’Tis a voice from the clouds which my soul must receive.
Tell me the secret whose whispers bereave
His eyelids of joy;
Preserve or destroy,
Crush him in mercy, or grant a reprieve.
IV.
Has he been guilty of some dark deed?
Surely no crime in that brow could breed!
So lofty, so mild in its terrible need?
Has he betrayed
An innocent maid?
Or plundered the poor to surfeit his greed?
V.
Has he, for sake of a crumb and a sip,
With loyalty’s cry evermore on his lip,
Counselled the use of a merciless whip
When failure brought blame
On the Patriot’s name,
And tyrants their hot-sided beagles let slip?
VI.
Has he been cruel to nearest of kin?
The mother who loved him, and pleaded to win
Her prodigal back from the desert of sin?
Has he struck in base ire
The cheek of his sire?
Then plunge him in Acheron up to the chin.—
“_Poor waif!_”
VII.
That tender refrain which the angels repeat,
The angels who hover o’er alley and street,
Let me interpret its sound as is meet.
’Tis a pitiful cry!
’Tis the sob of the sky!—
Is he the victim of woman’s deceit?
VIII.
O, ye invisible shapes of the air—
Ye watchers that wait upon heaven—declare,
Sees he naught else but a face that is fair?
Murmur again
The tender refrain,
If that and that only, hath wrought his despair.—
“_Poor waif!_”
IX.
Then have I wronged him! and grieve at his fate;
But love’s load of sorrow no love can abate,
Naming, still naming her, early and late.
A dim dream of bliss,
The soft light of a kiss,
Only may enter through memory’s gate.
X.
Within, what a ruin! arch, column and cope,
The palace of wisdom, ambition, and hope,
All broken and blasted! what spectres now grope
Through the blue charnel gloom
Of each desolate room!
Blind, shrivelled and maimed, they but mumble and mope.—
“_Poor waif!_”
XI.
Now am I certain that beauty’s false art,
A maid’s broken promise hath broken his heart
No other evil such look could impart
To manhood’s fair brow;
Only speak of her now,
And mark how the eye-drowning sorrow will start
XII.
Wild-eyed, but erect as a soldier-king,
Through the _Rue St. Jacques_, with a tireless swing,
Onward he strides; let the fire-bells ring,
And their terror outpour,
While the red flames roar,
Nothing cares he for the summons they fling.
XIII.
And why should he care? why linger, or start?
The fierce-hissing tongues that the fire-fiends dart
From window and roof, from the square to the mart,
Are harmless and mild,
As the laugh of a child,
Compared to the tempest of flame in his heart.
XIV.
Why care? when the thousands who sweep through the city,
The judge with black cap, and the maid with her ditty,
Bestow on love’s ruin no question of pity.
The crowds that he meets
On the merciless streets
Only smite him anew with some word that is witty.
XV.
Kind ghosts, whose compassionate voices I hear
High up in the air, come hither, come near!
Close down his eyelids and fashion his bier;
O let him pass
Under flower and grass!
Men are too busy to grant him a tear.
XVI.
Good angels! stoop earthward and bear him away
Out of the city’s tumultuous fray;
Tenderly kiss his parched lips, and then lay
His body to rest
On the mountain’s lone breast,
Where shadows and sunbeams in happiness play!
THE SONG OF A GLORIFIED SPIRIT
A youth knelt down by a new made grave
Unseen by the world, and wept;—
A sister whose beauty no love could save
Beneath in the darkness slept.
’Twas a calm, sweet eve, and on hill and plain
The summer had lavished her dower;
But the full sad heart of the youth could gain
No solace from sun or flower.
The big warm tears he wiped from his cheek,
As he said with a struggling faith,
“O God, if I could but hear her speak!—
My sister! now thine, O death!”
In silence and sorrow he lingered long,
And just as he rose to depart,
In the heavens was warbled this saintly song,
Which fell like a balm on his heart:
“Beautiful are my walks in the sky,
Beautiful, beautiful!
Here the amaranths never die,
Here the sweet winds murmur and sigh,
Beautiful, beautiful!
