{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_11064/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_11064","id":"gutenberg_11064","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11064","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry","English poetry -- 19th century"],"text":"Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk\n\n\n\n\nANDROMEDA AND OTHER POEMS\n\n\n\n\nContents:\n\n   Andromeda\n   Hypotheses Hypochondriacae\n   Trehill Well\n   In an Illuminated Missal\n   The Weird Lady\n   Palinodia\n   A Hope\n   The Poetry of a Root Crop\n   Child Ballad\n   Airly Beacon\n   Sappho\n   The Bad Squire\n   Scotch Song\n   The Young Knight\n   A New Forest Ballad\n   The Red King\n   The Outlaw\n   Sing Heigh-ho!\n   A March\n   A Lament\n   The Night Bird\n   The Dead Church\n   A Parable from Liebig\n   The Starlings\n   Old and New\n   The Watchman\n   The World's Age\n   The Sands of Dee\n   The Tide Rock\n   Elegiacs\n   Dartside\n   My Hunting Song\n   Alton Locke's Song\n   The Day of the Lord\n   A Christmas Carol\n   The Oubit\n   The Three Fishers\n   Sonnet\n   Margaret to Dolcino\n   Dolcino to Margaret\n   The Ugly Princess\n   Sonnet\n   The Swan-neck\n   A Thought from the Rhine\n   The Longbeards' Saga.  A.D. 400\n   Saint Maura.  A.D. 304\n   On the Death of a Certain Journal\n   Down to the Mothers\n   To Miss Mitford\n   Ballad of Earl Haldan's Daughter\n   Frank Leigh's Song.  A.D. 1586\n   Ode to the North-east Wind\n   A Farewell\n   To G. A. G.\n   The South Wind\n   The Invitation\n   The Find\n   Fishing Song\n   The Last Buccaneer\n   The Knight's Return\n   Pen-y-gwrydd\n   Ode\n   Songs from 'The Water-babies'\n      The Tide River\n      Young and Old\n      The Summer Sea\n      My Little Doll\n   The Knight's Leap\n   The Song of the Little Baltung.  A.D. 395\n   On the Death of Leopold, King of the Belgians\n   Easter Week\n   Drifting Away\n   Christmas Day\n   September 21, 1870\n   The Mango-tree\n   The Priest's Heart\n   'Qu'est Qu'il Dit'\n   The Legend of La Brea\n   Hymn\n   The Delectable Day\n   Juventus Mundi\n   Valentine's Day\n   Ballad\n   Martin Lightfoot's Song\n\n\n\nANDROMEDA\n\n\n\nOver the sea, past Crete, on the Syrian shore to the southward,\nDwells in the well-tilled lowland a dark-haired AEthiop people,\nSkilful with needle and loom, and the arts of the dyer and carver,\nSkilful, but feeble of heart; for they know not the lords of Olympus,\nLovers of men; neither broad-browed Zeus, nor Pallas Athene,\nTeacher of wisdom to heroes, bestower of might in the battle;\nShare not the cunning of Hermes, nor list to the songs of Apollo.\nFearing the stars of the sky, and the roll of the blue salt water,\nFearing all things that have life in the womb of the seas and the livers,\nEating no fish to this day, nor ploughing the main, like the Phoenics,\nManful with black-beaked ships, they abide in a sorrowful region,\nVexed with the earthquake, and flame, and the sea-floods, scourge of\nPoseidon.\n   Whelming the dwellings of men, and the toils of the slow-footed oxen,\nDrowning the barley and flax, and the hard-earned gold of the harvest,\nUp to the hillside vines, and the pastures skirting the woodland,\nInland the floods came yearly; and after the waters a monster,\nBred of the slime, like the worms which are bred from the slime of the Nile-\nbank,\nShapeless, a terror to see; and by night it swam out to the seaward,\nDaily returning to feed with the dawn, and devoured of the fairest,\nCattle, and children, and maids, till the terrified people fled inland.\n   Fasting in sackcloth and ashes they came, both the king and his people,\nCame to the mountain of oaks, to the house of the terrible sea-gods,\nHard by the gulf in the rocks, where of old the world-wide deluge\nSank to the inner abyss; and the lake where the fish of the goddess,\nHoly, undying, abide; whom the priests feed daily with dainties.\nThere to the mystical fish, high-throned in her chamber of cedar,\nBurnt they the fat of the flock; till the flame shone far to the seaward.\nThree days fasting they prayed; but the fourth day the priests of the\ngoddess,\nCunning in spells, cast lots, to discover the crime of the people.\nAll day long they cast, till the house of the monarch was taken,\nCepheus, king of the land; and the faces of all gathered blackness.\nThen once more they cast; and Cassiopoeia was taken,\nDeep-bosomed wife of the king, whom oft far-seeing Apollo\nWatched well-pleased from the welkin, the fairest of AEthiop women:\nFairest, save only her daughter; for down to the ankle her tresses\nRolled, blue-black as the night, ambrosial, joy to beholders.\nAwful and fair she arose, most like in her coming to Here,\nQueen before whom the Immortals arise, as she comes on Olympus,\nOut of the chamber of gold, which her son Hephaestos has wrought her.\nSuch in her stature and eyes, and the broad white light of her forehead.\nStately she came from her place, and she spoke in the midst of the people.\n   'Pure are my hands from blood:  most pure this heart in my bosom.\nYet one fault I remember this day; one word have I spoken;\nRashly I spoke on the shore, and I dread lest the sea should have heard it.\nWatching my child at her bath, as she plunged in the joy of her girlhood,\nFairer I called her in pride than Atergati, queen of the ocean.\nJudge ye if this be my sin, for I know none other.'  She ended;\nWrapping her head in her mantle she stood, and the people were silent.\n   Answered the dark-browed priests, 'No word, once spoken, returneth,\nEven if uttered unwitting.  Shall gods excuse our rashness?\nThat which is done, that abides; and the wrath of the sea is against us;\nHers, and the wrath of her brother, the Sun-god, lord of the sheepfolds.\nFairer than her hast thou boasted thy daughter?  Ah folly! for hateful,\nHateful are they to the gods, whoso, impious, liken a mortal,\nFair though he be, to their glory; and hateful is that which is likened,\nGrieving the eyes of their pride, and abominate, doomed to their anger.\nWhat shall be likened to gods?  The unknown, who deep in the darkness\nEver abide, twyformed, many-handed, terrible, shapeless.\nWoe to the queen; for the land is defiled, and the people accursed.\nTake thou her therefore by night, thou ill-starred Cassiopoeia,\nTake her with us in the night, when the moon sinks low to the westward;\nBind her aloft for a victim, a prey for the gorge of the monster,\nFar on the sea-girt rock, which is washed by the surges for ever;\nSo may the goddess accept her, and so may the land make atonement,\nPurged by her blood from its sin:  so obey thou the doom of the rulers.'\n   Bitter in soul they went out, Cepheus and Cassiopoeia,\nBitter in soul; and their hearts whirled round, as the leaves in the eddy.\nWeak was the queen, and rebelled:  but the king, like a shepherd of people,\nWilled not the land should waste; so he yielded the life of his daughter.\n   Deep in the wane of the night, as the moon sank low to the westward,\nThey by the shade of the cliffs, with the horror of darkness around them,\nStole, as ashamed, to a deed which became not the light of the sunshine,\nSlowly, the priests, and the queen, and the virgin bound in the galley,\nSlowly they rowed to the rocks:  but Cepheus far in the palace\nSate in the midst of the hall, on his throne, like a shepherd of people,\nChoking his woe, dry-eyed, while the slaves wailed loudly around him.\nThey on the sea-girt rock, which is washed by the surges for ever,\nSet her in silence, the guiltless, aloft with her face to the eastward.\nUnder a crag of the stone, where a ledge sloped down to the water;\nThere they set Andromeden, most beautiful, shaped like a goddess,\nLifting her long white arms wide-spread to the walls of the basalt,\nChaining them, ruthless, with brass; and they called on the might of the\nRulers.\n   'Mystical fish of the seas, dread Queen whom AEthiops honour,\nWhelming the land in thy wrath, unavoidable, sharp as the sting-ray,\nThou, and thy brother the Sun, brain-smiting, lord of the sheepfold,\nScorching the earth all day, and then resting at night in thy bosom,\nTake ye this one life for many, appeased by the blood of a maiden,\nFairest, and born of the fairest, a queen, most priceless of victims.'\n   Thrice they spat as they went by the maid:  but her mother delaying\nFondled her child to the last, heart-crushed; and the warmth of her weeping\nFell on the breast of the maid, as her woe broke forth into wailing.\n   'Daughter! my daughter! forgive me!  Oh curse not the murderess!  Curse\nnot!\nHow have I sinned, but in love?  Do the gods grudge glory to mothers?\nLoving I bore thee in vain in the fate-cursed bride-bed of Cepheus,\nLoving I fed thee and tended, and loving rejoiced in thy beauty,\nBlessing thy limbs as I bathed them, and blessing thy locks as I combed them;\nDecking thee, ripening to woman, I blest thee:  yet blessing I slew thee!\nHow have I sinned, but in love?  Oh swear to me, swear to thy mother,\nNever to haunt me with curse, as I go to the grave in my sorrow,\nChildless and lone:  may the gods never send me another, to slay it!\nSee, I embrace thy knees--soft knees, where no babe will be fondled--\nSwear to me never to curse me, the hapless one, not in the death-pang.'\n   Weeping she clung to the knees of the maid; and the maid low answered--\n'Curse thee!  Not in the death-pang!'  The heart of the lady was lightened.\nSlowly she went by the ledge; and the maid was alone in the darkness.\n   Watching the pulse of the oars die down, as her own died with them,\nTearless, dumb with amaze she stood, as a storm-stunned nestling\nFallen from bough or from eave lies dumb, which the home-going herdsman\nFancies a stone, till he catches the light of its terrified eyeball.\nSo through the long long hours the maid stood helpless and hopeless,\nWide-eyed, downward gazing in vain at the black blank darkness.\nFeebly at last she began, while wild thoughts bubbled within her--\n'Guiltless I am:  why thus, then?  Are gods more ruthless than mortals?\nHave they no mercy for youth? no love for the souls who have loved them?\nEven as I loved thee, dread sea, as I played by thy margin,\nBlessing thy wave as it cooled me, thy wind as it breathed on my forehead,\nBowing my head to thy tempest, and opening my heart to thy children,\nSilvery fish, wreathed shell, and the strange lithe things of the water,\nTenderly casting them back, as they gasped on the beach in the sunshine,\nHome to their mother--in vain! for mine sits childless in anguish!\nO false sea! false sea!  I dreamed what I dreamed of thy goodness;\nDreamed of a smile in thy gleam, of a laugh in the plash of thy ripple:\nFalse and devouring thou art, and the great world dark and despiteful.'\n   Awed by her own rash words she was still:  and her eyes to the seaward\nLooked for an answer of wrath:  far off, in the heart of the darkness,\nBlight white mists rose slowly; beneath them the wandering ocean\nGlimmered and glowed to the deepest abyss; and the knees of the maiden\nTrembled and sunk in her fear, as afar, like a dawn in the midnight,\nRose from their seaweed chamber the choir of the mystical sea-maids.\nOnward toward her they came, and her heart beat loud at their coming,\nWatching the bliss of the gods, as they wakened the cliffs with their\nlaughter.\n   Onward they came in their joy, and before them the roll of the surges\nSank, as the breeze sank dead, into smooth green foam-flecked marble,\nAwed; and the crags of the cliff, and the pines of the mountain were silent.\nOnward they came in their joy, and around them the lamps of the sea-nymphs,\nMyriad fiery globes, swam panting and heaving; and rainbows\nCrimson and azure and emerald, were broken in star-showers, lighting\nFar through the wine-dark depths of the crystal, the gardens of Nereus,\nCoral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean.\n   Onward they came in their joy, more white than the foam which they\nscattered,\nLaughing and singing, and tossing and twining, while eager, the Tritons\nBlinded with kisses their eyes, unreproved, and above them in worship\nHovered the terns, and the seagulls swept past them on silvery pinions\nEchoing softly their laughter; around them the wantoning dolphins\nSighed as they plunged, full of love; and the great sea-horses which bore\nthem\nCurved up their crests in their pride to the delicate arms of the maidens,\nPawing the spray into gems, till a fiery rainfall, unharming,\nSparkled and gleamed on the limbs of the nymphs, and the coils of the mermen.\n   Onward they went in their joy, bathed round with the fiery coolness,\nNeeding nor sun nor moon, self-lighted, immortal:  but others,\nPitiful, floated in silence apart; in their bosoms the sea-boys,\nSlain by the wrath of the seas, swept down by the anger of Nereus;\nHapless, whom never again on strand or on quay shall their mothers\nWelcome with garlands and vows to the temple, but wearily pining\nGaze over island and bay for the sails of the sunken; they heedless\nSleep in soft bosoms for ever, and dream of the surge and the sea-maids.\n   Onward they passed in their joy; on their brows neither sorrow nor anger;\nSelf-sufficing, as gods, never heeding the woe of the maiden.\nShe would have shrieked for their mercy:  but shame made her dumb; and their\neyeballs\nStared on her careless and still, like the eyes in the house of the idols.\nSeeing they saw not, and passed, like a dream, on the murmuring ripple.\n   Stunned by the wonder she gazed, wide-eyed, as the glory departed.\n'O fair shapes! far fairer than I!  Too fair to be ruthless!\nGladden mine eyes once more with your splendour, unlike to my fancies;\nYou, then, smiled in the sea-gleam, and laughed in the plash of the ripple.\nAwful I deemed you and formless; inhuman, monstrous as idols;\nLo, when ye came, ye were women, more loving and lovelier, only;\nLike in all else; and I blest you:  why blest ye not me for my worship?\nHad you no mercy for me, thus guiltless?  Ye pitied the sea-boys:\nWhy not me, then, more hapless by far?  Does your sight and your knowledge\nEnd with the marge of the waves?  Is the world which ye dwell in not our\nworld?'\n\n   Over the mountain aloft ran a rush and a roll and a roaring;\nDownward the breeze came indignant, and leapt with a howl to the water,\nRoaring in cranny and crag, till the pillars and clefts of the basalt\nRang like a god-swept lyre, and her brain grew mad with the noises;\nCrashing and lapping of waters, and sighing and tossing of weed-beds,\nGurgle and whisper and hiss of the foam, while thundering surges\nBoomed in the wave-worn halls, as they champed at the roots of the mountain.\nHour after hour in the darkness the wind rushed fierce to the landward,\nDrenching the maiden with spray; she shivering, weary and drooping,\nStood with her heart full of thoughts, till the foam-crests gleamed in the\ntwilight,\nLeaping and laughing around, and the east grew red with the dawning.\n   Then on the ridge of the hills rose the broad bright sun in his glory,\nHurling his arrows abroad on the glittering crests of the surges,\nGilding the soft round bosoms of wood, and the downs of the coastland;\nGilding the weeds at her feet, and the foam-laced teeth of the ledges,\nShowing the maiden her home through the veil of her locks, as they floated\nGlistening, damp with the spray, in a long black cloud to the landward.\nHigh in the far-off glens rose thin blue curls from the homesteads;\nSoftly the low of the herds, and the pipe of the outgoing herdsman,\nSlid to her ear on the water, and melted her heart into weeping.\nShuddering, she tried to forget them; and straining her eyes to the seaward,\nWatched for her doom, as she wailed, but in vain, to the terrible Sun-god.\n   'Dost thou not pity me, Sun, though thy wild dark sister be ruthless;\nDost thou not pity me here, as thou seest me desolate, weary,\nSickened with shame and despair, like a kid torn young from its mother?\nWhat if my beauty insult thee, then blight it:  but me--Oh spare me!\nSpare me yet, ere he be here, fierce, tearing, unbearable!  See me,\nSee me, how tender and soft, and thus helpless!  See how I shudder,\nFancying only my doom.  Wilt thou shine thus bright, when it takes me?\nAre there no deaths save this, great Sun?  No fiery arrow,\nLightning, or deep-mouthed wave?  Why thus?  What music in shrieking,\nPleasure in warm live limbs torn slowly?  And dar'st thou behold them!\nOh, thou hast watched worse deeds!  All sights are alike to thy brightness!\nWhat if thou waken the birds to their song, dost thou waken no sorrow;\nWaken no sick to their pain; no captive to wrench at his fetters?\nSmile on the garden and fold, and on maidens who sing at the milking;\nFlash into tapestried chambers, and peep in the eyelids of lovers,\nShowing the blissful their bliss--Dost love, then, the place where thou\nsmilest?\nLovest thou cities aflame, fierce blows, and the shrieks of the widow?\nLovest thou corpse-strewn fields, as thou lightest the path of the vulture?\nLovest thou these, that thou gazest so gay on my tears, and my mother's,\nLaughing alike at the horror of one, and the bliss of another?\nWhat dost thou care, in thy sky, for the joys and the sorrows of mortals?\nColder art thou than the nymphs:  in thy broad bright eye is no seeing.\nHadst thou a soul--as much soul as the slaves in the house of my father,\nWouldst thou not save?  Poor thralls! they pitied me, clung to me weeping,\nKissing my hands and my feet--What, are gods more ruthless than mortals?\nWorse than the souls which they rule?  Let me die:  they war not with ashes!'\n   Sudden she ceased, with a shriek:  in the spray, like a hovering foam-bow,\nHung, more fair than the foam-bow, a boy in the bloom of his manhood,\nGolden-haired, ivory-limbed, ambrosial; over his shoulder\nHung for a veil of his beauty the gold-fringed folds of the goat-skin,\nBearing the brass of his shield, as the sun flashed clear on its clearness.\nCurved on his thigh lay a falchion, and under the gleam of his helmet\nEyes more blue than the main shone awful; around him Athene\nShed in her love such grace, such state, and terrible daring.\nHovering over the water he came, upon glittering pinions,\nLiving, a wonder, outgrown from the tight-laced gold of his sandals;\nBounding from billow to billow, and sweeping the crests like a sea-gull;\nLeaping the gulfs of the surge, as he laughed in the joy of his leaping.\nFair and majestic he sprang to the rock; and the maiden in wonder\nGazed for a while, and then hid in the dark-rolling wave of her tresses,\nFearful, the light of her eyes; while the boy (for her sorrow had awed him)\nBlushed at her blushes, and vanished, like mist on the cliffs at the sunrise.\nFearful at length she looked forth:  he was gone:  she, wild with amazement,\nWailed for her mother aloud:  but the wail of the wind only answered.\nSudden he flashed into sight, by her side; in his pity and anger\nMoist were his eyes; and his breath like a rose-bed, as bolder and bolder,\nHovering under her brows, like a swallow that haunts by the house-eaves,\nDelicate-handed, he lifted the veil of her hair; while the maiden\nMotionless, frozen with fear, wept loud; till his lips unclosing\nPoured from their pearl-strung portal the musical wave of his wonder.\n   'Ah, well spoke she, the wise one, the gray-eyed Pallas Athene,--\nKnown to Immortals alone are the prizes which lie for the heroes\nReady prepared at their feet; for requiring a little, the rulers\nPay back the loan tenfold to the man who, careless of pleasure,\nThirsting for honour and toil, fares forth on a perilous errand\nLed by the guiding of gods, and strong in the strength of Immortals.\nThus have they led me to thee:  from afar, unknowing, I marked thee,\nShining, a snow-white cross on the dark-green walls of the sea-cliff;\nCarven in marble I deemed thee, a perfect work of the craftsman.\nLikeness of Amphitrite, or far-famed Queen Cythereia.