Chapter X: Part 10

'that you are fain
Where you last walked to turn and walk again.'

A generous reader might apply that description to Browne's
poetry; he might urge that the breezes which blew down these
leafy alleys and over those trim parterres were not more
grateful than the fragrance exhaled from the 'Pastorals';
that the brooks and birds babble and twitter in the printed
page not less blithely than in that western Paradise. What so
pleasant as to read of May-games, true-love knots, and
shepherds piping in the shade? of pixies and fairy-circles?
of rustic bridals and junketings? of angling, hunting the
squirrel, nut-gathering? Of such subjects William Browne
treats, singing like the shepherd in the 'Arcadia,' as though
he would never grow old. He was a happy poet. It was his good
fortune to grow up among wholesome surroundings whose
gracious influences sank into his spirit. He loved the hills
and dales round Tavistock, and lovingly described them in his
verse. Frequently he indulges in descriptions of sunrise and
sunset; they leave no vivid impression, but charm the reader
by their quiet beauty. It cannot be denied that his fondness
for simple, homely images sometimes led him into sheer
fatuity; and candid admirers must also admit that, despite
his study of simplicity, he could not refrain from hunting
(as the manner was) after far-fetched outrageous conceits."

Browne is a poet's poet. Drayton, Wither, Herbert, and John Davies of Hereford, wrote his praises. Mrs. Browning includes him in her 'Vision of Poets,' where she says:--

"Drayton and Browne,--with smiles they drew
From outward Nature, still kept new
From their own inward nature true."

Milton studied him carefully, and just as his influence is perceived in the work of Keats, so is it found in 'Comus' and in 'Lycidas.' Browne acknowledges Spenser and Sidney as his masters, and his work shows that he loved Chaucer and Shakespeare.

CIRCE'S CHARM

Song from the 'Inner Temple Masque'

Son of Erebus and night,
Hie away; and aim thy flight
Where consort none other fowl
Than the bat and sullen owl;
Where upon thy limber grass,
Poppy and mandragoras,
With like simples not a few,
Hang forever drops of dew;
Where flows Lethe without coil
Softly like a stream of oil.
Hie thee hither, gentle sleep:
With this Greek no longer keep.
Thrice I charge thee by my wand,
Thrice with moly from my hand
Do I touch Ulysses's eyes,
And with the jaspis: then arise,
Sagest Greek!

_CIRCE_.

Photogravure from a Painting by E Burne-Jones.

THE HUNTED SQUIRREL

From 'Britannia's Pastorals'

Then as a nimble squirrel from the wood
Ranging the hedges for his filbert food
Sits pertly on a bough, his brown nuts cracking,
And from the shell the sweet white kernel taking;
Till with their crooks and bags a sort of boys
To share with him come with so great a noise
That he is forced to leave a nut nigh broke,
And for his life leap to a neighbor oak,
Thence to a beach, thence to a row of ashes;
Whilst through the quagmires and red water plashes
The boys run dabbling through thick and thin;
One tears his hose, another breaks his shin;
This, torn and tattered, hath with much ado
Got by the briars; and that hath lost his shoe;
This drops his band; that headlong falls for haste;
Another cries behind for being last:
With sticks and stones and many a sounding holloa
The little fool with no small sport they follow,
Whilst he from tree to tree, from spray to spray
Gets to the woods and hides him in his dray.

AS CAREFUL MERCHANTS DO EXPECTING STAND

From 'Britannia's Pastorals'

As careful merchants do expecting stand,
After long time and merry gales of wind,
Upon the place where their brave ships must land,
So wait I for the vessel of my mind.

Upon a great adventure is it bound,
Whose safe return will valued be at more
Than all the wealthy prizes which have crowned
The golden wishes of an age before.

Out of the East jewels of worth she brings;
The unvalued diamond of her sparkling eye
Wants in the treasures of all Europe's kings;
And were it mine, they nor their crowns should buy.

The sapphires ringèd on her panting breast
Run as rich veins of ore about the mold,
And are in sickness with a pale possessed;
So true for them I should disvalue gold.

The melting rubies on her cherry lip
Are of such power to hold, that as one day
Cupid flew thirsty by, he stooped to sip:
And, fastened there, could never get away.

The sweets of Candy are no sweets to me
Where hers I taste: nor the perfumes of price,
Robbed from the happy shrubs of Araby,
As her sweet breath so powerful to entice.

O hasten then! and if thou be not gone
Unto that wicked traffic through the main,
My powerful sigh shall quickly drive thee on,
And then begin to draw thee back again.

If, in the mean, rude waves have it opprest,
It shall suffice, I ventured at the best.

SONG OF THE SIRENS

From 'The Inner Temple Masque'

Steer hither, steer your wingèd pines,
All beaten mariners!
Here lie love's undiscovered mines,
A prey to passengers:
Perfumes far sweeter than the best
Which make the Phoenix's urn and nest.
Fear not your ships,
Nor any to oppose you save our lips,
But come on shore,
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.

