DE PROFUNDIS. - A Pocketful of Poesy.

 

A Pocketful of Poesy.

—

TO QUEEN ELIZABETH II.
(Upon the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee.)

Our gracious Queen has reigned for more
Than ever sovereign reigned before,
Than any man in office stayed
Or any man in work was paid.
Let not then we with cause to praise
Restrain ourselves in ruling days,
But rather wax and laud our pride,
Laying unworthiness aside.
For this country of ours will not,
Acknowledging its shifting lot,
See once again such deference,
Though happy has it reference,
To dignity of rule, still yet
To duty which could but beget
An admiration deepest sprung,
A loyalty in old and young,
Which dying not will yet maintain
The virtues of a cherished reign,
Till none but one alive recalls
That kindly queen through kingly rules,
That lovely face and noblest look,
Which ever gave and never took.
   Depend upon it royalty,
And with it English loyalty,
Will last as past through sternest days
Will last, despite our feckless ways,
And guide old England further still,
Further forth! and further till
A perfect nation floats beside
Both worlds, and faces highest tide.
And will not be deterred in fights
Which threaten constitutional rights;
And will not shirk at Effort’s call,
Nor will those in Westminster Hall;
And bows its head to Glorious Dead
And acts and follows in their stead;
And falls upon a single knee
In presence of its Royalty;
And squares to all of Freedom’s foes,
And, perishing, to Legend goes.
So would it die a noble death
And honour Queen Elizabeth!

 —

TO KING CHARLES III.

By God appointed is our King,
   For Providence on earth is seen
In every mortal happening
   And so in Britain's King and Queen;

They represent for us the height,
   The utmost artistry, of rule,
Devoid of altercating spite,
   And of the parliamentary fool.

O happy isles! twice happy realms
   That still acknowledge such a crown,
Whose pageantry quite overwhelms
   The smirk, the grimace, and the frown.

Descended worth and glory gild
   The royal persons in our eyes,
That, seeing them, the tongue is stilled
   And patriotic fervours rise.

Wise King, possessor of the blood
   That ran through Alfred's gentle veins
We would defend you in the mud,
   And through the lashing winds and rains.

Britain herself ennobled bears
   The orb and sceptre through your hands,
And on her honour wholly swears
   To serve you as you serve your lands;

Thus we rejoice to see you well,
   As seeing history in its spring,
And would with fulsome voices tell,
   As we are true, God save the King!

— 

A PRAYER FOR THE HEALTH OF THE KING AND HIS FAMILY.

O God, mainspring of nourishment,

   Whose crystal fountains cleanse,

Whose lights enrich the firmament,

   Whose touch all harm suspends;

And in whose Providence we live

   With gratitude to pray,

For all Thy godly bounties give

   To render thanks alway;

A country prays in solemn will,

   With trust and faith in plight

That every passing cloud of ill

   Should vanish at Thy sight,

And that the King, our Sovereign Lord,

   With all His Royal kin,

Should by Thy grace be so restored,

   Refreshed and furnished in

The many blessings of Thy name,

   Their people so to touch,

For we who profit by their fame

   Would suffer twice as much

To see them hued again in health,

   To see them gladsome shine

In dignity and manners' wealth,

   The glories of their line;

And therefore Lord, by night and day,

   By starlight, sun, and snow,

Fond hearts with one accord will pray

   Our nation Thee to know.

Amen.

—

TO MY MOTHER.
(Upon her birthday.)

As close to mothers is there yet

A state, a purpose, better set?

Or close to giving could there be

A higher pledge of fealty

Than that which tasks a mother to

Raise a life and nurse it through

The ravages of extant self,

The frailties of helpless health,

Till happily the child it grows,

And, caring nought, away it goes?

O I myself bereave my fate!

I cannot bear to derogate

My mother whom, upon this day,

I wish as well as wishes may,

And whom, though hardly it redeem,

I give my thanks and heart's esteem.

— 

TO BETTY.

I cannot dream except that tears

Must drench me in unstinted grief

That I must carry on for years

Without your company’s relief;

 

How can I even bear to see

Another person on this earth,

When that they all are dismally

Compared to your outstanding worth?

 

Nor can I suffer once to stay

And think of all I loved in you,

For sorrow drains my blood away

And bids me nothing say nor do;

 

The sky has lost its stars, the sun

No more will rise up in the east,

Or else I am made blind for none

Can light me in the very least;

 

No light is theirs to me as yours,

No warmth, no guidance, nothing true,

My heart their presence all abhors

That they should be instead of you!

 

O Betty! If across the rift

Of death and time you dimly hear

My cries, send me your blessing, lift

My soul from out this doleful year;

 

I miss you as I never missed

A thing before, not food nor health;

A final kiss on you I kissed

And kept the earth, but lost myself.

 

You have departed, so have I,

I tarry but for habit’s sake,

And if to see you I must die,

Then may I not to-morrow wake.

 

 —

TALKERS AND THINKERS.

Some talkers think to talk,
Some thinkers talk to think,
Some talking thinkers, lured by talk,
Receive the talkers’ wink;

Some talkers talk of thinkers,
If thinkers talk of talking,
And talk of over-thinking thinkers
Musing, humming, baulking;

Some thinkers think the talkers
A thoughtless talking lot,
And talk of thinking talking nothing
More than merest rot;

Some thinking talkers ask
The thoughts of talking thinkers,
And hear and laugh and think their talk
The talk of trav’lling tinkers;

And some will up and say:
‘If thinkers had their way-
We all would sit and think all day-
So good old talk would die away-
Now raise a good and stout hurray!
To talking and all talkers!’

But some will silent wonder,
For many talk and blunder,
And postulate,
And contemplate,
And tear good talk asunder.

Some too will laugh and scorn,
And, hearing talkers, yawn,
And say with glee:
They talk as free
As doers rage and fawn;

Some thinkers act to talk,
Some talkers think to act,
But none at least is quite the beast
A doer is in fact. 

—

THE RIDDLE.

What seeks to kill itself to thrive,
And seems extinct when most alive?
What to keep have all men striven,
Yet despised and freely given?
What makes revelling and sadness,
Wit, and cleverness, and madness?
What is best when first apparent,
Most opaque when most transparent?
What induces intuition,
Loyalty, and rank suspicion?
What in short prevents you knowing
What this riddle most is showing?

 

THE ANSWER.

Ignorance.

— 

A MOURNFUL FACT.

It is a mournful fact
   That beings with a mind

Endowed to think ahead

   Must stare so oft behind;

As though by staring more
   A sight should come to please,

Which never pleased before

   Nor contributed ease.

—

ON ST. MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL'S CHURCH, BOOTON.

 

Let quiet summer settle on its stones

   And fanning breezes cause its trees to stir,

When sky and land compete their vibrant tones,

   When grass is growing soft and thick as fur;

 

Then should I sit to hear the humming flights

   Of mayflies in crossing this blessed ground

And list all day to musical delights,

   Fair Nature's glad experiments with sound;

 

Those thin and tapered towers stand so well,

   With grandeur unimposing, tall and slight,

And elegantly like a Juno belle,

   Self-conscious but magnificent in height;

 

Such undemanding beauty charms the soul,

   Sequestered from the chance of vain intents,

It rests but in itself, sufficient, whole,

   Much greater in sum than its elements.

 

And though not by crowds onlooking to crave

   The wonderment awe of a thousand eyes,

What company that church for every grave!

   What rapture to the blue anointing skies!

 

Which sleep by night, in moonlight sometime lit,

   Those gallic spires in silhouette divine,

Look up to watch a falling star emit

   Its magic tail of light so brightly shine;

 

Thus stands in dignified and strong array

   A plot of human worship to the view

Revealing, never telling, night and day,

   The scale of God is old and ever new;

 

By dawn the sun's long streamers pierce the scene,

   Through those Saracen arches quickly dart

Two of Apollo's lighted arrows keen,

   And soon the morning breaks in natural art;

 

The atmospheric blue is sunned in red,

   And tinted clouds resemble phoenix forms,

The gothic church stands tall unwearied,

   But feels the light and in its glory warms;

 

Again draws on the drowsy noon, there stoop

   This time a couple on the wooden bench

In peace to drink of their vichyssoise soup,

   The bread to nourish, the liquid to quench;

 

They gaze in contented stillness, they hear

   The crickets sounding, the birdsong in flow,

They notice the spirelets tops appear,

   And gladdened but saddened they turn to go;

 

I often feel the translations of sense,

   I have heard these scenes in music before,

I have tread the past in the future tense,

   And smelled in scents all my vision first saw;

 

Such sites stride gulfs, these timeless regions trace

   Æras and centuries, and stir we know not,

Eternity's history in time and space

   Infinity's ways in a sacred spot;

 

Do not dash it from my looking you Fates,

   You intemperate changelings, stay your hands!

The freedom of perfect wisdom awaits,

   For knowledge collates, but faith understands;

As wings unfurl, not presuming, it trusts,

   Partakes the gale, poised in balance, and soars,

Not seeing but feeling the varied gusts,

   It travels to countless kingdoms and shores;

 

And last of all shores, of none but the last

   To be taken up in our mortal ken,

Death, carried on life, and a district passed,

   The refiguration of form in men.

 

Reduction carry the spirit streaming

   From the pores of the broken body's flesh,

And falls out of dreams that e'er was dreaming,

   The essence of life abidingly fresh.

 

But why should temples be wrought to mystery?

   Or why should mere beauty have existence?

For present value is formed in history,

   For love itself causes love's persistence;

 

But see each star is dim by night to me

   When life is waning like the moon on high,

When hope is an endlessly ebbing sea,

   And truth a cynical strain of a lie;

 

Thus the generative object of God,

   As a sun causes heat, faith manifests,

As heights gather awe, as lightning a rod,

   Justifies purpose and disbelief tests.

