II.
I SEE You with the face they paint
For some saint
Born and saved in some sublime
Olden time,
Crowned with the gorgeous golden-waved
Aureole;
Just such a saint as should have saved
My own soul.
Yes; for you have the human grace
In your face
Painted upon the panel there,
And what hair!
‘Fra’—who was he? I forget—
Who could paint
Such a woman wholly, and yet
Such a saint?
From the dim cathedral height
Falls the light;
I could think it for a while
Christ’s smile
From the great window-scene above
Strangely shed
Toward you, resting like Christ’s love
On your head.
O the splendid purple niche
Deep and rich,
Stained of the colour of your soul
Strong and whole,
Full of the prevalence of prayers
And piteous plaint
You made for men and sins all theirs
—You a saint!
The niche a little narrow: well,
As the cell
Your world, your body—all things seen—
Must have been
About the soul that day by day
Groped and felt
To God’s own house and found the way
As you knelt:
In an attitude of prayer
O how fair!
All the body crouched, constrained
As if pained
With the spirit’s inward groan
To entreat
For a sin you could not own,
O how sweet!
Hands God making must have praised;
Clasped and raised
Holy mediæval way
Used to pray;
Sky all wrapped about your head
Blue and sweet,
Earth all golden from the tread
Of your feet.
God, who of all this world of ours
Gathers flowers,
Gathered you in the old sublime
Flower time:
If God had left some flowers like you—
Who can tell?—
He might have had yet one or two
Flowers that fell.
O then there were great sins of course;
Men were worse
Some ways no doubt; at any rate
Men were great:
We cannot bear their mail, much less
Lose or win
Their heavens, through their great holiness
Or great sin.
There were high things for men to see,
Do, or be;
Fair struggles after every throne:
And to atone
Fair crowns and kingdoms for the best;
All men strove,
And, loss or gain, for each man’s rest
There was love.
And men and women bore their part
Heart to heart,
For oh! the women and the men
Loved then;
And love from love you could not break,
Half to save;
If one sinned, for the other’s sake
God forgave.
Would thou wert yet, thou great and old
Time of gold!
Wert thou with me, or could I flee
Back to thee,
God might have had one other flower
Nigh to fall,
And I known love at least one hour
—Once for all.
O who shall have the barren years?
Who the tears?
One with false bosom and cold kiss
May have this:
But somewhere, unless love forget
His old way,
There shall be something better yet
—Ay, some day.
LOST BLISSES.
THINK, O Heart, what sweet—had you waited
A moment, on such a day—
Had yet been to do or to say
That shall never be said now or done!
Think what beautiful worlds uncreated
The clouds then bore back to the sun;
What blisses were all frustrated;
What loves, that were almost begun!
Think, O Life,—had your stream but drifted
To this or that holier Past,
Or Future that must come at last—
Think, O sorrowful Life, and repent—
How the sorrowful days had been gifted
With solace and ravishment,
And year after year slowly lifted
To heavens of golden content!
THE SPECTRE OF THE PAST.
ON the great day of my life—
On the memorable day—
Just as the long inward strife
Of the echoes died away,
Just as on my couch I lay
Thinking thought away;
Came a Man into my room,
Bringing with him gloom.
Midnight stood upon the clock,
And the street sound ceased to rise;
Suddenly, and with no knock,
Came that Man before my eyes:
Yet he seemed not anywise
My heart to surprise,
And he sat down to abide
At my fireside.
But he stirred within my heart
Memories of the ancient days;
And strange visions seemed to start
Vividly before my gaze,
Yea, from the most distant haze
Of forgotten ways:
And he looked on me the while
With a most strange smile.
But my heart seemed well to know
That his face the semblance had
Of my own face long ago
Ere the years had made it sad,
When my youthful looks were clad
In a smile half glad;
To my heart he seemed in truth
All my vanished youth.
Then he named me by a name
Long since unfamiliar grown,
But remembered for the same
That my childhood’s ears had known;
And his voice was like my own
In a sadder tone
Coming from the happy years
Choked, alas, with tears.
And, as though he nothing knew
Of that day’s fair triumphing,
Or the Present were not true,
Or not worth remembering,
All the Past he seemed to bring
As a piteous thing
Back upon my heart again,
Yea, with a great pain:
“Do you still remember the winding street
In the grey old village?” He seemed to say;
“And the long school days that the sun made sweet
And the thought of the flowers from far away?
