Rossetti Archive Textual Transcription

Document Title: Poems. (Privately Printed.): Proofs for the Second Trial Book (partial), Princeton/Troxell.
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1869 November 25-26
Printer: Strangeways and Walden

The full Rossetti Archive record for this transcribed document is available.

Image of page [1] page: [1]
Manuscript Addition: [Rossetti, Dante Gabriel 1828-18
Transcription Gap: 2 letters (image trunc)
/ Poems. (Privately printed). / London, Strangeways and Wald
Transcription Gap: at least one letter (image trunc)
/ 1869] / Proofs of Second Trial / book / Between Oct. 14 and Nov. / 1869.
Editorial Description: This is the Princeton University Library's cover-sheet to these proofs.
Note: This page contains hand-written editorial notes which are obscured in the electronic image.
Image of page [2] page: [2]
Note: Blank page.
Image of page [3] page: [3]
Note: Blank page.
Note: Pages 1-26 not in these proofs.
Image of page 27 page: 27
Manuscript Addition: p. 14 repeated
Editorial Description: Pencil markings in upper right corner.
Note: An X is marked in the upper left corner of this page.
  • The print of its first rush-wrapping,
  • Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
  • What song did the brown maidens sing,
  • From purple mouths alternating,
  • When that was woven languidly?
  • What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,
  • What songs has the strange image heard?
  • In what blind vigil stood interr'd
  • For ages, till an English word
  • 30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?
  • Oh when upon each sculptured court,
  • Where even the wind might not resort,—
  • O'er which Time passed, of like import
  • With the wild Arab boys at sport,—
  • A living face looked in to see:—
  • Oh seemed it not—the spell once broke—
  • As though the carven warriors woke,
  • As though the shaft the string forsook,
  • The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
  • 40 And there was life in Nineveh?
  • On London stones our sun anew
  • The beast's recovered shadow threw.
  • (No shade that plague of darkness knew,
  • No light, no shade, while older grew
  • By ages the old earth and sea.)
  • Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
  • Such proof to make thy godhead known?
  • Image of page 28 page: 28
    Editorial Description: The number 15 has been written in the top right margin.
  • From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;
  • And still thy shadow is thine own
  • 50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.
  • That day whereof we keep record,
  • When near thy city-gates the Lord
  • Sheltered his Jonah with a gourd,
  • This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd
  • Even thus this shadow that I see.
  • This shadow has been shed the same
  • From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
  • For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,
  • The last, while smouldered to a name
  • 60 Sardanapalus' Nineveh.
  • Within thy shadow, haply, once
  • Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
  • Smote him between the altar-stones:
  • Or pale Semiramis her zones
  • Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
  • In love for grace, in war for aid: . . . .
  • Ay, and who else? . . . . till 'neath thy shade
  • Within his trenches newly made
  • Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—
  • 70 Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 28):

* During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their ser-

vices in the shadow of the great bulls. ( Layard's ‘Nineveh,’ ch ix.)

Image of page 29 page: 29
Editorial Description: The number 16 has been added to the top right margin.
  • Now, thou poor god, within this hall
  • Where the blank windows blind the wall
  • From pedestal to pedestal,
  • The kind of light shall on thee fall
  • Which London takes the day to be:
  • While school-foundations in the act
  • Of holiday, three files compact,
  • Shall learn to view thee as a fact
  • Connected with that zealous tract:
  • 80 ‘Rome,—Babylon and Nineveh.’
  • Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
  • When, in some mythic chain of verse
  • Which man shall not again rehearse,
  • The faces of thy ministers
  • Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
  • Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god
  • Before whose feet men knelt unshod
  • Deem that in this unblest abode
  • Another scarce more unknown god
  • 90 Should house with him from Nineveh?
  • Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
  • From which this pigmy pile has grown,
  • Unto man's need how long unknown,
  • Since thy vast temples, court and cone,
  • Rose far in desert history?
  • Ah! what is here that does not lie
  • All strange to thine awakened eye?
  • Image of page 30 page: 30
    Editorial Description: The number 17 is written in the upper left margin.
  • Ah! what is here can testify
  • (Save that dumb presence of the sky)
  • 100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?
  • Why, of those mummies in the room
  • Above, there might indeed have come
  • One out of Egypt to thy home,
  • An alien. Nay, but were not some
  • Of these thine own ‘antiquity?’
  • And now,—they and their gods and thou
  • All relics here together,—now
  • Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
  • Isis or Ibis, who or how,
  • 110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?
  • The consecrated metals found,
  • And ivory tablets, underground,
  • Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd,
  • When air and daylight filled the mound,
  • Fell into dust immediately.
  • And even as these, the images
  • Of awe and worship,—even as these,—
  • So, smitten with the sun's increase,
  • Her glory mouldered and did cease
  • 120 From immemorial Nineveh.
  • The day her builders made their halt,
  • Those cities of the lake of salt
  • Image of page 31 page: 31
    Editorial Description: The number 18 has been written in the top right margin.
  • Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,
  • Made proud with pillars of basalt,
  • With sardonyx and porphyry.
  • The day that Jonah bore abroad
  • To Nineveh the voice of God,
  • A brackish lake lay in his road,
  • Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
  • 130 As then in royal Nineveh.
  • The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,
  • Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
  • To Him before whose countenance
  • The years recede, the years advance,
  • And said, Fall down and worship me:—
  • 'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
  • Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
  • Where to the wind the salt pools shook,
  • And in those tracts, of life forsook,
  • 140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!
  • Delicate harlot! On thy throne
  • Thou with a world beneath thee prone
  • In state for ages sat'st alone;
  • And needs were years and lustres flown
  • Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:
  • Whom even thy victor foes must bring,
  • Still royal, among maids that sing
  • As with doves' voices, taboring
  • Upon their breasts, unto the King,—
  • 150 A kingly conquest, Nineveh!
Image of page 32 page: 32
Editorial Description: The number 19 has been added to the top margin in manuscript.
  • . . . Here woke my thought. The wind's slow sway
  • Had waxed; and like the human play
  • Of scorn that smiling spreads away,
  • The sunshine shivered off the day:
  • The callous wind, it seemed to me,
  • Swept up the shadow from the ground:
  • And pale as whom the Fates astound,
  • The god forlorn stood winged and crown'd:
  • Within I knew the cry lay bound
  • 160 Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.
  • And as I turned, my sense half shut
  • Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
  • Go past as marshalled to the strut
  • Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
  • It seemed in one same pageantry
  • They followed forms which had been erst;
  • To pass, till on my sight should burst
  • That future of the best or worst
  • When some may question which was first,
  • 170 Of London or of Nineveh.
  • For as that Bull-god once did stand
  • And watched the burial-clouds of sand,
  • Till these at last without a hand
  • Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
  • And blinded him with destiny:—
  • So may he stand again; till now,
  • In ships of unknown sail and prow,
Note: Pages 32-64 not in these proofs.
Image of page 65 page: 65
Sig. F
DENNIS SHAND.
  • The shadows fall along the wall,
  • It's night at Haye-la-Serre;
  • The maidens weave since day grew eve,
  • The lady's in her chair.
  • O passing slow the long hours go
  • With time to think and sigh,
  • When weary maidens weave beneath
  • A listless lady's eye.
  • It's two days that Earl Simon's gone
  • 10 And it's the second night;
  • At Haye-la-Serre the lady's fair,
  • In June the moon is light.
  • O it's ‘Maids, ye'll wake till I come back,’
  • And the hound's i' the lady's chair:
  • No shuttles fly, the work stands by,
  • It's play at Haye-la-Serre.
  • The night is worn, the lamp's forlorn,
  • The shadows waste and fail;
  • There's morning air at Haye-la-Serre,
  • 20 The watching maids look pale.
Image of page 66 page: 66
  • O all unmarked the birds at dawn
  • Where drowsy maidens be;
  • But heard too soon the lark's first tune
  • Beneath the trysting-tree.
  • ‘Hold me thy hand, sweet Dennis Shand,
  • Says the Lady Joan de Haye,
  • ‘That thou to-morrow do forget
  • To-day and yesterday.
  • ‘For many a weary month to come
  • 30 My lord keeps house with me,
  • And sighing summer must lie cold
  • In winter's company.
  • ‘And many an hour I'll pass thee by
  • And see thee and be seen;
  • Yet not a glance must tell by chance
  • How sweet these hours have been.
  • ‘We've all to fear; there's Maud the spy,
  • There's Ann whose face I scor'd,
  • There's Blanch tells Huot everything,
  • 40 And Huot loves my lord.
  • ‘But O and it's my Dennis'll know,
  • When my eyes look weary dim,
  • Who finds the gold for his girdle-fee
  • And who keeps love for him.’
Image of page 67 page: 67
  • The morrow's come and the morrow-night,
  • It's feast at Haye-la-Serre,
  • And Dennis Shand the cup must hand
  • Beside Earl Simon's chair.
  • And still when the high pouring's done
  • 50 And cup and flagon clink,
  • Till his lady's lips have touched the brim
  • Earl Simon will not drink.
  • ‘But it's, ‘Joan my wife,’ Earl Simon says,
  • ‘Your maids are white and wan.’
  • And it's, ‘O,’ she says, ‘they've watched the night
  • With Maud's sick sister Ann.’
  • But it's, ‘Lady Joan and Joan my bird,
  • Yourself look white and wan.’
  • And it's, ‘O, I've walked the night myself
  • 60 To pull the herbs for Ann:
  • ‘And some of your knaves were at the hutch
  • And some in the cellarage,
  • But the only one that watched with us
  • Was Dennis Shand your page.
  • ‘Look on the boy, sweet honey lord,
  • And mark his drooping e'e:
  • The rosy colour's not yet back
  • That paled in serving me.’
Image of page 68 page: 68
  • O it's, ‘Wife, your maids are foolish jades,
  • 70 And you're a silly chuck,
  • And the lazy knaves shall get their staves
  • About their ears for luck:
  • ‘But Dennis Shand may take the cup
  • And pour the wine to his hand;
  • Wife, thou shalt touch it with thy lips,
  • And drink thou, Dennis Shand!’
Image of page 69 page: 69
THE CARD-DEALER.
  • Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
  • Yet though its splendour swoon
  • Into the silence languidly
  • As a tune into a tune,
  • Those eyes unravel the coiled night
  • And know the stars at noon.
  • The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
  • In truth rich prize it were;
  • And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
  • 10 With magic stillness there;
  • And he were rich who should unwind
  • That woven golden hair.
  • Around her, where she sits, the dance
  • Now breathes its eager heat;
  • And not more lightly or more true
  • Fall there the dancers' feet
  • Than fall her cards on the bright board
  • As 'twere an heart that beat.
Image of page 70 page: 70
  • Her fingers let them softly through,
  • 20 Smooth polished silent things;
  • And each one as it falls reflects
  • In swift light-shadowings,
  • Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
  • The great eyes of her rings.
  • Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
  • Those gems upon her hand;
  • With me, who search her secret brows;
  • With all men, bless'd or bann'd.
  • We play together, she and we,
  • 30 Within a vain strange land:
  • A land without any order,—
  • Day even as night, (one saith,)—
  • Where who lieth down ariseth not
  • Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
  • A land of darkness as darkness itself
  • And of the shadow of death.
  • What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
  • The heart, that doth but crave
  • More, having fed; the diamond,
  • 40 Skilled to make base seem brave;
  • The club, for smiting in the dark;
  • The spade, to dig a grave.
  • And do you ask what game she plays?
  • With me 'tis lost or won;
  • Image of page 71 page: 71
  • With thee it is playing still; with him
  • It is not well begun;
  • But 'tis a game she plays with all
  • Beneath the sway o' the sun.
  • Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
  • 50 The card that followeth:
  • Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
  • As ebbs thy daily breath:
  • When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
  • And know she calls it Death.
Image of page 72 page: 72
MY SISTER'S SLEEP.*
Transcribed Footnote (page 72):

* This little poem, written in 1847, was printed in a periodical

at the outset of 1850, a month or two before the appearance of ‘ In

Memoriam
,’ with which the metre (to be met with in old English

writers) is now identified.

