THROUGH the black, rushing smoke-bursts,Thick breaks the red flame.All Etna heaves fiercelyHer forest-clothed frame.Not here, O Apollo!Are haunts meet for thee.But, where Helicon breaks downIn cliff to the sea.Where the moon-silver’d inletsSend far their light voiceUp the still vale of Thisbe,O speed, and rejoice!On the sward at the cliff-top,Lie strewn the white flocks;On the cliff-side, the pigeonsRoost deep in the rocks.In the moonlight the shepherds,Soft lull’d by the rills,Lie wrapt in their blankets,Asleep on the hills.—What forms are these comingSo white through the gloom?What garments out-glisteningThe gold-flower’d broom?What sweet-breathing PresenceOut-perfumes the thyme?What voices enraptureThe night’s balmy prime?—’Tis Apollo comes leadingHis choir, The Nine.—The Leader is fairest,But all are divine.They are lost in the hollows.They stream up again.What seeks on this mountainThe glorified train?—They bathe on this mountain,In the spring by their road.Then on to Olympus,Their endless abode.—Whose praise do they mentionOf what is it told?—What will be for ever.What was from of old.First hymn they the FatherOf all things: and then,The rest of Immortals,The action of men.The Day in his hotness,The strife with the palm;The Night in her silence,The Stars in their calm.
THROUGH the black, rushing smoke-bursts,Thick breaks the red flame.All Etna heaves fiercelyHer forest-clothed frame.Not here, O Apollo!Are haunts meet for thee.But, where Helicon breaks downIn cliff to the sea.Where the moon-silver’d inletsSend far their light voiceUp the still vale of Thisbe,O speed, and rejoice!On the sward at the cliff-top,Lie strewn the white flocks;On the cliff-side, the pigeonsRoost deep in the rocks.In the moonlight the shepherds,Soft lull’d by the rills,Lie wrapt in their blankets,Asleep on the hills.—What forms are these comingSo white through the gloom?What garments out-glisteningThe gold-flower’d broom?What sweet-breathing PresenceOut-perfumes the thyme?What voices enraptureThe night’s balmy prime?—’Tis Apollo comes leadingHis choir, The Nine.—The Leader is fairest,But all are divine.They are lost in the hollows.They stream up again.What seeks on this mountainThe glorified train?—They bathe on this mountain,In the spring by their road.Then on to Olympus,Their endless abode.—Whose praise do they mentionOf what is it told?—What will be for ever.What was from of old.First hymn they the FatherOf all things: and then,The rest of Immortals,The action of men.The Day in his hotness,The strife with the palm;The Night in her silence,The Stars in their calm.
THROUGH the black, rushing smoke-bursts,Thick breaks the red flame.All Etna heaves fiercelyHer forest-clothed frame.
Not here, O Apollo!Are haunts meet for thee.But, where Helicon breaks downIn cliff to the sea.
Where the moon-silver’d inletsSend far their light voiceUp the still vale of Thisbe,O speed, and rejoice!
On the sward at the cliff-top,Lie strewn the white flocks;On the cliff-side, the pigeonsRoost deep in the rocks.
In the moonlight the shepherds,Soft lull’d by the rills,Lie wrapt in their blankets,Asleep on the hills.
—What forms are these comingSo white through the gloom?What garments out-glisteningThe gold-flower’d broom?
What sweet-breathing PresenceOut-perfumes the thyme?What voices enraptureThe night’s balmy prime?—
’Tis Apollo comes leadingHis choir, The Nine.—The Leader is fairest,But all are divine.
They are lost in the hollows.They stream up again.What seeks on this mountainThe glorified train?—
They bathe on this mountain,In the spring by their road.Then on to Olympus,Their endless abode.
—Whose praise do they mentionOf what is it told?—What will be for ever.What was from of old.
First hymn they the FatherOf all things: and then,The rest of Immortals,The action of men.
The Day in his hotness,The strife with the palm;The Night in her silence,The Stars in their calm.
749.
YES: in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown.Dotting the shoreless watery wild,We mortal millions livealone.The islands feel the enclasping flow,And then their endless bounds they know.But when the moon their hollows lights,And they are swept by balms of spring,And in their glens, on starry nights,The nightingales divinely sing;And lovely notes, from shore to shore,Across the sounds and channels pour;O then a longing like despairIs to their farthest caverns sent!For surely once, they feel, we wereParts of a single continent.Now round us spreads the watery plain—O might our marges meet again!Who order’d that their longing’s fireShould be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?Who renders vain their deep desire?—A God, a God their severance ruled;And bade betwixt their shores to beThe unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
YES: in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown.Dotting the shoreless watery wild,We mortal millions livealone.The islands feel the enclasping flow,And then their endless bounds they know.But when the moon their hollows lights,And they are swept by balms of spring,And in their glens, on starry nights,The nightingales divinely sing;And lovely notes, from shore to shore,Across the sounds and channels pour;O then a longing like despairIs to their farthest caverns sent!For surely once, they feel, we wereParts of a single continent.Now round us spreads the watery plain—O might our marges meet again!Who order’d that their longing’s fireShould be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?Who renders vain their deep desire?—A God, a God their severance ruled;And bade betwixt their shores to beThe unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
YES: in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown.Dotting the shoreless watery wild,We mortal millions livealone.The islands feel the enclasping flow,And then their endless bounds they know.
But when the moon their hollows lights,And they are swept by balms of spring,And in their glens, on starry nights,The nightingales divinely sing;And lovely notes, from shore to shore,Across the sounds and channels pour;
O then a longing like despairIs to their farthest caverns sent!For surely once, they feel, we wereParts of a single continent.Now round us spreads the watery plain—O might our marges meet again!
Who order’d that their longing’s fireShould be, as soon as kindled, cool’d?Who renders vain their deep desire?—A God, a God their severance ruled;And bade betwixt their shores to beThe unplumb’d, salt, estranging sea.
750.
STREW on her roses, roses,And never a spray of yew.In quiet she reposes:Ah! would that I did too.Her mirth the world required:She bathed it in smiles of glee.But her heart was tired, tired,And now they let her be.Her life was turning, turning,In mazes of heat and sound.But for peace her soul was yearning,And now peace laps her round.Her cabin’d, ample Spirit,It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.To-night it doth inheritThe vasty hall of Death.
