"Our spirits have climbed high
By reason of the passion of our grief,--
And from the top of sense, looked over sense
To the significance and heart of things
Rather than things themselves."
E. B. BROWNING.
_THE LEADING OF SORROW._
Through a twilight land, a moaning region,
Thick with sighs that shook the trembling air,
Land of shadows whose dim crew was legion,
Lost I hurried, hunted by despair.
Quailed my heart like an expiring splendour,
Fitful flicker of a faltering fire,
Smitten chords which tempest-stricken render
Rhythms of anguish from a breaking lyre.
Love had left me in a land of shadows,
Lonely on the ruins of delight,
And I grieved with tearless grief of widows,
Moaned as orphans homeless in the night.
Love had left me knocking at Death's portal--
Shone his star and vanished from my sky--
And I cried: "Since Love, even Love, is mortal,
Take, unmake, and break me; let me die."
Then, the twilight's grisly veils dividing,
Phantom-like there stole one o'er the plain,
Wavering mists for ever round it gliding
Hid the face I strove to scan in vain.
Spake the veiled one: "Solitary weeper,
'Mid the myriad mourners thou'rt but one:
Come, and thou shalt see the awful reaper,
Evil, reaping all beneath the sun."
On my hand the clay-cold hand did fasten
As it murmured--"Up and follow me;
O'er the thickly peopled earth we'll hasten,
Yet more thickly packed with misery."
And I followed: ever in the shadow
Of that looming form I fared along;
Now o'er mountains, now through wood and meadow,
Or through cities with their surging throng.
With none other for a friend or fellow
Those relentless footsteps were my guide
To the sea-caves echoing with the hollow
Immemorial moaning of the tide.
Laughed the sunlight on the living ocean,
Danced and rocked itself upon the spray,
And its shivered beams in twinkling motion
Gleamed like star-motes in the Milky Way.
Lo, beneath those waters surging, flowing,
I beheld the Deep's fantastic bowers;
Shapes which seemed alive and yet were growing
On their stalks like animated flowers.
Sentient flowers which seemed to glow and glimmer
Soft as ocean blush of Indian shells,
White as foam-drift in the moony shimmer
Of those sea-lit, wave-pavilioned dells.
Yet even here, as in the fire-eyed panther,
In disguise the eternal hunger lay,
For each feathery, velvet-tufted anther
Lay in ambush waiting for its prey.
Tiniest jewelled fish that flashed like lightning,
Blindly drawn, came darting through the wave,
When, a stifling sack above them tightening,
Closed the ocean-blossom's living grave.
Now we fared through forest glooms primeval
Through whose leaves the light but rarely shone,
Where the buttressed tree-trunks looked coeval
With the time-worn, ocean-fretted stone;
Where, from stem to stem their tendrils looping,
Coiled the lithe lianas fold on fold,
Or, in cataracts of verdure drooping,
From on high their billowy leafage rolled.
Where beneath the dusky woodland cover,
While the noon-hush holds all living things,
Butterflies of tropic splendour hover
In a maze of rainbow-coloured wings:
Some like stars light up their own green heaven
Some are spangled like a golden toy,
Or like flowers from their foliage driven
In the fiery ecstasy of joy.
But, the forest slumber rudely breaking,
Through the silence rings a piercing yell;
At the cry unnumbered beasts, awaking,
With their howls the loud confusion swell.
'Tis the cry of some frail creature panting
In the tiger's lacerating grip;
In its flesh carnivorous teeth implanting,
While the blood smokes round his wrinkled lip.
'Tis the scream some bird in terror utters,
With its wings weighed down by leaden fears,
As from bough to downward bough it flutters
Where the snake its glistening crest uprears:
Eyes of sluggish greed through rank weeds stealing,
Breath whose venomous fumes mount through the air,
Till benumbed the helpless victim, reeling,
Drops convulsed into the reptile snare.
Now we fared o'er sweltering wastes whose steaming
Clouds of tawny sand the wanderer blind.
Herds of horses with their long manes streaming
Snorted thirstily against the wind;
O'er the waste they scoured in shadowy numbers,
Gasped for springs their raging thirst to cool,
And, like sick men mocked in fevered slumbers,
Stoop to drink--and find a phantom pool.
What of antelopes crunched by the leopard?
What if hounds run down the timid hare?
What though sheep, strayed from the faithful shepherd,
Perish helpless in the lion's lair?
The all-seeing sun shines on unheeding,
In the night shines the unruffled moon,
Though on earth brute myriads, preying, bleeding,
Put creation harshly out of tune.
Cried I, turning to the shrouded figure--
"Oh, in mercy veil this cruel strife!
Sanguinary orgies which disfigure
The green ways of labyrinthine life.
From the needs and greeds of primal passion,
From the serpent's track and lion's den,
To the world our human hands did fashion,
Lead me to the kindly haunts of men."
And through fields of corn we passed together,
Orange golden in the brooding heat,
Where brown reapers in the harvest weather
Cut ripe swathes of downward rustling wheat.
In the orchards dangling red and yellow,
Clustered fruit weighed down the bending sprays;
On a hundred hills the vines grew mellow
In the warmth of fostering autumn days.
Through the air the shrilly twittering swallows
Flashed their nimble shadows on the leas;
Red-flecked cows were glassed in golden shallows,
Purple clover hummed with restless bees.
Herdsmen drove the cattle from the mountain,
To the fold the shepherd drove his flocks,
Village girls drew water from the fountain,
Village yokels piled the full-eared shocks.
From the white town dozing in the valley,
Round its vast Cathedral's solemn shade,
Citizens strolled down the walnut alley
Where youth courted and glad childhood played.
"Peace on earth," I murmured; "let us linger--
Here the wage of life seems good at least:"
As I spake the veiled One raised a finger
Where the moon broke flowering in the east.
Faintly muttering from deep mountain ranges,
Muffled sounds rose hoarsely on the night,
As the crash of foundering avalanches
Wakes hoarse echoes in each Alpine height.
Near and nearer sounds the roaring--thunder,
Mortal thunder, crashes through the vale;
Lightning flash of muskets breaks from under
Groves once haunted by the nightingale.
Men clutch madly at each weapon--women,
Children crouch in cellars, under roofs,
For the town is circled by their foemen--
Shakes the ground with clang of trampling hoofs.
Shot on shot the volleys hiss and rattle,
Shrilly whistling fly the murderous balls,
Fiercely roars the tumult of the battle
Round the hard-contested, dear-bought walls.
Horror, horror! The fair town is burning,
Flames burst forth, wild sparks and ashes fly;
With her children's blood the green earth's turning
Blood-red--blood-red, too, the cloud-winged sky.
Crackling flare the streets: from the lone steeple
The great clock booms forth its ancient chime,
And its dolorous quarters warn the people
Of the conquering troops that march with time.
Fallen lies the fair old town, its houses
Charred and ruined gape in smoking heaps;
Here with shouts a ruffian band carouses,
There an outraged woman vainly weeps.
In the fields where the ripe corn lies mangled,
Where the wounded groan beneath the dead,
Friend and foe, now helplessly entangled,
Stain red poppies with a guiltier red.
There the dog howls o'er his perished master,
There the crow comes circling from afar;
All vile things that batten on disaster
Follow feasting in the wake of war.
Famine follows--what they ploughed and planted
The unhappy peasants shall not reap;
Sickening of strange meats and fever haunted,
To their graves they prematurely creep.
"Hence"--I cried in unavailing pity--
"Let us flee these scenes of monstrous strife,
Seek the pale of some imperial city
Where the law rules starlike o'er man's life."
Straightway floating o'er blue sea and river,
We were plunged into a roaring cloud,
Wherethrough lamps in ague fits did shiver
O'er the surging multitudinous crowd.
Piles of stone, their cliff-like walls uprearing,
Flashed in luminous lines along the night;
Jets of flame, spasmodically flaring,
Splashed black pavements with a sickly light;
Fabulous gems shone here, and glowing coral,
Shimmering stuffs from many an Eastern loom,
And vast piles of tropic fruits and floral
Marvels seemed to mock November's gloom.
But what prowls near princely mart and dwelling,
Whence through many a thundering thoroughfare
Rich folk roll on cushions softly swelling
To the week-day feast and Sunday prayer?
Yea, who prowl there, hunger-nipped and pallid,
Breathing nightmares limned upon the gloom?
'Tis but human rubbish, gaunt and squalid,
Whom their country spurns for lack of room.
In their devious track we mutely follow,
Mutely climb dim flights of oozy stairs,
Where through gap-toothed, mizzling roof the yellow
Pestilent fog blends with the fetid air.
Through the unhinged door's discordant slamming
Ring the gruesome sounds of savage strife--
Howls of babes, the drunken father's damning,
Counter-cursing of the shrill-tongued wife.
Children feebly crying on their mother
In a wailful chorus--"Give us food!"
Man and woman glaring at each other
Like two gaunt wolves with a famished brood.