  • She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
  • At length the long ungranted shade
  • Of weary eyelide overweigh'd
  • The pain nought else might yet relieve.
  • Our mother, who had leaned all day
  • Over the bed from chime to chime,
  • Then raised herself for the first time,
  • And as she sat her down, did pray.
  • Her little work-table was spread
  • 10 With work to finish. For the glare
  • Made by her candle, she had care
  • To work some distance from the bed.
  • Without, there was a cold moon up,
  • Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
  • The hollow halo it was in
  • Was like an icy crystal cup.
Image of page 73 page: 73
  • Through the small room, with subtle sound
  • Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
  • And reddened. In its dim alcove
  • 20The mirror shed a clearness round.
  • I had been sitting up some nights,
  • And my tired mind felt weak and blank;
  • Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank
  • The stillness and the broken lights.
  • Twelve struck. That sound, which all the years
  • Hear in each hour, crept off; and then
  • The ruffled silence spread again,
  • Like water that a pebble stirs.
  • Our mother rose from where she sat:
  • 30 Her needles, as she laid them down,
  • Met lightly, and her silken gown
  • Settled: no other noise than that.
  • ‘Glory unto the Newly Born!’
  • So, as said angels, she did say;
  • Because we were in Christmas Day,
  • Though it would still be long till morn.
  • Just then in the room over us
  • There was a pushing back of chairs,
  • As some who had sat unawares
  • 40So late, now heard the hour, and rose.
Image of page 74 page: 74
  • With anxious softly-stepping haste
  • Our mother went where Margaret lay,
  • Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they
  • Have broken her long watched-for rest!
  • She stooped an instant, calm, and turned;
  • But suddenly turned back again;
  • And all her features seemed in pain
  • With woe, and her eyes gazed and yearned.
  • For my part, I but hid my face,
  • 50 And held my breath, and spoke no word:
  • There was none spoken; but I heard
  • The silence for a little space.
  • Our mother bowed herself and wept:
  • And both my arms fell, and I said,
  • ‘God knows I knew that she was dead.’
  • And there, all white, my sister slept.
  • Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
  • A little after twelve o'clock
  • We said, ere the first quarter struck,
  • 60‘Christ's blessing on the newly born!’
Image of page 75 page: 75
AN OLD SONG ENDED.
  • ‘How should I your true love know
  • From another one?’
  • ‘By his cockle-hat and staff
  • And his sandal-shoon.’
  • ‘And what signs have told you now
  • That he hastens home?’
  • ‘Lo! the spring is nearly gone,
  • He is nearly come.’
  • ‘For a token is there nought,
  • 10 Say, that he should bring?’
  • ‘He will bear a ring I gave
  • And another ring.’
  • ‘How may I, when he shall ask,
  • Tell him who lies there?’
  • ‘Nay, but leave my face unveiled
  • And unbound my hair.’
  • ‘Can you say to me some word
  • I shall say to him?’
  • ‘Say I'm looking in his eyes
  • 20 Though my eyes are dim.’
Image of page 76 page: 76
THE SEED OF DAVID.

( Inscription for a Picture.*)
  • Christ sprang from David shepherd, and even so
  • From David king; being born of high and low.
  • The shepherd lays his crook, the king his crown,
  • Here at Christ's feet, and high and low bow down.
  • And high and low, Christ's self is shown here; even
  • Christ the Good Shepherd, Christ the King of Heaven.
Transcribed Footnote (page 76):

* A Triptych. In the centre, the Adoration: at the two sides,

David as shepherd and David as king.

Image of page 77 page: 77
THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES.

(François Villon, 1450.)
  • Tell me now in what hidden way is
  • Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
  • Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
  • Neither of them the fairer woman?
  • Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
  • Only heard on river and mere,—
  • She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
  • Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
  • 10 For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
  • Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
  • (From Love he won such dule and teen!)
  • And where, I pray you, is the Queen
  • Who willed that Buridan should steer
  • Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . .
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
  • White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
  • With a voice like any mermaiden,—
  • Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
  • 20 And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
  • Image of page 78 page: 78
  • And that good Joan whom Englishmen
  • At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
  • Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
  • Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
  • Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
  • Except with this for an overword,—
  • But where are the snows of yester-year?
Image of page 79 page: 79
TO DEATH, OF HIS LADY.

(François Villon, 1450.)
  • Death, of thee do I make my moan,
  • Who hadst my lady away from me,
  • Nor wilt assuage thine enmity
  • Till with her life thou hast mine own;
  • For since that hour my strength has flown.
  • Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,
  • Death?
  • Two we were, and the heart was one;
  • Which now being dead, dead I must be,
  • 10 Or seem alive as lifelessly
  • As in the choir the painted stone,
  • Death!
Image of page 80 page: 80
JOHN OF TOURS.

( Old French.)
  • John of Tours is back with peace,
  • But he comes home ill at ease.
  • ‘Good-morrow, mother.’ ‘Good-morrow, son;
  • Your wife has borne you a little one.’
  • ‘Go now, mother, go before,
  • Make me a bed upon the floor;
  • ‘Very low your foot must fall,
  • That my wife hear not at all.’
  • As it neared the midnight toll,
  • 10John of Tours gave up his soul.
  • ‘Tell me now, my mother my dear,
  • What's the crying that I hear?’
  • ‘Daughter, the children are awake,
  • Crying with their teeth that ache.’
  • ‘Tell me though, my mother my dear,
  • What's the knocking that I hear?’
  • ‘Daughter, it's the carpenter
  • Mending planks upon the stair.’
Image of page 81 page: 81
Sig. G
  • ‘Tell me too, my mother my dear,
  • 20What's the singing that I hear?’
  • ‘Daughter, it's the priests in rows
  • Going round about our house.’
  • ‘Tell me then, my mother my dear
  • What's the dress that I should wear?’
  • ‘Daughter, any reds or blues,
  • But the black is most in use.’
  • ‘Nay, but say, my mother my dear,
  • Why do you fall weeping here?’
  • ‘Oh! the truth must be said,—
  • 30It's that John of Tours is dead.’
  • ‘Mother, let the sexton know
  • That the grave must be for two;
  • ‘Aye, and still have room to spare,
  • For you must shut the baby there.’
Image of page 82 page: 82
MY FATHER'S CLOSE.

( Old French.)
  • Inside my father's close,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • Sweet apple-blossom blows
  • So sweet.
  • Three king's daughters fair,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • They lie below it there
  • So sweet.
  • ‘Ah!’ says the eldest one,
  • 10 (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • ‘I think the day's begun
  • So sweet.’
  • ‘Ah!’ says the second one,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • ‘Far off I hear the drum
  • So sweet.’
Image of page 83 page: 83
  • ‘Ah!’ says the youngest one,
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • ‘It's my true love, my own,
  • 20 So sweet.
  • ‘Oh! if he fight and win,’
  • (Fly away O my heart away!)
  • ‘I keep my love for him,
  • So sweet:
  • Oh! let him lose or win,
  • He hath it still complete.’
Image of page 84 page: 84
ONE GIRL.

( A combination from Sappho.)
  • I.
  • Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost
  • bough,
  • A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot,
  • somehow,—
  • Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it
  • till now.
  • II.
  • Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is found,
  • Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear and
  • wound,
  • Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.
Image of page [85] page: [85]
SONNETS AND SONGS,

