Chapter XIX

She looks at heaven; afar the cloud-vane drifts;
Her face is pale, he comes, the lord is found:
She kneels, once more his slave; the stranger lifts
The virgin from the ground,
And offers up for sacred wedding gifts
The chains her heart had bound.

FAREWELL TO NATURE

Vain love for Nature! How these heartaches rust
Into the soul as we return to dust!
Hope’s shadow only masks our eventide,
Feigning to lead us to its brighter side,
While yet the mellowing skies that wondrous grow,
Seem left in waiting for the dead below.
But those tranced sunsets,—little they avail,
None travel hence in their alluring trail;
All is a dream, an ancient dream, the same
From the first mortal to the last that came.
Yet could we but for once our eyes unclose
When through the distant days the pageant goes!
Familiar vision, and so soon to be
Entombed within the dead eternity.

Doth Nature know our dream, or is the mind
A passing breath her beauty leaves behind?
Ah! not for this our grateful souls have wrought
Around her sphere a universe of thought.
’Tis she inspires our dreams, but no reply
Vouchsafes the loving hearts that for her die,
Who only pray, when life’s surprise is o’er,
They may partake a glimpse of her once more.
Is it too late? She sees not to the end;
What she hath done she never can amend:
Yet once by us beloved, once only known,
She seems from all the past to be our own.

Last wish of age! How sweet one glance would be
Even from the sod the olden haunts to see;
To watch the long-drawn wavelets as they reach
The silent plains of the deserted beach;
To look where light once was, if but to know
Of its faint struggle through the winnowed snow.
Ah! whence this dream that like the cuckoo-guest
Pleads in such winning accents for a nest,
And with its cloud-note ever on us calls,
And though it passes the fond heart enthralls?

Little it seems, this wish, when oft our sight
Tires of the world, yet what a fresh delight
Were it sometimes in death those scenes to view,
The olden scenes that to our youth were new,
To linger o’er a sound whose murmurs swell
Upon the heart,—the tinkling village bell,—
To find that all was safe, all gliding on
In beauty’s leisure ways though we were gone;
To see brave Nature in her perilous scheme
Advance without our help, without our dream.
At least ’twould hold ajar death’s open door
To think our love was honoured evermore,—
In dying, on the forward thought to dwell
That it was not our very last farewell.

Could hope unveil and not its mystic fire
Be lost among the embers of desire!
Ill though desponding hearts their burden bear,
Is not the soul the master of despair?
Is this great life, hard won, achieved in vain,
Is good once found to never be again?
Ask of the worlds if they their path forget,
Ask hope that never ends, its time to set.
One deep desire throughout all being cries,
And this is hope, our future in disguise.
O living lamp, O Hope, the only Seer;
Of Nature’s after-time the pioneer,
Keep in advance across our starless way,
Be the new morrow of our orphan day!

THE POET’S FEAST

The golden feast for jovial souls prepare
Whose wants the wants of nature far exceed;
The nectar of the sun such palates need;
To them the fatted calf is vulgar fare.
Earth’s dripping fruits may wandering Arabs share
Pleased with the pulp and juice whereon they feed;
And bread alone is still the poor man’s meed,
Though milk abound and honey be to spare.
So dreams the Poet, with his crust content:
The crumbs that from the rich man’s table fall
To him are sorry signs of merriment
To show the world has food enough for all.
At festive boards he has but little part—
To him ’twas given to feed on his own heart.

THE EXILE

I

They bore her to the northern snows
Whose floods down ice-domed caverns run,
From lands where that calm river flows
Whose depths decoy the vagrant sun,
Where palms o’er latticed shadows rise
With boughs that web the sultry skies.

II

Where roses climb the scent-steeped hills
And channelled leaves with dew-drops flash,
Bending beneath the trickled rills
That fall and the pink clusters splash;
Where aloe-flowers, all flaming red,
Like watch-fires o’er the summit spread.

III

They bore her to a desert plain
Where the dry, creviced mosses cling,
Sand-sprinkled as by drizzling rain;
Where dark and ragged pine-boughs swing,
And the free cygnet in its flight
Darts with a meteor’s wingèd light.

IV

Her father, last of mighty lords
Whose deeds the war-like peasants tell,
Fearless had met the northern hordes
And in the battle’s frenzy fell.
Full-armed he sleeps, and still the brave
Salute him as they pass his grave.

V

Now young, she thinks not of her race
But feels its glory and its pride.
She still recalls her mother’s face
Who in her stately sorrow died,
And those large eyes her image keep,
And dream beside it in love’s sleep.

VI

Eyes that are of the sultry zone—
That ofttimes in their musing moods
See rosy banks that seem their own
Where lies the waste: her olive-woods,
Her sky with cypress-skirted folds,
All that she loves, her heart remoulds.

VII

As in a desert one red rose
Seems like a garden full of bloom,
She charms the wilderness, and throws
Her own bright colours o’er its gloom;
Then at the falling cone’s rebound
Pomegranates gild the enchanted ground.

VIII

And lest when dear illusions come
They melt o’er-fast, she hides her eyes,
And feigns to see her native home,
And shouts in play her soul’s surprise.
So while the southern glory burns
The haunting vision still returns.

IX

When spring bursts o’er the wintry plain
And violet skies dissolve in spray,
And marsh-pools echo drops of rain
That o’er the bud’s new secret play,
Her soul seems darting from her eyes
To snatch at nature’s rhapsodies.

X

The serf who toils upon the road
From waste to waste with back that bears
Across the steppes another’s load,—
With eyes that homeward gaze in tears,—
Chills not for long a heart that glows
In its own fire ’mid northern snows.

XI

Where plough may delve or harrow graze,
She tramps beside the sluggish team
As fain to urge its tardy pace:
And when she drifts into some dream
Her laugh, her look of childish glee,
Is still the joy of memory.

XII

But fears flash o’er her mellow eyes
When gaunt sand-fountains, side by side,
Like giants in the distance rise,
Pass slowly by and onward glide,
Like shadows from her father’s land
That seek some rumoured icy strand.

XIII

Then day breaks through a sullen sky;
The keen air shivers;—doth she know
The blackened clouds now sailing by
Are freighted with the virgin snow?
Dark ships of winter that unload
The widespread famine they forbode.

XIV

The snow-flakes build a prison-wall
That slants high o’er her window sill;
She watches while they slowly fall,
Till heaven appears a sinking hill,
And darkness gathers o’er her mind:
Home is too far for hope to find.

XV

In new despair she sees heaven’s sand
Has drifted o’er her cottage gate!
She fears that now her native land
Is like the desert desolate.
The snow still falls and still it clings,
Soft dropped like insects’ broken wings.

XVI

Through the strange dusk she hears the shriek
Of trees snapped by the dreaded wind;
The casements shake, the rafters creak;
Ah! could she now her mother find!
With timid wings too weak for flight
She hangs upon the edge of night.

XVII

A wind’s moan utters, ‘Stir and go’:
Upon its gust she seems to glide
Towards lands beyond the falling snow
But reaches not its further side.
She drops on the cold hilly steeps
And in her distant reverie sleeps.