Chapter 14

But mainly the rich business of the hour, Their sight, made blind by urgency of blood, Embraced; and facts, the passing sweet or sour, To them were solid things that nought withstood.

Their facts are going headlong on the tides, Like commas on a line of History’s page; Nor that which once they took for Truth abides, Save in the form of youth enlarged from age.

Meantime give ear to woodland notes around, Look on our Earth full-breasted to our sun: So was it when their poets heard the sound, Beheld the scene: in them our days are one.

What figures will be shown the century hence? What lands intact? We do but know that Power From piety divorced, though seen immense, Shall sink on envy of the humblest flower.

Our cry for cradled Peace, while men are still The three-parts brute which smothers the divine, Heaven answers: Guard it with forethoughtful will, Or buy it; all your gains from War resign.

A land, not indefensibly alarmed, May see, unwarned by hint of friendly gods, Between a hermit crab at all points armed, And one without a shell, decisive odds.

YOUTH IN AGE

ONCE I was part of the music I heard On the boughs or sweet between earth and sky, For joy of the beating of wings on high My heart shot into the breast of the bird.

I hear it now and I see it fly, And a life in wrinkles again is stirred, My heart shoots into the breast of the bird, As it will for sheer love till the last long sigh.

EPITAPHS

TO A FRIEND LOST (TOM TAYLOR)

WHEN I remember, friend, whom lost I call, Because a man beloved is taken hence, The tender humour and the fire of sense In your good eyes; how full of heart for all, And chiefly for the weaker by the wall, You bore that lamp of sane benevolence; Then see I round you Death his shadows dense Divide, and at your feet his emblems fall. For surely are you one with the white host, Spirits, whose memory is our vital air, Through the great love of Earth they had: lo, these, Like beams that throw the path on tossing seas, Can bid us feel we keep them in the ghost, Partakers of a strife they joyed to share.

M. M.

WHO call her Mother and who calls her Wife Look on her grave and see not Death but Life.

THE LADY C. M.

TO them that knew her, there is vital flame In these the simple letters of her name. To them that knew her not, be it but said, So strong a spirit is not of the dead.

ON THE TOMBSTONE OF JAMES CHRISTOPHER WILSON (d. APRIL 11, 1884) IN HEADLEY CHURCHYARD, SURREY

THOU our beloved and light of Earth hast crossed The sea of darkness to the yonder shore. There dost thou shine a light transferred, not lost, Through love to kindle in our souls the more.

GORDON OF KHARTOUM

OF men he would have raised to light he fell: In soul he conquered with those nerveless hands. His country’s pride and her abasement knell The Man of England circled by the sands.

J. C. M.

A FOUNTAIN of our sweetest, quick to spring In fellowship abounding, here subsides: And never passage of a cloud on wing To gladden blue forgets him; near he hides.

THE EMPEROR FREDERICK OF OUR TIME

WITH Alfred and St. Louis he doth win Grander than crowned head’s mortuary dome: His gentle heroic manhood enters in The ever-flowering common heart for home.

ISLET THE DACHS

OUR Islet out of Helgoland, dismissed From his quaint tenement, quits hates and loves. There lived with us a wagging humourist In that hound’s arch dwarf-legged on boxing-gloves.

ON HEARING THE NEWS FROM VENICE (THE DEATH OF ROBERT BROWNING)

NOW dumb is he who waked the world to speak, And voiceless hangs the world beside his bier. Our words are sobs, our cry of praise a tear: We are the smitten mortal, we the weak. We see a spirit on Earth’s loftiest peak Shine, and wing hence the way he makes more clear: See a great Tree of Life that never sere Dropped leaf for aught that age or storms might wreak. Such ending is not Death: such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart, to conquer man’s old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy monsters raising heads When Song is murk from springs of turbid source.

_December_ 13, 1889.

HAWARDEN

WHEN comes the lighted day for men to read Life’s meaning, with the work before their hands Till this good gift of breath from debt is freed, Earth will not hear her children’s wailful bands Deplore the chieftain fall’n in sob and dirge; Nor they look where is darkness, but on high. The sun that dropped down our horizon’s verge Illumes his labours through the travelled sky, Now seen in sum, most glorious; and ’tis known By what our warrior wrought we hold him fast. A splendid image built of man has flown; His deeds inspired of God outstep a Past. Ours the great privilege to have had one Among us who celestial tasks has done.

AT THE FUNERAL FEBRUARY 2, 1901

HER sacred body bear: the tenement Of that strong soul now ranked with God’s Elect Her heart upon her people’s heart she spent; Hence is she Royalty’s lodestar to direct.

The peace is hers, of whom all lands have praised Majestic virtues ere her day unseen. Aloft the name of Womanhood she raised, And gave new readings to the Title, Queen.

ANGELA BURDETT-COUTTS

LONG with us, now she leaves us; she has rest Beneath our sacred sod: A woman vowed to Good, whom all attest, The daylight gift of God.

THE YEAR’S SHEDDINGS

THE varied colours are a fitful heap: They pass in constant service though they sleep; The self gone out of them, therewith the pain: Read that, who still to spell our earth remain.

FOOTNOTES

{140} Written in December 1870, printed in the ‘Fortnightly Review,’ and published in the volume ‘Ballads and Poems.’