Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

With books, with flowers, with Angel offices,
Like creatures native unto gracious act,
And in their own clear element, they moved.

But sadness on the soul of Ida fell, And hatred of her weakness, blent with shame. Old studies fail'd; seldom she spoke; but oft Clomb to the roofs, and gazed alone for hours On that disastrous leaguer, swarms of men Darkening her female field: void was her use; And she as one that climbs a peak to gaze O'er land and main, and sees a great black cloud Drag inward from the deeps, a wall of night, Blot out the slope of sea from verge to shore, And suck the blinding splendor from the sand, And quenching lake by lake and tarn by tarn Expunge the world: so fared she gazing there; So blacken'd all her world in secret, blank And waste it seem'd and vain; till down she came, And found fair peace once more among the sick.

And twilight dawn'd; and morn by morn the lark
Shot up and shrill'd in flickering gyres, but I
Lay silent in the muffled cage of life:
And twilight gloom'd; and broader-grown the bowers
Drew the great night into themselves, and Heaven,
Star after star, arose and fell; but I,

Deeper than those weird doubts could reach me, lay
Quite sunder'd from the moving Universe,
Nor knew what eye was on me, nor the hand
That nursed me, more than infants in their sleep.

But Psyche tended Florian: with her oft Melissa came; for Blanche had gone, but left Her child among us, willing she should keep Court-favor: here and there the small bright head, A light of healing glanced about the couch, Or thro' the parted silks the tender face Peep'd, shining in upon the wounded man With blush and smile, a medicine in themselves To wile the length from languorous hours, and draw The sting from pain; nor seem'd it strange that soon He rose up whole, and those fair charities Join'd at her side; nor stranger seem'd that hearts So gentle, so employ'd, should close in love, Than when two dew-drops on the petal shake To the same sweet air, and tremble deeper down, And slip at once all-fragrant into one.

Less prosperously the second suit obtain'd At first with Psyche. Not though Blanche had sworn That after that dark night among the fields, She needs must wed him for her own good name; Not tho' he built upon the babe restored; Nor tho' she liked him, yielded she, but fear'd To incense the Head once more; till on a day When Cyril pleaded, Ida came behind Seen but of Psyche: on her foot she hung A moment, and she heard, at which her face A little flush'd, and she past on; but each Assumed from thence, a half-consent involved In stillness, plighted troth, and were at peace.

Nor only these: Love in the sacred halls Held carnival at will, and flying struck With showers of random sweet on maid and man. Nor did her father cease to press my claim, Nor did mine own now reconciled; nor yet Did those twin brothers, risen again and whole; Nor Arac, satiate with his victory.

But I lay still, and with me oft she sat :

And call her hard and cold which seem'd a truth:
And still she fear'd that I should lose my mind,
And often she believed that I should die:
Till out of long frustration of her care,
And pensive tendance in the all-weary noons,
And watches in the dead, the dark, when clocks
Throbb'd thunder thro' the palace floors, or call'd
On flying Time from all their silver tongues-
And out of memories of her kindlier days,
And sidelong glances at my father's grief,
And at the happy lovers heart in heart-
And out of hauntings of my spoken love,
And lonely listenings to my mutter'd dream,
And often feeling of the helpless hands,
And wordless broodings on the wasted cheek-
From all a closer interest flourish'd up,
Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
But such as gather'd color day by day.

Last I woke sane, but wellnigh close to death For weakness: it was evening: silent light Slept on the painted walls, wherein were wrought Two grand designs: for on one side arose The women up in wild revolt, and storm'd At the Oppian law. Titanic shapes, they cramm'd The forum, and half-crush'd among the rest A dwarflike Cato cower'd. On the other side Hortensia spoke against the tax; behind, A train of dames: by axe and eagle sat, With all their foreheads drawn in Roman scowls, And half the wolf's-milk curdled in their veins, The fierce triumvirs; and before them paused Hortensia, pleading: angry was her face.

I saw the forms: I knew not where I was: They did but seem as hollow shows; nor more Sweet Ida: palm to palm she sat: the dew Dwelt in her eyes, and softer all her shape And rounder show'd: I moved: I sigh'd: a touch Came round my wrist, and tears upon my hand: Then all for languor and self-pity ran Mine down my face, and with what life I had, And like a flower that cannot all unfold, So drench'd it is with tempest, to the sun, Yet, as it may, turns toward him, I on her Fixt my faint eyes, and utter'd whisperingly :

"If you be, what I think you, some sweet dream,

I would but ask you to fulfil yourself:
But if you be that Ida whom I knew,

I ask you nothing: only, if a dream,

Sweet dream, be perfect. I shall die to-night.
Stoop down and seem to kiss me ere I die."

