ir 
 
DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure "Room 
 
\y 
 
POEMS. 
 

 
 
 NEW POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 MATTHEW ARNOLD 
 
 LONDON 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 M DCCC LXVII 
 
 I?fc7 
 
OXFORD: 
 
 BY T. COMBE, M A., E. B. GARDNER, E. P. HALL, AND H. LATHAM, M.A 
 
 PRINTERS TO THE UNIVERSITY. 
 

 292674 
 
Though the Muse be gone away, 
 Though she move not earth to-day, 
 Souls, erewhile who caught her word, 
 Ah! still harp on what they heard. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGE 
 
 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA 3 
 
 THYRSIS 73 
 
 SAINT BRANDAN 86 
 
 SONNETS 93-106 
 
 CALAIS SANDS 1 09 
 
 DOVER BEACH 112 
 
 THE TERRACE AT BERNE 115 
 
 STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC . . . . 119 
 
 A SOUTHERN NIGHT 123 
 
 FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A DEJANEIRA . . 1 32 
 
 PALLADIUM 134 
 
 HUMAN LIFE I3 6 
 
 EARLY DEATJI AND FAME 1 38 
 
 YOUTH AND CALM I4 
 
 YOUTH'S AGITATIONS I4 2 
 
 232674 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 GARDENS 
 
 GROWING OLD 
 THE PROGRESS OF POESY 
 EPITAPHS .... 
 
 THE LAST WORD . 
 
 A WISH 
 
 LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON 
 
 THE SECOND BEST 
 
 A CAUTION TO POETS . 
 
 PIS-ALLER .... 
 
 EPILOGUE TO LESSING'S LAOCOON 
 
 BACCHANALIA. 
 
 PROGRESS .... 
 
 RUGBY CHAPEL 
 
 HEINE'S GRAVE 
 
 STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE 
 
 OBERMANN ONCE MORE .... 
 
 MS 
 146 
 
 147 
 i+8 
 150 
 *54 
 157 
 159 
 160 
 161 
 172 
 179 
 182 
 195 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA 
 
 A DRAMATIC POEM. 
 
PERSONS. 
 
 Empedocles. 
 PAUSANIAS, a Physician. 
 CALLICLES, a young Harp-player. 
 
 The Scene of the Poem is on Mount Etna ; at first in the forest 
 region, afterwards on the summit of the mountain. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 1 
 
 ACT I, SCENE I. 
 A Pass in the forest region of £tna. Morning. 
 
 CALLICLES. 
 {Alone, resting on a rock by the path.) 
 ^PHE mules, I think, will not be here this hour. 
 
 They feel the eool wet turf under their feet 
 By the stream side, after the dusty lanes 
 In which they have toil'd all night from Catana, 
 And scarcely will they budge a yard. O Pan ! 
 How gracious is the mountain at this hour ! 
 A thousand times have I been here alone 
 Or with the revellers from the mountain towns, 
 But never on so fair a morn; — the sun 
 Is shining on the brilliant mountain crests, 
 
 B 2 
 
4 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And on the highest pines; but further down 
 Here in the valley is in shade ; the sward 
 Is dark, and on the stream the mist still hangs; 
 One sees one's foot-prints crush'd in the wet grass, 
 One's breath curls in the air; and on these pines 
 That climb from the stream's edge, the long grey tufts. 
 Which the goats love, are Jewell' d thick with dew. 
 Here will I stay till the slow litter comes. 
 I have my harp too — that is well. — Apollo ! 
 What mortal could be sick or sorry here? 
 I know not in what mind Empedocles, 
 Whose mules I follow'd, may be coming up, 
 But if, as most men say, he is half mad 
 With exile, and with brooding on his wrongs, 
 Pausanias, his sage friend, who mounts with him, 
 Could scarce have lighted on a lovelier cure. 
 The mules must be below, far down. I hear 
 Their tinkling bells, mix'd with the song of birds, 
 Rise faintly to me — now it stops! — Who's here? 
 Pausanias ! and on foot ? alone ? 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 5 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 
 And thou, then ? 
 
 I left thee supping with Peisianax, 
 
 With thy head full of wine, and thy hair crown - ' d, 
 
 Touching thy harp as the whim came on thee, 
 
 And prais'd and spoil'd by master and by guests 
 
 Almost as much as the new dancing girl. 
 
 Why hast thou follow'd us? 
 
 CALLICLES. 
 
 The night was hot, 
 And the feast past its prime; so we slipp'd out, 
 Some of us, to the portico to breathe ; — 
 Peisianax, thou know'st, drinks late; — and then, 
 As I was lifting my soil'd garland off, 
 I saw the mules and litter in the court, 
 And in the litter sate Empedocles; 
 Thou, too, wert with him. Straightway I sped home ; 
 I saddled my white mule, and all night long 
 Through the cool lovely country follow'd you, 
 Pass'd you a little since as morning dawn'd, 
 
6 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And have this hour sate by the torrent here, 
 Till the slow mules should climb in sight again. 
 And now? 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 And now, back to the town with speed ! 
 Crouch in the wood first, till the mules have pass'd 
 They do but halt, they will be here anon. 
 Thou must be viewless to Empedocles; 
 Save mine, he must not meet a human eye. 
 One of his moods is on him that thou know'st. 
 I think, thou wouldst not vex him. 
 
 CALLICLES. 
 
 No— and yet 
 I would fain stay and help thee tend him; once 
 He knew me well, and would oft notice me. 
 And still, I know not how, he draws me to him, 
 And I could watch him with his proud sad face, 
 His flowing locks and gold-encircled brow 
 And kingly gait, for ever; such a spell 
 In his severe looks, such a majesty 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 As drew of old the people after him. 
 
 In Agrigentum and Olympia, 
 
 When his star reign'd, before his banishment. 
 
 Is potent still on me in his decline. 
 
 But oh, Pausanias, he is changed of late ! 
 
 There is a settled trouble in his air 
 
 Admits no momentary brightening now ; 
 
 And when he comes among his friends at feasts, 
 
 Tis as an orphan among prosperous boys. 
 
 Thou know'st of old he loved this harp of mine, 
 
 When first he sojourn'd with Peisianax; 
 
 He is now always moody, and I fear him. 
 
 But I would serve him, soothe him, if I could, 
 
 Dared one but try. 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 
 Thou wert a kind child ever. 
 He loves thee, but he must not see thee now. 
 Thou hast indeed a rare touch on thy harp, 
 He loves that in thee, too ; there was a time 
 
8 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 (But that is pass'd) he would have paid thy strain 
 With music to have drawn the stars from heaven. 
 He has his harp and laurel with him still. 
 But he has laid the use of music by, 
 And all which might relax his settled gloom. 
 Yet thou may'st try thy playing if thou wilt. 
 But thou must keep unseen; follow us on, 
 But at a distance; in these solitudes, 
 In this clear mountain air, a voice will rise, 
 Though from afar, distinctly; it may soothe him. 
 Play when we halt, and, when the evening comes 
 And I must leave him (for his pleasure is 
 To be left musing these soft nights alone 
 In the high unfrequented mountain spots), 
 Then watch him, for he ranges swift and far, 
 Sometimes to Etna's top, and to the cone; 
 But hide thee in the rocks a great way down. 
 And try thy noblest strains, my Callicles, 
 With the sweet night to help thy harmony. 
 Thou wilt earn my thanks sure, and perhaps his. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. g 
 
 CALLICLES. 
 More than a day and night, Pausanias, 
 
 Of this fair summer weather, on these hills, 
 
 Would I bestow to help Empedocles. 
 
 That needs no thanks; one is far better here 
 
 Than in the broiling city in these heats. 
 
 But tell me, how hast thou persuaded him 
 
 In this his present fierce, man-hating mood, 
 
 To bring thee out with him alone on Etna? 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 Thou hast heard all men speaking of Pantheia, 
 The woman who at Agrigentum lay 
 Thirty long days in a cold trance of death 
 And whom Empedocles call'd back to life. 
 Thou art too young to note it, but his power 
 Swells with the swelling evil of this time, 
 And holds men mute to see where it will rise. 
 He could stay swift diseases in old days, 
 Chain madmen by the music of his lyre, 
 Cleanse to sweet airs the breath of poisonous streams, 
 
io EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And in the mountain chinks inter the winds. 
 
 This he could do of old; but now, since all 
 
 Clouds and grows daily worse in Sicily, 
 
 Since broils tear us in twain, since this new swarm 
 
 Of sophists has got empire in our schools 
 
 Where he was paramount, since he is banish'd, 
 
 And lives a lonely man in triple gloom, 
 
 He grasps the very reins of life and death. 
 
 I ask'd him of Pantheia yesterday, 
 
 When we were gather' d with Peisianax, 
 
 And he made answer, I should come at night 
 
 On Etna here, and be alone with him, 
 
 And he would tell me, as his old, tried friend, 
 
 Who still was faithful, what might profit me; 
 
 That is, the secret of this miracle. 
 
 CALLICLES. 
 Bah ! Thou a doctor ? Thou art superstitious. 
 
 Simple Pausanias, 'twas no miracle ! 
 Pantheia, for I know her kinsmen well, 
 Was subject to these trances from a girl. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. i 
 
 Empedocles would say so, did he deign; 
 
 But he still lets the people, whom he scorns, 
 
 Gape and cry wizard at him, if they list. 
 
 But thou, thou art no company for him; 
 
 Thou art as cross, as soured as himself. 
 
 Thou hast some wrong from thine own citizens, 
 
 And then thy friend is banish'd, and on that, 
 
 Straightway thou fallest to arraign the times, 
 
 As if the sky was impious not to fall. 
 
 The sophists are no enemies of his ; 
 
 I hear, Gorgias, their chief, speaks nobly of him. 
 
 As of his gifted master and once friend. 
 
 He is too scornful, too high-wrought, too bitter. 
 
 'Tis not the times, 'tis not the sophists vex him; 
 
 There is some root of suffering in himself, 
 
 Some secret and unfollow'd vein of woe, 
 
 Which makes the time look black and sad to him. 
 
 Pester him not in this his sombre mood 
 
 With questionings about an idle tale, 
 
 But lead him through the lovely mountain paths, 
 
12 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And keep his mind from preying on itself, 
 And talk to him of things at hand and common, 
 Not miracles; thou art a learned man, 
 But credulous of fables as a girl. 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 And thou, a boy whose tongue outruns his knowledge, 
 And on whose lightness blame is thrown away. 
 Enough of this ! I see the litter wind 
 Up by the torrent-side, under the pines. 
 I must rejoin Empedocles. Do thou 
 Crouch in the brush-wood till the mules have pass'd ; 
 Then play thy kind part well. Farewell till night ! 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 13 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 Noon. A Glen on the highest skirts of the woody region 
 of Etna. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. PAUSANIAS. 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 The noon is hot; when we have cross'd the stream 
 We shall have left the woody tract, and come 
 Upon the open shoulder of the hill. 
 See how the giant spires of yellow bloom 
 Of the sun-loving gentian, in the heat, 
 Are shining on those naked slopes like flame ! 
 Let us rest here; and now, Empedocles, 
 Pantheia's history. 
 
 [A harp note below is heard. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 Hark! what sound was that 
 Rose from below ? If it were possible, 
 
j 4 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And we were not so far from human haunt, 
 
 I should have said that some one touch'd a harp. 
 
 Hark ! there again ! 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 
 Tis the boy Callicles, 
 The sweetest harp player in Catana. 
 He is for ever coming on these hills, 
 In summer, to all country festivals, 
 With a gay revelling band; he breaks from them 
 Sometimes, and wanders far among the glens. 
 But heed him not, he will not mount to us; 
 I spoke with him this morning. Once more, therefore, 
 Instruct me of Pantheia's story, Master, 
 As I have pray'd thee. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 That? and to what end? 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 It is enough that all men speak of it. 
 But I will also say, that when the Gods 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 15 
 
 Visit us as they do with sign and plague, 
 
 To know those spells of time that stay their hand 
 
 Were to live free from terror. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 Spells? Mistrust them. 
 Mind is the spell which governs earth and heaven. 
 Man has a mind with which to plan his safety; 
 Know that, and help thyself. 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 
 But thy own words ? 
 
 " The wit and counsel of man was never clear, 
 
 Troubles confuse the little wit he has." 
 
 Mind is a light which the Gods mock us with, 
 
 To lead those false who trust it. 
 
 \The harp sounds again. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 Hist ! once more ! 
 Listen, Pausanias ! — Ay, 'tis Callicles ! 
 I know those notes among a thousand. Hark ! 
 
1 6 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 CALLICLES. 
 {Sings unseen , from below.) 
 The track winds down to the clear stream 
 To cross the sparkling shallows; there 
 The cattle love to gather, on their way 
 To the high mountain pastures, and to stay, 
 Till the rough cow-herds drive them past, 
 Knee-deep in the cool ford; for 'tis the last 
 Of all the woody, high, well-water' d dells 
 On Etna; and the beam 
 Of noon is broken there by chestnut boughs 
 Down its steep verdant sides; the air 
 Is freshen'd by the leaping stream, which throws 
 Eternal showers of spray on the moss'd roots 
 Of trees, and veins of turf, and long dark shoots 
 Of ivy-plants, and fragrant hanging bells 
 Of hyacinths, and on late anemonies, 
 That muffle its wet banks; but glade, 
 And stream, and sward, and chestnut trees, 
 End here; Etna beyond, in the broad glare 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Of the hot noon, without a shade, 
 
 Slope behind slope, up to the peak, lies bare : 
 
 The peak, round which the white clouds play. 
 
 In such a glen, on such a day, 
 
 On Pelion, on the grassy ground, 
 
 Chiron, the aged Centaur, lay, 
 
 The young Achilles standing by. 
 
 The Centaur taught him to explore 
 
 The mountains ; where the glens are dry 
 
 And the tired Centaurs come to rest, 
 
 And where the soaking springs abound, 
 
 And the straight ashes grow for spears, 
 
 And where the hill-goats come to feed, 
 
 And the sea-eagles build their nest. 
 
 He show'd him Phthia far away, 
 
 And said : O boy, I taught this lore 
 
 To Peleus, in long distant years ! 
 
 He told him of the Gods, the stars, 
 
 The tides; — and then of mortal wars, 
 c 
 
1 8 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And of the life which heroes lead 
 Before they reach the Elysian place 
 And rest in the immortal mead ; 
 And all the wisdom of his race. 
 
 The music below ceases, and Empedocles speaks, 
 accompanying himself in a solemn manner on 
 his harp. 
 
 The out-spread world to span 
 A cord the Gods first slung, 
 And then the soul of man 
 There, like a mirror, hung, 
 And bade the winds through space impel the gusty 
 toy. 
 
 Hither and thither spins 
 The wind-borne mirroring soul, 
 A thousand glimpses wins, 
 And never sees a whole; 
 Looks once, and drives elsewhere, and leaves its last 
 employ. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 19 
 
 The Gods laugh in their sleeve 
 To watch man doubt and fear, 
 Who knows not what to believe 
 Since he sees nothing clear, 
 And dares stamp nothing false where he finds nothing 
 sure. 
 
 Is this, Pausanias, so? 
 And can our souls not strive, 
 But with the winds must go, 
 And hurry where they drive? 
 Is Fate indeed so strong, man's strength indeed so 
 poor ? 
 
 I will not judge ! that man, 
 Howbeit, I judge as lost, 
 Whose mind allows a plan 
 Which would degrade it most; 
 And he treats doubt the best who tries to see least 
 
 ill. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Be not, then, fear's blind slave ! 
 Thou art my friend; to thee, 
 All knowledge that I have. 
 All skill I wield, are free; 
 Ask not the latest news of the last miracle. 
 
 Ask not what days and nights 
 In trance Pantheia lay, 
 But ask how thou such sights 
 May'st see without dismay; 
 Ask what most helps when known, thou son of 
 Anchitus ! 
 
 What? hate, and awe, and shame 
 Fill thee to see our world; 
 Thou feelest thy soul's frame 
 Shaken and rudely hurl'd. 
 What? life and time go hard with thee too, as 
 with us; 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Thy citizens, 'tis said, 
 Envy thee and oppress, 
 Thy goodness no men aid, 
 All strive to make it less; 
 Tyranny, pride, and lust fill Sicily's abodes ; 
 
 Heaven is with earth at strife, 
 Signs make thy soul afraid, 
 The dead return to life, 
 Rivers are dried, winds stay'd ; 
 Scarce can one think in calm, so threatening are the 
 Gods; 
 
 And we feel, day and night, 
 The burden of ourselves. 
 Well, then, the wiser wight 
 In his own bosom delves, 
 And asks what ails him so, and gets what cure 
 he can. 
 
22 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 The sophist sneers: Fool, take 
 Thy pleasure, right or wrong ! 
 The pious wail: Forsake 
 A world these sophists throng ! 
 Be neither saint nor sophist-led, but be a man. 
 
 These hundred doctors try 
 To preach thee to their school. 
 We have the truth ! they cry. 
 And yet their oracle, 
 Trumpet it as they will, is but the same as thine. 
 
 Once read thy own breast right, 
 And thou hast done with fears ! 
 Man gets no other light, 
 Search he a thousand years. 
 Sink in thyself ! there ask what ails thee, at that shrine ! 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 What makes thee struggle and rave? 
 Why are men ill at ease ? — . 
 Tis that the lot they have 
 Fails their own will to please; 
 For man would make no murmuring, were his wi 
 obey'd. 
 
 And why is it, that still 
 Man with his lot thus fights?— 
 'Tis that he makes this will 
 The measure of his rights, 
 And believes Nature outraged if his will's gainsaid. 
 
 Couldst thou, Pausanias, learn 
 How deep a fault is this ! 
 Couldst thou but once discern 
 Thou hast no right to bliss, 
 No title from the Gods to welfare and repose; 
 
 n 
 
24 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Then thou wouldst look less mazed 
 Whene'er from bliss debarred, 
 Nor think the Gods were crazed 
 When thy own lot went hard. 
 But we are all the same — the fools of our own woes ! 
 
 For, from the first faint morn 
 Of life, the thirst for bliss 
 Deep in man's heart is born ; 
 And, sceptic as he is, 
 He fails not to judge clear if this be quench' d or no. 
 
 Nor is that thirst to blame ! 
 Man errs not that he deems 
 His welfare his true aim, 
 He errs because he dreams 
 The world does but exist that welfare to bestow. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 25 
 
 We mortals are no kings 
 For each of whom to sway 
 A new-made world up-springs 
 Meant merely for his play; 
 No, we are strangers here; the world is from of old. 
 
 In vain our pent wills fret, 
 And would the world subdue. 
 Limits we did not set 
 Condition all we do ; 
 Born into life we are, and life must be our mould. 
 
 Born into life — man grows 
 Forth from his parents' stem, 
 And blends their bloods, as those 
 Of theirs are blent in them; 
 So each new man strikes root into a far fore-time. 
 
26 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Born into life — we bring 
 A bias with us here, 
 And, when here, each new thing 
 Affects us we come near ; 
 To tunes we did not call our being must keep chime. 
 
 Born into life — in vain, 
 Opinions, those or these, 
 Unalter'd to retain 
 The obstinate mind decrees ; 
 Experience, like a sea, soaks all-effacing in. 
 
 Born into life — who lists 
 May what is false hold dear, 
 And for himself make mists 
 Through which to see less clear; 
 The world is what it is, for all our dust and din. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 -: 
 
 Born into life — 'tis we, 
 And not the world, are new. 
 Our cry for bliss, our plea, 
 Others have urged it too; 
 Our wants have all been felt, our errors made before. 
 
 No eye could be too sound 
 To observe a world so vast, 
 No patience too profound 
 To sort what's here amass'd ; 
 How man may here best live no care too great to 
 explore. 
 
 But we — as some rude guest 
 Would change, where'er he roam, 
 The manners there profess'd 
 To those he brings from home — 
 We mark not the world's course, but would have it 
 take ours. 
 
28 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 The world's course proves the terms 
 On which man wins content; 
 Reason the proof confirms; 
 We spurn it, and invent 
 A false course for the world, and for ourselves, false 
 powers. 
 
 Riches we wish to get, 
 Yet remain spendthrifts still; 
 We would have health, and yet 
 Still use our bodies ill; 
 Bafflers of our own prayers, from youth to life's last 
 scenes. 
 
