From the loud world,--which yet he understood 35
Largely and wisely, as no worldling could.
For he by privilege of his nature proof
Against false glitter, from beneath the roof
Of privacy, as from a cave, surveyed
With stedfast eye its flickering light and shade, 40
And gently judged for evil and for good.
But whilst he mixed not for his own behoof
In public strife, his spirit glowed with zeal,
Not shorn of action, for the public weal,--
For truth and justice as its warp and woof, 45
For freedom as its signature and seal.
His life thus sacred from the world, discharged
From vain ambition and inordinate care,
In virtue exercised, by reverence rare
Lifted, and by humility enlarged, 50
Became a temple and a place of prayer.
In latter years he walked not singly there;
For one was with him ready at all hours
His griefs, his joys, his inmost thoughts to share,
Who buoyantly his burdens helped to bear, 55
And decked his altars daily with fresh flowers.
But further may we pass not; for the ground
Is holier than the Muse herself may tread;
Nor would I it should echo to a sound
Less solemn than the service for the dead. 60
Mine is inferior matter,--my own loss,--
The loss of dear delights for ever fled,
Of reason’s converse by affection fed,
Of wisdom, counsel, solace, that across
Life’s dreariest tracts a tender radiance shed. 65
Friend of my youth! though younger, yet my guide,
How much by thy unerring insight clear
I shaped my way of life for many a year!
What thoughtful friendship on thy deathbed died!
Friend of my youth! whilst thou wast by my side 70
Autumnal days still breathed a vernal breath;
How like a charm thy life to me supplied
All waste and injury of time and tide,
How like a disenchantment was thy death!
_Henry Taylor._
CCXCIII
_FOR CHARLIE’S SAKE._
The night is late, the house is still;
The angels of the hour fulfil
Their tender ministries, and move
From couch to couch, in cares of love.
They drop into thy dreams, sweet wife, 5
The happiest smile of Charlie’s life,
And lay on baby’s lips a kiss,
Fresh from his angel-brother’s bliss;
And, as they pass, they seem to make
A strange, dim hymn, ‘For Charlie’s sake.’ 10
My listening heart takes up the strain,
And gives it to the night again,
Fitted with words of lowly praise,
And patience learned of mournful days,
And memories of the dead child’s ways. 15
His will be done, his will be done!
Who gave and took away my son,
In the ‘far land’ to shine and sing
Before the Beautiful, the King,
Who every day doth Christmas make, 20
All starred and belled for Charlie’s sake,
For Charlie’s sake I will arise;
I will anoint me where he lies,
And change my raiment, and go in
To the Lord’s house, and leave my sin 25
Without, and seat me at his board,
Eat, and be glad, and praise the Lord.
For wherefore should I fast and weep,
And sullen moods of mourning keep?
I cannot bring him back, nor he, 30
For any calling, come to me.
The bond the angel Death did sign,
God sealed--for Charlie’s sake and mine.
I’m very poor--this slender stone
Marks all the narrow field I own; 35
Yet, patient husbandman, I till,
With faith and prayers, that precious hill,
Sow it with penitential pains,
And, hopeful, wait the latter rains;
Content if, after all, the spot 40
Yield barely one forget-me-not--
Whether or figs or thistles make
My crop, content for Charlie’s sake.
I have no houses, builded well--
Only that little lonesome cell, 45
Where never romping playmates come,
Nor bashful sweethearts, cunning-dumb--
An April burst of girls and boys,
Their rainbowed cloud of glooms and joys
Born with their songs, gone with their toys; 50
Nor ever is its stillness stirred
By purr of cat, or chirp of bird,
Or mother’s twilight legend, told
Of Horner’s pie, or Tiddler’s gold,
Or fairy hobbling to the door, 55
Red-cloaked and weird, banned and poor,
To bless the good child’s gracious eyes,
The good child’s wistful charities,
And crippled changeling’s hunch to make
Dance on his crutch, for good child’s sake. 60
How is it with the child? ’Tis well;
Nor would I any miracle
Might stir my sleeper’s tranquil trance,
Or plague his painless countenance:
I would not any seer might place 65
His staff on my immortal’s face,
Or lip to lip, and eye to eye,
Charm back his pale mortality.
No, Shunamite! I would not break
God’s stillness. Let them weep who wake; 70
For Charlie’s sake my lot is blest:
No comfort like his mother’s breast,
No praise like hers; no charm expressed
In fairest forms hath half her zest.
