To N. D. Stenhouse, Esq.
Dark days have passed, but you who taught me thenTo look upon the world with trustful eyes,Are not forgotten! Quick to sympathiseWith noble thoughts, I've dreamt of moments whenYour low voice filled with strains of fairer skies!Stray breaths of Grecian song that went and came,Like floating fragrance from some quiet glenIn those far hills which shine with classic fameOf passioned nymphs and grand-browed god-like men!I sometimes fear my heart hath lost the sameSweet sense of harmony; butthisI knowThat Beauty waits on youwhere'eryou go,Because she loveth child-like Faith! Her bowersAre rich for it with glad perennial flowers.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
A lofty Type of all her sex, I ween,My English brothers, though your wayward raceNow slight the Soul that never wore a screen,And loved too well to keep her noble place!Ah, bravest Woman that our World hath seen(A light in spaces wild and tempest-tost),In every verse of thine, behold, we traceThe full reflection of an earnest faceAnd hear the scrawling of an eager pen!O sisters! knowing what you've loved and lost,I ask where shall we find its like, and when?That dear heart with its passion sorrow-crost,And pathos rippling, like a brook in JuneAmongst the roses of a windless noon.
Sir Walter Scott
The Bard of ancient lore! Like one forlorn,He turned, enamoured, to the silent Past;And searching down its mazes gray and vast,As you might find the blossom by the thorn,He found fair things in barren places castAnd brought them up into the light of morn.Lo! Truth, resplendent, as a tropic dawn,Shines always through his wond'rous pictures! HenceThe many quick emotions which are bornOf an Imagination so intense!The chargers' hoofs come tearing up the sward—The claymores rattle in the restless sheath;You close his page, and almost look abroadFor Highland glens and windy leagues of heath.
Let me here endeavour to draw the fair distinctions between the great writers,or some of the great writers, of Scott's day; borrowing at the same timea later name. I shall start with that strange figure, Percy Bysshe Shelley.He was too subjective to be merely a descriptive poet,too metaphysical to be vague, and too imaginative to be didactic.As Scott was the most dramatic, Wordsworth the most profound,Byron the most passionate, so Shelley was the most spiritual writerof his time. Scott's poetry was the result of vivid emotion,Wordsworth's of quiet observation, Byron's of passion,and Shelley's of passion and reflection. Scott races like a torrent,Byron rolls like a sea, Wordsworth ripples into a lake,Tennyson flows like a river, and Shelley gushes like a fountain.As Tennyson is the most harmonious, so Shelley is the most musicalof modern bards. I fear to touch upon that grand old man, Coleridge;he appears to me so utterly apart from his contemporaries. He stands,like Teneriffe, alone. Can I liken him to a magnificent thunder-scorched cragwith its summits eternally veiled in vapour?—H.K.
She sleeps—and I see through a shadowy haze,Where the hopes of the past and the dreams that I cherishedIn the sunlight of brighter and happier days,As the mists of the morning, have faded and perished.She sleeps—and will waken to bless me no more;Her life has died out like the gleam on the river,And the bliss that illumined my bosom of yoreHas fled from its dwelling for ever and ever.I had thought in this life not to travel alone,I had hoped for a mate in my joys and my sorrow—But the face of my idol is colder than stone,And my path will be lonely without her to-morrow.I was hoping to bask in the light of her smileWhen Fortune and Fame with their laurels had crown'd me—But the fire in her eyes has been dying the while,And the thorns of affliction are planted around me.There are those that may vent all their grief in their tearsAnd weep till the past is away in the distance;But this wreck of the dream of my sunshiny yearsWill hang like a cloud o'er the rest of existence.In the depth of my soul she shall ever remain;My thoughts, like the angels, shall hover about her;For our hearts have been reft and divided in painAnd what is this world to be left in without her?