For swelling waves our panting breasts,
Where never storms arise,
Exchange, and be awhile our guests:
For stars, gaze on our eyes.
The compass love shall hourly sing,
And as he goes about the ring,
We will not miss
To tell each point he nameth with a kiss.
Then come on shore,
Where no joy dies till love hath gotten more.

AN EPISTLE ON PARTING

From 'Epistles'

Dear soul, the time is come, and we must part;
Yet, ere I go, in these lines read my heart:
A heart so just, so loving, and so true,
So full of sorrow and so full of you,
That all I speak or write or pray or mean,--
And, which is all I can, all that I dream,--
Is not without a sigh, a thought of you,
And as your beauties are, so are they true.
Seven summers now are fully spent and gone,
Since first I loved, loved you, and you alone;
And should mine eyes as many hundreds see,
Yet none but you should claim a right in me;
A right so placed that time shall never hear
Of one so vowed, or any loved so dear.
When I am gone, if ever prayers moved you,
Relate to none that I so well have loved you:
For all that know your beauty and desert,
Would swear he never loved that knew to part.
Why part we then? That spring, which but this day
Met some sweet river, in his bed can play,
And with a dimpled cheek smile at their bliss,
Who never know what separation is.
The amorous vine with wanton interlaces
Clips still the rough elm in her kind embraces:
Doves with their doves sit billing in the groves,
And woo the lesser birds to sing their loves:
Whilst hapless we in griefful absence sit,
Yet dare not ask a hand to lessen it.

SONNETS TO CÆLIA

Fairest, when by the rules of palmistry,
You took my hand to try if you could guess,
By lines therein, if any wight there be
Ordained to make me know some happiness:
I wished that those charácters could explain,
Whom I will never wrong with hope to win;
Or that by them a copy might be ta'en,
By you alone what thoughts I have within.
But since the hand of nature did not set
(As providently loath to have it known)
The means to find that hidden alphabet,
Mine eyes shall be the interpreters alone:
By them conceive my thoughts, and tell me, fair,
If now you see her that doth love me, there.

Were't not for you, here should my pen have rest,
And take a long leave of sweet poesy;
Britannia's swains, and rivers far by west,
Should hear no more my oaten melody.
Yet shall the song I sung of them awhile
Unperfect lie, and make no further known
The happy loves of this our pleasant Isle,
Till I have left some record of mine own.
You are the subject now, and, writing you,
I well may versify, not poetize:
Here needs no fiction; for the graces true
And virtues clip not with base flatteries.
Here should I write what you deserve of praise;
Others might wear, but I should win, the bays.

Fairest, when I am gone, as now the glass
Of Time is marked how long I have to stay,
Let me entreat you, ere from hence I pass,
Perhaps from you for ever more away,--
Think that no common love hath fired my breast,
No base desire, but virtue truly known,
Which I may love, and wish to have possessed,
Were you the highest as fairest of any one.
'Tis not your lovely eye enforcing flames,
Nor beauteous red beneath a snowy skin,
That so much binds me yours, or makes your fame's,
As the pure light and beauty shrined within:
Yet outward parts I must affect of duty,
As for the smell we like the rose's beauty.

HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL

(1820-1872)

This poet, prominent among those who gained their chief inspiration from the stirring events of the Civil War, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, February 6th, 1820, and died in East Hartford, Connecticut, October 31st, 1872. He was graduated at Trinity College, Hartford, studied law, and was admitted to the bar; but instead of the legal profession adopted that of a teacher, and made his home in Hartford, which was the residence of his uncle, the Bishop of Connecticut. Although Mr. Brownell soon became known as a writer of verse, both grave and humorous, it was not till the coming on of the Civil War that his muse found truest and noblest expression. With a poet's sensitiveness he foresaw the coming storm, and predicted it in verse that has the ring of an ancient prophet; and when the crash came he sang of the great deeds of warriors in the old heroic strain. Many of these poems, like 'Annus Memorabilis' and 'Coming,' were born of the great passion of patriotism which took possession of him, and were regarded only as the visions of a heated imagination. But when the storm burst it was seen that he had the true vision. As the dreadful drama unrolled, Brownell rose to greater issues, and became the war-poet _par excellence_, the vigorous chronicler of great actions.

He was fond of the sea, and ardently longed for the opportunity to witness, if not to participate in, a sea-fight. His desire was gratified in a singular way. He had printed in a Hartford paper a very felicitous versification of Farragut's 'General Orders' in the fight at the mouth of the Mississippi. This attracted Farragut's attention, and he took steps to learn the name of the author. When it was given, Commodore Farragut (he was not then Admiral) offered Mr. Brownell the position of master's-mate on board the Hartford, and attached the poet to him in the character of a private secretary. Thus he was present at the fight of Mobile Bay. After the war he accompanied the Admiral in his cruise in European waters.

