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POEMS.

PERFECT UNION.

W.K.C.—3rd MARCH, 1879.

• “DRAW back the curtain, wife,” he said;
• And, dying, raised his feeble head,
• As all his gathered soul leaped sheer
• Into his waning eyes, and yearned
• After the journeying sun which turned
• Towards that other hemisphere.

• Then, as its incandescent bulk
• Sank slowly, like the foundering hulk
• Of some lone burning ship at sea,
• His life set with it—bright as brief—
• In that invincible belief
• Of Man’s august supremacy.

• Truth’s vanward hero! Calmly brave
• Fronting the dumb unfathomed grave
• With unintimidated eyes;
• Though not for him, beyond its night,
• Resuscitated Hope alight
• Prescient, on peaks of Paradise.

• And like some solemn parting word
• From one belovèd friend on board
• Bound for some undiscovered shore,
• To one who stands with straining gaze
• To catch the last look of a face
• Which he may see, ah never more—

• So, ere he drifted to the deep
• Unknowable, the utter sleep,
• Out, out beyond life’s harbour bar,
• He whispered, “Perfect! no one knows
• How perfect!” and his eyes did close
• Even like a sun‐extinguished star.

• His eyes did close: I held his hand:
• I loved, so came to understand
• The inmost working of his mind;
• Yea, in that clasp, I know not how,
• Did not his life of life then flow
• Through mine, while mine was left behind?

• I know not how, and yet it seems
• As in some prank of shifting dreams,
• That it was I who died, not he:
• And then again, I know not how,
• I feel new powers upheave and glow,
• And all his life that stirs in me.

• I am no longer what I was;
• My nature is the pictured glass,
• Where he who lived lives on and on;
• All ye who loved him, ye may see
• His spirits still investing me,
• As moonlight but reflects the sun.

• For ever deepening grows his sway:
• A voice cries in me night and day:
• “He’ll never die to me, his wife;
• In our strong love death hath no part;
• I hold and fold him in my heart—
• There he shall live while I have life. ” ’

THE STREET‐CHILDREN’S DANCE.

• NOW the earth in fields and hills
• Stirs with pulses of the Spring,
• Next‐embowering hedges ring
• With interminable trills;
• Sunlight runs a race with rain,
• All the world grows young again.

• Young as at the hour of birth:
• From the grass the daisies rise
• With the dew upon their eyes,
• Sun‐awakened eyes of earth;
• Fields are set with cups of gold;
• Can this budding world grow old?

• Can the world grow old and sere,
• Now when ruddy‐tasselled trees
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• Stoop to every passing breeze,
• Rustling in their silken gear;
• Now when blossoms pink and white
• Have their own terrestrial light?

• Brooding light falls soft and warm,
• Where in many a wind‐rocked nest,
• Curled up ’neath the she‐bird’s breast,
• Clustering eggs are hid from harm;
• While the mellow‐throated thrush
• Warbles in the purpling bush.

• Misty purple bathes the Spring:
• Swallows flashing here and there
• Float and dive on waves of air,
• And make love upon the wing;
• Crocus‐buds in sheaths of gold
• Burst like sunbeams from the mould.

• Chestnut leaflets burst their buds,
• Perching tiptoe on each spray,
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• Springing toward the radiant day,
• As the bland, pacific floods
• Of the generative sun
• All the teeming earth o’errun.

• Can this earth run o’er with beauty,
• Laugh through leaf and flower and grain,
• While in close‐pent court and lane,
• In the air so thick and sooty,
• Little ones pace to and fro,
• Weighted with their parents’ woe?

• Woe‐predestined little ones!
• Putting forth their buds of life
• In an atmosphere of strife,
• And crime breeding ignorance;
• Where the bitter surge of care
• Freezes to a dull despair.

• Dull despair and misery
• Lie about them from their birth;
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• Ugly curses, uglier mirth,
• Are their earliest lullaby;
• Fathers have they without name,
• Mothers crushed by want and shame.

• Brutish, overburthened mothers,
• With their hungry children cast
• Half‐nude to the nipping blast;
• Little sisters with their brothers
• Dragging in their arms all day
• Children nigh as big as they.

• Children mothered by the street:
• Shouting, flouting, roaring after
• Passers‐by with gibes and laughter,
• Diving between horses’ feet,
• In and out of drays and barrows,
• Recklessly, like London sparrows.

• Mudlarks of our slums and alleys,
• All unconscious of the blooming
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• World behind those housetops looming.
• Of the happy fields and valleys,
• Of the miracle of Spring
• With its boundless blossoming.

• Blossoms of humanity!
• Poor soiled blossoms in the dust!
• Through the thick defiling crust
• Of soul‐stifling poverty,
• In your features may be traced
• Childhood’s beauty half effaced—

• Childhood, stunted in the shadow
• Of the light‐debarring walls:
• Not for you the cuckoo calls
• O’er the silver‐threaded meadow;
• Not for you the lark on high
• Pours his music from the sky.

• Ah! you have your music too!
• And come flocking round that player
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• Grinding at his organ there,
• Summer‐eyed and swart of hue,
• Rattling off his well‐worn tune
• On this April afternoon.

• Lovely April lights of pleasure
• Flit o’er want‐beclouded features
• Of these little outcast creatures,
• As they swing with rhythmic measure,
• In the courage of their rags,
• Lightly o’er the slippery flags.

• Little footfalls, lightly glancing
• In a luxury of motion,
• Supple as the waves of ocean
• In your elemental dancing,
• How you fly, and wheel, and spin,
• For your hearts too dance within.

• Dance along with mirth and laughter,
• Buoyant, fearless, and elate,
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• Dancing in the teeth of fate,
• Ignorant of your hereafter
• That with all its tragic glooms
• Blindly on your future looms.

• Past and future, hence away!
• Joy, diffused throughout the earth,
• Centre in this moment’s mirth
• Of ecstatic holiday:
• Once in all their lives’ dark story,
• Touch them, Fate! with April glory.