Chapter 30

POETRY.

"Perhaps you will none of you agree with me," Lois said; "and I do not know much poetry; but there seems to me to run an undertone of lament and weariness through most of what I know. Now take the 'Death of the Flowers,'--that you were reading yesterday, Mrs. Barclay--

'The south wind searches for the flowers whose fragrance late he bore, And sighs to find them in the wood and by the stream no more.'

That is the tone I mean; a sigh and a regret."

"But the 'Death of the Flowers' is _exquisite_," pleaded Mrs. Lenox.

"Certainly it is," said Lois; "but is it gay?

'The wind-flower and the violet, they perished long ago, And the brier-rose and the orchis died amid the summer glow; But on the hill the golden-rod, and the aster in the wood, And the yellow sun-flower by the brook in autumn beauty stood, Till fell the frost from the clear cold heaven, as falls the plague on men, And the brightness of their smile was gone, from upland, glade, and glen.'"

"How you remember it, Lois!" said Mrs. Barclay.

"But is not that all true?" asked Mr. Lenox.

"True in fact," said Lois. "The flowers do die. But the frost does not fall like a plague; and nobody that was right happy would say so, or think so. Take Pringle's 'Afar in the Desert,' Mrs. Barclay--

'When the sorrows of life the soul o'ercast, And sick of the present I turn to the past; When the eye is suffused with regretful tears From the fond recollections of former years, And shadows of things that are long since fled, Flit over the brain like the ghosts of the dead; Bright visions--'

I forget how it goes on."

"But that is as old as the hills!" exclaimed Mrs. Lenox.

"It shows what I mean."

"I am afraid you will not better your case by coming down into modern time, Mrs. Lenox," remarked Mrs. Barclay. "Take Tennyson--

'With weary steps I loiter on, Though always under altered skies; The purple from the distance dies, My prospect and horizon gone.'"

"Take Byron," said Lois--

'My days are in the yellow leaf, The flower and fruit of life are gone; The worm, the canker, and the grief, Are mine alone.'"

"O, Byron was morbid," said Mrs. Lenox.

"Take Moore," Mrs. Barclay went on, humouring the discussion on purpose. "Do you remember?--

'My birthday! what a different sound That word had in my younger years! And now, each time the day comes round, Less and less white its mark appears.'"

"Well, I am sure that is true," said the other lady.

"Do you remember Robert Herrick's lines to daffodils?--

'Fair daffodils, we weep to see You haste away so soon.'

And then--

'We have short time to stay as you; We have as short a spring; As quick a growth to meet decay, As you or anything:

We die As your showers do; and dry Away Like to the summer's rain, Or as the pearls of morning dew, Ne'er to be found again.'

And Waller to the rose--

'Then die! that she The common fate of all things rare May read in thee. How small a part of time they share, That are so wondrous sweet and fair!'

"And Burns to the daisy," said Lois--

'There in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snowy bosom sunward spread, Thou lifts thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies!

'Even thou who mournst the Daisy's fate, That fate is thine--no distant date; Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives, elate, Full on thy bloom, Till, crushed beneath the furrow's weight, Shall be thy doom!'"

"O, you are getting very gloomy!" exclaimed Mrs. Lenox.

"Not we," said Lois merrily laughing, "but your poets."

"Mend your cause, Julia," said her husband.

"I haven't got the poets in my head," said the lady. "They are not all like that. I am very fond of Elizabeth Barrett Browning."

"The 'Cry of the Children'?" said Mrs. Barclay.

"O no, indeed! She's not all like that."

"She is not all like that. There is 'Hector in the Garden.'"

"O, that is pretty!" said Lois. "But do you remember how it runs?--

'Nine years old! The first of any Seem the happiest years that come--'"

"Go on, Lois," said her friend. And the request being seconded, Lois gave the whole, ending with--

'Oh the birds, the tree, the ruddy And white blossoms, sleek with rain! Oh my garden, rich with pansies! Oh my childhood's bright romances! All revive, like Hector's body, And I see them stir again!

