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Title: The poetry of pathos & delight

from the works of Coventry Patmore

Author: Coventry Patmore

Editor: Alice Meynell

Illustrator: John Singer Sargent

Release date: July 20, 2026 [eBook #79143]

Language: English

Original publication: London: W. Heinemann, 1896

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79143

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POETRY OF PATHOS & DELIGHT ***

Transcriber’s Note:

New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

THE POETRY OF

PATHOS & DELIGHT

J. S. Sargent, A.R.A. Pinx      K. Dixon, Photo

THE POETRY OF

PATHOS & DELIGHT

From the Works of

COVENTRY PATMORE

❦

Passages Selected by

ALICE MEYNELL

WITH A PORTRAIT AFTER J. S. SARGENT, A. R. A.

LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN

MDCCCXCVI

All rights reserved

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

This book does not offer a selection in the usual sense. The poetry of a master is selected before it is written, and before it is conceived; and the mind that conceives it is selected. Mr. Coventry Patmore’s art and labour do but second that original distinction. Therefore it is hardly necessary to say that my intention has not been to make a collection of “best passages.” What has been intended is to collect passages in which the poet has dealt with two things—delight and sorrow, those human and intelligible passions to which all real poetry has access, but which this poetry touches so close as to be mingled with them and changed into them.

So to offer great poetry to the natural human sensibility, should be to gain for the poet’s whole work new readers. I confess that is my motive. Because of their youth, which has not allowed them to read very much, or because of accident, there may be many readers still to gain. Among them may be the fittest—not the less fit because they have been for a time under the influence of a fashion for inordinate haste, or for inordinate leisure, of appreciation. Mr. Patmore’s greatest work is neither so new as to gratify the eagerness of one fashion, nor so old as to flatter the reluctance of the other. It is a work of the beginning of the last quarter of our century. It is dated later than Mr. Swinburne’s best, for instance, but it had its place in literature before the present young love of poetry had taken life. Again, many poets are heard because a chorus of contemporaries sings with them and like them. Mr. Coventry Patmore’s voice is single in his day, and single in our literature. It makes part of no choir loud by numbers, and so it needs an attentive ear. To that attentive ear it sounds alone, as the divinest voice of our time.

There is a dignity in Mr. Patmore’s reputation (attendant on the exceeding dignity of his art) that might be offended—though it could not be injured—by officious praises. But it is not inopportune to say thus much: Readers of this book and of the entire poems may be promised a perfect respite from the tedious controversy as to matter and manner, thought and expression. They shall not be invited to attend to discussions as to the relative importance of two things that in truth have no high importance if they can be divided so as to be merely related. The dispute is an inconsiderable one; it is perfectly opportune in the criticism of all poetry below a certain perfectly definite standard of art, and there only. Above that standard, thought and form are not opposed, nor merely related; they are one. It is not difficult to make a definition of classical poetry, if classical poetry may rightly be defined as all poetry—be its thought what it may, and its form what it may—in which thought and form are one. Classical poetry of every age—and every age has had a little—is that in which there is no antithesis, in which there is more than a bond—union and fusion. The classical poem may be a mere “To Althea from Prison,” or even a mere “To Blossoms.” In the small classic the word is fused with its fancy, and in the great it is fused with its passion; and the greater the passion the greater the splendour of the fire of that fusion—the “integrity of fire.”

The more essential passages of Mr. Coventry Patmore’s much earlier work—The Angel in the House—are classic, and very high in that noble rank. He plays with this power of his art in the brief metre, the symmetrical stanza, and the colloquial phrase. He has here accepted the dailiest things and made them spirit and fire. There has been something said against these colloquialisms; and indeed they would not be tolerable in hands less austere and sweet. The newest Philistine, who is afraid of the reproach of Philistinism, who denies Philistinism in the name of a Philistine, and ultimately receives a Philistine’s reward, has been known to make light of some of Mr. Patmore’s couplets, which he finds too “domestic.” But such “domestic” couplets as those in “Olympus,” for instance, are a smiling defiance of Philistinism. So are the brilliant stanzas, made of life, sense, and spirit, in which the very accessories,—the spoilt accessories—of a modern English wedding are rendered grave and blithe, and the bridegroom is restored to the dignity of the sun. Mr. Patmore makes the Wedding Sermon (at the close of The Angel in the House) the improbable opportunity for the finest wit and thought, tenderness, mystery, and celestial knowledge. One of the things that have baffled the trivial in these early poems is probably what they have taken for triviality or artlessness in the metre as well as in the word. Locks and bars and bolts are less secure for the locking away of a poet’s privacy, than is his unintelligible candour. In his solemnity the world recognises a mystery; but by his frank play and simplicity it is sometimes baffled and misled into disregard.

The Odes are greater than the earlier poems, because they have greater capacity for the quality that is in all Mr. Patmore’s work. As for their metre, it is their very poetry. They move with indescribable dignity, and with the freedom of the spirit. The wind bloweth where it listeth. With absolute art the poet sighs, or pauses, or recovers breath, in the “irregular” line, with an effect of infinite liberty and pathos. “Thou hearest the sound thereof.” One of Mr. Patmore’s worthiest contemporaries has said that the Odes are almost too mournful to be read, because they are so close to the thought: “the verse attending on the thought, and having no independent life of its own.” This appreciation is insufficient, for there is union rather than “attendance;” but it expresses hastily the effect of this most sensitive and vital line—precisely the effect, which, in another art, results from the phrases of a Parsifal. Take the regular stanza as answering to a symmetrical melody; you will perceive that neither stanza nor tune can be so immediately sensitive as are those sentences of music, and those lines of the ode in the hands of a master. No other metrical form could be so free and so living a communication.

What is here to be communicated is vital and mortal pathos and felicity. Even as far as the reader has capacity to perceive that passion, he is aware that it is greater than his experience, and he confesses that it was uttered out of a greater capacity than his. Compassion with that greater passion is a high and worthy manner of admiration. It may be the “terror” that Aristotle joined to “pity.” Compassion in the highest degree is the divinest form of religion. The compassion of the slighter acquaintance with sorrow for the greater, and of the smaller capacity for the vaster, is a remorse of tenderness, lowliness, and respect, the paradox of worship.

