CANTO V.

_There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno,_ _Under Fiesole’s heights,—thither are we to return?_ _There is a city that fringes the curve of the inflowing waters,_ _Under the perilous hill fringes the beautiful bay,—_ _Parthenope, do they call thee?—the Siren, Neapolis, seated_ _Under Vesevus’s hill,—are we receding to thee?—_ _Sicily, Greece, will invite, and the Orient;—or are we to turn to_ _England, which may after all be for its children the best?_

I. MARY TREVELLYN, _at Lucerne_, TO MISS ROPER, _at Florence_.

So you are really free, and living in quiet at Florence; That is delightful news; you travelled slowly and safely; Mr. Claude got you out; took rooms at Florence before you; Wrote from Milan to say so; had left directly for Milan, Hoping to find us soon;—_if he could, he would, you are certain_.— Dear Miss Roper, your letter has made me exceedingly happy. You are quite sure, you say, he asked you about our intentions; You had not heard as yet of Lucerne, but told him of Como.— Well, perhaps he will come; however, I will not expect it. Though you say you are sure,—_if he can, he will, you are certain_. O my dear, many thanks from your ever affectionate Mary.

II. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Florence.

_Action will furnish belief_,—but will that belief be the true one? This is the point, you know. However, it doesn’t much matter What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the action, So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the true one. _Out of the question_, you say; _if a thing isn’t wrong we may do it_. Ah! but this _wrong_, you see—but I do not know that it matters. Eustace, the Ropers are gone, and no one can tell me about them.

Pisa.

Pisa, they say they think, and so I follow to Pisa, Hither and thither inquiring. I weary of making inquiries. I am ashamed, I declare, of asking people about it.— Who are your friends? You said you had friends who would certainly know them.

Florence.

But it is idle, moping, and thinking, and trying to fix her Image more and more in, to write the whole perfect inscription Over and over again upon every page of remembrance. I have settled to stay at Florence to wait for your answer. Who are your friends? Write quickly and tell me. I wait for your answer.

III. MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER,—_at Lucca Baths_.

You are at Lucca baths, you tell me, to stay for the summer; Florence was quite too hot; you can’t move further at present. Will you not come, do you think, before the summer is over? Mr. C. got you out with very considerable trouble; And he was useful and kind, and seemed so happy to serve you. Didn’t stay with you long, but talked very openly to you; Made you almost his confessor, without appearing to know it,— What about?—and you say you didn’t need his confessions. O my dear Miss Roper, I dare not trust what you tell me! Will he come, do you think? I am really so sorry for him. They didn’t give him my letter at Milan, I feel pretty certain. You had told him Bellaggio. We didn’t go to Bellaggio; So he would miss our track, and perhaps never come to Lugano, Where we were written in full, _To Lucerne across the St. Gothard_. But he could write to you;—you would tell him where you were going.

IV. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Let me, then, bear to forget her. I will not cling to her falsely: Nothing factitious or forced shall impair the old happy relation. I will let myself go, forget, not try to remember; I will walk on my way, accept the chances that meet me, Freely encounter the world, imbibe these alien airs, and Never ask if new feelings and thoughts are of her or of others. Is she not changing herself?—the old image would only delude me. I will be bold, too, and change,—if it must be. Yet if in all things, Yet if I do but aspire evermore to the Absolute only, I shall be doing, I think, somehow, what she will be doing;— I shall be thine, O my child, some way, though I know not in what way, Let me submit to forget her; I must; I already forget her.

V. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Utterly vain is, alas! this attempt at the Absolute,—wholly! I, who believed not in her, because I would fain believe nothing, Have to believe as I may, with a wilful, unmeaning acceptance. I, who refused to enfasten the roots of my floating existence In the rich earth, cling now to the hard, naked rock that is left me,— Ah! she was worthy, Eustace,—and that, indeed, is my comfort,— Worthy a nobler heart than a fool such as I could have given her.

* * * * *

Yes, it relieves me to write, though I do not send, and the chance that Takes may destroy my fragments. But as men pray, without asking Whether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,— Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a Being In a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,— So in your image I turn to an _ens rationis_ of friendship, Even so write in your name I know not to whom nor in what wise.

* * * * *

There was a time, methought it was but lately departed, When, if a thing was denied me, I felt I was bound to attempt it. Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender. There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early, Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted, But it is over, all that! I have slunk from the perilous field in Whose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested. It is over, all that! I am a coward, and know it. Courage in me could be only factitious, unnatural, useless.

* * * * *

Comfort has come to me here in the dreary streets of the city, Comfort—how do you think?—with a barrel-organ to bring it. Moping along the streets, and cursing my day as I wandered, All of a sudden my ear met the sound of an English psalm-tune, Comfort me it did, till indeed I was very near crying. Ah, there is some great truth, partial, very likely, but needful, Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of the English psalm-tune: Comfort it was at least; and I must take without question Comfort, however it come, in the dreary streets of the city.

* * * * *

What with trusting myself, and seeking support from within me, Almost I could believe I had gained a religious assurance, Formed in my own poor soul a great moral basis to rest on. Ah, but indeed I see, I feel it factitious entirely; I refuse, reject, and put it utterly from me; I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them; Fact shall be fact for me, and the Truth the Truth as ever, Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform, and doubtful.— Off, and depart to the void, thou subtle, fanatical tempter!

* * * * *

I shall behold thee again (is it so?) at a new visitation, O ill genius thou! I shall at my life’s dissolution (When the pulses are weak, and the feeble light of the reason Flickers, an unfed flame retiring slow from the socket), Low on a sick-bed laid, hear one, as it were, at the doorway, And, looking up, see thee standing by, looking emptily at me; I shall entreat thee then, though now I dare to refuse thee,— Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying.— Well, I will see thee again, and while I can, will repel thee.

VI. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken, Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost _il Moro_;— Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice. I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sit Moping and mourning here,—for her, and myself much smaller. Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle, Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them? Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labour, And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture Wiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy, Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour? All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome nor Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the Wreck of the Lombard youth, and the victory of the oppressor. Whither depart the brave?—God knows; I certainly do not.

VII. MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER.

He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it. You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him, If he perhaps should return;—but that is surely unlikely. Has he not written to you?—he did not know your direction. Oh, how strange never once to have told him where you were going! Yet if he only wrote to Florence, that would have reached you. If what you say he said was true, why has he not done so? Is he gone back to Rome, do you think, to his Vatican marbles?— O my dear Miss Roper, forgive me! do not be angry!— You have written to Florence;—your friends would certainly find him Might you not write to him?—but yet it is so little likely! I shall expect nothing more.—Ever yours, your affectionate Mary.

VIII. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

I cannot stay at Florence, not even to wait for a letter. Galleries only oppress me. Remembrance of hope I had cherished (Almost more than as hope, when I passed through Florence the first time) Lies like a sword in my soul. I am more a coward than ever, Chicken-hearted, past thought. The caffès and waiters distress me. All is unkind, and, alas! I am ready for any one’s kindness. Oh, I knew it of old, and knew it, I thought, to perfection, If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness, It is the need of it,—it is this sad, self-defeating dependence. Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you. But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression, Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose. All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something. Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks, Is not _I will_, but _I must_. I must,—I must,—and I do it.

* * * * *

After all, do I know that I really cared so about her? Do whatever I will, I cannot call up her image; For when I close my eyes, I see, very likely, St. Peter’s, Or the Pantheon façade, or Michel Angelo’s figures, Or, at a wish, when I please, the Alban hills and the Forum,— But that face, those eyes,—ah, no, never anything like them; Only, try as I will, a sort of featureless outline, And a pale blank orb, which no recollection will add to. After all, perhaps there was something factitious about it; I have had pain, it is true: I have wept, and so have the actors.

* * * * *

At the last moment I have your letter, for which I was waiting; I have taken my place, and see no good in inquiries. Do nothing more, good Eustace, I pray you. It only will vex me. Take no measures. Indeed, should we meet, I could not be certain; All might be changed, you know. Or perhaps there was nothing to be changed. It is a curious history, this; and yet I foresaw it; I could have told it before. The Fates, it is clear, are against us; For it is certain enough I met with the people you mention; They were at Florence the day I returned there, and spoke to me even; Stayed a week, saw me often; departed, and whither I know not. Great is Fate, and is best. I believe in Providence partly. What is ordained is right, and all that happens is ordered. Ah, no, that isn’t it. But yet I retain my conclusion. I will go where I am led, and will not dictate to the chances. Do nothing more, I beg. If you love me, forbear interfering.

IX. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE.

Shall we come out of it all, some day, as one does from a tunnel? Will it be all at once, without our doing or asking, We shall behold clear day, the trees and meadows about us, And the faces of friends, and the eyes we loved looking at us? Who knows? Who can say? It will not do to suppose it.

X. CLAUDE TO EUSTACE,—_from Rome_.

Rome will not suit me, Eustace; the priests and soldiers possess it; Priests and soldiers:—and, ah! which is the worst, the priest or the soldier? Politics, farewell, however! For what could I do? with inquiring, Talking, collating the journals, go fever my brain about things o’er Which I can have no control. No, happen whatever may happen, Time, I suppose, will subsist; the earth will revolve on its axis; People will travel; the stranger will wander as now in the city; Rome will be here, and the Pope the _custode_ of Vatican marbles. I have no heart, however, for any marble or fresco; I have essayed it in vain; ’tis in vain as yet to essay it: But I may haply resume some day my studies in this kind; Not as the Scripture says, is, I think, the fact. Ere our death-day, Faith, I think, does pass, and Love; but Knowledge abideth. Let us seek Knowledge;—the rest may come and go as it happens. Knowledge is hard to seek, and harder yet to adhere to. Knowledge is painful often; and yet when we know we are happy. Seek it, and leave mere Faith and Love to come with the chances. As for Hope,—to-morrow I hope to be starting for Naples. Rome will not do, I see, for many very good reasons. Eastward, then, I suppose, with the coming of winter, to Egypt.

XI. MARY TREVELLYN TO MISS ROPER.

You have heard nothing; of course I know you can have heard nothing. Ah, well, more than once I have broken my purpose, and sometimes, Only too often, have looked for the little lake steamer to bring him. But it is only fancy,—I do not really expect it. Oh, and you see I know so exactly how he would take it: Finding the chances prevail against meeting again, he would banish Forthwith every thought of the poor little possible hope, which I myself could not help, perhaps, thinking only too much of; He would resign himself, and go. I see it exactly. So I also submit, although in a different manner. Can you not really come? We go very shortly to England.

* * * * *

_So go forth to the world, to the good report and the evil!_ _Go, little book! thy tale, is it not evil and good?_ _Go, and if strangers revile, pass quietly by without answer._ _Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age,_ _Say, ‘I am flitting about many years from brain unto brain of_ _Feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days:_ _But,’ so finish the word, ‘I was writ in a Roman chamber,_ _When from Janiculan heights thundered the cannon of France.’_

SEVEN SONNETS ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.

_SEVEN SONNETS ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH._[15]

I

That children in their loveliness should die Before the dawning beauty, which we know Cannot remain, has yet begun to go; That when a certain period has passed by, People of genius and of faculty, Leaving behind them some result to show, Having performed some function, should forego The task which younger hands can better ply, Appears entirely natural. But that one Whose perfectness did not at all consist In things towards forming which time can have done Anything,—whose sole office was to exist, Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb Of Nature than to our unworthy view She grants for a possession, may be true: The cycle of the birthplace and the tomb Fulfils at least the order and the doom Of earth, that has not ordinance to do More than to withdraw and to renew, To show one moment and the next resume: The law that we return from whence we came, May for the flowers, beasts, and most men remain; If for ourselves, we ask not nor complain: But for a being that demands the name We highest deem—a Person and a Soul— It troubles us that this should be the whole.

III

To see the rich autumnal tint depart, And view the fading of the roseate glow That veils some Alpine altitude of snow, To hear of some great masterpiece of art Lost or destroyed, may to the adult heart, Impatient of the transitory show Of lovelinesses that but come and go, A positive strange thankfulness impart. When human pure perfections disappear, Not at the first, but at some later day, The buoyancy of such reaction may With strong assurance conquer blank dismay.

IV

But whether in the uncoloured light of truth, This inward strong assurance be, indeed, More than the self-willed arbitrary creed, Manhood’s inheritor to the dream of youth; Whether to shut out fact because forsooth To live were insupportable unfreed, Be not or be the service of untruth: Whether this vital confidence be more Than his, who upon death’s immediate brink, Knowing, perforce determines to ignore; Or than the bird’s, that when the hunter’s near, Burying her eyesight, can forget her fear; Who about this shall tell us what to think?

V

If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws What it at first as casually did make, Say what amount of ages it will take With tardy rare concurrences of laws, And subtle multiplicities of cause, The thing they once had made us to remake; May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake, E’en after utmost interval of pause, What revolutions must have passed, before The great celestial cycles shall restore The starry sign whose present hour is gone; What worse than dubious chances interpose, With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose The skiey picture we had gazed upon.

VI

But if as not by that the soul desired Swayed in the judgment, wisest men have thought, And furnishing the evidence it sought, Man’s heart hath ever fervently required, And story, for that reason deemed inspired, To every clime, in every age, hath taught; If in this human complex there be aught Not lost in death, as not in birth acquired, O then, though cold the lips that did convey Rich freights of meaning, dead each living sphere Where thought abode, and fancy loved to play, Thou yet, we think, somewhere somehow still art, And satisfied with that the patient heart The where and how doth not desire to hear.

VII

Shall I decide it by a random shot? Our happy hopes, so happy and so good, Are not mere idle motions of the blood; And when they seem most baseless, most are not. A seed there must have been upon the spot Where the flowers grow, without it ne’er they could; The confidence of growth least understood Of some deep intuition was begot. What if despair and hope alike be true? The heart, ’tis manifest, is free to do Whichever Nature and itself suggest, And always ’tis a fact that we are here, And with being here, doth palsy-giving fear (Whoe’er can ask or hope) accord the best?

MARI MAGNO OR TALES ON BOARD.

_MARI MAGNO or TALES ON BOARD._[16]

A youth was I. An elder friend with me, ’Twas in September o’er the autumnal sea We went; the wide Atlantic ocean o’er Two amongst many the strong steamer bore. Delight it was to feel that wondrous force That held us steady to our proposed course, The burning resolute victorious will ’Gainst winds and waves that strive unwavering still. Delight it was with each returning day To learn the ship had won upon her way Her sum of miles,—delight were mornings grey And gorgeous eves,—nor was it less delight, On each more temperate and favouring night, Friend with familiar or with new-found friend, To pace the deck, and o’er the bulwarks bend, And the night watches in long converse spend; While still new subjects and new thoughts arise Amidst the silence of the seas and skies. Amongst the mingled multitude a few, Some three or four, towards us early drew; We proved each other with a day or two; Night after night some three or four we walked And talked, and talked, and infinitely talked. Of the New England ancient blood was one; His youthful spurs in letters he had won, Unspoilt by that, to Europe late had come,— Hope long deferred,—and went unspoilt by Europe home. What racy tales of Yankeeland he had! Up-country girl, up-country farmer lad; The regnant clergy of the time of old In wig and gown;—tales not to be retold By me. I could but spoil were I to tell: Himself must do it who can do it well. An English clergyman came spick and span In black and white—a large well-favoured man, Fifty years old, as near as one could guess. He looked the dignitary more or less. A rural dean, I said, he was, at least, Canon perhaps; at many a good man’s feast A guest had been, amongst the choicest there. Manly his voice and manly was his air: At the first sight you felt he had not known The things pertaining to his cloth alone. Chairman of Quarter Sessions had he been? Serious and calm, ’twas plain he much had seen, Had miscellaneous large experience had Of human acts, good, half and half, and bad. Serious and calm, yet lurked, I know not why, At times, a softness in his voice and eye. Some shade of ill a prosperous life had crossed; Married no doubt: a wife or child had lost? He never told us why he passed the sea. My guardian friend was now, at thirty-three, A rising lawyer—ever, at the best, Slow rises worth in lawyer’s gown compressed; Succeeding now, yet just, and only just, His new success he never seemed to trust. By nature he to gentlest thoughts inclined, To most severe had disciplined his mind; He held it duty to be half unkind. Bitter, they said, who but the exterior knew; In friendship never was a friend so true: The unwelcome fact he did not shrink to tell, The good, if fact, he recognised as well. Stout to maintain, if not the first to see; In conversation who so great as he? Leading but seldom, always sure to guide, To false or silly, if ’twas borne aside, His quick correction silent he expressed, And stopped you short, and forced you to your best. Often, I think, he suffered from some pain Of mind, that on the body worked again; One felt it in his sort of half-disdain, Impatient not, but acrid in his speech; The world with him her lesson failed to teach To take things easily and let them go. He, for what special fitness I scarce know, For which good quality, or if for all, With less of reservation and recall And speedier favour than I e’er had seen, Took, as we called him, to the rural dean. As grew the gourd, as grew the stalk of bean, So swift it seemed, betwixt these differing two A stately trunk of confidence up-grew. Of marriage long one night they held discourse; Regarding it in different ways, of course. Marriage is discipline, the wise had said, A needful human discipline to wed; Novels of course depict it final bliss,— Say, had it ever really once been this? Our Yankee friend (whom, ere the night was done, We called New England or the Pilgrim Son), A little tired, made bold to interfere; ‘Appeal,’ he said, ‘to me; my sentence hear. You’ll reason on till night and reason fail; My judgment is you each shall tell a tale; And as on marriage you can not agree, Of love and marriage let the stories be.’ Sentence delivered, as the younger man, My lawyer friend was called on and began. ‘_Infandum jubes!_ ’tis of long ago, If tell I must, I tell the tale I know: Yet the first person using for the freak, Don’t rashly judge that of myself I speak.’ So to his tale; if of himself or not I never learnt, we thought so on the spot. Lightly he told it as a thing of old, And lightly I repeat it as he told.

