II. SENTIMENT.

My day began not till the twilight fell, And, lo, in ether from heaven’s sweetest well, The New Moon swam divinely isolate In maiden silence, she that makes my fate Haply not knowing it, or only so As I the secrets of my sheep may know; Nor ask I more, entirely blest if she, In letting me adore, ennoble me To height of what the Gods meant making man, As only she and her best beauty can. Mine be the love that in itself can find Seed of white thoughts, the lilies of the mind, Seed of that glad surrender of the will That finds in service self’s true purpose still; Love that in outward fairness sees the tent Pitched for an inmate far more excellent; Love with a light irradiate to the core, Lit at her lamp, but fed from inborn store; Love thrice-requited with the single joy Of an immaculate vision naught could cloy, Dearer because, so high beyond my scope, My life grew rich with her, unbribed by hope Of other guerdon save to think she knew One grateful votary paid her all her due; Happy if she, high-radiant there, resigned To his sure trust her image in his mind. O fairer even than Peace is when she comes Hushing War’s tumult, and retreating drums Fade to a murmur like the sough of bees Hidden among the noon-stilled linden-trees, Bringer of quiet, thou that canst allay The dust and din and travail of the day, Strewer of Silence, Giver of the dew That doth our pastures and our souls renew, Still dwell remote, still on thy shoreless sea Float unattained in sacred empery, Still light my thoughts, nor listen to a prayer Would make thee less imperishably fair!

Can, then, my twofold nature find content In vain conceits of airy blandishment? Ask I no more? Since yesterday I task My storm-strewn thoughts to tell me what I ask: Faint premonitions of mutation strange Steal o’er my perfect orb, and, with the change, Myself am changed; the shadow of my earth Darkens the disc of that celestial worth Which only yesterday could still suffice Upwards to waft my thoughts in sacrifice; My heightened fancy with its touches warm Moulds to a woman’s that ideal form; Nor yet a woman’s wholly, but divine With awe her purer essence bred in mine. Was it long brooding on their own surmise, Which, of the eyes engendered, fools the eyes, Or have I seen through that translucent air A Presence shaped in its seclusions bare, My Goddess looking on me from above As look our russet maidens when they love, But high-uplifted o’er our human heat And passion-paths too rough for her pearl feet? Slowly the Shape took outline as I gazed At her full-orbed or crescent, till, bedazed With wonder-working light that subtly wrought My brain to its own substance, steeping thought In trances such as poppies give, I saw Things shut from vision by sight’s sober law, Amorphous, changeful, but defined at last Into the peerless Shape mine eyes hold fast. This, too, at first I worshipt: soon, like wine, Her eyes, in mine poured, frenzy-philtred mine; Passion put Worship’s priestly raiment on And to the woman knelt, the Goddess gone. Was I, then, more than mortal made? or she Less than divine that she might mate with me? If mortal merely, could my nature cope With such o’ermastery of maddening hope? If Goddess, could she feel the blissful woe That women in their self-surrender know?

Long she abode aloof there in her heaven, Far as the grape-bunch of the Pleiad seven Beyond my madness' utmost leap; but here Mine eyes have feigned of late her rapture near, Moulded of mind-mist that broad day dispels, Here in these shadowy woods and brook-lulled dells. Have no heaven-habitants e’er felt a void In hearts sublimed with ichor unalloyed? E’er longed to mingle with a mortal fate Intense with pathos of its briefer date? Could she partake, and live, our human stains? Even with the thought there tingles through my veins Sense of unwarned renewal; I, the dead, Receive and house again the ardor fled, As once Alcestis; to the ruddy brim Feel masculine virtue flooding every limb, And life, like Spring returning, brings the key That sets my senses from their winter free, Dancing like naked fauns too glad for shame. Her passion, purified to palest flame, Can it thus kindle? Is her purpose this? I will not argue, lest I lose a bliss That makes me dream Tithonus' fortune mine, (Or what of it was palpably divine Ere came the fruitlessly immortal gift;) I cannot curb my hope’s imperious drift That wings with fire my dull mortality; Though fancy-forged, ’tis all I feel or see.

