A Threefold Cord by George MacDonald

By George MacDonald, John Hill MacDonald, and Greville Matheson MacDonald

To Greville Matheson MacDonald.

First, most, to thee, my son, I give this book In which a friend’s and brother’s verses blend With mine; for not son only⁠—brother, friend, Art thou, through sonship which no veil can brook Between the eyes that in each other look, Or any shadow ’twixt the hearts that tend Still nearer, with divine approach, to end In love eternal that cannot be shook When all the shakable shall cease to be. With growing hope I greet the coming day When from thy journey done I welcome thee Who sharest in the names of all the three, And take thee to the two, and humbly say, Let this man be the fourth with us, I pray.

Casa Coraggio: May, 1883.

Suggested by a drawing of Thomas Moran, the American painter.

This must be the very night! The moon knows it!⁠—and the trees! They stand straight upright, Each a sentinel drawn up, As if they dared not know Which way the wind might blow! The very pool, with dead gray eye, Dully expectant, feels it nigh, And begins to curdle and freeze! And the dark night, With its fringe of light, Holds the secret in its cup!

What can it be, to make The poplars cease to shiver and shake, And up in the dismal air Stand straight and stiff as the human hair When the human soul is dizzy with dread⁠— All but those two that strain Aside in a frenzy of speechless pain, Though never a wind sends out a breath To tunnel the foggy rheum of death? What can it be has power to scare The full-grown moon to the idiot stare Of a blasted eye in the midnight air? Something has gone wrong; A scream will come tearing out ere long!

III

Still as death, Although I listen with bated breath! Yet something is coming, I know⁠—is coming! With an inward soundless humming Somewhere in me, or if in the air I cannot tell, but it is there! Marching on to an unheard drumming Something is coming⁠—coming⁠— Growing and coming! And the moon is aware, Aghast in the air At the thing that is only coming With an inward soundless humming And an unheard spectral drumming!

Nothing to see and nothing to hear! Only across the inner sky The wing of a shadowy thought flits by, Vague and featureless, faceless, drear⁠— Only a thinness to catch the eye: Is it a dim foreboding unborn, Or a buried memory, wasted and worn As the fading frost of a wintry sigh? Anon I shall have it!⁠—anon!⁠—it draws nigh! A night when⁠—a something it was took place That drove the blood from that scared moon-face! Hark! was that the cry of a goat, Or the gurgle of water in a throat? Hush! there is nothing to see or hear, Only a silent something is near; No knock, no footsteps three or four, Only a presence outside the door! See! the moon is remembering!⁠—what? The wail of a mother-left, lie-alone brat? Or a raven sharpening its beak to peck? Or a cold blue knife and a warm white neck? Or only a heart that burst and ceased For a man that went away released? I know not⁠—know not, but something is coming Somehow back with an inward humming!

Ha! look there! look at that house, Forsaken of all things, beetle and mouse! Mark how it looks! It must have a soul! It looks, it looks, though it cannot stir! See the ribs of it, how they stare! Its blind eyes yet have a seeing air! It knows it has a soul! Haggard it hangs o’er the slimy pool, And gapes wide open as corpses gape: It is the very murderer! The ghost has modelled himself to the shape Of this drear house all sodden with woe Where the deed was done, long, long ago, And filled with himself his new body full⁠— To haunt for ever his ghastly crime, And see it come and go⁠— Brooding around it like motionless time, With a mouth that gapes, and eyes that yawn Blear and blintering and full of the moon, Like one aghast at a hellish dawn!⁠— The deed! the deed! it is coming soon!

For, ever and always, when round the tune Grinds on the barrel of organ-Time, The deed is done. And it comes anon: True to the roll of the clock-faced moon, True to the ring of the spheric chime, True to the cosmic rhythm and rime, Every point, as it first fell out, Will come and go in the fearsome bout. See! palsied with horror from garret to core, The house cannot shut its gaping door; Its burst eye stares as if trying to see, And it leans as if settling heavily, Settling heavy with sickness dull: It also is hearing the soundless humming Of the wheel that is turning⁠—the thing that is coming! On the naked rafters of its brain, Gaunt and wintred, see the train Of gossiping, scandal-mongering crows That watch, all silent, with necks a-strain, Wickedly knowing, with heads awry And the sharpened gleam of a cunning eye⁠— Watch, through the cracks of the ruined skull, How the evil business goes!⁠— Beyond the eyes of the cherubim, Beyond the ears of the seraphim, Outside, forsaken, in the dim Phantom-haunted chaos grim He stands, with the deed going on in him!

VII

O winds, winds, that lurk and peep Under the edge of the moony fringe! O winds, winds, up and sweep, Up and blow and billow the air, Billow the air with blow and swinge, Rend me this ghastly house of groans! Rend and scatter the skeleton’s bones Over the deserts and mountains bare! Blast and hurl and shiver aside Nailed sticks and mortared stones! Clear the phantom, with torrent and tide, Out of the moon and out of my brain, That the light may fall shadowless in again!

VIII

But, alas, then the ghost O’er mountain and coast Would go roaming, roaming! and never was swine That, grubbing and talking with snork and whine On Gadarene mountains, had taken him in But would rush to the lake to unhouse the sin! For any charnel This ghost is too carnal; There is no volcano, burnt out and cold, Whose very ashes are gray and old, But would cast him forth in reviving flame To blister the sky with a smudge of shame!

Is there no help? none anywhere Under the earth or above the air?⁠— Come, sad woman, whose tender throat Has a red-lipped mouth that can sing no note! Child, whose midwife, the third grim Fate, Shears in hand, thy coming did wait! Father, with blood-bedabbled hair! Mother, all withered with love’s despair! Come, broken heart, whatever thou be, Hasten to help this misery! Thou wast only murdered, or left forlorn: He is a horror, a hate, a scorn! Come, if out of the holiest blue That the sapphire throne shines through; For pity come, though thy fair feet stand Next to the elder-band; Fling thy harp on the hyaline, Hurry thee down the spheres divine; Come, and drive those ravens away; Cover his eyes from the pitiless moon, Shadow his brain from her stinging spray; Droop around him, a tent of love, An odour of grace, a fanning dove; Walk through the house with the healing tune Of gentle footsteps; banish the shape Remorse calls up thyself to ape; Comfort him, dear, with pardon sweet; Cool his heart from its burning heat With the water of life that laves the feet Of the throne of God, and the holy street!

O God, he is but a living blot, Yet he lives by thee⁠—for if thou wast not, They would vanish together, self-forgot, He and his crime:⁠—one breathing blown From thy spirit on his would all atone, Scatter the horror, and bring relief In an amber dawn of holy grief! God, give him sorrow; arise from within, His primal being, deeper than sin!

Why do I tremble, a creature at bay? ’Tis but a dream⁠—I drive it away. Back comes my breath, and my heart again Pumps the red blood to my fainting brain Released from the nightmare’s nine-fold train: God is in heaven⁠—yes, everywhere, And Love, the all-shining, will kill Despair!⁠— To the wall’s blank eyeless space I turn the picture’s face.

XII

But why is the moon so bare, up there? And why is she so white? And why does the moon so stare, up there⁠— Strangely stare, out of the night? Why stand up the poplars That still way? And why do those two of them Start astray? And out of the black why hangs the gray? Why does it hang down so, I say, Over that house, like a fringed pall Where the dead goes by in a funeral?⁠— Soul of mine, Thou the reason canst divine: Into thee the moon doth stare With pallid, terror-smitten air! Thou, and the Horror lonely-stark, Outcast of eternal dark, Are in nature same and one, And thy story is not done! So let the picture face thee from the wall, And let its white moon stare!

In the winter, flowers are springing; In the winter, woods are green, Where our banished birds are singing, Where our summer sun is seen! Our cold midnights are coeval With an evening and a morn Where the forest-gods hold revel, And the spring is newly born!

While the earth is full of fighting, While men rise and curse their day, While the foolish strong are smiting, And the foolish weak betray⁠— The true hearts beyond are growing, The brave spirits work alone, Where Love’s summer-wind is blowing In a truth-irradiate zone!

While we cannot shape our living To the beauty of our skies, While man wants and earth is giving⁠— Nature calls and man denies⁠— How the old worlds round Him gather Where their Maker is their sun! How the children know the Father Where the will of God is done!

Daily woven with our story, Sounding far above our strife, Is a time-enclosing glory, Is a space-absorbing life. We can dream no dream Elysian, There is no good thing might be, But some angel has the vision, But some human soul shall see!

Is thy strait horizon dreary? Is thy foolish fancy chill? Change the feet that have grown weary For the wings that never will. Burst the flesh, and live the spirit; Haunt the beautiful and far; Thou hast all things to inherit, And a soul for every star.

I think I might be weary of this day That comes inevitably every year, The same when I was young and strong and gay, The same when I am old and growing sere⁠— I should grow weary of it every year But that thou comest to me every day.

I shall grow weary if thou every day But come to me, Lord of eternal life; I shall grow weary thus to watch and pray, For ever out of labour into strife; Take everlasting house with me, my life, And I shall be new-born this Christmas-day.

Thou art the Eternal Son, and born no day, But ever he the Father, thou the Son; I am his child, but being born alway⁠— How long, O Lord, how long till it be done? Be thou from endless years to years the Son⁠— And I thy brother, new-born every day.

Be welcome, year! with corn and sickle come; Make poor the body, but make rich the heart: What man that bears his sheaves, gold-nodding, home, Will heed the paint rubbed from his groaning cart!

Nor leave behind thy fears and holy shames, Thy sorrows on the horizon hanging low⁠— Gray gathered fuel for the sunset-flames When joyous in death’s harvest-home we go.

When, in the mid-sea of the night, I waken at thy call, O Lord, The first that troop my bark aboard Are darksome imps that hate the light, Whose tongues are arrows, eyes a blight⁠— Of wraths and cares a pirate horde⁠— Though on the mid-sea of the night It was thy call that waked me, Lord.

Then I must to my arms and fight⁠— Catch up my shield and two-edged sword, The words of him who is thy word⁠— Nor cease till they are put to flight; Then in the mid-sea of the night I turn and listen for thee, Lord.

There comes no voice from thee, O Lord, Across the mid-sea of the night! I lift my voice and cry with might: If thou keep silent, soon a horde Of imps again will swarm aboard, And I shall be in sorry plight If no voice come from thee, my Lord, Across the mid-sea of the night.

There comes no voice; I hear no word! But in my soul dawns something bright:⁠— There is no sea, no foe to fight! Thy heart and mine beat one accord: I need no voice from thee, O Lord, Across the mid-sea of the night.

Heart, Thou Must Learn to Do Without⁠—

Heart, thou must learn to do without⁠— That is the riches of the poor, Their liberty is to endure; Wrap thou thine old cloak thee about, And carol loud and carol stout; Let thy rags fly, nor wish them fewer; Thou too must learn to do without, Must earn the riches of the poor!

Why should’st thou only wear no clout? Thou only walk in love-robes pure? Why should thy step alone be sure? Thou only free of fortune’s flout? Nay, nay! but learn to go without, And so be humbly, richly poor.

Lighter and Sweeter

Lighter and sweeter Let your song be; And for sorrow⁠—oh cheat her With melody!

Lord, I have laid my heart upon thy altar But cannot get the wood to burn; It hardly flares ere it begins to falter And to the dark return.

Old sap, or night-fallen dew, makes damp the fuel; In vain my breath would flame provoke; Yet see⁠—at every poor attempt’s renewal To thee ascends the smoke!

’Tis all I have⁠—smoke, failure, foiled endeavour, Coldness and doubt and palsied lack: Such as I have I send thee!⁠—perfect Giver, Send thou thy lightning back.

Such guests as you, sir, were not in my mind When I my homely dish with care designed; ’Twas certain humble souls I would have fed Who do not turn from wholesome milk and bread: You came, slow-trotting on the narrow way, O’erturned the food, and trod it in the clay; Then low with discoid nostrils sniffing curt, Cried, “Sorry cook! why, what a mess of dirt!”

She Loves Thee, Loves Thee Not!

She loves thee, loves thee not! That, that is all, my heart. Why should she take a part In every selfish blot, In every greedy spot That now doth ache and smart Because she loves thee not⁠— Not, not at all, poor heart!

Thou art no such dove-cot Of virtues⁠—no such chart Of highways, though the dart Of love be through thee shot! Why should she not love not Thee, poor, pinched, selfish heart?

Lord, hear my discontent: all blank I stand, A mirror polished by thy hand; Thy sun’s beams flash and flame from me⁠— I cannot help it: here I stand, there he! To one of them I cannot say, Go, and on yonder water play; Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion⁠— I do not make the words of this my limping passion! If I should say, Now I will think a thought, Lo, I must wait, unknowing What thought in me is growing, Until the thing to birth be brought! Nor know I then what next will come From out the gulf of silence dumb: I am the door the thing will find To pass into the general mind! I cannot say “I think⁠—” I only stand upon the thought-well’s brink: From darkness to the sun the water bubbles up⁠— lift it in my cup. Thou only thinkest⁠—I am thought; Me and my thought thou thinkest. Nought Am I but as a fountain spout From which thy water welleth out. Thou art the only one, the all in all.⁠— Yet when my soul on thee doth call And thou dost answer out of everywhere, I in thy allness have my perfect share.

Some men there are who cannot spare A single tear until they feel The last cold pressure, and the heel Is stamped upon the outmost layer.

And, waking, some will sigh to think The clouds have borrowed winter’s wing, Sad winter, when the grasses spring No more about the fountain’s brink.

And some would call me coward fool: I lay a claim to better blood, But yet a heap of idle mud Hath power to make me sorrowful.

O Earth, Earth, Earth, I am dying for love of thee, For thou hast given me birth, And thy hands have tended me.

I would fall asleep on thy breast When its swelling folds are bare, When the thrush dreams of its nest And the life of its joy in the air;

When thy life is a vanished ghost, And the glory hath left thy waves, When thine eye is blind with frost, And the fog sits on the graves;

When the blasts are shivering about, And the rain thy branches beats, When the damps of death are out, And the mourners are in the streets.

Oh my sleep should be deep In the arms of thy swiftening motion, And my dirge the mystic sweep Of the winds that nurse the ocean.

And my eye would slowly ope With the voice that awakens thee, And runs like a glance of hope Up through the quickening tree;

When the roots of the lonely fir Are dipt in thy veining heat, And thy countless atoms stir With the gather of mossy feet;

When the sun’s great censer swings In the hands that always be, And the mists from thy watery rings Go up like dust from the sea;

When the midnight airs are assembling With a gush in thy whispering halls, And the leafy air is trembling Like a stream before it falls.

Thy shadowy hand hath found me On the drifts of the Godhead’s will, And thy dust hath risen around me With a life that guards me still.

O Earth! I have caught from thine The pulse of a mystic chase; O Earth! I have drunk like wine The life of thy swiftening race.

Wilt miss me, mother sweet, A life in thy milky veins? Wilt miss the sound of my feet In the tramp that shakes thy plains

When the jaws of darkness rend, And the vapours fold away, And the sounds of life ascend Like dust in the blinding day?

I would know thy silver strain In the shouts of the starry crowd When the souls of thy changing men Rise up like an incense cloud.

I would know thy brightening lobes And the lap of thy watery bars Though space were choked with globes And the night were blind with stars!

From the folds of my unknown place, When my soul is glad and free, I will slide by my God’s sweet grace And hang like a cloud on thee.

When the pale moon sits at night By the brink of her shining well, Laving the rings of her widening light On the slopes of the weltering swell,

I will fall like a wind from the west On the locks of thy prancing streams, And sow the fields of thy rest With handfuls of sweet young dreams.

When the sound of thy children’s cry Hath stricken thy gladness dumb, I will kindle thine upward eye With a laugh from the years that come.

Far above where the loud wind raves, On a wing as still as snow I will watch the grind of the curly waves As they bite the coasts below;

When the shining ranks of the frost Draw down on the glistening wold In the mail of a fairy host, And the earth is mossed with cold,

Till the plates that shine about Close up with a filmy din, Till the air is frozen out, And the stars are frozen in.

I will often stoop to range On the fields where my youth was spent, And my feet shall smite the cliffs of change With the rush of a steep descent;

And my glowing soul shall burn With a love that knows no pall, And my eye of worship turn Upon him that fashioned all⁠—

When the sounding waves of strife Have died on the Godhead’s sea, And thy life is a purer life That nurses a life in me.

Make not of thy heart a casket, Opening seldom, quick to close; But of bread a wide-mouthed basket, Or a cup that overflows.

From the German of Dessler.

O Lord, how happy is the time When in thy love I rest! When from my weariness I climb Even to thy tender breast! The night of sorrow endeth there⁠— Thou art brighter than the sun; And in thy pardon and thy care The heaven of heaven is won.

Let the world call herself my foe, Or let the world allure⁠— I care not for the world; I go To this dear friend and sure. And when life’s fiercest storms are sent Upon life’s wildest sea, My little bark is confident Because it holds by thee.

When the law threatens endless death Upon the dreadful hill, Straightway from her consuming breath My soul goeth higher still⁠— Goeth to Jesus, wounded, slain, And maketh him her home, Whence she will not go out again, And where death cannot come.

I do not fear the wilderness Where thou hast been before; Nay rather will I daily press After thee, near thee, more! Thou art my food; on thee I lean, Thou makest my heart sing; And to thy heavenly pastures green All thy dear flock dost bring.

And if the gate that opens there Be dark to other men, It is not dark to those who share The heart of Jesus then: That is not losing much of life Which is not losing thee, Who art as present in the strife As in the victory.

Therefore how happy is the time When in thy love I rest! When from my weariness I climb Even to thy tender breast! The night of sorrow endeth there⁠— Thou art brighter than the sun! And in thy pardon and thy care The heaven of heaven is won!

O Lord, if on the wind, at cool of day, I heard one whispered word of mighty grace; If through the darkness, as in bed I lay, But once had come a hand upon my face;

If but one sign that might not be mistook Had ever been, since first thy face I sought, I should not now be doubting o’er a book, But serving thee with burning heart and thought.

So dreams that heart. But to my heart I say, Turning my face to front the dark and wind: Such signs had only barred anew his way Into thee, longing heart, thee, wildered mind.

They asked the very Way, where lies the way? The very Son, where is the Father’s face? How he could show himself, if not in clay, Who was the lord of spirit, form, and space!

My being, Lord, will nevermore be whole Until thou come behind mine ears and eyes, Enter and fill the temple of my soul With perfect contact⁠—such a sweet surprise,

Such presence as, before it met the view, The prophet-fancy could not once foresee, Though every corner of the temple knew By very emptiness its need of thee.

When I keep all thy words, no favoured some, Heedless of worldly winds or judgment’s tide, Then, Jesus, thou wilt with thy father come⁠— Oh, ended prayers!⁠—and in my soul abide.

Ah, long delay! ah, cunning, creeping sin! I shall but fail, and cease at length to try: O Jesus, though thou wilt not yet come in, Knock at my window as thou passest by!

Methought I floated sightless, nor did know That I had ears until I heard the cry As of a mighty man in agony: “How long, Lord, shall I lie thus foul and slow? The arrows of thy lightning through me go, And sting and torture me⁠—yet here I lie A shapeless mass that scarce can mould a sigh!” The darkness thinned; I saw a thing below Like sheeted corpse, a knot at head and feet. Slow clomb the sun the mountains of the dead, And looked upon the world: the silence broke! A blinding struggle! then the thunderous beat Of great exulting pinions stroke on stroke! And from that world a mighty angel fled.

