Many Will Love You

Many will love you; you were made for love;
For the soft plumage of the unruffled dove
Is not so soft as your caressing eyes.
You will love many; for the winds that veer
Are not more prone to shift their compass, dear,
Than your quick fancy flies.

Many will love you; but I may not, no;
Even though your smile sets all my life aglow,
And at your fairness all my senses ache.
You will love many; but not me, my dear,
Who have no gift to give you but a tear
Sweet for your sweetness' sake.

Love And The Muse

STRUCK down by Love in cruel mood,
That I ever met Love I rued,
Bleeding and bruised I lay,
Wet was my face as with the salt sea spray.

A lovely Muse on sparkling wing
A painless elemental thing,
Free as bird did float,
Swift flames of song light leaping from her throat.

And being more pitiful than Love
Stooped glowing from her path above,
And an unearthly kiss
Laid on my lips: Muse, answer, what is this?

In dreams or drunkenness divine
My life is all transfused with thine;
Like bubbles swept along,
My tears dissolve on cataracts of song.

Mystery Of Mysteries

BEFORE the abyss of the unanswering grave
Each mortal stands at last aloof, alone,
With his beloved one turned as deaf as stone,
However rebel love may storm and rave.
No will, however strong, avails to save
The wrecked identity knit to our own;
We may not hoard one treasured look or tone,
Dissolved in foam on Death's dissolving wave.

Is this the End? This handful of brown earth
For all releasing elements to take
And free for ever from the bonds of birth?
Or will true life from Life's disguises break,
Called to that vast confederacy of minds
Which casts all flesh as chaff to all the winds?

Mother of the unfortunate, mystic form,
Who calm, immutable, like oldest fate,
Sittest, where through the sombre swinging gate
Moans immemorial life's encircling storm.
My heart, sore stricken by grief's leaden arm,
Lags like a weary pilgrim knocking late,
And sigheth--toward thee staggering with its weight--
Behold Love conquered by thy son, the worm!

He stung him mid the roses' purple bloom,
The Rose of roses, yea, a thing so sweet,
Haply to stay blind Change's flying feet,
And stir with pity the unpitying tomb.
Here, take him, cold, cold, heavy and void of breath!
Nor me refuse, O Mother almighty, death.

Would we but love what will not pass away!
The sun that on each morning shines as clear
As when it rose first on the world's first year;
The fresh green leaves that rustle on the spray.
The sun will shine, the leaves will be as gay
When graves are full of all our hearts held dear,
When not a soul of those who loved us here,
Not one, is left us--creatures of decay.

Yea, love the Abiding in the Universe
Which was before, and will be after us.
Nor yet for ever hanker and vainly cry
For human love--the beings that change or die;
Die--change--forget: to care so is a curse,
Yet cursed we'll be rather than not care thus.

Peace, throbbing heart, nor let us shed one tear
O'er this late love's unseasonable glow;
Sweet as a violet blooming in the snow,
The posthumous offspring of the widowed year
That smells of March when all the world is sere,
And, while around the hurtling sea-winds blow--
Which twist the oak and lay the pine tree low--
Stands childlike in the storm and has no fear.

Poor helpless blossom orphaned of the sun,
How could it thus brave winter's rude estate?
Oh love, more helpless, why bloom so late,
Now that the flower-time of the year is done?
Since thy dear course must end when scarce begun,
Nipped by the cold touch of relentless fate.

ONCE we played at love together--
Played it smartly, if you please;
Lightly, as a windblown feather,
Did we stake a heart apiece.

Oh, it was delicious fooling!
In the hottest of the game,
Without thought of future cooling,
All too quickly burned Life's flame.

In this give-and-take of glances,
Kisses sweet as honey dews,
When we played with equal chances,
Did you win, or did I lose?

Was your heart then hurt to bleeding,
In the ardour of the throw?
Was it then I lost, unheeding,
Lost my heart so long ago?

Who shall say? The game is over.
Of us two who loved in fun,
One lies low beneath the clover,
One lies lonely in the sun.

The Music-Lesson

A thrush alit on a young-leaved spray,
And, lightly clinging,
It rocked in its singing
As the rapturous notes rose loud and gay;
And with liquid shakes,
And trills and breaks,
Rippled though blossoming bough of May.

Like a ball of fluff, with a warm brown throat
And throbbing bosom,
'Mid the apple-blossom,
The new-fledged nestling sat learning by rote
To echo the song
So tender and strong,
As it feebly put in its frail little note.

O blissfullest lesson amid the green grove!
The low wind crispeth
The leaves, where lispeth
The shy little bird with its parent above;
Two voices that mingle
And make but a single
Hymn of rejoicing in praise of their love.

THE young birds shy twitter
In hedges and bowers,
Fields brighten and glitter
With dewdrops and flowers.
Over flood, over fallow,
Impelled by old yearning,
The nest-building swallow
Exults at returning;
For dark days and hoary
Are routed and over,
Dark Winter is gone;
Resplendent in glory,
The earth meets her lover,
Her bridegroom the Sun.

Must I alone sorrow,
Despairingly languish,
Breaks never a morrow
On the night of my anguish?
The jubilant gladness
In bird, beam, and blossom,
But deepens the sadness
That weighs on my bosom.
Oh, Spring, in whose azure
Wake follow the starling,
The daisy, the dove;
Sweet spendthrift of pleasure,
Brings also my darling,
Oh bring me my love!

We Met As Strangers

We met as strangers on life's lonely way,
And yet it seemed we knew each other well;
There was no end to what thou hadst to say,
Or to the thousand things I found to tell.
My heart, long silent, at thy voice that day
Chimed in my breast like to a silver bell.

How much we spoke, and yet still left untold
Some secret half revealed within our eyes:
Didst thou not love me once in ages old?
Had I not called thee with importunate cries,
And, like a child left sobbing in the cold,
Listened to catch from far thy fond replies?

We met as strangers, and as such we part;
Yet all my life seems leaving me with thine;
Ah, to be clasped once only heart to heart,
If only once to feel that thou wert mine!
These lips are locked, and yet I know thou art
That all in all for which my soul did pine.

On A Torso Of Cupid

PEACH trees and Judas trees,
Poppies and roses,
Purple anemones
In garden closes!
Lost in the limpid sky,
Shrills a gay lark on high;
Lost in the covert's hush,
Gurgles a wooing thrush.

Look, where the ivy weaves,
Closely embracing,
Tendrils of clinging leaves
Round him enlacing,
With Nature's sacredness
Clothing the nakedness,
Clothing the marble of
This poor, dismembered love.

Gone are the hands whose skill
Aimed the light arrow,
Strong once to cure or kill,
Pierce to the marrow;
Gone are the lips whose kiss
Held hives of honeyed bliss;
Gone too the little feet,
Overfond, overfleet.

O helpless god of old,
Maimed mid the tender
Blossoming white and gold
Of April splendour!
Shall we not make thy grave
Where the long grasses wave;
Hide thee, O headless god,
Deep in the daisied sod?

Here thou mayst rest at last
After life's fever;
After love's fret is past
Rest thee for ever.
Nay, broken God of Love,
Still must thou bide above
While, left for woe or weal,
Thou has a heart to feel.
Villa Mattei.

I was an Arab,
I loved my horse;
Swift as an arrow
He swept the course.

Sweet as a lamb
He came to hand;
He was the flower
Of all the land.

Through lonely nights
I rode afar;
God lit His lights--
Star upon star.

God's in the desert;
His breath the air:
Beautiful desert,
Boundless and bare!

Free as the wild wind,
Light as a foal;
Ah, there is room there
To stretch one's soul.

Far reached my thought,
Scant were my needs:
A few bananas
And lotus seeds.

Sparkling as water
Cool in the shade,
Ibrahim's daughter,
Beautiful maid.

Out of thy Kulleh,
Fairest and first,
Give me to drink
Quencher of thirst.

I am athirst, girl;
Parched with desire,
Love in my bosom
Burns as a fire.

Green thy oasis,
Waving with Palms;
Oh, be no niggard,
Maid, with thy alms.

Kiss me with kisses,
Buds of thy mouth,
Sweeter than Cassia
Fresh from the South.

Bind me with tresses,
Clasp with a curl;
And in caresses
Stifle me, girl.

I was an Arab
Ages ago!
Hence this home-sickness
And all my woe.

The Mystic's Vision

Ah! I shall kill myself with dreams!
These dreams that softly lap me round
Through trance-like hours in which meseems
That I am swallowed up and drowned;
Drowned in your love, which flows o'er me
As o'er the seaweed flows the sea.

In watches of the middle night,
'Twixt vesper and 'twist matin bell,
With rigid arms and straining sight,
I wait within my narrow cell;
With muttered prayers, suspended will,
I wait your advent--statue-still.

Across the convent garden walls
The wind blows from the silver seas;
Black shadow of the cypress falls
Between the moon-meshed olive-trees;
Sleep-walking from their golden bowers,
Flit disembodied orange flowers.

And in God's consecrated house,
All motionless from head to feet,
My heart awaits her heavenly Spouse,
As white I lie on my white sheet;
With body lulled and soul awake,
I watch in anguish for your sake.

And suddenly, across the gloom,
The naked moonlight sharply swings;
A Presence stirs within the room,
A breath of flowers and hovering wings:--
Your presence without form and void,
Beyond all earthly joys enjoyed.

My heart is hushed, my tongue is mute,
My life is centred in your will;
You play upon me like a lute
Which answers to its master's skill,
Till passionately vibrating,
Each nerve becomes a throbbing string.

Oh, incommunicably sweet!
No longer aching and apart,
As rain upon the tender wheat,
You pour upon my thirsty heart;
As scent is bound up in the rose,
Your love within my bosom glows.

W.K.C.--3rd MARCH, 1879.

'A free man thinks of nothing so little as of death; and his wisdom is a meditation, not of death, but of life.' --Spinoza.

'DRAW back the curtain, wife,' he said;
And, dying, raised his feeble head,
As all his gathered soul leaped sheer
Into his waning eyes, and yearned
After the journeying sun which turned
Towards that other hemisphere.

Then, as its incandescent bulk
Sank slowly, like the foundering hulk
Of some lone burning ship at sea,
His life set with it--bright as brief--
In that invincible belief
Of Man's august supremacy.

Truth's vanward hero! Calmly brave
Fronting the dumb unfathomed grave
With unintimidated eyes;
Though not for him, beyond its night,
Resuscitated Hope alight
Prescient, on peaks of Paradise.

And like some solemn parting word
From one belovèd friend on board
Bound for some undiscovered shore,
To one who stands with straining gaze
To catch the last look of a face
Which he may see, ah never more--

So, ere he drifted to the deep
Unknowable, the utter sleep,
Out, out beyond life's harbour bar,
He whispered, 'Perfect! no one knows
How perfect!' and his eyes did close
Even like a sun-extinguished star.