I could no more, but lay like one in trance,
That hears his burial talk'd of by his friends,
And cannot speak, nor move, nor make one sign,
But lies and dreads his doom. She turn'd; she
paused;

She stoop'd; and out of languor leapt a cry;
Leapt fiery Passion from the brinks of death;
And I believed that in the living world
My spirit closed with Ida's at the lips;
Till back I fell, and from mine arms she rose
Glowing all over noble shame; and all
Her falser self slipt from her like a robe,
And left her woman, lovelier in her mood
Than in her mould that other, when she came
From barren deeps to conquer all with love:

Then came a change; for sometimes I would catch And down the streaming crystal dropt; and she

Her hand in wild delirium, gripe it hard,

And fling it like a viper off, and shriek "You are not Ida;" clasp it once again,

And call her Ida, tho' I knew her not, And call her sweet, as if in irony,

Far-fleeted by the purple island-sides,
Naked, a double light in air and wave,
To meet her Graces, where they deck'd her out
For worship without end; nor end of mine,
Stateliest, for thee! but mute she glided forth,

Nor glanced behind her, and I sank and slept, Fill'd thro' and thro' with Love, a happy sleep.

Deep in the night I woke: she, near me, held A volume of the Poets of her land: There to herself, all in low tones, she read.

"Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white: Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk; Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font: The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

A greater than all knowledge, beat her down.
And she had nurs'd me there from week to week:
Much had she learnt in little time. In part
It was ill counsel had misled the girl
To vex true hearts: yet was she but a girl-
"Ah fool, and made myself a Queen of farce!
When comes another such? never, I think
Till the Sun drop dead from the signs."

Her voice

Choked, and her forehead sank upon her hands,
And her great heart through all the faultful Past
Went sorrowing in a pause I dared not break;

"Now droops the milkwhite peacock like a ghost, Till notice of a change in the dark world
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

"Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars, And all thy heart lies open unto me..

"Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

"Now folds the lily all her sweetness up, And slips into the bosom of the lake: So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom and be lost in me."

I heard her turn the page; she found a small Sweet Idyl, and once more, as low, she read:

Was lisp'd about the acacias, and a bird, That early woke to feed her little ones, Sent from a dewy breast a cry for light: She moved, and at her feet the volume fell.

"Blame not thyself too much," I said, "nor blame
Too much the sons of men and barbarous laws;
These were the rough ways of the world till now.
Henceforth thou hast a helper, me, that know
The woman's cause is man's: they rise or sink
Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free:
For she that out of Lethe scales with man
The shining steps of Nature, shares with man
His nights, his days, moves with him to one goal,
Stays all the fair young planet in her hands-
If she be small, slight-natured, miserable,

"Come down, O maid, from yonder mountain How shall men grow? but work no more alone!

height:

What pleasure lives in height (the shepherd sang),
In height and cold, the splendor of the hills?
But cease to move so near the Heavens, and cease
To glide a sunbeam by the blasted Pine,
To sit a star upon the sparkling spire;
And come, for Love is of the valley, come,
For Love is of the valley, come thou down
And find him; by the happy threshold, he,
Or hand in hand with Plenty in the maize,
Or red with spirted purple of the vats,
Or foxlike in the vine; nor cares to walk
With Death and Morning on the Silver Horns,
Nor wilt thou snare him in the white ravine,
Nor find him dropt upon the firths of ice,
That huddling slant in furrow-cloven falls
To roli the torrent out of dusky doors:
But follow; let the torrent dance thee down
To find him in the valley; let the wild
Lean-headed Eagles yelp alone, and leave
The monstrous ledges there to slope, and spill
Their thousand wreaths of dangling water-smoke,
That like a broken purpose waste in air:
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees."

So she low-toned; while with shut eyes I lay Listening; then look'd. Pale was the perfect face: The bosom with long sighs labor'd; and meek Seem'd the full lips, and mild the luminous eyes, And the voice trembled and the hand. She said Brokenly, that she knew it, she had fail'd In sweet humility; had fail'd in all; That all her labor was but as a block Left in the quarry; but she still were loath, She still were loath to yield herself to one, That wholly scorn'd to help their equal rights Against the sons of men, and barbarous laws. She pray'd me not to judge their cause from her That wrong'd it, sought far less for truth than

power

In knowledge: something wild within her breast,

Our place is much: as far as in us lies
We two will serve them both in aiding her-
Will clear away the parasitic forms
That seem to keep her up but drag her down-
Will leave her space to burgeon out of all
Within her-let her make herself her own
To give or keep, to live and learn and be
All that not harms distinctive womanhood.
For woman is not undevelopt man,

But diverse: could we make her as the man,
Sweet love were slain: his dearest bond is this,
Not like to like, but like in difference.
Yet in the long years liker must they grow;
The man be more of woman, she of man ;
He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care,
Nor lose the childlike in the larger mind;
Till at the last she set herself to man,
Like perfect music unto noble words;
And so these twain, upon the skirts of Time,
Sit side by side, full-summ'd in all their powers,
Dispensing harvest, sowing the To-be,
Self-reverent each and reverencing each,
Distinct in individualities,

But like each other ev'n as those who love.
Then comes the statelier Eden back to men:
Then reign the world's great bridals, chaste and

calm:

Then springs the crowning race of humankind. May these things be!"

