Pleasant the secret hoard of bread;
What bars us from our pleasure?”
“Yea, take we pleasure while we may,”
I heard myself replying.
In the red sunset, far away,
My happier life was dying:
[40] My heart was sad, my voice was gay.
And unawares, I knew not how,
I kissed her dainty finger-tips,
I kissed her on the lily brow,
I kissed her on the false, false lips –
That burning kiss, I feel it now!
“True love gives true love of the best:
Then take,” I cried, “my heart to thee!”
The very heart from out my breast
I plucked, I gave it willingly:
[50] Her very heart she gave to me –
Then died the glory from the west.
In the grey light I saw her face,
And it was withered, old, and grey;
The flowers were fading in their place,
Were fading with the fading day.
Forth from her, like a hunted deer,
Through all that ghastly night I fled,
And still behind me seemed to hear
Her fierce unflagging tread;
[60] And scarce drew breath for fear.
Yet marked I well how strangely seemed
The heart within my breast to sleep:
Silent it lay, or so I dreamed,
With never a throb or leap.
For hers was now my heart, she said,
The heart that once had been mine own:
And in my breast I bore instead
A cold, cold heart of stone.
So grew the morning overhead.
[70] The sun shot downward through the trees
His old familiar flame;
All ancient sounds upon the breeze
From copse and meadow came –
But I was not the same.
They call me mad: I smile, I weep,
Uncaring how or why:
Yea, when one’s heart is laid asleep,
What better than to die?
So that the grave be dark and deep.
[80] To die! To die? And yet, methinks,
I drink of life, to-day,
Deep as the thirsty traveller drinks
Of fountain by the way:
My voice is sad, my heart is gay.
When yestereve was on the wane,
I heard a clear voice singing;
And suddenly, like summer-rain,
My happy tears came springing:
My human heart returned again.
[90] “A rosy child –
Sitting and singing, in a garden fair,
The joy of hearing, seeing,
The simple joy of being –
Or twining rosebuds in the golden hair
That ripples free and wild.
“A sweet pale child –
Wearily looking to the purple West –
Waiting the great For-ever
That suddenly shall sever
[100] The cruel chains that hold her from her rest –
By earth-joys unbeguiled.
“An angel-child –
Gazing with living eyes on a dead face:
The mortal form forsaken,
That none may now awaken,
That lieth painless, moveless in her place,
As though in death she smiled!
“Be as a child –
So shalt thou sing for very joy of breath –
[110] So shalt thou wait thy dying,
In holy transport lying –
So pass rejoicing through the gate of death,
In garment undefiled.”
Then call me what they will, I know
That now my soul is glad:
If this be madness, better so,
Far better to be mad,
Weeping or smiling as I go.
For if I weep, it is that now
[120] I see how deep a loss is mine,
And feel how brightly round my brow
The coronal might shine,
Had I but kept mine early vow:
And if I smile, it is that now
I see the promise of the years –
The garland waiting for my brow,
That must be won with tears,
With pain – with death – I care not how.
Stanzas for Music
The morn was bright, the steeds were light,
The wedding guests were gay;
Young Ellen stood within the wood
And watched them pass away.
She scarcely saw the gallant train,
The tear-drop dimmed her ee;
Unheard the maiden did complain
Beneath the Willow tree.
“O Robin, thou didst love me well,
[10] Till on a bitter day
She came, the Lady Isabel,
And stole my Love away.
My tears are vain, I live again
In days that used to be,
When I could meet thy welcome feet
Beneath the Willow tree.
“O Willow grey, I may not stay
Till Spring renew thy leaf,
But I will hide myself away,
[20] And nurse a hopeless grief.
It shall not dim life’s joy for him,
My tears he shall not see;
While he is by, I’ll come not nigh
My weeping Willow tree.
“But when I die, O let me lie
Beneath thy loving shade,
That he may loiter careless by
Where I am lowly laid.
And let the white white marble tell,
[30] If he should stoop to see,
‘Here lies a maid that loved thee well,
Beneath the Willow tree.’”
Solitude
I love the stillness of the wood,
I love the music of the rill,
I love to couch in pensive mood
Upon some silent hill.
Scarce heard, beneath yon arching trees,
The silver-crested ripples pass;
And, like a mimic brook, the breeze
Whispers among the grass.
Here from the world I win release,
[10] Nor scorn of men, nor footsteps rude,
Break in to mar the holy peace
Of this great solitude.
