Of blindness and their unbelief, who heard

And heard not, when I spake of famine, plague, Shrine-shattering earthquake, fire, flood, thunderbolt,

And angers of the Gods for evil done And expiation lack'd-no power on Fate, Theirs, or mine own! for when the crowd would roar

For blood, for war, whose issue was their doom,

To cast wise words among the multitude Was flinging fruit to lions; nor, in hours

Of civil outbreak, when I knew the twain Would each waste each, and bring on both the yoke

Of stronger states, was mine the voice to curb

The madness of our cities and their kings.

Who ever turn'd upon his heel to hear My warning that the tyranny of one Was prelude to the tyranny of all? My counsel that the tyranny of all Led backward to the tyranny of one? This power hath work'd no good to aught that lives,

And these blind hands were useless in

their wars.

O therefore that the unfulfill'd desire, The grief for ever born from griefs to be, The boundless yearning of the Prophet's heart

Could that stand forth, and like a statue, rear'd

To some great citizen, win all praise from all

Who past it, saying, 'That was he!'

In vain! Virtue must shape itself in deed, and those

Whom weakness or necessity have cramp'd Within themselves, immerging, each, his

urn

In his own well, draw solace as he may. Menæceus, thou hast eyes, and I can

hear

Too plainly what full tides of onset sap Our seven high gates, and what a weight of war

Rides on those ringing axles! jingle of bits,

Shouts, arrows, tramp of the hornfooted horse

That grind the glebe to powder! Stony showers

Of that ear-stunning hail of Arês crash Along the sounding walls. Above, below,

Shock after shock, the song-built towers and gates

Reel, bruised and butted with the shuddering

War-thunder of iron rams; and from within

The city comes a murmur void of joy, Lest she be taken captive- maidens,

wives,

And mothers with their babblers of the dawn,

And oldest age in shadow from the night,

Falling about their shrines before their Gods,

And wailing Save us.'

And they wail to thee! These eyeless eyes, that cannot see thine

own,

See this, that only in thy virtue lies
The saving of our Thebes; for, yester-

night,

To me, the great God Arês, whose one bliss

The Dragon's cave

Half hid, they tell me, now in flowing vines

Where once he dwelt and whence he roll'd himself

At dead of night-thou knowest, and that smooth rock

Before it, altar-fashion'd, where of late The woman-breasted Sphinx, with wings drawn back,

Folded her lion paws, and look'd to Thebes.

There blanch the bones of whom she slew, and these

Mixt with her own, because the fierce beast found

A wiser than herself, and dash'd herself Dead in her rage: but thou art wise enough,

Tho' young, to love thy wiser, blunt the

curse

Of Pallas, hear, and tho' I speak the truth

Believe I speak it, let thine own hand strike

Thy youthful pulses into rest and quench

strength

To mould it into action pure as theirs.

Thy torch of life in darkness, rather

thou

end

Be to end well! and thou refusing this,
Unvenerable will thy memory be
While men shall move the lips: but if

thou dare

Thou, one of these, the race of Cadmus -then

No stone is fitted in yon marble girth Whose echo shall not tongue thy glorious doom,

Nor in this pavement but shall ring thy

name

To every hoof that clangs it, and the springs

Of Dirce laving yonder battle-plain, Heard from the roofs by night, will murmur thee

To thine own Thebes, while Thebes thro' thee shall stand

Firm-based with all her Gods.

stars

Send no such light upon the ways of men As one great deed.

Thither, my son, and there Thou, that hast never known the embrace of love, Offer thy maiden life.

This useless hand! I felt one warm tear fall upon it. Gone! He will achieve his greatness.

But for me, I would that I were gather'd to my rest, And mingled with the famous kings of old,

On whom about their ocean-islets flash The faces of the Gods-the wise man's word,

Here trampled by the populace underfoot, There crown'd with worship-and these eyes will find

The men I knew, and watch the chariot

whirl

About the goal again, and hunters race The shadowy lion, and the warrior

kings,

In height and prowess more than human, strive

Again for glory, while the golden lyre
Is ever sounding in heroic ears
Heroic hymns, and every way the vales
Wind, clouded with the grateful incense-
fume

Of those who mix all odour to the Gods
On one far height in one far-shining fire.

'One height and one far-shining fire'
And while I fancied that my friend
For this brief idyll would require

A less diffuse and opulent end,
And would defend his judgment well,
If I should deem it over nice-
The tolling of his funeral bell

Broke on my Pagan Paradise,
And mixt the dream of classic times

And all the phantoms of the dream, With present grief, and made the rhymes,

That miss'd his living welcome, seem Like would-be guests an hour too late,

Who down the highway moving on With easy laughter find the gate

Is bolted, and the master gone. Gone into darkness, that full light

Of friendship! past, in sleep, away By night, into the deeper night !

The deeper night? A clearer day Than our poor twilight dawn on earthIf night, what barren toil to be! What life, so maim'd by night, were worth

Our living out? Not mine to me Remembering all the golden hours

Now silent, and so many dead, And him the last; and laying flowers,

This wreath, above his honour'd head, And praying that, when I from hence

Shall fade with him into the unknown, My close of earth's experience

May prove as peaceful as his own.

THE WRECK.

I.