_THE LAWYER’S FIRST TALE._

_Primitiæ, or Third Cousins._

I

‘Dearest of boys, please come to-day, Papa and mama have bid me say, They hope you’ll dine with us at three; They will be out till then, you see, But you will start at once, you know, And come as fast as you can go. Next week they hope you’ll come and stay Some time before you go away. Dear boy, how pleasant it will be! Ever your dearest Emily!’ Twelve years of age was I, and she Fourteen, when thus she wrote to me, A schoolboy, with an uncle spending My holidays, then nearly ending. My uncle lived the mountain o’er, A rector, and a bachelor; The vicarage was by the sea, That was the home of Emily: The windows to the front looked down Across a single-streeted town, Far as to where Worms-head was seen, Dim with ten watery miles between; The Carnedd mountains on the right With stony masses filled the sight; To left the open sea; the bay In a blue plain before you lay. A garden, full of fruit, extends, Stone-walled, above the house, and ends With a locked door, that by a porch Admits to churchyard and to church; Farm-buildings nearer on one side, And glebe, and then the country wide. I and my cousin Emily Were cousins in the third degree; My mother near of kin was reckoned To hers, who was my mother’s second: My cousinship I held from her. Such an amount of girls there were, At first one really was perplexed: ’Twas Patty first, and Lydia next, And Emily the third, and then, Philippa, Phœbe, Mary Gwen. Six were they, you perceive, in all; And portraits fading on the wall, Grandmothers, heroines of old, And aunts of aunts, with scrolls that told Their names and dates, were there to show Why these had all been christened so. The crowd of blooming daughters fair Scarce let you see the mother there, And by her husband, large and tall, She looked a little shrunk and small; Although my mother used to tell That once she was a county belle: Busied she seemed, and half-distress’d For him and them to do the best. The vicar was of bulk and thewes, Six feet he stood within his shoes, And every inch of all a man; Ecclesiast on the ancient plan, Unforced by any party rule His native character to school; In ancient learning not unread, But had few doctrines in his head; Dissenters truly he abhorr’d, They never had his gracious word. He ne’er was bitter or unkind, But positively spoke his mind. Their piety he could not bear, A sneaking snivelling set they were: Their tricks and meanness fired his blood; Up for his Church he stoutly stood. No worldly aim had he in life To set him with himself at strife; A spade a spade he freely named, And of his joke was not ashamed, Made it and laughed at it, be sure, With young and old, and rich and poor. His sermons frequently he took Out of some standard reverend book; They seemed a little strange, indeed, But were not likely to mislead. Others he gave that were his own, The difference could be quickly known. Though sorry not to have a boy, His daughters were his perfect joy; He plagued them, oft drew tears from each, Was bold and hasty in his speech; All through the house you heard him call, He had his vocatives for all: Patty Patina, Pat became, Lydia took Languish with her name, Philippa was the Gentle Queen, And Phœbe, Madam Proserpine; The pseudonyms for Mary Gwen Varied with every week again; But Emily, of all the set, Emilia called, was most the pet. Soon as her messenger had come, I started from my uncle’s home, On an old pony scrambling down Over the mountain to the town. My cousins met me at the door, And some behind, and some before, Kissed me all round and kissed again, The happy custom there and then, From Patty down to Mary Gwen. Three hours we had, and spent in play About the garden and the hay; We sat upon the half-built stack; And when ’twas time for hurrying back, Slyly away the others hied, And took the ladder from the side; Emily there, alone with me, Was left in close captivity; But down the stack at last I slid, And found the ladder they had hid. I left at six; again I went Soon after and a fortnight spent: Drawing, by Patty I was taught, But could not be to music brought; I showed them how to play at chess, I argued with the governess; I called them stupid; why, to me ’Twas evident as A B C; Were not the reasons such and such? Helston, my schoolfellow, but much My senior, in a yacht came o’er, His uncle with him, from the shore Under Worms-head: to take a sail He pressed them, but could not prevail; Mama was timid, durst not go, Papa was rather gruff with no. Helston no sooner was afloat, We made a party in a boat, And rowed to Sea-Mew Island out, And landed there and roved about: And I and Emily out of reach, Strayed from the rest along the beach. Turning to look into a cave She stood, when suddenly a wave Ran up; I caught her by the frock, And pulled her out, and o’er a rock, So doing, stumbled, rolled, and fell. She knelt down, I remember well, Bid me where I was hurt to tell, And kissed me three times as I lay; But I jumped up and limped away. The next was my departing day. Patty arranged it all with me To send next year to Emily A valentine. I wrote and sent; For the fourteenth it duly went. On the fourteenth what should there be But one from Emily to me; The postmark left it plain to see. Mine, though they praised it at the time, Was but a formal piece of rhyme. She sent me one that she had bought; ’Twas stupid of her, as I thought: Why not have written one? She wrote, However, soon, this little note. ‘Dearest of boys, of course ’twas you; You printed, but your hand I knew, And verses too, how did you learn? I can’t send any in return. Papa declares they are not bad— That’s praise from him—and I’m so glad Because you know no one can be I’d rather have to write to me. ‘Our governess is going away, We’re so distressed she cannot stay: Mama had made it quite a rule We none of us should go to school. But what to do they do not know, Papa protests it must be so. Lydia and I may have to go; Patty will try to teach the rest, Mama agrees it will be best. Dear boy, good-bye, I am, you see, Ever your dearest Emily. We want to know, so write and tell, If you’d a valentine as well.’

II

Five tardy years were fully spent Ere next my cousins’ way I went; With Christmas then I came to see My uncle in his rectory: But they the town had left; no more Were in the vicarage of yore. When time his sixtieth year had brought, An easier cure the vicar sought: A country parsonage was made Sufficient, amply, with the aid Of mortar here and there, and bricks, For him and wife and children six. Though neighbours now, there scarce was light To see them and return ere night. Emily wrote: how glad they were To hear of my arrival there; Mama had bid her say that all The house was crowded for the ball Till Tuesday, but if I would come, She thought that they could find me room; The week with them I then should spend, But really must the ball attend; ‘Dear cousin, you have been away For such an age, pray don’t delay, But come and do not lose a day.’ A schoolboy still, but now, indeed, About to college to proceed, Dancing was, let it be confess’d, To me no pleasure at the best: Of girls and of their lovely looks I thought not, busy with my books. Still, though a little ill-content, Upon the Monday morn I went: My cousins, each and all, I found Wondrously grown! They kissed me round, And so affectionate and good They were, it could not be withstood. Emily, I was so surprised, At first I hardly recognised; Her face so formed and rounded now, Such knowledge in her eyes and brow; For all I read and thought I knew, She could divine me through and through. Where had she been, and what had done, I asked, such victory to have won? She had not studied, had not read, Seemed to have little in her head, Yet of herself the right and true, As of her own experience knew. Straight from her eyes her judgments flew, Like absolute decrees they ran, From mine, on such a different plan. A simple county country ball It was to be, not grand at all; And cousins four with me would dance, And keep me well in countenance. And there were people there to be Who knew of old my family, Friends of my friends—I heard and knew, And tried; but no, it would not do. Somehow it seemed a sort of thing To which my strength I could not bring; The music scarcely touched my ears, The figures fluttered me with fears. I talked, but had not aught to say, Danced, my instructions to obey; E’en when with beautiful good-will Emilia through the long quadrille Conducted me, alas the day, Ten times I wished myself away. But she, invested with a dower Of conscious, scarce-exerted power, Emilia, so, I know not why, They called her now, not Emily, Amid the living, heaving throng, Sedately, somewhat, moved along, Serenely, somewhat, in the dance Mingled, divining at a glance, And reading every countenance; Not stately she, nor grand nor tall, Yet looked as if controlling all The fluctuations of the ball; Her subjects ready at her call, All others, she a queen, her throne Preparing, and her title known, Though not yet taken as her own. O wonderful! I still can see, And twice she came and danced with me. She asked me of my school, and what Those prizes were that I had got, And what we learnt, and ‘oh,’ she said, ‘How much to carry in one’s head,’ And I must be upon my guard, And really must not work too hard: Who were my friends? and did I go Ever to balls? I told her no: She said, ‘I really like them so; But then I am a girl; and dear, You like your friends at school, I fear Better than anybody here.’ How long had she left school, I asked. Two years, she told me, and I tasked My faltering speech to learn about Her life, but could not bring it out: This while the dancers round us flew. Helston, whom formerly I knew, My schoolfellow, was at the ball, A man full-statured, fair and tall, Helston of Helston now they said, Heir to his uncle, who was dead; In the army, too: he danced with three Of the four sisters. Emily Refused him once, to dance with me. How long it seemed! and yet at one We left, before ’twas nearly done: How thankful I! the journey through I talked to them with spirits new; And the brief sleep of closing night Brought a sensation of delight, Which, when I woke, was exquisite. The music moving in my brain I felt; in the gay crowd again Half felt, half saw the girlish bands, On their white skirts their white-gloved hands, Advance, retreat, and yet advance, And mingle in the mingling dance. The impulse had arrived at last, When the opportunity was past. Breakfast my soft sensations first With livelier passages dispersed. Reposing in his country home, Which half luxurious had become, Gay was their father, loudly flung His guests and blushing girls among, His jokes; and she, their mother, too, Less anxious seemed, with less to do, Her daughters aiding. As the day Advanced, the others went away, But I must absolutely stay, The girls cried out; I stayed and let Myself be once more half their pet, Although a little on the fret. How ill our boyhood understands Incipient manhood’s strong demands! Boys have such troubles of their own, As none, they fancy, e’er have known, Such as to speak of, or to tell, They hold, were unendurable: Religious, social, of all kinds, That tear and agitate their minds. A thousand thoughts within me stirred, Of which I could not speak a word; Strange efforts after something new, Which I was wretched not to do; Passions, ambitions lay and lurked, Wants, counter-wants, obscurely worked Without their names, and unexplained. And where had Emily obtained Assurance, and had ascertained? How strange, how far behind was I, And how it came, I asked, and why? How was it, and how could it be, And what was all that worked in me? They used to scold me when I read, And bade me talk to them instead; When I absconded to my room, To fetch me out they used to come; Oft by myself I went to walk, But, by degrees, was got to talk. The year had cheerfully begun, With more than winter’s wonted sun, Mountains, in the green garden ways, Gleamed through the laurel and the bays. I well remember letting out One day, as there I looked about, While they of girls discoursing sat, This one how sweet, how lovely that, That I could greater pleasure take In looking on Llynidwil lake Than on the fairest female face: They could not understand: a place! Incomprehensible it seemed; Philippa looked as if she dreamed, Patty and Lydia loud exclaimed, And I already was ashamed, When Emily asked, half apart, If to the lake I’d given my heart; And did the lake, she wished to learn, My tender sentiment return. For music, too, I would not care, Which was an infinite despair: When Lydia took her seat to play, I read a book, or walked away. I was not quite composed, I own, Except when with the girls alone; Looked to their father still with fear Of how to him I must appear; And was entirely put to shame, When once some rough he-cousins came. Yet Emily from all distress Could reinstate me, more or less; How pleasant by her side to walk, How beautiful to let her talk, How charming; yet, by slow degrees, I got impatient, ill at ease; Half glad, half wretched, when at last The visit ended, and ’twas past.

III

Next year I went and spent a week, And certainly had learnt to speak; My chains I forcibly had broke, And now too much indeed I spoke. A mother sick and seldom seen A grief for many months had been, Their father too was feebler, years Were heavy, and there had been fears Some months ago; and he was vexed With party heats and all perplexed With an upheaving modern change To him and his old wisdom strange. The daughters all were there, not one Had yet to other duties run, Their father, people used to say, Frightened the wooers all away;— As vines around an ancient stem, They clung and clustered upon him, Him loved and tended; above all, Emilia, ever at his call. But I was—intellectual; I talked in high superior tone Of things the girls had never known, Far wiser to have let alone; Things which the father knew in short By country clerical report; I talked of much I thought I knew, Used all my college wit anew, A little on my fancy drew; Religion, politics, O me! No subject great enough could be. In vain, more weak in spirit grown, At times he tried to put me down. I own it was the want, in part, Of any discipline of heart. It was, now hard at work again, The busy argufying brain Of the prize schoolboy; but, indeed, Much more, if right the thing I read, It was the instinctive wish to try And, above all things, not be shy. Alas! it did not do at all; Ill went the visit, ill the ball; Each hour I felt myself grow worse, With every effort more perverse. I tried to change; too hard, indeed, I tried, and never could succeed. Out of sheer spite an extra day I stayed; but when I went away, Alas, the farewells were not warm, The kissing was the merest form; Emilia was _distraite_ and sad, And everything was bad as bad.

O had some happy chance fall’n out, To turn the thing just round about, In time at least to give anew The old affectionate adieu! A little thing, a word, a jest, A laugh, had set us all at rest; But nothing came. I went away, And could have really cried that day, So vexed, for I had meant so well, Yet everything so ill befell, And why and how I could not tell.

Our wounds in youth soon close and heal, Or seem to close; young people feel, And suffer greatly, I believe, But then they can’t profess to grieve: Their pleasures occupy them more, And they have so much time before. At twenty life appeared to me A sort of vague infinity; And though of changes still I heard, Real changes had not yet occurred: And all things were, or would be, well, And nothing irremediable. The youth for his degree that reads Beyond it nothing knows or needs; Nor till ’tis over wakes to see The busy world’s reality.

One visit brief I made again In autumn next but one, and then All better found. With Mary Gwen I talked, a schoolgirl just about To leave this winter and come out. Patty and Lydia were away, And a strange sort of distance lay Betwixt me and Emilia. She sought me less, and I was shy. And yet this time I think that I More subtly felt, more saw, more knew The beauty into which she grew; More understood the meanings now Of the still eyes and rounded brow, And could, perhaps, have told you how The intellect that crowns our race To more than beauty in her face Was changed. But I confuse from hence The later and the earlier sense.

IV

Have you the Giesbach seen? a fall In Switzerland you say, that’s all; That, and an inn, from which proceeds A path that to the Faulhorn leads, From whence you see the world of snows. Few see how perfect in repose, White green, the lake lies deeply set, Where, slowly purifying yet, The icy river-floods retain A something of the glacier stain. Steep cliffs arise the waters o’er, The Giesbach leads you to a shore, And to one still sequestered bay I found elsewhere a scrambling way. Above, the loftier heights ascend, And level platforms here extend The mountains and the cliffs between, With firs and grassy spaces green, And little dips and knolls to show In part or whole the lake below; And all exactly at the height To make the pictures exquisite. Most exquisite they seemed to me, When, a year after my degree, Passing upon my journey home From Greece, and Sicily, and Rome, I stayed at that minute hotel Six days, or eight, I cannot tell. Twelve months had led me fairly through The old world surviving in the new. From Rome with joy I passed to Greece, To Athens and the Peloponnese; Saluted with supreme delight The Parthenon-surmounted height; In huts at Delphi made abode, And in Arcadian valleys rode; Counted the towns that lie like slain Upon the wide Bœotian plain; With wonder in the spacious gloom Stood of the Mycenæan tomb; From the Acrocorinth watched the day Light the eastern and the western bay. Constantinople then had seen, Where, by her cypresses, the queen Of the East sees flow through portals wide The steady streaming Scythian tide; And after, from Scamander’s mouth, Went up to Troy, and to the South, To Lycia, Caria, pressed, atwhiles Outvoyaging to Egean isles. To see the things, which, sick with doubt And comment, one had learnt about, Was like clear morning after night, Or raising of the blind to sight. Aware it might be first and last, I did it eagerly and fast, And took unsparingly my fill. The impetus of travel still Urged me, but laden, half oppress’d, Here lighting on a place of rest, I yielded, asked not if ’twere best. Pleasant it was, reposing here, To sum the experience of the year, And let the accumulated gain Assort itself upon the brain. Travel’s a miniature life, Travel is evermore a strife, Where he must run who would obtain. ’Tis a perpetual loss and gain; For sloth and error dear we pay, By luck and effort win our way, And both have need of every day. Each day has got its sight to see, Each day must put to profit be; Pleasant, when seen are all the sights, To let them think themselves to rights. I on the Giesbach turf reclined, Half watched this process in my mind, Watch the stream purifying slow, In me and in the lake below; And then began to think of home, And possibilities to come.

Brienz, on our Brienzer See From Interlaken every day A steamer seeks, and at our pier Lets out a crowd to see things here; Up a steep path they pant and strive; When to the level they arrive, Dispersing, hither, thither, run, For all must rapidly be done, And seek, with questioning and din, Some the cascade, and some the inn, The waterfall, for if you look, You find it printed in the book That man or woman, so inclined, May pass the very fall behind; So many feet there intervene The rock and flying jet between; The inn, ’tis also in the plan (For tourist is a hungry man), And a small _salle_ repeats by rote, A daily task of _table d’hôte_, Where broth and meat, and country wine Assure the strangers that they dine; Do it they must while they have power, For in three-quarters of an hour Back comes the steamer from Brienz, And with one clear departure hence The quietude is more intense. It was my custom at the top To stand and see them clambering up, Then take advantage of the start, And pass into the woods apart. It happened, and I know not why, I once returned too speedily; And, seeing women still and men, Was swerving to the woods again, But for a moment stopped to seize A glance at some one near the trees; A figure full, but full of grace, Its movement beautified the place. It turns, advances, comes my way; What do I see, what do I say? Yet, to a statelier beauty grown, It is, it can be, she alone! O mountains round! O heaven above! It is—Emilia, whom I love; ‘Emilia, whom I love,’ the word Rose to my lips, as yet unheard, When she, whose colour flushed to red, In a soft voice, ‘My husband,’ said; And Helston came up with his hand, And both of them took mine; but stand And talk they could not, they must go; The steamer rang her bell below; How curious that I did not know! They were to go and stay at Thun, Could I come there and see them soon? And shortly were returning home, And when would I to Helston come? Thus down we went, I put them in; Off went the steamer with a din, And on the pier I stood and eyed The bridegroom, seated by the bride, Emilia closing to his side.

V

She wrote from Helston; begged I’d come And see her in her husband’s home. I went, and bound by double vow, Not only wife, but mother now, I found her, lovely as of old, O, rather, lovelier manifold. Her wifely sweet reserve unbroke, Still frankly, tenderly, she spoke; Asked me about myself, would hear What I proposed to do this year; At college why was I detained, Was it the fellowship I’d gained? I told her that I was not tied Henceforward further to reside, Yet very likely might stay on, And lapse into a college don; My fellowship itself would give A competence on which to live, And if I waited, who could tell, I might be tutor too, as well. Oh, but, she said, I must not stay, College and school were only play; I might be sick, perhaps, of praise, But must not therefore waste my days! Fellows grow indolent, and then They may not do as other men, And for your happiness in life, Sometime you’ll wish to have a wife.