\nCurious I came, till I saw how thy tresses streamed in the sea-wind,\nGlistening, black as the night, and thy lips moved slow in thy wailing.\nSpeak again now--Oh speak!  For my soul is stirred to avenge thee;\nTell me what barbarous horde, without law, unrighteous and heartless,\nHateful to gods and to men, thus have bound thee, a shame to the sunlight,\nScorn and prize to the sailor:  but my prize now; for a coward,\nCoward and shameless were he, who so finding a glorious jewel\nCast on the wayside by fools, would not win it and keep it and wear it,\nEven as I will thee; for I swear by the head of my father,\nBearing thee over the sea-wave, to wed thee in Argos the fruitful,\nBeautiful, meed of my toil no less than this head which I carry,\nHidden here fearful--Oh speak!'\n   But the maid, still dumb with amazement,\nWatered her bosom with weeping, and longed for her home and her mother.\nBeautiful, eager, he wooed her, and kissed off her tears as he hovered,\nRoving at will, as a bee, on the brows of a rock nymph-haunted,\nGarlanded over with vine, and acanthus, and clambering roses,\nCool in the fierce still noon, where streams glance clear in the mossbeds,\nHums on from blossom to blossom, and mingles the sweets as he tastes them.\nBeautiful, eager, he kissed her, and clasped her yet closer and closer,\nPraying her still to speak--\n   'Not cruel nor rough did my mother\nBear me to broad-browed Zeus in the depths of the brass-covered dungeon;\nNeither in vain, as I think, have I talked with the cunning of Hermes,\nFace unto face, as a friend; or from gray-eyed Pallas Athene\nLearnt what is fit, and respecting myself, to respect in my dealings\nThose whom the gods should love; so fear not; to chaste espousals\nOnly I woo thee, and swear, that a queen, and alone without rival\nBy me thou sittest in Argos of Hellas, throne of my fathers,\nWorshipped by fair-haired kings:  why callest thou still on thy mother?\nWhy did she leave thee thus here?  For no foeman has bound thee; no foeman\nWinning with strokes of the sword such a prize, would so leave it behind\nhim.'\n   Just as at first some colt, wild-eyed, with quivering nostril,\nPlunges in fear of the curb, and the fluttering robes of the rider;\nSoon, grown bold by despair, submits to the will of his master,\nTamer and tamer each hour, and at last, in the pride of obedience,\nAnswers the heel with a curvet, and arches his neck to be fondled,\nCowed by the need that maid grew tame; while the hero indignant\nTore at the fetters which held her:  the brass, too cunningly tempered,\nHeld to the rock by the nails, deep wedged:  till the boy, red with anger,\nDrew from his ivory thigh, keen flashing, a falchion of diamond--\n'Now let the work of the smith try strength with the arms of Immortals!'\nDazzling it fell; and the blade, as the vine-hook shears off the vine-bough,\nCarved through the strength of the brass, till her arms fell soft on his\nshoulder.\nOnce she essayed to escape:  but the ring of the water was round her,\nRound her the ring of his arms; and despairing she sank on his bosom.\nThen, like a fawn when startled, she looked with a shriek to the seaward.\n   'Touch me not, wretch that I am!  For accursed, a shame and a hissing,\nGuiltless, accurst no less, I await the revenge of the sea-gods.\nYonder it comes!  Ah go!  Let me perish unseen, if I perish!\nSpare me the shame of thine eyes, when merciless fangs must tear me\nPiecemeal!  Enough to endure by myself in the light of the sunshine\nGuiltless, the death of a kid!'\n   But the boy still lingered around her,\nLoth, like a boy, to forego her, and waken the cliffs with his laughter.\n'Yon is the foe, then?  A beast of the sea?  I had deemed him immortal.\nTitan, or Proteus' self, or Nereus, foeman of sailors:\nYet would I fight with them all, but Poseidon, shaker of mountains,\nUncle of mine, whom I fear, as is fit; for he haunts on Olympus,\nHolding the third of the world; and the gods all rise at his coming.\nUnto none else will I yield, god-helped:  how then to a monster,\nChild of the earth and of night, unreasoning, shapeless, accursed?'\n   'Art thou, too, then a god?'\n      'No god I,' smiling he answered;\n'Mortal as thou, yet divine:  but mortal the herds of the ocean,\nEqual to men in that only, and less in all else; for they nourish\nBlindly the life of the lips, untaught by the gods, without wisdom:\nShame if I fled before such!'\n   In her heart new life was enkindled,\nWorship and trust, fair parents of love:  but she answered him sighing.\n   'Beautiful, why wilt thou die?  Is the light of the sun, then, so\nworthless,\nWorthless to sport with thy fellows in flowery glades of the forest,\nUnder the broad green oaks, where never again shall I wander,\nTossing the ball with my maidens, or wreathing the altar in garlands,\nCareless, with dances and songs, till the glens rang loud to our laughter.\nToo full of death the sad earth is already:  the halls full of weepers,\nQuarried by tombs all cliffs, and the bones gleam white on the sea-floor,\nNumberless, gnawn by the herds who attend on the pitiless sea-gods,\nEven as mine will be soon:  and yet noble it seems to me, dying,\nGiving my life for a people, to save to the arms of their lovers\nMaidens and youths for a while:  thee, fairest of all, shall I slay thee?\nAdd not thy bones to the many, thus angering idly the dread ones!\nEither the monster will crush, or the sea-queen's self overwhelm thee,\nVengeful, in tempest and foam, and the thundering walls of the surges.\nWhy wilt thou follow me down? can we love in the black blank darkness?\nLove in the realms of the dead, in the land where all is forgotten?\nWhy wilt thou follow me down? is it joy, on the desolate oozes,\nMeagre to flit, gray ghosts in the depths of the gray salt water?\nBeautiful! why wilt thou die, and defraud fair girls of thy manhood?\nSurely one waits for thee longing, afar in the isles of the ocean.\nGo thy way; I mine; for the gods grudge pleasure to mortals.'\n   Sobbing she ended her moan, as her neck, like a storm-bent lily,\nDrooped with the weight of her woe, and her limbs sank, weary with watching,\nSoft on the hard-ledged rock:  but the boy, with his eye on the monster,\nClasped her, and stood, like a god; and his lips curved proud as he answered--\n   'Great are the pitiless sea-gods:  but greater the Lords of Olympus;\nGreater the AEgis-wielder, and greater is she who attends him.\nClear-eyed Justice her name is, the counsellor, loved of Athene;\nHelper of heroes, who dare, in the god-given might of their manhood,\nGreatly to do and to suffer, and far in the fens' and the forests\nSmite the devourers of men, Heaven-hated, brood of the giants,\nTwyformed, strange, without like, who obey not the golden-haired Rulers.\nVainly rebelling they rage, till they die by the swords of the heroes,\nEven as this must die; for I burn with the wrath of my father,\nWandering, led by Athene; and dare whatsoever betides me.\nLed by Athene I won from the gray-haired terrible sisters\nSecrets hidden from men, when I found them asleep on the sand-hills,\nKeeping their eye and their tooth, till they showed me the perilous pathway\nOver the waterless ocean, the valley that led to the Gorgon.\nHer too I slew in my craft, Medusa, the beautiful horror;\nTaught by Athene I slew her, and saw not herself, but her image,\nWatching the mirror of brass, in the shield which a goddess had lent me.\nCleaving her brass-scaled throat, as she lay with her adders around her,\nFearless I bore off her head, in the folds of the mystical goat-skin\nHide of Amaltheie, fair nurse of the AEgis-wielder.\nHither I bear it, a gift to the gods, and a death to my foe-men,\nFreezing the seer to stone; to hide thine eyes from the horror.\nKiss me but once, and I go.'\n   Then lifting her neck, like a sea-bird\nPeering up over the wave, from the foam-white swells of her bosom,\nBlushing she kissed him:  afar, on the topmost Idalian summit\nLaughed in the joy of her heart, far-seeing, the queen Aphrodite.\n   Loosing his arms from her waist he flew upward, awaiting the sea-beast.\nOnward it came from the southward, as bulky and black as a galley,\nLazily coasting along, as the fish fled leaping before it;\nLazily breasting the ripple, and watching by sandbar and headland,\nListening for laughter of maidens at bleaching, or song of the fisher,\nChildren at play on the pebbles, or cattle that pawed on the sand-hills.\nRolling and dripping it came, where bedded in glistening purple\nCold on the cold sea-weeds lay the long white sides of the maiden,\nTrembling, her face in her hands, and her tresses afloat on the water.\n   As when an osprey aloft, dark-eyebrowed, royally crested,\nFlags on by creek and by cove, and in scorn of the anger of Nereus\nRanges, the king of the shore; if he see on a glittering shallow,\nChasing the bass and the mullet, the fin of a wallowing dolphin,\nHalting, he wheels round slowly, in doubt at the weight of his quarry,\nWhether to clutch it alive, or to fall on the wretch like a plummet,\nStunning with terrible talon the life of the brain in the hindhead:\nThen rushes up with a scream, and stooping the wrath of his eyebrows\nFalls from the sky, like a star, while the wind rattles hoarse in his\npinions.\nOver him closes the foam for a moment; and then from the sand-bed\nRolls up the great fish, dead, and his side gleams white in the sunshine.\nThus fell the boy on the beast, unveiling the face of the Gorgon;\nThus fell the boy on the beast; thus rolled up the beast in his horror,\nOnce, as the dead eyes glared into his; then his sides, death-sharpened,\nStiffened and stood, brown rock, in the wash of the wandering water.\n   Beautiful, eager, triumphant, he leapt back again to his treasure;\nLeapt back again, full blest, toward arms spread wide to receive him.\nBrimful of honour he clasped her, and brimful of love she caressed him,\nAnswering lip with lip; while above them the queen Aphrodite\nPoured on their foreheads and limbs, unseen, ambrosial odours,\nGivers of longing, and rapture, and chaste content in espousals.\nHappy whom ere they be wedded anoints she, the Queen Aphrodite!\n   Laughing she called to her sister, the chaste Tritonid Athene,\n'Seest thou yonder thy pupil, thou maid of the AEgis-wielder?\nHow he has turned himself wholly to love, and caresses a damsel,\nDreaming no longer of honour, or danger, or Pallas Athene?\nSweeter, it seems, to the young my gifts are; so yield me the stripling;\nYield him me now, lest he die in his prime, like hapless Adonis.'\n   Smiling she answered in turn, that chaste Tritonid Athene:\n'Dear unto me, no less than to thee, is the wedlock of heroes;\nDear, who can worthily win him a wife not unworthy; and noble,\nPure with the pure to beget brave children, the like of their father.\nHappy, who thus stands linked to the heroes who were, and who shall be;\nGirdled with holiest awe, not sparing of self; for his mother\nWatches his steps with the eyes of the gods; and his wife and his children\nMove him to plan and to do in the farm and the camp and the council.\nThence comes weal to a nation:  but woe upon woe, when the people\nMingle in love at their will, like the brutes, not heeding the future.'\n   Then from her gold-strung loom, where she wrought in her chamber of cedar,\nAwful and fair she arose; and she went by the glens of Olympus;\nWent by the isles of the sea, and the wind never ruffled her mantle;\nWent by the water of Crete, and the black-beaked fleets of the Phoenics;\nCame to the sea-girt rock which is washed by the surges for ever,\nBearing the wealth of the gods, for a gift to the bride of a hero.\nThere she met Andromeden and Persea, shaped like Immortals;\nSolemn and sweet was her smile, while their hearts beat loud at her coming;\nSolemn and sweet was her smile, as she spoke to the pair in her wisdom.\n   'Three things hold we, the Rulers, who sit by the founts of Olympus,\nWisdom, and prowess, and beauty; and freely we pour them on mortals;\nPleased at our image in man, as a father at his in his children.\nOne thing only we grudge to mankind:  when a hero, unthankful,\nBoasts of our gifts as his own, stiffnecked, and dishonours the givers,\nTurning our weapons against us.  Him Ate follows avenging;\nSlowly she tracks him and sure, as a lyme-hound; sudden she grips him,\nCrushing him, blind in his pride, for a sign and a terror to folly.\nThis we avenge, as is fit; in all else never weary of giving.\nCome, then, damsel, and know if the gods grudge pleasure to mortals.'\n   Loving and gentle she spoke:  but the maid stood in awe, as the goddess\nPlaited with soft swift finger her tresses, and decked her in jewels,\nArmlet and anklet and earbell; and over her shoulders a necklace,\nHeavy, enamelled, the flower of the gold and the brass of the mountain.\nTrembling with joy she gazed, so well Haephaistos had made it,\nDeep in the forges of AEtna, while Charis his lady beside him\nMingled her grace in his craft, as he wrought for his sister Athene.\nThen on the brows of the maiden a veil bound Pallas Athene;\nAmple it fell to her feet, deep-fringed, a wonder of weaving.\nAges and ages agone it was wrought on the heights of Olympus,\nWrought in the gold-strung loom, by the finger of cunning Athene.\nIn it she wove all creatures that teem in the womb of the ocean;\nNereid, siren, and triton, and dolphin, and arrowy fishes\nGlittering round, many-hued, on the flame-red folds of the mantle.\nIn it she wove, too, a town where gray-haired kings sat in judgment;\nSceptre in hand in the market they sat, doing right by the people,\nWise:  while above watched Justice, and near, far-seeing Apollo.\nRound it she wove for a fringe all herbs of the earth and the water,\nViolet, asphodel, ivy, and vine-leaves, roses and lilies,\nCoral and sea-fan and tangle, the blooms and the palms of the ocean:\nNow from Olympus she bore it, a dower to the bride of a hero.\nOver the limbs of the damsel she wrapt it:  the maid still trembled,\nShading her face with her hands; for the eyes of the goddess were awful.\n   Then, as a pine upon Ida when southwest winds blow landward,\nStately she bent to the damsel, and breathed on her:  under her breathing\nTaller and fairer she grew; and the goddess spoke in her wisdom.\n   'Courage I give thee; the heart of a queen, and the mind of Immortals;\nGodlike to talk with the gods, and to look on their eyes unshrinking;\nFearing the sun and the stars no more, and the blue salt water;\nFearing us only, the lords of Olympus, friends of the heroes;\nChastely and wisely to govern thyself and thy house and thy people,\nBearing a godlike race to thy spouse, till dying I set thee\nHigh for a star in the heavens, a sign and a hope to the seamen,\nSpreading thy long white arms all night in the heights of the aether,\nHard by thy sire and the hero thy spouse, while near thee thy mother\nSits in her ivory chair, as she plaits ambrosial tresses.\nAll night long thou wilt shine; all day thou wilt feast on Olympus,\nHappy, the guest of the gods, by thy husband, the god-begotten.'\n   Blissful, they turned them to go:  but the fair-tressed Pallas Athene\nRose, like a pillar of tall white cloud, toward silver Olympus;\nFar above ocean and shore, and the peaks of the isles and the mainland;\nWhere no frost nor storm is, in clear blue windless abysses,\nHigh in the home of the summer, the seats of the happy Immortals,\nShrouded in keen deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful\nHebe, Harmonie, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodite,\nWhirled in the white-linked dance with the gold-crowned Hours and the Graces,\nHand within hand, while clear piped Phoebe, queen of the woodlands.\nAll day long they rejoiced:  but Athene still in her chamber\nBent herself over her loom, as the stars rang loud to her singing,\nChanting of order and right, and of foresight, warden of nations;\nChanting of labour and craft, and of wealth in the port and the garner;\nChanting of valour and fame, and the man who can fall with the foremost,\nFighting for children and wife, and the field which his father bequeathed\nhim.\nSweetly and solemnly sang she, and planned new lessons for mortals:\nHappy, who hearing obey her, the wise unsullied Athene.\n\nEversley, 1852,\n\n\n\nHYPOTHESES HYPOCHONDRIACAE {211}\n\n\n\nAnd should she die, her grave should be\nUpon the bare top of a sunny hill,\nAmong the moorlands of her own fair land,\nAmid a ring of old and moss-grown stones\nIn gorse and heather all embosomed.\nThere should be no tall stone, no marble tomb\nAbove her gentle corse;--the ponderous pile\nWould press too rudely on those fairy limbs.\nThe turf should lightly he, that marked her home.\nA sacred spot it would be--every bird\nThat came to watch her lone grave should be holy.\nThe deer should browse around her undisturbed;\nThe whin bird by, her lonely nest should build\nAll fearless; for in life she loved to see\nHappiness in all things--\nAnd we would come on summer days\nWhen all around was bright, and set us down\nAnd think of all that lay beneath that turf\nOn which the heedless moor-bird sits, and whistles\nHis long, shrill, painful song, as though he plained\nFor her that loved him and his pleasant hills;\nAnd we would dream again of bygone days\nUntil our eyes should swell with natural tears\nFor brilliant hopes--all faded into air!\nAs, on the sands of Irak, near approach\nDestroys the traveller's vision of still lakes,\nAnd goodly streams reed-clad, and meadows green;\nAnd leaves behind the drear reality\nOf shadeless, same, yet ever-changing sand!\nAnd when the sullen clouds rose thick on high\nMountains on mountains rolling--and dark mist\nWrapped itself round the hill-tops like a shroud,\nWhen on her grave swept by the moaning wind\nBending the heather-bells--then would I come\nAnd watch by her, in silent loneliness,\nAnd smile upon the storm--as knowing well\nThe lightning's flash would surely turn aside,\nNor mar the lowly mound, where peaceful sleeps\nAll that gave life and love to one fond heart!\nI talk of things that are not; and if prayers\nBy night and day availed from my weak lips,\nThen should they never be! till I was gone,\nBefore the friends I loved, to my long home.\nOh pardon me, if e'er I say too much; my mind\nToo often strangely turns to ribald mirth,\nAs though I had no doubt nor hope beyond--\nOr brooding melancholy cloys my soul\nWith thoughts of days misspent, of wasted time\nAnd bitter feelings swallowed up in jests.\nThen strange and fearful thoughts flit o'er my brain\nBy indistinctness made more terrible,\nAnd incubi mock at me with fierce eyes\nUpon my couch:  and visions, crude and dire,\nOf planets, suns, millions of miles, infinity,\nSpace, time, thought, being, blank nonentity,\nThings incorporeal, fancies of the brain,\nSeen, heard, as though they were material,\nAll mixed in sickening mazes, trouble me,\nAnd lead my soul away from earth and heaven\nUntil I doubt whether I be or not!\nAnd then I see all frightful shapes--lank ghosts,\nHydras, chimeras, krakens, wastes of sand,\nHerbless and void of living voice--tall mountains\nCleaving the skies with height immeasurable,\nOn which perchance I climb for infinite years; broad seas,\nStudded with islands numberless, that stretch\nBeyond the regions of the sun, and fade\nAway in distance vast, or dreary clouds,\nCold, dark, and watery, where wander I for ever!\nOr space of ether, where I hang for aye!\nA speck, an atom--inconsumable--\nImmortal, hopeless, voiceless, powerless!\nAnd oft I fancy, I am weak and old,\nAnd all who loved me, one by one, are dead,\nAnd I am left alone--and cannot die!\nSurely there is no rest on earth for souls\nWhose dreams are like a madman's!  I am young\nAnd much is yet before me--after years\nMay bring peace with them to my weary heart!\n\nHelston, 1835.\n\n\n\nTREHILL WELL\n\n\n\nThere stood a low and ivied roof,\n   As gazing rustics tell,\nIn times of chivalry and song\n   'Yclept the holy well.