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POEMS.

PHILIP MY KING.

• LOOK at me with thy large brown eyes,
• Philip my king,
• Round whom the enshadowing purple lies
• Of babyhood’s royal dignities:
• Lay on my neck thy tiny hand
• With love’s invisible sceptre laden;
• I am thine Esther to command
• Till thou shalt find a queen‐handmaiden,
• Philip my king.

• O the day when thou goest a wooing,
• Philip my king!
• When those beautiful lips ’gin suing,
• And some gentle heart’s bars undoing
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• Thou dost enter, love‐crowned, and there
• Sittest love‐glorified. Rule kindly,
• Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair,
• For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,
• Philip my king.

• Up from thy sweet mouth,—up to thy brow,
• Philip my king!
• The spirit that there lies sleeping now
• May rise like a giant and make men bow
• As to one heaven‐chosen amongst his peers:
• My Saul, than thy brethren taller and fairer
• Let me behold thee in future years;—
• Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
• Philip my king.

• —A wreath not of gold, but palm. One day,
• Philip my king,
• Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way
• Thorny and cruel and cold and gray:
• Rebels within thee and foes without,
• Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious,
• Martyr, yet monarch: till angels shout
• As thou sit’st at the feet of God victorious,
• “Philip the king!”

THOUGHTS IN A WHEAT‐FIELD

“The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels”

• IN his wide fields walks the Master,
• In his fair fields, ripe for harvest,
• Where the evening sun shines slant‐wise
• On the rich ears heavy bending;
• Saith the Master: “It is time.”
• Though no leaf shows brown decadence,
• And September’s nightly frost‐bite
• Only reddens the horizon,
• “It is full time,” saith the Master,
• The wise Master, “It is time.”

• Lo, he looks. That look compelling
• Brings his laborers to the harvest;
• Quick they gather, as in autumn
• Passage‐birds in cloudy eddies
• Drop upon the seaside fields;
• White wings have they, and white raiment,
• White feet shod with swift obedience,
• Each lays down his golden palm branch,
• And uprears his sickle shining,
• “Speak, O Master,—is it time?”

• O’er the field the servants hasten,
• Where the full‐stored ears droop downwards,
• Humble with their weight of harvest:
• Where the empty ears wave upward,
• And the gay tares flaunt in rows:
• But the sickles, the sharp sickles,
• Flash new dawn at their appearing,
• Songs are heard in earth and heaven,
• For the reapers are the angels,
• And it is the harvest time.

• O Great Master, are thy footsteps
• Even now upon the mountains?
• Are thou walking in thy wheat‐field?
• Are the snowy‐wingèd reapers
• Gathering in the silent air?
• Are thy signs abroad, the glowing
• Of the distant sky, blood‐reddened,—
• And the near fields trodden, blighted,
• Choked by gaudy tares triumphant,—
• Sure, it must be harvest time?

• Who shall know the Master’s coming?
• Whether it be at dawn or sunset,
• When night dews weigh down the wheat‐ears,
• Or while noon rides high in heaven,
• Sleeping lies the yellow field?
• Only, may thy voice, Good Master,
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• Peal above the reapers’ chorus,
• And dull sound of sheaves slow falling,—
• “Gather all into My garner,
• For it is My harvest time.”

IMMUTABLE.

“With whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”

FOUR YEARS.

• AT the midsummer, when the hay was down,
• Said I, mournfully,—My life is at its prime,
• Yet bare lie my meadows, shorn before the time,
• In my scorched woodlands the leaves are turning brown.
• It is the hot midsummer, and the hay is down.

• At the midsummer, when the hay was down,
• Stood she by the streamlet, young and very fair,
• With the first white bindweed twisted in her hair,—
• Hair that drooped like birch‐boughs,—all in her simple gown.
• For it was midsummer, and the hay was down.

• At the midsummer, when the hay was down,
• Crept she, a willing bride close into my breast:
• Low piled the thunder‐clouds had drifted to the west,—
• Red‐eyed out glared the sun, like knight from leaguered town,
• That eve in high midsummer, when the hay was down.

• It is midsummer,—all the hay is down;
• Close to her bosom press I dying eyes,
• Praying, “God shield thee till we meet in Paradise!”
• Bless her in Love’s name who was my brief life’s crown,—
• And I go at midsummer, when the hay is down.

THE DEAD CZAR.

• LAY him beneath his snows,
• The great Norse giant who in these last days
• Troubled the nations. Gather decently
• The imperial robes about him. ’T is but man,—
• This demi‐god. Or rather it was man,
• And is—a little dust that will corrupt
• As fast as any nameless dust which sleeps
• ’Neath Alma’s grass or Balaklava’s vines.

• No vineyard grave for him. No quiet tomb
• By river margin, where across the seas
• Children’s fond thoughts and women’s memories come
• Like angels, to sit by the sepulchre,
• Saying: “All these were men who knew to count,
• Front‐faced, the cost of honor, nor did shrink
• From its full payment: coming here to die,
• They died—like men.”

• But this man? Ah! for him
• Funereal state, and ceremonial grand,
• The stone‐engraved sarcophagus, and then
• Oblivion.

• Nay, oblivion were as bliss
• To that fierce howl which rolls from land to land
• Exulting,—“Art thou fallen, Lucifer,
• Son of the morning?” or condemning,—“Thus
• Perish the wicked!” or blaspheming,—“Here
• Lies our Belshazzar, our Sennacherib,
• Our Pharaoh,—he whose heart God hardenèd,
• So that he would not let the people go.”

• Self‐glorifying sinners! Why, this man
• Was but like other men:—you, Levite small,
• Who shut your saintly ears, and prate of hell
• And heretics, because outside church‐doors,
• Your church‐doors, congregations poor and small
• Praise Heaven in their own way;—you, autocrat
• Of all the hamlets, who add field to field
• And house to house, whose slavish children cower
• Before your tyrant footstep;—you, foul‐tongued
• Fanatic or ambitious egotist,
• Who thinks God stoops from His high majesty
• To lay His finger on your puny head,
• And crown it,—that you henceforth may parade
• Your maggotship throughout the wondering world,—
• “I am the Lord’s anointed!”

• Fools and blind!
• This Czar, this emperor, this disthronèd corpse,
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• Lying so straightly in an icy calm
• Grander than sovereignty, was but as ye,—
• No better and no worse;—Heaven mend us all!

• Carry him forth and bury him. Death’s peace
• Rest on his memory! Mercy by his bier
• Sits silent, or says only these few words,—
• “Let him who is without sin ’mongst ye all
• Cast the first stone.”

THE WIND AT NIGHT.

• O SUDDEN blast, that through this silence black
• Sweeps past my windows,
• Coming and going with invisible track
• As death or sin does,—

• Why scare me, lying sick, and, save thy own,
• Hearing no voices?
• Why mingle with a helpless human moan
• Thy mad rejoices?

• Why not come gently, as good angels come
• To souls departing,
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• Floating among the shadows of the room
• With eyes light‐darting,

• Bringing faint airs of balm that seem to rouse
• Thoughts of a Far Land,
• Then binding softly upon weary brows
• Death’s poppy‐garland?

• O fearful blast, I shudder at thy sound,
• Like heathen mortal
• Who saw the Three that mark life’s doomèd bound
• Sit at his portal.

• Thou mightst be laden with sad, shrieking souls,
• Carried unwilling
• From their known earth to the unknown stream that rolls
• All anguish stilling.

• Fierce wind, will the Death‐angel come like thee,
• Soon, soon to bear me
• —Whither? what mysteries may unfold to me,
• What terrors scare me?

• Shall I go wand’ring on through empty space
• As on earth, lonely?
• Or seek through myriad spirit‐ranks one face,
• And miss that only?

• Shall I not then drop down from sphere to sphere
• Palsied and aimless?
• Or will my being change so that both fear
• And grief die nameless?

• Rather I pray Him who Himself is Love,
• Out of whose essence
• We all do spring, and towards him tending, move
• Back to His presence,

• That even His brightness may not quite efface
• The soul’s earth‐features,
• That the dear human likeness each may trace
• Glorified creatures;

• That we may not cease loving, only taught
• Holier desiring;
• More faith, more patience; with more wisdom fraught,
• Higher aspiring.

• That we may do all work we left undone
• Here—though unmeetness;
• From height to height celestial passing on
• Towards full completeness.

• Then, strong Azrael, be thy supreme call
• Soft as spring‐breezes,
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• Or like this blast, whose loud fiend‐festival
• My heart’s blood freezes.

• I will not fear thee. If thou safely keep
• My soul, God’s giving,
• And my soul’s soul, I, wakening from death‐sleep,
• Shall first know living.

A FABLE.

• SILENT and sunny was the way
• Where Youth and I danced on together:
• So winding and embowered o’er,
• We could not see one rood before.
• Nevertheless all merrily
• We bounded onward, Youth and I,
• Leashed closely in a silken tether:
• (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
• Ah Youth, ah Youth, but I would fain
• See thy sweet foolish face again!

