Sir Lewis Morris: Verses about Music

'ONLY a woman's hair,'
A fair lock severed and dead ;
But where is the maiden where
That delicate head ?

Perhaps she is rich and fair,
Perhaps she is poor and worn,
And 'twere better that one somewhere
Had never been born.

And the careless hand that threw
That faded tress away
Ah ! the false heart that once seemed true,
Ah ! love flung away.

AH ! love is like a tender flower
Hid in the opening leaves of life,
Which, when the springtide calls, has power
To scorn the elemental strife
So strong, that well it knows to gain
Fresh sweetness from the wind and rain.

So strong, and yet so weak, alas !
It waits the wooing of the sun ;
'Mid frosts and snows the brief hours pass,
And when they melt the spring is done.
Gay blooms and honeyed fruits may come,
But spring is dead, and birds are dumb.

IT was not that thy eyes
Were blue as autumn skies,
It was not that thy hair
Was as an angel's fair.
No excellence of form could move
A finer soul to so much love.

Nor that in thee I sought
For precious gems of thought,
Nor ever hoped to find
Hid treasure in thy mind.
Gray wisdom comes with time and age,
And thine was an unwritten page.

But that I seemed in thee
My other self to see,
Yet purer and more high
Than meets my inner eye,
Like that enamoured boy who, gazing down,
His lower self would in his higher drown.

THEY were two poor young girls, little older than children,
Who passed through the midnight streets of the city
Singing.

Poorly clad, morning-eyed, with a strange look of shyness,
Linked arms, and round cheeks, and smooth heads bent together,
Singing.

Singing, great Heaven ! with their fresh childish voices,
Some low-murmured ditty, half hymntune, half love-song,
Singing.

Always by hushed square, and long street deserted,
As from school by the old village streot on fair evenings,
Singing,

Singing, and knowing it not, the old burden
That is born out of secular wrongs and oppressions,
Singing,

Of selfish riches, of misery and hunger,
Of sin that is bred of the wants of the wretched,
Singing,

Of poor bribes that purchase souls, of the endless,
Perpetual harvest of pain and of evil,
Singing,

So, they passed to the flaring sinbefouled places,
And amid the thick throng of the fallen I lost them,
Singing,

A hymn-tune, a love-song, a prayer chanted backward,
A witch spell unholy, a sweet suffrage saintly
Singing.

O FAIR bird, singing in the woods,
To the rising and the setting sun,
Does ever any throb of pain
Thrill through thee ere thy song be done:
Because the summer fleets so fast ;
Because the autumn fades so soon ;
Because the deadly winter treads
So closely on the steps of June?

O sweet maid, opening like a rose
In love's mysterious, honeyed air,
Dost think sometimes the day will come
When thou shalt be no longer fair :
When love will leave thee and pass on
To younger and to brighter eyes ;
And thou shall live unloved, alone,
A dull life, only dowered with sighs ?

O brave youth, panting for the fight,
To conquer wrong and win thee fame,
Dost see thyself grown old and spent,
And thine a still unhonoured name :
When all thy hopes have come to naught,
And all thy fair schemes droop and pine
And wrong still lifts her hydra heads
To fall to younger arms than thine ?

Nay ; song and love and lofty aims
May never be where faith is not ;
Strong souls within the present live ;
The future veiled, the past forgot :
Grasping what is, with thews of steel,
They bend what shall be, to their will ;
And blind alike to doubt and dread,
The End, for which they are, fulfil.

IF ever,dear,
I might at last the barren victory gain,
After long struggle and laborious pain,
And many a secret tear,
To think, since think I must of thee,
Not otherwise than thou of me.

Haply I might
Thy chilling coldness, thy disdain, thy pride,
Which draw me, half reluctant, to thy side,
With a like meed requite,
And I my too fond self despise,
Seeing with disenchanted eyes.

But now, alas !
So fast a prisoner am I to my love,
No power there is that can my chains remove,
So sweet the caged hours pass,
That, if it parted me from thee,
I would not willingly grow free.

Nor would I dare
To ask for recompense of love again,
Who love thee for the height of thy disdain.
Thou wouldst not show so fair
If we should own an equal flame,
Unequal souls, in love the same.

Full well I know
That what I worship is not wholly thee,
But a fair dream, a pious fantasy.
Such as at times doth grow
On yearnings of the cloistered mind,
Or the rapt vision of the blind.

Scorn me then, sweet,
I would not thou shouldst leave thy lofty place,
Thy lover should not see thee face to face,
But prostrate at thy feet.
No recompense, no equal part I seek,
Only that thou be strong and I be weak.

MY soul is as a bird
Singing in fair weather,
Deep in shady woodlands through the evening's dewy calm ;
Every glossy feather
On her full throat stirred,
As she pours out, rapt, unconscious, all the sweetness of her psalm ;
Mounting high, and higher, higher,
Soaring now, now falling, dying ;
Now through silvery pauses sighing;
Throbbing now with joyous strife,
And rushing tides of love and life,
Till some ray of heavenly fire
Shot obliquely through the shade,
Pierces her ; and lo ! the strain
Of the music she has made
Fills her with a sudden pain.

Then she forgets to sing
Her former songs of gladness ;
Sitting mute in silence sweeter than the old forgotten lays ;
Till anon some note of sadness,
Long-drawn, languishing,
Faint at first, swells onward slowly to a subtler depth of praise,
As the low, wild, minor, broken
By the ghosts of gayer fancies,
Like a rippling stream advances,
Till the full tide grown too deep,
Whispers first, then falls asleep.
Then, as souls with no word spoken
Grow together, she, mute and still,
Thrills through with a secret voice,
Which the farthest heaven can fill,
And constrains her to rejoice.

And the passer-by who hears,
Not the burst of pleasure,
Swelling upward, sweet, spontaneous, to the portals of the sky,
But a chastened measure,
Low and full of tears ;
And anon the voiceless silence, when the last notes sink and die,
Deems some influence malign,
Checks the current of her song ;
For that none are happy long.
Nay ; but to the rapt soul come
Sounds that strike the singer dumb,
And the silence is Divine ;
For when heaven gives back the strain,
All its joyous tones are o'er ;
First the low sweet notes of pain,
Then, the singer sings no more.

I PACED along
The dim cathedral wrapped in reverend gloom :
I heard the sweet child's song
Spring upwards like a fountain ; and the boom
Of the tempestuous organ-music swell ;
The hushed low voices and the silvery bell;
The incense-laden air ; the kneeling throng :
I knew them all, and seemed to hear the cry
Of countless myriads, rising deep and strong,
Help us ! we faint, we die.
Our knees are weak, our eyes are blind ;
We seek what we shall never find.
Show but Thy face, and we are Thine,
Unknown, Ineffable, Divine !
I heard the loud
Muezzin from the slender minaret call
' To prayer, To prayer;' and lo ! the busy crowd,
Merchant and prince and water-carrier, all
Turned from the world, and, rapt in worship, knelt,
Facing the holy city ; and I felt
That from those myriads kneeling, prostrate, bowed,
A low moan rises to the throne on high,
Not shut out quite by error's thickest cloud,
Help us ! we faint, we die.
Our knees are weak, our eyes are blind ;
We seek what we shall never find.
Show but Thy face, and we are Thine,
Unknown, Ineffable, Divine.
I stood before
The glaring temples on the burning plain ;
I heard the hideous roar
Rise to the stars to drown the shrieks of pain,
What time the murderous idol swept along.
I listened to the innocent, mystic song,
Breathed to the jewelled Lotus evermore,
In the elder lands, through the ages, like a sigh,
And heard in low, sweet chant, and hateful roar,
Help us ! we faint, we die.
Our knees are weak, our eyes arc blind ;
We seek what we shall never find.
Show but Thy face, and we are Thine,
Unknown, Ineffable, Divine !
Ay : everywhere
Echoes the same exceeding bitter cry.
Yet can the Father bear
To hide His presence from the children's eye;
Lets loose on good and bad the plague and sword ;
And though wrong triumph, answers not a word ?
Only deep down in the heart doth He declare
His constant presence ; there, though the outward sky
Be darkened, shines a little speck of fair,—
A light which cannot die.
Though knees be weak, and eyes be blind ;
Though we may seek, and never find ;
Here doth His hidden glory shine,
Unknown, Ineffable, Divine !