Dexterity—the lower technique—may become habitual, and the more brilliant kinds of habit are often mistaken for the actual intention of great art; but great art is never habitual. Art has a perpetually living intention. All the lines and passages here gathered together are proofs of this instancy of art. And they are chosen as instant communications of the two passions of happiness and pain, because these are the most simple. It would have been easy to represent Mr. Patmore by an anthology proving him the poet of wit, or the poet of beauty, or the poet of indignation. But the most classic subject of classic poetry is the most intelligible in kind, however enormous in degree—felicity and infelicity. Of melancholy—the black humour—none of Mr. Patmore’s work has a sign.

CONTENTS

To the Unknown Eros

Page 1

England

5

Remnant of Honour

8

Victory in Defeat

9

Saint Valentine’s Day

12

The Wedding Sermon

15

The Paragon

16

The Rose of the World

18

The Lover

21

Heaven and Earth

23

The Letter

24

The Revelation

27

The Doubt

28

Security

29

The Spirit’s Epochs

30

The Maid

31

Acceptance

32

Betrothed

33

The Dance Page

34

Entreaty

36

The Revulsion

37

Praises

40

Marriage

41

The Rosy Bosom’d Hours

42

Wind and Wave

45

Beata

47

If I were Dead

48

Deliciæ Sapientiæ de Amore

49

Mignonne

55

Mildred

57

Rejected

58

Love in Tears

59

Denied

60

Love’s Will be Done

61

First Love Remembered

62

Lost Love

65

Away

66

Rachel

72

The Voice of One I Knew

73

In the Woods

75

Leah

77

Her Counsel

78

Sponsa Dei

79

Bonds

82

To the Body

83

Auras of Delight

86

Psyche

88

Dawn

89

The Edge of Bliss

90

Eros

91

Amelia

92

After Storm

96

Venus and Death

98

Semele

99

The Married Lover

100

The Amaranth

102

The Letters

103

One Spring

109

Ma Belle

111

A Farewell

112

Departure

114

The Azalea

116

Eurydice

118

The Day after To-Morrow

121

Tired Memory

124

The Toys

128

Winter

130

L’Allegro

133

A Retrospect

136

TO THE UNKNOWN EROS.

What rumour’d heavens are these

Which not a poet sings,

O, Unknown Eros? What this breeze

Of sudden wings

Speeding at far returns of time from interstellar space

To fan my very face,

And gone as fleet,

Through delicatest ether feathering soft their solitary beat,

With ne’er a light plume dropp’d, nor any trace

To speak of whence they came, or whither they depart?

And why this palpitating heart,

This blind and unrelated joy,

This meaningless desire,

That moves me like the Child

Who in the flushing darkness troubled lies,

Inventing lonely prophecies,

Which even to his Mother mild

He dares not tell;

To which himself is infidel;

His heart not less on fire

With dreams impossible as wildest Arab Tale,

(So thinks the boy,)

With dreams that turn him red and pale,

Yet less impossible and wild

Than those which bashful Love, in his own way and hour,

Shall duly bring to flower?

O, Unknown Eros, sire of awful bliss,

What portent and what Delphic word,

Such as in form of snake forebodes the bird,

Is this?

In me life’s even flood

What eddies thus?

What in its ruddy orbit lifts the blood,

Like a perturbed moon of Uranus,

Reaching to some great world in ungauged darkness hid;

And whence

This rapture of the sense

Which, by thy whisper bid,

Reveres with obscure rite and sacramental sign

A bond I know not of nor dimly can divine;

This subject loyalty which longs

For chains and thongs

Woven of gossamer and adamant,

To bind me to my unguess’d want,

And so to lie,

Between those quivering plumes that thro’ fine ether pant,

For hopeless, sweet eternity?

What God unhonour’d hitherto in songs,

Or which, that now

Forgettest the disguise

That Gods must wear who visit human eyes,

Art Thou?

Thou art not Amor; or, if so, yon pyre,

That waits the willing victim, flames with vestal fire;

Nor mooned Queen of maids; or, if thou’rt she,

Ah, then, from Thee

Let Bride and Bridegroom learn what kisses be!

In what veil’d hymn

Or mystic dance

Would he that were thy Priest advance

Thine earthly praise, thy glory limn?

Say, should the feet that feel thy thought

In double-center’d circuit run,

In that compulsive focus, Nought,

In this a furnace like the sun;

And might some note of thy renown

And high behest

Thus in enigma be expressed:

‘There lies the crown

Which all thy longing cures.

Refuse it, Mortal, that it may be yours!

It is a Spirit, though it seems red gold;

And such may no man, but by shunning, hold.

Refuse it, till refusing be despair;

And thou shalt feel the phantom in thy hair.’

ENGLAND

Lo, weary of the greatness of her ways,

There lies my Land, with hasty pulse and hard,

Her ancient beauty marr’d,

And, in her cold and aimless roving sight,

Horror of light;

Sole vigour left in her last lethargy,

Save when, at bidding of some dreadful breath,

The rising death

Rolls up with force;

And then the furiously gibbering corse

Shakes, panglessly convuls’d, and sightless stares,

Whilst one Physician pours in rousing wines,

One anodynes,

And one declares

That nothing ails it but the pains of growth.

My last look loth

Is taken; and I turn, with the relief

Of knowing that my life-long hope and grief

Are surely vain,

To that unshapen time to come, when She,

A dim, heroic Nation long since dead,

The foulness of her agony forgot,

Shall all benignly shed

Through ages vast

The ghostly grace of her transfigured past

Over the present, harass’d and forlorn,

Of nations yet unborn;

And this shall be the lot

Of those who, in the bird-voice and the blast

Of her omniloquent tongue,

Have truly sung

Or greatly said,

To shew as one

With those who have best done,

And be as rays,

Thro’ the still altering world, around her changeless head.

Therefore no ’plaint be mine

Of listeners none,

No hope of render’d use or proud reward,

In hasty times and hard;

But chants as of a lonely thrush’s throat.

At latest eve,

That does in each calm note

Both joy and grieve;

Notes few and strong and fine,

Gilt with sweet day’s decline,

And sad with promise of a different sun.

REMNANT OF HONOUR

Remnant of Honour, brooding in the dark

Over your bitter cark,

Staring, as Rispah stared, astonied seven days

Upon the corpses of so many sons,

Who loved her once,

Dead in the dim and lion-haunted ways,

Who could have dreamt

That times should come like these!

