_A Room in London._ WALTER _reading from a manuscript._
My head is grey, my blood is young,
Red-leaping in my veins,
The spring doth stir my spirit yet
To seek the cloistered violet,
The primrose in the lanes.
In heart I am a very boy,
Haunting the woods, the waterfalls,
The ivies on grey castle-walls;
Weeping in silent joy
When the broad sun goes down the west,
Or trembling o'er a sparrow's nest.
The world might laugh were I to tell
What most my old age cheers,--
Mem'ries of stars and crescent moons,
Of nutting strolls through autumn noons,
Rainbows 'mong April's tears.
But chief, to live that hour again,
When first I stood on sea-beach old,
First heard the voice, first saw out-rolled
The glory of the main.
Many rich draughts hath Memory,
The Soul's cup-bearer, brought to me.
I saw a garden in my strolls,
A lovely place, I ween,
With rows of vermeil-blossomed trees,
With flowers, with slumb'rous haunts of bees,
With summer-house of green.
A peacock perched upon a dial,
In the sun's face he did unclose
His train superb with eyes and glows,
To dare the sun to trial.
A child sat in a shady place,
A shower of ringlets round her face.
She sat on shaven plot of grass,
With earnest face, and weaving
Lilies white and freakèd pansies
Into quaint delicious fancies,
Then, on a sudden leaving
Her floral wreath, she would upspring
With silver shouts and ardent eyes,
To chase the yellow butterflies,
Making the garden ring;
Then gravely pace the scented walk,
Soothing her doll with childish talk.
And being, as I said before,
An old man who could find
A boundless joy beneath the skies,
And in the light of human eyes,
And in the blowing wind,
There, daily were my footsteps turned,
Through the long spring, until the peach
Was drooping full-juiced in my reach.--
Each day my old heart yearned
To look upon that child so fair,
That infant in her golden hair.
In this green lovely world of ours
I have had many pets,
Two are still leaping in the sun,
Three are married; _that_ dearest one
Is 'neath the violets.
I gazèd till my heart grew wild,
To fold her in my warm caresses,
Clasp her showers of golden tresses,--
Oh, dreamy-eyèd child!
O Child of Beauty! still thou art
A sunbeam in this lonely heart.
When autumn eves grew chill and rainy,
England left I for the Ganges;
I couched 'mong groves of cedar-trees,
Blue lakes, and slumb'rous palaces,
Crossed the snows of mountain-ranges,
Watched the set of old Orion,
Saw wild flocks and wild-eyed shepherds,
Princes charioted by leopards,
In the desert met the lion,
The mad sun above us glaring,--
Child! for thee I still was caring.
Home returned from realms barbaric,
By the shores of Loch Lubnaig,
A dear friend and I were walking
('Twas the Sabbath), we were talking
Of dreams and feelings vague;
We pausèd by a place of graves,
Scarcely a word was 'twixt us given,
Silent the earth, silent the heaven,
No murmur of the waves,
The awèd Loch lay black and still
In the black shadow of the hill.
We loosed the gate and wandered in,
When the sun eternal
Was sudden blanched with amethyst,
As if a thick and purple mist
Dusked his brows supernal.
Soon like a god in mortal throes,
City, hill, and sea, he dips
In the death-hues of eclipse;
Mightier his anguish grows,
Till he hung black, with ring intense,
The wreck of his magnificence.
Above the earth's cold face he hung
With a pale ring of glory,
Like that which cunning limners paint
Around the forehead of a saint,
Or brow of martyr hoary.
And sitting there I could but choose,--
That blind and stricken sun aboon,
Stars shuddering through the ghostly noon,
'Mong the thick-falling dews,--
To tell, with features pale and wild,
About that Garden and that Child.
When moons had waxed and waned, I stood
Beside the garden gate,
The Peacock's dial was overthrown,
The walks with moss were overgrown,
_Her_ bower was desolate.
Gazing in utter misery
Upon that sad and silent place,
A woman came with mournful face,
And thus she said to me,--
"Those trees, as they were human souls,
All withered at the death-bell knolls."
I turned and asked her of the child.
"She is gone hence," quoth she,
"To be with Christ in Paradise.