STREW on her roses, roses,And never a spray of yew.In quiet she reposes:Ah! would that I did too.Her mirth the world required:She bathed it in smiles of glee.But her heart was tired, tired,And now they let her be.Her life was turning, turning,In mazes of heat and sound.But for peace her soul was yearning,And now peace laps her round.Her cabin’d, ample Spirit,It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.To-night it doth inheritThe vasty hall of Death.
STREW on her roses, roses,And never a spray of yew.In quiet she reposes:Ah! would that I did too.
Her mirth the world required:She bathed it in smiles of glee.But her heart was tired, tired,And now they let her be.
Her life was turning, turning,In mazes of heat and sound.But for peace her soul was yearning,And now peace laps her round.
Her cabin’d, ample Spirit,It flutter’d and fail’d for breath.To-night it doth inheritThe vasty hall of Death.
751.
GO, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill;Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes:No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,Nor the cropp’d grasses shoot another head.But when the fields are still,And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,And only the white sheep are sometimes seenCross and recross the strips of moon-blanch’d green;Come, Shepherd, and again begin the quest.Here, where the reaper was at work of late,In this high field’s dark corner, where he leavesHis coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise,And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use;Here will I sit and wait,While to my ear from uplands far awayThe bleating of the folded flocks is borne,With distant cries of reapers in the corn—All the live murmur of a summer’s day.Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d field,And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be.Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,And round green roots and yellowing stalks I seePale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:And air-swept lindens yieldTheir scent, and rustle down their perfumed showersOf bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,And bower me from the August sun with shade;And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers:And near me on the grass lies Glanvil’s book—Come, let me read the oft-read tale again:The story of that Oxford scholar poor,Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door,One summer morn forsookHis friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore,And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood,And came, as most men deem’d, to little good,But came to Oxford and his friends no more.But once, years after, in the country lanes,Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,Met him, and of his way of life inquired.Whereat he answer’d that the Gipsy crew,His mates, had arts to rule as they desiredThe workings of men’s brains;And they can bind them to what thoughts they will:‘And I,’ he said, ‘the secret of their art,When fully learn’d, will to the world impart:But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill!’This said, he left them, and return’d no more,But rumours hung about the country-side,That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,The same the Gipsies wore.Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock’d boorsHad found him seated at their entering,But, ’mid their drink and clatter, he would fly:And I myself seem half to know thy looks,And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace;And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooksI ask if thou hast pass’d their quiet place;Or in my boat I lieMoor’d to the cool bank in the summer heats,‘Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,And watch the warm green-muffled Cumnor hills,And wonder if thou haunt’st their shy retreats.For most, I know, thou lov’st retirèd ground.Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,Returning home on summer nights, have metCrossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe,Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,As the slow punt swings round:And leaning backwards in a pensive dream,And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowersPluck’d in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream:And then they land, and thou art seen no more.Maidens who from the distant hamlets comeTo dance around the Fyfield elm in May,Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam,Or cross a stile into the public way.Oft thou hast given them storeOf flowers—the frail-leaf’d, white anemone—Dark bluebells drench’d with dews of summer eves,And purple orchises with spotted leaves—But none has words she can report of thee.And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time’s hereIn June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,Men who through those wide fields of breezy grassWhere black-wing’d swallows haunt the glittering Thames,To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass,Have often pass’d thee nearSitting upon the river bank o’ergrown:Mark’d thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air;But, when they came from bathing, thou wert gone.At some lone homestead in the Cumnor hills,Where at her open door the housewife darns,Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gateTo watch the threshers in the mossy barns.Children, who early range these slopes and lateFor cresses from the rills,Have known thee watching, all an April day,The springing pastures and the feeding kine;And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and shine,Through the long dewy grass move slow away.In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood,Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edged wayPitch their smoked tents, and every bush you seeWith scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of gray,Above the forest-ground call’d Thessaly—The blackbird picking foodSees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;So often has he known thee past him strayRapt, twirling in thy hand a wither’d spray,And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall.And once, in winter, on the causeway chillWhere home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridgeWrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge?And thou hast climb’d the hillAnd gain’d the white brow of the Cumnor range;Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,The line of festal light in Christ Church hall—Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d grange.But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flownSince first thy story ran through Oxford halls,And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribeThat thou wert wander’d from the studious wallsTo learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe:And thou from earth art goneLong since, and in some quiet churchyard laid;Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown graveTall grasses and white flowering nettles wave—Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade.—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours.For what wears out the life of mortal men?’Tis that from change to change their being rolls:’Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,Exhaust the energy of strongest souls,And numb the elastic powers.Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,To the just-pausing Genius we remitOur worn-out life, and are—what we have been.Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?Thou hadstoneaim,onebusiness,onedesire:Else wert thou long since number’d with the dead—Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire.The generations of thy peers are fled,And we ourselves shall go;But thou possessest an immortal lot,And we imagine thee exempt from ageAnd living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page,Because thou hadst—what we, alas, have not!For early didst thou leave the world, with powersFresh, undiverted to the world without,Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.O Life unlike to ours!Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,And each half lives a hundred different lives;Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we,Vague half-believers of our casual creeds,Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill’d;For whom each year we seeBreeds new beginnings, disappointments new;Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?Yes, we await it, but it still delays,And then we suffer; and amongst us One,Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedlyHis seat upon the intellectual throne;And all his store of sad experience heLays bare of wretched days;Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs,And how the dying spark of hope was fed,And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,And all his hourly varied anodynes.This for our wisest: and we others pine,And wish the long unhappy dream would end,And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear,With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend,Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair:But none has hope like thine.Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,And every doubt long blown by time away.O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;Before this strange disease of modern life,With its sick hurry, its divided aims,Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife—Fly hence, our contact fear!Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!Averse, as Dido did with gesture sternFrom her false friend’s approach in Hades turn,Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.Still nursing the unconquerable hope,Still clutching the inviolable shade,With a free onward impulse brushing through,By night, the silver’d branches of the glade—Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue.On some mild pastoral slopeEmerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,Freshen thy flowers, as in former years,With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,From the dark dingles, to the nightingales.But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!For strong the infection of our mental strife,Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;And we should win thee from thy own fair life,Like us distracted, and like us unblest.Soon, soon thy cheer would die,Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d thy powers,And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made:And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,Descried at sunrise an emerging prowLifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily,The fringes of a southward-facing browAmong the Ægean isles;And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine;And knew the intruders on his ancient home,The young light-hearted Masters of the waves;And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail,And day and night held on indignantlyO’er the blue Midland waters with the gale,Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,To where the Atlantic ravesOutside the Western Straits, and unbent sailsThere, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;And on the beach undid his corded bales.