“Joyfully glide my golden hours,
Joyfully, joyfully!
Here the leaves of the hyacinth flowers
Whisper around my love-lit bowers:
Joyfully, joyfully!
“Lovingly smile my comrades here,
Lovingly, lovingly!
All the bright shapes of this blissful sphere
Tell how that each unto each is dear,
Lovingly, lovingly!
“Merciful is my Father, my all,
Merciful, merciful!
Here the white-cheeked lilies, so tall,
Sing in their place by the jasper wall:
Merciful, merciful!”
NOTE.—The origin of this lyric may
possibly be of interest. A young friend had lost
an only sister and, in an outburst of passionate
sorrow, had exclaimed “O God if I could hear her
speak.” Brooding over his sorrow, I retired to
rest one evening and without attempting to embody
my sympathy in words, I fell into a quiet slumber
which lasted until day light. On waking, I had
a vivid recollection of having seen in dream
the youth kneeling by his sister’s grave and of
having heard the words of his sister’s spirit
chanted from the empyrean with inexpressible
sweetness as if responding to his yearning
exclamation. The words I heard in my dream I
wrote down immediately lest their exactness and
coherency might be lost. I was not at that time
aware that Kubla Khan originated in a somewhat
similar manner. As the occurrence, if standing
alone, might seem difficult to believe, I refer
to Coleridge’s poem merely to justify in some
degree the publication of such a freak of the
imagination.
BOUND TO THE WHEEL.
I.
Must I grind in this prison for ever?
No respite from morn till night;
Shall I never again, oh, never!
Commune with the spirits of light
That dwell by the crystalline river
Which flows by the Sibylline height?—
Which sings near the Sibylline height?
II.
I sigh for that region romantic,
Far away from the turmoil and strife
Of cities that render men frantic
In a desperate struggle for life;
For ’tis here that ambition gigantic
Cuts into the heart like a knife,—
Lies cold on the heart like a knife.
III.
There Beauty sits thronéd in glory,
The bards kiss her brow and adore,
Then tell to the world the sweet story
That millions repeat evermore;
The youth and the patriarch hoary
Bend over the musical lore,—
Never tire of the mystical lore.
IV.
It is there the perpetual graces,
Inhabiting bowers of bliss,
Give welcome to wearisome faces
That ’scape from a region like this,
A world in whose gaudiest places
The serpent is sure to hiss,—
The black-crested serpent will hiss.
V.
I know now the fate of Ixion
As I never could know it before;
And under the eyes of Orion,—
Storm-bound on a desolate shore,—
Or under the paws of the Lion,
I sigh for the sorrows he bore;—
I know, too, what Sisyphus bore.
VI.
Must I grind in this dungeon for ever!
Will the day of release never dawn?
Come, spirits of light, and deliver
My soul which I ventured to pawn;
Oh, bear her away to the river
That flows by the Sibylline lawn,—
The sylph-haunted Sibylline lawn.
THE APPLE WOMAN.
(_From life._)
I.
She often comes, a not unwelcome guest,
With her old face set in a marble smile,
And bonnet ribbonless—it is her best,—
And little cloak—and blesses you the while,
And cracks her joke, ambitious to beguile
Your heart to something human,
Then sets her basket down—a little rest!
The Apple Woman.
II.
Her stock in trade that basket doth contain;
It is her wholesale and her retail store,
Her goods and chattels,—all that doth pertain
To her estate, a daughter of the Poor;
O ye who tread upon a velvet floor,
Whose walls rich lights illumine,
Wound not, with word or look of high disdain,
The Apple Woman.
III.
She is thy sister, jewelled Lady Clare,
“My sister! fling this insult in my face?”
How dare you then, when in the house of prayer,
Utter, Our Father? difference of place
Nulls not the consanguinity of race,
And every creature human
Is kin to that poor mother, shivering there,
The Apple Woman.
IV.
She sits upon the sidewalk in the cold,
And with her scraggy hand, hard, shrunk and blue,
And corded with the cordage of the old,
She reaches forth a _fameuse_, sir, to you,
And begs her ladyship will take one, too,
And if you are a true man
Your pence will out; she never thinks of _gold_,
The Apple Woman.
