Augusta Davies Webster: Verses about Change

SMALL current of the wilds afar from men,
Changing and sudden as a baby's mood;
Now a green babbling rivulet in the wood,
Now loitering broad and shallow through the glen,
Or threading 'mid the naked shoals, and then
Brattling against the stones, half mist, half flood,
Between the mountains where the storm-clouds brood;
And each change but to wake or sleep again;
Pass on, young stream, the world has need of thee;
Far hence a mighty river on its breast
Bears the deep-laden vessels to the sea;
Far hence wide waters feed the vines and corn.
Pass on, small stream, to so great purpose born,
On to the distant toil, the distant rest.

I HAVE not yet I could have loved thee, sweet;
Nor know I wherefore, thou being all thou art,
The engrafted thought in me throve incomplete,

And grew to summer strength in every part
Of root and leaf, but hath not borne the flower.
Love hath refrained his fullness from my heart.

I know no better beauty, none with power
To hold mine eyes through change and change as thine,
Like southern skies that alter with each hour,

And yet are changeless, and their calm divine
From light to light hath motionlessly passed,
With only different loveliness for sign.

I know no fairer nature, nor where, cast
On the clear mirror of thine own young truth,
The imaged things of Heaven lie plainer glassed;

Nor where more fit alike show tender ruth,
And anger for the right, and hopes aglow,
And joy and sighs of April-hearted youth.

But some day I, so wont to praise thee so
With unabashed warm words for all to hear,
Shall scarcely name another, speaking low.

Some day, methinks, and who can tell how near?
I may, to thee unchanged, be praising thee
With one not worthier but a world more dear;

With one I know not yet, who shall, maybe,
Be not so fair, be not in aught thy peer;
Who shall be all that thou art not to me.

'AND when came I to this town?' did he say!
A question asked for the asking's sake,
Answered merely an answer to make,
As stranger to stranger may;
Answered enough with ''Twas yesterday,'
And a talk of the journey travelled so fast.
Had I said, 'Since I dwelt here first have passed
Hundreds of years away'!

Aye, and there be who, if they knew,
Would envy me, as a cripple must long,
Looking on limbs erect and strong,
To have his freedom given him too
And rise and reach to whither he would:
'What!' they would think, 'Is the gift not good
Beyond all gifts for earth or for time?
Life, and no shadow of death o'ercast,
Life, and the joy of manhood's prime,
Life, and the lore of a boundless past,
Life, and still life to come and to last! '
And I even, even now,
I know not what that spirit might be,
Whether of love or of hate to me,
That stood in the dusk on the mountain's brow,
Alone with the stars I had climbed to see nigh,
And smiled, and gave, and was no more there.
There was no trace broke the sky,
There was no breath stirred the air,
Nought from the heaven or the earth to tell
If it were well:
And how much surer to-day know I
Whether he meant me a boon or a curse,
Whether to wait or to die be worse?

Ah, how I joyed for so many years!
Death under my heel with his hindering fears,
And I the lord of my life for ever!
Leisure and labour limitless,
And always the joy of the earned success
Crowned with the joy of the new endeavour!
And I thought 'I will make all wisdoms mine;'
And I thought 'The world shall be glad of me.'
Ah, how I joyed! for could I divine
What the fruit of immortal days must be?
But alas for the numbness of wont on all,
For the heart that has loved too often to prize,
For the eyes that have wept too often for tears,
For the listless feet and the careless ears,
For the brain that has learned that to learn is vain,
For forgotten joy and forgotten pain,
For the life too frequent for memories!
And I taste no joy because it will pall,
And I watch no grace because it will wane,
And I seek no good for it will not remain,
And I knit no tie because it will sever.

If I were not alone: if the gift were shared
With but some one soul in the world beside,
Some one for whom I might have cared,
Who would not so soon have grown old and died.
But ever and ever to build all anew,
And ever and ever to see all decay;
To fashion my life as the others do
And have my place among fellow-men,
To sit content in my home—and then
To have lived, and the rest has faded away:
There are the graves, and I part of the past,
Forgotten with them whom I outlast.
Let it be; 'tis a foolish game,
The game that children play on the beach,
With its ending always the same,
Building amain till the tide-waves reach
And the sands will be bare to build on to-morrow.
Let it be; for what is the worth?
Long since I wearied of saying good-bye:
And what or whom should I cherish on earth
Where I go as might one from some world on high
Unmeet for the short-lived pleasure or sorrow?
Only the men who look to die
Can have or hope in a world where death reigns:
Do I pity that slight ephemerous fly,
Whirling and resting there in the sun,
Because his day will be so soon done?
All remains while his day remains;
He will not have known that a rosebud wanes.
How if he lived for ever, as I?