GO, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill;Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes:No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,Nor the cropp’d grasses shoot another head.But when the fields are still,And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,And only the white sheep are sometimes seenCross and recross the strips of moon-blanch’d green;Come, Shepherd, and again begin the quest.Here, where the reaper was at work of late,In this high field’s dark corner, where he leavesHis coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise,And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use;Here will I sit and wait,While to my ear from uplands far awayThe bleating of the folded flocks is borne,With distant cries of reapers in the corn—All the live murmur of a summer’s day.Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d field,And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be.Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,And round green roots and yellowing stalks I seePale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:And air-swept lindens yieldTheir scent, and rustle down their perfumed showersOf bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,And bower me from the August sun with shade;And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers:And near me on the grass lies Glanvil’s book—Come, let me read the oft-read tale again:The story of that Oxford scholar poor,Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door,One summer morn forsookHis friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore,And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood,And came, as most men deem’d, to little good,But came to Oxford and his friends no more.But once, years after, in the country lanes,Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,Met him, and of his way of life inquired.Whereat he answer’d that the Gipsy crew,His mates, had arts to rule as they desiredThe workings of men’s brains;And they can bind them to what thoughts they will:‘And I,’ he said, ‘the secret of their art,When fully learn’d, will to the world impart:But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill!’This said, he left them, and return’d no more,But rumours hung about the country-side,That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,The same the Gipsies wore.Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock’d boorsHad found him seated at their entering,But, ’mid their drink and clatter, he would fly:And I myself seem half to know thy looks,And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace;And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooksI ask if thou hast pass’d their quiet place;Or in my boat I lieMoor’d to the cool bank in the summer heats,‘Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,And watch the warm green-muffled Cumnor hills,And wonder if thou haunt’st their shy retreats.For most, I know, thou lov’st retirèd ground.Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,Returning home on summer nights, have metCrossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe,Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,As the slow punt swings round:And leaning backwards in a pensive dream,And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowersPluck’d in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream:And then they land, and thou art seen no more.Maidens who from the distant hamlets comeTo dance around the Fyfield elm in May,Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam,Or cross a stile into the public way.Oft thou hast given them storeOf flowers—the frail-leaf’d, white anemone—Dark bluebells drench’d with dews of summer eves,And purple orchises with spotted leaves—But none has words she can report of thee.And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time’s hereIn June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,Men who through those wide fields of breezy grassWhere black-wing’d swallows haunt the glittering Thames,To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass,Have often pass’d thee nearSitting upon the river bank o’ergrown:Mark’d thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air;But, when they came from bathing, thou wert gone.At some lone homestead in the Cumnor hills,Where at her open door the housewife darns,Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gateTo watch the threshers in the mossy barns.Children, who early range these slopes and lateFor cresses from the rills,Have known thee watching, all an April day,The springing pastures and the feeding kine;And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and shine,Through the long dewy grass move slow away.In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood,Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edged wayPitch their smoked tents, and every bush you seeWith scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of gray,Above the forest-ground call’d Thessaly—The blackbird picking foodSees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;So often has he known thee past him strayRapt, twirling in thy hand a wither’d spray,And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall.And once, in winter, on the causeway chillWhere home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridgeWrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge?And thou hast climb’d the hillAnd gain’d the white brow of the Cumnor range;Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,The line of festal light in Christ Church hall—Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d grange.But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flownSince first thy story ran through Oxford halls,And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribeThat thou wert wander’d from the studious wallsTo learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe:And thou from earth art goneLong since, and in some quiet churchyard laid;Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown graveTall grasses and white flowering nettles wave—Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade.—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours.For what wears out the life of mortal men?’Tis that from change to change their being rolls:’Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,Exhaust the energy of strongest souls,And numb the elastic powers.Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,To the just-pausing Genius we remitOur worn-out life, and are—what we have been.Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?Thou hadstoneaim,onebusiness,onedesire:Else wert thou long since number’d with the dead—Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire.The generations of thy peers are fled,And we ourselves shall go;But thou possessest an immortal lot,And we imagine thee exempt from ageAnd living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page,Because thou hadst—what we, alas, have not!For early didst thou leave the world, with powersFresh, undiverted to the world without,Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.O Life unlike to ours!Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,And each half lives a hundred different lives;Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we,Vague half-believers of our casual creeds,Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill’d;For whom each year we seeBreeds new beginnings, disappointments new;Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?Yes, we await it, but it still delays,And then we suffer; and amongst us One,Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedlyHis seat upon the intellectual throne;And all his store of sad experience heLays bare of wretched days;Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs,And how the dying spark of hope was fed,And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,And all his hourly varied anodynes.This for our wisest: and we others pine,And wish the long unhappy dream would end,And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear,With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend,Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair:But none has hope like thine.Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,And every doubt long blown by time away.O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;Before this strange disease of modern life,With its sick hurry, its divided aims,Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife—Fly hence, our contact fear!Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!Averse, as Dido did with gesture sternFrom her false friend’s approach in Hades turn,Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.Still nursing the unconquerable hope,Still clutching the inviolable shade,With a free onward impulse brushing through,By night, the silver’d branches of the glade—Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue.On some mild pastoral slopeEmerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,Freshen thy flowers, as in former years,With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,From the dark dingles, to the nightingales.But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!For strong the infection of our mental strife,Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;And we should win thee from thy own fair life,Like us distracted, and like us unblest.Soon, soon thy cheer would die,Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d thy powers,And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made:And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,Descried at sunrise an emerging prowLifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily,The fringes of a southward-facing browAmong the Ægean isles;And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine;And knew the intruders on his ancient home,The young light-hearted Masters of the waves;And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail,And day and night held on indignantlyO’er the blue Midland waters with the gale,Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,To where the Atlantic ravesOutside the Western Straits, and unbent sailsThere, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;And on the beach undid his corded bales.
GO, for they call you, Shepherd, from the hill;Go, Shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes:No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed,Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,Nor the cropp’d grasses shoot another head.But when the fields are still,And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest,And only the white sheep are sometimes seenCross and recross the strips of moon-blanch’d green;Come, Shepherd, and again begin the quest.
