A Shooting-box in the West of Ireland. A Bedchamber.
LAURENCE RABY and MELCHIOR. Night.

Melchior:
Surely in the great beginning God made all things good, and still
That soul-sickness men call sinning entered not without His will.
Nay, our wisest have asserted that, as shade enhances light,
Evil is but good perverted, wrong is but the foil of right.
Banish sickness, then you banish joy for health to all that live;
Slay all sin, all good must vanish, good being but comparative.
Sophistry, you say, yet listen: look you skyward, there ’tis known
Worlds on worlds in myriads glisten, larger, lovelier than our own,
This has been, and this still shall be, here as there, in sun or star;
These things are to be and will be, those things were to be and are.
Man in man’s imp...

        "Sleep, weary ones, while ye may --
            Sleep, oh, sleep!"
                    Eugene Field.


        Thro' May time blossoms, with whisper low,
        The soft wind sang to the dead below:
        "Think not with regret on the Springtime's song
        And the task ye left while your hands were strong.
        The song would have ceased when the Spring was past,
        And the task that was joyous be weary at last."

        To the winter sky when the nights were long
        The tree-tops tossed with a ceaseless song:
        "Do ye think with regret on the sunny days
        And the path ye left, with its untrod ways?
        The sun might sink in a storm cloud's frown
        And the path grow rough when the night came down."...

Army of Clouds! ye winged Hosts in troops
Ascending from behind the motionless brow
Of that tall rock, as from a hidden world,
Oh whither with such eagerness of speed?
What seek ye, or what shun ye? of the gale
Companions, fear ye to be left behind,
Or racing o'er your blue ethereal field
Contend ye with each other? of the sea
Children, thus post ye over vale and height
To sink upon your's mother's lap and rest?
Or were ye rightlier hailed, when first mine eyes
Beheld in your impetuous march the likeness
Of a wide army pressing on to meet
Or overtake some unknown enemy?
But your smooth motions suit a peaceful aim;
And Fancy, not less aptly pleased, compares
Your squadrons to an endless flight of birds
Aerial, upon due migration bound
To milder climes...

When from their game of dice men separate,
He, who hath lost, remains in sadness fix'd,
Revolving in his mind, what luckless throws
He cast: but meanwhile all the company
Go with the other; one before him runs,
And one behind his mantle twitches, one
Fast by his side bids him remember him.
He stops not; and each one, to whom his hand
Is stretch'd, well knows he bids him stand aside;
And thus he from the press defends himself.
E'en such was I in that close-crowding throng;
And turning so my face around to all,
And promising, I 'scap'd from it with pains.

Here of Arezzo him I saw, who fell
By Ghino's cruel arm; and him beside,
Who in his chase was swallow'd by the stream.
Here Frederic Novello, with his hand
Stretch'd forth, entreated; and of Pisa he,...

While History's Muse the memorial was keeping
    Of all that the dark hand of Destiny weaves,
Beside her the Genius of Erin stood weeping,
    For hers was the story that blotted the leaves.
But oh! how the tear in her eyelids grew bright,
When, after whole pages of sorrow and shame,
        She saw History write,
        With a pencil of light
That illumed the whole volume, her Wellington's name.

"Hail, Star of my Isle!" said the Spirit, all sparkling
    With beams, such as break from her own dewy skies--
"Thro' ages of sorrow, deserted and darkling,
    "I've watched for some glory like thine to arise.
"For, tho' heroes I've numbered, unblest was their lot,
"And unhallowed they sleep in the crossways of Fame;--
        "But oh! there is not
        "...

All day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane;

But now my torpid fancy wakes,
And, on thy Eagle’s plume,
Rides forth, like Sindbad on his bird,
Or witch upon her broom!

Below me roar the rocking pines,
Before me spreads the lake
Whose long and solemn-sounding waves
Against the sunset break.

I hear the wild Rice-Eater thresh
The grain he has not sown;
I see, with flashing scythe of fire,
The prairie harvest mown!