• It came to pass, one morn of May,
• All in a swoon of golden weather,
• That I through green leaves fluttering
• Saw Joy uprise on Psyche wing:
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• Eagerly, too eagerly
• We followed after,—Youth and I,—
• Till suddenly he slipped the tether:
• (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
• “Where art thou, Youth?” I cried. In vain;
• He never more came back again.

• Yet onward through the devious way
• In rain or shine, I recked not whether,
• Like many other maddened boy
• I tracked my Psyche‐wingèd Joy;
• Till, curving round the bowery lane,
• Lo,—in the pathway stood pale Pain,
• And we met face to face together:
• (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
• “Whence comest thou?”—and I writhed in vain—
• “Unloose thy cruel grasp, O Pain!”

• But he would not. Since, day by day
• He has ta’en up Youth’s silken tether
• And changed it into iron bands.
• So through rich vales and barren lands
• Solemnly, all solemnly,
• March we united, he and I;
• And we have grown such friends together
• (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
• I and this my brother Pain,
• I think we’ll never part again.

LABOR IS PRAYER

• LABORARE est orare:
• We, black‐visaged sons of toil,
• From the coal‐mine and the anvil
• And the delving of the soil,—
• From the loom, the wharf, the warehouse,
• And the ever‐whirling mill,
• Out of grim and hungry silence
• Raise a weak voice small and shrill;—
• Laborare est orare:
• Man, dost hear us? God, He will.

• We, who just can keep from starving
• Sickly wives,—not always mild:
• Trying not to curse Heaven’s bounty
• When it sends another child,—
• We who, worn‐out, doze on Sundays
• O’er the Book we strive to read,
• Cannot understand the parson
• Or the catechism and creed.
• Laborare est orare:—
• Then, good sooth, we pray indeed.

• We, poor women, feeble‐natured,
• Large of heart, in wisdom small,
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• Who the world’s incessant battle
• Cannot understand at all,
• All the mysteries of the churches,
• All the troubles of the state,—
• Whom child‐smiles teach “God is loving,”
• And child‐coffins, “God is great”:
• Laborare est orare:—
• We too at His footstool wait.

• Laborare est orare;
• Hear it, ye of spirit poor,
• Who sit crouching at the threshold
• While your brethren force the door;
• Ye whose ignorance stands wringing
• Rough hands, scamed with toil, nor dares
• Lift so much as eyes to Heaven,—
• Lo! all life this truth declares,
• Laborare est orare;
• And the whole earth rings with prayers.

A SILLY SONG

• “O HEART, my heart!” she said, and heard
• His mate the blackbird calling,
• While through the sheen of the garden green
• May rain was softly falling,—
• Aye softly, softly falling.

• The buttercups across the field
• Made sunshine rifts of splendor:
• The round snow‐bud of the thorn in the wood
• Peeped through its leefage tender,
• As the rain came softly falling.

• “O heart, my heart!” she said and smiled,
• “There’s not a tree of the valley,
• Or a leaf I wis which the rain’s soft kiss
• Freshens in yonder alley,
• Where the drops keep ever falling,—

• “There’s not a foolish flower i’ the grass,
• Or bird through the woodland calling,
• So glad again of the coming of rain
• As I of these tears now falling,—
• These happy tears down falling.”

IN MEMORIAM

Obiit 1854.

• HEAVEN rest thee!
• We shall go about today
• In our festal garlands gay;
• Whatsoever robes we wear
• Not a trace of black be there.
• Well, what matters? none is seen
• On thy daisy covering green,
• Or thy pure white pillow, hid
• Underneath a cofin lid.
• Heaven rest thee!

• Heaven take thee!—
• Ay, heaven only. Sleeps beneath
• One who died a virgin death:
• Died so slowly, day by day,
• That it scarcely seemed decay,
• Till this lonely churchyard kind
• Opened,—and we left behind
• Nothing but a little dust;—
• Heaven is pitiful and just:
• Heaven take thee!

• Heaven keep thee:
• Nevermore above the ground
• Be one relic of thee found:
• Lay the turf so smooth, we crave,
• None would guess it was a grave,
• Save for grass that greener grows,
• Or for wind that gentlier blows
• All the earth o’er, from this spot
• Where thou wert—and thou art not.
• Heaven keep thee!

AN HONEST VALENTINE

Returned from the Dead‐Letter Office

• THANK you for your kindness,
• Lady fair and wise,
• Though love’s famed for blindness,
• Lovers—hem! for lies.
• Courtship’s mighty pretty,
• Wedlock a sweet sight;—
• Should I (from the city,
• A plain man, Miss—) write,
• Ere we spouse‐and‐wive it,
• Just one honest line,
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• Could you e’er forgive it,
• Pretty Valentine?

• Honey‐moon quite over,
• If I less should scan
• You with eye of lover
• Than of mortal man?
• Seeing my fair charmer
• Curl hair spire on spire,
• All in paper armor,
• By the parlor fire;
• Gown that wants a stitch in
• Hid by apron fine,
• Scolding in her kitchen,—
• O fie, Valentine!

• Should I come home surly
• Vexed with fortune’s frown,
• Find a hurly‐burly,
• House turned upside down,
• Servants all a‐snarl, or
• Cleaning steps or stair:
• Breakfast still in parlor,
• Dinner—anywhere:
• Shall I to cold bacon
• Meekly fall and dine?
• No,—or I’m mistaken
• Much, my Valentine.

• What if we should quarrel?
• —Bless you, all folks do:—
• Will you take the war ill
• Yet half like it too?
• When I storm and jangle,
• Obstinate, absurd,
• Will you sit and wrangle
• Just for the last word,—
• Or, while poor Love, crying,
• Upon tiptoe stands,
• Ready plumed for flying,—
• Will you smile, shake hands,
• And the truth beholding,
• With a kiss divine
• Stop my rough mouth’s scolding?—
• Bless you, Valentine!

• If, should times grow harder,
• We have lack of pelf,
• Little in the larder,
• Less upon the shelf;
• Will you, never tearful,
• Make your old gowns do,
• Mend my stockings, cheerful,
• And pay visits few?
• Crave nor gift nor donor,
• Old days ne’er regret,
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• Seek no friend save Honor,
• Dread no foe but Debt;
• Meet ill‐fortune steady,
• Hand to hand with mine,
• Like a gallant lady,—
• Will you, Valentine?

• Then, whatever weather
• Come, or shine, or shade,
• We’ll set out together,
• Not a whit afraid.
• Age is ne’er alarming,—
• I shall find, I ween,
• You at sixty charming
• As at sweet sixteen:
• Let’s pray, nothing loath, dear,
• That our funeral may
• Make one date serve both, dear,
• As our marriage day.
• Then, come joy or sorrow,
• Thou art mine,—I thine.
• So we’ll wed to‐morrow,
• Dearest Valentine.

LOOKING DEATH IN THE FACE

• AY, in thy face, old fellow! Now’s the time.
• The Black Sea wind flaps my tent‐roof, nor wakes
• These lads of mine, who take of sleep their fill,
• As if they thought they’d never sleep again,
• Instead of—
• Pitiless Crimean blast,
• How many a howling lullaby thou’lt raise
• To‐morrow night, all nights till the world’s end,
• Over some sleepers here!
• Some?—who? Dumb Fate
• Whispers in no man’s ear his coming doom;
• Each thinks—“not I—not I.”
• But thou, grim Death,
• I hear thee on the night‐wind flying abroad,
• I feel thee here, squatted at our tent‐door,
• Invisible and incommunicable,
• Pointing:
• “Hurrah!”
• Why yell so in your sleep,
• Comrade? Did you see aught?
• Well—let him dream:
• Who knows, to‐morrow such a shout as this
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• He’ll die with. A brave lad, and very like
• His sister.
• * * * * * *

• So! just two hours have I lain
• Freezing. That pale white star, which came and peered
• Through the tent‐opening, has passed on, to smile
• Elsewhere, or lost herself i’ the dark,—God knows.
• Two hours nearer to dawn. The very hour,
• The very hour and day, a year ago,
• When we light‐hearted and light‐footed fools
• Went jingling idle swords in waltz and reel,
• And smiling in fair faces. How they’d start,
• Those dainty red ad white soft faces kind,
• If they could but behold my visage now,
• Or his—or his—o some poor faces cold
• We covered up with earth last noon.
• —There sits
• The laidly Thing I felt on our tent‐door
• Two hours back. It has sat and never stirred.
• I cannot challenge it, or shoot it down,
• Or grapple with it, as with that young Russ
• Whom I killed yesterday. (What eyes he had!—
• Great limpid eyes, and curling dark‐red hair,—
• A woman’s picture hidden in his breast,—
• I never liked this fighting hand to hand.)
• No, it will not be met like flesh and blood,
• This shapeless, voiceless, immaterial Thing,
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• Yet I will meet it. Here I sit alone,—
• Show me thy face, O Death!
• There, there. I think
• I did not tremble.
• I am a young man;
• Have done full many an ill deed, left undone
• Many a good one: lived unto the flesh,
• Not to the spirit: I would rather live
• A few years more, and try if things might change.
• Yet, yet I hope I do not tremble, Death;
• And that thy finger pointed at my heart
• But calms the tumult there.
• What small account
• The All‐living seems to take of this thin flame
• Which we call life. He sends a moment’s blast
• Out of war’s nostrils, and a myriad
• Of these our puny tapers are blown out
• Forever. Yet we shrink not,—we, such frail
• Poor knaves, whom a spent ball can instant strike
• Into eternity,—we helpless fools,
• Whom a serf’s clumsy hand and clumsier sword
• Smiting—shall sudden into nothingness
• Let out that something rare which could conceive
• A universe and its God.
• Free, open‐eyed,
• We rush like bridegrooms to Death’s grisly arms:
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• Surely the very longing for that clasp
• Proves us immortal. Immortality
• Alone could teach this mortal how to die.
• Perhaps, war is but Heaven’s great ploughshare, driven
• Over the barren, fallow earthly fields,
• Preparing them for harvest; rooting up
• Grass, weeds, and flowers, which necessary fall,
• That in these furrows the wise Husbandman
• May drop celestial seed.
• So let us die;
• Yield up our little lives, as the flowers do;
• Believing He’ll not lose one single soul,—
• One germ of His immortal. Naught of His
• Or Him can perish; therefore let us die.

