Victorian Women Writers Project

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THE PATH THROUGH THE SNOW.

• BARE and sunshiny, bright and bleak,
• Rounded cold as a dead maid’s cheek,
• Folded white as a sinner’s shroud,
• Or wandering angel’s robes of cloud.—
• Well I know, well I know
• Over the fields the path through the snow.

• Narrow and rough it lies between
• Wastes where the wind sweeps, biting keen:
• Every step of the slippery road
• Marks where some weary foot has trod;
• Who’ll go, who’ll go
• After the rest on the path through the snow?

• They who would tread it must walk alone,
• Silent and steadfast—one by one:
• Dearest to dearest can only say,
• “My heart! I’ll follow thee all the way,
• As we go, as we go
• Each after each on this path through the snow.”

• It may be under that western haze
• Lurks the omen of brighter days;
• That each sentinel tree is quivering
• Deep at its core with the sap of spring,
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• And while we go, while we go,
• Green grass‐blades pierce thro’ the glittering snow.

• It may be the unknown path will tend
• Never to any earthly end,
• Die with the dying day obscure,
• And never lead to a human door:
• That none know who did go
• Patiently once on this path through the snow.

• No matter, no matter! the path shines plain;
• These pure snow‐crystals will deaden pain;
• Above, like stars in the deep blue dark,
• Eyes that love us look down and mark.
• Let us go, let us go,
• Whither heaven leads in the path thro’ the snow.

THE PATH THROUGH THE CORN.

• WAVY and bright in the summer air,
• Like a pleasant sea when the wind blows fair,
• And its roughest breath has scarcely curled
• The green highway to a distant world,—
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• Soft whispers passing from shore to shore,
• As from hearts content, yet desiring more—
• Who feels forlorn,
• Wandering thus down the path through the corn?

• A short space since, and the dead leaves lay
• Mouldering under the hedgerow gray,
• Nor hum of insect, nor voice of bird,
• O’er the desolate field was ever heard;
• Only at eve the pallid snow
• Blushed rose‐red in the red sun‐glow;
• Till, one blest morn,
• Shot up into life the young green corn.

• Small and feeble, slender and pale,
• It bent its head to the winter gale,
• Hearkened the wren’s soft note of cheer,
• Hardly believing spring was near:
• Saw chestnuts bud out and campions blow,
• And daisies mimic the vanished snow
• Where it was born,
• On either side of the path through the corn.

• The corn, the corn, the beautiful corn,
• Rising wonderful, morn by morn:
• First, scarce as high as a fairy’s wand,
• Then, just in reach of a child’s wee hand;
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• Then growing, growing, tall, brave, and strong:
• With the voice of new harvests in its song;
• While in fond scorn
• The lark out‐carols the whispering corn.

• A strange, sweet path, formed day by day,
• How, when, and wherefore, we cannot say,
• No more than of our life‐paths we know,
• Whither they lead us, why we go;
• Or whether our eyes shall ever see
• The wheat in the ear or the fruit on the tree;
• Yet, who’s forlorn?—
• He who watered the furrows can ripen the corn.

THE GOOD OF IT.

A Cynic’s Song.

• SOME men strut proudly, all purple and gold,
• Hiding queer deeds ’neath a cloak of good fame;
• I creep along, braving hunger and cold,
• To keep my heart stainless as well as my name;
• So, so, where is the good of it?

• Some clothe bare Truth in fine garments of words,
• Fetter her free limbs with cumbersome state:
• With me, let me sit at the lordliest boards,
• “I love” means I love, and “I hate” means I hate,
• But, but, where is the good of it?

• Some have rich dainties and costly attire,
• Guests fluttering round them and duns at the door:
• I crouch alone at my plain board and fire,
• Enjoy what I pay for and scorn to have more.
• Yet, yet, where is the good of it?

• Some gather round them a phalanx of friends,
• Scattering affection like coin in a crowd;
• I keep my heart for the few that heaven sends,
• Where they’ll find their names writ when I lie in my shroud.
• Still, still, where is the good of it?

• Some toy with love, lightly come, lightly go,
• A blithe game at hearts, little worth, little cost:—
• I staked my whole soul on one desperate throw,
• A life ’gainst an hour’s sport. We played’ and I—lost
• Ha, ha, such was the good of it!

MORAL: ADDED ON HIS DEATH‐BED.

• TURN the Past’s mirror backward. Its shadows removed,
• The dim confused mass becomes softened, sublime:
• I have worked—I have felt—I have lived—I have loved,
• And each was a step towards the goal I now climb:
• Thou, God, Thou sawest the good of it.

MINE.

For a German Air.

• O HOW my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,
• And I drink up joy like wine:
• O how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,
• For the lovely girl is mine!
• She’s rich, she’s fair, beyond compare,
• Of noble mind, serene and kind—
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• And how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,
• For the lovely girl is mine!

• O how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,
• In a music soft and fine;
• O how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,
• For the girl I love is mine.
• She owns no lands, has no white hands,
• Her lot is poor, her life obscure;—
• Yet how my heart is beating as her name I keep repeating,
• For the girl I love is mine!

A GHOST AT THE DANCING.

• A WIND‐SWEPT tulip‐bed—a colored cloud
• Of butterflies careering in the air—
• A many‐figured arras stirred to life,
• And merry unto midnight music dumb—
• So the dance whirls. Do any think of thee,
• Amiel, Amiel?

• Friends greet each other—countless rills of talk
• Meander round, scattering a spray of smiles.
• Surely—the news was false. One minute more
• And thou wilt stand here, tall and quiet‐eyed,
• Shakespearian beauty in they pensive face,
• Amiel, Amiel.

• Many here knew and loved thee—I nor loved,
• Scarce knew—yet in thy place a shadow glides,
• And a face shapes itself from empty air,
• Watching the dancers, grave and quiet‐eyed—
• Eyes that now see the angels evermore,
• Amiel, Amiel.

• On just such night as this, ’midst dance and song,
• I bade thee carelessly a light good by—
• “Good by”—saidst thou; “A happy journey home!”
• Was the unseen death‐angel at thy side,
• Mocking those words—(“A happy journey home,”
• Amiel, Amiel?

• Ay, we play fool’s play still; thou hast gone home.
• While these dance here, a mile hence o’er thy grave
• Drifts the deep New Year snow. The wondrous gate
• We spoke of, thou hast entered; I without
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• Grope ignorant still—thou dost its secrets know,
• Amiel, Amiel.

• What if, thus sitting where we sat last year,
• Thou camest, took’st up our broken thread of talk,
• And told’st of that new Home, which far I view,
• As children, wandering on through wintry fields,
• Mark on the hill the father’s window shine,
• Amiel, Amiel?

• No. We shall see thy pleasant face no more;
• Thy words on earth are ended. Yet thou livest;
• ’T is we who die.—I too, one day shall come,
• And, unseen, watch these shadows, quiet‐eyed—
• Then flit back to thy land, the living land,
• Amiel, Amiel.

MY CHRISTIAN NAME.

• MY Christian name, my Christian name,
• I never hear it now:
• None have the right to utter it,
• ’T is lost, I scare know how.
• My worldly name the world speaks loud;
• Thank God for well‐earned fame!
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• But silence sits at my cold hearth,—
• I have no household name.

• My Christian name, my Christian name,
• It has an uncouth sound;
• My mother chose it out of those
• In Bible pages found:
• Mother, whose accents made half sweet
• What else I held in shame,
• Dost thou remember up in heaven
• My poor lost Christian name?

• Brothers and sisters, mockers oft
• Of the quaint name I bore,
• Would I could leap back years, to hear
• Ye shout it out once more!
• One speaks it still, in written lines,
• The last fraternal claim:
• But the wide seas between us drown
• Its sound—my Christian name.

• I had a long dream once. Her voice
• Might breathe the homely word,
• And make it music—as love makes
• Any name, said or heard.
• O, dumb, dumb lips!—O, silent heart!
• Though it is no ones’ blame:
• Now while I live I’ll never hear
• Her speak my Christian name.

• God send her bliss, and send me rest!
• If her white footsteps calm
• Should track my bleeding feet, God make
• To them each blood‐drop balm!
• Peace—peace. O mother, put thou forth
• Thine elder, holier claim,
• And the first word I hear in heaven
• May be my Christian name.

A DEAD BABY.

• LITTLE soul, for such brief space that entered
• In this little body straight and chilly,
• Little life that fluttered and departed,
• Like a moth from an unopened lily,
• Little being, without name or nation,
• Where is now thy place among creation?

• Little dark‐lashed eyes, unclosèd never,
• Little mouth, by earthly food ne’er tainted,
• Little breast, that just once heaved, and settled
• In eternal slumber, white and sainted,—
• Child, shall I in future children’s faces
• See some pretty look that thine retraces?

