Lost to the Church and deaf to me, this town
Yet wears a reverend garniture of peace.
Set in a land of trade, like Gideon's fleece
Bedewed where all is dry; the Pope may frown;
But, if this city is the shrine of youth,
How shall the Preacher lord of virgin souls,
When by glad streams and laughing lawns he strolls,
How can he bless them not? Yet in sad sooth,
When I would love these English gownsmen, sighs
Heave my frail breast, and weakness dims mine eyes.
These strangers heed me not. Far off in France
Are young men not so fair, and not so cold,
My listeners. Were they here, their greeting glance
Might charm me to forget that I were old.
1863.
A RETROSPECT OF SCHOOL LIFE
I go, and men who know me not,
When I am reckoned man, will ask,
"What is it then that thou hast got
By drudging through that five-year task?
"What knowledge or what art is thine?
Set out thy stock, thy craft declare."
Then this child-answer shall be mine,
"I only know they loved me there."
There courteous strivings with my peers,
And duties not bound up in books,
And courage fanned by stormy cheers,
And wisdom writ in pleasant looks,
And hardship buoyed with hope, and pain
Encountered for the common weal,
And glories void of vulgar gain,
Were mine to take, were mine to feel.
Nor from Apollo did I shrink
Like Titans chained; but sweet and low
Whispered the Nymphs, who seldom think:
"Up, up for action, run and row!"
He let me, though his smile was grave,
Seek an Egeria out of town
Beneath the chestnuts; he forgave;
And should the jealous Muses frown?
Fieldward some remnants of their lore
Went with me, as the rhymes of Gray
Annealed the heart of Wolfe for war
When drifting on his starlit way.
Much lost I; something stayed behind,
A snatch, maybe, of ancient song;
Some breathings of a deathless mind,
Some love of truth, some hate of wrong.
And to myself in games I said,
"What mean the books? Can I win fame?
I would be like the faithful dead
A fearless man, and pure of blame.
I may have failed, my School may fail;
I tremble, but thus much I dare;
I love her. Let the critics rail,
My brethren and my home are there.
July 28th, 1863.
CLOVELLY BEACH
Oh, music! breathe me something old to-day,
Some fine air gliding in from far away,
Through to the soul that lies behind the clay.
This hour, if thou did'st ever speak before,
Speak in the wave that sobs upon the shore,
Speak in the rill that trickles from the moor.
Known was this sea's slow chant when I was young;
To me these rivulets sing as once they sung,
No need this hour of human throat and tongue.
The Dead who loved me heard this selfsame tide.
Oh that the Dead were listening by my side,
And I could give the fondness then denied.
Once in the parlour of my mother's sire
One sang, "And ye shall walk in silk attire."
Then my cold childhood woke to strange desire.
That was an unconfessed and idle spell,
A drop of dew that on a blossom fell;
And what it wrought I cannot surely tell.
Far off that thought and changed, like lines that stay
On withered canvas, pink and pearly grey,
When rose and violet hues have passed away.
Oh, had I dwelt with music since that night!
What life but that is life, what other flight
Escapes the plaguing doubts of wrong and right!
Oh music! once I felt the touch of thee,
Once when this soul was as the chainless sea.
Oh, could'st thou bid me even now be free!
April, 1865.
AN EPOCH IN A SWEET LIFE
This sun, whose javelins strike and gild the wheat,
Who gives the nectarine half an orb of bloom,
Burns on my life no less, and beat by beat
Shapes that grave hour when boyhood hears her
doom.
Between this glow of pious eve and me,
Lost moments, thick as clouds of summer flies,
Specks of old time, which else one could not see,
Made manifest in the windless calm, arise.
Streaks fairy green are traced on backward ways,
Through vacant regions lightly overleapt,
With pauses, where in soft pathetic haze
Are phantoms of the joys that died unwept.
Seven years since one, who bore with me the yoke
Of household schooling, missed me from her side.
When called away from sorrowing woman folk
A prouder task with brothers twain I plied.
I came a child, and home was round me still,
No terror snapt the silken cord of trust;
My accents changed not, and the low "I will"
Silenced like halcyon plumes the loud "you must."
I lisped my Latin underneath the gloom
Of timbers dark as frowning usher's looks,
Where thought would stray beyond that sordid room
To saucy chessmen and to feathered hooks.
And soon I sat below my grandsire's bust,
Which in the school he loved not deigns to stand,
That Earl, who forced his compeers to be just,
And wrought in brave old age what youth had
planned.
But no ancestral majesties could fix
The wistful eye, which fell, and fondly read,
Fresh carven on the panel, letters six,
A brother's name, more sacred than the dead.
How far too sweet for school he seemed to me,
How ripe for combat with the wits of men,
How childlike in his manhood! Can it be?
Can I indeed be now what he was then?
He past from sight; my laughing life remained
Like merry waves that ripple to the bank,
Curved round the spot where longing eyes are strained,
Because beneath the lake a treasure sank.
Dear as the token of a loss to some,
And praised for likeness, this was well; and yet
'Twas better still that younger friends should come,
Whose love might grow entwined with no regret.
They came; and one was of a northern race,
Who bore the island galley on his shield,
Grand histories on his name, and in his face
A bright soul's ardour fearlessly revealed.
We trifled, toiled, and feasted, far apart
From churls, who wondered what our friendship
meant;
And in that coy retirement heart to heart
Drew closer, and our natures were content.
My noblest playmate lost, I still withdrew
From dull excitement which the Graces dread,
And talked in saunterings with the gentle few
Of tunes we practised, and of rhymes we read.
We swam through twilight waters, or we played
Like spellbound captives in the Naiad's grot;
Coquetted with the oar, and wooed the shade
On dainty banks of shy forget-me-not.
Oh Thames! my memories bloom with all thy flowers,
Thy kindness sighs to me from every tree:
Farewell I I thank thee for the frolic hours,
I bid thee, whilst thou flowest, speak of me.
July 28th, 1864.