Tanna is one of the largest islands in the group known as the New Hebrides.The natives of it, in common with all their South Sea brethren,are generally titled by the whites "Kanakas". They are of the negro family,resembling in feature, very closely, the Feejee tribes. It is said thatthey believe in the existence of a Superior Being, whose earthly dwellingthey fancy is in the burning volcanoes for which the island is remarkable.They believe in a future happy state, and call their heaven "Arrochin".They are divided into small tribes or clans; the largest of theseare the Ukingh-a-shaa and Attanam families. A spirit of rivalrybetween these two last-mentioned often causes long and bloody warsall over the island.Tanna, besides the never-sleeping volcano, has its other objects of interestin the many boiling springs that surround the base of the burning mountain.Some of these are held as holy, and none but chiefs are permittedto taste their waters. Such restriction, however, does not extend over all.When any of their great warriors die, the aborigines believe thatthe spirits of Arrochin prepare a great feast there for their coming guest,and for fear he should lose himself on the road thither they (the spirits)call to him and blow trumpets, sending some one at the same time with torchesto meet him and guide him on his way to those blessed regions.Explanation of Native Words:"Arrochin"—Heaven. "Cava"—a drink extracted from a root.(The natives believe it is made and drunk in Arrochin where it growsas in Tanna). "Muska" (corruption of the English term, musket)—of late their chief weapon in war. "Muttow"—a fishing-hook."Whyeena"—woman (this is not the original native appellation;that I could never ascertain). "Weepan"—Fish (their principal food)."Leenna" and "Yona"—native names.—H.K.
There's music wafting on the air,The evening winds are sighingAmong the trees—and yonder streamIs mournfully replying,Lamenting loud the sunny lightThat in the west is dying.The moon is rising o'er the hill,Her slanting rays are creepingWhere Nature lies profoundly stillIn happy quiet sleeping,And resting on her face, they'll findThe earth is wet with weeping.She mourneth for the lovely day,Now deep in darkness shaded;She sheds the dewy tear becauseOf morning's mantle faded;She misses from her breast the garbIn which the moon array'd it.The evening queen will strive in vainTo break the spell which bound her;A million stars can never throwDeparted warmth around her;They all must pass away and leaveThe earth as they had found her.But why should gentle Nature weepThat night has overtakenThe wearied world that needed sleep,Refreshed to re-awaken,So richer light might burst around,The gloomy shadows breaking?Oh, can she not from yonder skyThat gleams above her, borrowA single ray, or find a wayTo check the tear of sorrow?A beam of hope would last her tillThe dawning of to-morrow.
Sad faces came round, and I dreamily said"Though the harp of my country now slumbers,Some hand will pass o'er it, in love for the dead,And attune it to sorrowful numbers!"But the hopes that I clung to are withering things,For the days have gone by with a cloud on their wings,And the touch of a bard is unknown to the strings—Oh, why art thou silent, Australia?The leaves of the autumn are scattering fast,The willows look barren and lonely;But I dream a sad dream of my friend of the past,And his form I can dwell upon only!In the strength of his youth I can see him go by.There is health on the cheek, and a fire in the eye—Oh, who would have thought that such beauty could die!Ah, mourn for thy noblest, Australia!A strange shadow broods o'er the desolate earth,And the cypresses tremble and quiver;But my heart waxeth dark with the thoughts of the worthThat has left us for ever and ever!A dull cloud creepeth close to the moon,And the winter winds pass with a shuddering croon—Oh, why was he snatched from his brothers so soon?Ah, weep for thy lost one, Australia!How weary we grow when we turn to reflectUpon what we have seen and believed in;When harping on promises hopelessly wrecked,And the things we have all been deceived in!When a voice that I loved lingers near to me yet!And a kind, handsome face which I'll never forget—Can I wake to the present and stifle regret—Can I smother these feelings, Australia?It is useless to grieve o'er the light that has fledBut the harp of my country still slumbers;And I thought that some bard in his love for the dead,Would have thrilled it to sorrowful numbers!Lo, the hopes that I clung to are withering thingsFor the days have gone by with a cloud on their wings,And my hand is too feeble to strike at the strings—Oh, why art thou silent, Australia?