Truly 'tis even so,
To die betimes is scarcely to know
How death is around us everywhere.
But ever for me the birth and blow
Are but a part of decay that is there,
And the living come but to go:
Till at length I am one who, drawing aside,
Where the crowd sweeps by in one jostling race,
Stands unstirred in his lonely place
And leaves off noting face after face;
I am one who wait stranded, alone, by the tide
Of Life, which has also Death for name
Because for the world the two are the same,
The tide that goes winding back whence it came,
Bearing all thither save me;
And I dream and I scarcely seem to be,
And I know no count of time as it flies,
And the river passes, passes, passes,
Smooth and for ever, and changelessly glasses
Summers and winters and changing skies,
Passes, and passes, and passes,
And nothing abides and nothing is strange;
And oh for rest to my languid eyes
Weary of change that is never change!

Ah! men might marvel to hear me say
The world of my youth is the world of to-day;
Here, in this very home of my birth,
How they would answer from some old book,
'Thus and thus was the past; now look,
Are we as they of the older earth,
We and our ways, and the fields we plough?'
And the first-met gossip who knows but Now
Counts chances a score in half a year,
Tells me this was that, and there was here,
A hall is burnt, a new market is made,
A railway runs where the school-boys played,
He is married, and he is dead,
And he so rich goes begging his bread;
''Tis a world of change,' he will soberly sigh
For point to his tales: why, and so say I;
Chances and changes enough, I deem,
In a world that goes on like a shifting dream;
But, oh, the long sameness! Ebb and flow:
Billows that come, and billows that go!
Nothing is but will drift away,
Nothing was but will come:
Future finds Past, old becomes new;
What men have done that they will do.
'Tis but the counting coins of to-day
To measure the former sum,
But the naming laterwise
Things and thoughts of an ancient guise:
And what change for me who see life as some star,
The expanses of earth in one from afar?
Hill grows valley and valley grows hills
'Tis a world of hills and valleys still.

Did I dream I could have been wearied thus,
With truth and with wisdoms left to seek?
Alas, my learners who heard me speak
'Is not to learn enough for us?
Is not to strive a strength for the soul,
Though she never gained one foot to the goal?'
If you could waken now where you lie,
You and your graves forgotten as I
In our town that would tell our names for its praise;
If you could hear, and your pitying gaze
Could know the teacher who made you bold!
Nay, sleep on unconscious there in the mould:
You died with a joy as of something gained,
Something given to the world you left;
I laboured on to be ever bereft
Of the skill achieved, of the science attained.
For, lo, the end of all learning is this,
Only to know one has learned amiss,
Only to know that the art or the lore
With its rules and its axioms was nothing more
Than a working guess that did for the while;
Only to know that sage after sage
Has passed on a dream from age to age,
Till the world awakes, and the children smile
At the thoughts of the foolish grown-men of old.
Aye, sleep, ye who counted your lives well spent,
Sleep, ye who dreamed; ye are content
Thou who hadst gained the secret of gold,
Save that one last fusion left me to find;
Thou who hadst tracked the sun's path through the air;
Thou with thy skill of the stars; thou there
In the chapel vault, with thy name still shown
To sauntering strangers, cut on the stone,
With thy chronicle of the world left behind;
Thou who hadst learned and hadst lighted on cures
For every ill man's body endures,
And leftst me thy leechcrafts for legacy;
Thou; and thou; and thou; oh, poor fools,
Who dreamed ye had found the thing ye sought,
Sleep, sleep and know not. All goes by,
Lores, and crafts, and beliefs, and schools;
Wrought is unravelled; thought is new-thought;
Till meseems that truth's very self must die,
And be born again unto younger rules.

Whereto is life for me? And I would
I had now departed and knew the end.
Death—'tis a way even I might wend—
But were it evil or good?
Oh, had it been but a word to speak,
But a blow at once, or a venomous draught,
Long since I had said, or struck, or quaffed:
But all a seven days' week!