His eyes did close: I held his hand:
I loved, so came to understand
The inmost working of his mind;
Yea, in that clasp, I know not how,
Did not his life of life then flow
Through mine, while mine was left behind?

I know not how, and yet it seems
As in some prank of shifting dreams,
That it was I who died, not he:
And then again, I know not how,
I feel new powers upheave and glow,
And all his life that stirs in me.

I am no longer what I was;
My nature is the pictured glass,
Where he who lived lives on and on;
All ye who loved him, ye may see
His spirits still investing me,
As moonlight but reflects the sun.

For ever deepening grows his sway:
A voice cries in me night and day:
'He'll never die to me, his wife;
In our strong love death hath no part;
I hold and fold him in my heart--
There he shall live while I have life.'

Thou art the goal for which my spirit longs;
As dove on dove,
Bound for one home, I send thee all my songs
With all my love.

Thou art the haven with fair harbour lights;
Safe locked in thee,
My heart would anchor after stormful nights
Alone at sea.

Thou art the rest of which my life is fain,
The perfect peace;
Absorbed in thee the world, with all its pain
And toil, would cease.

Thou art the heaven to which my soul would go!
O dearest eyes,
Lost in your light you would turn hell below
To Paradise.

Thou all in all for which my heart-blood yearns!
Yea, near or far--
Where the unfathomed ether throbs and burns
With star on star,

Or where, enkindled by the fires of June,
The fresh earth glows,
Blushing beneath the mystical white moon
Through rose on rose--

Thee, thee, I see, thee feel in all live things,
Beloved one;
In the first bird which tremulously sings
Ere peep of sun;

In the last nestling orphaned in the hedge,
Rocked to and fro,
When dying summer shudders in the sedge,
And swallows go;

When roaring snows rush down the mountain-pass,
March floods with rills
Or April lightens through the living grass
In daffodils;

When poppied cornfields simmer in the heat
With tare and thistle,
And, like winged clouds above the mellow wheat,
The starlings whistle;

When stained with sunset the wide moorlands glare
In the wild weather,
And clouds with flaming craters smoke and flare
Red o'er red heather;

When the bent moon, on frostbound midnights waking,
Leans to the snow
Like some world-mother whose deep heart is breaking
O'er human woe.

As the round sun rolls red into the ocean,
Till all the sea
Glows fluid gold, even so life's mazy motion
Is dyed with thee:

For as the wave-like years subside and roll,
O heart's desire,
Thy soul glows interfused within my soul,
A quenchless fire.

Yea, thee I feel, all storms of life above,
Near though afar;
O thou my glorious morning star of love,
And evening star.

A Bridal In The Bois De Boulogne.

HOW the lilacs, the lilacs are glowing and blowing!
And white through the delicate verdure of May
The blossoming boughs of the hawthorn are showing,
Like beautiful brides in their bridal array;
With cobwebs for laces, and dewdrops for pearls,
Fine as a queen's dowry for workaday girls.

In an aisle of Acacias enlaced and enlacing,
Where the silvery sunlight tunnels the shade,
Where snowflakes of butterflies airily chasing
Each other in trios flash down the arcade:

Arrayed in white muslin the wedded bride
Looks fresh as a daisy, the groom by her side.

The guests flitted round her with light-hearted laughter;
They hunted the slipper, they kissed the ring;
Of days gone before and of days coming after
They thought of no more than the bird on the wing.
Were the loves and the laughter and lilacs of May,
With the sunshine above, not enough for the day?

And the lilacs, the lilacs are blowing and glowing!
They pluck them by handfuls and pile them in a mass;
And the sap of the Springtide is rising and flowing
Through the veins of the greenwood, the blades of the grass;
Up, up to the last leaf a dance on the tree,
It leaps like a fountain abundant and free.

The blackbirds are building their nests in the bushes,
And whistle at work, as the workpeople do;
The trees swing their censers, the wind comes in gushes
Of delicate scent mixed of honey and dew.
Now loud and now loud through the garrulous trees
A burst of gay music is blown with the breeze.

And the girls and the boys from the faubourgs of Paris,
The premature gamins as wise as fourscore;
The vain little Margots and the wide-awake Harrys,
Surprised into childhood, grew simple once more,
And vied with the cuckoo as, shouting at play,
They dashed through the thickets and darted away.

Ah, fair is the forest's green glimmering splendour,
The leaves of the lime tree a network of light;
And fringing long aisles of acacia, a tender
And delicate veiling of virginal white,
Where, framed in the gladdening flowers of May,
The bride and her bridesmaids beam gladder than they.

They have crowned her brown tresses with hawthorn in blossom,
They have made her a necklace of daisies for pearls;
They have set the white lily against her white bosom,
Enthroned on the grass mid a garland of girls;
With the earth for a footstool, the sky-roof above,
She is queen of the Springtide and Lady of Love.

Oh, the lilacs, the lilacs are glowing and blowing!
They pluck them by bushels as blithely they go
Through the green, scented dusk where the hawthorn is showing
A luminous whiteness of blossoming snow.
And the Sun ere he goes gives the Moon half his light,
As a lamp to lead Love on the bridal night.

I.
SHE stood against the Orient sun,
Her face inscrutable for light;
A myriad larks in unison
Sang o'er her, soaring out of sight.

A myriad flowers around her feet
Burst flame-like from the yielding sod,
Till all the wandering airs were sweet
With incense mounting up to God.

A mighty rainbow shook, inclined
Towards her, from the Occident,
Girdling the cloud-wrack which enshrined
Half the light-bearing firmament.

Lit showers flashed golden o'er the hills,
And trees flung silver to the breeze,
And, scattering diamonds, fleet-foot rills
Fled laughingly across the leas.

Yea Love, the skylarks laud but thee,
And writ in flowers thine awful name;
Spring is thy shade, dread Ecstasy,
And life a brand which feeds thy flame.



II.
WINDING all my life about thee,
Let me lay my lips on thine;
What is all the world without thee,
Mine--oh mine!

Let me press my heart out on thee,
Crush it like a fiery vine,
Spilling sacramental on thee
Love's red wine.

Let thy strong eyes yearning o'er me
Draw me with their force divine;
All my soul has gone before me
Clasping thine.

Irresistibly I follow,
As wherever we may run
Runs our shadow, as the swallow
Seeks the sun.

Yea, I tremble, swoon, surrender
All my spirit to thy sway,
As a star is drowned in splendour
Of the day.


III.
I CHARGE you, O winds of the West, O winds with the wings of the dove,
That ye blow o'er the brows of my Love, breathing low that I sicken for love.

I charge you, O dews of the Dawn, O tears of the star of the morn,
That ye fall at the feet of my love with the sound of one weeping forlorn.

I charge you, O birds of the Air, O birds flying home to your nest,
That ye sing in his ears of the joy that for ever has fled from my breast.

I charge you, O flowers of the Earth, O frailest of things, and most fair,
That ye droop in his path as the life in me shrivels consumed by despair.

O Moon, when he lifts up his face, when he seeth the waning of thee,
A memory of her who lies wan on the limits of life let it be.

Many tears cannot quench, nor my sighs extinguish, the flames of love's fire,
Which lifteth my heart like a wave, and smites it, and breaks its desire.

I rise like one in a dream when I see the red sun flaring low,
That drags me back shuddering from sleep each morning to life with its woe.

I go like one in a dream, unbidden my feet know the way
To that garden where love stood in blossom with the red and white hawthorn of May.

The song of the throstle is hushed, and the fountain is dry to its core,
The moon cometh up as of old; she seeks, but she finds him no more.

The pale-faced, pitiful moon shines down on the grass where I weep,
My face to the earth, and my breast in an anguish ne'er soothed into sleep.

The moon returns, and the spring, birds warble, trees burst into leaf,
But Love once gone, goes for ever, and all that endures is the grief.

When ich Dich liebe was geht es Dich an?

I.
THE air is full of the peal of bells,
The rhythmical pealing of marriage bells;
But athwart and above their ringing--
Throbbing clear like the light of a star
Lost in the sunrise--I hear afar
The skylark's jubilant singing.

II.
The clouds all woollen and white on high,
Like flocks of heavenly sheep go by,
Go through heaven's sapphire meadows;
While here on the earth's green meadows, deep
In sapphire flowers, our earthly sheep
Loll in their loitering shadows.

III.
Come, we will sit by the wayside here,
They must cross this field to the chapel, dear,
The loved by the side for her lover.
Grey, through the glimmer of vernal green,
Its time-worn tower may just be seen
Through the yews which curtain it over.

IV.
Nay, little brother, why should I pine?
Dare a violet ask that the sun should shine,
The shining sun shine for it solely?
Lowly it lifteth its meek blue eye,
And yields up its soul to the sun on high,
Nor asks for love, loving so wholly.

V.
He passed by the garden where, snow-white and red,
I tended the flowers which give us our bread,
And watered my lilies and roses;
He passed and repassed both early and late,
And lingering, often would lean on the gate
While I tied for him one of my posies.

VI.
Day after day would he pass this way,
And his smiling was sweet as the flowers of May,
Or the scent of the bee-haunted clover;
And a softer flame seemed to light up his eye
Than the lily-white moon's in the rose-hued sky,
Ere the blush of the May-day is over.

VII.
Aye, day after day he would stop on his way,
While the trees were in leaf and the meadows were gay,
And the curled little lambs were grazing;
As he went, or returned in the waning light
From the smoke-capped city whose lamps by night
Turn the black clouds red with their blazing.

VIII.
It's a year to-day when the young sun sets
Since I gave him that first bunch of violets
From the root on the grave of our mother.
Though thou seest them not with the bodily eye,
The language of flowers much better than I
I know that thou knowest, my brother.

IX.
Violets--then golden daffodils
Which the light of the sun like a wine-cup fills--
Tall tulips like flames upspringing--
Golden-brown wallflowers bright as his locks--
Marigolds--balsams--and perfumed stocks
Whose scent's like a blackbird's singing.

X.
You see, my darling, I never forget!
Aye, those were your own very words--ere yet
Our father lost his all in yon city,
Where the people, they say, in their struggle for gold,
Become like wild beasts, and the feeble and old
Are trampled upon without pity.

XI.
Poor father was better to-day: for the smile
Of the sun seemed to gladden him too for awhile
As he sat by the bright little casement,
With buttercups heaped on his knees without stint,
Which, deeming them childishly fresh from the mint,
He counted in chuckling amazement.

XII.
The air is full of the peal of bells--
The rhythmical pealing of marriage bells!
And there floats o'er the fields, o'er the fallows,
Borne on the wind with the wind-blown chimes,
From the old house hidden in older limes,
A chatter of maidens and swallows.

XIII.
Ah, give me the flowers!--the last year was all
In tune with the flowers from the spring to the fall,
And with singing of birds in the bowers;
And once--ah, look not so angry, dear!--
He whispered so softly I scarce could hear,
'You yourself are the flower of all flowers!'

