To the Signora Cairoli




Blessed was she that bare,
Hidden in flesh most fair,
For all men’s sake the likeness of all love;
Holy that virgin’s womb,
The old record saith, on whom
The glory of God alighted as a dove;
Blessed, who brought to gracious birth
The sweet-souled Saviour of a man-tormented earth.



But four times art thou blest,
At whose most holy breast
Four times a godlike soldier-saviour hung;
And thence a fourfold Christ
Given to be sacrificed
To the same cross as the same bosom clung;
Poured the same blood, to leave the same
Light on the many-folded mountain-skirts of fame.



Shall they and thou not live,
The children thou didst give
Forth of thine hands, a godlike gift, t...

Lost Youth, come back again!
Laugh at weariness and pain.
Come not in dreams, but come in truth,
            Lost Youth.

Sweetheart of long ago,
Why do you haunt me so?
Were you not glad to part,
            Sweetheart?

Still Death, that draws so near,
Is it hope you bring, or fear?
Is it only ease of breath,
            Still Death?

    Incumbent seemingly
    On the jagged points of peaks
    That end the visible west,
    The rounded moon yet floods
    The valleys hitherward
    With fall of torrential light,
    Ere from the overmost
    Aggressive mountain-cusp,
    She slip to the lower dark.
    But here, on an eastward slope
    Pointed and thick with its pine,
    The forest scarcely remembers
    Her light that is gone as a vision
    Or ecstasy too poignant
    And perilous for duration.
    Withdrawn in what darker web
    Or dimension of dream I know not,
    In silence pre-occupied
    And solemnest rectitude
    The pines uprear, and no sigh
    For the rapture of moonlight past,
    Comes from their bosom of boughs.
    Far in their secrecy

A village Chorus is supposed to be assembled, and about to commence its festive procession.


CHORUS.

THE festal day hail ye

With garlands of pleasure,

And dances' soft measure,
With rapture commingled
And sweet choral song.

DAMON.

Oh, how I yearn from out the crowd to flee!
What joy a secret glade would give to me!
Amid the throng, the turmoil here,
Confined the plain, the breezes e'en appear.

CHORUS.

Now order it truly,
That ev'ry one duly
May roam and may wander,
Now here, and now yonder,

The meadows along.

[The Chorus retreats gradually, and the song becomes fainter and fainter, till it dies away in the distance.]

DAMON.

In vain ye call, in vain would lure me on...

This April sun has wakened into cheer
    The wintry paths of thought, and tinged with gold
    These threadbare leaves of fancy brown and old.
This is for us the wakening of the year
    And May's sweet breath will draw the waiting soul
    To where in distance lies the longed-for goal.

The summer life will still all questioning,
    The leaves will whisper peace, and calm will be
    The wild, vast, blue, illimitable sea.
And we shall hush our murmurings, and bring
    To Nature, green below and blue above,
    A whole life's worshipping, a whole life's love.

We will not speak of sometime fretting fears,
    We will not think of aught that may arise
    In future hours to cloud our golden skies.
Some souls there are who love their woes and tears,

These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.

There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.

On the shore I sit and gaze
Out on the twilight sea,
For my ship may come, though many days
I have waited patiently;
With waiting trusting eyes,
A lonely watch I keep
For its silver sails to rise
Like a blossom out of the deep.

It is built of a costly wood,
Bearing the strange perfume
Of the gorgeous solitude,
Where it grew in tropical gloom;
And the odorous scent, the spicy balm
Of its isle it will bear to me,
As I stand on the shore, in the magic calm.
And my ship come in from sea.

It is laden with all that is sweet
Of the beauty of every clime;
Slowly and proudly 'twill glide to my feet
In the eve of that fair "Sometime,"
Before me its sails will be furled,
A princess I shall be,
Crowned with the wealth of the world...

Again mine eyes were fix'd on Beatrice,
And with mine eyes my soul, that in her looks
Found all contentment. Yet no smile she wore
And, "Did I smile," quoth she, "thou wouldst be straight
Like Semele when into ashes turn'd:
For, mounting these eternal palace-stairs,
My beauty, which the loftier it climbs,
As thou hast noted, still doth kindle more,
So shines, that, were no temp'ring interpos'd,
Thy mortal puissance would from its rays
Shrink, as the leaf doth from the thunderbolt.
Into the seventh splendour are we wafted,
That underneath the burning lion's breast
Beams, in this hour, commingled with his might,
Thy mind be with thine eyes: and in them mirror'd
The shape, which in this mirror shall be shown."
Whoso can deem, how fondly I had fed
My sight up...

A Gyges ring they bear about them still,
To be, and not seen when and where they will;
They tread on clouds, and though they sometimes fall,
They fall like dew, and make no noise at all:
So silently they one to th' other come,
As colours steal into the pear or plum,
And air-like, leave no pression to be seen
Where'er they met, or parting place has been.