What dost thou here, O soul, Beyond thy own control, Under the strange wild sky? O stars, reach down your hands, And clasp me in your silver bands, I tremble with this mystery!⁠— Flung hither by a chance Of restless circumstance, Thou art but here, and wast not sent; Yet once more mayest thou draw By thy own mystic law To the centre of thy wonderment.

Why wilt thou stop and start? Draw nearer, oh my heart, And I will question thee most wistfully; Gather thy last clear resolution To look upon thy dissolution.

The great God’s life throbs far and free, And thou art but a spark Known only in thy dark, Or a foam-fleck upon the awful ocean, Thyself thy slender dignity, Thy own thy vexing mystery, In the vast change that is not change but motion.

’Tis not so hard as it would seem; Thy life is but a dream⁠— And yet thou hast some thoughts about the past; Let go, let go thy memories, They are not things but wandering cries⁠— Wave them each one a long farewell at last: I hear thee say⁠—“Take them, O tide, And I will turn aside, Gazing with heedlessness, nay, even with laughter! Bind me, ye winds and storms, Among the things that once had forms, And carry me clean out of sight thereafter!”

Thou hast lived long enough To know thy own weak stuff, Laughing thy fondest joys to utter scorn; Give up the idle strife⁠— It is but mockery of life; The fates had need of thee and thou wast born! They are, in sooth, but thou shalt die. O wandering spark! O homeless cry! O empty will, still lacking self-intent! Look up among the autumn trees: The ripened fruits fall through the breeze, And they will shake thee even like these Into the lap of an Accomplishment!

Thou hadst a faith, and voices said:⁠— “Doubt not that truth, but bend thy head Unto the God who drew thee from the night:” Thou liftedst up thy eyes⁠—and, lo! A host of voices answered⁠—“No; A thousand things as good have seen the light!” Look how the swarms arise From every clod before thy eyes! Are thine the only hopes that fade and fall When to the centre of its action One purpose draws each separate fraction, And nothing but effects are left at all? Aha, thy faith! what is thy faith? The sleep that waits on coming death⁠— A blind delirious swoon that follows pain. “True to thy nature!”⁠—well! right well! But what that nature is thou canst not tell⁠— It has a thousand voices in thy brain. Danced all the leaflets to and fro? —Thy feet have trod them long ago! Sprung the glad music up the blue? —The hawk hath cut the song in two. All the mountains crumble, All the forests fall, All thy brethren stumble, And rise no more at all! In the dim woods there is a sound When the winds begin to moan; It is not of joy or yet of mirth, But the mournful cry of our mother Earth, As she calleth back her own. Through the rosy air to-night The living creatures play Up and down through the rich faint light⁠— None so happy as they! But the blast is here, and noises fall Like the sound of steps in a ruined hall, An icy touch is upon them all, And they sicken and fade away.

The child awoke with an eye of gladness, With a light on his head and a matchless grace, And laughed at the passing shades of sadness That chased the smiles on his mother’s face; And life with its lightsome load of youth Swam like a boat on a shining lake⁠— Freighted with hopes enough, in sooth, But he lived to trample on joy and truth, And change his crown for a murder-stake!

Oh, a ruddy light went through the room, Till the dark ran out to his mother Night! And that little chamber showed through the gloom Like a Noah’s ark with its nest of light! Right glad was the maiden there, I wis, With the youth that held her hand in his! Oh, sweet were the words that went and came Through the light and shade of the leaping flame That glowed on the cheerful faces! So human the speech, so sunny and kind, That the darkness danced on the wall behind, And even the wail of the winter wind Sang sweet through the window-cases!

But a mournful wail crept round and round, And a voice cried:⁠—“Come!” with a dreary sound, And the circle wider grew; The light flame sank, and sorrow fell On the faces of those that loved so well; Darker and wilder grew the tone; Fainter and fainter the faces shone; The wild night clasped them, and they were gone⁠— And thou art passing too!

Lo, the morning slowly springs Like a meek white babe from the womb of night! One golden planet sits and stings The shifting gloom with his point of light! Lo, the sun on its throne of flame! —Wouldst thou climb and win a crown? Oh, many a heart that pants for the same Falls to the earth ere he goes down! Thy heart is a flower with an open cup⁠— Sit and watch, if it pleaseth thee, Till the melting twilight fill it up With a crystal of tender sympathy; So, gently will it tremble The silent midnight through, And flocks of stars assemble By turns in its depths of dew;⁠— But look! oh, look again! After the driving wind and rain! When the day is up and the sun is strong, And the voices of men are loud and long, When the flower hath slunk to its rest again, And love is lost in the strife of men!

Let the morning break with thoughts of love, And the evening fall with dreams of bliss⁠— So vainly panteth the prisoned dove For the depths of her sweet wilderness; So stoops the eagle in his pride From his rocky nest ere the bow is bent; So sleeps the deer on the mountain-side Ere the howling pack hath caught the scent!

The fire climbs high till its work is done; The stalk falls down when the flower is gone; And the stars of heaven when their course is run Melt silently away! There was a footfall on the snow, A line of light on the ocean-flow, And a billow’s dash on the rocks below That stand by the wintry bay:⁠— The snow was gone on the coming night; Another wave arose in his might, Uplifted his foaming breast of white, And died like the rest for aye!

Oh, the stars were bright! and thyself in thee Yearned for an immortality! And the thoughts that drew from thy busy brain Clasped the worlds like an endless chain⁠— When a moon arose, and her moving chime Smote on thy soul, like a word in time, Or a breathless wish, or a thought in rime, And the truth that looked so gloomy and high Leapt to thy arms with a joyful cry! But what wert thou when a soulless Cause Opened the book of its barren laws, And thy spirit that was so glad and free Was caught in the gin of necessity, And a howl arose from the strife of things Vexing each other with scorpion stings? What wert thou but an orphan child Thrust from the door when the night was wild? Or a sailor on the toiling main Looking blindly up through the wind and rain As the hull of the vessel fell in twain!

Seals are on the book of fate, Hands may not unbind it; Eyes may search for truth till late, But will never find it⁠—! Rising on the brow of night Like a portent of dismay, As the worlds in wild affright Track it on its direful way; Resting like a rainbow bar Where the curve and level meet, As the children chase it far O’er the sands with blistered feet; Sadly through the mist of ages Gazing on this life of fear, Doubtful shining on its pages, Only seen to disappear! Sit thee by the sounding shore —Winds and waves of human breath!⁠— Learn a lesson from their roar, Swelling, bursting evermore: Live thy life and die thy death! Die not like the writhing worm, Rise and win thy highest stake; Better perish in the storm Than sit rotting on the lake! Triumph in thy present youth, Pulse of fire and heart of glee; Leap at once into the truth, If there is a truth for thee.

Shapeless thoughts and dull opinions, Slow distinctions and degrees⁠— Vex not thou thy weary pinions With such leaden weights as these⁠— Through this mystic jurisdiction Reaching out a hand by chance, Resting on a dull conviction Whetted but by ignorance; Living ever to behold Mournful eyes that watch and weep; Spirit suns that flashed in gold Failing from the vasty deep; Starry lights that glowed like Truth Gazing with unnumbered eyes, Melting from the skies of youth, Swallowed up of mysteries; Cords of love that sweetly bound thee; Faded writing on thy brow; Presences that came around thee; Hands of faith that fail thee now!

Groping hands will ever find thee In the night with loads of chains! Lift thy fetters and unbind thee, Cast thee on the midnight plains: Shapes of vision all-providing⁠— Famished cheeks and hungry cries! Sound of crystal waters sliding⁠— Thirsty lips and bloodshot eyes! Empty forms that send no gleaming Through the mystery of this strife!⁠— Oh, in such a life of seeming, Death were worth an endless life!

Hark the trumpet of the ocean Where glad lands were wont to be! Many voices of commotion Break in tumult over thee! Lo, they climb the frowning ages, Marching o’er their level lands! Far behind the strife that rages Silence sits with clasped hands; Undivided Purpose, freeing His own steps from hindrances, Sending out great floods of being, Bathes thy steps in silentness. Sit thee down in mirth and laughter⁠— One there is that waits for thee; If there is a true hereafter He will lend thee eyes to see.

Like a snowflake gently falling On a quiet fountain, Or a weary echo calling From a distant mountain, Drop thy hands in peace⁠— Fail⁠—falter⁠—cease.

Loosener of springs, he died by thee! Softness, not hardness, sent him home; He loved thee⁠—and thou mad’st him free Of all the place thou comest from!

Are the leaves falling round about The churchyard on the hill? Is the glow of autumn going out? Is that the winter chill? And yet through winter’s noise, no doubt The graves are very still!

Are the woods empty, voiceless, bare? On sodden leaves do you tread? Is nothing left of all those fair? Is the whole summer fled? Well, so from this unwholesome air Have gone away these dead!

The seasons pierce me; like a leaf I feel the autumn blow, And tremble between nature’s grief And the silent death below. O Summer, thou art very brief! Where do these exiles go?

Gilesgate, Durham.

Few in Joy’s Sweet Riot

Few in joy’s sweet riot Able are to listen: Thou, to make me quiet, Quenchest the sweet riot, Tak’st away my diet, Puttest me in prison⁠— Quenchest joy’s sweet riot That the heart may listen.

Yes, Master, when thou comest thou shalt find A little faith on earth, if I am here! Thou know’st how oft I turn to thee my mind. How sad I wait until thy face appear!

Hast thou not ploughed my thorny ground full sore, And from it gathered many stones and sherds? Plough, plough and harrow till it needs no more⁠— Then sow thy mustard-seed, and send thy birds.

I love thee, Lord; and if I yield to fears, Nor trust with triumph that pale doubt defies, Remember, Lord, ’tis nigh two thousand years, And I have never seen thee with mine eyes!

And when I lift them from the wondrous tale, See, all about me hath so strange a show! Is that thy river running down the vale? Is that thy wind that through the pines doth blow?

Could’st thou right verily appear again, The same who walked the paths of Palestine, And here in England teach thy trusting men In church and field and house, with word and sign?

Here are but lilies, sparrows, and the rest! My hands on some dear proof would light and stay! But my heart sees John leaning on thy breast, And sends them forth to do what thou dost say.

O Lord, my God, how long Shall my poor heart pant for a boundless joy? How long, O mighty Spirit, shall I hear The murmur of Truth’s crystal waters slide From the deep caverns of their endless being, But my lips taste not, and the grosser air Choke each pure inspiration of thy will?

I am a denseness ’twixt me and the light; 1 cannot round myself; my purest thought, Ere it is thought, hath caught the taint of earth, And mocked me with hard thoughts beyond my will.

I would be a wind Whose smallest atom is a viewless wing, All busy with the pulsing life that throbs To do thy bidding; yea, or the meanest thing That has relation to a changeless truth, Could I but be instinct with thee⁠—each thought The lightning of a pure intelligence, And every act as the loud thunder-clap Of currents warring for a vacuum.

Lord, clothe me with thy truth as with a robe; Purge me with sorrow; I will bend my head And let the nations of thy waves pass over, Bathing me in thy consecrated strength; And let thy many-voiced and silver winds Pass through my frame with their clear influence, O save me; I am blind; lo, thwarting shapes Wall up the void before, and thrusting out Lean arms of unshaped expectation, beckon Down to the night of all unholy thoughts.

Oh, when at midnight one of thy strong angels Stems back the waves of earthly influence That shape unsteady continents around me, And they draw off with the devouring gush Of exile billows that have found a home, Leaving me islanded on unseen points, Hanging ’twixt thee and chaos⁠—I have seen Unholy shapes lop off my shining thoughts, And they have lent me leathern wings of fear, Of baffled pride and harrowing distrust; And Godhead, with its crown of many stars, Its pinnacles of flaming holiness, And voice of leaves in the green summer-time, Has seemed the shadowed image of a self! Then my soul blackened; and I rose to find And grasp my doom, and cleave the arching deeps Of desolation.

O Lord, my soul is a forgotten well Clad round with its own rank luxuriance; A fountain a kind sunbeam searches for, Sinking the lustre of its arrowy finger Through the long grass its own strange virtue Hath blinded up its crystal eye withal: Make me a broad strong river coming down With shouts from its high hills, whose rocky hearts Throb forth the joy of their stability In watery pulses from their inmost deeps; And I shall be a vein upon thy world, Circling perpetual from the parent deep.

Most mighty One, Confirm and multiply my thoughts of good; Help me to wall each sacred treasure round With the firm battlements of special action. Alas, my holy happy thoughts of thee Make not perpetual nest within my soul, But like strange birds of dazzling colours stoop The trailing glories of their sunward speed For one glad moment, filling my blasted boughs With the sunshine of their wings. Make me a forest Of gladdest life wherein perpetual spring Lifts up her leafy tresses in the wind. Lo, now I see Thy trembling starlight sit among my pines, And thy young moon slide down my arching boughs With a soft sound of restless eloquence! And I can feel a joy as when thy hosts Of trampling winds, gathering in maddened bands, Roar upward through the blue and flashing day Round my still depths of uncleft solitude.

Hear me, O Lord, When the black night draws down upon my soul, And voices of temptation darken down The misty wind, slamming thy starry doors With bitter jests:⁠—“Thou fool!” they seem to say, “Thou hast no seed of goodness in thee; all Thy nature hath been stung right through and through; Thy sin hath blasted thee and made thee old; Thou hadst a will, but thou hast killed it dead, And with the fulsome garniture of life Built out the loathsome corpse; thou art a child Of night and death, even lower than a worm; Gather the skirts up of thy shadowy self, And with what resolution thou hast left Fall on the damned spikes of doom!”

Oh, take me like a child, If thou hast made me for thyself, my God, And lead me up thy hills. I shall not fear, So thou wilt make me pure, and beat back sin With the terrors of thine eye: it fears me not As once it might have feared thine own good image, But lays bold siege at my heart’s doors.

Oh, I have seen a thing of beauty stand In the young moonlight of its upward thoughts, And the old earth came round it with its gifts Of gladness, whispering leaves, and odorous plants, Until its large and spiritual eye Burned with intensest love: my God, I could Have watched it evermore with Argus-eyes, Lest when the noontide of the summer’s sun Let down the tented sunlight on the plain, His flaming beams should scorch my darling flower; And through the fruitless nights of leaden gloom, Of plashing rains, and knotted winds of cold, Yea, when thy lightnings ran across the sky, And the loud stumbling blasts fell from the hills Upon the mounds of death, I could have watched Guarding such beauty like another life! But, O my God, it changed!⁠— Yet methinks I know not if it was not I! Its beauty turned to ghastly loathsomeness! Then a hand spurned me backwards from the clouds, And with the gather of a mighty whirlwind, Drew in the glittering gifts of life.

How long, O Lord, how long? I am a man lost in a rocky place! Lo, all thy echoes smite me with confusion Of varied speech⁠—the cry of vanished Life Rolled upon nations’ sighs⁠—of hearts uplifted Against despair⁠—the stifled sounds of Woe Sitting perpetual by its grey cold well⁠— Or wasted Toil climbing its endless hills With quickening gasps⁠—or the thin winds of Joy That beat about the voices of the crowd!

Lord, hast thou sent Thy moons to mock us with perpetual hope? Lighted within our breasts the love of love To make us ripen for despair, my God?

Oh, dost thou hold each individual soul Strung clear upon thy flaming rods of purpose? Or does thine inextinguishable will Stand on the steeps of night with lifted hand Filling the yawning wells of monstrous space With mixing thought⁠—drinking up single life As in a cup? and from the rending folds Of glimmering purpose, do all thy navied stars Slide through the gloom with mystic melody, Like wishes on a brow? Oh, is my soul, Hung like a dewdrop in thy grassy ways, Drawn up again into the rack of change Even through the lustre which created it? —O mighty one, thou wilt not smite me through With scorching wrath, because my spirit stands Bewildered in thy circling mysteries!

Oh lift the burdened gloom that chokes my soul With dews of darkness; smite the lean winds of death That run with howls around the ruined temples, Blowing the souls of men about like leaves.

Lo, the broad life-lands widen overhead, Star-galaxies arise like drifting snow, And happy life goes whitening down the stream Of boundless action, whilst my fettered soul Sits, as a captive in a noisome dungeon Watches the pulses of his withered heart Lave out the sparkling minutes of his life On the idle flags!

Come in the glory of thine excellence, Rive the dense gloom with wedges of clear light, And let the shimmer of thy chariot wheels Burn through the cracks of night! So slowly, Lord, To lift myself to thee with hands of toil, Climbing the slippery cliffs of unheard prayer! Lift up a hand among my idle days⁠— One beckoning finger: I will cast aside The clogs of earthly circumstance and run Up the broad highways where the countless worlds Sit ripening in the summer of thy love. Send a clear meaning sparkling through the years; Burst all the prison-doors, and make men’s hearts Gush up like fountains with thy melody; Brighten the hollow eyes; fill with life’s fruits The hands that grope and scramble down the wastes; And let the ghastly troops of withered ones Come shining o’er the mountains of thy love.

Lord, thy strange mysteries come thickening down Upon my head like snowflakes, shutting out The happy upper fields with chilly vapour. Shall I content my soul with a weak sense Of safety? or feed my ravenous hunger with Sore purged hopes, that are not hopes but fears Clad in white raiment?

The creeds lie in the hollow of men’s hearts Like festering pools glassing their own corruption; The slimy eyes stare up with dull approval, And answer not when thy bright starry feet Move on the watery floors: oh, shake men’s souls Together like the gathering of all oceans Rent from their hidden chambers, till the waves Lift up their million voices of high joy Along the echoing cliffs! come thus, O Lord, With nightly gifts of stars, and lay a hand Of mighty peace upon the quivering flood.

O wilt thou hear me when I cry to thee? I am a child lost in a mighty forest; The air is thick with voices, and strange hands Reach through the dusk, and pluck me by the skirts. There is a voice which sounds like words from home, But, as I stumble on to reach it, seems To leap from rock to rock: oh, if it is Willing obliquity of sense, descend, Heal all my wanderings, take me by the hand, And lead me homeward through the shadows. Let me not by my wilful acts of pride Block up the windows of thy truth, and grow A wasted, withered thing, that stumbles on Down to the grave with folded hands of sloth And leaden confidence.

Still am I haunting Thy door with my prayers; Still they are panting Up thy steep stairs! Wouldst thou not rather Come down to my heart, And there, O my Father, Be what thou art?

The veil hath lifted and hath fallen; and him Who next it stood before us, first so long, We see not; but between the cherubim The light burns clearer: come⁠—a thankful song!

Lord, for thy prophet’s calm commanding voice, For his majestic innocence and truth, For his unswerving purity of choice, For all his tender wrath and plenteous ruth;

For his obedient, wise, clear-listening care To hear for us what word The Word would say, For all the trembling fervency of prayer With which he led our souls the prayerful way;

For all the heavenly glory of his face That caught the white Transfiguration’s shine And cast on us the reflex of thy grace⁠— Of all thy men late left, the most divine;

For all his learning, and the thought of power That seized thy one Idea everywhere, Brought the eternal down into the hour, And taught the dead thy life to claim and share;

For his humility, dove-clear of guile;⁠— The sin denouncing, he, like thy great Paul, Still claimed in it the greatest share, the while Our eyes, love-sharpened, saw him best of all!