'And despite life's changes--chances, And despite the deathbell's toll, They press on me in full seeming! Help, some angel! stay this dreaming! As the birds sang in the branches, Sing God's patience through my soul!

'That no dreamer, no neglecter Of the present work unsped, I may wake up and be doing, Life's heroic ends pursuing, Though my past is dead as Hector, And though Hector is twice dead.'"

"Well," said Mrs. Lenox slowly, "of course that is all true."

"From her standpoint," said Lois. "That is according to my charge, which you disallowed."

"From her standpoint?" repeated Mr. Lenox. "May I ask for an explanation?"

"I mean, that as she saw things,--

'The first of any Seem the happiest years that come.'"

"Well, of course!" said Mrs. Lenox. "Does not everybody say so?"

Nobody answered.

"Does not everybody agree in that judgment, Miss Lothrop?" urged the gentleman.

"I dare say--everybody looking from that standpoint," said Lois. "And the poets write accordingly. They are all of them seeing shadows."

"How can they help seeing shadows?" returned Mrs. Lenox impatiently. "The shadows are there!"

"Yes," said Lois, "the shadows are there." But there was a reservation in her voice.

"Do not _you_, then, reckon the years of childhood the happiest?" Mr. Lenox inquired.

"No."

"But you cannot have had much experience of life," said Mrs. Lenox, "to say so. I don't see how they can _help_ being the happiest, to any one."

"I believe," Lois answered, lowering her voice a little, "that if we could see all, we should see that the oldest person in our company is the happiest here."

The eyes of the strangers glanced towards the old lady in her low chair at the front of the ox cart. In her wrinkled face there was not a line of beauty, perhaps never had been; in spite of its sense and character unmistakeable; it was grave, she was thinking her own thoughts; it was weather-beaten, so to say, with the storms of life; and yet there was an expression of unruffled repose upon it, as calm as the glint of stars in a still lake. Mrs. Lenox's look was curiously incredulous, scornful, and wistful, together; it touched Lois.

"One's young years ought not to be one's best," she said.

"How are you going to help it?" came almost querulously. Lois thought, if _she_ were Mr. Lenox, she would not feel flattered.

"When one is young, one does not know disappointment," the other went on.

"And when one is old, one may get the better of disappointment."

"When one is young, everything is fresh."

"I think things grow fresher to me with every year," said Lois, laughing. "Mrs. Lenox, it is possible to keep one's youth."

"Then you have found the philosopher's stone?" said Mr. Lenox.

Lois's smile was brilliant, but she said nothing to that. She was beginning to feel that she had talked more than her share, and was inclined to draw back. Then there came a voice from the arm-chair, it came upon a pause of stillness, with its quiet, firm tones:

'He satisfieth thy mouth with good things, so that thy youth is renewed like the eagle's.'"

The voice came like an oracle, and was listened to with somewhat of the same silent reverence. But after that pause Mr. Lenox remarked that he never understood that comparison. What was it about an eagle's youth?

"Why," said Lois, "an eagle never grows old!"

"Is that it! But I wish you would go on a little further, Miss Lothrop. You spoke of hymn-writers having a different standpoint, and of their words as more cheerful than the utterances of other poets. Do you know, I had never thought other poets were not cheerful, until now; and I certainly never got the notion that hymns were an enlivening sort of literature. I thought they dealt with the shadowy side of life almost exclusively."

"Well--yes, perhaps they do," said Lois; "but they go kindling beacons everywhere to light it up; and it is the beacons you see, and not the darkness. Now the secular poets turn that about. They deal with the brightest things they can find; but, to change the figure, they cannot keep the minor chord out of their music."

Mr. and Mrs. Lenox looked at each other.

"Do you mean to say," said the latter, "that the hymn-writers do not use the minor key? They write in it, or they sing in it, more properly, altogether!"

"Yes," said Lois, into whose cheeks a slight colour was mounting; "yes, perhaps; but it is with the blast of the trumpet and the clash of the cymbals of triumph. There may be the confession of pain, but the cry of victory is there too!"

