So in the golden morning they parted and went to the westward.

And in the cottage with Airlie and Hobbes remained the Tutor;

Reading nine hours a day with the Tutor, Hobbes and Airlie;

One between bathing and breakfast, and six before it was dinner

(Breakfast at eight, at four, after bathing again, the dinner),

Finally, two after walking and tea, from nine to eleven.

Airlie and Adam at evening their quiet stroll together

Took on the terrace-road, with the western hills before them;

Hobbes, only rarely a third, now and then in the cottage remaining,

E’en after dinner, eupeptic, would rush yet again to his reading;

Other times, stung by the œstrum of some swift-working conception,

Ranged, tearing on in his fury, an Io-cow through the mountains,

Heedless of scenery, heedless of bogs, and of perspiration,

On the high peaks, unwitting, the hares and ptarmigan starting.

And the three weeks past, the three weeks, three days over,

Nither letter had come, nor casual tidings any,

And the pupils grumbled, the Tutor became uneasy,

And in the golden weather they wondered, and watched to the westward.

There is a stream (I name not its name, lest inquisitive tourist

Hunt it, and make it a lion, and get it at last into guide-books),

Springing far off from a loch unexplored in the folds of great mountains,

Falling two miles through rowan and stunted alder, enveloped

Then for four more in a forest of pine, where broad and ample

Spreads, to convey it, the glen with heathery slopes on both sides:

Broad and fair the stream, with occasional falls and narrows;

But, where the glen of its course approaches the vale of the river,

Met and blocked by a huge interposing mass of granite,

Scarce by a channel deep-cut, raging up, and raging onward,

Forces its flood through a passage so narrow a lady would step it.

There, across the great rocky wharves, a wooden bridge goes,

Carrying a path to the forest; below, three hundred yards, say,

Lower in level some twenty-five feet, through flats of shingle,

Stepping-stones and a cart-track cross in the open valley.

But in the interval here the boiling pent-up water

Frees itself by a final descent, attaining a basin,

Ten feet wide and eighteen long, with whiteness and fury

Occupied partly, but mostly pellucid, pure, a mirror;

Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks under;

Beautiful, most of all, where beads of foam uprising

Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the stillness,

Cliff over cliff for its sides, with rowan and pendent birch boughs,

Here it lies, unthought of above at the bridge and pathway,

Still more enclosed from below by wood and rocky projection.

You are shut in, left alone with yourself and perfection of water,

Hid on all sides, left alone with yourself and the goddess of bathing.

Here, the pride of the plunger, you stride the fall and clear it;

Here, the delight of the bather, you roll in beaded sparklings,

Here into pure green depth drop down from lofty ledges.

Hither, a month agone, they had come, and discovered it; hither

(Long a design, but long unaccountably left unaccomplished),

Leaving the well-known bridge and pathway above to the forest,

Turning below from the track of the carts over stone and shingle,

Piercing a wood, and skirting a narrow and natural causeway

Under the rocky wall that hedges the bed of the streamlet,

Rounded a craggy point, and saw on a sudden before them

Slabs of rock, and a tiny beach, and perfection of water,

Picture-like beauty, seclusion sublime, and the goddess of bathing.

There they bathed, of course, and Arthur, the Glory of headers,

Leapt from the ledges with Hope, he twenty feet, he thirty;

There, overbold, great Hobbes from a ten-foot height descended,

Prone, as a quadruped, prone with hands and feet protending;

There in the sparkling champagne, ecstatic, they shrieked and shouted.

‘Hobbes’s gutter’ the Piper entitles the spot, profanely,

Hope ‘the Glory’ would have, after Arthur, the Glory of headers:

But, for before they departed, in shy and fugitive reflex,

Here in the eddies and there did the splendour of Jupiter glimmer;

Adam adjudged it the name of Hesperus, star of the evening.

Hither, to Hesperus, now, the star of evening above them,

Come in their lonelier walk the pupils twain and Tutor;

Turned from the track of the carts, and passing the stone and shingle,

Piercing the wood, and skirting the stream by the natural causeway,

Rounded the craggy point, and now at their ease looked up; and

Lo, on the rocky ledge, regardant, the Glory of headers,

Lo, on the beach, expecting the plunge, not cigarless, the Piper,—

And they looked, and wondered, incredulous, looking yet once more.

Yes, it was he, on the ledge, bare-limbed, an Apollo, down-gazing,

Eyeing one moment the beauty, the life, ere he flung himself in it,

Eyeing through eddying green waters the green-tinting floor underneath

them,

Eyeing the bead on the surface, the bead, like a cloud rising to it,

Drinking-in, deep in his soul, the beautiful hue and the clearness,

Arthur, the shapely, the brave, the unboasting, the Glory of headers;

Yes, and with fragrant weed, by his knapsack, spectator and critic,

Seated on slab by the margin, the Piper, the Cloud-compeller.

Yes, they were come; were restored to the party, its grace and its

gladness,

Yes, were here, as of old; the light-giving orb of the household,

Arthur, the shapely, the tranquil, the strength-and-contentment

diffusing,

In the pure presence of whom none could quarrel long, nor be pettish,

And, the gay fountain of mirth, their dearly beloved of Pipers;

Yes, they were come, were here: but Hewson and Hope—where they then?

Are they behind, travel-sore, or ahead, going straight, by the pathway?

And from his seat and cigar spoke the Piper, the Cloud-compeller.

Hope with the uncle abideth for shooting. Ah me, were I with him!

Ah, good boy that I am, to have stuck to my word and my reading!

Good, good boy to be here, far away, who might be at Balloch!

Only one day to have stayed who might have been welcome for seven,

Seven whole days in castle and forest—gay in the mazy

Moving, imbibing the rosy, and pointing a gun at the horny!

And the Tutor impatient, expectant, interrupted.

Hope with the uncle, and Hewson—with him? or where have you left him?

And from his seat and cigar spoke the Piper, the Cloud-compeller.

Hope with the uncle, and Hewson—Why, Hewson we left in Rannoch,

By the lochside and the pines, in a farmer’s house,—reflecting—

Helping to shear,[8] and dry clothes, and bring in peat from the

peat-stack.

And the Tutor’s countenance fell; perplexed, dumb-foundered

Stood he,—slow and with pain disengaging jest from earnest.

He is not far from home, said Arthur from the water,

He will be with us to-morrow, at latest, or the next day.

And he was even more reassured by the Piper’s rejoinder.

Can he have come by the mail, and have got to the cottage before us?

So to the cottage they went, and Philip was not at the cottage;

But by the mail was a letter from Hope, who himself was to follow.

Two whole days and nights succeeding brought not Philip,

Two whole days and nights exhausted not question and story.

For it was told, the Piper narrating, corrected of Arthur,

Often by word corrected, more often by smile and motion,

How they had been to Iona, to Staffa, to Skye, to Culloden,

Seen Loch Awe, Loch Tay, Loch Fyne, Loch Ness, Loch Arkaig,

Been up Ben-nevis, Ben-more, Ben-cruachan, Ben-muick-dhui;

How they had walked, and eaten, and drunken, and slept in kitchens

Slept upon floors of kitchens, and tasted the real Glenlivat,

Walked up perpendicular hills, and also down them,

Hither and thither had been, and this and that had witnessed,

Left not a thing to be done, and had not a copper remaining.

For it was told withal, he telling, and he correcting,

How in the race they had run, and beaten the gillies of Rannoch,

How in forbidden glens, in Mar and midmost Athol,

Philip insisting hotly, and Arthur and Hope compliant,

They had defied the keepers; the Piper alone protesting,

Liking the fun, it was plain, in his heart, but tender of game-law;

Yea, too, in Meäly glen, the heart of Lochiel’s fair forest,

Where Scotch firs are darkest and amplest, and intermingle

Grandly with rowan and ash—in Mar you have no ashes,

There the pine is alone, or relieved by the birch and the alder—

How in Meäly glen, while stags were starting before, they

Made the watcher believe they were guests from Achnacarry.

And there was told moreover, he telling, the other correcting,

Often by word, more often by mute significant motion,

Much of the Cambridge _coach_ and his pupils at Inverary,

Huge barbarian pupils, Expanded in Infinite Series,

Firing-off signal guns (great scandal) from window to window

(For they were lodging perforce in distant and numerous houses),

Signals, when, one retiring, another should go to the Tutor:—

Much too of Kitcat, of course, and the party at Drumnadrochet,

Mainwaring, Foley, and Fraser, their idleness horrid and dog-cart;

Drumnadrochet was _seedy_, Glenmorison _adequate_, but at

Castleton, high in Braemar, were the _clippingest_ places for bathing;

One by the bridge in the village, indecent, the _Town Hall_ christened.

Where had Lauder howbeit been bathing, and Harrison also,

Harrison even, the Tutor; another like Hesperus here, and

Up the water of Eye, half-a-dozen at least, all _stunners_.

And it was told, the Piper narrating and Arthur correcting,

Colouring he, dilating, magniloquent, glorying in picture,

He to a matter-of-fact still softening, paring, abating,

He to the great might-have-been upsoaring, sublime and ideal,

He to the merest it-was restricting, diminishing, dwarfing,

River to streamlet reducing, and fall to slope subduing:

So was it told, the Piper narrating, corrected of Arthur,

How under Linn of Dee, where over rocks, between rocks,

Freed from prison the river comes, pouring, rolling, rushing,

Then at a sudden descent goes sliding, gliding, unbroken,

Falling, sliding, gliding, in narrow space collected,

Save for a ripple at last, a sheeted descent unbroken,—

How to the element offering their bodies, downshooting the fall, they

Mingled themselves with the flood and the force of imperious water.

And it was told too, Arthur narrating, the Piper correcting,

How, as one comes to the level, the weight of the downward impulse

Carries the head under water, delightful, unspeakable; how the

Piper, here ducked and blinded, got stray, and borne-off by the current

Wounded his lily-white thighs, below, at the craggy corner.

And it was told, the Piper resuming, corrected of Arthur,

More by word than motion, change ominous, noted of Adam,

How at the floating-bridge of Laggan, one morning at sunrise,

Came, in default of the ferryman, out of her bed a brave lassie;

And as Philip and she together were turning the handles,

Winding the chain by which the boat works over the water

Hands intermingled with hands, and at last, as they stepped from the

boatie,

Turning about, they saw lips also mingle with lips; but

That was flatly denied and loudly exclaimed at by Arthur:

How at the General’s hut, the Inn by the Foyers Fall, where

Over the loch looks at you the summit of Méalfourvónie,

How here too he was hunted at morning, and found in the kitchen

Watching the porridge being made, pronouncing them smoked for certain,

Watching the porridge being made, and asking the lassie that made them

What was the Gaelic for _girl_, and what was the Gaelic for _pretty_;

How in confusion he shouldered his knapsack, yet blushingly stammered,

Waving a hand to the lassie, that blushingly bent o’er the porridge,

Something outlandish—_Slan_-something, _Slan leat_, he believed, _Caleg

Looach_—

That was the Gaelic, it seemed, for ‘I bid you good-bye, bonnie lassie;

Arthur admitted it true, not of Philip, but of the Piper.

And it was told by the Piper, while Arthur looked out at the window,

How in thunder and in rain—it is wetter far to the westward—

Thunder and rain and wind, losing heart and road, they were welcomed,

Welcomed, and three days detained at a farm by the lochside of Rannoch;

How in the three days’ detention was Philip observed to be smitten,

Smitten by golden-haired Katie, the youngest and comeliest daughter;

Was he not seen, even Arthur observed it, from breakfast to bedtime,

Following her motions with eyes ever brightening, softening ever?

Did he not fume, fret, and fidget to find her stand waiting at table?

Was he not one mere St. Vitus’ dance, when he saw her at nightfall

Go through the rain to fetch peat, through beating rain to the

peat-stack?

How too a dance, as it happened, was given by Grant of Glenurchie,

And with the farmer they went as the farmer’s guests to attend it;

Philip stayed dancing till daylight,—and evermore with Katie;

How the whole next afternoon he was with her away in the shearing,[9]

And the next morning ensuing was found in the ingle beside her

Kneeling, picking the peats from her apron,—blowing together,

Both, between laughing, with lips distended, to kindle the embers;

Lips were so near to lips, one living cheek to another,—

Though, it was true, he was shy, very shy,—yet it wasn’t in nature,

Wasn’t in nature, the Piper averred, there shouldn’t be kissing;

So when at noon they had packed up the things, and proposed to be

starting,

Philip professed he was lame, would leave in the morning and follow;

Follow he did not; do burns, when you go up a glen, follow after?

Follow, he had not, nor left; do needles leave the loadstone?

Nay, they had turned after starting, and looked through the trees at

the corner,

Lo, on the rocks by the lake there he was, the lassie beside him,

Lo, there he was, stooping by her, and helping with stones from the water

Safe in the wind to keep down the clothes she would spread for the

drying.

There they had left him, and there, if Katie was there, was Philip,

There drying clothes, making fires, making love, getting on too by

this time,

Though he was shy, so exceedingly shy.

You may say so, said Arthur,

For the first time they had known with a peevish intonation,—

Did not the Piper himself flirt more in a single evening,

Namely, with Janet the elder, than Philip in all our sojourn?

Philip had stayed, it was true; the Piper was loth to depart too,

Harder his parting from Janet than e’en from the keeper at Balloch;

And it was certain that Philip was lame.

Yes, in his excuses,

Answered the Piper, indeed!—

But tell me, said Hobbes interposing,

Did you not say she was seen every day in her beauty and bedgown

Doing plain household work, as washing, cooking, scouring?

How could he help but love her? nor lacked there perhaps the attraction

That, in a blue cotton print tucked up over striped linsey-woolsey,

Barefoot, barelegged, he beheld her, with arms bare up to the elbows,

Bending with fork in her hand in a garden uprooting potatoes?

Is not Katie as Rachel, and is not Philip a Jacob?

Truly Jacob, supplanting a hairy Highland Esau?

Shall he not, love-entertained, feed sheep for the Laban of Rannoch?

Patriarch happier he, the long servitude ended of wooing,

If when he wake in the morning he find not a Leah beside him!

But the Tutor inquired, who had bit his lip to bleeding,

How far off is the place? who will guide me thither to-morrow?

But by the mail, ere the morrow, came Hope, and brought new tidings;

Round by Rannoch had come, and Philip was not at Rannoch;

He had left at noon, an hour ago.

With the lassie?

With her? the Piper exclaimed. Undoubtedly! By great Jingo’

And upon that he arose, slapping both his thighs like a hero,

Partly for emphasis only, to mark his conviction, but also

Part in delight at the fun, and the joy of eventful living.

Hope couldn’t tell him, of course, but thought it improbable wholly;

Janet, the Piper’s friend, he had seen, and she didn’t say so,

Though she asked a good deal about Philip, and where he was gone to;

One odd thing, by the bye, he continued, befell me while with her;

Standing beside her, I saw a girl pass; I thought I had seen her,

Somewhat remarkable-looking, elsewhere; and asked what her name was;

Elspie Mackaye, was the answer, the daughter of David! she’s stopping

Just above here, with her uncle. And David Mackaye, where lives he?

It’s away west, she said; they call it Tober-na vuolich.

IV

_Ut vidi, ut perii, ut me malus abstulit error._

So in the golden weather they waited. But Philip returned not.