VICTORY IN DEFEAT

Ah, God, alas,

How soon it came to pass

The sweetness melted from thy barbed hook

Which I so simply took;

And I lay bleeding on the bitter land,

Afraid to stir against thy least command,

But losing all my pleasant life-blood, whence

Force should have been heart’s frailty to withstand.

Life is not life at all without delight,

Nor has it any might;

And better than the insentient heart and brain

Is sharpest pain;

And better for the moment seems it to rebel,

If the great Master, from his lifted seat,

Ne’er whispers to the wearied servant ‘Well!’

Yet what returns of love did I endure,

When to be pardon’d seem’d almost more sweet

Than aye to have been pure!

But day still faded to disastrous night,

And thicker darkness changed to feebler light,

Until forgiveness, without stint renew’d,

Was now no more with loving tears imbued,

Vowing no more offence.

Not less to thine Unfaithful didst thou cry,

‘Come back, poor Child; be all as ’twas before.’

But I,

‘No, no; I will not promise any more!

Yet, when I feel my hour is come to die,

And so I am secured of continence,

Then may I say, though haply then in vain,

“My only, only Love, O, take me back again!”’

Thereafter didst thou smite

So hard that, for a space,

Uplifted seem’d Heav’n’s everlasting door,

And I indeed the darling of thy grace.

But, in some dozen changes of the moon,

A bitter mockery seem’d thy bitter boon.

The broken pinion was no longer sore.

Again, indeed, I woke

Under so dread a stroke

That all the strength it left within my heart

Was just to ache and turn, and then to turn and ache,

And some weak sign of war unceasingly to make.

And here I lie,

With no one near to mark,

Thrusting Hell’s phantoms feebly in the dark,

And still at point more utterly to die.

O God, how long!

Put forth indeed thy powerful right hand,

While time is yet,

Or never shall I see the blissful land!

Thus I: then God, in pleasant speech and strong

(Which soon I shall forget):

‘The man who, though his fights be all defeats,

Still fights,

Enters at last

The heavenly Jerusalem’s rejoicing streets

With glory more, and more triumphant rites

Than always-conquering Joshua’s, when his blast

The frighted walls of Jericho down cast;

And, lo, the glad surprise

Of peace beyond surmise,

More than in common Saints, for ever in his eyes.’

SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY

Well dost thou, Love, thy solemn Feast to hold

In vestal February;

Not rather choosing out some rosy day

From the rich coronet of the coming May,

When all things meet to marry!

O, quick, prævernal Power

That signall’st punctual through the sleepy mould

The Snowdrop’s time to flower,

Fair as the rash oath of virginity

Which is first-love’s first cry;

O, Baby Spring,

That flutter’st sudden ‘neath the breast of Earth

A month before the birth;

Whence is the peaceful poignancy,

The joy contrite,

Sadder than sorrow, sweeter than delight,

That burthens now the breath of everything,

Though each one sighs as if to each alone

The cherish’d pang were known?

At dusk of dawn, on his dark spray apart,

With it the Blackbird breaks the young Day’s heart;

In evening’s hush

About it talks the heavenly-minded Thrush;

The hill with like remorse

Smiles to the Sun’s smile in his westering course;

The fisher’s drooping skiff

In yonder sheltering bay;

The choughs that call about the shining cliff;

The children, noisy in the setting ray;

Own the sweet season, each thing as it may;

Thoughts of strange kindness and forgotten peace

In me increase;

And tears arise

Within my happy, happy Mistress’ eyes,

And, lo, her lips, averted from my kiss,

Ask for Love’s bounty, ah, much more than bliss!

Is’t the sequester’d and exceeding sweet

Of dear Desire electing his defeat?

Is’t the waked Earth now to yon purpling cope

Uttering first-love’s first cry,

Vainly renouncing, with a Seraph’s sigh,

Love’s natural hope?

Fair-meaning Earth, foredoom’d to perjury!

Behold, all-amorous May,

With roses heap’d upon her laughing brows,

Avoids thee of thy vows!

Were it for thee, with her warm bosom near,

To abide the sharpness of the Seraph’s sphere?

Forget thy foolish words;

Go to her summons gay,

Thy heart with dead, wing’d Innocencies fill’d,

Ev’n as a nest with birds

After the old ones by the hawk are kill’d.

Well dost thou, Love, to celebrate

The noon of thy soft ecstasy,

Or e’er it be too late,

Or e’er the Snowdrop die!

THE WEDDING SERMON

The truths of Love are like the sea

For clearness and for mystery.

Of that sweet love which, startling, wakes

Maiden and Youth, and mostly breaks

The word of promise to the ear,

But keeps it, after many a year,

To the full spirit, how shall I speak?

My memory with age is weak,

And I for hopes do oft suspect

The things I seem to recollect.

Yet who but must remember well

’Twas this made heaven intelligible

As motive, though ’twas small the power

The heart might have, for even an hour,

To hold possession of the height

Of nameless pathos and delight!

THE PARAGON

When I behold the skies aloft

Passing the pageantry of dreams,

The cloud whose bosom, cygnet-soft,

A couch for nuptial Juno seems,

The ocean broad, the mountains bright,

The shadowy vales with feeding herds,

I from my lyre the music smite,

Nor want for justly matching words.

All forces of the sea and air,

All interests of hill and plain,

I so can sing, in seasons fair,

That who hath felt may feel again.

Elated oft by such free songs,

I think with utterance free to raise

That hymn for which the whole world longs,

A worthy hymn in woman’s praise;

A hymn bright-noted like a bird’s,

Arousing these song-sleepy times

With rhapsodies of perfect words,

Ruled by returning kiss of rhymes.

But when I look on her and hope

To tell with joy what I admire,

My thoughts lie cramp’d in narrow scope,

Or in the feeble birth expire;

No mystery of well-woven speech,

No simplest phrase of tenderest fall,

No liken’d excellence can reach

Her, the most excellent of all,

The best half of creation’s best,

Its heart to feel, its eye to see,

The crown and complex of the rest,

Its aim and its epitome.

Nay, might I utter my conceit,

’Twere after all a vulgar song,

For she’s so simply, subtly sweet,

My deepest rapture does her wrong.