Towards a Work to be called

‘THE HOUSE OF LIFE.’
Image of page [86] page: [86]
Note: blank page
Image of page 87 page: 87
INCLUSIVENESS.
  • The changing guests, each in a different mood,
  • Sit at the roadside table and arise:
  • And every life among them in likewise
  • Is a soul's board set daily with new food.
  • What man has bent o'er his son's sleep, to brood
  • How that face shall watch his when cold it lies?—
  • Or thought, as his own mother kissed his eyes,
  • Of what her kiss was when his father wooed?
  • May not this ancient room thou sit'st in dwell
  • 10 In separate living souls for joy or pain?
  • Nay, all its corners may be painted plain
  • Where Heaven shows pictures of some life spent well;
  • And may be stamped, a memory all in vain,
  • Upon the sight of lidless eyes in Hell.
Image of page 88 page: 88
KNOWN IN VAIN.
  • As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
  • Knows suddenly, with music high and soft,
  • The Holy of holies; who because they scoff'd
  • Are now amazed with shame, nor dare to cope
  • With the whole truth in words, lest heaven should ope;
  • Yet, at their meetings, laugh not as they laugh'd
  • In speech; nor speak, at length; but sitting oft
  • Together, within hopeless sight of hope
  • For hours are silent:—So it happeneth
  • 10 When Work and Will awake too late, to gaze
  • After their life sailed by, and hold their breath.
  • Ah! who shall dare to search through what sad maze
  • Thenceforth their incommunicable ways
  • Follow the desultory feet of Death?
Image of page 89 page: 89
THE LANDMARK.
  • Was that the landmark? What,—the foolish well
  • Whose wave, low down, I did not stoop to drink,
  • But sat and flung the pebbles from its brink
  • In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell,
  • (And mine own image, had I noted well!)—
  • Was that my point of turning?—I had thought
  • The stations of my course should loom unsought,
  • As altar-stone or ensigned citadel.
  • But lo! the path is missed, I must go back,
  • 10 And thirst to drink when next I reach the spring
  • Which once I stained, which since may have grown black.
  • Yet though no light be left nor bird now sing
  • As here I turn, I'll thank God, hastening,
  • That the same goal is still on the same track.
Image of page 90 page: 90
A DARK DAY.
  • The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs
  • Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow
  • Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now
  • Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.
  • Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,
  • Or hath but memory of the day whose plough
  • Sowed hunger once,—the night at length when thou,
  • O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?
  • How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,
  • 10 Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,
  • Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!
  • Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead
  • Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,
  • Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.
Note: Pages 91-94 not in these proofs.
Image of page 95 page: 95
HOARDED JOY.
  • I said: ‘Nay, pluck not,—let the first fruit be:
  • Even as thou sayest, it is sweet and red,
  • But let it ripen still. The tree's bent head
  • Sees in the stream its own fecundity
  • And bides the day of fulness. Shall not we
  • At the sun's hour that day possess the shade,
  • And claim our fruit before its ripeness fade,
  • And eat it from the branch and praise the tree?’
  • I say: ‘Alas! our fruit hath wooed the sun
  • 10 Too long,—'tis fallen and floats adown the stream.
  • Lo, the last clusters! Pluck them every one,
  • And let us sup with summer; ere the gleam
  • Of autumn set the year's pent sorrow free,
  • And the woods wail like echoes from the sea.’
Image of page 96 page: 96
VAIN VIRTUES.
  • What is the sorriest thing that enters Hell?
  • None of the sins,—but this and that fair deed
  • Which a soul's sin at length could supersede.
  • These yet are virgins, whom death's timely knell
  • Might once have sainted; whom the fiends compel
  • Together now, in snake-bound shuddering sheaves
  • Of anguish, while the scorching bridegroom leaves
  • Their refuse maidenhood abominable.
  • Night sucks them down, the garbage of the pit,
  • 10 Whose names, half entered in the book of Life,
  • Were God's desire at noon. And as their hair
  • And eyes sink last, the Torturer deigns no whit
  • To gaze, but, yearning, waits his worthier wife,
  • The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.
Image of page 97 page: 97
Sig. H
LOST DAYS.
  • The lost days of my life until to-day,
  • What were they, could I see them on the street
  • Lie as they fell? Would they be ears of wheat
  • Sown once for food but trodden into clay?
  • Or golden coins squandered and still to pay?
  • Or drops of blood dabbling the guilty feet?
  • Or such spilt water as in dreams must cheat
  • The throats of men in Hell, who thirst alway?
  • I do not see them here; but after death
  • 10 God knows I know the faces I shall see,
  • Each one a murdered self, with low last breath.
  • ‘I am thyself,—what hast thou done to me?’
  • ‘And I—and I—thyself,’ (lo! each one saith,)
  • ‘And thou thyself to all eternity!’
Image of page 98 page: 98
DEATH'S SONGSTERS.
  • When first that horse, within whose populous womb
  • The birth was Death, o'ershadowed Troy with fate,
  • Her elders, dubious of its Grecian freight,
  • Brought Helen there to sing the songs of home:
  • She whispered, ‘Friends, I am alone; come, come!’
  • Then, crouched within, Ulysses waxed afraid,
  • And on his comrades' quivering mouths he laid
  • His hands, and held them till the voice was dumb.
  • The same was he who, lashed to his own mast,
  • 10 There where the sea-flowers screen the charnel-caves,
  • Beside the sirens' singing island pass'd,
  • Till sweetness failed along the inveterate waves. . . .
  • Say, soul,—are songs of Death no heaven to thee,
  • Nor shames her lip the cheek of Victory?
Image of page 99 page: 99
‘RETRO ME, SATHANA!’
  • Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
  • Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
  • Is caught from out his chariot by the hair,
  • So shall Time be; and as the void car, hurled
  • Abroad by reinless steeds, even so the world:
  • Yea, even as chariot-dust upon the air,
  • It shall be sought and not found anywhere.
  • Get thee behind me, Satan. Oft unfurled,
  • Thy perilous wings can beat and break like lath
  • 10 Much mightiness of men to win thee praise.
  • Leave these weak feet to tread in narrow ways.
  • Thou still, upon the broad vine-sheltered path,
  • Mayst wait the turning of the phials of wrath
  • For certain years, for certain months and days.
Image of page 100 page: 100
LOST ON BOTH SIDES.
  • As when two men have loved a woman well,
  • Each hating each, through Love's and Death's deceit;
  • Since not for either this stark marriage-sheet
  • And the long pauses of this wedding-bell;
  • Yet o'er her grave the night and day dispel
  • At last their feud forlorn, with cold and heat;
  • Nor other than dear friends to death may fleet
  • The two lives left that most of her can tell:—
  • So separate hopes, which in a soul had wooed
  • 10 The one same Peace, strove with each other long,
  • And Peace before their faces perished since:
  • So through that soul, in restless brotherhood,
  • They roam together now, and wind among
  • Its bye-streets, knocking at the dusty inns.
Image of page 101 page: 101
THE SUN'S SHAME.
  • Beholding youth and hope in mockery caught
  • From life; and mocking pulses that remain
  • When the soul's death of bodily death is fain;
  • Honour unknown, and honour known unsought;
  • And penury's sedulous self-torturing thought
  • On gold, whose master therewith buys his bane;
  • And longed-for woman longing all in vain
  • For lonely man with love's desire distraught;
  • And wealth, and strength, and power, and pleasantness,
  • 10 Given unto bodies of whose souls men say,
  • None poor and weak, slavish and foul, as they:—
  • Beholding these things, I behold no less
  • The blushing morn and blushing eve confess
  • The shame that loads the intolerable day.
Image of page 102 page: 102
RUN AND WON.
  • Around the vase of Life at your slow pace
  • He has not crept, but turned it with his hands,
  • And all its sides already understands.
  • There, girt, one breathes alert for some great race;
  • Whose road runs far by sands and fruitful space;
  • Who laughs, yet through the jolly throng has pass'd;
  • Who weeps, nor stays for weeping; who at last,
  • A youth, stands somewhere crowned, with silent face.
  • And he has filled this vase with wine for blood,
  • 10 With blood for tears, with spice for burning vow,
  • With watered flowers for buried love most fit;
  • And would have cast it shattered to the flood,
  • Yet in Fate's name has kept it whole; which now
  • Stands empty till his ashes fall in it.
Image of page 103 page: 103
NEWBORN DEATH.