Sunday six days thence a letter arrived in his writing.—

But, O Muse, that encompassest Earth like the ambient ether,

Swifter than steamer or railway or magical missive electric,

Belting like Ariel the sphere with the star-like trail of thy travel,

Thou with thy Poet, to mortals mere post-office second-hand knowledge

Leaving, wilt seek in the moorland of Rannoch the wandering hero.

There is it, there, or in lofty Lochaber, where, silent upheaving,

Heaving from ocean to sky, and under snow-winds of September,

Visibly whitening at morn to darken by noon in the shining,

Rise on their mighty foundations the brethren huge of Ben-nevis?

There, or westward away, where roads are unknown to Loch Nevish,

And the great peaks look abroad over Skye to the westernmost islands?

There is it? there? or there? we shall find our wandering hero?

Here, in Badenoch, here, in Lochaber anon, in Lochiel, in

Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan,

Here I see him and here: I see him; anon I lose him!

Even as cloud passing subtly unseen from mountain to mountain,

Leaving the crest of Ben-more to be palpable next on Ben-vohrlich,

Or like to hawk of the hill which ranges and soars in its hunting,

Seen and unseen by turns, now here, now in ether eludent.

Wherefore, as cloud of Ben-more or hawk over-ranging the mountains,

Wherefore in Badenoch drear, in lofty Lochaber, Lochiel, and

Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan,

Wandereth he who should either with Adam be studying logic,

Or by the lochside of Rannoch on Katie his rhetoric using;

He who, his three weeks past, past now long ago, to the cottage

Punctual promised return to cares of classes and classics.

He who, smit to the heart by that youngest comeliest daughter,

Bent, unregardful of spies, at her feet, spreading clothes from her

wash-tub?

Can it be with him through Badenoch, Morrer, and Ardnamurchan;

Can it be with him he beareth the golden-haired lassie of Rannoch?

This fierce, furious walking—o’er mountain-top and moorland,

Sleeping in shieling and bothie, with drover on hill-side sleeping,

Folded in plaid, where sheep are strewn thicker than rocks by Loch Awen,

This fierce, furious travel unwearying—cannot in truth be

Merely the wedding tour succeeding the week of wooing!

No, wherever be Katie, with Philip she is not; I see him,

Lo, and he sitteth alone, and these are his words in the mountain.

Spirits escaped from the body can enter and be with the living;

Entering unseen, and retiring unquestioned, they bring,—do they feel

too?—

Joy, pure joy, as they mingle and mix inner essence with essence;

Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!

Joy, pure joy, bringing with them, and, when they retire, leaving after

No cruel shame, no prostration, despondency; memories rather,

Sweet happy hopes bequeathing. Ah! wherefore not thus with the living?

Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!

Is it impossible, say you, these passionate fervent impulsions,

These projections of spirit to spirit, these inward embraces,

Should in strange ways, in her dreams, should visit her, strengthen

her, shield her?

Is it possible, rather, that these great floods of feeling

Setting-in daily from me towards her should, impotent wholly,

Bring neither sound nor motion to that sweet shore they heave to?

Efflux here, and there no stir nor pulse of influx!

Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!

Surely, surely, when sleepless I lie in the mountain lamenting,

Surely, surely, she hears in her dreams a voice, ‘I am with thee,’

Saying, ‘although not with thee; behold, for we mated our spirits

Then, when we stood in the chamber, and knew not the words we were

saying;’

Yea, if she felt me within her, when not with one finger I touched her

Surely she knows it, and feels it while sorrowing here in the moorland.

Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!

Spirits with spirits commingle and separate; lightly as winds do,

Spice-laden South with the ocean-born zephyr! they mingle and sunder;

No sad remorses for them, no visions of horror and vileness.

Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!

Surely the force that here sweeps me along in its violent impulse,

Surely my strength shall be in her, my help and protection about her,

Surely in inner-sweet gladness and vigour of joy shall sustain her,

Till, the brief winter o’er-past, her own true sap in the springtide

Rise, and the tree I have bared be verdurous e’en as aforetime!

Surely it may be, it should be, it must be. Yet ever and ever,

Would I were dead, I keep saying, that so I could go and uphold her!

No, wherever be Katie, with Philip she is not: behold, for

Here he is sitting alone, and these are his words in the mountain.

And, at the farm on the lochside of Rannoch, in parlour and kitchen,

Hark! there is music—the flowing of music, of milk, and of whisky;

Lo, I see piping and dancing! and whom in the midst of the battle

Cantering loudly along there, or, look you, with arms uplifted,

Whistling, and snapping his fingers, and seizing his gay-smiling Janet,

Whom?—whom else but the Piper? the wary precognisant Piper,

Who, for the love of gay Janet, and mindful of old invitation,

Putting it quite as a duty and urging grave claims to attention,

True to his night had crossed over: there goeth he, brimful of music,

Like a cork tossed by the eddies that foam under furious lasher,

Like to skiff, lifted, uplifted, in lock, by the swift-swelling sluices,

So with the music possessing him, swaying him, goeth he, look you,

Swinging and flinging, and stamping and tramping, and grasping and

clasping

Whom but gay Janet?—Him rivalling, Hobbes, briefest-kilted of heroes,

Enters, O stoutest, O rashest of creatures, mere fool of a Saxon,

Skill-less of philabeg, skill-less of reel too,—the whirl and the twirl

o’t:

Him see I frisking, and whisking, and ever at swifter gyration

Under brief curtain revealing broad acres—not of broad cloth.

Him see I there and the Piper—the Piper what vision beholds not?

Him and His Honour with Arthur, with Janet our Piper, and is it,

Is it, O marvel of marvels! he too in the maze of the mazy,

Skipping, and tripping, though stately, though languid, with head on one

shoulder,

Airlie, with sight of the waistcoat the golden-haired Katie consoling?

Katie, who simple and comely, and smiling and blushing as ever,

What though she wear on that neck a blue kerchief remembered as Philip’s,

Seems in her maidenly freedom to need small consolement of waistcoats!—

Wherefore in Badenoch then, far-away, in Lochaber, Lochiel, in

Knoydart, Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, or Ardnamurchan,

Wanders o’er mountain and moorland, in shieling or bothie is sleeping,

He, who,—and why should he not then? capricious? or is it rejected?

Might to the piping of Rannoch be pressing the thrilling fair fingers,

Might, as he clasped her, transmit to her bosom the throb of his

own—yea,—

Might in the joy of the reel be wooing and winning his Katie?

What is it Adam reads far off by himself in the cottage?

Reads yet again with emotion, again is preparing to answer?

What is it Adam is reading? What was it Philip had written?

There was it writ, how Philip possessed undoubtedly had been,

Deeply, entirely possessed by the charm of the maiden of Rannoch;

Deeply as never before! how sweet and bewitching he felt her

Seen still before him at work, in the garden, the byre, the kitchen;

How it was beautiful to him to stoop at her side in the shearing,

Binding uncouthly the ears that fell from her dexterous sickle,

Building uncouthly the stooks,[10] which she laid by her sickle to

straighten,

How at the dance he had broken through shyness; for four days after

Lived on her eyes, unspeaking what lacked not articulate speaking;

Felt too that she too was feeling what he did.—Howbeit they parted!

How by a kiss from her lips he had seemed made nobler and stronger,

Yea, for the first time in life a man complete and perfect,

So forth! much that before has been heard of.—Howbeit they parted!

What had ended it all, he said, was singular, very.—

I was walking along some two miles off from the cottage

Full of my dreamings—a girl went by in a party with others;

She had a cloak on, was stepping on quickly, for rain was beginning;

But as she passed, from her hood I saw her eyes look at me.

So quick a glance, so regardless I, that although I had felt it,

You couldn’t properly say our eyes met. She cast it, and left it:

It was three minutes perhaps ere I knew what it was. I had seen her

Somewhere before I am sure, but that wasn’t it; not its import;

No, it had seemed to regard me with simple superior insight,

Quietly saying to itself—Yes, there he is still in his fancy,

Letting drop from him at random as things not worth his considering

All the benefits gathered and put in his hands by fortune,

Loosing a hold which others, contented and unambitious,

Trying down here to keep up, know the value of better than he does,

What is this? was it perhaps?—Yes, there he is still in his fancy,

Doesn’t yet see we have here just the things he is used to elsewhere;

People here too are people and not as fairy-land creatures;

He is in a trance, and possessed; I wonder how long to continue;

It is a shame and a pity—and no good likely to follow.—

Something like this, but indeed I cannot attempt to define it.

Only, three hours thence I was off and away in the moorland,

Hiding myself from myself if I could; the arrow within me.

Katie was not in the house, thank God: I saw her in passing,

Saw her, unseen myself, with the pang of a cruel desertion;

What she thinks about it, God knows! poor child; may she only

Think me a fool and a madman, and no more worth her remembering!

Meantime all through the mountains I hurry and know not whither,

Tramp along here, and think, and know not what I should think.

Tell me then, why, as I sleep amid hill-tops high in the moorland,

Still in my dreams I am pacing the streets of the dissolute city,

Where dressy girls slithering by upon pavements give sign for accosting,

Paint on their beautiless cheeks, and hunger and shame in their bosoms;

Hunger by drink, and by that which they shudder yet burn for, appeasing,—

Hiding their shame—ah God!—in the glare of the public gas-lights?

Why, while I feel my ears catching through slumber the run of the

streamlet,

Still am I pacing the pavement, and seeing the sign for accosting,

Still am I passing those figures, not daring to look in their faces?

Why, when the chill, ere the light, of the daybreak uneasily wakes me,

Find I a cry in my heart crying up to the heaven of heavens,

No, Great Unjust Judge! she is purity; I am the lost one.

You will not think that I soberly look for such things for sweet Katie;

No, but the vision is on me; I now first see how it happens,

Feel how tender and soft is the heart of a girl; how passive

Fain would it be, how helpless; and helplessness leads to destruction.

Maiden reserve torn from off it, grows never again to reclothe it,

Modesty broken through once to immodesty flies for protection.

Oh, who saws through the trunk, though he leave the tree up in the

forest,

When the next wind casts it down,—is _his_ not the hand that smote it?

This is the answer, the second, which, pondering long with emotion,

There by himself in the cottage the Tutor addressed to Philip.

I have perhaps been severe, dear Philip, and hasty; forgive me;

For I was fain to reply ere I wholly had read through your letter;

And it was written in scraps with crossings and counter-crossings

Hard to connect with each other correctly, and hard to decipher;

Paper was scarce, I suppose: forgive me; I write to console you.

Grace is given of God, but knowledge is bought in the market;

Knowledge needful for all, yet cannot be had for the asking.

There are exceptional beings, one finds them distant and rarely,

Who, endowed with the vision alike and the interpretation,

See, by the neighbours’ eyes and their own still motions enlightened,

In the beginning the end, in the acorn the oak of the forest,

In the child of to-day its children to long generations,

In a thought or a wish a life, a drama, an epos.

There are inheritors, is it? by mystical generation

Heiring the wisdom and ripeness of spirits gone by; without labour

Owning what others by doing and suffering earn; what old men

After long years of mistake and erasure are proud to have come to,

Sick with mistake and erasure possess when possession is idle.

Yes, there is power upon earth, seen feebly in women and children,

Which can, laying one hand on the cover, read off, unfaltering,

Leaf after leaf unlifted, the words of the closed book under,

Words which we are poring at, hammering at, stumbling at, spelling.

Rare is this; wisdom mostly is bought for a price in the market;—

Rare is this; and happy, who buys so much for so little,

As I conceive have you, and as I will hope has Katie.

Knowledge is needful for man,—needful no less for woman,

Even in Highland glens, were they vacant of shooter and tourist.

Not that, of course, I mean to prefer your blindfold hurry

Unto a soul that abides most loving yet most withholding;

Least unfeeling though calm, self-contained yet most unselfish;

Renders help and accepts it, a man among men that are brothers,

Views, not plucks the beauty, adores, and demands no embracing,

So in its peaceful passage whatever is lovely and gracious

Still without seizing or spoiling, itself in itself reproducing.

No, I do not set Philip herein on the level of Arthur;

No, I do not compare still tarn with furious torrent,

Yet will the tarn overflow, assuaged in the lake be the torrent.

Women are weak, as you say, and love of all things to be passive,

Passive, patient, receptive, yea, even of wrong and misdoing,

Even to force and misdoing with joy and victorious feeling

Patient, passive, receptive; for that is the strength of their being,

Like to the earth taking all things, and all to good converting.

Oh ’tis a snare indeed!—Moreover, remember it, Philip,

To the prestige of the richer the lowly are prone to be yielding,

Think that in dealing with them they are raised to a different region,

Where old laws and morals are modified, lost, exist not;

Ignorant they as they are, they have but to conform and be yielding.

But I have spoken of this already, and need not repeat it.

You will not now run after what merely attracts and entices,

Every-day things highly-coloured, and common-place carved and gilded.

You will henceforth seek only the good: and seek it, Philip,

Where it is—not more abundant, perhaps, but—more easily met with;

Where you are surer to find it, less likely to run into error,

In your station, not thinking about it, but not disregarding.

So was the letter completed: a postscript afterward added,

Telling the tale that was told by the dancers returning from Rannoch.

So was the letter completed: but query, whither to send it?

Not for the will of the wisp, the cloud, and the hawk of the moorland,

Ranging afar thro’ Lochaber, Lochiel, and Knoydart, and Moydart,

Have even latest extensions adjusted a postal arrangement.

Query resolved very shortly, when Hope, from his chamber descending,

Came with a note in his hand from the Lady, his aunt, at the Castle;

Came and revealed the contents of a missive that brought strange tidings;

Came and announced to the friends, in a voice that was husky with wonder,

Philip was staying at Balloch, was there in the room with the Countess,

Philip to Balloch had come and was dancing with Lady Maria.

Philip at Balloch, he said, after all that stately refusal,

He there at last—O strange! O marvel, marvel of marvels!

Airlie, the Waistcoat, with Katie, we left him this morning at Rannoch;

Airlie with Katie, he said, and Philip with Lady Maria.

And amid laughter Adam paced up and down, repeating

Over and over, unconscious, the phrase which Hope had lent him,

Dancing at Balloch, you say, in the Castle, with Lady Maria.

V

——_Putavi_

_Stultus ego huic nostræ similem._

So in the cottage with Adam the pupils five together

Duly remained, and read, and looked no more for Philip,

Philip at Balloch shooting and dancing with Lady Maria.

Breakfast at eight, and now, for brief September daylight,

Luncheon at two, and dinner at seven, or even later,

Five full hours between for the loch and the glen and the mountain,—

So in the joy of their life and glory of shooting-jackets,

So they read and roamed, the pupils five with Adam.

What if autumnal shower came frequent and chill from the westward,

What if on browner sward with yellow leaves besprinkled,

Gemming the crispy blade, the delicate gossamer gemming,

Frequent and thick lay at morning the chilly beads of hoar-frost,

Duly in _matutine_ still, and daily, whatever the weather,

Bathed in the rain and the frost and the mist with the Glory of headers

Hope. Thither also at times, of cold and of possible gutters

Careless, unmindful, unconscious, would Hobbes, or ere they departed,

Come, in heavy pea-coat his trouserless trunk enfolding,

Come, under coat over-brief those lusty legs displaying,

All from the shirt to the slipper the natural man revealing.