\n\nAbove the ivies' branchlets gray\n   In glistening clusters shone;\nWhile round the base the grass-blades bright\n   And spiry foxglove sprung.\n\nThe brambles clung in graceful bands,\n   Chequering the old gray stone\nWith shining leaflets, whose bright face\n   In autumn's tinting shone.\n\nAround the fountain's eastern base\n   A babbling brooklet sped,\nWith sleepy murmur purling soft\n   Adown its gravelly bed.\n\nWithin the cell the filmy ferns\n   To woo the clear wave bent;\nAnd cushioned mosses to the stone\n   Their quaint embroidery lent.\n\nThe fountain's face lay still as glass--\n   Save where the streamlet free\nAcross the basin's gnarled lip\n   Flowed ever silently.\n\nAbove the well a little nook\n   Once held, as rustics tell,\nAll garland-decked, an image of\n   The Lady of the Well.\n\nThey tell of tales of mystery,\n   Of darkling deeds of woe;\nBut no! such doings might not brook\n   The holy streamlet's flow.\n\nOh tell me not of bitter thoughts,\n   Of melancholy dreams,\nBy that fair fount whose sunny wall\n   Basks in the western beams.\n\nWhen last I saw that little stream,\n   A form of light there stood,\nThat seemed like a precious gem,\n   Beneath that archway rude:\n\nAnd as I gazed with love and awe\n   Upon that sylph-like thing,\nMethought that airy form must be\n   The fairy of the spring.\n\nHelston, 1835.\n\n\n\nIN AN ILLUMINATED MISSAL {216}\n\n\n\nI would have loved:  there are no mates in heaven;\nI would be great:  there is no pride in heaven;\nI would have sung, as doth the nightingale\nThe summer's night beneath the moone pale,\nBut Saintes hymnes alone in heaven prevail.\nMy love, my song, my skill, my high intent,\nHave I within this seely book y-pent:\nAnd all that beauty which from every part\nI treasured still alway within mine heart,\nWhether of form or face angelical,\nOr herb or flower, or lofty cathedral,\nUpon these sheets below doth lie y-spred,\nIn quaint devices deftly blazoned.\n   Lord, in this tome to thee I sanctify\n   The sinful fruits of worldly fantasy.\n\n1839.\n\n\n\nTHE WEIRD LADY\n\n\n\nThe swevens came up round Harold the Earl,\n   Like motes in the sunnes beam;\nAnd over him stood the Weird Lady,\nIn her charmed castle over the sea,\n   Sang 'Lie thou still and dream.'\n\n'Thy steed is dead in his stall, Earl Harold,\n   Since thou hast been with me;\nThe rust has eaten thy harness bright,\nAnd the rats have eaten thy greyhound light,\n   That was so fair and free.'\n\nMary Mother she stooped from heaven;\nShe wakened Earl Harold out of his sweven,\n   To don his harness on;\nAnd over the land and over the sea\nHe wended abroad to his own countrie,\n   A weary way to gon.\n\nOh but his beard was white with eld,\n   Oh but his hair was gray;\nHe stumbled on by stock and stone,\nAnd as he journeyed he made his moan\n   Along that weary way.\n\nEarl Harold came to his castle wall;\n   The gate was burnt with fire;\nRoof and rafter were fallen down,\nThe folk were strangers all in the town,\n   And strangers all in the shire.\n\nEarl Harold came to a house of nuns,\n   And he heard the dead-bell toll;\nHe saw the sexton stand by a grave;\n'Now Christ have mercy, who did us save,\n   Upon yon fair nun's soul.'\n\nThe nuns they came from the convent gate\n   By one, by two, by three;\nThey sang for the soul of a lady bright\nWho died for the love of a traitor knight:\n   It was his own lady.\n\nHe stayed the corpse beside the grave;\n   'A sign, a sign!' quod he.\n'Mary Mother who rulest heaven,\nSend me a sign if I be forgiven\n   By the woman who so loved me.'\n\nA white dove out of the coffin flew;\n   Earl Harold's mouth it kist;\nHe fell on his face, wherever he stood;\nAnd the white dove carried his soul to God\n   Or ever the bearers wist.\n\nDurham, 1840.\n\n\n\nPALINODIA\n\n\n\nYe mountains, on whose torrent-furrowed slopes,\nAnd bare and silent brows uplift to heaven,\nI envied oft the soul which fills your wastes\nOf pure and stern sublime, and still expanse\nUnbroken by the petty incidents\nOf noisy life:  Oh hear me once again!\n\nWinds, upon whose racked eddies, far aloft,\nAbove the murmur of the uneasy world,\nMy thoughts in exultation held their way:\nWhose tremulous whispers through the rustling glade\nWere once to me unearthly tones of love,\nJoy without object, wordless music, stealing\nThrough all my soul, until my pulse beat fast\nWith aimless hope, and unexpressed desire--\nThou sea, who wast to me a prophet deep\nThrough all thy restless waves, and wasting shores,\nOf silent labour, and eternal change;\nFirst teacher of the dense immensity\nOf ever-stirring life, in thy strange forms\nOf fish, and shell, and worm, and oozy weed:\nTo me alike thy frenzy and thy sleep\nHave been a deep and breathless joy:  Oh hear!\n\nMountains, and winds, and waves, take back your child!\nUpon thy balmy bosom, Mother Nature,\nWhere my young spirit dreamt its years away,\nGive me once more to nestle:  I have strayed\nFar through another world, which is not thine.\nThrough sunless cities, and the weary haunts\nOf smoke-grimed labour, and foul revelry\nMy flagging wing has swept.  A mateless bird's\nMy pilgrimage has been; through sin, and doubt,\nAnd darkness, seeking love.  Oh hear me, Nature!\nReceive me once again:  but not alone;\nNo more alone, Great Mother!  I have brought\nOne who has wandered, yet not sinned, like me.\nUpon thy lap, twin children, let us lie;\nAnd in the light of thine immortal eyes\nLet our souls mingle, till The Father calls\nTo some eternal home the charge He gives thee.\n\nCambridge, 1841.\n\n\n\nA HOPE\n\n\n\nTwin stars, aloft in ether clear,\n   Around each other roll alway,\nWithin one common atmosphere\n   Of their own mutual light and day.\n\nAnd myriad happy eyes are bent\n   Upon their changeless love alway;\nAs, strengthened by their one intent,\n   They pour the flood of life and day.\n\nSo we through this world's waning night\n   May, hand in hand, pursue our way;\nShed round us order, love, and light,\n   And shine unto the perfect day.\n\n1842.\n\n\n\nTHE POETRY OF A ROOT CROP\n\n\n\nUnderneath their eider-robe\nRusset swede and golden globe,\nFeathered carrot, burrowing deep,\nSteadfast wait in charmed sleep;\nTreasure-houses wherein lie,\nLocked by angels' alchemy,\nMilk and hair, and blood, and bone,\nChildren of the barren stone;\nChildren of the flaming Air,\nWith his blue eye keen and bare,\nSpirit-peopled smiling down\nOn frozen field and toiling town--\nToiling town that will not heed\nGod His voice for rage and greed;\nFrozen fields that surpliced lie,\nGazing patient at the sky;\nLike some marble carven nun,\nWith folded hands when work is done,\nWho mute upon her tomb doth pray,\nTill the resurrection day.\n\nEversley, 1845.\n\n\n\nCHILD BALLAD\n\n\n\nJesus, He loves one and all,\nJesus, He loves children small,\nTheir souls are waiting round His feet\nOn high, before His mercy-seat.\n\nWhile He wandered here below\nChildren small to Him did go,\nAt His feet they knelt and prayed,\nOn their heads His hands He laid.\n\nCame a Spirit on them then,\nBetter than of mighty men,\nA Spirit faithful, pure and mild,\nA Spirit fit for king and child.\n\nOh! that Spirit give to me,\nJesu Lord, where'er I be!\n\n1847.\n\n\n\nAIRLY BEACON\n\n\n\nAirly Beacon, Airly Beacon;\n   Oh the pleasant sight to see\nShires and towns from Airly Beacon,\n   While my love climbed up to me!\n\nAirly Beacon, Airly Beacon;\n   Oh the happy hours we lay\nDeep in fern on Airly Beacon,\n   Courting through the summer's day!\n\nAirly Beacon, Airly Beacon;\n   Oh the weary haunt for me,\nAll alone on Airly Beacon,\n   With his baby on my knee!\n\n1847.\n\n\n\nSAPPHO\n\n\n\nShe lay among the myrtles on the cliff;\nAbove her glared the noon; beneath, the sea.\nUpon the white horizon Atho's peak\nWeltered in burning haze; all airs were dead;\nThe cicale slept among the tamarisk's hair;\nThe birds sat dumb and drooping.  Far below\nThe lazy sea-weed glistened in the sun;\nThe lazy sea-fowl dried their steaming wings;\nThe lazy swell crept whispering up the ledge,\nAnd sank again.  Great Pan was laid to rest;\nAnd Mother Earth watched by him as he slept,\nAnd hushed her myriad children for a while.\nShe lay among the myrtles on the cliff;\nAnd sighed for sleep, for sleep that would not hear,\nBut left her tossing still; for night and day\nA mighty hunger yearned within her heart,\nTill all her veins ran fever; and her cheek,\nHer long thin hands, and ivory-channelled feet,\nWere wasted with the wasting of her soul.\nThen peevishly she flung her on her face,\nAnd hid her eyeballs from the blinding glare,\nAnd fingered at the grass, and tried to cool\nHer crisp hot lips against the crisp hot sward:\nAnd then she raised her head, and upward cast\nWild looks from homeless eyes, whose liquid light\nGleamed out between deep folds of blue-black hair,\nAs gleam twin lakes between the purple peaks\nOf deep Parnassus, at the mournful moon.\nBeside her lay her lyre.  She snatched the shell,\nAnd waked wild music from its silver strings;\nThen tossed it sadly by.--'Ah, hush!' she cries;\n'Dead offspring of the tortoise and the mine!\nWhy mock my discords with thine harmonies?\nAlthough a thrice-Olympian lot be thine,\nOnly to echo back in every tone\nThe moods of nobler natures than thine own.'\n\nEversley, 1847\nFrom Yeast.\n\n\n\nTHE BAD SQUIRE\n\n\n\nThe merry brown hares came leaping\n   Over the crest of the hill,\nWhere the clover and corn lay sleeping\n   Under the moonlight still.\n\nLeaping late and early,\n   Till under their bite and their tread\nThe swedes and the wheat and the barley\n   Lay cankered and trampled and dead.\n\nA poacher's widow sat sighing\n   On the side of the white chalk bank,\nWhere under the gloomy fir-woods\n   One spot in the ley throve rank.\n\nShe watched a long tuft of clover,\n   Where rabbit or hare never ran;\nFor its black sour haulm covered over\n   The blood of a murdered man.\n\nShe thought of the dark plantation,\n   And the hares, and her husband's blood,\nAnd the voice of her indignation\n   Rose up to the throne of God.\n\n'I am long past wailing and whining--\n   I have wept too much in my life:\nI've had twenty years of pining\n   As an English labourer's wife.\n\n'A labourer in Christian England,\n   Where they cant of a Saviour's name,\nAnd yet waste men's lives like the vermin's\n   For a few more brace of game.\n\n'There's blood on your new foreign shrubs, squire,\n   There's blood on your pointer's feet;\nThere's blood on the game you sell, squire,\n   And there's blood on the game you eat.\n\n'You have sold the labouring-man, squire,\n   Body and soul to shame,\nTo pay for your seat in the House, squire,\n   And to pay for the feed of your game.\n\n'You made him a poacher yourself, squire,\n   When you'd give neither work nor meat,\nAnd your barley-fed hares robbed the garden\n   At our starving children's feet;\n\n'When, packed in one reeking chamber,\n   Man, maid, mother, and little ones lay;\nWhile the rain pattered in on the rotting bride-bed,\n   And the walls let in the day.\n\n'When we lay in the burning fever\n   On the mud of the cold clay floor,\nTill you parted us all for three months, squire,\n   At the dreary workhouse door.\n\n'We quarrelled like brutes, and who wonders?\n   What self-respect could we keep,\nWorse housed than your hacks and your pointers,\n   Worse fed than your hogs and your sheep?\n\n'Our daughters with base-born babies\n   Have wandered away in their shame,\nIf your misses had slept, squire, where they did,\n   Your misses might do the same.\n\n'Can your lady patch hearts that are breaking\n   With handfuls of coals and rice,\nOr by dealing out flannel and sheeting\n   A little below cost price?\n\n'You may tire of the jail and the workhouse,\n   And take to allotments and schools,\nBut you've run up a debt that will never\n   Be paid us by penny-club rules.\n\n'In the season of shame and sadness,\n   In the dark and dreary day,\nWhen scrofula, gout, and madness\n   Are eating your race away;\n\n'When to kennels and liveried varlets\n   You have cast your daughter's bread,\nAnd, worn out with liquor and harlots,\n   Your heir at your feet lies dead;\n\n'When your youngest, the mealy-mouthed rector,\n   Lets your soul rot asleep to the grave,\nYou will find in your God the protector\n   Of the freeman you fancied your slave.'\n\nShe looked at the tuft of clover,\n   And wept till her heart grew light;\nAnd at last, when her passion was over,\n   Went wandering into the night.\n\nBut the merry brown hares came leaping\n   Over the uplands still,\nWhere the clover and corn lay sleeping\n   On the side of the white chalk hill.\n\nEversley, 1847.\nFrom Yeast.\n\n\n\nSCOTCH SONG\n\n\n\nOh, forth she went like a braw, braw bride\n   To meet her winsome groom,\nWhen she was aware of twa bonny birds\n   Sat biggin' in the broom.\n\nThe tane it built with the green, green moss,\n   But and the bents sae fine,\nAnd the tither wi' a lock o' lady's hair\n   Linked up wi' siller twine.\n\n'O whaur gat ye the green, green moss,\n   O whaur the bents sae fine?\nAnd whaur gat ye the bonny broun hair\n   That ance was tress o' mine?'\n\n'We gat the moss fra' the elditch aile,\n   The bents fra' the whinny muir,\nAnd a fause knight threw us the bonny broun hair,\n   To please his braw new fere.'\n\n'Gae pull, gae pull the simmer leaves,\n   And strew them saft o'er me;\nMy token's tint, my love is fause,\n   I'll lay me doon and dee.'\n\n1847.\n\n\n\nTHE YOUNG KNIGHT:  A PARABLE\n\n\n\nA gay young knight in Burley stood,\nBeside him pawed his steed so good,\nHis hands he wrung as he were wood\n   With waiting for his love O!\n\n'Oh, will she come, or will she stay,\nOr will she waste the weary day\nWith fools who wish her far away,\n   And hate her for her love O?'\n\nBut by there came a mighty boar,\nHis jowl and tushes red with gore,\nAnd on his curled snout he bore\n   A bracelet rich and rare O!\n\nThe knight he shrieked, he ran, he flew,\nHe searched the wild wood through and through,\nBut found nought save a mantle blue,\n   Low rolled within the brake O!\n\nHe twined the wild briar, red and white,\nUpon his head the garland dight,\nThe green leaves withered black as night,\n   And burnt into his brain O!\n\nA fire blazed up within his breast,\nHe mounted on an aimless quest,\nHe laid his virgin lance in rest,\n   And through the forest drove O!\n\nBy Rhinefield and by Osmondsleigh,\nThrough leat and furze brake fast drove he,\nUntil he saw the homeless sea,\n   That called with all its waves O!\n\nHe laughed aloud to hear the roar,\nAnd rushed his horse adown the shore,\nThe deep surge rolled him o'er and o'er,\n   And swept him down the tide O!\n\nNew Forest, July 12, 1847.\n\n\n\nA NEW FOREST BALLAD\n\n\n\nOh she tripped over Ocknell plain,\n   And down by Bradley Water;\nAnd the fairest maid on the forest side\n   Was Jane, the keeper's daughter.\n\nShe went and went through the broad gray lawns\n   As down the red sun sank,\nAnd chill as the scent of a new-made grave\n   The mist smelt cold and dank.\n\n'A token, a token!' that fair maid cried,\n   'A token that bodes me sorrow;\nFor they that smell the grave by night\n   Will see the corpse to-morrow.\n\n'My own true love in Burley Walk\n   Does hunt to-night, I fear;\nAnd if he meet my father stern,\n   His game may cost him dear.\n\n'Ah, here's a curse on hare and grouse,\n   A curse on hart and hind;\nAnd a health to the squire in all England,\n   Leaves never a head behind.'\n\nHer true love shot a mighty hart\n   Among the standing rye,\nWhen on him leapt that keeper old\n   From the fern where he did lie.\n\nThe forest laws were sharp and stern,\n   The forest blood was keen;\nThey lashed together for life and death\n   Beneath the hollies green.\n\nThe metal good and the walnut wood\n   Did soon in flinders flee;\nThey tost the orts to south and north,\n   And grappled knee to knee.\n\nThey wrestled up, they wrestled down,\n   They wrestled still and sore;\nBeneath their feet the myrtle sweet\n   Was stamped to mud and gore.\n\nAh, cold pale moon, thou cruel pale moon,\n   That starest with never a frown\nOn all the grim and the ghastly things\n   That are wrought in thorpe and town:\n\nAnd yet, cold pale moon, thou cruel pale moon,\n   That night hadst never the grace\nTo lighten two dying Christian men\n   To see one another's face.\n\nThey wrestled up, they wrestled down,\n   They wrestled sore and still,\nThe fiend who blinds the eyes of men\n   That night he had his will.\n\nLike stags full spent, among the bent\n   They dropped a while to rest;\nWhen the young man drove his saying knife\n   Deep in the old man's breast.\n\nThe old man drove his gunstock down\n   Upon the young man's head;\nAnd side by side, by the water brown,\n   Those yeomen twain lay dead.\n\nThey dug three graves in Lyndhurst yard;\n   They dug them side by side;\nTwo yeomen lie there, and a maiden fair\n   A widow and never a bride.\n\nIn the New Forest, 1847.\n\n\n\nTHE RED KING\n\n\n\nThe King was drinking in Malwood Hall,\nThere came in a monk before them all:\nHe thrust by squire, he thrust by knight,\nStood over against the dais aright;\nAnd, 'The word of the Lord, thou cruel Red King,\nThe word of the Lord to thee I bring.\nA grimly sweven I dreamt yestreen;\nI saw thee lie under the hollins green,\nAnd through thine heart an arrow keen;\nAnd out of thy body a smoke did rise,\nWhich smirched the sunshine out of the skies:\nSo if thou God's anointed be\nI rede thee unto thy soul thou see.\nFor mitre and pall thou hast y-sold,\nFalse knight to Christ, for gain and gold;\nAnd for this thy forest were digged down all,\nSteading and hamlet and churches tall;\nAnd Christes poor were ousten forth,\nTo beg their bread from south to north.\nSo tarry at home, and fast and pray,\nLest fiends hunt thee in the judgment-day.'\n\n   The monk he vanished where he stood;\nKing William sterte up wroth and wood;\nQuod he, 'Fools' wits will jump together;\nThe Hampshire ale and the thunder weather\nHave turned the brains for us both, I think;\nAnd monks are curst when they fall to drink.\nA lothly sweven I dreamt last night,\nHow there hoved anigh me a griesly knight,\nDid smite me down to the pit of hell;\nI shrieked and woke, so fast I fell.\nThere's Tyrrel as sour as I, perdie,\nSo he of you all shall hunt with me;\nA grimly brace for a hart to see.'\n\n   The Red King down from Malwood came;\nHis heart with wine was all aflame,\nHis eyne were shotten, red as blood,\nHe rated and swore, wherever he rode.\nThey roused a hart, that grimly brace,\nA hart of ten, a hart of grease,\nFled over against the kinges place.\nThe sun it blinded the kinges ee,\nA fathom behind his hocks shot he:\n   'Shoot thou,' quod he, 'in the fiendes name,\nTo lose such a quarry were seven years' shame.'\nAnd he hove up his hand to mark the game.\nTyrrel he shot full light, God wot;\nFor whether the saints they swerved the shot,\n'Or whether by treason, men knowen not,\nBut under the arm, in a secret part,\nThe iron fled through the kinges heart.\nThe turf it squelched where the Red King fell;\nAnd the fiends they carried his soul to hell,\nQuod 'His master's name it hath sped him well.'\n\nTyrrel he smiled full grim that day,\nQuod 'Shooting of kings is no bairns' play;'\nAnd he smote in the spurs, and fled fast away.\nAs he pricked along by Fritham plain,\nThe green tufts flew behind like rain;\nThe waters were out, and over the sward:\nHe swam his horse like a stalwart lord:\nMen clepen that water Tyrrel's ford.\nBy Rhinefield and by Osmondsleigh,\nThrough glade and furze brake fast drove he,\nUntil he heard the roaring sea;\nQuod he, 'Those gay waves they call me.'\nBy Mary's grace a seely boat\nOn Christchurch bar did lie afloat;\nHe gave the shipmen mark and groat,\nTo ferry him over to Normandie,\nAnd there he fell to sanctuarie;\nGod send his soul all bliss to see.\n\nAnd fend our princes every one,\nFrom foul mishap and trahison;\nBut kings that harrow Christian men\nShall England never bide again.