THOUGH they may crowd
Rite upon rite, and mystic song on song;
Though the deep organ loud
Through the long nave reverberate full and strong ;
Though the weird priest,
Whom rolling clouds of incense half conceal,
By gilded robes increased,
Mutter and sign, and proudly prostrate kneel ;
Not pomp, nor song, nor bended knee
Shall bring them any nearer Thee.

I would not hold
Therefore that those who worship still where they,
In dear dead days of old,
Their distant sires, knelt once and passed away,
May not from carven stone,
High arching nave and reeded column fine,
And the thin soaring tone
Of the keen music catch a breath divine,
Or that the immemorial sense
Of worship adds not reverence.

But by some bare
Hill- side or plain, or crowded city street,
Wherever purer spirits are,
Or hearts with love inflamed together meet,
Rude bench and naked wall,
Humble and sordid to the worlddimmed sight,
On these shall come to fall
A golden ray of consecrating light,
And Thou within the midst shall there
Invisible receive the prayer.

In every home,
Wherever there are loving hearts and mild,
Thou still dost deign to come,
Clothed with the likeness of a little child ;
Upon the hearth Thou still
Dwellest with them at meat, or work, or play ;
Thou who all space dost fill
Art with the pure and humble day by day ;
Thou treasures! the tears they weep,
And watchest o'er them while they sleep.

Spirit and Word !
That still art hid in every faithful heart,
Indwelling Thought and Lord-
How should they doubt who know
Thee as Thou art ?
How think to bring Thee near
By magic words, or signs, or any spell,
Who art among us here,
Who always in the loving soul dost dwell,
Who art the staff and stay indeed
Of the weak knees and hands that bleed ?

Then let them take
Their pagan trappings, and their lifeless lore;
Let us arise and make
A worthy temple where was none before.
Each soul its own best shrine,
Its priesthood, its sufficient sacrifice,
Its cleansing fount divine,
Its hidden store cf precious sanctities.
Those only fit for priestcraft are
From whom their Lord and King is far.

OFT in the blazing summer noon,
And oft beneath the frosty moon,
When earth and air were hushed and still,
And absolute silence seemed to fill
The farthest border-lands of space,
I loved in childish thought to trace
Glimpses of change, which might transform
The voiceless calm to furious storm ;
Broke the dull spell, which comes to bind
In after-years the sluggish mind ;
And pictured, borne on fancy's wings,
The end of all created things.

Then have I seen with dreaming eye,
The blue depths of the vaulted sky
Rent without noise ; and in their stead
A wonder-world of fancy spread,
A golden city, with domes and spires,
Lit by a strange sun's mystic fires.
Portals of dazzling chrysolite,
Long colonnades of purest white ;
Streets paved with gold and jewels rare ;
And higher, in the ambient air,
A shining Presence undefined :
Swift seraphs stooping swift as wind
From pole to pole, and that vast throng
Which peopled Dante's world of song ;
The last great inquest which shall close
The tale of human joys and woes ;
The dreadful Judge, the opening tomb,
And all the mystery of doom.
Then woke to find the vision vain,
And sun or moon shine calm again.

No longer, save in memory's glass,
These vanished visions come and pass ;
The clearer light of fuller day
Has chased these earlier dreams away.
Faith's eye grows dim with too much light,
And fancy flies our clearer sight.
But shall we mourn her day is o'er,
That these rapt visions come no more ?
Nay ; knowledge has its splendours too,
Brighter than Fancy's brightest hue.
I gaze now on the heavens, and see
How, midst their vast immensity,
By cosmic laws the planets roll,
Sped onwards by a central soul ;
How farther still, and still more far,
World beyond world, star beyond star,
So many, and so far, that speech
And thought must fail the sum to reach.
This universe of nature teems
With things more strange than fancy's dreams ;
And so at length, with clearer eye,
Soar beyond childhood's painted sky,
Up to the Lord of great and small,
Not onewhere, but pervading all :
Who made the music of the spheres,
And yet inclines an ear that hears
The faintest prayer, the humblest sigh;
The strong man's groan, the childish cry;
Who guides the stars, yet without whom
No humblest floweret comes to bloom,
No lowliest creature comes to birth,
No dead leaf flutters to the earth :
Who breathed into our souls the breath,
Which neither time nor change nor death,
Nor hurtling suns at random hurled
And dashed together, world on world,
Can ever kill or quench, till He
Bends down, and bids them not to be.

HERE lay him down in peace to take his rest,
Who tired of singing ere the day was done.
A little time, a little, beneath the sun,
He tarried and gave forth his artless song;
The bird that sings with the dawn, sings not for long,
Only when dew is on the grass his breast
Thrills, but his voice is silent long ere noon.
So sang he once, but might not long sustain
The high pure note of youth, for soon, too soon !
He ceased to know the sweet creative pain
Made still one voice, amid the clamorous strife,
And proved no more the joys or pains of life.

And better so than that his voice should fail,
And sink to earth, and lose its heavenlier tone ;
Perchance, if he had stayed, the sad world's moan,
The long low discord of incessant wrong,
Had marred the perfect cadence of his song,
And made a grosser music to prevail.
But now it falls as pure upon the ear,
As sings the brown bird to the star of eve,
Or child's voice in grey minster quiring clear.
Rather then, give we thanks for him than grieve;
Thoughts of pure joys which but in memory live,
More joy than lower present joys can give.

For him, deep rest or high spontaneous strains ;
For us, fierce strife and low laborious song;
For him, truth's face shining out clear and strong ;
For us, half lights, thick clouds, and darkling days.
No longer walks his soul in mortal ways,
Nor thinks our thoughts, nor feels our joys or pains,
Nor doubts our doubts, nor any more pursues,
Knowing all things, the far-off searchless cause ;
Nor thrills with art, or nature's fairest hues,
Gazing on absolute beauty's inmost laws;
Or lies for ever sunk in dreamless sleep,
Nor recks of us ; and therefore 'tis we weep.

But surely if he sleep, some fair faint dream,
Some still small whisper from his ancient home,
Not joy, nor pain, but mixt of each shall come ;
Or if he wake, the thought of earthly clays
Shall add a tender sweetness to his praise ;
Tempering the unbroken joyance of his theme.
And by-and-by the time shall come when we,
Laden with all our lives, once more shall meet,
Like friends, who after infinite wastes of sea,
Look in each other's eyes ; and lo ! the sweet
Sad fount of memory to its depths is stirred,
And the past lives again, without a word.

Mourn not for him ! perchance he lends his voice
To swell the fulness of the eternal psalm ;
Or haply, wrapt in nature's holy calm,
As lurks the seed within the vital earth,
He quickens surely to a higher birth.
Mourn not for him ! but let your souls rejoice.
We know not what we shall be, but are sure
The spark once kindled by the Eternal breath,
Goes not out quite, but somewhere doth endure
In that strange life we blindly christen death.
Somewhere he is, though where we can' not tell ;
But wheresoe'er God hides him, it is well.

DEAR friend, who, two long centuries ago,
Didst tread where since my grandsires trod,
Along thy devious Usk's untroubled flow,
Breathing thy soul to God.

