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Document Title: The Collected Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, vol. 1 (1886)
Author: Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Date of publication: 1886
Publisher: Ellis and Scrutton
Printer: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury
Edition: 1

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

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Manuscript Addition: 2) litrs / γθX—
Editorial Description: Pencil note in upper left corner, in cursive script.
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Manuscript Addition: 2 vol s[et] / $
Editorial Description: Pencil note in upper right corner.
Manuscript Addition: Charles H. Forbes / from G. S. F.
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THE COLLECTED WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI
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THE COLLECTED WORKS

OF

DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI





EDITED

WITH PREFACE AND NOTES

BY

WILLIAM M ROSSETTI



IN TWO VOLUMES



VOLUME I

POEMS

PROSE—TALES AND LITERARY PAPERS



ELLIS AND SCRUTTON

LONDON

1886

All rights reserved

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Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.
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DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI

DIED 9 APRIL 1882 AGED 53

FRANCES MARY LAVINIA ROSSETTI

DIED 8 APRIL 1886 AGED 85


TO

THE MOTHER'S SACRED MEMORY

THIS FIRST COLLECTED EDITION OF

THE SON'S WORKS

IS DEDICATED BY

THE SURVIVING SON AND BROTHER

W M R
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CONTENTS.
Note: The word PAGE is printed at the top of each column of numbers in the table of contents.
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PREFACE.
The most adequate mode of prefacing the Collected

Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, as of most

authors, would probably be to offer a broad general

view of his writings, and to analyse with some critical

precision his relation to other writers, contemporary or

otherwise, and the merits and defects of his performances.

In this case, as in how few others, one would also have

to consider in what degree his mind worked con-

sentaneously or diversely in two several arts—the art of

poetry and the art of painting. But the hand of a

brother is not the fittest to undertake any work of this

scope. My preface will not therefore deal with themes

such as these, but will be confined to minor matters,

which may nevertheless be relevant also within their

limits. And first may come a very brief outline of the

few events of an outwardly uneventful life.
Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti, who, at an early stage

of his professional career, modified his name into Dante

Gabriel Rossetti, was born on 12th May 1828, at No.

38 Charlotte Street, Portland Place, London. In blood

he was three-fourths Italian, and only one-fourth Eng-

lish; being on the father's side wholly Italian (Abruzzese),

and on the mother's side half Italian (Tuscan) and half

English. His father was Gabriele Rossetti, born in

1783 at Vasto, in the Abruzzi, Adriatic coast, in the then

kingdom of Naples. Gabriele Rossetti (died 1854) was
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a man of letters, a custodian of ancient bronzes in the

Museo Borbonico of Naples, and a poet; he distinguished

himself by patriotic lays which fostered the popular

movement resulting in the grant of a constitution by

Ferdinand I. of Naples in 1820. The King, after the

fashion of Bourbons and tyrants, revoked the constitution

in 1821, and persecuted the abettors of it, and Rossetti

had to escape for his freedom, or perhaps even for his

life. He settled in London towards 1824, married, and

became Professor of Italian in King's College, London,

publishing also various works of bold speculation in the

way of Dantesque commentary and exposition. His

wife was Frances Mary Lavinia Polidori (died 1886),

daughter of Gaetano Polidori (died 1853), a teacher of

Italian and literary man who had in early youth been

secretary to the poet Alfieri, and who published various

books, including a complete translation of Milton's

poems. Frances Polidori was English on the side of

her mother, whose maiden name was Pierce. The

family of Rossetti and his wife consisted of four

children, born in four successive years—Maria Fran-

cesca (died 1876), Dante Gabriel, William Michael, and

Christina Georgina, the two last-named being now the only

survivors. Few more affectionate husbands and fathers

have lived, and no better wife and mother, than Gabriele

and Frances Rossetti. The means of the family were

always strictly moderate, and became scanty towards

1843, when the father's health began to fail. In or about

that year Dante Gabriel left King's College School, where

he had learned Latin, French, and a beginning of Greek;

and he entered upon the study of the art of painting, to

which he had from earliest childhood exhibited a very

marked bent. After a while he was admitted to the
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school of the Royal Academy, but never proceeded be-

yond its antique section. In 1848 Rossetti co-operated

with two of his fellow-students in painting, John Everett

Millais and William Holman Hunt, and with the sculptor

Thomas Woolner, in forming the so-called Præraphaelite

Brotherhood. There were three other members of the

Brotherhood—James Collinson (succeeded after two or

three years by Walter Howell Deverell), Frederic

George Stephens, and the present writer. Ford Madox

Brown, the historical painter, was known to Rossetti

much about the same time when the Præraphaelite

scheme was started, and bore an important part both in

directing his studies and in upholding the movement,

but he did not think fit to join the Brotherhood in any

direct or complete sense. Through Deverell, Rossetti

came to know Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal, daughter of a

Sheffield cutler, herself a milliner's assistant, gifted with

some artistic and some poetic faculty; in the Spring of

1860, after a long engagement, they married. Their

wedded life was of short duration, as she died in

February 1862, having meanwhile given birth to a still-

born child. For several years up to this date Rossetti,

designing and painting many works, in oil-colour or as

yet more frequently in water-colour, had resided at

No. 14 Chatham Place, Blackfriars Bridge, a line of

street now demolished. In the autumn of 1862 he re-

moved to No. 16 Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. At first

certain apartments in the house were occupied by Mr.

George Meredith the novelist, Mr. Swinburne the poet,

and myself. This arrangement did not last long,

although I myself remained a partial inmate of the house

up to 1873. My brother continued domiciled in Cheyne

Walk until his death; but from about 1869 he was
Sig. b
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frequently away at Kelmscot manorhouse, in Oxford-

shire, not far from Lechlade, occupied jointly by himself,

and by the poet Mr. William Morris with his family.

From the autumn of 1872 till the summer of 1874 he

was wholly settled at Kelmscot, scarcely visiting London

at all. He then returned to London, and Kelmscot

passed out of his ken.
In the early months of 1850 the members of the

Præraphaelite Brotherhood, with the co-operation of

some friends, brought out a short-lived magazine named

The Germ (afterwards Art and Poetry); here appeared

the first verses and the first prose published by Rossetti,

including The Blessed Damozel and Hand and Soul .

In 1856 he contributed a little to The Oxford and

Cambridge Magazine , printing there The Burden of

Nineveh . In 1861, during his married life, he published

his volume of translations The Early Italian Poets , now

entitled Dante and his Circle . By the time therefore of

the death of his wife he had a certain restricted yet far

from inconsiderable reputation as a poet, along with his

recognized position as a painter—a non-exhibiting painter,

it may here be observed, for, after the first two

or three years of his professional course, he ad-

hered with practical uniformity to the plan of abstaining

from exhibition altogether. He had contemplated bring-

ing out in or about 1862 a volume of original poems;

but, in the grief and dismay which overwhelmed

him in losing his wife, he determined to sacri-

fice to her memory this long-cherished project, and he

buried in her coffin the manuscripts which would have

furnished forth the volume. With the lapse of years he

came to see that, as a final settlement of the matter,

this was neither obligatory nor desirable; so in 1869 the
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manuscripts were disinterred, and in 1870 his volume

named Poems was issued. For some considerable

while it was hailed with general and lofty praise,

chequered by only moderate stricture or demur; but

late in 1871 Mr. Robert Buchanan published under a

pseudonym, in the Contemporary Review , a very hostile

article named The Fleshly School of Poetry , attacking

the poems on literary and more especially on moral

grounds. The article, in an enlarged form, was after-

wards reissued as a pamphlet. The assault produced

on Rossetti an effect altogether disproportionate to its

intrinsic importance; indeed, it developed in his cha-

racter an excess of sensitiveness and of distempered

brooding which his nearest relatives and friends had

never before surmised,—for hitherto he had on the whole

had an ample sufficiency of high spirits, combined with

a certain underlying gloominess or abrupt moodiness of

nature and outlook. Unfortunately there was in him

already only too much of morbid material on which this

venom of detraction was to work. For some years the

state of his eyesight had given very grave cause for appre-

hension, he himself fancying from time to time that the

evil might end in absolute blindness, a fate with which

our father had been formidably threatened in his closing

years. From this or other causes insomnia had ensued,

coped with by far too free a use of chloral, which may

have begun towards the end of 1869. In the summer of

1872 he had a dangerous crisis of illness; and from that

time forward, but more especially from the middle of

1874, he became secluded in his habits of life, and often

depressed, fanciful, and gloomy. Not indeed that there

were no intervals of serenity, even of brightness; for in

fact he was often genial and pleasant, and a most agreeable
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companion, with as much bonhomie as acuteness for wiling

an evening away. He continued also to prosecute his

pictorial work with ardour and diligence, and at times he

added to his product as a poet. The second of his original

volumes, Ballads and Sonnets , was published in the

autumn of 1881. About the same time he sought change

of air and scene in the Vale of St. John, near Keswick,

Cumberland; but he returned to town more shattered in

health and in mental tone than he had ever been before.

In December a shock of a quasi-paralytic character struck

him down. He rallied sufficiently to remove to Birching-

ton-on-Sea, near Margate. The hand of death was then

upon him, and was to be relaxed no more. The last

stage of his maladies was uræmia. Tended by his

mother and his sister Christina, with the constant com-

panionship at Birchington of Mr. Hall Caine, and in the

presence likewise of Mr. Theodore Watts, Mr. Frederick

Shields, and myself, he died on Easter Sunday, April 9th

1882. His sister-in-law, the daughter of Madox Brown,

arrived immediately after his latest breath had been

drawn. He lies buried in the churchyard of Birchington.
Few brothers were more constantly together, or shared

one another's feelings and thoughts more intimately, in

childhood, boyhood, and well on into mature manhood,

than Dante Gabriel and myself. I have no idea of

limning his character here at any length, but will de-

fine a few of its leading traits. He was always and

essentially of a dominant turn, in intellect and in

temperament a leader. He was impetuous and vehe-

ment, and necessarily therefore impatient; easily

angered, easily appeased, although the embittered

feelings of his later years obscured this amiable quality

to some extent; constant and helpful as a friend where
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he perceived constancy to be reciprocated; free-handed

and heedless of expenditure, whether for himself or for

others; in family affection warm and equable, and (except

in relation to our mother, for whom he had a fondling

love) not demonstrative. Never on stilts in matters of

the intellect or of aspiration, but steeped in the sense

of beauty, and loving, if not always practising, the good;

keenly alive also (though many people seem to discredit

this now) to the laughable as well as the grave or solemn

side of things; superstitious in grain, and anti-scientific

to the marrow. Throughout his youth and early man-

hood I considered him to be markedly free from vanity,

though certainly well equipped in pride; the distinction

between these two tendencies was less definite in his

closing years. Extremely natural and therefore totally

unaffected in tone and manner, with the naturalism

characteristic of Italian blood; good-natured and hearty,

without being complaisant or accommodating; reserved

at times, yet not haughty; desultory enough in youth,

diligent and persistent in maturity; self-centred always,

and brushing aside whatever traversed his purpose or

his bent. He was very generally and very greatly liked

by persons of extremely diverse character; indeed, I

think it can be no exaggeration to say that no one ever

disliked him. Of course I do not here confound the

question of liking a man's personality with that of

approving his conduct out-and-out.
Of his manner I can perhaps convey but a vague

impression. I have said that it was natural; it was

likewise eminently easy, and even of the free-and-easy

kind. There was a certain British bluffness, streaking

the finely poised Italian suppleness and facility. As he

was thoroughly unconventional, caring not at all to
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fall in with the humours or prepossessions of any

particular class of society, or to conciliate or approxi-

mate the socially distinguished, there was little in him

of any veneer or varnish of elegance; none the less he

was courteous and well-bred, meeting all sorts of persons

upon equal terms— i.e., upon his own terms; and I am

satisfied that those who are most exacting in such

matters found in Rossetti nothing to derogate from the

standard of their requirements. In habit of body he was

indolent and lounging, disinclined to any prescribed

or trying exertion of any sort, and very difficult to stir

out of his ordinary groove, yet not wanting in active

promptitude whenever it suited his liking. He often

seemed totally unoccupied, especially of an evening;

no doubt the brain was busy enough.
The appearance of my brother was to my eye rather

Italian than English, though I have more than once

heard it said that there was nothing observable to

bespeak foreign blood. He was of rather low middle

stature, say five feet seven and a half, like our father;

and, as the years advanced, he resembled our father

not a little in a characteristic way, yet with highly

obvious divergences. Meagre in youth, he was at

times decidedly fat in mature age. The complexion,

clear and warm, was also dark, but not dusky or sombre.

The hair was dark and somewhat silky; the brow grandly

spacious and solid; the full-sized eyes blueish-grey;

the nose shapely, decided, and rather projecting, with an

aquiline tendency and large nostrils, and perhaps no

detail in the face was more noticeable at a first glance

than the very strong indentation at the spring of the

nose below the forehead; the mouth moderately well-

shaped, but with a rather thick and unmoulded under-
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lip; the chin unremarkable; the line of the jaw, after

youth was passed, full, rounded, and sweeping; the ears

well-formed and rather small than large. His hips were

wide, his hands and feet small; the hands very much

those of the artist or author type, white, delicate,

plump, and soft as a woman's. His gait was resolute

and rapid, his general aspect compact and deter-

mined, the prevailing expression of the face that

of a fiery and dictatorial mind concentrated into re-

pose. Some people regarded Rossetti as eminently

handsome; few, I think, would have refused him the

epithet of well-looking. It rather surprises me to

find from Mr. Caine's book of Recollections that that

gentleman, when he first saw Rossetti in 1880, con-

sidered him to look full ten years older than he really

was,—namely, to look as if sixty-two years old. To my

own eye nothing of the sort was apparent. He wore

moustaches from early youth, shaving his cheeks; from

1870 or thereabouts he grew whiskers and beard, mode-

rately full and auburn-tinted, as well as moustaches. His

voice was deep and harmonious; in the reading of poetry,

remarkably rich, with rolling swell and musical cadence.
My brother was very little of a traveller; he disliked

the interruption of his ordinary habits of life, and the

flurry or discomfort, involved in locomotion. In boy-

hood he knew Boulogne: he was in Paris three or four

times, and twice visited some principal cities of Belgium.

This was the whole extent of his foreign travelling.

He crossed the Scottish border more than once, and

knew various parts of England pretty well—Hastings,

Bath, Oxford, Matlock, Stratford-on-Avon, Newcastle-

on-Tyne, Bognor, Herne Bay; Kelmscot, Keswick, and

Birchington-on-Sea, have been already mentioned. From
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1878 or thereabouts he became, until he went to the

neighbourhood of Keswick, an absolute home-keeping

recluse, never even straying outside the large garden of

his own house, except to visit from time to time our

mother in the central part of London.
From an early period of life he had a large circle of

friends, and could always have commanded any amount

of intercourse with any number of ardent or kindly

well-wishers, had he but felt elasticity and cheerfulness

of mind enough for the purpose. I should do injustice

to my own feelings if I were not to mention here some

of his leading friends. First and foremost I name Mr.

Madox Brown, his chief intimate throughout life, on

the unexhausted resources of whose affection and con-

verse he drew incessantly for long years; they were at

last separated by the removal of Mr. Brown to Man-

chester, for the purpose of painting the Town Hall

frescoes. The Præraphaelites—Millais, Hunt, Woolner,

Stephens, Collinson, Deverell—were on terms of un-

bounded familiarity with him in youth; owing to death

or other causes, he lost sight eventually of all of them

except Mr. Stephens. Mr. William Bell Scott was, like

Mr. Brown, a close friend from a very early period until

the last; Scott being both poet and painter, there was

a strict bond of affinity between him and Rossetti.

Mr. Ruskin was extremely intimate with my brother

from 1854 till about 1865, and was of material help to

his professional career. As he rose towards celebrity,

Rossetti knew Burne Jones, and through him Morris

and Swinburne, all staunch and fervently sympathetic

friends. Mr. Shields was a rather later acquaintance,

who soon became an intimate, equally respected and

cherished. Then Mr. Hueffer the musical critic (now
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a close family connection, editor of the Tauchnitz edition

of Rossetti's works), and Dr. Hake the poet. Through

the latter my brother came to know Mr. Theodore

Watts, whose intellectual companionship and incessant

assiduity of friendship did more than anything else

towards assuaging the discomforts and depression of his

closing years. In the latest period the most intimate

among new acquaintances were Mr. William Sharp and

Mr. Hall Caine, both of them known to Rossettian readers

as his biographers. Nor should I omit to speak of the

extremely friendly relation in which my brother stood to

some of the principal purchasers of his pictures—Mr.

Leathart, Mr. Rae, Mr. Leyland, Mr. Graham, Mr. Valpy,

Mr. Turner, and his early associate Mr. Boyce. Other

names crowd upon me—James Hannay, John Tupper,

Patmore, Thomas and John Seddon, Mrs. Bodichon,

Browning, John Marshall, Tebbs, Mrs. Gilchrist, Miss

Boyd, Sandys, Whistler, Joseph Knight, Fairfax Murray,

Mr. and Mrs. Stillman, Treffry Dunn, Lord and Lady

Mount-Temple, Oliver Madox Brown, the Marstons,

father and son—but I forbear.
Before proceeding to some brief account of the

sequence, etc., of my brother's writings, it may be worth

while to speak of the poets who were particularly

influential in nurturing his mind and educing its own

poetic endowment. The first poet with whom he

became partially familiar was Shakespeare. Then fol-

lowed the usual boyish fancies for Walter Scott and

Byron. The Bible was deeply impressive to him,

perhaps above all Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Apocalypse.

Byron gave place to Shelley when my brother was about

sixteen years of age; and Mrs. Browning and the old

English or Scottish ballads rapidly ensued. It may have
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been towards this date, say 1845, that he first seriously

applied himself to Dante, and drank deep of that in-

exhaustible well-head of poesy and thought; for the

Florentine, though familiar to him as a name, and in

some sense as a pervading penetrative influence, from

earliest childhood, was not really assimilated until boy-

hood was practically past. Bailey's Festus was enor-

mously relished about the same time—read again and

yet again; also Faust, Victor Hugo, De Musset (and

along with them a swarm of French novelists), and

Keats, whom my brother for the most part, though not

without some compunctious visitings now and then,

truly preferred to Shelley. The only classical poet

whom he took to in any degree worth speaking of was

Homer, the Odyssey considerably more than the Iliad.

Tennyson reigned along with Keats, and Edgar Poe and

Coleridge along with Tennyson. In the long run he

perhaps enjoyed and revered Coleridge beyond any other

modern poet whatsoever; but Coleridge was not so

distinctly or separately in the ascendant, at any par-

ticular period of youth, as several of the others. Blake

likewise had his peculiar meed of homage, and Charles

Wells, the influence of whose prose style, in the Stories

after Nature , I trace to some extent in Rossetti's Hand

and Soul . Lastly came Browning, and for a time, like

the serpent-rod of Moses, swallowed up all the rest.

This was still at an early stage of life; for I think the

year 1847 cannot certainly have been passed before my

brother was deep in Browning. The readings or frag-

mentary recitations of Bells and Pomegranates, Para-

celsus , and above all Sordello, are something to remember

from a now distant past. My brother lighted upon

Pauline (published anonymously) in the British Museum,
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copied it out, recognized that it must be Browning's, and

wrote to the great poet at a venture to say so, receiving

a cordial response, followed by a genial and friendly inter-

course for several years. One prose-work of great

influence upon my brother's mind, and upon his product

as a painter, must not be left unspecified—Malory's

Mort d'Arthur, which engrossed him towards 1856.

The only poet whom I feel it needful to add to the

above is Chatterton. In the last two or three years of

his life my brother entertained an abnormal—I think

an exaggerated—admiration of Chatterton. It appears

to me that (to use a very hackneyed phrase) he “evolved

this from his inner consciousness” at that late period;

certainly in youth and early manhood he had no such

feeling. He then read the poems of Chatterton with

cursory glance and unexcited spirit, recognizing them

as very singular performances for their date in English

literature, and for the author's boyish years, but beyond

that laying no marked stress upon them.
The reader may perhaps be surprised to find some

names unmentioned in this list: I have stated the facts

as I remember and know them. Chaucer, Spenser,

the Elizabethan dramatists (other than Shakespeare),

Milton, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, are unnamed. It

should not be supposed that he read them not at all, or

cared not for any of them; but, if we except Chaucer in

a rather loose way and (at a late period of life) Marlowe

in some of his non-dramatic poems, they were compara-

tively neglected. Thomas Hood he valued highly; also

very highly Burns in mature years, but he was not

a constant reader of the Scottish lyrist. Of Italian poets

he earnestly loved none save Dante: Cavalcanti in his

degree, and also Poliziano and Michelangelo — not
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Petrarca, Boccaccio, Ariosto, Tasso, or Leopardi, though

in boyhood he delighted well enough in Ariosto. Of

French poets, none beyond Hugo and De Musset;

except Villon, and partially Dumas, whose novels ranked

among his favourite reading. In German poetry he

read nothing currently in the original, although (as our

pages bear witness) he had in earliest youth so far

mastered the language as to make some translations.

Calderon, in Fitzgerald's version, he admired deeply;

but this was only at a late date. He had no liking for

the specialities of Scandinavian, nor indeed of Teutonic,

thought and work, and little or no curiosity about

Oriental—such as Indian, Persian, or Arabic—poetry.

Any writing about devils, spectres, or the supernatural

generally, whether in poetry or in prose, had always

a fascination for him; at one time, say 1844, his supreme

delight was the blood-curdling romance of Maturin,

Melmoth the Wanderer.
I now pass to a specification of my brother's own

writings. Of his merely childish or boyish performances

I need have said nothing, were it not that they have

been mentioned in other books regarding Rossetti. First

then there was The Slave , a “drama” which he

composed and wrote out in or about the sixth year of his

age. It is of course simple nonsense. “Slave” and

“traitor” were two words which he found passim in

Shakespeare; so he gave to his principal or only

characters the names of Slave and Traitor. If what

they do is meaningless, what they say (when they deviate

from prose) is probably unmetrical; but it is so long

since I read The Slave that I speak about this with

uncertainty. Towards his thirteenth year he began

a romantic prose-tale named Roderick and Rosalba . I
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hardly think that he composed anything else prior to

the ballad narrative Sir Hugh the Heron , founded on

a tale by Allan Cunningham. Our grandfather printed it

in 1843, which is probably the year of its composition.

It is correctly enough versified, but has no merit, and

little that could even be called promise. Soon afterwards a

prose-tale named Sorrentino , in which the devil played

a conspicuous part, was begun, and carried to some

length; it was of course boyish, but it must, I think, have

shown some considerable degree of cleverness. In 1844

or 1845 there was a translation of Bürger's Lenore ,

spirited and I suppose fairly efficient; and in November

1845 was begun a translation of the Nibelungenlied ,

almost deserving (if my memory serves me) to be con-

sidered good. Several hundred lines of it must certainly

have been written. My brother was by this time a

practised and competent versifier, at any rate, and his

mere prentice-work may count as finished.
Other original verse, not in any large quantity,

succeeded, along with the version of Der Arme Heinrich ,

and the beginning of his translations from the early

Italians. These must, I think, have been in full career

in the first half of 1847, if not in 1846. They show

a keen sensitiveness to whatsoever is poetic in the

originals, and a sinuous strength and ease in providing

English equivalents, with the command of a rich and

romantic vocabulary. In his nineteenth year, or before

12th May 1847, he wrote The Blessed Damozel .* As

that is universally recognized as one of his typical

Transcribed Footnote (page xxix):

* My brother said so, in a letter published by Mr. Caine. He

must presumably have been correct; otherwise I should have

thought that his twentieth year, or even his twenty-first, would

be nearer the mark.

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Note: Page is misnumbered as xx
or consummate productions, marking the high level of

his faculty whether inventive or executive, I may here

close this record of preliminaries; the poems, with such

slight elucidations as my notes supply, being left to

speak for themselves. I will only add that for some

while, more especially in the later part of 1848 and in

1849, my brother practised his pen to no small extent in

writing sonnets to bouts-rimés. He and I would sit

together in our bare little room at the top of No. 50

Charlotte Street, I giving him the rhymes for a sonnet,

and he me the rhymes for another; and we would write

off our emulous exercises with considerable speed, he

constantly the more rapid of the two. From five to eight

minutes may have been the average time for one of his

sonnets; not unfrequently more, and sometimes hardly

so much. In fact, the pen scribbled away at its fastest.

Many of his bouts-rimés sonnets still exist in my posses-

sion, a little touched up after the first draft. Two or

three seemed to me nearly good enough to appear in the

present collection, but on the whole I decided against

them all. Some have a faux air of intensity of meaning,

as well as of expression; but their real core of signifi-

cance is necessarily small, the only wonder being how

he could spin so deftly with so weak a thread. I may

be allowed to mention that most of my own sonnets (and

not sonnets alone) published in The Germ were bouts-

rimes experiments such as above described. In poetic

tone they are of course inferior to my brother's work of

like fashioning; in point of sequence or self-congruity of

meaning, the comparison might be less to my disadvantage.
Dante Rossetti's published works were as follows:

three volumes, chiefly of poetry. I shall transcribe the

title-pages verbatim.
Image of page xxxi page: xxxi
(1 a) The Early Italian Poets from Ciullo d'Alcamo to

Dante Alighieri (1100—1200—1300) in the Original

Metres. Together with Dante's Vita Nuova. Translated

by D. G. Rossetti. Part I. Poets chiefly before Dante.

Part II. Dante and his Circle. London: Smith, Elder

and Co., 65, Cornhill. 1861. The rights of translation

and reproduction, as regards all editorial parts of this

work, are reserved.
(1 b) Dante and his Circle , with the Italian Poets pre-

ceding him (1100—1200—1300). A Collection of Lyrics,

edited, and translated in the original metres, by Dante

Gabriel Rossetti. Revised and rearranged edition.

Part I. Dante's Vita Nuova, &c. Poets of Dante's

Circle. Part II. Poets chiefly before Dante. London:

Ellis and White, 29 New Bond Street. 1874.
(2 a) Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. London:

F. S. Ellis, 33 King Street, Covent Garden. 1870.
(2 b) Poems by Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A new edition.

London: Ellis and White, 29 New Bond Street. 1881.
(3) Ballads and Sonnets by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

London: Ellis and White, 29, New Bond Street, W. 1881.
The reader will understand that 1 b is essentially the

same book as 1 a, but altered in arrangement, chiefly

by inverting the order in which the poems of Dante

and of the Dantesque epoch, and those of an earlier

period, are printed. In the present collection, I reprint

1 b, taking no further count of 1 a. The volume 2 b is to

a great extent the same as 2 a, yet by no means identical

with it. 2 a contained a section named Sonnets and

Songs, towards a work to be called “The House of Life.”

In 1881, when 2 b and 3 were published simultaneously,

The House of Life was completed, was made to consist

solely of sonnets, and was transferred to 3; while the
Image of page xxxii page: xxxii


gap thus left in 2 b was filled up by other poems. With

this essential modification of The House of Life it was

clearly my duty not to interfere.
It thus became impossible for me to reproduce 2 a:

but the question had to be considered whether I should

reprint 2 b and 3 exactly as they stood in 1881, adding

after them a section of poems not hitherto printed in

any one of my brother's volumes; or whether I should

recast, in point of arrangement, the entire contents of

2 b and 3, inserting here and there, in their most appro-

priate sequence, the poems hitherto unprinted. I have

chosen the latter alternative, as being in my own opinion

the only arrangement which is thoroughly befitting for

an edition of Collected Works. I am aware that some

readers would have preferred to see the old order— i.e.,

the order of 1881—retained, so that the two volumes of

that year could be perused as they then stood. Indeed,

one of my brother's friends, most worthy, whether as

friend or as critic, to be consulted on such a subject,

decidedly advocated that plan. On the other hand, I

found my own view confirmed by my sister Christina,

who, both as a member of the family and as a poetess,

deserved an attentive hearing. The reader who inspects

my table of contents will be readily able to follow the

method of arrangement which is here adopted. I have

divided the materials into Principal Poems, Miscellaneous

Poems, Translations, and some minor headings; and

have in each section arranged the poems—and the

same has been done with the prose-writings—in some

approximate order of date. This order of date is cer-

tainly not very far from correct; but I could not make it

absolute, having frequently no distinct information to go

by. The few translations which were printed in 2 b (as
Image of page xxxiii page: xxxiii
Sig. c
also in 2 a) have been removed to follow on after 1 b. I

shall give in a tabular form some particulars which will

enable the reader to follow out for himself, if he takes

an interest in such minutiæ, the original arrangement of

2 a, 2 b, and 3.
There are two poems by my brother, unpublished as

yet, which I am unable to include among his Collected

Works. One of these is a grotesque ballad about a

Dutchman, begun at a very early date, and finished in

his last illness. The other is a brace of sonnets, in-

teresting in subject, and as being the very last thing

that he wrote. These works were presented as a gift

of love and gratitude to a friend, with whom it remains

to publish them at his own discretion. I have also

advisedly omitted three poems; two of them sonnets,

the third a ballad of no great length. One of the

sonnets is that entitled Nuptial Sleep . It appeared in

the volume of Poems 1870 (2 a), but was objected

to by Mr. Buchanan, and I suppose by some other

censors, as being indelicate; and my brother excluded

it from The House of Life in his third volume. I con-

sider that there is nothing in the sonnet which need

imperatively banish it from his Collected Works; but

his own decision commands mine, and besides it could

not now be reintroduced into The House of Life ,

which he moulded into a complete whole without it,

and would be misplaced if isolated by itself—a point

as to which his opinion is very plainly set forth in

his prose-paper The Stealthy School of Criticism . The

second sonnet, named On the French Liberation of Italy,

was put into print by my brother while he was pre-

paring his volume of 1870, but he resolved to leave

it unpublished. Its title shows plainly enough that it
Image of page xxxiv page: xxxiv
relates to a matter in which sexual morals have no

part; but the subject is treated under the form of a

vigorous and perhaps repulsive metaphor, and here

again I follow his own lead. The ballad above referred

to, Dennis Shand , is a skilful and really very harmless

production; it was printed but not published, like the

sonnet last-mentioned, and no writer other than one

who took a grave view of questions of moral propriety

would have preferred to suppress it. My brother's

opinion is worded thus in a letter to Mr. Caine, which

that gentleman has published: “The ballad . . . deals

trivially with a base amour (it was written very early),

and is therefore really reprehensible to some extent.”

I will not be less jealously scrupulous for him than he

was for himself.
Dante Rossetti was a very fastidious writer, and, I

might add, a very fastidious painter. He did not indeed

“cudgel his brains” for the idea of a poem or the

structure or diction of a stanza. He wrote out of a

large fund or reserve of thought and consideration,

which would culminate in a clear impulse or (as we

say) an inspiration. In the execution he was always

heedful and reflective from the first, and he spared no

after-pains in clarifying and perfecting. He abhorred

anything straggling, slipshod, profuse, or uncondensed.

He often recurred to his old poems, and was reluctant to

leave them merely as they were. A natural concomitant

of this state of mind was a great repugnance to the

notion of publishing, or of having published after his

death, whatever he regarded as juvenile, petty, or

inadequate. As editor of his Collected Works, I have

had to regulate myself by these feelings of his, whether

my own entirely correspond with them or not. The
Image of page xxxv page: xxxv
amount of unpublished work which he left behind him

was by no means large; out of the moderate bulk I

have been careful to select only such examples as I

suppose that he would himself have approved for the

purpose, or would, at any rate, not gravely have objected

to. A list of the new items is given at page xli, and a

few details regarding them will be found among my

notes. Some projects or arguments of poems which he

never executed are also printed among his prose-writings.

These particular projects had, I think, been practically

abandoned by him in all the later years of his life; but

there was one subject which he had seriously at heart,

and for which he had collected some materials, and he

would perhaps have put it into shape had he lived a

year or two longer—a ballad on the subject of Joan Darc,

to match The White Ship and The King's Tragedy .
I have not unfrequently heard my brother say that

he considered himself more essentially a poet than a

painter. To vary the form of expression, he thought that

he had mastered the means of embodying poetical concep-

tions in the verbal and rhythmical vehicle more thoroughly

than in form and design, perhaps more thoroughly than

in colour.
I may take this opportunity of observing that I hope

to publish at an early date a substantial selection from

the family-letters written by my brother, to be pre-

ceded by a Memoir drawn up by Mr. Theodore Watts,

who will be able to express more freely and more im-

partially than myself some of the things most apposite

to be said about Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
William M. Rossetti.

London, June 1886.
Image of page xxxvi page: xxxvi
Note: The table indexes poems by “Position in present edition”, and includes references to “VOL. PAGE”
    LIST OF THE POEMS PUBLISHED BY DANTE

    GABRIEL ROSSETTI DURING HIS LIFETIME.
    • 2a.—Contents of Poems, 1870.
      • Poems:
      • The Blessed Damozel . . . . . . i. . 232
      • Love's Nocturn . . . . . . . i. . 288
      • Troy Town . . . . . . . . i. . 305
      • The Burden of Nineveh . . . . . i. . 266
      • Eden Bower . . . . . . . . i. . 308
      • Ave . . . . . . . . . i. . 244
      • The Staff and Scrip . . . . . . i. . 75
      • A Last Confession . . . . . . i. . 18
      • Dante at Verona . . . . . . . i. . 1
      • Jenny . . . . . . . . i. . 83
      • The Portrait . . . . . . . . i. . 240
      • Sister Helen . . . . . . . . i. . 66
      • Stratton Water . . . . . . . i. . 274
      • The Stream's Secret . . . . . . i. . 95
      • The Card-dealer . . . . . . . i. . 248
      • My Sister's Sleep . . . . . . . i. . 229
      • A New Year's Burden . . . . . . i. . 296
      • Even So . . . . . . . . i. . 297
      • An Old Song Ended . . . . . . i. . 300
      • Aspecta Medusa . . . . . . . i. . 357
      • Three Translations from Villon . . . . ii.461,etc.
      • John of Tours . . . . . . . ii. . 465
      • My Father's Close . . . . . . ii. . 467
      • One Girl ( now named Beauty) . . . . ii. . 469
    • Sonnets and Songs towards a Work to be entitled “The

      House of Life.”
    • Fifty Sonnets . . . . . . i. 177, etc.
    • [For the titles of them see vol. i., p. 517.]
      • Image of page xxxvii page: xxxvii
      • Songs:
      • Love-lily . . . . . . . . i. . 315
      • First Love Remembered . . . . . i. . 293
      • Plighted Promise . . . . . . . i. . 294
      • Sudden Light . . . . . . . i. . 295
      • A Little While . . . . . . . i. . 304
      • The Song of the Bower . . . . . . i. . 301
      • Penumbra . . . . . . . . i. . 283
      • The Woodspurge . . . . . . . i. . 298
      • The Honeysuckle . . . . . . . i. . 298
      • A Young Fir-wood . . . . . . i. . 273
      • The Sea Limits . . . . . . . i. . 254
      • [Here ended the “House of Life” Series.]
      • Sonnets for Pictures, and other Sonnets:
      • For Our Lady of the Rocks, by Leonardo da
      • Vinci . . . . . . . . i. . 344
      • For a Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione . . . i. . 345
      • For an Allegorical Dance of Women, by Man-
      • tegna . . . . . . . . i. . 346
      • For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres . . . i. . 347
      • For the Wine of Circe, by Burne Jones . . i. . 350
      • Mary's Girlhood . . . . . . . i. . 353
      • The Passover in the Holy Family . . . . i. . 355
      • Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the
      • Pharisee . . . . . . . . i. . 356
      • St. Luke the Painter . . . . . . i. . 214
      • Lilith . . . . . . . . . i. . 216
      • Sibylla Palmifera . . . . . . . i. . 215
      • Venus . . . . . . . . . i. . 360
      • Cassandra . . . . . . . . i. . 358
      • Pandora . . . . . . . . . i. . 360
      • On Refusal of Aid between Nations . . . i. . 252
      • On the Vita Nuova of Dante . . . . . i. . 252
      • Dantis Tenebræ . . . . . . . i. . 299
      • Beauty and the Bird . . . . . . i. . 286
      • A Match with the Moon . . . . . i. . 287
      • Image of page xxxviii page: xxxviii
      • Sonnets for Pictures, and other Sonnets, continued:
      • Autumn Idleness . . . . . . . i. . 211
      • Farewell to the Glen . . . . . . i. . 219
      • The Monochord . . . . . . . i. . 216
    • 2b.—Contents of Poems, 1881.
      • Poems:

      • [This section contains the same compositions as the section Poems

        in the volume of 1870, but in a different sequence, and also the fol-

        lowing]

      • Down Stream . . . . . . . i. . 319
      • Wellington's Funeral . . . . . . i. . 281
      • World's Worth . . . . . . . i. . 250
      • The Bride's Prelude . . . . . . i. . 35

      • [But the following are removed to a section headed]

      • Lyrics:
      • A New Year's Burden . . . . . . i. . 296
      • Even So . . . . . . . . . i. . 297

      • [In other respects the section Lyrics consists of the Songs which used

        to form part of “The House of Life.”]

      • Sonnets:

      • [Contains the various compositions which appeared in the volume

        of 1870 under the heading Sonnets for Pictures, and other Sonnets,

        except St. Luke the Painter, Lilith, Sibylla Palmifera, Autumn Idleness,

        Farewell to the Glen, and The Monochord; these six sonnets were

        transferred to The House of Life in the Ballads and Sonnets (3),

        the Lilith and Sibylla Palmifera being renamed Body's Beauty and

        Soul's Beauty.]

      • Translations:

      • [Contains the six translations which in the volume of 1870 appeared

        under the heading “Poems,” the title One Girl being now superseded by

        the title Beauty (Sappho); also the following]

      • Youth and Lordship (Italian Street-song) . . i. . 366
      • The Leaf (Leopardi) . . . . . . ii. . 409
      • Francesca da Rimini (Dante) . . . . ii. . 405
    • Image of page xxxix page: xxxix
    • 3.—Contents of Ballads and Sonnets.
      • Ballads:
      • Rose Mary . . . . . . . . i. . 103
      • The White Ship . . . . . . . i. . 137
      • The King's Tragedy . . . . . . i. . 148
      • The House of Life— A Sonnet Sequence. . . i. . 176
      • Lyrics &c:
      • Soothsay . . . . . . . . i. . 334
      • Chimes . . . . . . . . . i. . 330
      • Parted Presence . . . . . . . i. . 324
      • A Death-parting . . . . . . . i. . 322
      • Spheral Change . . . . . . . i. . 326
      • Sunset Wings . . . . . . . i. . 316
      • Song and Music . . . . . . . i. . 253
      • Three Shadows . . . . . . . i. . 321
      • Alas so long! . . . . . . . . i. . 327
      • Adieu . . . . . . . . . i. . 333
      • Insomnia . . . . . . . . i. . 328
      • Possession . . . . . . . . i. . 329
      • The Cloud Confines . . . . . . i. . 317
      • Sonnets:
      • For the Holy Family, by Michelangelo . . . i. . 351
      • For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli . . . . i. . 352
      • Five English Poets . . . . . . i. . 337
      • Tiber, Nile, and Thames . . . . . i. . 340
      • The Last Three from Trafalgar . . . . i. . 342
      • Czar Alexander II. . . . . . . i. . 342
      • Words on the Window-pane . . . . i. . 299
      • Winter . . . . . . . . . i. . 341
      • Spring . . . . . . . . . i. . 323
      • The Church Porch . . . . . . . i. . 272
      • Untimely Lost (Oliver Madox Brown) . . . i. . 323
      • Image of page xl page: xl
      Note: Broken type: In the seventh line, the dot of the "i" for the page number is missing.
      • Sonnets, continued:
      • Place de la Bastille, Paris . . . . . i. . 261
      • “Found” (for a Picture) . . . . . i. . 363
      • A Sea-spell . . . . . . . . i. . 361
      • Fiammetta . . . . . . . . i. . 362
      • The Day-dream . . . . . . . i. . 364
      • Astarte Syriaca . . . . . . . i. . 361
      • Proserpina (Italian and English) . . . . i. . 370
      • La Bella Mano ” . . . . i. . 372
I add here the dedications to Rossetti's volumes 1a,

2a, 2b, and 3. The dedication to 1b appears in its

proper place.
  • 1a.— The Early Italian Poets:

    Whatever is mine in this book is inscribed to my Wife.—

    D.G.R. 1861.
  • 2a.— Poems, 1870:

    To William Michael Rossetti, these Poems, to so many

    of which, so many years back, he gave the first brotherly

    hearing, are now at last dedicated.
  • 2b.— Poems, 1881:

    Same dedication, adding the dates “1870—1881.”
  • 3.— Ballads and Sonnets:

    To Theodore Watts, the Friend whom my verse won for

    me, these few more pages are affectionately inscribed.
Image of page xli page: xli
In the Poems, 1881, appeared the ensuing “Adver-

tisement”:

“‘Many poems in this volume were written between 1847

and 1853. Others are of recent date, and a few belong to

the intervening period. It has been thought unnecessary

to specify the earlier work, as nothing is included which

the author believes to be immature.’

“The above brief note was prefixed to these poems when

first published in 1870. They have now been for some time

out of print.

“The fifty sonnets of the House of Life, which first appeared

here, are now embodied with the full series in the volume

entitled Ballads and Sonnets.

“The fragment of The Bride's Prelude, now first printed,

was written very early, and is here associated with other

work of the same date; though its publication in an un-

finished form needs some indulgence.”

On comparing the list which I have now given of

the “Poems published by Rossetti during his Lifetime”

with the contents of the present Collected Works,

section Poems, it will be found that the following

compositions are new. I put an asterisk against the

titles of the few which had been printed by my

brother in some outlying form, but not in his volumes.

For any further particulars the reader may be referred

to my notes.
  • At the Sun-rise in 1848 . . . . . . . 237
  • *Autumn Song . . . . . . . . 237
  • The Lady's Lament . . . . . . . . 238
  • A Trip to Paris and Belgium . . . . . . 255
  • The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris . . . . 261
  • Near Brussels—A Half-way Pause . . . . . 262
  • *Antwerp and Bruges . . . . . . . 263
    • Image of page xlii page: xlii
  • On Leaving Bruges . . . . . . . . 264
  • Vox Ecclesiæ, Vox Christi . . . . . . 265
  • The Mirror . . . . . . . . . 272
  • During Music . . . . . . . . . 273
  • *On the Site of a Mulberry-tree, etc. . . . . 285
  • *On certain Elizabethan Revivals . . . . . 285
  • English May . . . . . . . . . 286
  • Dawn on the Night-journey . . . . . . 303
  • To Philip Bourke Marston . . . . . . 340
  • *Raleigh's Cell in the Tower . . . . . . 341
  • For an Annunciation . . . . . . . 343
  • *For a Virgin and Child by Memmelinck . . . 348
  • *For a Marriage of St. Catherine, by the same . . 349
  • *Mary's Girlhood, No. 2 . . . . . . . 354
  • Michael Scott's Wooing . . . . . . . 357
  • Mnemosyne . . . . . . . . . 362
  • La Ricordanza (Memory) . . . . . 370-1
  • Con manto d'oro, etc. (With golden mantle, etc.) . 372-3
  • Robe d'or, etc. (A golden robe, etc.) . . . 372-3
  • Barcarola . . . . . . . . . . 374
  • Barcarola . . . . . . . . . . 375
  • Bambino Fasciato . . . . . . . . 375
  • Thomæ Fides . . . . . . . . . 376
  • Versicles and Fragments . . . . . 377-80
Image of page [xliii] page: [xliii]
more about Poems
POEMS.
Image of page [xliv] page: [xliv]
Note: blank page
Image of page [1] page: [1]
I.—PRINCIPAL POEMS.
more about Dante at Verona
DANTE AT VERONA.
  • Yea, thou shalt learn how salt his food who fares
  • Upon another's bread,—how steep his path
  • Who treadeth up and down another's stairs.
( Div. Com. Parad. xvii.)
  • Behold, even I, even I am Beatrice.
( Div. Com. Purg. xxx.)
  • Of Florence and of Beatrice
  • Servant and singer from of old,
  • O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
  • The knell that gave his Lady peace;
  • And now in manhood flew the dart
  • Wherewith his City pierced his heart.
  • Yet if his Lady's home above
  • Was Heaven, on earth she filled his soul;
  • And if his City held control
  • 10 To cast the body forth to rove,
  • The soul could soar from earth's vain throng,
  • And Heaven and Hell fulfil the song.
  • Follow his feet's appointed way;—
  • But little light we find that clears
  • The darkness of the exiled years.
  • Follow his spirit's journey:—nay,
  • What fires are blent, what winds are blown
  • On paths his feet may tread alone?
Sig. 1
Image of page 2 page: 2
  • Yet of the twofold life he led
  • 20 In chainless thought and fettered will
  • Some glimpses reach us,—somewhat still
  • Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,—
  • Of the soul's quest whose stern avow
  • For years had made him haggard now.
  • Alas! the Sacred Song whereto
  • Both heaven and earth had set their hand
  • Not only at Fame's gate did stand
  • Knocking to claim the passage through,
  • But toiled to ope that heavier door
  • 30 Which Florence shut for evermore.
  • Shall not his birth's baptismal Town
  • One last high presage yet fulfil,
  • And at that font in Florence still
  • His forehead take the laurel-crown?
  • O God! or shall dead souls deny
  • The undying soul its prophecy?
  • Aye, 'tis their hour. Not yet forgot
  • The bitter words he spoke that day
  • When for some great charge far away
  • 40 Her rulers his acceptance sought.
  • “And if I go, who stays?”—so rose
  • His scorn:—“and if I stay, who goes?”
  • “Lo! thou art gone now, and we stay”:
  • (The curled lips mutter): “and no star
  • Is from thy mortal path so far
  • As streets where childhood knew the way.
  • To Heaven and Hell thy feet may win,
  • But thine own house they come not in.”
  • Therefore, the loftier rose the song
  • 50 To touch the secret things of God,
  • The deeper pierced the hate that trod
    • Image of page 3 page: 3
  • On base men's track who wrought the wrong;
  • Till the soul's effluence came to be
  • Its own exceeding agony.
  • Arriving only to depart,
  • From court to court, from land to land,
  • Like flame within the naked hand
  • His body bore his burning heart
  • That still on Florence strove to bring
  • 60 God's fire for a burnt offering.
  • Even such was Dante's mood, when now,
  • Mocked for long years with Fortune's sport,
  • He dwelt at yet another court,
  • There where Verona's knee did bow
  • And her voice hailed with all acclaim
  • Can Grande della Scala's name.
  • As that lord's kingly guest awhile
  • His life we follow; through the days
  • Which walked in exile's barren ways,—
  • 70 The nights which still beneath one smile
  • Heard through all spheres one song increase,—
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice.”
  • At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
  • Due reverence did his steps attend;
  • The ushers on his path would ben
  • At ingoing as at going out;
  • The penmen waited on his call
  • At council-board, the grooms in hall.
  • And pages hushed their laughter down,
  • 80 And gay squires stilled the merry stir,
  • When he passed up the dais-chamber
  • With set brows lordlier than a frown;
  • And tire-maids hidden among these
  • Drew close their loosened bodices.
Image of page 4 page: 4
Note: The first l in “wall” is missing in line 107.
  • Perhaps the priests, (exact to span
  • All God's circumference,) if at whiles
  • They found him wandering in their aisles,
  • Grudged ghostly greeting to the man
  • By whom, though not of ghostly guild,
  • 90 With Heaven and Hell men's hearts were fill'd.
  • And the court-poets (he, forsooth,
  • A whole world's poet strayed to court!)
  • Had for his scorn their hate's retort.
  • He'd meet them flushed with easy youth,
  • Hot on their errands. Like noon-flies
  • They vexed him in the ears and eyes.
  • But at this court, peace still must wrench
  • Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
  • By day they held high watch afar,
  • 100 At night they cried across the trench;
  • And still, in Dante's path, the fierce
  • Gaunt soldiers wrangled o'er their spears.
  • But vain seemed all the strength to him,
  • As golden convoys sunk at sea
  • Whose wealth might root out penury:
  • Because it was not, limb with limb,
  • Knit like his heart-strings round the wa l
  • Of Florence, that ill pride might fall.
  • Yet in the tiltyard, when the dust
  • 110 Cleared from the sundered press of knights
  • Ere yet again it swoops and smites,
  • He almost deemed his longing must
  • Find force to yield that multitude
  • And hurl that strength the way he would.
  • How should he move them,—fame and gain
  • On all hands calling them at strife?
  • He still might find but his one life
    • Image of page 5 page: 5
  • To give, by Florence counted vain:
  • One heart the false hearts made her doubt,
  • 120 One voice she heard once and cast out.
  • Oh! if his Florence could but come,
  • A lily-sceptred damsel fair,
  • As her own Giotto painted her
  • On many shields and gates at home,—
  • A lady crowned, at a soft pace
  • Riding the lists round to the dais:
  • Till where Can Grande rules the lists,
  • As young as Truth, as calm as Force,
  • She draws her rein now, while her horse
  • 130 Bows at the turn of the white wrists;
  • And when each knight within his stall
  • Gives ear, she speaks and tells them all:
  • All the foul tale,—truth sworn untrue
  • And falsehood's triumph. All the tale?
  • Great God! and must she not prevail
  • To fire them ere they heard it through,—
  • And hand achieve ere heart could rest
  • That high adventure of her quest?
  • How would his Florence lead them forth,
  • 140 Her bridle ringing as she went;
  • And at the last within her tent,
  • 'Neath golden lilies worship-worth,
  • How queenly would she bend the while
  • And thank the victors with her smile!
  • Also her lips should turn his way
  • And murmur: “O thou tried and true,
  • With whom I wept the long years through!
  • What shall it profit if I say,
  • Thee I remember? Nay, through thee
  • 150 All ages shall remember me.”
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  • Peace, Dante, peace! The task is long,
  • The time wears short to compass it.
  • Within thine heart such hopes may flit
  • And find a voice in deathless song:
  • But lo! as children of man's earth,
  • Those hopes are dead before their birth.
  • Fame tells us that Verona's court
  • Was a fair place. The feet might still
  • Wander for ever at their will
  • 160 In many ways of sweet resort;
  • And still in many a heart around
  • The Poet's name due honour found.
  • Watch we his steps. He comes upon
  • The women at their palm-playing.
  • The conduits round the gardens sing
  • And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
  • Where wearied damsels rest and hold
  • Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.
  • One of whom, knowing well that he,
  • 170 By some found stern, was mild with them,
  • Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
  • Saying, “Messer Dante, pardon me,”—
  • Praying that they might hear the song
  • Which first of all he made, when young.
  • “Donne che avete”* . . . Thereunto
  • Thus would he murmur, having first
  • Drawn near the fountain, while she nurs'd
  • His hand against her side: a few
  • Sweet words, and scarcely those, half said:
  • 180 Then turned, and changed, and bowed his head.
Transcribed Footnote (page 6):

* Donne che avete intelletto d'amore:—the first canzone of

the Vita Nuova.

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  • For then the voice said in his heart,
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice;”
  • And his whole life would yearn to cease:
  • Till having reached his room, apart
  • Beyond vast lengths of palace-floor,
  • He drew the arras round his door.
  • At such times, Dante, thou hast set
  • Thy forehead to the painted pane
  • Full oft, I know; and if the rain
  • 190 Smote it outside, her fingers met
  • Thy brow; and if the sun fell there,
  • Her breath was on thy face and hair.
  • Then, weeping, I think certainly
  • Thou hast beheld, past sight of eyne,—
  • Within another room of thine
  • Where now thy body may not be
  • But where in thought thou still remain'st,—
  • A window often wept against:
  • The window thou, a youth, hast sought,
  • 200 Flushed in the limpid eventime,
  • Ending with daylight the day's rhyme
  • Of her; where oftenwhiles her thought
  • Held thee—the lamp untrimmed to write—
  • In joy through the blue lapse of night.
  • At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
  • Guests seldom wept. It was brave sport,
  • No doubt, at Can La Scala's court,
  • Within the palace and without;
  • Where music, set to madrigals,
  • 210 Loitered all day through groves and halls.
  • Because Can Grande of his life
  • Had not had six-and-twenty years
  • As yet. And when the chroniclers
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  • Tell you of that Vicenza strife
  • And of strifes elsewhere,—you must not
  • Conceive for church-sooth he had got
  • Just nothing in his wits but war:
  • Though doubtless 'twas the young man's joy
  • (Grown with his growth from a mere boy,)
  • 220To mark his “Viva Cane!” scare
  • The foe's shut front, till it would reel
  • All blind with shaken points of steel.
  • But there were places—held too sweet
  • For eyes that had not the due veil
  • Of lashes and clear lids—as well
  • In favour as his saddle-seat:
  • Breath of low speech he scorned not there
  • Nor light cool fingers in his hair.
  • Yet if the child whom the sire's plan
  • 230 Made free of a deep treasure-chest
  • Scoffed it with ill-conditioned jest,—
  • We may be sure too that the man
  • Was not mere thews, nor all content
  • With lewdness swathed in sentiment.
  • So you may read and marvel not
  • That such a man as Dante—one
  • Who, while Can Grande's deeds were done,
  • Had drawn his robe round him and thought—
  • Now at the same guest-table far'd
  • 240 Where keen Uguccio wiped his beard.*
  • Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
  • Left the wine cool within the glass,—
  • They feasting where no sun could pass:
    • Transcribed Footnote (page 8):

    * Uguccione della Faggiuola, Dante's former protector, was

    now his fellow-guest at Verona.

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  • And when the women, all as one,
  • Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
  • It was a comely thing, we know.
  • But Dante recked not of the wine;
  • Whether the women stayed or went,
  • His visage held one stern intent:
  • 250 And when the music had its sign
  • To breathe upon them for more ease,
  • Sometimes he turned and bade it cease.
  • And as he spared not to rebuke
  • The mirth, so oft in council he
  • To bitter truth bore testimony:
  • And when the crafty balance shook
  • Well poised to make the wrong prevail,
  • Then Dante's hand would turn the scale.
  • And if some envoy from afar
  • 260 Sailed to Verona's sovereign port
  • For aid or peace, and all the court
  • Fawned on its lord, “the Mars of war,
  • Sole arbiter of life and death,”—
  • Be sure that Dante saved his breath.
  • And Can La Scala marked askance
  • These things, accepting them for shame
  • And scorn, till Dante's guestship came
  • To be a peevish sufferance:
  • His host sought ways to make his days
  • 270 Hateful; and such have many ways.
  • There was a Jester, a foul lout
  • Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
  • Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
  • Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
  • In Folly's horny tympanum
  • Such things as make the wise man dumb.
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  • Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
  • One day when Dante felt perplex'd
  • If any day that could come next
  • 280 Were worth the waiting for or no,
  • And mute he sat amid their din,—
  • Can Grande called the Jester in.
  • Rank words, with such, are wit's best wealth.
  • Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
  • Twittering with clustered heads, except
  • Some few that took their trains by stealth
  • And went. Can Grande shook his hair
  • And smote his thighs and laughed i' the air.
  • Then, facing on his guest, he cried,—
  • 290 “Say, Messer Dante, how it is
  • I get out of a clown like this
  • More than your wisdom can provide.”
  • And Dante: “'Tis man's ancient whim
  • That still his like seems good to him.”
  • Also a tale is told, how once,
  • At clearing tables after meat,
  • Piled for a jest at Dante's feet
  • Were found the dinner's well-picked bones;
  • So laid, to please the banquet's lord,
  • 300 By one who crouched beneath the board.
  • Then smiled Can Grande to the rest:—
  • “Our Dante's tuneful mouth indeed
  • Lacks not the gift on flesh to feed!”
  • “Fair host of mine,” replied the guest,
  • “So many bones you'd not descry
  • If so it chanced the dog were I.”*
Transcribed Footnote (page 10):

* “ Messere, voi non vedreste tant 'ossa se cane io fossi .” The

point of the reproach is difficult to render, depending as it does on

the literal meaning of the name Cane.

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  • But wherefore should we turn the grout
  • In a drained cup, or be at strife
  • From the worn garment of a life
  • 310 To rip the twisted ravel out?
  • Good needs expounding; but of ill
  • Each hath enough to guess his fill.
  • They named him Justicer-at-Law:
  • Each month to bear the tale in mind
  • Of hues a wench might wear unfin'd
  • And of the load an ox might draw;
  • To cavil in the weight of bread
  • And to see purse-thieves gibbeted.
  • And when his spirit wove the spell
  • 320 (From under even to over-noon
  • In converse with itself alone,)
  • As high as Heaven, as low as Hell,—
  • He would be summoned and must go:
  • For had not Gian stabbed Giacomo?
  • Therefore the bread he had to eat
  • Seemed brackish, less like corn than tares;
  • And the rush-strown accustomed stairs
  • Each day were steeper to his feet;
  • And when the night-vigil was done,
  • 330 His brows would ache to feel the sun.
  • Nevertheless, when from his kin
  • There came the tidings how at last
  • In Florence a decree was pass'd
  • Whereby all banished folk might win
  • Free pardon, so a fine were paid
  • And act of public penance made,—
  • This Dante writ in answer thus,
  • Words such as these: “That clearly they
  • In Florence must not have to say,—
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  • 340The man abode aloof from us
  • Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
  • Hither to candleshrift and mulct.
  • “That he was one the Heavens forbid
  • To traffic in God's justice sold
  • By market-weight of earthly gold,
  • Or to bow down over the lid
  • Of steaming censers, and so be
  • Made clean of manhood's obloquy.
  • “That since no gate led, by God's will,
  • 350 To Florence, but the one whereat
  • The priests and money-changers sat,
  • He still would wander; for that still,
  • Even through the body's prison-bars,
  • His soul possessed the sun and stars.”
  • Such were his words. It is indeed
  • For ever well our singers should
  • Utter good words and know them good
  • Not through song only; with close heed
  • Lest, having spent for the work's sake
  • 360 Six days, the man be left to make.
  • Months o'er Verona, till the feast
  • Was come for Florence the Free Town:
  • And at the shrine of Baptist John
  • The exiles, girt with many a priest
  • And carrying candles as they went,
  • Were held to mercy of the saint.
  • On the high seats in sober state,—
  • Gold neck-chains range o'er range below
  • Gold screen-work where the lilies grow,—
  • 370 The Heads of the Republic sate,
  • Marking the humbled face go by
  • Each one of his house-enemy.
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  • And as each proscript rose and stood
  • From kneeling in the ashen dust
  • On the shrine-steps, some magnate thrust
  • A beard into the velvet hood
  • Of his front colleague's gown, to see
  • The cinders stuck in his bare knee.
  • Tosinghi passed, Manelli passed,
  • 380 Rinucci passed, each in his place;
  • But not an Alighieri's face
  • Went by that day from first to last
  • In the Republic's triumph; nor
  • A foot came home to Dante's door.
  • (Respublica—a public thing:
  • A shameful shameless prostitute,
  • Whose lust with one lord may not suit,
  • So takes by turn its revelling
  • A night with each, till each at morn
  • 390 Is stripped and beaten forth forlorn,
  • And leaves her, cursing her. If she,
  • Indeed, have not some spice-draught, hid
  • In scent under a silver lid,
  • To drench his open throat with—he
  • Once hard asleep; and thrust him not
  • At dawn beneath the stairs to rot.
  • Such this Republic!—not the Maid
  • He yearned for; she who yet should stand
  • With Heaven's accepted hand in hand,
  • 400 Invulnerable and unbetray'd:
  • To whom, even as to God, should be
  • Obeisance one with Liberty.)
  • Years filled out their twelve moons, and ceased
  • One in another; and alway
  • There were the whole twelve hours each day
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  • And each night as the years increased;
  • And rising moon and setting sun
  • Beheld that Dante's work was done.
  • What of his work for Florence? Well
  • 410 It was, he knew, and well must be.
  • Yet evermore her hate's decree
  • Dwelt in his thought intolerable:—
  • His body to be burned,*—his soul
  • To beat its wings at hope's vain goal.
  • What of his work for Beatrice?
  • Now well-nigh was the third song writ,—
  • The stars a third time sealing it
  • With sudden music of pure peace:
  • For echoing thrice the threefold song,
  • 420 The unnumbered stars the tone prolong.†
  • Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
  • He heard the utter harmony
  • Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
  • Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
  • So that all ended with her eyes,
  • Hell, Purgatory, Paradise.
  • “It is my trust, as the years fall,
  • To write more worthily of her
  • Who now, being made God's minister,
  • 430 Looks on His visage and knows all.”
  • Such was the hope that love dar'd blend
  • With grief's slow fires, to make an end
Transcribed Footnote (page 14):

* Such was the last sentence passed by Florence against Dante,

as a recalcitrant exile.

Transcribed Footnote (page 14):

† E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.— Inferno.

Puro e disposto a salire alle stelle.— Purgatorio.

L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle.— Paradiso.

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  • Of the “New Life,” his youth's dear book:
  • Adding thereunto: “In such trust
  • I labour, and believe I must
  • Accomplish this which my soul took
  • In charge, if God, my Lord and hers,
  • Leave my life with me a few years.”
  • The trust which he had borne in youth
  • 440 Was all at length accomplished. He
  • At length had written worthily—
  • Yea even of her; no rhymes uncouth
  • 'Twixt tongue and tongue; but by God's aid
  • The first words Italy had said.
  • Ah! haply now the heavenly guide
  • Was not the last form seen by him:
  • But there that Beatrice stood slim
  • And bowed in passing at his side,
  • For whom in youth his heart made moan
  • 450 Then when the city sat alone.*
  • Clearly herself: the same whom he
  • Met, not past girlhood, in the street,
  • Low-bosomed and with hidden feet;
  • And then as woman perfectly,
  • In years that followed, many an once,—
  • And now at last among the suns
  • In that high vision. But indeed
  • It may be memory might recall
  • Last to him then the first of all,—
  • 460 The child his boyhood bore in heed
  • Nine years. At length the voice brought peace,—
  • “Even I, even I am Beatrice.”
Transcribed Footnote (page 15):

* Quomodo sedet sola civitas!—The words quoted by Dante

in the Vita Nuova when he speaks of the death of Beatrice.