Duly there they bathed and daily, the twain or the trio,

Where in the morning was custom, where over a ledge of granite

Into a granite basin the amber torrent descended;

Beautiful, very, to gaze in ere plunging; beautiful also,

Perfect as picture, as vision entrancing that comes to the sightless,

Through the great granite jambs the stream, the glen, and the mountain,

Beautiful, seen by snatches in intervals of dressing,

Morn after morn, unsought for, recurring; themselves too seeming

Not as spectators, accepted into it, immingled, as truly

Part of it as are the kine in the field lying there by the birches.

So they bathed, they read, they roamed in glen and forest;

Far amid blackest pines to the waterfall they shadow,

Far up the long, long glen to the loch, and the loch beyond it,

Deep, under huge red cliffs, a secret; and oft by the starlight,

Or the aurora, perchance, racing home for the eight o’clock mutton.

So they bathed, and read, and roamed in heathery Highland;

There in the joy of their life and glory of shooting-jackets

Bathed and read and roamed, and looked no more for Philip.

List to a letter that came from Philip at Balloch to Adam.

I am here, O my friend!—idle, but learning wisdom.

Doing penance, you think; content, if so, in my penance.

Often I find myself saying, while watching in dance or on horseback

One that is here, in her freedom and grace, and imperial sweetness,

Often I find myself saying, old faith and doctrine abjuring,

Into the crucible casting philosophies, facts, convictions,—

Were it not well that the stem should be naked of leaf and of tendril,

Poverty-stricken, the barest, the dismallest stick of the garden;

Flowerless, leafless, unlovely, for ninety-and-nine long summers,

So in the hundredth, at last, were bloom for one day at the summit,

So but that fleeting flower were lovely as Lady Maria.

Often I find myself saying, and know not myself as I say it,

What of the poor and the weary? their labour and pain is needed.

Perish the poor and the weary! what can they better than perish,

Perish in labour for her, who is worth the destruction of empires?

What! for a mite, for a mote, an impalpable odour of honour,

Armies shall bleed; cities burn; and the soldier red from the storming

Carry hot rancour and lust into chambers of mothers and daughters:

What! would ourselves for the cause of an hour encounter the battle,

Slay and be slain; lie rotting in hospital, hulk, and prison:

Die as a dog dies; die mistaken perhaps, and dishonoured.

Yea,—and shall hodmen in beer-shops complain of a glory denied them,

Which could not ever be theirs more than now it is theirs as spectators?

Which could not be, in all earth, if it were not for labour of hodmen?

And I find myself saying, and what I am saying, discern not,

Dig in thy deep dark prison, O miner! and finding be thankful;

Though unpolished by thee, unto thee unseen in perfection,

While thou art eating black bread in the poisonous air of thy cavern,

Far away glitters the gem on the peerless neck of a Princess.

Dig, and starve, and be thankful; it is so, and thou hast been aiding.

Often I find myself saying, in irony is it, or earnest?

Yea, what is more, be rich, O ye rich! be sublime in great houses,

Purple and delicate linen endure; be of Burgundy patient;

Suffer that service be done you, permit of the page and the valet,

Vex not your souls with annoyance of charity schools or of districts,

Cast not to swine of the stye the pearls that should gleam in your

foreheads.

Live, be lovely, forget them, be beautiful even to proudness,

Even for their poor sakes whose happiness is to behold you;

Live, be uncaring, be joyous, be sumptuous; only be lovely,—

Sumptuous not for display, and joyous, not for enjoyment;

Not for enjoyment truly; for Beauty and God’s great glory!

Yes, and I say, and it seems inspiration—of Good or of Evil!

Is it not He that hath done it, and who shall dare gainsay it?

Is it not even of Him, who hath made us?—Yea, _for the lions,_

_Roaring after their prey, do seek their meat from God_!

Is it not even of Him, who one kind over another

All the works of His hand hath disposed in a wonderful order?

Who hath made man, as the beasts, to live the one on the other,

Who hath made man as Himself to know the law—and accept it!

You will wonder at this, no doubt! I also wonder!

But we must live and learn; we can’t know all things at twenty.

List to a letter of Hobbes to Philip his friend at Balloch.

All Cathedrals are Christian, all Christians are Cathedrals,

Such is the Catholic doctrine; ’tis ours with a slight variation;

Every woman is, or ought to be, a Cathedral,

Built on the ancient plan, a Cathedral pure and perfect,

Built by that only law, that Use be suggester of Beauty,

Nothing concealed that is done, but all things done to adornment,

Meanest utilities seized as occasions to grace and embellish.—

So had I duly commenced in the spirit and style of my Philip,

So had I formally opened the Treatise upon _the Laws of_

_Architectural Beauty in Application to Women_,

So had I writ.—But my fancies are palsied by tidings they tell me.

Tidings—ah me, can it be then? that I, the blasphemer accounted,

Here am with reverent heed at the wondrous Analogy working,

Pondering thy words and thy gestures, whilst thou, a prophet apostate,

(How are the mighty fallen!) whilst thou, a shepherd travestie,

(How are the mighty fallen!) with gun,—with pipe no longer,

Teachest the woods to re-echo thy game-killing recantations,

Teachest thy verse to exalt Amaryllis, a Countess’s daughter?

What, thou forgettest, bewildered, my Master, that rightly considered

Beauty must ever be useful, what truly is useful is graceful?

She that is handy is handsome, good dairy-maids must be good-looking,

If but the butter be nice, the tournure of the elbow is shapely,

If the cream-cheeses be white, far whiter the hands that made them,

If—but alas, is it true? while the pupil alone in the cottage

Slowly elaborates here thy System of Feminine Graces,

Thou in the palace, its author, art dining, small-talking and dancing,

Dancing and pressing the fingers kid-gloved of a Lady Maria.

These are the final words, that came to the Tutor from Balloch.

I am conquered, it seems! you will meet me, I hope, in Oxford,

Altered in manners and mind. I yield to the laws and arrangements,

Yield to the ancient existent decrees: who am I to resist them?

Yes, you will find me altered in mind, I think, as in manners,

Anxious too to atone for six weeks’ loss of your Logic.

So in the cottage with Adam, the pupils five together,

Read, and bathed, and roamed, and thought not now of Philip,

All in the joy of their life, and glory of shooting-jackets.

VI

_Ducite ab urbe domum, mea carmina, ducite Daphnin._

Bright October was come, the misty-bright October,

Bright October was come to burn and glen and cottage;

But the cottage was empty, the _matutine_ deserted.

Who are these that walk by the shore of the salt sea water?

Here in the dusky eve, on the road by the salt sea water?

Who are these? and where? it is no sweet seclusion;

Blank hill-sides slope down to a salt sea loch at their bases,

Scored by runnels, that fringe ere they end with rowan and alder:

Cottages here and there outstanding bare on the mountain,

Peat-roofed, windowless, white; the road underneath by the water.

There on the blank hill-side, looking down through the loch to the

ocean,

There with a runnel beside, and pine-trees twain before it,

There with the road underneath, and in sight of coaches and steamers,

Dwelling of David Mackaye, and his daughters Elspie and Bella,

Sends up a column of smoke the Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.

And of the older twain, the elder was telling the younger,

How on his pittance of soil he lived, and raised potatoes,

Barley, and oats, in the bothie where lived his father before him;

Yet was smith by trade, and had travelled making horse-shoes

Far; in the army had seen some service with brave Sir Hector,

Wounded soon, and discharged, disabled as smith and soldier;

He had been many things since that,—drover, schoolmaster,

Whitesmith,—but when his brother died childless came up hither;

And although he could get fine work that would pay in the city,

Still was fain to abide where his father abode before him.

And the lassies are bonnie,—I’m father and mother to them,—

Bonnie and young; they’re healthier here, I judge, and safer,

I myself find time for their reading, writing, and learning.

So on the road they walk by the shore of the salt sea water,

Silent a youth and maid, and elders twain conversing.

This was the letter that came when Adam was leaving the cottage.

If you can manage to see me before going off to Dartmoor,

Come by Tuesday’s coach through Glencoe (you have not seen it),

Stop at the ferry below, and ask your way (you will wonder,

There however I am) to the Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.

And on another scrap, of next day’s date, was written:—

It was by accident purely I lit on the place; I was returning,

Quietly, travelling homeward by one of these wretched coaches;

One of the horses cast a shoe; and a farmer passing

Said, Old David’s your man; a clever fellow at shoeing

Once; just here by the firs; they call it Tober-na-vuolich.

So I saw and spoke with David Mackaye, our acquaintance.

When we came to the journey’s end some five miles farther,

In my unoccupied evening I walked back again to the bothie.

But on a final crossing, still later in date, was added:

Come as soon as you can; be sure and do not refuse me.

Who would have guessed I should find my haven and end of my travel,

Here, by accident too, in the bothie we laughed about so?

Who would have guessed that here would be she whose glance at Rannoch

Turned me in that mysterious way; yes, angels conspiring,

Slowly drew me, conducted me, home, to herself; the needle

Which in the shaken compass flew hither and thither, at last, long

Quivering, poises to north. I think so. But I am cautious:

More, at least, than I was in the old silly days when I left you.

Not at the bothie now; at the changehouse in the clachan;[11]

Why I delay my letter is more than I can tell you.

There was another scrap, without or date or comment,

Dotted over with various observations, as follows:

Only think, I had danced with her twice, and did not remember.

I was as one that sleeps on the railway; one, who dreaming

Hears thro’ his dream the name of his home shouted out; hears and hears

not,—

Faint, and louder again, and less loud, dying in distance;

Dimly conscious, with something of inward debate and choice,—and

Sense of claim and reality present, anon relapses

Nevertheless, and continues the dream and fancy, while forward

Swiftly, remorseless, the car presses on, he knows not whither.

Handsome who handsome is, who handsome does is more so;

Pretty is all very pretty, it’s prettier far to be useful.

No, fair Lady Maria, I say not that; but I _will_ say,

Stately is service accepted, but lovelier service rendered,

Interchange of service the law and condition of beauty:

Any way beautiful only to be the thing one is meant for.

I, I am sure, for the sphere of mere ornament am not intended:

No, nor she, I think, thy sister at Tober-na-vuolich.

This was the letter of Philip, and this had brought the Tutor:

This is why Tutor and pupil are walking with David and Elspie.—

When for the night they part, and these, once more together,

Went by the lochside along to the changehouse near in the clachan,

Thus to his pupil anon commenced the grave man, Adam.

Yes, she is beautiful, Philip, beautiful even as morning:

Yes, it is that which I said, the Good and not the Attractive!

Happy is he that finds, and finding does not leave it!

Ten more days did Adam with Philip abide at the changehouse,

Ten more nights they met, they walked with father and daughter.

Ten more nights, and night by night more distant away were

Philip and she; every night less heedful, by habit, the father.

Happy ten days, most happy: and, otherwise than intended,

Fortunate visit of Adam, companion and friend to David.

Happy ten days, be ye fruitful of happiness! Pass o’er them slowly,

Slowly; like cruse of the prophet be multiplied, even to ages!

Pass slowly o’er them, ye days of October; ye soft misty mornings,

Long dusky eves; pass slowly; and thou, great Term-time of Oxford

Awful with lectures and books, and Little-goes, and Great-goes,

Till but the sweet bud be perfect, recede and retire for the lovers,

Yea, for the sweet love of lovers, postpone thyself even to doomsday!

Pass o’er them slowly, ye hours! Be with them, ye Loves and Graces!

Indirect and evasive no longer, a cowardly bather,

Clinging to bough and to rock, and sidling along by the edges,

In your faith, ye Muses and Graces, who love the plain present,

Scorning historic abridgment and artifice anti-poetic,

In your faith, ye Muses and Loves, ye Loves and Graces,

I will confront the great peril, and speak with the mouth of the lovers,

As they spoke by the alders, at evening, the runnel below them,

Elspie, a diligent knitter, and Philip her fingers watching.

VII

_Vesper adest, juvenes, consurgite. Vesper Olympo_

_Expectata diu vix tandem lumina tollit._

For she confessed, as they sat in the dusk, and he saw not her blushes,

Elspie confessed at the sports long ago with her father she saw him,

When at the door the old man had told him the name of the bothie;

Then after that at the dance; yet again at a dance in Rannoch—

And she was silent, confused. Confused much rather Philip

Buried his face in his hands, his face that with blood was bursting.

Silent, confused, yet by pity she conquered her fear, and continued.

Katie is good and not silly; be comforted, Sir, about her;

Katie is good and not silly; tender, but not, like many,

Carrying off, and at once, for fear of being seen, in the bosom

Locking-up as in a cupboard the pleasure that any man gives them,

Keeping it out of sight as a prize they need be ashamed of;

That is the way, I think, Sir, in England more than in Scotland;

No, she lives and takes pleasure in all, as in beautiful weather,

Sorry to lose it, but just as we would be to lose fine weather.

And she is strong to return to herself and feel undeserted,

Oh, she is strong, and not silly: she thinks no further about you;

She has had kerchiefs before from gentle, I know, as from simple.

Yes, she is good and not silly; yet were you wrong, Mr. Philip,

Wrong, for yourself perhaps more than for her.

But Philip replied not,

Raised not his eyes from the hands on his knees.

And Elspie continued.

That was what gave me much pain, when I met you that dance at Rannoch,

Dancing myself too with you, while Katie danced with Donald;

That was what gave me such pain; I thought it all a mistaking,

All a mere chance, you know, and accident,—not proper choosing,—

There were at least five or six—not there, no, that I don’t say,

But in the country about—you might just as well have been courting

That was what gave me much pain, and (you won’t remember that, though),

Three days after, I met you, beside my uncle’s, walking,

And I was wondering much, and hoped you wouldn’t notice,

So as I passed I couldn’t help looking. You didn’t know me.

But I was glad, when I heard next day you were gone to the teacher.

And uplifting his face at last, with eyes dilated,

Large as great stars in mist, and dim, with dabbled lashes,

Philip, with new tears starting,

You think I do not remember,

Said,—suppose that I did not observe! Ah me, shall I tell you?

Elspie, it was your look that sent me away from Rannoch.

It was your glance, that, descending, an instant revelation,

Showed me where I was, and whitherward going; recalled me,

Sent me, not to my books, but to wrestlings of thought in the mountains.

Yes, I have carried your glance within me undimmed, unaltered,

As a lost boat the compass some passing ship has lent her,

Many a weary mile on road, and hill, and moorland:

And you suppose that I do not remember, I had not observed it!

O, did the sailor bewildered observe when they told him his bearings?

O, did he cast overboard, when they parted, the compass they gave him?

And he continued more firmly, although with stronger emotion:

Elspie, why should I speak it? you cannot believe it, and should not:

Why should I say that I love, which I all but said to another?

Yet should I dare, should I say, O Elspie, you only I love; you,

First and sole in my life that has been and surely that shall be;

Could—O, could you believe it, O Elspie, believe it and spurn not?

Is it—possible,—possible, Elspie?

Well,—she answered,

And she was silent some time, and blushed all over, and answered

Quietly, after her fashion, still knitting, Maybe, I think of it,

Though I don’t know that I did: and she paused again; but it may be,

Yes,—I don’t know, Mr. Philip,—but only it feels to me strangely,

Like to the high new bridge, they used to build at, below there,

Over the burn and glen on the road. You won’t understand me.

