{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_55170/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_55170","id":"gutenberg_55170","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/55170","summary":null,"tags":["Canadian poetry -- 19th century","Category: British Literature","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Category: Poetry"],"text":"THE\n PROPHECY OF MERLIN\n AND\n OTHER POEMS.\n\n BY\n JOHN READE.\n\n MONTREAL:\n PUBLISHED BY DAWSON BROTHERS.\n\n 1870.\n\n\n\n\n Entered according to Act of Parliament, in the year 1870, by\n JOHN READE,\n in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture.\n\n MONTREAL: PRINTED BY THE MONTREAL PRINTING AND PUBLISHING CO.\n\n\n\n\n\n \u201cO living friends that love me!\n O dear ones gone above me!\n Careless of other fame,\n I leave to you my name.\n\n * * * *\n\n Sweeter than any sung\n My songs that found no tongue;\n Nobler than any fact\n My wish that failed of act.\u201d\n\n J. G. WHITTIER.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS.\n\n\n PAGE\n\nThe Prophecy of Merlin 3\n\nDevenish 29\n\nKings of Men 31\n\nVashti 32\n\nShakspere 38\n\nSpring 45\n\nIn Memoriam 48\n\nWinter 54\n\nPer Noctem Plurima Volvens 55\n\nBalaam 59\n\nGood Night 69\n\nWinter Sunshine 72\n\nChristus Salvator 73\n\nWho hath Begotten the Drops of Dew? 74\n\nThalatta! Thalatta! 76\n\nRizpah 78\n\nNatalie 81\n\nThe Fenian Raid (June, \u201966) 84\n\nHumanum est Errare 86\n\nSing me the Songs I Love 87\n\nIn Memoriam--T. D. McGee 89\n\nKillynoogan 92\n\nWhat Can I Do? 98\n\nHastings 99\n\nThe Naughty Boy 103\n\nRosa 106\n\nJubal 108\n\nApollo Dropt a Seed of Song 119\n\nVox Dei 120\n\nThe Old War-horse 121\n\nEloise 125\n\nWhen the Spring-time Comes 126\n\nHope 130\n\nDominion Day 131\n\nIn My Heart 143\n\nSisera 146\n\nColumba Sibylla 148\n\nSummer is Dead 149\n\nTo a Dead Field Flower 151\n\nThe Departure of the Prince of Wales from Portland 154\n\nOde on the Prince of Wales\u2019 Marriage 157\n\nTo a Snow-bird 160\n\nThe Clouds are Blushing 161\n\nUnspoken 163\n\nJephthah 166\n\nDe Profundis 169\n\nLochleven 172\n\nUnus Abest 174\n\nThe Prodigal\u2019s Return 176\n\nIt is the Quiet Hour 178\n\nESSAYS IN TRANSLATION.\n\nHector and Andromache,--\n\n The Parting 181\n\n The Lament of Andromache 189\n\nThe Beacon Light 194\n\nPriam and Helen 198\n\nSong of the Trojan Captive 205\n\nBellerophon 208\n\nHorace, Ode xi. Book I. 211\n\nOrpheus and Eurydice 212\n\nAdrian\u2019s Address to his Soul 217\n\nPyramus and Thisbe 219\n\nThe Withered Leaf 225\n\nAndr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier\u2019s Death-song 226\n\nThe Lake 229\n\nThe Wandering Jew 233\n\n\n\n\n POEMS.\n\n\n\n\n THE PROPHECY OF MERLIN.\n\n\n Sir Bedivere, in silence, watched the barge\n That bore away King Arthur to the vale\n Of Avalon, till it was seen no more.\n Then, on the beach, alone amid the dead,\n He lifted up his voice and sorely wept.\n \u201cAlas!\u201d he cried, \u201cgone are the pleasant days\n At Camelot, and the sweet fellowship\n Of noble knights and true, and beauteous dames\n Who have no peers in all the living world,\n Is quite dissolved for ever, and the King\n Has gone and left none like him among men.\n O happy, thrice and fourfold, ye who rest,\n Both friends and foemen, in one peaceful bed,\n While I am sick at soul and cannot die!\n Oh! that the battle might be fought again!\n Then would I surely seek the way to death,\n And bleed and sleep like you, and be at peace.\n But now, ah! whither, whither can I go,\n Since he is gone who was my light of life,\n And whom to see was bliss? What can I do\n Without the voice that gave my arm its strength?\n Or wherefore bear a sword, since now no more\n Excalibur points forth to noble deeds?\u201d\n\n And then he drew his blade, and threw it far\n Into the Lake, and, as he saw it sink,\n \u201cWould God,\u201d said he, \u201cthat so I followed him.\u201d\n\n But with the strain his wounds began to bleed,\n And he grew weak, and sank upon the ground,\n And swooned.\n And when he woke, he was aware\n Of Merlin, who stood watching by his side.\n Then cried Sir Bedivere: \u201cO good and wise,\n I bid thee welcome, for, in all the world,\n There is none other I would fainer see.\n Yet am I sad to see thee, for the King\n Is gone, and none is left of all his Knights\n Save me, and I am weary of my life.\u201d\n\n But Merlin, ere he answered, staunched his wound,\n And gave him wine out of a golden flask,\n And, by the healing art which he possessed,\n Restored him sound and whole. And then he spake:\n \u201cThere is no need to tell me, for I know\n All thou would\u2019st say, and knew ere thou wast born\n That all these things should be. But weep no more,\n Sir Bedivere. The past no man can change,\n Nor make what has been other than it is.\n As in the forests of Broceliande,\n The leaves fall year by year, and give the oaks\n All bare to wintry blasts, so, swept apace\n Before the breath of Time, the race of men\n Passes away, and may be seen no more.\n And yet the breeze of Spring is no less sweet,\n Which plays around the tender budding leaves,\n And calls to life their beauty, that it is\n As well a requiem as baby-song.\n So weep not for the days that are no more,\n But pray, as the King bade thee, for his soul,\n That to his far-off home no sigh may come\n From this, his orphan and unhappy realm,\n To mar the melody of Avalon.\u201d\n\n Then said Sir Bedivere: \u201cO good and wise,\n Will he return again to Camelot,\n After his wound is healed, and Guinevere\n Has healed that other wound that vexed his soul,\n By purging her own soul of all offence?\n And will he not assemble round his board\n The best and bravest knights of Christendom,\n And all the fairest ladies of the land,\n And reign as erst he reigned in Camelot?\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n Then Merlin: \u201cHid from eyes of common men\n Is that which is to be in after days;\n And only those can see it in whose souls\n A heavenly brightness has dissolved the mist\n That darkens mortal sight. And even these\n Can see but dimly, as a far-off hill\n Appears at even when the stars surprise\n The lingering kisses of the parting sun.\n But I, thou knowest well, Sir Bedivere,\n Am not of mortal race, nor was I born\n Of human mother nor of human sire.\n Mine is the blazonry of prophet souls\n Whose lineage finds in God its kingly head.\n To me what was and that which is to come\n Are ever present, and I grow not old\n With time, but have the gift of endless youth.\n As one who stands beside a placid stream,\n Watching the white sails passing slowly down,\n And knows a fatal whirlpool waits them all,\n And yet, the while, is powerless to save,--\n So watch I all the ages passing by\n Adown the stream of time into the gulf\n From which is no return. Alas! alas!\n How oft have I, who ever love the good,\n The pure, the brave and wise, wept bitter tears,\n As they have passed me, joyous in their course,\n And we have held sweet converse, as I thought\n How soon their faces would be seen no more!\n Sad, sad, Sir Bedivere, the prophet\u2019s gift,\n Who sees the evil which he cannot heal!\u201d\n\n And then a gloom o\u2019ershadowed Merlin\u2019s face,\n That caused Sir Bedivere to pity him;\n And they both wept, as one, amid the dead,\n Thinking of all the sorrows of the world.\n But Merlin, when his face grew calm again,\n Began: \u201cCome, hearken now, Sir Bedivere,\n And I will give an answer to thy quest:\n King Arthur sleeps in Avalon, and many a change\n Must over-pass this land before he wake.\n The great White Dragon of the stormy North,\n Rearing his crest above the foaming waves,\n Shall shake the ground, and level all the hills,--\n And war shall follow war,--and blood shall flow\n In every vale,--and smoke of burning towns\n Shall reach the sky,--and men shall cry for aid\n Unto the sea, to hide them from the foe--\n And still shall Arthur sleep in Avalon.\n\n And when the Dragon, sated with the blood\n Of Christian men and women, yields at length\n To a mild victor, Tigers of the Sea\n Shall come, from craggy homes, to rend and tear,\n And brave men\u2019s hearts shall quail before their eyes--\n Yet still shall Arthur sleep in Avalon.\n\n The Tigers\u2019 wrath appeased, another foe\n Shall wave a foreign banner o\u2019er the land,\n And trample down beneath his horses\u2019 hoofs\n Briton, and Dane, and Saxon, till the ground\n Is rank with blood, as when upon the slopes\n Of Badon Arthur charged the heathen host--\n Yet still the King shall sleep in Avalon.\n\n But as the ages pass, these foes shall join\n In friendship, and a nation shall arise,\n Like a strong oak amid the forest trees,\n Which, growing slowly, ceases not to grow,\n But fastens firmly, as it aims aloft,\n And spreads its branches far on every side,\n A shelter to the stranger of all lands--\n While Arthur still sleeps on in Avalon.\n\n And many Kings shall rule and win renown\n For this now saddened and distracted realm;\n And Britain shall be great by land and sea,\n And stretch her conquering arms around the world,\n And gather treasures from all climes, and teach\n Her tongues to distant nations, and her name\n Shall be a word of praise to all the earth--\n While Arthur still sleeps on in Avalon.\n But though he sleep, he still shall wear the crown\n As rightful lord of Britain, for on him,--\n The image of a noble Christian King,\n The image of a ruler sent of God,--\n The people still shall look in whoso reigns.\n And if there be a King of soul impure--\n Or if there be a King of hand unjust--\n Or if there be a King who weighs himself\n Against the nation\u2019s weal (such Kings there are\n And ever shall be until Arthur wake),--\n It is the _real_ King the people serve,\n The Blameless Prince that never can do wrong,\n And not the false usurper of his name.\u201d\n\n Then, wondering much, broke in Sir Bedivere:\n \u201cO Merlin, thou art far too wise for me,\n Though well I love thy speech. But, in good sooth,\n And plainly, as we speak of common things,\n Answer me: Will the King come back again\n In his own fleshly guise, the very same\n As when he feasted erst in Camelot\n With all the Table Round? And will he wear\n The crown, and gird him with Excalibur,\n And conquer heathen foes, and rid the land\n Of all that speaketh lies or doeth wrong?--\n Or, must he sleep for ever, and his face\n Be hid away from those that love him well?\n For, if I thought that it were so to be,\n I never could have comfort in my life.\u201d\n\n Then answered Merlin: \u201cLet me tell my tale\n In my own way, and hearken till the close.\n All these things happen not as we desire,\n But as the ages need. Such men as he\n Come not without great travail and sore pain;\n They are the ripe fruit of the centuries,\n Who nourish noble thoughts and noble deeds,\n Give health and vigour to the sickly times,\n And stir the gross blood of the sleepy world;\n And when they pass away, their names, endued\n With life, still head the van of truth and right:\n So shall the name and spirit of the King,\n Who ruled in Camelot the Table Round,\n Guide Britain into ever-growing fame;\n And all her Kings that reign shall reign in him,\n The golden type of kingly chivalry.\n And those three Queens thou sawest, three fair Queens,\n So sweet and womanly, who, in the barge,\n Bore, tenderly, away the wounded King,\n Shall reign in Britain in the after-time,--\n As, in the old time, Carismandua\n And brave Bonduca whom the Romans feared\n Held a firm sceptre in a gentle hand.\n Of best and purest Queenhood, they, the type,\n As Arthur is the type of Blameless Kings.\n And as by three sweet names of holy kin\n They shall be known, so shall they also shew\n A triple sisterhood beneath one crown--\n Britain, and Albyn, and green Innisfail.\n\n Now, when the last of three Queens has slept\n For many years, there shall arise a Fourth--\n Fair, good and wise, and loved by all the land\n Of Britain, and by many lands on every sea.\n And in her days the world shall have much changed\n From that which now we live in. Mysteries,\n Save unto me in vision, now unknown,\n Shall then be clear as day. The earth and air\n Shall yield strange secrets for the use of men,--\n The planets, in their courses, shall draw near,\n And men shall see their marvels, as the flowers\n That grace the meads of Summer,--time and space\n Shall know new laws, and history shall walk\n Abreast with fact o\u2019er all the peopled world:--\n For words shall flash like light from shore to shore,\n And light itself shall chronicle men\u2019s deeds.\n Great ships shall plough the ocean without sail,\n And steedless chariots shoot with arrowy speed\n O\u2019er hill and dale and river, and beneath\n The solid floor we tread,--the silent rocks\n Shall tell the story of the infant world,--\n The falling leaf shall shew the cause of things\n Sages have sought in vain--and the whole vast\n Of sight and sound shall be to men a school\n Where they may learn strange lessons; and great truths\n That long have slept in the deep heart of God\n Shall waken and come forth and dwell with men,\n As in the elder days the tented lord\n Of countless herds was taught by angel-guests.\n And this fair land of Britain then shall be\n Engrailed with stately cities,--and by streams\n Where now the greedy wolf roams shall be heard\n The multitudinous voice of Industry,--\n And Labour, incense-crowned, shall hold her court\n Where now the sun scarce touches with his beams\n The scattered seeds of future argosies,\n That to the furthest limit of the world\n Shall bear the glory of the British name.\n And where a Grecian victor never trod,\n And where a Roman banner never waved,\n East, West, and North, and South, and to those Isles,\n Happy and rich, of which the poets dreamed\n But never saw, set far in Western seas,\n Beyond the pillars of the heathen god--\n Shall Arthur\u2019s realm extend, and dusky Kings\n Shall yield obeisance to his conquering fame.\n\n And She, the fourth fair tenant of the throne,\n Heir to the ripe fruit of long centuries,\n Shall reign o\u2019er such an empire, and her name,\n Clasping the trophies of all ages, won\n By knightly deeds in every land and sea,\n Shall be VICTORIA.\n Then shall come a Prince\n From o\u2019er the sea, of goodly mien and fair,\n And, winning her, win all that she has won--\n Wedded to her, be good as she is pure--\n Reigning with her, be wise as she is great--\n And, loving her, be loved by all the world.\u201d\n\n Then spake Sir Bedivere, all eagerly:\n \u201cHe, Merlin, is he not our Blameless King,\n Returned from his long sleep in Avalon,\n To crown the glories of the later world?\u201d\n\n Then Merlin: \u201cWait a while, Sir Bedivere,\n And I will tell thee all.\n In deeds of war,--\n The rage of battle, and the clangorous charge\n Of mail\u00e9d knights, and flash of hostile swords,\n And flying spears, and din of meeting shields,\n And all the use of man-ennobling might\n For Christ and for His Cross, to wrest the land\n From heathen foes--did Arthur win his fame.\n For this, by marvels, was he born and bred;\n For this, by marvels, was he chosen King;\n For this he sent his heralds to all parts\n Of the divided realm, to summon forth\n All bravest, truest knights of Christendom\n From rude and selfish war to Camelot,\n That they might be one heart around himself\n To send new life-blood through the sickly land,\n And purge it of the plague of heathennesse.\n And had not the foul falsehood of his house\n Broken athwart the true aim of his life,\n And set the Table Round against itself,\n Ere now the heathen Dragon had been crushed,\n Never again to raise its hideous head\n O\u2019er the fair land that Christ\u2019s apostle blessed.\n\n This was the purpose that his soul had formed--\n Alas! how unaccomplished!--and he hoped\n That gentle peace would be the meed of war,--\n That \u2019neath the laurel far and wide would bloom\n The flowers of wisdom, charity and truth,--\n That holy men and sages, ladies fair\n And famous knights, and those that from earth\u2019s lap\n Gather God\u2019s bounties, and the men whose hands\n Have skilful touch, and those who tell or sing\n Of Nature and her marvels, or who fill\n The scroll with records of the misty past,\n And others of all arts and all degrees,\n Should work, each in the place that he had found,\n With one pure impulse in the heart of all,--\n That Britain should be called of all the world\n A blameless people round a Blameless King.\n\n This purpose Albert, in the after-time,\n (So shall the Prince be named of whom I spake,)\n Shall take from the dim shrine where it has lain,\n Scarce touched by dreamy reverence, many an age,\n And hold it in the daylight of his life.\n But not alone. She whom his heart has won,\n With loving aid, shall ever at his side\n (Till death them part) sustain him in his thought.\n And these two, nobly mated, each to each\n The sweet and ripe completion, shall be named\n With loyal love and tenderest respect\n By knight and lady, poet, sage and priest,\n In mart and camp, in palace and in cot,\n By babbling gray-beard and by lisping child,\n Wherever Britain\u2019s banner is unfurled.\n So shall the land grow strong with bonds of peace,\n Till men believe that wars have ceased to drench\n The earth with bloody rain;--and Art shall smile\n On myriad shapes of beauty and of use,--\n And Wisdom shall have freer scope, and push\n The boulders of old folly from her field,--\n And men shall walk with larger minds across\n The limits of the superstitious past,\n And cull the gold out of the dross of things,\n Flinging the dross aside,--and then shall be\n New hopes of better changes yet to be,\n When harmony shall reign through all the world,\n And interchange of good for common weal\n Be only law.\n A palace shall arise\n Beneath the guidance of the Blameless Prince,\n The crystal image of his ample mind,\n The home of what is best in every clime;\n And thither, from all lands beneath the sun,\n Shall crowd the patient workers in all arts,\n Bringing the treasures of their skill. The hands\n Of many nations with a brother\u2019s clasp\n Shall join together; and the Babel tongues\n Of Eastern, Western, Northern, Southern lands\n Shall strive no more in discord, but, as one,\n Shall make harmonious music, as of yore\n The sound of four great rivers rose and fell\n Through fragrant splendours in the Eden-world.\n\n And men shall say: \u2018Now is the reign of peace,\n Foretold by sacred sages, come at last.\n And cries of war shall never more be heard\n Through the fair world, but men shall take their swords\n And beat them into ploughshares, and their spears\n And lances they shall turn to pruning-hooks,--\n Nation with nation shall contend no more,\n Save as to who may reach the goal of best\n Before the other, for the common good,--\n And men shall only vie in virtue, skill\n And beauty, fruits of hand and head and heart,--\n And strength shall be in knowledge and its use,--\n And right, not might, shall guide men in their acts,--\n And small and great shall have one common law,--\n And he, alone, shall be considered just\n Who, in a doubtful matter, puts himself\n In his friend\u2019s place. So all men shall be friends:\n For each shall see in other but himself,\n And love him as himself. This is Christ\u2019s rule,\n Which the base world so long has set at nought,\n But now restored by our All-blameless Prince,\n And preached by gentle act to all the world.\u2019\n\n So shall men say, rejoicing; but, alas!\n While yet the words rise from their gladdened hearts,\n The olive garland shall begin to fade\n On the sweet brows of peace; and Avarice,\n Like a gaunt wolf, ever unsatisfied\n As long as one lamb bleats within the fold,\n Shall raise the harsh cry that awakens war.\n\n In those far lands beyond the Southern Sea,\n Traversed by knights who seek the Holy Grail,\n The mountains belch forth fire, and flood the slopes\n And valleys with the sulphurous tide of hell,\n Till man and all his works are whelmed beneath.\n Then, wearied with his rage, the demon sleeps,\n And o\u2019er the frozen graves of the long dead\n The hopeful vine grows and the flowers bloom,\n And children\u2019s voices and the song of birds\n Bid hush the awful memory of the past.\n But on some doomful night an ominous roar\n Startles the dreaming villager, who, looking\n Forth through his shivering casement, sees the sky\n Alive with fearful forms. The spirits of fire,\n Unchained from their long bondage, with fierce joy\n Dance onward, bearing death, while smoky palls\n Waver around them. With their ghostly hands\n From wrathful vials they pour blazing streams\n That lick the earth, from which is no escape\n But death--and death comes soon. So after peace,\n Which men had thought eternal, shall come war,\n And chase, with rumbling horror, the sweet dreams\n Of gentle harmony throughout the world.\n\n Then shall the spirit of the Table Round\n Enter men\u2019s hearts and make their right arms strong\n For deeds of war,--deeds that shall make the eyes\n Of those who come thereafter flash with pride.\n\n By many a far-off height and river-side\n Shall fall such men as fought at Badon-hill\n Warring with heathen foes; and lonely hearths\n Shall sorrow for the dead who come no more.