POEMS



BY



DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI.



A NEW EDITION.



LONDON:

ELLIS & WHITE, 29 NEW BOND STREET.

1881.

   

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POEMS .
• THE BLESSED DAMOZEL . . . . . . . . . . 3
• SISTER HELEN . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
• STRATTON WATER . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
• THE STAFF AND SCRIP . . . . . . . . . .34
• AVE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45
• DANTE AT VERONA . . . . . . . . . . . .51
• TROY TOWN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
• EDEN BOWER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
• THE CARD-DEALER . . . . . . . . . . . .92
• LOVE'S NOCTURN . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
• THE STREAM'S SECRET . . . . . . . . . 103
• JENNY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
• THE PORTRAIT . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
• MY SISTER'S SLEEP . . . . . . . . . . 138
• DOWN STREAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
• A LAST CONFESSION . . . . . . . . . . 144
• THE BURDEN OF NINEVEH . . . . . . . . 170
• WELLINGTON'S FUNERAL . . . . . . . . .180
• AN OLD SONG ENDED . . . . . . . . . . 184
• WORLD'S WORTH . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
• ASPECTA MEDUSA . . . . . . . . . . . .187
• THE BRIDE'S PRELUDE . . . . . . . . . 188

LYRICS .
• LOVE-LILY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
• FIRST LOVE REMEMBERED . . . . . . . . 239
• PLIGHTED PROMISE . . . . . . . . . . .240
• SUDDEN LIGHT . . . . . . . . . . . . .242
• A LITTLE WHILE . . . . . . . . . . . .243
• THE SONG OF THE BOWER . . . . . . . . 245
• PENUMBRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .247
• A NEW-YEAR'S BURDEN . . . . . . . . . 249
• EVEN SO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
• THE WOODSPURGE . . . . . . . . . . . .251
• THE HONEYSUCKLE . . . . . . . . . . . 252
• A YOUNG FIR-WOOD . . . . . . . . . . .253
• THE SEA-LIMITS . . . . . . . . . . . .254

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SONNETS .
• FOR ‘OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS’ BY LEONARDO DA
  
  VINCI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
• FOR A VENETIAN PASTORAL BY GIORGIONE . . 260
• FOR AN ALLEGORICAL DANCE OF WOMEN BY ANDREA
  
  MANTEGNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .261
• FOR ‘RUGGIERO AND ANGELICA’ BY INGRES . 262-3
• FOR ‘THE WINE OF CIRCE’ BY EDWARD BURNE
  
  JONES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
• MARY'S GIRLHOOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
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• THE PASSOVER IN THE HOLY FAMILY . . . . . 266
• MARY MAGDALENE AT THE DOOR OF SIMON THE
  
  PHARISEE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
• CASSANDRA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .268-9
• VENUS VERTICORDIA . . . . . . . . . . . .270
• PANDORA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .271
• ON REFUSAL OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS . . . .272
• ON THE ‘VITA NUOVA’ OF DANTE . . . . . 273
• DANTIS TENEBRÆ . . . . . . . . . . . . .274
• BEAUTY AND THE BIRD . . . . . . . . . . .275
• A MATCH WITH THE MOON . . . . . . . . . .276

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TRANSLATIONS .
• THE BALLAD OF DEAD LADIES (VILLON) . . . . 279
• TO DEATH, OF HIS LADY (VILLON) . . . . . . 281
• HIS MOTHER'S SERVICE TO OUR LADY (VILLON) .282
• JOHN OF TOURS (OLD FRENCH) . . . . . . . . 284
• MY FATHER'S CLOSE (OLD FRENCH) . . . . . . 286
• BEAUTY (SAPPHO) . . . . . . . . . . . . . .288
• YOUTH AND LORDSHIP (ITALIAN STREET-SONG) . 289
• THE LEAF (LEOPARDI) . . . . . . . . . . . .292
• FRANCESCA DA RIMINI (DANTE) . . . . . . . .293

       

• The blessed damozel leaned out
• From the gold bar of Heaven;
• Her eyes were deeper than the depth
• Of waters stilled at even;
• She had three lilies in her hand,
• And the stars in her hair were seven.

• Her robe, ungirt from clasp to hem,
• No wrought flowers did adorn,
• But a white rose of Mary's gift,
• 10 For service meetly worn;
• Her hair that lay along her back
• Was yellow like ripe corn.

• Herseemed she scarce had been a day
• One of God's choristers;
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• The wonder was not yet quite gone
• From that still look of hers;
• Albeit, to them she left, her day
• Had counted as ten years.

• (To one, it is ten years of years.
• 20 . . . Yet now, and in this place,
• Surely she leaned o'er me—her hair
• Fell all about my face. . . .
• Nothing: the autumn-fall of leaves.
• The whole year sets apace.)

• It was the rampart of God's house
• That she was standing on;
• By God built over the sheer depth
• The which is Space begun;
• So high, that looking downward thence
• 30 She scarce could see the sun.

• It lies in Heaven, across the flood
• Of ether, as a bridge.
• Beneath, the tides of day and night
• With flame and darkness ridge
• The void, as low as where this earth
• Spins like a fretful midge.

• Around her, lovers, newly met
• 'Mid deathless love's acclaims,
• Spoke evermore among themselves
• 40 Their heart-remembered names;
• And the souls mounting up to God
• Went by her like thin flames.

• And still she bowed herself and stooped
• Out of the circling charm;
• Until her bosom must have made
• The bar she leaned on warm,
• And the lilies lay as if asleep
• Along her bended arm.

• From the fixed place of Heaven she saw
• 50 Time like a pulse shake fierce
• Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove
• Within the gulf to pierce
• Its path; and now she spoke as when
• The stars sang in their spheres.

• The sun was gone now; the curled moon
• Was like a little feather
• Fluttering far down the gulf; and now
• She spoke through the still weather.
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• Her voice was like the voice the stars
• 60 Had when they sang together.

• (Ah sweet! Even now, in that bird's song,
• Strove not her accents there,
• Fain to be hearkened? When those bells
• Possessed the mid-day air,
• Strove not her steps to reach my side
• Down all the echoing stair?)

• ‘I wish that he were come to me,
• For he will come,’ she said.
• ‘Have I not prayed in Heaven?—on earth,
• 70 Lord, Lord, has he not pray'd?
• Are not two prayers a perfect strength?
• And shall I feel afraid?

• ‘When round his head the aureole clings,
• And he is clothed in white,
• I'll take his hand and go with him
• To the deep wells of light;
• As unto a stream we will step down,
• And bathe there in God's sight.

• ‘We two will stand beside that shrine,
• 80 Occult, withheld, untrod,
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• Whose lamps are stirred continually
• With prayer sent up to God;
• And see our old prayers, granted, melt
• Each like a little cloud.

• ‘We two will lie i' the shadow of
• That living mystic tree
• Within whose secret growth the Dove
• Is sometimes felt to be,
• While every leaf that His plumes touch
• 90 Saith His Name audibly.

• ‘And I myself will teach to him,
• I myself, lying so,
• The songs I sing here; which his voice
• Shall pause in, hushed and slow,
• And find some knowledge at each pause,
• Or some new thing to know.’

• (Alas! We two, we two, thou say'st!
• Yea, one wast thou with me
• That once of old. But shall God lift
• 100 To endless unity
• The soul whose likeness with thy soul
• Was but its love for thee?)

• ‘We two,’ she said, ‘will seek the groves
• Where the lady Mary is,
• With her five handmaidens, whose names
• Are five sweet symphonies,
• Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,
• Margaret and Rosalys.

• ‘Circlewise sit they, with bound locks
• 110 And foreheads garlanded;
• Into the fine cloth white like flame
• Weaving the golden thread,
• To fashion the birth-robes for them
• Who are just born, being dead.

• ‘He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:
• Then will I lay my cheek
• To his, and tell about our love,
• Not once abashed or weak:
• And the dear Mother will approve
• 120 My pride, and let me speak.

• ‘Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,
• To him round whom all souls
• Kneel, the clear-ranged unnumbered heads
• Bowed with their aureoles:
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• And angels meeting us shall sing
• To their citherns and citoles.

• ‘There will I ask of Christ the Lord
• Thus much for him and me:—
• Only to live as once on earth
• 130 With Love,—only to be,
• As then awhile, for ever now
• Together, I and he.’

• She gazed and listened and then said,
• Less sad of speech than mild,—
• ‘All this is when he comes.’ She ceased.
• The light thrilled towards her, fill'd
• With angels in strong level flight.
• Her eyes prayed, and she smil'd.

• (I saw her smile.) But soon their path
• 140 Was vague in distant spheres:
• And then she cast her arms along
• The golden barriers,
• And laid her face between her hands,
• And wept. (I heard her tears.)

   

• ‘Why did you melt your waxen man,
• Sister Helen?
• To-day is the third since you began.’
• ‘The time was long, yet the time ran,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Three days to-day, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘But if you have done your work aright,
• Sister Helen,
• 10You'll let me play, for you said I might.’
• ‘Be very still in your play to-night,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Third night, to-night, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘You said it must melt ere vesper-bell,
• Sister Helen;
• If now it be molten, all is well.’
• ‘Even so,—nay, peace! you cannot tell,
• Little brother.’
• 20 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• O what is this, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Oh the waxen knave was plump to-day,
• Sister Helen;
• How like dead folk he has dropped away!’
• ‘Nay now, of the dead what can you say,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What of the dead, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘See, see, the sunken pile of wood,
• 30 Sister Helen,
• Shines through the thinned wax red as blood!’
• ‘Nay now, when looked you yet on blood,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• How pale she is, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Now close your eyes, for they're sick and sore,
• Sister Helen,
• And I'll play without the gallery door.’
• ‘Aye, let me rest,—I'll lie on the floor,
• 40 Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What rest to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Here high up in the balcony,
• Sister Helen,
• The moon flies face to face with me.’
• ‘Aye, look and say whatever you see,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What sight to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)

• 50‘Outside it's merry in the wind's wake,
• Sister Helen;
• In the shaken trees the chill stars shake.’
• ‘Hush, heard you a horse-tread as you spake,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What sound to-night, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘I hear a horse-tread, and I see,
• Sister Helen,
• Three horsemen that ride terribly.’
• 60‘Little brother, whence come the three,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Whence should they come, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘They come by the hill-verge from Boyne Bar,
• Sister Helen,
• And one draws nigh, but two are afar.’
• ‘Look, look, do you know them who they are,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 70 Who should they be, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Oh, it's Keith of Eastholm rides so fast,
• Sister Helen,
• For I know the white mane on the blast.’
• ‘The hour has come, has come at last,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Her hour at last, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He has made a sign and called Halloo!
• Sister Helen,
• 80And he says that he would speak with you.’
• ‘Oh tell him I fear the frozen dew,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Why laughs she thus, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘The wind is loud, but I hear him cry,
• Sister Helen,
• That Keith of Ewern's like to die.’
• ‘And he and thou, and thou and I,
• Little brother.’
• 90 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• And they and we, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Three days ago, on his marriage-morn,
• Sister Helen,
• He sickened, and lies since then forlorn.’
• ‘For bridegroom's side is the bride a thorn,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Cold bridal cheer, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Three days and nights he has lain abed,
• 100 Sister Helen,
• And he prays in torment to be dead.’
• ‘The thing may chance, if he have prayed,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• If he have prayed, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘But he has not ceased to cry to-day,
• Sister Helen,
• That you should take your curse away.’
• ‘ My prayer was heard,—he need but pray,
• 110 Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Shall God not hear, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘But he says, till you take back your ban,
• Sister Helen,
• His soul would pass, yet never can.’
• ‘Nay then, shall I slay a living man,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• A living soul, between Hell and Heaven!)

• 120‘But he calls for ever on your name,
• Sister Helen,
• And says that he melts before a flame.’
• ‘My heart for his pleasure fared the same,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Fire at the heart, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Here's Keith of Westholm riding fast,
• Sister Helen,
• For I know the white plume on the blast.’
• 130‘The hour, the sweet hour I forecast,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Is the hour sweet, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘He stops to speak, and he stills his horse,
• Sister Helen;
• But his words are drowned in the wind's course.’
• ‘Nay hear, nay hear, you must hear perforce,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 140 What word now heard, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Oh he says that Keith of Ewern's cry,
• Sister Helen,
• Is ever to see you ere he die.’
• ‘In all that his soul sees, there am I,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• The soul's one sight, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He sends a ring and a broken coin,
• Sister Helen,
• 150And bids you mind the banks of Boyne.’
• ‘What else he broke will he ever join,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• No, never joined, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He yields you these and craves full fain,
• Sister Helen,
• You pardon him in his mortal pain.’
• ‘What else he took will he give again,
• Little brother?’
• 160 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Not twice to give, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He calls your name in an agony,
• Sister Helen,
• That even dead Love must weep to see.’
• ‘Hate, born of Love, is blind as he,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Love turned to hate, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh it's Keith of Keith now that rides fast,
• 170 Sister Helen,
• For I know the white hair on the blast.’
• ‘The short short hour will soon be past,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Will soon be past, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He looks at me and he tries to speak,
• Sister Helen,
• But oh! his voice is sad and weak!’
• ‘What here should the mighty Baron seek,
• 180 Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Is this the end, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Oh his son still cries, if you forgive,
• Sister Helen,
• The body dies but the soul shall live.’
• ‘Fire shall forgive me as I forgive,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• As she forgives, between Hell and Heaven!)

• 190‘Oh he prays you, as his heart would rive,
• Sister Helen,
• To save his dear son's soul alive.’
• Fire cannot slay it, it shall thrive,
• Little brother!
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Alas, alas, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘He cries to you, kneeling in the road,
• Sister Helen,
• To go with him for the love of God!’
• 200‘The way is long to his son's abode,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• The way is long, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘A lady's here, by a dark steed brought,
• Sister Helen,
• So darkly clad, I saw her not.’
• ‘See her now or never see aught,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 210 What more to see, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘Her hood falls back, and the moon shines fair,
• Sister Helen,
• On the Lady of Ewern's golden hair.’
• ‘Blest hour of my power and her despair,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Hour blest and bann'd, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Pale, pale her cheeks, that in pride did glow,
• Sister Helen,
• 220'Neath the bridal-wreath three days ago.’
• ‘One morn for pride and three days for woe,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Three days, three nights, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Her clasped hands stretch from her bending head,
• Sister Helen;
• With the loud wind's wail her sobs are wed.’
• ‘What wedding-strains hath her bridal-bed,
• Little brother?’
• 230 ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What strain but death's, between Hell and Heaven?)

• ‘She may not speak, she sinks in a swoon,
• Sister Helen,—
• She lifts her lips and gasps on the moon.’
• ‘Oh! might I but hear her soul's blithe tune,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Her woe's dumb cry, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘They've caught her to Westholm's saddle-bow,
• 240 Sister Helen,
• And her moonlit hair gleams white in its flow.’
• ‘Let it turn whiter than winter snow,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Woe-withered gold, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘O Sister Helen, you heard the bell,
• Sister Helen!
• More loud than the vesper-chime it fell.’
• ‘No vesper-chime, but a dying knell,
• 250 Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• His dying knell, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Alas! but I fear the heavy sound,
• Sister Helen;
• Is it in the sky or in the ground?’
• ‘Say, have they turned their horses round,
• Little brother?’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• What would she more, between Hell and Heaven?)

• 260 ‘They have raised the old man from his knee,
• Sister Helen,
• And they ride in silence hastily.’
• ‘More fast the naked soul doth flee,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• The naked soul, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Flank to flank are the three steeds gone,
• Sister Helen,
• But the lady's dark steed goes alone.’
• 270 ‘And lonely her bridegroom's soul hath flown,
• Little brother.’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• The lonely ghost, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Oh the wind is sad in the iron chill,
• Sister Helen,
• And weary sad they look by the hill.’
• ‘But he and I are sadder still,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• 280 Most sad of all, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘See, see, the wax has dropped from its place,
• Sister Helen,
• And the flames are winning up apace!’
• ‘Yet here they burn but for a space,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Here for a space, between Hell and Heaven!)

• ‘Ah! what white thing at the door has cross'd,
• Sister Helen?
• 290 Ah! what is this that sighs in the frost?’
• ‘A soul that's lost as mine is lost,
• Little brother!’
• ( O Mother, Mary Mother,
• Lost, lost, all lost, between Hell and Heaven!)

   

• ‘O have you seen the Stratton flood
• That's great with rain to-day?
• It runs beneath your wall, Lord Sands,
• Full of the new-mown hay.

• ‘I led your hounds to Hutton bank
• To bathe at early morn:
• They got their bath by Borrowbrake
• Above the standing corn.’

• Out from the castle-stair Lord Sands
• 10 Looked up the western lea;
• The rook was grieving on her nest,
• The flood was round her tree.

• Over the castle-wall Lord Sands
• Looked down the eastern hill:
• The stakes swam free among the boats,
• The flood was rising still.

• ‘What's yonder far below that lies
• So white against the slope?’
• ‘O it's a sail o' your bonny barks
• 20 The waters have washed up.’

• ‘But I have never a sail so white,
• And the water's not yet there.’
• ‘O it's the swans o' your bonny lake
• The rising flood doth scare.’

• ‘The swans they would not hold so still,
• So high they would not win.’
• ‘O it's Joyce my wife has spread her smock
• And fears to fetch it in.’

• ‘Nay, knave, it's neither sail nor swans,
• 30 Nor aught that you can say;
• For though your wife might leave her smock,
• Herself she'd bring away.’

• Lord Sands has passed the turret-stair,
• The court, and yard, and all;
• The kine were in the byre that day,
• The nags were in the stall.

• Lord Sands has won the weltering slope
• Whereon the white shape lay:
• The clouds were still above the hill,
• 40 And the shape was still as they.

• Oh pleasant is the gaze of life
• And sad is death's blind head;
• But awful are the living eyes
• In the face of one thought dead!

• ‘In God's name, Janet, is it me
• Thy ghost has come to seek?’
• ‘Nay, wait another hour, Lord Sands,—
• Be sure my ghost shall speak.’

• A moment stood he as a stone,
• 50 Then grovelled to his knee.
• ‘O Janet, O my love, my love,
• Rise up and come with me!’
• ‘O once before you bade me come,
• And it's here you have brought me!

• ‘O many's the sweet word, Lord Sands,
• You've spoken oft to me;
• But all that I have from you to-day
• Is the rain on my body.

• ‘And many's the good gift, Lord Sands,
• 60 You've promised oft to me;
• But the gift of yours I keep to-day
• Is the babe in my body.

• ‘O it's not in any earthly bed
• That first my babe I'll see;
• For I have brought my body here
• That the flood may cover me.’

• His face was close against her face,
• His hands of hers were fain:
• O her wet cheeks were hot with tears,
• 70 Her wet hands cold with rain.

• ‘They told me you were dead, Janet,—
• How could I guess the lie?’
• ‘They told me you were false, Lord Sands,—
• What could I do but die?’

• ‘Now keep you well, my brother Giles,—
• Through you I deemed her dead!
• As wan as your towers seem to-day,
• To-morrow they'll be red.

• ‘Look down, look down, my false mother,
• 80 That bade me not to grieve:
• You'll look up when our marriage fires
• Are lit to-morrow eve.

• ‘O more than one and more than two
• The sorrow of this shall see:
• But it's to-morrow, love, for them,—
• To-day's for thee and me.’

• He's drawn her face between his hands
• And her pale mouth to his:
• No bird that was so still that day
• 90 Chirps sweeter than his kiss.

• The flood was creeping round their feet.
• ‘O Janet, come away!
• The hall is warm for the marriage-rite,
• The bed for the birthday.’

• ‘Nay, but I hear your mother cry,
• “Go bring this bride to bed!
• And would she christen her babe unborn
• So wet she comes to wed?”

• ‘I'll be your wife to cross your door
• 100 And meet your mother's e'e.
• We plighted troth to wed i' the kirk,
• And it's there you'll wed with me.’

• He's ta'en her by the short girdle
• And by the dripping sleeve:
• ‘Go fetch Sir Jock my mother's priest,—
• You'll ask of him no leave.

• ‘O it's one half-hour to reach the kirk
• And one for the marriage-rite;
• And kirk and castle and castle-lands
• 110 Shall be our babe's to-night.’

• ‘The flood's in the kirkyard, Lord Sands,
• And round the belfry-stair.’
• ‘I bade you fetch the priest,’ he said,
• ‘Myself shall bring him there.

• ‘It's for the lilt of wedding bells
• We'll have the hail to pour,
• And for the clink of bridle-reins
• The plashing of the oar.

• Beneath them on the nether hill
• 120 A boat was floating wide:
• Lord Sands swam out and caught the oars
• And rowed to the hill-side.

• He's wrapped her in a green mantle
• And set her softly in;
• Her hair was wet upon her face,
• Her face was grey and thin;
• And ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘lie still, my babe,
• It's out you must not win!’

• But woe's my heart for Father John
• 130 As hard as he might pray,
• There seemed no help but Noah's ark
• Or Jonah's fish that day.

• The first strokes that the oars struck
• Were over the broad leas;
• The next strokes that the oars struck
• They pushed beneath the trees;

• The last stroke that the oars struck,
• The good boat's head was met,
• And there the gate of the kirkyard
• 140 Stood like a ferry-gate.

• He's set his hand upon the bar
• And lightly leaped within:
• He's lifted her to his left shoulder,
• Her knees beside his chin.

• The graves lay deep beneath the flood
• Under the rain alone;
• And when the foot-stone made him slip,
• He held by the head-stone.

• The empty boat thrawed i' the wind,
• 150 Against the postern tied.
• ‘Hold still, you've brought my love with me,
• You shall take back my bride.’

• But woe's my heart for Father John
• And the saints he clamoured to!
• There's never a saint but Christopher
• Might hale such buttocks through!

• And ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘on men's shoulders
• I well had thought to wend,
• And well to travel with a priest,
• 160 But not to have cared or ken'd.

• ‘And oh!’ she said, ‘it's well this way
• That I thought to have fared,—
• Not to have lighted at the kirk
• But stopped in the kirkyard.

• ‘For it's oh and oh I prayed to God,
• Whose rest I hoped to win,
• That when to-night at your board-head
• You'd bid the feast begin,
• This water past your window-sill
• 170 Might bear my body in.’

• Now make the white bed warm and soft
• And greet the merry morn.
• The night the mother should have died,
• The young son shall be born.

   

• ‘Who rules these lands?’ the Pilgrim said.
• ‘Stranger, Queen Blanchelys.’
• ‘And who has thus harried them?’ he said.
• ‘It was Duke Luke did this:
• God's ban be his!’

• The Pilgrim said: ‘Where is your house?
• I'll rest there, with your will.’
• ‘You've but to climb these blackened boughs
• And you'll see it over the hill,
• 10 For it burns still.’

• ‘Which road, to seek your Queen?’ said he.
• ‘Nay, nay, but with some wound
• You'll fly back hither, it may be,
• And by your blood i' the ground
• My place be found.’

• ‘Friend, stay in peace. God keep your head,
• And mine, where I will go;
• For He is here and there,’ he said.
• He passed the hill-side, slow,
• 20 And stood below.

• The Queen sat idle by her loom:
• She heard the arras stir,
• And looked up sadly: through the room
• The sweetness sickened her
• Of musk and myrrh.

• Her women, standing two and two,
• In silence combed the fleece.
• The Pilgrim said, ‘Peace be with you,
• Lady;’ and bent his knees.
• 30 She answered, ‘Peace.’