Across the dripping ridges,O, look, luxurious night!She comes, the bright-haired beauty,My luminous delight!My luminous delight!So hush, ye shores, your roar,That my soul may sleep, forgettingDead Love's wild Nevermore!Astarte, Syrian sister,Your face is wet with tears;I think you know the secretOne heart hath held for years!One heart hath held for years!But hide your hapless love,And my sweet—my Syrian sister,Dead Love's wild Nevermore!Ah, Helen Hope in heaven,My queen of long ago,I've swooned with adoration,But could not tell you so,Or dared not tell you so,My radiant queen of yore!And you've passed away and left meDead Love's wild Nevermore!Astarte knoweth, darling,Of eyes that once did weep,What time entranced PassionHath kissed your lips in sleep;Hath kissed your lips in sleep;But now those tears are o'er,Gone, my saint, with many a moan toDead Love's wild Nevermore!If I am past all crying,What thoughts are maddening me,Of you, my darling, dyingUpon the lone, wide sea,Upon the lone, wide sea,Ah! hush, ye shores, your roar,That my soul may sleep, forgettingDead Love's wild Nevermore!
Men have said that ye were sleeping—Hurl, Australians, back the lie;Whet the swords you have in keeping,Forward stand to do or die!Hear ye not, across the ocean,Echoes of the distant fray,Sounds of loud and fierce commotion,Swiftly sweeping on the way?Hearts have woke from sluggish trances,Woke to know their native worth;Freedom with her train advances—Freedom newly sprung to birth.Despots start from thrones affrighted—Tyrants hear the angry tread;Where the slaves, whose prayers were slighted,Marching—draw the sword instead.If the men of other nationsDash their fetters to the ground;When the foeman seeks your stations,Will you willing slaves be found?You the sons of hero fathers—Sires that bled at Waterloo!No! Your indignation gathers—To your old traditions true;Should the cannon's iron rattleSound between your harbour doors,You will rise to wage the battleIn a just and righteous cause.Patriot fires will scorch OppressionShould it dare to draw too near;And the tide of bold AggressionMustbe stayed from coming here.Look upon familiar places,Mountain, river, hill and glade;Look upon those beauteous faces,Turning up to you for aid.Think ye, in the time of danger,When that threatening moment comes—Will ye let the heartless strangerDrive your kindred from their homes?By the prayers which rise above you,When you face him on the shore,By the forms of those that love you—Greet him with the rifle's roar!While an arm can wield a sabre,While you yet can lift a hand,Strike and teach your hostile neighbour,This is Freedom's chosen land.
The verdant ivy clings aroundYon moss be-mantled wall,As if it sought to hide the stones,That crumbling soon must fall:That relic of a bygone ageNow tottering to decay,Has but one friend—the ivy—left.The rest have passed away.The fairy flowers that once did bloomAnd smile beneath its shade;They lingered till the autumn came,And autumn saw them fade:The emerald leaves that blushed between—The winds away have blown;But yet to cheer the mournful scene,The ivy liveth on.Thus heavenly hope will still survive,When earthly joys have fled;And all the flow'ry dreams of youthLie withering and dead.When Winter comes—it twines itselfAround the human heart;And like the ivy on the wallWill ne'er from thence depart.
How dazzling the sunbeams awoke on the spray,When Australia first rose in the distance away,As welcome to us on the deck of the bark,As the dove to the vision of those in the ark!What fairylike fancies appear'd to the viewAs nearer and nearer the haven we drew!What castles were built and rebuilt in the brain,To totter and crumble to nothing again!We had roam'd o'er the ocean—had travers'd a path,Where the tempest surrounded and shriek'd in its wrath:Alike we had roll'd in the hurricane's breath,And slumber'd on waters as silent as death:We had watch'd the Day breaking each morn on the main,And had seen it sink down in the billows again;For week after week, till dishearten'd we thoughtAn age would elapse ere we enter'd the port.How often while ploughing the 'watery waste',Our thoughts—from the Future have turn'd to the Past;How often our bosoms have heav'd with regret;For faces and scenes we could never forget:For we'd seen as the shadows o'er-curtain'd our mindsThe cliffs of old England receding behind;And had turned in our tears from the view of the shore,The land of our childhood, to see it no more.But when that red morning awoke from its sleep,To show us this land like a cloud on the deep;And when the warm sunbeams imparted their glow,To the heavens above and the ocean below;The hearts had been aching then revell'd with joy,And a pleasure was tasted exempt from alloy;The souls had been heavy grew happy and lightAnd all was forgotten in present delight.'Tis true—of the hopes that were verdant that dayThere is more than the half of them withered away:'Tis true that emotions of temper'd regret,Still live for the country we'll never forget;But yet we are happy, since learning to loveThe scenes that surround us—the skies are above,We find ourselves bound, as it were by a spell,In the clime we've adopted contented to dwell.