Each dawn and each dusk of a seven days' week,
To will it unwavering: all a week!
Vain, vain, o'er and o'er,
A thousand times and a thousand yet:
Lo, life with some one poor hope once more,
Some one poor grace worth a while for regret;
Lo, death grown awful with dread and doubt.
And oh, feeble will, and oh, sluggish heart,
Almost too weary to long to depart!

Yet, dusk is at hand, see, the sunset fades out:
And here where was home life is loneliest to bear,
'Twere a goodly time to renew the test;
And I will it—Nay, is it worth the care?
'Tis but beginning a strife and unrest.
Seven days for life to lure back her thrall.
Oh, if I knew the end! knew all!
But, what if even life were the best?
What, if death were a new despair?

Five minutes here, and they must steal two more!
shameful! Here have I been five mortal years
and not seen home nor one dear kindred face,
and these abominable slugs, this guard,
this driver, porters--what are they about?--
keep us here motionless, two minutes, three.--
Aha! at last!

Good! We shall check our minutes;
we're flying after them, like a mad wind
chasing the leaves it has tossed on in front.
Oh glorious wild speed, what giants' play!
and there are men who tell us poetry
is dead where railways come! Maybe 'tis true,
I'm a bad judge, I've had scant reading time
and little will to read ...... and certainly
I've not found railways in what verse I know:
but there's a whizz and whirr as trains go by,
a bullet-like indomitable rush
and then all's done, which makes me often think
one of those men who found out poetry,
and had to write the things just that they saw,
would have made some of their fine crashing lines
that stir one like the marches one knows best,
and the enemy knows best, with trains in them
as easily as chariots.

Anyhow
I've poetry and music too to-day
in the very clatter: it goes "Home, home, home."

And they'll think that sharp shriek a kinder sound
than sweetest singing, when it presently
pierces the quiet of the night and sends
its eager shrillness on for miles before
to say I'm no time distant. I can see
my mother's soft pink cheeks (like roses, pale
after a June week's blooming,) flush and wan,
and her lip quiver; I can see the girls,
restless between the hall door and the clock,
hear it and hush and lean expectant heads
to catch the rattle of the coming train;
my father, sitting pshawing by the fire
at all the fuss and waiting, half start up,
dropping his Times, forgetful just so long
that he is not impatient like the rest,
the tender foolish women, and, alert
to hide how he was tempted to fuss too,
reseat himself intent on politics;
and Hugh--I think Hugh must be there with them,
on leave out of his parish for a day,
a truant from the old women and the schools
to be at home with me for long enough
to say "God bless you" in--I can see Hugh,
narrow and straight in his skimp priestly coat,
pacing the room with slow and even steps,
and a most patient face, and in his eyes
that over patience we all know in them
when he is being extra good and calm.

So little change, they write me: all of them
with the same faces, scarce a day's mark there--
except our little Maude who was a child
and is a woman: little Maude grown tall:
the little Maude I left half prude half romp,
who, eager for her grown-up dignities,
tried to forego her mischiefs and would turn,
just in their midst, portentously demure
like a tired sleepy kitten, and to-day
wears all her womanhood inside her heart
and has none for her manners--some of it
for her sweet winsome face though; and a look
that's in her portrait brings my mother back,
though she's not like they tell me. I shall see;
yes I shall see! soon; almost now.

Dear home,
to think I am so near!

Ah, when I lay
in the hot thirst and fever of my wound,
and saw their faces pressing into mine,
changing and changing, never a one would stay
so long that I could see it like itself,
I scarcely hoped for this. And when I felt
that tiring weakness of my growing strong,
and was so helpless, and the babyish tears
would come without a thought to make them come,
I almost knew this day would never be:
but, oh my happy fortune, not to die,
not even to come home among them then,
with nothing done, a spoiled and worthless wreck
for them to weep at softly out of sight,
but to go stoutly to my post again,
and do my stroke of work as a man should,
and win them this.

You little dingy cross,
less precious than my sleeve-links, what a worth
lies in your worthlessness: there's not a man
but gladder lays you in his mother's hand,
or wife's, than he would bring her for his gift
the whole great jewels of an eastern king,
and not a woman but--

My mother, though--
sometimes she was not strong--have I been rash,
too thoughtless of her calm, not telling of it?
No, I'll not wear it on me, as I meant,
to take her first dear kisses in: we'll talk
before I show it--in a day or two--
perhaps to-night.