"Victory--over what?" said Mrs. Lenox rather scornfully,

"Over pain, for one thing," said Lois; "and over loss, and weariness, and disappointment."

"You will have to confirm your words by examples again, Lois," said Mrs. Barclay. "We do not all know hymn literature as well as you do."

"I never saw anything of all that in hymns," said Mrs. Lenox. "They always sound a little, to me, like dirges."

Lois hesitated. The cart was plodding along through the smooth lanes at the rate of less than a mile an hour, the oxen swaying from side to side with their slow, patient steps. The level country around lay sleepily still under the hot afternoon sun; it was rarely that any human stir was to be seen, save only the ox driver walking beside the cart. He walked beside the _cart_, not the oxen; evidently lending a curious ear to what was spoken in the company; on which account also the progress of the vehicle was a little less lively than it might have been.

"My Cynthy's writ a lot o' hymns," he remarked just here. "I never heerd no trumpets in 'em, though. I don' know what them other things is."

"Cymbals?" said Lois. "They are round, thin plates of metal, Mr. Sears, with handles on one side to hold them by; and the player clashes them together, at certain parts of the music--as you would slap the palms of your hands."

"Doos, hey? I want to know! And what doos they sound like?"

"I can't tell," said Lois. "They sound shrill, and sweet, and gay."

"But that's cur'ous sort o' church music!" said the farmer.

"Now, Miss Lothrop,--you must let us hear the figurative cymbals," Mr. Lenox reminded her.

"Do!" said Mrs. Barclay.

"There cannot be much of it," opined Mrs. Lenox.

"On the contrary," said Lois; "there is so much of it that I am at a loss where to begin.

'I love yon pale blue sky; it is the floor Of that glad home where I shall shortly be; A home from which I shall go out no more, From toil and grief and vanity set free.

'I gaze upon yon everlasting arch, Up which the bright stars wander as they shine; And, as I mark them in their nightly march, I think how soon that journey shall be mine!

'Yon silver drift of silent cloud, far up In the still heaven--through you my pathway lies: Yon rugged mountain peak--how soon your top Shall I behold beneath me, as I rise!

'Not many more of life's slow-pacing hours, Shaded with sorrow's melancholy hue; Oh what a glad ascending shall be ours, Oh what a pathway up yon starry blue!

'A journey like Elijah's, swift and bright, Caught gently upward to an early crown, In heaven's own chariot of all-blazing light, With death untasted and the grave unknown.'"

"That's not like any hymn I ever heard," remarked Mrs. Lenox, after a pause had followed the last words.

"That is a hymn of Dr. Bonar's," said Lois. "I took it merely because it came first into my head. Long ago somebody else wrote something very like it--

'Ye stars are but the shining dust Of my divine abode; The pavement of those heavenly courts Where I shall see my God.

'The Father of unnumbered lights Shall there his beams display; _And not one moment's darkness mix With that unvaried day_.'

Do you hear the cymbals, Mrs. Lenox?"

There came here a long breath, it sounded like a breath of satisfaction or rest; it was breathed by Mrs. Armadale. In the stillness of their progress, the slowly revolving wheels making no noise on the smooth road, and the feet of the oxen falling almost soundlessly, they all heard it; and they all felt it. It was nothing less than an echo of what Lois had been repeating; a mute "Even so!"--probably unconscious, and certainly undesigned. Mrs. Lenox glanced that way. There was a far-off look on the old worn face, and lines of peace all about the lips and the brow and the quiet folded hands. Mrs. Lenox did not know that a sigh came from herself as her eyes turned away.

Her husband eyed the three women curiously. They were a study to him, albeit he hardly knew the grammar of the language in which so many things seemed to be written on their faces. Mrs. Armadale's features, if strong, were of the homeliest kind; work-worn and weather-worn, to boot; yet the young man was filled with reverence as he looked from the hands in their cotton gloves, folded on her lap, to the hard features shaded and framed by the white sun-bonnet. The absolute, profound calm was imposing to him; the still peace of the spirit was attractive. He looked at his wife; and the contrast struck even him. Her face was murky. It was impatience, in part, he guessed, which made it so; _but_ why was she impatient? It was cloudy with unhappiness; and she ought to be very happy, Mr. Lenox thought; had she not everything in the world that she cared about? How could there be a cloud of unrest and discontent on her brow, and those displeased lines about her lips? His eye turned to Lois, and lingered as long as it dared. There was peace too, very sunny, and a look of lofty thought, and a brightness that seemed to know no shadow; though at the moment she was not smiling.