• Her eyes were like the wave within;
• Like water-reeds the poise
• Of her soft body, dainty thin;
• And like the water's noise
• Her plaintive voice.

• For him, the stream had never well'd
• In desert tracts malign
• So sweet; nor had he ever felt
• So faint in the sunshine
• 40 Of Palestine.

• Right so, he knew that he saw weep
• Each night through every dream
• The Queen's own face, confused in sleep
• With visages supreme
• Not known to him.

• ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘your lands lie burnt
• And waste: to meet your foe
• All fear: this I have seen and learnt.
• Say that it shall be so,
• 50 And I will go.’

• She gazed at him. ‘Your cause is just,
• For I have heard the same:’
• He said: ‘God's strength shall be my trust.
• Fall it to good or grame,
• 'Tis in His name.’

• ‘Sir, you are thanked. My cause is dead.
• Why should you toil to break
• A grave, and fall therein?’ she said.
• He did not pause but spake:
• 60 ‘For my vow's sake.’

• ‘Can such vows be, Sir—to God's ear,
• Not to God's will?’ ‘My vow
• Remains: God heard me there as here,’
• He said with reverent brow,
• ‘Both then and now.’

• They gazed together, he and she,
• The minute while he spoke;
• And when he ceased, she suddenly
• Looked round upon her folk
• 70 As though she woke.

• ‘Fight, Sir,’ she said; ‘my prayers in pain
• Shall be your fellowship.’
• He whispered one among her train,—
• ‘To-morrow bid her keep
• This staff and scrip.’

• She sent him a sharp sword, whose belt
• About his body there
• As sweet as her own arms he felt.
• He kissed its blade, all bare,
• 80 Instead of her.

• She sent him a green banner wrought
• With one white lily stem,
• To bind his lance with when he fought.
• He writ upon the same
• And kissed her name.

• She sent him a white shield, whereon
• She bade that he should trace
• His will. He blent fair hues that shone,
• And in a golden space
• 90 He kissed her face.

• Born of the day that died, that eve
• Now dying sank to rest;
• As he, in likewise taking leave,
• Once with a heaving breast
• Looked to the west.

• And there the sunset skies unseal'd,
• Like lands he never knew,
• Beyond to-morrow's battle-field
• Lay open out of view
• 100 To ride into.

• Next day till dark the women pray'd:
• Nor any might know there
• How the fight went: the Queen has bade
• That there do come to her
• No messenger.

• The Queen is pale, her maidens ail;
• And to the organ-tones
• They sing but faintly, who sang well
• The matin-orisons,
• 110 The lauds and nones.

• Lo, Father, is thine ear inclin'd,
• And hath thine angel pass'd?
• For these thy watchers now are blind
• With vigil, and at last
• Dizzy with fast.

• Weak now to them the voice o' the priest
• As any trance affords;
• And when each anthem failed and ceas'd,
• It seemed that the last chords
• 120 Still sang the words.

• ‘Oh what is the light that shines so red?
• 'Tis long since the sun set;’
• Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid:
• ‘'Twas dim but now, and yet
• The light is great.’

• Quoth the other: ‘'Tis our sight is dazed
• That we see flame i' the air.’
• But the Queen held her brows and gazed,
• And said, ‘It is the glare
• 130 Of torches there.’

• ‘Oh what are the sounds that rise and spread?
• All day it was so still;’
• Quoth the youngest to the eldest maid;
• ‘Unto the furthest hill
• The air they fill.’

• Quoth the other; ‘'Tis our sense is blurr'd
• With all the chants gone by.’
• But the Queen held her breath and heard,
• And said, ‘It is the cry
• 140 Of Victory.’

• The first of all the rout was sound,
• The next were dust and flame,
• And then the horses shook the ground:
• And in the thick of them
• A still band came.

• ‘Oh what do ye bring out of the fight,
• Thus hid beneath these boughs?’
• ‘Thy conquering guest returns to-night,
• And yet shall not carouse,
• 150 Queen, in thy house.’

• ‘Uncover ye his face,’ she said.
• ‘O changed in little space!’
• She cried, ‘O pale that was so red!
• O God, O God of grace!
• Cover his face.’

• His sword was broken in his hand
• Where he had kissed the blade.
• ‘O soft steel that could not withstand!
• O my hard heart unstayed,
• 160 That prayed and prayed!’

• His bloodied banner crossed his mouth
• Where he had kissed her name.
• ‘O east, and west, and north, and south,
• Fair flew my web, for shame,
• To guide Death's aim!’

• The tints were shredded from his shield
• Where he had kissed her face.
• ‘Oh, of all gifts that I could yield,
• Death only keeps its place,
• 170 My gift and grace!’

• Then stepped a damsel to her side,
• And spoke, and needs must weep:
• ‘For his sake, lady, if he died,
• He prayed of thee to keep
• This staff and scrip.’

• That night they hung above her bed,
• Till morning wet with tears.
• Year after year above her head
• Her bed his token wears,
• 180 Five years, ten years.

• That night the passion of her grief
• Shook them as there they hung.
• Each year the wind that shed the leaf
• Shook them and in its tongue
• A message flung.

• And once she woke with a clear mind
• That letters writ to calm
• Her soul lay in the scrip; to find
• Only a torpid balm
• 190 And dust of palm.

• They shook far off with palace sport
• When joust and dance were rife;
• And the hunt shook them from the court;
• For hers, in peace or strife,
• Was a Queen's life.

• A Queen's death now: as now they shake
• To gusts in chapel dim,—
• Hung where she sleeps, not seen to wake,
• (Carved lovely white and slim),
• 200 With them by him.

• Stand up to-day, still armed, with her,
• Good knight, before His brow
• Who then as now was here and there,
• Who had in mind thy vow
• Then even as now.

• The lists are set in Heaven to-day,
• The bright pavilions shine;
• Fair hangs thy shield, and none gainsay;
• The trumpets sound in sign
• 210 That she is thine.

• Not tithed with days' and years' decease
• He pays thy wage He owed,
• But with imperishable peace
• Here in His own abode,
• Thy jealous God.

   

• Mother of the Fair Delight,
• Thou handmaid perfect in God's sight,
• Now sitting fourth beside the Three,
• Thyself a woman-Trinity,—
• Being a daughter borne to God,
• Mother of Christ from stall to rood,
• And wife unto the Holy Ghost:—
• Oh when our need is uttermost,
• Think that to such as death may strike
• 10 Thou once wert sister sisterlike!
• Thou headstone of humanity,
• Groundstone of the great Mystery,
• Fashioned like us, yet more than we!

• Mind'st thou not (when June's heavy breath
page: 46  
• Warmed the long days in Nazareth,)
• That eve thou didst go forth to give
• Thy flowers some drink that they might live
• One faint night more amid the sands?
• Far off the trees were as pale wands
• 20 Against the fervid sky: the sea
• Sighed further off eternally
• As human sorrow sighs in sleep.
• Then suddenly the awe grew deep,
• As of a day to which all days
• Were footsteps in God's secret ways:
• Until a folding sense, like prayer,
• Which is, as God is, everywhere,
• Gathered about thee; and a voice
• Spake to thee without any noise,
• 30 Being of the silence:—‘Hail,’ it said,
• ‘Thou that art highly favourèd;
• The Lord is with thee here and now;
• Blessed among all women thou.’

• Ah! knew'st thou of the end, when first
• That Babe was on thy bosom nurs'd?—
• Or when He tottered round thy knee
• Did thy great sorrow dawn on thee?—
page: 47  
• And through His boyhood, year by year
• Eating with Him the Passover,
• 40 Didst thou discern confusedly
• That holier sacrament, when He,
• The bitter cup about to quaff,
• Should break the bread and eat thereof?—
• Or came not yet the knowledge, even
• Till on some day forecast in Heaven
• His feet passed through thy door to press
• Upon His Father's business?—
• Or still was God's high secret kept?

• Nay, but I think the whisper crept
• 50 Like growth through childhood. Work and play,
• Things common to the course of day,
• Awed thee with meanings unfulfill'd;
• And all through girlhood, something still'd
• Thy senses like the birth of light,
• When thou hast trimmed thy lamp at night
• Or washed thy garments in the stream;
• To whose white bed had come the dream
• That He was thine and thou wast His
• Who feeds among the field-lilies.
• 60 O solemn shadow of the end
page: 48  
• In that wise spirit long contain'd!
• O awful end! and those unsaid
• Long years when It was Finishèd!

• Mind'st thou not (when the twilight gone
• Left darkness in the house of John,)
• Between the naked window-bars
• That spacious vigil of the stars?—
• For thou, a watcher even as they,
• Wouldst rise from where throughout the day
• 70 Thou wroughtest raiment for His poor;
• And, finding the fixed terms endure
• Of day and night which never brought
• Sounds of His coming chariot,
• Wouldst lift through cloud-waste unexplor'd
• Those eyes which said, ‘How long, O Lord?’
• Then that disciple whom He loved,
• Well heeding, haply would be moved
• To ask thy blessing in His name;
• And that one thought in both, the same
• 80 Though silent, then would clasp ye round
• To weep together,—tears long bound,
• Sick tears of patience, dumb and slow.
• Yet, ‘Surely I come quickly,’—so
page: 49  
Sig. E
• He said, from life and death gone home.
• Amen: even so, Lord Jesus, come!

• But oh! what human tongue can speak
• That day when Michael came* to break
• From the tir'd spirit, like a veil,
• Its covenant with Gabriel
• 90 Endured at length unto the end?
• What human thought can apprehend
• That mystery of motherhood
• When thy Beloved at length renew'd
• The sweet communion severèd,—
• His left hand underneath thine head
• And His right hand embracing thee?—
• Lo! He was thine, and this is He!

• Soul, is it Faith, or Love, or Hope,
• That lets me see her standing up
• 100 Where the light of the Throne is bright?
• Unto the left, unto the right,
• The cherubim, succinct, conjoint,
• Float inward to a golden point,
  Transcribed Footnote (page 49):

  * A Church legend of the Blessed Virgin's death.

  page: 50  
• And from between the seraphim
• The glory issues for a hymn.
• O Mary Mother, be not loth
• To listen,—thou whom the stars clothe,
• Who seëst and mayst not be seen!
• Hear us at last, O Mary Queen!
• 110 Into our shadow bend thy face,
• Bowing thee from the secret place,
• O Mary Virgin, full of grace!

   

• Of Florence and of Beatrice
• Servant and singer from of old,
• O'er Dante's heart in youth had toll'd
• The knell that gave his Lady peace;
• And now in manhood flew the dart
• Wherewith his City pierced his heart.

• Yet if his Lady's home above
• Was Heaven, on earth she filled his soul;
• And if his City held control
• 10 To cast the body forth to rove,
• The soul could soar from earth's vain throng,
• And Heaven and Hell fulfil the song.

• Follow his feet's appointed way;—
• But little light we find that clears
• The darkness of the exiled years.
• Follow his spirit's journey:—nay,
• What fires are blent, what winds are blown
• On paths his feet may tread alone?

• Yet of the twofold life he led
• 20 In chainless thought and fettered will
• Some glimpses reach us,—somewhat still
• Of the steep stairs and bitter bread,—
• Of the soul's quest whose stern avow
• For years had made him haggard now.

• Alas! the Sacred Song whereto
• Both heaven and earth had set their hand
• Not only at Fame's gate did stand
• Knocking to claim the passage through,
• But toiled to ope that heavier door
• 30 Which Florence shut for evermore.

• Shall not his birth's baptismal Town
• One last high presage yet fulfil,
• And at that font in Florence still
page: 53  
• His forehead take the laurel-crown?
• O God! or shall dead souls deny
• The undying soul its prophecy?

• Aye, 'tis their hour. Not yet forgot
• The bitter words he spoke that day
• When for some great charge far away
• 40 Her rulers his acceptance sought.
• ‘And if I go, who stays?’—so rose
• His scorn:—‘and if I stay, who goes?’

• ‘Lo! thou art gone now, and we stay:’
• (The curled lips mutter): ‘and no star
• Is from thy mortal path so far
• As streets where childhood knew the way.
• To Heaven and Hell thy feet may win,
• But thine own house they come not in.’

• Therefore, the loftier rose the song
• 50 To touch the secret things of God,
• The deeper pierced the hate that trod
• On base men's track who wrought the wrong;
• Till the soul's effluence came to be
• Its own exceeding agony.

• Arriving only to depart,
• From court to court, from land to land,
• Like flame within the naked hand
• His body bore his burning heart
• That still on Florence strove to bring
• 60 God's fire for a burnt offering.

• Even such was Dante's mood, when now,
• Mocked for long years with Fortune's sport,
• He dwelt at yet another court,
• There where Verona's knee did bow
• And her voice hailed with all acclaim
• Can Grande della Scala's name.

• As that lord's kingly guest awhile
• His life we follow; through the days
• Which walked in exile's barren ways,—
• 70 The nights which still beneath one smile
• Heard through all spheres one song increase,—
• ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice.’

• At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
• Due reverence did his steps attend;
• The ushers on his path would bend
page: 55  
• At ingoing as at going out;
• The penmen waited on his call
• At council-board, the grooms in hall.

• And pages hushed their laughter down,
• 80 And gay squires stilled the merry stir,
• When he passed up the dais-chamber
• With set brows lordlier than a frown;
• And tire-maids hidden among these
• Drew close their loosened bodices.

• Perhaps the priests, (exact to span
• All God's circumference,) if at whiles
• They found him wandering in their aisles,
• Grudged ghostly greeting to the man
• By whom, though not of ghostly guild,
• 90 With Heaven and Hell men's hearts were fill'd.

• And the court-poets (he, forsooth,
• A whole world's poet strayed to court!)
• Had for his scorn their hate's retort.
• He'd meet them flushed with easy youth,
• Hot on their errands. Like noon-flies
• They vexed him in the ears and eyes.

• But at this court, peace still must wrench
• Her chaplet from the teeth of war:
• By day they held high watch afar,
• 100 At night they cried across the trench;
• And still, in Dante's path, the fierce
• Gaunt soldiers wrangled o'er their spears.

• But vain seemed all the strength to him,
• As golden convoys sunk at sea
• Whose wealth might root out penury:
• Because it was not, limb with limb,
• Knit like his heart strings round the wall
• Of Florence, that ill pride might fall.

• Yet in the tiltyard, when the dust
• 110 Cleared from the sundered press of knights
• Ere yet again it swoops and smites,
• He almost deemed his longing must
• Find force to wield that multitude
• And hurl that strength the way he would.

• How should he move them,—fame and gain
• On all hands calling them at strife?
• He still might find but his one life
page: 57  
• To give, by Florence counted vain;
• One heart the false hearts made her doubt,
• 120 One voice she heard once and cast out.

• Oh! if his Florence could but come,
• A lily-sceptred damsel fair,
• As her own Giotto painted her
• On many shields and gates at home,—
• A lady crowned, at a soft pace
• Riding the lists round to the dais:

• Till where Can Grande rules the lists,
• As young as Truth, as calm as Force,
• She draws her rein now, while her horse
• 130 Bows at the turn of the white wrists;
• And when each knight within his stall
• Gives ear, she speaks and tells them all:

• All the foul tale,—truth sworn untrue
• And falsehood's triumph. All the tale?
• Great God! and must she not prevail
• To fire them ere they heard it through,—
• And hand achieve ere heart could rest
• That high adventure of her quest?

• How would his Florence lead them forth,
• 140 Her bridle ringing as she went;
• And at the last within her tent,
• 'Neath golden lilies worship-worth,
• How queenly would she bend the while
• And thank the victors with her smile!

• Also her lips should turn his way
• And murmur: ‘O thou tried and true,
• With whom I wept the long years through!
• What shall it profit if I say,
• Thee I remember? Nay, through thee
• 150 All ages shall remember me.’

• Peace, Dante, peace! The task is long,
• The time wears short to compass it.
• Within thine heart such hopes may flit
• And find a voice in deathless song:
• But lo! as children of man's earth,
• Those hopes are dead before their birth.

• Fame tells us that Verona's court
• Was a fair place. The feet might still
• Wander for ever at their will
page: 59  
• 160 In many ways of sweet resort;
• And still in many a heart around
• The Poet's name due honour found.

• Watch we his steps. He comes upon
• The women at their palm-playing.
• The conduits round the gardens sing
• And meet in scoops of milk-white stone,
• Where wearied damsels rest and hold
• Their hands in the wet spurt of gold.

• One of whom, knowing well that he,
• 170 By some found stern, was mild with them,
• Would run and pluck his garment's hem,
• Saying, ‘Messer Dante, pardon me,’—
• Praying that they might hear the song
• Which first of all he made, when young.

• ‘Donne che avete’* . . . Thereunto
• Thus would he murmur, having first
• Drawn near the fountain, while she nurs'd
  Transcribed Footnote (page 59):

  * ‘Donne che avete intelletto d'amore:’—the first canzone of the
  
  ‘Vita Nuova.’

  page: 60  
• His hand against her side: a few
• Sweet words, and scarcely those, half said:
• 180 Then turned, and changed, and bowed his head.

• For then the voice said in his heart,
• ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice;’
• And his whole life would yearn to cease:
• Till having reached his room, apart
• Beyond vast lengths of palace-floor,
• He drew the arras round his door.

• At such times, Dante, thou hast set
• Thy forehead to the painted pane
• Full oft, I know; and if the rain
• 190 Smote it outside, her fingers met
• Thy brow; and if the sun fell there,
• Her breath was on thy face and hair.

• Then, weeping, I think certainly
• Thou hast beheld, past sight of eyne,—
• Within another room of thine
• Where now thy body may not be
• But where in thought thou still remain'st,—
• A window often wept against:

• The window thou, a youth, hast sought,
• 200 Flushed in the limpid eventime,
• Ending with daylight the day's rhyme
• Of her; where oftenwhiles her thought
• Held thee—the lamp untrimmed to write—
• In joy through the blue lapse of night.

• At Can La Scala's court, no doubt,
• Guests seldom wept. It was brave sport,
• No doubt, at Can La Scala's court,
• Within the palace and without;
• Where music, set to madrigals,
• 210 Loitered all day through groves and halls.

• Because Can Grande of his life
• Had not had six-and-twenty years
• As yet. And when the chroniclers
• Tell you of that Vicenza strife
• And of strifes elsewhere,—you must not
• Conceive for church-sooth he had got

• Just nothing in his wits but war:
• Though doubtless 'twas the young man's joy
• (Grown with his growth from a mere boy,)
page: 62  
• 220To mark his ‘Viva Cane!’ scare
• The foe's shut front, till it would reel
• All blind with shaken points of steel.

• But there were places—held too sweet
• For eyes that had not the due veil
• Of lashes and clear lids—as well
• In favour as his saddle-seat:
• Breath of low speech he scorned not there
• Nor light cool fingers in his hair.

• Yet if the child whom the sire's plan
• 230 Made free of a deep treasure-chest
• Scoffed it with ill-conditioned jest,—
• We may be sure too that the man
• Was not mere thews, nor all content
• With lewdness swathed in sentiment.

• So you may read and marvel not
• That such a man as Dante—one
• Who, while Can Grande's deeds were done,
• Had drawn his robe round him and thought—
page: 63  
• Now at the same guest-table far'd
• 240 Where keen Uguccio wiped his beard.*

• Through leaves and trellis-work the sun
• Left the wine cool within the glass,—
• They feasting where no sun could pass:
• And when the women, all as one,
• Rose up with brightened cheeks to go,
• It was a comely thing, we know.

• But Dante recked not of the wine;
• Whether the women stayed or went,
• His visage held one stern intent:
• 250 And when the music had its sign
• To breathe upon them for more ease,
• Sometimes he turned and bade it cease.

• And as he spared not to rebuke
• The mirth, so oft in council he
• To bitter truth bore testimony:
• And when the crafty balance shook
• Well poised to make the wrong prevail,
• Then Dante's hand would turn the scale.

• And if some envoy from afar
• 260 Sailed to Verona's sovereign port
• For aid or peace, and all the court
• Fawned on its lord, ‘the Mars of war,
• Sole arbiter of life and death,’—
• Be sure that Dante saved his breath.

• And Can La Scala marked askance
• These things, accepting them for shame
• And scorn, till Dante's guestship came
• To be a peevish sufferance:
• His host sought ways to make his days
• 270 Hateful; and such have many ways.

• There was a Jester, a foul lout
• Whom the court loved for graceless arts;
• Sworn scholiast of the bestial parts
• Of speech; a ribald mouth to shout
• In Folly's horny tympanum
• Such things as make the wise man dumb.

• Much loved, him Dante loathed. And so,
• One day when Dante felt perplex'd
• If any day that could come next
page: 65  
Sig. F
• 280 Were worth the waiting for or no,
• And mute he sat amid their din,—
• Can Grande called the Jester in.

• Rank words, with such, are wit's best wealth.
• Lords mouthed approval; ladies kept
• Twittering with clustered heads, except
• Some few that took their trains by stealth
• And went. Can Grande shook his hair
• And smote his thighs and laughed i' the air.

• Then, facing on his guest, he cried,—
• 290 ‘Say, Messer Dante, how it is
• I get out of a clown like this
• More than your wisdom can provide.’
• And Dante: ‘'Tis man's ancient whim
• That still his like seems good to him.’

• Also a tale is told, how once,
• At clearing tables after meat,
• Piled for a jest at Dante's feet
• Were found the dinner's well-picked bones;
• So laid, to please the banquet's lord,
• 300 By one who crouched beneath the board.

• Then smiled Can Grande to the rest:—
• ‘Our Dante's tuneful mouth indeed
• Lacks not the gift on flesh to feed!’
• ‘Fair host of mine,’ replied the guest,
• ‘So many bones you'd not descry
• If so it chanced the dog were I.’*

• But wherefore should we turn the grout
• In a drained cup, or be at strife
• From the worn garment of a life
• 310 To rip the twisted ravel out?
• Good needs expounding; but of ill
• Each hath enough to guess his fill.

• They named him Justicer-at-Law:
• Each month to bear the tale in mind
• Of hues a wench might wear unfin'd
• And of the load an ox might draw;
• To cavil in the weight of bread
• And to see purse-thieves gibbeted.

• And when his spirit wove the spell
• 320 (From under even to over-noon
• In converse with itself alone,)
• As high as Heaven, as low as Hell,—
• He would be summoned and must go:
• For had not Gian stabbed Giacomo?

• Therefore the bread he had to eat
• Seemed brackish, less like corn than tares;
• And the rush-strown accustomed stairs
• Each day were steeper to his feet;
• And when the night-vigil was done,
• 330 His brows would ache to feel the sun.

• Nevertheless, when from his kin
• There came the tidings how at last
• In Florence a decree was pass'd
• Whereby all banished folk might win
• Free pardon, so a fine were paid
• And act of public penance made,—

• This Dante writ in answer thus,
• Words such as these: ‘That clearly they
• In Florence must not have to say,—
page: 68  
• 340The man abode aloof from us
• Nigh fifteen years, yet lastly skulk'd
• Hither to candleshrift and mulct.

• ‘That he was one the Heavens forbid
• To traffic in God's justice sold
• By market-weight of earthly gold,
• Or to bow down over the lid
• Of steaming censers, and so be
• Made clean of manhood's obloquy.

• ‘That since no gate led, by God's will,
• 350 To Florence, but the one whereat
• The priests and money-changers sat,
• He still would wander; for that still,
• Even through the body's prison-bars,
• His soul possessed the sun and stars.’

