Poems

What, art thou done already? Thy tale is like
A day unsealed with sunset. What though dusk?
A dusky rod of iron hath power to draw
The lightnings from their heaven to itself.
The richest wage you can pay love is—love.

WALTER.

Then close the tale thyself, I drop the mask;
I am the sun-tanned Page; the Lady, thou!
I take thy hand, it trembles in my grasp;
I look in thy face and see no frown in it.
O may my spirit on hope's ladder climb
From hungry nothing up to star-packed space,
Thence strain on tip-toe to thy love beyond—
The only heaven I ask!

LADY.

My God! 'tis hard!
When I was all in leaf the frost winds came,
And now, when o'er me runs the summer's breath,
It waves but iron boughs.

WALTER.

What dost thou murmur?
Thy cheeks burn mad as mine. O untouched lips!
I see them as a glorious rebel sees
A crown within his reach. I'll taste their bliss
Although the price be death——

LADY (springing up).

Walter! beware!
These tell-tale heavens are list'ning earnestly.
O Sir! within a month my bridal bells
Will make a village glad. The fainting Earth
Is bleeding at her million golden veins,
And by her blood I'm bought. The sun shall see
A pale bride wedded to grey hair, and eyes
Of cold and cruel blue; and in the spring
A grave with daisies on it. [A pause.
O my friend!
We twain have met like ships upon the sea,
Who hold an hour's converse, so short, so sweet;
One little hour! and then, away they speed
On lonely paths, through mist, and cloud, and foam,
To meet no more. We have been foolish, Walter!
I would to God that I had never known
This secret of thy heart, or else had met thee
Years before this. I bear a heavy doom.
If thy rich heart is like a palace shattered,
Stand up amid the ruins of thy heart,
And with a calm brow front the solemn stars.
[Lady pauses; Walter remains silent.
'Tis four o'clock already. She, the moon,
Has climbed the blue steep of the eastern sky,
And sits and tarries for the coming night.
So let thy soul be up and ready armed,
In waiting till occasion comes like night;
As night to moons to souls occasion comes.
I am thine elder, Walter! in the heart,
I read thy future like an open book:
I see thou shalt have grief; I also see
Thy grief's edge blunted on the iron world.
Be brave and strong through all thy wrestling years,
A brave soul is a thing which all things serve;
When the great Corsican from Elba came,
The soldiers sent to take him, bound or dead,
Were struck to statues by his kingly eyes:
He spoke—they broke their ranks, they clasped his knees,
With tears along a cheering road of triumph
They bore him to a throne. Know when to die!
Perform thy work and straight return to God.
Oh! there are men who linger on the stage
To gather crumbs and fragments of applause
When they should sleep in earth—who, like the moon,
Have brightened up some little night of time,
And 'stead of setting when their light is worn,
Still linger, like its blank and beamless orb,
When daylight fills the sky. But I must go.
Nay, nay, I go alone! Yet one word more,—
Strive for the Poet's crown, but ne'er forget
How poor are fancy's blooms to thoughtful fruits;
That gold and crimson mornings, though more bright
Than soft blue days, are scarcely half their worth.
Walter, farewell! the world shall hear of thee.
[Lady still lingers.
I have a strange sweet thought. I do believe
I shall be dead in spring, and that the soul
Which animates and doth inform these limbs
Will pass into the daisies of my grave:
If memory shall ever lead thee there,
Through daisies I'll look up into thy face
And feel a dim sweet joy; and if they move,
As in a little wind, thou'lt know 't is I. [Lady goes.

WALTER (after a long interval, looking up).

God! what a light has passed away from earth
Since my last look! How hideous this night!
How beautiful the yesterday that stood
Over me like a rainbow! I am alone.
The past is past. I see the future stretch
All dark and barren as a rainy sea.

SCENE V.

Walter, wandering down a rural lane. Evening of the same day as Scene IV.

WALTER.

Sunset is burning like the seal of God
Upon the close of day.—This very hour
Night mounts her chariot in the eastern glooms
To chase the flying Sun, whose flight has left
Footprints of glory in the clouded west:
Swift is she haled by wingèd swimming steeds,
Whose cloudy manes are wet with heavy dews,
And dews are drizzling from her chariot wheels.
Soft in her lap lies drowsy-lidded Sleep,
Brainful of dreams, as summer hive with bees;
And round her in the pale and spectral light
Flock bats and grisly owls on noiseless wings.
The flying sun goes down the burning west,
Vast night comes noiseless up the eastern slope,
And so the eternal chase goes round the world.