Although Brownell was best known to the country by his descriptive poems, 'The River Fight' and 'The Bay Fight,' which appear in his volume of collected works, 'War Lyrics,' his title to be considered a true poet does not rest upon these only. He was unequal in his performance and occasionally was betrayed by a grotesque humor into disregard of dignity and finish; but he had both the vision and the lyric grace of the builder of lasting verse.

ANNUS MEMORABILIS

(CONGRESS, 1860-61)

Stand strong and calm as Fate! not a breath of scorn or hate--
Of taunt for the base, or of menace for the strong--
Since our fortunes must be sealed on that old and famous Field
Where the Right is set in battle with the Wrong.
'Tis coming, with the loom of Khamsin or Simoom,
The tempest that shall try if we are of God or no--
Its roar is in the sky,--and they there be which cry,
"Let us cower, and the storm may over-blow."
Now, nay! stand firm and fast! (that was a spiteful blast!)
This is not a war of men, but of Angels Good and Ill--
'Tis hell that storms at heaven--'tis the black and deadly Seven,
Sworn 'gainst the Shining Ones to work their damnèd will!
How the Ether glooms and burns, as the tide of combat turns,
And the smoke and dust above it whirl and float!
It eddies and it streams--and, certes, oft it seems
As the Sins had the Seraphs fairly by the throat.
But we all have read (in that Legend grand and dread),
How Michael and his host met the Serpent and his crew--
Naught has reached us of the Fight--but if I have dreamed aright,
'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through!
Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out,
And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir--
There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings,
Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar!
But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told
(Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen),
That on the Infinite Shore their place was found no more.
God send the like on this our earth! Amen.

Copyrighted by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston.

WORDS FOR THE 'HALLELUJAH CHORUS'

Old John Brown lies a-moldering in the grave,
Old John Brown lies slumbering in his grave--
But John Brown's soul is marching with the brave,
His soul is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His soul is marching on.

He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord;
He is sworn as a private in the ranks of the Lord,--
He shall stand at Armageddon with his brave old sword,
When Heaven is marching on.

He shall file in front where the lines of battle form,
He shall face to front when the squares of battle form--
Time with the column, and charge in the storm,
Where men are marching on.

Ah, foul Tyrants! do ye hear him where he comes?
Ah, black traitors! do ye know him as he comes,
In thunder of the cannon and roll of the drums,
As we go marching on?

Men may die, and molder in the dust--
Men may die, and arise again from dust,
Shoulder to shoulder, in the ranks of the Just,
When Heaven is marching on.

Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
His soul is marching on.

COMING

(APRIL, 1861)

World, are thou 'ware of a storm?
Hark to the ominous sound;
How the far-off gales their battle form,
And the great sea-swells feel ground!

It comes, the Typhoon of Death--
Nearer and nearer it comes!
The horizon thunder of cannon-breath
And the roar of angry drums!

Hurtle, Terror sublime!
Swoop o'er the Land to-day--
So the mist of wrong and crime,
The breath of our Evil Time
Be swept, as by fire, away!

PSYCHAURA

The wind of an autumn midnight
Is moaning around my door--
The curtains wave at the window,
The carpet lifts on the floor.

There are sounds like startled footfalls
In the distant chambers now,
And the touching of airy ringers
Is busy on hand and brow.

'Tis thus, in the Soul's dark dwelling--
By the moody host unsought--
Through the chambers of memory wander
The invisible airs of thought.

For it bloweth where it listeth,
With a murmur loud or low;
Whence it cometh--whither it goeth--
None tell us, and none may know.

Now wearying round the portals
Of the vacant, desolate mind--
As the doors of a ruined mansion,
That creak in the cold night wind.

And anon an awful memory
Sweeps over it fierce and high--
Like the roar of a mountain forest
When the midnight gale goes by.

Then its voice subsides in wailing,
And, ere the dawning of day,
Murmuring fainter and fainter,
In the distance dies away.

SUSPIRIA NOCTIS

Reading, and reading--little is the gain
Long dwelling with the minds of dead men leaves.
List rather to the melancholy rain,
Drop--dropping from the eaves.

Still the old tale--how hardly worth the telling!
Hark to the wind!--again that mournful sound,
That all night long, around this lonely dwelling,
Moans like a dying hound.

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING

(1809-1861)

It is interesting to step back sixty years into the lives of Miss Mitford and her "dear young friend Miss Barrett," when the _-esses_ of "authoresses" and "poetesses" and "editresses" and "hermitesses" make the pages sibilant; when 'Books of Beauty,' and 'Keepsakes,' and the extraordinary methods of "Finden's Tableaux" make us wonder that literature survived; when Mr. Kenyon, taking Miss Mitford "to the giraffes and the Diorama," called for "Miss Barrett, a hermitess in Gloucester Place, who reads Greek as I do French, who has published some translations from Æschylus, and some most striking poems,"--"Our sweet Miss Barrett! to think of virtue and genius is to think of her." Of her own life Mrs. Browning writes:--"As to stories, my story amounts to the knife-grinder's, with nothing at all for a catastrophe. A bird in a cage would have as good a story; most of my events and nearly all my intense pleasure have passed in my thoughts."