\n And, one war over, others shall succeed,\n And others; and the blaze of burning towns\n Shall blot the moon out of the midnight sky.\n\n And some will say: \u2018Now is the end at hand\n Of all things, and the whole fair world is doomed\n To sink in ashy nothingness. The wrath\n Of God is kindled for the sins of men.\u2019\n\n But when the fiery wave of war has washed\n The world, as gold from which the dross is burned,\n The nations shall rise purer, and men\u2019s hearts\n Shall fear the touch of wrong; the slave ashamed\n And angry once to see the pitiless sun\n Smile on his chains, shall leap and sing for joy.\n Free thought shall take the ancient shield of Truth\n And make it bright, showing the Artist\u2019s work,\n Long hid by stains and rust from longing eyes;\n And hoary ills shall die, and o\u2019er their graves\n Shall bloom fair flowers, and trees of goodly fruit\n To gladden and make strong the heart of man.\u201d\n\n Then said Sir Bedivere: \u201cO, good and wise,\n My heart is full of wonder, and I doubt\n Whether or not I listen in a dream\n Wrought by thy wizard spells around my soul.\n But tell me further of the Blameless Prince,\n The image of King Arthur,--or himself,\n Albeit thou sayst it not, come back again\n From his long sleep in Avalon. Shall he die,\n Or shall he live and teach men how to live\n Until the coming of our Master, Christ?\u201d\n\n Then Merlin, with a cloud upon his face,\n As thinking of the sorrow that must be,\n Yet with a silver smile about the cloud,\n Answered Sir Bedivere: \u201cO, loving well\n And loyal to the last, the Blameless Prince,\n The God-sent promise of a better time\n When all men shall be like him, good and wise,\n Shall, when his work is finished, pass away;\n And the dark shade of sorrow\u2019s wings shall blot\n The sky, and all the widowed land shall mourn;\n And chiefly she, his other self, the Queen,\n Shall weep long years in lonely palace-halls,\n Missing the music of a silent voice.\n But, though his voice be silent, in men\u2019s hearts\n Shall sink the fruitful memory of his life,\n And take deep root, and grow to glorious deeds.\n And she will write the story of his life\n Who loved him, and though tears may blot the page,\n Even as they fall, the rainbow hues of hope\n Shall bless them with Christ\u2019s promise of the time\n When they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.\u201d\n\n Then, sad and sore amazed, Sir Bedivere:\n \u201cO, Merlin, Merlin, truly didst thou say\n That hid from eyes of common men like me\n Is that which is to be in after days;\n For even now I scarce can comprehend\n What thou hast spoken with prophetic lips.\n These things are very far beyond my reach.\n This only do I know, that I am now\n An orphan knight, reft of the royal sire\n That made me knight, giving my soul new birth\n And heirdom to the Christian fellowship\n Of the Round Table. Gladly would I give\n All glory ever won by knightly deed,\n All honour in the ranks of my compeers,\n All gentle blandishments of ladies fair,\n All that I am, or have, or prize the most,\n And sink into the meanness of the churl\n That feeds the Saxon\u2019s swine, for but one glimpse\n Of my loved lord, King Arthur. But I know\n That he will never more to Camelot\n Bring back the glory of his vanished face,\n Nor call me his \u2018true knight, Sir Bedivere.\u2019\n So I will pray, even as thou badst me pray,\n And as King Arthur bade me, for his soul,\n That to his far-off home no sigh may come,\n From this his orphan and unhappy realm,\n To mar the melody of Avalon.\n And though he may not hither come to me,\n May I not hope that I may go to him,\n And see him face to face, in that fair land,\n Whose beauty mortal eye has never seen,\n Whose music mortal ear has never heard,\n Whose glory mortal heart has not conceived.\n\n But, Merlin, I would ask thee one thing more,\n If thou have patience with my blunter sense\n (For I am but a knight, and thou, a sage,\n And knowest all things)--prithee, tell me, Merlin,\n If, in the far-off after-time, shall come\n A Prince who shall be known by Arthur\u2019s name,\n And bear it blamelessly as he did his.\u201d\n\n Then, Merlin, with a wise smile on his face,\n Such as a mother wears who gently tries\n To answer the hard question of her child,\n Answered Sir Bedivere: \u201cThou askest well,\n And fain am I to answer. That good Prince\n Of whom I spake--Albert, the Blameless Prince--\n Shall be the head of many dynasties.\n His blood, in after years, shall wear the crown\n Of many kingdoms. She who loved him well\n Shall reign for many years when he is gone,\n And round her widowed diadem shall gleam\n The richer halo of a nation\u2019s love,\n For her own sake and for the sainted dead.\n And she will shed the brightness of her soul\n On Britain\u2019s future Kings, and they shall learn,\n Not only from her lips, but from her life,\n That who rules well must make Christ\u2019s law his rule.\n And of the Good Queen and the Blameless Prince\n One son shall be named Arthur. Like the King\n For whom thy heart is sad, Sir Bedivere,\n He shall be true, and brave, and generous\n In speech and act to all of all degrees,\n And win the unsought guerdon of men\u2019s love.\n\n In a far land beneath the setting sun,\n Now and long hence undreamed of (save by me\n Who, in my soul\u2019s eye, see the great round world\n Whirled by the lightning touches of the sun\n Through time and space),--a land of stately woods,\n Of swift broad rivers, and of ocean lakes,--\n The name of Arthur,--him that is to be,--\n (Son of the Good Queen and the Blameless Prince),\n Shall shed new glories upon him we loved.\u201d\n\n Then, by the memories of his lord, the King,\n Sir Bedivere was quickened into tears,\n But, like a boy ashamed to shew wet eyes\n Before a boy, he passed his mail\u00e9d hand\n Athwart his face, and frightened back his grief.\n And seeing Merlin made no sign to speak\n More of the Arthur of the after-time,\n He took the word: \u201cThanks, Merlin, thou art kind\n Beyond the limit of my gratitude,\n I fear me. Sorrow is a selfish thing,\n And much exacts from friendship. Still, I thank thee\n That thou hast not gainsayed my utmost quest.\n And, now, I pray God bless him when he comes,\n That other Arthur. May he keep his name\n As pure as his who ruled in Camelot;\n May he, in every wise, be like to him,\n Save in the pain that comes of love deceived\n And trampled faith; and may his far-off land\n Be great by noble deeds of noble men.\u201d\n\n Then came a sound of music from the Lake,\n Like the soft sighing of the summer winds\n Among the pine-trees, and Sir Bedivere\n Turned toward the sound. But as he turned again\n To ask of Merlin what the music meant,\n Merlin was gone, and he was all alone--\n Alone upon the beach amid the dead!\n\n\n\n\nDEVENISH.\n\n\n I.\n\n \u2019Twas years since I had heard the name,\n When, seen in print, before my eyes\n The old Round Tower seemed to rise,\n With silent scorn of noisy fame.\n\n\n II.\n\n Our little boat, like water-bird,\n Touches the still Lake, breast to breast;\n No sound disturbs the solemn rest\n Save kiss of oar and whisper\u2019d word.\n\n\n III.\n\n All Nature wears a placid smile\n Of gold and blue and tender green;\n And in the setting of the scene\n Lies, like a gem, the Holy Isle.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Hushed is the music of the oar;\n A little hand is placed in mine;\n My blood runs wildly, as with wine--\n We stand together on the shore.\n\n\n V.\n\n O boyish days! O boyish heart!\n In vain I wish you back again!\n O boyish fancy\u2019s first sweet pain,\n How glorious, after all, thou art!\n\n\n VI.\n\n The old Round Tower, the ruined walls,\n Where mould\u2019ring bones once knelt in prayer,\n The Latin legend, winding stair,--\n These any \u201ctourist\u2019s book\u201d recalls.\n\n\n VII.\n\n But, oh! the love, the wild delight,\n The sweet romance of long ago,\n All these have vanished, as the glow\n Of eventide fades out at night.\n\n\n\n\n KINGS OF MEN.\n\n\n As hills seem Alps, when veiled in misty shroud,\n Some men seem kings, through mists of ignorance;\n Must we have darkness, then, and cloud on cloud,\n To give our hills and pigmy kings a chance?\n Must we conspire to curse the humbling light,\n Lest some one, at whose feet our fathers bowed,\n Should suddenly appear, full length, in sight,\n Scaring to laughter the adoring crowd?\n Oh, no! God send us light!--Who loses then?\n The king of slaves and not the king of men.\n True kings are kings for ever, crowned of God,\n The King of Kings,--we need not fear for them.\n \u2019Tis only the usurper\u2019s diadem\n That shakes at touch of light, revealing fraud.\n\n\n\n\n VASHTI.\n\n\n \u201cAfter these things, when the wrath of King Ahasuerus was appeased,\n he remembered Vashti.\u201d--_Book of Esther_ ii. 1.\n\n\n I.\n\n Is this all the love that he bore me, my husband, to publish my face\n To the nobles of Media and Persia, whose hearts are besotted and base?\n Did he think me a slave, me, Vashti, the Beautiful,[A] me,\n Queen of Queens,\n To summon me thus for a show to the midst of his bacchanal scenes?\n\n [A] Vashti means \u201c_Beautiful Woman_;\u201d Esther means \u201c_A Star_.\u201d\n\n\n II.\n\n I stand like an image of brass, I, Vashti, in sight of such men!\n No, sooner, a thousand times sooner, the mouth of the lioness\u2019 den,\n When she\u2019s fiercest with hunger and love for the hungry\n young lions that tear\n Her breasts with sharp, innocent teeth, I would enter,\n aye, sooner than there!\n\n\n III.\n\n Did he love me, or is he, too, though the King, but a brute like the rest?\n I have seen him in wine, and I fancied \u2019twas then that he\n loved me the best;\n Though I think I would rather have one sweet, passionate\n word from the heart\n Than a year of caresses that may with the wine that creates them depart.\n\n\n IV.\n\n But ever before, in his wine, towards me he shewed honour and grace,--\n He was King, I was Queen, and those nobles he made them\n remember their place;\n But now all is changed: I am vile, they are honoured,\n they push me aside,--\n A butt for Memucan, and Shethar, and Meres, gone mad in their pride!\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n V.\n\n Shall I faint? shall I pine? shall I sicken and die for\n the loss of his love?\n Not I; I am queen of myself, though the stars fall from heaven above--\n The stars! ha! the torment is there, for my light is put out by a _Star_,\n That has dazzled the eyes of the King and his Court\n and his Captains of War.\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n VI.\n\n He was lonely, they say, and he looked, as he sat like\n a ghost at his wine,\n On the couch by his side, where, of yore, his Beautiful used to recline.\n But the King is a slave to his pride, to his oath, and\n the laws of the Medes,\n And he cannot call Vashti again, though his poor heart\n is wounded and bleeds.\n\n\n VII.\n\n So they ransacked the land for a wife, while the King\n thought of me all the while--\n I can see him, this moment, with eyes that are lost for\n the loss of a smile,\n Gazing dreamily on as each maiden is temptingly passed\n in review,\n While the love in his heart is awake with the thought\n of a face that he knew!\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n VIII.\n\n Then _she_ came, when his heart was grown weary with loving\n the dream of the past!\n She is fair--I could curse her for that, if I thought that\n this passion would last!\n But, e\u2019en if it last, all the love is for me, and, through\n good and through ill,\n The King shall remember his Vashti, shall think of his\n Beautiful still.\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n IX.\n\n Oh! the day is a weary burden, the night is a restless strife,--\n I am sick to the very heart of my soul of this life--this death in life!\n Oh! that the glorious, changeless sun would draw me up in his might,\n And quench my dreariness in the flood of his everlasting light!\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n X.\n\n What is it? Oft, as I lie awake and my pillow is wet with tears,\n There comes--it came to me just now--a flash, then disappears:\n A flash of thought that makes this life a re-enacted scene,\n That makes me dream what was, shall be, and what is now, has been.\n\n\n XI.\n\n And I, when age on age has rolled, shall sit on the royal throne,\n And the King shall love his Vashti, his Beautiful, his own;\n And for the joy of what has been and what again shall be,\n I\u2019ll try to bear this awful weight of lonely misery!\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n XII.\n\n The star! the star! oh! blazing light that burns into my soul!\n The star! the star! oh! flickering light of life beyond control!\n O King! remember Vashti, thy Beautiful, thy own,\n Who loved thee and shall love thee still, when Esther\u2019s light has flown!\n\n\n\n\n SHAKSPERE.\n\n _April 23rd, 1864._\n\n\n I.\n\n To-day, three hundred years ago,\n A common, English April morn,\n In Stratford town a child was born,\n Stratford, where Avon\u2019s waters flow.\n\n\n II.\n\n No guns are fired, no joy-bell rings:\n But neighbours call to see the boy\n And mother, and to wish them joy,\n And then--attend to other things.\n\n\n III.\n\n Some years glide by--the boy is man;\n At school they thought him apt to learn;\n And now he goes from home to earn\n His livelihood, as best he can.\n\n\n IV.\n\n He takes the stage; he writes a play;\n \u2019Tis well received; he writes again;\n His name is known, and courtly men\n Are glad to hear what he may say.\n\n\n V.\n\n For he flings wreaths of pearls abroad,\n Like shells or daisies idly strung;\n Nor sparing brain, nor pen, nor tongue,\n Nor waiting until men applaud;\n\n\n VI.\n\n But, like a bird, a noble song\n He sings, as Genius teaches him--\n Regardless of the critic\u2019s whim--\n Whether he think it right or wrong.\n\n\n VII.\n\n Great Nature\u2019s book he wisely reads:\n He solves the mystery of life,\n And cuts, with philosophic knife,\n The tangled knot of human deeds.\n\n\n VIII.\n\n Man\u2019s passion--madness, hatred, guile,\n Hope, mercy, friendship, honour, truth;\n The griefs of age--the joys of youth;\n The patriot\u2019s tear--the villain\u2019s smile;\n\n\n IX.\n\n The modest gem--the tinselled gaud,\n Of noble worth or base pretence;\n The glory bought at blood\u2019s expense;\n The power gained by force or fraud--\n\n\n X.\n\n On these his sun of genius shone,\n Making a wondrous photograph,\n Till even critics ceased to laugh,\n And owned the picture nobly done.\n\n\n XI.\n\n The chromatrope of woman\u2019s heart;\n The words forgot with passion\u2019s breath;\n The vanity that conquers death;\n The feathery smile that wings a dart;\n\n\n XII.\n\n The gentle care that makes man blest;\n The truth far more than jewels worth;\n The love that makes a heaven of earth--\n All these to him were manifest.\n\n\n XIII.\n\n He touches the historic page--\n The dead return to life again,\n And feel and speak like real men,\n Hero or lover, king or sage.\n\n\n XIV.\n\n The realms of air, with potent wand,\n He enters boldly as a king;\n And fays, that float on viewless wing,\n Sing dreamy songs at his command!\n\n\n XV.\n\n And witches point, with palsied hand,\n And blast the air with hellish chime;\n And ghosts revisit earth a time,\n With messages from spirit-land!\n\n\n XVI.\n\n He calls, and what men fancied dumb,\n Hills, groves, and lakes, and brooks, and stones,\n Answer him in a thousand tones,\n Till silence makes a joyous hum.\n\n\n XVII.\n\n In fine, he made \u201cthe world a stage,\u201d\n And all upon it act their parts--\n By Nature\u2019s prompting and by Art\u2019s--\n For Art is Nature taught by age.\n\n\n XVIII.\n\n And, singing thus, he passed his days--\n Not without honour, it is true--\n Yet hardly understood by few,\n And these were slow in giving praise.\n\n\n XIX.\n\n And men had lived in mist so long,\n Some could not bear his blaze of light,\n But shut their eyes, and said \u2019twas night,\n When it \u2019twas just the noon of song.\n\n\n XX.\n\n But when his soul shook off its clay,\n And hied, its labour done, to God,\n Throughout the land that he had trod,\n \u2019Twas felt \u201cA King is dead to-day!\u201d\n\n\n XXI.\n\n And now, when centuries have flown,\n Some shout, \u201cCome, build a monument,\n For all arrears of poet-rent,\u201d--\n As if _he_ needed brass or stone!\n\n\n XXII.\n\n O man! how oft thy acts have lied!\n Thou crushest those who strive to live,\n And makest poor pretence to give\n Fame unto him thou can\u2019st not hide.\n\n\n XXIII.\n\n And some are honoured, being dead,\n By those who coldly turned aside,\n And gave them, living, but their pride,\n When they, perhaps, were needing bread!\n\n\n XXIV.\n\n Yet not to all such honour comes--\n Only a few bright names are known\n Of all the \u201csimple, great ones gone\u201d--\n The most are only found on tombs.\n\n\n XXV.\n\n But one shall never pass away--\n His, who was born in Stratford town,\n When brave Queen Bess wore England\u2019s crown,\n Three hundred years ago to-day!\n\n\n\n\n SPRING.\n\n\n I.\n\n O grand, old Earth of God\u2019s and ours,\n Once more thou doffest winter\u2019s veil,\n Once more the budding trees and flowers\n And birds\u2019 sweet music bid thee hail!\n\n\n II.\n\n Is it a time for joy or care,\n O Earth?--a time to laugh or weep?\n What myriads in thy bosom sleep,\n And we shall soon lie sleeping there!\n\n\n III.\n\n O Earth! \u2019tis hard to understand\n Why thou should\u2019st thus thy children crave!\n For art thou not a mighty grave,\n Though strewn with flowers by God\u2019s good hand?\n\n\n IV.\n\n Thou hearest not, amid thy mirth,\n Nor carest though thy children die,\n And senseless in thy bosom lie,\n Cold and unthought of, cruel Earth!\n\n\n V.\n\n And yet, O Earth! a little seed,\n Dropt by man\u2019s hand within thy heart,\n Thou makest great, and dost impart\n To him again for every need!\n\n\n VI.\n\n O Earth! if seed that man lets fall\n Into thy heart, thou givest thus\n Back thirty, sixty-fold to us,\n Thou art not cruel, after all!\n\n\n VII.\n\n Nor dost thou, Earth, thy children crave;\n \u2019Tis God that sows them as His seed,\n And by and bye they shall be freed,\n As beauteous flowers for him who gave.\n\n\n VIII.\n\n O gay, Spring Earth of God\u2019s and ours,--\n Nay, rather, thou and we are His,\n And sun and stars and all that is,--\n We bid thee hail with birds and flowers!\n\n\n\n\n IN MEMORIAM.\n\n\n I.\n\n Our days of happiness Time hurries by,\n As though in haste his envy found relief;\n But in our nights of anguish his cold eye\n Lingers upon us, gloating o\u2019er our grief,--\n Yet in the past we fain would live again,\n Forgetting, for the gladness, all the pain.\n\n\n II.\n\n So pass our years. It seems a little while\n Since, with wild throbbings in my boyish heart,\n I westward gazed from my own western isle,\n And saw the white-winged messengers depart.\n Ah! little thought I then that o\u2019er the sea\n Lived any one that should be dear to me.\n\n\n III.\n\n Years fled--and other eyes were westward turned,\n And I was on the bosom of the deep,\n While strange emotions in my bosom burned--\n A sorrow that I thought would never sleep:\n For all that I had loved on earth was gone,--\n Perhaps forever--and--I was alone;\n\n\n IV.\n\n Save that I heard the dear familiar noise\n Of the old ocean, and can well recall\n The bliss, the awe, the love without a voice\n With which I felt that great heart rise and fall,\n Like some untamed and tameless \u201cthing of life\u201d\n That frets for something worthy of its strife.\n\n\n V.\n\n And then I was alone amid the din\n Of ceaseless strugglers after wealth and power,\n Content to hide the better soul within,\n And pass in men\u2019s applause a gaudy hour,--\n To act out well a something they are not,--\n To be admired and praised--despised, forgot.\n\n\n VI.\n\n I was alone, but in my fancy grew\n A fair ideal, fashioned from the best\n And purest feelings that my spirit knew;\n And this ideal was the goddess-guest\n In my heart\u2019s temple; but I sought not then\n To find my goddess in the haunts of men.\n\n\n VII.\n\n And yet I found her--all-personified\n The goddess of my lonely-loving heart,\n And--as an artist, when he stands beside\n Some genius-fathered, beauteous child of art,\n Worships it mutely, with enraptured gaze--\n My love was far too deep for words of praise.\n\n\n VIII.\n\n But, ah! earth\u2019s brightest joys are bought with pain:\n Meeting with parting,--smiles with bitter tears,--\n Hope ends in sorrow,--loss succeeds to gain,--\n And youth\u2019s gay spring-time leads to wintry years;\n Nought lives that dies not in the world\u2019s wide range,\n And nothing is unchangeable but change.\n\n\n IX.\n\n My bliss was o\u2019er. I was again alone\n Amid the scenes that I had learned to love\n For her dear sake; but, ah! the charm was gone\n From river-side and mountain-slope and grove--\n All, save the memory of happy hours\n That lingered like the sweetness of dead flowers.\n\n\n X.