 —

DELIBERATION.

In sympathy of the dead

Are we born and were we bred,

But to live a little longer

Will we make ourselves grow stronger,

Though we weaken as we age,

And each day another page

Is folded down and passed

For the die is surely cast,

And a decade thaws like ice

Firstly once and lately twice,

Then three times, four and five,

Are we aged but kept alive.

In a hopeless mood the lot

Seems a pointless dream forgot,

In a happy mood it looks

Like the best of treasured books.

What remains within the border

Of emotions' high disorder

Is the sense that life is leading,

And is ever closely heeding,

Out a purpose hid in sight

Dark in dark and dark in light,

That we are not all in vain

Seeking joy but feeling pain.

 

 — 

INSOMNIA.

 

To-night again is sleepless,

   No rest to-night again,

No slumber deep and dreamless

   Shall sweep me in its train;

 

No perfect rest shall stroke me

   As with a mother's hand

Or hush me, lull me gently,

   Away - away from land.

 

The night is strange as ever

   Its noises seem to say

'Ye are awake but never

   Alone, ye silent stray.'

 

Well, be it so, a semblance

   Of courage still resides

Within me, and an essence

   Of faith as yet abides;

 

So let me think of starlight,

   Of regions I have trod,

And of each stunning sight,

   In which I notice God.

 

 — 

DESPONDENCY.

The clouds are gathering fast,

The clouds are gathering fast.

We will not see again these shores

   Full many a year, for many a cause,

      Till fears are scudding past,

For clouds are gathering fast.

 

The clouds are gathering fast,

The clouds are gathering fast.

Sometime we start as from a dream

   And all we see doth different seem,

      A hint of Truth, a glint, a gleam,

Which soon is overcast,

For clouds are gathering fast.

 

The clouds are gathering fast,

The clouds are gathering fast.

   See every plant shrink and retire,         

      Our hearts sink lower, the winds roar higher,

So strap we to a mast!

For clouds are gathering fast.

 

The clouds are gathering fast,

The clouds are gathering fast.

   There is no more to say, nor less,

      There is no fruit from sore distress,

         Nor is there aught from happiness.

Is nothing made to last?

For clouds are gathering fast.

 

 — 

A ROMANTIC AIR.

As when the dawning sun extends
   Her amber limbs across the sky
And night's tyrannic reign suspends
   By whole appeal upon the eye,
So is a lady fair to see
For all who stay to near her be.

As when a wave surmounts a wall
   And scatters in a passing spray
That like a sunny waterfall
   Must sparkle with the light of day,
So is a lady fair to see
For all who stray to near her be.

As when the crystal snow has lain
   All night upon the sleepy town
And makes its dwellers look again
   At such an earth in such a gown,
So is a lady fair to see
For all who pray to near her be.

As when the harp is plucked by hands
   With knowledge of a moving song,
That every hearer understands
   And swiftly learns to sing along,

So is a lady fair to see,

Whom all must love and near her be.

  —

ARMISTICE DAY.

Only Britain, constant in all twelve years,

   From the first to the last fought each Great War,

Though bled by the foe and fleeced by the shears

   Of grasping allies, exhausted and poor,

Bereft but triumphant, is made to feel

   The probe of the torturing critics' spite;

Decoupled of empire, their pens conceal

   The virtues thereof, which (as Rome's) were slight,

And varnish its sins with a morbid love,

   Till Atilla is made a friendly face,

And Khan seems kind as a messenger dove,

   Before its dogged and villainous race.

Britannia! derided and scorned for deeds

   Which Homer could hardly all rhapsodise,

You grieve as your generation recedes

   And suffer instead for slanderous lies;

Though now you are baptised a witch, a whore,

   And decked in the rags of synthetic shame,

I notice your beauty only the more,

   And cherish your works, and honour your name.

   —

NIGHT AND DAY.

 

Last night I dreamt of night and day

   The one by black and one by white

   I recognised at once on sight,

And each stood an upright doorway.

 

There was a keeper of the doors,

   For there were more than one of each

   But far as seemed the eye could reach

These doors were lined in several scores;

 

Perhaps one for each night that’s been

   Was placed, and one for every day;

   The light and dark of each would stray

Into another’s glowing sheen;

 

The keeper full of malice walked

   Into a door to find me there

   And torture me awhile and share

Some starry wisdom as he talked:

 

‘They think perpetual night will come

   Upon the universe at large,

   They little reck the mighty targe

Which photons form in perfect sum;

 

‘If only! Night’s a mistress fair

   When she dons her splendid dresses

   And her onyx raven tresses

Tumble from her Medusa hair;

 

‘And never see I better when

   There is nothing for me to see,

   O! I can see eternity

In its many shapeshiftings then.

 

‘Now you’re waking, never mind me!

   I will see you again before

   Your brain is melted any more.

Wake! and dream of reality!’

— 

A LADY OF NATURE.

Soft breezes pass across her hair,
Across her hair and touch
The surface of the river fair

And brush it, but not much;

And while the clouds are yielding to
The urge to shower rain,
'T is lightly, lightly, down and through

The valley once again;

And where the valley roves there rove
The dogs and deer about,
And ducks, and geese, and doves, there hove

Into the sky and out.

Sometimes the moisture looks as though
Her tears are trailing down
Her nose, her cheeks, which softly flow

And land upon her gown.

Dear gentle lady, gently look
Upon us when you turn
Again towards the peopled nook

Where furnace fires burn;

Sigh only once, but then reflect
Upon the ways of God,
And live among us circumspect,

And smile, and laugh, and nod.

  — 

THE CYNIC'S EYE.

The sky it brightens in the morn

   And darkens in the night,

And with it several souls are born,

   And others fled from sight;

 

So on the stubborn mystery

   Of life dances its dance

And still in sunken misery

   Too many sing its chants;

 

And still in hopeless certainty

   They eke their days like drops,

To perish in inanity,

   To mould like dampened hops.

 

I care for none but me alone,

   These faces are not friends,

They set themselves before my throne

   And serve their selfish ends,

 

Not mine; but look upon the heir,

   He lives the better way

In spending all his father's share

   Of work upon his play;

 

Nor shall I show that charity,

   Which sickly is to see,

To aid a bright posterity

   Which never aided me;

 

The world is meaningless, I know,

   And people are like straw

That vanish in a moment's show

   Upon a burning floor;

 

And all is ash, a worthless dust,

   A meaningless array,

Though people live because they must,

   They fall apart like clay.

 

This dream of life we dream to-night

   To-morrow will disperse,

Let then the hymn of human plight

   Subject the flowered hearse;

 

Let tears be shed, life calls for tears,

   Let grief establish grief;

Let hearts be broken through the years

   And wither with the leaf!

  —

TWO LOVERS.

In Newcastle on Guy Fawkes’ night
   There were two lovers tripping down
The promenade with footstep light,
   And gentle spill of bitter brown.

‘O lover thou!’ one lover said,
   ‘Ye lover ye!’ the other cried,
‘Yet wilt thou wait till we art wed?’
   ‘Aye that I will!’ he gently lied.

‘Seest thou the stars?’ she wondered ‘loud.
   ‘Nay.’ ‘Neither I.’ Though up they gazed,
For northerners are ever proud
   Of all that northerly is praised.

‘Wilt love me long?’ ‘Aye, long as ‘might.’
   ‘Wilt love me true?’ ‘Aye, wilt and do.’
‘Wilt love me more than football night?’
   ‘Aye, I love ye and ye love–who?’

‘I love ye deeply George,’ returned
   The blushing comely maiden Rose,
‘But how much money hath ye earned?’
   And brought the interview to close.

  —

SOMETHING.

I’ll tell you something of the world.

There’s a great big man in a tree

At the top where the fruits grow free,

And he won’t withstand infringement;

   But with his whip kept close and furled

      He’ll tell you something of the world.

  —

DESCRIPTIONS.

There is something purely pleasant
   In a cleanly ordered space,
And the purified so present
   Has a sanctity of place;

And 't is noble when stone building
   Runs and rises from the floor,
That in pillars and with gilding
   Stuns the passers-by with awe;

While the rain makes sheens on street ways,
   And the droplets ripple wide
Making quiet of the weekdays
   As the citizens all hide;

Wide and narrow, straight and twisting,
   Glides the river on its course

Which, though all its banks resisting,
   Starts as puddles at its source.

   — 

THE FALTERING MOMENT.

Has it never been observed that a tide recedes?
Has it ever been deserved that the pride man feeds
      Should exalt his higher powers,
      And exult in happy hours
Which no active object warrants and no nurtured virtue breeds?

Did no wisdom ever drift through the firmament,
Which did never speak of life’s painful tournament?
      With the lions growling thunder,
      And ten foes desiring plunder
From the pockets of a pauper to his helpless detriment.

Could a single prospect please a faltering heart
Would it please through ear or eye, thus with human art?
      Or does it call upon a grace
      Descended of a holy place,
Which by binding promises adjoins two sundered poles apart?

—

THE EGOIST.

 

I looked within a crystal sea,

I stared upon a burning flame

But all I saw in each was me,

    And selfishness's name.

 

I smelled the rose in bloom but thought

Alone on gain and loss and pride,

When, feeling thorns my fingers caught,

    I threw the rose aside.

 

I gazed up long into the sky,

To the furthest starry reaches,

But thought its majesty a lie,

    As the scholar teaches.

 

I felt the falling rain commune

With noisome hiss and dropping sound

But thought on all life ending soon

    And stamped upon the ground.

 

Yet when I saw thy oval face,

And traced its smiling lips of red

It were as though all time and space

    Had fashioned gold from lead;

 

And I could look into the sea,

Or stare upon a glowing fire

And, seeing you instead of me,

    In happiness expire.