Till he snatched a stick, and, madly staring,
Struck her blow on blow upon the head;
And she, reeling back, gasped, hardly caring--
"Ah, you've done it now, Jim"--and was dead.
Dead--dead--dead--the miserable creature--
Never to feel hunger's cruel fang
Wring the bowels of rebellious nature
That her infants might be spared the pang.
"Dead! Good luck to her!" The man's teeth chattered,
Stone-still stared he with blank eyes and hard,
Then, his frame with one big sob nigh shattered,
Fled--and cut his throat down in the yard.
Dark the night--the children wail forsaken,
Crane their wrinkled necks and cry for food,
Drop off into fitful sleep, or waken
Trembling like a sparrow's ravished brood.
Dark the night--the rain falls on the ashes,
Feebly hissing on the feeble heat,
Filters through the ceiling, drops in splashes
On the little children's naked feet.
Dark the night--the children wail forsaken--
Is there none, ah, none, to heed their moan?
Yea, at dawn one little one is taken,
Four poor souls are left, but one is gone.
Gone--escaped--flown from the shame and sorrow
Waiting for them at life's sombre gate,
But the hand of merciless to-morrow
Drags the others shuddering to their fate.
But one came--a girlish thing--a creature
Flung by wanton hands 'mid lust and crime--
A poor outcast, yet by right of nature
Sweet as odour of the upland thyme.
Scapegoat of a people's sins, and hunted,
Howled at, hooted to the wilderness,
To that wilderness of deaf hearts, blunted
To the depths of woman's dumb distress.
Jetsam, flotsam of the monster city,
Spurned, defiled, reviled, that outcast came
To those babes that whined for love and pity,
Gave them bread bought with the wage of shame.
Gave them bread, and gave them warm, maternal
Kisses not on sale for any price:
Yea, a spark, a flash of some eternal
Sympathy shone through those haunted eyes.
Ah, perchance through her dark life's confusion,
Through the haste and taste of fevered hours,
Gusts of memory on her youth's pollution
Blew forgotten scents of faded flowers.
And she saw the cottage near the wild wood,
With its lichened roof and latticed panes,
Strayed once more through golden fields of childhood,
Hyacinth dells and hawthorn-scented lanes.
Heard once more the song of nesting thrushes
And the blackbird's long mellifluous note,
Felt once more the glow of maiden blushes
Burn through rosy cheek and milkwhite throat
In that orchard where the apple blossom
Lightly shaken fluttered on her hair,
As the heart was fluttering in her bosom
When her sweetheart came and kissed her there.
Often came he in the lilac-laden
Moonlit twilight, often pledged his word;
But she was a simple country-maiden,
He the offspring of a noble lord.
Fading lilacs May's farewell betoken,
Fledglings fly and soon forget the nest;
Lightly may a young man's vows be broken,
And the heart break in a woman's breast.
Gathered like a sprig of summer roses
In the dewy morn and flung away,
To the girl the father's door now closes,
Let her shelter henceforth how she may.
Who will house the miserable mother
With her child, a helpless castaway!
"I, am I the keeper of my brother?"
Asks smug virtue as it turns to pray!
Lovely are the earliest Lenten lilies,
Primrose pleiads, hyacinthine sheets;
Stripped and rifled from their pastoral valleys,
See them sold now in the public streets!
Other flowers are sold there besides posies--
Eyes may have the hyacinth's glowing blue,
Rounded cheeks the velvet bloom of roses,
Taper necks the rain-washed lily's hue.
But a rustic blossom! Love and duty
Bound up in a child whom hunger slays!
Ah! but one thing still is left her--beauty
Fresh, untarnished yet--and beauty pays.
Beauty keeps her child alive a little,
Then it dies--her woman's love with it--
Beauty's brilliant sceptre, ah, how brittle,
Drags her daily deeper down the pit.
Ruin closes o'er her--hideous, nameless;
Each fresh morning marks a deeper fall;
Till at twenty--callous, cankered, shameless,
She lies dying at the hospital.
Drink, more drink, she calls for--her harsh laughter
Grates upon the meekly praying nurse,
Eloquent about her soul's hereafter:
"Souls be blowed!" she sings out with a curse.
And so dies, an unrepenting sinner--
Pitched into her pauper's grave what time
That most noble lord rides by to dinner
Who had wooed her in her innocent prime.
And in after-dinner talk he preaches
Resignation--o'er his burgundy--
Till a grateful public dubs his speeches
Oracles of true philanthropy.
Peace ye call this? Call this justice, meted
Equally to rich and poor alike?
Better than this peace the battle's heated
Cannon-balls that ask not whom they strike!
Better than this masquerade of culture
Hiding strange hyaena appetites,
The frank ravening of the raw-necked vulture
As its beak the senseless carrion smites.
What of men in bondage, toiling blunted
In the roaring factory's lurid gloom?
What of cradled infants starved and stunted?
What of woman's nameless martyrdom?
The all-seeing sun shines on unheeding,
Shines by night the calm, unruffled moon,
Though the human myriads, preying, bleeding,
Put creation harshly out of tune.
"Hence, ah, hence"--I sobbed in quivering passion--
"From these fearful haunts of fiendish men!
Better far the plain, carnivorous fashion
Which is practised in the lion's den."
And I fled--yet staggering still did follow
In the footprints of my shrouded guide--
To the sea-caves echoing with the hollow
Immemorial moaning of the tide.
Sinking, swelling roared the wintry ocean,
Pitch-black chasms struck with flying blaze,
As the cloud-winged storm-sky's sheer commotion
Showed the blank Moon's mute Medusa face
White o'er wastes of water--surges crashing
Over surges in the formless gloom,
And a mastless hulk, with great seas washing
Her scourged flanks, pitched toppling to her doom.
Through the crash of wave on wave gigantic,
Through the thunder of the hurricane,
My wild heart in breaking shrilled with frantic
Exultation--"Chaos come again!
Yea, let earth be split and cloven asunder
With man's still accumulating curse--
Life is but a momentary blunder
In the cycle of the Universe.
"Yea, let earth with forest-belted mountains,
Hills and valleys, cataracts and plains,
With her clouds and storms and fires and fountains,
Pass with all her rolling sphere contains,
Melt, dissolve again into the ocean,
Ocean fade into a nebulous haze!"
And I sank back without sense or motion
'Neath the blank Moon's mute Medusa face.
Moments, years, or ages passed, when, lifting
Freezing lids, I felt the heavens on high,
And, innumerable as the sea-sands drifting,
Stars unnumbered drifted through the sky.
Rhythmical in luminous rotation,
In daedalian maze they reel and fly,
And their rushing light is Time's pulsation
In his passage through Eternity.
Constellated suns, fresh lit, declining,
Were ignited now, now quenched in space,
Rolling round each other, or inclining
Orb to orb in multi-coloured rays.
Ever showering from their flaming fountains
Light more light on each far-circling earth,
Till life stirred crepuscular seas, and mountains
Heaved convulsive with the throes of birth.
And the noble brotherhood of planets,
Knitted each to each by links of light,
Circled round their suns, nor knew a minute's
Lapse or languor in their ceaseless flight.
And pale moons and rings and burning splinters
Of wrecked worlds swept round their parent spheres,
Clothed with spring or sunk in polar winters
As their sun draws nigh or disappears.
Still new vistas of new stars--far dwindling--
Through the firmament like dewdrops roll,
Torches of the Cosmos which enkindling
Flash their revelation on the soul.
Yea, One spake there--though nor form nor feature
Shown--a Voice came from the peaks of time:--
"Wilt thou judge me, wilt thou curse me, Creature
Whom I raised up from the Ocean slime?
"Long I waited--ages rolled o'er ages--
As I crystallized in granite rocks,
Struggling dumb through immemorial stages,
Glacial aeons, fiery earthquake shocks.
In fierce throbs of flame or slow upheaval,
Speck by tiny speck, I topped the seas,
Leaped from earth's dark womb, and in primeval
Forests shot up shafts of mammoth trees.
"Through a myriad forms I yearned and panted,
Putting forth quick shoots in endless swarms--
Giant-hoofed, sharp-tusked, or finned or planted
Writhing on the reef with pinioned arms.
I have climbed from reek of sanguine revels
In Cimmerian wood and thorny wild,
Slowly upwards to the dawnlit levels
Where I bore thee, oh my youngest Child!
"Oh, my heir and hope of my to-morrow,
I--I draw thee on through fume and fret,
Croon to thee in pain and call through sorrow,
Flowers and stars take for thy alphabet.
Through the eyes of animals appealing,
Feel my fettered spirit yearn to thine,
Who, in storm of will and clash of feeling,
Shape the life that shall be--the divine.
"Oh, redeem me from my tiger rages,
Reptile greed, and foul hyaena lust;
With the hero's deeds, the thoughts of sages,
Sow and fructify this passive dust;
Drop in dew and healing love of woman
On the bloodstained hands of hungry strife,
Till there break from passion of the Human
Morning-glory of transfigured life.
"I have cast my burden on thy shoulder;
Unimagined potencies have given
That from formless Chaos thou shalt mould her
And translate gross earth to luminous heaven.