• I half remember, something like to this
• She says in her dear letters. So—let us die.
• What, dawn? The faint hum in the trenches fails.
• Is that a bell i’ the mist? My faith, they go
• Early to matins in Sebastopol!—
• A gun!—Lads, stand to your arms; the Russ is here.
• Agnes.
• Kind Heaven, I have looked Death in the face,
• Help me to die.

BY THE ALMA RIVER.

• WILLIE, fold your little hands;
• Let it drop, that “soldier” toy:
• Look where father’s picture stands,—
• Father, who here kissed his boy
• Not two months since,—father kind,
• Who this night may—Never mind
• Mother’s sob, my Willie dear,
• Call aloud that He may hear
• Who is God of battles, say,
• “O, keep father safe this day
• By the Alma river.”

• Ask no more, child. Never heed
• Either Russ, or Frank, or Turk,
• Right of nations or of creed,
• Chance‐poised victory’s bloody work:
• Any flag i’ the wind may roll
• On thy heights, Sebastopol;
• Willie, all to you and me
• Is that spot, where’er it be,
• Where he stands—no other word!
• Stands—God sure the child’s prayer heard—
• By the Alma river.

• Willie, listen to the bells
• Ringing through the town to‐day.
• That’s for victory. Ah, no knells
• For the many swept away,—
• Hundreds—thousands! Let us weep,
• We who need not,—just to keep
• Reason steady in my brain
• Till the morning comes again,
• Till the third dread morning tell
• Who they were that fought and fell
• By the Alma river.

• Come, we’ll lay us down, my child,
• Poor the bed is, poor and hard;
• Yet thy father, far exiled,
• Sleeps upon the open sward,
• Dreaming of us two at home:
• Or beneath the starry dome
• Digs out trenches in the dark,
• Where he buries—Willie, mark—
• Where he buries those who died
• Fighting bravely at his side
• By the Alma river.

• Willie, Willie, go to sleep,
• God will keep us, O my boy;
• He will make the dull hours creep
• Faster, and send news of joy,
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• When I need not shrink to meet
• Those dread placards in the street,
• Which for weeks will ghastly stare
• In some eyes—Child, sy thy prayer
• Once again; a different one:
• Say, “O God, Thy will be done
• By the Alma river.”

ROTHESAY BAY.

• FU’ yellow lie the corn rigs
• Far doun the braid hillside;
• It is the brawest harst field
• Alang the shores o’Clyde,—
• And I’m a puir harst‐lassie
• That stan’s the lee‐lang day
• Shearing the corn‐rigs of Ardbeg
• Aboon sweet Rothesay Bay.

• O I had ance a true‐love,—
• Now, I hae nane ava;
• And I had ance three brithers,
• But I hae tint them a’;
• My father and my mither
• Sleep i’ the mools this day.
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• I sit my lane amang the rigs
• Aboon sweet Rothesay Bay.

• It’s a bonnie bay at morning,
• And bonnier at the noon,
• But it’s bonniest when the sun draps
• And red comes up the moon:
• When the mist creeps o’er the Cambrays,
• And Arran peaks are gray,
• And the great black hills, like sleepin’ kings,
• Sit grand roun’ Rothesay Bay,

• Then a bit sigh stirs my bosom,
• And a wee tear blin’s my e’e,—
• And I think o’that far Countrie
• What I wad like to be!
• But I rise content i’ the morning
• To wark while wark I may
• I’ the yellow harst field of Ardbeg
• Aboon sweet Rothesay Bay.

LIVING:

AFTER A DEATH.

“That friend of mine who lives in God.”

• O LIVE!
• (Thus seems it we should say to our beloved,—
• Each held by such slight links, so oft removed;)
• And I can let thee go to the world’s end,
• All precious names, companion, love, spouse, friend,
• Seal up in an eternal silence gray,
• Like a closed grave till resurrection‐day:
• All sweet remembrances, hopes, dreams, desires,
• Heap, as one heaps up sarificial fires:
• Then, turning, consecrate by loss, and proud
• Of penury—go back into the loud
• Tumultuous world again with never a moan—
• Save that which whispers still, “My own, my own,”
• Unto the same broad sky whose arch immense
• Enfolds us both like the arm of Providence:
• And thus, contended, I could live or die,
• With never clasp of hand or meeting eye
• On this side Paradise.—While thee I see
• Living to God, thou art alive to me.

• O live!
• And I, methinks, can let all dear rights go,
• Fond duties melt away like April snow,
• And sweet, sweet hopes, that took a life to weave,
• Vanish like gossamers of autumn eve.
• Nay, sometimes seems it I could even bear
• To lay down humbly this love‐crown I wear,
• Steal from my palace, helpless, hopeless, poor,
• And see another queen it at the door,—
• If only that the king had done no wrong,
• If this my palace, where I dwelt so long,
• Were not defiled by falsehood entering in:—
• There is no loss but change, no death but sin,
• No parting, save the slow corrupting pain
• Of murdered faith that never lives again.

• O live!
• (So endeth faint the low pathetic cry
• Of love, whom death has taught love cannot die,)
• And I can stand above the daisy bed,
• The only pillow for thy dearest head,
• There cover up forever from my sight
• My own, my earthly all of earth delight;
• And enter the sea‐cave of widowed years,
• Where far, far off the trembling gleam appears
• Through which thy heavenly image slipped away,
• And waits to meet me at the open day.
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• Only to me, my love, only to me.
• This cavern underneath the moaning sea;
• This long, long life that I alone must tread,
• To whom the living seem most like the dead,—
• Thou wilt be safe out on the happy shore:
• He who in God lives, liveth evermore.

IN OUR BOAT.

• STARS trembling o’er us and sunset before us,
• Mountains in shadow and forests asleep;
• Down the dim river we float on forever,
• Speak not, ah, breathe not,—there’s peace on the deep.

• Come not, pale Sorrow, flee till to‐morrow,
• Rest softly falling o’er eyelids that weep;
• While down the river we float on forever,
• Speak not, ah, breathe not,—there’s peace on the deep.

• As the waves cover the depths we glide over,
• So let the past in forgetfullness sleep,
• page: 35
• While down the river we float on forever,
• Speak not, ah, breathe not,—there’s peace on the deep.

• Heaven shine above us, bless all that love us,
• All whome we love in thy tenderness keep!
• While down the river we float on forever,
• Speak not, ah, breathe not,—there’s peace on the deep.

THE RIVER SHORE.

For an old tune of Dowland’s

• WALKING by the quiet river
• Where the slow tide seaward goes,
• All the cares of life fall from us,
• All our troubles find repose:
• Naught forgetting, naught regretting,
• Lovely ghosts from days no more
• Glide with while feet o’er the river,
• Smiling towards the silent shore.

• So we pray in His good pleasure
• When this world we’ve safely trod,
• We may walk beside the river
• Flowing from the throne of God:
• page: 36
• All forgiving, all believing,
• Not one lost we loved before,
• Looking towards the hills of heaven
• Calmly from the eternal shore.

A FLOWER OF A DAY.

• OLD friend, that with a pale and pensile grace
• Climbest the lush hedgerows, art thou back again,
• Marking the slow round of the wond’rous years?
• Didst beckon me a moment, silent flower?

• Silent? As silent is the archangel’s pen
• That day by day writes our life chronicle,
• And turns the page,—the half‐forgotten page,
• Which all eternity will never blot.

• Forgotten? No, we never do forget:
• We let the years go: eash then clean with tears,
• Leave them to bleach, out in the open day,
• Or lock them careful by, like dead friends’ clothes,
• Till we shall dare unfold them without pain,—
• But we forget not, never can forget.
• page: 37
• Flower, thou and I a moment face to face—
• My face as clear as thine, this July noon
• Shining on both, on bee and butterfly
• And golden geetle creeping in the sun—
• Will pause, and,lifting up, page after page,
• The many‐colored history of life,
• Look backwards, backwards.

• So, the volume close!
• This July day, with the sun high in heaven,
• And the whole earth rejoicing,—let it close.

• I think we need not sigh, complain, nor rave;
• Nor blush,—our doings and misdoing all
• Being more ’gainst heaven than man, heaven them does keep
• With all its doings and undoings strange
• Concerning us.—Ah, let the volume close:
• I would not alter in it one poor line.