Here, where the reaper was at work of late,In this high field’s dark corner, where he leavesHis coat, his basket, and his earthen cruise,And in the sun all morning binds the sheaves,Then here, at noon, comes back his stores to use;Here will I sit and wait,While to my ear from uplands far awayThe bleating of the folded flocks is borne,With distant cries of reapers in the corn—All the live murmur of a summer’s day.
Screen’d is this nook o’er the high, half-reap’d field,And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be.Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,And round green roots and yellowing stalks I seePale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:And air-swept lindens yieldTheir scent, and rustle down their perfumed showersOf bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,And bower me from the August sun with shade;And the eye travels down to Oxford’s towers:
And near me on the grass lies Glanvil’s book—Come, let me read the oft-read tale again:The story of that Oxford scholar poor,Of pregnant parts and quick inventive brain,Who, tired of knocking at Preferment’s door,One summer morn forsookHis friends, and went to learn the Gipsy lore,And roam’d the world with that wild brotherhood,And came, as most men deem’d, to little good,But came to Oxford and his friends no more.
But once, years after, in the country lanes,Two scholars, whom at college erst he knew,Met him, and of his way of life inquired.Whereat he answer’d that the Gipsy crew,His mates, had arts to rule as they desiredThe workings of men’s brains;And they can bind them to what thoughts they will:‘And I,’ he said, ‘the secret of their art,When fully learn’d, will to the world impart:But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill!’
This said, he left them, and return’d no more,But rumours hung about the country-side,That the lost Scholar long was seen to stray,Seen by rare glimpses, pensive and tongue-tied,In hat of antique shape, and cloak of grey,The same the Gipsies wore.Shepherds had met him on the Hurst in spring;At some lone alehouse in the Berkshire moors,On the warm ingle-bench, the smock-frock’d boorsHad found him seated at their entering,But, ’mid their drink and clatter, he would fly:And I myself seem half to know thy looks,And put the shepherds, Wanderer, on thy trace;And boys who in lone wheatfields scare the rooksI ask if thou hast pass’d their quiet place;Or in my boat I lieMoor’d to the cool bank in the summer heats,‘Mid wide grass meadows which the sunshine fills,And watch the warm green-muffled Cumnor hills,And wonder if thou haunt’st their shy retreats.
For most, I know, thou lov’st retirèd ground.Thee, at the ferry, Oxford riders blithe,Returning home on summer nights, have metCrossing the stripling Thames at Bablock-hithe,Trailing in the cool stream thy fingers wet,As the slow punt swings round:And leaning backwards in a pensive dream,And fostering in thy lap a heap of flowersPluck’d in shy fields and distant Wychwood bowers,And thine eyes resting on the moonlit stream:
And then they land, and thou art seen no more.Maidens who from the distant hamlets comeTo dance around the Fyfield elm in May,Oft through the darkening fields have seen thee roam,Or cross a stile into the public way.Oft thou hast given them storeOf flowers—the frail-leaf’d, white anemone—Dark bluebells drench’d with dews of summer eves,And purple orchises with spotted leaves—But none has words she can report of thee.
And, above Godstow Bridge, when hay-time’s hereIn June, and many a scythe in sunshine flames,Men who through those wide fields of breezy grassWhere black-wing’d swallows haunt the glittering Thames,To bathe in the abandon’d lasher pass,Have often pass’d thee nearSitting upon the river bank o’ergrown:Mark’d thine outlandish garb, thy figure spare,Thy dark vague eyes, and soft abstracted air;But, when they came from bathing, thou wert gone.
At some lone homestead in the Cumnor hills,Where at her open door the housewife darns,Thou hast been seen, or hanging on a gateTo watch the threshers in the mossy barns.Children, who early range these slopes and lateFor cresses from the rills,Have known thee watching, all an April day,The springing pastures and the feeding kine;And mark’d thee, when the stars come out and shine,Through the long dewy grass move slow away.
In autumn, on the skirts of Bagley Wood,Where most the Gipsies by the turf-edged wayPitch their smoked tents, and every bush you seeWith scarlet patches tagg’d and shreds of gray,Above the forest-ground call’d Thessaly—The blackbird picking foodSees thee, nor stops his meal, nor fears at all;So often has he known thee past him strayRapt, twirling in thy hand a wither’d spray,And waiting for the spark from Heaven to fall.
And once, in winter, on the causeway chillWhere home through flooded fields foot-travellers go,Have I not pass’d thee on the wooden bridgeWrapt in thy cloak and battling with the snow,Thy face towards Hinksey and its wintry ridge?And thou hast climb’d the hillAnd gain’d the white brow of the Cumnor range;Turn’d once to watch, while thick the snowflakes fall,The line of festal light in Christ Church hall—Then sought thy straw in some sequester’d grange.
But what—I dream! Two hundred years are flownSince first thy story ran through Oxford halls,And the grave Glanvil did the tale inscribeThat thou wert wander’d from the studious wallsTo learn strange arts, and join a Gipsy tribe:And thou from earth art goneLong since, and in some quiet churchyard laid;Some country nook, where o’er thy unknown graveTall grasses and white flowering nettles wave—Under a dark red-fruited yew-tree’s shade.
—No, no, thou hast not felt the lapse of hours.For what wears out the life of mortal men?’Tis that from change to change their being rolls:’Tis that repeated shocks, again, again,Exhaust the energy of strongest souls,And numb the elastic powers.Till having used our nerves with bliss and teen,And tired upon a thousand schemes our wit,To the just-pausing Genius we remitOur worn-out life, and are—what we have been.
Thou hast not lived, why shouldst thou perish, so?Thou hadstoneaim,onebusiness,onedesire:Else wert thou long since number’d with the dead—Else hadst thou spent, like other men, thy fire.The generations of thy peers are fled,And we ourselves shall go;But thou possessest an immortal lot,And we imagine thee exempt from ageAnd living as thou liv’st on Glanvil’s page,Because thou hadst—what we, alas, have not!
For early didst thou leave the world, with powersFresh, undiverted to the world without,Firm to their mark, not spent on other things;Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.O Life unlike to ours!Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,And each half lives a hundred different lives;Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.