XIV.
But oh, when the wind was loud in the trees,
When the fluttering petals snowed down on the leas,
And the dim sun went out like an ember,
He stood by the gate all drenched with the mist,
And I gave him my last Christmas rose, which he kissed
For the last time that last of November.

XV.
Say, could he help if a hope as sweet
As the wild thyme had sprouted under his feet?
If his face in my heart is enfolden,
As the sun-smit globes of the summer rain
Reflect and hold and refract again
The sun, the eternally golden.

XVI.
He cometh, he cometh, oh brother, there!
Ah would that you saw the glint of his hair,
For he looks like that saint in the story
Whom you loved so to hear of in days of old,
Till he lit up your dreams with his curls of gold,
Exhaling a mystical glory.

XVII.
The unseen wings of the morning air
Fan his brow and ruffle his hair
As he steps with a stately measure;
White daisies under his feet are spread,
White butterflies hover above his head,
White clouds high up in the azure:

XVIII.
Pelt him with sunlit April rain,
Rain which ripens the earth-hid grain,
Which brings up the grass and the heather!
Hark at the peal of the bridal bells,
How their musical chiming swells and swells
As they enter the church door together.

XIX.
Let us go hence now--'tis over--the twain
One will they be when they pass here again:
All my flowers in their pathway I scatter;
Though he forget me as yesterday's rose,
My heart with a sweet tender feeling o'erflows:
If I love him, to whom can it matter?

XX.
Yea, let us go now; the stile, love, is here:
Henceforth I live but for thee. What! a tear
Splashed on thy hand? Nay, a drop from the shower
That has passed over, for yon, on that dark
Ominous cloud, dearest brother, the arc
Of the Lord's bow now breaks into flower.

OH torrent, roaring in thy giant fall,
And thund'ring grandly o'er th' opposing blocks,
Thy voice, far louder than the lion's call,
Through trackless forests shakes the heart of rocks,
Runs through the marrow of the earth with shocks,
Lashes the clouds with terror, for they fly
Along the high wide blue with streaming locks,
And round thee foam white dazzling flashes high
And with forked water-flames half licks the central sky.

Oh, what a storm of waters! Oh, what chasms
Of foam! what seething hills! what whirling rain!
Billows on billows press, though torn by spasms;
Wounded and bleeding, yet defying pain!
They grappled with the stones, that gnash in vain
Their cruel teeth, for smarting wounds they brave,
And toss in scorn their wildly flowing mane,
When with exulting cries big wave on wave
Rolls with a mighty sweep o'er a slain foeman's grave.

Roll on, great torrent, with triumphal song,
Through caverned cliff, through rock and mountain roll;
Force all the barriers that around thee throng,
Thou know'st th' eternal ocean for thy goal.
Hence thine impetuous rush, and roar, and roll;
Hence thy wild heavings as thou flow'st amain;
Hence thy far-reaching and tempestuous call
For stream and river, brook and rill and rain,
Thou on thy Titan breast would'st carry to the main.

Roll on! The heavens are with thee, for they fling
Their lovely rainbows round thy gleaming brow;
Rainbows, that like the crown of heroes cling
For ever round thee with their magic glow;
Or like the wondrous halo which will flow
Around the martyr's head; for those sweet hues,
They hover round thee in thy weal and woe,
Like love, that with its tender tears bedews
And heals the bitter pain of ev'ry earthly bruise!

Roll on! with a white heat upon thy way!
Lo yon, a little tiny woodland bird
Flits on wet wing through all the surf and spray,
And settles on a jagged rock unscared,
Round whose grim base a billowy din is heard;
A bright amazèd ray from its black eyes
It darts around, and listens not afeared--
Then diamond-powdered to the woods it flies,
And sings to forest ears the mighty melodies.

E'en thus thou art! for that Titanic stream
But a material symbol was of thee!
A dim reflection of thy being did seem
Thou man, high-souled as son of man can be!
Into whose mind, vast, noble, pure, and free,
Flash awful revelations light-like in:
Unveiling spiritual laws to thee;
Great central truths, that glow all life within,
That move the nations on, and make the planets spin.

Thou hero! for through prejudice's walls,
That lock up earth against the quick'ning floods,
And 'gainst the fresh regenerating falls
Of young ideas, that in sprouting mood
Seethe like new wine, stirred by the grape's hot blood,
In the old bottles; thou, oh, brave and bold!
Didst force thy way, crushing night's deathly brood,
As George the sainted, in the days of old--
The dragon, who beneath his footstep writhing roll'd.

Dragons, alas! still darken the green earth,
War with the good, the beautiful, the wise;
From gulfs of ancient night they've issued forth,
And with their shadowy wings blot out the skies;
Old creeds that gasp forth curses, tyrannies
All foul with feeding on their own decay,
Old cramping forms, and crippling social lies,
Whose venomous breathing with corruption slay,
Like loathsome rattlesnakes that glut upon their prey.

But thou assail'st them, fearless, though they spurt
Their reeking poison in thy smarting face;
And careless of thy bruises and thy hurt,
Thou still press'st on with an undaunted pace;
A bold path-finder for the coming race,
And in thy faith, strong as the morning star,
Piercing the welt'ring clouds with lucent rays;
Thy voice, a light above time's din and war,
Proclaimeth to mankind the rosy dawn afar!

Thou martyr! for the world it knows thee not,
Scoffs at thee, scorns thee, rails and laughs and sneers;
With barbèd darts embitters thy hard lot,
As oft of old to prophets and to seers;
With its bleared sight the veil it cannot pierce,
And see the future rise upon the days!
Thus persecutes with hatred blind and fierce,
And, 'stead of crowns plucked from the living bays,
It binds thy brows with thorns--thorns that will turn to rays!

Still from thy heart's vast deeps the shouts arise,
And swell along, a rushing lava stream--
A lava stream of burning melodies,
Shaking thy brethren from a sluggish dream,
To strive and be the thing they fain would seem;
With thee, false custom's cramping bounds to leap,
To trust the rising of the virgin beam,
And at thy call through death and danger sweep
Towards the free, the pure, the renovating deep.

And still around thee, thro' the battle's roar,
Shimmers in splendour and unfading bloom,
Brighter than moonlight on the seething shore,
Sweeter than roses clust'ring round the tomb,
Born of the struggle with the fatal gloom;
A subtle gleam, fleeting 'mid tears and ruth,
A dewy prophecy of days to come,
When one great rainbow, love, and light and truth,
Encircle will the world with an eternal youth!

But I, behold, like to the tiny thing,
The forest bird; I feel a magic spell,
That draws me strongly on uncertain wing
Away from all the violet woodland smell,
To hear the words that from thy spirit well:
Enchained, entranced, oh! let me list, while flame
And dazzling light in billows round me swell;
Then flying back to shades from whence I came
I will heroic deeds, prophetic words, proclaim.

Echoes Of Spring

I.
I WALK about in driving snow,
And drizzling rain, splashed o'er and o'er;
No sign that radiant spring e'en now
Stands at the threshold of the door.

No sign that fragrant violets burn
To burst the ground and quicken forth;
No sign that swallow flights return,
To gladden all the serious north.

But in my breast--what flutterings here!
What bursts of song! what twitt'rings blest!
Sure the first swallow of the year
Within my heart has built her nest.


II.
Oft on the gleaming April days,
When skies are soft, and winds are warm,
And in the air a subtle charm,
And on the hill a flight of rays;

When silver clouds slide through the blue,
Spreading a pure, transparent wing,
And all the budding branches ring
With blithesome birds, that warbling woo;

Beneath a pear tree's shade I lay,
Deep bedded in the long thick grass,
And heard the twitt'ring swallow pass,
And grasshoppers at endless play.

I knew, though flowers mine eyes did screen,
That butterflies danced in the light;
For, breaking sunbeams in their flight,
They flashed their shadows on the green.

And gazing up, in dreamful ease,
Where quiv'ring frail on shivery sprays,
The blossoms mix a milky maze,
What hum of golden-girted bees!

So lily-white, the tree, behold,
Seems set on fire by burnished lights,
And shoal on honeying shoal alights,
And turns the snowy boughs to gold.

Thus on my spirit--music-fraught,
Burst swarms of glimm'ring melodies,
And like the yellow-banded bees,
Make honey of my flutt'ring thought.


III.
Sometimes on my soul will throng
Such a blossom-burst of song,
That I cannot seize it all,
Letting sweetest measures fall.

Thus a child feels--sudden sunk
On a crowding violet bank,
And delighted and amazed,
Gathers in a flushèd haste.

Gathers them so fast and fleet,
Little fingers cannot meet
O'er the lot; and swifter still
Than they cull, the wealth they spill.

To that sweets o'erflooded nook,
Casting back one longing look,
At the last it takes away
But one little odorous spray.

Yet through many a day and night,
Flinging back the fragrant sight,
Cleaves to face, and hands, and feet,
All the woodland's violets sweet.


IV.
Fain would I sing of each sweet sight and sound,
Of fleeting odours wheeling round and round,
Of sunbeams dancing on the virgin grass,
Of flocks of fleecy clouds that glimmer as they pass.

Of larks, that lost in the blue ether float,
Of the weird blackbird's dream--enchanted note!
While the glad hedges palpitate with song,
That drops like murm'ring rain the dewy fields among.

Of blooming bushes and of budding trees,
Of flaming flowers, dotting the grassy leas,
Of glowing pools and of the babbling rills,
That flash through azure mists, slumb'ring on folded hills.

Fain would I sing, sweet April-time, of thee,
And mingle in thy wantonness of glee;
But thou such overwealth of sweets dost fling,
My heart is all too full, too full to speak or sing.


V.
There's somewhat in the loveliness of spring,
In the young light, and in the fragrant bloom,
In the sweet song that each soft breeze doth wing,
In the bright flowers that rise from earth's dark womb;

Which fills with sadness the presentient mind,
And for a far-off home awakes the sigh;
Which makes us gaze, with longings undefined,
On dim blue hills, and weep--we know not why.


VI.
Oh, birds, winged voices! children of the light!
Whose song is love, whose love is melody;
Shedding o'er hedge, and field, and bush, and tree,
Your tuneful joy and musical delight,

Making the air, the earth, the heavens bright;
Melodious, tender, sad and gay and free;
By all these gifts true poets born are ye;
Love circumscribes alone your restless flight.

Poets, I say? Ah, not like poets here,
That wander forth alone, companionless;
Whose lays are wrung from them by care and pain;
Who sing, while blinded by the hot salt tear.

Not such are ye; but free from all distress,
Ye, with the sunlight, range o'er land and main.


VII.
Oh, soft sweet air of early spring,
Again thou float'st on viewless wing,
Coax'st snowdrops their white bells to ring,
And wak'st the blackbird up to sing.

Again, upon the bright'ning lea,
Beneath the budding bursting tree,
The toddling baby-mites I see,
Skip, jump, and frisk in lamb-like glee.

