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 Poems, 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013496397 
 
Poems 
 
" Ed io a lui : Io mi son un che quando 
 Amore spira, noto ; ed a quel modo 
 Ch'ei detta dented, vo significando." , 
 
 Dante. Del Purgatorio 24. 52—54 
 
■->.-*•-«> 
 
 '\-j&M*J&J&-i 
 
 LONDON. JOHN LANE 
 
 THE BODLE* HEAD. 
 
 NEW-70RK.GEORGE.H.RICHM0ND 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGS 
 
 Dedication • vii 
 
 Note - ... . xi 
 
 An Essay in a Brief Model 3 
 
 Love's Eleusis 
 To Nellie • 
 Hastings 
 
 Sweet Seventeen 
 Near a Windmill 
 To the Moon 
 
 33 
 35 
 36 
 37 
 38 
 39 
 
 To a Beautiful Jewess * -40 
 
 Psychology -----•-■ -41 
 
 The Danger of the Individual Ideal - - ■ 4 2 
 
 Asleep ... . - 43 
 
 The Swallow Fall 44 
 
 Maxima Reverentia - 45 
 
 Counsel ... - - 50 
 
 Renunciation ..*-•_- ■ 5 1 
 
 Elaine- - "52 
 
 Home - - - * 53 
 
 Separated - 54 
 
 United - - 56 
 
 A Song - - ■ 58 
 
 The Sacrament of Love ....... 59 
 
 A Song of Solace - - - - 60 
 

 INTENTS 
 
 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Midnight Invocation to the Wind - 
 
 - 
 
 61 
 
 The Gifts of the Gods - 
 
 - 
 
 62 
 
 The New Apollo 
 
 
 63 
 
 Jehovah .... 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 64 
 
 Aldeburg .... 
 
 
 - 
 
 65 
 
 Eastbourne - 
 
 
 - 
 
 66 
 
 Weybridge 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 67 
 
 Matthew Arnold - 
 
 
 - 
 
 68 
 
 My Sister's Room 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 Vocation .... 
 
 
 
 ■ 70 
 
 Astronomy - 
 
 
 
 7i 
 
 Swiss Mountains by Night ■ 
 
 
 - 
 
 72 
 
 Hercules and Hylas 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 • 73 
 
 Tithonus 
 
 
 
 78 
 
 The Commonest Lot - 
 
 
 - 
 
 82 
 
 The Poet - 
 
 
 • 
 
 ■ 83, 
 
 Sympathy ... 
 
 
 - 
 
 ■ 8 S 
 
 Spring .... 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 To Her 
 
 
 - 
 
 • 88 
 
 An Invitation 
 
 
 
 ■ 89 
 
 A Song 
 
 
 
 • 90 
 
 May-Day Song - 
 
 
 - 
 
 91 
 
 Empty Kisses 
 
 
 
 ■ 92 
 
 Butes - 
 
 
 - 
 
 ■ 94 
 
 L'Envoi 
 
 
 • 
 
 ■ 95 
 
To my Mother 
 
 If faultless love demand a faultless lay, 
 To faultless love what tribute can I pay? 
 And yet, to whom, the while my voice may reach 
 Thine ear, that gladdened at my earliest speech y 
 Should I present my Song, hut thee alone, 
 That love for all its errors may atone? 
 
 'Twas kneeling at thy feet, for good or ill 
 I suffered poetry's mysterious thrill; 
 There, from thy soft melodious voice, I caught 
 The music of the Hebrew minstrePs thought: 
 " God is my shepherd; I shall never -need; 
 " In pastures green his flocks securely feed, 
 " By quiet pools my footsteps he shall lead" 
 
 And well I know, if prayer may aught avail, 
 
 No word of that fond prophecy can fail; 
 
 Or if solicitude may access gain 
 
 To Happy Island or Elysian Plain, 
 
 When all my wanderings on the hills are past, 
 
 To safe enclosure I shall win at last ! 
 
 What marvel if that Psalm, for thy dear sake, 
 Attends me, dove-like, as my way I take ? 
 What marvel if to thee my heart assign 
 The first low breathings of the Breath divine ? 
 
VU1 
 
 Not by the inward ear is only, heard 
 The splendid mode, the grand majestic word: 
 Thy voice, the very echo of thy heart, 
 Blends and transcends the eloquence of Art I 
 
 So, if the impulse, which thy teaching gave, 
 Has chafed, impatient, like the river wave 
 Against the boulders that divide its course, 
 Yet hold it blameless, sprung from blameless source t 
 Rejoicing, if the stream, in vain denied 
 Impetuous passage, flow with fuller tide, 
 And sweep away the piled, impeding stones, 
 Where to this hour the mangled current moans !' 
 
 Imagination, counted but a weed, 
 
 Obscurely struggles from its buried seed, 
 
 And pushing patiently through narrow rifts 
 
 Its little life toward the sunshine lifts; 
 
 How happy, if expectant Art perceives 
 
 The first pale promise of its tender leaves, 
 
 And straight transplants it, as a root most rare y 
 
 To more congenial sail and tempered air, 
 
 Before the World has crushed with lumbering wheel 
 
 Its signal to the sky, its lone appeal. 
 
 To common minds Imagination seems 
 The mock creator of a world of dreams, 
 And only bartered value, sold or bought, 
 The satisfying food for human thought ; 
 They know her not the sole celestial dower 
 That raises Man above the temporal power 
 Of popularity and lust of place 
 And earns him glimpses of celestial grace !' 
 
This, if the heart be pure and strong the hands y 
 
 The crypt-like hut of human life expands; 
 
 The walls recede, the roof becomes a dome, 
 
 Arid earth is seen a temple, not a home I 
 
 For this was Spenser* s magic; this the might 
 
 That turned our Milton's darkness into light; 
 
 This ministered to Goldsmith's loneliest hour, 
 
 And sunned the heart of Shelley into flower : - 
 
 Sweet influences! Pilgrims, to and fro 
 
 Ranging the world, and singing as they go; 
 
 Till men, like cattle, captive to the grass, 
 
 Raise their slow heads to hear them, when they pass 
 
 If these had not been truant from the school 
 
 Of law and physic, or the merchant's stool, 
 
 If these, and comrades of their craft, were mute, 
 
 Alan would be less and nearer to the brute. 
 
 Take, then, my offering, mother, reconciled 
 
 To this innate presumption of thy child! 
 
 Though need to sing imperatively led 
 
 His feet o'er duty's lowland far to tread, 
 
 He climbs with souls that do not fear to slip, 
 
 He craves their love and claims their fellowship, — 
 
 Not ill-contented, as he onward wends, 
 
 Though many are his judges, few his friends, 
 
 If from the pastures by the river fount 
 
 One voice beloved to the wanderer mount, 
 
 That taught him when a child the simple creed, 
 
 " God is my shepherd; I shall never need'' 
 
 1895. 
 
Note 
 
 I must take it on myself to explain that the 
 rhymes occurring here and there in the " Essay " 
 are intentional, and ought not to be put down to 
 inadvertence, I might instance the authority of 
 " Comus " ; but no excuse is needed, if the effedt 
 be agreeable. I can only say, for my own part, 
 that I regard as false the supposed canon forbidding 
 the use of rhymed and unrhymed lines in the same 
 poem. 
 
 Two volumes of Matthew Arnold's Letters have 
 been published since I wrote the Sonnet in his 
 name. More than one passage in them seem to 
 me to prove that he was driven from the altar of 
 the Muse, the High Place on which he would fain 
 have sacrificed himself, by the " practical " neces- 
 sities and pressure of the times. That he did what 
 he considered his duty is his best tribute to Religion.- 
 None the less, Art is left to mourn that his exqui- 
 site tribute to herself falls short of what it might 
 
Xll 
 
 have been, if the World had commissioned him to 
 write Poems, instead of School Reports and Maga- 
 zine Articles. 
 
 I may, perhaps, be allowed to mention that 
 Sefior Albeniz (who, in spite of his birth, belongs 
 rather to England than to Spain) has set twelve 
 of the lyrical pieces to music, and that the songs 
 are published by Messrs. Heugel, of Paris. 
 
Certain lines in the following poem were suggested by a passage 
 in Newman's "Apologia," and certain others by a sentence in 
 one of the Fathers. 
 
ARGUMENT 
 
 Humanity, having discarded his assumed grandeur, laments 
 life and invokes death. Religion hastens to comfort him and 
 declares that he is suffering the punishment of sin. Human- 
 ity objects that his affliction far outweighs his wickedness. 
 His friend maintains that even the most blameless life is full of 
 sin in the sight of God. To this Humanity answers that, in that 
 case, sin is unavoidable and continued pardon impossible. 
 Religion still asserts that pain is an invitation to seek peace 
 in repentance. The sufferer, however, feels that nothing can 
 bring him peace but an explanation of the justice and design 
 of introducing sin and pain into the world. Religion depre- 
 cates his pride and urges him, instead of vexing his soul with 
 inscrutable mysteries, to profit by the truths that have been re- 
 vealed. But Humanity exclaims that he has always been the 
 proper object of Revelation^ and that as at the beginning he 
 was enlightened by the Fall, he now yearns for a second illu- 
 mination, even at the cost of another curse. Religion rejoins 
 that happiness can only be attained by submission to the will 
 of God, and not by knowledge of his design, which has been 
 purposely placed beyond Man's reach. But Humanity, by 
 virtue of his divine ancestry and participation with the divine 
 nature, knows of a surety that all disingenuousness, however 
 excellent its motive, is hateful to God. He therefore boldly 
 confesses his belief that pain cannot be divided into separate 
 kinds ; but that it is a homogeneous evil, for which G d (that 
 is to say, the God of Religion) must be responsible. He taxes 
 Religion with a secret inclination to think as he does, and 
 taunts him with not daring to say so openly. For himself he 
 boasts a far greater and nobler faith. He regards the Cosmos 
 as a true reflection of the divine nature, but so di integrated 
 in its passage through the mind of Man, as to present pheno- 
 mena, to whose corresponding qualities in the Godhead there 
 is no remaining clue. Nevertheless, nothing will induce him to 
 pretend that even this view destroys God's appar. ni responsi- 
 bility for the relative construction of Mind and World i hat has 
 resulted in the phenomena of sin and pain ; and he aga n bit- 
 terly deplores his ignorance. Whereupon Religion, seeing 
 that his friend persists in impious and unrepentant curiosity 
 after a final adjuration to rebel no more against the august 
 disposals of Providence, reluctantly leaves him 10 his impeni- 
 tence ; but promises to return, whenever Humanity may require 
 his ghostly comfort. 
 
An Essay in a Brief Model 
 
 " Time serves not now, and perhaps I might seem 
 too profuse to give any certain account of what the mind 
 at home, in the spacious circuits of her musing, hath 
 liberty to propose to herself, though of highest hope and 
 hardest attempting ; whether that epic form whereof die 
 two poems of Homer, and those other two of Virgil and 
 Tasso, are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief model ! 
 or whether the rules of Aristotle herein are strictly to be 
 kept, or nature to be followed, which in them that know 
 art and use judgment is no transgression but an enrich- 
 ing of art." 
 
 The Reason of Church Government. — Milton. 
 
 EXatfjysov Sort? irr}/ia,Tcav e%w iroSa 
 eyei irapaivelv vovBerelv re tov «<xk<S? 
 •jrpdaaov^' iya> Be Taxid* hiravr 1 ^vicyTdfirjv. 
 Aeschylus. — Prometheus Vinctus (263 — 265) 
 
 Without the gate, where ruinous Ages heap 
 Their ashes, and the World casts forth her waste, 
 Humanity lay prone ; from sole to crown 
 Smitten with leprous blains ; defiled with tears, 
 And racked with throes of lamentable thought. 
 
 Long had he striven with Nature ; much achieved ; 
 First wresting from her clenched, reluftant hand 
 The flock, the vineyard, and the harvest field ; 
 Then cities, with their barter and exchange, 
 
 B 2 
 
Their comity and intercourse of mind, 
 
 Their ordinance and law 'twixt man and man ; 
 
 And last, fierce forces, tortured to betray 
 
 Such secrets as a wizard hardly spies 
 
 In crystal dream, or dreaming, when he wakes 
 
 Derides exulting, saner than his dream, — 
 
 Purveyors, these, of luxury, the pomp 
 
 Of purple and fine linen, and the forms 
 
 Of sensuous harmony in sight or sound ; 
 
 Artificers of all the mingled means 
 
 Of large dominion, whether virtue, vice, 
 
 Or law or license ; affluent Afreets, 
 
 Slaves of the lamp of intellectual lust. 
 
 But now prosperity and pride were past ; 
 
 Not like a joy renounced, that still we love, 
 
 But like a joy discarded, that we loathe. 
 
 His vines brought forth the drunkard, and the babe 
 
 Whose veins with venomous infedlion run 
 
 Of villainous impulse from its birth ; his corn 
 
 Became as manna, surfeiting the rich, 
 
 Beyond the favoured precincTs rarely strewn ; 
 
 Around his isles of civic opulence foamed 
 
 Amarous fringes of neglected lives ; 
 
 And more and more the shambles fed the feast. 
 
 Nor utmost skill, that rode upon the sun, 
 
 Or reined the sinuous lightning, could avail 
 
 To bear Love's message to the central cell 
 
 Of mammon's brain ; but ministered the more 
 
 By subtler instruments to subtler need 
 
 Of reckless arrogance and ruthless greed. 
 
 Therefore Humanity had shed his robes, 
 The gaudy veils and trappings of disease, 
 
And flung his carcase on that noisome mound ; 
 
 As if a butterfly should cast her wings 
 
 And turn, reversely, to a shrouded worm. 
 
 " Here let me lie," he said within himself, 
 
 " Unto the Doom ; a figure set aside, 
 
 Till God compute the fluxion of the World." 
 
 To him repaired (for rumour ran abroad) 
 
 Religion, most loquacious of his friends 
 
 And close companion of his youth ; o'erfraught 
 
 With consolation, like a leathern bottle 
 
 Swollen with the ripening vintage of the South ; 
 
 Yet watched that ruined greatness, overawed, 
 
 In silence, all day long ; nor- dared affront 
 
 The dignity of woe with puppet words ; 
 
 For griefs great stature dwarfs the loftiest theme. 
 