But I keep saying in my mind—this long time slowly with trouble

I have been building myself, up, up, and toilfully raising,

Just like as if the bridge were to do it itself without masons,

Painfully getting myself upraised one stone on another,

All one side I mean; and now I see on the other

Just such another fabric uprising, better and stronger,

Close to me, coming to join me: and then I sometimes fancy,—

Sometimes I find myself dreaming at nights about arches and bridges,—

Sometimes I dream of a great invisible hand coming down, and

Dropping the great key-stone in the middle: there in my dreaming,

There I felt the great-key stone coming in, and through it

Feel the other part—all the other stones of the archway,

Joined into mine with a strange happy sense of completeness. But,

dear me,

This is confusion and nonsense. I mix all the things I can think of.

And you won’t understand, Mr. Philip.

But while she was speaking,

So it happened, a moment she paused from her work, and pondering,

Laid her hand on her lap: Philip took it: she did not resist:

So he retained her fingers, the knitting being stopped. But emotion

Came all over her more and yet more from his hand, from her heart, and

Most from the sweet idea and image her brain was renewing.

So he retained her hand, and, his tears down-dropping on it,

Trembling a long time, kissed it at last. And she ended.

And as she ended, uprose he: saying, What have I heard? Oh,

What have I done, that such words should be said to me? Oh, I see it,

See the great key-stone coming down from the heaven of heavens;

And he fell at her feet, and buried his face in her apron.

But as under the moon and stars they went to the cottage,

Elspie sighed and said, Be patient, dear Mr. Philip,

Do not do anything hasty. It is all so soon, so sudden.

Do not say anything yet to any one.

Elspie, he answered,

Does not my friend go on Friday? I then shall see nothing of you.

Do not I go myself on Monday?

But oh, he said, Elspie!

Do as I bid you, my child: do not go on calling me Mr.;

Might I not just as well be calling you Miss Elspie?

Call me, this heavenly night for once, for the first time, Philip.

Philip, she said, and laughed, and said she could not say it;

Philip, she said; he turned, and kissed the sweet lips as they said it.

But on the morrow Elspie kept out of the way of Philip:

And at the evening seat, when he took her hand by the alders,

Drew it back, saying, almost peevishly,

No, Mr. Philip,

I was quite right, last night; it is too soon, too sudden.

What I told you before was foolish perhaps, was hasty.

When I think it over, I am shocked and terrified at it.

Not that at all I unsay it; that is, I know I said it,

And when I said it, felt it. But oh, we must wait, Mr. Philip!

We mustn’t pull ourselves at the great key-stone of the centre:

Some one else up above must hold it, fit it, and fix it;

If we try ourselves, we shall only damage the archway,

Damage all our own work that we wrought, our painful upbuilding.

When, you remember, you took my hand last evening, talking,

I was all over a tremble: and as you pressed the fingers

After, and afterwards kissed them, I could not speak. And then, too,

As we went home, you kissed me for saying your name. It was dreadful.

I have been kissed before, she added, blushing slightly,

I have been kissed more than once by Donald my cousin, and others;

It is the way of the lads, and I make up my mind not to mind it;

But, Mr. Philip, last night, and from you, it was different, quite, Sir.

When I think of all that, I am shocked and terrified at it.

Yes, it is dreadful to me.

She paused, but quickly continued,

Smiling almost fiercely, continued, looking upward.

You are too strong, you see, Mr. Philip! just like the sea there,

Which _will_ come, through the straits and all between the mountains

Forcing its great strong tide into every nook and inlet,

Getting far in, up the quiet stream of sweet inland water,

Sucking it up, and stopping it, turning it, driving it backward,

Quite preventing its own quiet running: and then, soon after,

Back it goes off, leaving weeds on the shore, and wrack and uncleanness:

And the poor burn in the glen tries again its peaceful running,

But it is brackish and tainted, and all its banks in disorder.

That was what I dreamt all last night. I was the burnie,

Trying to get along through the tyrannous brine, and could not;

I was confined and squeezed in the coils of the great salt tide, that

Would mix-in itself with me, and change me; I felt myself changing;

And I struggled, and screamed, I believe, in my dream. It was dreadful.

You are too strong, Mr. Philip! I am but a poor slender burnie,

Used to the glens and the rocks, the rowan and birch of the woodies,

Quite unused to the great salt sea; quite afraid and unwilling.

Ere she had spoken two words, had Philip released her fingers;

As she went on, he recoiled, fell back, and shook and shivered;

There he stood, looking pale and ghastly; when she had ended,

Answering in hollow voice,

It is true; oh, quite true, Elspie;

Oh, you are always right; oh, what, what have I been doing?

I will depart to-morrow. But oh, forget me not wholly,

Wholly, Elspie, nor hate me; no, do not hate me, my Elspie.

But a revulsion passed through the brain and bosom of Elspie;

And she got up from her seat on the rock, putting by her knitting;

Went to him, where he stood, and answered:

No, Mr. Philip,

No, you are good, Mr. Philip, and gentle; and I am the foolish:

No, Mr. Philip, forgive me.

She stepped right to him, and boldly

Took up his hand, and placed it in hers: he dared no movement;

Took up the cold hanging hand, up-forcing the heavy elbow.

I am afraid, she said, but I will; and kissed the fingers.

And he fell on his knees and kissed her own past counting.

But a revulsion wrought in the brain and bosom of Elspie;

And the passion she just had compared to the vehement ocean,

Urging in high spring-tide its masterful way through the mountains

Forcing and flooding the silvery stream, as it runs from the inland;

That great power withdrawn, receding here and passive,

Felt she in myriad springs, her sources far in the mountains,

Stirring, collecting, rising, upheaving, forth-outflowing,

Taking and joining, right welcome, that delicate rill in the valley,

Filling it, making it strong, and still descending, seeking,

With a blind forefeeling descending ever, and seeking,

With a delicious forefeeling, the great still sea before it;

There deep into it, far, to carry, and lose in its bosom,

Waters that still from their sources exhaustless are fain to be added

As he was kissing her fingers, and knelt on the ground before her,

Yielding backward she sank to her seat, and of what she was doing

Ignorant, bewildered, in sweet multitudinous vague emotion,

Stooping, knowing not what, put her lips to the hair on his forehead:

And Philip, raising himself, gently, for the first time round her

Passing his arms, close, close, enfolded her, close to his bosom.

As they went home by the moon, Forgive me, Philip, she whispered;

I have so many things to think of, all of a sudden;

I who had never once thought a thing,—in my ignorant Highlands.

VIII.

_Jam veniet virgo, jam dicetur Hymenæus._

But a revulsion again came over the spirit of Elspie,

When she thought of his wealth, his birth and education:

Wealth indeed but small, though to her a difference truly;

Father nor mother had Philip, a thousand pounds his portion,

Somewhat impaired in a world where nothing is had for nothing;

Fortune indeed but small, and prospects plain and simple.

But the many things that he knew, and the ease of a practised

Intellect’s motion, and all those indefinable graces

(Were they not hers, too, Philip?) to speech, and manner, and movement,

Lent by the knowledge of self, and wisely instructed feeling,—

When she thought of these, and these contemplated daily,

Daily appreciating more, and more exactly appraising,—

With these thoughts, and the terror withal of a thing she could not

Estimate, and of a step (such a step!) in the dark to be taken,

Terror nameless and ill-understood of deserting her station,—

Daily heavier, heavier upon her pressed the sorrow,

Daily distincter, distincter within her arose the conviction,

He was too high, too perfect, and she so unfit, so unworthy,

(Ah me! Philip, that ever a word such as that should be written!)

It would do neither for him nor for her; she also was something,

Not much indeed, it was true, yet not to be lightly extinguished

Should _he_—_he_, she said, have a wife beneath him? herself be

An inferior there where only equality can be?

It would do neither for him nor for her.

Alas for Philip!

Many were tears and great was perplexity. Nor had availed then

All his prayer and all his device. But much was spoken

Now, between Adam and Elspie: companions were they hourly:

Much by Elspie to Adam, inquiring, anxiously seeking,

From his experience seeking impartial accurate statement

What it was to do this or do that, go hither or thither,

How in the after-life would seem what now seeming certain

Might so soon be reversed; in her quest and obscure exploring

Still from that quiet orb soliciting light to her footsteps;

Much by Elspie to Adam, inquiringly, eagerly seeking:

Much by Adam to Elspie, informing, reassuring,

Much that was sweet to Elspie, by Adam heedfully speaking,

Quietly, indirectly, in general terms, of Philip,

Gravely, but indirectly, not as incognisant wholly,

But as suspending until she should seek it, direct intimation;

Much that was sweet in her heart of what he was and would be,

Much that was strength to her mind, confirming beliefs and insights

Pure and unfaltering, but young and mute and timid for action:

Much of relations of rich and poor, and of true education.

It was on Saturday eve, in the gorgeous bright October,

Then when brackens are changed, and heather blooms are faded,

And amid russet of heather and fern green trees are bonnie;

Alders are green, and oaks; the rowan scarlet and yellow;

One great glory of broad gold pieces appears the aspen,

And the jewels of gold that were hung in the hair of the birch-tree,

Pendulous, here and there, her coronet, necklace, and ear-rings,

Cover her now, o’er and o’er; she is weary and scatters them from her.

There, upon Saturday eve, in the gorgeous bright October,

Under the alders knitting, gave Elspie her troth to Philip,

For as they talked, anon she said,

It is well, Mr. Philip.

Yes, it is well: I have spoken, and learnt a deal with the teacher.

At the last I told him all, I could not help it;

And it came easier with him than could have been with my father;

And he calmly approved, as one that had fully considered.

Yes, it is well, I have hoped, though quite too great and sudden;

I am so fearful, I think it ought not to be for years yet.

I am afraid; but believe in you; and I trust to the teacher;

You have done all things gravely and temperate, not as in passion;

And the teacher is prudent, and surely can tell what is likely.

What my father will say, I know not; we will obey him:

But for myself, I could dare to believe all well, and venture.

O Mr. Philip, may it never hereafter seem to be different!

And she hid her face—

Oh, where, but in Philip’s bosom!

After some silence, some tears too perchance, Philip laughed, and said

to her,

So, my own Elspie, at last you are clear that I’m bad enough for you

Ah! but your father won’t make one half the question about it

You have—he’ll think me, I know, nor better nor worse than Donald,

Neither better nor worse for my gentlemanship and bookwork,

Worse, I fear, as he knows me an idle and vagabond fellow,

Though he allows, but he’ll think it was all for your sake, Elspie,

Though he allows I did some good at the end of the shearing.

But I had thought in Scotland you didn’t care for this folly.

How I wish, he said, you had lived all your days in the Highlands!

This is what comes of the year you spent in our foolish England.

You do not all of you feel these fancies.

No, she answered.

And in her spirit the freedom and ancient joy was reviving.

No, she said, and uplifted herself, and looked for her knitting,

No, nor do _I_, dear Philip, I don’t myself feel always

As I have felt, more sorrow for me, these four days lately,

Like the Peruvian Indians I read about last winter,

Out in America there, in somebody’s life of Pizarro;

Who were as good perhaps as the Spaniards; only weaker;

And that the one big tree might spread its root and branches,

All the lesser about it must even be felled and perish.

No, I feel much more as if I, as well as you, were,

Somewhere, a leaf on the one great tree, that, up from old time

Growing, contains in itself the whole of the virtue and life of

Bygone days, drawing now to itself all kindreds and nations

And must have for itself the whole world for its root and branches.

No, I belong to the tree, I shall not decay in the shadow;

Yes, and I feel the life-juices of all the world and the ages,

Coming to me as to you, more slowly no doubt and poorer:

You are more near, but then you will help to convey them to me.

No, don’t smile, Philip, now, so scornfully! While you look so

Scornful and strong, I feel as if I were standing and trembling,

Fancying the burn in the dark a wide and rushing river;

And I feel coming unto me from you, or it may be from elsewhere,

Strong contemptuous resolve; I forget, and I bound as across it.

But after all, you know, it may be a dangerous river.

Oh, if it were so, Elspie, he said, I can carry you over.

Nay, she replied, you would tire of having me for a burden.

O sweet burden, he said, and are you not light as a feather?

But it is deep, very likely, she said, over head and ears too.

O let us try, he answered, the waters themselves will support us,

Yea, very ripples and waves will form to a boat underneath us;

There is a boat, he said, and a name is written upon it,

Love, he said, and kissed her.—

But I will read your books, though,

Said she: you’ll leave me some, Philip?

Not I, replied he, a volume.

This is the way with you all, I perceive, high and low together.

Women must read, as if they didn’t know all beforehand:

Weary of plying the pump, we turn to the running water,

And the running spring will needs have a pump built upon it.

Weary and sick of our books, we come to repose in your eyelight,

As to the woodland and water, the freshness and beauty of Nature.

Lo, you will talk, forsooth, of things we are sick to the death of.

What, she said, and if I have let you become my sweetheart,

I am to read no books! but you may go your ways then,

And I will read, she said, with my father at home as I used to.

If you must have it, he said, I myself will read them to you.

Well, she said, but no, I will read to myself, when I choose it;

What, you suppose we never read anything here in our Highlands,

Bella and I with the father, in all our winter evenings!

But we must go, Mr. Philip—

I shall not go at all, said

He, if you call me Mr. Thank heaven! that’s over for ever.

No, but it’s not, she said, it is not over, nor will be.

Was it not then, she asked, the name I called you first by?

No, Mr. Philip, no—you have kissed me enough for two nights;

No—come, Philip, come, or I’11 go myself without you.

You never call me Philip, he answered, until I kiss you.

As they went home by the moon that waning now rose later,

Stepping through mossy stones by the runnel under the alders,

Loitering unconsciously, Philip, she said, I will not be a lady;

We will do work together—you do not wish me a lady.

It is a weakness perhaps and a foolishness; still it is so;

I have been used all my life to help myself and others;

I could not bear to sit and be waited on by footmen,

No, not even by women—

And God forbid, he answered,

God forbid you should ever be aught but yourself, my Elspie!

As for service, I love it not, I; your weakness is mine too,

I am sure Adam told you as much as that about me.

I am sure, she said, he called you wild and flighty.

That was true, he said, till my wings were clipped. But, my Elspie,

You will at least just go and see my uncle and cousins,

Sister, and brother, and brother’s wife. You should go, if you liked it,

Just as you are; just what you are, at any rate, my Elspie.

Yes, we will go, and give the old solemn gentility stage-play

One little look, to leave it with all the more satisfaction.

That may be, my Philip, she said; you are good to think of it.

But we are letting our fancies run on indeed; after all, it

May all come, you know, Mr. Philip, to nothing whatever,

There is so much that needs to be done, so much that may happen.

All that needs to be done, said he, shall be done, and quickly.

And on the morrow he took good heart, and spoke with David.

Not unwarned the father, nor had been unperceiving:

Fearful much, but in all from the first reassured by the Tutor.

And he remembered how he had fancied the lad from the first; and

Then, too, the old man’s eye was much more for inner than outer,

And the natural tune of his heart without misgiving

Went to the noble words of that grand song of the Lowlands,

_Rank is the guinea stamp, but the man’s a man for a’ that_.