But I am sad, I know not why;
My breast heaves with the long-drawn sigh;
The tear rounds slowly in mine eye;
I'd like to lay me down and die.


VIII.
The blooming hedge, the budding grove,
Resound with notes of joy and love;
The gleaming bush, the glimm'ring tree,
Live with a dewy melody.

Along the meadows, flashing bright,
Run trills of shrill and sweet delight;
E'en the small snowy clouds among,
Gush showers on showers of silver song.
But thou, my heart, oh, tell me why
Hast thou no language but a sigh?


IX.
Like a flower-fall of rain,
Like a snowy elfin train,
Like stray gleams of moonlight fair,
Do you shift upon the air,
Do you flutter on the breeze,
Do you fall upon the leas,
Blossoms of the apple-trees;
Then on earth's bosom slow ye fade away,
Like to a low and sweetly dying lay.


X.
With thousand gaps the earth is split,
By sunbeams wounded o'er and o'er,
My heart, it acheth bit by bit;
Life's heat and dust have made it sore.

When wilt thou fall from clouds above,
In silver showers, refreshing rain?
When wilt thou come, reviving love,
With dew, and make me whole again?

A little while, big drops will slake,
Oh, earth, thy thirst's hot agony;
But till my fevered heart doth break,
Will solace ever come to me?

The Prophecy Of St. Oran: Part Iv

I.
It is the night: across the starless waste
Of silent heaven the solitary moon
Flits like a frightened maid who flies in haste,
And wild with terror seems to reel and swoon,
As in her rear the multitudinous clouds
Follow like spectral huntsmen in their shrouds.


II.
And sometimes the wild rout o'ertakes its prey,
And holds her captive in the lowering sky,
But ever and anon she bursts away,
And her white orb floats lustrously on high,
And with its lambent flame transmutes the haze
Into a living halo for her face.


III.
And far o'er black morass and barren moor
The fitful splendour of the moonlight falls,
Its broken eddies sweep across the floor,
And dance in chequered silver on the walls,
And flood the chapel's grave-encircled site
With sudden flashes of unearthly light.


IV.
And as the unquiet moonlight comes and flies
Athwart the little roofless house of prayer,
Like some lost spirit strayed from Paradise
Or dæmon-angel of the realms of air,
A pallid shape flits through the open door
And flings itself, low wailing, on the floor;


V.
And wailing, wailing, lay there in its pain,
When suddenly it snatched from the out the sod
Some late-forgotten spade, while tears like rain
Poured from its eyes, enough to melt the clod,
And digging hard the small breach grew apace,
Till the soil lay like molehills round the place.


VI.
But through the silence suddenly there swells
Along the gusty breaths of midnight air
The mellow tinkling sound of magic bells,
Such as the pious brethren love to wear,
To keep the fiends and goblins off that prowl
For ever near to catch a tripping soul.


VII.
And as the monks, chanting a solemn hymn,
Draw nigh the chapel to perform their rite,
That wailing shape flies far into the dim
Recess behind the altar full of night;
While they with burning torches move in file
To consecrate afresh their sacred pile.


VIII.
Three days, three nights have fled since in that spot,
Where fiends and dæmons revelled unforbid,
They buried that false monk who was a blot
Upon their rule: but since the earth has hid
His bones accursed, God's sun has shone again,
Nor has fresh ill assailed their prospering fane


IX.
Which now they enter, singing hymns of praise,
Columba at their head--when lo, behold
The grave yawns open and a bloodless face,
The face of him they knew, rose from the mould:
Slowly he rose from the incumbent clay
Lifting the white shroud in the moonlight grey.


X.
Slowly his arm beneath the winding-sheet
He waved three times, as though to bid them hear;
Then in the moonlight rose he to his feet
Showing his shrunken body, and his sere
Discoloured hair, and smouldering eyes that lie
Sunk in their sockets, glaring hot and dry.


XI.
Slowly he raised his voice--once rich in tone
Like sweetest music, now a mournful knell
With dull sepulchral sounds, as of a stone
Cast down into a black unfathomed well--
And murmured, 'Lo, I come back from the grave,--
Behold, there is no God to smite or save.


XII.
'Poor fools! wild dreamers! No, there is no God;
Yon heaven is deaf and dumb to prayer and praise;
Lo, no almighty tyrant wields the rod
For evermore above our hapless race;
Nor fashioned us, frail creatures that we be,
To bear the burden of eternity.


XIII.
'Hear it, self-torturing monks, and cease to wage
Your mad, delirious, suicidal war;
There is no devil who from age to age
Waylays and tempts all souls of men that are;
For ever seeking whom he may devour,
And damn with wine and woman, gold and power.


XIV.
'Deluded priests, ye think the world a snare,
Denouncing every tender human tie!
Behold, your heaven is unsubstantial air,
Your future bliss a sick brain's phantasy;
There is no room amid the stars which gem
The firmament for your Jerusalem.


XV.
'Rejoice, poor sinners, for I come to tell
To you who hardly dare to live for fright;
There is no burning everlasting hell
Where souls shall be tormented day and night:
The fever ye call life ends with your breath;
All weary souls set in the night of death.


XVI.
'Then let your life on earth be life indeed!
Nor drop the substance, snatching at a shade!
Ye can have Eden here! ye bear the seed
Of all the hells and heavens and gods ye made
Within that mighty world-transforming thought
Which permeates the universe it wrought--


XVII.
'Wrought out of stones and plants and birds and beasts,
To flower in man, and know itself at last:
Around, about you, see what endless feasts
The spring and summer bountifully cast!
'A vale of tears,' ye cry--'if ye were wise,
The earth itself would change to Paradise.


XVIII.
'The earth itself--the old despisèd earth,
Would render back your love a thousandfold,
Nor yet afflict the sons of men with dearth,
Disease, and misery, and drought and cold;
If you would seek a blessing in her sod,
Instead of crying vainly on your God.


XIX.
'Cast down the crucifix, take up the plough!
Nor waste your breath which is the life in prayer!
Dare to be men, and break you impious vow,
Nor fly from woman as the devil's snare!
For if within, around, beneath, above
There is a living God, that God is Love.'


XX.
'The fool says in his heart, There is no God,'
Cried St. Columba, white with Christian ire
'Seize Oran, re-inter him in the sod
And may his soul awake in endless fire:
Earth on his mouth--the earth he would adore,
That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more.'


XXI.
Then like swart ravens swooping on their prey
These monks rushed upon Oran; when there came
One gliding towards them in wild disarray
With hair that streamed behind her like a flame
And face dazed with the moon, who shrilly cried,
'Let not death part the bridegroom from his bride.'


XXII.
But deeming her some fiend in female guise,
They drive her forth with threats, till, crazed with fear,
Across the stones and mounded graves she flies
Towards that lapping, moon-illumined mere;
And like a child seeking its mother's breast
She casts her life thereon, and is at rest.


XXIII.
And while the waves close gurgling o'er her head,
A grave is dug whence he may never stray,
Or come back prophesying from the dead,--
All shouting as they stifle him with clay:
'Earth on his mouth--the earth he would adore,
That his blaspheming tongue may blab no more.'

The Orange-Peel In The Gutter

BEHOLD, unto myself I said,
This place how dull and desolate,
For lovely thoughts how all unmeet,
This drear and darksome London street.
Above, beneath, and all around,
Not one slight crumb is to be found;
Not one so slight poetic crumb
For sparrow-poet to feed upon.
For lo! above there is no sky!
No living blue to glad the eye!
No sun that shines, no flying cloud!
But fog, that in a huge dun shroud
Wraps all the London town about;
And with it comes the drizzling rain,
And dusky houses wets in vain--
It ne'er can wash them white again.
Those houses, yea, how cold and bare,
With self-same aspect stand they there,
With grimy windows two and two,
It makes me sick to look at you!
No tree, no shrub, to lend you grace,
With drooping branch to hide your face;
No solitary blossom e'en
To brighten you with flow'ry sheen;
Nor living things I here espy,
Save yon black cat, with sharp green eye,
Sliding along with stealthy pace:
The very spirit of the place.
And in the road hops here and there
A sparrow, searching scanty fare,
The pauper of the sons of air.
Nought! nought! but wall and iron spike,
Cold, cruel, as if fain 'twould like
To run some beggar through and through,
And guard the door from him and you.
And underfoot?--no flowers, no grass,
T' arrest the step before you pass,
To send up whispers low and sweet,
To smile, to beckon, and to greet;
No gurgling brook, no silent pool,
In whose pure waters, still and cool,
The flying bird, the flitting cloud,
The sunbeam peering in and out,
The star that slides through limpid air,
Are glassed in beauty wondrous fair.
None--none of these, but miry clay,
To cling tenaciously all day,
With heavy clutch to your poor heel,
And in the gutter you, the peel
Of some sweet golden orange fruit,
Though smothered now with dirt and soot
Still darting forth through dull decay,
The splendour of a by-gone day,
The ling'ring of a dying ray.
Oh, wondrous strange! I feel the deep
Hush of Italian nights slow creep
Around me, see the fuller light
Of southern stars strike through the night,
And hear the sweeter breathèd sighs
Of southern breezes swell and rise;
Rise, swell I hear the balm-fed breeze,
Through the dark grove of orange trees,
Where silver gleams of creamy bloom,
In fragrance flash along the gloom;
And the gold fruit through dark doth shine
A star! a mystery divine!
I hear the sweeter sighs of love,
By southern hearts breathed through the grove,
Like to the cooing of a dove;
Like to the soft falls of summer rain,
On hoary wood and parched plain;
Like to the drops of pale moonlight,
That sink upon the sea at night;
Heart melts with heart, and kiss with kiss,
In holy night, in holy bliss,
As in the wondrous sunset skies
Hues melt with hues, and dyes with dyes,
Till all in one vast glory lies.

But what a full and deep-set roar
Heaves, swells, and surges more and more,
Like billows on a stormy shore.
Yet here flows not the dark blue sea,
But street on street continually;
Here walls on walls press nigh and nigher,
And roofs on roofs rise high and higher,
And spire still greets the rising spire.
The clang, the clash, the row, the roar,
London, great London, 'tis once more,
With hurry, flurry, to and fro,
Time scarce to snarl a 'yes' or 'no;'
Time scarce t' evade your neighbour's toe.
But here's the market fair to see,
An island green within that sea
Of streets, a little flow'ry spot,
Reminding him who's long forgot,
Of country fields and waving trees,
Of hedges, birds and flowers and bees.
The snowdrop stands in moist brown ground,
And purifies the air around;
The violet scatters woodland smells,
And hyacinths ring their honeyed bells.
This man sells grapes from sunny Spain;
Lombardian almonds this again;
Pears, peaches, with the morning down,
All in that world-wide lap are thrown,
By all the nations, and they vie
In fruits, nursed by a southern sky.
The chaff'ring crowd, the bart'ring maid,
Here buy and sell, and choose and trade.
There sits a woman lean and old,
She shivers in the east wind's cold;
She knits; how fast her fingers fly!
Her fingers, oh! how worn and dry.
But still she knits, because she knows
Her crying grandchild's icy toes.
Her basket stands close by her side,
With orange heaps in golden pride;
Surely imprisoned sunbeams throw
Around them such a flush and glow,
That seeing them we seem to see
A glimpse of sun-loved Italy.
Oh, may they all be bought, and give
The old woman wherewithal to live!