Here, pent about by office wallsAnd barren eyes all day,'Tis sweet to think of waterfallsTwo hundred miles away!I would not ask you, friends, to brookAn old, old truth from me,If I could shut a Poet's bookWhich haunts me like the Sea!He saith to me, this Poet saith,So many things of light,That I have found a fourfold faith,And gained a twofold sight.He telleth me, this Poet tells,How much of God is seenAmongst the deep-mossed English dells,And miles of gleaming green.From many a black Gethsemane,He leads my bleeding feetTo where I hear the Morning SeaRound shining spaces beat!To where I feel the wind, which bringsA sound of running creeks,And blows those dark, unpleasant things,The sorrows, from my cheeks.I'll shut mine eyes, my Poet choice,And spend the day with thee;I'll dream thou art a fountain voiceWhich God hath sent to me!And far beyond these office wallsMy thoughts shall even stray,And watch the wilful waterfalls,Two hundred miles away.For, if I know not of thy deeds,And darling Kentish downs,I've seen the deep, wild Dungog fells,Andhatethe heart of towns!Then, ho! for beaming bank and brake,Far-folded hills among,Where Williams,* like a silver snake,Draws winding lengths along!—* A tributary of the river Hunter, after Hunter, on which Dungog stands.—And ho! for stormy mountain cones,Where headlong Winter leaps,What time the gloomy swamp-oak groans,And weeps and wails and weeps.There, friends, are spots of sleepy green,Where one may hear afar,O'er fifteen leagues of waste, I ween,A moaning harbour bar!(The sea that breaks, and beats and shakesThe caverns, howling loud,Beyond the midnight Myall Lakes,*And half-awakened Stroud!)**—* A chain of lakes near Port Stephens, N.S.W.** A town on the Karuah, which flows into Port Stephens.—There, through the fretful autumn days,Beneath a cloudy sun,Comes rolling down rain-rutted ways,The wind, Euroclydon!While rattles over riven rocksThe thunder, harsh and dry;And blustering gum and brooding boxAre threshing at the sky!And then the gloom doth vex the sightWith crude, unshapely formsWhich hold throughout the yelling nightA fellowship with storms!But here are shady tufts and turns,Where sumptuous Summer lies(By reaches brave with flags and ferns)With large, luxuriant eyes.And here, another getteth ease—Our Spring, so rarely seen,Who shows us in the cedar treesA glimpse of golden green.What time the flapping bats have troopedAway like ghosts to graves,And darker growths than Night are coopedIn silent, hillside caves.Ah, Dungog, dream of darling days,'Tis better thou should'st beA far-off thing to love and praise—A boon from Heaven to me!For, let me say that when I lookWith wearied eyes on men,I think of one unchanging nook,And find my faith again.
Spirit of Loveliness! Heart of my heart!Flying so far from me, Heart of my heart!Above the eastern hill, I know the red leaves thrill,But thou art distant still, Heart of my heart!Sinning, I've searched for thee, Heart of my heart!Sinning, I've dreamed of thee, Heart of my heart!I know no end nor gain; amongst the paths of painI follow thee in vain, Heart of my heart!Much have I lost for thee, Heart of my heart!Not counting the cost for thee, Heart of my heart!Through all this year of years thy form as mist appears,So blind am I with tears, Heart of my heart!Mighty and mournful now, Heart of my heart!Cometh the Shadow-Face, Heart of my heart!The friends I've left for thee, their sad eyes trouble me—I cannot bear to be, Heart of my heart!
Just when the western lightFlickered out dim,Flushing the mountain-side,Summit and rim,A last, low, lingering gleamFell on a yellow stream,And then there came a dreamShining to him.Splendours miraculousMixed with his painAll like a vision ofRadiance and rain!He faced the sea, the skies,Old star-like thoughts did rise;But tears were in his eyes,Stifled in vain.Infinite tokens ofSorrows set freeCame in the dreaming windFar from the sea!Past years about him trooped,Fair phantoms round him stooped,Sweet faces o'er him droopedSad as could be!"This is our brother now:Sisters, deploreMan without purpose, likeShip without shore!He tracks false fire," one said,"But weep you—he must treadWhereto he may be led—Lost evermore.""Look," said another,"Summit and slopeBurn, in the mountain-land—Basement and cope!Till daylight, dying dim,Faints on the world's red rim,We'll tint this Dream for himEven—with hope!"