• My dainty flower, my innocent white flower
• With such a pure smile looking up to heaven,
• With such a bright smile looking down on me—
• (Nothing but smiles,—as if in all the world
• Were no such things as thunder‐storms or frosts,
• Or broken petals trampled on the ground,
• Or shivering leaveswhirled in the wintry air
• Like ghosts of last years joys:)—my pretty flower,
• page: 38
• I’ll pluck thee—smiling too. Not one salt drop
• Shall stain thee:—if these foolish eyes are dim,
• That they behold such beauty and such peace,
• Such wisdom and such sweetness, in God’s world.

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE MOWING.

• ALL shimmering in the morning shine
• And diamonded with dew,
• And quivering in the scented wind
• That thrills its green heart through,—
• The little field, the smiling field,
• With all its flowers a‐blowing,
• How happy looks the golden field
• The day before the mowing!

• All still ’neath the departing light,
• Twilight, though void of stars,
• Save where, low westering, Venus hides
• From the red eye of Mars;
• How quiet lies the silent field
• With all its beauties glowing;
• Just stirring,—like a child asleep,—
• The night before the mowing.

• Sharp steel, inevitable hand,
• Cut keen, cut kind! Our field
• We know full well must be laid low
• Before its wealth it yield:
• Labor and mirth and plenty blest
• Its blameless death bestowing:
• And yet we weep, and yet we weep,
• The night before the mowing.

PASSION PAST.

• WERE I a boy, with a boy’s heart‐beat
• At glimpse of her passing adown the street,
• Of a room where she had entered and gone,
• Or a page her hand had written on,—
• Would all be with me as it was before?
• O no, never! no, no, never!
• Never any more.

• Were I a man, with a man’s pulse‐throb,
• Breath hard and fierce, held down like a sob,
• Dumb, yet hearing her lightest word,
• Blind, until only her garment stirred:
• page: 40
• Would I pour my life like wine on her floor?
• No, no, never: never, never!
• Never any more.

• Gray and withered, wrinkled and marred,
• I have gone through the fire and come out unscarred,
• With the image of manhood upon me yet,
• No shame to remember, no wish to forget:
• But could she rekindle the pangs I bore?—
• O no, never! thank God, never!
• Never any more.

• Old and wrinkled, withered and gray,—
• And yet if her light step passed to‐day,
• I should see her face all faces among,
• And say,—“Heaven love thee, whom I loved long!
• Thou hast lost the key of my heart’s door,
• Lost it ever, and forever,
• Ay, forevermore.”

OCTOBER.

• IT is no joy to me to sit
• On dreamy summer eves,
• When silently the timid moon
• Kisses the sleeping leaves,
• And all things through the fair hushed earth
• Love, rest—but nothing grieves.
• Better I like old Autumn
• With his hair tossed to and fro,
• Firm striding o’er the stubble fields
• When the equinoctials blow.

• When shrinkingly the sun creeps up
• Through misty mornings cold,
• And Robin on the orchard hedge
• Sings cheerily and bold,
• While the frosted plum
• Drops downward on the mould;—
• And as he passes, Autumn
• Into earth’s lap does throw
• Brown apples gay in a game of play,
• As the equinoctials blow.

• When the spent year its carol sinks
• Into a humble psalm,
• page: 42
• Asks no more for the pleasure draught,
• But for the cup of balm,
• And all its storms and sunshine bursts
• Controls to one brave calm,—
• Then step by step walks Autumn,
• With steady eyes that show
• Nor grief nor fear, to the death of the year,
• While the equinoctials blow.

MOON‐STRUCK.

A FANTASY.

• IT is a moor
• Barren and treeless; lying high and bare
• Beneath the archèd sky. The rushing winds
• Fly over it, each with his strong bow bent
• And quiver full of whistling arrows keen.

• I am a woman, lonely, old, and poor.
• If there be any one who watches me
• (But there is none) adown the long blank wold,
• My figure painted on the level sky
• page: 43
• Would startle him as if it were a ghost,—
• And like a ghost, a weary wandering ghost,
• I roam and roam, and shiver through the dark
• That will not hide me. O but for one hour,
• One blessed hour of warm and dewy night,
• To wrap me like a pall—with not an eye
• In earth or heaven to pierce the black serene.
• Night, call yet this? No night; no dark—no rest—
• A moon‐ray sweeps down sudden from the sky,
• And smites the moor—
• Is’t thou, accursèd Thing,
• Broad, pallid, like a great woe looming out—
• Out of its long‐sealed grave, to fill all earth
• With its dead, ghastly smile? Art there again,
• Round, perfect, large, as when we buried thee,
• I and the kindly clouds that heard my prayers?
• I’ll sit me down and meet thee face to face,
• Mine enemy!—Why didst thou rise upon
• My world—my innocent world, to make me mad?
• Wherefore shine forth, a tiny tremulous curve
• Hung out in the gray sunset beauteously,
• To tempt mine eyes—then nightly to increase
• Slow orbing, till thy full, blank, pitiless stare
• Hunts me across the world?
• No rest—no dark.
• Hour after hour that passionless bright face
• Climbs up the desolate blue. I will press down
• page: 44
• The lids on my tired eyeballs—crouch in dust,
• And pray.
• —Thank God, thank God!—a cloud has hid
• My torturer. The night at last is free:
• Forth peep in crowds the merry twinkling stars.
• Ah, we’ll shine out, the little silly stars
• And I; we’ll dance together across the moor,
• They up aloft—I here. At last, at last
• We are avengèd of our adversary!

• The freshening of the night air feels like dawn.
• Who said that I was mad? I will arise,
• Throw off my burthen, march across the wold
• Airily—Ha! what, stumbling? Nay, no fear—
• I am used unto the dark, for many a year
• Steering compassionless athwart the waste
• To where, deep hid in valleys of white mist,
• The pleasant home‐lights shine. I will but pause,
• Turn round and gaze—
• O me! O miserable me!
• The cloud‐bank overflows: sudden outpour
• The bright white moon‐rays—ah! I drown, I drown,
• And o’er the flood, with steady motion, slow
• It walketh—my inexorable Doom.

• No more: I shall not struggle any more:
• I will lie down as quiet as a child,—
• I can but die.
• page: 45
• There, I have hid my face:
• Stray travellers passing o’er the silent wold
• Would only say, “She sleeps.”
• Glare on, my Doom;
• I will not look at thee: and if at times
• I shiver, still I neither weep nor moan:
• Angels may see, I neither weep nor moan.

• Was that sharp whistling wind the morning breeze
• That calls the stars back to the obscure of heaven?
• I am very cold.—And yet there is a change.
• Less fiercely the sharp moonbeams smite my brain,
• My heart beats slower, duller: soothing rest
• Like a soft garment binds my shuddering limbs.—
• If I looked up now, should I see it still
• Gibbeted ghastly in the hopeless sky?—
• No!
• It is very strange: all things seem strange:
• Pale spectral face, I do not fear thee now:
• Was’t this mere shadow which did haunt me once
• Like an avenging fiend?—Well, we fade out
• Together: I’ll nor dread nor curse thee more.

• How calm the earth seems! and I know the moor
• Glistens with dew‐stars. I will try and turn
• My poor face eastward. Close not, eyes! That light
• Fringing the far hills, all so fair—so fair,
• Is it not dawn? I am dying, but ’t is dawn.
• page: 46
• “Upon the mountains I behold the feet
• Of my Beloved: let us forth to meet”—
• Death.
• This is death. I see the light no more;
• I sleep.
• But like a morning bird my soul
• Springs singing upward, into the deeps of heaven
• Through world on world to follow Infinite Day.

A STREAM’S SINGING.

• O HOW beautiful is Morning!
• How the sunbeams strike the daisies,
• And the kingcups fill the meadow
• Like a golden‐shielded army
• Marching to the uplands fair;—
• I am going forth to battle,
• And life’s uplands rise before me,
• And my golden shield is ready,
• And I pause a moment, timing
• My heart’s pæan to the waters,
• As with cheerful song incessant
• Onwards runs the little stream;
• Singing ever, onward ever,
• Boldly runs the merry stream.

• O how glorious is Noon‐day!
• With the cool large shadows lying
• Underneath the giant forest,
• The far hill‐tops towering dimly
• O’er the conquered plains below;—
• I am conquering—I shall conquer
• In life’s battle‐field impetuous:
• And I lie and listen dreamy
• To a double‐voiced, low music,—
• Tender beech‐trees sheeny shiver
• Mingled with the diapason
• Of the strong, deep, joyful stream,
• Like a man’s love and a woman’s;
• So it runs—the happy stream!

• O how grandly cometh Even,
• Sitting on the mountain summit,
• Purple‐vestured, grave, and silent,
• Watching o’er the dewy valleys,
• Like a good king near his end:—
• I have labored, I have governed;
• Now I feel the gathering shadows
• Of the night that closes all things:
• And the fair earth fades before me,
• And the stars leap out in heaven,
• While into the infinite darkness
• Solemn runs the steadfast stream—
• Onward, onward, ceaseless, fearless,
• Singing runs the eternal stream.