\n\nIn the New Forest, 1847,\n\n\n\nTHE OUTLAW\n\n\n\nOh, I wadna be a yeoman, mither, to follow my father's trade,\nTo bow my back in miry banks, at pleugh and hoe and spade.\nStinting wife, and bairns, and kye, to fat some courtier lord,--\nLet them die o' rent wha like, mither, and I'll die by sword.\n\nNor I wadna be a clerk, mither, to bide aye ben,\nScrabbling ower the sheets o' parchment with a weary weary pen;\nLooking through the lang stane windows at a narrow strip o' sky,\nLike a laverock in a withy cage, until I pine away and die.\n\nNor I wadna be a merchant, mither, in his lang furred gown,\nTrailing strings o' footsore horses through the noisy dusty town;\nLouting low to knights and ladies, fumbling o'er his wares,\nTelling lies, and scraping siller, heaping cares on cares.\n\nNor I wadna be a soldier, mither, to dice wi' ruffian bands,\nPining weary months in castles, looking over wasted lands.\nSmoking byres, and shrieking women, and the grewsome sights o' war--\nThere's blood on my hand eneugh, mither; it's ill to make it mair.\n\nIf I had married a wife, mither, I might ha' been douce and still,\nAnd sat at hame by the ingle side to crack and laugh my fill;\nSat at hame wi' the woman I looed, and wi' bairnies at my knee:\nBut death is bauld, and age is cauld, and luve's no for me.\n\nFor when first I stirred in your side, mither, ye ken full well\nHow you lay all night up among the deer out on the open fell;\nAnd so it was that I won the heart to wander far and near,\nCaring neither for land nor lassie, but the bonnie dun deer.\n\nYet I am not a losel and idle, mither, nor a thief that steals;\nI do but hunt God's cattle, upon God's ain hills;\nFor no man buys and sells the deer, and the bonnie fells are free\nTo a belted knight with hawk on hand, and a gangrel loon like me.\n\nSo I'm aff and away to the muirs, mither, to hunt the deer,\nRanging far frae frowning faces, and the douce folk here;\nCrawling up through burn and bracken, louping down the screes,\nLooking out frae craig and headland, drinking up the simmer breeze.\n\nOh, the wafts o' heather honey, and the music o' the brae,\nAs I watch the great harts feeding, nearer, nearer a' the day.\nOh, to hark the eagle screaming, sweeping, ringing round the sky--\nThat's a bonnier life than stumbling ower the muck to colt and kye.\n\nAnd when I'm taen and hangit, mither, a brittling o' my deer,\nYe'll no leave your bairn to the corbie craws, to dangle in the air;\nBut ye'll send up my twa douce brethren, and ye'll steal me frae the tree,\nAnd bury me up on the brown brown muirs, where I aye looed to be.\n\nYe'll bury me 'twixt the brae and the burn, in a glen far away,\nWhere I may hear the heathcock craw, and the great harts bray;\nAnd gin my ghaist can walk, mither, I'll go glowering at the sky,\nThe livelong night on the black hill sides where the dun deer lie.\n\nIn the New Forest, 1847.\n\n\n\nSING HEIGH-HO!\n\n\n\nThere sits a bird on every tree;\n         Sing heigh-ho!\nThere sits a bird on every tree,\nAnd courts his love as I do thee;\n      Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!\n   Young maids must marry.\n\nThere grows a flower on every bough;\n         Sing heigh-ho!\nThere grows a flower on every bough,\nIts petals kiss--I'll show you how:\n      Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!\n   Young maids must marry.\n\nFrom sea to stream the salmon roam;\n         Sing heigh-ho!\nFrom sea to stream the salmon roam;\nEach finds a mate, and leads her home;\n      Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!\n   Young maids must marry.\n\nThe sun's a bridegroom, earth a bride;\n         Sing heigh-ho!\nThey court from morn till eventide:\nThe earth shall pass, but love abide.\n      Sing heigh-ho, and heigh-ho!\n   Young maids must marry.\n\nEversley, 1847.\n\n\n\nA MARCH\n\n\n\n   Dreary East winds howling o'er us;\n   Clay-lands knee-deep spread before us;\n   Mire and ice and snow and sleet;\n   Aching backs and frozen feet;\n   Knees which reel as marches quicken,\n   Ranks which thin as corpses thicken;\n   While with carrion birds we eat,\n   Calling puddle-water sweet,\nAs we pledge the health of our general, who fares as rough as we:\nWhat can daunt us, what can turn us, led to death by such as he?\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nA LAMENT\n\n\n\nThe merry merry lark was up and singing,\n   And the hare was out and feeding on the lea;\nAnd the merry merry bells below were ringing,\n   When my child's laugh rang through me.\n\nNow the hare is snared and dead beside the snow-yard,\n   And the lark beside the dreary winter sea;\nAnd the baby in his cradle in the churchyard\n   Sleeps sound till the bell brings me.\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nTHE NIGHT BIRD:  A MYTH\n\n\n\nA floating, a floating\nAcross the sleeping sea,\nAll night I heard a singing bird\nUpon the topmost tree.\n\n'Oh came you off the isles of Greece,\nOr off the banks of Seine;\nOr off some tree in forests free,\nWhich fringe the western main?'\n\n'I came not off the old world\nNor yet from off the new--\nBut I am one of the birds of God\nWhich sing the whole night through.'\n\n'Oh sing, and wake the dawning--\nOh whistle for the wind;\nThe night is long, the current strong,\nMy boat it lags behind.'\n\n'The current sweeps the old world,\nThe current sweeps the new;\nThe wind will blow, the dawn will glow\nEre thou hast sailed them through.'\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nTHE DEAD CHURCH\n\n\n\nWild wild wind, wilt thou never cease thy sighing?\n   Dark dark night, wilt thou never wear away?\nCold cold church, in thy death sleep lying,\n   The Lent is past, thy Passion here, but not thine Easter-day.\n\nPeace, faint heart, though the night be dark and sighing;\n   Rest, fair corpse, where thy Lord himself hath lain.\nWeep, dear Lord, above thy bride low lying;\n   Thy tears shall wake her frozen limbs to life and health again.\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nA PARABLE FROM LIEBIG\n\n\n\nThe church bells were ringing, the devil sat singing\n   On the stump of a rotting old tree;\n'Oh faith it grows cold, and the creeds they grow old,\n   And the world is nigh ready for me.'\n\nThe bells went on ringing, a spirit came singing,\n   And smiled as he crumbled the tree;\n'Yon wood does but perish new seedlings to cherish,\n   And the world is too live yet for thee.'\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nTHE STARLINGS\n\n\n\nEarly in spring time, on raw and windy mornings,\nBeneath the freezing house-eaves I heard the starlings sing--\n'Ah dreary March month, is this then a time for building wearily?\n   Sad, sad, to think that the year is but begun.'\n\nLate in the autumn, on still and cloudless evenings,\nAmong the golden reed-beds I heard the starlings sing--\n'Ah that sweet March month, when we and our mates were courting merrily;\n   Sad, sad, to think that the year is all but done.'\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nOLD AND NEW:  A PARABLE\n\n\n\nSee how the autumn leaves float by decaying,\nDown the wild swirls of the rain-swollen stream.\nSo fleet the works of men, back to their earth again;\nAncient and holy things fade like a dream.\n\nNay! see the spring-blossoms steal forth a-maying,\nClothing with tender hues orchard and glen;\nSo, though old forms pass by, ne'er shall their spirit die,\nLook!  England's bare boughs show green leaf again.\n\nEversley, 1848.\n\n\n\nTHE WATCHMAN\n\n\n\n'Watchman, what of the night?'\n   'The stars are out in the sky;\nAnd the merry round moon will be rising soon,\n   For us to go sailing by.'\n\n'Watchman, what of the night?'\n   'The tide flows in from the sea;\nThere's water to float a little cockboat\n   Will carry such fishers as we.'\n\n'Watchman, what of the night?'\n   'The night is a fruitful time;\nWhen to many a pair are born children fair,\n   To be christened at morning chime.'\n\n1849.\n\n\n\nTHE WORLD'S AGE\n\n\n\nWho will say the world is dying?\n   Who will say our prime is past?\nSparks from Heaven, within us lying,\n   Flash, and will flash till the last.\nFools! who fancy Christ mistaken;\n   Man a tool to buy and sell;\nEarth a failure, God-forsaken,\n   Anteroom of Hell.\n\nStill the race of Hero-spirits\n   Pass the lamp from hand to hand;\nAge from age the Words inherits--\n   'Wife, and Child, and Fatherland.'\nStill the youthful hunter gathers\n   Fiery joy from wold and wood;\nHe will dare as dared his fathers\n   Give him cause as good.\n\nWhile a slave bewails his fetters;\n   While an orphan pleads in vain;\nWhile an infant lisps his letters,\n   Heir of all the age's gain;\nWhile a lip grows ripe for kissing;\n   While a moan from man is wrung;\nKnow, by every want and blessing,\n   That the world is young.\n\n1849.\n\n\n\nTHE SANDS OF DEE\n\n\n\n'O Mary, go and call the cattle home,\n      And call the cattle home,\n      And call the cattle home\n   Across the sands of Dee;'\nThe western wind was wild and dank with foam,\n   And all alone went she.\n\nThe western tide crept up along the sand,\n      And o'er and o'er the sand,\n      And round and round the sand,\n   As far as eye could see.\nThe rolling mist came down and hid the land:\n   And never home came she.\n\n'Oh! is it weed, or fish, or floating hair--\n      A tress of golden hair,\n      A drowned maiden's hair\n   Above the nets at sea?\nWas never salmon yet that shone so fair\n   Among the stakes on Dee.'\n\nThey rowed her in across the rolling foam,\n      The cruel crawling foam,\n      The cruel hungry foam,\n   To her grave beside the sea:\nBut still the boatmen hear her call the cattle home\n   Across the sands of Dee.\n\nEversley, 1849.\n\n\n\nTHE TIDE ROCK\n\n\n\nHow sleeps yon rock, whose half-day's bath is done.\nWith broad blight side beneath the broad bright sun,\nLike sea-nymph tired, on cushioned mosses sleeping.\nYet, nearer drawn, beneath her purple tresses\nFrom drooping brows we find her slowly weeping.\n   So many a wife for cruel man's caresses\n   Must inly pine and pine, yet outward bear\n   A gallant front to this world's gaudy glare.\n\nIlfracombe, 1849.\n\n\n\nELEGIACS\n\n\n\nWearily stretches the sand to the surge, and the surge to the cloudland;\nWearily onward I ride, watching the water alone.\nNot as of old, like Homeric Achilles, ??de? ya???,\nJoyous knight-errant of God, thirsting for labour and strife;\nNo more on magical steed borne free through the regions of ether,\nBut, like the hack which I ride, selling my sinew for gold.\nFruit-bearing autumn is gone; let the sad quiet winter hang o'er me--\nWhat were the spring to a soul laden with sorrow and shame?\nBlossoms would fret me with beauty; my heart has no time to bepraise them;\nGray rock, bough, surge, cloud, waken no yearning within.\nSing not, thou sky-lark above! even angels pass hushed by the weeper.\nScream on, ye sea-fowl! my heart echoes your desolate cry.\nSweep the dry sand on, thou wild wind, to drift o'er the shell and the sea-\nweed;\nSea-weed and shell, like my dreams, swept down the pitiless tide.\nJust is the wave which uptore us; 'tis Nature's own law which condemns us;\nWoe to the weak who, in pride, build on the faith of the sand!\nJoy to the oak of the mountain:  he trusts to the might of the rock-clefts;\nDeeply he mines, and in peace feeds on the wealth of the stone.\n\nMorte Sands, Devonshire,\nFebruary 1849.\n\n\n\nDARTSIDE\n\n\n\nI cannot tell what you say, green leaves,\n   I cannot tell what you say:\nBut I know that there is a spirit in you,\n   And a word in you this day.\n\nI cannot tell what you say, rosy rocks,\n   I cannot tell what you say:\nBut I know that there is a spirit in you,\n   And a word in you this day.\n\nI cannot tell what you say, brown streams,\n   I cannot tell what you say:\nBut I know that in you too a spirit doth live,\n   And a word doth speak this day.\n\n'Oh green is the colour of faith and truth,\nAnd rose the colour of love and youth,\n   And brown of the fruitful clay.\n   Sweet Earth is faithful, and fruitful, and young,\n   And her bridal day shall come ere long,\nAnd you shall know what the rocks and the streams\n      And the whispering woodlands say.'\n\nDrew's Teignton, Dartmoor,\nJuly 31, 1849.\n\n\n\nMY HUNTING SONG\n\n\n\n      Forward!  Hark forward's the cry!\nOne more fence and we're out on the open,\nSo to us at once, if you want to live near us!\nHark to them, ride to them, beauties! as on they go,\nLeaping and sweeping away in the vale below!\nCowards and bunglers, whose heart or whose eye is slow,\n   Find themselves staring alone.\n\n      So the great cause flashes by;\nNearer and clearer its purposes open,\nWhile louder and prouder the world-echoes cheer us:\nGentlemen sportsmen, you ought to live up to us,\nLead us, and lift us, and hallo our game to us--\nWe cannot call the hounds off, and no shame to us--\n   Don't be left staring alone!\n\nEversley, 1849.\n\n\n\nALTON LOCKE'S SONG\n\n\n\nWeep, weep, weep and weep,\n   For pauper, dolt, and slave!\nHark! from wasted moor and fen,\nFeverous alley, stifling den,\nSwells the wail of Saxon men--\n   Work! or the grave!\n\nDown, down, down and down,\n   With idler, knave, and tyrant!\nWhy for sluggards cark and moil?\nHe that will not live by toil\nHas no right on English soil!\n   God's word's our warrant!\n\nUp, up, up and up!\n   Face your game and play it!\nThe night is past, behold the sun!\nThe idols fall, the lie is done!\nThe Judge is set, the doom begun!\n   Who shall stay it?\n\nOn Torridge, May 1849.\n\n\n\nTHE DAY OF THE LORD\n\n\n\nThe Day of the Lord is at hand, at hand:\n   Its storms roll up the sky:\nThe nations sleep starving on heaps of gold;\n   All dreamers toss and sigh;\nThe night is darkest before the morn;\nWhen the pain is sorest the child is born,\n      And the Day of the Lord at hand.\n\nGather you, gather you, angels of God--\n   Freedom, and Mercy, and Truth;\nCome! for the Earth is grown coward and old,\n   Come down, and renew us her youth.\nWisdom, Self-Sacrifice, Daring, and Love,\nHaste to the battle-field, stoop from above,\n      To the Day of the Lord at hand.\n\nGather you, gather you, hounds of hell--\n   Famine, and Plague, and War;\nIdleness, Bigotry, Cant, and Misrule,\n   Gather, and fall in the snare!\nHireling and Mammonite, Bigot and Knave,\nCrawl to the battle-field, sneak to your grave,\n      In the Day of the Lord at hand.\n\nWho would sit down and sigh for a lost age of gold,\n   While the Lord of all ages is here?\nTrue hearts will leap up at the trumpet of God,\n   And those who can suffer, can dare.\nEach old age of gold was an iron age too,\nAnd the meekest of saints may find stern work to do,\n      In the Day of the Lord at hand.\n\nOn the Torridge, Devonshire,\nSeptember 10, 1849.\n\n\n\nA CHRISTMAS CAROL\n\n\n\nIt chanced upon the merry merry Christmas eve,\n   I went sighing past the church across the moorland dreary--\n'Oh! never sin and want and woe this earth will leave,\n   And the bells but mock the wailing round, they sing so cheery.\nHow long, O Lord! how long before Thou come again?\n   Still in cellar, and in garret, and on moorland dreary\nThe orphans moan, and widows weep, and poor men toil in vain,\n   Till earth is sick of hope deferred, though Christmas bells be cheery.'\n\nThen arose a joyous clamour from the wild-fowl on the mere,\n   Beneath the stars, across the snow, like clear bells ringing,\nAnd a voice within cried--'Listen!--Christmas carols even here!\n   Though thou be dumb, yet o'er their work the stars and snows are singing.\nBlind!  I live, I love, I reign; and all the nations through\n   With the thunder of my judgments even now are ringing.\nDo thou fulfil thy work but as yon wild-fowl do,\n   Thou wilt heed no less the wailing, yet hear through it angels singing.'\n\nEversley, 1849.\n\n\n\nTHE OUBIT {260}\n\n\n\nIt was an hairy oubit, sae proud he crept alang,\nA feckless hairy oubit, and merrily he sang--\n'My Minnie bad me bide at hame until I won my wings;\nI show her soon my soul's aboon the warks o' creeping things.'\n\nThis feckless hairy oubit cam' hirpling by the linn,\nA swirl o' wind cam' doun the glen, and blew that oubit in:\nOh when he took the water, the saumon fry they rose,\nAnd tigg'd him a' to pieces sma', by head and tail and toes.\n\nTak' warning then, young poets a', by this poor oubit's shame;\nThough Pegasus may nicher loud, keep Pegasus at hame.\nOh haud your hands frae inkhorns, though a' the Muses woo;\nFor critics lie, like saumon fry, to mak' their meals o' you.\n\nEversley, 1851.\n\n\n\nTHE THREE FISHERS\n\n\n\nThree fishers went sailing away to the West,\n   Away to the West as the sun went down;\nEach thought on the woman who loved him the best,\n   And the children stood watching them out of the town;\n   For men must work, and women must weep,\n   And there's little to earn, and many to keep,\n      Though the harbour bar be moaning.\n\nThree wives sat up in the lighthouse tower,\n   And they trimmed the lamps as the sun went down;\nThey looked at the squall, and they looked at the shower,\n   And the night-rack came rolling up ragged and brown.\n   But men must work, and women must weep,\n   Though storms be sudden, and waters deep,\n      And the harbour bar be moaning.\n\nThree corpses lay out on the shining sands\n   In the morning gleam as the tide went down,\nAnd the women are weeping and wringing their hands\n   For those who will never come home to the town;\n   For men must work, and women must weep,\n   And the sooner it's over, the sooner to sleep;\n      And good-bye to the bar and its moaning.\n\nEversley, June 25, 1851.\n\n\n\nSONNET\n\n\n\nOh, thou hadst been a wife for Shakspeare's self!\nNo head, save some world-genius, ought to rest\nAbove the treasures of that perfect breast,\nOr nightly draw fresh light from those keen stars\nThrough which thy soul awes ours:  yet thou art bound--\nO waste of nature!--to a craven hound;\nTo shameless lust, and childish greed of pelf;\nAthene to a Satyr:  was that link\nForged by The Father's hand?  Man's reason bars\nThe bans which God allowed.--Ay, so we think:\nForgetting, thou hadst weaker been, full blest,\n   Than thus made strong by suffering; and more great\n   In martyrdom, than throned as Caesar's mate.\n\nEversley, 1851.\n\n\n\nMARGARET TO DOLCINO\n\n\n\nAsk if I love thee?  Oh, smiles cannot tell\nPlainer what tears are now showing too well.\nHad I not loved thee, my sky had been clear:\nHad I not loved thee, I had not been here,\n      Weeping by thee.\n\nAsk if I love thee?  How else could I borrow\nPride from man's slander, and strength from my sorrow?\nLaugh when they sneer at the fanatic's bride,\nKnowing no bliss, save to toil and abide\n      Weeping by thee.\n\nAndernach on the Rhine,\nAugust 1851.\n\n\n\nDOLCINO TO MARGARET\n\n\n\nThe world goes up and the world goes down,\n   And the sunshine follows the rain;\nAnd yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown\n   Can never come over again,\n      Sweet wife:\n   No, never come over again.\n\nFor woman is warm though man be cold,\n   And the night will hallow the day;\nTill the heart which at even was weary and old\n   Can rise in the morning gay,\n      Sweet wife;\n   To its work in the morning gay.\n\nAndernach, 1851.\n\n\n\nTHE UGLY PRINCESS\n\n\n\nMy parents bow, and lead them forth,\n   For all the crowd to see--\nAh well! the people might not care\n   To cheer a dwarf like me.\n\nThey little know how I could love,\n   How I could plan and toil,\nTo swell those drudges' scanty gains,\n   Their mites of rye and oil.\n\nThey little know what dreams have been\n   My playmates, night and day;\nOf equal kindness, helpful care,\n   A mother's perfect sway.\n\nNow earth to earth in convent walls,\n   To earth in churchyard sod:\nI was not good enough for man,\n   And so am given to God.\n\nBertrich in the Eifel, 1851.\n\n\n\nSONNET\n\n\n\nThe baby sings not on its mother's breast;\nNor nightingales who nestle side by side;\nNor I by thine:  but let us only part,\nThen lips which should but kiss, and so be still,\nAs having uttered all, must speak again--\nO stunted thoughts!  