For Charlie’s sake this bird’s caressed, 75
That death left lonely in the nest;
For Charlie’s sake my heart is dressed,
As for its birthday, in its best;
For Charlie’s sake we leave the rest
To Him who gave, and who did take, 80
And saved us twice, for Charlie’s sake.
_John Williamson Palmer._
CCXCIV
_THE LEGEND OF THE STEPMOTHER._
As I lay asleep, as I lay asleep,
Under the grass as I lay so deep,
As I lay asleep in my cotton sirk
Under the shade of Our Lady’s Kirk,
I wakened up in the dead of night, 5
I wakened up in my death-sirk white,
And I heard a cry from far away,
And I knew the voice of my daughter May.
‘Mother, mother, come hither to me!
Mother, mother, come hither and see! 10
Mother, mother, mother dear,
Another mother is sitting here:
My body is bruised, and in pain I cry;
On straw in the dark afraid I lie;
I thirst and hunger for drink and meat, 15
And, mother, mother, to sleep were sweet!’
I heard the cry, though my grave was deep,
And awoke from sleep, and awoke from sleep.
I awoke from sleep, I awoke from sleep,
Up I rose from my grave so deep! 20
The earth was black, but overhead
The stars were yellow, the moon was red;
And I walked along all white and thin,
And lifted the latch and entered in,
And reached the chamber as dark as night, 25
And though it was dark, my face was white.
‘Mother, mother, I look on thee!
Mother, mother, you frighten me!
For your cheeks are thin, and your hair is gray.’
But I smiled, and kissed her fears away, 30
I smoothed her hair, and I sang a song,
And on my knee I rocked her long:
‘O mother, mother, sing low to me;
I am sleepy now, and I cannot see!’
I kissed her, but I could not weep, 35
And she went to sleep, she went to sleep.
As we lay asleep, as we lay asleep,
My May and I, in our grave so deep,
As we lay asleep in the midnight mirk,
Under the shade of Our Lady’s Kirk, 40
I wakened up in the dead of night,
Though May, my daughter, lay warm and white,
And I heard the cry of a little one,
And I knew ’twas the voice of Hugh my son.
‘Mother, mother, come hither to me! 45
Mother, mother, come hither and see!
Mother, mother, mother dear,
Another mother is sitting here:
My body is bruised and my heart is sad,
But I speak my mind and call them bad; 50
I thirst and hunger night and day,
And were I strong I would fly away!’
I heard the cry, though my grave was deep,
And awoke from sleep, and awoke from sleep.
I awoke from sleep, I awoke from sleep, 55
Up I rose from my grave so deep;
The earth was black, but overhead
The stars were yellow, the moon was red;
And I walked along all white and thin,
And lifted the latch and entered in. 60
‘Mother, mother, and art thou here?
I know your face, and I feel no fear;
Raise me, mother, and kiss my cheek,
For oh I am weary, and sore, and weak.’
I smoothed his hair with a mother’s joy, 65
And he laughed aloud, my own brave boy;
I raised and held him on my breast,
Sang him a song and bade him rest.
‘Mother, mother, sing low to me;
I am sleepy now, and I cannot see!’ 70
I kissed him, and I could not weep,
As he went to sleep, as he went to sleep.
As I lay asleep, as I lay asleep,
With my girl and boy in my grave so deep,
As I lay asleep, I awoke in fear, 75
Awoke, but awoke not my children dear,
And heard a cry so low and weak
From a tiny voice that could not speak;
I heard the cry of a little one,
My bairn that could neither talk nor run, 80
My little little one, uncaressed,
Starving for lack of the milk of the breast;
And I rose from sleep and entered in,
And found my little one pinched and thin,
And crooned a song and hushed its moan, 85
And put its lips to my white breast-bone;
And the red, red moon that lit the place
Went white to look at the little face,
And I kissed and kissed, and I could not weep,
As it went to sleep, as it went to sleep. 90
As it lay asleep, as it lay asleep,
I set it down in the darkness deep,
Smoothed its limbs and laid it out,
And drew the curtains around about;
Then into the dark, dark room I hied, 95
Where he lay awake at the woman’s side,
And, though the chamber was black as night,
He saw my face, for it was so white;
I gazed in his eyes, and he shrieked in pain,
And I knew he would never sleep again, 100
And back to my grave went silently,
And soon my baby was brought to me;
My son and daughter beside me rest,
My little baby is on my breast;
Our bed is warm, and our grave is deep, 105
But he cannot sleep, he cannot sleep!