Here may the silent tears I weep
Lull the vexed spirit into rest,
As infants sob themselves to sleep
Upon a mother’s breast.
But when the bitter hour is gone,
And the keen throbbing pangs are still,
Oh, sweetest then to couch alone
[20] Upon some silent hill!
To live in joys that once have been,
To put the cold world out of sight,
And deck life’s drear and barren scene
With hues of rainbow light.
For what to man the gift of breath,
If sorrow be his lot below;
If all the day that ends in death
Be dark with clouds of woe?
Shall the poor transport of an hour
[30] Repay long years of sore distress –
The fragrance of a lonely flower
Make glad the wilderness?
Ye golden hours of life’s young spring,
Of innocence, of love and truth!
Bright, beyond all imagining,
Thou fairy dream of youth!
I’d give all wealth that years hath piled,
The slow result of life’s decay,
To be once more a little child
[40] For one bright summer day.
Only a Woman’s Hair
After the death of Dean Swift, there was found among his papers a small packet containing a single lock of hair and inscribed with the above words.
“Only a woman’s hair”! Fling it aside!
A bubb
le on Life’s mighty stream:
Heed it not, man, but watch the broadening tide
Bright with the western beam.
Nay! In those words there rings from other years
The echo of a long low cry,
Where a proud spirit wrestles with its tears
In loneliest agony.
And, as I touch that lock, strange visions rise
[10] Before me in a shadowy throng –
Of woman’s hair, the joy of lovers’ eyes,
The theme of poet’s song.
A child’s bright tresses, by the breezes kissed
To sweet disorder as she flies,
Veiling, beneath a cloud of golden mist,
Flushed cheek and laughing eyes –
Or fringing like a shadow, raven-black,
The glory of a queen-like face –
Or from a gipsy’s sunny brow tossed back
[20] In wild and wanton grace –
Or crown-like on the hoary head of Age,
Whose tale of life is well-nigh told –
Or, last, in dreams I make my pilgrimage
To Bethany of old.
I see the feast – the purple and the gold –
The gathering crowd of Pharisees,
Whose scornful eyes are centred to behold
Yon woman on her knees.
The stifled sob rings strangely on mine ears,
[30] Wrung from the depth of sin’s despair:
And still she bathes the sacred feet with tears,
And wipes them with her hair.
He scorned not then the simple loving deed
Of her, the lowest and the last;
Then scorn not thou, but use with earnest heed
This relic of the past.
The eyes that loved it once no longer wake:
So lay it by with reverent care –
Touching it tenderly for sorrow’s sake –
[40] It is a woman’s hair.
Three Sunsets
He saw her once, and in the glance,
A moment’s glance of meeting eyes,
His heart stood still in sudden trance:
He trembled with a sweet surprise –
All in the waning light she stood,
The star of perfect womanhood.
That summer-eve his heart was light,
With lighter step he trod the ground,
And life was fairer in his sight,
[10] And music was in every sound;
He blessed the world where there could be
So beautiful a thing as she.
There once again, as evening fell
And stars were peering overhead,
Two lovers met to bid farewell:
The western sun gleamed faint and red,
Lost in a drift of purple cloud
That wrapped him like a funeral-shroud.
Long time the memory of that night –
[20] The hand that clasped, the lips that kissed,
The form that faded from his sight
Slow sinking through the tearful mist –
In dreamy music seemed to roll
Through the dark chambers of his soul.
So after many years he came
A wanderer from a distant shore;
The street, the house, were still the same,
But those he sought were there no more:
His burning words, his hopes and fears,
[30] Unheeded fell on alien ears.
Only the children from their play
Would pause the mournful tale to hear,
Shrinking in half-alarm away,
Or, step by step, would venture near
To touch with timid curious hands
That strange wild man from other lands.
He sat beside the busy street,
There, where he last had seen her face;
And thronging memories, bitter-sweet,
[40] Seemed yet to haunt the ancient place:
Her footfall ever floated near,
Her voice was ever in his ear.
He sometimes, as the daylight waned
And evening mists began to roll,
In half-soliloquy complained
Of that black shadow on his soul,
And blindly fanned, with cruel care,
The ashes of a vain despair.
The summer fled: the lonely man
[50] Still lingered out the lessening days:
Still, as the night drew on, would scan
Each passing face with closer gaze –
Till, sick at heart, he turned away,
And sighed “She will not come to-day.”
