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II.The watchman watched along the walls:And lo! an hour or more ere lightLoud rang his trumpet. From their hallsThe revellers rushed into the night.There hung a terror on the air;There moved a terror under ground;—The hostile hosts, heard everywhere,Within, without—were nowhere found."The Christians to the lions! Ho!"—Alas! self-tortured crowds, let be!Let go your wrath; your fears let go:Ye gnaw the net, but cannot flee.Ye drank from out Orestes' cup;Orestes' Furies drave ye wild.Who conquers from on high? Look up!A Woman, holding forth a Child!{85}III.The golden rains are dashed againstThose verdant walls of lime and beechWith which our happy vale is fencedAgainst the north; yet cannot reachThe stems that lift yon leafy crestHigh up above their dripping screen:The chestnut fans are downward pressedOn banks of bluebell hid in green.White vapours float along the glen,Or rise from every sunny brake;—A pause amid the gusts—againThe warm shower sings across the lake.Sing on, all-cordial showers, and batheThe deepest root of loftiest pine!The cowslip dimmed, the "primrose rathe"Refresh; and drench in nectarous wineYon fruit-tree copse, all blossomed o'erWith forest-foam and crimson snow—Behold! above it bursts once moreThe world-embracing, heavenly bow!
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IV.O that the wordy war might cease!Self-sentenced Babel's strife of tongues!Loud rings the arena. Athletes, peace!Nor drown the wild-dove's Song of Songs.Alas, the wanderers feel their loss:With tears they seek—ah, seldom found—That peace whose volume is the Cross;That peace which leaves not holy ground.Mary, who loves true peace loves thee!A happy child, not taught of Scribes,He stands beside the Church's knee;From her the lore of Christ imbibes.Hourly he drinks it from her face:For there his eyes, he knows not how,The face of Him she loves can trace,And, crowned with thorns, the sovereign brow."Behold! all colours blend in white!Behold! all Truths have root in Love!"So sings, half lost in light of light,Her Song of Songs the mystic Dove.
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V."Wisdom hath built herself a House,And hewn her out her pillars seven." [Footnote 4]Her wine is mixed. Her guests are thoseWho share the harvest-home of heaven.[Footnote 4: Proverbs ix. 1.]Who guards the gates? The flaming swordOf Penance. Every way it turns:But healing from on high is pouredOn each that fire seraphic burns.The fruits upon her table piledAre gathered from the Tree of Life.Around are ranged the undefiled,And those that conquered in the strife.Who tends the guests? Who smiles awaySad memories? bids misgiving cease?A crowned one countenanced like the day—The Mother of the Prince of Peace.{88}VI.Here, in this paradise of light,Superfluous were both tree and grass:Enough to watch the sunbeams smiteYon white flower sole in the morass.From his cold nest the skylark springs;Sings, pauses, sings; shoots up anew;Attains his topmost height, and singsQuiescent in his vault of blue.With eyes half-closed I watch that lakeFlashed from whose plane the sun-sparks fly,Like souls new-born that shoot and breakFrom thy deep sea, Eternity!Ripplings of sunlight from the waveAscend the white rock, high and higher;Soft gurglings fill the satiate cave;Soft airs amid the reeds expire.All round the lone and luminous meerThe dark world stretches, far and free:That skylark's song alone I hear;That flashing wave alone I see.O myriad Earth! Where'er thy WordMakes way indeed into the soul,An answering echo there is stirred:—Of thee the part is as the whole.
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VII.Carmel, with Alp and Apennine,Low whispers in the wind that blowsBeneath the Eastern stars, ere shineThe lights of morning on their snows.Of thee, Elias, Carmel speaks,And that white cloud, so small at first,Thou saw'st approach the mountain peaksTo quench a dying nation's thirst.On Carmel, like a sheathed sword,Thy monks abode till Jesus came;On Carmel then they served their Lord;—Then Carmel rang with Mary's name.Blow over all the garden; blowO'er all the garden of the West,Balm-breathing Orient! Whisper lowThe secret of thy spicy nest.{90}"Who from the Desert upward movesLike cloud of incense onward borne?Who, moving, rests on Him she loves?Who mounts from regions of the Morn?"Behold! The apple-tree beneath—There where of old thy Mother fell—I raised thee up. More strong than DeathIs Love;—more strong than Death or Hell." [Footnote 5][Footnote 5: Cant. viii. 5.]