O chill and fettered rhyme\nYet my great bliss, though still entirely blest,\nLosing its proper home, can find no rest:\n   So, like a child who whiles away the time\nWith dance and carol till the eventide,\nWatching its mother homeward through the glen;\nOr nightingale, who, sitting far apart,\nTells to his listening mate within the nest\nThe wonder of his star-entranced heart\nTill all the wakened woodlands laugh and thrill--\n   Forth all my being bubbles into song;\n   And rings aloft, not smooth, yet clear and strong.\n\nBertrich, 1851\n\n\n\nTHE SWAN-NECK\n\n\n\nEvil sped the battle play\nOn the Pope Calixtus' day;\nMighty war-smiths, thanes and lords,\nIn Senlac slept the sleep of swords.\nHarold Earl, shot over shield,\nLay along the autumn weald;\nSlaughter such was never none\nSince the Ethelings England won.\n   Thither Lady Githa came,\nWeeping sore for grief and shame;\nHow may she her first-born tell?\nFrenchmen stript him where he fell,\nGashed and marred his comely face;\nWho can know him in his place?\n   Up and spake two brethren wise,\n'Youngest hearts have keenest eyes;\nBird which leaves its mother's nest,\nMoults its pinions, moults its crest.\nLet us call the Swan-neck here,\nShe that was his leman dear;\nShe shall know him in this stound;\nFoot of wolf, and scent of hound,\nEye of hawk, and wing of dove,\nCarry woman to her love.'\n   Up and spake the Swan-neck high,\n'Go! to all your thanes let cry\nHow I loved him best of all,\nI whom men his leman call;\nBetter knew his body fair\nThan the mother which him bare.\nWhen ye lived in wealth and glee\nThen ye scorned to look on me;\nGod hath brought the proud ones low\nAfter me afoot to go.'\n   Rousing erne and sallow glede,\nRousing gray wolf off his feed,\nOver franklin, earl, and thane,\nHeaps of mother-naked slain,\nRound the red field tracing slow,\nStooped that Swan-neck white as snow;\nNever blushed nor turned away,\nTill she found him where he lay;\nClipt him in her armes fair,\nWrapt him in her yellow hair,\nBore him from the battle-stead,\nSaw him laid in pall of lead,\nTook her to a minster high,\nFor Earl Harold's soul to cry.\n\n   Thus fell Harold, bracelet-giver;\nJesu rest his soul for ever;\nAngles all from thrall deliver;\n      Miserere Domine.\n\nEversley, 1851.\n\n\n\nA THOUGHT FROM THE RHINE\n\n\n\nI heard an Eagle crying all alone\nAbove the vineyards through the summer night,\nAmong the skeletons of robber towers:\nBecause the ancient eyrie of his race\nWas trenched and walled by busy-handed men;\nAnd all his forest-chace and woodland wild,\nWherefrom he fed his young with hare and roe,\nWere trim with grapes which swelled from hour to hour,\nAnd tossed their golden tendrils to the sun\nFor joy at their own riches:--So, I thought,\nThe great devourers of the earth shall sit,\nIdle and impotent, they know not why,\nDown-staring from their barren height of state\nOn nations grown too wise to slay and slave,\nThe puppets of the few; while peaceful lore\nAnd fellow-help make glad the heart of earth,\nWith wonders which they fear and hate, as he,\nThe Eagle, hates the vineyard slopes below.\n\nOn the Rhine, 1851.\n\n\n\nTHE LONGBEARDS' SAGA.  A.D. 400\n\n\n\nOver the camp-fires\nDrank I with heroes,\nUnder the Donau bank,\nWarm in the snow trench:\nSagamen heard I there,\nMen of the Longbeards,\nCunning and ancient,\nHoney-sweet-voiced.\nScaring the wolf cub,\nScaring the horn-owl,\nShaking the snow-wreaths\nDown from the pine-boughs,\nUp to the star roof\nRang out their song.\nSinging how Winil men,\nOver the ice-floes\nSledging from Scanland\nCame unto Scoring;\nSinging of Gambara,\nFreya's beloved,\nMother of Ayo,\nMother of Ibor.\nSinging of Wendel men,\nAmbri and Assi;\nHow to the Winilfolk\nWent they with war-words,--\n'Few are ye, strangers,\nAnd many are we:\nPay us now toll and fee,\nCloth-yarn, and rings, and beeves:\nElse at the raven's meal\nBide the sharp bill's doom.'\nClutching the dwarfs work then,\nClutching the bullock's shell,\nGirding gray iron on,\nForth fared the Winils all,\nFared the Alruna's sons,\nAyo and Ibor.\nMad at heart stalked they:\nLoud wept the women all,\nLoud the Alruna wife;\nSore was their need.\nOut of the morning land,\nOver the snow-drifts,\nBeautiful Freya came,\nTripping to Scoring.\nWhite were the moorlands,\nAnd frozen before her:\nGreen were the moorlands,\nAnd blooming behind her.\nOut of her gold locks\nShaking the spring flowers,\nOut of her garments\nShaking the south wind,\nAround in the birches\nAwaking the throstles,\nAnd making chaste housewives all\nLong for their heroes home,\nLoving and love-giving,\nCame she to Scoring.\nCame unto Gambara,\nWisest of Valas,--\n'Vala, why weepest thou?\nFar in the wide-blue,\nHigh up in the Elfin-home,\nHeard I thy weeping.'\n'Stop not my weeping,\nTill one can fight seven.\nSons have I, heroes tall,\nFirst in the sword-play;\nThis day at the Wendels' hands\nEagles must tear them.\nTheir mothers, thrall-weary,\nMust grind for the Wendels.'\nWept the Alruna wife;\nKissed her fair Freya:--\n'Far off in the morning land,\nHigh in Valhalla,\nA window stands open;\nIts sill is the snow-peaks,\nIts posts are the waterspouts,\nStorm-rack its lintel;\nGold cloud-flakes above\nAre piled for the roofing,\nFar up to the Elfin-home,\nHigh in the wide-blue.\nSmiles out each morning thence\nOdin Allfather;\nFrom under the cloud-eaves\nSmiles out on the heroes,\nSmiles on chaste housewives all,\nSmiles on the brood-mares,\nSmiles on the smiths' work:\nAnd theirs is the sword-luck,\nWith them is the glory,--\nSo Odin hath sworn it,--\nWho first in the morning\nShall meet him and greet him.'\nStill the Alruna wept:--\n'Who then shall greet him?\nWomen alone are here:\nFar on the moorlands\nBehind the war-lindens,\nIn vain for the bill's doom\nWatch Winil heroes all,\nOne against seven.'\nSweetly the Queen laughed:--\n'Hear thou my counsel now;\nTake to thee cunning,\nBeloved of Freya.\nTake thou thy women-folk,\nMaidens and wives:\nOver your ankles\nLace on the white war-hose;\nOver your bosoms\nLink up the hard mail-nets;\nOver your lips\nPlait long tresses with cunning;--\nSo war-beasts full-bearded\nKing Odin shall deem you,\nWhen off the gray sea-beach\nAt sunrise ye greet him.'\n\nNight's son was driving\nHis golden-haired horses up;\nOver the eastern firths\nHigh flashed their manes.\nSmiled from the cloud-eaves out\nAllfather Odin,\nWaiting the battle-sport:\nFreya stood by him.\n'Who are these heroes tall,--\nLusty-limbed Longbeards?\nOver the swans' bath\nWhy cry they to me?\nBones should be crashing fast,\nWolves should be full-fed,\nWhere such, mad-hearted,\nSwing hands in the sword-play.'\n\nSweetly laughed Freya:--\n'A name thou hast given them,\nShames neither thee nor them,\nWell can they wear it.\nGive them the victory,\nFirst have they greeted thee;\nGive them the victory,\nYokefellow mine!\nMaidens and wives are these,--\nWives of the Winils;\nFew are their heroes\nAnd far on the war-road,\nSo over the swans' bath\nThey cry unto thee.'\n\nRoyally laughed he then;\nDear was that craft to him,\nOdin Allfather,\nShaking the clouds.\n'Cunning are women all,\nBold and importunate!\nLongbeards their name shall be,\nRavens shall thank them:\nWhere women are heroes,\nWhat must the men be?\nTheirs is the victory;\nNo need of me!'\n\nEversley, 1852.\nFrom Hypatia.\n\n\n\nSAINT MAURA.  A.D. 304\n\n\n\nThank God!  Those gazers' eyes are gone at last!\nThe guards are crouching underneath the rock;\nThe lights are fading in the town below,\nAround the cottage which this morn was ours.\nKind sun, to set, and leave us here alone;\nAlone upon our crosses with our God;\nWhile all the angels watch us from the stars.\nKind moon, to shine so clear and full on him,\nAnd bathe his limbs in glory, for a sign\nOf what awaits him!  Oh look on him, Lord!\nLook, and remember how he saved thy lamb!\n   Oh listen to me, teacher, husband, love,\nNever till now loved utterly!  Oh say,\nSay you forgive me!  No--you must not speak:\nYou said it to me hours ago--long hours!\nNow you must rest, and when to-morrow comes\nSpeak to the people, call them home to God,\nA deacon on the Cross, as in the Church;\nAnd plead from off the tree with outspread arms,\nTo show them that the Son of God endured\nFor them--and me.  Hush!  I alone will speak,\nAnd while away the hours till dawn for you.\nI know you have forgiven me; as I lay\nBeneath your feet, while they were binding me,\nI knew I was forgiven then!  When I cried\n'Here am I, husband!  The lost lamb returned,\nAll re-baptized in blood!' and you said, 'Come!\nCome to thy bride-bed, martyr, wife once more!'\nFrom that same moment all my pain was gone;\nAnd ever since those sightless eyes have smiled\nLove--love!  Alas, those eyes!  They made me fall.\nI could not bear to see them, bleeding, dark,\nNever, no never to look into mine;\nNever to watch me round the little room\nSinging about my work, or flash on me\nLooks bright with counsel.--Then they drove me mad\nWith talk of nameless tortures waiting you--\nAnd I could save you!  You would hear your love--\nThey knew you loved me, cruel men!  And then--\nThen came a dream; to say one little word,\nOne easy wicked word, we both might say,\nAnd no one hear us, but the lictors round;\nOne tiny sprinkle of the incense grains,\nAnd both, both free!  And life had just begun--\nOnly three months--short months--your wedded wife\nOnly three months within the cottage there--\nHoping I bore your child. . . .\nAh! husband!  Saviour!  God! think gently of me!\nI am forgiven! . . .\n   And then another dream;\nA flash--so quick, I could not bear the blaze;\nI could not see the smoke among the light--\nTo wander out through unknown lands, and lead\nYou by the hand through hamlet, port, and town,\nOn, on, until we died; and stand each day\nTo glory in you, as you preached and prayed\nFrom rock and bourne-stone, with that voice, those words,\nMingled with fire and honey--you would wake,\nBend, save whole nations! would not that atone\nFor one short word?--ay, make it right, to save\nYou, you, to fight the battles of the Lord?\nAnd so--and so--alas! you knew the rest!\nYou answered me. . . .\nAh cruel words!  No!  Blessed, godlike words.\nYou had done nobly had you struck me dead,\nInstead of striking me to life!--the temptress! . . .\n'Traitress! apostate! dead to God and me!'--\n'The smell of death upon me?'--so it was!\nTrue! true! well spoken, hero!  Oh they snapped,\nThose words, my madness, like the angel's voice\nThrilling the graves to birth-pangs.  All was clear.\nThere was but one right thing in the world to do;\nAnd I must do it. . . .  Lord, have mercy!  Christ!\nHelp through my womanhood:  or I shall fail\nYet, as I failed before! . . .  I could not speak--\nI could not speak for shame and misery,\nAnd terror of my sin, and of the things\nI knew were coming:  but in heaven, in heaven!\nThere we should meet, perhaps--and by that time\nI might be worthy of you once again--\nOf you, and of my God. . . .  So I went out.\n. . . . . .\nWill you hear more, and so forget the pain?\nAnd yet I dread to tell you what comes next;\nYour love will feel it all again for me.\nNo! it is over; and the woe that's dead\nRises next hour a glorious angel.  Love!\nSay, shall I tell you?  Ah! your lips are dry!\nTo-morrow, when they come, we must entreat,\nAnd they will give you water.  One to-day,\nA soldier, gave me water in a sponge\nUpon a reed, and said, 'Too fair! too young!\nShe might have been a gallant soldier's wife!'\nAnd then I cried, 'I am a soldier's wife!\nA hero's!'  And he smiled, but let me drink.\nGod bless him for it!\n   So they led me back:\nAnd as I went, a voice was in my ears\nWhich rang through all the sunlight, and the breath\nAnd blaze of all the garden slopes below,\nAnd through the harvest-voices, and the moan\nOf cedar-forests on the cliffs above,\nAnd round the shining rivers, and the peaks\nWhich hung beyond the cloud-bed of the west,\nAnd round the ancient stones about my feet.\nOut of all heaven and earth it rang, and cried,\n'My hand hath made all these.  Am I too weak\nTo give thee strength to say so?'  Then my soul\nSpread like a clear blue sky within my breast,\nWhile all the people made a ring around,\nAnd in the midst the judge spoke smilingly--\n'Well! hast thou brought him to a better mind?'\n'No!  He has brought me to a better mind!'--\nI cried, and said beside--I know not what--\nWords which I learnt from thee--I trust in God\nNought fierce or rude--for was I not a girl\nThree months ago beneath my mother's roof?\nI thought of that.  She might be there!  I looked--\nShe was not there!  I hid my face and wept.\nAnd when I looked again, the judge's eye\nWas on me, cold and steady, deep in thought--\n'She knows what shame is still; so strip her.'  'Ah!'\nI shrieked, 'Not that, Sir!  Any pain!  So young\nI am--a wife too--I am not my own,\nBut his--my husband's!'  But they took my shawl,\nAnd tore my tunic off, and there I stood\nBefore them all. . . .  Husband! you love me still?\nIndeed I pleaded!  Oh, shine out, kind moon,\nAnd let me see him smile!  Oh! how I prayed,\nWhile some cried 'Shame!' and some, 'She is too young!'\nAnd some mocked--ugly words:  God shut my ears.\nAnd yet no earthquake came to swallow me.\nWhile all the court around, and walls, and roofs,\nAnd all the earth and air were full of eyes,\nEyes, eyes, which scorched my limbs like burning flame,\nUntil my brain seemed bursting from my brow:\nAnd yet no earthquake came!  And then I knew\nThis body was not yours alone, but God's--\nHis loan--He needed it:  and after that\nThe worst was come, and any torture more\nA change--a lightening; and I did not shriek--\nOnce only--once, when first I felt the whip--\nIt coiled so keen around my side, and sent\nA fire-flash through my heart which choked me--then\nI shrieked--that once.  The foolish echo rang\nSo far and long--I prayed you might not hear.\nAnd then a mist, which hid the ring of eyes,\nSwam by me, and a murmur in my ears\nOf humming bees around the limes at home;\nAnd I was all alone with you and God.\nAnd what they did to me I hardly know;\nI felt, and did not feel.  Now I look back,\nIt was not after all so very sharp:\nSo do not pity me.  It made me pray;\nForget my shame in pain, and pain in you,\nAnd you in God:  and once, when I looked down,\nAnd saw an ugly sight--so many wounds!\n'What matter?' thought I.  'His dear eyes are dark;\nFor them alone I kept these limbs so white--\nA foolish pride!  As God wills now.  'Tis just.'\n   But then the judge spoke out in haste:  'She is mad,\nOr fenced by magic arts!  She feels no pain!'\nHe did not know I was on fire within:\nBetter he should not; so his sin was less.\nThen he cried fiercely, 'Take the slave away,\nAnd crucify her by her husband's side!'\nAnd at those words a film came on my face--\nA sickening rush of joy--was that the end?\nThat my reward?  I rose, and tried to go--\nBut all the eyes had vanished, and the judge;\nAnd all the buildings melted into mist:\nSo how they brought me here I cannot tell--\nHere, here, by you, until the judgment-day,\nAnd after that for ever and for ever!\nAh!  If I could but reach that hand!  One touch!\nOne finger tip, to send the thrill through me\nI felt but yesterday!--No!  I can wait:--\nAnother body!--Oh, new limbs are ready,\nFree, pure, instinct with soul through every nerve,\nKept for us in the treasuries of God.\nThey will not mar the love they try to speak,\nThey will not fail my soul, as these have done!\n. . . . .\nWill you hear more?  Nay--you know all the rest:\nYet those poor eyes--alas! they could not see\nMy waking, when you hung above me there\nWith hands outstretched to bless the penitent--\nYour penitent--even like The Lord Himself--\nI gloried in you!--like The Lord Himself!\nSharing His very sufferings, to the crown\nOf thorns which they had put on that dear brow\nTo make you like Him--show you as you were!\nI told them so!  I bid them look on you,\nAnd see there what was the highest throne on earth--\nThe throne of suffering, where the Son of God\nEndured and triumphed for them.  But they laughed;\nAll but one soldier, gray, with many scars;\nAnd he stood silent.  Then I crawled to you,\nAnd kissed your bleeding feet, and called aloud--\nYou heard me!  You know all!  I am at peace.\nPeace, peace, as still and bright as is the moon\nUpon your limbs, came on me at your smile,\nAnd kept me happy, when they dragged me back\nFrom that last kiss, and spread me on the cross,\nAnd bound my wrists and ankles--Do not sigh:\nI prayed, and bore it:  and since they raised me up\nMy eyes have never left your face, my own, my own,\nNor will, till death comes! . . .\n   Do I feel much pain?\nNot much.  Not maddening.  None I cannot bear.\nIt has become like part of my own life,\nOr part of God's life in me--honour--bliss!\nI dreaded madness, and instead comes rest;\nRest deep and smiling, like a summer's night.\nI should be easy, now, if I could move . . .\nI cannot stir.  Ah God! these shoots of fire\nThrough all my limbs!  Hush, selfish girl!  He hears you!\nWho ever found the cross a pleasant bed?\nYes; I can bear it, love.  Pain is no evil\nUnless it conquers us.  These little wrists, now--\nYou said, one blessed night, they were too slender,\nToo soft and slender for a deacon's wife--\nPerhaps a martyr's:--You forgot the strength\nWhich God can give.  The cord has cut them through;\nAnd yet my voice has never faltered yet.\nOh! do not groan, or I shall long and pray\nThat you may die:  and you must not die yet.\nNot yet--they told us we might live three days . . .\nTwo days for you to preach!  Two days to speak\nWords which may wake the dead!\n. . . . .\n   Hush! is he sleeping?\nThey say that men have slept upon the cross;\nSo why not he? . . .  Thanks, Lord!  I hear him breathe:\nAnd he will preach Thy word to-morrow!--save\nSouls, crowds, for Thee!  And they will know his worth\nYears hence--poor things, they know not what they do!--\nAnd crown him martyr; and his name will ring\nThrough all the shores of earth, and all the stars\nWhose eyes are sparkling through their tears to see\nHis triumph--Preacher!  Martyr!--Ah--and me?--\nIf they must couple my poor name with his,\nLet them tell all the truth--say how I loved him,\nAnd tried to damn him by that love!  O Lord!\nReturning good for evil! and was this\nThe payment I deserved for such a sin?\nTo hang here on my cross, and look at him\nUntil we kneel before Thy throne in heaven!\n\nEversley, 1852.\n\n\n\nON THE DEATH OF A CERTAIN JOURNAL {282}\n\n\n\nSo die, thou child of stormy dawn,\nThou winter flower, forlorn of nurse;\nChilled early by the bigot's curse,\nThe pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn.\n\nFair death, to fall in teeming June,\nWhen every seed which drops to earth\nTakes root, and wins a second birth\nFrom steaming shower and gleaming moon.\n\nFall warm, fall fast, thou mellow rain;\nThou rain of God, make fat the land;\nThat roots which parch in burning sand\nMay bud to flower and fruit again.\n\nTo grace, perchance, a fairer morn\nIn mightier lands beyond the sea,\nWhile honour falls to such as we\nFrom hearts of heroes yet unborn,\n\nWho in the light of fuller day,\nOf purer science, holier laws,\nBless us, faint heralds of their cause,\nDim beacons of their glorious way.\n\nFailure?  While tide-floods rise and boil\nRound cape and isle, in port and cove,\nResistless, star-led from above:\nWhat though our tiny wave recoil?\n\nEversley, 1852.\n\n\n\nDOWN TO THE MOTHERS\n\n\n\nLinger no more, my beloved, by abbey and cell and cathedral;\nMourn not for holy ones mourning of old them who knew not the Father,\nWeeping with fast and scourge, when the bridegroom was taken from them.\nDrop back awhile through the years, to the warm rich youth of the nations,\nChildlike in virtue and faith, though childlike in passion and pleasure,\nChildlike still, and still near to their God, while the day-spring of Eden\nLingered in rose-red rays on the peaks of Ionian mountains.