"Unspiritual Civilization.
"We have been piping, Lord; we have been singing!
Five hundred years have passed o'er lawn and lea
Marked by the blowing bud and falling tree,
While all the ways with melody were ringing:
In tented lists, high-stationed and flower-flinging
Beauty looked down on conquering chivalry;
Science made wise the nations; Laws made free;
Art, like an angel ever onward winging,
Brightened the world. But O great Lord and Father!
Have these, thy bounties, drawn to thee man's race
That stood so far aloof? Have they not rather
His soul subjected? with a blind embrace
Gulfed it in sense? Prime blessings changed to curse
Twixt God and man can set God's universe."
Better, perhaps, than either of these, as combining the best qualities of both, is the one on
"Common Life.
"Onward between two mountain warders lies
The field that man must till. Upon the right,
Church-thronged, with summit hid by its own height,
Swells the wide range of the theologies:
Upon the left the hills of science rise
Lustrous but cold: nor flower is there, nor blight:
Between those ranges twain through shade and light
Winds the low vale wherein the meek and wise
Repose. The knowledge that excludes not doubt
Is there; the arts that beautify man's life:
There rings the choral psalm, the civic shout,
The genial revel, and the manly strife:
There by the bridal rose the cypress waves:
And there the all-blest sunshine softest falls on graves."
This is, we think, one of the author's very best. It evolves a happy allegory very neatly with a happy description, to express a thought too large, it is true, for development in such brief space, but highly suggestive. The question, how far wisdom lies in action, may be raised in a sonnet, and remain unsettled by a thousand treatises.
Several versions from Petrarch's sonnets are admirable, and serve to confirm our already expressed opinion that Mr. De Vere could give us excellent translations.
Perhaps, however, readers of our author will be most interested by the following, which is in an altogether different vein from the general run of these sonnets, and indeed is perhaps rather a curious subject for a sonnet to be made about at all. Still there is no accounting for these poets. Here it is, with all its oddities upon its head:
"A Warning.
"Why, if he loves you, lady, doth he hide
His love? So humble is he that his heart
Exults not in some sense of new desert
With all thy grace and goodness at his side?
Ah! trust not thou the love that hath no pride,
The pride wherein compunction claims no part,
The callous calm no doubts confuse or thwart,
The untrembling hope, and joy unsanctified!
He of your beauty prates without remorse;
You dropped last night a lily; on the sod
He let it lie, and fade in nature's course;
He looks not on the ground your feet have trod.
He smiles but with the lips, your form in view;
And he will kiss one day your lips—not you."
Where did our pious philosopher, of all men, learn to discourse thus sagely and plainly of the uncertainty of all things amorous? We think he makes a very good case, and only add our emphatic indorsement, if that can serve the young lady, and join in warning her to find a warmer lover, unless the untrembling and unsanctifled is very, very handsome, in which case we know better than to advise her at all.
The next particularly good piece is the opening one of a miscellany, and is called
"The World's Work.
"Where is the brightness now that long
Brimmed saddest hearts with happy tears?
It was not time that wrought the wrong:
Thy three and twenty vanquished years
Crouched reverent, round their spotless prize,
Like lions awed that spare a saint;
Forbore that face—a paradise
No touch autumnal ere could taint.
"It was not sorrow. Prosperous love
Her amplest streams for thee poured forth,
As when the spring in some rich grove
With blue-bells spreads a sky on earth. Subverted Virtue! They the most
Lament, that seldom deign to sigh;
O world! is this fair wreck thy boast?
Is this thy triumph, vanity?
"What power is that which, being nought,
Can unmake stateliest works of God?
What brainless thing can vanquish thought?
What heartless, leave the heart a clod?
The radiance quench, yet add the glare?
Dry up the flood; make loud the shoal!
And merciless in malice, spare
That mask, a face without a soul?
"Ah! Parian brows that overshone
Eyes bluer than Egean seas!
One time God's glory wrote thereon
Good-will's two gospels, love and peace.
Ah! smile. Around those lips of hers
The lustre rippled and was still,
As when a gold leaf falling stirs
A moment's tremor on the rill!"