• Such were his words. It is indeed
• For ever well our singers should
• Utter good words and know them good
• Not through song only; with close heed
• Lest, having spent for the work's sake
• 360 Six days, the man be left to make.

• Months o'er Verona, till the feast
• Was come for Florence the Free Town:
• And at the shrine of Baptist John
• The exiles, girt with many a priest
• And carrying candles as they went,
• Were held to mercy of the saint.

• On the high seats in sober state,—
• Gold neck-chains range o'er range below
• Gold screen-work where the lilies grow,—
• 370 The Heads of the Republic sate,
• Marking the humbled face go by
• Each one of his house-enemy.

• And as each proscript rose and stood
• From kneeling in the ashen dust
• On the shrine-steps, some magnate thrust
• A beard into the velvet hood
• Of his front colleague's gown, to see
• The cinders stuck in the bare knee.

• Tosinghi passed, Manelli passed,
• 380 Rinucci passed, each in his place;
• But not an Alighieri's face
page: 70  
• Went by that day from first to last
• In the Republic's triumph; nor
• A foot came home to Dante's door.

• (Respublica—a public thing:
• A shameful shameless prostitute,
• Whose lust with one lord may not suit,
• So takes by turns its revelling
• A night with each, till each at morn
• 390 Is stripped and beaten forth forlorn,

• And leaves her, cursing her. If she,
• Indeed, have not some spice-draught, hid
• In scent under a silver lid,
• To drench his open throat with—he
• Once hard asleep; and thrust him not
• At dawn beneath the stairs to rot.

• Such this Republic!—not the Maid
• He yearned for; she who yet should stand
• With Heaven's accepted hand in hand,
• 400 Invulnerable and unbetray'd:
• To whom, even as to God, should be
• Obeisance one with Liberty.)

• Years filled out their twelve moons, and ceased
• One in another; and alway
• There were the whole twelve hours each day
• And each night as the years increased;
• And rising moon and setting sun
• Beheld that Dante's work was done.

• What of his work for Florence? Well
• 410 It was, he knew, and well must be.
• Yet evermore her hate's decree
• Dwelt in his thought intolerable:—
• His body to be burned,*—his soul
• To beat its wings at hope's vain goal.

• What of his work for Beatrice?
• Now well-nigh was the third song writ,—
• The stars a third time sealing it
• With sudden music of pure peace:
• For echoing thrice the threefold song,
• 420 The unnumbered stars the tone prolong.†

• Each hour, as then the Vision pass'd,
• He heard the utter harmony
• Of the nine trembling spheres, till she
• Bowed her eyes towards him in the last,
• So that all ended with her eyes,
• Hell, Purgatory, Paradise.

• ‘It is my trust, as the years fall,
• To write more worthily of her
• Who now, being made God's minister,
• 430 Looks on His visage and knows all.’
• Such was the hope that love dar'd blend
• With grief's slow fires, to make an end

• Of the ‘New Life,’ his youth's dear book:
• Adding thereunto: ‘In such trust
• I labour, and believe I must
• Accomplish this which my soul took
• In charge, if God, my Lord and hers,
• Leave my life with me a few years.’

• The trust which he had borne in youth
• 440 Was all at length accomplished. He
• At length had written worthily—
page: 73  
• Yea even of her; no rhymes uncouth
• 'Twixt tongue and tongue; but by God's aid
• The first words Italy had said.

• Ah! haply now the heavenly guide
• Was not the last form seen by him:
• But there that Beatrice stood slim
• And bowed in passing at his side,
• For whom in youth his heart made moan
• 450 Then when the city sat alone.*

• Clearly herself; the same whom he
• Met, not past girlhood, in the street,
• Low-bosomed and with hidden feet;
• And then as woman perfectly,
• In years that followed, many an once,—
• And now at last among the suns

• In that high vision. But indeed
• It may be memory might recall
• Last to him then the first of all,—
Transcribed Footnote (page 73):

* ‘ Quomodo sedet sola civitas!’—The words quoted by Dante in

the ‘Vita Nuova’ when he speaks of the death of Beatrice.

page: 74  
• 460 The child his boyhood bore in heed
• Nine years. At length the voice brought peace,—
• ‘Even I, even I am Beatrice.’

• All this, being there, we had not seen.
• Seen only was the shadow wrought
• On the strong features bound in thought;
• The vagueness gaining gait and mien;
• The white streaks gathering clear to view
• In the burnt beard the women knew.

• For a tale tells that on his track,
• 470 As through Verona's streets he went,
• This saying certain women sent:—
• ‘Lo, he that strolls to Hell and back
• At will! Behold him, how Hell's reek
• Has crisped his beard and singed his cheek.’

• ‘Whereat’ (Boccaccio's words) ‘he smil'd
• For pride in fame.’ It might be so:
• Nevertheless we cannot know
• If haply he were not beguil'd
• To bitterer mirth, who scarce could tell
• 480 If he indeed were back from Hell.

• So the day came, after a space,
• When Dante felt assured that there
• The sunshine must lie sicklier
• Even than in any other place,
• Save only Florence. When that day
• Had come, he rose and went his way.

• He went and turned out. From his shoes
• It may be that he shook the dust,
• As every righteous dealer must
• 490 Once and again ere life can close:
• And unaccomplished destiny
• Struck cold his forehead, it may be.

• No book keeps record how the Prince
• Sunned himself out of Dante's reach,
• Nor how the Jester stank in speech:
• While courtiers, used to cringe and wince,
• Poets and harlots, all the throng,
• Let loose their scandal and their song.

• No book keeps record if the seat
• 500 Which Dante held at his host's board
• Were sat in next by clerk or lord,—
page: 76  
• If leman lolled with dainty feet
• At ease, or hostage brooded there,
• Or priest lacked silence for his prayer.

• Eat and wash hands, Can Grande;—scarce
• We know their deeds now: hands which fed
• Our Dante with that bitter bread;
• And thou the watch-dog of those stairs
• Which, of all paths his feet knew well,
• 510 Were steeper found than Heaven or Hell.

   

• Heavenborn Helen, Sparta's queen,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Had two breasts of heavenly sheen,
• The sun and moon of the heart's desire:
• All Love's lordship lay between.
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Helen knelt at Venus' shrine,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• 10Saying, ‘A little gift is mine,
• A little gift for a heart's desire.
• Hear me speak and make me a sign!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Look, I bring thee a carven cup;
• ( O Troy Town!)
• See it here as I hold it up,—
• Shaped it is to the heart's desire,
• Fit to fill when the gods would sup.
• 20 ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘It was moulded like my breast;
• ( O Troy Town!)
• He that sees it may not rest,
• Rest at all for his heart's desire.
• O give ear to my heart's behest!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘See my breast, how like it is;
• 30 ( O Troy Town!)
• See it bare for the air to kiss!
• Is the cup to thy heart's desire?
• O for the breast, O make it his!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Yea, for my bosom here I sue;
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Thou must give it where 'tis due,
• Give it there to the heart's desire.
• 40Whom do I give my bosom to?
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Each twin breast is an apple sweet.
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Once an apple stirred the beat
• Of thy heart with the heart's desire:—
• Say, who brought it then to thy feet?
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• 50‘They that claimed it then were three:
• ( O Troy Town!)
• For thy sake two hearts did he
• Make forlorn of the heart's desire.
• Do for him as he did for thee!
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• ‘Mine are apples grown to the south,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Grown to taste in the days of drouth,
• 60Taste and waste to the heart's desire:
• Mine are apples meet for his mouth.’
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Venus looked on Helen's gift,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Looked and smiled with subtle drift,
• Saw the work of her heart's desire:—
• ‘There thou kneel'st for Love to lift!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• 70 Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Venus looked in Helen's face,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Knew far off an hour and place,
• And fire lit from the heart's desire;
• Laughed and said, ‘Thy gift hath grace!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Cupid looked on Helen's breast,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• 80Saw the heart within its nest,
• Saw the flame of the heart's desire,—
• Marked his arrow's burning crest.
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Cupid took another dart,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Fledged it for another heart,
• Winged the shaft with the heart's desire,
• Drew the string and said, ‘Depart!’
• 90 ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

• Paris turned upon his bed,
• ( O Troy Town!)
• Turned upon his bed and said,
• Dead at heart with the heart's desire,—
• ‘Oh to clasp her golden head!’
• ( O Troy's down,
• Tall Troy's on fire!)

   

• It was Lilith the wife of Adam:
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Not a drop of her blood was human,
• But she was made like a soft sweet woman.

• Lilith stood on the skirts of Eden;
• ( Alas the hour!)
• She was the first that thence was driven;
• With her was hell and with Eve was heaven.

• In the ear of the Snake said Lilith:—
• 10 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• ‘To thee I come when the rest is over;
• A snake was I when thou wast my lover.

• ‘I was the fairest snake in Eden:
• ( Alas the hour!)
• By the earth's will, new form and feature
• Made me a wife for the earth's new creature.

• ‘Take me thou as I come from Adam:
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Once again shall my love subdue thee;
• 20The past is past and I am come to thee.

• ‘O but Adam was thrall to Lilith!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• All the threads of my hair are golden,
• And there in a net his heart was holden.

• ‘O and Lilith was queen of Adam!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• All the day and the night together
• My breath could shake his soul like a feather.

• ‘What great joys had Adam and Lilith!—
• 30 ( Alas the hour!)
• Sweet close rings of the serpent's twining,
• As heart in heart lay sighing and pining.

• ‘What bright babes had Lilith and Adam!—
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Shapes that coiled in the woods and waters,
• Glittering sons and radiant daughters.

• ‘O thou God, the Lord God of Eden!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Say, was this fair body for no man,
• 40That of Adam's flesh thou mak'st him a woman?

• ‘O thou Snake, the King-snake of Eden!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• God's strong will our necks are under,
• But thou and I may cleave it in sunder.

• ‘Help, sweet Snake, sweet lover of Lilith!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• And let God learn how I loved and hated
• Man in the image of God created.

• ‘Help me once against Eve and Adam!
• 50 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Help me once for this one endeavour,
• And then my love shall be thine for ever!

• ‘Strong is God, the fell foe of Lilith:
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Nought in heaven or earth may affright him;
• But join thou with me and we will smite him.

• ‘Strong is God, the great God of Eden:
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Over all He made He hath power;
• 60But lend me thou thy shape for an hour!

• ‘Lend thy shape for the love of Lilith!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Look, my mouth and my cheek are ruddy,
• And thou art cold, and fire is my body.

• ‘Lend thy shape for the hate of Adam!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• That he may wail my joy that forsook him,
• And curse the day when the bride-sleep took him.

• ‘Lend thy shape for the shame of Eden!
• 70 ( Alas the hour!)
• Is not the foe-God weak as the foeman
• When love grows hate in the heart of a woman?

• ‘Would'st thou know the heart's hope of Lilith?
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Then bring thou close thine head till it glisten
• Along my breast, and lip me and listen.

• ‘Am I sweet, O sweet Snake of Eden?
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Then ope thine ear to my warm mouth's cooing
• 80And learn what deed remains for our doing.

• ‘Thou didst hear when God said to Adam:—
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• “Of all this wealth I have made thee warden;
• Thou'rt free to eat of the trees of the garden:

• ‘“Only of one tree eat not in Eden;
• ( Alas the hour!)
• All save one I give to thy freewill,—
• The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

• ‘O my love, come nearer to Lilith!
• 90 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• In thy sweet folds bind me and bend me,
• And let me feel the shape thou shalt lend me!

• ‘In thy shape I'll go back to Eden;
• ( Alas the hour!)
• In these coils that Tree will I grapple,
• And stretch this crowned head forth by the apple.

• Lo, Eve bends to the breath of Lilith!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• O how then shall my heart desire
• 100All her blood as food to its fire!

• ‘Lo, Eve bends to the words of Lilith!—
• ( Alas the hour!)
• “Nay, this Tree's fruit,—why should ye hate it,
• Or Death be born the day that ye ate it?

• ‘“Nay, but on that great day in Eden,
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• By the help that in this wise Tree is,
• God knows well ye shall be as He is.”

• ‘Then Eve shall eat and give unto Adam;
• 110 ( Alas the hour!)
• And then they both shall know they are naked,
• And their hearts ache as my heart hath achèd.

• ‘Aye, let them hide 'mid the trees of Eden,
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• As in the cool of the day in the garden
• God shall walk without pity or pardon.

• ‘Hear, thou Eve, the man's heart in Adam!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Of his brave words hark to the bravest:—
• 120“This the woman gave that thou gavest.”

• ‘Hear Eve speak, yea list to her, Lilith!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Feast thine heart with words that shall sate it—
• “This the serpent gave and I ate it.”

• ‘O proud Eve, cling close to thine Adam,
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Driven forth as the beasts of his naming
• By the sword that for ever is flaming.

• ‘Know, thy path is known unto Lilith!
• 130 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• While the blithe birds sang at thy wedding,
• There her tears grew thorns for thy treading.

• ‘O my love, thou Love-snake of Eden!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• O to-day and the day to come after!
• Loose me, love,—give breath to my laughter

• ‘O bright Snake, the Death-worm of Adam!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Wreathe thy neck with my hair's bright tether,
• 140And wear my gold and thy gold together!

• ‘On that day on the skirts of Eden,
• ( Alas the hour!)
• In thy shape shall I glide back to thee,
• And in my shape for an instant view thee.

• ‘But when thou'rt thou and Lilith is Lilith,
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• In what bliss past hearing or seeing
• Shall each one drink of the other's being!

• ‘With cries of “Eve!” and “Eden!” and “Adam!”
• 150 ( Alas the hour!)
• How shall we mingle our love's caresses,
• I in thy coils, and thou in my tresses!

• ‘With those names, ye echoes of Eden,
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Fire shall cry from my heart that burneth,—
• “Dust he is and to dust returneth!”

• ‘Yet to-day, thou master of Lilith,—
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Wrap me round in the form I'll borrow
• 160And let me tell thee of sweet to-morrow.

• ‘In the planted garden eastward in Eden,
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Where the river goes forth to water the garden,
• The springs shall dry and the soil shall harden.

• ‘Yea, where the bride-sleep fell upon Adam,
• ( Alas the hour!)
• None shall hear when the storm-wind whistles
• Through roses choked among thorns and thistles.

• ‘Yea, beside the east-gate of Eden,
• 170 ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Where God joined them and none might sever,
• The sword turns this way and that for ever.

• ‘What of Adam cast out of Eden?
• ( Alas the hour!)
• Lo! with care like a shadow shaken,
• He tills the hard earth whence he was taken.

• ‘What of Eve too, cast out of Eden?
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• Nay, but she, the bride of God's giving,
• 180Must yet be mother of all men living.

• ‘Lo, God's grace, by the grace of Lilith!
• ( Alas the hour!)
• To Eve's womb, from our sweet to-morrow,
• God shall greatly multiply sorrow.

• ‘Fold me fast, O God-snake of Eden!
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• What more prize than love to impel thee?
• Grip and lip my limbs as I tell thee!

• ‘Lo! two babes for Eve and for Adam!
• 190 ( Alas the hour!)
• Lo! sweet Snake, the travail and treasure,—
• Two men-children born for their pleasure!

• ‘The first is Cain and the second Abel:
• ( Sing Eden Bower!)
• The soul of one shall be made thy brother,
• And thy tongue shall lap the blood of the other.’
• ( Alas the hour!)

   

• Could you not drink her gaze like wine?
• Yet though its splendour swoon
• Into the silence languidly
• As a tune into a tune,
• Those eyes unravel the coiled night
• And know the stars at noon.

• The gold that's heaped beside her hand,
• In truth rich prize it were;
• And rich the dreams that wreathe her brows
• 10 With magic stillness there;
• And he were rich who should unwind
• That woven golden hair.

• Around her, where she sits, the dance
• Now breathes its eager heat;
• And not more lightly or more true
• Fall there the dancers' feet
page: 93  
• Than fall her cards on the bright board
• As 'twere an heart that beat.

• Her fingers let them softly through,
• 20 Smooth polished silent things;
• And each one as it falls reflects
• In swift light-shadowings,
• Blood-red and purple, green and blue,
• The great eyes of her rings.

• Whom plays she with? With thee, who lov'st
• Those gems upon her hand;
• With me, who search her secret brows;
• With all men, bless'd or bann'd.
• We play together, she and we,
• 30 Within a vain strange land:

• A land without any order,—
• Day even as night, (one saith,)—
• Where who lieth down ariseth not
• Nor the sleeper awakeneth;
• A land of darkness as darkness itself
• And of the shadow of death.

• What be her cards, you ask? Even these:—
• The heart, that doth but crave
• More, having fed; the diamond,
• 40 Skilled to make base seem brave;
• The club, for smiting in the dark;
• The spade, to dig a grave.

• And do you ask what game she plays?
• With me 'tis lost or won;
• With thee it is playing still; with him
• It is not well begun;
• But 'tis a game she plays with all
• Beneath the sway o' the sun.

• Thou seest the card that falls,—she knows
• 50 The card that followeth:
• Her game in thy tongue is called Life,
• As ebbs thy daily breath:
• When she shall speak, thou'lt learn her tongue
• And know she calls it Death.

   

• Master of the murmuring courts
• Where the shapes of sleep convene!—
• Lo! my spirit here exhorts
• All the powers of thy demesne
• For their aid to woo my queen.
• What reports
• Yield thy jealous courts unseen?

• Vaporous, unaccountable,
• Dreamworld lies forlorn of light,
• 10Hollow like a breathing shell.
• Ah! that from all dreams I might
• Choose one dream and guide its flight!
• I know well
• What her sleep should tell to-night.

• There the dreams are multitudes:
• Some that will not wait for sleep,
• Deep within the August woods;
• Some that hum while rest may steep
• Weary labour laid a-heap;
• 20 Interludes,
• Some, of grievous moods that weep.

• Poets' fancies all are there:
• There the elf-girls flood with wings
• Valleys full of plaintive air;
• There breathe perfumes; there in rings
• Whirl the foam-bewildered springs;
• Siren there
• Winds her dizzy hair and sings.

• Thence the one dream mutually
• 30 Dreamed in bridal unison,
• Less than waking ecstasy;
• Half-formed visions that make moan
• In the house of birth alone;
• And what we
• At death's wicket see, unknown.

• But for mine own sleep, it lies
• In one gracious form's control,
• Fair with honourable eyes,
• Lamps of a translucent soul:
• 40 O their glance is loftiest dole,
• Sweet and wise,
• Wherein Love descries his goal.

• Reft of her, my dreams are all
• Clammy trance that fears the sky:
• Changing footpaths shift and fall;
• From polluted coverts nigh,
• Miserable phantoms sigh;
• Quakes the pall,
• And the funeral goes by.

• 50Master, is it soothly said
• That, as echoes of man's speech
• Far in secret clefts are made,
• So do all men's bodies reach
• Shadows o'er thy sunken beach,—
• Shape or shade
• In those halls pourtrayed of each?

• Ah! might I, by thy good grace
• Groping in the windy stair,
• (Darkness and the breath of space
• 60 Like loud waters everywhere,)
• Meeting mine own image there
• Face to face,
• Send it from that place to her!

• Nay, not I; but oh! do thou,
• Master, from thy shadowkind
• Call my body's phantom now:
• Bid it bear its face declin'd
• Till its flight her slumbers find,
• And her brow
• 70Feel its presence bow like wind.

• Where in groves the gracile Spring
• Trembles, with mute orison
• Confidently strengthening,
• Water's voice and wind's as one
• Shed an echo in the sun.
• Soft as Spring,
• Master, bid it sing and moan.

• Song shall tell how glad and strong
• Is the night she soothes alway;
• 80Moan shall grieve with that parched tongue
• Of the brazen hours of day:
• Sounds as of the springtide they,
• Moan and song,
• While the chill months long for May.

• Not the prayers which with all leave
• The world's fluent woes prefer,—
• Not the praise the world doth give,
• Dulcet fulsome whisperer;—
• Let it yield my love to her,
• 90 And achieve
• Strength that shall not grieve or err.

• Wheresoe'er my dreams befall,
• Both at night-watch, (let it say,)
• And where round the sundial
• The reluctant hours of day,
• Heartless, hopeless of their way,
• Rest and call;—
• There her glance doth fall and stay.

• Suddenly her face is there:
• 100 So do mounting vapours wreathe
• Subtle-scented transports where
• The black firwood sets its teeth.
• Part the boughs and look beneath,—
• Lilies share
• Secret waters there, and breathe.

• Master, bid my shadow bend
• Whispering thus till birth of light,
• Lest new shapes that sleep may send
• Scatter all its work to flight;—
• 110 Master, master of the night,
• Bid it spend
• Speech, song, prayer, and end aright.

• Yet, ah me! if at her head
• There another phantom lean
• Murmuring o'er the fragrant bed,—
• Ah! and if my spirit's queen
• Smile those alien prayers between,—
• Ah! poor shade!
• Shall it strive, or fade unseen?

• 120How should love's own messenger
• Strive with love and be love's foe?
• Master, nay! If thus, in her,
• Sleep a wedded heart should show,—
• Silent let mine image go,
• Its old share
• Of thy spell-bound air to know.

• Like a vapour wan and mute,
• Like a flame, so let it pass;
• One low sigh across her lute,
• 130 One dull breath against her glass;
• And to my sad soul, alas!
• One salute
• Cold as when death's foot shall pass.

• Then, too, let all hopes of mine,
• All vain hopes by night and day,
• Slowly at thy summoning sign
• Rise up pallid and obey.
• Dreams, if this is thus, were they:—
• Be they thine,
• 140 And to dreamworld pine away.

• Yet from old time, life, not death,
• Master, in thy rule is rife:
• Lo! through thee, with mingling breath,
• Adam woke beside his wife.
• O Love bring me so, for strife,
• Force and faith,
• Bring me so not death but life!

• Yea, to Love himself is pour'd
• This frail song of hope and fear.
• 150 Thou art Love, of one accord
• With kind Sleep to bring her near,
• Still-eyed, deep-eyed, ah how dear!
• Master, Lord,
• In her name implor'd, O hear!

   

• What thing unto mine ear
• Wouldst thou convey,—what secret thing,
• O wandering water ever whispering?
• Surely thy speech shall be of her.
• Thou water, O thou whispering wanderer,
• What message dost thou bring?

• Say, hath not Love leaned low
• This hour beside thy far well-head,
• And there through jealous hollowed fingers said
• 10 The thing that most I long to know,—
• Murmuring with curls all dabbled in thy flow
• And washed lips rosy red?

• He told it to thee there
• Where thy voice hath a louder tone;
• But where it welters to this little moan
page: 104  
• His will decrees that I should hear.
• Now speak: for with the silence is no fear,
• And I am all alone.

• Shall Time not still endow
• 20 One hour with life, and I and she
• Slake in one kiss the thirst of memory?
• Say, stream; lest Love should disavow
• Thy service, and the bird upon the bough
• Sing first to tell it me.

• What whisperest thou? Nay, why
• Name the dead hours? I mind them well:
• Their ghosts in many darkened doorways dwell
• With desolate eyes to know them by.
• The hour that must be born ere it can die,—
• 30 Of that I'd have thee tell.

• But hear, before thou speak!
• Withhold, I pray, the vain behest
• That while the maze hath still its bower for quest
• My burning heart should cease to seek.
• Be sure that Love ordained for souls more meek
• His roadside dells of rest.