\n\n And as the ground on which a temple stood\n Is holy, though the temple stand no more,\n So river, mountain, waterfall and wood\n Wore something of the sacredness they wore\n When her loved presence blessed them, and her face\n Made all around her smile with her sweet grace.\n\n\n XI.\n\n And I am still alone, and years have fled,\n And other scenes are \u2019round me, as I call\n The past by Memory\u2019s magic from the dead,\n As Endor\u2019s Sibyl brought the Seer to Saul.\n (May _he_ not then have thought of that good time\n When David\u2019s music lulled his soul from crime?)\n\n\n XII.\n\n And I, with more of bitterness than bliss,\n The summoned years of my past life review,\n Till Hope\u2019s red lips with love pale Sorrow\u2019s kiss,\n And all things good and beautiful and true,\n Start rainbow-like from Sorrow\u2019s falling tears,\n Spanning with hues of Heaven all my years.\n\n\n XIII.\n\n And as I ope the temple of my heart\n And seek its inmost and its holiest shrine,\n Still there, my love, my darling one, thou art,--\n There still I worship thee and call thee mine;\n And this sweet anthem all that temple fills--\n \u201cLove cannot lose, \u2019tis loss of love that kills.\u201d\n\n\n[POSTSCRIPT.]\n\n XIV.\n\n What cry was that which woke me from my dream?\n I stand upon my native, island shore,\n And hear the startled curlews round me scream\n O\u2019er the mute cliffs that make the fierce waves roar;\n I watch the \u201cstately ships\u201d go sailing by,\n And wonder how my heart has learned to sigh.\n\n\n XV.\n\n Ah! _that_ was but a dream. A summer\u2019s eve\n Breathes all its balmy blessings on my brow;\n I feel as though the earth had got reprieve\n From its death-sentence. See, the sun sets now--\n The blue of heaven grows gently dark above,--\n Below, blue eyes are growing dark with love.\n\n\n XVI.\n\n _That_, too, was but a dream. What startled me?\n The winds are making havoc \u2019mong the leaves\n Of summer-time, and each once happy tree\n For its lost darlings rocks itself and grieves.\n The night is dark, the sky is thick with clouds--\n Kind frost-nymphs make the little leaves their shrouds!\n\n\n\n\n WINTER.\n\n\n Now lies Adonis in Pros\u00e9rpine\u2019s breast,\n Who o\u2019er him spreads a mantle lily white,\n And every dryad, with disordered vest,\n Teareth her hair for sorrow at the sight.\n And ere he waketh, many an eye, now bright,\n Shall deaden; many a rosy cheek shall pale;\n O\u2019er many a fair, young head shall rise the wail\n Of those whom Death hath spoiled of their delight.\n And, when, at touch of Spring, the winding sheet\n That wraps thee now, Adonis, melts to flowers,\n To deck thee for thy Queen; and sunny Hours,\n Dancing around thee on their soft swift feet,\n Sing \u201cWake, Adonis;\u201d many a one shall weep\n For those that in the Earth\u2019s dark bosom sleep.\n\n\n\n\n PER NOCTEM PLURIMA VOLVENS.\n\n\n I.\n\n When the weary sun has ended his journey and descended,\n By his own bright, golden pathway, to his mansion in the west,\n And the sentry stars have taken the sky he has forsaken,\n To watch till he awaken, bright and smiling, from his rest;\n\n\n II.\n\n And the Moon is rising slowly with a light serene and holy,\n The Queen of all the watchers, the sister of the Sun,\n And hushed are all the noises from Earth\u2019s unnumbered voices,\n And the heart of sleep rejoices in the conquest he has won;\n\n\n III.\n\n In the still, unbroken quiet, free from day\u2019s unceasing riot,\n I love to call around me the friends of long before,\n And to fill my vacant places with the well-remembered graces\n Of dear, old familiar faces that may smile for me no more.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Some that shared my boyish pastime, as they seemed to me the last time\n That I saw them, full of life and joy and hope that knew no bound,\n But who now are sad and grieving, and have lost the gay believing\n In the deeds of hope\u2019s achieving, or--are laid beneath the ground;--\n\n\n V.\n\n Some, not merely friends for pleasure, but who cherished\n friendship\u2019s treasure\n More than gold or worldly honour or gay fashion\u2019s fickle smile,\n Who would neither scorn nor flatter, who spoke honestly, no matter\n How the world might grin and chatter, loving truth and hating guile;--\n\n\n VI.\n\n Some whose silvery hair seemed saintly, and whose eyes though\n shining faintly,\n Shed a tender lustre o\u2019er me that will light me till the grave\n That with all men I inherit takes my body, and my spirit,\n Trusting in my Savour\u2019s merit, has returned to God who gave;--\n\n\n VII.\n\n One, whom I have lost forever, but whom I will still endeavour\n To deserve, though undeserving to have passed before her eyes,\n For I know that while I love her, what is best and purest of her\n Near me, through my life shall hover, like an angel from the skies;--\n\n\n VIII.\n\n These, by Fancy, great enchanter, called, into my presence enter,\n When the Sun and Earth are sleeping and the Moon and Stars are bright,\n And whatever past seemed pleasant I live over in the present,\n And the cares of day are lessened by the magic of the night.\n\n\n\n\n BALAAM.\n\n\n While sleep had set its seal on many eyes,\n Balaam, the Seer, was forth beneath the stars,\n Whose beauty glimmered in Euphrates\u2019 stream,\n Gemming the mournful willows\u2019 floating hair.\n Behind him were the mountains of the east,\n The dark-browed nurses of the blue-eyed founts,\n Whose lone hearts were the life of Pethor-land.\n Westward, beyond the river, was the waste,\n O\u2019er which, this second time, with priceless gifts,\n Had come from Balak noble messengers;\n And westward were the eyes of Balaam turned,\n As one who waits for one who does not come,\n While wild things came and passed unheeded by,\n And the night wind, as with an angel\u2019s harp,\n Played lullaby to all the dreaming flowers.\n And, gazing on the western sky, he saw\n A picture, all whose forms were quick with life,\n Where all was discord, hurrying to and fro,\n As when two armies strive to gain the field;\n For, from the outer realms of space, there came\n Gigantic spearsmen, over whom there waved\n Gay, many-coloured banners, and these flew,\n Hither and thither, o\u2019er the starry plain,\n Pursuing and retreating; others came,\n And others, till it seemed all Sabaoth\n Had joined in conflict with the wicked one.\n And then there was a change; banners and spears\n Faded away, as fades away the reek\n Above a hamlet on a frosty morn;\n And none can tell when he sees last of it.\n And, in a little while, there grew an arch,\n Whose keystone was the zenith of the sky,\n Like to a rainbow, joining east and west,\n Beautiful, quivering, fearful, ominous,\n Drawing the heart of Balaam after it.\n And this, too, vanished, vapor-like, away;\n And Balaam, though he waited its return,\n Waited in vain; for warriors, and spears,\n And banners, and the fiery flash of hosts\n Embattled, and the mystic arch, were gone,\n And came no more.\n\n And Balaam stood amazed\n Long time, while thoughts, conflicting, tore his breast,\n And barred all passage for his voice.\n At length,\n \u201cHath not the Highest, by this sign, declared\n His purpose? I MUST GO!\u201d he said, and then\n Dark-boding terrors shook him and the strain\n That held his face rapt westward, all relaxed\n By speech, he felt as one, who, in a dream,\n Stands on a steep cliff, by the greedy sea,\n While ruthless foes pursue him.\n \u201cI MUST GO!\u201d\n He said, and from ten thousand horrid throats\n There seemed to come a mocking answer, \u201cGo!\u201d\n And o\u2019er him came a shiver, as a lake\n Shivers beneath the burden of a breeze.\n And then there came a whisper to his ear,\n \u201cBalaam, God\u2019s prophet! go not with these men!\n Puttest thou Balak\u2019s honour above His\n Who chose thee to declare His will to men?\n Go, and thou art undone! God doth not lie!\u201d\n Then Balaam, as in answer to a friend:\n \u201cThere came across the desert lordly men\n From Moab and from Midian, who besought,\n With many prayers and noble gifts, that I,\n Balaam, the Seer, would go with them and curse\n A people who were terrible in war--\n To whom the strength of Moab was as grass\n Before the oxen, feeding on the plains--\n If, haply, I might crush them with a curse!\n These prayed I to abide with me all night,\n Till I should learn the purpose of the Lord--\n And, in a dream, God warned me not to go;\n And so they went away ungratified.\n Then came these princes with more precious gifts,\n And still more precious promises, who said,\n \u2018Balak, our lord, hath sent us unto thee,\n And prayeth thee to come. He will promote\n Thee and thy house to honour; and all boons,\n Whate\u2019er thou askest, he will freely give.\u2019\n And I replied, \u2018If Balak\u2019s house were full\n Of gold and silver, and he made it mine,\n Or more or less than God commandeth me,\n I could not do. But tarry here to-night,\n And I will hear the answer of the Lord.\u2019\n And then God sent a sign, the like of which\n I, who know all the faces of the night,\n And am familiar with all stars that shine\n Over the hills and plains of Pethor-land,\n Have never seen before, a sign which said:\n \u2018Balaam, if these men call thee, rise and go.\u2019\n Or more or less than God commandeth me\n I cannot do. Am I in this to blame?\u201d\n And then the wind came sweeping down the hills,\n And Balaam heard again the mocking cry,\n \u201cIf these man call thee, Balaam, rise and go.\u201d\n And though he shuddered, all his face grew dark\n And knotted, as he said, \u201cGod doth not lie,\n But--doth God mock? Hath he not sent a sign\n To me, who have the power of reading signs,\n His own high gift? And now--and now, O God!\n If thou wouldst send me yet another sign--!\u201d\n And here the whisper of the still, small voice\n Came back, \u201cO, Balaam! wretched is their fate,\n Who, knowing good from evil, choose not good,\n Or suffer evil, howsoever fair,\n To make the good less lovely in their eyes!\n Full well thou knowest that thy heart is set\n More on the gold of Balak than God\u2019s will.\n God doth not mock. \u2019Tis thou that mockest Him,\n Coming into His presence, full of lust,\n And seeking for a sign. If thou wert pure\n No sign were needed. Being as thou art,\n Wert thou to offer up the land\u2019s whole wealth,\n Oxen and rams, and corn, and wine, and oil,\n And all the first-born of thy kings, no sign\n Would purge thee of those sordid dreams that drag\n Thy soul from God to hell!\n It is not yet too late,\n Perhaps, and but perhaps!\n O, Balaam, rouse thee!\n Thou art, e\u2019en yet, God\u2019s prophet! He has shewn\n His will to none more clearly than to thee.\n What is it He requireth at thy hands?\n Be true and honest, pure and merciful,\n Having thy heart aflame with faith and love,\n Still walking humbly, as though prone to fall--\n Guarding thine eyes from covetous wanderings,\n Deeming God\u2019s gifts more beautiful than man\u2019s--\n And he will keep thee right in all thy ways.\n Oh! what is Balak\u2019s honour, Balak\u2019s gold,\n To Balaam, if the Highest be his friend,\n Who owns the wealth and beauty of the world?\n Balaam, if these men call thee, do not go.\u201d\n And Balaam bowed himself unto the ground,\n And lay upon his face in misery;\n And in his heart an awful battle raged,\n Where evil fought with good. Longtime he lay,\n As one entranced, all motionless, but full,\n Through every nerve, of wakeful, painful life.\n And then he rose, as from his grave, so pale\n And wild his visage; and he looked again,\n Along the waste, towards the western sky,\n But saw no sign, save that the stars grew dim,\n And some were gone; and, even as he looked,\n He seemed to hear from all the waking earth,\n Borne through the gloaming on the mountain wind,\n The words he loved and longed for and yet loathed,\n \u201cBalaam, if these men call thee, rise and go.\u201d\n\n And once again a shudder shook his frame;\n And once again he bowed him to the earth,\n And lay upon his face in misery,\n Until, from weariness, he fell asleep.\n\n And as he slept, he dreamed he was a child\n And heard sweet music, soft as is the breeze\n That steals through corn-fields on a summer\u2019s day,\n And makes the flowers kiss sweetly, and the leaves\n On every tree grow tremulous for joy.\n\n And then there came a noble, swelling strain,\n Like the grand chorus of victorious hosts\n That still march on to victory; and he heard,\n And was a man, with men--a king of men,\n With crown of inspiration on his brow.\n Around him thronged the chiefs of Pethor-land\n And others, from afar, who came to hear\n The wisdom God had given to his lips.\n But he was still as humble as the child\n That played of yore amid the flowers, and drew\n From their sweet breath the beauty of the good.\n And as he spoke, they listened to his words\n As to an angel\u2019s: for his words were wise,\n Wiser than all the wisdom of the East.\n\n Then came a discord, as a sound of waves\n That dash against tall rocks, while drowning men\n Try vainly to be heard. And Balaam grew\n Proud with the pride of vain and worldly men,\n And thought within his heart how great he was,\n Forgetting who had made him wise and great;\n And thought of all the homage and the gifts\n Yielded to him by princes of all lands,\n Till his heart turned to evil more than good.\n\n Then came a sound of battle and wild cries,\n The blare of trumpets, and the clash of swords,\n And the fierce neigh of war-steeds, and the groans\n Of dying men,--and Balaam lay with these,\n Far from the hills and streams of Pethor-land.\n And, as he lay, he heard an awful voice,\n High o\u2019er the din of battle, and the words,\n \u201cIf these men call thee, Balaam, rise and go.\u201d\n And Balaam woke; and on the Eastern hills\n Beheld the ruddy blossom of the day\n Bursting from out the sapphire of the sky;\n And all the earth looked pure as when it rose,\n At first, in beauty, from the primal sea,\n And all the heavenly hosts sang songs of joy.\n\n But still the night lingered in Balaam\u2019s soul,\n And all the pleasant voices of the morn,\n With which, erstwhile, he joined in hymns of praise,\n Were buried, as all hues are lost in black,\n In the dark horrors of one fatal cry,\n \u201cIf these men call thee, Balaam, rise and go.\u201d\n\n And fainter was the whisper than before,\n And Balaam heard it not, or heeded not,\n As with slow steps--as one who walks in chains--\n And head bowed low upon his breast, he moved\n Homeward to where the princes waited him.\n\n And Balaam told them not of sign or dream,\n But only made him ready for the road.\n And ere the sun was half-way up the sky,\n Both he and they were far upon the waste\n That stretched towards Moab,--and he nevermore\n Beheld the hills and streams of Pethor-land.\n\n\n\n\n GOOD NIGHT.\n\n\n I.\n\n Good night! God bless thee, love, wherever thou art,\n And keep thee, like an infant, in His arms!\n And all good messengers that move unseen\n By eye sin-darkened, and on noiseless wings\n Carry glad tidings to the doors of sleep,\n Touch all thy tears to pearls of heavenly joy.\n Oh! I am very lonely, missing thee;\n Yet, morning, noon, and night, sweet memories\n Are nestling round thy name within my heart,\n Like summer birds in frozen winter woods.\n Good night! _Good night!_ oh, for the mutual word!\n Oh, for the loving pressure of thy hand!\n Oh, for the tender parting of thine eyes!\n God bless thee, love, wherever thou art! Good night.\n\n\n II.\n\n Good night, my love! Another day has brought\n Its load of grief and stowed it in my heart,\n So full already, Joy is crushed to death,\n And Hope stands mute and shivering at the door.\n Still Memory, kind angel, stays within,\n And will not leave me with my grief alone,\n But whispers of the happy days that were\n Made glorious by the light of thy pure eyes.\n Oh! shall I ever see thee, love, again,\n My own, my darling, my soul\u2019s best beloved,\n Far more than I had ever hoped to find\n Of true and good and beautiful on earth?\n Oh! shall I _never_ see thee, love, again?\n My treasure found and loved and lost, good night.\n\n\n III.\n\n Good night, my love! Without, the wintry winds\n Make the night sadly vocal; and within,\n The hours that danced along so full of joy,\n Like skeletons have come from out their graves,\n And sit beside me at my lonely fire,--\n Guests grim but welcome, which my fancy decks,\n In all the beauty that was theirs when thou\n Didst look and breathe and whisper softly on them.\n So do they come and sit, night after night,\n Talking to me of thee till I forget\n That they are mere illusions and the past\n Is gone forever. They have vanished now,\n And I am all alone, and thou art--where?\n My love, good angels bear thee my good night!\n\n\n\n\n WINTER SUNSHINE.\n\n\n The \u201cMiserere\u201d of the wintry earth\n Went up to Heaven on the wings of air--\n I heard it, sitting by my lonely hearth--\n An awful music; sighs and moans of prayer,\n The anguish human words could never bear\n Into God\u2019s ear, the agony whose birth\n The soul hides from itself were mingled there\n With the fierce undertones of frantic mirth.\n Then came a hush, and suddenly the floor\n Was carpeted with sunshine, living gold,\n That filled the heart with summer; Heaven\u2019s door\n Was touched and opened, and at once there rolled,\n In strains of sweetest music from above,\n Back to the earth an answer, \u201cGod is Love!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n CHRISTUS SALVATOR.\n\n\n I.\n\n C horo sancto nunciatus,\n H omo, Deus Increatus,\n R egum, Rex, Puell\u00e2 natus,\n I n ignaris habitat;\n S umit vilem carnis vestem,\n T radens Gloriam C\u0153lestem\n U t dispellat culp\u00e6 pestem,\n S atanamque subigat.\n\n\n II.\n\n S urgit Stella prophetarum,\n A dest Victor tenebrarum,\n L umen omnium terrarum,\n V ia, Vita, Veritas.\n A nimas illuminavit,\n T enebrarum vim fugavit,\n O ras C\u0153licas monstravit\n R edemptoris Claritas.\n\n CHRISTMAS, 1864.\n\n\n\n\n DEW.\n\n\u201cWho hath begotten the drops of dew?\u201d--JOB xxxviii, 28.\n\n\n I.\n\n Who hath begotten the drops of dew?\n Tell, if you can, the tale of their birth;\n Have the stars from Heaven come down to woo\n The flowers, the beautiful daughters of earth?\n\n\n II.\n\n Who hath begotten the drops of dew?\n Have angels open\u2019d the pearly doors,\n And, leaving their streets of golden hue,\n Blest with their footsteps our grassy floors?\n\n\n III.\n\n Who hath begotten the drops of dew?\n Doth not each orb in its bosom bear\n Ruby and topaz and sapphire blue,\n And all the colours that angels wear?\n\n\n IV.\n\n Who hath begotten the drops of dew?\n Are they the tears of the saints above,\n Returned to visit the scenes they knew,\n And to weep and pray for some earthly love?\n\n\n V.\n\n Who hath begotten the drops of dew?\n Who, the good that in all things lies?\n Who, the primal beauty that grew\n Into myriad forms in Paradise?\n\n\n VI.\n\n Who hath begotten the drops of dew?\n Tell, if you can, the tale of their birth;\n Are they not, children of men, with you,\n Sons of the Lord of _Heaven_ and _Earth_?\n\n\n\n\n THALATTA! THALATTA!\n\n\n I.\n\n In my ear is the moan of the pines--in my heart is the song of the sea,\n And I feel his salt breath on my face as he showers his kisses on me,\n And I hear the wild scream of the gulls, as they answer the call\n of the tide,\n And I watch the fair sails as they glisten like gems on the\n breast of a bride.\n\n\n II.\n\n From the rock where I stand to the sun is a pathway of sapphire and gold,\n Like a waif of those Patmian visions that wrapt the lone seer of old,\n And it seems to my soul like an omen that calls me far over the sea--\n But I think of a little white cottage and one that is dearest to me.\n\n\n III.\n\n Westward ho! Far away to the East is a cottage that looks to the shore--\n Though each drop in the sea were a tear, as it was, I can see it no more;\n For the heart of its pride with the flowers of the \u201cVale of the Shadow\u201d\n reclines,\n And--hushed is the song of the sea and hoarse is the moan of the pines.\n\n\n\n\n RIZPAH.\n\n (2 SAMUEL xxi. 10.)\n\n\n It is growing dark.\n At such a sunset I have been with Saul--\n But saw it not. I only saw his eyes\n And the wild beauty of his roaming locks,\n And--Oh! there never was a man like Saul!\n Strong arm, and gentle heart and tender ways\n To win a woman\u2019s very soul, were his.\n When he would take my hand and look on me,\n And whisper \u201cRizpah\u201d--Ah! those days are gone!\n Why should I weep? was I not loved by Saul?\n And Saul was king of all the Land of God.\n\n \u201cGod save the king!\u201d But, hush! what noise was that?\n Oh heaven! to think a mother\u2019s eyes should look\n On such a sight! Away! vile carrion-beast!\n Those are the sons of Saul,--poor Rizpah\u2019s sons.\n O my dead darlings! O my only joy!\n O sweet twin treasure of my lonely life,\n Since that most mournful day upon Gilboa,\n Torn from me thus!\n I have no tears to shed.\n O God! my heart is broken! Let me die!\n\n * * * * *\n\n Gilboa! David wrote a song on it,\n And had it put in _Jasher_--\u201cWeep for Saul.\u201d\n Armoni used to sing it to his harp.\n Poor blackened lips!