( Two Sonnets.)
I.
  • To-day Death seems to me an infant child
  • Which her worn mother Life upon my knee
  • Has set to grow my friend and play with me;
  • If haply so my heart might be beguil'd
  • To find no terrors in a face so mild,—
  • If haply so my weary heart might be
  • Unto the newborn milky eyes of thee,
  • O Death, before resentment reconcil'd.
  • How long, O Death? And shall thy feet depart
  • 10 Still a young child's with mine, or wilt thou stand
  • Fullgrown the helpful daughter of my heart,
  • What time with thee indeed I reach the strand
  • Of the pale wave which knows thee what thou art,
  • And drink it in the hollow of thy hand?
Image of page 104 page: 104
II.
  • And thou, O Life, the lady of all bliss,
  • With whom, when our first heart beat full and fast,
  • I wandered till the haunts of men were pass'd,
  • And in fair places found all bowers amiss
  • Till only woods and waves might hear our kiss,
  • While to the winds all thought of Death we cast:—
  • Ah, Life, and must I have from thee at last
  • No smile to greet me and no babe but this?
  • Lo! Love, the child once ours; and Song, whose hair
  • 10 Blew like a flame and blossomed like a wreath;
  • And Art, whose eyes were worlds by God found fair;
  • These o'er the book of Nature mixed their breath
  • With neck-twined arms, as oft we watched them there:
  • And did these die that thou mightst bear me Death?
Image of page 105 page: 105
A SUPERSCRIPTION.
  • Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been;
  • I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell;
  • Unto thine ear I hold the dead-sea shell
  • Cast up thy Life's foam-fretted feet between;
  • Unto thine eyes the glass where that is seen
  • Which had Life's form and Love's, but by my spell
  • Is now a shaken shadow intolerable,
  • Of ultimate things unuttered the frail screen.
  • Mark me, how still I am! But should there dart
  • 10 One moment through thy soul the soft surprise
  • Of that winged Peace which lulls the breath of sighs,—
  • Then shalt thou see me smile, and turn apart
  • Thy visage to mine ambush at thy heart
  • Sleepless with cold commemorative eyes.
Image of page 106 page: 106
ASPECTA MEDUSA.
  • Andromeda, by Perseus saved and wed,
  • Hankered each day to see the Gorgon's head:
  • Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
  • And mirrored in the wave was safely seen
  • That death she lived by.
  • Let not thine eyes know
  • Any forbidden thing itself, although
  • It once should save as well as kill: but be
  • Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
Image of page 107 page: 107
THE SEA-LIMITS.
  • Consider the sea's listless chime:
  • Time's self it is, made audible,—
  • The murmur of the earth's own shell.
  • Secret continuance sublime
  • Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
  • No furlong further. Since time was,
  • This sound hath told the lapse of time.
  • No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
  • The mournfulness of ancient life,
  • 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
  • As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
  • Its painful pulse is in the sands.
  • Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
  • Grey and not known, along its path.
  • Listen alone beside the sea,
  • Listen alone among the woods;
  • Those voices of twin solitudes
  • Shall have one sound alike to thee:
  • Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
  • Image of page 108 page: 108
  • 20 Surge and sink back and surge again,—
  • Still the one voice of wave and tree.
  • Gather a shell from the strown beach
  • And listen at its lips: they sigh
  • The same desire and mystery,
  • The echo of the whole sea's speech.
  • And all mankind is thus at heart
  • Not anything but what thou art:
  • And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.
Image of page 109 page: 109
A YOUNG FIR-WOOD.
  • These little firs to-day are things
  • To clasp into a giant's cap,
  • Or fans to suit his lady's lap.
  • From many winters many springs
  • Shall cherish them in strength and sap,
  • Till they be marked upon the map,
  • A wood for the wind's wanderings.
  • All seed is in the sower's hands:
  • And what at first was trained to spread
  • 10 Its shelter for some single head,—
  • Yea, even such fellowship of wands,—
  • May hide the sunset, and the shade
  • Of its great multitude be laid
  • Upon the earth and elder sands.
Image of page 110 page: 110
THE HONEYSUCKLE.
  • I plucked a honeysuckle where
  • The hedge on high is quick with thorn,
  • And climbing for the prize, was torn,
  • And fouled my feet in quag-water;
  • And by the thorns and by the wind
  • The blossom that I took was thinn'd,
  • And yet I found it sweet and fair.
  • Thence to a richer growth I came,
  • Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,
  • 10 The honeysuckles sprang by scores,
  • Not harried like my single stem,
  • All virgin lamps of scent and dew.
  • So from my hand that first I threw,
  • Yet plucked not any more of them.
Image of page 111 page: 111
THE WOODSPURGE.
  • The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
  • Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
  • I had walked on at the wind's will,—
  • I sat now, for the wind was still.
  • Between my knees my forehead was,—
  • My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
  • My hair was over in the grass,
  • My naked ears heard the day pass.
  • Mine eyes, wide open, had the run
  • 10Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
  • Among those few, out of the sun,
  • The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.
  • From perfect grief there need not be
  • Wisdom or even memory:
  • One thing then learnt remains to me,—
  • The woodspurge has a cup of three.
Image of page 112 page: 112
LOVE-LILY.
  • Between the hands, between the brows,
  • Between the lips of Love-Lily,
  • A spirit is born whose birth endows
  • My blood with fire to burn through me;
  • Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
  • Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
  • At whose least touch my colour flies,
  • And whom my life grows faint to hear.
  • Within the voice, within the heart,
  • 10 Within the mind of Love-Lily,
  • A spirit is born who lifts apart
  • His tremulous wings and looks at me;
  • Who on my mouth his finger lays,
  • And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
  • That Eden of Love's watered ways
  • Whose winds and spirits worship her.
  • Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
  • Kisses and words of Love-Lily,—
  • Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
  • 20 Till riotous longing rest in me!
  • Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
  • But find in her its gracious goal,
  • Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
  • Nor Love her body from her soul.
Image of page 113 page: 113
Sig. I
FIRST LOVE REMEMBERED.
  • Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er
  • It be, a holy place:
  • The thought still brings my soul such grace
  • As morning meadows wear.
  • Whether it still be small and light,
  • A maid's who dreams alone,
  • As from her orchard-gate the moon
  • Its ceiling showed at night:
  • Or whether, in a shadow dense
  • 10 As nuptial hymns invoke,
  • Innocent maidenhood awoke
  • To married innocence:
  • There still the thanks unheard await
  • The unconscious gift bequeathed;
  • And there my soul this hour has breathed
  • An air inviolate.
Image of page 114 page: 114
THE MOON-STAR.
  • In a soft-complexioned sky,
  • Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
  • Have you seen Aurora fly
  • At the break of day?
  • So my maiden, so my modest may
  • Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
  • Lifts to look my way.
  • Where the inmost leaf is stirred
  • With the heart-beat of the grove,
  • 10 Have you heard a hidden bird
  • Cast her note above?
  • So my lady, so my lovely love,
  • Echoing Cupid's prompted word,
  • Makes a tune thereof.
  • Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
  • In the moon-wrack's ebb and tide,
  • Venus leap forth burning white,
  • Dian pale and hide?
  • So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride,
  • 20 One sweet night, when fear takes flight,
  • Shall leap against my side.
Image of page 115 page: 115
SUDDEN LIGHT.
  • I have been here before,
  • But when or how I cannot tell:
  • I know the grass beyond the door,
  • The sweet keen smell,
  • The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.
  • You have been mine before,—
  • How long ago I may not know:
  • But just when at that swallow's soar
  • Your neck turned so,
  • 10Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
  • Then, now,—perchance again! . . . .
  • O round mine eyes your tresses shake!
  • Shall we not lie as we have lain
  • Thus for Love's sake,
  • And sleep, and wake, yet never break the chain?
Image of page 116 page: 116
A LITTLE WHILE.
  • A little while a little love
  • The hour yet bears for thee and me
  • Who have not drawn the veil to see
  • If still our heaven be lit above.
  • Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
  • Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
  • And I have heard the night-wind cry
  • And deemed its speech mine own.
  • A little while a little love
  • 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
  • Whose bower is not yet ruinous
  • Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
  • Only across the shaken boughs
  • We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
  • And deep in both our hearts they rouse
  • One wail for thee and me.
  • A little while a little love
  • May yet be ours who have not said
  • The word it makes our eyes afraid
  • 20To know that each is thinking of.
  • Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
  • In smiles a little season yet:
  • I'll tell thee when the end is come
  • How we may best forget.
Image of page 117 page: 117
THE SONG OF THE BOWER.
  • Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
  • Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
  • Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
  • Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
  • Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
  • Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
  • Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
  • Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.
  • Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
  • 10 What does it find there that knows it again?
  • There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
  • Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
  • Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,—
  • What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
  • Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
  • And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.
  • What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
  • This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
  • Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
  • 20 Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
  • Image of page 118 page: 118
  • Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!)
  • Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
  • My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
  • My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.
  • What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,—
  • My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
  • Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—
  • Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
  • Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
  • 30 The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
  • Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
  • The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.
  • Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
  • One day when all days are one day to me?—
  • Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power,’—
  • Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
  • Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
  • So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
  • Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. . . .
  • 40 Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?
Image of page 119 page: 119
PENUMBRA.
  • I did not look upon her eyes,
  • (Though scarcely seen, with no surprise,
  • 'Mid many eyes a single look,)
  • Because they should not gaze rebuke,
  • Thenceforth, from stars in sky and brook.
  • I did not take her by the hand,
  • (Though little was to understand
  • From touch of hand all friends might take,)
  • Because it should not prove a flake
  • 10Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.
  • I did not listen to her voice,
  • (Though none had noted, where at choice
  • All might rejoice in listening,)
  • Because no such a thing should cling
  • In the sea-wind at evening.
  • I did not cross her shadow once,
  • (Though from the hollow west the sun's
  • Last shadow runs along so far,)
  • Because in June it should not bar
  • 20My ways, at noon when fevers are.
Image of page 120 page: 120
  • They told me she was there: but I,
  • Who saw her not, did fear and fly
  • The means brought nigh of seeing her.
  • Thus must this day be bitterer,
  • I felt; yet did not speak nor stir.
  • So nightly shall the crows troop home
  • One less; one less the wailings come
  • From tongues of foam that chafe the sand;
  • One less, from sleep's dumb quaking land,
  • 30The dreams shall at my bed's foot stand.
Image of page 121 page: 121
A NEW YEAR'S BURDEN.
  • Along the grass sweet airs are blown
  • Our way this day in Spring.
  • Of all the songs that we have known
  • Now which one shall we sing?
  • Not that, my love, ah no!—
  • Not this, my love? why, so!—
  • Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.
  • The grove is all a pale frail mist,
  • The new year sucks the sun.
  • 10Of all the kisses that we kissed
  • Now which shall be the one?