Languidly by her chair I sat, But my eyes rather flashed at that. I said, ‘Emilia, people change, But yet, I own, I find it strange To hear this common talk from you: You speak, and some believe it true, Just as if any wife would do; Whoe’er one takes, ’tis much the same, And love—and so forth, but a name.’ She coloured. ‘What can I have said Or what could put it in your head? Indeed, I had not in my mind The faintest notion of the kind.’ I told her that I did not know— Her tone appeared to mean it so. ‘Emilia, when I’ve heard,’ I said, ‘How people match themselves and wed, I’ve sometimes wished that both were dead,’

She turned a little pale. I woke Some thought; what thought I but soft she spoke; ‘I’m sure that what you meant was good, But, really, you misunderstood. From point to point so quick you fly, And are so vehement,—and I, As you remember, long ago, Am stupid, certainly am slow. And yet some things I seem to know; I know it will be just a crime, If you should waste your powers and time. There is so much, I think, that you, And no one equally, can do.’ ‘It does not matter much,’ said I, ‘The things I thought of are gone by; I’m quite content to wait to die.’

A sort of beauteous anger spread Over her face. ‘O me!’ she said, ‘That you should sit and trifle so, And you so utterly don’t know How greatly you have yet to grow, How wide your objects have to expand, How much is yet an unknown land! You’re twenty-three, I’m twenty-five, And I am so much more alive.’ My eyes I shaded with my hand, And almost lost my self-command. I muttered something: ‘Yes, I see; Two years have severed you from me. O, Emily, was it ever told,’ I asked, ‘that souls are young and old?’ But she, continuing, ‘All the day Were I to speak, I could but say The one same thing the one same way. Sometimes, indeed, I think, you know,’ And her tone suddenly was low, ‘That in a day we yet shall see, You of my sisters and of me, And of the things that used to be, Will think, as you look back again, With something not unlike disdain; So you your rightful place obtain, That will to me be joy, not pain.’ Her voice still lower, lower fell, I heard, just heard, each syllable. ‘But,’ in the tone she used before, ‘Don’t stay at college any more! For others it perhaps may do, I’m sure it will be bad for you.’

She softened me. The following day We parted. As I went away Her infant on her bosom lay, And, as a mother might her boy, I think she would with loving joy Have kissed me; but I turned to go, ’Twas better not to have it so. Next year achieved me some amends, And once we met, and met as friends. Friends, yet apart; I had not much Valued her judgment, though to touch Her words had power; yet, strangely still, It had been cogent on my will. As she had counselled, I had done, And a new effort was begun. Forth to the war of life I went, Courageous, and not ill content.

‘Yours is the fault I opened thus again A youthful, ancient, sentimental vein,’ He said, ‘and like Munchausen’s horn o’erflow With liquefying tunes of long ago. My wiser friend, who knows for what we live, And what shall seek, will his correction give.’

We all made thanks. ‘My tale were quickly told,’ The other said, ‘but the turned heavens behold; The night two watches of the night is old, The sinking stars their suasions urge for sleep. My story for to-morrow night will keep.’

The evening after, when the day was stilled, His promise thus the clergyman fulfilled.

_THE CLERGYMAN’S FIRST TALE._

_Love is fellow-service._

A youth and maid upon a summer night Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light, Edmund and Emma, let their names be these, Among the shrubs within the circling trees, Joined in a game with boys and girls at play: For games perhaps too old a little they; In April she her eighteenth year begun, And twenty he, and near to twenty-one. A game it was of running and of noise; He as a boy, with other girls and boys (Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun; And when her turn, she marked not, came to run, ‘Emma,’ he called,—then knew that he was wrong, Knew that her name to him did not belong. Her look and manner proved his feeling true,— A child no more, her womanhood she knew; Half was the colour mounted on her face, Her tardy movement had an adult grace. Vexed with himself, and shamed, he felt the more A kind of joy he ne’er had felt before. Something there was that from this date began; ’Twas beautiful with her to be a man.

Two years elapsed, and he who went and came, Changing in much, in this appeared the same; The feeling, if it did not greatly grow, Endured and was not wholly hid below. He now, o’ertasked at school, a serious boy, A sort of after-boyhood to enjoy Appeared—in vigour and in spirit high And manly grown, but kept the boy’s soft eye: And full of blood, and strong and lithe of limb, To him ’twas pleasure now to ride, to swim; The peaks, the glens, the torrents tempted him. Restless he seemed,—long distances would walk, And lively was, and vehement in talk. A wandering life his life had lately been, Books he had read, the world had little seen. One former frailty haunted him, a touch Of something introspective overmuch. With all his eager motions still there went A self-correcting and ascetic bent, That from the obvious good still led astray, And set him travelling on the longest way; Seen in these scattered notes their date that claim When first his feeling conscious sought a name. ‘Beside the wishing gate which so they name, ’Mid northern hills to me this fancy came, A wish I formed, my wish I thus expressed: _Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,_ _And know to wish the wish that were the best!_ O for some winnowing wind, to the empty air This chaff of easy sympathies to bear Far off, and leave me of myself aware! While thus this over health deludes me still, So willing that I know not what I will; O for some friend, or more than friend, austere, To make me know myself, and make me fear! O for some touch, too noble to be kind, To awake to life the mind within the mind!’ ‘O charms, seductions and divine delights! All through the radiant yellow summer nights Dreams, hardly dreams, that yield or e’er they’re done, To the bright fact, my day, my risen sun! O promise and fulfilment, both in one! O bliss, already bliss, which nought has shared, Whose glory no fruition has impaired, And, emblem of my state, thou coming day, With all thy hours unspent to pass away! Why do I wait? What more propose to know? Where the sweet mandate bids me, let me go; My conscience in my impulse let me find, Justification in the moving mind, Law in the strong desire; or yet behind, Say, is there aught the spell that has not heard, A something that refuses to be stirred?’ ‘In other regions has my being heard Of a strange language the diviner word? Has some forgotten life the exemplar shown? Elsewhere such high communion have I known, As dooms me here, in this, to live alone? Then love, that shouldest blind me, let me, love, Nothing behold beyond thee or above; Ye impulses, that should be strong and wild, Beguile me, if I am to be beguiled!’ ‘Or are there modes of love, and different kinds, Proportioned to the sizes of our minds? There are who say thus, I held there was one, One love, one deity, one central sun; As he resistless brings the expanding day, So love should come on his victorious way. If light at all, can light indeed be there, Yet only permeate half the ambient air? Can the high noon be regnant in the sky, Yet half the land in light, and half in darkness lie? Can love, if love, be occupant in part, Hold, as it were, some chambers in the heart; Tenant at will of so much of the soul, Not lord and mighty master of the whole? There are who say, and say that it is well; Opinion all, of knowledge none can tell.’ ‘Montaigne, I know in a realm high above Places the seat of friendship over love; ’Tis not in love that we should think to find The lofty fellowship of mind with mind; Love’s not a joy where soul and soul unite, Rather a wondrous animal delight; And as in spring, for one consummate hour The world of vegetation turns to flower, The birds with liveliest plumage trim their wing, And all the woodland listens as they sing; When spring is o’er and summer days are sped, The songs are silent, and the blossoms dead: E’en so of man and woman is the bliss. O, but I will not tamely yield to this! I think it only shows us in the end, Montaigne was happy in a noble friend, Had not the fortune of a noble wife; He lived, I think, a poor ignoble life, And wrote of petty pleasures, petty pain; I do not greatly think about Montaigne.’ ‘How charming to be with her! yet indeed, After a while I find a blank succeed; After a while she little has to say, I’m silent too, although I wish to stay; What would it be all day, day after day? Ah! but I ask, I do not doubt, too much; I think of love as if it should be such As to fulfil and occupy in whole The nought-else-seeking, nought-essaying soul. Therefore it is my mind with doubts I urge; Hence are these fears and shiverings on the verge; By books, not nature, thus have we been schooled, By poetry and novels been befooled; Wiser tradition says, the affections’ claim Will be supplied, the rest will be the same. I think too much of love, ’tis true: I know It is not all, was ne’er intended so; Yet such a change, so entire, I feel, ’twould be, So potent, so omnipotent with me; My former self I never should recall,— Indeed I think it must be all in all.’ ‘I thought that Love was winged; without a sound, His purple pinions bore him o’er the ground, Wafted without an effort here or there, He came—and we too trod as if in air:— But panting, toiling, clambering up the hill, Am I to assist him? I, put forth my will To upbear his lagging footsteps, lame and slow, And help him on and tell him where to go, And ease him of his quiver and his bow?’ ‘Erotion! I saw it in a book; Why did I notice it, why did I look? Yea, is it so, ye powers that see above? I do not love, I want, I try to love! This is not love, but lack of love instead! Merciless thought! I would I had been dead, Or e’er the phrase had come into my head.’ She also wrote: and here may find a place, Of her and of her thoughts some slender trace. ‘He is not vain; if proud, he quells his pride, And somehow really likes to be defied; Rejoices if you humble him: indeed Gives way at once, and leaves you to succeed.’ ‘Easy it were with such a mind to play, And foolish not to do so, some would say; One almost smiles to look and see the way: But come what will, I will not play a part, Indeed I dare not condescend to art.’ ‘Easy ’twere not, perhaps, with him to live; He looks for more than any one can give: So dulled at times and disappointed; still Expecting what depends not of my will: My inspiration comes not at my call, Seek me as I am, if seek you do at all.’ ‘Like him I do, and think of him I must; But more—I dare not and I cannot trust. This more he brings—say, is it more or less Than that no fruitage ever came to bless,— The old wild flower of love-in-idleness?’ ‘Me when he leaves and others when he sees, What is my fate who am not there to please? Me he has left; already may have seen One, who for me forgotten here has been; And he, the while is balancing between. If the heart spoke, the heart I knew were bound; What if it utter an uncertain sound?’ ‘So quick to vary, so rejoiced to change, From this to that his feelings surely range; His fancies wander, and his thoughts as well; And if the heart be constant, who can tell? Far off to fly, to abandon me, and go, He seems returning then before I know: With every accident he seems to move, Is now below me and is now above, Now far aside,—O, does he really love?’ ‘Absence were hard; yet let the trial be; His nature’s aim and purpose he would free, And in the world his course of action see. O should he lose, not learn; pervert his scope; O should I lose! and yet to win I hope. I win not now; his way if now I went, Brief joy I gave, for years of discontent.’ ‘Gone, is it true? but oft he went before, And came again before a month was o’er. Gone—though I could not venture upon art, It was perhaps a foolish pride in part; He had such ready fancies in his head, And really was so easy to be led; One might have failed; and yet I feel ’twas pride, And can’t but half repent I never tried. Gone, is it true? but he again will come, Wandering he loves, and loves returning home.’ Gone, it was true; nor came so soon again; Came, after travelling, pleasure half, half pain, Came, but a half of Europe first o’erran; Arrived, his father found a ruined man. Rich they had been, and rich was Emma too. Heiress of wealth she knew not, Edmund knew. Farewell to her!—In a new home obscure, Food for his helpless parents to secure, From early morning to advancing dark, He toiled and laboured as a merchant’s clerk. Three years his heavy load he bore, nor quailed, Then all his health, though scarce his spirit, failed; Friends interposed, insisted it must be, Enforced their help, and sent him to the sea. Wandering about with little here to do, His old thoughts mingling dimly with his new, Wandering one morn, he met upon the shore, Her, whom he quitted five long years before. Alas! why quitted? Say that charms are nought, Nor grace, nor beauty worth one serious thought; Was there no mystic virtue in the sense That joined your boyish girlish innocence? Is constancy a thing to throw away, And loving faithfulness a chance of every day? Alas! why quitted? is she changed? but now The weight of intellect is in her brow; Changed, or but truer seen, one sees in her Something to wake the soul, the interior sense to stir. Alone they met, from alien eyes away, The high shore hid them in a tiny bay. Alone was he, was she; in sweet surprise They met, before they knew it, in their eyes. In his a wondering admiration glowed, In hers, a world of tenderness o’erflowed; In a brief moment all was known and seen, That of slow years the wearying work had been: Morn’s early odorous breath perchance in sooth, Awoke the old natural feeling of their youth: The sea, perchance, and solitude had charms, They met—I know not—in each other’s arms. Why linger now—why waste the sands of life? A few sweet weeks, and they were man and wife. To his old frailty do not be severe, His latest theory with patience hear: ‘I sought not, truly would to seek disdain, A kind, soft pillow for a wearying pain, Fatigues and cares to lighten, to relieve; But love is fellow-service, I believe.’ ‘No, truly no, it was not to obtain, Though that alone were happiness, were gain, A tender breast to fall upon and weep, A heart, the secrets of my heart to keep; To share my hopes, and in my griefs to grieve; Yet love is fellow-service, I believe.’ ‘Yet in the eye of life’s all-seeing sun We shall behold a something we have done, Shall of the work together we have wrought, Beyond our aspiration and our thought, Some not unworthy issue yet receive; For love is fellow-service I believe.’

* * * * *

The tale, we said, instructive was, but short; Could he not give another of the sort? He feared his second might his first repeat, ‘And Aristotle teaches, change is sweet; But come, our younger friend in this dim night Under his bushel must not hide his light.’ I said I’d had but little time to live, Experience none or confidence could give. ‘But I can tell to-morrow, if you please, My last year’s journey towards the Pyrenees.’ To-morrow came, and evening, when it closed, The penalty of speech on me imposed.

_MY TALE._

_A la Banquette, or a Modern Pilgrimage._

I stayed at La Quenille, ten miles or more From the old-Roman sources of Mont Dore; Travellers to Tulle this way are forced to go, —An old high-road from Lyons to Bordeaux,— From Tulle to Brives the swift Corrèze descends, At Brives you’ve railway, and your trouble ends; A little _bourg_ La Quenille; from the height The mountains of Auvergne are all in sight; Green pastoral heights that once in lava flowed, Of primal fire the product and abode; And all the plateaux and the lines that trace Where in deep dells the waters find their place; Far to the south above the lofty plain, The Plomb du Cantal lifts his towering train. A little after one, with little fail, Down drove the diligence that bears the mail; The _courier_ therefore called, in whose _banquette_ A place I got, and thankful was to get; The new postillion climbed his seat, _allez_, Off broke the four cart-horses on their way. Westward we roll, o’er heathy backs of hills, Crossing the future rivers in the rills; Bare table-lands are these, and sparsely sown, Turning their waters south to the Dordogne. Close-packed we were, and little at our ease, The _conducteur_ impatient with the squeeze; Not tall he seemed, but bulky round about, His cap and jacket made him look more stout; In _grande tenue_ he rode of _conducteur_; Black eyes he had, black his moustaches were, Shaven his chin, his hair and whiskers cropt; A ready man; at Ussel when we stopt, For me and for himself, bread, meat, and wine, He got, the _courier_ did not wait to dine; To appease our hunger, and allay our drouth, We ate and took the bottle at the mouth; One draught I had, the rest entire had he, For wine his body had capacity. A peasant in his country blouse was there, He told me of the _conseil_ and the _maire_. Their _maire_, he said, could neither write nor read, And yet could keep the registers, indeed; The _conseil_ had resigned—I know not what.— Good actions here are easily forgot: He in the _quarante-huit_ had something done, Were things but fair, some notice should have won. Another youth there was, a soldier he, A soldier ceasing with to-day to be; Three years had served, for three had bought release: From war returning to the arts of peace, To Tulle he went, as his department’s town, To-morrow morn to pay his money down. In Italy, his second year begun, This youth had served, when Italy was won. He told of Montebello, and the fight, That ended fiercely with the close of night. There was he wounded, fell, and thought to die, Two Austrian cones had passed into his thigh; One traversed it, the other, left behind, In hospital the doctor had to find: At eight of night he fell, and sadly lay Till three of morning of the following day, When peasants came and put him on a wain, And drove him to Voghera in his pain; To Alessandria thence the railway bore, In Alessandria then two months and more He lay in hospital; to lop the limb The Italian doctor who attended him Was much disposed, but high above the knee; For life an utter cripple he would be. Then came the typhoid fever, and the lack Of food. And sick and hungering, on his back, With French, Italians, Austrians as he lay, Arrived the tidings of Magenta’s day, And Milan entered in the burning June, And Solferino’s issue following soon. Alas, the glorious wars! and shortly he To Genoa for the advantage of the sea, And to Savona, suffering still, was sent And joined his now returning regiment. Good were the Austrian soldiers, but the feel They did not well encounter of cold steel, Nor in the bayonet fence of man with man Maintained their ground, but yielded, turned and ran _Les armes blanches_ and the rifled gun Had fought the battles, and the victories won. The glorious wars! but he, the doubtful chance Of soldiers’ glory quitting and advance,— His wounded limb less injured than he feared,— Was dealing now in timber, it appeared; Oak-timber finding for some mines of lead, Worked by an English company, he said. This youth perhaps was twenty-three years old; Simply and well his history he told. They wished to hear about myself as well; I told them, but it was not much to tell; At the Mont Dore, of which the guide-book talks, I’d taken, not the waters, but the walks. Friends I had met, who on their southward way Had gone before, I followed them to-day. They wondered greatly at this wondrous thing,— _Les Anglais_ are for ever on the wing,— The _conducteur_ said everybody knew We were descended of the Wandering Jew. And on with the declining sun we rolled, And woods and vales and fuller streams behold. About the hour when peasant people sup, We dropped the peasant, took a _curé_ up, In hat and bands and _soutane_ all to fit. He next the _conducteur_ was put to sit; I in the corner gained the senior place. Brown was his hair, but closely shaved his face; To lift his eyelids did he think it sin? I saw a pair of soft brown eyes within. Older he was, but looked like twenty-two, Fresh from the cases, to the country new. I, the _conducteur_ watching from my side, A roguish twinkle in his eye espied; He begged to hear about the pretty pair Whom he supposed he had been marrying there; The deed, he hoped, was comfortably done,— _Monsieur l’Evêque_ he called him in his fun. Then lifted soon his voice for all to hear; A barytone he had both strong and clear: In fragments first of music made essay, And tried his pipes and modest felt his way. _Le verre en main la mort nous trouvera_, It was, or _Ah, vous dirai-je, maman_! And then, _A toi, ma belle, à toi toujours_; Till of his organ’s quality secure, Trifling no more, but boldly, like a man, He filled his chest and gallantly began.