A clamour by day and a whisper by night,And the Summer comes—with the shining noons,With the ripple of leaves, and the passionate lightOf the falling suns and the rising moons.And the ripple of leaves and the purple and redDie for the grapes and the gleam of the wheat,And then you may pause with the splendours, or treadOn the yellow of Autumn with lingering feet.You may halt with the face to a flying sea,Or stand like a gloom in the gloom of things,When the moon drops down and the desolate leaIs troubled with thunder and desolate wings.But alas for the grey of the wintering eves,And the pondering storms and the ruin of rains;And alas for the Spring like a flame in the leaves,And the green of the woods and the gold of the lanes!For, seeing all pathos is mixed with our past,And knowing all sadness of storm and of surgeIs salt with our tears for the faith that was castAway like a weed o'er a bottomless verge,I am lost for these tokens, and wearied of waysWedded with ways that are waning amain,Like those that are filled with the trouble that slays;Having drunk of their life to the lees that are pain.And yet I would write to you! I who have turnedAway with a bitter disguise in the eyes,And bitten the lips that have trembled and burnedAlone for you, darling, and breaking with sighs.Because I have touched with my fingers a dressThat was Beauty's; because that the breath of thy mouthIs sweetness that lingers; because of each tressShowered down on thy shoulders; because of the drouthThat came in thy absence; because of the lightsIn the Passion that grew to a level with thee—Is it well that our lives have been filled with the nightsAnd the days which have made it a sorrow to be?Yea, thus having tasted all love with thy lips,And having the warmth of thy hand in mine own,Is it well that we wander, like parallel ships,With the silence between us, aloof and alone?With my face to the wall shall I sleep and forgetThe shadow, the sweet sense of slumber denies,If even I marvel at kindness, and fret,And start while the tears are all wet in mine eyes?Oh, darling of mine, standing here with the Past,Trampled under our feet in the bitterest ways,Is this speech like a ghost that it keeps us aghastOn the track of the thorns and in alien days?When I know of you, love, how you break with our pain,And sob for the sorrow of sorrowful dreams,Like a stranger who stands in the wind and the rainAnd watches and wails by impassable streams:Like a stranger who droops on a brink and deplores,With famishing hands and frost in the feet,For the laughter alive on the opposite shoresWith the fervour of fire and the wind of the wheat.
—* [This and the next poem were written for "Prince Alfred's Wreath",published in Sydney in 1868. While in Sydney, the Prince was shot atby a fanatic and slightly injured.]—
They come from the highways of labour,From labour and leisure they come;But not to the sound of the tabor,And not to the beating of drum.By thousands the people assembleWith faces of shadow and flame,And spirits that sicken and trembleBecause of their sorrow and shame!Their voice is the voice of a nation;But lo, it is muffled and mute,For the sword of a strong tribulationHath stricken their peace to the root.The beautiful tokens of pityHave utterly fled from their eyes,For the demon who darkened the cityIs curst in the breaking of sighs.Their thoughts are as one; and togetherThey band in their terrible ire,Like legions of wind in fierce weatherWhose footsteps are thunder and fire.But for ever, like springs of sweet waterThat sings in the grass-hidden leasAs soft as the voice of a daughter,There cometh a whisper from these.There cometh from shame and dejection,From wrath and the blackness thereof,A word at whose heart is affectionWith a sighing whose meaning is love.In the land of distress and of danger,With their foreheads in sackcloth and dust,They weep for the wounds of the StrangerAnd mourn o'er the ashes of trust!They weep for the Prince, and the MotherWhose years have been smitten of grief—For the son and the lord and the brother,And the widow, the queen and the chief!But he, having moved like a splendourAmongst them in happier days,With the grace that is manly and tenderAnd the kindness that passes all praise,Will think, in the sickness and shadow,Of greetings in forest and grove,And welcome in city and meadow,Nor couple this sin with their love.For the sake of the touching devotionThat sobs through the depths of their woe,This son of the kings of the ocean,As he came to them, trusting will go.
Who cometh from fields of the southWith raiment of weeping and woe,And a cry of the heart in her mouth,And a step that is muffled and slow?Her paths are the paths of the sun;Her house is a beautiful light;But she boweth her head, and is oneWith the daughters of dolour and night.She is fairer than flowers of love;She is fiercer than wind-driven flame;And God from His thunders aboveHath smitten the soul of her shame.She saith to the bloody one curstWith the fever of evil, she saith"My sorrow shall strangle thee firstWith an agony wilder than death!"My sorrow shall hack at thy life!Thou shalt wrestle with wraiths of thy sin,And sleep on a pillow of strifeWith demons without and within!"She whispers, "He came to the landA lord and a lover of me—A son of the waves with a handAs fearless and frank as the sea."On the shores of the stranger he stoodWith the sweetness of youth on his face;Till there started a fiend from the wood,Who stabbed at the peace of the place!"Because of the dastardly thingThou hast done in the sight of the day,All horrors that sicken and stingShall make thee for ever their prey."Because of the beautiful trustDestroyed by a devil like thee,Thy bed shall be low in the dustAnd my heel as a shackle shall be!"Because" (and she mutters it deepWho curseth the coward in chains)"Thou hast stricken and murdered our sleep,Thy sleep shall be perished with pains;"Thy sleep shall be broken and sharpAnd filled with fierce spasms and dreams,And shadow shall haunt thee and harpOn hellish and horrible themes!"I will set my right hand on thy neckAnd my foot on thy body, nor bate,Till thy name shall become as a wreckAnd a byword for hisses and hate!"