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VIII.Come from the midnight mountain tops,The mountains where the panthers play:Descend; the veil of darkness drops;Come fair and fairer than the day!Our hearts are wounded with thine eyes:They character in words of lightThereon the mystery of the skies:The "Name o'er every name" they write.Come from thy Lebanonian peaksWhose sacerdotal cedars nodAbove the world, when morning breaks—The Mountain of the House of God.The land thou lov'st—well is she!The ploughers on her back may plough;But in her vales upgrows the TreeOf Life, and binds the bleeding brow.
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IX.I saw, in visions of the night,Creation like a sea outspread,With surf of stars and storm of lightAnd movements manifold and dread.Then lo, within a Human HandA Sceptre moved that storm above:Thereon, as on the golden wandOf kings new-crowned, there sat a Dove.Beneath her gracious weight inclinedThat Sceptre drooped. The waves had restAnd Sceptre, Hand, and Dove were shrinedWithin a glassy ocean's breast.His Will it was that placed her there!He at whose word the tempests ceaseUpon that Sceptre planted fairThat peace-bestowing type of Peace!
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X.Each several Saint the Church reveres,What is he but an altar whenceSome separate Virtue ministersTo God a separate frankincense?Each beyond each, not made of hands,They rise, a ladder angel-trod:Star-bright the last and loftiest stands—That altar is the Throne of God.Lost in the uncreated lightA Form all Human rests thereon:His shade from that surpassing heightBeyond creation's verge is thrown.Him "Lord of lords, and King of kings,"The chorus of all worlds proclaim:—"He took from her," one angel singsAt intervals, "His Human frame."
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XI.He seemed to linger with them yet:But late ascended to the skies,They saw—ah, how could they forget?—The form they loved, the hands, the eyes.From anchored boat—in lane or field—He taught; He blessed, and brake the bread;The hungry filled; the afflicted healed;And wept, ere yet he raised, the dead.But when, like some supreme of hills,Whose feet shut out its summit's snow,That, hid no longer, heavenward swellsAs further from its base we go,Abroad His perfect Godhead shone,Each hour more plainly kenned on high,And clothed His Manhood with the sun,And, cleansing, hurt the adoring eye;{95}Then fixed His Church a deepening gazeUpon His Saints. With Him they sate,And, burning in that Godhead's blaze,They seemed that Manhood to dilate.His were they: of His likeness eachHad grace some fragment to present,And nearer brought to mortal reachOf Him some line or lineament.
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XII.Fall back, all worlds, into the abyss,That man may contemplate once moreThat which He ever was Who is:—The Eternal Essence we adore.Angelic hierarchies! recedeBeyond extinct creation's shade!What were ye at the first? Decreed:—Decreed, not fashioned; thought, not made!Like wind the untold Millenniums passed.Sole-throned He sat; yet not alone:Godhead in Godhead still was glassed;—The Spirit was breathed from Sire and Son.Prime Virgin, separate and sealed;Nor less of social love the root;Dimly in lowliest shapes revealed;Entire in every Attribute;—{97}Thou liv'st in all things, and around;To Thee external is there nought;Thou of the boundless art the bound;And still Creation is Thy Thought.In vain, O God, our wings we spread;So distant art Thou—yet so nigh.Remains but this, when all is said,For Thee to live; in Thee to die.{98}XIII.Where is the crocus now, that first,When earth was dark and heaven was grey,A prothalamion flash, up-burst?Ah, then we deemed not of the May!The clear stream stagnates in its course;Narcissus droops in pallid gloom;Far off the hills of golden gorseA dusk Saturnian face assume.The seeded dandelion dimCasts loose its air-globe on the breeze;Along the grass the swallows skim;The cattle couch among the trees.Yet ever lordlier lovelinessSucceeds to that which slips our hold:The thorn assumes her snowy dress;Laburnum bowers their robes of gold.Down waves successive of the yearWe drop; but drop once more to rise,With ampler view, as on we steer,Of lovelier lights and loftier skies.
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XIV.Before the morn began to breakThe bright One bent above that pairWhose childless vows aspired to takeThe mother of their Lord for heir.'Twas August: even in midnight shadeThe roofs were hot, and hot the street:—"Build me a fane," the vision said,"Where first your eyes the snow shall meet." [Footnote 6][Footnote 6: Santa Maria Maggiore, onthe Esquiline, at Rome.]With snow the Esquiline was strewnAt morn!—Fair Legend! who but thinksOf thee, when first the breezes blownFrom summer Alp to Alp he drinks?He stands: he hears the torrents dash:Slowly the vapours break; and lo!Through chasms of endless azure flashThe peaks of everlasting snow.{100}He stands; he listens; on his earSwells softly forth some virgin hymn:The white procession windeth near,With glimmering lights in sunshine dim.Mother of Purity and Peace!They sing the Saviour's name and thineClothe them for ever with the fleeceUnspotted of thy Lamb Divine!