‘Though I have seemed, against my wiser will, Your victim, O ye tender foibles, still, Once now for all, though half my heart be yours, Adieu, sweet faults, adieu, ye gay amours! Sad if it be, yet true it is to say, I’ve fifty years, and ’tis too late a day, My limbs are shrinking and my hair turns grey; Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day! ‘Once in your school (what good, alas! is once?) I took my lessons, and was not the dunce. Oh, what a pretty girl was then Juliette! Don’t you suppose that I remember yet, Though thirty years divide me from the day, When she and I first looked each other’s way? But now! midwinter to be matched with May! Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day! ‘You lovely Marguerite! I shut my eyes, And do my very utmost to be wise; Yet see you still; and hear, though closed my ears, And think I’m young in spite of all my years; Shall I forget you if I go away? To leave is painful, but absurd to stay; I’ve fifty dreadful reasons to obey. Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!’

This priest beside the lusty _conducteur_ Under his beaver sat and looked demure; Faintly he smiled the company to please, And folded held his hands above his knees. Then, apropos of nothing, had we heard, He asked, about a thing that had occurred At the Mont Dore a little time ago, A wondrous cure? and when we answered, No, About a little girl he told a tale, Who, when her medicines were of no avail, Was by the doctor ordered to Mont Dore, But nothing gained and only suffered more. This little child had in her simple way Unto the Blessed Virgin learnt to pray, And, as it happened, to an image there By the roadside one day she made her prayer, And of our Lady, who can hear on high, Begged for her parents’ sake she might not die. Our Lady of Grace, whose attribute is love, Beheld this child and listened from above. Her parents noticed from that very day The malady began to pass away, And but a fortnight after, as they tell, They took her home rejoicing, sound and well. Things come, he said, to show us every hour We are surrounded by superior power. Little we notice, but if once we see, The seed of faith will grow into a tree. The _conducteur_, he wisely shook his head: Strange things do happen in our time, he said; If the _bon Dieu_ but please, no doubt indeed, When things are desperate, yet they will succeed. Ask the postillion here, and he can tell Who cured his horse, and what of it befell. Then the postillion, in his smock of blue, His pipe into his mouth’s far corner drew, And told about a farrier and a horse; But his _Auvergnat_ grew from bad to worse; His rank Arvernian _patois_ was so strong, With what he said I could not go along; And what befell and how it came to pass, And if it were a horse or if an ass, The sequence of his phrase I could not keep, And in the middle fairly sank to sleep. When I awoke, I heard a stream below And on each bank saw houses in a row, Corrèze the stream, the houses Tulle, they said; Alighted here and thankful went to bed.

‘But how,’ said one, ‘about the Pyrenees? In Hamlet give us Hamlet, if you please; Your friend declares you said you met with there A peasant beauty, beauteous past compare, Who fed her cows the mountain peaks between, And asked if at Velletri you had been. And was Velletri larger than was Rome? Her soldier-brother went away from home, Two years ago,—to Rome it was he went, And to Velletri was this summer sent; He twenty-three, and she was sweet seventeen, And fed her cows the mountain peaks between. Lightly along a rocky path she led, And from a grange she brought you milk and bread. In summer here she lived, and with the snow Went in October to the fields below; And where you lived, she asked, and oh, they say, That with the English we shall fight some day; Loveliest of peasant girls that e’er was seen, Feeding her cows the mountain peaks between.’ ‘’Tis true,’ I said, ‘though to betray was mean. My Pyrenean verses will you hear, Though not about that peasant girl, I fear.’ ‘Begin,’ they said, ‘the sweet bucolic song, Though it to other maids and other cows belong.’

_Currente calamo._

Quick, painter, quick, the moment seize Amid the snowy Pyrenees; More evanescent than the snow, The pictures come, are seen, and go: Quick, quick, _currente calamo_. I do not ask the tints that fill The gate of day ’twixt hill and hill; I ask not for the hues that fleet Above the distant peaks; my feet Are on a poplar-bordered road, Where with a saddle and a load A donkey, old and ashen-grey, Reluctant works his dusty way. Before him, still with might and main Pulling his rope, the rustic rein, A girl: before both him and me, Frequent she turns and lets me see, Unconscious, lets me scan and trace The sunny darkness of her face And outlines full of southern grace. Following I notice, yet and yet, Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set, And black, and blacker e’en than jet, The escaping hair that scantly showed, Since o’er it in the country mode, For winter warmth and summer shade, The lap of scarlet cloth is laid. And then, back-falling from the head, A crimson kerchief overspread Her jacket blue; thence passing down, A skirt of darkest yellow-brown, Coarse stuff, allowing to the view The smooth limb to the woollen shoe. But who—here’s some one following too,— A priest, and reading at his book! Read on, O priest, and do not look; Consider,—she is but a child,— Yet might your fancy be beguiled. Read on, O priest, and pass and go! But see, succeeding in a row, Two, three, and four, a motley train, Musicians wandering back to Spain; With fiddle and with tambourine, A man with women following seen. What dresses, ribbon-ends, and flowers! And,—sight to wonder at for hours,— The man,—to Phillip has he sat?— With butterfly-like velvet hat; One dame his big bassoon conveys, On one his gentle arm he lays; They stop, and look, and something say, And to ‘España’ ask the way. But while I speak, and point them on, Alas! my dearer friends are gone; The dark-eyed maiden and the ass Have had the time the bridge to pass. Vainly, beyond it far descried, Adieu, and peace with you abide, Grey donkey, and your beauteous guide. The pictures come, the pictures go, Quick, quick, _currente calamo_.

They praised the rhymes, but still would persevere The eclogue of the mountain peaks to hear, Eclogue that never was; and then awhile, Of France, and Frenchmen, and our native isle, They talked; pre-insular above the rest, My friend his ardent politics expressed; France was behind us all, he saw in France Worse retrogression, and the least advance. Her revolutions had but thrown her back. Powerful just now, but wholly off the track; They in religion were, as I had seen, About where we in Chaucer’s time had been; In Chaucer’s time, and yet their Wickliffe where? Something they’d kept—the worst part—of Voltaire. Strong for Old England, was New England too; The clergyman was neutral in his view, And I, for France with more than I could do, Though sound, my thesis did not long maintain. The contemplation of the nightly main, The vaulted heavens above, and under these, The black ship working through the dusky seas, Deserting, to our narrow berths we crept; Sound slumbered there, the watch while others kept. The second officer, who kept the watch, A young man, fair of feature, partly Scotch And partly Irish in his voice and way, Joined us the evening of the following day, And of our stories when he heard us tell, Offered to give a narrative as well.

_THE MATE’S STORY._

‘I’ve often wondered how it is, at times Good people do what are as bad as crimes. A common person would have been ashamed To do what once a family far-famed For their religious ways was known to do. Small harm befell, small thanks to them were due. They from abroad, perhaps it cost them less, Had brought a young French girl as governess, A pretty, youthful thing as e’er you saw; She taught the children how to play and draw, Of course, the language of her native land; English she scarcely learnt to understand. After a time they wanted her no more; She must go home,—but how to send her o’er,— Far in the south of France she lived, and they In Ireland there—was more than they could say. A monthly steamer, as they chanced to know, From Liverpool went over to Bordeaux, And would, they thought, exactly meet the case. They wrote and got a friend to take a place; And from her salary paid her money down. A trading steamer from the seaport town Near which they lived, across the Channel plied, And this, they said, a passage would provide. With pigs, and with the Irish reaping horde, This pretty tender girl was put on board; And a rough time of it, no doubt, had she, Tossing about upon the Irish Sea. Arrived at last and set ashore, she found The steamer gone for which she had been bound. The pious people, in their careless way, Had made some loose mistake about the day. She stood; the passengers with whom she crossed Went off, and she remained as one that’s lost. Think of the hapless creature standing here Alone, beside her boxes on the pier. Whither to turn, and where to try and go, She knew not; nay, the language did not know. So young a girl, so pretty too, set down Here, in the midst of a great seaport town, What might have happened one may sadly guess, Had not the captain, seeing her distress, Made out the cause, and told her she could stay On board the vessel till the following day. Next day, he said—the steamer to Bordeaux Was gone no doubt, next month the next would go; For this her passage-money she had paid, But some arrangement could, he thought, be made, If only she could manage to afford To wait a month and pay for bed and board. She sadly shook her head—well, after all, ’Twas a bad town, and mischief might befall. Would she go back? Indeed ’twas but a shame, To take her back to those from whom she came. ‘There’s one thing, Miss,’ said he, ‘that you can do It’s speaking somewhat sudden-like, it’s true, But if you’ll marry me, I’ll marry you. May be you won’t, but if you will you can.’ This captain was a young and decent man, And I suppose she saw no better way; Marry they did, and married live this day. Another friend, these previous nights away, An officer of engineers, and round By Halifax to far Bermuda bound, Joined us this night; a rover he had been. Many strange sights and many climes had seen, And much of various life; his comment was, ’twas well There was no further incident to tell. He’d been afraid that ere the tale was o’er, ’Twould prove the captain had a wife before. The poor French girl was luckier than she knew; Soldiers and sailors had so often two. And it was something, too, for men who went From port to port to be with two content. In every place the marriage rite supplied A decent spouse to whom you were not tied. Of course the women would at times suspect, But felt their reputations were not wrecked.

One after night we took ourselves to task For our neglect who had forborne to ask The clergyman, who told his tale so well, Another tale for our behalf to tell. He to a second had himself confessed. Now, when to hear it eagerly we pressed. He put us off; but, ere the night was done, Told us his second, and his sadder one.

_THE CLERGYMAN’S SECOND TALE._

Edward and Jane a married couple were, And fonder she of him or he of her Was hard to say; their wedlock had begun When in one year they both were twenty-one; And friends, who would not sanction, left them free He gentle-born, nor his inferior she, And neither rich; to the newly-wedded boy, A great Insurance Office found employ. Strong in their loves and hopes, with joy they took This narrow lot and the world’s altered look; Beyond their home they nothing sought nor craved, And even from the narrow income saved; Their busy days for no ennui had place, Neither grew weary of the other’s face. Nine happy years had crowned their married state With children, one a little girl of eight; With nine industrious years his income grew, With his employers rose his favour too; Nine years complete had passed when something ailed. Friends and the doctors said his health had failed, He must recruit, or worse would come to pass; And though to rest was hard for him, alas! Three months of leave he found he could obtain, And go, they said, get well and work again. Just at this juncture of their married life, Her mother, sickening, begged to have his wife. Her house among the hills in Surrey stood, And to be there, said Jane, would do the children good They let their house, and with the children she Went to her mother, he beyond the sea; Far to the south his orders were to go. A watering-place, whose name we need not know, For climate and for change of scene was best: There he was bid, laborious task, to rest. A dismal thing in foreign lands to roam To one accustomed to an English home, Dismal yet more, in health if feeble grown, To live a boarder, helpless and alone In foreign town, and worse yet worse is made, If ’tis a town of pleasure and parade. Dispiriting the public walks and seats, The alien faces that an alien meets; Drearily every day this old routine repeats. Yet here this alien prospered, change of air Or change of scene did more than tenderest care; Three weeks were scarce completed, to his home, He wrote to say, he thought he now could come, His usual work was sure he could resume, And something said about the place’s gloom, And how he loathed idling his time away. O, but they wrote, his wife and all, to say He must not think of it, ’twas quite too quick; Let was their house, her mother still was sick, Three months were given, and three he ought to take; For his, and hers, and for his children’s sake. He wrote again, ’twas weariness to wait, This doing nothing was a thing to hate; He’d cast his nine laborious years away, And was as fresh as on his wedding-day; At last he yielded, feared he must obey. And now, his health repaired, his spirits grown Less feeble, less he cared to live alone. ’Twas easier now to face the crowded shore, And table d’hôte less tedious than before; His ancient silence sometimes he would break, And the mute Englishman was heard to speak. His youthful colour soon, his youthful air Came back; amongst the crowd of idlers there, With whom good looks entitle to good name, For his good looks he gained a sort of fame, People would watch him as he went and came. Explain the tragic mystery who can, Something there is, we know not what, in man, With all established happiness at strife, And bent on revolution in his life. Explain the plan of Providence who dare, And tell us wherefore in this world there are Beings who seem for this alone to live, Temptation to another soul to give. A beauteous woman at the table d’hôte, To try this English heart, at least to note This English countenance, conceived the whim. She sat exactly opposite to him. Ere long he noticed with a vague surprise How every day on him she bent her eyes; Soft and inquiring now they looked, and then Wholly withdrawn, unnoticed came again; His shrunk aside: and yet there came a day, Alas! they did not wholly turn away. So beautiful her beauty was, so strange, And to his northern feeling such a change; Her throat and neck Junonian in their grace; The blood just mantled in her southern face: Dark hair, dark eyes; and all the arts she had With which some dreadful power adorns the bad,— Bad women in their youth,—and young was she, Twenty perhaps, at the utmost twenty-three,— And timid seemed, and innocent of ill;— Her feelings went and came without her will. You will not wish minutely to know all His efforts in the prospect of the fall. He oscillated to and fro, he took High courage oft, temptation from him shook, Compelled himself to virtuous thoughts and just, And as it were in ashes and in dust Abhorred his thought. But living thus alone, Of solitary tedium weary grown; From sweet society so long debarred, And fearing in his judgment to be hard On her—that he was sometimes off his guard What wonder? She relentless still pursued Unmarked, and tracked him in his solitude. And not in vain, alas! The days went by and found him in the snare. But soon a letter full of tenderest care Came from his wife, the little daughter too In a large hand—the exercise was new— To her papa her love and kisses sent. Into his very heart and soul it went. Forth on the high and dusty road he sought Some issue for the vortex of his thought. Returned, packed up his things, and ere the day Descended, was a hundred miles away. There are, I know of course, who lightly treat Such slips; we stumble, we regain our feet; What can we do? they say, but hasten on And disregard it as a thing that’s gone. Many there are who in a case like this Would calm re-seek their sweet domestic bliss; Accept unshamed the wifely tender kiss, And lift their little children on their knees, And take their kisses too; with hearts at ease Will read the household prayers,—to church will go, And sacrament,—nor care if people know. Such men—so minded—do exist, God knows, And, God be thanked, this was not one of those. Late in the night, at a provincial town In France, a passing traveller was put down; Haggard he looked, his hair was turning grey, His hair, his clothes, were much in disarray: In a bedchamber here one day he stayed, Wrote letters, posted them, his reckoning paid And went. ’Twas Edward rushing from his fall Here to his wife he wrote and told her all. Forgiveness—yes, perhaps she might forgive— For her, and for the children, he must live At any rate; but their old home to share As yet was something that he could not bear. She with her mother still her home should make, A lodging near the office he should take; And once a quarter he would bring his pay, And he would see her on the quarter-day, But her alone; e’en this would dreadful be, The children ’twas not possible to see. Back to the office at this early day To see him come, old-looking thus and grey, His comrades wondered, wondered too to see How dire a passion for his work had he, How in a garret too he lived alone; So cold a husband, cold a father grown. In a green lane beside her mother’s home, Where in old days they had been used to roam, His wife had met him on the appointed day, Fell on his neck, said all that love could say, And wept; he put the loving arms away. At dusk they met, for so was his desire; She felt his cheeks and forehead all on fire; The kisses which she gave he could not brook; Once in her face he gave a sidelong look, Said, but for them he wished that he were dead, And put the money in her hand and fled. Sometimes in easy and familiar tone, Of sins resembling more or less his own He heard his comrades in the office speak, And felt the colour tingling in his cheek; Lightly they spoke as of a thing of nought; He of their judgment ne’er so much as thought. I know not, in his solitary pains, Whether he seemed to feel as in his veins The moral mischief circulating still, Racked with the torture of the double will; And like some frontier-land where armies wage The mighty wars, engage and yet engage All through the summer in the fierce campaign; March, counter-march, gain, lose, and yet regain; With battle reeks the desolated plain; So felt his nature yielded to the strife Of the contending good and ill of life. But a whole year this penance he endured, Nor even then would think that he was cured. Once in a quarter, in the country lane, He met his wife and paid his quarter’s gain; To bring the children she besought in vain. He has a life small happiness that gives, Who friendless in a London lodging lives, Dines in a dingy chop-house, and returns To a lone room while all within him yearns For sympathy, and his whole nature burns With a fierce thirst for some one,—is there none?— To expend his human tenderness upon. So blank, and hard, and stony is the way To walk, I wonder not men go astray. Edward, whom still a sense that never slept On the strict path undeviating kept, One winter-evening found himself pursued Amidst the dusky thronging multitude. Quickly he walked, but strangely swift was she, And pertinacious, and would make him see. He saw at last, and recognising slow, Discovered in this hapless thing of woe The occasion of his shame twelve wretched months ago. She gaily laughed, she cried, and sought his hand, And spoke sweet phrases of her native land; Exiled, she said, her lovely home had left, Not to forsake a friend of all but her bereft; Exiled, she cried, for liberty, for love, She was; still limpid eyes she turned above. So beauteous once, and now such misery in, Pity had all but softened him to sin; But while she talked, and wildly laughed, and cried, And plucked the hand which sadly he denied, A stranger came and swept her from his side. He watched them in the gas-lit darkness go, And a voice said within him, Even so, So midst the gloomy mansions where they dwell The lost souls walk the flaming streets of hell! The lamps appeared to fling a baleful glare, A brazen heat was heavy in the air; And it was hell, and he some unblest wanderer there. For a long hour he stayed the streets to roam, Late gathering sense, he gained his garret home; There found a telegraph that bade him come Straight to the country, where his daughter, still His darling child, lay dangerously ill. The doctor would he bring? Away he went And found the doctor; to the office sent A letter, asking leave, and went again, And with a wild confusion in his brain, Joining the doctor caught the latest train. The train swift whirled them from the city light Into the shadows of the natural night. ’Twas silent starry midnight on the down, Silent and chill, when they, straight come from town, Leaving the station, walked a mile to gain The lonely house amid the hills where Jane, Her mother, and her children should be found. Waked by their entrance, but of sleep unsound, The child not yet her altered father knew; Yet talked of her papa in her delirium too. Danger there was, yet hope there was; and he, To attend the crisis, and the changes see, And take the steps, at hand should surely be. Said Jane the following day, ‘Edward, you know, Over and over I have told you so, As in a better world I seek to live, As I desire forgiveness, I forgive. Forgiveness does not feel the word to say,— As I believe in One who takes away Our sin and gives us righteousness instead,— You to this sin, I do believe, are dead. ’Twas I, you know, who let you leave your home And bade you stay when you so wished to come; My fault was that: I’ve told you so before, And vainly told; but now ’tis something more. Say, is it right, without a single friend, Without advice, to leave me to attend Children and mother both? Indeed I’ve thought Through want of you the child her fever caught. Chances of mischief come with every hour. It is not in a single woman’s power Alone, and ever haunted more or less With anxious thoughts of you and your distress,— ’Tis not indeed, I’m sure of it, in me,— All things with perfect judgment to foresee. This weight has grown too heavy to endure; And you, I tell you now, and I am sure, Neglect your duty both to God and man Persisting thus in your unnatural plan. This feeling you must conquer, for you can. And after all, you know we are but dust, What are we, in ourselves that we should trust?’ He scarcely answered her; but he obtained A longer leave, and quietly remained. Slowly the child recovered, long was ill, Long delicate, and he must watch her still; To give up seeing her he could not bear, To leave her less attended, did not dare. The child recovered slowly, slowly too Recovered he, and more familiar drew Home’s happy breath; and apprehension o’er, Their former life he yielded to restore, And to his mournful garret went no more.