She was born at Burn Hall, Durham, on March 6th, 1809, and passed a happy childhood and youth in her father's country house at Hope End, Herefordshire. She was remarkably precocious, reading Homer in the original at eight years of age. She said that in those days "the Greeks were her demigods. She dreamed more of Agamemnon than of Moses, her black pony." "I wrote verses very early, at eight years old and earlier. But what is less common, the early fancy turned into a will, and remained with me." At seventeen years of age she published the 'Essay on Mind,' and translated the 'Prometheus' of Æschylus. Some years later the family removed to London, and here Elizabeth, on account of her continued delicate health, was kept in her room for months at a time. The shock following on the death of her brother, who was drowned before her eyes in Torquay, whither she had gone for rest, completely shattered her physically. Now her life of seclusion in her London home began. For years she lay upon a couch in a large, comfortably darkened room, seeing only the immediate members of her family and a few privileged friends, and spending her days in writing and study, "reading," Miss Mitford says, "almost every book worth reading in almost every language." Here Robert Browning met her. They were married in 1846, against the will of her father. Going abroad immediately, they finally settled in Florence at the Casa Guidi, made famous by her poem bearing the same name. Their home became the centre of attraction to visitors in Florence, and many of the finest minds in the literary and artistic world were among their friends. Hawthorne, who visited them, describes Mrs. Browning as "a pale, small person, scarcely embodied at all, at any rate only substantial enough to put forth her slender fingers to be grasped, and to speak with a shrill yet sweet tenuity of voice. It is wonderful to see how small she is, how pale her cheek, how bright and dark her eyes. There is not such another figure in the world, and her black ringlets cluster down in her neck and make her face look whiter." She died in Florence on the 30th of June, 1861, and the citizens of Florence placed a tablet to her memory on the walls of Casa Guidi.

The life and personality of Elizabeth Barrett Browning seem to explain her poetry. It is a life "without a catastrophe," except perhaps to her devoted father. And it is to this father's devotion that some of Mrs. Browning's poetical sins are due; for by him she was so pampered and shielded from every outside touch, that all the woes common to humanity grew for her into awful tragedies. Her life was abnormal and unreal,--an unreality that passed more or less into everything she did. Indeed, her resuscitation after meeting Robert Browning would mount into a miracle, unless it were realized that nothing in her former life had been quite as woful as it seemed. That Mrs. Browning was "a woman of real genius," even Edward Fitzgerald allowed; and in speaking of Shelley, Walter Savage Landor said, "With the exception of Burns, he [Shelley] and Keats were inspired with a stronger spirit of poetry than any other poet since Milton. I sometimes fancy that Elizabeth Barrett Browning comes next." This is very high praise from very high authority, but none too high for Mrs. Browning, for her best work has the true lyric ring, that spontaneity of thought and expression which comes when the singer forgets himself in his song and becomes tuneful under the stress of the moment's inspiration. All of Mrs. Browning's work is buoyed up by her luxurious and overflowing imagination. With all its imperfections of technique, its lapses of taste and faults of expression, it always remains poetry, throbbing with passion and emotion and rich in color and sound. She wrote because she must. Her own assertions notwithstanding, one cannot think of Mrs. Browning as sitting down in cold blood to compose a poem according to fixed rules of art. This is the secret of her shortcomings, as it is also the source of her strength, and in her best work raises her high above those who, with more technical skill, have less of the true poet's divine fire and overflowing imagination.

So in the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese,' written at a time when her woman's nature was thrilled to its very depths by the love of her "most gracious singer of high poems," and put forth as translations from another writer and tongue--in these her imperfections drop away, and she soars to marvelous heights of song. Such a lyric outburst as this, which reveals with magnificent frankness the innermost secrets of an ardently loving woman's heart, is unequaled in literature. Here the woman-poet is strong and sane; here she is free from obscurity and mannerism, and from grotesque rhymes. She has stepped out from her life of visions and of morbid woes into a life of wholesome reality and of "sweet reasonableness." Their literary excellence is due also to the fact that in the sonnet Mrs. Browning was held to a rigid form, and was obliged to curb her imagination and restrain her tendency to diffuseness of expression. Mr. Saintsbury goes so far as to say that the sonnet beginning--

"If thou wilt love me, let it be for naught
Except for love's sake only--"

does not fall far short of Shakespeare.