V.
She tells me—and I know she tells me true,
“My good man,—God be kind!—had long been sick,
And one cold morning when the snow-storm blew,
He said, dear Bess, it grieves me to the quick
To see you venture out,—give me my stick,
I’ll come to you at gloamin,’
And bide you home,”—she paused, the rest I knew.—
Poor Apple Woman!
VI.
Behold her then, a type of all that’s good,
Honest in poverty, in suffering kind;
And large must be that love which strains for food,
Through wind and rain, through frost and snows that blind,
For a sick burden that is left behind;
Call her but common;
God’s commonest things are little understood,
Poor Apple Woman!
VII.
Two April weeks I missed her, only two,
Missed her upon the sidewalk, everywhere,
And when again she chanced to cross my view,
The marble smile was changed, it still was there,
But darkly veined, an emblem of despair;
A God-knit union
Grim death had struck, whose dark shock shivered through
The Apple Woman.
VIII.
A widow now, she tells the bitter tale,
Tells how she sat within their little room
In yon dark alley, till she saw him fail,
Sat all alone through night’s oppressive gloom,
Sat by her Joe, as in a desert tomb,
No candle to illumine
His cold dead face! God only heard her wail.—
Poor Apple Woman.
IX.
Now, when you meet her of the basket-store,
Her of the little cloak and bonnet bare,
Reach forth a friendly hand, and something more,
When your portmonnaie has a coin to spare.
Dear are the hopes that mitigate thy care,
Dear the unbought communion
Whose tall vine reaches to the golden shore.—
Poor Apple Woman!
ON MOUNT ROYAL.
I.
They sat in the woods together,
On the mountain’s tranquil height,
And spoke of the Autumn weather,
Of the purplish-golden light
That played on the distant river,
And robed the mountains afar
In a robe more rich than ever
Was worn by Caliph or Czar.
II.
The wine of the beauty around them
They drank till the sun hung low,
Till the scene like a spell had bound them;
For the forest was all aglow
With the countless tints that follow
Spent Summer’s retiring tread,
When freely on height and hollow
All beautiful colours are shed.
III.
All hues that the rainbow showeth,
All opulent dyes that flush
The western sky when goeth
The Lord of Day, and the blush
Of river and lake and ocean
Betrays that his last caress
Their life-blood keeps in motion
Till he cometh again to bless.
IV.
No valley of famed Cashmere
Such exquisite tints puts on
As the woods that crown the year,
When hot-footed Summer is gone
When every tree is a flower,
Gigantic, superbly aflame
With ruby and scarlet,—a dower
Of beauty no tongue can name.
V.
They sat and communed together;
She spoke of this dream of life,
And quietly questioned whether
’Tis worth all the sorrow and strife
That burden the hearts of many,
That tangle the steps of all;
For truly there is not any
Who ’scapeth the serpent’s thrall.
VI.
He said: “Such a thought but troubles
The good that in life we find,
Distorts fair truth, and doubles
The anguish that clouds the mind.
Surely, this cirque of beauty,
And that blue heaven above,
Make love of life a duty,
And life a thing to love.”
VII.
She said: “The winter cometh;
These splendors will cease to be,
Like the joy in the heart that hummeth
An hour for you and me,
Then suddenly sinks to ashes,
So perish all beautiful things;
So love for an instant flashes,
Then folds his languid wings.”
VIII.
“Ah! now I suspect you dissemble,”
He presently made reply;
“You need not fear or tremble,
For surely you and I
Have faith in love’s endurance
And know that beauty abides
For souls that in blest assurance
Discern where it haply hides.”
IX.
In silent and solemn abstraction
She gazed on the pictured trees,
Through which a pale reflection
Of light and a friendly breeze
Shimmered and sighed so kindly,—
She dreamily said: “Maybe
Too coldly, perchance too blindly,
I’ve judged of this world—and thee!”
X.
A tear in her bright eye glistened,
The soft breeze wafted her hair
Adrift on his face, when she listened
As if to a voice in the air;
But neither by word nor token
Behooves it the world to know
How the chain of her doubt was broken,
Whilst the sun in the West hung low.