Here in the garret, 'neath the leads,
Slowly spin out life's weary threads;
Slowly and slowly ebbs away
The breath of one poor child of clay.
The throbbing pulse, the great'ning eye,
The parchèd lips, the impatient sigh,
The mother marks 'twixt hope and fright,
From weary noon to weary night,
From midnight round to noon again:
Each hour crammed full with aching pain,
And anxious fluttering of hope,
As both alternately find scope.
And as she breathless notes each sound,
He whispers, turning round and round,
'Oh! mother, mother, give me drink.'
She's up, she's back scarce in a wink,
And to her darling's burning lips,
The luscious fruit she holds, he sips
With breaths long drawn, still on and on,
Till all the cooling juice is gone,
And only left of fragrant meal,
Is that still golden orange-peel.

The orange-peel! ah, where am I?
Beneath the deep Italian sky?
In Covent Garden's crowded fair?
Or 'neath the roof of pain and care?
Ah, still within the darksome street,
So all unlovely and unsweet!
The welt'ring fog, the drizzling rain,
The dirt, the dust upon each pane,
The iron rails so hard and bare,
The miry clay, they all are here!
What did befall? Then did I dream?
Was all but air? Did all but seem?
How caught I then this wondrous gleam?
Ah! here you bit of sunny gold,
Within the gutter I behold;
Across my mind its life it flashed,
The fragrance of the past it dashed,
Dying, it kindled life, and hurled
My soul through heights and depths of world.
In bud and blossom, fruit and tree,
Revealed life's perfect harmony!
Revealed the throbs of mutual love,
Ensphered by kindling stars above!
Revealed the stir of busy life,
The trade, the turmoil, and the strife!
Struggles of honest poverty;
A watching mother's agony!
Child-life that hangs upon a breath,
The tremblings betwixt life and death--
Revealed the mystic link, that thrills
Through joy and pain, through good and ills,
Wafts influences from afar,
Connects the worm still with the star,
And binds the earth, the skies, the main,
The worlds, with one electric chain!
Behold, unto myself I said,
There's nought on earth so desolate,
But if the eye is there to see
Will find a joy and mystery,
As under dark and mossy dells
The violet hides with spring-like smells!
No cell, no garret, and no tomb,
For which no flower of love doth bloom!
No place so waste, so dark, so drear,
But heavenly beauty lurketh there!
And from these two will ever spring,
As music from the harp's sweet string,
As from the nest the lark soars high,
As from the flame the live sparks fly,
The fountain of great poesy,
Will shine and flash, and flame and glow,
Like to the million coloured bow
Of hope and peace, a lovely sign,
Flinging around that world of thine
A glory that is all divine!

BRIGHT as a morn of spring,
That jubilates along the earth,
With clouds, and winds, and flowers rejoicing,
And all the creatures that on wing
Scarce dip the ground in their ethereal mirth.
Whilst the dew'd sunlight and the gold-flushed rain
Wed midway in the air;
And from the twain
Is ever born that fairy gossamer,
The iridescent bridge that spans the skies.
Yea, e'en in such wild glory dost thou glow
Soul-fresh exuberant child!
And drops of heavenly freshness gleam
On red, red lips, in dark-orbed eyes,
Like morning dews that glimmering show
On winter moss and heath'ry wild,
And soft-cropped grasses undefiled,
In all the shifting splendour of a dream.

Oh, thou, that in thy glee
Know'st of no ending yet, and no beginning,
Making the hours melodious with thy play,
Like grasshoppers, that through the livelong day
Hopping on the new-mown hay,
Sun-struck trill their roundelay;
Or the cricket, chirping cheerly
Late at night, at morning early,
With a little baby-singing
Like an echo faintly ringing
From the distant summer leas;
And with tremulous murmurs clinging
Round the hearth, like clustering bees
Humming round the linden trees.

And yet athwart thy soul,
At times, perchance, I seem to see
The hid existence of far off events,
Trailing their slumb'rous shadows silently.
For in the dusky deeps
Of thy large eyes
Sometime the veilèd outline of a still
And mute-born vision sleeps
As in the hollows of a hill,
With dim and darksome rents
The dreamful shadow of the morning lies,
And softly, slowly, ever down doth roll,
Till lost in mystic deeps it flees our watchful eyes.

Yet from that silent trance
Quick leap'st thou back into thy playfulness,
As waters darkened by the drifting cloud
Into the swift sweet sunlight crowd,
Where dashed with dewy gold they dance
In unbedimmèd sprightliness;
Till with their blithesome strain
They make the brooding mountains loud
And fling their merriment across the voiceless plain.
And buzzing lightly, here and there,
Thou, like a little curious fly
That fusses through the air,
Dost pry and spy
With thy keen inquisitive eye;
Poking fatly-dimpled fingers
Into corner, box, and closet,
Where, perchance, there hidden lingers
Some deposit,
To be carried off triumphantly.
And with many questions, ever
Rippling like a restless river,
Puzzling many an older brain,
Dost thou hour by hour increase thy store
Of marvellous lore.
Thus a squirrel darting deftly
Up and down autumnal trees,
Sees its hoard of chesnuts growing swiftly
In a heap upon the leaf-strewn leas.

Yea, open art thou to each influence
That strikes on thy soft spirit from without
Thy spirit not yet frozen, nor shut out
From nature's kindling breath
By selfish aims, nor dulled the sense
By hot desires; alas, too oft the death
Of man's spiritual vision. No, thy soul
Is yet all clear and bright
And lieth naked 'neath the eye of heaven
As a small mountain pool--
A pure and azure pool,
To whom its food is given
By dews, and rains, and snows all lily-white,
That softly fall
Through many a summer's day and winter's night;
And whose unspotted breast
Glasses each pageant of the outer world,
The cloud with pinions to the blast unfurled,
The mountains' haughty crest,
The slanting beam of twilight skies
That like a golden ladder lies
Stretching across perchance for angel hosts
To slide
Down to the earth with heavenly boon;
And glasses too the hurrying mists that glide
Like gliding ghosts,
And stars, and all the mildness of the moon.

As yet 'tis early January with thee!
Warm-cradled doth the summer leaf
Lie folded in the winter leaf
On the blank tree.
And folded in the earth the seed
The future mother of some glorious weed,
Or flower blowing gorgeously,
Or cedar branching wondrously,
Lies slumbering; its whole destiny
Of great or lowly, foul or fair,
In this minutest space surely foreshadowed there.
But let the west wind, ocean-born,
Floating towards the meads of morn,
But once spread out his wild and vasty wing
Setting the sap a-cantring; till new life
Works wonders: then thy being
Will strangely stir, as at the sound
Of sounding drum and fife
The war-horse paws the ground.
And through thy sweet pure veins
Life like a waterfall will grandly bound.

But now the Psyche of thy being
Still shyly doth essay her delicate wing,
Like to that airy nurseling of the sun
When first it breaketh through its dun
And hornèd shell, and tries
To move its pinions, powdered o'er and o'er
With rainbow dust of April skies,
That have as not yet learnt to soar,
And lie soft-folded in sweet mysteries.

Oh! looking on thee, I do speculate
On thy futurity!
What wilt thou be?
Some great and glorious lot I dream for thee,
Some starry fate!
For in thy nature meet
Such buoyant strength, and such a sweet
Half-veiled heart tenderness, that on thy being doth rest
Like soft dark bloom upon a pansy's breast;
And pity gushes o'er thee, like warm rain,
For everything in pain,
Or great or small; and such a shoal
Of thick-bred fancies ever swimmeth forth
From the deep sea
Of changeful fantasy,
Like golden fish that glitter in the sun;
And quick perception leading on and on,
Into a maze of thought, fresh'ning the soul
Of him who listens. Aye, what wilt thou be?
Perchance, one of that sacred band
That ever were the salt of earth,
Whom men call dowered with genius! They who stand
In grandeur and in glory like the Alps,
With silver-shining scalps,
Bathed in the ether; feeding all the land
With the pure skyey waters that descend
For ever from them; men who freed
From narrow bonds of hate and greed,
Fetters of custom, and blind circumstance,
Breathe the soul-quickening air of thought and love.
And struggling into freedom, sudden see
The solid shroud of sense
Consumèd by a heavenly flame,
As is the vapour dense and dun,
Which the earth-spirit fast doth breed
By the great sun.
And the large mind in native majesty
Doth catch that radiance evermore above,
Around us; finest effluence of being;
Illuminating with sharp sudden blaze
Nature's mysterious ways;
Until his spirit, feeling itself one
With all that is, and was, and is to be,
Vibrates into intenser life,
Which is creation!
Then makes he revelation
Of that one truth, that as a supreme ray
With new existence heavily fraught,
Lightened in awful loveliness
And empyrean holiness,
Upon his passive thought;
Till with long peals of explosive oracular thunder,
He bursts and cleaves and splinters asunder
The clinging clinking manacles of life,
That fall and curl in harsh black masses under
His wingèd feet: and through time's noisy strife
His infinite acts do strike like flame

Of a volcano seen across a sea,
On nights when with earthquake the labouring hills are rife;
And labouring, too, like heaving heights, doth he,
Girt round with turbulent whirls of praise and blame,
Breathe the hot spark of that which he did see,
As vital force that pulses strong and warm
In the mid-heart of creeds,
Or rolls itself along the epic's flood,
Or lives through ages in the marbled form,
Or leaps to life in the heroic deeds,
Watering with the heart's noble blood
The seed of future world-reforming good.

But stay, my soul;
Too far thou fliest, as a falcon flies,
Forgetful of the hand
Where he must perch, so trancèd with the grand
And boundless skies.
Oh come my song, and roll
Thy billows back, where on the swelling bank,
Mid flowers, and reeds, and grasses rank,
And feathered warblers, warbling wild,
Sporteth the unconscious child,
Safely roofed o'er by shielding mother's love,
Like wee lamb-clouds of morn by tender skies above.
Hark! now I hear thy low soft laughter falling
Upon my heart, like to the murmurous calling
Of brooding stock doves, now it sweet doth sound
Like rippling rills of rain, that make the ground
Harmonious on hot summer afternoons;
And now thy joyous croons
Blither and brighter tumble on my ear
All clarion clear,
Like songs of matin birds that in spring weather,
Hid in young woods, do jubilate together.
Yea, on the musing mind,
That wrapt in meditation's sober dress,
Looks inward in a half-forgetfulness
Of the world's outer show,
Thou breakest in, like a tumultuous wind
That teasing tosses
The foam of flickering fountain;
Or like the flashing flow
Of waves of light along the long green grasses;
Or waters bickering low
Down many a sloping mountain
That make themselves a nest mid ferns and shining mosses.
Of each free thing that in its joy
All chains, and bonds, and obstacles o'erpasses
In elemental gladsomenesses
And wonderful wild wantonesses--
Fire, water, wand'ring air,
Hast a past, exuberant boy,
Glorious, glad, and fresh, and fair,
And blowing in upon the tired brain
Nature's undying, spirit-stirring strain.