Bear, oh, bear the terrible compulsion,
Flinch not from the path thy fathers trod,
From Man's martyrdom in slow convulsion
Will be born the infinite goodness--God."
Ceased the Voice: and as it ceased it drifted
Like the seashell's inarticulate moan;
From the Deep, on wings of flame uplifted,
Rose the sun rejoicing and alone.
Laughed in light upon the living ocean,
Danced and rocked itself upon the spray,
And its shivered beams in twinkling motion
Gleamed like star-motes of the Milky Way.
And beside me in the golden morning
I beheld my shrouded phantom-guide;
But no longer sorrow-veiled and mourning--
It became transfigured by my side.
And I knew--as one escaped from prison
Sees old things again with fresh surprise--
It was Love himself, Love re-arisen
With the Eternal shining through his eyes.
POEMS OF THE OPEN AIR.
"Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch."
S. T. COLERIDGE.
_THE SOWER._
The winds had hushed at last as by command;
The quiet sky above,
With its grey clouds spread o'er the fallow land,
Sat brooding like a dove
There was no motion in the air, no sound
Within the tree-tops stirred,
Save when some last leaf, fluttering to the ground,
Dropped like a wounded bird:
Or when the swart rooks in a gathering crowd
With clamorous noises wheeled,
Hovering awhile, then swooped with wranglings loud
Down on the stubbly field.
For now the big-thewed horses, toiling slow
In straining couples yoked,
Patiently dragged the ploughshare to and fro
Till their wet haunches smoked.
Till the stiff acre, broken into clods,
Bruised by the harrow's tooth,
Lay lightly shaken, with its humid sods
Ranged into furrows smooth.
There looming lone, from rise to set of sun,
Without or pause or speed,
Solemnly striding by the furrows dun,
The sower sows the seed.
The sower sows the seed, which mouldering,
Deep coffined in the earth,
Is buried now, but with the future spring
Will quicken into birth.
Oh, poles of birth and death! Controlling Powers
Of human toil and need!
On this fair earth all men are surely sowers,
Surely all life is seed!
All life is seed, dropped in Time's yawning furrow,
Which with slow sprout and shoot,
In the revolving world's unfathomed morrow,
Will blossom and bear fruit.
_A SPRING SONG._
Dark sod pierced by flames of flowers,
Dead wood freshly quickening,
Bright skies dusked with sudden showers,
Lit by rainbows on the wing.
Cuckoo calls and young lambs' bleating
Nimble airs which coyly bring
Little gusts of tender greeting
From shy nooks where violets cling.
Half-fledged buds and birds and vernal
Fields of grass dew-glistening;
Evanescent life's eternal
Resurrection, bridal Spring!
_APRIL RAIN._
The April rain, the April rain,
Comes slanting down in fitful showers,
Then from the furrow shoots the grain,
And banks are fledged with nestling flowers;
And in grey shaw and woodland bowers
The cuckoo through the April rain
Calls once again.
The April sun, the April sun,
Glints through the rain in fitful splendour,
And in grey shaw and woodland dun
The little leaves spring forth and tender
Their infant hands, yet weak and slender,
For warmth towards the April sun,
One after one.
And between shower and shine hath birth
The rainbow's evanescent glory;
Heaven's light that breaks on mists of earth!
Frail symbol of our human story,
It flowers through showers where, looming hoary,
The rain-clouds flash with April mirth,
Like Life on earth.
_THE SLEEPING BEAUTY._
There was intoxication in the air;
The wind, keen blowing from across the seas,
O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas,
Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere.
An undertone of song pulsed far and near,
The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies,
And, like a living clock among the trees,
The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year.
For now the Sun had found the earth once more,
And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss;
Who thrilled with light of love in every pore,
Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his.
Then all things felt life fluttering at their core--
The world shook mystical in lambent bliss.
_APPLE-BLOSSOM._
Blossom of the apple trees!
Mossy trunks all gnarled and hoary,
Grey boughs tipped with rose-veined glory,
Clustered petals soft as fleece
Garlanding old apple trees!
How you gleam at break of day!
When the coy sun, glancing rarely,
Pouts and sparkles in the pearly
Pendulous dewdrops, twinkling gay
On each dancing leaf and spray.
Through your latticed boughs on high,
Framed in rosy wreaths, one catches
Brief kaleidoscopic snatches
Of deep lapis-lazuli
In the April-coloured sky.
When the sundown's dying brand
Leaves your beauty to the tender
Magic spells of moonlight splendour,
Glimmering clouds of bloom you stand,
Turning earth to fairyland.
Cease, wild winds, O, cease to blow!
Apple-blossom, fluttering, flying,
Palely on the green turf lying,
Vanishing like winter snow;
Swift as joy to come and go.
_THE MUSIC-LESSON._
A thrush alit on a young-leaved spray,
And, lightly clinging,
It rocked in its singing
As the rapturous notes rose loud and gay;
And with liquid shakes,
And trills and breaks,
Rippled through blossoming boughs of May.
Like a ball of fluff, with a warm brown throat
And throbbing bosom,
'Mid the apple-blossom,
The new-fledged nestling sat learning by rote
To echo the song
So tender and strong,
As it feebly put in its frail little note.
O blissfullest lesson amid the green grove!
The low wind crispeth
The leaves, where lispeth
The shy little bird with its parent above;
Two voices that mingle
And make but a single
Hymn of rejoicing in praise of their love.
_THE TEAMSTER._
With slow and slouching gait Sam leads the team;
He stoops i' the shoulders, worn with work not years;
One only passion has he, it would seem--
The passion for the horses which he rears:
He names them as one would some household pet,
May, Violet.
He thinks them quite as sensible as men;
As nice as women, but not near so skittish;
He fondles, cossets, scolds them now and then,
Nay, gravely talks as if they knew good British:
You hear him call from dawn to set of sun,
"Goo back! Com on!"
Sam never seems depressed nor yet elate,
Like Nature's self he goes his punctual round;
On Sundays, smoking by his garden gate,
For hours he'll stand, with eyes upon the ground,
Like some tired cart-horse in a field alone,
And still as stone.
Yet, howsoever stolid he may seem,
Sam has his tragic background, weird and wild
Like some adventure in a drunkard's dream.
Impossible, you'd swear, for one so mild:
Yet village gossips dawdling o'er their ale
Still tell the tale.
In his young days Sam loved a servant-maid,
A girl with happy eyes like hazel brooks
That dance i' the sun, cheeks as if newly made
Of pouting roses coyly hid in nooks,
And warm brown hair that wantoned into curl:
A fresh-blown girl.
Sam came a-courting while the year was blithe,
When wet browed mowers, stepping out in tune,
With level stroke and rhythmic swing of scythe,
Smote down the proud grass in the pomp of June,
And wagons, half-tipped over, seemed to sway
With loads of hay.
The elder bush beside the orchard croft
Brimmed over with its bloom like curds and cream;
From out grey nests high in the granary loft
Black clusters of small heads with callow scream
Peered open-beaked, as swallows flashed along
To feed their young.
Ripening towards the harvest swelled the wheat,
Lush cherries dangled 'gainst the latticed panes;
The roads were baking in the windless heat,
And dust had floured the glossy country lanes,
One sun-hushed, light-flushed Sunday afternoon
The last of June.
When, with his thumping heart all out of joint,
And pulses beating like a stroller's drum,
Sam screwed his courage to the sticking point
And asked his blushing sweetheart if she'd come
To Titsey Fair; he meant to coax coy May
To name the day.
But her rich master snapped his thumb and swore
The girl was not for him! Should not go out!
And, whistling to his dogs, slammed-to the door
Close in Sam's face, and left him dazed without
In the fierce sunshine, blazing in his path
Like fire of wrath.
Unheeding, he went forth with hot wild eyes
Past fields of feathery oats and wine-red clover;
Unheeded, larks soared singing to the skies,
Or rang the plaintive cry of rising plover;
Unheeded, pheasants with a startled sound
Whirred from the ground.
On, on he went by acres full of grain,
By trees and meadows reeling past his sight,
As to a man whirled onwards in a train
The land with spinning hedgerows seems in flight;
At last he stopped and leant a long, long while
Against a stile.
Hours passed; the clock struck ten; a hush of night,
In which even wind and water seemed at peace;
But here and there a glimmering cottage light
Shone like a glowworm through the slumberous trees;
Or from some far-off homestead through the dark
A watch-dog's bark.
But all at once Sam gave a stifled cry:
"There's fire," he muttered, "fire upon the hills!"
No fire--but as the late moon rose on high
Her light looked smoke-red as through belching mills:
No fire--but moonlight turning in his path
To fire of wrath.
He looked abroad with eyes that gave the mist
A lurid tinge above the breadths of grain
Owned by May's master. Then he shook his fist,
Still muttering, "Fire!" and measured o'er again
The road he'd come, where, lapped in moonlight, lay
Huge ricks of hay.
