Chapter III

I will fear you, O stars, never more.
I have felt it! Go on, while the world is asleep,
Golden islands, fast moored in God's infinite deep.
Hark, hark to the words of sweet fashion, the harpings of yore!
How they sang to Him, seer and saint, in the far away lands:
"The heavens are the work of Thy hands;
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure;
Yea, they all shall wax old,--
But Thy throne is established, O God, and Thy years are made sure;
They shall perish, but Thou shalt endure,--
They shall pass like a tale that is told."

Doth He answer, the Ancient of Days?
Will He speak in the tongue and the fashion of men?
(Hist! hist! while the heaven-hung multitudes shine in His praise,
His language of old.) Nay, He spoke with them first; it was then
They lifted their eyes to His throne;
"They shall call on Me, 'Thou art our Father, our God, Thou alone!'
For I made them, I led them in deserts and desolate ways;
I have found them a Ransom Divine;
I have loved them with love everlasting, the children of men;
I swear by Myself, they are Mine."

THE MORNING WATCH.

THE COMING IN OF THE "MERMAIDEN."

The moon is bleached as white as wool,
And just dropping under;
Every star is gone but three,
And they hang far asunder,--
There's a sea-ghost all in gray,
A tall shape of wonder!

I am not satisfied with sleep,--
The night is not ended.
But look how the sea-ghost comes,
With wan skirts extended,
Stealing up in this weird hour,
When light and dark are blended.

A vessel! To the old pier end
Her happy course she's keeping;
I heard them name her yesterday:
Some were pale with weeping;
Some with their heart-hunger sighed,
She's in,--and they are sleeping.

O! now with fancied greetings blest,
They comfort their long aching:
The sea of sleep hath borne to them
What would not come with waking,
And the dreams shall most be true
In their blissful breaking.

The stars are gone, the rose-bloom comes,--
No blush of maid is sweeter;
The red sun, half way out of bed,
Shall be the first to greet her.
None tell the news, yet sleepers wake,
And rise, and run to meet her.

Their lost they have, they hold; from pain
A keener bliss they borrow.
How natural is joy, my heart!
How easy after sorrow!
For once, the best is come that hope
Promised them "to-morrow."

CONCLUDING SONG OF DAWN.

(_Old English Manner._)

A MORN OF MAY.

All the clouds about the sun lay up in golden creases, (Merry rings the maiden's voice that sings at dawn of day;) Lambkins woke and skipped around to dry their dewy fleeces, So sweetly as she carolled, all on a morn of May.

Quoth the Sergeant, "Here I'll halt; here's wine of joy for drinking; To my heart she sets her hand, and in the strings doth play; All among the daffodils, and fairer to my thinking, And fresh as milk and roses, she sits this morn of May."

Quoth the Sergeant, "Work is work, but any ye might make me, If I worked for you, dear lass, I'd count my holiday. I'm your slave for good and all, an' if ye will but take me, So sweetly as ye carol upon this morn of May."

"Medals count for worth," quoth she, "and scars are worn for honor; But a slave an' if ye be, kind wooer, go your way." All the nodding daffodils woke up and laughed upon her. O! sweetly did she carol, all on that morn of May.

Gladsome leaves upon the bough, they fluttered fast and faster, Fretting brook, till he would speak, did chide the dull delay: "Beauty! when I said a slave, I think I meant a master; So sweetly as ye carol all on this morn of May.

"Lass, I love you! Love is strong, and some men's hearts are tender." Far she sought o'er wood and wold, but found not aught to say; Mounting lark nor mantling cloud would any counsel render, Though sweetly she had carolled upon that morn of May.

Shy, she sought the wooer's face, and deemed the wooing mended; Proper man he was, good sooth, and one would have his way: So the lass was made a wife, and so the song was ended. O! sweetly she did carol all on that morn of May.

CONTRASTED SONGS.

CONTRASTED SONGS.

SAILING BEYOND SEAS.

(_Old Style._)

Methought the stars were blinking bright,
And the old brig's sails unfurled;
I said, "I will sail to my love this night
At the other side of the world."
I stepped aboard,--we sailed so fast,--
The sun shot up from the bourne;
But a dove that perched upon the mast
Did mourn, and mourn, and mourn.
O fair dove! O fond dove!
And dove with the white breast,
Let me alone, the dream is my own,
And my heart is full of rest.

My true love fares on this great hill,
Feeding his sheep for aye;
I looked in his hut, but all was still,
My love was gone away.
I went to gaze in the forest creek,
And the dove mourned on apace;
No flame did flash, nor fair blue reek
Rose up to show me his place.
O last love! O first love!
My love with the true heart,
To think I have come to this your home,
And yet--we are apart!