For his high victories over sin and fear, The captive hope his words of truth set free; For his abiding memory, holy, dear; Last, for his death and hiding now in thee,

We praise, we magnify thee, Lord of him: Thou hast him still; he ever was thine own; Nor shall our tears prevail the path to dim That leads where, lowly still, he haunts thy throne.

When thou, O Lord, ascendedst up on high Good gifts thou sentest down to cheer thy men: Lo, he ascends!⁠—we follow with the cry, His spirit send thou back in thine again.

My thoughts are like fire-flies, pulsing in moonlight; My heart like a silver cup, filled with red wine; My soul a pale gleaming horizon, whence soon light Will flood the gold earth with a torrent divine.

O Lord, at Joseph’s humble bench Thy hands did handle saw and plane; Thy hammer nails did drive and clench, Avoiding knot and humouring grain.

That thou didst seem, thou wast indeed, In sport thy tools thou didst not use; Nor, helping hind’s or fisher’s need, The labourer’s hire, too nice, refuse.

Lord, might I be but as a saw, A plane, a chisel, in thy hand!⁠— No, Lord! I take it back in awe, Such prayer for me is far too grand.

I pray, O Master, let me lie, As on thy bench the favoured wood; Thy saw, thy plane, thy chisel ply, And work me into something good.

No, no; ambition, holy-high, Urges for more than both to pray: Come in, O gracious Force, I cry⁠— O workman, share my shed of clay.

Then I, at bench, or desk, or oar, With knife or needle, voice or pen, As thou in Nazareth of yore, Shall do the Father’s will again.

Thus fashioning a workman rare, O Master, this shall be thy fee: Home to thy father thou shall bear Another child made like to thee.

I stood in an ancient garden With high red walls around; Over them grey and green lichens In shadowy arabesque wound.

The topmost climbing blossoms On fields kine-haunted looked out; But within were shelter and shadow, With daintiest odours about.

There were alleys and lurking arbours, Deep glooms into which to dive. The lawns were as soft as fleeces, Of daisies I counted but five.

The sun-dial was so aged It had gathered a thoughtful grace; ’Twas the round-about of the shadow That so had furrowed its face.

The flowers were all of the oldest That ever in garden sprung; Red, and blood-red, and dark purple The rose-lamps flaming hung.

Along the borders fringed With broad thick edges of box Stood foxgloves and gorgeous poppies And great-eyed hollyhocks.

There were junipers trimmed into castles, And ash-trees bowed into tents; For the garden, though ancient and pensive, Still wore quaint ornaments.

It was all so stately fantastic Its old wind hardly would stir; Young Spring, when she merrily entered, Scarce felt it a place for her.

I stood in the summer morning Under a cavernous yew; The sun was gently climbing, And the scents rose after the dew.

I saw the wise old mansion, Like a cow in the noon-day heat, Stand in a lake of shadows That rippled about its feet.

Its windows were oriel and latticed, Lowly and wide and fair; And its chimneys like clustered pillars Stood up in the thin blue air.

White doves, like the thoughts of a lady, Haunted it all about; With a train of green and blue comets The peacock went marching stout.

The birds in the trees were singing A song as old as the world, Of love and green leaves and sunshine, And winter folded and furled.

They sang that never was sadness But it melted and passed away; They sang that never was darkness But in came the conquering day.

And I knew that a maiden somewhere, In a low oak-panelled room, In a nimbus of shining garments, An aureole of white-browed bloom,

Looked out on the garden dreamy, And knew not it was old; Looked past the gray and the sombre, Saw but the green and the gold,

III

I stood in the gathering twilight, In a gently blowing wind; Then the house looked half uneasy, Like one that was left behind.

The roses had lost their redness, And cold the grass had grown; At roost were the pigeons and peacock, The sun-dial seemed a head-stone.

The world by the gathering twilight In a gauzy dusk was clad; Something went into my spirit And made me a little sad.

Grew and gathered the twilight, It filled my heart and brain; The sadness grew more than sadness, It turned to a gentle pain.

Browned and brooded the twilight, Pervaded, absorbed the calm, Till it seemed for some human sorrows There could not be any balm.

Then I knew that, up a staircase Which untrod will yet creak and shake, Deep in a distant chamber A ghost was coming awake⁠—

In the growing darkness growing, Growing till her eyes appear Like spots of a deeper twilight, But more transparent clear:

Thin as hot air up-trembling, Thin as sun-molten crape, An ethereal shadow of something Is taking a certain shape;

A shape whose hands hang listless, Let hang its disordered hair; A shape whose bosom is heaving But draws not in the air.

And I know, what time the moonlight On her nest of shadows will sit, Out on the dim lawn gliding That shadowy shadow will flit.

The moon is dreaming upward From a sea of cloud and gleam; She looks as if she had seen me Never but in a dream.

Down the stair I know she is coming, Bare-footed, lifting her train; It creaks not⁠—she hears it creaking Where once there was a brain.

Out at yon side-door she’s coming, With a timid glance right and left; Her look is hopeless yet eager, The look of a heart bereft.

Across the lawn she is flitting, Her thin gown feels the wind; Are her white feet bending the grasses? Her hair is lifted behind!

Shall I stay to look on her nearer? Would she start and vanish away? Oh, no, she will never see me, Stand I near as I may!

It is not this wind she is feeling, Not this cool grass below; ’Tis the wind and the grass of an evening A hundred years ago.

She sees no roses darkling, No stately hollyhocks dim; She is only thinking and dreaming The garden, the night, and him,

The unlit windows behind her, The timeless dial-stone, The trees, and the moon, and the shadows A hundred years agone!

’Tis a night for a ghostly lover To haunt the best-loved spot: Is he come in his dreams to this garden? I gaze, but I see him not.

VII

I will not look on her nearer, My heart would be torn in twain; From my eyes the garden would vanish In the falling of their rain.

I will not look on a sorrow That darkens into despair, On the surge of a heart that cannot Yet cannot cease to bear.

My soul to hers would be calling: She would hear no word it said! If I cried aloud in the stillness She would never turn her head!

She is dreaming the sky above her, She is dreaming the earth below:⁠— This night she lost her lover A hundred years ago.

Everything goes to its rest; The hills are asleep in the noon; And life is as still in its nest As the moon when she looks on a moon In the depth of a calm river’s breast As it steals through a midnight in June.

The streams have forgotten the sea In the dream of their musical sound; The sunlight is thick on the tree, And the shadows lie warm on the ground⁠— So still, you may watch them and see Every breath that awakens around.

The churchyard lies still in the heat, With its handful of mouldering bone, As still as the long stalk of wheat In the shadow that sits by the stone, As still as the grass at my feet When I walk in the meadows alone.

The waves are asleep on the main, And the ships are asleep on the wave; And the thoughts are as still in my brain As the echo that sleeps in the cave; All rest from their labour and pain⁠— Then why should not I in my grave?

Who lights the fire⁠—that forth so gracefully And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke? Some pretty one who never felt the yoke⁠— Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.

Pedant it cannot, villain cannot be! Some genius, may-be, his own symbol woke; But puritan, nor rogue in virtue’s cloke, Nor kitchen-maid has done it certainly!

Ha, ha! you cannot find the lighter out For all the blue smoke’s pantomimic gesture⁠— His name or nature, sex or age or vesture! The fire was lit by human care, no doubt⁠— But now the smoke is Nature’s tributary, Dancing ’twixt man and nothing like a fairy.

Who would have thought that even an idle song Were such a holy and celestial thing That wickedness and envy cannot sing⁠— That music for no moment lives with wrong? I know this, for a very grievous throng, Dark thoughts, low wishes, round my bosom cling, And, underneath, the hidden holy spring Stagnates because of their enchantment strong.

Blow, breath of heaven, on all this poison blow! And, heart, glow upward to this gracious breath! Between them, vanish, mist of sin and death, And let the life of life within me flow! Love is the green earth, the celestial air, And music runs like dews and rivers there!

This is the sweetness of an April day; The softness of the spring is on the face Of the old year. She has no natural grace, But something comes to her from far away

Out of the Past, and on her old decay The beauty of her childhood you can trace.⁠— And yet she moveth with a stormy pace, And goeth quickly.⁠—Stay, old year, oh, stay!

We do not like new friends, we love the old; With young, fierce, hopeful hearts we ill agree; But thou art patient, stagnant, calm, and cold, And not like that new year that is to be;⁠— Life, promise, love, her eyes may fill, fair child! We know the past, and will not be beguiled.

Yet the free heart will not be captive long; And if she changes often, she is free. But if she changes: One has mastery Who makes the joy the last in every song. And so to-day I blessed the breezes strong That swept the blue; I blessed the breezes free That rolled wet leaves like rivers shiningly; I blessed the purple woods I stood among.

“And yet the spring is better!” Bitterness Came with the words, but did not stay with them. “Accomplishment and promise! field and stem New green fresh growing in a fragrant dress! And we behind with death and memory!” —Nay, prophet-spring! but I will follow thee.

Beautiful stories wed with lovely days Like words and music:⁠—what shall be the tale Of love and nobleness that might avail To express in action what this sweetness says⁠—

The sweetness of a day of airs and rays That are strange glories on the winter pale? Alas, O beauty, all my fancies fail! I cannot tell a story in thy praise!

Thou hast, thou hast one⁠—set, and sure to chime With thee, as with the days of “winter wild;” For Joy like Sorrow loves his blessed feet Who shone from Heaven on Earth this Christmas-time A Brother and a Saviour, Mary’s child!⁠— And so, fair day, thou hast thy story sweet.

I know not what among the grass thou art, Thy nature, nor thy substance, fairest flower, Nor what to other eyes thou hast of power To send thine image through them to the heart; But when I push the frosty leaves apart And see thee hiding in thy wintry bower Thou growest up within me from that hour, And through the snow I with the spring depart.

I have no words. But fragrant is the breath, Pale beauty, of thy second life within. There is a wind that cometh for thy death, But thou a life immortal dost begin, Where in one soul, which is thy heaven, shall dwell Thy spirit, beautiful Unspeakable!

Now in the dark of February rains, Poor lovers of the sunshine, spring is born, The earthy fields are full of hidden corn, And March’s violets bud along the lanes;

Therefore with joy believe in what remains. And thou who dost not feel them, do not scorn Our early songs for winter overworn, And faith in God’s handwriting on the plains.

“Hope” writes he, “Love” in the first violet, “Joy,” even from Heaven, in songs and winds and trees; And having caught the happy words in these While Nature labours with the letters yet, Spring cannot cheat us, though her hopes be broken, Nor leave us, for we know what God hath spoken.

I envy the tree-tops that shake so high In winds that fill them full of heavenly airs; I envy every little cloud that shares With unseen angels evening in the sky; I envy most the youngest stars that lie Sky-nested, and the loving heaven that bears, And night that makes strong worlds of them unawares; And all God’s other beautiful and nigh!

Nay, nay, I envy not! And these are dreams, Fancies and images of real heaven! My longings, all my longing prayers are given For that which is, and not for that which seems. Draw me, O Lord, to thy true heaven above, The Heaven of thy Thought, thy Rest, thy Love.

Down a warm alley, early in the year, Among the woods, with all the sunshine in And all the winds outside it, I begin To think that something gracious will appear, If anything of grace inhabit here, Or there be friendship in the woods to win. Might one but find companions more akin To trees and grass and happy daylight clear, And in this wood spend one long hour at home! The fairies do not love so bright a place, And angels to the forest never come, But I have dreamed of some harmonious race, The kindred of the shapes that haunt the shore Of Music’s flow and flow for evermore.

Along the tops of all the yellow trees, The golden-yellow trees, the sunshine lies; And where the leaves are gone, long rays surprise Lone depths of thicket with their brightnesses; And through the woods, all waste of many a breeze, Cometh more joy of light for Poet’s eyes⁠— Green fields lying yellow underneath the skies, And shining houses and blue distances.

By the roadside, like rocks of golden ore That make the western river-beds so bright, The briar and the furze are all alight! Perhaps the year will be so fair no more, But now the fallen, falling leaves are gay, And autumn old has shone into a Day!

Mourner, that dost deserve thy mournfulness, Call thyself punished, call the earth thy hell; Say, “God is angry, and I earned it well⁠— I would not have him smile on wickedness:”

Say this, and straightway all thy grief grows less:⁠— “God rules at least, I find as prophets tell, And proves it in this prison!”⁠—then thy cell Smiles with an unsuspected loveliness.

—“A prison⁠—and yet from door and window-bar I catch a thousand breaths of his sweet air! Even to me his days and nights are fair! He shows me many a flower and many a star! And though I mourn and he is very far, He does not kill the hope that reaches there!”

“Show us the Father.” Chiming stars of space, And lives that fit the worlds, and means and powers, A Thought that holds them up reveal to ours⁠— A Wisdom we have been made wise to trace. And, looking out from sweetest Nature’s face, From sunsets, moonlights, rivers, hills, and flowers, Infinite love and beauty, all the hours, Woo men that love them with divinest grace; And to the depths of all the answering soul High Justice speaks, and calls the world her own; And yet we long, and yet we have not known The very Father’s face who means the whole! Show us the Father! Nature, conscience, love Revealed in beauty, is there One above?

When peevish flaws his soul have stirred To fretful tears for crossed desires, Obedient to his mother’s word My child to banishment retires.

As disappears the moon, when wind Heaps miles of mist her visage o’er, So vanisheth his face behind The cloud of his white pinafore.

I cannot then come near my child⁠— A gulf between of gainful loss; He to the infinite exiled⁠— I waiting, for I cannot cross.

Ah then, what wonder, passing show, The Isis-veil behind it brings⁠— Like that self-coffined creatures know, Remembering legs, foreseeing wings!

Mysterious moment! When or how Is the bewildering change begun? Hid in far deeps the awful now When turns his being to the sun!

A light goes up behind his eyes, A still small voice behind his ears; A listing wind about him sighs, And lo the inner landscape clears!

Hid by that screen, a wondrous shine Is gathering for a sweet surprise; As Moses grew, in dark divine, Too radiant for his people’s eyes.

For when the garment sinks again, Outbeams a brow of heavenly wile, Clear as a morning after rain, And sunny with a perfect smile.

Oh, would that I the secret knew Of hiding from my evil part, And turning to the lovely true The open windows of my heart!

Lord, in thy skirt, love’s tender gaol, Hide thou my selfish heart’s disgrace; Fill me with light, and then unveil To friend and foe a friendly face.

A pool of broken sunbeams lay Upon the passage-floor, Radiant and rich, profound and gay As ever diamond bore.

Small, flitting hands a handkerchief Spread like a cunning trap: Prone lay the gorgeous jewel-sheaf In the glory-gleaner’s lap!

Deftly she folded up the prize, With lovely avarice; Like one whom having had made wise, She bore it off in bliss.

But ah, when for her prisoned gems She peeped, to prove them there, No glories broken from their stems Lay in the kerchief bare!

For still, outside the nursery door, The bright persistency, A molten diadem on the floor, Lay burning wondrously.

How oft have I laid fold from fold And peered into my mind⁠— To see of all the purple and gold Not one gleam left behind!

The best of gifts will not be stored: The manna of yesterday Has filled no sacred miser-hoard To keep new need away.

Thy grace, O Lord, it is thyself; Thy presence is thy light; I cannot lay it on my shelf, Or take it from thy sight.

For daily bread we daily pray⁠— The want still breeds the cry; And so we meet, day after day, Thou, Father in heaven, and I.

Is my house dreary, wall and floor, Will not the darkness flit, I go outside my shadowy door And in thy rainbow sit.

Oh! is it Death that comes To have a foretaste of the whole? To-night the planets and the stars Will glimmer through my window-bars But will not shine upon my soul!

For I shall lie as dead Though yet I am above the ground; All passionless, with scarce a breath, With hands of rest and eyes of death, I shall be carried swiftly round.

Or if my life should break The idle night with doubtful gleams, Through mossy arches will I go, Through arches ruinous and low, And chase the true and false in dreams.

Why should I fall asleep? When I am still upon my bed The moon will shine, the winds will rise And all around and through the skies The light clouds travel o’er my head!

O busy, busy things, Ye mock me with your ceaseless life! For all the hidden springs will flow And all the blades of grass will grow When I have neither peace nor strife.

And all the long night through The restless streams will hurry by; And round the lands, with endless roar, The white waves fall upon the shore, And bit by bit devour the dry.

Even thus, but silently, Eternity, thy tide shall flow, And side by side with every star Thy long-drawn swell shall bear me far, An idle boat with none to row.

My senses fail with sleep; My heart beats thick; the night is noon; And faintly through its misty folds I hear a drowsy clock that holds Its converse with the waning moon.

Oh, solemn mystery That I should be so closely bound With neither terror nor constraint, Without a murmur of complaint, And lose myself upon such ground!

On the far horizon there Heaps of cloudy darkness rest; Though the wind is in the air There is stupor east and west.

For the sky no change is making, Scarce we know it from the plain; Droop its eyelids never waking, Blinded by the misty rain;

Save on high one little spot, Round the baffled moon a space Where the tumult ceaseth not: Wildly goes the midnight race!

And a joy doth rise in me Upward gazing on the sight, When I think that others see In yon clouds a like delight;

How perchance an aged man Struggling with the wind and rain, In the moonlight cold and wan Feels his heart grow young again;

As the cloudy rack goes by, How the life-blood mantles up Till the fountain deep and dry Yields once more a sparkling cup.

Or upon the gazing child Cometh down a thought of glory Which will keep him undefiled Till his head is old and hoary.

For it may be he hath woke And hath raised his fair young form; Strangely on his eyes have broke All the splendours of the storm;

And his young soul forth doth leap With the storm-clouds in the moon; And his heart the light will keep Though the vision passeth soon.

Thus a joy hath often laughed On my soul from other skies, Bearing on its wings a draught From the wells of Paradise,

For that not to me alone Comes a splendour out of fear; Where the light of heaven hath shone There is glory far and near.

Of the poor bird that cannot fly Kindly you think and mournfully; For prisoners and for exiles all You let the tears of pity fall; And very true the grief should be That mourns the bondage of the free.

The soul⁠— she has a fatherland; Binds her not many a tyrant’s hand? And the winged spirit has a home, But can she always homeward come? Poor souls, with all their wounds and foes, Will you not also pity those?

Father, I cry to thee for bread With hungred longing, eager prayer; Thou hear’st, and givest me instead More hunger and a half-despair.

O Lord, how long? My days decline, My youth is lapped in memories old; I need not bread alone, but wine⁠— See, cup and hand to thee I hold!

And yet thou givest: thanks, O Lord, That still my heart with hunger faints! The day will come when at thy board I sit, forgetting all my plaints.

If rain must come and winds must blow, And I pore long o’er dim-seen chart, Yet, Lord, let not the hunger go, And keep the faintness at my heart.

Through the unchanging heaven, as ye have sped, Speed onward still, a strange wild company, Fleet children of the waters! Glorious ye, Whether the sun lift up his shining head, High throned at noontide and established Among the shifting pillars, or we see The sable ghosts of air sleep mournfully Against the sunlight, passionless and dead! Take thus a glory, oh thou higher Sun, From all the cloudy labour of man’s hand⁠— Whether the quickening nations rise and run, Or in the market-place we idly stand Casting huge shadows over these thy plains⁠— Even thence, O God, draw thy rich gifts of rains.

I have not any fearful tale to tell Of fabled giant or of dragon-claw, Or bloody deed to pilfer and to sell To those who feed, with such, a gaping maw; But what in yonder hamlet there befell, Or rather what in it my fancy saw, I will declare, albeit it may seem Too simple and too common for a dream.