\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\n \u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7I wonder if they dream,\n My pretty children\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\n \u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7\u00b7Come, Mephibosheth,\n Here is your father; say \u201cGod save the king!\u201d\n The Gibeonites! Ah! that was long ago.\n Why should they die for what they never did?\n No; David never would consent to that!\n\n * * * * *\n\n Whose son is he, this youth? Dost know him, Abner?\n Ha, ha! they shout again \u201cGod save the king.\u201d\n\n * * * * *\n\n Was I asleep? I came not here to sleep.\n O poor old eyes, sorrow has made you weak.\n My sons! No, nought has touched them. O, how cold!\n Cold, cold! O stars of God, have pity on me,\n Poor lonely woman! O my sons, Saul\u2019s sons!\n Kind stars, watch with me; let no evil beast\n Rend that dear flesh. O God of Israel,\n Pardon my sins! My heart is broken!\n\n\n\n\n NATALIE.\n\n\n I.\n\n Such a pretty, siren face\n Thine was, Natalie!\n Such a merry, winning grace\n Drew my heart to thee,\n In those distant, happy days\n When thy heart was free.\n\n\n II.\n\n Fearless then we gathered joy,\n Not a care had we,\n Happier girl and happier boy\n Well there could not be;\n In our bliss was no alloy,\n Playmate, Natalie.\n\n\n III.\n\n Time is cruel. Thou and I\n Parted, Natalie!\n And thy kissed lips said \u201cGood bye!\n Surely write to me.\u201d\n Thou wast then too young to sigh,\n Little Natalie!\n\n\n IV.\n\n One day, after years had flown,\n Something came to me,\n \u2019Twas a portrait of my own\n Playmate, Natalie,--\n Natalie,--but not my own,\n Never mine to be!\n\n\n V.\n\n There she sat, so lovely grown,\n Like a queen to see,--\n There she sat--but not alone,--\n With her--who is he?\n So my boyish dream has flown,\n Faithless Natalie!\n\n\n VI.\n\n In my heart there is a place\n Still for Natalie!\n For the pretty, siren face,\n For the sweetly, winning ways,\n That were dear to me,\n In those happy far-off days,\n When her heart was free.\n\n\n\n\n THE FENIAN RAID.\n\n _June, 1866._\n\n\n I.\n\n The breath of the south wind was laden with woe\n As it moaned to the Northland \u201cPrepare for the foe!\u201d\n And the Northland was silent a moment, and then\n There was hieing and arming and marching of men.\n\n\n II.\n\n To the front! There\u2019s a struggle--the crisis is past!\n The foemen are flying! woe, woe to the last!\n There\u2019s a hush, only stirred by the zephyr of peace,\n Wafting thanks to the God who makes fighting to cease.\n\n\n III.\n\n But, oh! with the voice of that zephyr a cry\n Strives up after justice that seemeth to fly\n From the nations of earth.--O our God have regard\n To that cry; let the cause of the injured be heard!\n\n\n IV.\n\n From the blood of the true, the unselfish, the brave,\n From the women and children they perished to save,\n Goes a cry that no sound of rejoicing can still:\n \u201cJudge between us and those who have sanctioned this ill.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n _Humanum est errare, Divinum condonare._\n\n\n \u2019Tis easy to cry \u201cRaca\u201d[B] from within\n Cold, passionless morality\u2019s strong tower,\n To those who struggle fiercely, hour by hour,\n \u2019Gainst grim Goliaths of unconquered sin.\n\n \u2019Tis easy, safely far from battle\u2019s din,\n To wave a sword or raise a banner high\n To those who have to fight each inch, or--die;\n Who must be wounded, even if they win.\n\n \u2019Tis easy to point clean, weak hands of scorn\n When some much-tempted brother falls or flies;\n Or some sweet Eve has strayed from Paradise\n Into the outer world of briar and thorn.\n\n But in the great, high council of the skies\n There\u2019s One who reads men\u2019s hearts with milder eyes.\n\n [B] St. Matthew\u2019s Gospel v. 22.\n\n\n\n\n SING ME THE SONGS I LOVE.\n\n\n Sing me the songs I love once more,\n The songs your lips have made so dear,\n For many a day must pass before\n Again your music fills my ear.\n And when you are no longer near,\n I\u2019ll in my loneliness rejoice,\n Deep in my inmost heart, to hear\n The gentle music of your voice.\n\n \u2019Tis not in words that friendship lies,\n E\u2019en when those words in music move,\n But words have power that never dies,\n When said or sung by those we love.\n So when in weariness I rove\n Through the world\u2019s desert, seeking rest,\n The memory of your songs shall prove\n A solace to my lonely breast.\n\n And when you sing those songs again,\n For gayer hearts and brighter eyes,\n And thinking upon \u201cnow\u201d as \u201c_then_,\u201d\n Memories of other days arise,\n Believe that none more dearly prize\n The strains your lips so sweetly pour,\n Than he who asked \u2019neath other skies,\n \u201cSing me the songs I love once more.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n IN MEMORIAM.\n\n\n He is dead! and what words can we say that will tell half the sorrow\n we know;\n He is murdered! and mutters for vengeance are mingled with wailings\n of woe;\n He is gone! and the voice that thrilled thousands, like music, forever\n is hushed;\n He lies bleeding! and with him the heart of the nation lies bleeding\n and crushed!\n\n Ah! yes, he is gone! The pure stars that lighted him home to his rest,\n Saw his blood as he lay there, a martyr, his hand to a motionless breast;\n And the wings of the angels that quivered a moment before with his words,\n Flashed again--\u201cHe is dead,\u201d and the souls of the waking were pierced\n as with swords.\n\n Hardly strange doth it seem that the Springtime refuseth this morn to\n be gay,\n And covers her eyes with a veil, and putteth her garlands away,\n For she feels that the heart of a prophet of man and of nature is still,\n And she hideth her flowers in her bosom and cannot be gay, if she will!\n\n O Canada, weep, \u2019twas for thee that he spoke the last words of his\n life!\n Weep, Erin, his blood has been shed in the healing of wounds of thy\n strife!\n Weep, Scotia, no son of thy soil held thy mountains and valleys more\n dear!\n Weep, England, thy brave, honest eyes never glistened with worthier tear!\n\n He was true to himself, to his faith, to the lands of his birth and\n his choice;\n He was true, when, a boy, he obeyed, as he deemed it, a patriot voice;\n He was true, as a man, to the light gained by years, spite of slanderous\n breath;\n He was true, as the champion of peace, amid foes, under ban, _unto death_!\n\n \u201cHad he faults?\u201d men will ask. Who is faultless? How many there are who\n redeem\n Not the faults that they have by one virtue to make them a shield of\n esteem,\n But lie evermore all content in their grave of misdoing; but he\n Sent a light through his life that makes glorious for ever the\n name of MCGEE.\n\n APRIL 7th, 1868.\n\n\n\n\n KILLYNOOGAN.\n\n\n I.\n\n Killynoogan,--hallowed name,--\n Though thou\u2019rt little known to fame,\n My heart\u2019s homage thou dost claim.\n\n\n II.\n\n Though to stranger ears thou be\n But a word of mystery,\n Meaning deep thou hast for me.\n\n\n III.\n\n All thy quaint old masonry\n Now before my eyes I see,\n As, of old, it used to be.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Ah! too well I can recall\n Every stone in every wall,--\n In my heart I count them all.\n\n\n V.\n\n And the lawn before the door,\n I can see it as of yore,\n Bright with daisies spangled o\u2019er.\n\n\n VI.\n\n And the hedge, along whose side,\n Oft, in childhood, I have tried\n To escape, when playing \u201cHide.\u201d\n\n\n VII.\n\n And the miniature wood,\n Where in boyhood I have sued\n Coyish maiden, Solitude.\n\n\n VIII.\n\n And the garden full of flowers,\n Where I\u2019ve past romantic hours,\n Dreaming of fair ladies\u2019 bowers.\n\n\n IX.\n\n In the orchard, stretched at ease,\n On the grass, I hear the breeze\n Piping \u2019mong the apple trees.\n\n\n X.\n\n While from many a leafy nook,\n Grave as parson at his book,\n Rook replieth unto rook.\n\n\n XI.\n\n I can hear the river\u2019s flow\n As it murmurs, soft and low,\n Bringing news from Pettigo.\n\n\n XII.\n\n I can watch it to the mill,\n Where the never-tiring wheel\n Dances round and drinks its fill.\n\n\n XIII.\n\n Past the ever-bubbling \u201cspa,\u201d\n Past the castle of Magra,\n Razed by Cromwell\u2019s cruel law,\n\n\n XIV.\n\n On it goes with many a turn,\n Playing with its fringe of fern,\n Till it touches broad Lough Erne.\n\n\n XV.\n\n Here I leave thee, little stream,\n Lost, like much I dearest deem,\n In my life\u2019s oft-shifting dream.\n\n\n XVI.\n\n Lost! but let me backward haste,\n I have little time to waste\n In my ramble through the past.\n\n\n XVII.\n\n Words are cumbersome, at times,\n Thought could visit fifty climes,\n While I\u2019m seeking useless rhymes.\n\n\n XVIII.\n\n I am back upon the lawn,\n That I\u2019ve often stood upon,\n But--is every body gone?\n\n\n XIX.\n\n Knock,--is any one within?\n Not a sound, except the din\n Of the mice,--they must be thin.\n\n\n XX.\n\n Look along the avenue,\n Is there any one in view?\n Surely, this cann\u00f2t be true?\n\n\n XXI.\n\n Put your ear upon the ground!\n Listen! Is there any sound?\n Every thing is hushed around.\n\n\n XXII.\n\n Oh! I dream! I might have known;\n _I_ have wandered,--_they_ are gone,\n And of _four_ remains but _one_.\n\n\n XXIII.\n\n Two were young and two were old;\n _Three_ are lying stark and cold\n In death\u2019s rigid, icy fold.\n\n\n XXIV.\n\n Dear old Killynoogan, thee,\n Once so full of life and glee,\n Lifeless, desolate, I see!\n\n\n XXV.\n\n But, beloved and sacred spot,\n Nought of thee shall be forgot,\n Till what I am now--is not.\n\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat can I do that others have not done?\n What can I think that others have not thought?\n What can I teach that others have not taught?\n What can I win that others have not won?\n What is there left for me beneath the sun?\n My labour seems so useless, all I try\n I weary of, before \u2019tis well begun;\n I scorn to grovel and I cannot fly.\u201d\n\n \u201cHush! hush! repining heart! there\u2019s One whose eye\n Esteems each honest thought and act and word\n Noble as poet\u2019s songs or patriot\u2019s sword.\n Be true to Him: He will not pass thee by.\n He may not ask thee \u2019mid His stars to shine,\n And yet He needeth thee; His work is thine.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n HASTINGS.\n\n _October 14th, 1066._\n\n\n I.\n\n October\u2019s woods are bright and gay, a thousand colours vie\n To win the golden smiles the Sun sends gleaming thro\u2019 the sky;\n And tho\u2019 the flowers are dead and gone, one garden seems the earth,\n For, in God\u2019s world, as one charm dies, another starts to birth.\n\n\n II.\n\n To every season is its own peculiar beauty given,\n In every age of mortal men we see the Hand of Heaven;\n And century to century utters a glorious speech,\n And peace to war, and war to peace, eternal lessons teach.\n\n\n III.\n\n O grand, old woods, your forest-sires were thus as bright and gay,\n Before the axe\u2019s murderous voice had spoiled their sylvan play;\n When other axes smote our sires and laid them stiff and low,\n On Hastings\u2019 unforgotten field, _eight hundred years ago_.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Eight hundred years ago, long years, before Jacques Cartier clomb\n The Royal Height, where now no more the red men fearless roam!\n Eight hundred years ago, long years before Columbus came\n From stately Spain to find the world that ought to bear his name!\n\n\n V.\n\n The Sussex woods were bright and red on that October morn;\n And Sussex soil was red with blood before the next was born;\n But from that red united clay another race did start\n On the great stage of destiny to act a noble part.\n\n\n VI.\n\n So God doth mould, as pleaseth Him, the nations of His choice;\n Now, in the battle-cry is heard His purifying voice;\n And now with Orphic strains of peace He draws to nationhood\n The scattered tribes that dwell apart by mountain, sea and wood.\n\n\n VII.\n\n He took the lonely, poet Celt and taught him Roman lore,\n Then from the wealds of Saxony He brought the sons of Thor;\n Next from his craggy home the Dane came riding o\u2019er the sea,\n And last, came William with his bands of Norman chivalry.\n\n\n VIII.\n\n And now as our young nationhood is struggling into birth,\n God grant its infant pulse may beat with our fore-fathers\u2019 worth!\n And as we gather into _one_, let us recall with pride\n That we are of the blood of those who fought where Harold died.\n\n OCTOBER, 1866.\n\n\n\n\n THE NAUGHTY BOY.\n\n (_From H. C. Andersen\u2019s Tales._)\n\n\n A good old poet sat by his hearth,\n While the wind and rain were raging abroad;\n And he thought of the poor who roamed thro\u2019 the earth\n Without a home or friend but God,\n While he was as snug as he could desire,\n Roasting his apples before the fire.\n\n And just with the thought came a voice outside:\n \u201cO pray, let me in, I am wet and cold.\u201d\n In a second the door has been opened wide,\n And there standeth a boy with ringlets of gold.\n \u201cCome in, my boy, there is warmth for thee here;\n Come in and take share of my frugal cheer.\u201d\n\n So the boy came in, and in spite of the storm\n A cherub he seemed who had come from the skies,\n With his curly locks and his graceful form,\n And the sparkling beauty that lit his eyes;\n But the bow that he bore was so spoilt with the rain,\n One would say he could never have used it again.\n\n Then the good old poet nursed the boy,\n And dried him and warmed him and gave him wine,\n And his heart grew glad, and the spirit of joy\n Frolicked and danced o\u2019er his face divine;\n \u201cLight of heart thou seemest, and light of head,\n Pray, what is thy name?\u201d the old poet said.\n\n \u201cMy name is Love; dost thou know me not?\n Look, yonder my bow and my arrows lie,\n And I\u2019d have you beware. I\u2019m a capital shot.\u201d\n \u201cBut your bow is spoilt.\u201d \u201cNever mind; I\u2019ll try.\u201d\n And he bent his bow, and he aimed a dart,\n And the good old poet was shot thro\u2019 the heart.\n\n And he fell from his chair, and he wept full sore:\n \u201cIs this my reward for my apples and wine?\u201d\n But the Naughty Boy could be seen no more;\n He was forth again, for the night grew fine.\n \u201cBah! I\u2019ll warn all the boys and the girls I know,\n If they play with this Love, they\u2019ll have nothing but woe.\u201d\n\n So the good old poet he did his best\n To make others beware of a fate like his;\n And he shewed them the arrow that pierced his breast:\n \u201cNow you see what a terrible boy he is!\u201d\n But an archer, who\u2019s never two moment\u2019s the same,\n Like Proteus, it\u2019s hard to keep clear of his aim!\n\n\n\n\n ROSA.\n\n\n Thou art gone, sweet love, to take thy rest,\n Like a weary child on thy mother\u2019s breast;\n And thou hearest not, in thy calm deep sleep,\n The voices of those that around thee weep.\n\n Thou art gone where the weary find a home,\n Where sickness and sorrow can never come;\n A flower too fair for earthly skies,\n Thou art gone to bloom in Paradise.\n\n Thou art gone, and I hear not thy gladsome tone,\n But my heart is still beating \u201c_alone, alone_,\u201d--\n Yet often in dreams do I hear a strain\n As of angels bearing thee back again.\n\n Thou art gone, and the world may not miss thee long,\n For thou didst not care for its idle throng;\n But this fond bosom, in silent woe,\n Shall carry thine image wherever I go.\n\n Thou art gone, thou art gone! Shall we meet no more\n By the sandy hill or the winding shore?\n Or watch as the crested billows rise,\n And the frightened curlew startling cries?\n\n Thou art gone, but oh! in that land of peace\n Where sin, and sorrow and anguish cease,\n Where all is happy and bright and fair,\n My own sweet love, may I meet thee there?\n\n MARCH, 1857.\n\n\n\n\n JUBAL.\n\n (Book of Genesis iv. 21.)\n\n\n The Sun soon kissed to flowers, the blood-stained sod,\n From which the voice of Abel cried to God,\n And drove his murderer to the land of Nod;\n\n And smiling, kindly watched them day by day,\n Till they, like Abel, died and passed away,\n And other flowers grew bright above their clay.\n\n While with impartial kindness, year by year,\n He kissed from Cain\u2019s curs\u2019d face the awful tear\n That flowed when that dread voice appalled his ear.\n\n Still as at night the silent woods are stirred\n By the lone calling of some mateless bird,\n Ever that voice in Cain\u2019s sad heart was heard.\n\n But busy hands for good or bad are best\n To still the aching voices of the breast,\n And load the body with the soul\u2019s unrest.\n\n So, tow\u2019rds the Sun the City Enoch rose,\n Beneath Cain\u2019s hands, as in the desert grows\n A palm whose shade the tawny outcast knows.\n\n The City Enoch! from the first-born named\n Of the first-born of woman, son of blood!\n Built long ere Babel\u2019s boastful tower was shamed,\n Earth\u2019s lonely capital before the flood!\n\n The City Enoch! here were sown and grew\n The seeds of Art when Art and life were long;\n Here Lamech turned his misery to song,\n Hence Jabal journeyed, seeking pastures new!\n\n Here man\u2019s soft hand made brass and iron yield\n To cunning shapes and uses,--wondrous skill!\n Tearing earth\u2019s iron heart with iron will,\n To see what secrets in it lay concealed!\n\n And here, O music, like a dream of heaven,\n Thy subtle thrills did touch the wearied brain,\n With raptured, passionate longing to regain\n The bliss of having naught to be forgiven!\n\n Let me in fancy see thee rise again\n O city of the Wanderer, seldom sought!\n City of that wise Jubal who first taught\n The harp and organ to the sons of men!\n\n That I may learn the secret of his might,\n Who, leaving earth unto his brother\u2019s care,\n Did gentle battle with the powers of air,\n And made them his and ours by victor\u2019s right!\n\n Adah, the first-beloved of Lamech\u2019s wives,\n Bare him two sons. Jabal, the eldest-born,\n Grew up to manhood, strong and bold and free;\n And leaving Enoch, sought a boundless home,\n Living in tents, a king amid his flocks,\n Setting his throne where\u2019er his subjects thrived,\n Lord, or allowed vicegerent under God,\n Unto the \u201ccattle on a thousand hills.\u201d\n\n But Jubal, wise and gentle, \u2019tis for thee\n That we would raise to life the giant shades\n That lived and loved, and sinned and wept and died\n Ere Heaven\u2019s great tears had washed away the crime\n That stained the beauty of the early earth;\n And Enoch, mistress of primeval Art,\n Lay, the dead mistress of a drown\u00e8d world.\n\n What was thy year, thy month, thy day of birth,\n That we may mark it in our Calendar,\n \u201cOn this day, in a year before the Flood,\n Jubal was born, Inventor of the Harp?\u201d\n Where shall we seek this knowledge? Of the stars?\n \u2019Tis said by some our hearts and brains depend\n Upon the union in their mystic dance\n They happen to be forming at the hour\n When we are born. Then we shall ask the stars.\n For they may recollect the year and hour\n They formed that wondrous figure when the power\n Of music touched the soul of man\n For the first time, and if they can,\n \u2019Twas then that Jubal\u2019s life began!\n\n Sibyl-stars, that sing the chorus\n Of the life that lies before us\n As we open mortal eyes!\n Strange phrenologists of Heaven,\n That infuse the spirit-leaven\n Into nascent, infant brains,\n That can make them dull or wise,\n Forging subtle mental chains\n That must bind us until death,\n As ye calmly glitter o\u2019er us,\n When we draw our primal breath!\n Mixing qualities together,\n Just according to the weather,\n Just according to the season,\n And the point of daily time,\n Noon or even, night or morn,\n That we happen to be born,\n For some sage, sidereal reason,\n Which some sophomores call \u201cchance,\u201d\n Some the \u201cforce of circumstance!\u201d\n Tell, O fatal stars, sublime,\n What the swelling of the chime\n Into which you wove your dance,\n What the day and what the hour,\n Was so happy as to dower\n Earth with Music\u2019s heavenly power!\n\n Tell the day of Jubal\u2019s birth,\n Day of Jubilee to earth.\n\n Was the \u201cmusic of the spheres\u201d\n Audible to mortal ears?\n Did the winds of Heaven sing\n Till the forests clapped their hands?\n Did the ocean, heralding,\n Bear the tidings to all lands,\n Whispering, \u201cRejoice, rejoice,\u201d\n Till the earth, unprisoning\n All her sounds, became a Voice?\n As the soaring of his wing\n When the distant eagle moves,\n Wakes to life the silent groves,\n At the coming of their king!\n Sibyl-stars, was this the way\n That Earth greeted Jubal\u2019s day?\n\n In those far shadowy years before the Flood\n Jubal was born, and this is all we know;\n Born in the land where Cain, in solitude\n And occupation sought to hide his woe\n Born with a gift, well-used, of sin the foe,\n A heaven-sent harbinger of promised good.\n\n Oh! was not Adah happy in her boy?\n Oh! who could tell the secret of her joy,\n When, with a mother\u2019s love, she pierced the veil\n That childhood draws round genius, lest it fail\n In its high aim, by adulation fed,\n And only feel the poison, when \u2019tis dead?