A song that is bitter with grief—a ballad as pale as the lightThat comes with the fall of the leaf, I sing to the shadows to-night.The laugh on the lyrical lips is sadder than laughter of ghostsChained back in the pits of eclipse by wailing unnameable coasts.I gathered this wreath at the close of day that was dripping with dew;The blossom you take for a rose was plucked from the branch of a yew.The flower you fancy is sweet has black in the place of the red;For this is a song of the street—the ballad of larrikin Ned.He stands at the door of the sink that gapes like a fissure of death:The face of him fiery with drink, the flame of its fume in his breath.He thrives in the sickening scenes that the devil has under his ban;A rascal not out of his teens with the voice of a vicious old man.A blossom of blackness, indeed—of Satan a sinister fruit!Far better the centipede's seed—the spawn of the adder or newt.Than terror of talon or fang this imp of the alleys is worse:His speech is a poisonous slang—his phrases are coloured with curse.The prison, the shackles, and chain are nothing to him and his type:He sings in the shadow of pain, and laughs at the impotent stripe.There under the walls of the gaols the half of his life has been passed.He was born in the bosom of bale—he will go to the gallows at last.No angel in Paradise kneels for him at the feet of the Lord;A Nemesis follows his heels in the flame of a sinister sword.The sins of his fathers have brought this bitterness into his days—His life is accounted as naught; his soul is a brand for the blaze.Did ever his countenance change? Did ever a moment supremeIllumine his face with a strange ineffably beautiful dream?Before he was caught in the breach—in the pits of iniquity grim,Did ever the Deity reach the hand of a Father to him?Behold, it is folly to say the evil was born in the blood;The rose that is cankered to-day was once an immaculate bud!There might have been blossom and fruit—a harvest exceedingly fair,Instead of the venomous root, and flowers that startle and scare.The burden—the burden is their's who, watching this garden about,Assisted the thistle and tares, and stamped the divinity out!A growth like the larrikin Ned—a brutal unqualified clod,Is what ye are helping who'd tread on the necks of the prophets of God.No more than a damnable weed ye water and foster, ye fools,Whose aim is to banish indeed the beautiful Christ from the schools.The merciful, wonderful light of the seraph Religion beholdThese evil ones shut from the sight of the children who weep in the cold!But verily trouble shall fall on such, and their portion shall beA harvest of hyssop and gall, and sorrow as wild as the sea.For the rose of a radiant star is over the hills of the East,And the fathers are heartened for war—the prophet, the Saint, and the priest.For a spirit of Deity makes the holy heirophants strong;And a morning of majesty breaks, and blossoms in colour and song.Yea, now, by the altars august the elders are shining supreme;And brittle and barren as dust is the spiritless secular dream.It's life as a vapour shall end as a fog in the fall of the year;For the Lord is a Father and Friend, and the day of His coming is near.
Shall he, on whom the fair lord, Delphicus,Turned gracious eyes and countenance of shine,Be left to lie without a wreath from us,To sleep without a flower upon his shrine?Shall he, the son of that resplendent Muse,Who gleams, high priestess of sweet scholarship,Still slumber on, and every bard refuseTo touch a harp or move a tuneful lip?No! let us speak, though feeble be our speech,And let us sing, though faltering be our strain,And haply echoes of the song may reachAnd please the soul we cannot see again.We sing the beautiful, the radiant lifeThat shone amongst us like the quiet moon,A fine exception in this sphere of strife,Whose time went by us like a hallowed tune.Yon tomb, whereon the moonlit grasses sigh,Hides from our view the shell of one whose daysWere set throughout to that grand harmonyWhich fills all minor spirits with amaze.This was the man whose dear, lost face appearsTo rise betimes like some sweet evening dream,And holy memories of faultless years,And touching hours of quietness supreme.He, having learned in full the golden rule,Which guides great lives, stood fairly by the same,Unruffled as the Oriental pool,Before the bright, disturbing angel came.In Learning's halls he walked—a leading lord,He trod the sacred temple's inner floors;But kindness beamed in every look and wordHe gave the humblest Levite at the doors.When scholars poor and bowed beneath the ban,Which clings as fire, were like to faint and fall,This was the gentle, good Samaritan,Who stopped and held a helping hand to all.No term that savoured of unfriendliness,No censure through those pure lips ever passed;He saw the erring spirit's keen distress,And hoped for it, long-suffering to the last.Moreover, in these days when Faith grows faint,And Heaven seems blurred by speculation wild,He, blameless as a mediaeval saint,Had all the trust which sanctifies a child.But now he sleeps, and as the years go by,We'll often pause above his sacred dust,And think how grand a thing it is to dieThe noble death which deifies the just.