\nDown to the mothers, as Faust went, I go, to the roots of our manhood,\nMothers of us in our cradles; of us once more in our glory.\nNew-born, body and soul, in the great pure world which shall be\nIn the renewing of all things, when man shall return to his Eden\nConquering evil, and death, and shame, and the slander of conscience--\nFree in the sunshine of Godhead--and fearlessly smile on his Father.\nDown to the mothers I go--yet with thee still!--be with me, thou purest!\nLead me, thy hand in my hand; and the dayspring of God go before us.\n\nEversley, 1852.\n\n\n\nTO MISS MITFORD:  AUTHORESS OF 'OUR VILLAGE'\n\n\n\nThe single eye, the daughter of the light;\nWell pleased to recognise in lowliest shade\nSome glimmer of its parent beam, and made\nBy daily draughts of brightness, inly bright.\nThe taste severe, yet graceful, trained aright\nIn classic depth and clearness, and repaid\nBy thanks and honour from the wise and staid--\nBy pleasant skill to blame, and yet delight,\nAnd high communion with the eloquent throng\nOf those who purified our speech and song--\nAll these are yours.  The same examples lure,\nYou in each woodland, me on breezy moor--\nWith kindred aim the same sweet path along,\nTo knit in loving knowledge rich and poor.\n\nEversley, 1853.\n\n\n\nBALLAD OF EARL HALDAN'S DAUGHTER\n\n\n\n   It was Earl Haldan's daughter,\n      She looked across the sea;\n   She looked across the water;\n      And long and loud laughed she:\n   'The locks of six princesses\n      Must be my marriage fee,\nSo hey bonny boat, and ho bonny boat!\n      Who comes a wooing me?'\n\n   It was Earl Haldan's daughter,\n      She walked along the sand;\n   When she was aware of a knight so fair,\n      Came sailing to the land.\n   His sails were all of velvet,\n      His mast of beaten gold,\nAnd 'Hey bonny boat, and ho bonny boat!\n      Who saileth here so bold?'\n\n   'The locks of five princesses\n      I won beyond the sea;\n   I clipt their golden tresses,\n      To fringe a cloak for thee.\n   One handful yet is wanting,\n      But one of all the tale;\nSo hey bonny boat, and ho bonny boat!\n      Furl up thy velvet sail!'\n\n   He leapt into the water,\n      That rover young and bold;\n   He gript Earl Haldan's daughter,\n      He clipt her locks of gold:\n   'Go weep, go weep, proud maiden,\n      The tale is full to-day.\nNow hey bonny boat, and ho bonny boat!\n      Sail Westward ho! away!'\n\nDevonshire, 1854\n   From Westward Ho!\n\n\n\nFRANK LEIGH'S SONG.  A.D. 1586\n\n\n\nAh tyrant Love, Megaera's serpents bearing,\n   Why thus requite my sighs with venom'd smart?\nAh ruthless dove, the vulture's talons wearing,\n   Why flesh them, traitress, in this faithful heart?\nIs this my meed?  Must dragons' teeth alone\nIn Venus' lawns by lovers' hands be sown?\n\nNay, gentlest Cupid; 'twas my pride undid me;\n   Nay, guiltless dove; by mine own wound I fell.\nTo worship, not to wed, Celestials bid me:\n   I dreamt to mate in heaven, and wake in hell;\nFor ever doom'd, Ixion-like, to reel\nOn mine own passions' ever-burning wheel.\n\nDevonshire, 1854.\n   From Westward Ho!\n\n\n\nODE TO THE NORTH-EAST WIND\n\n\n\nWelcome, wild North-easter.\n   Shame it is to see\nOdes to every zephyr;\n   Ne'er a verse to thee.\nWelcome, black North-easter!\n   O'er the German foam;\nO'er the Danish moorlands,\n   From thy frozen home.\nTired we are of summer,\n   Tired of gaudy glare,\nShowers soft and steaming,\n   Hot and breathless air.\nTired of listless dreaming,\n   Through the lazy day:\nJovial wind of winter\n   Turns us out to play!\nSweep the golden reed-beds;\n   Crisp the lazy dyke;\nHunger into madness\n   Every plunging pike.\nFill the lake with wild-fowl;\n   Fill the marsh with snipe;\nWhile on dreary moorlands\n   Lonely curlew pipe.\nThrough the black fir-forest\n   Thunder harsh and dry,\nShattering down the snow-flakes\n   Off the curdled sky.\nHark!  The brave North-easter!\n   Breast-high lies the scent,\nOn by holt and headland,\n   Over heath and bent.\nChime, ye dappled darlings,\n   Through the sleet and snow.\nWho can over-ride you?\n   Let the horses go!\nChime, ye dappled darlings,\n   Down the roaring blast;\nYou shall see a fox die\n   Ere an hour be past.\nGo! and rest to-morrow,\n   Hunting in your dreams,\nWhile our skates are ringing\n   O'er the frozen streams.\nLet the luscious South-wind\n   Breathe in lovers' sighs,\nWhile the lazy gallants\n   Bask in ladies' eyes.\nWhat does he but soften\n   Heart alike and pen?\n'Tis the hard gray weather\n   Breeds hard English men.\nWhat's the soft South-wester?\n   'Tis the ladies' breeze,\nBringing home their true-loves\n   Out of all the seas:\nBut the black North-easter,\n   Through the snowstorm hurled,\nDrives our English hearts of oak\n   Seaward round the world.\nCome, as came our fathers,\n   Heralded by thee,\nConquering from the eastward,\n   Lords by land and sea.\nCome; and strong within us\n   Stir the Vikings' blood;\nBracing brain and sinew;\n   Blow, thou wind of God!\n\n1854.\n\n\n\nA FAREWELL:  TO C. E. G.\n\n\n\nMy fairest child, I have no song to give you;\n   No lark could pipe in skies so dull and gray;\nYet, if you will, one quiet hint I'll leave you,\n      For every day.\n\nI'll tell you how to sing a clearer carol\n   Than lark who hails the dawn or breezy down\nTo earn yourself a purer poet's laurel\n      Than Shakespeare's crown.\n\nBe good, sweet maid, and let who can be clever;\n   Do lovely things, not dream them, all day long;\nAnd so make Life, and Death, and that For Ever,\n      One grand sweet song.\n\nFebruary 1, 1856.\n\n\n\nTO G. A. G.\n\n\n\nA hasty jest I once let fall--\n   As jests are wont to be, untrue--\n   As if the sum of joy to you\nWere hunt and picnic, rout and ball.\n\nYour eyes met mine:  I did not blame;\n   You saw it:  but I touched too near\n   Some noble nerve; a silent tear\nSpoke soft reproach, and lofty shame.\n\nI do not wish those words unsaid.\n   Unspoilt by praise and pleasure, you\n   In that one look to woman grew,\nWhile with a child, I thought, I played.\n\nNext to mine own beloved so long!\n   I have not spent my heart in vain.\n   I watched the blade; I see the grain;\nA woman's soul, most soft, yet strong.\n\nEversley, 1856.\n\n\n\nTHE SOUTH WIND:  A FISHERMAN'S BLESSINGS\n\n\n\nO blessed drums of Aldershot!\n   O blessed South-west train!\nO blessed, blessed Speaker's clock,\n   All prophesying rain!\n\nO blessed yaffil, laughing loud!\n   O blessed falling glass!\nO blessed fan of cold gray cloud!\n   O blessed smelling grass!\n\nO bless'd South wind that toots his horn\n   Through every hole and crack!\nI'm off at eight to-morrow morn,\n   To bring _such_ fishes back!\n\nEversley, April 1, 1856.\n\n\n\nTHE INVITATION:  TO TOM HUGHES\n\n\n\nCome away with me, Tom,\nTerm and talk are done;\nMy poor lads are reaping,\nBusy every one.\nCurates mind the parish,\nSweepers mind the court;\nWe'll away to Snowdon\nFor our ten days' sport;\nFish the August evening\nTill the eve is past,\nWhoop like boys, at pounders\nFairly played and grassed.\nWhen they cease to dimple,\nLunge, and swerve, and leap,\nThen up over Siabod,\nChoose our nest, and sleep.\nUp a thousand feet, Tom,\nRound the lion's head,\nFind soft stones to leeward\nAnd make up our bed.\nEat our bread and bacon,\nSmoke the pipe of peace,\nAnd, ere we be drowsy,\nGive our boots a grease.\nHomer's heroes did so,\nWhy not such as we?\nWhat are sheets and servants?\nSuperfluity!\nPray for wives and children\nSafe in slumber curled,\nThen to chat till midnight\nO'er this babbling world--\nOf the workmen's college,\nOf the price of grain,\nOf the tree of knowledge,\nOf the chance of rain;\nIf Sir A. goes Romeward,\nIf Miss B. sings true,\nIf the fleet comes homeward,\nIf the mare will do,--\nAnything and everything--\nUp there in the sky\nAngels understand us,\nAnd no 'saints' are by.\nDown, and bathe at day-dawn,\nTramp from lake to lake,\nWashing brain and heart clean\nEvery step we take.\nLeave to Robert Browning\nBeggars, fleas, and vines;\nLeave to mournful Ruskin\nPopish Apennines,\nDirty Stones of Venice\nAnd his Gas-lamps Seven--\nWe've the stones of Snowdon\nAnd the lamps of heaven.\nWhere's the mighty credit\nIn admiring Alps?\nAny goose sees 'glory'\nIn their 'snowy scalps.'\nLeave such signs and wonders\nFor the dullard brain,\nAs aesthetic brandy,\nOpium and cayenne.\nGive me Bramshill common\n(St. John's harriers by),\nOr the vale of Windsor,\nEngland's golden eye.\nShow me life and progress,\nBeauty, health, and man;\nHouses fair, trim gardens,\nTurn where'er I can.\nOr, if bored with 'High Art,'\nAnd such popish stuff,\nOne's poor ear need airing,\nSnowdon's high enough.\nWhile we find God's signet\nFresh on English ground,\nWhy go gallivanting\nWith the nations round?\nThough we try no ventures\nDesperate or strange;\nFeed on commonplaces\nIn a narrow range;\nNever sought for Franklin\nRound the frozen Capes;\nEven, with Macdougall, {295}\nBagged our brace of apes;\nNever had our chance, Tom,\nIn that black Redan;\nCan't avenge poor Brereton\nOut in Sakarran;\nTho' we earn our bread, Tom,\nBy the dirty pen,\nWhat we can we will be,\nHonest Englishmen.\nDo the work that's nearest,\nThough it's dull at whiles,\nHelping, when we meet them,\nLame dogs over stiles;\nSee in every hedgerow\nMarks of angels' feet,\nEpics in each pebble\nUnderneath our feet;\nOnce a year, like schoolboys,\nRobin-Hooding go,\nLeaving fops and fogies\nA thousand feet below.\n\nEversley, August 1856.\n\n\n\nTHE FIND\n\n\n\n   Yon sound's neither sheep-bell nor bark,\n   They're running--they're running, Go hark!\n   The sport may be lost by a moment's delay;\n   So whip up the puppies and scurry away.\nDash down through the cover by dingle and dell,\nThere's a gate at the bottom--I know it full well;\nAnd they're running--they're running,\n      Go hark!\n\n   They're running--they're running, Go hark!\n   One fence and we're out of the park;\n   Sit down in your saddles and race at the brook,\n   Then smash at the bullfinch; no time for a look;\nLeave cravens and skirters to dangle behind;\nHe's away for the moors in the teeth of the wind,\nAnd they're running--they're running,\n      Go hark!\n\n   They're running--they're running, Go hark!\n   Let them run on and run till it's dark!\n   Well with them we are, and well with them we'll be,\n   While there's wind in our horses and daylight to see:\nThen shog along homeward, chat over the fight,\nAnd hear in our dreams the sweet music all night\nOf--They're running--they're running,\n      Go hark!\n\nEversley, 1856.\n\n\n\nFISHING SONG:  TO J. A. FROUDE AND TOM HUGHES\n\n\n\n      Oh, Mr. Froude, how wise and good,\n         To point us out this way to glory--\n      They're no great shakes, those Snowdon Lakes,\n         And all their pounders myth and story.\nBlow Snowdon!  What's Lake Gwynant to Killarney,\nOr spluttering Welsh to tender blarney, blarney, blarney?\n\n      So Thomas Hughes, sir, if you choose,\n         I'll tell you where we think of going,\n      To swate and far o'er cliff and scar,\n         Hear horns of Elfland faintly blowing;\nBlow Snowdon!  There's a hundred lakes to try in,\nAnd fresh caught salmon daily, frying, frying, frying.\n\n      Geology and botany\n         A hundred wonders shall diskiver,\n      We'll flog and troll in strid and hole,\n         And skim the cream of lake and river,\nBlow Snowdon! give me Ireland for my pennies,\nHurrah! for salmon, grilse, and--Dennis, Dennis, Dennis!\n\nEversley, 1856\n\n\n\nTHE LAST BUCCANEER\n\n\n\nOh England is a pleasant place for them that's rich and high,\nBut England is a cruel place for such poor folks as I;\nAnd such a port for mariners I ne'er shall see again\nAs the pleasant Isle of Aves, beside the Spanish main.\n\nThere were forty craft in Aves that were both swift and stout,\nAll furnished well with small arms and cannons round about;\nAnd a thousand men in Aves made laws so fair and free\nTo choose their valiant captains and obey them loyally.\n\nThence we sailed against the Spaniard with his hoards of plate and gold,\nWhich he wrung with cruel tortures from Indian folk of old;\nLikewise the merchant captains, with hearts as hard as stone,\nWho flog men and keel-haul them, and starve them to the bone.\n\nOh the palms grew high in Aves, and fruits that shone like gold,\nAnd the colibris and parrots they were gorgeous to behold;\nAnd the negro maids to Aves from bondage fast did flee,\nTo welcome gallant sailors, a-sweeping in from sea.\n\nOh sweet it was in Aves to hear the landward breeze,\nA-swing with good tobacco in a net between the trees,\nWith a negro lass to fan you, while you listened to the roar\nOf the breakers on the reef outside, that never touched the shore.\n\nBut Scripture saith, an ending to all fine things must be;\nSo the King's ships sailed on Aves, and quite put down were we.\nAll day we fought like bulldogs, but they burst the booms at night;\nAnd I fled in a piragua, sore wounded, from the fight.\n\nNine days I floated starving, and a negro lass beside,\nTill for all I tried to cheer her, the poor young thing she died;\nBut as I lay a gasping, a Bristol sail came by,\nAnd brought me home to England here, to beg until I die.\n\nAnd now I'm old and going--I'm sure I can't tell where;\nOne comfort is, this world's so hard, I can't be worse off there:\nIf I might but be a sea-dove, I'd fly across the main,\nTo the pleasant Isle of Aves, to look at it once again.\n\nEversley, 1857,\n\n\n\nTHE KNIGHT'S RETURN\n\n\n\nHark! hark! hark!\nThe lark sings high in the dark.\nThe were wolves mutter, the night hawks moan,\nThe raven croaks from the Raven-stone;\nWhat care I for his boding groan,\nRiding the moorland to come to mine own?\nHark! hark! hark!\nThe lark sings high in the dark.\n\nHark! hark! hark!\nThe lark sings high in the dark.\nLong have I wander'd by land and by sea,\nLong have I ridden by moorland and lea;\nYonder she sits with my babe on her knee,\nSits at the window and watches for me!\nHark! hark! hark!\nThe lark sings high in the dark.\n\nWritten for music, 1857.\n\n\n\nPEN-Y-GWRYDD:  TO TOM HUGHES, ESQ.\n\n\n\nThere is no inn in Snowdon which is not awful dear,\nExcepting Pen-y-gwrydd (you can't pronounce it, dear),\nWhich standeth in the meeting of noble valleys three--\nOne is the vale of Gwynant, so well beloved by me,\nOne goes to Capel-Curig, and I can't mind its name,\nAnd one it is Llanberris Pass, which all men knows the same;\nBetween which radiations vast mountains does arise,\nAs full of tarns as sieves of holes, in which big fish will rise,\nThat is, just one day in the year, if you be there, my boy,\nJust about ten o'clock at night; and then I wish you joy.\nNow to this Pen-y-gwrydd inn I purposeth to write,\n(Axing the post town out of Froude, for I can't mind it quite),\nAnd to engage a room or two, for let us say a week,\nFor fear of gents, and Manichees, and reading parties meek,\nAnd there to live like fighting-cocks at almost a bob a day,\nAnd arterwards toward the sea make tracks and cut away,\nAll for to catch the salmon bold in Aberglaslyn pool,\nAnd work the flats in Traeth-Mawr, and will, or I'm a fool.\nAnd that's my game, which if you like, respond to me by post;\nBut I fear it will not last, my son, a thirteen days at most.\nFlies is no object; I can tell some three or four will do,\nAnd John Jones, Clerk, he knows the rest, and ties and sells 'em too.\nBesides of which I have no more to say, leastwise just now,\nAnd so, goes to my children's school and 'umbly makes my bow.\n\nEversley, 1857.\n\n\n\nODE ON THE INSTALLATION OF THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE, CHANCELLOR OF THE\nUNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, 1862  {303}\n\n\n\nHence a while, severer Muses;\nSpare your slaves till drear October.\nHence; for Alma Mater chooses\nNot to be for ever sober:\nBut, like stately matron gray,\nCalling child and grandchild round her,\nWill for them at least be gay;\nShare for once their holiday;\nAnd, knowing she will sleep the sounder,\nCheerier-hearted on the morrow\nRise to grapple care and sorrow,\nGrandly leads the dance adown, and joins the children's play.\n      So go, for in your places\n      Already, as you see,\n(Her tears for some deep sorrow scarcely dried),\nVenus holds court among her sinless graces,\nWith many a nymph from many a park and lea.\nShe, pensive, waits the merrier faces\nOf those your wittier sisters three,\nO'er jest and dance and song who still preside,\nTo cheer her in this merry-mournful tide;\n   And bids us, as she smiles or sighs,\n   Tune our fancies by her eyes.\n\n   Then let the young be glad,\n   Fair girl and gallant lad,\n   And sun themselves to-day\n   By lawn and garden gay;\n   'Tis play befits the noon\n   Of rosy-girdled June:\n   Who dare frown if heaven shall smile?\n   Blest, who can forget a while;\n   The world before them, and above\n   The light of universal love.\nGo, then, let the young be gay;\nFrom their heart as from their dress\nLet darkness and let mourning pass away,\nWhile we the staid and worn look on and bless.\n\n   Health to courage firm and high!\n   Health to Granta's chivalry!\n   Wisely finding, day by day,\n   Play in toil, and toil in play.\n   Granta greets them, gliding down\n   On by park and spire and town;\n   Humming mills and golden meadows,\n   Barred with elm and poplar shadows;\n   Giant groves, and learned halls;\n   Holy fanes and pictured walls.\n   Yet she bides not here; around\n   Lies the Muses' sacred ground.\n   Most she lingers, where below\n   Gliding wherries come and go;\n   Stalwart footsteps shake the shores;\n   Rolls the pulse of stalwart oars;\n   Rings aloft the exultant cry\n   For the bloodless victory.\n   There she greets the sports, which breed\n   Valiant lads for England's need;\n   Wisely finding, day by day,\n   Play in toil, and toil in play.\n   Health to courage, firm and high!\n   Health to Granta's chivalry!\n\nYet stay a while, severer Muses, stay,\nFor you, too, have your rightful parts to-day.\nKnown long to you, and known through you to fame,\nAre Chatsworth's halls, and Cavendish's name.\nYou too, then, Alma Mater calls to greet\nA worthy patron for your ancient seat;\nAnd bid her sons from him example take,\nOf learning purely sought for learning's sake,\nOf worth unboastful, power in duty spent;\nAnd see, fulfilled in him, her high intent.\n\n      Come, Euterpe, wake thy choir;\n      Fit thy notes to our desire.\n      Long may he sit the chiefest here,\n      Meet us and greet us, year by year;\n      Long inherit, sire and son,\n      All that their race has wrought and won,\n      Since that great Cavendish came again,\n      Round the world and over the main,\n      Breasting the Thames with his mariners bold,\n      Past good Queen Bess's palace of old;\n      With jewel and ingot packed in his hold,\n      And sails of damask and cloth of gold;\n      While never a sailor-boy on board\n      But was decked as brave as a Spanish lord,\n         With the spoils he had won\n         In the Isles of the Sun,\n         And the shores of Fairy-land,\n      And yet held for the crown of the goodly show,\n      That queenly smile from the Palace window,\n         And that wave of a queenly hand.\n      Yes, let the young be gay,\n      And sun themselves to-day;--\n   And from their hearts, as from their dress,\n      Let mourning pass away.\nBut not from us, who watch our years fast fleeing,\nAnd snatching as they flee, fresh fragments of our being.\n      Can we forget one friend,\n      Can we forget one face,\n      Which cheered us toward our end,\n      Which nerved us for our race?\n      Oh sad to toil, and yet forego\n      One presence which has made us know\n      To Godlike souls how deep our debt!\n      We would not, if we could, forget.\n\n      Severer Muses, linger yet;\n   Speak out for us one pure and rich regret.