Thou waitest for the spark from Heaven: and we,Vague half-believers of our casual creeds,Who never deeply felt, nor clearly will’d,Whose insight never has borne fruit in deeds,Whose weak resolves never have been fulfill’d;For whom each year we seeBreeds new beginnings, disappointments new;Who hesitate and falter life away,And lose to-morrow the ground won to-day—Ah, do not we, Wanderer, await it too?
Yes, we await it, but it still delays,And then we suffer; and amongst us One,Who most has suffer’d, takes dejectedlyHis seat upon the intellectual throne;And all his store of sad experience heLays bare of wretched days;Tells us his misery’s birth and growth and signs,And how the dying spark of hope was fed,And how the breast was soothed, and how the head,And all his hourly varied anodynes.
This for our wisest: and we others pine,And wish the long unhappy dream would end,And waive all claim to bliss, and try to bear,With close-lipp’d Patience for our only friend,Sad Patience, too near neighbour to Despair:But none has hope like thine.Thou through the fields and through the woods dost stray,Roaming the country-side, a truant boy,Nursing thy project in unclouded joy,And every doubt long blown by time away.
O born in days when wits were fresh and clear,And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;Before this strange disease of modern life,With its sick hurry, its divided aims,Its heads o’ertax’d, its palsied hearts, was rife—Fly hence, our contact fear!Still fly, plunge deeper in the bowering wood!Averse, as Dido did with gesture sternFrom her false friend’s approach in Hades turn,Wave us away, and keep thy solitude.
Still nursing the unconquerable hope,Still clutching the inviolable shade,With a free onward impulse brushing through,By night, the silver’d branches of the glade—Far on the forest-skirts, where none pursue.On some mild pastoral slopeEmerge, and resting on the moonlit pales,Freshen thy flowers, as in former years,With dew, or listen with enchanted ears,From the dark dingles, to the nightingales.
But fly our paths, our feverish contact fly!For strong the infection of our mental strife,Which, though it gives no bliss, yet spoils for rest;And we should win thee from thy own fair life,Like us distracted, and like us unblest.Soon, soon thy cheer would die,Thy hopes grow timorous, and unfix’d thy powers,And thy clear aims be cross and shifting made:And then thy glad perennial youth would fade,Fade, and grow old at last, and die like ours.
Then fly our greetings, fly our speech and smiles!—As some grave Tyrian trader, from the sea,Descried at sunrise an emerging prowLifting the cool-hair’d creepers stealthily,The fringes of a southward-facing browAmong the Ægean isles;And saw the merry Grecian coaster come,Freighted with amber grapes, and Chian wine,Green bursting figs, and tunnies steep’d in brine;And knew the intruders on his ancient home,The young light-hearted Masters of the waves;And snatch’d his rudder, and shook out more sail,And day and night held on indignantlyO’er the blue Midland waters with the gale,Betwixt the Syrtes and soft Sicily,To where the Atlantic ravesOutside the Western Straits, and unbent sailsThere, where down cloudy cliffs, through sheets of foam,Shy traffickers, the dark Iberians come;And on the beach undid his corded bales.
752.
HARK! ah, the Nightingale!The tawny-throated!Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!What triumph! hark—what pain!O Wanderer from a Grecian shore,Still, after many years, in distant lands,Still nourishing in thy bewilder’d brainThat wild, unquench’d, deep-sunken, old-world pain—Say, will it never heal?And can this fragrant lawnWith its cool trees, and night,And the sweet, tranquil Thames,And moonshine, and the dew,To thy rack’d heart and brainAfford no balm?Dost thou to-night beholdHere, through the moonlight on this English grass,The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?Dost thou again peruseWith hot cheeks and sear’d eyesThe too clear web, and thy dumb Sister’s shame?Dost thou once more assayThy flight, and feel come over thee,Poor Fugitive, the feathery changeOnce more, and once more seem to make resoundWith love and hate, triumph and agony,Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?Listen, Eugenia—How thick the bursts come crowding through the leavesAgain—thou hearest!Eternal Passion!Eternal Pain!
HARK! ah, the Nightingale!The tawny-throated!Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!What triumph! hark—what pain!O Wanderer from a Grecian shore,Still, after many years, in distant lands,Still nourishing in thy bewilder’d brainThat wild, unquench’d, deep-sunken, old-world pain—Say, will it never heal?And can this fragrant lawnWith its cool trees, and night,And the sweet, tranquil Thames,And moonshine, and the dew,To thy rack’d heart and brainAfford no balm?Dost thou to-night beholdHere, through the moonlight on this English grass,The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?Dost thou again peruseWith hot cheeks and sear’d eyesThe too clear web, and thy dumb Sister’s shame?Dost thou once more assayThy flight, and feel come over thee,Poor Fugitive, the feathery changeOnce more, and once more seem to make resoundWith love and hate, triumph and agony,Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?Listen, Eugenia—How thick the bursts come crowding through the leavesAgain—thou hearest!Eternal Passion!Eternal Pain!
HARK! ah, the Nightingale!The tawny-throated!Hark! from that moonlit cedar what a burst!What triumph! hark—what pain!
O Wanderer from a Grecian shore,Still, after many years, in distant lands,Still nourishing in thy bewilder’d brainThat wild, unquench’d, deep-sunken, old-world pain—Say, will it never heal?And can this fragrant lawnWith its cool trees, and night,And the sweet, tranquil Thames,And moonshine, and the dew,To thy rack’d heart and brainAfford no balm?
Dost thou to-night beholdHere, through the moonlight on this English grass,The unfriendly palace in the Thracian wild?Dost thou again peruseWith hot cheeks and sear’d eyesThe too clear web, and thy dumb Sister’s shame?Dost thou once more assayThy flight, and feel come over thee,Poor Fugitive, the feathery changeOnce more, and once more seem to make resoundWith love and hate, triumph and agony,Lone Daulis, and the high Cephissian vale?Listen, Eugenia—How thick the bursts come crowding through the leavesAgain—thou hearest!Eternal Passion!Eternal Pain!
753.
OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free.We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hillThat to the stars uncrowns his majesty,Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place.Spares but the cloudy border of his baseTo the foil’d searching of mortality;And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,Didst walk on earth unguess’d at. Better so!All pains the immortal spirit must endure,All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.
OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free.We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hillThat to the stars uncrowns his majesty,Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place.Spares but the cloudy border of his baseTo the foil’d searching of mortality;And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,Didst walk on earth unguess’d at. Better so!All pains the immortal spirit must endure,All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.