\n\n And Lamech, first of bards, whose kindred art\n Would welcome her sweet sister, watched his son\n As day by day he saw the promise start\n Towards accomplishment. Yet neither one,\n Father nor mother, knew as yet the prize\n For which they waited with such anxious eyes.\n\n They saw that he was not of common mould:\n His quiet thoughtfulness, his pensive ways,\n His listening oft as to a story told,\n With side-turned head, and distant, earnest gaze,\n Told of some god-like purpose in his brain,\n Though what it was they asked themselves in vain.\n So Jubal grew in those far, shadowy years\n Before the Flood; and so the music grew\n Within his soul. The common air to him\n Was as a constant feast; its slightest touch\n Was joy to which all other joy was pain.\n The first sensations of his infancy\n Were blent with it. His mother\u2019s tender sighs,--\n Half sighs, half laughter,--as she looked on him,\n Wondering what sort of man he should become,\n Were like the breath of angels to his ear;\n And when his father\u2019s mighty voice came forth,\n Majestic, through its bearded doors, he hushed\n The tremulous beatings of his heart to hear.\n And when his brother Jabal went away,\n And there were sounds of sorrow in his home,\n (And he wept too, though hardly knowing why)\n He treasured up the sounds as precious things,\n Until they seemed a portion of his life.\n\n So did he gather all the tones of love\n And joy and grief, by strange instinctive power;\n And by and by, how anger wounds the air,\n And all the passions of the fallen heart\n That Satan hissed into the ear of Eve,\n He sadly learned; and yet with balanced sense,\n His great, high gift, he traced through all the tones\n The woman struggling with her serpent-foe,\n And desperate yearnings for lost innocence.\n\n But most he joyed to listen to the words\n Of happy children, respited a while,\n From fearful looking to the day of death;\n And it was Jubal\u2019s chief delight to wed\n Their gladsome voices with the Eden notes\n To which the first sweet marriage-hymn was set--\n The silver-throated wooing of the birds--\n The trilling of the zephyr-courted leaves--\n The merry-hearted laughter of the brooks--\n The multitudinous hum of joyous life--\n The weird lullaby that Nature sings\n Unto the darlings fondled in her lap,\n Loving but helpless, and their low response;\n And all the vocal charms of summer time,\n That wrap the soul in dreamy, languid bliss.\n\n All gentle sounds nestled within his heart,\n But not alone (though these he loved the most)\n Were gentle sounds the study of the boy.\n The mournful requiem of the dying leaves,--\n The piping gales that make the forest dance,--\n The tempest\u2019s rage, to which the pine and oak\n Are but as playthings to an angry child:\n The rain, the whirlwind and the thundercrash,--\n The mountain torrent, \u201cthe vexed ocean\u2019s roar,\u201d--\n The noisy lapping of the tongues of fire,--\n The howl of hungry, ravenous beasts of prey,--\n All that is sad or mad in Nature\u2019s voice,--\n All that reminds us of the awful words\n That pierced the fancied hiding place of sin,\n Ere yet the curse descended,--these he knew.\n For, in those giant days before the Flood,\n Nature and man were ever face to face,\n Till Art grew, Nature\u2019s image, in man\u2019s heart.\n\n So Jubal revelled in all sweet, grand sounds,\n A seeming spendthrift, but with miser craft,\n Locking his airy jewels in the casket\n Of lovingest remembrance,--till the boy\n Dreamed himself into manhood.\n\n Then there weighed\n Upon his brain the burden of a thought,--\n To bring to life the music that his soul\n Had gathered from the music of the world,--\n To make, by cunning union, every tone\n Of its great voice obedient to his will.\n And so he planned, awake, and, sleeping, dreamed\n Of this, his one idea; till at last\n \u2019Neath his creative hand the \u201cHarp\u201d was born.\n And then he planned again, for life was long\n In those far, shadowy years before the Flood,\n Until the \u201cOrgan,\u201d in its mighty heart,\n Echoed the throbbings of the heart of man.\n\n\n\n\n APOLLO DROPT A SEED OF SONG.\n\n\n I.\n\n Apollo dropt a seed of song\n Into my heart one day,\n And, smiling godlike, passed along\n Upon his heavenly way.\n\n\n II.\n\n I saw him make his golden arc,\n For many a weary day,\n But still the little seedling, dark\n Lay hid beneath the clay.\n\n\n III.\n\n But gentle eyes, one joyous hour,\n Shone where my seedling lay,--\n O Love, tend well thy little flower,\n And let it not decay.\n\n\n\n\n VOX DEI.\n\n\n The beauteous pyramid of harmless flame\n Spelled G O D for Moses; but the thundered law\n Was needed for the wild, unruly crowd.\n\n The awful test of swift-consuming fire\n Alone shewed Baal false to Baal\u2019s friends;\n The \u201cstill, small voice\u201d touched lone Elijah\u2019s heart.\n\n So God speaks variously to various men:\n To some in nature\u2019s sternest parables;\n To others, in the breath that woos the flowers,\n Until they blush and pale, and blush again.\n\n To _these_ the Decalogue were just as true\n If uttered on a summer Sabbath-day\n In village church--to _those_ there is no God,\n Till fiery rain has scarred the face of earth.\n\n\n\n\n THE OLD WAR-HORSE.\n\n\n I.\n\n He paweth no more in the field,\n Where glitter the spear and the shield;\n Nor heareth the thunder of war,\n Nor smelleth the battle afar;\n In his eyes is no glory of gleam,\n And his strength is the strength of a dream.\n\n\n II.\n\n He never turned back from the sword,\n When the pride of the land was his lord,\n Yet his neck is bowed meekly--the brave\n Can be meek, aye, as meek as a slave,--\n And he works near the dark of his day,--\n \u2019Twas _his_ pride (he was taught) to obey.\n\n\n III.\n\n In the gloaming of life his old eyes\n May see visions of glory arise;\n Who knows but within his old heart\n May thousands of memories start\n Of the march and the drum and the fife,\n Of the charge and the cry and the strife?\n\n\n IV.\n\n Who can tell? But, hark! once again\n He hears, as in whispers the strain\n Of that long-ago hid in his blood;\n It comes nearer; he paweth the mud\n Of the street, and his sinews rejoice,\n And he hears not his slave-master\u2019s voice!\n\n\n V.\n\n Though his form no gay war-trappings deck,\n The thunder returns to his neck;\n Ha! ha! he is free! for the sound\n Of the trumpet his soul has unbound!\n He is off! not a pause, till he comes\n To the midst of the din of the drums.\n\n\n VI.\n\n He has taken his place, as of yore,\n He is marching to battle once more;\n They may mock him as haggard and thin,\n They may laugh at the marks on his skin,\n But naught recks he; the master he bore,\n _His_ name may well cover them o\u2019er.\n\n\n VII.\n\n The music is hushed; the array\n Of the soldiers has vanished away;\n The old charger, poor fellow, elate\n No longer, returns to his fate;\n And the light of his eyes has burned low,\n And his paces are feeble and slow.\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n VIII.\n\n He has heard his last call to parade\n From the trumpet of death and obeyed;\n And the brave soldier-steed from all harness is freed\n Evermore, and his sleep\n Is so placid and deep,\n He needs fear no awakening. Rest to his shade!\n\n * * * * *\n\n\n\n IX.\n\n There are men, there are women who toil\n At the mill or the mart or the soil,\n Who wearily drudge day by day\n Till the soul of them seems to decay;\n Only _seems_,--for within, after all,\n There\u2019s a something that waits for its call.\n\n\n X.\n\n And if even the call never come\n In this world of the deaf and the dumb,\n When the Great Trumpet music shall fall\n On the ears of the quick and the dead,\n They shall burst from their clay\n And hasten away\n To their place in that host of which God is the Head.\n\n\n\n\n ELOISE.\n\n\n I.\n\n I\u2019ll call thee El\u00f6ise. Such eyes as thine\n With fatal beauty marred\n The peace of Abelard,\n And dimmed with human love the light divine\n That lingers near Religion\u2019s holy shrine!\n\n\n II.\n\n O pitiless eyes, you burn unto my soul,\n Each one a living coal\n From off Love\u2019s altar! Fall, O silken lashes,\n And shade me, like a screen, from their control,\n Ere all my warm delight be turned to ashes!\n\n\n III.\n\n Oh, no! I cannot bear the shade. Burn on,\n And let me slowly perish with sweet fire,\n Myself at once the victim and the pyre,--\n I die of cold when that dear heat is gone.\n\n\n\n\n WHEN THE SPRING-TIME COMES.\n\n\n I.\n\n \u201cWhen the Spring-time comes\u201d--\n So we say in wintry hours;\n And we look upon the snow,\n While we think upon the flowers.\n And we gaze till hope\u2019s bright glory is kindled in our eyes,\n And earth becomes an Eden full of beauty and delight,\n Where the air is far too happy to bear any weight of sighs,\n And myriad forms of gentle things bring gladness to the sight.\n And we wander through and through,\n Past the fairest trees and flowers,\n Till we find the friends we knew,\n And link their hands in ours,\n And then, in ecstacy of bliss, we seek the sweetest bowers.\n\n\n II.\n\n \u201cWhen the Spring-time comes\u201d--\n But ah! the snow is cold,\n And Death is colder still,--\n Whom may he not enfold?\n The glory in our eyes that shone is dimmed with bitter tears,\n And our Eden-flowers have faded into nothingness again;\n And we wander sadly, darkly, through a labyrinth of years,\n And we call for vanished faces, and act wildly in our pain.\n And then there comes a calm,\n And our sorrow grows less bold,\n As Nature\u2019s mighty psalm,\n O\u2019er God\u2019s own mountain rolled,\n Once heralded the still, small voice to that lone seer of old.\n\n\n III.\n\n \u201cWhen the Spring-time comes\u201d--\n Think we of griefs we know;\n Had we foreseen them long,\n Could we have stood the blow?\n Then should we not be thankful for the mercy that conceals\n The future, whether dark or bright, from our too curious eyes?\n God knows what\u2019s best for all of us; He covers or reveals,\n As it seemeth to him best, the ill that in our pathway lies.\n So let us journey on,\n Content in weal or woe\n To feel at least that One\n Smiles on us as we go,\n Who in sublime humility once suffered here below.\n\n\n IV.\n\n \u201cWhen the Spring-time comes\u201d--\n Let us live well the hours,\n God\u2019s spring within the heart\n Will wreathe them all with flowers.\n And when the snow has fallen over hand and heart and brain,\n Some few may say above our graves \u201cLet us be like to them,\n And though we may not see them when the Spring-time comes again,\n We hold their memory more dear than gold or precious gem.\n And at the great Spring day,\n When melted are the powers\n That hide our souls in clay,\n As winter hides the flowers,\n May we wreathe amaranths with them in Eden\u2019s choicest bowers.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n HOPE.\n\n\n She touched me in my sorrow; I awoke.\n Her kind hands broke the fetters of my grief;\n The light of smiles shone round me, as she spoke:\n \u201cI come, my friend, to bring thee sweet relief.\n Of those that minister, I am the chief,\n To man\u2019s sick heart; I made the tears of Eve\n Bright with the hues of Heaven, when loth to leave\n The joys her disobedience made so brief.\n I sailed with Noah o\u2019er the buried earth,\n I sat with Hagar by the new-found well,\n I solaced Joseph in his lonely cell,\n I filled sad David\u2019s soul with songs of mirth.\u201d\n Much more she whispered, till my heart grew bright\n And sorrow vanished, as at dawn, the night.\n\n\n\n\n DOMINION DAY.\n\n JULY, 1st, 1867.\n\n\n I.\n\n Our land is flushed with love; through the wealth of her gay-hued tresses\n From his bright-red fingers the sun has been dropping his amorous fire,\n And her eyes are gladly oppressed with the weight of his lips\u2019 caresses,\n And the zephyr-throbs of her bosom keep time with the voice of his lyre.\n\n\n II.\n\n \u2019Tis the noon of the sweet, strong summer, the king of the months\n of the year,\n And the king of the year is crowning our Land with his glory of love,\n And the King of all kings, in whose crown each gem is the light of\n a sphere,\n Looks smilingly down on our Land from the height of His heaven above.\n\n\n III.\n\n For to-day she breathes what to her is the first of a nation\u2019s breath,\n As she lies \u2019neath the gaze of the sun, as a bride, or a child new-born,\n Lies with fair motionless limbs in the beautiful semblance of death,\n Yet awake with the joy of a bird that awakes with the whisper of morn.\n\n\n IV.\n\n And her soul is drinking the music that flows through the golden lyre,\n From the deeps of the woods and waters and wonderful hearts of men,\n From the long-hushed songs of the forest, the wild, primeval choir,\n Till she feels the breath of the Spirit move over her face again.\n\n 1.\n\n Of the shadowy distant ages,\n (This is the song they sing),\n That scorn historic pages,\n When the Maple alone was king;\n When the bears were lords of creation,\n The beaver\u2019s the only trade,\n And the greatest Confederation\n Was that which the wolves had made.\n\n 2.\n\n And then, long ages after,\n How the first of the forest men,\n With sounds of war and laughter,\n Invaded the wild beast\u2019s den;\n They tell of the axe\u2019s ringing,\n Of the camp-fire\u2019s savage glee,\n Of the pipe of peace and the singing\n Under the maple tree.\n\n 3.\n\n And how strange birds of ocean\n Came from the dawn of day,\n And woke untold commotion,\n Where\u2019er they winged their way;\n How pale-faced men and cruel\n Carried the sword and brand,\n In search of gold and jewel,\n Into the red man\u2019s land.\n\n 4.\n\n How, with the warriors, others\n Of gentle manners came,\n Who called the red men brothers\n And told them of His Name,\n Who came from the Great Spirit,\n To bless mankind and save;\n And who, for man\u2019s demerit,\n Suffered the cross and grave.\n\n 5.\n\n How still in spite of preaching\n Of brotherhood and peace,\n It seemed that war\u2019s stern teaching\n Should never, never cease;\n How blood was shed like water,\n How treaties were despised,\n How massacre and slaughter\n Were night and day devised.\n\n 6.\n\n How, in the course of seasons,\n Other strange ocean birds\n Brought violence and treasons,\n And smooth, deceitful words;\n And how the first pale-faces\n Fought with the last who came,\n Until a war of races\n Set all the woods aflame.\n\n 7.\n\n How valiant deeds and noble\n Shone out amid the night,\n Illuming scenes of trouble,\n With Heaven\u2019s blessed light;\n How oft, in human nature,\n Though wofully defaced,\n Was seen some god-like feature--\n A flower in a waste;\n\n 8.\n\n Till now, through God\u2019s good guiding,\n Those who as foemen strove,\n With heart in heart confiding,\n As brothers join in love;\n Till, from lake, sea and ocean,\n Mountain and woody dell,\n Is heard, with glad emotion,\n Division\u2019s passing-bell.\n\n\n V.\n\n So she hears, not in words, but in spirit, the changeful tale of the past,\n As she leans to the sun with veins that are blue like the\n blue of the sky,\n Hears with a smile on her lips that the demon Division is cast\n Into the river of death, as a monster worthy to die.\n\n\n VI.\n\n And she hears many tongues of men, that are singing as one in her praise,\n Calling her, all, by one name, a name that is noble and old,\n Singing a p\u00e6an of joy for the light of the gladdest of days,\n Making a noise of thanksgiving for union more precious than gold.\n\n\n VII.\n\n 1.\n\n Canada, Canada, land of the maple,\n Queen of the forest and river and lake,\n Open thy soul to the voice of thy people,\n Close not thy heart to the music they make.\n Bells, chime out merrily,\n Trumpets, call cheerily,\n Silence is vocal, and sleep is awake!\n\n 2.\n\n Canada, Canada, land of the beaver,\n Labour and skill have their triumph to-day;\n Oh! may the joy of it flow like a river,\n Wider and deeper as time flies away.\n Bells, chime out merrily,\n Trumpets, call cheerily,\n Science and industry laugh and are gay.\n\n 3.\n\n Canada, Canada, land of the snow-bird,\n Emblem of constancy change cannot kill,\n Faith, that no strange cup has ever unsobered,\n Drinketh, to-day, from love\u2019s chalice her fill.\n Bells, chime out merrily,\n Trumpets, call cheerily,\n Loyalty singeth and treason is still!\n\n 4.\n\n Canada, Canada, land of the bravest,\n Sons of the war-path, and sons of the sea,\n Land of no slave-lash, to-day thou enslavest\n Millions of hearts with affection for thee.\n Bells, chime out merrily,\n Trumpets, call cheerily,\n Let the sky ring with the shout of the free.\n\n 5.\n\n Canada, Canada, land of the fairest,\n Daughters of snow that is kissed by the sun,\n Binding the charms of all lands that are rarest,\n Like the bright cestus of Venus in one!\n Bells, chime out merrily,\n Trumpets, call cheerily,\n A new reign of beauty on earth is begun!\n\n\n VIII.\n\n 1.\n\n The ocean has kissed her feet\n With cool, soft lips that smile,\n And his breath is wondrously sweet\n With the odours of many an isle.\n\n 2.\n\n He has many a grand old song\n Of his grand, old fearless kings;\n And the voice from his breast is strong,\n As he sings and laughs as he sings.\n\n 3.\n\n Though often his heart is sad\n With the weight of the gray-haired days\n That were once as light and as glad\n As the soul of a child that plays.\n\n 4.\n\n But to-day at Canada\u2019s feet,\n He smiles, as when Venus was born,\n And the breath from his lips is as sweet\n As the breath of wet flowers at morn.\n\n\n IX.\n\n 1.\n\n The mountains raise their faces\n Up to the face of God;\n They are fresh with balmy graces\n And with flowers their feet are shod.\n\n 2.\n\n In their soul is a noise of gladness,\n Their veins swell out with song,--\n With a feathery touch of sadness,\n Like a dream of forgotten wrong.\n\n 3.\n\n They have set their song to the metre\n Of the bright-eyed summer days,\n And our Land, to-day they greet her,\n With lips that are red with praise.\n\n\n X.\n\n 1.\n\n Lake is calling to lake\n With a ripply, musical sound,\n As though half afraid to awake\n The storm from his sleep profound.\n\n 2.\n\n The hem of their garments is gay\n With gardens that look to the south;\n And the smile of the dawn of to-day\n Has touched them on bosom and mouth.\n\n\n XI.\n\n The rivers have gladly embraced,\n And carry the joy of the lakes,\n Past mountain and island and waste,\n To where the sea\u2019s laughter outbreaks.\n\n\n XII.\n\n And sea and lake and mountain,\n And man and beast and bird--\n Our happy Land\u2019s life fountain--\n By one great voice are stirred.\n Bells chime out merrily,\n Trumpets call cheerily,\n Cannons boom lustily,\n Greet the glad day!\n Rose-wreath and fleur-de-lys,\n Shamrock and thistle be\n Joined to the maple tree\n Now and for aye!\n\n\n XIII.\n\n Let the shout of our joy to-day be borne through the pulse of the sea,\n To the grand old lands of our fathers,--a token of loyalest love;\n And may the winds bring back sweet words, O our Land, to thee--\n As, in the far old time, the peace-leaf came with the dove.\n\n\n XIV.\n\n And long, long ages hence, when the Land that we love so well\n Has clasped us all (as a mother clasps her babe) to her\n motherly bosom,\n Those who shall walk on the dust of us, with pride in their\n Land shall tell,\n Holding the fruit in their grateful hands, of the birth\n of to-day, the blossom.\n\n\n\n\n IN MY HEART.\n\n\n I.\n\n In my heart are many chambers through which I wander free;\n Some are furnished, some are empty, some are sombre, some are light;\n Some are open to all comers, and of some I keep the key,\n And I enter in the stillness of the night.\n\n\n II.\n\n But there\u2019s one I never enter,--it is closed to even me!\n Only once its door was opened, and it shut for evermore;\n And though sounds of many voices gather round it, like the sea,\n It is silent, ever silent, as the shore.\n\n\n III.\n\n In that chamber, long ago, my love\u2019s casket was concealed,\n And the jewel that it sheltered I knew only one could win;\n And my soul foreboded sorrow, should that jewel be revealed,\n And I almost hoped that none might enter in.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Yet day and night I lingered by that fatal chamber door,\n Till--she came at last, my darling one, of all the earth my own;\n And she entered--and she vanished with my jewel, which she wore;\n And the door was closed--and I was left alone.\n\n\n V.\n\n She gave me back no jewel, but the spirit of her eyes\n Shone with tenderness a moment, as she closed that chamber door,\n And the memory of that moment is all I have to prize,--\n But _that, at least_, is mine for evermore.\n\n\n VI.\n\n Was she conscious, when she took it, that the jewel was my love?\n Did she think it but a bauble, she might wear or toss aside?\n I know not, I accuse not, but I hope that it may prove\n A blessing, though she spurn it in her pride.\n\n\n\n\n SISERA.\n\n JUDGES v., 28-30.\n\n\n \u201cWhy comes he not? why comes he not,\n My brave and noble son?