OH come, thou power divine,
Thou lovely spirit with the wings of light,
And let thy dewy eyes
Shed their sweet influences on my soul;
Oh let me hear thy voice,
Whose sound thrills with a keener, deeper bliss,
Than the shrill jubilance the bird of joy
Pours on the air!
Or the child babblings of the gladsome rill
When, issuing first from out its mossy couch
In venturesome delight, it frisks in glee
Adown the hoary mountain, silver-fraught.

Oh come!
Where I do lie drenched in my bitter tears,
And drowning in dejection: haunted by
The pale gaunt fears that spectre-like rush forth
In shadowy swarms from out the brains's black cells,
Like glaring madmen in confusion 'scaped
From out their dens, whirling with shambling limbs
In whooping dances through the startled dusk,
And pouncing wildly on my shiv'ring soul,
Where in her hour of weakness prostrate she
Doth palpitate in terror, like a deer,
That hunted by the swift pursuing hounds,
Wounded and bleeding, sinks upon the ground,
While with hoarse croaks the ravening birds of prey
Wheel close and closer, darkening all the air.
But thou--
Come breathe upon me with thy balmy breath,
Like a young wind, born in the rosèd east,
That leapeth boy-like from the lap of morn,
To blow the land all clear from crouching fogs:

Thus drive thou hence the phantoms; cleanse my soul!
Thou sweet enchantress, with the magic spells!
Wails there a heart, lone on the populous earth,--
Like a weak infant lost within the night
That crieth piteously in helplessness,
And pusheth its blind limbs with gestures scared
Against the gloom,--
Then with an airy footfall glidest thou
Gently anigh, as softly as a cloud,
When one alone in crimson glory slides
Along the twilight sky: tak'st the bewildered thing
Into thine arms, thy fair and downy arms,
And rock'st it on thy bosom--singing low
An old, old song, old as the flowers that bloom,
And like them ever young; till dreams rise up,
Like cool white mists from out the heart of hills,
And lie dew-sweet upon it in its sleep!

Sits there an orphan girl with sunken cheeks,
And red-rimmed eyes, high up beneath the leads,
Stitching with aching fingers all the night
Beside the meagre flame, to earn her bread,
And feed with scanty fuel the low fire
Of life, while the shrill blast
Dashes the rain against the rattling panes,
And down the chimney roars with smoke and wet;--
Then comest thou, with memories all dim
And faint, with beauty from the childish years,
Transposing them into the time to come
With a new lustre of the full-grown heart.
Where the bare walls stood with a hungry stare,
The golden cornfields, weighed down by their wealth,
Sway to and fro; purling the brook flows on;
And, like a bit of sky drawn down by love,
Wilds of forget-me-nots run riot round;
And meadows scent the air; and lowing kine
Are driven home; and silver geese hiss loud
Within the pools; and childhood's silver laughs
Ring o'er the green like chimes of silver bells
In the clear atmosphere; and through green boughs
Curls up the smoke from many a thatchèd roof,
Flushed all the land with roseate floods of eve,
While large and full glows low the harvest moon,
There as through homely fields she lightly walks,
And one is by her side, and whispers low,
And thine, oh hope! the future's kindling glow.

Rocks there a sailor on a reeling ship,
That staggers blindly like a brain-struck man,
Around the staring cliffs!
While the wild blast, the fiddler of the deep,
Wakes such mad music on his shrieking strings
That the fierce elements in huge delight
Vault from their torpor, rearing giant heights!
Ha! The maned billows from abysmal deeps
Leap like live Alps, and catch the tearing clouds
That dizzy haste along the wilds of sky;
Tossing them round in labyrinthic whirls
To the witch light of lightning, and the roar
Of thunder, in its crashing clattering fall.
Yea, while the ocean yawneth for its prey,
Yelling with starvèd jaws around the hull,
Man's sole frail guardian from the fangs of death,--
Thou softly float'st,
Like to the dove that bore the olive branch
Across the waste of waters, to his side. . . .
No longer sees he then the wide wild sea,
No longer hears he the tempestuous blast:
But where the cottage leans against the cliff,
The evening star shedding its peace adown,
He lifts the latch, and with one bound of joy
He stands in the low room, beside the hearth,
Where sits his winsome wife, and rocks her babe
With lullabies; and heaving one big sob
He strains her to his breast, her whom he thought
On this side of the grave to see no more!
Then does she take him by the hand, and leads
Him round from cot to cot, where with round cheeks
His children lie, sleep-flushed, 'twixt snow-white sheets,
And snatching up the youngest in his arms,
With an untameable emotion, weeps
His kisses on him, till it opens wide
Large dream-dew'd eyes, and lisps with cherry mouth,
'Oh, Dada, Dada!'----That thou dost for him!

Wanders the patriot on a stranger shore,
And exile from the land he loved too well:
Within his heart
The festering wound a thankless nation strikes,
When cloud-capp'd by its ignorance and fear,
And goaded on by spurring king and priest,
Like a mad dog it turns and bites the hand
Stretched out to heal.
He sees his friends fall off like rotten leaves
That scrambling flee the tempest-girted oak;
He sees the enemies he boldly braved,
Forging the red-hot slanders wherewithal
To scorch his writhing soul!
Alone in the wide world, alone he stands;
Alone, save where beyond the roaring seas
His mother weeps, and weeps, oh God! through him.
Then, blowing from dead deserts the simoom
Of doubt breathes on him, with its killing breath,
With'ring the flowers of faith, the groves of youth,
And buffeting his heart on cruel waves
Of wind, e'en like a quiv'ring autumn leaf.
Oh, is it strange?
That in the midnight, on the dark there grow
Pale faces sweating blood, and wrapped in shrouds,
Turning reproachful eyes upon his eyes,
And asking dumbly, 'Wherefore did we die,
And spill the wine-filled goblets of our youth
On barren soil that will not teem with birth?'
That brides, like broken lilies whirled along
By arrowy streams, glide past and sadly sob,
'Thou'st mowed us down, and mowed us down in vain!'
That infants thrill the silence with their wail,
'Why are we fatherless, if fatherland
Is still denied?' And that his heartstrings quake
With sobs of mothers' hearts that hopeless break?
Strange that his purpose, that did seem so fair,
With a white blaze of light around her head,
Which fell like orient beams on nations' brows,
Should wane before his terror-stricken eyes?
And that in direst agony of soul
His noble nature tott'ring on her base,
Should question if his deeds were rightful deeds?
Stirred up by God's own living breath, or pushed
By hot ambition's ravenous desire?
And if the aim that drew were but a dream
By which his visionary youth was mocked,
As travellers in the desert by the shine
Of fair false waters?--At that torturing thought
Smells of cold graves struck damp upon his brow,
Till his wilds eyes grew void, and limp his limbs,
And he had dropped resistless in the jaws
Of madness or of death!
Hadst thou not come, perennial presence! bright
As Phosphorus in the dim morning skies!
And poured thy morning sunbeams on his heart,
And blown thy morning breezes on his soul,
Till freshly born the world, and on him smiled
With eyes as tender as his mother's were,
When sowing love upon his cradled self.
Then back plucked he his purpose, fixed it firm
In iron steadfastness upon his soul,
And called on faith, where with upturnèd eyes
Above the clouds she treads the mountain peaks,
And on that love, which boundless as the sky,
Stretches o'er all mankind its azured vault.
Then rose he, set his trustful eyes on high,
And set his heart among the lowly born:
For in the vasty glimmerings of the dawn
He saw such visions of the things to be,
Such heights of being ascended, and such love
And justice throning on the seats of men,
That with unflagging steps he calmly trod
The walks of martyrdom! Oh, crown his brows
With buds of those full summers of the race!

Mourns there an aged mother, lying low
Upon the lowly grave,
Round which the autumn moans her mournful dirge,
And shivering cadence of the shrunken leaves
Keeps saddest measure with the wailing wind;
While the pale glimm'rings of the waning moon
Fall in cold tears upon the unknown tomb,
Beneath whose sod, washed by the ghastly mists,
Lies he, her one sole flower, that on the breast
Of life bloomed for her all the days and nights;
In the midsummer of his lusty life
Devoured by that grim beast, whose reeking breath
Is saturated with the blood of man--
The twin of pestilence--the foul firstborn
Of her who spinneth in the nether gloom
The phantasms that turn mad the brains of men,
And him whose savage lusts and greedy soul
Would make his footstool on the necks of men!
Oh here, even here like a stray beam of light
That glides unscared in sacred tenderness
Across the heavy vapours, brooding blind
In shapeless masses o'er a joyless tarn
Deep sunk in mountains,--even here the gleam
Of thy gold hair makes music in the dark,
Cradlest the head of grief on thy warm breast,
Whisperest in tones sweeter than honeycomb
Of that new heaven where death shall be no more,
Nor grief, nor crying, neither shall there be
More pain; for former things have passed away.
And with thy wings of light around her soul,
And with thy dewy eyes upon her heart,
Death takes her gently like a cherubim
By the shrunk hand, and leads her to her rest.
* * * * *
Oh Hope! thou consolation of the soul!
Flash forth, and like a sun strike on the clouds
Of dull despondency, that pour their rain
In showers upon the sad heart's shivering soil;
Flash forth, and force each drop e'en as it falls
To glass thy loveliness, and on the cloud
Frowning in dumb defiance, paint such bloom
Etherial, that its blackness but becomes
A foil on which thy brightness brighter beams,
Till spanned with rainbow-glory the sad soul
Glistens in glimmering smiles through all her tears,
And life shone through by white eternity,
Circled with calm as by a covenant,
Is born in beauty of the bitter tears,
Like Aphrodite from the salt sea waves.

The Prophecy Of St. Oran: Part Ii

I.
THERE was a windless mere, on whose smooth breast
A little island, flushed with purple bloom,
Lay gently cradled like a moorhen's nest:
It glowed like some rich jewel 'mid the gloom
Of sluggish leagues of peat and black morass,
Without or shrub or tree or blade of grass.


II.
But on the isle itself the birch was seen
With its ethereal foliage, like some haze
Floating among the rowan's vivid green;
The ground with fern all feathered, and ablaze
With heath's and harebell's hyacinthine hue,
Was mirrored in the wave's intenser blue.