 Now sink the winds; the gorgeous track of eve 
 
 Is flooded o'er with darkness' flowing tide; 
 
 Now wearily turns tired Earth from taskful Day 
 
 And nestling in the lap of Night, who croons 
 
 Low lullabies of unrecorded song, 
 
 Babbles to the dangling stars. Love's opal, first, 
 
 Clasped on the Virgin's brow ; conjunction strange ! 
 
 Arcturus next, pre-eminently bright ; 
 
 And pale Capella, Northern ocean's pearl, 
 
 Opposing red Antares ; then Altair, 
 
 Vega, uncertain Spica, Regulus ; 
 
 Each in his constellation high embossed ; 
 
 And many a kin-born gem. The sufferer feels 
 
 Sweet influence fall, forceful to loose the voice 
 
 Even of ungarrulous grief; and half reclined 
 
 On his vile pallet, vehemently complains : — 
 
6 
 
 " Where is the consummation of my birth ? 
 Or what interpretation of design 
 Did my conception carry ? All my years 
 Accommodate distress ; for wisdom blights 
 The flower of gladness, not the seed of grief, 
 And larger knowledge breeds not fewer lusts. 
 But more, and more importunate. 
 
 O Light ! 
 
 warmly radiating, humid Air ! 
 
 1 curse ye ! Hateful ministers of Life ! 
 Why did ye penetrate the sealed abyss, 
 Where, folded in its wintry sleep, reposed 
 
 This hideous worm of Being, predoomed to crawl 
 For ever o'er waste places, seeking rest 
 And finding none ; imperilled and distressed ; 
 For ruthless foes inadequately armed ? 
 
 O foolish Earth ! 'tis time to wean thy child ! 
 When have thy soft pretences brought him peace ? 
 When have thy 'tinselled playthings staunched his 
 
 tears ? 
 Why nourish the corruption of his blood, — 
 The death that creeps from artery back to vein, 
 From vein to artery back, in irritant round ? 
 Or why not nourish it to more mature 
 And lustier virulence, until it fang 
 This immortality, that daily dies, 
 Beyond pursuit of every poison-bane ! " 
 
 Religion, freed from silence, now approached, 
 With jewelled fingers touched the sorrower's arm, 
 And ventured thus : — 
 
 " My once familiar friend, 
 Too long a stranger ! Deem it not unkind 
 
That balm of comfort has been long delayed; 
 The abundance proffered now shall make amends. 
 Afflidtions fall not from malignant clouds 
 And troubles rise not from malarious meads, 
 Like blight or murrain, prevalent to strew 
 Our pastures with fond yearlings of the flock, 
 Our pleasure-plots and orchards of content 
 With blossoms of sweet promises denied. 
 Pain is the child of foul-fermenting sin, 
 As pestilence of filth ; a chastisement 
 Inherent in transgression; the divine, 
 Inevitable sanction of a law 
 Whose execution is not left infirm, 
 Since breach and penalty are seed and fruit. 
 
 Recall the long commission of thy crimes ! 
 Iniquities enormous as the sea 
 And multitudinous as sea-borne sand ! 
 Remember thy rejection of the voice 
 Whose constant warning to thine inmost, ear 
 Wails, as a strangled babe about the house 
 Where it was murdered ! How that bodeful cry 
 Besieges the barred entrance of thy soul 
 ■ Obdurate, obstinate ! . . ." 
 
 But the other turned, 
 Protesting : — 
 
 " Whether penalty and pollution 
 Equally poise the apparent heavenly scales, 
 Appeal to God ! The waters of my woe 
 Have long o'erflown the channel of my guilt 
 And spread through every ' orchard of content ' 
 With evil inundation. If they lapse, 
 With ebbing time, from hills and uplands. green, 
 
8 
 
 Where hoar tradition holds a holier sway, 
 There, even there, the fields with desolate pools 
 They fret, or patch the meadows with morass. 
 
 Suppose the record of my crimes declared ; 
 That malice to the medley added faults 
 Of ignorance, omission, and the breach 
 Of laws that are themselves the breach of Law 
 Divine ; and wrath, deserved or undeserved, 
 Accumulated sentence passed ; — oh ! still 
 My present misery would exceed the tale 
 In magnitude, in mastery would exceed ! " 
 
 Religion answered : — 
 
 " Conscience contradicts. 
 What part of Man is pure before the God 
 To whom the light of heaven is full of motes, 
 To whom archangels are not folly-free, 
 Nor any vestal spirit immaculate ? 
 What part of Man, whose house is built of clay, 
 A shadow, and ephemeral as the moth ? " 
 
 Then groaned Humanity : — 
 
 "I would to God 
 My insignificance were cloud or cope 
 To shelter me from his intense regard ! 
 Sieged on the dais of the empyrean, 
 Aloof, He holds interminable assize 
 And sears me, sears me with continuous gaze, 
 My Judge and my Accuser ! Who shall dare 
 Defend me ? Who shall arbitrate a mean ? 
 The righteousness of Enoch, rapt to heaven, 
 Fair David's favour, dear Disciples' love 
 Crumble to ashes before his fierce assay ! 
 
9 
 
 Were every murder-mark that smears my hands 
 Obliterate, could chrismal torrents lave 
 My tainted blood, or could my flesh become 
 A little child's, He still would hold me foul 
 And pierce my marrow with remedial pain ! 
 
 . O innocence impossible ! O sin, 
 The flaunting efflorescence of a root 
 By me not planted, though I pluck the fruit ! 
 Pursue, thou Holy One, pursue no more 
 The withered leaflet with relentless wind ! 
 Why show thyself so marvellous ? Why hunt me 
 With monstrous persecutions, host on host 
 Launching of unavoidable dismay ? 
 Wilt Thou award eternal guilt, because 
 Thy creature is not guiltless as Thyself? 
 Is not the path I tread the appointed path ? 
 How long, O God, how long refrainest Thou 
 From stroke of grace that cruellest men bestow 
 On wounded quarries ? Merciful warrant give 
 Thine officer, Nature, to deliver me death, 
 Or in thine almshouse shelter me from dying ! 
 Plague me no more ; but pardon me or destroy ! 
 Death is not ignominious nor so vile 
 As this mock eminence, this lone suspense 
 Above the nibbling brain of sheep and kine, 
 But yet beneath vitality divine. 
 
 Mingling, perchance, the cup of mortal fate 
 Appointed 'me to drink, thy hand o'erpoured 
 The potion, and thou scourgest me from sleep 
 Unseasonable, with scorpions and thy rod 
 Of sevenfold fury? ... Ah ! but let me be ! 
 Let cerement-wreathing darkness wrap me round 
 
10 
 
 And noiseless flake on flake of feathery night 
 
 Compose me to oblivion absolute. 
 
 Rest, rest I crave ! From wisdom and from war, 
 
 From vanity, endeavour, and despair, 
 
 False riddles and false oracles. I crave 
 
 Rest from the pauseless pulses of the world ! " 
 
 With aspect more severe his friend replied : — 
 
 " Wild as the wind thy words, and blustering round 
 
 The vortex of themselves, with empty sound. 
 
 Impearled in suffering's rough repellent husk 
 
 Lies Love Eternal, whose inviolate germ 
 
 No violence can vivify, but love's ! 
 
 For though profaning pride the shell may shatter, 
 
 And the embryonic pith dissedt, dissolve, — 
 
 Stem, leaf, and flower remain, like mighty works 
 
 In Galilee, a miracle unwrought. 
 
 But sow it fairly in the loveable soul, 
 
 Behold it sprout, bourgeon, and multiply ! 
 
 Until with aromatic leaven it change 
 
 Crude and unwholesome elements to sweet 
 
 And serviceable quality. 
 
 Repent ! 
 God longs to fill thy lips with merriment, 
 Thy mouth with laughter, and thine eyes with 
 
 peace ; 
 His hand is heavy with munificent weight 
 Of happiness witheld, till thou submit ! " 
 
 Not without scorn, Humanity returned : — 
 
 " If the least faint reflection — faint, yet true, — 
 Of equity omniscient overarc 
 
The weeping of the world (for weeping eyes 
 
 Imperfect measure of the perfect light), 
 
 Who doubts the Priest, that lit this twofold flame 
 
 Of life and death unquenchable, forgives 
 
 The victim's maddened outcry ? 
 
 Far more near 
 Another question touches. . . . Will the pang, 
 Which rends endurance, rend the twined veil 
 That barricades the altar from the ark ? 
 Or any creature's clamour impel God's pity 
 To fold aside the curtain, as the dawn 
 With guled fingers folds aside the dark, 
 , Alluring Earth to doubt her dawnless woe ? 
 
 Come pardon or penance, what I crave, I crave ; 
 At least to ask (but, face to face) : 'Art Thou 
 The lord of Sin, — lord paramount, or lord 
 Immediate ? Is sin thy minister, — 
 Accredited or secret ? Thine the Law ? 
 Did'st Thou with prohibition's chisel carve 
 Idolatry, and by thy prophets curse 
 Indulgent virtue, turning it to vice? 
 Wherefore when righteousness on Earth defaults, 
 When judgment swerves aside and mercy halts ; 
 When men to market carry poor men's blood ; 
 When love itself is evil understood ; 
 When food is borne abroad on famine's wings ; 
 When kings are slaves and counterfeits are kings ; 
 When piety itself is parasite 
 Of riches, and when wrong usurps the right ; 
 When reeks the world with suffocating death 
 Of dungeoned spirits breathing their own breath ; 
 Are not these things ordained of Thee ? Whom 
 else?'" 
 
12 
 
 " The sin of blasphemy ! " indignant cried 
 
 His comrade, interrupting ; " wilt thou foist 
 
 Also this wickedness on Him whose name 
 
 Is thereby desecrate ? Lo ! impious words, 
 
 That soar against the sun with spurious wings, 
 
 Carry their own confusion and decay. 
 
 God punishes the sin men propagate ; 
 
 The Lord of Holiness (the Scripture saith) 
 
 Sins not Himself, nor yet by proxy sins, 
 
 But every man is tempted and betrayed 
 
 By his own lust ; which, finished, brings forth death. 
 
 Thou in the mirror of the world beholdest 
 A gliding phantom ; beautiful, yet masked 
 With horror of a beauty vilely used. 
 Turn, turn away thy fascinated eyes ! 
 'Tis but an image of thyself ! The Sun 
 That never wanes nor sets, behind thee glows ; 
 Turn to the source of vision ; that thy soul 
 May be encompassed with her native light, 
 As air encompasses a bird in flight. 
 
 Cease to regard the mystery of thyself. 
 As life and mind elude thee, sorrow and sin 
 Elude, for ever. Can the waves that ebb 
 Resentful from the scudding vessel, o'ertake 
 The prow that cleaves them ? Or riven air recover 
 Grasp of the wings that smote it into wind ? 
 Repine not that effe&ual Wisdom works 
 In secret ; with innumerable threads 
 Weaving an intricate pattern, as immense 
 As that embroidery of the lacing moons 
 That circle circling planets ; by their suns 
 Drawn around other clusters; implicate, 
 
J 3 
 
 Themselves, about some mightier universe ; 
 Ellipse more monstrous looping huger spheres, 
 More frequent swarms, to all infinitude ; 
 All trailed in pageant, lightly as the down, 
 Sown on the sowing wind by provident weeds. 
 
 Repine not if Eternity provide 
 
 A corner-niche too straitened for thy pride ! 
 
 When hast thou gauged its room? When ever 
 
 found 
 Circumference or centre, node or bound ? 
 Where are its confines ? Where its utmost zone, 
 Or inward essence ?• Stars superfluous, lit 
 For thine amazement (vanity assumes), 
 Outpost their spatial fellows ; cells forefront 
 The rudiments of life ; and molecules 
 Vanguard pervading atoms unattained ! 
 How lamely in this populous loneliness 
 Limps thy sad mind ; far more thy 'wildered soul ! 
 There, heaven ; here, hell ; above, below them, 
 
 God! 
 
 But ah ! why reckless voyage the strange, profound, 
 When kindly Revelation rings thee round 
 With ancient aids and beacons of belief 
 Familiar as the sun, whose homely heat 
 More comforts thee than skies of alien stars ; 
 With lamps of guidance nearer than the moon's 
 Orbed memory of the day ? Let these suffice 
 To guide, inform, and cheer thee ; let the rays 
 Of relative effulgence, manifest 
 Mandate of God himself, persuade thy soul 
 To quit her tomb, impenitence, and live ! '' 
 
1+ 
 
 To whom the Sufferer quickly made reply : — 
 
 " Inscrutable, indeed, is God's design ! 
 Map as we may the isles of the astral deep, 
 Or range the teeming dust of life and death, 
 From fairest structure, to the ravening mites 
 That swarm the distal side of vacancy, 
 Along the incalculable waste we know not whither 
 Whirled, with this speck, their own allodial glebe, — 
 Or mould our shallow phrases as we may, 
 (Poor cups to scoop the evasive, fluent Spirit, 
 That permeates, supports, envelops All), — 
 Inscrutable, indeed, is God's design ! 
 How small a whisper do we hear of Him ! 
 For these are but the outskirts of His ways. 
 
 A common path of thought, thus far, we tread ; 
 Yet I detedl authoritative notes, 
 That counter-sound the comfort in thy voice 
 With distant warnings of offended force ; 
 Like thunder, that a live-long summer day 
 Mutters a menace among the unheeding hills. 
 There we diverge ! I bear my lonely load 
 Full-weight, uneased by any friendly hand. 
 For what am / but Revelation ? I, 
 The child of God, his scholar, and his clerk ; 
 Born in the Paradise of home ; despatched 
 To school, to learn the wisdom of the world ; 
 
 Cast forth into the world, to learn my part ; 
 
 Engrossing on my soul, with iron pen, 
 The comedies and tragedies of God ! 
 
 What canst thou teach me that I taught not thee ? 
 Thy prophets were my sons ; their words, my words ■> 
 
is 
 
 The san&ity and charity they preached 
 
 Clear emanations of my soul, like dew 
 
 Alighting on the meadow whence it rose. 
 
 Thou bringest me nothing not mine own before ; 
 
 Thou did'st not plant one herb nor rear one flower, 
 
 But only tabulated, ranged, compared 
 
 Culled specimens ; perchance erroneously ! 
 
