Sir Lewis Morris: Verses about Sympathy

'CRY, cry aloud in the land, cry aloud in the streets of the city ;
Cry and proclaim that no more shall the blood of the people be shed.
Too long have the great ones waxed strong, without justice or any pity,
Too long have they ground down the poor, and eaten the people as bread.'
Thus said the voice from the dead.
'Terrible voice, I said, immoderate, voice of unreason,
Not of themselves do the lowly ones mourn, or the great ones rejoice ;
He who hath made them unequal, hath made all things in their season ;
If they are mighty and strong, they were made without freedom or choice.'
'Cry, cry aloud,' said the voice.

' How shall the sins of the few be reckoned against the many ?
Are there no tender hearts and kind 'midst the selfish and proud ;
Merciful souls and pure, full of love for their suffering brothers ;
Pitiful, touched with compassion and care for the desolate crowd ?'
'Cry,' said the voice, 'cry aloud.'

'Nay, but the world is ruled by merciless rules unbending ;
The feeble folk fade from the earth, and only the mighty remain ;
Not men alone, but all things send upwards a clamour unending ;
Always the whole creation travails in sorrow and pain.'
'Cry, 'said the voice, 'cry again,'

'Are not our sins and our fathers' worked out in our children's sorrow ?
Does not excess of laughter sink at its close in a sigh ?
Mirth and enjoyment to-day turn to pain and repentance to-morrow ;
Thousands are born every hour, in the place of the thousands who die.'
'Cry,' said the stubborn voice, 'cry.'

'Lo ! He hath made all things ; good and evil, sorrow and pleasure ;
Not as your ways are His ways, yet are ye not all in His hand ?
Just is He, though ye know not the measure wherewith He will measure ;
Dark things shall one day be clear ; to obey is to understand !'
Thus that voice, solemn and grand.

THE old lives are dead and gone and rotten,
The old thoughts shall never more be thought,
The old faiths have failed and are forgotten,
The old strifes are done, the fight is fought.
And with a clang and roll, the new creation
Bursts forth 'mid tears and blood and tribulation.

Sweet they were, the old days that are ended,
The golden years, the happy careless hours
Then, like Pagan gods on the asphodel extended,
Dreaming, men wove them fancies fair as flowers.
Love laid near them, Art to cheer them, youthful Beauty
Sitting crowned upon the marble throne of Duty.

All good things were theirs to cherish lives grown finer
From the heritage of long ancestral ease,
And a nobler port, and temperate mien diviner
Than their labours and their vigils leave to these ;
Gentler voices, smiles more gracious, and the fashion
Of their soft lives tuned to pity and compassion.

Naught men knew of science, now grown rigid
With its teaching of inexpiable sin ;
Nor the dull pedantic gospel, dead and frigid,
Of a heaven where mind alone may enter in,
Doom awaiting, stern and silent, all transgression,
And no saint with power to make an intercession.

For a Ruler, as men thought they saw above them,
More than earthly rulers, pitiful and mild,
A Father with a stronger love to love them
Than the love an earthly father bears his child—
God above them, and for pleader and defender
Christ's face stooping, like his mother's, true and tender.

But now there seems no place for the Creator
To hold his long unbroken chain of law,
Nor any need for heaven-sent Mediator,
Nor the Providence our fathers thought they saw.
Only a dull world-system, always tending
To a blind goal, by a blind rule unbending.

And for the courtesy and tender graces,
The chivalries and charities of old,
A dull and equal arrogance effaces
Soft sympathies by hard demands and cold ;
And the giver giveth not, lest any blame him,
And the taker may not take, lest taking shame him.

Be still, oh ye of little faith, repining
That the purpose of the Eternal will is dead.
The silent stars forget not yet their shining,
Daily the full sun journeys overhead.
How shall mind's realm alone forget its reason,
When the sure years roll season after season ?