I know she'll prize it more
that a life saved went to the winning it.
And tenderhearted Ellen will forgive
my part she shudders at in the red deaths
of battle fields a little more for that--
How sad her letters were; I know she thinks
we learn a heathenish passion after blood,
and, as she said, "to throw our lives like dross
back in our Maker's face:" but bye and bye
I'll teach her how it is, and that we fight
for duty, not like either fiends or fools.

They say they are longing for my history,
told by the fire of evenings; all my deeds,
all my escapes; and I must clear their minds
of fifty puzzles of the journalists,
decide what's true, and make them understand
the battles and the marchings: but my deeds
have been to just be one among them all,
doing what we were bidden as we could,
and my escapes must have been like the rest--
one has no time to know them; just that once,
when I was dragging off the fallen boy,
I knew what death was nearest as it missed,
but I've no memory of more escapes ......
except by being wounded, as they know;
and what can I explain of battle plans
made in the councils, whether kept or not
I cannot tell? I only know my part
and theirs with whom I waited at our post
or dashed on at the word, I could not mark
the swaying of the squadrons, the recoils
and shifting ground and sudden strategies,
and had no duty to be watching them.
No, I shall make them better out in print,
and learn in our snug study what I saw
among the rush and smoke.

No, I come back
no better talker than I was before,
no readier and no deeper, not like Hugh,
and I must use my unaspiring wits
to say things as I see them, going straight;
just as a plain man's life does, tramping on
the way that lies before one, with no whys.

No whys; ah how that chance word takes me back
to pinafore-time--my father's well-known phrase
"No whying, boy, but do what you are bid."
And once my mother, when first Hugh began
to be so clever, and had found it out
and, pleased at it, perhaps a little pert,
was apt to hit on puzzles, answered him
"our nursery rule was good for afterwards,
spared headaches and spared heartaches, and, well kept,
made the best heroes and best Christians too."
How I can see Hugh looking down to say,
in an odd slow tone, "I will remember that."
And well he has remembered; never a man
went straighter into action than our Hugh;
he knows what side he's on and stands to it:
if I'd a head like his, and wished to change
soldiering for anything, I'd try to learn
a parish parson's work to do it like Hugh.

Will he read prayers to-night? I'd like to hear
my father at it, as it used to be
before we any of us went away--
the old times back again. Oh, all of us
will say our prayers to-night out of glad hearts.
Oh, thank God for the meeting we shall have!

Such joy among us! and the country side
all to be glad for us. Ah well, I fear
there's one will shrink and sadden at my sight
among the welcomes and the happiness,
remembering that her husband was my friend,
and dropped beside me. But I'll go alone--
or maybe with my mother--to her house
and let her have the pain more quietly,
before she sees me in our Sunday pew,
with all the old friends smiling through the prayers
and all but nodding, and a buzzing round
spoiling the parson's reading "Look," and "Look,"
"There's Master Harry come back from the war."

Oh, how my mother's eyes will turn to me,
half unawares, then fix upon her book
that none may see them growing large and moist;
and how my father will look stern and frown,
hiding the treacherous twinkles with the shade
of knitted brows, lest any watching him
should think him moved to have his son by him,
and proud like foolish fathers; but the girls
will be all smiles and flutter, and look round
elate as if no other girls before
had had a soldier brother. And old Will,
out of his corner by the vestry door,
will peer and blink and suck his grins in tight,
trying to mind the sermon and not think
what sport he has for me in the preserves.

Plenty of birds this year, my father writes;
we'll see next week, and--There's the long shrill yell!
Home! all but home!

Oh! there, between the trees,
that light, our house--they're waiting for me there.

Not yet!

I thought this time 'twas done at last,
the workings perfected, the life in it;
and there's the flaw again, the petty flaw,
the fretting small impossibility
that has to be made possible.

To work!
so many more months lost on a wrong tack;
and months and months may so be lost again,
who knows? until they swell a tale of years
counted by failures. No time to sit down
with folded arms to moan for the spent toil,
for on, on, glide the envious treacherous hours
that bring at last the night when none can work;
and I'll not die with my work unfulfilled.

It must perform my thought, it must awake,
this soulless whirring thing of springs and wheels,
and be a power among us. Aye, but how?
There it stands facing me, compact, precise,
the nice presentment of my long design,
and what is it? an accurate mockery,
and not my creature. Where's my secret hid,
the little easy secret which, once found,
will shew so palpable that the pleased world
shall presently believe it always knew?
Where is my secret? Oh, my aching brain!
Good God, have all the anxious ponderings,
all the laborious strain of hand and head,
all the night watches, all the stolen days
from fruitfuller tasks, all I have borne and done,
brought me no nearer solving?

Stolen days;
yes, from the little ones and grave pale wife
who should have every hour of mine made coin
to buy them sunshine. Stolen; and they lack all
save the bare needs which only paupers lack:
stolen; and cheerlessly the mother sits
over her dismal blinding stitchery,
and no quick smile of welcome parts her lips,
seeing me come; and quiet at their play
the children crowd, cooped in the unlovely home,
and envy tattered urchins out of doors
their merry life and playground of the streets.

Oh, if it were but my one self to spend!
but to doom them too with me! Never a thought
dawns first into the world but is a curse
on the rash finder; part of heaven's fire
filched to bestow on men, and for your pay
the vulture at your heart.

What should one choose?
or is there choice? A madness comes on you,
whose name is revelation: who has power
to check the passion of it, who in the world?
A revelation, yes; 'tis but a name
for knowledge ... and there perishes free-will,
for every man is slave of what he knows;
it is the soul of him, could you quench that
you leave the mere mechanic animal--
a sentient creature, true, and reasoning,
(because the clockwork in it's made for that),
but, like my creature there, its purport lacked,
so but its own abortive counterfeit.
We have our several purports; some to pace
the accustomed roads and foot down rampant weeds,
bearing mute custom smoothly on her course;
some difficultly to force readier paths,
or hew out passes through the wilderness;
and some belike to find the snuggest place,
and purr beside the fire. Each of his kind;
but can you change your kind? the lion caged
is still a lion, pipes us no lark's trills;
drive forth the useful brood hen from the yard,
she'll never learn the falcon's soar and swoop.
We must abye our natures; if they fit
too crossly to our hap the worse for us,
but who would pray (say such a prayer could serve)
"Let me become some other, not myself"?

And yet, and yet--Oh, why am I assigned
to this long maiming battle? Why to me
this blasting gift, this lightning of the gods
scorching the hand that wields it? why to me?
A lonely man, or dandled in the lap
of comfortable fortune, might with joy
hug the strange serpent blessing; to the one
it has no tooth, for gilded hands make gold
of all they touch, the other ...... is alone,
and has the right to suffer. Not for them
is doubt or dread; but I--Oh little ones
whose unsuspecting eyes pierce me with smiles!
Oh sad and brooding wife whose silent hopes
are all rebukes to mine!

Come, think it out;
traitor to them or traitor to the world;
is that the choice? Why then, they are my own,
given in my hand, looking to me for all,
and, for my destined present to the world,
being what it is, some one some fortunate day
will find it, or achieve it; if the world wait...
well, it has waited. Yet 'twere pitiful
that still and still, while to a thousand souls
life's irrecoverable swift to-day
becomes the futile yesterday, the world
go beggared of a birthright unaware,
and, (as if one should slake his thirst with blood
pricked from his own red veins, while at his hand
lies the huge hairy nut from whose rough bowl
he might quaff juicy milk and knows it not),
spend out so great a wealth of wasted strength
man upon man given to the imperious
unnecessary labour. How were that,
having made my honest bargain with the world
to serve its easier and accepted needs
for the due praise and pudding, keeping it,
like a wise servant, not to lose my place,
to note the enduring loss, and, adding up
its various mischiefs, score them as the price
of my reposeful fortunes? Why, do this,
and each starved blockhead dribbling out his life
on the continued toil would be my drudge,
and not one farthest comer of our earth
where hurrying traffic plies but would have voice
to reach my ears and twit me guilty to it.
But then, the wife and children: must they pine
in the bleak shade of frosty poverty,
because the man that should have cared for them
discerned a way to double wealth with wealth
and glut the maw of rank prosperity?