XI.
The low wind hastened to utter
A message of joyful sound;
Like flakes of fire a-flutter
Some red leaves fell to the ground;
A chorus of bells in the city
Rose mournfully mellow and clear,
Like voices of infinite pity
For lives that were saddened and sere.
XII.
They rose and descended the mountain,
So happy and hallowed in thought,
Charmed nature to them was a fountain
Of tender emotion that wrought
A longing for nobler endeavour
To make life to others a boon
As peaceful and blessed forever
As their dream of that afternoon.
MAIDEN LONGINGS.
Sitting, thinking, all alone,
Listening to the beetle’s drone,
And the night-hawk’s monotone;
Sitting, sighing, thus alone,
How my heart is longing!
Yet I could not tell you why
Tears will gather in my eye
When the night-winds tread the sky;
No, I could not answer why,
Or for what, I’m longing.
Solemn as the rapid’s roar,
Sounding on my native shore,
Is my heart’s dream evermore;
Oh! for some old wizard’s lore
To ease this weary longing.
Vague the cause that moves me so;—
Is it love? Ah no! no! no!!
It can’t be love that shakes me so,
When the stars in regal show
Around their Queen are thronging.
ASPIRATION.
I.
“What Cyclopean force is this I feel,
Heaving the central fires within my heart?
While full-orbéd splendors round my spirit wheel,
And, gazing into vacant space, I start,
For seems a fair hand beckons me apart.
Oh! I will try,
Before I die,
To find a voice this mystery to reveal.
II.
“Why do I seem to sit upon a cloud,
Wearing the crimson mantle of the sun,
Delighted when the wind-god shrieks aloud,
And raptured when the midnight thunder-gun
Tells where the nimble-footed lightnings run?
Shall I not try
Ere age draw nigh
Some world-enticing poem to unshroud?
III.
“Why do the bygone years, with accents cold,
Call to me through the darkness from their grave,
Till thinking on their dowry, tears are rolled
Down my wan cheeks? I think of all they gave,
And all they stole from me, their fool and slave.
Earnestly I,
Henceforth will try
To sublimate my life to purest gold.
IV.
“And often while I dally with the Night,
Running my fingers through her raven hair,
There floats up to my shocked and tearful sight
An angel’s face, transformed with pain and care
O, maiden! long beloved, I see you there,
But you and I
May never try
To braid our love into a zone of light.
V.
“The organ of the Universe is played
By bards who strike the keys with master sweep,
Upon its music-waves I float, afraid,
Yet joyous, doubtful if to smile or weep,
And haunted by its sea of sound in sleep,
I wake to try
A purpose high—
To earn the poet’s crown before I fade.
VI.
“O, Heaven! while my spirit gladly sings,
Shape her vague tremblings to some useful end,
And purify my strange imaginings,
That when the better years which hither tend,
Pass on, I may be called Man’s poet-friend,
Thus will I try,
Before I die
To shake the earth-dregs from my soaring wings.”
VII.
So sang a poet by the harping sea,
And thick as white shells strewn upon the beach,
Fancies came thronging to him, wild and free,
And bade him limn their airy forms in speech:
But still he only sang with aimless reach,
“All things do cry
Pilgrim, try!
Thrill the tame world with sun-lit poesy.”
VIII.
Years rolled away, and by the sea-licked shore
The moonbeams quivered on a lonely mound;
The pilgrim-poet’s turbulence was o’er,
And that secluded spot was holy ground;
For he with songs of wondrous love had crowned
Insulted Right;
And pure and bright
His verse illumed the sorrows of the poor.
IX.
He left behind him, though he knew it not,
A trail of glory on the world’s highway,
And loving fingers now denote the spot
Where he was wont to build the witching lay,
And champions of mind, admiring, say,
“Grandly he tried,
Before he died,
To teach dull earth the majesty of thought.”
THE HAWK AND THE SPARROW.
I.
To-day, upon the public square,
I saw a hawk in fury tear
A sparrow: hapless little thing,
The tyrant rent it wing from wing
And limb from limb, and on the snow
Its life-drops made a crimson glow.