I hear the far-off voyager’s horn;
I see the Yankee’s trail,
His foot on every mountain-pass,
On every stream his sail.

By forest, lake, and waterfall,
I see his pedler show;
The mighty mingling with the mean,
The lofty...

Is life worth living?
It depends on your believing;--
If it ends with this short span,
Then is man no better than
The beasts that perish.
But a Loftier Hope we cherish.
"Life out of Death" is written wide
Across Life's page on every side.
We cannot think as ended, our dear dead who died.

What room is left us then for doubt or fear?
Love laughs at thought of ending--there, or here.
God would lack meaning if this world were all,
And this short life but one long funeral.

God is!    Christ loves!    Christ lives!
And by His Own Returning gives
Sure pledge of Immortality.
The first-fruits--He; and we--
The harvest of His victory.
The life beyond shall this life far transcend,
And Death is the Beginning--not the End!

I am the voice of the voiceless;
    Through me the dumb shall speak;
Till the deaf world's ear be made to hear
    The cry of the wordless weak.
From street, from cage, and from kennel,
    From jungle and stall, the wail
Of my tortured kin proclaims the sin
    Of the mighty against the frail.

I am a ray from the centre;
    And I will feed God's spark,
Till a great light glows in the night and shows
    The dark deeds done in the dark.
And full on the thoughtless sleeper
    Shall flash its glaring flame,
Till he wakens to see what crimes may be
    Cloaked under an honoured name.

The same Force formed the sparrow
    That fashioned man, the king;
The God of the Whole gave a spark of soul
    To furred and to feathered thing.

This morning is the morning of the day,
When I and Eustace from the city went
To see the Gardener’s Daughter; I and he,
Brothers in Art; a friendship so complete
Portion’d in halves between us, that we grew
The fable of the city where we dwelt.
My Eustace might have sat for Hercules;
So muscular he spread, so broad of breast.
He, by some law that holds in love, and draws
The greater to the lesser, long desired
A certain miracle of symmetry,
A miniature of loveliness, all grace
Summ’d up and closed in little;—Juliet, she
So light of foot, so light of spirit—oh, she
To me myself, for some three careless moons,
The summer pilot of an empty heart
Unto the shores of nothing! Know you not
Such touches are but embassies of love,
To tamper with the feelings,...

I.

                        Broken!
    It's only a ring - a plain, old ring,
        Worn down to a thread almost -
    Fling it away - the useless thing!
        What value now can it boast? -
                Fling it away!
            Yet stay! - oh stay
                Ere you cast it away!
        There's a tale of the vanished years
            That ever will cling,
                To that broken ring,
        That hallows and endears -
                        Oh stay!
In vain! - in vain! - What matters it now
    That tenderest memories cling
To that thread of gold so wasted and old -
    Who cares for a broken ring? -
                Fling it away!


II.

                        Broken!
    It's only a vase ...

As gold is tried in the furnace,
So He tries the hearts of men;
And the dwale and the dross shall suffer loss,
When He tries the hearts of men.
And the wood, and the hay, and the stubble
Shall pass in the flame away,
For gain is loss, and loss is gain,
And treasure of earth is poor and vain,
When He tries the hearts of men.

As gold is refined in the furnace,
So He fines the hearts of men.
The purge of the flame doth rid them of shame,
When He tries the hearts of men.
O, better than gold, yea, than much fine gold,
When He tries the hearts of men,
Are Faith, and Hope, and Truth, and Love,
And the Wisdom that cometh from above,
When He tries the hearts of men.

If these brief Records, by the Muses' art
Produced as lonely Nature or the strife
That animates the scenes of public life
Inspired, may in thy leisure claim a part;
And if these Transcripts of the private heart
Have gained a sanction from thy falling tears;
Then I repent not. But my soul hath fears
Breathed from eternity; for, as a dart
Cleaves the blank air, Life flies: now every day
Is but a glimmering spoke in the swift wheel
Of the revolving week. Away, away,
All fitful cares, all transitory zeal!
So timely Grace the immortal wing may heal,
And honour rest upon the senseless clay.