They will not."

Sighing she spoke, "I fear
"Dear, but let us type them now
In our own lives, and this proud watchword rest
Of equal; seeing either sex alone

Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils

Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
The single pure and perfect animal,

The two-cell'd heart beating, with one full stroke,
Life."

And again sighing she spoke: "A dream That once was mine! what woman taught you this?"

"Alone," I said, "from earlier than I know, Immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world,

I loved the woman: he, that doth not, lives
A drowning life, besotted in sweet self,

Or pines in sad experience worse than death,
Or keeps his wing'd affections clipt with crime:
Yet was there one thro' whom I loved her, one
Not learned, save in gracious household ways,
Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants.
No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt
In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise,
Interpreter between the Gods and men,
Who look'd all native to her place, and yet
On tiptoe seem'd to touch upon a sphere
Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce
Sway'd to her from their orbits as they moved,
And girded her with music. Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high
Comes easy to him, and tho' he trip and fall
He shall not blind his soul with clay."

Said Ida, tremulously, "so all unlike

"But I,"

It seems you love to cheat yourself with words:

This mother is your model. I have heard

A gallant fight, a noble princess-why
Not make her true-heroic-true-sublime?
Or all, they said, as earnest as the close?
Which yet with such a framework scarce could be
Then rose a little feud betwixt the two,
Betwixt the mockers and the realists;

And I, betwixt them both, to please them both,
And yet to give the story as it rose,

I moved as in a strange diagonal,

And maybe neither pleased myself nor them.

But Lilia pleased me, for she took no part In our dispute: the sequel of the tale Had touch'd her; and she sat, she pluck'd the grass, She flung it from her, thinking: last, she fixt A showery glance upon her aunt, and said, "You-tell us what we are" who might have told, For she was cramm'd with theories out of books, But that there rose a shout: the gates were closed At sunset, and the crowd were swarming now, To take their leave, about the garden rails.

So I and some went out to these: we climb'd

Of your strange doubts: they well might be: I The slope to Vivian-place, and turning saw

seem

[blocks in formation]

Sweet love on pranks of saucy boyhood: now,
Giv'n back to life, to life indeed, thro' thee,
Indeed I love: the new day comes, the light
Dearer for night, as dearer thou for faults
Lived over: lift thine eyes; my doubts are dead,
My haunting sense of hollow shows: the change,
This truthful change in thee has kill'd it. Dear,
Look up, and let thy nature strike on mine,
Like yonder morning on the blind half-world;
Approach and fear not; breathe upon my brows;
In that fine air I tremble, all the past
Melts mist-like into this bright hour, and this
Is morn to more, and all the rich to-come
Reels, as the golden Autumn woodland reels
Athwart the smoke of burning weeds. Forgive me,
I waste my heart in signs: let be. My bride,
My wife, my life. O we will walk this world,
Yoked in all exercise of noble end.
And so thro' those dark gates across the wild
That no man knows. Indeed I love thee: come,
Yield thyself up my hopes and thine are one:
Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself;
Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."

CONCLUSION.

So closed our tale, of which I give you all
The random scheme as wildly as it rose:
The words are mostly mine; for when we ceased
There came a minute's pause, and Walter said,
"I wish she had not yielded !" then to me,
"What, if you drest it up poetically!"

So pray'd the men, the women: I gave assent:
Yet how to bind the scatter'd scheme of seven
Together in one sheaf? What style could suit?
The men required that I should give throughout
The sort of mock-heroic gigantesque,
With which we banter'd little Lilia first:
The women-and perhaps they felt their power,
For something in the ballads which they sang,
Or in their silent influence as they sat,
Had ever seem'd to wrestle with burlesque,
And drove us, last, to quite a solemn close-
They hated banter, wish'd for something real,

The happy valleys, half in light, and half
Far-shadowing from the west, a land of peace;
Gray halls alone among the massive groves;
Trim hamlets; here and there a rustic tower
Half-lost in belts of hop and breadths of wheat; .
The shimmering glimpses of a stream; the seas;
A red sail, or a white; and far beyond,
Imagined more than seen, the skirts of France.