* * * * *

Midnight was dim and hazy overhead When the tale ended and we turned to bed. On the companion-way, descending slow, The artillery captain, as we went below, Said to the lawyer, life could not be meant To be so altogether innocent. What did the atonement show? he, for the rest, Could not, he thought, have written and confessed. Weakness it was, and adding crime to crime To leave his family that length of time, The lawyer said; the American was sure Each nature knows instinctively its cure. Midnight was in the cabin still and dead, Our fellow-passengers were all in bed, We followed them, and nothing further spoke. Out of the sweetest of my sleep I woke At two, and felt we stopped; amid a dream Of England knew the letting-off of steam And rose. ’Twas fog, and were we off Cape Race? The captain would be certain of his place. Wild in white vapour flew away the force, And self-arrested was the eager course That had not ceased before. But shortly now Cape Race was made to starboard on the bow. The paddles plied. I slept. The following night In the mid seas we saw a quay and light, And peered through mist into an unseen town, And on scarce-seeming land set one companion down, And went. With morning and a shining sun, Under the bright New Brunswick coast we run, And visible discern to every eye Rocks, pines, and little ports, and passing by The boats and coasting craft. When sunk the night Early now sunk, the northern streamers bright Floated and flashed, the cliffs and clouds behind, With phosphorus the billows all were lined. That evening, while the arctic streamers bright Rolled from the clouds in waves of airy light, The lawyer said, ‘I laid by for to-night A story that I would not tell before; For the last time, a confidential four, We meet. Receive in your elected ears A tale of human suffering and tears.’

_THE LAWYER’S SECOND TALE._

_Christian._

A Highland inn among the western hills, A single parlour, single bed that fills With fisher or with tourist, as may be; A waiting-maid, as fair as you can see, With hazel eyes, and frequent blushing face, And ample brow, and with a rustic grace In all her easy quiet motions seen, Large of her age, which haply is nineteen, Christian her name, in full a pleasant name, Christian and Christie scarcely seem the same;— A college fellow, who has sent away The pupils he has taught for many a day, And comes for fishing and for solitude, Perhaps a little pensive in his mood, An aspiration and a thought have failed, Where he had hoped, another has prevailed, But to the joys of hill and stream alive, And in his boyhood yet, at twenty-five. A merry dance, that made young people meet, And set them moving, both with hands and feet; A dance in which he danced, and nearer knew The soft brown eyes, and found them tender too. A dance that lit in two young hearts the fire, The low soft flame, of loving sweet desire, And made him feel that he could feel again;— The preface this, what follows to explain. That night he kissed, he held her in his arms, And felt the subtle virtue of her charms; Nor less bewildered on the following day, He kissed, he found excuse near her to stay,— Was it not love? And yet the truth to speak, Playing the fool for haply half a week, He yet had fled, so strong within him dwelt The horror of the sin, and such he felt The miseries to the woman that ensue. He wearied long his brain with reasonings fine, But when at evening dusk he came to dine, In linsey petticoat and jacket blue She stood, so radiant and so modest too, All into air his strong conclusions flew. Now should he go. But dim and drizzling too, For a night march, to-night will hardly do, A march of sixteen weary miles of way. No, by the chances which our lives obey, No, by the heavens and this sweet face he’ll stay.

A week he stayed, and still was loth to go, But she grew anxious and would have it so. Her time of service shortly would be o’er, And she would leave; her mistress knew before. Where would she go? To Glasgow, if she could; Her father’s sister would be kind and good; An only child she was, an orphan left, Of all her kindred, save of this, bereft. Said he, ‘Your guide to Glasgow let me be, You little know, you have not tried the sea; Say, at the ferry when are we to meet? Thither, I guess, you travel on your feet.’ She would be there on Tuesday next at three; ‘O dear, how glad and thankful she would be; But don’t,’ she said, ‘be troubled much for me.’ Punctual they met, a second class he took, More naturally to her wants to look, And from her side was seldom far away. So quiet, so indifferent yet, were they, As fellow-servants travelling south they seemed, And no one of a love-relation dreamed. At Oban, where the stormy darkness fell, He got two chambers in a cheap hotel. At Oban of discomfort one is sure, Little the difference whether rich or poor. Around the Mull the passage now to make, They go aboard, and separate tickets take, First-class for him, and second-class for her. No other first-class passengers there were, And with the captain walking soon alone, This Highland girl, he said, to him was known. He had engaged to take her to her kin; Could she be put the ladies’ cabin in? The difference gladly he himself would pay, The weather seemed but menacing to-day. She ne’er had travelled from her home before, He wished to be at hand to hear about her more. Curious it seemed, but he had such a tone, And kept at first so carefully alone, And she so quiet was, and so discreet, So heedful, ne’er to seek him or to meet, The first small wonder quickly passed away. And so from Oban’s little land-locked bay Forth out to Jura—Jura pictured high With lofty peaks against the western sky, Jura, that far o’erlooks the Atlantic seas, The loftiest of the Southern Hebrides. Through the main sea to Jura;—when we reach Jura, we turn to leftward to the breach, And southward strain the narrow channel through, And Colonsay we pass and Islay too; Cantire is on the left, and all the day A dull dead calm upon the waters lay. Sitting below, after some length of while, He sought her, and the tedium to beguile, He ventured some experiments to make, The measure of her intellect to take. Upon the cabin table chanced to lie A book of popular astronomy; In this he tried her, and discoursed away Of Winter, Summer, and of Night and Day. Still to the task a reasoning power she brought, And followed, slowly followed with the thought; How beautiful it was to see the stir Of natural wonder waking thus in her; But loth was he to set on books to pore An intellect so charming in the ore. And she, perhaps, had comprehended soon Even the nodes, so puzzling, of the moon; But nearing now the Mull they met the gale Right in their teeth: and should the fuel fail? Thinking of her, he grew a little pale, But bravely she the terrors, miseries, took: And met him with a sweet courageous look: Once, at the worst, unto his side she drew, And said a little tremulously too, ‘If we must die, please let me come to you.’ I know not by what change of wind or tide, Heading the Mull, they gained the eastern side, But stiller now, and sunny e’en it grew; Arran’s high peaks unmantled to the view; While to the north, far seen from left to right, The Highland range, extended snowy white. Now in the Clyde, he asked, what would be thought, In Glasgow, of the company she brought: ‘You know,’ he said, ‘how I desire to stay; We’ve played at strangers for so long a day, But for a while I yet would go away.’ She said, O no, indeed they must not part. Her father’s sister had a kindly heart. ‘I’ll tell her all, and O, when you she sees, I think she’ll not be difficult to please.’ Landed at Glasgow, quickly they espied Macfarlane, grocer, by the river side: To greet her niece the woman joyful ran, But looked with wonder on the tall young man Into the house the women went and talked, He with the grocer in the doorway walked. He told him he was looking for a set Of lodgings: had he any he could let? The man was called to council with his wife; They took the thing as what will be in life, Half in a kind, half in a worldly way; They said, the lassie might play out her play. The gentleman should have the second floor, At thirty shillings, for a week or more. Some days in this obscurity he stayed, Happy with her, and some inquiry made (For friends he found) and did his best to see, What hope of getting pupils there would be. This must he do, ’twas evident, ’twas clear, Marry and seek a humble maintenance here. Himself he had a hundred pounds a year. To this plain business he would bend his life, And find his joy in children and in wife, A wife so good, so tender, and so true, Mother to be of glorious children too. Half to excuse his present lawless way, He to the grocer happened once to say Marriage would cost him more than others dear, Cost him, indeed, three hundred pounds a-year. ‘’Deed,’ said the man, ‘a heavy price, no doubt, For a bit form that one can do without.’ And asked some questions, pertinent and plain, Exacter information to obtain; He took a little trouble to explain. The College Audit now, to last at least Three weeks, ere ending with the College Feast, He must attend, a tedious, dull affair, But he, as junior Bursar, must be there. Three weeks, however, quickly would be fled, And then he’d come,—he didn’t say to wed. With plans of which he nothing yet would say, Preoccupied upon the parting day, He seemed a little absent and distrait; But she, as knowing nothing was amiss, Gave him her fondest smile, her sweetest kiss. A fortnight after, or a little more, As at the Audit, weary of the bore, He sat, and of his future prospects thought, A letter in an unknown hand was brought. ’Twas from Macfarlane, and to let him know To South Australia they proposed to go. ‘Rich friends we have, who have advised us thus, Occasion offers suitable for us; Christie we take; whate’er she find of new, She’ll ne’er forget the joy she’s had with you; ’Tis an expensive pilgrimage to make, You’ll like to send a trifle for her sake.’ Nothing he said of when the ship would sail. That very night, by swift-returning mail, Ten pounds he sent, for what he did not know; And ‘In no case,’ he said, ‘let Christian go.’ He in three days would come, and for his life Would claim her and declare her as his wife. Swift the night-mail conveyed his missive on; He followed in three days, and found them gone. All three had sailed: he looked as though he dreamed; The money-order had been cashed, it seemed.

The Clergyman, ‘This story is mere pain,’ Exclaimed, ‘for if the women don’t sustain The moral standard, all we do is vain.’ ‘But what we want,’ the Yankee said, ‘to know, Is if the girl went willingly or no. Sufficient motive though one does not see, ’Tis clear the grocer used some trickery.’

He judged himself, so strong the clinging in This kind of people is to kith and kin; For if they went and she remained behind, No one she had, if him she failed to find. Alas, this lawless loving was the cause, She did not dare to think how dear she was. Justly his guilty tardiness he curst, He should have owned her when he left her first. And something added how upon the sea, She perilled, too, a life that was to be; A child that, born in far Australia, there Would have no father and no father’s care. So to the South a lonely man returned, For other scenes and busier life he burned,— College he left and settled soon in town, Wrote in the journals, gained a swift renown. Soon into high society he came, And still where’er he went outdid his fame. All the more liked and more esteemed, the less He seemed to make an object of success. An active literary life he spent, Towards lofty points of public practice bent, Was never man so carefully who read, Whose plans so well were fashioned in his head, Nor one who truths so luminously said. Some years in various labours thus he passed, A spotless course maintaining to the last. Twice upon Government Commissions served With honour; place, which he declined, deserved. He married then,—a marriage fit and good, That kept him where his worth was understood; A widow, wealthy, and of noble blood. Mr. and Lady Mary are they styled, One grief is theirs—to be without a child. I did not tell you how he went before To South Australia, vainly to explore. The ship had come to Adelaide, no doubt; Watching the papers he had made it out, But of themselves, in country or in town, Nothing discovered, travelling up and down. Only an entry of uncertain sound, In an imperfect register he found. His son, he thought, but could not prove it true; The surname of the girl it chanced he never knew. But this uneasy feeling gathered strength As years advanced, and it became at length His secret torture and his secret joy To think about his lost Australian boy. Somewhere in wild colonial lands has grown A child that is his true and very own. This strong parental passion fills his mind, To all the dubious chances makes him blind. Still he will seek, and still he hopes to find. Again will go. Said I, ‘O let him stay, And in a London drawing-room some day— Rings on her fingers, brilliants in her hair, The lady of the latest millionaire— She’ll come, and with a gathering slow surprise On Lady Mary’s husband turn her eyes: The soft brown eyes that in a former day From his discretion lured him all astray. At home, six bouncing girls, who more or less Are learning English of a governess, Six boisterous boys, as like as pear to pear; Only the eldest has a different air.’

‘You jest,’ he said, ‘indeed it happened so.’ From a great party just about to go, He saw, he knew, and ere she saw him, said Swift to his wife, as for the door he made, ‘My Highland bride! to escape a scene I go, Stay, find her out—great God!—and let me know.’ The Lady Mary turned to scrutinise The lovely brow, the beautiful brown eyes, One moment, then performed her perfect part, And did her spiriting with simplest art, Was introduced, her former friends had known, Say, might she call to-morrow afternoon At three? O yes! At three she made her call, And told her who she was and told her all. Her lady manners all she laid aside; Like women the two women kissed and cried. Half overwhelmed sat Christian by her side, While she, ‘You know he never knew the day When you would sail, but he believed you’d stay Because he wrote—you never knew, you say,— Wrote that in three days’ time, they need not fear, He’d come and then would marry you, my dear. You never knew? And he had planned to live At Glasgow, lessons had arranged to give. Alas, then to Australia he went out, All through the land to find you sought about, And found a trace, which though it left a doubt. Sufficed to make it still his grief, his joy, To think he had a child, a living boy, Whom you, my love——’ ‘His child is six foot high, I’ve kept him as the apple of my eye,’ Cried she, ‘he’s riding, or you’d see him here. O joy, that he at last should see his father dear! As soon as he comes in I’ll tell him all, And on his father he shall go and call.’ ‘And you,’ she said, ‘my husband will you see? ‘O no, it is not possible for me. The boy I’ll send this very afternoon. O dear, I know he cannot go too soon; And something I must write, to write will do.’ So they embraced and sadly bade adieu. The boy came in, his father went and saw! We will not wait this interview to draw; Ere long returned, and to his mother ran: His father was a wonderful fine man, He said, and looked at her; the Lady, too, Had done whatever it was kind to do. He loved his mother more than he could say, But if she wished, he’d with his father stay. A little change she noticed in his face, E’en now the father’s influence she could trace; From her the slight, slight severance had begun, But simply she rejoiced that it was done. She smiled and kissed her boy, and ‘Long ago, When I was young, I loved your father so. Together now we had been living, too, Only the ship went sooner than he knew. In loving him you will be loving me: Father and mother are as one you see.’ Her letter caught him on the following day As to the club he started on his way. From her he guessed, the hand indeed was new; Back to his room he went and read it through. ‘I know not how to write and dare not see; But it will take a load of grief from me— O! what a load—that you at last should know The way in which I was compelled to go. Wretched, I know, and yet it seems ’twas more Cruel and wretched than I knew before; So many years to think how on your day Joyful you’d come, and found me flown away. What would you think of me, what would you say? O love, this little let me call you so; What other name to use I do not know O let me think that by your side I sit, And tell it you, and weep a little bit, And you too weep with me, for hearing it. Alone so long I’ve borne this dreadful weight; Such grief, at times it almost turned to hate. O let me think you sit and listening long, Comfort me still, and say I wasn’t wrong, And pity me, and far, far hence again Dismiss, if haply any yet remain, Hard thoughts of me that in your heart have lain. O love! to hear your voice I dare not go; But let me trust that you will judge me so. ‘I think no sooner were you gone away, My aunt began to tell me of some pay, More than three hundred pounds a-year ’twould be, Which you, she said, would lose by marrying me. Was this a thing a man of sense would do? Was I a fool, to look for it from you? You were a handsome gentleman and kind, And to do right were every way inclined, But to this truth I must submit my mind, You would not marry. “Speak, and tell me true, Say, has he ever said one word to you That meant as much?” O, love, I knew you would. I’ve read it in your eyes so kind and good, Although you did not speak I understood. Though for myself, indeed, I sought it not, It seemed so high, so undeserved a lot, But for the child, when it should come, I knew— O, I was certain—what you meant to do. She said, “We quit the land, will it be right Or kind to leave you for a single night, Just on the chance that he will come down here, And sacrifice three hundred pounds a-year, And all his hopes and prospects fling away, And has already had his will, as one may say? Go you with us, and find beyond the seas, Men by the score to choose from, if you please.” I said my will and duty was to stay, Would they not help me to some decent way To wait, and surely near was now the day? Quite they refused; had they to let you know Written, I asked, to say we were to go? They told me yes; they showed a letter, too, Post-office order that had come from you. Alas, I could not read or write, they knew. I think they meant me, though they did not say, To think you wanted me to go away; O, love, I’m thankful nothing of the kind Ever so much as came into my mind. ‘To-morrow was the day that would not fail; For Adelaide the vessel was to sail. All night I hoped some dreadful wind would rise, And lift the seas and rend the very skies. All night I lay and listened hard for you. Twice to the door I went, the bolt I drew, And called to you; scarce what I did I knew. ‘Morning grew light, the house was emptied clear; The ship would go, the boat was lying near. They had my money, how was I to stay? Who could I go to, when they went away? Out in the streets I could not lie, you know. O dear, but it was terrible to go. Yet, yet I looked; I do not know what passed, I think they took and carried me at last. Twelve hours I lay, and sobbed in my distress; But in the night, let be this idleness, I said, I’ll bear it for my baby’s sake, Lest of my going mischief it should take, Advice will seek, and every caution use; My love I’ve lost—his child I must not lose. ‘How oft I thought, when sailing on the seas, Of our dear journey through the Hebrides, When you the kindest were and best of men: O, love, I did not love you right till then. O, and myself how willingly I blamed, So simple who had been, and was ashamed, So mindful only of the present joy, When you had anxious cares your busy mind to employ. Ah, well, I said, but now at least he’s free, He will not have to lower himself for me. He will not lose three hundred pounds a-year, In many ways my love has cost him dear. ‘Upon the passage, great was my delight, A lady taught me how to read and write. She saw me much, and fond of me she grew, Only I durst not talk to her of you. ‘We had a quiet time upon the seas, And reached our port of Adelaide with ease. At Adelaide my lovely baby came. Philip, he took his father’s Christian name, And my poor maiden surname, to my shame. O, but I little cared, I loved him so, ’Twas such a joy to watch and see him grow. At Adelaide we made no length of stay; Our friends to Melbourne just had gone away. We followed shortly where they led before, To Melbourne went, and flourished more and more. My aunt and uncle both are buried there; I closed their eyes, and I was left their heir. They meant me well, I loved them for their care. ‘Ten years ago I married Robert; dear And well he loved, and waited many a year. Selfish it seemed to turn from one so true, And I of course was desperate of you. I’ve borne him children six; we’ve left behind Three little ones, whom soon I hope to find. To my dear boy he ever has been kind. ‘Next week we sail, and I should be so glad, Only to leave my boy will make me sad. But yours he is by right—the grief I’ll bear, And at his age, more easy he can spare, Perhaps, a mother’s than a father’s care. Indeed I think him like his father, too; He will be happier, probably, with you. ’Tis best, I know, nor will he quite forget, Some day he’ll come perhaps and see his mother yet. ‘O heaven! farewell—perhaps I’ve been to blame To write as if it all were still the same. Farewell, write not.—I will not seek to know Whether you ever think of me or no.’ O love, love, love, too late! the tears fell down. He dried them up—and slowly walked to town.