"Are you not going on, Miss Lothrop?" he said gently; for he felt Mrs. Barclay's eye upon him. And, besides, he wanted to provoke the girl to speak more.

"I could go on till I tired you," said Lois.

"I do not think you could," he returned pleasantly. "What can we do better? We are in a most pastoral frame of mind, with pastoral surroundings; poetry could not be better accompanied."

"When one gets excited in talking, perhaps one had better stop," Lois said modestly.

"On the contrary! Then the truth will come out best."

Lois smiled and shook her head. "We shall soon be at the shore. Look,--this way we turn down to go to it, and leave the high road."

"Then make haste!" said Mr. Lenox. "It will sound nowhere better than here."

"Yes, go on," said his wife now, raising her heavy eyelids.

"Well," said Lois. "Do you remember Bryant's 'Thanatopsis'?"

"Of course. _That_ is bright enough at any rate," said the lady.

"Do you think so?"

"Yes! What is the matter with it?"

"Dark--and earthly."

"I don't think so at all!" cried Mrs. Lenox, now becoming excited in her turn. "What would you have? I think it is beautiful! And elevated; and hopeful."

"Can you repeat the last lines?"

"No; but I dare say you can. You seem to me to have a library of poets in your head."

"I can," said Mrs. Barclay here, putting in her word at this not very civil speech. And she went on--

'The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come And make their bed with thee.'"

"Well, of course," said Mrs. Lenox. "That is true."

"Is it cheerful?" said Mrs. Barclay. "But that is not the last.--

'So live, that when thy summons comes to join The innumerable caravan, which moves To that mysterious realm, where each shall take His chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go not like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.'"

"There!" Mrs. Lenox exclaimed. "What would you have, better than that?"

Lois looked at her, and said nothing. The look irritated husband and wife, in different ways; her to impatience, him to curiosity.

"Have you got anything better, Miss Lothrop?" he asked.

"You can judge. Compare that with a dying Christian's address to his soul--

'Deathless principle, arise; Soar, thou native of the skies. Pearl of price, by Jesus bought, To his glorious likeness wrought, Go, to shine before the throne; Deck the mediatorial crown; Go, his triumphs to adorn; Made for God, to God return.'

I won't give you the whole of it--

'Is thy earthly house distressed? Willing to retain her guest? 'Tis not thou, but she, must die; Fly, celestial tenant, fly.' Burst thy shackles, drop thy clay, Sweetly breathe thyself away: Singing, to thy crown remove, Swift of wing, and fired with love.'

'Shudder not to pass the stream; Venture all thy care on him; Him whose dying love and power Stilled its tossing, hushed its roar. Safe is the expanded wave, Gentle as a summer's eve; Not one object of his care Ever suffered shipwreck there.'"

"That ain't no hymn in the book, is it?" inquired the ox driver. "Haw!--go 'long. That ain't in the book, is it, Lois?"

"Not in the one we use in church, Mr. Sears."

"I wisht it was!--like it fust-rate. Never heerd it afore in my life."

"There's as good as that _in_ the church book," remarked Mrs. Armadale.

"Yes," said Lois; "I like Wesley's hymn even better--

'Come, let us join our friends above That have obtained the prize; And on the eagle wings of love To joys celestial rise.

. . . .

'One army of the living God, To his command we bow; Part of his host have crossed the flood And part are crossing now.

. . . . . .

'His militant embodied host, With wishful looks we stand, And long to see that happy coast, And reach the heavenly land.

'E'en now, by faith, we join our hands With those that went before; And greet the blood-besprinkled bands On the eternal shore.'"