He too, in deeper lore
Than woman’s in those early days, or yet,—
Train’d step by step his youthful Margaret;
The wonders of that amaranthine store
Which Hellas and Hesperia evermore
Lavish, to strengthen and refine the race:—
For, in his large embrace,
The light of faith with that new light combined
To purify the mind:—
A crystal soul, a heart without disguise,
All wisdom’s lover, and through love, all-wise.
—O face she ne’er will see,—
Gray eyes, and careless hair, and mobile lips
From which the shaft of kindly satire slips
Healing its wound with human sympathy;
The heart-deep smile; the tear-concealing glee!
O well-known furrows of the reverend brow!
Familiar voice, that now
She will not hear nor answer any more,—
Till on the better shore
Where love completes the love in life begun,
And smooths and knits our ravell’d skein in one!
Blest soul, who through life’s course
Didst keep the young child’s heart unstain’d and whole,
To find again the cradle at the goal,
Like some fair stream returning to its source;—
Ill fall’n on days of falsehood, greed, and force!
Base days, that win the plaudits of the base,
Writ to their own disgrace,
With casuist sneer o’erglossing works of blood,
Miscalling evil, good;
Before some despot-hero falsely named
Grovelling in shameful worship unashamed.
—But they of the great race
Look equably, not caring much, on foe
And fame and misesteem of man below;
And with forgiving radiance on their face,
And eyes that aim beyond the bourn of space,
Seeing the invisible, glory-clad, go up
And drink the absinthine cup,
Fill’d nectar-deep by the dear love of Him
Slain at Jerusalem
To free them from a tyrant worse than this,
Changing brief anguish for the heart of bliss.
Envoy
—O moaning stream of Time,
Heavy with hate and sin and wrong and woe
As ocean-ward dost go,
Thou also hast thy treasures!—Life, sublime
In its own sweet simplicity:—life for love:
Heroic martyr-death:—
Man sees them not: but they are seen above.
One in black array; Sir T. More’s daughter, Margaret Roper.
That Hall; Westminster, where More was tried: That other place; Tower Hill.
The vision of her girlhood; More taught his own children, and was like a child with them. He ‘would take grave scholars and statesmen into the garden to see his girls’ rabbit-hutches. . . . I have given you kisses enough, he wrote to his little ones, but stripes hardly ever’: (Green, B. V: ch. ii).
The wonders; See first note to Grocyn at Oxford.