I seek, I, born in these our later days,
Using the measure thou didst love,
With halting tribute of too tardy praise,
A poet throned above.

I in the self-same venerable halls
And gray quadrangles made my home,
Which heard, new-built, within their recent walls,
Thy youthful footsteps come.

A little grayer now and stiller grown,
The tranquil refuge now, as then,
Where our dear country glories in her own,
Apart from alien men.

There, on thy musings broke the painful sound
Of arms ; the long-plumed cavaliers
Clanged thro the courts the low fat fields around
Were filled with strife and tears.

Constrained by promptings of thy ancient race,
Thy gown and books thou flungst away,
To meet the sturdy Roundhead face to face
On many a hard-fought day,

Till thy soft soul grew sick, and thou didst turn
To our old hills ; and there, ere long,
Love for thy Amoret, at times, would burn
In some too fervid song.

But soon thy wilder pulses stayed, and, life
Grown equable, thy sweet muse mild,
Sobered by tranquil love of child and wife,
Flowed pure and undefiled.

A humble healer thro' a life obscure,
Thou didst expend thy homely days ;
Sweet Swan of Usk ! few know how clear and pure
Are thy unheeded lays.

One poet shall become a household name
Into the nation's heart ingrown ;
One more than equal miss the meed of fame,
And live and die unknown.

So thou, surviving in thy lonely age,
All but thy own undying love
Didst pour upon the sympathetic page,
Words which all hearts can move;

So quaintly fashioned as to add a grace
To the sweet fancies which they bear,
Even as a bronze delved from some ancient place
For very rust shows fair.

'They all are gone into the world of light !'
It is thy widowed muse that sings,
And then mounts upwards from our dazzled sight
On heavenward soaring wings.

'He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know '
'At first sight if the bird be flown ;'
' But what fair dell or grove he sings in now,'
'' That is to him unknown.'

' And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams '
' Call to the soul when man doth sleep,'
' So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes,'
' And into glory peep.'

' O father of eternal life and all '
' Created glories under Thee !'
' Resume Thy Spirit from this world of thrall'
' Into true liberty.'

* * * *

Thou hast rejoined thy dear ones now, and art,
Dear soul, as then thou wouldst be, free.
I, still a prisoner, strive to do my part
In memory of thee.

Thou art so high, and yet unknown: shall I
Repine that I too am obscure ?
Nay, what care I, though all my verse shall die,
If only it is pure ?

So some new singer of the days to be,
Reading this page with soft young eyes,
Shall note the tribute which I pay to thee
With youth's sweet frank surprise.

And musing in himself, perchance shall say,
' Two bards whom centuries part are here
One whose high fame and name defy decay,
And one who held him dear,'

I SAW Sleep stand by an enchanted wood,
Thick lashes drooping o'er her heavy eyes :
Leaning against a flower-cupped tree she stood,
The night air gently breathed with slumbrous sighs.
Such cloak of silence o'er the world was spread,
As on Nile sands enshrouds the mighty dead.

About her birds were dumb, and blooms were bowed,
And a thick heavy sweetness filled the air ;
White robed she seemed ; and hidden as in a cloud,
A star-like jewel in her raven hair.
Downward to earth her cold torch would she turn
With feeble fires that might no longer burn.

And in her languid limbs and loosened zone
Such beauty dwelt ; and in her rippling hair,
As of old time was hers, and hers alone,
The mother of gods and men.divinely fair ;
When whiter than white foam or sand she lay,
The fairest thing beneath the eye of day.

To her came Love, a comely youth and strong,
Fair as the morning of a day in June;
Around him breathed a jocund air of song,
And his limbs moved as to a joyous tune :
With golden locks blown back, and eyes aflame,
To where the sleeping maiden leant, he came.

Then they twain passed within that mystic grove
Together, and with them I, myself unseen.
Oh, strange, sweet land ! wherein all men may prove
The things they would, the things which might have been ;
Hopeless hopes blossom, withered youth revives,
And sunshine comes again to darkened lives.

What sights were theirs in that blest wonder-land ?
See, the white mountain-summits, framed in cloud,
Redden with sunset ; while below them stand
The solemn pine-woods like a funeral crowd ;
And lower still the vineyards twine, and make
A double vintage in the tranquil lake.

Or, after storm-tost nights, on some sea isle
The sudden tropical morning bursts ; and lo !
Bright birds and feathery palms, the green hills smile,
Strange barks, with swarthy crews, dart to and fro ;
And on the blue bay, glittering like a crown,
The white domes of some fair historic town.

Or, they fare northward ever, northward still,
At midnight, under the unsetting sun ;
O'er endless snows, from hill to icy hill,
Where silence reigns with death, and life is done :
Till from the North a sweet wind suddenly;
And hark ! the warm waves of the fabulous sea.

Or, some still eve, when summer days are long,
And the mown hay is sweet, and wheat is green,
They hear some wood-bird sing the old fair song
Of joys to be, greater than yet have been;
Stretched 'neath the snowy hawthorn, till the star,
Hung high in heaven, warns them that home is far.

Or, on the herbless, sun-struck hills, by night,
Under the silent peaks, they hear the loud
Wild flutes ; and onward, by the ghostly light,
Whirled in nude dances, sweeps the maddened crowd ;
Till the fierce eddy seize them, and they prove
The shame, the rapture, of unfettered love.

Or, by the sacred hearth they seem to sit,
While firelight gleams on many a sunny head ;
At that fair hour, before the lamp is lit,
When hearts are fullest, though no word be said,—
When the world fades, and rank and wealth and fame,
Seem, matched with this, no better than a name.

All these they knew ! and then a breeze of day
Stirred the dark wood ; and then they seemed to come
Forth with reluctant feet among the
Bare fields, unfanciful ; and all the flame
Was burnt from out Love's eyes, and from his hair,
And his smooth cheek was marked with lines of care.

And paler showed the maid, more pure and white
And holier than before. But when I said,
' Sweet eyes, be opened ;' lo, the unveiled sight
Was as the awful vision of the dead !
Then knew I, breathing slow, with difficult breath,
That Love was one with Life, and Sleep with Death.

UNDER the picture gallery wall,
As a sea-leaf clings to a wave-worn rock,
Nor shrinks from the surging impetuous shock
Of the breakers which gather and whiten and fall
A child's form crouches, nor seems to heed
The ceaseless eddy and whirl of men :
Men and women with hearts that bleed,
Men and women of wealth and fame,
High in honour, or sunk in shame,
Pass on like phantoms, and pass again.
And he lies there like a weed.

A child's form, said I ; but looking again
It is only the form that is childish now,
For age has furrowed the low dull brow,
And marked the pale face with its lines of pain.
Yet but few years have fled, since I first passed by,
For a dwarf's life is short if you go by the sun,
And marked in worn features and lustreless eye
Some trace of youth's radiance, though faint and thin,
But now, oh, strange jest ! there's a beard to his chin.
And he lies there, grown old ere his youth is done,
With his poor limbs bent awry.

What a passer-by sees, is a monstrous head,
With a look in the eyes as of those who gaze
On some far-off sight with a dumb amaze ;
A face as pale as the sheeted dead,
A frail body propt on a padded crutch,
And lean long fingers, which flutter the keys
Of an old accordion, returning their touch
With some poor faint echoes of popular song,
Trivial at all times and obsolete long,
Psalm-tunes, and African melodies,
Not differing very much.

And there he sits nightly in heat and cold,
When the fountains fall soft on the stillness of June,
Or when the sharp East sings its own shrill tune,
Patiently playing and growing old.
The long year waxes and wanes, the great
Flash by in splendour from rout or ball,
Statesmen grown weary of long debate,
Hurry by homewards, and fling him alms ;
Pitiful women, touched by the psalms,
Bringing back innocence, stoop by the wall
Where he lies at Dives' gate.

