Part 5

“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!”

MY PORTRAIT GALLERY.

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.

PAOLO TO FRANCESCA.

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.

SONNET.

_Scottish Border._

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.

SONNET.

_On being asked for an Autograph in Venice._

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.

THE DANCING BEAR.

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.

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!

NIGHTWATCHES.

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!

DEATH OF QUEEN MERCEDES.

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?

PRISON OF CERVANTES.

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?

TO A LADY PLAYING ON THE CITHERN.

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?

THE EYE’S TREASURY.

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!

PESSIMOPTIMISM.

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.

THE BRAKES.

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.

A FOREBODING.

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.

III.

FANCY.

UNDER THE OCTOBER MAPLES.

What mean these banners spread, These paths with royal red So gaily carpeted? Comes there a prince to-day? Such footing were too fine For feet less argentine Than Dian’s own or thine, Queen whom my tides obey.

Surely for thee are meant These hues so orient That with a sultan’s tent Each tree invites the sun; Our Earth such homage pays, So decks her dusty ways, And keeps such holidays, For one, and only one.

My brain shapes form and face, Throbs with the rhythmic grace And cadence of her pace To all fine instincts true; Her footsteps, as they pass, Than moonbeams over grass Fall lighter,--and, alas, More insubstantial too!

LOVE’S CLOCK.

A PASTORAL.

DAPHNIS _waiting_.

“O Dryad feet, Be doubly fleet, Timed to my heart’s expectant beat While I await her! 'At four,' vowed she; ’Tis scarcely three, Yet by _my_ time it seems to be A good hour later!”

CHLOE.

“Bid me not stay! Hear reason, pray! ’Tis striking six! Sure never day Was short as this is!”

DAPHNIS.

“Reason nor rhyme Is in the chime! It can’t be five; I’ve scarce had time To beg two kisses!”

BOTH.

“Early or late, When lovers wait, And Love’s watch gains, if Time a gait So snail-like chooses, Why should his feet Become more fleet Than cowards' are, when lovers meet And Love’s watch loses?”

ELEANOR MAKES MACAROONS.

Light of triumph in her eyes, Eleanor her apron ties; As she pushes back her sleeves, High resolve her bosom heaves. Hasten, cook! impel the fire To the pace of her desire; As you hope to save your soul, Bring a virgin casserole, Brightest bring of silver spoons,-- Eleanor makes macaroons!

Almond-blossoms, now adance In the smile of Southern France, Leave your sport with sun and breeze, Think of duty, not of ease; Fashion, ’neath their jerkins brown, Kernels white as thistle-down, Tiny cheeses made with cream From the Galaxy’s mid-stream, Blanched in light of honeymoons,-- Eleanor makes macaroons!

Now for sugar,--nay, our plan Tolerates no work of man. Hurry, then, ye golden bees; Fetch your clearest honey, please, Garnered on a Yorkshire moor, While the last larks sing and soar, From the heather-blossoms sweet Where sea-breeze and sunshine meet, And the Augusts mask as Junes,-- Eleanor makes macaroons!

Next the pestle and mortar find, Pure rock-crystal,--these to grind Into paste more smooth than silk, Whiter than the milkweed’s milk: Spread it on a rose-leaf, thus, Cate to please Theocritus; Then the fire with spices swell, While, for her completer spell, Mystic canticles she croons,-- Eleanor makes macaroons!

Perfect! and all this to waste On a graybeard’s palsied taste! Poets so their verses write, Heap them full of life and light, And then fling them to the rude Mumbling of the multitude. Not so dire her fate as theirs, Since her friend this gift declares Choicest of his birthday boons,-- Eleanor’s dear macaroons!

_February 22, 1884._

TELEPATHY.

“And how could you dream of meeting?” Nay, how can you ask me, sweet? All day my pulse had been beating The tune of your coming feet.

And as nearer and ever nearer I felt the throb of your tread, To be in the world grew dearer, And my blood ran rosier red.

Love called, and I could not linger, But sought the forbidden tryst, As music follows the finger Of the dreaming lutanist.