 

  —

AN UNFORTUNATE TALE.

Once upon a sultry day,

In an overheated May,

When came gratefully a spray

Of water

From a sudden breeze at sea,

Which sang most melodiously

In the blossoms of a tree,

A quarter

Just above my head where trilled

Songbirds evidently filled

With such verve of song as stilled

The poets.

What stilled them did not still me,

Still I eat my sandwiched brie

With a grape, palatably,

For though it’s

Fine to hear, amidst the drear,

Chirping songbirds so endear

Heart and soul by way of ear,

I weary

Of such play (‘An anodyne!’)

When the day (‘Such woe is mine!’)

Blazes May (O! Bring the wine!)

So seary.

Then I slept over a book

Filled with tales of brook and nook.

Till I woke and shook to look—

On a storm.

Doubtless all the birds had rests

In their downy concave nests.

Well, no sound fell from the pests—

To inform

Yours most truly he was wet,

And becoming wetter yet.

(Being of a turn to fret)

I hastened

Out into the squally air,

‘Turning purple over there.’

Till I fell into my chair,

Much chastened.

The moral of this story

Is, ‘Sure as age is hoary,

A sloth lives without glory.’

I suppose;

Or could there be no moral?

Nor answer to a quarrel?

Should then we dance round sorrel?

Who knows?

 

—

'IS THIS AN ANSWER?'

'Pray what is a world and what is a dream?'

   'The one is a blaze, the other a gleam.'

'And why is a dream, pray how is a world?'

   'The how and the why are the what when furled.'

'And minus and plus why fight they athwart?'

   'When short is made long then long is made short.'

'But many and one, how come they to be?'

   'I see what I think, I think what I see.'

'Does evil with good yet strive over will?'

   'For thinking they strive, they strive over still.'

'And where will we end when thinking is done?'

   'When thinking is done, where first we begun.'

'Speak then, is truth all 't is taken to be?'

   'It is all, 't is all, 't is nothing you see.'

'But fragmented, fine, dismantled, astray?'

   'Assembled and whole in perfect array.'

'I take it on trust but doubt never flies.'

   'Yet ever it sees the infinite skies.'

'It fears them, it smears them, it shuts the mind.'

   'Still vision exists, in spite of the blind.'

 

—

AN UNHAPPY ENCOUNTER.

One golden afternoon it seemed

   The century had drowsed

The sky was free of aeroplanes

   No gunshots had aroused

The huddled birds from out the lanes

   Of bushes thickly blooming

And as I walked, in spite of pains,

A happiness was looming.

 

I saw a horse approach ahead

   And waited at the side;

‘Good morning!’ I had boldly said,

   ‘Good afternoon!’ replied

The horseman grinning wide.

 —

HEAVY RAIN.

It is raining to-night,
    I can hear the strong pelting
    Of the droplets all melting
Wherever they alight;

And when I step outside
    I see them dancing in the rays
    My torch emits, their several ways,
Like rearing horses hied.

  —

GUY FAWKES' NIGHT.

 

To see the starry sky on high

   To feel the cheering fire

To talk to many friends nearby

   Within an English shire;

 

To hear the rockets soaring break

   Into a scattered blaze

Of blue and green and red and make

   Illuminated haze

 

Would make a pleasant night indeed,

   Would reach a happy goal,

But want is oft reflected need,

   I am a lonely soul.

 —

SOUTHWARD.

Southward; where the ocean clears
   To such a glassy lightness
That every tropic fish which nears
   Swims visibly in brightness,
And where the palm leaves overhang
   In languor, seeming sunken,
The shade where every day the tang
   Of orange juice is drunken;
Where often damsels wring their locks
   Of much their salty water,
And where the bleached old breaker rocks
   Are held with sand as mortar;
There of a time should I reside,
   And in lagoons could tarry,
Without a human voice beside
   To vex, rebuke, or harry,
I would within a dinghy lie
   And sleep that dreamless slumber,
Which lets so many moments by
   And never counts their number;
Which in, that silent wisdom, peace
   Stirs not for any reason,
And with infinity for lease,
   Forever stays in season.

 —  

NORTHWARD.

Northward; where the swallows hie
   As frost resumes to dew,
Whence travelled southern breezes sigh
   And turn the grey sky blue;
Where blossoms fall in early May,
   And warming rain refreshes,
Where finches sing and robins play,
   And spiders spin their meshes;
There glisten in the morn the streams
   Which run into the wood,
There thatch upon broad oaken beams
   Hangs in a golden hood;
Yet, scarcely far beyond, here loom
   Tall towers made of rubble,
And in the air huge pylons doom
   The earth to ash or stubble;
Here many work their daily toil
   And live in hoarded wealth,
And finish but the common foil
   Of sorrows, of ill health;
While high above the fallen night,
   Is hardly night at all,
Each star a merely blinking light
   Each breeze electrical;
And though it is most rich indeed,
   ‘T is poor indeed as well;
A heaven to a sprightly breed,
   But to a pensive, hell.

 

—

STAY!

Stay! Fair creature, stay,

   Sleep in thy chrysalis.

   Hoarfrost doth kill as kiss,

      Nor near, my dear, is day.

WAKE!

Wake! My creature kind,

   Thy cocoon is in rot,

   The rot is front and hind,

 O wake! My creature kind!

 

— 

LOVE.

Faithless, hapless, people, know

     Love on hate is sun on snow;

Hate on love, as snow on sands,

     Melts as quickly as it lands.

 —

BLOOM.

Bloom! you shoots of daffodil,

Would that a wish could will!

Long ago, nay, not so long,

All of Nature sang a song;

A song that birds soprano

Would sing full near the willow

(Who happily would flourish

Her locks, which blossoms nourish).

Nigh the winds that heard their trills

With cool softly sighing thrills,

Partook their harmony – and

Dandelion seeds would land

On the grass, upon the broad

Meadow pasture, wild and pawed

By the dog pups wandering

From their mothers, squandering

All their bounding merry play,

Chasing butterflies away.

Be at ease! The butterfly

Dances swiftly by and high

In the sky her silken wings

Flutter aërial nothings.

Then the fish fall down the weir

And their colourings appear;

Silver glimmering or red

Seem the scales from fin to head,

Like mosaic tiles in place

With such elegance and grace!

Their low splashes deftly swum

Beat a beat, and steadfast hum

All the dragonflies about

Effervescent spray in rout,

And they catch a sunny glare,

In a prism’s rainbow flare.

   Paradisiacal clime

   Murdered in the depths of time!

For ‘t was long ago, indeed

But while I, alone, in need,

Look upon this crushed old ground

Where these daffodils are found

Stamped upon, and near the wall,

I shall dimly, faintly, call:

Bloom! you shoots of daffodil,

Would that a wish could will!

—

SAILORS.

 

Well when at sea at night the sky

   Is laden with its candles

Shining, winking, shooting by

   The sailors in their sandals.

 

Well when the sky is cold and crisp

   Appears the hanging moon

To, aye, the rum-warmed tongues that lisp,

   And sing a shanty tune.

 

Well, very well, to those that breathe

   An air as fresh as bracing

And watch the stormy swelling heave

   Of waves each other racing.

 

Well, well indeed, and they are well

   And drink from life a'plenty,

But I remain on shore in hell

   And dull at five and twenty.

—

THE SACK OF ROME.

A world of demigods bequeathed

To pygmy populations breathed

The breath of liberty and law

Is favoured in its stead with war.

Its sacrifices riots made,

Its every edifice dismayed,

Its sacred day turned into shame,

Its honour fashioned into blame.

Its people, threatened into fear,

In silent outrage stand and hear

The clamour of disdaining bands,

The angered chants of foreign lands.

'For freedom's sake' these chants are learnt

'For order's sake' dear flags are burnt,

For 'human rights' these wolves surround

For 'safety's sake' old men are bound:

How long, O Lord, must they submit

To suffer ignominy and sit

Upon a ducking stool and think

With gratitude the while they sink?

 —

 A DISCOURSE.

Son. ‘Why will not every day

Encumbering my goal

Melt like wax away,

Or pulverise like coal?’

 

Mother. ‘Pray, cherish up each day

And each will cherish you,

For they will melt away

Or vaporise like dew.’

 

Son. ‘Why cannot every hour

Serve better better ends?

And why is all our power

Grown only as it spends?’

 

Mother. ‘In time we see each hour

Has served upon its post

To heighten mortal power,

The least as well as most.’

 

Son. ‘Are these not idle words

You speak only to soothe,

Like notes sung by the birds

That please but do not move?’

 

Mother. ‘They are not idle words,

Nor idle notes, my child,

Sung by the dainty birds

About the blossomed wild—

 

‘If you had seen as I

Your progress from my height,

With an unvarnished eye

Not hindered in its sight—

 

‘If you had seen how days

Ago you were much less

Inclined to think of ways

To speak of your distress—

 

‘If you had seen the year’s

Advance upon your face

And not have looked for fears

Clouding its natural grace—

 

‘Then you would not incline

To talk of idle words,

Nor denigrate the fine

Singing of pretty birds—

 

‘Yet, take my hand my son,

As you have so my heart,

For when our race is run

Such will mean more than art.’

 

—

PERSEVERANT MELANCHOLY.

My foundered mind works night and day

To find a thing to write or say,

My shrinking heart and ageing flesh

Produces nothing new nor fresh.

I try to dream of living thought

As clarified by tides that brought

Bubbling—comprehension fleet,

Waving—strong affection sweet,

But the terrible revulsion

Of enforced, unwished, compulsion

Breaks the dreamy vision's window

Into shattered shards of sorrow.