'Aurora Leigh' gives rise to the old question, Is it advisable to turn a three-volume novel into verse? Yet Landor wrote about it:--"I am reading a poem full of thought and fascinating with fancy--Mrs. Browning's (Aurora Leigh.) In many places there is the wild imagination of Shakespeare.... I am half drunk with it. Never did I think I should have a good draught of poetry again." Ruskin somewhere considered it the greatest poem of the nineteenth century, "with enough imagination to set up a dozen lesser poets"; and Stedman calls it "a representative and original creation: representative in a versatile, kaleidoscopic presentment of modern life and issues; original, because the most idiosyncratic of its author's poems. An audacious speculative freedom pervades it, which smacks of the New World rather than the Old.... 'Aurora Leigh' is a mirror of contemporary life, while its learned and beautiful illustrations make it almost a handbook of literature and the arts.... Although a most uneven production, full of ups and downs, of capricious or prosaic episodes, it nevertheless contains poetry as fine as its author has given us elsewhere, and enough spare inspiration to set up a dozen smaller poets. The flexible verse is noticeably her own, and often handled with as much spirit as freedom." Mrs. Browning herself declared it the most mature of her works, "and the one into which my highest convictions upon life and art have entered." Consider this:--

"For 'tis not in mere death that men die most:
And after our first girding of the loins
In youth's fine linen and fair broidery,
To run up-hill and meet the rising sun,
We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool,
While others gird us with the violent bands
Of social figments, feints, and formalisms,
Reversing our straight nature, lifting up
Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts,
Head downwards on the cross-sticks of the world.
Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross.
God, set our feet low and our foreheads high,
And teach us how a man was made to walk!"

Or this:--

"I've waked and slept through many nights and days
Since then--but still that day will catch my breath
Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed,
In which the fibrous years have taken root
So deeply, that they quiver to their tops
Whene'er you stir the dust of such a day."

Again:--

"Passion is
But something suffered after all--
. . . . . While Art

Sets action on the top of suffering."

And this:--

"Nothing is small!
No lily-muffled hum of summer-bee
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot but proves a sphere:
. . . . . Earth's crammed with Heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes."

Among Mrs. Browning's smaller poems, 'Crowned and Buried' is, notwithstanding serious defects of technique, one of the most virile things she has written; indeed, some of her finest lines are to be found in it. In 'The Cry of the Children' and in 'Cowper's Grave' the pathos is most true and deep. 'Lord Walter's Wife' is an even more courageous vindication of the feminine essence than 'Aurora Leigh'; and her 'Vision of Poets' is said to "vie in beauty with Tennyson's own." The fine thought and haunting beauty of 'A Musical Instrument,' with its matchless climax, need not be dwelt on.

During her fifteen years' residence in Florence she threw herself with great enthusiasm into Italian affairs, and wrote some political poems of varying merit, whose interest necessarily faded away when the occasion passed. But among those poems inspired by the struggle for freedom, 'Casa Guidi Windows' comes close to the 'Sonnets from the Portuguese' and 'Aurora Leigh,' and holds an enduring place for its high poetry, its musical, sonorous verse, and the sustained intellectual vigor of composition. Her volume of 'Last Poems' contains, among much inferior matter, some of her finest and most touching work, as 'A Musical Instrument,' 'The Forced Recruit,' and 'Mother and Poet,' Peter Bayne says of her in his 'Great Englishwomen':--"In melodiousness and splendor of poetic gift Mrs. Browning stands ... first among women. She may not have the knowledge of life, the insight into character, the comprehensiveness of some, but we must all agree that a poet's far more essential qualities are hers: usefulness, fervor, a noble aspiration, and above all a tender, far-reaching nature, loving and beloved, and touching the hearts of her readers with some virtue from its depths. She seemed even in her life something of a spirit; and her view of life's sorrow and shame, of its hearty and eternal hope, is something like that which one might imagine a spirit's to be." Whether political, or sociological, or mystical, or sentimental, or impossible, there is about all that Mrs. Browning has written an enduring charm of picturesqueness, of romance, and of a pure enthusiasm for art. "Art for Art," she cries,

"And good for God, himself the essential Good!
We'll keep our aims sublime, our eyes erect,
Although our woman-hands should shake and fail."

This was her achievement--her hands did not fail!

Her husband's words will furnish, perhaps, the best conclusion to this slight study:--"You are wrong," he said, "quite wrong--she has genius; I am only a painstaking fellow. Can't you imagine a clever sort of angel who plots and plans, and tries to build up something,--he wants to make you see it as he sees it, shows you one point of view, carries you off to another, hammering into your head the thing he wants you to understand; and whilst this bother is going on, God Almighty turns you off a little star--that's the difference between us. The true creative power is hers, not mine."

A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT

WHAT was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep, cool bed of the river.
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan,
While turbidly flowed the river,
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor, dry, empty thing
In holes as he sat by the river.