  • Not that, my love, ah no!—
  • Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
  • For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!
  • The branches cross above our eyes,
  • The skies are in a net:
  • And what's the thing beneath the skies
  • We two would most forget?
  • Not birth, my love, no, no,—
  • 20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
  • The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.
Image of page 122 page: 122
EVEN SO.
  • So it is, my dear.
  • All such things touch secret strings
  • For heavy hearts to hear.
  • So it is, my dear.
  • Very like indeed:
  • Sea and sky, afar, on high,
  • Sand and strewn seaweed,—
  • Very like indeed.
  • But the sea stands spread
  • 10As one wall with the flat skies,
  • Where the lean black craft like flies
  • Seem well-nigh stagnated,
  • Soon to drop off dead.
  • Seemed it so to us
  • When I was thine and thou wast mine,
  • And all these things were thus,
  • But all our world in us?
  • Could we be so now?
  • Not if all beneath heaven's pall
  • 20 Lay dead but I and thou,
  • Could we be so now!
Image of page 123 page: 123
BRIDAL BIRTH.
  • As when desire, long darkling, dawns, and first
  • The mother looks upon the newborn child,
  • Even so my Lady stood at gaze and smiled
  • When her soul knew at length the Love it nursed.
  • Born with her life, creature of poignant thirst
  • And exquisite hunger, at her heart Love lay
  • Quickening in darkness, till a voice that day
  • Cried on him, and bonds of birth were burst.
  • Now, shielded in his wings, our faces yearn
  • 10 Together, as his fullgrown feet now range
  • The grove, and his warm hands our couch prepare:
  • Till to his song our bodiless souls in turn
  • Be born his children, when Death's nuptial change
  • Leaves us for light the halo of his hair.
Image of page 124 page: 124
FLAMMIFERA.
  • O Thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
  • Unto my lips dost evermore present
  • The body and blood of Love in sacrament;
  • Whom I have neared and felt thy breath to be
  • The inmost incense of his sanctuary;
  • Who without speech hast owned him, and intent
  • Upon his will, thy life with mine hast blent,
  • And murmured o'er the cup, Remember me!—
  • O what from thee the grace, for me the prize,
  • 10 And what to Love the glory,—when the whole
  • Of the deep stair thou tread'st to the dim shoal
  • And weary water of the place of sighs,
  • And there dost work deliverance, as thine eyes
  • Draw up my prisoned spirit to thy soul!
Image of page 125 page: 125
LOVESIGHT.
  • When do I see thee most, beloved one?
  • When in the light the spirits of mine eyes
  • Before thy face, their altar, solemnize
  • The worship of that Love through thee made known?
  • Or when in the dusk hours, (we two alone,)
  • Close-kissed and eloquent of still replies
  • Thy twilight-hidden glimmering visage lies,
  • And my soul only sees thy soul its own?
  • O love, my love! if I no more should see
  • 10Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee,
  • Nor image of thine eyes in any spring,—
  • How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope
  • The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope,
  • The wind of Death's imperishable wing?
Image of page 126 page: 126
THE KISS.
  • What smouldering senses in death's sick delay
  • Or seizure of malign vicissitude
  • Can rob this body of honour, or denude
  • This soul of wedding-raiment worn to-day?
  • For lo! even now my lady's lips did play
  • With these my lips such consonant interlude
  • As laurelled Orpheus longed for when he wooed
  • The half-drawn hungering face with that last lay.
  • I was a child beneath her touch,—a man
  • 10 When breast to breast we clung, even I and she,—
  • A spirit when her spirit looked through me,—
  • A god when all our life-breath met to fan
  • Our life-blood, till love's emulous ardours ran,
  • Fire within fire, desire in deity.
Image of page 127 page: 127
NUPTIAL SLEEP.
  • At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart:
  • And as the last slow sudden drops are shed
  • From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled,
  • So singly flagged the pulses of each heart.
  • Their bosoms sundered, with the opening start
  • Of married flowers to either side outspread
  • From the knit stem; yet still their mouths, burnt red,
  • Fawned on each other where they lay apart.
  • Sleep sank them lower than the tide of dreams,
  • 10 And their dreams watched them sink, and slid away.
  • Slowly their souls swam up again, through gleams
  • Of watered light and dull drowned waifs of day;
  • Till from some wonder of new woods and streams
  • He woke, and wondered more: for there she lay.
Image of page 128 page: 128
SUPREME SURRENDER.
  • To all the spirits of love that wander by
  • Along the love-sown fallowfield of sleep
  • My lady lies apparent; and the deep
  • Calls to the deep; and no man sees but I.
  • The bliss so long afar, at length so nigh,
  • Rests there attained. Methinks proud Love must weep
  • When Fate's control doth from his harvest reap
  • The sacred hour for which the years did sigh.
  • First touched, the hand now warm around my neck
  • 10 Taught memory long to mock desire: and lo!
  • Across my breast the abandoned hair doth flow,
  • Where one shorn tress long stirred the longing ache:
  • And next the heart that trembled for its sake
  • Lies the queen-heart in sovereign overthrow.
Image of page 129 page: 129
Sig. K
LOVE'S LOVERS.
  • Some ladies love the jewels in Love's zone
  • And gold-tipped darts he hath for painless play
  • In idle scornful hours he flings away;
  • And some that listen to his lute's soft tone
  • Do love to deem the silver praise their own;
  • Some prize his blindfold sight; and there be they
  • Who kissed his wings which brought him yesterday
  • And thank his wings to-day that he is flown.
  • My lady only loves the heart of Love:
  • 10 Therefore Love's heart, my lady, hath for thee
  • His bower of unimagined flower and tree:
  • There kneels he now, and all-anhungered of
  • Thine eyes grey-lit in shadowing hair above,
  • Seals with thy mouth his immortality.
Image of page 130 page: 130
PASSION AND WORSHIP.
  • One flame-winged brought a white-winged harp-player
  • Even where my lady and I lay all alone;
  • Saying: ‘Behold, this minstrel is unknown;
  • Bid him depart, for I am minstrel here:
  • Only my strains are to Love's dear ones dear.’
  • Then said I: ‘'Mid thine hautboy's rapturous tone
  • Unto my lady still this harp makes moan,
  • And still she deems the cadence deep and clear.’
  • Then said my lady: ‘Thou art Passion of Love,
  • 10 And this Love's Worship: both he plights to me.
  • Thy mastering music walks the sunlit sea:
  • But where wan water trembles in the grove
  • And the wan moon is all the light thereof,
  • This harp still makes my name its voluntary.’
Image of page 131 page: 131
THE PORTRAIT.
  • O Lord of all compassionate control,
  • O Love! let this my Lady's picture glow
  • Under my hand to praise her name, and show
  • Even of her inner self the perfect whole:
  • That he who seeks her beauty's furthest goal,
  • Beyond the light that the sweet glances throw
  • And refluent wave of the sweet smile, may know
  • The very sky and sea-line of her soul.
  • Lo! it is done. Above the long lithe throat
  • 10 The mouth's mould testifies of voice and kiss,
  • The shadowed eyes remember and foresee.
  • Her face is made her shrine. Let all men note
  • That in all years (O Love, thy gift is this!)
  • They that would look on her must come to me.
Image of page 132 page: 132
THE BIRTH-BOND.
  • Have you not noted, in some family
  • Where two were born of a first marriage-bed,
  • How still they own their gracious bond, though fed
  • And nursed on the forgotten breast and knee?—
  • How to their father's children they shall be
  • In act and thought of one goodwill; but each
  • Shall for the other have, in silence speech,
  • And in a word complete community?
  • Even so, when first I saw you, seemed it, love,
  • 10 That among souls allied to mine was yet
  • One nearer kindred than life hinted of.
  • O born with me somewhere that men forget,
  • And though in years of sight and sound unmet,
  • Known for my soul's birth-partner well enough!
Image of page 133 page: 133
LOVE'S BAUBLES.
  • I stood where Love in brimming armfuls bore
  • Slight wanton flowers and foolish toys of fruit:
  • And round him ladies thronged in warm pursuit,
  • Fingered and lipped and proffered the strange store:
  • And from one hand the petal and the core
  • Savoured of sleep; and cluster and curled shoot
  • Seemed from another hand like shame's salute,—
  • Gifts that I felt my cheek was blushing for.
  • At last Love bade my Lady give the same:
  • 10 And as I looked, the dew was light thereon;
  • And as I took them, at her touch they shone
  • With inmost heaven-hue of the heart of flame.
  • And then Love said: ‘Lo! when the hand is hers,
  • Follies of love are love's true ministers.’
Image of page 134 page: 134
WINGED HOURS.
  • Each hour until we meet is as a bird
  • That wings from far his gradual way along
  • The rustling covert of my soul,—his song
  • Still loudlier trilled through leaves more deeply stirr'd:
  • But at the hour of meeting, a clear word
  • Is every note he sings, in Love's own tongue;
  • Yet, Love, thou know'st the sweet strain suffers wrong,
  • Through our contending kisses oft unheard.
  • What of that hour at last, when for her sake
  • 10 No wing may fly to me nor song may flow;
  • When, wandering round my life unleaved, I know
  • The bloodied feathers scattered in the brake,
  • And think how she, far from me, with like eyes
  • Sees through the untuneful bough the wingless skies?
Image of page 135 page: 135
THE LOVE-MOON.
  • ‘When that dead face, bowered in the furthest years,
  • Which once was all the life years held for thee,
  • Can now scarce bid the tides of memory
  • Cast on thy soul a little spray of tears,—
  • How canst thou gaze into these eyes of hers
  • Whom now thy heart delights in, and not see
  • Within each orb Love's philtred euphrasy
  • Make them of buried troth remembrancers?’
  • ‘Nay, pitiful Love, nay, loving Pity! Well
  • 10 Thou knowest that in these twain I have confess'd
  • Two very voices of thy summoning bell.
  • Nay, Master, shall not Death make manifest
  • In these the culminant changes which approve
  • The love-moon that must light my soul to Love?’
Image of page 136 page: 136
THE MORROW'S MESSAGE.
  • ‘Thou Ghost,’ I said, ‘and is thy name To-day?—
  • Yesterday's son, with such an abject brow!—
  • And can To-morrow be more pale than thou?’
  • While yet I spoke, the silence answered: ‘Yea,
  • Henceforth our issue is all grieved and grey,
  • And each beforehand makes such poor avow
  • As of old leaves beneath the budding bough
  • Or night-drift that the sundawn shreds away.’
  • Then cried I: ‘Mother of many malisons,
  • 10 O Earth, receive me to thy dusty bed!’
  • But therewithal the tremulous silence said:
  • ‘Lo! Love yet bids thy lady greet thee once:—
  • Yea, twice,—whereby thy life is still the sun's;
  • And thrice,—whereby the shadow of death is dead.’
Image of page 137 page: 137
SLEEPLESS DREAMS.
  • Girt in dark growths, yet glimmering with one star,
  • O night desirous as the nights of youth!
  • Why should my heart within thy spell, forsooth,
  • Now beat, as the bride's finger-pulses are
  • Quickened within the girdling golden bar?
  • What wings are these that fan my pillow smooth?
  • And why does Sleep, waved back by Joy and Ruth,
  • Tread softly round and gaze at me from far?
  • Nay, night deep-leaved! And would Love feign in thee
  • 10 Some shadowy palpitating grove that bears
  • Rest for man's eyes and music for his ears?
  • O lonely night! art thou not known to me,
  • A thicket hung with masks of mockery
  • And watered with the wasteful warmth of tears?
Image of page 138 page: 138
SECRET PARTING.
  • Because our talk was of the cloud-control
  • And moon-track of the journeying face of Fate,
  • Her tremulous kisses faltered at love's gate
  • And her eyes dreamed against a distant goal:
  • But soon, remembering her how brief the whole
  • Of joy, which its own hours annihilate,
  • Her set gaze gathered, thirstier than of late,
  • And as she kissed, her mouth became her soul.
  • Thence in what ways we wandered, and how strove
  • 10 To build with fire-tried vows the piteous home
  • Which memory haunts and whither sleep may roam,—
  • They only know for whom the roof of Love
  • Is the still-seated secret of the grove,
  • Nor spire may rise nor bell be heard therefrom.
Image of page 139 page: 139
PARTED LOVE.
  • What shall be said of this embattled day
  • And armed occupation of this night
  • By all thy foes beleaguered,—now when sight
  • Nor sound denotes the loved one far away?
  • Of these thy vanquished hours what shalt thou say,—
  • As every sense to which she dealt delight
  • Now labours lonely o'er the stark noon-height
  • To reach the sunset's desolate disarray?
  • Stand still, fond fettered wretch! while Memory's art
  • 10 Parades the Past before thy face, and lures
  • Thy spirit to her passionate portraitures:
  • Till the tempestuous tide-gates flung apart
  • Flood with wild will the hollows of thy heart,
  • And thy heart rends thee, and thy body endures.
Image of page 140 page: 140
BROKEN MUSIC.
  • The mother will not turn, who thinks she hears
  • Her nursling's speech first grow articulate;
  • But breathless with averted eyes elate
  • She sits, with open lips and open ears,
  • That it may call her twice. 'Mid doubts and fears
  • Thus oft my soul has hearkened; till the song,
  • A central moan for days, at length found tongue,
  • And the sweet music welled and the sweet tears.
  • But now, whatever while the soul is fain
  • 10 To list that wonted murmur, as it were
  • The speech-bound sea-shell's low importunate strain,—
  • No breath of song, thy voice alone is there,
  • O bitterly beloved! and all her gain
  • Is but the pang of unpermitted prayer.
Image of page 161 page: 161
Sig. M
CASSANDRA.

