Poems of Arthur Hugh Clough

by Arthur Hugh Clough

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

Oh, you are sick of self-love, Malvolio,

And taste with a distempered appetite!

Shakspeare.

Il doutait de tout, même de l’amour.

French Novel.

Solvitur ambulando.

Solutio Sophismatum.

Flevit amores

Non elaboratum ad pedem.

Horace.

AMOURS DE VOYAGE.

CANTO I.

Over the great windy waters, and over the clear-crested summits,

Unto the sun and the sky, and unto the perfecter earth,

Come, let us go,—to a land wherein gods of the old time wandered,

Where every breath even now changes to ether divine.

Come, let us go; though withal a voice whisper, ‘The world that we live in,

Whithersoever we turn, still is the same narrow crib;

’Tis but to prove limitation, and measure a cord, that we travel;

Let who would ’scape and be free go to his chamber and think;

’Tis but to change idle fancies for memories wilfully falser;

’Tis but to go and have been.’—Come, little bark! let us go.

i. Claude To Eustace.

Dear Eustatio, I write that you may write me an answer.

Or at the least to put us again en rapport with each other.

Rome disappoints me much,—St. Peter’s, perhaps, in especial;

Only the Arch of Titus and view from the Lateran please me:

This, however, perhaps is the weather, which truly is horrid.

Greece must be better, surely; and yet I am feeling so spiteful,

That I could travel to Athens, to Delphi, and Troy, and Mount Sinai,

Though but to see with my eyes that these are vanity also.

Rome disappoints me much; I hardly as yet understand, but

Rubbishy seems the word that most exactly would suit it.

All the foolish destructions, and all the sillier savings,

All the incongruous things of past incompatible ages,

Seem to be treasured up here to make fools of present and future.

Would to Heaven the old Goths had made a cleaner sweep of it!

Would to Heaven some new ones would come and destroy these churches!

However, one can live in Rome as also in London.

It is a blessing, no doubt, to be rid, at least for a time, of

All one’s friends and relations,—yourself (forgive me!) included,—

All the assujettissement of having been what one has been,

What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one;

Yet, in despite of all, we turn like fools to the English.

Vernon has been my fate; who is here the same that you knew him—

Making the tour, it seems, with friends of the name of Trevellyn.

ii. Claude to Eustace.

Rome disappoints me still; but I shrink and adapt myself to it.

Somehow a tyrannous sense of a superincumbent oppression

Still, wherever I go, accompanies ever, and makes me

Feel like a tree (shall I say?) buried under a ruin of brickwork

Rome, believe me, my friend, is like its own Monte Testaceo,

Merely a marvellous mass of broken and castaway wine-pots.

Ye gods! what do I want with this rubbish of ages departed,

Things that Nature abhors, the experiments that she has failed in?

What do I find in the Forum? An archway and two or three pillars.

Well, but St. Peter’s? Alas, Bernini has filled it with sculpture!

No one can cavil, I grant, at the size of the great Coliseum.

Doubtless the notion of grand and capacious and massive amusement,

This the old Romans had; but tell me, is this an idea?

Yet of solidity much, but of splendour little is extant:

‘Brickwork I found thee, and marble I left thee!’ their Emperor vaunted;

‘Marble I thought thee, and brickwork I find thee!’ the Tourist may answer.

iii. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ——.

At last, dearest Louisa, I take up my pen to address you.

Here we are, you see, with the seven-and-seventy boxes,

Courier, Papa and Mamma, the children, and Mary and Susan:

Here we all are at Rome, and delighted of course with St. Peter’s,

And very pleasantly lodged in the famous Piazza di Spagna.

Rome is a wonderful place, but Mary shall tell you about it;

Not very gay, however; the English are mostly at Naples;

There are the A.’s, we hear, and most of the W. party.

George, however, is come; did I tell you about his mustachios?

Dear, I must really stop, for the carriage, they tell me, is waiting;

Mary will finish; and Susan is writing, they say, to Sophia.

Adieu, dearest Louise,—evermore your faithful Georgina.

Who can a Mr. Claude be whom George has taken to be with?

Very stupid, I think, but George says so very clever.

iv. Claude to Eustace.

No, the Christian faith, as at any rate I understood it.

With its humiliations and exaltations combining,

Exaltations sublime, and yet diviner abasements,

Aspirations from something most shameful here upon earth and

In our poor selves to something most perfect above in the heavens,—

No, the Christian faith, as I, at least, understood it,

Is not here, O Rome, in any of these thy churches;

Is not here, but in Freiburg, or Rheims, or Westminster Abbey,

What in thy Dome I find, in all thy recenter efforts,

Is a something, I think, more rational far, more earthly,

Actual, less ideal, devout not in scorn and refusal,

But in a positive, calm, Stoic-Epicurean acceptance.

This I begin to detect in St. Peter’s and some of the churches,

Mostly in all that I see of the sixteenth-century masters;

Overlaid of course with infinite gauds and gewgaws,

Innocent, playful follies, the toys and trinkets of childhood,

Forced on maturer years, as the serious one thing needful,

By the barbarian will of the rigid and ignorant Spaniard.

Curious work, meantime, re-entering society: how we

Walk a livelong day, great Heaven, and watch our shadows!

What our shadows seem, forsooth, we will ourselves be.

Do I look like that I you think me that: then I am that.

v. Claude to Eustace.

Luther, they say, was unwise; like a half-taught German, he could not

See that old follies were passing most tranquilly out of remembrance;

Leo the Tenth was employing all efforts to clear out abuses;

Jupiter, Juno, and Venus, Fine Arts, and Fine Letters, the Poets,

Scholars, and Sculptors, and Painters, were quietly clearing away the

Martyrs, and Virgins, and Saints, or at any rate Thomas Aquinas:

He must forsooth make a fuss and distend his huge Wittenberg lungs, and

Bring back Theology once yet again in a flood upon Europe:

Lo you, for forty days from the windows of heaven it fell; the

Waters prevail on the earth yet more for a hundred and fifty;

Are they abating at last? the doves that are sent to explore are

Wearily fain to return, at the best with a leaflet of promise,—

Fain to return, as they went, to the wandering wave-tost vessel,—

Fain to re-enter the roof which covers the clean and the unclean,—

Luther, they say, was unwise; he didn’t see how things were going;

Luther was foolish,—but, O great God! what call you Ignatius?

O my tolerant soul, be still! but you talk of barbarians,

Alaric, Attila, Genseric;—why, they came, they killed, they

Ravaged, and went on their way; but these vile, tyrannous Spaniards,

These are here still,—how long, O ye heavens, in the country of Dante?

These, that fanaticized Europe, which now can forget them, release not

This, their choicest of prey, this Italy; here you see them,—

Here, with emasculate pupils and gimcrack churches of Gesu,

Pseudo-learning and lies, confessional-boxes and postures,—

Here, with metallic beliefs and regimental devotions,—

Here, overcrusting with slime, perverting, defacing, debasing,

Michael Angelo’s Dome, that had hung the Pantheon in heaven,

Raphael’s Joys and Graces, and thy clear stars, Galileo!

vi. Claude to Eustace.

Which of three Misses Trevellyn it is that Vernon shall marry

Is not a thing to be known; for our friend is one of those natures

Which have their perfect delight in the general tender-domestic;

So that he trifles with Mary’s shawl, ties Susan’s bonnet,

Dances with all, but at home is most, they say, with Georgina,

Who is, however, too silly in my apprehension for Vernon.

I, as before when I wrote, continue to see them a little;

Not that I like them much or care a bajocco for Vernon,

But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance,

And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses.

Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly

Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d’hôte and restaurant

Have their shilling’s worth, their penny’s pennyworth even:

Neither man’s aristocracy this, nor God’s, God knoweth!

Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected;

Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful to keep, some

Threadbare-genteel relations, who in their tum are enchanted

Grandly among county people to introduce at assemblies

To the unpennied cadets our cousins with excellent fortunes.

Neither man’s aristocracy this, nor God’s, God knoweth!

vii. Claude to Eustace.

Ah, what a shame, indeed, to abuse these most worthy people!

Ah, what a sin to have sneered at their innocent rustic pretensions!

Is it not laudable really, this reverent worship of station?

Is it not fitting that wealth should tender this homage to culture?

Is it not touching to witness these efforts, if little availing,

Painfully made, to perform the old ritual service of manners?

Shall not devotion atone for the absence of knowledge? and fervour

Palliate, cover, the fault of a superstitious observance?

Dear, dear, what do I say? but, alas! just now, like Iago,

I can be nothing at all, if it is not critical wholly;

So in fantastic height, in coxcomb exultation,

Here in the garden I walk, can freely concede to the Maker

That the works of His hand are all very good: His creatures,

Beast of the field and fowl, He brings them before me; I name them;

That which I name them, they are,—the bird, the beast, and the cattle.

But for Adam,—alas, poor critical coxcomb Adam!

But for Adam there is not found an help-meet for him.

viii. Claude to Eustace.

No, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian! canst not,

Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so!

Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian columns,

Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them;

Or, on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast

Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches,

Not with the Martyrs, and Saints, and Confessors, and Virgins, and children,

But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer worship;

And I recite to myself, how

Eager for battle here

Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno,

And with the bow to his shoulder faithful

He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly

His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia

The oak forest and the wood that bore him,

Delos’ and Patara’s own Apollo.[13]

ix. Claude to Eustace.

Yet it is pleasant, I own it, to be in their company; pleasant,

Whatever else it may be, to abide in the feminine presence.

Pleasant, but wrong, will you say? But this happy, serene coexistence

Is to some poor soft souls, I fear, a necessity simple,

Meat and drink and life, and music, filling with sweetness,

Thrilling with melody sweet, with harmonies strange overwhelming,

All the long-silent strings of an awkward, meaningless fabric.

Yet as for that, I could live, I believe, with children; to have those

Pure and delicate forms encompassing, moving about you,

This were enough, I could think; and truly with glad resignation

Could from the dream of Romance, from the fever of flushed adolescence,

Look to escape and subside into peaceful avuncular functions.

Nephews and nieces! alas, for as yet I have none! and, moreover,

Mothers are jealous, I fear me, too often, too rightfully; fathers

Think they have title exclusive to spoiling their own little darlings;

And by the law of the land, in despite of Malthusian doctrine,

No sort of proper provision is made for that most patriotic,

Most meritorious subject, the childless and bachelor uncle.

x. Claude to Eustace.

Ye, too, marvellous Twain, that erect on the Monte Cavallo

Stand by your rearing steeds in the grace of your motionless movement,

Stand with your upstretched arms and tranquil regardant faces,

Stand as instinct with life in the might of immutable manhood,—

O ye mighty and strange, ye ancient divine ones of Hellas.

Are ye Christian too? to convert and redeem and renew you,

Will the brief form have sufficed, that a Pope has set up on the apex

Of the Egyptian stone that o’ertops you, the Christian symbol?

And ye, silent, supreme in serene and victorious marble,

Ye that encircle the walls of the stately Vatican chambers,

Juno and Ceres, Minerva, Apollo, the Muses and Bacchus,

Ye unto whom far and near come posting the Christian pilgrims,

Ye that are ranged in the halls of the mystic Christian Pontiff,

Are ye also baptized? are ye of the kingdom of Heaven?

Utter, O some one, the word that shall reconcile Ancient and Modern!

Am I to turn me from this unto thee, great Chapel of Sixtus?

xi. Claude to Eustace.

These are the facts. The uncle, the elder brother, the squire (a

Little embarrassed, I fancy), resides in the family place in

Cornwall, of course; ‘Papa is in business,’ Mary informs me;

He’s a good sensible man, whatever his trade is. The mother

Is—shall I call it fine?—herself she would tell you refined, and

Greatly, I fear me, looks down on my bookish and maladroit manners;

Somewhat affecteth the blue; would talk to me often of poets;

Quotes, which I hate, Childe Harold; but also appreciates Wordsworth;

Sometimes adventures on Schiller; and then to religion diverges;

Questions me much about Oxford; and yet, in her loftiest flights still

Grates the fastidious ear with the slightly mercantile accent.

Is it contemptible, Eustace—I’m perfectly ready to think so,—

Is it,—the horrible pleasure of pleasing inferior people?

I am ashamed my own self; and yet true it is, if disgraceful,

That for the first time in life I am living and moving with freedom.

I, who never could talk to the people I meet with my uncle,—

I, who have always failed,—I, trust me, can suit the Trevellyns;

I, believe me,—great conquest, am liked by the country bankers.

And I am glad to be liked, and like in return very kindly.

So it proceeds; Laissez faire, laissez aller,—such is the watchword.

Well, I know there are thousands as pretty and hundreds as pleasant.

Girls by the dozen as good, and girls in abundance with polish

Higher and manners more perfect than Susan or Mary Trevellyn.

Well, I know, after all, it is only juxtaposition,—

Juxtaposition, in short; and what is juxtaposition?

xii. Claude to Eustace.

But I am in for it now,—laissez faire, of a truth, laissez aller.

Yes, I am going,—I feel it, I feel and cannot recall it,—

Fusing with this thing and that, entering into all sorts of relations,

Tying I know not what ties, which, whatever they are, I know one thing,

Will, and must, woe is me, be one day painfully broken,—

Broken with painful remorses, with shrinkings of soul, and relentings,

Foolish delays, more foolish evasions, most foolish renewals.

But I have made the step, have quitted the ship of Ulysses;

Quitted the sea and the shore, passed into the magical island;

Yet on my lips is the moly, medicinal, offered of Hermes.

I have come into the precinct, the labyrinth closes around me,

Path into path rounding slyly; I pace slowly on, and the fancy,

Struggling awhile to sustain the long sequences weary, bewildered.

Fain must collapse in despair; I yield, I am lost, and know nothing;

Yet in my bosom unbroken remaineth the clue; I shall use it.

Lo, with the rope on my loins I descend through the fissure; I sink, yet

Inly secure in the strength of invisible arms up above me;

Still, wheresoever I swing, wherever to shore, or to shelf, or

Floor of cavern untrodden, shell sprinkled, enchanting, I know I

Yet shall one time feel the strong cord tighten about me,—

Feel it, relentless, upbear me from spots I would rest in; and though the

Rope sway wildly, I faint, crags wound me, from crag unto crag re-

Bounding, or, wide in the void, I die ten deaths, ere the end I

Yet shall plant firm foot on the broad lofty spaces I quit, shall

Feel underneath me again the great massy strengths of abstraction,

Look yet abroad from the height o’er the sea whose salt wave I have tasted.

xiii. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ——.

Dearest Louisa,—Inquire, if you please, about Mr. Claude ——.

He has been once at R., and remembers meeting the H.’s.

Harriet L., perhaps, may be able to tell you about him.

It is an awkward youth, but still with very good manners;

Not without prospects, we hear; and, George says, highly connected.

Georgy declares it absurd, but Mamma is alarmed, and insists he has

Taken up strange opinions, and may be turning a Papist.

Certainly once he spoke of a daily service he went to.

‘Where?’ we asked, and he laughed and answered, ‘At the Pantheon

This was a temple, you know, and now is a Catholic church; and

Though it is said that Mazzini has sold it for Protestant service,

Yet I suppose this change can hardly as yet be effected.

Adieu again,—evermore, my dearest, your loving Georgina.

P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.

I am to tell you, you say, what I think of our last new acquaintance.

Well, then, I think that George has a very fair right to be jealous.

I do not like him much, though I do not dislike being with him.

He is what people call, I suppose, a superior man, and

Certainly seems so to me; but I think he is terribly selfish.

---

Alba, thou findest me still, and, Alba, thou findest me ever,

Now from the Capitol steps, now over Titus’s Arch,

Here from the large grassy spaces that spread from the Lateran portal,

Towering o’er aqueduct lines lost in perspective between,

Or from a Vatican window, or bridge, or the high Coliseum,

Clear by the garlanded line cut of the Flavian ring.

Beautiful can I not call thee, and yet thou hast power to o’ermaster,

Power of mere beauty; in dreams, Alba, thou hauntest me still.

Is it religion? I ask me; or is it a vain superstition?

Slavery abject and gross? service, too feeble, of truth?

Is it an idol I bow to, or is it a god that I worship?

Do I sink back on the old, or do I soar from the mean?

So through the city I wander and question, unsatisfied ever,

Reverent so I accept, doubtful because I revere.

CANTO II.

Is it illusion? or does there a spirit from perfecter ages,

Here, even yet, amid loss, change, and corruption abide?

Does there a spirit we know not, though seek, though we find, comprehend not,

Here to entice and confuse, tempt and evade us, abide?

Lives in the exquisite grace of the column disjointed and single,

Haunts the rude masses of brick garlanded gaily with vine,

E’en in the turret fantastic surviving that springs from the ruin,

E’en in the people itself? is it illusion or not?

Is it illusion or not that attracteth the pilgrim transalpine,

Brings him a dullard and dunce hither to pry and to stare?

Is it illusion or not that allures the barbarian stranger,

Brings him with gold to the shrine, brings him in arms to the gate?

i. Claude to Eustace.

What do the people say, and what does the government do?—you

Ask, and I know not at all. Yet fortune will favour your hopes; and

I, who avoided it all, am fated, it seems, to describe it.

I, who nor meddle nor make in politics,—I who sincerely

Put not my trust in leagues nor any suffrage by ballot,

Never predicted Parisian millenniums, never beheld a

New Jerusalem coming down dressed like a bride out of heaven

Right on the Place de la Concorde,—I, nevertheless, let me say it,

Could in my soul of souls, this day, with the Gaul at the gates shed

One true tear for thee, thou poor little Roman Republic;

What, with the German restored, with Sicily safe to the Bourbon,

Not leave one poor corner for native Italian exertion?

France, it is foully done! and you, poor foolish England,—

You, who a twelvemonth ago said nations must choose for themselves, you

Could not, of course, interfere,—you, now, when a nation has chosen——

Pardon this folly! The Times will, of course, have announced the occasion,

Told you the news of to-day; and although it was slightly in error

When it proclaimed as a fact the Apollo was sold to a Yankee,

You may believe when it tells you the French are at Civita Vecchia.

ii. Claude to Eustace.

Dulce it is, and decorum, no doubt, for the country to fall,—to

Offer one’s blood an oblation to Freedom, and die for the Cause; yet

Still, individual culture is also something, and no man

Finds quite distinct the assurance that he of all others is called on,

Or would be justified even, in taking away from the world that

Precious creature, himself. Nature sent him here to abide here;

Else why send him at all? Nature wants him still, it is likely;

On the whole, we are meant to look after ourselves; it is certain

Each has to eat for himself, digest for himself, and in general

Care for his own dear life, and see to his own preservation;

Nature’s intentions, in most things uncertain, in this are decisive;

Which, on the whole, I conjecture the Romans will follow, and I shall.

So we cling to our rocks like limpets; Ocean may bluster,

Over and under and round us; we open our shells to imbibe our

Nourishment, close them again, and are safe, fulfilling the purpose

Nature intended,—a wise one, of course, and a noble, we doubt not.

Sweet it may be and decorous, perhaps, for the country to die; but,

On the whole, we conclude the Romans won’t do it, and I sha’n’t.

iii. Claude to Eustace.

Will they fight? They say so. And will the French? I can hardly,

Hardly think so; and yet—He is come, they say, to Palo,

He is passed from Monterone, at Santa Severa

He hath laid up his guns. But the Virgin, the Daughter of Roma,

She hath despised thee and laughed thee to scorn,—The Daughter of Tiber,

She hath shaken her head and built barricades against thee!

Will they fight! I believe it. Alas! ’tis ephemeral folly,

Vain and ephemeral folly, of course, compared with pictures,

Statues, and antique gems!—Indeed: and yet indeed too,

Yet, methought, in broad day did I dream,—tell it not in St. James’s,

Whisper it not in thy courts, O Christ Church!—yet did I, waking,

Dream of a cadence that sings, Si tombent nos jeunes héros, la

Terre en produit de nouveaux contre vous tous prêts à se battre;

Dreamt of great indignations and angers transcendental,

Dreamt of a sword at my side and a battle-horse underneath me.

iv. Claude to Eustace.