Still he was doubtful, would hear nothing of it now, but insisted

Philip should go to his books; if he chose, he might write; if after

Chose to return, might come; he truly believed him honest.

But a year must elapse, and many things might happen.

Yet at the end he burst into tears, called Elspie, and blessed them:

Elspie, my bairn, he said, I thought not when at the doorway

Standing with you, and telling the young man where he would find us,

I did not think he would one day be asking me here to surrender

What is to me more than wealth in my Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.

IX

_Arva, beata Petamus arva!_

So on the morrow’s morrow, with Term-time dread returning,

Philip returned to his books, and read, and remained at Oxford,

All the Christmas and Easter remained and read at Oxford.

Great was wonder in College when postman showed to butler

Letters addressed to David Mackaye, at Tober-na-vuolich,

Letter on letter, at least one a week, one every Sunday:

Great at that Highland post was wonder too and conjecture,

When the postman showed letters to wife, and wife to the lassies,

And the lassies declared they couldn’t be really to David;

Yes, they could see inside a paper with E. upon it.

Great was surmise in College at breakfast, wine, and supper,

Keen the conjecture and joke; but Adam kept the secret,

Adam the secret kept, and Philip read like fury.

This is a letter written by Philip at Christmas to Adam.

There may be beings, perhaps, whose vocation it is to be idle,

Idle, sumptuous even, luxurious, if it must be:

Only let each man seek to be that for which nature meant him.

If you were meant to plough, Lord Marquis, out with you, and do it;

If you were meant to be idle, O beggar, behold, I will feed you.

If you were born for a groom, and you seem, by your dress, to believe so,

Do it like a man, Sir George, for pay, in a livery stable;

Yes, you may so release that slip of a boy at the corner,

Fingering books at the window, misdoubting the eighth commandment.

Ah, fair Lady Maria, God meant you to live and be lovely;

Be so then, and I bless you. But ye, ye spurious ware, who

Might be plain women, and can be by no possibility better!

—Ye unhappy statuettes, and miserable trinkets,

Poor alabaster chimney-piece ornaments under glass cases,

Come, in God’s name, come down! the very French clock by you

Puts you to shame with ticking; the fire-irons deride you.

You, young girl, who have had such advantages, learnt so quickly,

Can you not teach? O yes, and she likes Sunday-school extremely,

Only it’s soon in the morning. Away! if to teach be your calling,

It is no play, but a business: off! go teach and be paid for it.

Lady Sophia’s so good to the sick, so firm and so gentle.

Is there a nobler sphere than of hospital nurse and matron?

Hast thou for cooking a turn, little Lady Clarissa? in with them,

In with your fingers! their beauty it spoils, but your own it enhances

For it is beautiful only to do the thing we are meant for.

This was the answer that came from the Tutor, the grave man, Adam

When the armies are set in array, and the battle beginning,

Is it well that the soldier whose post is far to the leftward

Say, I will go to the right, it is there I shall do best service?

There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our battalions;

Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in our stations.

This was the final retort from the eager, impetuous Philip.

I am sorry to say your Providence puzzles me sadly;

Children of Circumstance are we to be? you answer, On no wise!

Where does Circumstance end, and Providence, where begins it?

What are we to resist, and what are we to be friends with?

If there is battle, ’tis battle by night, I stand in the darkness,

Here in the mêlée of men, Ionian and Dorian on both sides,

Signal and password known; which is friend and which is foeman?

Is it a friend? I doubt, though he speak with the voice of a brother.

Still you are right, I suppose; you always are, and will be;

Though I mistrust the Field-Marshal, I bow to the duty of order.

Yet is my feeling rather to ask, where is the battle?

Yes, I could find in my heart to cry, notwithstanding my Elspie,

O that the armies indeed were arrayed! O joy of the onset!

Sound, thou Trumpet of God, come forth, Great Cause, to array us,

King and leader appear, thy soldiers sorrowing seek thee.

Would that the armies indeed were arrayed, O where is the battle!

Neither battle I see, nor arraying, nor King in Israel,

Only infinite jumble and mess and dislocation,

Backed by a solemn appeal, ‘For God’s sake, do not stir, there!’

Yet you are right, I suppose; if you don’t attack my conclusion,

Let us get on as we can, and do the thing we are fit for;

Every one for himself, and the common success for us all, and

Thankful, if not for our own, why then for the triumph of others,

Get along, each as we can, and do the thing we are meant for.

That isn’t likely to be by sitting still, eating and drinking.

These are fragments again without date addressed to Adam.

As at return of tide the total weight of ocean,

Drawn by moon and sun from Labrador and Greenland,

Sets-in amain, in the open space betwixt Mull and Scarba,

Heaving, swelling, spreading the might of the mighty Atlantic;

There into cranny and slit of the rocky, cavernous bottom

Settles down, and with dimples huge the smooth sea-surface

Eddies, coils, and whirls; by dangerous Corryvreckan:

So in my soul of souls, through its cells and secret recesses,

Comes back, swelling and spreading, the old democratic fervour.

But as the light of day enters some populous city,

Shaming away, ere it come, by the chilly day-streak signal,

High and low, the misusers of night, shaming out the gas-lamps—

All the great empty streets are flooded with broadening clearness,

Which, withal, by inscrutable simultaneous access

Permeates far and pierces to the very cellars lying in

Narrow high back-lane, and court, and alley of alleys:—

He that goes forth to his walks, while speeding to the suburb,

Sees sights only peaceful and pure: as labourers settling

Slowly to work, in their limbs the lingering sweetness of slumber;

Humble market-carts, coming in, bringing in, not only

Flower, fruit, farm-store, but sounds and sights of the country

Dwelling yet on the sense of the dreamy drivers; soon after

Half-awake servant-maids unfastening drowsy shutters

Up at the windows, or down, letting-in the air by the doorway;

School-boys, school-girls soon, with slate, portfolio, satchel,

Hampered as they haste, those running, these others maidenly tripping,

Early clerk anon turning out to stroll, or it may be

Meet his sweetheart—waiting behind the garden gate there;

Merchant on his grass-plat haply bare-headed; and now by this time

Little child bringing breakfast to ‘father’ that sits on the timber

There by the scaffolding; see, she waits for the can beside him;

Meantime above purer air untarnished of new-lit fires:

So that the whole great wicked artificial civilised fabric—

All its unfinished houses, lots for sale, and railway out-works—

Seems reaccepted, resumed to Primal Nature and Beauty:—

—Such—in me, and to me, and on me the love of Elspie!

Philip returned to his books, but returned to his Highlands after;

Got a first, ’tis said; a winsome bride, ’tis certain.

There while courtship was ending, nor yet the wedding appointed,

Under her father he studied the handling of hoe and of hatchet:

Thither that summer succeeding came Adam and Arthur to see him

Down by the lochs from the distant Glenmorison; Adam the tutor,

Arthur, and Hope; and the Piper anon who was there for a visit;

He had been into the schools; plucked almost; all but a _gone-coon_;

So he declared; never once had brushed up his _hairy_ Aldrich;

Into the great might-have-been upsoaring sublime and ideal

Gave to historical questions a free poetical treatment;

Leaving vocabular ghosts undisturbed in their lexicon-limbo,

Took Aristophanes up at a shot; and the whole three last weeks

Went, in his life and the sunshine rejoicing, to Nuneham and Godstowe:

What were the claims of Degree to those of life and the sunshine?

There did the four find Philip, the poet, the speaker, the Chartist,

Delving at Highland soil, and railing at Highland landlords,

Railing, but more, as it seemed, for the fun of the Piper’s fury.

There saw they David and Elspie Mackaye, and the Piper was almost

Almost deeply in love with Bella the sister of Elspie;

But the good Adam was heedful: they did not go too often.

There in the bright October, the gorgeous bright October,

When the brackens are changed, and heather blooms are faded,

And amid russet of heather and fern green trees are bonnie,

Alders are green, and oaks, the rowan scarlet and yellow,

Heavy the aspen, and heavy with jewels of gold the birch-tree,

There, when shearing had ended, and barley-stooks were garnered,

David gave Philip to wife his daughter, his darling Elspie;

Elspie the quiet, the brave, was wedded to Philip the poet.

So won Philip his bride. They are married and gone—But oh, Thou

Mighty one, Muse of great Epos, and Idyll the playful and tender,

Be it recounted in song, ere we part, and thou fly to thy Pindus,

(Pindus is it, O Muse, or Ætna, or even Ben-nevis?)

Be it recounted in song, O Muse of the Epos and Idyll,

Who gave what at the wedding, the gifts and fair gratulations.

Adam, the grave careful Adam, a medicine chest and tool-box,

Hope a saddle, and Arthur a plough, and the Piper a rifle,

Airlie a necklace for Elspie, and Hobbes a Family Bible,

Airlie a necklace, and Hobbes a Bible and iron bedstead.

What was the letter, O Muse, sent withal by the corpulent hero?

This is the letter of Hobbes the kilted and corpulent hero.

So the last speech and confession is made, O my eloquent speaker!

So _the good time_ is _coming_, or come is it? O my Chartist!

So the cathedral is finished at last, O my Pugin of women;

Finished, and now, is it true? to be taken out whole to New Zealand!

Well, go forth to thy field, to thy barley, with Ruth, O Boaz,

Ruth, who for thee hath deserted her people, her gods, her mountains.

Go, as in Ephrath of old, in the gate of Bethlehem said they,

Go, be the wife in thy house both Rachel and Leah unto thee;

Be thy wedding of silver, albeit of iron thy bedstead!

Yea, to the full golden fifty renewed be! and fair memoranda

Happily fill the fly-leaves duly left in the Family Bible.

Live, and when Hobbes is forgotten, may’st thou, an unroasted Grand-sire,

See thy children’s children, and Democracy upon New Zealand!

This was the letter of Hobbes, and this the postscript after.

Wit in the letter will prate, but wisdom speaks in a postscript;

Listen to wisdom—_Which things_—you perhaps didn’t know, my dear fellow,

I have reflected; _Which things are an allegory_, Philip.

For this Rachel-and-Leah is marriage; which, I have seen it,

Lo, and have known it, is always, and must be, bigamy only,

Even in noblest kind a duality, compound, and complex,

One part heavenly-ideal, the other vulgar and earthy:

For this Rachel-and-Leah is marriage, and Laban, their father,

Circumstance, chance, the world, our uncle and hard task-master.

Rachel we found as we fled from the daughters of Heth by the desert

Rachel we met at the well; we came, we saw, we kissed her;

Rachel we serve-for, long years,—that seem as a few days only,

E’en for the love we have to her,—and win her at last of Laban.

Is it not Rachel we take in our joy from the hand of her father?

Is it not Rachel we lead in the mystical veil from the altar?

Rachel we dream-of at night: in the morning, behold, it is Leah.

‘Nay, it is custom,’ saith Laban, the Leah indeed is the elder.

Happy and wise who consents to redouble his service to Laban,

So, fulfilling her week, he may add to the elder the younger,

Not repudiates Leah, but wins the Rachel unto her!

Neither hate thou thy Leah, my Jacob, she also is worthy;

So, many days shall thy Rachel have joy, and survive her sister;

Yea, and her children—_Which things are an allegory_, Philip,

Aye, and by Origen’s head with a vengeance truly, a long one!

This was a note from the Tutor, the grave man, nick-named Adam.

I shall see you of course, my Philip, before your departure

Joy be with you, my boy, with you and your beautiful Elspie.

Happy is he that found, and finding was not heedless;

Happy is he that found, and happy the friend that was with him.

So won Philip his bride:—

They are married and gone to New Zealand.

Five hundred pounds in pocket, with books, and two or three pictures,

Tool-box, plough, and the rest, they rounded the sphere to New Zealand.

There he hewed, and dug; subdued the earth and his spirit;

There he built him a home; there Elspie bare him his children,

David and Bella; perhaps ere this too an Elspie or Adam;

There hath he farmstead and land, and fields of corn and flax fields;

And the Antipodes too have a Bothie of Tober-na-vuolich.

IDYLLIC SKETCHES.

_ITE DOMUM SATURÆ, VENIT HESPERUS._

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

The rainy clouds are filing fast below,

And wet will be the path, and wet shall we.

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Ah dear, and where is he, a year agone,

Who stepped beside and cheered us on and on?

My sweetheart wanders far away from me,

In foreign land or on a foreign sea.

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The lightning zigzags shoot across the sky

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

And through the vale the rains go sweeping by;

Ah me, and when in shelter shall we be?

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Cold, dreary cold, the stormy winds feel they

O’er foreign lands and foreign seas that stray

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie).

And doth he e’er, I wonder, bring to mind

The pleasant huts and herds he left behind?

And doth he sometimes in his slumbering see

The feeding kine, and doth he think of me,

My sweetheart wandering wheresoe’er it be?

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The thunder bellows far from snow to snow

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

And loud and louder roars the flood below.

Heigho! but soon in shelter shall we be:

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Or shall he find before his term be sped,

Some comelier maid that he shall wish to wed?

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.)

For weary is work, and weary day by day

To have your comfort miles on miles away.

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

Or may it be that I shall find my mate,

And he returning see himself too late?

For work we must, and what we see, we see,

And God he knows, and what must be, must be,

When sweethearts wander far away from me.

Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie.

The sky behind is brightening up anew

(Home, Rose, and home, Provence and La Palie),

The rain is ending, and our journey too:

Heigho! aha! for here at home are we:—

In, Rose, and in, Provence and La Palie.

_A LONDON IDYLL._

On grass, on gravel, in the sun,

Or now beneath the shade,

They went, in pleasant Kensington,

A prentice and a maid.

That Sunday morning’s April glow,

How should it not impart

A stir about the veins that flow

To feed the youthful heart.

Ah! years may come, and years may bring

The truth that is not bliss,

But will they bring another thing

That can compare with this?

I read it in that arm she lays

So soft on his; her mien,

Her step, her very gown betrays

(What in her eyes were seen)

That not in vain the young buds round,

The cawing birds above,

The air, the incense of the ground,

Are whispering, breathing love.

Ah! years may come, &c.

To inclination, young and blind,

So perfect, as they lent,

By purest innocence confined

Unconscious free consent.

Persuasive power of vernal change,

On this, thine earliest day,

Canst thou have found in all thy range

One fitter type than they?

Ah! years may come, &c.

Th’ high-titled cares of adult strife,

Which we our duties call,

Trades, arts, and politics of life,

Say, have they after all,

One other object, end or use

Than that, for girl and boy,

The punctual earth may still produce

This golden flower of joy?

Ah! years may come, &c.

O odours of new-budding rose,

O lily’s chaste perfume,

O fragrance that didst first unclose

The young Creation’s bloom!

Ye hang around me, while in sun

Anon and now in shade,

I watched in pleasant Kensington

The prentice and the maid.

Ah! years may come, and years may bring

The truth that is not bliss,

But will they bring another thing

That will compare with this?

_NATURA NATURANS._[12]

Beside me,—in the car,—she sat,

She spake not, no, nor looked to me:

From her to me, from me to her,

What passed so subtly, stealthily?

As rose to rose that by it blows

Its interchanged aroma flings;

Or wake to sound of one sweet note

The virtues of disparted strings.

Beside me, nought but this!—but this,

That influent as within me dwelt

Her life, mine too within her breast,

Her brain, her every limb she felt:

We sat; while o’er and in us, more

And more, a power unknown prevailed,

Inhaling, and inhaled,—and still

’Twas one, inhaling or inhaled.