There he paused glaring. Then he turned and waned
Like mist into the misty, moon-soaked night,
Where the pale silvery fields were blotched and stained
With strange fantastic shadows. But what light
Is that which leaps up, flickering lithe and long,
With licking tongue!
Hungry it darts and hisses, twists and turns,
And with each minute shoots up high and higher,
Till, wrapped in flames, the mighty hayrick burns
And sends its sparks on to a neighbouring byre,
Where, frightened at the hot, tremendous glow,
The cattle low.
And rick on rick takes fire; and next a stye,
Whence through the smoke the little pigs rush out;
The house-dog barks; then, with a startled cry,
The window is flung open, shout on shout
Wakes the hard-sleeping farm where man and maid
Start up dismayed.
And with wild faces wavering in the glare,
In nightcaps, bedgowns, clothes half huddled on
Some to the pump, some to the duck-pond tear
In frantic haste, while others splashing run
With pails, or turn the hose with flame-scorched face
Upon the blaze.
At last, when some wan streaks began to show
In the chill darkness of the sky, the fire
Went out, subdued but for the sputtering glow
Of sparks among wet ashes. Barn and byre
Were safe, but swallowed all the summer math
By fire of wrath.
Still haggard from the night's wild work and pale,
Farm-men and women stood in whispering knots,
Regaled with foaming mugs of nut-brown ale;
Firing his oaths about like vicious shots,
The farmer hissed out now and then: "Gad damn!
It's that black Sam."
They had him up and taxed him with the crime;
Denying naught, he sulked and held his peace;
And so, a branded convict, in due time,
Handcuffed and cropped, they shipped him over-seas:
Seven years of shame sliced from his labourer's life
As with a knife.
But through it all the image of a girl
With hazel eyes like pebbled waters clear,
And warm brown hair that wantoned into curl,
Kept his heart sweet through many a galling year,
Like to a bit of lavender long pressed
In some black chest.
At last his time was up, and Sam returned
To his dear village with its single street,
Where, in the sooty forge, the fire still burned,
As, hammering on the anvil, red with heat,
The smith wrought at a shoe with tongues aglow,
Blow upon blow.
There stood the church, with peals for death and birth,
Its ancient spire o'ertopping ancient trees,
And there the graves and mounds of unknown earth,
Gathered like little children round its knees;
There was "The Bull," with sign above the door,
And sanded floor.
Unrecognized Sam took his glass of beer,
And picked up gossip which the men let fall:
How Farmer Clow had failed, and one named Steer
Had taken on the land, repairs and all;
And how the Kimber girl was to be wed
To Betsy's Ned.
Sam heard no more, flung down his pence, and took
The way down to the well-remembered stile;
There, in the gloaming by the trysting brook,
He came upon his May--with just that smile
For sheep-faced Ned, that light in happy eyes:
Oh, sugared lies!
He came upon them with black-knitted brows
And clenched brown hands, and muttered huskily:
"Oh, little May, are those your true love's vows
You swore to keep while I was over-sea?"
Then crying, turned upon the other one,
"Com on, com on."
Then they fell to with faces set for fight,
And hit each other hard with rustic pride;
But Sam, whose arm with iron force could smite,
Knocked his cowed rival down, and won his bride.
May wept and smiled, swayed like a wild red rose
As the wind blows.
She married Sam, who loved her with a wild
Strong love he could not put to words--too deep
For her to gauge; but with her first-born child
May dropped off, flower-like, into the long sleep,
And left him nothing but the memory of
His little love.
Since then the silent teamster lives alone,
The trusted headman of his master Steer;
One only passion seems he still to own--
The passion for the foals he has to rear;
And still the prettiest, full of life and play,
Is little May.
_A HIGHLAND VILLAGE._
Clear shining after the rain,
The sun bursts the clouds asunder,
And the hollow-rumbling thunder
Groans like a loaded wain
As, deep in the Grampians yonder,
He grumbles now and again.
Whenever the breezes shiver
The leaves where the rain-drops quiver,
Each bough and bush and brier
Breaks into living fire,
Till every tree is bright
With blossom bursts of light.
From golden roof and spout
Brown waters gurgle and splutter,
And rush down the flooded gutter
Where the village children shout,
As barefoot they splash in and out
The water with tireless patter.
The bald little Highland street
Is all alive and a-glitter;
The air blows keen and sweet
From the field where the swallows twitter;
Old wives on the doorsteps meet,
At the corner the young maids titter.
And the reapers hasten again,
Ere quite the daylight wane
To shake out the barley sheaves;
While through the twinkling leaves
The harvest moon upheaves
Clear shining after the rain.
_ON A FORSAKEN LARK'S NEST._
Lo, where left 'mid the sheaves, cut down by the iron-fanged reaper,
Eating its way as it clangs fast through the wavering wheat,
Lies the nest of a lark, whose little brown eggs could not keep her
As she, affrighted and scared, fled from the harvester's feet.
Ah, what a heartful of song that now will never awaken,
Closely packed in the shell, awaited love's fostering,
That should have quickened to life what, now a-cold and forsaken,
Never, enamoured of light, will meet the dawn on the wing.
Ah, what paeans of joy, what raptures no mortal can measure,
Sweet as honey that's sealed in the cells of the honey-comb,
Would have ascended on high in jets of mellifluous pleasure,
Would have dropped from the clouds to nest in its gold-curtained home.
Poor, pathetic brown eggs! Oh, pulses that never will quicken!
Music mute in the shell that hath been turned to a tomb!
Many a sweet human singer, chilled and adversity-stricken,
Withers benumbed in a world his joy might have helped to illume.
_REAPERS._
Sun-tanned men and women, toiling there together;
Seven I count in all, in yon field of wheat,
Where the rich ripe ears in the harvest weather
Glow an orange gold through the sweltering heat.
Busy life is still, sunk in brooding leisure:
Birds have hushed their singing in the hushed tree-tops;
Not a single cloud mars the flawless azure;
Not a shadow moves o'er the moveless crops;
In the glassy shallows, that no breath is creasing,
Chestnut-coloured cows in the rushes dank
Stand like cows of bronze, save when they flick the teasing
Flies with switch of tail from each quivering flank.
Nature takes a rest--even her bees are sleeping,
And the silent wood seems a church that's shut;
But these human creatures cease not from their reaping
While the corn stands high, waiting to be cut.
_APPLE-GATHERING._
Essex flats are pink with clover,
Kent is crowned with flaunting hops,
Whitely shine the cliffs of Dover,
Yellow wave the Midland crops;
Sussex Downs the flocks grow sleek on,
But, for me, I love to stand
Where the Herefordshire beacon
Watches o'er his orchard land.
Where now sun, now shadow dapples--
As it wavers in the breeze--
Clumps of fresh-complexioned apples
On the heavy-laden trees:
Red and yellow, streaked and hoary,
Russet-coated, pale or brown--
Some are dipped in sunset glory,
And some painted by the dawn.
What profusion, what abundance!
Not a twig but has its fruits;
High in air some in the sun dance,
Some lie scattered near the roots.
These the hasty winds have taken
Are a green, untimely crop;
Those by burly rustics shaken
Fall with loud resounding plop.
In this mellow autumn weather,
Ruddy 'mid the long green grass,
Heaped-up baskets stand together,
Filled by many a blowsy lass.
Red and yellow, streaked and hoary,
Pile them on the granary floors,
Till the yule-log's flame in glory
Loudly up the chimney roars;
Till gay troops of children, lightly
Tripping in with shouts of glee,
See ripe apples dangling brightly
On the red-lit Christmas-tree.
_THE SONGS OF SUMMER._
The songs of summer are over and past!
The swallow's forsaken the dripping eaves;
Ruined and black 'mid the sodden leaves
The nests are rudely swung in the blast:
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.
The songs of summer are over and past!
Woe's me for a music sweeter than theirs--
The quick, light bound of a step on the stairs,
The greeting of lovers too sweet to last:
And ever the wind like a soul in pain
Knocks and knocks at the window-pane.
_AUTUMN TINTS._
Coral-coloured yew-berries
Strew the garden ways,
Hollyhocks and sunflowers
Make a dazzling blaze
In these latter days.
Marigolds by cottage doors
Flaunt their golden pride,
Crimson-punctured bramble leaves
Dapple far and wide
The green mountain-side.
Far away, on hilly slopes
Where fleet rivulets run,
Miles on miles of tangled fern,
Burnished by the sun,
Glow a copper dun.
For the year that's on the wane,
Gathering all its fire,
Flares up through the kindling world
As, ere they expire,
Flames leap high and higher.
_GREEN LEAVES AND SERE._
Three tall poplars beside the pool
Shiver and moan in the gusty blast,
The carded clouds are blown like wool,
And the yellowing leaves fly thick and fast.
The leaves, now driven before the blast,
Now flung by fits on the curdling pool,
Are tossed heaven-high and dropped at last
As if at the whim of a jabbering fool.
O leaves, once rustling green and cool!
Two met here where one moans aghast
With wild heart heaving towards the past:
Three tall poplars beside the pool.