Now supposing the French or the Neapolitan soldier

Should by some evil chance come exploring the Maison Serny

(Where the family English are all to assemble for safety),

Am I prepared to lay down my life for the British female?

Really, who knows? One has bowed and talked, till, little by little,

All the natural heat has escaped of the chivalrous spirit.

Oh, one conformed, of course; but one doesn’t die for good manners,

Stab or shoot, or be shot, by way of graceful attention.

No, if it should be at all, it should be on the barricades there;

Should I incarnadine ever this inky pacifical finger,

Sooner far should it be for this vapour of Italy’s freedom,

Sooner far by the side of the d——d and dirty plebeians.

Ah, for a child in the street I could strike; for the full-blown lady——

Somehow, Eustace, alas! I have not felt the vocation.

Yet these people of course will expect, as of course, my protection,

Vernon in radiant arms stand forth for the lovely Georgina,

And to appear, I suppose, were but common civility. Yes, and

Truly I do not desire they should either be killed or offended.

Oh, and of course, you will say, ‘When the time comes, you will be ready.’

Ah, but before it comes, am I to presume it will be so?

What I cannot feel now, am I to suppose that I shall feel?

Am I not free to attend for the ripe and indubious instinct?

Am I forbidden to wait for the clear and lawful perception?

Is it the calling of man to surrender his knowledge and insight,

For the mere venture of what may, perhaps, be the virtuous action?

Must we, walking our earth, discern a little, and hoping

Some plain visible task shall yet for our hands be assigned us,—

Must we abandon the future for fear of omitting the present,

Quit our own fireside hopes at the alien call of a neighbour,

To the mere possible shadow of Deity offer the victim?

And is all this, my friend, but a weak and ignoble refining,

Wholly unworthy the head or the heart of Your Own Correspondent?

v. Claude to Eustace.

Yes, we are fighting at last, it appears. This morning as usual,

Murray, as usual, in hand, I enter the Caffè Nuovo;

Seating myself with a sense as it were of a change in the weather,

Not understanding, however, but thinking mostly of Murray,

And, for to-day is their day, of the Campidoglio Marbles;

Caffè-latte! I call to the waiter,—and Non c’ è latte,

This is the answer he makes me, and this is the sign of a battle.

So I sit: and truly they seem to think any one else more

Worthy than me of attention. I wait for my milkless nero,

Free to observe undistracted all sorts and sizes of persons,

Blending civilian and soldier in strangest costume, coming in, and

Gulping in hottest haste, still standing, their coffee,—withdrawing

Eagerly, jangling a sword on the steps, or jogging a musket

Slung to the shoulder behind. They are fewer, moreover, than usual,

Much and silenter far; and so I begin to imagine

Something is really afloat. Ere I leave, the Caffè is empty,

Empty too the streets, in all its length the Corso

Empty, and empty I see to my right and left the Condotti.

Twelve o’clock, on the Pincian Hill, with lots of English,

Germans, Americans, French,—the Frenchmen, too, are protected,—

So we stand in the sun, but afraid of a probable shower;

So we stand and stare, and see, to the left of St. Peter’s,

Smoke, from the cannon, white,—but that is at intervals only,—

Black, from a burning house, we suppose, by the Cavalleggieri;

And we believe we discern some lines of men descending

Down through the vineyard-slopes, and catch a bayonet gleaming.

Every ten minutes, however,—in this there is no misconception,—

Comes a great white puff from behind Michel Angelo’s dome, and

After a space the report of a real big gun,—not the Frenchman’s!—

That must be doing some work. And so we watch and conjecture.

Shortly, an Englishman comes, who says he has been to St. Peter’s,

Seen the Piazza and troops, but that is all he can tell us;

So we watch and sit, and, indeed, it begins to be tiresome.—

All this smoke is outside; when it has come to the inside,

It will be time, perhaps, to descend and retreat to our houses.

Half-past one, or two. The report of small arms frequent,

Sharp and savage indeed; that cannot all be for nothing:

So we watch and wonder; but guessing is tiresome, very.

Weary of wondering, watching, and guessing, and gossiping idly,

Down I go, and pass through the quiet streets with the knots of

National Guards patrolling, and flags hanging out at the windows,

English, American, Danish,—and, after offering to help an

Irish family moving en masse to the Maison Serny,

After endeavouring idly to minister balm to the trembling

Quinquagenarian fears of two lone British spinsters,

Go to make sure of my dinner before the enemy enter.

But by this there are signs of stragglers returning; and voices

Talk, though you don’t believe it, of guns and prisoners taken;

And on the walls you read the first bulletin of the morning.—

This is all that I saw, and all I know of the battle.

vi. Claude to Eustace.

Victory! Victory!—Yes! ah, yes, thou republican Zion,

Truly the kings of the earth are gathered and gone by together;

Doubtless they marvelled to witness such things, were astonished, and so forth.

Victory! Victory! Victory!—Ah, but it is, believe me,

Easier, easier far, to intone the chant of the martyr

Than to indite any pæan of any victory. Death may

Sometimes be noble; but life, at the best, will appear an illusion.

While the great pain is upon us, it is great; when it is over,

Why, it is over. The smoke of the sacrifice rises to heaven,

Of a sweet savour, no doubt, to Somebody; but on the altar,

Lo, there is nothing remaining but ashes and dirt and ill odour.

So it stands, you perceive; the labial muscles that swelled with

Vehement evolution of yesterday Marseillaises,

Articulations sublime of defiance and scorning, to-day col-

Lapse and languidly mumble, while men and women and papers

Scream and re-scream to each other the chorus of Victory. Well, but

I am thankful they fought, and glad that the Frenchmen were beaten.

vii. Claude to Eustace.

So, I have seen a man killed! An experience that, among others!

Yes, I suppose I have; although I can hardly be certain,

And in a court of justice could never declare I had seen it.

But a man was killed, I am told, in a place where I saw

Something; a man was killed, I am told, and I saw something.

I was returning home from St. Peter’s; Murray, as usual,

Under my arm, I remember; had crossed the St. Angelo bridge; and

Moving towards the Condotti, had got to the first barricade, when

Gradually, thinking still of St. Peter’s, I became conscious

Of a sensation of movement opposing me,—tendency this way

(Such as one fancies may be in a stream when the wave of the tide is

Coming and not yet come,—a sort of noise and retention);

So I turned, and, before I turned, caught sight of stragglers

Heading a crowd, it is plain, that is coming behind that corner.

Looking up, I see windows filled with heads; the Piazza,

Into which you remember the Ponte St. Angelo enters,

Since I passed, has thickened with curious groups; and now the

Crowd is coming, has turned, has crossed that last barricade, is

Here at my side. In the middle they drag at something. What is it?

Ha! bare swords in the air, held up? There seem to be voices

Pleading and hands putting back; official, perhaps; but the swords are

Many, and bare in the air. In the air? they descend; they are smiting,

Hewing, chopping—At what? In the air once more upstretched? And—

Is it blood that’s on them? Yes, certainly blood! Of whom, then?

Over whom is the cry of this furor of exultation?

While they are skipping and screaming, and dancing their caps on the points of

Swords and bayonets, I to the outskirts back, and ask a

Mercantile-seeming bystander, ‘What is it?’ and he, looking always

That way, makes me answer, ‘A Priest, who was trying to fly to

The Neapolitan army,’—and thus explains the proceeding.

You didn’t see the dead man? No;—I began to be doubtful;

I was in black myself, and didn’t know what mightn’t happen,—

But a National Guard close by me, outside of the hubbub,

Broke his sword with slashing a broad hat covered with dust,—and

Passing away from the place with Murray under my arm, and

Stooping, I saw through the legs of the people the legs of a body.

You are the first, do you know, to whom I have mentioned the matter.

Whom should I tell it to else?—these girls?—the Heavens forbid it!—

Quidnuncs at Monaldini’s?—Idlers upon the Pincian?

If I rightly remember, it happened on that afternoon when

Word of the nearer approach of a new Neapolitan army

First was spread. I began to bethink me of Paris Septembers,

Thought I could fancy the look of that old ’Ninety-two. On that evening

Three or four, or, it may be, five, of these people were slaughtered.

Some declared they had, one of them, fired on a sentinel; others

Say they were only escaping; a Priest, it is currently stated,

Stabbed a National Guard on the very Piazza Colonna:

History, Rumour of Rumours, I leave to thee to determine!

But I am thankful to say the government seems to have strength to

Put it down; it has vanished, at least; the place is most peaceful.

Through the Trastevere walking last night, at nine of the clock, I

Found no sort of disorder; I crossed by the Island-bridges,

So by the narrow streets to the Ponte Rotto, and onwards

Thence by the Temple of Vesta, away to the great Coliseum,

Which at the full of the moon is an object worthy a visit.

viii. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ——.

Only think, dearest Louisa, what fearful scenes we have witnessed!—

George has just seen Garibaldi, dressed up in a long white cloak, on

Horseback, riding by, with his mounted negro behind him:

This is a man, you know, who came from America with him,

Out of the woods, I suppose, and uses a lasso in fighting,

Which is, I don’t quite know, but a sort of noose, I imagine;

This he throws on the heads of the enemy’s men in a battle,

Pulls them into his reach, and then most cruelly kills them:

Mary does not believe, but we heard it from an Italian.

Mary allows she was wrong about Mr. Claude being selfish;

He was most useful and kind on the terrible thirtieth of April.

Do not write here any more; we are starting directly for Florence:

We should be off to-morrow, if only Papa could get horses;

All have been seized everywhere for the use of this dreadful Mazzini.

P.S.

Mary has seen thus far.—I am really so angry, Louisa,—

Quite out of patience, my dearest! What can the man be intending?

I am quite tired; and Mary, who might bring him to in a moment,

Lets him go on as he likes, and neither will help nor dismiss him.

ix. Claude to Eustace.

It is most curious to see what a power a few calm words (in

Merely a brief proclamation) appear to possess on the people.

Order is perfect, and peace; the city is utterly tranquil;

And one cannot conceive that this easy and nonchalant crowd, that

Flows like a quiet stream through street and market-place, entering

Shady recesses and bays of church, osteria, and caffè,

Could in a moment be changed to a flood as of molten lava,

Boil into deadly wrath and wild homicidal delusion.

Ah, ’tis an excellent race,—and even in old degradation,

Under a rule that enforces to flattery, lying, and cheating,

E’en under Pope and Priest, a nice and natural people.

Oh, could they but be allowed this chance of redemption!—but clearly

That is not likely to be. Meantime, notwithstanding all journals,

Honour for once to the tongue and the pen of the eloquent writer!

Honour to speech! and all honour to thee, thou noble Mazzini!

x. Claude to Eustace.

I am in love, meantime, you think; no doubt you would think so.

I am in love, you say; with those letters, of course, you would say so.

I am in love, you declare. I think not so; yet I grant you

It is a pleasure indeed to converse with this girl. Oh, rare gift,

Rare felicity, this! she can talk in a rational way, can

Speak upon subjects that really are matters of mind and of thinking,

Yet in perfection retain her simplicity; never, one moment,

Never, however you urge it, however you tempt her, consents to

Step from ideas and fancies and loving sensations to those vain

Conscious understandings that vex the minds of mankind.

No, though she talk, it is music; her fingers desert not the keys; ’tis

Song, though you hear in the song the articulate vocables sounded,

Syllabled singly and sweetly the words of melodious meaning.

I am in love, you say: I do not think so, exactly.

xi. Claude to Eustace.

There are two different kinds, I believe, of human attraction:

One which simply disturbs, unsettles, and makes you uneasy,

And another that poises, retains, and fixes and holds you.

I have no doubt, for myself, in giving my voice for the latter.

I do not wish to be moved, but growing where I was growing,

There more truly to grow, to live where as yet I had languished.

I do not like being moved: for the will is excited; and action

Is a most dangerous thing; I tremble for something factitious,

Some malpractice of heart and illegitimate process;

We are so prone to these things, with our terrible notions of duty.

xii. Claude to Eustace.

Ah, let me look, let me watch, let me wait, unhurried, unprompted!

Bid me not venture on aught that could alter or end what is present!

Say not, Time flies, and Occasion, that never returns, is departing!

Drive me not out, ye ill angels with fiery swords, from my Eden,

Waiting, and watching, and looking! Let love be its own inspiration!

Shall not a voice, if a voice there must be, from the airs that environ,

Yea, from the conscious heavens, without our knowledge or effort,

Break into audible words? And love be its own inspiration?

xiii. Claude to Eustace.

Wherefore and how I am certain, I hardly can tell; but it is so.

She doesn’t like me, Eustace; I think she never will like me.

Is it my fault, as it is my misfortune, my ways are not her ways?

Is it my fault, that my habits and modes are dissimilar wholly?

’Tis not her fault; ’tis her nature, her virtue, to misapprehend them:

’Tis not her fault; ’tis her beautiful nature, not ever to know me.

Hopeless it seems,—yet I cannot, though hopeless, determine to leave it:

She goes—therefore I go; she moves,—I move, not to lose her.

xiv. Claude to Eustace.

Oh, ’tisn’t manly, of course, ’tisn’t manly, this method of wooing;

’Tisn’t the way very likely to win. For the woman, they tell you,

Ever prefers the audacious, the wilful, the vehement hero;

She has no heart for the timid, the sensitive soul; and for knowledge,—

Knowledge, O ye Gods!—when did they appreciate knowledge?

Wherefore should they, either? I am sure I do not desire it.

Ah, and I feel too, Eustace, she cares not a tittle about me!

(Care about me, indeed! and do I really expect it?)

But my manner offends; my ways are wholly repugnant;

Every word that I utter estranges, hurts, and repels her;

Every moment of bliss that I gain, in her exquisite presence,

Slowly, surely, withdraws her, removes her, and severs her from me.

Not that I care very much!—any way I escape from the boy’s own

Folly, to which I am prone, of loving where it is easy.

Not that I mind very much! Why should I? I am not in love, and

Am prepared, I think, if not by previous habit,

Yet in the spirit beforehand for this and all that is like it;

It is an easier matter for us contemplative creatures,

Us upon whom the pressure of action is laid so lightly;

We, discontented indeed with things in particular, idle,

Sickly, complaining, by faith, in the vision of things in general,

Manage to hold on our way without, like others around us,

Seizing the nearest arm to comfort, help, and support us.

Yet, after all, my Eustace, I know but little about it.

All I can say for myself, for present alike and for past, is,

Mary Trevellyn, Eustace, is certainly worth your acquaintance.

You couldn’t come, I suppose, as far as Florence to see her?

xv. Georgina Trevellyn to Louisa ——.

...To-morrow we’re starting for Florence,

Truly rejoiced, you may guess, to escape from republican terrors;

Mr. C. and Papa to escort us; we by vettura

Through Siena, and Georgy to follow and join us by Leghorn.

Then—Ah, what shall I say, my dearest? I tremble in thinking!

You will imagine my feelings,—the blending of hope and of sorrow.

How can I bear to abandon Papa and Mamma and my Sisters?

Dearest Louise, indeed it is very alarming; but, trust me

Ever, whatever may change, to remain your loving Georgina.

P.S. by Mary Trevellyn.

...‘Do I like Mr. Claude any better?’

I am to tell you,—and, ‘Pray, is it Susan or I that attract him?’

This he never has told, but Georgina could certainly ask him.

All I can say for myself is, alas! that he rather repels me.

There! I think him agreeable, but also a little repulsive.

So be content, dear Louisa; for one satisfactory marriage

Surely will do in one year for the family you would establish;

Neither Susan nor I shall afford you the joy of a second.

P.S. by Georgina Trevellyn.

Mr. Claude, you must know, is behaving a little bit better;

He and Papa are great friends; but he really is too shilly-shally,—

So unlike George! Yet I hope that the matter is going on fairly.

I shall, however, get George, before he goes, to say something.

Dearest Louise, how delightful to bring young people together!

---

Is it to Florence we follow, or are we to tarry yet longer,

E’en amid clamour of arms, here in the city of old,

Seeking from clamour of arms in the Past and the Arts to be hidden,

Vainly ’mid Arts and the Past seeking one life to forget?

Ah, fair shadow, scarce seen, go forth! for anon he shall follow,—

He that beheld thee, anon, whither thou leadest must go!

Go, and the wise, loving Muse, she also will follow and find thee!

She, should she linger in Rome, were not dissevered from thee!

CANTO III.

Yet to the wondrous St. Peter’s, and yet to the solemn Rotonda,

Mingling with heroes and gods, yet to the Vatican Walls,

Yet may we go, and recline, while a whole mighty world seems above us,

Gathered and fixed to all time into one roofing supreme;

Yet may we, thinking on these things, exclude what is meaner around us;

Yet, at the worst of the worst, books and a chamber remain;

Yet may we think, and forget, and possess our souls in resistance.—

Ah, but away from the stir, shouting, and gossip of war,

Where, upon Apennine slope, with the chestnut the oak-trees immingle,

Where, amid odorous copse bridle-paths wander and wind,

Where, under mulberry-branches, the diligent rivulet sparkles,

Or amid cotton and maize peasants their water-works ply,

Where, over fig-tree and orange in tier upon tier still repeated,

Garden on garden upreared, balconies step to the sky,—

Ah, that I were far away from the crowd and the streets of the city,

Under the vine-trellis laid, O my beloved, with thee!

i. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,—on the way to Florence.

Why doesn’t Mr. Claude come with us? you ask.—We don’t know,

You should know better than we. He talked of the Vatican marbles;

But I can’t wholly believe that this was the actual reason,—

He was so ready before, when we asked him to come and escort us.

Certainly he is odd, my dear Miss Roper. To change so

Suddenly, just for a whim, was not quite fair to the party,—

Not quite right. I declare, I really almost am offended:

I, his great friend, as you say, have doubtless a title to be so.

Not that I greatly regret it, for dear Georgina distinctly

Wishes for nothing so much as to show her adroitness. But, oh, my

Pen will not write any more;—let us say nothing further about it.

Yes, my dear Miss Roper, I certainly called him repulsive;

So I think him, but cannot be sure I have used the expression

Quite as your pupil should; yet he does most truly repel me.

Was it to you I made use of the word? or who was it told you?

Yes, repulsive; observe, it is but when he talks of ideas

That he is quite unaffected, and free, and expansive, and easy;

I could pronounce him simply a cold intellectual being.—

When does he make advances?—He thinks that women should woo him;

Yet, if a girl should do so, would be but alarmed and disgusted.

She that should love him must look for small love in return,—like the ivy

On the stone wall, must expect but a rigid and niggard support, and

E’en to get that must go searching all round with her humble embraces.

ii. Claude to Eustace,—from Rome.

Tell me, my friend, do you think that the grain would sprout in the furrow,

Did it not truly accept as its summum and ultimum bonum

That mere common and may-be indifferent soil it is set in?

Would it have force to develop and open its young cotyledons,

Could it compare, and reflect, and examine one thing with another?

Would it endure to accomplish the round of its natural functions

Were it endowed with a sense of the general scheme of existence?

While from Marseilles in the steamer we voyage to Civita Vecchia,

Vexed in the squally seas as we lay by Capraja and Elba,

Standing, uplifted, alone on the heaving poop of the vessel,

Looking around on the waste of the rushing incurious billows,

‘This is Nature,’ I said: ‘we are born as it were from her waters;

Over her billows that buffet and beat us, her offspring uncared-for,

Casting one single regard of a painful victorious knowledge,

Into her billows that buffet and beat us we sink and are swallowed.’

This was the sense in my soul, as I swayed with the poop of the steamer;

And as unthinking I sat in the hall of the famed Ariadne,

Lo, it looked at me there from the face of a Triton in marble.

It is the simpler thought, and I can believe it the truer.

Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

iii. Claude to Eustace.

Farewell, Politics, utterly! What can I do? I cannot

Fight, you know; and to talk I am wholly ashamed. And although I

Gnash my teeth when I look in your French or your English papers,

What is the good of that? Will swearing, I wonder, mend matters?