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

Lo, when the Lord made North and South,

And sun and moon ordained, He,

Forthbringing each by word of mouth

In order of its dignity,

Did man from the crude clay express

By sequence, and, all else decreed,

He form’d the woman; nor might less

Than Sabbath such a work succeed.

And still with favour singled out,

Marr’d less than man by mortal fall,

Her disposition is devout,

Her countenance angelical;

The best things that the best believe

Are in her face so kindly writ

The faithless, seeing her, conceive

Not only heaven, but hope of it;

No idle thought her instinct shrouds,

But fancy chequers settled sense,

Like alteration of the clouds

On noonday’s azure permanence;

Pure dignity, composure, ease

Declare affections nobly fix’d,

And impulse sprung from due degrees

Of sense and spirit sweetly mix’d.

Her modesty, her chiefest grace,

The cestus clasping Venus’ side,

How potent to deject the face

Of him who would affront its pride!

Wrong dares not in her presence speak,

Nor spotted thought its taint disclose

Under the protest of a cheek

Outbragging Nature’s boast the rose.

In mind and manners how discreet;

How artless in her very art;

How candid in discourse; how sweet

The concord of her lips and heart;

How simple and how circumspect;

How subtle and how fancy-free;

Though sacred to her love, how deck’d

With unexclusive courtesy;

How quick in talk to see from far

The way to vanquish or evade;

How able her persuasions are

To prove, her reasons to persuade;

How (not to call true instinct’s bent

And woman’s very nature, harm),

How amiable and innocent

Her pleasure in her power to charm;

How humbly careful to attract,

Though crown’d with all the soul desires,

Connubial aptitude exact,

Diversity that never tires.

THE LOVER

He meets, by heavenly chance express,

The destined maid; some hidden hand

Unveils to him that loveliness

Which others cannot understand.

His merits in her presence grow,

To match the promise in her eyes,

And round her happy footsteps blow

The authentic airs of Paradise.

For joy of her he cannot sleep;

Her beauty haunts him all the night;

It melts his heart, it makes him weep

For wonder, worship, and delight.

O, paradox of love, he longs,

Most humble when he most aspires,

To suffer scorn and cruel wrongs

From her he honours and desires.

Her graces make him rich, and ask

No guerdon; this imperial style

Affronts him; he disdains to bask,

The pensioner of her priceless smile.

He prays for some hard thing to do,

Some work of fame and labour immense,

To stretch the languid bulk and thew

Of love’s fresh-born magnipotence.

No smallest boon were bought too dear,

Though barter’d for his love-sick life;

Yet trusts he, with undaunted cheer,

To vanquish heaven, and call her Wife.

He notes how queens of sweetness still

Neglect their crowns, and stoop to mate;

How, self-consign’d with lavish will,

They ask but love proportionate;

How swift pursuit by small degrees,

Love’s tactic, works like miracle;

How valour, clothed in courtesies,

Brings down the haughtiest citadel;

And therefore, though he merits not

To kiss the braid upon her skirt,

His hope, discouraged ne’er a jot,

Out-soars all possible desert.

HEAVEN AND EARTH

How long shall men deny the flower

Because its roots are in the earth,

And crave with tears from God the dower

They have, and have despised as dearth,

And scorn as low their human lot,

With frantic pride, too blind to see

That standing on the head makes not

Either for ease or dignity!

But fools shall feel like fools to find

(Too late inform’d) that angels’ mirth

Is one in cause, and mode, and kind

With that which they profaned on earth.

THE LETTER

‘O, more than dear, be more than just,

‘And do not deafly shut the door!

‘I claim no right to speak; I trust

‘Mercy, not right; yet who has more?

‘For, if more love makes not more fit,

‘Of claimants here none’s more nor less,

‘Since your great worth does not permit

‘Degrees in our unworthiness.

‘Yet, if there’s aught that can be done

‘With arduous labour of long years,

‘By which you’ll say that you’ll be won,

‘O tell me, and I’ll dry my tears.

‘Ah, no; if loving cannot move,

‘How foolishly must labour fail!

‘The use of deeds is to show love;

‘If signs suffice let these avail:

‘Your name pronounced brings to my heart

‘A feeling like the violet’s breath,

‘Which does so much of heaven impart

‘It makes me amorous of death;

‘The winds that in the garden toss

‘The Guelder-roses give me pain,

‘Alarm me with the dread of loss,

‘Exhaust me with the dream of gain;

‘I’m troubled by the clouds that move;

‘Tired by the breath which I respire;

‘And ever, like a torch, my love,

‘Thus agitated, flames the higher;

‘All’s hard that has not you for goal;

‘I scarce can move my hand to write,

‘For love engages all my soul,

‘And leaves the body void of might;

‘The wings of will spread idly, as do

‘The bird’s that in a vacuum lies;

‘My breast, asleep with dreams of you,

‘Forgets to breathe, and bursts in sighs;

‘I see no rest this side the grave,

‘No rest nor hope, from you apart;

‘Your life is in the rose you gave,

‘Its perfume suffocates my heart;

‘There’s no refreshment in the breeze;

‘The heaven o’erwhelms me with its blue;

‘I faint beside the dancing seas;

‘Winds, skies, and waves are only you;

‘The thought or act which not intends

‘You service, seems a sin and shame;

‘In that one only object ends

‘Conscience, religion, honour, fame.

‘Ah, could I put off love! Could we

‘Never have met! What calm, what ease!

‘Nay, but, alas, this remedy

‘Were ten times worse than the disease!

‘For when, indifferent, I pursue

‘The world’s best pleasures for relief,

‘My heart, still sickening back to you,

‘Finds none like memory of its grief;

‘And, though ’twere very hell to hear

‘You felt such misery as I,

‘All good, save you, were far less dear

‘Than is that ill with which I die!

‘Where’er I go, wandering forlorn,

‘You are the world’s love, life, and glee:

‘Oh, wretchedness not to be borne

‘If she that’s Love should not love me!’

THE REVELATION

An idle poet, here and there,

Looks round him; but, for all the rest,

The world, unfathomably fair,

Is duller than a witling’s jest.

Love wakes men, once a lifetime each;

They lift their heavy lids, and look;

And, lo, what one sweet page can teach,

They read with joy, then shut the book.