_THE HUNTER'S MOON._
The Hunter's Moon rides high,
High o'er the close-cropped plain;
Across the desert sky
The herded clouds amain
Scamper tumultuously,
Chased by the hounding wind
That yelps behind.
The clamorous hunt is done,
Warm-housed the kennelled pack;
One huntsman rides alone
With dangling bridle slack;
He wakes a hollow tone,
Far echoing to his horn
In clefts forlorn.
The Hunter's Moon rides low,
Her course is nearly sped.
Where is the panting roe?
Where hath the wild deer fled?
Hunter and hunted now
Lie in oblivion deep:
Dead or asleep.
_THE PASSING YEAR._
No breath of wind stirs in the painted leaves,
The meadows are as stirless as the sky,
Like a Saint's halo golden vapours lie
Above the restful valley's garnered sheaves.
The journeying Sun, like one who fondly grieves,
Above the hills seems loitering with a sigh,
As loth to bid the fruitful earth good-bye,
On these hushed hours of luminous autumn eves.
There is a pathos in his softening glow,
Which like a benediction seems to hover
O'er the tranced earth, ere he must sink below
And leave her widowed of her radiant Lover,
A frost-bound sleeper in a shroud of snow
While winter winds howl a wild dirge above her.
_THE ROBIN REDBREAST._
The year's grown songless! No glad pipings thrill
The hedge-row elms, whose wind-worn branches shower
Their leaves on the sere grass, where some late flower
In golden chalice hoards the sunlight still.
Our summer guests, whose raptures used to fill
Each apple-blossomed garth and honeyed bower,
Have in adversity's inclement hour
Abandoned us to bleak November's chill.
But hearken! Yonder russet bird among
The crimson clusters of the homely thorn
Still bubbles o'er with little rills of song--
A blending of sweet hope and resignation:
Even so, when life of love and youth is shorn,
One friend becomes its last, best consolation.
_THE RED SUNSETS, 1883._
The boding sky was charactered with cloud,
The scripture of the storm--but high in air,
Where the unfathomed zenith still was bare,
A pure expanse of rose-flushed violet glowed
And, kindling into crimson light, o'erflowed
The hurrying wrack with such a blood-red glare,
That heaven, igniting, wildly seemed to flare
On the dazed eyes of many an awe-struck crowd.
And in far lands folk presaged with blanched lips
Disastrous wars, earthquakes, and foundering ships
Such whelming floods as never dykes could stem,
Or some proud empire's ruin and eclipse:
Lo, such a sky, they cried, as burned o'er them
Once lit the sacking of Jerusalem!
_THE RED SUNSETS, 1883._
The twilight heavens are flushed with gathering light,
And o'er wet roofs and huddling streets below
Hang with a strange Apocalyptic glow
On the black fringes of the wintry night.
Such bursts of glory may have rapt the sight
Of him to whom on Patmos long ago
The visionary angel came to show
That heavenly city built of chrysolite.
And lo, three factory hands begrimed with soot,
Aflame with the red splendour, marvelling stand,
And gaze with lifted faces awed and mute.
Starved of earth's beauty by Man's grudging hand,
O toilers, robbed of labour's golden fruit,
Ye, too, may feast in Nature's fairyland.
_ON THE LIGHTHOUSE AT ANTIBES._
A stormy light of sunset glows and glares
Between two banks of cloud, and o'er the brine
Thy fair lamp on the sky's carnation line
Alone on the lone promontory flares:
Friend of the Fisher who at nightfall fares
Where lurk false reefs masked by the hyaline
Of dimpling waves, within whose smile divine
Death lies in wait behind Circean snares.
The evening knows thee ere the evening star;
Or sees thy flame sole Regent of the bight,
When storm, hoarse rumoured by the hills afar,
Makes mariners steer landward by thy light,
Which shows through shock of hostile nature's war
How man keeps watch o'er man through deadliest night.
_CAGNES._
ON THE RIVIERA.
In tortuous windings up the steep incline
The sombre street toils to the village square,
Whose antique walls in stone and moulding bear
Dumb witness to the Moor. Afar off shine,
With tier on tier, cutting heaven's blue divine,
The snowy Alps; and lower the hills are fair,
With wave-green olives rippling down to where
Gold clusters hang and leaves of sunburnt vine.
You may perchance, I never shall forget
When, between twofold glory of land and sea,
We leant together o'er the old parapet,
And saw the sun go down. For, oh, to me,
The beauty of that beautiful strange place
Was its reflection beaming from your face.
_A WINTER LANDSCAPE._
All night, all day, in dizzy, downward flight,
Fell the wild-whirling, vague, chaotic snow,
Till every landmark of the earth below,
Trees, moorlands, roads, and each familiar sight
Were blotted out by the bewildering white.
And winds, now shrieking loud, now whimpering low,
Seemed lamentations for the world-old woe
That death must swallow life, and darkness light.
But all at once the rack was blown away,
The snowstorm hushing ended in a sigh;
Then like a flame the crescent moon on high
Leaped forth among the planets; pure as they,
Earth vied in whiteness with the Milky Way:
Herself a star beneath the starry sky.
LOVE IN EXILE.
"Whatever way my days decline,
I felt and feel, tho' left alone,
His being working in mine own,
The footsteps of his life in mine."
LORD TENNYSON.
_SONGS._
I.
Thou walkest with me as the spirit-light
Of the hushed moon, high o'er a snowy hill,
Walks with the houseless traveller all the night,
When trees are tongueless and when mute the rill.
Moon of my soul, O phantasm of delight,
Thou walkest with me still.
The vestal flame of quenchless memory burns
In my soul's sanctuary. Yea, still for thee
My bitter heart hath yearned, as moonward yearns
Each separate wave-pulse of the clamorous sea:
My Moon of love, to whom for ever turns
The life that aches through me.
II.
I was again beside my Love in dream:
Earth was so beautiful, the moon was shining;
The muffled voice of many a cataract stream
Came like a love-song, as, with arms entwining,
Our hearts were mixed in unison supreme.
The wind lay spell-bound in each pillared pine,
The tasselled larches had no sound or motion,
As my whole life was sinking into thine--
Sinking into a deep, unfathomed ocean
Of infinite love--uncircumscribed, divine.
Night held her breath, it seemed, with all her stars:
Eternal eyes that watched in mute compassion
Our little lives o'erleap their mortal bars,
Fused in the fulness of immortal passion,
A passion as immortal as the stars.
There was no longer any thee or me;
No sense of self, no wish or incompleteness;
The moment, rounded to Eternity,
Annihilated time's destructive fleetness:
For all but love itself had ceased to be.
III.
I am athirst, but not for wine;
The drink I long for is divine,
Poured only from your eyes in mine.
I hunger, but the bread I want,
Of which my blood and brain are scant,
Is your sweet speech, for which I pant.
I am a-cold, and lagging lame,
Life creeps along my languid frame;
Your love would fan it into flame.
Heaven's in that little word--your love!
It makes my heart coo like a dove,
My tears fall as I think thereof.
IV.
I would I were the glow-worm, thou the flower,
That I might fill thy cup with glimmering light;
I would I were the bird, and thou the bower,
To sing thee songs throughout the summer night.
I would I were a pine tree deeply rooted,
And thou the lofty, cloud-beleaguered rock,
Still, while the blasts of heaven around us hooted,
To cleave to thee and weather every shock.
I would I were the rill, and thou the river;
So might I, leaping from some headlong steep,
With all my waters lost in thine for ever,
Be hurried onwards to the unfathomed deep.
I would--what would I not? O foolish dreaming!
My words are but as leaves by autumn shed,
That, in the faded moonlight idly gleaming,
Drop on the grave where all our love lies dead.
V.
Dost thou remember ever, for my sake,
When we two rowed upon the rock-bound lake?
How the wind-fretted waters blew their spray
About our brows like blossom-falls of May
One memorable day?
Dost thou remember the glad mouth that cried--
"Were it not sweet to die now side by side,
To lie together tangled in the deep
Close as the heart-beat to the heart--so keep
The everlasting sleep?"
Dost thou remember? Ah, such death as this
Had set the seal upon my heart's young bliss!
But, wrenched asunder, severed and apart,
Life knew a deadlier death: the blighting smart
Which only kills the heart.
VI.
O moon, large golden summer moon,
Hanging between the linden trees,
Which in the intermittent breeze
Beat with the rhythmic pulse of June!
O night-air, scented through and through
With honey-coloured flower of lime,
Sweet now as in that other time
When all my heart was sweet as you!
The sorcery of this breathing bloom
Works like enchantment in my brain,
Till, shuddering back to life again,
My dead self rises from its tomb.
And, lovely with the love of yore,
Its white ghost haunts the moon-white ways;
But, when it meets me face to face,
Flies trembling to the grave once more.
VII.
Why will you haunt me unawares,
And walk into my sleep,
Pacing its shadowy thoroughfares,
Where long-dried perfume scents the airs,
While ghosts of sorrow creep,
Where on Hope's ruined altar-stairs,
With ineffectual beams,
The Moon of Memory coldly glares
Upon the land of dreams?
