Friendship

It was but a little thing,
Yet I knew it meant to me
Ease from what had given a sting
To the very birdsinging
Latterly.

But I would not welcome it;
And for all I then declined
O the regrettings infinite
When the night-processions flit
Through the mind!

"Black is the sky, but the land is white -
    (O the wind, the snow and the storm!) -
Father, where is our boy to-night?
    Pray to God he is safe and warm."

"Mother, mother, why should you fear?
    Safe is he, and the Arctic moon
Over his cabin shines so clear -
    Rest and sleep, 'twill be morning soon."

"It's getting dark awful sudden. Say, this is mighty queer!
Where in the world have I got to? It's still and black as a tomb.
I reckoned the camp was yonder, I figured the trail was here -
Nothing! Just draw and valley packed with quiet and gloom;
Snow that comes down like feathers, thick and gobby and gray;
Night that looks spiteful ugly - seems that I've lost my way.

"The cold's got an edge like a jackknife - it must be forty belo...

There will come soft rains and the
smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

Ne'er talk of Wisdom's gloomy schools;
    Give me the sage who's able
To draw his moral thoughts and rules
    From the study of the table;--
Who learns how lightly, fleetly pass
    This world and all that's in it.
From the bumper that but crowns his glass,
    And is gone again next minute!

The diamond sleeps within the mine,
    The pearl beneath the water;
While Truth, more precious, dwells in wine.
    The grape's own rosy daughter.
And none can prize her charms like him,
    Oh, none like him obtain her,
Who thus can, like Leander, swim
    Thro' sparkling floods to gain her!

There's been a young stranger at our house,
A baby whom nobody knew;
Who hated his brother, his father, his mother,
And made them aware of it, too.

He stayed with us nearly a fortnight
And carried a grouch all the while,
Nor promise nor present could make him look pleasant;
He hadn't the power to smile.

He cried when he couldn't have something;
He cried just as hard when he could;
Kind words by the earful but made him more tearful,
And scoldings did just as much good.

He stormed when his meals weren't ready,
And when they were ready, he screamed.
He went to bed growling, got up again howling
And quarreled and snarled as he dreamed.

He's gone, and the child we are fond of
Is back, just as nice as of old.
But I hope to be in som...

An incident of the Sepoy mutiny.


Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of bloom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer,
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear;
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The pipes at Lucknow played.

Day by day the Indian tiger
Louder yelled, and nearer crept;
Round and round the jungle-serpent
Near and nearer circles swept.
'Pray for rescue, wives and mothers,
Pray to-day!' the soldi...

Sacred Religion! "mother of form and fear,"
Dread arbitress of mutable respect,
New rites ordaining when the old are wrecked,
Or cease to please the fickle worshiper;
Mother of Love! (that name best suits thee here)
Mother of Love! for this deep vale, protect
Truth's holy lamp, pure source of bright effect,
Gifted to purge the vapoury atmosphere
That seeks to stifle it; as in those days
When this low Pile a Gospel Teacher knew,
Whose good works formed an endless retinue:
A Pastor such as Chaucer's verse portrays;
Such as the heaven-taught skill of Herbert drew;
And tender Goldsmith crowned with deathless praise!

SCENE. - A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale



I

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
As of angel fallen from grace?"

II

- "Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:
In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,
Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
Such deeds her hands have done."

III

- "And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
These fallings from her fair beginnings,...

This war's a waste of slurry, and its atmosphere is mud,
All is bog from here to sunset. Wadin' through
We're the victims of a thicker sort of universal flood,
With discomforts that old Noah never knew.

We have dubbed our trench The Cecil. There's a brass-plate and a dome,
And a quagmire where the doormat used to be,
If you're calling, second Tuesday is our reg'lar day at home,
So delighted if you'll toddle in to tea!

There is mud along the corridors enough to bog a cow;
In the air there hangs a musty kind of woof;
There's a frog-pond in the parlour, and the kitchen is a slough.
She has neither doors nor windows, nor a roof.