A REJECTED LOVER.

• You “never loved me,” Ada. These slow words
• Dropped softly from your gentle woman‐tongue
• Out of your true and kindly woman‐heart,
• Fell, piercing into mine like very swords
• The sharper for their kindness. Yet no wrong
• Lies to your charge, nor cruelty, nor art,—
• Ev’n when you spoke, I saw the tender tear‐drop start.

• You “never loved me.” No, you never knew,
• You, with youth’s morning fresh upon your soul,
• What ’t is to love: slow, drop by drop, to pour
• Our life’s whole essence, perfumed through and through
• With all the best we have or can control
• For the libation—cast it down before
• Your feet—then lift the goblet, dry for evermore.

• I shall not die as foolish lovers do:
• A man’s heart beats beneath thid breast of mine,
• The breast where—Curse on that fiend‐whispering
• page: 49
• “It might have been!”—Ada, I will be true
• Unto myself—the self that so loved thine:
• May all life’s pain, like these few tears that spring
• For me, glance off as rain‐drops from my white dove’s wing!

• May you live long, some good man’s bosom flower,
• And gather chldren round your matron knees:
• So, when all this is past, and you and I
• Remember each our youth‐days as an hour
• Of joy—or anguish, one, serene, at ease,
• May come to meet the other’s steadfast eye,
• Thinking, “He loved me well!” clasp hands, and so pass by.

A LIVING PICTURE.

• No, I’ll not say your name. I have said it now,
• As you mine, first in childish treble, then
• Up through a score and more familiar years
• Till baby‐voices mock us. Time may come
• When your tall sons look down on our white hair,
• Amused to hear us call each other thus,
• And question us about the old, old days,
• The far‐off days, the days when we were young.

• How distant do they seem, and yet how near!
• Now, as I lie and watch you come and go,
• With garden basket in your hand; in gown
• Just girdled, and brown curls that girl‐like fall,
• And straw hat flapping in the April breeze,
• I could forget this lapse of years—start up
• Laughing—“Come, let’s go play!”
• Well‐a‐day, friend,
• Our play‐days are all done.
• Still, let us smile:
• For as you flit about your garden here
• You look like this spring morning: on your lips
• An unseen bird sings snatches of gay tunes,
• While, an embodied music, moves your step,
• Your free, wild, springy step, like Atala’s,
• Or Pocahontas, careless child o’ the sun—
• Those Indian beauties I compare you to—
• I, still your praiser,—
• Nay, nay, I’ll not praise,
• Fair seemeth fairest, ignorant ’t is fair:
• That light incredulous laugh is worth a world!
• That laugh, with childish echoes.
• So then, fade,
• Mere dream. Come, true and sweet reality:
• Come, dawn of happy wifehood, motherhood,
• Ripening to perfect noon! Come, peaceful round
• Of simple joys, fond duties, gladsome cares,
• When each full hour drops bliss with liberal hand,
• Yet leaves to‐morrow richer than to‐day.

• Will you sit here? the grass is summer‐warm.
• Look at those children making daisy‐chains,
• So did we too, do you mind? That eldest lad,
• He has your very mouth. Yet, you will have ’t
• His eyes are like his father’s? Perhaps so:
• They could not be more dark and deep and kind.
• Do you know, this hour I have been fancying you
• A poet’s dream, and almost sighed to think
• There was no poet to praise you—
• Why, you’re flown
• After those mad elves in the flower‐beds there,
• Ha—ha—you’re no dream now.
• Well, well—so best!
• My eyelids droop content o’er moistened eyes:
• I would not have you other than you are.

LEONORA.

• LEONORA, Leonora,
• How the word rolls—Leonora—
• Lion‐like, in full‐mouthed sound,
• Marching o’er the metric ground
• With a tawny tread sublime—
• So your name moves, Leonora,
• Down my desert rhyme.

• So you pace, young Leonora,
• Through the alleys of the wood,
• Head erect, majestic, tall,
• The fit daughter of the Hall:
• Yet with hazel eyes declined,
• And a voice like summer wind,
• And a meek mouth, sweet and good,
• Dimpling ever, Leonora,
• In fair womanhood.

• How those smiles dance, Leonora,
• As you meet the pleasant breeze
• Under your ancestral trees:
• For your heart is free and pure
• As this blue March sky o’erhead,
• And in the life‐path you tread,
• page: 53
• All the leaves are budding, sure,
• All the primroses are springing,
• All the birds begin their singing—
• ’T is your spring‐time, Leonora,
• May it long endure.

• But it will pass, Leonora:
• And the silent days must fall
• When a change comes over all:
• When the last leaf downward flitters,
• And the last, last sunbeam glitters
• On the terraced hillside cool,
• On the peacocks by the pool:
• When you’ll walk along these alleys
• With no lightsome foot that dallies
• With the violets and the moss,—
• But with quiet steps and slow,
• And grave eyes that earthward grow,
• And a matron‐heart inured
• To all women have endured,—
• Must endure and ever will,
• All the joy and all the ill,
• All the gain and all the loss—
• Can you cheerfully lay down
• Careless girlhood’s flowery crown,
• And thus take up, Leonora,
• Womanhood’s meek cross?
• page: 54
• Ay! your eyes shine, Leonora,
• Warm, and true, and brave, and kind:
• And although I nothing know
• Of the maiden heart below,
• I in them good omens find.
• Go, enjoy your present hours
• Like the birds and bees and flowers:
• And may summer days bestow
• On you just so much of rain,
• Blessed baptism of pain!
• As will make your blossoms grow.
• May you walk, as through life’s road
• Every noble woman can,—
• With a pure heart before God,
• And a true heart unto man:
• Till with this same smile you wait
• For the opening of the Gate
• That shuts earth from mortal eyes;
• Till at last, with peaceful heart,
• All contented to depart,
• Leaving children’s children playing
• In these woods you used to stray in,
• You may enter, Leonora,
• Into Paradise.

PLIGHTED.

• MINE to the core of the heart, my beauty!
• Mine, all mine, and for love, not duty:
• Love given willingly, full and free,
• Love for love’s sake—as mine to thee.
• Duty’s a slave that keeps the keys,
• But Love, the master, goes in and out
• Of his goodly chambers with song and shout,
• Just as he please—just as he please.

• Mine, from the dear head’s crown, brown‐golden,
• To the silken foot that’s scarce beholden;
• Give to a few friends hand or smile,
• Like a generous lady, now and awhile,
• But the sanctuary heart, that none dare win,
• Keep holiest of holiest evermore;
• The crowd in the aisles may watch the door,
• The high‐priest only enters in.

• Mine, my own, without doubts or terrors,
• With all thy goodness, all thy errors,
• Unto me and to me alone revealed,
• “A spring shut up, a fountain sealed.”
• Many may praise thee—praise mine as thine,
• page: 56
• Many may love thee—I’ll love them too;
• But thy heart of hearts, pure, faithful, and true,
• Must be mine, mine wholly, and only mine.

• Mine!—God, I thank Thee that Thou hast given
• Something all mine on this side heaven:
• Something as much myself to be
• As this my soul, which I lift to Thee:
• Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,
• Life of my life, whom Thou dost make
• Two to the world for the world’s work’s sake—
• But each unto each, as in Thy sight, one.

MORTALITY.

“And we shall be changed.”

• YE dainty mosses, lichens gray,
• Pressed each to each in tender fold,
• And peacefully thus, day by day,
• Returning to their mould;

• Brown leaves, that with aerial grace
• Slip from your branch like birds a‐wing,
• Each leaving in the appointed place
• Its bud of future spring;—

• If we, God’s conscious creatures, knew
• But half your faith in our decay,
• We should not tremble as we do
• When summoned clay to clay.

• But with an equal patience sweet
• We should put off this mortal gear,
• In whatsoe’er new form is meet
• Content to reappear.

• Knowing each germ of life He gives
• Must have in Him its source and rise,
• Being that of His being lives
• May change, but never dies.

• Ye dead leaves, dropping soft and slow,
• Ye mosses green and lichens fair,
• Go to your graves, as I will go,
• For God is also there.

LIFE RETURNING

After War‐time.

• O LIFE, dear life, with sunbeam finger touching
• This poor damp brow, or flying freshly by
• On wings of mountain wind, or tenderly
• In links of visionary embraces clutching
• Me from the yawning grave—
• Can I believe thou yet hast power to save?

• I see thee, O my life, like phantom giant
• Stand on the hill‐top, large against the dawn,
• Upon the night‐black clouds a picture drawn
• Of aspect wonderful, with hope defiant,
• And so majestic grown
• I scarce discern the image as my own.

• Those mists furl off, and through the vale resplendent
• I see the pathway of my years prolong;
• Not without labor, yet for labor strong;
• Not without pain, but pain whose touch transcendent
• page: 59
• By love’s divinest laws
• Heart unto heart, and all hearts upwards, draws.

• O life, O love, your diverse tones bewildering
• Make silence, like two meeting waves of sound;
• I dream of wifely white arms, lisp of children—
• Never of ended wars,
• Save kisses scaling honorable scars.