• Is this thrill that strikes across my heart‐strings
• And in dew beneath my eyelid gathers,
• Token of the bliss thou mightst have brought me,
• Dawning of the love they call a father’s?
• Do I hear through this still room a sighing
• Like thy spirit to me its author crying?

• Whence didst come and whither take thy journey,
• Little soul, of me and mine created?
• Must thou lose us, and we thee, forever,
• O strange life, by minutes only dated?
• Or new flesh assuming, just to prove us,
• In some other babe return and love us?

• Idle questions all: yet our beginning
• Like our ending, rests with the Life‐sender,
• With whom naught is lost, and naught spent vainly:
• Unto Him this little one I render.
• Hide the face—the tiny coffin cover:
• So, our first dream, our first hope—is over.

FOR MUSIC.

• ALONG the shore, along the shore
• I see the wavelets meeting:
• But thee I see—ah, never more,
• For all my wild heart’s beating.
• The little wavelets come and go,
• The tide of life ebbs to and fro,
• Advancing and retreating:
• But from the shore, the steadfast shore,
• The sea is parted never:
• And mine I hold thee evermore,
• Forever and forever.

• Along the shore, along the shore
• I hear the waves resounding,
• But thou wilt cross them nevermore
• For all my wild heart’s bounding:
• The moon comes out above the tide
• And quiets all the billows wide
• Her pathway bright surrounding:
• Thus on the shore, the dreary shore,
• I walk with weak endeavor:
• I have thy love’s light evermore,
• Forever and forever.

THE CANARY IN HIS CAGE.

• SING away, ay, sing away,
• Merry little bird,
• Always gayest of the gay,
• Though a woodland roundelay
• You ne’er sung nor heard;
• Though your life from youth to age
• Passes in a narrow cage.

• Near the window wild birds fly,
• Trees are waving round:
• Fair things everywhere you spy
• Through the glass pane’s mystery,
• Your small life’s small bound:
• Nothing hinders your desire
• But a little gilded wire.

• Like a human soul you seem
• Shut in golden bars:
• Placed amidst earth’s sunshine‐stream,
• Singing to the morning beam,
• Dreaming ’neath the stars:
• Seeing all life’s pleasures clear,—
• But they never can come near.

• Never! Sing, bird‐poet mine,
• As most poets do;—
• Guessing by an instinct fine
• At some happiness divine
• Which they never knew.
• Lonely in a prison bright
• Hymning for the world’s delight.

• Yet, my birdie, you’re content
• In your tiny cage:
• Not a carol thence is sent
• But for happiness is meant—
• Wisdom pure as sage:
• Teaching, the true poet’s part
• Is to sing with merry heart.

• So, lie down thou peevish pen,
• Eyes, shake off all tears;
• And my wee bird, sing again:
• I’ll translate your song to men
• In these future years.
• “Howsoe’er thy lot’s assigned,
• Bear it with a cheerful mind.”

CONSTANCY IN INCONSTANCY.

AN OLD MAN’S CONFESSION.

BURIED TO‐DAY.

February 23, 1858.

• BURIED to‐day.
• When the soft green buds are bursting out,
• And up on the south wind comes a shout
• Of village boys and girls at play
• In the mild spring evening gray.

• Taken away
• Sturdy of heart and stout of limb,
• From eyes that drew half their light from him,
• And put low, low, underneath the clay,
• In his spring—on this spring day.

• Passes away
• All the pride of boy‐life begun,
• All the hope of life yet to run;
• Who dares to question when One saith “Nay.”
• Murmur not—only pray.

• Enters to‐day
• Another body in churchyard sod,
• Another soul on the life in God.
• HIS Christ was buried—and lives alway:
• Trust Him, and go your way.

THE MILL.

For an Irish Tune.

• WINDING and grinding
• Round goes the mill:
• Winding and grinding
• Should never stand still.
• Ask not if neighbor
• Grind great or small:
• Spare not your labor,
• Grind your wheat all.
• Winding and grinding round goes the mill:
• Winding and grinding should never stand still.

• Winding and grinding
• Work through the day,
• Grief never minding—
• Grind it away!
• What though tears dropping
• Rust as they fall?
• Have no wheel stopping—
• Work comforts all.
• Winding and grinding round goes the mill:
• Winding and grinding should never stand still.

NORTH WIND.

• LOUD wind, strong wind, sweeping o’er the mountains,
• Fresh wind, free wind, blowing from the sea,
• Pour forth thy vials like streams from airy fountains,
• Draughts of life to me.

• Clear wind, cold wind, like a Northern giant,
• Stars brightly threading thy cloud‐driven hair,
• Thrilling the blank night with thy voice defiant,
• Lo! I meet thee there.

• Wild wind, bold wind, like a strong‐armed angel,
• Clasp me and kiss me with thy kisses divine;
• Breathe in this dulled ear thy secret sweet evangel—
• Mine—and only mine.

• Fierce wind, mad wind, howling o’er the nations,
• Knew’st thou how leapeth my heart as thou goest by:
• Ah, thou wouldst pause awhile in a sudden patience
• Like a human sigh.

• Sharp wind, keen wind, cutting as word‐arrows,
• Empty thy quiverful! pass by! What is’t to thee,
• That in some mortal eyes life’s whole bright circle narrows,
• To one misery?

• Loud wind, strong wind, stay thou in the mountains,
• Fresh wind, free wind, trouble not the sea.
• Or lay thy deathly hand upon my heart’s warm fountains,
• That I hear not thee.

NOW AND AFTERWARDS.

• TWO hands upon the breast,
• And labor’s done;
• Two pale feet crossed in rest—
• The race is won;
• Two eyes with coin‐weights shut,
• And all tears cease;
• Two lips where grief is mute,
• Anger at peace”:—
• page: 134
• So pray we oftentimes, mourning our lot
• God in his kindness answereth not.

• “Two hands to work addrest
• Aye for His praise;
• Two feet that never rest
• Walking His ways;
• Two eyes that look above
• Through all their tears;
• Two lips still breathing love,
• Not wrath, nor fear”;
• So pray we afterwards, low on our knees;
• Pardon those erring prayers! Father, hear these!

A SKETCH.

• DOST thou thus love me, O thou beautiful?
• So beautiful, that by thy side I seem
• Like a great ducky cloud beside a star:
• Yet thou creep’st o’er its edges, and it rests
• On its lone path, the slow deep‐hearted cloud—
• page: 135
• Then opes a rift and lets thee enter in;
• And with thy beauty shining on its breast,
• Feels no more its own blackness—thou art fair.

• Dost thou thus love me, O thou all beloved,
• In whose large store the very meanest coin
• Would out‐buy my whole wealth? Yet here thou comest
• Like a kind heiress from her purple and down
• Uprising, who for pity cannot sleep,
• But goes forth to the stranger at her gate—
• The beggared stranger at her beauteous gate—
• And clothes and feeds; scarce blest till she has blest.

• Dost thou thus love me, O thou pure of heart,
• Whose very looks are prayers? What couldst thou see
• In this forsaken pool by the yew‐wood’s side,
• To sit down at its bank, and dip thy hand,
• Saying, “it is so clear!”—And lo, erelong
• Its blackness caught the shimmer of they wings,
• Its slimes slid downward from thy stainless palm,
• Its depths grew still that there thy form might rise.

• O beautiful! O well‐beloved! O rich
• In all that makes my need! I lay me down
• I’ the shadow of thy love, and feel no pain.
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• The cloud floats on, thee glittering on its breast,
• The beggar wears thy purple as his own:
• The noisome waves, made calm, creep to thy feet
• Rejoicing that they yet can image thee,
• And beyond thee, God’s heaven, thick‐sown with stars.

THE UNKNOWN COUNTRY.

To a German Air.

• WHERE is the unknown country?”
• I whispered sad and slow,—
• “The strange and awful country
• To which I soon must go, must go,
• To which I soon must go?”

• Out of the unknown country
• A voice sang soft and low:—
• “O pleasant is that country
• And sweet it is to go, to go,
• And sweet it is to go.

• “Along the shining country
• The peaceful rivers flow:
• page: 137
• And in that wondrous country
• The tree of life does grow, does grow,
• The tree of life does grow.”

• Ah, then into that country
• Of which I nothing know,
• The everlasting country,
• With willing heart I go, I go,
• With willing heart I go.

A CHILD’S SMILE.

• A CHILD’S smile—nothing more;
• Quiet, and soft, and grave, and seldom seen;
• Like summer lightning o’er,
• Leaving the little face again serene.

• I think, boy well‐beloved,
• Thine angel, who did grieve to see how far
• Thy childhood is removed
• From sports that dear to other children are,

• On this pale cheek has thrown
• The brightness of his countenance, and made
• A beauty like his own—
• That, while we see it, we are half afraid,

• And marvel, will it stay?
• Or, long ere manhood, will that angel fair,
• Departing some sad day,
• Steal the child‐smile and leave the shadow care?