My Goddess sinks; round Latmos' darkening brow Trembles the parting of her presence now, Faint as the perfume left upon the grass By her limbs' pressure or her feet that pass By me conjectured, but conjectured so As things I touch far fainter substance show. Was it mine eyes' imposture I have seen Flit with the moonbeams on from shade to sheen Through the wood-openings? Nay, I see her now Out of her heaven new-lighted, from her brow The hair breeze-scattered, like loose mists that blow Across her crescent, goldening as they go High-kirtled for the chase, and what was shown, Of maiden rondure, like the rose half-blown. If dream, turn real! If a vision, stay! Take mortal shape, my philtre’s spell obey! If hags compel thee from thy secret sky With gruesome incantations, why not I, Whose only magic is that I distil A potion, blent of passion, thought, and will, Deeper in reach, in force of fate more rich, Than e’er was juice wrung by Thessalian witch From moon-enchanted herbs,—a potion brewed Of my best life in each diviner mood? Myself the elixir am, myself the bowl Seething and mantling with my soul of soul. Taste and be humanized: what though the cup, With thy lips frenzied, shatter? Drink it up! If but these arms may clasp, o’erquited so, My world, thy heaven, all life means I shall know.

Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half, As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams, And, as her image in a thousand streams, So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, Floating and flaming there, her images Bear to my little world’s remotest zone Glad messages of her, and her alone. With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me, (But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,) In motion gracious as a seagull’s wing, And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. If life’s most solid things illusion seem, Why should not substance wear the mask of dream? Let me believe so, then, if so I may With the night’s bounty feed my beggared day. In dreams I see her lay the goddess down With bow and quiver, and her crescent-crown Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse As down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips; And as her neck my happy arms enfold, Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss: Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, My arms are empty, my awakener fled, And, silent in the silent sky o’erhead, But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams, Herself the mother and the child of dreams.

Gone is the time when phantasms could appease My quest phantasmal and bring cheated ease; When, if she glorified my dreams, I felt Through all my limbs a change immortal melt At touch of hers illuminate with soul. Not long could I be stilled with Fancy’s dole; Too soon the mortal mixture in me caught Red fire from her celestial flame, and fought For tyrannous control in all my veins: My fool’s prayer was accepted; what remains? Or was it some eidolon merely, sent By her who rules the shades in banishment, To mock me with her semblance? Were it thus, How ’scape I shame, whose will was traitorous? What shall-compensate an ideal dimmed? How blanch again my statue virgin-limbed, Soiled with the incense-smoke her chosen priest Poured more profusely as within decreased The fire unearthly, fed with coals from far Within the soul’s shrine? Could my fallen star Be set in heaven again by prayers and tears And quenchless sacrifice of all my years, How would the victim to the flamen leap, And life for life’s redemption paid hold cheap! But what resource when she herself descends From her blue throne, and o’er her vassal bends That shape thrice-deified by love, those eyes Wherein the Lethe of all others lies? When my white queen of heaven’s remoteness tires, Herself against her other self conspires, Takes woman’s nature, walks in mortal ways, And finds in my remorse her beauty’s praise? Yet all would I renounce to dream again The dream in dreams fulfilled that made my pain, My noble pain that heightened all my years With crowns to win and prowess-breeding tears; Nay, would that dream renounce once more to see Her from her sky there looking down at me!

Goddess, reclimb thy heaven, and be once more An inaccessible splendor to adore, A faith, a hope of such transcendent worth As bred ennobling discontent with earth; Give back the longing, back the elated mood That, fed with thee, spurned every meaner good; Give even the spur of impotent despair That, without hope, still bade aspire and dare; Give back the need to worship that still pours Down to the soul that virtue it adores! Nay, brightest and most beautiful, deem naught These frantic words, the reckless wind of thought; Still stoop, still grant,—I live but in thy will; Be what thou wilt, but be a woman still! Vainly I cried, nor could myself believe That what I prayed for I would fain receive. My moon is set; my vision set with her; No more can worship vain my pulses stir. Goddess Triform, I own thy triple spell, My heaven’s queen,—queen, too, of my earth and hell!