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  • All this, being there, we had not seen.
  • Seen only was the shadow wrought
  • On the strong features bound in thought;
  • The vagueness gaining gait and mien;
  • The white streaks gathering clear to view
  • In the burnt beard the women knew.
  • For a tale tells that on his track,
  • 470 As through Verona's streets he went,
  • This saying certain women sent:—
  • “Lo, he that strolls to Hell and back
  • At will! Behold him, how Hell's reek
  • Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.”
  • “Whereat” (Boccaccio's words) “he smil'd
  • For pride in fame.” It might be so:
  • Nevertheless we cannot know
  • If haply he were not beguil'd
  • To bitterer mirth, who scarce could tell
  • 480 If he indeed were back from Hell.
  • So the day came, after a space,
  • When Dante felt assured that there
  • The sunshine must lie sicklier
  • Even than in any other place,
  • Save only Florence. When that day
  • Had come, he rose and went his way.
  • He went and turned out. From his shoes
  • It may be that he shook the dust,
  • As every righteous dealer must
  • 490 Once and again ere life can close:
  • And unaccomplished destiny
  • Struck cold his forehead, it may be.
  • No book keeps record how the Prince
  • Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
  • Nor how the Jester stank in speech:
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  • While courtiers, used to cringe and wince,
  • Poets and harlots, all the throng,
  • Let loose their scandal and their song.
  • No book keeps record if the seat
  • 500 Which Dante held at his host's board
  • Were sat in next by clerk or lord,—
  • If leman lolled with dainty feet
  • At ease, or hostage brooded there,
  • Or priest lacked silence for his prayer.
  • Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce
  • We know their deeds now: hands which fed
  • Our Dante with that bitter bread;
  • And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
  • Which, of all paths his feet knew well,
  • 510 Were steeper found than Heaven or Hell.
Sig. 2
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more about A Last Confession.
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
  • 10 And 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,
  • And only then, if God can pardon me.
  • 20 What 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: such might prove, I said,
  • 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.
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  • That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
  • For certain, it must be a parting gift.
  • And, standing silent now at last, I looked
  • 30 Into 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.
  • Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
  • But God heard that. Will God remember all?
  • It was another laugh than the sweet sound
  • Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
  • 50 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
  • Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees
  • 60 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
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  • 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
  • They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
  • 70 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,
  • “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,
  • When last I had been there a month ago,
  • 80 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,
  • Saying aloud that if their husbands 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,
  • Because of the great famine, rather than
  • 90 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,
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  • As any hiding hunted man must live.
  • It was no easy thing to keep a child
  • 100 In safety; for herself it was not safe,
  • And doubled my own danger: but I knew
  • 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
  • Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
  • 110 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
  • Of each there floated like a ring of fire
  • 120 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
  • Stood up together, as it were a voice
  • 130 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
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  • 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,
  • The life of this dead terror; as in days
  • 140 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
  • Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
  • 150 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
  • She needs must fix him there herself, because
  • I gave him to her and she loved him so,
  • 160 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,
    • Image of page 23 page: 23
  • It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
  • 170 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
  • You gave me.” So she cried herself to sleep.
  • 180 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, each month
  • Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
  • Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
  • That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
  • 190 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
  • A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
  • 200 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.
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  • 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
  • Leaning against my side. But when I felt
  • 210 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
  • 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
  • The time, I made out fourteen years for her
  • 220 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
  • Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
  • 230 Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
  • Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
  • Her face was pearly 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 dimness 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
  • The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
  • 240 That face made wonderful with night and day.
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  • 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,
  • 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
  • Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
  • 250 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
  • Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
  • 260 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.
  • And though she ruled me always, I remember
  • 270 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
  • 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
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  • All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
  • Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
  • 280 Holding the platter, when the children run
  • To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—
more about Madonna
  • La bella donna*
  • Piangendo disse:
  • “Come son fisse
  • Le stelle in cielo!
  • Quel fiato anelo
  • Dello stanco sole,
  • Quanto m' assonna!
more about She wept, sweet lady
Transcribed Footnote (page 26):
Note: The English poem is printed in two columns, divided by a vertical line.
  • *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
  • 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?”
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  • E la luna, macchiata
  • 290Come 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.
  • E veramente,
  • 300 Che le spalle sien franche
  • E le braccia bianche
  • E il seno caldo e tondo,
  • Non mi fa niente.
  • Che cosa al mondo
  • Posso più far di questi
  • Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?”
  • La donna rise
  • E riprese ridendo:—
  • “Questa mano che prendo
  • 310 È 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
  • (Dicesti) un qualche istante
  • 320 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!
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  • Oimè! Che cosa dargli,”
  • 330(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
  • And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
  • 340 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
  • The lapping blaze of hell's environment
  • Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.
  • Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
  • 350 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
  • Sat on one throne together: and to her
  • 360 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
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  • (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
  • Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
  • 370 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!”
  • 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,
  • On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
  • 380 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
  • Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
  • 390 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
  • And hands held light before her; and the face
  • 400 Which long had made a day in my life's night
  • Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
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  • Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
  • Beyond my heart to the world made for her.
  • 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
  • With his white face, only the two grew red
  • 410 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
  • And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
  • 420 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
  • And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
  • 430 Which will not let you understand my tale.
  • 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,
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    Note: There is a printing error on the third word in the first line of this page.
  • I heard he blood between her fingers hiss;
  • So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
  • Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
  • 440 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,
  • How shall I make you know? You have not known
  • 450 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
  • In every corner of myself I sought
  • To find what service failed her; and no less
  • Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
  • 460 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.
  • How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
  • 470 Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
  • That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
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  • “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
  • When to my prayers at last one sight of her
  • 480 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
  • 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,
  • Your broken love!”
  • My Father, have I not
  • 490 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
  • For safety. A poor painted mountebank
  • 500 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;
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  • And there I handed him his cups and balls
  • And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
  • For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
  • 510 And while they stopped, and made all sights and
  • sounds
  • Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
  • A woman laughed above me. I looked up
  • And saw where a brown-shouldered 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 on him, as now
  • He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine
  • Crawled in her back.
  • And three hours afterwards,
  • 520 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,
  • And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
  • 530 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 eclipse, that she
  • Or I or all things bled or burned to death.
  • And then I found her laid against my feet
  • And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
  • 540 Her look in falling. For she took the knife
  • Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
    • Sig. 3
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  • 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
  • Twist in their garters.
  • Father, I have done:
  • 550 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 steel to God.
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more about The Bride's Prelude.
THE BRIDE'S PRELUDE.
  • “Sister,” said busy Amelotte
  • To listless Aloÿse;
  • “Along your wedding-road the wheat
  • Bends as to hear your horse's feet,
  • And the noonday stands still for heat.”
  • Amelotte laughed into the air
  • With eyes that sought the sun:
  • But where the walls in long brocade
  • Were screened, as one who is afraid
  • 10 Sat Aloÿse within the shade.
  • And even in shade was gleam enough
  • To shut out full repose
  • From the bride's 'tiring-chamber, which
  • Was like the inner altar-niche
  • Whose dimness worship has made rich.
  • Within the window's heaped recess
  • The light was counterchanged
  • In blent reflexes manifold
  • From perfume-caskets of wrought gold
  • 20 And gems the bride's hair could not hold
  • All thrust together: and with these
  • A slim-curved lute, which now,
  • At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
  • Was swept in somewise unaware,
  • And shook to music the close air.
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  • Against the haloed lattice-panes
  • The bridesmaid sunned her breast;
  • Then to the glass turned tall and free,
  • And braced and shifted daintily
  • 30 Her loin-belt through her cote-hardie.
  • The belt was silver, and the clasp
  • Of lozenged arm-bearings;
  • A world of mirrored tints minute
  • The rippling sunshine wrought into 't,
  • That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.
  • At least an hour had Aloÿse,—
  • Her jewels in her hair,—
  • Her white gown, as became a bride,
  • Quartered in silver at each side,—
  • 40 Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.
  • Over her bosom, that lay still,
  • The vest was rich in grain,
  • With close pearls wholly overset:
  • Around her throat the fastenings met
  • Of chevesayle and mantelet.
  • Her arms were laid along her lap
  • With the hands open: life
  • Itself did seem at fault in her:
  • Beneath the drooping brows, the stir
  • 50 Of thought made noonday heavier.
  • Long sat she silent; and then raised
  • Her head, with such a gasp
  • As while she summoned breath to speak
  • Fanned high that furnace in the cheek
  • But sucked the heart-pulse cold and weak.
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  • (Oh gather round her now, all ye
  • Past seasons of her fear,—
  • Sick springs, and summers deadly cold!
  • To flight your hovering wings unfold,
  • 60 For now your secret shall be told.
  • Ye many sunlights, barbed with darts
  • Of dread detecting flame,—
  • Gaunt moonlights that like sentinels
  • Went past with iron clank of bells,—
  • Draw round and render up your spells!)
  • “Sister,” said Aloÿse, “I had
  • A thing to tell thee of
  • Long since, and could not. But do thou
  • Kneel first in prayer awhile, and bow
  • 70 Thine heart, and I will tell thee now.”
  • Amelotte wondered with her eyes;
  • But her heart said in her:
  • “Dear Aloÿse would have me pray
  • Because the awe she feels to-day
  • Must need more prayers than she can say.”
  • So Amelotte put by the folds
  • That covered up her feet,
  • And knelt,—beyond the arras'd gloom
  • And the hot window's dull perfume,—
  • 80 Where day was stillest in the room.
  • “Queen Mary, hear,” she said, “and say
  • To Jesus the Lord Christ,
  • This bride's new joy, which He confers,
  • New joy to many ministers,
  • And many griefs are bound in hers.”
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  • The bride turned in her chair, and hid
  • Her face against the back,
  • And took her pearl-girt elbows in
  • Her hands, and could not yet begin,
  • 90 But shuddering, uttered, “Urscelyn!”
  • Most weak she was; for as she pressed
  • Her hand against her throat,
  • Along the arras she let trail
  • Her face, as if all heart did fail,
  • And sat with shut eyes, dumb and pale.
  • Amelotte still was on her knees
  • As she had kneeled to pray.
  • Deeming her sister swooned, she thought,
  • At first, some succour to have brought;
  • 100 But Aloÿse rocked, as one distraught.
  • She would have pushed the lattice wide
  • To gain what breeze might be;
  • But marking that no leaf once beat
  • The outside casement, it seemed meet
  • Not to bring in more scent and heat.
  • So she said only: “Aloÿse,
  • Sister, when happened it
  • At any time that the bride came
  • To ill, or spoke in fear of shame
  • 110 When speaking first the bridegroom's name?
  • A bird had out its song and ceased
  • Ere the bride spoke. At length
  • She said: “The name is as the thing:—
  • Sin hath no second christening,
  • And shame is all that shame can bring.
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  • “In divers places many an while
  • I would have told thee this;
  • But faintness took me, or a fit
  • Like fever. God would not permit
  • 120 That I should change thine eyes with it.
  • “Yet once I spoke, hadst thou but heard:—
  • That time we wandered out
  • All the sun's hours, but missed our way
  • When evening darkened, and so lay
  • The whole night covered up in hay.
  • “At last my face was hidden: so,
  • Having God's hint, I paused
  • Not long; but drew myself more near
  • Where thou wast laid, and shook off fear,
  • 130 And whispered quick into thine ear
  • “Something of the whole tale. At first
  • I lay and bit my hair
  • For the sore silence thou didst keep:
  • Till, as thy breath came long and deep,
  • I knew that thou hadst been asleep.
  • “The moon was covered, but the stars
  • Lasted till morning broke.
  • Awake, thou told'st me that thy dream
  • Had been of me,—that all did seem
  • 140 At jar,—but that it was a dream.
  • “I knew God's hand and might not speak.
  • After that night I kept
  • Silence and let the record swell:
  • Till now there is much more to tell
  • Which must be told out ill or well.”
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  • She paused then, weary, with dry lips
  • Apart. From the outside
  • By fits there boomed a dull report
  • From where i' the hanging tennis-court
  • 150 The bridegroom's retinue made sport.
  • The room lay still in dusty glare,
  • Having no sound through it
  • Except the chirp of a caged bird
  • That came and ceased: and if she stirred,
  • Amelotte's raiment could be heard.
  • Quoth Amelotte: “The night this chanced
  • Was a late summer night
  • Last year! What secret, for Christ's love,
  • Keep'st thou since then? Mary above!
  • 160 What thing is this thou speakest of?
  • “Mary and Christ! Lest when 'tis told
  • I should be prone to wrath,—
  • This prayer beforehand! How she errs
  • Soe'er, take count of grief like hers,
  • Whereof the days are turned to years!”
  • She bowed her neck, and having said,
  • Kept on her knees to hear;
  • And then, because strained thought demands
  • Quiet before it understands,
  • 170 Darkened her eyesight with her hands.
  • So when at last her sister spoke,
  • She did not see the pain
  • O' the mouth nor the ashamèd eyes,
  • But marked the breath that came in sighs
  • And the half-pausing for replies.
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  • This was the bride's sad prelude-strain:—
  • “I' the convent where a girl
  • I dwelt till near my womanhood,
  • I had but preachings of the rood
  • 180 And Aves told in solitude
  • “To spend my heart on: and my hand
  • Had but the weary skill
  • To eke out upon silken cloth
  • Christ's visage, or the long bright growth
  • Of Mary's hair, or Satan wroth.
  • “So when at last I went, and thou,
  • A child not known before,
  • Didst come to take the place I left,—
  • My limbs, after such lifelong theft
  • 190 Of life, could be but little deft
  • “In all that ministers delight
  • To noble women: I
  • Had learned no word of youth's discourse,
  • Nor gazed on games of warriors,
  • Nor trained a hound, nor ruled a horse.
  • “Besides, the daily life i' the sun
  • Made me at first hold back.
  • To thee this came at once; to me
  • It crept with pauses timidly;
  • 200 I am not blithe and strong like thee.
  • “Yet my feet liked the dances well,
  • The songs went to my voice,
  • The music made me shake and weep;
  • And often, all night long, my sleep
  • Gave dreams I had been fain to keep.
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  • “But though I loved not holy things,
  • To hear them scorned brought pain,—
  • They were my childhood; and these dames
  • Were merely perjured in saints' names
  • 210 And fixed upon saints' days for games.
  • “And sometimes when my father rode
  • To hunt with his loud friends,
  • I dared not bring him to be quaff'd,
  • As my wont was, his stirrup-draught,
  • Because they jested so and laugh'd.
  • “At last one day my brothers said,
  • ‘The girl must not grow thus,—
  • Bring her a jennet,—she shall ride.’
  • They helped my mounting, and I tried
  • 220 To laugh with them and keep their side.
  • “But brakes were rough and bents were steep
  • Upon our path that day:
  • My palfrey threw me; and I went
  • Upon men's shoulders home, sore spent,
  • While the chase followed up the scent.
  • “Our shrift-father (and he alone
  • Of all the household there
  • Had skill in leechcraft,) was away
  • When I reached home. I tossed, and lay
  • 230 Sullen with anguish the whole day.
  • “For the day passed ere some one brought
  • To mind that in the hunt
  • Rode a young lord she named, long bred
  • Among the priests, whose art (she said)
  • Might chance to stand me in much stead.
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  • “I bade them seek and summon him:
  • But long ere this, the chase
  • Had scattered, and he was not found.
  • I lay in the same weary stound,
  • 240 Therefore, until the night came round.
  • “It was dead night and near on twelve
  • When the horse-tramp at length
  • Beat up the echoes of the court:
  • By then, my feverish breath was short
  • With pain the sense could scarce support.
  • “My fond nurse sitting near my feet
  • Rose softly,—her lamp's flame
  • Held in her hand, lest it should make
  • My heated lids, in passing, ache;
  • 250 And she passed softly, for my sake.
  • “Returning soon, she brought the youth
  • They spoke of. Meek he seemed,
  • But good knights held him of stout heart.
  • He was akin to us in part,
  • And bore our shield, but barred athwart.
  • “I now remembered to have seen
  • His face, and heard him praised
  • For letter-lore and medicine,
  • Seeing his youth was nurtured in
  • 260 Priests' knowledge, as mine own had been.”
  • The bride's voice did not weaken here,
  • Yet by her sudden pause
  • She seemed to look for questioning;
  • Or else (small need though) 'twas to bring
  • Well to her mind the bygone thing.
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  • Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
  • Gave her a sick recoil;
  • As, dip thy fingers through the green
  • That masks a pool,—where they have been
  • 270 The naked depth is black between.
  • Amelotte kept her knees; her face
  • Was shut within her hands,
  • As it had been throughout the tale;
  • Her forehead's whiteness might avail
  • Nothing to say if she were pale.
  • Although the lattice had dropped loose,
  • There was no wind; the heat
  • Being so at rest that Amelotte
  • Heard far beneath the plunge and float
  • 280 Of a hound swimming in the moat.
  • Some minutes since, two rooks had toiled
  • Home to the nests that crowned
  • Ancestral ash-trees. Through the glare
  • Beating again, they seemed to tear
  • With that thick caw the woof o' the air.
  • But else, 'twas at the dead of noon
  • Absolute silence; all,
  • From the raised bridge and guarded sconce
  • To green-clad places of pleasaunce
  • 290 Where the long lake was white with swans.
  • Amelotte spoke not any word
  • Nor moved she once; but felt
  • Between her hands in narrow space
  • Her own hot breath upon her face,
  • And kept in silence the same place.
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  • Aloÿse did not hear at all
  • The sounds without. She heard
  • The inward voice (past help obey'd)
  • Which might not slacken nor be stay'd,
  • 300 But urged her till the whole were said.
  • Therefore she spoke again: “That night
  • But little could be done:
  • My foot, held in my nurse's hands,
  • He swathed up heedfully in bands,
  • And for my rest gave close commands.
  • “I slept till noon, but an ill sleep
  • Of dreams: through all that day
  • My side was stiff and caught the breath;
  • Next day, such pain as sickeneth
  • 310 Took me, and I was nigh to death.
  • “Life strove, Death claimed me for his own
  • Through days and nights: but now
  • 'Twas the good father tended me,
  • Having returned. Still, I did see
  • The youth I spoke of constantly.
  • “For he would with my brothers come
  • To stay beside my couch,
  • And fix my eyes against his own,
  • Noting my pulse; or else alone,
  • 320 To sit at gaze while I made moan.
  • “(Some nights I knew he kept the watch,
  • Because my women laid
  • The rushes thick for his steel shoes.)
  • Through many days this pain did use
  • The life God would not let me lose.
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  • “At length, with my good nurse to aid,
  • I could walk forth again:
  • And still, as one who broods or grieves,
  • At noons I'd meet him and at eves,
  • 330 With idle feet that drove the leaves.
  • “The day when I first walked alone
  • Was thinned in grass and leaf,
  • And yet a goodly day o' the year:
  • The last bird's cry upon mine ear
  • Left my brain weak, it was so clear.
  • “The tears were sharp within mine eyes
  • I sat down, being glad,
  • And wept; but stayed the sudden flow
  • Anon, for footsteps that fell slow;
  • 340 'Twas that youth passed me, bowing low.
  • “He passed me without speech; but when,
  • At least an hour gone by,
  • Rethreading the same covert, he
  • Saw I was still beneath the tree,
  • He spoke and sat him down with me.
  • “Little we said; nor one heart heard
  • Even what was said within;
  • And, faltering some farewell, I soon
  • Rose up; but then i' the autumn noon
  • 350 My feeble brain whirled like a swoon.
  • “He made me sit. ‘Cousin, I grieve
  • Your sickness stays by you.’
  • ‘I would,’ said I, ‘that you did err
  • So grieving. I am wearier
  • Than death, of the sickening dying year.’
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  • “He answered: ‘If your weariness
  • Accepts a remedy,
  • I hold one and can give it you.’
  • I gazed: ‘What ministers thereto,
  • 360 Be sure,’ I said, ‘that I will do.’
  • “He went on quickly:—'Twas a cure
  • He had not ever named
  • Unto our kin lest they should stint
  • Their favour, for some foolish hint
  • Of wizardry or magic in't:
  • “But that if he were let to come
  • Within my bower that night,
  • (My women still attending me,
  • He said, while he remain'd there,) he
  • 370 Could teach me the cure privily.
  • “I bade him come that night. He came;
  • But little in his speech
  • Was cure or sickness spoken of,
  • Only a passionate fierce love
  • That clamoured upon God above.
  • “My women wondered, leaning close
  • Aloof. At mine own heart
  • I think great wonder was not stirr'd.
  • I dared not listen, yet I heard
  • 380 His tangled speech, word within word.
  • “He craved my pardon first,—all else
  • Wild tumult. In the end
  • He remained silent at my feet
  • Fumbling the rushes. Strange quick heat
  • Made all the blood of my life meet.
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  • “And lo! I loved him. I but said,
  • If he would leave me then,
  • His hope some future might forecast.
  • His hot lips stung my hand: at last
  • 390 My damsels led him forth in haste.”
  • The bride took breath to pause; and turned
  • Her gaze where Amelotte
  • Knelt,—the gold hair upon her back
  • Quite still in all its threads,—the track
  • Of her still shadow sharp and black.
  • That listening without sight had grown
  • To stealthy dread; and now
  • That the one sound she had to mark
  • Left her alone too, she was stark
  • 400 Afraid, as children in the dark.
  • Her fingers felt her temples beat;
  • Then came that brain-sickness
  • Which thinks to scream, and murmureth;
  • And pent between her hands, the breath
  • Was damp against her face like death.
  • Her arms both fell at once; but when
  • She gasped upon the light,
  • Her sense returned. She would have pray'd
  • To change whatever words still stay'd
  • 410 Behind, but felt there was no aid.
  • So she rose up, and having gone
  • Within the window's arch
  • Once more, she sat there, all intent
  • On torturing doubts, and once more bent
  • To hear, in mute bewilderment
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  • But Aloÿse still paused. Thereon
  • Amelotte gathered voice
  • In somewise from the torpid fear
  • Coiled round her spirit. Low but clear
  • 420 She said: “Speak, sister; for I hear.”
  • But Aloÿse threw up her neck
  • And called the name of God:—
  • “Judge, God, 'twixt her and me to-day!
  • She knows how hard this is to say,
  • Yet will not have one word away.”
  • Her sister was quite silent. Then
  • Afresh:—“Not she, dear Lord!
  • Thou be my judge, on Thee I call!”
  • She ceased,—her forehead smote the wall:
  • 430 “Is there a God,” she said “at all?”
  • Amelotte shuddered at the soul,
  • But did not speak. The pause
  • Was long this time. At length the bride
  • Pressed her hand hard against her side,
  • And trembling between shame and pride
  • Said by fierce effort: “From that night
  • Often at nights we met:
  • That night, his passion could but rave:
  • The next, what grace his lips did crave
  • 440 I knew not, but I know I gave.”
  • Where Amelotte was sitting, all
  • The light and warmth of day
  • Were so upon her without shade
  • That the thing seemed by sunshine made
  • Most foul and wanton to be said.
Sig. 4
Image of page 50 page: 50
  • She would have questioned more, and known
  • The whole truth at its worst,
  • But held her silent, in mere shame
  • Of day. 'Twas only these words came:—
  • 450 “Sister, thou hast not said his name.”
  • “Sister,” quoth Aloÿse, “thou know'st
  • His name. I said that he
  • Was in a manner of our kin.
  • Waiting the title he might win,
  • They called him the Lord Urscelyn.”
  • The bridegroom's name, to Amelotte
  • Daily familiar,—heard
  • Thus in this dreadful history,—
  • Was dreadful to her; as might be
  • 460 Thine own voice speaking unto thee.
  • The day's mid-hour was almost full;
  • Upon the dial-plate
  • The angel's sword stood near at One.
  • An hour's remaining yet; the sun
  • Will not decrease till all be done.
  • Through the bride's lattice there crept in
  • At whiles (from where the train
  • Of minstrels, till the marriage-call,
  • Loitered at windows of the wall,)
  • 470 Stray lute-notes, sweet and musical.
  • They clung in the green growths and moss
  • Against the outside stone;
  • Low like dirge-wail or requiem
  • They murmured, lost 'twixt leaf and stem:
  • There was no wind to carry them.
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  • Amelotte gathered herself back
  • Into the wide recess
  • That the sun flooded: it o'erspread
  • Like flame the hair upon her head
  • 480 And fringed her face with burning red.
  • All things seemed shaken and at change:
  • A silent place o' the hills
  • She knew, into her spirit came:
  • Within herself she said its name
  • And wondered was it still the same.
  • The bride (whom silence goaded) now
  • Said strongly,—her despair
  • By stubborn will kept underneath:—
  • “Sister, 'twere well thou didst not breathe
  • 490 That curse of thine. Give me my wreath.”
  • “Sister,” said Amelotte, “abide
  • In peace. Be God thy judge,
  • As thou hast said—not I. For me,
  • I merely will thank God that he
  • Whom thou hast lovèd loveth thee.”
  • Then Aloÿse lay back, and laughed
  • With wan lips bitterly,
  • Saying, “Nay, thank thou God for this,—
  • That never any soul like his
  • 500 Shall have its portion where love is.”
  • Weary of wonder, Amelotte
  • Sat silent: she would ask
  • No more, though all was unexplained:
  • She was too weak; the ache still pained
  • Her eyes,—her forehead's pulse remained.
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  • The silence lengthened. Aloÿse
  • Was fain to turn her face
  • Apart, to where the arras told
  • Two Testaments, the New and Old,
  • 510 In shapes and meanings manifold.
  • One solace that was gained, she hid.
  • Her sister, from whose curse
  • Her heart recoiled, had blessed instead:
  • Yet would not her pride have it said
  • How much the blessing comforted.
  • Only, on looking round again
  • After some while, the face
  • Which from the arras turned away
  • Was more at peace and less at bay
  • 520 With shame than it had been that day.
  • She spoke right on, as if no pause
  • Had come between her speech:
  • “That year from warmth grew bleak and pass'd,”
  • She said; “the days from first to last
  • How slow,—woe's me! the nights how fast!
  • “From first to last it was not known:
  • My nurse, and of my train
  • Some four or five, alone could tell
  • What terror kept inscrutable:
  • 530 There was good need to guard it well.
  • “Not the guilt only made the shame,
  • But he was without land
  • And born amiss. He had but come
  • To train his youth here at our home,
  • And, being man, depart therefrom.
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  • “Of the whole time each single day
  • Brought fear and great unrest:
  • It seemed that all would not avail
  • Some once,—that my close watch would fail,
  • 540 And some sign, somehow, tell the tale.
  • “The noble maidens that I knew,
  • My fellows, oftentimes
  • Midway in talk or sport, would look
  • A wonder which my fears mistook,
  • To see how I turned faint and shook.
  • “They had a game of cards, where each
  • By painted arms might find
  • What knight she should be given to.
  • Ever with trembling hand I threw
  • 550 Lest I should learn the thing I knew.
  • “And once it came. And Aure d'Honvaulx
  • Held up the bended shield
  • And laughed: ‘Gramercy for our share!—
  • If to our bridal we but fare
  • To smutch the blazon that we bear!’
  • “But proud Denise de Villenbois
  • Kissed me, and gave her wench
  • The card, and said: ‘If in these bowers
  • You women play at paramours,
  • 560 You must not mix your game with ours.’
  • “And one upcast it from her hand:
  • ‘Lo! see how high he'll soar!’
  • But then their laugh was bitterest;
  • For the wind veered at fate's behest
  • And blew it back into my breast.
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  • “Oh! if I met him in the day
  • Or heard his voice,—at meals
  • Or at the Mass or through the hall,—
  • A look turned towards me would appal
  • 570 My heart by seeming to know all.
  • “Yet I grew curious of my shame,
  • And sometimes in the church,
  • On hearing such a sin rebuked,
  • Have held my girdle-glass unhooked
  • To see how such a woman looked.
  • “But if at night he did not come,
  • I lay all deadly cold
  • To think they might have smitten sore
  • And slain him, and as the night wore,
  • 580 His corpse be lying at my door.
  • “And entering or going forth,
  • Our proud shield o'er the gate
  • Seemed to arraign my shrinking eyes.
  • With tremors and unspoken lies
  • The year went past me in this wise.
  • “About the spring of the next year
  • An ailing fell on me;
  • (I had been stronger till the spring;)
  • 'Twas mine old sickness gathering,
  • 590 I thought; but 'twas another thing.
  • “I had such yearnings as brought tears,
  • And a wan dizziness:
  • Motion, like feeling, grew intense;
  • Sight was a haunting evidence
  • And sound a pang that snatched the sense.
Image of page 55 page: 55
  • “It now was hard on that great ill
  • Which lost our wealth from us
  • And all our lands. Accursed be
  • The peevish fools of liberty
  • 600 Who will not let themselves be free!
  • “The Prince was fled into the west:
  • A price was on his blood,
  • But he was safe. To us his friends
  • He left that ruin which attends
  • The strife against God's secret ends.
  • “The league dropped all asunder,—lord,
  • Gentle and serf. Our house
  • Was marked to fall. And a day came
  • When half the wealth that propped our name
  • 610 Went from us in a wind of flame.
  • “Six hours I lay upon the wall
  • And saw it burn. But when
  • It clogged the day in a black bed
  • Of louring vapour, I was led
  • Down to the postern, and we fled.
  • “But ere we fled, there was a voice
  • Which I heard speak, and say
  • That many of our friends, to shun
  • Our fate, had left us and were gone,
  • 620 And that Lord Urscelyn was one.
  • “That name, as was its wont, made sight
  • And hearing whirl. I gave
  • No heed but only to the name:
  • I held my senses, dreading them,
  • And was at strife to look the same.
Note: There is printer's inking after the word “sight” in line 621
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  • “We rode and rode. As the speed grew,
  • The growth of some vague curse
  • Swarmed in my brain. It seemed to me
  • Numbed by the swiftness, but would be—
  • 630 That still—clear knowledge certainly.
  • “Night lapsed. At dawn the sea was there
  • And the sea-wind: afar
  • The ravening surge was hoarse and loud
  • And underneath the dim dawn-cloud
  • Each stalking wave shook like a shroud.
  • “From my drawn litter I looked out
  • Unto the swarthy sea,
  • And knew. That voice, which late had cross'd
  • Mine ears, seemed with the foam uptoss'd:
  • 640 I knew that Urscelyn was lost.
  • “Then I spake all: I turned on one
  • And on the other, and spake:
  • My curse laughed in me to behold
  • Their eyes: I sat up, stricken cold,
  • Mad of my voice till all was told.
  • “Oh! of my brothers, Hugues was mute,
  • And Gilles was wild and loud,
  • And Raoul strained abroad his face,
  • As if his gnashing wrath could trace
  • 650 Even there the prey that it must chase.
  • “And round me murmured all our train,
  • Hoarse as the hoarse-tongued sea;
  • Till Hugues from silence louring woke,
  • And cried: ‘What ails the foolish folk?
  • Know ye not frenzy's lightning-stroke?’
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  • “But my stern father came to them
  • And quelled them with his look,
  • Silent and deadly pale. Anon
  • I knew that we were hastening on,
  • 660 My litter closed and the light gone.
  • “And I remember all that day
  • The barren bitter wind
  • Without, and the sea's moaning there
  • That I first moaned with unaware,
  • And when I knew, shook down my hair.
  • “Few followed us or faced our flight:
  • Once only I could hear,
  • Far in the front, loud scornful words,
  • And cries I knew of hostile lords,
  • 670 And crash of spears and grind of swords.
  • “It was soon ended. On that day
  • Before the light had changed
  • We reached our refuge; miles of rock
  • Bulwarked for war; whose strength might mock
  • Sky, sea, or man, to storm or shock.
  • “Listless and feebly conscious, I
  • Lay far within the night
  • Awake. The many pains incurred
  • That day,—the whole, said, seen or heard,—
  • 680 Stayed by in me as things deferred.
  • “Not long. At dawn I slept. In dreams
  • All was passed through afresh
  • From end to end. As the morn heaved
  • Towards noon, I, waking sore aggrieved,
  • That I might die, cursed God, and lived.
Note: The period at the end of line 685 is not fully inked.
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  • “Many days went, and I saw none
  • Except my women. They
  • Calmed their wan faces, loving me;
  • And when they wept, lest I should see,
  • 690 Would chaunt a desolate melody.
  • “Panic unthreatened shook my blood
  • Each sunset, all the slow
  • Subsiding of the turbid light.
  • I would rise, sister, as I might,
  • And bathe my forehead through the night
  • “To elude madness. The stark walls
  • Made chill the mirk: and when
  • We oped our curtains, to resume
  • Sun-sickness after long sick gloom,
  • 700 The withering sea-wind walked the room.
  • “Through the gaunt windows the great gales
  • Bore in the tattered clumps
  • Of waif-weed and the tamarisk-boughs;
  • And sea-mews, 'mid the storm's carouse,
  • Were flung, wild-clamouring, in the house.
  • “My hounds I had not; and my hawk,
  • Which they had saved for me,
  • Wanting the sun and rain to beat
  • His wings, soon lay with gathered feet;
  • 710 And my flowers faded, lacking heat.
  • “Such still were griefs: for grief was still
  • A separate sense, untouched
  • Of that despair which had become
  • My life. Great anguish could benumb
  • My soul,—my heart was quarrelsome.
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  • “Time crept. Upon a day at length
  • My kinsfolk sat with me:
  • That which they asked was bare and plain:
  • I answered: the whole bitter strain
  • 720 Was again said, and heard again.
  • “Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turned
  • The point against my breast.
  • I bared it, smiling: ‘To the heart
  • Strike home,’ I said; ‘another dart
  • Wreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.’
  • “'Twas then my sire struck down the sword,
  • And said with shaken lips:
  • ‘She from whom all of you receive
  • Your life, so smiled; and I forgive.’
  • 730 Thus, for my mother's sake, I live.
  • “But I, a mother even as she,
  • Turned shuddering to the wall:
  • For I said: ‘Great God! and what would I do,
  • When to the sword, with the thing I knew,
  • I offered not one life but two!’
  • “Then I fell back from them, and lay
  • Outwearied. My tired sense
  • Soon filmed and settled, and like stone
  • I slept; till something made me moan,
  • 740 And I woke up at night alone.
  • “I woke at midnight, cold and dazed;
  • Because I found myself
  • Seated upright, with bosom bare,
  • Upon my bed, combing my hair,
  • Ready to go, I knew not where.
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  • “It dawned light day,—the last of those
  • Long months of longing days.
  • That noon, the change was wrought on me
  • In somewise,—nought to hear or see,—
  • 750 Only a trance and agony.”
  • The bride's voice failed her, from no will
  • To pause. The bridesmaid leaned,
  • And where the window-panes were white,
  • Looked for the day: she knew not quite
  • If there were either day or night.
  • It seemed to Aloÿse that the whole
  • Day's weight lay back on her
  • Like lead. The hours that did remain
  • Beat their dry wings upon her brain
  • 760 Once in mid-flight, and passed again.
  • There hung a cage of burnt perfumes
  • In the recess: but these,
  • For some hours, weak against the sun,
  • Had simmered in white ash. From One
  • The second quarter was begun.
  • They had not heard the stroke. The air,
  • Though altered with no wind,
  • Breathed now by pauses, so to say:
  • Each breath was time that went away,—
  • 770 Each pause a minute of the day.
  • I' the almonry, the almoner,
  • Hard by, had just dispensed
  • Church-dole and march-dole. High and wide
  • Now rose the shout of thanks, which cried
  • On God that He should bless the bride.
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  • Its echo thrilled within their feet,
  • And in the furthest rooms
  • Was heard, where maidens flushed and gay
  • Wove with stooped necks the wreaths alway
  • 780 Fair for the virgin's marriage-day.
  • The mother leaned along, in thought
  • After her child; till tears,
  • Bitter, not like a wedded girl's,
  • Fell down her breast along her curls,
  • And ran in the close work of pearls.
  • The speech ached at her heart. She said:
  • “Sweet Mary, do thou plead
  • This hour with thy most blessed Son
  • To let these shameful words atone,
  • 790 That I may die when I have done.”
  • The thought ached at her soul. Yet now:—
  • “Itself—that life” (she said,)
  • “Out of my weary life—when sense
  • Unclosed, was gone. What evil men's
  • Most evil hands had borne it thence
  • “I knew, and cursed them. Still in sleep
  • I have my child; and pray
  • To know if it indeed appear
  • As in my dream's perpetual sphere,
  • 800 That I—death reached—may seek it there.
  • “Sleeping, I wept; though until dark
  • A fever dried mine eyes
  • Kept open; save when a tear might
  • Be forced from the mere ache of sight.
  • And I nursed hatred day and night.
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  • “Aye, and I sought revenge by spells;
  • And vainly many a time
  • Have laid my face into the lap
  • Of a wise woman, and heard clap
  • 810 Her thunder, the fiend's juggling trap.
  • “At length I feared to curse them, lest
  • From evil lips the curse
  • Should be a blessing; and would sit
  • Rocking myself and stifling it
  • With babbled jargon of no wit.
  • “But this was not at first: the days
  • And weeks made frenzied months
  • Before this came. My curses, pil'd
  • Then with each hour unreconcil'd,
  • 820 Still wait for those who took my child.”
  • She stopped, grown fainter. “Amelotte,
  • Surely,” she said, “this sun
  • Sheds judgment-fire from the fierce south:
  • It does not let me breathe: the drouth
  • Is like sand spread within my mouth.”
  • The bridesmaid rose. I' the outer glare
  • Gleamed her pale cheeks, and eyes
  • Sore troubled; and aweary weigh'd
  • Her brows just lifted out of shade;
  • 830 And the light jarred within her head.
  • 'Mid flowers fair-heaped there stood a bowl
  • With water. She therein
  • Through eddying bubbles slid a cup,
  • And offered it, being risen up,
  • Close to her sister's mouth, to sup.
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  • The freshness dwelt upon her sense,
  • Yet did not the bride drink;
  • But she dipped in her hand anon
  • And cooled her temples; and all wan
  • 840 With lids that held their ache, went on.
  • “Through those dark watches of my woe,
  • Time, an ill plant, had waxed
  • Apace. That year was finished. Dumb
  • And blind, life's wheel with earth's had come
  • Whirled round: and we might seek our home.
  • “Our wealth was rendered back, with wealth
  • Snatched from our foes. The house
  • Had more than its old strength and fame:
  • But still 'neath the fair outward claim
  • 850 I rankled,—a fierce core of shame.
  • “It chilled me from their eyes and lips
  • Upon a night of those
  • First days of triumph, as I gazed
  • Listless and sick, or scarcely raised
  • My face to mark the sports they praised.
  • “The endless changes of the dance
  • Bewildered me: the tones
  • Of lute and cithern struggled tow'rds
  • Some sense; and still in the last chords
  • 860 The music seemed to sing wild words.
  • “My shame possessed me in the light
  • And pageant, till I swooned.
  • But from that hour I put my shame
  • From me, and cast it over them
  • By God's command and in God's name
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  • “For my child's bitter sake. O thou
  • Once felt against my heart
  • With longing of the eyes,—a pain
  • Since to my heart for ever,—then
  • 870 Beheld not, and not felt again!”
  • She scarcely paused, continuing:—
  • “That year drooped weak in March;
  • And April, finding the streams dry,
  • Choked, with no rain, in dust: the sky
  • Shall not be fainter this July.
  • “Men sickened; beasts lay without strength;
  • The year died in the land.
  • But I, already desolate,
  • Said merely, sitting down to wait,—
  • 880 ‘The seasons change and Time wears late.’
  • “For I had my hard secret told,
  • In secret, to a priest;
  • With him I communed; and he said
  • The world's soul, for its sins, was sped,
  • And the sun's courses numberèd.
  • “The year slid like a corpse afloat:
  • None trafficked,—who had bread
  • Did eat. That year our legions, come
  • Thinned from the place of war, at home
  • 890 Found busier death, more burdensome.
  • “Tidings and rumours came with them,
  • The first for months. The chiefs
  • Sat daily at our board, and in
  • Their speech were names of friend and kin:
  • One day they spoke of Urscelyn.
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  • “The words were light, among the rest:
  • Quick glance my brothers sent
  • To sift the speech; and I, struck through,
  • Sat sick and giddy in full view:
  • 900 Yet did none gaze, so many knew.
  • “Because in the beginning, much
  • Had caught abroad, through them
  • That heard my clamour on the coast:
  • But two were hanged; and then the most
  • Held silence wisdom, as thou know'st.
  • “That year the convent yielded thee
  • Back to our home; and thou
  • Then knew'st not how I shuddered cold
  • To kiss thee, seeming to enfold
  • 910 To my changed heart myself of old.
  • “Then there was showing thee the house,
  • So many rooms and doors;
  • Thinking the while how thou would'st start
  • If once I flung the doors apart
  • Of one dull chamber in my heart.
  • “And yet I longed to open it;
  • And often in that year
  • Of plague and want, when side by side
  • We've knelt to pray with them that died,
  • 920 My prayer was, ‘Show her what I hide!’”
End of Part I.
Sig. 5
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more about Sister Helen.
SISTER HELEN.
  • “Why did you melt your waxen man,
  • Sister Helen?
  • To-day is the third since you began.”
  • “The time was long, yet the time ran,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “But if you have done your work aright,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 10You'll let me play, for you said I might.”
  • “Be very still in your play to-night,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
  • Sister Helen;
  • If now it be molten, all is well.”
  • “Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell,
  • Little brother.”
  • 20 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,
  • Sister Helen;
  • How like dead folk he has dropped away!”
  • “Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)
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Note: This page is numbered incorrectly as 79
  • “See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
  • 30 Sister Helen,
  • Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!”
  • “Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And I'll play without the gallery door.”
  • “Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor,
  • 40 Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Here high up in the balcony,
  • Sister Helen,
  • The moon flies face to face with me.”
  • “Aye, look and say whatever you see,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • 50“Outside it's merry in the wind's wake,
  • Sister Helen;
  • In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.”
  • “Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
  • Sister Helen,
  • Three horsemen that ride terribly.”
  • 60“Little brother, whence come the three,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven? )
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  • “They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And one draws nigh, but two are afar.”
  • “Look, look, do you know them who they are,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 70 Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,
  • Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white mane on the blast.”
  • “The hour has come, has come at last,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He has made a sign and called Halloo!
  • Sister Helen,
  • 80And he says that he would speak with you.”
  • “Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That Keith of Ewern's like to die.”
  • “And he and thou, and thou and I,
  • Little brother.”
  • 90 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Three days ago, on his marriage-morn,
  • Sister Helen,
  • He sickened, and lies since then forlorn.”
  • “For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Three days and nights he has lain abed,
  • 100 Sister Helen,
  • And he prays in torment to be dead.”
  • “The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That you should take your curse away.”
  • “ My prayer was heard,—he need but pray,
  • 110 Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “But he says, till you take back your ban,
  • Sister Helen,
  • His soul would pass, yet never can.”
  • “Nay then, shall I slay a living man,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • 120“But he calls for ever on your name,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And says that he melts before a flame.”
  • “My heart for his pleasure fared the same,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,
  • Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white plume on the blast.”
  • 130“The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?)
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  • “He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
  • Sister Helen;
  • But his words are drowned in the wind's course.”
  • “Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 140 What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,
  • Sister Helen,
  • Is ever to see you ere he die.”
  • “In all that his soul sees, there am I,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The soul's one sight, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “He sends a ring and a broken coin,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 150And bids you mind the banks of Boyne.”
  • “What else he broke will he ever join,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • No, never joined, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He yields you these and craves full fain,
  • Sister Helen,
  • You pardon him in his mortal pain.”
  • “What else he took will he give again,
  • Little brother?”
  • 160 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He calls your name in an agony,
  • Sister Helen,
  • That even dead Love must weep to see.”
  • “Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast,
  • 170 Sister Helen,
  • For I know the white hair on the blast.”
  • “The short short hour will soon be past,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He looks at me and he tries to speak,
  • Sister Helen,
  • But oh! his voice is sad and weak!”
  • “What here should the mighty Baron seek,
  • 180 Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
  • Sister Helen,
  • The body dies but the soul shall live.”
  • “Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • 190“Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
  • Sister Helen,
  • To save his dear son's soul alive.”
  • “Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
  • Sister Helen,
  • To go with him for the love of God!”
  • 200“The way is long to his son's abode,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “A lady's here, by a dark steed brought,
  • Sister Helen,
  • So darkly clad, I saw her not.”
  • “See her now or never see aught,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 210 What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • “Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair,
  • Sister Helen,
  • On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair.”
  • “Blest hour of my power and her despair,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 220'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.”
  • “One morn for pride and three days for woe,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head,
  • Sister Helen;
  • With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed.”
  • “What wedding-strains hath her bridal-bed,
  • Little brother?”
  • 230 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven! )
  • “She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,
  • Sister Helen,—
  • She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon.”
  • “Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow,
  • 240 Sister Helen,
  • And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow.”
  • “Let it turn whiter than winter snow,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
  • Sister Helen!
  • More loud than the vesper-chime it fell.”
  • “No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
  • 250 Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
  • Sister Helen;
  • Is it in the sky or in the ground?”
  • “Say, have they turned their horses round,
  • Little brother?”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?)
  • 260 “They have raised the old man from his knee,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And they ride in silence hastily.”
  • “More fast the naked soul doth flee,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Flank to flank are the three steeds gone,
  • Sister Helen,
  • But the lady's dark steed goes alone.”
  • 270 “And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown,
  • Little brother.”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!)
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  • “Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And weary sad they look by the hill.”
  • “But he and I are sadder still,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • 280 Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
  • Sister Helen,
  • And the flames are winning up apace!”
  • “Yet here they burn but for a space,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!)
  • “Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
  • Sister Helen,
  • 290 Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?”
  • “A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
  • Little brother!”
  • ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
  • Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven! )
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more about The Staff and Scrip.
THE STAFF AND SCRIP.
  • “Who rules these lands?” the Pilgrim said.
  • “Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.”
  • “And who has thus harried them?” he said.
  • “It was Duke Luke did this:
  • God's ban be his!”
  • The Pilgrim said: “Where is your house?
  • I'll rest there, with your will.”
  • “You've but to climb these blackened boughs
  • And you'll see it over the hill,
  • 10 For it burns still.”
  • “Which road, to seek your Queen?” said he.
  • “Nay, nay, but with some wound
  • You'll fly back hither, it may be,
  • And by your blood i' the ground
  • My place be found.”
  • “Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,
  • And mine, where I will go;
  • For He is here and there,” he said.
  • He passed the hill-side, slow,
  • 20 And stood below.
  • The Queen sat idle by her loom:
  • She heard the arras stir,
  • And looked up sadly: through the room
  • The sweetness sickened her
  • Of musk and myrrh.
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  • Her women, standing two and two,
  • In silence combed the fleece.
  • The Pilgrim said, “Peace be with you,
  • Lady;” and bent his knees.
  • 30 She answered, “Peace.”
  • Her eyes were like the wave within;
  • Like water-reeds the poise
  • Of her soft body, dainty thin;
  • And like the water's noise
  • Her plaintive voice.
  • For him, the stream had never well'd
  • In desert tracks malign
  • So sweet; nor had he ever felt
  • So faint in the sunshine
  • 40 Of Palestine.
  • Right so, he knew that he saw weep
  • Each night through every dream
  • The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
  • With visages supreme
  • Not known to him.
  • “Lady,” he said, “your lands lie burnt
  • And waste: to meet your foe
  • All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
  • Say that it shall be so,
  • 50 And I will go.”
  • She gazed at him. “Your cause is just,
  • For I have heard the same,”
  • He said: “God's strength shall be my trust.
  • Fall it to good or grame,
  • 'Tis in His name.”
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  • “Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
  • Why should you toil to break
  • A grave, and fall therein?” she said.
  • He did not pause but spake:
  • 60 “For my vow's sake.”
  • “Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
  • Not to God's will?” “My vow
  • Remains: God heard me there as here,”
  • He said with reverent brow,
  • “Both then and now.”
  • They gazed together, he and she,
  • The minute while he spoke;
  • And when he ceased, she suddenly
  • Looked round upon her folk
  • 70 As though she woke.
  • “Fight, Sir,” she said; “my prayers in pain
  • Shall be your fellowship.”
  • He whispered one among her train,—
  • “To-morrow bid her keep
  • This staff and scrip.”
  • She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
  • About his body there
  • As sweet as her own arms he felt.
  • He kissed its blade, all bare,
  • 80 Instead of her.
  • She sent him a green banner wrought
  • With one white lily stem,
  • To bind his lance with when he fought.
  • He writ upon the same
  • And kissed her name.
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  • She sent him a white shield, whereon
  • She bade that he should trace
  • His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
  • And in a golden space
  • 90 He kissed her face.
  • Born of the day that died, that eve
  • Now dying sank to rest;
  • As he, in likewise taking leave,
  • Once with a heaving breast
  • Looked to the west.
  • And there the sunset skies unseal'd,
  • Like lands he never knew,
  • Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
  • Lay open out of view
  • 100 To ride into.
  • Next day till dark the women pray'd:
  • Nor any might know there
  • How the fight went: the Queen has bade
  • That there do come to her
  • No messenger.
  • The Queen is pale, her maidens ail;
  • And to the organ-tones
  • They sing but faintly, who sang well
  • The matin-orisons,
  • 110 The lauds and nones.
  • Lo, Father, is thine ear inclin'd,
  • And hath thine angel pass'd?
  • For these thy watchers now are blind
  • With vigil, and at last
  • Dizzy with fast.
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  • Weak now to them the voice o' the priest
  • As any trance affords;
  • And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,
  • It seemed that the last chords
  • 120 Still sang the words.
  • “Oh what is the light that shines so red?
  • 'Tis long since the sun set;”
  • Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
  • “'Twas dim but now, and yet
  • The light is great.”
  • Quoth the other: “'Tis our sight is dazed
  • That we see flame i' the air.”
  • But the Queen held her brows and gazed,
  • And said, “It is the glare
  • 130 Of torches there.”
  • “Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?
  • All day it was so still;”
  • Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
  • “Unto the furthest hill
  • The air they fill.”
  • Quoth the other: “'Tis our sense is blurr'd
  • With all the chants gone by.”
  • But the Queen held her breath and heard,
  • And said, “It is the cry
  • 140 Of Victory.”
  • The first of all the rout was sound,
  • The next were dust and flame,
  • And then the horses shook the ground:
  • And in the thick of them
  • A still band came.
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  • “Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,
  • Thus hid beneath these boughs?”
  • “Thy conquering guest returns to-night,
  • And yet shall not carouse,
  • 150 Queen, in thy house.”
  • “Uncover ye his face,” she said.
  • “O changed in little space!”
  • She cried, “O pale that was so red!
  • O God, O God of grace!
  • Cover his face.”
  • His sword was broken in his hand
  • Where he had kissed the blade.
  • “O soft steel that could not withstand!
  • O my hard heart unstayed,
  • 160 That prayed and prayed!”
  • His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
  • Where he had kissed her name.
  • “O east, and west, and north, and south,
  • Fair flew my web, for shame,
  • To guide Death's aim!”
  • The tints were shredded from his shield
  • Where he had kissed her face.
  • “Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
  • Death only keeps its place,
  • 170 My gift and grace!”
  • Then stepped a damsel to her side,
  • And spoke, and needs must weep:
  • “For his sake, lady, if he died,
  • He prayed of thee to keep
  • This staff and scrip.”
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  • That night they hung above her bed,
  • Till morning wet with tears.
  • Year after year above her head
  • Her bed his token wears,
  • 180 Five years, ten years.
  • That night the passion of her grief
  • Shook them as there they hung.
  • Each year the wind that shed the leaf
  • Shook them and in its tongue
  • A message flung.
  • And once she woke with a clear mind
  • That letters writ to calm
  • Her soul lay in the scrip; to find
  • Only a torpid balm
  • 190 And dust of palm.
  • They shook far off with palace sport
  • When joust and dance were rife;
  • And the hunt shook them from the court;
  • For hers, in peace or strife,
  • Was a Queen's life.
  • A Queen's death now: as now they shake
  • To gusts in chapel dim,—
  • Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake,
  • (Carved lovely white and slim),
  • 200 With them by him.
  • Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,
  • Good knight, before His brow
  • Who then as now was here and there,
  • Who had in mind thy vow
  • Then even as now.
Sig. 6
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  • The lists are set in Heaven to-day,
  • The bright pavilions shine;
  • Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;
  • The trumpets sound in sign
  • 210 That she is thine.
  • Not tithed with days' and years' decease
  • He pays thy wage He owed,
  • But with imperishable peace
  • Here in His own abode
  • Thy jealous God.
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more about Jenny.
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;
  • 10 Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
  • Is countless gold incomparable:
  • Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
  • Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
  • Poor 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;—
  • 20 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,
  • Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
  • So many captive hours of youth,—
    • Image of page 84 page: 84
  • 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:
  • 30 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.
  • Well, 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,—
  • 40 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,—
  • The 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,
  • 50 All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
  • You know not what a book you seem,
  • Half-read by lightning in a dream!
  • How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
  • And 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,
  • 60 What is the thought?—conjectural
    • Image of page 85 page: 85
  • On sorry matters best unsolved?—
  • Or inly is each grace revolved
  • To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
  • To 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,
  • 70 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,
  • Whose 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:—
  • 80 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,
  • Who 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:
  • 90 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
  • Your head there, so you do not sleep;
  • But that the weariness may pass
  • And leave you merry, take this glass.
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  • Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
  • If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
  • Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!
  • 100 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
  • Can share.) Another rest and ease
  • Along each summer-sated path
  • From its new lord the garden hath,
  • Than that whose spring in blessings ran
  • Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
  • Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
  • 110 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.
  • But you had roses left in May,—
  • They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
  • But must your roses die, and those
  • Their purfled buds that should unclose?
  • Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
  • Still red as from the broken heart,
  • 120 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,—
  • Nothing 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;
  • 130 When she would lie in fields and look
  • Along the ground through the blown grass
  • And wonder where the city was,
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  • Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
  • They told her then for a child's tale.
  • 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,
  • 140 When Saturday night is market-night
  • Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
  • And market-night in the Haymarket.
  • Our learned London children know,
  • Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
  • Have seen your lifted silken skirt
  • Advertise 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
  • 150 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,
  • A 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,
  • 160 So might the pages of her brain
  • Be parted at such words, and thence
  • Close back upon the dusty sense.
  • For is there hue or shape defin'd
  • In 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,
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  • But as they coil those eddies clot,
  • 170 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,
  • With 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
  • 180 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,
  • Two 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,
  • 190 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,
  • Shall 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.
  • 200 For Love himself shall ripen these
  • In a kind soil to just increase
  • Through years of fertilizing peace.
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  • Of the same lump (as it is said)
  • For 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
  • 210 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?
  • Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
  • Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
  • Till in the end, the Day of Days,
  • At Judgment, one of his own race,
  • As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
  • His daughter, with his mother's eyes?
  • 220 How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!
  • Might not the dial scorn itself
  • That has such hours to register?
  • Yet as to me, even so to her
  • Are golden sun and silver moon,
  • In daily largesse of earth's boon,
  • Counted for life-coins to one tune.
  • And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
  • Through some one man this life be lost,
  • Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?
  • 230 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,—
  • The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
  • And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
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  • With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand
  • To show them to men's souls, might stand,
  • Whole ages long, the whole world through,
  • 240 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
  • Man'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.
  • 250 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
  • In 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
  • 260 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;
  • And 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,
  • 270 The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
  • Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
  • Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
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  • Love roses better for its sake:—
  • Only 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 cipher of man's changeless sum
  • Of lust, past, present, and to come,
  • 280 Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
  • To challenge from the scornful sphinx.
  • Like a toad within a stone
  • Seated while Time crumbles on;
  • Which 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;
  • 290 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
  • Break 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.
  • Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
  • Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
  • 300 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!
  • 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
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  • Another night that London knew;
  • And all as ghostlike as the lamps.
  • 310 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,
  • And 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
  • 320 Reflected lying on my knee,
  • Where teems with first foreshadowings
  • Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:
  • And on your bosom all night worn
  • Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn,
  • But dies not yet this summer morn.
  • And now without, as if some word
  • Had called upon them that they heard,
  • The London sparrows far and nigh
  • Clamour together suddenly;
  • 330 And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake
  • Here in their song his part must take,
  • Because here too the day doth break.
  • And somehow in myself the dawn
  • Among 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
  • 340 I lay among your golden hair
  • Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
  • These golden coins.
  • For still one deems
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  • That 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;
  • 350 But delicately sighs in musk
  • The homage of the dim boudoir;
  • Or like a palpitating star
  • Thrilled 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
  • 360 Her functions there and here are one,
  • Beneath the lamps and in the sun
  • There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
  • Apparelled 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 plac'd
  • But hide Priapus to the waist,
  • 370 And whoso looks on him shall see
  • An eligible deity.
  • Why, Jenny, waking here alone
  • May help you to remember one,
  • Though all the memory's long outworn
  • Of many a double-pillowed morn.
  • I think I see you when you wake,
  • And rub your eyes for me, and shake
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  • My gold, in rising, from your hair,
  • A Danaë for a moment there.
  • 380 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
  • Because some thoughts not born amiss
  • Rose at a poor fair face like this?
  • Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
  • In my life, as in hers, they show,
  • By a far gleam which I may near,
  • 390 A dark path I can strive to clear.
  • Only one kiss. Good-bye, my dear.
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more about The Stream's Secret.
THE STREAM'S SECRET.
  • What thing unto mine ear
  • Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing,
  • O wandering water ever whispering?
  • Surely thy speech shall be of her.
  • Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
  • What message dost thou bring?
  • Say, hath not Love leaned low
  • This hour beside thy far well-head,
  • And there through jealous hollowed fingers said
  • 10 The thing that most I long to know,—
  • Murmuring with curls all dabbled in thy flow
  • And washed lips rosy red?
  • He told it to thee there
  • Where thy voice hath a louder tone;
  • But where it welters to this little moan
  • His will decrees that I should hear.
  • Now speak: for with the silence is no fear,
  • And I am all alone.
  • Shall Time not still endow
  • 20 One hour with life, and I and she
  • Slake in one kiss the thirst of memory?
  • Say, stream; lest Love should disavow
  • Thy service, and the bird upon the bough
  • Sing first to tell it me.
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  • What whisperest thou? Nay, why
  • Name the dead hours? I mind them well:
  • Their ghosts in many darkened doorways dwell
  • With desolate eyes to know them by.
  • The hour that must be born ere it can die,—
  • 30 Of that I'd have thee tell.
  • But hear, before thou speak!
  • Withhold, I pray, the vain behest
  • That while the maze hath still its bower for quest
  • My burning heart should cease to seek.
  • Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek
  • His roadside dells of rest.
  • Stream, when this silver thread
  • In flood-time is a torrent brown
  • May any bulwark bind thy foaming crown?
  • 40 Shall not the waters surge and spread
  • And to the crannied boulders of their bed
  • Still shoot the dead drift down?
  • Let no rebuke find place
  • In speech of thine: or it shall prove
  • That thou dost ill expound the words of Love,
  • Even as thine eddy's rippling race
  • Would blur the perfect image of his face.
  • I will have none thereof.
  • O learn and understand
  • 50 That 'gainst the wrongs himself did wreak
  • Love sought her aid; until her shadowy cheek
  • And eyes beseeching gave command;
  • And compassed in her close compassionate hand
  • My heart must burn and speak.
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  • For then at last we spoke
  • What eyes so oft had told to eyes
  • Through that long-lingering silence whose half-sighs
  • Alone the buried secret broke,
  • Which with snatched hands and lips' reverberate stroke
  • 60 Then from the heart did rise.
  • But she is far away
  • Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar
  • Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
  • The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey
  • And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day
  • When we shall meet once more.
  • Dark as thy blinded wave
  • When brimming midnight floods the glen,—
  • Bright as the laughter of thy runnels when
  • 70 The dawn yields all the light they crave;
  • Even so these hours to wound and that to save
  • Are sisters in Love's ken.
  • Oh sweet her bending grace
  • Then when I kneel beside her feet;
  • And sweet her eyes' o'erhanging heaven; and sweet
  • The gathering folds of her embrace;
  • And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face
  • When breaths and tears shall meet.
  • Beneath her sheltering hair,
  • 80 In the warm silence near her breast,
  • Our kisses and our sobs shall sink to rest;
  • As in some still trance made aware
  • That day and night have wrought to fulness there
  • And Love has built our nest.
Sig. 7
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  • And as in the dim grove,
  • When the rains cease that hushed them long,
  • 'Mid glistening boughs the song-birds wake to song,—
  • So from our hearts deep-shrined in love,
  • While the leaves throb beneath, around, above,
  • 90 The quivering notes shall throng.
  • Till tenderest words found vain
  • Draw back to wonder mute and deep,
  • And closed lips in closed arms a silence keep,
  • Subdued by memory's circling strain,—
  • The wind-rapt sound that the wind brings again
  • While all the willows weep.
  • Then by her summoning art
  • Shall memory conjure back the sere
  • Autumnal Springs, from many a dying year
  • 100 Born dead; and, bitter to the heart,
  • The very ways where now we walk apart
  • Who then shall cling so near.
  • And with each thought new-grown,
  • Some sweet caress or some sweet name
  • Low-breathed shall let me know her thought the same;
  • Making me rich with every tone
  • And touch of the dear heaven so long unknown
  • That filled my dreams with flame.
  • Pity and love shall burn
  • 110 In her pressed cheek and cherishing hands;
  • And from the living spirit of love that stands
  • Between her lips to soothe and yearn,
  • Each separate breath shall clasp me round in turn
  • And loose my spirit's bands.
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  • Oh passing sweet and dear,
  • Then when the worshiped form and face
  • Are felt at length in darkling close embrace;
  • Round which so oft the sun shone clear,
  • With mocking light and pitiless atmosphere,
  • 120 In many an hour and place.
  • Ah me! with what proud growth
  • Shall that hour's thirsting race be run;
  • While, for each several sweetness still begun
  • Afresh, endures love's endless drouth:
  • Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes,
  • [sweet mouth,
  • Each singly wooed and won.
Note: The words “sweet mouth” in line 125 have been dropped to the next line.
  • Yet most with the sweet soul
  • Shall love's espousals then be knit;
  • For very passion of peace shall breathe from it
  • 130 O'er tremulous wings that touch the goal,
  • As on the unmeasured height of Love's control
  • The lustral fires are lit.
  • Therefore, when breast and cheek
  • Now part, from long embraces free,—
  • Each on the other gazing shall but see
  • A self that has no heed to speak:
  • All things unsought, yet nothing more to seek,—
  • One love in unity.
  • O water wandering past,—
  • 140 Albeit to thee I speak this thing,
  • O water, thou that wanderest whispering,
  • Thou keep'st thy counsel to the last.
  • What spell upon thy bosom should Love cast,
  • His message thence to wring?
Note: There is incomplete inking of the dash at the end of line 137.
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  • Nay, must thou hear the tale
  • Of the past days,—the heavy debt
  • Of life that obdurate time withholds,—ere yet
  • To win thine ear these prayers prevail,
  • And by thy voice Love's self with high All-hail
  • 150 Yield up the love-secret?
  • How should all this be told?—
  • All the sad sum of wayworn days;—
  • Heart's anguish in the impenetrable maze;
  • And on the waste uncoloured wold
  • The visible burthen of the sun grown cold
  • And the moon's labouring gaze?
  • Alas! shall hope be nurs'd
  • On life's all-succouring breast in vain,
  • And made so perfect only to be slain?
  • 160 Or shall not rather the sweet thirst
  • Even yet rejoice the heart with warmth dispers'd
  • And strength grown fair again?
  • Stands it not by the door—
  • Love's Hour—till she and I shall meet;
  • With bodiless form and unapparent feet
  • That cast no shadow yet before,
  • Though round its head the dawn begins to pour
  • The breath that makes day sweet?
  • Its eyes invisible
  • 170 Watch till the dial's thin-thrown shade
  • Be born,—yea, till the journeying line be laid
  • Upon the point that wakes the spell,
  • And there in lovelier light than tongue can tell
  • Its presence stand array'd.
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  • Its soul remembers yet
  • Those sunless hours that passed it by;
  • And still it hears the night's disconsolate cry,
  • And feels the branches wringing wet
  • Cast on its brow, that may not once forget,
  • 180 Dumb tears from the blind sky.
  • But oh! when now her foot
  • Draws near, for whose sake night and day
  • Were long in weary longing sighed away,—
  • The Hour of Love, 'mid airs grown mute,
  • Shall sing beside the door, and Love's own lute
  • Thrill to the passionate lay.
  • Thou know'st, for Love has told
  • Within thine ear, O stream, how soon
  • That song shall lift its sweet appointed tune.
  • 190 O tell me, for my lips are cold,
  • And in my veins the blood is waxing old
  • Even while I beg the boon.
  • So, in that hour of sighs
  • Assuaged, shall we beside this stone
  • Yield thanks for grace; while in thy mirror shown
  • The twofold image softly lies,
  • Until we kiss, and each in other's eyes
  • Is imaged all alone.
  • Still silent? Can no art
  • 200 Of Love's then move thy pity? Nay,
  • To thee let nothing come that owns his sway:
  • Let happy lovers have no part
  • With thee; nor even so sad and poor a heart
  • As thou hast spurned to-day.
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  • To-day? Lo! night is here.
  • The glen grows heavy with some veil
  • Risen from the earth or fall'n to make earth pale;
  • And all stands hushed to eye and ear,
  • Until the night-wind shake the shade like fear
  • 210 And every covert quail.
  • Ah! by a colder wave
  • On deathlier airs the hour must come
  • Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
  • Between the lips of the low cave
  • Against that night the lapping waters lave,
  • And the dark lips are dumb.
  • But there Love's self doth stand,
  • And with Life's weary wings far-flown,
  • And with Death's eyes that make the water moan,
  • 220 Gathers the water in his hand:
  • And they that drink know nought of sky or land
  • But only love alone.
  • O soul-sequestered face
  • Far off,—O were that night but now!
  • So even beside that stream even I and thou
  • Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace,
  • And in the zone of that supreme embrace
  • Bind aching breast and brow.
  • O water whispering
  • 230 Still through the dark into mine ears,—
  • As with mine eyes, is it not now with hers?—
  • Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring,
  • Wan water, wandering water weltering,
  • This hidden tide of tears.
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Note: This page is misnumbered as 10 in the top center.
more about Rose Mary.
ROSE MARY.

Of her two fights with the Beryl-stone:

Lost the first, but the second won.

more about Rose Mary. Part I.
PART I.
  • “Mary mine that art Mary's Rose,
  • Come in to me from the garden-close.
  • The sun sinks fast with the rising dew,
  • And we marked not how the faint moon grew;
  • But the hidden stars are calling you.
  • “Tall Rose Mary, come to my side,
  • And read the stars if you'd be a bride.
  • In hours whose need was not your own,
  • While you were a young maid yet ungrown
  • 10You've read the stars in the Beryl-stone.
  • “Daughter, once more I bid you read;
  • But now let it be for your own need:
  • Because to-morrow, at break of day,
  • To Holy Cross he rides on his way,
  • Your knight Sir James of Heronhaye.
  • “Ere he wed you, flower of mine,
  • For a heavy shrift he seeks the shrine.
  • Now hark to my words and do not fear;
  • Ill news next I have for your ear;
  • 20But be you strong, and our help is here.
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  • “On his road, as the rumour's rife,
  • An ambush waits to take his life.
  • He needs will go, and will go alone;
  • Where the peril lurks may not be known;
  • But in this glass all things are shown.”
  • Pale Rose Mary sank to the floor:—
  • “The night will come if the day is o'er!”
  • “Nay, heaven takes counsel, star with star,
  • And help shall reach your heart from afar:
  • 30A bride you'll be, as a maid you are.”
  • The lady unbound her jewelled zone
  • And drew from her robe the Beryl-stone.
  • Shaped it was to a shadowy sphere,—
  • World of our world, the sun's compeer,
  • That bears and buries the toiling year.
  • With shuddering light 'twas stirred and strewn
  • Like the cloud-nest of the wading moon:
  • Freaked it was as the bubble's ball,
  • Rainbow-hued through a misty pall
  • 40Like the middle light of the waterfall.
  • Shadows dwelt in its teeming girth
  • Of the known and unknown things of earth;
  • The cloud above and the wave around,—
  • The central fire at the sphere's heart bound,
  • Like doomsday prisoned underground.
  • A thousand years it lay in the sea
  • With a treasure wrecked from Thessaly;
  • Deep it lay 'mid the coiled sea-wrack,
  • But the ocean-spirits found the track:
  • 50A soul was lost to win it back.
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  • The lady upheld the wondrous thing:—
  • “Ill fare” (she said) “with a fiend's-fairing:
  • But Moslem blood poured forth like wine
  • Can hallow Hell, 'neath the Sacred Sign;
  • And my lord brought this from Palestine.
  • “Spirits who fear the Blessed Rood
  • Drove forth the accursed multitude
  • That heathen worship housed herein,—
  • Never again such home to win,
  • 60Save only by a Christian's sin.
  • “All last night at an altar fair
  • I burnt strange fires and strove with prayer;
  • Till the flame paled to the red sunrise,
  • All rites I then did solemnize;
  • And the spell lacks nothing but your eyes.”
  • Low spake maiden Rose Mary:—
  • “O mother mine, if I should not see!”
  • “Nay, daughter, cover your face no more,
  • But bend love's heart to the hidden lore,
  • 70And you shall see now as heretofore.”
  • Paler yet were the pale cheeks grown
  • As the grey eyes sought the Beryl-stone:
  • Then over her mother's lap leaned she,
  • And stretched her thrilled throat passionately,
  • And sighed from her soul, and said, “I see.”
  • Even as she spoke, they two were 'ware
  • Of music-notes that fell through the air;
  • A chiming shower of strange device,
  • Drop echoing drop, once twice and thrice,
  • 80As rain may fall in Paradise.
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  • An instant come, in an instant gone,
  • No time there was to think thereon.
  • The mother held the sphere on her knee:—
  • “Lean this way and speak low to me,
  • And take no note but of what you see.”
  • “I see a man with a besom grey
  • That sweeps the flying dust away.”
  • “Ay, that comes first in the mystic sphere;
  • But now that the way is swept and clear,
  • 90Heed well what next you look on there.”
  • “Stretched aloft and adown I see
  • Two roads that part in waste-country:
  • The glen lies deep and the ridge stands tall;
  • What's great below is above seen small,
  • And the hill-side is the valley-wall.”
  • “Stream-bank, daughter, or moor and moss,
  • Both roads will take to Holy Cross.
  • The hills are a weary waste to wage;
  • But what of the valley-road's presage?
  • 100That way must tend his pilgrimage.”
  • “As 'twere the turning leaves of a book,
  • The road runs past me as I look;
  • Or it is even as though mine eye
  • Should watch calm waters filled with sky
  • While lights and clouds and wings went by.”
  • “In every covert seek a spear;
  • They'll scarce lie close till he draws near.”
  • “The stream has spread to a river now;
  • The stiff blue sedge is deep in the slough,
  • 110But the banks are bare of shrub or bough.”
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  • “Is there any roof that near at hand
  • Might shelter yield to a hidden band?”
  • “On the further bank I see but one,
  • And a herdsman now in the sinking sun
  • Unyokes his team at the threshold-stone.”
  • “Keep heedful watch by the water's edge,—
  • Some boat might lurk 'neath the shadowed sedge.’
  • “One slid but now 'twixt the winding shores,
  • But a peasant woman bent to the oars
  • 120And only a young child steered its course.
  • “Mother, something flashed to my sight!—
  • Nay, it is but the lapwing's flight.—
  • What glints there like a lance that flees?—
  • Nay, the flags are stirred in the breeze,
  • And the water's bright through the dart-rushes.
  • “Ah! vainly I search from side to side:—
  • Woe's me! and where do the foemen hide?
  • Woe's me! and perchance I pass them by,
  • And under the new dawn's blood-red sky
  • 130Even where I gaze the dead shall lie.”
  • Said the mother: “For dear love's sake,
  • Speak more low, lest the spell should break.”
  • Said the daughter: “By love's control,
  • My eyes, my words, are strained to the goal;
  • But oh! the voice that cries in my soul!”
  • “Hush, sweet, hush! be calm and behold.”
  • “I see two floodgates broken and old:
  • The grasses wave o'er the ruined weir,
  • But the bridge still leads to the breakwater;
  • 140And—mother, mother, O mother dear!”
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  • The damsel clung to her mother's knee,
  • And dared not let the shriek go free;
  • Low she crouched by the lady's chair,
  • And shrank blindfold in her fallen hair,
  • And whispering said, “The spears are there!”
  • The lady stooped aghast from her place,
  • And cleared the locks from her daughter's face.
  • “More's to see, and she swoons, alas!
  • Look, look again, ere the moment pass!
  • 150One shadow comes but once to the glass.
  • “See you there what you saw but now?”
  • “I see eight men 'neath the willow bough.
  • All over the weir a wild growth's spread:
  • Ah me! it will hide a living head
  • As well as the water hides the dead.
  • “They lie by the broken water-gate
  • As men who have a while to wait.
  • The chief's high lance has a blazoned scroll,—
  • He seems some lord of tithe and toll
  • 160With seven squires to his bannerole.
  • “The little pennon quakes in the air,
  • I cannot trace the blazon there:—
  • Ah! now I can see the field of blue,
  • The spurs and the merlins two and two;—
  • It is the Warden of Holycleugh!”
  • “God be thanked for the thing we know!
  • You have named your good knight's mortal foe.
  • Last Shrovetide in the tourney-game
  • He sought his life by treasonous shame;
  • 170And this way now doth he seek the same.
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  • “So, fair lord, such a thing you are!
  • But we too watch till the morning star.
  • Well, June is kind and the moon is clear:
  • Saint Judas send you a merry cheer
  • For the night you lie at Warisweir!
  • “Now, sweet daughter, but one more sight,
  • And you may lie soft and sleep to-night.
  • We know in the vale what perils be:
  • Now look once more in the glass, and see
  • 180If over the hills the road lies free.”
  • Rose Mary pressed to her mother's cheek,
  • And almost smiled but did not speak;
  • Then turned again to the saving spell,
  • With eyes to search and with lips to tell
  • The heart of things invisible.
  • “Again the shape with the besom grey
  • Comes back to sweep the clouds away.
  • Again I stand where the roads divide;
  • But now all's near on the steep hillside,
  • 190And a thread far down is the rivertide.”
  • “Ay, child, your road is o'er moor and moss,
  • Past Holycleugh to Holy Cross.
  • Our hunters lurk in the valley's wake,
  • As they knew which way the chase would take:
  • Yet search the hills for your true love's sake.”
  • “Swift and swifter the waste runs by,
  • And nought I see but the heath and the sky;
  • No brake is there that could hide a spear,
  • And the gaps to a horseman's sight lie clear;
  • 200Still past it goes, and there's nought to fear.”
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  • “Fear no trap that you cannot see,—
  • They'd not lurk yet too warily.
  • Below by the weir they lie in sight,
  • And take no heed how they pass the night
  • Till close they crouch with the morning light.”
  • “The road shifts ever and brings in view
  • Now first the heights of Holycleugh:
  • Dark they stand o'er the vale below,
  • And hide that heaven which yet shall show
  • 210The thing their master's heart doth know.
  • “Where the road looks to the castle steep,
  • There are seven hill-clefts wide and deep:
  • Six mine eyes can search as they list,
  • But the seventh hollow is brimmed with mist:
  • If aught were there, it might not be wist.”
  • “Small hope, my girl, for a helm to hide
  • In mists that cling to a wild moorside:
  • Soon they melt with the wind and sun,
  • And scarce would wait such deeds to be done:
  • 220God send their snares be the worst to shun.”
  • “Still the road winds ever anew
  • As it hastens on towards Holycleugh;
  • And ever the great walls loom more near,
  • Till the castle-shadow, steep and sheer,
  • Drifts like a cloud, and the sky is clear.”
  • “Enough, my daughter,” the mother said,
  • And took to her breast the bending head;
  • “Rest, poor head, with my heart below,
  • While love still lulls you as long ago:
  • 230For all is learnt that we need to know.
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  • “Long the miles and many the hours
  • From the castle-height to the abbey-towers;
  • But here the journey has no more dread;
  • Too thick with life is the whole road spread
  • For murder's trembling foot to tread.”
  • She gazed on the Beryl-stone full fain
  • Ere she wrapped it close in her robe again:
  • The flickering shades were dusk and dun
  • And the lights throbbed faint in unison,
  • 240Like a high heart when a race is run.
  • As the globe slid to its silken gloom,
  • Once more a music rained through the room;
  • Low it splashed like a sweet star-spray,
  • And sobbed like tears at the heart of May,
  • And died as laughter dies away.
  • The lady held her breath for a space,
  • And then she looked in her daughter's face:
  • But wan Rose Mary had never heard;
  • Deep asleep like a sheltered bird
  • 250She lay with the long spell minister'd.
  • “Ah! and yet I must leave you, dear,
  • For what you have seen your knight must hear.
  • Within four days, by the help of God,
  • He comes back safe to his heart's abode:
  • Be sure he shall shun the valley-road.”
  • Rose Mary sank with a broken moan,
  • And lay in the chair and slept alone,
  • Weary, lifeless, heavy as lead:
  • Long it was ere she raised her head
  • 260And rose up all discomforted.
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  • She searched her brain for a vanished thing,
  • And clasped her brows, remembering;
  • Then knelt and lifted her eyes in awe,
  • And sighed with a long sigh sweet to draw:—
  • “Thank God, thank God, thank God I saw!”
  • The lady had left her as she lay,
  • To seek the Knight of Heronhaye.
  • But first she clomb by a secret stair,
  • And knelt at a carven altar fair,
  • 270And laid the precious Beryl there.
  • Its girth was graved with a mystic rune
  • In a tongue long dead 'neath sun and moon:
  • A priest of the Holy Sepulchre
  • Read that writing and did not err;
  • And her lord had told its sense to her.
  • She breathed the words in an undertone:—
  • “ None sees here but the pure alone .”
  • “And oh!” she said, “what rose may be
  • In Mary's bower more pure to see
  • 280Than my own sweet maiden Rose Mary?”
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more about Beryl-Song. I.
Beryl-Song.
  • We whose home is the Beryl,
  • Fire-spirits of dread desire,
  • Who entered in
  • By a secret sin,
  • 'Gainst whom all powers that strive with ours are sterile,—
  • We cry, Woe to thee, mother!
  • What hast thou taught her, the girl thy daughter,
  • That she and none other
  • Should this dark morrow to her deadly sorrow imperil?
  • 10 What were her eyes
  • But the fiend's own spies,
  • O mother,
  • And shall We not fee her, our proper prophet and seër?
  • Go to her, mother,
  • Even thou, yea thou and none other,
  • Thou, from the Beryl:
  • Her fee must thou take her,
  • Her fee that We send, and make her,
  • Even in this hour, her sin's unsheltered avower.
  • 20 Whose steed did neigh,
  • Riderless, bridleless,
  • At her gate before it was day?
  • Lo! where doth hover
  • The soul of her lover?
  • She sealed his doom, she, she was the sworn approver,—
  • Whose eyes were so wondrous wise,
  • Yet blind, ah! blind to his peril!
  • For stole not We in
  • Through a love-linked sin,
  • 30 'Gainst whom all powers at war with ours are sterile,—
  • Fire-spirits of dread desire,
  • We whose home is the Beryl?
Sig. 8
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more about Rose Mary. Part II.
PART II.
  • “Pale Rose Mary, what shall be done
  • With a rose that Mary weeps upon?”
  • “Mother, let it fall from the tree,
  • And never walk where the strewn leaves be
  • Till winds have passed and the path is free.”
  • “Sad Rose Mary, what shall be done
  • With a cankered flower beneath the sun?”
  • “Mother, let it wait for the night;
  • Be sure its shame shall be out of sight
  • 10Ere the moon pale or the east grow light.”
  • “Lost Rose Mary, what shall be done
  • With a heart that is but a broken one?”
  • “Mother, let it lie where it must;
  • The blood was drained with the bitter thrust,
  • And dust is all that sinks in the dust.”
  • “Poor Rose Mary, what shall I do,—
  • I, your mother, that lovèd you?”
  • “O my mother, and is love gone?
  • Then seek you another love anon:
  • 20Who cares what shame shall lean upon?”
  • Low drooped trembling Rose Mary,
  • Then up as though in a dream stood she.
  • “Come, my heart, it is time to go;
  • This is the hour that has whispered low
  • When thy pulse quailed in the nights we know.
  • “Yet O my heart, thy shame has a mate
  • Who will not leave thee desolate.
  • Shame for shame, yea and sin for sin:
  • Yet peace at length may our poor souls win
  • 30If love for love be found therein.
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  • “O thou who seek'st our shrift to-day,”
  • She cried, “O James of Heronhaye—
  • Thy sin and mine was for love alone;
  • And oh! in the sight of God 'tis known
  • How the heart has since made heavy moan.
  • “Three days yet!” she said to her heart;
  • “But then he comes, and we will not part.
  • God, God be thanked that I still could see!
  • Oh! he shall come back assuredly,
  • 40But where, alas! must he seek for me?
  • “O my heart, what road shall we roam
  • Till my wedding-music fetch me home?
  • For love's shut from us and bides afar,
  • And scorn leans over the bitter bar
  • And knows us now for the thing we are.”
  • Tall she stood with a cheek flushed high
  • And a gaze to burn the heart-strings by.
  • 'Twas the lightning-flash o'er sky and plain
  • Ere labouring thunders heave the chain
  • 50From the floodgates of the drowning rain.
  • The mother looked on the daughter still
  • As on a hurt thing that's yet to kill.
  • Then wildly at length the pent tears came;
  • The love swelled high with the swollen shame,
  • And their hearts' tempest burst on them.
  • Closely locked, they clung without speech,
  • And the mirrored souls shook each to each,
  • As the cloud-moon and the water-moon
  • Shake face to face when the dim stars swoon
  • 60In stormy bowers of the night's mid-noon.
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  • They swayed together, shuddering sore,
  • Till the mother's heart could bear no more.
  • 'Twas death to feel her own breast shake
  • Even to the very throb and ache
  • Of the burdened heart she still must break.
  • All her sobs ceased suddenly,
  • And she sat straight up but scarce could see.
  • “O daughter, where should my speech begin?
  • Your heart held fast its secret sin:
  • 70How think you, child, that I read therein?”
  • “Ah me! but I thought not how it came
  • When your words showed that you knew my shame:
  • And now that you call me still your own,
  • I half forget you have ever known.
  • Did you read my heart in the Beryl-stone?”
  • The lady answered her mournfully:—
  • “The Beryl-stone has no voice for me:
  • But when you charged its power to show
  • The truth which none but the pure may know,
  • 80Did naught speak once of a coming woe?”
  • Her hand was close to her daughter's heart,
  • And it felt the life-blood's sudden start:
  • A quick deep breath did the damsel draw,
  • Like the struck fawn in the oakenshaw:
  • “O mother,” she cried, “but still I saw!”
  • “O child, my child, why held you apart
  • From my great love your hidden heart?
  • Said I not that all sin must chase
  • From the spell's sphere the spirits of grace,
  • 90And yield their rule to the evil race?
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  • “Ah! would to God I had clearly told
  • How strong those powers, accurst of old:
  • Their heart is the ruined house of lies;
  • O girl, they can seal the sinful eyes,
  • Or show the truth by contraries!”
  • The daughter sat as cold as a stone,
  • And spoke no word but gazed alone,
  • Nor moved, though her mother strove a space
  • To clasp her round in a close embrace,
  • 100Because she dared not see her face.
  • “Oh!” at last did the mother cry,
  • “Be sure, as he loved you, so will I!
  • Ah! still and dumb is the bride, I trow;
  • But cold and stark as the winter snow
  • Is the bridegroom's heart, laid dead below!
  • “Daughter, daughter, remember you
  • That cloud in the hills by Holycleugh?
  • 'Twas a Hell-screen hiding truth away:
  • There, not i' the vale, the ambush lay,
  • 110And thence was the dead borne home to-day.”
  • Deep the flood and heavy the shock
  • When sea meets sea in the riven rock:
  • But calm is the pulse that shakes the sea
  • To the prisoned tide of doom set free
  • In the breaking heart of Rose Mary.
  • Once she sprang as the heifer springs
  • With the wolf's teeth at its red heart-strings.
  • First 'twas fire in her breast and brain,
  • And then scarce hers but the whole world's pain,
  • 120As she gave one shriek and sank again.
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  • In the hair dark-waved the face lay white
  • As the moon lies in the lap of night;
  • And as night through which no moon may dart
  • Lies on a pool in the woods apart,
  • So lay the swoon on the weary heart.
  • The lady felt for the bosom's stir,
  • And wildly kissed and called on her;
  • Then turned away with a quick footfall,
  • And slid the secret door in the wall,
  • 130And clomb the strait stair's interval.
  • There above in the altar-cell
  • A little fountain rose and fell:
  • She set a flask to the water's flow,
  • And, backward hurrying, sprinkled now
  • The still cold breast and the pallid brow.
  • Scarce cheek that warmed or breath on the air,
  • Yet something told that life was there.
  • “Ah! not with the heart the body dies!”
  • The lady moaned in a bitter wise;
  • 140Then wrung her hands and hid her eyes.
  • “Alas! and how may I meet again
  • In the same poor eyes the selfsame pain?
  • What help can I seek, such grief to guide?
  • Ah! one alone might avail,” she cried,—
  • “The priest who prays at the dead man's side.”
  • The lady arose, and sped down all
  • The winding stairs to the castle-hall.
  • Long-known valley and wood and stream,
  • As the loopholes passed, naught else did seem
  • 150Than the torn threads of a broken dream.
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  • The hall was full of the castle-folk;
  • The women wept, but the men scarce spoke.
  • As the lady crossed the rush-strewn floor,
  • The throng fell backward, murmuring sore,
  • And pressed outside round the open door.
  • A stranger shadow hung on the hall
  • Than the dark pomp of a funeral.
  • 'Mid common sights that were there alway,
  • As 'twere a chance of the passing day,
  • 160On the ingle-bench the dead man lay.
  • A priest who passed by Holycleugh
  • The tidings brought when the day was new.
  • He guided them who had fetched the dead;
  • And since that hour, unwearièd,
  • He knelt in prayer at the low bier's head.
  • Word had gone to his own domain
  • That in evil wise the knight was slain:
  • Soon the spears must gather apace
  • And the hunt be hard on the hunters' trace;
  • 170But all things yet lay still for a space.
  • As the lady's hurried step drew near,
  • The kneeling priest looked up to her.
  • “Father, death is a grievous thing;
  • But oh! the woe has a sharper sting
  • That craves by me your ministering.
  • “Alas for the child that should have wed
  • This noble knight here lying dead!
  • Dead in hope, with all blessed boon
  • Of love thus rent from her heart ere noon,
  • 180I left her laid in a heavy swoon.
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  • “O haste to the open bower-chamber
  • That's topmost as you mount the stair:
  • Seek her, father, ere yet she wake;
  • Your words, not mine, be the first to slake
  • This poor heart's fire, for Christ's sweet sake!
  • “God speed!” she said as the priest passed through,
  • “And I ere long will be with you.”
  • Then low on the hearth her knees sank prone;
  • She signed all folk from the threshold-stone,
  • 190And gazed in the dead man's face alone.
  • The fight for life found record yet
  • In the clenched lips and the teeth hard-set;
  • The wrath from the bent brow was not gone,
  • And stark in the eyes the hate still shone
  • Of that they last had looked upon.
  • The blazoned coat was rent on his breast
  • Where the golden field was goodliest;
  • But the shivered sword, close-gripped, could tell
  • That the blood shed round him where he fell
  • 200Was not all his in the distant dell.
  • The lady recked of the corpse no whit,
  • But saw the soul and spoke to it:
  • A light there was in her steadfast eyes,—
  • The fire of mortal tears and sighs
  • That pity and love immortalize.
  • “By thy death have I learnt to-day
  • Thy deed, O James of Heronhaye!
  • Great wrong thou hast done to me and mine;
  • And haply God hath wrought for a sign
  • 210By our blind deed this doom of thine.
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  • “Thy shrift, alas! thou wast not to win;
  • But may death shrive thy soul herein!
  • Full well do I know thy love should be
  • Even yet—had life but stayed with thee—
  • Our honour's strong security.”
  • She stooped, and said with a sob's low stir,—
  • “Peace be thine,—but what peace for her?”
  • But ere to the brow her lips were press'd,
  • She marked, half-hid in the riven vest,
  • 220A packet close to the dead man's breast.
  • 'Neath surcoat pierced and broken mail
  • It lay on the blood-stained bosom pale.
  • The clot clung round it, dull and dense,
  • And a faintness seized her mortal sense
  • As she reached her hand and drew it thence.
  • 'Twas steeped in the heart's flood welling high
  • From the heart it there had rested by:
  • 'Twas glued to a broidered fragment gay,—
  • A shred by spear-thrust rent away
  • 230From the heron-wings of Heronhaye.
  • She gazed on the thing with piteous eyne:—
  • “Alas, poor child, some pledge of thine!
  • Ah me! in this troth the hearts were twain,
  • And one hath ebbed to this crimson stain,
  • And when shall the other throb again?”
  • She opened the packet heedfully;
  • The blood was stiff, and it scarce might be.
  • She found but a folded paper there,
  • And round it, twined with tenderest care,
  • 240A long bright tress of golden hair.
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  • Even as she looked, she saw again
  • That dark-haired face in its swoon of pain:
  • It seemed a snake with a golden sheath
  • Crept near, as a slow flame flickereth,
  • And stung her daughter's heart to death.
  • She loosed the tress, but her hand did shake
  • As though indeed she had touched a snake;
  • And next she undid the paper's fold,
  • But that too trembled in her hold,
  • 250And the sense scarce grasped the tale it told.
  • “My heart's sweet lord,” ('twas thus she read,)
  • “At length our love is garlanded.
  • At Holy Cross, within eight days' space,
  • I seek my shrift; and the time and place
  • Shall fit thee too for thy soul's good grace.
  • “From Holycleugh on the seventh day
  • My brother rides, and bides away:
  • And long or e'er he is back, mine own,
  • Afar where the face of fear's unknown
  • 260We shall be safe with our love alone.
  • “Ere yet at the shrine my knees I bow,
  • I shear one tress for our holy vow.
  • As round these words these threads I wind,
  • So, eight days hence, shall our loves be twined,
  • Says my lord's poor lady, Jocelind.”
  • She read it twice, with a brain in thrall,
  • And then its echo told her all.
  • O'er brows low-fall'n her hands she drew:—
  • “O God!” she said, as her hands fell too,—
  • 270“The Warden's sister of Holycleugh!”
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  • She rose upright with a long low moan,
  • And stared in the dead man's face new-known.
  • Had it lived indeed? She scarce could tell:
  • 'Twas a cloud where fiends had come to dwell,—
  • A mask that hung on the gate of Hell.
  • She lifted the lock of gleaming hair
  • And smote the lips and left it there.
  • “Here's gold that Hell shall take for thy toll!
  • Full well hath thy treason found its goal,
  • 280O thou dead body and damnèd soul!”
  • She turned, sore dazed, for a voice was near,
  • And she knew that some one called to her.
  • On many a column fair and tall
  • A high court ran round the castle-hall;
  • And thence it was that the priest did call.
  • “I sought your child where you bade me go,
  • And in rooms around and rooms below;
  • But where, alas! may the maiden be?
  • Fear nought,—we shall find her speedily,—
  • 290But come, come hither, and seek with me.”
  • She reached the stair like a lifelorn thing,
  • But hastened upward murmuring:—
  • “Yea, Death's is a face that's fell to see;
  • But bitterer pang Life hoards for thee,
  • Thou broken heart of Rose Mary!”
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more about Beryl-Song. II.
Beryl-Song.
  • We whose throne is the Beryl,
  • Dire-gifted spirits of fire,
  • Who for a twin
  • Leash Sorrow to Sin,
  • Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril,—
  • We cry,—O desolate daughter!
  • Thou and thy mother share newer shame with each other
  • Than last night's slaughter.
  • Awake and tremble, for our curses assemble!
  • 10 What more, that thou know'st not yet,—
  • That life nor death shall forget?
  • No help from Heaven,—thy woes heart-riven are sterile!
  • O once a maiden,
  • With yet worse sorrow can any morrow be laden?
  • It waits for thee,
  • It looms, it must be,
  • O lost among women,—
  • It comes and thou canst not flee.
  • Amen to the omen,
  • 20 Says the voice of the Beryl.
  • Thou sleep'st? Awake,—
  • What dar'st thou yet for his sake,
  • Who each for other did God's own Future imperil?
  • Dost dare to live
  • 'Mid the pangs each hour must give?
  • Nay, rather die,—
  • With him thy lover 'neath Hell's cloud-cover to fly,—
  • Hopeless, yet not apart,
  • Cling heart to heart,
  • 30 And beat through the nether storm-eddying winds together?
  • Shall this be so?
  • There thou shalt meet him, but mayst thou greet him?
  • ah no!
  • He loves, but thee he hoped nevermore to see,—
  • He sighed as he died,
    • Image of page 125 page: 125
  • But with never a thought for thee.
  • Alone!
  • Alone, for ever alone,—
  • Whose eyes were such wondrous spies for the fate foreshown!
  • Lo! have not We leashed the twin
  • 40 Of endless Sorrow to Sin,—
  • Who on no flower refrain to lour with peril,—
  • Dire-gifted spirits of fire,
  • We whose throne is the Beryl?
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more about Rose Mary. Part III.
PART III.
  • A swoon that breaks is the whelming wave
  • When help comes late but still can save.
  • With all blind throes is the instant rife,—
  • Hurtling clangour and clouds at strife,—
  • The breath of death, but the kiss of life.
  • The night lay deep on Rose Mary's heart,
  • For her swoon was death's kind counterpart:
  • The dawn broke dim on Rose Mary's soul,—
  • No hill-crown's heavenly aureole,
  • 10But a wild gleam on a shaken shoal.
  • Her senses gasped in the sudden air,
  • And she looked around, but none was there.
  • She felt the slackening frost distil
  • Through her blood the last ooze dull and chill:
  • Her lids were dry and her lips were still.
  • Her tears had flooded her heart again;
  • As after a long day's bitter rain,
  • At dusk when the wet flower-cups shrink,
  • The drops run in from the beaded brink,
  • 20And all the close-shut petals drink.
  • Again her sighs on her heart were rolled;
  • As the wind that long has swept the wold,—
  • Whose moan was made with the moaning sea,—
  • Beats out its breath in the last torn tree,
  • And sinks at length in lethargy.
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  • She knew she had waded bosom-deep
  • Along death's bank in the sedge of sleep:
  • All else was lost to her clouded mind;
  • Nor, looking back, could she see defin'd
  • 30O'er the dim dumb waste what lay behind.
  • Slowly fades the sun from the wall
  • Till day lies dead on the sun-dial:
  • And now in Rose Mary's lifted eye
  • 'Twas shadow alone that made reply
  • To the set face of the soul's dark sky.
  • Yet still through her soul there wandered past
  • Dread phantoms borne on a wailing blast,—
  • Death and sorrow and sin and shame;
  • And, murmured still, to her lips there came
  • 40Her mother's and her lover's name.
  • How to ask, and what thing to know?
  • She might not stay and she dared not go.
  • From fires unseen these smoke-clouds curled;
  • But where did the hidden curse lie furled?
  • And how to seek through the weary world?
  • With toiling breath she rose from the floor
  • And dragged her steps to an open door:
  • 'Twas the secret panel standing wide,
  • As the lady's hand had let it bide
  • 50In hastening back to her daughter's side.
  • She passed, but reeled with a dizzy brain
  • And smote the door which closed again.
  • She stood within by the darkling stair,
  • But her feet might mount more freely there,—
  • 'Twas the open light most blinded her.
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  • Within her mind no wonder grew
  • At the secret path she never knew:
  • All ways alike were strange to her now,—
  • One field bare-ridged from the spirit's plough,
  • 60One thicket black with the cypress-bough.
  • Once she thought that she heard her name;
  • And she paused, but knew not whence it came.
  • Down the shadowed stair a faint ray fell
  • That guided the weary footsteps well
  • Till it led her up to the altar-cell.
  • No change there was on Rose Mary's face
  • As she leaned in the portal's narrow space:
  • Still she stood by the pillar's stem,
  • Hand and bosom and garment's hem,
  • 70As the soul stands by at the requiem.
  • The altar-cell was a dome low-lit,
  • And a veil hung in the midst of it:
  • At the pole-points of its circling girth
  • Four symbols stood of the world's first birth,—
  • Air and water and fire and earth.
  • To the north, a fountain glittered free;
  • To the south, there glowed a red fruit-tree;
  • To the east, a lamp flamed high and fair;
  • To the west, a crystal casket rare
  • 80Held fast a cloud of the fields of air.
  • The painted walls were a mystic show
  • Of time's ebb-tide and overflow;
  • His hoards long-locked and conquering key,
  • His service-fires that in heaven be,
  • And earth-wheels whirled perpetually.
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Note: There is what appears to be an accent acute over the “e” in “Beryl” in line 100, which is likely a typesetting error.
  • Rose Mary gazed from the open door
  • As on idle things she cared not for,—
  • The fleeting shapes of an empty tale;
  • Then stepped with a heedless visage pale,
  • 90And lifted aside the altar-veil.
  • The altar stood from its curved recess
  • In a coiling serpent's life-likeness:
  • Even such a serpent evermore
  • Lies deep asleep at the world's dark core
  • Till the last Voice shake the sea and shore.
  • From the altar-cloth a book rose spread
  • And tapers burned at the altar-head;
  • And there in the altar-midst alone,
  • 'Twixt wings of a sculptured beast unknown,
  • 100Rose Mary saw the Béryl-stone.
  • Firm it sat 'twixt the hollowed wings,
  • As an orb sits in the hand of kings:
  • And lo! for that Foe whose curse far-flown
  • Had bound her life with a burning zone,
  • Rose Mary knew the Beryl-stone.
  • Dread is the meteor's blazing sphere
  • When the poles throb to its blind career;
  • But not with a light more grim and ghast
  • Thereby is the future doom forecast,
  • 110Than now this sight brought back the past.
  • The hours and minutes seemed to whirr
  • In a clanging swarm that deafened her;
  • They stung her heart to a writhing flame,
  • And marshalled past in its glare they came,—
  • Death and sorrow and sin and shame.
Sig. 9
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  • Round the Beryl's sphere she saw them pass
  • And mock her eyes from the fated glass:
  • One by one in a fiery train
  • The dead hours seemed to wax and wane,
  • 120And burned till all was known again.
  • From the drained heart's fount there rose no cry,
  • There sprang no tears, for the source was dry.
  • Held in the hand of some heavy law,
  • Her eyes she might not once withdraw,
  • Nor shrink away from the thing she saw.
  • Even as she gazed, through all her blood
  • The flame was quenched in a coming flood:
  • Out of the depth of the hollow gloom
  • On her soul's bare sands she felt it boom,—
  • 130The measured tide of a sea of doom.
  • Three steps she took through the altar-gate,
  • And her neck reared and her arms grew straight:
  • The sinews clenched like a serpent's throe,
  • And the face was white in the dark hair's flow,
  • As her hate beheld what lay below.
  • Dumb she stood in her malisons,—
  • A silver statue tressed with bronze:
  • As the fabled head by Perseus mown,
  • It seemed in sooth that her gaze alone
  • 140Had turned the carven shapes to stone.
  • O'er the altar-sides on either hand
  • There hung a dinted helm and brand:
  • By strength thereof, 'neath the Sacred Sign,
  • That bitter gift o'er the salt sea-brine
  • Her father brought from Palestine.
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  • Rose Mary moved with a stern accord
  • And reached her hand to her father's sword;
  • Nor did she stir her gaze one whit
  • From the thing whereon her brows were knit;
  • 150But gazing still, she spoke to it.
  • “O ye, three times accurst,” she said,
  • “By whom this stone is tenanted!
  • Lo! here ye came by a strong sin's might;
  • Yet a sinner's hand that's weak to smite
  • Shall send you hence ere the day be night.
  • “This hour a clear voice bade me know
  • My hand shall work your overthrow:
  • Another thing in mine ear it spake,—
  • With the broken spell my life shall break.
  • 160I thank Thee, God, for the dear death's sake!
  • “And he Thy heavenly minister
  • Who swayed erewhile this spell-bound sphere,—
  • My parting soul let him haste to greet,
  • And none but he be guide for my feet
  • To where Thy rest is made complete.”
  • Then deep she breathed, with a tender moan:—
  • “My love, my lord, my only one!
  • Even as I held the cursed clue,
  • When thou, through me, these foul ones slew,—
  • 170By mine own deed shall they slay me too!
  • “Even while they speed to Hell, my love,
  • Two hearts shall meet in Heaven above.
  • Our shrift thou sought'st, but might'st not bring:
  • And oh! for me 'tis a blessed thing
  • To work hereby our ransoming.
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  • “One were our hearts in joy and pain,
  • And our souls e'en now grow one again.
  • And O my love, if our souls are three,
  • O thine and mine shall the third soul be,—
  • 180One threefold love eternally.”
  • Her eyes were soft as she spoke apart,
  • And the lips smiled to the broken heart:
  • But the glance was dark and the forehead scored
  • With the bitter frown of hate restored,
  • As her two hands swung the heavy sword.
  • Three steps back from her Foe she trod:—
  • “Love, for thy sake! In Thy Name, O God!”
  • In the fair white hands small strength was shown;
  • Yet the blade flashed high and the edge fell prone,
  • 190And she cleft the heart of the Beryl-stone.
  • What living flesh in the thunder-cloud
  • Hath sat and felt heaven cry aloud?
  • Or known how the levin's pulse may beat?
  • Or wrapped the hour when the whirlwinds meet
  • About its breast for a winding-sheet?
  • Who hath crouched at the world's deep heart
  • While the earthquake rends its loins apart?
  • Or walked far under the seething main
  • While overhead the heavens ordain
  • 200The tempest-towers of the hurricane?
  • Who hath seen or what ear hath heard
  • The secret things unregister'd
  • Of the place where all is past and done,
  • And tears and laughter sound as one
  • In Hell's unhallowed unison?
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  • Nay, is it writ how the fiends despair
  • In earth and water and fire and air?
  • Even so no mortal tongue may tell
  • How to the clang of the sword that fell
  • 210The echoes shook the altar-cell.
  • When all was still on the air again
  • The Beryl-stone lay cleft in twain;
  • The veil was rent from the riven dome;
  • And every wind that's winged to roam
  • Might have the ruined place for home.
  • The fountain no more glittered free;
  • The fruit hung dead on the leafless tree;
  • The flame of the lamp had ceased to flare;
  • And the crystal casket shattered there
  • 220Was emptied now of its cloud of air.
  • And lo! on the ground Rose Mary lay,
  • With a cold brow like the snows ere May,
  • With a cold breast like the earth till Spring,
  • With such a smile as the June days bring
  • When the year grows warm for harvesting.
  • The death she had won might leave no trace
  • On the soft sweet form and gentle face:
  • In a gracious sleep she seemed to lie;
  • And over her head her hand on high
  • 230Held fast the sword she triumphed by.
  • 'Twas then a clear voice said in the room:—
  • “Behold the end of the heavy doom.
  • O come,—for thy bitter love's sake blest;
  • By a sweet path now thou journeyest,
  • And I will lead thee to thy rest.
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  • “Me thy sin by Heaven's sore ban
  • Did chase erewhile from the talisman:
  • But to my heart, as a conquered home,
  • In glory of strength thy footsteps come
  • 240Who hast thus cast forth my foes therefrom.
  • “Already thy heart remembereth
  • No more his name thou sought'st in death:
  • For under all deeps, all heights above,—
  • So wide the gulf in the midst thereof,—
  • Are Hell of Treason and Heaven of Love.
  • “Thee, true soul, shall thy truth prefer
  • To blessed Mary's rose-bower:
  • Warmed and lit is thy place afar
  • With guerdon-fires of the sweet Love-star
  • 250Where hearts of steadfast lovers are:—
  • “Though naught for the poor corpse lying here
  • Remain to-day but the cold white bier,
  • But burial-chaunt and bended knee,
  • But sighs and tears that heaviest be,
  • But rent rose-flower and rosemary.”
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more about Beryl-Song. III.
Beryl-Song.
  • We, cast forth from the Beryl,
  • Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
  • Whose pangs begin
  • With God's grace to sin,
  • For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile,—
  • Woe! must We behold this mother
  • Find grace in her dead child's face, and doubt of none other
  • But that perfect pardon, alas! hath assured her guerdon?
  • Woe! must We behold this daughter,
  • 10 Made clean from the soil of sin wherewith We had fraught
  • her,
  • Shake off a man's blood like water?
  • Write up her story
  • On the Gate of Heaven's glory,
  • Whom there We behold so fair in shining apparel,
  • And beneath her the ruin
  • Of our own undoing!
  • Alas, the Beryl!
  • We had for a foeman
  • But one weak woman;
  • 20 In one day's strife,
  • Her hope fell dead from her life;
  • And yet no iron,
  • Her soul to environ,
  • Could this manslayer, this false soothsayer imperil!
  • Lo, where she bows
  • In the Holy House!
  • Who now shall dissever her soul from its joy for ever
  • While every ditty
  • Of love and plentiful pity
  • 30 Fills the White City,
  • And the floor of Heaven to her feet for ever is given?
  • Hark, a voice cries “Flee!”
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  • Woe! woe! what shelter have We,
  • Whose pangs begin
  • With God's grace to sin,
  • For whose spent powers the immortal hours are sterile,
  • Gyre-circling spirits of fire,
  • We, cast forth from the Beryl?
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more about The White Ship (Henry I of England 25 November 1120
THE WHITE SHIP.