"Look there, a garden!" said my college friend, The Tory member's elder son, "and there! God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruledSome sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made, Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowdBut yonder, whiff! there comes a sudden heat, The gravest citizen seems to lose his head, The king is scared, the soldier will not fight, The little boys begin to shoot and stab, A kingdom topples over with a shriek Like an old woman, and down rolls the world In mock heroics stranger than our own; Revolts, republics, revolutions, most No graver than a school-boys' barring out; Too comic for the solemn things they are, Too solemn for the comic touches in them, Like our wild Princess with as wise a dream As some of theirs-God bless the narrow seas! I wish they were a whole Atlantic broad."

"Have patience," I replied, "ourselves are full Of social wrong; and maybe wildest dreams Are but the needful preludes of the truth: For me, the genial day, the happy crowd, The sport half-science, fill me with a faith. This fine old world of ours is but a child Yet in the go-cart. Patience! Give it time To learn its limbs: there is a hand that guides."

In such discourse we gain'd the garden rails,
And there we saw Sir Walter where he stood,
Before a tower of crimson holly-oaks,
Among six boys, head under head, and look'd
No little lily-handed Baronet he,

A great broad-shoulder'd genial Englishman,
A lord of fat prize-oxen and of sheep,
A raiser of huge melons and of pine,
A patron of some thirty charities,
A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,
A quarter-sessions chairman, abler none;

Fair-hair'd and redder than a windy morn;
Now shaking hands with him, now him, of those
That stood the nearest-now address'd to speech-
Who spoke few words and pithy, such as closed
Welcome, farewell, and welcome for the year
To follow a shout rose again, and made
The long line of the approaching rookery swerve
From the elms, and shook the branches of the deer
From slope to slope thro' distant ferns, and rang
Beyond the bourn of sunset; O, a shout
More joyful than the city-roar that hails
Premier or king! Why should not these great Sirs
Give up their parks some dozen times a year
To let the people breathe? So thrice they cried,
I likewise, and in groups they stream'd away.

But we went back to the Abbey, and sat on, So much the gathering darkness charm'd: we sat But spoke not, rapt in nameless reverie, Perchance upon the future man: the walls Blacken'd about us, bats wheel'd, and owls whoop'd, And gradually the powers of the night, That range above the region of the wind, Deepening the courts of twilight broke them up Thro' all the silent spaces of the worlds, Beyond all thought into the Heaven of Heavens.

Last little Lilia, rising quietly,

Disrobed the glimmering statue of Sir Ralph From those rich silks, and home well-pleased we went.

IN MEMORIAM.

STRONG Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace,
Believing where we cannot prove;
Thine are these orbs of light and shade;
Thou madest life in man and brute;
Thou madest Death; and lo, thy foot
Is on the skull which thou hast made.

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust:

Thou madest man, he knows not why; He thinks he was not made to die; And thou hast made him: thou art just. Thou seemest human and divine,

The highest, holiest manhood, thou: Our wills are ours, we know not how; Our wills are ours, to make them thine.

Our little systems have their day;

They have their day and cease to be: They are but broken lights of thee, And thou, O Lord, art more than they. We have but faith: we cannot know; For knowledge is of things we see; And yet we trust it comes from thee, A beam in darkness: let it grow.

Let knowledge grow from more to more,
But more of reverence in us dwell;
That mind and soul according well,
May make one music as before,
But vaster. We are fools and slight;
We mock thee when we do not fear:
But help thy foolish ones to bear;
Help thy vain worlds to bear thy light.
Forgive what seem'd my sin in me;
What seem'd my worth since I began;
For merit lives from man to man,
And not from man, O Lord, to thee.

Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee, and there
I find him worthier to be loved.

Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confusions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in thy wisdom make me wise.
1849.

IN MEMORIAM.

A. H. H.

OBIIT MDCCCXXXIII.

I.

I HELD it truth, with him who sings
To one clear harp in divers tones,
That men may rise on stepping-stones
Of their dead selves to higher things.
But who shall so forecast the years,
And find in loss a gain to match?
Or reach a hand thro' time to catch
The far-off interest of tears?

Let Love clasp Grief lest both be drown'd,
Let darkness keep her raven gloss:
Ah, sweeter to be drunk with loss,
To dance with death, to beat the ground,

Than that the victor Hours should scorn
The long result of love, and boast,
"Behold the man that loved and lost
But all he was is overworn."

II.

OLD Yew, which graspest at the stones
That name the underlying dead,
Thy fibres net the dreamless head,
Thy roots are wrapt about the bones.

The seasons bring the flower again,

And bring the firstling to the flock; And in the dusk of thee, the clock Beats out the little lives of men.

O not for thee the glow, the bloom,
Who changest not in any gale,
Nor branding summer suns avail
To touch thy thousand years of gloom:

And gazing on thee, sullen tree, Sick for thy stubborn hardihood, I seem to fail from out my blood And grow incorporate into thee.

III.

O SORROW, cruel fellowship,

O Priestess in the vaults of Death, O sweet and bitter in a breath, What whispers from thy lying lip?

1

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »