MAYTIME IN MIDWINTER. A new year gleams on us, tearful And troubled and smiling dim As the smile on a lip still fearful, As glances of eyes that swim: But the bird of my heart makes cheerful The days that are bright for him. Child, how may a man’s love merit The grace you shed as you stand, The gift that is yours to inherit? Through you are the bleak days bland; Your voice is a light to my spirit; You bring the sun in your hand. The year’s wing shows not a feather As yet of the plumes to be; Yet here in the shrill grey weather The spring’s self stands at my knee, And laughs as we commune together, And lightens the world we see. The rains are as dews for the christening Of dawns that the nights benumb: The spring’s voice answers me listening For speech of a child to come, While promise of music is glistening On lips that delight keeps dumb. The mists and the storms receding At sight of you smile and die: Your eyes held wide on me reading Shed summer across the sky: Your heart shines clear for me, heeding No more of the world than I. The world, what is it to you, dear, And me, if its face be grey, And the new-born year be a shrewd year For flowers that the fierce winds fray? You smile, and the sky seems blue, dear; You laugh, and the month turns May. Love cares not for care, he has daffed her Aside as a mate for guile: The sight that my soul yearns after Feeds full my sense for awhile; Your sweet little sun-faced laughter, Your good little glad grave smile. Your hands through the bookshelves flutter; Scott, Shakespeare, Dickens, are caught; Blake’s visions, that lighten and mutter; Molière—and his smile has nought Left on it of sorrow, to utter The secret things of his thought. No grim thing written or graven But grows, if you gaze on it, bright; A lark’s note rings from the raven, And tragedy’s robe turns white; And shipwrecks drift into haven; And darkness laughs, and is light. Grief seems but a vision of madness; Life’s key-note peals from above With nought in it more of sadness Than broods on the heart of a dove: At sight of you, thought grows gladness, And life, through love of you, love.
A DOUBLE BALLAD OF AUGUST. (1884.) All Afric, winged with death and fire, Pants in our pleasant English air. Each blade of grass is tense as wire, And all the wood’s loose trembling hair Stark in the broad and breathless glare Of hours whose touch wastes herb and tree. This bright sharp death shines everywhere; Life yearns for solace toward the sea. Earth seems a corpse upon the pyre; The sun, a scourge for slaves to bear. All power to fear, all keen desire, Lies dead as dreams of days that were Before the new-born world lay bare In heaven’s wide eye, whereunder we Lie breathless till the season spare: Life yearns for solace toward the sea. Fierce hours, with ravening fangs that tire On spirit and sense, divide and share The throbs of thoughts that scarce respire, The throes of dreams that scarce forbear One mute immitigable prayer For cold perpetual sleep to be Shed snowlike on the sense of care. Life yearns for solace toward the sea. The dust of ways where men suspire Seems even the dust of death’s dim lair. But though the feverish days be dire The sea-wind rears and cheers its fair Blithe broods of babes that here and there Make the sands laugh and glow for glee With gladder flowers than gardens wear. Life yearns for solace toward the sea. The music dies not off the lyre That lets no soul alive despair. Sleep strikes not dumb the breathless choir Of waves whose note bids sorrow spare. As glad they sound, as fast they fare, As when fate’s word first set them free And gave them light and night to wear. Life yearns for solace toward the sea. For there, though night and day conspire To compass round with toil and snare And changeless whirl of change, whose gyre Draws all things deathwards unaware, The spirit of life they scourge and scare, Wild waves that follow on waves that flee Laugh, knowing that yet, though earth despair, Life yearns for solace toward the sea.
HEARTSEASE COUNTRY. TO ISABEL SWINBURNE. The far green westward heavens are bland, The far green Wiltshire downs are clear As these deep meadows hard at hand: The sight knows hardly far from near, Nor morning joy from evening cheer. In cottage garden-plots their bees Find many a fervent flower to seize And strain and drain the heart away From ripe sweet-williams and sweet-peas At every turn on every way. But gladliest seems one flower to expand Its whole sweet heart all round us here; ’Tis Heartsease Country, Pansy Land. Nor sounds nor savours harsh and drear Where engines yell and halt and veer Can vex the sense of him who sees One flower-plot midway, that for trees Has poles, and sheds all grimed or grey For bowers like those that take the breeze At every turn on every way. Content even there they smile and stand, Sweet thought’s heart-easing flowers, nor fear, With reek and roaring steam though fanned, Nor shrink nor perish as they peer. The heart’s eye holds not those more dear That glow between the lanes and leas Where’er the homeliest hand may please To bid them blossom as they may Where light approves and wind agrees At every turn on every way. Sister, the word of winds and seas Endures not as the word of these Your wayside flowers whose breath would say How hearts that love may find heart’s ease At every turn on every way.