"This is the way," laughed the great god Pan,
(Laughed while he sat by the river,)
"The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed."
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan,
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and the pain,--
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

MY HEART AND I

Enough! we're tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason's knife,
As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
With which we're tired, my heart and I.

You see we're tired, my heart and I.
We dealt with books, we trusted men,
And in our own blood drenched the pen,
As if such colors could not fly.
We walked too straight for fortune's end,
We loved too true to keep a friend:
At last we're tired, my heart and I.

How tired we feel, my heart and I!
We seem of no use in the world;
Our fancies hang gray and uncurled
About men's eyes indifferently;
Our voice, which thrilled you so, will let
You sleep; our tears are only wet:
What do we here, my heart and I?

So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
It was not thus in that old time
When Ralph sat with me 'neath the lime
To watch the sunset from the sky.
"Dear love, you're looking tired," he said;
I, smiling at him, shook my head:
'Tis now we're tired, my heart and I.

So tired, so tired, my heart and I!
Though now none takes me on his arm
To fold me close and kiss me warm
Till each quick breath end in a sigh
Of happy languor. Now, alone,
We lean upon this graveyard stone,
Uncheered, unkissed, my heart and I.

Tired out we are, my heart and I.
Suppose the world brought diadems
To tempt us, crusted with loose gems
Of powers and pleasures? Let it try.
We scarcely care to look at even
A pretty child, or God's blue heaven,
We feel so tired, my heart and I.

Yet who complains? My heart and I?
In this abundant earth, no doubt,
Is little room for things worn out:
Disdain them, break them, throw them by!
And if, before the days grew rough,
We _once_ were loved, used,--well enough
I think we've fared, my heart and I.

FROM 'CATARINA TO CAMOENS'

[Dying in his absence abroad, and referring to the poem in which he
recorded the sweetness of her eyes.]

On the door you will not enter
I have gazed too long: adieu!
Hope withdraws her "peradventure";
Death is near me,--and not _you!_
Come, O lover,
Close and cover
These poor eyes you called, I ween,
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

When I heard you sing that burden
In my vernal days and bowers,
Other praises disregarding,
I but hearkened that of yours,
Only saying
In heart-playing,
"Blessed eyes mine eyes have been,
If the sweetest HIS have seen!"

But all changes. At this vesper
Cold the sun shines down the door.
If you stood there, would you whisper,
"Love, I love you," as before,--
Death pervading
Now and shading
Eyes you sang of, that yestreen,
As the sweetest ever seen?

Yes, I think, were you beside them,
Near the bed I die upon,
Though their beauty you denied them,
As you stood there looking down,
You would truly
Call them duly,
For the love's sake found therein,
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

And if _you_ looked down upon them,
And if _they_ looked up to _you_,
All the light which has foregone them
Would be gathered back anew;
They would truly
Be as duly
Love-transformed to beauty's sheen,
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

But, ah me! you only see me,
In your thoughts of loving man,
Smiling soft, perhaps, and dreamy,
Through the wavings of my fan;
And unweeting
Go repeating
In your revery serene,
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

O my poet, O my prophet!
When you praised their sweetness so,
Did you think, in singing of it,
That it might be near to go?
Had you fancies
From their glances,
That the grave would quickly screen
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?

No reply. The fountain's warble
In the courtyard sounds alone.
As the water to the marble
So my heart falls with a moan
From love-sighing
To this dying.
Death forerunneth Love to win
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

_Will_ you come? When I'm departed
Where all sweetnesses are hid,
Where thy voice, my tender-hearted,
Will not lift up either lid,
Cry, O lover,
Love is over!
Cry, beneath the cypress green,
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

When the Angelus is ringing,
Near the convent will you walk,
And recall the choral singing
Which brought angels down our talk?
Spirit-shriven
I viewed heaven,
Till you smiled--"Is earth unclean,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen?"

When beneath the palace-lattice
You ride slow as you have done,
And you see a face there that is
Not the old familiar one,
Will you oftly
Murmur softly,
"Here ye watched me morn and e'en,
Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?

When the palace-ladies, sitting
Round your gittern, shall have said,
"Poets, sing those verses written
For the lady who is dead,"
Will you tremble,
Yet dissemble,
Or sing hoarse, with tears between,
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen"?

"Sweetest eyes!" How sweet in flowings
The repeated cadence is!
Though you sang a hundred poems,
Still the best one would be this.
I can hear it
'Twixt my spirit
And the earth-noise intervene,--
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

But--but _now_--yet unremovèd
Up to heaven they glisten fast;
You may cast away, beloved,
In your future all my past:
Such old phrases
May be praises
For some fairer bosom-queen--
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen!"

Eyes of mine, what are ye doing?
Faithless, faithless, praised amiss
If a tear be, on your showing,
Dropped for any hope of HIS!
Death has boldness
Besides coldness,
If unworthy tears demean
"Sweetest eyes were ever seen."