Two brothers were they, and they sat alone Without a word, beside the winter’s glow; For it was many years since they had known The love that bindeth brothers, till the snow Of age had frozen it, and it had grown An icy-withered stream that would not flow; And so they sat with warmth about their feet And ice about their hearts that would not beat.

And yet it was a night for quiet hope:⁠— A night the very last of all the year To many a youthful heart did seem to ope An eye within the future, round and clear; And age itself, that travels down the slope, Sat glad and waiting as the hour drew near, The dreamy hour that hath the heaviest chime, Jerking our souls into the coming time.

But they!⁠—alas for age when it is old! The silly calendar they did not heed; Alas for age when in its bosom cold There is not warmth to nurse a bladed weed! They thought not of the morrow, but did hold A quiet sitting as their hearts did feed Inwardly on themselves, as still and mute As if they were a-cold from head to foot.

O solemn kindly night, she looketh still With all her moon upon us now and then! And though she dwelleth most in craggy hill, She hath an eye unto the hearts of men! So past a corner of the window-sill She thrust a long bright finger just as ten Had struck, and on the dial-plate it came, Healing each hour’s raw edge with tender flame.

There is a something in the winds of heaven That stirreth purposely and maketh men; And unto every little wind is given A thing to do ere it is still again; So when the little clock had struck eleven, The edging moon had drawn her silver pen Across a mirror, making them aware Of something ghostlier than their own grey hair.

Therefore they drew aside the window-blind And looked upon the sleeping town below, And on the little church which sat behind As keeping watch upon the scanty row Of steady tombstones⁠—some of which inclined And others upright, in the moon did show Like to a village down below the waves⁠— It was so still and cool among the graves.

But not a word from either mouth did fall, Except it were some very plain remark. Ah! why should such as they be glad at all? For years they had not listened to the lark! The child was dead in them!⁠—yet did there crawl A wish about their hearts; and as the bark Of distant sheep-dog came, they were aware Of a strange longing for the open air.

Ah! many an earthy-weaving year had spun A web of heavy cloud about their brain! And many a sun and moon had come and gone Since they walked arm in arm, these brothers twain! But now with timed pace their feet did stun The village echoes into quiet pain: The street appeared very short and white, And they like ghosts unquiet for the light.

“Right through the churchyard,” one of them did say —I knew not which was elder of the two⁠— “Right through the churchyard is our better way.” “Ay,” said the other, “past the scrubby yew. I have not seen her grave for many a day; And it is in me that with moonlight too It might be pleasant thinking of old faces, And yet I seldom go into such places.”

Strange, strange indeed to me the moonlight wan Sitting about a solitary stone! Stranger than many tales it is to scan The earthy fragment of a human bone; But stranger still to see a grey old man Apart from all his fellows, and alone With the pale night and all its giant quiet; Therefore that stone was strange and those two by it.

It was their mother’s grave, and here were hid The priceless pulses of a mother’s soul. Full sixty years it was since she had slid Into the other world through that deep hole. But as they stood it seemed the coffin-lid Grew deaf with sudden hammers!⁠—’twas the mole Niddering about its roots.⁠—Be still, old men, Be very still and ye will hear again.

Ay, ye will hear it! Ye may go away, But it will stay with you till ye are dead! It is but earthy mould and quiet clay, But it hath power to turn the oldest head. Their eyes met in the moon, and they did say More than a hundred tongues had ever said. So they passed onwards through the rapping wicket Into the centre of a firry thicket.

It was a solemn meeting of Earth’s life, An inquest held upon the death of things; And in the naked north full thick and rife The snow-clouds too were meeting as on wings Shorn round the edges by the frost’s keen knife; And the trees seemed to gather into rings, Waiting to be made blind, as they did quail Among their own wan shadows thin and pale.

Many strange noises are there among trees, And most within the quiet moony light, Therefore those aged men are on their knees As if they listened somewhat:⁠—Ye are right⁠— Upwards it bubbles like the hum of bees! Although ye never heard it till to-night, The mighty mother calleth ever so To all her pale-eyed children from below.

Ay, ye have walked upon her paven ways, And heard her voices in the market-place, But ye have never listened what she says When the snow-moon is pressing on her face! One night like this is more than many days To him who hears the music and the bass Of deep immortal lullabies which calm His troubled soul as with a hushing psalm.

I know not whether there is power in sleep To dim the eyelids of the shining moon, But so it seemed then, for still more deep She grew into a heavy cloud, which, soon Hiding her outmost edges, seemed to keep A pressure on her; so there came a swoon Among the shadows, which still lay together But in their slumber knew not one another.

But while the midnight groped for the chime As she were heavy with excess of dreams, She from the cloud’s thick web a second time Made many shadows, though with minished beams; And as she looked eastward through the rime Of a thin vapour got of frosty steams, There fell a little snow upon the crown Of a near hillock very bald and brown.

And on its top they found a little spring, A very helpful little spring indeed, Which evermore unwound a tiny string Of earnest water with continual speed⁠— And so the brothers stood and heard it sing; For all was snowy-still, and not a seed Had struck, and nothing came but noises light Of the continual whitening of the night.

There is a kindness in the falling snow⁠— It is a grey head to the spring time mild; So as the creamy vapour bowed low Crowning the earth with honour undefiled, Within each withered man arose a glow As if he fain would turn into a child: There was a gladness somewhere in the ground Which in his bosom nowhere could be found!

Not through the purple summer or the blush Of red voluptuous roses did it come That silent speaking voice, but through the slush And snowy quiet of the winter numb! It was a barren mound that heard the gush Of living water from two fountains dumb⁠— Two rocky human hearts which long had striven To make a pleasant noise beneath high heaven!

Now from the village came the onward shout Of lightsome voices and of merry cheer; It was a youthful group that wandered out To do obeisance to the glad new year; And as they passed they sang with voices stout A song which I was very fain to hear, But as they darkened on, away it died, And the two men walked homewards side by side.

Mourn Not, My Friends, That We Are Growing Old

Mourn not, my friends, that we are growing old: A fresher birth brings every new year in. Years are Christ’s napkins to wipe off the sin. See now, I’ll be to you an angel bold! My plumes are ruffled, and they shake with cold, Yet with a trumpet-blast I will begin. —Ah, no; your listening ears not thus I win! Yet hear, sweet sisters; brothers, be consoled:⁠— Behind me comes a shining one indeed; Christ’s friend, who from life’s cross did take him down, And set upon his day night’s starry crown! “Death,” say’st thou? Nay⁠—thine be no caitiff creed!⁠— A woman-angel! see⁠—in long white gown! The mother of our youth!⁠—she maketh speed.

When the summer gave us a longer day, And the leaves were thickest, I went away: Like an isle, through dark clouds, of the infinite blue, Was that summer-ramble from London and you.

It was but one burst into life and air, One backward glance on the skirts of care, A height on the hills with the smoke below⁠— And the joy that came quickly was quick to go.

But I know and I cannot forget so soon How the Earth is shone on by Sun and Moon; How the clouds hide the mountains, and how they move When the morning sunshine lies warm above.

I know how the waters fall and run In the rocks and the heather, away from the sun; How they hang like garlands on all hill-sides, And are the land’s music, those crystal tides.

I know how they gather in valleys fair, Meet valleys those beautiful waves to bear; How they dance through the rocks, how they rest in the pool, How they darken, how sparkle, and how they are cool.

I know how the rocks from their kisses climb To keep the storms off with a front sublime; And how on their platforms and sloping walls The shadow of oak-tree and fir-tree falls.

I know how the valleys are bright from far, Rocks, meadows, and waters, the wood and the scaur; And how the roadside and the nearest hill The foxglove and heather and harebell fill.

I know⁠—but the joy that was quick to go Gave more knowledge to me than words can show; And you know the story, and how they fare Who love the green earth and the heavenly air.

Come to me, come to me, O my God; Come to me everywhere! Let the trees mean thee, and the grassy sod, And the water and the air!

For thou art so far that I often doubt, As on every side I stare, Searching within, and looking without, If thou canst be anywhere.

How did men find thee in days of old? How did they grow so sure? They fought in thy name, they were glad and bold, They suffered, and kept themselves pure!

But now they say⁠—neither above the sphere Nor down in the heart of man, But solely in fancy, ambition, and fear The thought of thee began.

If only that perfect tale were true Which ages have not made old, Which of endless many makes one anew, And simplicity manifold!

But he taught that they who did his word The truth of it sure would know: I will try to do it: if he be lord Again the old faith will glow;

Again the old spirit-wind will blow That he promised to their prayer; And obeying the Son, I too shall know His father everywhere!

O Mother Earth, I have a fear Which I would tell to thee⁠— Softly and gently in thine ear When the moon and we are three.

Thy grass and flowers are beautiful; Among thy trees I hide; And underneath the moonlight cool Thy sea looks broad and wide;

But this I fear⁠—lest thou shouldst grow To me so small and strange, So distant I should never know On thee a shade of change,

Although great earthquakes should uplift Deep mountains from their base, And thy continual motion shift The lands upon thy face;⁠—

The grass, the flowers, the dews that lie Upon them as before⁠— Driven upwards evermore, lest I Should love these things no more.

Even now thou dimly hast a place In deep star galaxies! And I, driven ever on through space, Have lost thee in the skies!

Out of thy door I run to do the thing That calls upon me. Straight the wind of words Whoops from mine ears the sounds of them that sing About their work, “My God, my father-king!”

I turn in haste to see thy blessed door, But, lo, a cloud of flies and bats and birds, And stalking vapours, and vague monster-herds Have risen and lighted, rushed and swollen between!

Ah me! the house of peace is there no more. Was it a dream then?⁠—Walls, fireside, and floor, And sweet obedience, loving, calm, and free, Are vanished⁠—gone as they had never been!

I labour groaning. Comes a sudden sheen!⁠— And I am kneeling at my father’s knee, Sighing with joy, and hoping utterly.

A Fragment.

When the cock crows loud from the glen, And the moor-cock chirrs from the heather, What hear ye and see ye then, Ye children of air and ether?

A thunder as of waves at the rising of the moon, And a darkness on the graves though the day is at its noon.

A springing as of grass though the air is damp and chill, And a glimmer from the river that winds about the hill.

A lapse of crags that leant from the mountain’s earthen sheath, And a shock of ruin sent on the river underneath.

A sound as of a building that groweth fair and good, And a piping of the thrushes from the hollow of the wood.

A wailing as of lambs that have wandered from the flock, And a bleating of their dams that was answered from the rock.

A breathing as of cattle in the shadow where they dream, And a sound of children playing with the pebbles in the stream.

A driving as of clouds in the kingdom of the air, And a tumult as of crowds that mingle everywhere.

A waving of the grass, and a passing o’er the lakes, And a shred of tempest-cloud in the glory when it breaks.

In God alone, the perfect end, Wilt thou find thyself or friend.

They come to thee, the halt, the maimed, the blind, The devil-torn, the sick, the sore; Thy heart their well of life they find, Thine ear their open door.

Ah, who can tell the joy in Palestine⁠— What smiles and tears of rescued throngs! Their lees of life were turned to wine, Their prayers to shouts and songs!

The story dear our wise men fable call, Give paltry facts the mighty range; To me it seems just what should fall, And nothing very strange.

But were I deaf and lame and blind and sore, I scarce would care for cure to ask; Another prayer should haunt thy door⁠— Set thee a harder task.

If thou art Christ, see here this heart of mine, Torn, empty, moaning, and unblest! Had ever heart more need of thine, If thine indeed hath rest?

Thy word, thy hand right soon did scare the bane That in their bodies death did breed; If thou canst cure my deeper pain Then art thou lord indeed.

Oh that a wind would call From the depths of the leafless wood! Oh that a voice would fall On the ear of my solitude! Far away is the sea, With its sound and its spirit tone; Over it white clouds flee; But I am alone, alone.

Straight and steady and tall The trees stand on their feet; Fast by the old stone wall The moss grows green and sweet; But my heart is full of fears, For the sun shines far away; And they look in my face through tears, And the light of a dying day.

My heart was glad last night As I pressed it with my palm; Its throb was airy and light As it sang some spirit psalm; But it died away in my breast As I wandered forth to-day⁠— As a bird sat dead on its nest, While others sang on the spray.

O weary heart of mine, Is there ever a Truth for thee? Will ever a sun outshine But the sun that shines on me? Away, away through the air The clouds and the leaves are blown; And my heart hath need of prayer, For it sitteth alone, alone.

I see thy house, but I am blown about, A wind-mocked kite, between the earth and sky, All out of doors⁠—alas! of thy doors out, And drenched in dews no summer suns can dry.

For every blast is passion of my own; The dews cold sweats of selfish agony; Dank vapour steams from memories lying prone; And all my soul is but a stifled cry.

Lord, thou dost hold my string, else were I driven Down to some gulf where I were tossed no more, No turmoil telling I was not in heaven, No billows raving on a blessed shore.

Thou standest on thy door-sill, calm as day, And all my throbs and pangs are pulls from thee; Hold fast the string, lest I should break away And outer dark and silence swallow me.

III

No longer fly thy kite, Lord; draw me home. Thou pull’st the string through all the distance bleak; Lord, I am nearing thee; O Lord, I come; Thy pulls grow stronger and the wind grows weak.

In thy remodelling hands thou tak’st thy kite; A moment to thy bosom hold’st me fast. Thou flingest me abroad:⁠—lo, in thy might A strong-winged bird I soar on every blast!

I honour Nature, holding it unjust To look with jealousy on her designs; With every passing year more fast she twines About my heart; with her mysterious dust Claim I a fellowship not less august Although she works before me and combines Her changing forms, wherever the sun shines Spreading a leafy volume on the crust Of the old world; and man himself likewise Is of her making: wherefore then divorce What God hath joined thus, and rend by force Spirit away from substance, bursting ties By which in one great bond of unity God hath together bound all things that be?

And in these lines my purpose is to show That He who left the Father, though he came Not with art-splendour or the earthly flame Of genius, yet in that he did bestow His own true loving heart, did cause to grow, Unseen and buried deep, whate’er we name The best in human art, without the shame Of idle sitting in most real woe; And that whate’er of Beautiful and Grand The Earth contains, by him was not despised, But rather was so deeply realized In word and deed, though not with artist hand, That it was either hid or all disguised From those who were not wise to understand.

III

Art is the bond of weakness, and we find Therein acknowledgment of failing power: A man would worship, gazing on a flower⁠— Onward he passeth, lo his eyes are blind! The unenlivened form he left behind Grew up within him only for an hour! And he will grapple with Nature till the dower Of strength shall be retreasured in his mind. And each form-record is a high protest Of treason done unto the soul of man, Which, striving upwards, ever is oppress’d By the old bondage, underneath whose ban He, failing in his struggle for the best, Must live in pain upon what food he can.

Moreover, were there perfect harmony ’Twixt soul and Nature, we should never waste The precious hours in gazing, but should haste To assimilate her offerings, and we From high life-elements, as doth the tree, Should grow to higher; so what we call Taste Is a slow living as of roots encased In the grim chinks of some sterility Both cramping and withholding. Art is Truth, But Truth dammed up and frozen, gagged and bound As is a streamlet icy and uncouth Which pebbles hath and channel but no sound: Give it again its summer heart of youth And it will be a life upon the ground.

And Love had not been prisoned in cold stone, Nor Beauty smeared on the dead canvas so, Had not their worshipper been forced to go Questful and restless through the world alone, Searching but finding not, till on him shone Back from his own deep heart a chilly glow As of a frost-nipped sunbeam, or of snow Under a storm-dodged crescent which hath grown Wasted to mockery; and beneath such gleam His wan conceits have found an utterance, Which, had they found a true and sunny beam, Had ripened into real touch and glance⁠— Nay more, to real deed, the Truth of all, To some perfection high and personal.

“But yet the great of soul have ever been The first to glory in all works of art; For from the genius-form would ever dart A light of inspiration, and a sheen As of new comings; and ourselves have seen Men of stern purpose to whose eyes would start Sorrow at sight of sorrow though no heart Did riot underneath that chilly, screen; And hence we judge such utterance native to The human soul⁠—expression highest⁠—best.” —Nay, it is by such sign they will pursue, Albeit unknowing, Beauty, without rest; And failing in the search, themselves will fling Speechless before its shadow, worshipping.

VII

And how shall he whose mission is to bring The soul to worship at its rightful shrine, Seeing in Beauty what is most divine, Give out the mightiest impulse, and thus fling His soul into the future, scattering The living seed of wisdom? Shall there shine From underneath his hand a matchless line Of high earth-beauties, till the wide world ring With the far clang that tells a missioned soul, Kneeling to homage all about his feet? Alas for such a gift were this the whole, The only bread of life men had to eat! Lo, I behold them dead about him now, And him the heart of death, for all that brow!

VIII

If Thou didst pass by Art, thou didst not scorn The souls that by such symbol yearned in vain From Truth and Love true nourishment to gain: On thy warm breast, so chilly and forlorn Fell these thy nurslings little more than born That thou wast anguished, and there fell a rain From thy blest eyelids, and in grief and pain Thou partedst from them yet one night and morn To find them wholesome food and nourishment Instead of what their blindness took for such, Laying thyself a seed in earthen rent From which, outspringing to the willing touch, Riseth for all thy children harvest great, For which they will all learn to bless thee yet.

Thou sawest Beauty in the streaking cloud When grief lift up those eyelids; nor in scorn Broke ever on thine eyes the purple morn Along the cedar tops; to thee aloud Spake the night-solitude, when hushed and bowed The earth lay at thy feet stony and worn; Loving thou markedst when the lamb unshorn Was glad before thee, and amongst the crowd Famished and pent in cities did thine eye Read strangest glory⁠—though in human art No record lives to tell us that thy heart Bowed to its own deep beauty: deeper did lie The burden of thy mission, even whereby We know that Beauty liveth where Thou art.

Doubtless thine eyes have watched the sun aspire From that same Olivet, when back on thee Flushed upwards after some night-agony Thy proper Godhead, with a purer fire Purpling thy Infinite, and in strong desire Thou sattest in the dawn that was to be Uplifted on our dark perplexity. Yea in thee lay thy soul, a living lyre, And each wild beauty smote it, though the sound Rung to the night-winds oft and desert air; Beneath thine eyes the lily paled more fair, And each still shadow slanting on the ground Lay sweetly on thee as commissioned there, So full wast thou of eyes all round and round.

And so thou neededst not our human skill To fix what thus were transient⁠—there it grew Wedded to thy perfection; and anew With every coming vision rose there still Some living principle which did fulfil Thy most legitimate manhood; and unto Thy soul all Nature rendered up its due With not a contradiction; and each hill And mountain torrent and each wandering light Grew out divinely on thy countenance, Whereon, as we are told, by word and glance Thy hearers read an ever strange delight⁠—So strange to them thy Truth, they could not tell What made thy message so unspeakable.

XII

And by such living witness didst thou preach: Not with blind hands of groping forward thrust Into the darkness, gathering only dust, But by this real sign⁠—that thou didst reach, In natural order, rising each from each, Thy own ideals of the True and Just; And that as thou didst live, even so he must Who would aspire his fellow-men to teach, Looking perpetual from new heights of Thought On his old self. Of art no scorner thou! Instead of leafy chaplet, on thy brow Wearing the light of manhood, thou hast brought Death unto Life! Above all statues now, Immortal Artist, hail! thy work is wrought!