A BALLAD OF APPEAL. TO CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI. Song wakes with every wakening year From hearts of birds that only feel Brief spring’s deciduous flower-time near: And song more strong to help or heal Shall silence worse than winter seal? From love-lit thought’s remurmuring cave The notes that rippled, wave on wave, Were clear as love, as faith were strong; And all souls blessed the soul that gave Sweet water from the well of song. All hearts bore fruit of joy to hear, All eyes felt mist upon them steal For joy’s sake, trembling toward a tear, When, loud as marriage-bells that peal, Or flutelike soft, or keen like steel, Sprang the sheer music; sharp or grave, We heard the drift of winds that drave, And saw, swept round by ghosts in throng, Dark rocks, that yielded, where they clave, Sweet water from the well of song. Blithe verse made all the dim sense clear That smiles of babbling babes conceal: Prayer’s perfect heart spake here: and here Rose notes of blameless woe and weal, More soft than this poor song’s appeal. Where orchards bask, where cornfields wave, They dropped like rains that cleanse and lave, And scattered all the year along, Like dewfall on an April grave, Sweet water from the well of song. Ballad, go bear our prayer, and crave Pardon, because thy lowlier stave Can do this plea no right, but wrong. Ask nought beside thy pardon, save Sweet water from the well of song.
CRADLE SONGS. (To a tune of Blake’s) I. Baby, baby bright, Sleep can steal from sight Little of your light: Soft as fire in dew, Still the life in you Lights your slumber through. Four white eyelids keep Fast the seal of sleep Deep as love is deep: Yet, though closed it lies, Love behind them spies Heaven in two blue eyes. II. Baby, baby dear, Earth and heaven are near Now, for heaven is here. Heaven is every place Where your flower-sweet face Fills our eyes with grace. Till your own eyes deign Earth a glance again, Earth and heaven are twain. Now your sleep is done, Shine, and show the sun Earth and heaven are one. III. Baby, baby sweet, Love’s own lips are meet Scarce to kiss your feet. Hardly love’s own ear, When your laugh crows clear, Quite deserves to hear. Hardly love’s own wile, Though it please awhile, Quite deserves your smile. Baby full of grace, Bless us yet a space: Sleep will come apace. IV. Baby, baby true, Man, whate’er he do, May deceive not you. Smiles whose love is guile, Worn a flattering while, Win from you no smile. One, the smile alone Out of love’s heart grown, Ever wins your own. Man, a dunce uncouth, Errs in age and youth: Babies know the truth. V. Baby, baby fair, Love is fain to dare Bless your haughtiest air. Baby blithe and bland, Reach but forth a hand None may dare withstand; Love, though wellnigh cowed, Yet would praise aloud Pride so sweetly proud. No! the fitting word Even from breeze or bird Never yet was heard. VI. Baby, baby kind, Though no word we find, Bear us yet in mind. Half a little hour, Baby bright in bower, Keep this thought aflower— Love it is, I see, Here with heart and knee Bows and worships me. What can baby do, Then, for love so true?— Let it worship you. VII. Baby, baby wise, Love’s divine surmise Lights your constant eyes. Day and night and day One mute word would they, As the soul saith, say. Trouble comes and goes; Wonder ebbs and flows; Love remains and glows. As the fledgeling dove Feels the breast above, So your heart feels love.