Said one who led the spears of swarthy Gad,To Jesse's mighty son: "My Lord, O King,I, halting hard by Gibeon's bleak-blown hillThree nightfalls past, saw dark-eyed Rizpah, cladIn dripping sackcloth, pace with naked feetThe flinty rock where lie unburied yetThe sons of her and Saul; and he whose postOf watch is in those places desolate,Got up, and spake unto thy servant hereConcerning her—yea, even unto me:—'Behold,' he said, 'the woman seeks not rest,Nor fire, nor food, nor roof, nor any hauntWhere sojourns man; but rather on yon rockAbideth, like a wild thing, with the slain,And watcheth them, lest evil wing or pawShould light upon the comely faces dead,To spoil them of their beauty. Three long moonsHath Rizpah, daughter of Aiah, dweltWith drouth and cold and rain and wind by turns,And many birds there are that know her face,And many beasts that flee not at her step,And many cunning eyes do look at herFrom serpent-holes and burrows of the rat.Moreover,' spake the scout, 'her skin is brownAnd sere by reason of exceeding heat;And all her darkness of abundant hairIs shot with gray, because of many nightsWhen grief hath crouched in fellowship with frostUpon that desert rock. Yea, thus and thusFares Rizpah,' said the spy, O King, to me."But David, son of Jesse, spake no word,But turned himself, and wept against the wall.We have our Rizpahs in these modern daysWho've lost their households through no sin of theirs,On bloody fields and in the pits of war;And though their dead were sheltered in the sodBy friendly hands, these have not suffered lessThan she of Judah did, nor is their loveSurpassed by hers. The Bard who, in great daysAfar off yet, shall set to epic songThe grand pathetic story of the strifeThat shook America for five long years,And struck its homes with desolation—heShall in his lofty verse relate to menHow, through the heat and havoc of that time,Columbia's Rachael in her Rama weptHer children, and would not be comforted;And sing of Woman waiting day by dayWith that high patience that no man attains,For tidings, from the bitter field, of spouse,Or son, or brother, or some other loveSet face to face with Death. Moreover, heShall say how, through her sleepless hours at night,When rain or leaves were dropping, every noiseSeemed like an omen; every coming stepFell on her ears like a presentimentAnd every hand that rested on the doorShe fancied was a herald bearing grief;While every letter brought a faintness onThat made her gasp before she opened it,To read the story written for her eyes,And cry, or brighten, over its contents.