Henry I. of England.—25th November 1120.
  • By none but me can the tale be told,
  • The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
  • ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne. )
  • 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
  • Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
  • ( The sea hath no King but God alone. )
  • King Henry held it as life's whole gain
  • That after his death his son should reign.
  • 'Twas so in my youth I heard men say,
  • 10And my old age calls it back to-day.
  • King Henry of England's realm was he,
  • And Henry Duke of Normandy.
  • The times had changed when on either coast
  • “Clerkly Harry” was all his boast.
  • Of ruthless strokes full many an one
  • He had struck to crown himself and his son;
  • And his elder brother's eyes were gone.
  • And when to the chase his court would crowd,
  • The poor flung ploughshares on his road,
  • 20And shrieked: “Our cry is from King to God!”
Image of page 138 page: 138
  • But all the chiefs of the English land
  • Had knelt and kissed the Prince's hand.
  • And next with his son he sailed to France
  • To claim the Norman allegiance:
  • And every baron in Normandy
  • Had taken the oath of fealty.
  • 'Twas sworn and sealed, and the day had come
  • When the King and the Prince might journey home:
  • For Christmas cheer is to home hearts dear,
  • 30And Christmas now was drawing near.
  • Stout Fitz-Stephen came to the King,—
  • A pilot famous in seafaring;
  • And he held to the King, in all men's sight,
  • A mark of gold for his tribute's right.
  • “Liege Lord! my father guided the ship
  • From whose boat your father's foot did slip
  • When he caught the English soil in his grip,
  • “And cried: ‘By this clasp I claim command
  • O'er every rood of English land!’
  • 40“He was borne to the realm you rule o'er now
  • In that ship with the archer carved at her prow:
  • “And thither I'll bear, an it be my due,
  • Your father's son and his grandson too.
  • “The famed White Ship is mine in the bay,
  • From Harfleur's harbour she sails to-day,
Image of page 139 page: 139
  • “With masts fair-pennoned as Norman spears
  • And with fifty well-tried mariners.”
  • Quoth the King: “My ships are chosen each one,
  • But I'll not say nay to Stephen's son.
  • 50“My son and daughter and fellowship
  • Shall cross the water in the White Ship.”
  • The King set sail with the eve's south wind,
  • And soon he left that coast behind.
  • The Prince and all his, a princely show,
  • Remained in the good White Ship to go.
  • With noble knights and with ladies fair,
  • With courtiers and sailors gathered there,
  • Three hundred living souls we were:
  • And I Berold was the meanest hind
  • 60In all that train to the Prince assign'd.
  • The Prince was a lawless shameless youth;
  • From his father's loins he sprang without ruth:
  • Eighteen years till then he had seen,
  • And the devil's dues in him were eighteen.
  • And now he cried: “Bring wine from below;
  • Let the sailors revel ere yet they row:
  • “Our speed shall o'ertake my father's flight
  • Though we sail from the harbour at midnight.”
  • The rowers made good cheer without check;
  • 70The lords and ladies obeyed his beck;
  • The night was light, and they danced on the deck.
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  • But at midnight's stroke they cleared the bay,
  • And the White Ship furrowed the water-way.
  • The sails were set, and the oars kept tune
  • To the double flight of the ship and the moon:
  • Swifter and swifter the White Ship sped
  • Till she flew as the spirit flies from the dead:
  • As white as a lily glimmered she
  • Like a ship's fair ghost upon the sea.
  • 80And the Prince cried, “Friends, 'tis the hour to
  • sing!
  • Is a songbird's course so swift on the wing?”
  • And under the winter stars' still throng,
  • From brown throats, white throats, merry and
  • strong,
  • The knights and the ladies raised a song.
  • A song,—nay, a shriek that rent the sky,
  • That leaped o'er the deep!—the grievous cry
  • Of three hundred living that now must die.
  • An instant shriek that sprang to the shock
  • As the ship's keel felt the sunken rock.
  • 90'Tis said that afar—a shrill strange sigh—
  • The King's ships heard it and knew not why.
  • Pale Fitz-Stephen stood by the helm
  • 'Mid all those folk that the waves must whelm.
  • A great King's heir for the waves to whelm,
  • And the helpless pilot pale at the helm!
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  • The ship was eager and sucked athirst,
  • By the stealthy stab of the sharp reef pierc'd:
  • And like the moil round a sinking cup
  • The waters against her crowded up.
  • 100A moment the pilot's senses spin,—
  • The next he snatched the Prince 'mid the din,
  • Cut the boat loose, and the youth leaped in.
  • A few friends leaped with him, standing near.
  • “Row! the sea's smooth and the night is clear!”
  • “What! none to be saved but these and I?”
  • “Row, row as you'd live! All here must die!”
  • Out of the churn of the choking ship,
  • Which the gulf grapples and the waves strip,
  • They struck with the strained oars' flash and dip.
  • 110'Twas then o'er the splitting bulwarks' brim
  • The Prince's sister screamed to him.
  • He gazed aloft, still rowing apace,
  • And through the whirled surf he knew her face.
  • To the toppling decks clave one and all
  • As a fly cleaves to a chamber-wall.
  • I Berold was clinging anear;
  • I prayed for myself and quaked with fear,
  • But I saw his eyes as he looked at her.
  • He knew her face and he heard her cry,
  • 120And he said, “Put back! she must not die!”
  • And back with the current's force they reel
  • Like a leaf that's drawn to a water-wheel.
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  • 'Neath the ship's travail they scarce might float,
  • But he rose and stood in the rocking boat.
  • Low the poor ship leaned on the tide:
  • O'er the naked keel as she best might slide,
  • The sister toiled to the brother's side.
  • He reached an oar to her from below,
  • And stiffened his arms to clutch her so.
  • 130But now from the ship some spied the boat,
  • And “Saved!” was the cry from many a throat.
  • And down to the boat they leaped and fell:
  • It turned as a bucket turns in a well,
  • And nothing was there but the surge and swell.
  • The Prince that was and the King to come,
  • There in an instant gone to his doom,
  • Despite of all England's bended knee
  • And maugre the Norman fealty!
  • He was a Prince of lust and pride;
  • 140He showed no grace till the hour he died.
  • When he should be King, he oft would vow,
  • He'd yoke the peasant to his own plough.
  • O'er him the ships score their furrows now.
  • God only knows where his soul did wake,
  • But I saw him die for his sister's sake.
  • By none but me can the tale be told,
  • The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
  • ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne. )
  • 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
  • 150Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
  • ( The sea hath no King but God alone. )
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Note: The typeface of the “m” in “seem” at the end of line 169 is either damaged or improperly inked.
  • And now the end came o'er the waters' womb
  • Like the last great Day that's yet to come.
  • With prayers in vain and curses in vain,
  • The White Ship sundered on the mid-main:
  • And what were men and what was a ship
  • Were toys and splinters in the sea's grip.
  • I Berold was down in the sea;
  • And passing strange though the thing may be,
  • 160Of dreams then known I remember me.
  • Blithe is the shout on Harfleur's strand
  • When morning lights the sails to land:
  • And blithe is Honfleur's echoing gloam
  • When mothers call the children home:
  • And high do the bells of Rouen beat
  • When the Body of Christ goes down the street.
  • These things and the like were heard and shown
  • In a moment's trance 'neath the sea alone;
  • And when I rose, 'twas the sea did seem,
  • 170And not these things, to be all a dream.
  • The ship was gone and the crowd was gone,
  • And the deep shuddered and the moon shone,
  • And in a strait grasp my arms did span
  • The mainyard rent from the mast where it ran;
  • And on it with me was another man.
  • Where lands were none 'neath the dim sea-sky,
  • We told our names, that man and I.
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  • “O I am Godefroy de l'Aigle hight,
  • And son I am to a belted knight.”
  • 180“And I am Berold the butcher's son
  • Who slays the beasts in Rouen town.”
  • Then cried we upon God's name, as we
  • Did drift on the bitter winter sea.
  • But lo! a third man rose o'er the wave,
  • And we said, “Thank God! us three may He
  • save!”
  • He clutched to the yard with panting stare,
  • And we looked and knew Fitz-Stephen there.
  • He clung, and “What of the Prince?” quoth he.
  • “Lost, lost!” we cried. He cried, “Woe on me!”
  • 190And loosed his hold and sank through the sea.
  • And soul with soul again in that space
  • We two were together face to face:
  • And each knew each, as the moments sped,
  • Less for one living than for one dead:
  • And every still star overhead
  • Seemed an eye that knew we were but dead.
  • And the hours passed; till the noble's son
  • Sighed, “God be thy help! my strength's foredone!
  • “O farewell, friend, for I can no more!”
  • 200“Christ take thee!” I moaned; and his life was o'er.
  • Three hundred souls were all lost but one,
  • And I drifted over the sea alone.
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  • At last the morning rose on the sea
  • Like an angel's wing that beat tow'rds me.
  • Sore numbed I was in my sheepskin coat;
  • Half dead I hung, and might nothing note,
  • Till I woke sun-warmed in a fisher-boat.
  • The sun was high o'er the eastern brim
  • As I praised God and gave thanks to Him.
  • 210That day I told my tale to a priest,
  • Who charged me, till the shrift were releas'd,
  • That I should keep it in mine own breast.
  • And with the priest I thence did fare
  • To King Henry's court at Winchester.
  • We spoke with the King's high chamberlain,
  • And he wept and mourned again and again,
  • As if his own son had been slain:
  • And round us ever there crowded fast
  • Great men with faces all aghast:
  • 220And who so bold that might tell the thing
  • Which now they knew to their lord the King?
  • Much woe I learnt in their communing.
  • The King had watched with a heart sore stirred
  • For two whole days, and this was the third:
  • And still to all his court would he say,
  • “What keeps my son so long away?”
  • And they said: “The ports lie far and wide
  • That skirt the swell of the English tide;
Sig. 10
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  • “And England's cliffs are not more white
  • 230Than her women are, and scarce so light
  • Her skies as their eyes are blue and bright;
  • “And in some port that he reached from France
  • The Prince has lingered for his pleasaùnce.”
  • But once the King asked: “What distant cry
  • Was that we heard 'twixt the sea and sky?”
  • And one said: “With suchlike shouts, pardie!
  • Do the fishers fling their nets at sea.”
  • And one: “Who knows not the shrieking quest
  • When the sea-mew misses its young from the nest?”
  • 240'Twas thus till now they had soothed his dread,
  • Albeit they knew not what they said:
  • But who should speak to-day of the thing
  • That all knew there except the King?
  • Then pondering much they found a way,
  • And met round the King's high seat that day:
  • And the King sat with a heart sore stirred,
  • And seldom he spoke and seldom heard.
  • 'Twas then through the hall the King was 'ware
  • Of a little boy with golden hair,
  • 250As bright as the golden poppy is
  • That the beach breeds for the surf to kiss:
  • Yet pale his cheek as the thorn in Spring,
  • And his garb black like the raven's wing.
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  • Nothing heard but his foot through the hall,
  • For now the lords were silent all.
  • And the King wondered, and said, “Alack!
  • Who sends me a fair boy dressed in black?
  • “Why, sweet heart, do you pace through the hall
  • As though my court were a funeral?”
  • 260Then lowly knelt the child at the dais,
  • And looked up weeping in the King's face.
  • “O wherefore black, O King, ye may say,
  • For white is the hue of death to-day.
  • “Your son and all his fellowship
  • Lie low in the sea with the White Ship.”
  • King Henry fell as a man struck dead;
  • And speechless still he stared from his bed
  • When to him next day my rede I read.
  • There's many an hour must needs beguile
  • 270A King's high heart that he should smile,—
  • Full many a lordly hour, full fain
  • Of his realm's rule and pride of his reign:—
  • But this King never smiled again.
  • By none but me can the tale be told,
  • The butcher of Rouen, poor Berold.
  • ( Lands are swayed by a King on a throne. )
  • 'Twas a royal train put forth to sea,
  • Yet the tale can be told by none but me.
  • ( The sea hath no King but God alone. )
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more about The King's Tragedy.
THE KING'S TRAGEDY.

James I. of Scots.—20th February 1437.
Transcribed Note (page 148):

NOTE.

Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honour of her heroic

act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers

of James the First of Scots, received popularly the name of “Bar-

lass.” This name remains to her descendants, the Barlas family,

in Scotland, who bear for their crest a broken arm. She married

Alexander Lovell of Bolunnie.

A few stanzas from King James's lovely poem, known as The

King's Quair , are quoted in the course of this ballad. The writer

must express regret for the necessity which has compelled him to

shorten the ten-syllabled lines to eight syllables, in order that

they might harmonize with the ballad metre.

  • I Catherine am a Douglas born,
  • A name to all Scots dear;
  • And Kate Barlass they've called me now
  • Through many a waning year.
  • This old arm's withered now. 'Twas once
  • Most deft 'mong maidens all
  • To rein the steed, to wing the shaft,
  • To smite the palm-play ball.
  • In hall adown the close-linked dance
  • 10It has shone most white and fair;
  • It has been the rest for a true lord's head,
  • And many a sweet babe's nursing-bed,
  • And the bar to a King's chambère.
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  • Aye, lasses, draw round Kate Barlass,
  • And hark with bated breath
  • How good King James, King Robert's son,
  • Was foully done to death.
  • Through all the days of his gallant youth
  • The princely James was pent,
  • 20By his friends at first and then by his foes,
  • In long imprisonment.
  • For the elder Prince, the kingdom's heir,
  • By treason's murderous brood
  • Was slain; and the father quaked for the child
  • With the royal mortal blood.
  • I' the Bass Rock fort, by his father's care,
  • Was his childhood's life assured;
  • And Henry the subtle Bolingbroke,
  • Proud England's King, 'neath the southron yoke
  • 30His youth for long years immured.
  • Yet in all things meet for a kingly man
  • Himself did he approve;
  • And the nightingale through his prison-wall
  • Taught him both lore and love.
  • For once, when the bird's song drew him close
  • To the opened window-pane,
  • In her bower beneath a lady stood,
  • A light of life to his sorrowful mood,
  • Like a lily amid the rain.
  • 40And for her sake, to the sweet bird's note,
  • He framed a sweeter Song,
  • More sweet than ever a poet's heart
  • Gave yet to the English tongue.
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  • She was a lady of royal blood;
  • And when, past sorrow and teen,
  • He stood where still through his crownless years
  • His Scotish realm had been,
  • At Scone were the happy lovers crowned,
  • A heart-wed King and Queen.
  • 50But the bird may fall from the bough of youth,
  • And song be turned to moan,
  • And Love's storm-cloud be the shadow of Hate,
  • When the tempest-waves of a troubled State
  • Are beating against a throne.
  • Yet well they loved; and the god of Love,
  • Whom well the King had sung,
  • Might find on the earth no truer hearts
  • His lowliest swains among.
  • From the days when first she rode abroad
  • 60With Scotish maids in her train,
  • I Catherine Douglas won the trust
  • Of my mistress sweet Queen Jane.
  • And oft she sighed, “To be born a King!”
  • And oft along the way
  • When she saw the homely lovers pass
  • She has said, “Alack the day!”
  • Years waned,—the loving and toiling years:
  • Till England's wrong renewed
  • Drove James, by outrage cast on his crown,
  • 70To the open field of feud.
  • 'Twas when the King and his host were met
  • At the leaguer of Roxbro' hold,
  • The Queen o' the sudden sought his camp
  • With a tale of dread to be told.
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  • And she showed him a secret letter writ
  • That spoke of treasonous strife,
  • And how a band of his noblest lords
  • Were sworn to take his life.
  • “And it may be here or it may be there,
  • 80In the camp or the court,” she said:
  • “But for my sake come to your people's arms
  • And guard your royal head.”
  • Quoth he, “'Tis the fifteenth day of the siege,
  • And the castle's nigh to yield.”
  • “O face your foes on your throne,” she cried,
  • “And show the power you wield;
  • And under your Scotish people's love
  • You shall sit as under your shield.”
  • At the fair Queen's side I stood that day
  • 90When he bade them raise the siege,
  • And back to his Court he sped to know
  • How the lords would meet their Liege.
  • But when he summoned his Parliament,
  • The louring brows hung round,
  • Like clouds that circle the mountain-head
  • Ere the first low thunders sound.
  • For he had tamed the nobles' lust
  • And curbed their power and pride,
  • And reached out an arm to right the poor
  • 100Through Scotland far and wide;
  • And many a lordly wrong-doer
  • By the headsman's axe had died.
  • 'Twas then upspoke Sir Robert Græme,
  • The bold o'ermastering man:—
  • “O King, in the name of your Three Estates
  • I set you under their ban!
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  • “For, as your lords made oath to you
  • Of service and fealty,
  • Even in like wise you pledged your oath
  • 110Their faithful sire to be:—
  • “Yet all we here that are nobly sprung
  • Have mourned dear kith and kin
  • Since first for the Scotish Barons' curse
  • Did your bloody rule begin.”
  • With that he laid his hands on his King:—
  • “Is this not so, my lords?”
  • But of all who had sworn to league with him
  • Not one spake back to his words.
  • Quoth the King:—“Thou speak'st but for one
  • Estate,
  • 120Nor doth it avow thy gage.
  • Let my liege lords hale this traitor hence!”
  • The Græme fired dark with rage:—
  • “Who works for lesser men than himself,
  • He earns but a witless wage!”
  • But soon from the dungeon where he lay
  • He won by privy plots,
  • And forth he fled with a price on his head
  • To the country of the Wild Scots.
  • And word there came from Sir Robert Græme
  • 130To the King at Edinbro':—
  • “No Liege of mine thou art; but I see
  • From this day forth alone in thee
  • God's creature, my mortal foe.
  • “Through thee are my wife and children lost,
  • My heritage and lands;
  • And when my God shall show me a way,
  • Thyself my mortal foe will I slay
  • With these my proper hands.”
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  • Against the coming of Christmastide
  • 140That year the King bade call
  • I' the Black Friars' Charterhouse of Perth
  • A solemn festival.
  • And we of his household rode with him
  • In a close-ranked company;
  • But not till the sun had sunk from his throne
  • Did we reach the Scotish Sea.
  • That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
  • 'Neath a toilsome moon half seen;
  • The cloud stooped low and the surf rose high;
  • 150And where there was a line of the sky,
  • Wild wings loomed dark between.
  • And on a rock of the black beach-side,
  • By the veiled moon dimly lit,
  • There was something seemed to heave with life
  • As the King drew nigh to it.
  • And was it only the tossing furze
  • Or brake of the waste sea-wold?
  • Or was it an eagle bent to the blast?
  • When near we came, we knew it at last
  • 160For a woman tattered and old.
  • But it seemed as though by a fire within
  • Her writhen limbs were wrung;
  • And as soon as the King was close to her,
  • She stood up gaunt and strong.
  • 'Twas then the moon sailed clear of the rack
  • On high in her hollow dome;
  • And still as aloft with hoary crest
  • Each clamorous wave rang home,
  • Like fire in snow the moonlight blazed
  • 170Amid the champing foam.
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  • And the woman held his eyes with her eyes:—
  • “O King, thou art come at last;
  • But thy wraith has haunted the Scotish Sea
  • To my sight for four years past.
  • “Four years it is since first I met,
  • 'Twixt the Duchray and the Dhu,
  • A shape whose feet clung close in a shroud,
  • And that shape for thine I knew.
  • “A year again, and on Inchkeith Isle
  • 180I saw thee pass in the breeze,
  • With the cerecloth risen above thy feet
  • And wound about thy knees.
  • “And yet a year, in the Links of Forth,
  • As a wanderer without rest,
  • Thou cam'st with both thine arms i' the shroud
  • That clung high up thy breast.
  • “And in this hour I find thee here,
  • And well mine eyes may note
  • That the winding-sheet hath passed thy breast
  • 190And risen around thy throat.
  • “And when I meet thee again, O King,
  • That of death hast such sore drouth,—
  • Except thou turn again on this shore,—
  • The winding-sheet shall have moved once more
  • And covered thine eyes and mouth.
  • “O King, whom poor men bless for their King,
  • Of thy fate be not so fain;
  • But these my words for God's message take,
  • And turn thy steed, O King, for her sake
  • 200Who rides beside thy rein!”
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  • While the woman spoke, the King's horse reared
  • As if it would breast the sea,
  • And the Queen turned pale as she heard on the gale
  • The voice die dolorously.
  • When the woman ceased, the steed was still,
  • But the King gazed on her yet,
  • And in silence save for the wail of the sea
  • His eyes and her eyes met.
  • At last he said:—“God's ways are His own;
  • 210Man is but shadow and dust.
  • Last night I prayed by His altar-stone;
  • To-night I wend to the Feast of His Son;
  • And in Him I set my trust.
  • “I have held my people in sacred charge,
  • And have not feared the sting
  • Of proud men's hate,—to His will resign'd
  • Who has but one same death for a hind
  • And one same death for a King.
  • “And if God in His wisdom have brought close
  • 220The day when I must die,
  • That day by water or fire or air
  • My feet shall fall in the destined snare
  • Wherever my road may lie.
  • “What man can say but the Fiend hath set
  • Thy sorcery on my path,
  • My heart with the fear of death to fill,
  • And turn me against God's very will
  • To sink in His burning wrath?”
  • The woman stood as the train rode past,
  • 230And moved nor limb nor eye;
  • And when we were shipped, we saw her there
  • Still standing against the sky.
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  • As the ship made way, the moon once more
  • Sank slow in her rising pall;
  • And I thought of the shrouded wraith of the King,
  • And I said, “The Heavens know all.”
  • And now, ye lasses, must ye hear
  • How my name is Kate Barlass:—
  • But a little thing, when all the tale
  • 240Is told of the weary mass
  • Of crime and woe which in Scotland's realm
  • God's will let come to pass.
  • 'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth
  • That the King and all his Court
  • Were met, the Christmas Feast being done,
  • For solace and disport.
  • 'Twas a wind-wild eve in February,
  • And against the casement-pane
  • The branches smote like summoning hands
  • 250And muttered the driving rain.
  • And when the wind swooped over the lift
  • And made the whole heaven frown,
  • It seemed a grip was laid on the walls
  • To tug the housetop down.
  • And the Queen was there, more stately fair
  • Than a lily in garden set;
  • And the King was loth to stir from her side;
  • For as on the day when she was his bride,
  • Even so he loved her yet.
  • 260And the Earl of Athole, the King's false friend,
  • Sat with him at the board;
  • And Robert Stuart the chamberlain
  • Who had sold his sovereign Lord.
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  • Yet the traitor Christopher Chaumber there
  • Would fain have told him all,
  • And vainly four times that night he strove
  • To reach the King through the hall.
  • But the wine is bright at the goblet's brim
  • Though the poison lurk beneath;
  • 270And the apples still are red on the tree
  • Within whose shade may the adder be
  • That shall turn thy life to death.
  • There was a knight of the King's fast friends
  • Whom he called the King of Love;
  • And to such bright cheer and courtesy
  • That name might best behove.
  • And the King and Queen both loved him well
  • For his gentle knightliness;
  • And with him the King, as that eve wore on,
  • 280Was playing at the chess.
  • And the King said, (for he thought to jest
  • And soothe the Queen thereby;)—
  • “In a book 'tis writ that this same year
  • A King shall in Scotland die.
  • “And I have pondered the matter o'er,
  • And this have I found, Sir Hugh,—
  • There are but two Kings on Scotish ground,
  • And those Kings are I and you.
  • “And I have a wife and a newborn heir,
  • 290And you are yourself alone;
  • So stand you stark at my side with me
  • To guard our double throne.
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  • “For here sit I and my wife and child,
  • As well your heart shall approve,
  • In full surrender and soothfastness,
  • Beneath your Kingdom of Love.”
  • And the Knight laughed, and the Queen too smiled;
  • But I knew her heavy thought,
  • And I strove to find in the good King's jest
  • 300What cheer might thence be wrought.
  • And I said, “My Liege, for the Queen's dear love
  • Now sing the song that of old
  • You made, when a captive Prince you lay,
  • And the nightingale sang sweet on the spray,
  • In Windsor's castle-hold.”
  • Then he smiled the smile I knew so well
  • When he thought to please the Queen;
  • The smile which under all bitter frowns
  • Of fate that rose between
  • 310For ever dwelt at the poet's heart
  • Like the bird of love unseen.
  • And he kissed her hand and took his harp,
  • And the music sweetly rang;
  • And when the song burst forth, it seemed
  • 'Twas the nightingale that sang.
  • “Worship, ye lovers, on this May:
  • Of bliss your kalends are begun:
  • Sing with us, Away, Winter, away!
  • Come, Summer, the sweet season and sun!
  • 320 Awake for shame,—your heaven is won,—
  • And amorously your heads lift all:
  • Thank Love, that you to his grace doth call!”
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  • But when he bent to the Queen, and sang
  • The speech whose praise was hers,
  • It seemed his voice was the voice of the Spring
  • And the voice of the bygone years.
  • “The fairest and the freshest flower
  • That ever I saw before that hour,
  • The which o' the sudden made to start
  • 330 The blood of my body to my heart.
  • Ah sweet, are ye a worldly creature
  • Or heavenly thing in form of nature?”
  • And the song was long, and richly stored
  • With wonder and beauteous things;
  • And the harp was tuned to every change
  • Of minstrel ministerings;
  • But when he spoke of the Queen at the last,
  • Its strings were his own heart-strings.
  • “Unworthy but only of her grace,
  • 340 Upon Love's rock that's easy and sure,
  • In guerdon of all my lovè's space
  • She took me her humble creäture.
  • Thus fell my blissful aventure
  • In youth of love that from day to day
  • Flowereth aye new, and further I say.
  • “To reckon all the circumstance
  • As it happed when lessen gan my sore,
  • Of my rancour and woful chance,
  • It were too long,—I have done therefor.
  • 350 And of this flower I say no more,
  • But unto my help her heart hath tended
  • And even from death her man defended.”
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  • “Aye, even from death,” to myself I said;
  • For I thought of the day when she
  • Had borne him the news, at Roxbro' siege,
  • Of the fell confederacy.
  • But Death even then took aim as he sang
  • With an arrow deadly bright;
  • And the grinning skull lurked grimly aloof,
  • 360And the wings were spread far over the roof
  • More dark than the winter night.
  • Yet truly along the amorous song
  • Of Love's high pomp and state,
  • There were words of Fortune's trackless doom
  • And the dreadful face of Fate.
  • And oft have I heard again in dreams
  • The voice of dire appeal
  • In which the King then sang of the pit
  • That is under Fortune's wheel.
  • 370 “And under the wheel beheld I there
  • An ugly Pit as deep as hell,
  • That to behold I quaked for fear:
  • And this I heard, that who therein fell
  • Came no more up, tidings to tell:
  • Whereat, astound of the fearful sight,
  • I wist not what to do for fright.”
  • And oft has my thought called up again
  • These words of the changeful song:—
  • “Wist thou thy pain and thy travàil
  • 380 To come, well might'st thou weep and wail!”
  • And our wail, O God! is long.
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  • But the song's end was all of his love;
  • And well his heart was grac'd
  • With her smiling lips and her tear-bright eyes
  • As his arm went round her waist.
  • And on the swell of her long fair throat
  • Close clung the necklet-chain
  • As he bent her pearl-tir'd head aside,
  • And in the warmth of his love and pride
  • 390He kissed her lips full fain.
  • And her true face was a rosy red,
  • The very red of the rose
  • That, couched on the happy garden-bed,
  • In the summer sunlight glows.
  • And all the wondrous things of love
  • That sang so sweet through the song
  • Were in the look that met in their eyes,
  • And the look was deep and long.
  • 'Twas then a knock came at the outer gate,
  • 400And the usher sought the King.
  • “The woman you met by the Scotish Sea,
  • My Liege, would tell you a thing;
  • And she says that her present need for speech
  • Will bear no gainsaying.”
  • And the King said: “The hour is late;
  • To-morrow will serve, I ween.”
  • Then he charged the usher strictly, and said:
  • “No word of this to the Queen.”
  • But the usher came again to the King.
  • 410“Shall I call her back?” quoth he:
  • “For as she went on her way, she cried,
  • ‘Woe! Woe! then the thing must be!‘”
Sig. 11
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  • And the King paused, but he did not speak.
  • Then he called for the Voidee-cup:
  • And as we heard the twelfth hour strike,
  • There by true lips and false lips alike
  • Was the draught of trust drained up.
  • So with reverence meet to King and Queen,
  • To bed went all from the board;
  • 420And the last to leave of the courtly train
  • Was Robert Stuart the chamberlain
  • Who had sold his sovereign lord.
  • And all the locks of the chamber-door
  • Had the traitor riven and brast;
  • And that Fate might win sure way from afar,
  • He had drawn out every bolt and bar
  • That made the entrance fast.
  • And now at midnight he stole his way
  • To the moat of the outer wall,
  • 430And laid strong hurdles closely across
  • Where the traitors' tread should fall.
  • But we that were the Queen's bower-maids
  • Alone were left behind;
  • And with heed we drew the curtains close
  • Against the winter wind.
  • And now that all was still through the hall,
  • More clearly we heard the rain
  • That clamoured ever against the glass
  • And the boughs that beat on the pane.
  • 440But the fire was bright in the ingle-nook,
  • And through empty space around
  • The shadows cast on the arras'd wall
  • 'Mid the pictured kings stood sudden and tall
  • Like spectres sprung from the ground.
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  • And the bed was dight in a deep alcove;
  • And as he stood by the fire
  • The King was still in talk with the Queen
  • While he doffed his goodly attire.
  • And the song had brought the image back
  • 450Of many a bygone year;
  • And many a loving word they said
  • With hand in hand and head laid to head;
  • And none of us went anear.
  • But Love was weeping outside the house,
  • A child in the piteous rain;
  • And as he watched the arrow of Death,
  • He wailed for his own shafts close in the sheath
  • That never should fly again.
  • And now beneath the window arose
  • 460A wild voice suddenly:
  • And the King reared straight, but the Queen fell back
  • As for bitter dule to dree;
  • And all of us knew the woman's voice
  • Who spoke by the Scotish Sea.
  • “O King,” she cried, “in an evil hour
  • They drove me from thy gate;
  • And yet my voice must rise to thine ears;
  • But alas! it comes too late!
  • “Last night at mid-watch, by Aberdour,
  • 470When the moon was dead in the skies,
  • O King, in a death-light of thine own
  • I saw thy shape arise.
  • “And in full season, as erst I said,
  • The doom had gained its growth;
  • And the shroud had risen above thy neck
  • And covered thine eyes and mouth.
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  • “And no moon woke, but the pale dawn broke,
  • And still thy soul stood there;
  • And I thought its silence cried to my soul
  • 480As the first rays crowned its hair.
  • “Since then have I journeyed fast and fain
  • In very despite of Fate,
  • Lest Hope might still be found in God's will:
  • But they drove me from thy gate.
  • “For every man on God's ground, O King,
  • His death grows up from his birth
  • In a shadow-plant perpetually;
  • And thine towers high, a black yew-tree,
  • O'er the Charterhouse of Perth!”
  • 490That room was built far out from the house;
  • And none but we in the room
  • Might hear the voice that rose beneath,
  • Nor the tread of the coming doom.
  • For now there came a torchlight-glare,
  • And a clang of arms there came;
  • And not a soul in that space but thought
  • Of the foe Sir Robert Græme.
  • Yea, from the country of the Wild Scots,
  • O'er mountain, valley, and glen,
  • 500He had brought with him in murderous league
  • Three hundred armèd men.
  • The King knew all in an instant's flash;
  • And like a King did he stand;
  • But there was no armour in all the room,
  • Nor weapon lay to his hand.
  • And all we women flew to the door
  • And thought to have made it fast;
  • But the bolts were gone and the bars were gone
  • And the locks were riven and brast.
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  • 510And he caught the pale pale Queen in his arms
  • As the iron footsteps fell,—
  • Then loosed her, standing alone, and said,
  • “Our bliss was our farewell!”
  • And 'twixt his lips he murmured a prayer,
  • And he crossed his brow and breast;
  • And proudly in royal hardihood
  • Even so with folded arms he stood,—
  • The prize of the bloody quest.
  • Then on me leaped the Queen like a deer:—
  • 520“O Catherine, help!” she cried.
  • And low at his feet we clasped his knees
  • Together side by side.
  • “Oh! even a King, for his people's sake,
  • From treasonous death must hide!”
  • “For her sake most!” I cried, and I marked
  • The pang that my words could wring.
  • And the iron tongs from the chimney-nook
  • I snatched and held to the King:—
  • “Wrench up the plank! and the vault beneath
  • 530Shall yield safe harbouring.”
  • With brows low-bent, from my eager hand
  • The heavy heft did he take;
  • And the plank at his feet he wrenched and tore;
  • And as he frowned through the open floor,
  • Again I said, “For her sake!”
  • Then he cried to the Queen, “God's will be done!”
  • For her hands were clasped in prayer.
  • And down he sprang to the inner crypt;
  • And straight we closed the plank he had ripp'd
  • 540And toiled to smooth it fair.
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  • (Alas! in that vault a gap once was
  • Wherethro' the King might have fled:
  • But three days since close-walled had it been
  • By his will; for the ball would roll therein
  • When without at the palm he play'd.)
  • Then the Queen cried, “Catherine, keep the door,
  • And I to this will suffice!”
  • At her word I rose all dazed to my feet,
  • And my heart was fire and ice.
  • 550And louder ever the voices grew,
  • And the tramp of men in mail;
  • Until to my brain it seemed to be
  • As though I tossed on a ship at sea
  • In the teeth of a crashing gale.
  • Then back I flew to the rest; and hard
  • We strove with sinews knit
  • To force the table against the door;
  • But we might not compass it.
  • Then my wild gaze sped far down the hall
  • 560To the place of the hearthstone-sill;
  • And the Queen bent ever above the floor,
  • For the plank was rising still.
  • And now the rush was heard on the stair,
  • And “God, what help?” was our cry.
  • And was I frenzied or was I bold?
  • I looked at each empty stanchion-hold,
  • And no bar but my arm had I!
  • Like iron felt my arm, as through
  • The staple I made it pass:—
  • 570Alack! it was flesh and bone—no more!
  • 'Twas Catherine Douglas sprang to the door,
  • But I fell back Kate Barlass.
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  • With that they all thronged into the hall,
  • Half dim to my failing ken;
  • And the space that was but a void before
  • Was a crowd of wrathful men.
  • Behind the door I had fall'n and lay,
  • Yet my sense was wildly aware,
  • And for all the pain of my shattered arm
  • 580I never fainted there.
  • Even as I fell, my eyes were cast
  • Where the King leaped down to the pit;
  • And lo! the plank was smooth in its place,
  • And the Queen stood far from it.
  • And under the litters and through the bed
  • And within the presses all
  • The traitors sought for the King, and pierced
  • The arras around the wall.
  • And through the chamber they ramped and stormed
  • 590Like lions loose in the lair,
  • And scarce could trust to their very eyes,—
  • For behold! no King was there.
  • Then one of them seized the Queen, and cried,—
  • “Now tell us, where is thy lord?”
  • And he held the sharp point over her heart:
  • She drooped not her eyes nor did she start,
  • But she answered never a word.
  • Then the sword half pierced the true true breast:
  • But it was the Græme's own son
  • 600Cried, “This is a woman,—we seek a man!”
  • And away from her girdle zone
  • He struck the point of the murderous steel;
  • And that foul deed was not done.
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  • And forth flowed all the throng like a sea,
  • And 'twas empty space once more;
  • And my eyes sought out the wounded Queen
  • As I lay behind the door.
  • And I said: “Dear Lady, leave me here,
  • For I cannot help you now;
  • 610But fly while you may, and none shall reck
  • Of my place here lying low.”
  • And she said, “My Catherine, God help thee!”
  • Then she looked to the distant floor,
  • And clasping her hands, “O God help him,”
  • She sobbed, “for we can no more!”
  • But God He knows what help may mean,
  • If it mean to live or to die;
  • And what sore sorrow and mighty moan
  • On earth it may cost ere yet a throne
  • 620Be filled in His house on high.
  • And now the ladies fled with the Queen;
  • And thorough the open door
  • The night-wind wailed round the empty room
  • And the rushes shook on the floor.
  • And the bed drooped low in the dark recess
  • Whence the arras was rent away;
  • And the firelight still shone over the space
  • Where our hidden secret lay.
  • And the rain had ceased, and the moonbeams lit
  • 630The window high in the wall,—
  • Bright beams that on the plank that I knew
  • Through the painted pane did fall,
  • And gleamed with the splendour of Scotland's crown
  • And shield armorial.
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  • But then a great wind swept up the skies
  • And the climbing moon fell back;
  • And the royal blazon fled from the floor,
  • And nought remained on its track;
  • And high in the darkened window-pane
  • 640The shield and the crown were black.
  • And what I say next I partly saw
  • And partly I heard in sooth,
  • And partly since from the murderers' lips
  • The torture wrung the truth.
  • For now again came the armèd tread,
  • And fast through the hall it fell;
  • But the throng was less; and ere I saw,
  • By the voice without I could tell
  • That Robert Stuart had come with them
  • 650Who knew that chamber well.
  • And over the space the Græme strode dark
  • With his mantle round him flung;
  • And in his eye was a flaming light
  • But not a word on his tongue.
  • And Stuart held a torch to the floor,
  • And he found the thing he sought;
  • And they slashed the plank away with their swords;
  • And O God! I fainted not!
  • And the traitor held his torch in the gap,
  • 660All smoking and smouldering;
  • And through the vapour and fire, beneath
  • In the dark crypt's narrow ring,
  • With a shout that pealed to the room's high roof
  • They saw their naked King.
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  • Half naked he stood, but stood as one
  • Who yet could do and dare:
  • With the crown, the King was stript away,—
  • The Knight was 'reft of his battle-array,—
  • But still the Man was there.
  • 670From the rout then stepped a villain forth,—
  • Sir John Hall was his name;
  • With a knife unsheathed he leapt to the vault
  • Beneath the torchlight-flame.
  • Of his person and stature was the King
  • A man right manly strong,
  • And mightily by the shoulder-blades
  • His foe to his feet he flung.
  • Then the traitor's brother, Sir Thomas Hall,
  • Sprang down to work his worst;
  • 680And the King caught the second man by the neck
  • And flung him above the first.
  • And he smote and trampled them under him;
  • And a long month thence they bare
  • All black their throats with the grip of his hands
  • When the hangman's hand came there.
  • And sore he strove to have had their knives,
  • But the sharp blades gashed his hands.
  • Oh James! so armed, thou hadst battled there
  • Till help had come of thy bands;
  • 690And oh! once more thou hadst held our throne
  • And ruled thy Scotish lands!
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  • But while the King o'er his foes still raged
  • With a heart that nought could tame,
  • Another man sprang down to the crypt;
  • And with his sword in his hand hard-gripp'd,
  • There stood Sir Robert Græme.
  • (Now shame on the recreant traitor's heart
  • Who durst not face his King
  • Till the body unarmed was wearied out
  • 700With two-fold combating!
  • Ah! well might the people sing and say,
  • As oft ye have heard aright:—
  • “ O Robert Græme, O Robert Græme,
  • Who slew our King, God give thee shame! ”
  • For he slew him not as a knight.)
  • And the naked King turned round at bay,
  • But his strength had passed the goal,
  • And he could but gasp:—“Mine hour is come;
  • But oh! to succour thine own soul's doom,
  • 710Let a priest now shrive my soul!”
  • And the traitor looked on the King's spent strength,
  • And said:—“Have I kept my word?—
  • Yea, King, the mortal pledge that I gave?
  • No black friar's shrift thy soul shall have,
  • But the shrift of this red sword!”
  • With that he smote his King through the breast;
  • And all they three in that pen
  • Fell on him and stabbed and stabbed him there
  • Like merciless murderous men.
  • 720Yet seemed it now that Sir Robert Græme,
  • Ere the King's last breath was o'er,
  • Turned sick at heart with the deadly sight
  • And would have done no more.
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  • But a cry came from the troop above:—
  • “If him thou do not slay,
  • The price of his life that thou dost spare
  • Thy forfeit life shall pay!”
  • O God! what more did I hear or see,
  • Or how should I tell the rest?
  • 730But there at length our King lay slain
  • With sixteen wounds in his breast.
  • O God! and now did a bell boom forth,
  • And the murderers turned and fled;—
  • Too late, too late, O God, did it sound!—
  • And I heard the true men mustering round,
  • And the cries and the coming tread.
  • But ere they came, to the black death-gap
  • Somewise did I creep and steal;
  • And lo! or ever I swooned away,
  • 740Through the dusk I saw where the white face lay
  • In the Pit of Fortune's Wheel.
  • And now, ye Scotish maids who have heard
  • Dread things of the days grown old,—
  • Even at the last, of true Queen Jane
  • May somewhat yet be told,
  • And how she dealt for her dear lord's sake
  • Dire vengeance manifold.
  • 'Twas in the Charterhouse of Perth,
  • In the fair-lit Death-chapelle,
  • 750That the slain King's corpse on bier was laid
  • With chaunt and requiem-knell.
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  • And all with royal wealth of balm
  • Was the body purified;
  • And none could trace on the brow and lips
  • The death that he had died.
  • In his robes of state he lay asleep
  • With orb and sceptre in hand;
  • And by the crown he wore on his throne
  • Was his kingly forehead spann'd.
  • 760And, girls, 'twas a sweet sad thing to see
  • How the curling golden hair,
  • As in the day of the poet's youth,
  • From the King's crown clustered there.
  • And if all had come to pass in the brain
  • That throbbed beneath those curls,
  • Then Scots had said in the days to come
  • That this their soil was a different home
  • And a different Scotland, girls!
  • And the Queen sat by him night and day,
  • 770And oft she knelt in prayer,
  • All wan and pale in the widow's veil
  • That shrouded her shining hair.
  • And I had got good help of my hurt:
  • And only to me some sign
  • She made; and save the priests that were there,
  • No face would she see but mine.
  • And the month of March wore on apace;
  • And now fresh couriers fared
  • Still from the country of the Wild Scots
  • 780With news of the traitors snared.
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  • And still as I told her day by day,
  • Her pallor changed to sight,
  • And the frost grew to a furnace-flame
  • That burnt her visage white.
  • And evermore as I brought her word,
  • She bent to her dead King James,
  • And in the cold ear with fire-drawn breath
  • She spoke the traitors' names.
  • But when the name of Sir Robert Græme
  • 790Was the one she had to give,
  • I ran to hold her up from the floor;
  • For the froth was on her lips, and sore
  • I feared that she could not live.
  • And the month of March wore nigh to its end,
  • And still was the death-pall spread;
  • For she would not bury her slaughtered lord
  • Till his slayers all were dead.
  • And now of their dooms dread tidings came,
  • And of torments fierce and dire;
  • 800And nought she spake,—she had ceased to speak,—
  • But her eyes were a soul on fire.
  • But when I told her the bitter end
  • Of the stern and just award,
  • She leaned o'er the bier, and thrice three times
  • She kissed the lips of her lord.
  • And then she said,—“My King, they are dead!”
  • And she knelt on the chapel-floor,
  • And whispered low with a strange proud smile,—
  • “James, James, they suffered more!”
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  • 810Last she stood up to her queenly height,
  • But she shook like an autumn leaf,
  • As though the fire wherein she burned
  • Then left her body, and all were turned
  • To winter of life-long grief.
  • And “O James!” she said,—“My James!” she
  • said,—
  • “Alas for the woful thing,
  • That a poet true and a friend of man,
  • In desperate days of bale and ban,
  • Should needs be born a King!”
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more about THE HOUSE OF LIFE: A SONNET-SEQUENCE.
THE HOUSE OF LIFE:

A SONNET-SEQUENCE.



Part I.

YOUTH AND CHANGE.



Part II.

CHANGE AND FATE.
Transcribed Note (page 176):

(The present full series of The House of Life consists of sonnets

only. It will be evident that many among those now first added

are still the work of earlier years.—1881.)

more about Introductory Sonnet
  • A Sonnet is a moment's monument,—
  • Memorial from the Soul's eternity
  • To one dead deathless hour. Look that it be,
  • Whether for lustral rite or dire portent,
  • Of its own arduous fulness reverent:
  • Carve it in ivory or in ebony,
  • As Day or Night may rule; and let Time see
  • Its flowering crest impearled and orient.
  • A Sonnet is a coin: its face reveals
  • 10 The soul,—its converse, to what Power 'tis due: —
  • Whether for tribute to the august appeals
  • Of Life, or dower in Love's high retinue,
  • It serve; or, 'mid the dark wharf's cavernous breath,
  • In Charon's palm it pay the toll to Death.
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more about Part I. Youth and Change.
Part I.— YOUTH AND CHANGE.
more about Love Enthroned.
SONNET I.

LOVE ENTHRONED.
  • I marked all kindred Powers the heart finds fair:—
  • Truth, with awed lips; and Hope, with eyes upcast;
  • And Fame, whose loud wings fan the ashen Past
  • To signal-fires, Oblivion's flight to scare;
  • And Youth, with still some single golden hair
  • Unto his shoulder clinging, since the last
  • Embrace wherein two sweet arms held him fast;
  • And Life, still wreathing flowers for Death to wear.
  • Love's throne was not with these; but far above
  • 10 All passionate wind of welcome and farewell
  • He sat in breathless bowers they dream not of;
  • Though Truth foreknow Love's heart, and Hope foretell,
  • And Fame be for Love's sake desirable,
  • And Youth be dear, and Life be sweet to Love.
more about Bridal Birth.
SONNET II.

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 nurs'd.
  • 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 the bonds of birth were burst.
  • Now, shadowed by his wings, our faces yearn
  • 10 Together, as his full–grown 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.
Sig. 12
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more about Love's Testament.
SONNET III.

LOVE'S TESTAMENT.
  • O thou who at Love's hour ecstatically
  • Unto my heart dost evermore present,
  • Clothed with his fire, thy heart his testament;
  • 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, “I am thine, thou'rt one with me!”
  • O what from thee the grace, to 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!
more about Lovesight.
SONNET IV.

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?
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more about Heart's Hope.
SONNET V.

HEART'S HOPE.
  • By what word's power, the key of paths untrod,
  • Shall I the difficult deeps of Love explore,
  • Till parted waves of Song yield up the shore
  • Even as that sea which Israel crossed dryshod?
  • For lo! in some poor rhythmic period,
  • Lady, I fain would tell how evermore
  • Thy soul I know not from thy body, nor
  • Thee from myself, neither our love from God.
  • Yea, in God's name, and Love's, and thine, would I
  • 10 Draw from one loving heart such evidence
  • As to all hearts all things shall signify;
  • Tender as dawn's first hill-fire, and intense
  • As instantaneous penetrating sense,
  • In Spring's birth-hour, of other Springs gone by.
more about The Kiss.
SONNET VI.

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.
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more about Supreme Surrender.
SONNET VII.

SUPREME SURRENDER.
  • To all the spirits of Love that wander by
  • Along his love-sown harvest-field 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.
more about Love's Lovers.
SONNET VIII.

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 vaunt 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.
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more about Passion and Worship.
SONNET IX.

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: “Through 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.”
more about The Portrait.
SONNET X.

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 enthroning 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.
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more about The Love-Letter.
SONNET XI.

THE LOVE-LETTER.
  • Warmed by her hand and shadowed by her hair
  • As close she leaned and poured her heart through
  • thee,
  • Whereof the articulate throbs accompany
  • The smooth black stream that makes thy whiteness
  • fair,—
  • Sweet fluttering sheet, even of her breath aware,—
  • Oh let thy silent song disclose to me
  • That soul wherewith her lips and eyes agree
  • Like married music in Love's answering air.
  • Fain had I watched her when, at some fond thought,
  • 10 Her bosom to the writing closelier press'd,
  • And her breast's secrets peered into her breast;
  • When, through eyes raised an instant, her soul sought
  • My soul, and from the sudden confluence caught
  • The words that made her love the loveliest.
more about The Lover's Walk.
SONNET XII.

THE LOVERS' WALK.
  • Sweet twining hedgeflowers wind-stirred in no wise
  • On this June day; and hand that clings in hand:—
  • Still glades; and meeting faces scarcely fann'd:—
  • An osier-odoured stream that draws the skies
  • Deep to its heart; and mirrored eyes in eyes:—
  • Fresh hourly wonder o'er the Summer land
  • Of light and cloud; and two souls softly spann'd
  • With one o'erarching heaven of smiles and sighs:—
  • Even such their path, whose bodies lean unto
  • 10 Each other's visible sweetness amorously,—
  • Whose passionate hearts lean by Love's high decree
  • Together on his heart for ever true,
  • As the cloud-foaming firmamental blue
  • Rests on the blue line of a foamless sea.
Note: The em dash at the end of line two of the second sonnet is incompletely inked.
Note: The colon at the end of line five of the second sonnet is also incompletely inked.
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more about Youth's Antiphony.
SONNET XIII.

YOUTH'S ANTIPHONY.
  • “I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn
  • How much I love you?” “You I love even so,
  • And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know
  • How fair you are.” “If fair enough to earn
  • Your love, so much is all my love's concern.”
  • “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth
  • grow,
  • Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!”
  • Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.
  • Ah! happy they to whom such words as these
  • 10 In youth have served for speech the whole day long,
  • Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng,
  • Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,—
  • What while Love breathed in sighs and silences
  • Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.
more about Youth's Spring-Tribute.
SONNET XIV.

YOUTH'S SPRING-TRIBUTE.
  • On this sweet bank your head thrice sweet and dear
  • I lay, and spread your hair on either side,
  • And see the newborn woodflowers bashful-eyed
  • Look through the golden tresses here and there.
  • On these debateable borders of the year
  • Spring's foot half falters; scarce she yet may know
  • The leafless blackthorn-blossom from the snow;
  • And through her bowers the wind's way still is clear.
  • But April's sun strikes down the glades to-day;
  • 10 So shut your eyes upturned, and feel my kiss
  • Creep, as the Spring now thrills through every spray,
  • Up your warm throat to your warm lips: for this
  • Is even the hour of Love's sworn suitservice,
  • With whom cold hearts are counted castaway.
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more about The Birth-Bond.
SONNET XV.

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!
more about A Day of Love.
SONNET XVI.

A DAY OF LOVE.
  • Those envied places which do know her well,
  • And are so scornful of this lonely place,
  • Even now for once are emptied of her grace:
  • Nowhere but here she is: and while Love's spell
  • From his predominant presence doth compel
  • All alien hours, an outworn populace,
  • The hours of Love fill full the echoing space
  • With sweet confederate music favourable.
  • Now many memories make solicitous
  • 10 The delicate love-lines of her mouth, till, lit
  • With quivering fire, the words take wing from it;
  • As here between our kisses we sit thus
  • Speaking of things remembered, and so sit
  • Speechless while things forgotten call to us.
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more about Beauty's Pageant.
SONNET XVII.

BEAUTY'S PAGEANT.
  • What dawn-pulse at the heart of heaven, or last
  • Incarnate flower of culminating day,—
  • What marshalled marvels on the skirts of May,
  • Or song full-quired, sweet June's encomiast;
  • What glory of change by Nature's hand amass'd
  • Can vie with all those moods of varying grace
  • Which o'er one loveliest woman's form and face
  • Within this hour, within this room, have pass'd?
  • Love's very vesture and elect disguise
  • 10 Was each fine movement,—wonder new-begot
  • Of lily or swan or swan-stemmed galiot;
  • Joy to his sight who now the sadlier sighs,
  • Parted again; and sorrow yet for eyes
  • Unborn, that read these words and saw her not.
more about Genius in Beauty.
SONNET XVIII.

GENIUS IN BEAUTY.
  • Beauty like hers is genius. Not the call
  • Of Homer's or of Dante's heart sublime,—
  • Not Michael's hand furrowing the zones of time,—
  • Is more with compassed mysteries musical;
  • Nay, not in Spring's or Summer's sweet footfall
  • More gathered gifts exuberant Life bequeathes
  • Than doth this sovereign face, whose love-spell breathes
  • Even from its shadowed contour on the wall.
  • As many men are poets in their youth,
  • 10 But for one sweet-strung soul the wires prolong
  • Even through all change the indomitable song;
  • So in likewise the envenomed years, whose tooth
  • Rends shallower grace with ruin void of ruth,
  • Upon this beauty's power shall wreak no wrong.
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more about Silent Noon
SONNET XIX.

SILENT NOON.
  • Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,—
  • The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:
  • Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms
  • 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.
  • All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,
  • Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge
  • Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.
  • 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
  • Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly
  • 10Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:—
  • So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.
  • Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,
  • This close-companioned inarticulate hour
  • When twofold silence was the song of love.
more about Gracious Moonlight.
SONNET XX.

GRACIOUS MOONLIGHT.
  • Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space
  • When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car
  • Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,—
  • So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace
  • When the drear soul desires thee. Of that face
  • What shall be said,—which, like a governing star,
  • Gathers and garners from all things that are
  • Their silent penetrative loveliness?
  • O'er water-daisies and wild waifs of Spring,
  • 10 There where the iris rears its gold-crowned sheaf
  • With flowering rush and sceptred arrow-leaf,
  • So have I marked Queen Dian, in bright ring
  • Of cloud above and wave below, take wing
  • And chase night's gloom, as thou the spirit's grief.
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more about Love-Sweetness.
SONNET XXI.

LOVE-SWEETNESS.
  • Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
  • About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
  • In gracious fostering union garlanded;
  • Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
  • Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
  • Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
  • On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
  • Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
  • What sweeter than these things, except the thing
  • 10 In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
  • The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat
  • And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,
  • Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
  • The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
more about Heart's Haven.
SONNET XXII.

HEART'S HAVEN.
  • Sometimes she is a child within mine arms,
  • Cowering beneath dark wings that love must chase,—
  • With still tears showering and averted face,
  • Inexplicably filled with faint alarms:
  • And oft from mine own spirit's hurtling harms
  • I crave the refuge of her deep embrace,—
  • Against all ills the fortified strong place
  • And sweet reserve of sovereign counter-charms.
  • And Love, our light at night and shade at noon,
  • 10 Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away
  • All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day.
  • Like the moon's growth, his face gleams through his tune;
  • And as soft waters warble to the moon,
  • Our answering spirits chime one roundelay.
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more about Love's Baubles.
SONNET XXIII.

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.”
more about Pride of Youth.
SONNET XXIV.

PRIDE OF YOUTH.
  • Even as a child, of sorrow that we give
  • The dead, but little in his heart can find,
  • Since without need of thought to his clear mind
  • Their turn it is to die and his to live:—
  • Even so the winged New Love smiles to receive
  • Along his eddying plumes the auroral wind,
  • Nor, forward glorying, casts one look behind
  • Where night-rack shrouds the Old Love fugitive.
  • There is a change in every hour's recall,
  • 10 And the last cowslip in the fields we see
  • On the same day with the first corn-poppy.
  • Alas for hourly change! Alas for all
  • The loves that from his hand proud Youth lets fall,
  • Even as the beads of a told rosary!
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more about Winged Hours.
SONNET XXV.

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,
  • Full oft through our contending joys 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?
more about Mid-Rapture.
SONNET XXVI.

MID-RAPTURE.
  • Thou lovely and beloved, thou my love;
  • Whose kiss seems still the first; whose summoning
  • eyes,
  • Even now, as for our love-world's new sunrise,
  • Shed very dawn; whose voice, attuned above
  • All modulation of the deep-bowered dove,
  • Is like a hand laid softly on the soul;
  • Whose hand is like a sweet voice to control
  • Those worn tired brows it hath the keeping of:—
  • What word can answer to thy word,—what gaze
  • 10 To thine, which now absorbs within its sphere
  • My worshipping face, till I am mirrored there
  • Light-circled in a heaven of deep-drawn rays?
  • What clasp, what kiss mine inmost heart can prove,
  • O lovely and beloved, O my love?
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more about Heart's Compass.
SONNET XXVII.

HEART'S COMPASS.
  • Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone,
  • But as the meaning of all things that are;
  • A breathless wonder, shadowing forth afar
  • Some heavenly solstice hushed and halcyon;
  • Whose unstirred lips are music's visible tone;
  • Whose eyes the sun-gate of the soul unbar,
  • Being of its furthest fires oracular;—
  • The evident heart of all life sown and mown.
  • Even such Love is; and is not thy name Love?
  • 10 Yea, by thy hand the Love-god rends apart
  • All gathering clouds of Night's ambiguous art;
  • Flings them far down, and sets thine eyes above;
  • And simply, as some gage of flower or glove,
  • Stakes with a smile the world against thy heart.
more about Soul-Light.
SONNET XXVIII.

SOUL-LIGHT.
  • What other woman could be loved like you,
  • Or how of you should love possess his fill?
  • After the fulness of all rapture, still,—
  • As at the end of some deep avenue
  • A tender glamour of day,—there comes to view
  • Far in your eyes a yet more hungering thrill,—
  • Such fire as Love's soul-winnowing hands distil
  • Even from his inmost ark of light and dew.
  • And as the traveller triumphs with the sun,
  • 10 Glorying in heat's mid-height, yet startide brings
  • Wonder new-born, and still fresh transport springs
  • From limpid lambent hours of day begun;—
  • Even so, through eyes and voice, your soul doth move
  • My soul with changeful light of infinite love.
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more about The Moonstar.
SONNET XXIX.

THE MOONSTAR.
  • Lady, I thank thee for thy loveliness,
  • Because my lady is more lovely still.
  • Glorying I gaze, and yield with glad goodwill
  • To thee thy tribute; by whose sweet-spun dress
  • Of delicate life Love labours to assess
  • My lady's absolute queendom; saying, “Lo!
  • How high this beauty is, which yet doth show
  • But as that beauty's sovereign votaress.”
  • Lady, I saw thee with her, side by side;
  • 10 And as, when night's fair fires their queen surround,
  • An emulous star too near the moon will ride,—
  • Even so thy rays within her luminous bound
  • Were traced no more; and by the light so drown'd,
  • Lady, not thou but she was glorified.
more about Last Fire.
SONNET XXX.