Cursing and scolding repel the assailants? No, it is idle;

No, whatever befalls, I will hide, will ignore or forget it.

Let the tail shift for itself; I will bury my head. And what’s the

Roman Republic to me, or I to the Roman Republic?

Why not fight?—In the first place, I haven’t so much as a musket;

In the next, if I had, I shouldn’t know how I should use it;

In the third, just at present I’m studying ancient marbles;

In the fourth, I consider I owe my life to my country;

In the fifth—I forget, but four good reasons are ample.

Meantime, pray let ’em fight, and be killed. I delight in devotion.

So that I ’list not, hurrah for the glorious army of martyrs!

Sanguis martyrum semen Ecclesiæ; though it would seem this

Church is indeed of the purely Invisible, Kingdom-come kind:

Militant here on earth! Triumphant, of course, then, elsewhere!

Ah, good Heaven, but I would I were out far away from the pother!

iv. Claude to Eustace.

Not, as we read in the words of the olden-time inspiration,

Are there two several trees in the place we are set to abide in;

But on the apex most high of the Tree of Life in the Garden,

Budding, unfolding, and falling, decaying and flowering ever,

Flowering is set and decaying the transient blossom of Knowledge,—

Flowering alone, and decaying, the needless unfruitful blossom.

Or as the cypress-spires by the fair-flowing stream Hellespontine,

Which from the mythical tomb of the godlike Protesilaüs

Rose sympathetic in grief to his love-lorn Laodamia,

Evermore growing, and when in their growth to the prospect attaining,

Over the low sea-banks, of the fatal Ilian city,

Withering still at the sight which still they upgrow to encounter.

Ah, but ye that extrude from the ocean your helpless faces,

Ye over stormy seas leading long and dreary processions,

Ye, too, brood of the wind, whose coming is whence we discern not,

Making your nest on the wave, and your bed on the crested billow,

Skimming rough waters, and crowding wet sands that the tide shall return to,

Cormorants, ducks, and gulls, fill ye my imagination!

Let us not talk of growth; we are still in our Aqueous Ages.

v. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,—from Florence.

Dearest Miss Roper,—Alas! we are all at Florence quite safe, and

You, we hear, are shut up! indeed, it is sadly distressing!

We were most lucky, they say, to get off when we did from the troubles.

Now you are really besieged; they tell us it soon will be over;

Only I hope and trust without any fight in the city.

Do you see Mr. Claude?—I thought he might do something for you.

I am quite sure on occasion he really would wish to be useful.

What is he doing? I wonder;—still studying Vatican marbles?

Letters, I hope, pass through. We trust your brother is better.

vi. Claude to Eustace.

Juxtaposition, in fine; and what is juxtaposition?

Look you, we travel along in the railway-carriage or steamer,

And, pour passer le temps, till the tedious journey be ended,

Lay aside paper or book, to talk with the girl that is next one;

And, pour passer le temps, with the terminus all but in prospect,

Talk of eternal ties and marriages made in heaven.

Ah, did we really accept with a perfect heart the illusion!

Ah, did we really believe that the Present indeed is the Only!

Or through all transmutation, all shock and convulsion of passion,

Feel we could carry undimmed, unextinguished, the light of our knowledge!

But for his funeral train which the bridegroom sees in the distance,

Would he so joyfully, think you, fall in with the marriage procession?

But for that final discharge, would he dare to enlist in that service?

But for that certain release, ever sign to that perilous contract?

But for that exit secure, ever bend to that treacherous doorway?—

Ah, but the bride, meantime,—do you think she sees it as he does?

But for the steady fore-sense of a freer and larger existence,

Think you that man could consent to be circumscribed here into action?

But for assurance within of a limitless ocean divine, o’er

Whose great tranquil depths unconscious the wind-tost surface

Breaks into ripples of trouble that come and change and endure not,—

But that in this, of a truth, we have our being, and know it,

Think you we men could submit to live and move as we do here?

Ah, but the women,—God bless them! they don’t think at all about it.

Yet we must eat and drink, as you say. And as limited beings

Scarcely can hope to attain upon earth to an Actual Abstract,

Leaving to God contemplation, to His hands knowledge confiding,

Sure that in us if it perish, in Him it abideth and dies not,

Let us in His sight accomplish our petty particular doings,—

Yes, and contented sit down to the victual that He has provided.

Allah is great, no doubt, and Juxtaposition his prophet.

Ah, but the women, alas! they don’t look at it in that way.

Juxtaposition is great;—but, my friend, I fear me, the maiden

Hardly would thank or acknowledge the lover that sought to obtain her,

Not as the thing he would wish, but the thing he must even put up with,—

Hardly would tender her hand to the wooer that candidly told her

That she is but for a space, an ad-interim solace and pleasure,—

That in the end she shall yield to a perfect and absolute something,

Which I then for myself shall behold, and not another,—

Which amid fondest endearments, meantime I forget not, forsake not.

Ah, ye feminine souls, so loving, and so exacting,

Since we cannot escape, must we even submit to deceive you?

Since, so cruel is truth, sincerity shocks and revolts you,

Will you have us your slaves to lie to you, flatter and—leave you?

vii. Claude to Eustace.

Juxtaposition is great,—but, you tell me, affinity greater.

Ah, my friend, there are many affinities, greater and lesser,

Stronger and weaker; and each, by the favour of juxtaposition,

Potent, efficient, in force,—for a time; but none, let me tell you,

Save by the law of the land and the ruinous force of the will, ah,

None, I fear me, at last quite sure to be final and perfect.

Lo, as I pace in the street, from the peasant-girl to the princess,

Homo sum, nihil humani a me alienum puto,—

Vir sum, nihil fæminei,—and e’en to the uttermost circle,

All that is Nature’s is I, and I all things that are Nature’s.

Yes, as I walk, I behold, in a luminous, large intuition,

That I can be and become anything that I meet with or look at:

I am the ox in the dray, the ass with the garden-stuff panniers;

I am the dog in the doorway, the kitten that plays in the window,

On sunny slab of the ruin the furtive and fugitive lizard,

Swallow above me that twitters, and fly that is buzzing about me;

Yea, and detect, as I go, by a faint but a faithful assurance,

E’en from the stones of the street, as from rocks or trees of the forest

Something of kindred, a common, though latent vitality, greets me;

And to escape from our strivings, mistakings, misgrowths, and perversions,

Fain could demand to return to that perfect and primitive silence,

Fain be enfolded and fixed, as of old, in their rigid embraces.

viii. Claude to Eustace.

And as I walk on my way, I behold them consorting and coupling;

Faithful it seemeth, and fond, very fond, very probably faithful,

All as I go on my way, with a pleasure sincere and unmingled.

Life is beautiful, Eustace, entrancing, enchanting to look at;

As are the streets of a city we pace while the carriage is changing,

As a chamber filled-in with harmonious, exquisite pictures,

Even so beautiful Earth; and could we eliminate only

This vile hungering impulse, this demon within us of craving,

Life were beatitude, living a perfect divine satisfaction.

ix. Claude to Eustace.

Mild monastic faces in quiet collegiate cloisters:

So let me offer a single and celibatarian phrase, a

Tribute to those whom perhaps you do not believe I can honour.

But, from the tumult escaping, ’tis pleasant, of drumming and shouting,

Hither, oblivious awhile, to withdraw, of the fact or the falsehood,

And amid placid regards and mildly courteous greetings

Yield to the calm and composure and gentle abstraction that reign o’er

Mild monastic faces in quiet collegiate cloisters:

Terrible word, Obligation! You should not, Eustace, you should not,

No, you should not have used it. But, oh, great Heavens, I repel it!

Oh, I cancel, reject, disavow, and repudiate wholly

Every debt in this kind, disclaim every claim, and dishonour,

Yea, my own heart’s own writing, my soul’s own signature! Ah, no!

I will be free in this; you shall not, none shall, bind me.

No, my friend, if you wish to be told, it was this above all things,

This that charmed me, ah, yes, even this, that she held me to nothing.

No, I could talk as I pleased; come close; fasten ties, as I fancied;

Bind and engage myself deep;—and lo, on the following morning

It was all e’en as before, like losings in games played for nothing.

Yes, when I came, with mean fears in my soul, with a semi-performance

At the first step breaking down in its pitiful rôle of evasion,

When to shuffle I came, to compromise, not meet, engagements,

Lo, with her calm eyes there she met me and knew nothing of it,—

Stood unexpecting, unconscious. She spoke not of obligations,

Knew not of debt—ah, no, I believe you, for excellent reasons.

x. Claude to Eustace.

Hang this thinking, at last! what good is it? oh, and what evil!

Oh, what mischief and pain! like a clock in a sick man’s chamber,

Ticking and ticking, and still through each covert of slumber pursuing.

What shall I do to thee, O thou Preserver of men? Have compassion;

Be favourable, and hear! Take from me this regal knowledge;

Let me, contented and mute, with the beasts of the fields, my brothers,

Tranquilly, happily lie,—and eat grass, like Nebuchadnezzar!

xi. Claude to Eustace.

Tibur is beautiful, too, and the orchard slopes, and the Anio

Falling, falling yet, to the ancient lyrical cadence;

Tibur and Anio’s tide; and cool from Lucretilis ever,

With the Digentian stream, and with the Bandusian fountain,

Folded in Sabine recesses, the valley and villa of Horace:—

So not seeing I sang; so seeing and listening say I,

Here as I sit by the stream, as I gaze at the cell of the Sibyl,

Here with Albunea’s home and the grove of Tiburnus beside me;[14]

Tivoli beautiful is, and musical, O Teverone,

Dashing from mountain to plain, thy parted impetuous waters,

Tivoli’s waters and rocks; and fair unto Monte Gennaro

(Haunt, even yet, I must think, as I wander and gaze, of the shadows,

Faded and pale, yet immortal, of Faunus, the Nymphs, and the Graces),

Fair in itself, and yet fairer with human completing creations,

Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace:—

So not seeing I sang; so now—Nor seeing, nor hearing,

Neither by waterfall lulled, nor folded in sylvan embraces,

Neither by cell of the Sibyl, nor stepping the Monte Gennaro,

Seated on Anio’s bank, nor sipping Bandusian waters,

But on Montorio’s height, looking down on the tile-clad streets, the

Cupolas, crosses, and domes, the bushes and kitchen-gardens,

Which, by the grace of the Tibur, proclaim themselves Rome of the Romans,—

But on Montorio’s height, looking forth to the vapoury mountains,

Cheating the prisoner Hope with illusions of vision and fancy,—

But on Montorio’s height, with these weary soldiers by me,

Waiting till Oudinot enter, to reinstate Pope and Tourist.

xii. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.

Dear Miss Roper,—It seems, George Vernon, before we left Rome, said

Something to Mr. Claude about what they call his attentions.

Susan, two nights ago, for the first time, heard this from Georgina.

It is so disagreeable and so annoying to think of!

If it could only be known, though we may never meet him again, that

It was all George’s doing, and we were entirely unconscious,

It would extremely relieve—Your ever affectionate Mary.

P.S. (1)

Here is your letter arrived this moment, just as I wanted.

So you have seen him,—indeed, and guessed,—how dreadfully clever!

What did he really say? and what was your answer exactly?

Charming!—but wait for a moment, I haven’t read through the letter.

P.S. (2)

Ah, my dearest Miss Roper, do just as you fancy about it.

If you think it sincerer to tell him I know of it, do so.

Though I should most extremely dislike it, I know I could manage.

It is the simplest thing, but surely wholly uncalled for

Do as you please; you know I trust implicitly to you.

Say whatever is right and needful for ending the matter.

Only don’t tell Mr. Claude, what I will tell you as a secret,

That I should like very well to show him myself I forget it.

P.S. (3)

I am to say that the wedding is finally settled for Tuesday.

Ah, my dear Miss Roper, you surely, surely can manage

Not to let it appear that I know of that odious matter.

It would be pleasanter far for myself to treat it exactly

As if it had not occurred: and I do not think he would like it.

I must remember to add, that as soon as the wedding is over

We shall be off, I believe, in a hurry, and travel to Milan;

There to meet friends of Papa’s, I am told, at the Croce di Malta;

Then I cannot say whither, but not at present to England.

xiii. Claude to Eustace.

Yes, on Montorio’s height for a last farewell of the city,—

So it appears; though then I was quite uncertain about it.

So, however, it was. And now to explain the proceeding.

I was to go, as I told you, I think, with the people to Florence.

Only the day before, the foolish family Vernon

Made some uneasy remarks, as we walked to our lodging together,

As to intentions forsooth, and so forth. I was astounded,

Horrified quite; and obtaining just then, as it happened, an offer

(No common favour) of seeing the great Ludovisi collection,

Why, I made this a pretence, and wrote that they must excuse me.

How could I go? Great Heavens! to conduct a permitted flirtation

Under those vulgar eyes, the observed of such observers!

Well, but I now, by a series of fine diplomatic inquiries,

Find from a sort of relation, a good and sensible woman,

Who is remaining at Rome with a brother too ill for removal,

That it was wholly unsanctioned, unknown,—not, I think, by Georgina:

She, however, ere this,—and that is the best of the story,—

She and the Vernon, thank Heaven, are wedded and gone—honey mooning.

So—on Montorio’s height for a last farewell of the city.

Tibur I have not seen, nor the lakes that of old I had dreamt of;

Tibur I shall not see, nor Anio’s waters, nor deep en-

Folded in Sabine recesses the valley and villa of Horace;

Tibur I shall not see;—but something better I shall see.

Twice I have tried before, and failed in getting the horses;

Twice I have tried and failed: this time it shall not be a failure.

---

Therefore farewell, ye hills, and ye, ye envineyarded ruins!

Therefore farewell, ye walls, palaces, pillars, and domes!

Therefore farewell, far seen, ye peaks of the mythic Albano,

Seen from Montorio’s height, Tibur and Æsula’s hills!

Ah, could we once, ere we go, could we stand, while, to ocean descending,

Sinks o’er the yellow dark plain slowly the yellow broad sun,

Stand, from the forest emerging at sunset, at once in the champaign,

Open, but studded with trees, chestnuts umbrageous and old,

E’en in those fair open fields that incurve to thy beautiful hollow,

Nemi, imbedded in wood, Nemi, inurned in the hill!—

Therefore farewell, ye plains, and ye hills, and the City Eternal!

Therefore farewell! We depart, but to behold you again!

CANTO IV.

Eastward, or Northward, or West? I wander and ask as I wander;

Weary, yet eager and sure, Where shall I come to my love?

Whitherward hasten to seek her? Ye daughters of Italy, tell me,

Graceful and tender and dark, is she consorting with you?

Thou that out-climbest the torrent, that tendest thy goats to the summit,

Call to me, child of the Alp, has she been seen on the heights?

Italy, farewell I bid thee! for whither she leads me, I follow.

Farewell the vineyard! for I, where I but guess her, must go;

Weariness welcome, and labour, wherever it be, if at last it

Bring me in mountain or plain into the sight of my love.

i. Claude to Eustace,—from Florence.

Gone from Florence; indeed! and that is truly provoking;—

Gone to Milan, it seems; then I go also to Milan.

Five days now departed; but they can travel but slowly;—

I quicker far; and I know, as it happens, the house they will go to.—

Why, what else should I do? Stay here and look at the pictures,

Statues, and churches? Alack, I am sick of the statues and pictures!—

No, to Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Lodi, and Milan,

Off go we to-night,—and the Venus go to the Devil!

ii. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

Gone to Como, they said; and I have posted to Como.

There was a letter left; but the cameriere had lost it.

Could it have been for me? They came, however, to Como,

And from Como went by the boat,—perhaps to the Splügen,—

Or to the Stelvio, say, and the Tyrol; also it might be

By Porlezza across to Lugano, and so to the Simplon

Possibly, or the St. Gothard,—or possibly, too, to Baveno,

Orta, Turin, and elsewhere. Indeed, I am greatly bewildered.

iii. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

I have been up the Splügen, and on the Stelvio also:

Neither of these can I find they have followed; in no one inn, and

This would be odd, have they written their names. I have been to Porlezza;

There they have not been seen, and therefore not at Lugano.

What shall I do? Go on through the Tyrol, Switzerland, Deutschland,

Seeking, an inverse Saul, a kingdom to find only asses?

There is a tide, at least, in the love affairs of mortals,

Which, when taken at flood, leads on to the happiest fortune,—

Leads to the marriage-morn and the orange-flowers and the altar,

And the long lawful line of crowned joys to crowned joys succeeding.—

Ah, it has ebbed with me! Ye gods, and when it was flowing,

Pitiful fool that I was, to stand fiddle-faddling in that way!

iv. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

I have returned and found their names in the book at Como.

Certain it is I was right, and yet I am also in error.

Added in feminine hand, I read, By the boat to Bellaggio.—

So to Bellaggio again, with the words of her writing to aid me.

Yet at Bellaggio I find no trace, no sort of remembrance.

So I am here, and wait, and know every hour will remove them.

v. Claude to Eustace,—from Bellaggio.

I have but one chance left,—and that is going to Florence.

But it is cruel to turn. The mountains seem to demand me,—

Peak and valley from far to beckon and motion me onward.

Somewhere amid their folds she passes whom fain I would follow;

Somewhere among those heights she haply calls me to seek her.

Ah, could I hear her call! could I catch the glimpse of her raiment!

Turn, however, I must, though it seem I turn to desert her;

For the sense of the thing is simply to hurry to Florence,

Where the certainty yet may be learnt, I suppose, from the Ropers!

vi. Mary Trevellyn, from Lucerne, to Miss Roper, at Florence.

Dear Miss Roper,—By this you are safely away, we are hoping,

Many a league from Rome; ere long we trust we shall see you.

How have you travelled? I wonder;—was Mr. Claude your companion?

As for ourselves, we went from Como straight to Lugano;

So by the Mount St. Gothard; we meant to go by Porlezza,

Taking the steamer, and stopping, as you had advised, at Bellaggio,

Two or three days or more; but this was suddenly altered,

After we left the hotel, on the very way to the steamer.

So we have seen, I fear, not one of the lakes in perfection.

Well, he is not come, and now, I suppose, he will not come.

What will you think, meantime? and yet I must really confess it;—

What will you say? I wrote him a note. We left in a hurry,

Went from Milan to Como, three days before we expected.

But I thought, if he came all the way to Milan, he really

Ought not to be disappointed: and so I wrote three lines to

Say I had heard he was coming, desirous of joining our party;—

If so, then I said, we had started for Como, and meant to

Cross the St. Gothard, and stay, we believed, at Lucerne, for the summer.

Was it wrong? and why, if it was, has it faded to bring him?

Did he not think it worth while to come to Milan? He knew (you

Told him) the house we should go to. Or may it, perhaps, have miscarried?

Any way, now, I repent, and am heartily vexed that I wrote it.

There is a home on the shore of the Alpine sea, that upswelling

High up the mountain-sides spreads in the hollow between;

Wilderness, mountain, and snow from the land of the olive conceal it;

Under Pilatus’s hill low by its river it lies:

Italy, utter the word, and the olive and vine will allure not,—

Wilderness, forest, and snow will not the passage impede;

Italy, unto thy cities receding, the clue to recover,

Hither, recovered the clue, shall not the traveller haste?

CANTO V.

There is a city, upbuilt on the quays of the turbulent Arno,

Under Fiesole’s heights,—thither are we to return?

There is a city that fringes the curve of the inflowing waters,

Under the perilous hill fringes the beautiful bay,—

Parthenope, do they call thee?—the Siren, Neapolis, seated

Under Vesevus’s hill,—are we receding to thee?—

Sicily, Greece, will invite, and the Orient;—or are we to turn to

England, which may after all be for its children the best?

i. Mary Trevellyn, at Lucerne, to Miss Roper, at Florence.

So you are really free, and living in quiet at Florence;

That is delightful news; you travelled slowly and safely;

Mr. Claude got you out; took rooms at Florence before you;

Wrote from Milan to say so; had left directly for Milan,

Hoping to find us soon;—if he could, he would, you are certain.—

Dear Miss Roper, your letter has made me exceedingly happy.

