And that mighty Judgment-vision
Tells how man essayed to climb
Up the ladder of the ages,
Past the frontier-walls of Time;
Heard the trumpet-echoes rolling
Through the phantom-peopled sky,
And the still voice bid this mortal
Put on immortality.
* * *
Thence we turned, what time the blackbird
Pipes to vespers from his perch,
And from out the clattering city
Pass’d into the silent church;
Marked the shower of sunlight breaking
Thro’ the crimson panes o’erhead,
And on pictured wall and window
Read the histories of the dead:
Till the kneelers round us, rising,
Cross’d their foreheads and were gone;
And o’er aisle and arch and cornice,
Layer on layer, the night came on.
CHARADES.
I.
She stood at Greenwich, motionless amid
The ever-shifting crowd of passengers.
I marked a big tear quivering on the lid
Of her deep-lustrous eye, and knew that hers
Were days of bitterness. But, “Oh! what stirs”
I said “such storm within so fair a breast?”
Even as I spoke, two apoplectic curs
Came feebly up: with one wild cry she prest
Each singly to her heart, and faltered, “Heaven be blest!”
Yet once again I saw her, from the deck
Of a black ship that steamed towards Blackwall.
She walked upon my first. Her stately neck
Bent o’er an object shrouded in her shawl:
I could not see the tears—the glad tears—fall,
Yet knew they fell. And “Ah,” I said, “not puppies,
Seen unexpectedly, could lift the pall
From hearts who know what tasting misery’s cup is,
As Niobe’s, or mine, or Mr. William Guppy’s.”