I cannot feel a single sense,

But only feel complete suspense,

I cannot taste my daily fare,

I cannot see whereon I stare,

I cannot touch the things I hold,

Nor can I notice hot from cold.

I wish, I wish, but do not know

What I do wish when wish I so,

But day on day, and night on night,

I am half mad and fooled with fright,

And try, but make not one success,

Of weaving good from dark distress.

O God, I crave a shred of worth,

A single thread of healthful mirth,

That I may not forever fray

My youthful life this rueful way.

   From loathing of my wretched self

I try to fashion out of pelf

Some beauty born within the soul,

Some lifeblood slowly drawn of coal;

My faith, where is it? Dullness faints

With weariness before its paints,

Like dunces at a gallery

Engaged in stupid drollery.

But send me rain to wash my mood,

And give me love instead of food;

Why have I not a single peer,

To share a hope or quell a fear?

Could someone something still restore

Of my lorn life so ill and poor?

That is, it seems, all that it lacks,

A candle doused within its wax;

A recreant and shrinking face

Appearing awkwardly in place.

I would I could dilate my mind,

But all my thinking proves unkind;

I long to share a pleasant air,

To think and speak surpassing fair,

But blackened plumes of choking fumes,

Are all the breath my throat consumes.

It belches out the chimney charred

Upon a ship called Scorned and Scarred;

On which I long have sailed for years,

And sail on still, despite of tears,

And bound in limbo bound for hell,

With dreadful madness foul and fell,

Piled of beams of fool's delusions,

Manned by crews of fiend illusions;

Though some had told me, wraiths of note,

Who smoke at night upon the boat,

That I am not alone of kin

With Eve and Adam, trapped within,

But others guising yet as ghosts

Are boarding with me unbeknownst.

   I heard it late one starry night,

They hovered round in lucent light,

Their eyes rolled red inside their head,

They are not one with us, they said,

And laughed, and I laughed with them, mad,

Five parts afraid, and five parts glad.

Thus as the cane of rapid rain

Rapped down upon the swelling main,

As rain is wont, with a thunder

Which impales the mind with wonder,

I, now grinning, reeling, shrieking,

Looked about me hotly seeking,

For these unpredictive creatures,

Strange of signs and full of features,

But each I hailed and touched dissolved,

So oft that all my doubt resolved

Into a cloudy pall of blame

I wrapped around myself in shame.

Sleep. Sleep again. I lie to sleep,

When all I long to do is weep,

But eyes are dry, in time I dream,

And twice I start awake and scream:

Revenge I dream of shall be mine!

And taste like providential wine.

Revenge, that breaks without an aid,

Shall answer debts still unrepaid,

But not by my clenched angered hands,

But slowly by eroding sands,

Be Nature's Justice meted out;

As thirst is cured in drowning drought.

Where have I been, where have I not?

Who have I seen, and who forgot?

I walked in caves devoid of sound

Through eerie hollows underground,

In rooms of illness long I stayed,

And on an instrument I played,

But nowhere present once was I,

Methinks my soul was in the sky.

—

THE STONY BUILDING.

There was a stony building half

Covered in moss and ivy trails,

Within a little wooded spot,

Where feathered wings and downy tails

Would gather, for a nook, a bath

From out a hollowed cobble, shot

From out a wall upon a night

Of storms which shook the branches near

To creak and groan as though for fright

At every vivid bolt of light.

Yet, there were bees in brighter days

And sometime came the passing deer,

To graze upon the grass around,

Sprinkled with daisies, brushed with rays

Of sunlight falling on the ground,

And here and there a butterfly

Would perch upon a leafy plant;

And high above the stretching sky

Though often blue would sometime cry,

And drip its gentle sorrows on

The land and life beneath its cloak

Refreshing, when the sun had shone

With too much heat, a cooling soak

For all the thirsty creatures round,

The rabbits, voles, and hooting owls,

The flies, and ants upon their mound,

The feral dogs whose moonlit howls

Made ever on a stilly night

Would stun the air with echoed sound

And shake awoken heads with fright.

Amid the which the stony place

Stood six centuries and crumbled

Only here and there, while twenty

Empires fell, their sovereigns tumbled,

And vanished a forgotten race,

With its old and hoarded plenty

Left to sit in secret stashes,

All their heirs reduced to ashes.

Still the stony building waited,

Still within its wooded corner,

Still as though a silent mourner

Of an era fair and faded,

When a lady fair and feted,

Once was won, through troubled waded

By a noble knight of honour,

Equal to his lovely donna.

Coos the drowsy pigeon seated

High upon an oaken rafter?

Must all romance so be treated

By its fattened hearers’ laughter?

Yet he flies at once on hearing

Sounds emerge behind a hedgerow,

Who could be this figure nearing

To the stony building’s window?

 

— 

ON SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.

Let those who would incline

   To doubt as to a God

No longer wilt and pine

   And bruise beneath the rod,

But go, and behold Salisbury.

Perfection passed the earth

   Upon a distant day,

And saw with scorn, then mirth,

   Its ugliness should stay

Unless it builded Salisbury.

Thus gently made the stones

   The masons, one by one,

The very living bones

   Which formed, a life begun

To live — and it was Salisbury.

The sculptors sculpted all

   They could upon its sides

That, making of each wall

   A Glory, God presides

At every point of Salisbury.

The tower rose so stately

   It seemed it could command

A world but very lately

   Benumbed by the demand

That Satan should have Salisbury;

Which base supposition

   So spurred its glory’s pride

It wrought, that holy vision,

   A steeple none could hide

Which all exclaimed was Salisbury!

Now life is often vile,

   And I have often turned

My blood into a bile

   As though I might have spurned

The very name of Salisbury.

For there are times ‘t is true

   When misery is stirred,

And clouds obscure the view 

   Of all but the absurd,

There seems no thing as Salisbury.

But if I close my eyes

   And wait a little while

Then all my sorrow flies,

   And all my furrows smile,

For there again is Salisbury.

—

 

TO MY YOUNGEST BROTHER.

(Written after a warm debate.)

 

Seek pleasure! Selfishness will stir

All action thus without demur.

But all to pleasure immunise,

For pleasure is a brief disguise.

Some find too late the downward slope,

Forsaking fear, abandons hope;

Too late the lowering front they find

Inclines the path they leave behind.

Till sometime blind they walk so low

They die without a virtue’s glow,

And racked by pain they yet have more

Than death to hate and to abhor.

When wealth they leave they leave the worse,

If blind by avarice’s curse;

When wounds they leave they leave in fear,

The world had never wished them here;

When spite they leave they leave despite

The spite they lived to breathe alight,

And thus are left their sins below

The virtues better men bestow.

—

WONDER.

 

Tell me, where the stars align

How and why they bear a sign?

Tell me, when the clocks all ring

What significance they bring.

Tell me, oracle and seer,

Why it is that I am here.

Runs the river with its mud,

Runs the human with his blood,

Runs the sun upon its course,

Runs and gallops with the horse,

With not a why to spur on

Their energies, then begone!

Inspiration vanish!

Empiricism's banish

Falls and thuds upon you

And breaks apart your sinew,

And bids me join the common throng

I've stayed away from now too long.

 

 —

 

REVERIE.

 

There, on a bed, prostrate he lies

   The old man breathing quietly,

A moisture resting on his eyes,

Upon his eyes, awaiting cries

   Induced by sudden reverie:

 

‘Where is the world that I loved once?

   Where is the love it once received?

Fled far beyond a ground where hunts,

With sorrow’s calls and anger’s grunts,

   An old man, lonely and aggrieved.

 

‘One by one the days pass by me,

   And one by one the nights descend,

But though my final day must flee,

Must flee as for a day to be,

   My final night will never end.

 

‘One by one my friends departed,

   Or rather, vanished into air,

And they left me broken hearted,

Broken hearted, dear departed!

   And they left me all my care!

 

‘I’ll never see the sea again,

   No, never pass my fingers through

The glassy bulbous salt-laced main,

Or feel the winds which staid terrain

   Inhales and all its coasts subdue.

 

‘Nor shall I evermore return

   From out an afternoon’s long sail

To see the harbour’s water burn

With sunset sparks as night’s round urn

   Would quench them in an ashy vale.

 

‘And though modern things bring leisure,

   And modern things undo disease,

And modern things can litter pleasure,

Gaudy pleasure out of measure,

   Upon the swampy grounds of ease,

 

‘These modern things cannot provide

   Me consolation nor insight.

These modern things are an aside,

They cannot birth the hopes which died,

   With old religion’s guiding light.

 

‘My mother died, my dearest friend,

   With half the years we now can haul,

But O! the solace of her end,

When she did modestly commend

   Her soul to God, was worth them all!

 

‘And what am I now all alone?

   What am I, now ever ailing?

Wheezing, coughing, shaking, prone?

Hopeless and faithless, skin and bone!

   An echo of echoes fading!’

 

He turns his head the other way

   Then turns it back again and sighs,

A sigh for sunken yesterday,

For yesterday he sighed and lay,

   With tightly closed and weeping eyes.

 —

SONNETS.

It chances her eyes dilated like ink

And captured inside them the sun and air,

And all which the living creature can think,

The height of delight, the depth of despair,

As fever freezes and burns in tandem,

And twines in mutual hatred, in love,

That, seeming to yield, prevails at random

This moment below, that moment above;

And all the rains of the sky were gathered

Up into a single resonant tear,

And all the mirrors on earth were shattered

In it, and with it the hope of the year,

   So vanish like stars the sparks of a flame,

   So worlds are taken by action the same.

 

What in the nature of loss must confirm

The sweetness and savour of possession?