Traitor to them or traitor to the world:
a downright question that, and sounds well put,
and one that begs its answer, since we count
the nearer duty first to every man;
but there's another pungent clause to note...
that's traitor to myself. Has any man
the right of that? God puts a gift in you--
to your own hurt, we'll say, but what of that?--
He puts a gift in you, a seed to grow
to His fulfilment, germinant with your life,
and may you crush it out? And, say you do,
what is your remnant life? an empty husk,
or balked and blighted stem past hope of bloom.
Well, make the seed develope otherwise
and grow to your fulfilment wiselier planned:
but will that prosper? may the thistle say
"Let me blow smooth white lilies," or the wheat

"Let me be purple with enticing grapes"?
God says "Be that I bade, or else be nought,"
and what thing were the man to make that choice?
For me I dare not, were it for their sake,
and, for their sake, I dare not; could their good
grow out of my undoing? they with me,
and I with them, we are so interknit
that taint in me must canker into them
and my upholding holds them from the mire:
and so, as there are higher things than ease,
we must bear on together they and I.

And it may be to bear is all our part.
I have outpast the first fantastic hopes
that fluttered round my project at its birth,
outgrown them as the learning child outgrows
the picture A's and B's that lured him on;
I have forgotten honours, wealth, renown,
I see no bribe before me but that one,
my work's fruition. Yes, as we all, who feel
the dawn of a creative thought, discern
in the beginning that perfected end
which haply shall not be, I saw the end;
and my untried presumptuous eyes, befooled,
saw it at hand. How round each forward step
locked the delusive and decoying dreams!
and I seemed, while I sowed, still hurrying on
to touch the sudden fruit, the ripe choice fruit
to be garnered for my dear ones, mine for them:
but long since I have learned, in weariness,
in failures, and in toil, to put by dreams,
to put by hopes, and work, as the bird sings,
because God planned me for it. For I look
undazzled on the future, see the clouds,
and see the sunbeams, several, not one glow:
I know that I shall find my secret yet
and make my creature here another power
to change a world's whole life; but, that achieved,
whom will the world thank for it? Me perhaps;
perhaps some other, who, with after touch,
shall make the springs run easier: I have read
the lives of men like me who have so sought,
so found, then been forgotten, while there came
an apter man, maybe but luckier,
to add or alter, gave another shape,
made or displayed it feasible and sure,
and then the thing was his ... as the rare gem
is not called his who dug it from the mines,
but his who cut and set it in a ring.
It will be as it will be: I dare count
no better fortunes mine than from first days
the finders met with, men who, howsoe'er,
seekers and teachers, bring the world new gifts,
too new for any value. Well, so be it:
and now--No, I am over weary now,
and out of heart too: idleness to-night;
to-morrow all shall be begun again.
That lever, now, if--

Am I out of heart?
to work at once then! I'll not go to rest
with the desponding cramp clutching my heart:
a new beginning blots the failure out,
and sets one's thoughts on what's to be achieved,
letting what's lost go by. Come, foolish toy,
that should have been so much, let's see at least
what help you have to give me. Bye and bye
we'll have another like you, with the soul.

Spring Stornelli.

THE RIVULET.

OH clear smooth rivulet, creeping through our bridge
With backward waves that cling around the shore,
And is thy world beyond the dim blue ridge
More dear than this, or does it need thee more?
Oh lingering stream, upon thy ceaseless way
Glide to to-morrow; yet 'tis fair to-day:
Beyond the hills and haze to-morrows hide;
To-day is fair; glide lingering, ceaseless tide.

SPRING AND SUMMER.

And summer time is good; but at its heat
The fair poor blossoms wither for the fruit,
And song-birds go that made our valley sweet
With useless ecstasies, and the boughs are mute.
And I would keep the blossoms and the song,
And I would have it spring the whole year long:
And I would have my life a year-long spring
To never pass from hopes and blossoming.

THE PRIMROSE.

Dear welcome, sweet pale stars of hope and spring,
Young primroses, blithe with the April air;
My darlings, waiting for my gathering,
Sit in my bosom, nestle in my hair.
But, oh! the fairest laughs behind the brook,
I cannot have it, I can only look:
Oh happy primrose on the further beach,
One can but look on thee, one cannot reach.

LINNET AND LARK.

Oh buoyant linnet in the flakes of thorn,
Sing thy loud lay; for joy and song are one.
Oh skylark floating upwards into morn,
Pour out thy carolling music of the sun.
Sing, sing; be voices of the life-ful air,
Glad things that never knew the cage nor snare:
Be voices of the air, and fill the sky,
Glad things that have no heed of by-and-by.


Summer Stornelli.

THE BEES IN THE LIME.