\n Why comes he not with his warlike men,\n And the trophies his sword has won?\n How slowly roll his chariot wheels!\n How weary is the day!\n Pride of thy mother\u2019s lonely heart,\n Why dost thou still delay?\n\n He comes not yet! will he never come\n To gladden these heavy eyes,\n That have watched and watched from morn till eve,\n And again till the sun did rise?\n Shall I greet no more his look of joy,\n Nor hear his manly voice?\n Why comes he not with the spoils of war,\n And the damsels of his choice?\u201d\n\n Years rushed along in their ceaseless course,\n But Sisera came no more,\n With his mighty men and his captive maids,\n As he oft had come before.\n A woman\u2019s hand had done the deed\n That laid a hero low;--\n A woman\u2019s heart had felt the grief\n That childless mothers know.\n\n\n\n\n COLUMBA SIBYLLA.\n\n\n Ex mediis viridem surgentem ut l\u0153ta columba\n Undis aspexit, post tempora tristia, terram,\n Et levibus volitans folia alis carpsit oliv\u00e6,\n Pacifera et rediit, libertatemque futuram\n Navali inclusis in carcere significavit;\n Sic terram, l\u0153tis, super \u0153quora vasta, Columbus\n Insequitur, ventis astrisque faventibus, alis;\n Inventam et terram placidis consevit olivis.\n Aevorum super \u00e6quora parva columba Columbum\n Inscia persequitur cum vaticinantibus alis!\n Omina nomina sunt et Verbo facta reguntur,\n Pr\u0153teritum nectitque futuro Aeterna Catena.\n\n\n\n\n SUMMER IS DEAD.\n\n\n I.\n\n Summer is dead. Shall we weep or laugh,\n As we gaze on the dead queen\u2019s epitaph\n Which Autumn has written in letters of gold:\n \u201cShe was bright and beautiful, blithe and young,\n And through grove and meadow she gaily sung,\n As with careless footsteps she danced along\n To the grave, where she now lies cold?\u201d\n\n\n II.\n\n Shall we weep that her beauty from earth has gone?\n Shall we weep for the friends that with her have flown?\n Shall we weep for those that with her have died?\n For the man that has perished in manhood\u2019s pride?\n For the maiden that never can be a bride?\n For the hearts that are left alone?\n\n\n III.\n\n Shall we laugh as we stand at earth\u2019s palace-door,\n With the faded crown that poor Summer wore,\n And placing it on her sister\u2019s brow,\n Forget the face that once smiled beneath\n That faded crown, and the flowery breath\n That parted those lips now cold in death?\n For Autumn is monarch now.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Summer is dead. Shall we laugh or weep?\n Is she really dead or only asleep\n With her sleeping garments on?\n She only sleeps, and in meadow and grove\n Again in gay dances her steps shall move;\n But shall she come back with the friends we love?\n God knows, and His will be done.\n\n\n\n\n ON A DEAD FIELD-FLOWER.\n\n\n Torn by some careless hand\n From thy mother\u2019s breast,\n Where gentle breezes fann\u2019d\n Thy little leaves to rest,\n Here dost thou lie, forsaken,\n No more shalt thou awaken,\n To gladden with thy beauty the wanderer opprest!\n\n No more at early morn,\n When the lark\u2019s gay song,\n Through grove and meadow borne,\n Calls his merry mates along,\n Shall thy tiny arms, outspreading,\n Their grateful odour shedding,\n Give silent, speaking welcome to Nature\u2019s joyous throng!\n\n Peaceful and calm thy sleep!\n Thy life\u2019s race run,\n Thou hadst no cause to weep,\n No duty left undone!\n Sweet little withered blossom,\n How many a blighted bosom\n Would fain repose as softly beneath a summer\u2019s sun!\n\n How many a child of care,\n Won by thy power,\n Might raise his voice in prayer,\n Taught by thee, little flower!\n Ah! surely thou wast given,\n A gracious boon from heaven,\n To throw its charm on sinful earth for one short blissful hour!\n\n Farewell! I may not stay;\n Thy frail, drooping form\n Heeds not the sun\u2019s fierce ray,\n Nor winter\u2019s frowning storm!\n Like thee, kind hearts have perish\u2019d\n By those that should have cherish\u2019d,\n And held the shield of friendship to shelter them from harm.\n\n Like thee, I soon must fade,\n And \u2019neath the sky\n Lifeless and cold be laid!\n But though I claim no sigh,\n Though no fond heart may miss me\n When death\u2019s pale lips shall kiss me,\n If my short life be pure as thine, I need not fear to die.\n\n MAY, 1857.\n\n\n\n\n LINES\n\n WRITTEN ON THE DEPARTURE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES\n FROM PORTLAND, OCTOBER, 1860.\n\n (_Set to Music by_ F. BARNBY, Esq., _and sung at a Concert given in\n honour of the Prince, in Montreal, November 9th, 1860_.)\n\n\n I.\n\n He stands alone upon the deck,\n A prince without a peer,\n He hears the cannon\u2019s farewell boom,\n The loud and loyal cheer--\n A prayer from true New England hearts,\n Honest and brave and free,\n That God would guide Old England\u2019s heir\n Safe o\u2019er the stormy sea.\n He sees the sad, regretful gaze\n That marks him as he goes,\n And prays that God may never make\n Such trusty friends his foes,\n But that, as brothers in the cause\n Of Liberty and Right,\n Under the sacred flag of Truth\n They ever may unite.\n\n\n II.\n\n He stands alone upon the deck,\n Son of the noblest Queen\n That ever placed a royal crown\n Upon a brow serene.\n For her sake did we welcome him,\n Who owns an empire\u2019s love;\n But now we bless him for his own,--\n God bless him from above!\n He stands alone, a boy in years,\n A \u201cmighty one\u201d by birth,\n Crowned with a love that far excels\n The brightest crowns of earth;\n Nor thinks he of the pomp and power\n That wait his glad return,\n But thoughts of manly tenderness\n Deep in his bosom burn.\n\n\n III.\n\n He stands alone upon the deck,\n Though thousands gaze on him,\n He sees them not, for fond regret\n Has made his blue eyes dim;\n His boyish lip is quivering,\n And flushed his boyish cheek,\n And his tearful eye speaks more, by far,\n Than words could ever speak.\n God grant that he may ever be\n As good a prince as now,\n Nor ever may true virtue\u2019s crown\n Be lifted from his brow!\n God bless him for his mother\u2019s sake,\n God bless him for his own,\n As thus he stands upon the deck,\n \u2019Mid thousands all alone!\n\n\n\n\n ODE ON THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.\n\n MARCH 10th, 1863.\n\n\n I.\n\n Roses of England of every hue,\n Your heads were lately bowed with the dew\n Of sorrow for one that was good and true,\n Through the length and breadth of your Island-garden,\n Missing a hand that had cared for you!\n He sleeps in your midst, O Roses,\n The Roses he loved and knew,\n And blest was your sorrow, Roses,\n You gave unto worth its due!\n\n\n II.\n\n But, O Roses, smile again,\n He for whom you weep\n Left his spirit among men\n When he fell asleep,--\n Left his spirit and his name,\n Left his pure, unspotted fame,\n One who lives them all can claim.\n Smile on him, O Roses!\n He whose head reposes\n In a sacred spot of your Island-garden,\n Left him to you, good, brave and true,\n To cherish and guard you, Roses!\n\n\n III.\n\n And now to you he brings\n A treasure to keep and love,\n From the north-land home of the old sea kings,--\n A beautiful Danish Dove!\n I heard proud Ocean\u2019s waves,\n England\u2019s and Denmark\u2019s slaves,\n Tell it in all the caves\n That peep through the wall of your Island-garden!\n Then welcome her sweetly, Roses,\n She shall nestle among you soon,\n And shall be to the loved of him whom you loved\n In sorrow a priceless boon!\n\n\n IV.\n\n Winds that sport with the sea,\n Go east, west, south and north,\n And from every Rose of the English tree\n That remembers its English birth\n Carry from far and wide\n A gentle message of love\n To the lone Rose-queen and her garden\u2019s pride,\n And his beautiful Danish Dove.\n\n\n\n\n TO A SNOWBIRD.\n\n\n I.\n\n O gentle little comer\n In wintry days,\n Far more than songs of summer\n I love thy lays.\n They come when flowers are sweetest,\n And leaves are green;\n But thou thy song repeatest\n In sterner scene.\n\n\n II.\n\n In joyous days are many\n The friends we find;\n In dark ones scarcely any,\n To soothe the mind.\n But friends in hours of sorrow\n Far more we prize\n Than those that go to-morrow\n If storms arise.\n\n\n\n\n THE CLOUDS ARE BLUSHING.\n\n\n The clouds are blushing, the sun is gone,\n He has been kissing them, every one,\n Except the shy ones, that kept away,\n And tearfully watched his parting ray;\n But they love him no less\n For their bashfulness;\n The truest of lovers are not the most gay.\n\n The sun is gone, and the blushing clouds\n Are growing dimmer, as Night enshrouds\n Sky, sea and land in her sombre pall--\n The sexton at old Earth\u2019s funeral,\n When her race is run,\n And her work is done,\n And her children are weaned from her, one and all.\n\n The Man of the Moon has lit his lamp,\n And is now commencing his airy tramp,\n To see how the stars, those merry elves\n That wink as he passes, behave themselves.\n With steady pace\n He is running his race,\n Holding his lamp with a dignified grace.\n\n The sun is rising behind the hill,\n And I am waiting and watching still--\n Waiting and watching, as night goes by,\n What queer little scenes take place in the sky,\n When the silence is deep\n And men are asleep,\n And none are awake but the stars and I!\n\n MAY, 1859.\n\n\n\n\n UNSPOKEN.\n\n.... Quis prodere tanta relatu\n.... possit?\n\n --_Claudian._\n\n\n There is a voice that never stirs the lips,--\n Felt, but not heard; that vibrates through the soul,--\n A solemn music; but no human speech\n Can give that music to the ambient air.\n\n The noblest poem poet ever wrote;\n The brightest picture artist ever drew;\n The loftiest music lyrist ever sung;\n The gentlest accents woman ever spoke,--\n Are paraphrases of a felt original,\n That lip, or pen, or pencil, cannot show\n Unto the seeing eye or listening ear.\n The thoughts we utter are but half themselves.\n The poet knows this well. The artist knows\n His hands bear not the burden of his thoughts\n Upon the canvas. The musician knows\n His soul must ever perish on his lips.\n Even the eye,--\u201cthe window of the soul,\u201d--\n Though it may shed a light a little way,\n Gives but a glimpse of that which burns within.\n\n The sweet, unconscious tenderness of flowers;\n The boundless awe of star-encircled night;\n The tear that trickles down an old man\u2019s cheek;\n Ocean\u2019s loud pulse, that makes our own beat high;\n The vocal throb of a great multitude;\n The pause when we have heard and said \u201cFarewell,\u201d\n And feel the pressure of a hand that\u2019s gone;\n The thought that we have wronged our truest friend,\n When he is sleeping in the arms of Death;\n The silent, fathomless anguish that engulfs\n Him who has found the precious power to love,\n And sees that all he loves is torn from him;\n His dying moments who is void of hope;\n Jezebel; Nero; Judas; any one\n Of all the hideous things that crawled through life\n In human form;--what mortal could express\n All that he feels in one or all of these,\n Giving the very image of his thought?\n\n Life, Death, Hell, Judgment, Resurrection, GOD--\n Who can express their meaning? Who can bound\n Awe that is infinite in finite words?\n\n Thus much of us must ever be concealed--\n Spite of the high ambition to be born\n Of what is noblest in us,--till His breath\n Who woke the morning stars to sing their song,\n Awakes our souls to fuller utterance.\n\n\n\n\n JEPHTHAH.\n\n JUDGES xi.\n\n\n I.\n\n Rejoice ye tribes of Israel, the Lord was on your side,\n Your fierce and daring enemies have fallen in their pride.\n In vain the heathen strove against Jehovah\u2019s awful word,\n For Ammon\u2019s proud, presumptuous sons have perished by the sword.\n\n\n II.\n\n From Aroer to Minnith and to Abel\u2019s fertile plain\n Of twenty noble cities the \u201cmighty men\u201d are slain;\n Rejoice, thou son of Gilead, the Lord hath heard thy vow,--\n Thy foes are crushed, thy father\u2019s sons before thy presence bow.\n\n\n III.\n\n It is an hour of triumph to the warrior and his band,\n An hour of stern rejoicing to all the chosen land,\n When the conqueror of Ammon, the valiant of his race,\n Beholds once more, with well-earned joy, his long-lost native place.\n\n\n IV.\n\n But who is this advancing with gay attendant crowd?\n O Jephthah! dost remember now the vow that thou hast vowed?\n Why is thy face so ghastly pale? why sinks thy noble head?\n Thy daughter\u2019s blood must now atone for all that thou hast shed!\n\n\n V.\n\n Honour and pomp and victory are all forgotten now,\n And clouds of darkest anguish sweep across the father\u2019s brow.\n He speaks--his words are words of death: he orders--is obeyed--\n And lonely mountains mourn the fate of Israel\u2019s queenly maid.\n\n\n VI.\n\n Rejoice, ye tribes of Israel, the Lord was on your side,\n Your fierce presumptuous enemies have fallen in their pride?\n But, Jephthah, thou art childless now, lift up thy voice and weep!\n No sound of wailing can disturb thy daughter\u2019s dreamless sleep!\n\n MAY, 1858.\n\n\n\n\n DE PROFUNDIS.\n\n\n I\u2019ve seen the Ocean try to kiss the Moon,\n Till the wild effort of his hopeless love\n Tortured him into madness, and the roar\n From his great throat was terrible to hear;\n And his vast bosom heaved such awful sighs\n As made Earth tremble to her very bones,\n And all her children cling to her for fear.\n And I have watched and seen a gentle change\n Come over him, till, like a child, he lay,\n That, disappointed, cries herself asleep,\n And on her sorrow angels paint a dream\n So happy that her face is one sweet smile.\n So have I seen the love-tost Ocean smile\n After his fury, till I almost hoped\n That the gay Moon would never tempt him more.\n But ever his heart throbs at her approach,\n And he awakes in all the strength of love,\n And frets himself to madness, watching her.\n\n And when, as I have sometimes seen, the Sun,\n His mighty rival, struts before his eyes\n With her he loves, and warmly looks on her,\n Oh! how his heart is torn with jealousy!\n Oh! how he froths and foams and moans and raves,\n Till all his energy is lost in sleep,\n From which his love will rouse him soon again!\n\n So did I learn the Ocean\u2019s tale of love,\n Watching him, day by day, for many years,\n Hearing him often murmur in his sleep\n Such sweet, sad murmurs, that I pitied him;\n And, like Electra, sat beside his bed\n Till all the madness of his love awoke.\n\n O Ocean! thou art like the human heart,\n Which craves forever what it cannot have,\n And, though a little it forget its strife\n Of longing, only wakes to long again\n For that which is no more accessible\n Than is the Moon to thee! Yet, shouldst thou lie\n Dull, sluggish, motionless, thy very life\n Would grow corrupt, and from the stagnant mass\n All things abominable would creep forth\n To soil with slimy poison the fair Earth;\n And that alone which moves thee to thy heart\n Can keep thee pure and bright and beautiful!\n\n So, by the anguish of a hopeless love,--\n So, by the madness born of mental pain,--\n So, by the endless strife of joy and fear,--\n So, by all sufferings, tortures, agonies,--\n So, by the powers that shake it to its depths,--\n So, by the very loss of what it seeks,--\n The heart is purified, and that which seems\n Its death gives it a fresher, truer life.\n\n\n\n\n LOCHLEVEN.\n\n \u201cWe passed Lochleven, and saw the Castle on the Lake from which\n poor Queen Mary escaped.\u201d--_The Queen\u2019s Journal._\n\n\n I.\n\n Sweet words of pity! Oh! if thou could\u2019st rise,\n Fair Queen, from out the darkness of the tomb,\n And their old beauty light again thine eyes,\n And thy persuasive lips no more be dumb,--\n If thou, in all thy charms, should\u2019st thus appear,\n How thy full heart would throb! With what surprise\n And rapture thou would\u2019t watch thy gentle peer,\n By sad Lochleven, as, with tender sighs,\n She mourned thy fate,--\u201cPoor Mary wandered here.\u201d\n\n\n II.\n\n This vengeance Time hath brought thee; and thy foe,\n Should she, too, rise with envy in her breast,\n Would see thee throned with mercy in the best\n And purest heart that ever beat below\n The purple of a Queen; whose veins are warm\n With that same blood that gave the beauteous glow\n To thine own cheeks. In her still lives the charm,\n For which, in spite of all, men worshipped thee,--\n Refined by honour, truth and purity.\n\n\n\n\n UNUS ABEST.\n\n\n I.\n\n A group of merry children played;\n The smiling sun to watch them stayed;\n A cloud came by with deadly shade;\n \u201cUnus abest.\u201d\n\n\n II.\n\n Bright faces glow \u2019mid dance and game;\n Hush! some one named a well-known name;\n But dance and song go on the same;\n \u201cUnus abest.\u201d\n\n\n III.\n\n A father joins his children\u2019s mirth;\n A mother mourns an awful dearth;\n \u201cAshes to ashes, earth to earth;\u201d\n \u201cUnus abest.\u201d\n\n\n IV.\n\n One sits before a lonely fire,\n Watching the flame\u2019s unsteady spire\n Wasting with suicidal ire;\n \u201cUnus abest.\u201d\n\n\n V.\n\n Thus, day by day, in house or street,\n We miss some form we used to meet;\n Some human heart has ceased to beat;\n \u201cUnus abest.\u201d\n\n\n VI.\n\n The years pass on; our hair is grey;\n A few years more we\u2019ll pass away,\n Each leaving to his friends to say\n \u201cUnus abest.\u201d\n\n\n VII.\n\n Then let us live that, when the call\n Of the Great Trumpet wakes us all,\n These words from God\u2019s high throne may fall:\n \u201cNULLUS ABEST.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE PRODIGAL\u2019S RETURN.\n\n (_St. Luke\u2019s Gospel_, xv. 17-32.)\n\n\n I.\n\n Long, my Father, have I wandered\n From the home I loved of old,--\n All Thy tender mercies squandered,\n All Thy loving-kindness sold.\n\n\n II.\n\n I have sinned against Thy goodness,\n Mocked Thy sorrow, scorned Thy love;\n Treated all Thy care with rudeness,\n \u2019Gainst Thy gentle Spirit strove.\n\n\n III.\n\n Far from Thy free, bounteous table,\n I have fed on husks of sin;\n Wayward, thankless, and unstable,\n Father, wilt Thou take me in?\n\n\n IV.\n\n Take me, oh! in mercy take me,\n To Thy blessed home again,\n And let no enticement shake me,--\n Satan\u2019s wiles nor wicked men.\n\n\n V.\n\n I am sinful, doubting, fearing--\n Thou canst banish all alarm;\n I am weak, and blind, and erring--\n Thou canst shield from every harm.\n\n\n VI.\n\n Look upon me, crushed and broken,\n Humble, contrite, at Thy feet.\n Dost Thou know me? Hast Thou spoken?\n \u201cHast Thou come Thy child to meet!\u201d\n\n\n VII.\n\n Lost and found! Once dead, now living!\n Once an outcast, now a son!\n Once despairing, now believing,--\n I my Father\u2019s house have won.\n\n BALLYSHANNON, 1855.\n\n\n\n\n IT IS THE QUIET HOUR.\n\n\n It is the quiet hour, when weary Day\n Whispers adieu in his dark Sister\u2019s ear,\n And my lone soul is wandering away\n To blissful scenes that are no longer near;\n And well-known faces seem to smile again,\n And voices long unheard sound blithe and gay,\n As, when, of yore, a happy, careless train,\n We plucked the flowers that grew by life\u2019s young way.\n Sweet flowers!--destined to a swift decay!\n Bright faces!--that on earth have smiled your last!\n Gay voices!--that have ceased to sing the lay\n That rose spontaneous in the joyous past!\n Memory\u2019s own stars amid my night of pain,\n Shine out and tell me \u201cLove is not in vain!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n ESSAYS\n\n IN\n\n TRANSLATION.\n\n\n\n\n HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.\n\n\n THE PARTING.\n\n (_Homer\u2019s Iliad_ vi. 369-503.)\n\n Thus, having done his duty to his gods\n And to his country, Hector sought his home,\n Where Art and Nature vied in loveliness.\n Love winged his feet; his home he quickly found.\n But her whom his soul loved he found not there,\n Her of the snowy arms, Andromache:\n For she, with infant child and well-robed nurse,\n Unto a tower that faced the Grecian camp\n Had gone to watch and weep. So Hector paused\n Upon the threshold, as he left the house,\n And made enquiry of the household maids:\n \u201cCome now, handmaidens, answer me in truth,\n Whither white-armed Andromache has gone,\n To seek my sisters, or my brothers\u2019 wives,\n Or to Athene\u2019s temple, where a crowd\n Of matrons seek the bright-haired goddess\u2019 wrath\n To turn to mercy by the strength of tears?\u201d\n A trusty servant quickly made response:\n \u201cHector, my lord, right willingly my lips\n Shall answer truthfully thy eager quest,--\n Not to thy sisters, nor thy brothers\u2019 wives,\n Nor to Athene\u2019s temple, where a crowd\n Of matrons seek the bright haired goddess\u2019 wrath\n To turn to mercy by the strength of tears,\n Has gone Andromache; but she has gone\n Unto a lofty tower of Ilion\n To watch the contest, for bad tidings came\n Of Greeks victorious and of Trojans slain;\n And at this moment, like a frenzied one,\n She rushes to the rampart, while, behind,\n Her darling boy is carried by his nurse.\u201d\n\n She ceased; nor waited Hector long, but rushed\n Forth from the house, along the very way\n That he had come, through fair-built Troja\u2019s streets;\n Nor paused he till he reached the Sc\u00e6an gate,\n (Through which he meant to hie him to the plain).