So by degrees his spirit bent
To mock its own despairing cry,
In stern self-torture to invent
New luxuries of agony,
And people all the vacant space
[60] With visions of her perfect face:
Till for a moment she was nigh,
He heard no step, but she was there;
As if an angel suddenly
Were bodied from the viewless air,
And all her fine ethereal frame
Should fade as swiftly as it came.
So, half in fancy’s sunny trance,
And half in misery’s aching void,
With set and stony countenance
[70] His bitter being he enjoyed,
And thrust for ever from his mind
The happiness he could not find.
As when the wretch, in lonely room,
To selfish death is madly hurled,
The glamour of that fatal fume
Shuts out the wholesome living world –
So all his manhood’s strength and pride
One sickly dream had swept aside.
Yea, brother, and we passed him there,
[80] But yesterday, in merry mood,
And marvelled at the lordly air
That shamed his beggar’s attitude,
Nor heeded that ourselves might be
Wretches as desperate as he;
Who let the thought of bliss denied
Make havoc of our life and powers,
And pine, in solitary pride,
For peace that never shall be ours,
Because we will not work and wait
And so it chanced once more that she
Came by the old familiar spot;
The face he would have died to see
Bent o’er him, and he knew it not;
Too rapt in selfish grief to hear,
Even when happiness was near.
And pity filled her gentle breast
For him that would not stir nor speak;
The dying crimson of the west,
[100] That faintly tinged his haggard cheek,
Fell on her as she stood, and shed
A glory round the patient head.
Awake, awake! The moments fly;
This awful tryst may be the last.
And see! The tear, that dimmed her eye,
Had fallen on him ere she passed –
She passed: the crimson paled to grey:
And hope departed with the day.
The heavy hours of night went by,
[110] And silence quickened into sound,
And light slid up the eastern sky,
And life began its daily round –
But light and life for him were fled:
His name was numbered with the dead.
Christmas Greetings
[From a Fairy to a Child.]
Lady dear, if fairies may
For a moment lay aside
Cunning tricks and elfish play –
’Tis at happy Christmas-tide.
We have heard the children say –
Gentle children, whom we love –
Long ago, on Christmas Day
Came a message from above.
Still, as Christmas time comes round,
[10] They
remember it again –
Echo still the joyful sound
“Peace on earth, good will to men!”
Yet the hearts must child-like be
Where such heavenly guests abide:
Unto children in their glee
All the year is Christmas-tide!
So, forgetting tricks and play
For a moment, lady dear,
We would wish you, if we may,
[20] Merry Christmas, glad New Year!
After Three Days
Written after seeing Holman Hunt’s picture of “Christ in the Temple.”
I stood within the gate
Of a great temple, ’mid the living stream
Of worshippers that thronged its regal state
Fair pictured in my dream.
Jewels and gold were there;
And floors of marble lent a crystal sheen
To body forth, as in a lower air,
The wonders of the scene.
Such wild and lavish grace
[10] Had whispers in it of a coming doom;
As richest flowers lie strown about the face
Of her that waits the tomb.
The wisest of the land
Had gathered there, three solemn trysting-days,
For high debate: men stood on either hand
To listen and to gaze.
The aged brows were bent,
Bent to a frown, half thought, and half annoy,
That all their stores of subtlest argument
[20] Were baffled by a boy.
In each averted face
I marked but scorn and loathing, till mine eyes
Fell upon one that stirred not in his place,
Tranced in a dumb surprise.
Surely within his mind
Strange thoughts are born, until he doubts the lore
Of those old men, blind leaders of the blind,
Whose kingdom is no more.
Surely he sees afar
[30] A day of death the stormy future brings;
The crimson setting of the herald-star
That led the Eastern kings.
Thus, as a sunless deep
Mirrors the shining heights that crown the bay,
So did my soul create anew in sleep
The picture seen by day.
Gazers came and went –
A restless hum of voices marked the spot –
In varying shades of critic discontent
[40] Prating they knew not what.
“Where is the comely limb,
The form attuned in every perfect part,
The beauty that we should desire in him?”
Ah! Fools and slow of heart!
Look into those deep eyes,
Deep as the grave, and strong with love divine;
Those tender, pure, and fathomless mysteries,
That seem to pierce through thine.
Look into those deep eyes,
[50] Stirred to unrest by breath of coming strife,