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XV.Far down the bird may sing of love;The honey-bearing blossom blow:But hail, ye hills that rise aboveThe limit of perpetual snow!O Alpine City, with thy wallsOf rock eterne and spires of ice,Where torrent still to torrent calls,And precipice to precipice;—How like that holier City thou,The heavenly Salem's earthly porch,Which rears among the stars her brow,And plants firm feet on earth—the Church!"Decaying, ne'er to be decayed,"Her woods, like thine, renew their youth:Her streams, in rocky arms embayed,Are clear as virtue, strong as truth.{102}At times the lake may burst its dam;Black pine and rock the valley strew;But o'er the ruin soon the lambIts flowery pasture crops anew.She, too, in regions near the skyUp-piles her cloistered snows, and thenceDiffuses gales of purityO'er fields of consecrated sense.On those still heights a love-light glowsThe plains from them alone receive;—Not all the Lily! There thy Rose,O Mary, triumphs, morn and eve!{103}XVI.Cloud-piercing Mountains! Chance and ChangeMore high than you their thrones advance.Self-vanquished Nature's rockiest rangeGives way before them like the tranceOf one that wakes. From morn to eveThrough fissured clefts her mists make way;At Night's cold touch they freeze, and cleaveHer crags; and, with a Titan's sway,Flake off and peel the rotting rocks,And heap the glacier tide belowWith isles of sand and floating blocks,As leaves on streams when tempests blow.Lo, thus the great decree all-just,O Earth, thy mountains hear; and learnFrom fire and frost its import—"dustThou art; and shalt to dust return."He only is Who ever was;The All-measuring Mind; the Will Supreme.Rocks, mountains, worlds, like bubbles pass:God is; the things not God but seem.
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XVII.From end to end, O God, Thy WillWith swift yet ordered might doth reach:Thy purposes their scope fulfilIn sequence, resting each on each.In Thee is nothing sudden; noughtFrom harmony and law that swerves:The orbits of Thine act and thoughtIn soft succession wind their curves.O then with what a gradual careMust thou have shaped that sacred shrine,That Ark of grace, ordained to bearThe burthen of the Babe divine!How many a gift within her breastLay stored, for Him a couch to strew!How many a virtue lined His nest!How many a grace beside Him grew!Of love on love what sweet excess!How deep a faith! a hope how high!—Mary! on earth of thee we guess;But we shall see thee when we die!
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XVIII.She mused upon the Saints of old;Their toils, their pains, she longed to shareOf Him she mused, the Child foretold;To Him her hands she stretched in prayer.No moment passed without its crown;And each new grace was used so wellIt drew some tenfold talent down,Some miracle on miracle.O golden House! O boundless storeOf wealth by heavenly commerce won!When God Himself could give no more,He gave thee all; He gave His Son!Blessed the Mother of her Lord!And yet for this more blessed still,Because she heard and kept His Word—High servant of His sovereign Will!
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XIXNot all thy purity, althoughThe whitest moon that ever litThe peaks of Lebanonian snowShone dusk and dim compared with it;—Not that great love of thine, whose beamsTranscended in their virtuous heatThose suns which melt the ice-bound streams,And make earth's pulses newly beat:—It was not these that from the skyDrew down to thee the Eternal Word:He looked on thy humility;He knew thee, "Handmaid of thy Lord."Let no one claim with thee a part;Let no one, Mary, name thy name,While, aping God, upon his heartPride sits, a demon robed in flame.Proud Vices, die! Where Sin has placeBe Sin's familiar self-disgust.Proud Virtues, doubly die; that GraceAt last may burgeon from your dust.
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XX.Supreme among the things createOmnipotence revealed below,More swift than thought, more strong than fate,Such, such, Humility, art thou!All strength beside is weakness. MightBelongs to God: and they alone,Self-emptied souls and seeming-slight,Are filled with God and share his throne.O Mary! strong wert thou and meek;Thy meekness gave thee strength divine:Thyself in nothing didst thou seek;Therefore thy Maker made Him thine.Through Pride our parents disobeyed;Rebellious Sense avenged the crime:The soul, the body's captive made,Became the branded thrall of time.{108}With barrenness the earth was cursed;Inviolate she brought forth no moreHer fruits, nor freely as at first:—Thou cam'st, her Eden to restore!Low breathes the wind upon the string;The harp, responsive, sounds in turn:Thus o'er thy Soul the Spirit's wingCreative passed; and Christ was born.