• Nay, fear not. As is given
• Unto this child the father watching o’er,
• His angel up in heaven
• Beholds Our Father’s face for evermore.

• And he will help him bear
• His burthen, as his father helps him now:
• So may he come to wear
• That happy child‐smile on an old man’s brow.

VIOLETS.

SENT IN A LITTLE BOX.

• LET them lie, yes, let them lie,
• They’ll be dead to‐morrow:
• Lift the lid up quietly
• As you’d lift the mystery
• Of a shrouded sorrow.

• Let them lie, the fragrant things,
• Their sweet souls thus giving:
• Let no breezes’ ambient wings,
• And no useless water‐springs
• Lure them into living.

• They have lived—they live no more:
• Nothing can requite them
• For the gentle life they bore
• And up‐yielded in full store
• While it did delight them.

• Yet, poor flowers, not sad to die
• In the hand that slew ye,
• Did ye leave the open sky,
• And the winds that wandered by,
• And the bees that knew ye.

• Giving up a small earth place,
• And a day of blooming,
• Here to lie in narrow space,
• Smiling in this sickly face,
• This dull air perfuming?

• O my pretty violets dead,
• Coffined from all gazes,
• We will also smiling shed
• Out of our flowers witherèd,
• Perfume of sweet praises.

• And as ye, for this poor sake,
• Love with life are buying,
• So, I doubt not, ONE will make
• All our gathered flowers to take
• Richer scent through dying.

EDENLAND.

For Music.

• YOU remember where in starlight
• We two wandered hand in hand,
• While the night‐flowers poured their perfume,
• And night‐airs the still earth fanned?—
• There I, walking yester even,
• Felt like a ghost in Edenland.

• I remember all you told me,
• Looking up as we did stand,
• While my heart poured out its perfume,
• Like the night‐flowers in your hand;
• And the path where we two wandered
• Seemed not like earth but Edenland.

• Now the stars shine paler, colder
• Night‐flowers die without your hand;
• Yet my spirit walks beside you
• Everywhere, unsought, unbanned.
• And I wait till we shall wander
• Under the stars of Edenland.

THE HOUSE OF CLAY.

• THERE was a house, a house of clay,
• Wherein the inmate sat all day,
• Merry and poor;
• For Hope sat with her, heart to heart,
• Fond and kind, fond and kind,
• Vowing he never would depart,—
• Till all at once he changed his mind:
• “Sweetheart, good by!” He slipped away
• And shut the door.

• But Love came past, and, looking in,
• With smile that pierced like sunbeam thin
• Through wall, roof, floor,
• Stood in the midst of that poor room,
• Grand and fair, grand and fair,
• Making a glory out of gloom:—
• Till at the window mocked grim Care:
• Love sighed; “All lose, and nothing win?”—
• He shut the door.

• Then o’er the close‐barred house of clay
• Kind clematis and woodbine gay
• Crept more and more;
• And bees hummed merrily outside,
• page: 143
• Loud and strong, loud and strong,
• The inner silentness to hide,
• The patient silence all day long;
• Till evening touched with finger gray
• The bolted door.

• Most like, the next step passing by
• Will be the Angel’s, whose calm eye
• Marks rich, marks poor:
• Who, fearing not, at any gate
• Stands and calls, stands and calls;
• At which the inmate opens straight,—
• Whom, ere the crumbling clay‐house falls,
• He takes in kind arms silently,
• And shuts the door.

WINTER MOONLIGHT.

• LOUD‐VOICED night, with the wild wind blowing
• Many a tune;
• Stormy night, with white rain‐clouds going
• Over the moon;
• Mystic night, that each minute changes,
• Now as blue as the mountain‐ranges
• page: 144
• Far, far away;
• Now as black as a heart where strange is
• Joy, night or day.

• Wondrous moonlight, unlike all moonlights
• Since I was born;
• That on a hundred, bright as noonlights,
• Looks in slow scorn,—
• Moonlights where the old vine‐leaves quiver,
• Moonlights shining on vale and river,
• Where old paths lie;
• Moonlights—Night, blot their like forever
• Out of the sky!

• Hail, new moonlight, fierce, wild, and stormy,
• Wintry and bold!
• Hail, sharp wind, that can strengthen, warm me,
• If ne’er so cold!
• Not chance‐driven this deluge rages,
• ONE doth pour out and ONE assuages;
• Under His hand
• Drifting, Noah‐like, into the ages
• Shall shall touch land.

THE PLANTING.

• PLANT it safe and sure, my child,
• Then cease watching and cease weeping;
• You have done your utmost part:
• Leave it with a quiet heart:
• It will grow while you are sleeping.

• “But, O father,” says the child,
• With a troubled face up‐creeping,
• “How can I but think and grieve
• When the fierce wind comes at eve
• Tearing it—and I lie sleeping!

• “I have loved my young tree so!
• In each bud seen leaf and floweret,
• Watered it each day with prayers,
• Guarded it with many cares,
• Lest some canker should devour it.

• “O good father,” sobs the child,
• “If I come in summer’s shining
• page: 146
• And my pretty tree be dead,
• How the sun will scorch my head,
• How I shall sit lorn, repining!

• “Rather let me, evermore,
• An incessant watch thus keeping,
• Bear the cold, the storm, the frost,
• That my treasure be not lost—
• Ay, bear aught—but idle sleeping.”

• Sternly said the father then,
• “Who art thou, child, vainly grieving?
• Canst thou send the balmy dews,
• Or the rich sap interfuse
• Through the dead trunk, inly living?

• “Canst thou bid the heavens restrain
• Natural tempests for thy praying?
• Canst thou bend one tender shoot,
• Urge the growth of one frail root,
• Keep one leaflet from decaying?

• “If it live to bloom all fair,
• Will it praise thee for its blossom?
• If it die, will any plaints
• Reach thee, as with kings and saints
• Drops it to the cold earth’s bosom?

• “Plant it—all thou canst!—with prayers;
• It is safe ’neath His sky’s folding
• Who the whole earth compasses,
• Whether we watch more or less,
• His wide eye all things beholding.

• “Should He need a goodly tree
• For the shelter of the nations,
• He will make it grow: if not,
• Never yet His love forgot
• Human love, and faith, and patience.

• “Leave thy treasure in His hand—
• Cease all watching and all weeping:
• Years hence, men its shade may crave,
• And its mighty branches wave
• Beautiful above they sleeping.”

• If his hope, tear‐sown, that child
• Garnered after joyful reaping,
• Know I not: yet unawares
• Gleams this truth through many cares,
• “It will grow while thou art sleeping.”

SITTING ON THE SHORE.

• THE tide has ebbed away:
• No more wild dashings ’gainst the adamant rocks,
• Nor swayings amidst sea‐weed false that mocks
• The hues of gardens gay:
• No laugh of little wavelets at their play:
• No lucid pools reflecting heaven’s clear brow—
• Both storm and calm alike are ended now.

• The rocks sit gray and lone:
• The shifting sand is spread so smooth and dry,
• That not a tide might ever have swept by
• Stirring it with rude moan:
• Only some weedy fragments idly thrown
• To rot beneath the sky, tell what has been:
• But Desolation’s self has grown serene.

• Afar the mountains rise,
• And the broad estuary widens out,
• All sunshine; wheeling round and round about
• Seaward, a white bird flies.
• A bird? Nay, seems it rather in these eyes
• A spirit, o’er Eternity’s dim sea
• Calling—“Come thou where all we glad souls be.

• O life, O silent shore,
• Where we sit patient; O great sea beyond
• To which we turn with solemn hope and fond,
• But sorrowful no more:
• A little while, and then we too shall soar
• Like white‐winged sea‐birds into the Infinite Deep:
• Till then, Thou, Father—wilt our spirits keep.

EUDOXIA.

FIRST PICTURE.

• O SWEETEST my sister, my sister that sits in the sun,
• Her lap full of jewels, and roses in showers on her hair;
• Soft smiling and counting her riches up slow, one by one,
• Cool‐browed, shaking dew from her garlands—those garlands so fair,
• Many gasp, climb, snatch, struggle, and die for—her every‐day wear!
• O beauteous my sister, turn downwards those mild eyes of thine,
• Lest they stab with their smiling, and blister or scorch where they shine.

• Young sister who never yet sat for an hour in the cold,
• Whose cheek scarcely feels half the roses that throng to caress,
• Whose light hands hold loosely these jewels and silver and gold,
• Remember thou those in the world who forever on press
• In perils and watchings, and hunger and nakedness,
• While thou sit’st content in the sunlight that round thee doth shine.
• Take heed! these have long borne their burthen—now lift thou up thine.

