The Project Gutenberg eBook of Poems, by Richard Chenevix Trench.

Ah me! that by so frail and feeble thread
Our life is holden—that not life alone,
But all that life has won
May in an hour be gathered to the dead;
The slow additions that build up the mind,
The skill that by temptation we have bought
And suffering, and whatever has been taught
By lengthened years and converse with our kind,
That all may cease together—and the tree
Reared to its height by many a slow degree,
And by the dews the sunshine and the showers
Of many springs, an instant may lay low,
With all its living towers,
And all the fruit mature of growth and slow,
Which on the trees of wisdom leisurely must grow.

Alas! it is another thing to wail,
That when the foremost runners sink and fail,
They cannot pass their torch or forward place
To them that are behind them in their race,
But their extinguished torches must be laid
Together with them in the dust of death:
That when the wise and the true-hearted fade,
So little of themselves they can bequeath
To us, who yet are in the race of life,
For labour and for toil, for weariness and strife.

But from behind the veil,
Where they are entered who have gone before,
A solemn voice arrests my feeble wail—
“And has thy life such worthier aims, O man,
That thou shouldst grudge to give its little span
To truth and knowledge, and faith’s holy lore,
Because the places for the exercise
Of these may be withdrawn from mortal eyes.
Win truth, win goodness—for which man was made,
And fear not thou of these to be bereft,
Fear not that these shall in the dust be laid,
Or in corruption left,
Or be the grave-worm’s food.
Nothing is left or lost—nothing of good,
Or lovely; but whatever its first springs
Has drawn from God, returns to him again;
That only which ’twere misery to retain
Is taken from you, which to keep were loss;
Only the scum the refuse and the dross
Are borne away unto the grave of things,
Meanwhile whatever gifts from heav’n descend
Thither again have flowed,
To the receptacle of all things good,
From whom they come and unto whom they tend,
Who is the First and Last, the Author and the End.

And fear to sorrow with increase of grief,
When they who go before
Go furnished—or because their span was brief,
When in the acquist of what is life’s true gage,
Truth, knowledge, and that other worthiest lore,
They had fulfilled already a long age.
For doubt not but that in the worlds above
There must be other offices of love,
That other tasks and ministries there are,
Since it is promised that His servants, there
Shall serve him still. Therefore be strong, be strong,
Ye that remain, nor fruitlessly revolve,
Darkling, the riddles which ye cannot solve,
But do the works that unto you belong,
Believing that for every mystery,
For all the death the darkness and the curse
Of this dim universe,
Needs a solution full of love must be:
And that the way whereby ye may attain
Nearest to this, is not thro’ broodings vain
And half-rebellious—questionings of God,
But by a patient seeking to fulfil
The purpose of his everlasting will,
Treading the way which lowly men have trod.
Since it is ever they who are too proud
For this, that are the foremost and most loud
To judge his hidden judgments, these are still
The most perplexed and mazed at his mysterious will.”

When I have sometimes read of precious things,
The precious things of earth, which yet are vile,
Together heaped into the graves of kings,
Or wasted with them on their funeral pile,
Steeds arms and costly vestments and the dross
Which men call gold, feeding one ravenous pyre,
I have been little moved at all the loss
Of all the treasure which fond men admire.
But when I hear of some too early doom,
Snatching wit wisdom valour grace away,
Or our own loss has taught me what the tomb
May cover from us, then I feel and say
That earth has things whereon the grave may feed,
And feeding may make poor the world indeed.

What is the greatness of a fallen king?
This—that his fall avails not to abate
His spirit to a level with his fate,
Or inward fall along with it to bring;
That he disdains to stoop his former wing,
But keeps in exile and in want the law
Of kingship yet, and counts it scorn to draw
Comfort indign from any meaner thing.
Soul, that art fallen from thine ancient place,
Mayest thou in this mean world find nothing great,
Nor aught that shall the memories efface
Of that true greatness which was once thine own,
As knowing thou must keep thy kingly state,
If thou wouldst reascend thy kingly throne.