True it is that joys' sensations affirm

So much their keeping becomes obsession;

But water when grasping falls through our hands

For very contempt of such earnestness,

And nothing experience understands

So well as hope's essence deceptiveness.

Were all the visions of the heart a dream,

And all the days of fond company lies,

Our souls would yet cherish the faintest gleam

Which from their sun of false memory flies;

   But knowing for feeling truth from above

   We trust to it by this image of love.

 

Man heard of bliss but knowing loss he sighed

And moved across the moonlit lake of chance,

That leaving he noticed the tide subside

And draw from his will a departing glance,

Which stunned, for all in promise had conjured

Itself in the crystal mirror a face

That bid him seek for its like and sundered

His self into halves, half rational grace,

And half all passionate frenzy's strength,

Which struggling, distracted his purposed soul

Till finding in one an answer at length

Love's settlement bonded the parts a whole,

   And consummated one with another

   As the lover is each with the other.

 

When that I look into the minds of men,

For so it is I do in sight and speech,

I see a storm of elements and then

Perceive their beings in a barren beach,

A surging sea, a tossing tempest's work,

A purling brook, a beaming sun, a tree,

An earthquake-splitting rage a moment's smirk,

A gentle kissing rain in pleasant glee,

I hear in laughter breezes cooling June,

I smell from herbs varieties of type,

Through loneliness I watch the hanging moon,

And taste perfected thoughts of berries ripe;

   When everything I see the mind displays

   Why tells itself it is hidden in haze?

 —

FORGIVENESS.

As the aching heart cannot
    In the mind it serves to live
Make the past to be forgot,
    It must make it to forgive.

 —

CONFUSION.

It is indeed a notion strange to say

That all this world is alike to a play,

Wherein real-seeming creatures act a part,

And put on a face, and paint on a heart.

 —

ILLUMINATIONS.

 

Dance amid the illuminations
Of master spirits’ ruminations!

Dance in the midst of the mists of reason!
Dance in the midst of the mists of song!
Dance in the midst of the mists a season!
Dance in the mists as they dance along!

Light lighted mists diffuse their light
An hundred thousand separate ways,
Each droplet like a lantern bright
Reflects its own repeated rays.

Each crystal lantern crisply shines
Its coloured beams and glimmers,
And each to each collective lines
A mist in sheens, and shimmers.

An incandescent scarlet blaze!
A phosphorescent hissing haze!
An iridescent glowing glaze!
An efflorescent misted maze!

O snaking, furling, trailing vapour!
Expansive growth, curtailing taper!
Assimilate in obscuration
The threads of the imagination!

Pupils dilate in deepest darkness.
Colours lighten in bleakest starkness.
Sounds enhance in silence eerie.
Joys redound from days most dreary.

Dance in the midst of the mists of reason!
Dance in the midst of the mists of song!
Dance in the midst of the mists a season!
Dance in the mists as they dance along!

   —

TAUNT NOT OLD ENGLAND.

The fields have eyes and woods have ears,

   And smooth runs water where the brook is deep,

Loud shouts sound less than silent tears,

   And lions are deadly though in their sleep.

  —

SIRENS.

Though Population’s rot decays

   Fair Nature’s frail beguiling art,

Yet one can stray on summer’s days

   Alone and blissfully apart

To savour peace, or nearly peace—

   When comes the wailing siren brash

As though our dreams were theirs to cease

   Our fragile ears their own to thrash.

Then fearful dogs howl desperately,

But we must do so silently.

 

—

PIRATES.

 

Think when a buccaneer would find

Some Spanish treasure buried hind

Of the gulf beneath the beaches,

As much literature well teaches,

Where the skull and crossbones reaches

On a dark and moonless evening,

By the light of lanterns burning,

That reveals the green glass bottles,

Crusted o'er with sandy mottles,

Of much Spanish brandy-wine stored,

Scenting sweetly all the great hoard

Packed into a wooden barrel

Over flintlock-flashing quarrel,

Over cutlass-ringing duelling,

Under thund'rous lightning flashing,

Think! that when all this was raging,

Parson Pius slow was ageing.

 —

THE CULT OF DIONYSUS.

 

Red Bacchus wrung the neck

Of lean old common sense,

And wizened white discretion

Rose a'quiver, hobbled hence;

Then his guests came rowing down

In their skiffs of shining brown,

Bearing goblets in their crooks,

Bearing mischief in their looks,

Scheming frolics in their skulls,

Hoarding bottles in their hulls;

And here was mincing wildly

Quite an introvert by nature,

And there was glancing shyly

Quite a dour and sober preacher,

Whetting knives to a silver shine,

Wetted waiters waited primly,

Weighted full as well with wine,

Standing stiffly, seeing dimly,

Bowing shortly, falling swiftly;

Thus Bacchus read his charter,

As he nibbled on a starter:

   'All ye gathered here for plenty

In impunity of twenty,

Cast aside all judgement staid

And all wisdom, all tirade,

Here regret is yet to come,

Here your blood is golden rum,

Here foregathered thought is parted,

Here the bold are faintest hearted,

Taste a drop of dripping juice!

Taste another! Ope the sluice!

Break the bonds of fettered calms!

Break the rules and break your arms!

Break your bottles on each other!

Break your vows to dearest mother!

Come my acolytes and feed

On the illnesses we breed!'

   Good old Bacchus never falters,

But he strangles well with halters,

As he fat and jolly sings

Of the souls he nightly brings

Through the underworld to languish

In eternal torment's anguish.

 —

ENNUI.

 

The morning rises without me,

I cannot find the will,

For waking puts us on a sea

Of pain and woe and thrill.

 

The energies with which we act

Are limited each day,

And choice is some old secret pact,

To work, to laze, to pray.

 

—

OF ONE AND NOUGHT.

 

It is a very painful thought

That everything must come to nought;

It is a very hopeful sight

To see the day succeed to night;

Yet what in this is false or true,

That one is one, that two is two?

That one is one is so to say:

This thing is here; the rest- away.

That two is two is much the view

That one thing twice is one thing too.

Then what of naught or what of nil?

The thought of absence with a will,

The view of death or crumbling earth;

The final fate of one thing's birth;

The nothing thing, the absentee,

The referential referee,

Dividing by its presence all,

Its present absence like a wall.

A very paradox of form,

A something-making Nothing Swarm.

What is it, which is not, which hides

Between the things it so divides?

Nothing but mistaken thinking

All is all things interlinking.

 

—

 A HYMN.

Upon the banks of running streams
The light of heaven brightly beams,
Along their rippling surface plays
The light of heaven's golden rays;
   Such beauty is a clearest sight
   Of highest heaven's holy light.

Around the lakes the pearly geese
Are coupled to a lifelong lease,
They swim in tandem with their loves
As true as pretty turtledoves;
   Such beauty is a clearest sight
   Of highest heaven's holy light.

 

Amid the air the tumbling rain

Is washing all of earth again,

And with the wind it makes a sound

Within the trees and on the ground;

     Such beauty is a clearest sight

   Of highest heaven's holy light.

 

Throughout the sky the graceful birds

Are soaring high above the herds,

Then of a sudden down they perch

Upon the rooftop of the church;

   Such beauty is a clearest sight

   Of highest heaven's holy light.

 

Lord and God of all creation

Hear us in our supplication,

O grant that we may learn to be

As that we all around us see;

   Such beauty is a clearest sight

   Of highest heaven's holy light.

—

GLOOM ON CHRISTMAS EVE.

O Jesus Christ! Before our eyes

   We see the bunting for Thy birth

But can we hear Thy infant cries

   Portending God upon the earth?

Christmas indeed! Nay, something stings

   The soul amid prodigious greed.

It is a mass of worldly things,

   Something of nothing; want not need.

—

IDENTITY.

What is it rouses when I wake

And of each part of me doth make

A total which I recognise,

And every day epitomise?

What is it strains my soul from mass

And filters through my skull like gas?

Which weaves of all my years a thread

And makes me live when I am dead?

What is this silent entity,

This thing we call identity,

This name, this face, this body pale.

This sense of self, this mortal veil,

This cloudy wrap of vital pride,

This coachman thrashing off my hide?

This brutal force which makes me faint

Bespattered in its gaudy paint?

What is it, if not all a lie,

This force which makes of dust an I?

 

—

DEPRESSION.

 

A bleakness in the heart

Which tears it whole apart,

With inward wrenching

And desperate clenching

Is direful woe to feel,

Its wounds so seldom heal,

Its fangs so often sink;

And worse it is to think,

To think is but to steep;

A mind in sorrows deep

O better to be dumb,

O better to be numb,

Than to suffer so,

In recurring woe,

With nothing to console

But tears that roughly roll,

And sleep that has no rest.

Contented souls are blessed

With a wealth beyond wealth,

Beyond even health,

They are loved and love

The stars above

Are with them.

 

—

TO THE IMMORTAL MEMORY OF THE EMPRESS ELISABETH OF AUSTRIA.

 

'O stoss' ins Herz mir deinen Speer,

Lös' mich aus einer Welt,

Die ohne dich so öd, so leer,

Umsonst mich ferner hält.' THE EMPRESS ELISABETH.

 

I have read thy poems, regal beauty,

   A century hence in a desolate age

And dearly loved thy present majesty

   So far to distraction, to bliss, to rage;

And why? In all the annals of delight

   Is there a parallel I could conjure

That so like a varied prism of light

   Soaks my imagining mind with wonder?

 

What beauty! — Of expression as feature,

   In those lightly weary and lilting eyes,

Why slums were heavens made by a creature

   Whose presence so royal should patronise

The lowest man to the height of a king,

   The poorest maid to the richest of queens,

And imbue with her honour everything,

   As sunlight reflectively conjures sheens.