LAST FIRE.
  • Love, through your spirit and mine what summer eve
  • Now glows with glory of all things possess'd,
  • Since this day's sun of rapture filled the west
  • And the light sweetened as the fire took leave?
  • Awhile now softlier let your bosom heave,
  • As in Love's harbour, even that loving breast,
  • All care takes refuge while we sink to rest,
  • And mutual dreams the bygone bliss retrieve.
  • Many the days that Winter keeps in store,
  • 10 Sunless throughout, or whose brief sun-glimpses
  • Scarce shed the heaped snow through the naked trees.
  • This day at least was Summer's paramour,
  • Sun-coloured to the imperishable core
  • With sweet well-being of love and full heart's ease.
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more about Her Gifts.
SONNET XXXI.

HER GIFTS.
  • High grace, the dower of queens; and therewithal
  • Some wood-born wonder's sweet simplicity;
  • A glance like water brimming with the sky
  • Or hyacinth-light where forest-shadows fall;
  • Such thrilling pallor of cheek as doth enthral
  • The heart; a mouth whose passionate forms imply
  • All music and all silence held thereby;
  • Deep golden locks, her sovereign coronal;
  • A round reared neck, meet column of Love's shrine
  • 10 To cling to when the heart takes sanctuary;
  • Hands which for ever at Love's bidding be,
  • And soft-stirred feet still answering to his sign:—
  • These are her gifts, as tongue may tell them o'er.
  • Breathe low her name, my soul; for that means more.
more about Equal Troth.
SONNET XXXII.

EQUAL TROTH.
  • Not by one measure mayst thou mete our love;
  • For how should I be loved as I love thee?—
  • I, graceless, joyless, lacking absolutely
  • All gifts that with thy queenship best behove;—
  • Thou, throned in every heart's elect alcove,
  • And crowned with garlands culled from every tree,
  • Which for no head but thine, by Love's decree,
  • All beauties and all mysteries interwove.
  • But here thine eyes and lips yield soft rebuke:—
  • 10“Then only” (say'st thou) “could I love thee less,
  • When thou couldst doubt my love's equality.”
  • Peace, sweet! If not to sum but worth we look,—
  • Thy heart's transcendence, not my heart's excess,—
  • Then more a thousandfold thou lov'st than I.
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more about Venus Victrix.
SONNET XXXIII.

VENUS VICTRIX.
  • Could Juno's self more sovereign presence wear
  • Than thou, 'mid other ladies throned in grace?—
  • Or Pallas, when thou bend'st with soul-stilled face
  • O'er poet's page gold-shadowed in thy hair?
  • Dost thou than Venus seem less heavenly fair
  • When o'er the sea of love's tumultuous trance
  • Hovers thy smile, and mingles with thy glance
  • That sweet voice like the last wave murmuring there?
  • Before such triune loveliness divine
  • 10 Awestruck I ask, which goddess here most claims
  • The prize that, howsoe'er adjudged, is thine?
  • Then Love breathes low the sweetest of thy names;
  • And Venus Victrix to my heart doth bring
  • Herself, the Helen of her guerdoning.
more about The Dark Glass.
SONNET XXXIV.

THE DARK GLASS.
  • Not I myself know all my love for thee:
  • How should I reach so far, who cannot weigh
  • To-morrow's dower by gage of yesterday?
  • Shall birth and death, and all dark names that be
  • As doors and windows bared to some loud sea,
  • Lash deaf mine ears and blind my face with spray;
  • And shall my sense pierce love,—the last relay
  • And ultimate outpost of eternity?
  • Lo! what am I to Love, the lord of all?
  • 10 One murmuring shell he gathers from the sand,—
  • One little heart-flame sheltered in his hand.
  • Yet through thine eyes he grants me clearest call
  • And veriest touch of powers primordial
  • That any hour-girt life may understand.
Sig. 13
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more about The Lamp's Shrine.
SONNET XXXV.

THE LAMP'S SHRINE.
  • Sometimes I fain would find in thee some fault,
  • That I might love thee still in spite of it:
  • Yet how should our Lord Love curtail one whit
  • Thy perfect praise whom most he would exalt?
  • Alas! he can but make my heart's low vault
  • Even in men's sight unworthier, being lit
  • By thee, who thereby show'st more exquisite
  • Like fiery chrysoprase in deep basalt.
  • Yet will I nowise shrink; but at Love's shrine
  • 10 Myself within the beams his brow doth dart
  • Will set the flashing jewel of thy heart
  • In that dull chamber where it deigns to shine:
  • For lo! in honour of thine excellencies
  • My heart takes pride to show how poor it is.
more about Life-in-Love.
SONNET XXXVI.

LIFE-IN-LOVE.
  • Not in thy body is thy life at all,
  • But in this lady's lips and hands and eyes;
  • Through these she yields thee life that vivifies
  • What else were sorrow's servant and death's thrall.
  • Look on thyself without her, and recall
  • The waste remembrance and forlorn surmise
  • That lived but in a dead-drawn breath of sighs
  • O'er vanished hours and hours eventual.
  • Even so much life hath the poor tress of hair
  • 10 Which, stored apart, is all love hath to show
  • For heart-beats and for fire-heats long ago;
  • Even so much life endures unknown, even where,
  • 'Mid change the changeless night environeth,
  • Lies all that golden hair undimmed in death.
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more about The Love Moon.
SONNET XXXVII.

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?”
more about The Morrow's Message.
SONNET XXXVIII.

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.”
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more about Sleepless Dreams.
SONNET XXXIX.

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?
more about Severed Selves.
SONNET XL.

SEVERED SELVES.
  • Two separate divided silences,
  • Which, brought together, would find loving voice;
  • Two glances which together would rejoice
  • In love, now lost like stars beyond dark trees;
  • Two hands apart whose touch alone gives ease;
  • Two bosoms which, heart-shrined with mutual flame,
  • Would, meeting in one clasp, be made the same;
  • Two souls, the shores wave mocked of sundering seas:—
  • Such are we now. Ah! may our hope forecast
  • 10 Indeed one hour again, when on this stream
  • Of darkened love once more the light shall gleam?—
  • An hour how slow to come, how quickly past,—
  • Which blooms and fades, and only leaves at last,
  • Faint as shed flowers, the attenuated dream.
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more about Through Death to Love.
SONNET XLI.

THROUGH DEATH TO LOVE.
  • Like labour-laden moonclouds faint to flee
  • From winds that sweep the winter-bitten wold,—
  • Like multiform circumfluence manifold
  • Of night's flood-tide,—like terrors that agree
  • Of hoarse-tongued fire and inarticulate sea,—
  • Even such, within some glass dimmed by our breath,
  • Our hearts discern wild images of Death,
  • Shadows and shoals that edge eternity.
  • Howbeit athwart Death's imminent shade doth soar
  • 10 One Power, than flow of stream or flight of dove
  • Sweeter to glide around, to brood above.
  • Tell me, my heart,—what angel-greeted door
  • Or threshold of wing-winnowed threshing-floor
  • Hath guest fire-fledged as thine, whose lord is Love?
more about Hope Overtaken.
SONNET XLII.

HOPE OVERTAKEN.
  • I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,
  • So far I viewed thee. Now the space between
  • Is passed at length; and garmented in green
  • Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day.
  • Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,
  • On all that road our footsteps erst had been
  • Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen
  • Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way.
  • O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,
  • 10 No eyes but hers,—O Love and Hope the same!—
  • Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun
  • That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.
  • O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!
  • Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!
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more about Love and Hope.
SONNET XLIII.

LOVE AND HOPE
  • Bless love and hope. Full many a withered year
  • Whirled past us, eddying to its chill doomsday;
  • And clasped together where the blown leaves lay,
  • We long have knelt and wept full many a tear.
  • Yet lo! one hour at last, the Spring's compeer,
  • Flutes softly to us from some green byeway:
  • Those years, those tears are dead, but only they:—
  • Bless love and hope, true soul; for we are here.
  • Cling heart to heart; nor of this hour demand
  • 10 Whether in very truth, when we are dead,
  • Our hearts shall wake to know Love's golden head
  • Sole sunshine of the imperishable land;
  • Or but discern, through night's unfeatured scope,
  • Scorn-fired at length the illusive eyes of Hope.
more about Cloud and Wind.
SONNET XLIV.

CLOUD AND WIND.
  • Love, should I fear death most for you or me?
  • Yet if you die, can I not follow you,
  • Forcing the straits of change? Alas! but who
  • Shall wrest a bond from night's inveteracy,
  • Ere yet my hazardous soul put forth, to be
  • Her warrant against all her haste might rue?—
  • Ah! in your eyes so reached what dumb adieu,
  • What unsunned gyres of waste eternity?
  • And if I die the first, shall death be then
  • 10 A lampless watchtower whence I see you weep?—
  • Or (woe is me!) a bed wherein my sleep
  • Ne'er notes (as death's dear cup at last you drain)
  • The hour when you too learn that all is vain
  • And that Hope sows what Love shall never reap?
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more about Secret Parting.
SONNET XLV.

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.
more about Parted Love.
SONNET XLVI.

PARTED LOVE.
  • What shall be said of this embattled day
  • And armèd 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.
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more about Broken Music.
SONNET XLVII.

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.
more about Death-in-Love.
SONNET XLVIII.

DEATH-IN-LOVE.
  • There came an image in Life's retinue
  • That had Love's wings and bore his gonfalon:
  • Fair was the web, and nobly wrought thereon,
  • O soul-sequestered face, thy form and hue!
  • Bewildering sounds, such as Spring wakens to,
  • Shook in its folds; and through my heart its power
  • Sped trackless as the immemorable hour
  • When birth's dark portal groaned and all was new.
  • But a veiled woman followed, and she caught
  • 10 The banner round its staff, to furl and cling,—
  • Then plucked a feather from the bearer's wing,
  • And held it to his lips that stirred it not,
  • And said to me, “Behold, there is no breath:
  • I and this Love are one, and I am Death.”
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more about Willowwood.
SONNETS XLIX, L, LI, LII.

WILLOWWOOD.
more about Willowwood. I.
I.
  • I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
  • Leaning across the water, I and he;
  • Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
  • But touched his lute wherein was audible
  • The certain secret thing he had to tell:
  • Only our mirrored eyes met silently
  • In the low wave; and that sound came to be
  • The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
  • And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
  • 10And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
  • He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
  • Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
  • And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
  • Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.
more about Willowwood II.
II.
  • And now Love sang: but his was such a song,
  • So meshed with half-remembrance hard to free,
  • As souls disused in death's sterility
  • May sing when the new birthday tarries long.
  • And I was made aware of a dumb throng
  • That stood aloof, one form by every tree,
  • All mournful forms, for each was I or she,
  • The shades of those our days that had no tongue.
  • They looked on us, and knew us and were known;
  • 10 While fast together, alive from the abyss,
  • Clung the soul-wrung implacable close kiss;
  • And pity of self through all made broken moan
  • Which said, “For once, for once, for once alone!”
  • And still Love sang, and what he sang was this:—
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more about Willowwood. III.
III.
  • “O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood,
  • That walk with hollow faces burning white;
  • What fathom-depth of soul-struck widowhood,
  • What long, what longer hours, one lifelong night,
  • Ere ye again, who so in vain have wooed
  • Your last hope lost, who so in vain invite
  • Your lips to that their unforgotten food,
  • Ere ye, ere ye again shall see the light!
  • Alas! the bitter banks in Willowwood,
  • 10 With tear-spurge wan, with blood-wort burning red:
  • Alas! if ever such a pillow could
  • Steep deep the soul in sleep till she were dead,—
  • Better all life forget her than this thing,
  • That Willowwood should hold her wandering!”
more about Willowwood. IV.
IV.
  • So sang he: and as meeting rose and rose
  • Together cling through the wind's wellaway
  • Nor change at once, yet near the end of day
  • The leaves drop loosened where the heart-stain glows,—
  • So when the song died did the kiss unclose;
  • And her face fell back drowned, and was as grey
  • As its grey eyes; and if it ever may
  • Meet mine again I know not if Love knows.
  • Only I know that I leaned low and drank
  • 10A long draught from the water where she sank,
  • Her breath and all her tears and all her soul:
  • And as I leaned, I know I felt Love's face
  • Pressed on my neck with moan of pity and grace,
  • Till both our heads were in his aureole.
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more about Without Her.
SONNET LIII.

WITHOUT HER.
  • What of her glass without her? The blank grey
  • There where the pool is blind of the moon's face.
  • Her dress without her? The tossed empty space
  • Of cloud-rack whence the moon has passed away.
  • Her paths without her? Day's appointed sway
  • Usurped by desolate night. Her pillowed place
  • Without her? Tears, ah me! for love's good grace,
  • And cold forgetfulness of night or day.
  • What of the heart without her? Nay, poor heart,
  • 10 Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?
  • A wayfarer by barren ways and chill,
  • Steep ways and weary, without her thou art,
  • Where the long cloud, the long wood's counterpart,
  • Sheds doubled darkness up the labouring hill.
more about Love's Fatality.
SONNET LIV.

LOVE'S FATALITY.
  • Sweet Love,—but oh! most dread Desire of Love
  • Life-thwarted. Linked in gyves I saw them stand,
  • Love shackled with Vain-longing, hand to hand:
  • And one was eyed as the blue vault above:
  • But hope tempestuous like a fire-cloud hove
  • I' the other's gaze, even as in his whose wand
  • Vainly all night with spell-wrought power has spann'd
  • The unyielding caves of some deep treasure-trove.
  • Also his lips, two writhen flakes of flame,
  • 10 Made moan: “Alas O Love, thus leashed with me!
  • Wing-footed thou, wing-shouldered, once born free:
  • And I, thy cowering self, in chains grown tame,—
  • Bound to thy body and soul, named with thy name,—
  • Life's iron heart, even Love's Fatality.”
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more about Stillborn Love.
SONNET LV.

STILLBORN LOVE.
  • The hour which might have been yet might not be,
  • Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore
  • Yet whereof life was barren,—on what shore
  • Bides it the breaking of Time's weary sea?
  • Bondchild of all consummate joys set free,
  • It somewhere sighs and serves, and mute before
  • The house of Love, hears through the echoing door
  • His hours elect in choral consonancy.
  • But lo! what wedded souls now hand in hand
  • 10Together tread at last the immortal strand
  • With eyes where burning memory lights love home?
  • Lo! how the little outcast hour has turned
  • And leaped to them and in their faces yearned:—
  • “I am your child: O parents, ye have come!”
more about True Woman.
SONNETS LVI, LVII, LVIII.

TRUE WOMAN.
more about True Woman. I. Herself.
I. HERSELF.
  • To be a sweetness more desired than Spring;
  • A bodily beauty more acceptable
  • Than the wild rose-tree's arch that crowns the fell;
  • To be an essence more environing
  • Than wine's drained juice; a music ravishing
  • More than the passionate pulse of Philomel;—
  • To be all this 'neath one soft bosom's swell
  • That is the flower of life:—how strange a thing!
  • How strange a thing to be what Man can know
  • 10 But as a sacred secret! Heaven's own screen
  • Hides her soul's purest depth and loveliest glow;
  • Closely withheld, as all things most unseen,—
  • The wave-bowered pearl,—the heart-shaped seal of
  • green
  • That flecks the snowdrop underneath the snow.
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more about True Woman. II. Her Love.
II. HER LOVE.
  • She loves him; for her infinite soul is Love,
  • And he her lodestar. Passion in her is
  • A glass facing his fire, where the bright bliss
  • Is mirrored, and the heat returned. Yet move
  • That glass, a stranger's amorous flame to prove,
  • And it shall turn, by instant contraries,
  • Ice to the moon; while her pure fire to his
  • For whom it burns, clings close i' the heart's alcove.
  • Lo! they are one. With wifely breast to breast
  • 10 And circling arms, she welcomes all command
  • Of love,—her soul to answering ardours fann'd:
  • Yet as morn springs or twilight sinks to rest,
  • Ah! who shall say she deems not loveliest
  • The hour of sisterly sweet hand-in-hand?
more about True Woman. III. Her Heaven.
III. HER HEAVEN.
  • If to grow old in Heaven is to grow young,
  • (As the Seer saw and said,) then blest were he
  • With youth for evermore, whose heaven should be
  • True Woman, she whom these weak notes have sung.
  • Here and hereafter,—choir-strains of her tongue,—
  • Sky-spaces of her eyes,—sweet signs that flee
  • About her soul's immediate sanctuary,—
  • Were Paradise all uttermost worlds among.
  • The sunrise blooms and withers on the hill
  • 10 Like any hillflower; and the noblest troth
  • Dies here to dust. Yet shall Heaven's promise clothe
  • Even yet those lovers who have cherished still
  • This test for love:—in every kiss sealed fast
  • To feel the first kiss and forbode the last.
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more about Love's Last Gift.
SONNET LIX.

LOVE'S LAST GIFT.
  • Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,
  • And said: “The rose-tree and the apple-tree
  • Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;
  • And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf
  • Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,
  • Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea
  • Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably
  • Between the filtering channels of sunk reef.
  • All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love
  • 10 To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;
  • But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang
  • From those worse things the wind is moaning of.
  • Only this laurel dreads no winter days:
  • Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.
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more about Part II. Change and Fate.
Part II.— CHANGE AND FATE.
more about Transfigured Life.
SONNET LX.

TRANSFIGURED LIFE.
  • As growth of form or momentary glance
  • In a child's features will recall to mind
  • The father's with the mother's face combin'd,—
  • Sweet interchange that memories still enhance:
  • And yet, as childhood's years and youth's advance,
  • The gradual mouldings leave one stamp behind,
  • Till in the blended likeness now we find
  • A separate man's or woman's countenance:—
  • So in the Song, the singer's Joy and Pain,
  • 10 Its very parents, evermore expand
  • To bid the passion's fullgrown birth remain,
  • By Art's transfiguring essence subtly spann'd;
  • And from that song-cloud shaped as a man's hand
  • There comes the sound as of abundant rain.
more about The Song-Throe.
SONNET LXI.

THE SONG-THROE.
  • By thine own tears thy song must tears beget,
  • O Singer! Magic mirror thou hast none
  • Except thy manifest heart; and save thine own
  • Anguish or ardour, else no amulet.
  • Cisterned in Pride, verse is the feathery jet
  • Of soulless air-flung fountains; nay, more dry
  • Than the Dead Sea for throats that thirst and sigh,
  • That song o'er which no singer's lids grew wet.
  • The Song-god—He the Sun-god—is no slave
  • 10 Of thine: thy Hunter he, who for thy soul
  • Fledges his shaft: to no august control
  • Of thy skilled hand his quivered store he gave:
  • But if thy lips' loud cry leap to his smart,
  • The inspir'd recoil shall pierce thy brother's heart.
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more about The Soul's Sphere.
SONNET LXII.

THE SOUL'S SPHERE.
  • Some prisoned moon in steep cloud-fastnesses,—
  • Throned queen and thralled; some dying sun whose
  • pyre
  • Blazed with momentous memorable fire;—
  • Who hath not yearned and fed his heart with these?
  • Who, sleepless, hath not anguished to appease
  • Tragical shadow's realm of sound and sight
  • Conjectured in the lamentable night? . . . . .
  • Lo! the soul's sphere of infinite images!
  • What sense shall count them? Whether it forecast
  • 10 The rose-winged hours that flutter in the van
  • Of Love's unquestioning unrevealèd span,—
  • Visions of golden futures: or that last
  • Wild pageant of the accumulated past
  • That clangs and flashes for a drowning man.
more about Inclusiveness.
SONNET LXIII.

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.
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more about Ardour and Memory.
SONNET LXIV.

ARDOUR AND MEMORY.
  • The cuckoo-throb, the heartbeat of the Spring;
  • The rosebud's blush that leaves it as it grows
  • Into the full-eyed fair unblushing rose;
  • The summer clouds that visit every wing
  • With fires of sunrise and of sunsetting;
  • The furtive flickering streams to light re-born
  • 'Mid airs new-fledged and valorous lusts of morn,
  • While all the daughters of the daybreak sing:—
  • These ardour loves, and memory: and when flown
  • 10 All joys, and through dark forest-boughs in flight
  • The wind swoops onward brandishing the light,
  • Even yet the rose-tree's verdure left alone
  • Will flush all ruddy though the rose be gone;
  • With ditties and with dirges infinite.
more about Known in Vain.
SONNET LXV.

KNOWN IN VAIN.
  • As two whose love, first foolish, widening scope,
  • Knows suddenly, to 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 aloud, 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?
Sig. 14
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more about The Heart of the Night.
SONNET LXVI.

THE HEART OF THE NIGHT.
  • From child to youth; from youth to arduous man;
  • From lethargy to fever of the heart;
  • From faithful life to dream-dowered days apart;
  • From trust to doubt; from doubt to brink of ban;—
  • Thus much of change in one swift cycle ran
  • Till now. Alas, the soul!—how soon must she
  • Accept her primal immortality,—
  • The flesh resume its dust whence it began?
  • O Lord of work and peace! O Lord of life!
  • 10 O Lord, the awful Lord of will! though late,
  • Even yet renew this soul with duteous breath:
  • That when the peace is garnered in from strife,
  • The work retrieved, the will regenerate,
  • This soul may see thy face, O Lord of death!
more about The Landmark.
SONNET LXVII.

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 rise 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.
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more about A Dark Day.
SONNET LXVIII.

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.
more about Autumn Idleness.
SONNET LXIX.

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.
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more about The Hill Summit.
SONNET LXX.

THE HILL SUMMIT.
  • This feast-day of the sun, his altar there
  • In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;
  • And I have loitered in the vale too long
  • And gaze now a belated worshiper.
  • Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,
  • So journeying, of his face at intervals
  • Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,—
  • A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
  • And now that I have climbed and won this height,
  • 10 I must tread downward through the sloping shade
  • And travel the bewildered tracks till night.
  • Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed
  • And see the gold air and the silver fade
  • And the last bird fly into the last light.
more about The Choice.
SONNETS LXXI, LXXII, LXXIII.

THE CHOICE.
more about The Choice. I.
I.
  • Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  • Surely the earth, that's wise being very old,
  • Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold
  • Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I
  • May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high,
  • Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold.
  • We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd,
  • Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky.
  • Now kiss, and think that there are really those,
  • 10 My own high-bosomed beauty, who increase
  • Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way!
  • Through many years they toil; then on a day
  • They die not,—for their life was death,—but cease;
  • And round their narrow lips the mould falls close.
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more about The Choice. II.
II.
  • Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  • Or art thou sure thou shalt have time for death?
  • Is not the day which God's word promiseth
  • To come man knows not when? In yonder sky,
  • Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I
  • Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath
  • Even at this moment haply quickeneth
  • The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh
  • Though screened and hid, shall walk the daylight here.
  • 10 And dost thou prate of all that man shall do?
  • Canst thou, who hast but plagues, presume to be
  • Glad in his gladness that comes after thee?
  • Will his strength slay thy worm in Hell? Go to:
  • Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear.
more about The Choice. III.
III.
  • Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die.
  • Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore,
  • Thou say'st: “Man's measured path is all gone o'er:
  • Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh,
  • Man clomb until he touched the truth; and I,
  • Even I, am he whom it was destined for.”
  • How should this be? Art thou then so much more
  • Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby?
  • Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound
  • 10 Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me;
  • Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd.
  • Miles and miles distant though the last line be,
  • And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,—
  • Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.
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more about Old and New Art.
SONNETS LXXIV, LXXV, LXXVI.

OLD AND NEW ART.
more about Old and New Art. I. St. Luke the Painter.
I. ST. 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.
more about Old and New Art. II. Not as These.
II. NOT AS THESE.
  • “I am not as these are,” the poet saith
  • In youth's pride, and the painter, among men
  • At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen,
  • And shut about with his own frozen breath.
  • To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith
  • As poets,—only paint as painters,—then
  • He turns in the cold silence; and again
  • Shrinking, “I am not as these are,” he saith.
  • And say that this is so, what follows it?
  • 10 For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head,
  • Such words were well; but they see on, and far.
  • Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit
  • Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,—
  • Say thou instead, “I am not as these are.”
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more about Old and New Art. III. The Husbandmen.
III. THE HUSBANDMEN.
  • Though God, as one that is an householder,
  • Called these to labour in His vineyard first,
  • Before the husk of darkness was well burst
  • Bidding them grope their way out and bestir,
  • (Who, questioned of their wages, answered, “Sir,
  • Unto each man a penny”:) though the worst
  • Burthen of heat was theirs and the dry thirst:
  • Though God hath since found none such as these were
  • To do their work like them:—Because of this
  • 10 Stand not ye idle in the market-place.
  • Which of ye knoweth he is not that last
  • Who may be first by faith and will?—yea, his
  • The hand which after the appointed days
  • And hours shall give a Future to their Past?
more about Soul's Beauty.
SONNET LXXVII.

SOUL'S BEAUTY.
  • Under the arch of Life, where love and death,
  • Terror and mystery, guard her shrine, I saw
  • Beauty enthroned; and though her gaze struck awe,
  • I drew it in as simply as my breath.
  • Hers are the eyes which, over and beneath,
  • The sky and sea bend on thee,—which can draw,
  • By sea or sky or woman, to one law,
  • The allotted bondman of her palm and wreath.
  • This is that Lady Beauty, in whose praise
  • 10 Thy voice and hand shake still,—long known to thee
  • By flying hair and fluttering hem,—the beat
  • Following her daily of thy heart and feet,
  • How passionately and irretrievably,
  • In what fond flight, how many ways and days!
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more about Body's Beauty.
SONNET LXXVIII.

BODY'S BEAUTY.
  • Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told
  • (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,)
  • That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive,
  • And her enchanted hair was the first gold.
  • And still she sits, young while the earth is old,
  • And, subtly of herself contemplative,
  • Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave,
  • Till heart and body and life are in its hold.
  • The rose and poppy are her flowers; for where
  • 10 Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent
  • And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare?
  • Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went
  • Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent
  • And round his heart one strangling golden hair.
more about The Monochord
SONNET LXXIX.

THE MONOCHORD.
  • Is it this sky's vast vault or ocean's sound
  • That is Life's self and draws my life from me,
  • And by instinct ineffable decree
  • Holds my breath quailing on the bitter bound?
  • Nay, is it Life or Death, thus thunder-crown'd,
  • That 'mid the tide of all emergency
  • Now notes my separate wave, and to what sea
  • Its difficult eddies labour in the ground?
  • Oh! what is this that knows the road I came,
  • 10The flame turned cloud, the cloud returned to flame,
  • The lifted shifted steeps and all the way?—
  • That draws round me at last this wind-warm space,
  • And in regenerate rapture turns my face
  • Upon the devious coverts of dismay?
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more about From Dawn to Noon.
SONNET LXXX.

FROM DAWN TO NOON.
  • As the child knows not if his mother's face
  • Be fair; nor of his elders yet can deem
  • What each most is; but as of hill or stream
  • At dawn, all glimmering life surrounds his place:
  • Who yet, tow'rd noon of his half-weary race,
  • Pausing awhile beneath the high sun-beam
  • And gazing steadily back,—as through a dream,
  • In things long past new features now can trace:—
  • Even so the thought that is at length fullgrown
  • 10 Turns back to note the sun-smit paths, all grey
  • And marvellous once, where first it walked alone;
  • And haply doubts, amid the unblenching day,
  • Which most or least impelled its onward way,—
  • Those unknown things or these things overknown.
more about Memorial Thresholds.
SONNET LXXXI.

MEMORIAL THRESHOLDS.
  • What place so strange,—though unrevealèd snow
  • With unimaginable fires arise
  • At the earth's end,—what passion of surprise
  • Like frost-bound fire-girt scenes of long ago?
  • Lo! this is none but I this hour; and lo!
  • This is the very place which to mine eyes
  • Those mortal hours in vain immortalize,
  • 'Mid hurrying crowds, with what alone I know.
  • City, of thine a single simple door,
  • 10 By some new Power reduplicate, must be
  • Even yet my life-porch in eternity,
  • Even with one presence filled, as once of yore:
  • Or mocking winds whirl round a chaff-strown floor
  • Thee and thy years and these my words and me.
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more about Hoarded Joy.
SONNET LXXXII.

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.”
more about Barren Spring.
SONNET LXXXIII.

BARREN SPRING.
  • Once more the changed year's turning wheel returns:
  • And as a girl sails balanced in the wind,
  • And now before and now again behind
  • Stoops as it swoops, with cheek that laughs and burns,—
  • So Spring comes merry towards me here, but earns
  • No answering smile from me, whose life is twin'd
  • With the dead boughs that winter still must bind,
  • And whom to-day the Spring no more concerns.
  • Behold, this crocus is a withering flame;
  • 10 This snowdrop, snow; this apple-blossom's part
  • To breed the fruit that breeds the serpent's art.
  • Nay, for these Spring-flowers, turn thy face from them,
  • Nor stay till on the year's last lily-stem
  • The white cup shrivels round the golden heart.
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more about Farewell to the Glen.
SONNET LXXXIV.

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.
more about Vain Virtues.
SONNET LXXXV.

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 pit's pollution leaves
  • Their refuse maidenhood abominable.
  • Night sucks them down, the tribute 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 destined wife,
  • The Sin still blithe on earth that sent them there.
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more about Lost Days.
SONNET LXXXVI.

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 undying throats of Hell, athirst 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!”
more about Death's Songsters.
SONNET LXXXVII.

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?
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more about Hero's Lamp.
SONNET LXXXVIII.

HERO'S LAMP. 1
  • That lamp thou fill'st in Eros' name to-night,
  • O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take
  • To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake
  • To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.
  • Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light
  • On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;
  • While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,
  • Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.
  • That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine
  • 10 Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)
  • Till some one man the happy issue see
  • Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:
  • Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,
  • O brother, what brought love to them or thee?
Transcribed Footnote (page 221):

1 After the deaths of Leander and of Hero, the signal-lamp was

dedicated to Anteros, with the edict that no man should light it

unless his love had proved fortunate.

Note: The last word of the twelfth line below, marked with a left square bracket, has been moved up from the end of the line it is above.
more about The Trees of the Garden.
SONNET LXXXIX.

THE TREES OF THE GARDEN.
  • Ye who have passed Death's haggard hills; and ye
  • Whom trees that knew your sires shall cease to know
  • And still stand silent:—is it all a show,—
  • A wisp that laughs upon the wall?—decree
  • Of some inexorable supremacy
  • Which ever, as man strains his blind surmise
  • From depth to ominous depth, looks past his eyes,
  • Sphinx-faced with unabashèd augury?
  • Nay, rather question the Earth's self. Invoke
  • 10 The storm-felled forest-trees moss-grown to-day
  • Whose roots are hillocks where the children play;
  • Or ask the silver sapling 'neath what yoke
  • [wage
  • Those stars, his spray-crown's clustering gems, shall
  • Their journey still when his boughs shrink with age.
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more about 'Retro Me, Sathana!'
SONNET XC.

“ RETRO ME, SATHANA!”
  • Get thee behind me. Even as, heavy-curled,
  • Stooping against the wind, a charioteer
  • Is snatched 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.
more about Lost on Both Sides.
SONNET XCI.

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.
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more about The Sun's Shame.
SONNETS XCII, XCIII.

THE SUN'S SHAME.
more about The Sun's Shame. I.
I.
  • 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.
more about The Sun's Shame. II.
II.
  • As some true chief of men, bowed down with stress
  • Of life's disastrous eld, on blossoming youth
  • May gaze, and murmur with self-pity and ruth,—
  • “Might I thy fruitless treasure but possess,
  • Such blessing of mine all coming years should bless;”—
  • Then sends one sigh forth to the unknown goal,
  • And bitterly feels breathe against his soul
  • The hour swift-winged of nearer nothingness:—
  • Even so the World's grey Soul to the green World
  • 10 Perchance one hour must cry: “Woe's me, for whom
  • Inveteracy of ill portends the doom,—
  • Whose heart's old fire in shadow of shame is furl'd:
  • While thou even as of yore art journeying,
  • All soulless now, yet merry with the Spring!”
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more about Michelangelo's Kiss.
SONNET XCIV.

MICHELANGELO'S KISS.
  • Great Michelangelo, with age grown bleak
  • And uttermost labours, having once o'ersaid
  • All grievous memories on his long life shed,
  • This worst regret to one true heart could speak:—
  • That when, with sorrowing love and reverence meek,
  • He stooped o'er sweet Colonna's dying bed,
  • His Muse and dominant Lady, spirit-wed,—
  • Her hand he kissed, but not her brow or cheek.
  • O Buonarruoti,—good at Art's fire-wheels
  • 10 To urge her chariot!—even thus the Soul,
  • Touching at length some sorely-chastened goal,
  • Earns oftenest but a little: her appeals
  • Were deep and mute,—lowly her claim. Let be:
  • What holds for her Death's garner? And for thee?
more about The Vase of Life.
SONNET XCV.

THE VASE OF LIFE.
  • 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.
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more about Life the Beloved.
SONNET XCVI.

LIFE THE BELOVED.
  • As thy friend's face, with shadow of soul o'erspread,
  • Somewhile unto thy sight perchance hath been
  • Ghastly and strange, yet never so is seen
  • In thought, but to all fortunate favour wed;
  • As thy love's death-bound features never dead
  • To memory's glass return, but contravene
  • Frail fugitive days, and alway keep, I ween,
  • Than all new life a livelier lovelihead:—
  • So Life herself, thy spirit's friend and love,
  • 10 Even still as Spring's authentic harbinger
  • Glows with fresh hours for hope to glorify;
  • Though pale she lay when in the winter grove
  • Her funeral flowers were snow-flakes shed on her
  • And the red wings of frost-fire rent the sky.
more about A Superscription.
SONNET XCVII.

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.
Sig. 15
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more about He and I.
SONNET XCVIII.

HE AND I.
  • Whence came his feet into my field, and why?
  • How is it that he sees it all so drear?
  • How do I see his seeing, and how hear
  • The name his bitter silence knows it by?
  • This was the little fold of separate sky
  • Whose pasturing clouds in the soul's atmosphere
  • Drew living light from one continual year:
  • How should he find it lifeless? He, or I?
  • Lo! this new Self now wanders round my field,
  • 10 With plaints for every flower, and for each tree
  • A moan, the sighing wind's auxiliary:
  • And o'er sweet waters of my life, that yield
  • Unto his lips no draught but tears unseal'd,
  • Even in my place he weeps. Even I, not he.
more about Newborn Death.
SONNETS XCIX, C.

NEWBORN DEATH.
more about Newborn Death. I.
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?
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more about Newborn Death. II.
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?
more about The One Hope.
SONNET CI.

THE ONE HOPE.
  • When vain desire at last and vain regret
  • Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain,
  • What shall assuage the unforgotten pain
  • And teach the unforgetful to forget?
  • Shall Peace be still a sunk stream long unmet,—
  • Or may the soul at once in a green plain
  • Stoop through the spray of some sweet life-fountain
  • And cull the dew-drenched flowering amulet?
  • Ah! when the wan soul in that golden air
  • 10 Between the scriptured petals softly blown
  • Peers breathless for the gift of grace unknown,—
  • Ah! let none other alien spell soe'er
  • But only the one Hope's one name be there,—
  • Not less nor more, but even that word alone.
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II.—MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.

more about My Sister's Sleep.
MY SISTER'S SLEEP.
  • She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
  • At length the long-ungranted shade
  • Of weary eyelids 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.
  • Through the small room, with subtle sound
  • Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
  • And reddened. In its dim alcove
  • 20 The 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.
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  • Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
  • Heard 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
  • 40 So late, now heard the hour, and rose.
  • 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 stopped 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.
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  • 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!”
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more about The Blessed Damozel
THE BLESSED DAMOZEL.
  • The blessed damozel leaned out
  • From the gold bar of Heaven;
  • Her eyes were deeper than the depth
  • Of waters stilled at even;
  • She had three lilies in her hand,
  • And the stars in her hair were seven.
  • Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
  • No wrought flowers did adorn,
  • But a white rose of Mary's gift,
  • 10 For service meetly worn;
  • Her hair that lay along her back
  • Was yellow like ripe corn.
  • Herseemed she scarce had been a day
  • One of God's choristers;
  • The wonder was not yet quite gone
  • From that still look of hers;
  • Albeit, to them she left, her day
  • Had counted as ten years.
  • (To one, it is ten years of years.
  • 20 . . . Yet now, and in this place,
  • Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
  • Fell all about my face. . . .
  • Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
  • The whole year sets apace.)
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  • It was the rampart of God's house
  • That she was standing on;
  • By God built over the sheer depth
  • The which is Space begun;
  • So high, that looking downward thence
  • 30 She scarce could see the sun.
  • It lies in Heaven, across the flood
  • Of ether, as a bridge.
  • Beneath, the tides of day and night
  • With flame and darkness ridge
  • The void, as low as where this earth
  • Spins like a fretful midge.
  • Around her, lovers, newly met
  • 'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
  • Spoke evermore among themselves
  • 40 Their heart-remembered names;
  • And the souls mounting up to God
  • Went by her like thin flames.
  • And still she bowed herself and stooped
  • Out of the circling charm;
  • Until her bosom must have made
  • The bar she leaned on warm,
  • And the lilies lay as if asleep
  • Along her bended arm.
  • From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
  • 50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
  • Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
  • Within the gulf to pierce
  • Its path; and now she spoke as when
  • The stars sang in their spheres.
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  • The sun was gone now; the curled moon
  • Was like a little feather
  • Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
  • She spoke through the still weather.
  • Her voice was like the voice the stars
  • 60 Had when they sang together.
  • (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
  • Strove not her accents there,
  • Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
  • Possessed the mid-day air,
  • Strove not her steps to reach my side
  • Down all the echoing stair?)
  • “I wish that he were come to me,
  • For he will come,” she said.
  • “Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
  • 70 Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
  • Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
  • And shall I feel afraid?
  • “When round his head the aureole clings,
  • And he is clothed in white,
  • I'll take his hand and go with him
  • To the deep wells of light;
  • As unto a stream we will step down,
  • And bathe there in God's sight.
  • “We two will stand beside that shrine,
  • 80 Occult, withheld, untrod,
  • Whose lamps are stirred continually
  • With prayer sent up to God;
  • And see our old prayers, granted, melt
  • Each like a little cloud.
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  • “We two will lie i' the shadow of
  • That living mystic tree
  • Within whose secret growth the Dove
  • Is sometimes felt to be,
  • While every leaf that His plumes touch
  • 90 Saith His Name audibly.
  • “And I myself will teach to him,
  • I myself, lying so,
  • The songs I sing here; which his voice
  • Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
  • And find some knowledge at each pause,
  • Or some new thing to know.”
  • (Alas! we two, we two, thou say'st!
  • Yea, one wast thou with me
  • That once of old. But shall God lift
  • 100 To endless unity
  • The soul whose likeness with thy soul
  • Was but its love for thee?)
  • “We two,” she said, “will seek the groves
  • Where the lady Mary is,
  • With her five handmaidens, whose names
  • Are five sweet symphonies,
  • Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
  • Margaret and Rosalys.
  • “Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
  • 110 And foreheads garlanded;
  • Into the fine cloth white like flame
  • Weaving the golden thread,
  • To fashion the birth-robes for them
  • Who are just born, being dead.
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  • “He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
  • Then will I lay my cheek
  • To his, and tell about our love,
  • Not once abashed or weak:
  • And the dear Mother will approve
  • 120 My pride, and let me speak.
  • “Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
  • To Him round whom all souls
  • Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
  • Bowed with their aureoles:
  • And angels meeting us shall sing
  • To their citherns and citoles.
  • “There will I ask of Christ the Lord
  • Thus much for him and me:—
  • Only to live as once on earth
  • 130 With Love,—only to be,
  • As then awhile, for ever now
  • Together, I and he.”
  • She gazed and listened and then said,
  • Less sad of speech than mild,—
  • “All this is when he comes.” She ceased.
  • The light thrilled towards her, fill'd
  • With angels in strong level flight.
  • Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.
  • (I saw her smile.) But soon their path
  • 140 Was vague in distant spheres:
  • And then she cast her arms along
  • The golden barriers,
  • And laid her face between her hands,
  • And wept. (I heard her tears.)
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more about At the Sun-Rise in 1848
AT THE SUN-RISE IN 1848.
  • God said, Let there be light; and there was light.
  • Then heard we sounds as though the Earth did sing
  • And the Earth's angel cried upon the wing:
  • We saw priests fall together and turn white:
  • And covered in the dust from the sun's sight,
  • A king was spied, and yet another king.
  • We said: “The round world keeps its balancing;
  • On this globe, they and we are opposite,—
  • If it is day with us, with them 'tis night.
  • 10 Still, Man, in thy just pride, remember this:—
  • Thou hadst not made that thy sons' sons shall ask
  • What the word king may mean in their day's task,
  • But for the light that led: and if light is,
  • It is because God said, Let there be light.
more about Autumn Song
AUTUMN SONG.
  • Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
  • How the heart feels a languid grief
  • Laid on it for a covering,
  • And how sleep seems a goodly thing
  • In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
  • And how the swift beat of the brain
  • Falters because it is in vain,
  • In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
  • Knowest thou not? and how the chief
  • 10Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
  • Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
  • How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
  • Bound up at length for harvesting,
  • And how death seems a comely thing
  • In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
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more about The Lady's Lament
THE LADY'S LAMENT.
  • Never happy any more!
  • Aye, turn the saying o'er and o'er,
  • It says but what it said before,
  • And heart and life are just as sore.
  • The wet leaves blow aslant the floor
  • In the rain through the open door.
  • No, no more.
  • Never happy any more!
  • The eyes are weary and give o'er,
  • 10 But still the soul weeps as before.
  • And always must each one deplore
  • Each once, nor bear what others bore?
  • This is now as it was of yore.
  • No, no more.
  • Never happy any more!
  • Is it not but a sorry lore
  • That says, “Take strength, the worst is o'er”?
  • Shall the stars seem as heretofore?
  • The day wears on more and more—
  • 20 While I was weeping the day wore.
  • No, no more.
  • Never happy any more!
  • In the cold behind the door
  • That was the dial striking four:
  • One for joy the past hours bore,
  • Two for hope and will cast o'er,
  • One for the naked dark before.
  • No, no more.
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  • Never happy any more!
  • Put the light out, shut the door,
  • 30 Sweep the wet leaves from the floor.
  • Even thus Fate's hand has swept her floor,
  • Even thus Love's hand has shut the door
  • Through which his warm feet passed of yore.
  • Shall it be opened any more?
  • No, no, no more.
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more about The Portrait.
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.
  • 10 Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
  • That makes the prison-depths more rude,—
  • The drip of water night and day
  • Giving a tongue to solitude.
  • Yet only this, of love's whole prize,
  • Remains; save what in mournful guise
  • Takes counsel with my soul alone,—
  • Save what is secret and unknown,
  • Below the earth, above the skies.
  • In painting her I shrined her face
  • 20 '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.
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  • A deep dim wood; and there she stands
  • As in that wood that day: for so
  • 30 Was the still movement of her hands
  • And such the pure line's gracious flow.
  • 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;
  • And we were blithe; yet memory
  • 40 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.
  • But when that hour my soul won strength
  • For words whose silence wastes and kills,
  • Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
  • Thundered the heat within the hills.
  • 50 That eve I spoke those words again
  • Beside the pelted window-pane;
  • And there she hearkened what I said,
  • With under-glances that surveyed
  • The empty pastures blind with rain.
  • Next day the memories of these things,
  • Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
  • Still vibrated with Love's warm wings;
  • Till I must make them all my own
  • And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease
  • 60 Of talk and sweet long silences,
  • She stood among the plants in bloom
  • At windows of a summer room,
  • To feign the shadow of the trees.
Sig. 16
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  • And as I wrought, while all above
  • And all around was fragrant air,
  • In the sick burthen of my love
  • It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there
  • Beat like a heart among the leaves.
  • O heart that never beats nor heaves,
  • 70 In that one darkness lying still,
  • What now to thee my love's great will
  • Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?
  • For now doth daylight disavow
  • Those days—nought left to see or hear.
  • Only in solemn whispers now
  • At night-time these things reach mine ear;
  • When the leaf-shadows at a breath
  • Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
  • Forest and water, far and wide,
  • 80 In limpid starlight glorified,
  • Lie like the mystery of death.
  • Last night at last I could have slept,
  • And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
  • Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
  • For unawares I came upon
  • Those glades where once she walked with me:
  • And as I stood there suddenly,
  • All wan with traversing the night,
  • Upon the desolate verge of light
  • 90 Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.
  • 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,—
  • How 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!
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  • 100 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:
  • While 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.
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more about Ave.
AVE.
  • Mother of the Fair Delight,
  • Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight,
  • Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
  • Thyself a woman-Trinity,—
  • Being a daughter born to God,
  • Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
  • And wife unto the Holy Ghost:—
  • Oh when our need is uttermost,
  • Think that to such as death may strike
  • 10 Thou once wert sister sisterlike!
  • Thou headstone of humanity,
  • Groundstone of the great Mystery,
  • Fashioned like us, yet more than we!
  • Mind'st thou not (when June's heavy breath
  • Warmed the long days in Nazareth,)
  • That eve thou didst go forth to give
  • Thy flowers some drink that they might live
  • One faint night more amid the sands?
  • Far off the trees were as pale wands
  • 20 Against the fervid sky: the sea
  • Sighed further off eternally
  • As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
  • Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
  • As of a day to which all days
  • Were footsteps in God's secret ways:
  • Until a folding sense, like prayer,
  • Which is, as God is, everywhere,
  • Gathered about thee; and a voice
  • Spake to thee without any noise,
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  • 30 Being of the silence:—“Hail,” it said,
  • “Thou that art highly favourèd;
  • The Lord is with thee here and now;
  • Blessed among all women thou.”
  • Ah! knew'st thou of the end, when first
  • That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd?—
  • Or when He tottered round thy knee
  • Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee?—
  • And through His boyhood, year by year
  • Eating with Him the Passover,
  • 40 Didst thou discern confusedly
  • That holier sacrament, when He,
  • The bitter cup about to quaff,
  • Should break the bread and eat thereof?—
  • Or came not yet the knowledge, even
  • Till on some day forecast in Heaven
  • His feet passed through thy door to press
  • Upon His Father's business?—
  • Or still was God's high secret kept?
  • Nay, but I think the whisper crept
  • 50 Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
  • Things common to the course of day,
  • Awed thee with meanings unfulfill'd;
  • And all through girlhood, something still'd
  • Thy senses like the birth of light,
  • When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
  • Or washed thy garments in the stream;
  • To whose white bed had come the dream
  • That He was thine and thou wast His
  • Who feeds among the field-lilies.
  • 60 O solemn shadow of the end
  • In that wise spirit long contain'd!
  • O awful end! and those unsaid
  • Long years when It was Finishèd!
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  • Mind'st thou not (when the twilight gone
  • Left darkness in the house of John,)
  • Between the naked window-bars
  • That spacious vigil of the stars?—
  • For thou, a watcher even as they,
  • Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
  • 70 Thou wroughtest raiment for His poor;
  • And, finding the fixed terms endure
  • Of day and night which never brought
  • Sounds of His coming chariot,
  • Wouldst lift through cloud-waste unexplor'd
  • Those eyes which said, “How long, O Lord?”
  • Then that disciple whom He loved,
  • Well heeding, haply would be moved
  • To ask thy blessing in His name;
  • And that one thought in both, the same
  • 80 Though silent, then would clasp ye round
  • To weep together,—tears long bound,
  • Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
  • Yet, “Surely I come quickly,”—so
  • He said, from life and death gone home.
  • Amen: even so, Lord Jesus, come!
  • But oh! what human tongue can speak
  • That day when Michael came* to break
  • From the tir'd spirit, like a veil,
  • Its covenant with Gabriel
  • 90 Endured at length unto the end?
  • What human thought can apprehend
  • That mystery of motherhood
  • When thy Beloved at length renew'd
  • The sweet communion severèd,—
  • His left hand underneath thine head
  • And His right hand embracing thee?—
  • Lo! He was thine, and this is He!
Transcribed Footnote (page 246):

* A Church legend of the Blessed Virgin's death.

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  • Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
  • That lets me see her standing up
  • 100 Where the light of the Throne is bright?
  • Unto the left, unto the right,
  • The cherubim, succinct, conjoint,
  • Float inward to a golden point,
  • And from between the seraphim
  • The glory issues for a hymn.
  • O Mary Mother, be not loth
  • To listen,—thou whom the stars clothe,
  • Who seëst and mayst not be seen!
  • Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
  • 110 Into our shadow bend thy face,
  • Bowing thee from the secret place,
  • O Mary Virgin, full of grace!
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more about The Card-Dealer.
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.
  • 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.
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  • 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;
  • 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.
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more about World's Worth.
WORLD'S WORTH.
  • 'Tis of the Father Hilary.
  • He strove, but could not pray; so took
  • The steep-coiled stair, where his feet shook
  • A sad blind echo. Ever up
  • He toiled. 'Twas a sick sway of air
  • That autumn noon within the stair,
  • As dizzy as a turning cup.
  • His brain benumbed him, void and thin;
  • He shut his eyes and felt it spin;
  • 10 The obscure deafness hemmed him in.
  • He said: “O world, what world for me?”
  • He leaned unto the balcony
  • Where the chime keeps the night and day;
  • It hurt his brain, he could not pray.
  • He had his face upon the stone:
  • Deep 'twixt the narrow shafts, his eye
  • Passed all the roofs to the stark sky,
  • Swept with no wing, with wind alone.
  • Close to his feet the sky did shake
  • 20 With wind in pools that the rains make:
  • The ripple set his eyes to ache.
  • He said: “O world, what world for me?”
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  • He stood within the mystery
  • Girding God's blessed Eucharist:
  • The organ and the chaunt had ceas'd.
  • The last words paused against his ear
  • Said from the altar: drawn round him
  • The gathering rest was dumb and dim.
  • And now the sacring-bell rang clear
  • 30 And ceased; and all was awe,—the breath
  • Of God in man that warranteth
  • The inmost utmost things of faith.
  • He said: “O God, my world in Thee!”
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more about On Refusal of Aid Between Nations.
ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN

NATIONS.
  • Not that the earth is changing, O my God!
  • Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,—
  • Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
  • Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,—
  • Not therefore are we certain that the rod
  • Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
  • Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
  • So many kings:—not therefore, O my God!—
  • But because Man is parcelled out in men
  • 10 To-day; because, for any wrongful blow,
  • No man not stricken asks, “I would be told
  • Why thou dost thus;” but his heart whispers then,
  • “He is he, I am I.” By this we know
  • That our earth falls asunder, being old.
more about On the 'Vita Nuova' of Dante.
ON THE VITA NUOVA OF DANTE.
  • As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
  • And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
  • And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
  • And the mild fire of precious life wax warm:
  • So I, long bound within the threefold charm
  • Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood,
  • Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
  • How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.
  • At length within this book I found pourtrayed
  • 10 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
  • And simple like a child; with whose clear aid
  • I understood. To such a child as this,
  • Christ, charging well His chosen ones, forbade
  • Offence: “for lo! of such my kingdom is.”
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more about Song and Music.
SONG AND MUSIC.
  • O leave your hand where it lies cool
  • Upon the eyes whose lids are hot:
  • Its rosy shade is bountiful
  • Of silence, and assuages thought.
  • O lay your lips against your hand
  • And let me feel your breath through it,
  • While through the sense your song shall fit
  • The soul to understand.
  • The music lives upon my brain
  • 10 Between your hands within mine eyes;
  • It stirs your lifted throat like pain,
  • An aching pulse of melodies.
  • Lean nearer, let the music pause:
  • The soul may better understand
  • Your music, shadowed in your hand,
  • Now while the song withdraws.
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more about The Sea-Limits.
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
  • 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.
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more about A Trip to Paris and Belgium
A TRIP TO PARIS AND BELGIUM .
more about London to Folkstone (half-past one to half-past five)
I.

LONDON TO FOLKESTONE.
  • A constant keeping-past of shaken trees,
  • And a bewildered glitter of loose road;
  • Banks of bright growth, with single blades atop
  • Against white sky: and wires—a constant chain—
  • That seem to draw the clouds along with them
  • (Things which one stoops against the light to see
  • Through the low window; shaking by at rest,
  • Or fierce like water as the swiftness grows);
  • And, seen through fences or a bridge far off,
  • 10Trees that in moving keep their intervals
  • Still one 'twixt bar and bar; and then at times
  • Long reaches of green level, where one cow,
  • Feeding among her fellows that feed on,
  • Lifts her slow neck, and gazes for the sound.
  • Fields mown in ridges; and close garden-crops
  • Of the earth's increase; and a constant sky
  • Still with clear trees that let you see the wind;
  • And snatches of the engine-smoke, by fits
  • Tossed to the wind against the landscape, where
  • 20Rooks stooping heave their wings upon the day.
  • Brick walls we pass between, passed so at once
  • That for the suddenness I cannot know
  • Or what, or where begun, or where at end.
  • Sometimes a station in grey quiet; whence,
  • With a short gathered champing of pent sound,
  • We are let out upon the air again.
  • Pauses of water soon, at intervals,
  • That has the sky in it;—the reflexes
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  • O' the trees move towards the bank as we go by,
  • 30Leaving the water's surface plain. I now
  • Lie back and close my eyes a space; for they
  • Smart from the open forwardness of thought
  • Fronting the wind
  • I did not scribble more,
  • Be certain, after this; but yawned, and read,
  • And nearly dozed a little, I believe;
  • Till, stretching up against the carriage-back,
  • I was roused altogether, and looked out
  • To where the pale sea brooded murmuring.
more about Boulogne to Amiens and Paris
II.

BOULOGNE TO AMIENS AND PARIS .
  • Strong extreme speed, that the brain hurries with,
  • Further than trees, and hedges, and green grass
  • Whitened by distance,—further than small pools
  • Held among fields and gardens, further than
  • Haystacks, and wind-mill-sails, and roofs and herds,—
  • The sea's last margin ceases at the sun.
  • The sea has left us, but the sun remains.
  • Sometimes the country spreads aloof in tracts
  • Smooth from the harvest; sometimes sky and land
  • 10Are shut from the square space the window leaves
  • By a dense crowd of trees, stem behind stem
  • Passing across each other as we pass:
  • Sometimes tall poplar-wands stand white, their heads
  • Outmeasuring the distant hills. Sometimes
  • The ground has a deep greenness; sometimes brown
  • In stubble; and sometimes no ground at all,
  • For the close strength of crops that stand unreaped.
  • The water-plots are sometimes all the sun's,—
  • Sometimes quite green through shadows filling them,
  • 20Or islanded with growths of reeds,—or else
  • Masked in grey dust like the wide face o' the fields.
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  • And still the swiftness lasts; that to our speed
  • The trees seem shaken like a press of spears.
  • There is some count of us:—folks travelling capped,
  • Priesthood, and lank hard-featured soldiery,
  • Females (no women), blouses, Hunt, and I.
  • We are delayed at Amiens. The steam
  • Snorts, chafes, and bridles, like three hundred horse,
  • And flings its dusky mane upon the air.
  • 30Our company is thinned, and lamps alight.
  • But still there are the folks in travelling-caps,
  • No priesthood now, but always soldiery,
  • And babies to make up for show in noise;
  • Females (no women), blouses, Hunt, and I.
  • Our windows at one side are shut for warmth;
  • Upon the other side, a leaden sky,
  • Hung in blank glare, makes all the country dim,
  • Which too seems bald and meagre,—be it truth,
  • Or of the waxing darkness. Here and there
  • 40The shade takes light, where in thin patches stand
  • The unstirred dregs of water.
III.

THE PARIS RAILWAY-STATION.
  • In France, (to baffle thieves and murderers)
  • A journey takes two days of passport work
  • At least. The plan's sometimes a tedious one,
  • But bears its fruit. Because, the other day,
  • In passing by the Morgue, we saw a man
  • (The thing is common, and we never should
  • Have known of it, only we passed that way)
    • Sig. 17
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  • Who had been stabbed and tumbled in the Seine,
  • Where he had stayed some days. The face was black,
  • 10And, like a negro's, swollen; all the flesh
  • Had furred, and broken into a green mould.
  • Now, very likely, he who did the job
  • Was standing among those who stood with us,
  • To look upon the corpse. You fancy him—
  • Smoking an early pipe, and watching, as
  • An artist, the effect of his last work.
  • This always if it had not struck him that
  • 'Twere best to leave while yet the body took
  • Its crust of rot beneath the Seine. It may:
  • 20But, if it did not, he can now remain
  • Without much fear. Only, if he should want
  • To travel, and have not his passport yet,
  • (Deep dogs these French police!) he may be caught.
  • Therefore you see (lest, being murderers,
  • We should not have the sense to go before
  • The thing were known, or to stay afterwards)
  • There is good reason why—having resolved
  • To start for Belgium—we were kept three days
  • To learn about the passports first, then do
  • 30As we had learned. This notwithstanding, in
  • The fulness of the time 'tis come to pass.
IV.

REACHING BRUSSELS.
  • There is a small change of country; but the sun
  • Is out, and it seems shame this were not said.
  • For upon all the grass the warmth has caught;
  • And betwixt distant whitened poplar-stems
  • Makes greener darkness; and in dells of trees
  • Shows spaces of a verdure that was hid;
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  • And the sky has its blue floated with white,
  • And crossed with falls of the sun's glory aslant
  • To lay upon the waters of the world;
  • 10And from the road men stand with shaded eyes
  • To look; and flowers in gardens have grown strong;
  • And our own shadows here within the coach
  • Are brighter; and all colour has more bloom.
  • So, after the sore torments of the route;—
  • Toothache, and headache, and the ache of wind,
  • And huddled sleep, and smarting wakefulness,
  • And night, and day, and hunger sick at food,
  • And twenty-fold relays, and packages
  • To be unlocked, and passports to be found,
  • 20And heavy well-kept landscape;—we were glad
  • Because we entered Brussels in the sun.
more about Antwerp to Ghent
V.

ANTWERP TO GHENT.
  • We are upon the Scheldt. We know we move
  • Because there is a floating at our eyes
  • Whatso they seek; and because all the things
  • Which on our outset were distinct and large
  • Are smaller and much weaker and quite grey,
  • And at last gone from us. No motion else.
  • We are upon the road. The thin swift moon
  • Runs with the running clouds that are the sky,
  • And with the running water runs—at whiles
  • 10Weak 'neath the film and heavy growth of reeds.
  • The country swims with motion. Time itself
  • Is consciously beside us, and perceived.
  • Our speed is such the sparks our engine leaves
  • Are burning after the whole train has passed.
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  • The darkness is a tumult. We tear on,
  • The roll behind us and the cry before,
  • Constantly, in a lull of intense speed
  • And thunder. Any other sound is known
  • Merely by sight. The shrubs, the trees your eye
  • 20Scans for their growth, are far along in haze.
  • The sky has lost its clouds, and lies away
  • Oppressively at calm: the moon has failed:
  • Our speed has set the wind against us. Now
  • Our engine's heat is fiercer, and flings up
  • Great glares alongside. Wind and steam and speed
  • And clamour and the night. We are in Ghent.
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more about The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris
THE STAIRCASE OF NOTRE DAME, PARIS.
  • As one who, groping in a narrow stair,
  • Hath a strong sound of bells upon his ears,
  • Which, being at a distance off, appears
  • Quite close to him because of the pent air:
  • So with this France. She stumbles file and square
  • Darkling and without space for breath: each one
  • Who hears the thunder says: “It shall anon
  • Be in among her ranks to scatter her.”
  • This may be; and it may be that the storm
  • 10 Is spent in rain upon the unscathed seas,
  • Or wasteth other countries ere it die:
  • Till she,—having climbed always through the swarm
  • Of darkness and of hurtling sound,—from these
  • Shall step forth on the light in a still sky.
more about Place de la Bastille, Paris
PLACE DE LA BASTILLE, PARIS.
  • How dear the sky has been above this place!
  • Small treasures of this sky that we see here
  • Seen weak through prison-bars from year to year;
  • Eyed with a painful prayer upon God's grace
  • To save, and tears that stayed along the face
  • Lifted at sunset. Yea, how passing dear,
  • Those nights when through the bars a wind left
  • clear
  • The heaven, and moonlight soothed the limpid space!
  • So was it, till one night the secret kept
  • 10 Safe in low vault and stealthy corridor
  • Was blown abroad on gospel-tongues of flame.
  • O ways of God, mysterious evermore!
  • How many on this spot have cursed and wept
  • That all might stand here now and own Thy
  • Name.
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more about A Half-Way Pause
NEAR BRUSSELS—A HALF-WAY PAUSE.
  • The turn of noontide has begun.
  • In the weak breeze the sunshine yields.
  • There is a bell upon the fields.
  • On the long hedgerow's tangled run
  • A low white cottage intervenes:
  • Against the wall a blind man leans,
  • And sways his face to have the sun.
  • Our horses' hoofs stir in the road,
  • Quiet and sharp. Light hath a song
  • 10 Whose silence, being heard, seems long.
  • The point of noon maketh abode,
  • And will not be at once gone through.
  • The sky's deep colour saddens you,
  • And the heat weighs a dreamy load.
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more about Antwerp and Bruges
ANTWERP AND BRUGES.
  • I climbed the stair in Antwerp church,
  • What time the circling thews of sound
  • At sunset seem to heave it round.
  • Far up, the carillon did search
  • The wind, and the birds came to perch
  • Far under, where the gables wound.
  • In Antwerp harbour on the Scheldt
  • I stood along, a certain space
  • Of night. The mist was near my face;
  • 10Deep on, the flow was heard and felt.
  • The carillon kept pause, and dwelt
  • In music through the silent place.
  • John Memmeling and John van Eyck
  • Hold state at Bruges. In sore shame
  • I scanned the works that keep their name.
  • The carillon, which then did strike
  • Mine ears, was heard of theirs alike:
  • It set me closer unto them.
  • I climbed at Bruges all the flight
  • 20 The belfry has of ancient stone.
  • For leagues I saw the east wind blown;
  • The earth was grey, the sky was white.
  • I stood so near upon the height
  • That my flesh felt the carillon.
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more about On Leaving Bruges
ON LEAVING BRUGES.
  • The city's steeple-towers remove away,
  • Each singly; as each vain infatuate Faith
  • Leaves God in heaven, and passes. A mere breath
  • Each soon appears, so far. Yet that which lay
  • The first is now scarce further or more grey
  • Than the last is. Now all are wholly gone.
  • The sunless sky has not once had the sun
  • Since the first weak beginning of the day.
  • The air falls back as the wind finishes,
  • 10 And the clouds stagnate. On the water's face
  • The current breathes along, but is not stirred.
  • There is no branch that thrills with any bird.
  • Winter is to possess the earth a space,
  • And have its will upon the extreme seas.
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more about Vox Ecclesiae, Vox Christi (Epigraph from Rev. vi 9-10)
VOX ECCLESIÆ, VOX CHRISTI.

I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for

the word of God, and for the testimony which they held; and

they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy

and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our blood on them

that dwell on the earth?—Rev. vi. 9, 10.

  • Not 'neath the altar only,—yet, in sooth,
  • There more than elsewhere,—is the cry, “How long?”
  • The right sown there hath still borne fruit in wrong—
  • The wrong waxed fourfold. Thence, (in hate of truth)
  • O'er weapons blessed for carnage, to fierce youth
  • From evil age, the word hath hissed along:—
  • “Ye are the Lord's: go forth, destroy, be strong:
  • Christ's Church absolves ye from Christ's law of ruth.”
  • Therefore the wine-cup at the altar is
  • 10 As Christ's own blood indeed, and as the blood
  • Of Christ's elect, at divers seasons spilt
  • On the altar-stone, that to man's church, for this,
  • Shall prove a stone of stumbling,—whence it stood
  • To be rent up ere the true Church be built.
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more about The Burden of Nineveh.
THE BURDEN OF NINEVEH.
  • In our Museum galleries
  • To-day I lingered o'er the prize
  • Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
  • Her Art for ever in fresh wise
  • From hour to hour rejoicing me.
  • Sighing I turned at last to win
  • Once more the London dirt and din;
  • And as I made the swing-door spin
  • And issued, they were hoisting in
  • 10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.
  • A human face the creature wore,
  • And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
  • And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
  • 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
  • A dead disbowelled mystery:
  • The mummy of a buried faith
  • Stark from the charnel without scathe,
  • Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
  • Such fossil cerements as might swathe
  • 20 The very corpse of Nineveh.
  • 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?
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  • 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:—
  • O 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?
  • 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,
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  • 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.*
  • 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 worshipers,
  • 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 pillared pile has grown,
  • Unto man's need how long unknown,
  • Since those thy temples, court and cone,
  • Rose far in desert history?
    • Transcribed Footnote (page 268):

    * During the excavations, the Tiyari workmen held their services

    in the shadow of the great bulls.—( Layard's “Nineveh,” ch. ix.)

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  • Ah! what is here that does not lie
  • All strange to thine awakened eye?
  • 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
  • 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.
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  • 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!
  • . . . 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
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  • 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,
  • Some tribe of the Australian plough
  • Bear him afar,—a relic now
  • 180 Of London, not of Nineveh!
  • Or it may chance indeed that when
  • Man's age is hoary among men,—
  • His centuries threescore and ten,—
  • His furthest childhood shall seem then
  • More clear than later times may be:
  • Who, finding in this desert place
  • This form, shall hold us for some race
  • That walked not in Christ's lowly ways,
  • But bowed its pride and vowed its praise
  • 190 Unto the God of Nineveh.
  • The smile rose first,—anon drew nigh
  • The thought: . . Those heavy wings spread high
  • So sure of flight, which do not fly;
  • That set gaze never on the sky;
  • Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;
  • Its crown, a brow-contracting load;
  • Its planted feet which trust the sod: . . .
  • (So grew the image as I trod:)
  • O Nineveh, was this thy God,—
  • 200 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?
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more about The Church-Porch
THE CHURCH-PORCH.
  • Sister, first shake we off the dust we have
  • Upon our feet, lest it defile the stones
  • Inscriptured, covering their sacred bones
  • Who lie i' the aisles which keep the names they gave,
  • Their trust abiding round them in the grave;
  • Whom painters paint for visible orisons,
  • And to whom sculptors pray in stone and bronze;
  • Their voices echo still like a spent wave.
  • Without here, the church-bells are but a tune,
  • 10And on the carven church-door this hot noon
  • Lays all its heavy sunshine here without:
  • But having entered in, we shall find there
  • Silence, and sudden dimness, and deep prayer,
  • And faces of crowned angels all about.
more about The Mirror
THE MIRROR.
  • She knew it not:—most perfect pain
  • To learn: this too she knew not. Strife
  • For me, calm hers, as from the first.
  • 'Twas but another bubble burst
  • Upon the curdling draught of life,—
  • My silent patience mine again.
  • As who, of forms that crowd unknown
  • Within a distant mirror's shade,
  • Deems such an one himself, and makes
  • 10 Some sign but when the image shakes
  • No whit, he finds his thought betray'd,
  • And must seek elsewhere for his own.
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more about A Young Fir-Wood.
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.
more about During Music
DURING MUSIC.
  • O cool unto the sense of pain
  • That last night's sleep could not destroy
  • O warm unto the sense of joy,
  • That dreams its life within the brain.
  • What though I lean o'er thee to scan
  • The written music cramped and stiff;—
  • 'Tis dark to me, as hieroglyph
  • On those weird bulks Egyptian.
  • But as from those, dumb now and strange,
  • 10 A glory wanders on the earth,
  • Even so thy tones can call a birth
  • From these, to shake my soul with change.
  • O swift, as in melodious haste
  • Float o'er the keys thy fingers small;
  • O soft, as is the rise and fall
  • Which stirs that shade within thy breast.
Sig. 18
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more about Stratton Water.
STRATTON WATER.
  • “O have you seen the Stratton flood
  • That's great with rain to-day?
  • It runs beneath your wall, Lord Sands,
  • Full of the new-mown hay.
  • “I led your hounds to Hutton bank
  • To bathe at early morn:
  • They got their bath by Borrowbrake
  • Above the standing corn.”
  • Out from the castle-stair Lord Sands
  • 10 Looked up the western lea;
  • The rook was grieving on her nest,
  • The flood was round her tree.
  • Over the castle-wall Lord Sands
  • Looked down the eastern hill:
  • The stakes swam free among the boats,
  • The flood was rising still.
  • “What's yonder far below that lies
  • So white against the slope?”
  • “O it's a sail o' your bonny barks
  • 20 The waters have washed up.”
  • “But I have never a sail so white,
  • And the water's not yet there.”
  • “O it's the swans o' your bonny lake
  • The rising flood doth scare.”
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  • “The swans they would not hold so still,
  • So high they would not win.”
  • “O it's Joyce my wife has spread her smock
  • And fears to fetch it in.”
  • “Nay, knave, it's neither sail nor swans,
  • 30 Nor aught that you can say;
  • For though your wife might leave her smock,
  • Herself she'd bring away.”
  • Lord Sands has passed the turret-stair,
  • The court, and yard, and all;
  • The kine were in the byre that day,
  • The nags were in the stall.
  • Lord Sands has won the weltering slope
  • Whereon the white shape lay:
  • The clouds were still above the hill,
  • 40 And the shape was still as they.
  • Oh pleasant is the gaze of life
  • And sad is death's blind head;
  • But awful are the living eyes
  • In the face of one thought dead!
  • “In God's name, Janet, is it me
  • Thy ghost has come to seek?”
  • “Nay, wait another hour, Lord Sands,—
  • Be sure my ghost shall speak.”
  • A moment stood he as a stone,
  • 50 Then grovelled to his knee.
  • “O Janet, O my love, my love,
  • Rise up and come with me!”
  • “O once before you bade me come,
  • And it's here you have brought me!
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  • “O many's the sweet word, Lord Sands,
  • You've spoken oft to me;
  • But all that I have from you to-day
  • Is the rain on my body.
  • “And many's the good gift, Lord Sands,
  • 60 You've promised oft to me;
  • But the gift of yours I keep to-day
  • Is the babe in my body.
  • “O it's not in any earthly bed
  • That first my babe I'll see;
  • For I have brought my body here
  • That the flood may cover me.”
  • His face was close against her face,
  • His hands of hers were fain:
  • O her wet cheeks were hot with tears,
  • 70 Her wet hands cold with rain.
  • “They told me you were dead, Janet,—
  • How could I guess the lie?”
  • “They told me you were false, Lord Sands,—
  • What could I do but die?”
  • “Now keep you well, my brother Giles,—
  • Through you I deemed her dead!
  • As wan as your towers seem to-day,
  • To-morrow they'll be red.
  • “Look down, look down, my false mother,
  • 80 That bade me not to grieve:
  • You'll look up when our marriage fires
  • Are lit to-morrow eve:
  • “O more than one and more than two
  • The sorrow of this shall see:
  • But it's to-morrow, love, for them,—
  • To-day's for thee and me.”
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  • He's drawn her face between his hands
  • And her pale mouth to his:
  • No bird that was so still that day
  • 90 Chirps sweeter than his kiss.
  • The flood was creeping round their feet.
  • “O Janet, come away!
  • The hall is warm for the marriage-rite,
  • The bed for the birthday.”
  • “Nay, but I hear your mother cry,
  • ‘Go bring this bride to bed!
  • And would she christen her babe unborn
  • So wet she comes to wed?’
  • “I'll be your wife to cross your door
  • 100 And meet your mother's e'e.
  • We plighted troth to wed i' the kirk,
  • And it's there you'll wed with me.”
  • He's ta'en her by the short girdle
  • And by the dripping sleeve:
  • “Go fetch Sir Jock my mother's priest,—
  • You'll ask of him no leave.
  • “O it's one half-hour to reach the kirk
  • And one for the marriage-rite;
  • And kirk and castle and castle-lands
  • 110 Shall be our babe's to-night.”
  • “The flood's in the kirkyard, Lord Sands,
  • And round the belfry-stair.”
  • “I bade you fetch the priest,” he said,
  • “Myself shall bring him there.
  • “It's for the lilt of wedding bells
  • We'll have the hail to pour,
  • And for the clink of bridle-reins
  • The plashing of the oar.
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  • Beneath them on the nether hill
  • 120 A boat was floating wide:
  • Lord Sands swam out and caught the oars
  • And rowed to the hill-side.
  • He's wrapped her in a green mantle
  • And set her softly in;
  • Her hair was wet upon her face,
  • Her face was grey and thin;
  • And “Oh!” she said, “lie still, my babe,
  • It's out you must not win!”
  • But woe's my heart for Father John
  • 130 As hard as he might pray,
  • There seemed no help but Noah's ark
  • Or Jonah's fish that day.
  • The first strokes that the oars struck
  • Were over the broad leas;
  • The next strokes that the oars struck
  • They pushed beneath the trees;
  • The last stroke that the oars struck,
  • The good boat's head was met,
  • And there the gate of the kirkyard
  • 140 Stood like a ferry-gate.
  • He's set his hand upon the bar
  • And lightly leaped within:
  • He's lifted her to his left shoulder,
  • Her knees beside his chin.
  • The graves lay deep beneath the flood
  • Under the rain alone;
  • And when the foot-stone made him slip,
  • He held by the head-stone.
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  • The empty boat thrawed i' the wind,
  • 150 Against the postern tied.
  • “Hold still, you've brought my love with me,
  • You shall take back my bride.”
  • But woe's my heart for Father John
  • And the saints he clamoured to!
  • There's never a saint but Christopher
  • Might hale such buttocks through!
  • And “Oh!” she said, “on men's shoulders
  • I well had thought to wend,
  • And well to travel with a priest,
  • 160 But not to have cared or ken'd.
  • “And oh!” she said, “it's well this way
  • That I thought to have fared,—
  • Not to have lighted at the kirk
  • But stopped in the kirkyard.
  • “For it's oh and oh I prayed to God,
  • Whose rest I hoped to win,
  • That when to-night at your board-head
  • You'd bid the feast begin,
  • This water past your window-sill
  • 170 Might bear my body in.”
  • Now make the white bed warm and soft
  • And greet the merry morn.
  • The night the mother should have died,
  • The young son shall be born.
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more about Wellington's Funeral.
WELLINGTON'S FUNERAL.