My love! He stood at my right hand,
His eyes were grave and sweet.
Methought he said, "In this far land,
O, is it thus we meet!
Ah, maid most dear, I am not here;
I have no place,--no part,--
No dwelling more by sea or shore,
But only in thy heart."
O fair dove! O fond dove!
Till night rose over the bourne,
The dove on the mast, as we sailed fast,
Did mourn, and mourn, and mourn.

REMONSTRANCE.

Daughters of Eve! your mother did not well:
She laid the apple in your father's hand,
And we have read, O wonder! what befell,--
The man was not deceived, nor yet could stand:
He chose to lose, for love of her, his throne,--
With her could die, but could not live alone.

Daughters of Eve! he did not fall so low, Nor fall so far, as that sweet woman fell; For something better, than as gods to know, That husband in that home left off to dwell: For this, till love be reckoned less than lore, Shall man be first and best for evermore.

Daughters of Eve! it was for your dear sake The world's first hero died an uncrowned king; But God's great pity touched the grand mistake, And made his married love a sacred thing: For yet his nobler sons, if aught be true, Find the lost Eden in their love to you.

SONG FOR THE NIGHT OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION.

(_A Humble Imitation._)

"And birds of calm sit brooding on the charméd wave."

It is the noon of night,
And the world's Great Light
Gone out, she widow-like doth carry her:
The moon hath veiled her face,
Nor looks on that dread place
Where He lieth dead in sealéd sepulchre;
And heaven and hades, emptied, lend
Their flocking multitudes to watch and wait the end.

Tier above tier they rise,
Their wings new line the skies,
And shed out comforting light among the stars;
But they of the other place
The heavenly signs deface,
The gloomy brand of hell their brightness mars;
Yet high they sit in thronéd state,--
It is the hour of darkness to them dedicate.

And first and highest set,
Where the black shades are met,
The lord of night and hades leans him down;
His gleaming eyeballs show
More awful than the glow,
Which hangeth by the points of his dread crown;
And at his feet, where lightnings play,
The fatal sisters sit and weep, and curse their day.

Lo! one, with eyes all wide,
As she were sight denied,
Sits blindly feeling at her distaff old;
One, as distraught with woe,
Letting the spindle go,
Her star y-sprinkled gown doth shivering fold;
And one right mournful hangs her head,
Complaining, "Woe is me! I may not cut the thread.

"All men of every birth,
Yea, great ones of the earth,
Kings and their councillors, have I drawn down;
But I am held of Thee,--
Why dost Thou trouble me,
To bring me up, dead King, that keep'st Thy crown?
Yet for all courtiers hast but ten
Lowly, unlettered, Galilean fishermen.

"Olympian heights are bare
Of whom men worshipped there,
Immortal feet their snows may print no more;
Their stately powers below
Lie desolate, nor know
This thirty years Thessalian grove or shore;
But I am elder far than they;--
Where is the sentence writ that I must pass away?

"Art thou come up for this,
Dark regent, awful Dis?
And hast thou moved the deep to mark our ending?
And stirred the dens beneath,
To see us eat of death,
With all the scoffing heavens toward us bending?
Help! powers of ill, see not us die!"
But neither demon dares, nor angel deigns, reply.

Her sisters, fallen on sleep,
Fade in the upper deep,
And their grim lord sits on, in doleful trance;
Till her black veil she rends,
And with her death-shriek bends
Downward the terrors of her countenance;
Then, whelmed in night and no more seen,
They leave the world a doubt if ever such have been.

And the winged armies twain
Their awful watch maintain;
They mark the earth at rest with her Great Dead.
Behold, from antres wide,
Green Atlas heave his side;
His moving woods their scarlet clusters shed,
The swathing coif his front that cools,
And tawny lions lapping at his palm-edged pools.

Then like a heap of snow,
Lying where grasses grow,
See glimmering, while the moony lustres creep,
Mild mannered Athens, dight
In dewy marbles white,
Among her goddesses and gods asleep;
And swaying on a purple sea,
The many moored galleys clustering at her quay.

Also, 'neath palm-trees' shade,
Amid their camels laid,
The pastoral tribes with all their flocks at rest;
Like to those old-world folk,
With whom two angels broke
The bread of men at Abram's courteous 'quest,
When, listening as they prophesied,
His desert princess, being reproved, her laugh denied.

Or from the Morians' land
See worshipped Nilus bland,
Taking the silver road he gave the world,
To wet his ancient shrine
With waters held divine,
And touch his temple steps with wavelets curled,
And list, ere darkness change to gray,
Old minstrel-throated Memnon chanting in the day.

Moreover, Indian glades,
Where kneel the sun-swart maids,
On Gunga's flood their votive flowers to throw,
And launch i' the sultry night
Their burning cressets bright,
Most like a fleet of stars that southing go,
Till on her bosom prosperously
She floats them shining forth to sail the lulléd sea.