I

O fairest flower no sooner blown but blasted,
Soft silken Primrose fading timelesslie,
Summers chief honour if thou hadst outlasted
Bleak winters force that made thy blossome drie;
For he being amorous on that lovely die
That did thy cheek envermeil, thought to kiss
But kill'd alas, and then bewayl'd his fatal bliss.

II

For since grim Aquilo his charioter
By boistrous rape th' Athenian damsel got,
He thought it toucht his Deitie full neer,
If likewise he some fair one wedded not,
Thereby to wipe away th' infamous blot,
Of long-uncoupled bed, and childless eld,
Which 'mongst the wanton gods a foul reproach was held.

III

So mounting up in ycie-pearled carr,
Through middle empire of the freezing aire
He wanderd long,...

So Good-Luck came, and on my roof did light,
Like noiseless snow, or as the dew of night;
Not all at once, but gently, as the trees
Are by the sun-beams, tickled by degrees.

Were not the sinful Mary's tears
    An offering worthy Heaven,
When, o'er the faults of former years,
    She wept--and was forgiven?

When, bringing every balmy sweet
    Her day of luxury stored,
She o'er her Saviour's hallowed feet
    The precious odors poured;--
And wiped them with that golden hair,
    Where once the diamond shone;
Tho' now those gems of grief were there
    Which shine for GOD alone!

Were not those sweets, so humbly shed--
    That hair--those weeping eyes--
And the sunk heart, that inly bled--
    Heaven's noblest sacrifice?

Thou that hast slept in error's sleep,
    Oh, would'st thou wake in Heaven,
Like Mary kneel, like Mary weep,
    "Love much" and be forgiven![1]

Down in the street the last late hansoms go
        Still westward, but with backward eyes of red
        The harlot shuffles to her lonely bed;
The tall policeman pauses but to throw
A flash into the empty portico;
        Then he too passes, and his lonely tread
        Links all the long-drawn gas-lights on a thread
And ties them to one planet swinging low.

O Hesperus! O happy star! to bend
        O'er Helen's bosom in the trancèd west--
        To watch the hours heave by upon her breast
And at her parted lip for dreams attend:
        If dawn defraud thee, how shall I be deem'd.
        Who house within that bosom, and am dreamed?

Wreathe in a garland the corn's golden ear!
With it, the Cyane [31] blue intertwine
Rapture must render each glance bright and clear,
For the great queen is approaching her shrine,
She who compels lawless passions to cease,
Who to link man with his fellow has come,
And into firm habitations of peace
Changed the rude tents' ever-wandering home.

Shyly in the mountain-cleft
Was the Troglodyte concealed;
And the roving Nomad left,
Desert lying, each broad field.
With the javelin, with the bow,
Strode the hunter through the land;
To the hapless stranger woe,
Billow-cast on that wild strand!

When, in her sad wanderings lost,
Seeking traces of her child,
Ceres hailed the dreary coast,
Ah, no verdant plain then smiled!
That she here wit...

There was a Boy, long years ago,
Who hour by hour awake would lie,
And watch the white moon gliding slow
Along her pathway in the sky.

And every night as thus he lay
Entranced in lonely fantasy,
Borne swiftly on a bright moon-ray
There came to him a Golden Key.

And with that Golden Key the Boy
Oped every night a magic door
That to a melody of Joy
Turned on its hinges evermore.

Then, trembling with delight and awe,
When he the charmèd threshold crossed,
A radiant corridor he saw,
Its end in dazzling distance lost.

Great windows shining in a row
Lit up the wondrous corridor,
And each its own rich light did throw
In stream resplendent on the floor.

One window showed the Boy a scene
Within a forest old and dim...