Unrest! unrest! The passion-panting sea
Watches the unveiled beauty of the stars
Like a great hungry soul. The unquiet clouds
Break and dissolve, then gather in a mass,
And float like mighty icebergs through the blue.
Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth;
Heaven yearns in stars. Down comes the frantic rain;
We hear the wail of the remorseful winds
In their strange penance. And this wretched orb
Knows not the taste of rest; a maniac world,
Homeless and sobbing through the deep she goes.
[A Child runs past; Walter looks after her.
O thou bright thing, fresh from the hand of God,
The motions of thy dancing limbs are swayed
By the unceasing music of thy being!
Nearer I seem to God when looking on thee.
'Tis ages since he made his younger star.
His hand was on thee as 'twere yesterday,
Thou later Revelation! Silver Stream,
Breaking with laughter from the lake divine
Whence all things flow! O bright and singing babe!
What wilt thou be hereafter?—Why should man
Perpetuate this round of misery
When he has in his hand the power to close it?
Let there be no warm hearts, no love on earth.
No Love! No Love! Love bringeth wretchedness.
No holy marriage. No sweet infant smiles.
No mother's bending o'er the innocent sleep
With unvoiced prayers and with happy tears.
Let the whole race die out, and with a stroke,
A master-stroke, at once cheat Death and Hell
Of half of their enormous revenues.

[Walter approaches a cottage; a peasant sitting at the door.
One of my peasants. 'Tis a fair eve.

PEASANT.

Ay, Master!
How sweet the smell of beans upon the air;
The wheat is earing fairly. We have reason
For thankfulness to God.

WALTER (looking upward).

We have great reason;
For He provides a balm for all our woes.
He has made Death. Thrice blessed be His name!

PEASANT.

He has made Heaven——

WALTER.

To yawn eternities.
Did I say death? O God! there is no death.
When our eyes close, we only pass one stage
Of our long being.—Dost thou wish to die?

PEASANT.

I trust in God to live for many years,
Although with a worn frame and with a heart
Somewhat the worse for wear.

WALTER.

O fool! fool! fool!
These hands are brown with toil; that brow is seamed,
Still must you sweat and swelter in the sun,
And trudge, with feet benumbed, the winter's snow,
Nor intermission have until the end.
Thou canst not draw down fame upon thy head,
And yet would cling to life! I'll not believe it;
The faces of all things belie their hearts,
Each man's as weary of his life as I.
This anguish'd earth shines on the moon—a moon.
The moon hides with a cloak of tender light
A scarr'd heart fed upon by hungry fires.
Black is this world, but blacker is the next;
There is no rest for any living soul:
We are immortals—and must bear with us
Through all eternity this hateful being;
Restlessly flitting from pure star to star,
The memory of our sins, deceits, and crimes,
Eating into us like a poisoned robe.
Yet thou canst wear content upon thy face
And talk of thankfulness! O die, man, die!
Get underneath the earth for very shame.
[During this speech the Child draws near; at its close her Father presents her to Walter.
Is this thy answer? [Looks at her earnestly.
O my worthy friend,
I lost a world to-day and shed no tear;
Now I could weep for thee. Sweet sinless one!
My heart is weak as a great globe, all sea.
It finds no shore to break on but thyself:
So let it break.
[He hides his face in his hands, the Child looking fearfully up at him.

SCENE VI.

A Room in London. Walter reading from a manuscript.

My head is grey, my blood is young,
Red-leaping in my veins,
The spring doth stir my spirit yet
To seek the cloistered violet,
The primrose in the lanes.
In heart I am a very boy,
Haunting the woods, the waterfalls,
The ivies on grey castle-walls;
Weeping in silent joy
When the broad sun goes down the west,
Or trembling o'er a sparrow's nest.

The world might laugh were I to tell
What most my old age cheers,—
Mem'ries of stars and crescent moons,
Of nutting strolls through autumn noons,
Rainbows 'mong April's tears.
But chief, to live that hour again,
When first I stood on sea-beach old,
First heard the voice, first saw out-rolled
The glory of the main.
Many rich draughts hath Memory,
The Soul's cup-bearer, brought to me.

I saw a garden in my strolls,
A lovely place, I ween,
With rows of vermeil-blossomed trees,
With flowers, with slumb'rous haunts of bees,
With summer-house of green.
A peacock perched upon a dial,
In the sun's face he did unclose
His train superb with eyes and glows,
To dare the sun to trial.
A child sat in a shady place,
A shower of ringlets round her face.