We stood by the window and hearkenedTo the voice of the runnels sea-driven,While, northward, the mountain-heads darkened,Girt round with the clamours of heaven.One peak with the storm at his portalLoomed out to the left of his brothers:Sustained, and sublime, and immortal,A king, and the lord of the others!Beneath him a cry from the surgesRang shrill, like a clarion calling;And about him, the wind of the gorgesWent falling, and rising, and falling.ButI, as the roofs of the thunderWere cloven with manifold fires,Turned back from the wail and the wonder,And dreamed of old days and desires.A song that was made, I remembered—A song that was made in the gloamingOf suns which are sunken and numberedWith times that my heart hath no home in.But I said to my Dream, "I am calmerThan waters asleep on the river.I can look at the hills of KiamaAnd bury that dead Past for ever.""Past sight, out of mind, alienated,"Said the Dream to me, wearily sighing,"Ah, where is the Winter you matedTo Love, its decline and its dying?Here, five years ago, there were placesThat knew of her cunning to grieve you,But alas! for her eyes and her graces;And wherefore and how did she leave you!Have you hidden the ways of this Woman,Her whispers, her glances, her powerTo hold you, as demon holds human,Chained back to the day and the hour?Say, where have you buried her sweetness,Her coldness for youth and its yearning?Is the sleep of your Sorrow a witnessShe is passed all the roads of returning?Was she left with her beauty, O lover,And the shreds of your passion about her,Beyond reach and where none can discover?Ah! what is the wide world without her?"I answered, "Behold, I was broken,Because of this bright, bitter maiden,Who helped me with never a tokenTo beat down the dark I had strayed in.She knew that my soul was entangledBy what was too fiery to bear then;Nor cared how she withered and strangledMy life with her eyes and her hair then.But I have not leapt to the levelWhere light and the shadows dissever?She is fair, but a beautiful devilThat I have forgotten for ever!""She is sweeter than music or singing,"Said the Dream to me, heavily moaning,"Her voice in your slumber is ringing;And where is the end—the atoning?Can you look at the red of the roses;Are you friend of the fields and the flowers?Can you bear the faint day as it closesAnd dies into twilighted hours?Do you love the low notes of the balladShe sang in her darling old fashion?"And I whispered, "O Dream, I am pallidAnd perished because of my passion."But the Wraith withered out, and the riftedGray hills gleaming over the granges,Stood robed with moon-rainbows that shiftedAnd shimmered resplendent with changes!While, for the dim ocean ledges,The storm and the surges were blended,Sheer down the bluff sides of the ridgesSpent winds and the waters descended.The forests, the crags, and the forelands,Grew sweet with the stars after raining;But out in the north-lying moorlands,I heard the lone plover complaining.From these to Kiama, half-hiddenIn a yellow sea-mist on the slopingsOf hills, by the torrents be-ridden,I turned with my aches and my hopings,Sayingthis—"There are those that are takenBy Fate to wear Love as a raimentWhose texture is trouble with breakingOf youth and no hope of repayment."
The spirit of beautiful faces,The light on the forehead of Love,And the spell of past visited places,And the songs and the sweetness thereof;These, touched by a hand that is hoary;These, vext with a tune of decay,Are spoiled of their glow and their glory;And the burden is, "Passing away!Passing away!"Old years and their changes come troopingAt nightfall to you and to me,When Autumn sits faded and droopingBy the sorrowful waves of the sea.Faint phantoms that float in the gloaming,Return with the whispers that say,"The end which is quiet is coming;Ye are weary, and passing away!Passing away!"It is hard to awake and discoverThe swiftness that waits upon Time;But youth and its beauty are over,And Love has a sigh in its rhyme.The Life that looks back and remembers,Is troubled and tired and gray,And sick of the sullen Decembers,Whose burden is, "Passing away!Passing away!"We have wandered and wandered together,And our joys have been many and deep;But seasons of alien weatherHave ended in longings for sleep.Pale purpose and perishing passion,With never a farewell to say,Die down into sobs of suppression;The burden is, "Passing away!Passing away!"We loved the soft tangle of tresses,The lips that were fain and afraid.And the silence of far wildernesses,With their dower of splendour and shade!For faces of sweetness we waited,And days of delight and delay,Ere Time and its voices were matedTo a voice that sighs, "Passing away!Passing away!"O years interwoven with storiesOf strong aspirations and high,How fleet and how false were the gloriesThat lived in your limited sky!Here, sitting by ruinous altarsOf Promise, what word shall we sayTo the speech that the rainy wind falters,Whose burden is, "Passing away!Passing away!"
Be his rest the rest he sought:Calm and deep.Let no wayward word or thoughtVex his sleep.Peace—the peace that no man knows—Now remainsWhere the wasted woodwind blows,Wakes and wanes.Latter leaves, in Autumn's breath,White and sere,Sanctify the scholar's death,Lying here.Soft surprises of the sun—Swift, serene—O'er the mute grave-grasses run,Cold and green.Wet and cold the hillwinds moan;Let them rave!Love that takes a tender toneLights his grave.He who knew the friendless faceSorrows shew,Often sought this quiet placeYears ago.One, too apt to faint and fail,Loved to strayHere where water-shallows wailDay by day.Care that lays her heavy handOn the best,Bound him with an iron hand;Let him rest.Life, that flieth like a tune,Left his eyes,As an April afternoonLeaves the skies.Peace is best! If life was hardPeace came next.Thus the scholar, thus the bard,Lies unvext.Safely housed at last from rack—Far from pain;Who would wish to have him back?Back again?Let the forms he loved so wellHover near;Shine of hill and shade of dell,Year by year.All the wilful waifs that makeBeauty's face,Let them sojourn for his sakeRound this place.Flying splendours, singing streams,Lutes and lights,May they be as happy dreams:Sounds and sights;So that Time to Love may say,"Wherefore weep?Sweet is sleep at close of day!Death is sleep."
