Family

Inner not outer, without gnash of teeth
Or weeping, save quiet sobs of some who pray
And feel the Everlasting Arms beneath, -
Blackness of darkness this, but not for aye;
Darkness that even in gathering fleeteth fast,
Blackness of blackest darkness close to day.
Lord Jesus, through Thy darkened pillar cast,
Thy gracious eyes all-seeing cast on me
Until this tyranny be overpast.
Me, Lord, remember who remember Thee,
And cleave to Thee, and see Thee without sight,
And choose Thee still in dire extremity,
And in this darkness worship Thee my Light,
And Thee my Life adore in shadow of death,
Thee loved by day, and still beloved by night.
It is the Voice of my Beloved that saith:
"I am the Way, the Truth, the Life, I go
Whither that soul knows well that follow...

When the dark ivy the thorn-tree is mounting,
Sweet shielding in summer the nest of the dove,
There lies the sweet spot, by the side of the fountain,
That's dear to all sweetness that dwells upon love:
For there setting sunbeams, ere even's clouds close 'em,
Once stretch'd a long shadow of one I adore;
And there did I meet the sweet sighs of the bosom
Of one ever dear, though I meet her no more.

And who with a soul, and a share of warm feeling,
And who with a heart that owns love for the fair,
Can pass by the spot where his first look was stealing,
Or first fondness ventur'd love-tales to declare?
Ah, who can pass by it, and notice it never?
Can long days forget on first fondness to call?
Sure time kindles love to burn brighter than ever,
And nature's first c...

1

As by the fix'd decrees of Heaven,
'Tis vain to hope that Joy can last;
The dearest boon that Life has given,
To me is - visions of the past.


2.

For these this toy of blushing hue
I prize with zeal before unknown,
It tells me of a Friend I knew,
Who loved me for myself alone.


3.

It tells me what how few can say
Though all the social tie commend;
Recorded in my heart 'twill lay, [2]
It tells me mine was once a Friend.


4.

Through many a weary day gone by,
With time the gift is dearer grown;
And still I view in Memory's eye
That teardrop sparkle through my own.


5.

And heartless Age perhaps will smile,
Or wonder whence those feelings sprung;

Subtly conscious, all awake,
Let us clear our eyes, and break
Through the cloudy chrysalis,
See the wonder as it is.
Down a narrow alley, blind,
Touch and vision, heart and mind;
Turned sharply inward, still we plod,
Till the calmly smiling god
Leaves us, and our spirits grow
More thin, more acrid, as we go.
Creeping by the sullen wall,
We forego the power to see,
The threads that bind us to the All,
God or the Immensity;
Whereof on the eternal road
Man is but a passing mode.

Too blind we are, too little see
Of the magic pageantry,
Every minute, every hour,
From the cloudflake to the flower,
Forever old, forever strange,
Issuing in perpetual change
From the rainbow gates of Time.

But he who through this common air...

We were apart; yet, day by day,
I bade my heart more constant be.
I bade it keep the world away,
And grow a home for only thee;
Nor fear'd but thy love likewise grew,
Like mine, each day, more tried, more true.

The fault was grave! I might have known,
What far too soon, alas! I learn'd
The heart can bind itself alone,
And faith may oft be unreturn'd.
Self-sway'd our feelings ebb and swell
Thou lov'st no more; Farewell! Farewell!

Farewell! and thou, thou lonely heart,
Which never yet without remorse
Even for a moment didst depart
From thy remote and spherèd course
To haunt the place where passions reign
Back to thy solitude again!

Back! with the conscious thrill of shame
Which Luna felt, that summer-night,
Flash through her...

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.

If the wind and the sunlight of April and August had mingled the past and hereafter
In a single adorable season whose life were a rapture of love and of laughter,
And the blithest of singers were back with a song; if again from his tomb as from prison,
If again from the night or the twilight of ages Aristophanes had arisen,
With the gold-feathered wings of a bird that were also a god upon earth at his shoulders,
And the gold-flowing laugh of the manhood of old at his lips, for a joy to beholders,
He alone unrebuked of presumption were able to set to some adequate measure
The delight of our eyes in the dawn that restores them the sun of their sense and the pleasure.
For the days of the darkness of spirit are over for all of us here, and the season
When desire was a longing, and absence a thorn, ...

"Just forty years to-day, my dear,
We sail'd from Irish waters,
And bade farewell, with many a tear,
To Erin's sons and daughters.

"You'll recollect how ach'd our hearts,
That day in Tipperary,
When we set forth for foreign parts,
For distant woods or prairie.

"You know our very hearts were rent
With grief, almost asunder,
And if we thought all joy was spent,
No exil'd heart will wonder.

"But soon we reach'd our strange, new home,
Where mighty forests flourish'd,
With others, forc'd like us to roam,
Who in our isle were nourish'd.

"But now I'm fairly happy here,
And so are you, my Mary,
But still I've seen you drop a tear
Betimes, for Tipperary.

"We've many friends from home, here, now,
And some we call ou...

Lance, shield, and sword relinquished, at his side
A bead-roll, in his hand a clasped book,
Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook,
The war-worn Chieftain quits the world to hide
His thin autumnal locks where Monks abide
In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell
In soft repose he comes: within his cell,
Round the decaying trunk of human pride,
At morn, and eve, and midnight's silent hour,
Do penitential cogitations cling;
Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine
In grisly folds and strictures serpentine;
Yet, while they strangle, a fair growth they bring,
For recompense, their own perennial bower.