Oh, sir! I stilled her infant cries,
I nursed her on my knee.
Though we were ever at her side,
And saw life fading in her cheek,
She knew us not, nor did she speak,
Till just before she died;
In the wild heart of that eclipse,
These words came through her wasted lips:--
'The callow young were huddling in the nests,
The marigold was burning in the marsh,
Like a thing dipt in sunset, when He came.
My blood went up to meet Him on my face,
Glad as a child that hears its father's step,
And runs to meet him at the open porch.
I gave Him all my being, like a flower
That flings its perfume on a vagrant breeze;
A breeze that wanders on and heeds it not.
His scorn is lying on my heart like snow,
My eyes are weary, and I fain would sleep;
The quietest sleep is underneath the ground.
Are ye around me, friends? I cannot see,
I cannot hear the voices that I love,
I lift my hands to you from out the night!
Methought I felt a tear upon my cheek;
Weep not, my mother! It is time to rest,
And I am very weary; so, good night!'
"My heart is in the grave with her,
The family went abroad;
Last autumn you might see the fruits,
Neglected, rot round the tree-roots;
This spring no leaves they shewed.
I sometimes fear my brain is crost:
Around this place, the churchyard yonder,
All day, all night, I silent wander,
As woeful as a ghost----
God take me to His gracious keeping,
But this old man is wildly weeping!"
That night the sky was heaped with clouds;
Through one blue gulf profound,
Begirt with many a cloudy crag,
The moon came rushing like a stag,
And one star like a hound.
Wearily the chase I eyed,
Wearily I saw the Dawn's
Feet sheening o'er the dewy lawns.
O God! that I had died.
My heart's red tendrils were all torn
And bleeding on that summer morn.
WALTER (_after a long silence, speaking abstractedly, and with
frequent pauses_).
Twice hath the windy Summer made a noise
Of leaves o'er all the land from sea to sea,
And still that Child's face sleeps within my heart
Like a young sunbeam in a gloomy wood,
Making the darkness smile--I almost smile
At the strange fancies I have girt her with;
The garden, peacock, and the black eclipse,
The still old graveyard 'mong the dreary hills,
Grey mourners round it--I wonder if she's dead?
She was too fair for earth. Ah! she would die
Like music, sunbeams, and the pallid flowers
That spring on Winter's corse--I saw those graves
With Him who is no more. They are all dead,
The beings whom I loved, and I am sad,
But would not change my sadness for a life
Without a fissure running through its joy.
This very hour a suite of sumptuous rooms
O'erflows with music like a cup with wine;
Outside, the night is weeping like a girl
At her seducer's door, and still the rooms
Run o'er with music, careless of her woe.
I would not have my heart thus. This poor rhyme
Is but an adumbration of my life,
My misery tricked out in a quaint disguise.
Oh, it did happen on a summer day
When I was playing unawares with flowers,
That happiness shot past me like a planet,
And I was barren left!
_Enter_ EDWARD, _unobserved._
EDWARD.
Walter's love-sick for Fame:
A haughty mistress! How this mad old world
Reels to its burning grave, shouting forth names,
Like a wild drunkard at his frenzy's height,
And they who bear them deem such shoutings _Fame_,
And, smiling, die content. What is thy thought?
WALTER.
'Tis this, a sad one:--Though our beings point
Upward, like prayers or quick spires of flame,
We soon lose interest in this breathing world.
Joy palls from taste to taste, until we yawn
In Pleasure's glowing face. When first we love,
Our souls are clad with joy, as if a tree,
All winter-bare, had on a sudden leapt
To a full load of blooms; next time 'tis nought.
Great weariness doth feed upon the soul;
I sometimes think the highest-blest in heaven
Will weary 'mong its flowers. As for myself,
There's nothing new between me and the grave
But the cold feel of Death.
EDWARD.
Watch well thy heart!
It is, methinks, an eager shaking star,
Not a calm steady planet.
WALTER.
I love thee much,
But thou art all unlike the glorious guide
Of my proud boyhood. Oh, he led me up,
As Hesper, large and brilliant, leads the night!