PELAGIUS. I. The sea shall praise him and the shores bear part That reared him when the bright south world was black With fume of creeds more foul than hell’s own rack, Still darkening more love’s face with loveless art Since Paul, faith’s fervent Antichrist, of heart Heroic, haled the world vehemently back From Christ’s pure path on dire Jehovah’s track, And said to dark Elisha’s Lord, ‘Thou art.’ But one whose soul had put the raiment on Of love that Jesus left with James and John Withstood that Lord whose seals of love were lies, Seeing what we see—how, touched by Truth’s bright rod, The fiend whom Jews and Africans called God Feels his own hell take hold on him, and dies. II. The world has no such flower in any land, And no such pearl in any gulf the sea, As any babe on any mother’s knee. But all things blessed of men by saints are banned: God gives them grace to read and understand The palimpsest of evil, writ where we, Poor fools and lovers but of love, can see Nought save a blessing signed by Love’s own hand. The smile that opens heaven on us for them Hath sin’s transmitted birthmark hid therein: The kiss it craves calls down from heaven a rod. If innocence be sin that Gods condemn, Praise we the men who so being born in sin First dared the doom and broke the bonds of God. III. Man’s heel is on the Almighty’s neck who said, Let there be hell, and there was hell—on earth. But not for that may men forget their worth— Nay, but much more remember them—who led The living first from dwellings of the dead, And rent the cerecloths that were wont to engirth Souls wrapped and swathed and swaddled from their birth With lies that bound them fast from heel to head. Among the tombs when wise men all their lives Dwelt, and cried out, and cut themselves with knives, These men, being foolish, and of saints abhorred, Beheld in heaven the sun by saints reviled, Love, and on earth one everlasting Lord In every likeness of a little child.
LOUIS BLANC. THREE SONNETS TO HIS MEMORY. I. The stainless soul that smiled through glorious eyes; The bright grave brow whereon dark fortune’s blast Might blow, but might not bend it, nor o’ercast, Save for one fierce fleet hour of shame, the skies Thrilled with warm dreams of worthier days to rise And end the whole world’s winter; here at last, If death be death, have passed into the past; If death be life, live, though their semblance dies. Hope and high faith inviolate of distrust Shone strong as life inviolate of the grave Through each bright word and lineament serene. Most loving righteousness and love most just Crowned, as day crowns the dawn-enkindled wave, With visible aureole thine unfaltering mien. II. Strong time and fire-swift change, with lightnings clad And shod with thunders of reverberate years, Have filled with light and sound of hopes and fears The space of many a season, since I had Grace of good hap to make my spirit glad, Once communing with thine: and memory hears The bright voice yet that then rejoiced mine ears, Sees yet the light of eyes that spake, and bade Fear not, but hope, though then time’s heart were weak And heaven by hell shade-stricken, and the range Of high-born hope made questionable and strange As twilight trembling till the sunlight speak. Thou sawest the sunrise and the storm in one Break: seest thou now the storm-compelling sun? III. Surely thou seest, O spirit of light and fire, Surely thou canst not choose, O soul, but see The days whose dayspring was beheld of thee Ere eyes less pure might have their hope’s desire, Beholding life in heaven again respire Where men saw nought that was or was to be, Save only death imperial. Thou and he Who has the heart of all men’s hearts for lyre, Ye twain, being great of spirit as time is great, And sure of sight as truth’s own heavenward eye, Beheld the forms of forces passing by And certitude of equal-balanced fate, Whose breath forefelt makes darkness palpitate, And knew that light should live and darkness die.
VOS DEOS LAUDAMUS: THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNALIST’S ANTHEM. ‘As a matter of fact, no man living, or who ever lived—not Cæsar or Pericles, not Shakespeare or Michael Angelo—could confer honour more than he took on entering the House of Lords.’—Saturday Review, December 15, 1883. ‘Clumsy and shallow snobbery—can do no hurt.’—Ibid. I. O Lords our Gods, beneficent, sublime, In the evening, and before the morning flames, We praise, we bless, we magnify your names. The slave is he that serves not; his the crime And shame, who hails not as the crown of Time That House wherein the all-envious world acclaims Such glory that the reflex of it shames All crowns bestowed of men for prose or rhyme. The serf, the cur, the sycophant is he Who feels no cringing motion twitch his knee When from a height too high for Shakespeare nods The wearer of a higher than Milton’s crown. Stoop, Chaucer, stoop: Keats, Shelley, Burns, bow down: These have no part with you, O Lords our Gods. II. O Lords our Gods, it is not that ye sit Serene above the thunder, and exempt From strife of tongues and casualties that tempt Men merely found by proof of manhood fit For service of their fellows: this is it Which sets you past the reach of Time’s attempt, Which gives us right of justified contempt For commonwealths built up by mere men’s wit: That gold unlocks not, nor may flatteries ope, The portals of your heaven; that none may hope With you to watch how life beneath you plods, Save for high service given, high duty done; That never was your rank ignobly won: For this we give you praise, O Lords our Gods. III. O Lords our Gods, the times are evil: you Redeem the time, because of evil days. While abject souls in servitude of praise Bow down to heads untitled, and the crew Whose honour dwells but in the deeds they do, From loftier hearts your nobler servants raise More manful salutation: yours are bays That not the dawn’s plebeian pearls bedew; Yours, laurels plucked not of such hands as wove Old age its chaplet in Colonos’ grove. Our time, with heaven and with itself at odds, Makes all lands else as seas that seethe and boil; But yours are yet the corn and wine and oil, And yours our worship yet, O Lords our Gods. December 15.