And the faces of friends whom you used to meet
In that village day by day,
—Ay, the face of this one or of that?” he said,
And the names he named were names of the dead
Who all in the churchyard lay.
“Do you still remember your brother’s face,
And his soft light hair, and his eyes’ deep blue,
And the child’s pet name that in every place
Was once so familiar to him and to you?
And the innocent sports and the butterfly chase
That lasted the bright day through?”
—O this time, I thought of the churchyard and sighed,
For I thought of the dead lying side by side,
And my brother who lay there too.
“And do you remember the far green hills;
Or the long straight path by the side of the stream;
Or the road that led to the farm and the mills,
And the fields where you oft used to wander or dream
Or follow each change of your childish wills
Like the dance of some gay sunbeam?”—
Then, alas, from right weeping I could not refrain,
For indeed all those things I remembered again,—
As of yesterday they did seem.
And I thought of a day in a far lost Spring,
When the sun with a kiss set the wild flowers free;
When my heart felt the kiss and the shadowy wing
Of some beautiful spirit of things to be,
Who breathed in the song that the wild birds sing
Some deep tender meaning for me,—
Who undid a strange spell in the world as it were,
Who set wide sweet whispers abroad in the air,—
Made a presence I could not see.
O that whisper my heart seemed to understand!
O that spell it took hold on right willing feet!
To that beautiful spirit I gave my hand,
And he led me that day up the village street,
And out through the fields and the fragrant land,
And on through the pathways sweet;
Yea, still on, with a semblance of some new bliss,
Through the world he has led me from that day to this
With a tender and fair deceit.
“O for what have you wandered so far—so long?”
Said the voice that was e’en as my voice of old:
“O for what have you done to the Past such wrong?
Was there no fair dream on your own threshold?
In your childhood’s home was there no fresh song?
—Was your heart then all so cold?
Why, at length, are you weary and lone and sad,
But for casting away all the good that you had
With the peace that was yours of old?
“Have you wholly forgotten the words you said,
When you stood by a certain mound of earth,
When you vowed with your heart that that place you made
The last burial place for your love and your mirth,
For the pure past blisses you therein laid
Were surely your whole life’s worth?—
O, the angels who deck the lone graves with their tears
Have cared for this, morning and evening, for years,
But of yours there has been long dearth:
“In the pure pale sheen of a hallowed night,
When the graves are looking their holiest,
You may see it more glistering and more bright
And holier-looking than all the rest;
You may see that the dews and the stars’ strange light
Are loving that grave the best;
But, perhaps, if you went in the clear noon-day,
After so many years you might scarce find the way
Ere you tired indeed of the quest:
“For the path that leads to it is almost lost;
And quite tall grass-flowers of sickly blue
Have grown up there and gathered for years, and tost
Bitter germs all around them to grow up too;
For indeed all these years not a man has crost
That pathway—not even You!”—
But alas! for these words to my heart he sent,
For I knew it was Marguérite’s grave that he meant,
And I felt that the words were true.
Then the dim sweet faces of them of yore
Seemed to start from the mist where the memory lies;
And each one was as sweet and as dear as before;
But a piteous look was in all their eyes—
Yea, the long smile of sadness; and each one bore
A reproach in some tender wise:
Till my bosom was troubled and sorely thrilled
With the thought of them all, and my ears were filled
With a sound of the mingling of sighs.
And my heart, where the memories of them were cast
And as buried and choked in the dust of the years,
Became peopled, it seemed, with the shapes of the Past;
And the voice of my brother grew fresh in my ears:
So my dried up eyes were softened at last
To weeping some few sweet tears;
But the Man who was sitting at my fireside—
He covered his face with his hands and cried
As I did in those earlier years.
Then I faltered,—“O Spectre of my lost Youth!
All too well at thy pleading the sad thoughts wake,
With the bitter regret of the Past, and in truth
The whole love of the fair things that all men forsake;
And for this thy reproach I am filléd with ruth—
My heart seemeth nigh to break:
Ah! right gladly would I now return with thee
To those loves and those lovers, if that might be,
And be happy for their sweet sake.