• Be meek—as befits one whose cup to the brim is love‐crowned,
• While others in dry dust drop empty—What, what canst thou know
• Of the wild human tide that goes sweeping eternally round
• The isle where thou sit’st pure and calm as a statue of snow,
• Around which good thoughts like kind angels continually go?
• Be pitiful. Whose eyes once turned from the angels to shine
• Upon publicans, sinners? O sister, ’t will not pollute thine.

• Who, even‐eyed, looks on His children, the black and the fair,
• The loved and the unloved, the tempted, untempted—marks all,
• And metes—not as man metes? If thou with weak tender hand dare
• To take up His balances—say where His justice should fall,
• Far better be Magdalen dead at the gate of thy hall—
• Dead, sinning, and loving, and contrite, and pardoned, to shine
• Midst he saints high in heaven, than thou, angel sister of mine!

EUDOXIA.

SECOND PICTURE.

• O DEAREST my sister, my sister who sits by the hearth,
• With lids softly drooping, or lifted up saintly and calm,
• With household hands folded, or opened for help and for balm,
• page: 152
• And lips, ripe and dewy, or ready for innocent mirth,—
• Thy life rises upwards to heaven everyday like a psalm
• Which the singer sings sleeping, and waked, would half wondering say—
• “I sang not. Nay, how could I sing thus?—I only do pray.”

• O gentlest my sister, who walks in at every dark door
• Whether bolted or open, unheedful of welcome or frown;
• But entering silent as sunlight, and there sitting down,
• Illumines the damp walls and shines pleasant shapes on the floor,
• And unlocks dim chambers where low lies sad Hope, without crown,
• Uplifts her from sackcloth and ashes and black mourning weeds,
• Re‐crowns and re‐clothes her.—Then, on to the next door that needs.

• O blessed my sister, whose spirit so wholly dost live
• In loving, that even the word “loved,” with its rapturous sound,
• page: 153
• Rings faintly, like earth‐tunes when angels are hymning around:
• Whose eyes say: “Less happy methinks to receive than to give.”—
• So whatsoever we give, may One give to thee without bound,
• All best gifts—all dearest gifts—whether His right hand do close
• Or open—He holds it forever above thee;—He knows!

EUDOXIA.

THIRD PICTURE.

• O SILENT my sister, who stands by my side at the shore,
• Back gazing with me on those waves which we mortals call years,
• That rose, grew, and threatened, and climaxed, and broke, and were o’er,
• While we still sit watching and watching, our cheeks free from tears—
• O sister, with looks so familiar, yet strange, flitting by,
• Say, say, hast thou been to those dead years as faithful as I?

• Have they cast at thy feet also, jewels and whitening bones,
• Gold, silver, and wreck‐wood, dank sea‐weed and treasures of cost?
• Hast thou buried thy dead, sought thy jewels ’midst shingle and stones,
• And learnt how the lost is the found, and the found is the lost?
• Or stood with clear eyes upturned placid ’twixt sorrow and mirth,
• As asking deep questions that cannot be answered on earth?—

• I know not. Who knoweth? Our own souls we scarcely do know,
• And none knows his brother’s. Who judges, contemns, or bewails,
• Or mocketh, or praiseth? In this world’s strange vanishing show,
• The one truth is loving. O sister, the dark cloud that veils
• All life, lets this rift through to glorify future and past.
• “Love ever—love only—love faithfully—love to the last.”

BENEDETTA MINELLI.

I.

THE NOVICE.

• IT is near morning. Ere the next night fall
• I shall be made the bride of heaven. Then home
• To my still marriage chamber I shall come,
• And spouseless, childless, watch the slow years crawl.

• These lips will never meet a softer touch
• Than the stone crucifix I kiss; no child
• Will clasp this neck. Ah, virgin‐mother mild,
• Thy painted bliss will mock me overmuch.

• This is the last time I shall twist the hair
• My mother’s hand wreathed, till in dust she lay:
• The name, her name, given on my baptism‐day,
• This is the last time I shall ever bear.

• O weary world, O heavy life, farewell!
• Like a tired child that creeps into the dark
• page: 156
• To sob itself asleep, where none will mark,—
• So creep I to my silent convent cell.

• Friends, lovers whom I loved not, kindly hearts
• Who grieve that I should enter this still door,
• Grieve not. Closing behind me evermore,
• Me from all anguish, as all joy, it parts.

• Love, whom alone I loved; who stand’st far off,
• Lifting compassionate eyes that could not save,
• Remember, this my spirit’s quiet grave
• Hides me from worldly pity, worldly scoff.

• ’T was less thy hand than Heaven’s which came between,
• And dashed my cup down. See, I shed no tears:
• And if I think at all of vanished years,
• ’T is but to bless thee, dear, for what has been.

• My soul continually does cry to thee;
• In the night‐watches ghost‐like stealing out
• From its flesh tomb, and hovering thee about;
• So live that I in heaven thy face may see!

• Live, noble heart, of whom this heart of mine
• Was half unworthy. Build up actions great,
• That I down looking from the crystal gate
• Smile o’er our dead hopes urned in such a shrine.

• Live, keeping aye they spirit undefiled,
• That, when we stand before our Master’s feet,
• I with an angel’s love may crown complete
• The woman’s faith, the worship of the child.

• Dawn, solemn bridal morn; ope, bridal door;
• I enter. My vowed soul may Heaven take;
• My heart its virgin spousal for thy sake;
• O love, keeps sacred thus forevermore.

II.

THE SISTER OF MERCY.

• IS it then so?—Good friends, who sit and sigh
• While I lie smiling, are my life’s sands run?
• Will my next matins, hymned beyond the sun,
• Mingle with those of saints and martyrs high?

• Shall I with these my gray hairs turned to gold,
• My aged limbs new clad in garments white,
• Stand all transfigured in the angels’ sight,
• Singing triumphantly that moan of old,—

• Thy will be done? It was done. O my God,
• Thou know’st, when over grief’s tempestuous sea
• My broken‐wingèd soul fled home to Thee,
• I writhed, but never murmured at Thy rod.

• It fell upon me, stern at first, then soft
• As parent’s kisses, till the wound was healed;
• And I went forth a laborer in Thy field:—
• They best can bind who have been bruisèd oft.

• And Thou wert pitiful. I came heart‐sore,
• And drank Thy cup because earth’s cups ran dry:
• Thou slew’st me not for that impiety,
• But madest the draught so sweet, I thirst no more.

• I came for silence, heavy rest, or death:
• Thou gavest instead life, peace, and holy toil:
• My sighing lips from sorrow didst assoil,
• And fill with righteous thankfulness each breath.

• Therefore I praise Thee that Thou shuttest Thine ears
• Unto my misery: didst Thy will, not mine:
• That to this length of days Thy hand divine,
• My feet from falling kept, mine eyes from tears.

• Sisters, draw near. Hear my last words serene:
• When I was young I walked in mine own ways,
• page: 159
• Worshipped—not God: sought not alone His praise;
• So he cut down my gourd while it was green.

• And then He o’er me threw His holy shade,
• That though no other mortal plants might grow,
• Mocking the beauty that was long laid low,
• I dwelt in peace, and His commands obeyed.

• I thank Him for all joy and for all pain:
• For healèd pangs, for years of calm content:
• For blessedness of spending and being spent
• In His high service where all loss is gain.

• I bless Him for my life and for my death;
• But most, that in my death my life is crowned,
• Since I see there, with angels gathering round,
• My angel. Ay, love, thou hast kept thy faith,

• I mine. The golden portals will not close
• Like those of earth, between us. Reach thy hand!
• No miserere, sisters. Chant out grand
• Te Deum laudamus. Now,—’t is all repose.

A DREAM OF DEATH.

• WHERE shall we sail to‐day?”—Thus said, methought,
• A voice that only could be heard in dreams:
• And on we glided without mast or oar,
• A wondrous boat upon a wondrous sea.

• Sudden, the shore curved inward to a bay,
• Broad, calm, with gorgeous sea‐weeds waving slow
• Beneath the water, like rich thoughts that stir
• In the mysterious deep of poets’ hearts.

• So still, so fair, so rosy in the dawn
• Lay that bright bay: yet something seemed to breath,
• Or in the air, or from the whispering waves,
• Or from that voice, as near as one’s own soul,

• “There was a wreck last night.” A wreck? then where
• The ship, the crew?—The all‐entombing sea
• On which is writ nor name nor chronicle
• Laid itself o’er them with smooth crystal smile.

• “Yet was the wreck last night.”. And gazing down
• Deep down below the surface, we were ware
• Of ghastly faces with their open eyes
• Uplooking to the dawn they could not see.

• One moved with moving sea‐weeds: one lay prone,
• The tinted fishes gliding o’er his breast;
• One, caught by floating hair, rocked quietly
• Upon his reedy cradle, like a child.

• “The wreck has been”—said the melodious voice,
• “Yet all is peace. The dead, that, while we slept,
• Struggled for life, now sleep and fear no storms:
• O’er them let us not weep when heaven smiles.”