Our pulses beat together, and our beings
Mixed like two voices in one perfect tune,
And his the richest voice. He loved all things,
From God to foam-bells dancing down a stream,
With a most equal love. Thou mock'st at much;
And he who sneers at any living hope
Or aspiration of a human heart,
Is just so many stages less than God,
That universal and all-sided Love.
I'm wretched, Edward! to the very heart;
I see an unreached heaven of young desire
Shine through my hopeless tears. My drooping sails
Flap idly 'gainst the mast of my intent.
I rot upon the waters when my prow
Should grate the golden isles.
EDWARD.
What wouldst thou do?
Thy brain did teem with vapours wild and vast.
WALTER.
But since my younger and my hotter days
(As nebula condenses to an orb),
These vapours gathered to one shining hope,
Sole-hanging in my sky.
EDWARD.
What hope is that?
WALTER.
To set this Age to music--The great work
Before the Poet now--I do believe
When it is fully sung, its great complaint,
Its hope, its yearning, told to earth and heaven,
Our troubled age shall pass, as doth a day
That leaves the west all crimson with the promise
Of the diviner morrow, which even then
Is hurrying up the world's great side with light.
Father! if I should live to see that morn,
Let me go upward, like a lark, to sing
One song in the dawning!
EDWARD.
Ah, my ardent friend!
You need not tinker at this leaking world,
'Tis ruined past all cure.
WALTER.
Edward, for shame!
Not on a path of reprobation runs
The trembling earth. God's eye doth follow her
With far more love than doth her maid, the moon.
Speak no harsh words of Earth, she is our mother,
And few of us, her sons, who have not added
A wrinkle to her brow. She gave us birth,
We drew our nurture from her ample breast,
And there is coming, for us both, an hour
When we shall pray that she will ope her arms
And take us back again. Oh, I would pledge
My heart, my blood, my brain, to ease the earth
Of but one single pang!
EDWARD.
So would not I.
Because the pangs of earth shall ne'er be eased.
We sleep on velvets now, instead of leaves;
The land is covered with a net of iron,
Upon whose spider-like, far-stretching lines,
The trains are rushing, and the peevish sea
Frets 'gainst the bulging bosoms of the ships,
Whose keels have waked it from its hour's repose.
Walter! this height of civilisation's tide
Measures our wrong. We've made the immortal Soul
Slave to the Body. 'Tis the Soul has wrought
And laid the iron roads, evoked a power
Next mightiest to God, to drive the trains
That bring the country butter up to town;
Has drawn the terrible lightning from its cloud,
And tamed it to an eager Mercury,
Running with messages of news and gain;
And still the Soul is tasked to harder work,
For Paradise, according to the world,
Is scarce a league a-head.
WALTER.
The man I loved
Wrought this complaint of thine into a song,
Which I sung long ago.
EDWARD.
We must reverse
The plans of ages. Let the Body sweat,
So that the soul be calm, why should _it_ work?
Say, had I spent the pith of half my life,
And made me master of our English law,
What gain had I on resurrection morn,
But such as hath the body of a clown,
That it could turn a summerset on earth?
A single soul is richer than all worlds,
Its acts are only shadows of itself,
And oft its wondrous wealth is all unknown;
'Tis like a mountain-range, whose rugged sides
Feed starveling flocks of sheep; pierce the bare sides,
And they ooze plenteous gold. We must go down
And work our souls like mines, make books our lamps,
Not shrines to worship at, nor heed the world--
Let it go roaring past. You sigh for Fame;
Would serve as long as Jacob for his love,
So you might win her. Spirits calm and still
Are high above your order, as the stars
Sit large and tranquil o'er the restless clouds
That weep and lighten, pelt the earth with hail,
And fret themselves away. The truly great
Rest in the knowledge of their own deserts,
Nor seek the confirmation of the world.
Wouldst thou be calm and still?
WALTER.
I'd be as lieve
A minnow to leviathan, that draws
A furrow like a ship. Away! away!
You'd make the world a very oyster-bed.
I'd rather be the glad, bright-leaping foam,
Than the smooth sluggish sea. O let me live
To love and flush and thrill--or let me die!
EDWARD.
And yet, what weariness was on your tongue
An hour ago!--you shall be wearier yet.