My yearning eyes were fain to look
Upon your hidden face;
Their love, alas! you could not brook,
But in your own you mutely took
My hand, and for a space
You wrung it till I throbbed and shook,
And woke with wildest moan
And wet face channelled like a brook
With your tears or my own.
VIII.
When you wake from troubled slumbers
With a dream-bewildered brain,
And old leaves which no man numbers
Chattering tap against the pane;
And the midnight wind is wailing
Till your very life seems quailing
As the long gusts shudder and sigh:
Know you not that homeless cry
Is my love's, which cannot die,
Wailing through Eternity?
When beside the glowing embers,
Sitting in the twilight lone,
Drop on drop you hear November's
Melancholy monotone,
As the heavy rain comes sweeping,
With a sound of weeping, weeping,
Till your blood is chilled with fears;
Know you not those falling tears,
Flowing fast through years on years,
For my sobs within your ears?
When with dolorous moan the billows
Surge around where, far and wide,
Leagues on leagues of sea-worn hollows
Throb with thunders of the tide,
And the weary waves in breaking
Fill you, thrill you, as with aching
Memories of our love of yore
Where you pace the sounding shore,
Hear you not, through roll and roar,
Soul call soul for evermore?
IX.
In a lonesome burial-place
Crouched a mourner white of face;
Wild her eyes--unheeding
Circling pomp of night and day--
Ever crying, "Well away,
Love lies a-bleeding!"
And her sighs were like a knell,
And her tears for ever fell,
With their warm rain feeding
That purpureal flower, alas!
Trailing prostrate in the grass,
Love lies a-bleeding.
Through the yews' black-tufted gloom
Crimson light dripped on the tomb,
Funeral shadows breeding:
In the sky the sun's light shed
Dyed the earth one awful red--
Love lies a-bleeding.
Came grey mists, and blanching cloud
Bore one universal shroud;
Came the bowed moon leading,
From the infinite afar
Star that rumoured unto star--
Love lies a-bleeding.
X.
On life's long round by chance I found
A dell impearled with dew,
Where hyacinths, gushing from the ground,
Lent to the earth heaven's native hue
Of holy blue.
I sought that plot of azure light
Once more in gloomy hours;
But snow had fallen overnight
And wrapped in mortuary white
My fairy ring of flowers.
XI.
Ah, yesterday was dark and drear,
My heart was deadly sore;
Without thy love it seemed, my Dear,
That I could live no more.
And yet I laugh and sing to-day;
Care or care not for me,
Thou canst not take the love away
With which I worship thee.
And if to-morrow, Dear, I live,
My heart I shall not break:
For still I hold it that to give
Is sweeter than to take.
XII.
Yea, the roses are still on fire
With the bygone heat of July,
Though the least little wind drifting by
Shake a rose-leaf or two from the brier,
Be it never so soft a sigh.
Ember of love still glows and lingers
Deep at the red heart's smouldering core;
With the sudden passionate throb of yore
We shook as our eyes and clinging fingers
Met once only to meet no more.
XIII.
We met as strangers on life's lonely way,
And yet it seemed we knew each other well;
There was no end to what thou hadst to say,
Or to the thousand things I found to tell.
My heart, long silent, at thy voice that day
Chimed in my breast like to a silver bell.
How much we spoke, and yet still left untold
Some secret half revealed within our eyes:
Didst thou not love me once in ages old?
Had I not called thee with importunate cries,
And, like a child left sobbing in the cold,
Listened to catch from far thy fond replies?
We met as strangers, and as such we part;
Yet all my life seems leaving me with thine;
Ah, to be clasped once only heart to heart,
If only once to feel that thou wert mine!
These lips are locked, and yet I know thou art
That all in all for which my soul did pine.
XIV.
You make the sunshine of my heart
And its tempestuous shower;
Sometimes the thought of you is like
A lilac bush in flower,
Yea, honey-sweet as hives in May.
And then the pang of it will strike
My bosom with a fiery smart,
As though love's deeply planted dart
Drained all its life away.
My thoughts hum round you, Dear, like bees
About a bank of thyme,
Or round the yellow blossoms of
The heavy-scented lime.
Ah, sweeter you than honeydew,
Yet dark the ways of love,
For it has robbed my soul of peace,
And marred my life and turned heart's-ease
Into funereal rue.
XV.
Dear, when I look into your eyes
My hurts are healed, my heart grows whole;
The barren places in my soul,
Like waste lands under April skies,
Break into flower beneath your eyes.
Ah, life grows lovely where you are;
Only to think of you gives light
To my dark heart, within whose night
Your image, though you bide afar,
Glows like a lake-reflected star.
Dare I crave more than only this:
A thrill of love, a transient smile
To gladden all my world awhile?
No more, alas! Is mortal bliss
Not transient as a lover's kiss?
XVI.
Ah, if you knew how soon and late
My eyes long for a sight of you,
Sometimes in passing by my gate
You'd linger until fall of dew,
If you but knew!
Ah, if you knew how sick and sore
My life flags for the want of you,
Straightway you'd enter at the door
And clasp my hand between your two,
If you but knew!
Ah, if you knew how lost and lone
I watch and weep and wait for you,
You'd press my heart close to your own
Till love had healed me through and through,
If you but knew!
XVII.
Your looks have touched my soul with bright
Ineffable emotion;
As moonbeams on a stormy night
Illume with transitory light
A seagull on her lonely flight
Across the lonely ocean.
Fluttering from out the gloom and roar,
On fitful wing she flies,
Moon-white above the moon-washed shore;
Then, drowned in darkness as before,
She's lost, as I when lit no more
By your beloved eyes.
XVIII.
Oh, brown Eyes with long black lashes,
Young brown Eyes,
Depths of night from which there flashes
Lightning as of summer skies,
Beautiful brown Eyes!
In your veiled mysterious splendour
Passion lies
Sleeping, but with sudden tender
Dreams that fill with vague surmise
Beautiful brown Eyes.
All my soul, with yearning shaken,
Asks in sighs--
Who will see your heart awaken,
Love's divine sunrise
In those young brown Eyes?
XIX.
Once on a golden day,
In the golden month of May,
I gave my heart away--
Little birds were singing.
I culled my heart in truth,
Wet with the dews of youth,
For love to take, forsooth--
Little flowers were springing.
Love sweetly laughed at this,
And between kiss and kiss
Fled with my heart in his:
Winds warmly blowing.
And with his sun and shower
Love kept my heart in flower,
As in the greenest bower
Rose richly glowing.
Till, worn at evensong,
Love dropped my heart among
Stones by the way ere long;
Misprized token.
There in the wind and rain,
Trampled and rent in twain,
Ne'er to be whole again,
My heart lies broken.
XX.
What magic is there in thy mien,
What sorcery in thy smile,
Which charms away all cark and care,
Which turns the foul days into fair,
And for a little while
Changes this disenchanted scene
From the sere leaf into the green,
Transmuting with love's golden wand
This beggared life to fairyland?
My heart goes forth to thee, oh friend,
As some poor pilgrim to a shrine,
A pilgrim who has come from far
To seek his spirit's folding star,
And sees the taper shine;
The goal to which his wanderings tend,
Where want and weariness shall end,
And kneels ecstatically blest
Because his heart hath entered rest.
_HEART'S-EASE._
As opiates to the sick on wakeful nights,
As light to flowers, as flowers in poor men's rooms,
As to the fisher when the tempest glooms
The cheerful twinkling of his village lights;
As emerald isles to flagging swallow flights,
As roses garlanding with tendrilled blooms
The unweeded hillocks of forgotten tombs,
As singing birds on cypress-shadowed heights,
Thou art to me--a comfort past compare--
For thy joy-kindling presence, sweet as May
Sets all my nerves to music, makes away
With sorrow and the numbing frost of care,
Until the influence of thine eyes' bright sway
Has made life's glass go up from foul to fair.
_UNTIMELY LOVE._
Peace, throbbing heart, nor let us shed one tear
O'er this late love's unseasonable glow;
Sweet as a violet blooming in the snow,
The posthumous offspring of the widowed year,
That smells of March when all the world is sere,
And, while around the hurtling sea-winds blow--
Which twist the oak and lay the pine tree low--
Stands childlike in the storm and has no fear.
Poor helpless blossom orphaned of the sun,
How could it thus brave winter's rude estate?
Oh love, more helpless love, why bloom so late,
Now that the flower-time of the year is done?
Since thy dear course must end when scarce begun,
Nipped by the cold touch of untoward fate.
_THE AFTER-GLOW._
It is a solemn evening, golden-clear--
The Alpine summits flame with rose-lit snow
And headlands purpling on wide seas below,
And clouds and woods and arid rocks appear
Dissolving in the sun's own atmosphere
And vast circumference of light, whose slow
Transfiguration--glow and after-glow--
Turns twilight earth to a more luminous sphere.