 As, once misread, but glibly now declared, 
 
 This rotary globe convidts thine obstinate mind 
 
 Of not infallible scorn, that day I cried 
 
 ' But yet, it moves ! ' 
 
 I will not be immured 
 In thy museum f Rather let me lie 
 Beneath this common archway of the sky; 
 Though naked to the night, yet scorched with woe ; 
 A criminal, a beggar, and unclean ! . . . 
 Before the delegated serpent taught me 
 Sub-ocular learning and the secret door 
 Where lust for ever knocks and love replies, 
 I revelled in larger amplitude of air 
 Than thy Ptol'maic firmament o'erdomes ! 
 And since I pushed away the obtrusive heavens, 
 That fain would hood me from unvaulted space, 
 For ever new enfranchisement I long ; 
 Nor will my gain forego ; but, rather, invoke 
 New sin, to marshal back the encroaching clouds ! 
 
 Crannied in Eden's pleasance, stridlly calm, 
 Too straitened seemed my destiny ; I ranged 
 The boundaries ; found the portal ; with the key, 
 God-given Rebellion, wrenched the bolts, and stood 
 Clothed with the great Beyond ! The murmurous 
 
 conch, 
 That harboured me from tempest, tossed me forth ; 
 
i6 
 
 The clangorous main engulfed me ; and I feared 
 
 The vast, untried estate ! Not knowing how small 
 
 The pool appointed me, wherein to sport ! 
 
 To sport, despair, corrupt, regerminate, 
 
 And sport again ; recurrent, changeless change ; 
 
 Before those eyes of calm intelligence, 
 
 Observing, unobserved, near, vigilant, 
 
 And all-perceptive ; universal vision, 
 
 In all dimensions equally ensphered. 
 
 Again would I devour the fruit, enjoined 
 
 By interdiction, and again commit 
 
 Knowledge ! That irremediable crime, 
 
 Whose flaming-falcioned guilt reentrance bars 
 
 To the element of ignorance despised, 
 
 Lest the new lethal shores of wisdom won 
 
 Should scare men to existence less enlarged. 
 
 But how attainable, by new revolt, 
 Incursion to new countries of his will, — 
 The need Himself imparted ? Sate am I 
 With the iterated savour of my first 
 Emancipation ; and another such 
 Impregnant prohibition He denies ; 
 No more saluting me in garden shades 
 At eventide, with blessing or with curse, 
 Containing each the other. 
 
 Face to face, 
 As man with man, is my desire to meet, — 
 No envoy or ambassador, though crowned 
 With consular authority, or robed 
 With mantle of his Master ; bearing scrolls 
 Of eloquent proclamation, amnesties 
 And gracious tolerance for my turbulent blood 
 
»7 
 
 Of royal extradt, — but, as man with man, 
 
 The very Presence, — attendant powers dismissed 
 
 And ceremonial lightnings laid aside, 
 
 Like-sheaved rapiers, that my tongue, unawed 
 
 Give answerable echo to my thought. 
 
 Then would I cry, ' I ask Thee no hard thing ! 
 
 Only to lift the hem of draperies dense 
 
 That sway around my solitary cell 
 
 Of birth, of love, of labour, and of death ; 
 
 Oppressive pall ! ' Where miracles and signs, 
 
 Ambiguous parables, enigmas mad 
 
 And mad solutions ; clueless hieroglyphs, 
 
 Creeds and contentions, prophecies and proofs, 
 
 With mummeries of diurnal futile things, — 
 
 Phantasmagoria of the world of thought, 
 
 Phantasmagoria of the world of deed, — 
 
 In tapestried procession giddily dance. 
 
 I ask no survey of the Promised Land ; 
 The panorama of thy providence 
 Needs other sight than mine ; I only crave 
 One word, one gesture (tempered by thy skill 
 To my infirmity), to cleave the night 
 Wherein I crawl ; one flash, to indicate 
 A landmark of thy purpose ! 
 
 For I scout 
 Wise tales of trade-wind tendencies, whose drift 
 Of righteousness excludes the drift of sin ; 
 Or main mid-current, sheathed in refluent pools, 
 Where broken bough, drowned flower, and rotting 
 
 weed, 
 The flotsam and the jetsam of the weir, 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 With scums and drosses of the sluiced town 
 Regurgitate, and slime the dipping wands 
 Of willows with their lichen of foul foam ; 
 Until the cataclysm of lifted spars 
 Admit the imperative flood, and all is swept 
 Onward, reluctant, swirling to the sea. 
 
 I know thine operation leaves no marge; 
 No particles avoided rim its road ; 
 No periodic effluence, to lave 
 Neglected purlieus, agitates its wave ; 
 But immanent in its handiwork, it draws 
 Soul and her parasites of circumstance 
 With strong inevitable stress to Thee. 
 
 I know Thee World-wrightor I know Thee Nought \ 
 
 I know Thee World-wright ; yet between that hut 
 
 Of refuge and thy jasper citadel 
 
 That overcrests the pathway of the clouds, — 
 
 Palace of promulgation of the law 
 
 And seat of government o'er all the hills, 
 
 Sinai or Calvary, or before or since, — 
 
 What void envelopment of blinding mist ! 
 
 What treacheries of snow and ice and storm ! 
 
 What false ascents, false guides, and ominous deaths ! 
 
 Is there no aid ? Is mercy comfortless ? 
 Wilt Thou not flare one beacon above the belt 
 Of lumber dimness that divides etern 
 Effulgence from this abject, glimmering globe ? 
 Hast Thou no thread Thou darest let descend, 
 Whose molten filament would make this point 
 Terrene a linked extremity of Light ? 
 Or down whose tremulous nerve might undulate 
 
l 9 
 
 An echo of the music scored by Thee 
 For thine orchestral universe ? 
 
 I dare 
 Accept the message, if Thou dare command.' 
 
 Thus would I wrestle with God ; nor let Him go 
 Except He blessed me, though His blessing slew.'* 
 
 To whom perturbed Religion answered : — 
 
 "Friend, 
 It is not meet ambassadors should hear, 
 Save under protest, mutinous words ; nor I 
 Endure them, mindful Whom I serve ; to Whom 
 Be glory and dominion, power and praise, 
 For ever and for ever 1 
 
 If I claim 
 Authority, 'tis in His holy Name ; 
 Nor yet without good reason and great need. 
 Where plumes, in this stark winter of the world, 
 One bud of promise? Where is writ one clause 
 Encouraging, one mitigative word, 
 I' the social and intolerable scroll 
 Of lamentation, mourning, and wild woe ? 
 Review the world in all its length and breadth ! 
 Its varied enterprise, and various lore ; 
 Its governments ; their manners and their modes ! — 
 What medley routs their random courses run 
 To random goals ! What errant energies 
 Cross and recross ; achieving, as by chance, 
 Some blind progression or reverse result ! 
 Where is the prevalence of final cause ? 
 Or any prevalence, save one, innate, — 
 Of mutual alienation, mutual hate? 
 
 c — 2 
 
20 
 
 Intolerable prospe£t ! Dolorous scene 
 
 Of wilful Man's precipitant career ! 
 
 Of mutinous Reason hurling blatant war 
 
 Against divine supremacy ! What mole 
 
 Of immobility can dissipate 
 
 The fierce momentum of the ruining Mind, 
 
 Corrupt, anarchical, idolatrous, 
 
 Except the word of God, or visible Power 
 
 Established on the charter of that Word, 
 
 Its only muniment ? What force reaft 
 
 Against this riotous, proud Intellect, 
 
 Impugning unconditioned Wisdom's plan 
 
 For its conditioned happiness, save one, — 
 
 The plenary authority of God ? 
 
 That adamant and ultimate under-rock, 
 
 Firm fulcrum of the spiritual lever 
 
 By which the Saints must lift the world to Light ? 
 
 That subtlety the Serpent first infused 
 Beneath the rind of sin, by thee partaken, 
 Infects the wholesome ichor of thy blood ; 
 Toxic, disintegrating, breaking forth 
 In sores and ulcers of impiety ; 
 Anathemas, and all contagious rheums 
 Of self-appreciative discontent. 
 The leprosy of Naaman shall cleave 
 To thee and thine for ever, save thou wash 
 In unpretentious waters ; for the meek 
 Inherit the Earth ; the poor in spirit receive 
 Beatitude; the lowly, rest of soul. 
 
 None challenges that God, sustaining all. 
 Created all, save error ; which enures, 
 To testify that He bestowed Free-will, 
 
21 
 
 Chief gift to Man. In headlong course pursued, 
 Thine argument confronts thee ; — wherefore thou, 
 Thy state, thy limits, and thine attributes, 
 Are integrant portions of the structured scheme ! 
 Must, then, the published edict be revoked, • 
 The rock of dispensation be removed j 
 The pillar of fire by night, the cloud by day, — 
 Flame of his Word, cloud of his Providence, — 
 Be banished from the camp, — that thou (whose eyes 
 Mercy has blurred, or Revelation dazed), 
 Mayst gain incontinent liberty to peer 
 Into the farther midnight, unillumined, 
 Into the farther noonday, unabridged ? 
 
 Thy state not adventitious, first believe: 
 Thine ignorance and knowledge weighed, exadl 
 To the fra&ion of fraftions ; to the grain of grains ; 
 To poise the ponderous burden of thy fate ! 
 More knowledge (should the Measurer grant thy 
 
 prayer) 
 Might over-bear the balance. . . . 
 
 Dost thou court 
 Destruction? . . . 
 
 Shall the Architect be baulked 
 Because the trunk refuses to be hewn, 
 The marble chiselled or the iron mailed ? 
 Will He not split and splinter them in his wrath, 
 Some great and terrible day, when no day dawn, 
 And even that mediate orb, from whose dead face 
 The javelin glances of the sun deflect 
 Earthward, and fall, white wands of embassy, 
 Be turned to blood ? 
 
 Ere then, recall thy scorn ! 
 Ujabend thine unsubmissive heart; rejedt 
 
22 
 
 The whispered sophistries of the crafty mind ! 
 
 Who sows the darnels of disdain shall reap 
 
 Disdain ; who sows humility, with sheaves 
 
 Of honour from the harvest shall return, 
 
 Rejoicing . . . With devotion cure thy doubt F 
 
 Offer thy faculties, emotions, thoughts, 
 
 Thine energies and consciousness of life, 
 
 Thyself, and all thou knowest of thyself, 
 
 And all thou knowest not, to Him, from Whom 
 
 Proceeded thine identity, in one 
 
 Determinate abandonment ; in one 
 
 Immutable ascription ; — aft of awe ! 
 
 That thrills the accordant angels and vibrates 
 
 Through the vast vestibules and courts of heaven 
 
 Up to the very throne ! . . . May God so grant ! " 
 
 The stricken one, bitterly smiling, thus replied: — 
 
 " A due gestation and deliverance due 
 
 Of courtier threats, for vagabonds that refuse 
 
 The Court-essential garment and offend 
 
 The obsequious usher! . . . Suppliant none the less, 
 
 Though but a ragged, unanointed waif, 
 
 Audience I ask and ' Audience ' cry, — ' Give ear 
 
 To my complaint ! ' Whene'er his chariot rolls 
 
 Purpureal, 'mid. his panoplied angel-guard. 
 
 Yet speak I folly ! Temporal potentates, 
 One span superior to the goggling crowd, 
 Strut on their pomp-stilts ; in imperial lawn 
 Swaddle their suckling sovereignties ; in wars 
 Of ostentation rock their cradled crowns; 
 But shall the King of kings, — who was and is, 
 And is to come, — Ancient of Days, — shall He,— 
 
23 
 
 Of realm unfrontiered and of reign untermed, 
 Save by Himself, — pretend, proclaim, protest, 
 Flourish his sceptre, wave his bannered badge, 
 And scatter pomegranates to the multitude ? 
 On his own altar shall Jehovah leap 
 And shout and cut Himself with knives, to rouse 
 His disregardful servants?" 
 
 "God is Love!" 
 Religion interposed ; " but perfeft love 
 In flame-like majesty is manifest, — 
 To fervent souls, renewal ; but to frozen, 
 Scorching and death, — concentric, dbomful love ! 
 Insufferable, except his rippling rays 
 Impinged the marginal mind through sacraments 
 Of metaphor and symbol; mercy-clouds, 
 Pavilioned round about his habitation 
 Thunder-patrolled, pennoned with lightning, war- 
 dered 
 By serpent whirlwinds, coiled, waiting his word. 
 
 So in God's unity are love and wrath 
 One ; or the intensity of love is wrath, 
 Because it burns the lovelessness of Man. 
 Nor canst thou ever escape Love's anxious anger, 
 Besetting, compassing, searching, winnowing thee, 
 Watching thy thoughts afar, as shepherds watch 
 The South wind full his fleeces on the hills, 
 Long ere he lade them to the destined vale. 
 Therefore no farthest region of the morn 
 Across waste waters ; no black-surpliced night ; 
 No pinnacle of heaven nor crypt of hell 
 Can sunder thy spirit from his ; but sin alone 
 Shakes from thy shoulder his persuading hand. 
 
24 
 
 Again thou delvest up the floor of Eden 
 
 To find a passage into Paradise ; 
 
 Again wilt strike upon the nether lava, 
 
 In which thou wilt anneal thy stubbornness, 
 
 Lest heat too sudden of love or shock of shame 
 
 Fissure thy hard enamel, and truth intrude, — 
 
 Truth, in all life substantiate, save in thine, — 
 
 That will-submission to God's will is heaven, 
 
 Where angels of the will aye see his face, 
 
 And will-resistance of his will is hell, 
 
 Where the worm dieth not nor the fire is quenched." 
 
 Now light the Pleiads their sevenfold cresset; now 
 
 Antares' ruby pinion downward dips, 
 
 As if a king-fisher, flashing low along 
 
 The alder alley of a dark-rilled river, dived. 
 
 Fast up the Northern slope the Charioteer 
 
 Bears pale Capella ; far to Westward swing 
 
 The Serpent, round huge Ophiuch sprawling huge, 
 
 And Hercules, blazoned 'twixt the Lyre and Crown. 
 
 The waning moon's full altitude is past j 
 
 The solemn hour broods, when the tides of life 
 
 Ebb, and the Earth grows cognisant of death, 
 
 Despairful and incredulous of dawn. 
 