AMID the thousand blossoms of the lime,
The gossip bees go humming to and fro:
And oh the busy joy of working time!
And oh the fragrance when the lime trees blow!
Take the sweet honeys deftly, happy bees,
And store them for the later days than these:
Store, happy bees, these honeys for the frost,
That sweetness of the blossom be not lost.

THE CORNFLOWER.

A field-plant in my sheltered garden bed,
And I have set it there to love it dear;
It makes blue flowers to match skies overhead,
Blue flowers for all the while the summer's here.
Sky-blooms that woke and budded with the wheat,
Ye last and make the livelong summer sweet:
Spread while the green wheat passes into gold,
Sky-blooms I planted in the garden-mould.

THE FLOWING TIDE.

The slow green wave comes curling from the bay
And leaps in spray along the sunny marge,
And steals a little more and more away,
And drowns the dulse, and lifts the stranded barge.
Leave me, strong tide, my smooth and yellow shore;
But the clear waters deepen more and more:
Leave me my pathway of the sands, strong tide;
Yet are the waves more fair than all they hide.

THE WHISPER.

Some one has said a whispered word to me;
The whisper whispers on within my ear.
Oh little word, hush, hush, and let me be;
Hush, little word, too vexing sweet to hear.
And, if it will not hush, what must I do?
The word was 'Love'; perchance the word was true:
And, if it will not hush, must I repine?
I am his love; perchance then he is mine.

THE HEART THAT LACKS ROOM.

I love him, and I love him, and I love:
Oh heart, my love goes welling o'er the brim.
He makes my light more than the sun above,
And what am I save what I am to him?
All will, all hope I have, to him belong;
Oh heart, thou art too small for love so strong:
Oh heart, grow large, grow deeper for his sake;
Oh love him better, heart, or thou wilt break!

THE LOVERS.

And we are lovers, lovers he and I:
Oh sweet dear name that angels envy us;
Lovers for now, lovers for by and by,
And God to hear us call each other thus.
Flow softly, river of our life, and fair;
We float together to the otherwhere:
Storm, river of our life, if storm must be,
We brunt thy tide together to that sea.

THE NIGHTINGALE.

From the dusk elm rings out a changing lay;
The human-hearted nightingale sings there.
Why not, like little minstrels of the day,
Sweet voice, fling only raptures on the air?
'Tis that she's kin to us and has our woe,
Something that's lost or something yet to know:
'Tis that she's kin to us and sings our bliss,
Loving, to know love is yet more than this.

THE STORM.

Storm in the dimness of the purpled sky,
And the sharp flash leaps out from cloud to cloud:
But the blue, lifted, corner spreads more high,
Brightness, and brightness, bursts the gathered shroud.
Aye, pass, black storm, thou hadst thy threatening hour;
Now.the freed beams make rainbows of the shower:
Now the freed sunbeams break into the air;
Pass, and the sky forgets thee and is fair.

BABY EYES.

Blue baby eyes, they are so sweetest sweet,
And yet they have not learned love's dear replies;
They beg not smiles, nor call for me, nor greet,
But clear, unshrinking, note me with surprise.
But, eyes that have your father's curve of lid,
You'll learn the look that he keeps somewhere hid:
You'll smile, grave baby eyes, and I shall see
The look your father keeps for only me.

THE BINDWEED.

In all fair hues from white to mingled rose,
Along the hedge the clasping bindweed flowers;
And when one chalice shuts a new one blows,
There's blooming for all minutes of the hours.
Along the hedge beside the trodden lane
Where day by day we pass and pass again:
Rosy and white along the busy mile,
A flower for every step and all the while.


Autumn Stornelli.

THE HEATHER.

THE leagues of heather lie on moor and hill,
And make soft purple dimness and red glow;
No butterfly may call the blithe wind chill
That brings the ruddy heather-bells a-blow.
The song-birds half forget the world is fair,
And pipe no lays because the heather's there:
Oh foolish birds that have no joyous lay,
With hill and moor a garden ground to-day!

LATE ROSES.

The swallows went last week, but 'twas too soon;
For, look, the sunbeams streaming on their eaves;
And, look, my rose, a very child of June,
Spreading its crimson coronet of leaves.
Was it too late, my rose, to bud and blow?
For when the summer wanes her roses go:
Bloom, rose, there are more roses yet to wake,
With hearts of sweetness for the summer's sake.

THE BRAMBLES.