XIII

Solemn and icy stand ye in my eyes, Far up into the niches of the Past, Ye marble statues, dim and holden fast Within your stony homes! nor human cries Had shook you from your frozen fantasies Or sent the life-blood through you, till there passed Through all your chilly bulks a new life-blast From the Eternal Living, and ye rise From out your stiffened postures rosy-warm, Walking abroad a goodly company Of living virtues at that wondrous charm, As he with human heart and hand and eye Walked sorrowing upon our highways then, The Eternal Father’s living gift to men!

XIV

As the pent torrent in uneasy rest Under the griping rocks, doth ever keep A monstrous working as it lies asleep In the round hollow of some mountain’s breast, Till where it hideth in its sweltering nest Some earthquake finds it, and its waters leap Forth to the sunshine down the mighty steep, So in thee once was anguished forth the quest Whereby man sought for life-power as he lay Under his own proud heart and black despair Wedged fast and stifled up with loads of care, Yet at dumb struggle with the tyrant clay; Thou wentest down below the roots of prayer, And he hath cried aloud since that same day!

As he that parts in hatred from a friend Mixing with other men forgets the woe Which anguished him when he beheld and lo Two souls had fled asunder which did bend Under the same blue heaven! yet ere the end, When the loud world hath tossed him to and fro, Will often strangely reappear that glow At simplest memory which some chance may send, Although much stronger bonds have lost their power: So thou God-sent didst come in lowly guise, Striking on simple chords⁠—not with surprise Or mightiest recollectings in that hour, But like remembered fragrance of a flower A man with human heart and loving eyes.

March, 1852.

Job 14:13⁠–⁠15

Rondel

Would that thou hid me in the grave And kept me with death’s gaoler-care; Until thy wrath away should wear A sentence fixed thy prisoner gave! I would endure with patience brave So thou remembered I was there! Would that thou hid me in the grave, And kept me with death’s gaoler-care!

To see thy creature thou wouldst crave⁠— Desire thy handiwork so fair; Then wouldst thou call through death’s dank air And I would answer from the cave! Would that thou hid me in the grave, And kept me with death’s gaoler-care!

I woke at midnight, and my heart, My beating heart, said this to me: Thou seest the moon, how calm and bright! The world is fair by day and night, But what is that to thee? One touch to me, down dips the light Over the land and sea. All is mine, all is my own! Toss the purple fountain high! The breast of man is a vat of stone; I am alive, I, only I!

One little touch and all is dark⁠— The winter with its sparkling moons, The spring with all her violets, The crimson dawns and rich sunsets, The autumn’s yellowing noons! I only toss my purple jets, And thou art one that swoons Upon a night of gust and roar, Shipwrecked among the waves, and seems Across the purple hills to roam: Sweet odours touch him from the foam, And downward sinking still he dreams He walks the clover fields at home And hears the rattling teams. All is mine, all is my own! Toss the purple fountain high! The breast of man is a vat of stone; I am alive, I, only I!

Thou hast beheld a throated fountain spout Full in the air, and in the downward spray A hovering Iris span the marble tank, Which, as the wind came, ever rose and sank, Violet and red; so my continual play Makes beauty for the Gods with many a prank Of human excellence, while they, Weary of all the noon, in shadows sweet, Supine and heavy-eyed rest in the boundless heat. Let the world’s fountain play! Beauty is pleasant in the eyes of Jove; Betwixt the wavering shadows where he lies He marks the dancing column with his eyes Celestial, and amid his inmost grove Upgathers all his limbs, serenely blest, Lulled by the mellow noise of the great world’s unrest.

One heart beats in all nature, differing But in the work it works; its doubts and clamours Are but the waste and brunt of instruments Wherewith a work is done, or as the hammers On forge Cyclopean plied beneath the rents Of lowest Etna, conquering into shape The hard and scattered ore; Choose thou narcotics, and the dizzy grape Outworking passion, lest with horrid crash Thy life go from thee in a night of pain; So tutoring thy vision, shall the flash Of dove white-breasted be to thee no more Than a white stone heavy upon the plain.

Hark, the cock crows loud! And without, all ghastly and ill, Like a man uplift in his shroud, The white, white morn is propped on the hill; And adown from the eaves, pointed and chill The icicles ’gin to glitter And the birds with a warble short and shrill Pass by the chamber-window still⁠— With a quick, uneasy twitter! Let me pump warm blood, for the cold is bitter; And wearily, wearily, one by one, Men awake with the weary sun! Life is a phantom shut in thee: I am the master and keep the key; So let me toss thee the days of old Crimson and orange and green and gold; So let me fill thee yet again With a rush of dreams from my spout amain; For all is mine, all is my own: Toss the purple fountain high! The breast of man is a vat of stone, And I am alive, I only, I!

Lord, according to thy words, I have considered thy birds; And I find their life good, And better the better understood: Sowing neither corn nor wheat They have all that they can eat; Reaping no more than they sow They have more than they could stow; Having neither barn nor store, Hungry again, they eat more.

Considering, I see too that they Have a busy life, and plenty of play; In the earth they dig their bills deep And work well though they do not heap; Then to play in the air they are not loath, And their nests between are better than both.

But this is when there blow no storms, When berries are plenty in winter, and worms, When feathers are rife, with oil enough⁠— To keep the cold out and send the rain off; If there come, indeed, a long hard frost Then it looks as thy birds were lost.

But I consider further, and find A hungry bird has a free mind; He is hungry to-day, not to-morrow, Steals no comfort, no grief doth borrow; This moment is his, thy will hath said it, The next is nothing till thou hast made it.

Thy bird has pain, but has no fear Which is the worst of any gear; When cold and hunger and harm betide him, He does not take them and stuff inside him; Content with the day’s ill he has got, He waits just, nor haggles with his lot: Neither jumbles God’s will With driblets from his own still.

But next I see, in my endeavour, Thy birds here do not live for ever; That cold or hunger, sickness or age Finishes their earthly stage; The rooks drop in cold nights, Leaving all their wrongs and rights; Birds lie here and birds lie there With their feathers all astare; And in thy own sermon, thou That the sparrow falls dost allow.

It shall not cause me any alarm, For neither so comes the bird to harm Seeing our father, thou hast said, Is by the sparrow’s dying bed; Therefore it is a blessed place, And the sparrow in high grace.

It cometh therefore to this, Lord: I have considered thy word, And henceforth will be thy bird.

Chained is the Spring. The Night-wind bold Blows over the hard earth; Time is not more confused and cold, Nor keeps more wintry mirth.

Yet blow, and roll the world about⁠— Blow, Time, blow, winter’s Wind! Through chinks of time heaven peepeth out, And Spring the frost behind.

Oh holy Sabbath bells, Ye have a pleasant voice! Through all the land your music swells, And man with one commandment tells To rest and to rejoice.

As birds rejoice to flee From dark and stormy skies To brighter lands beyond the sea Where skies are calm, and wings are free To wander and to rise;

As thirsty travellers sing, Through desert paths that pass, To hear the welcome waters spring, And see, beyond the spray they fling Tall trees and waving grass;

So we rejoice to know Your melody begun; For when our paths are parched below Ye tell us where green pastures glow And living waters run.

London, December 15, 1840.

Here is a temple strangely wrought: Within it I can see Two spirits of a diverse thought Contend for mastery.

One is an angel fair and bright, Adown the aisle comes he, Adown the aisle in raiment white, A creature fair to see.

The other wears an evil mien, And he hath doubtless slipt, A fearful being dark and lean, Up from the mouldy crypt.

Is that the roof that grows so black? Did some one call my name? Was it the bursting thunder crack That filled this place with flame?

I move⁠—I wake from out my sleep: Some one hath victor been! I see two radiant pinions sweep, And I am borne between.

Beneath the clouds that under roll An upturned face I see⁠— A dead man’s face, but, ah, the soul Was right well known to me!

A man’s dead face! Away I haste Through regions calm and fair: Go vanquish sin, and thou shall taste The same celestial air.

I have long enough been working down in my cellar, Working spade and pick, boring-chisel and drill; I long for wider spaces, airy, clear-dark, and stellar: Successless labour never the love of it did fill.

More profit surely lies in a holy, pure quiescence, In a setting forth of cups to catch the heavenly rain, In a yielding of the being to the ever waiting presence, In a lifting of the eyes upward, homeward again!

Up to my garret, its storm-windows and skylights! There I’ll lay me on the floor, and patient let the sun, The moon and the stars, the blueness and the twilights Do what their pleasure is, and wait till they have done.

But, lo, I hear a waving on the roof of great pinions! ’Tis the labour of a windmill, broad-spreading to the wind! Lo, down there goes a shaft through all the house-dominions! I trace it to a cellar, whose door I cannot find.

But there I hear ever a keen diamond-drill in motion, Now fast and now slow as the wind sits in the sails, Drilling and boring to the far eternal ocean, The living well of all wells whose water never fails.

So now I go no more to the cellar to my labour, But up to my garret where those arms are ever going; There the sky is ever o’er me, and the wind my blessed neighbour, And the prayer-handle ready turns the sails to its blowing.

Blow, blow, my blessed wind; oh, keep ever blowing! Keep the great windmill going full and free; So shall the diamond-drill down below keep going Till in burst the waters of God’s eternal sea.

Dead art thou? No more dead than was the maid Over whose couch the saving God did stand⁠— “She is not dead but sleepeth,” said, And took her by the hand!

Thee knowledge never from Life’s pathway wiled, But following still where life’s great father led, He turned, and taking up his child, Raised thee too from the dead,

O living, thou hast passed thy second birth, Found all things new, and some things lovely strange; But thou wilt not forget the earth, Or in thy loving change!

Thou foldest me in sickness; Thou callest through the cloud; I batter with the thickness Of the swathing, blinding shroud: Oh, let me see thy face, The only perfect grace That thou canst show thy child.

O father, being-giver, Take off the sickness-cloud; Saviour, my life deliver From this dull body-shroud: Till I can see thy face I am not full of grace, I am not reconciled.

Quiet, quiet dead, Have ye aught to say From your hidden bed In the earthy clay?

Fathers, children, mothers, Ye are very quiet; Can ye shout, my brothers? I would know you by it!

Have ye any words That are like to ours? Have ye any birds? Have ye any flowers?

Could ye rise a minute When the sun is warm? I would know you in it, I would take no harm.

I am half afraid In the ghostly night; If ye all obeyed I should fear you quite.

But when day is breaking In the purple east I would meet you waking⁠— One of you at least⁠—

When the sun is tipping Every stony block, And the sun is slipping Down the weathercock.

Quiet, quiet dead, I will not perplex you; What my tongue hath said Haply it may vex you!

Yet I hear you speaking With a quiet speech, As if ye were seeking Better things to teach:

“Wait a little longer, Suffer and endure Till your heart is stronger And your eyes are pure⁠—

A little longer, brother, With your fellow-men: We will meet each other Otherwhere again.”

Sometimes, O Lord, thou lightest in my head A lamp that well might pharos all the lands; Anon the light will neither rise nor spread: Shrouded in danger gray the beacon stands!

A pharos? Oh dull brain! poor dying lamp Under a bushel with an earthy smell! Mouldering it stands, in rust and eating damp, While the slow oil keeps oozing from its cell!

For me it were enough to be a flower Knowing its root in thee, the Living, hid, Ordained to blossom at the appointed hour, And wake or sleep as thou, my Nature, bid;

But hear my brethren in their darkling fright! Hearten my lamp that it may shine abroad Then will they cry⁠—Lo, there is something bright! Who kindled it if not the shining God?

When the Heart Is a Cup

When the heart is a cup In the body low lying, And wine, drop by drop Falls into that cup

From somewhere high up, It is good to be dying With the heart for a cup In the body low lying.

See how the storm of life ascends Up through the shadow of the world! Beyond our gaze the line extends, Like wreaths of vapour tempest-hurled! Grasp tighter, brother, lest the storm Should sweep us down from where we stand, And we may catch some human form We know, amongst the straining band.

See! see in yonder misty cloud One whirlwind sweep, and we shall hear The voice that waxes yet more loud And louder still approaching near!

Tremble not, brother, fear not thou, For yonder wild and mystic strain Will bring before us strangely now The visions of our youth again!

Listen! oh listen! See how its eyeballs roll and glisten With a wild and fearful stare Upwards through the shining air, Or backwards with averted look, As a child were gazing at a book Full of tales of fear and dread, When the thick night-wind came hollow and dead.

Round about it, wavering and light. As the moths flock round a candle at night, A crowd of phantoms sheeted and dumb Strain to its words as they shrilly come: Brother, my brother, dost thou hear? They pierce through the tumult sharp and clear!

“The rush of speed is on my soul, My eyes are blind with things I see; I cannot grasp the awful whole, I cannot gird the mystery! The mountains sweep like mist away; The great sea shakes like flakes of fire; The rush of things I cannot see Is mounting upward higher and higher! Oh! life was still and full of calm In yonder spot of earthly ground, But now it rolls a thunder-psalm, Its voices drown my ear in sound! Would God I were a child again To nurse the seeds of faith and power; I might have clasped in wisdom then A wing to beat this awful hour! The dullest things would take my marks⁠— They took my marks like drifted snow⁠— God! how the footsteps rise in sparks, Rise like myself and onward go! Have pity, O ye driving things That once like me had human form! For I am driven for lack of wings A shreddy cloud before the storm!”

How its words went through me then, Like a long forgotten pang, Till the storm’s embrace again Swept it far with sudden clang!⁠— Ah, methinks I see it still! Let us follow it, my brother, Keeping close to one another, Blessing God for might of will! Closer, closer, side by side! Ours are wings that deftly glide Upwards, downwards, and crosswise Flashing past our ears and eyes, Splitting up the comet-tracks With a whirlwind at our backs!

How the sky is blackening! Yet the race is never slackening; Swift, continual, and strong, Streams the torrent slope along, Like a tidal surge of faces Molten into one despair; Each the other now displaces, A continual whirl of spaces; Ah, my fainting eyesight reels As I strive in vain to stare On a thousand turning wheels Dimly in the gloom descending, Faces with each other blending!⁠— Let us beat the vapours back, We are yet upon his track.

Didst thou see a spirit halt Upright on a cloudy peak, As the lightning’s horrid fault Smote a gash into the cheek Of the grinning thunder-cloud Which doth still besiege and crowd Upward from the nether pits Where the monster Chaos sits, Building o’er the fleeing rack Roofs of thunder long and black? Yes, I see it! I will shout Till I stop the horrid rout. Ho, ho! spirit-phantom, tell Is thy path to heaven or hell? We would hear thee yet again, What thy standing amongst men, What thy former history, And thy hope of things to be! Wisdom still we gain from hearing: We would know, we would know Whither thou art steering⁠— Unto weal or woe!

Ah, I cannot hear it speaking! Yet it seems as it were seeking Through our eyes our souls to reach With a quaint mysterious speech, As with stretched and crossing palms One were tracing diagrams On the ebbing of the beach, Till with wild unmeasured dance All the tiptoe waves advance, Seize him by the shoulder, cover, Turn him up and toss him over: He is vanished from our sight, Nothing mars the quiet night Save a speck of gloom afar Like the ruin of a star!

Brother, streams it ever so, Such a torrent tide of woe? Ah, I know not; let us haste Upwards from this dreary waste, Up to where like music flowing Gentler feet are ever going, Streams of life encircling run Round about the spirit-sun! Up beyond the storm and rush With our lesson let us rise! Lo, the morning’s golden flush Meets us midway in the skies! Perished all the dream and strife! Death is swallowed up of Life!

The stars are all watching; God’s angel is catching At thy skirts in the darkness deep! Gold hinges grating, The mighty dead waiting, Why dost thou sleep?

Years without number, Ages of slumber, Stiff in the track of the infinite One! Dead, can I think it? Dropt like a trinket, A thing whose uses are done!

White wings are crossing, Glad waves are tossing, The earth flames out in crimson and green Spring is appearing, Summer is nearing⁠— Where hast thou been?

Down in some cavern, Death’s sleepy tavern, Housing, carousing with spectres of night? There is my right hand! Grasp it full tight and Spring to the light.

Wonder, oh, wonder! How the life-thunder Bursts on his ear in horror and dread! Happy shapes meet him; Heaven and earth greet him: Life from the dead!

Seek not my name⁠—it doth no virtue bear; Seek, seek thine own primeval name to find⁠— The name God called when thy ideal fair Arose in deeps of the eternal mind.

When that thou findest, thou art straight a lord Of time and space⁠—art heir of all things grown; And not my name, poor, earthly label-word, But I myself thenceforward am thine own.

Thou hearest not? Or hearest as a man Who hears the muttering of a foolish spell? My very shadow would feel strange and wan In thy abode:⁠—I say “No,” and “Farewell.”

Thou understandest? Then it is enough; No shadow-deputy shall mock my friend; We walk the same path, over smooth and rough, To meet ere long at the unending end.

Rich is the fancy which can double back All seeming forms, and from cold icicles Build up high glittering palaces where dwells Summer perfection, moulding all this wrack To spirit symmetry, and doth not lack The power to hear amidst the funeral bells The eternal heart’s wind-melody which swells In whirlwind flashes all along its track! So hath the sun made all the winter mine With gardens springing round me fresh and fair; On hidden leaves uncounted jewels shine; I live with forms of beauty everywhere, Peopling the crumbling waste and icy pool With sights and sounds of life most beautiful.

To E. M. H.

Dear friend, you love the poet’s song, And here is one for your regard. You know the “melancholy bard,” Whose grief is wise as well as strong;

Already something understand For whom he mourns and what he sings, And how he wakes with golden strings The echoes of “the silent land;”

How, restless, faint, and worn with grief, Yet loving all and hoping all, He gazes where the shadows fall, And finds in darkness some relief;

And how he sends his cries across, His cries for him that comes no more, Till one might think that silent shore Full of the burden of his loss;

And how there comes sublimer cheer⁠— Not darkness solacing sad eyes, Not the wild joy of mournful cries, But light that makes his spirit clear;

How, while he gazes, something high, Something of Heaven has fallen on him, His distance and his future dim Broken into a dawning sky!

Something of this, dear friend, you know; And will you take the book from me That holds this mournful melody, And softens grief to sadness so?

Perhaps it scarcely suits the day Of joyful hopes and memories clear, When love should have no thought of fear, And only smiles be round your way;

Yet from the mystery and the gloom, From tempted faith and conquering trust, From spirit stronger than the dust, And love that looks beyond the tomb,

What can there be but good to win, But hope for life, but love for all, But strength whatever may befall?⁠— So for the year that you begin,

For all the years that follow this While a long happy life endures, This hope, this love, this strength be yours, And afterwards a larger bliss!

May nothing in this mournful song Too much take off your thoughts from time, For joy should fill your vernal prime, And peace your summer mild and long.

And may his love who can restore All losses, give all new good things, Like loving eyes and sheltering wings Be round us all for evermore!

They are blind, and they are dead: We will wake them as we go; There are words have not been said, There are sounds they do not know: We will pipe and we will sing⁠— With the Music and the Spring Set their hearts a wondering!

They are tired of what is old, We will give it voices new; For the half hath not been told Of the Beautiful and True. Drowsy eyelids shut and sleeping! Heavy eyes oppressed with weeping! Flashes through the lashes leaping!

Ye that have a pleasant voice, Hither come without delay; Ye will never have a choice Like to that ye have to-day: Round the wide world we will go, Singing through the frost and snow Till the daisies are in blow.