 We would have inward peace, 
 Yet will not look within; 
 We would have misery cease, 
 Yet will not cease from sin; 
 We want all pleasant ends, but will use no harsh 
 means : 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA, 29 
 
 We do not what we ought. 
 What we ought not, we do, 
 And lean upon the thought 
 That chance will bring us through ; 
 But our own acts, for good or ill, are mightier power?. 
 
 Yet, even when man forsakes 
 All sin — is just, is pure, 
 Abandons all which makes 
 His welfare insecure — 
 Other existences there are, that clash with ours. 
 
 Like us, the lightning fires 
 Love to have scope and play; 
 The stream, like us, desires 
 An unimpeded way; 
 Like us, the Libyan wind delights to roam at large. 
 
^o EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Streams will not curb their pride 
 The just man not to entomb, 
 Nor lightnings go aside 
 To leave his virtues room; 
 Nor is that wind less rough which blows a good man's 
 barge. 
 
 Nature, with equal mind, 
 Sees all her sons at play; 
 Sees man control the wind, 
 The wind sweep man away; 
 Allows the proudly-riding and the founder' d bark. 
 
 And, lastly, though of ours 
 No weakness spoil our lot, 
 Though the non-human powers 
 Of Nature harm us not, 
 The ill-deeds of other men make often our life dark. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 31 
 
 What were the wise man's plan ? — 
 Through this sharp, toil-set life, 
 To fight as best he can, 
 And win what's won by strife. 
 But we an easier way to cheat our pains have found. 
 
 Scratch'd by a fall, with moans 
 
 As children of weak age 
 
 Lend life to the dumb stones 
 
 Whereon to vent their rage, 
 
 And bend their little fists, and rate the senseless 
 ground ; 
 
 So, loath to suffer mute, 
 We, peopling the void air, 
 Make Gods to whom to impute 
 The ills we ought to bear; 
 With God and Fate to rail at, suffering easily. 
 
32 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Yet grant — as sense long miss'd 
 Things that are now perceiv'd, 
 And much may still exist 
 Which is not yet belie v'd — 
 Grant that the world were full of Gods we cannot 
 see; 
 
 All things the world which fill 
 Of but one stuff are spun, 
 That we who rail are still, 
 With what we rail at, one; 
 One with the o'er-labour'd Power that through the 
 breadth and length 
 
 Of earth, and air, and sea, 
 In men, and plants, and stones, 
 Hath toil perpetually, 
 And struggles, pants, and moans; 
 Fain would do all things well, but sometimes fails in 
 strength. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 35 
 
 And patiently exact 
 This universal God 
 Alike to any act 
 Proceeds at any nod, 
 And quietly declaims the cursings of himself. 
 
 This is not what man hates, 
 Yet he can curse but this. 
 Harsh Gods and hostile Fates 
 Are dreams ! this only is ; 
 Is everywhere ; sustains the wise, the foolish elf. 
 
 Nor only, in the intent 
 To attach blame elsewhere, 
 Do we at will invent 
 Stern Powers who make their care 
 To embitter human life, malignant Deities; 
 
34 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 But, next, we would reverse 
 The scheme ourselves have spun, 
 And what we made to curse 
 We now would lean upon, 
 And feign kind Gods who perfect what man vainly 
 tries. 
 
 Look, the world tempts our eye, 
 And we would know it all! 
 We map the starry sky, 
 We mine this earthen ball, 
 We measure the sea-tides, we number the sea-sands ; 
 
 We scrutinise the dates 
 Of long-past human things, 
 The bounds of effac'd states, 
 The lines of deceas'd kings; 
 We search out dead men's words, and works of dead 
 men's hands; 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 35 
 
 We shut our eyes, and muse 
 How our own minds are made, 
 What springs of thought they use, 
 How righten'd, how betray'd; 
 And spend our wit to name what most employ 
 unnam'd ; 
 
 But still, as we proceed, 
 The mass swells more and more 
 Of volumes yet to read, 
 Of secrets yet to explore. 
 Our hair grows grey, our eyes are dimm'd, our heat 
 is tamed, 
 
 We rest our faculties, 
 And thus address the Gods: 
 " True science if there is, 
 It stays in your abodes; 
 Man's measures cannot mete the immeasurable 
 All; 
 
 D 2 
 
36 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 " You only can take in 
 The world's immense design, 
 Our desperate search was sin, 
 Which henceforth we resign, 
 Sure only that your mind sees all things which 
 befall" 
 
 Fools ! that in man's brief term 
 He cannot all things view, 
 Affords no ground to affirm 
 That there are Gods who do! 
 Nor does being weary prove that he has where to rest ! 
 
 Again: our youthful blood 
 Claims rapture as its right; 
 The world, a rolling flood 
 Of newness and delight, 
 Draws in the enamour'd gazer to its shining breast ; 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 37 
 
 3 
 
 Pleasure to our hot grasp 
 
 Gives flowers after flowers, 
 
 With passionate warmth we clasp 
 
 Hand after hand in ours; 
 
 Nor do we soon perceive how fast our youth is 
 
 spent. 
 
 At once our eyes grow clear; 
 We see in blank dismay 
 Year posting after year, 
 Sense after sense decay; 
 Our shivering heart is mined by secret discontent; 
 
 Yet still, in spite of truth, 
 In spite of hopes entomb'd, 
 That longing of our youth 
 Burns ever unconsum'd, 
 Still hungrier for delight as delights grow more rare. 
 
38 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 i 
 
 We pause ; we hush our heart, 
 
 And then address the Gods : 
 
 " The world hath fail'd to impart 
 
 The joy our youth forbodes, 
 Fail'd to fill up the void which in our breasts we bear. 
 
 "Changeful till now, we still 
 Look'd on to something new ; 
 Let us, with changeless will, 
 Henceforth look on to you, 
 To find with you the joy we in vain here require ! 
 
 Fools ! that so often here 
 Happiness mock'd our prayer, 
 I think, might make us fear 
 A like event elsewhere ! 
 Make us, not fly to dreams, but moderate desire ! 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 39 
 
 And yet, for those who know 
 Themselves, who wisely take 
 Their way through life, and bow 
 To what they cannot break, 
 Why should I say that life need yield but moderate 
 bliss ? 
 
 Shall we, with temper spoil' d, 
 Health sapp'd by living ill, 
 And judgment all embroil' d 
 By sadness and self-will, 
 Shall we judge what for man is not true bliss or is ? 
 
 Is it so small a thing 
 To have enjoy'd the sun, 
 To have lived light in the spring, 
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done ; 
 To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling 
 foes; 
 
4 o EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 That we must feign a bliss 
 Of doubtful future date, 
 And, while we dream on this, 
 Lose all our present state, 
 And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose ? 
 
 Not much, I know, you prize 
 What pleasures may be had, 
 Who look on life with eyes 
 Estrang'd, like mine, and sad; 
 And yet the village churl feels the truth more than 
 you, 
 
 Who's loath to leave this life 
 Which to him little yields; 
 His hard-task'd sunburnt wife, 
 His often-labour' d fields, 
 The boors with whom he talk'd, the country spots he 
 knew. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 41 
 
 But thou, because thou hear'st 
 Men scoff at Heaven and Fate, 
 Because the Gods thou fear'st 
 Fail to make blest thy state, 
 Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys there 
 are. 
 
 I say : Fear not ! Life still 
 Leaves human effort scope. 
 But, since life teems with ill, 
 Nurse no extravagant hope ; 
 Because thou must not dream, thou need'st not then 
 despair ! 
 
 A long pause. At the end of it the notes of a harp 
 below are again heard, and Callicles sings : — 
 
 Far, far from here. 
 The Adriatic breaks in a warm bay 
 Among the green Illyrian hills; and there 
 The sunshine in the happy glens is fair, 
 
42 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And by the sea, and in the brakes. 
 
 The grass is cool, the sea-side air 
 
 Buoyant and fresh, the mountain flowers 
 
 As virginal and sweet as ours. 
 
 And there, they say, two bright and aged snakes. 
 
 Who once were Cadmus and Harmonia, 
 
 Bask in the glens or on the warm sea-shore, 
 
 In breathless quiet, after all their ills. 
 
 Nor do they see their country, nor the place 
 
 Where the Sphinx lived among the frowning hills, 
 
 Nor the unhappy palace of their race, 
 
 Nor Thebes, nor the Ismenus, any more. 
 
 There those two live, far in the Illyrian brakes. 
 
 They had stay'd long enough to see, 
 
 In Thebes, the billow of calamity 
 
 Over their own dear children roll'd, 
 
 Curse upon curse, pang upon pang, 
 
 For years, they sitting helpless in their home, 
 
 A grey old man and woman ; yet of old 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 43 
 
 The Gods had to their marriage come, 
 And at the banquet all the Muses sang. 
 
 Therefore they did not end their days 
 
 In sight of blood; but were rapt, far away, 
 
 To where the west wind plays, 
 
 And murmurs of the Adriatic come 
 
 To those untrodden mountain lawns; and there 
 
 Placed safely in changed forms, the Pair 
 
 Wholly forget their first sad life, and home, 
 
 And all that Theban woe, and stray 
 
 For ever through the glens, placid and dumb. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 That was my harp-player again ! — where is he ? 
 Down by the stream? 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 
 Yes, Master, in the wood. 
 
44 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 He ever loved the Theban story well! 
 But the day wears. Go now, Pausanias, 
 For I must be alone. Leave me one mule; 
 Take down with thee the rest to Catana. 
 And for young Callicles, thank him from me; 
 Tell him I never fail'd to love his lyre : 
 But he must follow me no more to-night. 
 
 PAUSANIAS. 
 Thou wilt return to-morrow to the city? 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 Either to-morrow or some other day, 
 
 In the sure revolutions of the world, 
 Good friend, I shall revisit Catana. 
 I have seen many cities in my time 
 Till my eyes ache with the long spectacle, 
 And I shall doubtless see them all again; 
 Thou know'st me for a wanderer from of old. 
 Meanwhile, stay me not now. Farewell, Pausanias! 
 He departs on his way up the mountain. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 45 
 
 PAUSANIAS (alone). 
 I dare not urge him further; he must go. 
 But he is strangely wrought ! — I will speed back 
 And bring Peisianax to him from the city; 
 His counsel could once soothe him. But, Apollo ! 
 How his brow lighten'd as the music rose ! 
 Callicles must wait here, and play to him; 
 I saw him through the chestnuts far below, 
 Just since, down at the stream. — Ho ! Callicles ! 
 
 He descends, calling. 
 
4 b EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 Evening. The Summit of Etna. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 
 Alone ! — 
 
 On this charr'd, blacken' d, melancholy waste, 
 Crown' d by the awful peak, Etna's great mouth, 
 Round which the sullen vapour rolls — alone ! 
 Pausanias is far hence, and that is well, 
 For I must henceforth speak no more with man. 
 He has his lesson too, and that debt's paid; 
 And the good, learned, friendly, quiet man, 
 May bravelier front his life, and in himself 
 Find henceforth energy and heart; but I, 
 The weary man, the banish'd citizen — 
 Whose banishment is not his greatest ill, 
 Whose weariness no energy can reach, 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 47 
 
 And for whose hurt courage is not the cure— 
 What should I do with life and living more? 
 
 No, thou art come too late, Empedocles! 
 
 And the world hath the day, and must break thee, 
 
 Not thou the world. With men thou canst not live, 
 
 Their thoughts, their ways, their wishes, are not thine ; 
 
 And being lonely thou art miserable, 
 
 For something has impair'd thy spirit's strength, 
 
 And dried its self-sufficing fount of joy. 
 
 Thou canst not live with men nor with thyself — 
 
 Oh sage ! oh sage ! — Take then the one way left ; 
 
 And turn thee to the elements, thy friends, 
 
 Thy well-tried friends, thy willing ministers, 
 
 And say: — Ye servants, hear Empedocles, 
 
 Who asks this final service at your hands! 
 
 Before the sophist brood hath overlaid 
 
 The last spark of man's consciousness with words — 
 
 Ere quite the being of man, ere quite the world 
 
 Be disarray'd of their divinity — 
 
4$ EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Before the soul lose all her solemn joys, 
 And awe be dead, and hope impossible, 
 And the soul's deep eternal night come on, 
 Receive me, hide me, quench me, take me home ! 
 
 He advances to the edge of the crater. Smoke 
 and fire break forth with a loud noise, and 
 Callicles is heard below singing : — 
 
 The lyre's voice is lovely everywhere ! 
 In the court of Gods, in the city of men, 
 And in the lonely rock-strewn mountain glen, 
 In the still mountain air. 
 
 Only to Typho it sounds hatefully ! 
 
 To Typho only, the rebel o'erthrown, 
 
 Through whose heart Etna drives her roots of stone, 
 
 To imbed them in the sea. 
 
 Wherefore dost thou groan so loud? 
 Wherefore do thy nostrils flash, 
 Through the dark night, suddenly, 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 49 
 
 Typho, such red jets of flame? — 
 
 Is thy tortur'd heart still proud? 
 
 Is thy fire-scath'd arm still rash ? 
 
 Still alert thy stone-crush'd frame ? 
 
 Doth thy fierce soul still deplore 
 
 The ancient rout by the Cilician hills, 
 
 And that curst treachery on the Mount of Gore? 
 
 Do thy bloodshot eyes still see 
 
 The fight that crown'd thy ills, 
 
 Thy last defeat in this Sicilian sea ? 
 
 Hast thou sworn, in thy sad lair. 
 
 Where erst the strong sea-currents suck'd thee 
 
 down, 
 Never to cease to writhe, and try to sleep, 
 Letting the sea-stream wander through thy hair? 
 That thy groans, like thunder deep, 
 Begin to roll, and almost drown 
 The sweet notes, whose lulling spell 
 Gods and the race of mortals love so well, 
 When through thy caves thou hearest music swell? 
 
SO EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 But an awful pleasure bland 
 Spreading o'er the Thunderer's face, 
 When the sound climbs near his seat, 
 The Olympian council sees; 
 As he lets his lax right hand, 
 Which the lightnings doth embrace, 
 Sink upon his mighty knees. 
 And the eagle, at the beck 
 Of the appeasing gracious harmony, 
 Droops all his sheeny, brown, deep-feather' d neck, 
 Nestling nearer to Jove's feet; 
 While o'er his sovereign eye 
 The curtains of the blue films slowly meet. 
 And the white Olympus peaks 
 Rosily brighten, and the sooth'd Gods smile 
 At one another from their golden chairs, 
 And no one round the charmed circle speaks. 
 Only the loved Hebe bears 
 The cup about, whose draughts beguile 
 Pain and care, with a dark store 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 51 
 
 Of fresh-pull'd violets wreath'd and nodding o'er; 
 And her flush'd feet glow on the marble floor. 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 He fables, yet speaks truth ! 
 
 The brave impetuous heart yields everywhere 
 
 To the subtle, contriving head; 
 
 Great qualities are trodden down, 
 
 And littleness united 
 
 Is become invincible. 
 
 These rumblings are not Typho's groans, I know ! 
 
 These angry smoke-bursts 
 
 Are not the passionate breath 
 
 Of the mountain-crush'd, tortur'd, intractable Titan 
 
 king ! 
 
 But over all the world 
 
 What suffering is there not seen 
 
 Of plainness oppress' d by cunning, 
 
 As the well-counsell'd Zeus oppress'd 
 
 The self-helping son of earth ! 
 e 2 
 
52 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 What anguish of greatness 
 Rail'd and hunted from the world, 
 Because its simplicity rebukes 
 This envious, miserable age ! 
 
 I am weary of it! — 
 
 Lie there, ye ensigns 
 
 Of my unlov'd preeminence 
 
 In an age like this ! 
 
 Among a people of children, 
 
 Who throng'd me in their cities, 
 
 Who worshipp'd me in their houses, 
 
 And ask'd, not wisdom, 
 
 But drugs to charm with, 
 
 But spells to mutter — 
 
 All the fool's-armoury of magic ! — Lie there, 
 
 My golden circlet ! 
 
 My purple robe ! 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 CALLICLES (from below). 
 As the sky-brightening south wind clears the day, 
 And makes the mass'd clouds roll, 
 The music of the lyre blows away 
 The clouds that wrap the soul. 
 
 Oh, that Fate had let me see 
 
 That triumph of the sweet persuasive lyre ! 
 
 That famous, final victory 
 
 When jealous Pan with Marsyas did conspire ! 
 
 When, from far Parnassus' side, 
 Young Apollo, all the pride 
 Of the Phrygian flutes to tame, 
 To the Phrygian highlands came ! 
 Where the long green reed-beds sway 
 In the rippled waters grey 
 Of that solitary lake 
 Where Maeander's springs are born; 
 Where the ridg'd pine-wooded roots 
 
 S3 
 
54 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Of Messogis westward break, 
 Mounting westward, high and higher. 
 There was held the famous strife; 
 There the Phrygian brought his flutes, 
 And Apollo brought his lyre; 
 And, when now the westering sun 
 Touch'd the hills, the strife was done, 
 And the attentive Muses said; 
 " Marsyas ! thou art vanquished." 
 Then Apollo's minister 
 Hang'd upon a branching fir 
 Marsyas, that unhappy Faun, 
 And began to whet his knife. 
 But the Maenads, who were there, 
 Left their friend, and with robes flowing 
 In the wind, and loose dark hair 
 O'er their polish'd bosoms blowing, 
 Each her ribbon'd tambourine 
 Flinging on the mountain sod, 
 With a lovely frighten'd mien 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 55 
 
 Came about the youthful God. 
 But he turn'd his beauteous face 
 Haughtily another way, 
 From the grassy sun-warm'd place 
 Where in proud repose he lay, 
 With one arm over his head, 
 Watching how the whetting sped. 
 
 But aloof, on the lake strand, 
 
 Did the young Olympus stand, 
 
 Weeping at his master's end; 
 
 For the Faun had been his friend. 
 
 For he taught him how to sing, 
 
 And he taught him flute-playing. 
 
 Many a morning had they gone 
 
 To the glimmering mountain lakes, 
 
 And had torn up by the roots 
 
 The tall crested water reeds 
 
 With long plumes, and soft brown seeds, 
 
 And had carved them into flutes, 
 
S 6 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Sitting on a tabled stone 
 
 Where the shoreward ripple breaks. 
 
 And he taught him how to please 
 
 The red-snooded Phrygian girls, 
 
 Whom the summer evening sees 
 
 Flashing in the dance's whirls 
 
 Underneath the starlit trees 
 
 In the mountain villages. 
 
 Therefore now Olympus stands, 
 
 At his master's piteous cries 
 
 Pressing fast with both his hands 
 
 His white garment to his eyes, 
 
 Not to see Apollo's scorn; 
 
 Ah, poor Faun, poor Faun ! ah, poor Faun ! 
 
 EMPEDOCLES. 
 And lie thou there, 
 My laurel bough! 
 
 Scornful Apollo's ensign, lie thou there! 
 Though thou hast been my shade in the world's heat- 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 57 
 
 Though I have loved thee, lived in honouring thee — 
 Yet lie thou there, 
 My laurel bough! . 
 
 I am weary of thee ! 
 
 I am weary of the solitude 
 
 Where he who bears thee must abide ! 
 
 Of the rocks of Parnassus, 
 
 Of the gorge of Delphi, 
 
 Of the moonlit peaks, and the caves. 
 
 Thou guardest them, Apollo ! 
 
 Over the grave of the slain Pytho, 
 
 Though young, intolerably severe; 
 
 Thou keepest aloof the profane, 
 
 But the solitude oppresses thy votary ! 
 
 The jars of men reach him not in thy valley — 
 
 But can life reach him ? 
 
 Thou fencest him from the multitude — 
 
 Who will fence him from himself? 
 
 He hears nothing but the cry of the torrents 
 
58 EMPEDQCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 And the beating of his own heart. 
 The air is thin, the veins swell — 
 The temples tighten and throb there — 
 Air ! air ! 
 
 Take thy bough ; set me free from my solitude ! 
 I have been enough alone ! 
 