The strong in spiritual action need not look
Upon the new-found year as on a scroll,
The which their hands lack cunning to unroll,
But in it read, as in an open book,
All they are seeking—high resolve unshook
By circumstance’s unforeseen control,
Successful striving, and whate’er the soul
Has recognised for duty, not forsook.
But they whom many failures have made tame,
Question the future with that reverent fear,
Which best their need of heav’nly aid may shew.
Will it have purer thought, and loftier aim
Pursued more loftily? That a man might know
What thou wilt bring him, thou advancing year!

Thy gladness makes me thankful every way,
To look upon thy gladness makes me glad;
While yet in part it well might render sad
Us thinking that we too might sport and play,
And keep like thee continual holiday,
If we retained the things which once we had,
If we like happy Neophytes were clad
Still in baptismal stoles of white array.
And yet the gladness of the innocent child
Has not more matter for our thankful glee
Than the dim sorrows of the man defiled;
Since both in sealing one blest truth agree—
Joy is of God, but heaviness and care
Of our own hearts and what has harboured there.

An open wound that has been healed anew;
A stream dried up, that once again is fed
With waters making green its grassy bed;
A tree that withered was, but to the dew
Puts forth young leaves and blossoms fresh of hue,
Even from the branches which had seemed most dead;
A sea which having been disquieted,
Now stretches like a mirror calm and blue,—
Our hearts to each of these were likened well.
But Thou wert the physician and the balm;
Thou, Lord, the fountain, whence anew was filled
Their parchèd channel; Thou the dew that fell
On their dead branches; ’twas thy voice that stilled
The storm within—Thou didst command the calm.

A sound of many waters—now I know
To what was likened the large utterance sent
By Him who ’mid the golden lampads went:
Innumerable streams, above, below,
Some seen, some heard alone, with headlong flow
Come rushing; some with smooth and sheer descent,
Some dashed to foam and whiteness, but all blent
Into one mighty music. As I go,
The tumult of a boundless gladness fills
My bosom, and my spirit leaps and sings:
Sounds and sights are there of the ancient hills,
The eagle’s cry, or when the mountain flings
Mists from its brow, but none of all these things
Like the one voice of multitudinous rills.

What is thy worship but a vain pretence,
Spirit of Beauty, and a servile trade,
A poor and an unworthy traffic made
With the most sacred gifts of soul and sense;
If they who tend thine altars, gathering thence
No strength, no purity, may still remain
Selfish and dark, and from Life’s sordid stain
Find in their ministrations no defence?
Thus many times I ask, when aught of mean
Or sensual has been brought unto mine ear,
Of them whose calling high is to insphere
Eternal Beauty in forms of human art—
Vexed that my soul should ever moved have been
By that which has such feigning at the heart.

Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent;
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,
In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free
From outward hindrance or impediment.
For presently this hindrance thou shalt find
That without which all goodness were a task
So slight, that Virtue never could grow strong:
And wouldst thou do one duty to His mind,
The Imposer’s—over-burdened thou shalt ask,
And own thy need of grace to help, ere long.

No harsh transitions Nature knows,
No dreary spaces intervene;
Her work in silence forward goes,
And rather felt than seen.

For where the watcher, that with eye
Turned eastward, yet could ever say
When the faint glooming in the sky
First lightened into day?

Or maiden, by an opening flower
That many a summer morn has stood,
Could fix upon the very hour
It ceased to be a bud?

The rainbow colours mix and blend
Each with the other, until none
Can tell where fainter hues had end,
And deeper tints begun.

But only doth this much appear—
That the pale hues are deeper grown;
The day has broken bright and clear;
The bud is fully blown.

Dear child, and happy shalt thou be,
If from this hour, with just increase
All good things shall grow up in thee,
By such unmarked degrees.

If there shall be no dreary space
Between thy present self and past,
No dreary miserable place
With spectral shapes aghast;

But the full graces of thy prime
Shall, in their weak beginnings, be
Lost in an unremembered time
Of holy infancy.

This blessing is the first and best;
Yet has not prayer been made in vain
For them, tho’ not so amply blest,
The lost and found again.

And shouldest thou, alas! forbear
To choose the better, nobler lot,
Yet may we not esteem our prayer
Unheard or heeded not;

If after many a wandering,
And many a devious pathway trod;
If having known that bitter thing,
To leave the Lord thy God,

It yet shall be, that thou at last,
Altho’ thy noon be lost, return
To bind life’s eve in union fast
To this, its blessed morn.