 The sufferer feels calm visitings emerge 
 
 From the heavenly, solemn chambers, to compose 
 
 The passion of grief; and pensively thus resumes : — 
 
 " The soul-face of the World is shattered to words 
 In the Mind's mirror j — how vain, with painted 
 
 shards 
 To tesselate God's miniature ! No Art 
 Holds the Arch-Artist's portrait ; save Myself. 
 I am not undivine, nor God inhuman ! 
 
25 
 
 I am not undivine ; though seamed and scarred 
 
 By accidents of sorrow and of sin, 
 
 And wandering like a child shut out from home ; 
 
 Pilfered of love and dowered with lonelihood ; 
 
 Snatched from familiar fairydom and set 
 
 Full in the arena of the blood-stained World, 
 
 Void-vaulted, with implacable faces girt ! 
 
 Yet to no saint, though alabaster-smooth, 
 
 For specious pottage of a ruddier faith, 
 
 My birthright will I barter, — God to know 
 
 By the near conscience of my intimate Self. 
 
 Shall no one question Him, but thou cry ' Hush ! ' 
 
 None plead before Him, but thou claim to plead 
 
 Crown-Advocate ; none scrutinise the scroll 
 
 Authentic of creation, but thou gloss it ? 
 
 For ever wilt thou palisade the peak 
 
 Against explorers God himself invites ? . . . 
 
 Now learn a lesson of me ! . . . My God is 
 
 Truth; 
 Supreme Sincerity, — whatever else ! 
 Who hates the homage of a menial heart ; 
 Who hates chameleon skins of compromise, 
 Assumed by souls that never sloughed the lie 
 That called them naked (nuder now in rags 
 Conceded under seal of banishment) ; 
 Whom argument of souls against themselves, 
 Framed for their overhearing tyrant, hurts 
 More than arraignment of a scurrilous tongue. 
 Wherefore no dog am I, with sycophant nose, 
 Scenting a well-stuffed wallet, to confess 
 That pain can gather from prospective joy 
 Unnative goodness ; or that joy annuls 
 The woful ancestry that taints his blood ; 
 
26 
 
 While mirth, if he should tenant the broad demesne 
 Of tribulation (so thy minions preach, 
 When drunk with more authority than love), 
 Muft needs disburse a rack remorse for wear, 
 Not only for mere wantonness and waste. 
 Though every sorrow should beget a saint 
 And every pang a martyr, never a choir 
 Of saints or martyrs would I join to sing 
 ' O blessed grief 1 Inestimable pain ! ' 
 But still must reprobate usurious plagues, 
 Hypothecate to demons of the dust, 
 To culture asphodel in pits of death 
 And amaranth from corruption. 
 
 Thankless theme ! 
 For who can analyse pervasive woe, — 
 One coalescence, like the constant air ? 
 Fresh from thy mundane interrogatory, 
 Canst thou record a gladness as engrained, 
 As indivisibly fibred into life, 
 As torture is ? Men run from the ends of Earth 
 To specks of joy reported, but to find 
 The same full galleys of chained slaves, the same 
 Antagonistic forces' hourly ache, 
 The same peremptory exigence of thought ! 
 Or, at the most, some apparition of joy 
 Defunct, whose ghosts are Cheerfulness, Content, 
 Or Immolate Delight ; a godly crew, 
 But not that Spirit whose robes once rustled so near 
 And filled them with a proud and reverent fear, 
 Waiting their fairy bride by altared hill, 
 'Mid clashed carillons of consenting winds. 
 
 Shall I suggest to God that strange displays 
 Of occult torture and opprobrious wrong 
 
2 7 
 
 Redound not to his honourable, astute 
 Authority ; but give anarchic 111 
 Advertisement in weak, anaemic minds ; — 
 'Twere better, therefore, to repudiate 
 Responsibility ; claim beauty, and impute 
 Phenomena of ugliness to Satan ; 
 Hinting of swampy patches of the plain, 
 Unoccupied, — ' They are not what they seem ' ? 
 
 They say God never laughs ; I deem it not ; 
 But, if 'twere true, what bubbling merriment 
 Must well upon the lips, at least of those 
 Angels and principalities and powers 
 That need not envy devils the grace to smile, 
 At libel so audacious ! 
 
 'Heresy'? 
 There is no heresy. All things are true, 
 Except a lie ; and lies are of the soul, 
 Not of the brain ; — excuses that we put 
 Into the mouth of God, to vindicate 
 His ways to men ; ignoring that the proof 
 Must vindicate the ways of men to God ; — 
 Prevarications that we recommend 
 For buoying callow souls on wings of wax, 
 Lest they should dash their foot against a stone, 
 Or stumble over blocks of the moraine, 
 Strewn by the glacier-thought that grinds the 
 
 world ; — 
 Manipulations, piously to change 
 The premiss to accommodate the proof; — 
 All the fallaeious euphonies we use 
 To mortgage truth for momentary gain ! 
 Like casuist reasons, given by careful dames 
 
28 
 
 To riddling children. Better far, to fall 
 Learning to fly, than flying learn to fall, 
 Profoundly plunging from Ideal to Doubt. 
 
 But irritable faith too plain betrays, 
 By contradiction ill-endured, how much 
 The black that bands the escutcheon of God's light, 
 Flashed from accrete creation, makes aghast 
 Thine heart of hearts. But thou refusest to see 
 Or suffer it to be seen ; dissembling well; 
 Conscious of Who shall be the judge of thoughts, 
 Of speech and silence ; stoutly taking oath 
 That not to God these crevices belong, 
 Though he shall fill them full of after-joy 
 Or after-woe. 
 
 But let God fill his own 
 Omissions, not another's ! ... If the Whole 
 By Him, was fashioned and is now maintained, — 
 In just proportion, just relation, fixed, 
 Must every part cohere, and all consist 
 Like radiant raiment, seamless-woven throughout,— 
 The Seventh Day vesture^that He loves to wear, — 
 Which only Mind's cross lenses rend and ravel, 
 Impervious to completeness ; as the prism 
 Combs into separate locks a. tawny tress 
 Of slender-rifted sunshine. 
 
 Grieves Man less, 
 That God beholds Hereafter as Herenow ? 
 Black lust a lily and pale pain a rose ? 
 Though all to Him be absolute, to me 
 He made all relative. If thus He wrought, 
 And while his apparatus of my sense 
 
2 9 
 
 Perceives this indigent and desperate Is 
 Pursue the indebted fugitive To Be, 
 How is my permanent torture less, or how 
 Lies chiding in his mouth because I weep ? 
 
 Far, far ahead of thine o'erfreighted Hope, 
 With figure-head of Faith so falsely prowed, 
 Whose cargo of tradition drags it down 
 Low in the labouring surge, my confidence 
 Profane forges ; alert to learn new lands 
 Of richer revelation, promise new, 
 And clearer climate than the retrospect ; 
 Where I may make discovery of what ore 
 Of precious quality those shafts portend, 
 Alloyed by grosser atmosphere to shades. 
 
 Meanwhile I learn not, and my misery grows ; 
 Tossed out of reckoning, broached and rudderless^ 
 Yet with all remnant canvas pressing on 
 Desperate, to reach the haven ; to disembark ; 
 Haste to my Father's door ; and 'mid the crowd 
 Of lackeying suitors, for my Sonship claim 
 Free entry and free hearing ; not with base 
 Outrageous reverence bowed, but holding fast 
 Integrity of spirit, not to cringe 
 Before his presence ; as He would not cringe, 
 Cited before one greater than Himself ! " 
 
 With strong suppressed impatience, once again 
 His comrade spoke : — 
 
 " I hear a voice that cries, 
 1 Humanity, Humanity ! how oft 
 I would have gathered thee beneath my wings, 
 
30 
 
 As gathers a hen her brood ; but thou wouldst not. 
 If thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, 
 The things belonging to thy peace ! But now 
 They are hidden from thine eyes. Wherefore thy 
 
 house 
 Is left unto thee desolate.' 
 
 The trump 
 That bade the everlasting gates lift up their heads, 
 Redeeming forfeit entrance into Eden, 
 And bruising the adder of sin, until he poured 
 His loathly python length to darker den 
 And malice more remote, announced, to worlds 
 Amazed, the mortal birth and sacrifice 
 Of Love immortal; and this moment sounds, 
 Suspended o'er the loud discordant deep 
 Of Earth and Hell in masterful embrace 
 Conflicting. Powers of darkness and of light, 
 Princes infernal and celestial, lean 
 To listen; but thou art deaf! Until, resolved 
 Into the full chord tonic, oftave Love 
 Obliterate thy tegument of pride 
 And smite thee to the core. 
 
 What justice, then, 
 In thy complaint of God's desertion ? None 
 Deserts thee, save thyself; thine other self 
 Contemptible, that shuns thy nobler self, 
 Which is the God within thee, as thou sayest, 
 Whose triple-stranded nature is to warn, 
 To counsel, and to comfort. Such my charge ; 
 But most to warn ; because, for callous pride 
 Emollients are a charlatan's false cure. 
 Still am I loth to quit thee without help. 
 
3 1 
 
 A measure of meal, a little cruse of oil, 
 Yet inexhaustible, I fain would leave 
 To feed thy famishing soul : — that tale forgot, 
 Of Samuel ; how he served before the Lord, — 
 A Nazarite child with linen ephod girt, — 
 And learnt the secret, how to speak with God, 
 Denied to Saul by prophets or by dreams, 
 By Urim or by Samuel's hooded shade, 
 Evoked at Endor. 
 
 God vouchsafe that soon 
 The deep break up, that deep may call to deep ! 
 Then, as a rivulet rises in a wood, 
 After long rain ; and no one sees it rise 
 Nor the world heeds it ; and, perchance, the sun, 
 Reaching a poniard through the clustered trees, 
 The frail fount pierces, or perchance, it grows 
 To rule wide vales : so in thy heart shall spring 
 A royal fount, which, nurtured, shall become 
 A well of Samarite water, springing up 
 To Everlasting Life. 
 
 But now, farewell! 
 Whene'er thou summon me, — when troublous 
 
 moods, 
 Not Israel's wisest harper could have charmed, 
 Passing, have left thee spent, — in love to come, 
 In love to fill that empty, swept, and garnished 
 Guest-chamber of thine heart, shall be my joy! 
 And be the glory, as all glory, God's ! " 
 
 Thus to and fro they tossed the cumbrous word, 
 The clumsy counterfeit of bird-like thought ; 
 Or hither and thither hauled, with adverse force, 
 
3^ 
 
 Huge cables, twisted of the gossamer silk 
 
 Spun by the mind ; or pushed converging terms, 
 
 Resultant in conclusion unobserved ; 
 
 Until Humanity no more engaged ; 
 
 Like wrestler scornful of a loosened grip. 
 
 But the other twitched his broadly-bordered frock 
 Higher, and picked fastidious descent ; 
 As delicately trips a school-bound child, 
 Heedful of ferule or maternal tongue, 
 O'er stepping-stones of Wharfe, by Bolton woods, 
 When o'er the midmost stone the freshet peeps. 
 Yet, homeward hieing, thrice he stayed and sought 
 With yearning eyes, and half imagined, half 
 Discerned the motionless figure of his friend; 
 As travellers, guided by the dalesman, turn 
 To view a crag, by Oreads roughly graven, 
 And dubiously affirm the crouching shape. 
 
 Now creeps the Dawn forth of the folded sky, 
 Touching with timorous finger first the mane 
 Of slumberous Ocean; then with both her hands 
 The monster stroking ; who his shaggy sides 
 Shakes, with enormous smiles ; and mariners hail 
 From lonely ships another golden link 
 Wound on the winch of Time, to warp them home. 
 Meanwhile the mountains light their signal fires 
 Of roseate snow ; but jealous Dawn, in haste 
 To bear her own sweet tidings of herself, 
 O'er valleyed town and hamlet of the plain 
 Advances ; till the Sun his amorous arms 
 Stretches to stay her ; but she merrily sprays 
 Her dewy locks full in his face ; and flees, 
 Following austere Night with instant feet. 
 
 1895. 
 
33 
 
 Love's Eleusis 
 
 Love has a sacred name 
 Without more touch of blame 
 Than glow-worm's lamp or trill 
 Of April black-bird's bill; 
 Yet not in tents of death 
 Love draws his native breath, 
 But roaming unconfined 
 The mountains of the mind ; 
 For there with mystic mirth 
 High heaven and humble earth 
 Proclaim his sovereign birth ! 
 But few may understand 
 The king-craft of his land, 
 Held far aloof from fate, 
 In governance and state ; 
 For thither none may win 
 By saintliness nor sin ; 
 In vain his votaries crowd 
 The valleys ; wreathed in cloud, 
 Rise o'er the random throng 
 The hills he dwells among. 
 To that green mountain-side 
 Can poet's only guide, 
 Where far on sun-lit steep 
 
34 
 
 Love wills his Court to keep ! 
 Nor folly's praise nor blame 
 Attaints his sacred name, 
 But youths and maidens bring 
 Fresh chaplets to their king 
 And sing as sky-larks sing ! 
 
 1896. 
 
35 
 
 To Nellie 
 
 I ask thee for a kiss no more, 
 
 As once I asked (and not in vain) j 
 
 For now thy spirit I adore, 
 To wed thy spirit I am fain. 
 
 Thy face is fair, thine eyes are fond, 
 Thy form was cast in beauty's mould ; 
 
 But far beneath, or far beyond, 
 
 Dwells she, whom I would fain enfold ! 
 
 She tends a shrine of vestal fire, 
 
 A fount of virgin fancy sips ; 
 Immured from intimate desire, 
 
 She hides her heart and locks her lips. 
 
 Mock me no more, but let us wed ! 
 
 Come forth, come forth, secluded bride ! 
 No other way, when we are dead, 
 
 Shall we rejoice that we have died. 
 
 D — 2 
 
3* 
 
 Hastings 
 
 We give thee many names, unheedful Sea, 
 
 And some I deem not thou dost well deserve. 
 
 For when thy tides majestically swerve 
 Across the bay, is that inconstancy ? 
 Or when a vessel, driving to the lee, 
 
 Where the dark deluge breaks with emerald curve 
 
 Drops her last anchor in the seething surf, 
 Why blame we not the thwarting blast, but thee ? 
 
 Thou laughest and thou ravest in thy sleep ; 
 Or, blind as Samson, grindest at thy mill, 
 
 Howe'er tormenting winds may make thee leap f 
 Earthquakes may toss the landscape ; yonder hill, 
 
 Pushed by imprisoned waters, downward sweep 
 Into the valley ; ' thou abidest still ! 
 