 Where shall thy votary fly then? back to men?— 
 
 But they will gladly welcome him once more, 
 
 And help him to unbend his too tense thought, 
 
 And rid him of the presence of himself, 
 
 And keep their friendly chatter at his ear, 
 
 And haunt him, till the absence from himself, 
 
 That other torment, grow unbearable ; 
 
 And he will fly to solitude again, 
 
 And he will find its air too keen for him, 
 
 And so change back; and many thousand times 
 
 Be miserably bandied to and fro 
 
 Like a sea wave, betwixt the world and thee, 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 59 
 
 Thou young, implacable God! and only death 
 Shall cut his oscillations short, and so 
 Bring him to poise. There is no other way. 
 
 And yet what days were those, Parmenides ! 
 
 When we were young, when we could number friends 
 
 In all the Italian cities like ourselves, 
 
 When with elated hearts we join'd your train, 
 
 Ye Sun-born Virgins ! on the road of truth 2 . 
 
 Then we could still enjoy, then neither thought 
 
 Nor outward things were clos'd and dead to us, 
 
 But we receiv'd the shock of mighty thoughts 
 
 On simple minds with a pure natural joy; 
 
 And if the sacred load oppress'd our brain, 
 
 We had the power to feel the pressure eased, 
 
 The brow unbound, the thoughts flow free again, 
 
 In the delightful commerce of the world. 
 
 We had not lost our balance then, nor grown 
 
 Thought's slaves, and dead to every natural joy ! 
 
 The smallest thing could give us pleasure then ! 
 
bo EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 The sports of the country people, 
 
 A flute note from the woods, 
 
 Sunset over the sea; 
 
 Seed-time and harvest, 
 
 The reapers in the corn, 
 
 The vinedresser in his vineyard, 
 
 The village-girl at her wheel ! 
 
 Fulness of life and power of feeling, ye 
 
 Are for the happy, for the souls at ease, 
 
 Who dwell on a firm basis of content ! — 
 
 But he, who has outliv'd his prosperous days, 
 
 But he, whose youth fell on a different world 
 
 From that on which his exiled age is thrown, 
 
 Whose mind was fed on other food, was train'd 
 
 By other rules than are in vogue to-day, 
 
 Whose habit of thought is fix'd, who will not change, 
 
 But in a world he loves not must subsist 
 
 In ceaseless opposition, be the guard 
 
 Of his own breast, fetter'd to what he guards, 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 61 
 
 That the world win no mastery over him ; 
 Who has no friend, no fellow left, not one; 
 Who has no minute's breathing space allow'd 
 To nurse his dwindling faculty of joy— 
 Joy and the outward world must die to him, 
 As they are dead to me ! 
 
 A long pause, during which Empedocles re- 
 mains motionless, plunged in thought. The 
 night deepens. He moves forward and gazes 
 round him, and proceeds : — 
 
 And you, ye stars, 
 
 Who slowly begin to marshal, 
 
 As of old, in the fields of heaven, 
 
 Your distant, melancholy lines ! 
 
 Havejww, too, survived yourselves? 
 
 Ave you, too, what I fear to become? 
 
 You, too, once lived ! 
 
 You too moved joyfully 
 
 Among august companions 
 
 In an older world, peopled by Gods, 
 
Oz EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 In a mightier order, 
 
 The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven ! 
 
 But now, you kindle 
 
 Your lonely, cold-shining lights, 
 
 Unwilling lingerers 
 
 In the heavenly wilderness, 
 
 For a younger, ignoble world ; 
 
 And renew, by necessity, 
 
 Night after night your courses, 
 
 In echoing unnear'd silence, 
 
 Above a race you know not. 
 
 Uncaring and undelighted, 
 
 Without friend and without home ; 
 
 Weary like us, though not 
 
 Weary with our weariness. 
 
 No, no, ye stars ! there is no death with you, 
 No languor, no decay ! Languor and death, 
 They are with me, not you ! ye are alive ! 
 Ye and the pure dark ether where ye ride 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 63 
 
 Brilliant above me ! And thou, fiery world, 
 That sapp'st the vitals of this terrible mount 
 Upon whose charr'd and quaking crust I stand. 
 Thou, too, brimmest with life ! — the sea of cloud 
 That heaves its white and billowy vapours up 
 To moat this isle of ashes from the world, 
 Lives ! — and that other fainter sea, far down, 
 O'er whose lit floor a road of moonbeams leads 
 To Etna's Liparean sister-fires 
 And the long dusky line of Italy — 
 That mild and luminous floor of waters lives, 
 With held-in joy swelling its heart ! — I only, 
 Whose spring of hope is dried, whose spirit has 
 
 fail'd— 
 I, who have not, like these, in solitude 
 Maintain'd courage and force, and in myself 
 Nursed an immortal vigour — I alone 
 Am dead to life and joy; therefore I read 
 In all things my own deadness. 
 
 A long silence. He continues : — 
 
64 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Oh that I could glow like this mountain! 
 
 Oh that my heart bounded with the swell of the 
 
 sea! 
 Oh that my soul were full of light as the stars ! 
 Oh that it brooded over the world like the air ! 
 
 But no, this heart will glow no more ! thou art 
 A living man no more, Empedocles ! 
 Nothing but a devouring flame of thought — 
 But a naked, eternally restless mind ! 
 
 After a pause : — 
 
 To the elements it came from 
 
 Everything will return. 
 
 Our bodies to earth, 
 
 Our blood to water, 
 
 Heat to fire, 
 
 Breath to air. 
 
 They were well born, they will be well entomb' d ! 
 
 But mind ? . . . 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 65 
 
 And we might gladly share the fruitful stir 
 
 Down in our mother earth's miraculous womb ! 
 
 Well might it be 
 
 With what roll'd of us in the stormy main! 
 
 We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air, 
 
 Or with the nimble radiant life of fire ! 
 
 But mind — but thought — 
 
 If these have been the master part of us — 
 
 Where will they find their parent element ? 
 
 What will receive them, who will call them home ? 
 
 But we shall still be in them, and they in us. 
 
 And we shall be the strangers of the world, 
 
 And they will be our lords, as they are now ; 
 
 And keep us prisoners of our consciousness. 
 
 And never let us clasp and feel the All 
 
 But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils. 
 
 And we shall be unsatisfied as now, 
 
 And we shall feel the agony of thirst, 
 
 The ineffable longing for the life of life 
 
6f> EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Baffled for ever ; and still thought and mind 
 
 Will hurry us with them on their homeless march, 
 
 Over the unallied unopening earth, 
 
 Over the unrecognising sea; while air 
 
 Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth, 
 
 And fire repel us from its living waves. 
 
 And then we shall unwillingly return 
 
 Back to this meadow of calamity, 
 
 This uncongenial place, this human life ; 
 
 And in our individual human state 
 
 Go through the sad probation all again, 
 
 To see if we will poise our life at last, 
 
 To see if we will now at last be true 
 
 To our own only true, deep-buried selves, 
 
 Being one with which we are one with the whole 
 
 world ; 
 Or whether we will once more fall away 
 Into some bondage of the flesh or mind, 
 Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze 
 Forg'd by the imperious lonely thinking-power. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 67 
 
 And each succeeding age in which we are born 
 
 Will have more peril for us than the last; 
 
 Will goad our senses with a sharper spur, 
 
 Will fret our minds to an intenser play, 
 
 Will make ourselves harder to be discern*d. 
 
 And we shall struggle awhile, gasp and rebel ; 
 
 And we shall fly for refuge to past times, 
 
 Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness ; 
 
 And the reality will pluck us back, 
 
 Knead us in its hot hand, and change our nature. 
 
 And we shall feel our powers of effort flag, 
 
 And rally them for one last fight, and fail ; 
 
 And we shall sink in the impossible strife, 
 
 And be astray for ever. 
 
 Slave of sense 
 I have in no wise been; but slave of thought? — 
 
 And who can say : — I have been always free, 
 Lived ever in the light of my own soul? — 
 I cannot ! I have lived in wrath and gloom, 
 Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man, 
 
 F 2 
 
68 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light. 
 But I have not grown easy in these bonds — 
 But I have not denied what bonds these were! 
 Yea, I take myself to witness, 
 That I have loved no darkness, 
 Sophisticated no truth, 
 Nursed no delusion, 
 Allow'd no fear ! 
 
 And therefore, O ye elements, I know — 
 Ye know it too — it hath been granted me 
 Not to die wholly, not to be all enslav'd. 
 I feel it in this hour ! The numbing cloud 
 Mounts off my soul ; I feel it, I breathe free ! 
 
 Is it but for a moment? 
 Ah ! boil up, ye vapours ! 
 Leap and roar, thou sea of fire ! 
 My soul glows to meet you. 
 Ere it flag, ere the mists 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 69 
 
 Of despondency and gloom 
 
 Rush over it again, 
 
 Receive me ! Save me ! He plunges into the crater. 
 
 CALLICLES {from below). 
 Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, 
 Thick breaks the red flame; 
 All Etna heaves fiercely 
 Her forest-cloth'd frame. 
 
 Not here, O Apollo ! 
 Are haunts meet for thee. 
 But, where Helicon breaks down 
 In cliff to the sea, 
 
 Where the moon-silver'd inlets 
 Send far their light voice 
 Up the still vale of Thisbe, 
 O speed, and rejoice ! 
 
70 EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 On the sward at the cliff-top 
 Lie strewn the white flocks ; 
 On the cliff-side the pigeons 
 Roost deep in the rocks ; 
 
 In the moonlight the shepherds, 
 Soft lull'd by the rills, 
 Lie wrapt in their blankets, 
 Asleep on the hills. 
 
 — What forms are these coming 
 So white through the gloom? 
 What garments out-glistening 
 The gold-flower'd broom? 
 
 What sweet-breathing presence 
 Out-perfumes the thyme ? 
 What voices enrapture 
 The night's balmy prime ? — 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 71 
 
 'Tis Apollo comes leading 
 His choir, the Nine. 
 — The leader is fairest, 
 But all are divine. 
 
 They are lost in the hollows ! 
 They stream up again ! 
 What seeks on this mountain 
 
 The glorified train? — 
 
 They bathe on this mountain, 
 In the spring by their road; 
 Then on to Olympus, 
 Their endless abode ! 
 
 — Whose praise do they mention ? 
 Of what is it told?— 
 What will be for ever; 
 What was from of old. 
 
EMPEDOCLES ON ETNA. 
 
 First hymn they the Father 
 Of all things ; and then. 
 The rest of immortals. 
 The action of men. 
 
 The day in his hotness, 
 The strife with the palm ; 
 The night in her silence, 
 The stars in their calm. 
 
THYRSIS. 
 
 A MONODY, to commemorate the author's friend, ARTHUR 
 HUGH GLOUGH, who died at Florence, 1861 *. 
 
 Thus yesterday, to-day, to-morrow come, 
 They hustle one another and they pass ; 
 But all our hustling morrows only make 
 The smooth to-day of God. 
 
 From Lucretius, an unpublished Tragedy 
 
 IT OW changed is here each spot man makes or fills ! 
 In the two Hinkseys nothing keeps the same ; 
 
 The village-street its haunted mansion lacks, 
 And from the sign is gone Sibylla's name, 
 
 And from the roofs the twisted chimney-stacks ; 
 Are ye too changed, ye hills ? 
 See, 'tis no foot of unfamiliar men 
 
 To-night from Oxford up your pathway strays ! 
 
 Here came I often, often, in old days; 
 Thyrsis and I; we still had Thyrsis then. 
 
 * Throughout this Poem there is reference to another piece, The 
 Scholar-Gipsy, printed in the first volume of the Author's Poems. 
 
74 THVRSIS. 
 
 Runs it not here, the track by Childsworth Farm, 
 Up past the wood, to where the elm-tree crowns 
 
 The hill behind whose ridge the sunset flames ? 
 The signal-elm, that looks on Ilsley Downs, 
 
 The Vale, the three lone wears, the youthful Thames ?- 
 This winter-eve is warm, 
 Humid the air; leafless, yet soft as spring, 
 
 The tender purple spray on copse and briers; 
 
 And that sweet City with her dreaming spires, 
 She needs not June for beauty's heightening, 
 
 Lovely all times she lies, lovely to-night ! 
 Only, methinks, some loss of habit's power 
 
 Befalls me wandering through this upland dim ; 
 Once pass'd I blindfold here, at any hour, 
 
 Now seldom come I, since I came with him. 
 That single elm-tree bright 
 Against the west — I miss it ! is it gone ? 
 
 We prized it dearly; while it stood, we said, 
 
 Our friend, the Scholar-Gipsy, was not dead; 
 While the tree lived, he in these fields lived on. 
 
THFRSIS. 75 
 
 Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here ! 
 But once I knew each field, each flower, each stick ; 
 
 And with the country-folk acquaintance made 
 By barn in threshing-time, by new-built rick. 
 
 Here, too, our shepherd-pipes we first assay 'd. 
 Ah me ! this many a year 
 My pipe is lost, my shepherd's-holiday ! 
 
 Needs must I lose them, needs with heavy heart 
 
 Into the world and wave of men depart; 
 But Thyrsis of his own will went away. 
 
 It irk'd him to be here, he could not rest. 
 He loved each simple joy the country yields, 
 
 He loved his mates ; but yet he could not keep, 
 For that a shadow lower'd on the fields, 
 
 Here with the shepherds and the silly sheep. 
 Some life of men unblest 
 He knew, which made him droop, and fill'd his head. 
 
 He went; his piping took a troubled sound 
 
 Of storms that rage outside our happy ground ; 
 He could not wait their passing, he is dead ! 
 
; 6 THYRSIS. 
 
 So, some tempestuous morn in early June, 
 When the year's primal burst of bloom is o'er, 
 
 Before the roses and the longest day — 
 When garden-walks, and all the grassy floor, 
 
 With blossoms, red and white, of fallen May, 
 And chestnut-flowers are strewn — 
 So have I heard the cuckoo's parting cry, 
 
 From the wet field, through the vext garden-trees, 
 
 Come with the volleying rain and tossing breeze : 
 The bloom is gone, and with the bloom go I. 
 
 Too quick despairer, wherefore wilt thou go? 
 Soon will the high Midsummer pomps come on, 
 
 Soon will the musk carnations break and swell, 
 Soon shall we have gold-dusted snapdragon, 
 
 Sweet- William with its homely cottage-smell, 
 And stocks in fragrant blow; 
 Roses that down the alleys shine afar, 
 
 And open, jasmine-muffled lattices, 
 
 And groups under the dreaming garden-trees, 
 And the full moon, and the white evening-star. 
 
THFRSIS. ; 7 
 
 He hearkens not ! light comer, he is flown ! 
 What matters it? next year he will return. 
 
 And we shall have him in the sweet spring-days. 
 With whitening hedges, and uncrumpling fern, 
 
 And blue-bells trembling by the forest-ways. 
 And scent of hay new-mown. 
 But Thyrsis never more we swains shall see ! 
 
 See him come back, and cut a smoother reed, 
 
 And blow a strain the world at last shall heed — 
 For Time, not Corydon, hath conquer' d thee. 
 
 Alack, for Corydon no rival now ! — 
 
 But when Sicilian shepherds lost a mate, 
 
 Some good survivor with his flute would go, 
 Piping a ditty sad for Bion's fate, 
 
 And cross the unpermitted ferry's flow, 
 And relax Pluto's brow, 
 And make leap up with joy the beauteous head 
 
 Of Proserpine, among whose crowned hair 
 
 Are flowers, first open'd on Sicilian air, 
 And flute his friend, like Orpheus, from the dead. 
 
7 8 THFRSIS. 
 
 O easy access to the hearer's grace 
 
 When Dorian shepherds sang to Proserpine ! 
 
 For she herself had trod Sicilian fields, 
 She knew the Dorian water's gush divine, 
 
 She knew each lily white which Enna yields, 
 Each rose with blushing face; 
 She loved the Dorian pipe, the Dorian strain. 
 
 But ah, of our poor Thames she never heard ! 
 
 Her foot the Cumnor cowslips never stirr'd ! 
 And we should tease her with our plaint in vain. 
 
 I- Well! wind-dispers'd and vain the words will be, 
 Yet, Thyrsis, let me give my grief its hour 
 
 In the old haunt, and find our tree-topp'd hill ! 
 Who, if not I, for questing here hath power ? 
 
 I know the wood which hides the daffodil, 
 I know the Fyfield tree, 
 I know what white, what purple fritillaries 
 
 The grassy harvest of the river-fields, 
 
 Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields, 
 And what sedg'd brooks are Thames's tributaries ; 
 
THVRSIS. 79 
 
 I know these slopes; who knows them if not I? — 
 But many a dingle on the loved hill-side, 
 
 With thorns once studded, old, white-blossom'd trees, 
 Where thick the cowslips grew, and, far descried, 
 
 High tower'd the spikes of purple orchises, 
 Hath since our day put by 
 The coronals of that forgotten time. 
 
 Down each green bank hath gone the ploughboy's team. 
 
 And only in the hidden brookside gleam 
 Primroses, orphans of the flowery prime. 
 
 Where is the girl, who, by the boatman's door, 
 Above the locks, above the boating throng, 
 
 Unmoor' d our skiff, when, through the Wytham flats, 
 Red loosestrife and blond meadow-sweet among, 
 
 And darting swallows, and light water-gnats, 
 We track'd the shy Thames shore ? 
 Where are the mowers, who, as the tiny swell 
 
 Of our boat passing heav'd the river-grass, 
 
 Stood with suspended scythe to see us pass? — 
 They all are gone, and thou art gone as well. 
 
8o THYRSIS. 
 
 Yes, thou art gone ! and round me too the night 
 In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. 
 
 I see her veil draw soft across the day, 
 I feel her slowly chilling breath invade 
 
 The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey 
 I feel her finger light 
 Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; 
 The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, 
 . The heart less bounding at emotion new, 
 And hope, once crush' d, less quick to spring again. 
 
 And long the way appears, which seem'd so short 
 To the unpractis'd eye of sanguine youth; 
 
 And high the mountain-tops, in cloudy air, 
 The mountain-tops where is the throne of Truth, 
 
 Tops in life's morning-sun so bright and bare ! 
 Unbreachable the fort 
 Of the long-batter'd world uplifts its wall. 
 
 And strange and vain the earthly turmoil grows, 
 
 And near and real the charm of thy repose, 
 And night as welcome as a friend would fall. 
 
THVRSIS. 8 1 
 
 But hush ! the upland hath a sudden loss 
 Of quiet ; — Look ! adown the dusk hillside, 
 
 A troop of Oxford hunters going home, 
 As in old days, jovial and talking, ride ! 
 
 From hunting with the Berkshire hounds they come- 
 Quick, let me fly, and cross 
 Into yon further field! — 'Tis done; and see, 
 
 Back'd by the sunset, which doth glorify 
 
 The orange and pale violet evening-sky. 
 Bare on its lonely ridge, the Tree ! the Tree ! 
 
 I take the omen ! Eve lets down her veil, 
 
 The white fog creeps from bush to bush about, 
 
 The west unnushes, the high stars grow bright. 
 And in the scattered farms the lights come out. 
 
 I cannot reach the Signal-Tree to-night, 
 Yet, happy omen, hail! 
 Hear it from thy broad lucent Arno vale 
 
 (For there thine earth-forgetting eyelids keep 
 
 The morningless and unawakening sleep 
 Under the flowery oleanders pale), 
 
82 THFRSIS. 
 
 Hear it, O Thyrsis, still our Tree is there! — 
 Ah, vain ! These English fields, this upland dim, 
 
 These brambles pale with mist engarlanded, 
 That lone, sky-pointing tree, are not for him. 
 
 To a boon southern country he is fled, 
 And now in happier air, 
 Wandering with the great Mother's train divine 
 
 (And purer or more subtle soul than thee, 
 
 I trow, the mighty Mother doth not see !) 
 Within a folding of the Apennine, 
 
 Thou hearest the immortal strains of old. 
 Putting his sickle to the perilous grain 
 
 In the hot cornfield of the Phrygian king, 
 For thee the Lityerses song again 
 
 Young Daphnis with his silver voice doth sing ; 
 Sings his Sicilian fold, 
 His sheep, his hapless love, his blinded eyes; 
 
 And how a call celestial round him rang 
 
 And heavenward from the fountain-brink he sprang, 
 And all the marvel of the golden skies. 
 
THFRSIS. 83 
 
 There thou art gone, and me thou leavest here 
 Sole in these fields ; yet will I not despair ; 
 
 Despair I will not, while I yet descry 
 'Neath the soft canopy of English air 
 
 That lonely Tree against the western sky. 
 Still, still these slopes, 'tis clear, 
 Our Gipsy-Scholar haunts, outliving thee ! 
 