At Carnac in Brittany, close on the bay, They show you a church, or rather the gray Ribs of a dead one, left there to bleach With the wreck lying near on the crest of the beach, Roofless and splintered with thunder-stone, ’Mid lichen-blurred gravestones all alone; ’Tis the kind of ruin strange sights to see That may have their teaching for you and me. Something like this, then, my guide had to tell, Perched on a saint cracked across when he fell; But since I might chance give his meaning a wrench, He talking his patois and I English-French, I’ll put what he told me, preserving the tone, In a rhymed prose that makes it half his, half my own. An abbey-church stood here, once on a time, Built as a death-bed atonement for crime: ’Twas for somebody’s sins, I know not whose; But sinners are plenty, and you can choose. Though a cloister now of the dusk-winged bat, ’Twas rich enough once, and the brothers grew fat, Looser in girdle and purpler in jowl, Singing good rest to the founder’s lost soul. But one day came Northmen, and lithe tongues of fire Lapped up the chapter-house, licked off the spire, And left all a rubbish-heap, black and dreary, Where only the wind sings miserere. No priest has kneeled since at the altar’s foot, Whose crannies are searched by the nightshade’s root, Nor sound of service is ever heard, Except from throat of the unclean bird, Hooting to unassoiled shapes as they pass In midnights unholy his witches' mass, Or shouting “Ho! ho!” from the belfry high As the Devil’s sabbath-train whirls by. But once a year, on the eve of All-Souls, Through these arches dishallowed the organ rolls, Fingers long fleshless the bell-ropes work, The chimes peal muffled with sea-mists mirk, The skeleton windows are traced anew On the baleful flicker of corpse-lights blue, And the ghosts must come, so the legend saith, To a preaching of Reverend Doctor Death. Abbots, monks, barons, and ladies fair Hear the dull summons and gather there: No rustle of silk now, no clink of mail, Nor ever a one greets his church-mate pale; No knight whispers love in the châtelaine’s ear His next-door neighbor this five hundred year; No monk has a sleek benedicite For the great lord shadowy now as he; Nor needeth any to hold his breath, Lest he lose the least word of Doctor Death. He chooses his text in the Book Divine, Tenth verse of the Preacher in chapter nine:— “'Whatsoever thy hand shall find thee to do, That do with thy whole might, or thou shalt rue; For no man is wealthy, or wise, or brave, In that quencher of might-be’s and would-be’s, the grave.' Bid by the Bridegroom, 'To-morrow,' ye said, And To-morrow was digging a trench for your bed; Ye said, 'God can wait; let us finish our wine;' Ye had wearied Him, fools, and that last knock was mine!” But I can’t pretend to give you the sermon, Or say if the tongue were French, Latin, or German; Whatever he preached in, I give you my word The meaning was easy to all that heard; Famous preachers there have been and be, But never was one so convincing as he; So blunt was never a begging friar, No Jesuit’s tongue so barbed with fire, Cameronian never, nor Methodist, Wrung gall out of Scripture with such a twist. And would you know who his hearers must be? I tell you just what my guide told me: Excellent teaching men have, day and night, From two earnest friars, a black and a white, The Dominican Death and the Carmelite Life; And between these two there is never strife, For each has his separate office and station, And each his own work in the congregation; Whoso to the white brother deafens his ears, And cannot be wrought on by blessings or tears, Awake in his coffin must wait and wait, In that blackness of darkness that means too late, And come once a year, when the ghost-bell tolls, As till Doomsday it shall on the eve of All-Souls, To hear Doctor Death, whose words smart with the brine Of the Preacher, the tenth verse of chapter nine.

I, walking the familiar street, While a crammed horse-car jingled through it, Was lifted from my prosy feet And in Arcadia ere I knew it. Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread, And shepherd’s pipes my ear delighted; The riddle may be lightly read: I met two lovers newly plighted. They murmured by in happy care, New plans for paradise devising, Just as the moon, with pensive stare, O’er Mistress Craigie’s pines was rising. Astarte, known nigh threescore years, Me to no speechless rapture urges; Them in Elysium she enspheres, Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges. The railings put forth bud and bloom, The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them, And light-winged Loves in every room Make nests, and then with kisses line them. O sweetness of untasted life! O dream, its own supreme fulfilment! O hours with all illusion rife, As ere the heart divined what ill meant! “Et ego,” sighed I to myself, And strove some vain regrets to bridle, “Though now laid dusty on the shelf, Was hero once of such an idyl! “An idyl ever newly sweet, Although since Adam’s day recited, Whose measures time them to Love’s feet, Whose sense is every ill requited.” Maiden, if I may counsel, drain Each drop of this enchanted season, For even our honeymoons must wane, Convicted of green cheese by Reason. And none will seem so safe from change, Nor in such skies benignant hover, As this, beneath whose witchery strange You tread on rose-leaves with your lover. The glass unfilled all tastes can fit, As round its brim Conjecture dances; For not Mephisto’s self hath wit To draw such vintages as Fancy’s. When our pulse beats its minor key, When play-time halves and school-time doubles, Age fills the cup with serious tea, Which once Dame Clicquot starred with bubbles. “Fie, Mr. Graybeard! Is this wise? Is this the moral of a poet, Who, when the plant of Eden dies, Is privileged once more to sow it? “That herb of clay-disdaining root, From stars secreting what it feeds on, Is burnt-out passion’s slag and soot Fit soil to strew its dainty seeds on? “Pray, why, if in Arcadia once, Need one so soon forget the way there? Or why, once there, be such a dunce As not contentedly to stay there?” Dear child, ’twas but a sorry jest, And from my heart I hate the cynic Who makes the Book of Life a nest For comments staler than rabbinic. If Love his simple spell but keep, Life with ideal eyes to flatter, The Grail itself were crockery cheap To Every-day’s communion-platter. One Darby is to me well known, Who, as the hearth between them blazes, Sees the old moonlight shine on Joan, And float her youthward in its hazes. He rubs his spectacles, he stares,— ’Tis the same face that witched him early! He gropes for his remaining hairs,— Is this a fleece that feels so curly? “Good heavens! but now ’twas winter gray, And I of years had more than plenty; The almanac’s a fool! ’Tis May! Hang family Bibles! I am twenty! “Come, Joan, your arm; we’ll walk the room— The lane, I mean—do you remember? How confident the roses bloom, As if it ne’er could be December! “Nor more it shall, while in your eyes My heart its summer heat recovers, And you, howe’er your mirror lies, Find your old beauty in your lover’s.”