 

And yet Titania what troubles stirred

   Around thy too gentle person! What hail

Of unrelenting adversity heard

   Across the world and through ages, a tale

Of beauty, of manners, and learning, twined,

   Like thy raven and onyx plaits, in one

Woman and Poet and Empress combined,

   To sorrows condemned, by evils outrun.

 

But mistress of language, empress of arts,

   Of royalty the brightest ornament,

Thy sensitive person formed of its parts,

   Proudly unique, while custom's exponent,

In a time of anarchy's second birth,

   When such as thy odious step-mother

Too poorly embodied monarchy's worth,

   And repelled thee away to another.

 

Another that loved thee for loveliness,

   For pensive brows and patient lips compressed,

For thy person's evident sprightliness,

   Thy womanly body gorgeously dressed,

And all thy solemnly humorous smiles,

   And all thy obvious empathy's deeds,

Which matched with a charm decoupled of wiles

   Must glorify earth with dignity's seeds.

 

Shy to a virtue and not to a fault,

   Proof to all scandalous gossip could cast,

Thy unsullied heart was a ruby vault,

   Of faithful but sad recollections past;

And too well I know, my witching empress,

   The sickness of mind thy temperament caused,

Too well I feel thy headaches and faintness

   When stood by a stair in agony paused.

  

A son and an heir to suicide lost,

   A husband and king to dullness a prey,

A love predestined, a tender soul tossed,

   To unwelcome people, unhappy fay!

Then fly to Achilles! Fly to the sea,

   That crystal mirror thou lovest so well,

And far from the courts of mere doing, be

   That whichsoever thou longest for belle.

 

On foaming chargers of water be borne,

   Now to thy Hellas, now to dear Britain,

Where into sight she appeared like a fawn,

   Covered in snow, with eyes like a kitten,

As rang the clangourous bells with a zest;

   Such as our island always delighted

To show to venerable monarchs, the best

   Breeding and manners ever had plighted.

 

With many a joyous and saddened sound,

   I fancy I hear thy voice in the boat

Which carried its precious cargo around

   A troubled Europe, as troubled afloat,

Its representative sovereign straining

   To sight the bluffs of Liguria's shore,

At night when the pleasing rain was raining

   With ardour on the many coats she wore.

 

But havoc lies hiding in wait for years

   To seize on a moment's open weakness,

When horrible anarchy's head uprears

   To strike at her loveliness and meekness,

And drive Luigi Lucheni, the wretch,

   That vile and depraved rodent of history,

To find her and now his arm to outstretch,

   Then thrust a blade in the heart of Sisi.

 

And now the world in a moment is stilled

   With its beautiful monarch to silence;

The cowardly anarchist's task fulfilled

   From his doctrine of envious licence.

He flees, but nothing shall ever efface

   The shame of his villainous name and deed

Which leaving a darkened spot on her lace

   Condemns her slowly but fully to bleed.

 

'What has happened?' Nothing sweet lady, rest.

   Though the skies themselves are welling with grief

That aught should ever have entered thy breast  

   But friendship and love, but comfort's relief.

O pale! no love, this world will be darkened

   Almost to blindness without thy presence.

If ever the voice of prayer were hearkened

   Preserve her O God, her self, her essence!

 

She walks in silent amazement, throbbing

   Gently by minute the last of her blood,

And surely her heart itself were sobbing

   To try but to fail to stifle the flood.

Yet God Himself will not let her suffer

   An ounce of pain, nor a pang of anguish,

The earth itself that holds her must love her

   And see her beautifully rest and languish;

 

And close both her eyes — forever! Alas!

   That beauty and virtue should each eclipse

As one, as one silver spirit should pass

   From out of those delicate fading lips!

Sleep angel, as long as it pleases thee,

   Posterity's lot is theirs now to grieve,

From all thy burdens, our darling, be free

   Depart with this last gentle breath: and breathe.

 

The world will ring with the torturous news,

   And wonder what dismal portents are these

Closing the century with uprising crews

   Of anarchists, socialists; thought disease,

Which reckons its books in murders and war,

   Renders a man a donkey of labour

Which holds a beautiful woman a whore,

   And our Sisi, a thing for a sabre.

 

—

CHRISTIAN PANTHEISM.

(As coined by J. Allanson Picton.)

 

Within a mystic system held

And by philosophy propelled,

Again the Nazarene is shown

Upon His all-commanding throne;

The hymns of ages fill the air

And every soul partakes its share;

A godly architecture gains

A meaning more than its remains;

The pantheistic leaven stirs,

Correcting as ill logic errs:

Of heaven, be it understood

It is the sole reward of good,

It is a state of bliss achieved

By virtue given and received;

Of incarnation, know that we

Are part of all we cannot see,

Thus incarnated are we all

Of one great God invisible,

Yet visible in all that can

Be present to the mind of man,

And once within a Man divine

So present was, and so did shine,

That born was Christianity,

To guide a dark humanity.

But at its heart a law was fixed:

The Lord almighty must exist.

He must exist, and so must be

Defined with greater clarity.

For truly God cannot be part

Of much the higher work of art,

Uprooted, limited, or placed,

By fancy spoken, writ, or traced,

But in Himself, not bounded, all

Which tongue can name and voice can call.

For such thought Jesus, so must we,

That God is all infinity,

With many mansions, so He wills

And in His many ways fulfils

That Purpose which is but to free

An utter creativity,

Shown much in genius on earth,

In works of most outstanding worth.

When such a thing is brought to view

The old is rendered forth anew,

The past is present made to shine

And roughened ore is smelted fine.

Thus consonant with everything

Is all of studied anything,

But with a view to all its links

With all the mulling creature thinks;

Of one part every part, the whole,

The total's manifested soul;

The meaning into which refers,

And which the swelling heart prefers,

Each particle of knowledge caught

Upon the current of a thought

Which past the estuary of proof,

Becomes a boundless sea of truth,

Where inspiration sails at will

With an unerring artist's skill,

About a glorious domain,

Whence all has come, and shall remain.

The epochs are its phases passed

As last is first so first is last,

According to perspective's eye,

The near is far, the far is nigh,

And nothing, save the deity,

Is truly a reality,

But concerned within illusion

Framed about a first confusion,

Ignorance or fiction musters,

That which brazenly it blusters,

This dividual part, this fashion,

This proclaimed a feast, a ration,

Yet in this is Nature's plenty:

One encompasses the many,

One substantiates its remnants

By its never passing presence,

   This, as verities must show,

Is all, and all we need, to know.

—

SPINOZA'S PHILOSOPHY.

The show of life departs from view
   And the secrets of existence,
As ever hid in sight, renew
   For death is part of persistence.

Regard the leaves are poised on trees,
   Regard the trees are grown on ground,
Regard the ground is held in seas
   And the skies forever abound;

With nothing new and nothing old,
   For everything at once is so,
And dross is summed along with gold,
   As darkness fashions indigo.

The several ways defined by thought
   Within the mind exist alone,
Such logic is a pattern sought,
   A splash of paint too rashly thrown;

All ways are one, all pieces whole,
   Division all a union,
They are involved within a Soul
   Of infinite communion.

Lo, once upon a trysting night
   A lover waited for his prize,
And saw a very godly sight
   When once he looked into her eyes;

Meanwhile the priest was dreaming faith
   With beauty for a guiding line
And, following a moving wraith,
   Was delving through a crystal mine.

No less the farmer with his crops,
   No less the scholar at his books,
No less the actor with his props,
   Was worshipping with raptured looks.

The prophecies reveal this truth,
   But only by their winding ways
That God exists in spite of proof,
   In limitless unending days.

There falls upon the parchment ink
   Evincing much but chiefly this:
That humankind are born to think
   And, while on God, in utmost bliss.

Our passions bind us but release
   Occurs when we are made aware,
And when we are, abiding peace
   Eliminates our every care.

As planets spin and people dance
   The system is unfolding still
Though we be fallen in a trance
   Of appetite and mortal will;

A gleam becomes a broadened blaze
   So insight makes the wisest head,
And folly is a passing phase
   That measures truth like weighing lead.

In torment happiness is known
   By absence of its pleasing heat,
So that the opposite is shown
   And sought for with directed feet.

The songs of nature tell a tale
   Of seasons changing through the years
Yet playing still to all regale
   The music of the moving spheres.

Into the distance gaze a while
   And feel it, all the essence stirred,
Forgetting every care, and smile
   For all is seen, and touched, and heard.

The fever of deluded life,
   Cools like a coal in water dipped,
Exuding all internal strife
   As one long sigh of vapour dripped;

And though the rushing blood of flesh
   Heats up for many causes traced
The cooling Force is always fresh,
   And we within it squarely placed.

Spinoza, hero of my heart
   And hero of the world to-day,
What of this era torn apart
   Would you, I often wonder, say?

The nations tremble with their wealth,
   And power is so widely felt
Almost it feels there is no health,
   And piety and honour melt.

Too many want too much it seems,
   We strive to aggregate mere ash,
Entangled in a thousand dreams
   Of selfish grandeur: foolish! rash!

Though miracles are daily wrought,
   For miracles are closely based
Upon a standard firstly thought
   Then broken in a sudden haste,

There is no sense of purpose made
   To guide the threads to common ends
But all disordered, disarrayed,
   Are leading off in parting bends;

Wise thinker, what I ponder did
   You feel upon your final day
When calmly you to bed were bid
   And passed alone and young away?

A painful peace I speculate,
   A tranquil fever, thinking still
On all that must encapsulate
   The universe: the Holy Will.

The Will that will outlive the span
   Of all this mighty social strength
And carry on apart from man
   For an eternity of length.