III.
This was the immemorial isle of graves,
Here, under nameless mound and dateless stone,
The generations, like successive waves,
Had rolled one o'er the other, and had gone
As these go, indistinguishably fused
Their separate lives in common death confused.


IV.
And here amid the dead Columba chose
To found God's holy house and sow His word;
Already here and there the walls arose,
Built from the stones imbedded in the sward;
These did the natives without mortar pile,
As was the ancient custom of their isle.


V.
For many of them to the work were won
By reverence for the saint, and thus apace
The chapel grew which they had first begun
As dedicate to God's perpetual praise;
So many of the monks again were free
To give thought wholly to their ministry.


VI.
And ever first in hastening to his task
St. Oran was, though last to seek repose;
Columba's best beloved, he still would ask
For heaviest share of duty, while he chose
Rude penances, till shadow-like he grew
With fasts and vigils that the flesh subdue.


VII.
Yet there was that which would not be subdued--
A shape, a presence haunting every dream;
Fair as the moon that shines above a flood,
And ever trembles on the trembling stream;
Sweet as some gust of fragrance, unaware
Stealing upon us on the summer air.


VIII.
Even so it stole upon his ravished heart,
Suffusing every fibre with delight,
Till from his troubled slumber he would start,
And, as with ague shivering and affright,
Catch broken speech low murmuring in his ears,
And feel his eyelids ache with unshed tears.


IX.
But it befell one windy afternoon,
While monks and men were busied with the roof,
Laying the beams through which the sun and moon
Might shed their light as yet without reproof,
That there came one across the lonely waste
Toward these men of God, crying in haste,--


X.
'Ye say ye came to save us, save us then!
Save us if ye spake truth, and not a lie!
Famine and fever stalk among us,--men,
Women, and children are struck down and die!
For lo, the murrain smites our cowering sheep,
The fishers haul no fish from out the deep.


XI.
'Ye tell us that your God did multiply
A few small fishes, wherewithal He fed
A multitude; in sooth, if 'tis no lie,
Then come, ye holy men, and give us bread!
For they are starving by the waterside,--
Come then, and give us bread,' he loudly cried.


XII.
He was a man inspiring dread surprise,
Half-naked, with long glibs of bristling hair
In fiery meshes tumbling o'er his eyes,
Which, like a famished wolf's from out its lair,
Glanced restlessly; his dog behind him came,
Whose lolling tongue hung down like scarlet flame.


XIII.
'Let me arise, and go to them withal!'
Cried Oran, flinging down his implement:
'This heavy tribulation is a call
From the Most High; a blessed instrument
To compass their salvation: let me go
Teach them what mercy worketh in their woe.'


XIV.
'Go then, my son, and God go with thee still,
While I abide to speed His temple here,'
Said St. Columba; 'and thy basket fill
With herbs and cordials, also wine to cheer
And bread to feed the poor, so that their days
May still endure to God's eternal praise.'


XV.
Then Oran and that wild man forth did fare,
And o'er the little lake they rowed in haste,
And mounting each a small and shaggy mare,
They ambled o'er that solitary waste,
Then through a sterile glen their road did lie
Whose shrouded peaks loomed awfully on high.


XVI.
When for a mile or two they thus had gone,
The mountains opened wide on either hand,
And lo, amid those labyrinths of stone
The sea had got entangled in the land,
And turned and twisted, struggling to get free,
And be once more the immeasurable sea.


XVII.
It was a sorcerous, elemental place,
O'er which there now came rushing from the plain--
Like some dark host whom yelling victors chase--
A moving pillar of resistless rain
Shivering the gleaming lances in its flight
Against the bastions of each monstrous height.


XVIII.
Fast, fast it raced before the roaring gale,
With shrieks and frenzied howlings that did shake
The very stones with long-resounding wail,
And in outlying gorges would it wake
The startled echo's sympathetic scream,
Then whirling on would vanish like a dream,--


XIX.
Would vanish dream-like, whither no man knows,
Fading afar in vaporous gulfs of light,
While the wet mountain-tops flushed like a rose,
And following the spent tempest in its flight
Its hues ethereal mantling o'er the gloom,
There glowed the rainbow's evanescent bloom.


XX.
And while that rain still drenched him to the skin,
St. Oran, unappalled, intoned a psalm,
And lifting up his voice amidst the din,
He sang, 'We laud Thee, Lord, through storm and calm,
In the revolving stars we see Thine hand,
The sun and moon rise as Thou dost command.


XXI.
'We laud Thee for the evening and the morn,
And the prolific seasons' changing boon,
For singing-birds, and flowers, and ripening corn,
For tides that rise and fall beneath the moon;
As in a mirror darkling do we see
The shadow that Thou castest on the sea.'


XXII.
Up many a wild ascent, down many a steep
Clothed with scant herbage, rode that battered pair,
Where lay the bleaching bones of mangled sheep,
And carrion crows wheeled hoarsely in the air;
At last through mist and darkness they espied
Small lights that twinkled by the waterside.


XXIII.
There in dark turf-built hovels close to earth
Lay the poor sufferers on their beds of heath,
Gnawed to the very bone by cruel dearth,
Cold to the marrow with approaching death;
Thither came Oran like some vision bright,
And ministered to each one through the night.


XXIV.
And so dispensing alms he went and came,
Stooping to enter the last house of all;
There, by the peat-fire's orange-coloured flame,
Whose flashes fitfully did rise and fall
On the smoke-blackened rafters--sat a crone
Ancient it might be as the lichened stone.


XXV.
Fast through her bony fingers flies the thread,
And as her foot still turns the whirring wheel,
She seems to spin the yarn of quick and dead!
But oh, what makes St. Oran's senses reel?
Whose is the shape clad in its golden hair
That turns and tosses on the pallet there?


XXVI.
Like some wan water lily veiled in mist
When puffs of wind its tender petals shake,
Whose chalice by the shining moonbeams kissed
Sways to and fro upon the swelling lake,
So white--so wan--so wonderfully fair,
Showed Mona tossing mid her golden hair.


XXVII.
What should he do? Ah, whither should he turn?
Why had God let this trial come again?
Her beauty, half-revealed, did straightly burn
Through his hot eyeballs to his kindling brain.
Was it his duty to go hence or stay?
He wavered--gazed on her--then turned away.


XXVIII.
But that old woman tottered to the door
And clutched his cassock with a shaking hand,
And mumbled, 'Priest, ah! dost thou shun the poor?
They say that ye go bragging through the land
Of some new God called Christian Charity;
But in our need ye turn from us and fly.'


XXIX.
So spake the crone, but Oran bowed his head
And murmured, 'If thou bid'st me, I abide.'
With downcast eyes he turned towards the bed
In fervent prayer low kneeling by its side:
At last he rose, pale, cold, and deadly still,
With heart subdued to his stern Maker's will.


XXX.
Thus through her fever did he tend the maid,
Who babbled wildly in delirious trance
Of her lost home, and her loved kindred laid
In alien earth--and of a countenance
Fair as a spirit's comforting her pain,
But soon withdrawn to its own heaven again.


XXXI.
All this unflinching would the monk endure,
And having cured her body's sickness, strove
With double zeal her sicker soul to cure:
But when he told her of the Saviour's love,
Of sin, and its atonement, and free grace,
She looked in puzzled wonder on his face.


XXXII.
She could not understand his mournful creed,
Nor knew, poor child, of what she should repent,
Nor why her heart was wicked, and had need
That some poor pitying God should once have spent
His blood for her five hundred years ago--
Ancestral voices never told her so!


XXXIII.
She could not understand, but she could feel!
And while she sat before him by the flame
The pathos of his pleading voice would steal
Sweeter than sweetest music through her frame,
And as the ocean murmur in a shell
Through her dim soul his solemn accents swell.


XXXIV.
He was the air she breathed--all living things
Were pale reflections of him--as the hart
In desert places thirsts for water-springs,
Even thus for him she thirsted in her heart;
To her it seemed as if life's aim and end
Were just to lay her hand within his hand.


XXXV.
Her eyes were full of love as stars of light,
And pierced the cold obstructive atmosphere
Of his joy-killing creed, and did ignite
His inmost spirit of sense with fire as clear
And radiant as their own--their beaming looks
Mingled as flames of fire or meeting brooks.


XXXVI.
Was he not young and beautiful?--in face
Like to that radiant god whose flame divine
The Druid worshipped in those younger days
Ere sin had stamped the green earth with its sign,
Had made the loveliness of flowers a snare,
And bid frail man of woman's love beware.


XXXVII.
Oh, not for him, through all the lonely years
Never for him a woman's love might bloom;
Her smiles would never cheer him, nor her tears
Fall softly on his unlamented tomb;
Never till quenched in death's supreme eclipse
His lips would know the sweetness of her lips.


XXXVIII.
Oh God! would nothing quench that secret fire,
Nor yet assuage that hunger of the heart?
To feel this flagellation of desire,
To be so near, yet evermore apart,
Never to clasp this woman as a wife--
This was the crowning penance of his life.


XXXIX.
But lo! one day at dusk they were alone,
The rain was beating down on roof and wall,
The round of earth with solid rock and stone
Had turned phantasmal in its misty pall:
They were alone, but neither spake a word--
Only their hearts in throbbing might be heard.


XL.
Whose is that low involuntary cry
That like a flash of lightning shook each frame
With thrill electric? Simultaneously
Their yearning lips had sobbed each other's name!
With swift instinctive dread they move apart
While magnet-like each draws the other's heart.


XLI.
What boots it thus to struggle with his sin,
So much more sweet than all his virtues were?
Like a great flood let all her love roll in
And his soul stifle mid her golden hair!
And so he barters his eternal bliss
For the divine delirium of her kiss!


XLII.
What cares he for his soul's salvation now?
Let it go to perdition evermore
For breaking that accursed monastic vow
Which cankers a man's nature to the core;
For he had striven as never mortal strove,
But than his Lord a mightier lord was Love.

The Prophecy Of St. Oran: Part I

'Earth, earth on the mouth of Oran, that he may blab no more.' Gaelic Proverb.


I.
THE storm had ceased to rave: subsiding slow
Lashed ocean heaved, and then lay calm and still;
From the clear North a little breeze did blow
Severing the clouds: high o'er a wooded hill
The slant sun hung intolerably bright,
And spanned the sea with a broad bridge of light.


II.
Now St. Columba rose from where he sat
Among his monkish crew; and lifting high
His pale worn hands, his eagle glances met
The awful glory which suffused the sky.
As soars the lark, sweet singing from the sod,
So prayer is wafted from his soul to God.


III.
For they in their rude coracle that day
Shuddered had climbed the crests of mountainous wave,
To plunge down glassy walls of shifting spray,
From which death roared as from an open grave;
Till, the grim fury of the tempest o'er,
Bursts on their ravished sight an azure shore.