When oaken woods with buds are pink, And new-come birds each morning sing, When fickle May on Summer’s brink Pauses, and knows not which to fling, Whether fresh bud and bloom again, Or hoar-frost silvering hill and plain, Then from the honeysuckle gray The oriole with experienced quest Twitches the fibrous bark away, The cordage of his hammock-nest, Cheering his labor with a note Rich as the orange of his throat. High o’er the loud and dusty road The soft gray cup in safety swings, To brim ere August with its load Of downy breasts and throbbing wings, O’er which the friendly elm-tree heaves An emerald roof with sculptured eaves. Below, the noisy World drags by In the old way, because it must, The bride with heartbreak in her eye, The mourner following hated dust: Thy duty, wingëd flame of Spring, Is but to love, and fly, and sing. Oh, happy life, to soar and sway Above the life by mortals led, Singing the merry months away, Master, not slave of daily bread, And, when the Autumn comes, to flee Wherever sunshine beckons thee!

Like some lorn abbey now, the wood Stands roofless in the bitter air; In ruins on its floor is strewed The carven foliage quaint and rare, And homeless winds complain along The columned choir once thrilled with song. And thou, dear nest, whence joy and praise The thankful oriole used to pour, Swing’st empty while the north winds chase Their snowy swarms from Labrador: But, loyal to the happy past, I love thee still for what thou wast. Ah, when the Summer graces flee From other nests more dear than thou, And, where June crowded once, I see Only bare trunk and disleaved bough; When springs of life that gleamed and gushed Run chilled, and slower, and are hushed; When our own branches, naked long, The vacant nests of Spring betray, Nurseries of passion, love, and song That vanished as our year grew gray; When Life drones o’er a tale twice told O’er embers pleading with the cold,— I’ll trust, that, like the birds of Spring, Our good goes not without repair, But only flies to soar and sing Far off in some diviner air, Where we shall find it in the calms Of that fair garden ’neath the palms.

Sometimes come pauses of calm, when the rapt bard, holding his heart back, Over his deep mind muses, as when o’er awestricken ocean Poises a heapt cloud luridly, ripening the gale and the thunder; Slow rolls onward the verse with a long swell heaving and swinging, Seeming to wait till, gradually wid’ning from far-off horizons, Piling the deeps up, heaping the glad-hearted surges before it, Gathers the thought as a strong wind darkening and cresting the tumult. Then every pause, every heave, each trough in the waves, has its meaning; Full-sailed, forth like a tall ship steadies the theme, and around it, Leaping beside it in glad strength, running in wild glee beyond it, Harmonies billow exulting and floating the soul where it lists them, Swaying the listener’s fantasy hither and thither like driftweed.

’Twas sung of old in hut and hall How once a king in evil hour Hung musing o’er his castle wall, And, lost in idle dreams, let fall Into the sea his ring of power. Then, let him sorrow as he might, And pledge his daughter and his throne To who restored the jewel bright, The broken spell would ne’er unite; The grim old ocean held its own. Those awful powers on man that wait, On man, the beggar or the king, To hovel bare or hall of state A magic ring that masters fate With each succeeding birthday bring. Therein are set four jewels rare: Pearl winter, summer’s ruby blaze, Spring’s emerald, and, than all more fair, Fall’s pensive opal, doomed to bear A heart of fire bedreamed with haze. To him the simple spell who knows The spirits of the ring to sway, Fresh power with every sunrise flows, And royal pursuivants are those That fly his mandates to obey. But he that with a slackened will Dreams of things past or things to be, From him the charm is slipping still, And drops, ere he suspect the ill, Into the inexorable sea.