HIDE me, Mother! my Fathers belong'd to the church of old,

I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold,

I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves,

My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves,

My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name,

I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as a waif of shame,

I am roused by the wail of a child, and awake to a livid light,

And a ghastlier face than ever has haunted a grave by night,

I would hide from the storm without, I would flee from the storm within, I would make my life one prayer for a soul that died in his sin,

I was the tempter, Mother, and mine was the deeper fall;

I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face, I will tell you all.

II.

He that they gave me to, Mother, a heedless and innocent bride

I never have wrong'd his heart, I have only wounded his pride

Spain in his blood and the Jew——dark. visaged, stately and tallA princelier-looking man never stept thro' a Prince's hall.

And who, when his anger was kindled, would venture to give him the nay? And a man men fear is a man to be loved by the women they say.

And I could have loved him too, if the blossom can doat on the blight, Or the young green leaf rejoice in the frost that sears it at night;

He would open the books that I prized, and toss them away with a yawn,

my nature was drawn,

The music that robes it in language beneath

and beyond the word! My Shelley would fall from my hands when he cast a contemptuous glance From where he was poring over his Tables of Trade and Finance; My hands, when I heard him coming would drop from the chords or the keys,

But ever I fail'd to please him, however I strove to please

All day long far-off in the cloud of the city, and there

Lost, head and heart, in the chances of

dividend, consol, and share

And at home if I sought for a kindly

caress, being woman and weak, His formal kiss fell chill as a flake of snow on the cheek:

And so, when I bore him a girl, when I held it aloft in my joy,

He look'd at it coldly, and said to me 'Pity it isn't a boy.'

The one thing given me, to love and to live for, glanced at in scorn!

The child that I felt I could die for-as if she were basely born!

I had lived a wild-flower life, I was planted now in a tomb;

The daisy will shut to the shadow, I closed my heart to the gloom;

I threw myself all abroad-I would play
my part with the young
By the low foot-lights of the world-and
I caught the wreath that was flung.

But I came on him once at a ball, the heart of a listening crowd

Why, what a brow was there! he was seated-speaking aloud

To women, the flower of the time, and men at the helm of stateFlowing with easy greatness and touching on all things great, Science, philosophy, song--till I felt myself ready to weep

For I knew not what, when I heard that voice,- -as mellow and deep As a psalm by a mighty master and peal'd from an organ,-roll

Rising and falling-for, Mother, the voice was the voice of the soul; And the sun of the soul made day in the dark of his wonderful eyes.

Here was the hand that would help me, would heal me-the heart that

III.

Mother, I have not-however their tongues may have babbled of meSinn'd thro' an animal vileness, for all but a dwarf was he, And all but a hunchback too; and I look'd at him, first, askance, With pity-not he the knight for an amorous girl's romance!

V.

Low warm winds had gently breathed us away from the land

Ten long sweet summer days upon deck, sitting hand in handWhen he clothed a naked mind with the wisdom and wealth of his own, And I bow'd myself down as a slave to his intellectual throne,

When he coin'd into English gold some treasure of classical song,

When he flouted a statesman's error, or flamed at a public wrong,

And down in the cabin were we, for the towering crest of the tides

Plunged on the vessel and swept in a cataract off from her sides,

an eagle beyond me, and past Over the range and the change of the

world from the first to the last,

When he spoke of his tropical home in

the canes by the purple tide, And the high star-crowns of his palms on the deep-wooded mountain-side, And cliffs all robed in lianas that dropt

to the brink of his bay,

And trees like the towers of a minster, the sons of a winterless day. 'Paradise there!' so he said, but I seem'd in Paradise then

With the first great love I had felt for the first and greatest of men;

Ten long days of summer and sin-if it must be so

But days of a larger light than I ever

again shall know

Days that will glimmer, I fear, thro' life to my latest breath;

No frost there,' so he said, 'as in truest Love no Death.'

VI.

Mother, one morning a bird with a warble plaintively sweet

Perch'd on the shrouds, and then fell fluttering down at my feet;

I took it, he made it a cage, we fondled it, Stephen and I,

But it died, and I thought of the child

for a moment, I scarce know why.

VII.

But if sin be sin, not inherited fate, as many will say,

My sin to my desolate little one found

me at sea on a day, When her orphan wail came borne in the shriek of a growing wind, And a voice rang out in the thunders of Ocean and Heaven Thou hast sinn'd.'

howl and a hoot of the blast In the rigging, voices of hell-then came the crash of the mast.

'The wages of sin is death,' and there I began to weep,

'I am the Jonah, the crew should cast me into the deep,

For ah God, what a heart was mine to forsake her even for you.'

'Never the heart among women,' he said, " more tender and true.' 'The heart! not a mother's heart, when I left my darling alone.' 'Comfort yourself, for the heart of the father will care for his own.' 'The heart of the father will spurn her,'

I cried, for the sin of the wife, The cloud of the mother's shame will enfold her and darken her life.' Then his pale face twitch'd; 'O Stephen,

I love you, I love you, and yet 'As I lean'd away from his arms-' would God, we had never met!'. And he spoke not-only the storm; till after a little, I yearn'd

For his voice again, and he call'd to me 'Kiss me!' and there- - as I turn'd'The heart, the heart!' I kiss'd him, I clung to the sinking form,

And the storm went roaring above us, and he was out of the storm.

VIII.

And then, then, Mother, the ship stagger'd under a thunderous shock, That shook us asunder, as if she had struck and crash'd on a rock; For a huge sea smote every soul from the decks of The Falcon but one; All of them, all but the man that was lash'd to the helm had gone; And I fell and the storm and the days went by, but I knew no more