II.
I drove the feathered fiend away,
And gathered up the mangled prey;
And pondering o’er the fragments red,
I thought of what is writ and said:
“_The Omnipresent Lord of all_
_Has knowledge of a sparrow’s fall._”
III.
I thought,—if the omnific Lord
Commiserates a dying bird,
If all things act by his design,
And swerve not from his plumb and line,
Why did he arm with murderous beak
That hawk to slay a thing so weak
And harmless as our little friend?
IV.
No more the maple twig will bend
Beneath his feet; his life’s swift end
One faithful mourner, one at least,—
His sexton now and reverent priest,—
Deplores; does He who gave him life,
And walled him round with tragic strife,
Feel equal pity? Why, O why
This outrage under all His sky?
V.
Is He too weak the weak to save?
To His own laws is He a slave?
If not, then wherefore were the laws
Permitted with such fatal flaws?
Surely the heavy curse that fell
On Adam, sloping down to hell,
Cannot in justice overtake
Aught less than human, save the snake?
VI.
A soft voice answered, soft and still:
“This mystery of earthly ill
’Tis well to probe, ’tis well to seek
All knowledge, and to freely speak,
Since love of truth thy soul impels,
And love of goodness in thee dwells.
Well, too, the sympathetic tear
Bestowed upon the sparrow here;
But scarcely was it well to balk,
Or rudely blame the famished hawk.
VII.
“High knowledge is not ready-made,
And darker grows the mental shade,
If you pursue your curious quest;
Why with the hawk and sparrow rest?
How many of thy boastful race
Would spare the hawk in any case—
Would spare or pity, though his need
Your lordly sportsman could not plead.
Moreover this poor bird whose doom
Has touched thy feeling heart with gloom,
No tender scruple ever made
With creatures of an humbler grade,
So, puzzling o’er these knots of fate,
Life’s riddle grows more intricate.
VIII.
“Who seeks will rarely fail to find
The thing to which he’s most inclined.
If thorns instead of roses suit,—
If leaves instead of luscious fruit,—
If turbid waters more than clear,—
If doleful sounds in place of cheer,—
_Those_ will respect the cynic’s right,
While _these_ elude his senses quite.
IX.
“Doubt if thou wilt, but reverently,
And heed not what the owls may say,
Who from their gloomy perch give out
That sin is foster-child of Doubt.
Doubt is the silent needful night,
The womb of intellectual might;
But who can wisely choose to dwell
Forever in that darksome shell?
X.
“The fearless soul emerging thence
Feels something of omnipotence;—
Upon the mountain tops his feet
Will tread in joy, and gladly beat
The golden shores of summer seas;
And he will hear in every breeze
Divinest music; even the storm
That bends the proud oak’s stubborn form,
And howls athwart the naked land,
Will bring to him an utterance grand,
Engendering noble thoughts, and power
To serve him in some trying hour.
XI.
“Revere fair Nature’s balanced laws,
Nor rashly deem them framed with flaws;
The discord which thou seem’st to find
In them is part of thine own mind.
Put that in tune, and, for the sake
Of darkened faces, strive to make
The world more happy; do this thing,
And thy despondent muse shall wring
Sweet nectar out of weed and cloud.”
XII.
Silent, though unconvinced, I bowed
My head abashed; with firmer trust,
And higher faith, I shook the dust
Of utter doubt from reason’s plume;
And through small openings in the gloom
I half discerned a meaning new
In that which seemed before untrue:
_The ever-present Lord of all_
_Compassionates a sparrow’s fall._
CELESTINE.
I.
I must not look on you nor think of you,—
Must seek close kinship with forgetfulness;
Such looks as thine but make a strong man rue
That ever in his heart’s devout excess
The shadow of thy soul he did pursue
Through many a golden hour for one caress;
’Twas but a noontide dream,
A phantom fire, a gleam
Of heaven wasted in a wilderness.
II.