The path from me to you that led, Untrodden long, with grass is grown,— Mute carpet that his lieges spread Before the Prince Oblivion When he goes visiting the dead. And who are they but who forget? You, who my coming could surmise Ere any hint of me as yet Warned other ears and other eyes, See the path blurred without regret. But when I trace its windings sweet With saddened steps, at every spot That feels the memory in my feet, Each grass-blade turns forget-me-not, Where murmuring bees your name repeat.

Ere pales in Heaven the morning star, A bird, the loneliest of its kind, Hears Dawn’s faint footfall from afar While all its mates are dumb and blind. It is a wee sad-colored thing, As shy and secret as a maid, That, ere in choir the robins ring, Pipes its own name like one afraid. It seems pain-prompted to repeat The story of some ancient ill, But Phœbe! Phœbe! sadly sweet Is all it says, and then is still. It calls and listens. Earth and sky, Hushed by the pathos of its fate, Listen: no whisper of reply Comes from its doom-dissevered mate. Phœbe! it calls and calls again, And Ovid, could he but have heard, Had hung a legendary pain About the memory of the bird; A pain articulate so long In penance of some mouldered crime Whose ghost still flies the Furies' thong Down the waste solitudes of time. Waif of the young World’s wonder-hour, When gods found mortal maidens fair, And will malign was joined with power Love’s kindly laws to overbear, Like Progne, did it feel the stress And coil of the prevailing words Close round its being, and compress Man’s ampler nature to a bird’s? One only memory left of all The motley crowd of vanished scenes, Hers, and vain impulse to recall By repetition what it means. Phœbe! is all it has to say In plaintive cadence o’er and o’er, Like children that have lost their way, And know their names, but nothing more. Is it a type, since Nature’s Lyre Vibrates to every note in man, Of that insatiable desire, Meant to be so since life began? I, in strange lands at gray of dawn, Wakeful, have heard that fruitless plaint Through Memory’s chambers deep withdrawn Renew its iterations faint. So nigh! yet from remotest years It summons back its magic, rife With longings unappeased, and tears Drawn from the very source of life.

How was I worthy so divine a loss, Deepening my midnights, kindling all my morns? Why waste such precious wood to make my cross, Such far-sought roses for my crown of thorns? And when she came, how earned I such a gift? Why spend on me, a poor earth-delving mole, The fireside sweetnesses, the heavenward lift, The hourly mercy, of a woman’s soul? Ah, did we know to give her all her right, What wonders even in our poor clay were done! It is not Woman leaves us to our night, But our brute earth that grovels from her sun. Our nobler cultured fields and gracious domes We whirl too oft from her who still shines on To light in vain our caves and clefts, the homes Of night-bird instincts pained till she be gone. Still must this body starve our souls with shade; But when Death makes us what we were before, Then shall her sunshine all our depths invade, And not a shadow stain heaven’s crystal floor.

Come back before the birds are flown, Before the leaves desert the tree, And, through the lonely alleys blown, Whisper their vain regrets to me Who drive before a blast more rude, The plaything of my gusty mood, In vain pursuing and pursued! Nay, come although the boughs be bare, Though snowflakes fledge the summer’s nest, And in some far Ausonian air The thrush, your minstrel, warm his breast. Come, sunshine’s treasurer, and bring To doubting flowers their faith in spring, To birds and me the need to sing!

Sleep is Death’s image,—poets tell us so; But Absence is the bitter self of Death, And, you away, Life’s lips their red forego, Parched in an air unfreshened by thy breath. Light of those eyes that made the light of mine, Where shine you? On what happier fields and flowers? Heaven’s lamps renew their lustre less divine, But only serve to count my darkened hours. If with your presence went your image too, That brain-born ghost my path would never cross Which meets me now where’er I once met you, Then vanishes, to multiply my loss.

She gave me all that woman can, Nor her soul’s nunnery forego, A confidence that man to man Without remorse can never show. Rare art, that can the sense refine Till not a pulse rebellious stirs, And, since she never can be mine, Makes it seem sweeter to be hers!

Turbid from London’s noise and smoke, Here I find air and quiet too: Air filtered through the beech and oak, Quiet by nothing harsher broke Than wood-dove’s meditative coo. The Truce of God is here; the breeze Sighs as men sigh relieved from care, Or tilts as lightly in the trees As might a robin: all is ease, With pledge of ampler ease to spare. Repose fills all the generous space Of undulant plain; the rook and crow Hush; ’tis as if a silent grace, By Nature murmured, calmed the face Of Heaven above and Earth below. From past and future toils I rest, One Sabbath pacifies my year; I am the halcyon, this my nest; And all is safely for the best While the World’s there and I am here. So I turn tory for the nonce, And think the radical a bore, Who cannot see, thick-witted dunce, That what was good for people once Must be as good forevermore. Sun, sink no deeper down the sky; Earth, never change this summer mood; Breeze, loiter thus forever by, Stir the dead leaf or let it lie: Since I am happy, all is good. Middleton, August, 1884.