I will look out to his future;
I will bless it till it shine.
Should he ever be a suitor
Unto sweeter eyes than mine,
Sunshine gild them,
Angels shield them,
Whatsoever eyes terrene
_Be_ the sweetest HIS have seen.

THE SLEEP

"He giveth his beloved sleep."--Ps. cxxvii. 2

OF ALL the thoughts of God that are
Borne inward into souls afar
Along the Psalmist's music deep,
Now tell me if that any is,
For gift or grace, surpassing this--
"He giveth his beloved sleep."

What would we give to our beloved?
The hero's heart to be unmoved.
The poet's star-tuned harp to sweep,
The patriot's voice to teach and rouse,
The monarch's crown to light the brows?--
He giveth his belovèd sleep.

What do we give to our beloved?
A little faith all undisproved,
A little dust to overweep,
And bitter memories to make
The whole earth blasted for our sake.
He giveth his beloved sleep.

"Sleep soft, beloved!" we sometimes say,
Who have no tune to charm away
Sad dreams that through the eyelids creep;
But never doleful dream again
Shall break the happy slumber when
He giveth his belovèd sleep.

O earth, so full of dreary noises!
O men with wailing in your voices!
O delvèd gold the wailers heap!
O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth his beloved sleep.

His dews drop mutely on the hill,
His cloud above it saileth still,
Though on its slope men sow and reap;
More softly than the dew is shed,
Or cloud is floated overhead,
He giveth his belovèd sleep.

Ay, men may wonder while they scan
A living, thinking, feeling man
Confirmed in such a rest to keep;
But angels say,--and through the word
I think their happy smile is _heard_,--
"He giveth his belovèd sleep."

For me, my heart that erst did go
Most like a tired child at a show,
That sees through tears the mummers leap,
Would now its wearied vision close,
Would childlike on His love repose
Who giveth his belovèd sleep.

And friends, dear friends, when it shall be
That this low breath is gone from me,
And round my bier ye come to weep,
Let one most loving of you all
Say, "Not a tear must o'er her fall!
He giveth his belovèd sleep."

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

I

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,
And _that_ cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west:
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
They are weeping bitterly.
They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

II

Do you question the young children in their sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?
The old man may weep for his To-morrow
Which is lost in Long-Ago;
The old tree is leafless in the forest;
The old year is ending in the frost;
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest;
The old hope is hardest to be lost:
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
Do you ask them why they stand
Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?

III

They look up with their pale and sunken faces;
And their looks are sad to see,
For the man's hoary anguish draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy.
"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;
Our young feet," they say, "are very weak;
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary;
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.
Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children;
For the outside earth is cold,
And we young ones stand without in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old."

IV

"True," say the children, "it may happen
That we die before our time:
Little Alice died last year; her grave is shapen
Like a snowball in the rime.
We looked into the pit prepared to take her:
Was no room for any work in the close clay,
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.'
If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,
With your ear down, little Alice never cries.
Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,
For the smile has time for growing in her eyes;
And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in
The shroud by the kirk-chime.
It is good when it happens," say the children,
"That we die before our time."

V

Alas, alas, the children! They are seeking
Death in life, as best to have.
They are binding up their hearts away from breaking
With a cerement from the grave.
Go out, children, from the mine and from the city;
Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;
Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty;
Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through.
But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows
Like our weeds anear the mine?
Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,
From your pleasures fair and fine.

VI

"For oh!" say the children, "we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap;
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them, and sleep.
Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping;
We fall upon our faces, trying to go;
And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,
The reddest flower would look as pale as snow;
For all day we drag our burden tiring,
Through the coal-dark, underground;
Or all day we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.

VII

"For all-day the wheels are droning, turning;
Their wind comes in our faces,
Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,
And the walls turn in their places.
Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling,
Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,
Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling,--
All are turning, all the day, and we with all.
And all day the iron wheels are droning,
And sometimes we could pray,
'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning),
'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"

VIII

Ay. be silent! Let them hear each other breathing
For a moment, mouth to mouth;
Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing
Of their tender human youth;
Let them feel that this cold metallic motion
Is not all the life God fashions or reveals;
Let them prove their living souls against the notion
That they live in you, or tinder you, O wheels!
Still all day the iron wheels go onward,
Grinding life down from its mark;
And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,
Spin on blindly in the dark.

IX

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,
To look up to Him, and pray;
So the blessèd One who blesseth all the others
Will bless them another day.
They answer, "Who is God, that he should hear us
While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?
When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us
Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word;
And _we_ hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)
Strangers speaking at the door.
Is it likely God, with angels singing round him,
Hears our weeping any more?

X

"Two words, indeed, of praying we remember;
And at midnight's hour of harm,
'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,
We say softly for a charm.
We know no other words except 'Our Father';
And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,
God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,
And hold both within his right hand, which is strong.
'Our Father!' If he heard us, he would surely
(For they call him good and mild)
Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,
'Come and rest with me, my child.'