OTHERS abide our question. Thou art free.We ask and ask: Thou smilest and art still,Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hillThat to the stars uncrowns his majesty,Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place.Spares but the cloudy border of his baseTo the foil’d searching of mortality;And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,Self-school’d, self-scann’d, self-honour’d, self-secure,Didst walk on earth unguess’d at. Better so!All pains the immortal spirit must endure,All weakness that impairs, all griefs that bow,Find their sole voice in that victorious brow.
754.
IS it so small a thingTo have enjoy’d the sun,To have lived light in the spring,To have loved, to have thought, to have done;To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;That we must feign a blissOf doubtful future date,And while we dream on thisLose all our present state,And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?Not much, I know, you prizeWhat pleasures may be had,Who look on life with eyesEstranged, like mine, and sad:And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you;Who’s loth to leave this lifeWhich to him little yields:His hard-task’d sunburnt wife,His often-labour’d fields;The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew.But thou, because thou hear’stMen scoff at Heaven and Fate;Because the gods thou fear’stFail to make blest thy state,Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.I say, Fear not! life stillLeaves human effort scope.But, since life teems with ill,Nurse no extravagant hope.Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair.
IS it so small a thingTo have enjoy’d the sun,To have lived light in the spring,To have loved, to have thought, to have done;To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;That we must feign a blissOf doubtful future date,And while we dream on thisLose all our present state,And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?Not much, I know, you prizeWhat pleasures may be had,Who look on life with eyesEstranged, like mine, and sad:And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you;Who’s loth to leave this lifeWhich to him little yields:His hard-task’d sunburnt wife,His often-labour’d fields;The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew.But thou, because thou hear’stMen scoff at Heaven and Fate;Because the gods thou fear’stFail to make blest thy state,Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.I say, Fear not! life stillLeaves human effort scope.But, since life teems with ill,Nurse no extravagant hope.Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair.
IS it so small a thingTo have enjoy’d the sun,To have lived light in the spring,To have loved, to have thought, to have done;To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes;
That we must feign a blissOf doubtful future date,And while we dream on thisLose all our present state,And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?
Not much, I know, you prizeWhat pleasures may be had,Who look on life with eyesEstranged, like mine, and sad:And yet the village churl feels the truth more than you;
Who’s loth to leave this lifeWhich to him little yields:His hard-task’d sunburnt wife,His often-labour’d fields;The boors with whom he talk’d, the country spots he knew.
But thou, because thou hear’stMen scoff at Heaven and Fate;Because the gods thou fear’stFail to make blest thy state,Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there are.
I say, Fear not! life stillLeaves human effort scope.But, since life teems with ill,Nurse no extravagant hope.Because thou must not dream, thou need’st not then despair.
1823-1880
755.
WHEN Love arose in heart and deedTo wake the world to greater joy,‘What can she give me now?’ said Greed,Who thought to win some costly toy.He rose, he ran, he stoop’d, he clutch’d;And soon the Flowers, that Love let fall,In Greed’s hot grasp were fray’d and smutch’d,And Greed said, ‘Flowers! Can this be all?’He flung them down and went his way,He cared no jot for thyme or rose;But boys and girls came out to play,And some took these and some took those—Red, blue, and white, and green and gold;And at their touch the dew return’d,And all the bloom a thousandfold—So red, so ripe, the roses burn’d!
WHEN Love arose in heart and deedTo wake the world to greater joy,‘What can she give me now?’ said Greed,Who thought to win some costly toy.He rose, he ran, he stoop’d, he clutch’d;And soon the Flowers, that Love let fall,In Greed’s hot grasp were fray’d and smutch’d,And Greed said, ‘Flowers! Can this be all?’He flung them down and went his way,He cared no jot for thyme or rose;But boys and girls came out to play,And some took these and some took those—Red, blue, and white, and green and gold;And at their touch the dew return’d,And all the bloom a thousandfold—So red, so ripe, the roses burn’d!
WHEN Love arose in heart and deedTo wake the world to greater joy,‘What can she give me now?’ said Greed,Who thought to win some costly toy.
He rose, he ran, he stoop’d, he clutch’d;And soon the Flowers, that Love let fall,In Greed’s hot grasp were fray’d and smutch’d,And Greed said, ‘Flowers! Can this be all?’
He flung them down and went his way,He cared no jot for thyme or rose;But boys and girls came out to play,And some took these and some took those—
Red, blue, and white, and green and gold;And at their touch the dew return’d,And all the bloom a thousandfold—So red, so ripe, the roses burn’d!
756.
INTO the skies, one summer’s day,I sent a little Thought away;Up to where, in the blue round,The sun sat shining without sound.Then my Thought came back to me.—Little Thought, what did you seeIn the regions whence you come?And when I spoke, my Thought was dumb.But she breathed of what was there,In the pure bright upper air;And, because my Thought so shone,I knew she had been shone upon.Next, by night a Thought I sentUp into the firmament;When the eager stars were out,And the still moon shone about.And my Thought went past the moonIn between the stars, but soonHeld her breath and durst not stir,For the fear that covered her;Then she thought, in this demur:‘Dare I look beneath the shade,Into where the worlds are made;Where the suns and stars are wrought?Shall I meet another Thought?‘Will that other Thought have wings?Shall I meet strange, heavenly things?Thought of Thoughts, and Light of Lights,Breath of Breaths, and Night of Nights?’Then my Thought began to harkIn the illuminated dark,Till the silence, over, under,Made her heart beat more than thunder.And my Thought, came trembling back,But with something on her track,And with something at her side;Nor till she has lived and died,Lived and died, and lived again,Will that awful thing seem plain.
INTO the skies, one summer’s day,I sent a little Thought away;Up to where, in the blue round,The sun sat shining without sound.Then my Thought came back to me.—Little Thought, what did you seeIn the regions whence you come?And when I spoke, my Thought was dumb.But she breathed of what was there,In the pure bright upper air;And, because my Thought so shone,I knew she had been shone upon.Next, by night a Thought I sentUp into the firmament;When the eager stars were out,And the still moon shone about.And my Thought went past the moonIn between the stars, but soonHeld her breath and durst not stir,For the fear that covered her;Then she thought, in this demur:‘Dare I look beneath the shade,Into where the worlds are made;Where the suns and stars are wrought?Shall I meet another Thought?‘Will that other Thought have wings?Shall I meet strange, heavenly things?Thought of Thoughts, and Light of Lights,Breath of Breaths, and Night of Nights?’Then my Thought began to harkIn the illuminated dark,Till the silence, over, under,Made her heart beat more than thunder.And my Thought, came trembling back,But with something on her track,And with something at her side;Nor till she has lived and died,Lived and died, and lived again,Will that awful thing seem plain.