With what odorous woods and spices Spared for royal sacrifices, With what costly gums seld-seen, Hoarded to embalm a queen, With what frankincense and myrrh, Burn these precious parts of her, Full of life and light and sweetness As a summer day’s completeness, Joy of sun and song of bird Running wild in every word, Full of all the superhuman Grace and winsomeness of woman? O’er these leaves her wrist has slid, Thrilled with veins where fire is hid ’Neath the skin’s pellucid veil, Like the opal’s passion pale; This her breath hath sweetened; this Still seems trembling with the kiss She half-ventured on my name, Brow and cheek and throat aflame; Over all caressing lies Sunshine left there by her eyes; From them all an effluence rare With her nearness fills the air, Till the murmur I half-hear Of her light feet drawing near. Rarest woods were coarse and rough, Sweetest spice not sweet enough, Too impure all earthly fire For this sacred funeral-pyre; These rich relics must suffice For their own dear sacrifice. Seek we first an altar fit For such victims laid on it: It shall be this slab brought home In old happy days from Rome,— Lazuli, once blest to line Dian’s inmost cell and shrine. Gently now I lay them there, Pure as Dian’s forehead bare, Yet suffused with warmer hue, Such as only Latmos knew. Fire I gather from the sun In a virgin lens: ’tis done! Mount the flames, red, yellow, blue, As her moods were shining through, Of the moment’s impulse born,— Moods of sweetness, playful scorn, Half defiance, half surrender, More than cruel, more than tender, Flouts, caresses, sunshine, shade, Gracious doublings of a maid Infinite in guileless art, Playing hide-seek with her heart. On the altar now, alas, There they lie a crinkling mass, Writhing still, as if with grief Went the life from every leaf; Then (heart-breaking palimpsest!) Vanishing ere wholly guessed, Suddenly some lines flash back, Traced in lightning on the black, And confess, till now denied, All the fire they strove to hide. What they told me, sacred trust, Stays to glorify my dust, There to burn through dusk and damp Like a mage’s deathless lamp, While an atom of this frame Lasts to feed the dainty flame. All is ashes now, but they In my soul are laid away, And their radiance round me hovers Soft as moonlight over lovers, Shutting her and me alone In dream-Edens of our own; First of lovers to invent Love, and teach men what it meant.

I could not bear to see those eyes On all with wasteful largesse shine, And that delight of welcome rise Like sunshine strained through amber wine, But that a glow from deeper skies, From conscious fountains more divine, Is (is it?) mine. Be beautiful to all mankind, As Nature fashioned thee to be; ’Twould anger me did all not find The sweet perfection that’s in thee: Yet keep one charm of charms behind,— Nay, thou ’rt so rich, keep two or three For (is it?) me!

Oh, tell me less or tell me more, Soft eyes with mystery at the core, That always seem to meet my own Frankly as pansies fully blown, Yet waver still ’tween no and yes! So swift to cavil and deny, Then parley with concessions shy, Dear eyes, that share their youth with mine And through my inmost shadows shine, Oh, tell me more or tell me less!

In town I hear, scarce wakened yet, My neighbor’s clock behind the wall Record the day’s increasing debt, And Cuckoo! Cuckoo! faintly call. Our senses run in deepening grooves, Thrown out of which they lose their tact, And consciousness with effort moves From habit past to present fact. So, in the country waked to-day, I hear, unwitting of the change, A cuckoo’s throb from far away Begin to strike, nor think it strange. The sound creates its wonted frame: My bed at home, the songster hid Behind the wainscoting,—all came As long association bid. I count to learn how late it is, Until, arrived at thirty-four, I question, “What strange world is this Whose lavish hours would make me poor?” Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Still on it went, With hints of mockery in its tone; How could such hoards of time be spent By one poor mortal’s wit alone? I have it! Grant, ye kindly Powers, I from this spot may never stir, If only these uncounted hours May pass, and seem too short, with Her! But who She is, her form and face, These to the world of dream belong; She moves through fancy’s visioned space, Unbodied, like the cuckoo’s song.

One kiss from all others prevents me, And sets all my pulses astir, And burns on my lips and torments me: ’Tis the kiss that I fain would give her. One kiss for all others requites me, Although it is never to be, And sweetens my dreams and invites me: ’Tis the kiss that she dare not give me. Ah, could it be mine, it were sweeter Than honey bees garner in dream, Though its bliss on my lips were fleeter Than a swallow’s dip to the stream. And yet, thus denied, it can never In the prose of life vanish away; O’er my lips it must hover forever, The sunshine and shade of my day.