• No more of battles! Save the combat glorious
• To which all earth and heaven may witness stand;
• The sword of the Spirit taking in my hand
• I shall go forth, since in new fields victorious
• The King yet grants that I
• His servant live, or His good soldier die.

MY FRIEND.

• MY Friend wears a cheerful smile of his own,
• And a musical tongue has he;
• We sit and look in each other’s face,
• And are very good company.
• A heart he has, full warm and red
• As ever a heart I see;
• page: 60
• And as long as I keep true to him,
• Why, he’ll keep true to me.

• When the wind blows high and the snow falls fast
• And we hear the wassailers’ roar—
• My Friend and I, with a right good‐will
• We bolt the chamber door:
• I smile at him and he smiles at me
• In a dreamy calm profound,
• Till his heart leaps up in the midst of him
• With a comfortable sound.

• His warm breath kisses my thin gray hair
• And reddens my ashen cheeks;
• He knows me better than you all know,
• Though never a word he speaks:—
• Knows me as well as some had known
• Were things—not as things be.
• page: 61
• But hey, what matters? my Friend and I
• Are capital company.

• At dead of night, when the house is still,
• He opens his pictures fair;
• Faces that are, that used to be,
• And faces that never were:
• My wife sits sewing beside my hearth,
• My little ones frolic wild,
• Though—Lilian’s married these twenty years,
• And I never had a child.

• But hey, what matters? When those who laugh
• May weep to‐morrow, and they
• Who weep be as those that wept not—all
• Their tears long wiped away.
• I shall burn out, like you, my Friend,
• With a bright warm heart and bold,
• That flickers up to the last—then drops
• Into quiet ashes cold.

• And when you flicker on me, old Friend,
• In the old man’s elbow‐chair,
• Or—something easier still, where we
• Lie down, to arise up fair
• And young, and happy—why then, my Friend,
• Should other friends ask of me,
• Tell them I lived and loved and died
• In the best of all company.

A VALENTINE.

• YE are twa laddies unco gleg,
• An’ blithe an’ bonnie:
• As licht o’ heel as Anster’s Meg;—
• Gin ye’d a lassie’s favor beg,
• I’ faith she couldna stir a peg
• Ance lookin’ on ye!

• He’s a douce wiselike callant—Jim:
• Of wit aye ready.
• Cuts aff ane’s sentence, ’t ither’s limb,
• An’ whiles he’s daft and whiles he’s grim,
• But brains?—wha’s got the like o’him
• In’s wee bit heidie?

• Dear laddie wi’ the curlin’ hair,
• Gentlest of ony:
• That gies kind looks an’ speeches fair
• To dour auld wives as lassies rare,—
• I ken a score o’ lads an’ mair,
• But nane like Johnnie!

• And gin ye learn the way to woo,
• Hae sweethearts mony,
• O laddie, never say ye loe
• An’ gie fause coin for siller true;
• A lassie’s sair heart’s naething new,—
• Mind o’ that, Johnnie.

• An’ dinna change your luve sae fast
• For ilk face bonnie,
• Lest waefu’ want track wilfu’ waste,
• And a’ your youthfu’ years lang past,
• Ye get the crookit stick at last,
• Ochone, puir Johnnie!

• But callants baith, tak tent, and when
• Bright e’en hae won ye,
• Tak each your jo—and keep her—then
• Be faithfu’ as ye’re fond, ye ken,
• Or—gang your gate like honest men,
• Young Jim and Johnnie.

• Sae when auld Time his crookit claw
• Sall lay upon ye,
• When, Jim, your feet that dance sae braw
• Are no the lightest in the ha’,
• An’ a’ your curly haffets fa’,
• My winsome Johnnie,—

• May each his ain warm ingle view,
• Cosie as ony:
• A gudewife sonsie, leal and true,
• O’ bonnie dochters not a few,
• An’ lads—sic lads as ye’re the noo—
• Dear Jim and Johnnie!

GRACE OF CLYDESIDE.

• AH, little Grace of the golden locks,
• The hills rise fair on the shores of Clyde.
• As the merry waves wear out these rocks
• She wears my heart out, glides past and mocks:
• But heaven’s gate ever stands open wide.

• The boat goes softly along, along,
• Like a river of life glows the amber Clyde;
• Her voice floats near me like angel’s song,—
• Ah, sweet love‐death, but thy pangs are strong!
• Though heaven’s gate ever stands open wide.

• We walk by the shore and the stars shine bright,
• But coldly, above the solemn Clyde:
• Her arm touches mine—her laugh rings light—
• ONE hears my silence: His merciful night
• Hides me—Can heaven be open wide?

• I ever was but a dreamer, Grace:
• As the gray hills watch o’er the sunny Clyde,
• Standing afar, each in his place,
• I watch your young life’s beautiful race,
• Apart—until heaven be opened wide.

• And sometimes when in the twilight balm
• The hills grow purple along the Clyde,
• The waves flow softly and very calm,
• I hear all nature sing this one psalm,
• That “heaven’s gate ever stands open wide.”

• So, happy Grace, with your spirit free,
• Laugh on! life is sweet on the banks of Clyde;
• This is no blame unto thee or me;
• Only God saw it could not be,
• Therefore His heaven stands open wide.

TO A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.

• SURELY, dame Nature made you in some dream
• Of old‐world women—Chriemhild, or bright
• Aslauga, or Boadicea fierce and fair,
• Or Berengaria as she rose, her lips
• Yet ruddy from the poison that anoints
• Her memory still, the queen of queenly wives.
• page: 66
• I marvel, who will crown you wife, you grand
• And goodly creature! who will mount supreme
• The empty chariot of your maiden heart,
• Curb the strong will that leaps and foams and chafes
• Still masterless, and guide you safely home
• Unto the golden gate, where quiet sits
• Grave Matronhood, with gracious, loving eyes.

• What eyes you have, you wild gazelle o’ the plain,
• You fierce hind of the forest! now they flash,
• Now glow, now in their own dark down‐dropt shade
• Conceal themselves a moment, as some thought,
• Too brief to be a feeling, flits across
• The April cloudland of your careless soul—
• There—that light laugh—and ’t is full sun—full day.

• Would I could paint you, line by line, ere Time
• Touches the gorgeous picture! your ripe mouth,
• Your white arched throat, your stature like to Saul’s
• Among his brethren, yet so fitly framed
• In such harmonious symmetry, we say
• As of a cedar among common trees
• Never “How tall!” but only “O how fair!”

• Who made you fair? moulded you in the shape
• That poets dream of; sent you forth to men
• His caligraph inscribed on every curve
• Of your brave form?
• page: 67
• Is it written on your soul?
• —I know not.
• Woman, upon whom is laid
• Heaven’s own sign‐manual, Beauty, mock heaven not!
• Reverence thy loveliness—the outward type
• Of things we understand not, nor behold
• But as in a glass, darkly; wear it thou
• With awful gladness, grave humility,
• That not contemns, nor boasts, nor is ashamed,
• But lifts its face up prayerfully to heaven,—
• “Thou who hast made me, make me worthy Thee!”

MARY’S WEDDING.

February 25th, 1851.

• YOU are to be married, Mary;
• This hour as I wakeful lie
• In the dreamy dawn of the morning,
• Your wedding hour draws nigh;
• Miles off, you are rising, dressing,
• Your bridemaidens gay among,
• In the same old house we played in,—
• You and I, when we were young.

• Your bridemaids—they were our playmates:
• Those known rooms, every wall,
• Could speak of our childish frolics,
• Loves, jealousies, great and small:
• Do you mind how pansies changed we
• And smiled at the word “forget”?—
• ’T was a girl’s romance: yet somehow
• I have kept my pansy yet.

• Do you mind our poems written
• Together? our dreams of fame—
• And of love—how we’d share all secrets
• When that sweet mystery came?
• It is no mystery now, Mary;
• It was unveiled, year by year,
• Till—this is your marriage morning;
• And I rest quiet here.

• I cannot call up your face, Mary,
• The face of the bride to‐day:
• You have outgrown my knowledge,
• The years have so slipped away.
• I see but your girlish likeness,
• Brown eyes and brown falling hair;—
• God knows, I did love you dearly,
• And was proud that you were fair.

• Many speak my name, Mary,
• While yours in home’s silence lies:
• page: 69
• The future I read in toil’s guerdon,
• You will read in your children’s eyes:
• The past—the same past with either—
• Is to you a delightsome scene,
• But I cannot trace it clearly
• For the graves that rise between.

• I am glad you are happy, Mary!
• These tears, could you see them fall,
• Would show, though you have forgotten,
• I have remembered all.
• And though my cup may be empty
• While yours is all running o’er,
• Heaven keep you its sweetness, Mary,
• Brimming for evermore.

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS.

Parting for Australia.

• HERE sitting by the fire
• I aspire, love, I aspire—
• Not to that “other world” of your fond dreams,
• But one as nigh and nigher,
• Compared to which your real, unreal seems.

• Together as to‐night
• In our light, love, in our light
• Of reunited joy appears no shade:
• From this our hope’s reached height
• All things are possible and level made.