INTO the skies, one summer’s day,I sent a little Thought away;Up to where, in the blue round,The sun sat shining without sound.
Then my Thought came back to me.—Little Thought, what did you seeIn the regions whence you come?And when I spoke, my Thought was dumb.
But she breathed of what was there,In the pure bright upper air;And, because my Thought so shone,I knew she had been shone upon.
Next, by night a Thought I sentUp into the firmament;When the eager stars were out,And the still moon shone about.
And my Thought went past the moonIn between the stars, but soonHeld her breath and durst not stir,For the fear that covered her;Then she thought, in this demur:
‘Dare I look beneath the shade,Into where the worlds are made;Where the suns and stars are wrought?Shall I meet another Thought?
‘Will that other Thought have wings?Shall I meet strange, heavenly things?Thought of Thoughts, and Light of Lights,Breath of Breaths, and Night of Nights?’
Then my Thought began to harkIn the illuminated dark,Till the silence, over, under,Made her heart beat more than thunder.
And my Thought, came trembling back,But with something on her track,And with something at her side;Nor till she has lived and died,Lived and died, and lived again,Will that awful thing seem plain.
1823-1889
757.
OF all the flowers rising now,Thou only saw’st the headOf that unopen’d drop of snowI placed beside thy bed.In all the blooms that blow so fast,Thou hast no further part,Save those the hour I saw thee last,I laid above thy heart.Two snowdrops for our boy and girl,A primrose blown for me,Wreathed with one often-play’d-with curlFrom each bright head for thee.And so I graced thee for thy grave,And made these tokens fastWith that old silver heart I gave,My first gift—and my last.
OF all the flowers rising now,Thou only saw’st the headOf that unopen’d drop of snowI placed beside thy bed.In all the blooms that blow so fast,Thou hast no further part,Save those the hour I saw thee last,I laid above thy heart.Two snowdrops for our boy and girl,A primrose blown for me,Wreathed with one often-play’d-with curlFrom each bright head for thee.And so I graced thee for thy grave,And made these tokens fastWith that old silver heart I gave,My first gift—and my last.
OF all the flowers rising now,Thou only saw’st the headOf that unopen’d drop of snowI placed beside thy bed.
In all the blooms that blow so fast,Thou hast no further part,Save those the hour I saw thee last,I laid above thy heart.
Two snowdrops for our boy and girl,A primrose blown for me,Wreathed with one often-play’d-with curlFrom each bright head for thee.
And so I graced thee for thy grave,And made these tokens fastWith that old silver heart I gave,My first gift—and my last.
IDREAM’d, her babe upon her breast,Here she might lie and calmly restHer happy eyes on that far hillThat backs the landscape fresh and still.I hoped her thoughts would thrid the boughsWhere careless birds on love carouse,And gaze those apple-blossoms throughTo revel in the boundless blue.But now her faculty of sightIs elder sister to the light,And travels free and unconfinedThrough dense and rare, through form and mind.Or else her life to be completeHath found new channels full and meet—Then, O, what eyes are leaning o’er,If fairer than they were before!
IDREAM’d, her babe upon her breast,Here she might lie and calmly restHer happy eyes on that far hillThat backs the landscape fresh and still.I hoped her thoughts would thrid the boughsWhere careless birds on love carouse,And gaze those apple-blossoms throughTo revel in the boundless blue.But now her faculty of sightIs elder sister to the light,And travels free and unconfinedThrough dense and rare, through form and mind.Or else her life to be completeHath found new channels full and meet—Then, O, what eyes are leaning o’er,If fairer than they were before!
IDREAM’d, her babe upon her breast,Here she might lie and calmly restHer happy eyes on that far hillThat backs the landscape fresh and still.
I hoped her thoughts would thrid the boughsWhere careless birds on love carouse,And gaze those apple-blossoms throughTo revel in the boundless blue.
But now her faculty of sightIs elder sister to the light,And travels free and unconfinedThrough dense and rare, through form and mind.
Or else her life to be completeHath found new channels full and meet—Then, O, what eyes are leaning o’er,If fairer than they were before!
1823-1892
758.
YOU promise heavens free from strife,Pure truth, and perfect change of will;But sweet, sweet is this human life,So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;Your chilly stars I can forgo,This warm kind world is all I know.You say there is no substance here,One great reality above:Back from that void I shrink in fear,And child-like hide myself in love:Show me what angels feel. Till thenI cling, a mere weak man, to men.You bid me lift my mean desiresFrom faltering lips and fitful veinsTo sexless souls, ideal quires,Unwearied voices, wordless strains:My mind with fonder welcome ownsOne dear dead friend’s remember’d tones.Forsooth the present we must giveTo that which cannot pass away;All beauteous things for which we liveBy laws of time and space decay.But O, the very reason whyI clasp them, is because they die.
YOU promise heavens free from strife,Pure truth, and perfect change of will;But sweet, sweet is this human life,So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;Your chilly stars I can forgo,This warm kind world is all I know.You say there is no substance here,One great reality above:Back from that void I shrink in fear,And child-like hide myself in love:Show me what angels feel. Till thenI cling, a mere weak man, to men.You bid me lift my mean desiresFrom faltering lips and fitful veinsTo sexless souls, ideal quires,Unwearied voices, wordless strains:My mind with fonder welcome ownsOne dear dead friend’s remember’d tones.Forsooth the present we must giveTo that which cannot pass away;All beauteous things for which we liveBy laws of time and space decay.But O, the very reason whyI clasp them, is because they die.
YOU promise heavens free from strife,Pure truth, and perfect change of will;But sweet, sweet is this human life,So sweet, I fain would breathe it still;Your chilly stars I can forgo,This warm kind world is all I know.
You say there is no substance here,One great reality above:Back from that void I shrink in fear,And child-like hide myself in love:Show me what angels feel. Till thenI cling, a mere weak man, to men.
You bid me lift my mean desiresFrom faltering lips and fitful veinsTo sexless souls, ideal quires,Unwearied voices, wordless strains:My mind with fonder welcome ownsOne dear dead friend’s remember’d tones.