* * * * *

To bed with busy thoughts; the following day Bore us expectant into Boston Bay; With dome and steeple on the yellow skies, Upon the left we watched with curious eyes The Puritan great Mother City rise. Among the islets, winding in and round, The great ship moved to her appointed ground. We bade adieu, shook hands and went ashore: I and my friend have seen our friends no more.

SONGS IN ABSENCE.

_SONGS IN ABSENCE._[17]

Farewell, farewell! Her vans the vessel tries, His iron might the potent engine plies; Haste, wingèd words, and ere ’tis useless, tell, Farewell, farewell, yet once again, farewell.

The docks, the streets, the houses past us fly, Without a strain the great ship marches by; Ye fleeting banks take up the words we tell, And say for us yet once again, farewell.

The waters widen—on without a strain The strong ship moves upon the open main; She knows the seas, she hears the true waves swell, She seems to say farewell, again farewell.

The billows whiten and the deep seas heave; Fly once again, sweet words, to her I leave, With winds that blow return, and seas that swell, Farewell, farewell, say once again, farewell.

Fresh in my face and rippling to my feet The winds and waves an answer soft repeat, In sweet, sweet words far brought they seem to tell, Farewell, farewell, yet once again, farewell.

Night gathers fast; adieu, thou fading shore! The land we look for next must lie before; Hence, foolish tears! weak thoughts, no more rebel, Farewell, farewell, a last, a last farewell.

Yet not, indeed, ah not till more than sea And more than space divide my love and me, Till more than waves and winds between us swell, Farewell, a last, indeed, a last farewell

* * * * *

Ye flags of Piccadilly, Where I posted up and down, And wished myself so often Well away from you and town,—

Are the people walking quietly And steady on their feet, Cabs and omnibuses plying Just as usual in the street?

Do the houses look as upright As of old they used to be, And does nothing seem affected By the pitching of the sea?

Through the Green Park iron railings Do the quick pedestrians pass? Are the little children playing Round the plane-tree in the grass?

This squally wild north-wester With which our vessel fights, Does it merely serve with you to Carry up some paper kites?

Ye flags of Piccadilly, Which I hated so, I vow I could wish with all my heart You were underneath me now!

* * * * *

Come home, come home! and where is home for me, Whose ship is driving o’er the trackless sea? To the frail bark here plunging on its way, To the wild waters, shall I turn and say To the plunging bark, or to the salt sea foam, You are my home?

Fields once I walked in, faces once I knew, Familiar things so old my heart believed them true, These far, far back, behind me lie, before The dark clouds mutter, and the deep seas roar, And speak to them that ’neath and o’er them roam No words of home.

Beyond the clouds, beyond the waves that roar, There may indeed, or may not be, a shore, Where fields as green, and hands and hearts as true, The old forgotten semblance may renew, And offer exiles driven far o’er the salt sea foam Another home.

But toil and pain must wear out many a day, And days bear weeks, and weeks bear months away, Ere, if at all, the weary traveller hear, With accents whispered in his wayworn ear, A voice he dares to listen to, say, Come To thy true home.

Come home, come home! and where a home hath he Whose ship is driving o’er the driving sea? Through clouds that mutter, and o’er waves that roar, Say, shall we find, or shall we not, a shore That is, as is not ship or ocean foam, Indeed our home?

1852

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Green fields of England! wheresoe’er Across this watery waste we fare, Your image at our hearts we bear, Green fields of England, everywhere.

Sweet eyes in England, I must flee Past where the waves’ last confines be, Ere your loved smile I cease to see, Sweet eyes in England, dear to me.

Dear home in England, safe and fast If but in thee my lot lie cast, The past shall seem a nothing past To thee, dear home, if won at last; Dear home in England, won at last.

1852

* * * * *

Come back, come back, behold with straining mast And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast; With one new sun to see her voyage o’er, With morning light to touch her native shore. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, while westward labouring by, With sailless yards, a bare black hulk we fly. See how the gale we fight with sweeps her back, To our lost home, on our forsaken track. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, across the flying foam, We hear faint far-off voices call us home, Come back, ye seem to say; ye seek in vain; We went, we sought, and homeward turned again. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; and whither back or why? To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try; Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street; Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; and whither and for what? To finger idly some old Gordian knot, Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave, And with much toil attain to half-believe. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back; yea back, indeed, do go Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow; Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings, And wishes idly struggle in the strings; Come back, come back.

Come back, come back, more eager than the breeze, The flying fancies sweep across the seas, And lighter far than ocean’s flying foam, The heart’s fond message hurries to its home. Come back, come back.

Come back, come back! Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back; The long smoke wavers on the homeward track, Back fly with winds things which the winds obey, The strong ship follows its appointed way.

1852

* * * * *

Some future day when what is now is not, When all old faults and follies are forgot, And thoughts of difference passed like dreams away, We’ll meet again, upon some future day.

When all that hindered, all that vexed our love, As tall rank weeds will climb the blade above, When all but it has yielded to decay, We’ll meet again upon some future day.

When we have proved, each on his course alone, The wider world, and learnt what’s now unknown, Have made life clear, and worked out each a way, We’ll meet again,—we shall have much to say.

With happier mood, and feelings born anew, Our boyhood’s bygone fancies we’ll review, Talk o’er old talks, play as we used to play, And meet again, on many a future day.

Some day, which oft our hearts shall yearn to see, In some far year, though distant yet to be, Shall we indeed,—ye winds and waters, say!— Meet yet again, upon some future day?

1852

* * * * *

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

On sunny noons upon the deck’s smooth face, Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace; Or, o’er the stern reclining, watch below The foaming wake far widening as we go.

On stormy nights when wild north-westers rave, How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave! The dripping sailor on the reeling mast Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. And where the land she travels from? Away, Far, far behind, is all that they can say.

1852

* * * * *

The mighty ocean rolls and raves, To part us with its angry waves; But arch on arch from shore to shore, In a vast fabric reaching o’er,

With careful labours daily wrought By steady hope and tender thought, The wide and weltering waste above— Our hearts have bridged it with their love.

There fond anticipations fly To rear the growing structure high Dear memories upon either side Combine to make it large and wide.

There, happy fancies day by day, New courses sedulously lay; There soft solicitudes, sweet fears, And doubts accumulate, and tears.

While the pure purpose of the soul, To form of many parts a whole, To make them strong and hold them true, From end to end, is carried through.

Then when the waters war between, Upon the masonry unseen, Secure and swift, from shore to shore, With silent footfall travelling o’er,

Our sundered spirits come and go, Hither and thither, to and fro, Pass and repass, now linger near, Now part, anew to reappear.

With motions of a glad surprise, We meet each other’s wondering eyes, At work, at play, when people talk, And when we sleep, and when we walk.

Each dawning day my eyelids see You come, methinks, across to me, And I, at every hour anew, Could dream I travelled o’er to you.

1853

* * * * *

That out of sight is out of mind Is true of most we leave behind; It is not sure, nor can be true, My own and only love, of you.

They were my friends, ’twas sad to part; Almost a tear began to start; But yet as things run on they find That out of sight is out of mind.

For men, that will not idlers be, Must lend their hearts to things they see; And friends who leave them far behind, When out of sight are out of mind.

I blame it not; I think that when The cold and silent meet again, Kind hearts will yet as erst be kind, ’Twas ‘out of sight,’ was ‘out of mind.’

I knew it when we parted, well, I knew it, but was loth to tell; I felt before, what now I find, That ‘out of sight’ is ‘out of mind.’

That friends, however friends they were, Still deal with things as things occur, And that, excepting for the blind, What’s out of sight is out of mind.

But love, the poets say, _is_ blind; So out of sight and out of mind Need not, nor will, I think, be true, My own and only love, of you.

1853

* * * * *

Were you with me, or I with you, There’s nought, methinks, I might not do; Could venture here, and venture there, And never fear, nor ever care.

To things before, and things behind, Could turn my thoughts, and turn my mind, On this and that, day after day, Could dare to throw myself away.

Secure, when all was o’er, to find My proper thought, my perfect mind, And unimpaired receive anew My own and better self in you.

1853

* * * * *

Am I with you, or you with me? Or in some blessed place above, Where neither lands divide nor sea, Are we united in our love?

Oft while in longing here I lie, That wasting ever still endures; My soul out from me seems to fly, And half-way, somewhere, meet with yours.

Somewhere—but where I cannot guess— Beyond, may be, the bound of space, The liberated spirits press And meet, bless heaven, and embrace.

It seems not either here nor there, Somewhere between us up above, A region of a clearer air, The dwelling of a purer love.

1852

* * * * *

Were I with you, or you with me, My love, how happy should we be; Day after day it is sad cheer To have you there, while I am here.

My darling’s face I cannot see, My darling’s voice is mute for me, My fingers vainly seek the hair Of her that is not here, but there.

In a strange land, to her unknown, I sit and think of her alone; And in that happy chamber where We sat, she sits, nor has me there.

Yet still the happy thought recurs That she is mine, as I am hers, That she is there, as I am here, And loves me, whether far or near.

The mere assurance that she lives And loves me, full contentment gives; I need not doubt, despond, or fear, For, she is there, and I am here.

1852

* * * * *

Were you with me, or I with you, There’s nought methinks I could not do; And nothing that, for your dear sake, I might not dare to undertake.

With thousands standing by as fit, More keen, perhaps more needing it, To be the first some job to spy, And jump and call out, Here am I!

O for one’s miserable self To ask a pittance of the pelf, To claim, however small, a share, Which other men might think so fair:

It was not worth it! a first time A thought upon it seemed a crime; To stoop and pick the dirty pence, A taint upon one’s innocence.

My own! with nothing sordid, base. Or mean, we would our love disgrace; Yet something I methinks could do, Were you with me, or I with you:

Some misconstruction would sustain; Count some humiliation gain; Make unabashed a righteous claim, And profess merit without shame:

Apply for service; day by day Seek honest work for honest pay, Without a fear by any toil The over-cleanly hand to soil:

Secure in safety to return, And every pettiness unlearn; And unimpaired still find anew My own and better self in you.

* * * * *

O ship, ship, ship, That travellest over the sea, What are the tidings, I pray thee, Thou bearest hither to me?

Are they tidings of comfort and joy, That shall make me seem to see The sweet lips softly moving And whispering love to me?

Or are they of trouble and grief, Estrangement, sorrow, and doubt, To turn into torture my hopes, And drive me from Paradise out?

O ship, ship, ship, That comest over the sea, Whatever it be thou bringest, Come quickly with it to me.

1853

ESSAYS IN CLASSICAL METRES.

_TRANSLATIONS OF ILIAD._

(I. 1-32.)

Goddess, the anger sing of the Pelean Achilles, Fatal beginning of griefs unnumbered to the Achæans; Many valiant souls untimely it hurried to Hades, And the heroes left themselves of dogs to be eaten And of ravenous birds—till Zeus’s plan was accomplished— From the day when first contention arose to dissever Atrides the King and the godlike hero Achilles. What divinity thus incited them to contention?— Zeus and Leto’s son; who, in anger with Agamemnon, Sent a deadly disease on the host, destroying the people, On account of the wrong the King to his worshipper offered, Chryses, who had come to the hollow ships of Achaia, To recover his daughter, with gifts of costly redemption, Carrying in his hands the wreaths of the archer Apollo Set on a golden staff—beseeching all the Achæans, And the Atridæ in chief, the two in command of the nations: ‘Ye, Atreus’ sons, and other well-greaved Achaïan heroes, May the gods, who live in Olympian houses, accord you Capture of Priam’s town and safe to return to Achaia, But liberate to me my child and take the redemption— Fearing Zeus’s son, the far-death-dealing Apollo.’ Then the Achæans all with acclamation assented, Honour to show to the priest, and take the costly redemption; Only to Atrides Agamemnon it was unpleasing, Sternly who dismissed him with contumelious answer: ‘Old man, let me not, by the hollow ships of Achaia Lingering find you now, or henceforth ever appearing, Lest to defend you fail the staff and wreaths of Apollo. Her do I not release until old age come upon her, In my house in the land of Argos, far from her country, Stepping at the loom and in the chamber attending. Go, and trouble me not, that your return be the safer.’

(I. 121-218.)

And replying, said godlike, swift-footed Achilles: ‘Atrides, our chief, as in rank, so in love of possessions, Say, in what way shall the noble Achæans find you a present? Little we yet have gained the general stock to replenish, Distributed were all the spoils we took from the cities, And to recall our gifts and reapportion befits not— Yield you the maiden to-day to the god, and we, the Achæans, Three or four times over will compensate it, if ever Zeus the capture accord of the well-walled Ilian city.’ And with words of reply the King Agamemnon addressed him: ‘Think not, great as you are, O god-resembling Achilles, Thus to dissimulate and evade me with a profession; Is it that you desire to enjoy your prize, and to let me Sit empty-handed here, and mine you bid me surrender— Doubtless, if the noble Achæans find me another Suitable to my wants and answerable in value; But, if they do not give, myself will make my election— Yours, or that, if I please, of Ajax or of Ulysses, I for my own will take, and leave the loser lamenting. At a suitable time this, after, will we determine; Now proceed we to haul a swift ship into the water, Choose the rowers to take her, and send the cattle aboard her For sacrifice, and bring the beautiful daughter of Chryses Also on board, and appoint some prudent chief to convey her— Ajax shall it be, or Idomeneus, or Ulysses? Or will Pelides, incomparable of heroes, Go, and with holy rite appease the wrath of Apollo?’ And with a frown swift-footed Achilles eyed him, and answered: ‘O me! clothed-upon with impudence, greedy-hearted, How shall any Achæan again be willing to serve you, Make any expedition, or fight in battle to help you? Certainly not upon any account of the Troïan horsemen Came I hither to fight; they never gave me occasion, Never carried away any cattle of mine, any horses, Nor in Phthia ever, the rich land, feeder of people, Devastated the fruit; since numerous, to divide them, Mountains shadowy lie, and a sea’s tumultuous water: To’ attend thee we came, on thy effrontery waiting, Reparation to take of the Trojans for Menelaus, And thy unblushing self. All which you little remember, And can threaten to-day of my reward to deprive me, Dearly with labour earned, and given me by the Achæans. Do I ever receive any gift your gifts to compare with, When the Achæans sack any wealthy town of the Trojans? Truly the larger part of the busy, hurrying warfare My hands have to discharge; but, in the day of division, Yours is the ample share, and I, content with a little, Thankfully turn to my ships, well wearied out with the fighting. Now to Phthia I go—far wiser for me to do so, Home with my hollow ships to travel, than for another Accumulate riches to be requited with insult.’ And replying, said the king of men, Agamemnon: ‘Go, if to go be your wish; I keep you not—do not ask you For my honour to stay; I have others here to support it, Who—and Zeus above all, the Counsellor—will uphold me You are the hatefullest to me of the Zeus-fed princes, Lover for evermore of brawl and battle and discord. Strong if you are, your strength was by some deity given. Home with your hollow ships, and with your people returning Order the Myrmidonans: expect not me to regard you, Or to observe your wrath. I advertise you beforehand— As Chryseïda Phœbus Apollo hath bid me surrender, I in a ship of my own will with my people remit her Home, and the beautiful-cheeked Briseïda then to replace her Out of your tent, your prize, will carry; an argument to you How much greater I am than yourself, and a warning to others Not to oppose my will and talk with me as an equal.’ So said he, and pain seized Pelides, and in the bosom Under his hairy breast two purposes he divided, Either, from by his thigh the glittering blade unsheathing, To put aside the rest and straightway kill Agamemnon, Or to repress his wrath and check himself in his anger. With the purposes yet conflicting thus in his bosom, From the sheath the huge sword was issuing out, when Athena Came from heaven: the goddess, the white-armed Hera, desired it, Solicitous for the good of the one alike and the other. Standing behind, by the yellow hair she drew back Achilles, Visible only to him, of the rest to no one apparent; And with wonder seized he turned, and knew in a moment Pallas Athenæa, with dreadful eyes looking at him; And he opened his lips with wingèd words and addressed her: ‘Wherefore art thou come, O child of the ægis-bearer; Was it the fury to see of Atrides Agamemnon? Lo, I declare it now, and you will see it accomplished, His injurious acts will bring his death-blow upon him.’ And replying, said the blue-eyed goddess, Athena: ‘To repress I came, if practicable, your anger, Out of heaven,—the goddess, the white-armed Hera, desired me, Solicitous for the good of the one alike and the other. Abstain from violence, put back the sword in the scabbard, Let opprobrious words, if necessary, requite him; For I declare it now, and you will see it accomplished, Three times as many gifts will soon, as costly, be sent you In reparation of this; be ruled by us to be patient.’ And replying, spoke and said swift-footed Achilles: ‘Unto admonition of you two given, O goddess, Even the greatly incensed should yield; ’tis well to obey you; Who to the voice of the gods is obedient, they will assist him.’