“And, O Spectre that wearest my look—my face,
And art ever with them as the thought they keep
To remind them of me in the changeless place
In the changeless Past where the memories sleep,—
Do thou tell them I am not all barren of grace,
Nor have buried their love so deep,
But that now after so long toward them I yearn,
And that often the thought of them all may return,
And that often it makes me weep.”
Then, alas! I was troubled and filled with shame,
As I looked on His face and beheld him fair;
For his locks were as gold, and his eyes as a flame;
And I knew that one winter had blanched my hair,
And that surely my looks were no longer the same
As in earlier days they were:
For I feared he should mock me and tell them of this,
And that even my tears were but scant beside his.
O, this thought was a hard one to bear!
But at length I fell dreaming beneath the might
Of each spell of the Past whence I cared not to start;
And I saw Him some time by the flickering light,
As the one in my dream who was playing my part;
Till his semblance grew dim and was gone from my sight
As a dream of the Past will depart.
Then the Spirit whose beauty has led me till now,
Came and breathed a sweet breath on my feverish brow,
And the strain of this verse in my heart.
A FADING FACE.
OUT of a dim and slowly fading place
In the deep dwelling mem’ries,—as it seems,
Mingled of purple mem’ries and of dreams—
The perfect marble features of Your face
Shine and are seen: each brow is like the space
Pearly in heaven after the sun-beams;
And all the curving of the mouth still gleams
Where many a gracious smile hath left a grace;
But the eyes are within, or all too far,
Or changed now to some element of heaven
Purer and subtler than the blue they were;
They meet me not. I know not where you are;
With God most—wholly in the grave,—or even
In the remembrance of you that is here.
THE HEART’S QUESTIONS.
Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15, no. 3.
WHEN the heaven is blue,
Or the stars look down,
Or the golden crown
Glows upon the hills,—
When the sky of tears
Lets the sunlight through,
And the heart a moment thrills,
Yea, and utters too,—
Who discerns? who hears?
Who but I—and perhaps You?
When some thin thought-wave
From the shadow shore
Brings the Voice once more
From beyond the grave;
When some pain is prest
Deep into the breast,
And the inward thoughts are swords
Killing one with sadness;
Most when love is strong,
And the anguish long
Rolls up in a haste of words
Ending all in madness—
Who is he that soothes or cheers?
Who believes? who hears?
Ay, when the Heart grieves,
Pants, prays—who believes?—
Ay, when the Heart cries,
When it breaks, when it dies,—
(Ah, why was the Heart born!—)
Who shall save? who shall mourn?
BARCAROLLE.
THE stars are dimly seen among the shadows of the bay,
And lights that win are seen in strife with lights that die away:
The wave is very still—the rudder loosens in our hand,
The zephyr will not fill our sail and waft us to the land;
O precious is the pause between the winds that come and go,
And sweet the silence of the shores between the ebb and flow.
No sound but sound of rest is on the bosom of the deep,
Soft as the breathing of a breast serenely hushed with sleep:
Lay by the oar; there is a voice at heart to sing or sigh—
O what shall be the choice of barcarolle or lullaby?
Say shall we sing of day or night, fair land or mighty ocean,
Of any rapturous delight or any dear emotion,
Of any joy that is on Earth, or hope that is above—
The holy country of our birth, or any song of love?
Our heart in all our life is like the hand of one who steers
A bark upon an ocean rife with dangers and with fears;
The joys, the hopes, like waves or wings, bear up this life of ours—
Short as a song of all these things that make up all its hours.
Spread sail! for it is Hope to-day that like a wind new-risen
Doth waft us on a golden wing towards a new horizon,
That is the sun before our sight, the beacon for us burning,
That is the star in all our night of watching and of yearning.
Love is this thing that we pursue to-day, to-night, for ever,
We care not whither, know not who shall be at length the giver:
For Love,—our life and all our years are cast upon the waves;
Our heart is as the hand that steers;—but who is He that saves?
We ply with oars, we strive with every sail upon our mast—
We never tire, never fail—and Love is seen at last:
A low and purple mirage like a coast where day is breaking—
Sink sail!—for such a dream as Love is lost before the waking.
THE MINER.
BALLAD.
HO, I sing and I sing!