What are his thoughts of, stranded there ?
While life ebbs and flows by, again and again,
Does the old sad Problem vex his poor brain ?
'Why is the world so pleasant and fair,
Why, am I only who did no wrong
Crippled and bent out of human form ?
Why are other men tall and strong ?
Surely if all men were made to rejoice,
Seeing that we come without will or choice,
It were better to crawl for a day like a worm,
Than to lie like this so long !

'The blind shuffles by with a tap of his staff,
The tired tramp plods to the workhouse ward,
But he carries his broad back as straight as a lord
And the blind man can hear his little ones laugh.
While I lie here like a weed on the sand,
With these crooked limbs, paining me night and day.
Would to Heaven, I were come to the promised land !
Of the sweet old faith which was preached for the poor,
Where none shall be weary or pained any more,
Nor change shall enter nor any decay,
And the stricken down shall stand ?'

And perhaps sometimes when the sky is clear,
And the stars show like lamps on the sweet summer night,
Some chance chord struck with a sudden delight,
Soars aloft with his soul, and brings Paradise near.
And then for even nature is sometimes kind
He lies stretched under palms with a harp of gold ;
Or is whirled on by coursers as fleet as the wind ;
And is no more crippled, nor weak nor bent ;
No more painful nor impotent ;
No more hungry, nor weary nor cold,—
But of perfect form and mind.

Or maybe his thoughts are of humbler cast,
For hunger and cold are real indeed ;
And he longs for the hour when his toil shall be past,
And he with sufficient for next day's need :
Some humble indulgence of food or fire,
Some music-hall ditty, or marvellous book,
Or whatever it be such poor souls desire ;
And with this little solace, for God would fain
Make even His measures of joy and pain,
He drones happily on in his quiet nook,
With hands that never tire.

Well, these random guesses must go for naught
Seeing it were surer and easier far
To weigh to an atom the faintest star,
Than to sound the dim depths of a brother's thought.
But whenever I hear those poor snatches of song,
And see him lie maimed in,tody and soul,
While I am straight and healthy and strong,
I seem to redden with a secret shame,
That we can thus differ who should be the same,
While I hear the World's thundering chariot-wheels roll
Unpitying along

ALL men are poets if they might but tell
The dim ineffable changes which the sight
Of natural beauty works on them : the charm
Of those first days of Spring, when life revives
And all the world is bloom : the whitefringed green
Ofsummer seas swirling around the base
Of overhanging cliffs ; the golden gleam
Seen from some breezy hill, where far and wide
The fields grow ripe for harvest ; or the storm
Smiting the leaden surf, or echoing
On nightly lakes and unsuspected hills,
Revealed in lurid light ; or first perceived,
High in mid-heaven, above the rosy clouds,
The everlasting snows.
And Art can move,
To higher minds, an influence as great
As Nature's self ; when the rapt gazer marks
The stainless mother folding arms divine
Around the Eternal Child, or pitying love
Nailed to the dreadful cross, or the white strength
Of happy heathen gods, or serpent coils
Binding the agonized limbs, till from their pain
Is born a thing of beauty for all time.

And more than Nature, more than Art can move
The awakened soul heroic soaring deeds ;
When the young champion falls in hopeless fight,
Striking for home ; or when, by truth constrained,
The martyr goes forth cheerful to his fate
The dungeon, or the torture, or, more hard,
The averted gaze of friends, the loss of love,
The loneliness of soul, which truth too oft
Gives to reward the faith which casts aside
All things for her ; or saintly lives obscure,
Spent in a sweet compassion, till they gain,
Living, some glow of heaven ; or passionate love,
Bathing our poor world in a mystic light,
Seen once, then lost for ever. These can stir
Life to its depths, till silence grows a load
Too hard to bear, and the rapt soul would fain
Speak with strange tongues which startle as they come,
Like the old saints who spake at Pentecost.

But we are dumb, we are dumb, and may not tell
What stirs within us, though the soul may throb
And tremble with its passion, though the heart
Dissolve in weeping : dumb. Nature may spread
Sublimest sights of beauty ; Art inspire
High thoughts and pure of God -like sacrifice ;
Yet no word comes. Heroic daring deeds
Thrill us, yet no word comes ; we are dumb, we are dumb,
Save that from finer souls at times may rise,
Once in an age, faint inarticulate sounds,
Low halting tones of wonder, such as come
From children looking on the stars, but still
With power to open to the listening ear
The Fair Divine Unknown, and to unseal
Heaven's inner gates before us evermore.

Ah, few and far between ! The earth grows green,
Art's glorious message speaks from year to year,
Great deeds and high are done from day to day,
But the voice comes not which has power to wake
The sleeping soul within, and animate
The beauty which informs them, lending speech
To what before was dumb. They come, they go,
Those sweet impressions spent on separate souls,
Like raindrops on the endless oceanplains,
Lost as they fall. The world rolls on ; lives spring,
Blossom, and fade ; the play of life is played
More vivid than of old a wider stage,
With more consummate actors ; yet the dull,
Cold deeps of sullen silence swallow up
The strain, and it is lost. But if we might
Paint all things as they are, find voice to speak
The thoughts now mute within us, let the soul
Trace on its sensitive surface vividly,
As does the sun our features, all the play
Of passion, all the changeful tides of thought,
The mystery, the beauty, the delight,
The fear, the horror, of our lives, our being
Would blaze up heavenward in a sudden flame,
Spend itself, and be lost.
Wherefore 'tis well
This narrow boundary that hedges in
The strong and weak alike. Thought could not live,
Nor speech, in that pure aether which girds round
Life's central dwelling-place. Only the dull
And grosser atmosphere of earth it is
Which vibrates to the sweet birds' song, and brings
Heaven to the wondering ear. Only the stress,
The pain, the hope, the longing, the constraint
Of limited faculties circling round and round
The grim circumference, and finding naught
Of outlet to the dread unknown beyond,
Can lend the poet voice. Only the weight,
The dulness of our senses, which makes dumb
And hushes half the finer utterance,
Makes possible the song, and modulates
The too exalted music, that it falls
So soft upon the listening soul, that life,
Not withered by the awful harmony, -
Nor drunk with too much sweetness,' nor struck blind
By the too vivid presence of the
Unknown,
Fulfils its round of duty elevated,
Not slain by too much splendour comforted,
Not thunder-smitten soothed, not laid asleep
And ever, through the devious maze of being,
Fares in slow narrowing cycles to the end.

OH ! sometimes when the solemn organ rolls
Its stream of sound down gray historic aisles ;
Or the full, high-pitched struggling symphony
Pursues the fleeting melody in vain :
Like a fawn through shadowy groves, or heroine
Voiced like a lark, pours out in burning song
Her love or grief; or when, to the rising stars
Linked village maidens chant the hymn of eve ;
Or Sabbath concourse, flushed and dewy-eyed
Booms its full bass ; or before tasks begun,
Fresh childish voices sanctify the morn :
My eyes grow full, my heart forgets to beat.
What is this mystic yearning fills my being ?