• Stream, when this silver thread
• In flood-time is a torrent brown
• May any bulwark bind thy foaming crown?
• 40 Shall not the waters surge and spread
• And to the crannied boulders of their bed
• Still shoot the dead drift down?

• Let no rebuke find place
• In speech of thine: or it shall prove
• That thou dost ill expound the words of Love,
• Even as thine eddy's rippling race
• Would blur the perfect image of his face.
• I will have none thereof.

• O learn and understand
• 50 That 'gainst the wrongs himself did wreak
• Love sought her aid; until her shadowy cheek
• And eyes beseeching gave command;
• And compassed in her close compassionate hand
• My heart must burn and speak.

• For then at last we spoke
• What eyes so oft had told to eyes
• Through that long-lingering silence whose half-sighs
page: 106  
• Alone the buried secret broke,
• Which with snatched hands and lips' reverberate stroke
• 60 Then from the heart did rise.

• But she is far away
• Now; nor the hours of night grown hoar
• Bring yet to me, long gazing from the door,
• The wind-stirred robe of roseate grey
• And rose-crown of the hour that leads the day
• When we shall meet once more.

• Dark as thy blinded wave
• When brimming midnight floods the glen,—
• Bright as the laughter of thy runnels when
• 70 The dawn yields all the light they crave;
• Even so these hours to wound and that to save
• Are sisters in Love's ken.

• Oh sweet her bending grace
• Then when I kneel beside her feet;
• And sweet her eyes' o'erhanging heaven; and sweet
• The gathering folds of her embrace;
• And her fall'n hair at last shed round my face
• When breaths and tears shall meet.

• Beneath her sheltering hair,
• 80 In the warm silence near her breast,
• Our kisses and our sobs shall sink to rest;
• As in some still trance made aware
• That day and night have wrought to fulness there
• And Love has built our nest.

• And as in the dim grove,
• When the rains cease that hushed them long,
• 'Mid glistening boughs the song-birds wake to song,—
• So from our hearts deep-shrined in love,
• While the leaves throb beneath, around, above,
• 90 The quivering notes shall throng.

• Till tenderest words found vain
• Draw back to wonder mute and deep,
• And closed lips in closed arms a silence keep,
• Subdued by memory's circling strain,—
• The wind-rapt sound that the wind brings again
• While all the willows weep.

• Then by her summoning art
• Shall memory conjure back the sere
• Autumnal Springs, from many a dying year
page: 108  
• 100 Born dead; and, bitter to the heart,
• The very ways where now we walk apart
• Who then shall cling so near.

• And with each thought new-grown,
• Some sweet caress or some sweet name
• Low-breathed shall let me know her thought the same;
• Making me rich with every tone
• And touch of the dear heaven so long unknown
• That filled my dreams with flame.

• Pity and love shall burn
• 110 In her pressed cheek and cherishing hands;
• And from the living spirit of love that stands
• Between her lips to soothe and yearn,
• Each separate breath shall clasp me round in turn
• And loose my spirit's bands.

• Oh passing sweet and dear,
• Then when the worshipped form and face
• Are felt at length in darkling close embrace;
• Round which so oft the sun shone clear,
• With mocking light and pitiless atmosphere,
• 120 In many an hour and place.

• Ah me! with what proud growth
• Shall that hour's thirsting race be run;
• While, for each several sweetness still begun
• Afresh, endures love's endless drouth:
• Sweet hands, sweet hair, sweet cheeks, sweet eyes, sweet
• [mouth.
• Each singly wooed and won.
  Note: The word “mouth” in line 125 has been dropped to the next line.

• Yet most with the sweet soul
• Shall love's espousals then be knit;
• For very passion of peace shall breathe from it
• 130 O'er tremulous wings that touch the goal,
• As on the unmeasured height of Love's control
• The lustral fires are lit.

• Therefore, when breast and cheek
• Now part, from long embraces free,—
• Each on the other gazing shall but see
• A self that has no need to speak:
• All things unsought, yet nothing more to seek,—
• One love in unity.

• O water wandering past,—
• 140 Albeit to thee I speak this thing,
• O water, thou that wanderest whispering,
page: 110  
• Thou keep'st thy counsel to the last.
• What spell upon thy bosom should Love cast,
• His message thence to wring?

• Nay, must thou hear the tale
• Of the past days,—the heavy debt
• Of life that obdurate time withholds,—ere yet
• To win thine ear these prayers prevail,
• And by thy voice Love's self with high All-hail
• 150 Yield up the love-secret?

• How should all this be told?—
• All the sad sum of wayworn days;—
• Heart's anguish in the impenetrable maze;
• And on the waste uncoloured wold
• The visible burthen of the sun grown cold
• And the moon's labouring gaze?

• Alas! shall hope be nurs'd
• On life's all-succouring breast in vain,
• And made so perfect only to be slain?
• 160 Or shall not rather the sweet thirst
• Even yet rejoice the heart with warmth dispers'd
• And strength grown fair again?

• Stands it not by the door—
• Love's Hour—till she and I shall meet;
• With bodiless form and unapparent feet
• That cast no shadow yet before,
• Though round its head the dawn begins to pour
• The breath that makes day sweet?

• Its eyes invisible
• 170 Watch till the dial's thin-thrown shade
• Be born,—yea, till the journeying line be laid
• Upon the point that wakes the spell,
• And there in lovelier light than tongue can tell
• Its presence stand array'd.

• Its soul remembers yet
• Those sunless hours that passed it by;
• And still it hears the night's disconsolate cry,
• And feels the branches wringing wet
• Cast on its brow, that may not once forget,
• 180 Dumb tears from the blind sky.

• But oh! when now her foot
• Draws near, for whose sake night and day
• Were long in weary longing sighed away,—
page: 112  
• The Hour of Love, 'mid airs grown mute,
• Shall sing beside the door, and Love's own lute
• Thrill to the passionate lay.

• Thou know'st, for Love has told
• Within thine ear, O stream, how soon
• That song shall lift its sweet appointed tune.
• 190 O tell me, for my lips are cold,
• And in my veins the blood is waxing old
• Even while I beg the boon.

• So, in that hour of sighs
• Assuaged, shall we beside this stone
• Yield thanks for grace; while in thy mirror shown
• The twofold image softly lies,
• Until we kiss, and each in other's eyes
• Is imaged all alone.

• Still silent? Can no art
• 200 Of Love's then move thy pity? Nay,
• To thee let nothing come that owns his sway:
• Let happy lovers have no part
• With thee; nor even so sad and poor a heart
• As thou hast spurned to-day.

• To-day? Lo! night is here.
• The glen grows heavy with some veil
• Risen from the earth or fall'n to make earth pale;
• And all stands hushed to eye and ear,
• Until the night-wind shake the shade like fear
• 210 And every covert quail.

• Ah! by a colder wave
• On deathlier airs the hour must come
• Which to thy heart, my love, shall call me home.
• Between the lips of the low cave
• Against that night the lapping waters lave,
• And the dark lips are dumb.

• But there Love's self doth stand,
• And with Life's weary wings far-flown,
• And with Death's eyes that make the water moan,
• 220 Gathers the water in his hand:
• And they that drink know nought of sky or land
• But only love alone.

• O soul-sequestered face
• Far off,—O were that night but now!
• So even beside that stream even I and thou
page: 114  
• Through thirsting lips should draw Love's grace,
• And in the zone of that supreme embrace
• Bind aching breast and brow.

• O water whispering
• 230 Still through the dark into mine ears,—
• As with mine eyes, is it not now with hers?—
• Mine eyes that add to thy cold spring,
• Wan water, wandering water weltering,
• This hidden tide of tears.

   

• Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
• Fond of a kiss and fond of a guinea,
• Whose head upon my knee to-night
• Rests for a while, as if grown light
• With all our dances and the sound
• To which the wild tunes spun you round:
• Fair Jenny mine, the thoughtless queen
• Of kisses which the blush between
• Could hardly make much daintier;
• 10 Whose eyes are as blue skies, whose hair
• Is countless gold incomparable:
• Fresh flower, scarce touched with signs that tell
• Of Love's exuberant hotbed:—Nay,
• Poor flower left torn since yesterday
• Until to-morrow leave you bare;
• Poor handful of bright spring-water
• Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face;
page: 116  
• Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
• Thus with your head upon my knee;—
• 20 Whose person or whose purse may be
• The lodestar of your reverie?

• This room of yours, my Jenny, looks
• A change from mine so full of books,
• Whose serried ranks hold fast, forsooth,
• So many captive hours of youth,—
• The hours they thieve from day and night
• To make one's cherished work come right,
• And leave it wrong for all their theft,
• Even as to-night my work was left:
• 30 Until I vowed that since my brain
• And eyes of dancing seemed so fain,
• My feet should have some dancing too:—
• And thus it was I met with you.
• Well, I suppose 'twas hard to part,
• For here I am. And now, sweetheart,
• You seem too tired to get to bed.

• It was a careless life I led
• When rooms like this were scarce so strange
• Not long ago. What breeds the change,—
page: 117  
• 40 The many aims or the few years?
• Because to-night it all appears
• Something I do not know again.

• The cloud's not danced out of my brain,—
• The cloud that made it turn and swim
• While hour by hour the books grew dim.
• Why, Jenny, as I watch you there,—
• For all your wealth of loosened hair,
• Your silk ungirdled and unlac'd
• And warm sweets open to the waist,
• 50 All golden in the lamplight's gleam,—
• You know not what a book you seem,
• Half-read by lightning in a dream!
• How should you know, my Jenny? Nay,
• And I should be ashamed to say:—
• Poor beauty, so well worth a kiss!
• But while my thought runs on like this
• With wasteful whims more than enough,
• I wonder what you're thinking of.

• If of myself you think at all,
• 60 What is the thought?—conjectural
• On sorry matters best unsolved?—
page: 118  
• Or inly is each grace revolved
• To fit me with a lure?—or (sad
• To think!) perhaps you're merely glad
• That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
• And let you rest upon my knee.

• For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
• You're thankful for a little rest,—
• Glad from the crush to rest within,
• 70 From the heart-sickness and the din
• Where envy's voice at virtue's pitch
• Mocks you because your gown is rich;
• And from the pale girl's dumb rebuke,
• Whose ill-clad grace and toil-worn look
• Proclaim the strength that keeps her weak
• And other nights than yours bespeak;
• And from the wise unchildish elf,
• To schoolmate lesser than himself
• Pointing you out, what thing you are:—
• 80 Yes, from the daily jeer and jar,
• From shame and shame's outbraving too,
• Is rest not sometimes sweet to you?—
• But most from the hatefulness of man
• Who spares not to end what he began,
page: 119  
• Whose acts are ill and his speech ill,
• Who, having used you at his will,
• Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
• I serve the dishes and the wine.

• Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
• 90 I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
• And do not let me think of you,
• Lest shame of yours suffice for two.
• What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
• Your head there, so you do not sleep;
• But that the weariness may pass
• And leave you merry, take this glass.
• Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
• If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
• Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

• 100 Behold the lilies of the field,
• They toil not neither do they spin;
• (So doth the ancient text begin,—
• Not of such rest as one of these
• Can share.) Another rest and ease
• Along each summer-sated path
• From its new lord the garden hath,
page: 120  
• Than that whose spring in blessings ran
• Which praised the bounteous husbandman,
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• 110 The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,—
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• But must your roses die, and those
• Their purfled buds that should unclose?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• 120 And here's the naked stem of thorns.

• Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns
• As yet of winter. Sickness here
• Or want alone could waken fear,—
• Nothing but passion wrings a tear.
• Except when there may rise unsought
• Haply at times a passing thought
• Of the old days which seem to be
• Much older than any history
page: 121  
• That is written in any book;
• 130 When she would lie in fields and look
• Along the ground through the blown grass,
• And wonder where the city was,
• Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
• They told her then for a child's tale.

• Jenny, you know the city now.
• A child can tell the tale there, how
• Some things which are not yet enroll'd
• In market-lists are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• 140 When Saturday night is market-night
• Everywhere, be it dry or wet,
• And market-night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your pride and woe;
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertise dainties through the dirt;
• Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learned your look
• When, wealth and health slipped past, you stare
• 150 Along the streets alone, and there,
• Round the long park, across the bridge,
page: 122  
• The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
• Wind on together and apart,
• A fiery serpent for your heart.

• Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
• Suppose I were to think aloud,—
• What if to her all this were said?
• Why, as a volume seldom read
• Being opened halfway shuts again,
• 160 So might the pages of her brain
• Be parted at such words, and thence
• Close back upon the dusty sense.
• For is there hue or shape defin'd
• In Jenny's desecrated mind,
• Where all contagious currents meet,
• A Lethe of the middle street?
• Nay, it reflects not any face,
• Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
• But as they coil those eddies clot,
• 170 And night and day remember not.

• Why, Jenny, you're asleep at last!—
• Asleep, poor Jenny, hard and fast,—
• So young and soft and tired; so fair,
page: 123  
• With chin thus nestled in your hair,
• Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue
• As if some sky of dreams shone through!

• Just as another woman sleeps!
• Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
• Of doubt and horror,—what to say
• 180 Or think,—this awful secret sway,
• The potter's power over the clay!
• Of the same lump (it has been said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
• And fond of dress, and change, and praise,
• So mere a woman in her ways:
• And if her sweet eyes rich in youth
• Are like her lips that tell the truth,
• 190 My cousin Nell is fond of love.
• And she's the girl I'm proudest of.
• Who does not prize her, guard her well?
• The love of change, in cousin Nell,
• Shall find the best and hold it dear:
• The unconquered mirth turn quieter
page: 124  
• Not through her own, through others' woe:
• The conscious pride of beauty glow
• Beside another's pride in her,
• One little part of all they share.
• 200 For Love himself shall ripen these
• In a kind soil to just increase
• Through years of fertilizing peace.

• Of the same lump (as it is said)
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• It makes a goblin of the sun.

• So pure,—so fall'n! How dare to think
• Of the first common kindred link?
• Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
• 210 It seems that all things take their turn;
• And who shall say but this fair tree
• May need, in changes that may be,
• Your children's children's charity?
• Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorn'd!
• Shall no man hold his pride forewarn'd
• Till in the end, the Day of Days,
page: 125  
• At Judgment, one of his own race,
• As frail and lost as you, shall rise,—
• His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

• 220 How Jenny's clock ticks on the shelf!
• Might not the dial scorn itself
• That has such hours to register?
• Yet as to me, even so to her
• Are golden sun and silver moon,
• In daily largesse of earth's boon,
• Counted for life-coins to one tune.
• And if, as blindfold fates are toss'd,
• Through some one man this life be lost,
• Shall soul not somehow pay for soul?

• 230 Fair shines the gilded aureole
• In which our highest painters place
• Some living woman's simple face.
• And the stilled features thus descried
• As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
• The shadows where the cheeks are thin,
• And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
• With Raffael's, Leonardo's hand
• To show them to men's souls, might stand,
page: 126  
• Whole ages long, the whole world through,
• 240 For preachings of what God can do.
• What has man done here? How atone,
• Great God, for this which man has done?
• And for the body and soul which by
• Man's pitiless doom must now comply
• With lifelong hell, what lullaby
• Of sweet forgetful second birth
• Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
• What measure of God's rest endows
• The many mansions of his house.

• 250 If but a woman's heart might see
• Such erring heart unerringly
• For once! But that can never be.

• Like a rose shut in a book
• In which pure women may not look,
• For its base pages claim control
• To crush the flower within the soul;
• Where through each dead rose-leaf that clings,
• Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
• To the vile text, are traced such things
• 260 As might make lady's cheek indeed
page: 127  
• More than a living rose to read;
• So nought save foolish foulness may
• Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
• And so the life-blood of this rose,
• Puddled with shameful knowledge, flows
• Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
• Yet still it keeps such faded show
• Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
• That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
• 270 The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
• Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
• Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
• Love roses better for its sake:—
• Only that this can never be:—
• Even so unto her sex is she.

• Yet, Jenny, looking long at you,
• The woman almost fades from view.
• A cipher of man's changeless sum
• Of lust, past, present, and to come,
• 280 Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
• To challenge from the scornful sphinx.

• Like a toad within a stone
• Seated while Time crumbles on;
page: 128  
• Which sits there since the earth was curs'd
• For Man's transgression at the first;
• Which, living through all centuries,
• Not once has seen the sun arise;
• Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
• The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
• 290 Which always—whitherso the stone
• Be flung—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
• Aye, and shall not be driven out
• Till that which shuts him round about
• Break at the very Master's stroke,
• And the dust thereof vanish as smoke,
• And the seed of Man vanish as dust:—
• Even so within this world is Lust.

• Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
• Poor little Jenny, good to kiss,—
• 300 You'd not believe by what strange roads
• Thought travels, when your beauty goads
• A man to-night to think of toads!
• Jenny, wake up . . . . Why, there's the dawn!

• And there's an early waggon drawn
• To market, and some sheep that jog
page: 129  
Sig. K
• Bleating before a barking dog;
• And the old streets come peering through
• Another night that London knew;
• And all as ghostlike as the lamps.

• 310 So on the wings of day decamps
• My last night's frolic. Glooms begin
• To shiver off as lights creep in
• Past the gauze curtains half drawn-to,
• And the lamp's doubled shade grows blue,—
• Your lamp, my Jenny, kept alight,
• Like a wise virgin's, all one night!
• And in the alcove coolly spread
• Glimmers with dawn your empty bed;
• And yonder your fair face I see
• 320 Reflected lying on my knee,
• Where teems with first foreshadowings
• Your pier-glass scrawled with diamond rings:
• And on your bosom all night worn
• Yesterday's rose now droops forlorn
• But dies not yet this summer morn.

• And now without, as if some word
• Had called upon them that they heard,
page: 130  
• The London sparrows far and nigh
• Clamour together suddenly;
• 330 And Jenny's cage-bird grown awake
• Here in their song his part must take,
• Because here too the day doth break.

• And somehow in myself the dawn
• Among stirred clouds and veils withdrawn
• Strikes greyly on her. Let her sleep.
• But will it wake her if I heap
• These cushions thus beneath her head
• Where my knee was? No,—there's your bed,
• My Jenny, while you dream. And there
• 340 I lay among your golden hair
• Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
• These golden coins.

• For still one deems
• That Jenny's flattering sleep confers
• New magic on the magic purse,—
• Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
• Between the threads fine fumes arise
• And shape their pictures in the brain.
• There roll no streets in glare and rain,
• Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
page: 131  
• 350 But delicately sighs in musk
• The homage of the dim boudoir;
• Or like a palpitating star
• Thrilled into song, the opera-night
• Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
• Or at the carriage-window shine
• Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
• Whirls through its hour of health (divine
• For her) the concourse of the Park.
• And though in the discounted dark
• 360 Her functions there and here are one,
• Beneath the lamps and in the sun
• There reigns at least the acknowledged belle
• Apparelled beyond parallel.
• Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

• For even the Paphian Venus seems
• A goddess o'er the realms of love,
• When silver-shrined in shadowy grove:
• Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd
• But hide Priapus to the waist,
• 370 And whoso looks on him shall see
• An eligible deity.

• Why, Jenny, waking here alone
• May help you to remember one,
• Though all the memory's long outworn
• Of many a double-pillowed morn.
• I think I see you when you wake,
• And rub your eyes for me, and shake
• My gold, in rising, from your hair,
• A Danaë for a moment there.

• 380 Jenny, my love rang true! for still
• Love at first sight is vague, until
• That tinkling makes him audible.

• And must I mock you to the last,
• Ashamed of my own shame,—aghast
• Because some thoughts not born amiss
• Rose at a poor fair face like this?
• Well, of such thoughts so much I know:
• In my life, as in hers, they show,
• By a far gleam which I may near,
• 390 A dark path I can strive to clear.

• Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.

   

• This is her picture as she was:
• It seems a thing to wonder on,
• As though mine image in the glass
• Should tarry when myself am gone
• I gaze until she seems to stir,—
• Until mine eyes almost aver
• That now, even now, the sweet lips part
• To breathe the words of the sweet heart:—
• And yet the earth is over her.

• 10 Alas! even such the thin-drawn ray
• That makes the prison-depths more rude,—
• The drip of water night and day
• Giving a tongue to solitude.
• Yet only this, of love's whole prize,
• Remains; save what in mournful guise
• Takes counsel with my soul alone,—
• Save what is secret and unknown,
• Below the earth, above the skies.

• In painting her I shrined her face
• 20 Mid mystic trees, where light falls in
• Hardly at all; a covert place
• Where you might think to find a din
• Of doubtful talk, and a live flame
• Wandering, and many a shape whose name
• Not itself knoweth, and old dew,
• And your own footsteps meeting you,
• And all things going as they came.

• A deep dim wood; and there she stands
• As in that wood that day: for so
• 30 Was the still movement of her hands
• And such the pure line's gracious flow.
• And passing fair the type must seem,
• Unknown the presence and the dream.
• 'Tis she: though of herself, alas!
• Less than her shadow on the grass
• Or than her image in the stream.

• That day we met there, I and she
• One with the other all alone;
• And we were blithe; yet memory
• 40 Saddens those hours, as when the moon
page: 135  
• Looks upon daylight. And with her
• I stooped to drink the spring-water,
• Athirst where other waters sprang;
• And where the echo is, she sang,—
• My soul another echo there.

• But when that hour my soul won strength
• For words whose silence wastes and kills,
• Dull raindrops smote us, and at length
• Thundered the heat within the hills.
• 50 That eve I spoke those words again
• Beside the pelted window-pane;
• And there she hearkened what I said,
• With under-glances that surveyed
• The empty pastures blind with rain.

• Next day the memories of these things,
• Like leaves through which a bird has flown,
• Still vibrated with Love's warm wings;
• Till I must make them all my own
• And paint this picture. So, 'twixt ease
• 60 Of talk and sweet long silences,
• She stood among the plants in bloom
• At windows of a summer room,
• To feign the shadow of the trees.

• And as I wrought, while all above
• And all around was fragrant air,
• In the sick burthen of my love
• It seemed each sun-thrilled blossom there
• Beat like a heart among the leaves.
• O heart that never beats nor heaves,
• 70 In that one darkness lying still,
• What now to thee my love's great will
• Or the fine web the sunshine weaves?

• For now doth daylight disavow
• Those days,—nought left to see or hear.
• Only in solemn whispers now
• At night-time these things reach mine ear;
• When the leaf-shadows at a breath
• Shrink in the road, and all the heath,
• Forest and water, far and wide,
• 80 In limpid starlight glorified,
• Lie like the mystery of death.

• Last night at last I could have slept,
• And yet delayed my sleep till dawn,
• Still wandering. Then it was I wept:
• For unawares I came upon
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• Those glades where once she walked with me:
• And as I stood there suddenly,
• All wan with traversing the night,
• Upon the desolate verge of light
• 90 Yearned loud the iron-bosomed sea.

• Even so, where Heaven holds breath and hears
• The beating heart of Love's own breast,—
• Where round the secret of all spheres
• All angels lay their wings to rest,—
• How shall my soul stand rapt and awed,
• When, by the new birth borne abroad
• Throughout the music of the suns,
• It enters in her soul at once
• And knows the silence there for God!

• 100 Here with her face doth memory sit
• Meanwhile, and wait the day's decline,
• Till other eyes shall look from it,
• Eyes of the spirit's Palestine,
• Even than the old gaze tenderer:
• While hopes and aims long lost with her
• Stand round her image side by side,
• Like tombs of pilgrims that have died
• About the Holy Sepulchre.