I wake and wonder at the vision gone,
Sweet music borne upon a winter blast,
A beauty filched from sunset and the dawn,
A marvel too ethereal to last;
And now a heavy sadness falls upon
My spirit and the world, both overcast
With thunderstorm and gloom,
In which there is no room
For any ray of the enchanted past.
III.
I chide the fond delirium of my brow,
And only pray that you forgive, forget
The homage of a man who doth avow
His folly with a penitent’s regret;
Such adoration even the gods allow,
For thou art as a star divinely set
In heaven’s perfect blue,
I can but sigh for you
In lonely ways with night dews chilled and wet.
TO A YOUNG LADY.
When Morn, in spring glory,
Salutes the dull earth,
How sweet is her story
Of music and mirth.
The happy leaves glisten
And tremble around,
The young blossoms listen
With joy to the sound.
They tell by their blushes,
Their soft breathing proves,
That night’s dewy hushes
Promoted their loves.
The murmur of grasses,
The singing of birds,
In sweetness surpasses
The compass of words.
Far away on the mountain
The mist is on fire,
And the joy of the fountain
Can soar up no higher.
A tremor of gladness
Pervadeth the air,
And no touch of sadness
Can rest anywhere.
We cease to be mortal
In moments like this,
And enter the portal
Of absolute bliss.
At noon, and at even,
We think of the morn,
In the midst of whose heaven
Such beauty is born.
’Tis thus I shall cherish
Till life’s gloaming end,
And never let perish
The face of a friend.
Then come, gentle maiden,
And dwell with the few
That in my soul’s Aidenn
I know to be true;—
Some distant, some sleeping
The sleep of the just,
Are here in the keeping
Of memory’s trust.
With these let thy spirit
Abide in its place,
So shall I inherit
New goodness and grace.
BETRAYED.
These verses embody the last thoughts
recorded in the Journal of a young lady
of a village on the banks of the St.
Lawrence, who was found dead in her
chamber on a bright June morning of
186—, and was supposed to have committed
suicide during the night.
Henceforth a wanderer,
Hie thee, my soul,
Over life’s frozen waste,
Haste to thy goal.
O never again
Shall the down of sweet rest
Pillow thy weariness,
Spirit unblest!
No fair land of promise
Thy vision can reach;
No sunshine, no music,
No glory of speech.
Regrets and reproaches
Are idle and weak,
And the insult of pity
Brings shame to the cheek.
Farewell, ruined world!—
In the depth of star spaces
There may be sweet slumber,
And love-beaming faces.
There must be some spot
In this Universe wide,
Where a poor wounded dovelet
May haste to and hide.
The raven has flown
To his perch through the gloom,
And the death-watch is calling
His mate in my room.
The wail of the winds,
And the rapid’s loud roar,
Have a weirdness and terror
Felt never before.
A gray mist has settled
On land and on sea,
And night dews are falling,
My spirit, on thee!
When daylight is gone,
And the glimmer of stars,
Like a ghost at the casement,
Looks in through the bars,
It is time to disrobe,
And to kneel down and weep,
To forgive and forget,—
It is time now to sleep!
EPITHALAMIUM.
Written in honour of the nuptials of two young friends.
(1882.)
_Moonlight Chant of Fairies, crowned with maple leaves._
Scene:—Mount Royal, Canada.
I.
Speed, thou fiery monster, speed,
Let thy chariot wheels take heed
That they out-strip flight of beagle,
Till our Benedict they’ve borne
To his little maiden, lorn,
In the Land where screams the Eagle.
Linger, star of evening, linger,
Like the gem upon her finger,
While she sits, her love-notes humming,
At her casement, watching, waiting—
With her busy heart debating—
For the magic of his coming.
II.
_The Goblin of Celibacy chagrined._
Scene:—On the border.
Oh—ho! they have escaped my grip;
How stupid I, to let them slip!
The fools! to lose their free estate!
These rash and idiotic pranks,
These sly desertions from my ranks
Have multiplied so fast of late
That few remain, save priests and nuns,
And some fastidious elder sons
To honour still the heavenly call,
And piously their loves resign,
Obedient to the word divine,
The gospel preached by good St. Paul.
III.
_Hymenæus, exultant._
Scene:—Newark, N. J.