You are quite sure, you say, he asked you about our intentions;

You had not heard as yet of Lucerne, but told him of Como.—

Well, perhaps he will come; however, I will not expect it.

Though you say you are sure,—if he can, he will, you are certain.

O my dear, many thanks from your ever affectionate Mary.

ii. Claude to Eustace.

Florence.

Action will furnish belief,—but will that belief be the true one?

This is the point, you know. However, it doesn’t much matter

What one wants, I suppose, is to predetermine the action,

So as to make it entail, not a chance belief, but the true one.

Out of the question, you say; if a thing isn’t wrong we may do it.

Ah! but this wrong, you see—but I do not know that it matters.

Eustace, the Ropers are gone, and no one can tell me about them.

Pisa.

Pisa, they say they think, and so I follow to Pisa,

Hither and thither inquiring. I weary of making inquiries.

I am ashamed, I declare, of asking people about it.—

Who are your friends? You said you had friends who would certainly know them.

Florence.

But it is idle, moping, and thinking, and trying to fix her

Image more and more in, to write the whole perfect inscription

Over and over again upon every page of remembrance.

I have settled to stay at Florence to wait for your answer.

Who are your friends? Write quickly and tell me. I wait for your answer.

iii. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper,—at Lucca Baths.

You are at Lucca baths, you tell me, to stay for the summer;

Florence was quite too hot; you can’t move further at present.

Will you not come, do you think, before the summer is over?

Mr. C. got you out with very considerable trouble;

And he was useful and kind, and seemed so happy to serve you.

Didn’t stay with you long, but talked very openly to you;

Made you almost his confessor, without appearing to know it,—

What about?—and you say you didn’t need his confessions.

O my dear Miss Roper, I dare not trust what you tell me!

Will he come, do you think? I am really so sorry for him.

They didn’t give him my letter at Milan, I feel pretty certain.

You had told him Bellaggio. We didn’t go to Bellaggio;

So he would miss our track, and perhaps never come to Lugano,

Where we were written in full, To Lucerne across the St. Gothard.

But he could write to you;—you would tell him where you were going.

iv. Claude to Eustace.

Let me, then, bear to forget her. I will not cling to her falsely:

Nothing factitious or forced shall impair the old happy relation.

I will let myself go, forget, not try to remember;

I will walk on my way, accept the chances that meet me,

Freely encounter the world, imbibe these alien airs, and

Never ask if new feelings and thoughts are of her or of others.

Is she not changing herself?—the old image would only delude me.

I will be bold, too, and change,—if it must be. Yet if in all things,

Yet if I do but aspire evermore to the Absolute only,

I shall be doing, I think, somehow, what she will be doing;—

I shall be thine, O my child, some way, though I know not in what way,

Let me submit to forget her; I must; I already forget her.

v. Claude to Eustace.

Utterly vain is, alas! this attempt at the Absolute,—wholly!

I, who believed not in her, because I would fain believe nothing,

Have to believe as I may, with a wilful, unmeaning acceptance.

I, who refused to enfasten the roots of my floating existence

In the rich earth, cling now to the hard, naked rock that is left me,—

Ah! she was worthy, Eustace,—and that, indeed, is my comfort,—

Worthy a nobler heart than a fool such as I could have given her.

---

Yes, it relieves me to write, though I do not send, and the chance that

Takes may destroy my fragments. But as men pray, without asking

Whether One really exist to hear or do anything for them,—

Simply impelled by the need of the moment to turn to a Being

In a conception of whom there is freedom from all limitation,—

So in your image I turn to an ens rationis of friendship,

Even so write in your name I know not to whom nor in what wise.

---

There was a time, methought it was but lately departed,

When, if a thing was denied me, I felt I was bound to attempt it.

Choice alone should take, and choice alone should surrender.

There was a time, indeed, when I had not retired thus early,

Languidly thus, from pursuit of a purpose I once had adopted,

But it is over, all that! I have slunk from the perilous field in

Whose wild struggle of forces the prizes of life are contested.

It is over, all that! I am a coward, and know it.

Courage in me could be only factitious, unnatural, useless.

---

Comfort has come to me here in the dreary streets of the city,

Comfort—how do you think?—with a barrel-organ to bring it.

Moping along the streets, and cursing my day as I wandered,

All of a sudden my ear met the sound of an English psalm-tune,

Comfort me it did, till indeed I was very near crying.

Ah, there is some great truth, partial, very likely, but needful,

Lodged, I am strangely sure, in the tones of the English psalm-tune:

Comfort it was at least; and I must take without question

Comfort, however it come, in the dreary streets of the city.

---

What with trusting myself, and seeking support from within me,

Almost I could believe I had gained a religious assurance,

Formed in my own poor soul a great moral basis to rest on.

Ah, but indeed I see, I feel it factitious entirely;

I refuse, reject, and put it utterly from me;

I will look straight out, see things, not try to evade them;

Fact shall be fact for me, and the Truth the Truth as ever,

Flexible, changeable, vague, and multiform, and doubtful.—

Off, and depart to the void, thou subtle, fanatical tempter!

---

I shall behold thee again (is it so?) at a new visitation,

O ill genius thou! I shall at my life’s dissolution

(When the pulses are weak, and the feeble light of the reason

Flickers, an unfed flame retiring slow from the socket),

Low on a sick-bed laid, hear one, as it were, at the doorway,

And, looking up, see thee standing by, looking emptily at me;

I shall entreat thee then, though now I dare to refuse thee,—

Pale and pitiful now, but terrible then to the dying.—

Well, I will see thee again, and while I can, will repel thee.

vi. Claude to Eustace.

Rome is fallen, I hear, the gallant Medici taken,

Noble Manara slain, and Garibaldi has lost il Moro;—

Rome is fallen; and fallen, or falling, heroical Venice.

I, meanwhile, for the loss of a single small chit of a girl, sit

Moping and mourning here,—for her, and myself much smaller.

Whither depart the souls of the brave that die in the battle,

Die in the lost, lost fight, for the cause that perishes with them?

Are they upborne from the field on the slumberous pinions of angels

Unto a far-off home, where the weary rest from their labour,

And the deep wounds are healed, and the bitter and burning moisture

Wiped from the generous eyes? or do they linger, unhappy,

Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavour?

All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome nor

Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the

Wreck of the Lombard youth, and the victory of the oppressor.

Whither depart the brave?—God knows; I certainly do not.

vii. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.

He has not come as yet; and now I must not expect it.

You have written, you say, to friends at Florence, to see him,

If he perhaps should return;—but that is surely unlikely.

Has he not written to you?—he did not know your direction.

Oh, how strange never once to have told him where you were going!

Yet if he only wrote to Florence, that would have reached you.

If what you say he said was true, why has he not done so?

Is he gone back to Rome, do you think, to his Vatican marbles?—

O my dear Miss Roper, forgive me! do not be angry!—

You have written to Florence;—your friends would certainly find him

Might you not write to him?—but yet it is so little likely!

I shall expect nothing more.—Ever yours, your affectionate Mary.

viii. Claude to Eustace.

I cannot stay at Florence, not even to wait for a letter.

Galleries only oppress me. Remembrance of hope I had cherished

(Almost more than as hope, when I passed through Florence the first time)

Lies like a sword in my soul. I am more a coward than ever,

Chicken-hearted, past thought. The caffès and waiters distress me.

All is unkind, and, alas! I am ready for any one’s kindness.

Oh, I knew it of old, and knew it, I thought, to perfection,

If there is any one thing in the world to preclude all kindness,

It is the need of it,—it is this sad, self-defeating dependence.

Why is this, Eustace? Myself, were I stronger, I think I could tell you.

But it is odd when it comes. So plumb I the deeps of depression,

Daily in deeper, and find no support, no will, no purpose.

All my old strengths are gone. And yet I shall have to do something.

Ah, the key of our life, that passes all wards, opens all locks,

Is not I will, but I must. I must,—I must,—and I do it.

---

After all, do I know that I really cared so about her?

Do whatever I will, I cannot call up her image;

For when I close my eyes, I see, very likely, St. Peter’s,

Or the Pantheon façade, or Michel Angelo’s figures,

Or, at a wish, when I please, the Alban hills and the Forum,—

But that face, those eyes,—ah, no, never anything like them;

Only, try as I will, a sort of featureless outline,

And a pale blank orb, which no recollection will add to.

After all, perhaps there was something factitious about it;

I have had pain, it is true: I have wept, and so have the actors.

---

At the last moment I have your letter, for which I was waiting;

I have taken my place, and see no good in inquiries.

Do nothing more, good Eustace, I pray you. It only will vex me.

Take no measures. Indeed, should we meet, I could not be certain;

All might be changed, you know. Or perhaps there was nothing to be changed.

It is a curious history, this; and yet I foresaw it;

I could have told it before. The Fates, it is clear, are against us;

For it is certain enough I met with the people you mention;

They were at Florence the day I returned there, and spoke to me even;

Stayed a week, saw me often; departed, and whither I know not.

Great is Fate, and is best. I believe in Providence partly.

What is ordained is right, and all that happens is ordered.

Ah, no, that isn’t it. But yet I retain my conclusion.

I will go where I am led, and will not dictate to the chances.

Do nothing more, I beg. If you love me, forbear interfering.

ix. Claude to Eustace.

Shall we come out of it all, some day, as one does from a tunnel?

Will it be all at once, without our doing or asking,

We shall behold clear day, the trees and meadows about us,

And the faces of friends, and the eyes we loved looking at us?

Who knows? Who can say? It will not do to suppose it.

x. Claude to Eustace,—from Rome.

Rome will not suit me, Eustace; the priests and soldiers possess it;

Priests and soldiers:—and, ah! which is the worst, the priest or the soldier?

Politics, farewell, however! For what could I do? with inquiring,

Talking, collating the journals, go fever my brain about things o’er

Which I can have no control. No, happen whatever may happen,

Time, I suppose, will subsist; the earth will revolve on its axis;

People will travel; the stranger will wander as now in the city;

Rome will be here, and the Pope the custode of Vatican marbles.

I have no heart, however, for any marble or fresco;

I have essayed it in vain; ’tis in vain as yet to essay it:

But I may haply resume some day my studies in this kind;

Not as the Scripture says, is, I think, the fact. Ere our death-day,

Faith, I think, does pass, and Love; but Knowledge abideth.

Let us seek Knowledge;—the rest may come and go as it happens.

Knowledge is hard to seek, and harder yet to adhere to.

Knowledge is painful often; and yet when we know we are happy.

Seek it, and leave mere Faith and Love to come with the chances.

As for Hope,—to-morrow I hope to be starting for Naples.

Rome will not do, I see, for many very good reasons.

Eastward, then, I suppose, with the coming of winter, to Egypt.

xi. Mary Trevellyn to Miss Roper.

You have heard nothing; of course I know you can have heard nothing.

Ah, well, more than once I have broken my purpose, and sometimes,

Only too often, have looked for the little lake steamer to bring him.

But it is only fancy,—I do not really expect it.

Oh, and you see I know so exactly how he would take it:

Finding the chances prevail against meeting again, he would banish

Forthwith every thought of the poor little possible hope, which

I myself could not help, perhaps, thinking only too much of;

He would resign himself, and go. I see it exactly.

So I also submit, although in a different manner.

Can you not really come? We go very shortly to England.

---

So go forth to the world, to the good report and the evil!

Go, little book! thy tale, is it not evil and good?

Go, and if strangers revile, pass quietly by without answer.

Go, and if curious friends ask of thy rearing and age,

Say, ‘I am flitting about many years from brain unto brain of

Feeble and restless youths born to inglorious days:

But,’ so finish the word, ‘I was writ in a Roman chamber,

When from Janiculan heights thundered the cannon of France.’

SEVEN SONNETS
ON
THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.

SEVEN SONNETS
ON THE THOUGHT OF DEATH.[15]

I

That children in their loveliness should die

Before the dawning beauty, which we know

Cannot remain, has yet begun to go;

That when a certain period has passed by,

People of genius and of faculty,

Leaving behind them some result to show,

Having performed some function, should forego

The task which younger hands can better ply,

Appears entirely natural. But that one

Whose perfectness did not at all consist

In things towards forming which time can have done

Anything,—whose sole office was to exist,

Should suddenly dissolve and cease to be

Is the extreme of all perplexity.

II

That there are better things within the womb

Of Nature than to our unworthy view

She grants for a possession, may be true:

The cycle of the birthplace and the tomb

Fulfils at least the order and the doom

Of earth, that has not ordinance to do

More than to withdraw and to renew,

To show one moment and the next resume:

The law that we return from whence we came,

May for the flowers, beasts, and most men remain;

If for ourselves, we ask not nor complain:

But for a being that demands the name

We highest deem—a Person and a Soul—

It troubles us that this should be the whole.

III

To see the rich autumnal tint depart,

And view the fading of the roseate glow

That veils some Alpine altitude of snow,

To hear of some great masterpiece of art

Lost or destroyed, may to the adult heart,

Impatient of the transitory show

Of lovelinesses that but come and go,

A positive strange thankfulness impart.

When human pure perfections disappear,

Not at the first, but at some later day,

The buoyancy of such reaction may

With strong assurance conquer blank dismay.

IV

But whether in the uncoloured light of truth,

This inward strong assurance be, indeed,

More than the self-willed arbitrary creed,

Manhood’s inheritor to the dream of youth;

Whether to shut out fact because forsooth

To live were insupportable unfreed,

Be not or be the service of untruth:

Whether this vital confidence be more

Than his, who upon death’s immediate brink,

Knowing, perforce determines to ignore;

Or than the bird’s, that when the hunter’s near,

Burying her eyesight, can forget her fear;

Who about this shall tell us what to think?

V

If it is thou whose casual hand withdraws

What it at first as casually did make,

Say what amount of ages it will take

With tardy rare concurrences of laws,

And subtle multiplicities of cause,

The thing they once had made us to remake;

May hopes dead slumbering dare to reawake,

E’en after utmost interval of pause,

What revolutions must have passed, before

The great celestial cycles shall restore

The starry sign whose present hour is gone;

What worse than dubious chances interpose,

With cloud and sunny gleam to recompose

The skiey picture we had gazed upon.

VI

But if as not by that the soul desired

Swayed in the judgment, wisest men have thought,

And furnishing the evidence it sought,

Man’s heart hath ever fervently required,

And story, for that reason deemed inspired,

To every clime, in every age, hath taught;

If in this human complex there be aught

Not lost in death, as not in birth acquired,

O then, though cold the lips that did convey

Rich freights of meaning, dead each living sphere

Where thought abode, and fancy loved to play,

Thou yet, we think, somewhere somehow still art,

And satisfied with that the patient heart

The where and how doth not desire to hear.

VII

Shall I decide it by a random shot?

Our happy hopes, so happy and so good,

Are not mere idle motions of the blood;

And when they seem most baseless, most are not.

A seed there must have been upon the spot

Where the flowers grow, without it ne’er they could;

The confidence of growth least understood

Of some deep intuition was begot.

What if despair and hope alike be true?

The heart, ’tis manifest, is free to do

Whichever Nature and itself suggest,

And always ’tis a fact that we are here,

And with being here, doth palsy-giving fear

(Whoe’er can ask or hope) accord the best?

MARI MAGNO
OR
TALES ON BOARD.

MARI MAGNO
or
TALES ON BOARD.[16]

A youth was I. An elder friend with me,

’Twas in September o’er the autumnal sea

We went; the wide Atlantic ocean o’er

Two amongst many the strong steamer bore.

Delight it was to feel that wondrous force

That held us steady to our proposed course,

The burning resolute victorious will

’Gainst winds and waves that strive unwavering still.

Delight it was with each returning day

To learn the ship had won upon her way

Her sum of miles,—delight were mornings grey

And gorgeous eves,—nor was it less delight,

On each more temperate and favouring night,

Friend with familiar or with new-found friend,

To pace the deck, and o’er the bulwarks bend,

And the night watches in long converse spend;

While still new subjects and new thoughts arise

Amidst the silence of the seas and skies.

Amongst the mingled multitude a few,

Some three or four, towards us early drew;

We proved each other with a day or two;

Night after night some three or four we walked

And talked, and talked, and infinitely talked.

Of the New England ancient blood was one;

His youthful spurs in letters he had won,

Unspoilt by that, to Europe late had come,—

Hope long deferred,—and went unspoilt by Europe home.

What racy tales of Yankeeland he had!

Up-country girl, up-country farmer lad;

The regnant clergy of the time of old

In wig and gown;—tales not to be retold

By me. I could but spoil were I to tell:

Himself must do it who can do it well.

An English clergyman came spick and span

In black and white—a large well-favoured man,

Fifty years old, as near as one could guess.

He looked the dignitary more or less.

A rural dean, I said, he was, at least,

Canon perhaps; at many a good man’s feast

A guest had been, amongst the choicest there.

Manly his voice and manly was his air:

At the first sight you felt he had not known

The things pertaining to his cloth alone.

Chairman of Quarter Sessions had he been?

Serious and calm, ’twas plain he much had seen,

Had miscellaneous large experience had

Of human acts, good, half and half, and bad.

Serious and calm, yet lurked, I know not why,

At times, a softness in his voice and eye.

Some shade of ill a prosperous life had crossed;

Married no doubt: a wife or child had lost?

He never told us why he passed the sea.

My guardian friend was now, at thirty-three,

A rising lawyer—ever, at the best,

Slow rises worth in lawyer’s gown compressed;

Succeeding now, yet just, and only just,

His new success he never seemed to trust.

By nature he to gentlest thoughts inclined,

To most severe had disciplined his mind;

He held it duty to be half unkind.

Bitter, they said, who but the exterior knew;

In friendship never was a friend so true:

The unwelcome fact he did not shrink to tell,

The good, if fact, he recognised as well.

Stout to maintain, if not the first to see;

In conversation who so great as he?

Leading but seldom, always sure to guide,

To false or silly, if ’twas borne aside,

His quick correction silent he expressed,

And stopped you short, and forced you to your best.

Often, I think, he suffered from some pain

Of mind, that on the body worked again;

One felt it in his sort of half-disdain,

Impatient not, but acrid in his speech;

The world with him her lesson failed to teach

To take things easily and let them go.

He, for what special fitness I scarce know,

For which good quality, or if for all,

With less of reservation and recall

And speedier favour than I e’er had seen,

Took, as we called him, to the rural dean.

As grew the gourd, as grew the stalk of bean,

So swift it seemed, betwixt these differing two

A stately trunk of confidence up-grew.

Of marriage long one night they held discourse;

Regarding it in different ways, of course.

Marriage is discipline, the wise had said,

A needful human discipline to wed;

Novels of course depict it final bliss,—

Say, had it ever really once been this?

Our Yankee friend (whom, ere the night was done,

We called New England or the Pilgrim Son),

A little tired, made bold to interfere;

‘Appeal,’ he said, ‘to me; my sentence hear.

You’ll reason on till night and reason fail;

My judgment is you each shall tell a tale;

And as on marriage you can not agree,

Of love and marriage let the stories be.’

Sentence delivered, as the younger man,

My lawyer friend was called on and began.

‘Infandum jubes! ’tis of long ago,

If tell I must, I tell the tale I know:

Yet the first person using for the freak,

Don’t rashly judge that of myself I speak.’

So to his tale; if of himself or not

I never learnt, we thought so on the spot.

Lightly he told it as a thing of old,

And lightly I repeat it as he told.

THE LAWYER’S FIRST TALE.
Primitiæ, or Third Cousins.

I

‘Dearest of boys, please come to-day,

Papa and mama have bid me say,

They hope you’ll dine with us at three;

They will be out till then, you see,

But you will start at once, you know,

And come as fast as you can go.

Next week they hope you’ll come and stay

Some time before you go away.

Dear boy, how pleasant it will be!

Ever your dearest Emily!’