Walking alone where we walked together, When June was breezy and blue, I watch in the gray autumnal weather The leaves fall inconstant as you. If a dead leaf startle behind me, I think ’tis your garment’s hem, And, oh, where no memory could find me, Might I whirl away with them!

Silencioso por la puerta Voy de su casa desierta Do siempre feliz entré, Y la encuentro en vano abierta Cual la boca de una muerta Despues que el alma se fué.

“What means this glory round our feet,” The Magi mused, “more bright than morn?” And voices chanted clear and sweet, “To-day the Prince of Peace is born!” “What means that star,” the Shepherds said, “That brightens through the rocky glen?” And angels, answering overhead, Sang, “Peace on earth, good-will to men!” ’Tis eighteen hundred years and more Since those sweet oracles were dumb; We wait for Him, like them of yore; Alas, He seems so slow to come! But it was said, in words of gold No time or sorrow e’er shall dim, That little children might be bold In perfect trust to come to Him. All round about our feet shall shine A light like that the wise men saw, If we our loving wills incline To that sweet Life which is the Law. So shall we learn to understand The simple faith of shepherds then, And, clasping kindly hand in hand, Sing, “Peace on earth, good-will to men!” And they who do their souls no wrong, But keep at eve the faith of morn, Shall daily hear the angel-song, “To-day the Prince of Peace is born!”

Oft round my hall of portraiture I gaze, By Memory reared, the artist wise and holy, From stainless quarries of deep-buried days. There, as I muse in soothing melancholy, Your faces glow in more than mortal youth, Companions of my prime, now vanished wholly, The loud, impetuous boy, the low-voiced maiden. Ah, never master that drew mortal breath Can match thy portraits, just and generous Death, Whose brush with sweet regretful tints is laden! Thou paintest that which struggled here below Half understood, or understood for woe, And with a sweet forewarning Mak’st round the sacred front an aureole glow Woven of that light that rose on Easter morning.

I was with thee in Heaven: I cannot tell If years or moments, so the sudden bliss, When first we found, then lost, us in a kiss, Abolished Time, abolished Earth and Hell, Left only Heaven. Then from our blue there fell The dagger’s flash, and did not fall amiss, For nothing now can rob my life of this,— That once with thee in Heaven, all else is well. Us, undivided when man’s vengeance came, God’s half-forgives that doth not here divide; And, were this bitter whirl-blast fanged with flame, To me ’twere summer, we being side by side: This granted, I God’s mercy will not blame, For, given thy nearness, nothing is denied.

As sinks the sun behind yon alien hills Whose heather-purpled slopes, in glory rolled, Flush all my thought with momentary gold, What pang of vague regret my fancy thrills? Here ’tis enchanted ground the peasant tills, Where the shy ballad dared its blooms unfold, And memory’s glamour makes new sights seem old, As when our life some vanished dream fulfils. Yet not to thee belong these painless tears, Land loved ere seen: before my darkened eyes, From far beyond the waters and the years, Horizons mute that wait their poet rise; The stream before me fades and disappears, And in the Charles the western splendor dies.

Amid these fragments of heroic days When thought met deed with mutual passion’s leap, There sits a Fame whose silent trump makes cheap What short-lived rumor of ourselves we raise. They had far other estimate of praise Who stamped the signet of their souls so deep In art and action, and whose memories keep Their height like stars above our misty ways: In this grave presence to record my name Something within me hangs the head and shrinks. Dull were the soul without some joy in fame; Yet here to claim remembrance were, methinks, Like him who, in the desert’s awful frame, Notches his cockney initials on the Sphinx.

Far over Elf-land poets stretch their sway, And win their dearest crowns beyond the goal Of their own conscious purpose; they control With gossamer threads wide-flown our fancy’s play, And so our action. On my walk to-day, A wallowing bear begged clumsily his toll, When straight a vision rose of Atta Troll, And scenes ideal witched mine eyes away. “Merci, Mossieu!” the astonished bear-ward cried, Grateful for thrice his hope to me, the slave Of partial memory, seeing at his side A bear immortal. The glad dole I gave Was none of mine; poor Heine o’er the wide Atlantic welter reached it from his grave.

The Maple puts her corals on in May, While loitering frosts about the lowlands cling, To be in tune with what the robins sing, Plastering new log-huts ’mid her branches gray; But when the Autumn southward turns away, Then in her veins burns most the blood of Spring, And every leaf, intensely blossoming, Makes the year’s sunset pale the set of day. O Youth unprescient, were it only so With trees you plant, and in whose shade reclined, Thinking their drifting blooms Fate’s coldest snow! You carve dear names upon the faithful rind, Nor in that vernal stem the cross foreknow That Age shall bear, silent, yet unresigned!