( Two Sonnets for a Design.*)
I.
  • Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
  • Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine hands, and cry
  • From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
  • See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
  • He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
  • Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
  • This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
  • The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.
  • What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
  • 10 Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
  • On tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave?
  • He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
  • Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
  • Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.
Transcribed Footnote (page 161):

* The subject shows Cassandra prophesying among her kindred,

as Hector leaves them for his last battle. They are on the platform

of a fortress, from which the Trojan troops are marching out. Helen

is arming Paris; Priam soothes Hecuba; and Andromache holds

the child to her bosom.

Image of page 162 page: 162
II.
  • ‘O Hector, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee
  • Two chariots wait, in Troy long bless'd and curs'd;
  • And Grecian spear and Phrygian sand athirst
  • Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
  • Lo! long upon our hearth the brand had we,
  • Lit for the roof-tree's ruin: and to-day
  • The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
  • And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.
  • O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
  • 10 Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
  • Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
  • Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
  • Within thy curls at last, and while Troy glows
  • Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.’
Image of page 165 page: 165
DANTIS TENEBRÆ.

( In Memory of my Father. )
  • And didst thou know indeed, when at the font
  • Together with thy name thou gav'st me his,
  • That also on thy son must Beatrice
  • Decline her eyes according to her wont,
  • Accepting me to be of those that haunt
  • The vale of magical sweet mysteries
  • Where to the hills her poet's foot-track lies
  • And wisdom's living fountain to his chaunt
  • Trembles in music? This is that steep land
  • 10 Where he that holds his journey stands at gaze
  • Tow'rd sunset, when the clouds like a new height
  • Seem piled to climb. These things I understand:
  • For here, where day still soothes my lifted face,
  • On thy bowed head, my father, fell the night.
Image of page 166 page: 166
SAINT LUKE THE PAINTER.
  • Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
  • For he it was (the aged legends say)
  • Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray.
  • Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist
  • Of devious symbols: but soon having wist
  • How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day
  • Are symbols also in some deeper way,
  • She looked through these to God and was God's priest.
  • And if, past noon, her toil began to irk,
  • 10And she sought talismans, and turned in vain
  • To soulless self-reflections of man's skill,—
  • Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still
  • Kneel in the latter grass to pray again,
  • Ere the night cometh and she may not work.
Image of page 167 page: 167
AUTUMN IDLENESS.
  • This sunlight shames November where he grieves
  • In dead red leaves, and will not let him shun
  • The day, though bough with bough be over-run:
  • But with a blessing every glade receives
  • High salutation; while from hillock-eaves
  • The deer gaze calling, dappled white and dun,
  • As if, being foresters of old, the sun
  • Had marked them with the shade of forest-leaves.
  • Here dawn to-day unveiled her magic glass;
  • 10 Here noon now gives the thirst and takes the dew;
  • Till eve bring rest when other good things pass.
  • And here the lost hours the lost hours renew
  • While I still lead my shadow o'er the grass,
  • Nor know, for longing, that which I should do.
Image of page 168 page: 168
FAREWELL TO THE GLEN.
  • Sweet stream-fed glen, why say ‘farewell’ to thee
  • Who far'st so well and find'st for ever smooth
  • The brow of Time where man may read no ruth?
  • Nay, do thou rather say ‘farewell’ to me,
  • Who now fare forth in bitterer fantasy
  • Than erst was mine where other shade might soothe
  • By other streams, what while in fragrant youth
  • The bliss of being sad made melancholy.
  • And yet, farewell! For better shalt thou fare
  • 10 When children bathe sweet faces in thy flow
  • And happy lovers blend sweet shadows there
  • In hours to come, than when an hour ago
  • Thine echoes had but one man's sighs to bear
  • And thy trees whispered what he feared to know.
Image of page 171 page: 171
ON THE SITE OF A MULBERRY-TREE;

Planted by Wm. Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.
  • This tree, here fall'n, no common birth or death
  • Shared with its kind. The world's enfranchised son,
  • Who found the trees of Life and Knowledge one,
  • Here set it, frailer than his laurel-wreath.
  • Shall not the wretch whose hand it fell beneath
  • Rank also singly—the supreme unhung?
  • Lo! Sheppard, Turpin, pleading with black tongue
  • This viler thief's unsuffocated breath!
  • We'll search thy glossary, Shakspeare! whence almost,
  • 10 And whence alone, some name shall be reveal'd
  • For this deaf drudge, to whom no length of ears
  • Sufficed to catch the music of the spheres;
  • Whose soul is carrion now,—too mean to yield
  • Some tailor's ninth allotment of a ghost.
Stratford-on-Avon.
Image of page 172 page: 172
A LAST CONFESSION.

( Regno Lombardo-Veneto, 1848.)

  • Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
  • Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
  • That they might hate another girl to death
  • Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
  • I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.
  • Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
  • That day in going to meet her,—that last day
  • For the last time, she said;—of all the love
  • And all the hopeless hope that she might change
  • 10And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
  • At places we both knew along the road,
  • Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
  • Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
  • So close they gathered round me—they would all
  • Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
  • To plead my cause with her against herself
  • So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
  • You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
  • Image of page 173 page: 173
  • And only then, if God can pardon me.
  • 20What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.
  • I passed a village-fair upon my road,
  • And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
  • Some little present, which might prove that day
  • Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
  • A parting gift. And there it was I bought
  • The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.
  • That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
  • For certain, it must be a parting gift.
  • And, standing silent now at last, I looked
  • 30Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
  • Still trying hard to din into my ears
  • Some speech it knew which still might change her heart
  • If only it could make me understand.
  • One moment thus. Another, and her face
  • Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
  • So that I thought, if now she were to speak
  • I could not hear her. Then again I knew
  • All, as we stood together on the sand
  • At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.
  • 40 ‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
  • While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
  • ‘Take it and keep it for my sake,’ I said,
  • Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
  • Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
  • Only she put it by from her and laughed.
Image of page 174 page: 174
  • Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
  • But God was there and heard. Father, will God
  • Remember all? He heard her when she laughed.
  • It was another laugh than the sweet sound
  • 50Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
  • Eleven years before, when first I found her
  • Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
  • Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
  • Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
  • She might have served a painter to pourtray
  • That heavenly child which in the latter days
  • Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
  • I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
  • And hardly fed; and so her words at first
  • 60Seemed fitful like the talking of the trees
  • And voices in the air that knew my name.
  • And I remember that I sat me down
  • Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
  • Must be all over or had never been,
  • We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
  • Her parents both were gone away from her.
  • I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
  • But when I asked her this, she looked again
  • Into my face, and said that yestereve
  • 70They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
  • And gave her all the bread they had with them,
  • And then had gone together up the hill
  • Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
  • Into the great red light: ‘and so,’ she said,
  • Image of page 175 page: 175
  • ‘I have come up here too; and when this evening
  • They step out of the light as they stepped in,
  • I shall be here to kiss them.’ And she laughed.
  • Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
  • And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
  • 80When last I had been there a month ago,
  • Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed
  • By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
  • For wives and mothers walked the public street,
  • Telling their husbands how, if they still feared
  • To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
  • Till they had earned it there. So then this child
  • Was piteous to me; for all told me then
  • Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
  • To man's or to the Church's charity,
  • 90Because of the great famine, rather than
  • To watch her growing thin between their knees.
  • With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
  • And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
  • And all my childhood found me on the hills;
  • And so I took her with me.
  • I was young,
  • Scarce man then, Father; but the cause which gave
  • The wounds I die of now had brought me then
  • Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
  • As any hiding hunted man must live.
  • 100It was no easy thing to keep a child
  • In safety; for herself it was not safe,
  • And doubled my own danger: but I knew
  • Image of page 176 page: 176
  • That God would help me.
  • Yet a little while
  • Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
  • I have been speaking to you of some matters
  • There was no need to speak of, have I not?
  • You do not know how clearly those things stood
  • Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
  • Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
  • 110Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
  • Clearest where furthest off.
  • I told you how
  • She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
  • A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
  • I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
  • I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
  • Where women walked whose painted images
  • I have seen with candles round them in the church.
  • They bent this way and that, one to another,
  • Playing: and over the long golden hair
  • 120Of each there floated like a ring of fire
  • Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose
  • Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
  • As if a window had been opened in heaven
  • For God to give his blessing from, before
  • This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
  • I thought our world was setting, and the sun
  • Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
  • The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
  • Then all the blessed maidens who were there
  • 130Stood up together, as it were a voice
  • Image of page 177 page: 177
    Sig. N
  • That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
  • And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
  • For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
  • To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
  • And looking round, I saw as usual
  • That she was standing there with her long locks
  • Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.
  • For always when I see her now, she laughs.
  • And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
  • 140The life of this dead terror; as in days
  • When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
  • Something of those days yet before the end.
  • I brought her from the city—one such day
  • When she was still a merry loving child,—
  • The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
  • A little image of a flying Love
  • Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
  • A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
  • And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
  • 150Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
  • And why the arrow. What I knew I told
  • Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
  • And when she heard that he could rule the loves
  • Of men and women, still she shook her head
  • And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
  • ‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
  • And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
  • Fronting her little bed; and then again
  • Image of page 178 page: 178
  • She needs must fix him there herself, because
  • 160I gave him to her and she loved him so,
  • And he should make her love me better yet,
  • If women loved the more, the more they grew.
  • But the fit place upon the wall was high
  • For her, and so I held her in my arms:
  • And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
  • I gave her for a hammer slipped away
  • As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
  • And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
  • Just as she hung the image on the nail,
  • 170It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
  • And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
  • The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
  • And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
  • I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
  • ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
  • Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
  • The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
  • And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
  • She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
  • 180You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.
  • Another later thing comes back to me.
  • 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
  • When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
  • Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
  • (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
  • Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
  • His year's doomed hundreds daintily, eachmonth
  • Image of page 179 page: 179
  • Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
  • Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
  • 190That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
  • Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
  • The first I heard of it was a chance shot
  • In the street here and there, and on the stones
  • A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
  • Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
  • My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
  • Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
  • And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
  • Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
  • 200A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
  • So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.
  • For now, being always with her, the first love
  • I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
  • I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
  • Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
  • The first time I perceived this, I remember,
  • Was once when after hunting I came home
  • Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
  • And sat down at my feet upon the floor
  • 210Leaning against my side. But when I felt
  • Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
  • So high as to be laid upon my heart,
  • I turned and looked upon my darling there
  • And marked for the first time how tall she was;
  • And my heart beat with so much violence
  • Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
  • Image of page 180 page: 180
  • But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
  • And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
  • And when, remembering all and counting back
  • 220The time, I made out fourteen years for her
  • And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
  • As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
  • And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me
  • If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
  • And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
  • Beneath the growing throat the breasts half globed
  • Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.
  • Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
  • Her image, Father, is not like the sights
  • 230Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
  • Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
  • Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
  • Her face was ever pale, as when one stoops
  • Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
  • And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
  • Deep-serried locks, the darkness of the cloud
  • Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
  • Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
  • Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
  • 240The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
  • That face made wonderful with night and day.
  • Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
  • Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
  • She had, that clung a little where they touched
  • And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
  • Image of page 181 page: 181
  • That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
  • The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
  • Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
  • Which under the dark lashes evermore
  • 250Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
  • Between the water and the willow-leaves,
  • And the shade quivers till he wins the light.
  • I was a moody comrade to her then,
  • For all the love I bore her. Italy,
  • The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
  • Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
  • To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
  • Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
  • Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
  • 260Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
  • Had yielded his. And this had come to be
  • A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
  • To wreak, all things together that a man
  • Needs for his blood to ripen: till at times
  • All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
  • To see such life pass muster and be deemed
  • Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
  • To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
  • Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
  • 270And though she ruled me always, I remember
  • That once when I was thus and she still kept
  • Leaping about the place and laughing, I
  • Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
  • And putting her two hands into my breast
  • Image of page 182 page: 182
  • Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
  • 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
  • I thought that song forgotten out of mind,
  • And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
  • All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
  • 280Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
  • Holding the platter, when the children run
  • To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—
Transcribed Footnote (page 182):
  • * She wept, sweet lady,
  • And said in weeping:
  • ‘What spell is keeping
  • The stars so steady?
  • Why does the power
  • Of the sun's noon-hour
  • To sleep so move me?
  • And the moon in heaven,
  • Stained where she passes
  • 10 As a worn-out glass is,—
  • Wearily driven,
  • Why walks she above me?
  • ‘Stars, moon, and sun too,
  • I'm tired of either
  • And all together!
  • Whom speak they unto
  • That I should listen?
  • For very surely,
  • Though my arms and shoulders
  • 20 Dazzle beholders,
  • And my eyes glisten,
  • All's nothing purely!
  • What are words said for
  • At all about them,
  • If he they are made for
  • Can do without them?’
  • She laughed, sweet lady,
  • And said in laughing:
  • ‘His hand clings half in