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XXI.Met in a point [Footnote 7] the circles twainOf temporal and eternal thingsEmbrace, close linked. Redemption's chainDrops thence to earth its myriad rings.[Footnote 7: The Incarnation.]In either circle, from of old,That point of meeting stood decreed;—Twin mysteries cast in one deep mould,"The Woman," and "the Woman's Seed."Mary, long ages ere thy birthResplendent with Salvation's Sign,In thee a stainless hand the earthPut forth, to meet the Hand Divine!First trophy of all-conquering Grace,First victory of that Blood all pure,Of man's once fair but fallen raceThou stood'st, the monument secure.The Word made Flesh! the Way! the Door!The link that dust with Godhead blends!Through Him the worlds their God adore:—Through thee that God to man descends.
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XXII.A soul-like sound, subdued yet strong,A whispered music, mystery-rife,A sound like Eden airs amongThe branches of the Tree of Life—At first no more than this; at lastThe voice of every land and clime,It swept o'er Earth, a clarion blast:Earth heard, and shook with joy sublime.Mary! thy triumph was her own.In thee she saw her prime restored:She saw ascend a spotless ThroneFor Him, her Saviour, and her Lord.The Church had spoken. She that dwellsSun-clad with beatific light,From Truth's unvanquished citadels,From Sion's Apostolic height,Had stretched her sceptred hands, and pressedThe seal of Faith, defined and known,Upon that Truth till then confessedBy Love's instinctive sense alone.{111}XXIII.Brow-bound with myrtle and with gold,Spring, sacred now from blasts and blights,Lifts in a firm, untrembling holdHer chalice of fulfilled delights.Confirmed around her queenly lipThe smile late wavering, on she moves;And seems through deepening tides to stepOf steadier joys and larger loves.The stony Ash itself relents,Into the blue embrace of MaySinking, like old impenitentsHeart-touched at last; and, far away,The long wave yearns along the coastWith sob suppressed, like that which thrills(While o'er the altar mounts the Host)Some chapel on the Irish hills.
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XXIV.Rejoice, O Mary! and be glad,Thou Church triumphant here below!He cometh, in meekest emblems clad;Himself he cometh to bestow!That body which thou gav'st, O Earth,He giveth back—that Flesh, that Blood;Born of the Altar's mystic birth;At once thy Worship and thy Food.He who of old on Calvary bledOn all thine altars lies to-day,A bloodless Sacrifice, but dread;The Lamb in heaven adored for aye.His Godhead on the Cross He veiled;His Manhood here He veileth too:But Faith has eagle eyes unsealed;And Love to Him she loves is true.{113}"I will not leave you orphans. Lo!While lasts the world with you am I."Saviour! we see Thee not; but know,With burning hearts, that Thou art nigh!He comes! Blue Heaven, thine incense breatheO'er all the consecrated sod;And thou, O Earth, with flowers enwreatheThe steps of thine advancing God!
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XXV.What music swells on every gale?What heavenly Herald rideth past?Vale sings to vale, "He comes; all hail!"Sea sighs to sea, "He comes at last."The Earth bursts forth in choral song;Aloft her "Lauda Sion" soars;Her myrtle boughs at once are flungBefore a thousand Minster doors.Far on the white processions windThrough wood and plain and street and courtThe kings and prelates pace behindThe King of kings in seemly sort.The incense floats on Grecian air;Old Carmel echoes back the chant;In every breeze the torches flareThat curls the waves of the Levant.On Ramah's plain—in Bethlehem's bound—Is heard to-day a gladsome voice:"Rejoice," it cries, "the lost is found!With Mary's joy, O Earth, rejoice!"{115}XXVI.Pleasant the swarm about the bough;The meadow-whisper round the woods;And for their coolness pleasant nowThe murmur of the falling floods.Pleasant beneath the thorn to lie,And let a summer fancy loose;To hear the cuckoo's double cry;To make the noon-tide sloth's excuse.Panting, but pleased, the cattle standKnee-deep in water-weed and sedge,And scarcely crop the greener bandOf osiers round the river's edge.But hark! Far off the south wind sweepsThe golden-foliaged groves among,Renewed or lulled, with rests and leaps—Ah! how it makes the spirit longTo drop its earthly weight, and driftLike yon white cloud, on pinions free,Beyond that mountain's purple rift,And o'er that scintillating sea!{116}XXVII.Sing on, wide winds, your anthems vast!The ear is richer than the eye:Upon the eye no shape can castSuch impress of Infinity.And thou, my soul, thy wings of mightPut forth:—thou too, one day shalt soar,And, onward borne in heavenward flight,The starry universe explore;Breasting that breeze which waves the bowersOf Heaven's bright forest never mute,Whereof perchance this earth of oursIs but the feeblest forest-fruit."The Spirit bloweth where He wills"—Effluence of that Life DivineWhich wakes the Universe, and stills,In Thy strong refluence make us Thine!