As he who finds one flower sharp thorns among,
Plucks it, and highly prizes, though before
Careless regard on thousands he has flung,
As fair as this or more;

Not otherwise perhaps this argument
Won from me, where I found it, such regard,
That I esteemed no labour thereon spent
As wearisome or hard.

In huge and antique volume did it lie,
That by two solemn clasps was duly bound,
As neither to be opened or laid by
But with due thought profound.

There fixèd thought to questions did I lend,
Which hover on the bounds of mortal ken,
And have perplexed, and will unto the end
Perplex the brains of men;

Of what is time, and what eternity,
Of all that seems and is not—forms of things—
Till my tired spirit followed painfully
On flagging weary wings.

So that I welcomed this one resting-place,
Pleased as a bird, that when its forces fail,
Lights panting in the ocean’s middle space
Upon a sunny sail.

And now the grace of fiction, which has power
To render things impossible believed,
And win them with the credence of an hour
To be for truths received—

That grace must help me, as it only can,
Winning such transient credence, while I tell
What to a cloistered solitary man
In ancient times befel.

Him little might our earthly grandeur feed,
Who to the uttermost was vowed to be
A follower of his Master’s barest need,
In holy poverty.

Nor might he know the gentle mutual strife
Of home affections, which can more or less
Temper with sweet the bitter of our life,
And lighten its distress.

Yet we should err to deem that he was left
To bear alone our being’s lonely weight,
Or that his soul was vacant and bereft
Of pomp and inward state:

Morn, when before the sun his orb unshrouds,
Swift as a beacon torch the light has sped,
Kindling the dusky summits of the clouds
Each to a fiery red—

The slanted columns of the noonday light,
Let down into the bosom of the hills,
Or sunset, that with golden vapour bright
The purple mountains fills—

These made him say,—if God has so arrayed
A fading world that quickly passes by,
Such rich provision of delight was made
For every human eye,

What shall the eyes that wait for him survey,
Where his own presence gloriously appears
In worlds that were not founded for a day,
But for eternal years?

And if at seasons this world’s undelight
Oppressed him, or the hollow at its heart,
One glance at those enduring mansions bright
Made gloomier thoughts depart;

Till many times the sweetness of the thought
Of an eternal country—where it lies
Removed from care and mortal anguish, brought
Sweet tears into his eyes.

Thus, not unsolaced, he longwhile abode,
Filling all dreary melancholy time,
And empty spaces of the heart with God,
And with this hope sublime:

Even thus he lived, with little joy or pain,
Drawn thro’ the channels by which men receive—
Most men receive the things which for the main
Make them rejoice or grieve.

But for delight—on spiritual gladness fed,
And obvious to temptations of like kind;
One such, from out his very gladness bred,
It was his lot to find.

When first it came, he lightly put it by,
But it returned again to him ere long,
And ever having got some new ally,
And every time more strong—

A little worm that gnawed the life away
Of a tall plant, the canker of its root,
Or like as when, from some small speck, decay
Spreads o’er a beauteous fruit.

For still the doubt came back—can God provide
For the large heart of man what shall not pall,
Nor thro’ eternal ages’ endless tide
On tired spirits fall.

Here but one look tow’rd heavèn will repress
The crushing weight of undelightful care;
But what were there beyond, if weariness
Should ever enter there?

Yet do not sweetest things here soonest cloy?
Satiety the life of joy would kill,
If sweet with bitter, pleasure with annoy
Were not attempered still.

This mood endured, till every act of love,
Vigils of praise and prayer, and midnight choir,
All shadows of the service done above,
And which, while his desire,

And while his hope was heav’nward, he had loved,
As helps to disengage him from the chain
That fastens unto earth—all these now proved
Most burdensome and vain.

What must have been the issue of that mood
It were a thing to fear—but that one day,
Upon the limits of an ancient wood,
His thoughts him led astray.

Darkling he went, nor once applied his ear,
On a loud sea of agitations thrown,
Nature’s low tones and harmonies to hear,
Heard by the calm alone.

The merry chirrup of the grasshopper,
Sporting among the roots of withered grass,
The dry leaf rustling to the wind’s light stir
Did each unnoted pass:

He, walking in a trance of selfish care,
Not once observed the beauty shed around,
The blue above, the music in the air,
The flowers upon the ground;

Till from the centre of that forest dim
Came to him such sweet singing of a bird,
As sweet in very truth, then seemed to him
The sweetest ever heard.

That lodestar drew him onward inward still,
Deeper than where the village children stray,
Deeper than where the woodman’s glittering bill
Lops the large boughs away—

Into a central space of glimmering shade,
Where hardly might the struggling sunbeams pass,
Which a faint lattice-work of light had made
Upon the long lank grass.

He did not sit, but stood and listened there,
And to him listening the time seemed not long,
While that sweet bird above him filled the air
With its melodious song.

He heard not, saw not, felt not aught beside,
Through the wide worlds of pleasure and of pain,
Save the full flowing and the ample tide
Of that celestial strain.

As tho’ a bird of Paradise should light
A moment on a twig of this bleak earth,
And singing songs of Paradise invite
All hearts to holy mirth,

And then take wing to Paradise again,
Leaving all listening spirits raised above
The toil of earth the trouble and the pain,
And melted all in love:

Such spiritual might, such power was in the sound,
But when it ceased sweet music to unlock,
The spell that held him sense and spirit-bound
Dissolved with a slight shock.

All things around were as they were before—
The trees and the blue sky, and sunshine bright,
Painting the pale and leafstrewn forest-floor
With patches of faint light.

But as when music doth no longer thrill,
Light shudderings yet along the chords will run,
Or the heart vibrates tremulously still,
After its prayer be done,

So his heart fluttered all the way he went,
Listening each moment for the vesper bell;
For a long hour he deemed he must have spent
In that untrodden dell.

And once it seemed that something new or strange
Had passed upon the flowers the trees the ground,
Some slight but unintelligible change
On every thing around:

Such change, where all things undisturbed remain,
As only to the eye of him appears,
Who absent long, at length returns again—
The silent work of years.

And ever grew upon him more and more
Fresh marvel—for, unrecognised of all,
He stood a stranger at the convent door—
New faces filled the hall.

Yet was it long ere he received the whole
Of that strange wonder—how, while he had stood
Lost in deep gladness of his inmost soul,
Far hidden in that wood,

A generation had gone down unseen
Under the thin partition which is spread—
The thin partition of thin earth—between
The living and the dead.

Nor did he many days to earth belong,
For like a pent-up stream, released again,
The years arrested by the strength of song,
Came down on him amain;

Sudden as a dissolving thaw in spring;
Gentle as when upon the first warm day,
Which sunny April in its train may bring,
The snow melts all away.

They placed him in his former cell, and there
Watched him departing; what few words he said
Were of calm peace and gladness, with one care
Mingled—one only dread—

Lest an eternity should not suffice
To take the measure and the breadth and height
Of what there is reserved in Paradise—
Its ever-new delight.

III.

IV.

V.

SONNET.

SONNET.

NEW YEAR’S EVE.

TO MY CHILD.

SONNET.

SONNET. IN A PASS OF BAVARIA BETWEEN THE WALCHEN AND THE WALDENSEE. “His voice was as the sound of many waters.”

SONNET.

SONNET.

TO MY GOD-CHILD, ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.

THE MONK AND BIRD.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

XI.

XII.

XIII.

XIV.

XV.

XVI.

XVII.

XVIII.

XIX.

XX.

XXI.

XXII.

XXIII.

XXIV.

XXV.

XXVI.

XXVII.

XXVIII.

XXIX.

XXX.

XXXI.

XXXII.

XXXIII.

XXXIV.

XXXV.

XXXVI.

XXXVII.

XXXVIII.

XXXIX.

XL.

XLI.

XLII.

XLIII.

XLIV.

XLV.

XLVI.

XLVII.

XLVIII.

XLIX.

L.

LI.

SONNET.

IN A PASS OF BAVARIA BETWEEN THE WALCHEN AND THE WALDENSEE.

“His voice was as the sound of many waters.”

TO MY GOD-CHILD,

ON THE DAY OF HIS BAPTISM.