And though you had said it and said it, “We must not be happy to-day,” Was I not wiser to credit The fire in my feet than your Nay?

SCHERZO.

When the down is on the chin And the gold-gleam in the hair, When the birds their sweethearts win And champagne is in the air, Love is here, and Love is there, Love is welcome everywhere.

Summer’s cheek too soon turns thin, Days grow briefer, sunshine rare; Autumn from his cannekin Blows the froth to chase Despair: Love is met with frosty stare, Cannot house ’neath branches bare.

When new red is in the rose And new life is in the leaf, Though Love’s Maytime be as brief As a dragon-fly’s repose, Never moments come like those, Be they Heaven or Hell: who knows?

All too soon comes Winter’s grief, Spendthrift Love’s false friends turn foes; Softly comes Old Age, the thief, Steals the rapture, leaves the throes: Love his mantle round him throws,-- “Time to say Good-bye; it snows.”

“FRANCISCUS DE VERULAMIO SIC COGITAVIT.”

That’s a rather bold speech, my Lord Bacon, For, indeed, is’t so easy to know Just how much we from others have taken, And how much our own natural flow?

Since your mind bubbled up at its fountain, How many streams made it elate, While it calmed to the plain from the mountain, As every mind must that grows great?

While you thought ’twas You thinking as newly As Adam still wet with God’s dew, You forgot in your self-pride that truly The whole Past was thinking through you.

Greece, Rome, nay, your namesake, old Roger, With Truth’s nameless delvers who wrought In the dark mines of Truth, helped to prod your Fine brain with the goad of their thought.

As mummy was prized for a rich hue The painter no elsewhere could find, So ’twas buried men’s thinking with which you Gave the ripe mellow tone to your mind.

I heard the proud strawberry saying, “Only look what a ruby I’ve made!” It forgot how the bees in their maying Had brought it the stuff for its trade.

And yet there’s the half of a truth in it, And my Lord might his copyright sue; For a thought’s his who kindles new youth in it, Or so puts it as makes it more true.

The birds but repeat without ending The same old traditional notes, Which some, by more happily blending, Seem to make over new in their throats;

And we men through our old bit of song run, Until one just improves on the rest, And we call a thing his, in the long run, Who utters it clearest and best.

AUSPEX.

My heart, I cannot still it, Nest that had song-birds in it; And when the last shall go, The dreary days, to fill it, Instead of lark or linnet, Shall whirl dead leaves and snow.

Had they been swallows only, Without the passion stronger That skyward longs and sings,-- Woe’s me, I shall be lonely When I can feel no longer The impatience of their wings!

A moment, sweet delusion, Like birds the brown leaves hover; But it will not be long Before their wild confusion Fall wavering down to cover The poet and his song.

THE PREGNANT COMMENT.

Opening one day a book of mine, I absent, Hester found a line Praised with a pencil-mark, and this She left transfigured with a kiss.

“When next upon the page I chance, Like Poussin’s nymphs my pulses dance, And whirl my fancy where it sees Pan piping ’neath Arcadian trees, Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, Still young and glad as Homer’s verse. “What mean,” I ask, “these sudden joys? This feeling fresher than a boy’s? What makes this line, familiar long, New as the first bird’s April song? I could, with sense illumined thus, Clear doubtful texts in Æschylus!”

Laughing, one day she gave the key, My riddle’s open-sesame; Then added, with a smile demure, Whose downcast lids veiled triumph sure, “If what I left there give you pain, You--you--can take it off again; ’Twas for _my_ poet, not for him, Your Doctor Donne there!”

Earth grew dim And wavered in a golden mist, As rose, not paper, leaves I kissed. Donne, you forgive? I let you keep Her precious comment, poet deep.

THE LESSON.

I sat and watched the walls of night With cracks of sudden lightning glow, And listened while with clumsy might The thunder wallowed to and fro.

The rain fell softly now; the squall, That to a torrent drove the trees, Had whirled beyond us to let fall Its tumult on the whitening seas.

But still the lightning crinkled keen, Or fluttered fitful from behind The leaden drifts, then only seen, That rumbled eastward on the wind.