So tall along the dusty highway row,
So wide on the free heath the brambles spread;
Here's the pink bud, and here the full white blow,
And here the black ripe berry, here the red.
Bud, flower, and fruit, among the mingling thorns;
And dews to feed them in the autumn morns:
Fruit, flower, and bud, together, thou rich tree!
And oh but life's a happy time for me!

WE TWO.

The road slopes on that leads us to the last,
And we two tread it softly, side by side;
'Tis a blithe count the milestones we have passed,
Step fitting step, and each of us for guide.
My love, and I thy love, our road is fair,
And fairest most because the other's there:
Our road is fair, adown the harvest hill,
But fairest that we two are we two still.

WE TWO.

We two, we two! the children's smiles are dear—
Thank God how dear the bonny children's smiles!—
But 'tis we two among our own ones here,
We two along life's way through all the whiles.
To think if we had passed each other by;
And he not he apart, and I not I!
And oh to think if we had never known;
And I not I and he not he alone!

THE APPLE ORCHARD.

The apple branches bend with ripening weight,
The apple branches rosy as with flowers;
You'd think red giant fuchsias blooming late
Within this sunny orchard ground of ours.
Give us your shade, fair fountain trees of fruits;
We rest upon the mosses at your roots:
Fair fountain trees of fruits, drop windfalls here;
Lo, ripening store for all the coming year.


Winter Stornelli.

THE SNOWS.

THE green and happy world is hidden away;
Cold, cold, the ghostly snows lie on its breast;
The white miles reach the shadows wan and grey
'Neath wan grey skies unchanged from east to west.
Sleep on beneath the snows, chilled, barren, earth;
There are no blossoms for thy winter dearth:
Break not nor melt, fall still from heaven, wan snows;
Hide the spoiled earth, and numb her to repose.

THE HOLLY.

'Tis a brave tree. While round its boughs in vain
The warring wind of January bites and girds,
It holds the clusters of its crimson grain,
A winter pasture for the shivering birds.
Oh patient holly, that the children love,
No need for thee of smooth blue skies above:
Oh green strong holly, shine amid the frost;
Thou dost not lose one leaf for sunshine lost.

THE GRAVEYARD.

They sleep here well who have forgotten to-day,
They weep not while we weep, nor wake each morn
To bitter new surprise, as mourners may
That knew not in their rest they were forlorn.
Calm graveyard, 'tis more pleasant to sit here
Than where loud life pretends its eager cheer:
Calm graveyard, where he waits and I shall be,
Thou hast the spot of earth most dear to me.

THE FROZEN RIVER.

Dead stream beneath the icy silent blocks
That motionless stand soddening into grime,
Thy fretted falls hang numb, frost pens the locks;
Dead river, when shall be thy waking time?
'Not dead;' the river spoke and answered me,
'My burdened current, hidden, finds the sea'
'Not dead, not dead;' my heart replied at length,
'The frozen river holds a hidden strength.'

THE DAUGHTER.

Go forth, my darling, in the wreath and veil;
My hand shall place them for thee; so goodbye.
Thou hast Love's rose, and tend it without fail;
It withers, dear, if lovers let it lie.
Go, my own singing bird, and be his now;
And I am more than half as glad as thou.
Ah me! the singing birds that were our own
Fly forth and mate: and 'tis long life alone.

WE TWO.

We two that could not part are parted long;
He in the far-off Heaven, and I to wait.
A fair world once, all blossom-time and song;
But to be lonely tires, and I live late.
To think we two have not a word to change:
And one without the other here is strange!
To think we two have nothing now to share:
I wondering here, and he without me there!

WE TWO.

We two, we two! we still are linked and nigh:
He could not have forgotten in any bliss;
Surely he feels my being yet; and I,
I have no thought but seems some part of his.
Oh love gone out of reach of yearning eyes,
Our hearts can meet to gather-in replies:
Oh love past touch of lip and clasp of hand,
Thou canst not be too far to understand.

THE FLOWERS TO COME.

The drift is in the hollows of the hill,
Yet primrose leaves uncurl beneath the hedge;
Frosts pierce the dawn, and the north wind blows chill,
Yet snowdrop spikelets rim the garden edge.
Dear plants that will make bud in coming spring,
Ye were not for one only blossoming:
More than one blossoming for all fair flowers;
And God keeps mine till spring is somewhere ours.