To-night the sea sends up a gulf-like sound,And ancient rhymes are ringing in my head,The many lilts of song we sang and said,My friend and brother, when we journeyed roundOur haunts at Wollongong, that classic groundFor me at least, a lingerer deeply readAnd steeped in beauty. Oft in trance I treadThose shining shores, and hear your talk of FameWith thought-flushed face and heart so well assured(Beholding through the woodland's bright distressThe Moon half pillaged of her loveliness)Of this wild dreamer: Had you but enduredA dubious dark, you might have won a nameWith brighter bays than I can ever claim.
The song of the waterDoomed ever to roam,A beautiful exile,Afar from its home.The cliffs on the mountain,The grand and the gray,They took the bright creatureAnd hurled it away!I heard the wild downfall,And knew it must spillA passionate heart outAll over the hill.Oh! was it a daughterOf sorrow and sin,That they threw it so madlyDown into the lynn?. . .And listen, my Sister,For this is the songThe Waterfall taught meThe ridges among:—"Oh where are the shadowsSo cool and so sweetAnd the rocks," saith the water,"With the moss on their feet?"Oh, where are my playmatesThe wind and the flowers—The golden and purple—Of honey-sweet bowers,"Mine eyes have been blindedBecause of the sun;And moaning and moaningI listlessly run."These hills are so flinty!—Ah! tell me, dark Earth,What valley leads back toThe place of my birth?—"What valley leads up toThe haunts where a childOf the caverns I sported,The free and the wild?"There lift me,"—it crieth,"I faint from the heat;With a sob for the shadowsSo cool and so sweet."Ye rocks, that look overWith never a tear,I yearn for one half ofThe wasted love here!My sister so wistful,You know I believe,Like a child for the mountainsThis water doth grieve.Ah! you with the blue eyesAnd golden-brown hair,Come closer and closerAnd truly declare:—Supposing a darlingOnce happened to sin,In a passionate space,Would you carry her in—If your fathers and mothers,The grand and the gray,Had taken the weak oneAnd hurled her away?
(From "Annatanam".)
Low as a lute, my love, beneath the callOf storm, I hear a melancholy wind;The memorably mournful wind of yoreWhich is the very brother of the oneThat wanders, like a hermit, by the moundOf Death, in lone Annatanam. A songWas shaped for this, what time we heard outsideThe gentle falling of the faded leafIn quiet noons: a song whose theme doth turnOn gaps of Ruin and the gay-green cliftsBeneath the summits haunted by the moon.Yea, much it travels to the dens of dole;And in the midst of this strange rhyme, my lords,Our Desolation like a phantom sitsWith wasted cheeks and eyes that cannot weepAnd fastened lips crampt up in marvellous pain.A song in whose voice is the voice of the foamAnd the rhyme of the wintering wave,And the tongue of the things that eternally roamIn forest, in fell or in cave;But mostly 'tis like to the Wind without homeIn the glen of a desolate grave—Of a deep and desolate grave.The torrent flies over the thunder-struck cliftWith many and many a call;The leaves are swept down, and a dolorous driftIs hurried away with the fall.But mostly 'tis like the Wind without homeIn the glen of a desolate grave—Of a deep and desolate grave.Whoever goes thither by night or by dayMust mutter, O Father, to Thee,For the shadows that startle, the sounds that waylayAre heavy to hear and to see;And a step and a moan and a whisper for ayeHave made it a sorrow to be—A sorrow of sorrows to be.Oh! cover your faces and shudder, and turnAnd hide in the dark of your hair,Nor look to the Glen in the Mountains, to learnOf the mystery mouldering there;But rather sit low in the ashes and urnDead hopes in your mighty despair—In the depths of your mighty despair.