18 th November 1852.
  • “Victory!”
  • So once more the cry must be.
  • Duteous mourning we fulfil
  • In God's name; but by God's will,
  • Doubt not, the last word is still
  • “Victory!”
  • Funeral,
  • In the music round this pall,
  • Solemn grief yields earth to earth;
  • 10 But what tones of solemn mirth
  • In the pageant of new birth
  • Rise and fall?
  • For indeed,
  • If our eyes were openèd,
  • Who shall say what escort floats
  • Here, which breath nor gleam denotes,—
  • Fiery horses, chariots
  • Fire-footed?
  • Trumpeter,
  • 20 Even thy call he may not hear;
  • Long-known voice for ever past,
  • Till with one more trumpet-blast
  • God's assuring word at last
  • Reach his ear.
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  • Multitude,
  • Hold your breath in reverent mood:
  • For while earth's whole kindred stand
  • Mute even thus on either hand,
  • This soul's labour shall be scann'd
  • 30 And found good.
  • Cherubim,
  • Lift ye not even now your hymn?
  • Lo! once lent for human lack,
  • Michael's sword is rendered back.
  • Thrills not now the starry track,
  • Seraphim?
  • Gabriel,
  • Since the gift of thine “All hail!”
  • Out of Heaven no time hath brought
  • 40 Gift with fuller blessing fraught
  • Than the peace which this man wrought
  • Passing well.
  • Be no word
  • Raised of bloodshed Christ-abhorr'd.
  • Say: “'Twas thus in His decrees
  • Who Himself, the Prince of Peace,
  • For His harvest's high increase
  • Sent a sword.”
  • Veterans,
  • 50 He by whom the neck of France
  • Then was given unto your heel,
  • Timely sought, may lend as well
  • To your sons his terrible
  • Countenance.
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  • Waterloo!
  • As the last grave must renew,
  • Ere fresh death, the banshee-strain,—
  • So methinks upon thy plain
  • Falls some presage in the rain,
  • 60 In the dew.
  • And O thou,
  • Watching with an exile's brow
  • Unappeased, o'er death's dumb flood:—
  • Lo! the saving strength of God
  • In some new heart's English blood
  • Slumbers now.
  • Emperor,
  • Is this all thy work was for?—
  • Thus to see thy self-sought aim,
  • 70 Yea thy titles, yea thy name,
  • In another's shame, to shame
  • Bandied o'er? *
  • Wellington,
  • Thy great work is but begun.
  • With quick seed his end is rife
  • Whose long tale of conquering strife
  • Shows no triumph like his life
  • Lost and won.
Transcribed Footnote (page 282):

* Date of the Coup d' État: 2nd December 1851.

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more about Penumbra
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,
  • At night, 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
  • 10 Burnt 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 wood's moan 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
  • 20 My ways, at noon when fevers are.
  • They told me she was sad that day,
  • (Though wherefore tell what love's soothsay,
  • Sooner than they, did register?)
  • And my heart leapt and wept to her,
  • And yet I did not speak nor stir.
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  • So shall the tongues of the sea's foam
  • (Though many voices therewith come
  • From drowned hope's home to cry to me,)
  • Bewail one hour the more, when sea
  • 30 And wind are one with memory.
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more about On the Site of a Mulberry-Tree; Planted by Wm Shakspeare; felled by the Rev. F. Gastrell.
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 Starveling's ninth allotment of a ghost.
more about On Certain Elizabethan Revivals
ON CERTAIN ELIZABETHAN REVIVALS.
  • O ruff-embastioned vast Elizabeth,
  • Bush to these bushel-bellied casks of wine,
  • Home-growth, 'tis true, but rank as turpentine—
  • What would we with such skittle-plays at death?
  • Say, must we watch these brawlers' brandished lathe,
  • Or to their reeking wit our ears incline,
  • Because all Castaly flowed crystalline
  • In gentle Shakspeare's modulated breath?
  • What! must our drama with the rat-pit vie,
  • 10 Nor the scene close while one is left to kill?
  • Shall this be poetry? And thou—thou man
  • Of blood, thou cannibalic Caliban,
  • What shall be said of thee? A poet?—Fie!
  • “An honourable murderer, if you will.”
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more about English May
ENGLISH MAY.
  • Would God your health were as this month of May
  • Should be, were this not England,—and your face
  • Abroad, to give the gracious sunshine grace
  • And laugh beneath the budding hawthorn-spray.
  • But here the hedgerows pine from green to grey
  • While yet May's lyre is tuning, and her song
  • Is weak in shade that should in sun be strong;
  • And your pulse springs not to so faint a lay.
  • If in my life be breath of Italy,
  • 10 Would God that I might yield it all to you!
  • So, when such grafted warmth had burgeoned through
  • The languor of your Maytime's hawthorn-tree,
  • My spirit at rest should walk unseen and see
  • The garland of your beauty bloom anew.
more about Beauty and the Bird.
BEAUTY AND THE BIRD.
  • She fluted with her mouth as when one sips,
  • And gently waved her golden head, inclin'd
  • Outside his cage close to the window-blind;
  • Till her fond bird, with little turns and dips,
  • Piped low to her of sweet companionships.
  • And when he made an end, some seed took she
  • And fed him from her tongue, which rosily
  • Peeped as a piercing bud between her lips.
  • And like the child in Chaucer, on whose tongue
  • 10 The Blessed Mary laid, when he was dead,
  • A grain,—who straightway praised her name in song:
  • Even so, when she, a little lightly red,
  • Now turned on me and laughed, I heard the throng
  • Of inner voices praise her golden head.
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more about A Match with the Moon.
A MATCH WITH THE MOON.
  • Weary already, weary miles to-night
  • I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,
  • I dogged the flying moon with similes.
  • And like a wisp she doubled on my sight
  • In ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite;
  • And in a globe of film all liquorish
  • Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish;—
  • Last like a bubble shot the welkin's height
  • Where my road turned, and got behind me, and sent
  • 10 My wizened shadow craning round at me,
  • And jeered, “So, step the measure,—one two three!”—
  • And if I faced on her, looked innocent.
  • But just at parting, halfway down a dell,
  • She kissed me for good-night. So you'll not tell.
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more about Love's Nocturne.
LOVE'S NOCTURN.
  • Master of the murmuring courts
  • Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
  • Lo! my spirit here exhorts
  • All the powers of thy demesne
  • For their aid to woo my queen.
  • What reports
  • Yield thy jealous courts unseen?
  • Vaporous, unaccountable,
  • Dreamworld lies forlorn of light,
  • 10Hollow like a breathing shell.
  • Ah! that from all dreams I might
  • Choose one dream and guide its flight!
  • I know well
  • What her sleep should tell to-night.
  • There the dreams are multitudes:
  • Some that will not wait for sleep,
  • Deep within the August woods;
  • Some that hum while rest may steep
  • Weary labour laid a-heap;
  • 20 Interludes,
  • Some, of grievous moods that weep.
  • Poets' fancies all are there:
  • There the elf-girls flood with wings
  • Valleys full of plaintive air;
  • There breathe perfumes; there in rings
  • Whirl the foam-bewildered springs;
  • Siren there
  • Winds her dizzy hair and sings.
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  • Thence the one dream mutually
  • 30 Dreamed in bridal unison,
  • Less than waking ecstasy;
  • Half-formed visions that make moan
  • In the house of birth alone;
  • And what we
  • At death's wicket see, unknown.
  • But for mine own sleep, it lies
  • In one gracious form's control,
  • Fair with honourable eyes,
  • Lamps of a translucent soul:
  • 40 O their glance is loftiest dole,
  • Sweet and wise,
  • Wherein Love descries his goal.
  • Reft of her, my dreams are all
  • Clammy trance that fears the sky:
  • Changing footpaths shift and fall;
  • From polluted coverts nigh,
  • Miserable phantoms sigh;
  • Quakes the pall,
  • And the funeral goes by.
  • 50Master, is it soothly said
  • That, as echoes of man's speech
  • Far in secret clefts are made,
  • So do all men's bodies reach
  • Shadows o'er thy sunken beach,—
  • Shape or shade
  • In those halls pourtrayed of each?
  • Ah! might I, by thy good grace
  • Groping in the windy stair,
  • (Darkness and the breath of space
  • 60 Like loud waters everywhere,)
  • Meeting mine own image there
  • Face to face,
  • Send it from that place to her!
Sig. 19
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  • Nay, not I; but oh! do thou,
  • Master, from thy shadowkind
  • Call my body's phantom now:
  • Bid it bear its face declin'd
  • Till its flight her slumbers find,
  • And her brow
  • 70Feel its presence bow like wind.
  • Where in groves the gracile Spring
  • Trembles, with mute orison
  • Confidently strengthening,
  • Water's voice and wind's as one
  • Shed an echo in the sun.
  • Soft as Spring,
  • Master, bid it sing and moan.
  • Song shall tell how glad and strong
  • Is the night she soothes alway;
  • 80Moan shall grieve with that parched tongue
  • Of the brazen hours of day:
  • Sounds as of the springtide they,
  • Moan and song,
  • While the chill months long for May.
  • Not the prayers which with all leave
  • The world's fluent woes prefer,—
  • Not the praise the world doth give,
  • Dulcet fulsome whisperer;—
  • Let it yield my love to her,
  • 90 And achieve
  • Strength that shall not grieve or err.
  • Wheresoe'er my dreams befall,
  • Both at night-watch, (let it say,)
  • And where round the sundial
  • The reluctant hours of day,
  • Heartless, hopeless of their way,
  • Rest and call;—
  • There her glance doth fall and stay.
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  • Suddenly her face is there:
  • 100 So do mounting vapours wreathe
  • Subtle-scented transports where
  • The black firwood sets its teeth.
  • Part the boughs and look beneath,—
  • Lilies share
  • Secret waters there, and breathe.
  • Master, bid my shadow bend
  • Whispering thus till birth of light,
  • Lest new shapes that sleep may send
  • Scatter all its work to flight;—
  • 110 Master, master of the night,
  • Bid it spend
  • Speech, song, prayer, and end aright.
  • Yet, ah me! if at her head
  • There another phantom lean
  • Murmuring o'er the fragrant bed,—
  • Ah! and if my spirit's queen
  • Smile those alien prayers between,—
  • Ah! poor shade!
  • Shall it strive, or fade unseen?
  • 120How should love's own messenger
  • Strive with love and be love's foe?
  • Master, nay! If thus, in her,
  • Sleep a wedded heart should show,—
  • Silent let mine image go,
  • Its old share
  • Of thy spell-bound air to know.
  • Like a vapour wan and mute,
  • Like a flame, so let it pass;
  • One low sigh across her lute,
  • 130 One dull breath against her glass;
  • And to my sad soul, alas!
  • One salute
  • Cold as when death's foot shall pass.
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  • Then, too, let all hopes of mine,
  • All vain hopes by night and day,
  • Slowly at thy summoning sign
  • Rise up pallid and obey.
  • Dreams, if this is thus, were they:—
  • Be they thine,
  • 140 And to dreamworld pine away.
  • Yet from old time, life, not death,
  • Master, in thy rule is rife:
  • Lo! through thee, with mingling breath,
  • Adam woke beside his wife.
  • O Love bring me so, for strife,
  • Force and faith,
  • Bring me so not death but life!
  • Yea, to Love himself is pour'd
  • This frail song of hope and fear.
  • 150 Thou art Love, of one accord
  • With kind Sleep to bring her near,
  • Still-eyed, deep-eyed, ah how dear!
  • Master, Lord,
  • In her name implor'd, O hear!
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more about First Love Remembered.
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:
  • For there my soul this hour has breathed
  • An air inviolate.
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more about Plighted Promise.
PLIGHTED PROMISE.
  • 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 plighted 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-rack'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.
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more about Sudden Light.
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,
  • 10 Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.
  • Has this been thus before?
  • And shall not thus time's eddying flight
  • Still with our lives our love restore
  • In death's despite,
  • And day and night yield one delight once more?
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more about A New-Year's Burden.
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.
  • 10 Of 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.
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more about Even So.
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
  • 10 As 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!
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more about The Woodspurge.
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.
  • My eyes, wide open, had the run
  • 10 Of 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.
more about The Honeysuckle.
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.
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more about Dantis Tenebrae. (In Memory of my Father.)
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 dark 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.
more about Words on the Window-pane.
WORDS ON THE WINDOW-PANE. *
  • Did she in summer write it, or in spring,
  • Or with this wail of autumn at her ears,
  • Or in some winter left among old years
  • Scratched it through tettered cark? A certain thing
  • That round her heart the frost was hardening,
  • Not to be thawed of tears, which on this pane
  • Channelled the rime, perchance, in fevered rain,
  • For false man's sake and love's most bitter sting.
  • Howbeit, between this last word and the next
  • 10Unwritten, subtly seasoned was the smart,
  • And here at least the grace to weep: if she,
  • Rather, midway in her disconsolate text,
  • Rebelled not, loathing from the trodden heart
  • That thing which she had found man's love to be.
Transcribed Footnote (page 299):

* For a woman's fragmentary inscription.

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more about An Old Song Ended.
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.”
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more about The Song of the Bower.
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.
  • 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?
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  • 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?
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more about Dawn on the Night Journey
DAWN ON THE NIGHT-JOURNEY.
  • Till dawn the wind drove round me. It is past
  • And still, and leaves the air to lisp of bird,
  • And to the quiet that is almost heard
  • Of the new-risen day, as yet bound fast
  • In the first warmth of sunrise. When the last
  • Of the sun's hours to-day shall be fulfilled,
  • There shall another breath of time be stilled
  • For me, which now is to my senses cast
  • As much beyond me as eternity,
  • 10 Unknown, kept secret. On the newborn air
  • The moth quivers in silence. It is vast,
  • Yea, even beyond the hills upon the sea,
  • The day whose end shall give this hour as sheer
  • As chaos to the irrevocable Past.
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more about A Little While.
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
  • 20 To 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.
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more about Troy Town.
TROY TOWN.
  • Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's queen,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
  • The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
  • All Love's lordship lay between.
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • 10Saying, “A little gift is mine,
  • A little gift for a heart's desire.
  • Hear me speak and make me a sign!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Look, I bring thee a carven cup;
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • See it here as I hold it up,—
  • Shaped it is to the heart's desire,
  • Fit to fill when the gods would sup.
  • 20 ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “It was moulded like my breast;
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • He that sees it may not rest,
  • Rest at all for his heart's desire.
  • O give ear to my heart's behest!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
Sig. 20
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  • “See my breast, how like it is;
  • 30 ( O Troy Town!)
  • See it bare for the air to kiss!
  • Is the cup to thy heart's desire?
  • O for the breast, O make it his!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Yea, for my bosom here I sue;
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Thou must give it where 'tis due,
  • Give it there to the heart's desire.
  • 40Whom do I give my bosom to?
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Each twin breast is an apple sweet.
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Once an apple stirred the beat
  • Of thy heart with the heart's desire:—
  • Say, who brought it then to thy feet?
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • 50“They that claimed it then were three:
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • For thy sake two hearts did he
  • Make forlorn of the heart's desire.
  • Do for him as he did for thee!
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • “Mine are apples grown to the south,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Grown to taste in the days of drouth,
  • 60Taste and waste to the heart's desire:
  • Mine are apples meet for his mouth.”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
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  • Venus looked on Helen's gift,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Looked and smiled with subtle drift,
  • Saw the work of her heart's desire:—
  • “There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • 70 Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Venus looked in Helen's face,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Knew far off an hour and place,
  • And fire lit from the heart's desire;
  • Laughed and said, “Thy gift hath grace!”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Cupid looked on Helen's breast,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • 80Saw the heart within its nest,
  • Saw the flame of the heart's desire,—
  • Marked his arrow's burning crest.
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Cupid took another dart,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Fledged it for another heart,
  • Winged the shaft with the heart's desire,
  • Drew the string and said, “Depart!”
  • 90 ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
  • Paris turned upon his bed,
  • ( O Troy Town!)
  • Turned upon his bed and said,
  • Dead at heart with the heart's desire,—
  • “Oh to clasp her golden head!”
  • ( O Troy's down,
  • Tall Troy's on fire!)
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more about Eden Bower.
EDEN BOWER.
  • It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Not a drop of her blood was human,
  • But she was made like a soft sweet woman.
  • Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden;
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • She was the first that thence was driven;
  • With her was hell and with Eve was heaven.
  • In the ear of the Snake said Lilith:—
  • 10 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • “To thee I come when the rest is over;
  • A snake was I when thou wast my lover.
  • “I was the fairest snake in Eden:
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • By the earth's will, new form and feature
  • Made me a wife for the earth's new creature.
  • “Take me thou as I come from Adam:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Once again shall my love subdue thee;
  • 20The past is past and I am come to thee.
  • “O but Adam was thrall to Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • All the threads of my hair are golden,
  • And there in a net his heart was holden.
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  • “O and Lilith was queen of Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • All the day and the night together
  • My breath could shake his soul like a feather.
  • “What great joys had Adam and Lilith!—
  • 30 ( Alas the hour!)
  • Sweet close rings of the serpent's twining,
  • As heart in heart lay sighing and pining.
  • “What bright babes had Lilith and Adam!—
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
  • Glittering sons and radiant daughters.
  • “O thou God, the Lord God of Eden!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Say, was this fair body for no man,
  • 40That of Adam's flesh thou mak'st him a woman?
  • “O thou Snake, the King-snake of Eden!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • God's strong will our necks are under,
  • But thou and I may cleave it in sunder.
  • “Help, sweet Snake, sweet lover of Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • And let God learn how I loved and hated
  • Man in the image of God created.
  • “Help me once against Eve and Adam!
  • 50 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Help me once for this one endeavour,
  • And then my love shall be thine for ever!
  • “Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith:
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Nought in heaven or earth may affright Him;
  • But join thou with me and we will smite Him.
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  • “Strong is God, the great God of Eden:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Over all He made He hath power;
  • 60But lend me thou thy shape for an hour!
  • “Lend thy shape for the love of Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Look, my mouth and my cheek are ruddy,
  • And thou art cold, and fire is my body.
  • “Lend thy shape for the hate of Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • That he may wail my joy that forsook him,
  • And curse the day when the bride-sleep took him.
  • “Lend thy shape for the shame of Eden!
  • 70 ( Alas the hour!)
  • Is not the foe-God weak as the foeman
  • When love grows hate in the heart of a woman?
  • “Wouldst thou know the heart's hope of Lilith?
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Then bring thou close thine head till it glisten
  • Along my breast, and lip me and listen.
  • “Am I sweet, O sweet Snake of Eden?
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Then ope thine ear to my warm mouth's cooing
  • 80And learn what deed remains for our doing.
  • “Thou didst hear when God said to Adam:—
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • ‘Of all this wealth I have made thee warden;
  • Thou'rt free to eat of the trees of the garden:
  • “‘Only of one tree eat not in Eden;
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • All save one I give to thy freewill,—
  • The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.’
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  • “O my love, come nearer to Lilith!
  • 90 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • In thy sweet folds bind me and bend me,
  • And let me feel the shape thou shalt lend me!
  • “In thy shape I'll go back to Eden;
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • In these coils that Tree will I grapple,
  • And stretch this crowned head forth by the apple.
  • Lo, Eve bends to the breath of Lilith!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • O how then shall my heart desire
  • 100All her blood as food to its fire!
  • “Lo, Eve bends to the words of Lilith!—
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • ‘Nay, this Tree's fruit,—why should ye hate it,
  • Or Death be born the day that ye ate it?
  • “‘Nay, but on that great day in Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • By the help that in this wise Tree is,
  • God knows well ye shall be as He is.’
  • “Then Eve shall eat and give unto Adam;
  • 110 ( Alas the hour!)
  • And then they both shall know they are naked,
  • And their hearts ache as my heart hath achèd.
  • “Ay, let them hide 'mid the trees of Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • As in the cool of the day in the garden
  • God shall walk without pity or pardon.
  • “Hear, thou Eve, the man's heart in Adam!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Of his brave words hark to the bravest:—
  • 120‘This the woman gave that thou gavest.’
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  • “Hear Eve speak, yea list to her, Lilith!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Feast thine heart with words that shall sate it—
  • ‘This the serpent gave and I ate it.’
  • “O proud Eve, cling close to thine Adam,
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Driven forth as the beasts of his naming
  • By the sword that for ever is flaming.
  • “Know, thy path is known unto Lilith!
  • 130 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • While the blithe birds sang at thy wedding,
  • There her tears grew thorns for thy treading.
  • “O my love, thou Love-snake of Eden!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • O to-day and the day to come after!
  • Loose me, love,—give breath to my laughter.
  • “O bright Snake, the Death-worm of Adam!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Wreathe thy neck with my hair's bright tether,
  • 140And wear my gold and thy gold together!
  • “On that day on the skirts of Eden,
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • In thy shape shall I glide back to thee,
  • And in my shape for an instant view thee.
  • “But when thou'rt thou and Lilith is Lilith,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • In what bliss past hearing or seeing
  • Shall each one drink of the other's being!
  • “With cries of ‘Eve!’ and ‘Eden!’ and ‘Adam!’
  • 150 ( Alas the hour!)
  • How shall we mingle our love's caresses,
  • I in thy coils, and thou in my tresses!
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Note: The third character of "thorns" in line 168 contains a diagonal line.
  • “With those names, ye echoes of Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Fire shall cry from my heart that burneth,—
  • ‘Dust he is and to dust returneth!’
  • “Yet to-day, thou master of Lilith,—
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Wrap me round in the form I'll borrow
  • 160And let me tell thee of sweet to-morrow.
  • “In the planted garden eastward in Eden,
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Where the river goes forth to water the garden,
  • The springs shall dry and the soil shall harden.
  • “Yea, where the bride-sleep fell upon Adam,
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • None shall hear when the storm-wind whistles
  • Through roses choked among thorns and thistles.
  • “Yea, beside the east-gate of Eden,
  • 170 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Where God joined them and none might sever,
  • The sword turns this way and that for ever.
  • “What of Adam cast out of Eden?
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • Lo! with care like a shadow shaken,
  • He tills the hard earth whence he was taken.
  • “What of Eve too, cast out of Eden?
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • Nay, but she, the bride of God's giving,
  • 180Must yet be mother of all men living.
  • “Lo, God's grace, by the grace of Lilith!
  • ( Alas the hour!)
  • To Eve's womb, from our sweet to-morrow,
  • God shall greatly multiply sorrow.
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  • “Fold me fast, O God-snake of Eden!
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • What more prize than love to impel thee?
  • Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!
  • “Lo! two babes for Eve and for Adam!
  • 190 ( Alas the hour!)
  • Lo! sweet Snake, the travail and treasure,—
  • Two men-children born for their pleasure!
  • “The first is Cain and the second Abel:
  • ( Sing Eden Bower!)
  • The soul of one shall be made thy brother,
  • And thy tongue shall lap the blood of the other.”
  • ( Alas the hour!)
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more about Love-Lily.
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.
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more about Sunset Wings.
SUNSET WINGS.
  • To-night this sunset spreads two golden wings
  • Cleaving the western sky;
  • Winged too with wind it is, and winnowings
  • Of birds; as if the day's last hour in rings
  • Of strenuous flight must die.
  • Sun-steeped in fire, the homeward pinions sway
  • Above the dovecote-tops;
  • And clouds of starlings, ere they rest with day,
  • Sink, clamorous like mill-waters, at wild play,
  • 10 By turns in every copse:
  • Each tree heart-deep the wrangling rout receives,—
  • Save for the whirr within,
  • You could not tell the starlings from the leaves;
  • Then one great puff of wings, and the swarm heaves
  • Away with all its din.
  • Even thus Hope's hours, in ever-eddying flight,
  • To many a refuge tend;
  • With the first light she laughed, and the last light
  • Glows round her still; who natheless in the night
  • 20 At length must make an end.
  • And now the mustering rooks innumerable
  • Together sail and soar,
  • While for the day's death, like a tolling knell,
  • Unto the heart they seem to cry, Farewell,
  • No more, farewell, no more!
  • Is Hope not plumed, as 'twere a fiery dart?
  • And oh! thou dying day,
  • Even as thou goest must she too depart,
  • And Sorrow fold such pinions on the heart
  • 30 As will not fly away?
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more about The Cloud Confines.
THE CLOUD CONFINES.
  • The day is dark and the night
  • To him that would search their heart;
  • No lips of cloud that will part
  • Nor morning song in the light:
  • Only, gazing alone,
  • To him wild shadows are shown,
  • Deep under deep unknown
  • And height above unknown height.
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • 10 “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • The Past is over and fled;
  • Named new, we name it the old;
  • Thereof some tale hath been told,
  • But no word comes from the dead;
  • Whether at all they be,
  • Or whether as bond or free,
  • Or whether they too were we,
  • 20Or by what spell they have sped.
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • What of the heart of hate
  • That beats in thy breast, O Time?—
  • Red strife from the furthest prime,
  • And anguish of fierce debate
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  • War that shatters her slain,
  • 30 And peace that grinds them as grain,
  • And eyes fixed ever in vain
  • On the pitiless eyes of Fate.
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • What of the heart of love
  • That bleeds in thy breast, O Man?—
  • Thy kisses snatched 'neath the ban
  • 40Of fangs that mock them above;
  • Thy bells prolonged unto knells,
  • Thy hope that a breath dispels,
  • Thy bitter forlorn farewells
  • And the empty echoes thereof?
  • Still we say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • That shall we know one day.”
  • The sky leans dumb on the sea,
  • 50 Aweary with all its wings;
  • And oh! the song the sea sings
  • Is dark everlastingly.
  • Our past is clean forgot,
  • Our present is and is not,
  • Our future's a sealed seedplot,
  • And what betwixt them are we?—
  • We who say as we go,—
  • “Strange to think by the way,
  • Whatever there is to know,
  • 60 That shall we know one day.”
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more about Down Stream.
DOWN STREAM.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • The river-reaches wind,
  • The whispering trees accept the breeze,
  • The ripple's cool and kind:
  • With love low-whispered 'twixt the shores,
  • With rippling laughters gay,
  • With white arms bared to ply the oars,
  • On last year's first of May.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • 10 The river's brimmed with rain,
  • Through close-met banks and parted banks
  • Now near, now far again:
  • With parting tears caressed to smiles,
  • With meeting promised soon,
  • With every sweet vow that beguiles,
  • On last year's first of June.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • The river's flecked with foam,
  • 'Neath shuddering clouds that hang in shrouds
  • 20 And lost winds wild for home:
  • With infant wailings at the breast,
  • With homeless steps astray,
  • With wanderings shuddering tow'rds one rest
  • On this year's first of May.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • The summer river flows
  • With doubled flight of moons by night
  • And lilies' deep repose:
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  • With lo! beneath the moon's white stare
  • 30 A white face not the moon,
  • With lilies meshed in tangled hair,
  • On this year's first of June.
  • Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
  • A troth was given and riven,
  • From heart's trust grew one life to two,
  • Two lost lives cry to Heaven:
  • With banks spread calm to meet the sky,
  • With meadows newly mowed,
  • The harvest-paths of glad July,
  • 40 The sweet school-children's road.
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more about Three Shadows.
THREE SHADOWS.
  • I looked and saw your eyes
  • In the shadow of your hair,
  • As a traveller sees a stream
  • In the shadow of the wood;
  • And I said, “My faint heart sighs,
  • Ah me! to linger there,
  • To drink deep and to dream
  • In that sweet solitude.”
  • I looked and saw your heart
  • 10 In the shadow of your eyes,
  • As a seeker sees the gold
  • In the shadow of the stream;
  • And I said, “Ah me! what art
  • Should win the immortal prize,
  • Whose want must make life cold
  • And Heaven a hollow dream?”
  • I looked and saw your love
  • In the shadow of your heart,
  • As a diver sees the pearl
  • 20 In the shadow of the sea;
  • And I murmured, not above
  • My breath, but all apart,—
  • “Ah! you can love, true girl,
  • And is your love for me?”
Sig. 21
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more about A Death-Parting.
A DEATH-PARTING.
  • Leaves and rain and the days of the year,
  • ( Water-willow and wellaway,)
  • All these fall, and my soul gives ear,
  • And she is hence who once was here.
  • ( With a wind blown night and day .)
  • Ah! but now, for a secret sign,
  • ( The willow's wan and the water white ,)
  • In the held breath of the day's decline
  • Her very face seemed pressed to mine.
  • 10 ( With a wind blown day and night .)
  • O love, of my death my life is fain;
  • ( The willows wave on the water-way ,)
  • Your cheek and mine are cold in the rain,
  • But warm they'll be when we meet again.
  • ( With a wind blown night and day .)
  • Mists are heaved and cover the sky;
  • ( The willows wail in the waning light ,)
  • O loose your lips, leave space for a sigh,—
  • They seal my soul, I cannot die.
  • 20 ( With a wind blown day and night .)
  • Leaves and rain and the days of the year,
  • ( Water-willow and wellaway,)
  • All still fall, and I still give ear,
  • And she is hence, and I am here.
  • ( With a wind blown night and day .)
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more about Spring.
SPRING.
  • Soft-littered is the new-year's lambing-fold,
  • And in the hollowed haystack at its side
  • The shepherd lies o'nights now, wakeful-eyed
  • At the ewes' travailing call through the dark cold.
  • The young rooks cheep 'mid the thick caw o' the old:
  • And near unpeopled stream-sides, on the ground,
  • By her Spring cry the moorhen's nest is found,
  • Where the drained flood-lands flaunt their marigold.
  • Chill are the gusts to which the pastures cower,
  • 10 And chill the current where the young reeds stand
  • As green and close as the young wheat on land:
  • Yet here the cuckoo and the cuckoo-flower
  • Plight to the heart Spring's perfect imminent hour
  • Whose breath shall soothe you like your dear one's hand.
more about Untimely Lost. (Oliver Madox Brown. Born 1855; Died 1874.)
UNTIMELY LOST.

Oliver Madox Brown. Born 1855; Died 1874.
  • Upon the landscape of his coming life
  • A youth high-gifted gazed, and found it fair:
  • The heights of work, the floods of praise, were there.
  • What friendships, what desires, what love, what wife?—
  • All things to come. The fanned springtide was rife
  • With imminent solstice; and the ardent air
  • Had summer sweets and autumn fires to bear;—
  • Heart's ease full-pulsed with perfect strength for strife.
  • A mist has risen: we see the youth no more:
  • 10 Does he see on and strive on? And may we
  • Late-tottering world-worn hence, find his to be
  • The young strong hand which helps us up that shore?
  • Or, echoing the No More with Nevermore,
  • Must Night be ours and his? We hope: and he?
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more about Parted Presence
PARTED PRESENCE.
  • Love, I speak to your heart,
  • Your heart that is always here.
  • Oh draw me deep to its sphere,
  • Though you and I are apart;
  • And yield, by the spirit's art,
  • Each distant gift that is dear.
  • O love, my love, you are here!
  • Your eyes are afar to-day,
  • Yet, love, look now in mine eyes.
  • 10 Two hearts sent forth may despise
  • All dead things by the way.
  • All between is decay,
  • Dead hours and this hour that dies.
  • O love, look deep in mine eyes!
  • Your hands to-day are not here,
  • Yet lay them, love, in my hands.
  • The hourglass sheds its sands
  • All day for the dead hours' bier;
  • But now, as two hearts draw near,
  • 20 This hour like a flower expands.
  • O love, your hands in my hands!
  • Your voice is not on the air,
  • Yet, love, I can hear your voice:
  • It bids my heart to rejoice
  • As knowing your heart is there,—
  • A music sweet to declare
  • The truth of your steadfast choice.
  • O love, how sweet is your voice!
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  • To-day your lips are afar,
  • 30 Yet draw my lips to them, love.
  • Around, beneath, and above,
  • Is frost to bind and to bar;
  • But where I am and you are,
  • Desire and the fire thereof.
  • O kiss me, kiss me, my love!
  • Your heart is never away,
  • But ever with mine, for ever,
  • For ever without endeavour,
  • To-morrow, love, as to-day;
  • 40Two blent hearts never astray,
  • Two souls no power may sever,
  • Together, O my love, for ever!
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more about Spheral Change.
SPHERAL CHANGE.
  • In this new shade of Death, the show
  • Passes me still of form and face;
  • Some bent, some gazing as they go,
  • Some swiftly, some at a dull pace,
  • Not one that speaks in any case.
  • If only one might speak!—the one
  • Who never waits till I come near;
  • But always seated all alone
  • As listening to the sunken air,
  • 10 Is gone before I come to her.
  • O dearest! while we lived and died
  • A living death in every day,
  • Some hours we still were side by side,
  • When where I was you too might stay
  • And rest and need not go away.
  • O nearest, furthest! Can there be
  • At length some hard-earned heart-won home,
  • Where,—exile changed for sanctuary,—
  • Our lot may fill indeed its sum,
  • 20 And you may wait and I may come?
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more about 'Alas, So Long!'
ALAS, SO LONG!
  • Ah! dear one, we were young so long,
  • It seemed that youth would never go,
  • For skies and trees were ever in song
  • And water in singing flow
  • In the days we never again shall know.
  • Alas, so long!
  • Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
  • Nay, but we were young and together.
  • Ah! dear one, I've been old so long,
  • 10 It seems that age is loth to part,
  • Though days and years have never a song,
  • And oh! have they still the art
  • That warmed the pulses of heart to heart?
  • Alas, so long!
  • Ah! then was it all Spring weather?
  • Nay, but we were young and together.
  • Ah! dear one, you've been dead so long,—
  • How long until we meet again,
  • Where hours may never lose their song
  • 20 Nor flowers forget the rain
  • In glad noonlight that never shall wane?
  • Alas, so long!
  • Ah! shall it be then Spring weather,
  • And ah! shall we be young together?
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more about Insomnia.
INSOMNIA.
  • Thin are the night-skirts left behind
  • By daybreak hours that onward creep,
  • And thin, alas! the shred of sleep
  • That wavers with the spirit's wind:
  • But in half-dreams that shift and roll
  • And still remember and forget,
  • My soul this hour has drawn your soul
  • A little nearer yet.
  • Our lives, most dear, are never near,
  • 10 Our thoughts are never far apart,
  • Though all that draws us heart to heart
  • Seems fainter now and now more clear.
  • To-night Love claims his full control,
  • And with desire and with regret
  • My soul this hour has drawn your soul
  • A little nearer yet.
  • Is there a home where heavy earth
  • Melts to bright air that breathes no pain,
  • Where water leaves no thirst again
  • 20And springing fire is Love's new birth?
  • If faith long bound to one true goal
  • May there at length its hope beget,
  • My soul that hour shall draw your soul
  • For ever nearer yet.
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more about Possession.
POSSESSION.
  • There is a cloud above the sunset hill,
  • That wends and makes no stay,
  • For its goal lies beyond the fiery west;
  • A lingering breath no calm can chase away,
  • The onward labour of the wind's last will;
  • A flying foam that overleaps the crest
  • Of the top wave: and in possession still
  • A further reach of longing; though at rest
  • From all the yearning years,
  • 10Together in the bosom of that day
  • Ye cling, and with your kisses drink your tears.
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more about Chimes
CHIMES.
more about Chimes I. Honey-flowers to the honey-comb
I.
  • Honey-flowers to the honey-comb
  • And the honey-bee's from home.
  • A honey-comb and a honey-flower,
  • And the bee shall have his hour.
  • A honeyed heart for the honey-comb,
  • And the humming bee flies home.
  • A heavy heart in the honey-flower,
  • And the bee has had his hour.
more about Chimes II. A honey-cell's in the honeysuckle
II.
  • A honey cell's in the honeysuckle,
  • 10And the honey-bee knows it well.
  • The honey-comb has a heart of honey,
  • And the humming bee's so bonny.
  • A honey-flower's the honeysuckle,
  • And the bee's in the honey-bell.
  • The honeysuckle is sucked of honey,
  • And the bee is heavy and bonny.
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more about Chimes III. Brown shell first for the butterfly
III.
  • Brown shell first for the butterfly
  • And a bright wing by and by.
  • Butterfly, good-bye to your shell,
  • 20And, bright wings, speed you well.
  • Bright lamplight for the butterfly
  • And a burnt wing by and by.
  • Butterfly, alas for your shell,
  • And, bright wings, fare you well.
more about Chimes IV. Lost love-labour and lullaby
IV.
  • Lost love-labour and lullaby,
  • And lowly let love lie.
  • Lost love-morrow and love-fellow
  • And love's life lying low.
  • Lovelorn labour and life laid by
  • 30And lowly let love lie.
  • Late love-longing and life-sorrow
  • And love's life lying low.
more about Chimes V. Beauty's body and benison
V.
  • Beauty's body and benison
  • With a bosom-flower new blown.
  • Bitter beauty and blessing bann'd
  • With a breast to burn and brand.
  • Beauty's bower in the dust o'erblown
  • With a bare white breast of bone.
  • Barren beauty and bower of sand
  • 40With a blast on either hand.
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more about Chimes VI. Buried bars in the breakwater
VI.
  • Buried bars in the breakwater
  • And bubble of the brimming weir.
  • Body's blood in the breakwater
  • And a buried body's bier.
  • Buried bones in the breakwater
  • And bubble of the brawling weir.
  • Bitter tears in the breakwater
  • And a breaking heart to bear.
more about Chimes VII. Hollow heaven and the hurricane
VII.
  • Hollow heaven and the hurricane
  • 50And hurry of the heavy rain.
  • Hurried clouds in the hollow heaven
  • And a heavy rain hard-driven.
  • The heavy rain it hurries amain
  • And heaven and the hurricane.
  • Hurrying wind o'er the heaven's hollow
  • And the heavy rain to follow.
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more about Adieu.
ADIEU.
  • Waving whispering trees,
  • What do you say to the breeze
  • And what says the breeze to you?
  • 'Mid passing souls ill at ease,
  • Moving murmuring trees,
  • Would ye ever wave an Adieu?
  • Tossing turbulent seas,
  • Winds that wrestle with these,
  • Echo heard in the shell,—
  • 10'Mid fleeting life ill at ease,
  • Restless ravening seas,—
  • Would the echo sigh Farewell?
  • Surging sumptuous skies,
  • For ever a new surprise,
  • Clouds eternally new,—
  • Is every flake that flies,
  • Widening wandering skies,
  • For a sign—Farewell, Adieu?
  • Sinking suffering heart
  • 20That know'st how weary thou art,—
  • Soul so fain for a flight,—
  • Aye, spread your wings to depart,
  • Sad soul and sorrowing heart,—
  • Adieu, Farewell, Good-night.
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more about Soothsay.
SOOTHSAY.
  • Let no man ask thee of anything
  • Not yearborn between Spring and Spring.
  • More of all worlds than he can know,
  • Each day the single sun doth show.
  • A trustier gloss than thou canst give
  • From all wise scrolls demonstrative,
  • The sea doth sigh and the wind sing.
  • Let no man awe thee on any height
  • Of earthly kingship's mouldering might.
  • 10The dust his heel holds meet for thy brow
  • Hath all of it been what both are now;
  • And thou and he may plague together
  • A beggar's eyes in some dusty weather
  • When none that is now knows sound or sight.
  • Crave thou no dower of earthly things
  • Unworthy Hope's imaginings.
  • To have brought true birth of Song to be
  • And to have won hearts to Poesy,
  • Or anywhere in the sun or rain
  • 20To have loved and been beloved again,
  • Is loftiest reach of Hope's bright wings.
  • The wild waifs cast up by the sea
  • Are diverse ever seasonably.
  • Even so the soul-tides still may land
  • A different drift upon the sand.
  • But one the sea is evermore:
  • And one be still, 'twixt shore and shore,
  • As the sea's life, thy soul in thee.
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  • Say, hast thou pride? How then may fit
  • 30Thy mood with flatterers' silk-spun wit?
  • Haply the sweet voice lifts thy crest,
  • A breeze of fame made manifest.
  • Nay, but then chaf'st at flattery? Pause:
  • Be sure thy wrath is not because
  • It makes thee feel thou lovest it.
  • Let thy soul strive that still the same
  • Be early friendship's sacred flame.
  • The affinities have strongest part
  • In youth, and draw men heart to heart:
  • 40As life wears on and finds no rest,
  • The individual in each breast
  • Is tyrannous to sunder them.
  • In the life-drama's stern cue-call,
  • A friend's a part well-prized by all:
  • And if thou meet an enemy,
  • What art thou that none such should be?
  • Even so: but if the two parts run
  • Into each other and grow one,
  • Then comes the curtain's cue to fall.
  • 50Whate'er by other's need is claimed
  • More than by thine,—to him unblamed
  • Resign it: and if he should hold
  • What more than he thou lack'st, bread, gold,
  • Or any good whereby we live,—
  • To thee such substance let him give
  • Freely: nor he nor thou be shamed.
  • Strive that thy works prove equal: lest
  • That work which thou hast done the best
  • Should come to be to thee at length
  • 60(Even as to envy seems the strength
  • Of others) hateful and abhorr'd,—
  • Thine own above thyself made lord,—
  • Of self-rebuke the bitterest.
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  • Unto the man of yearning thought
  • And aspiration, to do nought
  • Is in itself almost an act,—
  • Being chasm-fire and cataract
  • Of the soul's utter depths unseal'd.
  • Yet woe to thee if once thou yield
  • 70Unto the act of doing nought!
  • How callous seems beyond revoke
  • The clock with its last listless stroke!
  • How much too late at length!—to trace
  • The hour on its forewarning face,
  • The thing thou hast not dared to do!. . .
  • Behold, this may be thus! Ere true
  • It prove, arise and bear thy yoke.
  • Let lore of all Theology
  • Be to thy soul what it can be:
  • 80But know,—the Power that fashions man
  • Measured not out thy little span
  • For thee to take the meting-rod
  • In turn, and so approve on God
  • Thy science of Theometry.
  • To God at best, to Chance at worst,
  • Give thanks for good things, last as first.
  • But windstrown blossom is that good
  • Whose apple is not gratitude.
  • Even if no prayer uplift thy face,
  • 90Let the sweet right to render grace
  • As thy soul's cherished child be nurs'd.
  • Didst ever say, “Lo, I forget”?
  • Such thought was to remember yet.
  • As in a gravegarth, count to see
  • The monuments of memory.
  • Be this thy soul's appointed scope:—
  • Gaze onward without claim to hope,
  • Nor, gazing backward, court regret.
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more about Five English Poets.
FIVE ENGLISH POETS.
more about I. Thomas Chatterton.
I. THOMAS CHATTERTON.
  • With Shakspeare's manhood at a boy's wild heart,—
  • Through Hamlet's doubt to Shakspeare near allied,
  • And kin to Milton through his Satan's pride,—
  • At Death's sole door he stooped, and craved a dart;
  • And to the dear new bower of England's art,—
  • Even to that shrine Time else had deified,
  • The unuttered heart that soared against his side,—
  • Drove the fell point, and smote life's seals apart.
  • Thy nested home-loves, noble Chatterton;
  • 10 The angel-trodden stair thy soul could trace
  • Up Redcliffe's spire; and in the world's armed space
  • Thy gallant sword-play:—these to many an one
  • Are sweet for ever; as thy grave unknown
  • And love-dream of thine unrecorded face.
Sig. 22
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more about II. William Blake.
II. WILLIAM BLAKE.

( TO FREDERICK SHIELDS, ON HIS SKETCH OF BLAKE'S

WORK-ROOM AND DEATH-ROOM, 3 FOUNTAIN COURT, STRAND. )
  • This is the place. Even here the dauntless soul,
  • The unflinching hand, wrought on; till in that nook,
  • As on that very bed, his life partook
  • New birth, and passed. Yon river's dusky shoal,
  • Whereto the close-built coiling lanes unroll,
  • Faced his work-window, whence his eyes would stare,
  • Thought-wandering, unto nought that met them there,
  • But to the unfettered irreversible goal.
  • This cupboard, Holy of Holies, held the cloud
  • 10 Of his soul writ and limned; this other one,
  • His true wife's charge, full oft to their abode
  • Yielded for daily bread the martyr's stone,
  • Ere yet their food might be that Bread alone,
  • The words now home-speech of the mouth of God.
more about III. Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
III. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE .
  • His Soul fared forth (as from the deep home-grove
  • The father-songster plies the hour long quest),
  • To feed his soul-brood hungering in the nest;
  • But his warm Heart, the mother-bird, above
  • Their callow fledgling progeny still hove
  • With tented roof of wings and fostering breast
  • Till the Soul fed the soul-brood. Richly blest
  • From Heaven their growth, whose food was Human Love.
  • Yet ah! Like desert pools that show the stars
  • 10 Once in long leagues,—even such the scarce-snatched
  • hours
  • Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers:—
  • Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.
  • Six years, from sixty saved! Yet kindling skies
  • Own them, a beacon to our centuries.
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more about IV. John Keats.
IV. JOHN KEATS.
  • The weltering London ways where children weep
  • And girls whom none call maidens laugh,—strange road
  • Miring his outward steps, who inly trode
  • The bright Castalian brink and Latmos' steep:—
  • Even such his life's cross-paths; till deathly deep
  • He toiled through sands of Lethe; and long pain,
  • Weary with labour spurned and love found vain,
  • In dead Rome's sheltering shadow wrapped his sleep.
  • O pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips
  • 10And heart-strung lyre awoke the Moon's eclipse,—
  • Thou whom the daisies glory in growing o'er,—
  • Their fragrance clings around thy name, not writ
  • But rumour'd in water, while the fame of it
  • Along Time's flood goes echoing evermore.
more about V. Percy Bysshe Shelley. (Inscription for the couch, still preserved, on which he passed the last night of his life.)
V. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

(INSCRIPTION FOR THE COUCH, STILL PRESERVED,

ON WHICH HE PASSED THE LAST NIGHT OF HIS LIFE.)
  • 'Twixt those twin worlds,—the world of Sleep, which
  • gave
  • No dream to warn,—the tidal world of Death,
  • Which the earth's sea, as the earth, replenisheth,—
  • Shelley, Song's orient sun, to breast the wave,
  • Rose from this couch that morn. Ah! did he brave
  • Only the sea?—or did man's deed of hell
  • Engulph his bark 'mid mists impenetrable? . . .
  • No eye discerned, nor any power might save.
  • When that mist cleared, O Shelley! what dread veil
  • 10 Was rent for thee, to whom far-darkling Truth
  • Reigned sovereign guide through thy brief ageless
  • youth?
  • Was the Truth thy Truth, Shelley?—Hush! All-Hail,
  • Past doubt, thou gav'st it; and in Truth's bright sphere
  • Art first of praisers, being most praisèd here.
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more about To Philip Bourke Marston, inciting me to poetic work
TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON,

INCITING ME TO POETIC WORK.
  • Sweet Poet, thou of whom these years that roll
  • Must one day yet the burdened birthright learn,
  • And by the darkness of thine eyes discern
  • How piercing was the sight within thy soul;—
  • Gifted apart, thou goest to the great goal,
  • A cloud-bound radiant spirit, strong to earn,
  • Light-reft, that prize for which fond myriads yearn
  • Vainly light-blest,—the Seër's aureole.
  • And doth thine ear, divinely dowered to catch
  • 10 All spheral sounds in thy song blent so well,
  • Still hearken for my voice's slumbering spell
  • With wistful love? Ah! let the Muse now snatch
  • My wreath for thy young brows, and bend to watch
  • Thy veiled transfiguring sense's miracle.
more about Tiber, Nile and Thames.
TIBER, NILE, AND THAMES.
  • The head and hands of murdered Cicero,
  • Above his seat high in the Forum hung,
  • Drew jeers and burning tears. When on the rung
  • Of a swift-mounted ladder, all aglow,
  • Fluvia, Mark Antony's shameless wife, with show
  • Of foot firm-poised and gleaming arm upflung,
  • Bade her sharp needle pierce that god-like tongue
  • Whose speech fed Rome even as the Tiber's flow.
  • And thou, Cleopatra's Needle, that hadst thrid
  • 10Great skirts of Time ere she and Antony hid
  • Dead hope!—hast thou too reached, surviving death,
  • A city of sweet speech scorned,—on whose chill stone
  • Keats withered, Coleridge pined, and Chatterton,
  • Breadless, with poison froze the God-fired breath?
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more about Raleigh's Cell in the Tower.
RALEIGH'S CELL IN THE TOWER.
  • Here writ was the World's History by his hand
  • Whose steps knew all the earth; albeit his world
  • In these few piteous paces then was furl'd.
  • Here daily, hourly, have his proud feet spann'd
  • This smaller speck than the receding land
  • Had ever shown his ships; what time he hurl'd
  • Abroad o'er new-found regions spiced and pearl'd
  • His country's high dominion and command.
  • Here dwelt two spheres. The vast terrestrial zone
  • 10His spirit traversed; and that spirit was
  • Itself the zone celestial, round whose birth
  • The planets played within the zodiac's girth;
  • Till hence, through unjust death unfeared, did pass
  • His spirit to the only land unknown.
more about Winter.
WINTER.
  • How large that thrush looks on the bare thorn-tree!
  • A swarm of such, three little months ago,
  • Had hidden in the leaves and let none know
  • Save by the outburst of their minstrelsy.
  • A white flake here and there—a snow-lily
  • Of last night's frost—our naked flower-beds hold;
  • And for a rose-flower on the darkling mould
  • The hungry redbreast gleams. No bloom, no bee.
  • The current shudders to its ice-bound sedge:
  • 10 Nipped in their bath, the stark reeds one by one
  • Flash each its clinging diamond in the sun:
  • 'Neath winds which for this Winter's sovereign pledge
  • Shall curb great king-masts to the ocean's edge
  • And leave memorial forest-king's o'erthrown.
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more about The Last Three from Trafalgar at the Anniversary Banquet, 21st October, 187.
THE LAST THREE FROM TRAFALGAR

AT THE ANNIVERSARY BANQUET, 21ST OCTOBER 187* .
  • In grappled ships around The Victory,
  • Three boys did England's Duty with stout cheer,
  • While one dread truth was kept from every ear,
  • More dire than deafening fire that churned the sea:
  • For in the flag-ship's weltering cockpit, he
  • Who was the Battle's Heart without a peer,
  • He who had seen all fearful sights save Fear,
  • Was passing from all life save Victory.
  • And round the old memorial board to-day,
  • 10 Three greybeards—each a warworn British Tar—
  • View through the mist of years that hour afar:
  • Who soon shall greet, 'mid memories of fierce fray,
  • The impassioned soul which on its radiant way
  • Soared through the fiery cloud of Trafalgar.
more about Czar Alexander the Second. (13th March, 1881.)
CZAR ALEXANDER THE SECOND.

(13TH MARCH 1881.)
  • From him did forty million serfs, endow'd
  • Each with six feet of death-due soil, receive
  • Rich freeborn lifelong land, whereon to sheave
  • Their country's harvest. These to-day aloud
  • Demand of Heaven a Father's blood,—sore bow'd
  • With tears and thrilled with wrath; who, while they
  • grieve,
  • On every guilty head would fain achieve
  • All torment by his edicts disallow'd.
  • He stayed the knout's red-ravening fangs; and first
  • 10 Of Russian traitors, his own murderers go
  • White to the tomb. While he,—laid foully low
  • With limbs red-rent, with festering brain which erst
  • Willed kingly freedom,—'gainst the deed accurst
  • To God bears witness of his people's woe.
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III.—SONNETS ON PICTURES.

more about For an Annunciation. Early German
FOR

AN ANNUNCIATION,

EARLY GERMAN.
  • The lilies stand before her like a screen
  • Through which, upon this warm and solemn day,
  • God surely hears. For there she kneels to pray
  • Who wafts our prayers to God—Mary the Queen.
  • She was Faith's Present, parting what had been
  • From what began with her, and is for aye.
  • On either hand, God's twofold system lay:
  • With meek bowed face a Virgin prayed between.
  • So prays she, and the Dove flies in to her,
  • 10 And she has turned. At the low porch is one
  • Who looks as though deep awe made him to smile.
  • Heavy with heat, the plants yield shadow there;
  • The loud flies cross each other in the sun;
  • And the aisled pillars meet the poplar-aisle.
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more about For 'Our Lady of the Rocks' by Leonardo Da Vinci.
FOR

OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS

BY LEONARDO DA VINCI.
  • Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
  • The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
  • Infinite imminent Eternity?
  • And does the death-pang by man's seed sustained
  • In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
  • Its silent prayer upon the Son, while He
  • Blesses the dead with His hand silently
  • To His long day which hours no more offend?
  • Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
  • 10 Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
  • Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
  • Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
  • Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
  • Amid the bitterness of things occult.
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more about For a Venetian Pastoral, by Giorgione (in the Louvre).
FOR

A VENETIAN PASTORAL

BY GIORGIONE.

( In the Louvre.)
  • Water, for anguish of the solstice:—nay,
  • But dip the vessel slowly,—nay, but lean
  • And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
  • Reluctant. Hush! beyond all depth away
  • The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
  • Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
  • That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
  • Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
  • Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
  • 10 And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
  • Is cool against her naked side? Let be:—
  • Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
  • Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,—
  • Life touching lips with Immortality.
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more about For an Allegorical Dance of Women, by Andrea Mantegna (In the Louvre).
FOR

AN ALLEGORICAL DANCE OF WOMEN

BY ANDREA MANTEGNA.

( In the Louvre.)
  • Scarcely, I think; yet it indeed may be
  • The meaning reached him, when this music rang
  • Clear through his frame, a sweet possessive pang,
  • And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea.
  • But I believe that, leaning tow'rds them, he
  • Just felt their hair carried across his face
  • As each girl passed him; nor gave ear to trace
  • How many feet; nor bent assuredly
  • His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought
  • 10 To know the dancers. It is bitter glad
  • Even unto tears. Its meaning filleth it,
  • A secret of the wells of Life: to wit:—
  • The heart's each pulse shall keep the sense it had
  • With all, though the mind's labour run to nought.
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more about For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres.
FOR

RUGGIERO AND ANGELICA

BY INGRES.
more about For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres. I.
I.
  • A remote sky, prolonged to the sea's brim:
  • One rock-point standing buffeted alone,
  • Vexed at its base with a foul beast unknown,
  • Hell-birth of geomaunt and teraphim:
  • A knight, and a winged creature bearing him,
  • Reared at the rock: a woman fettered there,
  • Leaning into the hollow with loose hair
  • And throat let back and heartsick trail of limb.
  • The sky is harsh, and the sea shrewd and salt:
  • 10 Under his lord the griffin-horse ramps blind
  • With rigid wings and tail. The spear's lithe stem
  • Thrills in the roaring of those jaws: behind,
  • That evil length of body chafes at fault.
  • She does not hear nor see—she knows of them.
more about For Ruggiero and Angelica, by Ingres. II.
II.
  • Clench thine eyes now,—'tis the last instant, girl:
  • Draw in thy senses, set thy knees, and take
  • One breath for all: thy life is keen awake,—
  • Thou mayst not swoon. Was that the scattered whirl
  • Of its foam drenched thee?—or the waves that curl
  • And split, bleak spray wherein thy temples ache?
  • Or was it his the champion's blood to flake
  • Thy flesh?—or thine own blood's anointing, girl?
  • Now, silence: for the sea's is such a sound
  • 10 As irks not silence; and except the sea,
  • All now is still. Now the dead thing doth cease
  • To writhe, and drifts. He turns to her: and she,
  • Cast from the jaws of Death, remains there, bound,
  • Again a woman in her nakedness.
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more about For a Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmelinck; in the Academy of Bruges
FOR

A VIRGIN AND CHILD

BY HANS MEMMELINCK.

( In the Academy of Bruges.)
  • Mystery: God, man's life, born into man
  • Of woman. There abideth on her brow
  • The ended pang of knowledge, the which now
  • Is calm assured. Since first her task began
  • She hath known all. What more of anguish than
  • Endurance oft hath lived through, the whole space
  • Through night till day, passed weak upon her face
  • While the heard lapse of darkness slowly ran?
  • All hath been told her touching her dear Son,
  • 10 And all shall be accomplished. Where He sits
  • Even now, a babe, He holds the symbol fruit
  • Perfect and chosen. Until God permits,
  • His soul's elect still have the absolute
  • Harsh nether darkness, and make painful moan.
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more about For a Marriage of St. Catherine, by the same (Hans Memmeling)
FOR

A MARRIAGE OF ST. CATHERINE

BY THE SAME.

( In the Hospital of St. John at Bruges .)
  • Mystery: Catherine the bride of Christ.
  • She kneels, and on her hand the holy Child
  • Now sets the ring. Her life is hushed and mild,
  • Laid in God's knowledge—ever unenticed
  • From God, and in the end thus fitly priced.
  • Awe, and the music that is near her, wrought
  • Of angels, have possessed her eyes in thought:
  • Her utter joy is hers, and hath sufficed.
  • There is a pause while Mary Virgin turns
  • 10 The leaf, and reads. With eyes on the spread book,
  • That damsel at her knees reads after her.
  • John whom He loved, and John His harbinger,
  • Listen and watch. Whereon soe'er thou look,
  • The light is starred in gems and the gold burns.
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more about For 'The Wine of Circe' by Edward Burne Jones.
FOR

THE WINE OF CIRCE

BY EDWARD BURNE JONES.
  • Dusk-haired and gold-robed o'er the golden wine
  • She stoops, wherein, distilled of death and shame,
  • Sink the black drops; while, lit with fragrant flame,
  • Round her spread board the golden sunflowers shine.
  • Doth Helios here with Hecatè combine
  • (O Circe, thou their votaress?) to proclaim
  • For these thy guests all rapture in Love's name,
  • Till pitiless Night give Day the countersign?
  • Lords of their hour, they come. And by her knee
  • 10 Those cowering beasts, their equals heretofore,
  • Wait; who with them in new equality
  • To-night shall echo back the sea's dull roar
  • With a vain wail from passion's tide-strown shore
  • Where the dishevelled seaweed hates the sea.
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more about For The Holy Family, By Michelangelo. (In the National Gallery.)
FOR

THE HOLY FAMILY

BY MICHELANGELO.

( In the National Gallery.*)
  • Turn not the prophet's page, O Son! He knew
  • All that Thou hast to suffer, and hath writ.
  • Not yet Thine hour of knowledge. Infinite
  • The sorrows that Thy manhood's lot must rue
  • And dire acquaintance of Thy grief. That clue
  • The spirits of Thy mournful ministerings
  • Seek through yon scroll in silence. For these things
  • The angels have desired to look into.
  • Still before Eden waves the fiery sword,—
  • 10 Her Tree of Life unransomed: whose sad Tree
  • Of Knowledge yet to growth of Calvary
  • Must yield its Tempter,—Hell the earliest dead
  • Of Earth resign,—and yet, O Son and Lord,
  • The seed o' the woman bruise the serpent's head.
Transcribed Footnote (page 351):

* In this picture the Virgin Mother is seen withholding from the

Child Saviour the prophetic writings in which His sufferings are

foretold. Angelic figures beside them examine a scroll.

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more about For Spring, by Sandro Botticelli. (In the Accademia of Florence.)
FOR

SPRING

BY SANDRO BOTTICELLI.

(In the Accademia of Florence.)
  • What masque of what old wind-withered New-Year
  • Honours this Lady?* Flora, wanton-eyed
  • For birth, and with all flowrets prankt and pied:
  • Aurora, Zephyrus, with mutual cheer
  • Of clasp and kiss: the Graces circling near,
  • 'Neath bower-linked arch of white arms glorified:
  • And with those feathered feet which hovering glide
  • O'er Spring's brief bloom, Hermes the harbinger.
  • Birth-bare, not death-bare yet, the young stems stand
  • 10 This Lady's temple-columns: o'er her head
  • Love wings his shaft. What mystery here is read
  • Of homage or of hope? But how command
  • Dead Springs to answer? And how question here
  • These mummers of that wind-withered New-Year?
Transcribed Footnote (page 352):

* The same lady, here surrounded by the masque of Spring, is

evidently the subject of a portrait by Botticelli formerly in the

Pourtalès collection in Paris. This portrait is inscribed “Smeralda

Bandinelli.”

Image of page 353 page: 353
IV.—SONNETS AND VERSES

FOR ROSSETTI'S OWN WORKS OF ART.

more about Mary's Girlhood. (For a Picture).
MARY'S GIRLHOOD.

( For a Picture.)
more about Mary's Girlhood (For a Picture) I.
I.
  • This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
  • God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
  • Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
  • Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
  • Profound simplicity of intellect,
  • And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
  • Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
  • Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.
  • So held she through her girlhood; as it were
  • 10 An angel-watered lily, that near God
  • Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
  • She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
  • At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed:
  • Because the fulness of the time was come.
Sig. 23
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more about Mary's Girlhood (For a Picture) II.
II.
  • These are the symbols. On that cloth of red
  • I' the centre is the Tripoint: perfect each,
  • Except the second of its points, to teach
  • That Christ is not yet born. The books—whose head
  • Is golden Charity, as Paul hath said—
  • Those virtues are wherein the soul is rich:
  • Therefore on them the lily standeth, which
  • Is Innocence, being interpreted.
  • The seven-thorn'd briar and the palm seven-leaved
  • 10 Are her great sorrow and her great reward.
  • Until the end be full, the Holy One
  • Abides without. She soon shall have achieved
  • Her perfect purity: yea, God the Lord
  • Shall soon vouchsafe His Son to be her Son.
Image of page 355 page: 355
more about The Passover in the Holy Family. (For a Drawing.)
THE PASSOVER IN THE HOLY FAMILY.

( For a Drawing.*)
  • Here meet together the prefiguring day
  • And day prefigured. “Eating, thou shalt stand,
  • Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand,
  • With blood-stained door and lintel,”—did God say
  • By Moses' mouth in ages passed away.
  • And now, where this poor household doth comprise
  • At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,—
  • Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.
  • The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained,
  • 10 What shadow of Death the Boy's fair brow subdues
  • Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
  • By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
  • He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
  • And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.
Transcribed Footnote (page 355):

* The scene is in the house-porch, where Christ holds a bowl of

blood from which Zacharias is sprinkling the posts and lintel.

Joseph has brought the lamb and Elizabeth lights the pyre. The

shoes which John fastens and the bitter herbs which Mary is

gathering form part of the ritual.

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more about Mary Magdalene at the Door of Simon the Pharisee (For a Drawing).
MARY MAGDALENE

AT THE DOOR OF SIMON THE PHARISEE.

( For a Drawing.*)
  • “Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?
  • Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek.
  • Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek;
  • See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.
  • This delicate day of love we two will share
  • Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak.
  • What, sweet one,—hold'st thou still the foolish freak?
  • Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.”
  • “Oh loose me! Seest thou not my Bridegroom's face
  • 10 That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss,
  • My hair, my tears He craves to-day:—and oh!
  • What words can tell what other day and place
  • Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His?
  • He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!”
Transcribed Footnote (page 356):

* In the drawing Mary has left a procession of revellers, and is

ascending by a sudden impulse the steps of the house where she

sees Christ. Her lover has followed her, and is trying to turn her

back.

Image of page 357 page: 357
more about Michael Scott's Wooing (For a Drawing)
MICHAEL SCOTT'S WOOING.

( For a Drawing.)
  • Rose-sheathed beside the rosebud tongue
  • Lurks the young adder's tooth;
  • Milk-mild from new-born hemlock-bluth
  • The earliest drops are wrung:
  • And sweet the flower of his first youth
  • When Michael Scott was young.
more about Aspecta Medusa.
ASPECTA MEDUSA.

( For a Drawing .)
  • 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 358 page: 358
more about Cassandra. (For a Drawing.)
CASSANDRA.

( For a Drawing.*)
more about Cassandra. (For a Drawing.) I.
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 358):

* 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 359 page: 359
more about Cassandra. (For a Drawing.) II.
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.”
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more about Venus Verticordia.
VENUS VERTICORDIA.

( For a Picture.)
  • She hath the apple in her hand for thee,
  • Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;
  • She muses, with her eyes upon the track
  • Of that which in thy spirit they can see.
  • Haply, “Behold, he is at peace,” saith she;
  • “Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
  • That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
  • The wandering of his feet perpetually!”
  • A little space her glance is still and coy;
  • 10 But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
  • Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
  • Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell,
  • And her far seas moan as a single shell,
  • And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.
more about Pandora. (For a Picture.)
PANDORA.

( For a Picture.)
  • What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
  • The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
  • Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
  • In its own likeness make thee half divine?
  • Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign
  • For ever? and the mien of Pallas be
  • A deadly thing? and that all men might see
  • In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?
  • What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
  • 10 The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
  • Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
  • Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go
  • Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know
  • If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.
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more about A Sea-spell. (For a Picture.)
A SEA-SPELL.

( For a Picture.)
  • Her lute hangs shadowed in the apple-tree,
  • While flashing fingers weave the sweet-strung spell
  • Between its chords; and as the wild notes swell,
  • The sea-bird for those branches leaves the sea.
  • But to what sound her listening ear stoops she?
  • What netherworld gulf-whispers doth she hear,
  • In answering echoes from what planisphere,
  • Along the wind, along the estuary?
  • She sinks into her spell: and when full soon
  • 10 Her lips move and she soars into her song,
  • What creatures of the midmost main shall throng
  • In furrowed surf-clouds to the summoning rune:
  • Till he, the fated mariner, hears her cry,
  • And up her rock, bare-breasted, comes to die?
more about Astarte Syriaca
ASTARTE SYRIACA.

( For a Picture.)
  • Mystery: lo! betwixt the sun and moon
  • Astarte of the Syrians: Venus Queen
  • Ere Aphrodite was. In silver sheen
  • Her twofold girdle clasps the infinite boon
  • Of bliss whereof the heaven and earth commune:
  • And from her neck's inclining flower-stem lean
  • Love-freighted lips and absolute eyes that wean
  • The pulse of hearts to the spheres' dominant tune.
  • Torch-bearing, her sweet ministers compel
  • 10 All thrones of light beyond the sky and sea
  • The witnesses of Beauty's face to be:
  • That face, of Love's all-penetrative spell
  • Amulet, talisman, and oracle,—
  • Betwixt the sun and moon a mystery.
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more about Mnemosyne
MNEMOSYNE.

( For a Picture.)
  • Thou fill'st from the winged chalice of the soul
  • Thy lamp, O Memory, fire-winged to its goal.
more about Fiammetta. (For a Picture.)
FIAMMETTA.

( For a Picture.)
  • Behold Fiammetta, shown in Vision here.
  • Gloom-girt 'mid Spring-flushed apple-growth she stands;
  • And as she sways the branches with her hands,
  • Along her arm the sundered bloom falls sheer,
  • In separate petals shed, each like a tear;
  • While from the quivering bough the bird expands
  • His wings. And lo! thy spirit understands
  • Life shaken and shower'd and flown, and Death drawn
  • near.
  • All stirs with change. Her garments beat the air:
  • 10 The angel circling round her aureole
  • Shimmers in flight against the tree's grey bole:
  • While she, with reassuring eyes most fair,
  • A presage and a promise stands; as 'twere
  • On Death's dark storm the rainbow of the Soul.
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more about 'Found.' (For a Picture.)
FOUND.”

( For a Picture.)
  • “There is a budding morrow in midnight:”—
  • So sang our Keats, our English nightingale.
  • And here, as lamps across the bridge turn pale
  • In London's smokeless resurrection-light,
  • Dark breaks to dawn. But o'er the deadly blight
  • Of Love deflowered and sorrow of none avail
  • Which makes this man gasp and this woman quail,
  • Can day from darkness ever again take flight?
  • Ah! gave not these two hearts their mutual pledge,
  • 10Under one mantle sheltered 'neath the hedge
  • In gloaming courtship? And, O God! to-day
  • He only knows he holds her;—but what part
  • Can life now take? She cries in her locked heart,—
  • “Leave me—I do not know you—go away!”
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more about The Day-Dream. (For a Picture.)
THE DAY-DREAM.

( For a Picture.)
  • The thronged boughs of the shadowy sycamore
  • Still bear young leaflets half the summer through;
  • From when the robin 'gainst the unhidden blue
  • Perched dark, till now, deep in the leafy core,
  • The embowered throstle's urgent wood-notes soar
  • Through summer silence. Still the leaves come new;
  • Yet never rosy-sheathed as those which drew
  • Their spiral tongues from spring-buds heretofore.
  • Within the branching shade of Reverie
  • 10Dreams even may spring till autumn; yet none be
  • Like woman's budding day-dream spirit-fann'd.
  • Lo! tow'rd deep skies, not deeper than her look,
  • She dreams; till now on her forgotten book
  • Drops the forgotten blossom from her hand.
Image of page [365] page: [365]
V.—POEMS IN ITALIAN

(OR ITALIAN AND ENGLISH),

FRENCH AND LATIN.

Image of page 366 page: 366
more about Youth and Lordship (Italian Street Song)
more about Gioventu e Signoria
GIOVENTÙ E SIGNORÌA.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama molte cose,—
  • I canti, le rose,
  • La forza e l'amore.
  • Quel che più vuole
  • Ancor non osa:
  • Ahi più che il sole,
  • Più ch' ogni rosa,
  • La cara cosa,
  • 10Donna a gioire.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama quelle cose
  • Che ardor dispose
  • In cuore all' amore.
  • Bella fanciulla,
  • Guardalo in viso;
  • Non mancar nulla,
  • Motto o sorriso;
  • Ma viso a viso
  • 20Guarda a gradire.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama tutte cose,
  • Vezzose, giojose,
  • Tenenti all' amore.
Image of page 367 page: 367
more about Youth and Lordship (Italian Street Song)
YOUTH AND LORDSHIP.

( Italian Street-Song.)
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of earth and sky above,
  • Of youth's sway and youth's play,
  • Of songs and flowers and love.
  • Yet for love's desire
  • Green youth lacks the daring;
  • Though one dream of fire,
  • All his hours ensnaring,
  • Burns the boy past bearing—
  • 10 The dream that girls inspire.
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of every burning thought
  • That Love's will, that Love's skill
  • Within his breast has wrought.
  • Lovely girl, look on him
  • Soft as music's measure;
  • Yield him, when you've won him,
  • Joys and toys at pleasure;
  • But to win your treasure,
  • 20 Softly look upon him.
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of every tender grace
  • That woman, to woo man,
  • Can wear in form or face.
Image of page 368 page: 368
more about Gioventu e Signoria
  • Prendilo in braccio
  • Adesso o mai;
  • Per più mi taccio,
  • Chè tu lo sai;
  • Bacialo e l'avrai,
  • 30Ma non lo dire.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama ben le cose
  • Che Amor nascose,
  • Che mostragli Amore.
  • Deh trionfando
  • Non farne pruova;
  • Ahimè! che quando
  • Gioja più giova,
  • Allor si trova
  • 40Presso al finire.
  • È giovine il signore,
  • Ed ama tante cose,
  • Le rose, le spose,
  • Quante gli dona Amore.
Image of page 369 page: 369
more about Youth and Lordship (Italian Street Song)
  • Take him to your bosom
  • Now, girl, or never;
  • Let not your new blossom
  • Of sweet kisses sever;
  • Only guard for ever
  • 30 Your boast within your bosom.
  • My young lord's the lover
  • Of every secret thing,
  • Love-hidden, love-bidden
  • This day to banqueting.
  • Lovely girl, with vaunting
  • Never tempt to-morrow:
  • From all shapes enchanting
  • Any joy can borrow,
  • Still the spectre Sorrow
  • 40 Rises up for haunting.
  • And now my lord's the lover
  • Of ah! so many a sweet,—
  • Of roses, of spouses,
  • As many as love may greet.
Sig. 24
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more about Proserpina. (Per un Quadro.)
PROSERPINA.

(PER UN QUADRO.)
  • Lungi è la luce che in sù questo muro
  • Rifrange appena, un breve istante scorta
  • Del rio palazzo alla soprana porta.
  • Lungi quei fiori d'Enna, O lido oscuro,
  • Dal frutto tuo fatal che omai m'è duro.
  • Lungi quel cielo dal tartareo manto
  • Che quì mi cuopre: e lungi ahi lungi ahi quanto
  • Le notti che saran dai dì che furo.
  • Lungi da me mi sento; e ognor sognando
  • 10 Cerco e ricerco, e resto ascoltatrice;
  • E qualche cuore a qualche anima dice,
  • (Di cui mi giunge il suon da quando in quando,
  • Continuamente insieme sospirando,)—
  • “Oimè per te, Proserpina infelice!”
more about La Ricordanza
LA RICORDANZA.
  • Maggior dolore è ben la Ricordanza,
  • O nell' amaro inferno amena stanza?
Image of page 371 page: 371
more about Proserpina (for a Picture)
PROSERPINA.

( For a Picture.)
  • Afar away the light that brings cold cheer
  • Unto this wall,—one instant and no more
  • Admitted at my distant palace-door.
  • Afar the flowers of Enna from this drear
  • Dire fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here.
  • Afar those skies from this Tartarean grey
  • That chills me: and afar, how far away,
  • The nights that shall be from the days that were.
  • Afar from mine own self I seem, and wing
  • 10 Strange ways in thought, and listen for a sign:
  • And still some heart unto some soul doth pine,
  • (Whose sounds mine inner sense is fain to bring,
  • Continually together murmuring,)—
  • “Woe's me for thee, unhappy Proserpine!”
more about Memory
MEMORY.
  • Is Memory most of miseries miserable,
  • Or the one flower of ease in bitterest hell?
Image of page 372 page: 372
more about La Bella Mano. (Per un Quadro.)
LA BELLA MANO.

(PER UN QUADRO.)
  • O bella Mano, che ti lavi e piaci
  • In quel medesmo tuo puro elemento
  • Donde la Dea dell' amoroso avvento
  • Nacque, (e dall' onda s'infuocar le faci
  • Di mille inispegnibili fornaci):—
  • Come a Venere a te l'oro e l'argento
  • Offron gli Amori; e ognun riguarda attento
  • La bocca che sorride e te che taci.
  • In dolce modo dove onor t'invii
  • 10 Vattene adorna, e porta insiem fra tante
  • Di Venere e di vergine sembiante;
  • Umilemente in luoghi onesti e pii
  • Bianca e soave ognora; infin che sii,
  • O Mano, mansueta in man d'amante.
more about Con Manto d'Oro, etc.
  • Con manto d'oro, collana, ed anelli,
  • Le piace aver con quelli
  • Non altro che una rosa ai suoi capelli.
more about Robe d'Or, etc.
  • Robe d'or, mais rien ne veut
  • Qu'une rose à ses cheveux.
Image of page 373 page: 373
more about La Bella Mano. (For a Picture.)
LA BELLA MANO.