• So we sailed on above the diamond sands,
• Bright sea‐flowers, and white faces stony calm,
• Till the waves bore us to the open main,
• And the great sun arose upon the world.

A DREAM OF RESURRECTION.

• SO heavenly beautiful it lay,
• It was less like a human corse
• Than that fair shape in which perforce
• A lost hope clothes itself alway.

• The dream showed very plain: the bed
• Where that known unknown face reposed,—
• A woman’s face with eyelids closed,
• A something precious that was dead;

• A something, lost on this side life,
• By which the mourner came and stood,
• And laid down, ne’er to be indued,
• All flaunting robes of earthly strife;

• Shred off, like votive locks of hair,
• Youth’s ornaments of pride and strength,
• And cast them in their golden length
• The silence of that bier to share.

• No tears fell,—but with gazings long
• Lorn memory tried to print that face
• On the heart’s ever‐vacant place,
• With a sun‐finger, sharp and strong.—

• Then kisses, dropping without sound,
• And solemn arms wound round the dead,
• And lifting from the natural bed
• Into the coffin’s strange new bound.

• Yet still no farewell, or belief
• In death, no more than one believes
• In some dread truth that sudden weaves
• The whole world in a shroud of grief.

• And still unanswered kisses; still
• Warm clingings to the image cold
• With an incredulous faith’s close fold,
• Creative in its fierce “I will.”

• Hush,—hush! the marble eyelids move,
• The kissed lips quiver into breath:
• Avaunt, thou mockery of Death!
• Avaunt!—we are conquerors, I and Love.

• Corpse of dead Hope, awake, arise,
• A living Hope that only slept
• Until the tears thus overwept
• Had washed the blindness from our eyes.

• Come back into the upper day:
• Pluck off these cerements. Patient shroud,
• We’ll wrap thee as a garment proud
• Round the fair shape we thought was clay.

• Clasp, arms; cling, soul; eyes, drink anew
• The beauty that returns with breath:
• Faith, that out‐loved this trance‐like death,
• May see this resurrection too.

ON THE CLIFF‐TOP.

• FACE upward to the sky
• Quiet I lie:
• Quiet as if the finger of God’s will
• Had bade this human mechanism “be still!”
• And sent the intangible essence, this strange I,
• All wondering forth to His eternity.

• Below, the sea’s sound, faint
• As dying saint
• Telling of gone‐by sorrows long at rest:
• Above, the fearless sea‐gull’s shimmering breast
• Painted a moment on the dark blue skies—
• A hovering joy, that while I watch it flies.

• Alike unheeded now
• Old griefs, and thou
• Quick‐wingèd Joy, that like a bird at play
• Pleasest thyself to visit me to‐day:
• page: 165
• On the cliff‐top, earth dim and heaven clear,
• My soul lies calmly, above hope—or fear.

• But not—(do Thou forbid
• Whose stainless lid
• Wept tears at Lazarus’ grave, and looking down
• Afar off, upon Solyma’s doomed town.)
• Ah, not above love—human yet divine—
• Which, Thee seen first, in Thee sees all of Thine!

• Is’t sunset? The keen breeze
• Blows from the seas:
• And at my side a pleasant vision stands
• With her brown eyes and kind extended hands.
• Dear, we’ll go down together and full fain
• From the cliff‐top to the busy world again.

AN EVENING GUEST.

• IF, in the silence of this lonely eve,
• With the street lamp pale flickering on the wall,
• An angel were to whisper me, “Believe—
• It shall be given thee. Call!”—whom should I call?

• And then I were to see thee gliding in
• Clad in known garments, that with empty fold
• Lie in my keeping, and my fingers, thin
• As thine were once, to feel in thy safe hold:

• “I should fall weeping on thy neck and say,
• “I have so suffered since—since—” But my tears
• Would stop, remembering how thou count’st thy day
• A day that is with God a thousand years.

• Then what are these sad days, months, years of mine,
• To thine eternity of full delight?
• What my whole life, when myriad lives divine
• May wait, each leading to a higher height?

• I lose myself—I faint. Beloved, best,
• Let me still dream, thy dear humanity
• Sits with me here, my head upon thy breast,
• And then I will go back to heaven with thee.

AFTER SUNSET.

• REST—rest—four little letters, one short word,
• Enfolding an infinitude of bliss—
• Rest is upon the earth. The heavy clouds
• Hang poised in silent ether, motionless,
• Seeking nor sun nor breeze. No restless star
• Thrills the sky’s gray‐robed breast with pulsing rays,
• The night’s heart has throbbed out.
• No grass blade stirs,
• No downy‐wingèd moth comes flittering by
• Caught by the light—Thank God, there is no light,
• No open‐eyed, loud‐voiced, quick motioned light,
• Nothing but gloom and rest.
• A row of trees
• Along the hill horizon, westward, stands
• All black and still, as if it were a rank
• Of fallen angels, melancholy met
• Before the amber gate of Paradise—
• The bright shut gate, whose everlasting smile
• Deadens despair to calm.
• O, better far
• Better than bliss is rest! If suddenly
• page: 168
• Those burnished doors of molten gold, steel‐barred,
• Which the sun closed behind him as he went
• Into his bridal chamber—were to burst
• Asunder with a clang, and in a breath
• God’s mysteries were revealed—His kingdom came—
• The multitudes of heavenly messengers
• Hastening throughout all space—the thunder quire
• Of praise—the obedient lightnings’ lambent gleam
• Around the unseen Throne—should I not sink
• Crushed by the weight of such beatitudes,
• Crying, “Rest, only rest, thou merciful God!
• Hide me within the hollow of Thy hand
• In some dark corner of the universe,
• Thy bright, full, busy universe, that blinds,
• Deafens, and tortures—Give me only rest!”

• O for a soul‐sleep, long and deep and still!
• To lie down quiet after the weary day,
• Dropping all pleasant flowers from the numbed hands,
• Bidding good‐night to all companions dear,
• Drawing the curtains on this darkened world,
• Closing the eyes, and with a patient sigh
• Murmuring “Our Father”—fall on sleep, till dawn!

THE GARDEN‐CHAIR.

TWO PORTRAITS.

• A PLEASANT picture, full of meanings deep,
• Old age, calm sitting in the July sun,
• On withered hands half‐leaning—feeble hands,
• That after their life‐labors, light or hard,
• Their girlish broideries, their marriage‐ringed
• Domestic duties, their sweet cradle cares,
• Have dropped into the quiet‐folded ease
• Of fourscore years. How peacefully the eyes
• Face us! Contented, unregretful eyes,
• That carry in them the whole tale of life
• With its one moral—“Thus all was—thus best.”
• Eyes now so near unto their closing mild
• They seem to pierce direct through all that maze,
• As eyes immortal do.

• Here—Youth. She stands
• Under the roses, with elastic foot
• Poised to step forward; eager‐eyed, yet grave
• Beneath the mystery of the unknown To‐come,
• Though longing for its coming. Firm prepared
• page: 170
• (So say the lifted head and close, sweet mouth)
• For any future: though the dreamy hope
• Throned on her girlish forehead, whispers fond,
• “Surely they err who say that life is hard;
• Surely it shall not be with me as these.”

• God knows: He only. And so best, dear child,
• Thou woman‐statured, sixteen‐year‐old child,
• Meet bravely the impenetrable Dark
• Under thy roses. Bud and blossom thou
• Fearless as they—if thou art planted safe,
• Whether for gathering or for withering, safe
• In the King’s garden.

AN OLD IDEA.

• STREAM of my life, dull, placid river, flow!
• I have no fear of the ingulfing seas:
• Neither I look before me nor behind,
• But, lying mute with wave‐dipped hand, float on.

• It was not always so. My brethren, see
• This oar‐stained, trembling palm. It keeps the sign
• page: 171
• Of youth’s mad wrestling with the waves that drift
• Immutably, eternally along.

• I would have had them flow through fields and flowers,
• Giving and taking freshness, perfume, joy;
• It winds through—here. Be silent, O my soul!
• —The finger of God’s wisdom drew its line.

• So I lean back and look up to the stars,
• And count the ripples circling to the shore,
• And watch the solemn river rolling on
• Until it widen to the open seas.

PARABLES.

“Hold every mortal joy

With a loose hand.”