Some take their willingness to be
   An animal with finite time
And force their eyes to simply see
   The dust of earth, the rock, the slime,

Yet they as well, though knowing not,
   Partake of this along their lives,
Though feeling it, it is forgot,
   The Spirit always, always, thrives,

Goodness is its recognition,
   And patience is its memory,
Wisdom is its own cognition
   And happiness its melody.

 

—

 

DIVINITY.

Again and again the currents of time

Hurl wavelets of lives upon the seashore,

And wasted away the animal mime

Returns to its death, to mineral ore;

 

I cannot grasp it, but still I suppose

That life is a mystery serving a role,

Seen largely in dying, the eyelids close,

And something departs, a spirit, a soul.

 

There are kinds of ignorance, so it seems,

Much better, kinder, than knowledge appears,

That orbit around such beautiful dreams,

And scatter away most adamant fears;

 

That scarcely the charge of fiction sustains,

So real the pleasure is worked in its cause,

The carefully treasuring owner maintains

Its lustre and shines away at its flaws;

 

Is this the beauty, by poets called truth,

That lifts up the heart to heavens of joy

Is this the sensory answering proof

To systems upheld of woe and annoy?

 

Is this the feeling evoked when nearing

Hedges of lavender strong in the sun,

Or reaching a grassy woodland clearing

Breaking from strides of a walk to a run?

 

The birds sing fairly, the sky is all blue,

The earth is rich in the warmth of the day,

And lovers talk happily near to you,

And breezes make all the branches to play.

 

It is as a still and gentle river

Lapping in shade when the season is spring

That sparkles and seems to drift forever,

A beautiful, most ineffable thing.

—

AN ODE TO THE SUNRISE.

The words of the Lord are His works. The sun that giveth light looketh upon all things, and the work thereof is full of the glory of the Lord. ECCLUS. xxxxii. 15-16.

Though Oblivion’s son the Night descends

   Upon the world, when tutored beings sleep

That sleep, the choicest taste of death, it ends

   With thou risen Sun, take a sickle! reap!

Our fears had prospered too long with the night!

   Our hopes had languished like withered roses,

      And dull misanthropic care had spoken

With its fine detailed tyranny — but Light!

   The very body of hope, opposes

      The lines of darkness, whose ranks, now broken

From an irresistible charge on high,

Has drenched in the blood of despair the sky!

It seemeth blood of a charmed quality

   Why, soaked in purple it dries orange-red!

And while it blots a gay frivolity

   Of colouring clouds puffs high overhead.

Such is the end of all evils endured,

   Such is the fate of mistake as of vice,

      The greater it grows the sooner it dies,

Thus are the angry in anger immured,

   And the greedy by greed, the rich for a price,

      The schemers in schemes, the liars in lies,

Each by his poison is poisoned, for Ill

Acts slower than Good and walks against will.

Then rouse up my soul! all peoples arise!

   The Sun is proclaiming this morning a Truth,

Which once having heard may never demise

   But twice waxes strength in age as in youth:

Our deaths are mere nights, born to be ended,

   Our lives are but preludes played to ordain

      Our journeys throughout His infinite realms,

On which we gently embarked are wended

   About and amid each stunning domain,

      Whose glory, whose breadth, so utterly whelms

We either must die for all this delight

Or be as the things which we see — ever bright.

—

 

The First Book of Milton’s Paradise Lost,

 Partly Rendered into Rhyme.

THE MORAL.

For Satan has every merit but virtue.

 

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruits

Of that forbidden tree whose fatal roots

Brought death into the World, and all our woe,

With Eden's loss, till one greater Man show

Us restored and regained to blissful light,

Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret height,

Of Oreb or Sinai, didst sweetly lead

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed

In the beginning how the heavens and the earth

Rose from Chaos: or if Sion hill's worth

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that passed

Fast by the oracle of God, I cast,

Strains to thee to aid my adventurous song

That with no mean flight intends to soar long

Above th' Aonian mount, while it chases

Things yet unmet by prose or rime's graces.

And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer

Before all temples th' upright heart and pure,

Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from the first

Wast present, and, with mighty wings dispersed,

Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss

And mad'st it pregnant: what in me is this

Abyss, illumine, what is false circumvent;

That, to the height of this great argument,

I assert Eternal Providence when

I justify the ways of God to men.

   Say first — for Heaven hides nothing from thy view,

Nor the deep tract of Hell — say first what drew

Our grand Parents, in that happiest state,

Favoured of Heaven so highly, to fall straight

From their Creator, and transgress his will

For one sole restraint, but the world's lords still?

Who first seduced them to revolt so vile?

Th' infernal Serpent; he it was whose guile,

Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived

Mankind's mother, what time his pride conceived

Awry, had cast him from Heaven with all  

His host of rebel angels, who must fall

To set himself in glory above the sky,

He trusted to have equalled the Most High,

If he opposed; and, with ambitious aim

Against God's throne and His monarchy, maim

Heaven with impious war and battle proud,

But vain attempt. Him th' Almighty bowed,

And hurled headlong flaming from ethereal air

With hideous ruin and combustion, there

To bottomless perdition, so to tire

In adamantine chains and penal fire,

Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to fight.

Nine times the space that measures day and night

To mortal men, he, with his horrid crew

Lay vanquished, in the fiery gulf to stew

Confounded, though immortal; but his doom

Reserved him to more wrath; for in this tomb

Thoughts of lost joy and lasting agony

Torment him: he rolls baleful eyes to see

Huge affliction and dismay, steadfast hate

Mixed with obdurate pride quick to dilate

At once his mind's eye, thus the angel views

The dismal situation's wastes and rues:

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round,

As one great furnace flamed; yet from it found

No light, but rather visible darkness

Served only to see a woeful starkness,

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace

And rest can never dwell, where hope doth cease

That lasts for all, constant torture instead

Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed

With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed.

Such place Eternal Justice had presumed

Fit for those rebels; here their prison ordained

In utter darkness, and their portion gained,

As far removed from God, Heavenly Host,

As the centre thrice to the pole utmost.

Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell!

There the companions of his fall, sunk in Hell,

In floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire,

He soon discerns; and, weltering by his sire,

One next himself in power, and next most shamed,

Long after known in Palestine, and named

Beëlzebub. To whom th' Arch-Enemy,

And thence in Heaven called Satan, boldly

Breaking the horrid silence, thus ranged:

   'If thou beest he — but oh, how fall'n! how changed

From him who, in the happy realms of light,

Clothed with transcendent brightness, were a sight

That outshone myriads, though bright! — if he

Whom mutual league, thoughts, and counsels with me

Joined once and hazarded in hope as firm

The glorious enterprise, now doth squirm

In misery, in equal ruin, in the pit

Thou seest, from what height fallen, must befit

We the weaker: so much the stronger shows.

Who knew the force of those dire arms? Yet those

I do not repent, nor what the victor

Potent in his rage can else inflict, or

Change, though changed in my lustre, that fixed mind,

And high disdain that merits injured find,

That with the Mightiest raised me to contend,

And to the contention contrived to send

Innumerable force of Spirits armed,

That durst dislike his reign, and of me charmed,

His utmost power with adverse power opposed

In dubious battle on Heaven's plains proposed,

And shook his throne. Though the field we lost still?

All is not lost — the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit to fate:

And what is else not to be killed in fight.

That glory never shall his wrath or might

Extort from me. To bow and sue at length

With suppliant knee, and deify his strength

Who, from the terror of this arm, lately

Doubted his empire — O that were lowly;

That were an ignominy and shame beneath

This downfall; since the strength of Gods is chief,

And this empyreal substance, cannot fail;

For, through experience of this dire gaol,

With arms not worse, and foresight to evolve,

We may with more successful hope resolve

To wage eternal war by force or guile

And to our grand Foe never reconcile,

Who now triumphs, and in th' excess of glee

Sole reigning still holds Heaven's tyranny.'

   So spake th' apostate Angel, though in pain,

Though racked with deep despair, vaunting plain;

And him thus answered soon his bold compeer:

   'O Prince, O Chief of many Powers here

That led to war th' embattled Seraphim

Under thy conduct, and, in dread deeds, grim,

Fearless, endangered Heaven's King to see,

A true proof of his high supremacy,

Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate!

Too well I rue the event and too late,

That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat

Hath lost us Heaven, and we a mighty fleet

In horrible destruction laid thus low,

As far as Gods' Heavenly Essences show,

Perished: though the mind and spirit remains

Invincible, and vigour soon regains,

Though all our glory extinct, and happy we

Here swallowed up in endless misery!

But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now

Believe almighty, for no less could cow,

Or have overpowered, such a force as ours)

Have left us this our spirit, our strength and powers,

Strongly to suffer and support our pains,

That we may suffice while his vengeance rains,

Or do him mightier service as his thralls

By right of war, whate'er his business calls,

To work in Hell and its torments to reap,

Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep?

What can it then avail though yet to feel

Strength undiminished, and forever heal

To undergo eternal punishment?'

   Whereto with speedy words th' Arch-Fiend gave vent:

   'Fall'n Cherub, to be weak is misery.

Doing or suffering: but of this surest be —

To do aught good never be in our sight,

But ever to do ill our sole delight,

As being the contrary to his high sense

Whom we resist. If then his providence

Out of our evil seek to bring forth good,

Our labour must pervert whate'er it would,

And out of good still to find means of ill;

Which oft-times may succeed such as will

Grieve him, if I fail not, and thus contended

Disturb his counsels from their aim intended.

But see! the angry Victor hath forestalled

His ministers of vengeance and recalled

Back to the gates of Heaven: the sulphurous hail,

Shot at us in storm, that o'erblown doth veil

The fiery surge that from the precipice

Of Heaven received our plummet from bliss;

And the thunder of impetuous rage

Winged with red lightning, perhaps, doth assuage,

Hath spent his shafts, and subsides now to sleep,

No more to bellow through the boundless Deep.