( For a Picture.)
  • O lovely hand, that thy sweet self dost lave
  • In that thy pure and proper element,
  • Whence erst the Lady of Love's high advènt
  • Was born, and endless fires sprang from the wave:—
  • Even as her Loves to her their offerings gave,
  • For thee the jewelled gifts they bear; while each
  • Looks to those lips, of music-measured speech
  • The fount, and of more bliss than man may crave.
  • In royal wise ring-girt and bracelet-spann'd,
  • 10 A flower of Venus' own virginity,
  • Go shine among thy sisterly sweet band;
  • In maiden-minded converse delicately
  • Evermore white and soft; until thou be,
  • O hand! heart-handsel'd in a lover's hand.
more about With Golden Mantle, etc.
  • With golden mantle, rings, and necklace fair,
  • It likes her best to wear
  • Only a rose within her golden hair.
more about A Golden Robe Etc.
  • A golden robe, yet will she wear
  • Only a rose in her golden hair.
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more about Barcarola
BARCAROLA.
  • Per carità,
  • Mostrami amore:
  • Mi punge il cuore,
  • Ma non si sa
  • Dove è amore.
  • Che mi fa
  • La bella età,
  • Sè non si sa
  • Come amerà?
  • 10Ahi me solingo!
  • Il cuor mi stringo!
  • Non più ramingo,
  • Per carità!
  • Per carità,
  • Mostrami il cielo:
  • Tutto è un velo,
  • E non si sa
  • Dove è il cielo.
  • Se si sta
  • 20Così colà,
  • Non si sa
  • Se non si va.
  • Ahi me lontano!
  • Tutto è in vano!
  • Prendimi in mano,
  • Per carità!
Image of page 375 page: 375
more about Barcarola
BARCAROLA.
  • Oltre tomba
  • Qualche cosa?
  • E che ne dici?
  • Saremo felici?
  • Terra mai posa,
  • E mar rimbomba.
more about Bambino Fasciato
BAMBINO FASCIATO.
  • A Pippo Pipistrello
  • Farfalla la fanciulla:
  • “O vedi quanto è bello
  • Ridendo in questa culla!
  • E noi l'abbiamo fatto,
  • Noi due insiem d 'un tratto,
  • E senza noi fia nulla.”
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more about Thomae Fides
THOMÆ FIDES.
  • “Digitum tuum, Thoma,
  • Infer, et vide manûs!
  • Manum tuam, Thoma,
  • Affer, et mitte in latus.”
  • “Dominus et Deus,
  • Deus,” dixit,
  • “Et Dominus meus.”
  • “Quia me vidisti,
  • Thoma, credidisti.
  • 10Beati qui non viderunt,
  • Thoma, et crediderunt.”
  • “Dominus et Deus,
  • Deus,” dixit,
  • “Et Dominus meus.”
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VI.—VERSICLES AND

FRAGMENTS.

more about The Orchard-pit
THE ORCHARD-PIT.
  • Piled deep below the screening apple-branch
  • They lie with bitter apples in their hands:
  • And some are only ancient bones that blanch,
  • And some had ships that last year's wind did launch,
  • And some were yesterday the lords of lands.
  • In the soft dell, among the apple-trees,
  • High up above the hidden pit she stands,
  • And there for ever sings, who gave to these,
  • That lie below, her magic hour of ease,
  • 10 And those her apples holden in their hands.
  • This in my dreams is shown me; and her hair
  • Crosses my lips and draws my burning breath;
  • Her song spreads golden wings upon the air,
  • Life's eyes are gleaming from her forehead fair,
  • And from her breasts the ravishing eyes of Death.
  • Men say to me that sleep hath many dreams,
  • Yet I knew never but this dream alone:
  • There, from a dried-up channel, once the stream's,
  • The glen slopes up; even such in sleep it seems
  • 20 As to my waking sight the place well known.
  • My love I call her, and she loves me well:
  • But I love her as in the maelstrom's cup
  • The whirled stone loves the leaf inseparable
  • That clings to it round all the circling swell,
  • And that the same last eddy swallows up.
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TO ART.
  • I loved thee ere I loved a woman, Love.
more about On Burns
ON BURNS.
  • In whomsoe'er, since Poesy began,
  • A Poet most of all men we may scan,
  • Burns of all poets is the most a Man.
more about Fin di Maggio
FIN DI MAGGIO.
  • Oh! May sits crowned with hawthorn-flower,
  • And is Love's month, they say;
  • And Love's the fruit that is ripened best
  • By ladies' eyes in May.
more about 'I saw the Sibyl at Cumae' [with epigraph by Petronius]

And the Sibyl, you know. I saw her with my own eyes at Cumæ,

hanging in a jar; and, when the boys asked her, “What would you,

Sibyl?” she answered, “I would die.” —Petronius.

  • “I saw the Sibyl at Cumæ”
  • (One said) “with mine own eye.
  • She hung in a cage, and read her rune
  • To all the passers-by.
  • Said the boys, ‘What wouldst thou, Sibyl?’
  • She answered, ‘I would die.’”
  • As balmy as the breath of her you love
  • When deep between her breasts it comes to you.
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  • “Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies?”
  • “Nay, who but infants question in such wise?
  • 'Twas one of my most intimate enemies.”
  • At her step the water-hen
  • Springs from her nook, and skimming the clear stream,
  • Ripples its waters in a sinuous curve,
  • And dives again in safety.
  • Would God I knew there were a God to thank
  • When thanks rise in me!
  • I shut myself in with my soul,
  • And the shapes come eddying forth.
  • If I could die like the British Queen
  • Who faced the Roman war,
  • Or hang in a cage for my country's sake
  • Like Black Bess of Dunbar!
more about [My Lady Greensleeves]
  • She bound her green sleeve on my helm,
  • Sweet pledge of love's sweet meed:
  • Warm was her bared arm round my neck
  • As well she bade me speed;
  • And her kiss clings still between my lips,
  • Heart's beat and strength at need.
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  • Where is the man whose soul has never waked
  • To sudden pity of the poor torn past?
  • As much as in a hundred years, she's dead:
  • Yet is to-day the day on which she died.
  • Who shall say what is said in me,
  • With all that I might have been dead in me?
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PROSE.
I.—STORIES AND SCHEMES OF POEMS.
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more about Hand and Soul
HAND AND SOUL.
  • Rivolsimi in quel lato
  • Là onde venìa la voce,
  • E parvemi una luce
  • Che lucea quanto stella:
  • La mia menta era quella.
Bonaggiunta Urbiciani (1250).
Before any knowledge of painting was brought to

Florence, there were already painters in Lucca, and

Pisa, and Arezzo, who feared God and loved the art.

The workmen from Greece, whose trade it was to sell

their own works in Italy and teach Italians to imitate

them, had already found in rivals of the soil a skill that

could forestall their lessons and cheapen their labours,

more years than is supposed before the art came at all

into Florence. The pre-eminence to which Cimabue was

raised at once by his contemporaries, and which he still

retains to a wide extent even in the modern mind, is

to be accounted for, partly by the circumstances under

which he arose, and partly by that extraordinary purpose

of fortune born with the lives of some few, and through

which it is not a little thing for any who went before, if

they are even remembered as the shadows of the coming

of such an one, and the voices which prepared his way

in the wilderness. It is thus, almost exclusively, that

the painters of whom I speak are now known. They

have left little, and but little heed is taken of that which

men hold to have been surpassed; it is gone like time

gone,—a track of dust and dead leaves that merely led

to the fountain.
Nevertheless, of very late years and in very rare
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instances, some signs of a better understanding have

become manifest. A case in point is that of the triptych

and two cruciform pictures at Dresden, by Chiaro di

Messer Bello dell' Erma, to which the eloquent pamphlet

of Dr. Aemmster has at length succeeded in attracting

the students. There is another still more solemn and

beautiful work, now proved to be by the same hand, in

the Pitti gallery at Florence. It is the one to which my

narrative will relate.
This Chiaro dell' Erma was a young man of very

honourable family in Arezzo; where, conceiving art

almost for himself, and loving it deeply, he endeavoured

from early boyhood towards the imitation of any objects

offered in nature. The extreme longing after a visible

embodiment of his thoughts strengthened as his years

increased, more even than his sinews or the blood of his

life; until he would feel faint in sunsets and at the sight

of stately persons. When he had lived nineteen years,

he heard of the famous Giunta Pisano; and, feeling

much of admiration, with perhaps a little of that envy

which youth always feels until it has learned to measure

success by time and opportunity, he determined that he

would seek out Giunta, and, if possible, become his

pupil.
Having arrived in Pisa, he clothed himself in humble

apparel, being unwilling that any other thing than the

desire he had for knowledge should be his plea with the

great painter; and then, leaving his baggage at a house

of entertainment, he took his way along the street,

asking whom he met for the lodging of Giunta. It soon

chanced that one of that city, conceiving him to be

a stranger and poor, took him into his house and

refreshed him; afterwards directing him on his way.
When he was brought to speech of Giunta, he said

merely that he was a student, and that nothing in the

world was so much at his heart as to become that which
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he had heard told of him with whom he was speaking.

He was received with courtesy and consideration, and

soon stood among the works of the famous artist. But

the forms he saw there were lifeless and incomplete;

and a sudden exultation possessed him as he said within

himself, “I am the master of this man.” The blood

came at first into his face, but the next moment he was

quite pale and fell to trembling. He was able, however,

to conceal his emotion; speaking very little to Giunta,

but when he took his leave, thanking him respectfully.
After this, Chiaro's first resolve was, that he would

work out thoroughly some one of his thoughts, and let

the world know him. But the lesson which he had now

learned, of how small a greatness might win fame, and

how little there was to strive against, served to make

him torpid, and rendered his exertions less continual.

Also Pisa was a larger and more luxurious city than

Arezzo; and when, in his walks, he saw the great

gardens laid out for pleasure, and the beautiful women

who passed to and fro, and heard the music that was in

the groves of the city at evening, he was taken with

wonder that he had never claimed his share of the

inheritance of those years in which his youth was cast.

And women loved Chiaro; for, in despite of the burthen

of study, he was well-favoured and very manly in his

walking; and, seeing his face in front, there was a glory

upon it, as upon the face of one who feels a light round

his hair.
So he put thought from him, and partook of his life.

But, one night, being in a certain company of ladies,

a gentleman that was there with him began to speak of

the paintings of a youth named Bonaventura, which he

had seen in Lucca; adding that Giunta Pisano might

now look for a rival. When Chiaro heard this, the

lamps shook before him and the music beat in his ears.

He rose up, alleging a sudden sickness, and went out of

that house with his teeth set. And, being again within

his room, he wrote up over the door the name of
Sig. 25
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Bonaventura, that it might stop him when he would go

out.
He now took to work diligently, not returning to

Arezzo, but remaining in Pisa, that no day more might

be lost; only living entirely to himself. Sometimes,

after nightfall, he would walk abroad in the most solitary

places he could find; hardly feeling the ground under

him, because of the thoughts of the day which held him

in fever.
The lodging Chiaro had chosen was in a house that

looked upon gardens fast by the Church of San Petronio.

It was here, and at this time, that he painted the

Dresden pictures; as also, in all likelihood, the one—

inferior in merit, but certainly his—which is now at

Munich. For the most part he was calm and regular in

his manner of study; though often he would remain at

work through the whole of a day, not resting once so

long as the light lasted; flushed, and with the hair from

his face. Or, at times, when he could not paint, he

would sit for hours in thought of all the greatness the

world had known from of old; until he was weak with

yearning, like one who gazes upon a path of stars.
He continued in this patient endeavour for about three

years, at the end of which his name was spoken through-

out all Tuscany. As his fame waxed, he began to be

employed, besides easel-pictures, upon wall-paintings;

but I believe that no traces remain to us of any of these

latter. He is said to have painted in the Duomo; and

D'Agincourt mentions having seen some portions of a

picture by him which originally had its place above

the high altar in the Church of the Certosa; but which,

at the time he saw it, being very dilapidated, had been

hewn out of the wall, and was preserved in the stores

of the convent. Before the period of Dr. Aemmster's

researches, however, it had been entirely destroyed.
Chiaro was now famous. It was for the race of fame

that he had girded up his loins; and he had not paused

until fame was reached; yet now, in taking breath, he
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found that the weight was still at his heart. The years

of his labour had fallen from him, and his life was still

in its first painful desire.
With all that Chiaro had done during these three

years, and even before with the studies of his early

youth, there had always been a feeling of worship and

service. It was the peace-offering that he made to God

and to his own soul for the eager selfishness of his aim.

There was earth, indeed, upon the hem of his raiment;

but this was of the heaven, heavenly. He had seasons

when he could endure to think of no other feature of his

hope than this. Sometimes it had even seemed to him

to behold that day when his mistress—his mystical lady

(now hardly in her ninth year, but whose smile at

meeting had already lighted on his soul,)—even she, his

own gracious Italian Art—should pass, through the sun

that never sets, into the shadow of the tree of life, and

be seen of God and found good: and then it had seemed

to him that he, with many who, since his coming, had

joined the band of whom he was one (for, in his dream,

the body he had worn on earth had been dead an

hundred years), were permitted to gather round the

blessed maiden, and to worship with her through all

ages and ages of ages, saying, Holy, holy, holy. This

thing he had seen with the eyes of his spirit; and in

this thing had trusted, believing that it would surely

come to pass.
But now, (being at length led to inquire closely into

himself,) even as, in the pursuit of fame, the unrest

abiding after attainment had proved to him that he had

misinterpreted the craving of his own spirit—so also,

now that he would willingly have fallen back on devo-

tion, he became aware that much of that reverence

which he had mistaken for faith had been no more than

the worship of beauty. Therefore, after certain days

passed in perplexity, Chiaro said within himself, “My

life and my will are yet before me: I will take another

aim to my life.”
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From that moment Chiaro set a watch on his soul, and

put his hand to no other works but only to such as had

for their end the presentment of some moral greatness

that should influence the beholder: and to this end,

he multiplied abstractions, and forgot the beauty and

passion of the world. So the people ceased to throng

about his pictures as heretofore; and, when they were

carried through town and town to their destination, they

were no longer delayed by the crowds eager to gaze and

admire; and no prayers or offerings were brought to

them on their path, as to his Madonnas, and his Saints,

and his Holy Children, wrought for the sake of the life

he saw in the faces that he loved. Only the critical

audience remained to him; and these, in default of more

worthy matter, would have turned their scrutiny on a

puppet or a mantle. Meanwhile, he had no more of

fever upon him; but was calm and pale each day in all

that he did and in his goings in and out. The works he

produced at this time have perished—in all likelihood,

not unjustly. It is said (and we may easily believe it),

that, though more laboured than his former pictures,

they were cold and unemphatic; bearing marked out

upon them the measure of that boundary to which they

were made to conform.
And the weight was still close at Chiaro's heart: but

he held in his breath, never resting (for he was afraid),

and would not know it.
Now it happened, within these days, that there fell

a great feast in Pisa, for holy matters: and each man left

his occupation; and all the guilds and companies of the

city were got together for games and rejoicings. And

there were scarcely any that stayed in the houses,

except ladies who lay or sat along their balconies

between open windows which let the breeze beat through

the rooms and over the spread tables from end to end.

And the golden cloths that their arms lay upon drew

all eyes upward to see their beauty; and the day was

long; and every hour of the day was bright with the sun.
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So Chiaro's model, when he awoke that morning on

the hot pavement of the Piazza Nunziata, and saw the

hurry of people that passed him, got up and went along

with them; and Chiaro waited for him in vain.
For the whole of that morning, the music was in

Chiaro's room from the Church close at hand; and he

could hear the sounds that the crowd made in the

streets; hushed only at long intervals while the pro-

cessions for the feast-day chanted in going under his

windows. Also, more than once, there was a high

clamour from the meeting of factious persons: for the

ladies of both leagues were looking down; and he who

encountered his enemy could not choose but draw upon

him. Chiaro waited a long time idle; and then knew

that his model was gone elsewhere. When at his work,

he was blind and deaf to all else; but he feared sloth:

for then his stealthy thoughts would begin to beat round

and round him, seeking a point for attack. He now

rose, therefore, and went to the window. It was

within a short space of noon; and underneath him a

throng of people was coming out through the porch

of San Petronio.
The two greatest houses of the feud in Pisa had filled

the church for that mass. The first to leave had been

the Gherghiotti; who, stopping on the threshold, had

fallen back in ranks along each side of the archway: so

that now, in passing outward, the Marotoli had to walk

between two files of men whom they hated, and whose

fathers had hated theirs. All the chiefs were there and

their whole adherents; and each knew the name of

each. Every man of the Marotoli, as he came forth and

saw his foes, laid back his hood and gazed about him, to

show the badge upon the close cap that held his hair.

And of the Gherghiotti there were some who tightened

their girdles; and some shrilled and threw up their

wrists scornfully, as who flies a falcon; for that was the

crest of their house.
On the walls within the entry were a number of tall
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narrow pictures, presenting a moral allegory of Peace,

which Chiaro had painted that year for the Church. The

Gherghiotti stood with their backs to these frescoes; and

among them Golzo Ninuccio, the youngest noble of the

faction, called by the people Golaghiotta, for his debased

life. This youth had remained for some while talking

listlessly to his fellows, though with his sleepy sunken

eyes fixed on them who passed: but now, seeing that

no man jostled another, he drew the long silver shoe

off his foot and struck the dust out of it on the cloak of

him who was going by, asking him how far the tides

rose at Viderza. And he said so because it was three

months since, at that place, the Gherghiotti had beaten

the Marotoli to the sands, and held them there while the

sea came in; whereby many had been drowned. And,

when he had spoken, at once the whole archway was

dazzling with the light of confused swords; and they

who had left turned back; and they who were still

behind made haste to come forth; and there was so

much blood cast up the walls on a sudden, that it ran in

long streams down Chiaro's paintings.
Chiaro turned himself from the window; for the light

felt dry between his lids, and he could not look. He sat

down, and heard the noise of contention driven out of

the church-porch and a great way through the streets;

and soon there was a deep murmur that heaved and

waxed from the other side of the city, where those of

both parties were gathering to join in the tumult.
Chiaro sat with his face in his open hands. Once

again he had wished to set his foot on a place that

looked green and fertile; and once again it seemed to

him that the thin rank mask was about to spread away,

and that this time the chill of the water must leave

leprosy in his flesh. The light still swam in his head,

and bewildered him at first; but when he knew his

thoughts, they were these:—
“Fame failed me: faith failed me: and now this also,

—the hope that I nourished in this my generation of
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men,—shall pass from me, and leave my feet and my

hands groping. Yet because of this are my feet become

slow and my hands thin. I am as one who, through the

whole night, holding his way diligently, hath smitten the

steel unto the flint, to lead some whom he knew

darkling; who hath kept his eyes always on the sparks

that himself made, lest they should fail; and who,

towards dawn, turning to bid them that he had guided

God speed, sees the wet grass untrodden except of his

own feet. I am as the last hour of the day, whose

chimes are a perfect number; whom the next followeth

not, nor light ensueth from him; but in the same dark-

ness is the old order begun afresh. Men say,‘This is

not God nor man; he is not as we are, neither above

us: let him sit beneath us, for we are many.’ Where I

write Peace, in that spot is the drawing of swords, and

there men's footprints are red. When I would sow,

another harvest is ripe. Nay, it is much worse with me

than thus much. Am I not as a cloth drawn before the

light, that the looker may not be blinded? but which

sheweth thereby the grain of its own coarseness, so

that the light seems defiled, and men say, ‘We will not

walk by it.’ Wherefore through me they shall be

doubly accursed, seeing that through me they reject the

light. May one be a devil and not know it?”
As Chiaro was in these thoughts, the fever encroached

slowly on his veins, till he could sit no longer and would

have risen; but suddenly he found awe within him, and

held his head bowed, without stirring. The warmth of

the air was not shaken; but there seemed a pulse in the

light, and a living freshness, like rain. The silence

was a painful music, that made the blood ache in his

temples; and he lifted his face and his deep eyes.
A woman was present in his room, clad to the hands

and feet with a green and grey raiment, fashioned to

that time. It seemed that the first thoughts he had ever

known were given him as at first from her eyes, and he

knew her hair to be the golden veil through which he
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beheld his dreams. Though her hands were joined, her

face was not lifted, but set forward; and though the

gaze was austere, yet her mouth was supreme in gentle-

ness. And as he looked, Chiaro's spirit appeared

abashed of its own intimate presence, and his lips

shook with the thrill of tears; it seemed such a bitter

while till the spirit might be indeed alone.
She did not move closer towards him, but he felt her

to be as much with him as his breath. He was like one

who, scaling a great steepness, hears his own voice

echoed in some place much higher than he can see,

and the name of which is not known to him. As the

woman stood, her speech was with Chiaro: not, as it

were, from her mouth or in his ears; but distinctly

between them.
“I am an image, Chiaro, of thine own soul within

thee. See me, and know me as I am. Thou sayest

that fame has failed thee, and faith failed thee; but

because at least thou hast not laid thy life unto riches,

therefore, though thus late, I am suffered to come into

thy knowledge. Fame sufficed not, for that thou didst

seek fame: seek thine own conscience (not thy mind's

conscience, but thine heart's), and all shall approve and

suffice. For Fame, in noble soils, is a fruit of the

Spring: but not therefore should it be said: ‘Lo! my

garden that I planted is barren: the crocus is here, but

the lily is dead in the dry ground, and shall not lift the

earth that covers it: therefore I will fling my garden

together, and give it unto the builders.’ Take heed

rather that thou trouble not the wise secret earth; for in

the mould that thou throwest up shall the first tender

growth lie to waste; which else had been made strong

in its season. Yea, and even if the year fall past in all

its months, and the soil be indeed, to thee, peevish and

incapable, and though thou indeed gather all thy harvest,

and it suffice for others, and thou remain vexed with

emptiness; and others drink of thy streams, and the

drouth rasp thy throat;—let it be enough that these
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have found the feast good, and thanked the giver:

remembering that, when the winter is striven through,

there is another year, whose wind is meek, and whose

sun fulfilleth all.”
While he heard, Chiaro went slowly on his knees. It

was not to her that spoke, for the speech seemed within

him and his own. The air brooded in sunshine, and

though the turmoil was great outside, the air within was

at peace. But when he looked in her eyes, he wept.

And she came to him, and cast her hair over him, and

took her hands about his forehead, and spoke again:—
“Thou hast said,” she continued, gently, “that faith

failed thee. This cannot be. Either thou hadst it not,

or thou hast it. But who bade thee strike the point

betwixt love and faith? Wouldst thou sift the warm

breeze from the sun that quickens it? Who bade thee

turn upon God and say: ‘Behold, my offering is of

earth, and not worthy: Thy fire comes not upon it:

therefore, though I slay not my brother whom Thou

acceptest, I will depart before Thou smite me.’ Why

shouldst thou rise up and tell God He is not content?

Had He, of His warrant, certified so to thee? Be not

nice to seek out division; but possess thy love in

sufficiency: assuredly this is faith, for the heart must

believe first. What He hath set in thine heart to do,

that do thou; and even though thou do it without thought

of Him, it shall be well done; it is this sacrifice that He

asketh of thee, and His flame is upon it for a sign.

Think not of Him; but of His love and thy love. For

God is no morbid exactor: He hath no hand to bow

beneath, nor a foot, that thou shouldst kiss it.”
And Chiaro held silence, and wept into her hair which

covered his face; and the salt tears that he shed ran

through her hair upon his lips; and he tasted the bitter-

ness of shame.
Then the fair woman, that was his soul, spoke again

to him, saying:
“And for this thy last purpose, and for those unprofit
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able truths of thy teaching,—thine heart hath already

put them away, and it needs not that I lay my bidding

upon thee. How is it that thou, a man, wouldst say

coldly to the mind what God hath said to the heart

warmly? Thy will was honest and wholesome; but

look well lest this also be folly,—to say, ‘I, in doing

this, do strengthen God among men.’ When at any

time hath He cried unto thee, saying, ‘My son, lend Me

thy shoulder, for I fall’ ? Deemest thou that the men

who enter God's temple in malice, to the provoking of

blood, and neither for His love nor for His wrath will

abate their purpose,—shall afterwards stand, with thee

in the porch midway between Him and themselves, to

give ear unto thy thin voice, which merely the fall of

their visors can drown, and to see thy hands, stretched

feebly, tremble among their swords? Give thou to God

no more than He asketh of thee; but to man also, that

which is man's. In all that thou doest, work from thine

own heart, simply; for his heart is as thine, when thine

is wise and humble; and he shall have understanding of

thee. One drop of rain is as another, and the sun's

prism in all: and shalt thou not be as he, whose lives

are the breath of One? Only by making thyself his

equal can he learn to hold communion with thee, and at

last own thee above him. Not till thou lean over the

water shalt thou see thine image therein: stand erect,

and it shall slope from thy feet and be lost. Know that

there is but this means whereby thou mayst serve God

with man:—Set thine hand and thy soul to serve man

with God.”
And when she that spoke had said these words within

Chiaro's spirit, she left his side quietly, and stood up as

he had first seen her: with her fingers laid together,

and her eyes steadfast, and with the breadth of her long

dress covering her feet on the floor. And, speaking

again, she said:—
“Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto

thee, and paint me thus, as I am, to know me: weak, as
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I am, and in the weeds of this time; only with eyes

which seek out labour, and with a faith, not learned, yet

jealous of prayer. Do this; so shall thy soul stand

before thee always, and perplex thee no more.”
And Chiaro did as she bade him. While he worked,

his face grew solemn with knowledge: and before the

shadows had turned, his work was done. Having

finished, he lay back where he sat, and was asleep imme-

diately: for the growth of that strong sunset was heavy

about him, and he felt weak and haggard; like one just

come out of a dusk, hollow country, bewildered with

echoes, where he had lost himself, and who has not slept

for many days and nights. And when she saw him lie

back, the beautiful woman came to him, and sat at his

head, gazing, and quieted his sleep with her voice.
The tumult of the factions had endured all that day

through all Pisa, though Chiaro had not heard it: and

the last service of that feast was a mass sung at mid-

night from the windows of all the churches for the many

dead who lay about the city, and who had to be buried

before morning, because of the extreme heats.
In the spring of 1847, I was at Florence. Such as

were there at the same time with myself—those, at

least, to whom Art is something,—will certainly recollect

how many rooms of the Pitti Gallery were closed

through that season, in order that some of the pictures

they contained might be examined and repaired without

the necessity of removal. The hall, the staircases,

and the vast central suite of apartments, were the only

accessible portions; and in these such paintings as they

could admit from the sealed penetralia were profanely

huddled together, without respect of dates, schools, or

persons.
I fear that, through this interdict, I may have missed

seeing many of the best pictures. I do not mean only

the most talked of: for these, as they were restored,
Image of page 396 page: 396
generally found their way somehow into the open rooms,

owing to the clamours raised by the students; and I

remember how old Ercoli's, the curator's, spectacles used

to be mirrored in the reclaimed surface, as he leaned

mysteriously over these works with some of the visitors,

to scrutinize and elucidate.
One picture that I saw that spring, I shall not easily

forget. It was among those, I believe, brought from the

other rooms, and had been hung, obviously out of all

chronology, immediately beneath that head by Raphael

so long known as the Berrettino, and now said to be the

portrait of Cecco Ciulli.
The picture I speak of is a small one, and represents

merely the figure of a woman, clad to the hands and feet

with a green and grey raiment, chaste and early in its

fashion, but exceedingly simple. She is standing: her

hands are held together lightly, and her eyes set ear-

nestly open.
The face and hands in this picture, though wrought

with great delicacy, have the appearance of being

painted at once, in a single sitting: the drapery is

unfinished. As soon as I saw the figure, it drew an

awe upon me, like water in shadow. I shall not attempt

to describe it more than I have already done; for the

most absorbing wonder of it was its literality. You

knew that figure, when painted, had been seen; yet it

was not a thing to be seen of men. This language will

appear ridiculous to such as have never looked on the

work; and it may be even to some among those who

have. On examining it closely, I perceived in one

corner of the canvas the words Manus Animam pinxit,

and the date 1239.
I turned to my Catalogue, but that was useless, for the

pictures were all displaced. I then stepped up to the

Cavaliere Ercoli, who was in the room at the moment,

and asked him regarding the subject and authorship of

the painting. He treated the matter, I thought, some-

what slightingly, and said that he could show me the
Image of page 397 page: 397
reference in the Catalogue, which he had compiled. This,

when found, was not of much value, as it merely said,

“Schizzo d'autore incerto,” adding the inscription.* I

could willingly have prolonged my inquiry, in the hope

that it might somehow lead to some result; but I had

disturbed the curator from certain yards of Guido, and

he was not communicative. I went back, therefore, and

stood before the picture till it grew dusk.
The next day I was there again; but this time a

circle of students was round the spot, all copying the

Berrettino. I contrived, however, to find a place whence

I could see my picture, and where I seemed to be in

nobody's way. For some minutes I remained undis-

turbed; and then I heard, in an English voice: “Might

I beg of you, sir, to stand a little more to this side, as

you interrupt my view.”
I felt vexed, for, standing where he asked me, a glare

struck on the picture from the windows, and I could not

see it. However, the request was reasonably made, and

from a countryman; so I complied, and turning away,

stood by his easel. I knew it was not worth while; yet

I referred in some way to the work underneath the one

he was copying. He did not laugh, but he smiled as we

do in England. “ Very odd, is it not?” said he.
The other students near us were all continental; and

seeing an Englishman select an Englishman to speak

with, conceived, I suppose, that he could understand no

language but his own. They had evidently been noticing

the interest which the little picture appeared to excite

in me.
Transcribed Footnote (page 397):

* I should here say, that in the latest catalogues (owing, as in

cases before mentioned, to the zeal and enthusiasm of Dr. Aemm-

ster), this, and several other pictures, have been more competently

entered. The work in question is now placed in the Sala Sessa-

gona , a room I did not see—under the number 161. It is described

as “Figura mistica di Chiaro dell' Erma,” and there is a brief

notice of the author appended.

Image of page 398 page: 398
One of them, an Italian, said something to another

who stood next to him. He spoke with a Genoese

accent, and I lost the sense in the villanous dialect.

“Che so?” replied the other, lifting his eyebrows

towards the figure; “roba mistica: 'st' Inglesi son

matti sul misticismo: somiglia alle nebbie di là. Li

fa pensare alla patria,
  • ‘e intenerisce il core
  • Lo dì ch' han detto ai dolci amici adio.’”
“La notte, vuoi dire,” said a third.
There was a general laugh. My compatriot was

evidently a novice in the language, and did not take

in what was said. I remained silent, being amused.
“Et toi donc?” said he who had quoted Dante,

turning to a student, whose birthplace was unmistakable,

even had he been addressed in any other language:

“que dis-tu de ce genre-là ?”
“Moi?” returned the Frenchman, standing back from

his easel, and looking at me and at the figure, quite

politely, though with an evident reservation: “Je dis,

mon cher, que c'est une spécialité dont je me fiche pas

mal. Je tiens que quand on ne comprend pas une

chose, c'est qu' elle ne signifie rien.”
My reader thinks possibly that the French student

was right.
Image of page 399 page: 399
more about St. Agnes of Intercession
SAINT AGNES OF INTERCESSION.

“In all my life,” said my uncle in his customary voice, made up

of goodness and trusting simplicity, and a spice of piety withal,

which, an't pleased your worship, made it sound the sweeter,—

“In all my life,” quoth my uncle Toby, “I have never heard a

stranger story than one which was told me by a sergeant in

Maclure's regiment, and which, with your permission, Doctor, I

will relate.”

“No stranger, brother Toby,” said my father testily, “than a

certain tale to be found in Slawkenbergius (being the eighth of

his third Decad), and called by him the History of an Icelandish

Nose.”

“Nor than the golden legend of Saint Anschankus of Lithuania,”

added Dr. Slop, “who, being troubled digestively while delivering

his discourse ‘de sanctis sanctorum,’ was tempted by the Devil in

imagine vasis in contumeliam ,—which is to say,—in the form of a

vessel unto dishonour.”

Now Excentrio, as one mocking, sayeth, etc., etc.—Tristram

Shandy.

Among my earliest recollections, none is stronger than

that of my father standing before the fire when he came

home in the London winter evenings, and singing to us

in his sweet, generous tones: sometimes ancient English

ditties,—such songs as one might translate from the

birds, and the brooks might set to music; sometimes

those with which foreign travel had familiarized his

youth,—among them the great tunes which have rung

the world's changes since '89. I used to sit on the

hearth-rug, listening to him, and look between his knees

into the fire till it burned my face, while the sights

swarming up in it seemed changed and changed with the

music: till the music and the fire and my heart burned

together, and I would take paper and pencil, and try in

some childish way to fix the shapes that rose within me.

For my hope, even then, was to be a painter.
Image of page 400 page: 400
The first book I remember to have read, of my own

accord, was an old-fashioned work on Art, which my

mother had,—Hamilton's “English Conoscente.” It was

a kind of continental tour,—sufficiently Della-Cruscan,

from what I can recall of it,—and contained notices of

pictures which the author had seen abroad, with engrav-

ings after some of them. These were in the English

fashion of that day, executed in stipple and printed with

red ink; tasteless enough, no doubt, but I yearned to-

wards them and would toil over them for days. One

especially possessed for me a strong and indefinable

charm: it was a Saint Agnes in glory, by Bucciolo d'Orlì

Angiolieri. This plate I could copy from the first with

much more success than I could any of the others;

indeed, it was mainly my love of the figure, and a desire

to obtain some knowledge regarding it, which impelled

me, by one magnanimous effort upon the “Conoscente,”

to master in a few days more of the difficult art of reading

than my mother's laborious inculcations had accomplished

till then. However, what I managed to spell and puzzle

out related chiefly to the executive qualities of the

picture, which could be little understood by a mere child;

of the artist himself, or the meaning of his work, the

author of the book appeared to know scarcely any-

thing.
As I became older, my boyish impulse towards art

grew into a vital passion; till at last my father took me

from school and permitted me my own bent of study.

There is no need that I should dwell much upon the

next few years of my life. The beginnings of Art,

entered on at all seriously, present an alternation of

extremes:—on the one hand, the most bewildering

phases of mental endeavour, on the other, a toil rigidly

exact and dealing often with trifles. What was then

the precise shape of the cloud within my tabernacle, I

could scarcely say now; or whether through so thick a

veil I could be sure of its presence there at all. And

as to which statue at the Museum I drew most or learned
Image of page 401 page: 401
least from,—or which Professor at the Academy “set”

the model in the worst taste,—these are things which no

one need care to know. I may say, briefly, that I was

wayward enough in the pursuit, if not in the purpose;

that I cared even too little for what could be taught me

by others; and that my original designs greatly out-

numbered my school-drawings.
In most cases where study (such study, at least, as

involves any practical elements) has benumbed that

subtle transition which brings youth out of boyhood,

there comes a point, after some time, when the mind

loses its suppleness and is riveted merely by the con-

tinuance of the mechanical effort. It is then that the

constrained senses gradually assume their utmost ten-

sion, and any urgent impression from without will

suffice to scatter the charm. The student looks up: the

film of their own fixedness drops at once from before

his eyes, and for the first time he sees his life in the

face.
In my nineteenth year, I might say that, between one

path of Art and another, I worked hard. One afternoon

I was returning, after an unprofitable morning, from a

class which I attended. The day was one of those

oppressive lulls in autumn, when application, unless

under sustained excitement, is all but impossible,—

when the perceptions seem curdled and the brain full

of sand. On ascending the stairs to my room, I heard

voices there, and when I entered, found my sister

Catharine, with another young lady, busily turning over

my sketches and papers, as if in search of something.

Catharine laughed, and introduced her companion as

Miss Mary Arden. There might have been a little

malice in the laugh, for I remembered to have heard the

lady's name before, and to have then made in fun some

teasing inquiries about her, as one will of one's sisters'

friends. I bowed for the introduction, and stood re-

buked. She had her back to the window, and I could

not well see her features at the moment; but I made sure
Sig. 26
Image of page 402 page: 402
she was very beautiful, from her tranquil body and the

way that she held her hands. Catharine told me they

had been looking together for a book of hers which

I had had by me for some time, and which she had

promised to Miss Arden. I joined in the search, the

book was found, and soon after they left my room. I

had come in utterly spiritless; but now I fell to and

worked well for several hours. In the evening, Miss

Arden remained with our family circle till rather late:

till she left I did not return to my room, nor, when

there, was my work resumed that night. I had thought

her more beautiful than at first.
After that, every time I saw her, her beauty seemed

to grow on my sight by gazing, as the stars do in water.

It was some time before I ceased to think of her beauty

alone; and even then it was still of her that I thought.

For about a year my studies somewhat lost their hold

upon me, and when that year was upon its close, she

and I were promised in marriage.
Miss Arden's station in life, though not lofty, was one

of more ease than my own, but the earnestness of her

attachment to me had deterred her parents from placing

any obstacles in the way of our union. All the more,

therefore, did I now long to obtain at once such a posi-

tion as should secure me from reproaching myself with

any sacrifice made by her for my sake: and I now set to

work with all the energy of which I was capable, upon

a picture of some labour, involving various aspects of

study. The subject was a modern one, and indeed it

has often seemed to me that all work, to be truly

worthy, should be wrought out of the age itself, as well

as out of the soul of its producer, which must needs be

a soul of the age. At this picture I laboured constantly

and unweariedly, my days and my nights; and Mary sat

to me for the principal female figure. The exhibition to

which I sent it opened a few weeks before the comple-

tion of my twenty-first year.
Naturally enough, I was there on the opening day.
Image of page 403 page: 403
My picture, I knew, had been accepted, but I was

ignorant of a matter perhaps still more important,—

its situation on the walls. On that now depended its

success; on its success the fulfilment of my most

cherished hopes might almost be said to depend. That

is not the least curious feature of life as evolved in

society,—which, where the average strength and the

average mind are equal, as in this world, becomes to

each life another name for destiny,—when a man, having

endured labour, gives its fruit into the hands of other

men, that they may do their work between him and

mankind: confiding it to them, unknown, without seek-

ing knowledge of them; to them, who have probably

done in like wise before him, without appeal to the

sympathy of kindred experience: submitting to them his

naked soul, himself, blind and unseen: and with no

thought of retaliation, when, it may be, by their judg-

ment, more than one year, from his dubious threescore

and ten, drops alongside, unprofitable, leaving its baffled

labour for its successors to recommence. There is

perhaps no proof more complete how sluggish and little

arrogant, in aggregate life, is the sense of individuality.
I dare say something like this may have been passing

in my mind as I entered the lobby of the exhibition,

though the principle, with me as with others, was sub-

servient to its application; my thoughts, in fact, starting

from and tending towards myself and my own picture.

The kind of uncertainty in which I then was is rather

a nervous affair; and when, as I shouldered my way

through the press, I heard my name spoken close behind

me, I believe that I could have wished the speaker

further off without being particular as to distance. I

could not well, however, do otherwise than look round,

and on doing so, recognized in him who had addressed

me a gentleman to whom I had been introduced over-

night at the house of a friend, and to whose remarks on

the Corn question and the National Debt I had listened

with a wish for deliverance somewhat akin to that which
Image of page 404 page: 404
I now felt; the more so, perhaps, that my distaste was

coupled with surprise; his name having been for some

time familiar to me as that of a writer of poetry.
As soon as we were rid of the crush, we spoke and

shook hands; and I said, to conceal my chagrin, some

platitudes as to Poetry being present to support her

sister Art in the hour of trial.
“Oh just so, thank you,” said he; “have you any-

thing here?”
While he spoke, it suddenly struck me that my friend,

the night before, had informed me this gentleman was a

critic as well as a poet. And indeed, for the hippopota-

mus-fronted man, with his splay limbs and wading gait,

it seemed the more congenial vocation of the two. In

a moment, the instinctive antagonism wedged itself

between the artist and the reviewer, and I avoided his

question.
He had taken my arm, and we were now in the gallery

together. My companion's scrutiny was limited almost

entirely to the “line,” but my own glance wandered

furtively among the suburbs and outskirts of the ceiling,

as a misgiving possessed me that I might have a per-

sonal interest in those unenviable “high places” of art.

Works, which at another time would have absorbed my

whole attention, could now obtain from me but a restless

and hurried examination: still I dared not institute an open

search for my own, lest thereby I should reveal to my

companion its presence in some dismal condemned corner

which might otherwise escape his notice. Had I procured

my catalogue, I might at least have known in which room

to look, but I had omitted to do so, thinking thereby to

know my fate the sooner, and never anticipating so

vexatious an obstacle to my search. Meanwhile I must

answer his questions, listen to his criticism, observe and

discuss. After nearly an hour of this work, we were

not through the first room. My thoughts were already

bewildered, and my face burning with excitement.
By the time we reached the second room, the crowd
Image of page 405 page: 405
was more dense than ever, and the heat more and more

oppressive. A glance round the walls could reveal but

little of the consecrated “line,” before all parts of which

the backs were clustered more or less thickly; except,

perhaps, where at intervals hung the work of some

venerable member, whose glory was departed from him.

The seats in the middle of the room were, for the most

part, empty as yet: here and there only an unenthusi-

astic lady had been left by her party, and sat in stately

unruffled toilet, her eye ranging apathetically over the

upper portion of the walls, where the gilt frames were

packed together in desolate parade. Over these my gaze

also passed uneasily, but without encountering the object

of its solicitude.
In this room my friend the critic came upon a picture,

conspicuously hung, which interested him prodigiously,

and on which he seemed determined to have my opinion.

It was one of those tender and tearful works, those

“labours of love,” since familiar to all print-shop flâneurs,

—in which the wax doll is made to occupy a position in

Art which it can never have contemplated in the days

of its humble origin. The silks heaved and swayed in

front of this picture the whole day long.
All that we could do was to stand behind, and catch a

glimpse of it now and then, through the whispering

bonnets, whose “curtains” brushed our faces continu-

ally. I hardly knew what to say, but my companion

was lavish of his admiration, and began to give symp-

toms of the gushing of the poet-soul. It appeared that

he had already seen the picture in the studio, and being

but little satisfied with my monosyllables, was at great

pains to convince me. While he chattered, I trembled

with rage and impatience.
“You must be tired,” said he at last; “so am I; let

us rest a little.” He led the way to a seat. I was his

slave, bound hand and foot: I followed him.
The crisis now proceeded rapidly. When seated, he

took from his pocket some papers, one of which he
Image of page 406 page: 406
handed to me. Who does not know the dainty action of

a poet fingering MS.? The knowledge forms a portion

of those wondrous instincts implanted in us for self-

preservation. I was past resistance, however, and took

the paper submissively.
“They are some verses,” he said, “suggested by the

picture you have just seen. I mean to print them in

our next number, as being the only species of criticism

adequate to such a work.”
I read the poem twice over, for after the first reading

I found I had not attended to a word of it, and was

ashamed to give it him back. The repetition was not,

however, much more successful, as regarded comprehen-

sion,—a fact which I have since believed (having seen

it again) may have been dependent upon other causes

besides my distracted thoughts. The poem, now in-

cluded among the works of its author, runs as follows:—
more about O thou who art not as I am
  • “O thou who art not as I am,
  • Yet knowest all that I must be,—
  • O thou who livest certainly
  • Full of deep meekness like a lamb
  • Close laid for warmth under its dam,
  • On pastures bare towards the sea:—
  • “Look on me, for my soul is bleak,
  • Nor owns its labour in the years,
  • Because of the deep pain of tears:
  • 10 It hath not found and will not seek,
  • Lest that indeed remain to speak
  • Which, passing, it believes it hears.
  • “Like ranks in calm unipotence
  • Swayed past, compact and regular,
  • Time's purposes and portents are:
  • Yet the soul sleeps, while in the sense
  • The graven brows of Consequence
  • Lie sunk, as in blind wells the star.
  • “O gaze along the wind-strewn path
  • 20 That curves distinct upon the road
  • To the dim purple-hushed abode.
    • Image of page 407 page: 407
  • Lo! autumntide and aftermath!
  • Remember that the year has wrath
  • If the ungarnered wheat corrode.
  • “It is not that the fears are sore
  • Or that the evil pride repels:
  • But there where the heart's knowledge dwells
  • The heart is gnawed within the core,
  • Nor loves the perfume from that shore
  • 30 Faint with bloom-pulvered asphodels.”
Having atoned for non-attention by a second perusal,

whose only result was non-comprehension, I thought I

had done my duty towards this performance, which I

accordingly folded up and returned to its author. He

asked, in so many words, my opinion of it.
“I think,” replied I coolly, “that when a poet strikes

out for himself a new path in style, he should first be

quite convinced that it possesses sufficient advantages to

counterbalance the contempt which the swarm of his

imitators will bring upon poetry.”
My ambiguity was successful. I could see him take

the compliment to himself, and inhale it like a scent,

while a slow broad smile covered his face. It was much

as if, at some meeting, on a speech being made compli-

mentary to the chairman, one of the waiters should

elbow that personage aside, plant his knuckles on the

table, and proceed to return thanks.
And indeed, I believe my gentleman was about to do

so in due form, but my thoughts, which had been unable

to resist some enjoyment of his conceit, now suddenly

reverted to their one dominant theme; and rising at

once, in an indignant spleen at being thus harassed and

beset, I declared that I must leave him, and hurry

through the rest of the gallery by myself, for that I had

an impending appointment. He rose also. As we

were shaking hands, a part of the “line” opposite to

where we stood was left bare by a lapse in the crowd.

“There seems to be an odd-looking picture,” said my

companion. I looked in the same direction: the press
Image of page 408 page: 408
was closing again; I caught only a glimpse of the

canvas, but that sufficed: it was my own picture, on

the line! For a moment my head swam with me.
He walked towards the place, and I followed him. I

did not at first hear well what he said of the picture;

but when I did, I found he was abusing it. He called

it quaint, crude, even grotesque; and certainly the

uncompromising adherence to nature as then present

before me, which I had attempted throughout, gave it,

in the exhibition, a more curious and unique appearance

than I could have anticipated. Of course only a very

few minutes elapsed before my companion turned to the

catalogue for the artist's name.
“They thought the thing good,” he drawled as he ran

his eye down the pages, “or it wouldn't be on the line.

605, 606, —— or else the fellow has interest some-

where. 630, what the deuce am I thinking of?——

613, 613, 613 —— Here it is ——Why,” he exclaimed,

short of breath with astonishment, “the picture is

yours!”
“Well, it seems so,” said I, looking over his shoulder;

“I suppose they're likely to know.”
“And so you wanted to get away before we came to

it. And so the picture is yours!”
“Likely to remain so too,” I replied laughing, “if

every one thinks as well of it as you do.”
“Oh! mind you,” he exclaimed, “you must not be

offended: one always finds fault first: I am sure to

congratulate you.”
The surprise he was in made him speak rather loud,

so that people were beginning to nudge each other, and

whisper that I was the painter. I therefore repeated

hurriedly that I really must go, or I should miss my

appointment.
“Stay a minute,” ejaculated my friend the critic; “I

am trying to think what the style of your picture is like.

It is like the works of a very early man that I saw in

Italy. Angioloni, Angellini, Angiolieri, that was the
Image of page 409 page: 409
name, Bucciuolo Angiolieri. He always turned the toes

in. The head of your woman there” (and he pointed to

the figure painted from Mary) “is exactly like a

St. Agnes of his at Bologna.”
A flash seemed to strike before my eyes as he spoke.

The name mentioned was a part of my first recollections;

and the picture he spoke of.... Yes, indeed, there,

in the face of my betrothed bride, I beheld the once

familiar features of the St. Agnes, forgotten since child-

hood! I gazed fixedly on the work of my own hands;

and thought turned in my brain like a wheel.
When I looked again toward my companion, I could

see that he was wondering at my evident abstraction. I

did not explain, but abruptly bidding him good-bye,

hastened out of the exhibition.
As I walked homewards, the cloud was still about me,

and the street seemed to pass me like a shadow. My

life had been, as it were, drawn by, and the child and

the man brought together. How had I not at once

recognized, in her I loved, the dream of my childhood?

Yet, doubtless, the sympathy of relation, though uncon-

scious, must have had its influence. The fact of the

likeness was a mere casualty, however singular; but

that which had cast the shadow of a man's love in the

path of the child, and left the seed at his heart to work

its growth blindly in darkness, was surely much more

than chance.
Immediately on reaching home, I made inquiries of

my mother concerning my old friend the “English

Conoscente”; but learned, to my disappointment, that

she had long since missed the book, and had never

recovered it. I felt vexed in the extreme.
The joy with which the news of my picture was

hailed at home may readily be imagined. There was

one, however, to whom it may have been more welcome

even than to my own household: to her, as to myself, it

was hope seen nearer. I could scarcely have assigned

a reason why I refrained from mentioning to her, or to
Image of page 410 page: 410
any one, the strange point of resemblance which I had

been led to perceive; but from some unaccountable

reluctance I kept it to myself at the time. The matter

was detailed in the journal of the worthy poet-critic who

had made the discovery; such scraps of research being

much too scarce not to be worked to their utmost; it

may be too that my precipitate retreat had left him in

the belief of my being a convicted plagiarist. I do not

think, however, that either Mary's family or my own

saw the paper; and indeed it was much too æsthetic to

permit itself many readers.
Meanwhile, my picture was obtaining that amount of

notice, favourable with unfavourable, which constitutes

success, and was not long in finding a purchaser. My

way seemed clearing before me. Still, I could not

prevent my mind from dwelling on the curious incident

connected with the painting, and which, by constant

brooding upon it, had begun to assume, in my idea,

almost the character of a mystery. The coincidence was

the more singular that my work, being in subject,

costume, and accessories, English, and of the present

period, could scarcely have been expected to suggest so

striking an affinity in style to the productions of one of

the earliest Italian painters.
The gentleman who purchased my picture had com-

missioned me at the same time for another. I had

always entertained a great wish to visit Italy, but now

a still stronger impulse than before drew me thither.

All substantial record having been lost, I could hardly

persuade myself that the idol of my childhood, and the

worship I had rendered it, was not all an unreal dream:

and every day the longing possessed me more strongly

to look with my own eyes upon the veritable St. Agnes.

Not holding myself free to marry as yet, I therefore

determined (having it now within my power) that I

would seek Italy at once, and remain there while I

painted my next picture. Nor could even the thought

of leaving Mary deter me from this resolution.
Image of page 411 page: 411
On the day I quitted England, Mary's father again

placed her hand in mine, and renewed his promise; but

our own hearts were a covenant between us.
From this point, my narrative will proceed more

rapidly to its issue. Some lives of men are as the sea

is, continually vexed and trampled with winds. Others

are, as it were, left on the beach. There the wave is

long in reaching its tide-mark, where it abides but a

moment; afterwards, for the rest of that day, the water

is shifted back more or less slowly; the sand it has

filled hardens; and hourly the wind drives lower till

nightfall.
To dwell here on my travels any further than in so

much as they concern the thread of my story, would be

superfluous. The first place where I established myself,

on arriving in the Papal State, was Bologna, since it was

there, as I well remembered, that the St. Agnes of

Bucciuolo Angiolieri was said to be. I soon became

convinced, however, after ransacking the galleries and

private collections, that I had been misinformed. The

great Clementine is for the most part a dismal wilderness

of Bolognese Art, “where nothing is that hath life,”

being rendered only the more ghastly by the “life-in-

death” of Guido and the Caracci; and the private

collectors seem to emulate the Clementine.
From Bologna I removed to Rome, where I stayed

only for a month, and proceeded thence into Tuscany.

Here, in the painter's native province, after all, I

thought the picture was most likely to be found; as is

generally the case with artists who have produced com-

paratively few works, and whose fame is not of the

highest order of all. Having visited Siena and Arezzo,

I took up my abode in Florence. Here, however, seeing

the necessity of getting to work at once, I commenced

my next picture, devoting to it a certain number of hours

each day; the rest of my time being chiefly spent among

the galleries, where I continued my search. The St.

Agnes still eluded me; but in the Pitti and elsewhere,
Image of page 412 page: 412
I met with several works of Bucciuolo; in all of which

I thought, in fact, that I could myself recognize, despite

the wide difference both of subject and occasional treat-

ment, a certain mental approximation, not easily defined,

to the style of my own productions. The peculiarities

of feeling and manner which had attracted my boyish

admiration had evidently sunk deep, and maintained,

though hitherto unperceived, their influence over me.
I had been at Florence for about three months, and

my picture was progressing, though slowly enough;

moreover, the other idea which engrossed me was losing

its energy, by the recurrence of defeat, so that I now

determined on leaving the thing mainly to chance, and

went here and there, during the hours when I was not

at work, seeing what was to see. One day, however,

being in a bookseller's shop, I came upon some numbers

of a new Dictionary of Works of Art, then in course of

publication, where it was stated that a painting of St.

Agnes, by Bucciuolo Angiolieri, was in the possession

of the Academy of Perugia. This then, doubtless, was

the work I wished to see; and when in the Roman

States, I must already have passed upon my search

through the town which contained it. In how many

books had I rummaged for the information which chance

had at length thrown in my way! I was almost inclined

to be provoked with so inglorious a success. All my

interest in the pursuit, however, revived at once, and I

immediately commenced taking measures for retracing

my steps to Perugia. Before doing so I despatched a

long letter to Mary, with whom I kept up a correspon-

dence, telling her where to direct her next missive, but

without informing her as to the motive of my abrupt

removal, although in my letter I dwelt at some length,

among other topics, on those works of Bucciuolo which

I had met with at Florence.
I arrived at Perugia late in the evening, and to see the

gallery before the next morning was out of the question.

I passed a most restless night. The same one thought
Image of page 413 page: 413
had been more or less with me during the whole of my

journey, and would not leave me now until my wish was

satisfied. The next day proved to be one on which the

pictures were not visible; so that on hastening to the

Academy in the morning, I was again disappointed.

Upon the second day, had they refused me admittance,

I believe I should have resorted to desperate measures.

The doors however were at last wide open. Having

put the swarm of guides to rout, I set my feet on the

threshold; and such is the power of one absorbing idea,

long suffered to dwell on the mind, that as I entered

I felt my heart choke me as if with some vague

apprehension.
This portion of my story which the reader has already

gone through is so unromantic and easy of belief, that I

fear the startling circumstances which remain to be told

will jar upon him all the more by contrast as a clumsy

fabrication. My course, however, must be to speak on,

relating to the best of my memory things in which the

memory is not likely to have failed; and reserving at

least my own inward knowledge that all the events of

this narrative (however unequal the measure of credit

they may obtain) have been equally, with myself,

matters of personal experience.
The Academy of Perugia is, in its little sphere, one

of the high places of privilege; and the first room, the

Council Chamber, full of rickety arm chairs, is hung

with the presentation pictures of the members, a collec-

tion of indigenous grandeurs of the school of David. I

purchased a catalogue of an old woman who was knitting

in one corner, and proceeded to turn the leaves with

nervous anxiety. Having found that the Florentine

pictures were in the last room, I commenced hurrying

across the rest of the gallery as fast as the polish of the

waxed boards would permit. There was no visitor

besides myself in the rooms, which were full of Roman,

Bolognese, and Perugian handiwork: one or two students

only, who had set up their easels before some master-
Image of page 414 page: 414
piece of the “advanced” style, stared round in wonder

at my irreverent haste. As I walked, I continued my

search in the catalogue; so that, by the time I reached

the Florentine room, I had found the number, and

walked, with a beating heart, straight up to the picture.
The picture is about half the size of life: it represents

a beautiful woman, seated, in the costume of the painter's

time, richly adorned with jewels; she holds a palm

branch, and a lamb nestles to her feet. The glory round

her head is a device pricked without colour on the gold

background, which is full of the faces of angels. The

countenance was the one known to me, by a feeble

reflex, in childhood; it was also the exact portrait of

Mary, feature by feature. I had been absent from her

for more than five months, and it was like seeing her

again.
As I looked, my whole life seemed to crowd about me,

and to stun me like a pulse in my head. For some

time I stood lost in astonishment, admiration, perplex-

ity, helpless of conjecture, and an almost painful sense of

love.
I had seen that in the catalogue there was some

account of the picture; and now, after a long while, I

removed my eyes, dizzy with gazing and with thought,

from the face, and read in Italian as follows:
“No. 212. St. Agnes, with a glory of angels. By

Bucciuolo Angiolieri.
“Bertuccio, Buccio, or Bucciuolo d'Orlì Angiolieri, a

native of Cignana in the Florentine territory, was born

in 1405 and died in 1460. He was the friend, and has

been described as the pupil, of Benozzo Gozzoli; which

latter statement is not likely to be correct, since their

ages were nearly the same, as are also the dates of their

earliest known pictures.
“He is said by some to have been the first to introduce

a perfectly nude figure in a devotional subject (the St.

Sebastian now at Florence); an opinion which Professor

Ehrenhaupt has called in question, by fixing the date of
Image of page 415 page: 415
the five anonymous frescoes in the Church of Sant'

Andrea d'Oltr 'arno, which contain several nude figures,

at a period antecedent to that in which he flourished.

His works are to be met with at Florence, at Lucca, and

in one or two cities of Germany. The present picture,

though ostensibly representing St. Agnes, is the por-

trait of Blanzifiore dall 'Ambra, a lady to whom the

painter was deeply attached, and who died early. The

circumstances connected by tradition with the painting

of this picture are of a peculiarly melancholy nature.
“It appears that, in the vicissitudes of faction, the lady's

family were exiled from Florence, and took refuge at

Lucca; where some of them were delivered by treachery

to their enemies and put to death. These accumulated

misfortunes (not the least among which was the separa-

tion from her lover, who, on account of his own ties and

connections, could not quit Florence), preyed fatally on

the mind and health of Blanzifiore; and before many

months had passed, she was declared to be beyond

medicinal aid. No sooner did she learn this, than her

first thought was of the misery which her death would

occasion her lover; and she insisted on his being sum-

moned immediately from Florence, that they might at

least see each other once again upon earth. When, on his

arrival, she witnessed his anguish at thus losing her for

ever, Blanzifiore declared that she would rise at once

from her bed, and that Bucciuolo should paint her por-

trait before she died; for so, she said, there should still

remain something to him whereby to have her in

memory. In this will she persisted against all remon-

strance occasioned by the fears of her friends; and for

two days, though in a dying state, she sat with wonder-

ful energy to her lover: clad in her most sumptuous

attire, and arrayed with all her jewels: her two sisters

remaining constantly at her side, to sustain her and

supply restoratives. On the third day, while Bucciuolo

was still at work, she died without moving.
“After her death, Bucciuolo finished the portrait, and
Image of page 416 page: 416
added to it the attributes of St. Agnes, in honour of her

purity. He kept it always near him during his lifetime;

and, in dying, bequeathed it to the Church of Santa

Agnese dei Lavoranti, where he was buried at her side.

During all the years of his life, after the death of Blan-

zifiore, he remained at Lucca: where some of his works

are still to be found.
“The present picture has been copied many times, but

never competently engraved; and was among those con-

veyed to Paris by Bonaparte, in the days of his omnipo-

tence.”
The feeling of wonder which attained bewilderment,

as I proceeded with this notice, was yet less strong than

an intense penetrating sympathy excited in me by the

unhappy narrative, which I could not easily have

accounted for, but which so overcame me that, as I

finished, the tears stung my eyes. I remained for some

time leaning upon the bar which separated me from the

picture, till at last my mind settled to more definite

thought. But thought here only served to confound. A

woman had then lived four hundred years since, of

whom that picture was the portrait; and my own eyes

bore me witness that it was also the surpassingly per-

fect resemblance of a woman now living and breathing,

—of my own affianced bride! While I stood, these

things grew and grew upon my mind, till my thoughts

seemed to hustle about me like pent-up air.
The catalogue was still open in my hand; and now,

as my eyes wandered, in aimless distraction, over the

page, they were arrested by these words: “ No. 231.

Portrait of Bucciuolo Angiolieri painted by himself .” At

first my bewildered perceptions scarcely attached a

meaning to the words; yet, owing no doubt to the

direction of my thoughts, my eye dwelt upon them, and

continued to peruse them over and over, until at last

their purport flashed upon me. At the same instant

that it did so, I turned round and glanced rapidly over

the walls for the number: it was at the other end of the
Image of page 417 page: 417
room. A trembling suspense, with something almost of

involuntary awe, was upon me as I ran towards the

spot; the picture was hung low; I stooped over the rail

to look closely at it, and was face to face with myself!

I can recall my feeling at that moment, only as one of

the most lively and exquisite fear.
It was myself, of nearly the same age as mine was

then, but perhaps a little older. The hair and beard

were of my colour, trimmed in an antique fashion; and

the dress belonged to the early part of the fifteenth cen-

tury. In the background was a portion of the city of

Florence. One of the upper corners contained this

inscription:—
ALBERTUS* ORLITIS ANGELERIUS

Ipsum ipse

ÆTAT. SUÆ XXIV.
That it was my portrait,—that the St. Agnes was the

portrait of Mary,—and that both had been painted by

myself four hundred years ago,—this now rose up dis-

tinctly before me as the one and only solution of so

startling a mystery, and as being, in fact, that result

round which, or some portion of which, my soul had

been blindly hovering, uncertain of itself. The tremen-

dous experience of that moment, the like of which has

never, perhaps, been known to any other man, must

remain undescribed; since the description, read calmly

at common leisure, could seem but fantastic raving. I

was as one who, coming after a wilderness to some city

dead since the first world, should find among the tombs

a human body in his own exact image, embalmed;

having the blackened coin still within its lips, and the

jars still at its side, in honour of gods whose very names

are abolished.
After the first incapable pause, during which I stood

rooted to the spot, I could no longer endure to look on
Transcribed Footnote (page 417):

* Alberto, Albertuccio, Bertuccio, Buccio, Bucciuolo.

Sig. 27
Image of page 418 page: 418
the picture, and turning away, fled back through the

rooms and into the street. I reached it with the sweat

springing on my forehead, and my face felt pale and

cold in the sun.
As I hurried homewards, amid all the chaos of my

ideas, I had clearly resolved on one thing,—namely, that

I would leave Perugia that night on my return to Eng-

land. I had passports which would carry me as far as

the confines of Italy; and when there I counted on some-

how getting them signed at once by the requisite

authorities, so as to pursue my journey without delay.
On entering my room in the hotel where I had put up,

I found a letter from Mary lying on the table. I was

too much agitated with conflicting thoughts to open it at

once; and therefore allowed it to remain till my pertur-

bation should in some measure have subsided. I drew

the blinds before my windows, and covered my face to

think; my forehead was still damp between my hands.

At least an hour must have elapsed in that tumult of the

spirit which leaves no impression behind, before I opened

the letter.
It was an answer to the one which I had posted before

leaving Florence. After many questions and much news

of home, there was a paragraph which ran thus:—
“The account you give me of the works of Bucciuolo

Angiolieri interested me greatly. I am surprised never

to have heard you mention him before, as he appears to

find so much favour with you. But perhaps he was un-

known to you till now. How I wish I could stand by

your side before his pictures, to enjoy them with you

and hear you interpret their beauties! I assure you that

what you say about them is so vivid, and shows so much

insight into all the meanings of the painter, that, while

reading, I could scarcely divest myself of the impression

that you were describing some of your own works.”
As I finished the last sentence, the paper fell from my

hands. A solemn passage of scripture had been running

in my mind; and as I again lay back and hid my now
Image of page 419 page: 419
burning and fevered face, I repeated it aloud:—“How

unsearchable are Thy judgments, and Thy ways past

finding out!”
As I have said, my intention was to set out from

Perugia that same night; but on making enquiry, I

found that it would be impossible to do so before the

morning, as there was no conveyance till then. Post-

horses, indeed, I might have had, but of this my re-

sources would not permit me to think. That was a

troubled and gloomy evening for me. I wrote, as well

as my disturbed state would allow me, a short letter to

my mother, and one to Mary, to apprise them of my

return; after which, I went early to bed, and, contrary

to my expectations, was soon asleep.
That night I had a dream, which has remained as

clear and whole in my memory as the events of the day:

and so strange were those events—so apart from the

rest of my life till then,—that I could sometimes almost

persuade myself that my dream of that night also was

not without a mystic reality.
I dreamt that I was in London, at the exhibition where

my picture had been; but in the place of my picture,

which I could not see, there hung the St. Agnes of

Perugia. A crowd was before it; and I heard several

say that it was against the rules to hang that picture, for

that the painter (naming me) was dead. At this, a

woman who was there began to weep: I looked at her

and perceived it to be Mary. She had her arm in that

of a man who appeared to wear a masquerade dress;

his back was towards me, and he was busily writing on

some tablets; but on peering over his shoulder, I saw

that his pencil left no mark where it passed, which he

did not seem to perceive, however, going on as before.

I spoke to Mary, but she continued crying and did not

look up. I then touched her companion on the shoulder;

but finding that he paid no attention, I shook him and

told him to resign that lady's arm to me, as she was my

bride. He then turned round suddenly, and showed me
Image of page 420 page: 420
my own face with the hair and beard quaintly cut, as in

the portrait of Bucciuolo. After looking mournfully at

me, he said, “Not mine, friend, but neither thine:” and

while he spoke, his face fell in like a dead face. Mean-

time, every one seemed pale and uneasy, and they began

to whisper in knots; and all at once I found opposite

me the critic I met at the gallery, who was saying some-

thing I could not understand, but so fast that he panted

and kept wiping his forehead. Then my dream changed.

I was going up stairs to my room at home, where I

thought Mary was waiting to sit for her portrait. The

staircase was quite dark; and as I went up, the voices

of several persons I knew passed by me, as if they were

descending; and sometimes my own among them. I

had reached the top, and was feeling for the handle of

the door, when it was opened suddenly by an angel;

and looking in, I saw, not Mary, but a woman whose

face was hidden with white light, and who had a lamb

beside her that was bleating aloud. She knelt in the

middle of the room, and I heard her say several times:

“O Lord, it is more than he can bear. Spare him, O

Lord, for her sake whom he consecrated to me.” After

this, music came out of heaven, and I thought to have

heard speech; but instead, there was silence that woke

me.
This dream must have occurred repeatedly in the

course of the night, for I remember waking up in perfect

darkness, overpowered with fear, and crying out in the

words which I had heard spoken by the woman; and

when I woke in the morning, it was from the same

dream, and the same words were on my lips.
During the two days passed at Perugia, I had not had

time to think of the picture I was engaged upon, which

had therefore remained in its packing-case, as had also

the rest of my baggage. I was thus in readiness to start

without further preliminaries. My mind was so con-

fused and disturbed that I have but a faint recollection

of that morning; to the agitating events of the previous
Image of page 421 page: 421
day, my dream had now added, in spite of myself, a

vague foreboding of calamity.
No obstacle occurred throughout the course of my

journey, which was, even at that recent date, a longer

one than it is now. The whole time, with me, was

occupied by one haunting and despotic idea: it accom-

panied me all day on the road; and if we paused at

night it either held me awake or drove all rest from my

sleep. It is owing to this, I suppose, that the wretched

mode of conveyance, the evil roads, the evil weather,

the evil inns, the harassings of petty authorities, and all

those annoyances which are set as close as milestones

all over the Continent, remain in my memory only with

a general sense of discomfort. Moreover, on the day

when I left Perugia I had felt the seeds of fever already

in my veins; and during the journey this oppression

kept constantly on the increase. I was obliged, however,

carefully to conceal it, since the panic of the cholera was

again in Europe, and any sign of illness would have

caused me to be left at once on the road.
By the night of my arrival in London, I felt that I was

truly and seriously ill; and, indeed during the last

part of the journey, physical suffering had for the first

time succeeded in partially distracting my thought from

the thing which possessed it. The first inquiries I made

of my family were regarding Mary. I learned that she

at least was still in good health, and anxiously looking

for my arrival; that she would have been there, indeed,

but that I had not been expected till a day later. This

was a weight taken from my heart. After scarcely more

than an hour passed among my family, I repaired to my

bed; both body and mind had at length a perfect craving

for rest. My mother, immediately on my arrival, had

noticed my flushed and haggard appearance; but when

questioned by her I attributed this to the fatigues of

travelling.
In spite of my extreme need of sleep, and the wish I

felt for it, I believe that I slept but little that night.
Image of page 422 page: 422
I am not certain, however, for I can only remember that

as soon as I lay down my head began to whirl till I

seemed to be lifted out of my bed; but whether this

were in waking or a part of some distempered dream, I

cannot determine. This, however, is the last thing I can

recall. The next morning I was in a raging fever, which

lasted for five weeks.
Health and consciousness came back to me by degrees,

as light and air towards the outlet of a long vault. At

length, one day, I sat up in bed for the first time. My

head felt light in the pillows; and the sunshine that

warmed the room made my blood creep refreshingly.

My father and mother were both with me.
As sense had deserted my mind, so had it returned,

in the form of one constant thought. But this was now

grown peremptory, absolute, uncompromising, and

seemed to cry within me for speech, till silence became

a torment. To-day, therefore, feeling for the first time,

since my gradual recovery, enough of strength for the

effort, I resolved that I would at last tell the whole to

my parents. Having first warned them of the extra-

ordinary nature of the disclosure I was about to make,

I accordingly began. Before I had gone far with my

story, however, my mother fell back in her seat, sobbing

violently; then rose, and running up to me, kissed me

many times, still sobbing and calling me her poor boy.

She then left the room. I looked towards my father,

and saw that he had turned away his face. In a few

moments he rose also without looking at me, and went

out as my mother had done.
I could not quite account for this, but was so weary of

doubt and conjecture, that I was content to attribute it to

the feelings excited by my narration and the pity for all

those troubles which the events I spoke of had brought

upon me. It may appear strange, but I believe it to

have been the fact, that the startling and portentous

reality which those events had for me, while it left me

fully prepared for wonder and perturbation on the part
Image of page 423 page: 423
of my hearers, prevented the idea from even occurring

to me that, as far as belief went, there could be more

hesitation in another's than in my own.
It was not long before my father returned. On my

questioning him as to the cause of my mother's excite-

ment, he made no explicit answer, but begged to hear

the remainder of what I had to disclose. I went on,

therefore, and told my tale to the end. When I had

finished, my father again appeared deeply affected; but

soon recovering himself, endeavoured, by reasoning, to

persuade me either that the circumstances I had described

had no foundation save in my own diseased fancy, or

else that at the time of their occurrence incipient illness

had caused me to magnify very ordinary events into

marvels and omens.
Finding that I still persisted in my conviction of their

actuality, he then informed me that the matters I had

related were already known to himself and to my mother

through the disjointed ravings of my long delirium, in

which I had dwelt on the same theme incessantly; and

that their grief, which I had remarked, was occasioned

by hearing me discourse thus connectedly on the same

wild and unreal subject, after they had hoped me to be

on the road to recovery. To convince me that this

could merely be the effect of prolonged illness, he led

me to remark that I had never till then alluded to the

topic, either by word or in any of my letters, although,

by my account, the chain of coincidences had already

begun before I left England. Lastly, he implored me

most earnestly at once to resist and dispel this fantastic

brain-sickness, lest the same idea, allowed to retain

possession of my mind, might end,—as he dreaded to

think that it indeed might,—by endangering my reason.
My father's last words struck me like a stone in the

mouth; there was no longer any answer that I could

make. I was very weak at the time, and I believe I

lay down in my bed and sobbed. I remember it was

on that day that it seemed to me of no use to see Mary
Image of page 424 page: 424
again, or, indeed, to strive again after any aim I had

had, and that for the first time I wished to die; and

then it was that there came distinctly, such as it may

never have come to any other man, the unutterable

suspicion of the vanity of death.
From that day until I was able to leave my bed, I

never in any way alluded to the same terrible subject;

but I feared my father's eye as though I had been

indeed a madman. It is a wonder that I did not

really lose my senses. I lived in a continual panic lest

I should again speak of that matter unconsciously, and

used to repeat inwardly, for hours together, words

enjoining myself to silence. Several friends of the

family, who had made constant inquiries during my

illness, now wished to see me; but this I strictly

refused, being in fear that my incubus might get the

better of me, and that I might suddenly implore them to

say if they had any recollection of a former existence.

Even a voice or a whistle from the street would set me

wondering whether that man also had lived before, and

if so, why I alone should be cursed with this awful

knowledge. It was useless even to seek relief in books;

for the name of any historical character occurring at once

disturbed my fevered mind with conjectures as to what

name its possessor now bore, who he was, and in what

country his lot was cast.
For another week after that day I was confined to my

room, and then at last I might go forth. Latterly, I had

scarcely spoken to any one, but I do not think that either

my father or my mother imagined I had forgotten. It

was on a Sunday that I left the house for the first time.

Some person must have been buried at the neighbouring

church very early that morning, for I recollect that the

first thing I heard upon waking was the funeral bell.

I had had, during the night, but a restless throbbing

kind of sleep; and I suppose it was my excited nerves

which made me wait with a feeling of ominous dread

through the long pauses of the tolling, unbroken as they
Image of page 425 page: 425
were by any sound from the silent Sunday streets,

except the twitter of birds about the housetops. The

last knell had long ceased, and I had been lying for some

time in bitter reverie, when the bells began to ring for

church. I cannot express the sudden refreshing joy

which filled me at that moment. I rose from my bed,

and kneeling down, prayed while the sound lasted.
On joining my parents at breakfast, I made my mother

repeat to me once more how many times Mary had

called during my illness, and all that she had said and

done. They told me that she would probably be there

that morning; but my impatience would not permit me

to wait; I must go and seek her myself at once. Often

already, said my parents, she had wished and begged

to see me, but they had feared for my strength. This

was in my thoughts as I left the house; and when,

shutting the door behind me, I stood once again in the

living suunshine, it seemed as if her love burst around

me like music.
I set out hastily in the well-known direction of Mary's

house. While I walked through the crowded streets,

the sense of reality grew upon me at every step, and for

the first time during some months I felt a man among

men. Any artist or thoughtful man whatsoever, whose

life has passed in a large city, can scarcely fail, in course

of time, to have some association connecting each spot

continually passed and repassed with the labours of his

own mind. In the woods and fields every place has its

proper spell and mystery, and needs no consecration

from thought; but wherever in the daily walk through

the thronged and jarring city, the soul has read some

knowledge from life, or laboured towards some birth

within its own silence, there abides the glory of that

hour, and the cloud rests there before an unseen taber-

nacle. And thus now, with myself, old trains of thought

and the conceptions of former years came back as I

passed from one swarming resort to another, and seemed,

by contrast, to wake my spirit from its wild and fantastic
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broodings to a consciousness of something like actual

existence; as the mere reflections of objects, sunk in the

vague pathless water, appear almost to strengthen it into

substance.
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more about The Orchard Pit
THE ORCHARD PIT.
Men tell me that sleep has many dreams; but all my

life I have dreamt one dream alone.
I see a glen whose sides slope upward from the deep

bed of a dried-up stream, and either slope is covered

with wild apple-trees. In the largest tree, within the

fork whence the limbs divide, a fair, golden-haired

woman stands and sings, with one white arm stretched

along a branch of the tree, and with the other holding

forth a bright red apple, as if to some one coming down

the slope. Below her feet the trees grow more and

more tangled, and stretch from both sides across the deep

pit below: and the pit is full of the bodies of men.
They lie in heaps beneath the screen of boughs, with

her apples bitten in their hands; and some are no

more than ancient bones now, and some seem dead but

yesterday. She stands over them in the glen, and sings

for ever, and offers her apple still.
This dream shows me no strange place. I know the

glen, and have known it from childhood, and heard many

tales of those who have died there by the Siren's spell.
I pass there often now, and look at it as one might

look at a place chosen for one's grave. I see nothing,

but I know that it means death for me. The apple-trees

are like others, and have childish memories connected

with them, though I was taught to shun the place.
No man sees the woman but once, and then no other

is near; and no man sees that man again.
One day, in hunting, my dogs tracked the deer to that

dell, and he fled and crouched under that tree, but the

dogs would not go near him. And when I approached,

he looked in my eyes as if to say, “Here you shall die,
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and will you here give death?” And his eyes seemed

the eyes of my soul, and I called off the dogs, who were

glad to follow me, and we left the deer to fly.
I know that I must go there and hear the song and

take the apple. I join with the young knights in their

games; and have led our vassals and fought well. But

all seems to me a dream, except what only I among

them all shall see. Yet who knows? Is there one

among them doomed like myself, and who is silent, like

me? We shall not meet in the dell, for each man goes

there alone: but in the pit we shall meet each other,

and perhaps know.
Each man who is the Siren's choice dreams the same

dream, and always of some familiar spot wherever he

lives in the world, and it is there that he finds her when

his time comes. But when he sinks in the pit, it is the

whole pomp of her dead gathered through the world that

awaits him there; for all attend her to grace her triumph.

Have they any souls out of those bodies? Or are the

bodies still the house of the soul, the Siren's prey till the

day of judgment?
We were ten brothers. One is gone there already.