Twelve years of age was I, and she

Fourteen, when thus she wrote to me,

A schoolboy, with an uncle spending

My holidays, then nearly ending.

My uncle lived the mountain o’er,

A rector, and a bachelor;

The vicarage was by the sea,

That was the home of Emily:

The windows to the front looked down

Across a single-streeted town,

Far as to where Worms-head was seen,

Dim with ten watery miles between;

The Carnedd mountains on the right

With stony masses filled the sight;

To left the open sea; the bay

In a blue plain before you lay.

A garden, full of fruit, extends,

Stone-walled, above the house, and ends

With a locked door, that by a porch

Admits to churchyard and to church;

Farm-buildings nearer on one side,

And glebe, and then the country wide.

I and my cousin Emily

Were cousins in the third degree;

My mother near of kin was reckoned

To hers, who was my mother’s second:

My cousinship I held from her.

Such an amount of girls there were,

At first one really was perplexed:

’Twas Patty first, and Lydia next,

And Emily the third, and then,

Philippa, Phœbe, Mary Gwen.

Six were they, you perceive, in all;

And portraits fading on the wall,

Grandmothers, heroines of old,

And aunts of aunts, with scrolls that told

Their names and dates, were there to show

Why these had all been christened so.

The crowd of blooming daughters fair

Scarce let you see the mother there,

And by her husband, large and tall,

She looked a little shrunk and small;

Although my mother used to tell

That once she was a county belle:

Busied she seemed, and half-distress’d

For him and them to do the best.

The vicar was of bulk and thewes,

Six feet he stood within his shoes,

And every inch of all a man;

Ecclesiast on the ancient plan,

Unforced by any party rule

His native character to school;

In ancient learning not unread,

But had few doctrines in his head;

Dissenters truly he abhorr’d,

They never had his gracious word.

He ne’er was bitter or unkind,

But positively spoke his mind.

Their piety he could not bear,

A sneaking snivelling set they were:

Their tricks and meanness fired his blood;

Up for his Church he stoutly stood.

No worldly aim had he in life

To set him with himself at strife;

A spade a spade he freely named,

And of his joke was not ashamed,

Made it and laughed at it, be sure,

With young and old, and rich and poor.

His sermons frequently he took

Out of some standard reverend book;

They seemed a little strange, indeed,

But were not likely to mislead.

Others he gave that were his own,

The difference could be quickly known.

Though sorry not to have a boy,

His daughters were his perfect joy;

He plagued them, oft drew tears from each,

Was bold and hasty in his speech;

All through the house you heard him call,

He had his vocatives for all:

Patty Patina, Pat became,

Lydia took Languish with her name,

Philippa was the Gentle Queen,

And Phœbe, Madam Proserpine;

The pseudonyms for Mary Gwen

Varied with every week again;

But Emily, of all the set,

Emilia called, was most the pet.

Soon as her messenger had come,

I started from my uncle’s home,

On an old pony scrambling down

Over the mountain to the town.

My cousins met me at the door,

And some behind, and some before,

Kissed me all round and kissed again,

The happy custom there and then,

From Patty down to Mary Gwen.

Three hours we had, and spent in play

About the garden and the hay;

We sat upon the half-built stack;

And when ’twas time for hurrying back,

Slyly away the others hied,

And took the ladder from the side;

Emily there, alone with me,

Was left in close captivity;

But down the stack at last I slid,

And found the ladder they had hid.

I left at six; again I went

Soon after and a fortnight spent:

Drawing, by Patty I was taught,

But could not be to music brought;

I showed them how to play at chess,

I argued with the governess;

I called them stupid; why, to me

’Twas evident as A B C;

Were not the reasons such and such?

Helston, my schoolfellow, but much

My senior, in a yacht came o’er,

His uncle with him, from the shore

Under Worms-head: to take a sail

He pressed them, but could not prevail;

Mama was timid, durst not go,

Papa was rather gruff with no.

Helston no sooner was afloat,

We made a party in a boat,

And rowed to Sea-Mew Island out,

And landed there and roved about:

And I and Emily out of reach,

Strayed from the rest along the beach.

Turning to look into a cave

She stood, when suddenly a wave

Ran up; I caught her by the frock,

And pulled her out, and o’er a rock,

So doing, stumbled, rolled, and fell.

She knelt down, I remember well,

Bid me where I was hurt to tell,

And kissed me three times as I lay;

But I jumped up and limped away.

The next was my departing day.

Patty arranged it all with me

To send next year to Emily

A valentine. I wrote and sent;

For the fourteenth it duly went.

On the fourteenth what should there be

But one from Emily to me;

The postmark left it plain to see.

Mine, though they praised it at the time,

Was but a formal piece of rhyme.

She sent me one that she had bought;

’Twas stupid of her, as I thought:

Why not have written one? She wrote,

However, soon, this little note.

‘Dearest of boys, of course ’twas you;

You printed, but your hand I knew,

And verses too, how did you learn?

I can’t send any in return.

Papa declares they are not bad—

That’s praise from him—and I’m so glad

Because you know no one can be

I’d rather have to write to me.

‘Our governess is going away,

We’re so distressed she cannot stay:

Mama had made it quite a rule

We none of us should go to school.

But what to do they do not know,

Papa protests it must be so.

Lydia and I may have to go;

Patty will try to teach the rest,

Mama agrees it will be best.

Dear boy, good-bye, I am, you see,

Ever your dearest Emily.

We want to know, so write and tell,

If you’d a valentine as well.’

II

Five tardy years were fully spent

Ere next my cousins’ way I went;

With Christmas then I came to see

My uncle in his rectory:

But they the town had left; no more

Were in the vicarage of yore.

When time his sixtieth year had brought,

An easier cure the vicar sought:

A country parsonage was made

Sufficient, amply, with the aid

Of mortar here and there, and bricks,

For him and wife and children six.

Though neighbours now, there scarce was light

To see them and return ere night.

Emily wrote: how glad they were

To hear of my arrival there;

Mama had bid her say that all

The house was crowded for the ball

Till Tuesday, but if I would come,

She thought that they could find me room;

The week with them I then should spend,

But really must the ball attend;

‘Dear cousin, you have been away

For such an age, pray don’t delay,

But come and do not lose a day.’

A schoolboy still, but now, indeed,

About to college to proceed,

Dancing was, let it be confess’d,

To me no pleasure at the best:

Of girls and of their lovely looks

I thought not, busy with my books.

Still, though a little ill-content,

Upon the Monday morn I went:

My cousins, each and all, I found

Wondrously grown! They kissed me round,

And so affectionate and good

They were, it could not be withstood.

Emily, I was so surprised,

At first I hardly recognised;

Her face so formed and rounded now,

Such knowledge in her eyes and brow;

For all I read and thought I knew,

She could divine me through and through.

Where had she been, and what had done,

I asked, such victory to have won?

She had not studied, had not read,

Seemed to have little in her head,

Yet of herself the right and true,

As of her own experience knew.

Straight from her eyes her judgments flew,

Like absolute decrees they ran,

From mine, on such a different plan.

A simple county country ball

It was to be, not grand at all;

And cousins four with me would dance,

And keep me well in countenance.

And there were people there to be

Who knew of old my family,

Friends of my friends—I heard and knew,

And tried; but no, it would not do.

Somehow it seemed a sort of thing

To which my strength I could not bring;

The music scarcely touched my ears,

The figures fluttered me with fears.

I talked, but had not aught to say,

Danced, my instructions to obey;

E’en when with beautiful good-will

Emilia through the long quadrille

Conducted me, alas the day,

Ten times I wished myself away.

But she, invested with a dower

Of conscious, scarce-exerted power,

Emilia, so, I know not why,

They called her now, not Emily,

Amid the living, heaving throng,

Sedately, somewhat, moved along,

Serenely, somewhat, in the dance

Mingled, divining at a glance,

And reading every countenance;

Not stately she, nor grand nor tall,

Yet looked as if controlling all

The fluctuations of the ball;

Her subjects ready at her call,

All others, she a queen, her throne

Preparing, and her title known,

Though not yet taken as her own.

O wonderful! I still can see,

And twice she came and danced with me.

She asked me of my school, and what

Those prizes were that I had got,

And what we learnt, and ‘oh,’ she said,

‘How much to carry in one’s head,’

And I must be upon my guard,

And really must not work too hard:

Who were my friends? and did I go

Ever to balls? I told her no:

She said, ‘I really like them so;

But then I am a girl; and dear,

You like your friends at school, I fear

Better than anybody here.’

How long had she left school, I asked.

Two years, she told me, and I tasked

My faltering speech to learn about

Her life, but could not bring it out:

This while the dancers round us flew.

Helston, whom formerly I knew,

My schoolfellow, was at the ball,

A man full-statured, fair and tall,

Helston of Helston now they said,

Heir to his uncle, who was dead;

In the army, too: he danced with three

Of the four sisters. Emily

Refused him once, to dance with me.

How long it seemed! and yet at one

We left, before ’twas nearly done:

How thankful I! the journey through

I talked to them with spirits new;

And the brief sleep of closing night

Brought a sensation of delight,

Which, when I woke, was exquisite.

The music moving in my brain

I felt; in the gay crowd again

Half felt, half saw the girlish bands,

On their white skirts their white-gloved hands,

Advance, retreat, and yet advance,

And mingle in the mingling dance.

The impulse had arrived at last,

When the opportunity was past.

Breakfast my soft sensations first

With livelier passages dispersed.

Reposing in his country home,

Which half luxurious had become,

Gay was their father, loudly flung

His guests and blushing girls among,

His jokes; and she, their mother, too,

Less anxious seemed, with less to do,

Her daughters aiding. As the day

Advanced, the others went away,

But I must absolutely stay,

The girls cried out; I stayed and let

Myself be once more half their pet,

Although a little on the fret.

How ill our boyhood understands

Incipient manhood’s strong demands!

Boys have such troubles of their own,

As none, they fancy, e’er have known,

Such as to speak of, or to tell,

They hold, were unendurable:

Religious, social, of all kinds,

That tear and agitate their minds.

A thousand thoughts within me stirred,

Of which I could not speak a word;

Strange efforts after something new,

Which I was wretched not to do;

Passions, ambitions lay and lurked,

Wants, counter-wants, obscurely worked

Without their names, and unexplained.

And where had Emily obtained

Assurance, and had ascertained?

How strange, how far behind was I,

And how it came, I asked, and why?

How was it, and how could it be,

And what was all that worked in me?

They used to scold me when I read,

And bade me talk to them instead;

When I absconded to my room,

To fetch me out they used to come;

Oft by myself I went to walk,

But, by degrees, was got to talk.

The year had cheerfully begun,

With more than winter’s wonted sun,

Mountains, in the green garden ways,

Gleamed through the laurel and the bays.

I well remember letting out

One day, as there I looked about,

While they of girls discoursing sat,

This one how sweet, how lovely that,

That I could greater pleasure take

In looking on Llynidwil lake

Than on the fairest female face:

They could not understand: a place!

Incomprehensible it seemed;

Philippa looked as if she dreamed,

Patty and Lydia loud exclaimed,

And I already was ashamed,

When Emily asked, half apart,

If to the lake I’d given my heart;

And did the lake, she wished to learn,

My tender sentiment return.

For music, too, I would not care,

Which was an infinite despair:

When Lydia took her seat to play,

I read a book, or walked away.

I was not quite composed, I own,

Except when with the girls alone;

Looked to their father still with fear

Of how to him I must appear;

And was entirely put to shame,

When once some rough he-cousins came.

Yet Emily from all distress

Could reinstate me, more or less;

How pleasant by her side to walk,

How beautiful to let her talk,

How charming; yet, by slow degrees,

I got impatient, ill at ease;

Half glad, half wretched, when at last

The visit ended, and ’twas past.

III

Next year I went and spent a week,

And certainly had learnt to speak;

My chains I forcibly had broke,

And now too much indeed I spoke.

A mother sick and seldom seen

A grief for many months had been,

Their father too was feebler, years

Were heavy, and there had been fears

Some months ago; and he was vexed

With party heats and all perplexed

With an upheaving modern change

To him and his old wisdom strange.

The daughters all were there, not one

Had yet to other duties run,

Their father, people used to say,

Frightened the wooers all away;—

As vines around an ancient stem,

They clung and clustered upon him,

Him loved and tended; above all,

Emilia, ever at his call.

But I was—intellectual;

I talked in high superior tone

Of things the girls had never known,

Far wiser to have let alone;

Things which the father knew in short

By country clerical report;

I talked of much I thought I knew,

Used all my college wit anew,

A little on my fancy drew;

Religion, politics, O me!

No subject great enough could be.

In vain, more weak in spirit grown,

At times he tried to put me down.

I own it was the want, in part,

Of any discipline of heart.

It was, now hard at work again,

The busy argufying brain

Of the prize schoolboy; but, indeed,

Much more, if right the thing I read,

It was the instinctive wish to try

And, above all things, not be shy.

Alas! it did not do at all;

Ill went the visit, ill the ball;

Each hour I felt myself grow worse,

With every effort more perverse.

I tried to change; too hard, indeed,

I tried, and never could succeed.

Out of sheer spite an extra day

I stayed; but when I went away,

Alas, the farewells were not warm,

The kissing was the merest form;

Emilia was distraite and sad,

And everything was bad as bad.

O had some happy chance fall’n out,

To turn the thing just round about,

In time at least to give anew

The old affectionate adieu!

A little thing, a word, a jest,

A laugh, had set us all at rest;

But nothing came. I went away,

And could have really cried that day,

So vexed, for I had meant so well,

Yet everything so ill befell,

And why and how I could not tell.

Our wounds in youth soon close and heal,

Or seem to close; young people feel,

And suffer greatly, I believe,

But then they can’t profess to grieve:

Their pleasures occupy them more,

And they have so much time before.

At twenty life appeared to me

A sort of vague infinity;

And though of changes still I heard,

Real changes had not yet occurred:

And all things were, or would be, well,

And nothing irremediable.

The youth for his degree that reads

Beyond it nothing knows or needs;

Nor till ’tis over wakes to see

The busy world’s reality.

One visit brief I made again

In autumn next but one, and then

All better found. With Mary Gwen

I talked, a schoolgirl just about

To leave this winter and come out.

Patty and Lydia were away,

And a strange sort of distance lay

Betwixt me and Emilia.

She sought me less, and I was shy.

And yet this time I think that I

More subtly felt, more saw, more knew

The beauty into which she grew;

More understood the meanings now

Of the still eyes and rounded brow,

And could, perhaps, have told you how

The intellect that crowns our race

To more than beauty in her face

Was changed. But I confuse from hence

The later and the earlier sense.

IV

Have you the Giesbach seen? a fall

In Switzerland you say, that’s all;

That, and an inn, from which proceeds

A path that to the Faulhorn leads,

From whence you see the world of snows.

Few see how perfect in repose,

White green, the lake lies deeply set,

Where, slowly purifying yet,

The icy river-floods retain

A something of the glacier stain.

Steep cliffs arise the waters o’er,

The Giesbach leads you to a shore,

And to one still sequestered bay

I found elsewhere a scrambling way.

Above, the loftier heights ascend,

And level platforms here extend

The mountains and the cliffs between,

With firs and grassy spaces green,

And little dips and knolls to show

In part or whole the lake below;

And all exactly at the height

To make the pictures exquisite.

Most exquisite they seemed to me,

When, a year after my degree,

Passing upon my journey home

From Greece, and Sicily, and Rome,

I stayed at that minute hotel

Six days, or eight, I cannot tell.

Twelve months had led me fairly through

The old world surviving in the new.

From Rome with joy I passed to Greece,

To Athens and the Peloponnese;

Saluted with supreme delight

The Parthenon-surmounted height;

In huts at Delphi made abode,

And in Arcadian valleys rode;

Counted the towns that lie like slain

Upon the wide Bœotian plain;

With wonder in the spacious gloom

Stood of the Mycenæan tomb;

From the Acrocorinth watched the day

Light the eastern and the western bay.

Constantinople then had seen,

Where, by her cypresses, the queen

Of the East sees flow through portals wide

The steady streaming Scythian tide;

And after, from Scamander’s mouth,

Went up to Troy, and to the South,

To Lycia, Caria, pressed, atwhiles

Outvoyaging to Egean isles.

To see the things, which, sick with doubt

And comment, one had learnt about,

Was like clear morning after night,

Or raising of the blind to sight.

Aware it might be first and last,

I did it eagerly and fast,

And took unsparingly my fill.

The impetus of travel still

Urged me, but laden, half oppress’d,

Here lighting on a place of rest,

I yielded, asked not if ’twere best.

Pleasant it was, reposing here,

To sum the experience of the year,

And let the accumulated gain

Assort itself upon the brain.

Travel’s a miniature life,

Travel is evermore a strife,

Where he must run who would obtain.

’Tis a perpetual loss and gain;

For sloth and error dear we pay,

By luck and effort win our way,

And both have need of every day.

Each day has got its sight to see,

Each day must put to profit be;

Pleasant, when seen are all the sights,

To let them think themselves to rights.

I on the Giesbach turf reclined,

Half watched this process in my mind,

Watch the stream purifying slow,

In me and in the lake below;

And then began to think of home,

And possibilities to come.

Brienz, on our Brienzer See

From Interlaken every day

A steamer seeks, and at our pier

Lets out a crowd to see things here;

Up a steep path they pant and strive;

When to the level they arrive,

Dispersing, hither, thither, run,

For all must rapidly be done,

And seek, with questioning and din,

Some the cascade, and some the inn,

The waterfall, for if you look,

You find it printed in the book

That man or woman, so inclined,

May pass the very fall behind;

So many feet there intervene

The rock and flying jet between;

The inn, ’tis also in the plan

(For tourist is a hungry man),

And a small salle repeats by rote,

A daily task of table d’hôte,

Where broth and meat, and country wine

Assure the strangers that they dine;

Do it they must while they have power,

For in three-quarters of an hour

Back comes the steamer from Brienz,

And with one clear departure hence

The quietude is more intense.

It was my custom at the top

To stand and see them clambering up,

Then take advantage of the start,

And pass into the woods apart.

It happened, and I know not why,

I once returned too speedily;

And, seeing women still and men,

Was swerving to the woods again,

But for a moment stopped to seize

A glance at some one near the trees;

A figure full, but full of grace,

Its movement beautified the place.

It turns, advances, comes my way;

What do I see, what do I say?

Yet, to a statelier beauty grown,

It is, it can be, she alone!

O mountains round! O heaven above!

It is—Emilia, whom I love;

‘Emilia, whom I love,’ the word

Rose to my lips, as yet unheard,

When she, whose colour flushed to red,

In a soft voice, ‘My husband,’ said;

And Helston came up with his hand,

And both of them took mine; but stand

And talk they could not, they must go;

The steamer rang her bell below;

How curious that I did not know!

They were to go and stay at Thun,

Could I come there and see them soon?

And shortly were returning home,

And when would I to Helston come?

Thus down we went, I put them in;

Off went the steamer with a din,

And on the pier I stood and eyed

The bridegroom, seated by the bride,

Emilia closing to his side.

V

She wrote from Helston; begged I’d come

And see her in her husband’s home.

I went, and bound by double vow,

Not only wife, but mother now,

I found her, lovely as of old,

O, rather, lovelier manifold.

Her wifely sweet reserve unbroke,

Still frankly, tenderly, she spoke;

Asked me about myself, would hear

What I proposed to do this year;

At college why was I detained,

Was it the fellowship I’d gained?

I told her that I was not tied

Henceforward further to reside,

Yet very likely might stay on,

And lapse into a college don;

My fellowship itself would give

A competence on which to live,

And if I waited, who could tell,

I might be tutor too, as well.

Oh, but, she said, I must not stay,

College and school were only play;

I might be sick, perhaps, of praise,

But must not therefore waste my days!

Fellows grow indolent, and then

They may not do as other men,

And for your happiness in life,

Sometime you’ll wish to have a wife.

Languidly by her chair I sat,

But my eyes rather flashed at that.