\n   Thou, Clio, who, with awful pen,\n   Gravest great names upon the hearts of men,\n   Speak of a fate beyond our ken;\n   A gem late found and lost too soon; {306}\n   A sun gone down at highest noon;\n   A tree from Odin's ancient root,\n   Which bore for men the ancient fruit,\n   Counsel, and faith and scorn of wrong,\n   And cunning lore, and soothing song,\n   Snapt in mid-growth, and leaving unaware\n   The flock unsheltered and the pasture bare\n   Nay, let us take what God shall send,\n   Trusting bounty without end.\n   God ever lives; and Nature,\n   Beneath His high dictature,\n   Hale and teeming, can replace\n   Strength by strength, and grace by grace,\n   Hope by hope, and friend by friend:\n   Trust; and take what God shall send.\n   So shall Alma Mater see\n      Daughters fair and wise\n   Train new lands of liberty\n      Under stranger skies;\n   Spreading round the teeming earth\n   English science, manhood, worth.\n\n1862.\n\n\n\nSONGS FROM 'THE WATER-BABIES'\n\n\n\nTHE TIDE RIVER\n\n   Clear and cool, clear and cool,\nBy laughing shallow, and dreaming pool;\n   Cool and clear, cool and clear,\nBy shining shingle, and foaming wear;\nUnder the crag where the ouzel sings,\nAnd the ivied wall where the church-bell rings,\n      Undefiled, for the undefiled;\n   Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.\n\n      Dank and foul, dank and foul,\n   By the smoky town in its murky cowl;\n      Foul and dank, foul and dank,\n   By wharf and sewer and slimy bank;\nDarker and darker the farther I go,\nBaser and baser the richer I grow;\n      Who dare sport with the sin-defiled?\n   Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child.\n\n      Strong and free, strong and free,\n   The floodgates are open, away to the sea.\n      Free and strong, free and strong,\n   Cleansing my streams as I hurry along\nTo the golden sands, and the leaping bar,\nAnd the taintless tide that awaits me afar,\nAs I lose myself in the infinite main,\nLike a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again.\n      Undefiled, for the undefiled;\n   Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.\n\nFrom The Water-Babies.\nEversley, 1862.\n\n\nYOUNG AND OLD\n\n\nWhen all the world is young, lad,\n   And all the trees are green;\nAnd every goose a swan, lad,\n   And every lass a queen;\nThen hey for boot and horse, lad,\n   And round the world away;\nYoung blood must have its course, lad,\n   And every dog his day.\n\nWhen all the world is old, lad,\n   And all the trees are brown;\nAnd all the sport is stale, lad,\n   And all the wheels run down;\nCreep home, and take your place there,\n   The spent and maimed among:\nGod grant you find one face there,\n   You loved when all was young.\n\nFrom The Water-Babies.  1862\n\n\nTHE SUMMER SEA\n\n\n   Soft soft wind, from out the sweet south sliding,\nWaft thy silver cloud webs athwart the summer sea;\n   Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining\nWeave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me.\n\n   Deep deep Love, within thine own abyss abiding,\nPour Thyself abroad, O Lord, on earth and air and sea;\n   Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding,\nShield from sorrow, sin, and shame my helpless babe and me.\n\nFrom The Water-Babies.  1862\n\n\nMY LITTLE DOLL\n\n\nI once had a sweet little doll, dears,\n   The prettiest doll in the world;\nHer cheeks were so red and so white, dears,\n   And her hair was so charmingly curled.\nBut I lost my poor little doll, dears,\n   As I played in the heath one day;\nAnd I cried for more than a week, dears,\n   But I never could find where she lay.\n\nI found my poor little doll, dears,\n   As I played in the heath one day:\nFolks say she is terribly changed, dears,\n   For her paint is all washed away,\nAnd her arms trodden off by the cows, dears\n   And her hair not the least bit curled:\nYet for old sakes' sake she is still, dears,\n   The prettiest doll in the world.\n\nFrom The Water-Babies.\nEversley, 1862.\n\n\n\nTHE KNIGHT'S LEAP:  A LEGEND OF ALTENAHR\n\n\n\n'So the foemen have fired the gate, men of mine;\n   And the water is spent and gone?\nThen bring me a cup of the red Ahr-wine:\n   I never shall drink but this one.\n\n'And reach me my harness, and saddle my horse,\n   And lead him me round to the door:\nHe must take such a leap to-night perforce,\n   As horse never took before.\n\n'I have fought my fight, I have lived my life,\n   I have drunk my share of wine;\nFrom Trier to Coln there was never a knight\n   Led a merrier life than mine.\n\n'I have lived by the saddle for years two score;\n   And if I must die on tree,\nThen the old saddle tree, which has borne me of yore,\n   Is the properest timber for me.\n\n'So now to show bishop, and burgher, and priest,\n   How the Altenahr hawk can die:\nIf they smoke the old falcon out of his nest,\n   He must take to his wings and fly.'\n\nHe harnessed himself by the clear moonshine,\n   And he mounted his horse at the door;\nAnd he drained such a cup of the red Ahr-wine,\n   As man never drained before.\n\nHe spurred the old horse, and he held him tight,\n   And he leapt him out over the wall;\nOut over the cliff, out into the night,\n   Three hundred feet of fall.\n\nThey found him next morning below in the glen,\n   With never a bone in him whole--\nA mass or a prayer, now, good gentlemen,\n   For such a bold rider's soul.\n\nEversley, 1864.\n\n\n\nTHE SONG OF THE LITTLE BALTUNG.  A.D. 395\n\n\n\nA harper came over the Danube so wide,\n   And he came into Alaric's hall,\nAnd he sang the song of the little Baltung\n   To him and his heroes all.\n\nHow the old old Balt and the young young Balt\n   Rode out of Caucaland,\nWith the royal elephant's trunk on helm\n   And the royal lance in hand.\n\nThuringer heroes, counts and knights,\n   Pricked proud in their meinie;\nFor they were away to the great Kaiser,\n   In Byzant beside the sea.\n\nAnd when they came to the Danube so wide\n   They shouted from off the shore,\n'Come over, come over, ye Roman slaves,\n   And ferry your masters o'er.'\n\nAnd when they came to Adrian's burgh,\n   With its towers so smooth and high,\n'Come out, come out, ye Roman knaves,\n   And see your lords ride by.'\n\nBut when they came lo the long long walls\n   That stretch from sea to sea,\nThat old old Balt let down his chin,\n   And a thoughtful man grew he.\n\n'Oh oft have I scoffed at brave Fridigern,\n   But never will I scoff more,\nIf these be the walls which kept him out\n   From the Micklegard there on the shore.'\n\nThen out there came the great Kaiser,\n   With twice ten thousand men;\nBut never a Thuring was coward enough\n   To wish himself home again.\n\n'Bow down, thou rebel, old Athanarich,\n   And beg thy life this day;\nThe Kaiser is lord of all the world,\n   And who dare say him nay?'\n\n'I never came out of Caucaland\n   To beg for less nor more;\nBut to see the pride of the great Kaiser,\n   In his Micklegard here by the shore.\n\n'I never came out of Caucaland\n   To bow to mortal wight,\nBut to shake the hand of the great Kaiser,\n   And God defend my right.'\n\nHe shook his hand, that cunning Kaiser,\n   And he kissed him courteouslie,\nAnd he has ridden with Athanarich\n   That wonder-town to see.\n\nHe showed him his walls of marble white--\n   A mile o'erhead they shone;\nQuoth the Balt, 'Who would leap into that garden,\n   King Siegfried's boots must own.'\n\nHe showed him his engines of arsmetrick\n   And his wells of quenchless flame,\nAnd his flying rocks, that guarded his walls\n   From all that against him came.\n\nHe showed him his temples and pillared halls,\n   And his streets of houses high;\nAnd his watch-towers tall, where his star-gazers\n   Sit reading the signs of the sky.\n\nHe showed him his ships with their hundred oars,\n   And their sides like a castle wall,\nThat fetch home the plunder of all the world,\n   At the Kaiser's beck and call.\n\nHe showed him all nations of every tongue\n   That are bred beneath the sun,\nHow they flowed together in Micklegard street\n   As the brooks flow all into one.\n\nHe showed him the shops of the china ware,\n   And of silk and sendal also,\nAnd he showed him the baths and the waterpipes\n   On arches aloft that go.\n\nHe showed him ostrich and unicorn,\n   Ape, lion, and tiger keen;\nAnd elephants wise roared 'Hail Kaiser!'\n   As though they had Christians been.\n\nHe showed him the hoards of the dragons and trolls,\n   Rare jewels and heaps of gold--\n'Hast thou seen, in all thy hundred years,\n   Such as these, thou king so old?'\n\nNow that cunning Kaiser was a scholar wise,\n   And could of gramarye,\nAnd he cast a spell on that old old Balt,\n   Till lowly and meek spake he.\n\n'Oh oft have I heard of the Micklegard,\n   What I held for chapmen's lies;\nBut now do I know of the Micklegard,\n   By the sight of mine own eyes.\n\n'Woden in Valhalla,\n   But thou on earth art God;\nAnd he that dare withstand thee, Kaiser,\n   On his own head lies his blood.'\n\nThen out and spake that little Baltung,\n   Rode at the king's right knee,\nQuoth 'Fridigern slew false Kaiser Valens,\n   And he died like you or me.'\n\n'And who art thou, thou pretty bold boy,\n   Rides at the king's right knee?'\n'Oh I am the Baltung, boy Alaric,\n   And as good a man as thee.'\n\n'As good as me, thou pretty bold boy,\n   With down upon thy chin?'\n'Oh a spae-wife laid a doom on me,\n   The best of thy realm to win.'\n\n'If thou be so fierce, thou little wolf cub\n   Or ever thy teeth be grown;\nThen I must guard my two young sons\n   Lest they should lose their own.'\n\n'Oh, it's I will guard your two lither lads,\n   In their burgh beside the sea,\nAnd it's I will prove true man to them\n   If they will prove true to me.\n\n'But it's you must warn your two lither lads,\n   And warn them bitterly,\nThat if I shall find them two false Kaisers,\n   High hanged they both shall be.'\n\nNow they are gone into the Kaiser's palace\n   To eat the peacock fine,\nAnd they are gone into the Kaiser's palace\n   To drink the good Greek wine.\n\nThe Kaiser alone, and the old old Balt,\n   They sat at the cedar board;\nAnd round them served on the bended knee\n   Full many a Roman lord.\n\n'What ails thee, what ails thee, friend Athanarich?\n   What makes thee look so pale?'\n'I fear I am poisoned, thou cunning Kaiser,\n   For I feel my heart-strings fail.\n\n'Oh would I had kept that great great oath\n   I swore by the horse's head,\nI would never set foot on Roman ground\n   Till the day that I lay dead.\n\n'Oh would I were home in Caucaland,\n   To hear my harpers play,\nAnd to drink my last of the nut-brown ale,\n   While I gave the gold rings away.\n\n'Oh would I were home in Caucaland,\n   To hear the Gothmen's horn,\nAnd watch the waggons, and brown brood mares\n   And the tents where I was born.\n\n'But now I must die between four stone walls\n   In Byzant beside the sea:\nAnd as thou shalt deal with my little Baltung,\n   So God shall deal with thee.'\n\nThe Kaiser he purged himself with oaths,\n   And he buried him royally,\nAnd he set on his barrow an idol of gold,\n   Where all Romans must bow the knee.\n\nAnd now the Goths are the Kaiser's men,\n   And guard him with lance and sword,\nAnd the little Baltung is his sworn son-at-arms,\n   And eats at the Kaiser's board,\n\nAnd the Kaiser's two sons are two false white lads\n   That a clerk may beat with cane.\nThe clerk that should beat that little Baltung\n   Would never sing mass again.\n\nOh the gates of Rome they are steel without,\n   And beaten gold within:\nBut they shall fly wide to the little Baltung\n   With the down upon his chin.\n\nOh the fairest flower in the Kaiser's garden\n   Is Rome and Italian land:\nBut it all shall fall to the little Baltung\n   When he shall take lance in hand.\n\nAnd when he is parting the plunder of Rome,\n   He shall pay for this song of mine,\nNeither maiden nor land, neither jewel nor gold,\n   But one cup of Italian wine.\n\nEversley, 1864.\n\n\n\nON THE DEATH OF LEOPOLD, KING OF THE BELGIANS {319}\n\n\n\nA King is dead!  Another master mind\n   Is summoned from the world-wide council hall.\nAh, for some seer, to say what links behind--\n   To read the mystic writing on the wall!\n\nBe still, fond man:  nor ask thy fate to know.\n   Face bravely what each God-sent moment brings.\nAbove thee rules in love, through weal and woe,\n   Guiding thy kings and thee, the King of kings.\n\nWindsor Castle,\n   November 10, 1865.\n\n\n\nEASTER WEEK\n\n\n\n(Written for music to be sung at a parish industrial exhibition)\n\nSee the land, her Easter keeping,\n   Rises as her Maker rose.\nSeeds, so long in darkness sleeping,\n   Burst at last from winter snows.\nEarth with heaven above rejoices;\n   Fields and gardens hail the spring;\nShaughs and woodlands ring with voices,\n   While the wild birds build and sing.\n\nYou, to whom your Maker granted\n   Powers to those sweet birds unknown,\nUse the craft by God implanted;\n   Use the reason not your own.\nHere, while heaven and earth rejoices,\n   Each his Easter tribute bring--\nWork of fingers, chant of voices,\n   Like the birds who build and sing.\n\nEversley, 1867.\n\n\n\nDRIFTING AWAY:  A FRAGMENT\n\n\n\nThey drift away.  Ah, God! they drift for ever.\nI watch the stream sweep onward to the sea,\nLike some old battered buoy upon a roaring river,\nRound whom the tide-waifs hang--then drift to sea.\n\nI watch them drift--the old familiar faces,\nWho fished and rode with me, by stream and wold,\nTill ghosts, not men, fill old beloved places,\nAnd, ah! the land is rank with churchyard mold.\n\nI watch them drift--the youthful aspirations,\nShores, landmarks, beacons, drift alike.\n. . . . .\nI watch them drift--the poets and the statesmen;\nThe very streams run upward from the sea.\n   . . . . . .\n   Yet overhead the boundless arch of heaven\n   Still fades to night, still blazes into day.\n   . . . . .\n   Ah, God!  My God!  Thou wilt not drift away\n\nNovember 1867.\n\n\n\nCHRISTMAS DAY\n\n\n\nHow will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?\nA northern Christmas, such as painters love,\nAnd kinsfolk, shaking hands but once a year,\nAnd dames who tell old legends by the fire?\nRed sun, blue sky, white snow, and pearled ice,\nKeen ringing air, which sets the blood on fire,\nAnd makes the old man merry with the young,\nThrough the short sunshine, through the longer night?\n   Or southern Christmas, dark and dank with mist,\nAnd heavy with the scent of steaming leaves,\nAnd rosebuds mouldering on the dripping porch;\nOne twilight, without rise or set of sun,\nTill beetles drone along the hollow lane,\nAnd round the leafless hawthorns, flitting bats\nHawk the pale moths of winter?  Welcome then\nAt best, the flying gleam, the flying shower,\nThe rain-pools glittering on the long white roads,\nAnd shadows sweeping on from down to down\nBefore the salt Atlantic gale:  yet come\nIn whatsoever garb, or gay, or sad,\nCome fair, come foul, 'twill still be Christmas Day.\n   How will it dawn, the coming Christmas Day?\nTo sailors lounging on the lonely deck\nBeneath the rushing trade-wind?  Or to him,\nWho by some noisome harbour of the East,\nWatches swart arms roll down the precious bales,\nSpoils of the tropic forests; year by year\nAmid the din of heathen voices, groaning\nHimself half heathen?  How to those--brave hearts!\nWho toil with laden loins and sinking stride\nBeside the bitter wells of treeless sands\nToward the peaks which flood the ancient Nile,\nTo free a tyrant's captives?  How to those--\nNew patriarchs of the new-found underworld--\nWho stand, like Jacob, on the virgin lawns,\nAnd count their flocks' increase?  To them that day\nShall dawn in glory, and solstitial blaze\nOf full midsummer sun:  to them that morn,\nGay flowers beneath their feet, gay birds aloft,\nShall tell of nought but summer:  but to them,\nEre yet, unwarned by carol or by chime,\nThey spring into the saddle, thrills may come\nFrom that great heart of Christendom which beats\nRound all the worlds; and gracious thoughts of youth;\nOf steadfast folk, who worship God at home;\nOf wise words, learnt beside their mothers' knee;\nOf innocent faces upturned once again\nIn awe and joy to listen to the tale\nOf God made man, and in a manger laid--\nMay soften, purify, and raise the soul\nFrom selfish cares, and growing lust of gain,\nAnd phantoms of this dream which some call life,\nToward the eternal facts; for here or there,\nSummer or winter, 'twill be Christmas Day.\n\n   Blest day, which aye reminds us, year by year,\nWhat 'tis to be a man:  to curb and spurn\nThe tyrant in us; that ignobler self\nWhich boasts, not loathes, its likeness to the brute,\nAnd owns no good save ease, no ill save pain,\nNo purpose, save its share in that wild war\nIn which, through countless ages, living things\nCompete in internecine greed.--Ah God!\nAre we as creeping things, which have no Lord?\nThat we are brutes, great God, we know too well;\nApes daintier-featured; silly birds who flaunt\nTheir plumes unheeding of the fowler's step;\nSpiders, who catch with paper, not with webs;\nTigers, who slay with cannon and sharp steel,\nInstead of teeth and claws;--all these we are.\nAre we no more than these, save in degree?\nNo more than these; and born but to compete--\nTo envy and devour, like beast or herb;\nMere fools of nature; puppets of strong lusts,\nTaking the sword, to perish with the sword\nUpon the universal battle-field,\nEven as the things upon the moor outside?\n   The heath eats up green grass and delicate flowers,\nThe pine eats up the heath, the grub the pine,\nThe finch the grub, the hawk the silly finch;\nAnd man, the mightiest of all beasts of prey,\nEats what he lists; the strong eat up the weak,\nThe many eat the few; great nations, small;\nAnd he who cometh in the name of all--\nHe, greediest, triumphs by the greed of all;\nAnd, armed by his own victims, eats up all:\nWhile ever out of the eternal heavens\nLooks patient down the great magnanimous God,\nWho, Maker of all worlds, did sacrifice\nAll to Himself?  Nay, but Himself to one;\nWho taught mankind on that first Christmas Day,\nWhat 'twas to be a man; to give, not take;\nTo serve, not rule; to nourish, not devour;\nTo help, not crush; if need, to die, not live.\n   O blessed day, which givest the eternal lie\nTo self, and sense, and all the brute within;\nOh, come to us, amid this war of life;\nTo hall and hovel, come; to all who toil\nIn senate, shop, or study; and to those\nWho, sundered by the wastes of half a world,\nIll-warned, and sorely tempted, ever face\nNature's brute powers, and men unmanned to brutes--\nCome to them, blest and blessing, Christmas Day.\nTell them once more the tale of Bethlehem;\nThe kneeling shepherds, and the Babe Divine:\nAnd keep them men indeed, fair Christmas Day.\n\nEversley, 1868.\n\n\n\nSEPTEMBER 21, 1870  {325}\n\n\n\nSpeak low, speak little; who may sing\n   While yonder cannon-thunders boom?\nWatch, shuddering, what each day may bring:\n   Nor 'pipe amid the crack of doom.'\n\nAnd yet--the pines sing overhead,\n   The robins by the alder-pool,\nThe bees about the garden-bed,\n   The children dancing home from school.\n\nAnd ever at the loom of Birth\n   The mighty Mother weaves and sings:\nShe weaves--fresh robes for mangled earth;\n   She sings--fresh hopes for desperate things.\n\nAnd thou, too:  if through Nature's calm\n   Some strain of music touch thine ears,\nAccept and share that soothing balm,\n   And sing, though choked with pitying tears.\n\nEversley, 1870.\n\n\n\nTHE MANGO-TREE\n\n\n\nHe wiled me through the furzy croft;\n   He wiled me down the sandy lane.\nHe told his boy's love, soft and oft,\n   Until I told him mine again.\n\nWe married, and we sailed the main;\n   A soldier, and a soldier's wife.\nWe marched through many a burning plain;\n   We sighed for many a gallant life.\n\nBut his--God kept it safe from harm.\n   He toiled, and dared, and earned command;\nAnd those three stripes upon his arm\n   Were more to me than gold or land.