One day we looked for his return from a border foray,

and his men came home without him, saying that he had

told them he went to seek his love who would come to

meet him by another road. But anon his love met

them, asking for him; and they sought him vainly all

that day. But in the night his love rose from a dream;

and she went to the edge of the Siren's dell, and there

lay his helmet and his sword. And her they sought in

the morning, and there she lay dead. None has ever

told this thing to my love, my sweet love who is affianced

to me.
One day at table my love offered me an apple. And

as I took it she laughed, and said, “Do not eat, it is the

fruit of the Siren's dell.” And I laughed and ate: and

at the heart of the apple was a red stain like a woman's

mouth; and as I bit it I could feel a kiss upon my lips.
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The same evening I walked with my love by that

place, and she would needs have me sit with her under

the apple-tree in which the Siren is said to stand. Then

she stood in the hollow fork of the tree, and plucked an

apple, and stretched it to me and would have sung: but

at that moment she cried out, and leaped from the tree

into my arms, and said that the leaves were whispering

other words to her, and my name among them. She

threw the apple to the bottom of the dell, and fol-

lowed it with her eyes, to see how far it would fall, till

it was hidden by the tangled boughs. And as we still

looked, a little snake crept up through them.
She would needs go with me afterwards to pray in the

church, where my ancestors and hers are buried; and

she looked round on the effigies, and said, “How long

will it be before we lie here carved together?” And I

thought I heard the wind in the apple trees that seemed

to whisper, “How long?”
And late that night, when all were asleep, I went back

to the dell, and said in my turn, “How long?” And

for a moment I seemed to see a hand and apple stretched

from the middle of the tree where my love had stood.

And then it was gone: and I plucked the apples and bit

them, and cast them in the pit, and said, “Come.”
I speak of my love, and she loves me well; but I love

her only as the stone whirling down the rapids loves

the dead leaf that travels with it and clings to it, and

that the same eddy will swallow up.
Last night, at last, I dreamed how the end will come.

and now I know it is near. I not only saw, in sleep, the

lifelong pageant of the glen, but I took my part in it at

last, and learned for certain why that dream was mine.
I seemed to be walking with my love among the hills

that lead downward to the glen: and still she said, “It

is late;” but the wind was glenwards, and said, “Hither.”

And still she said, “Home grows far;” but the rooks

flew glenwards, and said, “Hither.” And still she said,

“Come back;” but the sun had set, and the moon
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laboured towards the glen, and said, “Hither.” And

my heart said in me, “Aye, thither at last.” Then we

stood on the margin of the slope, with the apple-trees

beneath us; and the moon bade the clouds fall from her,

and sat in her throne like the sun at noon-day: and

none of the apple-trees were bare now, though autumn

was far worn, but fruit and blossom covered them

together. And they were too thick to see through

clearly; but looking far down I saw a white hand holding

forth an apple, and heard the first notes of the Siren's

song. Then my love clung to me and wept; but I

began to struggle down the slope through the thick wall

of bough and fruit and blossom, scattering them as the

storm scatters the dead leaves; for that one apple only

would my heart have. And my love snatched at me as

I went; but the branches I thrust away sprang back on

my path, and tore her hands and face: and the last

I knew of her was the lifting of her hands to heaven as

she cried aloud above me, while I still forced my way

downwards. And now the Siren's song rose clearer as

I went. At first she sang, “Come to Love;” and of the

sweetness of Love she said many things. And next she

sang, “Come to Life;” and Life was sweet in her song.

But long before I reached her, she knew that all her will

was mine: and then her voice rose softer than ever,

and her words were, “Come to Death;” and Death's

name in her mouth was the very swoon of all sweetest

things that be. And then my path cleared; and she

stood over against me in the fork of the tree I knew so

well, blazing now like a lamp beneath the moon. And

one kiss I had of her mouth, as I took the apple from

her hand. But while I bit it, my brain whirled and my

foot stumbled; and I felt my crashing fall through the

tangled boughs beneath her feet, and saw the dead white

faces that welcomed me in the pit. And so I woke cold

in my bed: but it still seemed that I lay indeed at last

among those who shall be my mates for ever, and could

feel the apple still in my hand.
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more about The Doom of the Sirens
THE DOOM OF THE SIRENS.

A LYRICAL TRAGEDY.
Act I.—Scene 1.



Hermitage near the Sirens' Rock. A Christianized

Prince, flying from persecution in the latter days of

the Roman Empire, is driven that way by stress of

weather (having with him his wife and infant child),

and succeeds in taking refuge in the Hermitage. The

Hermit relates to him the legend of the Sirens, and how

they are among the Pagan powers not yet subdued but

still acting as demons against the human race. The

spell upon them is that their power cannot be destroyed

until one of them shall yield to human love and become

enamoured of some one among her intended victims.

The Hermit has, therefore, established himself hard by

to pray for travellers in danger, and, if possible, to warn

them off in time, and he implores the Prince to pursue

his voyage by some other course. The Prince, however,

says that he shall not be able to do so, and trusts in

Heaven and in his love for his wife to guard him against

danger. He dwells on his being a Christian, and there-

fore beyond the power of Pagan demons, who had as yet

destroyed only those unprotected by true faith. The

storm having subsided (this scene occurs the morning

after he had taken refuge), the Prince and his family re-

embark, leaving the Hermit praying for their safety.


Scene 2.



The ship arrives at the Sirens' Rock, amid the songs

of the three Sirens, Thelxiope, Thelxione, and Ligeia.

The first offers wealth, the second greatness and triumph

over his enemies, the third (Ligeia) offers her love.

Here a chorus in which the three contend and the wife

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strives against them. The Prince gradually, in spite of

his efforts, succumbs to Ligeia and climbs the rock, his

wife following him. Here the choral contention is con-

tinued, the Prince clinging to Ligeia, rapt by her spells

into the belief that it is the time of his first love and that

he is surrounded by the scenes of that time. At last he

dies in her arms, as she sings, under her poisonous breath,

calling her as he dies by his wife's name, and shrinking

from his wife without recognition. The Queen makes a

prayer begging God to make him know her. During

this he dies, and Ligeia then says,
  • “He knows us now; woman, take back your dead!”


The Queen pronounces a despairing curse against Ligeia,

praying that she may yet love and be hated and so

destroy herself and her sisters. The Queen then flings

herself in madness from the rock into the sea.


Scene 3.



The Hermit puts out in a boat to where the Prince's

ship is still lying, and takes the infant to his hermitage.

He soliloquizes over him, saying how, if the faith prevails

in his father's kingdom, he will take him in due time to

occupy the throne, but how otherwise the youth shall

stay with himself to serve him as an acolyte, and so

escape the storms of human passion more baneful than

those of the sea.
Twenty-one years elapse between Acts I. and II.


Act II.—Scene 1.



At the court of the Byzantine Prince. The courtiers

are conversing about the approaching marriage of the

young Prince, now come to the throne. One of them

relates particulars respecting his being brought there as

a boy by the Hermit, who revealed the secret of his

father's and mother's death only to a trusted counsellor,

the father of the girl he is now about to marry. They

also refer to the troubles of the time when the former
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Prince had to fly from his kingdom on account of his

faith, and recall to each other the progress of events

since, and the establishment of Christianity in the

country, after which the young Prince was brought back

by the Hermit, and seated on his father's throne. Allu-

sions are made to various omens and portents appearing

to bear on the mysterious death of the Prince's father

and mother, and on the vengeance still to be taken

for it.


Scene 2.



A grove, formerly sacred to an Oracle. The Prince

and his betrothed meet here and speak of their love and

approaching nuptials, which are to take place the next

day. They are both, however, troubled by dreams they

have had and which they relate to each other at length.

These bear fantastically on the death of the Prince's

parents, but without clearly revealing anything, though

seeming to prognosticate misfortunes still unaccomplished,

and a fatal issue to their love. The Prince connects

these things with the events of his early boyhood, which

he dimly remembers in the hermitage by the Sirens'

Rock, before the Hermit brought him to his kingdom;

and he confesses to his betrothed the gloomy uncertainty

with which his mind is clouded. However, they try to

forget all forebodings and dwell on the happiness in store

for them. They sing to each other and together, but

their songs seem to find an ominous burden in the echoes

of the sacred grove, and they part at last, saddened in

spite of themselves. The Prince goes, leaving the lady,

who says that she will stay there till her maidens join

her. Being left alone, she suddenly hears a voice calling

her, and finds that it comes from the Oracle of the grove,

whose shrine is forgotten and almost overgrown. She

forces the tangled growth aside and enters the precincts.


Scene 3.



The Shrine of the Oracle. Here the Oracle speaks to

her; at first in dark sentences, but at length more
Sig. 28
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explicitly, as to a great task awaiting her lover, without

accomplishing which he must not hope for love or peace.

It speaks of the evil powers which caused his parents'

death, and are doomed themselves to annihilation by the

just vengeance transmitted to him. It then tells her

clearly how it is the heavenly will that the Prince shall

only wed if he survives the vengeance due for his parents'

death, but that he had been chosen now to fulfil the doom

of the Sirens, and must at once accomplish his mission.

Finally the Oracle announces that its function has been

so far renewed for the last time that it may be compelled

to denounce its fellow powers of Paganism; but that

now its voice is silent for ever. At the end of this

scene the Bride's maidens come to meet her, and find her

bewildered and in tears, but cannot learn the cause from

her.


Scene 4.



The Bridal Chamber on the morning after the nuptials.

The scene opens with a réveillee sung outside. The

Prince and Princess are together, and he is speaking

to her of his love and their future happiness, but after

a time, in the midst of their endearments, he begins to

perceive that she is disturbed and anxious, and presses

her to tell him the cause. She at last informs him with

tears of her conference with the Oracle on their last

meeting in the grove. This (as she tells him) she had

not the courage to reveal to him before their wedding,

as, if obeyed, it must tear him from her arms, perhaps

never to return; and she had then resolved to suppress

the terrible secret at any risk to herself; but on the

bridal night, while she lay in his arms, the Hermit, now

a saint in heaven, had appeared to her in a dream, with

a wrathful aspect. He had told her how by his means

the Prince had been preserved in infancy; had reproached

her with her silence as to the charge she had received;

and had told her that if she did not now make known to

her husband the will of Heaven, some fatal mischance
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would soon separate them for ever. All this she now

tells him with many tears and with bitter upbraidings of

the cruel fate which compelled her to avoid the certain

wrath threatened to him by sending him on a mission

of such terrible uncertainty. Before telling all this she

had consented to speak only on his promising to grant

the first favour she should afterwards ask for herself;

and she now tells him that this favour is the permission

to accompany him on his voyage. He endeavours in

vain to dissuade her from this, and at last consents to it.


Act III.—Scene 1.



The hermitage near the Sirens' Rock, as in Act I.

Arrival of the Prince, accompanied by his Bride, who is

prevailed on by him to remain in prayer at the hermitage

while he pursues his journey to the rock. Before they

part, a paper is found written, by which they learn that

the Hermit had died there a year and a day before, and

that he named the day of their present arrival as the

one on which his hermitage would again be tenanted,

and yet on which its appointed use would cease.


Scene 2.



The Sirens' Rock. The Sirens have been warned by

the evil powers to whom they are tributary that this

day is a signal one for them. They are uncertain

whether for good or ill, but are possessed by a spirit

of baneful exaltation, and in their songs alternate from

one to the other wild tales of their triumphs in past

times and the renowned victims who have succumbed to

them. As they reach the name of the Christian Prince

and his wife who died by their means, a vessel comes in

view, but almost before their songs have been directed

towards it, they are surprised to see it make straight for

the rock, and the occupant resolutely disembark and

commence the ascent. As he nears them, they exchange

scornful prophecies of his ruin between the pauses of

their song; but gradually Ligeia, who has at first begged

him of her sisters as her special prey, finds herself
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strangely overpowered by emotions she does not under-

stand, and by the time he reaches the summit of the

rock and stands before them, she is alternately beseech-

ing him for his love and her sisters for his life. A long

chorus here occurs: Ligeia yielding to the agony of her

passion, while the Prince repulses and reviles her, and

the other Sirens wail and curse, warning her of the im-

pending doom. The Prince tells Ligeia of his parentage

and mission, but she still madly craves for his love and

holds forth to him such promises of infernal sovereignty

as her gods afford, if he will yield to her passion. He

meanwhile, though proof against her lures and loathing

her in his heart, is physically absorbed into the death-

agony of the expiring spell; and when, at his last word

of reprobation, the curse seizes her and her sisters, and

they dash themselves headlong from the rock, he also

succumbs to the doom, calling with his last breath on his

Bride to come to him. Throughout the scene the prayers

of the Bride are fitfully wafted from the hermitage

between the pauses of the Sirens' songs and the deadly

chorus of love and hate.


Scene 3.



Within the hermitage, the Bride still praying. The

scene to commence with a few lines of prayer, after

which the Spirit of the Prince appears, calling the Bride

to come to him, in the same words with which the last

scene ended. She then discourses to him, saying many

things in gradually increasing ecstasy of love, he all the

time speaking to her at intervals, only the same words

as before. She ends by answering him in his own

words, calling him to come to her, and so dies.
In case of representation—supposing the hermitage

and rock to be visible on the stage at the same time—

the conclusion might be that at the moment of the Prince's

death, when he calls to his bride, she breaks off her

prayers; answering him in the same words, and dies.

Scene 3 would thus be dispensed with.
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more about The Cup of Water
THE CUP OF WATER.
The young King of a country is hunting on a day with a

young Knight, his friend; when, feeling thirsty, he stops

at a Forester's cottage, and the Forester's daughter brings

him a cup of water to drink. Both of them are equally

enamoured at once of her unequalled beauty. The

King, however, has been affianced from boyhood to a

Princess worthy of all love, and whom he has always

believed he loved until undeceived by his new absorbing

passion; but the Knight, resolved to sacrifice all other

considerations to his love, goes again to the Forester's

cottage and asks his daughter's hand. He finds that the

girl has fixed her thoughts on the King, whose rank she

does not know. On hearing it she tells her suitor

humbly that she must die if such be her fate, but cannot

love another. The Knight goes to the King to tell him

all and beg his help; and the two friends then come

to an explanation. Ultimately the King goes to the girl

and pleads his friend's cause, not disguising his own

passion, but saying that as he sacrifices himself to honour,

so should she, at his prayer, accept a noble man whom

he loves better than all men and whom she will love too.

This she does at last; and the King makes his friend an

Earl and gives him a grant of the forest and surround-

ing country as a marriage gift, with the annexed condition,

that the Earl's wife shall bring the King a cup of water

at the same spot on every anniversary of their first

meeting when he rides a-hunting with her husband. At

no other time will he see her, loving her too much. He

weds the Princess, and thus two years pass, the condition

being always fulfilled. But before the third anniversary
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the lady dies in childbirth, leaving a daughter. The

King's life wears on, and still he and his friend pursue

their practice of hunting on that day, for sixteen years.

When the anniversary comes round for the sixteenth

time since the lady's death, the Earl tells his daughter,

who has grown to her mother's perfect likeness (but

whom the King has never seen), to meet them on the

old spot with the cup of water, as her mother first did

when of the same age. The King, on seeing her, is

deeply moved; but on her being presented to him by

the Earl, he is about to take the cup from her hand, when

he is aware of a second figure in her exact likeness but

dressed in peasant's clothes, who steps to her side as he

bends from his horse to take the cup, looks in his face

with solemn words of love and welcome, and kisses him

on the mouth. He falls forward on his horse's neck, and

is lifted up dead.
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more about Michael Scott's Wooing
MICHAEL SCOTT'S WOOING.
Michael Scott and a friend, both young and dissolute,

are returning from a carouse, by moonlight, along a wild

sea-coast during a groundswell. As they come within

view of a small house on the rocky shore, his companion

taunts Michael Scott as to his known passion for the

maiden Janet who dwells there with her father, and as

to the failure of the snares he has laid for her. Scott is

goaded to great irritation, and as they near the point of

the sands overlooked by the cottage, he turns round on

his friend and declares that the maiden shall come out to

him then and there at his summons.The friend still

taunts and banters him, saying that wine has heated his

brain; but Scott stands quite still, muttering, and regard-

ing the cottage with a gesture of command. After he

has done so for some time, the door opens softly, and Janet

comes running down the rock. As she approaches, she

nearly rushes into Michael Scott's arms, but instead

swerves aside, runs swiftly by him, and plunges into the

surging waves. With a shriek Michael plunges after

her, and strikes out this side and that, and lashes his

way among the billows, between the rising and sinking

breakers; but all in vain, no sign appears of her. After

some time spent in this way he returns almost exhausted

to the sands, and passing without answer by his appalled

and questioning friend, he climbs the rock to the door

of the cottage, which is now closed. Janet's father

answers his loud knocking, and to him he says, “Slay

me, for your daughter has drowned herself this hour in

yonder sea, and by my means.” The father at first

suspects some stratagem, but finally deems him mad,

and says, “You rave,—my daughter is at rest in her
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bed.” “Go seek her there,” answers Michael Scott.

The father goes up to his daughter's chamber, and re-

turning very pale, signs to Michael to follow him.

Together they climb the stair, and find Janet half lying

and half kneeling, turned violently round, as if, in the

act of rising from her bed, she had again thrown herself

backward and clasped the feet of a crucifix at her bed-

head; so she lies dead. Michael Scott rushes from the

house, and returning maddened to the seashore, is with

difficulty restrained from suicide by his friend. At last

he stands like stone for a while, and then, as if repeating

an inner whisper, he describes the maiden's last struggle

with her heart. He says how she loved him but would

not sin; how, hearing in her sleep his appeal from the

shore she almost yielded, and the embodied image of

her longing came rushing out to him; but how in the

last instant she turned back for refuge to Christ, and her

soul was wrung from her by the struggle of her heart.

“And as I speak,” he says, “the fiend who whispers

this concerning her says also in my ear how surely I

am lost.”
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more about The Palimpsest. (Subject for Tale or Humorous Poem)
THE PALIMPSEST.

(SUBJECT FOR TALE OR HUMOROUS POEM.)
The jealousies of two rival Scholars, a classical and a

theological one, respecting a palimpsest. The classical

one takes years to decipher his Pagan author, while the

Theologian considers the only value of the scroll to con-

sist in the Early Father on the surface, whom he is to

edit in due course. The Theologian is in bad health, and

expects to die before the Classic has finished. This drives

him to desperation, and impels him at last to murder his

rival; who in dying shows him in triumph the scroll,

from which the Early Father has been completely erased

by acids, leaving a fair MS. of the Pagan poet.
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more about The Philtre
THE PHILTRE.
A woman, intensely enamoured of a man who does not

love her, makes use of a philtre to secure his love. In

this she succeeds; but it also acts gradually upon his

life. She attempts to avert this by destroying the whole

effect of the philtre, but finds this is not permitted her;

and he dies in her arms, deeply loving her and deeply

loved by her, while she is conscious of being the cause

of his death. As he yields his last breath in a kiss, she

knows that his spirit now hates her.
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II.—LITERARY PAPERS.

more about Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus'
WILLIAM BLAKE.

Blake felt his way in drawing, notwithstanding his

love of a “bold determinate outline,” and did not get

this at once. Copyists and plagiarists do that, but not

original artists, as it is common to suppose: they find

a difficulty in developing the first idea. Blake drew

a rough, dotted line with pencil, then with ink; then

colour, filling in cautiously, carefully. At the same time

he attached very great importance to “first lines,” and

was wont to affirm—“First thoughts are best in art,

second thoughts in other matters.”

He held that nature should be learned by heart, and

remembered by the painter, as the poet remembers

language.“To learn the language of art, Copy for ever

is my rule,” said he. But he never painted his pictures

from models.“Models are difficult—enslave one—

efface from one's mind a conception or reminiscence

which was better.” This last axiom is open to much

more discussion than can be given it here. From

Fuseli, that often-reported declaration of his, “Nature

puts me out,” seems but another expression of the

same wilful arrogance and want of delicate shades,

whether of character or style, which we find in that

painter's works. Nevertheless a sentence should here

be spared to say that England would do well to preserve

some remnant of Fuseli's work before it is irremediably

obliterated. His oil pictures are, for the most part,

Image of page 444 page: 444
monstrously overloaded in bulk as in style, and not less

overloaded in mere slimy pigment. But his sketches in

water-wash and pencil or pen-and-ink should yet be

formed, ere too late, into a precious national collection,

including as they do many specimens than which not

the greatest Italian masters could show greater proofs of

mastery.

Blake's natural tendencies were, in many respects, far

different from Fuseli's; and it is deeply to be regretted

that an antagonism, which became more and more

personal as well as artistic, to the petty practice of the

art of his day,—joined no doubt to inevitable sympathy

with this very Fuseli, fighting in great measure the same

battle with himself for the high against the low,—should

have led to Blake's adopting and unreservedly following

the dogma above given as regards the living model.

Poverty, and consequent difficulty of models at com-

mand, must have had something to do with it too. The

truth on this point is, that no imaginative artist can fully

express his own tone of mind without sometimes in his

life working untrammelled by present reference to

nature; and, indeed, that the first conception of every

serious work must be wrought into something like

complete form, as a preparatory design, without such

aid, before having recourse to it in the carrying-out of

the work. But it is equally or still more imperative

that immediate study of nature should pervade the whole

completed work. Tenderness, the constant unison of

wonder and familiarity so mysteriously allied in nature,

the sense of fulness and abundance such as we feel in

a field, not because we pry into it all, but because it is

all there: these are the inestimable prizes to be secured

only by such study in the painter's every picture. And

all this Blake, as thoroughly as any painter, was gifted

to have attained, as we may see especially in his works

of that smallest size where memory and genius may

really almost stand in lieu of immediate consultation of

nature. But the larger his works are, the further he

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departs from this lovely impression of natural truth; and

when we read the above maxim, we know why. How-

ever, the principle was not one about which he had no

misgiving, for very fluctuating if not quite conflicting

opinions on this point might be quoted from his writings.

No special consideration has yet been entered on here

of Blake's claim as a colourist, but it is desirable that

this should be done now in winding up the subject, both

because his place in this respect among painters is very

peculiar, and also on account of the many misleading

things he wrote regarding colour, carried away at the

moment, after his fiery fashion, by the predominance he

wished to give to other qualities in some argument in

hand. Another reason why his characteristics in this

respect need to be dwelt upon is that certainly his most

original and prismatic system of colour,—in which tints

laid on side by side, each in its utmost force, are made

by masterly treatment to produce a startling and novel

effect of truth,—must be viewed as being, more deci-

dedly than the system of any other painter, the fore-

runner of a style of execution now characterizing a whole

new section of the English School, and making itself

admitted as actually involving some positive additions to

the resources of the art. Some of the out-door pictures

of this class, studied as they are with a closeness of

imitation perhaps unprecedented, have nevertheless no

slight essential affinity to Blake's way of representing

natural scenes, though the smallness of scale in these

latter, and the spiritual quality which always mingles

with their truth to nature, may render the parallel less

apparent than it otherwise would be. In Blake's colour-

ing of landscape, a subtle and exquisite reality forms

quite as strong an element as does ideal grandeur;

whether we find him dealing with the pastoral sweetness

of drinking cattle at a stream, their hides and fleeces all

glorified by sunset with magic rainbow hues; or reveal-

ing to us, in a flash of creative genius, some parted sky

and beaten sea full of portentous expectation. One

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unfailing sign of his true brotherhood with all the great

colourists is the lovingly wrought and realistic flesh-

painting which is constantly to be met with in the midst

of his most extraordinary effects. For pure realism, too,

though secured in a few touches as only greatness can,

let us turn to the dingy London street, all snow-clad and

smoke-spotted, through which the little black Chimney-

sweeper wends his way in the Songs of Experience.

Certainly an unaccountable perversity of colour may

now and then be apparent, as where, in the same series,

the tiger is painted in fantastic streaks of red, green,

blue, and yellow, while a tree stem at his side tanta-

lizingly supplies the tint which one might venture to

think his due, and is perfect tiger-colour! I am sure,

however, that such vagaries, curious enough no doubt,

are not common with Blake, as the above is the only

striking instance I can recall in his published work.

But, perhaps, a few occasional bewilderments may be

allowed to a system of colour which is often suddenly

called upon to help in embodying such conceptions as

painter never before dreamed of: some old skeleton

folded together in the dark bowels of earth or rock, dis-

coloured with metallic stain and vegetable mould; some

symbolic human birth of crowned flowers at dawn, amid

rosy light and the joyful opening of all things. Even

a presentment of the most abstract truths of natural

science is not only attempted by this new painter, but

actually effected by legitimate pictorial ways; and we

are somehow shown, in figurative yet not wholly unreal

shapes and hues, the mingling of organic substances,

the gradual development and perpetual transfusion of

life.

The reader who wishes to study Blake as a colourist

has a means of doing so, thorough in kind though limited

in extent, by going to the Print Room at the British

Museum (which is accessible to any one who takes the

proper course to gain admission), and there examining

certain of Blake's hand-coloured prints, bound in

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volumes. All those in the collection are not equally

valuable, since the various copies of Blake's own colour-

ing differ extremely in finish and richness. The Museum

copy of the Songs of Innocence and Experience is rather a

poor one, though it will serve to judge of the book; and

some others of his works are there represented by copies

which, I feel convinced, are not coloured by Blake's hand

at all, but got up more or less in his manner, and brought

into the market after his death. But two volumes here—

the Song of Los , and especially the smaller of the two

collections of odd plates from his different works, which

is labelled Designs by W. Blake, and numbered inside

the fly-leaf 5240—afford specimens of his colouring,

perhaps equal to any that could be seen.

The tinting in the Song of Los is not, throughout, of

one order of value; but no finer example of Blake's

power in rendering poetic effects of landscape could be

found than that almost miraculous expression of the

glow and freedom of air in closing sunset, in a plate

where a youth and maiden, lightly embraced, are racing

along a saddened low-lit hill, against an open sky of

blazing and changing wonder. But in the volume of

collected designs I have specified, almost every plate (or

more properly water-colour drawing, as the printed

groundwork in such specimens is completely overlaid)

shows Blake's colour to advantage, and some in its very

fullest force. See, for instance, in plate 8, the deep,

unfathomable, green sea churning a broken foam as

white as milk against that sky which is all blue and gold

and blood-veined heart of fire; while from sea to sky

one locked and motionless face gazes, as it might seem,

for ever. Or, in plate 9, the fair tongues and threads of

liquid flame deepening to the redness of blood, lapping

round the flesh-tints of a human figure which bathes and

swims in the furnace. Or plate 12, which, like the

other two, really embodies some of the wild ideas in

Urizen, but might seem to be Aurora guiding the new-

born day, as a child, through a soft-complexioned sky of

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fleeting rose and tingling grey, such as only dawn and

dreams can show us. Or, for pure delightfulness, intri-

cate colour, and a kind of Shakespearean sympathy with

all forms of life and growth, as in the Midsummer Night's

Dream , let the gazer, having this precious book once in

his hands, linger long over plates 10, 16, 22, and 23. If

they be for him, he will be joyful more and more the

longer he looks, and will gain back in that time some

things as he first knew them, not encumbered behind

the days of his life; things too delicate for memory or

years since forgotten; the momentary sense of spring in

winter-sunshine, the long sunsets long ago, and falling

fires on many distant hills.

The inequality in value, to which I have alluded,

between various copies of the same design as coloured

by Blake, may be tested by comparing the book con-

taining the plates alluded to above, with the copies of

Urizen and the Book of Thel , also in the Print Room,

some of whose contents are the same as in this collected

volume. The immense difference dependent on greater

finish in the book I have described, and indeed some-

times involving the introduction of entirely new features

into the design, will thus be at once apparent. In these

highly-wrought specimens, the colour has a half floating

and half granulated character which is most curious and

puzzling, seeming dependent on the use of some peculiar

means, either in vehicle, or by some kind of pressure or

stamping which had the result of blending the trans-

parent and body tints in a manner not easily described.

The actual printing from the plate bearing the design

was, as I have said and feel convinced, confined to the

first impression in monochrome. But this perplexing

quality of execution reaches its climax in some of

Blake's “oil-colour printed” and hand-finished designs,

such as several large ones now in the possession of

Captain Butts, the grandson of Blake's friend and patron.

One of these, the Newton, consists in a great part of

rock covered with fossil substance or lichen of some

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kind, the treatment of which is as endlessly varied and

intricate as a photograph from a piece of seaweed would

be. It cannot possibly be all handwork, and yet I can

conceive no mechanical process, short of photography,

which is really capable of explaining it. It is no less

than a complete mystery, well worthy of any amount of

inquiry, if a clue could only be found from which to

commence. In nearly all Blake's works of this solidly

painted kind, it is greatly to be lamented that the

harmony of tints is continually impaired by the blacken-

ing of the bad white pigment, and perhaps red lead also,

which has been used,—an injury which must probably

go still further in course of time.

Of the process by which the designs last alluded to

were produced, the following explanation has been fur-

nished by Mr. Tatham. It is interesting, and I have no

doubt correct as regards the groundwork, but certainly

it quite falls short of accounting for the perplexing

intricacy of such portions as the rock-background of the

Newton. “Blake, when he wanted to make his prints

in oil” (writes my informant), “took a common thick

millboard, and drew, in some strong ink or colour, his

design upon it strong and thick. He then painted upon

that in such oil colours and in such a state of fusion that

they would blur well. He painted roughly and quickly,

so that no colour would have time to dry. He then

took a print of that on paper, and this impression he

coloured up in water-colours, repainting his outline on

the millboard when he wanted to take another print.

This plan he had recourse to, because he could vary

slightly each impression; and each having a sort of

accidental look, he could branch out so as to make each

one different. The accidental look they had was very

enticing.” Objections might be raised to this account

as to the apparent impracticability of painting in water

colours over oil; but I do not believe it would be found

so, if the oil colour were merely stamped as described,

and left to dry thoroughly into the paper.

Sig. 29
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In concluding a biography which has for its subject

a life so prone to new paths as was that of William

Blake, it may be well to allude, however briefly, to those

succeeding British artists who have shown unmistakably

something of his influence in their works. Foremost

among these comes a very great though as yet imper-

fectly acknowledged name,—that of David Scott of Edin-

burgh, a man whom Blake himself would have delighted

to honour, and to whose high appreciation of Blake the

motto on the title-page of the present book bears witness.

Another proof of this is to be found in a MS. note in a

copy of The Grave which belonged to Scott; which note

I shall here transcribe. I may premise that the apparent

preference given to The Grave over Blake's other works

seems to me almost to argue in the writer an imperfect

acquaintance with the Job.

“These, of any series of designs which art has pro-

duced” (writes the Scottish painter), “are the most

purely elevated in their relation and sentiment. It

would be long to discriminate the position they hold in

this respect, and at the same time the disregard in

which they may be held by some who judge of them in

a material relation; while the great beauty which they

possess will at once be apparent to others who can

appreciate their style in its immaterial connection. But

the sum of the whole in my mind is this: that these

designs reach the intellectual or infinite, in an abstract

significance, more entirely unmixed with inferior ele-

ments and local conventions than any others; that they

are the result of high intelligence, of thought, and of

a progress of art through many styles and stages of

different times, produced through a bright generalizing

and transcendental mind.

“The errors or defects of Blake's mere science in

form, and his proneness to overdo some of its best fea-

tures into weakness, are less perceptible in these than

in others of his works. What was a disappointment to

him was a benefit to the work,—that it was etched by

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another, who was able to render it in a style thoroughly

consistent, (but which Blake has the originality of having

pointed out, in his series from Young, though he did not

properly effect it,) and to pass over those solecisms

which would have interrupted its impression, in a way

that, to the apprehender of these, need scarcely give

offence, and hides them from the discovery of others.

They are etched with most appropriate and consummate

ability.” David Scott, 1844.

In the list of subscribers appended to Blake's Grave,

we find the name of “Mr. Robert Scott, Edinburgh.”

This was the engraver, father of David Scott, to whom,

therefore, this book (published in 1808, one year after

his birth) must have come as an early association and

influence. That such was the case is often traceable in

his works, varied as they are in their grand range of

subject, and even treatment. And it is singular that the

clear perception of Blake's weak side, evident in the

second paragraph of the note, did not save its writer

from falling into defects exactly similar in that peculiar

class of his works in which he most resembles Blake.

It must be noticed, however, that these are chiefly among

his earlier productions (such as the Monograms of

Man , the picture of Discord, etc.), or else among the

sketches left imperfect; while the note dates only five

years before his untimely death at the age of forty-

two. This is not a place where any attempt can be

made at estimating the true position of David Scott.

Such a task will need, and some day doubtless find,

ample limit and opportunity. It is fortunate that an

unusually full and excellent biographical record of him

already exists in the Memoir from the hand of a brother

no less allied to him by mental and artistic powers than

by ties of blood; but what is needed is that his works

should be collected and competently placed before the

world. An opportunity in this direction was afforded

by the International Exhibition of 1862; but the two

noble works of his which were there were so unpardon-

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ably ill-placed (and that where so much was well seen

which was not worth the seeing) that the chance was

completely missed. David Scott will one day be ac-

knowledged as the painter most nearly fulfilling the

highest requirements for historic art, both as a thinker

and a colourist (in spite of the great claims in many

respects of Etty and Maclise), who had come among us

from the time of Hogarth to his own. In saying this it

is necessary to add distinctly (for the sake of objectors

who have raised, or may raise, their voices), that it is

not only or even chiefly on his intellectual eminence

that the statement is based, but also on the great qualities

of colour and powers of solid execution displayed in his

finest works, which are to be found among those deriving

their subjects from history.

Another painter, ranking far below David Scott, but

still not to be forgotten where British poetic art is the

theme, was Theodore von Holst, an Englishman, though

of German extraction; in many of whose most charac-

teristic works the influence of Blake, as well as of

Fuseli, has probably been felt. But Holst was far from

possessing anything like the depth of thought or high

aims which distinguished Blake. At the same time, his

native sense of beauty and colour in the more ideal

walks of art was originally beyond that of any among

his contemporaries, except Etty and Scott. He may be

best described, perhaps, to the many who do not know

his works, as being, in some sort, the Edgar Poe of

painting; but lacking, probably, even the continuity of

closely studied work in the midst of irregularities which

distinguished the weird American poet, and has enabled

him to leave behind some things which cannot be soon

forgotten. Holst, on the contrary, it is to be feared, has

hardly transmitted such complete record of his naturally

great gifts as can secure their rescue from oblivion. It

would be very desirable that an account of him and his

works should be written by some one best able to do so

among those still living who must have known him.

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It is a tribute due to an artist who, however imperfect

his self-expression during a short and fitful career, forms

certainly one of the few connecting links between the

early and sound period of English colour and method in

painting, and that revival of which so many signs have,

in late years, been apparent. At present, much of what

he did is doubtless in danger of being lost altogether.

Specimens from his hand existed in the late Northwick

collection, now dispersed; and some years since I saw

a most beautiful work by him—a female head or half

figure—among the pictures at Stafford House. But

Holst's sketches and designs on paper (a legion past

numbering) were, for the most part, more expressive of

his full powers than his pictures, which were too often

merely sketches enlarged without reference to nature.

Of these, a very extensive collection was possessed by

the late Serjeant Ralph Thomas. What has become of

them? Amongst Holst's pictures, the best are nearly

always those partaking of the fantastic or supernatural,

which, however dubious a ground to take in art, was the

true bent of his genius. A notable instance of his com-

parative weakness in subjects of pure dignity may be

found in what has been pronounced his best work, and

was probably about the most “successful” at the

time of its production; that is, the Raising of Jairus's

Daughter , which was once in the gallery at the Pantheon

in Oxford Street. Probably the fullest account of Holst

is to be found in the sufficiently brief notice of him

which appeared in the Art Journal (or Art Union, as

then called).

Of any affinity in spirit to Blake which might be found

existing in the works of some living artists, it is not

necessary to speak here; yet allusion should be made to

one still alive and honoured in other ways, who early in

life produced a series of Biblical designs seldom equalled

for imaginative impression, and perhaps more decidedly

like Blake's works, though quite free from plagiarism,

than anything else that could be cited. I allude to One

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Hundred Copper-plate Engravings from original drawings

by Isaac Taylor, junior, calculated to ornament all quarto

and octavo editions of the Bible. London: Allan Bell

& Co., Warwick Square. 1834. Strange as it may

appear, I believe I am right in stating that these were

produced in youth by the late venerable author of the

Natural History of Enthusiasm, and many other works.

How he came to do them, or why he did no more, I have

no means of recording. They are very small and very

unattractively engraved, sometimes by the artist and

sometimes by others. In simplicity, dignity, and

original thought, probably in general neglect at the time,

and certainly in complete disregard ever since, they bear

a close affinity to the mass of Blake's works, and may

fairly be supposed to have been, in some measure,

inspired by the study of them. The Witch of Endor,

The Plague Stayed, The Death of Samson, and many

others, are, in spirit, even well worthy of his hand, and

from him, at least, would not have missed the admiration

they deserve.

Having spoken so far of Blake's influence as a painter,

I should be glad if I could point out that the simplicity

and purity of his style as a lyrical poet had also exercised

some sway. But, indeed, he is so far removed from

ordinary apprehensions in most of his poems, or more or

less in all, and they have been so little spread abroad,

that it will be impossible to attribute to them any decided

place among the impulses which have directed the extra-

ordinary mass of poetry, displaying power of one or

another kind, which has been brought before us, from

his day to our own. Perhaps some infusion of his

modest and genuine beauties might add a charm even to

the most gifted works of our present rather redundant

time. One grand poem which was, till lately, on the

same footing as his own (or even a still more obscure

one) as regards popular recognition, and which shares,

though on a more perfect scale than he ever realized in

poetry, the exalted and primeval, if not the subtly

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etherealized, qualities of his poetic art, may be found in

Charles Wells's scriptural drama of Joseph and his Brethren,

published in 1824 under the assumed name of Howard.

This work affords, perhaps, the solitary instance, within

our period, of poetry of the very first class falling quite

unrecognized and remaining so for a long space of

years. In the first edition of this Life of Blake it was

prophesied that Wells's time would “assuredly still

come.” In 1876 Joseph and his Brethren was repub-

lished under the auspices of Mr. Swinburne, and with

an introduction from his pen. Charles Wells lived to

see this new phœnix form of the genius of his youth,

but died in 1878. The work is attainable now, and need

not here be dwelt on at any length. In what may

be called the Anglo-Hebraic order of aphoristic truth,

Shakspeare, Blake, and Wells, are nearly akin; nor

could any fourth poet be named so absolutely in the

same connection, though from the Shakspearean point of

view alone the “marvellous,” nay miraculous, Chatter-

ton must also be included. It may be noted that Wells's

admirable prose Stories after Nature (1822) have not yet

been republished.

A very singular example of the closest and most abso-

lute resemblance to Blake's poetry may be met with (if

only one could meet with it) in a phantasmal sort of little

book, published, or perhaps not published but only

printed, some years since, and entitled Improvisations

of the Spirit . It bears no author's name, but was

written by Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, the highly-gifted

editor of Swedenborg's writings, and author of a Life

of him: to whom we owe a reprint of the poems in

Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience . These im-

provisations profess to be written under precisely the

same kind of spiritual guidance, amounting to abnegation

of personal effort in the writer, which Blake supposed to

have presided over the production of his Jerusalem, etc.

The little book has passed into the general (and in all

other cases richly-deserved) limbo of the modern “spiri-

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tualist” muse. It is a very thick little book, however

unsubstantial its origin; and contains, amid much that is

disjointed or hopelessly obscure (but then why be the

polisher of poems for which a ghost, and not even your

own ghost, is alone responsible?) many passages and

indeed whole compositions of a remote and charming

beauty, or sometimes of a grotesque figurative relation

to things of another sphere, which are startlingly akin

to Blake's writings,—could pass, in fact, for no one's

but his. Professing as they do the same new kind of

authorship, they might afford plenty of material for

comparison and bewildered speculation, if such were in

any request.

Considering the interval of seventeen years which has

now elapsed since the first publication of this Life , it

may be well to refer briefly to such studies connected

with Blake as have since appeared. This is not the

place where any attempt could be made to appraise the

thanks due for such a work as Mr. Swinburne's Critical

Essay on Blake. The task chiefly undertaken in it—

that of exploring and expounding the system of thought

and personal mythology which pervades Blake's Pro-

phetic Books —has been fulfilled, not by piecework or

analysis, but by creative intuition. The fiat of Form

and Light has gone forth, and as far as such a chaos

could respond it has responded. To the volume itself,

and to that only, can any reader be referred for its store

of intellectual wealth and reach of eloquent dominion.

Next among Blake labours of love let me here refer to

Mr. James Smetham's deeply sympathetic and assimila-

tive study (in the form of a review article on the present

Life ) published in the London Quarterly Review for

January 1869. As this article is reprinted in our

present Vol. II., no further tribute to its delicacy and

force needs to be made here: it speaks for itself. But

some personal mention, however slight, should here

exist as due to its author, a painter and designer of our

own day who is, in many signal respects, very closely

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akin to Blake; more so, probably, that any other living

artist could be said to be. James Smetham's work—

generally of small or moderate size—ranges from Gospel

subjects, of the subtlest imaginative and mental insight,

and sometimes of the grandest colouring, through Old

Testament compositions and through poetic and pastoral

themes of every kind, to a special imaginative form of

landscape. In all these he partakes greatly of Blake's

immediate spirit, being also often nearly allied by land-

scape intensity to Samuel Palmer,—in youth, the noble

disciple of Blake. Mr. Smetham's works are very

numerous, and, as other exclusive things have come to

be, will some day be known in a wide circle. Space is

altogether wanting to make more than this passing men-

tion here of them and of their producer, who shares, in

a remarkable manner, Blake's mental beauties and his

formative shortcomings, and possesses besides an indi-

vidual invention which often claims equality with the

great exceptional master himself.

Mr. W. B. Scott's two valuable contributions to Blake

records—his Catalogue Raisonné of the Exhibition of

Blake's Works , as held at the Burlington Fine Arts

Club in 1876, and his Etchings from Blake's Works,

with Descriptive Text ,—are both duly specified in the

General Catalogues, existing in our Vol. II. We will

say briefly here that no man living has a better right to

write of Blake or to engrave his work than Mr. Scott,

whose work of both kinds is now too well known to call

for recognition. Last but not least, the richly condensed

and representative essay prefixed by Mr. W. M. Rossetti

to his edition (in the Aldine series) of Blake's Poetical

Works demands from all sides—as its writer has, from

all sides, discerned and declared Blake—the highest

commendation we can here briefly offer.

The reader has now reached the threshold of the

Second Volume of this work, in which he will be for-

tunate enough to be communicating directly with Blake's

own mind, in a series of writings in prose and verse,

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many of them here first published. Now perhaps

no poet ever courted a public with more apparent

need for some smoothing of the way, or mild fore-

warning, from within, from without, or indeed from

any region whence a helping heaven and four bountiful

winds might be pleased to waft it, than does Blake

in many of the “emanations” contained in this our

Second Volume. Yet, on the other hand, there is

the plain truth that such aid will be not at all

needed by those whom these writings will impress, and

almost certainly lost upon those whom they will not. On

the whole, I have thought it best to preface each class of

these Selections with a few short remarks, but neither to

encumber with many words their sure effect in the

right circles, nor to do battle with their destiny in the

wrong. Only it may be specified here, that whenever

any pieces occurring in Blake's written note-books

appeared of a nature on the privacy of which he might

have relied in writing them, these have been passed by,

in the task of selection. At the same time, all has been

included which seemed capable in any way of extending

our knowledge of Blake as a poet and writer, in the

manner he himself might have wished. Mere obscurity

or remoteness from usual ways of thought was, as we

know, no bar to publication with him; therefore, in all

cases where such qualities, even seeming to myself

excessive, are found in conjunction with the lyrical

power and beauty of expression so peculiar to Blake's

style as a poet (and this, let us not forget, startlingly in

advance of the time at which he wrote), I have thought

it better to include the compositions so qualified. On

the other hand, my MS. researches have often furnished

me with poems which I treasure most highly, and which

I cannot doubt will dwell in many memories as they do

in mine. But, as regards the varying claims of these

selections, it should be borne in mind that an attempt is

made in the present volume to produce, after a long

period of neglect, as complete a record as might be of
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Blake and his works; and that, while any who can here

find anything to love will be the poet-painter's welcome

guests, still such a feast is spread first of all for those

who can know at a glance that it is theirs and was meant

for them; who can meet their host's eye with sympathy

and recognition, even when he offers them the new strange

fruits grown for himself in far-off gardens where he has

dwelt alone, or pours for them the wines which he has

learned to love in lands where they never travelled.



From the Poetical Sketches.

[ Printed in 1783. Written 1768-77. æt. 11—20.]



There is no need for many further critical remarks on

these selections from the Poetical Sketches, which have

already been spoken of in Chap. VI. of the Life . Among

the lyrical pieces here chosen, it would be difficult to

award a distinct preference. These Songs are certainly

among the small class of modern times which recall

the best period of English song writing, whose rarest

treasures lie scattered among the plays of our Elizabethan

dramatists. They deserve no less than very high admi-

ration in a quite positive sense, which cannot be even

qualified by the slight, hasty, or juvenile imperfections

of execution to be met with in some of them, though by

no means in all. On the other hand, if we view them

comparatively; in relation to Blake's youth when he

wrote them, or the poetic epoch in which they were

produced; it would be hardly possible to overrate their

astonishing merit. The same return to the diction and

high feeling of a greater age is to be found in the un-

finished play of Edward the Third, from which some

fragments are included here. In the original edition,

however, these are marred by frequent imperfections in

the metre (partly real and partly dependent on careless

printing), which I have thought it best to remove, as I
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found it possible to do so without once, in the slightest

degree, affecting the originality of the text. The same

has been done in a few similar instances elsewhere.

The poem of Blind-man's Buff stands in curious contrast

with the rest, as an effort in another manner, and, though

less excellent, is not without interest. Besides what is

here given, there are attempts in the very modern-antique

style of ballad prevalent at the time, and in Ossianic

prose, but all naturally very inferior, and probably

earlier. It is singular that, for formed style and purely

literary qualities, Blake perhaps never afterwards

equalled the best things in this youthful volume, though

he often did so in melody and feeling, and more than

did so in depth of thought.



Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience.



[ Engraved 1789.]



Here again but little need be added to what has

already been said in the Life respecting the Songs of

Innocence and Experience . The first series is incom-

parably the more beautiful of the two, being indeed

almost flawless in essential respects; while in the second

series, the five years intervening between the two had

proved sufficient for obscurity and the darker mental

phases of Blake's writings to set in and greatly mar its

poetic value. This contrast is more especially evident

in those pieces whose subjects tally in one and the other

series. For instance, there can be no comparison

between the first Chimney Sweeper, which touches with

such perfect simplicity the true pathetic chord of its

subject, and the second, tinged somewhat with the

commonplaces, if also with the truths, of social discon-

tent. However, very perfect and noble examples of

Blake's metaphysical poetry occur among the Songs

of Experience , such as Christian Forbearance, and The

Human Abstract . One piece, the second Cradle Song,
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I have myself introduced from the MS. Note-book often

referred to, since there can be no doubt that it was

written to match with the first, and it has quite sufficient

beauty to give it a right to its natural place. A few

alterations and additions in other poems have been made

from the same source.



Ideas of Good and Evil.



In the MS. Note-book, to which frequent reference has

been made in the Life , a page stands inscribed with the

heading given above. It seems uncertain how much of

the book's contents such title may have been meant to

include; but it is now adopted here as a not inappro-

priate summarizing endorsement for the precious section

which here follows. In doing so, Mr. Swinburne's

example (in his Essay on Blake ) has been followed, as

regards pieces drawn from the Note-book.

The contents of the present section are derived partly

from the Note-book in question, and partly from another

small autograph collection of different matter, somewhat

more fairly copied. The poems have been reclaimed, as

regards the first-mentioned source, from as chaotic a mass

as could well be imagined; amid which it has sometimes

been necessary either to omit, transpose, or combine,

so as to render available what was very seldom found

in a final state. And even in the pieces drawn from the

second source specified above, means of the same kind

have occasionally been resorted to, where they seemed

to lessen obscurity or avoid redundance. But with all

this, there is nothing throughout that is not faithfully

Blake's own.

One piece in this series ( The Two Songs) may be

regarded as a different version of The Human Abstract,

occurring in the Songs of Experience. This new form is

certainly the finer one, I think, by reason of its personified

character, which adds greatly to the force of the impres-

sion produced. It is, indeed, one of the finest things

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Blake ever did, really belonging, by its vivid complete-

ness, to the order of perfect short poems,—never a very

large band, even when the best poets are ransacked to

recruit it. Others among the longer poems of this

section, which are, each in its own way, truly admirable,

are Broken Love, Mary, and Auguries of Innocence.

It is but too probable that the piece called Broken Love

has a recondite bearing on the bewilderments of Blake's

special mythology. But besides a soul suffering in such

limbo, this poem has a recognizable body penetrated

with human passion. From this point of view, never,

perhaps, have the agony and perversity of sundered

affection been more powerfully (however singularly)

expressed than here.

The speaker is one whose soul has been intensified by

pain to be his only world, among the scenes, figures,

and events of which he moves as in a new state of being.

The emotions have been quickened and isolated by con-

flicting torment, till each is a separate companion. There

is his “spectre,” the jealous pride which scents in the

snow the footsteps of the beloved rejected woman, but

is a wild beast to guard his way from reaching her; his

“emanation” which silently weeps within him, for has

not he also sinned? So they wander together in “a

fathomless and boundless deep,” the morn full of tempests

and the night of tears. Let her weep, he says, not for

his sins only, but for her own; nay, he will cast his sins

upon her shoulders too; they shall be more and more

till she come to him again. Also this woe of his can

array itself in stately imagery. He can count separately

how many of his soul's affections the knife she stabbed

it with has slain, how many yet mourn over the tombs

which he has built for these: he can tell too of some

that still watch around his bed, bright sometimes with

ecstatic passion of melancholy and crowning his mournful

head with vine. All these living forgive her transgres-

sions: when will she look upon them, that the dead may

live again? Has she not pity to give for pardon? nay,

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does he not need her pardon too? He cannot seek her,

but oh! if she would return! Surely her place is ready

for her, and bread and wine of forgiveness of sins.

The Crystal Cabinet and the Mental Traveller belong

to a truly mystical order of poetry. The former is a

lovely piece of lyrical writing, but certainly has not the

clearness of crystal. Yet the meaning of such among

Blake's compositions as this is may sometimes be

missed chiefly through seeking for a sense more re-

condite than was really meant. A rather intricate

interpretation was attempted here in the first edition

of these Selections. Mr. W. M. Rossetti has probably

since found the true one in his simple sentence: “This

poem seems to me to represent, under a very ideal form,

the phenomena of gestation and birth” (see the Aldine

edition of Blake's Poems, page 174). The singular stanza

commencing “Another England there I saw,” etc.,

may thus be taken to indicate quaintly that the un-

developed creature, half sentient and half conscious, has

a world of its own akin in some wise to the country of its

birth.

The Mental Traveller seemed at first a hopeless riddle;

and the editor of these Selections must confess to having

been on the point of omitting it, in spite of its high poetic

beauty, as incomprehensible. He is again indebted to

his brother for the clear-sighted, and no doubt correct,

exposition which is now printed with it, and brings its

full value to light.

The poem of Mary appears to be, on one side, an

allegory of the poetic or spiritual mind moving unre-

cognized and reviled among its fellows; and this view

of it is corroborated when we find Blake applying to

himself two lines almost identically taken from it, in the

last of the Letters to Mr. Butts printed in the Life . But

the literal meaning may be accepted, too, as a hardly

extreme expression of the rancour and envy so constantly

attending pre-eminent beauty in women.

A most noble, though surpassingly quaint example of

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Blake's loving sympathy with all forms of created life,

as well as of the kind of oracular power which he

possessed of giving vigorous expression to abstract or

social truths, will be found in the Auguries of Innocence.

It is a somewhat tangled skein of thought, but stored

throughout with the riches of simple wisdom.

Quaintness reaches its climax in William Bond, which

may be regarded as a kind of glorified street-ballad.

One point that requires to be noted is that the term

“fairies” is evidently used to indicate passionate emo-

tions, while “angels” are spirits of cold coercion. The

close of the ballad is very beautiful. It is not long since

there seemed to dawn on the present writer a mean-

ing in this ballad not discovered before. Should we

not connect it with the lines In a Myrtle Shade the

meaning of which is obvious to all knowers of Blake

as bearing on marriage? And may not “William

Bond” thus be William Blake, the bondman of the

“lovely myrtle tree”? It is known that the shadow

of jealousy, far from unfounded, fell on poor Catherine

Blake's married life at one moment, and it has been

stated that this jealousy culminated in a terrible and

difficult crisis. We ourselves can well imagine that this

ballad is but a literal relation, with such emotional

actors, of some transfiguring trance and passion of

mutual tears from which Blake arose no longer “bond”

to his myrtle-tree, but with that love, purged of all

drossier element, whose last death-bed accent was,

“Kate, you have ever been an angel to me!”

The ballad of William Bond has great spiritual

beauties, whatever its meaning; and it is one of only

two examples, in this form, occurring among Blake's

lyrics. The other is called Long John Brown and Little

Mary Bell , and perhaps the reader may be sufficiently

surprised without it.

The shorter poems, and even the fragments, afford

many instances of that exquisite metrical gift and right-

ness in point of form which constitute Blake's special

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glory among his contemporaries, even more eminently

perhaps than the grander command of mental resources

which is also his. Such qualities of pure perfection in

writing verse as he perpetually without effort displayed

are to be met with among those elder poets whom he

loved, and such again are now looked upon as the

peculiar trophies of a school which has arisen since his

time; but he alone (let it be repeated and remembered)

possessed them then, and possessed them in clear com-

pleteness. Colour and metre, these are the true patents

of nobility in painting and poetry, taking precedence of

all intellectual claims; and it is by virtue of these, first

of all, that Blake holds, in both arts, a rank which cannot

be taken from him.

Of the Epigrams on Art, which conclude this section,

a few are really pointed, others amusingly irascible,—

all more or less a sort of nonsense verses, and not even

pretending to be much else. To enter into their reckless

spirit of doggerel, it is almost necessary to see the original

note-book in which they occur, which continually testifies,

by sudden exclamatory entries, to the curious degree of

boyish impulse which was one of Blake's characteristics.

It is not improbable that such names as Rembrandt,

Rubens, Correggio, Reynolds, may have met the reader's

eye before in a very different sort of context from that

which surrounds them in the surprising poetry of this

their brother artist; and certainly they are made to do

service here as scarecrows to the crops of a rather jealous

husbandman. And for all that, I have my strong suspi-

cions that the same amount of disparagement of them

uttered to instead of by our good Blake, would have

elicited, on his side, a somewhat different estimate.

These phials of his wrath, however, have no poison but

merely some laughing gas in them; so now that we are

setting the laboratory a little in order, let these, too,

come down from their dusty upper shelf.

Sig. 30
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Prose Writings.



Of the prose writings which now follow, the only ones

already in print are the Descriptive Catalogue and the

Sibylline Leaves. To the former of these, the Public

Address , which here succeeds it, forms a fitting and most

interesting pendant. It has been compiled from a very

confused mass of MS. notes; but its purpose is unmis-

takable as having been intended as an accompaniment

to the engraving of Chaucer's Pilgrims. Both the

Catalogue and Address abound in critical passages on

painting and poetry, which must be ranked without

reserve among the very best things ever said on either

subject. Such inestimable qualities afford quite sufficient

ground whereon to claim indulgence for eccentricities

which are here and there laughably excessive, but which

never fail to have a personal, even where they have no

critical, value. As evidence of the writer's many moods,

these pieces of prose are much best left unmutilated:

let us, therefore, risk misconstruction in some quarters.

There are others where even the whimsical onslaughts

on names no less great than those which the writer

most highly honoured, and assertions as to this or that

component quality of art being everything or nothing

as it served the fiery plea in hand, will be discerned as

the impatient extremes of a man who had his own work

to do, which was of one kind, as he thought, against

another; and who mainly did it too, in spite of that

injustice without which no extremes might ever have

been chargeable against him. And let us remember

that, after all, having greatness in him, his practice of art

included all great aims, whether they were such as his

antagonistic moods railed against or no.

The Vision of the Last Judgment is almost as much a

manifesto of opinion as either the Catalogue or Address.

But its work is in a wider field, and one which, where

it stretches beyond our own clear view, may not neces-

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sarily therefore have been a lost road to Blake himself.

Certainly its grandeur and the sudden great things greatly

said in it, as in all Blake's prose, constitute it an addition

to our opportunities of communing with him, and one

which we may prize highly.

The constant decisive words in which Blake alludes,

throughout these writings, to the plagiarisms of his con-

temporaries, are painful to read, and will be wished

away; but, still, it will be worth thinking whether their

being said, or the need of their being said, is the greater

cause for complaint. Justice, looking through surface

accomplishments, greater nicety and even greater occa-

sional judiciousness of execution, in the men whom Blake

compares with himself, still perceives these words of

his to be true. In each style of the art of a period, and

more especially in the poetic style, there is often some

one central initiatory man, to whom personally, if not to

the care of the world, it is important that his creative

power should be held to be his own, and that his ideas

and slowly perfected materials should not be caught up

before he has them ready for his own use. Yet, con-

sciously or unconsciously, such an one's treasures and

possessions are, time after time, while he still lives and

needs them, sent forth to the world by others in forms

from which he cannot perhaps again clearly claim what

is his own, but which render the material useless to him

henceforward. Hardly wonderful, after all, if for once

an impetuous man of this kind is found raising the hue

and cry, careless whether people heed him or no. It is

no small provocation, be sure, when the gazers hoot you

as outstripped in your race, and you know all the time

that the man ahead, whom they shout for, is only a

flying thief.





The Inventions to the Book of Job.



These Inventions to the Book of Job, which may be

regarded as the works of Blake's own hand in which he

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most unreservedly competes with others—belonging as

they do in style to the accepted category of engraved

designs—consist of twenty-one subjects on a considerably

smaller scale than those in The Grave, each highly

wrought in light and shade, and each surrounded by a

border of allusive design and inscription, executed in a

slighter style than the subject itself. Perhaps this may

fairly be pronounced, on the whole, the most remark-

able series of prints on a scriptural theme which has

appeared since the days of Albert Dürer and Rembrandt,

widely differing too from either.

Except The Grave, these designs must be known to a

larger circle than any other series by Blake; and yet

they are by no means so familiar as to render unneces-

sary such imperfect reproduction of their intricate beau-

ties as the scheme of this work made possible, or even

the still more shadowy presentment of verbal description.

The first among them shows us the patriarch Job

worshiping among his family under a mighty oak,

surrounded by feeding flocks, range behind range, as far

as the distant homestead, in a landscape glorified by

setting sun and rising moon. “Thus did Job continually,”

the leading motto tells us. In the second plate we see

the same persons grouped, still full of happiness and

thanksgiving. But this is that day when the sons of

God came to present themselves before the Lord, and

Satan came also among them; and above the happy group

we see what they do not see, and know that power is

given to Satan over all that Job has. Then in the two

next subjects come the workings of that power; the

house falling on the slain feasters, and the messengers

hurrying one after another to the lonely parents, still

with fresh tidings of ruin. The fifth is a wonderful

design. Job and his wife still sit side by side, the closer

for their misery, and still, out of the little left to them,

give alms to those poorer than themselves. The angels

of their love and resignation are ever with them on

either side; but above, again, the unseen Heaven lies

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open. There sits throned that Almighty figure, filled

now with inexpressible pity, almost with compunction.

Around Him His angels shrink away in horror; for now

the fires which clothe them —the very fires of God—are

compressed in the hand of Satan into a phial for the

devoted head of Job himself. Job is to be tried to the

utmost; only his life is withheld from the tormentor.

How this is wrought, and how Job's friends come

to visit him in his desolation, are the subjects which

follow; and then, in the eighth design, Job at last

lifts up his voice, with arms uplifted too, among his

crouching, shuddering friends, and curses the day when

he was born. The next, again, is among the grandest

of the series. Eliphaz the Temanite is telling Job of the

thing which was secretly brought to him in the visions

of the night; and above we are shown the matter of

his words, the spirit which passed before his face; all

blended in a wondrous partition of light, cloud, and mist

of light. After this, Job kneels up and prays his re-

proachful friends to have pity on him, for the hand of

God has touched him. And next—most terrible of all

—we see embodied the accusations of torment which Job

brings against his Maker: a theme hard to dwell upon,

and which needs to be viewed in the awful spirit in

which Blake conceived it. But in the following subject

there comes at last some sign of soothing change. The

sky, till now full of sunset and surging cloud, in which

the stones of the ruined home looked as if they were

still burning, has here given birth to the large peaceful

stars, and under them the young Elihu begins to speak:

“Lo! all these things worketh God oftentimes with man,

to bring forth his soul from the pit.” The expression of

Job, as he sits with folded arms, beginning to be recon-

ciled, is full of delicate familiar nature; while the look

of the three unmerciful friends, in their turn reproved,

has something in it almost humorous. And then the

Lord answers Job out of the whirlwind, dreadful in its

resistless force, but full also of awakening life, and rich
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with lovely clinging spray. Under its influence, Job and

his wife kneel and listen, with faces to which the blessing

of thankfulness has almost returned. In the next sub-

ject it shines forth fully present again, for now God

Himself is speaking of His own omnipotence and right

of judgment—of that day of creation “when the morning

stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for

joy.” All that He says is brought before us, surround-

ing His own glorified Image; while below, the hearers

kneel rapt and ecstatic. This is a design which never

has been surpassed in the whole range of Christian art.

Very grand too is the next, where we see Behemoth,

chief of the ways of God, and Leviathan, king over the

children of pride. The sixteenth plate, to which we

now come, is a proof of the clear dramatic sense with

which Blake conceived the series as a whole. It is

introduced in order to show us the defeat of Satan in his

contest against Job's uprightness. Here, again, is the

throned Creator among His angels, and beneath Him the

Evil One falls with tremendous plummet-force; Hell

naked before His face, and Destruction without a cover-

ing. Job with his friends are present as awe-struck

witnesses. In the design which follows, He who has

chastened and consoled Job and his wife is seen to be-

stow His blessing on them; while the three friends,

against whom “His wrath is kindled,” cover their faces

with fear and trembling. And now comes the acceptance

of Job, who prays for his friends before an altar, from

which a heart-shaped body of flame shoots upward into

the sun itself; the background showing a distant evening

light through broad tree-stems—the most peaceful sight

in the world. Then Job's kindred return to him: “every

one also gave him a piece of money and every one an

earring of gold.” Next he is seen relating his trials and

mercies to the new daughters who were born to him—

no women so fair in the land. And, lastly, the series

culminates in a scene of music and rapturous joy, which,

contrasted with the calm thanksgiving of the opening
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design, gloriously embodies the words of its text, “So

the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than the

beginning.”

In these three last designs, I would specially direct

attention to the exquisite beauty of the female figures.

Nothing proves more thoroughly how free was the

spiritualism of Blake's art from any ascetic tinge. These

women are given to us no less noble in body than in

soul; large-eyed, and large-armed also; such as a man

may love with all his life.

The angels (and especially those in plate 14, “When

the morning stars sang together,”) may be equally cited

as proofs of the same great distinctive quality. These

are no flimsy, filmy creatures, drowsing on feather-bed

wings, or smothered in draperies. Here the utmost

amount of vital power is the heavenly glory they dis-

play; faces, bodies, and wings, all living and springing

fire. And that the ascetic tendency, here happily absent,

is not the inseparable penalty to be paid for a love of the

Gothic forms of beauty, is evident enough, when we seen

those forms everywhere rightly mingling with the artist's

conceptions, as the natural breath of sacred art. With

the true daring of genius, he has even introduced a Gothic

cathedral in the background of the worshipping group in

plate 1, as the shape in which the very soul of worship

is now for ever embodied for us. It is probably with

the fine intention of symbolizing the unshaken piety of

Job under heavy affliction that a similar building is still

seen pointing its spires heavenward in the fourth plate,

where the messengers of ruin follow close at one ano-

ther's heels. We may, perhaps, even conjecture that

the shapeless buildings, like rude pagan cairns, which

are scattered over those scenes of the drama which refer

to the gradual darkening of Job's soul, have been intro-

duced as forms suggestive of error and the shutting out

of hope. Everywhere throughout the series we meet

with evidences of Gothic feeling. Such are the recessed

settle and screen of trees in plate 2, much in the spirit

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of Orcagna; the decorative character of the stars in

plate 12; the Leviathan and Behemoth in plate 15,

grouped so as to recall a mediæval medallion or wood-

carving; the trees, drawn always as they might be carved

in the woodwork of an old church. Further instances

of the same kind may be found in the curious sort of

painted chamber, showing the themes of his discourse,

in which Job addresses his daughters in plate 20; and

in the soaring trumpets of plate 21, which might well be

one of the rich conceptions of Luca della Robbia.

Nothing has yet been said of the borders of illustrative

design and inscription which surround each subject in

the Job. These are slight in manner, but always thought-

ful and appropriate, and often very beautiful. Where

Satan obtains power over Job, we see a terrible serpent

twined round tree-stems among winding fires, while

angels weep, but may not quench them. Fungi spring

under baleful dews, while Job prays that the night may

be solitary, and the day perish wherein he was born.

Trees stand and bow like ghosts, with bristling hair of

branches, round the spirit which passes before the face

of Eliphaz. Fine examples also are the prostrate rain-

beaten tree in plate 13; and, in the next plate, the map

of the days of creation. In plate 18 (the sacrifice and

acceptance of Job), Blake's palette and brushes are ex-

pressively introduced in the border, lying, as it were,

on an altar-step beside the signature of his name. That

which possesses the greatest charm is perhaps the border

to plate 2. Here, at the base, are sheepfolds watched

by shepherds: up the sides is a trellis, on whose lower

rings birds sit upon their nests, while angels, on the

higher ones, worship round flame and cloud, till it arches

at the summit into a sky full of the written words of

God.

Such defects as exist in these designs are of the kind

usual with Blake, but far less frequent than in his more

wilful works; indeed, many among them are entirely

free from any damaging peculiarities. Intensely mus-

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cular figures, who surprise us by a sort of line round

the throat, wrists, and ankles, but show no other sign

of being draped, are certainly to be sometimes found

here as elsewhere, but not many of them. The lifted

arms and pointing arms in plates 7 and 10 are pieces of

mannerism to be regretted, the latter even seeming a

reminiscence of Macbeth's Witches by Fuseli: and a

few other slight instances might, perhaps, be cited.

But, on the whole, these are designs no less well and

clearly considered, however highly imaginative, than the

others in the small highest class of original engraved

inventions, which comprises the works of Albert Dürer,

of Rembrandt, of Hogarth, of Turner, of Cruikshank in

his best time, and some few others. Like all these they

are incisive and richly toned to a degree which can only

be attained in engraving by the original inventor, and

have equally a style of execution all their own. In spirit

and character they are no less independent, having more

real affinity, perhaps, with Orcagna than with any other

of the greatest men. In their unison of natural study

with imagination, they remind one decidedly of him;

and also of Giotto, himself the author of a now almost

destroyed series of frescoes from Job, in the Campo Santo

at Pisa, which it would be interesting to compare, as far

as possible, with these inventions of Blake.





Jerusalem.



Of the pictorial part of the Jerusalem much might be

said which would merely be applicable to all Blake's

works alike. One point perhaps somewhat distinctive

about it is an extreme largeness and decorative character

in the style of the drawings, which are mostly made up

of a few massive forms, thrown together on a grand,

equal scale. The beauty of the drawings varies much,

according to the colour in which they are printed. One

copy, possessed by Lord Houghton, is so incomparably

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superior, from this cause, to any other I have seen, that

no one could know the work properly without having

examined this copy. It is printed in a warm reddish

brown, the exact colour of a very fine photograph; and

the broken blending of the deeper tones with the more

tender shadows,—all sanded over with a sort of golden

mist peculiar to Blake's mode of execution,—makes still

more striking the resemblance to the then undiscovered

“handling” of Nature herself. The extreme breadth of

the forms throughout, when seen through the medium

of this colour, shows sometimes, united with its grandeur,

a suavity of line which is almost Venetian.

The subjects are vague and mystic as the poem itself.

Female figures lie among waves full of reflected stars:

a strange human image, with a swan's head and wings,

floats on water in a kneeling attitude, and drinks: lovers

embrace in an open water-lily: an eagle-headed creature

sits and contemplates the sun: serpent-women are coiled

with serpents: Assyrian-looking, human-visaged lions are

seen yoked to the plough or the chariot: rocks swallow

or vomit forth human forms, or appear to amalgamate

with them: angels cross each other over wheels of flame:

and flames and hurrying figures wreathe and wind among

the lines. Even such slight things as these rough inter-

secting circles, each containing some hint of an angel,

even these are made the unmistakable exponents of

genius. Here and there some more familiar theme meets

us,—the creation of Eve, or the Crucifixion; and then

the thread is lost again. The whole spirit of the designs

might seem well symbolized in one of the finest among

them, where we see a triple-headed and triple-crowned

figure embedded in rocks, from whose breast is bursting

a string of youths, each in turn born from the other's

breast in one sinuous throe of mingled life, while the

life of suns and planets dies and is born and rushes

together around them.

There is an ominous sentence in one of the letters of

Blake to Mr. Butts, where, speaking of the Jerusalem, he

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says, “the persons and machinery entirely new to the

inhabitants of earth ( some of the persons excepted ).” The

italics are mine, and alas! to what wisp-led flounderings

of research might they not lure a reckless adventurer.

The mixture of the unaccountable with the familiar in

nomenclature which occurs towards the close of a pre-

ceding extract from the Jerusalem is puzzling enough

in itself; but conjecture attains bewilderment when we

realize that one of the names, “Scofield” (spelt, perhaps

more properly Scholfield, but pronounced no doubt as

above), was that of the soldier who had brought a charge

of sedition against Blake at Felpham. Whether the

other English names given were in some way connected

with the trial would be worth any practicable inquiries.

When we consider the mystical connection in which

this name of Scofield is used, a way seems opened into

a more perplexed region of morbid analogy existing in

Blake's brain than perhaps any other key could unlock.

It is a minute point, yet a significant and amazing one.

Further research discovers further references to “Sco-

field,” for instance,
  • “Go thou to Skofield:
  • Ask him if he is Bath or if he is Canterbury:
  • Tell him to be no more dubious: demand explicit words:
  • Tell him I will dash him into shivers where and at what time
  • I please. Tell him, Hand and Skofield, they are ministers of
  • evil
  • To those I hate: for I can hate also as well as they.”

Again (not without Jack the Giant Killer to help):—

  • “Hark! hear the giants of Albion cry at night,—
  • We smell the blood of the English, we delight in their blood on
  • our altars;
  • The living and the dead shall be ground in our crumbling mill,
  • For bread of the sons of Albion, of the giants Hand and Skofield:
  • Skofield and Cox are let loose upon the Saxons; they accumu-
  • late
  • A world in which man is, by his nature, the enemy of man.”

Again (and woe is the present editor!):—

  • “These are the names of Albion's twelve sons and of his twelve
  • daughters:—”
Image of page 476 page: 476


(Then follows a long enumeration,—to each name

certain counties attached):—
  • “Skofield had Ely, Rutland, Cambridge, Huntingdon,
  • Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertford, Essex, and his emanation is Guini-
  • vere.”(!!!)

The first of the three above quotations seems meant

really as a warning to Scholfield to be exact in evidence

as to his place of birth or other belongings, and as to

the “explicit words” used by Blake. Cox and Court-

hope are Sussex names: can these be the “Kox” and

“Kotope” of the poem, and names in some way con-

nected, like Scholfield's, with the trial?

Is the wild, wild tale of Scofield exhausted here?

Alas no! At leaf 51 of the Jerusalem occurs a certain

design. In some, perhaps in all, copies of the Jeru-

salem , as a whole, the names inscribed above the figures

are not given, but at least three examples of water-

colour drawings or highly-coloured reproductions of

the plate exist, in which the names appear. Who

“Vala” and “Hyle” may personify I do not pretend

to conjecture, though dim surmises hurtle in the

mind, which, like De Quincey in the catastrophe of

the Spanish Nun, I shall keep to myself. These two

seem, pretty clearly, to be prostrate at the discomfiture

of Scofield, who is finally retiring fettered into his

native element. As a historical picture, then, Blake felt

it his duty to monumentalize this design with due in-

scription. Two of the three hand-coloured versions,

referred to above, are registered as Nos. 50 and 51 of

the Catalogue in Vol. II., and the third version appears

as No. 108 in the Burlington Catalogue.

I may note another point bearing on the personal

grudges shadowed in the Jerusalem. In Blake's Public

Address he says:—“The manner in which my character

has been blasted these thirty years, both as an artist and

a man, may be seen, particularly in a Sunday paper called

the Examiner, published in Beaufort's Buildings (we all

Image of page 477 page: 477
know that editors of newspapers trouble their heads

very little about art and science, and that they are

always paid for what they put in upon these ungracious

subjects); and the manner in which I have rooted out

the nest of villains will be seen in a poem concerning

my three years' Herculean labours at Felpham, which I

shall soon publish. Secret calumny and open profes-

sions of friendship are common enough all the world

over, but have never been so good an occasion of poetic

imagery.” Thus we are evidently to look (or sigh in

vain) for some indication of Blake's wrath against the

Examiner in the vast Jerusalem. It is true that the

Examiner persecuted him, his publications and exhibi-

tion, and that Leigh Hunt was prone to tell “good

stories” of him; and in some MS. doggrel of Blake's

we meet with the line,
  • The “Examiner whose very name is Hunt.”


But what form can the irate allegory be supposed to

take in the Jerusalem? Is it conceivable that that

mysterious entity or non-entity, “Hand,” whose name

occurs sometimes in the poem, and of whom an inscribed

spectrum is there given at full length, can be a hiero-

glyph for Leigh Hunt? Alas! what is possible or

impossible in such a connection?

Image of page 478 page: 478
more about Ebenezer Jones
EBENEZER JONES.