And some give thanks, and some blaspheme,

And most forget; but, either way,

That and the Child’s unheeded dream

Is all the light of all their day.

THE DOUBT

The moods of love are like the wind,

And none knows whence or why they rise:

I ne’er before felt heart and mind

So much affected through mine eyes.

How cognate with the flatter’d air,

How form’d for earth’s familiar zone,

She moved; how feeling and how fair

For others’ pleasure and her own!

And, ah, the heaven of her face!

How, when she laugh’d I seem’d to see

The gladness of the primal grace,

And how, when grave, its dignity!

Of all she was, the least not less

Delighted the devoted eye;

No fold or fashion of her dress

Her fairness did not sanctify.

I could not else than grieve. What cause?

Was I not blest? Was she not there?

Likely my own? Ah, that it was:

How like seem’d ‘likely’ to despair!

SECURITY

But as we talk’d, my spirit quaff’d

The sparkling winds; the candid skies

At our untruthful strangeness laugh’d;

I kiss’d with mine her smiling eyes;

And sweet familiarness and awe

Prevail’d that hour on either part,

And in the eternal light I saw

That she was mine; though yet my heart

Could not conceive, nor would confess

Such contentation; and there grew

More form and more fair stateliness

Than heretofore between us two.

THE SPIRIT’S EPOCHS

Not in the crises of events,

Of compass’d hopes, or fears fulfill’d,

Or acts of gravest consequence,

Are life’s delight and depth reveal’d.

The day of days was not the day;

That went before, or was postponed;

The night Death took our lamp away

Was not the night on which we groan’d.

I drew my bride, beneath the moon,

Across my threshold; happy hour!

But, ah, the walk that afternoon

We saw the water-flags in flower!

THE MAID

She wearies with an ill unknown;

In sleep she sobs and seems to float,

A water-lily, all alone

Within a lonely castle moat

And as the full-moon, spectral, lies

Within the crescent’s gleaming arms,

The present shows her heedless eyes

A future dim with vague alarms.

She sees, and yet she scarcely sees,

For, life-in-life not yet begun,

Too many are its mysteries

For thought to fix on any one.

ACCEPTANCE

Twice rose, twice died my trembling word;

The faint and frail Cathedral chimes

Spake time in music, and we heard

The chafers rustling in the limes.

Her dress, that touch’d me where I stood,

The warmth of her confided arm,

Her bosom’s gentle neighbourhood,

Her pleasure in her power to charm;

Her look, her love, her form, her touch,

The least seem’d most by blissful turn,

Blissful but that it pleased too much,

And taught the wayward soul to yearn.

It was as if a harp with wires

Was traversed by the breath I drew;

And oh, sweet meeting of desires,

She, answering, own’d that she loved too.

BETROTHED

What fortune did my heart foretell?

What shook my spirit, as I woke,

Like the vibration of a bell

Of which I had not heard the stroke?

Was it some happy vision shut

From memory by the sun’s fresh ray?

Was it that linnet’s song; or but

A natural gratitude for day?

Or the mere joy the senses weave,

A wayward ecstasy of life?

Then I remember’d, yester-eve

I won Honoria for my Wife.

THE DANCE

But there danced she, who from the leaven

Of ill preserv’d my heart and wit

All unawares, for she was heaven,

Others at best but fit for it.

One of those lovely things she was

In whose least action there can be

Nothing so transient but it has

An air of immortality.

I mark’d her step, with peace elate,

Her brow more beautiful than morn,

Her sometime look of girlish state

Which sweetly waived its right to scorn

The giddy crowd, she grave the while,

Although, as ’twere beyond her will,

Around her mouth the baby smile,

That she was born with, linger’d still.

Her ball-dress seem’d a breathing mist,

From the fair form exhaled and shed,

Raised in the dance with arm and wrist

All warmth and light, unbraceleted.

Her motion, feeling ’twas beloved,

The pensive soul of tune express’d,

And, oh, what perfume, as she moved,

Came from the flowers in her breast!

Ah, none but I discern’d her looks,

When in the throng she pass’d me by,

For love is like a ghost, and brooks

Only the chosen seer’s eye;

And who but she could e’er divine

The halo and the happy trance,

When her bright arm reposed on mine,

In all the pauses of the dance!

ENTREATY

‘O Dearest, tell me how to prove

‘Goodwill which cannot be express’d;

‘The beneficial heart of love

‘Is labour in an idle breast.’

THE REVULSION

’Twas when the spousal time of May

Hangs all the hedge with bridal wreaths,

And air’s so sweet the bosom gay

Gives thanks for every breath it breathes;

When like to like is gladly moved,

And each thing joins in Spring’s refrain,

‘Let those love now who never loved;

‘Let those who have loved love again;’

That I, in whom the sweet time wrought,

Lay stretch’d within a lonely glade,

Abandon’d to delicious thought,

Beneath the softly twinkling shade.

And so I mused, till musing brought

A dream that shook my house of clay,

And, in my humbled heart, I thought,

To me there yet may come a day

With this the single vestige seen

Of comfort, earthly or divine,

My sorrow some time must have been

Her portion, had it not been mine.

Then I, who knew, from watching life,

That blows foreseen are slow to fall,

Rehearsed the losing of a wife,

And faced its terrors each and all.

The self-chastising fancy show’d

The coffin with its ghastly breath;

The innocent sweet face that owed

None of its innocence to death;

The lips that used to laugh; the knell

That bade the world beware of mirth;

The heartless and intolerable

Indignity of ‘earth to earth;’

At morn remembering by degrees

That she I dream’d about was dead;

Love’s still recurrent jubilees,

The days that she was born, won, wed;

The duties of my life the same,

Their meaning for the feelings gone;

Friendship impertinent, and fame

Disgusting; and, more harrowing none,

Small household troubles fall’n to me,

As, ‘What time would I dine to-day?’

And, oh, how could I bear to see

The noisy children at their play.

Besides, where all things limp and halt,

Could I go straight, should I alone

Have kept my love without default

Pitch’d at the true and heavenly tone?

The festal-day might come to mind

That miss’d the gift which more endears;

The hour which might have been more kind,

And now less fertile in vain tears;

The good of common intercourse,

For daintier pleasures then despised,

Now with what passionate remorse,

What poignancy of hunger prized!