\n But here Andromache of queenly dower,\n His wife, the daughter of E\u00ebtion,\n Who dwelt erstwhile \u2019neath Placus\u2019 woody height,\n In Thebe, ruling o\u2019er Cilician men,\n Came running till she met him in the way.\n With her, the nurse, who to her bosom held\n An innocent-hearted babe, their only son,\n His father\u2019s joy, in beauty like a star,\n Scamandrius named by Hector, but the host\n Called him Astyanax, the City\u2019s King,\n Honouring Hector chief defence of Troy.\n And now he looked on him, and smiled a smile\n That spake his heart more than a thousand words,\n And called the tears into his mother\u2019s eyes.\n She, clinging to her husband, grasped his hand,\n And, sobbing \u201cHector,\u201d spoke to him these words:\n \u201cAh! love, thy bravery will be thy bane,\n And, seeking glory, thou forgettest _him_\n And me, ah! hapless me when thou art gone!\n Soon, soon, I know it, all the foes of Troy,\n Rushing on thee at once, shall take thy life.\n And, when I miss thee, it were better far\n That I were laid beneath the ground: for I\n Shall then have none to comfort me, not one,\n But woes on woes, when thou hast left me, Hector!\n No sire have I, nor gentle mother left,--\n _Him_, as thou know\u2019st, the proud Achilles slew,\n And razed his fair-built city to the ground.\n High-gated Thebe. Yet he spoiled him not,\n Although he slew him, but, with reverence,\n Laid him in glittering arms upon the pyre,\n And raised a mound in honour of his name,\n Which the hill-nymphs garlanded round with elms,\n The daughters of the \u00e6gis-bearing Zeus.\n And my seven brothers, in one fatal day,\n Entered the gloomy shades where Pluto reigns,\n Slain by the ruthless hand that slew my sire,\n As, in their native fields, they watched the herds\n Of kine, slow-footed, and of snowy sheep.\n Nor did my queenly mother long survive,\n For, led a captive to the Grecian camp,\n With other spoils, the victor sent her home,\n For goodly ransom, only to be slain\n By the sure shaft of huntress Artemis.\n But thou art father, mother, brother, spouse,\n My pride, my Hector! Oh! then, pity me!\n Stay here and watch with me upon this tower,--\n Stay, stay, my Hector, go not hence to make\n Thy child an orphan and a widow me!\n But set the forces by the Fig-tree Hill,\n Where the chief risk of hostile entrance lies,\n And where the wall is weakest. At that point\n Already have the bravest of our foes--\n Idomeneus and either Ajax, Diomede,\n And the two sons of Atreus--made assault,\n Whether incited thither by some voice\n Prophetic, or high hope of victory.\n So stay, my Hector, they will need thee here.\u201d\n\n Then valiant Hector, of quick-glancing helm,\n Thus made reply: \u201cOf all that thou hast said,\n My own true wife, I feel, I know the truth,\n But--could I bear the taunts of Trojan chiefs\n And stately Trojan dames, if, coward-like,\n I skulked from battle in my country\u2019s need?\n Nor does my spirit keep me from the fight,\n For I have learned, brave-hearted, \u2019mid the first,\n To draw my sword in Ilion\u2019s defence,\n To struggle for the honour of my sire\n And for my own. Although too well I know\n The day shall come when sacred Troy must fall,\n And Priam and his war-like hosts, who well\n Can wield in fight the ashen-handled spear!\n But not the woes of my brave countrymen,\n Nor yet my mother\u2019s nor my kingly sire\u2019s,\n Nor all my brethren\u2019s who shall bite the dust\n \u2019Neath bitter foes, touch me so much as thine,\n When some one of the brass-mailed Greeks shall end\n Thy days of freedom, leading thee away\n In tears; and, haply, in far Argos, thou\n May\u2019st tend another\u2019s loom or water draw\n From Hyperea\u2019s or Messeis\u2019 fount,--\n A slavish duty forced on thee by fate.\n And some one, looking on thy tears, may say:\n \u2018_She_ was the wife of Hector, who excelled\n In fight among the chiefs that fought for Troy.\u2019\n And thy poor heart will ache with vain regret\n For him whose strong right arm would keep thee free.\n Then may his heaped-up grave keep Hector\u2019s eyes\n From looking on thy sorrow and disgrace!\u201d\n\n So spake the noble Hector, and his arms\n Extended to receive his son; but _he_\n Shrank, crying, to his well-robed nurse\u2019s breast,\n Fearing the war-like presence of his sire,\n His brazen armour and the horse-hair crest\n Above his helmet nodding fearfully.\n And Hector took the helmet off his head\n And laid it down, all gleaming, on the ground;\n And then he kissed and dandled him, and prayed\n To Zeus and all the gods on his behalf:\n \u201cO Zeus and all ye gods, I pray you, grant\n That this, my son, may, as his sire, excel,\n And may he truly be the City\u2019s King!\n And may men say of him, as he returns\n From war: \u2018He\u2019s braver than his father was.\u2019\n May he from war-like men take gory spoils,\n And may his mother glory in his might!\u201d\n\n Such was the warrior\u2019s prayer; and in the arms\n Of his dear wife he placed the little child.\n She clasped the treasure to her fragrant breast,\n Tearfully smiling. And her husband\u2019s soul\n Was touched with pity, and he nursed her hand,\n And called her by her name: \u201cAndromache,\n My love, fret not thyself too much for me!\n No man descends to Hades ere his time,\n And none whoe\u2019er is born escapes his fate,\n Whether his heart be cowardly or brave.\n But, love, returning home, apply thyself\n To household duties, and thy handmaidens\n Despatch to theirs, the distaff and the loom.\n For war must be the business of men,\n And of all men that have been born in Troy,\n This war has need of none so much as me.\u201d\n Thus having spoken, noble Hector placed\n The waving helmet on his head again.\n And, silently, Andromache returned\n (Oft looking back through her fast-gushing tears)\n To the fair mansion of her warrior spouse.\n\n And there, amid her handmaidens, she wept;\n And they wept, too, mourning their lord as dead,\n While yet he lived: for, though he lived, they said\n They knew that he would never more return,\n Exulting in his prowess, from the war.\n\n\n THE LAMENT OF ANDROMACHE FOR HECTOR.\n\n (_Homer\u2019s Iliad_ xxii. 437-515.)\n\n But she whom he had loved, Andromache,\n Knew not of Hector\u2019s death, for none had come\n To tell her of his stay without the walls.\n She in the lofty palace sat retired\n Within her chamber, working at the loom,--\n Weaving a purple vest, with varied flowers\n Embroidered.\n But, as she her fair-haired maids\n Enjoined to place upon the blazing fire\n The spacious caldron, that the soothing bath\n Might be for Hector ready when he came\n Home from the battle, knowing not that he,\n Betrayed by blue-eyed Pallas, bleeding lay\n Beneath Achilles\u2019 hand, she heard the sound\n Of weeping and of wailing on the walls;\n And her limbs trembled, and the shuttle fell\n Upon the ground.\n Then cried she to her maids:\n \u201cCome, quickly, follow me, that we may see\n What thing has happened, for I surely heard\n My mother\u2019s voice. My heart within my breast\n Bounds to my lips,--my knees are stiff with fear,--\n And--oh! I dread some ill to Priam\u2019s house.\n Ah, me! I fear me much, great Peleus\u2019 son\n Has severed my brave Hector from the town,\n And drives him to the plain; and soon his life\n Will be the forfeit of his manly rage.\n Never would he abide amid the crowd,\n But must be ever foremost in the war,--\n In valour without peer.\u201d\n She said, and flew\n Forth from the palace, like a frenzied one,\n With throbbing heart; and her maids followed her.\n But when she reached the tower, amid the throng,\n She stood upon the wall, and gazed around,\n Until she saw her Hector dragged along\n With foul dishonour by the prancing steeds\n Towards the Grecian ships; and, at the sight,\n Night, as of death, darkened her tearful eyes.\n Swooning, she fell, and scattered in her fall\n The ornaments that bound her captive hair,\n Wondrous in beauty, band, and wreath, and veil,\n And fillet, Golden Aphrodite\u2019s gift,\n What day brave Hector led Andromache\n Forth from her father\u2019s house, E\u00ebtion.\n Her sisters, who were nigh, with gentle care\n Received her sinking form, and by her side\n Waited in fear lest she should wake no more.\n But when, at last, the parted life returned\n And the full sense of misery, she wept\n Among her kinsfolk, and, with choking sobs,\n Called Hector\u2019s name:\n \u201cAh, wretched me! my Hector,\n Surely a cruel fate has followed us\n Since we were born,--thou, in this city, Troy,\n In Priam\u2019s palace,--I, in far-off Thebes,\n Where Placus rears on high his woody crest,\n The hapless daughter of a hapless king!\n Oh! would that I had never seen the sun!\n For now to Pluto\u2019s dark and drear abode\n Thou hast descended, leaving me alone,\n A mournful widow in thy empty halls.\n And he who was his hapless parents\u2019 pride,\n Our infant son, shall see thy face no more,\n Nor ever more delight thy loving eyes,\n Since thine are closed in death.\n Unhappy boy!\n If even he escape the Grecian sword,\n Travail and woes must be henceforth his lot,\n And stranger hands shall reap his father\u2019s fields,--\n The woful day of orphanage has made\n His life all friendless and companionless,--\n The constant prey of grief, upon his cheek\n The tears shall never dry,--and he must beg\n With suppliant mien bread from his father\u2019s guests,\n Scarce heeded, or, if heeded, poorly fed.\n His pampered peer in age, whose ev\u2019ry need\n Both parents well supply, with cruel hands\n Thrusting him from the feast, will rudely say:\n \u2018Away! begone! thy father feasts not here.\u2019\n Then to his widowed mother, all in tears,\n My boy will come, my sweet Astyanax,\n Who, erstwhile, fondled on his father\u2019s knee,\n Shared in the choicest titbits of the board;\n And when, at eve, his childish prattle ceased,\n Lulled by his tender nurse, his little head\n Reposed on downy pillow, and his cheek\n Glowed with the silent pleasure of his heart.\n Now is he doomed to pain, his father gone,\n Whose valour won his name Astyanax,\n \u2018The City\u2019s King,\u2019--for Hector was of Troy,\n Its gates and lofty walls, the chief defence.\n And thou, my Hector, liest all unclad\n Far from thy kin, beside the high-prowed ships,--\n Of ravenous dogs and coiling worms the prey,--\n While in thy desert halls neglected lie\n The soft, fair garments that were wrought for thee,\n Alas! in vain, by hands that love had taught.\n These now must only deck thy funeral pyre,\n In mournful honour to thy cherished name--\n The glory and the strength of fallen Troy.\u201d\n\n Thus spake she \u2019mid her tears, and, all around,\n The listening chorus of her maidens wept.\n\n\n\n\n THE BEACON LIGHT ANNOUNCING THE FALL OF TROY AT ARGOS.\n\n (_From the Agamemnon of \u00c6schylus, v. 255._)\n\n\n CHORUS AND CLYTEMNESTRA.\n\n CL.--Word of joy this morning brings\n From the bosom of the night,\n Higher joy than Hope\u2019s gay wings\n Circled in her farthest flight!\n Troy is taken, Troy is fallen\n By the victor Argive\u2019s might!\n\n CH.--Troy has fallen dost thou tell me?\n Have I heard thy words aright?\n\n CL.--Hearken! I repeat the words,--\n Troy is held by Grecian lords.\n\n CH.--Ah! what gladness fills my heart,\n And my tears with rapture start!\n\n CL.--Yes, thine eyes thy feeling shew.\n\n CH.--This by what proof dost thou know?\n\n CL.--The gods, that never would deceive,\n Brought these tidings.\n\n CH.--Dost believe\n In the fickle shapes of dreams?\n\n CL.--Nay; the dozings of the mind\n Leave in me no trace behind.\n\n CH.--Some wild rumour, then, meseems?\n\n CL.--Dost thou think me but a child,\n Thus and thus to be beguiled?\n\n CH.--How long, then, is it since proud Ilion fell?\n\n CL.--Since but the night that bore this morning\u2019s light.\n\n CH.--And who this message hither brought so well?\n\n CL.--Heph\u00e6stus, sending forth his beacon bright\n From Ida\u2019s summit; then, from height to height\n With blaze successive, beacon kindling beacon,\n Bore us the tidings. Ida glanced it forth\n To Lemnos, even to th\u2019 Herm\u00e6an rock;\n And next steep Athos, dear to Zeus, received\n From Lemnos the bright flame, which, in its strength\n Joyous, pursued its onward course, and flew\n O\u2019er the broad shoulders of Oceanus,\n Giving its gleams all-golden, like the sun,\n To those that on Makistos kept high watch.\n Nor dallying he, nor won by ill-timed sleep,\n Assumed his part of messenger; and far\n Over Euripus speeds the signal flame,\n Telling their tasks to the Messapian guards,\n Who answered with a blaze that straightway lit\n The heather on old Graia\u2019s mountain-tops.\n Then in full-gleaming strength, like a fair moon,\n The beacon-light shot o\u2019er Asopus plain,\n And lit with answering fire Cith\u00e6ron\u2019s cliff,\n Whose emulous watch made brighter still the blaze.\n Thence darted on the fiery messenger\n Over Gorgopis lake and up the sides\n Of \u00c6giplanctus, whence (the waiting wards\n Heaping no niggard pile), a beard-like flame\n Streamed onward till it touched the cliff that spies\n The billows of the blue Saronic sea;\n But paused not in its course, until it reached\n The heights of Arachn\u00e6um, over there.\n And thence it strikes upon these palace-roofs,--\n Far offspring of the light of fallen Troy.\n\n\n\n\n PRIAM AND HELEN.\n\n (_Iliad_ iii. 161.)\n\n\n Priam, the King, to the tower where he sat called the beautiful Helen:\n \u201cHither, my daughter, approach and sit by me here on this tower,\n Whence thou mayest see the spouse of thy youth, thy friends\n and thy kindred.\n Thou knowest I never blamed thee; I blame the gods of Olympus,\n Who excited this war of sorrows and tears without number.\n Come, Helen, sit by my side, and tell me the name of yon hero,\n Mighty and stately in mien. Though others around him are taller,\n One of such beauty as his and of so majestic a bearing\n I have never beheld. If he is not a king he is kingly.\u201d\n Then Helen, fairest of women, answered the King: \u201cO my father,\n Father of Paris, by me thou art loved and revered and respected!\n Would that an evil death had been my lot when I followed\n Hither thy son, Alexander, leaving my husband behind me,\n Kinsmen, too, and sweet daughter, and friends that I knew\n since my childhood!\n \u2019Twas not allowed me to die--so I pine away slowly with weeping.\n But thou awaitest reply: thou seest the great Agamemnon,\n Wide-ruling king, as thou saidst, and a warrior valiant and skilful;\n Once he was a brother to me--oh, shame!--in the days that\n have vanished!\u201d\n\n Then, as a hero a hero, the old man admired Agamemnon:\n \u201cHappy art thou, Atrides, in birth, and in name, and in fortune;\n Many are under thy sway--the flower of the sons of Ach\u00e6a.\n Once into vine-bearing Phrygia I entered, and saw many Phrygians\n Riding swift steeds, the forces of Otreus and Mygdon, the godlike,\n Who, with me for an ally, encamped by the banks of the Sangar,\n Waiting the march of their foes, the Amazons, warrior-women:\n But few in number were they to those quick-eyed sons of Ach\u00e6a.\u201d\n\n Next, perceiving Ulysses, the old man said, \u201cMy dear Helen,\n Tell me who this is also--in stature less than Atrides,\n Less by a head, it may be, but broader in chest and in shoulders.\n Rest on the ground his arms; but he through the ranks of the army\n Ranges about like a ram; to a thick-fleeced ram I compare him,\n Wandering hither and thither through snow-white sheep in the pasture?\u201d\n\n Him then answered Helen--Helen of Jove descended:\n \u201cThat is Ulysses, my father, the wily son of Laertes,\n Nourished in Ithaca\u2019s isle--Ithaca rocky and barren;\n Skilled to contrive and complete wise plans and politic counsels.\u201d\n\n Her then the sage Antenor addressed, when she spake of Ulysses:\n \u201cLady, in truth thou hast uttered these words; for once, I remember,\n Hither the noble Ulysses came with the brave Menelaus,\n (Thou wast the cause of his coming) and I was their host in my palace,\n And of both the heroes I learned the genius and wisdom.\n When they met in the Council, with Trojan heroes assembled,\n Standing, Ulysses was less by a head than the brave Menelaus--\n Sitting, more honour was due to the thoughtful brow of Ulysses.\n And when they wove, for the general ear, their thoughts into language,\n Menelaus harangued very freely and briefly, and clearly,\n Never missing his words, nor misapplying their meaning,\n Though, as to years, not yet was he reckoned among the elders.\n But when Ulysses arose, with his head full of wariest measures,\n Standing, he fixed his eyes on the ground, and kept looking downwards,\n Moving his sceptre nor backwards nor forwards, but holding it firmly,\n Looking like one not wise; and those who beheld him might fancy\n That he was deeply enraged, and thus bereft of his reason.\n But when, as I have seen, he sent his great voice from his bosom,\n Words that came thick and fast, like the flakes of the snow in the winter,\n Then he that listened would say, no man might compete with Ulysse;\n Then we forgot how he looked as the words of Ulysses enchained us.\u201d\n\n Thirdly, on seeing Ajax, the old King of Helen demanded:\n \u201cWho, so stately and tall, is this other chief of the Grecians,\n Rising as high o\u2019er the rest as the height of his head and\n broad shoulders?\u201d\n\n And thus the comely-robed Helen, the fairest of women, responded:\n \u201cHe thou beholdest is Ajax, gigantic--to Grecians a bulwark!\n And over there, like a god, Idomeneus stands \u2019mong the Cretans,\n While around him the chiefs of the Cretan army are gathered.\n Many a time has the brave Menelaus bidden him welcome,\n When to our Spartan home he came from the land of the Cretans.\n\n But while I see all around, the rest of the dark-eyed Ach\u00e6eans,\n Whom I well know, and whose names I could tell, two captains I see not--\n Castor, tamer of steeds, and Pollux, skilful in boxing--\n Both own brothers of mine: we three were nursed by one mother.\n Either they have not come with the forces from far Laced\u00e6mon,\n Or having come, it may be, to this place, in sea-traversing vessels,\n Do not desire, after all to enter the battle of heroes,\n Fearing the shame and reproach the crime of their sister would\n cause them.\u201d\n\n So she spake; but them the life-giving earth was embracing\n In the dear land of their fathers over the sea, Laced\u00e6mon!\n\n\n\n\n SONG OF THE TROJAN CAPTIVE.\n\n (_Euripidis Hecuba_, 905.)\n\n\n I.\n\n O my Ilion, once we named thee\n City of unconquered men;\n But the Grecian spear has tamed thee,\n Thou canst never rise again.\n Grecian clouds thy causeways darken;--\n Ah! they cannot hide thy glory!\n Ages hence shall heroes hearken\n To the wonders of thy story.\n\n\n II.\n\n O my Ilion, they have shorn thee\n Of thy lofty crown of towers!\n Thy poor daughter can but mourn thee\n In her lonely, captive hours.\n They have robbed thee of thy beauty,\n Made thee foul with smoke and gore;\n Tears are now my only duty,\n I shall tread thy streets no more.\n\n\n III.\n\n O my Ilion, I remember--\n \u2019Twas the hour of sweet repose,\n And my husband in our chamber\n Slept, nor dreamt of Grecian foes.\n For the song and feast were over,\n And the spear was hung to rest--\n Never more, my hero-lover,\n Aimed by thee at foeman\u2019s breast.\n\n\n IV.\n\n O my Ilion, at the mirror\n I was binding up my hair,\n When my face grew pale with terror\n At the cry that rent the air.\n Hark! amid the din, the Grecian\n Shout of triumph \u201cTroy is taken;\n Ten years\u2019 work have now completion--\n Ilion\u2019s haughty towers are shaken!\u201d\n\n\n V.\n\n O my Ilion, forth I hied me\n From his happy home and mine;\n Hapless, soon the Greeks descried me,\n As I knelt at Ph\u0153be\u2019s shrine.\n Then, my husband slain before me,\n To the shore they hurried me,\n And from all I loved they tore me\n Fainting o\u2019er the cruel sea.\n\n\n\n\n BELLEROPHON.\n\n (_Iliad_ vi. 152-195.)\n\n\n In a far nook of steed-famed Argos, stand\n The city Ephyra. Here Sisyphus,\n The wily son of \u00c6olus, was king.\n\n His son was Glaucus, and to him was born\n Bellerophon of honour without stain,\n Gifted with every grace the gods bestow,\n And manly spirit that won all men\u2019s love.\n\n Him Pr\u0153tus, who by Jove\u2019s supreme consent\n Held a harsh sceptre over Argolis,\n Hated and doomed to exile or to death.\n For fair Antea loved Bellerophon\n With a mad passion, and, her royal spouse\n Deceiving, told her longing to his guest.\n But brave Bellerophon, as good as brave,\n Set a pure heart against her evil words.\n Then with false tongue she stood before the king:\n \u201cO Pr\u0153tus, die or slay Bellerophon,\n Who sought her love, who only loveth thee.\u201d\n And anger seized the king at what he heard,\n Yet was he loath to kill him, for the laws\n That make the stranger sacred he revered.\n But unto Lycia, bearing fatal signs,\n And folded in a tablet, words of death,\n He sent him, and enjoined him these to give\n Unto Antea\u2019s sire--his step-father,\n Thinking that he would perish.