Chapter 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SONG

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

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

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

THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

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

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

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

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

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

THE DEATH OF WINTER

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

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

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

SONG

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

JOHN LACKLAND

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

THE SLEEPING CITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE POETRY OF CHAUCER

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

THE POETRY OF SPENSER

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

THE POETRY OF SHAKESPEARE

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

THE POETRY OF MILTON

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

THE POETRY OF SOUTHEY

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

THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE

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

THE POETRY OF SHELLEY

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

THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH

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

THE POETRY OF KEATS

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

VIOLETS

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

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

ANGELIC LOVE

ANGELIC love that stoops with heavenly lips To meet its earthly mate; Heroic love that to its sphere’s eclipse Can dare to join its fate With one beloved devoted human heart, And share with it the passion and the smart, The undying bliss Of its most fleeting kiss; The fading grace Of its most sweet embrace:— Angelic love, heroic love! Whose birth can only be above, Whose wandering must be on earth, Whose haven where it first had birth! Love that can part with all but its own worth, And joy in every sacrifice That beautifies its Paradise! And gently, like a golden-fruited vine, With earnest tenderness itself consign, And creeping up deliriously entwine Its dear delicious arms Round the beloved being! With fair unfolded charms, All-trusting, and all-seeing,— Grape-laden with full bunches of young wine! While to the panting heart’s dry yearning drouth Buds the rich dewy mouth— Tenderly uplifted, Like two rose-leaves drifted Down in a long warm sigh of the sweet South! Such love, such love is thine, Such heart is mine, O thou of mortal visions most divine!

TWILIGHT MUSIC

KNOW you the low pervading breeze That softly sings In the trembling leaves of twilight trees, As if the wind were dreaming on its wings? And have you marked their still degrees Of ebbing melody, like the strings Of a silver harp swept by a spirit’s hand In some strange glimmering land, ’Mid gushing springs, And glistenings Of waters and of planets, wild and grand! And have you marked in that still time The chariots of those shining cars Brighten upon the hushing dark, And bent to hark That Voice, amid the poplar and the lime, Pause in the dilating lustre Of the spheral cluster; Pause but to renew its sweetness, deep As dreams of heaven to souls that sleep! And felt, despite earth’s jarring wars, When day is done And dead the sun, Still a voice divine can sing, Still is there sympathy can bring A whisper from the stars! Ah, with this sentience quickly will you know How like a tree I tremble to the tones Of your sweet voice! How keenly I rejoice When in me with sweet motions slow The spiritual music ebbs and moans— Lives in the lustre of those heavenly eyes, Dies in the light of its own paradise,— Dies, and relives eternal from its death, Immortal melodies in each deep breath; Sweeps thro’ my being, bearing up to thee Myself, the weight of its eternity; Till, nerved to life from its ordeal fire, It marries music with the human lyre, Blending divine delight with loveliest desire.

REQUIEM

WHERE faces are hueless, where eyelids are dewless, Where passion is silent and hearts never crave; Where thought hath no theme, and where sleep hath no dream, In patience and peace thou art gone—to thy grave! Gone where no warning can wake thee to morning, Dead tho’ a thousand hands stretch’d out to save.

Thou cam’st to us sighing, and singing and dying, How could it be otherwise, fair as thou wert? Placidly fading, and sinking and shading At last to that shadow, the latest desert; Wasting and waning, but still, still remaining. Alas for the hand that could deal the death-hurt!

The Summer that brightens, the Winter that whitens, The world and its voices, the sea and the sky, The bloom of creation, the tie of relation, All—all is a blank to thine ear and thine eye; The ear may not listen, the eye may not glisten, Nevermore waked by a smile or a sigh.

The tree that is rootless must ever be fruitless; And thou art alone in thy death and thy birth; No last loving token of wedded love broken, No sign of thy singleness, sweetness and worth; Lost as the flower that is drowned in the shower, Fall’n like a snowflake to melt in the earth.

THE FLOWER OF THE RUINS

TAKE thy lute and sing By the ruined castle walls, Where the torrent-foam falls, And long weeds wave: Take thy lute and sing, O’er the grey ancestral grave! Daughter of a King, Tune thy string.

Sing of happy hours, In the roar of rushing time; Till all the echoes chime To the days gone by; Sing of passing hours To the ever-present sky;— Weep—and let the showers Wake thy flowers.

Sing of glories gone:— No more the blazoned fold From the banner is unrolled; The gold sun is set. Sing his glory gone, For thy voice may charm him yet; Daughter of the dawn, He is gone!

Pour forth all thy grief! Passionately sweep the chords, Wed them quivering to thy words; Wild words of wail! Shed thy withered grief— But hold not Autumn to thy bale; The eddy of the leaf Must be brief!

Sing up to the night: Hard it is for streaming tears To read the calmness of the spheres; Coldly they shine; Sing up to their light; They have views thou may’st divine— Gain prophetic sight From their light!

On the windy hills Lo, the little harebell leans On the spire-grass that it queens, With bonnet blue; Trusting love instils Love and subject reverence true; Learn what love instils On the hills!

By the bare wayside Placid snowdrops hang their cheeks, Softly touch’d with pale green streaks, Soon, soon, to die; On the clothed hedgeside Bands of rosy beauties vie, In their prophesied Summer pride.

From the snowdrop learn; Not in her pale life lives she, But in her blushing prophecy. Thus be thy hopes, Living but to yearn Upwards to the hidden scopes;— Even within the urn Let them burn!

Heroes of thy race— Warriors with golden crowns, Ghostly shapes with marbled frowns Stare thee to stone; Matrons of thy race Pass before thee making moan; Full of solemn grace Is their pace.

Piteous their despair! Piteous their looks forlorn! Terrible their ghostly scorn! Still hold thou fast;— Heed not their despair!— Thou art thy future, not thy past; Let them glance and glare Thro’ the air.