   

• She fell asleep on Christmas Eve:
• At length the long-ungranted shade
• Of weary eyelids overweigh'd
• The pain nought else might yet relieve.

• Our mother, who had leaned all day
• Over the bed from chime to chime,
• Then raised herself for the first time,
• And as she sat her down, did pray.

• Her little work-table was spread
• 10 With work to finish. For the glare
• Made by her candle, she had care
• To work some distance from the bed.

• Without, there was a cold moon up,
• Of winter radiance sheer and thin;
• The hollow halo it was in
• Was like an icy crystal cup.

• Through the small room, with subtle sound
• Of flame, by vents the fireshine drove
• And reddened. In its dim alcove
• 20 The mirror shed a clearness round.

• I had been sitting up some nights,
• And my tired mind felt weak and blank;
• Like a sharp strengthening wine it drank
• The stillness and the broken lights.

• Twelve struck. That sound, by dwindling years
• Heard in each hour, crept off; and then
• The ruffled silence spread again,
• Like water that a pebble stirs.

• Our mother rose from where she sat:
• 30 Her needles, as she laid them down,
• Met lightly, and her silken gown
• Settled: no other noise than that.

• ‘Glory unto the Newly Born!’
• So, as said angels, she did say;
• Because we were in Christmas Day,
• Though it would still be long till morn.

• Just then in the room over us
• There was a pushing back of chairs,
• As some who had sat unawares
• 40 So late, now heard the hour, and rose.

• With anxious softly-stepping haste
• Our mother went where Margaret lay,
• Fearing the sounds o'erhead—should they
• Have broken her long watched-for rest!

• She stopped an instant, calm, and turned;
• But suddenly turned back again;
• And all her features seemed in pain
• With woe, and her eyes gazed and yearned.

• For my part, I but hid my face,
• 50 And held my breath, and spoke no word:
• There was none spoken; but I heard
• The silence for a little space.

• Our mother bowed herself and wept:
• And both my arms fell, and I said,
• ‘God knows I knew that she was dead.’
• And there, all white, my sister slept.

• Then kneeling, upon Christmas morn
• A little after twelve o'clock
• We said, ere the first quarter struck,
• 60 ‘Christ's blessing on the newly born!’

   

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• The river-reaches wind,
• The whispering trees accept the breeze,
• The ripple's cool and kind:
• With love low-whispered 'twixt the shores,
• With rippling laughters gay,
• With white arms bared to ply the oars,
• On last year's first of May.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• 10 The river's brimmed with rain,
• Through close-met banks and parted banks
• Now near now far again:
• With parting tears caressed to smiles,
• With meeting promised soon,
• With every sweet vow that beguiles,
• On last year's first of June.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• The river's flecked with foam,
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• 'Neath shuddering clouds that hang in shrouds
• 20 And lost winds wild for home:
• With infant wailings at the breast,
• With homeless steps astray,
• With wanderings shuddering tow'rds one rest
• On this year's first of May.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• The summer river flows
• With doubled flight of moons by night
• And lilies' deep repose:
• With lo! beneath the moon's white stare
• 30 A white face not the moon,
• With lilies meshed in tangled hair,
• On this year's first of June.

• Between Holmscote and Hurstcote
• A troth was given and riven,
• From heart's trust grew one life to two,
• Two lost lives cry to Heaven:
• With banks spread calm to meet the sky,
• With meadows newly mowed,
• The harvest-paths of glad July,
• 40 The sweet school-children's road.

   

---

• Our Lombard country-girls along the coast
• Wear daggers in their garters; for they know
• That they might hate another girl to death
• Or meet a German lover. Such a knife
• I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.

• Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts
• That day in going to meet her,—that last day
• For the last time, she said;—of all the love
• And all the hopeless hope that she might change
• 10 And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,
• At places we both knew along the road,
• Some fresh shape of herself as once she was
• Grew present at my side; until it seemed—
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Sig. L
• So close they gathered round me—they would all
• Be with me when I reached the spot at last,
• To plead my cause with her against herself
• So changed. O Father, if you knew all this
• You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,
• And only then, if God can pardon me.
• 20 What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

• I passed a village-fair upon my road,
• And thought, being empty-handed, I would take
• Some little present: such might prove, I said,
• Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)
• A parting gift. And there it was I bought
• The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

• That day, some three hours afterwards, I found
• For certain, it must be a parting gift.
• And, standing silent now at last, I looked
• 30 Into her scornful face; and heard the sea
• Still trying hard to din into my ears
• Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,
• If only it could make me understand.
• One moment thus. Another, and her face
• Seemed further off than the last line of sea,
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• So that I thought, if now she were to speak
• I could not hear her. Then again I knew
• All, as we stood together on the sand
• At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.

• 40 ‘Take it,’ I said, and held it out to her,
• While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;
• ‘Take it and keep it for my sake,’ I said.
• Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes
• Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;
• Only she put it by from her and laughed.

• Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;
• But God heard that. Will God remember all?

• It was another laugh than the sweet sound
• Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day
• 50 Eleven years before, when first I found her
• Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls
• Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up
• Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.
• She might have served a painter to pourtray
• That heavenly child which in the latter days
• Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.
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• I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick
• And hardly fed; and so her words at first
• Seemed fitful like the talking of the trees
• 60 And voices in the air that knew my name.
• And I remember that I sat me down
• Upon the slope with her, and thought the world
• Must be all over or had never been,
• We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me
• Her parents both were gone away from her.
• I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;
• But when I asked her this, she looked again
• Into my face, and said that yestereve
• They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,
• 70 And gave her all the bread they had with them,
• And then had gone together up the hill
• Where we were sitting now, and had walked on
• Into the great red light; ‘and so,’ she said,
• ‘I have come up here too; and when this evening
• They step out of the light as they stepped in,
• I shall be here to kiss them.’ And she laughed.

• Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;
• And how the church-steps throughout all the town,
• When last I had been there a month ago,
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• 80 Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was
• weighed
• By Austrians armed; and women that I knew
• For wives and mothers walked the public street,
• Saying aloud that if their husbands feared
• To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay
• Till they had earned it there. So then this child
• Was piteous to me; for all told me then
• Her parents must have left her to God's chance,
• To man's or to the Church's charity,
• Because of the great famine, rather than
• 90 To watch her growing thin between their knees.
• With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,
• And sights and sounds came back and things long since,
• And all my childhood found me on the hills;
• And so I took her with me.

• I was young,
• Scarce man then, Father; but the cause which gave
• The wounds I die of now had brought me then
• Some wounds already; and I lived alone,
• As any hiding hunted man must live.
• It was no easy thing to keep a child
• 100 In safety; for herself it was not safe,
• And doubled my own danger: but I knew
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• That God would help me.

• Yet a little while
• Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think
• I have been speaking to you of some matters
• There was no need to speak of, have I not?
• You do not know how clearly those things stood
• Within my mind, which I have spoken of,
• Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past
• Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,
• 110 Clearest where furthest off.

• I told you how
• She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet
• A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:
• I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night
• I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,
• Where women walked whose painted images
• I have seen with candles round them in the church.
• They bent this way and that, one to another,
• Playing: and over the long golden hair
• Of each there floated like a ring of fire
• 120 Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when
• she rose
• Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,
• As if a window had been opened in heaven
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• For God to give His blessing from, before
• This world of ours should set; (for in my dream
• I thought our world was setting, and the sun
• Flared, a spent taper;) and beneath that gust
• The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.
• Then all the blessed maidens who were there
• Stood up together, as it were a voice
• 130 That called them; and they threw their tresses back,
• And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,
• For the strong heavenly joy they had in them
• To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:
• And looking round, I saw as usual
• That she was standing there with her long locks
• Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

• For always when I see her now, she laughs.
• And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,
• The life of this dead terror; as in days
• 140 When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell
• Something of those days yet before the end.

• I brought her from the city—one such day
• When she was still a merry loving child,—
• The earliest gift I mind my giving her;
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• A little image of a flying Love
• Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands
• A dart of gilded metal and a torch.
• And him she kissed and me, and fain would know
• Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings
• 150 And why the arrow. What I knew I told
• Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.
• And when she heard that he could rule the loves
• Of men and women, still she shook her head
• And wondered; and, ‘Nay, nay,’ she murmured still,
• ‘So strong, and he a younger child than I!’
• And then she'd have me fix him on the wall
• Fronting her little bed; and then again
• She needs must fix him there herself, because
• I gave him to her and she loved him so,
• 160 And he should make her love me better yet,
• If women loved the more, the more they grew.
• But the fit place upon the wall was high
• For her, and so I held her in my arms:
• And each time that the heavy pruning-hook
• I gave her for a hammer slipped away
• As it would often, still she laughed and laughed
• And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,
• Just as she hung the image on the nail,
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• It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:
• 170 And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand
• The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.
• And so her laughter turned to tears: and ‘Oh!’
• I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—
• ‘That I should be the first to make you bleed,
• Who love and love and love you!’—kissing still
• The fingers till I got her safe to bed.
• And still she sobbed,—‘not for the pain at all,’
• She said, ‘but for the Love, the poor good Love
• You gave me.’ So she cried herself to sleep.

• 180 Another later thing comes back to me.
• 'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,
• When still from his shut palace, sitting clean
• Above the splash of blood, old Metternich
• (May his soul die, and never-dying worms
• Feast on its pain for ever!) used to thin
• His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month
• Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,
• Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take
• That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks
• 190 Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.
• The first I heard of it was a chance shot
page: 153  
• In the street here and there, and on the stones
• A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.
• Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,
• My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife
• Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair
• And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped
• Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still
• A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips
• 200 So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

• For now, being always with her, the first love
• I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,
• I think, in somewise; like a holy thought
• Which is a prayer before one knows of it.
• The first time I perceived this, I remember,
• Was once when after hunting I came home
• Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,
• And sat down at my feet upon the floor
• Leaning against my side. But when I felt
• 210 Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers
• So high as to be laid upon my heart,
• I turned and looked upon my darling there
• And marked for the first time how tall she was;
• And my heart beat with so much violence
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• Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose
• But wonder at it soon and ask me why;
• And so I bade her rise and eat with me.
• And when, remembering all and counting back
• The time, I made out fourteen years for her
• 220 And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes
• As of the sky and sea on a grey day,
• And drew her long hands through her hair, and
• asked me
• If she was not a woman; and then laughed:
• And as she stooped in laughing, I could see
• Beneath the growing throat the breasts half-globed
• Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.

• Yes, let me think of her as then; for so
• Her image, Father, is not like the sights
• Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth
• 230 Made to bring death to life,—the underlip
• Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.
• Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops
• Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair
• And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—
• Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloud
• Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.
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• Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem
• Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains
• The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore
• 240 That face made wonderful with night and day.
• Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words
• Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips
• She had, that clung a little where they touched
• And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,
• That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath
• The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,
• Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,
• Which under the dark lashes evermore
• Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low
• 250 Between the water and the willow-leaves,
• And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

• I was a moody comrade to her then,
• For all the love I bore her. Italy,
• The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed
• Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands
• To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,
• Cleaving her way to light. And from her need
• Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life
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• Which I was proud to yield her, as my father
• 260 Had yielded his. And this had come to be
• A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate
• To wreak, all things together that a man
• Needs for his blood to ripen; till at times
• All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still
• To see such life pass muster and be deemed
• Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,
• To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—
• Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.
• And though she ruled me always, I remember
• 270 That once when I was thus and she still kept
• Leaping about the place and laughing, I
• Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt
• And putting her two hands into my breast
• Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?
• 'Tis long since I have wept for anything.
• I thought that song forgotten out of mind;
• And now, just as I spoke of it, it came
• All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,
• Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears
• 280 Holding the platter, when the children run
• To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—

   

• La bella donna*
• Piangendo disse:
• ‘Come son fisse
• Le stelle in cielo!
• Quel fiato anelo
• Dello stanco sole,
• Quanto m' assonna!
• E la luna, macchiata

   

• 290Come uno specchio
• Logoro e vecchio,—
• Faccia affannata,
• Che cosa vuole?

• ‘Chè stelle, luna, e sole,
• Ciascun m' annoja
• E m' annojano insieme;
• Non me ne preme
• Nè ci prendo gioja.
• E veramente,
• 300Che le spalle sien franche
• E la braccia bianche
• E il seno caldo e tondo,
• Non mi fa niente.
• Chè cosa al mondo
• Posso più far di questi
• Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?’

• La donna rise
• E riprese ridendo:—
• ‘Questa mano che prendo
• 310E dunque mia?
• Tu m' ami dunque?
• Dimmelo ancora,
• Non in modo qualunque,
• Ma le parole
• Belle e precise
• Che dicesti pria.

• ‘ Siccome suole
• La state talora
  page: 159  
• (Dicesti) un qualche istante
• 320 Tornare innanzi inverno,
• Così tu fai ch' io scerno
• Le foglie tutte quante,
• Ben ch' io certo tenessi
• Per passato l' autunno.

• ‘Eccolo il mio alunno!
• Io debbo insegnargli
• Quei cari detti istessi
• Ch' ei mi disse una volta!
• Oimè! Che cosa dargli,’
• 330(Ma ridea piano piano
• Dei baci in sulla mano,)
• ‘Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?’

• That I should sing upon this bed!—with you
• To listen, and such words still left to say!
• Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,
• As on the very day she sang to me;
• When, having done, she took out of my hand
• Something that I had played with all the while
• And laid it down beyond my reach; and so
• 340 Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—
• ‘Weeping or laughing, which was best?’ she said.

• But these are foolish tales. How should I show
• The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day
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• More and more brightly?—when for long years now
• The very flame that flew about the heart,
• And gave it fiery wings, has come to be
• The lapping blaze of hell's environment
• Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.

• Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night
• 350 Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul
• Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.
• It chanced that in our last year's wanderings
• We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,
• If home we had: and in the Duomo there
• I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.
• An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought
• In marble by some great Italian hand
• In the great days when she and Italy
• Sat on one throne together: and to her
• 360 And to none else my loved one told her heart.
• She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—
• Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—
• They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land
• (Whose work still serves the world for miracle)
• Made manifest herself in womanhood.
• Father, the day I speak of was the first
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Sig. M
• For weeks that I had borne her company
• Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been
• Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came
• 370 Of some impenetrable restlessness
• Growing in her to make her changed and cold.
• And as we entered there that day, I bent
• My eyes on the fair Image, and I said
• Within my heart, ‘Oh turn her heart to me!’
• And so I left her to her prayers, and went
• To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,
• Where in the sacristy the light still falls
• Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,
• On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet
• 380 The daybreak gilds another head to crown.
• But coming back, I wondered when I saw
• That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood
• Alone without her; until further off,
• Before some new Madonna gaily decked,
• Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,
• I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step
• She rose, and side by side we left the church.
• I was much moved, and sharply questioned her
• Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed
• 390 Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed
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• And said: ‘The old Madonna? Aye indeed,
• She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.’
• Then silent to the soul I held my way:
• And from the fountains of the public place
• Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,
• Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;
• And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile
• She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck
• And hands held light before her; and the face
• 400 Which long had made a day in my life's night
• Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes
• Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread
• Beyond my heart to the world made for her.

• Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:
• The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud
• Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it
• Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave
• The Austrian whose white coat I still made match
• With his white face, only the two grew red
• 410 As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear
• White for a livery, that the blood may show
• Braver that brings them to him. So he looks
• Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.

• Give me a draught of water in that cup;
• My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;
• But you must hear. If you mistake my words
• And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing
• Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words
• And so absolve me, Father, the great sin
• 420 Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn
• With mine for it. I have seen pictures where
• Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:
• Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know
• 'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,
• Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.

• You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,
• But cannot, as you see. These twenty times
• Beginning, I have come to the same point
• And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words
• 430 Which will not let you understand my tale.
• It is that then we have her with us here,
• As when she wrung her hair out in my dream
• To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.
• Her hair is always wet, for she has kept
• Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;
• And when she wrung them round over the floor,
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• I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;
• So that I sat up in my bed and screamed
• Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.
• 440 Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:
• Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,
• Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.

• At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills
• The sand is black and red. The black was black
• When what was spilt that day sank into it,
• And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood
• This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

---

• What would you have me tell you? Father, father,
• How shall I make you know? You have not known
• 450 The dreadful soul of woman, who one day
• Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,
• Forgets what man remembers, and therewith
• Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell
• How the change happened between her and me.
• Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart
• When most my heart was full of her; and still
• In every corner of myself I sought
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• To find what service failed her; and no less
• Than in the good time past, there all was hers.
• 460 What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread
• For one first year of all eternity
• All round you with all joys and gifts of God;
• And then when most your soul is blent with it
• And all yields song together,—then it stands
• O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back
• Your image, but now drowns it and is clear
• Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns
• Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.
• How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,
• 470 Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears
• That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—
• ‘God! what is left but hell for company,
• But hell, hell, hell?’—until the name so breathed
• Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?
• Even so I stood the day her empty heart
• Left her place empty in our home, while yet
• I knew not why she went nor where she went
• Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day
• When to my prayers at last one sight of her
• 480 Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale
• With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.

• O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you,
• Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes
• Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet
• Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,
• We may have sweetness yet, if you but say
• As once in childish sorrow: ‘Not my pain,
• My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,
• Your broken love!’

• My Father, have I not
• 490 Yet told you the last things of that last day
• On which I went to meet her by the sea?
• O God, O God! but I must tell you all.

• Midway upon my journey, when I stopped
• To buy the dagger at the village fair,
• I saw two cursed rats about the place
• I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day
• Was not yet over; for three hours to come
• I prized my life: and so I looked around
• For safety. A poor painted mountebank
• 500 Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.
• I knew he must have heard my name, so I
• Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,
• And of my danger. Straight he hustled me
page: 167  
• Into his booth, as it were in the trick,
• And brought me out next minute with my face
• All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;
• And there I handed him his cups and balls
• And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring
• For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;
• 510 And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds
• Sharp to my startled senses, I remember
• A woman laughed above me. I looked up
• And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned
• Half through a tavern window thick with vine.
• Some man had come behind her in the room
• And caught her by her arms, and she had turned
• With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now
• He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine
• Crawled in her back.

• And three hours afterwards,
• 520 When she that I had run all risks to meet
• Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death
• Within me, for I thought it like the laugh
• Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;
• But all she might have changed to, or might change to,
• (I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)
page: 168  
• Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,
• Not told you all this time what happened, Father,
• When I had offered her the little knife,
• And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,
• 530 And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?

• ‘Take it,’ I said to her the second time,
• ‘Take it and keep it.’ And then came a fire
• That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,
• And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all
• The day was one red blindness; till it seemed,
• Within the whirling brain's eclipse, that she
• Or I or all things bled or burned to death.
• And then I found her laid against my feet
• And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still
• 540 Her look in falling. For she took the knife
• Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,
• And fell; and her stiff bodice scooped the sand
• Into her bosom.

• And she keeps it, see,
• Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath
• Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.
• For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows
page: 169  
• The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such
• A dagger as our women of the coast
• Twist in their garters.

• Father, I have done:
• 550 And from her side now she unwinds the thick
• Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,
• But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.
• Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,
• I have told all: tell me at once what hope
• Can reach me still. For now she draws it out
• Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,
• She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh
• Soon, when she shows the crimson steel to God.

   

• In our Museum galleries
• To-day I lingered o'er the prize
• Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—
• Her Art for ever in fresh wise
• From hour to hour rejoicing me.
• Sighing I turned at last to win
• Once more the London dirt and din;
• And as I made the swing-door spin
• And issued, they were hoisting in
• 10 A wingèd beast from Nineveh.

• A human face the creature wore,
• And hoofs behind and hoofs before,
• And flanks with dark runes fretted o'er.
• 'Twas bull, 'twas mitred Minotaur,
• A dead disbowelled mystery:
page: 171  
• The mummy of a buried faith
• Stark from the charnel without scathe,
• Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—
• Such fossil cerements as might swathe
• 20 The very corpse of Nineveh.

• The print of its first rush-wrapping,
• Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.
• What song did the brown maidens sing,
• From purple mouths alternating,
• When that was woven languidly?
• What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr'd,
• What songs has the strange image heard?
• In what blind vigil stood interr'd
• For ages, till an English word
• 30 Broke silence first at Nineveh?

• Oh when upon each sculptured court,
• Where even the wind might not resort,—
• O'er which Time passed, of like import
• With the wild Arab boys at sport,—
• A living face looked in to see:—
• O seemed it not—the spell once broke—
• As though the carven warriors woke,
page: 172  
• As though the shaft the string forsook,
• The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,
• 40 And there was life in Nineveh?

• On London stones our sun anew
• The beast's recovered shadow threw.
• (No shade that plague of darkness knew,
• No light, no shade, while older grew
• By ages the old earth and sea.)
• Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown
• Such proof to make thy godhead known?
• From their dead Past thou liv'st alone;
• And still thy shadow is thine own,
• 50 Even as of yore in Nineveh.

• That day whereof we keep record,
• When near thy city-gates the Lord
• Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,
• This sun, (I said) here present, pour'd
• Even thus this shadow that I see.
• This shadow has been shed the same
• From sun and moon,—from lamps which came
• For prayer,—from fifteen days of flame,
• The last, while smouldered to a name
• 60 Sardanapalus' Nineveh.

• Within thy shadow, haply, once
• Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons
• Smote him between the altar-stones:
• Or pale Semiramis her zones
• Of gold, her incense brought to thee,
• In love for grace, in war for aid: . . . .
• Ay, and who else? . . . . till 'neath thy shade
• Within his trenches newly made
• Last year the Christian knelt and pray'd—
• 70 Not to thy strength—in Nineveh.*

• Now, thou poor god, within this hall
• Where the blank windows blind the wall
• From pedestal to pedestal,
• The kind of light shall on thee fall
• Which London takes the day to be:
• While school-foundations in the act
• Of holiday, three files compact,
• Shall learn to view thee as a fact
• Connected with that zealous tract:
• 80 ‘Rome,—Babylon and Nineveh.’

• Deemed they of this, those worshippers,
• When, in some mythic chain of verse
• Which man shall not again rehearse,
• The faces of thy ministers
• Yearned pale with bitter ecstasy?
• Greece, Egypt, Rome,—did any god
• Before whose feet men knelt unshod
• Deem that in this unblest abode
• Another scarce more unknown god
• 90 Should house with him, from Nineveh?

• Ah! in what quarries lay the stone
• From which this pillared pile has grown,
• Unto man's need how long unknown,
• Since those thy temples, court and cone,
• Rose far in desert history?
• Ah! what is here that does not lie
• All strange to thine awakened eye?
• Ah! what is here can testify
• (Save that dumb presence of the sky)
• 100 Unto thy day and Nineveh?

• Why, of those mummies in the room
• Above, there might indeed have come
page: 175  
• One out of Egypt to thy home,
• An alien. Nay, but were not some
• Of these thine own ‘antiquity?’
• And now,—they and their gods and thou
• All relics here together,—now
• Whose profit? whether bull or cow,
• Isis or Ibis, who or how,
• 110 Whether of Thebes or Nineveh?

• The consecrated metals found,
• And ivory tablets, underground,
• Winged teraphim and creatures crown'd,
• When air and daylight filled the mound,
• Fell into dust immediately.
• And even as these, the images
• Of awe and worship,—even as these,—
• So, smitten with the sun's increase,
• Her glory mouldered and did cease
• 120 From immemorial Nineveh.

• The day her builders made their halt,
• Those cities of the lake of salt
• Stood firmly 'stablished without fault,
• Made proud with pillars of basalt,
• With sardonyx and porphyry.
page: 176  
• The day that Jonah bore abroad
• To Nineveh the voice of God,
• A brackish lake lay in his road,
• Where erst Pride fixed her sure abode,
• 130 As then in royal Nineveh.