 Fields where soft sheep from cages pull the hay, 
 
 Woods with anemonies in flower till May, 
 Know him a wanderer still ; then why not me ? 
 
 A fugitive and gracious light he seeks, 
 
 Shy to illumine ; and I seek it too. 
 
 This does not come with houses or with gold, 
 
 With place, with honour, and a flattering crew : 
 
 'Tis not in the world's market bought and sold. 
 
 But the smooth-slipping weeks 
 
 Drop by, and leave its seeker still untired ; 
 
 Out of the heed of mortals he is gone, 
 
 He wends unfollow'd, he must house alone ; 
 
 Yet on he fares, by his own heart inspired. 
 G 2 
 
84 THVRSIS. 
 
 Thou too, Thyrsis, on like quest wert bound, 
 Thou wanderedst with me for a little hour ; 
 
 Men gave thee nothing, but this happy quest, 
 If men esteem'd thee feeble, gave thee power, 
 
 If men procured thee trouble, gave thee rest. 
 And this rude Cumnor ground, 
 Its fir-topped Hurst, its farms, its quiet fields, 
 
 Here cam'st thou in thy jocund youthful time, 
 
 Here was thine height of strength, thy golden prime ; 
 And still the haunt beloved a virtue yields. 
 
 What though the music of thy rustic flute 
 Kept not for long its happy, country tone, 
 
 Lost it too soon, and learnt a stormy note 
 Of men contention-tost, of men who groan, 
 
 Which task'd thy pipe too sore, and tired thy throat- - 
 It fail'd, and thou wast mute ; 
 Yet hadst thou alway visions of our light, 
 
 And long with men of care thou couldst not stay, 
 
 And soon thy foot resumed its wandering way, 
 Left human haunt, and on alone till night. 
 
THFRSIS. 85 
 
 Too rare, too rare, grow now my visits here ! 
 'Mid city-noise, not, as with thee of yore, 
 
 Thyrsis, in reach of sheep-bells is my home ! 
 Then through the great town's harsh, heart-wearying roar, 
 
 Let in thy voice a whisper often come, 
 To chase fatigue and fear: 
 Why faintest thou ? I wander' d till I died. 
 
 Roam on ! the light we sought is shining still. 
 
 Dost thou ask proof? Our Tree yet crowns the hill. 
 Our Scholar travels yet the loved hillside. 
 
SAINT BRANDAN. 
 
 OAINT Brandan sails the northern main; 
 
 The brotherhoods of saints are glad. 
 He greets them once, he sails again. 
 So late ! — such storms ! — The Saint is mad ! 
 
 He heard across the howling seas 
 Chime convent bells on wintry nights, 
 He saw on spray-swept Hebrides 
 Twinkle the monastery lights; 
 
 But north, still north, Saint Brandan steer'd; 
 And now no bells, no convents more ! 
 The hurtling Polar lights are near'd, 
 The sea without a human shore. 
 
SAINT BRAND AN. 
 
 At last — (it was the Christmas night, 
 Stars shone after a day of storm) — 
 He sees float past an iceberg white, 
 And on it — Christ! — a living form! 
 
 That furtive mien, that scowling eye, 
 
 Of hair that red and tufted fell 
 
 It is — Oh, where shall Brandan fly? — 
 The traitor Judas, out of hell ! 
 
 Palsied with terror, Brandan sate; 
 The moon was bright, the iceberg near. 
 He hears a voice sigh humbly : " Wait ! 
 By high permission I am here. 
 
 " One moment wait, thou holy man ! 
 On earth my crime, my death, they knew: 
 My name is under all men's ban; 
 Ah, tell them of my respite too ! 
 
SAINT BR AND AN. 
 
 " Tell them, one blessed Christmas night — 
 (It was the first after I came, 
 Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite, 
 To rue my guilt in endless flame) — 
 
 "I felt, as I in torment lay 
 'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power, 
 An angel touch mine arm, and say : 
 Go hence, and cool thyself an hour ! 
 
 " ' Ah, whence this mercy, Lord?' I said. 
 The Leper recollect, said he, 
 Who ask'd the passers-by for aid, 
 In foppa, and thy charity. 
 
 " Then I remember'd how I went, 
 In Joppa, through the public street, 
 One morn, when the sirocco spent 
 Its storms of dust, with burning heat: 
 
SAINT BR AND AN. 89 
 
 "And in the street a Leper sate, 
 Shivering with fever, naked, old; 
 Sand raked his sores from heel to pate, 
 The hot wind fever'd him five-fold. 
 
 " He gazed upon me as I pass'd, 
 And murmur'd : Help me, or I die ! — 
 To the poor wretch my cloak I cast, 
 Saw him look eased, and hurried by. 
 
 " Oh, Brandan, think what grace divine, 
 What blessing must true goodness shower, 
 If semblance of it faint, like mine, 
 Hath such inestimable power ! 
 
 "Well-fed, well-clothed, well-friended, I 
 Did that chance act of good, that one ! 
 Then went my way to kill and lie — 
 Forgot my good as soon as done. 
 
9 o SAINT BRAND AN. 
 
 " That germ of kindness, in the womb 
 Of mercy caught, did not expire; 
 Outlives my guilt, outlives my doom, 
 And friends me in the pit of fire. 
 
 " Once every year, when carols wake, 
 On earth, the Christmas night's repose, 
 Arising from the sinners' lake, 
 I journey to these healing snows. 
 
 "I stanch with ice my burning breast, 
 With silence balm my whirling brain. 
 O Brandan ! to this hour of rest, 
 That Joppan leper's ease was pain ! " — 
 
 Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes; 
 He bow'd his head; he breathed a prayer. 
 When he look'd up — tenantless lies 
 The iceberg in the frosty air ! 
 
SONNETS. 
 
93 
 
 A PICTURE AT NEWSTEAD. 
 
 \J{ 7"HAT made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell ?- 
 'Twas not the thought of Byron, of his cry 
 Stormily sweet, his Titan agony ; 
 It was the sight of that Lord Arundel 
 
 Who struck, in heat, the child he loved so well, 
 And the child's reason flickered, and did die. 
 Painted (he will'd it) in the gallery 
 They hang; the picture doth the story tell. 
 
 Behold the stern, mail'd father, staff in hand ! 
 The little fair-hair'd son, with vacant gaze, 
 Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are ! 
 
 Methinks the woe which made that father stand 
 Baring his dumb remorse to future days, 
 Was woe than Byron's woe more tragic far. 
 
94 
 
 RACHEL. 
 
 TN Paris all look'd hot and like to fade. 
 
 Brown in the garden of the Tuileries, 
 
 Brown with September, droop'd the chestnut-trees. 
 
 Twas dawn; a brougham roll'd through the streets, 
 and made 
 
 Halt at the white and silent colonnade 
 
 Of the French Theatre. Worn with disease, 
 
 Rachel, with eyes no gazing can appease, 
 
 Sate in the brougham, and those blank walls survey'd. 
 
 She follows the gay world, whose swarms have fled 
 
 To Switzerland, to Baden, to the Rhine; 
 
 Why stops she by this empty play-house drear? 
 
 Ah, where the spirit its highest life hath led, 
 
 All spots, match'd with that spot, are less divine; 
 
 And Rachel's Switzerland, her Rhine, is here ! 
 
95 
 
 RACHEL. 
 
 II. 
 
 T TNTO a lonely villa in a dell 
 
 Above the fragrant warm Provencal shore 
 
 The dying Rachel in a chair they bore 
 
 Up the steep pine-plumed paths of the Estrelle, 
 
 And laid her in a stately room, where fell 
 The shadow of a marble Muse of yore— 
 The rose-crown'd queen of legendary lore, 
 Polymnia— full on her death-bed. 'Twas well I 
 
 The fret and misery of our northern towns, 
 In this her life's last day, our poor, our pain, 
 Our jangle of false wits, our climate's frowns, 
 
 Do for this radiant Greek-soul'd artist cease ; 
 
 Sole object of her dying eyes remain 
 
 The beauty and the glorious art of Greece. 
 
9 6 
 
 RACHEL. 
 
 III. 
 
 OPRUNG from the blood of Israel's scatter'd race, 
 At a mean inn in German Aarau born, 
 To forms from antique Greece and Rome uptorn, 
 Trick'd out with a Parisian speech and face, 
 
 Imparting life renew' d, old classic grace; 
 Then soothing with thy Christian strain forlorn, 
 A-Kempis ! her departing soul outworn, 
 While by her bedside Hebrew rites have place — 
 
 Ah, not the radiant spirit of Greece alone 
 
 She had — one power, which made her breast its 
 home ! 
 
 In her, like us, there clash'd, contending powers, 
 
 Germany, France, Christ, Moses, Athens, Rome. 
 The strife, the mixture in her soul, are ours; 
 Her genius and her glory are her own. 
 
97 
 
 EAST LONDON. 
 
 "HP WAS August, and the fierce sun overhead 
 Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green, 
 And the pale weaver, through his windows seen 
 In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited; 
 
 I met a preacher there I knew, and said: 
 "111 and o'erwork'd, how fare you in this scene?" 
 " Bravely I" said he ; "for I of late have been 
 Much cheer'd with thoughts of Christ, the living breads 
 
 O human soul ! as long as thou canst so 
 Set up a mark of everlasting light, 
 Above the howling senses' ebb and flow, 
 
 To cheer thee, and to right thee if thou roam, 
 Not with lost toil thou labourest through the night! 
 Thou mak'st the heaven thou hop'st indeed thy home. 
 
9 8 
 
 WEST LONDON. 
 
 /^ROUCH'D on the pavement close by Belgrave 
 
 Square 
 A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied; 
 A babe was in her arms, and at her side 
 A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet were bare. 
 
 Some labouring men, whose work lay somewhere there, 
 Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who hied 
 Across, and begg'd, and came back satisfied. 
 The rich she had let pass with frozen stare- 
 Thought I: Above her state this spirit towers; 
 She will not ask of aliens, but of friends, 
 Of sharers in a common human fate. 
 
 She turns from that cold succour, which attends 
 The unknown little from the unknowing great, 
 And points us to a better time than ours. 
 
99 
 
 ANTI-DESPERATION. 
 
 ONG fed on boundless hopes, O race of man, 
 How angrily thou spurn'st all simpler fare ! 
 Christ, some one says, was human as we are; 
 No judge eyes us from heaven, our sin to scan; 
 
 We live no more, when we have done our span. 
 "Well, then, for Christ," thou answerest, "who can 
 
 care ? 
 " From sim which heaven records not, why forbear 
 "Live we like brutes our life without a plan!" 
 
 So answerest thou; but why not rather say: 
 "Hath man no second life? — Pitch this one high! 
 " Sits there no judge in heaven, our sin to see? — 
 
 " More strictly, then, the inward judge obey ! 
 " Was Christ a man like us ? — Ah ! let us try 
 " If we then, too, can be such men as he !" 
 
 H 2 
 
IOO 
 
 IMMORTALITY. 
 
 T^OIL'D by our fellow men, depress'd, outworn, 
 We leave the brutal world to take its way, 
 And, Patience ! in another life, we say, 
 The world shall be thrust down, and we up-borne ! 
 
 And will not, then, the immortal armies scorn 
 The world's poor, routed leavings; or will they, 
 Who fail'd under the heat of this life's day, 
 Support the fervours of the heavenly morn? 
 
 No, no ! the energy of life may be 
 Kept on after the grave, but not begun; 
 And he who flagg'd not in the earthly strife, 
 
 From strength to strength advancing— only he, 
 His soul well-knit, and all his battles won, 
 Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal life. 
 
WORLDLY PLACE. 
 
 pVEN in a palace, life may be led well! 
 So spoke the imperial sage, purest of men, 
 Marcus Aurelius.— But the stifling den 
 Of common life, where, crowded up pell-mell, 
 
 Our freedom for a little bread we sell, 
 And drudge under some foolish master's ken, 
 Who rates us, if we peer outside our pen — 
 Match'd with a palace, is not this a hell? 
 
 Even in a palace ! On his truth sincere, 
 
 Who spoke these words, no shadow ever came; 
 
 And when my ill-school'd spirit is aflame 
 
 Some nobler, ampler stage of life to win, 
 
 I'll stop, and say : " There were no succour here 
 
 "The aids to noble life are all within." 
 
102 
 
 THE DIVINITY. 
 
 " "X/ES, write it in the rock !" Saint Bernard said, 
 
 "Grave it on brass with adamantine pen! 
 
 " 'Tis God himself becomes apparent, when 
 
 " God's wisdom and God's goodness are display'd, 
 
 " For God of these his attributes is made." — 
 Well spake the impetuous Saint, and bore of men 
 The suffrage captive; now, not one in ten 
 Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh'd. 3 
 
 God's wisdom and God's goodness I — Ay, but fools 
 Mis-define these till God knows them no more. 
 Wisdom and goodness, they are God! — what schools 
 
 Have yet so much as heard this simpler lore? 
 This no Saint preaches, and this no Church rules ; 
 'Tis in the desert, now and heretofore. 
 
io3 
 
 THE GOOD SHEPHERD WITH THE KID. 
 
 f-TE saves the sheep, the goats he doth not save I 
 So rang Tertullian's sentence, on the side 
 Of that unpitying Phrygian sect which cried : 
 " Him can no fount of fresh forgiveness lave, 
 
 "Who sins, once wash'd by the baptismal wave!" 
 So spake the fierce Tertullian. But she sigh'd, 
 The infant Church ; of love she felt the tide 
 Stream on her from her Lord's yet recent grave. 
 
 And then she smiled, and in the Catacombs, 
 With eye suffused but heart inspired true, 
 On those walls subterranean, where she hid 
 
 Her head in ignominy, death, and tombs, 
 She her Good Shepherd's hasty image drew; 
 And on his shoulders, not a lamb, a kid. 
 
io 4 
 
 AUSTERITY OF POETRY. 
 
 ^PHAT son of Italy who tried to blow, 4 
 Ere Dante came, the trump of sacred song, 
 In his light youth amid a festal throng 
 Sate with his bride to see a public show. 
 
 Fair was the bride, and on her front did glow 
 Youth like a star; and what to youth belong. 
 Gay raiment, sparkling gauds, elation strong. 
 A prop gave way ! crash fell a platform ! lo, 
 
 Mid struggling sufferers, hurt to death, she lay ! 
 Shuddering they drew her garments off — and found 
 A robe' of sackcloth next the smooth, white skin. 
 
 Such, poets, is your bride, the Muse ! young, gay 
 Radiant, adorn'd outside ; a hidden ground 
 Of thought and of austerity within. 
 
i°5 
 
 EAST AND WEST. 
 
 T N the bare midst of Anglesey they show 
 Two springs which close by one another play, 
 And, "Thirteen hundred years agone," they say, 
 " Two saints met often where those waters flow. 
 
 "One came from Penmon, westward, and a glow 
 "Whiten'd his face from the sun's fronting ray. 
 " Eastward the other, from the dying day; 
 "And he with unsunn'd face did always go." 
 
 Seiriol the Bright, Kybi the Dark, men said. 
 The Seer from the East was then in light, 
 The Seer from the West was then in shade. 
 
 Ah ! now 'tis changed. In conquering sunshine bright 
 The man of the bold West now comes array'd; 
 He of the mystic East is touch'd with night. 
 
io6 
 
 MONICA'S LAST PRAYER. 
 
 " ^)H could thy grave at home, at Carthage, be !"— 
 Care not for that, and lay me where I fall. 
 Everywhere heard will be the judgment-call. 
 But at Gods altar, oh ! remember me. 
 
 Thus Monica, and died in Italy. 
 Yet fervent had her longing been, through all 
 Her course, for home at last, and burial 
 With her own husband, by the Libyan sea. 
 
 Had been ; but at the end, to her pure soul 
 All tie with all beside seem'd vain and cheap, 
 And union before God the only care. 
 
 Creeds pass, rites change, no altar standeth whole 
 Yet we her memory, as she pray'd, will keep, 
 Keep by this : Life in God, and union there ! 
 
POEMS. 
 
CALAIS SANDS. 
 
 A THOUSAND knights have rein'd their steeds 
 To watch this line of sand-hills run, 
 Along the never silent Strait, 
 To Calais glittering in the sun. 
 
 To look toward Ardres' Golden Field 
 Across this wide aerial plain, 
 Which glows as if the Middle Age 
 Were gorgeous upon earth again. 
 
 Oh, that to share this famous scene 
 
 I saw, upon the open sand, 
 
 Thy lovely presence at my side, 
 
 Thy shawl, thy look, thy smile, thy hand ! 
 
CALAIS SANDS. 
 
 How exquisite thy voice would come, 
 My darling, on this lonely air ! 
 How sweetly would the fresh sea-breeze 
 Shake loose some lock of soft brown hair ! 
 
 But now my glance but once hath roved 
 O'er Calais and its famous plain; 
 To England's cliffs my gaze is turn'd, 
 O'er the blue Strait mine eyes I strain. 
 
 Thou comest! Yes, the vessel's cloud 
 Hangs dark upon the rolling sea ! — 
 Oh that yon seabird's wings were mine 
 To win one instant's glimpse of thee ! 
 
 I must not spring to grasp thy hand, 
 To woo thy smile, to seek thine eye; 
 But I may stand far off, and gaze, 
 And watch thee pass unconscious by, 
 
CALAIS SANDS. : 
 
 And spell thy looks, and guess thy thoughts, 
 Mixt with the idlers on the pier. — 
 Ah, might I always rest unseen, 
 So I might have thee always near! 
 
 To-morrow hurry through the fields 
 Of Flanders to the storied Rhine! 
 To-night those soft-fringed eyes shall close 
 Beneath one roof, my queen! with mine. 
 
DOVER BEACH. 
 
 n^HE sea is calm to-night, 
 
 The tide is full, the moon lies fair 
 Upon the Straits; — on the French coast, the light 
 Gleams, and is gone ; the cliffs of England stand, 
 Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. 
 Come to the window, sweet is the night air ! 
 Only, from the long line of spray 
 Where the ebb meets the moon-blanch'd sand, 
 Listen ! you hear the grating roar 
 Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling, 
 At their return, up the high strand, 
 Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 
 With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
 The eternal note of sadness in. 
 
DOVER BEACH. 
 
 Sophocles long ago 
 Heard it on the iEgaean, and it brought 
 Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 
 Of human misery ; we 
 Find also in the sound a thought, 
 Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 
 
 The sea of faith 
 
 Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's short 
 
 Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd; 
 
 But now I only hear 
 
 Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, 
 
 Retreating to the breath 
 
 Of the night-wind down the vast edges drear 
 
 And naked shingles of the world. 
 
 Ah, love, let us be true 
 
 To one another ! for the world, which seems 
 To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
 So various, so beautiful, so new, 
 
 "3 
 
ii 4 DOVER BEACH. 
 
 Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
 Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain; 
 And we are here as on a darkling plain 
 Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, 
 Where ignorant armies clash by night. 
 
 +*$*«- 
 
THE TERRACE AT BERNE. 
 
 HPEN years! — and to my waking eye 
 
 Once more the roofs of Berne appear; 
 The rocky banks, the terrace high, 
 The stream — and do I linger here? 
 
 The clouds are on the Oberland, 
 The Jungfrau snows look faint and far; 
 But bright are those green fields at hand, 
 And through those fields comes down the Aar, 
 
 And from the blue twin lakes it comes, 
 Flows by the town, the church-yard fair, 
 And 'neath the garden-walk it hums, 
 The house — and is my Marguerite there? 
 
 I 2 
 
u6 THE TERRACE AT BERNE. 
 
 Ah, shall I see thee, while a flush 
 Of startled pleasure floods thy brow, 
 Quick through the oleanders brush, 
 And clap thy hands, and cry : ' Tis thou ! 
 
 Or hast thou long since wander'd back, 
 Daughter of France ! to France, thy home 
 And flitted down the flowery track 
 Where feet like thine too lightly come? 
 
 Doth riotous laughter now replace 
 Thy smile, and rouge, with stony glare, 
 Thy cheek's soft hue, and fluttering lace 
 The kerchief that enwound thy hair ? 
 
 Or is it over ? — art thou dead ? — 
 Dead? — and no warning shiver ran 
 Across my heart, to say thy thread 
 Of life was cut, and closed thy span! 
 
