Chapter 586

He paused, and in the moment's pause, His eyes and Willie's strangely glistened. Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hung With face averted, near enough To hear, and sob unheard; the young And careless ones had scampered off Meantime, and sought the loftiest place To beacon the approaching chase.

'Daily upon the meads to browse, Goes Nancy with those dairy cows You see behind the clematis: And such a favourite she is, That when fatigued, and helter skelter, Among them from her foes to shelter, She dashes when the chase is over, They'll close her in and give her cover, And bend their horns against the hounds, And low, and keep them out of bounds! From the house dogs she dreads no harm, And is good friends with all the farm, Man, and bird, and beast, howbeit Their natures seem so opposite. And she is known for many a mile, And noted for her splendid style, For her clear leap and quick slight hoof; Welcome she is in many a roof. And if I say, I love her, man! I say but little: her fine eyes full Of memories of my girl, at Yule And May-time, make her dearer than Dumb brute to men has been, I think. So dear I do not find her dumb. I know her ways, her slightest wink, So well; and to my hand she'll come, Sidelong, for food or a caress, Just like a loving human thing. Nor can I help, I do confess, Some touch of human sorrowing To think there may be such a doubt That from the next world she'll be shut out, And parted from me! And well I mind How, when my girl's last moments came, Her soft eyes very soft and kind, She joined her hands and prayed the same, That she "might meet her father, mother, Sister Bess, and each dear brother, And with them, if it might be, one Who was her last companion." Meaning the fawn--the doe you mark - For my bay mare was then a foal, And time has passed since then:- but hark!'

For like the shrieking of a soul Shut in a tomb, a darkened cry Of inward-wailing agony Surprised them, and all eyes on each Fixed in the mute-appealing speech Of self-reproachful apprehension: Knowing not what to think or do: But Joan, recovering first, broke through The instantaneous suspension, And knelt upon the ground, and guessed The bitterness at a glance, and pressed Into the comfort of her breast The deep-throed quaking shape that drooped In misery's wilful aggravation, Before the farmer as he stooped, Touched with accusing consternation: Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:- 'Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no! Not me! God will not take me in! Nothing can wipe away my sin! I shall not see her: you will go; You and all that she loves so: Not me! not me! Oh, no, no, no!' Colourless, her long black hair, Like seaweed in a tempest tossed Tangling astray, to Joan's care She yielded like a creature lost: Yielded, drooping toward the ground, As doth a shape one half-hour drowned, And heaved from sea with mast and spar, All dark of its immortal star. And on that tender heart, inured To flatter basest grief, and fight Despair upon the brink of night, She suffered herself to sink, assured Of refuge; and her ear inclined To comfort; and her thoughts resigned To counsel; her wild hair let brush From off her weeping brows; and shook With many little sobs that took Deeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs, Long sighs, they sank; and to the 'hush!' Of Joan's gentle chide, she sought Childlike to check them as she ought, Looking up at her infantwise. And Willie, gazing on them both, Shivered with bliss through blood and brain, To see the darling of his troth Like a maternal angel strain The sinful and the sinless child At once on either breast, and there In peace and promise reconciled Unite them: nor could Nature's care With subtler sweet beneficence Have fed the springs of penitence, Still keeping true, though harshly tried, The vital prop of human pride.

BEAUTY ROHTRAUT (From Moricke)

What is the name of King Ringang's daughter? Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut! And what does she do the livelong day, Since she dare not knit and spin alway? O hunting and fishing is ever her play! And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be! I'd hunt and fish right merrily! Be silent, heart!

And it chanced that, after this some time, - Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut, - The boy in the Castle has gained access, And a horse he has got and a huntsman's dress, To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess; And, O! that a king's son I might be! Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly. Hush! hush! my heart.

Under a grey old oak they sat, Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut! She laughs: 'Why look you so slyly at me? If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.' Cried the breathless boy, 'kiss thee?' But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth; And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut's mouth. Down! down! mad heart.

Then slowly and silently they rode home, - Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut! The boy was lost in his delight: 'And, wert thou Empress this very night, I would not heed or feel the blight; Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist How Beauty Rohtraut's mouth I kiss'd. Hush! hush! wild heart.'

THE OLIVE BRANCH

A dove flew with an Olive Branch; It crossed the sea and reached the shore, And on a ship about to launch Dropped down the happy sign it bore.

'An omen' rang the glad acclaim! The Captain stooped and picked it up, 'Be then the Olive Branch her name,' Cried she who flung the christening cup.