Ye that cannot pipe or sing, Ye must also come with speed; Ye must come, and with you bring Weighty word and weightier deed⁠— Helping hands and loving eyes! These will make them truly wise⁠— Then will be our Paradise.

March 27, 1852.

When the storm was proudest, And the wind was loudest, I heard the hollow caverns drinking down below; When the stars were bright, And the ground was white, I heard the grasses springing underneath the snow.

Many voices spake⁠— The river to the lake, And the iron-ribbed sky was talking to the sea; And every starry spark Made music with the dark, And said how bright and beautiful everything must be.

When the sun was setting, All the clouds were getting Beautiful and silvery in the rising moon; Beneath the leafless trees Wrangling in the breeze, I could hardly see them for the leaves of June.

When the day had ended, And the night descended, I heard the sound of streams that I heard not through the day, And every peak afar Was ready for a star, And they climbed and rolled around until the morning gray.

Then slumber soft and holy Came down upon me slowly, And I went I know not whither, and I lived I know not how; My glory had been banished, For when I woke it vanished; But I waited on its coming, and I am waiting now.

Tumultuous rushing o’er the outstretched plains; A wildered maze of comets and of suns; The blood of changeless God that ever runs With quick diastole up the immortal veins; A phantom host that moves and works in chains; A monstrous fiction, which, collapsing, stuns The mind to stupor and amaze at once; A tragedy which that man best explains Who rushes blindly on his wild career With trampling hoofs and sound of mailed war, Who will not nurse a life to win a tear, But is extinguished like a falling star;⁠— Such will at times this life appear to me Until I learn to read more perfectly.

If thou art tempted by a thought of ill, Crave not too soon for victory, nor deem Thou art a coward if thy safety seem To spring too little from a righteous will; For there is nightmare on thee, nor until Thy soul hath caught the morning’s early gleam Seek thou to analyze the monstrous dream By painful introversion; rather fill Thine eye with forms thou knowest to be truth; But see thou cherish higher hope than this⁠— hope hereafter that thou shall be fit Calm-eyed to face distortion, and to sit Transparent among other forms of youth Who own no impulse save to God and bliss.

And must I ever wake, gray dawn, to know Thee standing sadly by me like a ghost? I am perplexed with thee that thou shouldst cost This earth another turning! All aglow Thou shouldst have reached me, with a purple show Along far mountain-tops! and I would post Over the breadth of seas, though I were lost In the hot phantom-chase for life, if so Thou earnest ever with this numbing sense Of chilly distance and unlovely light, Waking this gnawing soul anew to fight With its perpetual load: I drive thee hence! I have another mountain-range from whence Bursteth a sun unutterably bright!

“And yet it moves!” Ah, Truth, where wert thou then When all for thee they racked each piteous limb? Wert thou in heaven, and busy with thy hymn When those poor hands convulsed that held thy pen? Art thou a phantom that deceives! men To their undoing? or dost thou watch him Pale, cold, and silent in his dungeon dim? And wilt thou ever speak to him again? “It moves, it moves! Alas, my flesh was weak! That was a hideous dream! I’ll cry aloud How the green bulk wheels sunward day by day! Ah me! ah me! perchance my heart was proud That I alone should know that word to speak! And now, sweet Truth, shine upon these, I pray.”

If thou wouldst live the Truth in very deed, Thou hast thy joy, but thou hast more of pain. Others will live in peace, and thou be fain To bargain with despair, and in thy need To make thy meal upon the scantiest weed. These palaces, for thee they stand in vain; Thine is a ruinous hut, and oft the rain Shall drench thee in the midnight; yea, the speed Of earth outstrip thee, pilgrim, while thy feet Move slowly up the heights. Yet will there come Through the time-rents about thy moving cell, Shot from the Truth’s own bow, and flaming sweet, An arrow for despair, and oft the hum Of far-off populous realms where spirits dwell.

Speak, Prophet of the Lord! We may not start To find thee with us in thine ancient dress, Haggard and pale from some bleak wilderness, Empty of all save God and thy loud heart, Nor with like rugged message quick to dart Into the hideous fiction mean and base; But yet, O prophet man, we need not less But more of earnest, though it is thy part To deal in other words, if thou wouldst smite The living Mammon, seated, not as then In bestial quiescence grimly dight, But robed as priest, and honoured of good men Yet thrice as much an idol-god as when He stared at his own feet from morn to night.

From out a windy cleft there comes a gaze Of eyes unearthly, which go to and fro Upon the people’s tumult, for below The nations smite each other: no amaze Troubles their liquid rolling, or affrays Their deep-set contemplation; steadily glow Those ever holier eyeballs, for they grow Liker unto the eyes of one that prays. And if those clasped hands tremble, comes a power As of the might of worlds, and they are holden Blessing above us in the sunrise golden; And they will be uplifted till that hour Of terrible rolling which shall rise and shake This conscious nightmare from us, and we wake.

One do I see and twelve; but second there Methinks I know thee, thou beloved one; Not from thy nobler port, for there are none More quiet-featured: some there are who bear Their message on their brows, while others wear A look of large commission, nor will shun The fiery trial, so their work is done; But thou hast parted with thine eyes in prayer⁠— Unearthly are they both; and so thy lips Seem like the porches of the spirit land; For thou hast laid a mighty treasure by Unlocked by Him in Nature, and thine eye Burns with a vision and apocalypse Thy own sweet soul can hardly understand.

A Boanerges too! Upon my heart It lay a heavy hour: features like thine Should glow with other message than the shine Of the earth-burrowing levin, and the start That cleaveth horrid gulfs! Awful and swart A moment stoodest thou, but less divine⁠— Brawny and clad in ruin⁠—till with mine Thy heart made answering signals, and apart Beamed forth thy two rapt eyeballs doubly clear And twice as strong because thou didst thy duty, And, though affianced to immortal Beauty, Hiddest not weakly underneath her veil The pest of Sin and Death which maketh pale: Henceforward be thy spirit doubly dear!

There is not any weed but hath its shower, There is not any pool but hath its star; And black and muddy though the waters are We may not miss the glory of a flower, And winter moons will give them magic power To spin in cylinders of diamond spar; And everything hath beauty near and far, And keepeth close and waiteth on its hour! And I, when I encounter on my road A human soul that looketh black and grim, Shall I more ceremonious be than God? Shall I refuse to watch one hour with him Who once beside our deepest woe did bud A patient watching flower about the brim?

’Tis not the violent hands alone that bring The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom, Although to these full oft the yawning tomb Owes deadly surfeit; but a keener sting, A more immortal agony will cling To the half fashioned sin which would assume Fair Virtue’s garb; the eye that sows the gloom With quiet seeds of Death henceforth to spring What time the sun of passion burning fierce Breaks through the kindly cloud of circumstance; The bitter word, and the unkindly glance, The crust and canker coming with the years, Are liker Death than arrows and the lance Which through the living heart at once doth pierce.

I pray you, all ye men who put your trust In moulds and systems and well-tackled gear, Holding that Nature lives from year to year In one continual round because she must⁠— Set me not down, I pray you, in the dust Of all these centuries, like a pot of beer⁠— A pewter-pot disconsolately clear, Which holds a potful, as is right and just! I will grow clamorous⁠—by the rood, I will, If thus ye use me like a pewter pot! Good friend, thou art a toper and a sot⁠— will not be the lead to hold thy swill, Nor any lead: I will arise and spill Thy silly beverage⁠—spill it piping hot!

Nature, to him no message dost thou bear Who in thy beauty findeth not the power To gird himself more strongly for the hour Of night and darkness. Oh, what colours rare The woods, the valleys, and the mountains wear To him who knows thy secret, and, in shower, And fog, and ice-cloud, hath a secret bower Where he may rest until the heavens are fair! Not with the rest of slumber, but the trance Of onward movement steady and serene, Where oft, in struggle and in contest keen, His eyes will opened be, and all the dance Of life break on him, and a wide expanse Roll upward through the void, sunny and green.

Ah, truant, thou art here again, I see! For in a season of such wretched weather I thought that thou hadst left us altogether, Although I could not choose but fancy thee Skulking about the hill-tops, whence the glee Of thy blue laughter peeped at times, or rather Thy bashful awkwardness, as doubtful whether Thou shouldst be seen in such a company Of ugly runaways, unshapely heaps Of ruffian vapour, broken from restraint Of their slim prison in the ocean deeps. But yet I may not chide: fall to thy books⁠— Fall to immediately without complaint⁠— There they are lying, hills and vales and brooks.

Summer, sweet Summer, many-fingered Summer! We hold thee very dear, as well we may: It is the kernel of the year to-day⁠— All hail to thee! thou art a welcome comer! If every insect were a fairy drummer, And I a fifer that could deftly play, We’d give the old Earth such a roundelay That she would cast all thought of labour from her.⁠— Ah! what is this upon my window-pane? Some sulky, drooping cloud comes pouting up, Stamping its glittering feet along the plain!⁠— Well, I will let that idle fancy drop! Oh, how the spouts are bubbling with the rain! And all the earth shines like a silver cup!

Whence do ye come, ye creatures? Each of you Is perfect as an angel! wings and eyes Stupendous in their beauty⁠—gorgeous dyes In feathery fields of purple and of blue! Would God I saw a moment as ye do! I would become a molecule in size, Rest with you, hum with you, or slanting rise Along your one dear sunbeam, could I view The pearly secret which each tiny fly⁠— Each tiny fly that hums and bobs and stirs Hides in its little breast eternally From you, ye prickly, grim philosophers With all your theories that sound so high: Hark to the buz a moment, my good sirs!

Here stands a giant stone from whose far top Comes down the sounding water: let me gaze Till every sense of man and human ways Is wrecked and quenched for ever, and I drop Into the whirl of time, and without stop Pass downward thus! Again my eyes I raise To thee, dark rock; and through the mist and haze My strength returns when I behold thy prop Gleam stern and steady through the wavering wrack. Surely thy strength is human, and like me Thou bearest loads of thunder on thy back! And, lo, a smile upon thy visage black⁠— A breezy tuft of grass which I can see Waving serenely from a sunlit crack!

Above my head the great pine-branches tower; Backwards and forwards each to the other bends, Beckoning the tempest-cloud which hither wends Like a slow-laboured thought, heavy with power: Hark to the patter of the coming shower! Let me be silent while the Almighty sends His thunder-word along⁠—but when it ends I will arise and fashion from the hour Words of stupendous import, fit to guard High thoughts and purposes, which I may wave, When the temptation cometh close and hard, Like fiery brands betwixt me and the grave Of meaner things⁠—to which I am a slave, If evermore I keep not watch and ward.

I do remember how, when very young, I saw the great sea first, and heard its swell As I drew nearer, caught within the spell Of its vast size and its mysterious tongue. How the floor trembled, and the dark boat swung With a man in it, and a great wave fell Within a stone’s cast! Words may never tell The passion of the moment, when I flung All childish records by, and felt arise A thing that died no more! An awful power I claimed with trembling hands and eager eyes, Mine, mine for ever, an immortal dower.⁠— The noise of waters soundeth to this hour When I look seaward through the quiet skies.

Hears’t thou the dash of water, loud and hoarse, With its perpetual tidings upward climb, Struggling against the wind? Oh, how sublime! For not in vain from its portentous source Thy heart, wild stream, hath yearned for its full force, But from thine ice-toothed caverns, dark as time, At last thou issuest, dancing to the rime Of thy outvolleying freedom! Lo, thy course Lies straight before thee as the arrow flies! Right to the ocean-plains away, away! Thy parent waits thee, and her sunset dyes Are ruffled for thy coming, and the gray Of all her glittering borders flashes high Against the glittering rocks!⁠—oh, haste, and fly!

Lie down upon the ground, thou hopeless one! Press thy face in the grass, and do not speak. Dost feel the green globe whirl? Seven times a week Climbeth she out of darkness to the sun, Which is her God; seven times she doth not shun Awful eclipse, laying her patient cheek Upon a pillow ghost-beset with shriek Of voices utterless, which rave and run Through all the star-penumbra, craving light And tidings of the dawn from East and West. Calmly she sleepeth, and her sleep is blest With heavenly visions, and the joy of Night Treading aloft with moons; nor hath she fright Though cloudy tempests beat upon her breast.

Oft, as I rest in quiet peace, am I Thrust out at sudden doors, and madly driven Through desert solitudes, and thunder-riven Black passages which have not any sky: The scourge is on me now, with all the cry Of ancient life that hath with murder striven. How many an anguish hath gone up to heaven, How many a hand in prayer been lifted high When the black fate came onward with the rush Of whirlwind, avalanche, or fiery spume! Even at my feet is cleft a shivering tomb Beneath the waves; or else, with solemn hush The graveyard opens, and I feel a crush As if we were all huddled in one doom!

Comes there, O Earth, no breathing time for thee, No pause upon thy many-chequered lands? Now resting on my bed with listless hands I mourn thee resting not. Continually Hear I the plashing borders of the sea Answer each other from the rocks and sands! Troop all the rivers seawards; nothing stands, But with strange noises hasteth terribly! Loam-eared hyenas go a moaning by; Howls to each other all the bloody crew Of Afric’s tigers! but, O men, from you Comes this perpetual sound more loud and high Than aught that vexes air! I hear the cry Of infant generations rising too!

One is a slow and melancholy maid; I know riot if she cometh from the skies Or from the sleepy gulfs, but she will rise Often before me in the twilight shade, Holding a bunch of poppies and a blade Of springing wheat: prostrate my body lies Before her on the turf, the while she ties A fillet of the weed about my head; And in the gaps of sleep I seem to hear A gentle rustle like the stir of corn, And words like odours thronging to my ear: “Lie still, beloved⁠—still until the morn; Lie still with me upon this rolling sphere⁠— Still till the judgment; thou art faint and worn.”

The other meets me in the public throng; Her hair streams backward from her loose attire; She hath a trumpet and an eye of fire; She points me downward, steadily and long:⁠— “There is thy grave⁠—arise, my son, be strong! Hands are upon thy crown⁠—awake, aspire To immortality; heed not the lyre Of the Enchantress, nor her poppy-song, But in the stillness of the summer calm Tremble for what is Godlike in thy being. Listen a while, and thou shall hear the psalm Of victory sung by creatures past thy seeing; And from far battle-fields there comes the neighing Of dreadful onset, though the air is balm.”

III

Maid with the poppies, must I let thee go? Alas, I may not; thou art likewise dear! I am but human, and thou hast a tear When she hath nought but splendour, and the glow Of a wild energy that mocks the flow Of the poor sympathies which keep us here: Lay past thy poppies, and come twice as near, And I will teach thee, and thou too shalt grow; And thou shalt walk with me in open day Through the rough thoroughfares with quiet grace; And the wild-visaged maid shall lead the way, Timing her footsteps to a gentler pace As her great orbs turn ever on thy face, Drinking in draughts of loving help alway.

There is a bellowing in me, as of might Unfleshed and visionless, mangling the air With horrible convulse, as if it bare The cruel weight of worlds, but could not fight With the thick-dropping clods, and could but bite A vapour-cloud! Oh, I will climb the stair Of the great universe, and lay me there Even at the threshold of his gate, despite The tempest, and the weakness, and the rush Of this quick crowding on me!⁠—Oh, I dream! Now I am sailing swiftly, as we seem To do in sleep! and I can hear the gush Of a melodious wave that carries me On, on for ever to eternity!

Cry out upon the crime, and then let slip The dogs of hate, whose hanging muzzles track The bloody secret; let the welkin crack Reverberating, while ye dance and skip About the horrid blaze! or else ye strip, More secretly, for the avenging rack, Him who hath done the deed, till, oozing black Ye watch the anguish from his nostrils drip, And all the knotted limbs lie quivering! Or, if your hearts disdain such banqueting, With wide and tearless eyes go staring through The murder cells! but think⁠—that, if your knees Bow not to holiness, then even in you Lie deeper gulfs and blacker crimes than these.

Now have I grown a sharpness and an edge Unto my future nights, and I will cut Sheer through the ebon gates that yet will shut On every set of day; or as a sledge Drawn over snowy plains; where not a hedge Breaks this Aurora’s dancing, nothing but The one cold Eskimos’ unlikely hut That swims in the broad moonlight! Lo, a wedge Of the clean meteor hath been brightly driven Right home into the fastness of the north! Anon it quickeneth up into the heaven! And I with it have clomb and spreaded forth Upon the crisp and cooling atmosphere! My soul is all abroad: I cannot find it here!

Within each living man there doth reside, In some unrifled chamber of the heart, A hidden treasure: wayward as thou art I love thee, man, and bind thee to my side! By that sweet act I purify my pride And hasten onward⁠—willing even to part With pleasant graces: though thy hue is swart, I bear thee company, thou art my guide! Even in thy sinning wise beyond thy ken To thee a subtle debt my soul is owing! I take an impulse from the worst of men That lends a wing unto my onward going; Then let me pay them gladly back again With prayer and love from Faith and Duty flowing!

O wild and dark! a night hath found me now Wherein I mingle with that element Sent madly loose through the wide staring rent In yon tormented branches! I will bow A while unto the storm, and thenceforth grow Into a mighty patience strongly bent Before the unconquering Power which hither sent These winds to fight their battles on my brow!⁠— Again the loud boughs thunder! and the din Licks up my footfall from the hissing earth! But I have found a mighty peace within, And I have risen into a home of mirth! Wildly I climb above the shaking spires, Above the sobbing clouds, up through the steady fires!

A power is on me, and my soul must speak To thee, thou grey, grey man, whom I behold With those white-headed children. I am bold To commune with thy setting, and to wreak My doubts on thy grey hair; for I would seek Thee in that other world, but I am told Thou goest elsewhere and wilt never hold Thy head so high as now. Oh I were weak, Weak even to despair, could I forego The tender vision which will give somehow Thee standing brightly one day even as now! Thou art a very grey old man, and so I may not pass thee darkly, but bestow A look of reverence on thy wrinkled brow.

Methought I stood among the stars alone, Watching a grey parched orb which onward flew Half blinded by the dusty winds that blew, Empty as Death and barren as a stone, The pleasant sound of water all unknown! When, as I looked in wonderment, there grew, High in the air above, a drop of dew, Which, gathering slowly through long cycles, shone Like a great tear; and then at last it fell Clasping the orb, which drank it greedily, With a delicious noise and upward swell Of sweet cool joy that tossed me like a sea; And then the thick life sprang as from a grave, With trees, flowers, boats upon the bounding wave!

Oh, melancholy fragment of the night Drawing thy lazy web against the sun, Thou shouldst have waited till the day was done With kindred glooms to build thy fane aright, Sublime amid the ruins of the light! But thus to shape our glories one by one With fearful hands, ere we had well begun To look for shadows⁠—even in the bright! Yet may we charm a lesson from thy breast, A secret wisdom from thy folds of thunder: There is a wind that cometh from the west Will rend thy tottering piles of gloom asunder, And fling thee ruinous along the grass, To sparkle on us as our footsteps pass!

First came the red-eyed sun as I did wake; He smote me on the temples and I rose, Casting the night aside and all its woes; And I would spurn my idleness, and take My own wild journey even like him, and shake The pillars of all doubt with lusty blows, Even like himself when his rich glory goes Right through the stalwart fogs that part and break. But ere my soul was ready for the fight, His solemn setting mocked me in the west; And as I trembled in the lifting night, The white moon met me, and my heart confess’d A mellow wisdom in her silent youth, Which fed my hope with fear, and made my strength a truth.