THE TERRACE AT BERNE. n 7 
 
 Could from earth's ways that figure slight 
 Be lost, and I not feel 'twas so ? 
 Of that fresh voice the gay delight 
 Fail from earth's air, and I not know? 
 
 Or shall I find thee still, but changed, 
 But not the Marguerite of thy prime ? 
 With all thy being re-arranged, 
 Pass'd through the crucible of time; 
 
 With spirit vanish'd, beauty waned, 
 And hardly yet a glance, a tone, 
 A gesture — anything— retain'd 
 Of all that was my Marguerite's own? 
 
 I will not know! — for wherefore try 
 To things by mortal course that live 
 A shadowy durability 
 For which they were not meant, to give 
 
n8 THE TERRACE AT BERNE. 
 
 Like driftwood spars which meet and pass 
 
 Upon the boundless ocean-plain, 
 
 So on the sea of life, alas ! 
 
 Man nears man, meets, and leaves again. 
 
 I knew it when my life was young, 
 I feel it still, now youth is o'er ! 
 The mists are on the mountains hung, 
 And Marguerite I shall see no more. 
 
 ~oC/^)XP>30~ 
 
STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC, 
 May 6, 1859. 
 
 T^AR on its rocky knoll descried 
 
 Saint Michael's chapel cuts the sky. 
 I climb' d ;— beneath me, bright and wide. 
 Lay the lone coast of Brittany. 
 
 Bright in the sunset, weird and still, 
 It lay beside the Atlantic wave, 
 As if the wizard Merlin's will 
 Yet charm' d it from his forest grave. 
 
 Behind me on their grassy sweep, 
 Bearded with lichen, scrawl'd and grey, 
 The giant stones of Carnac sleep, 
 In the mild evening of the May. 
 
STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC. 
 
 No priestly stern procession now 
 Streams through their rows of pillars old ; 
 No victims bleed, no Druids bow; 
 Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold. 
 
 From bush to bush the cuckoo flies, 
 The orchis red gleams everywhere; 
 Gold broom with furze in blossom vies. 
 The blue-bells perfume all the air. 
 
 And o'er the glistening, lonely land, 
 Rise up, all round, the Christian spires. 
 The church of Carnac, by the strand, 
 Catches the westering sun's last fires. 
 
 And there across the watery way, 
 See, low above the tide at flood. 
 The sickle-sweep of Quiberon bay 
 Whose beach once ran with loyal blood ! 
 
STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC. i 
 
 And beyond that, the Atlantic wide ! — 
 All round, no soul, no boat, no hail ! 
 But, on the horizon's verge descried, 
 Hangs, touch'd with light, one snowy sail ! 
 
 Ah, where is he, who should have come 
 Where that far sail is passing now, 
 Past the Loire's mouth, and by the foam 
 Of Finistere's unquiet brow, 
 
 Home, round into the English wave ? — 
 He tarries where the Rock of Spain 5 
 Mediterranean waters lave ; 
 He enters not the Atlantic main. 
 
 Oh, could he once have reach' d this air 
 Freshen'd by plunging tides, by showers ! 
 Have felt this breath he loved, of fair 
 Cool northern fields, and grass, and flowers ! 
 
STANZAS COMPOSED AT CARNAC. 
 
 He long'd for it — press'd on ! — In vain. 
 At the Straits fail'd that spirit brave. 
 The South was parent of his pain, 
 The South is mistress of his grave. 
 
 »=«c§>^<!>=c 
 
A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 'T^HE sandy spits, the shore-lock'd lakes, 
 
 Melt into open, moonlit sea; 
 The soft Mediterranean breaks 
 At my feet, free. 
 
 Dotting the fields of corn and vine 
 
 Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl'd olives stand 
 Behind, that lovely mountain-line ! 
 While by the strand 
 
 Cette, with its glistening houses white, 
 Curves with the curving beach away 
 To where the lighthouse beacons bright 
 Far in the bay. 
 
124 A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone, 
 
 So moonlit, saw me once of yore 
 Wander unquiet, and my own 
 Vext heart deplore ! 
 
 But now that trouble is forgot; 
 
 Thy memory, thy pain, to-night, 
 My brother! and thine early lot, 6 
 Possess me quite. 
 
 The murmur of this Midland deep 
 
 Is heard to-night around thy grave 
 There where Gibraltar's cannon'd steep 
 O'erfrowns the wave. 
 
 For there, with bodily anguish keen, 
 With Indian heats at last fordone, 
 With public toil and private teen, 
 Thou sank'st, alone. 
 
A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 12 
 
 Slow to a stop, at morning grey, 
 
 I see the smoke-crown' d vessel come 
 Slow round her paddles dies away 
 The seething foam. 
 
 A boat is lower'd from her side ; 
 
 Ah, gently place him on the bench ! 
 That spirit — if all have not yet died — 
 A breath might quench. 
 
 Is this the eye, the footstep fast, 
 
 The mien of youth we used to see, 
 Poor, gallant boy ! — for such thou wast, 
 Still art, to me. 
 
 The limbs their wonted tasks refuse, 
 
 The eyes are glazed, thou canst not speak 
 And whiter than thy white burnous 
 That wasted cheek ! 
 
126 A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 Enough ! The boat, with quiet shock, 
 
 Unto its haven coming nigh, 
 
 Touches, and on Gibraltar's rock 
 
 Lands thee, to die. 
 
 Ah me ! Gibraltar's strand is far, 
 But farther yet across the brine 
 Thy dear wife's ashes buried are, 
 Remote from thine. 
 
 For there where Morning's sacred fount 
 
 Its golden rain on earth confers, 
 The snowy Himalayan Mount 
 O'ershadows hers. 
 
 Strange irony of Fate, alas, 
 
 Which for two jaded English saves, 
 
 When from their dusty life they pass, 
 Such peaceful graves ! 
 
A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 In cities should we English lie, 
 
 Where cries are rising ever new, 
 And men's incessant stream goes by; 
 We who pursue 
 
 Our business with unslackening stride, 
 
 Traverse in troops, with care-fill'd breast, 
 The soft Mediterranean side, 
 The Nile, the East, 
 
 And see all sights from pole to pole, 
 
 And glance, and nod, and bustle by; 
 And never once possess our soul 
 Before we die. 
 
 Not by those hoary Indian hills, 
 
 Not by this gracious Midland sea 
 Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills, 
 Should our graves be ! 
 
 127 
 
28 A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 Some sage, to whom the world was dead. 
 And men were specks, and life a play; 
 Who made the roots of trees his bed, 
 And once a day 
 
 With staff and gourd his way did bend 
 
 To villages and homes of man, 
 For food to keep him till he end 
 His mortal span, 
 
 And the pure goal of Being reach; 
 
 Grey-headed, wrinkled, clad in white, 
 Without companion, without speech, 
 By day and night 
 
 Pondering God's mysteries untold, 
 
 And tranquil as the glacier snows- - 
 He by those Indian mountains old 
 Might well repose ! 
 
A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 Some grey crusading knight austere 
 
 Who bore Saint Louis company 
 And came home hurt to death and here 
 Landed to die ; 
 
 Some youthful troubadour whose tongue 
 Fill'd Europe once with his love-pain, 
 Who here outwearied sunk, and sung 
 His dying strain; 
 
 Some girl who here from castle-bower, 
 
 With furtive step and cheek of flame, 
 'Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower 
 By moonlight came 
 
 To meet her pirate-lover's ship, 
 
 And from the wave-kiss'd marble stair 
 Beckon'd him on, with quivering lip 
 And unbound hair, 
 
 29 
 
i -jo A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 
 
 And lived some moons in happy trance, 
 
 Then learnt his death, and pined away — 
 Such by these waters of romance 
 'Twas meet to lay ! 
 
 But you — a grave for knight or sage, 
 Romantic, solitary, still, 
 
 spent ones of a work-day age ! 
 
 Befits you ill. 
 
 So sang I j but the midnight breeze 
 
 Down to the brimm'd moon-charmed main 
 Comes softly through the olive-trees, 
 And checks my strain. 
 
 1 think of her, whose gentle tongue 
 
 All plaint in her own cause controll'd; 
 Of thee I think, my brother! young 
 In heart, high-soul' d ; 
 
A SOUTHERN NIGHT. 131 
 
 That comely face, that cluster'd brow, 
 That cordial hand, that bearing free, 
 I see them still, I see them now, 
 Shall always see ! 
 
 And what but gentleness untired, 
 
 And what but noble feeling warm, 
 Wherever shewn, howe'er attired, 
 Is grace, is charm? 
 
 What else is all these waters are, 
 
 What else is steep'd in lucid sheen, 
 What else is bright, what else is fair, 
 What else serene? 
 
 Mild o'er her grave, ye mountains, shine ! 
 
 Gently by his, ye waters, glide ! 
 
 To that in you which is divine 
 
 They were allied. 
 k 2 
 
FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A 
 DEJANEIRA. 
 
 r\ FRIVOLOUS mind of man, 
 
 Light ignorance, and hurrying, unsure thoughts, 
 Though man bewails you not, 
 How I bewail you ! 
 
 Little in your prosperity 
 
 Do you seek counsel of the Gods. 
 
 Proud, ignorant, self-adored, you live alone. 
 
 In profound silence stern 
 
 Among their savage gorges and cold springs 
 
 Un visited remain 
 
 The great oracular shrines. 
 
 Thither in your adversity 
 
 Do you betake yourselves for light, 
 
 But strangely misinterpret all you hear. 
 
FRAGMENT OF CHORUS OF A DEJANEIRA. 133 
 
 For you will not put on 
 
 New hearts with the enquirer's holy robe, 
 
 And purged, considerate minds. 
 
 And him on whom, at the end 
 
 Of toil and dolour untold, 
 
 The Gods have said that repose 
 
 At last shall descend undisturb'd, 
 
 Him you expect to behold 
 
 In an easy old age, in a happy home ; 
 
 No end but this you praise, 
 
 But him, on whom, in the prime 
 
 Of life, with vigour undimm'd, 
 
 With unspent mind, and a soul 
 
 Unworn, undebased, undecay'd, 
 
 Mournfully grating, the gates 
 
 Of the city of death have for ever closed — 
 
 Him, I count him, well-starr'd. 
 
PALLADIUM. 
 
 CET where the upper streams of Simois flow 
 
 Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood; 
 And Hector was in Ilium, far below, 
 And fought, and saw it not, but there it stood. 
 
 It stood; and sun and moonshine rain'd their light 
 On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. 
 Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight 
 Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not 
 fall. 
 
 So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. 
 Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air; 
 Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll ; 
 We visit it by moments, ah ! too rare. 
 
PALLADIUM. 135 
 
 Men will renew the battle in the plain 
 To-morrow ; red with blood will Xanthus be ; 
 Hector and Ajax will be there again ; 
 Helen will come upon the wall to see. 
 
 Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife, 
 And fluctuate 'twist blind hopes and blind despairs, 
 And fancy that we put forth all our life, 
 And never know how with the soul it fares. 
 
 Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high, 
 Upon our life a ruling effluence send; 
 And when it fails, fight as we will, we die, 
 And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end. 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 
 
 A \ THAT mortal, when he saw, 
 
 Life's voyage done, his heavenly Friend. 
 Could ever yet dare tell him fearlessly : 
 "I have kept uninfring'd my nature's law; 
 The inly-written chart thou gavest me 
 To guide me, I have steer'd by to the end?'" 
 
 Ah ! let us make no claim 
 
 On life's incognisable sea 
 
 To too exact a steering of our way ! 
 
 Let us not fret and fear to miss our aim 
 
 If some fair coast has lured us to make stay, 
 
 Or some friend hail'd us to keep company ! 
 
 Ay, we would each fain drive 
 
 At random, and not steer by rule ! 
 
 Weakness ! and worse, weakness bestow'd in vain ! 
 
HUMAN LIFE. 137 
 
 Winds from our side the unsuiting consort rive, 
 We rush by coasts where we had lief remain ; 
 Man cannot, though he would, live chance's fool. 
 
 No ! as the foaming swathe 
 
 Of torn-up water, on the main. 
 
 Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar 
 
 On either side the black deep-furrow'd path 
 
 Cut by an onward-labouring vessel's prore, 
 
 And never touches the ship-side again ; 
 
 Even so we leave behind, 
 
 As, charter'd by some unknown Powers, 
 
 We stem across the sea of life by night, 
 
 The joys which were not for our use designed, 
 
 The friends to whom we had no natural rio-ht. 
 
 The homes that were not destined to be ours. 
 
EARLY DEATH AND FAME. 
 
 T^OR him who must see many years, 
 I praise the life which slips away 
 Out of the light and mutely; which avoids 
 Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife, 
 Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal, 
 Insincere praises ; which descends 
 The quiet mossy track to age. 
 
 But, when immature death 
 Beckons too early the guest 
 From the half-tried banquet of life, 
 Young, in the bloom of his days ; 
 Leaves no leisure to press, 
 Slow and surely, the sweets 
 
EARLY DEATH AND FAME. 139 
 
 Of a tranquil life in the shade; 
 
 Fuller for him be the hours ! 
 
 Give him emotion, though pain ! 
 
 Let him live, let him feel: I have lived! 
 
 Heap up his moments with life, 
 
 Triple his pulses with fame ! 
 
YOUTH AND CALM. 
 
 TTS death! and peace, indeed, is here, 
 And ease from shame, and rest from feai 
 There's nothing can dismarble now 
 The smoothness of that limpid brow. 
 But is a calm like this, in truth, 
 The crowning end of life and youth, 
 And when this boon rewards the dead, 
 Are all debts paid, has all been said? 
 And is the heart of youth so light, 
 Its step so firm, its eye so bright, 
 Because on its hot brow there blows 
 A wind of promise and repose 
 From the far grave, to which it goes; 
 Because it has the hope to come, 
 One day, to harbour in the tomb? 
 
YOUTH AND CALM. I4 , 
 
 Ah no, the bliss youth dreams is one 
 For daylight, for the cheerful sun, 
 For feeling nerves and living breath — 
 Youth dreams a bliss on this side death ! 
 It dreams a rest, if not more deep, 
 More grateful than this marble sleep. 
 It hears a voice within it tell : 
 Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well. 
 Tis all perhaps which man acquires, 
 But 'tis not what our youth desires. 
 
 *«£*«- 
 
YOUTH'S AGITATIONS. 
 
 A 1 THEN I shall be divorced, some ten years hence, 
 From this poor present self which I am now ; 
 When youth has done its tedious vain expense 
 Of passions that for ever ebb and flow; 
 Shall I not joy youth's heats are left behind, 
 And breathe .more happy in an even clime? 
 Ah no ! for then I shall begin to find 
 A thousand virtues in this hated time. 
 Then I shall wish its agitations back, 
 And all its thwarting currents of desire; 
 Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack, 
 And call this hurrying fever, generous fire, 
 And sigh that one thing only has been lent 
 To youth and age in common — discontent. 
 
GROWING OLD. 
 
 VI 7HAT is it to grow old? 
 
 Is it to lose the glory of the form, 
 The lustre of the eye? 
 Is it for beauty to forego her wreath ? 
 Yes, but not this alone. 
 
 Is it to feel our strength — 
 
 Not our bloom only, but our strength — decay? 
 
 Is it to feel each limb 
 
 Grow stiffer, every function less exact, 
 
 Each nerve more weakly strung ? 
 
 Yes, this, and more ! but not, 
 
 Ah, 'tis not what in youth we dream'd 'twould be ! 
 
 'Tis not to have our life 
 
 Mellow'd and soften'd as with sunset glow, 
 
 A golden day's decline ! 
 
i + 4 GROWING OLD. 
 
 Tis not to see the world 
 
 As from a height, with rapt prophetic eyes, 
 
 And heart profoundly stirr'd; 
 
 And weep, and feel the fulness of the past, 
 
 The years that are no more ! 
 
 It is to spend long days 
 
 And not once feel that we were ever young. 
 
 It is to add, immured 
 
 In the hot prison of the present, month 
 
 To month with weary pain. 
 
 It is to suffer this, 
 
 And feel but half, and feebly, what we feel. 
 
 Deep in our hidden heart 
 
 Festers the dull remembrance of a change, 
 
 But no emotion — none. 
 
GROWING OLD. 145 
 
 It is — last stage of all — 
 
 When we are frozen up within, and quite 
 
 The phantom of ourselves, 
 
 To hear the world applaud the hollow ghost 
 
 Which blamed the living man. 
 
 <^r?s3%jy~d^^ 
 
THE PROGRESS OF POESY. 
 
 A Variation. 
 
 V^OUTH rambles on life's arid mount, 
 
 And strikes the rock, and finds the vein, 
 And brings the water from the fount, 
 The fount which shall not flow again. 
 
 The man mature with labour chops 
 For the bright stream a channel grand, 
 And sees not that the sacred drops 
 Ran off and vanish'd out of hand. 
 
 And then the old man totters nigh 
 And feebly rakes among the stones. 
 The mount is mute, the channel dry; 
 And down he lays his weary bones. 
 
A NAMELESS EPITAPH. 
 
 HP HIS sentence have I left behind: 
 
 An aching body, and a mind 
 Not wholly clear, nor wholly blind, 
 Too keen to rest, too weak to find, 
 That travails sore, and brings forth wind, 
 Are God's worst portion to mankind. 
 
 Another. 
 Ask not my name, O friend ! 
 That Being only, which hath known each man 
 From the beginning, can 
 Remember each unto the end. 
 
 L 2 
 
THE LAST WORD. 
 
 /^REEP into thy narrow bed, 
 
 Creep, and let no more be said ! 
 Vain thy onset ! all stands fast ; 
 Thou thyself must break at last. 
 
 Let the long contention cease ! 
 Geese are swans, and swans are geese. 
 Let them have it how they will! 
 Thou art tired ; best be still ! 
 
 They out-talk'd thee, hiss'd thee, tore thee. 
 Better men fared thus before thee; 
 Fired their ringing shot and pass'd, 
 Hotly charged — and broke at last. 
 
THE LAST WORD. 
 
 Charge once more, then, and be dumb ! 
 Let the victors, when they come, 
 When the forts of folly fall, 
 Find thy body by the wall. 
 
 149 
 
A WISH. 
 
 T ASK not that my bed of death 
 
 From bands of greedy heirs be free ; 
 For these besiege the latest breath 
 Of fortune's favour'd sons, not me. 
 
 I ask not each kind soul to keep 
 Tearless, when of my death he hears ; 
 Let those who will, if any, weep ! 
 There are worse plagues on earth than tears. 
 
 I ask but that my death may find 
 The freedom to my life denied; 
 Ask but the folly of mankind, 
 Then, then at last, to quit my side. 
 
A WISH. 151 
 
 Spare me the whispering, crowded room, 
 The friends who come, and gape, and go ; 
 The ceremonious air of gloom — 
 All, that makes death a hideous show! 
 
 Nor bring, to see me cease to live, 
 Some doctor full of phrase and fame, 
 To shake his sapient head and give 
 The ill he cannot cure a name. 
 
 Nor fetch, to take the accustom'd toll 
 Of the poor sinner bound for death, 
 His brother doctor of the soul, 
 To canvass with official breath 
 
 The future and its viewless things — 
 
 That undiscover'd mystery 
 
 Which one who feels death's winnowing wings 
 
 Must needs read clearer, sure, than he ! 
 
A WISH. 
 
 Bring none of these ! but let me be, 
 While all around in silence lies, 
 Moved to the window near, and see 
 Once more before my dying eyes 
 
 Bathed in the sacred dews of morn 
 The wide aerial landscape spread — 
 The world which was ere I was born, 
 The world which lasts when I am dead. 
 
 Which never was the friend of one 
 Nor promised love it could not give, 
 But lit for all its generous sun, 
 And lived itself, and made us live. 
 
 There let me gaze, till I become 
 In soul with what I gaze on wed ! 
 To feel the universe my home; 
 To have before my mind — instead 
 
A WISH. 
 
 Of the sick-room, the mortal strife, 
 The turmoil for a little breath — 
 The pure eternal course of life, 
 Not human combatings with death. 
 
 Thus feeling, gazing, let me grow 
 Compos'd, refreshed, ennobled, clear; 
 Then willing let my spirit go 
 To work or wait elsewhere or here ! 
 