• The day when he, Pride's lord and Man's,
• Showed all the kingdoms at a glance
• To Him before whose countenance
• The years recede, the years advance,
• And said, Fall down and worship me:—
• 'Mid all the pomp beneath that look,
• Then stirred there, haply, some rebuke,
• Where to the wind the Salt Pools shook,
• And in those tracts, of life forsook,
• 140 That knew thee not, O Nineveh!

• Delicate harlot! On thy throne
• Thou with a world beneath thee prone
• In state for ages sat'st alone;
• And needs were years and lustres flown
• Ere strength of man could vanquish thee:
• Whom even thy victor foes must bring,
• Still royal, among maids that sing
page: 177  
Sig. N
• As with doves' voices, taboring
• Upon their breasts, unto the King,—
• 150 A kingly conquest, Nineveh!

• . . . Here woke my thought. The wind's slow sway
• Had waxed; and like the human play
• Of scorn that smiling spreads away,
• The sunshine shivered off the day:
• The callous wind, it seemed to me,
• Swept up the shadow from the ground:
• And pale as whom the Fates astound,
• The god forlorn stood winged and crown'd:
• Within I knew the cry lay bound
• 160 Of the dumb soul of Nineveh.

• And as I turned, my sense half shut
• Still saw the crowds of kerb and rut
• Go past as marshalled to the strut
• Of ranks in gypsum quaintly cut.
• It seemed in one same pageantry
• They followed forms which had been erst;
• To pass, till on my sight should burst
• That future of the best or worst
• When some may question which was first,
• 170 Of London or of Nineveh.

• For as that Bull-god once did stand
• And watched the burial-clouds of sand,
• Till these at last without a hand
• Rose o'er his eyes, another land,
• And blinded him with destiny:—
• So may he stand again; till now,
• In ships of unknown sail and prow,
• Some tribe of the Australian plough
• Bear him afar,—a relic now
• 180 Of London, not of Nineveh!

• Or it may chance indeed that when
• Man's age is hoary among men,—
• His centuries threescore and ten,—
• His furthest childhood shall seem then
• More clear than later times may be:
• Who, finding in this desert place
• This form, shall hold us for some race
• That walked not in Christ's lowly ways,
• But bowed its pride and vowed its praise
• 190 Unto the God of Nineveh.

• The smile rose first,—anon drew nigh
• The thought: . . Those heavy wings spread high
page: 179  
• So sure of flight, which do not fly;
• That set gaze never on the sky;
• Those scriptured flanks it cannot see;
• Its crown, a brow-contracting load;
• Its planted feet which trust the sod: . . .
• (So grew the image as I trod:)
• O Nineveh, was this thy God,—
• 200 Thine also, mighty Nineveh?

   

• ‘Victory!’
• So once more the cry must be.
• Duteous mourning we fulfil
• In God's name; but by God's will,
• Doubt not, the last word is still
• ‘Victory!’

• Funeral,
• In the music round this pall,
• Solemn grief yields earth to earth;
• 10 But what tones of solemn mirth
• In the pageant of new birth
• Rise and fall?

• For indeed,
• If our eyes were openèd,
• Who shall say what escort floats
page: 181  
• Here, which breath nor gleam denotes,—
• Fiery horses, chariots
• Fire-footed?

• Trumpeter,
• 20 Even thy call he may not hear;
• Long-known voice for ever past,
• Till with one more trumpet-blast
• God's assuring word at last
• Reach his ear.

• Multitude,
• Hold your breath in reverent mood:
• For while earth's whole kindred stand
• Mute even thus on either hand,
• This soul's labour shall be scann'd
• 30 And found good.

• Cherubim,
• Lift ye not even now your hymn?
• Lo! once lent for human lack,
• Michael's sword is rendered back.
• Thrills not now the starry track,
• Seraphim?

• Gabriel,
• Since the gift of thine ‘All hail!’
• Out of Heaven no time hath brought
• 40 Gift with fuller blessing fraught
• Than the peace which this man wrought
• Passing well.

• Be no word
• Raised of bloodshed Christ-abhorr'd.
• Say: ‘'Twas thus in His decrees
• Who Himself, the Prince of Peace,
• For His harvest's high increase
• Sent a sword.’

• Veterans,
• 50 He by whom the neck of France
• Then was given unto your heel,
• Timely sought, may lend as well
• To your sons his terrible
• Countenance.

• Waterloo!
• As the last grave must renew,
• Ere fresh death, the banshee-strain,—
page: 183  
• So methinks upon thy plain
• Falls some presage in the rain,
• 60 In the dew.

• And O thou,
• Watching with an exile's brow
• Unappeased, o'er death's dumb flood:—
• Lo! the saving strength of God
• In some new heart's English blood
• Slumbers now.

• Emperor,
• Is this all thy work was for?—
• Thus to see thy self-sought aim,
• 70 Yea thy titles, yea thy name,
• In another's shame, to shame
• Bandied o'er? *

• Wellington,
• Thy great work is but begun.
• With quick seed his end is rife
• Whose long tale of conquering strife
• Shows no triumph like his life
• Lost and won.

   

• ‘ How should I your true love know
• From another one?’
• ‘ By his cockle-hat and staff
• And his sandal-shoon.’

• ‘And what signs have told you now
• That he hastens home?’
• ‘Lo! the spring is nearly gone,
• He is nearly come.’

• ‘For a token is there nought,
• 10 Say, that he should bring?’
• ‘He will bear a ring I gave
• And another ring.’

• ‘How may I, when he shall ask,
• Tell him who lies there?’
• ‘Nay, but leave my face unveiled
• And unbound my hair.’

• ‘Can you say to me some word
• I shall say to him?‘
• ‘Say I'm looking in his eyes
• 20 Though my eyes are dim.’

   

• 'Tis of the Father Hilary.
• He strove, but could not pray; so took
• The steep-coiled stair, where his feet shook
• A sad blind echo. Ever up
• He toiled. 'Twas a sick sway of air
• That autumn noon within the stair,
• As dizzy as a turning cup.
• His brain benumbed him, void and thin;
• He shut his eyes and felt it spin;
• 10 The obscure deafness hemmed him in.
• He said: ‘O world, what world for me?’

• He leaned unto the balcony
• Where the chime keeps the night and day;
• It hurt his brain, he could not pray.
• He had his face upon the stone:
• Deep 'twixt the narrow shafts, his eye
• Passed all the roofs to the stark sky,
page: 186  
• Swept with no wing, with wind alone.
• Close to his feet the sky did shake
• 20 With wind in pools that the rains make:
• The ripple set his eyes to ache.
• He said: ‘O world, what world for me?’

• He stood within the mystery
• Girding God's blessed Eucharist:
• The organ and the chaunt had ceas'd.
• The last words paused against his ear
• Said from the altar: drawn round him
• The gathering rest was dumb and dim.
• And now the sacring-bell rang clear
• 30 And ceased; and all was awe,—the breath
• Of God in man that warranteth
• The inmost utmost things of faith.
• He said: ‘O God, my world in Thee!’

   

• Andromeda, by Perseus saved and wed,
• Hankered each day to see the Gorgon's head:
• Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean,
• And mirrored in the wave was safely seen
• That death she lived by.

• Let not thine eyes know
• Any forbidden thing itself, although
• It once should save as well as kill: but be
• Its shadow upon life enough for thee.

   

• ‘Sister,’ said busy Amelotte
• To listless Aloÿse;
• ‘Along your wedding-road the wheat
• Bends as to hear your horse's feet,
• And the noonday stands still for heat.’

• Amelotte laughed into the air
• With eyes that sought the sun:
• But where the walls in long brocade
• Were screened, as one who is afraid
• 10 Sat Aloÿse within the shade.

• And even in shade was gleam enough
• To shut out full repose
• From the bride's 'tiring-chamber, which
• Was like the inner altar-niche
• Whose dimness worship has made rich.

• Within the window's heaped recess
• The light was counterchanged
• In blent reflexes manifold
• From perfume-caskets of wrought gold
• 20 And gems the bride's hair could not hold

• All thrust together: and with these
• A slim-curved lute, which now,
• At Amelotte's sudden passing there,
• Was swept in somewise unaware,
• And shook to music the close air.

• Against the haloed lattice-panes
• The bridesmaid sunned her breast
• Then to the glass turned tall and free,
• And braced and shifted daintily
• 30 Her loin-belt through her côte-hardie.

• The belt was silver, and the clasp
• Of lozenged arm-bearings;
• A world of mirrored tints minute
• The rippling sunshine wrought into 't,
• That flushed her hand and warmed her foot.

• At least an hour had Aloÿse,—
• Her jewels in her hair,—
• Her white gown, as became a bride,
• Quartered in silver at each side,—
• 40 Sat thus aloof, as if to hide.

• Over her bosom, that lay still,
• The vest was rich in grain,
• With close pearls wholly overset:
• Around her throat the fastenings met
• Of chevesayle and mantelet.

• Her arms were laid along her lap
• With the hands open: life
• Itself did seem at fault in her:
• Beneath the drooping brows, the stir
• 50 Of thought made noonday heavier.

• Long sat she silent; and then raised
• Her head, with such a gasp
• As while she summoned breath to speak
• Fanned high that furnace in the cheek
• But sucked the heart-pulse cold and weak.

• (Oh gather round her now, all ye
• Past seasons of her fear,—
• Sick springs, and summers deadly cold!
• To flight your hovering wings unfold,
• 60 For now your secret shall be told.

• Ye many sunlights, barbed with darts
• Of dread detecting flame,—
• Gaunt moonlights that like sentinels
• Went past with iron clank of bells,—
• Draw round and render up your spells!)

• ‘Sister,’ said Aloÿse,‘I had
• A thing to tell thee of
• Long since, and could not. But do thou
• Kneel first in prayer awhile, and bow
• 70 Thine heart, and I will tell thee now.’

• Amelotte wondered with her eyes;
• But her heart said in her:
• ‘Dear Aloÿse would have me pray
• Because the awe she feels to-day
• Must need more prayers than she can say.’

• So Amelotte put by the folds
• That covered up her feet,
• And knelt,—beyond the arras'd gloom
• And the hot window's dull perfume,—
• 80 Where day was stillest in the room.

• ‘Queen Mary, hear,’ she said, ‘and say
• To Jesus the Lord Christ,
• This bride's new joy, which He confers,
• New joy to many ministers,
• And many griefs are bound in hers.’

• The bride turned in her chair, and hid
• Her face against the back,
• And took her pearl-girt elbows in
• Her hands, and could not yet begin,
• 90 But shuddering, uttered, ‘Urscelyn!’

• Most weak she was; for as she pressed
• Her hand against her throat,
• Along the arras she let trail
• Her face, as if all heart did fail,
• And sat with shut eyes, dumb and pale.

• Amelotte still was on her knees
• As she had kneeled to pray.
• Deeming her sister swooned, she thought,
• At first, some succour to have brought;
• 100 But Aloÿse rocked, as one distraught.

• She would have pushed the lattice wide
• To gain what breeze might be;
• But marking that no leaf once beat
• The outside casement, it seemed meet
• Not to bring in more scent and heat.

• So she said only: ‘Aloÿse,
• Sister, when happened it
• At any time that the bride came
• To ill, or spoke in fear of shame,
• 110 When speaking first the bridegroom's name?’

• A bird had out its song and ceased
• Ere the bride spoke. At length
• She said: ‘The name is as the thing:—
• Sin hath no second christening,
• And shame is all that shame can bring.

• ‘In divers places many an while
• I would have told thee this;
• But faintness took me, or a fit
• Like fever. God would not permit
• 120 That I should change thine eyes with it.

• ‘Yet once I spoke, hadst thou but heard:—
• That time we wandered out
• All the sun's hours, but missed our way
• When evening darkened, and so lay
• The whole night covered up in hay.

• ‘At last my face was hidden: so,
• Having God's hint, I paused
• Not long; but drew myself more near
• Where thou wast laid, and shook off fear,
• 130 And whispered quick into thine ear

• ‘Something of the whole tale. At first
• I lay and bit my hair
• For the sore silence thou didst keep:
• Till, as thy breath came long and deep,
• I knew that thou hadst been asleep.

• ‘The moon was covered, but the stars
• Lasted till morning broke.
• Awake, thou told'st me that thy dream
• Had been of me,—that all did seem
• 140 At jar,—but that it was a dream.

• ‘I knew God's hand and might not speak.
• After that night I kept
• Silence and let the record swell:
• Till now there is much more to tell
• Which must be told out ill or well.’

• She paused then, weary, with dry lips
• Apart. From the outside
• By fits there boomed a dull report
• From where i' the hanging tennis-court
• 150 The bridegroom's retinue made sport.

• The room lay still in dusty glare,
• Having no sound through it
• Except the chirp of a caged bird
• That came and ceased: and if she stirred,
• Amelotte's raiment could be heard.

• Quoth Amelotte: ‘The night this chanced
• Was a late summer night
• Last year! What secret, for Christ's love,
• Keep'st thou since then? Mary above!
• 160 What thing is this thou speakest of?

• ‘Mary and Christ! Lest when 'tis told
• I should be prone to wrath,—
• This prayer beforehand! How she errs
• Soe'er, take count of grief like hers,
• Whereof the days are turned to years!’

• She bowed her neck, and having said,
• Kept on her knees to hear;
• And then, because strained thought demands
• Quiet before it understands,
• 170 Darkened her eyesight with her hands.

• So when at last her sister spoke,
• She did not see the pain
• O' the mouth nor the ashamèd eyes,
• But marked the breath that came in sighs
• And the half-pausing for replies.

• This was the bride's sad prelude-strain:—
• ‘I'the convent where a girl
• I dwelt till near my womanhood,
• I had but preachings of the rood
• 180 And Aves told in solitude

• ‘To spend my heart on: and my hand
• Had but the weary skill
• To eke out upon silken cloth
• Christ's visage, or the long bright growth
• Of Mary's hair, or Satan wroth.

• ‘So when at last I went, and thou,
• A child not known before,
• Didst come to take the place I left,—
• My limbs, after such lifelong theft
• 190 Of life, could be but little deft

• ‘In all that ministers delight
• To noble women: I
• Had learned no word of youth's discourse,
• Nor gazed on games of warriors,
• Nor trained a hound, nor ruled a horse.

• ‘Besides, the daily life i' the sun
• Made me at first hold back.
• To thee this came at once; to me
• It crept with pauses timidly;
• 200 I am not blithe and strong like thee.

• ‘Yet my feet liked the dances well,
• The songs went to my voice,
• The music made me shake and weep;
• And often, all night long, my sleep
• Gave dreams I had been fain to keep.

• ‘But though I loved not holy things,
• To hear them scorned brought pain,—
• They were my childhood; and these dames
• Were merely perjured in saints' names
• 210 And fixed upon saints' days for games.

• ‘And sometimes when my father rode
• To hunt with his loud friends,
• I dared not bring him to be quaff'd,
• As my wont was, his stirrup-draught,
• Because they jested so and laugh'd.

• ‘At last one day my brothers said,
• “The girl must not grow thus,—
• Bring her a jennet,—she shall ride.”
• They helped my mounting, and I tried
• 220 To laugh with them and keep their side.

• ‘But brakes were rough and bents were steep
• Upon our path that day:
• My palfrey threw me; and I went
• Upon men's shoulders home, sore spent,
• While the chase followed up the scent.

• ‘Our shrift-father (and he alone
• Of all the household there
• Had skill in leechcraft,) was away
• When I reached home. I tossed, and lay
• 230 Sullen with anguish the whole day.

• ‘For the day passed ere some one brought
• To mind that in the hunt
• Rode a young lord she named, long bred
• Among the priests, whose art (she said)
• Might chance to stand me in much stead.

• ‘I bade them seek and summon him:
• But long ere this, the chase
• Had scattered, and he was not found.
• I lay in the same weary stound,
• 240 Therefore, until the night came round.

• ‘It was dead night and near on twelve
• When the horse-tramp at length
• Beat up the echoes of the court:
• By then, my feverish breath was short
• With pain the sense could scarce support.

• ‘My fond nurse sitting near my feet
• Rose softly,—her lamp's flame
• Held in her hand, lest it should make
• My heated lids, in passing, ache;
• 250 And she passed softly, for my sake.

• ‘Returning soon, she brought the youth
• They spoke of. Meek he seemed,
• But good knights held him of stout heart.
• He was akin to us in part,
• And bore our shield, but barred athwart.

• ‘I now remembered to have seen
• His face, and heard him praised
• For letter-lore and medicine,
• Seeing his youth was nurtured in
• 260 Priests' knowledge, as mine own had been.’

• The bride's voice did not weaken here,
• Yet by her sudden pause
• She seemed to look for questioning;
• Or else (small need though) 'twas to bring
• Well to her mind the bygone thing.

• Her thought, long stagnant, stirred by speech,
• Gave her a sick recoil;
• As, dip thy fingers through the green
• That masks a pool,—where they have been
• 270 The naked depth is black between.

• Amelotte kept her knees; her face
• Was shut within her hands,
• As it had been throughout the tale;
• Her forehead's whiteness might avail
• Nothing to say if she were pale.

• Although the lattice had dropped loose,
• There was no wind; the heat
• Being so at rest that Amelotte
• Heard far beneath the plunge and float
• 280 Of a hound swimming in the moat.

• Some minutes since, two rooks had toiled
• Home to the nests that crowned
• Ancestral ash-trees. Through the glare
• Beating again, they seemed to tear
• With that thick caw the woof o' the air.

• But else, 'twas at the dead of noon
• Absolute silence; all,
• From the raised bridge and guarded sconce
• To green-clad places of pleasaùnce
• 290 Where the long lake was white with swans.

• Amelotte spoke not any word
• Nor moved she once; but felt
• Between her hands in narrow space
• Her own hot breath upon her face,
• And kept in silence the same place.

• Aloÿse did not hear at all
• The sounds without. She heard
• The inward voice (past help obey'd)
• Which might not slacken nor be stay'd,
• 300 But urged her till the whole were said.

• Therefore she spoke again: ‘That night
• But little could be done:
• My foot, held in my nurse's hands,
• He swathed up heedfully in bands,
• And for my rest gave close commands.

• ‘I slept till noon, but an ill sleep
• Of dreams: through all that day
• My side was stiff and caught the breath;
• Next day, such pain as sickeneth
• 310 Took me, and I was nigh to death.

• ‘Life strove, Death claimed me for his own
• Through days and nights: but now
• 'Twas the good father tended me,
• Having returned. Still, I did see
• The youth I spoke of constantly.

• ‘For he would with my brothers come
• To stay beside my couch,
• And fix my eyes against his own,
• Noting my pulse; or else alone,
• 320 To sit at gaze while I made moan.

• ‘(Some nights I knew he kept the watch,
• Because my women laid
• The rushes thick for his steel shoes.)
• Through many days this pain did use
• The life God would not let me lose.

• ‘At length, with my good nurse to aid,
• I could walk forth again:
• And still, as one who broods or grieves,
• At noons I'd meet him and at eves,
• 330 With idle feet that drove the leaves.

• ‘The day when I first walked alone
• Was thinned in grass and leaf,
• And yet a goodly day o' the year:
• The last bird's cry upon mine ear
• Left my brain weak, it was so clear.

• The tears were sharp within mine eyes;
• I sat down, being glad,
• And wept; but stayed the sudden flow
• Anon, for footsteps that fell slow;
• 340 'Twas that youth passed me, bowing low.

• ‘He passed me without speech; but when,
• At least an hour gone by,
• Rethreading the same covert, he
• Saw I was still beneath the tree,
• He spoke and sat him down with me.

• ‘Little we said; nor one heart heard
• Even what was said within;
• And, faltering some farewell, I soon
• Rose up; but then i' the autumn noon
• 350 My feeble brain whirled like a swoon.

• ‘He made me sit. “Cousin, I grieve
• Your sickness stays by you.”
• “I would,” said I, “that you did err
• So grieving. I am wearier
• Than death, of the sickening dying year.”

• ‘He answered: “If your weariness
• Accepts a remedy,
• I hold one and can give it you.”
• I gazed: “What ministers thereto,
• 360 Be sure,” I said, “that I will do.”

• ‘He went on quickly:—'Twas a cure
• He had not ever named
• Unto our kin, lest they should stint
• Their favour, for some foolish hint
• Of wizardry or magic in't:

• ‘But that if he were let to come
• Within my bower that night,
• (My women still attending me,
• He said, while he remain'd there,) he
• 370 Could teach me the cure privily.

• ‘I bade him come that night. He came;
• But little in his speech
• Was cure or sickness spoken of,
• Only a passionate fierce love
• That clamoured upon God above.

• ‘My women wondered, leaning close
• Aloof. At mine own heart
• I think great wonder was not stirr'd.
• I dared not listen, yet I heard
• 380 His tangled speech, word within word.

• ‘He craved my pardon first,—all else
• Wild tumult. In the end
• He remained silent at my feet
• Fumbling the rushes. Strange quick heat
• Made all the blood of my life meet.

• ‘And lo! I loved him. I but said,
• If he would leave me then,
• His hope some future might forecast.
• His hot lips stung my hand: at last
• 390 My damsels led him forth in haste.’

• The bride took breath to pause; and turned
• Her gaze where Amelotte
• Knelt,—the gold hair upon her back
• Quite still in all its threads,—the track
• Of her still shadow sharp and black.

• That listening without sight had grown
• To stealthy dread; and now
• That the one sound she had to mark
• Left her alone too, she was stark
• 400 Afraid, as children in the dark.

• Her fingers felt her temples beat;
• Then came that brain-sickness
• Which thinks to scream, and murmureth;
• And pent between her hands, the breath
• Was damp against her face like death.

• Her arms both fell at once; but when
• She gasped upon the light,
• Her sense returned. She would have pray'd
• To change whatever words still stay'd
• 410 Behind, but felt there was no aid.

• So she rose up, and having gone
• Within the window's arch
• Once more, she sat there, all intent
• On torturing doubts, and once more bent
• To hear, in mute bewilderment.

• But Aloÿse still paused. Thereon
• Amelotte gathered voice
• In somewise from the torpid fear
• Coiled round her spirit. Low but clear
• 420 She said: ‘Speak, sister; for I hear.’

• But Aloÿse threw up her neck
• And called the name of God:—
• ‘Judge, God, 'twixt her and me to-day!
• She knows how hard this is to say,
• Yet will not have one word away.’

• Her sister was quite silent. Then
• Afresh:—‘Not she, dear Lord!
• Thou be my judge, on Thee I call!’
• She ceased,—her forehead smote the wall:
• 430 ‘Is there a God,’ she said, ‘at all?’

• Amelotte shuddered at the soul,
• But did not speak. The pause
• Was long this time. At length the bride
• Pressed her hand hard against her side,
• And trembling between shame and pride

• Said by fierce effort: ‘From that night
• Often at nights we met:
• That night, his passion could but rave:
• The next, what grace his lips did crave
• 440 I knew not, but I know I gave.’

• Where Amelotte was sitting, all
• The light and warmth of day
• Were so upon her without shade,
• That the thing seemed by sunshine made
• Most foul and wanton to be said.

• She would have questioned more, and known
• The whole truth at its worst,
• But held her silent, in mere shame
• Of day. 'Twas only these words came:—
• 450 ‘Sister, thou hast not said his name.’