_ELEGIACS._

I

From thy far sources, ’mid mountains airily climbing, Pass to the rich lowland, thou busy sunny river; Murmuring once, dimpling, pellucid, limpid, abundant, Deepening now, widening, swelling, a lordly river. Through woodlands steering, with branches waving above thee, Through the meadows sinuous, wandering irriguous; Towns, hamlets leaving, towns by thee, bridges across thee, Pass to palace garden, pass to cities populous. Murmuring once, dimpling, ’mid woodlands wandering idly, Now with mighty vessels loaded, a mighty river. Pass to the great waters, though tides may seem to resist thee, Tides to resist seeming, quickly will lend thee passage, Pass to the dark waters that roaring wait to receive thee; Pass them thou wilt not, thou busy sunny river.

Freshwater, 1861.

II

Trunks the forest yielded with gums ambrosial oozing, Boughs with apples laden beautiful, Hesperian, Golden, odoriferous, perfume exhaling about them, Orbs in a dark umbrage luminous and radiant; To the palate grateful, more luscious were not in Eden, Or in that fabled garden of Alcinoüs; Out of a dark umbrage sounds also musical issued, Birds their sweet transports uttering in melody: Thrushes clear piping, wood-pigeons cooing, arousing Loudly the nightingale, loudly the sylvan echoes; Waters transpicuous flowed under, flowed to the list’ning Ear with a soft murmur, softly soporiferous; Nor, with ebon locks too, there wanted, circling, attentive Unto the sweet fluting, girls, of a swarthy shepherd; Over a sunny level their flocks are lazily feeding, They of Amor musing rest in a leafy cavern.

1861

_ALCAICS._

So spake the voice: and as with a single life Instinct, the whole mass, fierce, irretainable, Down on that unsuspecting host swept; Down, with the fury of winds, that all night Upbrimming, sapping slowly the dyke, at dawn Fall through the breach o’er holmstead and harvest; and Heard roll a deluge: while the milkmaid Trips i’ the dew, and remissly guiding Morn’s first uneven furrow, the farmer’s boy Dreams out his dream; so, over the multitude Safe-tented, uncontrolled and uncon- trollably sped the Avenger’s fury.

_ACTÆON._[18]

Over a mountain slope with lentisk, and with abounding Arbutus, and the red oak overtufted, ’mid a noontide Now glowing fervidly, the Leto-born, the divine one, Artemis, Arcadian wood-rover, alone, hunt-weary, Unto a dell cent’ring many streamlets her foot unerring Had guided. Platanus with fig-tree shaded a hollow, Shaded a waterfall, where pellucid yet abundant Streams from perpetual full-flowing sources a current: Lower on either bank in sunshine flowered the oleanders: Plenteous under a rock green herbage here to the margin Grew with white poplars overcrowning. She thither arrived, Unloosening joyfully the vest enfolded upon her, Swift her divine shoulders discovering, swiftly revealing Her maidenly bosom and all her beauty beneath it, To the river water overflowing to receive her Yielded her ambrosial nakedness. But with an instant Conscious, with the instant the’ immortal terrific anger Flew to the guilty doer: that moment, where amid amply Concealing plane-leaves he the’ opportunity pursued, Long vainly, possessed, unwise, Actæon, of hunters, Hapless of Arcadian, and most misguided of hunters, Knew the divine mandate, knew fate directed upon him. He, to the boughs crouching, with dreadful joy the desired one Had viewed descending, viewed as in a dream, disarraying, And the unclad shoulders awestruck, awestruck let his eyes see The maidenly bosom, but not—dim fear fell upon them— Not more had witnessed. Not, therefore, less the forest through Ranging, their master ceasing thenceforth to remember, With the instant together came trooping, as to devour him His dogs from the ambush.—Transformed suddenly before them, He fled, an antlered stag wild with terror to the mountain, She, the liquid stream in, her limbs carelessly reclining, The flowing waters collected grateful about her.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

_COME, POET, COME!_[19]

Come, Poet, come! A thousand labourers ply their task, And what it tends to scarcely ask, And trembling thinkers on the brink Shiver, and know not how to think. To tell the purport of their pain, And what our silly joys contain; In lasting lineaments pourtray The substance of the shadowy day; Our real and inner deeds rehearse, And make our meaning clear in verse: Come, Poet, come! for but in vain We do the work or feel the pain, And gather up the seeming gain, Unless before the end thou come To take, ere they are lost, their sum.

Come, Poet, come! To give an utterance to the dumb, And make vain babblers silent, come; A thousand dupes point here and there, Bewildered by the show and glare; And wise men half have learned to doubt Whether we are not best without. Come, Poet; both but wait to see Their error proved to them in thee.

Come, Poet, come! In vain I seem to call. And yet Think not the living times forget. Ages of heroes fought and fell That Homer in the end might tell; O’er grovelling generations past Upstood the Doric fane at last; And countless hearts on countless years Had wasted thoughts, and hopes, and fears, Rude laughter and unmeaning tears; Ere England Shakespeare saw, or Rome The pure perfection of her dome. Others, I doubt not, if not we, The issue of our toils shall see; Young children gather as their own The harvest that the dead had sown, The dead forgotten and unknown.

_THE DREAM LAND._

I

To think that men of former days In naked truth deserved the praise Which, fain to have in flesh and blood An image of imagined good, Poets have sung and men received, And all too glad to be deceived, Most plastic and most inexact, Posterity has told for fact;— To say what was, was not as we, This also is a vanity.

II

Ere Agamemnon, warriors were, Ere Helen, beauties equalling her, Brave ones and fair, whom no one knows, And brave or fair as these or those. The commonplace whom daily we In our dull streets and houses see, To think of other mould than these Were Cato, Solon, Socrates, Or Mahomet or Confutze, This also is a vanity.

III

Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemain, And he before, who back on Spain Repelled the fierce inundant Moor; Godfrey, St. Louis, wise and pure, Washington, Cromwell, John, and Paul, Columbus, Luther, one and all, Go mix them up, the false and true, With Sindbad, Crusoe, or St. Preux, And say as he was, so was he, This also is a vanity.

IV

Say not: Behold it here or there, Or on the earth, or in the air. That better thing than can be seen Is neither now nor e’er has been; It is not in this land or that, But in a place we soon are at, Where all can seek and some can find, Where hope is liberal, fancy kind, And what we wish for we can see, Which also is a vanity.

_IN THE DEPTHS._

It is not sweet content, be sure, That moves the nobler Muse to song, Yet when could truth come whole and pure From hearts that inly writhe with wrong?

’Tis not the calm and peaceful breast That sees or reads the problem true; They only know on whom ’t has prest Too hard to hope to solve it too.

Our ills are worse than at their ease These blameless happy souls suspect, They only study the disease, Alas, who live not to detect.

_DARKNESS._

But that from slow dissolving pomps of dawn No verity of slowly strengthening light Early or late hath issued; that the day Scarce-shown, relapses rather, self-withdrawn, Back to the glooms of ante-natal night, For this, O human beings, mourn we may.

_TWO MOODS._

Ah, blame him not because he’s gay! That he should smile, and jest, and play But shows how lightly he can bear, How well forget that load which, where Thought is, is with it, and howe’er Dissembled, or indeed forgot, Still is a load, and ceases not. This aged earth that each new spring Comes forth so young, so ravishing In summer robes for all to see, Of flower, and leaf, and bloomy tree, For all her scarlet, gold, and green, Fails not to keep within unseen That inner purpose and that force Which on the untiring orbit’s course Around the sun, amidst the spheres Still bears her thro’ the eternal years. Ah, blame the flowers and fruits of May, And then blame him because he’s gay.

Ah, blame him not, for _not_ being gay, Because an hundred times a day He doth not currently repay Sweet words with ready words as sweet, And for each smile a smile repeat. To mute submissiveness confined, Blame not, if once or twice the mind Its pent-up indignation wreak In scowling brow and flushing cheek, And smiles curled back as soon as born, To dire significance of scorn. Nor blame if once, and once again He wring the hearts of milder men, If slights, the worse if undesigned, Should seem unbrotherly, unkind; For though tree wave, and blossom blow Above, earth hides a fire below; Her seas the starry laws obey, And she from her own ordered way Swerves not, because it dims the day Or changes verdure to decay. Ah, blame the great world on its way, And then blame him for not being gay.

_YOUTH AND AGE._

Dance on, dance on, we see, we see Youth goes, alack, and with it glee, A boy the old man ne’er can be; Maternal thirty scarce can find The sweet sixteen long left behind; Old folks must toil, and scrape, and strain, That boys and girls may once again Be that for them they cannot be, But which it gives them joy to see, Youth goes and glee; but not in vain, Young folks, if only you remain.

Dance on, dance on, ’tis joy to see; The dry red leaves on winter’s tree, Can feel the new sap rising free. On, on, young folks; so you survive, The dead themselves are still alive; The blood in dull parental veins Long numbed, a tingling life regains. Deep down in earth, the tough old root Is conscious still of flower and fruit. Spring goes and glee but were not vain: In you, young folks, they come again.

Dance on, dance on, we see, we feel; Wind, wind your waltzes, wind and wheel, Our senses too with music reel; Nor let your pairs neglect to fill The old ancestral scorned quadrille. Let hand the hand uplifted seek, And pleasure fly from cheek to cheek; Love too; but gently, nor astray, And yet, deluder, yet in play. Dance on; youth goes: but all’s not vain, Young folks, if only you remain.

Dance on, dance on, ’tis joy to see; We once were nimble e’en as ye, And danced to give the oldest glee; O wherefore add, as we, you too, Once gone your prime cannot renew; You too, like us, at last shall stand To watch and not to join the band, Content some day (a far-off day) To your supplanters soft to say, Youth goes, but goes not all in vain, Young folks, so only you remain, Dance on, dance on, ’tis joy to see.

_SOLVITUR ACRIS HIEMS._

Youth, that went, is come again, Youth, for which we all were fain; With soft pleasure and sweet pain In each nerve and every vein, Circling through the heart and brain, Whence and wherefore come again? Eva, tell me!

Dead and buried when we thought him, Who the magic spell hath taught him? Who the strong elixir brought him? Dead and buried as we thought, Lo! unasked for and unsought Comes he, shall it be for nought? Eva, tell me!

Youth that lifeless long had lain, Youth that long we longed in vain for, Used to grumble and complain for, Thought at last to entertain A decorous cool disdain for, On a sudden see again Comes, but will not long remain, Comes, with whom too in his train, Comes, and shall it be in vain? Eva, tell me!

_THESIS AND ANTITHESIS._

If that we thus are guilty doth appear, Ah, guilty tho’ we are, grave judges, hear! Ah, yes; if ever you in your sweet youth ’Midst pleasure’s borders missed the track of truth, Made love on benches underneath green trees, Stuffed tender rhymes with old new similes, Whispered soft anythings, and in the blood Felt all you said not most was understood— Ah, if you have—as which of you has not?— Nor what you were have utterly forgot, Then be not stern to faults yourselves have known, To others harsh, kind to yourselves alone.

That we, young sir, beneath our youth’s green trees Once did, not what should profit, but should please, In foolish longing and in love-sick play Forgot the truth and lost the flying day— That we went wrong we say not is not true, But, if we erred, were we not punished too? If not—if no one checked our wandering feet,— Shall we our parents’ negligence repeat?— In future times that ancient loss renew, If none saved _us_, forbear from saving you? Nor let that justice in your faults be seen Which in our own or was or should have been?

Yet, yet, recall the mind that you had then, And, so recalling, listen yet again; If you escaped, ’tis plainly understood Impunity may leave a culprit good; If you were punished, did you then, as now, The justice of that punishment allow? Did what your age consents to now, appear Expedient then and needfully severe? In youth’s indulgence think there yet might be A truth forgot by grey severity. That strictness and that laxity between, Be yours the wisdom to detect the mean. ’Tis possible, young sir, that some excess Mars youthful judgment and old men’s no less; Yet we must take our counsel as we may For (flying years this lesson still convey), ’Tis worst unwisdom to be overwise, And not to use, but still correct one’s eyes.

_ἀνεμώλια._

Go, foolish thoughts, and join the throng Of myriads gone before; To flutter and flap and flit along The airy limbo shore.

Go, words of sport and words of wit, Sarcastic point and fine, And words of wisdom wholly fit, With folly’s to combine.

Go, words of wisdom, words of sense, Which, while the heart belied, The tongue still uttered for pretence, The inner blank to hide.

Go, words of wit, so gay, so light, That still were meant express To soothe the smart of fancied slight By fancies of success.

Go, broodings vain o’er fancied wrong; Go, love-dreams vainer still; And scorn that’s not, but would be, strong; And Pride without a Will.

Go, foolish thoughts, and find your way Where myriads went before, To languish out your lingering day Upon the limbo shore.

November, 1850

_COLUMBUS._

How in God’s name did Columbus get over Is a pure wonder to me, I protest, Cabot, and Raleigh too, that well-read rover, Frobisher, Dampier, Drake, and the rest. Bad enough all the same, For them that after came, But, in great Heaven’s name, How _he_ should ever think That on the other brink Of this wild waste terra firma should be, Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

How a man ever should hope to get thither, E’en if he knew that there was another side; But to suppose he should come any whither, Sailing straight on into chaos untried, In spite of the motion Across the whole ocean, To stick to the notion That in some nook or bend Of a sea without end He should find North and South America, Was a pure madness, indeed I must say, to me.

What if wise men had, as far back as Ptolemy, Judged that the earth like an orange was round, None of them ever said, Come along, follow me, Sail to the West, and the East will be found. Many a day before Ever they’d come ashore, From the ‘San Salvador,’ Sadder and wiser men They’d have turned back again; And that _he_ did not, but did cross the sea, Is a pure wonder, I must say, to me.

_EVEN THE WINDS AND THE SEA OBEY._

Said the Poet, I wouldn’t maintain, As the mystical German has done, That the land, inexistent till then, To reward him then first saw the sun; And yet I could deem it was so, As o’er the new waters he sailed, That his soul made the breezes to blow, With his courage the breezes had failed; His strong quiet purpose had still The hurricane’s fury withheld; The resolve of his conquering will The lingering vessel impelled: For the beings, the powers that range In the air, on the earth, at our sides, Can modify, temper and change Stronger things than the winds and the tides, By forces occult can the laws— As we style them—of nature o’errule; Can cause, so to say, every cause, And our best mathematics befool; Can defeat calculation and plan, Baffle schemes ne’er so wisely designed, But will bow to the genius of man, And acknowledge a sovereign mind.

_REPOSE IN EGYPT._

O happy mother!—while the man wayworn Sleeps by his ass and dreams of daily bread, Wakeful and heedful for thy infant care— O happy mother!—while thy husband sleeps, Art privileged, O blessed one, to see Celestial strangers sharing in thy task, And visible angels waiting on thy child.

Take, O young soul, O infant heaven-desired, Take and fear not the cates, although of earth, Which to thy hands celestial hands extend, Take and fear not: such vulgar meats of life Thy spirit lips no more must scorn to pass; The seeming ill, contaminating joys, Thy sense divine no more be loth to allow; The pleasures as the pains of our strange life Thou art engaged, self-compromised, to share. Look up, upon thy mother’s face there sits No sad suspicion of a lurking ill, No shamed confession of a needful sin; Mistrust her not, although of earth she too: Look up! the bright-eyed cherubs overhead Strew from mid air fresh flowers to crown the just Look! thy own father’s servants these, and thine, Who at his bidding and at thine are here. In thine own word was it not said long since Butter and honey shall he eat, and learn The evil to refuse and choose the good? Fear not, O babe divine, fear not, accept; O happy mother, privileged to see, While the man sleeps, the sacred mystery.

_TO A SLEEPING CHILD._

Lips, lips, open! Up comes a little bird that lives inside— Up comes a little bird, and peeps, and out he flies.

All the day he sits inside, and sometimes he sings, Up he comes, and out he goes at night to spread his wings.

Little bird, little bird, whither will you go? Round about the world, while nobody can know.

Little bird, little bird, whither do you flee? Far away around the world, while nobody can see.

Little bird, little bird, how long will you roam? All round the world and around again home;

Round the round world, and back through the air, When the morning comes, the little bird is there.

Back comes the little bird and looks and in he flies, Up wakes the little boy, and opens both his eyes.

Sleep, sleep, little boy, little bird’s away, Little bird will come again, by the peep of day;

Sleep, little boy, the little bird must go Round about the world, while nobody can know. Sleep, sleep sound, little bird goes round, Round and round he goes; sleep, sleep sound.

_TRANSLATIONS FROM GOETHE._

I

Over every hill All is still; In no leaf of any tree Can you see The motion of a breath. Every bird has ceased its song, Wait; and thou too, ere long, Shall be quiet in death.

II

Who ne’er his bread with tears hath ate, Who never through the sad night hours Weeping upon his bed hath sate, He knows not you, you heavenly powers.

Forth into life you bid us go, And into guilt you let us fall, Then leave us to endure the woe It brings unfailingly to all.

III

You complain of the woman for roving from one to another:— Where is the constant man whom she is trying to find?

IV

Slumber and Sleep, two brothers appointed to serve the immortals, By Prometheus were brought hither to comfort mankind; But what in heaven was light, to human creatures was heavy:— Slumber became our Sleep, Sleep unto mortals was Death.

V

Oh, the beautiful child! and oh, the most happy mother! She in her infant blessed, and in its mother the babe— What sweet longing within me this picture might not occasion, Were I not, Joseph, like you, calmly condemned to stand by!