Beside me, nought but this;—and passed;

I passed; and know not to this day

If gold or jet her girlish hair,

If black, or brown, or lucid-grey

Her eye’s young glance: the fickle chance

That joined us, yet may join again;

But I no face again could greet

As hers, whose life was in me then.

As unsuspecting mere a maid

As, fresh in maidhood’s bloomiest bloom,

In casual second-class did e’er

By casual youth her seat assume;

Or vestal, say, of saintliest clay,

For once by balmiest airs betrayed

Unto emotions too, too sweet

To be unlingeringly gainsaid:

Unowning then, confusing soon

With dreamier dreams that o’er the glass

Of shyly ripening woman-sense

Reflected, scarce reflected, pass,

A wife may-be, a mother she

In Hymen’s shrine recalls not now,

She first in hour, ah, not profane,

With me to Hymen learnt to bow.

Ah no!—Yet owned we, fused in one,

The Power which e’en in stones and earths

By blind elections felt, in forms

Organic breeds to myriad births;

By lichen small on granite wall

Approved, its faintest feeblest stir

Slow spreading, strengthening long, at last

Vibrated full in me and her

In me and her—sensation strange!

The lily grew to pendent head,

To vernal airs the mossy bank

Its sheeny primrose spangles spread,

In roof o’er roof of shade sun-proof

Did cedar strong itself outclimb,

And altitude of aloe proud

Aspire in floreal crown sublime;

Flashed flickering forth fantastic flies,

Big bees their burly bodies swung,

Rooks roused with civic din the elms,

And lark its wild reveillez rung;

In Libyan dell the light gazelle,

The leopard lithe in Indian glade,

And dolphin, brightening tropic seas,

In us were living, leapt and played:

Their shells did slow crustacea build,

Their gilded skins did snakes renew.

While mightier spines for loftier kind

Their types in amplest limbs outgrew;

Yea, close comprest in human breast,

What moss, and tree, and livelier thing,

What Earth, Sun, Star of force possest,

Lay budding, burgeoning forth for Spring

Such sweet preluding sense of old

Led on in Eden’s sinless place

The hour when bodies human first

Combined the primal prime embrace,

Such genial heat the blissful seat

In man and woman owned unblamed,

When, naked both, its garden paths

They walked unconscious, unashamed:

Ere, clouded yet in mistiest dawn,

Above the horizon dusk and dun,

One mountain crest with light had tipped

That Orb that is the Spirit’s Sun;

Ere dreamed young flowers in vernal showers

Of fruit to rise the flower above,

Or ever yet to young Desire

Was told the mystic name of Love.

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

_Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio,_

_And taste with a distempered appetite!_

SHAKSPEARE.

_Il doutait de tout, même de l’amour._

FRENCH NOVEL.

_Solvitur ambulando._

SOLUTIO SOPHISMATUM.

_Flevit amores_

_Non elaboratum ad pedem._

HORACE.

_AMOURS DE VOYAGE._

CANTO I.

_Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits,_

_Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,_

_Come, let us go,—to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,_

_Where every breath even now changes to ether divine._

_Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, ‘The world that we

live in,_

_Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;_

_’Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;_

_Let who would ’scape and be free go to his chamber and think;_

_’Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;_

_’Tis but to go and have been.’—Come, little bark! let us go._

I. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer.

Or at the least to put us again _en rapport_ with each other.

Rome disappoints me much,—St. Peter’s, perhaps, in especial;

Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me:

This, however, perhaps is the weather, which truly is horrid.

Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful,

That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai,

Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also.

Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but

_Rubbishy_ seems the word that most exactly would suit it.

All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings,

All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages,

Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future.

Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it!

Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy these churches!

However, one can live in Rome as also in London.

It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of

All one’s friends and relations,—yourself (forgive me!) included,—

All the _assujettissement_ of having been what one has been,

What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one;

Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English.

Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him—

Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn.

II. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.

Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression

Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me

Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork

Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,

Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.

Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,

Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?

What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.

Well, but St. Peter’s? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!

No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.

Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,

This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?

Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant:

‘Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!’ their Emperor vaunted;

‘Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!’ the Tourist may

answer.

III. GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——.

At last, dearest Louisa, I take up my pen to address you.

Here we are, you see, with the seven-and-seventy boxes,

Courier, Papa and Mamma, the children, and Mary and Susan:

Here we all are at Rome, and delighted of course with St. Peter’s,

And very pleasantly lodged in the famous Piazza di Spagna.

Rome is a wonderful place, but Mary shall tell you about it;

Not very gay, however; the English are mostly at Naples;

There are the A.’s, we hear, and most of the W. party.

George, however, is come; did I tell you about his mustachios?

Dear, I must really stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting;

Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia.

Adieu, dearest Louise,—evermore your faithful Georgina.

Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with?

Very stupid, I think, but George says so _very_ clever.

IV. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it.

With its humiliations and exaltations combining,

Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,

Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and

In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,—

No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it,

Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches;

Is not here, but in Freiburg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey,

What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts,

Is a something, I think, more _rational_ far, more earthly,

Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal,

But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance.

This I begin to detect in St. Peter’s and some of the churches,

Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters;

Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws,

Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood,

Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing needful,

By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard.

Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we

Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows!

What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be.

Do I look like that I you think me that: then I am that.

V. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not

See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance;

Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses;

Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets,

Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the

Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas:

He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and

Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe:

Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the

Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty;

Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are

Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,—

Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,—

Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,—

Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn’t see how things were going;

Luther was foolish,—but, O great God! what call you Ignatius?

O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians,

Alaric, Attila, Genseric;—why, they came, they killed, they

Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards,

These are here still,—how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante?

These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not

This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,—

Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu,

Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,—

Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,—

Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing,

Michael Angelo’s Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven,

Raphael’s Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!

VI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry

Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures

Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic;

So that he trifles with Mary’s shawl, ties Susan’s bonnet,

Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina,

Who is, however, _too_ silly in my apprehension for Vernon.

I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little;

Not that I like them much or care a _bajocco_ for Vernon,

But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance,

And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses.

Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly

Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d’hôte and restaurant

Have their shilling’s worth, their penny’s pennyworth even:

Neither man’s aristocracy this, nor God’s, God knoweth!

Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected;

Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful to keep,

some

Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their tum are enchanted

Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies

To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes.

Neither man’s aristocracy this, nor God’s, God knoweth!

VII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people!

Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions!

Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station?

Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture?

Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing,

Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners?

Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervour

Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance?

Dear, dear, what do I say? but, alas! just now, like Iago,

I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly;

So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exultation,

Here in the garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker

That the works of His hand are all very good: His creatures,

Beast of the field and fowl, He brings them before me; I name them;

That which I name them, they are,—the bird, the beast, and the cattle.

But for Adam,—alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam!

But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him.

VIII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

No, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian! canst not,

Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so!

Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian columns,

Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them;

Or, on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast

Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches,

Not with the Martyrs, and Saints, and Confessors, and Virgins, and

children,

But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer worship;

And I recite to myself, how

Eager for battle here

Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno,

And with the bow to his shoulder faithful

He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly

His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia

The oak forest and the wood that bore him,

Delos’ and Patara’s own Apollo.[13]

IX. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Yet it is pleasant, I own it, to be in their company; pleasant,

Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence.

Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence

Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple,

Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness,

Thrilling with melody sweet, with harmonies strange overwhelming,

All the long-silent strings of an awkward, meaningless fabric.

Yet as for that, I could live, I believe, with children; to have those

Pure and delicate forms encompassing, moving about you,

This were enough, I could think; and truly with glad resignation

Could from the dream of Romance, from the fever of flushed adolescence,

Look to escape and subside into peaceful avuncular functions.

Nephews and nieces! alas, for as yet I have none! and, moreover,

Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers

Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings;

And by the law of the land, in despite of Malthusian doctrine,

No sort of proper provision is made for that most patriotic,

Most meritorious subject, the childless and bachelor uncle.

X. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Ye, too, marvellous Twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo

Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement,

Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces,

Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,—

O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas.

Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and renew you,

Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has set up on the apex

Of the Egyptian stone that o’ertops you, the Christian symbol?

And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,

Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,

Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus,

Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,

Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian Pontiff,

Are ye also baptized? are ye of the kingdom of Heaven?

Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!

Am I to turn me from this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?

XI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

These are the facts. The uncle, the elder brother, the squire (a

Little embarrassed, I fancy), resides in the family place in

Cornwall, of course; ‘Papa is in business,’ Mary informs me;

He’s a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. The mother

Is—shall I call it fine?—herself she would tell you refined, and

Greatly, I fear me, looks down on my bookish and maladroit manners;

Somewhat affecteth the blue; would talk to me often of poets;

Quotes, which I hate, Childe Harold; but also appreciates Wordsworth;

Sometimes adventures on Schiller; and then to religion diverges;

Questions me much about Oxford; and yet, in her loftiest flights still

Grates the fastidious ear with the slightly mercantile accent.

Is it contemptible, Eustace—I’m perfectly ready to think so,—

Is it,—the horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people?

I am ashamed my own self; and yet true it is, if disgraceful,

That for the first time in life I am living and moving with freedom.

I, who never could talk to the people I meet with my uncle,—

I, who have always failed,—I, trust me, can suit the Trevellyns;

I, believe me,—great conquest, am liked by the country bankers.

And I am glad to be liked, and like in return very kindly.

So it proceeds; _Laissez faire, laissez aller_,—such is the watchword.

Well, I know there are thousands as pretty and hundreds as pleasant.

Girls by the dozen as good, and girls in abundance with polish

Higher and manners more perfect than Susan or Mary Trevellyn.

Well, I know, after all, it is only juxtaposition,—

Juxtaposition, in short; and what is juxtaposition?

XII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

But I am in for it now,—_laissez faire_, of a truth, _laissez aller_.

Yes, I am going,—I feel it, I feel and cannot recall it,—

Fusing with this thing and that, entering into all sorts of relations,

Tying I know not what ties, which, whatever they are, I know one thing,

Will, and must, woe is me, be one day painfully broken,—

Broken with painful remorses, with shrinkings of soul, and relentings,

Foolish delays, more foolish evasions, most foolish renewals.

But I have made the step, have quitted the ship of Ulysses;

Quitted the sea and the shore, passed into the magical island;

Yet on my lips is the _moly_, medicinal, offered of Hermes.

I have come into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me,

Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy,

Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences weary, bewildered.

Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost, and know nothing;

Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it.

Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet

Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me;

Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or

Floor of cavern untrodden, shell sprinkled, enchanting, I know I

Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,—

Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the

Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag re-

Bounding, or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths, ere the end I

Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall

Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction,

Look yet abroad from the height o’er the sea whose salt wave I have

tasted.

XIII. GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——.

Dearest Louisa,—Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude ——.

He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.’s.

Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him.

It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;

Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected.

Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed, and insists he has

Taken up strange opinions, and may be turning a Papist.

Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to.

‘Where?’ we asked, and he laughed and answered, ‘At the Pantheon

This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and

Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,

Yet I suppose this change can hardly as yet be effected.

Adieu again,—evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.

P.S. BY MARY TREVELLYN.

I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.

Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.

I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.

He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and

Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is terribly selfish.

* * * * *

_Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,_

_Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus’s Arch,_

_Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,_

_Towering o’er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,_

_Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,_

_Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring._

_Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o’ermaster,_

_Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still._

_Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition?_

_Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth?_

_Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship?_

_Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean?_

_So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,_

_Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere._

CANTO II.

_Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages,_

_Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption abide?_

_Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find,

comprehend not,_

_Here to entice and confuse, tempt and evade us, abide?_

_Lives in the exquisite grace of the column disjointed and single,_

_Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gaily with vine,_

_E’en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin,_

_E’en in the people itself? is it illusion or not?_

_Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,_

_Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?_

_Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,_

_Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?_

I. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

What do the people say, and what does the government do?—you

Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favour your hopes; and

I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it.

I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,—I who sincerely

Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot,

Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a

New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven

Right on the Place de la Concorde,—I, nevertheless, let me say it,

Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates shed

One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman Republic;

What, with the German restored, with Sicily safe to the Bourbon,

Not leave one poor corner for native Italian exertion?

France, it is foully done! and you, poor foolish England,—

You, who a twelvemonth ago said nations must choose for themselves, you

Could not, of course, interfere,—you, now, when a nation has chosen——

Pardon this folly! The _Times_ will, of course, have announced the

occasion,

Told you the news of to-day; and although it was slightly in error

When it proclaimed as a fact the Apollo was sold to a Yankee,

You may believe when it tells you the French are at Civita Vecchia.

II. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

_Dulce_ it is, and _decorum_, no doubt, for the country to fall,—to

Offer one’s blood an oblation to Freedom, and die for the Cause; yet

Still, individual culture is also something, and no man

Finds quite distinct the assurance that he of all others is called on,

Or would be justified even, in taking away from the world that

Precious creature, himself. Nature sent him here to abide here;

Else why send him at all? Nature wants him still, it is likely;

On the whole, we are meant to look after ourselves; it is certain

Each has to eat for himself, digest for himself, and in general

Care for his own dear life, and see to his own preservation;

Nature’s intentions, in most things uncertain, in this are decisive;

Which, on the whole, I conjecture the Romans will follow, and I shall.

So we cling to our rocks like limpets; Ocean may bluster,

Over and under and round us; we open our shells to imbibe our

Nourishment, close them again, and are safe, fulfilling the purpose

Nature intended,—a wise one, of course, and a noble, we doubt not.

Sweet it may be and decorous, perhaps, for the country to die; but,

On the whole, we conclude the Romans won’t do it, and I sha’n’t.

III. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Will they fight? They say so. And will the French? I can hardly,

Hardly think so; and yet—He is come, they say, to Palo,

He is passed from Monterone, at Santa Severa

He hath laid up his guns. But the Virgin, the Daughter of Roma,

She hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn,—The Daughter of Tiber,

She hath shaken her head and built barricades against thee!

Will they fight! I believe it. Alas! ’tis ephemeral folly,

Vain and ephemeral folly, of course, compared with pictures,

Statues, and antique gems!—Indeed: and yet indeed too,

Yet, methought, in broad day did I dream,—tell it not in St. James’s,

Whisper it not in thy courts, O Christ Church!—yet did I, waking,

Dream of a cadence that sings, _Si tombent nos jeunes héros, la_

_Terre en produit de nouveaux contre vous tous prêts à se battre_;

Dreamt of great indignations and angers transcendental,

Dreamt of a sword at my side and a battle-horse underneath me.

IV. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Now supposing the French or the Neapolitan soldier

Should by some evil chance come exploring the Maison Serny

(Where the family English are all to assemble for safety),

Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female?

Really, who knows? One has bowed and talked, till, little by little,

All the natural heat has escaped of the chivalrous spirit.

Oh, one conformed, of course; but one doesn’t die for good manners,

Stab or shoot, or be shot, by way of graceful attention.

No, if it should be at all, it should be on the barricades there;

Should I incarnadine ever this inky pacifical finger,

Sooner far should it be for this vapour of Italy’s freedom,

Sooner far by the side of the d——d and dirty plebeians.

Ah, for a child in the street I could strike; for the full-blown lady——

Somehow, Eustace, alas! I have not felt the vocation.