Into that good old Hebrew's soul sublimeThe spirit of the wilderness had passed;For where the thunders of imperial StormRolled over mighty hills; and where the cavesOf cloud-capt Horeb rang with hurricane;And where wild-featured Solitude did holdSupreme dominion; there the prophet sawAnd heard and felt that large mysterious lifeWhich lies remote from cities, in the woodsAnd rocks and waters of the mountained Earth.And so it came to pass, Elijah caughtThat scholarship which gave him power to seeAnd solve the deep divinity that liesWith Nature, under lordly forest-domes,And by the seas; and so his spirit waxed,Made strong and perfect by its fellowshipWith God's authentic world, until his eyesBecame a splendour, and his face was asA glory with the vision of the seer.Thereafter, thundering in the towns of men,His voice, a trumpet of the Lord, did shakeAll evil to its deep foundations. He,The hairy man who ran before the king,Like some wild spectre fleeting through the storm,What time Jezreel's walls were smitten hardBy fourfold wind and rain; 'twas he who slewThe liars at the altars of the gods,And, at the very threshold of a throne,Heaped curses on its impious lord; 'twas heJehovah raised to grapple Sin that stalked,Arrayed about with kingship; and to strikeThrough gold and purple, to the heart of it.And therefore Falsehood quaked before his face,And Tyranny grew dumb at sight of him,And Lust and Murder raged abroad no more;But where these were he walked, a shining sonOf Truth, and cleared and sanctified the land.Not always was the dreaded Tishbite stern;The scourge of despots, when he saw the faceOf Love in sorrow by the bed of Death,Grew tender as a maid; and she who missedA little mouth that used to catch, and cling—A small, sweet trouble—at her yearning breast;*Yea, she of Zarephath, who sat and mournedThe silence of a birdlike voice that madeHer flutter with the joy of motherhoodIn other days, she came to know the heartOf Pity that the rugged prophet had.And when he took the soft, still child away,And laid it on his bed; and in the darkSent up a pleading voice to Heaven; and drewThe little body to his breast; and heldIt there until the bright, young soul returnedTo earth again; the gladdened woman sawA radiant beauty in Elijah's eyes,And knew the stranger was a man of God.—* [Note.—These lines were suggested by a passage in an unpublished dramaby my friend, the author of "Ashtaroth" {A. L. Gordon}—"And she who missedA little mouth that used to catch and cling—A small sweet trouble—at her yearning breast."The poem to which I am indebted is entitled "The Road to Avernus".It is only fair that I should make this acknowledgment.—H.K.]—We want a new Elijah in these days,A mighty spirit clad in shining armsOf Truth—yea, one whose lifted voice would break,Like thunder, on our modern Apathy,And shake the fanes of Falsehood from their domesDown to the firm foundations; one whose words,Directly coming from a source divine,Would fall like flame where Vice holds festival,And search the inmost heart of nations; oneMade godlike with that scholarship supremeWhich comes of suffering; one, with eyes to seeThe very core of things; with hands to graspHigh opportunities, and use them forHis glorious mission; one, whose face inspiredWould wear a terror for the lying soul,But seem a glory in the sight of thoseWho make the light and sweetness of the world,And are the high priests of the Beautiful.Yea, one like this we want amongst us nowTo drive away the evil fogs that chokeOur social atmosphere, and leave it clearAnd pure and hallowed with authentic light.