IV.
Ah! is this solid earth which meets their view,
Or some still cloud-land islanded on high?
Those crags are too aërially blue,
Too soft those mountains mingling with the sky,
And too ineffable their dewy gleam,
For aught but fabric of a fleeting dream.


V.
Entranced they gaze, and o'er the glimmering track
Of seething gold and foaming silver row:
Now to their left tower headlands, bare and black
And blasted, with grey centuries of snow,
Deep in whose echoing caves, with hollow sighs,
Monotonous seas for ever ebb and rise.


VI.
Rounding these rocks, they glide into a deep
And tranquil bay, in whose translucent flood
The shadows of the azure mountains sleep:
High on a hill, amid green foliage, stood
A square and rough-hewn tower, whose time-bleached stone,
Like some red beacon, with the sunset shone.


VII.
A few more vigorous strokes, and the sharp keel
Grates on the beach, on which, inclining low
Their tonsured heads, the monks adoring kneel;
While St. Columba, his pale face aglow
With outward light and inward, lifts on high
The Cross, swart outlined on the burning sky.


VIII.
Impassive, though in silent wonder, stood
The islesmen while these worshipped, on their shore,
A thorn-crowned figure nailed upon the wood,
From whose pierced side the dark blood seemed to pour;
While on the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
They loudly called as brow and breast they crost.


IX.
Spoke now their Master, in a voice whose ring
Was like the west wind's in a twilight grove:
'Glad tidings to this sea-girt isle we bring,
Good tidings of our heavenly Father's love,
Who sent His only Son,--oh, marvellous
Deep love!--to die that He might ransom us.'


X.
'Come! listen to the story of our Lord!
Sweet Jesus Christ, a child of lowly birth,
Whom in the manger the wise kings adored,
For well they knew Him Lord of Heaven and Earth,
With myrrh and spice they journeyed from the far
Prophetic East, led by the Pilgrim Star:


XI.
'And when the star stood still, and mildly shone
Above a shed where lay the new-born child,
They hailed Him God's only-begotten Son,
Saviour of sinners and Redeemer mild;
Eve's promised seed, when she with streaming eyes
Saw the bright sword wave her from Paradise.


XII.
'For we are children of a fallen race,
Our sins are grievous in the Father's sight,
Death was our doom, but that by heavenly grace
God sent His Son to be a steadfast light,
Which calmly shining o'er life's troubled wave,
The storm-tossed souls of erring men might save.


XIII.
'Go unto Him, all ye that toil and weep,
Ye that are weary with the long day's load;
He is the Shepherd watching o'er His sheep,
He leads His flock along the narrow road;
And when He hears the bleating lamb's alarm
He folds the weak one in His sheltering arm.


XIV.
'Ah, tender Shepherd, who didst love us so,
Choosing to die that we Thy flock might live;
What bitter anguish, ah! what heavy woe
To think, O Lord! that mortal hands should give
This wound that cleaves Thy side, that mortal scorn
In mockery crowned Thee with the barren thorn!'


XV.
Sad was Columba's face, his words were slow
As though reluctant to the piteous tale--
But now his eyes with sacred rapture glow,
And his wan features kindle, like a pale
Dissolving cloud through which the moon is shed:
He speaks of Christ re-risen from the dead.


XVI.
He ceased, then cried: 'Glory unto the Lord
Whose mercy is as boundless as the sea;
Fruitful to-day makes He my feeble word,
For with faith's eye an ancient chief I see,
Whose bark o'er the blue deep is drawing nigh,
He comes to be baptised before he die.'


XVII.
Scarce had he ended when towards the land
A wicker boat sped swiftly o'er the bay;
There by the Pictish chieftain, hand in hand,
Her golden locks entangled with his grey,
His grandchild sat, lit by the level rays;
The loveliest and the last of all her race.


XVIII.
They hailed the Chief as to a sea-worn stone
Two fishers bore him; and his muffled sense
Struggled with feeble eld to seize the tone
Of the Saint's voice, as he in words intense
Proclaimed the saving truth of gospel lore,
Then with his hands baptised the Chieftain hoar.


XIX.
And when the holy dew had wet his brow,
And his wan lips tasted the sacrament,
His head against Columba's breast sank low,
And o'er his face a smile of rapt content
Played softly, smoothing out the lines of care
Which joy and grief and toil had planted there.


XX.
Then on the spot where he has breathed his last
They lay him, letting dust to dust return;
Then one by one, as solemnly they cast
A little earth upon his grave, they turn
To the benighted heathen, look above,
And chaunt: 'His soul is God's, and God is love.'


XXI.
A piteous cry and terrible then rung
Even like a very echo to the word
Upon the startled hearers, whom it wrung
With answering grief, as when along the chord
Of palpitating harp the breezes sigh
Each string responsive wails in sympathy.


XXII.
A maiden with wild eyes and streaming hair
And features white with horror rose aghast,
Unconscious of the pitying people's stare,
And on the new-made grave herself she cast
In utter desolation, till her frame
Convulsed by sobs shook like a wind-blown flame.


XXIII.
'Oh father, father,' she at last made moan,
'My father's father, last of all our race,
Hast thou gone too, and left me here alone
So helpless as I am, so weak to face
The dreadful shifts of war with all its woes,
Cold, hunger, shame, fear of insulting foes.'


XXIV.
'Nay, child, blaspheme not in thine agony!
Art thou not in our heavenly Father's care?
He who upholds the everlasting sky
Throughout the ages, suffers not a hair
Of thine to fall but that it is His will;
Bless Him for joy, for sorrow bless Him still.


XXV.
'Yea! clasp thine unused hands in prayer, and lift
Thy still down-drooping eyes to Him above.
Is not the giver greater than His gift?
Must not His love contain all lesser love
Of father, mother, brother, husband, wife--
The Alpha He and Omega of life?'


XXVI.
Thus spake Columba, burning to allay
The pains of earthly love with saving truth;
But she, who deemed confusedly that they
With their sad rites had slain her sire, forsooth,
Was deaf to him, and ever made her moan,
'Hast thou gone too, and left me here alone!'


XXVII.
At last--when all his words and prayers had failed
To comfort or assuage the orphan's woe,
Who prostrate on the grave still wept and wailed,--
Columba muttered as he turned to go:
'Nay, sooner parley with the roaring main
Than with a woman maddening in her pain.'


XXVIII.
So thus they left her, as she would not come,
Left her to night and a few firstling stars
That here and there from the celestial dome
Peered brightly through the narrow cloudy bars,
As though some great white seraph's lidless eyes
Were looking down on her from Paradise.


XXIX.
But one there was who could not rest in peace,
For pity of that maiden's lonely pain!
Was there no balm in Gilead to appease
Her wounded spirit?--yea, might not he gain
That soul benighted to eternal bliss,
By teaching her God's love through grief like this?


XXX.
Thus Oran mused, the youngest and most fair
Of that devoted zealous little band
That now for many a laborious year
Followed Columba's lead from land to land,
Daring the danger of the narrow seas
To plant the Cross among the Hebrides.


XXXI.
Young, but most fervid of their brotherhood,
Fair Oran was, whose faith leaped like a sword
From out the sheath, and could not be subdued
When brandished in the service of the Lord,
To whom--as sparks leap upward from a fire--
His soaring thoughts incessantly aspire.


XXXII.
Yea, he must save her soul, that like a bark
Drifting without a rudder, rudely tossed
On life's rough sea, might founder in the dark,
In the abysm of hell engulfed and lost.
Thus musing, he retraced his steps once more
Towards the grave beside the sounding shore.


XXXIII.
'Arise, and let the dead bury their dead!'
He said to her still shedding stanchless tears.
Affrighted by his voice, she raised her head
With eyes dilated like a startled deer's;
With lovely, longing, melancholy eyes,
She looked up at him with a dumb surprise.


XXXIV.
'Come unto Jesus, He will give thee rest,'
Oran began, but stammered as he spoke:
Why throbbed his heart so loudly in his breast,
As if impatient of the heavy yoke
Of faith, that curbed desire as soon as born,
That nipped the rose, but left its piercing thorn?


XXXV.
A moment has undone the work of years!
A single glance o'erthrown an austere saint!
And the clear faith, achieved with stripes and tears
And midnight fasts and vigils, now grows faint,
And like a star lost in the new-born light
Flickers awhile, then fades into the night.


XXXVI.
Still Oran wrestles with the fiend within,
Striving to teach the gospel to the maid;
He tells her of man's fall through deadly sin,
And of the Saviour who our ransom paid:
She, with her eyes now bent upon the ground,
Listens like one by strong enchantment bound.


XXXVII.
It was a clear and cloudless summer night,
Stars without number clustered in the blue,
Some like mere sparks of evanescent light
Receding infinite from mortal view,
Some with a steadier lustre softly glow,
Like golden flames or silver flakes of snow.


XXXVIII.
But lo! like some lost soul from heaven's height
Hurled headlong, shivering to its awful doom,
A wingèd star shoots dazzling through the night,
And vanishes in some stupendous gloom:
Thus once the brightest of the angels fell
Through yawning space into profoundest hell.


XXXIX.
And trembling for his own soul, Oran prayed:
'Oh blessed Virgin, whom the angelic quire
Rapturous adore! immaculate Mother-maid!
Pure Queen! make pure my heart of every fire
Which is not kindled on thy sacred shrine,
Of every thought not wholly, solely thine!'


XL.
Even while suppliant's lips devoutly move,
A heavenly face, though not the Virgin's, filled
His eyes with beauty, and his heart with love,
Till with dread rapture all his pulses thrilled:
A face whose heavenly innocence might well
Eradicate the very thought of hell.


XLI.
Perplexed, bewildered, breathless Oran stood,
Torn by the passions he had still suppressed
With macerations of the flesh and blood;
But now this idol which enthralled his breast
With subtle witchcraft, snake-like seemed to hiss,
'Thine immortality for one long kiss!'


XLII.
'Get thee behind me, Satan!' wildly cries
The monk, and flees in horror from the place.
Did not the devil tempt him through those eyes
Burning like two fair lights in that fair face,
Till moth-like drawn in ever-narrowing rings
Towards the flame, his soul must scorch her wings?


XLIII.
Far o'er the moorland through the starlit night
He rushed, like one who flies in mortal fear
Of some dread enemy that dogs his flight,
And who, whate'er his speed, still draweth near:
Yea, though he shall outspeed the wingèd wind,
How fly the haunting thought of his own mind?


XLIV.
At last he knelt all breathless on the sod,
And gathered up his whole soul in one prayer,
Yea,--even as Jacob wrestled before God
While angels hovered on the heavenly stair,
He wrestled,--loudly calling on the Lord
To keep him from the sin his soul abhorred.


XLV.
When his long prayer was done, and the pale priest
Rose cold with clinging vapour, one by one
The flickering stars went out, and in the East
The dim air kindled with the coming sun,
While in illimitable sheer delight
The holy larks rose worshipping the light.