Digging jewels for the King;—
Till I tire of the measure
I sing and I sing:
Here’s a diamond true bright;
Here’s a ruby worth a treasure:
So I labour, and my sight
Surely fails, and I get gray
Digging jewels for the King:
I have toiled so many a day,
I have found so many a treasure,
Yet,—ah’s me!—I dare to say
That I could not earn my way
To the palace of the King.
I was a miner—doomed
With a fate branded at birth
To serve the King entombed
In this dungeon of the Earth:
They gave me a thing called Hope,
A word written in gold
On a talent—precious I’m told;
But, if I am to grope
All my life long in a mine,
What were the use at best
Of a bauble just to shine
And dangle at my breast?
So I sing, so I sing
Here’s a jewel for the King!—
Let me clear it of the rust;
Wrap the gold thing in gold dust:
’Tis a perfect bauble—see,
A truly precious thing,
Far fitter for a king
Than a prisoner like me.
A WASTED LAND.
ALAS, for a sound is heard
Of a bitterly broken song;
Grievous is every word;
And the burden is weary and long
Like the waves between ebb and flow;
And it comes when the winds are low,
Or whenever the night is nigh,
And the world hath space for a sigh.
It was in the time of fruit;
When the peach began to pout,
And the purple grape to shine,
And the leaves were a threadbare suit
For the blushing blood of the vine,
And the spoilers were about
And the viper glode at the root:
—She came, and with her hand,
With her mouth, yea, and her eyes
She hath ravaged all the land;
Its beauty shall no more rise:
She hath drawn the wine to her lip.
For a mere wanton sip:
Lo, where the vine-branch lies;
Lo, where the drained grapes drip.
Her feet left many a stain;
And her lips left many a sting;
She will never come again,
And the fruit of everything
Is a canker or a pain:
And a memory doth crouch
Like an asp,—yea, in each part
Where she hath left her touch,—
Lying in wait for the heart.
CHARMED MOMENTS.
Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 37, no. 1.
THE sky is a brilliant enamel;
The sea is a beautiful gem;
The hours are beautiful flowers
That pass, and we keep none of them;
They bear not the thing we would cherish,
Those beautiful fruitless flowers;
Each comes up to blossom and perish;
We wait, and another is ours:
We wait till the heavens above us,
The flowering earth, or the seas
Shall bring us the soul meant to love us,
And hours much sweeter than these.
How thrill we, when heavenly hushes
Come over the sea and the land!—
Soft kissings of waves among rushes,
Footfalls of a bird on the sand,
Or least little stirs in the bushes
Take hold on the heart like a hand
Arresting—we know not for what—
But little we care to withstand:
How thrill we!—We think that some Spirit
Is speaking each moment like that;—
O faint not, strained ear, till you hear it,—
Heart, break not till you understand!
A LIFE-TOMB.
THE house is haunted and rife
With Her touch behind panel and door
And her footfalls under the floor;
O the house is filled with gloom:
—Is She here dead in my life?
Am I here alive in her tomb?—
Ah fain am I still to track
And to walk along the ways
Sown with flowers by her feet;
And to gather, following back,
All the purple nights and days
She slew passing; or, half sweet,
To sit with dull eyes cast
On slowly dying embers
Of things the heart remembers
Right fair in the heart’s past,
—Till tones, that seem to start
From the shadows in the room,
Move round about the heart,
And a love-glow fills the gloom;
And her soul seems to look out
As from dim and distant eyes,
And a shade of lips to pout
With some remnant of her sighs.
And often too, in the night,
The flame in famished eyes
Re-kindles an old delight
At some dream-sight of her;
The heart with tremulous stir
Lives a moment and then dies.
THE SLAVE OF APOLLO.
“HOW shall I rid myself from thee,
Apollo? Give me leave to be
No more than flower, or wind, or thought,
—Only a fragrant memory, nought,
Or anything that’s free:
“Give me—O pitying—some power
To cease; make me a gentle shower;
A hidden fount that murmureth
In some sweet glimmer all apart
From sounds of living: give me death!
Or loose me for your love of me;
My bosom faileth and my heart
No more a prisoner will be
—Will be free!