 153 
 
 *^<^(S^&f^S^>^ 
 
LINES 
 WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 
 
 TN this lone open glade I lie, 
 
 Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand; 
 And at its head, to stay the eye, 
 Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand. 
 
 Birds here make song, each bird has his, 
 Across the girdling city's hum. 
 How green under the boughs it is ! 
 How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come ! 
 
 Sometimes a child will cross the glade 
 To take his nurse his broken toy ; 
 Sometimes a thrush flit overhead 
 Deep in her unknown day's employ. 
 
LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS, 155 
 
 Here at my feet what wonders pass, 
 What endless, active life is here ! 
 What blowing daisies, fragrant grass ! 
 An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear. 
 
 Scarce fresher is the mountain sod 
 Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out, 
 And, eased of basket and of rod, 
 Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout. 
 
 In the huge world which roars hard by 
 
 Be others happy, if they can! 
 
 But in my helpless cradle I 
 
 Was breathed on by the rural Pan. 
 
 I, on men's impious uproar hurl'd, 
 Think often, as I hear them rave, 
 That peace has left the upper world, 
 And now keeps only in the grave. 
 
156 LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. 
 
 Yet here is peace for ever new ! 
 When I, who watch them, am away, 
 Still all things in this glade go through 
 The changes of their quiet day. 
 
 Then to their happy rest they pass ; 
 The flowers close, the birds are fed, 
 The night comes down upon the grass, 
 The child sleeps warmly in his bed. 
 
 Calm soul of all things ! make it mine 
 To feel, amid the city's jar, 
 That there abides a peace of thine, 
 Man did not make, and cannot mar ! 
 
 The will to neither strive nor cry, 
 The power to feel with others give ! 
 Calm, calm me more ! nor let me die 
 Before I have begun to live. 
 
THE SECOND BEST. 
 
 1V/TODERATE tasks and moderate leisure, 
 
 Quiet living, strict-kept measure 
 Both in suffering and in pleasure — 
 'Tis for this thy nature yearns. 
 
 But so many books thou readest, 
 But so many schemes thou breedest, 
 But so many wishes feedest, 
 
 That thy poor head almost turns. 
 
 And (the world's so madly jangled, 
 Human things so fast entangled) 
 Nature's wish must now be strangled 
 For that best which she discerns. 
 
158 THE SECOND BEST. 
 
 So it must be ! yet, while leading 
 A strain'd life, while overfeeding, 
 Like the rest, his wit with reading, 
 No small profit that man earns, 
 
 Who through all he meets can steer him, 
 Can reject what cannot clear him, 
 Cling to what can truly cheer him ! 
 Who each day more surely learns 
 
 That an impulse, from the distance 
 Of his deepest, best existence, 
 To the words " Hope, Light, Persistence,' 
 Strongly stirs and truly burns ! 
 
 -Ife/^^'i 
 
A CAUTION TO POETS. 
 
 YX THAT poets feel not, when they make, 
 
 A pleasure in creating, 
 The world, in its turn, will not take 
 Pleasure in contemplating. 
 
PIS-ALLER. 
 
 " TV/T-AN is blind because of sin; 
 " Revelation makes him sure. 
 " Without that, who looks within, 
 " Looks in vain, for all's obscure." 
 
 Nay, look closer into man ! 
 Tell me, can you find indeed 
 Nothing sure, no moral plan 
 Clear prescribed, without your creed? 
 
 " No, I nothing can perceive ; 
 " Without that, all's dark for men. 
 " That, or nothing, I believe." — 
 For God's sake, believe it then ! 
 
EPILOGUE TO LESSING'S LAOCOON. 
 
 /^NE morn as through Hyde Park we walk'd, 
 
 My friend and I, by chance we talk'd 
 Of Lessing's famed Laocoon; 
 And after we awhile had gone 
 In Lessing's track, and tried to see 
 What painting is, what poetry — 
 Diverging to another thought, 
 " Ah," cries my friend, " but who hath taught 
 Why music and the other arts 
 Oftener perform aright their parts 
 Than poetry ? why she, than they, 
 Fewer real successes can display? 
 
 " For 'tis so, surely ! Even in Greece 
 Where best the poet framed his piece, 
 Even in that Phcebus-guarded ground 
 Pausanias on his travels found 
 
1 62 EPILOGUE TO LESSING's LAOCOON. 
 
 Good poems, if he look'd, more rare 
 
 (Though many) than good statues were — 
 
 For these, in truth, were everywhere ! 
 
 Of bards full many a stroke divine 
 
 In Dante's, Petrarch's, Tasso's line, 
 
 The land of Ariosto show'd; 
 
 And yet, e'en there, the canvas glow'd 
 
 With triumphs, a yet ampler brood, 
 
 Of Raphael and his brotherhood. 
 
 And nobly perfect, in our day ^ 
 
 Of haste, half-work, and disarray, 
 
 Profound yet touching, sweel yet strong, 
 
 Hath risen Goethe's, Wordsworth's song; 
 
 Yet even I (and none will bow 
 
 Deeper to these !) must needs allow, 
 
 They yield us not, to soothe our pains, 
 
 Such multitude of heavenly strains 
 
 As from the kings of sound are blown, 
 
 Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn." 
 
EPILOGUE TO LESSING S LAOCOON. 163 
 
 While thus my friend discoursed, we pass 
 
 Out of the path, and take the grass. 
 
 The grass had still the green of May, 
 
 And still the unblacken'd elms were gay ; 
 
 The kine were resting in the shade, 
 
 The flies a summer murmur made ; 
 
 Bright was the morn and south the air. 
 
 The soft-couch'd cattle were as fair 
 
 As those that pastured by the sea, 
 
 That old-world morn, in Sicily, 
 
 When on the beach the Cyclops lay, 
 
 And Galatea from the bay 
 
 Mock'd her poor lovelorn giant's lay. 
 
 " Behold,'' I said, " the painter's sphere ! 
 
 The limits of his art appear ! 
 
 The passing group, the summer morn, 
 
 The grass, the elms, that blossom'd thorn ; 
 
 Those cattle couch'd, or, as they rise, 
 
 Their shining flanks, their liquid eyes ; 
 m 2 
 
164 EPILOGUE TO LESSING S LAOCOON. 
 
 These, or much greater things, but caught 
 Like these, and in one aspect brought. 
 In outward semblance he must give 
 A moment's life of things that live; 
 Then let him choose his moment well, 
 With power divine its story tell !" 
 
 Still we walk'd on, in thoughtful mood, 
 And now upon the Bridge we stood. 
 Full of sweet breathings was the air, 
 Of sudden stirs and pauses fair ; 
 Down o'er the stately Bridge the breeze 
 Came rustling from the garden trees 
 And on the sparkling waters play'd. 
 Light-plashing waves an answer made, 
 And mimic boats their haven near'd. 
 Beyond, the Abbey towers appear'd, 
 By mist and chimneys unconfined, 
 Free to the sweep of light and wind; 
 While, through the earth-moor'd nave below, 
 
EPILOGUE TO LESSING S LAOCOON. 165 
 
 Another breath of wind doth blow, 
 Sound as of wandering breeze — but sound 
 In laws by human artists bound. 
 " The world of music !" I exclaim'd, 
 " This breeze that rustles by, that famed 
 Abbey recall it ! what a sphere, 
 Large and profound, hath genius here ! 
 Th' inspired musician what a range, 
 What power of passion, wealth of change ! 
 Some pulse of feeling he must choose 
 And its lock'd fount of beauty use, 
 And through the stream of music tell 
 Its else unutterable spell; 
 To choose it rightly is his part, 
 And press into its inmost heart. 
 
 " Miserere, Domine ! 
 The words are utter'd, and they flee. 
 Deep is their penitential moan, 
 Mighty their pathos, but 'tis gone ! 
 
166 EPILOGUE TO LESSING'S LAOCOON. 
 
 They have declared the spirit's sore 
 Sore load, and words can do no more. 
 Beethoven takes them then — those two 
 Poor, bounded words — and makes them new 
 Infinite makes them, makes them young, 
 Transplants them to another tongue 
 Where they can now, without constraint, 
 Pour all the soul of their complaint, 
 And roll adown a channel large 
 The wealth divine they have in charge. 
 Page after page of music turn, 
 And still they live and still they burn, 
 Eternal, passion-fraught and free — 
 Miserere Domine ! " 
 
 Onward we moved, and reach' d the Ride 
 
 Where gaily flows the human tide. 
 
 Afar, in rest the cattle lay, 
 
 We heard, afar, faint music play; 
 
 But agitated, brisk, and near, 
 
 Men, with their stream of life, were here. 
 
i6 7 
 
 Some hang upon the rails, and some, 
 On foot, behind them, go and come. 
 This through the Ride upon his steed 
 Goes slowly by, and this at speed ; 
 The young, the happy, and the fair, 
 The old, the sad, the worn were there ; 
 Some vacant, and some musing went, 
 And some in talk and merriment. 
 Nods, smiles, and greetings, and farewells ! 
 And now and then, perhaps, there swells 
 A sigh, a tear — but in the throng 
 All changes fast, and hies along; 
 Hies, ah, from whence, what native ground? 
 And to what goal, what ending, bound ? 
 " Behold at last the poet's sphere ! 
 But who," I said, " suffices here ? 
 
 " For, ah ! so much he has to do ! 
 Be painter and musician too ! 
 The aspect of the moment show, 
 The feeling of the moment know ! 
 
1 68 EPILOGUE TO LESSING'S LAOCOON. 
 
 The aspect not, I grant, express 
 Clear as the painter's art can dress, 
 The feeling not, I grant, explore 
 So deep as the musician's lore — 
 But clear as words can make revealing, 
 And deep as words can follow feeling. 
 But, ah, then comes his sorest spell 
 Of toil ! he must life's movement tell ! 
 The thread which binds it all in one, 
 And not its separate parts alone ! 
 The movement he must tell of life, 
 Its pain and pleasure, rest and strife; 
 His eye must travel down, at full, 
 The long, unpausing spectacle ; 
 With faithful unrelaxing force 
 Attend it from its primal source, 
 From change to change and year to year 
 Attend it of its mid career, 
 Attend it to the last repose 
 And solemn silence of its close. 
 
169 
 
 "The cattle rising from the grass 
 His thought must follow where they pass ; 
 The penitent with anguish bow'd 
 His thought must follow through the crowd. 
 Yes, all this eddying, motley throng 
 That sparkles in the sun along, 
 Girl, statesman, merchant, soldier bold, 
 Master and servant, young and old, 
 Grave, gay, child, parent, husband, wife, 
 He follows home, and lives their life ! 
 
 " And many, many are the souls 
 Life's movement fascinates, controls, 
 It draws them on, they cannot save 
 Their feet from its alluring wave ; 
 They cannot leave it, they must go 
 With its unconquerable flow. 
 But, ah, how few of all that try 
 This mighty march, do aught but die ! 
 For ill prepared for such a way. 
 
170 
 
 111 found in strength, in wits, are they ! 
 They faint, they stagger to and fro, 
 And wandering from the stream they go 
 In pain, in terror, in distress, 
 They see, all round, a wilderness. 
 Sometimes a momentary gleam 
 They catch of the mysterious stream ; 
 Sometimes, a second's space, their ear 
 The murmur of its waves doth hear. 
 That transient glimpse in song they say, 
 But not as painter can pourtray ! 
 That transient sound in song they tell, 
 But not, as the musician, well ! 
 And when at last these snatches cease, 
 And they are silent and at peace, 
 The stream of life's majestic whole 
 Hath ne'er been mirror'd on their soul. 
 
 Only a few the life-stream's shore 
 With safe un wandering feet explore, 
 
EPILOGUE TO LESSING S LAOCOON. 171 
 
 Untired its movement bright attend, 
 
 Follow its windings to the end. 
 
 Then from its brimming waves their eye 
 
 Drinks up delighted ecstasy, 
 
 And its deep-toned, melodious voice, 
 
 For ever makes their ear rejoice. 
 
 They speak! the happiness divine 
 
 They feel, runs o'er in every line. 
 
 Its spell is round them like a shower; 
 
 It gives them pathos, gives them power. 
 
 No painter yet hath such a way 
 
 Nor no musician made, as they ; 
 
 And gather' d on immortal knolls 
 
 Such lovely flowers for cheering souls ! 
 
 Beethoven, Raphael, cannot reach 
 
 The charm which Homer, Shakspeare, teach. 
 
 To these, to these, their thankful race 
 
 Gives, then, the first, the fairest place ! 
 
 And brightest is their glory's sheen 
 
 For greatest has their labour been. 
 
BACCHANALIA; 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE NEW AGE. 
 
 PHE evening comes, the field is still. 
 
 The tinkle of the thirsty rill, 
 Unheard all day, ascends again; 
 Deserted is the new-reap'd grain, 
 Silent the sheaves ! the ringing wain, 
 The reaper's cry, the dogs' alarms, 
 All housed within the sleeping farms ! 
 The business of the day is done, 
 The last belated gleaner gone. 
 And from the thyme upon the height, 
 And from the elder-blossom white 
 And pale dog-roses in the hedge, 
 And from the mint-plant in the sedge, 
 
BACCHANALIA ; OR, THE NEW AGE. 
 
 In puffs of balm the night-air blows 
 
 The perfume which the day forgoes. 
 
 And on the pure horizon far, 
 
 See, pulsing with the first-born star, 
 
 The liquid sky above the hill ! 
 
 The evening comes, the field is still. 
 
 Loitering and leaping, 
 
 With saunter, with bounds — 
 
 Flickering and circling 
 
 In files and in rounds — 
 
 Gaily their pine-staff green 
 
 Tossing in air, 
 
 Loose o'er their shoulders white 
 
 Showering their hair — 
 
 See ! the wild Maenads 
 
 Break from the wood, 
 
 Youth and Iacchus 
 
 Maddening their blood ! 
 
 See ! through the quiet corn 
 
 T.^ 
 
174 BACCHANALIA ; 
 
 Rioting they pass — 
 
 Fling the piled sheaves about. 
 
 Trample the grass ! 
 
 Tear from the rifled hedge 
 
 Garlands, their prize; 
 
 Fill with their sports the field, 
 
 Fill with their cries ! 
 
 Shepherd, what ails thee, then? 
 
 Shepherd, why mute? 
 
 Forth with thy joyous song! 
 
 Forth with thy flute! 
 
 Tempts not the revel blithe? 
 
 Lure not their cries? 
 
 Glow not their shoulders smooth? 
 
 Melt not their eyes? 
 
 Is not, on cheeks like those, 
 
 Lovely the flush? — 
 
 Ah, so the quiet was! 
 So was the hush ! 
 
OR, THE NEW AGE. 175 
 
 II. 
 
 The epoch ends, the world is still. 
 The age has talk'd and work'd its fill — 
 The famous orators have done, 
 The famous poets sung and gone, 
 The famous men of war have fought, 
 The famous speculators thought, 
 The famous players, sculptors, wrought, 
 The famous painters fill'd their wall. 
 The famous critics judged it all. 
 The combatants are parted now, 
 Uphung the spear, unbent the bow, 
 The puissant crown'd, the weak laid low ! 
 And in the after-silence sweet, 
 Now strife is hush'd, our ears doth meet, 
 Ascending pure, the bell-like fame 
 Of this or that down-trodden name, 
 Delicate spirits, push'd away 
 In the hot press of the noon-day. 
 
1 76 BACCHANALIA; 
 
 And o'er the plain, where the dead age 
 
 Did its now silent warfare wage — 
 
 O'er that wide plain, now wrapt in gloom, 
 
 Where many a splendour finds its tomb, 
 
 Many spent fames and fallen mights — 
 
 The one or two immortal lights 
 
 Rise slowly up into the sky 
 
 To shine there everlastingly, 
 
 Like stars over the bounding hill. 
 
 The epoch ends, the world is still. 
 
 Thundering and bursting 
 In torrents, in waves — 
 Carolling and shouting 
 Over tombs, amid graves — 
 See ! on the cumber' d plain 
 Clearing a stage, 
 Scattering the past about, 
 Comes the new age ! 
 Bards make new poems, 
 
OR, THE NEW AGE. 17; 
 
 Thinkers new schools, 
 
 Statesmen new systems, 
 
 Critics new rules! 
 
 All things begin again; 
 
 Life is their prize ; 
 
 Earth with their deeds they fill, 
 
 Fill with their cries ! 
 
 Poet, what ails thee, then? 
 
 Say, why so mute? 
 
 Forth with thy praising voice ! 
 
 Forth with thy flute ! 
 
 Loiterer! why sittest thou 
 
 Sunk in thy dream? 
 
 Tempts not the bright new age? 
 
 Shines not its stream? 
 
 Look, ah, what genius, 
 
 Art, science, wit ! 
 
 Soldiers like Caesar, 
 
 Statesmen like Pitt! 
 
 N 
 
178 BACCHANALIA ; OR, THE NEW AGE. 
 
 Sculptors like Phidias, 
 
 Raphaels in shoals, 
 
 Poets like Shakspeare — 
 
 Beautiful souls ! 
 
 See, on their glowing cheeks 
 
 Heavenly the flush ! 
 
 Ah, so the silence was ! 
 So was the hush ! 
 
 The world but feels the present's spell. 
 The poet feels the past as well; 
 Whatever men have done, might do, 
 Whatever thought, might think it too. 
 
 --t^XSJr^- 
 
PROGRESS. 
 
 n^HE Master stood upon the mount, and taught. 
 
 He saw a fire in his disciples' eyes; 
 " The old law," they said, " is wholly come to nought ! 
 
 Behold the new world rise ! " 
 
 " Was it," the Lord then said, " with scorn ye saw 
 The old law observed by Scribes and Pharisees? 
 I say unto you, see ye keep that law 
 More faithfully than these ! 
 
 " Too hasty heads for ordering worlds, alas ! 
 Think not that I to annul the law have will*d; 
 No jot, no tittle from the law shall pass, 
 Till all hath been fulfill'd." 
 
 N 2 
 
180 PROGRESS. 
 
 So Christ said eighteen hundred years ago. 
 And what then shall be said to those to-day 
 Who cry aloud to lay the old world low 
 To clear the new world's way? 
 
 "Religious fervours! ardour misapplied! 
 Hence, hence," they cry, "ye do but keep man blind! 
 But keep him self-immersed, preoccupied, 
 And lame the active mind." 
 
 Ah ! from the old world let some one answer give : 
 "Scorn ye this world, their tears, their inward cares? 
 I say unto you, see that your souls live 
 A deeper life than theirs. 
 
 " Say ye : The spirit of man has found new roads, 
 And we must leave the old faiths, and walk therein ? — 
 Leave then the Cross as ye have left carved gods, 
 But guard the fire within! 
 
PROGRESS. 181 
 
 " Bright, else, and fast the stream of life may roll, 
 And no man may the other's hurt behold; 
 Yet each will have one anguish — his own soul 
 Which perishes of cold." 
 
 Here let that voice make end ! then let a strain 
 From a far lonelier distance, like the wind 
 Be heard, floating through heaven, and fill again 
 These men's profoundest mind : 
 
 " Children of men ! the unseen Power, whose eve 
 For ever doth accompany mankind, 
 Hath look'd on no religion scornfully 
 That man did ever find. 
 
 " Which has not taught weak wills how much they can, 
 Which has not fall'n on the dry heart like rain. 
 Which has not cried to sunk, self-weary man : 
 Thou must be born again ! 
 
182 
 
 PROGRESS. 
 
 " Children of men ! not that your age excel 
 In pride of life the ages of your sires, 
 But that you think clear, feel deep, bear fruit well. 
 The Friend of man desires." 
 
RUGBY CHAPEL; 
 November, 1857. 
 
 /^OLDLY, sadly descends 
 
 The autumn evening. The Field 
 Strewn with its dank yellow drifts 
 Of wither' d leaves, and the elms, 
 Fade into dimness apace, 
 Silent; — hardly a shout 
 From a few boys late at their play ! 
 The lights come out in the street, 
 In the school-room windows; but cold, 
 Solemn, unlighted, austere, 
 Through the gathering darkness, arise 
 The Chapel walls, in whose bound 
 Thou, my father ! art laid. 
 