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XXVIII.Sole Maker of the Worlds! They layA barren blank, a void, a nought,Beyond the ken of solar rayOr reach of archangelic thought.Thou spak'st; and they were made! Forth sprangFrom every region of the abyss,Whose deeps, fire-clov'n, with anthems rang,The spheres new-born and numberless.Thou spak'st:—upon the winds were foundThe astonished Eagles. Awed and hushedSubsiding seas revered their bound;And the strong forests upward rushed.Before the Vision angels fell,As though the face of God they saw;And all the panting miracleFound rest within the arms of Law.{118}Perfect, O God, Thy primal plan—That scheme frost-bound by Adam's sin:Create, within the heart of Man,Worlds meet for Thee; and dwell therein.From Thy bright realm of Sense and Nature,Which flowers enwreathe and stars begem,Shape Thou Thy Church; the crowned Creature;The Bride; the New Jerusalem!
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XXIX.When from beneath the Almighty HandThe suns and systems rushed abroad,Like coursers which have burst their band,Or torrents when the ice is thawed;When round in luminous orbits flungThe great stars gloried in their might;Still, still, a bridgeless gulf there hung'Twixt Finite things and Infinite.That crown of light creation woreWas edged with vast unmeasured black;And all of natural good she boreConfessed her supernatural lack.For what is Nature at the best?An arch suspended in its spring;An altar-step without a priest;A throne whereon there sits no king.{120}As one stone-blind that fronts the morn,The world before her Maker stood,Uplifting suppliant hands forlorn—God's creature, yet how far from God!He came. That world His priestly robe;The Kingly Pontiff raised on highThe worship of the starry globe:—The gulf was bridged, and God was nigh.{121}XXX.A woman "clothed with the sun," [Footnote 8]Yet fleeing from the Dragon's rage!—The strife in Eden-bowers begunSwells upward to the latest age.[Footnote 8: Rev. xii. 1.]That woman's Son is throned on high;The angelic hosts before Him bend:The sceptre of His emperySubdues the worlds from end to end.Yet still the sword goes through her heart,For still on earth His Church survives.In her that woman holds a part:In her she suffers, wakes, and strives.Around her head the stars are set;A dying moon beneath her wanes:But he that letteth still must let:The Power accurst awhile remains.Break up, strong Earth, thy stony floors,And snatch to penal caverns dunThat Dragon from the pit that warsAgainst the woman and her Son!{122}XXXI.No ray of all their silken sheenThe leaves first fledged have lost as yetUnfaded, near the advancing queenOf flowers, abides the violet.The rose succeeds—her month is come:—The flower with sacred passion red:She sings the praise of martyrdom,And Him for whom His martyrs bled.The perfect work of May is done:Hard by a new perfection waits:—The twain, a sister and a nun,A moment parley at the grates.The whiter Spirit turns in peaceTo hide her in the cloistral shade:—'Tis time that you should also cease,Slight carols in her honour made.
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Regent of Change, thou waning Moon,Whom they, the sons of night, adore,Her feet are on thee! Late or soonHeap up upon the expectant shoreThe tides of Man's Intelligence;Or backward to the blackening deepRemit them: Knowledge won from SenseBut sleeps to wake, and wakes to sleep.Where are the hands that reared on highHeaven-threat'ning Babel? where the mightOf them, that giant progeny,The Deluge dealt with? Lost in night.The child who knows his creed doth stretchA sceptred hand o'er Space, and holdThe end of all those threads that catchIn wisdom's net the starry fold.The Sabbath comes: the work-days sixOf Time go by; meantime the key,O salutary crucifix,Of all the worlds, we clasp in thee.{126}Truth deeplier felt by none than him [Footnote 9]Who at the Alban mountain's foot,Wandering no more in shadows dim,Lay down, a lamb-like offering mute.[Footnote 9: Robert Isaak Wilberforce.]His mighty lore found rest at lastIn Faith, and woke in God. Ah, Friend!When life which is not Life is past,Pray that like thine may be my end.Thy fair large front; thine eyes' grave blue;Thine English ways so staid and plain;—Through native rosemaries and rueMemory creeps back to thee again.Beside thy dying bed were writSome snatches of these random rhymes;Weak Song, how happy if with itThy name should blend in after times.Rome, April 27, 1857.