She sat on shaven plot of grass,
With earnest face, and weaving
Lilies white and freakèd pansies
Into quaint delicious fancies,
Then, on a sudden leaving
Her floral wreath, she would upspring
With silver shouts and ardent eyes,
To chase the yellow butterflies,
Making the garden ring;
Then gravely pace the scented walk,
Soothing her doll with childish talk.
And being, as I said before,
An old man who could find
A boundless joy beneath the skies,
And in the light of human eyes,
And in the blowing wind,
There, daily were my footsteps turned,
Through the long spring, until the peach
Was drooping full-juiced in my reach.—
Each day my old heart yearned
To look upon that child so fair,
That infant in her golden hair.

In this green lovely world of ours
I have had many pets,
Two are still leaping in the sun,
Three are married; that dearest one
Is 'neath the violets.
I gazèd till my heart grew wild,
To fold her in my warm caresses,
Clasp her showers of golden tresses,—
Oh, dreamy-eyèd child!
O Child of Beauty! still thou art
A sunbeam in this lonely heart.

When autumn eves grew chill and rainy,
England left I for the Ganges;
I couched 'mong groves of cedar-trees,
Blue lakes, and slumb'rous palaces,
Crossed the snows of mountain-ranges,
Watched the set of old Orion,
Saw wild flocks and wild-eyed shepherds,
Princes charioted by leopards,
In the desert met the lion,
The mad sun above us glaring,—
Child! for thee I still was caring.

Home returned from realms barbaric,
By the shores of Loch Lubnaig,
A dear friend and I were walking
('Twas the Sabbath), we were talking
Of dreams and feelings vague;
We pausèd by a place of graves,
Scarcely a word was 'twixt us given,
Silent the earth, silent the heaven,
No murmur of the waves,
The awèd Loch lay black and still
In the black shadow of the hill.

We loosed the gate and wandered in,
When the sun eternal
Was sudden blanched with amethyst,
As if a thick and purple mist
Dusked his brows supernal.
Soon like a god in mortal throes,
City, hill, and sea, he dips
In the death-hues of eclipse;
Mightier his anguish grows,
Till he hung black, with ring intense,
The wreck of his magnificence.
Above the earth's cold face he hung
With a pale ring of glory,
Like that which cunning limners paint
Around the forehead of a saint,
Or brow of martyr hoary.
And sitting there I could but choose,—
That blind and stricken sun aboon,
Stars shuddering through the ghostly noon,
'Mong the thick-falling dews,—
To tell, with features pale and wild,
About that Garden and that Child.

When moons had waxed and waned, I stood
Beside the garden gate,
The Peacock's dial was overthrown,
The walks with moss were overgrown,
Her bower was desolate.
Gazing in utter misery
Upon that sad and silent place,
A woman came with mournful face,
And thus she said to me,—
"Those trees, as they were human souls,
All withered at the death-bell knolls."

I turned and asked her of the child.
"She is gone hence," quoth she,
"To be with Christ in Paradise.
Oh, sir! I stilled her infant cries,
I nursed her on my knee.
Though we were ever at her side,
And saw life fading in her cheek,
She knew us not, nor did she speak,
Till just before she died;
In the wild heart of that eclipse,
These words came through her wasted lips:—

'The callow young were huddling in the nests,
The marigold was burning in the marsh,
Like a thing dipt in sunset, when He came.

My blood went up to meet Him on my face,
Glad as a child that hears its father's step,
And runs to meet him at the open porch.

I gave Him all my being, like a flower
That flings its perfume on a vagrant breeze;
A breeze that wanders on and heeds it not.

His scorn is lying on my heart like snow,
My eyes are weary, and I fain would sleep;
The quietest sleep is underneath the ground.

Are ye around me, friends? I cannot see,
I cannot hear the voices that I love,
I lift my hands to you from out the night!

Methought I felt a tear upon my cheek;
Weep not, my mother! It is time to rest,
And I am very weary; so, good night!'

"My heart is in the grave with her,
The family went abroad;
Last autumn you might see the fruits,
Neglected, rot round the tree-roots;
This spring no leaves they shewed.
I sometimes fear my brain is crost:
Around this place, the churchyard yonder,
All day, all night, I silent wander,
As woeful as a ghost——
God take me to His gracious keeping,
But this old man is wildly weeping!"

That night the sky was heaped with clouds;
Through one blue gulf profound,
Begirt with many a cloudy crag,
The moon came rushing like a stag,
And one star like a hound.
Wearily the chase I eyed,
Wearily I saw the Dawn's
Feet sheening o'er the dewy lawns.
O God! that I had died.
My heart's red tendrils were all torn
And bleeding on that summer morn.

WALTER (after a long silence, speaking abstractedly, and with frequent pauses).