ON THE BICENTENARY OF CORNEILLE, CELEBRATED UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF VICTOR HUGO. Scarce two hundred years are gone, and the world is past away As a noise of brawling wind, as a flash of breaking foam, That beheld the singer born who raised up the dead of Rome; And a mightier now than he bids him too rise up to-day, All the dim great age is dust, and its king is tombless clay, But its loftier laurel green as in living eyes it clomb, And his memory whom it crowned hath his people’s heart for home, And the shade across it falls of a lordlier-flowering bay. Stately shapes about the tomb of their mighty maker pace, Heads of high-plumed Spaniards shine, souls revive of Roman race, Sound of arms and words of wail through the glowing darkness rise, Speech of hearts heroic rings forth of lips that know not breath, And the light of thoughts august fills the pride of kindling eyes Whence of yore the spell of song drove the shadow of darkling death.
IN SEPULCRETIS. ‘Vidistis ipso rapere de rogo cœnam.’—Catullus, LIX. 3. ‘To publish even one line of an author which he himself has not intended for the public at large—especially letters which are addressed to private persons—is to commit a despicable act of felony.’—Heine. I. It is not then enough that men who give The best gifts given of man to man should feel, Alive, a snake’s head ever at their heel: Small hurt the worms may do them while they live— Such hurt as scorn for scorn’s sake may forgive. But now, when death and fame have set one seal On tombs whereat Love, Grief, and Glory kneel, Men sift all secrets, in their critic sieve, Of graves wherein the dust of death might shrink To know what tongues defile the dead man’s name With loathsome love, and praise that stings like shame. Rest once was theirs, who had crossed the mortal brink: No rest, no reverence now: dull fools undress Death’s holiest shrine, life’s veriest nakedness. II. A man was born, sang, suffered, loved, and died. Men scorned him living: let us praise him dead. His life was brief and bitter, gently led And proudly, but with pure and blameless pride. He wrought no wrong toward any; satisfied With love and labour, whence our souls are fed With largesse yet of living wine and bread. Come, let us praise him: here is nought to hide. Make bare the poor dead secrets of his heart, Strip the stark-naked soul, that all may peer, Spy, smirk, sniff, snap, snort, snivel, snarl, and sneer: Let none so sad, let none so sacred part Lie still for pity, rest unstirred for shame, But all be scanned of all men. This is fame. III. ‘Now, what a thing it is to be an ass!’1 If one, that strutted up the brawling streets As foreman of the flock whose concourse greets Men’s ears with bray more dissonant than brass, Would change from blame to praise as coarse and crass His natural note, and learn the fawning feats Of lapdogs, who but knows what luck he meets? But all in vain old fable holds her glass. Mocked and reviled by men of poisonous breath, A great man dies: but one thing worst was spared, Not all his heart by their base hands lay bared. One comes to crown with praise the dust of death; And lo, through him this worst is brought to pass. Now, what a thing it is to be an ass! 1 Titus Andronicus, Act iv., Scene 2. IV. Shame, such as never yet dealt heavier stroke On heads more shameful, fall on theirs through whom Dead men may keep inviolate not their tomb, But all its depths these ravenous grave-worms choke And yet what waste of wrath were this, to invoke Shame on the shameless? Even their twin-born doom, Their native air of life, a carrion fume, Their natural breath of love, a noisome smoke, The bread they break, the cup whereof they drink, The record whose remembrance damns their name, Smells, tastes, and sounds of nothing but of shame. If thankfulness nor pity bids them think What work is this of theirs, and pause betimes, Not Shakespeare’s grave would scare them off with rhymes.