When they post our bald somnambulist as missing from his flat
We take soundings for the digger with a prop.
By the day the board ...

The day is done, the winter sun
Is setting in its sullen sky;
And drear the course that has been run,
And dim the hearts that slowly die.

No star will light my coming night;
No morn of hope for me will shine;
I mourn not heaven would blast my sight,
And I ne'er longed for joys divine.

Through life's hard task I did not ask
Celestial aid, celestial cheer;
I saw my fate without its mask,
And met it too without a tear.

The grief that pressed my aching breast
Was heavier far than earth can be;
And who would dread eternal rest
When labour's hour was agony?

Dark falls the fear of this despair
On spirits born of happiness;
But I was bred the mate of care,
The foster-child of sore distress.

No sighs for me, no sympathy...

‘Time to put off the world and go somewhere
And find my health again in the sea air,’
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
‘And make my soul before my pate is bare.’

‘And get a comfortable wife and house
To rid me of the devil in my shoes,’
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
‘And the worse devil that is between my thighs.’

‘And though I’d marry with a comely lass,
She need not be too comely, let it pass,’
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
‘But there’s a devil in a looking-glass.’

‘Nor should she be too rich, because the rich
Are driven by wealth as beggars by the itch,’
Beggar to beggar cried, being frenzy-struck,
‘And cannot have a humorous happy speech.’

‘And there I’ll grow respected at my ease,
And ...

There's no sense in going further, it's the edge of cultivation,"
So they said, and I believed it, broke my land and sowed my crop,
Built my barns and strung my fences in the little border station
Tucked away below the foothills where the trails run out and stop:

Till a voice, as bad as Conscience, rang interminable changes
On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated, so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges,
"Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and wating for you. Go!"

So I went, worn out of patience; never told my nearest neighbours,
Stole away with pack and ponies, left 'em drinking in the town;
And the faith that moveth mountains didn't seem to help my labours
As I faced the sheer main-ranges, whipping up and leading down.

Give way, give way, ye gates, and win
An easy blessing to your bin
And basket, by our entering in.

May both with manchet stand replete;
Your larders, too, so hung with meat,
That though a thousand, thousand eat,

Yet, ere twelve moons shall whirl about
Their silv'ry spheres, there's none may doubt
But more's sent in than was served out.

Next, may your dairies prosper so,
As that your pans no ebb may know;
But if they do, the more to flow,

Like to a solemn sober stream,
Bank'd all with lilies, and the cream
Of sweetest cowslips filling them.

Then may your plants be press'd with fruit,
Nor bee or hive you have be mute,
But sweetly sounding like a lute.

Last, may your harrows, shares, and ploughs,
Your stacks, you...

(A Memory Of Christiana C-)



Where Blackmoor was, the road that led
To Bath, she could not show,
Nor point the sky that overspread
Towns ten miles off or so.

But that Calcutta stood this way,
Cape Horn there figured fell,
That here was Boston, here Bombay,
She could declare full well.

Less known to her the track athwart
Froom Mead or Yell'ham Wood
Than how to make some Austral port
In seas of surly mood.

She saw the glint of Guinea's shore
Behind the plum-tree nigh,
Heard old unruly Biscay's roar
In the weir's purl hard by . . .

"My son's a sailor, and he knows
All seas and many lands,
And when he's home he points and shows
Each country where it stands.

"He's now just there - by Gib's high...

Love and Death once ceased their strife
At the Tavern of Man's Life.
Called for wine, and threw, alas!
Each his quiver on the grass.
When the bout was o'er they found
Mingled arrows strewed the ground.
Hastily they gathered then
Each the loves and lives of men.
Ah, the fateful dawn deceived!
Mingled arrows each one sheaved;
Death's dread armoury was stored
With the shafts he most abhorred;
Love's light quiver groaned beneath
Venom-headed darts of Death.

Thus it was they wrought our woe
At the Tavern long ago.
Tell me, do our masters know,
Loosing blindly as they fly,
Old men love while young men die?