\n\n So he went,\n Blameless, beneath the guidance of the gods,\n And reached the eddying Xanthus. There the king\n Of wide-extending Lycia honoured him\n Nine days with feasting and with sacrifice.\n But when the tenth rose-fingered morn had come,\n He asked him for his message and the sign\n Whate\u2019er he bore from Pr\u0153tus,--which he gave.\n\n And when he broke the evil-boding seal,\n He first enjoined him the Chim\u00e6ra dire\n To slay,--of race divine and not of men,\n In front a lion, dragon in the rear,\n And goat between, whose breath was as the strength\n Of fiercely blazing fire. And this he slew,\n Trusting the portents of the gods. And next\n He conquered the wild, far-famed Solymi,--\n The hardest battle fought with mortal men.\n The man-like Amazons he next subdued;\n And as he journed homeward, fearing nought,\n An ambuscade of Lycia\u2019s bravest men,\n Attacked him, but he slew them one by one,\n And they returned no more.\n\n And so the king\n Seeing his race divine by noble deeds\n Well proven, made the Lycian realm his home,\n His beauteous daughter gave him for his wife,\n And made him partner in his royal power.\n And of the choicest land for corn and wine,\n The Lycians gave him to possess and till.\n\n\n\n\n HORACE.\n\n (_Book_ i. _Ode_ xi.)\n\n\n Seek not to know (for \u2019tis as wrong as vain)\n What term of life to thee or me\n The god may grant, Leuconoe,\n Nor with Chaldean numbers vex thy brain.\n But calmly take what comes of joy or pain,\n Whether Jove grant us many winters more,\n Or this complete our destiny\n Which makes the stormy Tuscan sea\n Weary its strength with angry shocks\n Against the hollow-echoing rocks.\n Be gently wise, my friend, and while you pour\n The ruddy wine, live long by living well.\n While we are speaking, hark! time\u2019s envious knell!\n Let us enjoy to-day, nor borrow\n Vague grief by thinking of to-morrow.\n\n\n\n\n ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.\n\n (_From_ VIRGIL--_Georgic_ IV. 457-527.)\n\n\n The fair, young bride of Orpheus, as she fled\n From Arist\u00e6us who designed her ill,\n With hasty feet, along the river bank\n Of Hebrus, found her death. For in her way\n There lurked a baleful serpent \u2019mid the grass.\n\n Full long the choir of Dryads mourned her fate,\n And set the mountains wailing with their woe.\n Pang\u00e6us answered back to Rhodope, and grief\n Held all the land of Rhesus, dear to Mars;\n And Hebrus, weeping, rolled to distant shores\n The story of the dead Eurydice.\n\n But Orpheus in his sorrow touched his harp,\n And, sitting by the wild beach all alone,\n Sang from the rising till the setting sun\n Of his own sweet, lost wife Eurydice.\n Till, drawing solace to his wounded love,\n Through the fierce jaws of T\u00e6narus he passed,\n The gates of Hades, and the gloomy grove,\n All thick with darkest horror, and, at last,\n Entered the drear abodes where Pluto reigns\n Among the dead--inexorable king.\n\n And then he put his fingers to the strings\n And sang of her he loved, Eurydice;\n And made such sweet, enchanting melody\n That all the ghosts of Erebus were charmed,\n And hied from all recesses at the sound;\n Gathering around him, many as the birds\n That hide themselves by thousands \u2019mid the leaves\n Of some sweet-smelling grove, when eventide\n Or wintry shower calls them from the hills.\n\n The shades of mothers, sires and mighty men,\n Of maids for whom the torch was never lit,\n And boys whose pyres their parents\u2019 eyes had seen,\n Listened, enchained, and for a while forgot\n The slimy weeds that grew upon the banks,\n Of black Cocytus, and the hateful Styx,\n Whose nine slow streams shut out the happy world.\n And even Tartarus, Death\u2019s deepest home,\n Was stricken with amazement; and the rage\n Of snake-tressed Furies ceased; and Cerberus\n Restrained his triple roar, and hellish blasts\n Forbore a while to turn Ixion\u2019s wheel.\n\n And now, all danger past, to upper air\n He turned his eager feet, Eurydice\n Restored, near-following (for Proserpine\n Had so enjoined), when Orpheus, mad with joy\n And longing to behold her face once more,\n Paused and looked back, unmindful. Fatal look,\n That robbed him of his treasure on the verge\n Of full fruition in the world\u2019s broad light!\n No hope of mercy; Hell no mercy knows\n For broken law. This Orpheus learned too late,\n When triple thunder bellowed through the deeps\n Of dark Avernus.\n\n Then Eurydice:\n \u201cWhat frenzy, Orpheus, has possessed thy soul\n To ruin thee and me, ah! wretched me,\n Whom now the Fates call back to Hades\u2019 gloom!\n Alas! the sleep of death is on my eyes.\n Farewell, my Orpheus! darkness hems me round--\n Farewell! in vain I stretch weak hands to thee--\n Thine, thine no more! Farewell! Farewell!\u201d\n She said,\n And vanished from his sight away, as smoke\n Fades into viewless air, nor saw she more\n Her Orpheus.\n\n He in vain the fleeting shade\n Sought to restrain with outspread hands; in vain\n Essayed to speak, dumb-stricken with surprise;\n In vain, to cross the gloomy Stygian wave.\n Alas! what could he do, or whither go,\n Since she was gone, the sum of all his joy?\n Or, with what tears, what plaintive, moving words,\n Seek respite from the gods that rule below\n For her who, shivering, crossed the darksome stream?\n\n So passed she from him; and, for seven long months\n Beneath a rock by Strymon\u2019s lonely flood\n He wailed her fate and his, till all the caves\n Re-echoed mournfully, and savage beasts,\n Assuaged, knew milder breasts, and strength of oaks\n Was captive led by magic of his song.\n Even as, in woods, beneath a poplar\u2019s shade\n Lone Philomel laments her callow brood,\n Robbed from the nest by cruel, churlish hands;\n And she, poor childless mother, all night long,\n Perched on a branch, renews the doleful strain,\n And with her plaints makes all the grove resound;\n So Orpheus mourned Eurydice, nor dreamed\n Of other love, nor other nuptial tie.\n Alone, \u2019mid Boreal ice, and by the banks\n Of snow-girt Tanais, and through the plains\n That feel the chill breath of Niph\u00e6an hills,\n He sang the loss of sweet Eurydice\n And Pluto\u2019s bootless gift. And even when\n The Thracian maidens maddened at the slight\n Of their own beauty in such lasting grief\n And wild from Bacchic orgies, slew the bard,\n Strewing the broad fields with his severed limbs;\n Then, even then, when Hebrus bore away\n The tuneful head torn from the marble neck,\n The cold lips, faithful still to their lost love,\n Murmured, \u201cEurydice! Eurydice!\u201d\n And the sad banks replied \u201cEurydice!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n ADRIAN\u2019S ADDRESS TO HIS SOUL.\n\n (_From Catullus._)\n\n\n Animula! vagula, blandula,\n Hospes, comesque corporis,\n Qu\u00e6 nunc abibis in loca,\n Pallidula rigida, nudula\n Nec, ut soles, dabis jocos?\n\n The same rendered into English:\n\n\n VERSION I.\n\n Darling, gentle, wandering soul,\n Long this body\u2019s friend and guest,\n Tell what region is thy goal,\n Pale and cold and all undrest,\n Lost thy wonted play and jest?\n\n\n VERSION II.\n\n Spirit! sweet, gentle thing,\n Thou seemest taking wing\n For some new place of rest;\n So long this body\u2019s guest\n And friend, dost thou forsake it,\n And pallid, cold, and naked,\n Thou wanderest,\n Bereft of joy and jest,\n Whither, ethereal thing?\n\n\n VERSION III.\n\n Dear, pretty, fluttering, vital thing,\n So long this body\u2019s guest and friend,\n Ah! tell me, whither dost thou wend\n Thy lonely way,\n Pallid and nude and shivering,\n Nor, as thy wont is, gently gay?\n\n\n\n\n PYRAMUS AND THISBE.\n\n (_From Ovid\u2019s \u201cMetamorphoses.\u201d_)\n\n\n Fairest of many youths was Pyramus,\n And Thisbe beauteous among Eastern maids.\n These dwelt in neighbour houses, where, of old,\n Semiramis girt Babylon with walls.\n And, being neighbours, these two fell in love,\n And love with time grew stronger. They had wed,\n But that their parents willed it not, and so\n Forbade all intercourse. With mutual breasts,\n Each sighed for other. Parted thus, they spoke\n By signs, and, being hindered, loved the more.\n\n There was an opening in the common wall\n That made their houses two, long unobserved,\n But (what does not love see?) by them discerned.\n Of this they made a passage for the voice,\n And, safe from notice, murmured loving words.\n As oftentimes they stood, the wall between,\n Whispering and catching soft replies in turn,\n \u201cO envious wall, that standest in our way,\n Who love each other!\u201d they would, vexed, exclaim,\n \u201cIf thou would\u2019st let us meet full face to face,\n Or e\u2019en enough to touch each other\u2019s lips!\n And yet we are not thankless; \u2019tis to thee\n We owe this pleasure of exchanging words.\u201d\n\n Thus oft conversing, at approach of night,\n They said \u201cfarewell,\u201d and kissed with longing lips,\n That never met, the wall that stood between;\n And when Aurora quenched the fires of night,\n And Ph\u0153bus dried the dew upon the grass,\n They came again unto the trysting place.\n\n Once, having come and many plaints exchanged\n Of their sad lot, they each with each agreed\n To leave their homes, and in the silent night\n Baffling their guardians, through the quiet streets,\n Pass to the fields, and meet at Ninus\u2019 tomb.\n There stood a tree with snow-white fruit adorned--\n A lofty mulberry--a cool fount close by;\n This was to be their trysting-place.\n\n That day\n Was slow to vanish in the western sea.\n Then in the darkness Thisbe issued forth,\n With stealthy footsteps, and with close-veiled face.\n She reached the tomb, and \u2019neath the trysting-tree\n Sat down (love made her confident); when, lo!\n A lioness, her mouth all froth and blood,\n From recent slaughter, came to quench her thirst\n At the near fountain.\n\n Thisbe saw her come,\n (For the moon shone) and fled with frightened feet\n Into a cave, and, running, dropt her veil;\n Which, having quenched her thirst, the lioness,\n Returning, found, and tore with bloody mouth.\n\n Just then, came Pyramus with later feet,\n Who saw the lion\u2019s tracks deep in the soil,\n And paled with sudden fear. But when he found\n His Thisbe\u2019s garment stained with blood, he cried,\n \u201cOne fatal night two lovers shall destroy,\n Of whom she was the worthier of life!\n My soul is guilty, O dear perished love,\n Who bade thee come at night to scenes of dread,\n And let thee come the first. O lions! rush\n From where you have your dens beneath the rock,\n And tear these cursed limbs with ruthless teeth!\n But--\u2019tis a coward\u2019s part to wish for death.\u201d\n\n Then with the veil he seeks the trysting-tree,\n And to its cherished folds gives kisses, tears,\n And to his sword, \u201cDrink now my blood,\u201d he cries,\n And sinks it in his heart, and draws it forth,\n And falling, lies at length with upturned face.\n The blood spurts forth, as when a pipe that\u2019s burst\n Throws from the hissing gap a slender jet,\n Beating the obstant air with watery blows.\n The trysting-tree is sprinkled with his blood,\n Till its fair fruit is changed to gloomy black.\n\n Then Thisbe, half afraid e\u2019en yet, returns,\n Lest Pyramus should miss her. Eagerly,\n With eyes and heart, she looks for her beloved,\n Burning to tell him of the danger past.\n But when she gained the place and saw the tree\n Sadly discoloured, she was sore in doubt\n Whether or no it was the very spot;\n Till, all aghast, she saw the blood-stained ground\n And quivering limbs, and started, horror-struck,\n Trembling as does the sea beneath a breeze.\n And when she recognized her dear one\u2019s face,\n She threw her tender arms above her head,\n And tore her hair, and the dear form embraced,\n Filling the wound with tears, and with her lips\n Touched the cold face, and called him by his name;\n \u201cPyramus, answer, thine own Thisbe calls!\n Oh! hear me, Pyramus, look up once more!\u201d\n Touched by the voice, he oped his dying eyes,\n Then closed them on the world for evermore.\n\n She now saw all--her veil--the empty sheath.\n \u201cAh! hapless love,\u201d she said, \u201chath slain my love,\n But love will make me strong like him to die,\n Fearing no wounds; for I will follow him,\n The wretched cause--his comrade, too, in death:\n And death that parted us shall re-unite.\n O wretched parents of a wretched pair,\n Whom true love bound together to the last,\n Hear this, my dying voice, and not refuse\n To let our ashes mingle in one urn.\n O trysting-tree, whose funeral branches shade\n The corse of one, and soon shall wave o\u2019er two,\n Henceforth forever be our mark of fate,--\n Bear in thy fruit the memory of our death!\u201d\n She spake these words, and fell upon the sword,\n And the point entered deep within her breast.\n His blood, yet warm, was mingled with her own.\n\n Her dying prayer the gods in heaven heard,\n Her dying prayer touched the lone parents\u2019 hearts,\n And both their ashes mingle in one urn.\n\n\n\n\n THE WITHERED LEAF.\n\n (_From the French of A. V. Arnault._)\n\n \u201cDe ta tige d\u00e9tach\u00e9e.\u201d\n\n\n \u201cFrom thy branchlet torn away,\n Whither, whither dost thou stray,\n Poor dry leaf?\u201d--\u201cI cannot say.\n Late, the tempest struck the oak,\n Which was hitherto my stay.\n Ever since that fatal stroke,\n To the faithless winds a prey,\n Not a moment\u2019s rest I gain.\n From the forest to the plain,\n I am carried by the gale.\n Yet I only go the way\n That the rose-leaf shuns in vain,\n And where laurel-leaves grow pale.\u201d\n\n\n\n\n ANDR\u00c9 CH\u00c9NIER\u2019S DEATH-SONG.\n\n Andr\u00e9 Ch\u00e9nier, for having dared to write against the excesses of his\n countrymen, was summoned before the Revolutional Tribunal, condemned\n and executed, in the year 1794. The first eight stanzas (in the\n translation) he composed in prison, after his condemnation; the two\n last he wrote at the foot of the scaffold, while waiting to be dragged\n to execution. He had just finished the line, \u201cLe sommeil du tombeau\n pressera ma paupi\u00e8re,\u201d when his turn came, and his words had their\n fulfillment. In the translation, the spirit, not the letter, has been\n regarded.\n\n\n When one lone lamb is bleating in the shambles,\n And gleams the ruthless knife,\n His yester playmates pause not in their gambols,\n Their wild, free joy of life,\n\n To think of him; the little ones that played\n With him in sunny hours,\n In bright green fields, and his fair form arrayed\n With ribbons gay and flowers,\n Mark not his absence from the fleecy throng;\n Unwept he sheds his blood;\n And this sad destiny is mine. Ere long\n From this grim solitude\n\n I pass to death. But let me bear my fate,\n And calmly be forgot;\n A thousand others in the self-same state\n Await the self-same lot.\n\n And what were friends to me? Oh! one kind voice\n Heard through those prison-bars,\n Did it not make my drooping heart rejoice,\n Though from my murderers\n\n \u2019Twas bought, perhaps? Alas! how soon life ends!\n And yet why should my death\n Make any one unhappy? Live, my friends.\n Nor think my fleeting breath\n\n Calls you to come. Mayhap, in days gone by,\n I, too, from sight of sorrow\n Turned, careless, with self-wrapt unpitying eye,\n Not dreaming of the morrow.\n\n And now misfortune presses on my heart,\n Erewhile so strong and free,\n \u2019Twere craven to ask you to bear its smart--\n Farewell, nor think of me!\n\n * * * * *\n\n As a faint ray or zephyr\u2019s latest breath\n Revives the dying day,\n Beneath the scaffold, that stern throne of death,\n I sing my parting lay.\n\n Before an hour, with wakeful foot and loud,\n Has marked its journey\u2019s close\n On yon bright disc, the sleep of death shall shroud\n Mine eyes from worldly woes!\n\n\n\n\n THE LAKE.\n\n (_From Lamartine._)\n\n\n I.\n\n For ever drifting towards shores unknown,\n In endless night, returnless, borne away,\n We never, in Time\u2019s sea our anchor thrown,\n Pause for a single day!\n\n\n II.\n\n O Lake, I come alone to sit by thee,\n Upon the stone where thou didst see her rest,\n Hardly a year ago, it seems, when she\n Looked on thy wavy breast!\n\n\n III.\n\n Thus didst thou threaten to those stooping rocks,\n Thus on their wave-worn sides thou then didst beat,\n Thus did thy foam, aroused by windy shocks,\n Play round my darling\u2019s feet!\n\n\n IV.\n\n One evening, as we floated on the calm,\n And not a sound was heard afar or near,\n Save oary music mingling firm and clear,\n With thy soft rippling psalm,--\n\n\n V.\n\n Then, all at once, sweet tones, too sweet for earth,\n Awoke the sleeping echoes into bliss,\n The waves grew hushed, the voice I loved gave birth\n To such a strain as this:\n\n\n 1.\n\n \u201cO Time, suspend thy flight, and happy hours,\n Linger upon your ways!\n Oh! let us know the fleeting joy that\u2019s ours\n These brightest of our days!\n\n\n 2.\n\n For the unhappy ones who thee implore,\n Flow swiftly as thou canst,\n With all their cares; but leave us, pass us o\u2019er\n In happiness entranced!\n\n\n 3.\n\n Alas! in vain I ask some moments more,\n For Time escapes and flies!\n I ask this night to linger; lo, the power\n Of darkness quickly dies!\n\n\n 4.\n\n But let us love, and, while we may, be blest,\n Before our hour is gone!\n Nor time, nor man has any point of rest,\n _It_ flows, and _we_ float on!\u201d\n\n\n VI.\n\n O jealous Time! those moments of delight,\n When Love pours bliss in streams upon the heart,\n Must they fly from us with as swift a flight\n As days of ill depart?\n\n\n VII.\n\n Alas! can we not even mark the track?\n _Forever lost!_ like all that went before!\n And Time that gave them and then took them back\n Shall give them back no more!\n\n\n VIII.\n\n O Lake, mute rocks and caves and forest shade,\n Whose beauty Time is powerless to blight,\n Dear nature, suffer not the thought to fade\n Of that sweet, happy night!\n\n\n IX.\n\n Still let it live in all thy scene, fair Lake,\n In calm and storm, and make thy smiles more bright,\n And every tree and rock new meaning take\n From that sweet, happy night.\n\n\n X.\n\n Let it be heard in every passing breeze,\n And in the sound of shore to shore replying,\n Let it be seen in every star that sees\n Its image in thee lying!\n\n\n XI.\n\n And let the moaning wind and sighing reed,\n And the light perfume of the balmy air,\n All that is heard or seen or felt declare,\n \u201c_They loved--they loved, indeed_!\u201d\n\n\n\n\n THE WANDERING JEW.\n\n (_From Beranger._)\n\n\n I.\n\n Christian, a pilgrim craves from you\n A glass of water at your door!\n I am--I am--the Wandering Jew--\n Chained to a whirlwind evermore!\n Though ever young, weighed down with years,\n The end of Time my one glad dream;\n Each night I hope the end appears,\n Each morning brings its cursed gleam.\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n II.\n\n For eighteen centuries, alas!\n Over the dust of Greece and Rome,\n I\u2019ve seen a thousand kingdoms pass,--\n And yet the end delays to come.\n I\u2019ve seen the good spring up in vain,\n I\u2019ve seen the ill wax strong and bold,\n And from the bosom of the main\n I\u2019ve seen twin worlds succeed the old.\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n III.\n\n God gives me life to punish me;\n I cling to all that hopes for death,\n But ere my soul\u2019s desire I see,\n I feel the whirlwind\u2019s vengeful breath.\n How many a poor, sad man of grief\n Has asked from me the means to live!\n But none from me has gained relief,--\n My hand has never time to give!\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n IV.\n\n Alone, in shade of downing trees,\n Upon the turf, where water flows,\n If I enjoy a moment\u2019s ease,\n The whirlwind breaks my short repose.\n Oh! might not angry heaven allow\n One moment stolen from the sun!\n Is less than endlessness enow?\n Or shall this journey ne\u2019er be done?\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n V.\n\n If e\u2019er I see a child\u2019s sweet face,\n And in its pretty, joyous pride,\n My own lost innocents\u2019 retrace,\n The Hoarse Voice grumbles at my side.\n Oh! you, who lust for length of days,\n Dare not to envy my career!\n That sweet child-face on which I gaze\n Shall long be dust while I am here!\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n VI.\n\n I find some trace of those old walls,\n Where I was born long, long ago;\n I fain would stay, the whirlwind calls--\n \u201cPass on! thy fathers sleep below,\n But in their tombs no place is kept\n For thee; thou still must wander on,\n Nor sleep till all thy race has slept,\n And all the pride of man is gone.\u201d\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n VII.\n\n I outraged with a laugh of scorn\n The God-man in His hour of woe--\n But from my feet the way is torn--\n _I feel the whirlwind_--I must go.\n You, who feel not another\u2019s pain,\n Tremble--and help him while you can;\n The crime I dared was foul disdain\n Not of God only, but of Man.\n Never, never,\n Till this earth its race has run,\n Shall my goal of death be won.\n\n\n FINIS.","title":"The Prophecy of Merlin, and Other Poems","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":28561}