• Therefore we sit and view—
• I and you, love, I and you—
• That wondrous valley o’er southern seas,
• Where in a country new
• You will make for me a sweet nest of ease;

• Where I, your poor tired bird,
• (Nothing stirred? Love, nothing stirred?)
• May fold her wings and be no more distrest:
• Where troubles may be heard
• Like outside winds at night which deepen rest.

• Where in green pastures wide
• We’ll abide, love, we’ll abide,
• And keep content our patriarchal flocks,
• Till at our aged side
• Leap our young brown‐faced shepherds of the rocks.

• Ah, tale that’s easy told!
• (Hold my hand, love, tighter hold.)
• What if this face of mine, which you think fair—
• If it should ne’er grow old,
• Nor matron cap cover this maiden hair?

• What if this silver ring
• (Loose it clings, love, yet does cling:)
• Should ne’er be changed for any other? nay,
• This very hand I fling.
• About your neck should—Hush! to‐day’s to‐day:

• To‐morrow is—ah, whose?
• You’ll not lose, love, you’ll not lose
• This hand I pledged, if never a wife’s hand
• For tender household use
• Led by your fearless into a far, far land.

• Kiss me and do not grieve;
• I believe, love, I believe
• That He who holds the measure of our days,
• And did thus strangely weave
• Our opposite lives together, to His praise—

• He never will divide
• Us so wide, love, us so wide:
• But will, whate’er befalls us, clearly show
• That those in Him allied
• In life or death are nearer than they know.

COUSIN ROBERT.

• O COUSIN Robert, far away
• Among the lands of gold,
• How many years since we two met?—
• You would not like it told.

• O cousin Robert, buried deep
• Amid your bags of gold—
• I thought I saw you yesternight
• Just as you were of old.

• You own whole leagues—I half a rood
• Behind my cottage door;
• You have your lacs of gold rupees,
• And I my children four;

• Your tall barques dot the dangerous seas,
• My “ship’s come home”—to rest
• Safe anchored from the storms of life
• Upon one faithful breast.

• And it would cause no start or sigh,
• Nor thought of doubt or blame,
• If I should teach our little son
• His cousin Robert’s name.—

• That name, however wide it rings,
• I oft think, when alone,
• I rather would have seen it graved
• Upon a churchyard stone—

• Upon the white sunshining stone
• Where cousin Alick lies:
• Ah, sometimes, woe to him that lives!
• Happy is he that dies!

• O Robert, Robert, many a tear—
• Though not the tears of old—
• Drops, thinking of your face last night
• Your hand’s remembered fold;

• A young man’s face, so like, so like
• Our mothers’ faces fair:
• A young man’s hand, so firm to clasp,
• So resolute to dare.

• I thought you good—I wished you great;
• You were my hope, my pride:
• To know you good, to make you great
• I once had happy died.

• To tear the plague‐spot from your heart,
• Place honor on your brow,
• See old age come in crownèd peace—
• I almost would die now!

• Would give—all that’s now mine to give—
• To have you sitting there,
• The cousin Robert of my youth—
• Though beggar’d, with gray hair.

• O Robert, Robert, some that live
• Are dead, long ere they are old;
• Better the pure heart of our youth
• Than palaces of gold;

• Better the blind faith of our youth
• Than doubt, which all truth braves;
• Better to mourn, God’s children dear,
• Than laugh, the Devil’s slaves.

• O Robert, Robert, life is sweet,
• And love is boundless gain:
• Yet if I mind of you, my heart
• Is stabbed with sudden pain:

• And as in peace this Christmas eve
• I close our quiet doors,
• And kiss “good‐night” on sleeping heads—
• Such bonnie curls,—like yours:

• I fall upon my bended knees
• With sobs that choke each word;—
• “On those who err and are deceived
• Have mercy, O good Lord!”

AT LAST.

• Down, down like a pale leaf dropping
• Under an autumn sky,
• My love dropped into my bosom
• Quietly, quietly.

• There was not a ray of sunshine
• And not a sound in the air,
• As she trembled into my bosom—
• My love, no longer fair.

• All year round in her beauty
• She dwelt on the tree‐top high:
• She danced in the summer breezes,
• She laughed to the summer sky.

• I lay so low in the grass‐dews,
• She sat so high above,
• She never wist of my longing,
• She never dreamed of my life.

• But when winds lay bare her dwelling,
• And her heart could find no rest,
• I called—and she fluttered downward
• Into my faithful breast.

• I know that my love is fading;
• I know I cannot fold
• Her fragrance from the frost‐blight,
• Her beauty from the mould:

• But a little, little longer
• She shall contented lie,
• And wither away in the sunshine
• Silently, silently.

• Come when thou wilt, grim Winter,
• My year is crowned and blest
• If when my love is dying
• She die upon my breast.

THE AURORA ON THE CLYDE.

September, 1850.

• AH me, how heavily the night comes down,
• Heavily, heavily:
• Fade the curved shores, the blue hills’ serried throng,
• The darkening waves we oared in light and song:
• Joy melts from us as sunshine from the sky;
• And Patience with sad eye
• Takes up her staff and drops her withered crown.

• Our small boat heaves upon the heaving river,
• Wearily, wearily;
• The flickering shore‐lights come and go by fits;
• Towering ’twixt earth and heaven dusk silence sits,
• Death at her feet; above, infinity;
• Between, slow drifting by,
• Our tiny boat, like life, floats onward ever.

• Pale, mournful hour,—too early night that falls
• Drearily, drearily,
• Come not too soon! Return, return, bright day,
• Kind voices, smiles, blue mountains, sunny bay!
• In vain! Life’s dial cannot backward fly:
• The dark time comes. Low lie,
• And listen, soul. Oft in the night, God calls.
• * * * * * *

• Light, light on the black river! How it gleams,
• Solemnly, solemnly!
• Like troops of pale ghosts on their pensive march,
• Treading the far heavens in a luminous arch,
• Each after each: phantasms serene and high
• From that eternity
• Where all earth’s sharpest woes grow dim as dreams.

• Let us drink in the glory, full and whole,
• Silently, silently:
• Gaze, till it lulls all pain, all vain desires:—
• page: 78
• See now, that radiant bow of pillared fires
• Spanning the hills like dawn, until they lie
• In soft tranquillity,
• And all night’s ghastly glooms asunder roll.

• Look, look again! the vision changes fast,
• Gloriously, gloriously:
• That was heaven’s gate with its illumined road,
• But this is heaven; the very throne of God
• Hung with flame curtains of celestial dye
• Waving perpetually,
• While to and fro innumerous angels haste.

• I see no more the stream, the boat that moves
• Mournfully, mournfully:
• And we who sit, poor prisoners of clay:
• It is not night, it is immortal day,
• Where the One Presence fills eternity,
• And each, His servant high,
• Forever praises and forever loves.

• O soul, forget the weight that drags thee down
• Deathfully, deathfully:
• Know thyself. As this glory wraps thee round,
• Let it melt off the chains that long have bound
• Thy strength. Stand free before thy God and cry—
• “My Father, here am I:
• Give to me as thou wilt—first cross, then crown.”

AN AURORA BOREALIS.

Roslin Castle.

• O STRANGE soft gleam, o ghostly dawn
• That never brightens unto day;
• Ere earth’s mirk pale once more be drawn
• Let us look out beyond the gray.

• It is just midnight by the clock—
• There is no sound on glen or hill,
• The moaning linn adown its rock
• Leaps, but the woods lie dark and still.

• Austere against the kindling sky
• Yon broken turret blacker grows;
• Harsh light, to show remorselessly
• Ruins night hid in kind repose!

• Nay, beauteous light, nay, light that fills
• The whole heaven like a dream of morn,
• As waking upon northern hills
• She smiles to find herself new‐born,—

• Strange light, I know thou wilt not stay,
• That many an hour must come and go
• page: 80
• Before the pale November day
• Break in the east, forlorn and slow.

• Yet blest one gleam—one gleam like this,
• When all heaven brightens in our sight,
• And the long night that was and is
• And shall be, vanishes in light:

• O blest one hour like this! to rise
• And see grief’s shadows backward roll;
• While bursts on unaccustomed eyes
• The glad Aurora of the soul.

AT THE LINN‐SIDE.

Roslin.

• O LIVING, living water,
• So busy and so bright,
• Aye flashing in the morning beams,
• And sounding through the night;
• O golden‐shining water—
• Would God that I might be
• A vocal message from His mouth
• Into the world, like thee!

• O merry, merry water,
• Which nothing e’er affrays;
• And as it pours from rock to rock
• Nothing e’er stops or stays;
• But past cool heathery hollows
• And gloomy pools it flows;
• Past crags that fain would shut it in
• Leaps through—and on it goes.

• O fresh’ning, sparkling water,
• O voice that’s never still,
• Though winter lays her dead‐white hand
• On brae and glen and hill;
• Though no leaf’s left to flutter
• In woods all mute and hoar,
• Yet thou, O river, night and day
• Thou runnest evermore.

• No foul thing can pollute thee;
• Thy swiftness casts aside
• All ill, like a good heart and true,
• However sorely tried.
• O living, living water,
• So fresh and bright and free—
• God lead us through this changeful world
• Forever pure, like thee!

A HYMN FOR CHRISTMAS MORNING.