• ‘Sister,’ quoth Aloÿse, ‘thou know'st
• His name. I said that he
• Was in a manner of our kin.
• Waiting the title he might win,
• They called him the Lord Urscelyn.’

• The bridegroom's name, to Amelotte
• Daily familiar,—heard
• Thus in this dreadful history,—
• Was dreadful to her; as might be
• 460 Thine own voice speaking unto thee.

• The day's mid-hour was almost full;
• Upon the dial-plate
• The angel's sword stood near at One.
• An hour's remaining yet; the sun
• Will not decrease till all be done.

• Through the bride's lattice there crept in
• At whiles (from where the train
• Of minstrels, till the marriage-call,
• Loitered at windows of the wall,)
• 470 Stray lute-notes, sweet and musical.

• They clung in the green growths and moss
• Against the outside stone;
• Low like dirge-wail or requiem
• They murmured, lost 'twixt leaf and stem:
• There was no wind to carry them.

• Amelotte gathered herself back
• Into the wide recess
• That the sun flooded: it o'erspread
• Like flame the hair upon her head
• 480 And fringed her face with burning red.

• All things seemed shaken and at change:
• A silent place o' the hills
• She knew, into her spirit came:
• Within herself she said its name
• And wondered was it still the same.

• The bride (whom silence goaded) now
• Said strongly,—her despair
• By stubborn will kept underneath:—
• ‘Sister, 'twere well thou didst not breathe
• 490 That curse of thine. Give me my wreath.’

• ‘Sister,’ said Amelotte, ‘abide
• In peace. Be God thy judge,
• As thou hast said—not I. For me,
• I merely will thank God that he
• Whom thou hast lovèd loveth thee.’

• Then Aloÿse lay back, and laughed
• With wan lips bitterly,
• Saying, ‘Nay, thank thou God for this,—
• That never any soul like his
• 500 Shall have its portion where love is.’

• Weary of wonder, Amelotte
• Sat silent: she would ask
• No more, though all was unexplained:
• She was too weak; the ache still pained
• Her eyes,—her forehead's pulse remained.

• The silence lengthened. Aloÿse
• Was fain to turn her face
• Apart, to where the arras told
• Two Testaments, the New and Old,
• 510 In shapes and meanings manifold.

• One solace that was gained, she hid.
• Her sister, from whose curse
• Her heart recoiled, had blessed instead:
• Yet would not her pride have it said
• How much the blessing comforted.

• Only, on looking round again
• After some while, the face
• Which from the arras turned away
• Was more at peace and less at bay
• 520 With shame than it had been that day.

• She spoke right on, as if no pause
• Had come between her speech:
• ‘That year from warmth grew bleak and pass'd;’
• She said; ‘the days from first to last
• How slow,—woe's me! the nights how fast!’

• ‘From first to last it was not known:
• My nurse, and of my train
• Some four or five, alone could tell
• What terror kept inscrutable:
• 530 There was good need to guard it well.

• ‘Not the guilt only made the shame,
• But he was without land
• And born amiss. He had but come
• To train his youth here at our home
• And, being man, depart therefrom.

• ‘Of the whole time each single day
• Brought fear and great unrest:
• It seemed that all would not avail
• Some once,—that my close watch would fail,
• 540 And some sign, somehow, tell the tale.

• ‘The noble maidens that I knew,
• My fellows, oftentimes
• Midway in talk or sport, would look
• A wonder which my fears mistook,
• To see how I turned faint and shook.

• ‘They had a game of cards, where each
• By painted arms might find
• What knight she should be given to.
• Ever with trembling hand I threw
• 550 Lest I should learn the thing I knew.

• ‘And once it came. And Aure d'Honvaulx
• Held up the bended shield
• And laughed: “Gramercy for our share!—
• If to our bridal we but fare
• To smutch the blazon that we bear!”

• ‘But proud Denise de Villenbois
• Kissed me, and gave her wench
• The card, and said: “If in these bowers
• You women play at paramours,
• 560 You must not mix your game with ours.”

• ‘And one upcast it from her hand:
• “Lo! see how high he'll soar!”
• But then their laugh was bitterest;
• For the wind veered at fate's behest
• And blew it back into my breast.

• ‘Oh! if I met him in the day
• Or heard his voice,—at meals
• Or at the Mass or through the hall,—
• A look turned towards me would appal
• 570 My heart by seeming to know all.

• ‘Yet I grew curious of my shame,
• And sometimes in the church,
• On hearing such a sin rebuked,
• Have held my girdle-glass unhooked
• To see how such a woman looked.

• ‘But if at night he did not come,
• I lay all deadly cold
• To think they might have smitten sore
• And slain him, and as the night wore,
• 580 His corpse be lying at my door.

• ‘And entering or going forth,
• Our proud shield o'er the gate
• Seemed to arraign my shrinking eyes.
• With tremors and unspoken lies
• The year went past me in this wise.

• ‘About the spring of the next year
• An ailing fell on me;
• (I had been stronger till the spring;)
• 'Twas mine old sickness gathering,
• 590 I thought; but 'twas another thing.

• ‘I had such yearnings as brought tears,
• And a wan dizziness:
• Motion, like feeling, grew intense;
• Sight was a haunting evidence
• And sound a pang that snatched the sense.

• ‘It now was hard on that great ill
• Which lost our wealth from us
• And all our lands. Accursed be
• The peevish fools of liberty
• 600 Who will not let themselves be free!

• ‘The Prince was fled into the west:
• A price was on his blood,
• But he was safe. To us his friends
• He left that ruin which attends
• The strife against God's secret ends.

• ‘The league dropped all asunder,—lord,
• Gentle and serf. Our house
• Was marked to fall. And a day came
• When half the wealth that propped our name
• 610 Went from us in a wind of flame.

• ‘Six hours I lay upon the wall
• And saw it burn. But when
• It clogged the day in a black bed
• Of louring vapour, I was led
• Down to the postern, and we fled.

• ‘But ere we fled, there was a voice
• Which I heard speak, and say
• That many of our friends, to shun
• Our fate, had left us and were gone,
• 620 And that Lord Urscelyn was one.

• ‘That name, as was its wont, made sight
• And hearing whirl. I gave
• No heed but only to the name
• I held my senses, dreading them,
• And was at strife to look the same.

• ‘We rode and rode. As the speed grew,
• The growth of some vague curse
• Swarmed in my brain. It seemed to me
• Numbed by the swiftness, but would be—
• 630 That still—clear knowledge certainly.

• ‘Night lapsed. At dawn the sea was there
• And the sea-wind: afar
• The ravening surge was hoarse and loud,
• And underneath the dim dawn-cloud
• Each stalking wave shook like a shroud.

• ‘From my drawn litter I looked out
• Unto the swarthy sea,
• And knew. That voice, which late had cross'd
• Mine ears, seemed with the foam uptoss'd:
• 640 I knew that Urscelyn was lost.

• ‘Then I spake all: I turned on one
• And on the other, and spake:
• My curse laughed in me to behold
• Their eyes: I sat up, stricken cold,
• Mad of my voice till all was told.

• ‘Oh! of my brothers, Hugues was mute,
• And Gilles was wild and loud,
• And Raoul strained abroad his face,
• As if his gnashing wrath could trace
• 650 Even there the prey that it must chase.

• ‘And round me murmured all our train,
• Hoarse as the hoarse-tongued sea;
• Till Hugues from silence louring woke,
• And cried: “What ails the foolish folk?
• Know ye not frenzy's lightning-stroke?”

• ‘But my stern father came to them
• And quelled them with his look,
• Silent and deadly pale. Anon
• I knew that we were hastening on,
• 660 My litter closed and the light gone.

• ‘And I remember all that day
• The barren bitter wind
• Without, and the sea's moaning there
• That I first moaned with unaware,
• And when I knew, shook down my hair.

• ‘Few followed us or faced our flight:
• Once only I could hear,
• Far in the front, loud scornful words,
• And cries I knew of hostile lords,
• 670 And crash of spears and grind of swords.

• ‘It was soon ended. On that day
• Before the light had changed
• We reached our refuge; miles of rock
• Bulwarked for war; whose strength might mock
• Sky, sea, or man, to storm or shock.

• ‘Listless and feebly conscious, I
• Lay far within the night
• Awake. The many pains incurred
• That day,—the whole, said, seen or heard,—
• 680 Stayed by in me as things deferred.

• ‘Not long. At dawn I slept. In dreams
• All was passed through afresh
• From end to end. As the morn heaved
• Towards noon, I, waking sore aggrieved,
• That I might die, cursed God, and lived.

• ‘Many days went, and I saw none
• Except my women. They
• Calmed their wan faces, loving me;
• And when they wept, lest I should see,
• 690 Would chaunt a desolate melody.

• ‘Panic unthreatened shook my blood
• Each sunset, all the slow
• Subsiding of the turbid light.
• I would rise, sister, as I might,
• And bathe my forehead through the night

• ‘To elude madness. The stark walls
• Made chill the mirk: and when
• We oped our curtains, to resume
• Sun-sickness after long sick gloom,
• 700 The withering sea-wind walked the room.

• Through the gaunt windows the great gales
• Bore in the tattered clumps
• Of waif-weed and the tamarisk-boughs;
• And sea-mews, 'mid the storm's carouse,
• Were flung, wild-clamouring, in the house.

• ‘My hounds I had not; and my hawk,
• Which they had saved for me,
• Wanting the sun and rain to beat
• His wings, soon lay with gathered feet;
• 710 And my flowers faded, lacking heat.

• ‘Such still were griefs: for grief was still
• A separate sense, untouched
• Of that despair which had become
• My life. Great anguish could benumb
• My soul,—my heart was quarrelsome.

• ‘Time crept. Upon a day at length
• My kinsfolk sat with me:
• That which they asked was bare and plain:
• I answered: the whole bitter strain
• 720 Was again said, and heard again.

• ‘Fierce Raoul snatched his sword, and turned
• The point against my breast.
• I bared it, smiling: “To the heart
• Strike home,” I said; “another dart
• Wreaks hourly there a deadlier smart.”

• ‘'Twas then my sire struck down the sword,
• And said with shaken lips:
• “She from whom all of you receive
• Your life, so smiled; and I forgive.”
• 730 Thus, for my mother's sake, I live.

• ‘But I, a mother even as she,
• Turned shuddering to the wall:
• For I said: “Great God! and what would I do,
• When to the sword, with the thing I knew,
• I offered not one life but two!”

• ‘Then I fell back from them, and lay
• Outwearied. My tired sense
• Soon filmed and settled, and like stone
• I slept; till something made me moan,
• 740 And I woke up at night alone.

• ‘I woke at midnight, cold and dazed;
• Because I found myself
• Seated upright, with bosom bare,
• Upon my bed, combing my hair,
• Ready to go, I knew not where.

• ‘It dawned light day,—the last of those
• Long months of longing days.
• That noon, the change was wrought on me
• In somewise,—nought to hear or see,—
• 750 Only a trance and agony.’

• The bride's voice failed her, from no will
• To pause. The bridesmaid leaned,
• And where the window-panes were white,
• Looked for the day: she knew not quite
• If there were either day or night.

• It seemed to Aloÿse that the whole
• Day's weight lay back on her
• Like lead. The hours that did remain
• Beat their dry wings upon her brain
• 760 Once in mid-flight, and passed again.

• There hung a cage of burnt perfumes
• In the recess: but these,
• For some hours, weak against the sun,
• Had simmered in white ash. From One
• The second quarter was begun.

• They had not heard the stroke. The air,
• Though altered with no wind,
• Breathed now by pauses, so to say:
• Each breath was time that went away,—
• 770 Each pause a minute of the day.

• I' the almonry, the almoner,
• Hard by, had just dispensed
• Church-dole and march-dole. High and wide
• Now rose the shout of thanks, which cried
• On God that He should bless the bride.

• Its echo thrilled within their feet,
• And in the furthest rooms
• Was heard, where maidens flushed and gay
• Wove with stooped necks the wreaths alway
• 780 Fair for the virgin's marriage-day.

• The mother leaned along, in thought
• After her child; till tears,
• Bitter, not like a wedded girl's,
• Fell down her breast along her curls,
• And ran in the close work of pearls.

• The speech ached at her heart. She said:
• ‘Sweet Mary, do thou plead
• This hour with thy most blessed Son
• To let these shameful words atone,
• 790 That I may die when I have done.’

• The thought ached at her soul. Yet now:—
• ‘Itself—that life’ (she said,)
• Out of my weary life—when sense
• Unclosed, was gone. What evil men's
• Most evil hands had borne it thence

• ‘I knew, and cursed them. Still in sleep
• I have my child; and pray
• To know if it indeed appear
• As in my dream's perpetual sphere,
• 800 That I—death reached—may seek it there.

• ‘Sleeping, I wept; though until dark
• A fever dried mine eyes
• Kept open; save when a tear might
• Be forced from the mere ache of sight.
• And I nursed hatred day and night.

• ‘Aye, and I sought revenge by spells;
• And vainly many a time
• Have laid my face into the lap
• Of a wise woman, and heard clap
• 810 Her thunder, the fiend's juggling trap.

• ‘At length I feared to curse them, lest
• From evil lips the curse
• Should be a blessing; and would sit
• Rocking myself and stifling it
• With babbled jargon of no wit.

• ‘But this was not at first: the days
• And weeks made frenzied months
• Before this came. My curses, pil'd
• Then with each hour unreconcil'd,
• 820 Still wait for those who took my child.’

• She stopped, grown fainter. ‘Amelotte,
• Surely,’ she said, ‘this sun
• Sheds judgment-fire from the fierce south:
• It does not let me breathe: the drouth
• Is like sand spread within my mouth.’

• The bridesmaid rose. I' the outer glare
• Gleamed her pale cheeks, and eyes
• Sore troubled; and aweary weigh'd
• Her brows just lifted out of shade;
• 830 And the light jarred within her head.

• 'Mid flowers fair-heaped there stood a bowl
• With water. She therein
• Through eddying bubbles slid a cup,
• And offered it, being risen up,
• Close to her sister's mouth, to sup.

• The freshness dwelt upon her sense,
• Yet did not the bride drink;
• But she dipped in her hand anon
• And cooled her temples; and all wan
• 840 With lids that held their ache, went on.

• Through those dark watches of my woe,
• Time, an ill plant, had waxed
• Apace. That year was finished. Dumb
• And blind, life's wheel with earth's had come
• Whirled round: and we might seek our home.

• ‘Our wealth was rendered back, with wealth
• Snatched from our foes. The house
• Had more than its old strength and fame:
• But still 'neath the fair outward claim
• 850 I rankled,—a fierce core of shame.

• ‘It chilled me from their eyes and lips
• Upon a night of those
• First days of triumph, as I gazed
• Listless and sick, or scarcely raised
• My face to mark the sports they praised.

• ‘The endless changes of the dance
• Bewildered me: the tones
• Of lute and cithern struggled tow'rds
• Some sense; and still in the last chords
• 860 The music seemed to sing wild words.

• ‘My shame possessed me in the light
• And pageant, till I swooned.
• But from that hour I put my shame
• From me, and cast it over them
• By God's command and in God's name

• ‘For my child's bitter sake. O thou
• Once felt against my heart
• With longing of the eyes,—a pain
• Since to my heart for ever,—then
• 870 Beheld not, and not felt again!’

• She scarcely paused, continuing:—
• ‘That year drooped weak in March;
• And April, finding the streams dry,
• Choked, with no rain, in dust: the sky
• Shall not be fainter this July.

• ‘Men sickened; beasts lay without strength;
• The year died in the land.
• But I, already desolate,
• Said merely, sitting down to wait,—
• 880 “The seasons change and Time wears late.”

• ‘For I had my hard secret told,
• In secret, to a priest;
• With him I communed; and he said
• The world's soul, for its sins, was sped,
• And the sun's courses numberèd.

• ‘The year slid like a corpse afloat:
• None trafficked,—who had bread
• Did eat. That year our legions, come
• Thinned from the place of war, at home
• 890 Found busier death, more burdensome.

• ‘Tidings and rumours came with them,
• The first for months. The chiefs
• Sat daily at our board, and in
• Their speech were names of friend and kin:
• One day they spoke of Urscelyn.

• ‘The words were light, among the rest:
• Quick glance my brothers sent
• To sift the speech; and I, struck through,
• Sat sick and giddy in full view:
• 900 Yet did none gaze, so many knew.

• ‘Because in the beginning, much
• Had caught abroad, through them
• That heard my clamour on the coast:
• But two were hanged; and then the most
• Held silence wisdom, as thou know'st.

• ‘That year the convent yielded thee
• Back to our home; and thou
• Then knew'st not how I shuddered cold
• To kiss thee, seeming to enfold
• 910 To my changed heart myself of old.

• ‘Then there was showing thee the house,
• So many rooms and doors;
• Thinking the while how thou would'st start
• If once I flung the doors apart
• Of one dull chamber in my heart.

• ‘And yet I longed to open it;
• And often in that year
• Of plague and want, when side by side
• We've knelt to pray with them that died,
• 920 My prayer was, “Show her what I hide!”’

       

• Between the hands, between the brows,
• Between the lips of Love-Lily,
• A spirit is born whose birth endows
• My blood with fire to burn through me;
• Who breathes upon my gazing eyes,
• Who laughs and murmurs in mine ear,
• At whose least touch my colour flies,
• And whom my life grows faint to hear.

• Within the voice, within the heart,
• 10 Within the mind of Love-Lily,
• A spirit is born who lifts apart
• His tremulous wings and looks at me;
• Who on my mouth his finger lays,
• And shows, while whispering lutes confer,
• That Eden of Love's watered ways
• Whose winds and spirits worship her.

• Brows, hands, and lips, heart, mind, and voice,
• Kisses and words of Love-Lily,—
• Oh! bid me with your joy rejoice
• 20 Till riotous longing rest in me!
• Ah! let not hope be still distraught,
• But find in her its gracious goal,
• Whose speech Truth knows not from her thought
• Nor Love her body from her soul.

   

• Peace in her chamber, wheresoe'er
• It be, a holy place:
• The thought still brings my soul such grace
• As morning meadows wear.

• Whether it still be small and light,
• A maid's who dreams alone,
• As from her orchard-gate the moon
• Its ceiling showed at night:

• Or whether, in a shadow dense
• 10 As nuptial hymns invoke,
• Innocent maidenhood awoke
• To married innocence:

• There still the thanks unheard await
• The unconscious gift bequeathed:
• For there my soul this hour has breathed
• An air inviolate.

   

• In a soft-complexioned sky,
• Fleeting rose and kindling grey,
• Have you seen Aurora fly
• At the break of day?
• So my maiden, so my plighted may
• Blushing cheek and gleaming eye
• Lifts to look my way.

• Where the inmost leaf is stirred
• With the heart-beat of the grove,
• 10 Have you heard a hidden bird
• Cast her note above?
• So my lady, so my lovely love,
• Echoing Cupid's prompted word,
• Makes a tune thereof.

• Have you seen, at heaven's mid-height,
• In the moon-rack's ebb and tide,
• Venus leap forth burning white,
• Dian pale and hide?
• So my bright breast-jewel, so my bride,
• 20 One sweet night, when fear takes flight,
• Shall leap against my side.

   

• I have been here before,
• But when or how I cannot tell:
• I know the grass beyond the door,
• The sweet keen smell,
• The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

• You have been mine before,—
• How long ago I may not know:
• But just when at that swallow's soar
• Your neck turned so,
• 10 Some veil did fall,—I knew it all of yore.

• Has this been thus before?
• And shall not thus time's eddying flight
• Still with our lives our love restore
• In death's despite,
• And day and night yield one delight once more?

   

• A little while a little love
• The hour yet bears for thee and me
• Who have not drawn the veil to see
• If still our heaven be lit above.
• Thou merely, at the day's last sigh,
• Hast felt thy soul prolong the tone;
• And I have heard the night-wind cry
• And deemed its speech mine own.

• A little while a little love
• 10 The scattering autumn hoards for us
• Whose bower is not yet ruinous
• Nor quite unleaved our songless grove.
• Only across the shaken boughs
• We hear the flood-tides seek the sea,
• And deep in both our hearts they rouse
• One wail for thee and me.

• A little while a little love
• May yet be ours who have not said
• The word it makes our eyes afraid
• 20 To know that each is thinking of.
• Not yet the end: be our lips dumb
• In smiles a little season yet:
• I'll tell thee, when the end is come,
• How we may best forget.

   

• Say, is it day, is it dusk in thy bower,
• Thou whom I long for, who longest for me?
• Oh! be it light, be it night, 'tis Love's hour,
• Love's that is fettered as Love's that is free.
• Free Love has leaped to that innermost chamber,
• Oh! the last time, and the hundred before:
• Fettered Love, motionless, can but remember,
• Yet something that sighs from him passes the door.

• Nay, but my heart when it flies to thy bower,
• 10 What does it find there that knows it again?
• There it must droop like a shower-beaten flower,
• Red at the rent core and dark with the rain.
• Ah! yet what shelter is still shed above it,—
• What waters still image its leaves torn apart?
• Thy soul is the shade that clings round it to love it,
• And tears are its mirror deep down in thy heart.

• What were my prize, could I enter thy bower,
• This day, to-morrow, at eve or at morn?
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• Large lovely arms and a neck like a tower,
• 20 Bosom then heaving that now lies forlorn.
• Kindled with love-breath, (the sun's kiss is colder!)
• Thy sweetness all near me, so distant to-day;
• My hand round thy neck and thy hand on my shoulder,
• My mouth to thy mouth as the world melts away.

• What is it keeps me afar from thy bower,—
• My spirit, my body, so fain to be there?
• Waters engulfing or fires that devour?—
• Earth heaped against me or death in the air?
• Nay, but in day-dreams, for terror, for pity,
• 30 The trees wave their heads with an omen to tell;
• Nay, but in night-dreams, throughout the dark city,
• The hours, clashed together, lose count in the bell.

• Shall I not one day remember thy bower,
• One day when all days are one day to me?—
• Thinking, ‘I stirred not, and yet had the power!’—
• Yearning, ‘Ah God, if again it might be!’
• Peace, peace! such a small lamp illumes, on this highway,
• So dimly so few steps in front of my feet,—
• Yet shows me that her way is parted from my way. . . .
• 40 Out of sight, beyond light, at what goal may we meet?

   

• I did not look upon her eyes,
• (Though scarcely seen, with no surprise,
• 'Mid many eyes a single look,)
• Because they should not gaze rebuke,
• At night, from stars in sky and brook.

• I did not take her by the hand,
• (Though little was to understand
• From touch of hand all friends might take,)
• Because it should not prove a flake
• 10 Burnt in my palm to boil and ache.

• I did not listen to her voice,
• (Though none had noted, where at choice
• All might rejoice in listening,)
• Because no such a thing should cling
• In the wood's moan at evening.

• I did not cross her shadow once,
• (Though from the hollow west the sun's
• Last shadow runs along so far,)
• Because in June it should not bar
• 20 My ways, at noon when fevers are.

• They told me she was sad that day,
• (Though wherefore tell what love's soothsay,
• Sooner than they, did register?)
• And my heart leapt and wept to her,
• And yet I did not speak nor stir.

• So shall the tongues of the sea's foam
• (Though many voices therewith come
• From drowned hope's home to cry to me,)
• Bewail one hour the more, when sea
• 30 And wind are one with memory.