There shall rise from this confused sound of voices
A firmer faith than that our fathers knew,
A deep religion, which alone rejoices
In worship of the Infinitely True,
Not built on rite or portent, but a finer
And purer reverence for a Lord diviner.

There shall come from out this noise of strife and groaning
A broader and a juster brotherhood,
A deep equality of aim, postponing
All selfish seeking to the general good.
There shall come a time when each shall to another
Be as Christ would have him brother unto brother.

There shall come a time when knowledge wide extended,
Sinks each man's pleasure in the general health,
And all shall hold irrevocably blended
The individual and the commonwealth,
When man and woman in an equal union
Shall merge, and marriage be a true communion.

There shall come a time when brotherhood shows stronger
Than the narrow bounds which now distract the world ;
When the cannons roar and trumpets blare no longer,
And the ironclad rusts, and battle flags are furled ;
When the bars of creed and speech and race, which sever,
Shall be fused in one humanity for ever.

Oh, glorious end ! oh, blessed consummation!
Oh, precious day ! for which we wait and yearn.
Thou shalt come, and knit men nation unto nation.
But not for us, who watch to day and burn,
Thou shalt come, but after what long years of trial,
Weary watchings, baffled longings, dull denial !

THE last crusader's helm had gleamed
Upon the yellow Syrian shore ;
No more the war-worn standards streamed,
The stout knights charged and fell no more ;
No more the Paynim grew afraid—
The crescent floated o'er the cross.
But to one simple Heathen maid
Her country's gain was bitter loss ;

For love, which knows not race or creed,
Had bound her with its subtle chain,—
Love, which still makes young hearts to bleed,
For this one, mingled joy with pain,
And left for one brief hour of bliss,
One little span of hopes and fears,
The memory of a parting kiss,
And what poor solace comes of tears.

A lowly English squire was he,
A prisoner chained, enslaved, and sold ;
A lady she of high degree.
'Tis an old tale and often told :
'Twas pity bade the brown cheek glow,
'Twas love and pity drew the sigh,
'Twas love that made the soft tear flow,
The sweet sad night she bade him fly.

Far from the scorching Syrian plain
The brave ship bears the Saxon home ;
Once more to mists and rains again,
And verdant English lawns, they come.
I know not if as now 'twas then,
Or if the growing ages move
The careless, changeful hearts of men
More slowly to the thoughts of love ;

But woman's heart was then, as now,
Tender and passionate and true.
Think, gentle ladies, ye who know
Love's power, what pain that poor heart knew ;
How, living always o'er again
The sweet short past, she knew, too late,
'Twas love had bound the captive's chain,
Which broken, left her desolate.

Till by degrees the full young cheek
Grew hollow, and the liquid eyes
Still gazing seaward, large and meek,
Took something of a sad surprise ;
As one who learns, with a strange chill,
'Mid youth and wealth's unclouded day,
Of sad lives full of pain and ill,
And thinks, 'And am I too as they?'

And by degrees most hateful grew
All things that once she held so dear
The feathery palms, the cloudless blue,
Tall mosque and loud muezzin clear,
The knights who flashed by blinded street,
The lattice lit by laughing eyes,
The songs around the fountain, sweet
To maidens under Eastern skies.

And oft at eve, when young girls told
Tales precious to the girlish heart,
She sat alone, and loved to hold
Communion with her soul apart.
Till at the last, too great became
The hidden weight of secret care,
And girlish fears and maiden shame
Were gone, and only love was there.

And so she fled. I see her still
In fancy, desolate, alone,
Wander by arid plain and hill,
From early dawn till day was done ;
Sun-stricken, hungry, thirsty, faint,
By perilous paths I see her move,
Clothed round with pureness like a saint,
And fearless in the might of love.

Till lo ! a gleam of azure sen,
And rude ships moored upon the shore.
Strange, yet not wholly strange, for he
Had dared those mystic depths before.
And some good English seaman bold,
Remembering those he left at home,
Put gently back the offered gold,
And for love's honour bade her come.