Nor bend they not their eyne
Where the watch-fires shine,
By shepherds fed, on hills of Bethlehem:
They mark, in goodly wise,
The city of David rise,
The gates and towers of rare Jerusalem;
And hear the 'scapéd Kedron fret,
And night dews dropping from the leaves of Olivet.

But now the setting moon
To curtained lands must soon,
In her obedient fashion, minister;
She first, as loath to go,
Lets her last silver flow
Upon her Master's sealéd sepulchre;
And trees that in the gardens spread,
She kisseth all for sake of His low-lying head,

Then 'neath the rim goes down;
And night with darker frown
Sinks on the fateful garden watched long;
When some despairing eyes,
Far in the murky skies,
The unwishéd waking by their gloom foretell;
And blackness up the welkin swings,
And drinks the mild effulgence from celestial wings.

Last, with amazéd cry,
The hosts asunder fly,
Leaving an empty gulf of blackest hue;
Whence straightway shooteth down,
By the Great Father thrown,
A mighty angel, strong and dread to view;
And at his fall the rocks are rent,
The waiting world doth quake with mortal tremblement;

The regions far and near
Quail with a pause of fear,
More terrible than aught since time began;
The winds, that dare not fleet,
Drop at his awful feet,
And in its bed wails the wide oceán;
The flower of dawn forbears to blow,
And the oldest running river cannot skill to flow.

At stand, by that dread place,
He lifts his radiant face,
And looks to heaven with reverent love and fear;
Then, while the welkin quakes,
The muttering thunder breaks,
And lightnings shoot and ominous meteors drear,
And all the daunted earth doth moan,
He from the doors of death rolls back the sealéd stone.--

--In regal quiet deep,
Lo, One new waked from sleep!
Behold, He standeth in the rock-hewn door!
Thy children shall not die,--
Peace, peace, thy Lord is by!
He liveth!--they shall live for evermore.
Peace! lo, He lifts a priestly hand,
And blesseth all the sons of men in every land.

Then, with great dread and wail,
Fall down, like storms of hail,
The legions of the lost in fearful wise;
And they whose blissful race
Peoples the better place,
Lift up their wings to cover their fair eyes,
And through the waxing saffron brede,
Till they are lost in light, recede, and yet recede.

So while the fields are dim,
And the red sun his rim
First heaves, in token of his reign benign,
All stars the most admired,
Into their blue retired,
Lie hid,--the faded moon forgets to shine,--
And, hurrying down the sphery way,
Night flies, and sweeps her shadows from the paths of day.

But look! the Saviour blest,
Calm after solemn rest,
Stands in the garden 'neath His olive boughs;
The earliest smile of day
Doth on His vesture play,
And light the majesty of His still brows;
While angels hang with wings outspread,
Holding the new-won crown above His saintly head.

SONG OF MARGARET.

Ay, I saw her, we have met,--
Married eyes how sweet they be,--
Are you happier, Margaret,
Than you might have been with me?
Silence! make no more ado!
Did she think I should forget?
Matters nothing, though I knew,
Margaret, Margaret.

Once those eyes, full sweet, full shy,
Told a certain thing to mine;
What they told me I put by,
O, so careless of the sign.
Such an easy thing to take,
And I did not want it then;
Fool! I wish my heart would break,
Scorn is hard on hearts of men.

Scorn of self is bitter work,--
Each of us has felt it now:
Bluest skies she counted mirk,
Self-betrayed of eyes and brow;
As for me, I went my way,
And a better man drew nigh,
Fain to earn, with long essay,
What the winner's hand threw by.

Matters not in deserts old,
What was born, and waxed, and yearned,
Year to year its meaning told,
I am come,--its deeps are learned,--
Come, but there is naught to say,--
Married eyes with mine have met.
Silence! O, I had my day,
Margaret, Margaret.

SONG OF THE GOING AWAY.

"Old man, upon the green hillside,
With yellow flowers besprinkled o'er,
How long in silence wilt thou bide
At this low stone door?

"I stoop: within 'tis dark and still;
But shadowy paths methinks there be,
And lead they far into the hill?"
"Traveller, come and see."

"'Tis dark, 'tis cold, and hung with gloom;
I care not now within to stay;
For thee and me is scarcely room,
I will hence away."

"Not so, not so, thou youthful guest,
Thy foot shall issue forth no more:
Behold the chamber of thy rest,
And the closing door!"

"O, have I 'scaped the whistling ball,
And striven on smoky fields of fight,
And scaled the 'leaguered city's wall
In the dangerous night;

"And borne my life unharméd still
Through foaming gulfs of yeasty spray,
To yield it on a grassy hill
At the noon of day?"

"Peace! Say thy prayers, and go to sleep,
Till _some time_, ONE my seal shall break,
And deep shall answer unto deep,
When He crieth, 'AWAKE!'"

A LILY AND A LUTE.

(_Song of the uncommunicated Ideal._)