I said, ‘Emilia, people change,

But yet, I own, I find it strange

To hear this common talk from you:

You speak, and some believe it true,

Just as if any wife would do;

Whoe’er one takes, ’tis much the same,

And love—and so forth, but a name.’

She coloured. ‘What can I have said

Or what could put it in your head?

Indeed, I had not in my mind

The faintest notion of the kind.’

I told her that I did not know—

Her tone appeared to mean it so.

‘Emilia, when I’ve heard,’ I said,

‘How people match themselves and wed,

I’ve sometimes wished that both were dead,’

She turned a little pale. I woke

Some thought; what thought I but soft she spoke;

‘I’m sure that what you meant was good,

But, really, you misunderstood.

From point to point so quick you fly,

And are so vehement,—and I,

As you remember, long ago,

Am stupid, certainly am slow.

And yet some things I seem to know;

I know it will be just a crime,

If you should waste your powers and time.

There is so much, I think, that you,

And no one equally, can do.’

‘It does not matter much,’ said I,

‘The things I thought of are gone by;

I’m quite content to wait to die.’

A sort of beauteous anger spread

Over her face. ‘O me!’ she said,

‘That you should sit and trifle so,

And you so utterly don’t know

How greatly you have yet to grow,

How wide your objects have to expand,

How much is yet an unknown land!

You’re twenty-three, I’m twenty-five,

And I am so much more alive.’

My eyes I shaded with my hand,

And almost lost my self-command.

I muttered something: ‘Yes, I see;

Two years have severed you from me.

O, Emily, was it ever told,’

I asked, ‘that souls are young and old?’

But she, continuing, ‘All the day

Were I to speak, I could but say

The one same thing the one same way.

Sometimes, indeed, I think, you know,’

And her tone suddenly was low,

‘That in a day we yet shall see,

You of my sisters and of me,

And of the things that used to be,

Will think, as you look back again,

With something not unlike disdain;

So you your rightful place obtain,

That will to me be joy, not pain.’

Her voice still lower, lower fell,

I heard, just heard, each syllable.

‘But,’ in the tone she used before,

‘Don’t stay at college any more!

For others it perhaps may do,

I’m sure it will be bad for you.’

She softened me. The following day

We parted. As I went away

Her infant on her bosom lay,

And, as a mother might her boy,

I think she would with loving joy

Have kissed me; but I turned to go,

’Twas better not to have it so.

Next year achieved me some amends,

And once we met, and met as friends.

Friends, yet apart; I had not much

Valued her judgment, though to touch

Her words had power; yet, strangely still,

It had been cogent on my will.

As she had counselled, I had done,

And a new effort was begun.

Forth to the war of life I went,

Courageous, and not ill content.

‘Yours is the fault I opened thus again

A youthful, ancient, sentimental vein,’

He said, ‘and like Munchausen’s horn o’erflow

With liquefying tunes of long ago.

My wiser friend, who knows for what we live,

And what shall seek, will his correction give.’

We all made thanks. ‘My tale were quickly told,’

The other said, ‘but the turned heavens behold;

The night two watches of the night is old,

The sinking stars their suasions urge for sleep.

My story for to-morrow night will keep.’

The evening after, when the day was stilled,

His promise thus the clergyman fulfilled.

THE CLERGYMAN’S FIRST TALE.
Love is fellow-service.

A youth and maid upon a summer night

Upon the lawn, while yet the skies were light,

Edmund and Emma, let their names be these,

Among the shrubs within the circling trees,

Joined in a game with boys and girls at play:

For games perhaps too old a little they;

In April she her eighteenth year begun,

And twenty he, and near to twenty-one.

A game it was of running and of noise;

He as a boy, with other girls and boys

(Her sisters and her brothers), took the fun;

And when her turn, she marked not, came to run,

‘Emma,’ he called,—then knew that he was wrong,

Knew that her name to him did not belong.

Her look and manner proved his feeling true,—

A child no more, her womanhood she knew;

Half was the colour mounted on her face,

Her tardy movement had an adult grace.

Vexed with himself, and shamed, he felt the more

A kind of joy he ne’er had felt before.

Something there was that from this date began;

’Twas beautiful with her to be a man.

Two years elapsed, and he who went and came,

Changing in much, in this appeared the same;

The feeling, if it did not greatly grow,

Endured and was not wholly hid below.

He now, o’ertasked at school, a serious boy,

A sort of after-boyhood to enjoy

Appeared—in vigour and in spirit high

And manly grown, but kept the boy’s soft eye:

And full of blood, and strong and lithe of limb,

To him ’twas pleasure now to ride, to swim;

The peaks, the glens, the torrents tempted him.

Restless he seemed,—long distances would walk,

And lively was, and vehement in talk.

A wandering life his life had lately been,

Books he had read, the world had little seen.

One former frailty haunted him, a touch

Of something introspective overmuch.

With all his eager motions still there went

A self-correcting and ascetic bent,

That from the obvious good still led astray,

And set him travelling on the longest way;

Seen in these scattered notes their date that claim

When first his feeling conscious sought a name.

‘Beside the wishing gate which so they name,

’Mid northern hills to me this fancy came,

A wish I formed, my wish I thus expressed:

Would I could wish my wishes all to rest,

And know to wish the wish that were the best!

O for some winnowing wind, to the empty air

This chaff of easy sympathies to bear

Far off, and leave me of myself aware!

While thus this over health deludes me still,

So willing that I know not what I will;

O for some friend, or more than friend, austere,

To make me know myself, and make me fear!

O for some touch, too noble to be kind,

To awake to life the mind within the mind!’

‘O charms, seductions and divine delights!

All through the radiant yellow summer nights

Dreams, hardly dreams, that yield or e’er they’re done,

To the bright fact, my day, my risen sun!

O promise and fulfilment, both in one!

O bliss, already bliss, which nought has shared,

Whose glory no fruition has impaired,

And, emblem of my state, thou coming day,

With all thy hours unspent to pass away!

Why do I wait? What more propose to know?

Where the sweet mandate bids me, let me go;

My conscience in my impulse let me find,

Justification in the moving mind,

Law in the strong desire; or yet behind,

Say, is there aught the spell that has not heard,

A something that refuses to be stirred?’

‘In other regions has my being heard

Of a strange language the diviner word?

Has some forgotten life the exemplar shown?

Elsewhere such high communion have I known,

As dooms me here, in this, to live alone?

Then love, that shouldest blind me, let me, love,

Nothing behold beyond thee or above;

Ye impulses, that should be strong and wild,

Beguile me, if I am to be beguiled!’

‘Or are there modes of love, and different kinds,

Proportioned to the sizes of our minds?

There are who say thus, I held there was one,

One love, one deity, one central sun;

As he resistless brings the expanding day,

So love should come on his victorious way.

If light at all, can light indeed be there,

Yet only permeate half the ambient air?

Can the high noon be regnant in the sky,

Yet half the land in light, and half in darkness lie?

Can love, if love, be occupant in part,

Hold, as it were, some chambers in the heart;

Tenant at will of so much of the soul,

Not lord and mighty master of the whole?

There are who say, and say that it is well;

Opinion all, of knowledge none can tell.’

‘Montaigne, I know in a realm high above

Places the seat of friendship over love;

’Tis not in love that we should think to find

The lofty fellowship of mind with mind;

Love’s not a joy where soul and soul unite,

Rather a wondrous animal delight;

And as in spring, for one consummate hour

The world of vegetation turns to flower,

The birds with liveliest plumage trim their wing,

And all the woodland listens as they sing;

When spring is o’er and summer days are sped,

The songs are silent, and the blossoms dead:

E’en so of man and woman is the bliss.

O, but I will not tamely yield to this!

I think it only shows us in the end,

Montaigne was happy in a noble friend,

Had not the fortune of a noble wife;

He lived, I think, a poor ignoble life,

And wrote of petty pleasures, petty pain;

I do not greatly think about Montaigne.’

‘How charming to be with her! yet indeed,

After a while I find a blank succeed;

After a while she little has to say,

I’m silent too, although I wish to stay;

What would it be all day, day after day?

Ah! but I ask, I do not doubt, too much;

I think of love as if it should be such

As to fulfil and occupy in whole

The nought-else-seeking, nought-essaying soul.

Therefore it is my mind with doubts I urge;

Hence are these fears and shiverings on the verge;

By books, not nature, thus have we been schooled,

By poetry and novels been befooled;

Wiser tradition says, the affections’ claim

Will be supplied, the rest will be the same.

I think too much of love, ’tis true: I know

It is not all, was ne’er intended so;

Yet such a change, so entire, I feel, ’twould be,

So potent, so omnipotent with me;

My former self I never should recall,—

Indeed I think it must be all in all.’

‘I thought that Love was winged; without a sound,

His purple pinions bore him o’er the ground,

Wafted without an effort here or there,

He came—and we too trod as if in air:—

But panting, toiling, clambering up the hill,

Am I to assist him? I, put forth my will

To upbear his lagging footsteps, lame and slow,

And help him on and tell him where to go,

And ease him of his quiver and his bow?’

‘Erotion! I saw it in a book;

Why did I notice it, why did I look?

Yea, is it so, ye powers that see above?

I do not love, I want, I try to love!

This is not love, but lack of love instead!

Merciless thought! I would I had been dead,

Or e’er the phrase had come into my head.’

She also wrote: and here may find a place,

Of her and of her thoughts some slender trace.

‘He is not vain; if proud, he quells his pride,

And somehow really likes to be defied;

Rejoices if you humble him: indeed

Gives way at once, and leaves you to succeed.’

‘Easy it were with such a mind to play,

And foolish not to do so, some would say;

One almost smiles to look and see the way:

But come what will, I will not play a part,

Indeed I dare not condescend to art.’

‘Easy ’twere not, perhaps, with him to live;

He looks for more than any one can give:

So dulled at times and disappointed; still

Expecting what depends not of my will:

My inspiration comes not at my call,

Seek me as I am, if seek you do at all.’

‘Like him I do, and think of him I must;

But more—I dare not and I cannot trust.

This more he brings—say, is it more or less

Than that no fruitage ever came to bless,—

The old wild flower of love-in-idleness?’

‘Me when he leaves and others when he sees,

What is my fate who am not there to please?

Me he has left; already may have seen

One, who for me forgotten here has been;

And he, the while is balancing between.

If the heart spoke, the heart I knew were bound;

What if it utter an uncertain sound?’

‘So quick to vary, so rejoiced to change,

From this to that his feelings surely range;

His fancies wander, and his thoughts as well;

And if the heart be constant, who can tell?

Far off to fly, to abandon me, and go,

He seems returning then before I know:

With every accident he seems to move,

Is now below me and is now above,

Now far aside,—O, does he really love?’

‘Absence were hard; yet let the trial be;

His nature’s aim and purpose he would free,

And in the world his course of action see.

O should he lose, not learn; pervert his scope;

O should I lose! and yet to win I hope.

I win not now; his way if now I went,

Brief joy I gave, for years of discontent.’

‘Gone, is it true? but oft he went before,

And came again before a month was o’er.

Gone—though I could not venture upon art,

It was perhaps a foolish pride in part;

He had such ready fancies in his head,

And really was so easy to be led;

One might have failed; and yet I feel ’twas pride,

And can’t but half repent I never tried.

Gone, is it true? but he again will come,

Wandering he loves, and loves returning home.’

Gone, it was true; nor came so soon again;

Came, after travelling, pleasure half, half pain,

Came, but a half of Europe first o’erran;

Arrived, his father found a ruined man.

Rich they had been, and rich was Emma too.

Heiress of wealth she knew not, Edmund knew.

Farewell to her!—In a new home obscure,

Food for his helpless parents to secure,

From early morning to advancing dark,

He toiled and laboured as a merchant’s clerk.

Three years his heavy load he bore, nor quailed,

Then all his health, though scarce his spirit, failed;

Friends interposed, insisted it must be,

Enforced their help, and sent him to the sea.

Wandering about with little here to do,

His old thoughts mingling dimly with his new,

Wandering one morn, he met upon the shore,

Her, whom he quitted five long years before.

Alas! why quitted? Say that charms are nought,

Nor grace, nor beauty worth one serious thought;

Was there no mystic virtue in the sense

That joined your boyish girlish innocence?

Is constancy a thing to throw away,

And loving faithfulness a chance of every day?

Alas! why quitted? is she changed? but now

The weight of intellect is in her brow;

Changed, or but truer seen, one sees in her

Something to wake the soul, the interior sense to stir.

Alone they met, from alien eyes away,

The high shore hid them in a tiny bay.

Alone was he, was she; in sweet surprise

They met, before they knew it, in their eyes.

In his a wondering admiration glowed,

In hers, a world of tenderness o’erflowed;

In a brief moment all was known and seen,

That of slow years the wearying work had been:

Morn’s early odorous breath perchance in sooth,

Awoke the old natural feeling of their youth:

The sea, perchance, and solitude had charms,

They met—I know not—in each other’s arms.

Why linger now—why waste the sands of life?

A few sweet weeks, and they were man and wife.

To his old frailty do not be severe,

His latest theory with patience hear:

‘I sought not, truly would to seek disdain,

A kind, soft pillow for a wearying pain,

Fatigues and cares to lighten, to relieve;

But love is fellow-service, I believe.’

‘No, truly no, it was not to obtain,

Though that alone were happiness, were gain,

A tender breast to fall upon and weep,

A heart, the secrets of my heart to keep;

To share my hopes, and in my griefs to grieve;

Yet love is fellow-service, I believe.’

‘Yet in the eye of life’s all-seeing sun

We shall behold a something we have done,

Shall of the work together we have wrought,

Beyond our aspiration and our thought,

Some not unworthy issue yet receive;

For love is fellow-service I believe.’

---

The tale, we said, instructive was, but short;

Could he not give another of the sort?

He feared his second might his first repeat,

‘And Aristotle teaches, change is sweet;

But come, our younger friend in this dim night

Under his bushel must not hide his light.’

I said I’d had but little time to live,

Experience none or confidence could give.

‘But I can tell to-morrow, if you please,

My last year’s journey towards the Pyrenees.’

To-morrow came, and evening, when it closed,

The penalty of speech on me imposed.

MY TALE.
A la Banquette, or a Modern Pilgrimage.

I stayed at La Quenille, ten miles or more

From the old-Roman sources of Mont Dore;

Travellers to Tulle this way are forced to go,

—An old high-road from Lyons to Bordeaux,—

From Tulle to Brives the swift Corrèze descends,

At Brives you’ve railway, and your trouble ends;

A little bourg La Quenille; from the height

The mountains of Auvergne are all in sight;

Green pastoral heights that once in lava flowed,

Of primal fire the product and abode;

And all the plateaux and the lines that trace

Where in deep dells the waters find their place;

Far to the south above the lofty plain,

The Plomb du Cantal lifts his towering train.

A little after one, with little fail,

Down drove the diligence that bears the mail;

The courier therefore called, in whose banquette

A place I got, and thankful was to get;

The new postillion climbed his seat, allez,

Off broke the four cart-horses on their way.

Westward we roll, o’er heathy backs of hills,

Crossing the future rivers in the rills;

Bare table-lands are these, and sparsely sown,

Turning their waters south to the Dordogne.

Close-packed we were, and little at our ease,

The conducteur impatient with the squeeze;

Not tall he seemed, but bulky round about,

His cap and jacket made him look more stout;

In grande tenue he rode of conducteur;

Black eyes he had, black his moustaches were,

Shaven his chin, his hair and whiskers cropt;

A ready man; at Ussel when we stopt,

For me and for himself, bread, meat, and wine,

He got, the courier did not wait to dine;

To appease our hunger, and allay our drouth,

We ate and took the bottle at the mouth;

One draught I had, the rest entire had he,

For wine his body had capacity.

A peasant in his country blouse was there,

He told me of the conseil and the maire.

Their maire, he said, could neither write nor read,

And yet could keep the registers, indeed;

The conseil had resigned—I know not what.—

Good actions here are easily forgot:

He in the quarante-huit had something done,

Were things but fair, some notice should have won.

Another youth there was, a soldier he,

A soldier ceasing with to-day to be;

Three years had served, for three had bought release:

From war returning to the arts of peace,

To Tulle he went, as his department’s town,

To-morrow morn to pay his money down.

In Italy, his second year begun,

This youth had served, when Italy was won.

He told of Montebello, and the fight,

That ended fiercely with the close of night.

There was he wounded, fell, and thought to die,

Two Austrian cones had passed into his thigh;

One traversed it, the other, left behind,

In hospital the doctor had to find:

At eight of night he fell, and sadly lay

Till three of morning of the following day,

When peasants came and put him on a wain,

And drove him to Voghera in his pain;

To Alessandria thence the railway bore,

In Alessandria then two months and more

He lay in hospital; to lop the limb

The Italian doctor who attended him

Was much disposed, but high above the knee;

For life an utter cripple he would be.

Then came the typhoid fever, and the lack

Of food. And sick and hungering, on his back,

With French, Italians, Austrians as he lay,

Arrived the tidings of Magenta’s day,

And Milan entered in the burning June,

And Solferino’s issue following soon.

Alas, the glorious wars! and shortly he

To Genoa for the advantage of the sea,

And to Savona, suffering still, was sent

And joined his now returning regiment.

Good were the Austrian soldiers, but the feel

They did not well encounter of cold steel,

Nor in the bayonet fence of man with man

Maintained their ground, but yielded, turned and ran

Les armes blanches and the rifled gun

Had fought the battles, and the victories won.

The glorious wars! but he, the doubtful chance

Of soldiers’ glory quitting and advance,—

His wounded limb less injured than he feared,—

Was dealing now in timber, it appeared;

Oak-timber finding for some mines of lead,

Worked by an English company, he said.

This youth perhaps was twenty-three years old;

Simply and well his history he told.

They wished to hear about myself as well;

I told them, but it was not much to tell;

At the Mont Dore, of which the guide-book talks,

I’d taken, not the waters, but the walks.

Friends I had met, who on their southward way

Had gone before, I followed them to-day.

They wondered greatly at this wondrous thing,—

Les Anglais are for ever on the wing,—

The conducteur said everybody knew

We were descended of the Wandering Jew.

And on with the declining sun we rolled,

And woods and vales and fuller streams behold.

About the hour when peasant people sup,

We dropped the peasant, took a curé up,

In hat and bands and soutane all to fit.

He next the conducteur was put to sit;

I in the corner gained the senior place.

Brown was his hair, but closely shaved his face;

To lift his eyelids did he think it sin?

I saw a pair of soft brown eyes within.

Older he was, but looked like twenty-two,

Fresh from the cases, to the country new.

I, the conducteur watching from my side,

A roguish twinkle in his eye espied;

He begged to hear about the pretty pair

Whom he supposed he had been marrying there;

The deed, he hoped, was comfortably done,—

Monsieur l’Evêque he called him in his fun.

Then lifted soon his voice for all to hear;

A barytone he had both strong and clear:

In fragments first of music made essay,

And tried his pipes and modest felt his way.

Le verre en main la mort nous trouvera,

It was, or Ah, vous dirai-je, maman!

And then, A toi, ma belle, à toi toujours;

Till of his organ’s quality secure,

Trifling no more, but boldly, like a man,

He filled his chest and gallantly began.

‘Though I have seemed, against my wiser will,

Your victim, O ye tender foibles, still,

Once now for all, though half my heart be yours,

Adieu, sweet faults, adieu, ye gay amours!

Sad if it be, yet true it is to say,

I’ve fifty years, and ’tis too late a day,

My limbs are shrinking and my hair turns grey;

Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!

‘Once in your school (what good, alas! is once?)

I took my lessons, and was not the dunce.

Oh, what a pretty girl was then Juliette!

Don’t you suppose that I remember yet,

Though thirty years divide me from the day,

When she and I first looked each other’s way?

But now! midwinter to be matched with May!

Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!

‘You lovely Marguerite! I shut my eyes,

And do my very utmost to be wise;

Yet see you still; and hear, though closed my ears,

And think I’m young in spite of all my years;

Shall I forget you if I go away?