Forsooth the present we must giveTo that which cannot pass away;All beauteous things for which we liveBy laws of time and space decay.But O, the very reason whyI clasp them, is because they die.
759.
THEY told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.I wept as I remember’d how often you and IHad tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
THEY told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.I wept as I remember’d how often you and IHad tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
THEY told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.I wept as I remember’d how often you and IHad tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.
And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.
1823-1896
760.
WHY, having won her, do I woo?Because her spirit’s vestal graceProvokes me always to pursue,But, spirit-like, eludes embrace;Because her womanhood is suchThat, as on court-days subjects kissThe Queen’s hand, yet so near a touchAffirms no mean familiarness;Nay, rather marks more fair the heightWhich can with safety so neglectTo dread, as lower ladies might,That grace could meet with disrespect;Thus she with happy favour feedsAllegiance from a love so highThat thence no false conceit proceedsOf difference bridged, or state put by;Because although in act and wordAs lowly as a wife can be,Her manners, when they call me lord,Remind me ’tis by courtesy;Not with her least consent of will,Which would my proud affection hurt,But by the noble style that stillImputes an unattain’d desert;Because her gay and lofty brows,When all is won which hope can ask,Reflect a light of hopeless snowsThat bright in virgin ether bask;Because, though free of the outer courtI am, this Temple keeps its shrineSacred to Heaven; because, in short,She’s not and never can be mine.
WHY, having won her, do I woo?Because her spirit’s vestal graceProvokes me always to pursue,But, spirit-like, eludes embrace;Because her womanhood is suchThat, as on court-days subjects kissThe Queen’s hand, yet so near a touchAffirms no mean familiarness;Nay, rather marks more fair the heightWhich can with safety so neglectTo dread, as lower ladies might,That grace could meet with disrespect;Thus she with happy favour feedsAllegiance from a love so highThat thence no false conceit proceedsOf difference bridged, or state put by;Because although in act and wordAs lowly as a wife can be,Her manners, when they call me lord,Remind me ’tis by courtesy;Not with her least consent of will,Which would my proud affection hurt,But by the noble style that stillImputes an unattain’d desert;Because her gay and lofty brows,When all is won which hope can ask,Reflect a light of hopeless snowsThat bright in virgin ether bask;Because, though free of the outer courtI am, this Temple keeps its shrineSacred to Heaven; because, in short,She’s not and never can be mine.
WHY, having won her, do I woo?Because her spirit’s vestal graceProvokes me always to pursue,But, spirit-like, eludes embrace;Because her womanhood is suchThat, as on court-days subjects kissThe Queen’s hand, yet so near a touchAffirms no mean familiarness;Nay, rather marks more fair the heightWhich can with safety so neglectTo dread, as lower ladies might,That grace could meet with disrespect;Thus she with happy favour feedsAllegiance from a love so highThat thence no false conceit proceedsOf difference bridged, or state put by;Because although in act and wordAs lowly as a wife can be,Her manners, when they call me lord,Remind me ’tis by courtesy;Not with her least consent of will,Which would my proud affection hurt,But by the noble style that stillImputes an unattain’d desert;Because her gay and lofty brows,When all is won which hope can ask,Reflect a light of hopeless snowsThat bright in virgin ether bask;Because, though free of the outer courtI am, this Temple keeps its shrineSacred to Heaven; because, in short,She’s not and never can be mine.
761.
‘IF I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’The dear lips quiver’d as they spake,And the tears brakeFrom eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.Poor Child, poor Child!I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song.It is not true that Love will do no wrong.Poor Child!And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,And of those words your full avengers make?Poor Child, poor Child!And now, unless it beThat sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,O God, have Thounomercy upon me!Poor Child!
‘IF I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’The dear lips quiver’d as they spake,And the tears brakeFrom eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.Poor Child, poor Child!I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song.It is not true that Love will do no wrong.Poor Child!And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,And of those words your full avengers make?Poor Child, poor Child!And now, unless it beThat sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,O God, have Thounomercy upon me!Poor Child!
‘IF I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’The dear lips quiver’d as they spake,And the tears brakeFrom eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.Poor Child, poor Child!I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song.It is not true that Love will do no wrong.Poor Child!And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,And of those words your full avengers make?Poor Child, poor Child!And now, unless it beThat sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,O God, have Thounomercy upon me!Poor Child!
762.
IT was not like your great and gracious ways!Do you, that have naught other to lament,Never, my Love, repentOf how, that July afternoon,You went,With sudden, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,Upon your journey of so many daysWithout a single kiss, or a good-bye?I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays,You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,Your harrowing praise.Well, it was wellTo hear you such things speak,And I could tellWhat made your eyes a growing gloom of love,As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.And it was like your great and gracious waysTo turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,Lifting the luminous, pathetic lashTo let the laughter flash,Whilst I drew near,Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.But all at once to leave me at the last,More at the wonder than the loss aghast,With huddled, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,And go your journey of all daysWith not one kiss, or a good-bye,And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.
IT was not like your great and gracious ways!Do you, that have naught other to lament,Never, my Love, repentOf how, that July afternoon,You went,With sudden, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,Upon your journey of so many daysWithout a single kiss, or a good-bye?I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays,You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,Your harrowing praise.Well, it was wellTo hear you such things speak,And I could tellWhat made your eyes a growing gloom of love,As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.And it was like your great and gracious waysTo turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,Lifting the luminous, pathetic lashTo let the laughter flash,Whilst I drew near,Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.But all at once to leave me at the last,More at the wonder than the loss aghast,With huddled, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,And go your journey of all daysWith not one kiss, or a good-bye,And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.
IT was not like your great and gracious ways!Do you, that have naught other to lament,Never, my Love, repentOf how, that July afternoon,You went,With sudden, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,Upon your journey of so many daysWithout a single kiss, or a good-bye?I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays,You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,Your harrowing praise.Well, it was wellTo hear you such things speak,And I could tellWhat made your eyes a growing gloom of love,As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.And it was like your great and gracious waysTo turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,Lifting the luminous, pathetic lashTo let the laughter flash,Whilst I drew near,Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.But all at once to leave me at the last,More at the wonder than the loss aghast,With huddled, unintelligible phrase,And frighten’d eye,And go your journey of all daysWith not one kiss, or a good-bye,And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.
763.