And then they sailed. No pirate bark
Swooped on them, for the Power of Love
Watched o'er that precious wandering ark,
And this his tender little dove.
I see those stalwart seamen still
Gaze wondering on that childish form,
And shelter her from harm and ill,
And guide her safe through wave and storm.

Till under grayer skies a gleam
Of white, and taking land she went,
Following our broad imperial stream,
Or rose-hung lanes of smiling Kent.
Friendless I see her, lonely, weak,
Thro' fields where every flower was strange,
Go forth without a word to speak,
By burgh and thorp and moated grange.

For all that Love himself could teach
This passionate pilgrim to our shore,
Were but two words of Saxon speech,
Two little words and nothing more
'Gilbert' and 'London'; like a flame
To her sweet lips these sounds would come,
The syllables of her lover's name,
And the far city of his home.

I see her cool her weary feet
In dewy depths of crested grass ;
By clear brooks fringed with meadowsweet,
And daisied meads, I see her pass ;
I see her innocent girlish glee,
I see the doubts which on her crowd,
O'erjoyed with bird, or flower, or tree,
Despondent for the fleeting cloud.

I see her passing slow, alone,
By burgh and thorp and moated grange,
Still murmuring softly like a moan
Those two brief words in accents strange.
Sometimes would pass a belted earl
With squires behind in brave array ;
Sometimes some honest, toilworn churl
Would fare with her till close of day.

The saintly abbess, sweet and sage,
Would wonder as she ambled by,
Or white-plumed knight or long-haired page
Ride by her with inquiring eye.
The friar would cross himself, and say
His paternosters o'er and o'er ;
The gay dames whisper Welladay !
And pity her and nothing more.

But tender women, knowing love
And all the pain of lonelihood,
Would feel a sweet compassion move,
And welcome her to rest and food,
And walk with her beyond the hill,
And kiss her cheek when she must go ;
And ' Gilbert' she would murmur still,
And 'London' she would whisper low.

And sometimes sottish boors would rise
From wayside tavern, where they sate,
And leer from heated vinous eyes,
And stagger forth with reeling gait,
And from that strong unswerving will
And clear gaze shrink as from a blow ;
And 'Gilbert' she would murmur still,
And ' London ' she would whisper low.

Then by the broad suburban street,
And city groups that outward stray
To take the evening, and the sweet
Faint breathings of the dying day
The gay young 'prentice, lithe and slim,
The wimpled maid, demurely shy,
The merchant somewhat grave and prim,
The courtier with his rolling eye.

And more and more the growing crowd
Would gather, wondering whence she came
And why, with boorish laughter loud,
And jeers which burnt her cheek with flame.
For potent charm to save from ill
But one word she made answer now :
For ' Gilbert' she would murmur still,
And ' Gilbert' she would whisper low.

Till some good pitiful soul not then
Our London was as now o'ergrown
Pressed through the idle throng of men,
And led her to his home alone,
And signing to her he would find
Him whom she sought, went forth again
And left her there with heart and mind
Distracted by a new-born pain.

For surely then, when doubt was o'er,
A doubt before a stranger came,
' He loved me not, or loves no more.'
Oh, virgin pride ! oh, maiden shame !
Almost she fled, almost the past
Seemed better than the pain she knew ;
Her veil around her face she cast :
Then the gate swung—and he was true.

Poor child ! they christened her, and so
She had her wish. Ah, yearning heart,
Was love so sweet then ? would you know
Again the longing and the smart ?
Came there no wintry hours when you
Longed for your native skies again,
The creed, the tongue your girlhood knew,
Aye, even the longing and the pain ?

Peace ! Love is Lord of all. But I,
Seeing her fierce son's mitred tomb,
Conjoin with fancy's dreaming eye
This love tale, and that dreadful doom.
Sped hither by a hidden will,
O'er sea and land I watch her go ;
'Gilbert' I hear her murmur still,
And ' London ' still she whispers low.