37 
 
 Sweet Seventeen 
 
 I would not bring the menace 
 Of mourning autumn near 
 
 The tender buds of promise 
 Of this thy blossoming year ! 
 
 fresh in mind and feature ! 
 I would not overcast 
 
 The sunshine of thy future 
 With the shadow of my past. 
 
 1 would not breathe my sorrows. 
 
 To blur with ageing blight 
 Thy green ungathered morrows, 
 
 Unfolding to the light ; 
 God keep thee, fairy creature ! 
 
 God separate, to the last, 
 The sunshine of thy future 
 
 From the shadow of my past ! 
 
38 
 
 Near a Windmill 
 
 Slow wheel the latticed swifts, without a sound ! 
 The Winds, that have the harvest in their care, 
 The furrow fan, in folded clouds prepare 
 
 The scented rain, then push these sails around ; 
 
 They have more mastery of the mutinous ground 
 Than has the Sun himself; whom, if he dare 
 Challenge their will, they seize with vaporous air, 
 
 And cast into their dripping dungeon, bound. 
 
 Invisible, but resolute and fleet, 
 
 They flaw the river and the grassy plain 
 
 With pressure of imperishable feet, 
 
 Hasting impetuously to grind the grain, 
 To fill the poor man's basket and ordain 
 
 The cradle and the birth of next year's wheat. 
 
39 
 
 To the Moon 
 
 QicrrvXi, ral icvves cififiiv ava ittoK.iv mpvovrai. 
 a 6eb<s ev rpioSoiai. 
 
 Theocritus {Idyll II. 35, 36). 
 
 Now maddens the slumbering shepherd in thy sheen 
 The death-foreboding watch-dog distant bays 
 Thy look malign ; where cross the lonely ways, 
 
 The gliding spedtres pace their scant demesne ! 
 
 As men emerge, this summer night serene, 
 From revel, sedulous to cheat the days, 
 They shudder at thy cold accusing gaze, 
 
 And wish they were not, and had never been ! 
 
 Warping their faint reluctant waves, thou glarest 
 On fascinated seas ; no fruitful heat, 
 
 No happier race in thy bleached bosom thou bearest 
 But rangest in sad bondage to the beat 
 
 Of Earth's sad heart, and in amazement farest, 
 Treading thy weary round with frozen feet. 
 
40 
 
 To a Beautiful Jewess 
 
 The faithful Eliezer, at the well, 
 
 Saluted thee; smooth Jacob, in the field; 
 
 For thee unhappy Abner's fate was sealed, 
 And stern Ahasuerus owned thy spell ; 
 Before thy Child the Median sages fell, 
 
 And shining hosts of heaven his birth revealed 
 
 To shepherds ; daily art thou now appealed, 
 As Mother of the Lord of heaven and hell ! 
 For thus the great traditions of thy type 
 
 Abide. We children of corrupter breed 
 Snatch short successes in a time unripe ; 
 
 And if our greedy race charge thine with greed 
 Thine learnt it writhing in the Egyptian's gripe, 
 
 Ere yet our youngling nation was in seed. 
 
4i 
 
 Psychology 
 
 A hell for which no heaven can make amends, — 
 
 The hell of our unalterable past ; 
 
 The clay once formed that cannot be re-cast, 
 The destiny once bent that ne'er unbends, 
 The inexorable fate that hews our ends, 
 
 Smooth-shape them how we will ; the flowers so 
 fast 
 
 To fade away, the weeds so long to last, 
 Though pious forethought all the garden tends. 
 Behold ! we choose our colours with what care, 
 
 To paint the pattern of our life withal ! 
 What prudent laws observe to make it fair ! 
 
 But all in vain ! Our hues and shapes appal ! 
 
 We have been painting on a prison-wall, 
 And madden, staring, — ever doomed to stare. 
 
42 
 
 The Danger of the Individual Ideal 
 
 Let not the peaks allure thee ! Not because 
 The strain and struggle of the upward way 
 May prove too hard for spirits cloyed with clay ; 
 
 That common curse gives every climber pause ; 
 
 But lest, enamoured of thy self-applause, 
 Or praise of God or man, thou go astray, 
 Until thou meet thy real self at bay, 
 
 The avenging seraph of resisted laws ! 
 
 The legend " By sincerity excel " 
 
 Burns on his brow ; from which thou must retire 
 Along the backward path, now fringed with fire 
 
 And set with serpents and strange snares of hell, 
 To seek the valley of thy true desire, 
 
 Roofed with white stars and paved with asphodel. 
 
43 
 
 Asleep 
 
 A slumber came thy troubled heart to steep ; 
 
 Thy sunny head upon the pillow lay, 
 
 Like the first marigold of opening May 
 Upon a snow-patch in a dingle deep ; 
 Thy gentle eyes that are so loth to weep, 
 
 Were folded from the urgency of day, 
 
 Like flowers in silken petals lapped away ; 
 Over thy brow swept summer clouds of sleep. 
 I stood beside thee, like the spirit of care 
 
 That watches children, laid in drowsy cot ; 
 
 "Alas," methought, "what fate has linked thy lot 
 With one who breathes the desolate dry air 
 
 Of lone ambition ? " So, awoke thee not ; 
 But let thee slumber; slumber, unaware. 
 
44 
 
 The Swallow Fall 
 
 " Sir John Wynn of Gwydir . . . was a celebrity 
 in his day. Being ' shrewd and successful in his dealings,' 
 the people were led to suppose he oppressed them, and, 
 says Yorke, ' it is the superstition of the place (Llanrwst) 
 to this day, that the spirit of the old gentleman lies under 
 the great waterfall Rhaiadr-y-Wen-nol, better known as 
 the Swallow Fall." 
 
 Gossiping Guide to Wales. 
 
 In Swallow Fall (so runs the tale) is pent 
 
 A sinful soul ; until, with sand and silt, 
 His evil passions in the sea are spent. 
 
 Yet who can dream that Llugwy harbours guilt ? 
 
 Along the vale he sings a laughing lilt, 
 Fair flowers assemble to his freshening scent, 
 
 The woods are merry where his waves are spilt, 
 And all his kine-loved meadows breathe content. 
 Thou art no jailor to a tortured ghost, , 
 
 Thou happy stream ! Not yet from thee are 
 driven 
 The pagan spirits of the fairy host ; 
 ' No covetous Church shall justify her boast, 
 
 To foist on thee the shriek of souls unshriven ; 
 
 If souls do haunt thee, they are souls forgiven. 
 
45 
 
 Maxima Reverentia 
 
 Quench not the children's joy ! 
 
 Too soon these cavernous damps 
 
 Will dim their fairy lamps, 
 Too soon the haloes fall from girl and boy, 
 That crown their brow so innocently bright ; 
 
 Too soon the garlands white 
 Of all their inconsiderate employ 
 Take sad infection from surrounding night. 
 
 Too soon will life's amazement 
 
 Encounter their advance, 
 
 And dubious circumstance 
 Make proof of their appraisement 
 Of charity and j udgment, truth and gain ! 
 Too soon anxiety's abhorrent shapes 
 Will spread like vapour o'er the splendid plain, 
 And all its promise of unblemished grapes ; 
 The beckoning harvest-fields will suffer blight 
 And even the sun-lit mountain's high domain 
 
 The mist will stain 
 Blurring its aspect of celestial light. 
 
 Dim not the eyes of youth 
 
 With shadowed sorrow and the ghosts of ruth 
 
 Soon when the tracks are tangled, 
 
 And all emotion jangled, 
 
4 6 
 
 Will fade their blessed vision of the truth ; 
 Till then let sin and suffering keep aloof; 
 
 But come, unfeigned delight, 
 With music heralded, with blossom spangled ! 
 Cordial the heart with courage for the proof ! 
 Feed the fresh mind with mirth, the nurse of might F 
 
 Far be the horrid sight 
 Of lacerated souls and spirits mangled I 
 
 Young souls should laugh before they laugh in vain ; 
 
 First let them learn of earth 
 
 The mysteries of mirth, 
 Before they learn the mysteries of pain ; 
 First let them be enriched with dance and song, 
 
 That make men strong 
 To face dull labour and endure the strain 
 
 Of disappointed faith and fortune's wrong. 
 
 Not hermit hearts, that love alone to dwell 
 
 In secret cell, 
 But happy hearts, that like a hive of bees 
 
 Hum, thick with busy hopes, 
 Nerve the weak arms and knit the feeble knees, 
 
 Winning from sunny slopes 
 Of mountains, from the summer woods and leas, 
 What sadness spends, gazing on wintry seas. 
 
 Quench not the children's joy ! 
 
 Let no lugubrious fantasy or tale 
 
 Their heart assail ! 
 No morbid mirror flout their guileless faces 
 With hint of lurking furrows and grimaces ! 
 Though greed and shame hereafter may destroy 
 
 The sensitive play 
 
47 
 
 Of mobile muscle, and the unconscious graces 
 That soon with introspection pass away, — 
 Though they are destined to a sure decay, 
 As are the lilies, — yet their lucent clay 
 Is offspring of the sunshine and the skies, 
 
 And their immaculate eyes 
 Fade at the sight of lethal miseries. 
 
 With pulsing feet let children trip along 
 In rhythmic tumult of the dance and song, 
 With waving arms and cymbals held aloft, 
 
 To strains repeated oft ! 
 Into the movement of the Doric mode 
 
 Guide passionate impulse, guide 
 
 Life's eagerness and pride ! 
 Lead the desire that none by lash or goad 
 
 Can drive along the road ! 
 Give them fair meads for pastime, undistraught 
 
 By ill-foreboding thought, 
 With balls of flowers tossed up and hardly caught, 
 And dells with rippling laughter overflowed ! 
 
 So let the muse indignant 
 Drive doleful thrummers from her sacred mount ! 
 
 Her melodies benignant 
 Let shepherds to the dancing children count ! 
 
 Who with their hands and feet 
 
 Shall to the cadence beat, 
 Beat to the jocund pipe and gentle lyre, 
 
 Until the anguished earth 
 Listen, as sick men listen to the choir 
 Of warbling birds at eager morning's birth. 
 
 For where shall perfect happiness be found 
 If not in careless children ? Like the birds, 
 
48 
 
 They pour through sullen woods a jocund sound, 
 
 A language not of words, 
 More native to the air than to the ground ! 
 Who can life's unreplenished channels fill, 
 
 If children may not treasure 
 The untaxed waters of a bounteous pleasure ? 
 
 If children may not guard the precious store 
 Of natural mirth, and from their vantage hill 
 
 Launch many a laughing rill 
 Along the valley, where men labour sore 
 
 To delve the golden ore, 
 The barren sand$ of vanity to till ? 
 
 For of all creatures that on earth should be 
 
 Devote to gaiety, 
 Upon whose lips should oftenest be heard 
 
 Laughter's melodious bubble, 
 Within whose eyes should rareliest be stirred 
 
 The bitter pools of trouble, 
 Children to gladness are entitled most ! 
 For they alone amid the weary host 
 Of warring men, that beat the phantomed air, 
 Frenzied, and wound each other unaware, 
 
 They only dare 
 Feast and make merriment. Ah ! let them be ! 
 Smirch not their white-winged hours ! 
 They are the vestal guardians of the flame 
 Of happiness ! Ah ! sprinkle not your spice, — 
 
 Self-scorn and sacrifice, — 
 Nor pluck away their garlands of sweet flowers, 
 With desecrating fingers, hinting blame ! 
 
 But watch with me and listen, 
 
 By those enchanted bowers 
 
49 
 
 Where children dance with children, hand in hand | 
 
 Their eyes with gladness glisten, 
 Their laughter makes a marvel in the land ; 
 
 They imitate no code, 
 
 They use no courtier mode 
 Of pleasing God ; they neither toil nor haste 
 For righteousness; but dwell in Eden still; 
 And who would tempt their taintless lips to taste 
 The cheating fruit of conscious good and ill ? 
 
 Hail, fairy child, 
 Not by dissimulation yet defiled ! 
 
 Hail, frolic elf, 
 Not yet instructed to disseft thyself! 
 
 Too soon to be beguiled 
 Into the gilded cage, — saint, devotee, 
 
 I know not what thou'lt be, — 
 But nevermore the simple, fresh, and free ! 
 
So 
 
 Counsel 
 
 Wear not the rubies that I gave! 
 
 Like wine, aglow with lurid heats ; 
 But diamonds ; whiter than the wave 
 
 That down the northern channel beats. 
 
 Press pallid jewels to thy breast ; 
 
 For they are free from dangerous fires j 
 They are not reddened with unrest, 
 
 Nor fierce unsatisfied desires. 
 
 Keep thine affeition free from blame ; 
 
 Austere, yet ardent, purely shine j 
 To set thy crystal heart aflame 
 
 Shall never be a sin of mine. 
 
Si 
 
 Renunciation 
 
 Ah! delicate maiden, 
 
 Whose glance is so kind, 
 And bosom love-laden 
 
 And pure as thy mind, 
 " Come woo me and win me," 
 
 Thine eyes seem to say, — 
 But voices within me 
 
 Still call me away. 
 
 Thine hair is like tansies 
 
 In sunshine arrayed ; 
 Thine eyes like the pansies 
 
 That shine in the shade ; 
 " Come woo me and win me 
 
 And nevermore stray," — 
 But voices within me 
 
 Still call me- away. 
 
ss 
 
 Elaine 
 
 •Art thou gone for ever, Elaine, 
 Thou with the starry eyes 
 In a twilight of tangled hair ? 
 In the lonely night I complain, 
 Till the memoried moon arise, 
 With her lesson of dumb despair. 
 
 Oh ! for thy voice to calm 
 
 My heart that so beats astray, — 
 Set it to rhythm, aright ! 
 Oh ! for thy lpve to balm 
 
 The wounds of the warring day, 
 And the fever of friendless night ! 
 
 Would I had taken Elaine, 
 Kissed the two starry eyes, 
 Tangled the tangled hairj 
 Laughed for a day at pain ; 
 Ceased for a day to be wise ; 
 And let the silly world stare. 
 
S3 
 
 Home 
 
 Home is not home when thou art gone ! 
 