The vessel took the laughing tides; It was a joyous revelry To see her dashing from her sides The rough, salt kisses of the sea.

And forth into the bursting foam She spread her sail and sped away, The rolling surge her restless home, Her incense wreaths the showering spray.

Far out, and where the riot waves Run mingling in tumultuous throngs, She danced above a thousand graves, And heard a thousand briny songs.

Her mission with her manly crew, Her flag unfurl'd, her title told, She took the Old World to the New, And brought the New World to the Old.

Secure of friendliest welcomings, She swam the havens sheening fair; Secure upon her glad white wings, She fluttered on the ocean air.

To her no more the bastioned fort Shot out its swarthy tongue of fire; From bay to bay, from port to port, Her coming was the world's desire.

And tho' the tempest lashed her oft, And tho' the rocks had hungry teeth, And lightnings split the masts aloft, And thunders shook the planks beneath,

And tho' the storm, self-willed and blind, Made tatters of her dauntless sail, And all the wildness of the wind Was loosed on her, she did not fail;

But gallantly she ploughed the main, And gloriously her welcome pealed, And grandly shone to sky and plain The goodly bales her decks revealed;

Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes Where blow the gusts of balm and spice, Or where the black blockaded ribs Are jammed 'mongst ghostly fleets of ice,

Or where upon the curling hills Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape, Or where the hand of labour drills The stubbornness of earth to shape;

Rich harvestings and wealthy germs, And handicrafts and shapely wares, And spinnings of the hermit worms, And fruits that bloom by lions' lairs.

Come, read the meaning of the deep! The use of winds and waters learn! 'Tis not to make the mother weep For sons that never will return;

'Tis not to make the nations show Contempt for all whom seas divide; 'Tis not to pamper war and woe, Nor feed traditionary pride;

'Tis not to make the floating bulk Mask death upon its slippery deck, Itself in turn a shattered hulk, A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.

It is to knit with loving lip The interests of land to land; To join in far-seen fellowship The tropic and the polar strand.

It is to make that foaming Strength Whose rebel forces wrestle still Thro' all his boundaried breadth and length Become a vassal to our will.

It is to make the various skies, And all the various fruits they vaunt, And all the dowers of earth we prize, Subservient to our household want.

And more, for knowledge crowns the gain Of intercourse with other souls, And Wisdom travels not in vain The plunging spaces of the poles.

The wild Atlantic's weltering gloom, Earth-clasping seas of North and South, The Baltic with its amber spume, The Caspian with its frozen mouth;

The broad Pacific, basking bright, And girdling lands of lustrous growth, Vast continents and isles of light, Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;

She visits these, traversing each; They ripen to the common sun; Thro' diverse forms and different speech, The world's humanity is one.

O may her voice have power to say How soon the wrecking discords cease, When every wandering wave is gay With golden argosies of peace!

Now when the ark of human fate, Long baffled by the wayward wind, Is drifting with its peopled freight, Safe haven on the heights to find;

Safe haven from the drowning slime Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath; - To plant again the foot of Time Upon a purer, firmer path;

'Tis now the hour to probe the ground, To watch the Heavens, to speak the word, The fathoms of the deep to sound, And send abroad the missioned bird,

On strengthened wing for evermore, Let Science, swiftly as she can, Fly seaward on from shore to shore, And bind the links of man to man;

And like that fair propitious Dove Bless future fleets about to launch; Make every freight a freight of love, And every ship an Olive Branch.

SONG

Love within the lover's breast Burns like Hesper in the west, O'er the ashes of the sun, Till the day and night are done; Then when dawn drives up her car - Lo! it is the morning star.

Love! thy love pours down on mine As the sunlight on the vine, As the snow-rill on the vale, As the salt breeze in the sail; As the song unto the bird, On my lips thy name is heard.

As a dewdrop on the rose In thy heart my passion glows, As a skylark to the sky Up into thy breast I fly; As a sea-shell of the sea Ever shall I sing of thee.

THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers; It lives and dies upon its bed of snows; And like a thought of spring it comes and goes, Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers. The sun's betrothing kiss it never knows, Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers; But ever in a placid, pure repose, More like a spirit with its look serene, Droops its pale cheek veined thro' with infant green.

Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose, Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June; The year's own darling and the Summer's Queen! Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon. Much of that early prophet look she shows, Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows, As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen; Like a soft evening over sunset snows, Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.

Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair In all that glads the eye and charms the air; In all that wakes emotions in the mind And sows sweet sympathies for human kind. Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart, They bloom together in the thoughtful heart; Fair symbols of the marvels of our state, Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!

For each, fulfilling nature's law, fulfils Itself and its own aspirations pure; Living and dying; letting faith ensure New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills. Each perfect in its place; and each content With that perfection which its being meant: Divided not by months that intervene, But linked by all the flowers that bud between. Forever smiling thro' its season brief, The one in glory and the one in grief: Forever painting to our museful sight, How lowlihead and loveliness unite.

Born from the first blind yearning of the earth To be a mother and give happy birth, Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings, Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs; And ere the snows have melted from the grass, And not a strip of greensward doth appear, Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare, Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass! While in the ripe enthronement of the year, Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath, - Odorous and exquisite beyond compare, And starr'd with dews upon her forehead clear, Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be Who takes the land's devotion as her fee, - The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower, Nature's most beautiful and perfect flower.

THE DEATH OF WINTER

When April with her wild blue eye Comes dancing over the grass, And all the crimson buds so shy Peep out to see her pass; As lightly she loosens her showery locks And flutters her rainy wings; Laughingly stoops To the glass of the stream, And loosens and loops Her hair by the gleam, While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks Go frolicking round in rings; - Then Winter, he who tamed the fly, Turns on his back and prepares to die, For he cannot live longer under the sky.

Down the valleys glittering green, Down from the hills in snowy rills, He melts between the border sheen And leaps the flowery verges! He cannot choose but brighten their hues, And tho' he would creep, he fain must leap, For the quick Spring spirit urges. Down the vale and down the dale He leaps and lights, till his moments fail, Buried in blossoms red and pale, While the sweet birds sing his dirges!

O Winter! I'd live that life of thine, With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue, And never a song my whole life long, - Were such delicious burial mine! To die and be buried, and so remain A wandering brook in April's train, Fixing my dying eyes for aye On the dawning brows of maiden May.

SONG

The moon is alone in the sky As thou in my soul; The sea takes her image to lie Where the white ripples roll All night in a dream, With the light of her beam, Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore. The pebbles speak low In the ebb and the flow, As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore: Nought other stirred Save my heart all unheard Beating to bliss that is past evermore.

JOHN LACKLAND

A wicked man is bad enough on earth; But O the baleful lustre of a chief Once pledged in tyranny! O star of dearth Darkly illumining a nation's grief! How many men have worn thee on their brows! Alas for them and us! God's precious gift Of gracious dispensation got by theft - The damning form of false unholy vows! The thief of God and man must have his fee: And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince - Basest of England's banes before or since! Thrice traitor, coward, thief! O thou shalt be The historic warning, trampled and abhorr'd Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!

THE SLEEPING CITY

A Princess in the eastern tale Paced thro' a marble city pale, And saw in ghastly shapes of stone The sculptured life she breathed alone;

Saw, where'er her eye might range, Herself the only child of change; And heard her echoed footfall chime Between Oblivion and Time;

And in the squares where fountains played, And up the spiral balustrade, Along the drowsy corridors, Even to the inmost sleeping floors,

Surveyed in wonder chilled with dread The seemingness of Death, not dead; Life's semblance but without its storm, And silence frosting every form;

Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves, Like suddenly arrested waves About to sink, about to rise, - Strange meaning in their stricken eyes;

And cloths and couches live with flame Of leopards fierce and lions tame, And hunters in the jungle reed, Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;

Dumb chambers hushed with fold on fold, And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold; White casements o'er embroidered seats, Looking on solitudes of streets, -

On palaces and column'd towers, Unconscious of the stony hours; Harsh gateways startled at a sound, With burning lamps all burnish'd round; -

Surveyed in awe this wealth and state, Touched by the finger of a Fate, And drew with slow-awakening fear The sternness of the atmosphere; -

And gradually, with stealthier foot, Became herself a thing as mute, And listened,--while with swift alarm Her alien heart shrank from the charm;

Yet as her thoughts dilating rose, Took glory in the great repose, And over every postured form Spread lava-like and brooded warm, -

And fixed on every frozen face Beheld the record of its race, And in each chiselled feature knew The stormy life that once blushed thro'; -

The ever-present of the past There written; all that lightened last, Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair, Beauty and rage, all written there; -

Enchanted Passions! whose pale doom Is never flushed by blight or bloom, But sentinelled by silent orbs, Whose light the pallid scene absorbs. -

Like such a one I pace along This City with its sleeping throng; Like her with dread and awe, that turns To rapture, and sublimely yearns; -

For now the quiet stars look down On lights as quiet as their own; The streets that groaned with traffic show As if with silence paved below;

The latest revellers are at peace, The signs of in-door tumult cease, From gay saloon and low resort, Comes not one murmur or report:

The clattering chariot rolls not by, The windows show no waking eye, The houses smoke not, and the air Is clear, and all the midnight fair.