• WE clutch our joys as children do their flowers;
• We look at them, but scarce believe them ours,
• Till our hot palms have smirched their colors rare
• And crushed their dewy beauty unaware.
• page: 172
• But the wise Gardener, whose they were, comes by
• At hours when we expect not, and with eye
• Mournful yet sweet, compassionate though stern,
• Takes them.
• Then in a moment we discern
• By loss, what was possession, and, half‐wild
• With misery, cry out like angry child:
• “O cruel! thus to snatch my posy fine!”
• He answers tenderly, “Not thine, but mine,”
• And points to those stained fingers which do prove
• Our fatal cherishing, our dangerous love;
• At which we, chidden, a pale silence keep;
• Yet evermore must weep, and weep, and weep.
• So on through gloomy ways and thorny brakes,
• Quiet and slow, our shrinking feet he takes
• Let by the soilèd hand, which, laved in tears,
• More and more clean beneath his sight appears.
• At length the heavy eyes with patience shine—
• “I am content. Thou took’st but what was thine.”

• And then he us his beauteous garden shows,
• Where bountiful the Rose of Sharon grows:’
• Where in the breezes opening spice‐buds swell,
• And the pomegranates yield a pleasant smell:
• While to and fro peace‐sandalled angels move
• In the pure air that they—not we—call Love:
• An air so rare and fine, our grosser breath
• Cannot inhale till purified by death.
• page: 173
• And thus we, struck with longing joy, adore,
• And, satisfied, wait mute without the door,
• Until the gracious Gardener maketh sign,
• “Enter in peace. All this is mine—and thine.”

LETTICE.

• I SAID to Lettice, our sister Lettice,
• While drooped and glistened her eye‐lash brown,
• “Your man’s a poor man, a cold and dour man,
• There’s many a better about our town.”
• She smiled securely—“He loves me purely:
• A true heart’s safe, both in smile or frown;
• And nothing harms me while his love warms me,
• Whether the world go up or down.”

• “He comes of strangers, and they are rangers,
• And ill to trust, girl, when out of sight:
• Fremd folk may blame ye, and e’en defame ye,—
• A gown oft handled looks seldom white.”
• She raise serenely her eyelids queenly,—
• “My innocence is my whitest gown;
• No harsh tongue grieves me while he believes me,
• Whether the world go up or down.”

• “Your man’s a frail man, was ne’er a hale man,
• And sickness knocketh at every door,
• And death comes making bold hearts cower, breaking—”
• Our Lettice trembled;—but once, no more.
• “If death should enter, smite to the centre
• Our poor home palace, all crumbling down,
• He cannot fright us, nor disunite us,
• Life bears Love’s cross, death brings Love’s crown.”

A SPIRIT PRESENT.

• IF, coming from that unknown sphere
• Where I believe thou art,—
• The world unseen which girds our world
• So close, yet so apart,—
• Thy soul’s soft call unto my soul
• Electrical could reach,
• And mortal and immortal blend
• In one familiar speech,—

• What wouldst thou say to me? wouldst ask
• What, since did me befall?
• page: 175
• Or close this chasm of cruel years
• Between us—knowing all?
• Wouldst love me—thy pure eyes seeing that
• God only saw beside?
• O, love me! ’T was so hard to live,
• So easy to have died.

• If, while this dizzy whirl of life
• A moment pausing stayed,
• I face to face with thee could stand,
• I would not be afraid:
• Not though from heaven to heaven thy feet
• In glad ascent have trod,
• While mine took through earth’s miry ways
• Their solitary road.

• We could not lose each other. World
• On world piled ever higher
• Would part like banked clouds, lightning‐cleft
• By our two souls’ desire.
• Life ne’er divided us; death tried,
• But could not; Love’s voice fine
• Called luring through the dark—then ceased,
• And I am wholly thine.

A WINTER WALK.

• WE never had believed, I wis,
• At primrose time when west winds stole
• Like thoughts of youth across the soul,
• In such an altered time as this,

• When if one little flower did peep
• Up through the brown and sullen grass,
• We should just look on it, and pass
• As if we saw it in our sleep.

• Feeling as sure as that this ray
• Which cottage children call the sun,
• Colors the pale clouds one by one,—
• Our touch would make it drop to clay.

• We never could have looked, in prime
• Of April, or when July trees
• Shook full‐leaved in the evening bree
• Upon the face of this pale time,

• Still, soft, familiar; shining bleak
• On naked branches, sodden ground,
• Yet shining—as if one had found
• A smile upon a dead friend’s cheek,

• Or old friend, lost for years, had strange
• In altered mien come sudden back,
• Confronting us with our great lack—
• Till loss seemed far less sad than change.

• Yet though, alas! Hope did not see
• This winter skeleton through full leaves,
• Out of all bareness Faith perceives
• Possible life in field and tree.

• In bough and trunk the sap will move,
• And the mould break o’er springing flowers;
• Nature revives with all her powers,
• But only nature;—never love.

• So, listlessly with linkèd hands
• Both Faith and Hope glide soft away;
• While in long shadows, cool and gray,
• The sun sets o’er the barren lands.

“WILL SAIL TO‐MORROW.”

• THE good ship lies in the crowded dock,
• Fair as a statue, firm as a rock:
• Her tall masts piercing the still blue air,
• Her funnel glittering white and bare,
• Whence the long soft line of vapory smoke
• Betwixt sky and sea like a vision broke,
• Or slowly o’er the horizon curled
• Like a lost hope fled to the other world:
• She sails to‐morrow,—
• Sails to‐morrow.

• Out steps the captain, busy and grave,
• With his sailor’s footfall, quick and brave,
• His hundred thoughts and his thousand cares,
• And his steady eye that all things dares:
• Though a little smile o’er the kind face dawns
• On the loving brute that leaps and fawns,
• And a little shadow comes and goes,
• As if heart and fancy fled—where, who knows:
• He sails to‐morrow:
• Sails to‐morrow.

• To‐morrow the serried line of ships
• Will quick close after her as she slips
• page: 179
• Into the unknown deep once more:
• To‐morrow, to‐morrow, some on shore
• With straining eyes shall desperate yearn—
• “This is not parting? return—return!”
• Peace, wild‐wrung hands! hush, sobbing breath!
• Love keepeth its own through life and death;
• Though she sails to‐morrow—
• Sails to‐morrow.

• Sail, stately ship; down Southampton water
• Gliding fair as old Nereus’ daughter:
• Christian ship that for burthen bears
• Christians, speeded by Christian prayers;
• All kinds of angels follow her track!
• Pitiful God, bring the good ship back!
• All the souls in her forever keep
• Thine, living or dying, awake or asleep:
• Then sail to‐morrow!
• Ship, sail to‐morrow!

AT EVEN‐TIDE.

C. N.—Died April, 1857.

• What spirit is it that doth pervade
• The silence of this empty room?
• And as I lift my eyes, what shade
• Glides off and vanishes in gloom?

• I could believe this moment gone,
• A known form filled that vacant chair,
• That those kind eyes upon me shone
• I never shall see anywhere!

• The living are so far away:
• But thou—thou seemest strangely near;
• Knowest all my silent heart would say,
• Its peace, its pain, its hope, its fear.

• And from thy calm supernal height,
• And wondrous wisdom newly won,
• Smilest on all our poor delight,
• And petty woe beneath the sun.

• From all this coil thou hast slipped away,
• As softly as a cloud departs
• Along the hillside purple gray—
• Into the heaven of patient hearts.

• Nothing here suffered, nothing missed,
• Will ever stir from its repose
• The death‐smile on her lips unkissed,
• Who all things loves and all things knows.

• And I, who, ignorant and weak,
• Of love so helpless—quick to pain,
• With restless longing ever seek
• The unattainable in vain,

• Find it strange comfort thus to sit
• While the loud world unheeded rolls,
• And clasp, ere yet the fancy flit,
• A friend’s hand from the land of souls.

A DEAD SEA‐GULL.

Near Liverpool.

• LACK‐LUSTRE eye, and idle wing,
• And smirchèd breast that skims no more,
• White as the foam itself, the wave—
• Hast thou not even a grave
• Upon the dreary shore,
• Forlorn, forsaken thing?

• Thou whom the deep seas could not drown,
• Nor all the elements affright,
• Flashing like thought across the main,
• Mocking the hurricane,
• Screaming with shrill delight
• When the great ship went down.

• Thee not thy beauty saved, nor mirth,
• Nor daring, nor thy humble lot,
• One among thousands—in quick haste
• Fate clutched thee as she passed;
• Dead—how, it matters not:
• Corrupting, earth to earth.

• And not a league from where it lies
• Lie bodies once as free from stain,
• And hearts as gay as this sea‐bird’s,
• Whom all the preachers’ words
• Will ne’er make white again,
• Or from the dead to rise.

• Rot, pretty bird, in harmless clay:—
• We sing too much poetic woes;
• Let us be doing while we can:
• Blessed the Christian man
• Who on life’s shore seeks those
• Dying of soul decay.

LOOKING EAST.

In January, 1858.

• LITTLE white clouds, why are you flying
• Over the sky so blue and cold?
• Fair faint hopes, why are you lying
• Over my heart like a white cloud’s fold?

• Slender green leaves, why are you peeping
• Out of the ground where the snow show yet lies?
• Toying west wind, why are you creeping
• Like a child’s breath across my eyes?