184 RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 There thou dost lie, in the gloom 
 Of the autumn evening. But ah ! 
 That word, gloom, to my mind 
 Brings thee back in the light 
 Of thy radiant vigour again ! 
 In the gloom of November we pass'd 
 Days not of gloom at thy side; 
 Seasons impair'd not the ray 
 Of thine even cheerfulness clear. 
 Such thou wast; and I stand 
 In the autumn evening, and think 
 Of bygone autumns with thee. 
 
 Fifteen years have gone round 
 Since thou arosest to tread, 
 In the summer morning, the road 
 Of death, at a call unforeseen, 
 Sudden. For fifteen years, 
 We who till then in thy shade 
 Rested as under the boughs 
 
RUGBY CHAPEL. 185 
 
 Of a mighty oak, have endured 
 Sunshine and rain as we might, 
 Bare, unshaded, alone, 
 Lacking the shelter of thee. 
 
 O strong soul, by what shore 
 Tarriest thou now? For that force, 
 Surely, has not been left vain ! 
 Somewhere, surely, afar, 
 In the sounding labour-house vast 
 Of being, is practised that strength, 
 Zealous, beneficent, firm ! 
 
 Yes, in some far-shining sphere, 
 
 Conscious or not of the past, 
 
 Still thou performest the word 
 
 Of the Spirit in whom thou dost live, 
 
 Prompt, unwearied, as here ! 
 
 Still thou upraisest with zeal 
 
 The humble good from the ground, 
 
86 RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 Sternly repressest the bad. 
 Still, like a trumpet, dost rouse 
 Those who with half-open eyes 
 Tread the border-land dim 
 'Twixt vice and virtue; reviv'st, 
 Succourest; — this was thy work, 
 This was thy life upon earth. 
 
 
 What is the course of the life 
 Of mortal men on the earth? — 
 Most men eddy about 
 Here and there — eat and drink, 
 Chatter and love and hate, 
 Gather and squander, are raised 
 Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust, 
 Striving blindly, achieving 
 Nothing; and, then they die — 
 Perish; and no one asks 
 Who or what they have been, 
 More than he asks what waves 
 
RUGBY CHAPEL, 
 
 In the moonlit solitudes mild 
 
 Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd, 
 
 Foam'd for a moment, and gone. 
 
 And there are some, whom a thirst 
 
 Ardent, unquenchable, fires, 
 
 Not with the crowd to be spent, 
 
 Not without aim to go round 
 
 In an eddy of purposeless dust, 
 
 Effort unmeaning and vain. 
 
 Ah yes, some of us strive 
 
 Not without action to die 
 
 Fruitless, but something to snatch 
 
 From dull oblivion, nor all 
 
 Glut the devouring grave ! 
 
 We, we have chosen our path — 
 
 Path to a clear-purposed goal, 
 
 Path of advance ! but it leads 
 
 A long, steep journey, through sunk 
 
 Gorges, o'er mountains in snow! 
 
1 88 RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 Cheerful, with friends, we set forth ; 
 Then, on the height, comes the storm ! 
 Thunder crashes from rock 
 To rock, the cataracts reply; 
 Lightnings dazzle our eyes ; 
 Roaring torrents have breach' d 
 The track, the stream-bed descends 
 In the place where the wayfarer once 
 Planted his footstep — the spray 
 Boils o'er its borders; aloft, 
 The unseen snow-beds dislodge 
 Their hanging ruin; — alas, 
 Havoc is made in our train ! 
 Friends who set forth at our side 
 Falter, are lost in the storm ! 
 We, we only, are left ! 
 With frowning foreheads, with lips 
 Sternly compress'd, we strain on, 
 On — and at nightfall, at last, 
 Come to the end of our wav, 
 
RUGBY CHAPEL. 189 
 
 To the lonely inn 'mid the rocks ; 
 Where the gaunt and taciturn Host 
 Stands on the threshhold, the wind 
 Shaking his thin white hairs — 
 Holds his lantern to scan 
 Our storm-beat figures, and asks : 
 Whom in our party we bring? 
 Whom we have left in the snow ? 
 
 Sadly we answer : We bring 
 Only ourselves ; we lost 
 Sight of the rest in the storm. 
 Hardly ourselves we fought through, 
 Stripp'd, without friends, as we are. 
 Friends, companions, and train 
 The avalanche swept from our side. 
 
 But thou would'st not alone 
 Be saved, my father ! alone 
 Conquer and come to thy goal, 
 
190 RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 Leaving the rest in the wild. 
 We were weary, and we 
 Fearful, and we, in our march, 
 Fain to drop down and to die. 
 Still thou turnedst, and still 
 Beckonedst the trembler, and still 
 Gavest the weary thy hand ! 
 If, in the paths of the world, 
 Stones might have wounded thy feet, 
 Toil or dejection have tried 
 Thy spirit, of that we saw 
 Nothing ! to us thou wert still 
 Cheerful, and helpful, and firm. 
 Therefore to thee it was given 
 Many to save with thyself; 
 And, at the end of thy day, 
 O faithful shepherd ! to come, 
 Bringing thy sheep in thy hand. 
 
 And through thee I believe 
 
RUGBY CHAPEL. i 9 i 
 
 In the noble and great who are gone; 
 
 Pure souls honour'd and blest 
 
 By former ages, who else — 
 
 Such, so soulless, so poor, 
 
 Is the race of men whom I see — 
 
 Seem'd but a dream of the heart, 
 
 Seem'd but a cry of desire. 
 
 Yes! I believe that there lived 
 
 Others like thee in the past, 
 
 Not like the men of the crowd 
 
 Who all round me to-day 
 
 Bluster or cringe, and make life 
 
 Hideous, and arid, and vile; 
 
 But souls temper' d with fire, 
 
 Fervent, heroic, and good, 
 
 Helpers and friends of mankind. 
 
 Servants of God !— or sons 
 Shall I not call you? because 
 Not as servants ye knew 
 
192 RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 Your Father's innermost mind, 
 His, who unwillingly sees 
 One of his little ones lost — 
 Yours is the praise, if mankind 
 Hath not as yet in its march 
 Fainted, and fallen, and died! 
 
 See ! in the rocks of the world 
 Marches the host of mankind, 
 A feeble, wavering line. 
 Where are they tending? — A God 
 Marshall' d them, gave them their goal. 
 Ah, but the way is so long ! 
 Years they have been in the wild ! 
 Sore thirst plagues them; the rocks, 
 Rising all round, overawe. 
 Factions divide them; their host 
 Threatens to break, to dissolve. 
 Ah, keep, keep them combined! 
 Else, of the myriads who fill 
 
RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 That army, not one shall arrive ! 
 Sole they shall stray; in the rocks 
 Labour for ever in vain, 
 Die one by one in the waste. 
 
 Then, in such hour of need 
 
 Of your fainting, dispirited race, 
 
 Ye, like angels, appear, 
 
 Radiant with ardour divine. 
 
 Beacons of hope, ye appear ! 
 
 Languor is not in your heart, 
 
 Weakness is not in your word, 
 
 Weariness not on your brow. 
 
 Ye alight in our van; at your voice, 
 
 Panic, despair, flee away. 
 
 Ye move through the ranks, recall 
 
 The stragglers, refresh the outworn, 
 
 Praise, re-inspire the brave. 
 
 Order, courage, return. 
 
 Eyes rekindling, and prayers, 
 o 
 
 193 
 
194 RUGBY CHAPEL. 
 
 Follow your steps as ye go. 
 Ye fill up the gaps in our files, 
 Strengthen the wavering line, 
 Stablish, continue our march, 
 On, to the bound of the waste, 
 On, to the City of God. 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 "Henri Heine " 'tis here ! 
 
 The black tombstone, the name 
 
 Carved there— no more! and the smooth. 
 
 Swarded alleys, the limes 
 
 Touch'd with yellow by hot 
 
 Summer, but under them still 
 
 In September's bright afternoon 
 
 Shadow, and verdure, and cool ! 
 
 Trim Montmartre ! the faint 
 
 Murmur of Paris outside ; 
 
 Crisp everlasting-flowers, 
 
 Yellow and black, on the graves. 
 
 Half blind, palsied, in pain, 
 
 Hither to come, from the streets' 
 o 2 
 
196 HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 Uproar, surely not loath 
 Wast thou, Heine ! — to lie 
 Quiet ! to ask for closed 
 Shutters, and darken'd room, 
 And cool drinks, and an eased 
 Posture, and opium, no more ! 
 Hither to come, and to sleep 
 Under the wings of Renown. 
 
 Ah ! not little, when pain 
 Is most quelling, and man 
 Easily quell'd, and the fine 
 Temper of genius alive 
 Quickest to ill, is the praise 
 Not to have yielded to pain ! 
 No small boast, for a weak 
 Son of mankind, to the earth 
 Pinn'd by the thunder, to rear 
 His bolt-scathed front to the stars 
 And, undaunted, retort 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE, 197 
 
 'Gainst thick-crashing, insane, 
 Tyrannous tempests of bale, 
 Arrowy lightnings of soul ! 
 
 Hark ! through the alley resounds 
 Mocking laughter ! A film 
 Creeps o'er the sunshine ; a breeze 
 Ruffles the warm afternoon, 
 Saddens my soul with its chill. 
 Gibing of spirits in scorn 
 Shakes every leaf of the grove, 
 Mars the benignant repose 
 Of this amiable home of the dead. 
 
 Bitter spirits ! ye claim 
 Heine ? — Alas, he is yours ! 
 Only a moment I long'd 
 Here in the quiet to snatch 
 From such mates the outworn 
 Poet, and steep him in calm. 
 
198 HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 Only a moment ! I knew 
 
 Whose he was who is here 
 
 Buried, I knew he was yours ! 
 
 Ah, I knew that I saw 
 
 Here no sepulchre built 
 
 In the laurell'd rock, o'er the blue 
 
 Naples bay, for a sweet 
 
 Tender Virgil ! no tomb 
 
 On Ravenna sands, in the shade 
 
 Of Ravenna pines, for a high 
 
 Austere Dante ! no grave 
 
 By the Avon side, in the bright 
 
 Stratford meadows, for thee, 
 
 Shakspeare ! loveliest of souls, 
 
 Peerless in radiance, in joy. 
 
 What so harsh and malign, 
 Heine ! distils from thy life, 
 Poisons the peace of thy grave? 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE. 199 
 
 I chide with thee not, that thy sharp 
 Upbraidings often assail' d 
 England, my country ; for we, 
 Fearful and sad, for her sons, 
 Long since, deep in our hearts, 
 Echo the blame of her foes. 
 We, too, sigh that she flags ; 
 We, too, say that she now, 
 Scarce comprehending the voice 
 Of her greatest, golden-mouth'd sons 
 Of a former age any more, 
 Stupidly travels her round 
 Of mechanic business, and lets 
 Slow die out of her life 
 Glory, and genius, and joy. 
 
 So thou arraign'st her, her foe; 
 So we arraign her, her sons. 
 
 Yes, we arraign her ! but she, 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 The weary Titan ! with deaf 
 Ears, and labour- dirnm'd eyes, 
 Regarding neither to right 
 Nor left, goes passively by, 
 Staggering on to her goal; 
 Bearing on shoulders immense, 
 Atlantean, the load, 
 Wellnigh not to be borne, 
 Of the too vast orb of her fate. 
 
 But was it thou — I think 
 Surely it was — that bard 
 Unnamed, who, Goethe said, 
 Had every other gift, but wanted love 
 Love, without which the tongue 
 Even of angels sounds amiss ? 
 
 Charm is the glory which makes 
 Song of the poet divine ; 
 Love is the fountain of charm. 
 How without charm wilt thou draw, 
 
Heine's grave. 201 
 
 Poet ! the world to thy way ? 
 
 Not by the lightnings of wit ! 
 
 Not by the thunder of scorn ! 
 
 These to the world, too, are given; 
 
 Wit it possesses, and scorn — 
 
 Charm is the poet's alone. 
 
 Hollow and dull are the great, 
 
 And artists envious, and the mob profane. 
 
 We know all this, we know ! 
 
 Cam' st thou from heaven, O child 
 
 Of light ! but this to declare ? 
 
 Alas ! to help us forget 
 
 Such barren knowledge awhile, 
 
 God gave the poet his song. 
 
 Therefore a secret unrest 
 Tortured thee, brilliant and bold ! 
 Therefore 1 triumph itself 
 Tasted amiss to thy soul. 
 Therefore, with blood of thy foes, 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 Trickled in silence thine own. 
 Therefore the victor's heart 
 Broke on the field of his fame. 
 
 Ah! as of old, from the pomp 
 Of Italian Milan, the fair 
 Flower of marble of white 
 Southern palaces — steps 
 B order' d by statues, and walks 
 Terraced, and orange bowers 
 Heavy with fragrance— the blond 
 German Kaiser full oft 
 Long'd himself back to the fields, 
 Rivers, and high-roof'd towns 
 Of his native Germany; so, 
 So, how often ! from hot 
 Paris drawing-rooms, and lamps 
 Blazing, and brilliant crowds, 
 Starr'd and Jewell' d, of men 
 Famous, of women the queens 
 
203 
 
 Of dazzling converse, and fumes 
 
 Of praise — hot, heady fumes, to the poor brain 
 
 That mount, that madden !^-how oft 
 
 Heine's spirit outworn 
 
 Long'd itself out of the din 
 
 Back to the tranquil, the cool 
 
 Far German home of his youth ! 
 
 See ! in the May afternoon, 
 
 O'er the fresh short turf of the Hartz, 
 
 A youth, with the foot of youth, 
 
 Heine ! thou climbest again. 
 
 Up, through the tall dark firs 
 
 Warming their heads in the sun, 
 
 Chequering the grass with their shade — 
 
 Up, by the stream with its huge 
 
 Moss-hung boulders and thin 
 
 Musical water half-hid — 
 
 Up, o'er the rock-strewn slope, 
 
 With the sinking sun, and the air 
 
2o 4 HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 Chill, and the shadows now 
 
 Long on the grey hill-side — 
 
 To the stone-roof'd hut at the top. 
 
 Or, yet later, in watch 
 
 On the roof of the Brocken tower 
 
 Thou standest, gazing ! to see 
 
 The broad red sun, over field 
 
 Forest and city and spire 
 
 And mist-track'd stream of the wide 
 
 Wide German land, going down 
 
 In a bank of vapours again 
 
 Standest ! at nightfall, alone. 
 
 Or, next morning, with limbs 
 Rested by slumber, and heart 
 Freshen'd and light with the May, 
 O'er the gracious spurs coming down 
 Of the Lower Hartz, among oaks, 
 And beechen coverts, and copse 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 Of hazels green in whose depth 
 
 Use, the fairy transform^, 
 
 In a thousand water-breaks light 
 
 Pours her petulant youth — 
 
 Climbing the rock which juts 
 
 O'er the valley, the dizzily perch'd 
 
 Rock ! to its Iron Cross 
 
 Once more thou cling'st; to the Cross 
 
 Clingest ! with smiles, with a sigh. 
 
 Goethe, too, had been there. 7 
 In the long-past winter he came 
 To the frozen Hartz, with his soul 
 Passionate, eager, his youth 
 All in ferment; — but he 
 Destined to work and to live 
 Left it, and thou, alas ! 
 Only to laugh and to die. 
 
 But something prompts me : Not thus 
 
2o6 Heine's grave. 
 
 Take leave of Heine, not thus 
 Speak the last word at his grave ! 
 Not in pity and not 
 With half censure — with awe 
 Hail, as it passes from earth 
 Scattering lightnings, that soul ! 
 
 The spirit of the world 
 
 Beholding the absurdity of men — 
 
 Their vaunts, their feats — let a sardonic smile 
 
 For one short moment wander o'er his lips. 
 
 That smile was Heine ! for its earthly hour 
 
 The strange guest sparkled ; now 'tis pass'd away. 
 
 That was Heine ! and we, 
 Myriads who live, who have lived, 
 What are we all, but a mood, 
 A single mood, of the life 
 Of the Being in whom we exist, 
 Who alone is all things in one. 
 
HEINE'S GRAVE. 
 
 Spirit, who fillest us all! 
 Spirit who utterest in each 
 New-coming son of mankind 
 Such of thy thoughts as thou wilt 
 O thou, one of whose moods, 
 Bitter and strange, was the life 
 Of Heine — his strange, alas ! 
 His bitter life— may a life 
 Other and milder be mine ! 
 May'st thou a mood more serene, 
 Happier, have utter'd in mine ! 
 May'st thou the rapture of peace 
 Deep have embreathed at its core ! 
 Made it a ray of thy thought ! 
 Made it a beat of thy joy ! 
 
STANZAS 
 FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 HHHROUGH Alpine meadows soft suffused 
 With rain, where thick the crocus blows, 
 Past the dark forges long disused, 
 
 The mule-track from Saint Laurent goes. 
 The bridge is cross'd, and slow we ride, 
 Through forest, up the mountain-side. 
 
 The autumnal evening darkens round, 
 The wind is up, and drives the rain; 
 While hark! far down, with strangled sound 
 Doth the Dead Guiers' stream complain, 
 Where that wet smoke among the woods 
 Over his boiling cauldron broods. 
 
STANZAS FROM THE GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 209 
 
 Swift rush the spectral vapours white 
 
 Past limestone scars with ragged pines, 
 
 Shewing— then blotting from our sight. 
 
 Halt ! through the cloud-drift something shines ! 
 
 High in the valley, wet and drear, 
 
 The huts of Courrerie appear. 
 
 Strike leftward! cries our guide; and higher 
 
 Mounts up the stony forest-way. 
 
 At last the encircling trees retire ; 
 
 Look ! through the showery twilight grey 
 
 What pointed roofs are these advance ? 
 
 A palace of the Kings of France ? 
 
 Approach, for what we seek is here. 
 
 Alight and sparely sup and wait 
 
 For rest in this outbuilding near; 
 
 Then cross the sward and reach that gate; 
 
 Knock ; pass the wicket ! Thou art come 
 
 To the Carthusians' world-famed home. 
 
STANZAS FROM THE 
 
 The silent courts, where night and day 
 
 Into their stone-carved basins cold 
 
 The splashing icy fountains play, 
 
 The humid corridors behold, 
 
 Where ghostlike in the deepening night 
 
 Cowl'd forms brush by in gleaming white. 
 
 The chapel, where no organ's peal 
 Invests the stern and naked prayer. 
 With penitential cries they kneel 
 And wrestle; rising then, with bare 
 And white uplifted faces stand, 
 Passing the Host from hand to hand; 
 
 Each takes; and then his visage wan 
 Is buried in his cowl once more. 
 The cells— the suffering Son of Man 
 Upon the wall ! the knee-worn floor ! 
 And, where they sleep, that wooden bed, 
 Which shall their coffin be, when dead. 
 
GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 
 
 The library, where tract and tome 
 
 Not to feed priestly pride are there, 
 
 To hymn the conquering march of Rome. 
 
 Nor yet to amuse, as ours are ; 
 
 They paint of souls the inner strife, 
 
 Their drops of blood, their death in life. 
 
 The garden, overgrown — yet mild 
 Those fragrant herbs are flowering there ! 
 Strong children of the Alpine wild 
 Whose culture is the brethren's care; 
 Of human tasks their only one, 
 And cheerful works beneath the sun. 
 
 Those halls too, destined to contain 
 
 Each its own pilgrim host of old, 
 
 From England, Germany, or Spain — 
 
 All are before me ! I behold 
 
 The House, the Brotherhood austere ! 
 
 And what am I, that I am here ? 
 p 2 
 
STANZAS FROM THE 
 
 For rigorous teachers seized my youth, 
 And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire, 
 Shew'd me the high white star of Truth, 
 There bade me gaze, and there aspire ; 
 Even now their whispers pierce the gloom 
 What dost thou in this living tomb? 
 
 Forgive me, masters of the mind ! 
 At whose behest I long ago 
 So much unlearnt, so much resign'd ! 
 I come not here to be your foe. 
 I seek these anchorites, not in ruth, 
 To curse and to deny your truth; 
 
 Not as their friend or child I speak ! 
 But as on some far northern strand, 
 Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek 
 In pity and mournful awe might stand 
 Before some fallen Runic stone — 
 For both were faiths, and both are gone. 
 
GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 213 
 
 Wandering between two worlds, one dead, 
 The other powerless to be born, 
 With nowhere yet to rest my head, 
 Like these, on earth I wait forlorn. 
 Their faith, my tears, the world deride; 
 I come to shed them at their side. 
 