Hark ! the low music wakes, and soft and slow
Wanders at will through flowery fields of sound ;
Climbs gentle hills, and sinks in sunny vales,
And stoops to cull sweet way-side blooms, and weaves
A dainty garland ; then, grown tired, casts down
With careless hand the fragrant coronal,
And child-like sings itself to sleep.
Anon
The loud strain rises like a strong knight armed,
Battling with wrong ; or passionate seer of God
Scathing with tongue of fire the hollow shows,
The vain deceits of men ; or law-giver,
Parting in thunder from the burning hill
With face aflame j or with fierce rush of wings
And blazing brand, upon the crest of Sin,
The swift archangel swooping ; or the roll
Which follows on the lightning ; all are there
In that great hurry of sound.
And then the voice
Grows thinner like a lark's, and soars and soars,
And mounts in circles, higher, higher, higher,
Up to heaven's gate, and lo I the unearthly song
Thrills some fine inner chord, and the swift soul,
Eager and fluttering like a prisoned bird,
Breaks from its cage, and soars aloft to join
The enfranchised sound, and for a moment seems
To touch on some dim border-land of being,
Full of high thought and glorious enterprise
And vague creative fancies, till at length
Waxed grosser than the thin ethereal air,
It sinks to earth again.
And then a strain
Sober as is the tender voice of home,
Unbroken like a gracious life, and lo
Young children sit around me, and the love
I never knew is mine, and so my eyes
Grow full, and all my being is thrilled with tears.

What is this strange new life, this finer sense,
This passionate exaltation, which doth' force
Like the weird Indian juggler, instantly
My soul from seed to flower, from flower to fruit,
Which lifts me out of self, and bids me tread
Without a word, on dim aerial peaks,
Impossible else, and rise to glorious thoughts,
High hopes, and inarticulate fantasies
Denied to soberer hours ? No spoken thought
Of bard or seer can mount so far, or lift
The soul to such transcendent heights, or work
So strong a spell of love, or roll along
Such passionate troubled depths. No painter's hand
Can limn so clear, the luminous air serene
Of Paradise, the halcyon deep, the calm
Of the eternal snows, the eddy and whirl
Of mortal fight, the furious flood let loose
From interlacing hills, the storm which glooms
Over the shoreless sea. Our speech too oft
Is bound and fettered by such narrow laws,
That words which to one nation pierce the heart,
To another are but senseless sounds, or weak
And powerless to stir the soul ; but this
Speaks with a common tongue, uses a speech
Which all may understand, or if it bear
Some seeds of difference in it, only such
As separates gracious sisters, like in form,
But one by gayer fancies touched, and one
Rapt by sweet graver thoughts alone, and both
Mighty to reach the changing moods of the soul,
Or grave or gay, and though sometimes they be
Mated with unintelligible words,
Or feeble and unworthy, yet can lend
A charm to gild the worthless utterance,
And wing the sordid chrysalis to float
Amid the shining stars.
Oh strange sweet power,
Ineffable, oh gracious influence,
I know not whence thou art, but this
I know.
Thou boldest in thy hand the silver key
That can unlock the sacred fount of tears,
Which falling make life green ; the hidden spring
Of purer fancies and high sympathies ;
No mirth is thine, thou art too high for mirth,
Like Him who wept but 'smiled not *, mirth is born
On the low plains of thoughts bes' reached by words.
But those who scale the untrodden mountain peak,
Or sway upon the trembling spire, are far
From laughter ; so thy gracious power divine,
Not sad but solemn, stirs the well of tears,
But not mirth's shallow spring : tears are divine,
But mirth is of the earth, a creature born
Of careless youth and joyance ; satisfied
With that which is ; parched by no nobler thirst
For that which might be ; pained by no regret
For that which was, but is not : but for thee.
Oh, fair mysterious power, the whole great scheme
Lies open like a book ; and if the charm
Of its high beauty makes thee sometimes gay,
Yet 'tis an awful joy, so mixed with thought,
That even Mirth grows grave, and evermore
The myriad possibilities unfulfilled,
The problem of Creation, the immense
Impenetrable depths of thought, the vague
Perplexities of being, touch thy lips
And keep thee solemn always.
Oh, fair voice,
Oh virginal, sweet interpreter, reveal
Our inner selves to us, lay bare the springs,
The hidden depths of life, the high desires
Which lurk there unsuspected, the remorse
Which never woke before ; unclothe the soul
Of this its shroud of sense, and let it mount,
On the harmonious beat of thy light wings,
Up to those heights where life is so attuned,
So pure and self-concordant ; filled so deep
With such pervading beauty that no voice
Mars the unheard ineffable harmony,
And o'er white plain and breathless summit reigns
A silence sweeter than the sweetest sound.

DEAR heart ! what a little time it is since Francis and I used to walk
From church in the still June evenings together, busy with loving talk ;
And now he is gone, far away over seas, to some strange foreign country, and I
Shall never rise from my bed any more, till the day when I come to die.

I tried not to think of him during the prayers; but when his dear voice I heard,
I failed to take part in the hymn ; for my heart fluttered up to my throat like a bird,
And scarcely a word of the sermon I caught. I doubt 'twas a grievous sin;
But 'twas only one poor little hour in the week that I had to be happy in.

When the blessing was given, and we left the dim aisles for the light of the evening star ;
Though I durst not lift up my eyes from the ground, yet I knew that he was not far.
And I hurried on, though I fain would have stayed, till I heard his footstep draw near ;
And love rising up in my breast like a flame, cast out every shadow of fear.

Ah me ! 'twas a pleasant pathway home, a pleasant pathway and sweet ;
Ankle deep through the purple clover ; breast high 'mid the blossoming wheat ;
I can hear the landrails prate through the dew, and the night-jars' tremulous thrill,
And the nightingale pouring her passionate song from the hawthorn under the hill.

One day, when we came to the wicket gate, 'neath the elms, where we used to part,
His voice began to falter and break as he told me I had his heart.
And I whispered back that mine was his : we knew what we felt long ago ;
Six weeks are as long as a lifetime almost, when you love each other so.

So we put up the banns, and were man and wife, in the sweet fading time of the year,
And till Christmas was over and past, I knew no shadow of sorrow or fear.
It seems like a dream already, alas ! a sweet dream vanished and gone,
So hurried and brief while passing away, so long to look back upon.

I had only had him three little months, and the world lay frozen and dead,
When the summons came, which we feared and hoped, and he sailed over seas for our bread.
Ah, well ! it is fine to be wealthy and grand, and never to need to part ;
But 'tis better far to love and be poor than be rich with an empty heart.

Though I thought 'twould have killed me to lose him at first, yet was he not going for me ?
So I hid deep down in my breast all the grief, which I knew it would pain him to see.
He'd surely be back by the autumn, he said ; and since his last passionate kiss
He has scarcely been out of my thoughts, day or night, for a moment, from that day to this.

When I wrote to him how I thought it would be, and he answered so full of love,
Ah ! there was not an angel happier than I, in all the white chorus above.
And I seemed to be lonely no longer, the days and the weeks passed so swiftly away;
And the March winds died, and the sweet April showers gave place to the blossoms of May.

And then came the sad summer eve, when I sat with the little frock in the sun,
And Patience ran in with the news of the ship Ah, veil ! may His will be done.
They said that all hands were lost, and I swooned away on the floor like a stone ;
And another life came, ere I knew he was safe, and my own was over and gone.

* * * * * * *

And now I lie helpless here, and shall never rise up again ;
I grow weaker and weaker, day by day, till my weakness itself is a pain.
Every morning the slow dawn creeps ; every evening I see from my bed
The orange-gold fade into lifeless gray, and the old evening star overhead.

Sometimes by the twilight dim, or the awful birth of the day,
As I lie, very still, not asleep nor awake, my soul seems to flutter away ;
And I float far beyond the stars, till I thrill with a rapturous pain,
And the feeble touch of a tiny hand recalls me to life again.

And the doctor says she will live. Ah ! 'tis hard to leave her alone,
And to think she will never know, in the world, the love of the mother who's gone.
They will tell her of me, by-and-by, and perhaps she will shed me a tear ;
But if I should stoop to her bed in the night, she would start with a horrible fear.