The little wrong, now greatly rued,

Which no repentance now could right;

And love, in disbelieving mood,

Deserting his celestial height.

Withal to know, God’s love sent grief

To make me less the world’s, and more

Meek-hearted: ah, the sick relief!

Why bow’d I not my heart before?

PRAISES

I praised her, but no praise could fill

The depths of her desire to please,

Though dull to others as a Will

To them that have no legacies.

The more I praised the more she shone,

Her eyes incredulously bright,

And all her happy beauty blown

Beneath the beams of my delight.

Sweet rivalry was thus begot;

By turns, my speech, in passion’s style,

With flatteries the truth o’ershot,

And she surpass’d them with her smile.

‘Nature to you was more than kind;

‘’Twas fond perversity to dress

‘So much simplicity of mind

‘In such a pomp of loveliness!

MARRIAGE

Forth, from the glittering spirits peace

And gaiety ineffable,

Stream’d to the heart delight and ease,

As from an overflowing well;

And, orderly deriving thence

Its pleasure perfect and allow’d.

Bright with the spirit shone the sense,

As with the sun a fleecy cloud.

THE ROSY BOSOM’D HOURS

A florin to the willing Guard

Secured, for half the way,

(He lock’d us in, ah, lucky-starr’d,)

A curtain’d, front coupé.

The sparkling sun of August shone;

The wind was in the West;

Your gown and all that you had on

Was what became you best;

And we were in that seldom mood

When soul with soul agrees,

Mingling, like flood with equal flood,

In agitated ease.

Far round, each blade of harvest bare

Its little load of bread;

Each furlong of that journey fair

With separate sweetness sped.

The calm of use was coming o’er

The wonder of our wealth,

And now, maybe, ’twas not much more

Than Eden’s common health.

We paced the sunny platform, while

The train at Havant changed:

What made the people kindly smile,

Or stare with looks estranged?

Too radiant for a wife you seem’d,

Serener than a bride;

Me happiest born of men I deem’d,

And show’d perchance my pride.

I loved that girl, so gaunt and tall,

Who whispered loud, ‘Sweet Thing!’

Scanning your figure, slight yet all

Round as your own gold ring.

At Salisbury you stray’d alone

Within the shafted glooms,

Whilst I was by the Verger shown

The brasses and the tombs.

At tea we talk’d of matters deep,

Of joy that never dies;

We laugh’d, till love was mix’d with sleep

Within your great sweet eyes.

The next day, sweet with luck no less

And sense of sweetness past,

The full tide of our happiness

Rose higher than the last.

At Dawlish, ’mid the pools of brine,

You stept from rock to rock,

One hand quick tightening upon mine,

One holding up your frock.

On starfish and on weeds alone

You seem’d intent to be:

Flash’d those great gleams of hope unknown

From you, or from the sea?

Ne’er came before, ah, when again

Shall come two days like these:

Such quick delight within the brain,

Within the heart such peace?

I thought, indeed, by magic chance,

A third from Heaven to win,

But as, at dusk, we reach’d Penzance,

A drizzling rain set in.

WIND AND WAVE

The wedded light and heat,

Winnowing the witless space,

Without a let,

What are they till they beat

Against the sleepy sod, and there beget

Perchance the violet!

Is the One found,

Amongst a wilderness of as happy grace,

To make Heaven’s bound;

So that in Her

All which it hath of sensitively good

Is sought and understood

After the narrow mode the mighty Heavens prefer?

She, as a little breeze

Following still Night,

Ripples the spirit’s cold, deep seas

Into delight;

But, in a while,

The immeasurable smile

Is broke by fresher airs to flashes blent

With darkling discontent:

And all the subtle zephyr hurries gay,

And all the heaving ocean heaves one way,

T’ward the void sky-line and an unguess’d weal.

Until the vanward billows feel

The agitating shallows, and divine the goal,

And to foam roll,

And spread and stray

And traverse wildly, like delighted hands,

The fair and fleckless sands;

And so the whole

Unfathomable and immense

Triumphing tide comes at the last to reach

And burst in wind-kiss’d splendours on the deaf’ning beach,

Where forms of children in first innocence

Laugh and fling pebbles on the rainbow’d crest

Of its untired unrest.

BEATA

Of infinite Heaven the rays,

Piercing some eyelet in our cavern black,

Ended their viewless track

On thee to smite

Solely, as on a diamond stalactite,

And in mid-darkness lit a rainbow’s blaze,

Wherein the absolute Reason, Power, and Love,

That erst could move

Mainly in me but toil and weariness,

Renounced their deadening might,

Renounced their undistinguishable stress

Of withering white,

And did with gladdest hues my spirit caress,

Nothing of Heaven in thee showing infinite,

Save the delight.

IF I WERE DEAD

‘If I were dead, you’d sometimes say, Poor Child!’

The dear lips quiver’d as they spake,

And the tears brake

From eyes which, not to grieve me, brightly smiled.

Poor Child, poor Child!

I seem to hear your laugh, your talk, your song.

It is not true that Love will do no wrong.

Poor Child!

And did you think, when you so cried and smiled,

How I, in lonely nights, should lie awake,

And of those words your full avengers make?

Poor Child, poor Child!

And now, unless it be

That sweet amends thrice told are come to thee,

O God, have Thou no mercy upon me!

Poor Child!

DELICIÆ SAPIENTIÆ DE AMORE

Love, light for me

Thy ruddiest blazing torch,

That I, albeit a beggar by the Porch

Of the glad Palace of Virginity,

May gaze within, and sing the pomp I see;

For, crown’d with roses all,

’Tis there, O Love, they keep thy festival!

But first warn off the beatific spot

Those wretched who have not

Even afar beheld the shining wall,

And those who, once beholding, have forgot,

And those, most vile, who dress

The charnel spectre drear

Of utterly dishallow’d nothingness

In that refulgent fame,

And cry, Lo, here!

And name

The Lady whose smiles inflame

The sphere.

Bring, Love, anear,

And bid be not afraid

Young Lover true, and Love-foreboding Maid,

And wedded Spouse, if virginal of thought;

For I will sing of nought

Less sweet to hear

Than seems

A music in their half-remember’d dreams.