   

• Along the grass sweet airs are blown
• Our way this day in Spring.
• Of all the songs that we have known
• Now which one shall we sing?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love? why, so!—
• Yet both were ours, but hours will come and go.

• The grove is all a pale frail mist,
• The new year sucks the sun.
• 10 Of all the kisses that we kissed
• Now which shall be the one?
• Not that, my love, ah no!—
• Not this, my love?—heigh-ho
• For all the sweets that all the winds can blow!

• The branches cross above our eyes,
• The skies are in a net:
• And what's the thing beneath the skies
• We two would most forget?
• Not birth, my love, no, no,—
• 20 Not death, my love, no, no,—
• The love once ours, but ours long hours ago.

   

• So it is, my dear.
• All such things touch secret strings
• For heavy hearts to hear.
• So it is, my dear.

• Very like indeed:
• Sea and sky, afar, on high,
• Sand and strewn seaweed,—
• Very like indeed.

• But the sea stands spread
• 10 As one wall with the flat skies,
• Where the lean black craft like flies
• Seem well-nigh stagnated,
• Soon to drop off dead.

• Seemed it so to us
• When I was thine and thou wast mine,
• And all these things were thus,
• But all our world in us?

• Could we be so now?
• Not if all beneath heaven's pall
• 20 Lay dead but I and thou,
• Could we be so now!

   

• The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
• Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
• I had walked on at the wind's will,—
• I sat now, for the wind was still.

• Between my knees my forehead was,—
• My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
• My hair was over in the grass,
• My naked ears heard the day pass.

• My eyes, wide open, had the run
• 10 Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
• Among those few, out of the sun,
• The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

• From perfect grief there need not be
• Wisdom or even memory:
• One thing then learnt remains to me,—
• The woodspurge has a cup of three.

   

• I plucked a honeysuckle where
• The hedge on high is quick with thorn,
• And climbing for the prize, was torn,
• And fouled my feet in quag-water;
• And by the thorns and by the wind
• The blossom that I took was thinn'd,
• And yet I found it sweet and fair.

• Thence to a richer growth I came,
• Where, nursed in mellow intercourse,
• 10 The honeysuckles sprang by scores,
• Not harried like my single stem,
• All virgin lamps of scent and dew.
• So from my hand that first I threw,
• Yet plucked not any more of them.

   

• These little firs to-day are things
• To clasp into a giant's cap,
• Or fans to suit his lady's lap.
• From many winters many springs
• Shall cherish them in strength and sap,
• Till they be marked upon the map,
• A wood for the wind's wanderings.

• All seed is in the sower's hands:
• And what at first was trained to spread
• 10 Its shelter for some single head,—
• Yea, even such fellowship of wands,—
• May hide the sunset, and the shade
• Of its great multitude be laid
• Upon the earth and elder sands.

   

• Consider the sea's listless chime:
• Time's self it is, made audible,—
• The murmur of the earth's own shell.
• Secret continuance sublime
• Is the sea's end: our sight may pass
• No furlong further. Since time was,
• This sound hath told the lapse of time.

• No quiet, which is death's,—it hath
• The mournfulness of ancient life,
• 10 Enduring always at dull strife.
• As the world's heart of rest and wrath,
• Its painful pulse is in the sands.
• Last utterly, the whole sky stands,
• Grey and not known, along its path.

• Listen alone beside the sea,
• Listen alone among the woods;
• Those voices of twin solitudes
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• Shall have one sound alike to thee:
• Hark where the murmurs of thronged men
• 20 Surge and sink back and surge again,—
• Still the one voice of wave and tree.

• Gather a shell from the strown beach
• And listen at its lips: they sigh
• The same desire and mystery,
• The echo of the whole sea's speech.
• And all mankind is thus at heart
• Not anything but what thou art:
• And Earth, Sea, Man, are all in each.

       

• Mother, is this the darkness of the end,
• The Shadow of Death? and is that outer sea
• Infinite imminent Eternity?
• And does the death-pang by man's seed sustain'd
• In Time's each instant cause thy face to bend
• Its silent prayer upon the Son, while he
• Blesses the dead with his hand silently
• To his long day which hours no more offend?

• Mother of grace, the pass is difficult,
• 10 Keen as these rocks, and the bewildered souls
• Throng it like echoes, blindly shuddering through.
• Thy name, O Lord, each spirit's voice extols,
• Whose peace abides in the dark avenue
• Amid the bitterness of things occult.

   

• Water, for anguish of the solstice:—nay,
• But dip the vessel slowly,—nay, but lean
• And hark how at its verge the wave sighs in
• Reluctant. Hush! Beyond all depth away
• The heat lies silent at the brink of day:
• Now the hand trails upon the viol-string
• That sobs, and the brown faces cease to sing,
• Sad with the whole of pleasure. Whither stray
• Her eyes now, from whose mouth the slim pipes creep
• 10 And leave it pouting, while the shadowed grass
• Is cool against her naked side? Let be:—
• Say nothing now unto her lest she weep,
• Nor name this ever. Be it as it was,—
• Life touching lips with Immortality.

   

• Scarcely, I think; yet it indeed may be
• The meaning reached him, when this music rang
• Clear through his frame, a sweet possessive pang,
• And he beheld these rocks and that ridged sea.
• But I believe that, leaning tow'rds them, he
• Just felt their hair carried across his face
• As each girl passed him; nor gave ear to trace
• How many feet; nor bent assuredly
• His eyes from the blind fixedness of thought
• 10 To know the dancers. It is bitter glad
• Even unto tears. Its meaning filleth it,
• A secret of the wells of Life: to wit:—
• The heart's each pulse shall keep the sense it had
• With all, though the mind's labour run to nought.

       

• A remote sky, prolonged to the sea's brim:
• One rock-point standing buffeted alone,
• Vexed at its base with a foul beast unknown,
• Hell-birth of geomaunt and teraphim:
• A knight, and a winged creature bearing him,
• Reared at the rock: a woman fettered there,
• Leaning into the hollow with loose hair
• And throat let back and heartsick trail of limb.

• The sky is harsh, and the sea shrewd and salt:
• 10 Under his lord the griffin-horse ramps blind
• With rigid wings and tail. The spear's lithe stem
• Thrills in the roaring of those jaws: behind,
• That evil length of body chafes at fault.
• She doth not hear nor see—she knows of them.

   

• Clench thine eyes now,—'tis the last instant, girl:
• Draw in thy senses, set thy knees, and take
• One breath for all: thy life is keen awake,—
• Thou mayst not swoon. Was that the scattered whirl
• Of its foam drenched thee?—or the waves that curl
• And split, bleak spray wherein thy temples ache?
• Or was it his the champion's blood to flake
• Thy flesh?—or thine own blood's anointing, girl?

• Now, silence: for the sea's is such a sound
• 10 As irks not silence; and except the sea,
• All now is still. Now the dead thing doth cease
• To writhe, and drifts. He turns to her: and she,
• Cast from the jaws of Death, remains there, bound,
• Again a woman in her nakedness.

   

• Dusk-haired and gold-robed o'er the golden wine
• She stoops, wherein, distilled of death and shame,
• Sink the black drops; while, lit with fragrant flame,
• Round her spread board the golden sunflowers shine.
• Doth Helios here with Hecatè combine
• (O Circe, thou their votaress?) to proclaim
• For these thy guests all rapture in Love's name,
• Till pitiless Night give Day the countersign?

• Lords of their hour, they come. And by her knee
• 10 Those cowering beasts, their equals heretofore,
• Wait; who with them in new equality
• To-night shall echo back the sea's dull roar
• With a vain wail from passion's tide-strown shore
• Where the dishevelled seaweed hates the sea.

   

• This is that blessed Mary, pre-elect
• God's Virgin. Gone is a great while, and she
• Dwelt young in Nazareth of Galilee.
• Unto God's will she brought devout respect,
• Profound simplicity of intellect,
• And supreme patience. From her mother's knee
• Faithful and hopeful; wise in charity;
• Strong in grave peace; in pity circumspect.

• So held she through her girlhood; as it were
• 10 An angel-watered lily, that near God
• Grows and is quiet. Till, one dawn at home,
• She woke in her white bed, and had no fear
• At all,—yet wept till sunshine, and felt awed:
• Because the fulness of the time was come.

   

• Here meet together the prefiguring day
• And day prefigured. ‘Eating, thou shalt stand,
• Feet shod, loins girt, thy road-staff in thine hand,
• With blood-stained door and lintel,’—did God say
• By Moses' mouth in ages passed away.
• And now, where this poor household doth comprise
• At Paschal-Feast two kindred families,—
• Lo! the slain lamb confronts the Lamb to slay.

• The pyre is piled. What agony's crown attained,
• 10 What shadow of Death the Boy's fair brow subdues
• Who holds that blood wherewith the porch is stained
• By Zachary the priest? John binds the shoes
• He deemed himself not worthy to unloose;
• And Mary culls the bitter herbs ordained.

   

• ‘Why wilt thou cast the roses from thine hair?
• Nay, be thou all a rose,—wreath, lips, and cheek.
• Nay, not this house,—that banquet-house we seek;
• See how they kiss and enter; come thou there.
• This delicate day of love we two will share
• Till at our ear love's whispering night shall speak.
• What, sweet one,—hold'st thou still the foolish freak?
• Nay, when I kiss thy feet they'll leave the stair.’

• ‘Oh loose me! See'st thou not my Bridegroom's face
• 10 That draws me to Him? For His feet my kiss,
• My hair, my tears He craves to-day:—and oh!
• What words can tell what other day and place
• Shall see me clasp those blood-stained feet of His?
• He needs me, calls me, loves me: let me go!’

       

• Rend, rend thine hair, Cassandra: he will go.
• Yea, rend thy garments, wring thine hands, and cry
• From Troy still towered to the unreddened sky.
• See, all but she that bore thee mock thy woe:—
• He most whom that fair woman arms, with show
• Of wrath on her bent brows; for in this place
• This hour thou bad'st all men in Helen's face
• The ravished ravishing prize of Death to know.

• What eyes, what ears hath sweet Andromache,
• 10 Save for her Hector's form and step; as tear
• On tear make salt the warm last kiss he gave?
• He goes. Cassandra's words beat heavily
• Like crows above his crest, and at his ear
• Ring hollow in the shield that shall not save.

   

• ‘O Hector, gone, gone, gone! O Hector, thee
• Two chariots wait, in Troy long bless'd and curs'd;
• And Grecian spear and Phrygian sand athirst
• Crave from thy veins the blood of victory.
• Lo! long upon our hearth the brand had we,
• Lit for the roof-tree's ruin: and to-day
• The ground-stone quits the wall,—the wind hath way,—
• And higher and higher the wings of fire are free.

• O Paris, Paris! O thou burning brand,
• 10 Thou beacon of the sea whence Venus rose,
• Lighting thy race to shipwreck! Even that hand
• Wherewith she took thine apple let her close
• Within thy curls at last, and while Troy glows
• Lift thee her trophy to the sea and land.’

   

• She hath the apple in her hand for thee,
• Yet almost in her heart would hold it back;
• She muses, with her eyes upon the track
• Of that which in thy spirit they can see.
• Haply, ‘Behold, he is at peace,’ saith she;
• ‘Alas! the apple for his lips,—the dart
• That follows its brief sweetness to his heart,—
• The wandering of his feet perpetually!’

• A little space her glance is still and coy;
• 10 But if she give the fruit that works her spell,
• Those eyes shall flame as for her Phrygian boy.
• Then shall her bird's strained throat the woe foretell,
• And her far seas moan as a single shell,
• And through her dark grove strike the light of Troy.

   

• What of the end, Pandora? Was it thine,
• The deed that set these fiery pinions free?
• Ah! wherefore did the Olympian consistory
• In its own likeness make thee half divine?
• Was it that Juno's brow might stand a sign
• For ever? and the mien of Pallas be
• A deadly thing? and that all men might see
• In Venus' eyes the gaze of Proserpine?

• What of the end? These beat their wings at will,
• 10 The ill-born things, the good things turned to ill,—
• Powers of the impassioned hours prohibited.
• Aye, clench the casket now! Whither they go
• Thou mayst not dare to think: nor canst thou know
• If Hope still pent there be alive or dead.

   

• Not that the earth is changing, O my God!
• Nor that the seasons totter in their walk,—
• Not that the virulent ill of act and talk
• Seethes ever as a winepress ever trod,—
• Not therefore are we certain that the rod
• Weighs in thine hand to smite thy world; though now
• Beneath thine hand so many nations bow,
• So many kings:—not therefore, O my God!—

• But because Man is parcelled out in men
• 10 To-day; because, for any wrongful blow,
• No man not stricken asks, ‘I would be told
• Why thou dost thus;’ but his heart whispers then,
• ‘He is he, I am I.’ By this we know
• That our earth falls asunder, being old.

   

• As he that loves oft looks on the dear form
• And guesses how it grew to womanhood,
• And gladly would have watched the beauties bud
• And the mild fire of precious life wax warm:—
• So I, long bound within the threefold charm
• Of Dante's love sublimed to heavenly mood,
• Had marvelled, touching his Beatitude,
• How grew such presence from man's shameful swarm.

• At length within this book I found pourtrayed
• 10 Newborn that Paradisal Love of his,
• And simple like a child; with whose clear aid
• I understood. To such a child as this,
• Christ, charging well his chosen ones, forbade
• Offence: ‘for lo! of such my kingdom is.’

   

• And did'st thou know indeed, when at the font
• Together with thy name thou gav'st me his,
• That also on thy son must Beatrice
• Decline her eyes according to her wont,
• Accepting me to be of those that haunt
• The vale of magical dark mysteries
• Where to the hills her poet's foot-track lies
• And wisdom's living fountain to his chaunt
• Trembles in music? This is that steep land
• 10 Where he that holds his journey stands at gaze
• Tow'rd sunset, when the clouds like a new height
• Seem piled to climb. These things I understand:
• For here, where day still soothes my lifted face,
• On thy bowed head, my father, fell the night.

   

• She fluted with her mouth as when one sips,
• And gently waved her golden head, inclin'd
• Outside his cage close to the window-blind;
• Till her fond bird, with little turns and dips,
• Piped low to her of sweet companionships.
• And when he made an end, some seed took she
• And fed him from her tongue, which rosily
• Peeped as a piercing bud between her lips.

• And like the child in Chaucer, on whose tongue
• 10 The Blessed Mary laid, when he was dead,
• A grain,—who straightway praised her name in song:
• Even so, when she, a little lightly red,
• Now turned on me and laughed, I heard the throng
• Of inner voices praise her golden head.

   

• Weary already, weary miles to-night
• I walked for bed: and so, to get some ease,
• I dogged the flying moon with similes.
• And like a wisp she doubled on my sight
• In ponds; and caught in tree-tops like a kite;
• And in a globe of film all liquorish
• Swam full-faced like a silly silver fish;—
• Last like a bubble shot the welkin's height
• Where my road turned, and got behind me, and sent
• 10 My wizened shadow craning round at me,
• And jeered, ‘So, step the measure,—one two three!’—
• And if I faced on her, looked innocent.
• But just at parting, halfway down a dell,
• She kissed me for good-night. So you'll not tell.

       

• Tell me now in what hidden way is
• Lady Flora the lovely Roman?
• Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais,
• Neither of them the fairer woman?
• Where is Echo, beheld of no man,
• Only heard on river and mere,—
• She whose beauty was more than human? . . .
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

• Where's Héloise, the learned nun,
• 10 For whose sake Abeillard, I ween,
• Lost manhood and put priesthood on?
• (From Love he won such dule and teen!)
• And where, I pray you, is the Queen
• Who willed that Buridan should steer
• Sewed in a sack's mouth down the Seine? . . .
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

• White Queen Blanche, like a queen of lilies,
• With a voice like any mermaiden,—
• Bertha Broadfoot, Beatrice, Alice,
• 20 And Ermengarde the lady of Maine,—
• And that good Joan whom Englishmen
• At Rouen doomed and burned her there,—
• Mother of God, where are they then? . . .
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

• Nay, never ask this week, fair lord,
• Where they are gone, nor yet this year,
• Save with thus much for an overword,—
• But where are the snows of yester-year?

   

• Death, of thee do I make my moan,
• Who hadst my lady away from me,
• Nor wilt assuage thine enmity
• Till with her life thou hast mine own;
• For since that hour my strength has flown.
• Lo! what wrong was her life to thee,
• Death?

• Two we were, and the heart was one;
• Which now being dead, dead I must be,
• 10 Or seem alive as lifelessly
• As in the choir the painted stone,
• Death!

   

• Lady of Heaven and earth, and therewithal
• Crowned Empress of the nether clefts of Hell,—
• I, thy poor Christian, on thy name do call,
• Commending me to thee, with thee to dwell,
• Albeit in nought I be commendable.
• But all mine undeserving may not mar
• Such mercies as thy sovereign mercies are;
• Without the which (as true words testify)
• No soul can reach thy Heaven so fair and far.
• 10 Even in this faith I choose to live and die.

• Unto thy Son say thou that I am His,
• And to me graceless make Him gracious.
• Sad Mary of Egypt lacked not of that bliss,
• Nor yet the sorrowful clerk Theophilus,
• Whose bitter sins were set aside even thus
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• Though to the Fiend his bounden service was.
• Oh help me, lest in vain for me should pass
• (Sweet Virgin that shalt have no loss thereby!)
• The blessed Host and sacring of the Mass.
• 20 Even in this faith I choose to live and die.

• A pitiful poor woman, shrunk and old,
• I am, and nothing learn'd in letter-lore.
• Within my parish-cloister I behold
• A painted Heaven where harps and lutes adore,
• And eke an Hell whose damned folk seethe full sore:
• One bringeth fear, the other joy to me.
• That joy, great Goddess, make thou mine to be,—
• Thou of whom all must ask it even as I;
• And that which faith desires, that let it see.
• 30 For in this faith I choose to live and die.

• O excellent Virgin Princess! thou didst bear
• King Jesus, the most excellent comforter,
• Who even of this our weakness craved a share
• And for our sake stooped to us from on high,
• Offering to death His young life sweet and fair.
• Such as He is, Our Lord, I Him declare,
• And in this faith I choose to live and die.

   

• John of Tours is back with peace,
• But he comes home ill at ease.

• ‘Good-morrow, mother.’ ‘Good-morrow, son;
• Your wife has borne you a little one.’

• ‘Go now, mother, go before,
• Make me a bed upon the floor;

• ‘Very low your foot must fall,
• That my wife hear not at all.’

• As it neared the midnight toll,
• 10 John of Tours gave up his soul.

• ‘Tell me now, my mother my dear,
• What's the crying that I hear?’

• ‘Daughter, it's the children wake
• Crying with their teeth that ache.’

• ‘Tell me though, my mother my dear,
• What's the knocking that I hear?’

• ‘Daughter, it's the carpenter
• Mending planks upon the stair.’

• ‘Tell me too, my mother my dear,
• 20 What's the singing that I hear?’

• ‘Daughter, it's the priests in rows
• Going round about our house.’

• ‘Tell me then, my mother my dear,
• What's the dress that I should wear?’

• ‘Daughter, any reds or blues,
• But the black is most in use.’

• ‘Nay, but say, my mother my dear,
• Why do you fall weeping here?’

• ‘Oh! the truth must be said,—
• 30 It's that John of Tours is dead.’

• ‘Mother, let the sexton know
• That the grave must be for two;

• ‘Aye, and still have room to spare,
• For you must shut the baby there.’

   

• Inside my father's close,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• Sweet apple-blossom blows
• So sweet.

• Three kings' daughters fair,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• They lie below it there
• So sweet.

• ‘Ah!’ says the eldest one,
• 10 (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘I think the day's begun
• So sweet.’

• ‘Ah!’ says the second one,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘Far off I hear the drum
• So sweet.’

• ‘Ah!’ says the youngest one,
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘It's my true love, my own,
• 20 So sweet.

• ‘Oh! if he fight and win,’
• (Fly away O my heart away!)
• ‘I keep my love for him,
• So sweet:
• Oh! let him lose or win,
• He hath it still complete.’

   

• I.
• Like the sweet apple which reddens upon the topmost
• bough,
• A-top on the topmost twig,—which the pluckers forgot,
• somehow,—
• Forgot it not, nay, but got it not, for none could get it
• till now.

• II.
• Like the wild hyacinth flower which on the hills is
• found,
• Which the passing feet of the shepherds for ever tear
• and wound,
• Until the purple blossom is trodden into the ground.

       

• My young lord's the lover
• Of earth and sky above,
• Of youth's sway and youth's play,
• Of songs and flowers and love.

   

• Yet for love's desire
• Green youth lacks the daring;
• Though one dream of fire,
• All his hours ensnaring,
• Burns the boy past bearing,—
• 10 The dream that girls inspire.

• My young lord's the lover
• Of every burning thought
• That Love's will, that Love's skill
• Within his breast has wrought.

• Lovely girl, look on him
• Soft as music's measure;
• Yield him, when you've won him,
• Joys and toys at pleasure;
• But to win your treasure,
• 20 Softly look upon him.

• My young lord's the lover
• Of every tender grace
• That woman, to woo man,
• Can wear in form or face.

• Take him to your bosom
• Now, girl, or never;
• Let not your new blossom
• Of sweet kisses sever;
• Only guard for ever
• 30 Your boast within your bosom.

• My young lord's the lover
• Of every secret thing,
• Love-hidden, love-bidden
• This day to banqueting.

• Lovely girl, with vaunting
• Never tempt to-morrow:
• From all shapes enchanting
• Any joy can borrow,
• Still the spectre Sorrow
• 40 Rises up for haunting.

• And now my lord's the lover
• Of ah! so many a sweet,—
• Of roses, of spouses,
• As many as love may greet.

   

• ‘Torn from your parent bough,
• Poor leaf all withered now,
• Where go you?’ ‘I cannot tell.
• Storm-stricken is the oak-tree
• Where I grew, whence I fell.
• Changeful continually,
• The zephyr and hurricane
• Since that day bid me flee
• From deepest woods to the lea,
• 10 From highest hills to the plain.
• Where the wind carries me
• I go without fear or grief:
• I go whither each one goes,—
• Thither the leaf of the rose
• And thither the laurel-leaf.’

   

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• When I made answer, I began: ‘Alas!
• How many sweet thoughts and how much desire
• Led these two onward to the dolorous pass!’
• Then turned to them, as who would fain inquire,
• And said: ‘Francesca, these thine agonies
• Wring tears for pity and grief that they inspire:
• But tell me,—in the season of sweet sighs,
• When and what way did Love instruct you so
• That he in your vague longings made you wise?
• 10 Then she to me: ‘There is no greater woe
• Than the remembrance brings of happy days
• In misery; and this thy guide doth know.
• But if the first beginnings to retrace
• Of our sad love can yield thee solace here,
• So will I be as one that weeps and says.
• One day we read, for pastime and sweet cheer,
page: 294  
• Of Lancelot, how he found Love tyrannous:
• We were alone and without any fear.
• Our eyes were drawn together, reading thus,
• 20 Full oft, and still our cheeks would pale and glow;
• But one sole point it was that conquered us.
• For when we read of that great lover, how
• He kissed the smile which he had longed to win,—
• Then he whom nought can sever from me now
• For ever, kissed my mouth, all quivering.
• A Galahalt was the book, and he that writ:
• Upon that day we read no more therein.’
• At the tale told, while one soul uttered it,
• The other wept: a pang so pitiable
• 30 That I was seized, like death, in swooning-fit,
• And even as a dead body falls, I fell.

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