(FROM NOTES AND QUERIES, 1870.)
I hope Mr. Gledstanes-Waugh may receive from other

sources a more complete account than I can give of this

remarkable poet, who affords nearly the most striking

instance of neglected genius in our modern school of

poetry. This is a more important fact about him than

his being a Chartist, which however he was, at any rate

for a time. I met him only once in my life, I believe

in 1848, at which time he was about thirty, and

would hardly talk on any subject but Chartism. His

poems (the Studies of Sensation and Event) had been

published some five years before my meeting him, and

are full of vivid disorderly power. I was little more

than a lad at the time I first chanced on them, but they

struck me greatly, though I was not blind to their

glaring defects and even to the ludicrous side of their

wilful “newness”; attempting, as they do, to deal

recklessly with those almost inaccessible combinations

in nature and feeling which only intense and oft-renewed

effort may perhaps at last approach. For all this, these

Studies should be, and one day will be, disinterred

from the heaps of verse deservedly buried.
Some years after meeting Jones, I was much pleased

to hear the great poet Robert Browning speak in warm

terms of the merit of his work; and I have understood

that Monckton Milnes (Lord Houghton) admired the

Studies, and interested himself on their author's

behalf. The only other recognition of this poet which

I have observed is the appearance of a short but

admirable lyric by him in the collection called Nightin-
Image of page 479 page: 479
gale Valley, edited by William Allingham. I believe

that some of Jones's unpublished MSS. are still in the

possession of his friend Mr. W. J. Linton, the eminent

wood-engraver, now residing in New York, who could

no doubt furnish more facts about him than any one

else. It is fully time that attention should be called

to this poet's name, which is a noteworthy one.
It may not be out of place to mention here a much

earlier and still more striking instance of poetic genius

which has hitherto failed of due recognition. I allude

to Charles J. Wells, the author of the blank verse

scriptural drama of Joseph and his Brethren, published

under the pseudonym of “Howard” in 1824, and of

Stories after Nature (in prose, but of a highly poetic

cast), published anonymously in 1822. This poet was

a friend of Keats, who addressed to him one of the

sonnets to be found in his works—“On receiving a

present of roses.” Wells's writings—youthful as they

are—deserve to stand beside any poetry, even of that

time, for original genius, and, I may add, for native

structural power, though in this latter respect they bear

marks of haste and neglect. Their time will come yet.
Image of page 480 page: 480
more about The Stealthy School of Criticism
THE STEALTHY SCHOOL OF

CRITICISM.

(FROM THE ATHENÆUM, 1871.)
Your paragraph, a fortnight ago, relating to the pseu-

donymous authorship of an article, violently assailing

myself and other writers of poetry, in the Contemporary

Review for October last, reveals a species of critical

masquerade which I have expressed in the heading

given to this letter. Since then, Mr. Sidney Colvin's

note, qualifying the report that he intends to “answer”

that article, has appeared in your pages; and my own

view as to the absolute forfeit, under such conditions, of

all claim to honourable reply, is precisely the same as

Mr. Colvin's. For here a critical organ, professedly

adopting the principle of open signature, would seem,

in reality, to assert (by silent practice, however, not by

enunciation,) that if the anonymous in criticism was—as

itself originally inculcated—but an early caterpillar stage,

the nominate too is found to be no better than a homely

transitional chrysalis, and that the ultimate butterfly

form for a critic who likes to sport in sunlight and yet

to elude the grasp, is after all the pseudonymous. But,

indeed, what I may call the “Siamese” aspect of the

entertainment provided by the Review will elicit but one

verdict. Yet I may, perhaps, as the individual chiefly

attacked, be excused for asking your assistance now in

giving a specific denial to specific charges which, if

unrefuted, may still continue, in spite of their author's

strategic fiasco, to serve his purpose against me to some

extent.
The primary accusation, on which this writer grounds
Image of page 481 page: 481
all the rest, seems to be that others and myself “extol

fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of poetic

and pictorial art; aver that poetic expression is greater

than poetic thought; and, by inference, that the body

is greater than the soul, and sound superior to sense.”
As my own writings are alone formally dealt with in

the article, I shall confine my answer to myself; and

this must first take unavoidably the form of a challenge

to prove so broad a statement. It is true, some frag-

mentary pretence at proof is put in here and there

throughout the attack, and thus far an opportunity is

given of contesting the assertion.
A Sonnet entitled Nuptial Sleep is quoted and

abused at page 338 of the Review , and is there dwelt

upon as a “whole poem,” describing “merely animal

sensations.” It is no more a whole poem, in reality,

than is any single stanza of any poem throughout the

book. The poem, written chiefly in sonnets, and of

which this is one sonnet-stanza, is entitled The House

of Life ; and even in my first published instalment of

the whole work (as contained in the volume under

notice) ample evidence is included that no such passing

phase of description as the one headed Nuptial Sleep

could possibly be put forward by the author of The

House of Life as his own representative view of the

subject of love. In proof of this, I will direct attention

(among the love-sonnets of this poem) to Nos. 2, 8, 11,

17, 28, and more especially 13, which, indeed, I had

better print here.

LOVE-SWEETNESS.
  • “Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall
  • About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head
  • In gracious fostering union garlanded;
  • Her tremulous smiles; her glances' sweet recall
  • Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial;
  • Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed
  • On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led
  • Back to her mouth which answers there for all:—
Sig. 31
Image of page 482 page: 482
  • “What sweeter than these things, except the thing
  • 10In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:—
  • The confident heart's still fervour; the swift beat
  • And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing
  • Then when it feels, in cloud-girt wayfaring,
  • The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?”
Any reader may bring any artistic charge he pleases

against the above sonnet; but one charge it would be

impossible to maintain against the writer of the series

in which it occurs, and that is, the wish on his part to

assert that the body is greater than the soul. For here

all the passionate and just delights of the body are

declared—somewhat figuratively, it is true, but unmis-

takably—to be as naught if not ennobled by the concur-

rence of the soul at all times. Moreover, nearly one

half of this series of sonnets has nothing to do with love,

but treats of quite other life-influences. I would defy

any one to couple with fair quotation of Sonnets 29, 30,

31, 39, 40, 41, 43, or others, the slander that their

author was not impressed, like all other thinking men,

with the responsibilities and higher mysteries of life;

while Sonnets 35, 36, and 37, entitled The Choice ,

sum up the general view taken in a manner only to be

evaded by conscious insincerity. Thus much for The

House of Life , of which the sonnet Nuptial Sleep is

one stanza, embodying, for its small constituent share,

a beauty of natural universal function, only to be repro-

bated in art if dwelt on (as I have shown that it is not

here) to the exclusion of those other highest things of

which it is the harmonious concomitant.
At page 342, an attempt is made to stigmatize four

short quotations as being specially “my own property,”

that is, (for the context shows the meaning,) as being

grossly sensual; though all guiding reference to any

precise page or poem in my book is avoided here. The

first of these unspecified quotations is from the Last

Confession ; and is the description referring to the

harlot's laugh, the hideous character of which, together
Image of page 483 page: 483
with its real or imagined resemblance to the laugh

heard soon afterwards from the lips of one long cherished

as an ideal, is the immediate cause which makes the

maddened hero of the poem a murderer. Assailants

may say what they please; but no poet or poetic reader

will blame me for making the incident recorded in these

seven lines as repulsive to the reader as it was to the

hearer and beholder. Without this, the chain of motive

and result would remain obviously incomplete. Observe

also that these are but seven lines in a poem of some

five hundred, not one other of which could be classed

with them.
A second quotation gives the last two lines only of the

following sonnet, which is the first of four sonnets in

The House of Life jointly entitled Willowwood :—
  • “I sat with Love upon a woodside well,
  • Leaning across the water, I and he;
  • Nor ever did he speak nor looked at me,
  • But touched his lute wherein was audible
  • The certain secret thing he had to tell:
  • Only our mirrored eyes met silently
  • In the low wave; and that sound seemed to be
  • The passionate voice I knew; and my tears fell.
  • “And at their fall, his eyes beneath grew hers;
  • 10 And with his foot and with his wing-feathers
  • He swept the spring that watered my heart's drouth.
  • Then the dark ripples spread to waving hair,
  • And as I stooped, her own lips rising there
  • Bubbled with brimming kisses at my mouth.”


The critic has quoted (as I said) only the last two

lines, and he has italicized the second as something

unbearable and ridiculous. Of course the inference

would be that this was really my own absurd bubble-

and-squeak notion of an actual kiss. The reader will

perceive at once, from the whole sonnet transcribed

above, how untrue such an inference would be. The

sonnet describes a dream or trance of divided love

momentarily re-united by the longing fancy; and in

the imagery of the dream, the face of the beloved rises
Image of page 484 page: 484
through deep dark waters to kiss the lover. Thus the

phrase, “Bubbled with brimming kisses” etc., bears

purely on the special symbolism employed, and from

that point of view will be found, I believe, perfectly

simple and just
A third quotation is from Eden Bower , and says,

  • “What more prize than love to impel thee?
  • Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!”


Here again no reference is given, and naturally the

reader would suppose that a human embrace is described.

The embrace, on the contrary, is that of a fabled snake-

woman and a snake. It would be possible still, no

doubt, to object on other grounds to this conception; but

the ground inferred and relied on for full effect by the

critic is none the less an absolute misrepresentation.

These three extracts, it will be admitted, are virtually,

though not verbally, garbled with malicious intention;

and the same is the case, as I have shown, with the

sonnet called Nuptial Sleep when purposely treated as a

“whole poem.”
The last of the four quotations grouped by the critic

as conclusive examples consists of two lines from

Jenny . Neither some thirteen years ago, when I wrote

this poem, nor last year when I published it, did

I fail to foresee impending charges of recklessness and

aggressiveness, or to perceive that even some among

those who could really read the poem, and acquit me on

these grounds, might still hold that the thought in it had

better have dispensed with the situation which serves

it for framework. Nor did I omit to consider how far

a treatment from without might here be possible. But

the motive powers of art reverse the requirement of

science, and demand first of all an inner standing-point.

The heart of such a mystery as this must be plucked

from the very world in which it beats or bleeds; and

the beauty and pity, the self-questionings and all-ques-

tionings which it brings with it, can come with full force

only from the mouth of one alive to its whole appeal,
Image of page 485 page: 485
such as the speaker put forward in the poem,—that is,

of a young and thoughtful man of the world. To such

a speaker, many half-cynical revulsions of feeling and

reverie, and a recurrent presence of the impressions of

beauty (however artificial) which first brought him with-

in such a circle of influence, would be inevitable features

of the dramatic relations portrayed. Here again I can

give the lie, in hearing of honest readers, to the base or

trivial ideas which my critic labours to connect with the

poem. There is another little charge, however, which

this minstrel in mufti brings against Jenny , namely,

one of plagiarism from that very poetic self of his which

the tutelary prose does but enshroud for the moment.

This question can, fortunately, be settled with ease by

others who have read my critic's poems; and thus I

need the less regret that, not happening myself to be in

that position, I must be content to rank with those who

cannot pretend to an opinion on the subject.
It would be humiliating, need one come to serious

detail, to have to refute such an accusation as that of

“binding oneself by solemn league and covenant to

extol fleshliness as the distinct and supreme end of

poetic and pictorial art”; and one cannot but feel that

here every one will think it allowable merely to pass-by

with a smile the foolish fellow who has brought a charge

thus framed against any reasonable man. Indeed, what

I have said already is substantially enough to refute it,

even did I not feel sure that a fair balance of my poetry

must, of itself, do so in the eyes of every candid reader.

I say nothing of my pictures; but those who know

them will laugh at the idea. That I may, nevertheless,

take a wider view than some poets or critics, of how

much, in the material conditions absolutely given to

man to deal with as distinct from his spiritual aspira-

tions, is admissible within the limits of Art,—this, I say,

is possible enough; nor do I wish to shrink from such

responsibility. But to state that I do so to the ignoring

or overshadowing of spiritual beauty, is an absolute
Image of page 486 page: 486
falsehood, impossible to be put forward except in the

indulgence of prejudice or rancour.
I have selected, amid much railing on my critic's part,

what seemed the most representative indictment against

me, and have, so far, answered it. Its remaining clauses

set forth how others and myself “aver that poetic ex-

pression is greater than poetic thought . . . and sound

superior to sense”—an accusation elsewhere, I observe,

expressed by saying that we “wish to create form for its

own sake.” If writers of verse are to be listened to in

such arraignment of each other, it might be quite com-

petent to me to prove, from the works of my friends in

question, that no such thing is the case with them; but

my present function is to confine myself to my own

defence. This, again, it is difficult to do quite seriously.

It is no part of my undertaking to dispute the verdict

of any “contemporary,” however contemptuous or con-

temptible, on my own measure of executive success;

but the accusation cited above is not against the poetic

value of certain work, but against its primary and (by

assumption) its admitted aim. And to this I must reply

that so far, assuredly, not even Shakespeare himself

could desire more arduous human tragedy for develop-

ment in Art than belongs to the themes I venture to

embody, however incalculably higher might be his power

of dealing with them. What more inspiring for poetic

effort than the terrible Love turned to Hate,—perhaps

the deadliest of all passion-woven complexities,—which

is the theme of Sister Helen , and, in a more fantastic

form, of Eden Bower —the surroundings of both poems

being the mere machinery of a central universal

meaning? What, again, more so than the savage

penalty exacted for a lost ideal, as expressed in the

Last Confession ;—than the outraged love for man

and burning compensations in art and memory of

Dante at Verona ;—than the baffling problems which

the face of Jenny conjures up;—or than the analysis

of passion and feeling attempted in The House of Life ,
Image of page 487 page: 487
and others among the more purely lyrical poems?

I speak here, as does my critic in the clause adduced, of

aim not of achievement; and so far, the mere summary

is instantly subversive of the preposterous imputation.

To assert that the poet whose matter is such as this

aims chiefly at “creating form for its own sake,” is, in

fact, almost an ingenuous kind of dishonesty; for surely

it delivers up the asserter at once, bound hand and foot,

to the tender mercies of contradictory proof. Yet this

may fairly be taken as an example of the spirit in which

a constant effort is here made against me to appeal to

those who either are ignorant of what I write, or else

belong to the large class too easily influenced by an

assumption of authority in addressing them. The false

name appended to the article must, as is evident, aid

this position vastly; for who, after all, would not be apt

to laugh at seeing one poet confessedly come forward

as aggressor against another in the field of criticism?
It would not be worth while to lose time and patience

in noticing minutely how the system of misrepresenta-

tion is carried into points of artistic detail,—giving us,

for example, such statements as that the burthen em-

ployed in the ballad of Sister Helen “is repeated

with little or no alteration through thirty-four verses,”

whereas the fact is, that the alteration of it in every

verse is the very scheme of the poem. But these are

minor matters quite thrown into the shade by the critic's

more daring sallies. In addition to the class of attack I

have answered above, the article contains, of course, an

immense amount of personal paltriness; as, for instance,

attributions of my work to this, that, or the other absurd

derivative source; or again, pure nonsense (which can

have no real meaning even to the writer) about “one

art getting hold of another, and imposing on it its con-

ditions and limitations”; or, indeed, what not besides?

However, to such antics as this, no more attention is

possible than that which Virgil enjoined Dante to bestow

on the meaner phenomena of his pilgrimage.
Image of page 488 page: 488
Thus far, then, let me thank you for the opportunity

afforded me to join issue with the Stealthy School of

Criticism. As for any literary justice to be done on

this particular Mr. Robert-Thomas, I will merely ask

the reader whether, once identified, he does not become

manifestly his own best “sworn tormentor”? For

who will then fail to discern all the palpitations which

preceded his final resolve in the great question whether

to be or not to be his acknowledged self when he became

an assailant? And yet this is he who, from behind his

mask, ventures to charge another with “bad blood,”

with “insincerity,” and the rest of it (and that where

poetic fancies are alone in question); while every word

on his own tongue is covert rancour, and every stroke

from his pen perversion of truth. Yet, after all, there

is nothing wonderful in the lengths to which a fretful

poet-critic will carry such grudges as he may bear, while

publisher and editor can both be found who are willing

to consider such means admissible, even to the clear

subversion of first professed tenets in the Review which

they conduct.
In many phases of outward nature, the principle of

chaff and grain holds good,—the base enveloping the

precious continually; but an untruth was never yet the

husk of a truth. Thresh and riddle and winnow it as

you may,—let it fly in shreds to the four winds,—false-

hood only will be that which flies and that which stays.

And thus the sheath of deceit which this pseudonymous

undertaking presents at the outset insures in fact what

will be found to be its real character to the core.
Image of page 489 page: 489
more about Hake's Madeline, and Other Poems
HAKE'S MADELINE, AND OTHER POEMS.
Above all ideal personalities with which the poet must

learn to identify himself, there is one supremely real

which is the most imperative of all; namely, that of his

reader. And the practical watchfulness needed for such

assimilation is as much a gift and instinct as is the

creative grasp of alien character. It is a spiritual con-

tact, hardly conscious yet ever renewed, and which

must be a part of the very act of production. Among

the greatest English singers of the past, perhaps four

only have possessed this assimilative power in pure

perfection. These are Chaucer, Shakespeare, Byron,

and Burns; and to their names the world may probably

add in the future that of William Morris.
We have no thought of saying that not to belong to

this circle, widest in range and narrowest in numbers, is

to be but half a poet. It is with the poetic glory as

with the planetary ones; this too has satellites called

into being by the law of its own creation. Not every

soul specially attuned to song is itself a singer; but

the productive and the receptive poetic mind are mem-

bers of one constellation; and it may be safely asserted

that to take rank in the exceptional order of those

born with perfect though passive song-perception is to

be even further removed from the “general reader”

on the one hand than from the producer of poetry on

the other.
But some degree, entire or restricted, of relation to

the outer audience, must be the test of every poet's voca-

tion, and has to be considered first of all in criticizing his

work. The book under notice has perhaps as limited a
Image of page 490 page: 490
reach of appeal as can well be imagined, and the writer's

faculty of rapport seems on the whole imperfect; yet

there are qualities in what he has written which no true

poetic reader can regard with indifference.
The best and most sympathetic part of Dr. Hake's

volume is decidedly its central division—the one

headed Parables. Had one poem of this section,

quaintly called Old Souls, come first in the book,

the favourable impression on opening it must have

been immediate and conclusive. The poem is a sym-

bolic expression of the humility of Christ in His personal

ministering to man's needs and renewal of fallen

humanity; and the subject is carried out with great

completeness as regards the contrast between Christ

Himself and His earthly representatives, His relation to

all classes of men, and the deliberate simplicity of His

beneficent labour in the soul. The form of expression

adopted in this poem is of the highest order of homely

pathos, to which no common word comes amiss, and yet

in which the sense of reverence and appropriateness is

everywhere perfect. The piece is so high in theme, and

so utterly good of its class, that we shall not attempt to

extract from it, as its unity of purpose and execution

throughout is the leading quality without which no idea

of its merit can be conveyed.
Two others among the four Parables,— The Lily

of the Valley and The Deadly Nightshade —though

somewhat less perfect successes than this, rival it in

essential value. They are contrasted pictures; the first,

of poverty surrounded by natural influences and the com-

pensations of universal endowment; the other, of poverty

surrounded in the life of cities by social rejection only,

and endlessly instigated to snatch some share of good by

the reiterated scoff, “This is not for thee.” In the first

poem a young forest-bred girl, in the second a boy reared

in the fetid life of courts and alleys, is the medium

through which the lesson is developed. Here, again, we

are at some loss to express the poems by extract; but
Image of page 491 page: 491
with this proviso we may take from the Lily of the

Valley a few sweet stanzas of simple description:—

  • “The wood is what it was of old,
  • A timber-farm where wild flowers grow:
  • There woodman's axe is never cold,
  • And lays the oaks and beeches low:
  • But though the hand of man deface,
  • The lily ever grows in grace.
  • “Of their sweet loving natures proud,
  • The stock-doves sojourn in the tree:
  • With breasts of feathered sky and cloud,
  • 10And notes of soft though tuneless glee,
  • Hid in the leaves they take a spring,
  • And crush the stillness with their wing.
  • “The wood to her was the old wood,
  • The same as in her father's time;
  • Nor with their sooths and sayings good
  • The dead told of its youth or prime.
  • The hollow trunks were hollow then,
  • And honoured like the bones of men.”
This simple story of parable has great beauties, especi-

ally at the point where the first acquaintance with death

among those she loved causes the child to wander forth

bewildered, and at last, weary and asleep in the wood, to

find the images of terror and decay hitherto overlooked

in nature assume prominence for the first time in her

dreams. This is very subtle and lovely; but it must be

added that even this poem, which is among the least

difficult in the book, needs some re-reading before it is

mastered, and leaves an impression—if not of artifici-

ality, to which the author's mind is evidently superior—

yet of a singular native tendency to embody all concep-

tions through a remote and reticent medium. This,

however, is much less apparent in the Deadly Night-

shade , which approaches Old Souls in clearness and

mastery, though not essentially finer than its companion

poem, the Lily. The description here of the poor

beggar-boy's drunken mother is in a vein of true realistic
Image of page 492 page: 492
tragedy; and the dire directness of treatment is carried

on throughout:—
  • “Then did he long for once to taste
  • The reeking viands, as their smell
  • From cellar-gratings ran to waste
  • In gusts that sicken and repel.
  • Like Beauty with a rose regaled,
  • The grateful vapours he inhaled.
  • “So oft a-hungered has he stood
  • And yarn of fasting fancy spun,
  • As wistfully he watched the food
  • 10With one foot out away to run,
  • Lest questioned be his only right
  • To revel in the goodly sight.
  • “Lest justice should detect within
  • A blot no human eye could see,
  • He dragged his rags about his skin
  • To hide from view his pedigree:
  • He deemed himself a thief by law,
  • Who stole ere yet the light he saw.
  • “His theft, the infancy of crime,
  • 20Was but a sombre glance to steal,
  • While outside shops he spent his time
  • In vain imaginings to deal,
  • With looks of awe to speculate
  • On all things good, while others ate.
  • “No better school his eyes to guide,
  • He lingers by some savoury mass,
  • And watches mouths that open wide
  • And sees them eating through the glass:
  • Oft his own lips he opes and shuts,—
  • 30 With sympathy his fancy gluts.
  • “Yet he begs not, but in a trance
  • Admires the scene where numbers throng;
  • And if on him descends a glance,
  • He is abashed and slinks along;
  • Nor cares he more, the spell once broke,
  • Scenes of false plenty to invoke.”
The fourth Parable, called Immortality, deals with

the course of an elevated soul in which thwarted
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ambition is tempered by resignation, and which looks

into the future of eternity for free scope and for a re-

versed relation between itself and antagonistic natures.

This, however, is somewhat obscurely rendered, and

must be pronounced inferior to the other three. Of

these three, we may say that, if they are read first in the

book, the fit reader cannot but be deeply moved by their

genuine human and spiritual sympathy, and by their

many beauties of expression; and will be prepared to

look thenceforward past his author's difficulties to the

spirit which shines through them, with a feeling of

enthusiastic confidence.
We may turn next to the last section of the volume—

the series of sixty-five short poems entitled in the

aggregate The World's Epitaph . Many of these

reveal the same tender thought for human suffering

which is the great charm of the Parables, and it is

sometimes expressed with equal force and beauty.

Such pre-eminently are those On the Outcast and

On the Saint; the last conveying a picture which has

something startlingly imaginative, of a member of the

communion of saints presenting before the supreme

Tribunal, as an appeal for pity, some poignant persona-

tion of the anguish endured on earth. However, here

again the order of the poems seems unfortunate, the

series opening with some of the weakest. Many of

the “epitaphs” have appended to them an “epode”

which appears to be, generally or always, the rejoinder

of the world to the poet's reflection; but perhaps these

do not often add much to the force of the thing said.

Such a scheme as this series presents is obviously not to

be fairly discussed in a brief notice like the present; but

we may note as interesting examples, in various degrees,

of its plan, the epitaphs On the Sanctuary, On Time,

On the Soul, On the Valley of the Shadow , On Life, On

the Seasons of Life , On the Widow, On Early Death, On

the Deserted , On Dissipated Youth , On the Statesman , On

Old Age , On Penitence, and On the Struggle for Immor-
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tality. As a specimen of this section of the book we

extract the following brief poem On the Soul:—

  • “Free as the soul, the spire ascends;
  • Heaven lets it in her presence sit;
  • Yet ever back to earth it tends,—
  • The tranquil waters echo it.
  • So falls the future to the past;
  • So the high soul to earth is cast.
  • “But though the soul thus nobly fails,
  • Not long it borders on despair;
  • It still the fallen glory hails,
  • 10Though lost its conquests in the air.
  • While truth is yet above, its good
  • Is measured in the spirit's flood.
  • “Though not at first its holy light
  • Is figured in that mirror's face,
  • It scarce returns a form less bright
  • Than fills above a higher place.
  • The one was loved though little known,
  • The other is the spirits' own.”


This little piece, in spite of some uncertainty in the

arrangement of its last stanza, has the dignity and

ordered compass of a mind naturally empowered to deal

with high things; and this is often equally evident

throughout the series. Still we have to regret that even

complete obscurity is a not uncommon blemish, while

imperfect expression seems too often to be attributable

to a neglect of means; and this despite the fact that a

sense of style is certainly one of the first impressions

derived from Dr. Hake's writings. But we fear that a

too great and probably organic abstraction of mind

interferes continually with the projection of his thoughts;

and we are frequently surprised to meet, amid the

excellence and fluent melody of his rhythm, with some

sudden deviation from the structure of the metre em-

ployed, which can be attributable only to carelessness

and want of watchful revision. It needs such practical

and patent proofs as this to convince one of neglect where

the instinct of structure exists so unmistakably; and it is
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then that we begin to perceive the cause of much that

is imperfect in the author's intellectual self-expression.

This is no doubt the absence of that self-examination and

self-confronting with the reader which are in an abso-

lutely unwearied degree necessary in art; and the

question only remains whether the poet's nature will or

will not for the future admit of his applying at all times

a rigorous remedy to this mental shortcoming.
The same difficulty meets us in excess when we come

to the poem which stands first on Dr. Hake's title-page—

Madeline. With this our remaining space is far from

permitting us to deal at such length as could alone give

any true idea of its involved and somewhat bewildering

elements. Its unexplained form is a puzzle at the out-

set. It is delivered in a kind of alternating recitative

between Valclusa, the name of the personified district

in which the action is laid, and a Chorus of Nymphs.

The argument may be summed up somewhat to this

effect. Hermes, a beneficent magician and poet, has

been enamoured of Daphne, who has since died and

become to him a ministering spirit and his coadjutress in

the hallowed exercise of his art. He has been made

aware of the seduction of a young girl, Madeline, by the

lord of the land, and has in vain laboured to prevent it,

but now calls Daphne to his aid in consoling the outcast.

This angelic spirit conveys her to the magician's home,

where a sort of heavenly encampment is formed, in the

midst of which Madeline lies in magic slumbers watched

by her protectress. Glad and sad visions succeed each

other in her sleep, varied but not broken by conference

with Daphne, who urges her to forgiveness of her

betrayer. But she has been chosen by a resistless

power as the avenger of her own wrong; and as this

ever-recurring phantom of vengeance gains gradual pos-

session of her whole being, the angelic comforter, who

has taken on herself some expiatory communion in

Madeline's agony, is so wrung by the human anguish

that she undergoes the last pain of humanity in a simu-
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lated death. Madeline then fulfils her destiny, and

makes her way, still in a trance of sleep, by stormy

mountain passes to the castle of him who had wrought

her ruin; passes through his guards, finds him among

his friends, and slays him. She then returns to the

magic encampment, and lying down by the now un-

conscious Daphne, is in her turn released by death.

The poem closes with the joint apotheosis of the consoler

and the consoled, together with a child, the unborn fruit

of Madeline's wrong.
This conception, singular enough, but neither devoid

of sublimity nor of real relation to human passion and

pity, is carried out with great structural labour, and

forms no doubt the portion of the volume on which

Dr. Hake has bestowed his most conscientious care.

But our rough argument can give no idea of the baffling

involutions of its treatment and diction, rendering it, we

fear, quite inaccessible to most readers. The scheme

of this strange poem is as literal and deliberate in a

certain sense as though the story were the simplest in

the world; and so far it might be supposed to fulfil

one of the truest laws of the supernatural in art—that

of homely externals developing by silent contrast the

inner soul of the subject. But here, in fact, the outer

world does not once affect us in tangible form. The

effect produced is operatic or even ballet-like as regards

mechanical environment and course of action. This is

still capable of defence on very peculiar ideal grounds;

but we fear the reader will find the sequence of the whole

work much more difficult to pursue than our summary

may promise.
The structure of the verse is even exceptionally grand

and well combined; but the use of language, though

often extremely happy, is also too frequently vague to

excess; and the employment of one elaborate lyrical

metre throughout a long dramatic action, only varied by

occasional passages in the heroic couplet, conveys a

certain sense of oppression, in spite of the often felicitous
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workmanship. Moreover a rigid exactness in the rhymes

—without the variation of assonance so valuable or even

invaluable in poetry—is apt here to be preserved at the

expense of meaning and spontaneity. Nevertheless,

when all is said, there can be no doubt that the same

reader who at one moment lays down a poem like this

in hopeless bewilderment might at another, when his

mind is lighter and clearer, and he is at a happier junc-

ture of rapport with its author, take it up to much more

luminous and pleasurable results, and find it really im-

pressive. One point which should not be overlooked

in reading it is, that there is an evident intention on

Dr. Hake's part to make hysterical and even mesmeric

phenomena in some degree the groundwork of his concep-

tion. The fitness of these for poetry, particularly when

thus minutely dealt with, may indeed afford matter for

argument, but the intention must not be lost sight of.

Lastly, to deny to Madeline a decided element of

ideal beauty, however unusually presented, would be

to demonstrate entire unfitness for judgment on the

work.
We have left ourselves no room to extract from

Madeline in any representative way; but the following

two stanzas (the second of them extremely fine) may

serve to give an idea of the metre in which it is written,

and afford some glimpse of its uniquely fantastic elabora-

tion. The passage is from the very heart of the poem:

where Madeline is overshadowed in sleep by the vision

of her seducer's castle, rousing half-formed horror and

resolve; till all things, even to the drapery which clothes

her body, seem to take part in the direful overmaster-

ing hour.
  • “The robe that round her flows
  • Is stirred like drifted snows;
  • Its restless waves her marble figure drape
  • And all its charms express,
  • In ever-changing shape,
  • To zephyrs that caress
    • Sig. 32
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  • Her limbs, and lay them bare,
  • And all their grace and loveliness declare.
  • Nor modesty itself could chide
  • 10 The soft enchanters as they past her breathe
  • And beauty wreathe
  • In rippling forms that ever onward glide.
  • “Breezes from yonder tower,
  • Loosed by the avenging power,
  • Her senses hurry and a dread impart.
  • In terror she beholds
  • Her fluttering raiment start
  • In ribbed and bristled folds.
  • Its texture close and fine
  • 20 With broidery sweeps the bosom's heaving line,
  • Then trickles down as from a wound,
  • Curdling across the heart as past it steals,
  • Where it congeals
  • In horrid clots her quivering waist around.”
We have purposely avoided hitherto any detailed

allusion to what appear to us grave verbal defects of

style in these poems; nor shall we cite such instances

at all, as things of this kind, detached from their context,

produce often an exaggeratedly objectionable impression.

Suffice it to say that, for a writer who displays an

undoubted command over true dignity of language,

Dr. Hake permits himself at times the most extra-

ordinarily conventional (or once conventional) use of

Della-Cruscan phrases, that could be found in any poet

since the wonderful days when Hayley wrote the

Triumphs of Temper. And this leads us to a few

final words on his position as a living writer.
It appears to us then that Dr. Hake is, in relation to

his own time, as original a poet as one can well conceive

possible. He is uninfluenced by any styles or manner-

isms of the day to so absolute a degree as to tempt one

to believe that the latest English singer he may have

even heard of is Wordsworth; while in some respects his

ideas and points of view are newer than the newest in

vogue; and the external affinity frequently traceable to

elder poets only throws this essential independence into
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startling and at times almost whimsical relief. His

style, at its most characteristic pitch, is a combination of

extreme homeliness, as of Quarles or Bunyan, with a

formality and even occasional courtliness of diction

which recall Pope himself in his most artificial flights;

while one is frequently reminded of Gray by sustained

vigour of declamation. This is leaving out of the ques-

tion the direct reference to classical models which is

perhaps in reality the chief source of what this poet has

in common with the eighteenth century writers. The

resemblance sometimes apparent to Wordsworth may be

more on the surface than the influences named above;

while one might often suppose that the spiritual tender-

ness of Blake had found in our author a worthy disciple,

did not one think it most probable that Blake lay out of

his path of study. With all his pecularities, and all the

obstacles which really stand between him and the read-

ing public, he will not fail to be welcomed by certain

readers for his manly human heart, and genuine if not

fully subjugated powers of hand.
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more about Hake's Parables and Tales
HAKE'S PARABLES AND TALES.
The quality of finish in poetic execution is of two kinds.

The first and highest is that where the work has been

all mentally “cartooned,” as it were, beforehand, by a

process intensely conscious, but patient and silent,—an

occult evolution of life: then follows the glory of wield-

ing words, and we see the hand of Dante, as that of

Michelangelo,—or almost as that quickening Hand

which Michelangelo has dared to embody,—sweep

from left to right, fiery and final. Of this order of

poetic action,—the omnipotent freewill of the artist's

mind,—our curbed and slackening world may seem to

have seen the last. It has been succeeded by another

kind of “finish,” devoted and ardent, but less building

on ensured foundations than self-questioning in the very

moment of action or even later: yet by such creative

labour also the evening and the morning may be blent

to a true day, though it be often but a fitful or an un-

glowing one. Not only with this second class, but even

with those highest among consummate workers, produc-

tiveness must be found, at the close of life, to have been

comparatively limited; though never failing, where a

true master is in question, of such mass as is necessary

to robust vitality.
That Dr. Hake is to be ranked with those poets who,

in striving to perfect what they do as best they may,

resolve to have a tussle for their own with Oblivion, is

evident on comparison of his present little volume with

its predecessor of a year or two ago. A portion of its

contents is reproduced from that former book, but so

remoulded by a searching self-criticism as to give the

reader the best possible guarantee of its being worth his
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while to follow the author in his future course. We

believe, on the whole, that Dr. Hake will do well in

cultivating chiefly, as he does here, the less intricate of

his poetic tendencies. His former poem of Madeline,

—a tragic narrative couched in a metre, and invested

with an imagery, which recalled the Miltonic ode or the

Petrarchian canzone,—presented, amid much that was

unmanageable, some striking elements of success. But

there were other compositions in the same volume to

which some readers must have turned with astonish-

ment, after reading Madeline, and wondered that the

writer who had so much genuine command over the

heart as these displayed should be at pains to put his

thoughts elsewhere in a difficult and exclusive form.

Such a book does not get rapidly abroad, yet the piece

called Old Souls is probably already secure of a

distinct place in the literature of our day, and we believe

the same may be predicted of other poems in the little

collection just issued.
The finest new poem here is The Blind Boy, which

gives scope to all the poet's sympathies by summoning

the beloved beauties of visible nature round the ideal of

a mysterious exclusion and isolation. Speaking of the

aim alone, we may say that perhaps there is hardly in

Wordsworth himself any single poem of equal length

which from so central a stand-point interpenetrates the

seen with the unseen, bounded always in a familiar

circle of ideas. The blind boy—heir to the lands and

sea-coast which are dark to him alone—has their

beauties transmitted to him by description through his

loving sister's eyes and lips. Some of the opening

stanzas, wherein the poet spreads the scenery before us,

are very direct and spacious:—
  • “Clouds, folded round the topmost peaks,
  • Shut out the gorges from the sun
  • Till midday, when the early streaks
  • Of sunshine down the valley run;
  • But where the opening cliffs expand,
  • The early sea-light breaks on land.
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  • “Before the sun, like golden shields,
  • The clouds a lustre shed around;
  • Wild shadows gambolling o'er the fields;
  • 10Tame shadows stretching o'er the ground.
  • Towards noon the great rock-shadow moves,
  • And takes slow leave of all it loves.”
The descriptions become yet more beautiful, and

assume an under-current of relative significance, when

the sister and brother are the speakers:—

  • “She tells him how the mountains swell,
  • How rocks and forests touch the skies;
  • He tells her how the shadows dwell
  • In purple dimness on his eyes,
  • Whose tremulous orbs the while he lifts,
  • As round his smile their spirit drifts.
  • “More close around his heart to wind,
  • She shuts her eyes in childish glee,
  • ‘To share,’ she said, ‘his peace of mind;
  • 10To sit beneath his shadow-tree.’
  • So, half in play, the sister tries
  • To find his soul within her eyes.
  • “His hand in hers, she walks along
  • And leads him to the river's brink;
  • She stays to hear the water's song,
  • Closing her eyes with him to think.
  • His ear, more watchful than her own,
  • Caught up the ocean's distant moan.
  • “‘The river's flow is bright and clear,’
  • 20The blind boy said, ‘and were it dark
  • We should no less its music hear:
  • Sings not at eventide the lark?
  • Still when the ripples pause, they fade
  • Upon my spirit like a shade.’
  • “‘Yet, brother, when the river stops,
  • And in the quiet bay is hushed,
  • E'en though its gentle murmur drops,
  • 'Tis bright as when by us it rushed;
  • It is not like a shade the more
  • 30 Except beneath the wooded shore.’”
The second stanza here has much of that colossal

infancy of expression which we find in William Blake.
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Such touches, sometimes quite masterly, as here, some-

times striving with what yet remains but half said, are

characteristic of this poet.
The blind boy—blind early but not from his birth—

speaks again:—

  • “‘The waves with mingling echoes fall;
  • And memories of a long-lost light
  • From far-off mornings seem to call,
  • And what I hear comes into sight.
  • The beauteous skies flash back again,
  • But ah! the light will not remain!’”
The stanzas which follow are perhaps the most subtle

and suggestive in the poem:—

  • “Awhile he pauses; as he stops,
  • Her little hand the sister moves,
  • And pebbles on the water drops,
  • As it runs up the sandy grooves;
  • Or to her ear a shell applies,
  • With parted lips and dreaming eyes.
  • “‘That noise!’ said he, with lifted hand.
  • ‘The sea-gull's scream and flapping wings.
  • Before the wind it flies to land,
  • 10And omens of a tempest brings.’
  • She tells him how the sea-bird pale
  • Whirls wildly on the coming gale.
  • “‘And is the sea alone? Even now
  • I hear faint mutterings.’ - ‘'Tis the waves.’
  • ‘It seems a murmur sweeping low
  • And hurrying through the distant caves.
  • I hear again that smothered tone,
  • As if the sea were not alone.’”
Less elevated in tone than The Blind Boy, but

perhaps still more complete from the artistic point of

view, in the clear flow of its familiar observation and

homely pathos, is the poem entitled The Cripple. We

have given The Blind Boy the higher place on account

of its more ideal treatment; but a careful reading of The

Cripple will show it to be nothing less than a master-

piece in its simple way, and so blended together in its

parts that it is very difficult to extract from it so as to
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convey the emotional impression which the verses pro-

duce when read in sequence. The cripple is the helpless

son of a poor village widow, charwoman or washer-

woman as the chance presents itself.
  • “As a wrecked vessel on the sand,
  • The cripple to his mother clung:
  • Close to the tub he took his stand
  • While she the linen washed and wrung;
  • And when she hung it out to dry
  • The cripple still was standing by.
  • “When she went out to char, he took
  • His fife, to play some simple snatch
  • Before the inn hard by the brook,
  • 10While for the traveller keeping watch,
  • Against the horse's head to stand,
  • Or hold its bridle in his hand.
  • “Sometimes the squire his penny dropped
  • Upon the road for him to clutch,
  • Which, as it rolled, the cripple stopped,
  • Striking it nimbly with his crutch.
  • The groom, with leathern belt and pad,
  • E'en found a copper for the lad.
  • “The farmer's wife her hand would dip
  • 20Down her deep pocket with a sigh;
  • Some halfpence in his hand would slip,
  • When there was no observer nigh;
  • Or give him apples for his lunch,
  • That he loved leisurely to munch.
  • “But for the farmer, what he made,
  • At market table he would spend,
  • And boys who used not plough or spade
  • Had got the parish for their friend;
  • He paid his poor-rates to the day,
  • 30 So let the boy ask parish-pay.
  • “Yet would the teamster feel his fob,
  • The little cripple's heart to cheer,
  • Himself of penny pieces rob,
  • That he begrudged to spend in beer.
  • His boy, too, might be sick or sore,
  • So gave he of his thrifty store.”
All this is a good deal lost without the aid of the
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preceding introductory picture of village life. The above

passage is succeeded by a charming brookside description

of the cripple's favourite haunt. What follows we must

pursue to the close, though the extract be rather a long

one:—

  • “There with soft notes his fife he filled—
  • A mere tin plaything from the mart,
  • With holes at equal distance drilled,
  • To which his fingers grace impart,
  • While it obeys his lips' control,
  • And is a crutch unto his soul.
  • “At church he longed his fife to try,
  • Where oboe gave its doleful note,
  • Where fiddle scraped harsh melody,
  • 10Where bass the rustic vitals smote.
  • Such music then was all in vogue,
  • And psalms were sung in village brogue.
  • “His cheerful ways gave many cause
  • For wonder; nay, his very joy
  • To others' mirth would give a pause:
  • His soul so like his body's toy,
  • So childish, yet with face of age,
  • Beginning at life's latter stage.
  • “Dead is his crutch on moping days—
  • 20'Tis so they call his sickly fits,
  • When by his side his crutch he lays,
  • And in the chimney-corner sits,
  • Hobbling in spirit near the yew
  • That in the village churchyard grew.
  • “Ah! it befell at harvest-time—
  • Such are the ways of Providence,—
  • That the poor widow in her prime
  • Was fever-struck, and hurried hence;
  • Then did he wish indeed to lie
  • 30 Between her arms and with her die.
  • “Who shall the cripple's woes beguile?
  • Who earn the bread his mouth to feed?
  • Who greet him with a mother's smile?
  • Who tend him in his utter need?
  • Who lead him to the sanded floor?
  • Who put his crutch behind the door?
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  • “Who set him in his wadded chair,
  • And after supper say his grace?
  • Who to invite a loving air
  • 40His fife upon the table place?
  • Who, as he plays, her eyes shall lift
  • In wonder at a cripple's gift?
  • “Who ask him all the news that chanced—
  • Of farmer's wife in coat and hat,
  • Of squire who to the city pranced—
  • To draw him out in lively chat?
  • This flood of love, now but a surf
  • Left on a nameless mound of turf.
  • “Some it made sigh, and some made talk,
  • 50To see the guardian of the poor
  • Call for the boy to take a walk,
  • And lead him to the workhouse door:
  • With lifted hands and boding look
  • They watched him cross the village brook.”
Old Morality is a poem differing much from the

two already dwelt upon, as being a kind of light satirical

allegory, yet having an affinity to them by its rustic

surroundings, and producing much the same impression

as the old verse-inscribed Emblems of a whole school of

Dutch and English moralists. We hardly think it

possible to extract from this piece; nor, though full of

thoughtful perceptive whimsicality, does it quite possess

that consequent clear-headedness which must be the first

principle of all allegory, whether serious or humorous,

whereof twilight is the true atmosphere, but fog the utter

destruction. Nevertheless we may refer the reader to

the poem itself, as one characterized by flashes of genial

wisdom and by delicate and pleasurable execution. The

sound of its title recalls rather awkwardly Scott's Old

Mortality (a kind of trivial obstruction by no means

beneath artistic notice;) and for the symbolism of the

poem it seems to us that another representative name—

Old Veracity for instance—would have been actually

more to the purpose than the word Morality which

men have long conspired to beset with endless ambi-

guities.
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We have not yet noticed the poem entitled Mother

and Child which stands first in the volume, and which

has a more distinctly dramatic aim than appears in its

other contents. We must admit that this poem is far

from satisfying us. Its subject is this. A young lady,

leaving the Opera, sees suddenly in the street a mother

and infant whose aspect—that of the child especially,

which seems confused in her mind with the face of her

affianced lover,—continues to haunt her memory most

painfully. Meeting them again by accident, she makes

enquiry and finds that the child is in fact her lover's

illegitimate offspring; whereupon she expresses by

words and by good deeds the gratitude due to the un-

conscious agents of her own rescue from the hands of

him who had ruined and abandoned another. This

invention is striking and certainly not impossible; but to

reconcile us to its exceptional features, it requires much

more individuality in the working out, and much more

space for the purpose, than are here bestowed upon it.

Its steady abruptness in disposing, one after another, of

incidents sufficiently surprising to give us pause, recalls

somewhat the pseudo-ballads of a past generation, and

its execution is certainly stiffer and more prosaic than is

the case with any other piece in the series. However,

it has, like all its author puts forth, the genuine charm

of human sympathy, and on a wider canvas its concep-

tion might probably have been developed to good

purpose.
The present writer has on a former occasion spoken

elsewhere of several poems here reproduced from the

earlier volume,—notably of Old Souls and the subtly

exquisite Lily of the Valley . He will here only note

that—with the exception of Old Souls, which needed

and has received hardly any modification—every piece

which Dr. Hake has presented for the second time has

been made his own afresh by that double of himself, the

self-critic, who should be one always with the poet.

We do not venture to say that harmony of sound and
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clearness of structure have been everywhere equally

mastered throughout the present collection; but so much

has been done that to doubt further progress in fresh

work would be unjust to the author. Though disposed

to encourage him to the pursuit chiefly of the path in

poetry which this volume follows, we should not regret

to find his thoughts clothed sometimes in more varied

and even more adventurous lyrical forms.
Though much has been said concerning the matter-of-

fact tendencies of the reading public which poets desire

to enlist, it must we think be admitted that the simpler

and more domestic order of themes has not been

generally, of late years, the most widely popular. In-

deed these have probably had less than their due in the

balance of immediate acceptance. It would be easy to

point to examples,—for instance, to the work which

Mr. Allingham has done so well in this field,—above all,

to his very memorable book, Laurence Bloomfield in

Ireland ,—a solid and undeniable achievement, no less

a historical record than a searching poetic picture of

those manners which can alone be depicted with a

certainty of future value,—the manners of our own time.

Yet such a book as this seems yet to have its best day

to come. Should Dr. Hake's more restricted, but lovely

and sincere, contributions to the poetry of real life, not

find the immediate response they deserve, he may at

least remember that others also have failed to meet at

once with full justice and recognition. But we will hope

for good encouragement to his present and future work;

and can at least assure the lover of poetry (but indeed

we have proved it to him by quotation,) that in these

simple pages he shall find not seldom a humanity limpid

and pellucid,—the well-spring of a true heart, with

which his tears must mingle as with their own element.
Dr. Hake has been fortunate in the beautiful drawings

which Mr. Arthur Hughes has contributed to his little

volume. No poet could have a more congenial yoke-

fellow than this gifted and imaginative artist. The lovely
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little picture which heads the Lily of the Valley must

satisfy even the most jealous admirer of the poem, and

that to the Blind Boy leaves nothing to desire, full

as it is of a gracious and kindred melancholy. The

illustration to Old Morality is another decided success,

except perhaps for the too plump and juvenile sexton;

and that to the Cripple has great sweetness, only the

poor widow here is hardly “in her prime” as described

in the text, and her son thus looks more like her grand-

son. We should be glad to find the poet and the artist

again in company.
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III.—SENTENCES AND NOTES.
1866.—Thinking in what order I love colours, found

the following:—

1. Pure light warm green.

2. Deep gold-colour.

3. Certain tints of grey.

4. Shadowy or steel blue.

5. Brown, with crimson tinge.

6. Scarlet.

Other colours (comparatively) only loveable according

to the relations in which they are placed.
The true artist will first perceive in another's work

the beauties, and in his own the defects.
There are few indeed whom the facile enthusiasm

for contemporary models does not deaden to the truly-

balanced claims of successive effort in art.
The critic of the new school sits down before a picture,

and saturates it with silence.
If one painted Boors drinking, and even were refined

oneself, they would pardon and in some degree revere

one. Or, if one were a drinking boor oneself, and painted

refinements, they would condone the latter. But the

refined, painted by the refined, is unpardonable.
Picture and poem bear the same relation to each other

as beauty does in man and woman: the point of meeting

where the two are most identical is the supreme perfec-

tion.
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Poetry should seem to the hearer to have been always

present to his thought, but never before heard.
Poetry is the apparent image of unapparent realities.
The Elizabethans created a style in poetry, and by mis-

applying some of its qualities formed their prose. The

Annians created a style in prose, and wrenched its

characteristics to form their poetry.
Chatterton can only be under-rated if we expect that

he should have done by intuition all that was accom-

plished by gradual inheritance from him half a century

later.
Invention absolute is slow of acceptance, and must be

so. This Coleridge and others have found. Why make

a place for what is neither adaptation nor reproduction?

Let it hew its way if it can.
Moderation is the highest law of poetry. Experimen-

tal as Coleridge sometimes becomes, his best work is

tuned but never twanged; and this is his great distinc-

tion from almost all other who venture as far.
The sense of the momentous is strongest in Coleridge:

not the weird and ominous only, but the value of monu-

mental moments.
The deepest trait of nature in fiction will appear as if

nothing but fact could have given it birth, and will yet

show that consummate art is its true source.
Conceit is not so much the over-value of a man's own

work as the fatal capacity for abstracting, from his in-

evitable knowledge of the value of his achievements, an

ideal of his intrinsic power.
It is bad enough when there is a gifted and powerful

opposition to the teachings of the best minds in any

period: but when the best minds themselves are on a

false tack, who shall stem the tide?
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As the waifs cast up by the sea change with the

changing season, so the tides of the soul throw up their

changing drift on the sand, but the sea beyond is one for

ever.
A woman may have some little mercy for the man she

has ceased to love, but she has none for the memory of

what he has been to her.
Seek thine ideal anywhere except in thyself. Once

fix it there, and the ways of thy real self will matter

nothing to thee, whose eyes can rest on the ideal already

perfected.
No skunk can get rid of his own name by giving it to

another.
In receiving an unjust insult, remember that you can

afford to despise it; while he who has been guilty of it

can only despise himself for his act. Thus the advantage

is yours.
He belonged to that extraordinary class of persons

whom no amount of intellect can prevent from being

fools.
Could I have seen the thing I am to-day!
The same (how strange), the same as I was then!

Yet the time may come when to my soul it may be diffi-

cult, in such old things, to tell which came first of all the

days which now seem so wide apart.
I was one of those whose little is their own.
more about Notes
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NOTES BY WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI.
Sig. 33
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Note: blank page
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NOTES BY WILLIAM M. ROSSETTI.
Page 35.
The Bride's Prelude.—A good deal of this uncompleted

poem was written at a very early date, say 1847-9. This

portion may have extended up to about p. 52, “Not the

guilt only made the shame,” etc.; and the poem was then

named Bride-chamber Talk. The date of the remainder is

less definite to me; perhaps towards 1859-60 for the most

part; and in the earlier portion considerable changes in

diction etc. were introduced about the same time. My

brother had practically laid the poem aside for many years

before his death, and would probably never have completed

it, even in a longer term of life. I find a memorandum in

his handwriting of the contemplated conclusion of the poem:

written perhaps towards 1878. “Urscelyn has become cele-

brated as a soldier of fortune, selling his sword to the highest

bidder, and in this character reports reach Aloyse and her

family respecting him. Aloyse now becomes enamoured of

a young knight who loves her deeply; this leads, after fears

and hesitations, to her confessing to him the stain on her life;

he still remains devoted to her. Urscelyn now reappears;

his influence as a soldier renders a lasting bond with him

desirable to the brothers of Aloyse, much as they hate him;

and he, on his side, is bent on assuming an important position

in the family to which he as yet only half belongs. He there-

fore offers marriage to Aloyse, supported by the will of her

brothers, who moreover are well aware of the blot they have

to efface, which would thus disappear. At a tournament

Urscelyn succeeds in treacherously slaying the knight to

whom Aloyse has betrothed herself; and this death is followed

in due course by the bridal to which the poem relates. It

winds up with the description of the last preparations pre-

ceding the bridal procession. Amelotte would draw atten-

tion to the passing of the time. Aloyse then says: ‘There

is much now that you remember; how we heard that Urscelyn
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had become a soldier of fortune, and how he returned here,

etc. You must also remember well the death of that young

knight at the tourney.’ Amelotte should then describe the

event, and say how well she remembers Urscelyn's bitter

grief at the mischance. Aloyse would then tell her how she

herself was betrothed secretly to the young knight, and how

Urscelyn slew him intentionally. As the bridal procession

appears, perhaps it might become apparent that the brothers

mean to kill Urscelyn when he has married her.”
Page 66.
Sister Helen.—This poem was first published in 1853

in the Düsseldorf Annual, at the invitation of the editress,

Mrs. Howitt. It had been written a couple of years or so

before. It reappeared with some improvements in the volume

Poems of 1870; and again in the partly modified re-issue of

that volume in 1881. The stanzas regarding the bride of

Keith of Ewern are additions proper to this ultimate form of

the poem.
Page 75.
The Staff and Scrip.—My brother found the story of

this in the Gesta Romanorum, and schemed out the

poem in September 1849. Its actual composition seems to

me to have been somewhat later, perhaps towards 1853.
Page 103.
Rose Mary.—This poem was written in the early autumn

of 1871. The Beryl-songs are a later addition, say 1879.

The very general opinion has been that they were better

away, and I cannot but agree with it. I have heard my

brother say that he wrote them to show that he was not

incapable of the daring rhyming and rhythmical exploits of

some other poets. As to this point readers must judge. It

is at any rate true that in making the word “Beryl” the pivot

of his experiment, a word to which there are the fewest

possible rhymes, my brother weighted himself heavily.
Page 176.
The House of Life: Prefatory Note.—This note appeared

in the volume Ballads and Sonnets, 1881. The point which

it emphasizes is that a series entitled The House of Life had

been published in the volume Poems of 1870, consisting at

that time partly of sonnets and partly of other compositions;
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whereas in the volume Ballads and Sonnets the series thus

entitled consisted solely of sonnets, and was in other respects

not a little different.
Page 176.
The House of Life.—The dates of the various sonnets

which make up this series are extremely various. The

earliest of them may date in 1848, or even a year or so pre-

ceding. The latest come close before, or even in, 1881, in

the autumn of which year the series was published in the

same form which it now bears. One positive line of demarca-

tion between the various sonnets separates those which

appeared in the volume Poems, published in the Spring of

1870, from any others. I am far from having a clear idea or

definite information as to the true dates of the sonnets. But

I think the reader is entitled to some sort of guidance re-

garding them, forming as they do so extremely important a

constituent in my brother's poetical and intellectual record;

and therefore, keeping in view the line of demarcation above

referred to, I append here a rough suggestion of what may

have been their sequence in point of date. All the items

which are here entered “Between 1848 and 1869” appeared

in the Poems of 1870, except the second and third sonnets

(Numbers 75 and 76) of Old and New Art.
    Between 1848 and 1869.
    • SONNETS

      NUMBERED
    • 90. Retro me, Sathana.
    • 71 to 73. The Choice.
    • 74 to 76. Old and New Art.
    • 69. Autumn Idleness.
    • 47. Broken Music.
    • 65. Known in vain.
    • 15. The Birth-bond.
    • 67. The Landmark.
    • 63. Inclusiveness.
    • 77. Soul's Beauty.
    • 78. Body's Beauty.
    • 70. The Hill Summit.
    • 85. Vain Virtues.
    • 86. Lost Days.
    • 87. Death's Songsters
    • 91. Lost on Both Sides.
    • 92. The Sun's Shame—I.
    • 97. A Superscription.
    • 48. Death-in-Love.
    • 48. Death-in-Love.
    • 36. Life-in-Love.
    • 37. The Love-Moon.
    • 49 to 52. Willow-wood.
    • 55. Stillborn Love.
    • 68. A Dark Day.


    • Column Break


    • SONNETS

      NUMBERED
    • 84. Farewell to the Glen.
    • 95. The Vase of Life.
    • 6. The Kiss.
    • 7. Supreme Surrender.
    • 9. Passion and Worship.
    • 79. The Monochord.
    • 98. He and I.
    • 99, 100. Newborn Death.
    • 101. The One Hope.
    • 2. Bridal Birth.
    • 3. Love's Testament.
    • 4. Lovesight.
    • 10. The Portrait.
    • 11. The Love-letter.
    • 16. A Day of Love.
    • 21. Love-Sweetness.
    • 23. Love's Baubles.
    • 25. Winged Hours.
    • 38. The Morrow's Message.
    • 39. Sleepless Dreams.
    • 45. Secret Parting.
    • 46. Parted Love.
    • 82. Hoarded Joy.
    • 83. Barren Spring.
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    Between 1870 and 1881.
    • SONNETS

      NUMBERED
    • 29. The Moonstar.
    • 30. Last Fire.
    • 31. Her Gifts.
    • 32. Equal Troth.
    • 33. Venus Victrix.
    • 34. The Dark Glass.
    • 35. The Lamp's Shrine.
    • 20. Gracious Moonlight.
    • 1. Love Enthroned.
    • 5. Heart's Hope.
    • 8. Love's Lovers.
    • 12. The Lovers' Walk.
    • 13. Youth's Antiphony.
    • 14. Youth's Spring-tribute.
    • 17. Beauty's Pageant.
    • 18. Genius in Beauty.
    • 19. Silent Noon.
    • 22. Heart's Haven.
    • 26. Mid-Rapture.
    • 27. Heart's Compass.
    • 28. Soul-light.
    • 42. Hope overtaken.


    • Column Break


    • SONNETS

      NUMBERED
    • 43. Love and Hope.
    • 44. Cloud and Wind.
    • 53. Without Her.
    • 54. Love's Fatality.
    • 80. Love Dawn to Noon.
    • 96. Life the Beloved.
    • 40. Severed Selves.
    • 41. Through Death to Love.
    • 60. Transfigured Life.
    • 66. The Heart of the Night.
    • 81. Memorial Thresholds.
    • 88. Hero's Lamp.
    • 89. The Trees of the Garden.
    • 93. The Sun's Shame—2.
    • 61. The Song Throe.
    • 62. The Soul's Sphere.
    • 64. Ardour and Memory.
    • 66 to 68. True Woman.
    • 69. Love's Last Gift.
    • 70. Introductory Sonnet.
    • 24. Pride of Youth.
    • 94. Michelango's Kiss.
The Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti , the work of the

friend of his closing days, Mr. Hall Caine, shows that the

author regarded Still-born Love, Known in Vain, Lost Days,

and The One Hope (Nos. 55, 65, 86, and 101), as about the

best of the series.
Pages 215, 216.
Soul's Beauty and Body's Beauty.—These two sonnets

a.2-1867.i92 were written respectively for Rossetti's pictures entitled

Sibylla Palmifera and Lilith. They might therefore, if he

had not himself embodied them in The House of Life, have

appeared appropriately in the section of the present book

named Sonnets and Verses for Rossetti's own Works of Art.
Page 237.
At the Sun-rise in 1848.—My brother never published

this sonnet. It is not of his best; yet, as it openly proclaims

that he shared the aspirations and exultations of the great

year of European revolution, I have thought the personal in-

terest attaching to the sonnet to be such as to entitle it to

something better than final oblivion.
Page 237.
Autumn Song.—This lyric was set to music by Mr. Edward Dann-

reuther during my brother's lifetime, and was published in

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that form—though not otherwise. I have therefore felt no

hesitation in including it among his collected works. As to

the next following lyric, The Lady's Lament, which had

hitherto been wholly unpublished, I did hesitate; but I

finally admitted it, as being a somewhat marked performance

of its class. The class is the same as with the Autumn

Song; each being the utterance of a dreamy or indeed

morbid mood of desolation to which the youth of our modern

generations is prone.
Page 240.
The Portrait.—In printed notices of my brother's poems

I have often seen the supposition advanced that this poem

was written after the death of his wife, in relation to some

portrait he had painted of her during her lifetime. The

supposition is very natural — yet not correct. The poem

was in fact an extremely early one, and purely imaginary,—

perhaps, in the first draft of it, as early as 1847; it was after-

wards considerably revised.
Page 252.
On Refusal of Aid between Nations.—This sonnet

was written in 1849, or perhaps 1848. It refers to the apathy

with which other countries witnessed the national struggles

of Italy and Hungary against Austria.
Page 255.
A Trip to Paris and Belgium.—In the autumn of 1849

my brother undertook this trip along with Mr. Holman Hunt.

He wrote the verses mostly while actually travelling by rail

etc., and sent them in his letters to me. Under the above

heading I have pieced together such portions of his verse-

missives as appear to me worthy of preservation in the present

form. Much the same observation applies to the two ensuing

sonnets, The Staircase of Notre Dame, Paris, and On

Leaving Bruges; and to the lyric, Near Brussels, A

Halfway Pause. The sonnet, Place de la Bastille, Paris,

belongs to the same series; it is only one of the set which

my brother published in one of his volumes ( Ballads and

Sonnets ). The lyric Antwerp and Bruges is an altered

version (as I find it in his own MS.) of The Carillon , which

was printed in The Germ.
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Page 265.
Vox Ecclesiæ Vox Christi .—This sonnet, hitherto un-

published, was written in 1849. My brother wrote it to serve

as a pendent to a sonnet of my own composition which was

published in The Germ, 1850, under the vague title The Evil

under the Sun (“How long, O Lord,” etc.). That title was

vamped up to appease the publisher's nervousness; the

sonnet being in fact written by me as a sorrowful com-

memoration of the collapse—the temporary collapse, as we

now know it to have been—of various revolutionary move-

ments in Europe, especially that of Hungary. My own title

for the sonnet was On the General Oppression of the Better

by the Worse Cause, October 1849. The sonnet has of late

years been more than once republished under a more general-

ized title, Democracy Downtrodden . I mention these facts,

not to thrust my own performance into notice, but to bring

out the more clearly the precise point of view which marks

my brother's sonnet.
Page 272.
The Church-porch.—This sonnet was published by my

brother in the volume Ballads and Sonnets. It was written

as one of a brace of sonnets. He never published the second;

but this is to be found in an article, Dante Gabriel Rossetti,

by Mr. Gosse, printed in The Century Magazine in 1882. I

am rather reluctant to miss out that second sonnet; but, as

my brother saw fit to leave it unused when he gave publicity

to the first, I have decided to conform.
Page 272.
The Mirror.—Written in 1850. My brother never pub-

lished this snatch of verse, but he had a certain liking for it,

and I think it should now find a niche among his works.
Page 273.
A Young Fir-Wood.—A MS. of these verses is marked

by my brother, “Between Ightham and Sevenoaks, Novem-

ber 1850.”
Page 273.
During Music. —Written in 1851. Hitherto unpublished.
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Page 280.
Wellington's Funeral. —In one of my brother's jotting-

books I find the following entry: “When printing in 1870, I

omitted the piece on Wellington's Funeral as referring to so

recent a date; but year by year such themes become more

dateless, and rank only with immortal things.”
Page 285.
On the Site of a Mulberry Tree, etc.—My brother

had this sonnet printed long ago, but never published it ex-

cept in the Academy for 15 February 1871. In the last line

he substituted (in MS.) the word “Starveling's” for “tailor's”;

and I remember he once told me that his real reason for not

publishing the sonnet in either of his volumes was to avoid

hurting the feelings of some sensitive member or members

of the tailoring craft who might dislike the line in its original

wording. This point is referred to in a letter addressed by

my brother to Mr. Hall Caine, and published in that gentle-

man's Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Page 285.
On certain Elizabethan Revivals . —This sonnet had

hitherto appeared only in Mr. Caine's volume above-men-

tioned. My brother had offered it for the collection, Sonnets

of Three Centuries , compiled by Mr. Caine; but it dropped

out of that book, as being little in harmony with the other

contributions therein by Rossetti. The sonnet was written

many years prior to the date of either of Mr. Caine's

volumes.
Page 286.
English May. —This sonnet had not hitherto been pub-

lished. I regard it as addressed to Miss Siddal, whom my

brother married in 1860. Its date may probably have been

1854.
Page 303.
Dawn on the Night Journey.—Also hitherto unpublished.
Page 340.
To Philip Bourke Marston .—This sonnet was printed

in Mr. William Sharp's book, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a

Record and a Study. In line 4 he gives the word “sight.”
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In the MS. in my own possession I find “light” instead;

but I incline to think that Mr. Sharp's version is correct.
Page 341.
Raleigh's Cell in the Tower .—This sonnet was pub-

lished in Mr. Caine's Sonnets of Three Centuries.
Page 343.
For an Annunciation, Early German.—This is an early

sonnet, hitherto unpublished—perhaps the earliest of all the

Sonnets on Pictures.
Page 348.
For a Virgin and Child, by Hans Memmelinck ; and A

Marriage of St. Catherine, by the Same .—These sonnets

were published in The Germ; I have thought it, on the whole,

better to admit them here. A few verbal alterations are

made on MS. authority.
Page 353.
Mary's Girlhood.—The picture to which these sonnets

relate was the first oil-painting, 1848-49, completed by my

brother. The concluding lines of sonnet I, “She woke in

her white bed” etc., have a more direct connection, however,

with his second picture, The Annunciation (or Ecce Ancilla

Domini ) , now in the National Gallery. Sonnet 2 was in-

scribed by my brother on the frame of his first picture. He

never published it otherwise; but it has been given in Mr.

Sharp's book, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, etc.
Page 357.
Michael Scott's Wooing.—My brother made two or three

drawings of this subject of invention, diverse in composition.

He contemplated carrying out the subject in a large picture,

which was never executed; I am not certain whether a water-

colour of it was produced or not. He took some pains over

the wording of the illustrative verse, but never published it.

I think it deserves a place here, if merely as appertaining to

one of his own designs. See also the prose narrative under

the same title, p. 439.
Page 362.
Mnemosyne. —This couplet was inscribed on the frame

of the picture entitled Mnemosyne, or the Lamp of Memory.
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Page 366.
Gioventù e Signoria.—This so-called Italian Street-song

is certainly my brother's own composition—the Italian as well

as the English version. I have seen his MS. of it, replete

with alterations. In all the instances in which he wrote a

composition in the two languages, the Italian was, I think, the

first, and the English the second.
Page 370.
Proserpina.—This sonnet, and the following one, La

Bella Mano, might have been included in the section Sonnets

and Verses for Rossetti's own Works of Art. The fact of

their being written in Italian as well as English has guided

me, however, to a different arrangement.
Page 372.
Robe d'or, etc.—This French couplet with its English

equivalent—and also the preceding Italian triplet with the like

—may, I think, have been written to serve as motto for some

picture; I could not say which.
Page 374.
Barcarola.—The two little songs thus entitled had not

hitherto been published; nor yet the Bambino Fasciato nor

La Ricordanza.
Page 376.
Thomæ Fides .—It is only on looking through my brother's

MSS. that I have become aware of his having ventured thus

into the realm of Latin verse. I find the little composition

written out more than once, and with alterations of diction

which convince me that it must be his own composition. It

was intended to appear in a “lyrical tragedy,” The Doom of

the Sirens , of which he wrote out the scheme. See p. 431.
Page 377.
Versicles and Fragments.—I have taken these from

among various jottings in my brother's notebooks. The first

item, named The Orchard-Pit, is all that I can find written of

a poem which was long and seriously projected: the argument

of the poem appears printed now among the Prose works.

Of the other items I need perhaps say nothing, unless it be

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this—that, slight as they are, they appear to me worthy

of preservation, on one ground or another. I do not think

that any of the Versicles and Fragments belong to my brother's

earlier period.
Page 383.
Hand and Soul. —This story—which, brief though it is,

may rank as the most considerable prose-writing by Rossetti

apart from what appears in The Early Italian Poets—was

written in December 1849, almost entirely in one night,

or rather earliest morning (see Mr. Caine's Recollections

of Dante Gabriel Rossetti , p. 134). It is purely a work of

imagination; there never was a Chiaro dell' Erma, nor a Dr.

Aemmster, nor the rest of them. The story was published in

The Germ; and I have heard of more than one admirer of it

who made enquiry in Florence or Dresden after the pictures

of Chiaro—of course with no result save disappointment. The

statement on page 395, “In the spring of 1847 I was at

Florence,” is also fictitious, though it has sometimes been

cited as showing (contrary to the general and correct state-

ment) that Rossetti had once at least been in Italy.
Page 399.
St. Agnes of Intercession . —This fragmentary tale forms,

I think, no unworthy pendent to Hand and Soul. It does

not seem to be intended to bear an equal weight of moral or

spiritual significance; but is not less imaginative, and its

style of writing, if simpler and less resolutely sustained,

seems to me fully as noticeable and individual. I incline to

think that it was begun before Hand and Soul—in 1849, or

even 1848; and was continued from time to time, probably

into the spring of 1850. My brother intended to publish it in

The Germ ; and would doubtless have done so, had that

magazine been less short-lived. He began an etching to

illustrate it; but threw this aside in disgust at his failure in

technique. Sir John Millais then undertook to execute the

etching. His production was included in the great Millais

Exhibition at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1886, and manifestly

represents the hero of the story painting the portrait of his

affianced bride during her mortal illness. This, therefore, is

clearly shown to be the intended finale of the tale; as indeed

one might readily divine from that portion of it which was

written. At a later date Rossetti himself painted the like

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incident, in its mediæval phase, under the title of Bonifazio's

Mistress . The written portion may be surmised to constitute

less than half of the projected whole: my brother, according

to Mr. Caine, indicated, in talking to that gentleman, that it

would only be about a third. At some much later date, per-

haps towards 1870, my brother turned his thoughts again to

this tale, and transcribed the earlier pages of it; and he again

paid some attention to it in the last two or three months of

his life, but without writing anything additional, or even re-

vising the extant portion. The reader may observe that the

name in the title, St. Agnes of Intercession, does not re-appear

in the course of the story, where the picture itself comes to

be spoken of: it was only adopted towards the time when the

beginning of the tale was transcribed. My brother also

intended to substitute the name “Davanzati” for “Angio-

lieri”; but (in order to avoid tampering with an untranscribed

passage printed at the close of our p. 408) I have found it

requisite to retain “Angiolieri.” Something in the nature

of actual reminiscence may be traced in the opening details;

as that of our father singing old revolutionary and other

songs, and of the author leaving school early to study the

painter's art. The motto from Tristram Shandy would not,

I believe, be discoverable upon the most diligent turning-over

of the pages of that now too seldom read classic, which fasci-

nated my brother greatly at a date not much earlier than the

commencement of this tale: I regard it as his own.
The first draft of St. Agnes of Intercession begins with the

following paragraph—discarded when my brother made his

transcript towards 1870. I preserve it here, as being, in its

dim way, a true sketch of our father. Where I write “Italy,”

my brother wrote “Poland,” or afterwards “ France.” “ My

father had settled in England only a few years before I was

born to him. He was one of that vast multitude of exiles

who, almost from lustrum to lustrum for a season of nearly a

century, have been scattered from Italy over all Europe—over

the world indeed. Few among these can have less of riches

than he had, wherein to seek happiness; but I believe that

there are still fewer who could be so happy as he was, with-

out riches, in exile and labour.”
It may have been rather later than the St. Agnes of Inter-

cession —say 1851, and again towards 1855, to judge by the

character of the handwriting—that Rossetti began another

story of the fantastic or supernatural, entitled Deuced Odd, or

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The Devil's in it. I have forgotten, or perhaps never knew,

what the narrative was to be: it relates to an actor in the

walk of legitimate drama. The fragment which remains of

this story, and I think no more was ever written, is so scanty,

and exhibits so little of the main purport, that I leave it un-

printed. Perhaps the idea may have been somewhat, yet

only remotely, like that of a tale published in Hood's

Magazine , in which the devil appears on the boards, acting

his own part in Der Freischütz or some such stage-piece; I

can well remember that both my brother and I, reading that

tale towards 1845, thought it extremely clever and effective.

The author remains to me unknown.
Page 427.
The Orchard Pit. —This is the prose narrative written

with a view to the composition of a poem: see p. 377. It

dates towards 1871.
Page 431.
The Doom of the Sirens. —My brother, I am sure,

schemed out this “lyrical tragedy” with a feeling that it

might really be made to constitute the words ( libretto) of a

musical opera. He regarded the project indeed with some

eagerness at one time: he had not, I fancy, any clearly de-

fined idea as to a musician to co-operate with him, but thought

vaguely of our friend Dr. Franz Hueffer. The date of the

composition may be nearly the same as that of The Orchard

Pit , but rather later.
Page 439.
Michael Scott's Wooing.—See the note (p. 522) to

the verses bearing the same title. The present project of a

poem, or perhaps rather of a prose-story, is entirely different

in its incidents from any of the designs which he made of

Michael Scott's Wooing—so far at least as my knowledge

of them extends. From the character of the handwriting I

judge this skeleton-narrative to be two or three years later

than The Orchard Pit, etc.
Page 443.
William Blake.—These observations are taken from the

Life of Blake by Alexander Gilchrist, edition of 1880: the

large majority of them appeared also in the original edition,

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1863. I need only say here that my brother knew, and had

a very sincere regard for, Mr. Gilchrist, who died in 1861, as

he was nearing the close of his excellent and now widely

appreciated labours on the Life. Rossetti supplied him with

some important materials, but not with any contributory

writing of his own. After Gilchrist's death, his widow also

worked to very good purpose upon the task; but she

thought it desirable to avail herself of my brother's assist-

ance in certain defined portions of the subject, especially the

arranging and editing of the poems. I here give the remarks

of my brother upon the poems; preceded by his “supple-

mentary chapter” to the Life, and followed by his comments

upon the Designs to the Book of Job, and upon certain points

connected with the designs to the Jerusalem. Part of this

last section ( Jerusalem) belongs only to the edition of 1880.

In the “supplementary chapter” a few of the opening phrases

must, I consider, be Mr. Gilchrist's own: I have not been at

the pains of detaching them. Nothing else of any substantial

bulk or importance was written by my brother for Gilchrist's

book. The present owner of the copyright handsomely

made me free to reproduce my brother's contribution in the

present form.
Page 478.
Ebenezer Jones.—From Notes and Queries, 5 February

1870. This was an answer to a question asked by Mr. Gled-

stanes-Waugh.
Page 480.
The Stealthy School of Criticism .—This article, a

reply to The Fleshly School of Poetry, was published in the

Athenæum for 16 December 1871. The Fleshly School of

Poetry was (as observed in my Preface) an article in the

Contemporary Review written by Mr. Robert Buchanan, and

published under the pseudonym “Thomas Maitland.” Subse-

quently to the printing of my brother's rejoinder, the Contem-

porary article was enlarged by its author, and re-issued in

pamphlet-form. Mr. Buchanan has since publicly admitted

that it was totally unjust to Rossetti: whether it was or was

not (even apart from its pseudonymity) a profligate act of

literary spite under the disguise of moral purism is a ques-

tion which I leave to the judgment of others. Having been

revoked, be the act condoned—so far at least as I am con-

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cerned. My brother refers prominently to a sonnet in The

House of Life named Nuptial Sleep: this point also is

touched upon in my Preface. Later on in the article he

adverts to sonnets 29, 30, 31, 39, 40, 41, and 43. In the

present arrangement of The House of Life , these are sonnets

63, Inclusiveness, 65, Known in Vain, 67, The Landmark,

85, Vain Virtues, 86, Lost Days, 87, Death's Songsters, and

91, Lost on Both Sides.
Page 489.
Hake's Madeline, and other Poems .—This critique

comes from the Academy of 1 February 1871. The ensu-

ing critique, of the same author's Parables and Tales, is

from the Fortnightly Review, April 1873.
Page 510.
Sentences and Notes. — Picked out passim from my

brother's note-books. The only date which I have given,

1866, may be about the earliest date of any of these jottings.

They go on till towards the close of his life.
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Electronic Archive Edition: 1
Source File: 1-1886.1sted.vol1.rad.xml
Copyright: Library of Jerome J. McGann.