_Robert Buchanan._
CCXCV
_THE SANDS OF DEE._
‘O Mary, go and call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
And call the cattle home,
Across the sands of Dee;’
The western wind was wild and dank with foam, 5
And all alone went she.
The creeping tide crept up along the sand,
And o’er and o’er the sand,
And round and round the sand,
As far as eye could see. 10
The blinding mist came down, and hid the land:
And never home came she.
‘Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair--
A tress of golden hair,
A drownèd maiden’s hair,
Above the nets at sea?
Was never salmon yet that shone so fair
Among the stakes on Dee.’
They rowed her in across the rolling foam,
The cruel crawling foam, 20
The cruel hungry foam,
To her grave beside the sea:
But still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home
Across the sands of Dee.
_Charles Kingsley._
CCXCVI
_A DIRGE._
Softly! she is lying
With her lips apart:
Softly! she is dying
Of a broken heart.
Whisper! she is going 5
To her final rest:
Whisper! life is growing
Dim within her breast.
Gently! she is sleeping,
She has breathed her last: 10
Gently! while you’ are weeping,
She to Heaven has past.
_Charles Gamage Eastman._
CCXCVII
_DEATH AND LIFE._
Her sufferings ended with the day!
Yet lived she at its close,
And breathed the long long night away
In statuelike repose.
But when the Sun in all his state 5
Illumed the eastern skies,
She passed through glory’s morning gate,
And walked in Paradise.
_James Aldrich._
CCXCVIII
_TITHONUS._
The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality 5
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn. 10
Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man--
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seemed
To his great heart none other than a God!
I asked thee, ‘Give me immortality.’ 15
Then didst thou grant mine asking with a smile,
Like wealthy men who care not how they give.
But thy strong Hours indignant worked their wills,
And beat me down and marred and wasted me,
And though they could not end me, left me maimed 20
To dwell in presence of immortal youth,
Immortal age beside immortal youth,
And all I was, in ashes. Can thy love,
Thy beauty, make amends, though even now,
Close over us, the silver star, thy guide, 25
Shines in those tremulous eyes that fill with tears
To hear me? Let me go: take back thy gift:
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance 30
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure, 35
And bosom beating with a heart renewed.
Thy cheek begins to redden through the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise, 40
And shake the darkness from their loosened manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
Lo! ever thus thou growest beautiful
In silence, then before thine answer given
Departest, and thy tears are on my cheek. 45
Why wilt thou ever scare me with thy tears,
And make me tremble lest a saying learnt,
In days far-off, on that dark earth, be true?
‘The Gods themselves cannot recall their gifts.’
Ay me! ay me! with what another heart 50
In days far-off, and with what other eyes
I used to watch--if I be he that watched--
The lucid outline forming round thee; saw
The dim curls kindle into sunny rings;
Changed with thy mystic change, and felt my blood 55
Glow with the glow that slowly crimsoned all
Thy presence and thy portals, while I lay,
Mouth, forehead, eyelids, growing dewy-warm
With kisses balmier than half-opening buds
Of April, and could hear the lips that kissed 60
Whispering I knew not what of wild and sweet,
Like that strange song I heard Apollo sing,
While Ilion like a mist rose into towers.
Yet hold me not for ever in thine East:
How can my nature longer mix with thine? 65
Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die, 70
And grassy barrows of the happier dead.
Release me, and restore me to the ground;
Thou seëst all things, thou wilt see my grave;
Thou wilt renew thy beauty morn by morn;
I earth in earth forget these empty courts, 75
And thee returning on thy silver wheels.
_Alfred Tennyson._
CCXCIX
_THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE._
‘Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean:
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more. 5
‘Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one,
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more. 10
‘Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more. 15
‘Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more.’ 20
_Alfred Tennyson._
CCC
_SONNET._
Rise, said the Master, come unto the feast:
She heard the call and rose with willing feet;
But thinking it not otherwise than meet
For such a bidding to put on her best,
She is gone from us for a few short hours 5
Into her bridal closet, there to wait
For the unfolding of the palace gate,
That gives her entrance to the blissful bowers.
We have not seen her yet, though we have been
Full often to her chamber door, and oft 10
Have listened underneath the postern green,
And laid fresh flowers, and whispered short and soft;
But she hath made no answer, and the day
From the clear west is fading fast away.