To leave is painful, but absurd to stay;

I’ve fifty dreadful reasons to obey.

Adieu, gay loves, it is too late a day!’

This priest beside the lusty conducteur

Under his beaver sat and looked demure;

Faintly he smiled the company to please,

And folded held his hands above his knees.

Then, apropos of nothing, had we heard,

He asked, about a thing that had occurred

At the Mont Dore a little time ago,

A wondrous cure? and when we answered, No,

About a little girl he told a tale,

Who, when her medicines were of no avail,

Was by the doctor ordered to Mont Dore,

But nothing gained and only suffered more.

This little child had in her simple way

Unto the Blessed Virgin learnt to pray,

And, as it happened, to an image there

By the roadside one day she made her prayer,

And of our Lady, who can hear on high,

Begged for her parents’ sake she might not die.

Our Lady of Grace, whose attribute is love,

Beheld this child and listened from above.

Her parents noticed from that very day

The malady began to pass away,

And but a fortnight after, as they tell,

They took her home rejoicing, sound and well.

Things come, he said, to show us every hour

We are surrounded by superior power.

Little we notice, but if once we see,

The seed of faith will grow into a tree.

The conducteur, he wisely shook his head:

Strange things do happen in our time, he said;

If the bon Dieu but please, no doubt indeed,

When things are desperate, yet they will succeed.

Ask the postillion here, and he can tell

Who cured his horse, and what of it befell.

Then the postillion, in his smock of blue,

His pipe into his mouth’s far corner drew,

And told about a farrier and a horse;

But his Auvergnat grew from bad to worse;

His rank Arvernian patois was so strong,

With what he said I could not go along;

And what befell and how it came to pass,

And if it were a horse or if an ass,

The sequence of his phrase I could not keep,

And in the middle fairly sank to sleep.

When I awoke, I heard a stream below

And on each bank saw houses in a row,

Corrèze the stream, the houses Tulle, they said;

Alighted here and thankful went to bed.

‘But how,’ said one, ‘about the Pyrenees?

In Hamlet give us Hamlet, if you please;

Your friend declares you said you met with there

A peasant beauty, beauteous past compare,

Who fed her cows the mountain peaks between,

And asked if at Velletri you had been.

And was Velletri larger than was Rome?

Her soldier-brother went away from home,

Two years ago,—to Rome it was he went,

And to Velletri was this summer sent;

He twenty-three, and she was sweet seventeen,

And fed her cows the mountain peaks between.

Lightly along a rocky path she led,

And from a grange she brought you milk and bread.

In summer here she lived, and with the snow

Went in October to the fields below;

And where you lived, she asked, and oh, they say,

That with the English we shall fight some day;

Loveliest of peasant girls that e’er was seen,

Feeding her cows the mountain peaks between.’

‘’Tis true,’ I said, ‘though to betray was mean.

My Pyrenean verses will you hear,

Though not about that peasant girl, I fear.’

‘Begin,’ they said, ‘the sweet bucolic song,

Though it to other maids and other cows belong.’

Currente calamo.

Quick, painter, quick, the moment seize

Amid the snowy Pyrenees;

More evanescent than the snow,

The pictures come, are seen, and go:

Quick, quick, currente calamo.

I do not ask the tints that fill

The gate of day ’twixt hill and hill;

I ask not for the hues that fleet

Above the distant peaks; my feet

Are on a poplar-bordered road,

Where with a saddle and a load

A donkey, old and ashen-grey,

Reluctant works his dusty way.

Before him, still with might and main

Pulling his rope, the rustic rein,

A girl: before both him and me,

Frequent she turns and lets me see,

Unconscious, lets me scan and trace

The sunny darkness of her face

And outlines full of southern grace.

Following I notice, yet and yet,

Her olive skin, dark eyes deep set,

And black, and blacker e’en than jet,

The escaping hair that scantly showed,

Since o’er it in the country mode,

For winter warmth and summer shade,

The lap of scarlet cloth is laid.

And then, back-falling from the head,

A crimson kerchief overspread

Her jacket blue; thence passing down,

A skirt of darkest yellow-brown,

Coarse stuff, allowing to the view

The smooth limb to the woollen shoe.

But who—here’s some one following too,—

A priest, and reading at his book!

Read on, O priest, and do not look;

Consider,—she is but a child,—

Yet might your fancy be beguiled.

Read on, O priest, and pass and go!

But see, succeeding in a row,

Two, three, and four, a motley train,

Musicians wandering back to Spain;

With fiddle and with tambourine,

A man with women following seen.

What dresses, ribbon-ends, and flowers!

And,—sight to wonder at for hours,—

The man,—to Phillip has he sat?—

With butterfly-like velvet hat;

One dame his big bassoon conveys,

On one his gentle arm he lays;

They stop, and look, and something say,

And to ‘España’ ask the way.

But while I speak, and point them on,

Alas! my dearer friends are gone;

The dark-eyed maiden and the ass

Have had the time the bridge to pass.

Vainly, beyond it far descried,

Adieu, and peace with you abide,

Grey donkey, and your beauteous guide.

The pictures come, the pictures go,

Quick, quick, currente calamo.

They praised the rhymes, but still would persevere

The eclogue of the mountain peaks to hear,

Eclogue that never was; and then awhile,

Of France, and Frenchmen, and our native isle,

They talked; pre-insular above the rest,

My friend his ardent politics expressed;

France was behind us all, he saw in France

Worse retrogression, and the least advance.

Her revolutions had but thrown her back.

Powerful just now, but wholly off the track;

They in religion were, as I had seen,

About where we in Chaucer’s time had been;

In Chaucer’s time, and yet their Wickliffe where?

Something they’d kept—the worst part—of Voltaire.

Strong for Old England, was New England too;

The clergyman was neutral in his view,

And I, for France with more than I could do,

Though sound, my thesis did not long maintain.

The contemplation of the nightly main,

The vaulted heavens above, and under these,

The black ship working through the dusky seas,

Deserting, to our narrow berths we crept;

Sound slumbered there, the watch while others kept.

The second officer, who kept the watch,

A young man, fair of feature, partly Scotch

And partly Irish in his voice and way,

Joined us the evening of the following day,

And of our stories when he heard us tell,

Offered to give a narrative as well.

THE MATE’S STORY.

‘I’ve often wondered how it is, at times

Good people do what are as bad as crimes.

A common person would have been ashamed

To do what once a family far-famed

For their religious ways was known to do.

Small harm befell, small thanks to them were due.

They from abroad, perhaps it cost them less,

Had brought a young French girl as governess,

A pretty, youthful thing as e’er you saw;

She taught the children how to play and draw,

Of course, the language of her native land;

English she scarcely learnt to understand.

After a time they wanted her no more;

She must go home,—but how to send her o’er,—

Far in the south of France she lived, and they

In Ireland there—was more than they could say.

A monthly steamer, as they chanced to know,

From Liverpool went over to Bordeaux,

And would, they thought, exactly meet the case.

They wrote and got a friend to take a place;

And from her salary paid her money down.

A trading steamer from the seaport town

Near which they lived, across the Channel plied,

And this, they said, a passage would provide.

With pigs, and with the Irish reaping horde,

This pretty tender girl was put on board;

And a rough time of it, no doubt, had she,

Tossing about upon the Irish Sea.

Arrived at last and set ashore, she found

The steamer gone for which she had been bound.

The pious people, in their careless way,

Had made some loose mistake about the day.

She stood; the passengers with whom she crossed

Went off, and she remained as one that’s lost.

Think of the hapless creature standing here

Alone, beside her boxes on the pier.

Whither to turn, and where to try and go,

She knew not; nay, the language did not know.

So young a girl, so pretty too, set down

Here, in the midst of a great seaport town,

What might have happened one may sadly guess,

Had not the captain, seeing her distress,

Made out the cause, and told her she could stay

On board the vessel till the following day.

Next day, he said—the steamer to Bordeaux

Was gone no doubt, next month the next would go;

For this her passage-money she had paid,

But some arrangement could, he thought, be made,

If only she could manage to afford

To wait a month and pay for bed and board.

She sadly shook her head—well, after all,

’Twas a bad town, and mischief might befall.

Would she go back? Indeed ’twas but a shame,

To take her back to those from whom she came.

‘There’s one thing, Miss,’ said he, ‘that you can do

It’s speaking somewhat sudden-like, it’s true,

But if you’ll marry me, I’ll marry you.

May be you won’t, but if you will you can.’

This captain was a young and decent man,

And I suppose she saw no better way;

Marry they did, and married live this day.

Another friend, these previous nights away,

An officer of engineers, and round

By Halifax to far Bermuda bound,

Joined us this night; a rover he had been.

Many strange sights and many climes had seen,

And much of various life; his comment was, ’twas well

There was no further incident to tell.

He’d been afraid that ere the tale was o’er,

’Twould prove the captain had a wife before.

The poor French girl was luckier than she knew;

Soldiers and sailors had so often two.

And it was something, too, for men who went

From port to port to be with two content.

In every place the marriage rite supplied

A decent spouse to whom you were not tied.

Of course the women would at times suspect,

But felt their reputations were not wrecked.

One after night we took ourselves to task

For our neglect who had forborne to ask

The clergyman, who told his tale so well,

Another tale for our behalf to tell.

He to a second had himself confessed.

Now, when to hear it eagerly we pressed.

He put us off; but, ere the night was done,

Told us his second, and his sadder one.

THE CLERGYMAN’S SECOND TALE.

Edward and Jane a married couple were,

And fonder she of him or he of her

Was hard to say; their wedlock had begun

When in one year they both were twenty-one;

And friends, who would not sanction, left them free

He gentle-born, nor his inferior she,

And neither rich; to the newly-wedded boy,

A great Insurance Office found employ.

Strong in their loves and hopes, with joy they took

This narrow lot and the world’s altered look;

Beyond their home they nothing sought nor craved,

And even from the narrow income saved;

Their busy days for no ennui had place,

Neither grew weary of the other’s face.

Nine happy years had crowned their married state

With children, one a little girl of eight;

With nine industrious years his income grew,

With his employers rose his favour too;

Nine years complete had passed when something ailed.

Friends and the doctors said his health had failed,

He must recruit, or worse would come to pass;

And though to rest was hard for him, alas!

Three months of leave he found he could obtain,

And go, they said, get well and work again.

Just at this juncture of their married life,

Her mother, sickening, begged to have his wife.

Her house among the hills in Surrey stood,

And to be there, said Jane, would do the children good

They let their house, and with the children she

Went to her mother, he beyond the sea;

Far to the south his orders were to go.

A watering-place, whose name we need not know,

For climate and for change of scene was best:

There he was bid, laborious task, to rest.

A dismal thing in foreign lands to roam

To one accustomed to an English home,

Dismal yet more, in health if feeble grown,

To live a boarder, helpless and alone

In foreign town, and worse yet worse is made,

If ’tis a town of pleasure and parade.

Dispiriting the public walks and seats,

The alien faces that an alien meets;

Drearily every day this old routine repeats.

Yet here this alien prospered, change of air

Or change of scene did more than tenderest care;

Three weeks were scarce completed, to his home,

He wrote to say, he thought he now could come,

His usual work was sure he could resume,

And something said about the place’s gloom,

And how he loathed idling his time away.

O, but they wrote, his wife and all, to say

He must not think of it, ’twas quite too quick;

Let was their house, her mother still was sick,

Three months were given, and three he ought to take;

For his, and hers, and for his children’s sake.

He wrote again, ’twas weariness to wait,

This doing nothing was a thing to hate;

He’d cast his nine laborious years away,

And was as fresh as on his wedding-day;

At last he yielded, feared he must obey.

And now, his health repaired, his spirits grown

Less feeble, less he cared to live alone.

’Twas easier now to face the crowded shore,

And table d’hôte less tedious than before;

His ancient silence sometimes he would break,

And the mute Englishman was heard to speak.

His youthful colour soon, his youthful air

Came back; amongst the crowd of idlers there,

With whom good looks entitle to good name,

For his good looks he gained a sort of fame,

People would watch him as he went and came.

Explain the tragic mystery who can,

Something there is, we know not what, in man,

With all established happiness at strife,

And bent on revolution in his life.

Explain the plan of Providence who dare,

And tell us wherefore in this world there are

Beings who seem for this alone to live,

Temptation to another soul to give.

A beauteous woman at the table d’hôte,

To try this English heart, at least to note

This English countenance, conceived the whim.

She sat exactly opposite to him.

Ere long he noticed with a vague surprise

How every day on him she bent her eyes;

Soft and inquiring now they looked, and then

Wholly withdrawn, unnoticed came again;

His shrunk aside: and yet there came a day,

Alas! they did not wholly turn away.

So beautiful her beauty was, so strange,

And to his northern feeling such a change;

Her throat and neck Junonian in their grace;

The blood just mantled in her southern face:

Dark hair, dark eyes; and all the arts she had

With which some dreadful power adorns the bad,—

Bad women in their youth,—and young was she,

Twenty perhaps, at the utmost twenty-three,—

And timid seemed, and innocent of ill;—

Her feelings went and came without her will.

You will not wish minutely to know all

His efforts in the prospect of the fall.

He oscillated to and fro, he took

High courage oft, temptation from him shook,

Compelled himself to virtuous thoughts and just,

And as it were in ashes and in dust

Abhorred his thought. But living thus alone,

Of solitary tedium weary grown;

From sweet society so long debarred,

And fearing in his judgment to be hard

On her—that he was sometimes off his guard

What wonder? She relentless still pursued

Unmarked, and tracked him in his solitude.

And not in vain, alas!

The days went by and found him in the snare.

But soon a letter full of tenderest care

Came from his wife, the little daughter too

In a large hand—the exercise was new—

To her papa her love and kisses sent.

Into his very heart and soul it went.

Forth on the high and dusty road he sought

Some issue for the vortex of his thought.

Returned, packed up his things, and ere the day

Descended, was a hundred miles away.

There are, I know of course, who lightly treat

Such slips; we stumble, we regain our feet;

What can we do? they say, but hasten on

And disregard it as a thing that’s gone.

Many there are who in a case like this

Would calm re-seek their sweet domestic bliss;

Accept unshamed the wifely tender kiss,

And lift their little children on their knees,

And take their kisses too; with hearts at ease

Will read the household prayers,—to church will go,

And sacrament,—nor care if people know.

Such men—so minded—do exist, God knows,

And, God be thanked, this was not one of those.

Late in the night, at a provincial town

In France, a passing traveller was put down;

Haggard he looked, his hair was turning grey,

His hair, his clothes, were much in disarray:

In a bedchamber here one day he stayed,

Wrote letters, posted them, his reckoning paid

And went. ’Twas Edward rushing from his fall

Here to his wife he wrote and told her all.

Forgiveness—yes, perhaps she might forgive—

For her, and for the children, he must live

At any rate; but their old home to share

As yet was something that he could not bear.

She with her mother still her home should make,

A lodging near the office he should take;

And once a quarter he would bring his pay,

And he would see her on the quarter-day,

But her alone; e’en this would dreadful be,

The children ’twas not possible to see.

Back to the office at this early day

To see him come, old-looking thus and grey,

His comrades wondered, wondered too to see

How dire a passion for his work had he,

How in a garret too he lived alone;

So cold a husband, cold a father grown.

In a green lane beside her mother’s home,

Where in old days they had been used to roam,

His wife had met him on the appointed day,

Fell on his neck, said all that love could say,

And wept; he put the loving arms away.

At dusk they met, for so was his desire;

She felt his cheeks and forehead all on fire;

The kisses which she gave he could not brook;

Once in her face he gave a sidelong look,

Said, but for them he wished that he were dead,

And put the money in her hand and fled.

Sometimes in easy and familiar tone,

Of sins resembling more or less his own

He heard his comrades in the office speak,

And felt the colour tingling in his cheek;

Lightly they spoke as of a thing of nought;

He of their judgment ne’er so much as thought.

I know not, in his solitary pains,

Whether he seemed to feel as in his veins

The moral mischief circulating still,

Racked with the torture of the double will;

And like some frontier-land where armies wage

The mighty wars, engage and yet engage

All through the summer in the fierce campaign;

March, counter-march, gain, lose, and yet regain;

With battle reeks the desolated plain;

So felt his nature yielded to the strife

Of the contending good and ill of life.

But a whole year this penance he endured,

Nor even then would think that he was cured.

Once in a quarter, in the country lane,

He met his wife and paid his quarter’s gain;

To bring the children she besought in vain.

He has a life small happiness that gives,

Who friendless in a London lodging lives,

Dines in a dingy chop-house, and returns

To a lone room while all within him yearns

For sympathy, and his whole nature burns

With a fierce thirst for some one,—is there none?—

To expend his human tenderness upon.

So blank, and hard, and stony is the way

To walk, I wonder not men go astray.

Edward, whom still a sense that never slept

On the strict path undeviating kept,

One winter-evening found himself pursued

Amidst the dusky thronging multitude.

Quickly he walked, but strangely swift was she,

And pertinacious, and would make him see.

He saw at last, and recognising slow,

Discovered in this hapless thing of woe

The occasion of his shame twelve wretched months ago.

She gaily laughed, she cried, and sought his hand,

And spoke sweet phrases of her native land;

Exiled, she said, her lovely home had left,

Not to forsake a friend of all but her bereft;

Exiled, she cried, for liberty, for love,

She was; still limpid eyes she turned above.

So beauteous once, and now such misery in,

Pity had all but softened him to sin;

But while she talked, and wildly laughed, and cried,

And plucked the hand which sadly he denied,

A stranger came and swept her from his side.

He watched them in the gas-lit darkness go,

And a voice said within him, Even so,

So midst the gloomy mansions where they dwell

The lost souls walk the flaming streets of hell!

The lamps appeared to fling a baleful glare,

A brazen heat was heavy in the air;

And it was hell, and he some unblest wanderer there.

For a long hour he stayed the streets to roam,

Late gathering sense, he gained his garret home;

There found a telegraph that bade him come

Straight to the country, where his daughter, still

His darling child, lay dangerously ill.

The doctor would he bring? Away he went

And found the doctor; to the office sent

A letter, asking leave, and went again,

And with a wild confusion in his brain,

Joining the doctor caught the latest train.

The train swift whirled them from the city light

Into the shadows of the natural night.

’Twas silent starry midnight on the down,

Silent and chill, when they, straight come from town,

Leaving the station, walked a mile to gain

The lonely house amid the hills where Jane,

Her mother, and her children should be found.

Waked by their entrance, but of sleep unsound,

The child not yet her altered father knew;

Yet talked of her papa in her delirium too.

Danger there was, yet hope there was; and he,

To attend the crisis, and the changes see,

And take the steps, at hand should surely be.

Said Jane the following day, ‘Edward, you know,

Over and over I have told you so,

As in a better world I seek to live,

As I desire forgiveness, I forgive.

Forgiveness does not feel the word to say,—

As I believe in One who takes away

Our sin and gives us righteousness instead,—

You to this sin, I do believe, are dead.

’Twas I, you know, who let you leave your home

And bade you stay when you so wished to come;

My fault was that: I’ve told you so before,

And vainly told; but now ’tis something more.

Say, is it right, without a single friend,

Without advice, to leave me to attend

Children and mother both? Indeed I’ve thought

Through want of you the child her fever caught.

Chances of mischief come with every hour.

It is not in a single woman’s power

Alone, and ever haunted more or less

With anxious thoughts of you and your distress,—

’Tis not indeed, I’m sure of it, in me,—

All things with perfect judgment to foresee.

This weight has grown too heavy to endure;

And you, I tell you now, and I am sure,

Neglect your duty both to God and man

Persisting thus in your unnatural plan.

This feeling you must conquer, for you can.

And after all, you know we are but dust,

What are we, in ourselves that we should trust?’

He scarcely answered her; but he obtained

A longer leave, and quietly remained.

Slowly the child recovered, long was ill,

Long delicate, and he must watch her still;

To give up seeing her he could not bear,

To leave her less attended, did not dare.