Manasseh, lord of Judah, and the sonOf him who, favoured of Jehovah, sawAt midnight, when the skies were flushed with fire,The splendid mystery of the shining air,That flamed above the black Assyrian camps,And breathed upon the evil hosts at rest,And shed swift violent sleep into their eyes;Manasseh, lord of Judah, when he cameTo fortify himself upon his throne,And saw great strength was gathered unto him,Let slip satanic passions he had nursedFor years and years; and lo! the land that HeWho thundered on the Oriental MountGirt round with awful light, had set apartFor Jacob's seed—the land that Moses strainedOn Nebo's topmost cone to see, grew blackBeneath the shadow of despotic SinThat stalked on foot-ways dashed with human blood,And mocked high Heaven by audacious fires;And as when Storm, that voice of God, is loudWithin the mountained Syrian wilderness,There flits a wailing through the wilted pines,So in the city of the wicked kingA voice, like Abel's crying from the ground,Made sorrow of the broken evening winds,And darkness of the fair young morning lights,And silence in the homes of hunted men.But in a time when grey-winged Autumn fogsShut off the sun from Carmel's seaward side,And fitful gusts did speak within the treesOf rain beyond the waters, while the priestsIn Hinnom's echoing valley offered upUnhallowed sacrifices unto godsOf brass and stone, there came a trumpet's voiceAlong the bald, bleak northern flats; and thenA harnessed horseman, riding furiously,Dashed down the ridge with an exceeding cryOf "Esarhaddon, Esarhaddon! hasteAway, ye elders, lo, the swarthy foeSix leagues from hence hath made the land a fire,And all the dwellers of the hollowed hillsAre flying hitherwards before a flameOf fifty thousand swords!" At this the menOf Baal turned about, set face, and fledTowards the thickets, where the impious king,Ringed round by grey, gaunt wizards with the brandOf Belial on their features, cowered low,And hid himself amongst the tangled thornsAnd shivered in a bitter seaborn wind,And caught the whiteness of a deathly fear.There where the ash-pale forest-leaves were touchedBy Morning's shining fingers, and the inland depthsSent out rain-plenished voices west and south,The steel-clad scouts of Esarhaddon cameAnd searched, and found Manasseh whom they boundAnd dragged before the swart Assyrian king;And Esarhaddon, scourge of Heaven, sentTo strange Evil at its chiefest fanes,And so fulfil a dread divine decree,Took Judah's despot, fettered hand and foot,And cast him bleeding on a dungeon floorHard by where swift Euphrates chafes his brinkAnd gleams from cataract to cataract,And gives the gale a deep midwinter tone.So fared Manasseh for the sins which broughtPale-featured Desolation to the tentsOf alienated Judah; but one night,When ninety moons of wild unrest had passed,The humbled son of Hezekiah turnedHimself towards the wall, and prayed and wept;And in an awful darkness face to faceWith God, he said—"I know, O Lord of Hosts,That Thou art wise and just and kind, and IAm shapen in iniquity; but byThe years of black captivity, whose daysAnd nights have marked my spirit passing throughFierce furnaces of suffering, and seenIt groping in blind shadows with a hopeTo reach Thy Hand—by these, O Father, theseThat brought the swift, sad silver to my headWhich should have come with Age—which came with Pain,I pray Thee hear these supplications now,And stoop and lift me from my low estate,And lend me this once my dominionship,So I may strive to live the bad Past down,And lead henceforth a white and wholesome life,And be thy contrite servant, Lord, indeed!"The prayer was not in vain: for while the stormSang high above the dim Chaldean domes—While, in the pines, the spirit of the rainSobbed fitfully, Jehovah's angel cameAnd made a splendour of the dungeon walls,And smote the bars, and led Manasseh forthAnd caught him up, nor set him down againUntil the turrets of JerusalemSprang white before the flying travellersAgainst the congregated morning hills.And he, the broken man made whole again,Was faithful to his promise. Every dayThereafter passing, bore upon its wingsSome shining record of his faultless life,Some brightness of a high resolve fulfilled;And in good time, when all the land had rest,He found that he had lived the bad Past down,And gave God praise, and with his fathers slept.Thus ends the story of Manasseh. IfThis verse should catch the eyes of one whose sinLies heavy on his soul; who finds himselfA shame-faced alien when he walks abroad,A moping shadow when he sits at home;Who has no human friends; who, day by day,Is smitten down by icy level looksFrom that cold Virtue which is mercilessBecause it knoweth not what wrestling withA fierce temptation means; if such a oneShould read my tale of Hezekiah's son,Let him take heart, and gather up his strength,And step above men's scorn, and find his wayBy paths of fire, as brave Manasseh did,Up to the white heights of a blameless life;And it will come to pass that in the faceOf grey old enmities, whose partial eyesAre blind to reformation, he will tasteA sweetness in his thoughts, and live his timeArrayed with the efficient armour ofThat noble power which grows of self-respect,And makes a man a pillar in the world.