• Hope and terror by turns consuming,
• Lover and friend put far from me,—
• What should I do with the bright spring, coming
• Like an angel over the sea?

• Over the cruel sea that parted
• Me from mine own, and rolls between;—
• Out of the woful east, whence darted
• Heaven’s full quiver of vengeance keen.

• Day teaches day, night whispers morning—
• “Hundreds are weeping their dead, while thou
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• Weeping thy living—Rise, be adorning
• Thy brows, unwidowed, with smiles.”—But how?

• O, had he married me!—unto anguish,
• Hardship, sickness, peril, and pain;
• That on my breast his head might languish
• In lonely jungle or scorching plain;

• O, had we stood on some rampart gory,
• Till he—ere Horror behind us trod—
• Kissed me, and killed me—so, with his glory
• My soul went happy and pure to God!

• Nay, nay, Heaven pardon me! me, sick‐hearted,
• Living this long, long life‐in‐death:
• Many there are far wider parted
• Who under one roof‐tree breathe one breath.

• But we that loved—whom one word half broken
• Had drawn together close soul to soul
• As lip to lip—and it was not spoken,
• Nor may be while the world’s ages roll.

• I sit me down with my tears all frozen:
• I drink my cup, be it gall or wine:
• For I know, if he lives, I am his chosen—
• I know, if he dies, that he is mine.

• If love in its silence be greater, stronger
• Than million promises, sighs, or tears—
• I will wait upon Him a little longer
• Who holdeth the balance of our years.

• Little white clouds, like angels flying,
• Bring the spring with you across the sea—
• Loving or losing, living or dying,
• Lord, remember, remember me!

OVER THE HILLS AND FAR AWAY.

• A LITTLE bird flew my window by,
• ’Twixt the level street and the level sky,
• The level rows of houses tall,
• The long low sun on the level wall;
• And all that the little bird did say
• Was, “Over the hills and far away.”

• A little bird sang behind my chair,
• From the level line of corn‐fields fair,
• The smooth green hedgerow’s level bound
• Not a furlong off—the horizon’s bound,
• And the level lawn where the sun all day
• Burns:—“Over the hills and far away.”

• A little bird sings above my bed,
• And I know if I could but lift my head
• I would see the sun set, round and grand,
• Upon level sea and level sand,
• While beyond the misty distance gray
• Is “Over the hills and far away.”

• I think that a little bird will sing
• Over a grassy mound, next spring,
• Where something that once was me, ye’ll leave
• In the level sunshine, morn and eve:
• But I shall be gone, past night, past day,
• Over the hills and far away.

TOO LATE.

• COULD ye come back to me, Douglas, Douglas,
• In the old likeness that I knew,
• I would be so faithful, so loving, Douglas,
• Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

• Never a scornful word should grieve ye,
• I’d smile on ye sweet as the angels do;—
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• Sweet as your smile on me shone ever,
• Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

• O to call back the days that are not!
• My eyes were blinded, your words were few
• Do you know the truth now up in heaven,
• Douglas, Douglas, tender and true?

• I never was worthy of you, Douglas;
• Not half worthy the like of you:
• Now all men beside seem to me like shadows—
• I love you, Douglas, tender and true.

• Stretch out your hand to me, Douglas, Douglas Dougla
• Drop forgiveness from heaven like dew;
• As I lay my heart on your dead heart, Douglas,
• Douglas, Douglas, tender and true.

LOST IN THE MIST.

• THE thin white snow‐streaks pencilling
• That mountain’s shoulder gray,
• While in the west the pale green sky
• Smiled back the dawning day,
• Till from the misty east the sun
• Was of a sudden born
• page: 188
• Like a new soul in Paradise—
• How long it seems since morn!

• One little hour, O round red sun,
• And thou and I shall come
• Unto the golden gate of rest,
• The open door of home:
• One little hour, O weary sun,
• Delay the threatened eve
• Till my tired feet that pleasant door
• Enter and never leave.

• Ye rooks that fly in slender file
• Into the thick’ning gloom,
• Ye’ll scarce have reached your grim gray tower
• Ere I have reached my home;
• Plover, that thrills the solitude
• With such an eerie cry,
• Seek you your nest ere night‐fall comes,
• As my heart’s nest seek I.

• O light, light heart and heavy feet,
• Patience a little while!
• Keep the warm love‐light in these eyes,
• And on these lips the smile:
• Out‐speed the mist, the gathering mist
• That follows o’er the moor!—
• The darker grows the world without
• The brighter seems that door.

• O door, so close yet so far off;
• O mist that nears and nears!
• What, shall I faint in sight of home?
• Blinded—but not with tears—
• ’T is but the mist, the cruel mist,
• Which chills this heart of mine:
• These eyes, too weak to see that light—
• It has not ceased to shine.

• A little further, further yet:
• The white mist crawls and crawls;
• It hems me around, it shuts me in
• Its great sepulchral walls:
• No earth—no sky—no path—no light—
• A silence like the tomb:
• O me, it is too soon to die—
• And I was going home!

• A little further, further yet:
• My limbs are young,—my heart—
• O heart, it is not only life
• That feels it hard to part:
• Poor lips, slow freezing into calm,
• Numbed hands that helpless fall,
• And, a mile off, warm lips, fond hands,
• Waiting to welcome all!

• I see the pictures in the room,
• The figures moving round,
• page: 190
• The very flicker of the fire
• Upon the patterned ground:
• O that I were the shepherd‐dog
• That guards their happy door!
• Or even the silly household cat
• That basks upon the floor!

• O that I sat one minute’s space
• Where I have sat so long!
• O that I heard one little word
• Sweeter than angel’s song!
• A pause—and then the table fills,
• The harmless mirth brims o’er;
• While I—O can it be God’s will?—
• I die, outside the door.

• My body fails—my desperate soul
• Struggles before it go:
• The bleak air’s full of voices wild,
• But not the voice I know;
• Dim shapes come wandering through the dark:
• With mocking, curious stares,
• Faces long strange peer glimmering by—
• But not one face of theirs.

• Lost, lost, and such a little way
• From that dear sheltering door!
• Lost, lost, out of the loving arms
• Left empty evermore!
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• His will be done. O, gate of heaven,
• Fairer than earthly door,
• Receive me! Everlasting arms,
• Enfold me evermore!

• And so, farewell * * * * *
• What is this touch
• Upon my closing eyes?
• My name too, that I thought to hear
• Next time in Paradise?
• Warm arms—close lips—O, saved, saved, saved!
• Across the deathly moor
• Sought, found—and yonder through the night
• Shineth the blessed door.

SEMPER FIDELIS.

• THINK you, had we two lost fealty, something would not, as I sit
• With this book upon my lap here, come and overshadow it?
• Hide with spectral mists the pages, under each familiar leaf
• Lurk, and clutch my hand that turns it with the icy clutch of grief?
• page: 192
• Think you, were we twain divided, not by distance, time, or aught
• That the world calls separation, but we smile at, better taught,
• That I should not feel the dropping of each link you did untwine
• Clear as if you sat before me with your true eyes fixed on mine?

• That I should not, did you crumble as the other false friends do
• To the dust of broken idols, know it without sight of you,
• By some shadow darkening daylight in the fickle skies of spring,
• By foul fears from household corners crawling over everything?

• If that awful gulf were opening which makes two, however near,
• Parted more than we were parted, dwelt we in each hemisphere,—
• Could I sit here, smiling quiet on this book within my hand,
• And while earth was cloven beneath me, feel no shock nor understand?

• No, you cannot, could not alter. No, my faith builds safe on yours,
• Rock‐like; though the winds and waves howl, its foundation still endures:
• By a man’s will—“See, I hold thee: mine thou art, and mine shalt be.”
• By a woman’s patience—“Sooner doubt I my own soul than thee.“

• So, Heaven mend us! we’ll together once again take counsel sweet;
• Though this hand of mine drops empty, that blank wall my blank eyes meet:
• Life may flow on: men be faithless,—ay, forsooth, and women too!
• ONE is true; and as He liveth, I believe in truth—and you.

ONE SUMMER MORNING.

• IT is but a little while ago:
• The elm‐leaves have scarcely begun to drop away;
• The sunbeams strike the elm‐trunk just where they struck that day—
• Yet all seems to have happened long ago.

• And the year rolleth round, slow, slow:
• Autumn will fade to winter and winter melt in spring,
• New life return again to every living thing.
• Soon, this will have happened long ago.

• The bonnie wee flowers will blow;
• The trees will re‐clothe themselves, the birds sing out amain,—
• But never, never, never will the world look again
• As it looked before this happened—long ago!

MY LOVE ANNIE.

• SOFT of voice and light of hand
• As the fairest in the land—
• Who can rightly understand
• My love Annie?