Oh heart, I ask, seeing that the orb of day
Has sunk below, yet left to sky and sea
His glory's spiritual after-shine:
I ask if Love, whose sun hath set for thee,
May not touch grief with his memorial ray,
And lend to loss itself a joy divine?
_L'ENVOI._
Thou art the goal for which my spirit longs;
As dove on dove,
Bound for one home, I send thee all my songs
With all my love.
Thou art the haven with fair harbour lights;
Safe locked in thee,
My heart would anchor after stormful nights
Alone at sea.
Thou art the rest of which my life is fain,
The perfect peace;
Absorbed in thee the world, with all its pain
And toil, would cease.
Thou art the heaven to which my soul would go!
O dearest eyes,
Lost in your light you would turn hell below
To Paradise.
Thou all in all for which my heart-blood yearns!
Yea, near or far--
Where the unfathomed ether throbs and burns
With star on star,
Or where, enkindled by the fires of June,
The fresh earth glows,
Blushing beneath the mystical white moon
Through rose on rose--
Thee, thee I see, thee feel in all live things,
Beloved one;
In the first bird which tremulously sings
Ere peep of sun;
In the last nestling orphaned in the hedge,
Rocked to and fro,
When dying summer shudders in the sedge,
And swallows go;
When roaring snows rush down the mountain-pass,
March floods with rills,
Or April lightens through the living grass
In daffodils;
When poppied cornfields simmer in the heat
With tare and thistle,
And, like winged clouds above the mellow wheat,
The starlings whistle;
When stained with sunset the wide moorlands glare
In the wild weather,
And clouds with flaming craters smoke and flare
Red o'er red heather;
When the bent moon, on frostbound midnights waking,
Leans to the snow
Like some world-mother whose deep heart is breaking
O'er human woe.
As the round sun rolls red into the ocean,
Till all the sea
Glows fluid gold, even so life's mazy motion
Is dyed with thee:
For as the wave-like years subside and roll,
O heart's desire,
Thy soul glows interfused within my soul,
A quenchless fire.
Yea, thee I feel, all storms of life above,
Near though afar;
O thou my glorious morning star of love,
And evening star.
* * * * *
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON AND BECCLES.
* * * * *
WORKS BY MATHILDE BLIND.
Poetry.
THE PROPHECY OF SAINT ORAN, and other Poems.
THE HEATHER ON FIRE.
Prose Fiction.
TARANTELLA: A Romance.
Monographs.
GEORGE ELIOT.
MADAME ROLAND.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
THE PROPHECY OF SAINT ORAN,
And other Poems.
"There is perhaps no phase of our history more capable of poetic
treatment than the sainted lives of the Irish monks who first spread
the Christian faith over the western shores of Scotland, and yet it
would be difficult to point to a single representative poem having
Saint Columba and the devoted band of his disciples for its heroes. An
attempt at filling up this gap has recently been made by Miss Blind in
a narrative poem devoted to the fate of St. Oran, the friend and
disciple of St. Columba.... Apart from the sonorous beauty of her
lines, there is in her diction a straightforwardness and simplicity,
and an entire absence of affectation and false sentiment, which,
combined with considerable power of characterization, make her volume
a remarkable contribution to English literature."--_Times_, September
26, 1881.
"To disturb the _motif_ of a legend is always a bold, and mostly a
rash, proceeding.... And yet so skilfully is the story handled that
the main incidents of the legend do not lose, but gain by this
disturbance of the _motif_, and the character of Oran, which with the
old _motif_ could only have presented the single side of the religious
enthusiast, becomes a character exhibiting that complexity which
modern taste demands.... Directness of style and lucidity of narrative
are the characteristic excellences of the poem. There are few
contemporary poets who could have done so much dramatic business in so
few lines.... In each of the sonnets there is a thought that is well
expressed, and worth expressing."--_Athenaeum_, July 30, 1881.
"It is in the domain of character that the poem is distinguished by
its highest excellence. There is an ideal statuesqueness embodied in
the person of St. Columba such as is felt to possess a powerful appeal
to the imagination. The poem embraces many passions, of which the most
tender and beautiful finds expression in the exquisite creation of the
radiant golden-haired girl for whose love St. Oran breaks his vow of
chastity. But the really powerful contribution to our knowledge of
character which this book contains is fittingly centred in St. Oran
himself. A dramatic instinct of high order finds utterance in his
struggles between opposing passions. Nor are the metrical excellences
of the poem less conspicuous.... If one were in need of some single
phrase by which to denote the ultimate effect produced by this book,
one might say that it seems the most _mature_ of all recent first
efforts, even of established rank."--_Academy_, July 16, 1881.
"In the choice of a subject for her chief poem she has been
singularly fortunate.... That a story such as this is full of poetical
suggestiveness is obvious, and Miss Blind has proved herself equal to
the occasion. She has avoided writing anything approaching to a
'tendency poem.' She metes out justice with an equal hand to all her
characters. The genuine enthusiasm and religious zeal of the monks are
set forth in language as inspired as is the final protest of St. Oran
against their narrow fanaticism; and one of the best passages in the
book is indeed the Sermon in which St. Columba announces the Gospel of
love and redemption to the islanders."--_Pall Mall Gazette_, August
22, 1881.
"'The Prophecy of Saint Oran' is skilfully told and vigorously
written. In the description of nature and scenery; in the delineation
of character; and in the management of singularly difficult positions
there is visible a firm and practised hand, a bold and unmistakable
power. 'The Street Children's Dance' not unworthily ranks with some of
the touching pieces of Hood, Mrs. Barrett Browning, and
others."--_British Mail_, September 1, 1881.
"The only excuse for street music that can reasonably be considered
valid is the touching plea for public toleration which is embodied in
Miss Mathilde Blind's poem, wherein the spectacle of poor children
dancing round an organ is as pathetically moralized and as tender and
full of loving pity as Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children.'"--_Daily
Telegraph_, September 1, 1881.
"The poem is rich in true description of sea and sky and mountain, and
glows in sympathy with the deeper feelings which stir humanity. There
has been published no poem of such creative suggestiveness as this for
many a day, and we hope and believe that it is the precursor of other
work by the same unfaltering hand. This poem is a true work of art,
complete and beautiful. There is in the volume other work which shows
a master's touch...."--_Manchester Examiner and Times_, July 1, 1882.
"Il y a la bien plus qu'une simple facilite de versification. Le recit
du poeme d'ouverture est grand et fort, la maniere de raconter est
pleine de poesie et d'effet. Depuis la mort de Mrs. Barrett Browning,
nous n'avons point eu de poesie aussi hautement inspiree qui ait
jailli d'une source feminine."--_Le Livre_, Paris, October 10, 1881.
THE HEATHER ON FIRE:
A Tale of the Highland Clearances.
"Miss Blind has produced one of the most noticeable and moving poems
which recent years have added to our shelves.... As a singer with a
message her attempt is praiseworthy, and her performance is fairly
self-consistent. It is eminently homogeneous; the passion once felt, the
inspiration once obeyed, the well-head pours forth its stream in a
strong and uniform current, which knows no pause until its impulse
ceases.... The story is pathetic at once in its simplicity and in its
terror.... We congratulate the author upon her boldness in choosing a
subject of our own time, fertile in what is pathetic, and free from any
taint of the vulgar and conventional. Poetry of late years has tended
too much towards motives of a merely fanciful and abstruse, sometimes a
plainly artificial, character; and we have had much of lyrical energy or
attraction, with little of the real marrow of human life, the flesh and
blood of man and woman. Positive subject-matter, the emotion which
inheres in actual life, the very smile and the very tear and heart-pang,
are, after all, precious to poetry, and we have them here. 'The Heather
on Fire' may possibly prove to be something of a new departure, and one
that was certainly not superfluous."--_Athenaeum_, July 17, 1886.
"Miss Blind has chosen for her new poem one of those terrible
Highland clearances which stain the history of Scotch landlordism.
Though her tale is a fiction it is too well founded on fact.... It may
be said generally of the poem that the most difficult scenes are those
in which Miss Blind succeeds best; and on the whole we are inclined to
think that its greatest and most surprising success is the picture of
the poor old soldier Rory driven mad by the burning of his wife. In
his frenzy he mixes up his old battles with the French and the descent
of the landlord's ejectors upon the village."--_Academy_, August 7,
1886.
"In this versified tale of Highland clearances, Mathilde Blind has,
with genuine poetic instinct, selected a family the fortunes of which
form the burden of her story.... Literature and poetry are never seen
at their best save in contact with actual life.... This little book
abounds in vivid delineation of character, and is redolent with the
noblest human sympathy."--_Newcastle Daily Chronicle_, June 3, 1886.
