Volume 74 / Part 2 — POEMS BY H. G. K.

FROM THE TENTS OF KEDAR.

When rolling wastes of barren sand

Torment the exile’s eye,

And, howling o’er the thirsty land,

The furnace blasts go by;

When Nature seems, with furious beams,

To glare in wrath on me,

My breast is fain to breathe again

The freshness of the sea.

When in the night awakes the breeze,

I turn, in feverish sleep,

And seem to hear, in rustling trees,

The murmur of the deep:

Thick falls the heat, the transient cheat

But feeds my misery;

Mine ears are fain to hear again

The language of the sea.

Unnumbered smilings of the calm

The billows give their God,

To Him goes up the awful psalm

When tempests are abroad;

The ocean’s Lord my soul adored

On childhood’s bended knee;

O! I am fain to share again

The worship of the sea.

A CONFESSION.

When first I looked upon thy face,

O sister of the meek-eyed Dove!

I wondered at its gentle grace,

But never thought of love.

And when again, in later days,

Thy simple tale of grief I heard,

My heart outwent my lips’ weak praise,

But ne’er a pulse was stirred.

Slowly, at length, the feeling grew,

All common passions far above;

I found that when thyself I knew,

To know thee was to love.

But now, when years have passed, and these

Have brought us mutual joy and pain,

When children gathering round our knees

But closer draw the chain;

I find my days have been so free

From loneliness, despair, or strife,

If my late love grew dear to me,

How precious is the wife!

Nor thou with disappointment hear

A secret I had ne’er confessed,

Were that slow trust that made thee dear

Less rooted in my breast.

Not thine the vain and wanton look

On which the moths of passion feed,

Nor is thy soul such trivial book

As he who runs may read.

Nor envy I the vagrant race

Whose loves as soon as felt are gone,

Who wander on from face to face

Till age shall leave them lone.

The gourd that in a night appeared

Next noon had withered on the sand;

The oak a hundred years have reared,

For ages crowns the land.

MOVEMENT.

(India, 1853.)

In the dismal polar world,

As the night of months wears on,

The ice-bound ship, her white wings furled,

Lies torpid, and alone.

At times the sailors hear

Strange voices of the night,

And see the streamers, far and near,

Of the transient northern light.

The months draw on, night wanes,

Slow creeps the spreading dawn,

A soft wind stirs the slumbering vanes,

The winter’s power is gone.

House awnings, hoist your sails,

Your vessel moves at last;

No matter, if Atlantic gales

Should snap each straining mast;

Nor if through crashing floes,

Or mountain waves she roam;

Through icebergs and through storm she goes

To the happier skies of Home.

There is a land fast bound,

In chains of age-long night,

Encompassed by unfruitful sound,

And false precarious light.

The ages wear, night wanes,

She stirs in her helpless rest,

Loosens her old obdurate chains,

Sees day spring from the west!

Blow, low, or loud, each breath,

To regions light and warm;

Where calm is harbinger of death,

How welcome is the storm!

Brethren! if slanderous speech

Press heavy on your heart,

Remember truth is vast, and each

Beholds her but in part.

And if to alien view

We seem to slumber yet,

God sees the work begun by you,

And He will not forget.

THE POET AND THE PASSIONS.

The winds come forth from South and North,

Through the World they go,

And divers are the ends they work,

And places where they blow.

Some howl along the Polar snows,

Where the riving Icebergs roar;

And some sail o’er the weltering Sea,

And drive tall Ships before.

Some breathe on Mills by thymy downs,

And some, through Gardens fair,

Steal ’mid the flowers, and moist tree-leaves,

And in young lovers’ hair.

And others waste their strength and life,

On whirling spires of sand,

Till men the gathered poison take,

By Suez or the Caspian Lake,

From Fez to Samarcand.

Our passions thus in solitude

Are driven round and round;

Unrecognised by learned ears,

They howl in stony ground.

Time was the Poet’s music rose,

On every breeze that stirred;

In Nature’s free, unquestioned joy,

He sang as sings the bird.

Yon trifler of the curious pipe,

With all his high wrought art,

May for a moment please the ear,

But cannot touch the heart:

In a night of fabled innocence,

His simple fancies flow,

With cold fantastic images,

Like Moonlight on the snow;

While through the darkling ways of life,

The earnest crowds grope on,

And, though they may not tell their care,

The old delight is gone.

Speak in the darkness words of truth,

Upon the crowded ways,

Oh Poet, if such man there be,

In these material days!

Thou must ignore the heart no more,

In quaint reluctant rhymes,

If thou wouldst seek to cure indeed

The madness of the times:

Tell those, like fire whose souls aspire,

That God himself is love;

And that the Heaven they seek to reach

Is round them, not above:

Tell those whose self-deemed virtue brooks

No intercourse with sin,

God loves not whited sepulchres,

With rottenness within:

Tell those who sneer because their eyes

Embrace not all His plan,

The Steam-engine does many things,

But cannot make a man:

The accidents of time and space,

Their ripening lore may know;

The human soul as well was read,

Two thousand years ago:

The air that makes the furnace glow,

O’er flowery meads has blown,

Man lives by every breath of God,

And not by bread alone.

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