There could scarcely be a truer sign of poetic power than the fidelity and finish of some of these heart-pictures. Out of many others we select two for contrast: one tracing the deep, dreary introspection of passive suffering; the other following out the subtle, restless impulses of pain with pangs. The first we take from a longer poem, "Philip and Mildred."
Dawn of day saw Philip speeding on his road to the great city,
Thinking how the stars gazed downward just with Mildred's patient eyes.
Dreams of work and fame and honor struggling with a tender pity,
Till the loving past receding saw the conquering future rise.
Daybreak still found Mildred watching, with the wonder of first sorrow,
How the outward world unaltered shone the same this very day,
How unpitying and relentless human life met this new morrow—
Earth, and sky, and man unheeding that her joy had passed away.
Then the round of weary duties, cold and formal, came to meet her,
With the life within departed that had given them each a soul;
And her sick heart even slighted gentle words that came to greet her;
For grief spread its shadowy pinions, like a blight, upon the whole.
Jar one chord, the harp is silent; move one stone, the arch is shattered;
One small clarion-cry of sorrow bids an armed host awake.
One dark cloud can hide the sunlight; loose one string, the pearls are scattered;
Think one thought, a soul may perish; say one word, a heart may break.
Life went on, the two lives running side by side, the outward seeming,
And the truer and diviner hidden in the heart and brain:
Dreams grow holy put in action, work grows fair through starry dreaming:
But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.
We hardly know which to like the better, the description itself or the moralizing. Very different, very far from moralizing, and yet even more to the life, is
A Comforter.
"Will she come to me, little Effie,
Will she come to my arms to rest,
And nestle her head on my shoulder,
While the sun goes down in the west?
"I and Effie will sit together
All alone in this great arm-chair:
Is it silly to mind it, darling,
When life is so hard to bear?
"No one comforts me like my Effie.
Just, I think, that she does not try,
Only looks with a wistful wonder
Why grown people should ever cry;
"While the little soft arms close tighter
Round my neck in their clinging hold:
Well, I must not cry on your hair, dear,
For my tears might tarnish the gold.
"I am tired of trying to read, dear;
It is worse to talk and seem gay;
There are some kinds of sorrow, Effie,
It is useless to thrust away.
"Ah! advice may be wise, my darling,
But one always knows it before;
And the reasoning down one's sorrow
Seems to make one suffer the more.
"But my Effie won't reason, will she?
Or endeavor to understand;
Only holds up her mouth to kiss me,
As she strokes my face with her hand.
"If you break your plaything yourself, dear,
Don't you cry for it all the same?
I don't think it is such a comfort,
One has only one's self to blame.
"People say things cannot be helped, dear,
But then that is the reason why;
For, if things could be helped or altered
One would never sit down to cry.
"They say, too, that tears are quite useless
To undo, amend, or restore:
When I think how useless, my Effie,
Then my tears only fall the more.
"All to-day I struggled against it,
But that does not make sorrow cease;
And now, dear, it such a comfort
To be able to cry in peace.
"Though wise people would call that folly,
And remonstrate with grave surprise,
We won't mind what they say, my Effie;
We never professed to be wise.
"But my comforter knows a lesson
Wiser, truer than all the rest,
That to help and to heal a sorrow,
Love and silence are always best.
"Well, who is my comforter tell me!
Effie smiles, but she will not speak,
Or look up through the long, curled lashes
That are shading her rosy cheek.
"Is she thinking of talking fishes,
The blue-bird, or magical tree?
Perhaps I am thinking, my darling,
Of something that never can be.
"You long, don't you, dear, for the genii,
Who were slaves of lamps and of rings?
And I—I am sometimes afraid, dear,
I want as impossible things.
"But, hark! there is nurse calling Effie!
It is bedtime, so run away;
And I must go back, or the others
Will be wondering why I stay.
"So good-night to my darling Effie;
Keep happy, sweetheart, and grow wise:
There's one kiss for her golden tresses
And two for her sleepy eyes."
We do not know where to look for anything like this. It is so graphic, so simple, so true. We, at least, never realized a scene so vividly, so minutely, with all the details we would notice if it actually happened, and not a touch beyond, unless perhaps after reading Maud Müller. The kind of force is in many respects the same, except that the woman-poet, as usual, says what the man-poet suggests of the inner life underlying. But it is excellently said, so well that one mentally declines to apply the principles of aesthetics, which would dictate Whittier's method as the more thoroughly artistic. How well the whole logic, or illogic, of that grand solace, a good cry, is given, and how natural and how sweet if one could only chance on an Effie that would not tell nurse all about it, to have a little "comforter" that would only know the grief and never care for the causes!
We have only one more poem to quote—one which we consider in many respects Miss Procter's best. If feeling, delicacy, pathos, truth, make beauty and poetry, this alone ought to entitle its author to distinction. Bare of all factitious ornament, carrying no overload of elegances, it goes straight to the heart of every mother, and strikes the deepest key-note in the organism of the world—motherhood. And it seems to us that, if all men today were to league against her memory, this poem should win her an immortality in the hearts of womankind:
Links With Heaven.
Our God in heaven, from that holy place
To each of us an angel guide has given;
But mothers of dead children have more grace,
For they give angels to their God and heaven.
How can a mother's heart feel cold or weary,
Knowing her dearer self safe, happy, warm?
How can she feel her road too dark or dreary,
Who knows her treasure sheltered from the storm?
How can she sin? Our hearts may be unheeding,
Our God forgot, our holy saints defied;
But can a mother hear her dead child pleading,
And thrust those little angel hands aside?
Those little hands stretched down to draw her ever
Nearer to God by mother love: we all
Are blind and weak, yet surely she can never,
With such a stake in heaven, fail or fall.
She knows that, when the mighty angels raise
Chorus in heaven, one little silver tone
Is hers forever; that one little praise,
One little happy voice, is all her own.
We may not see her sacred crown of honor,
But all the angels flitting to and fro
Pause smiling as they pass—they look upon her
As mother of an angel whom they know;
One whom they left nestled at Mary's feet—
The children's place in heaven—who softly sings
A little chant to please them, slow and sweet,
Or, smiling, strokes their little folded wings;
Or gives them her white lilies or her beads
To play with: yet, in spite of flower or song,
They often lift a wistful look that pleads
And asks them why their mother stays so long.
Then our dear Queen makes answer she will call
Her very soon: meanwhile they are beguiled
To wait and listen while she tells them all
A story of her Jesus as a child.
Ah! saints in heaven may pray with earnest will
And pity for their weak and erring brothers;
Yet there is prayer in heaven more tender still,
The little children pleading for their mothers.
In conclusion, we think the world will not know for a while yet how much it has lost in Adelaide Anne Procter. Her time to be missed will come when Catholic England will need to be represented in the national literature. For those who will force it into recognition, there will of necessity be strong rather than fine intellects. Then the world will turn back to her pages, and wish she were but there to represent Catholicity in England; then she will be carefully read, and, once this happens, her place is assured. And yet, even then, we can never know her as she was; for beyond almost any author we recall, Miss Procter impresses us as being far superior to her works. She is the best of examples of her own doctrine of imperfect expression. The fulness and fineness of her nature strike one from the beginning as being immeasurable by what she has written. There is something exalted and tender, rich and yet reserved, about the life which animates her poems, that interests us uncommonly. And when we come to read of her, what was her life and what its aims, and, above all, when we see how she is mourned by those who held her dear here, we recognize her for one of those rare and beautiful hearts whom God loves too well to leave us long, and conclude, in laying down these broken reflections of her spirit, that her noblest poem was herself.