Shall I not cry to ye aloud
O clouds! My spirit was a cloud
Like one of you,—was free, I say,
To loiter o’er the tremulous lakes
Loving, to cling upon the wane
Of every fair thing that forsakes
The light and luxury of day;
To bear me over hill and plain
Upon the winds’ unfooted way:
Ah, I was fearless then and pure;
And my sight touched all things obscure
Beneath dim masks of change or sleep:
And read the tender meanings writ
For full new heavens down in deep
Horizons, over which stood knit
The storms’ dark brows; I saw what cleaves
In the far corners of sun-smiles,
And I could send my breath for miles
Among the flowers and the leaves.
O bosom of my mother Heaven,
Was not I purer than the dew?
Was not my spirit of the leaven
Of your own high eternal blue
Unspotted by one part of earth?
O, wherefore this dull flesh that wraps
My sense in shame,—O, why this birth
Among hard human sights and mirth!
Hear now, and draw me back to you.
Call to me through the silent gaps
In some great tempest cloud above,
Steal me when, gasping in the laps
Of these that sicken me of love,
I lie and think of my lost bliss:
O can you not in one long kiss
Absorb my spirit back to you?
But thou, Apollo, who prevailest!
Hast thou made me thine envy? choosing,
Out of all creatures, me the frailest;
Me the most piteous, for the loosing
Of thy swift amorous looks like hounds
That hunt my soul—heavy and rife
With bodiless delights and sounds,
And knowledge of a goodlier life?
—O, not until some fate shall darken
This soul with death, shall any scorn
Or hate of heaven make me mute:
Rather, through hot days, will I hearken
For quick breaths panting in pursuit,
And the swift feet of some sweet fawn
Crashing among the fallen fruit:
And him—making my whole blood blush—
I will all languishing beseech,—
Crush me, O God, as thou wouldst crush
Some fire-fed fruit, some fallen peach,
Some swollen skin of purple wine;
Care not to spare me,—nor refuse me;
Take me, to use me or abuse me,
And slay me taking me for thine!—
So—till he seize me with a shout,
Tear me, and sear me with his breath;
Yea, till he tread my heart quite out,
And give me Death!
And if not Death!—
O all the night I shall be free
To steep me and to stifle me
In dew, and cool dew-dropping hair,
In every shadowy haunt and lair
Where most forgetfulness may be;
And, all on flame, my soul shall flare
Into the chillest of the dark,
And there be quenchéd, spark by spark.
To the last faintest spark of me.
I will be wasted as a spoil
On all things of the woods and winds;
Earned with no eagerness or toil
I will be for the first who finds—
A revel for mad zephyr lips,
A soft eternity of sips:
I will no sweet of mine detain;
But wholly be to them a prey,
Used lavishly or cast away
For the whole rout of them to drain.
Or I will give myself to make
Sport for the green gods of the lake;
—All fierce are they with foamy breath,
And rainbow eyes, and watery souls,
Quaint things, half deity, half snake;
—O, I shall lay me in the shoals
Of waves: or any way get Death!—
So I shall rid myself from thee,
Apollo!—So at length be free!
THE POET’S GRAVE.
IN a lonely spot that was filled with leaves,
And the wild waste plants without scent or name,
Where never a mourner came,—
That was far from the ground where the false world grieves,
And far from the shade of the church’s eaves—
They buried the Poet with thoughts of shame,
And not as one who believes.
Then the tall grass flower with lolling head,
Who is king of all flowers that twine or creep
On graves where few come to weep,
To the briar, and bindweed, and vetch, he said,
“Lo, here is a grave of the lonely dead;
Let us go up and haste while his soul may sleep,
To make the fresh earth our bed.”
Then the rootless briar and bindweed mean,
And the grovelling vetch, with the pale trefoil
That cumbers the fruitless soil,
Yea, the whole strange rout of the earth’s unclean
Went up to the grave that was fresh and green;
And together they wrought there so dense a coil
The grave was no longer seen.
But the tall mad flower whose head is crowned
With the long lax petals that fall and flap
Like the ears of a fool’s bell-cap,
He stood higher than all on the fameless mound;
And nodded his head to each passing sound,
Darting this way and that, as in sport to trap
Each laugh of the winds around.
JOHN CAMDEN HOTTEN, 74 & 75, PICCADILLY, LONDON.