An angel saw me sitting by a brook, Pleased with the silence, and the melodies Of wind and water which did fall and rise: He gently stirred his plumes and from them shook An outworn doubt, which fell on me and took The shape of darkness, hiding all the skies, Blinding the sun, but giving to my eyes An inextinguishable wish to look; When, lo! thick as the buds of spring there came, Crowd upon crowd, informing all the sky, A host of splendours watching silently, With lustrous eyes that wept as if in blame, And waving hands that crossed in lines of flame, And signalled things I hope to hold although I die!

Is there a secret Joy, that may not weep, For every flower that ends its little span, For every child that groweth up to man, For every captive bird a cage doth keep, For every aching eye that went to sleep Long ages back, when other eyes began To see and know and love as now they can, Unravelling God’s wonders heap by heap? Or doth the Past lie ’mid Eternity In charnel dens that rot and reek alway, A dismal light for those that go astray, A pit of foul deformity⁠—to be, Beauty, a dreadful source of growth for thee When thou wouldst lift thine eyes to greet the day?

I missed him when the sun began to bend; I found him not when I had lost his rim; With many tears I went in search of him, Climbing high mountains which did still ascend, And gave me echoes when I called my friend; Through cities vast and charnel-houses grim, And high cathedrals where the light was dim, Through books and arts and works without an end, But found him not⁠—the friend whom I had lost. And yet I found him⁠—as I found the lark, A sound in fields I heard but could not mark; I found him nearest when I missed him most; I found him in my heart, a life in frost, A light I knew not till my soul was dark.

She comes! again she comes, the bright-eyed moon! Under a ragged cloud I found her out, Clasping her own dark orb like hope in doubt! That ragged cloud hath waited her since noon, And he hath found and he will hide her soon! Come, all ye little winds that sit without, And blow the shining leaves her edge about, And hold her fast⁠—ye have a pleasant tune! She will forget us in her walks at night Among the other worlds that are so fair! She will forget to look on our despair! She will forget to be so young and bright! Nay, gentle moon, thou hast the keys of light⁠— I saw them hanging by thy girdle there!

I came upon a fountain on my way When it was hot, and sat me down to drink Its sparkling stream, when all around the brink I spied full many vessels made of clay, Whereon were written, not without display, In deep engraving or with merely ink, The blessings which each owner seemed to think Would light on him who drank with each alway. I looked so hard my eyes were looking double Into them all, but when I came to see That they were filthy, each in his degree, I bent my head, though not without some trouble, To where the little waves did leap and bubble, And so I journeyed on most pleasantly.

I said, I will arise and work some thing, Nor be content with growth, but cause to grow A life around me, clear as yes from no, That to my restless hand some rest may bring, And give a vital power to Action’s spring: Thus, I must cease to be! I cried; when, lo! An angel stood beside me on the snow, With folded wings that came of pondering. “God’s glory flashes on the silence here Beneath the moon,” he cried, and upward threw His glorious eyes that swept the utmost blue, “Ere yet his bounding brooks run forth with cheer To bear his message to the hidden year Who cometh up in haste to make his glory new.”

There may be seeming calm above, but no!⁠— There is a pulse below which ceases not, A subterranean working, fiery hot, Deep in the million-hearted bosom, though Earthquakes unlock not the prodigious show Of elemental conflict; and this spot Nurses most quiet bones which lie and rot, And here the humblest weeds take root and grow. There is a calm upon the mighty sea, Yet are its depths alive and full of being, Enormous bulks that move unwieldily; Yet, pore we on it, they are past our seeing!⁠— From the deep sea-weed fields, though wide and ample, Comes there no rushing sound: these do not trample!

Power that is not of God, however great, Is but the downward rushing and the glare Of a swift meteor that hath lost its share In the one impulse which doth animate The parent mass: emblem to me of fate! Which through vast nightly wastes doth onward fare, Wild-eyed and headlong, rent away from prayer⁠— A moment brilliant, then most desolate! And, O my brothers, shall we ever learn From all the things we see continually That pride is but the empty mockery Of what is strong in man! Not so the stern And sweet repose of soul which we can earn Only through reverence and humility!

Yes, There Is One Who Makes Us All Lay Down

Yes, there is one who makes us all lay down Our mushroom vanities, our speculations, Our well-set theories and calculations, Our workman’s jacket or our monarch’s crown! To him alike the country and the town, Barbaric hordes or civilized nations, Men of all names and ranks and occupations, Squire, parson, lawyer, Jones, or Smith, or Brown! He stops the carter: the uplifted whip Falls dreamily among the horses’ straw; He stops the helmsman, and the gallant ship Holdeth to westward by another law; No one will see him, no one ever saw, But he sees all and lets not any slip.

They all were looking for a king To slay their foes, and lift them high: Thou cam’st a little baby thing That made a woman cry.

O son of man, to right my lot Nought but thy presence can avail; Yet on the road thy wheels are not, Nor on the sea thy sail!

My fancied ways why shouldst thou heed? Thou com’st down thine own secret stair: Com’st down to answer all my need, Yea, every bygone prayer!

The homely words how often read! How seldom fully known! “Which father of you, asked for bread, Would give his son a stone?”

How oft has bitter tear been shed, And heaved how many a groan, Because thou wouldst not give for bread The thing that was a stone!

How oft the child thou wouldst have fed, Thy gift away has thrown! He prayed, thou heard’st, and gav’st the bread: He cried, “It is a stone!”

Lord, if I ask in doubt and dread Lest I be left to moan, Am I not he who, asked for bread, Would give his son a stone?

It’s all very well, Said the Bell, To be the big Organ below! But the folk come and go, Said the Bell, And you never can tell What sort of person the Organ will blow! And, besides, it is much at the mercy of the weather For ’tis all made in pieces and glued together!

But up in my cell Next door to the sky, Said the Bell, I dwell Very high; And with glorious go I swing to and fro; I swing swift or slow, I swing as I please, With summons or knell; I swing at my ease, Said the Bell: Not the tallest of men Can reach up to touch me, To smirch me or smutch me, Or make me do what I would not be at! And, then, The weather can’t cause me to shrink or increase: I chose to be made in one perfect piece!

O wind of God, that blowest in the mind, Blow, blow and wake the gentle spring in me; Blow, swifter blow, a strong warm summer wind, Till all the flowers with eyes come out to see; Blow till the fruit hangs red on every tree, And our high-soaring song-larks meet thy dove⁠— High the imperfect soars, descends the perfect love!

Blow not the less though winter cometh then; Blow, wind of God, blow hither changes keen; Let the spring creep into the ground again, The flowers close all their eyes and not be seen: All lives in thee that ever once hath been! Blow, fill my upper air with icy storms; Breathe cold, O wind of God, and kill my cankerworms.

I cannot praise thee. By his instrument The master sits, and moves nor foot nor hand; For see the organ-pipes this, that way bent, Leaning, o’erthrown, like wheat-stalks tempest-fanned!

I well could praise thee for a flower, a dove, But not for life that is not life in me; Not for a being that is less than love⁠— A barren shoal half lifted from a sea!

Unto a land where no wind bloweth ships Thy wind one day will blow me to my own: Rather I’d kiss no more their loving lips Than carry them a heart so poor and prone!

I bless thee, Father, thou art what thou art, That thou dost know thyself what thou dost know⁠— A perfect, simple, tender, rhythmic heart, Beating its blood to all in bounteous flow.

And I can bless thee too for every smart, For every disappointment, ache, and fear; For every hook thou fixest in my heart, For every burning cord that draws me near.

But prayer these wake, not song. Thyself I crave. Come thou, or all thy gifts away I fling. Thou silent, I am but an empty grave: Think to me, Father, and I am a king!

My organ-pipes will then stand up awake, Their life soar, as from smouldering wood the blaze; And swift contending harmonies shall shake Thy windows with a storm of jubilant praise.

I have a fellowship with every shade Of changing nature: with the tempest hour My soul goes forth to claim her early dower Of living princedom; and her wings have stayed Amidst the wildest uproar undismayed! Yet she hath often owned a better power, And blessed the gentle coming of the shower, The speechless majesty of love arrayed In lowly virtue, under which disguise Full many a princely thing hath passed her by; And she from homely intercourse of eyes Hath gathered visions wider than the sky, And seen the withered heart of man arise Peaceful as God, and full of majesty.

Sighing above, Rustling below, Thorough the woods The winds go. Beneath, dead crowds; Above, life bare; And the besom tempest Sweeps the air: Heart, leave thy woe: Let the dead things go.

Through the brown Gold doth push; Misty green Veils the bush. Here a twitter, There a croak! They are coming⁠— The spring-folk! Heart, be not numb; Let the live things come.

Through the beech The winds go, With gentle speech, Long and slow. The grass is fine, And soft to lie in: The sun doth shine The blue sky in: Heart, be alive; Let the new things thrive.

Round again! Here art thou, A rimy fruit On a bare bough! Winter comes, Winter and snow; And a weary sighing To fall and go! Heart, thy hour shall be; Thy dead will comfort thee.

Why Do the Houses Stand

Why do the houses stand When they that built them are gone; When remaineth even of one That lived there and loved and planned Not a face, not an eye, not a hand, Only here and there a bone? Why do the houses stand When they who built them are gone?

Oft in the moonlighted land When the day is overblown, With happy memorial moan Sweet ghosts in a loving band Roam through the houses that stand⁠— For the builders are not gone.

The miser lay on his lonely bed; Life’s candle was burning dim. His heart in an iron chest was hid Under heaps of gold and an iron lid; And whether it were alive or dead It never troubled him.

Slowly out of his body he crept. He said, “I am just the same! Only I want my heart in my breast; I will go and fetch it out of my chest!” Through the dark a darker shadow he leapt, Saying “Hell is a fabled flame!”

He opened the lid. Oh, Hell’s own night! His ghost-eyes saw no gold!⁠— Empty and swept! Not a gleam was there! In goes his hand, but the chest is bare! Ghost-fingers, aha! have only might To close, not to clasp and hold!

But his heart he saw, and he made a clutch At the fungous puff-ball of sin: Eaten with moths, and fretted with rust, He grasped a handful of rotten dust, And shrieked, as ghosts may, at the crumbling touch, But hid it his breast within.

And some there are who see him sit Under the church, apart, Counting out coins and coins of gold Heap by heap on the dank death-mould: Alas poor ghost and his sore lack of wit⁠— They breed in the dust of his heart!

Another miser has now his chest, And it hoards wealth more and more; Like ferrets his hands go in and out, Burrowing, tossing the gold about⁠— Nor heed the heart that, gone from his breast, Is the cold heap’s bloodless core.

Now wherein differ old ghosts that sit Counting ghost-coins all day From the man who clings with spirit prone To whatever can never be his own? Who will leave the world with not one whit But a heart all eaten away?

Satan, avaunt! Nay, take thine hour, Thou canst not daunt, Thou hast no power; Be welcome to thy nest, Though it be in my breast.

Burrow amain; Dig like a mole; Fill every vein With half-burnt coal; Puff the keen dust about, And all to choke me out.

Fill music’s ways With creaking cries, That no loud praise May climb the skies; And on my labouring chest Lay mountains of unrest.

My slumber steep In dreams of haste, That only sleep, No rest, I taste⁠— With stiflings, rimes of rote, And fingers on my throat.

Satan, thy might I do defy; Live core of night I patient lie: A wind comes up the gray Will blow thee clean away.

Christ’s angel, Death, All radiant white, With one cold breath Will scare thee quite, And give my lungs an air As fresh as answered prayer.

So, Satan, do Thy worst with me Until the True Shall set me free, And end what he began, By making me a man.

Lord, What Is Man

Lord, what is man That thou art mindful of him! Though in creation’s van, Lord, what is man! He wills less than he can, Lets his ideal scoff him! Lord, what is man That thou art mindful of him!

All things are shadows of thee, Lord; The sun himself is but thy shade; My spirit is the shadow of thy word, A thing that thou hast said.

Diamonds are shadows of the sun, They gleam as after him they hark: My soul some arrows of thy light hath won. And feebly fights the dark!

All knowledges are broken shades, In gulfs of dark a scattered horde: Together rush the parted glory-grades⁠— Then, lo, thy garment, Lord!

My soul, the shadow, still is light Because the shadow falls from thee; I turn, dull candle, to the centre bright, And home flit shadowy.

Shine, Lord; shine me thy shadow still; The brighter I, the more thy shade! My motion be thy lovely moveless will! My darkness, light delayed!

Come through the gloom of clouded skies, The slow dim rain and fog athwart; Through east winds keen with wrong and lies Come and lift up my hopeless heart.

Come through the sickness and the pain, The sore unrest that tosses still; Through aching dark that hides the gain Come and arouse my fainting will.

Come through the prate of foolish words, The science with no God behind; Through all the pangs of untuned chords Speak wisdom to my shaken mind.

Through all the fears that spirits bow Of what hath been, or may befall, Come down and talk with me, for thou Canst tell me all about them all.

Hear, hear my sad lone heart entreat, Heart of all joy, below, above! Come near and let me kiss thy feet, And name the names of those I love!

Roses all the rosy way! Roses to the rosier west Where the roses of the day Cling to night’s unrosy breast!

Thou who mak’st the roses, why Give to every leaf a thorn? On thy rosy highway I Still am by thy roses torn!

Pardon! I will not mistake These good thorns that make me fret! Goads to urge me, stings to wake, For my freedom they are set.

Yea, on one steep mountain-side, Climbing to a fancied fold, Roses grasped had let me slide But the thorns did keep their hold.

Out of darkness light is born, Out of weakness make me strong: One glad day will every thorn Break into a rose of song.

Though like sparrow sit thy bird Lonely on the house-top dark, By the rosy dawning stirred Up will soar thy praising lark;

Roses, roses all his song! Roses in a gorgeous feast! Roses in a royal throng, Surging, rosing from the east!

I am a bubble Upon thy ever-moving, resting sea: Oh, rest me now from tossing, trespass, trouble! Take me down into thee.

Give me thy peace. My heart is aching with unquietness: Oh, make its inharmonious beating cease! Thy hand upon it press.

My Night! my Day! Swift night and day betwixt, my world doth reel: Potter, take not thy hand from off the clay That whirls upon thy wheel.

O Heart, I cry For love and life, pardon and hope and strength! O Father, I am thine; I shall not die, But I shall sleep at length!

Mercy to Thee, O Lord, Belongs

Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs, For as his work thou giv’st the man. From us, not thee, come all our wrongs; Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs: With small-cord whips and scorpion thongs Thou lay’st on every ill thy ban. Mercy to thee, O Lord, belongs, For as his work thou giv’st the man.

The stars are spinning their threads, And the clouds are the dust that flies, And the suns are weaving them up For the day when the sleepers arise.

The ocean in music rolls, The gems are turning to eyes, And the trees are gathering souls For the day when the sleepers arise.

The weepers are learning to smile, And laughter to glean the sighs, And hearts to bury their care and guile For the day when the sleepers arise.

Oh, the dews and the moths and the daisy-red, The larks and the glimmers and flows! The lilies and sparrows and daily bread, And the something that nobody knows!

Great-hearted child, thy very being The Son , Who know’st the hearts of all us prodigals;⁠— For who is prodigal but he who has gone Far from the true to heart it with the false?⁠— Who, who but thou, that, from the animals’, Know’st all the hearts, up to the Father’s own, Can tell what it would be to be alone!

Alone! No father!⁠—At the very thought Thou, the eternal light, wast once aghast; A death in death for thee it almost wrought! But thou didst haste, about to breathe thy last, And call’dst out “Father” ere thy spirit passed, Exhausted in fulfilling not any vow, But doing his will who greater is than thou.

That we might know him, thou didst come and live; That we might find him, thou didst come and die; The son-heart, brother, thy son-being give⁠— We too would love the father perfectly, And to his bosom go back with the cry, Father, into thy hands I give the heart Which left thee but to learn how good thou art!

There are but two in all the universe⁠— The father and his children⁠—not a third; Nor, all the weary time, fell any curse! Not once dropped from its nest an unfledged bird But thou wast with it! Never sorrow stirred But a love-pull it was upon the chain That draws the children to the father again!

O Jesus Christ, babe, man, eternal son, Take pity! we are poor where thou art rich: Our hearts are small; and yet there is not one In all thy father’s noisy nursery which, Merry, or mourning in its narrow niche, Needs not thy father’s heart, this very now, With all his being’s being, even as thou!

I Do Not Know Thy Final Will

I do not know thy final will, It is too good for me to know: Thou willest that I mercy show, That I take heed and do no ill, That I the needy warm and fill, Nor stones at any sinner throw; But I know not thy final will⁠— It is too good for me to know.

I know thy love unspeakable⁠— For love’s sake able to send woe! To find thine own thou lost didst go, And wouldst for men thy blood yet spill!⁠— How should I know thy final will, Godwise too good for me to know!

O Lord, I cannot but believe The birds do sing thy praises then, when they sing to one another, And they are lying seed-sown land when the winter makes them grieve, Their little bosoms breeding songs for the summer to unsmother!

If thou hadst finished me, O Lord, Nor left out of me part of that great gift that goes to singing, I sure had known the meaning high of the songster’s praising word, Had known upon what thoughts of thee his pearly talk he was stringing!

I should have read the wisdom hid In the storm-inspired melody of thy thrush’s bosom solemn: I should not then have understood what thy free spirit did To make the lark-soprano mount like to a geyser-column!

I think I almost understand Thy owl, his muffled swiftness, moon-round eyes, and intoned hooting; I think I could take up the part of a night-owl in the land, With yellow moon and starry things day-dreamers all confuting.

But ’mong thy creatures that do sing Perhaps of all I likest am to the housetop-haunting sparrow, That flies brief, sudden flights upon a dumpy, fluttering wing, And chirps thy praises from a throat that’s very short and narrow.

But if thy sparrow praise thee well By singing well thy song, nor letting noisy traffic quell it, It may be that, in some remote and leafy heavenly dell, He may with a trumpet-throat awake, and a trumpet-song to swell it!

A thousand houses of poesy stand around me everywhere; They fill the earth and they fill my thought, they are in and above the air; But to-night they have shut their doors, they have shut their shining windows fair, And I am left in a desert world, with an aching as if of care.

Cannot I break some little nut and get at the poetry in it? Cannot I break the shining egg of some all but hatched heavenly linnet? Cannot I find some beauty-worm, and its moony cocoon-silk spin it? Cannot I find my all but lost day in the rich content of a minute?

III

I will sit me down, all aching and tired, in the midst of this never-unclosing Of door or window that makes it look as if truth herself were dozing; I will sit me down and make me a tent, call it poetizing or prosing, Of what may be lying within my reach, things at my poor disposing!

Now what is nearest?⁠—My conscious self. Here I sit quiet and say: “Lo, I myself am already a house of poetry solemn and gay! But, alas, the windows are shut, all shut: ’tis a cold and foggy day, And I have not now the light to see what is in me the same alway!”

Nay, rather I’ll say: “I am a nut in the hard and frozen ground; Above is the damp and frozen air, the cold blue sky all round; And the power of a leafy and branchy tree is in me crushed and bound Till the summer come and set it free from the grave-clothes in which it is wound!”

But I bethink me of something better!⁠—something better, yea best! “I am lying a voiceless, featherless thing in God’s own perfect nest; And the voice and the song are growing within me, slowly lifting my breast; And his wide night-wings are closed about me, for his sun is down in the west!”