VI

Diogenes by his tub, contenting himself with the sunshine, And Calanus with joy mounting his funeral pyre:— Great examples were these for the eager approving of Philip, But for the Conqueror of Earth were, as the earth was, too small.

_URANUS._[20]

When on the primal peaceful blank profound, Which in its still unknowing silence holds All knowledge, ever by withholding holds— When on that void (like footfalls in far rooms), In faint pulsations from the whitening East Articulate voices first were felt to stir, And the great child, in dreaming grown to man, Losing his dream to piece it up began; Then Plato in me said, ‘’Tis but the figured ceiling overhead, With cunning diagrams bestarred, that shine In all the three dimensions, are endowed With motion too by skill mechanical, That thou in height, and depth, and breadth, and power, Schooled unto pure Mathesis, might proceed To higher entities, whereof in us Copies are seen, existent they themselves In the sole kingdom of the Mind and God. Mind not the stars, mind thou thy Mind and God.’ By that supremer Word O’ermastered, deafly heard Were hauntings dim of old astrologies; Chaldean mumblings vast, with gossip light From modern ologistic fancyings mixed, Of suns and stars, by hypothetic men Of other frame than ours inhabited, Of lunar seas and lunar craters huge. And was there atmosphere, or was there not? And without oxygen could life subsist? And was the world originally mist?— Talk they as talk they list, I, in that ampler voice, Unheeding, did rejoice.

_SELENE._

My beloved, is it nothing Though we meet not, neither can, That I see thee, and thou me, That we see, and see we see, When I see I also feel thee; Is it nothing, my beloved?

Thy luminous clear beauty Brightens on me in my night, I withdraw into my darkness To allure thee into light. About me and upon me I feel them pass and stay, About me, deep into me, every lucid tender ray. And thou, thou also feelest When thou stealest Shamefaced and half afraid To the chamber of thy shade, Thou in thy turn, Thou too feelest Something follow, something yearn, A full orb blaze and burn.

My full orb upon thine, As thine erst, gently smiling, Softly wooing, sweetly wiling, Gleamed on mine; So mine on thine in turn When thou feelest blaze and burn, Is it nothing, my beloved?

My beloved, is it nothing When I see thee and thou me, When we each other see, Is it nothing, my beloved?

Closer, closer come unto me. Shall I see thee and no more? I can see thee, is that all? Let me also, Let me feel thee, Closer, closer, my beloved, Come unto me, come to me, come! O cruel, cruel lot, still thou rollest, stayest not, Lookest onward, look’st before, Yet I follow, evermore. Oh, cold and cruel fate, thou rollest on thy way, Scarcely lookest, wilt not stay, From thine alien way.

The inevitable motion Bears me forth upon the line Whose course I cannot see. I must move as it conveys me Evermore. It so must be.

O cold one, and I round thee Revolve, round only thee, Straining ever to be nearer While thou evadest still; Repellest still, O cold one, Nay, but closer, closer, closer, My beloved, come, come, come!

The inevitable motion Carries both upon its line, Also you as well as me. What is best, and what is strongest, We obey. It so must be.

Cruel, cruel, didst thou only Feel as I feel evermore, A force, though in, not of me, Drawing inward, in, in, in.

Yea, thou shalt though, ere all endeth Thou shalt feel me closer, closer, My beloved, close, close to thee, Come to thee, come, come, come!

The inevitable motion Bears us both upon its line Together, you as me, Together and asunder, Evermore. It so must be.

_AT ROME._

O richly soiled and richly sunned, Exuberant, fervid, and fecund! Is this the fixed condition On which may Northern pilgrim come, To imbibe thine ether-air, and sum Thy store of old tradition? Must we be chill, if clean, and stand Foot-deep in dirt on classic land?

So is it: in all ages so, And in all places man can know, From homely roots unseen below The stem in forest, field, and bower, Derives the emanative power That crowns it with the ethereal flower, From mixtures fœtid, foul, and sour Draws juices that those petals fill.

Ah Nature, if indeed thy will Thou own’st it, it shall not be ill! And truly here, in this quick clime, Where, scarcely bound by space or time, The elements in half a day Toss off with exquisitest play What our cold seasons toil and grieve, And never quite at last achieve; Where processes, with pain, and fear, Disgust, and horror wrought, appear The quick mutations of a dance, Wherein retiring but to advance, Life, in brief interpause of death, One moment sitting taking breath, Forth comes again as glad as e’er, In some new figure full as fair, Where what has scarcely ceased to be, Instinct with newer birth we see— What dies, already, look you, lives; In such a clime, who thinks, forgives; Who sees, will understand; who knows, In calm of knowledge find repose, And thoughtful as of glory gone, So too of more to come anon, Of permanent existence sure, Brief intermediate breaks endure. O Nature, if indeed thy will, Thou ownest it, it is not ill! And e’en as oft on heathy hill, On moorland black, and ferny fells, Beside thy brooks and in thy dells, Was welcomed erst the kindly stain Of thy true earth, e’en so again With resignation fair, and meet The dirt and refuse of thy street, My philosophic foot shall greet, So leave but perfect to my eye Thy columns, set against thy sky!

_LAST WORDS. NAPOLEON AND WELLINGTON._

NAPOLEON.

Is it this, then, O world-warrior, That, exulting, through the folds Of the dark and cloudy barrier Thine enfranchised eye beholds? Is, when blessed hands relieve thee From the gross and mortal clay, This the heaven that should receive thee? ‘Tête d’armée.’

Now the final link is breaking, Of the fierce, corroding chain, And the ships, their watch forsaking, Bid the seas no more detain, Whither is it, freed and risen, The pure spirit seeks away, Quits for what the weary prison? ‘Tête d’armée.’

Doubtless—angels, hovering o’er thee In thine exile’s sad abode, Marshalled even now before thee, Move upon that chosen road! Thither they, ere friends have laid thee Where sad willows o’er thee play, Shall already have conveyed thee! ‘Tête d’armée.’

Shall great captains, foiled and broken, Hear from thee on each great day, At the crisis, a word spoken— Word that battles still obey— ‘Cuirassiers here, here those cannon; Quick, those squadrons, up—away! To the charge, on—as one man, on!’ ‘Tête d’armée.’

(Yes, too true, alas! while sated Of the wars so slow to cease, Nations, once that scorned and hated, Would to Wisdom turn, and Peace; Thy dire impulse still obeying, Fevered youths, as in the old day, In their hearts still find thee saying, ‘Tête d’armée.’)

Oh, poor soul!—Or do I view thee, From earth’s battle-fields withheld, In a dream, assembling to thee Troops that quell not, nor are quelled, Breaking airy lines, defeating Limbo-kings, and, as to-day, Idly to all time repeating ‘Tête d’armée’?

WELLINGTON.

And what the words, that with his failing breath Did England hear her aged soldier say? I know not. Yielding tranquilly to death, With no proud speech, no boast, he passed away.

Not stirring words, nor gallant deeds alone, Plain patient work fulfilled that length of life; Duty, not glory—Service, not a throne, Inspired his effort, set for him the strife.

Therefore just Fortune, with one hasty blow, Spurning her minion, Glory’s, Victory’s lord, Gave all to him that was content to know, In service done its own supreme reward.

The words he said, if haply words there were, When full of years and works he passed away, Most naturally might, methinks, refer To some poor humble business of to-day.

‘That humble simple duty of the day Perform,’ he bids; ‘ask not if small or great: Serve in thy post; be faithful, and obey; Who serves her truly, sometimes saves the State.’

1852

_PESCHIERA._

What voice did on my spirit fall, Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost? ‘’Tis better to have fought and lost, Than never to have fought at all.’

The tricolor—a trampled rag Lies, dirt and dust; the lines I track By sentry boxes yellow-black, Lead up to no Italian flag.

I see the Croat soldier stand Upon the grass of your redoubts; The eagle with his black wings flouts The breath and beauty of your land.

Yet not in vain, although in vain, O men of Brescia, on the day Of loss past hope, I heard you say Your welcome to the noble pain.

You say, ‘Since so it is,—good-bye Sweet life, high hope; but whatsoe’er May be, or must, no tongue shall dare To tell, “The Lombard feared to die!”’

You said (there shall be answer fit), ‘And if our children must obey, They must; but thinking on this day ’Twill less debase them to submit.’

You said (Oh not in vain you said), ‘Haste, brothers, haste, while yet we may; The hours ebb fast of this one day When blood may yet be nobly shed.’

Ah! not for idle hatred, not For honour, fame, nor self-applause, But for the glory of the cause, You did, what will not be forgot.

And though the stranger stand, ’tis true, By force and fortune’s right he stands; By fortune, which is in God’s hands, And strength, which yet shall spring in you.

This voice did on my spirit fall, Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost, ‘’Tis better to have fought and lost, Than never to have fought at all.’

1849

_ALTERAM PARTEM._

Or shall I say, Vain word, false thought, Since Prudence hath her martyrs too, And Wisdom dictates not to do, Till doing shall be not for nought?

Not ours to give or lose is life; Will Nature, when her brave ones fall, Remake her work? or songs recall Death’s victim slain in useless strife?

That rivers flow into the sea Is loss and waste, the foolish say, Nor know that back they find their way, Unseen, to where they wont to be.

Showers fall upon the hills, springs flow, The river runneth still at hand, Brave men are born into the land, And whence the foolish do not know.

No! no vain voice did on me fall, Peschiera, when thy bridge I crost, ‘_’Tis_ better to have fought and lost, Than never to have fought at all.’

1849

_SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NOUGHT AVAILETH._

Say not the struggle nought availeth, The labour and the wounds are vain, The enemy faints not, nor faileth, And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; It may be, in yon smoke concealed, Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers, And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking, Seem here no painful inch to gain, Far back, through creeks and inlets making, Comes silent, flooding in, the main,

And not by eastern windows only, When daylight comes, comes in the light, In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly, But westward, look, the land is bright.

1849

FOOTNOTES

[1] This and the following Early Poems are reprinted from the volume called _Ambarvalia_.

[2] This was written for the twenty-fifth wedding-day of Mr. and Mrs. Walrond, of Calder Park.

[3] Ho Thëos meta sou—God be with you!

[4] The manuscript of this poem is very imperfect, and bears no title.

[5] The manuscript of this poem is incomplete; but it has been thought best to give all the separate fragments, since they evidently are conceived on the same plan, and throw light on each other.

[6] This poem, as well as the ‘Mari Magno,’ was not published during the author’s lifetime, and should not be regarded as having received his finishing touches.

[7] Flood.

[8] Reap.

[9] Reaping.

[10] Shocks.

[11] Public-house in the hamlet.

[12] This poem is reprinted from the volume called _Ambarvalia_.

[13]

Hic avidus stetit Vulcanus, hic matrona Juno, et Nunquam humeris positurus arcum; Qui rore puro Castaliæ lavit Crines solutos, qui Lyciæ tenet Dumeta natalemque silvam, Delius et Patareus Apollo.

[14]

——domus Albuneæ resonantis, Et præceps Anio, et Tiburni lucus, et uda Mobilibus pomaria rivis

[15] These Sonnets have been brought together from very imperfect manuscripts. It is not to be supposed that their author would have given them to the public in their present state; but they are in parts so characteristic of his thought and style, that they will not be without interest to the readers of his poems.

[16] These Tales were written only a few months before the writer’s death, during his journeys in Greece, Italy, and the Pyrenees, and had not been revised by him.

[17] These songs were composed either during the writer’s voyage across the Atlantic in 1852, or during his residence in America.

[18] Passages of the second letter of Parepidemus (vol. i. pp. 400, 401) illustrate the theory which Mr. Clough has carried into practice in these hexameters as well as in the Translations from the Iliad.

[19] A great proportion of the Poems described as Miscellaneous have, like some included in previous divisions, been brought together from rough copies and unfinished manuscripts. Fragmentary and imperfect as they are, they yet are so characteristic of their writer, that they have been placed here along with others more finished.

[20] This thought is taken from a passage on astronomy in Plato’s _Republic_, in which the following sentence occurs, vii. 529, D: ‘We must use the fretwork of the sky as patterns, with a view to the study which aims at these higher realities, just as if we chanced to meet with diagrams cunningly drawn and devised by Dædalus or some other craftsman or painter.’

INDEX OF THE FIRST LINES.

PAGE

A Highland inn among the western hills 384

A youth and maid upon a summer night 352

A youth was I. An elder friend with me 325

Across the sea, along the shore 94

Ah, blame him not because he’s gay! 431

Am I with you, or you with me? 410

And replying, said godlike, swift-footed Achilles 418

As, at a railway junction, men 35

As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay 38

Away, haunt thou not me 11

Beside me,—in the car,—she sat 260

Blessed are those who have not seen 90

Bright October was come, the misty-bright October 236

But a revulsion again came over the spirit of Elspie 245

But if as not by that the soul desired 321

But that from slow dissolving pomps of dawn 430

But whether in the uncoloured light of truth 320

Cease, empty Faith, the Spectrum saith 89

Come back again, my olden heart! 8

Come back, come back, behold with straining mast 404

Come home, come home! and where is home for me 403

Come, Poet, come! 427

Dance on, dance on, we see, we see 432

Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer 269

Dearest of boys, please come to-day 329

Diogenes by his tub, contenting himself with the sunshine 442

Duty—that’s to say, complying 181

Each for himself is still the rule 183

Eastward, or Northward, or West? I wander and ask as I wander 305

Edward and Jane a married couple were 374

Farewell, farewell! Her vans the vessel tries 401

Farewell, my Highland lassie! when the year returns around 29

For she confessed, as they sat in the dusk, and he saw not her blushes 239

From thy far sources, ’mid mountains airily climbing 422

Go, foolish thoughts, and join the throng 436

Goddess, the anger sing of the Pelean Achilles 417

Green fields of England! wheresoe’er 404

Hearken to me, ye mothers of my tent 69

Here am I yet, another twelvemonth spent 12

Hope evermore and believe, O man, for e’en as thy thought 188

How in God’s name did Columbus get over 437

How often sit I, poring o’er 14

I dreamed a dream: I dreamt that I espied 96

I have seen higher, holier things than these 19

I saw again the spirits on a day 186

I stayed at La Quenille, ten miles or more 361

If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws 321

If that we thus are guilty doth appear 434

If, when in cheerless wanderings, dull and cold 20

In controversial foul impureness 93

Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages 280

Is it this, then, O world-warrior 448

Is it true, ye gods, who treat us 39

It fortifies my soul to know 90

It is not sweet content, be sure 430

It may be true 91

It was but some few nights ago 3

It was the afternoon; and the sports were now at the ending 201

I’ve often wondered how it is, at times 371

Light words they were, and lightly, falsely said 34

Like a child 14

Lips, lips, open! 440

Lo, here is God, and there is God! 81

Matthew and Mark and Luke and holy John 95

Morn, in yellow and white, came broadening out from the mountains 207

My beloved, is it nothing 443

My sons, and ye children of my sons 74

My wind is turned to bitter north 18

O God! O God! and must I still go on 171

O happy mother!—while the man wayworn 439

O happy they whose hearts receive 189

O kind protecting Darkness! as a child 15

O let me love my love unto myself alone 87

O only Source of all our light and life 85

O richly soiled and richly sunned 446

O ship, ship, ship 413

O stream descending to the sea 196

O tell me, friends, while yet we part 36

O Thou whose image in the shrine 86

Oh, the beautiful child! and oh, the most happy mother! 442

‘Old things need not be therefore true’ 93

On grass, on gravel, in the sun 260

On the mountain, in the woodland 31

Once more the wonted road I tread 16

Or shall I say, Vain word, false thought 452

Over a mountain slope with lentisk, and with abounding 423

Over every hill 441

Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits 269

Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane 197

Roused by importunate knocks 15

Said the Poet, I wouldn’t maintain 438

Say not the struggle nought availeth 452

Say, will it, when our hairs are grey 190

Shall I decide it by a random shot? 322

Since that last evening we have fallen indeed! 43

Slumber and Sleep, two brothers appointed to serve the immortals 441

So I went wrong 7

So in the cottage with Adam the pupils five together 232

So in the golden morning they parted and went to the westward 215

So in the golden weather they waited. But Philip returned not 224

So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone 104

So on the morrow’s morrow, with Term-time dread returning 250

So spake the voice: and as with a single life 423

Some future day when what is now is not 406

Sweet streamlet bason! at thy side 10

That children in their loveliness should die 319

That out of sight is out of mind 409

That there are better things within the womb 319

The grasses green of sweet content 193

The human spirits saw I on a day 185

The mighty ocean rolls and raves 407

The scene is different, and the place, the air 109

The Silver Wedding! on some pensive ear 20

The skies have sunk, and hid the upper snow 259

There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno 309

These are the words of Jacob’s wives, the words 77

Thou shalt have one God only; who 184

Though to the vilest things beneath the moon 12

Thought may well be ever ranging 25

Through the great sinful streets of Naples as I past 100

To see the rich autumnal tint depart 320

To spend uncounted years of pain 91

To think that men of former days 428

To wear out heart, and nerves, and brain 182

Trunks the forest yielded with gums ambrosial oozing 422

Truth is a golden thread, seen here and there 6

’Twas on a sunny summer day 5

Upon the water, in the boat 195

Well, well,—Heaven bless you all from day to day! 13

Were I with you, or you with me 411

Were you with me, or I with you 410

Were you with me, or I with you 412

What voice did on my spirit fall 450

What we, when face to face we see 92

Whate’er you dream with doubt possest 194

When on the primal peaceful blank profound 442

When panting sighs the bosom fill 26

When soft September brings again 10

When the dews are earliest falling 30

Whence are ye, vague desires 191

Whence comest thou, shady lane? and why and how? 8

Where lies the land to which the ship would go? 407

Who is this man that walketh in the field 72

Who ne’er his bread with tears hath ate 441

Why should I say I see the things I see not? 23

Ye flags of Piccadilly 402

Yes, I have lied, and so must walk my way 13

Yet to the wondrous St. Peter’s, and yet to the solemn Rotonda 293

You complain of the woman for roving from one to another 441

Youth, that went, is come again 434

THE END.

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