Twice hath the windy Summer made a noise
Of leaves o'er all the land from sea to sea,
And still that Child's face sleeps within my heart
Like a young sunbeam in a gloomy wood,
Making the darkness smile—I almost smile
At the strange fancies I have girt her with;
The garden, peacock, and the black eclipse,
The still old graveyard 'mong the dreary hills,
Grey mourners round it—I wonder if she's dead?
She was too fair for earth. Ah! she would die
Like music, sunbeams, and the pallid flowers
That spring on Winter's corse—I saw those graves
With Him who is no more. They are all dead,
The beings whom I loved, and I am sad,
But would not change my sadness for a life
Without a fissure running through its joy.
This very hour a suite of sumptuous rooms
O'erflows with music like a cup with wine;
Outside, the night is weeping like a girl
At her seducer's door, and still the rooms
Run o'er with music, careless of her woe.
I would not have my heart thus. This poor rhyme
Is but an adumbration of my life,
My misery tricked out in a quaint disguise.
Oh, it did happen on a summer day
When I was playing unawares with flowers,
That happiness shot past me like a planet,
And I was barren left!

Enter Edward, unobserved.

EDWARD.

Walter's love-sick for Fame:
A haughty mistress! How this mad old world
Reels to its burning grave, shouting forth names,
Like a wild drunkard at his frenzy's height,
And they who bear them deem such shoutings Fame,
And, smiling, die content. What is thy thought?

WALTER.

'Tis this, a sad one:—Though our beings point
Upward, like prayers or quick spires of flame,
We soon lose interest in this breathing world.
Joy palls from taste to taste, until we yawn
In Pleasure's glowing face. When first we love,
Our souls are clad with joy, as if a tree,
All winter-bare, had on a sudden leapt
To a full load of blooms; next time 'tis nought.
Great weariness doth feed upon the soul;
I sometimes think the highest-blest in heaven
Will weary 'mong its flowers. As for myself,
There's nothing new between me and the grave
But the cold feel of Death.

EDWARD.

Watch well thy heart!
It is, methinks, an eager shaking star,
Not a calm steady planet.

WALTER.

I love thee much,
But thou art all unlike the glorious guide
Of my proud boyhood. Oh, he led me up,
As Hesper, large and brilliant, leads the night!
Our pulses beat together, and our beings
Mixed like two voices in one perfect tune,
And his the richest voice. He loved all things,
From God to foam-bells dancing down a stream,
With a most equal love. Thou mock'st at much;
And he who sneers at any living hope
Or aspiration of a human heart,
Is just so many stages less than God,
That universal and all-sided Love.
I'm wretched, Edward! to the very heart;
I see an unreached heaven of young desire
Shine through my hopeless tears. My drooping sails
Flap idly 'gainst the mast of my intent.
I rot upon the waters when my prow
Should grate the golden isles.

EDWARD.

What wouldst thou do?
Thy brain did teem with vapours wild and vast.

WALTER.

But since my younger and my hotter days
(As nebula condenses to an orb),
These vapours gathered to one shining hope,
Sole-hanging in my sky.

EDWARD.

What hope is that?

WALTER.

To set this Age to music—The great work
Before the Poet now—I do believe
When it is fully sung, its great complaint,
Its hope, its yearning, told to earth and heaven,
Our troubled age shall pass, as doth a day
That leaves the west all crimson with the promise
Of the diviner morrow, which even then
Is hurrying up the world's great side with light.
Father! if I should live to see that morn,
Let me go upward, like a lark, to sing
One song in the dawning!

EDWARD.

Ah, my ardent friend!
You need not tinker at this leaking world,
'Tis ruined past all cure.

WALTER.

Edward, for shame!
Not on a path of reprobation runs
The trembling earth. God's eye doth follow her
With far more love than doth her maid, the moon.
Speak no harsh words of Earth, she is our mother,
And few of us, her sons, who have not added
A wrinkle to her brow. She gave us birth,
We drew our nurture from her ample breast,
And there is coming, for us both, an hour
When we shall pray that she will ope her arms
And take us back again. Oh, I would pledge
My heart, my blood, my brain, to ease the earth
Of but one single pang!

EDWARD.

So would not I.
Because the pangs of earth shall ne'er be eased.
We sleep on velvets now, instead of leaves;
The land is covered with a net of iron,
Upon whose spider-like, far-stretching lines,
The trains are rushing, and the peevish sea
Frets 'gainst the bulging bosoms of the ships,
Whose keels have waked it from its hour's repose.
Walter! this height of civilisation's tide
Measures our wrong. We've made the immortal Soul
Slave to the Body. 'Tis the Soul has wrought
And laid the iron roads, evoked a power
Next mightiest to God, to drive the trains
That bring the country butter up to town;
Has drawn the terrible lightning from its cloud,
And tamed it to an eager Mercury,
Running with messages of news and gain;
And still the Soul is tasked to harder work,
For Paradise, according to the world,
Is scarce a league a-head.