The child recovered slowly, slowly too

Recovered he, and more familiar drew

Home’s happy breath; and apprehension o’er,

Their former life he yielded to restore,

And to his mournful garret went no more.

---

Midnight was dim and hazy overhead

When the tale ended and we turned to bed.

On the companion-way, descending slow,

The artillery captain, as we went below,

Said to the lawyer, life could not be meant

To be so altogether innocent.

What did the atonement show? he, for the rest,

Could not, he thought, have written and confessed.

Weakness it was, and adding crime to crime

To leave his family that length of time,

The lawyer said; the American was sure

Each nature knows instinctively its cure.

Midnight was in the cabin still and dead,

Our fellow-passengers were all in bed,

We followed them, and nothing further spoke.

Out of the sweetest of my sleep I woke

At two, and felt we stopped; amid a dream

Of England knew the letting-off of steam

And rose. ’Twas fog, and were we off Cape Race?

The captain would be certain of his place.

Wild in white vapour flew away the force,

And self-arrested was the eager course

That had not ceased before. But shortly now

Cape Race was made to starboard on the bow.

The paddles plied. I slept. The following night

In the mid seas we saw a quay and light,

And peered through mist into an unseen town,

And on scarce-seeming land set one companion down,

And went. With morning and a shining sun,

Under the bright New Brunswick coast we run,

And visible discern to every eye

Rocks, pines, and little ports, and passing by

The boats and coasting craft. When sunk the night

Early now sunk, the northern streamers bright

Floated and flashed, the cliffs and clouds behind,

With phosphorus the billows all were lined.

That evening, while the arctic streamers bright

Rolled from the clouds in waves of airy light,

The lawyer said, ‘I laid by for to-night

A story that I would not tell before;

For the last time, a confidential four,

We meet. Receive in your elected ears

A tale of human suffering and tears.’

THE LAWYER’S SECOND TALE.
Christian.

A Highland inn among the western hills,

A single parlour, single bed that fills

With fisher or with tourist, as may be;

A waiting-maid, as fair as you can see,

With hazel eyes, and frequent blushing face,

And ample brow, and with a rustic grace

In all her easy quiet motions seen,

Large of her age, which haply is nineteen,

Christian her name, in full a pleasant name,

Christian and Christie scarcely seem the same;—

A college fellow, who has sent away

The pupils he has taught for many a day,

And comes for fishing and for solitude,

Perhaps a little pensive in his mood,

An aspiration and a thought have failed,

Where he had hoped, another has prevailed,

But to the joys of hill and stream alive,

And in his boyhood yet, at twenty-five.

A merry dance, that made young people meet,

And set them moving, both with hands and feet;

A dance in which he danced, and nearer knew

The soft brown eyes, and found them tender too.

A dance that lit in two young hearts the fire,

The low soft flame, of loving sweet desire,

And made him feel that he could feel again;—

The preface this, what follows to explain.

That night he kissed, he held her in his arms,

And felt the subtle virtue of her charms;

Nor less bewildered on the following day,

He kissed, he found excuse near her to stay,—

Was it not love? And yet the truth to speak,

Playing the fool for haply half a week,

He yet had fled, so strong within him dwelt

The horror of the sin, and such he felt

The miseries to the woman that ensue.

He wearied long his brain with reasonings fine,

But when at evening dusk he came to dine,

In linsey petticoat and jacket blue

She stood, so radiant and so modest too,

All into air his strong conclusions flew.

Now should he go. But dim and drizzling too,

For a night march, to-night will hardly do,

A march of sixteen weary miles of way.

No, by the chances which our lives obey,

No, by the heavens and this sweet face he’ll stay.

A week he stayed, and still was loth to go,

But she grew anxious and would have it so.

Her time of service shortly would be o’er,

And she would leave; her mistress knew before.

Where would she go? To Glasgow, if she could;

Her father’s sister would be kind and good;

An only child she was, an orphan left,

Of all her kindred, save of this, bereft.

Said he, ‘Your guide to Glasgow let me be,

You little know, you have not tried the sea;

Say, at the ferry when are we to meet?

Thither, I guess, you travel on your feet.’

She would be there on Tuesday next at three;

‘O dear, how glad and thankful she would be;

But don’t,’ she said, ‘be troubled much for me.’

Punctual they met, a second class he took,

More naturally to her wants to look,

And from her side was seldom far away.

So quiet, so indifferent yet, were they,

As fellow-servants travelling south they seemed,

And no one of a love-relation dreamed.

At Oban, where the stormy darkness fell,

He got two chambers in a cheap hotel.

At Oban of discomfort one is sure,

Little the difference whether rich or poor.

Around the Mull the passage now to make,

They go aboard, and separate tickets take,

First-class for him, and second-class for her.

No other first-class passengers there were,

And with the captain walking soon alone,

This Highland girl, he said, to him was known.

He had engaged to take her to her kin;

Could she be put the ladies’ cabin in?

The difference gladly he himself would pay,

The weather seemed but menacing to-day.

She ne’er had travelled from her home before,

He wished to be at hand to hear about her more.

Curious it seemed, but he had such a tone,

And kept at first so carefully alone,

And she so quiet was, and so discreet,

So heedful, ne’er to seek him or to meet,

The first small wonder quickly passed away.

And so from Oban’s little land-locked bay

Forth out to Jura—Jura pictured high

With lofty peaks against the western sky,

Jura, that far o’erlooks the Atlantic seas,

The loftiest of the Southern Hebrides.

Through the main sea to Jura;—when we reach

Jura, we turn to leftward to the breach,

And southward strain the narrow channel through,

And Colonsay we pass and Islay too;

Cantire is on the left, and all the day

A dull dead calm upon the waters lay.

Sitting below, after some length of while,

He sought her, and the tedium to beguile,

He ventured some experiments to make,

The measure of her intellect to take.

Upon the cabin table chanced to lie

A book of popular astronomy;

In this he tried her, and discoursed away

Of Winter, Summer, and of Night and Day.

Still to the task a reasoning power she brought,

And followed, slowly followed with the thought;

How beautiful it was to see the stir

Of natural wonder waking thus in her;

But loth was he to set on books to pore

An intellect so charming in the ore.

And she, perhaps, had comprehended soon

Even the nodes, so puzzling, of the moon;

But nearing now the Mull they met the gale

Right in their teeth: and should the fuel fail?

Thinking of her, he grew a little pale,

But bravely she the terrors, miseries, took:

And met him with a sweet courageous look:

Once, at the worst, unto his side she drew,

And said a little tremulously too,

‘If we must die, please let me come to you.’

I know not by what change of wind or tide,

Heading the Mull, they gained the eastern side,

But stiller now, and sunny e’en it grew;

Arran’s high peaks unmantled to the view;

While to the north, far seen from left to right,

The Highland range, extended snowy white.

Now in the Clyde, he asked, what would be thought,

In Glasgow, of the company she brought:

‘You know,’ he said, ‘how I desire to stay;

We’ve played at strangers for so long a day,

But for a while I yet would go away.’

She said, O no, indeed they must not part.

Her father’s sister had a kindly heart.

‘I’ll tell her all, and O, when you she sees,

I think she’ll not be difficult to please.’

Landed at Glasgow, quickly they espied

Macfarlane, grocer, by the river side:

To greet her niece the woman joyful ran,

But looked with wonder on the tall young man

Into the house the women went and talked,

He with the grocer in the doorway walked.

He told him he was looking for a set

Of lodgings: had he any he could let?

The man was called to council with his wife;

They took the thing as what will be in life,

Half in a kind, half in a worldly way;

They said, the lassie might play out her play.

The gentleman should have the second floor,

At thirty shillings, for a week or more.

Some days in this obscurity he stayed,

Happy with her, and some inquiry made

(For friends he found) and did his best to see,

What hope of getting pupils there would be.

This must he do, ’twas evident, ’twas clear,

Marry and seek a humble maintenance here.

Himself he had a hundred pounds a year.

To this plain business he would bend his life,

And find his joy in children and in wife,

A wife so good, so tender, and so true,

Mother to be of glorious children too.

Half to excuse his present lawless way,

He to the grocer happened once to say

Marriage would cost him more than others dear,

Cost him, indeed, three hundred pounds a-year.

‘’Deed,’ said the man, ‘a heavy price, no doubt,

For a bit form that one can do without.’

And asked some questions, pertinent and plain,

Exacter information to obtain;

He took a little trouble to explain.

The College Audit now, to last at least

Three weeks, ere ending with the College Feast,

He must attend, a tedious, dull affair,

But he, as junior Bursar, must be there.

Three weeks, however, quickly would be fled,

And then he’d come,—he didn’t say to wed.

With plans of which he nothing yet would say,

Preoccupied upon the parting day,

He seemed a little absent and distrait;

But she, as knowing nothing was amiss,

Gave him her fondest smile, her sweetest kiss.

A fortnight after, or a little more,

As at the Audit, weary of the bore,

He sat, and of his future prospects thought,

A letter in an unknown hand was brought.

’Twas from Macfarlane, and to let him know

To South Australia they proposed to go.

‘Rich friends we have, who have advised us thus,

Occasion offers suitable for us;

Christie we take; whate’er she find of new,

She’ll ne’er forget the joy she’s had with you;

’Tis an expensive pilgrimage to make,

You’ll like to send a trifle for her sake.’

Nothing he said of when the ship would sail.

That very night, by swift-returning mail,

Ten pounds he sent, for what he did not know;

And ‘In no case,’ he said, ‘let Christian go.’

He in three days would come, and for his life

Would claim her and declare her as his wife.

Swift the night-mail conveyed his missive on;

He followed in three days, and found them gone.

All three had sailed: he looked as though he dreamed;

The money-order had been cashed, it seemed.

The Clergyman, ‘This story is mere pain,’

Exclaimed, ‘for if the women don’t sustain

The moral standard, all we do is vain.’

‘But what we want,’ the Yankee said, ‘to know,

Is if the girl went willingly or no.

Sufficient motive though one does not see,

’Tis clear the grocer used some trickery.’

He judged himself, so strong the clinging in

This kind of people is to kith and kin;

For if they went and she remained behind,

No one she had, if him she failed to find.

Alas, this lawless loving was the cause,

She did not dare to think how dear she was.

Justly his guilty tardiness he curst,

He should have owned her when he left her first.

And something added how upon the sea,

She perilled, too, a life that was to be;

A child that, born in far Australia, there

Would have no father and no father’s care.

So to the South a lonely man returned,

For other scenes and busier life he burned,—

College he left and settled soon in town,

Wrote in the journals, gained a swift renown.

Soon into high society he came,

And still where’er he went outdid his fame.

All the more liked and more esteemed, the less

He seemed to make an object of success.

An active literary life he spent,

Towards lofty points of public practice bent,

Was never man so carefully who read,

Whose plans so well were fashioned in his head,

Nor one who truths so luminously said.

Some years in various labours thus he passed,

A spotless course maintaining to the last.

Twice upon Government Commissions served

With honour; place, which he declined, deserved.

He married then,—a marriage fit and good,

That kept him where his worth was understood;

A widow, wealthy, and of noble blood.

Mr. and Lady Mary are they styled,

One grief is theirs—to be without a child.

I did not tell you how he went before

To South Australia, vainly to explore.

The ship had come to Adelaide, no doubt;

Watching the papers he had made it out,

But of themselves, in country or in town,

Nothing discovered, travelling up and down.

Only an entry of uncertain sound,

In an imperfect register he found.

His son, he thought, but could not prove it true;

The surname of the girl it chanced he never knew.

But this uneasy feeling gathered strength

As years advanced, and it became at length

His secret torture and his secret joy

To think about his lost Australian boy.

Somewhere in wild colonial lands has grown

A child that is his true and very own.

This strong parental passion fills his mind,

To all the dubious chances makes him blind.

Still he will seek, and still he hopes to find.

Again will go.

Said I, ‘O let him stay,

And in a London drawing-room some day—

Rings on her fingers, brilliants in her hair,

The lady of the latest millionaire—

She’ll come, and with a gathering slow surprise

On Lady Mary’s husband turn her eyes:

The soft brown eyes that in a former day

From his discretion lured him all astray.

At home, six bouncing girls, who more or less

Are learning English of a governess,

Six boisterous boys, as like as pear to pear;

Only the eldest has a different air.’

‘You jest,’ he said, ‘indeed it happened so.’

From a great party just about to go,

He saw, he knew, and ere she saw him, said

Swift to his wife, as for the door he made,

‘My Highland bride! to escape a scene I go,

Stay, find her out—great God!—and let me know.’

The Lady Mary turned to scrutinise

The lovely brow, the beautiful brown eyes,

One moment, then performed her perfect part,

And did her spiriting with simplest art,

Was introduced, her former friends had known,

Say, might she call to-morrow afternoon

At three? O yes! At three she made her call,

And told her who she was and told her all.

Her lady manners all she laid aside;

Like women the two women kissed and cried.

Half overwhelmed sat Christian by her side,

While she, ‘You know he never knew the day

When you would sail, but he believed you’d stay

Because he wrote—you never knew, you say,—

Wrote that in three days’ time, they need not fear,

He’d come and then would marry you, my dear.

You never knew? And he had planned to live

At Glasgow, lessons had arranged to give.

Alas, then to Australia he went out,

All through the land to find you sought about,

And found a trace, which though it left a doubt.

Sufficed to make it still his grief, his joy,

To think he had a child, a living boy,

Whom you, my love——’

‘His child is six foot high,

I’ve kept him as the apple of my eye,’

Cried she, ‘he’s riding, or you’d see him here.

O joy, that he at last should see his father dear!

As soon as he comes in I’ll tell him all,

And on his father he shall go and call.’

‘And you,’ she said, ‘my husband will you see?

‘O no, it is not possible for me.

The boy I’ll send this very afternoon.

O dear, I know he cannot go too soon;

And something I must write, to write will do.’

So they embraced and sadly bade adieu.

The boy came in, his father went and saw!

We will not wait this interview to draw;

Ere long returned, and to his mother ran:

His father was a wonderful fine man,

He said, and looked at her; the Lady, too,

Had done whatever it was kind to do.

He loved his mother more than he could say,

But if she wished, he’d with his father stay.

A little change she noticed in his face,

E’en now the father’s influence she could trace;

From her the slight, slight severance had begun,

But simply she rejoiced that it was done.

She smiled and kissed her boy, and ‘Long ago,

When I was young, I loved your father so.

Together now we had been living, too,

Only the ship went sooner than he knew.

In loving him you will be loving me:

Father and mother are as one you see.’

Her letter caught him on the following day

As to the club he started on his way.

From her he guessed, the hand indeed was new;

Back to his room he went and read it through.

‘I know not how to write and dare not see;

But it will take a load of grief from me—

O! what a load—that you at last should know

The way in which I was compelled to go.

Wretched, I know, and yet it seems ’twas more

Cruel and wretched than I knew before;

So many years to think how on your day

Joyful you’d come, and found me flown away.

What would you think of me, what would you say?

O love, this little let me call you so;

What other name to use I do not know

O let me think that by your side I sit,

And tell it you, and weep a little bit,

And you too weep with me, for hearing it.

Alone so long I’ve borne this dreadful weight;

Such grief, at times it almost turned to hate.

O let me think you sit and listening long,

Comfort me still, and say I wasn’t wrong,

And pity me, and far, far hence again

Dismiss, if haply any yet remain,

Hard thoughts of me that in your heart have lain.

O love! to hear your voice I dare not go;

But let me trust that you will judge me so.

‘I think no sooner were you gone away,

My aunt began to tell me of some pay,

More than three hundred pounds a-year ’twould be,

Which you, she said, would lose by marrying me.

Was this a thing a man of sense would do?

Was I a fool, to look for it from you?

You were a handsome gentleman and kind,

And to do right were every way inclined,

But to this truth I must submit my mind,

You would not marry. “Speak, and tell me true,

Say, has he ever said one word to you

That meant as much?” O, love, I knew you would.

I’ve read it in your eyes so kind and good,

Although you did not speak I understood.

Though for myself, indeed, I sought it not,

It seemed so high, so undeserved a lot,

But for the child, when it should come, I knew—

O, I was certain—what you meant to do.

She said, “We quit the land, will it be right

Or kind to leave you for a single night,

Just on the chance that he will come down here,

And sacrifice three hundred pounds a-year,

And all his hopes and prospects fling away,

And has already had his will, as one may say?

Go you with us, and find beyond the seas,

Men by the score to choose from, if you please.”

I said my will and duty was to stay,

Would they not help me to some decent way

To wait, and surely near was now the day?

Quite they refused; had they to let you know

Written, I asked, to say we were to go?

They told me yes; they showed a letter, too,

Post-office order that had come from you.

Alas, I could not read or write, they knew.

I think they meant me, though they did not say,

To think you wanted me to go away;

O, love, I’m thankful nothing of the kind

Ever so much as came into my mind.

‘To-morrow was the day that would not fail;

For Adelaide the vessel was to sail.

All night I hoped some dreadful wind would rise,

And lift the seas and rend the very skies.

All night I lay and listened hard for you.

Twice to the door I went, the bolt I drew,

And called to you; scarce what I did I knew.

‘Morning grew light, the house was emptied clear;

The ship would go, the boat was lying near.

They had my money, how was I to stay?

Who could I go to, when they went away?

Out in the streets I could not lie, you know.

O dear, but it was terrible to go.

Yet, yet I looked; I do not know what passed,

I think they took and carried me at last.

Twelve hours I lay, and sobbed in my distress;

But in the night, let be this idleness,

I said, I’ll bear it for my baby’s sake,

Lest of my going mischief it should take,

Advice will seek, and every caution use;

My love I’ve lost—his child I must not lose.

‘How oft I thought, when sailing on the seas,

Of our dear journey through the Hebrides,

When you the kindest were and best of men:

O, love, I did not love you right till then.

O, and myself how willingly I blamed,

So simple who had been, and was ashamed,

So mindful only of the present joy,

When you had anxious cares your busy mind to employ.

Ah, well, I said, but now at least he’s free,

He will not have to lower himself for me.

He will not lose three hundred pounds a-year,

In many ways my love has cost him dear.

‘Upon the passage, great was my delight,

A lady taught me how to read and write.

She saw me much, and fond of me she grew,

Only I durst not talk to her of you.

‘We had a quiet time upon the seas,

And reached our port of Adelaide with ease.

At Adelaide my lovely baby came.

Philip, he took his father’s Christian name,

And my poor maiden surname, to my shame.

O, but I little cared, I loved him so,

’Twas such a joy to watch and see him grow.

At Adelaide we made no length of stay;

Our friends to Melbourne just had gone away.

We followed shortly where they led before,

To Melbourne went, and flourished more and more.

My aunt and uncle both are buried there;

I closed their eyes, and I was left their heir.

They meant me well, I loved them for their care.

‘Ten years ago I married Robert; dear

And well he loved, and waited many a year.

Selfish it seemed to turn from one so true,

And I of course was desperate of you.

I’ve borne him children six; we’ve left behind

Three little ones, whom soon I hope to find.

To my dear boy he ever has been kind.

‘Next week we sail, and I should be so glad,

Only to leave my boy will make me sad.

But yours he is by right—the grief I’ll bear,

And at his age, more easy he can spare,

Perhaps, a mother’s than a father’s care.

Indeed I think him like his father, too;

He will be happier, probably, with you.

’Tis best, I know, nor will he quite forget,

Some day he’ll come perhaps and see his mother yet.

‘O heaven! farewell—perhaps I’ve been to blame

To write as if it all were still the same.

Farewell, write not.—I will not seek to know

Whether you ever think of me or no.’

O love, love, love, too late! the tears fell down.

He dried them up—and slowly walked to town.

---

To bed with busy thoughts; the following day

Bore us expectant into Boston Bay;

With dome and steeple on the yellow skies,

Upon the left we watched with curious eyes

The Puritan great Mother City rise.

Among the islets, winding in and round,

The great ship moved to her appointed ground.

We bade adieu, shook hands and went ashore:

I and my friend have seen our friends no more.