Like one who meets a staggering blow,The stout old ship doth reel,And waters vast go seething past—But will it last, this fearful blast,On straining shroud and groaning mast,O sailor at the wheel?His face is smitten with the wind,His cheeks are chilled with rain;And you were right, his hair is white,But eyes are calm and heart is lightHedoes not fear the strife to-night,He knows the roaring main.Ho, Sailor! Will to-morrow bringThe hours of pleasant rest?An answer low—"I do not know,The thunders grow and far winds blow,But storms may come and storms may go—Our God, He judgeth best!"Now you are right, brave mariner,But we are not like you;We, used to shore, our fates deplore,And fear the more when waters roar;So few amongst us look before,Or stop to think that Heaven is o'er—Ah! what you say is true.And those who go abroad in ships,Who seldom see the land,But sail and stray so far away,Should trust and pray, for are not they,When Darkness blinds them on their way,All guided by God's hand?But you are wrinkled, grey and worn;'Tis time you dwelt in peace!Your prime is past; we fail so fast;You may not last through every blast,And, oh, 'tis fearful to be castAmongst the smothering seas!Is there no absent face to loveThat you must live alone?If faith did fade, if friends betrayed,And turned, and staid resolves you'd made,Ah, still 'tis pleasant to be laidWhere you at least are known.The answer slides betwixt our words—"The season shines and gloomsOn ship and strand, on sea and land,But life must go and Time is spanned,As well you know when out you standWith Death amongst the tombs!"It matters not to one so oldWho mourns when Fate comes round,And one may sleep down in the deepAs well as those beneath the heapThat fifty stormy years will sweepAnd trample to the ground."Your speech is wise, brave mariner,And we would let you be;You speak with truth, you strive to soothe;But, oh, the wrecks of Love and Truth,What say you to our tears for YouthAnd Beauty drowned at sea?"Oh, talk not of the Beauty lost,Since first these decks I trodThe hopeless stare on faces fair,The streaming, bare, dishevelled hair,The wild despair, the sinking—where,Oh where, oh where?—My God!"
Beneath the shelter of the bush,In undisturbed repose—Unruffled by the kiss of breeze—There lurks a smiling rose;Beneath thine outer beauty, gleams,In holy light enshrined,A symbol of the blooming flower,A pure, unspotted mind.The lovely tint that crowns the hillWhen westward sinks the sun,The milder dazzle in the streamThat evening sits upon,The morning blushes, mantling o'erThe face of land and sea,They all recall to mind the charmsThat are combined in thee!
Fifteen miles and then the harbour! Here we cannot choose but stand,Faces thrust towards the day-break, listening for our native land!Close-reefed topsails shuddering over, straining down the groaning mast;For a tempest cleaves the darkness, hissing, howling, shrieking past!Lo! the air is flecked with stormbirds, and their melancholy wailLends a tone of deeper pathos to the melancholy gale!Whilst away they wheel to leeward, leaving in their rapid flightWind and water grappling wildly through the watches of the night.Yesterday we both were happy; but my soul is filled with change,And I'm sad, my gallant comrade, with foreshadowings vague and strange!Dear old place, are we so near you? Like to one that speaks in sleep,I'm talking, thinking wildly o'er this moaning, maddened deep!Much it makes me marvel, brother, that such thoughts should linger nighNow we know what shore is hidden somewhere in that misty sky!Oh! I even fear to see it; and I've never felt so lowSince we turned our faces from it, seven weary years ago.Have you faith at all in omens? Fits of passion I have knownWhen it seemed in crowded towns as if I walked the Earth alone!And amongst my comrades often, o'er the lucent, laughing sea,I have felt like one that drifteth on a dark and dangerous lee!As a man who, crossing waters underneath a moony night,Knows there will be gloomy weather if a cloudrack bounds the light,So I hold, when Life is splendid, and our hopes are new and warm,We can sometimes, looking forward, see the shade and feel the storm.When you called me I was dreaming that this thunder raged no more,And we travelled, both together, on a calm, delightful shore;That we went along rejoicing, for I thought I heard you say,"Now we soon shall see them, brother—now our fears have passed away!"Pleasant were those deep green wild-woods; and we hurried, like a breeze,Till I saw a distant opening through the porches of the trees;And our village faintly gleaming past the forest and the stream;But we wandered sadly through it with the Spirit of my Dream.Why was our delight so fickle? Was it well while there to mourn;When the loved—the loving, crowding, came to welcome our return?In my vision, once so glorious, did we find that aught was changed;Or that ONE whom WE remembered was forgotten or estranged?Through a mist of many voices, listening for sweet accents fled,Heard we hints of lost affection, or of gentle faces dead?No! but on the quiet dreamscape came a darkness like a pallAnd a ghostly shadow, brother, fell and rested over all.Talking thus my friend I fronted, and in trustful tones he spake—"I have long been waiting, watching here to see the morning break;Now behold the bright fulfilment! Did my Spirit yearn in vain;And amidst this holy splendour can a moody heart remain?Let them pass, those wayward fancies! Waking thoughts return with sleep;And they mingle strangely sometimes, while we lie in slumber deep;But, believe me, dreams are nothing. If unto His creatures weakGod should whisper of the Future, not in riddles will He speak."Since he answered I have rested, for his brave words fell like balm;And we reached the land in daylight, and the tempest died in calm;Though the sounds of gusty fragments of a faint and broken breezeStill went gliding with the runnels, gurgling down the spangled leas!So we turned and travelled onward, till we rested at a placeWhere a Vision fell about us, sunned with many a lovely face;Then we heard low silvery voices; and I knelt upon the shore—Knelt and whispered, "God I thank Thee! and will wander never more."