 My heart in blindness seems to grope ; 
 Where love's accustomed light has shone, 
 
 'Tis dark as disappointed hope, 
 
 When thou art gone. 
 
 The oft appeal, the quick reply, — 
 Still more, may-be, the silent sense 
 
 Of sympathy, when thou art by, — 
 These, these are Home ! And they are hence, 
 When thou art gone. 
 
54 
 
 Separated 
 
 "In the weather for this tour I have been very fortunate. 
 . . . . I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of 
 nature, &c. . . . But in all this the recollection of 
 bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home 
 desolation, which must accompany me through life, have 
 preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the 
 shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, the torrent, the 
 mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for 
 one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor 
 enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the 
 majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, above, 
 and beneath me." 
 
 Nichol's Life of Byron. (English Men of Letters 
 Series, p. 109.) 
 
 Alas ! when thou wert near, I wished thee far; 
 
 But now thy distance is a jangling pain, 
 That all the harmony of life must mar ; 
 
 All day I murmur, " Wilt thou come again ? " 
 
 Unless thou wilt return, I sing no more ; 
 
 A hawk o'ertowers the song-bird of my heart ; 
 Leagues have I drifted on toward the shore 
 
 Of mute remorse, since we were driven apart ! 
 
55 
 
 For though to sing is more to me than breath, — 
 If I might only sing one worthy song, — 
 
 Who sings beneath the basilisk eyes of death ? 
 Or, worse than death, the hovering wings of 
 wrong ? 
 
 They hover o'er me, like a brooding mist, 
 
 That blurs the mountains and the morning light, 
 
 And blemishes the clustered amethyst 
 
 Of pleasure's grapes, with grey mysterious blight, 
 
56 
 
 United 
 
 " Nothing that I ever read in tale or history," write* 
 Peacock, _" could present a more striking image of a 
 sudden, violent, irresistible passion than that under which 
 I found him labouring*" 
 
 Dowdetis Life of Shelley, Vol.1., Ch. 9., 
 
 Thou dull and foolish day, 
 
 Swiftly decline ! 
 My love is far away, 
 
 No sun doth shine ; 
 Hasten to thy decay 
 Thou dull and foolish day ! 
 To-morrow's joy be mine ! 
 
 To-night my love and I 
 
 Lie far apart; 
 To-morrow she shall lie 
 
 Close to my heart j 
 " Hither, dear morrow, fly ! " 
 Beseech my love and I ; 
 " Fly swift and slow depart ! " 
 
 To-day, when day is done, 
 Wearisome day, 
 
57 
 
 Our blurred and surly sun 
 
 Scatters his ray 
 Over the lands where run 
 All day, when night is done, 
 Warm things at happy play. 
 
 This frigid land of ours 
 
 Scarce can be gay; 
 Too soon our summer bowers' 
 
 Droop and decay ; 
 Fair are the southern flowers, 
 Beyond this land of ours ; 
 Fair is the southern day ! 
 
 Then hasten on, thou moon, 
 
 Haggard and grey ! 
 Roll up and onward soon, 
 
 'Mid mists astray ! 
 Like thee in pallid swoon 
 We faint, thou haggard moon,- 
 Faint with love's long delay I 
 
58 
 
 A Song 
 
 Laugh at loving if you will, 
 
 But no laughing Love can kill ! 
 
 Still he rejgris in maidens' eyes, 
 
 Conquers with a sweet surprise, 
 And still, though all the world is dark and sleeps, 
 Love like a sunbeam through the shadow creeps, 
 And gentle hearts in warmest passion steeps. 
 
 Cities he will overskip, 
 
 For he loves a country lip, 
 
 That no shame nor lying sears, 
 
 And an eye undimmed with tears : 
 So oft you'll find him at the country fairs, 
 Where kirtled Prudence sells her homely wares, 
 Fresh crocks of butter or ripe Katherine pears. 
 
 Laugh at loving as you may, 
 
 Love will laugh another day ! 
 
 If he laugh not, you shall weep 
 
 For his favour, ere you sleep ! 
 Bring to his altar, then, — in time be wise, — 
 Bring Venus' appjes, that poor lover's prize, 
 And pansies, softer than their mistress' eyes ! 
 
59 
 
 The Sacrament of Love 
 
 Love brimmed the golden bowl of life 
 
 With generous measure ; 
 The importunacy of strife 
 
 Subdued to pleasure; 
 Made sensitive to lightest play 
 
 The heart's vibration ; 
 And taught upon his shrine to lay 
 
 The due oblation. 
 
 A priest came by and cast a doubt 
 
 Into that nedlar ; 
 'Twas wrong, he said, to be without 
 
 Pain, the corrector ; 
 The idolater in hell, he vowed, 
 
 Lies next. the scoffer; 
 Only to God are men allowed 
 
 Homage to offer. 
 
 Such wormwood in the bowl he threw. 
 
 With holy malice ; 
 Some drops, splashed up like rosy dew, 
 
 Fell in his chalice ; 
 He sipped, and happier than a child 
 
 He grew, and meeker ; 
 Pleasure and pain were reconciled 
 
 Within that beaker. 
 
6o 
 
 A Song of Solace 
 
 Again, dear heart, we snatch an hour 
 
 From Time, who grudges bliss ; 
 Thy lips unfold, like morning flower, 
 
 To pout the promised kiss ! 
 Deep hues arise within thine eyes j 
 
 Love's soft suffusion, stealing, 
 Fills all thy face with tender grace 
 
 And all thy form with feeling. 
 
 Beside thee I can still forget 
 
 Life's purposes, how vain; 
 The force that dissipates in fret; 
 
 The disproportioned pain : 
 Whoso may preach, can never reach 
 
 (Too careful comfort doling), 
 The soothing power of one dear hour 
 
 Of thy complete consoling. 
 
H 
 
 Midnight Invocation to the Wind 
 
 Come forth from thine Aeolian cave ! 
 
 Make plain the approaches of the day ! 
 Then Earthward let thy pinions wave, 
 
 To winnow human dross away ! 
 
 Come forth, O Wind ! O'er dale and down, 
 Across the broad, untainted seas, 
 
 With gathered freshness fan the town, 
 That faints with manifold disease ! 
 
 Come forth ] To make the hazes flee 
 From leagured souls ; to sound thy horn ■ 
 
 In laggard hearts ; to set us free 
 From petty love and petty scorn J 
 
62 
 
 The Gifts of the Gods 
 
 Once with life and love enamoured, 
 
 We besought the gods above ; 
 " Send us love and life ! " we clamoured, 
 
 And they sent us life and love. 
 
 Soon they over-filled the measure ; 
 
 Soon we prayed them, " Grant us calm ! " 
 But they answered, " Pain is pleasure ! 
 
 " Crush from bitter herbs the balm ! 
 
 " Forms of beauty ye may fashion 
 " From the anguish of the heart ; 
 
 " Only by the cross of passion 
 " Can ye win the crown of Art." 
 
63 
 
 The New Apollo 
 
 Oh ! credit not, though Academes have taught,. 
 
 That poesy is manacled to speak 
 
 Through those old masks wherein the buskined 
 Greek 
 Poured his sea-sounding dithyrambics, fraught 
 With rage melodious and majestic thought, 
 
 Or that no other chrism a bard may seek 
 
 Than lustral dews on Helicon's high peak 
 Or rare Castalian sprinklings, hardly caught. 
 Soon shall the holier song, that Olivet 
 
 Chants to her sister hill of Calvary, 
 Place echo's fingers on a finer fret ; 
 
 Whose many-pinioned utterance, ranging free, 
 
 Sion shall welcome first, with holy glee, 
 When poet and the day are duly met. 
 
6 4 
 
 Jehovah 
 
 Art thou the God of millions or of tens ? 
 
 Art thou the God of this world or the next ? 
 
 Art thou the God of spirit or of text ? 
 Art thou the God of sheep in folded pens, 
 But not of roaming, restless denizens 
 
 Of mountains and of forests, often vexed 
 
 By hurricanes and spedlres of perplexed, 
 Belated waifs that perish in the fens ? 
 Doth thy Shekinah still above one race 
 
 Brood, with its fire by night and cloud by day ? 
 Doth one fleece catch the dewdrops of thy grace, 
 
 While unrefreshed is all the common clay, 
 Can nature for repentance find no place, 
 
 While the smooth saint her birthright bears away ? 
 
65 
 
 Aldeburg 
 
 Once more I watch the pale and writhing lips 
 Of this old sea that gnaws around the land. 
 How lonely are the surges and the strand ! 
 
 The fishermen are gone, and fled the ships ; 
 
 The billows, that the cruel tempest whips, 
 
 Shake their grey manes and plunge along the sand 
 Round dying day no stars attendant stand ; 
 
 Far o'er the foam the floating beacon dips. 
 
 When last I wandered here, in childhood's hour, 
 The sky was blue, the waves were all aglow ; 
 
 Ah ! then my heart unfolded, like a flower 
 
 Enisled in innocence ; no stormy stower 
 Of worldly waters, no unfathomed flow 
 Of passion compassed me with empty woe. 
 
66 
 
 Eastbourne 
 
 I love thee, queenly mother of the streams, 
 That seek thy breast again, their labour done | 
 Source of all kindly waters, as the sun 
 
 Is minister of warmth and fruitful beams ; 
 
 Like harvest-waggons, drawn by chiming teams 
 . Of horses grey, the merchant-vessels run 
 Upon thy plain ; and oft from thee has won 
 
 The city toiler health and happy dreams. 
 
 A promise in thy voice I understand, 
 
 Fairer than length of days or teeming marts j 
 
 For jhou shalt bear us in thy pallid hand, 
 My love and me, until thy barrier parts 
 
 Us ever from the narrow northern land, 
 And ever from the narrow northern hearts. 
 
6 7 
 
 Weybridge 
 
 Queen village of the Bridge upon the Wey, 
 Dim grow thy beauties as we number them 
 Saint George's Hill, thy plumed diadem ; 
 
 Thy meadow girdle ; all thy green array j 
 
 The spire, thy sceptre, seen so far away 
 Along the river that with pearly hem 
 Borders thy robe, from barges as they stem 
 
 The current, and from boats that idly stray. 
 
 As from that reeking city in the East 
 Black hazes on the landscape oft alight, 
 
 Like hint of poisoned goblets at a feast, 
 So doth a foul suburban parasite 
 
 Thy field and forest, with fermenting yeast 
 Of spawning speculation, blear and blight. 
 
 F — 2 
 
68 
 
 Matthew Arnold 
 
 Arnold, whose lot was cast in days of ill, 
 
 That seized thy mind, the fountain of thy song, 
 And turned its stream with callous hands and 
 strong, 
 
 To push the paddles of the groaning mill, 
 
 The arteries of the city's heart to fill, — 
 Wert thou content, if so were borne, along 
 The hissing culverts, to the herded throng 
 
 Hints of the freshness of thy native hill ? 
 
 I could have wished thine undiverted flood 
 Had rolled harmoniously from source to sea, 
 
 Untortured, save by restless lyric mood ; 
 Now a cascade, now lingering o'er the lea. 
 
 For beauty is not drawn into our blood 
 
 From cisterns ; but from waters wandering free. 
 
69 
 
 My Sister's Room 
 
 She that dwells here her spirit doth transmit 
 
 Into the very air ; a calmness steals 
 Upon me, sitting where she's wont to sit, 
 
 Or standing at the table where she kneels. 
 
 Ah ! could I only fancy what she feels 
 When the near presence of her heavenly guide, 
 
 The Man divine, her reverie reveals. 
 Here, are her books; and here, her pen is plied 
 In tasks of love ; there, through the window wide, 
 
 From wood and meadow floats a summer sound 
 The thrushes pipe, the whispering waters glide ; 
 
 Crowned is the vale with peace, as she is crowned 
 O virgin spirit of this quiet place, 
 Inform me with thy restfulness and grace ! 
 
70 
 
 Vocation 
 
 This day with careful courage have I sworn 
 My feet no more shall stagger after praise, 
 Climbing the long denial's precipitous ways ; 
 
 These poor foolhardy feet, bare, bruised, and torn, 
 
 Henceforward shall be shod for paths of scorn ; 
 Then, though I clamber upward all my days 
 And never reach the summit, where the bays 
 
 And myrtles beckon, waiting to be worn, 
 
 Yet shall I never faint, until I die. 
 
 From God the impulse sprang, from God it 
 springs, 
 
 To mount into the distance, far and high 
 Beyond the dusty coop of common things ; 
 
 But now I know that feet can never fly, 
 And only from our sandals grow our wings. 
 
7i 
 
 Astronomy 
 
 Our spirits loose their prison bars 
 
 And search for truth beyond the bound 
 Of wisdom, when our heads are crowned 
 
 With haloes of the streaming stars. 
 
 Then to the farthest orb we run 
 And stand upon its utmost edge ; 
 And lo ! there is a farther ledge, 
 
 And, still beyond, a farther sun ! 
 
7 z 
 
 Swiss Mountains by Night 
 
 Ye lonely peaks, with brows of ice ! 
 
 Ye lonely peaks, with breasts of snow ! 
 
 Like nuns remote from worlds below, 
 Pale with the pain of sacrifice ! 
 
 Like novice clinging in a swoon 
 Repentant of renounced love, 
 Lies at your feet the lake ; above 
 
 Leans forth the white disdainful moon • 
 
73 
 
 Hercules and Hylas 
 
 {Theocritus, Idyll XIII.) 
 
 Then came the Argo to an unknown isle, 
 Where thought the mariners to rest awhile, 
 To fill the empty water-skins anew, 
 And gather store of juicy fruit that grew 
 Upon the laden trees along the strand. 
 
 Hylas, — an earthen pitcher in his hand, — 
 First wades to shore, to seek a woodland spring 
 And water for the mid-day meal to bring. 
 Beautiful Hylas, loved of Hercules ! 
 Who often set him on his mighty knees, 
 And told him how a hero's fame was earned, 
 Till the boy's heart with thoughts of glory burned 
 
 So, while he hies him to the bosky vales, 
 The mariners haul down the flapping sails, 
 The anchor cast, and leap upon the sand; 
 Some draw the net and from the shallows land 
 The silver tunny-fish, or baskets fill 
 With parsley pale and crisp luxuriant dill, 
 
74 
 
 That at the fringes of the forest shine; 
 Others for fuel gather boughs of pine ; 
 And while the frugal banquet they prepare, 
 Their shouts and laughter float upon the air. 
 