While the slow clock, as they were miser’s gold, Counts and recounts the mornward steps of Time, The darkness thrills with conscience of each crime By Death committed, daily grown more bold. Once more the list of all my wrongs is told, And ghostly hands stretch to me from my prime Helpless farewells, as from an alien clime; For each new loss redoubles all the old. This morn ’twas May; the blossoms were astir With southern wind; but now the boughs are bent With snow instead of birds, and all things freeze. How much of all my past is dumb with her, And of my future, too, for with her went Half of that world I ever cared to please!

Hers all that Earth could promise or bestow,— Youth, Beauty, Love, a crown, the beckoning years, Lids never wet, unless with joyous tears, A life remote from every sordid woe, And by a nation’s swelled to lordlier flow. What lurking-place, thought we, for doubts or fears, When, the day’s swan, she swam along the cheers Of the Alcalá, five happy months ago? The guns were shouting Io Hymen then That, on her birthday, now denounce her doom; The same white steeds that tossed their scorn of men To-day as proudly drag her to the tomb. Grim jest of fate! Yet who dare call it blind, Knowing what life is, what our humankind?

Seat of all woes! Though Nature’s firm decree The narrowing soul with narrowing dungeon bind, Yet was his free of motion as the wind, And held both worlds, of spirit and sense, in fee. In charmed communion with his dual mind He wandered Spain, himself both knight and hind, Redressing wrongs he knew must ever be. His humor wise could see life’s long deceit, Man’s baffled aims, nor therefore both despise; His knightly nature could ill fortune greet Like an old friend. Whose ever such kind eyes That pierced so deep, such scope, save his whose feet By Avon ceased ’neath the same April’s skies?

So dreamy-soft the notes, so far away They seem to fall, the horns of Oberon Blow their faint Hunt’s-up from the good-time gone; Or, on a morning of long-withered May, Larks tinkle unseen o’er Claudian arches gray, That Romeward crawl from Dreamland; and anon My fancy flings her cloak of Darkness on, To vanish from the dungeon of To-day. In happier times and scenes I seem to be, And, as her fingers flutter o’er the strings, The days return when I was young as she, And my fledged thoughts began to feel their wings With all Heaven’s blue before them: Memory Or Music is it such enchantment sings?

Gold of the reddening sunset, backward thrown In largess on my tall paternal trees, Thou with false hope or fear didst never tease His heart that hoards thee; nor is childhood flown From him whose life no fairer boon hath known Than that what pleased him earliest still should please. And who hath incomes safe from chance as these, Gone in a moment, yet for life his own? All other gold is slave of earthward laws; This to the deeps of ether takes its flight, And on the topmost leaves makes glorious pause Of parting pathos ere it yield to night: So linger, as from me earth’s light withdraws, Dear touch of Nature, tremulously bright!

Ye little think what toil it was to build A world of men imperfect even as this, Where we conceive of Good by what we miss, Of Ill by that wherewith best days are filled; A world whose every atom is self-willed, Whose corner-stone is propt on artifice, Whose joy is shorter-lived than woman’s kiss, Whose wisdom hoarded is but to be spilled. Yet this is better than a life of caves, Whose highest art was scratching on a bone, Or chipping toilsome arrowheads of flint; Better, though doomed to hear while Cleon raves, To see wit’s want eterned in paint or stone, And wade the drain-drenched shoals of daily print.

What countless years and wealth of brain were spent To bring us hither from our caves and huts, And trace through pathless wilds the deep-worn ruts Of faith and habit, by whose deep indent Prudence may guide if genius be not lent,— Genius, not always happy when it shuts Its ears against the plodder’s ifs and buts, Hoping in one rash leap to snatch the event. The coursers of the sun, whose hoofs of flame Consume morn’s misty threshold, are exact As bankers' clerks, and all this star-poised frame, One swerve allowed, were with convulsion rackt; This world were doomed, should Dulness fail, to tame Wit’s feathered heels in the stern stocks of fact.

What were the whole void world, if thou wert dead, Whose briefest absence can eclipse my day, And make the hours that danced with Time away Drag their funereal steps with muffled head? Through thee, meseems, the very rose is red, From thee the violet steals its breath in May, From thee draw life all things that grow not gray, And by thy force the happy stars are sped. Thou near, the hope of thee to overflow Fills all my earth and heaven, as when in Spring, Ere April come, the birds and blossoms know, And grasses brighten round her feet to cling; Nay, and this hope delights all nature so That the dumb turf I tread on seems to sing.