She will grow into girlhood, I trust, and will bask in the light of love,
And I, if I gain to see her at all, shall only look on from above.
I shall see her and cannot aid, though she fall into evil and woe.
Ah, how can the angels find heart to rejoice, when they think of their dear ones below ?

And Francis, he too will forget me, and go on the journey of life ;
And I hope, though I dare not think of it yet, will take him another wife
It will hardly be Patience, I think, though she liked him in days gone by.
Was that why she came ? But what thoughts are these for one who is soon to die?

I hope he will come ere I go, though I feel no longer the thirst
For the sound of his voice and the light of his eye, which I used to feel at first.
!Tis not that I care for him less, but death dries, with a finger of fire,
The tender springs of innocent love and the torrents of strong desire.

And I know we shall meet again. I have done many things that are wrong,
But surely the Lord of Life and of Love cannot bear to be angry long.
I am only a girl of eighteen, and have had no teacher but love ;
And, it may be, the sorrow and pain I have known will be counted for tna above.

For I doubt if the minister knows all the depths of the goodness of God,
When he says, He is jealous of earthly love, and bids me bow down 'neath the rod.
He is learned and wise, I know, but somehow to dying eyes
God opens the secret doors of the shrine that are closed to the learned and wise.

So now I am ready to go, for I know He will do what is best,
Though He call me away while the sun is on high, like a child sent early to rest.
I should like him to see her first, though the yearning is over and past :
But what is that footstep upon the stair ? Oh, my darling at last, at last!

GREAT brown eyes,
Thick plumes of hair,
Old corduroys
The worse for wear ;
A buttoned jacket,
And peeping out
An ape's grave poll,
Or a guinea pig's snout ;
A sun-kissed face,
And a dimpled mouth,
With the white flashing teeth
And soft smile of the south ;
A young back bent,
Not with age or care,
But the load of poor music
'Tis fated to bear :
But a commonplace picture
To commonplace eyes,
,Yet full of a charm
Which the thinker will prize.

They were stern cold rulers,
Those Romans of old,
Scorning letters and art
For conquest and gold ;
Yet leavening mankind,
In mind and in tongue,
With the laws that they made
And the songs that they sung :
Sitting rose-crowned,
With pleasure-choked breath,
As the nude young limbs crimsoned,
Then stiffened in death ;
Piling up monuments
Greater than praise,
Thoughts and deeds that shall live
To the latest of days :
Adding province to province,
And sea to sea,
Till the idol fell down
And the world rose up free.

And this is the outcome,
This vagabond child
With that statue-like face
And eyes soft and mild,
This creature so humble,
So gay, yet so meek,
Whose sole strength is only
The strength of the weak ;
Of those long cruel ages
Of lust and of guile,
Naught left us to-day
But an innocent smile.
For the laboured appeal
Of the orator's art,
A few childish accents
That reach to the heart.
For those stern legions speeding
O'er sea and o'er land,
But a pitiful glance
And a suppliant hand.
I could moralize still ;
But the organ begins,
And the tired ape swings downward
And capers and grins :

And away flies romance.
And yet, time after time,
As I dream of days spent
In a sunnier clime,
Of blue lakes set deep
In the olive-clad mountains,
Of gleaming white palaces
Girt with cool fountains,
Of minsters where every
Carved stone is a treasure,
Of sweet music hovering
'Twixt pain and 'twixt pleasure ;
Of chambers enriched,
On all sides, overhead,
With the deathless creations
Of hands that are dead ;
Of still cloisters holy,
And twilight arcade,
Where the lovers still saunter
Thro' chequers of shade ;
Of tomb and of temple,
Arena and column,
'Mid to-day's garish splendours,
Sombre and solemn ;
Of the marvellous town
With the salt-flowing street,
Where colour is richest,
And music most sweet ;
Of her the great mother,
Who centuries sate
'Neath a black shadow blotting
The days she was great ;
Bound so fast, brought so low
She, our source and our home-
That only a phantom
Was left us of Rome !
She who, seeming to sleep
Thro' all ages to be,
Was the priests', is mankind's,
Was a slave, and is free !
I turn with grave thought
To this child of the ages,
And to all that is writ
In Time's hidden pages.
Shall young Howards or Guelphs,
In the days that shall come,
Wander forth seeking bread
Far from England and home ?

Shall they sail to new continents,
English no more,
Or turn strange reverse
To the old classic shore ?
Shall fair locks and blue eyes,
And the rose on the cheek,
Find a language of pity
The tongue cannot speak
' Not English, but angels'?
Shall this tale be told
Of Romans to be
As of Romans of old ?
Shall they too have monkeys
And music ? Will any
Try their luck with an engine
Or toy spinning-jenny ?

Shall we too be led
By that mirage of Art
Which saps the true strength
Of the national heart ?
The sensuous glamour,
The dreamland of grace,
Which rot the strong manhood
They fail to replace ;
Which at once are the glory,
The ruin, the shame,
Of the beautiful lands
And ripe souls whence they came ?

Oh, my Britain ! oh, Mother
Of Freemen ! oh, sweet,
Sad toiler majestic,
With labour-worn feet !
Brave worker, girt round,
Inexpugnable, free,
With tumultuous sound
And salt spume of the sea,
Fenced off from the clamour
Of alien mankind
By the surf on the rock,
And the shriek of the wind,
Tho' the hot Gaul shall envy,
The cold German flout thee,
Thy far children scorn thee,
Still thou shall be great!
Still march on uncaring,
Thy perils unsharing,
Alone, and yet daring
Thy infinite fate!
Yet ever remembering
The precepts of gold,
That were written in part
For the great ones of old
' Let other hands fashion
The marvels of art ;
To thee fate has given
A loftier part.
To rule the wide peoples ;
To bind them to thee'
By the sole bond of loving,
That bindeth the free.
To hold thy own place,
Neither lawless nor slave ;
Not driven by the despot,
Nor tricked by the knave !

But these thoughts are too solemn,
So play, my child, play,
Never heeding the connoisseur
Over the way,
The last dances of course ;
Then, with scant pause between,
'Home, Sweet Home,' the 'Old Hundredth,'
And 'God Save the Queen.'
See the poor children swarm
From dark court and dull street,
As the gay music quickens
The lightsome young feet.
See them now whirl away,
Now insidiously come,
With a coy grace which conquers
The squalor of home.
See the pallid cheeks flushing
With innocent pleasure
At the hurry and haste
Of the quick-footed measure.
See the dull eyes now bright,
And now happily dim,
For some soft-dying cadence
Of love-song or hymn.
Dear souls, little joy
Of their young lives have they,
So thro' hymn-tune and song-tune
Play on, my child, play.

For tho' dull pedants chatter
Of musical taste,
Talk of hindered researches,
And hours run to waste ;
Tho' they tell us of thoughts
To ennoble mankind
Which your poor measures chase
From the labouring mind ;
While your music rejoices
One joyless young heart,
Perish bookworms and books,
Perish learning and art
Of my vagabond fancies
I'll e'en take my fill.
''Qualche cosa, signor ?'
Yes, my child, that I will.

COME, friend, let us forget
The turmoil of the world a little while,
For now the soft skies smile,
With dew the flowers are wet.
Let us away awhile
With fierce unrest and carking thoughts of care,
And breathe a little while the jocund air,
And sing the joyous measures sung
By blither singers, when the world was young.

For still the world is young, for still the spring
Renews itself, and still the lengthening hours
Bring back the month of flowers ;
The leaves are green to-day as those of old,
For Chaucer and for Shakspeare ; still the gold
Of August gilds the rippling waves of wheat;
Young maids are fair and sweet
As when they frolicked gay, with flashing feet,
Round the old May-pole. All young things rejoice.
No sorrow dulls the blackbird's mellow voice,
Thro' the clear summer dawns or twilights long.
With aspect not more dim
Thro' space the planets swim
Than of old time o'er the Chaldean plain.
We only, we alone,
Let jarring discords mar our song.
And find our music take a lower tone.
We only with dim eyes
And laboured vision feebly strain,
And flout the undying splendours of the skies.