WALTER.

The man I loved
Wrought this complaint of thine into a song,
Which I sung long ago.

EDWARD.

We must reverse
The plans of ages. Let the Body sweat,
So that the soul be calm, why should it work?
Say, had I spent the pith of half my life,
And made me master of our English law,
What gain had I on resurrection morn,
But such as hath the body of a clown,
That it could turn a summerset on earth?
A single soul is richer than all worlds,
Its acts are only shadows of itself,
And oft its wondrous wealth is all unknown;
'Tis like a mountain-range, whose rugged sides
Feed starveling flocks of sheep; pierce the bare sides,
And they ooze plenteous gold. We must go down
And work our souls like mines, make books our lamps,
Not shrines to worship at, nor heed the world—
Let it go roaring past. You sigh for Fame;
Would serve as long as Jacob for his love,
So you might win her. Spirits calm and still
Are high above your order, as the stars
Sit large and tranquil o'er the restless clouds
That weep and lighten, pelt the earth with hail,
And fret themselves away. The truly great
Rest in the knowledge of their own deserts,
Nor seek the confirmation of the world.
Wouldst thou be calm and still?

WALTER.

I'd be as lieve
A minnow to leviathan, that draws
A furrow like a ship. Away! away!
You'd make the world a very oyster-bed.
I'd rather be the glad, bright-leaping foam,
Than the smooth sluggish sea. O let me live
To love and flush and thrill—or let me die!

EDWARD.

And yet, what weariness was on your tongue
An hour ago!—you shall be wearier yet.

SCENE VII.

A Balcony overlooking the Sea—Edward and Walter seated.

WALTER.

The lark is singing in the blinding sky,
Hedges are white with May. The bridegroom sea
Is toying with the shore, his wedded bride,
And, in the fulness of his marriage joy,
He decorates her tawny brow with shells,
Retires a space, to see how fair she looks,
Then proud, runs up to kiss her. All is fair—
All glad, from grass to sun! Yet more I love
Than this, the shrinking day, that sometimes comes
In Winter's front, so fair 'mong its dark peers,
It seems a straggler from the files of June,
Which in its wanderings had lost its wits,
And half its beauty; and, when it returned,
Finding its old companions gone away,
It joined November's troop, then marching past;
And so the frail thing comes, and greets the world
With a thin crazy smile, then bursts in tears,
And all the while it holds within its hand
A few half-withered flowers. I love and pity it!

EDWARD.

Air is like Happiness or Poetry.
We see it in the glorious roof of day,
We feel it lift the down upon the cheek,
We hear it when it sways the heavy woods,
We close our hand on 't—and we have it not.

WALTER.

I'd be above all things the summer wind
Blowing across a kingdom, rich with alms
From ev'ry flower and forest, ruffling oft
The sea to transient wrinkles in the sun,
Where ev'ry wrinkle is a flash of light.

EDWARD.

Like God, I would pervade Humanity,
From bridegroom dreaming on his marriage morn,
To a wild wretch tied on the farthest bough
Of oak that roars on edge of an abyss,
The while the desperate wind with all its strength
Strains the whole night to drive it down the gulf,
Which like a beast gapes wide for man and tree.
I'd creep into the lost and ruined hearts
Of sinful women dying in the streets,—
Of pinioned men, their necks upon the block,
Axe gleaming in the air.

WALTER.

Away, away!
Break not, my Edward, this consummate hour;
For very oft within the year that's past
I've fought against thy drifts of wintry thought
Till they put out my fires, and I have lain,
A volcano choked with snow. Now let me rest!
If I should wear a rose but once in life,
You surely would not tear it leaf from leaf,
And trample all its sweetness in the dust!
Thy dreary thoughts will make my festal heart
As empty and as desolate's a church
When worshippers are gone and night comes down.
Spare me this happy hour, and let me rest!

EDWARD.

The banquet you do set before your joys
Is surely but indifferently served,
When they so readily vacate their seats.

WALTER (abstractedly).

Would I could raise the dead!
I am as happy as the singing heavens—
There was one very dear to me that died,
With heart as vacant as a last-year's nest.
Oh, could I bring her back, I'd empty mine,
And brim hers with my joy!—enough for both.

EDWARD (after a pause).

About This Book

SCENE V.

SCENE VI.

SCENE VII.