Love, under Friendship's vesture white,
Laughs, his little limbs concealing;
And oft in sport, and oft in spite,
Like Pity meets the dazzled sight,
Smiles thro' his tears revealing.

But now as Rage the God appears!
He frowns, and tempests shake his frame!--
Frowning, or smiling, or in tears,
'Tis Love; and Love is still the same.

I.
I WAS the chief of the race—he had stricken my father dead—
But I gather’d my fellows together, I swore I would strike off his head.
Each of them look’d like a king, and was noble in birth as in worth,
And each of them boasted he sprang from the oldest race upon earth.
Each was as brave in the light as the bravest hero of song,
And each of them liefer had died than have done one another a wrong.
He lived on an isle in the ocean—we sail’d on a Friday morn—
He that had slain my father the day before I was born.

II.
And we came to the isle in the ocean, and there on the shore was he.
But a sudden blast blew us out and away thro’ a boundless sea.

III.
And we came to the Silent Isle that we never had touch’d at before,
Where a silent ocean always broke on a si...

What does one gain by living? What by dying
Is lost worth having? What the daily things
Lived through together make them worth the while
For their sakes or for life's? Where's the denying
Of souls through separation? There's your smile!
And your hands' touch! And the long day that brings
Half uttered nothings of delight! But then
Now that I see you not, and shall again
Touch you no more - memory can possess
Your soul's essential self, and none the less
You live with me. I therefore write to you
This letter just as if you were away
Upon a journey, or a holiday;
And so I'll put down everything that's new
In this secluded village, since you left. ...
Now let me think! Well, then, as I remember,
After ten days the lilacs burst in bloom.
We had spring all at o...

(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.)

This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the well-known tune: -

            "Last night I lay a-sleeping,
            There came a dream so fair,
            I stood in Old Jerusalem
            Beside the temple there, - " etc.

Yet this tune is not to be fitted on, arbitrarily.    It is here given to suggest the manner of handling rather than determine it.


                    # To be sung. #
    I heard Immanuel singing
    Within his own good lands,
    I saw him bend above his harp.
    I watched his wandering hands
    Lost amid the harp-strings;
    Sweet, sweet I heard him play.
    His wounds were altogether healed.
   ...

O Donall og, if you go across the sea, bring myself with you and do not forget    it; and you will have a sweetheart for fair days and market days, and the daughter of the King of Greece beside you at night. It is late last night the dog was speaking of you; the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh. It is you are the lonely bird through the woods; and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me, that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked; I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you, and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you, a ship of gold under a silver mast; twelve towns with a market in all of them, and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not p...

Well hast thou spoken, and yet not taught
A feeling strange or new;
Thou hast but roused a latent thought,
A cloud-closed beam of sunshine brought
To gleam in open view.

Deep down, concealed within my soul,
That light lies hid from men;
Yet glows unquenched, though shadows roll,
Its gentle ray cannot control,
About the sullen den.

Was I not vexed, in these gloomy ways
To walk alone so long?
Around me, wretches uttering praise,
Or howling o'er their hopeless days,
And each with Frenzy's tongue;

A brotherhood of misery,
Their smiles as sad as sighs;
Whose madness daily maddened me,
Distorting into agony
The bliss before my eyes!

So stood I, in Heaven's glorious sun,
And in the glare of Hell;
My spirit drank a...

Dry thine eyes, Doll! the stars above us shine;
God of His goodness made them mine and thine;
His silver have we gotten, and His gold,
Whilst there's a sun to call us in the morn
To ply the hook among amid the yellow corn,
That such a mine of pretty gems doth hold:
For there's the poppy half in sorrow,
Greeting sleepy-eyed the morrow,
And the corn-flower, dainty tire for a sweetheart sunny-poll'd.

Dry thine eyes, Doll! the woods are all our own,
The woods that soon shall take a braver tone,
What time the frosts first silver Nature's hair;
The birds shall sing their best for thee and me;
And every sunrise listeners will we be,
And so of singing get the goodliest share;
When the thrushes sing so sweetly,
We would fain be footing featly,
But our hearts...

Clear was the night: the moon was young:
The larkspurs in the plots
Mingled their orange with the gold
Of the forget-me-nots.

The poppies seemed a silver mist:
So darkly fell the gloom.
You scarce had guessed yon crimson streaks
Were buttercups in bloom.

But one thing moved: a little child
Crashed through the flower and fern:
And all my soul rose up to greet
The sage of whom I learn.

I looked into his awful eyes:
I waited his decree:
I made ingenious attempts
To sit upon his knee.

The babe upraised his wondering eyes,
And timidly he said,
"A trend towards experiment
In modern minds is bred.

"I feel the will to roam, to learn
By test, experience, _nous_,
That fire is hot and ocean deep,
And wolves...

I oft have net thee, Autumn, wandering
Beside a misty stream, thy locks flung wild;
Thy cheeks a hectic flush more fair than Spring,
As if on thee the scarlet copse had smiled.
Or thee I've seen a twisted oak beneath,
Thy gentle eyes with foolish weeping dim,
    Beneath a faded oak from whose tinged leaves
Thou woundedst drowsy wreaths, while the soft breath
Of Morn did kiss thy locks and make them swim
    Far out behind, brown as the rustling sheaves.

Oft have I thee upon a hillock seen,
Dream-visaged, all agaze at glimpses faint
Of glimmering woods that glanced the hills between
With Indian faces from thy airy paint.
Or I have met thee 'twixt two dappled hills
Within a dingled valley nigh a fall,
    Clasped in thy tinted hand a ruddy flower,
An...