Oh, see how glorious show,
On this fair morn in May, the clear-cut hills,
The dewy lawns, the hawthorn's white,
Argent on fields of gold ; the growing light
Pure as when first on the young earth
The faint warm sunlight came to birth ;
There is a nameless air
Of sweet renewal over all which fills
The earth and sky with life, and everywhere
Before the new-born sun begins to glow,
The birds awake which slumhered all night long,
And with a gush of song,
First doubting of their strain, then full and wide
Raise their fresh hymns thro' all the country side;
Already, above the dewy clover,
The soaring lark begins to hover
Over his mate's low nest ;
And soon, from childhood's early rest
In hall and cottage, to the casement rise
The little ones with their fresh opened eyes,
And gaze on the old Earth, which still grows new,
And see the tranquil heaven's unclouded blue,
And, since as yet no sight nor sound of toil
The fair spread, peaceful picture comes to soil,
Look with their young and steadfast gaze
Fixed in such artless sweet amaze
As Adam knew, when first on either hand
He saw the virgin landscapes of the morning land.

Oh, youth, dawn, springtide, triune miracle,
Renewing life in earth, and sky, and man,
By what eternal plan
Dost thou revive again and yet again ?
There is no morn that breaks,
No bud that bursts, no life that comes to birth,
But the rapt fancy takes,
Far from the duller plains of mind and earth,
Up to the source and origin of things,
Where, poised on brooding wings,
It seems to hover o'er the immense inane,
And see the suns, like feeble rings of light,
Orb from the gray, and all the youngling globe
A coil of vapour circling like a dream,
Then fixed compact for ever ; the first beam
Strike on the dark and undivided sea,
And wake the deeps with life. Oh, mystery
That still dost baffle thought,
Though by all sages sought,
And yet art daily done
With each returning sun,
With every dawn which reddens in the skies,
With every opening of awakened eyes !

How shall any dare to hold
That the fair world growing old,
Hath spent in vanished time
The glories of its prime ?
Beautiful were the days indeed
Of the Pagan's simple creed,
When all of life was made for girl and boy,
And all religion was but to enjoy.
The fair chivalric dream
To some may glorious seem,
When from the sleeping centuries,
Awakened Europe seemed to rise ;
It may be that we cannot know,
In these ripe years, the glory and the glow
Of those young hours of time, and careless days,
Borne down too much by knowledge, and opprest,
To halt a little for the needed rest,
And yield ourselves awhile to joy and praise ;
Yet every year doth bring
With each recurrence of the genial hour
The infancy of spring,
Crowned with unfolding leaf and bursting flower,
And still to every home
Fresh childish voices come,
And eyes that opened last in Paradise,
And with each rosy dawn
Are night and death withdrawn ;
Another world rises for other eyes ;
Again begins the joy, the stress, the strife,
Ancient as time itself, and wide as life.

We are the ancients of the world indeed ;
No more the simple creed,
When every hill and stream and grove
Was filled with shy divinities of love,
Allures us, serving as our King
A Lord of grief and suffering.
Too much our wisdom burdens to permit
The fair, thin visions of the past, to flit
From shade to shade, or float from hill to hill.
We are so compassed round by ill,
That all the music of our lives is dumb,
Amid the turbulent waves of sound that rise,
The discord born of doubts, and tears, and sighs,
Which daily to the listening ear do come ;
Nay, oft, confounded by the incessant noise
Of vast world-engines, grinding law on law,
We lose the godhead that our fathers saw,
And all our higher joys,
And bear to plod on daily, deaf and blind,
To a dark goal we dare not hope to find.

But grows the world then old ?
Nay, all things that are born of time
Spring upwards, and expand from youth to prime,
Ripen from flower to fruit,
From song-tide till the days are mute,
Green blade to ear of gold.
But not the less through the eternal round
The sleep of winter wakes in days of spring,
And not the less the bare and frozen ground
Grows blithe with blooms that burst and birds that sing.
Nature is deathless ; herb and tree,
Through time that has been and shall be,
Change not, although the outward form
Seem now the columned palm
Nourished in zones of calm,
And now the gnarled oak that defies the storm.
The cedar's thousand summers are no more
To her than are the fleeting petals gay
Which the young spring, ere March is o'er,
Scarce offered, takes away.
Eternal arc her works. Unchanging she,
Alike in short-lived flower and everchanging sea.

We, too, are deathless ; we,
Eternal as the Earth,
We cannot cease to be
While springtide comes or birth.
If our being cease to hold
Reflected lights divine
On budding lives, with every morn they shine
With unabated gold.
Though lost it may be to our mortal sight,
It cannot be that any perish quite
Only the baser part forgets to be.
And if within the hidden Treasury
Of the great Ruler we awhile should rest,
To issue with a higher stamp imprest,
With all our baser alloy purged and spent,
Were we not thus content?

Our thoughts too mighty are
To be within our span of years confined,
Too deep and wide and far,
The hopes, the fears, that crowd the labouring mind,
The sorrows that oppress
The sanctities that bless,
Are vaster than this petty stage of things.
The soaring fancy mounts on careless wings
Beyond the glimmer of the furthest star.
The nightly watcher who with patient eye
Scans the illumined sky,
Knows when the outward rushing fire shall turn,
And in far ages hence shall brightly burn
For eyes to-day undreamt of. The clear voice
From Greece or Israel thro' the centuries heard
Still bids us tremble or rejoice,
Stronger than living look or word ;
The love of home or race,
Which doth transfigure us, and seems to bring
On every heaven-lit face
Some shadow of the glory of our King,
Fades not on earth, nor with our years doth end ;
Nay, even earth's poor physical powers transcend
The narrow bounds of space and time,
The swift thought by some mystic sympathy
Speeding through desert sand, and storm-tost sea.
And shall we hold the range of mind
Is to our little lives confined ;
That the pure heart in some blest sphere above,
Loves not which here was set on fire of love ;
The clear eye scans not still, which here could scan
The confines of the Universal plan ;
The seer nor speaks nor thinks his thoughts sublime,
And all of Homer is a speck of lime ?

Nay, friend, let us forget
Our haunting doubts and fears a little while,
Again our springs shall smile ;
We shall not perish yet.
If God so guide our fate,
The nobler portions of ourselves shall last
Till all the lower rounds of life be past,
And we, regenerate.
We too again shall rise,
The same and not the same,
As daily rise upon the orient skies
New dawns with wheels of flame.
So, if it worthy prove,
Our being, self-perfected, shall upward move
To higher essence, and still higher grown,
Not sweeping idle harps before a throne,
Nor spending praise where is no need of praise,
But through unnumbered lives and ages come
From pure laborious days,
To an eternal home,
Where spring is not, nor birth, nor any dawn,
But life's full noontide never is withdrawn.

I MAY not scorn, I cannot prize
Those whose quick-coming fancies rise
Only in quaint disguise

Some trick of speech, or mien, or dress,
Some obsolete uncomeliness,
Some ancient wickedness.

Strange words antique for tilings not strange,
Like broken tower and mould'ring grange,
Made fair through time and change.

Legends of knight, and squire, and dame,
With this our common life the same
In glory and in shame.

Mean lives and narrow aims which owe
The glamour and the charm they show
To that strange 'Long ago;'

Nay, meaner, lower than our own,
Because To-day is wider grown,
Knows deeper, and is known.