 Soon as the feast is done, beneath the trees, 
 With listening comrades stretched around at ease, 
 The minstrel Orpheus on his cithern plays 
 And sings the famous deeds of former days. 
 
 But when the noon-day heat is overpast, 
 
 Along the level sand the games they range ; 
 Huge boulders, here, in ordered turn they cast, 
 
 The wrestlers writhe with many an antic strange, 
 And youths of Elis or Aetolia leap 
 The pools that lie along the ebbing deep ; 
 There, like an antelope, the runner flies, 
 And great Alcides stands to judge the prize. 
 But yet the while his thoughts seem otherwise, 
 Nor in the triumph nor defeat to share ; 
 His heart is with his comrade, far away 
 In forests wandering since the break of day ; 
 
 And now the mellow sunset lulls the breeze; 
 The billows leap no more; across the bay 
 
 The calm, uncrested ripple of the seas 
 Lisps murmurous secrets of the coming night ; 
 No more the sea-bird soars with wheeling flight ; 
 Touched by the torch of Evening, each in turn, 
 The cressets of the sky begin to burn ; 
 The tide creeps up the sands where late they set 
 The racing goal : but Hylas comes not yet. 
 
 Then, through the woods, the hero strides away, 
 To shout for Hylas. 'Wildered or astray, 
 
75 
 
 Wounded or faint, some evil chance befalls 
 The winsome boy ! And ever as he calls 
 He stands awhile, with ear intent, to hark 
 If there be answer through the dreary dark ! 
 For in his mind a vision will not cease 
 Of locks as golden as the Golden Fleece, 
 That oft were wont upon his breast to spread 
 When there the happy child would lay his head; 
 And often, too, a voice he seems to hear, 
 That loved to tell youth's day-dreams in his ear ! 
 But till the Eastern clouds are all aflame, 
 Only mad echo answers Hylas' name. 
 
 At sun-rise he perceives a narrow vale, 
 Where sky-blue swallow-wort and galingale 
 With mallow cool and trembling maiden-hair 
 The sheltered margin of a river share ; 
 Here, as he kneels along a strip of sand, 
 To splash his fevered brow with hollow hand, 
 With sudden pang he sees the shape impressed 
 
 Of youthful footsteps by the river brink ! 
 He starts ereft ! He must renew the quest ! 
 
 He pants, he runs ; and scarcely dares to think 
 If he should hope or be the more distressed ! 
 
 So comes he to the head of the ravine, 
 And there beholds a bubbling pool, between 
 Unnumbered flowers, enamelling the ground, 
 And golden-fruited trees. He looks around 
 And calls for Hylas. Then with sudden start 
 A chilling tremour seizes on his heart, — 
 Beside the fount an earthen pitcher lies ! 
 Again the forest echoes with his cries ; 
 
7 6 
 
 Again along the hateful shore he seeks : 
 But all is silence ; nought of Hylas speaks 
 Save that deserted pitcher. But its tale 
 Of desolation darkens all the vale. 
 
 And yet fair Hylas was not truly dead, 
 For when he rambled to the river's head, 
 And stood upon a boulder, shelving sheer 
 Into the well of water crystal-clear, 
 Up through the cloven wave, with sudden swirl 
 Of silvery spray, arose a Naiad girl ! 
 Glad, glad was Hylas ; for not yet had men 
 Scared gentle fairies from the lake and glen 
 But who was pure in spirit and right free 
 Might meet them oft beneath the forest tree. 
 Around her soon a troop of Naiads rise, 
 Naked, with clinging hair and dusky eyes ; 
 They stretch alluring arms, and laughing toy 
 With the fair curls that crown the lovely boy ; 
 Then, at the touch of those immortal hands, 
 His nature changes ; fearless, to the sands 
 Beneath the wave, he lets them draw him down, 
 And with large lilies plait for him a crown, 
 Among their grottoes, pale with shelly floor. 
 Here would he stay with them for evermore, 
 And feel not summer heat, nor wintry cold ; 
 Never grow weary, sorrowful, nor old ; 
 But chase the speckled fish with emerald eyes, 
 
 Pluck down the clustered apples, golden-ripe, 
 By the lake-side, and when the moon should rise 
 
 Dance with the maidens to the Satyrs' pipe ! 
 
 Now whether Hercules, beside the well, 
 Had visions of this witchery that befell, 
 
77. 
 
 By very anguish wearied into sleep, 
 Or whether from the water's crystal deep 
 Rose up with Hylas those Limnaean maids, 
 I know not ; for the isle before me fades ; 
 The Argonauts have put to sea once more, 
 And dimly glimmers that enchanted shore. 
 
 But this I know, — the minstrel Orpheus oft, 
 When round the prow the ripples murmured soft, 
 A ballad for the mariners would make 
 Of Hylas and the Maidens of the Lake. 
 
7» 
 
 Tithonus 
 
 (Aurora, the Goddess of Morning, fell in love with 
 Tithonus, a beautiful youth, and craved for him from the 
 gods the gift of eternal life ; which gift they bestowed ; 
 but not that of eternal youth.) 
 
 How slowly wane the weary hours away! 
 
 The tree is dry, the sap has ceased to flow ; 
 And yet it stands unshattered by the storm, 
 Unwounded by the sharpest axe of Fate ! 
 Nor can it die, although it would not live. 
 They say that death and life are mingled wine, 
 The bitter and the sweet ; but who hath seen 
 Such intertwined confusion as in me ? 
 I might be death himself, who ever lives. 
 My blood is curdled and my bones are dust ; 
 My eyes are dim, but not with tears ; the power 
 To weep has left me, with my youth and hope; 
 For youthful tears are sweet and hopeful pain. 
 I live in self-embodied death, and die 
 In mock similitude of life ; but death 
 Would be a better life to me than all. 
 
 How slowly wane the weary hours away ! 
 
 Ah ! how in those old days, when first the love 
 Of my bright goddess flooded through my soul, 
 
79 
 
 I felt the warm blood beat about my heart, 
 At tender tone or blush of hers, for me, 
 When sitting on the hill in vine-leaf shade 
 We watched the mid-day heat steal o'er the hills, 
 The lazy lizard sleep along the wall, 
 The bird drop silent to his inmost bower ; 
 Till the black bat athwart the sunset wheeled, 
 And cooler night bedewed the frog's harsh throat. 
 Then had I life before me, and to die 
 A death as peaceful as the balmy air 
 That floated round us in that quiet hour ; 
 Then, like a happy bee, — from flower to flower 
 Flashing his banded colours in the sun, 
 Sipping his store from thyme and asphodel 
 In earliest morning, ere the pastures drowse, 
 Lulled by the poppy-scented heat to calm, — 
 I sucked from day to day the present sweet. 
 
 Ah Morning ! — Ah dear Night ! that used to bring 
 In Hesperus' car mine own imperial bride, 
 Who loved me first with more than mortal love, 
 With golden locks and breath like incense-wind 
 From iris arches of the Southern rain, 
 How often in the noiseless halls of heaven, 
 Sating our souls with silent songs of love, 
 We watched at eve thy bright inquisitive stars, 
 Watching in turn, with many shimmering eyes 5 
 Till in their prairies and untraversed bowers 
 Blossomed the moon, and every fleecy cloud 
 Unfolded petals, pearled with silvery sheen ! 
 Then to our inmost chamber passed, to sleep 
 A charmed sleep, as innocent as babes, 
 Of all this misery and life so lost. 
 
8o 
 
 O loitering, long, intolerable hours ! 
 
 Ungiving gift ! unbenefiting good ! 
 
 Never to know that imperceptibly . 
 
 My youth was vanishing, like sliding sand ; 
 
 That, grain by grain, records the sliding hour! 
 
 Never to feel the palsy touch of age 
 
 Steal on my limbs and stagnate in my veins ! 
 
 But to live on, the very sport of fate, 
 
 The puppet of an empty-handed hope ; 
 
 Till a cloud gathered on my loved one's face 
 
 And men said " Lo, a stormy cloud-girt morn ! " 
 
 For year by year I failed ; with locks more grey, 
 
 More feeble fingers, and more hollow cheeks ; 
 
 And so at last an agony of thought 
 
 Swept o'er her mind, and passing, left the truth ! 
 
 Our lives diverge ; no yoke of love can bridge 
 The gulf between them ; mortal recompense, — 
 The consolation of a wedded fate, 
 The journey step by step, and hand in hand, 
 The tasting of the bitterness of death 
 Together, — is denied us ; and I fail. 
 
 O loitering, long, intolerable hours ! 
 
 O soft-robed spouse, pray that I too may die ; 
 For all the seasons tread with -weighted heels, 
 And all thy beauty makes my misery more ! 
 Pray that I too may die, like other men, 
 And leave my burden in a clod of clay ! 
 The peace of death is peace inviolate, 
 His realm a placid place from age to age. 
 
8i 
 
 So when again, from these thine ivory gates, 
 
 Thy chariot bears thee to the wistful earth, — 
 
 Where sedges rustle to thine herald wind, 
 
 And rivers creep through many a length of land, 
 
 Where shepherds pipe upon the pasture hills 
 
 Of rich Arcadia, or the purple peaks 
 
 Of fair Aegina and the Cyclades, — 
 
 Mark ! when the bee has sealed her amber cells, 
 
 The swallow laced the air with weaving wings, 
 
 The lark achieved the summit of his song, 
 
 And every creature lived his life, they drop 
 
 Like thunder-bolt from heaven upon the deep, 
 
 In one short moment into endless rest I 
 
 But when the swarthy Evening clasps the beads 
 
 Of topaz on her brow, return ! And there, 
 
 On thy dear bosom, will I lay my head, 
 
 To hear thy whispered tidings ; that my soul 
 
 May shed itself, in memory of these things,, 
 
 In one great burst of tears, and I may die I 
 
82 
 
 The Commonest Lot 
 
 The beam that drifts about the sea, 
 Nosed by the dog-fish, slimed by sea-snails, draws 
 Into itself through, seams and flaws 
 
 The ocean imperceptibly. 
 
 Quick currents sift it through and through j 
 With jelly creatures feeding on its sides; 
 The sea-flower round it glooms and slides 
 
 With languid motion, to and fro, 
 
 Tb£ wave within weighs more and more 
 Down, till the burden over-balance it; 
 Pown, till the flat-rfish o'er it flit, 
 
 The sand-worm burrow to its core. 
 
83 
 
 The Poet 
 
 He draws from the heart of the Human tears that 
 
 he makes his own, 
 He draws from the spirit of Nature sounds of a 
 
 mystic tone. 
 His mirth (though it draw quick smiles) has the 
 
 theme of some deeper moan. 
 
 E'en when his mouth is mutest, within there is 
 
 sound on sound, 
 For shafts of light come slanting from the hoary 
 
 mountains round 
 To his heart's embowered vale, by a stream of tears 
 
 enwound. 
 
 Ah ! could you see him greet it, with eyes undazed 
 and proud ! 
 
 Light from the hoary mountains, where winds are 
 ever loud ! 
 
 Light that would scathe another, — one of the dark- 
 ling crowd ! 
 
 G — 2 
 
84 
 
 Though, when he breaks the silence, vainly his 
 
 voice may float, 
 His is the blackbird's warble, his is the throstle's 
 
 throat, 
 Spring after spring repeating an exquisite, idle note. 
 
 Idle song of the poet ! Message from seas and 
 
 skies ! 
 Stronger than wind it pierces, swifter than light it 
 
 flies! 
 Gladdens the world, unheeded, as sunshine gladdens 
 
 the eyes ! 
 
85 
 
 Sympathy 
 
 I often think, wert thou to die, 
 
 A thi-ill of secret sympathy- 
 Would knit thy soul with mine, 
 
 And through the air would come to me ' 
 
 A pang Sfsadness suddenly, 
 If thou became divine. . 
 
 Through prayer and longing for thy heart 
 In all thy fate I have a part 
 
 To feel, to think, or say ; 
 So shouldst thou fade, a sudden sigh 
 Would startle me, — in death more nigh,— 
 
 In life so far away ! 
 
 As when on some high-pasture-hill 
 A shepherd feels the sudden chill 
 
 Of evening come to him, 
 When through the golden gates of sky 
 The tender tints of sunset fly, ' 
 
 And all the land grows dim. 
 
 So if thine hours of life were done, 
 A shudder through my soul would run, 
 An icy wind would blow 
 
86 
 
 Upon me, standing on the height 
 Whereto Love bore me by his might, 
 And set me, long ago. 
 
 Know you not, dearest, if thou sing 
 And touch upon thine harp a string, 
 
 Another chord vibrates ? 
 So if death snap thy life-time's thread, 
 Shall I too know that thou art dead, 
 
 And free from, loves, and hates [ 
 
87 
 
 Spring 
 
 O day desired, to plump the hawthorn bud, 
 
 To make the lambkin skip, to push the juice 
 Up through the chestnut bough like lusty blood, 
 To urge the fields their herbage to produce, 
 To give the lark or even the twittering linnet 
 Ambition for the crown of song and mastery to win it t 
 
 See how the sunbeams leave their blue expanse, 
 
 To visit every opening daffodil, 
 And roguishly among its leaves to dance ! 
 See how the stream, reludtant, to the mill 
 Coils with slow current ! Ere to labour leaping, 
 In green and grassy arms the water-sprite is sleeping ! 
 
 Now, day by day, the teeming hours unfold 
 
 A film of verdure over glebe and glade, 
 A tardier twilight, and a dawn more bold, 
 Delicious sun and more delicious shade ! 
 Till lavish Spring, redeeming all her pledges, 
 Inherit once again her meadows and her hedges. 
 
88 
 
 To Her 
 
 Till thee I loved, my radiant Spring, 
 My heart was like a silent plot, 
 Where goodly flowers flourish not, 
 
 And brambles tear and nettles sting ! 
 
 Now thorn and nettle in a ring 
 
 My garden guard from filching foes, 
 But in the midst the lily blows 
 
 And all thine herald thrushes sing. 
 
8 9 
 
 An Invitation 
 
 Oh ! come to yonder pasture-hill, 
 
 To drink the distance with our eyes ; 
 There, through the summer noonday still, 
 Shall tinkling of the sheep bells rise ; 
 And near at hand, in cadence low, 
 A bubble-tossing spring shall flow. 
 