1855.

• IT is the Christmas time:
• And up and down ’twixt heaven and earth,
• In glorious grief and solemn mirth,
• The shining angels climb.

• And unto everything
• That lives and moves, for heaven, on earth,
• With equal share of grief and mirth,
• The shining angels sing:—

• “Babes new‐born, undefiled,
• In lowly hut, or mansion wide—
• Sleep safely through this Christmas‐tide
• When Jesus was a child.

• “O young men, bold and free,
• In peopled town, or desert grim,
• When ye are tempted like to Him,
• ’The man Christ Jesus’ see.

• “Poor mothers, with your hoard
• Of endless love and countless pain—
• page: 83
• Remember all her grief, her gain,
• The Mother of the Lord.

• “Mourners, half blind with woe,
• Look up! One standeth in this place,
• And by the pity of His face
• The Man of Sorrows know.

• “Wanderers in far countrie,
• O think of Him, who came, forgot,
• To His own, and they received Him not—
• Jesus of Galilee.

• “O all ye who have trod
• The wine‐press of affliction, lay
• Your hearts before His heart this day—
• Behold the Christ of God!”

A PSALM FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE.

1855.

• A FRIEND stands at the door;
• In either tight‐closed hand
• Hiding rich gifts, three hundred and three score:
• Waiting to strew them daily o’er the land
• Even as seed the sower.
• Each drops he, treads it in and passes by:
• It cannot be made fruitful till it die.

• O good New Year, we clasp
• This warm shut hand of thine,
• Loosing forever, with half sigh, half gasp,
• That which from ours falls like dead fingers’ twine:
• Ay, whether fierce its grasp
• Has been, or gentle, having been, we know
• That it was blessed: let the Old Year go.

• O New Year, teach us faith!
• The road of life is hard:
• When our feet bleed and scourging winds us scathe,
• Point thou to Him whose visage was more marred
• Than any man’s: who saith
• page: 85
• “Make straight paths for your feet”—and to the opprest—
• “Come ye to Me, and I will give you rest.”

• Yet hang some lamp‐like hope
• Above this unknown way,
• Kind year, to give our spirits freer scope
• And our hands strength to work while it is day.
• But if that way must slope
• Tombward, O bring before our fading eyes
• The lamp of life, the Hope that never dies.

• Comfort our souls with love,—
• Love of all human kind;
• Love special, close—in which like sheltered dove
• Each weary heart its own safe nest may find;
• And love that turns above
• Adoringly; contented to resign
• All loves, if need be, for the Love Divine.

• Friend, come thou like a friend,
• And whether bright thy face,
• Or dim with clouds we cannot comprehend,—
• We’ll hold out patient hands, each in his place,
• And trust thee to the end.
• Knowing thou leadest onwards to those spheres
• Where there are neither days nor months nor years.

FAITHFUL IN VANITY‐FAIR.

Suggested by one of David Scott’s illustrations of “Pilgrim’s Progress.”

I.

• THE great human whirlpool—’t is seething and seething:
• On! No time for shrieking out—scarcely for breathing:
• All toiling and moiling, some feebler, some bolder,
• But each sees a fiend‐face grim over his shoulder:
• Thus merrily live they in Vanity‐fair.

• The great human caldron—it boils ever higher:
• Some drowning, some sinking; while some, stealing nigher
• Athirst, come and lean o’er its outermost verges,
• Or touch, as a child’s feet touch, timorous, the surges—
• One plunge—lo! more souls swamped in Vanity‐fair.

• Let’s live while we live; for to‐morrow all’s over:
• Drink deep, drunkard bold; and kiss close, maddened lover;
• page: 87
• Smile, hypocrite, smile; it is no such hard labor,
• While each stealthy hand stabs the heart of his neighbor—
• Faugh! Fear not: we’ve no hearts in Vanity‐fair.

• The mad crowd divides and then soon closes after:
• Afar towers the pyre. Through the shouting and laughter
• “What new sport is this?” gasps a reveller, half turning.—
• “One Faithful, meek fool, who is led to the burning,
• He cumbered us sorely in Vanity‐fair.

• “A dreamer, who held every man for a brother;
• A coward, who, smit on one cheek, gave the other;
• A fool, whose blind soul took as truth all our lying,
• Too simple to live, so best fitted for dying:
• Sure, such are best swept out of Vanity‐fair.”

II.

• SILENCE! though the flames arise and quiver:
• Silence! though the crowd howls on forever:
• Silence! Through this fiery purgatory
• God is leading up a soul to glory.

• See, the white lips with no moans are trembling,
• Hate of foes or plaint of friends’ dissembling;
• If sighs come—his patient prayers outlive them,
• “Lord—these know not what they do. Forgive them!”

• Thirstier still the roaring flames are glowing;
• Fainter in his ear the laughter growing;
• Brief will last the fierce and fiery trial,
• Angel welcomes drown the earth denial.

• Now the amorous death‐fires, gleaming ruddy,
• Clasp him close. Down drops the quivering body,
• While through harmless flames ecstatic flying
• Shoots the beauteous soul. This, this is dying.

• Lo, the opening sky with splendor rifted,
• Lo, the palm‐branch for his hands uplifted:
• Lo, the immortal chariot, cloud‐descending,
• And its legioned angels close attending.

• Let his poor dust mingle with the embers
• While the crowds sweep on and none remembers:
• Saints unnumbered through the Infinite Glory,
• Praising God, recount the martyr’s story.

HER LIKENESS.

• A GIRL, who has so many wilful ways
• She would have caused Job’s patience to forsake him;
• Yet is so rich in all that’s girlhood’s praise,
• Did Job himself upon her goodness gaze,
• A little better she would surely make him.

• Yet is this girl I sing in naught uncommon,
• And very far from angel yet, I trow.
• Her faults, her sweetnesses, are purely human;
• Yet she’s more lovable as simple woman
• Than any one diviner that I know.

• Therefore I wish that she may safely keep
• This womanhede, and change not, only grow;
• From maid to matron, youth to age, may creep,
• And in perennial blessedness, still reap
• On every hand of that which she doth sow.

ONLY A DREAM.

• METHOUGHT I saw thee yesternight
• Sit by me in the olden guise,
• The white robes and the pain foregone,
• Weaving instead of amaranth crown
• A web of mortal dyes.

• I cried, “Where hast thou been so long?”
• (The mild eyes turned and mutely smiled:)
• “Why dwellest thou in far‐off lands?
• What is that web within thy hands?”
• —“I work for thee, my child.”

• I clasped thee in my arms and wept;
• I kissed thee oft with passion wild:
• I poured fond questions, tender blame;
• Still thy sole answer was the same,—
• “I work for thee, my child.”

• “Come and walk with me as of old.”
• Then camest thou, silent as before;
• We passed along that churchyard way
• We used to tread each Sabbath day,
• Till one trod earth no more.

• I felt thy hand upon my arm,
• Beside me thy meek face I saw,
• Yet through the sweet familiar grace
• A something spiritual could trace
• That left a nameless awe.

• Trembling I said, “Long years have passed
• Since thou wert from my side beguiled;
• Now thou’rt returned and all shall be
• As was before.”—Half‐pensively
• Thou answered’st—“Nay, my child.”

• I pleaded sore: “Hadst thou forgot
• The love wherewith we loved of old,—
• The long sweet days of converse blest,
• The nights of slumber on thy breast,—
• Wert thou to me grown cold?”

• There beamed on me those eyes of heaven
• That wept no more, but ever smiled;
• “Love only is love in that Home
• Where I abide—where, till thou come,
• I work for thee, my child.”

• If from my sight thou passedst then,
• Or if my sobs the dream exiled,
• I know not: but in memory clear
• I seem these strange words still to hear,
• “I work for thee, my child.”

TO MY GODCHILD ALICE.

• ALICE, Alice, little Alice,
• My new‐christened baby Alice,
• Can there ever rhymes be found
• To express my wishes for thee
• In a silvery flowing, worthy
• Of that silvery sound?
• Bonnie Alice, Lady Alice,
• Sure, this sweetest name must be
• A true omen to thee, Alice,
• Of a life’s long melody.

• Alice, Alice, little Alice,
• Mayst thou prove a golden chalice,
• Filled with holiness like wine:
• With rich blessings running o’er
• Yet replenished evermore
• From a fount divine:
• Alice, Alice, little Alice,
• When this future comes to thee,
• In thy young life’s brimming chalice
• Keep some drops of balm for me!

• Alice, Alice, little Alice,
• Mayst thou grow a goodly palace,
• page: 93
• Fitly framed from roof to floors,
• Pure unto the inmost centre,
• While high thoughts like angels enter
• At the open doors:
• Alice, Alice, little Alice,
• When this beauteous sight I see,
• In thy woman‐heart’s wide palace
• Keep one nook of love for me.

• Alice, Alice, little Alice,—
• Sure the verse halts out of malice
• To the thoughts it feebly bears,
• And thy name’s soft echoes, ranging
• From quaint rhyme to rhyme, are changing
• Into silent prayers.
• God be with thee, little Alice,
• Of His bounteousness may He
• Fill the chalice, build the palace,
• Here, unto eternity!