• Simple in her thoughts and ways,
• True in every word she says,—
• Who shall even dare to praise
• My love Annie?

• Midst a naughty world and rude
• Never in ungentle mood;
• Never tired of being good—
• My love Annie.

• Hundreds of the wise and great
• Might o’erlook her meek estate;
• But on her good angels wait,
• My love Annie.

• Many or few of the loves that may
• Shine upon her silent way,—
• God will love her night and day,
• My love Annie.

SUMMER GONE.

• SMALL wren, mute pecking at the last red plum
• Or twittering idly at the yellowing boughs
• Fruit‐emptied, over thy forsaken house,—
• Birdie, that seems to come
• Telling, we too have spent our little store,
• Our summer’s o’er:

• Poor robin, driven in by rain‐storms wild
• To lie submissive under household hands
• With beating heart that no love understands,
• And scarèd eye, like a child
• Who only knows that he is all alone
• And summer’s gone;

• Pale leaves, sent flying wide, a frightened flock
• On which the wolfish wind bursts out, and tears
• Those tender forms that lived in summer airs
• Till, taken at this shock,
• They, like weak hearts when sudden grief sweeps by,
• Whirl, drop, and die:—

• All these things, earthy, of the earth—do tell
• This earth’s perpetual story; we belong
• Unto another country, and our song
• Shall be no mortal knell;
• Though all the year’s tale, as our years run fast,
• Mourns, “summer’s past.”

• O love immortal, O perpetual youth,
• Whether in budding nooks it sits and sings
• As hundred poets in a hundred springs,
• Or, slaking passion’s drouth,
• In wine‐press of affliction, ever goes
• Heavenward, through woes:

• O youth immortal—O undying love!
• With these by winter fireside we’ll sit down
• Wearing our snows of honor like a crown;
• And sing as in a grove,
• Where the full nests ring out with happy cheer,
• “Summer is here.”

• Roll round, strange years; swift seasons, come and go;
• Ye leave upon us but an outward sign;
• Ye cannot touch the inward and divine,
• While God alone does know;
• There sealed till summers, winters, all shall cease
• In His deep peace.

• Therefore uprouse ye winds and howl your will;
• Beat, beat, ye sobbing rains on pane and door;
• Enter, slow‐footed age, and thou, obscure,
• Grand Angel—not of ill;
• Healer of every wound, where’er thou come,
• Glad, we’ll go home.

THE VOICE CALLING.

• IN the hush of April weather,
• With the bees in budding heather,
• And the white clouds floating, floating, and the sunshine falling broad;
• While my children down the hill
• Run and leap, and I sit still,—
• Through the silence, through the silence art Thou calling, O my God?

• Through my husband’s voice that prayeth,
• Though he knows not what he sayeth,
• Is it Thou who in Thy Holy Word hast solemn words for me?
• And when he clasps me fast,
• And smiles fondly o’er the past,
• And talks, hopeful, of the future—Lord, do I hear only Thee?

• Not in terror nor in thunder
• Comes Thy voice, although it sunder
• Flesh from spirit, soul from body, human bliss from human pain:
• All the work that was to do,
• All the joys so sweet and new
• Which Thou shewed’st me in a vision—Moses‐like—and hid’st again.

• From this Pisgah, lying humbled,
• The long desert where I stumbled,
• And the fair plains I shall never reach, seem equal, clear and far:
• On this mountain‐top of ease
• Thou wilt bury me in peace;
• While my tribes march onward, unto Canaan and war.

• In my boy’s loud laughter ringing,
• In the sigh more soft than singing
• Of my baby girl that nestles up unto this mortal breast,
• After every voice most dear
• Comes a whisper—“Rest not here.”
• And the rest Thou art preparing, is it best, Lord, is it best?

• “Lord, a little, little longer!”
• Sobs the earth‐love, growing stronger:
• He will miss me, and go mourning through his solitary days.
• And heaven were scarcely heaven
• If these lambs which Thou hast given
• Were to slip out of our keeping and be lost in the world’s ways.

• Lord, it is not fear of dying
• Nor an impious denying
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• Of Thy will, which forevermore on earth, in heaven, be done:
• But the love that desperate clings
• Unto these my precious things
• In the beauty of the daylight, and the glory of the sun.

• Ah, Thou still art calling, calling,
• With a soft voice unappalling;
• And it vibrates in far circles through the everlasting years;
• When Thou knockest, even so!
• I will arise and go.—
• What, m little ones, more violets?—Nay, be patient—mother hears.

THE WREN’S NEST.

• I TOOK the wren’s nest;—
• Heaven forgive me!
• Its merry architects so small
• Had scarcely finished their wee hall,
• That, empty still, and neat and fair,
• Hung idly in the summer air.
• The mossy walls, the dainty door,
• Where Love should enter and explore,
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• And Love sit carolling outside,
• And Love within chirp multiplied;—
• I took the wren’s nest;—
• Heaven forgive me!

• How many hours of happy pains
• Through early frosts and April rains,
• How many songs at eve and morn
• O’er springing grass and greening corn,
• Before the pretty house was made!
• One little minute, only one,
• And she’ll fly back, and find it—gone!
• I took the wren’s nest:
• Bird, forgive me!

• Thou and thy mate, sans let, sans fear,
• Ye have before you all the year,
• And every wood holds nooks for you,
• In which to sing and build and woo;
• One piteous cry of birdish pain—
• And ye’ll begin your life again,
• And quite forget the lost, lost home
• In many a busy home to come.—
• But I?—Your wee house keep I must
• Until it crumble into dust.
• I took the wren’s nest:
• God forgive me!

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

TUNE—“God rest ye, merry gentleman.”

• GOD rest ye, merry gentlemen; let nothing you dismay,
• For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas‐day.
• The dawn rose red o’er Bethlehem, the stars shone through the gray,
• When Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas‐day.

• God rest ye, little children; let nothing you affright,
• For Jesus Christ, your Saviour, was born this happy night;
• Along the hills of Galilee the white flocks sleeping lay,
• When Christ, the Child of Nazareth, was born on Christmas‐day.

• God rest ye, all good Christians; upon this blessed morn
• The Lord of all good Christians was of a woman born:
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• Now all your sorrows He doth heal, your sins He takes away;
• For Jesus Christ, our Saviour, was born on Christmas‐day.

THE MOTHER’S VISITS.

From the French.

• LONG years ago she visited my chamber,
• Steps soft and slow, a taper in her hand;
• Her fond kiss she laid upon my eyelids,
• Fair as an angel from the unknown land:
• Mother, mother, is it thou I see?
• Mother, mother, watching over me.

• And yesternight I saw her cross my chamber,
• Soundless as light, a palm‐branch in her hand;
• Her mild eyes she bent upon my anguish,
• Calm as an angel from the blessed land;
• Mother, mother, is it thou I see?
• Mother, mother, art thou come for me?

A GERMAN STUDENT’S FUNERAL HYMN.

• WITH steady march across the daisy meadow,
• And by the churchyard wall we go;
• But leave behind, beneath the linden shadow,
• One, who no more will rise and go:
• Farewell, our brother, here sleeping in dust,
• Till thou shalt wake again, wake with the just.

• Along the street where neighbor nods to neighbor,
• Along the busy street we throng,
• Once more to laugh, to live and love and labor,—
• But he will be remembered long:
• Sleep well, our brother, though sleeping in dust:
• Shalt thou not rise again—rise with the just?

• Farewell, true heart and kindly hand, left lying
• Where wave the linden branches calm;
• ’T is his to live, and ours to wait for dying,
• We win, while he has won, the palm;
• Farewell, our brother! But one day, we trust,
• Call—he will answer Thee, God of the just.

WESTWARD HO!

• WE should not sit us down and sigh,
• My girl, whose brow a fane appears,
• Whose steadfast eyes look royally
• Backwards and forwards o’er the years—

• The long, long years of conquered time,
• The possible years unwon, that slope
• Before us in the pale sublime
• Of lives that have more faith than hope.

• We dare not sit us down and dream
• Fond dreams, as idle children do:
• My forehead owns too many a seam,
• And tears have worn their channels through

• Your poor thin cheeks, which now I take
• Twixt my two hands, caressing. Dear,
• A little sunshine for my sake!
• Although we’re far on in the year.

• Though all our violets, sweet! are dead,
• The primrose lost from fields we knew,
• Who knows that harvests may be spread
• For reapers brave like me and you?

• Who knows what bright October suns
• May light up distant valleys mild,
• Where as our pathway downward runs
• We see Joy meet us, like a child

• Who, sudden, by the roadside stands,
• To kiss the travellers’ weary brows,
• And lead them through the twilight lands
• Safely unto their Father’s house.

• So, we’ll not dream, nor look back, dear!
• But march right on, content and bold,
• To where our life sets, heavenly clear,
• Westward, behind the hills of gold.