 Or, if the shade we more esteem, 
 
 Through yon secluded woodland ways, 
 We'll trace the winding of the stream, 
 That round the boulder peeps and plays ; 
 There water-ousels sweetly cry, 
 And with their cousin thrushes vie. 
 
 Till, guided by the laughing linn, 
 
 That runs before, with becks and nods, 
 We come to where the meads begin, 
 Fringed by a bank of golden-rods ; 
 
 And there we'll lie 'neath leaning boughs 
 To watch the quiet cattle browse. 
 
 But not of love must be our theme, 
 Nor of the world's delirious ways ; 
 In silence will we lie and dream, 
 Watched by a thousand forest fays ; 
 Until our souls aloft shall fly, 
 To carol in that leafy sky. 
 
90 
 
 A Song 
 
 "That not impossible She." 
 
 Crashaw. 
 
 Love comes to all f 
 
 When will he come to me ? 
 Love be kind ! 
 Let her be fair, and let her be tall, 
 Let her laugh merrily ! 
 Love, be kind ! 
 
 Love comes to all ! 
 So she is fair to me, 
 Never mind! 
 Let her seem fair, and fair must befall ? 
 We shall live merrily ! 
 Love is blind ! 
 
 Love comes to all ! 
 
 Love, when you come to me, 
 Be not blind ! 
 Let her be fair, and let her be tall, 
 Let her laugh merrily ! 
 Love, be kind 1 
 
9 1 
 
 May-Day Song 
 
 Rainbow showers of sunlight falling 
 
 Tint the dew on every spray ! 
 Loud across the valley calling, 
 Hark the jolly cuckoo's lay !. 
 Children, bringing 
 Wreaths, are singing 
 " Come away ! " 
 
 Celandine the lane has spangled ; 
 Holly laughs no more at m,ay; 
 Rills, that icy fingers tangled, 
 Now like loosened ringlets stray I 
 Woods are crying, 
 Meads replying, 
 " Come away ! " 
 
 Holt and hurst, to spring awaking, 
 
 Birds in rapturous roundelay, 
 Sing you shame for money-making,, 
 Losing for the World To-day ! 
 Leave your labours, 
 Careful neighbours ! 
 Come away ! 
 
9 2 
 
 Empty Kisses 
 
 Ecrn. Kai iv Keveotat (fuXdfia&w aSea report?. 
 
 Theocritus (Idyll HI. 20) 
 
 Not barren are empty kisses, 
 
 But bearers of delight ; 
 They fill our dreams with blisses, 
 
 With dreams they fill the night, 
 
 Andromeda is sighing, 
 
 And Danae forlorn ; 
 And o'er the Eastern mountain 
 
 Aurora leads the morn ! 
 
 Lo! Atalanta races! 
 
 The magic apples roll ! 
 Her steps the maid retraces ; 
 
 Her lover gains the goal ! 
 
 'Neath friendly billows flying, 
 
 Runs laughing Arethuse ; 
 And faster than the fountain 
 
 The river-god pursues ! 
 
 Endymion, lapped in slumber, 
 
 Oblivious of the years, 
 No more the sheep shall number, 
 
 The pleasures nor the tears, — 
 
93 
 
 In haloed moonlight lying, 
 
 Asleep for evermore ; 
 With the wind upon the mountain,, 
 
 And the sea upon the shore. 
 
 Not barren are empty kisses, 
 
 But bearers of delight; 
 They fill our dreams with blisses^ 
 
 With dreams they fill the night.. 
 
94- 
 
 Butes 
 
 (Butes was one of the crew of the Argo. When the 
 vessel neared the Isle of the Sirens, the youth leaped over- 
 board to reach them. But Aphrodite, the Goddess of 
 ^Love, rescued him.) 
 
 Aphrodite, goddess fair, 
 
 Sprang from her Idalian height, 
 
 Cleft the startled evening air, 
 Left a glittering trail of light ; 
 
 .Like a star with sudden glare 
 Sliding down the sky at night ; 
 
 In her arms, divinely strong, 
 
 Bore to Lilybaeum's steep 
 Butes, from all Siren wrong 
 
 Lapped in magic slumber deep ! 
 There, the poets say in song, 
 
 She for love the youth doth keep ; 
 
 With her lips, divinely fair, 
 Pressing oft his mortal cheek ! 
 
 Ah ! how little doth he care ! 
 .Ne'er to rouse him will she seek; 
 
 Still he slumbers, unaware, 
 High op Lilybaeum's peak. 
 
95 
 
 L' Envoi 
 
 Now homes my Song from meadow, mount, and sea y 
 
 Sure of her refuge, circling back to thee, 
 
 To seek, with folded wings, the world apart, 
 
 Silent, at rest, the shelter of thine heart. 
 
 But, could my voice in true accord repeat' 
 
 Th? measure of thy love's melodious beat, 
 
 " The world would listen, then-" and kneel, as I 
 
 Have knelt and listened in my infancy, — 
 
 As now I kneel! Oh, stretch thine hands to bless 
 
 My toil, to pardon my unworthiness ! 
 
 Could life revert to those serener rays 
 
 Where slides no more the shadow of my days, 
 
 More patient should I prove; in deed and song 
 
 More humbly set to do thy love no wrong; 
 
 More mindful of thy patience and the springs 
 
 Of sympathy that lurfc in common things. 
 
 Tet must I cease from vain accusing tears, 
 
 That win no respite from relentless years ; 
 
 For well I know my grief is grief to thee ! 
 
 In silent homage let me bend the knee; 
 
 Immeasurably blest that present will 
 
 And living vqice are tjjinp^ to bless me still! 
 
 1896, 
 
&W JOHN LANE AM 
 
 CATALQCUE^PUB UGATIO NS 
 £Z>BELLES LF.TSTRF.fl gtfafaf^miT - 
 
iSg6. 
 
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 Vol. xviii. The Woman Who Didn't. By Victoria 
 CROSSE. [ Third Edition. 
 
 Vol. xix. The Three Impostors. By Arthur 
 Machen. 
 
THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 KEYNOTES SERIES.— continued. 
 
 "Vol. xx. Nobody's Fault. By Netta Syrett. 
 
 Vol. xxi. The British Barbarians. By Grant 
 Allen. [Second Edition. 
 
 Vol. xxii. In Homespun. By E. Nesbit. 
 
 Vol. xxiii. Platonic Affections. By John Smith. 
 
 Vol. xxiv. Nets for the Wind. By Una Taylor. 
 
 Vol. xxv. Where the Atlantic Meets the Land. 
 By Caldwell Lipsett. 
 (The following are in rapid preparation). 
 
 Vol. xxvi. In Scarlet and Grey. By the Hon. 
 Mrs. Arthur Henniker. (With a story, 
 "The Spectre of the Real," written in 
 collaboration with Thomas Hardy). 
 
 Yol. xxvu. Maris Stella. By Marie Clothilde 
 Balfour. 
 
 Vol. xxviii. Morrison's Heir. By Mabel E. Wotton. 
 
 Vol. xxix. Shapes in the Fire. By M. P. Shiel. 
 
 Vol. xxx. Ugly Idol. By Claud Nicholson. 
 
 LANE'S LIBRARY. 
 
 Each volume cr. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. 
 Vol. 1. March Hares. By George Forth. 
 Vol. 11. The Sentimental Sex. By Gertrude War- 
 den. 
 Vol. in. Gold. By Annie Luden. 
 Vol iv. The Sentimental Vikings. By R. V. Risley. 
 
 LEATHER (R. K.). 
 
 Verses. 250 copies, fcap. 8vo. 3s. net. 
 
 Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher. 
 
 LE C ALLIEN NE {RICHARD). 
 
 Prose Fancies, with a portrait of the Author by Wilson 
 Steer. Cr. 8vo., purple cloth. 5 s. net. [Fourth Edition. 
 Also a limited large paper edition. 12s. 6d. net. 
 
 The Book Bills of Narcissus. An account rendered 
 by Richard le Gallienne. With a new chapter 
 and a frontispiece, cr. ovo., purple cloth. 3s. (td. net. 
 
 [Third Edition. 
 Also 50 copies on large paper. 8vo. 10s. td. net. 
 
THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 LE GALLIENNE {RICHARD). 
 
 English Poems. Revised. Cr. 8vo., purple cloth. 4s. 6d. 
 
 net. [Fourth Edition. 
 
 George Meredith : Some Characteristics ; with a Biblio- 
 graphy (much enlarged) by John Lane, portrait, &c. 
 
 Cr. 8vo., purple cloth. $s. od. net. [Fourth Edition. 
 The Religion of a Literary Man. Cr. 8vo., purple 
 
 cloth. 3^. 6d. net. [Fifth Edition. 
 
 Also a. special rubricated edition on hand-made paper. 
 
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 Robert Louis Stevenson : An Elegy, and Other Poems, 
 
 mainly personal. With etched title-page by D. Y. 
 
 Cameron. Cr. 8vo., purple cloth. 4^. 6d. net. 
 Also 75 copies on large paper. 8vo. 12s. 6d. net. 
 Retrospective Reviews : A Literary Log, 1891-1895. 
 
 2 vols., cr. 8vo., purple cloth. 9^. net. 
 Prose Fancies. Second Series. Cr. 8vo., purple cloth. 
 
 5^ net. [In preparation. 
 
 See also Hazlitt, Liber Amoris, p. 6. 
 
 LUCAS {WINIFRED). 
 
 Units : Poems. Fcap. 8vo. 4s. 6d. net. 
 
 [In preparation. 
 LYNCH {HANNAH). 
 
 The Great Galeoto, and Folly or Saintliness. 
 Two Plays, from the Spanish of Jose Echegaray, 
 with an Introduction. Sm. 4to. $s. 6d. net. 
 
 MARZIALS {THEO.). 
 
 The Gallery of Pigeons, and Other Poems. Post 8vo. 
 4s. 6d. net. [Very few remain. 
 
 Transferred by the Author to the present Publisher. 
 
 THE MAYFAIR SET. 
 
 Each volume fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d. net. 
 Vol. 1. The Autobiography of a Boy. Passages 
 selected by his friend G. S. Street. With a 
 title-page designed by C W. Furse. 
 
 [Fifth Edition. 
 
 Vol. 11. The Joneses and the Asterisks : a Story in 
 
 Monologue by Gerald Campbell. With 
 
 title-page and six illustrations by F. H. 
 
 Townsend. [Second Edition. 
 
THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 THE MAYFAIR SET— continued. 
 
 Vol. in. Select Conversations with an Uncle, now 
 
 Extinct by H. G. Wells. With title-page 
 
 by F. H. Townsend. 
 Vol. iv. For Plain Women Only. By George Fleming. 
 
 With title-page by Patten Wilson. 
 Vol. v. The Feasts of Autolycus: the Diary of 
 
 a Greedy Woman. Edited by Elizabeth 
 
 Robins Pennell. With title-page by 
 
 Patten Wilson. 
 Vol. vi. Mrs. Albert Grundy : Observations in 
 
 Philistia. By Harold Frederic. With 
 
 title-page by Patten Wilson. 
 
 MEREDITH {GEORGE). 
 
 The First Published Portrait of this Author, 
 engraved on the wood by W. Biscombe Gardner, 
 after the painting by G. F. Watts. Proof copies on 
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 £l. is. net. 
 
 MEYNELL (MRS.) {ALICE C. THOMPSON). 
 
 Poems. Fcap. 8vo. 3s. 6d.net. [Third Edition. 
 
 A few of the 50 large paper copies (1st edition) remain. 
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 The Rhythm of Life, and Other Essays. Fcap. 8vo. 
 
 3s.6d.net. [Third Edition. 
 
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 MILLER (JOASgJIN). 
 
 The Building of the City Beautiful. Fcap. 8vo. 
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 MONKHOUSE (ALLAN). 
 
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12 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
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 Vol. in. Death, the Knight and the Lady. By H. 
 
 de Vere Stacpoole. 
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THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 13 
 
 PLARR (VICTOR). 
 
 In the Dorian Mood : Poems. With title-page designed 
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 RADFORD (DOLL IE). 
 
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 ROBERTSON (JOHN M.). 
 
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 Prince Otto : A Rendering in French by Egerton 
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 trations by Charles Robinson. Cr. 8vo. 5*. net. 
 
 [Second Edition, 
 
14 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
 STODDART (THOMAS TOD). 
 
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 STREET (G. S.). 
 
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 TENNYSON (FREDERICK). 
 
 Poems of the Day and Year. With a title-page by 
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 THIMM (CARL A.). 
 
 A Complete Bibliography of Fencing and Duelling, 
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 arranged chronologically according to Languages. Illus- 
 trated with numerous portraits of Ancient and Modern 
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 Portrait of the Author by Wilson Steer, and title- 
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 \jn preparation. 
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 [Fourth Edition. 
 Sister-Songs : An Offering to Two Sisters. With frontis- 
 piece, title-page, and cover design by Laurence 
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THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE IS 
 
 THOREAU {HENRY DAVID). 
 
 Poems of Nature. Selected and edited by Henry S. 
 Salt and Frank B. Sanborn. With a title-page 
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 WATSON (ROSAMUND MARRIOTT). 
 
 Vespertilia, and Other Poems. With title-page de- 
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 WATSON (WILLIAM). 
 
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l6 THE PUBLICATIONS OF JOHN LANE 
 
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 Excursions in Criticism : being some Prose Recrea- 
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 WHARTON (H. T). 
 
 Sappho. Memoir, text, selected renderings, and a literal 
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 [Third Edition. 
 
 The Yellow Book. 
 
 An Illustrated Quarterly. Pott 4I0, Js. net. 
 
 Volume I. April 1894, 272 pp., 15 Illustrations. [Out of print 
 Volume 11. July 1894, 364 pp., 23 Illustrations. 
 Volume III. October 1894, 280 pp., 15 Illustrations. 
 Volume IV. January 1895, 285 pp., 16 Illustrations. 
 Volume V. April 1895, 317 pp., 14 Illustrations. 
 Volume VI. July 1895, 335 pp., 16 Illustrations. 
 Volume vii. October, 1895, 3 zo PP> 20 Illustrations. 
 Volume vm. January 1896, 406 pp., 26 Illustrations. 
 Volume IX. April 1896, 256 pp., 17 Illustrations.