  • Column Break


  • 30 My own already!
  • Oh! do you love me?
  • Oh! speak of passion
  • In no new fashion,
  • No loud inveighings,
  • But the old sayings
  • You once said of me.
  • ‘You said: “As summer,
  • Through boughs grown brittle,
  • Comes back a little
  • 40 Ere frosts benumb her,—
  • So bring'st thou to me
  • All leaves and flowers,
  • Though autumn's gloomy
  • To-day in the bowers.”
  • ‘Oh! does he love me,
  • When my voice teaches
  • The very speeches
  • He then spoke of me?
  • Alas! what flavour
  • 50 Still with me lingers?’
  • (But she laughed as my kisses
  • Glowed in her fingers
  • With love's old blisses.)
  • ‘Oh! what one favour
  • Remains to woo him,
  • Whose whole poor savour
  • Belongs not to him?’
  • La bella donna*
  • Piangendo disse:
  • Image of page 183 page: 183
  • ‘Come son fisse
  • Le stelle in cielo!
  • Quel fiato anelo
  • Dello stanco sole,
  • Quanto m'assonna!
  • 290E la luna, macchiata
  • Come uno specchio
  • Logoro e vecchio,—
  • Faccia affannata,
  • Che cosa vuole?
  • ‘Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
  • Ciascun m'annoja
  • E m'annojano insieme;
  • Non me ne preme
  • Nè ci prendo gioja.
  • 300E veramente,
  • Che le spalle sien franche
  • E le braccia bianche
  • E il seno caldo e tondo,
  • Non mi fa niente.
  • Chè cosa al mondo
  • Posso più far di questi
  • Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?’
  • La donna rise
  • E riprese ridendo:—
  • 310‘Questa mano che prendo
  • E dunque mia?
  • Tu m'ami dunque?
  • Dimmelo ancora,
  • Non in modo qualunque,
  • Ma le parole
  • Belle e precise
  • Che dicesti pria.
  • Siccome suole
  • La state talora
  • Image of page 184 page: 184
  • 320(Dicesti) un qualche istante
  • Tornare innanzi inverno,
  • Così tu fai ch'io scerno
  • Le foglie tutte quante,
  • Ben ch'io certo tenessi
  • Per passato l'autunno.
  • ‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
  • Io debbo insegnargli
  • Quei cari detti istessi
  • Ch'ei mi disse una volta!
  • 330Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
  • (Ma ridea piano piano
  • Dei baci in sulla mano,)
  • ‘Ch'ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?’
  • That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
  • To listen, and such words still left to say!
  • Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
  • As on the very day she sang to me;
  • When, having done, she took out of my hand
  • Something that I had played with all the while
  • 340And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
  • Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
  • ‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.
  • But these are foolish tales. How should I show
  • The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
  • More and more brightly?—when for long years now
  • The very flame that flew about the heart,
  • And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
  • Image of page 185 page: 185
  • The lapping blaze of hell's environment
  • Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.
  • 350 Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
  • Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
  • Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
  • It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
  • We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
  • If home we had: and in the Duomo there
  • I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
  • An Image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
  • In marble by some great Italian hand
  • In the great days when she and Italy
  • 360Sat on one throne together: and to her
  • And to none else my loved one told her heart.
  • She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
  • Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
  • They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
  • (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
  • Made manifest herself in womanhood.
  • Father, the day I speak of was the first
  • For weeks that I had borne her company
  • Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
  • 370Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
  • Of some impenetrable restlessness
  • Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
  • And as we entered there that day, I bent
  • My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
  • Within my heart, ‘Oh turn her heart to me!’
  • Image of page 186 page: 186
  • And so I left her to her prayers, and went
  • To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
  • Where in the sacristy the light still falls
  • Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
  • 380On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
  • The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
  • But coming back, I wondered when I saw
  • That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
  • Alone without her; until further off,
  • Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
  • Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
  • I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
  • She rose, and side by side we left the church.
  • I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
  • 390Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
  • Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
  • And said: ‘The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
  • ‘She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.’
  • Then silent to the soul I held my way:
  • And from the fountains of the public place
  • Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
  • Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
  • And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
  • She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
  • 400And hands held light before her; and the face
  • Which long had made a day in my life's night
  • Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
  • Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
  • Beyond my heart to the world made for her.
Image of page 187 page: 187
  • Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
  • The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
  • Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
  • Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,
  • The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
  • 410With his white face, only the two were red
  • As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
  • White for a livery, that the blood may show
  • Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
  • Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.
  • Give me a draught of water in that cup;
  • My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
  • But you must hear. If you mistake my words
  • And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
  • Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
  • 420And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
  • Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
  • With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
  • Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
  • Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
  • 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
  • Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.
  • You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
  • But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
  • Beginning, I have come to the same point
  • 430And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
  • Which will not let you understand my tale.
  • Image of page 188 page: 188
  • It is that then we have her with us here,
  • As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
  • To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
  • Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
  • Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
  • And when she wrung them round over the floor,
  • I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;
  • So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
  • 440Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
  • Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
  • Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
  • Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.
  • At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
  • The sand is black and red. The black was black
  • When what was spilt that day sank into it,
  • And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
  • This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

  • What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
  • 450How shall I make you know? You have not known
  • The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
  • Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
  • Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
  • Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
  • How the change happened between her and me.
  • Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
  • When most my heart was full of her; and still
  • Image of page 189 page: 189
  • In every corner of myself I sought
  • To find what service failed her; and no less
  • 460Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
  • What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
  • For one first year of all eternity
  • All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
  • And then when most your soul is blent with it
  • And all yields song together,—then it stands
  • O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
  • Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
  • Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
  • Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
  • 470How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
  • Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
  • That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
  • ‘God! what is left but hell for company,
  • But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
  • Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
  • Even so I stood the day her empty heart
  • Left her place empty in our home, while yet
  • I knew not why she went nor where she went
  • Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
  • 480When to my prayers at last one sight of her
  • Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
  • With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.
  • O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you
  • Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
  • Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
  • Image of page 190 page: 190
  • Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
  • We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
  • As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
  • My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
  • 490Your broken love!’
  • My Father, have I not
  • Yet told you the last things of that last day
  • On which I went to meet her by the sea?
  • O God, O God! but I must tell you all.
  • Midway upon my journey, when I stopped
  • To buy the dagger at the village fair,
  • I saw two cursed rats about the place
  • I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
  • Was not yet over; for three hours to come
  • I prized my life: and so I looked around
  • 500For safety. A poor painted mountebank
  • Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.
  • I knew he must have heard my name, so I
  • Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
  • And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
  • Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
  • And brought me out next minute with my face
  • All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
  • And there I handed him his cups and balls
  • And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
  • 510For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
  • And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
  • Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
  • Image of page 191 page: 191
  • A woman laughed above me. I looked up
  • And saw where a brown handsome harlot leaned
  • Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
  • Some man had come behind her in the room
  • And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
  • With that coarse empty laugh. I saw him there
  • Munching her neck with kisses, while the vine
  • 520Crawled in her back.
  • And three hours afterwards,
  • When she that I had run all risks to meet
  • Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
  • Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
  • Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
  • But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
  • (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
  • Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
  • Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
  • When I had offered her the little knife,
  • 530And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
  • And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?
  • ‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
  • ‘Take it and keep it.’ And then came a fire
  • That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood.
  • And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
  • The day was one red blindness; till it seemed
  • Within the whirling brain's entanglement
  • That she or I or all things bled to death.
  • And then I found her lying at my feet
  • Image of page 192 page: 192
  • 540And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
  • The look she gave me when she took the knife
  • Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
  • And fell, and her stiff bodice scooped the sand
  • Into her bosom.
  • And she keeps it, see,
  • Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
  • Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
  • For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
  • The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
  • A dagger as our women of the coast
  • 550Twist in their garters.
  • Father, I have done:
  • And from her side now she unwinds the thick
  • Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
  • But like the sand at Iglio does not change.
  • Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
  • I have told all: tell me at once what hope
  • Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
  • Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
  • She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
  • Soon, when she shows the crimson blade to God.
Image of page 193 page: 193
Sig. O
JENNY.

“Vengeance of Jenny's case! Fie on her! Never name her,

child!”—( Mrs. Quickly.)

  • Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
  • Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
  • Whose head upon my knee to-night
  • Rests for a while, as if grown light
  • With all our dances and the sound
  • To which the wild tunes spun you round:
  • Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
  • Of kisses which the blush between
  • Could hardly make much daintier:—Nay,
  • 10Poor flower left torn since yesterday
  • Until to-morrow leave you bare;
  • Poor handful of bright spring-water
  • Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face!—
  • Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
  • Thus with your head upon my knee;—
  • Whose person or whose purse may be
  • The lodestar of your reverie?
  • This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
  • A change from mine so full of books,
  • Image of page 194 page: 194
  • 20Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
  • So many captive hours of youth,—
  • The hours they thieve from day and night
  • To make one's cherished work come right,
  • And leave it wrong for all their theft,
  • Even as to-night my work was left:
  • Until I vowed that since my brain
  • And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
  • My feet should have some dancing too:—
  • And thus it was I met with you.
  • 30Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
  • For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
  • You seem too tired to get to bed.
  • It was a careless life I led
  • When rooms like this were scarce so strange
  • Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
  • The many aims or the few years?
  • Because to-night it all appears.
  • Something I do not know again.
  • The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
  • 40The cloud that made it turn and swim
  • While hour by hour the books grew dim.
  • Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
  • For all your wealth of loosened hair,
  • Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
  • And warm sweets open to the waist,
  • All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
  • You know not what a book you seem,
  • Image of page 195 page: 195
  • Half-read by lightning in a dream!
  • How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
  • 50And I should be ashamed to say:—
  • Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
  • But while my thought runs on like this
  • With wasteful whims more than enough,
  • I wonder what you're thinking of.
  • If of myself you think at all,
  • What is the thought?—conjectural
  • On sorry matters best unsolved?—
  • Or inly is each grace revolved
  • To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
  • 60To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
  • That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
  • And let you rest upon my knee.
  • For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
  • You're thankful for a little rest,—
  • Glad from the crush to rest within,
  • From the heart-sickness and the din
  • Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
  • Mocks you because your gown is rich;
  • And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
  • 70Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
  • Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
  • And other nights than yours bespeak;
  • And from the wise unchildish elf,
  • To schoolmate lesser than himself
  • Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
  • Image of page 196 page: 196
  • Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
  • From shame and shame's outbraving too,
  • Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
  • But most from the hatefulness of man
  • 80Who spares not to end what he began,
  • Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
  • Who, having used you at his will,
  • Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
  • I serve the dishes and the wine.
  • Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
  • I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
  • And do not let me think of you,
  • Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
  • What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
  • 90Your head there, so you do not sleep;
  • But that the weariness may pass
  • And leave you merry, take this glass.
  • Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
  • If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
  • Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!
  • Behold the lilies of the field,
  • They toil not neither do they spin;
  • (So doth the ancient text begin,—
  • Not of such rest as one of these
  • 100Can share.) Another rest and ease
  • Along each summer-sated path
  • From its new lord the garden hath,
  • Image of page 197 page: 197
  • Than that whose spring in blessings ran
  • Which praised the righteous husbandman,
  • Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
  • The lilies sickened unto death.
  • What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
  • Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
  • Like winter on the garden-bed.
  • 110But you had roses left in May,—
  • They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
  • But must your roses die, and those
  • Their purfelled buds that should unclose?
  • Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
  • Still red as from the broken heart,
  • And here's the naked stem of thorns.
  • Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
  • As yet of winter. Sickness here
  • Or want alone could waken fear,—
  • 120Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
  • Except when there may rise unsought
  • Haply at times a passing thought
  • Of the old days which seem to be
  • Much older than any history
  • That is written in any book;
  • When she would lie in fields and look
  • Along the ground through the blown grass,
  • And wonder where the city was,
  • Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
  • 130They told her then for a child's tale.
Image of page 198 page: 198
  • Jenny, you know the city now.
  • A child can tell the tale there, how
  • Some things which are not yet enroll'd
  • In market-lists are bought and sold
  • Even till the early Sunday light,
  • When Saturday night is market-night
  • Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
  • And market-night in the Haymarket.
  • Our learned London children know,
  • 140Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe;
  • Have seen your lifted silken skirt
  • Advertize dainties through the dirt;
  • Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
  • On virtue; and have learned your look
  • When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
  • Along the streets alone, and there,
  • Round the long park, across the bridge,
  • The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
  • Wind on together and apart,
  • 150A fiery serpent for your heart.
  • Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
  • Suppose I were to think aloud,—
  • What if to her all this were said?
  • Why, as a volume seldom read
  • Being opened halfway shuts again,
  • So might the pages of her brain
  • Be parted at such words, and thence
  • Close back upon the dusty sense.
  • Image of page 199 page: 199
  • For is there hue or shape defin'd
  • 160In Jenny's desecrated mind,
  • Where all contagious currents meet,
  • A Lethe of the middle street?
  • Nay, it reflects not any face,
  • Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
  • But as they coil those eddies clot,
  • And night and day remember not.
  • Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
  • Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
  • So young and soft and tired; so fair,
  • 170With chin thus nestled in your hair,
  • Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
  • As if some sky of dreams shone through!
  • Just as another woman sleeps!
  • Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
  • Of doubt and horror,—what to say
  • Or think,—this awful secret sway,
  • The potter's power over the clay!
  • Of the same lump (it has been said)
  • For honour and dishonour made,
  • 180Two sister vessels. Here is one.
  • My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
  • And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
  • So mere a woman in her ways:
  • And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
  • Are like her lips that tell the truth,
  • Image of page 200 page: 200
  • My cousin Nell is fond of love.
  • And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
  • Who does not prize her, guard her well?
  • The love of change, in cousin Nell,
  • 190Shall find the best and hold it dear:
  • The unconquered mirth turn quieter
  • Not through her own, through others' woe:
  • The conscious pride of beauty glow
  • Beside another's pride in her,
  • One little part of all they share.
  • For Love himself shall ripen these
  • In a kind soil to just increase
  • Through years of fertilizing peace.
  • Of the same lump (as it is said)
  • 200For honour and dishonour made,
  • Two sister vessels. Here is one.
  • It makes a goblin of the sun.
  • So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
  • Of the first common kindred link?
  • Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
  • It seems that all things take their turn;
  • And who shall say but this fair tree
  • May need, in changes that may be,
  • Your children's children's charity?
  • 210Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
  • Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
  • Till in the end, the Day of Days,
  • Image of page 201 page: 201
  • At Judgment, one of his own race,
  • As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
  • His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
  • Each of such curdled lives alike
  • A life for which my twelve hours strike
  • And time must be and time must end.
  • Hard to keep sight of! What might tend
  • 220To give the thought clear presence? Well,
  • Remember it is possible,
  • Whether I please or do not please,
  • That in the making each of these
  • A separate man has lost his soul.
  • Fair shines the gilded aureole
  • In which our highest painters place
  • Some living woman's simple face.
  • And the stilled features thus descried
  • As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
  • 230The loving underlip drawn in,
  • The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
  • And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
  • With Raffael's or Da Vinci's hand
  • To show them to men's souls, might stand,
  • Whole ages long, the whole world through,
  • For preachings of what God can do.
  • What has man done here? How atone,
  • Great God, for this which man has done?
  • And for the body and soul which by
  • Image of page 202 page: 202
  • 240Man's pitiless doom must now comply
  • With lifelong hell, what lullaby
  • Of sweet forgetful second birth
  • Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
  • What measure of God's rest endows
  • The many mansions of his house.
  • If but a woman's heart might see
  • Such erring heart unerringly
  • For once! But that can never be.
  • Like a rose shut in a book
  • 250In which pure women may not look,
  • For its base pages claim control
  • To crush the flower within the soul;
  • Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
  • Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
  • To the vile text, are traced such things
  • As might make lady's cheek indeed
  • More than a living rose to read;
  • So nought save foolish foulness may
  • Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
  • 260And so the life-blood of this rose,
  • Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
  • Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
  • Yet still it keeps such faded show
  • Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
  • That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
  • The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
  • Image of page 203 page: 203
  • Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
  • Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
  • Love roses better for its sake:—
  • 270Only that this can never be:—
  • Even so unto her sex is she.
  • Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
  • The woman almost fades from view.
  • A cypher of man's changeless sum
  • Of lust, past, present, and to come,
  • Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
  • To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
  • Like a toad within a stone
  • Seated while Time crumbles on;
  • 280Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
  • For Man's transgression at the first;
  • Which, living through all centuries,
  • Not once has seen the sun arise;
  • Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
  • The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
  • Which always—whitherso the stone
  • Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
  • Aye, and shall not be driven out
  • Till that which shuts him round about
  • 290Break at the very Master's stroke,
  • And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
  • And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
  • Even so within this world is Lust.
Image of page 204 page: 204
  • Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
  • Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
  • You'd not believe by what strange roads
  • Thought travels, when your beauty goads
  • A man to-night to think of toads!
  • Jenny, wake up. . . . Why, there's the dawn!
  • 300 And there's an early waggon drawn
  • To market, and some sheep that jog
  • Bleating before a barking dog;
  • And the old streets come peering through
  • Another night that London knew;
  • And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
  • So on the wings of day decamps
  • My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
  • To shiver off as lights creep in
  • Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
  • 310And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
  • Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
  • Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
  • And in the alcove coolly spread
  • Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
  • And yonder your fair face I see
  • Reflected lying on my knee,
  • Where teems with first foreshadowings
  • Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings.
  • And somehow in myself the dawn
  • Image of page 205 page: 205
  • 320Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
  • Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
  • But will it wake her if I heap
  • These cushions thus beneath her head
  • Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
  • My Jenny, while you dream. And there
  • I lay among your golden hair
  • Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
  • These golden coins.
  • For still one deems
  • 330That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
  • New magic on the magic purse,—
  • Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
  • Between the threads fine fumes arise
  • And shape their pictures in the brain.
  • There roll no streets in glare and rain,
  • Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
  • But delicately sighs in musk
  • The homage of the dim boudoir;
  • Or like a palpitating star
  • 340Thrilled into song, the opera-night
  • Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
  • Or at the carriage-window shine
  • Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
  • Whirls through its hour of health (divine
  • For her) the concourse of the Park.
  • And though in the discounted dark
  • Her functions there and here are one,
  • Beneath the lamps and in the sun
  • Image of page 206 page: 206
  • There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
  • 350Apparelled beyond parallel.
  • Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.
  • For even the Paphian Venus seems
  • A goddess o'er the realms of love,
  • When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
  • Aye, or let offerings nicely placed
  • But hide Priapus to the waist,
  • And whoso looks on him shall see
  • An eligible deity.
  • Why, Jenny, waking here alone
  • 360May help you to remember one!
  • I think I see you when you wake,
  • And rub your eyes for me, and shake
  • My gold, in rising, from your hair,
  • A Danaë for a moment there.
  • Jenny, my love rang true! for still
  • Love at first sight is vague, until
  • That tinkling makes him audible.
  • And must I mock you to the last,
  • Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
  • 370Because some thoughts not born amiss
  • Rose at a poor fair face like this?
  • Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
  • Image of page 207 page: 207
  • In my life, as in hers, they show,
  • By a far gleam which I may near,
  • A dark path I can strive to clear.
  • Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.
Image of page 208 page: 208
THE PORTRAIT.
  • This is her picture as she was:
  • It seems a thing to wonder on,
  • As though mine image in the glass
  • Should tarry when myself am gone.
  • I gaze until she seems to stir,—
  • Until mine eyes almost aver
  • That now, even now, the sweet lips part
  • To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
  • And yet the earth is over her.
  • 10In painting her I shrined her face
  • Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
  • Hardly at all; a covert place
  • Where you might think to find a din
  • Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
  • Wandering, and many a shape whose name
  • Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
  • And your own footsteps meeting you,
  • And all things going as they came.
Image of page 209 page: 209
Sig. P
  • A deep dim wood; and there she stands
  • 20 As in that wood that day. At least,
  • Thus was the movement of her hands
  • And thus the carriage of her waist.
  • And passing fair the type must seem,
  • Unknown the presence and the dream.
  • 'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
  • Less than her shadow on the grass
  • Or than her image in the stream.
  • That day we met there, I and she
  • One with the other all alone;
  • 30And we were blithe; yet memory
  • Saddens those hours, as when the moon
  • Looks upon daylight. And with her
  • I stooped to drink the spring-water,
  • Athirst where other waters sprang;
  • And where the echo is, she sang,—
  • My soul another echo there.
  • Last night at last I could have slept,
  • And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
  • Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
  • 40 For unawares I came upon
  • Those glades where then she walked with me:
  • And as I stood there suddenly,
  • All wan with traversing the night,
  • Upon the desolate verge of light
  • Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.
Image of page 210 page: 210
  • Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
  • The beating heart of Love's own breast,—
  • Where round the secret of all spheres
  • All angels lay their wings to rest,—
  • 50How shall my soul stand rapt and awed,
  • When, by the new birth borne abroad
  • Throughout the music of the suns,
  • It enters in her soul at once
  • And knows the silence there for God!
  • Here with her face doth memory sit
  • Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,
  • Till other eyes shall look from it,
  • Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,
  • Even than the old gaze tenderer:
  • 60While hopes and aims long lost with her
  • Stand round her image side by side,
  • Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
  • About the Holy Sepulchre.
Electronic Archive Edition: 1