Still as gloom followed after glare, While bated breath the pine-trees drew, Tiny Salmoneus of the air, His mimic bolts the firefly threw.

He thought, no doubt, “Those flashes grand, That light for leagues the shuddering sky, Are made, a fool could understand, By some superior kind of fly.

“He’s of our race’s elder branch His family-arms the same as ours, Both born the twy-forked flame to launch, Of kindred, if unequal, powers.”

And is man wiser? Man who takes His consciousness the law to be Of all beyond his ken, and makes God but a bigger kind of Me?

SCIENCE AND POETRY.

He who first stretched his nerves of subtile wire Over the land and through the sea-depths still, Thought only of the flame-winged messenger As a dull drudge that should encircle earth With sordid messages of Trade, and tame Blithe Ariel to a bagman. But the Muse Not long will be defrauded. From her foe Her misused wand she snatches; at a touch, The Age of Wonder is renewed again, And to our disenchanted day restores The Shoes of Swiftness that give odds to Thought, The Cloak that makes invisible; and with these I glide, an airy fire, from shore to shore, Or from my Cambridge whisper to Cathay.

A NEW YEAR’S GREETING.

The century numbers fourscore years; You, fortressed in your teens, To Time’s alarums close your ears, And, while he devastates your peers, Conceive not what he means.

If e’er life’s winter fleck with snow Your hair’s deep shadowed bowers, That winsome head an art would know To make it charm, and wear it so As ’twere a wreath of flowers.

If to such fairies years must come, May yours fall soft and slow As, shaken by a bee’s low hum, The rose-leaves waver, sweetly dumb, Down to their mates below!

THE DISCOVERY.

I watched a moorland torrent run Down through the drift itself had made, Golden as honey in the sun, Of darkest amber in the shade.

In this wild glen at last, methought, The magic’s secret I surprise; Here Celia’s guardian fairy caught The changeful splendors of her eyes.

All else grows tame, the sky’s one blue, The one long languish of the rose, But these, beyond prevision new, Shall charm and startle to the close.

WITH A SEASHELL.

Shell, whose lips, than mine more cold, Might with Dian’s ear make bold, Seek my Lady’s; if thou win To that portal, shut from sin, Where commissioned angels' swords Startle back unholy words, Thou a miracle shalt see Wrought by it and wrought in thee; Thou, the dumb one, shalt recover Speech of poet, speech of lover. If she deign to lift you there, Murmur what I may not dare; In that archway, pearly-pink As the Dawn’s untrodden brink, Murmur, “Excellent and good, Beauty’s best in every mood, Never common, never tame, Changeful fair as windward flame”-- Nay, I maunder; this she hears Every day with mocking ears, With a brow not sudden-stained With the flush of bliss restrained, With no tremor of the pulse More than feels the dreaming dulse In the midmost ocean’s caves, When a tempest heaps the waves. Thou must woo her in a phrase Mystic as the opal’s blaze, Which pure maids alone can see When their lovers constant be. I with thee a secret share, Half a hope, and half a prayer, Though no reach of mortal skill Ever told it all, or will; Say, “He bids me--nothing more-- Tell you what you guessed before!”

THE SECRET.

I have a fancy: how shall I bring it Home to all mortals wherever they be? Say it or sing it? Shoe it or wing it, So it may outrun or outfly ME, Merest cocoon-web whence it broke free?

Only one secret can save from disaster, Only one magic is that of the Master: Set it to music; give it a tune,-- Tune the brook sings you, tune the breeze brings you, Tune the wild columbines nod to in June!

This is the secret: so simple, you see! Easy as loving, easy as kissing, Easy as--well, let me ponder--as missing, Known, since the world was, by scarce two or three.

IV.

HUMOR AND SATIRE.

FITZ ADAM’S STORY.

[The greater part of this poem was written many years ago as part of a larger one, to be called “The Nooning,” made up of tales in verse, some of them grave, some comic. It gives me a sad pleasure to remember that I was encouraged in this project by my friend the late Arthur Hugh Clough.]