IThe First Attempt to Reach the Shore
Where is the painter who shall paint for you,My Austral brothers, with a pencil steepedIn hues of Truth, the weather-smitten crewWho gazed on unknown shores—a thoughtful few—What time the heart of their great Leader leapedTill he was faint with pain of longing? NewAnd wondrous sights on each and every hand,Like strange supernal visions, grew and grewUntil the rocks and trees, and sea and sand,Danced madly in the tear-bewildered view!And from the surf a fierce, fantastic bandOf startled wild men to the hills withdrewWith yells of fear! Who'll paint thy face, O Cook!Turned seaward, "after many a wistful look!"
IIThe Second Attempt, Opposed by Two of the Natives
"There were but two, and we were forty! Yet,"The Captain wrote, "that dauntless couple throve,And faced our wildering faces; and I said'Lie to awhile!' I did not choose to letA strife go on of little worth tous.And so unequal! But the dying treadOf flying kinsmen moved them not: for wetWith surf and wild with streaks of white and blackThe pair remained."—O stout Caractacus!'Twas thus you stood when Caesar's legions stroveTo beat their few, fantastic foemen back—Your patriots with their savage stripes of red!To drench the stormy cliff and moaning coveWith faithful blood, as pure as any ever shed.
IIIThe Spot Where Cook Landed
Chaotic crags are huddled east and west—Dark, heavy crags, against a straitened seaThat cometh, like a troubled soul in questOf voiceless rest where never dwelleth rest,With noise "like thunder everlasting."But here, behold a silent space of sand!—Oh, pilgrim, halt!—it even seems to beAsleep in other years. How still! How grand!How awful in its wild solemnity!Thisis the spot on which the Chief did land,And there, perchance, he stood what time a bandOf yelling strangers scoured the savage lea.Dear friend, with thoughtful eyes look slowly round—By all the sacred Past 'tis sacred ground.
IVSutherland's Grave
'Tis holy ground! The silent silver lightsAnd darks undreamed of, falling year by yearUpon his sleep, in soft Australian nights,Are joys enough for him who lieth hereSo sanctified with Rest. We need not rearThe storied monument o'er such a spot!That soul, the first for whom the Christian tearWas shed on Austral soil, hath heritageMost ample! Let the ages wane with age,The grass which clothesthisgrave shall wither not.See yonder quiet lily! Have the blightsOf many winters left it on a faded tomb?*Oh, peace! Its fellows, glad with green delights,Shall gather round it deep eternal bloom!* A wild lily grows on the spot supposed to be Sutherland's grave.—H.K.
You know I left my forest home full loth,And those weird ways I knew so well and long,Dishevelled with their sloping sidelong growthOf twisted thorn and kurrajong.It seems to me, my friend (and this wild thoughtOf all wild thoughts, doth chiefly make me bleed),That in those hills and valleys wonder-fraught,I loved and lost a noble creed.A splendid creed! But let me even turnAnd hide myself from what I've seen, and tryTo fathom certain truths you know, and learnThe Beauty shining in your sky:Remembering you in ardent autumn nights,And Stenhouse near you, like a fine stray guestOf other days, with all his lore of lightsSo manifold and manifest!Then hold me firm. I cannot choose but longFor that which lies and burns beyond my reach,Suggested in your steadfast, subtle songAnd his most marvellous speech!For now my soul goes drifting back again,Ay, drifting, drifting, like the silent snowWhile scattered sheddings, in a fall of rain,Revive the dear lost Long Ago!The time I, loitering by untrodden fens,Intent upon low-hanging lustrous skies,Heard mellowed psalms from sounding southern glens—Euroma, dear to dreaming eyes!And caught seductive tokens of a voiceHalf maddened with the dim, delirious themesOf perfect Love, and the immortal choiceOf starry faces—Astral dreams!That last was yours! And if you sometimes findAn alien darkness on the front of things,Sing none the less for Life, nor fall behind,Like me, with trailing, tired wings!Yea, though the heavy Earth wears sackcloth nowBecause she hath the great prophetic griefWhich makes me set my face one way, and bowAnd falter for a far belief,Be faithful yet for all, my brave bright peer,In that rare light you hold so true and good;And find me something clearer than the clearWhite spaces of Infinitude.