_Henry Alford._
CCCI
_THE VOICELESS._
We count the broken lyres that rest
Where the sweet wailing singers slumber,
But o’er their silent sister’s breast
The wild flowers who will stoop to number?
A few can touch the magic string, 5
And noisy fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Nay, grieve not for the dead alone,
Whose song has told their hearts’ sad story: 10
Weep for the voiceless, who have known
The cross without the crown of glory!
Not where Leucadian breezes sweep
O’er Sappho’s memory-haunted billow,
But where the glistening night-dews weep 15
On nameless sorrow’s churchyard pillow.
O hearts that break, and give no sign,
Save whitening lip and fading tresses,
Till Death pours out his cordial wine,
Slow-dropped from misery’s crushing presses! 20
If singing breath or echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven!
_Oliver Wendell Holmes._
CCCII
_A THANKSGIVING._
Lord, in this dust thy sovereign voice
First quickened love divine;
I am all thine--thy care and choice,
My very praise is thine.
I praise Thee, while thy providence 5
In childhood frail I trace,
For blessings given, ere dawning sense
Could seek or scan thy grace;
Blessings in boyhood’s marvelling hour,
Bright dreams and fancyings strange; 10
Blessings, when reason’s awful power
Gave thought a bolder range;
Blessings of friends, which to my door
Unasked, unhoped, have come;
And choicer still, a countless store 15
Of eager smiles at home.
Yet, Lord, in memory’s fondest place
I shrine those seasons sad,
When looking up, I saw thy face
In kind austereness clad. 20
I would not miss one sigh or tear,
Heart-pang or throbbing brow;
Sweet was the chastisement severe,
And sweet its memory now.
Yes! let the fragrant scars abide, 25
Love-tokens in thy stead,
Faint shadows of the spear-pierced side,
And thorn-encompassed head.
And such thy tender force be still,
When self would swerve or stray, 30
Shaping to truth the froward will
Along thy narrow way.
Deny me wealth; far, far remove
The lure of power or name;
Hope thrives in straits, in weakness love, 35
And faith in this world’s shame.
_John Henry Newman._
CCCIII
_THE GRAVE._
I stood within the grave’s o’ershadowing vault;
Gloomy and damp it stretched its vast domain;
Shades were its boundary; for my strained eye sought
For other limit to its width in vain.
Faint from the entrance came a daylight ray, 5
And distant sound of living men and things;
This, in the encountering darkness passed away,
That, took the tone in which a mourner sings.
I lit a torch at a sepulchral lamp,
Which shot a thread of light amid the gloom; 10
And feebly burning ’gainst the rolling damp,
I bore it through the regions of the tomb.
Around me stretched the slumbers of the dead,
Whereof the silence ached upon mine ear;
More and more noiseless did I make my tread, 15
And yet its echoes chilled my heart with fear.
The former men of every age and place,
From all their wanderings gathered; round me lay;
The dust of withered empires did I trace,
And stood ’mid generations past away. 20
I saw whole cities, that in flood or fire,
Or famine or the plague, gave up their breath;
Whole armies whom a day beheld expire,
By thousands swept into the arms of Death.
I saw the old world’s white and wave-swept bones, 25
A giant heap of creatures that had been;
Far and confused the broken skeletons
Lay strewn beyond mine eye’s remotest ken.
Death’s various shrines--the Urn, the Stone, the Lamp--
Were scattered round, confused, amid the dead; 30
Symbols and Types were mouldering in the damp,
Their shapes were waning, and their meaning fled.
Unspoken tongues, perchance in praise or woe,
Were charactered on tablets Time had swept;
And deep were half their letters hid below 35
The thick small dust of those they once had wept.
No hand was here to wipe the dust away;
No reader of the writing traced beneath;
No spirit sitting by its form of clay;
Nor sigh nor sound from all the heaps of Death. 40
One place alone had ceased to hold its prey;
A form had pressed it and was there no more;
The garments of the Grave beside it lay,
Where once they wrapped Him on the rocky floor.
He only with returning footsteps broke 45
The eternal calm wherewith the Tomb was bound;
Among the sleeping Dead alone He woke,
And blessed with outstretched hands the host around.
Well is it that such blessing hovers here,
To soothe each sad survivor of the throng 50
Who haunt the portals of the solemn sphere,
And pour their woe the loaded air along.
They to the verge have followed that they love,
And on the insuperable threshold stand;
With cherished names its speechless calm reprove, 55
And stretch in the abyss their ungrasped hand.