Let us not slip th' occasion whether scorn

Or our Foe's satiate fury this hath borne.

Seest thou yon dreary plain, a forlorn sight,

The seat of desolation, void of light,

Save what these glimmering livid flames lend

Deathly and dreadful? Thither let us tend

From off these fiery waves and their tossing;

There rest, if rest we find from the crossing;

And, reassembling our afflicted forces,

Consult how we may, in our discourses,

Offend our Enemy most grievously,

Overcome our own loss, and thenceforth see

What reinforcement comes from hope's repair,

If not, what resolution from despair.'

   Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate,

With head uplift above the wave and great

Eyes that sparkling blazed; his other parts lay

Prone on the flood, long and large away

Floating many a rood, in bulk did rise

High as the fables name of monstrous size,

Titanian or Earth-born, that warred on Jove,

Briareos or Typhon, whom the cove

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-born

Beast Leviathan, made of all God's spawn

The hugest that on th' ocean-stream roam.

Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam,

The pilot of some small night-foundered boat

Deeming some island, oft 't is told, did float

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind,

Moored by his side under the lee, while blind

Night invests the sea, to wished morn's delay.

So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay,

Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence

Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the sense

And permission of Heaven's starry signs

Left him at large to his own dark designs,

That with reiterated crimes he brought

On himself heaped damnation, while he sought

Evil to others, and enraged might see

How all his malice brought but clemency,

Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shown

On Man by him seduced; but on him alone

Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance break.

Forthwith upright he rears from off the lake

His mighty stature; the flames on each hand,

Driven backward, slope their pointing spires, and, fanned,

Roll in billows, leaving two horrid vales.

Then with expanded wings he sets his sails

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air,

That felt unusual weight; till on the bare

Dry land he lights; if land could be a pyre

With solid, as the lake with liquid, fire,

And such appeared in hue as when the will

Of subterranean wind transports a hill

Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side

Of thundering Aetna, whose flammable hide

And fuelled entrails, thence fire conceiving,

Sublimed with mineral rage, sets winds heaving,

And leaves a singed bottom black as coal

With stench and smoke; such resting found the sole

Of unblest feet. Next his mate by his side;

Both glorying to have 'scaped the Stygian tide

As gods, and by their own recovered vigour,

Not by the sufferance of Supernal rigour.

   'Is this the region, this the soil, the heat,'

Said then the lost Archangel, 'this the seat

That we must change for Heaven? — this mournful gloom

For that celestial light? Be it so, since whom

I know is sovran can dispose and bid

What shall be right: farthest from him be rid,

Whom reason hath equalled, force hath made supreme

Above his equals. Farewell, fields that teem,

With ever dwelling joy! Hail horrors! hail,

Infernal World! and thou, profound Hell quail!

Receive thy new possessor — of a mind

Unchanged by any time or place I find.

The mind is its own place, and in its wake

Can a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven, make.

What matter where, if still the same I be,

And what I should be, all but less than he

Whom thunder hath made greater? Here at least

We shall be free; th' Almighty here hath ceased

To build for his envy, will not drive us off:

Here we may reign secure; and sally forth,

To reign, though in Hell, will our spirits leaven

Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.

But wherefore let we then our faithful friends,

Th' associates and co-partners of our ends,

Lie thus astonished on th' oblivious pool,

And call them not to share with us our rule

In this unhappy mansion, or once more

With rallied arms see what may yet in war

Be regained in Heaven, or more lost in Hell?'

   So Satan spake; and Beelzebub fell

To answering thus: 'Leader of those bright

Ranks which, but th' Omnipotent, none could fight,

If once they hear that voice, their liveliest pledge

Made in extremes, as on the perilous edge,

When thou spoke of hope in dangers and fears,

As when th' assault and raging battle rears,

Their surest signal, they will soon resume

New courage, and revive, and ranks assume,

Though grovelling and prostrate on yon fire's blaze

As we erewhile, astounded with amaze;

No wonder, when fall'n from such pernicious heights!'

   He scarce had ceased when his master he sights

Moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield,

Massy, large, and round, ethereal steeled,

Behind him cast. The circumference wide

Hung on his shoulders as the moon's orb, spied

By the Tuscan artist through optic sights

At evening, atop steep Fesolè’s heights,

Or in Valdarno, to descry new land,

Rivers, or mountains, in her globe so spanned.

His spear, as tall as a pine unsurpassed

Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast

Of some great ammiral, were but a wand,

He walked with, to support himself beyond

The burning marle, not like those soft steps bare

On Heaven’s azure; and the torrid air

Smote on him sore besides, fire vaulted o’er.

Nathless he so endured, till on the shore

Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called

His legions, Angel forms, who, dazed, lay sprawled

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the streams

In Vallombrosa, where the dappled gleams

Of the high over-arched Etrurian shades

Embower, or scattered sedge makes floating glades

When with fierce winds Orion armed hath vexed

The Red-Sea coast, whose waves had hexed

Busiris and his Memphian chivalry,

While they in their odious perfidy

Chased the sojourners of Goshen, who saw

Their carcases floating, while on the safe shore

‘Mid broken chariot wheels. So these bestrown,

Covering the flood, lost, abject, and prone,

Under amazement of their hideous change.

He called so loud that all the hollowed range

Of Hell resounded: ‘Princes, Potentates,

Warriors, that Flower of Heaven, once yours, awaits.

Can such astonishment as this ye seize,

Eternal Spirits, or chose ye this place for ease,

After the toil of battle to repose

Your wearied virtue, to slumber, to doze,

As in the vales of Heaven? Or have ye sworn

In this abject posture to praise and fawn,

To adore the Conqueror? who now beholds

Cherub and Seraph rolling in the folds

Of this flood of fire with scattered ensigns

And arms, till anon He our fate resigns

To His swift pursuers who from Heaven see

Th’ advantage, and, descending, trample we

Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts

Transfix us to this gulf’s nethermost vaults?

Awake, arise, or be for ever fallen!

   They heard, were abashed, and up rose all then

Upon the wing; as when watchmen abed

On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread,

Rouse and bestir themselves into sight.

Nor did they not perceive the evil plight

In which they were, or the fierce pains thus fade,

Yet to their General’s voice they soon obeyed

Innumerable. As when the rod held sway

Of Amram’s son, in Egypt’s evil day,

And waved round the coast, called a cloud, pitch limned

By locusts warping on the eastern wind,

That hung o’er the realm of impious Pharaoh

Like night, and darkened the land of Nile; so

Numberless were those bad Angels to tell

Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell.

‘Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires,

Till, at a signal, th’ uplifted spear spires

Of their great Sultan waving to aright

Their course, in even balance down they light

On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain:

A multitude like which the North domain

Poured never from her frozen loins to pass

Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous mass

Came like a deluge on the South, in bands

Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands.

Forthwith, from every squadron, as each should,

The heads and leaders thither haste where stood

Their great Commander; godlike Shapes, and Shifts

Excelling human; princely Airs and Gifts;

And Powers that erst in Heaven forced to bow,

Though of their names in Heavenly records now

Be no memorial, blotted out and rased

From the Books of Life since rebellion blazed.

Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve

Got them new names, till they saw to deceive,

Through God’s high sufferance for the trial of man,

As Falsities and Lies the Earth overran...

—

CAIN'S MARK.

My brother is gone. What profit to me

No longer myself? I hardly know how

He came to lie dead at my trembling feet,

But so the wretch did, now twice wretched I,

Whom the Lord has tainted with a mark to see

That I be not vengefully slain in turn,

But live outcast and despised. O Abel!

Must I envy thy death as thy life?

 —

ABEL'S CRY.

Beneath the sanded rock and clay, beneath

The hard stone layers and the soft stone bands;

Past the filters of death, unfleshed, alone,

Is this? O hear me! Where are you brother?

I have no hands nor legs; and where am I?

Am I dead? Am I murdered? Murdered by

Cain? O I am murdered by a brother,

A brother of blood but of nothing else!
Nothing more was Cain except blood on boil,

And boiling more in his furnace-hot rage!

God hear me! My cry will echo as long

As the damned race of Man crawls upon earth:

I am dead at the hand of a brother!

 —

ADAM'S CURSE.

What doth the ailing body signify?

I see in my children’s countenances

Irritation at the old man’s illness.

‘When will he die?’ Do they wonder? Do they!

I have lingered long, lingered overlong,

And hinder now where I once had aided.

I know that my time is fast approaching.

A bell within me hath started to ring

And will not hush except death should hush it.

I know; I hear; it comes; it comes. Did Eve

Know fully, as I know it now, when she

Were descending slowly, even as this?

O Eve! Darling of nature! Beauty’s own!

How did I grieve to perceive thy decline!

To see thy vermillion fading, paling,

Yet wast thou beautiful, sunset and rise.

O Eve! O Abel! Am I to face death

Or birth, to return to ye gentle two?

To depart from Cain, and the sons of Cain;

They look on me as carrion, will they

War? Because Adam, their sire, hath perished?

Will they call themselves Adam’s children, they:

Murderers, thieves, curs, vermin, and swine? Lord!

Only see me again ere I perish.

It is as the most distant dream when last,

I heard Thy voice carry pardon and say

‘Adam! Cursed art thou evermore this day!’

And yet Thou turned the earth for me. Have I

Justified aught of that sovereign mercy?

Have I earnt its tribute of majesty?

Have I? – Has Adam? The foremost of men?

Then pity mankind—I have not!

 —

THE LAST WORD.

When the petals fall,

   When the sea is dried,

When the world and all

    It protracts has died,    

When our voices cease,

   With the wrath they stirred,

Then our God in peace

   Will speak, and be heard.