Yet these people of course will expect, as of course, my protection,

Vernon in radiant arms stand forth for the lovely Georgina,

And to appear, I suppose, were but common civility. Yes, and

Truly I do not desire they should either be killed or offended.

Oh, and of course, you will say, ‘When the time comes, you will be

ready.’

Ah, but before it comes, am I to presume it will be so?

What I cannot feel now, am I to suppose that I shall feel?

Am I not free to attend for the ripe and indubious instinct?

Am I forbidden to wait for the clear and lawful perception?

Is it the calling of man to surrender his knowledge and insight,

For the mere venture of what may, perhaps, be the virtuous action?

Must we, walking our earth, discern a little, and hoping

Some plain visible task shall yet for our hands be assigned us,—

Must we abandon the future for fear of omitting the present,

Quit our own fireside hopes at the alien call of a neighbour,

To the mere possible shadow of Deity offer the victim?

And is all this, my friend, but a weak and ignoble refining,

Wholly unworthy the head or the heart of Your Own Correspondent?

V. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Yes, we are fighting at last, it appears. This morning as usual,

_Murray_, as usual, in hand, I enter the Caffè Nuovo;

Seating myself with a sense as it were of a change in the weather,

Not understanding, however, but thinking mostly of Murray,

And, for to-day is their day, of the Campidoglio Marbles;

_Caffè-latte_! I call to the waiter,—and _Non c’ è latte_,

This is the answer he makes me, and this is the sign of a battle.

So I sit: and truly they seem to think any one else more

Worthy than me of attention. I wait for my milkless _nero_,

Free to observe undistracted all sorts and sizes of persons,

Blending civilian and soldier in strangest costume, coming in, and

Gulping in hottest haste, still standing, their coffee,—withdrawing

Eagerly, jangling a sword on the steps, or jogging a musket

Slung to the shoulder behind. They are fewer, moreover, than usual,

Much and silenter far; and so I begin to imagine

Something is really afloat. Ere I leave, the Caffè is empty,

Empty too the streets, in all its length the Corso

Empty, and empty I see to my right and left the Condotti.

Twelve o’clock, on the Pincian Hill, with lots of English,

Germans, Americans, French,—the Frenchmen, too, are protected,—

So we stand in the sun, but afraid of a probable shower;

So we stand and stare, and see, to the left of St. Peter’s,

Smoke, from the cannon, white,—but that is at intervals only,—

Black, from a burning house, we suppose, by the Cavalleggieri;

And we believe we discern some lines of men descending

Down through the vineyard-slopes, and catch a bayonet gleaming.

Every ten minutes, however,—in this there is no misconception,—

Comes a great white puff from behind Michel Angelo’s dome, and

After a space the report of a real big gun,—not the Frenchman’s!—

That must be doing some work. And so we watch and conjecture.

Shortly, an Englishman comes, who says he has been to St. Peter’s,

Seen the Piazza and troops, but that is all he can tell us;

So we watch and sit, and, indeed, it begins to be tiresome.—

All this smoke is outside; when it has come to the inside,

It will be time, perhaps, to descend and retreat to our houses.

Half-past one, or two. The report of small arms frequent,

Sharp and savage indeed; that cannot all be for nothing:

So we watch and wonder; but guessing is tiresome, very.

Weary of wondering, watching, and guessing, and gossiping idly,

Down I go, and pass through the quiet streets with the knots of

National Guards patrolling, and flags hanging out at the windows,

English, American, Danish,—and, after offering to help an

Irish family moving _en masse_ to the Maison Serny,

After endeavouring idly to minister balm to the trembling

Quinquagenarian fears of two lone British spinsters,

Go to make sure of my dinner before the enemy enter.

But by this there are signs of stragglers returning; and voices

Talk, though you don’t believe it, of guns and prisoners taken;

And on the walls you read the first bulletin of the morning.—

This is all that I saw, and all I know of the battle.

VI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Victory! Victory!—Yes! ah, yes, thou republican Zion,

Truly the kings of the earth are gathered and gone by together;

Doubtless they marvelled to witness such things, were astonished, and

so forth.

Victory! Victory! Victory!—Ah, but it is, believe me,

Easier, easier far, to intone the chant of the martyr

Than to indite any pæan of any victory. Death may

Sometimes be noble; but life, at the best, will appear an illusion.

While the great pain is upon us, it is great; when it is over,

Why, it is over. The smoke of the sacrifice rises to heaven,

Of a sweet savour, no doubt, to Somebody; but on the altar,

Lo, there is nothing remaining but ashes and dirt and ill odour.

So it stands, you perceive; the labial muscles that swelled with

Vehement evolution of yesterday Marseillaises,

Articulations sublime of defiance and scorning, to-day col-

Lapse and languidly mumble, while men and women and papers

Scream and re-scream to each other the chorus of Victory. Well, but

I am thankful they fought, and glad that the Frenchmen were beaten.

VII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

So, I have seen a man killed! An experience that, among others!

Yes, I suppose I have; although I can hardly be certain,

And in a court of justice could never declare I had seen it.

But a man was killed, I am told, in a place where I saw

Something; a man was killed, I am told, and I saw something.

I was returning home from St. Peter’s; Murray, as usual,

Under my arm, I remember; had crossed the St. Angelo bridge; and

Moving towards the Condotti, had got to the first barricade, when

Gradually, thinking still of St. Peter’s, I became conscious

Of a sensation of movement opposing me,—tendency this way

(Such as one fancies may be in a stream when the wave of the tide is

Coming and not yet come,—a sort of noise and retention);

So I turned, and, before I turned, caught sight of stragglers

Heading a crowd, it is plain, that is coming behind that corner.

Looking up, I see windows filled with heads; the Piazza,

Into which you remember the Ponte St. Angelo enters,

Since I passed, has thickened with curious groups; and now the

Crowd is coming, has turned, has crossed that last barricade, is

Here at my side. In the middle they drag at something. What is it?

Ha! bare swords in the air, held up? There seem to be voices

Pleading and hands putting back; official, perhaps; but the swords are

Many, and bare in the air. In the air? they descend; they are smiting,

Hewing, chopping—At what? In the air once more upstretched? And—

Is it blood that’s on them? Yes, certainly blood! Of whom, then?

Over whom is the cry of this furor of exultation?

While they are skipping and screaming, and dancing their caps on the

points of

Swords and bayonets, I to the outskirts back, and ask a

Mercantile-seeming bystander, ‘What is it?’ and he, looking always

That way, makes me answer, ‘A Priest, who was trying to fly to

The Neapolitan army,’—and thus explains the proceeding.

You didn’t see the dead man? No;—I began to be doubtful;

I was in black myself, and didn’t know what mightn’t happen,—

But a National Guard close by me, outside of the hubbub,

Broke his sword with slashing a broad hat covered with dust,—and

Passing away from the place with Murray under my arm, and

Stooping, I saw through the legs of the people the legs of a body.

You are the first, do you know, to whom I have mentioned the matter.

Whom should I tell it to else?—these girls?—the Heavens forbid it!—

Quidnuncs at Monaldini’s?—Idlers upon the Pincian?

If I rightly remember, it happened on that afternoon when

Word of the nearer approach of a new Neapolitan army

First was spread. I began to bethink me of Paris Septembers,

Thought I could fancy the look of that old ’Ninety-two. On that evening

Three or four, or, it may be, five, of these people were slaughtered.

Some declared they had, one of them, fired on a sentinel; others

Say they were only escaping; a Priest, it is currently stated,

Stabbed a National Guard on the very Piazza Colonna:

History, Rumour of Rumours, I leave to thee to determine!

But I am thankful to say the government seems to have strength to

Put it down; it has vanished, at least; the place is most peaceful.

Through the Trastevere walking last night, at nine of the clock, I

Found no sort of disorder; I crossed by the Island-bridges,

So by the narrow streets to the Ponte Rotto, and onwards

Thence by the Temple of Vesta, away to the great Coliseum,

Which at the full of the moon is an object worthy a visit.

VIII. GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——.

Only think, dearest Louisa, what fearful scenes we have witnessed!—

* * * * *

George has just seen Garibaldi, dressed up in a long white cloak, on

Horseback, riding by, with his mounted negro behind him:

This is a man, you know, who came from America with him,

Out of the woods, I suppose, and uses a _lasso_ in fighting,

Which is, I don’t quite know, but a sort of noose, I imagine;

This he throws on the heads of the enemy’s men in a battle,

Pulls them into his reach, and then most cruelly kills them:

Mary does not believe, but we heard it from an Italian.

Mary allows she was wrong about Mr. Claude _being selfish_;

He was _most_ useful and kind on the terrible thirtieth of April.

Do not write here any more; we are starting directly for Florence:

We should be off to-morrow, if only Papa could get horses;

All have been seized everywhere for the use of this dreadful Mazzini.

P.S.

Mary has seen thus far.—I am really so angry, Louisa,—

Quite out of patience, my dearest! What can the man be intending?

I am quite tired; and Mary, who might bring him to in a moment,

Lets him go on as he likes, and neither will help nor dismiss him.

IX. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

It is most curious to see what a power a few calm words (in

Merely a brief proclamation) appear to possess on the people.

Order is perfect, and peace; the city is utterly tranquil;

And one cannot conceive that this easy and _nonchalant_ crowd, that

Flows like a quiet stream through street and market-place, entering

Shady recesses and bays of church, _osteria_, and _caffè_,

Could in a moment be changed to a flood as of molten lava,

Boil into deadly wrath and wild homicidal delusion.

Ah, ’tis an excellent race,—and even in old degradation,

Under a rule that enforces to flattery, lying, and cheating,

E’en under Pope and Priest, a nice and natural people.

Oh, could they but be allowed this chance of redemption!—but clearly

That is not likely to be. Meantime, notwithstanding all journals,

Honour for once to the tongue and the pen of the eloquent writer!

Honour to speech! and all honour to thee, thou noble Mazzini!

X. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

I am in love, meantime, you think; no doubt you would think so.

I am in love, you say; with those letters, of course, you would say so.

I am in love, you declare. I think not so; yet I grant you

It is a pleasure indeed to converse with this girl. Oh, rare gift,

Rare felicity, this! she can talk in a rational way, can

Speak upon subjects that really are matters of mind and of thinking,

Yet in perfection retain her simplicity; never, one moment,

Never, however you urge it, however you tempt her, consents to

Step from ideas and fancies and loving sensations to those vain

Conscious understandings that vex the minds of mankind.

No, though she talk, it is music; her fingers desert not the keys; ’tis

Song, though you hear in the song the articulate vocables sounded,

Syllabled singly and sweetly the words of melodious meaning.

I am in love, you say: I do not think so, exactly.

XI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction:

One which simply disturbs, unsettles, and makes you uneasy,

And another that poises, retains, and fixes and holds you.

I have no doubt, for myself, in giving my voice for the latter.

I do not wish to be moved, but growing where I was growing,

There more truly to grow, to live where as yet I had languished.

I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action

Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,

Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;

We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.

XII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Ah, let me look, let me watch, let me wait, unhurried, unprompted!

Bid me not venture on aught that could alter or end what is present!

Say not, Time flies, and Occasion, that never returns, is departing!

Drive me not out, ye ill angels with fiery swords, from my Eden,

Waiting, and watching, and looking! Let love be its own inspiration!

Shall not a voice, if a voice there must be, from the airs that environ,

Yea, from the conscious heavens, without our knowledge or effort,

Break into audible words? And love be its own inspiration?

XIII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Wherefore and how I am certain, I hardly can tell; but it _is_ so.

She doesn’t like me, Eustace; I think she never will like me.

Is it my fault, as it is my misfortune, my ways are not her ways?

Is it my fault, that my habits and modes are dissimilar wholly?

’Tis not her fault; ’tis her nature, her virtue, to misapprehend them:

’Tis not her fault; ’tis her beautiful nature, not ever to know me.

Hopeless it seems,—yet I cannot, though hopeless, determine to leave it:

She goes—therefore I go; she moves,—I move, not to lose her.

XIV. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Oh, ’tisn’t manly, of course, ’tisn’t manly, this method of wooing;

’Tisn’t the way very likely to win. For the woman, they tell you,

Ever prefers the audacious, the wilful, the vehement hero;

She has no heart for the timid, the sensitive soul; and for knowledge,—

Knowledge, O ye Gods!—when did they appreciate knowledge?

Wherefore should they, either? I am sure I do not desire it.

Ah, and I feel too, Eustace, she cares not a tittle about me!

(Care about me, indeed! and do I really expect it?)

But my manner offends; my ways are wholly repugnant;

Every word that I utter estranges, hurts, and repels her;

Every moment of bliss that I gain, in her exquisite presence,

Slowly, surely, withdraws her, removes her, and severs her from me.

Not that I care very much!—any way I escape from the boy’s own

Folly, to which I am prone, of loving where it is easy.

Not that I mind very much! Why should I? I am not in love, and

Am prepared, I think, if not by previous habit,

Yet in the spirit beforehand for this and all that is like it;

It is an easier matter for us contemplative creatures,

Us upon whom the pressure of action is laid so lightly;

We, discontented indeed with things in particular, idle,

Sickly, complaining, by faith, in the vision of things in general,

Manage to hold on our way without, like others around us,

Seizing the nearest arm to comfort, help, and support us.

Yet, after all, my Eustace, I know but little about it.

All I can say for myself, for present alike and for past, is,

Mary Trevellyn, Eustace, is certainly worth your acquaintance.

You couldn’t come, I suppose, as far as Florence to see her?

XV. GEORGINA TREVELLYN TO LOUISA ——.

...To-morrow we’re starting for Florence,

Truly rejoiced, you may guess, to escape from republican terrors;

Mr. C. and Papa to escort us; we by _vettura_

Through Siena, and Georgy to follow and join us by Leghorn.

Then—Ah, what shall I say, my dearest? I tremble in thinking!

You will imagine my feelings,—the blending of hope and of sorrow.

How can I bear to abandon Papa and Mamma and my Sisters?

Dearest Louise, indeed it is very alarming; but, trust me

Ever, whatever may change, to remain your loving Georgina.

P.S. BY MARY TREVELLYN.

...‘Do I like Mr. Claude any better?’

I am to tell you,—and, ‘Pray, is it Susan or I that attract him?’

This he never has told, but Georgina could certainly ask him.

All I can say for myself is, alas! that he rather repels me.

There! I think him agreeable, but also a little repulsive.

So be content, dear Louisa; for one satisfactory marriage

Surely will do in one year for the family you would establish;

Neither Susan nor I shall afford you the joy of a second.

P.S. BY GEORGINA TREVELLYN.

Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better;

He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too _shilly-shally_,—

So unlike George! Yet I hope that the matter is going on fairly.

I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something.

Dearest Louise, how delightful to bring young people together!

* * * * *

_Is it to Florence we follow, or are we to tarry yet longer,_

_E’en amid clamour of arms, here in the city of old,_

_Seeking from clamour of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden,_

_Vainly ’mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget?_

_Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,—_

_He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go!_

_Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee!_

_She, should she linger in Rome, were not dissevered from thee!_

CANTO III.