But vainly there the mourners seek relief
From silenced voice, and shapes, Decay has swept,
Till Death himself shall medicine their grief,
Closing their eyes by those o’er whom they wept. 60
All that have died, the Earth’s whole race, repose,
Where Death collects his treasures, heap on heap;
O’er each one’s busy day the nightshades close;
Its Actors, Sufferers, Schools, Kings, Armies--sleep.
‘_V._’
CCCIV
_MY PSALM._
I mourn no more my vanished years:
Beneath a tender rain,
An April rain of smiles and tears,
My heart is young again.
The west winds blow, and singing low, 5
I hear the glad streams run;
The windows of my soul I throw
Wide open to the sun.
No longer forward, nor behind,
I look in hope and fear: 10
But grateful, take the good I find,
The best of now, and here.
I plough no more a desert land
For harvest, weed and tare;
The manna dropping from God’s hand 15
Rebukes my painful care.
I break my pilgrim staff, I lay
Aside the toiling oar;
The angel sought so far away
I welcome at my door. 20
The airs of spring may never play
Among the ripening corn,
Nor freshness of the flowers of May
Blow through the autumn morn;
Yet shall the blue-eyed gentian look 25
Through fringèd lids to heaven,
And the pale aster in the brook
Shall see its image given;
The woods shall wear their robes of praise,
The south-wind softly sigh, 30
And sweet calm days in golden haze
Melt down the amber sky.
Not less shall manly deed and word
Rebuke an age of wrong:
The graven flowers that wreathe the sword 35
Make not the blade less strong.
Enough that blessings undeserved
Have marked my erring track,
That wheresoe’er my feet have swerved,
His chastening turned me back; 40
That more and more a Providence
Of love is understood,
Making the springs of time and sense
Sweet with eternal good;
That death seems but a covered way, 45
Which opens into light,
Wherein no blinded child can stray
Beyond the Father’s sight;
That care and trial seem at last,
Through memory’s sunset air, 50
Like mountain ranges overpast
In purple distance fair;
That all the jarring notes of life
Seem blending in a psalm,
And all the angles of its strife 55
Slow rounding into calm.
And so the shadows fall apart,
And so the west winds play:
And all the windows of my heart
I open to this day. 60
_John Greenleaf Whittier._
NOTES.
P. 3, No. iii.--There seems no reason to doubt that Sir Walter Raleigh
was the author of this poem, and that the initials W. R. with which it
appears in Davison’s _Rhapsody_ indicate truly the authorship. It is
abundantly worthy of him; there have been seldom profounder thoughts
more perfectly expressed than in the fourth and fifth stanzas. A certain
obscurity in the poem will demand, but will also repay, study; and for
its right understanding we must keep in mind that ‘affection’ is here
used as in our English Bible, where it is the rendering of πἁθος (Rom.
i. 26; Col. 3, 5), and that ‘affection’ and ‘desire’ are regarded as
interchangeable and equivalent.
P. 4, No. iv.--See Spedding’s _Works of Lord Bacon_, vol. vii. p. 267
sqq., for the external evidence making it reasonably probable, but
certainly not lifting above all doubt, that the ascription of these
lines to Lord Bacon is a right one.
P. 6, No. vi.--This very remarkable poem first appeared in the second
edition of Davison’s _Poetical Rhapsody_, 1608; itself a sufficient
disproof of the often-repeated assertion that Raleigh wrote it the night
before his execution, 1618. At the same time this leaves untouched the
question whether he may not at some earlier day have been its author.
There is a certain amount of evidence in favour of this tradition, which
is carefully put together in Hannah’s _Poems by Sir Henry Wotton, Sir
Walter Raleigh, and others_, 1845, pp. 89-98.
P. 10, No. viii.--The author of these beautiful lines was a minister of
the Scotch Kirk at the close of the sixteenth century. Several stanzas
have been omitted.
P. 21, No. xviii.--This sonnet is the first among the commendatory poems
prefixed to the original edition of _The Fairy Queen_. As original in
conception as it is grand in execution, it is about the finest
compliment which was ever paid by poet to poet, such as it became
Raleigh to indite and Spenser to receive. Yet it labours under a serious
defect. The great poets of the past lose no whit of their glory because
later poets are found worthy to share it. Petrarch in his lesser, and
Homer in his greater sphere, are just as illustrious since Spenser
appeared as before.