 Oh, hide me in your gloom profound 
 
 Ye solemn seats of holy pain! 
 
 Take me, cowl'd forms, and fence me round, 
 
 Till I possess my soul again ! 
 
 Till free my thoughts before me roll, 
 
 Not chafed by hourly false control. 
 
 For the world cries your faith is now 
 
 But a dead time's exploded dream; 
 
 My melancholy, sciolists say, 
 
 Is a pass'd mode, an outworn theme — 
 
 As if the world had ever had 
 
 A faith, or sciolists been sad. 
 
2i 4 STANZAS FROM THE 
 
 Ah, if it be pass'd, take away, 
 At least, the restlessness — the pain ! 
 Be man henceforth no more a prey 
 To these out-dated stings again ! 
 The nobleness of grief is gone — 
 Ah, leave us not the fret alone ! 
 
 But, if you cannot give us ease, 
 Last of the race of them who grieve 
 Here leave us to die out with these 
 Last of the people who believe ! 
 Silent, while years engrave the brow; 
 Silent — the best are silent now. 
 
 Achilles ponders in his tent, 
 The kings of modern thought are dumb 
 Silent they are, though not content, 
 And wait to see the future come. 
 They have the grief men had of yore, 
 But they contend and cry no more. 
 
GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 215 
 
 Our fathers water'd with their tears 
 This sea of time whereon we sail; 
 Their voices were in all men's ears 
 Who pass'd within their puissant hail. 
 Still the same Ocean round us raves, 
 But we stand mute and watch the waves. 
 
 For what avail'd it, all the noise 
 
 And outcry of the former men ? 
 
 Say, have their sons obtain'd more joys? 
 
 Say, is life lighter now than then? 
 
 The sufferers died, they left their pain; 
 
 The pangs which tortured them remain. 
 
 What helps it now, that Byron bore, 
 
 With haughty scorn which mock'd the smart, 
 
 Through Europe to the iEtolian shore 
 
 The pageant of his bleeding heart ? 
 
 That thousands counted every groan, 
 
 And Europe made his woe her own ? 
 
2i6 STANZAS FROM THE 
 
 What boots it, Shelley ! that the breeze 
 
 Carried thy lovely wail away, 
 
 Musical through Italian trees 
 
 That fringe thy soft blue Spezzian bay ? 
 
 Inheritors of thy distress 
 
 Have restless hearts one throb the less ? 
 
 Or are we easier, to have read, 
 O Obermann ! the sad, stern page, 
 Which tells us how thou hidd'st thy head 
 From the fierce tempest of thine age 
 In the lone brakes of Fontainebleau, 
 Or chalets near the Alpine snow? 
 
 Ye slumber in your silent grave ! 
 The world, which for an idle day 
 Grace to your mood of sadness gave, 
 Long since hath flung her weeds away. 
 The eternal trifler breaks your spell ; 
 But we — we learnt your lore too well ! 
 
GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 217 
 
 There may, perhaps, yet dawn an age, 
 
 More fortunate, alas ! than we, 
 
 Which without hardness will be sage, 
 
 And gay without frivolity. 
 
 Sons of the world, oh, haste those years; 
 
 But, till they rise, allow our tears ! 
 
 Allow them! We admire with awe 
 The exulting thunder of your race ; 
 You give the universe your law, 
 You triumph over time and space. 
 Your pride of life, your tireless powers, 
 We mark them, but they are not ours. 
 
 We are like children rear'd in shade 
 
 Beneath some old-world abbey wall 
 
 Forgotten in a forest-glade 
 
 And secret from the eyes of all ; 
 
 Deep, deep the greenwood round them waves, 
 
 Their abbey, and its close of graves. 
 
2i8 STANZAS FROM THE 
 
 But where the road runs near the stream 
 Oft through the trees they catch a glance 
 Of passing troops in the sun's beam — 
 Pennon, and plume, and flashing lance ! 
 Forth to the world those soldiers fare, 
 To life, to cities, and to war. 
 
 And through the woods, another way, 
 Faint bugle-notes from far are borne, 
 Where hunters gather, staghounds bay, 
 Round some old forest-lodge at morn; 
 Gay dames are there in sylvan green, 
 Laughter and cries — those notes between ! 
 
 The banners flashing through the trees 
 Make their blood dance and chain their eyes 
 That bugle-music on the breeze 
 Arrests them with a charm'd surprise. 
 Banner by turns and bugle woo : 
 Ye shy recluses, follow too! 
 
GRANDE CHARTREUSE. 219 
 
 O children, what do ye reply ? — 
 " Action and pleasure, will ye roam 
 Through these secluded dells to cry 
 And call us ? but too late ye come ! 
 Too late for us your call ye blow 
 Whose bent was taken long ago. 
 
 " Long since we pace this shadow' d nave ; 
 We watch those yellow tapers shine, 
 Emblems of hope over the grave, 
 In the high altar's depth divine ; 
 The organ carries to our ear 
 Its accents of another sphere. 
 
 " Fenced early in this cloistral round ' 
 Of reverie, of shade, of prayer, 
 How should we grow in other ground? 
 How should we flower in foreign air? 
 Pass, banners, pass, and bugles, cease ! 
 And leave our desert to its peace !" 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 Savez-votis quelque bien qui console du regret d'un monde ? 
 
 Obermann. 
 
 /^LION? Ah, twenty years, it cuts 
 
 All meaning from a name ! 
 
 White houses prank where once were huts ! 
 
 Glion ! but not the same, 
 
 And yet I know not. All unchanged 
 The turf, the pines, the sky ! 
 The hills in their old order ranged ! 
 The lake, with Chillon by! 
 
 And 'neath those chestnut-trees, where stiff 
 And stony mounts the way, 
 Their crackling husk-heaps burn, as if 
 I left them yesterday. 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 Across the valley, on that slope, 
 The huts of Avant shine — 
 Its pines under their branches ope 
 Ways for the tinkling kine. 
 
 Full- foaming milk-pails, Alpine fare, 
 Sweet heaps of fresh-cut grass, 
 Invite to rest the traveller there 
 Before he climb the pass — 
 
 The gentian-flower'd pass, its crown - 
 With yellow spires aflame, 
 Whence drops the path to Alliere down 
 And walls where Byron came, 9 
 
 By their green river who doth change 
 His birth-name just below — 
 Orchard, and croft, and full-stored grange 
 Nursed by his pastoral flow. 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 But stop ! — to fetch back thoughts that stray 
 
 Beyond this gracious bound, 
 
 The cone of Jaman, pale and grey, 
 
 See, in the blue profound ! 
 
 Ah, Jaman ! delicately tall 
 
 Above his sun-warm'd firs — 
 
 What thoughts to me his rocks recall! 
 
 What memories he stirs ! 
 
 And who but thou must be, in truth, 
 Obermann ! with me here ? 
 Thou master of my wandering youth, 
 But left this many a year! 
 
 Yes, I forget the world's work wrought, 
 Its warfare waged with pain ! 
 An eremite with thee, in thought 
 Once more I slip my chain 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 223 
 
 And to thy mountain-chalet come 
 And lie beside its door 
 And hear the wild bee's Alpine hum 
 And thy sad, tranquil lore. 
 
 Again I feel its words inspire 
 Their mournful calm — serene, 
 Yet tinged with infinite desire 
 For all that might have been, 
 
 The harmony from which man swerved 
 Made his life's rule once more ! 
 The universal order served ! 
 Earth happier than before ! 
 
 While thus I mused, night gently ran 
 Down over hill and wood. 
 Then, still and sudden, Obermann 
 On the grass near me stood. 
 
2 2 4 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 Those pensive features well I knew. 
 On my mind, years before, 
 Imaged so oft, imaged so true ! 
 A shepherd's garb he wore, 
 
 A mountain-flower was in his hand, 
 A book was in his breast; 
 Bent on my face, with gaze that scann'd 
 My soul, his eyes did rest. 
 
 "And is it thou," he cried, "so long 
 Held by the world which we 
 Loved not, who turnest from the throng 
 Back to thy youth and me ? 
 
 " And from thy world, with heart opprest, 
 Choosest thou now to turn? — 
 Ah me, we anchorites knew it best ! 
 Best can its course discern ! 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " Thou fledd'st me when the ungenial earth, 
 Thou soughtest, lay in gloom. 
 Return'st thou in her hour of birth, 
 Of hopes and hearts in bloom ? 
 
 " Wellnigh two thousand years have brought 
 Their load, and gone away, 
 Since last on earth there lived and wrought 
 A world like ours to-day. 
 
 " Like ours it look'd in outward air ! 
 Its head was clear and true, 
 Sumptuous its clothing, rich its fare, 
 No pause its action knew ; 
 
 " Stout was its arm, each pulse and bone 
 
 Seem'd puissant and alive — 
 
 But, ah, its heart, its heart was stone, 
 
 And so it could not thrive ! 
 Q 
 
 225 
 
226 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " On that hard Pagan world disgust 
 And secret loathing fell. 
 Deep weariness and sated lust 
 Made human life a hell. 
 
 " In his cool hall, with haggard eyes, 
 The Roman noble lay; 
 He drove abroad, in furious guise, 
 Along the Appian way; 
 
 " He made a feast, drank fierce and fast, 
 And crown' d his hair with flowers — 
 No easier nor no quicker pass'd 
 The impracticable hours. 
 
 "The brooding East with awe beheld 
 Her impious younger world ; 
 The Roman tempest swell' d and swell'd, 
 And on her head was hurTd. 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 227 
 
 " The East bow'd low before the blast, 
 In patient, deep disdain. 
 She let the legions thunder past, 
 And plunged in thought again. 
 
 " So well she mused, a morning broke 
 Across her spirit grey. 
 A conquering, new-born joy awoke, 
 And fill'd her life with day. 
 
 " ' Poor world/ she cried, ' so deep accurst 
 That runn'st from pole to pole 
 To seek a draught to slake thy thirst — 
 Go, seek it in thy soul!' 
 
 " She heard it, the victorious West ! 
 In crown and sword array'd. 
 She felt the void which mined her breast, 
 She shiver' d and obey'd. 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " She veil'd her eagles, snapp'd her sword. 
 And laid her sceptre down ; 
 Her stately purple she abhorr'd, 
 And her imperial crown; 
 
 " She broke her flutes, she stopp'd her sports. 
 Her artists could not please; 
 She tore her books, she shut her courts. 
 She fled her palaces; 
 
 "Lust of the eye and pride of life 
 She left it all behind, 
 And hurried, torn with inward strife, 
 The wilderness to find. 
 
 " Tears wash'd the trouble from her face ! 
 She changed into a child. 
 'Mid weeds and wrecks she stood — a place 
 Of ruin — but she smiled ! 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 229 
 
 " Oh, had I lived in that great day, 
 How had its glory new 
 Fill'd earth and heaven, and caught away 
 My ravish'd spirit too ! 
 
 " No cToister-floor of humid stone 
 Had been too cold for me; 
 For me no Eastern desert lone 
 Had been too far to flee. 
 
 " No thoughts that to the world belong 
 Had stood against the wave 
 Of love which set so deep and strong 
 From Christ's then open grave. 
 
 "No lonely life had pass'd too slow 
 When I could hourly see 
 That wan, nail'd Form, with head droop'd low. 
 Upon the bitter tree; 
 
230 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 "Could see the Mother with the Child 
 Whose tender winning arts 
 Have to his little arms beguiled 
 So many wounded hearts ! 
 
 " And centuries came, and ran their course, 
 And unspent all that time 
 Still, still went forth that Child's dear force, 
 And still was at its prime. 
 
 " Ay, ages long endured his span 
 
 Of life, 'tis true received, 
 
 That gracious Child, that thom-crown'd Man 
 
 He lived while we believed. 
 
 " While we believed, on earth he went, 
 And open stood his grave. 
 Men call'd from chamber, church, and tent, 
 And Christ was by to save. 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 231 
 
 " Now he is dead. Far hence he lies 
 In the lorn Syrian town, 
 And on his grave, with shining eyes, 
 The Syrian stars look down. 
 
 " In vain men still, with hoping new, 
 Regard his death-place dumb, 
 And say the stone is not yet to, 
 And wait for words to come. 
 
 " Ah, from that silent sacred land, 
 Of sun, and arid stone, 
 And crumbling wall, and sultry sand, 
 Comes now one word alone ! 
 
 " From David's lips this word did roll, 
 'Tis true and living yet: 
 No man can save his brother's soul, 
 Nor pay his brother's debt. 
 
2.^2 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 "Alone, self-poised, henceforward man 
 Must labour; must resign 
 His all too human creeds, and scan 
 Simply the way divine. 
 
 " But slow that tide of common thought, 
 Which bathed our life, retired. 
 Slow, slow the old world wore to nought, 
 And pulse by pulse expired. 
 
 " Its frame yet stood without a breach 
 When blood and warmth were fled; 
 And still it spake its wonted speech — 
 But every word was dead. 
 
 "And oh, we cried, that on this corse 
 Might fall a freshening storm! 
 Rive its dry bones, and with new force 
 A new-sprung world inform ! 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 233 
 
 " Down came the storm ! In ruin fell 
 The outworn world we knew. 
 It pass'd, that elemental swell ! 
 Again appear'd the blue. 
 
 "The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky — 
 And what from heaven saw he ? 
 Blocks of the past, like icebergs high, 
 Float in a rolling sea. 
 
 " Upon them ply the race of man 
 
 All they before endeavour'd; 
 
 They come and go, they work and plan, 
 
 And know not they are sever'd. 
 
 " Poor fragments of a broken world 
 Whereon we pitch our tent ! 
 Why were ye too to death not hurl'd 
 When your world's day was spent? 
 
234 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " The glow of central fire is done 
 Which with its fusing flame 
 Knit all your parts, and kept you one; — 
 But ye, ye are the same ! 
 
 " The past, its mask of union on, 
 Had ceased to live and thrive. 
 The past, its mask of union gone, 
 Say, is it more alive? 
 
 " Your creeds are dead, your rites are dead, 
 Your social order too. 
 Where tarries he, the power who said : 
 See, I make all things new? 
 
 " The millions suffer still, and grieve ; 
 And what can helpers heal 
 With old-world cures men half believe 
 For woes they wholly feel? 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " And yet they have such need of joy ! 
 And joy whose grounds are true ! 
 And joy that should all hearts employ 
 As when the past was new ! 
 
 " Ah, not the emotion of that past, 
 Its common hope, were vain ! 
 A new such hope must dawn at last, 
 Or man must toss in pain. 
 
 "But now the past is out of date, 
 The future not yet born — 
 And who can be alone elate, 
 While the world lies forlorn ? 
 
 " Then to the wilderness I fled. 
 There among Alpine snows 
 And pastoral huts I hid my head, 
 And sought and found repose. 
 
 235 
 
236 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " It was not yet the appointed hour. 
 Sad, patient, and resign'd, 
 I watch'd the crocus fade and flower, 
 I felt the sun and wind. 
 
 " The day I lived in was not mine — 
 Man gets no second day. 
 In dreams I saw the future shine, 
 But ah, I could not stay! 
 
 " Action I had not, followers, fame. 
 I pass'd obscure, alone. 
 The after-world forgets my name, 
 Nor do I wish it known. 
 
 " Gloom-wrapt within, I lived and died, 
 And knew my life was vain. 
 With fate I murmur not, nor chide; 
 At Sevres by the Seine 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 237 
 
 " (If Paris that brief flight allow) 
 My humble tomb explore; 
 It bears : Eternity, be thou 
 My refuge! and no more. 
 
 " But thou, whom fellowship of mood 
 Did make from haunts of strife 
 Come to my mountain solitude 
 And learn my frustrate life; 
 
 " O thou, who, ere thy flying span 
 Was past of cheerful youth, 
 Didst seek the solitary man 
 And love his cheerless truth — 
 
 ''Despair not thou as I despair'd, 
 Nor be cold gloom thy prison ! 
 Forward the gracious hours have fared, 
 And see ! the sun is risen. 
 
238 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 " He melts the icebergs of the past, 
 A green, new earth appears. 
 Millions, whose life in ice lay fast, 
 Have thoughts, and smiles, and tears. 
 
 " The world's great order dawns in sheen 
 After long darkness rude, 
 Divinelier imaged, clearer seen, 
 With happier zeal pursued. 
 
 "With hope extinct and brow composed 
 I mark'd the present die; 
 Its term of life was nearly closed, 
 Yet it had more than I. 
 
 "But thou, though to the world's new hour 
 Thou come with aspect marr'd, 
 Shorn of the joy, the bloom, the power, 
 Which best beseem its bard; 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 239 
 
 " Though more than half thy years be past, 
 And spent thy youthful prime; 
 Though, round thy firmer manhood cast, 
 Hang weeds of our sad time, 
 
 •' Whereof thy youth felt all the spell, 
 
 And traversed all the shade — 
 
 Though late, though dimm'd, though weak, yet tell 
 
 Hope to a world new-made 1 
 
 " Help it to reach our deep desire, 
 The dream which fill'd our brain, 
 Fix'd in our soul a thirst like fire, 
 Immedicable pain! 
 
 " Which to the wilderness drove out 
 Our life, to Alpine snow; 
 And palsied all our deed with doubt 
 And all our word with woe — 
 
240 OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 ■• What still of strength is left, employ, 
 That end to help men gain : 
 One mighty wave of thought and joy 
 Lifting mankind amain /" 
 
 The vision ended; I awoke 
 
 As out of sleep, and no 
 
 Voice moved— only the torrent broke 
 
 The silence, far below. 
 
 Soft darkness on the turf did lie; 
 Solemn, o'er hut and wood, 
 In the yet star-sown nightly sky, 
 The peak of Jaman stood. 
 
 Still in my soul the voice I heard 
 Of Obermann— away 
 I turn'd; by some vague impulse stirr'd, 
 Along the rocks of Naye 
 
OBERMANN ONCE MORE. 
 
 And Sonchaud's piny flanks I gaze 
 And the blanch'd summit bare 
 Of Malatrait, to where in haze 
 The Valais opens fair, 
 
 And the domed Velan with his snows 
 Behind the upcrowding hills 
 Doth all the heavenly opening close 
 Which the Rhone's murmur fills— 
 
 And glorious there, without a sound, 
 Across the glimmering lake, 
 High in the Valais depth profound, 
 I saw the morning break. 
 
 241 
 
NOTES. 
 
 NOTE I, PAGE 3. 
 
 Empedocles on Etna. 
 
 I cannot deny myself the pleasure of saying that 1 re- 
 print (I cannot say republish, for it was withdrawn from 
 circulation before fifty copies were sold) this poem at the 
 request of a man of genius, whom it had the honour and 
 the good fortune to interest,— Mr. Robert Browning. 
 
 NOTE 2, PAGE 59. 
 Ye Sun-born Virgins ! on the road of truth. 
 See the Fragments of Parmenides : 
 
 Kovpat §' odov yyepovevov, 
 
 TjXiades Kovpai, npoXinovaat. dwfiara vvktos, 
 els cpdos 
 
 NOTE 3, PAGE 102. 
 Recalls the obscure opposer he outweigh 'd. 
 Gilbert de la Porree, at the Council of Rheims, in n 4 8. 
 
 NOTE 4, PAGE 104. 
 That son of Italy (who tried to blow. 
 Giacopone di Todi. 
 
244 NOTES. 
 
 NOTE 5, PAGE 12 1. 
 He tarries where the Rock of Spain. 
 
 The Author's brother, William Delafield Arnold, Di- 
 rector of Public Instruction in the Punjab, and author 
 of Oakfield, or Fellowship in the East, died at Gibraltar, on 
 his way home from India, April the 9th, 1859. 
 
 NOTE 6, page 124. 
 My brother ! and thine early lot. 
 See the preceding note. 
 
 note 7, page 205. 
 Goethe, too, had been there. 
 See Harzreise im Winter, in Goethe's Gedichte. 
 
 NOTE 8, PAGE 22 1. 
 The gentian-flower* d pass, its crown. 
 The gentiana lutea of the Alps. 
 
 NOTE 9, PAGE 2 2 1. 
 
 And walls where Byron came. 
 
 Montbovon. See Byron's Journal, in his Works, vol. iii. 
 p. 258. The river Saane becomes the Sarine below Mont- 
 bovon.