The magnet calls the steel:

Answers the iron to the magnet’s breath;

What do they feel

But death!

The clouds of summer kiss in flame and rain,

And are not found again;

But the heavens themselves eternal are with fire

Of unapproach’d desire,

By the aching heart of Love, which cannot rest,

In blissfullest pathos so indeed possess’d.

O, spousals high;

O, doctrine blest,

Unutterable in even the happiest sigh;

This know ye all

Who can recall

With what a welling of indignant tears

Love’s simpleness first hears

The meaning of his mortal covenant.

And from what pride comes down

To wear the crown

Of which ’twas very heaven to feel the want.

How envies he the ways

Of yonder hopeless star,

And so would laugh and yearn

With trembling lids eterne,

ineffably content from infinitely far

Only to gaze

On his bright Mistress’s responding rays,

That never know eclipse;

And, once in his long year,

With præternuptial ecstasy and fear,

By the delicious law of that ellipse

Wherein all citizens of ether move,

With hastening pace to come

Nearer, though never near,

His Love

And always inaccessible sweet Home;

There on his path doubly to burn,

Kiss’d by her doubled light

That whispers of its source,

The ardent secret ever clothed with Night,

Then go forth in new force

Towards a new return,

Rejoicing as a Bridegroom on his course!

This know ye all;

Therefore gaze bold,

That so in you be joyful hope increas’d,

Thorough the Palace portals, and behold

The dainty and unsating Marriage-Feast.

O, hear

Them singing clear

‘Cor meum et caro mea’ round the ‘I am,’

The Husband of the Heavens, and the Lamb

Whom they for ever follow there that kept,

Or losing, never slept

Till they reconquer’d had in mortal fight

The standard white.

O, hear

From the harps they bore from Earth, five-strung, what music springs,

While the glad Spirits chide

The wondering strings!

And how the shining sacrificial Choirs,

Offering for aye their dearest hearts’ desires,

Which to their hearts come back beatified,

Hymn, the bright aisles along,

The nuptial song,

Song ever new to us and them, that saith,

‘Hail Virgin in Virginity a Spouse!’

Heard first below

Within the little house

At Nazareth;

Heard yet in many a cell where brides of Christ

Lie hid, emparadised,

And where, although

By the hour ’tis night,

There’s light,

The Day still lingering in the lap of snow.

Gaze and be not afraid

Ye wedded few that honour, in sweet thought

And glittering will,

So freshly from the garden gather still

The lily sacrificed;

For ye, though self-suspected here for nought,

Are highly styled

With the thousands twelve times twelve of undefiled.

Gaze and be not afraid

Young Lover true and love-foreboding Maid.

The full noon of deific vision bright

Abashes nor abates

No spark minute of Nature’s keen delight.

’Tis there your Hymen waits!

There where in courts afar, all unconfused, they crowd,

As fumes the starlight soft

In gulfs of cloud,

And each to the other, well-content,

Sighs oft,

‘’Twas this we meant!’

Gaze without blame

Ye in whom living Love yet blushes for dead shame.

There of pure Virgins none

Is fairer seen,

Save One,

Than Mary Magdalene.

Gaze without doubt or fear

Ye to whom generous Love, by any name, is dear

Love makes the life to be

A fount perpetual of virginity;

For, lo, the Elect

Of generous Love, how nam’d soe’er, affect

Nothing but God,

Or mediate or direct,

Nothing but God,

The Husband of the Heavens:

And who Him love, in potence great or small,

Are, one and all,

Heirs of the Palace glad,

And inly clad

With the bridal robes of ardour virginal.

MIGNONNE

Whate’er thou dost thou’rt dear.

Uncertain troubles sanctify

That magic well-spring of the willing tear,

Thine eye.

Thy jealous fear,

With not the rustle of a rival near;

Thy careless disregard of all

My tenderest care;

Thy dumb despair

When thy keen wit my worship may construe

Into contempt of thy divinity;

They please me too!

But should it once befall

These accidental charms to disappear,

Leaving withal

Thy sometime self the same throughout the year,

So glowing, grave and shy,

Kind, talkative and dear

As now thou sitt’st to ply

The fireside tune

Of that neat engine deft at which thou sew’st

With fingers mild and foot like the new moon,

O, then what cross of any further fate

Could my content abate?

Forget, then, (but I know

Thou canst not so,)

Thy customs of some prædiluvian state.

I am no Bullfinch, fair my Butterfly,

That thou should’st try

Those zigzag courses, in the welkin clear;

Nor cruel Boy that, fledd’st thou straight

Or paused, mayhap

Might catch thee, for thy colours, with his cap.

MILDRED

Mildred’s of Earth, yet happier far

Than most men’s thoughts of Heaven are.

REJECTED

‘Perhaps she’s dancing somewhere now!’

The thoughts of light and music wake

Sharp jealousies, that grow and grow

Till silence and the darkness ache.

He sees her step, so proud and gay,

Which, ere he spake, foretold despair;

Thus did she look, on such a day,

And such the fashion of her hair;

And thus she stood, when, kneeling low,

He took the bramble from her dress,

And thus she laugh’d and talk’d, whose ‘No’

Was sweeter than another’s ‘Yes.’

He feeds on thoughts that most deject;

He impudently feigns her charms,

So reverenced in his own respect,

Dreadfully clasp’d by other arms;

And turns, and puts his brows, that ache,

Against the pillow where ’tis cold.

If only now his heart would break!

But, oh, how much a heart can hold.

LOVE IN TEARS

If fate Love’s dear ambition mar,

And load his breast with hopeless pain,

And seem to blot out sun and star,

Love, won or lost, is countless gain;

His sorrow boasts a secret bliss

Which sorrow of itself beguiles,

And Love in tears too noble is

For pity, save of Love in smiles.

DENIED

The storm-cloud, whose portentous shade

Fumes from a core of smother’d fire,

His livery is whose worshipp’d maid

Denies herself to his desire.

Ah, grief that almost crushes life,

To lie upon his lonely bed,

And fancy her another’s wife!

His brain is flame, his heart is lead.

Sinking at last, by nature’s course,

Cloak’d round with sleep from his despair,

He does but sleep to gather force

That goes to his exhausted care.

He wakes renew’d for all the smart.

His only Love, and she is wed!