XI

"But no!" say the children, weeping faster,
"He is speechless as a stone;
And they tell us, of his image is the master
Who commands us to work on.
Go to!" say the children,--"up in heaven,
Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.
Do not mock us: Grief has made us unbelieving:
We look up for God; but tears have made us blind."
Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,
O my brothers, what ye preach?
For God's possible is taught by his world's loving--
And the children doubt of each.

XII

And well may the children weep before you!
They are weary ere they run;
They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory
Which is brighter than the sun.
They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;
They sink in man's despair, without its calm;
Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom;
Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm;
Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly
The harvest of its memories cannot reap;
Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly--
Let them weep! let them weep!

XIII

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see.
For they mind you of their angels in high places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart,--
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?
Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,
And your purple shows your path;
But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath!"

MOTHER AND POET

[On Laura Savio of Turin, a poetess and patriot, whose sons
were killed at Ancona and Gaeta.]

DEAD! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Dead! both my boys! When you sit at the feast,
And are wanting a great song for Italy free,
Let none look at _me_!

Yet I was a poetess only last year,
And good at my art, for a woman, men said:
But _this_ woman, _this_, who is agonized here,--
The east sea and west sea rhyme on in her head
Forever instead.

What art can a woman be good at? Oh, vain!
What art _is_ she good at, but hurting her breast
With the milk-teeth of babes, and a smile at the pain?
Ah, boys, how you hurt! you were strong as you prest,
And I proud by that test.

What art's for a woman? To hold on her knees
Both darlings! to feel all their arms round her throat
Cling, strangle a little! to sew by degrees,
And 'broider the long-clothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to dote.

To teach them.... It stings there! _I_ made them indeed
Speak plain the word _country. I_ taught them, no doubt,
That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.

And when their eyes flashed ... O my beautiful eyes! ...
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not. But then the surprise
When one sits quite alone! Then one weeps, then one kneels.
God, how the house feels!

At first, happy news came, in gay letters moiled
With my kisses, of camp-life and glory, and how
They both loved me; and soon, coming home to be spoiled,
In return would fan off every fly from my brow
With their green laurel-bough.

There was triumph at Turin: "Ancona was free!"
And some one came out of the cheers in the street,
With a face pale as stone, to say something to me.
My Guido was dead! I fell down at his feet,
While they cheered in the street.

I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height _he_ had gained.

And letters still came; shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand:--"I was not to faint,--
One loved me for two; would be with me ere long:
And _Viva l'Italia_ he died for, our saint,
Who forbids our complaint."

My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls,--was imprest
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossest,
To live on for the rest."

On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta,--"_Shot.
Tell his mother_." Ah, ah! "his," "their" mother, not "mine":
No voice says, "_My_ mother," again to me. What!
You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy, that, dizzy with heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not! Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that Love and that Sorrow which reconciled so
The Above and Below.

O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark
To the face of thy mother! Consider, I pray,
How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,--
Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away,
And no last word to say!

Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. We all
Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.
'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;
And when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?
When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men;
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short;

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee;
When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red:
When _you_ have your country from mountain to sea,
When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head,
(And I have my dead)--

What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low
And burn your lights faintly! _My_ country is _there_.
Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's THERE, with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this, and we sit on forlorn
When the man-child is born.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea.
Both! both my boys! If in keeping the feast
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at _me_!

A COURT LADY

Her hair was tawny with gold; her eyes with purple were dark;
Her cheeks' pale opal burnt with a red and restless spark.

Never was lady of Milan nobler in name and in race;
Never was lady of Italy fairer to see in the face.

Never was lady on earth more true as woman and wife,
Larger in judgment and instinct, prouder in manners and life.

She stood in the early morning, and said to her maidens, "Bring
That silken robe made ready to wear at the court of the King.

"Bring me the clasps of diamond, lucid, clear of the mote;
Clasp me the large at the waist, and clasp me the small at the throat.

"Diamonds to fasten the hair, and diamonds to fasten the sleeves,
Laces to drop from their rays, like a powder of snow from the eaves."

Gorgeous she entered the sunlight, which gathered her up in a flame,
While, straight in her open carriage, she to the hospital came.

In she went at the door, and gazing from end to end,--
"Many and low are the pallets; but each is the place of a friend."

Up she passed through the wards, and stood at a young man's bed;
Bloody the band on his brow, and livid the droop of his head.

"Art thou a Lombard, my brother? Happy art thou!" she cried,
And smiled like Italy on him: he dreamed in her face--and died.

Pale with his passing soul, she went on still to a second:
He was a grave hard man, whose years by dungeons were reckoned.

Wounds in his body were sore, wounds in his life were sorer.
"Art thou a Romagnole?" Her eyes drove lightnings before her.

"Austrian and priest had joined to double and tighten the cord
Able to bind thee, O strong one, free by the stroke of a sword.