The centre of the striving world, Round which the human fate is curled, To which the future crieth wild, - Is pillowed like a cradled child.

The palace roof that guards a crown, The mansion swathed in dreamy down, Hovel, court, and alley-shed, Sleep in the calmness of the dead.

Now while the many-motived heart Lies hushed--fireside and busy mart, And mortal pulses beat the tune That charms the calm cold ear o' the moon

Whose yellowing crescent down the West Leans listening, now when every breast Its basest or its purest heaves, The soul that joys, the soul that grieves; -

While Fame is crowning happy brows That day will blindly scorn, while vows Of anguished love, long hidden, speak From faltering tongue and flushing cheek

The language only known to dreams, Rich eloquence of rosy themes! While on the Beauty's folded mouth Disdain just wrinkles baby youth;

While Poverty dispenses alms To outcasts, bread, and healing balms; While old Mammon knows himself The greatest beggar for his pelf;

While noble things in darkness grope, The Statesman's aim, the Poet's hope; The Patriot's impulse gathers fire, And germs of future fruits aspire; -

Now while dumb nature owns its links, And from one common fountain drinks, Methinks in all around I see This Picture in Eternity; -

A marbled City planted there With all its pageants and despair; A peopled hush, a Death not dead, But stricken with Medusa's head; -

And in the Gorgon's glance for aye The lifeless immortality Reveals in sculptured calmness all Its latest life beyond recall.

THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

Grey with all honours of age! but fresh-featured and ruddy As dawn when the drowsy farm-yard has thrice heard Chaunticlere. Tender to tearfulness--childlike, and manly, and motherly; Here beats true English blood richest joyance on sweet English ground.

THE POETRY OF SPENSER

Lakes where the sunsheen is mystic with splendour and softness; Vales where sweet life is all Summer with golden romance: Forests that glimmer with twilight round revel-bright palaces; Here in our May-blood we wander, careering 'mongst ladies and knights.

THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

Picture some Isle smiling green 'mid the white-foaming ocean; - Full of old woods, leafy wisdoms, and frolicsome fays; Passions and pageants; sweet love singing bird-like above it; Life in all shapes, aims, and fates, is there warm'd by one great human heart.

THE POETRY OF MILTON

Like to some deep-chested organ whose grand inspiration, Serenely majestic in utterance, lofty and calm, Interprets to mortals with melody great as its burthen The mystical harmonies chiming for ever throughout the bright spheres.

THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY

Keen as an eagle whose flight towards the dim empyrean Fearless of toil or fatigue ever royally wends! Vast in the cloud-coloured robes of the balm-breathing Orient Lo! the grand Epic advances, unfolding the humanest truth.

THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE

A brook glancing under green leaves, self-delighting, exulting, And full of a gurgling melody ever renewed - Renewed thro' all changes of Heaven, unceasing in sunlight, Unceasing in moonlight, but hushed in the beams of the holier orb.

THE POETRY OF SHELLEY

See'st thou a Skylark whose glistening winglets ascending Quiver like pulses beneath the melodious dawn? Deep in the heart-yearning distance of heaven it flutters - Wisdom and beauty and love are the treasures it brings down at eve.

THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

A breath of the mountains, fresh born in the regions majestic, That look with their eye-daring summits deep into the sky. The voice of great Nature; sublime with her lofty conceptions, Yet earnest and simple as any sweet child of the green lowly vale.

THE POETRY OF KEATS

The song of a nightingale sent thro' a slumbrous valley, Low-lidded with twilight, and tranced with the dolorous sound, Tranced with a tender enchantment; the yearning of passion That wins immortality even while panting delirious with death.

VIOLETS

Violets, shy violets! How many hearts with you compare! Who hide themselves in thickest green, And thence, unseen, Ravish the enraptured air With sweetness, dewy fresh and rare!

Violets, shy violets! Human hearts to me shall be Viewless violets in the grass, And as I pass, Odours and sweet imagery Will wait on mine and gladden me!

ANGELIC LOVE