From the wheel and the drift of Things
Deliver us, Good Lord,
And we will face the wrath of Kings,
The faggot and the sword!

Lay not thy Works before our eyes
Nor vex us with thy Wars,
Lest we should feel the straining skies
O'ertrod by trampling stars.

Hold us secure behind the gates
Of saving flesh and bone,
Lest we should dream what Dream awaits
The Soul escaped alone.

Thy Path, thy Purposes conceal
From our beleaguered realm
Lest any shattering whisper steal
Upon us and o'erwhelm.

A veil 'twixt us and Thee, Good Lord,
A veil 'twixt us and Thee,
Lest we should hear too clear, too clear,
And unto madness see!

            Early on Christmas Day,
            Love, as awake I lay,
And heard the Christmas bells ring sweet and clearly,
            My heart stole through the gloom
            Into your silent room,
And whispered to your heart, 'I love you dearly.'

            There, in the dark profound,
            Your heart was sleeping sound,
And dreaming some fair dream of summer weather.
            At my heart's word it woke,
            And, ere the morning broke,
They sang a Christmas carol both together.

            Glory to God on high!
            Stars of the morning sky,
Sing as ye sang upon the first creation,
            When all the Sons of God
            Shouted for joy abroad,
And earth was laid upon a sure foundation.

    ...

The intellect of man is forced to choose
perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
When all that story's finished, what's the news?
In luck or out the toil has left its mark:
That old perplexity an empty purse,
Or the day's vanity, the night's remorse.

I

But yesterday
I looked away
O'er happy lands, where sunshine lay
In golden blots
Inlaid with spots
Of shade and wild forget-me-nots.

My head was fair
With flaxen hair,
And fragrant breezes, faint and rare,
And warm with drouth
From out the south,
Blew all my curls across my mouth.

And, cool and sweet,
My naked feet
Found dewy pathways through the wheat;
And out again
Where, down the lane,
The dust was dimpled with the rain.


II

But yesterday: -
Adream, astray,
From morning's red to evening's gray,
O'er dales and hills
Of daffodils
And lorn sweet-fluting whippoorwills.

I knew nor cares
Nor tears nor prayers -
A mortal god, crowned unawares
With sunset - a...

The deep seclusion of this forest path,
O'er which the green boughs weave a canopy,
Along which bluet and anemone
Spread a dim carpet; where the twilight hath
Her dark abode; and, sweet as aftermath,
Wood-fragrance breathes, has so enchanted me,
That yonder blossoming bramble seems to be
Some sylvan resting, rosy from her bath:
Has so enspelled me with tradition's dreams,
That every foam-white stream that twinkling flows,
And every bird that flutters wings of tan,
Or warbles hidden, to my fancy seems
A Naiad dancing to a Faun who blows
Wild woodland music on the pipes of Pan.

        "His Lordship said that it took a long time for a moral position to find its way across the Atlantic. He was very sorry that its voyage had been so long," etc.--Speech of Lord Dudley and Ward on Colonial Slavery, March 8.


T'other night, after hearing Lord Dudley's oration
    (A treat that comes once a year as May-day does),
I dreamt that I saw--what a strange operation!
A "moral position" shipt off for Barbadoes.

The whole Bench of Bishops stood by in grave attitudes,
    Packing the article tidy and neat;--
As their Reverences know that in southerly latitudes
    "Moral positions" don't keep very sweet.

There was Bathurst arranging the custom-house pass;
    And to guard the frail package from tousing and routing,
There stood my Lord Eldon, endorsing ...

Midst greens and shades the Catterskill leaps,
From cliffs where the wood-flower clings;
All summer he moistens his verdant steeps
With the sweet light spray of the mountain springs;
And he shakes the woods on the mountain side,
When they drip with the rains of autumn-tide.

But when, in the forest bare and old,
The blast of December calls,
He builds, in the starlight clear and cold,
A palace of ice where his torrent falls,
With turret, and arch, and fretwork fair,
And pillars blue as the summer air.

For whom are those glorious chambers wrought,
In the cold and cloudless night?
Is there neither spirit nor motion of thought
In forms so lovely, and hues so bright?
Hear what the gray-haired woodmen tell
Of this wild stream and its rocky dell.

The gray dawn on the mountain top
Is slow to pass away.
Still lays him by in sluggish dreams,
The golden God of day.

And then a light along the hills,
Your laughter silvery gay;
The Sun God wakes, a bluebird trills,
You come and it is day.

The far moon maketh lovers wise
In her pale beauty trembling down,
Lending curved cheeks, dark lips, dark eyes,
A strangeness not her own.
And, though they shut their lids to kiss,
In starless darkness peace to win,
Even on that secret world from this
Her twilight enters in.