I doubt if anything there be
Which best thro' mask of chivalry,
Reveals myself to me ;

Myself, its yearnings and desires,
Its glimpses of supernal fires,
The something which aspires ;

Myself, the thing of blot and stain,
Which fallen, rises, falls again,
A mystery of pain ;

Myself, the toiler slow to earn,
The thinker sowing words that burn,
The sensuous in turn,

The vanquished, the disgraced, the saint,
Now free as air, now bound and faint,
By everyday constraint.

Or, if too near the present lies
For common brains and common eyes
To probe its mysteries.

If feeble fancy fails to tear
The outer husk of fact, and bare
The seed to vital air,

But too extended, too immense,
Life's orb a vast circumference
Stretches for mortal sense ;

If simpler shows the past, more fair,
Set in a pure and luminous air,
Not dimmed by mists of care,

Seeming to breathe a lighter strain
Of lutes and lyres where none complain
With undertones of pain ;

If haply there we seem to view
Ourselves, behind a veil, yet true
The germ from which we grew ;

Not less our duty and our pride
Forbid to leave unsought, untried,
The glories at our side.

What ? shall the limner only paint
Blue hills with adumbrations faint,
Or misty aureoled saint,

And scorn to ponder flower or tree,
Ripe fields, child-faces, summer sea,
And all fair things that be ;

Nor care thro' passion's endless play,
Our living brethren to portray,
Who fare to doom to-day,

When the sun's finger deigns to trace
Each line and feature of man's face,
Its beauty and disgrace ?

Or shall the skilled musician dare
Only to sound some jocund air
Arcadian, free from care,

Round whom in strains that scorn control
The mighty diapasons roll,
That speak from soul to soul ;

Our mystical modern music deep,
Not piped by shepherds to their sheep,
But wrung from souls that weep ;

Where seldom melody is heard,
Nor simple woodland note of bird,
So deep a depth is stirred,

Such blended harmonies divine
Across the core of sweetness twine
As round the grape the vine ?

Or shall some false cold dream of art
Corrupt the voice and chill the heart,
And turn us from our part,

Blot out the precious lesson won
From all the ages past and done,
That bard and seer are one ?

Dull creed of earthy souls ! who tell
That, be the song of heaven or hell,
Who truly sings, sings well,

And with the same encomiums greet
The satyr baring brutish feet,
And pure child-angels sweet ;

Whose praise in equal meed can share
The Mcenad with distempered hair,
The cold Madonna fair.

Great singers of the past ! whose song
Still streams down earthward pure and strong,
Free from all stain of wron'.

Whose lives were chequered, but whose verse
The generations still rehearse ;
Yet never soul grew worse.

What is it that these would ? shall I,
Born late in time, consent to lie
In the old misery ?

I who have learnt that flesh is dust,
What gulfs dissever love from lust,
The wrongful from the just-

Put on again the rags of sense,
A Pagan without innocence,
A Christian in offence ?

Perish the thought ! I am to-day
What God and Time have made me; they
Have ordered, I obey.

And day by day the labouring earth
Whirls on glad mysteries of birth,
Sad death throes, sorrow, mirth,

Youth's flower just bursting into bloom,
Wan age, a sun which sets in gloom,
The cradle, and the tomb ;

These are around me hope and fear,
Not fables, but alive and near,
Fresh smile and scarce-dried tear ;

These are around me, these I sing,
These, these of every thought and thing,
My verse shall heavenward wing.

The sun but seems to kiss the hill,
And all the vast eternal Will
Is moving, working, still

God is, Truth lives, and overhead
Behold a visible glory spread ;
Only the past is dead.

Courage ! arise ; if hard it seem
To sing the present, yet we deem
'Tis worthier than a dream.

Awake, arise, for to the bold
The seeming desert comes to hold
Blossoms of white and gold.

* * * *

Shall I then choose to take my side
With those who love their thoughts to hide
In vague abstractions wide ?

Whose dim verse struggles to recall
The hopes, the fears that rise and fall
Deep in the souls of all.

Who fitly choose a fitting theme.
Not things which neither are nor seem,
No visionary dream,

But the great psalm of life, the long
Harmonious confluence of song,
Thro' all the ages strong,

But grown to wider scale to-day,
And sweeping fuller chords than they
Knew who have passed away.

A worthy theme for worthy bard
But all too often blurred and marred
By intonations hard.

So that the common eye and ear
Can dimly see and faintly hear
What should be bright and clear.

Who wing the fiery thought so high,
An arrow shot into the sky,
Its failing forces die,

And all the straining eye discerns
Is but a spark which feebly burns,
Then quenched to earth returns,

Or with a borrowed lyre devote
Hoarse accent and untuneful throat
To sound a difficult note,

By currents of conflicting thought,
And counter themes which rise unsought,
And jangling chords distraught.

Not song, but science, sign not sound,
Not soaring to high heaven, but bound
Fast to the common ground.

Who with a pitiless skill dissect
What secret sources, vexed and checked,
Surge upward in effect,

And trace in endless struggling rhyme
How hearts forlorn of love and time
Have rotted into crime.

Or those who, baffled and opprest
By life's incessant fierce unrest,
Where naught that is seems best,

Assail the tyrant, lash the wrong,
Till but a wild invective long,
Is left in lieu of song.

Most precious all, yet this is sure,
The song which longest shall endure
Is simple, sweet, and pure.

Not psychologic riddles fine,
Not keen analysis, combine
In verse we feel divine.

Nor fierce o'erbalanced rage alone,
Which mars the rhyme, and dulls the tone
They may not sing who groan ;

But a sweet cadence, wanting much
Of depth, perhaps, and fire, but such
As finer souls can touch,

To finer issues ; such as come
To him who far afield must roam,
Thinking old thoughts of home.

Or who in Sabbath twilights hears
His children lisp a hymn, and fears
Lest they should see his tears.

Wherefore, my soul, if song be thine,
If any gleam of things divine
Thro' thee may dimly shine,

If ever any faintest note
Of far-off sweetness swell thy throat,
True echo tho' remote,

This is my task, to sing To-day,
Not dead years past and fled away,
But this alone To-day.

Or if I pause a little space
Striving, across the gulf, to trace
Some fine, forgotten face

Some monarch of the race whose name
Still lives upon the lips of fame,
Touched by no stain ofshame ;

Some sweet old love-tale, ever young,
Which of old time the burning tongue
Of god -like bard has sung ;

Some meed of effort nobly won,
Some more than human task begun,
Precious though left undone ;

Some awful story, strong to show
How passions unrestricted flow
Into a sea of woe ;

Not less my powers I strive to bend,
Not less my song aspires to tend
To one unchanging end,

By lofty aspirations, stirred
Thro' homely music, daily heard,
Trite phrase and common word,

Simple, but holding at the core
Thoughts which strange speech and varied lore
Have hid from men before.

To lift how little howsoe'er
The hearts of toilers struggling here,
In joyless lives and sere.

To make a little lighter yet
Their lives by daily ills beset,
Whom men and laws forget.

To sing, if sing I must, of love
As a pure spell, with power to move
Dull hearts to things above.

But choosing rather to portray
The warring tides of thought which stray
Thro' doubting souls to-day.

Or if at times, with straining eye
And voice, I dwell on things which lie
Hidden in Futurity,

And strive to tell in halting rhyme
The glorious dawn, the golden prime,
The victories of Time,

The race transfigured, wrong redressed,
None worn with labour, nor oppressed,
But peace for all and rest,

And knowledge throwing wide the shrine
From whose broad doorways seems to shine
An effluence Divine ;

If of these visions fain to dream,
Not less I hold, whate'er may seem,
The Present for my theme,

The vain regret remembering,
Which lost occasion knows to bring,
Afraid, yet bound, to sing.