VII

Doors and windows, tents and grave-clothes, winters and eggs and seeds, Ye shall all be opened and broken and torn; ye are but to serve my needs! On the will of the Father all lovely things are strung like a string of beads For his heart to give the obedient child that the will of the father heeds.

After King David

I shall be satisfied With the seeing of thy face. When I awake, wide-eyed, I shall be satisfied With what this life did hide, The one supernal grace! I shall be satisfied With the seeing of thy face.

Every time would have its song If the heart were right, Seeing Love all tender-strong Fills the day and night.

Weary drop the hands of Prayer Calling out for peace; Love always and everywhere Sings and does not cease.

Fear, the caitiff, through the night Silent peers about; Love comes singing with a light And doth cast him out.

Hate and Guile and Wrath and Doubt Never try to sing; If they did, oh, what a rout Anguished ears would sting!

Pride indeed will sometimes aim At the finer speech, But the best that he can frame Is a peacock-screech.

Greed will also sometimes try: Happiness he hunts! But his dwelling is a sty, And his tones are grunts.

Faith will sometimes raise a song Soaring up to heaven, Then she will be silent long, And will weep at even.

Hope has many a gladsome note Now and then to pipe; But, alas, he has the throat Of a bird unripe.

Often Joy a stave will start Which the welkin rends, But it always breaks athwart, And untimely ends.

Grief, who still for death doth long, Always self-abhorred, Has but one low, troubled song, “I am sorry, Lord.”

But Love singeth in the vault. Singeth on the stair; Even for Sorrow will not halt, Singeth everywhere.

For the great Love everywhere Over all doth glow; Draws his birds up trough the air, Tends his birds below.

And with songs ascending sheer Love-born Love replies, Singing “Father” in his ear Where she bleeding lies.

Therefore, if my heart were right I should sing out clear, Sing aloud both day and night Every month in the year!

A dim, vague shrinking haunts my soul, My spirit bodeth ill⁠— As some far-off restraining bank Had burst, and waters, many a rank, Were marching on my hill;

As if I had no fire within For thoughts to sit about; As if I had no flax to spin, No lamp to lure the good things in And keep the bad things out.

The wind, south-west, raves in the pines That guard my cottage round; The sea-waves fall in stormy lines Below the sandy cliffs and chines, And swell the roaring sound.

The misty air, the bellowing wind Not often trouble me; The storm that’s outside of the mind Doth oftener wake my heart to find More peace and liberty.

Why is not such my fate to-night? Chance is not lord of things! Man were indeed a hapless wight Things, thoughts occurring as they might⁠— Chaotic wallowings!

The man of moods might merely say As by the fire he sat, “I am low spirited to-day; I must do something, work or play, Lest care should kill the cat!”

Not such my saw: I was not meant To be the sport of things! The mood has meaning and intent, And my dull heart is humbly bent To have the truth it brings.

This sense of needed shelter round, This frequent mental start Show what a poor life mine were found, To what a dead self I were bound, How feeble were my heart,

If I who think did stand alone Centre to what I thought, A brain within a box of bone, A king on a deserted throne, A something that was nought!

A being without power to be, Or any power to cease; Whom objects but compelled to see, Whose trouble was a windblown sea, A windless sea his peace!

This very sadness makes me think How readily I might Be driven to reason’s farthest brink, Then over it, and sudden sink In ghastly waves of night.

It makes me know when I am glad ’Tis thy strength makes me strong; But for thy bliss I should be sad, But for thy reason should be mad, But for thy right be wrong.

Around me spreads no empty waste, No lordless host of things; My restlessness but seeks thy rest; My little good doth seek thy best, My needs thy ministerings.

’Tis this, this only makes me safe⁠— I am, immediate, Of one that lives; I am no waif That haggard waters toss and chafe, But of a royal fate,

The born-child of a Power that lives Because it will and can, A Love whose slightest motion gives, A Freedom that forever strives To liberate his Man.

I live not on the circling air, Live not by daily food; I live not even by thinkings fair, I hold my very being there Where God is pondering good.

Because God lives I live; because He thinks, I also think; I am dependent on no laws But on himself, and without pause; Between us hangs no link.

The man that lives he knows not how May well fear any mouse! I should be trembling this same now If I did think, my Father, thou Wast nowhere in the house!

O Father, lift me on thine arm, And hold me close to thee; Lift me into thy breathing warm, Then cast me, and I fear no harm, Into creation’s sea!

In His Arms Thy Silly Lamb

In his arms thy silly lamb, Lo, he gathers to his breast! See, thou sadly bleating dam, See him lift thy silly lamb! Hear it cry, “How blest I am! Here is love, and love is rest!” In his arms thy silly lamb See him gather to his breast!

I say! hey! cousin there! I mustn’t call you brother! Yet you have a tail behind, and I have another! You pull, and I pull, though we don’t pull together: You have less hardship, and I have more weather!

Your legs are long, mine are short; I am lean, you are fatter; Your step is bold and free, mine goes pitter-patter; Your head is in the air, and mine hangs down like lead⁠— But then my two great ears are so heavy on my head!

III

You need not whisk your stump, nor turn away your nose; Poor donkeys ain’t so stupid as rich horses may suppose! I could feed in any manger just as well as you, Though I don’t despise a thistle⁠—with sauce of dust and dew!

T’other day a bishop’s cob stopped before me in a lane, With a tail as broad as oil-cake, and a close-clipped hoggy mane; I stood sideways to the hedge, but he did not want to pass, And he was so full of corn he didn’t care about the grass.

Quoth the cob, “You are a donkey of a most peculiar breed! You’ve just eaten up a thistle that was going fast to seed! If you had but let it be, you might have raised a crop! To many a coming dinner you have put a sad stop!”

I told him I was hungry, and to leave one of ten Would have spoiled my best dinner, the one I wanted then. Said the cob, “ I ought to know the truth about dinners, I don’t eat on roadsides like poor tramping sinners!”

VII

“Why don’t you take it easy? You are working much too hard! In the shafts you’ll die one day, if you’re not upon your guard! Have pity on your friends: work seems to you delectable, But believe me such a cart⁠—excuse me⁠—’s not respectable!”

VIII

I told him I must trot in the shafts where I was put, Nor look round at the cart, but set foremost my best foot; It was rather rickety, and the axle wanted oil, But I always slept at night with the deep sleep of toil!

“All very fine,” he said, “to wag your ears and parley, And pretend you quite despise my bellyfuls of barley! But with blows and with starving, and with labour over-hard, By spurs! a week will see you in the knacker’s yard.”

I thanked him for his counsel, and said I thought I’d take it, really, If he’d spare me half a feed out of four feeds daily. He tossed his head at that: “Now don’t be cheeky!” said he; “When I find I’m getting fat, I’ll think of you: keep steady.”

“Good-bye!” I said⁠—and say, for you are such another! Why, now I look at you, I see you are his brother! Yes, thank you for your kick: ’twas all that you could spare, For, sure, they clip and singe you very, very bare!

XII

My cart it is upsets you! but in that cart behind There’s no dirt or rubbish, no bags of gold or wind! There’s potatoes there, and wine, and corn, and mustard-seed, And a good can of milk, and some honey too, indeed!

XIII

Few blows I get, some hay, and of water many a draught: I tell you he’s no coster that sits upon my shaft! And for the knacker’s yard⁠—that’s not my destined bed: No donkey ever yet saw himself there lying dead.

Strait is the path? He means we must not roam? Yes; but the strait path leads into a boundless home.

By the Cradle

Close her eyes: she must not peep! Let her little puds go slack; Slide away far into sleep: Sis will watch till she comes back!

Mother’s knitting at the door, Waiting till the kettle sings; When the kettle’s song is o’er She will set the bright tea-things.

Father’s busy making hay In the meadow by the brook, Not so very far away⁠— Close its peeps, it needn’t look!

God is round us everywhere⁠— Sees the scythe glitter and rip; Watches baby gone somewhere; Sees how mother’s fingers skip!

Sleep, dear baby; sleep outright: Mother’s sitting just behind: Father’s only out of sight; God is round us like the wind.

Sweeping the Floor

Sweep and sweep and sweep the floor, Sweep the dust, pick up the pin; Make it clean from fire to door, Clean for father to come in!

Mother said that God goes sweeping, Looking, sweeping with a broom, All the time that we are sleeping, For a shilling in the room:

Did he drop it out of glory, Walking far above the birds? Or did parson make the story For the thinking afterwards?

If I were the swept-for shilling I would hearken through the gloom; Roll out fast, and fall down willing Right before the sweeping broom!

Washing the Clothes

This is the way we wash the clo’es Free from dirt and smoke and clay! Through and through the water flows, Carries Ugly right away!

This is the way we bleach the clo’es: Lay them out upon the green; Through and through the sunshine goes, Makes them white as well as clean!

This is the way we dry the clo’es: Hang them on the bushes about; Through and through the soft wind blows, Draws and drives the wetness out!

Water, sun, and windy air Make the clothes clean, white, and sweet Lay them now in lavender For the Sunday, folded neat!

Drawing Water

Dark, as if it would not tell, Lies the water, still and cool: Dip the bucket in the well, Lift it from the precious pool!

Up it comes all brown and dim, Telling of the twilight sweet: As it rises to the brim See the sun and water meet!

See the friends each other hail! “Here you are!” cries Master Sun; Mistress Water from the pail Flashes back, alive with fun!

Have you not a tale to tell, Water, as I take you home? Tell me of the hidden well Whence you, first of all, did come.

Of it you have kept some flavour Through long paths of darkling strife: Water all has still a savour Of the primal well of life!

Could you show the lovely way Back and up through sea and sky To that well? Oh, happy day, I would drink, and never die!

Jesus sits there on its brink All the world’s great thirst to slake, Offering every one to drink Who will only come and take!

Lord of wells and waters all, Lord of rains and dewy beads, Unto thee my thirst doth call For the thing thou know’st it needs!

Come home, water sweet and cool, Gift of God thou always art! Spring up, Well more beautiful, Rise in mine straight from his heart.

Cleaning the Windows

Wash the window; rub it dry; Make the ray-door clean and bright: He who lords it in the sky Loves on cottage floors to light!

Looking over sea and beck, Mountain-forest, orchard-bloom, He can spy the smallest speck Anywhere about the room!

See how bright his torch is blazing In the heart of mother’s store! Strange! I never saw him gazing So into that press before!

Ah, I see!⁠—the wooden pane In the window, dull and dead, Father called its loss a gain, And a glass one put instead!

What a difference it makes! How it melts the filmy gloom! What a little more it takes Much to brighten up a room!

There I spy a dusty streak! There a corner not quite clean! There a cobweb! There the sneak Of a spider, watching keen!

Lord of suns, and eyes that see, Shine into me, see and show; Leave no darksome spot in me Where thou dost not shining go.

Fill my spirit full of eyes, Doors of light in every part; Open windows to the skies That no moth corrupt my heart.

Said the Wind to the Moon, “I will blow you out! You stare In the air As if crying “Beware,” Always looking what I am about: I hate to be watched; I will blow you out!”

The Wind blew hard, and out went the Moon. So, deep On a heap Of clouds, to sleep Down lay the Wind, and slumbered soon, Muttering low, “I’ve done for that Moon!”

He turned in his bed: she was there again! On high In the sky With her one ghost-eye The Moon shone white and alive and plain: Said the Wind, “I will blow you out again!”

The Wind blew hard, and the Moon grew slim. “With my sledge And my wedge I have knocked off her edge! I will blow,” said the Wind, “right fierce and grim, And the creature will soon be slimmer than slim!”

He blew and he blew, and she thinned to a thread. “One puff More’s enough To blow her to snuff! One good puff more where the last was bred, And glimmer, glimmer, glum will go that thread!”

He blew a great blast, and the thread was gone. In the air Nowhere Was a moonbeam bare; Larger and nearer the shy stars shone: Sure and certain the Moon was gone!

The Wind he took to his revels once more; On down And in town, A merry-mad clown, He leaped and holloed with whistle and roar⁠— When there was that glimmering thread once more!

He flew in a rage⁠—he danced and blew; But in vain Was the pain Of his bursting brain, For still the Moon-scrap the broader grew The more that he swelled his big cheeks and blew.

Slowly she grew⁠—till she filled the night, And shone On her throne In the sky alone A matchless, wonderful, silvery light, Radiant and lovely, the queen of the night.

Said the Wind, “What a marvel of power am I! With my breath, In good faith, I blew her to death!⁠— First blew her away right out of the sky, Then blew her in: what a strength am I!”

But the Moon she knew nought of the silly affair; For, high In the sky With her one white eye, Motionless miles above the air, She never had heard the great Wind blare.

A harebell hung her wilful head: “I am tired, so tired! I wish I was dead.”

She hung her head in the mossy dell: “If all were over, then all were well!”

The Wind he heard, and was pitiful, And waved her about to make her cool.

“Wind, you are rough!” said the dainty Bell; “Leave me alone⁠—I am not well.”

The Wind, at the word of the drooping dame, Sighed to himself and ceased in shame.

“I am hot, so hot!” she moaned and said; “I am withering up; I wish I was dead!”

Then the Sun he pitied her woeful case, And drew a thick veil over his face.

“Cloud go away, and don’t be rude,” She said; “I do not see why you should!”

The Cloud withdrew. Then the Harebell cried, “I am faint, so faint!⁠—and no water beside!”

The Dew came down its millionfold path: She murmured, “I did not want a bath!”

The Dew went up; the Wind softly crept; The Night came down, and the Harebell slept.

A boy ran past in the morning gray, Plucked the Harebell, and threw her away.

The Harebell shivered, and sighed, “Oh! oh! I am faint indeed! Come, dear Wind, blow.”

The Wind blew gently, and did not speak. She thanked him kindly, but grew more weak.

“Sun, dear Sun, I am cold!” she said. He shone; but lower she drooped her head.

“O Rain, I am withering! all the blue Is fading out of me!⁠—come, please do!”

The Rain came down as fast as he could, But for all his good will he could do her no good.

She shuddered and shrivelled, and moaning said, “Thank you all kindly!” and then she was dead.

Let us hope, let us hope when she comes next year She’ll be simple and sweet! But I fear, I fear!

I Was Very Cold

I was very cold In the summer weather; The sun shone all his gold, But I was very cold⁠— Alas, we were grown old, Love and I together! Oh, but I was cold In the summer weather!

Sudden I grew warmer Though the brooks were frozen: “Truly, scorn did harm her!” I said, and I grew warmer; “Better men the charmer Knows at least a dozen!” I said, and I grew warmer Though the brooks were frozen.

Spring sits on her nest, Daisies and white clover; And my heart at rest Lies in the spring’s young nest: My love she loves me best, And the frost is over! Spring sits on her nest, Daisies and white clover!

The stars cleave the sky. Yet for us they rest, And their race-course high Is a shining nest!

The hours hurry on. But where is thy flight, Soft pavilion Of motionless night?

Earth gives up her trees To the holy air; They live in the breeze; They are saints at prayer!

Summer night, come from God, On your beauty, I see, A still wave has flowed Of eternity!

No bird can sing in tune but that the Lord Sits throned in equity above the heaven, And holds the righteous balance always even; No heart can true response to love afford Wherein from one to eight not every chord Is yet attuned by the spirits seven: For tuneful no bird sings but that the Lord Is throned in equity above high heaven.

Oh heart, by wrong unfilial scathed and scored, And from thy humble throne with mazedness driven, Take courage: when thy wrongs thou hast forgiven, Thy rights in love thy God will see restored: No bird could sing in tune but that the Lord Sits throned in equity above the heaven.

On an Engraving of Scheffer’s Christus Consolator

What human form is this? what form divine? And who are these that gaze upon his face Mild, beautiful, and full of heavenly grace, With whose reflected light the gazers shine? Saviour, who does not know it to be thine? Who does not long to fill a gazer’s place? And yet there is no time, there is no space To keep away thy servants from thy shrine! Here if we kneel, and watch with faithful eyes, Thou art not too far for faithful eyes to see, Thou art not too far to turn and look on me, To speak to me, and to receive my sighs. Therefore for ever I forget the skies, And find an everlasting Sun in thee.

Oh let us never leave that happy throng! From that low attitude of love not cease! In all the world there is no other peace, In all the world no other shield from wrong. But chiefly, Saviour, for thy feet we long⁠— For no vain quiet, for no pride’s increase⁠— But that, being weak, and Thou divinely strong, Us from our hateful selves thou mayst release. We wander from thy fold’s free holy air, Forget thy looks, and take our fill of sin! But if thou keep us evermore within, We never surely can forget thee there⁠— Breathing thy breath, thy white robe given to wear, And loving thee for all thou diedst to win!

III

To speak of him in language of our own, Is not for us too daringly to try; But, Saviour, we can read thy history Upon the faces round thy humble throne; And as the flower among the grass makes known What summer suns have warmed it from the sky, As every human smile and human sigh Is witness that we do not live alone, So in that company⁠—in those sweet tears, The first-born of a rugged melted heart, In those gaunt chains for ever torn apart, And in the words that weeping mother hears, We read the story of two thousand years, And know thee somewhat, Saviour, as thou art.

I cannot write old verses here, Dead things a thousand years away, When all the life of the young year Is in the summer day.

The roses make the world so sweet, The bees, the birds have such a tune, There’s such a light and such a heat And such a joy this June,

One must expand one’s heart with praise, And make the memory secure Of sunshine and the woodland days And summer twilights pure.

Oh listen rather! Nature’s song Comes from the waters, beating tides, Green-margined rivers, and the throng Of streams on mountain-sides.

So fair those water-spirits are, Such happy strength their music fills, Our joy shall be to wander far And find them on the hills.

A fresh young voice that sings to me So often many a simple thing, Should surely not unanswered be By all that I can sing.

Dear voice, be happy every way A thousand changing tones among, From little child’s unfinished lay To angel’s perfect song.

In dewy woods⁠—fair, soft, and green Like morning woods are childhood’s bower⁠— Be like the voice of brook unseen Among the stones and flowers;

A joyful voice though born so low, And making all its neighbours glad; Sweet, hidden, constant in its flow Even when the winds are sad.

So, strengthen in a peaceful home, And daily deeper meanings bear; And when life’s wildernesses come Be brave and faithful there.

Try all the glorious magic range, Worship, forgive, console, rejoice, Until the last and sweetest change⁠— So live and grow, dear voice.

Out of the gulf into the glory, Father, my soul cries out to be lifted. Dark is the woof of my dismal story, Thorough thy sun-warp stormily drifted!⁠— Out of the gulf into the glory, Lift me, and save my story.

I have done many things merely shameful; I am a man ashamed, my father! My life is ashamed and broken and blameful⁠— The broken and blameful, oh, cleanse and gather! Heartily shame me, Lord, of the shameful! To my judge I flee with my blameful.

Saviour, at peace in thy perfect purity, Think what it is, not to be pure! Strong in thy love’s essential security, Think upon those who are never secure. Full fill my soul with the light of thy purity: Fold me in love’s security.

O Father, O Brother, my heart is sore aching! Help it to ache as much as is needful; Is it you cleansing me, mending, remaking, Dear potter-hands, so tender and heedful? Sick of my past, of my own self aching⁠— Hurt on, dear hands, with your making.

Proud of the form thou hadst given thy vessel, Proud of myself, I forgot my donor; Down in the dust I began to nestle, Poured thee no wine, and drank deep of dishonour! Lord, thou hast broken, thou mendest thy vessel! In the dust of thy glory I nestle.

Come Home.