When God drave the ruthless watersFrom our cornfields to the sea,Came she where our wives and daughtersSobbed their thanks on bended knee.Hidden faces! there ye found herMute as death, and staring wildAt the shadow waxing round herLike the presence of her child—Of her drenched and drowning child!Dark thoughts live when tears won't gather;Who can tell us what she felt?It was human, O my Father,If she blamed Thee while she knelt!Ever, as a benedictionFell like balm on all and each,Rose a young face whose afflictionChoked and stayed the founts of speech—Stayed and shut the founts of speech!Often doth she sit and ponderOver gleams of happy hair!How her white hands used to wander,Like a flood of moonlight there!Lord—our Lord! Thou know'st her weakness:Give her faith that she may pray;And the subtle strength of meekness,Lest she falter by the way—Falter, fainting, by the way!"Darling!" saith she, wildly moaningWhere the grass-grown silence lies,"Is there rest from sobs and groaning—Rest with you beyond the skies?Child of mine, so far above me!Late it waxeth—dark and late;Will the love with which I love thee,Lift me where you sit and wait—Darling! where you sit and wait?"
I hear no footfall beating through the dark,A lonely gust is loitering at the pane;There is no sound within these forests starkBeyond a splash or two of sullen rain;But you are with us! and our patient landIs filled with long-expected change at last,Though we have scarce the heart to lift a handOf welcome, after all the yearning past!Ah! marvel not; the days and nights were longAnd cold and dull and dashed with many tears;And lately there hath been a doleful song,Of "Mene, Mene," in our restless ears!Indeed, we've said, "The royal son of Time,Whose feet will shortly cross our threshold floor,May lead us to those outer heights sublimeOur Sires have sold their lives to see before!We'll follow him! Beyond the waves and wrecksOf years fulfilled, some fine results must lie;We'll pass the last of all wild things that vexThe pale, sad face of our Humanity!"But now our fainting feet are loth to strayFrom trodden paths; our eyes with pain are blind!We've lost fair treasures by the weary way;We cry, like children, to be left behind.Our human speech is dim. Yet, latest bornOf God's Eternity, there came to me,In saddened streets last week, from lips forlornA sound more solemn than the sleepless sea!O, Rachael! Rachael! We have heard the criesIn Rama, stranger, o'er our darling dead;And seen our mothers with the heavy eyes,Who would not hearken to be comforted!Then lead us gently! It must come to passThat some of us shall halt and faint and fall;For we are looking through a darkened glass,And Heaven seems far, and faith grows cold and pale.I know, for one, I need a subtle strengthI have not yet to hold me from a fall;What time I cry to God within the lengthOf weary hours; my face against the wall!My mourning brothers! in the long, still nights,When sleep is wilful, and the lone moon shines,Bethink you of the silent, silver lights,And darks with Death amongst the moody pines!Then, though you cannot shut a stricken faceAway from you, this hope will come aboutThat Christ hath sent again throughout the placeSome signs of Love to worst and weaken doubt.So you may find in every afterthoughtA peace beyond your best expression dear;And haply hearken to the Voice which wroughtSuch strength in Peter on the seas of fear!
Ah, often do I wait and watch,And look up, straining through the RealWith longing eyes, my friend, to catchFaint glimpses of your white Ideal.I know she loved to rest her feetBy slumbrous seas and hidden strand;But mostly hints of her I meetOn moony spots of mountain land.I've never reached her shining place,And only cross at times a gleam;As one might pass a fleeting faceJust on the outside of a Dream.But you may climb, her happy Choice!She knows your step, the maiden true,And ever when she hears your voice,She turns and sits and waits for you.How sweet to rest on breezy crestWith such a Love, what time the MornLooks from his halls of rosy rest,Across green miles of gleaming corn!How sweet to find a leafy nook,When bees are out, and Day burns mute,Where you may hear a passion'd brookPlay past you, like a mellow flute!Or, turning from the sunken sun,On fields of dim delight to lie—To close your eyes and muse uponThe twilight's strange divinity!Or through the Night's mysterious noon,While Sound lies hushed among the trees,To sit and watch a mirror'd moonFloat over silver-sleeping seas!Oh, vain regret! why should I stayTo think and dream of joys unknown?You walk with her from day to day,I faint afar off—and alone.