\n\nSure he would win some great renown:\n   Our lives were strong, our hearts were high.\nOne night the fever struck him down.\n   I sat, and stared, and saw him die.\n\nI had his children--one, two, three.\n   One week I had them, blithe and sound.\nThe next--beneath this mango-tree,\n   By him in barrack burying-ground.\n\nI sit beneath the mango-shade;\n   I live my five years' life all o'er--\nRound yonder stems his children played;\n   He mounted guard at yonder door.\n\n'Tis I, not they, am gone and dead.\n   They live; they know; they feel; they see.\nTheir spirits light the golden shade\n   Beneath the giant mango-tree.\n\nAll things, save I, are full of life:\n   The minas, pluming velvet breasts;\nThe monkeys, in their foolish strife;\n   The swooping hawks, the swinging nests;\n\nThe lizards basking on the soil,\n   The butterflies who sun their wings;\nThe bees about their household toil,\n   They live, they love, the blissful things.\n\nEach tender purple mango-shoot,\n   That folds and droops so bashful down;\nIt lives; it sucks some hidden root;\n   It rears at last a broad green crown.\n\nIt blossoms; and the children cry--\n   'Watch when the mango-apples fall.'\nIt lives:  but rootless, fruitless, I--\n   I breathe and dream;--and that is all.\n\nThus am I dead:  yet cannot die:\n   But still within my foolish brain\nThere hangs a pale blue evening sky;\n   A furzy croft; a sandy lane.\n\n1870.\n\n\n\nTHE PRIEST'S HEART\n\n\n\nIt was Sir John, the fair young Priest,\n   He strode up off the strand;\nBut seven fisher maidens he left behind\n   All dancing hand in hand.\n\nHe came unto the wise wife's house:\n   'Now, Mother, to prove your art;\nTo charm May Carleton's merry blue eyes\n   Out of a young man's heart.'\n\n'My son, you went for a holy man,\n   Whose heart was set on high;\nGo sing in your psalter, and read in your books;\n   Man's love fleets lightly by.'\n\n'I had liever to talk with May Carleton,\n   Than with all the saints in Heaven;\nI had liever to sit by May Carleton\n   Than climb the spheres seven.\n\n'I have watched and fasted, early and late,\n   I have prayed to all above;\nBut I find no cure save churchyard mould\n   For the pain which men call love.'\n\n'Now Heaven forefend that ill grow worse:\n   Enough that ill be ill.\nI know of a spell to draw May Carleton,\n   And bend her to your will.'\n\n'If thou didst that which thou canst not do,\n   Wise woman though thou be,\nI would run and run till I buried myself\n   In the surge of yonder sea.\n\n'Scathless for me are maid and wife,\n   And scathless shall they bide.\nYet charm me May Carleton's eyes from the heart\n   That aches in my left side.'\n\nShe charmed him with the white witchcraft,\n   She charmed him with the black,\nBut he turned his fair young face to the wall,\n   Till she heard his heart-strings crack.\n\n1870\n\n\n\n'QU'EST QU'IL DIT' {330}\n\n\n\nEspion aile de la jeune amante\nDe l'ombre des palmiers pourquoi ce cri?\nLaisse en paix le beau garcon plaider et vaincre--\nPourquoi, pourquoi demander 'Qu'est qu'il dit?'\n\n'Qu'est qu'il dit?'  Ce que tu dis toi-meme\nChaque mois de ce printemps eternel;\nCe que disent les papillons qui s'entre-baisent,\nCe que dit tout bel jeun etre a toute belle.\n\nImportun!  Attende quelques lustres:\nQuand les souvenirs 1'emmeneront ici--\nMere, grand'mere, pale, lasse, et fidele,\nDemande mais doucement--'Et le vieillard,\n   Qu'est qu'il dit?'\n\nTrinidad, January 10, 1870\n\n\n\nTHE LEGEND OF LA BREA {331a}\n\n\n\nDown beside the loathly Pitch Lake,\n   In the stately Morichal, {331b}\nSat an ancient Spanish Indian,\n   Peering through the columns tall.\n\nWatching vainly for the flashing\n   Of the jewelled colibris; {331c}\nListening vainly for their humming\n   Round the honey-blossomed trees.\n\n'Few,' he sighed, 'they come, and fewer,\n   To the cocorite {331d} bowers;\nMurdered, madly, through the forests\n   Which of yore were theirs--and ours\n\nBy there came a negro hunter,\n   Lithe and lusty, sleek and strong,\nRolling round his sparkling eyeballs,\n   As he loped and lounged along.\n\nRusty firelock on his shoulder;\n   Rusty cutlass on his thigh;\nNever jollier British subject\n   Rollicked underneath the sky.\n\nBritish law to give him safety,\n   British fleets to guard his shore,\nAnd a square of British freehold--\n   He had all we have, and more.\n\nFattening through the endless summer,\n   Like his own provision ground,\nHe had reached the summum bonum\n   Which our latest wits have found.\n\nSo he thought; and in his hammock\n   Gnawed his junk of sugar-cane,\nToasted plantains at the fire-stick,\n   Gnawed, and dozed, and gnawed again.\n\nHad a wife in his ajoupa {332}--\n   Or, at least, what did instead;\nChildren, too, who died so early,\n   He'd no need to earn their bread.\n\nNever stole, save what he needed,\n   From the Crown woods round about;\nNever lied, except when summoned--\n   Let the warden find him out.\n\nNever drank, except at market;\n   Never beat his sturdy mate;\nShe could hit as hard as he could,\n   And had just as hard a pate.\n\nHad no care for priest nor parson,\n   Hope of heaven nor fear of hell;\nAnd in all his views of nature\n   Held with Comte and Peter Bell.\n\nHealthy, happy, silly, kindly,\n   Neither care nor toil had he,\nSave to work an hour at sunrise,\n   And then hunt the colibri.\n\nNot a bad man; not a good man:\n   Scarce a man at all, one fears,\nIf the Man be that within us\n   Which is born of fire and tears.\n\nRound the palm-stems, round the creepers,\n   Flashed a feathered jewel past,\nRuby-crested, topaz-throated,\n   Plucked the cocorite bast,\n\nPlucked the fallen ceiba-cotton, {333}\n   Whirred away to build his nest,\nHung at last, with happy humming,\n   Round some flower he fancied best.\n\nUp then went the rusty muzzle,\n   'Dat de tenth I shot to-day:'\nBut out sprang the Indian shouting,\n   Balked the negro of his prey.\n\n'Eh, you Senor Trinidada!\n   What dis new ondacent plan?\nSpoil a genl'man's chance ob shooting?\n   I as good as any man.\n\n'Dese not your woods; dese de Queen's woods:\n   You seem not know whar you ar,\nGibbin' yuself dese buckra airs here,\n   You black Indian Papist!  Dar!'\n\nStately, courteous, stood the Indian;\n   Pointed through the palm-tree shade:\n'Does the gentleman of colour\n   Know how yon Pitch Lake was made?'\n\nGrinned the negro, grinned and trembled--\n   Through his nerves a shudder ran--\nSaw a snake-like eye that held him;\n   Saw--he'd met an Obeah man.\n\nSaw a fetish--such a bottle--\n   Buried at his cottage door;\nToad and spider, dirty water,\n   Rusty nails, and nine charms more.\n\nSaw in vision such a cock's head\n   In the path--and it was white!\nSaw Brinvilliers {334} in his pottage:\n   Faltered, cold and damp with fright.\n\nFearful is the chance of poison:\n   Fearful, too, the great unknown:\nMagic brings some positivists\n   Humbly on their marrow-bone.\n\nLike the wedding-guest enchanted,\n   There he stood, a trembling cur;\nWhile the Indian told his story,\n   Like the Ancient Mariner.\n\nTold how--'Once that loathly Pitch Lake\n   Was a garden bright and fair;\nHow the Chaymas off the mainland\n   Built their palm ajoupas there.\n\n'How they throve, and how they fattened,\n   Hale and happy, safe and strong;\nPassed the livelong days in feasting;\n   Passed the nights in dance and song.\n\n'Till they cruel grew, and wanton:\n   Till they killed the colibris.\nThen outspake the great Good Spirit,\n   Who can see through all the trees,\n\n'Said--\"And what have I not sent you,\n   Wanton Chaymas, many a year?\nLapp, {335a} agouti, {335b} cachicame, {335c}\n   Quenc {335d} and guazu-pita deer.\n\n'\"Fish I sent you, sent you turtle,\n   Chip-chip, {335e} conch, flamingo red,\nWoodland paui, {335f} horned screamer, {335g}\n   And blue ramier {335h} overhead.\n\n'\"Plums from balata {335i} and mombin, {335j}\n   Tania, {335k} manioc, {335l} water-vine; {335m}\nLet you fell my slim manacques, {335n}\n   Tap my sweet moriche wine. {335o}\n\n'\"Sent rich plantains, {336a} food of angels;\n   Rich ananas, {336b} food of kings;\nGrudged you none of all my treasures:\n   Save these lovely useless things.\"\n\n'But the Chaymas' ears were deafened;\n   Blind their eyes, and could not see\nHow a blissful Indian's spirit\n   Lived in every colibri.\n\n'Lived, forgetting toil and sorrow,\n   Ever fair and ever new;\nWhirring round the dear old woodland,\n   Feeding on the honey-dew.\n\n'Till one evening roared the earthquake:\n   Monkeys howled, and parrots screamed:\nAnd the Guaraons at morning\n   Gathered here, as men who dreamed.\n\n'Sunk were gardens, sunk ajoupas;\n   Hut and hammock, man and hound:\nAnd above the Chayma village\n   Boiled with pitch the cursed ground.\n\n'Full, and too full; safe, and too safe;\n   Negro man, take care, take care.\nHe that wantons with God's bounties\n   Of God's wrath had best beware.\n\n'For the saucy, reckless, heartless,\n   Evil days are sure in store.\nYou may see the Negro sinking\n   As the Chayma sank of yore.'\n\nLoudly laughed that stalwart hunter--\n   'Eh, what superstitious talk!\nNyam {337} am nyam, an' maney maney;\n   Birds am birds, like park am park;\nAn' dere's twenty thousand birdskins\n   Ardered jes' now fram New Yark.'\n\nEversley, 1870.\n\n\n\nHYMN {338}\n\n\n\nAccept this building, gracious Lord,\n   No temple though it be;\nWe raised it for our suffering kin,\n   And so, Good Lord, for Thee.\n\nAccept our little gift, and give\n   To all who here may dwell,\nThe will and power to do their work,\n   Or bear their sorrows well.\n\nFrom Thee all skill and science flow;\n   All pity, care, and love,\nAll calm and courage, faith and hope,\n   Oh! pour them from above.\n\nAnd part them, Lord, to each and all,\n   As each and all shall need,\nTo rise like incense, each to Thee,\n   In noble thought and deed.\n\nAnd hasten, Lord, that perfect day,\n   When pain and death shall cease;\nAnd Thy just rule shall fill the earth\n   With health, and light, and peace.\n\nWhen ever blue the sky shall gleam,\n   And ever green the sod;\nAnd man's rude work deface no more\n   The Paradise of God.\n\nEversley, 1870.\n\n\n\nTHE DELECTABLE DAY\n\n\n\nThe boy on the famous gray pony,\n   Just bidding good-bye at the door,\nPlucking up maiden heart for the fences\n   Where his brother won honour of yore.\n\nThe walk to 'the Meet' with fair children,\n   And women as gentle as gay,--\nAh! how do we male hogs in armour\n   Deserve such companions as they?\n\nThe afternoon's wander to windward,\n   To meet the dear boy coming back;\nAnd to catch, down the turns of the valley,\n   The last weary chime of the pack.\n\nThe climb homeward by park and by moorland,\n   And through the fir forests again,\nWhile the south-west wind roars in the gloaming,\n   Like an ocean of seething champagne.\n\nAnd at night the septette of Beethoven,\n   And the grandmother by in her chair,\nAnd the foot of all feet on the sofa\n   Beating delicate time to the air.\n\nAh, God! a poor soul can but thank Thee\n   For such a delectable day!\nThough the fury, the fool, and the swindler,\n   To-morrow again have their way!\n\nEversley, 6th November 1872.\n\n\n\nJUVENTUS MUNDI\n\n\n\nList a tale a fairy sent us\nFresh from dear Mundi Juventus.\nWhen Love and all the world was young,\nAnd birds conversed as well as sung;\nAnd men still faced this fair creation\nWith humour, heart, imagination.\nWho come hither from Morocco\nEvery spring on the sirocco?\nIn russet she, and he in yellow,\nSinging ever clear and mellow,\n'Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you,\nDid he beat you?  Did he beat you?'\nPhyllopneustes wise folk call them,\nBut don't know what did befall them,\nWhy they ever thought of coming\nAll that way to hear gnats humming,\nWhy they built not nests but houses,\nLike the bumble-bees and mousies.\nNor how little birds got wings,\nNor what 'tis the small cock sings--\nHow should they know--stupid fogies?\nThey daren't even believe in bogies.\nOnce they were a girl and boy,\nEach the other's life and joy.\nHe a Daphnis, she a Chloe,\nOnly they were brown, not snowy,\nTill an Arab found them playing\nFar beyond the Atlas straying,\nTied the helpless things together,\nDrove them in the burning weather,\nIn his slave-gang many a league,\nTill they dropped from wild fatigue.\nUp he caught his whip of hide,\nLashed each soft brown back and side\nTill their little brains were burst\nWith sharp pain, and heat, and thirst,\nOver her the poor boy lay,\nTried to keep the blows away,\nTill they stiffened into clay,\nAnd the ruffian rode away:\nSwooping o'er the tainted ground,\nCarrion vultures gathered round,\nAnd the gaunt hyenas ran\nTracking up the caravan.\nBut--ah, wonder! that was gone\nWhich they meant to feast upon.\nAnd, for each, a yellow wren,\nOne a cock, and one a hen,\nSweetly warbling, flitted forth\nO'er the desert toward the north.\nBut a shade of bygone sorrow,\nLike a dream upon the morrow,\nRound his tiny brainlet clinging,\nSets the wee cock ever singing,\n'Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet you, sweet you,\nDid he beat you?  Did he beat you?'\nVultures croaked, and hopped, and flopped,\nBut their evening meal was stopped.\nAnd the gaunt hyenas foul\nSat down on their tails to howl.\nNorthward towards the cool spring weather,\nThose two wrens fled on together,\nOn to England o'er the sea,\nWhere all folks alike are free.\nThere they built a cabin, wattled\nLike the huts where first they prattled,\nHatched and fed, as safe as may be,\nMany a tiny feathered baby.\nBut in autumn south they go\nPast the Straits and Atlas' snow,\nOver desert, over mountain,\nTo the palms beside the fountain,\nWhere, when once they lived before, he\nTold her first the old, old story.\n'What do the doves say?  Curuck Coo,\nYou love me and I love you.'\n\n1872.\n\n\n\nVALENTINE'S DAY\n\n\n\nOh!  I wish I were a tiny browny bird from out the south,\n   Settled among the alder-holts, and twittering by the stream;\nI would put my tiny tail down, and put up my tiny mouth,\n   And sing my tiny life away in one melodious dream.\n\nI would sing about the blossoms, and the sunshine and the sky,\n   And the tiny wife I mean to have in such a cosy nest;\nAnd if some one came and shot me dead, why then I could but die,\n   With my tiny life and tiny song just ended at their best.\n\nEversley, 1873\n\n\n\nBALLAD:  LORRAINE, LORRAINE, LORREE\n\n\n\n1\n\n'Are you ready for your steeple-chase, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree?\n   Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Barum, Baree,\nYou're booked to ride your capping race to-day at Coulterlee,\nYou're booked to ride Vindictive, for all the world to see,\nTo keep him straight, to keep him first, and win the run for me.\n   Barum, Barum,' etc.\n\n2\n\nShe clasped her new-born baby, poor Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree,\n'I cannot ride Vindictive, as any man might see,\nAnd I will not ride Vindictive, with this baby on my knee;\nHe's killed a boy, he's killed a man, and why must he kill me?'\n\n3\n\n'Unless you ride Vindictive, Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree,\nUnless you ride Vindictive to-day at Coulterlee,\nAnd land him safe across the brook, and win the blank for me,\nIt's you may keep your baby, for you'll get no keep from me.'\n\n4\n\n'That husbands could be cruel,' said Lorraine, Lorraine, Lorree,\n'That husbands could be cruel, I have known for seasons three;\nBut oh! to ride Vindictive while a baby cries for me,\nAnd be killed across a fence at last for all the world to see!'\n\n5\n\nShe mastered young Vindictive--Oh! the gallant lass was she,\nAnd kept him straight and won the race as near as near could be;\nBut he killed her at the brook against a pollard willow-tree,\nOh! he killed her at the brook, the brute, for all the world to see,\nAnd no one but the baby cried for poor Lorraine, Lorree.\n\nLast poem written in illness.\nColorado, U.S.A.\nJune 1874.\n\n\n\nMARTIN LIGHTFOOT'S SONG {346}\n\n\n\nCome hearken, hearken, gentles all,\n   Come hearken unto me,\nAnd I'll sing you a song of a Wood-Lyon\n   Came swimming out over the sea.\n\nHe ranged west, he ranged east,\n   And far and wide ranged he;\nHe took his bite out of every beast\n   Lives under the greenwood tree.\n\nThen by there came a silly old wolf,\n   'And I'll serve you,' quoth he;\nQuoth the Lyon, 'My paw is heavy enough,\n   So what wilt thou do for me?'\n\nThen by there came a cunning old fox,\n   'And I'll serve you,' quoth he;\nQuoth the Lyon, 'My wits are sharp enough\n   So what wilt thou do for me?'\n\nThen by there came a white, white dove,\n   Flew off Our Lady's knee;\nSang 'It's I will be your true, true love,\n   If you'll be true to me.'\n\n'And what will you do, you bonny white dove?\n   And what will you do for me?'\n'Oh, it's I'll bring you to Our Lady's love,\n   In the ways of chivalrie.'\n\nHe followed the dove that Wood-Lyon\n   By mere and wood and wold,\nTill he is come to a perfect knight,\n   Like the Paladin of old.\n\nHe ranged east, he ranged west,\n   And far and wide ranged he--\nAnd ever the dove won him honour and fame\n   In the ways of chivalrie.\n\nThen by there came a foul old sow,\n   Came rookling under the tree;\nAnd 'It's I will be true love to you,\n   If you'll be true to me.'\n\n'And what wilt thou do, thou foul old sow?\n   And what wilt thou do for me?'\n'Oh, there hangs in my snout a jewel of gold,\n   And that will I give to thee.'\n\nHe took to the sow that Wood-Lyon;\n   To the rookling sow took he;\nAnd the dove flew up to Our Lady's bosom;\n   And never again throve he.\n\n\n\nFootnotes:\n\n{211}  This and the following poem were written at school in early boy-hood.\n\n{216}  Lines supposed to be found written in an illuminated missal.\n\n{260}  Found among Sandy Mackaye's papers, of a hairy oubit who would not\nmind his mother.\n\n{282}  The Christian Socialist, started by the Council of Associates for\npromotion of Co-operation.\n\n{295}  Bishop of Labuan, in Borneo.\n\n{303}  This Ode was set to Professor Sterndale Bennet's music, and sung in\nthe Senate House, Cambridge, on the Day of Installation.\n\n{306}  His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, Chancellor of Cambridge\nUniversity.\n\n{319}  Impromptu lines written in the album of the Crown Princess of Germany.\n\n{325}  Time of the Franco-Prussian War.\n\n{330}  The Qu'est qu'il dit is a Tropical bird.\n\n{331a}  This myth about the famous Pitch Lake of Trinidad was told almost\nword for word to a M. Joseph by an aged half-caste Indian who went by the\nname of Senor Trinidada.  The manners and customs which the ballad described,\nand the cruel and dangerous destruction of the beautiful birds of Trinidad,\nare facts which may be easily verified by any one who will take the trouble\nto visit the West Indies.\n\n{331b}  A magnificent wood of the Mauritia Fanpalm, on the south shore of the\nPitch Lake.\n\n{331c}  Humming-birds.\n\n{331d}  Maximiliana palms.\n\n{332}  Hut of timber and palm-leaves.\n\n{333}  From the Eriodendron, or giant silk-cotton.\n\n{334}  Spigelia anthelmia, a too-well-known poison-plant.\n\n{335a}  Coelogenys Paca.\n\n{335b}  Wild cavy.\n\n{335c}  Armadillo.\n\n{335d}  Peccary hog.\n\n{335e}  Trigonia.\n\n{335f}  Penelope.\n\n{335g}  Palamedea.\n\n{335h}  Dove.\n\n{335i}  Mimusops.\n\n{335j}  Spondias.\n\n{335k}  An esculent Arum.\n\n{335l}  Jatropha manihot, 'Cassava.'\n\n{335m}  Vitis Caribaea.\n\n{335n}  Euterpe, 'mountain cabbage' palm.\n\n{335o}  Mauritia palm.\n\n{336a}  Musa.\n\n{336b}  Pine-apple.\n\n{337}  Food.\n\n{338}  Sung by 1000 School Children at the Opening of the New Wing of the\nChildren's Hospital, Birmingham.\n\n{346}  Supposed to be sung at Crowland Minster to Leofric, the Wake's Mass\nPriest, when news was received of Hereward's second marriage to Alftruda.","title":"Andromeda, and Other Poems","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":27635}