_Yet to the wondrous St. Peter’s, and yet to the solemn Rotonda,_

_Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls,_

_Yet may we go, and recline, while a whole mighty world seems above us,_

_Gathered and fixed to all time into one roofing supreme;_

_Yet may we, thinking on these things, exclude what is meaner around us;_

_Yet, at the worst of the worst, books and a chamber remain;_

_Yet may we think, and forget, and possess our souls in resistance.—_

_Ah, but away from the stir, shouting, and gossip of war,_

_Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle,_

_Where, amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind,_

_Where, under mulberry-branches, the diligent rivulet sparkles,_

_Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply,_

_Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated,_

_Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,—_

_Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city,_

_Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!_

I. MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER,—_on the way to Florence_.

Why doesn’t Mr. Claude come with us? you ask.—We don’t know,

You should know better than we. He talked of the Vatican marbles;

But I can’t wholly believe that this was the actual reason,—

He was so ready before, when we asked him to come and escort us.

Certainly he is odd, my dear Miss Roper. To change so

Suddenly, just for a whim, was not quite fair to the party,—

Not quite right. I declare, I really almost am offended:

I, his great friend, as you say, have doubtless a title to be so.

Not that I greatly regret it, for dear Georgina distinctly

Wishes for nothing so much as to show her adroitness. But, oh, my

Pen will not write any more;—let us say nothing further about it.

* * * * *

Yes, my dear Miss Roper, I certainly called him repulsive;

So I think him, but cannot be sure I have used the expression

Quite as your pupil should; yet he does most truly repel me.

Was it to you I made use of the word? or who was it told you?

Yes, repulsive; observe, it is but when he talks of ideas

That he is quite unaffected, and free, and expansive, and easy;

I could pronounce him simply a cold intellectual being.—

When does he make advances?—He thinks that women should woo him;

Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted.

She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy

On the stone wall, must expect but a rigid and niggard support, and

E’en to get that must go searching all round with her humble embraces.

II. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE,—_from Rome_.

Tell me, my friend, do you think that the grain would sprout in the

furrow,

Did it not truly accept as its _summum_ and _ultimum bonum_

That mere common and may-be indifferent soil it is set in?

Would it have force to develop and open its young cotyledons,

Could it compare, and reflect, and examine one thing with another?

Would it endure to accomplish the round of its natural functions

Were it endowed with a sense of the general scheme of existence?

While from Marseilles in the steamer we voyage to Civita Vecchia,

Vexed in the squally seas as we lay by Capraja and Elba,

Standing, uplifted, alone on the heaving poop of the vessel,

Looking around on the waste of the rushing incurious billows,

‘This is Nature,’ I said: ‘we are born as it were from her waters;

Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for,

Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge,

Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed.’

This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the poop of the steamer;

And as unthinking I sat in the hall of the famed Ariadne,

Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble.

It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer.

Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

III. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Farewell, Politics, utterly! What can I do? I cannot

Fight, you know; and to talk I am wholly ashamed. And although I

Gnash my teeth when I look in your French or your English papers,

What is the good of that? Will swearing, I wonder, mend matters?

Cursing and scolding repel the assailants? No, it is idle;

No, whatever befalls, I will hide, will ignore or forget it.

Let the tail shift for itself; I will bury my head. And what’s the

Roman Republic to me, or I to the Roman Republic?

Why not fight?—In the first place, I haven’t so much as a musket;

In the next, if I had, I shouldn’t know how I should use it;

In the third, just at present I’m studying ancient marbles;

In the fourth, I consider I owe my life to my country;

In the fifth—I forget, but four good reasons are ample.

Meantime, pray let ’em fight, and be killed. I delight in devotion.

So that I ’list not, hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!

_Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiæ_; though it would seem this

Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind:

Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere!

Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother!

IV. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Not, as we read in the words of the olden-time inspiration,

Are there two several trees in the place we are set to abide in;

But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden,

Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever,

Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,—

Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless unfruitful blossom.

Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine,

Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaüs

Rose sympathetic in grief to his love-lorn Laodamia,

Evermore growing, and when in their growth to the prospect attaining,

Over the low sea-banks, of the fatal Ilian city,

Withering still at the sight which still they upgrow to encounter.

Ah, but ye that extrude from the ocean your helpless faces,

Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions,

Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern not,

Making your nest on the wave, and your bed on the crested billow,

Skimming rough waters, and crowding wet sands that the tide shall

return to,

Cormorants, ducks, and gulls, fill ye my imagination!

Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

V. MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER,—_from Florence_.

Dearest Miss Roper,—Alas! we are all at Florence quite safe, and

You, we hear, are shut up! indeed, it is sadly distressing!

We were most lucky, they say, to get off when we did from the troubles.

Now you are really besieged; they tell us it soon will be over;

Only I hope and trust without any fight in the city.

Do you see Mr. Claude?—I thought he might do something for you.

I am quite sure on occasion he really would wish to be useful.

What is he doing? I wonder;—still studying Vatican marbles?

Letters, I hope, pass through. We trust your brother is better.

VI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Juxtaposition, in fine; and what is juxtaposition?

Look you, we travel along in the railway-carriage or steamer,

And, _pour passer le temps_, till the tedious journey be ended,

Lay aside paper or book, to talk with the girl that is next one;

And, _pour passer le temps_, with the terminus all but in prospect,

Talk of eternal ties and marriages made in heaven.

Ah, did we really accept with a perfect heart the illusion!

Ah, did we really believe that the Present indeed is the Only!

Or through all transmutation, all shock and convulsion of passion,

Feel we could carry undimmed, unextinguished, the light of our knowledge!

But for his funeral train which the bridegroom sees in the distance,

Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage procession?

But for that final discharge, would he dare to enlist in that service?

But for that certain release, ever sign to that perilous contract?

But for that exit secure, ever bend to that treacherous doorway?—

Ah, but the bride, meantime,—do you think she sees it as he does?

But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and larger existence,

Think you that man could consent to be circumscribed here into action?

But for assurance within of a limitless ocean divine, o’er

Whose great tranquil depths unconscious the wind-tost surface

Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and change and endure not,—

But that in this, of a truth, we have our being, and know it,

Think you we men could submit to live and move as we do here?

Ah, but the women,—God bless them! they don’t think at all about it.

Yet we must eat and drink, as you say. And as limited beings

Scarcely can hope to attain upon earth to an Actual Abstract,

Leaving to God contemplation, to His hands knowledge confiding,

Sure that in us if it perish, in Him it abideth and dies not,

Let us in His sight accomplish our petty particular doings,—

Yes, and contented sit down to the victual that He has provided.

Allah is great, no doubt, and Juxtaposition his prophet.

Ah, but the women, alas! they don’t look at it in that way.

Juxtaposition is great;—but, my friend, I fear me, the maiden

Hardly would thank or acknowledge the lover that sought to obtain her,

Not as the thing he would wish, but the thing he must even put up with,—

Hardly would tender her hand to the wooer that candidly told her

That she is but for a space, an _ad-interim_ solace and pleasure,—

That in the end she shall yield to a perfect and absolute something,

Which I then for myself shall behold, and not another,—

Which amid fondest endearments, meantime I forget not, forsake not.

Ah, ye feminine souls, so loving, and so exacting,

Since we cannot escape, must we even submit to deceive you?

Since, so cruel is truth, sincerity shocks and revolts you,

Will you have us your slaves to lie to you, flatter and—leave you?

VII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Juxtaposition is great,—but, you tell me, affinity greater.

Ah, my friend, there are many affinities, greater and lesser,

Stronger and weaker; and each, by the favour of juxtaposition,

Potent, efficient, in force,—for a time; but none, let me tell you,

Save by the law of the land and the ruinous force of the will, ah,

None, I fear me, at last quite sure to be final and perfect.

Lo, as I pace in the street, from the peasant-girl to the princess,

_Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto_,—

_Vir sum, nihil fæminei_,—and e’en to the uttermost circle,

All that is Nature’s is I, and I all things that are Nature’s.

Yes, as I walk, I behold, in a luminous, large intuition,

That I can be and become anything that I meet with or look at:

I am the ox in the dray, the ass with the garden-stuff panniers;

I am the dog in the doorway, the kitten that plays in the window,

On sunny slab of the ruin the furtive and fugitive lizard,

Swallow above me that twitters, and fly that is buzzing about me;

Yea, and detect, as I go, by a faint but a faithful assurance,

E’en from the stones of the street, as from rocks or trees of the forest

Something of kindred, a common, though latent vitality, greets me;

And to escape from our strivings, mistakings, misgrowths, and

perversions,

Fain could demand to return to that perfect and primitive silence,

Fain be enfolded and fixed, as of old, in their rigid embraces.

VIII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

And as I walk on my way, I behold them consorting and coupling;

Faithful it seemeth, and fond, very fond, very probably faithful,

All as I go on my way, with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.

Life is beautiful, Eustace, entrancing, enchanting to look at;

As are the streets of a city we pace while the carriage is changing,

As a chamber filled-in with harmonious, exquisite pictures,

Even so beautiful Earth; and could we eliminate only

This vile hungering impulse, this demon within us of craving,

Life were beatitude, living a perfect divine satisfaction.

IX. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

_Mild monastic faces in quiet collegiate cloisters_:

So let me offer a single and celibatarian phrase, a

Tribute to those whom perhaps you do not believe I can honour.

But, from the tumult escaping, ’tis pleasant, of drumming and shouting,

Hither, oblivious awhile, to withdraw, of the fact or the falsehood,

And amid placid regards and mildly courteous greetings

Yield to the calm and composure and gentle abstraction that reign o’er

_Mild monastic faces in quiet collegiate cloisters_:

Terrible word, Obligation! You should not, Eustace, you should not,

No, you should not have used it. But, oh, great Heavens, I repel it!

Oh, I cancel, reject, disavow, and repudiate wholly

Every debt in this kind, disclaim every claim, and dishonour,

Yea, my own heart’s own writing, my soul’s own signature! Ah, no!

I will be free in this; you shall not, none shall, bind me.

No, my friend, if you wish to be told, it was this above all things,

This that charmed me, ah, yes, even this, that she held me to nothing.

No, I could talk as I pleased; come close; fasten ties, as I fancied;

Bind and engage myself deep;—and lo, on the following morning

It was all e’en as before, like losings in games played for nothing.

Yes, when I came, with mean fears in my soul, with a semi-performance

At the first step breaking down in its pitiful rôle of evasion,

When to shuffle I came, to compromise, not meet, engagements,

Lo, with her calm eyes there she met me and knew nothing of it,—

Stood unexpecting, unconscious. _She_ spoke not of obligations,

Knew not of debt—ah, no, I believe you, for excellent reasons.

X. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

_Hang_ this thinking, at last! what good is it? oh, and what evil!

Oh, what mischief and pain! like a clock in a sick man’s chamber,

Ticking and ticking, and still through each covert of slumber pursuing.

What shall I do to thee, O thou Preserver of men? Have compassion;

Be favourable, and hear! Take from me this regal knowledge;

Let me, contented and mute, with the beasts of the fields, my brothers,

Tranquilly, happily lie,—and eat grass, like Nebuchadnezzar!

XI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Tibur is beautiful, too, and the orchard slopes, and the Anio

Falling, falling yet, to the ancient lyrical cadence;

Tibur and Anio’s tide; and cool from Lucretilis ever,

With the Digentian stream, and with the Bandusian fountain,

Folded in Sabine recesses, the valley and villa of Horace:—

So not seeing I sang; so seeing and listening say I,

Here as I sit by the stream, as I gaze at the cell of the Sibyl,

Here with Albunea’s home and the grove of Tiburnus beside me;[14]

Tivoli beautiful is, and musical, O Teverone,

Dashing from mountain to plain, thy parted impetuous waters,

Tivoli’s waters and rocks; and fair unto Monte Gennaro

(Haunt, even yet, I must think, as I wander and gaze, of the shadows,

Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces),

Fair in itself, and yet fairer with human completing creations,

Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace:—

So not seeing I sang; so now—Nor seeing, nor hearing,

Neither by waterfall lulled, nor folded in sylvan embraces,

Neither by cell of the Sibyl, nor stepping the Monte Gennaro,

Seated on Anio’s bank, nor sipping Bandusian waters,

But on Montorio’s height, looking down on the tile-clad streets, the

Cupolas, crosses, and domes, the bushes and kitchen-gardens,

Which, by the grace of the Tibur, proclaim themselves Rome of the

Romans,—

But on Montorio’s height, looking forth to the vapoury mountains,

Cheating the prisoner Hope with illusions of vision and fancy,—

But on Montorio’s height, with these weary soldiers by me,

Waiting till Oudinot enter, to reinstate Pope and Tourist.

XII. MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER.

Dear Miss Roper,—It seems, George Vernon, before we left Rome, said

Something to Mr. Claude about what they call his attentions.

Susan, two nights ago, for the first time, heard this from Georgina.

It is _so_ disagreeable and _so_ annoying to think of!

If it could only be known, though we may never meet him again, that

It was all George’s doing, and we were entirely unconscious,

It would extremely relieve—Your ever affectionate Mary.

P.S. (1)

Here is your letter arrived this moment, just as I wanted.

So you have seen him,—indeed, and guessed,—how dreadfully clever!

What did he really say? and what was your answer exactly?

Charming!—but wait for a moment, I haven’t read through the letter.

P.S. (2)

Ah, my dearest Miss Roper, do just as you fancy about it.

If you think it sincerer to tell him I know of it, do so.

Though I should most extremely dislike it, I know I could manage.

It is the simplest thing, but surely wholly uncalled for

Do as you please; you know I trust implicitly to you.

Say whatever is right and needful for ending the matter.

Only don’t tell Mr. Claude, what I will tell you as a secret,

That I should like very well to show him myself I forget it.

P.S. (3)

I am to say that the wedding is finally settled for Tuesday.

Ah, my dear Miss Roper, you surely, surely can manage

Not to let it appear that I know of that odious matter.

It would be pleasanter far for myself to treat it exactly

As if it had not occurred: and I do not think he would like it.

I must remember to add, that as soon as the wedding is over

We shall be off, I believe, in a hurry, and travel to Milan;

There to meet friends of Papa’s, I am told, at the Croce di Malta;

Then I cannot say whither, but not at present to England.

XIII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Yes, on Montorio’s height for a last farewell of the city,—

So it appears; though then I was quite uncertain about it.

So, however, it was. And now to explain the proceeding.

I was to go, as I told you, I think, with the people to Florence.

Only the day before, the foolish family Vernon

Made some uneasy remarks, as we walked to our lodging together,

As to intentions forsooth, and so forth. I was astounded,

Horrified quite; and obtaining just then, as it happened, an offer

(No common favour) of seeing the great Ludovisi collection,

Why, I made this a pretence, and wrote that they must excuse me.

How could I go? Great Heavens! to conduct a permitted flirtation

Under those vulgar eyes, the observed of such observers!

Well, but I now, by a series of fine diplomatic inquiries,

Find from a sort of relation, a good and sensible woman,

Who is remaining at Rome with a brother too ill for removal,

That it was wholly unsanctioned, unknown,—not, I think, by Georgina:

She, however, ere this,—and that is the best of the story,—

She and the Vernon, thank Heaven, are wedded and gone—honey mooning.

So—on Montorio’s height for a last farewell of the city.

Tibur I have not seen, nor the lakes that of old I had dreamt of;

Tibur I shall not see, nor Anio’s waters, nor deep en-

Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace;

Tibur I shall not see;—but something better I shall see.

Twice I have tried before, and failed in getting the horses;

Twice I have tried and failed: this time it shall not be a failure.