Five years ago! you cannot chooseBut know the face of change,Though July sleeps and Spring renewsThe gloss in gorge and range.Five years ago! I hardly knowHow they have slipped away,Since here we watched at ebb and flowThe waters of the Bay;And saw, with eyes of little faith,From cumbered summits fadeThe rainbow and the rainbow wraith,That shadow of a shade.For Love and Youth were vext with doubt,Like ships on driving seas,And in those days the heart gave outUnthankful similes.But let it be! I've often saidHis lot was hardly castWho never turned a happy headTo an unhappy Past—Who never turned a face of lightTo cares beyond recall:He only fares in sorer plightWho hath no Past at all!So take my faith, and let it standBetween us for a signThat five bright years have known the landSince yonder tumbled lineOf seacliff took our troubled talk—The words at random thrown,And Echo lived about this walkOf gap and slimy stone.Here first we learned the Love which leavesNo lack or loss behind,The dark, sweet Love which woos the evesAnd haunts the morning wind.And roves with runnels in the dell,And houses by the waveWhat time the storm hath struck the fellAnd Terror fills the cave—A Love, you know, that lives and liesFor moments past control,And mellows through the Poet's eyesAnd sweetens in his soul.Here first we faced a briny breeze,What time the middle galeWent shrilling over whitened seasWith flying towers of sail.And here we heard the plovers callAs shattered pauses came,When Heaven showed a fiery wallWith sheets of wasted flame.Here grebe and gull and heavy gledePassed eastward far away,The while the wind, with slackened speed,Drooped with the dying Day.And here our friendship, like a tree,Perennial grew and grew,Till you were glad to live for me,And I to live for you.
Out of the body for ever,Wearily sobbing, "Oh, whither?"A Soul that hath wasted its chancesFloats on the limitless ether.Lost in dim, horrible blankness;Drifting like wind on a sea,Untraversed and vacant and moaning,Nor shallow nor shore on the lee!Helpless, unfriended, forsaken;Haunted and tracked by the Past,With fragments of pitiless voices,And desolate faces aghast!One saith—"It is well that he goethNaked and fainting with cold,Who worshipped his sweet-smelling garments,Arrayed with the cunning of old!"Hark! how he crieth, my brothers,With pain for the glittering thingsHe saw on the shoulders of Rulers,And the might in the mouths of the Kings!"This Soul hath been one of the idlersWho wait with still hands, when they lackFor Fortune, like Joseph, to throw themThe cup thrust in Benjamin's sack."Now, had he been faithful in striving,And warring with Wrong to the sword,He must have passed over these spacesCaught up in the arms of the Lord."A second: "Lo, Passion was wilful;And, glad with voluptuous sighs,He held it luxurious troubleTo ache for luxurious eyes!"She bound him, the woman resplendent;She withered his strength with her stare;And Faith hath been twisted and strangledWith folds of her luminous hair!"Was it well, O you wandering wailer,Abandoned in terrible space,To halt on the highway to HeavenBecause of a glittering face?"And another: "Behold, he was careful:He faltered to think of his Youth,Dejected and weary and footsore,Alone on the dim road to Truth."If the way had been shorter and greenerAnd brighter, he might have been brave;But the goal was too far and he fainted,Like Peter with Christ on the wave!"Beyond the wild haunts of the mockers—Far in the distance and gray,Floateth that sorrowful spiritAway, and away, and away.Pale phantoms fly past it, like shadows:Dim eyes that are blinded with tears;Old faces all white with affliction—The ghosts of the wasted dead years!"Soul that hath ruined us, shiverAnd moan when you know us," they cry—"Behold, I was part of thy substance!"—"And I"—saith another—"and I!"Drifting from starless abyssesInto the ether sublime,Where is no upward nor downward,Nor region nor record of Time!Out of the Body for everNo refuge—no succour nor stay—Floated that sorrowful SpiritAway, and away, and away.