"A subject which has painfully preoccupied public opinion is, in the
poem entitled 'The Heather on Fire,' treated with characteristic power
by Miss Mathilde Blind. Irish evictions have offered so convenient a
theme to party strife, that the sufferings of the unhappy Highland
crofters have not always met with the compassion they were so well
calculated to inspire. In eloquent and forcible verse, Miss Blind
tells the tale of their wrongs, their resistance to the hard fate
imposed upon them, and describes the bitter grief with which
'Crowding on the decks with hungry eyes,
Straining towards the coast that flies and flies,'
those among them driven into exile look on the shores to which many
bid an eternal farewell. Both as a narrative and descriptive poem 'The
Heather on Fire' is equally remarkable."--_Morning Post_, July 30,
1886.
"We are happy in being able to extend to the present poem a welcome
equally sincere and equally hearty; for it is a poem that is rich not
only in power and beauty but in that 'enthusiasm of humanity' which
stirs and moves us, and of which so much contemporary verse is almost
painfully deficient. Miss Blind does not possess her theme; she is
possessed by it, as was Mrs. Browning when she wrote 'Aurora
Leigh.'... We can best describe the kind of her success by noting the
fact that while engaged in the perusal of her book we do not say,
'What a fine poem!' but 'What a terrible story!' or, more probably
still, say nothing at all, but read on and on under the spell of a
great horror and an over-powering pity. Poetry of which this can be
said needs no other recommendation, and, therefore, we need not unduly
lengthen our review of 'The Heather on Fire.'"--_Manchester Examiner
and Times_, September 1, 1886.
"There are charming pictures of West Highland scenery, in Arran
apparently, and of the surroundings and conditions of Highland cottar
life."--_Scotsman_, July 20, 1886.
"In 'The Heather on Fire' she exhibits a clearness and beauty of
diction, a rhythmical correctness, a grace and simplicity of style
which mark her out as no slavish follower of any poetic 'school,' but
an unaffected and truthful expression of her own feelings.... Whatever
the reader's opinion may be on the grievance which Miss Blind throws
into such fierce light, he cannot fail to be pleased with her graceful
tale, so gracefully and simply told."--_Glasgow Herald_, July 20,
1886.
"Miss Mathilde Blind's poem is the tragic epic of the old evictions
in the Highlands of Scotland. It is a strange fact that the general
reader knows more about the siege of Troy, the Norman Conquest, and
the Wars of the Roses, than about such matters in the very history of
our own days as the depopulation of the Highlands of Scotland by the
landlords. The old story comes to the front just now by reason of the
crofter agitation. In the preface to her fine and touching epic, and
in the notes at the end, Miss Blind passes in review some of the facts
of the eviction of the Glen Sannox people by the Duke of Hamilton in
1832, where, as she says, 'the progress of civilization, which has
redeemed many a wilderness and gladdened the solitary places of the
world, has come with a curse to these Highland glens, and turned green
pastures and golden harvest fields once more into a desert.' The
'Heather on Fire' is a poem in four cantos--or 'Duans'--comprising
about two hundred stanzas."--_School Board Chronicle_, July 10, 1886.
"It is written in a strain which must of necessity appeal to the
sympathies of all grades of society, and at the same time it is
eminently poetical, both in thought and rhythm."--_Western Antiquary_,
August, 1886.
"A book like this forms an admirable corrective to the harsh and
cold-blooded theories of such landlords as the Duke of Argyle on the
rights of his class."--_Cambridge Independent Press_, August, 1886.
"There is a sonorous beauty, a classic dignity and depth of pathos
throughout her four cantos, and a vivid and thrilling description is
given of the industrious hamlets, the contented happy people, and the
ruthless manner in which the evictions were effected by the stewards
and ground-officers."--_Elgin Courant_, August, 1886.
TARANTELLA:
A Romance.
"The author of this two-volumed romance is favourably known by other
works, and by her appreciative 'Life of George Eliot.' The strange
effects of the bite of a tarantula spider, so firmly believed in by
the Italian peasantry, and the marvellous power of musical enthusiasm,
supply the motive of the story; and the characters are portrayed with
great force, pathos, and a touch of homely humour."--_Bookseller_,
Christmas, 1884.
"Miss Blind may be congratulated on 'Tarantella,' her first novel. In
the _recit_ (as we have called it) of the musician, Emanuel Sturm,
nearly all the interest of the book is concentrated. The violinist,
poor and unknown, finds himself at Capri. Accident brings him, one
evening, to a frightened group of women, one of whom has just been
bitten by the tarantula, and, according to the popular superstition,
he is implored to play, in order to drive the poison out of her. He
refuses at first, but afterwards consents, and, finding himself almost
supernaturally inspired, plays an improvised 'Tarantella' throughout a
whole stormy night, finally curing the girl. The tune thus strangely
hit on spreads, and ultimately makes him famous, but the love he has
conceived for his Antonella brings him almost as much misery as his
music brings him fame."--_Pall Mall Gazette_, February 5, 1885.
"Admiration of the delicate sketching now in vogue should not blind us
to the very opposite kind of charm of which 'Tarantella' is full.
Entirely poetical in conception (save that it is not written in metre),
'Tarantella' is more essentially a poem than many a narrative written in
smooth and elegant verse.... 'Tarantella' is indeed full of strange
originality and scenic effects of uncommon powers. The dance among the
ruins is not likely to be soon forgotten by the most unimaginative of
readers, and it is rarely, we think, that in an English novel the
psychology of the poetic temperament has been touched by a hand so
delicate and at the same time so strong."--_Athenaeum_, January 17, 1885.
"There is abundant imagination, and the language is generally fresh
and vigorous.... The author finds many opportunities of introducing
scenes from German life, which are evidently written with intimate
knowledge.... This is distinctly a novel to read."--_Echo_, June 16,
1886.
"This powerful and pathetic tale has carried us more completely out
of ourselves and along with it than any work of fiction we have read
for many a day.... Her (Miss Blind's) word-pictures glow with rich
local colours; she is a complete mistress of the art of dramatic cause
and effect. When once fairly under weigh, she never allows the
interest to flag for a single moment. Thus it is only when we have
laid down the final volume that we have time or inclination to pause
and recognize the care and art which have contributed to this
triumphant result; to turn back ... and dwell on the author's
extraordinary knowledge of the human heart--extraordinary alike for
its depth and its range. As for the wit and humour with which the book
is freely sprinkled, the poetic and artistic spirit which pervades it
throughout, they can only be appreciated on a second or a third
perusal."--_Life_, December 25, 1884.
"'Tarantella' is extremely clever, and the treatment of the weird
subject she has chosen picturesque in the extreme. The local colouring
is especially fine, and her character studies extremely strong. Thrice
welcome in its two-volume form, 'Tarantella' is a book bound to make
its mark."--_Whitehall Review_, December 11, 1884.
"We have very ingenious resources in music and the bite of the
tarantula, which alone music is said to heal. Notwithstanding the
sense of improbability, we follow the strange fortunes of Antonella,
Countess Ogotshka, and her almost magical transformation with
interest. Mina, the innocent girl, her friend, is well delineated, and
Emanuel Sturm, the wonderful violinist and composer, for whose
portrait Paganini has doubtless been available, is original, no less
than his friend the painter."--_British Quarterly_, January, 1885.
"'Tarantella' is a very clever story, with plenty of action and not
without tragic incidents. The author has also plenty of humour, and
there is at least as much light as shade in the book. Mina is not less
delightful than the Countess is objectionable, in spite of her beauty
and her daring."--_London Figaro_, November 20, 1886.
"We shall not spoil the story by hinting at its _denouement_. It is a
deeply interesting one; and the characters, three of them at least,
are sufficiently original to give the author a high rank as a
novelist.... The book abounds in striking and interesting pictures of
Italian and German life and scenery."--_Dublin Mail_, November, 1886.
"'Tarantella' is, indeed, a novel unlike the common--full of power and
imagination and originality.... It would be unjust to deny to this
very remarkable book a large share of what the world calls
genius."--_Melbourne Argus_, March 14, 1885.
"By her recent works, 'The Prophecy of Saint Oran' and the 'Life of
George Eliot,' Miss Blind brought herself before the public as a
writer of considerable ability, and her latest novel will do much to
increase her reputation.... 'Tarantella' deserves to be classed among
the best novels of the present day."--_Scottish News_, June 15, 1886.
"There is an inherent charm about 'Tarantella' which will be apparent
to the reader from a perusal of the first chapter. This agreeable
quality does not end there, however. The whole of the tale, which is
divided into forty-six chapters, is permeated with features of an
exceptionally attractive description. Not the least noteworthy
character of the story is its novelty. Most of the incidents, which
are carefully elaborated and follow in logical sequence, are
conspicuous for an airy freshness in nature and treatment. Every
chapter has its specific purpose, there being a uniform overflow of
idea and sentiment; and each development of the pleasing romance opens
to the mental vision of the thoughtful reader incidents of a more or
less engrossing description. Continental scenes and customs are
described with freeness and perspicuity, and the varied and eventful
adventures of the principal characters--pleasingly typical, it may be
mentioned, of the romanticism invariably associated with 'love's young
dream,' when, as in the present instance, there is a combination of
youth and beauty--are recorded with a poetical fervour and
gracefulness of diction which are certain to be generally
admired."--_Western Daily Press_, June 2, 1886.