His fondness comes about his heart,

As milk comes, when the babe is dead.

The wretch, whom she found fit for scorn,

His own allegiant thoughts despise;

And far into the shining morn

Lazy with misery he lies.

LOVE’S WILL BE DONE

Not loss, not death, my love shall tire.

A mystery does my heart foretell;

Nor do I press the oracle

For explanations. Leave me alone,

And let in me love’s will be done.

FIRST LOVE REMEMBERED

As, ere the Spring has any power,

The almond branch all turns to flower,

Though not a leaf is out, so she

The bloom of life provoked in me;

And, hard till then and selfish, I

Was thenceforth nought but sanctity

And service: life was mere delight

In being wholly good and right,

As she was; just, without a slur;

Honouring myself no less than her;

Obeying, in the loneliest place,

Ev’n to the slightest gesture, grace,

Assured that one so fair, so true,

He only served that was so too.

For me, hence weak towards the weak,

No more the unnested blackbird’s shriek

Startled the light-leaved wood; on high

Wander’d the gadding butterfly,

Unscared by my flung cap; the bee,

Rifling the hollyhock in glee,

Was no more trapp’d with his own flower,

And for his honey slain. Her power,

From great things even to the grass

Through which the unfenced footways pass,

Was law, and that which keeps the law,

Cherubic gaiety and awe;

Day was her doing, and the lark

Had reason for his song; the dark

In anagram innumerous spelt

Her name with stars that throbb’d and felt;

’Twas the sad summit of delight

To wake and weep for her at night;

She turn’d to triumph or to shame

The strife of every childish game;

The heart would come into my throat

At rosebuds; howsoe’er remote,

In opposition or consent,

Each thing, or person, or event,

Or seeming neutral howsoe’er,

All, in the live, electric air,

Awoke, took aspect, and confess’d

In her a centre of unrest,

Yea, stocks and stones within me bred

Anxieties of joy and dread.

O, bright apocalyptic sky

O’erarching childhood! Far and nigh

Mystery and obscuration none,

Yet nowhere any moon or sun!

What reason for these sighs? What hope,

Daunting with its audacious scope

The disconcerted heart, affects

These ceremonies and respects?

Why stratagems in everything?

Why, why not kiss her in the ring?

’Tis nothing strange that warriors bold,

Whose fierce, forecasting eyes behold

The city they desire to sack,

Humbly begin their proud attack

By delving ditches two miles off,

Aware how the fair place would scoff

At hasty wooing; but, O child,

Why thus approach thy playmate mild?

LOST LOVE

Fashion’d by Heaven and by art

So is she, that she makes the heart

Ache and o’erflow with tears, that grace

So lovely fair should have for place,

(Deeming itself at home the while,)

The unworthy earth! To see her smile

Amid this waste of pain and sin,

As only knowing the heaven within,

Is sweet, and does for pity stir

Passion to be her minister:

Wherefore last night I lay awake,

And said, ‘Ah, Lord, for thy love’s sake,

Give not this darling child of thine

To care less reverent than mine!’

And, as true faith was in my word,

I trust, I trust that I was heard.

AWAY

The multitude of voices blythe

Of early day, the hissing scythe

Across the dew drawn and withdrawn,

The noisy peacock on the lawn,

These, and the sun’s eye-gladding gleam,

This morning, chased the sweetest dream

That e’er shed penitential grace

On life’s forgetful commonplace;

Yet ’twas no sweeter than the spell

To which I woke to say farewell.

Noon finds me many a mile removed

From her who must not be beloved;

And us the waste sea soon shall part,

Heaving for aye, without a heart!

Beholding one like her, a man

Longs to lay down his life! How can

Aught to itself seem thus enough

When I have so much need thereof?

Blest in her place, blissful is she;

And I, departing, seem to be

Like the strange waif that comes to run

A few days flaming near the sun,

And carries back, through boundless night,

Its lessening memory of light.

Had I but her, ah, what the gain

Of owning aught but that domain!

Nay, heaven’s extent, however much,

Cannot be more than many such;

And, she being mine, should God to me

Say ‘Lo! my Child, I give to thee

All heaven besides,’ what could I then,

But, as a child, to Him complain

That whereas my dear Father gave

A little space for me to have

In His great garden, now, o’erblest,

I’ve that, indeed, but all the rest,

Which, somehow, makes it seem I’ve got

All but my only cared-for plot.

Enough was that for my weak hand

To tend, my heart to understand.

Oh, the sick fact, ’twixt her and me

There’s naught, and half a world of sea.

Yet, latterly, with strange delight,

Rich tides have risen in the night,

And sweet dreams chased the fancies dense

Of waking life’s dull somnolence.

I see her as I knew her, grace

Already glory in her face;

I move about, I cannot rest,

For the proud brain and joyful breast

I have of her. Or else I float,

The pilot of an idle boat,

Alone, alone with sky and sea,

And her, the third simplicity.

Or with me, in the Ball-Room’s blaze,

Her brilliant mildness thrids the maze;

Our thoughts are lovely, and each word

Is music in the music heard,

And all things seem but parts to be

Of one persistent harmony,

By which I’m made divinely bold;

The secret, which she knows, is told;

And, laughing with a lofty bliss

Of innocent accord, we kiss;

About her neck my pleasure weeps;

Against my lip the silk vein leaps;

Then says an Angel, ‘Day or night,

‘If yours you seek, not her delight,

‘Although by some strange witchery

‘It seems you kiss her, ’tis not she;

‘But, whilst you languish at the side

‘Of a fair-foul phantasmal bride,

‘Surely a dragon and strong tower

‘Guard the true lady in her bower.’

And I say, ‘Dear my Lord, Amen!’

And the true lady kiss again.

Or else some wasteful malady

Devours her shape and dims her eye;

No charms are left, where all were rife,

Except her voice, which is her life,

Wherewith she, for her foolish fear,

Says trembling, ‘Do you love me, Dear?’

And I reply, ‘Sweetest, I vow

‘I never loved but half till now.’

She turns her face to the wall at this,

And says, ‘Go, Love, ’tis too much bliss.’

And then a sudden pulse is sent

About the sounding firmament

In smitings as of silver bars;

The bright disorder of the stars

Is solved by music; far and near,

Through infinite distinctions clear,

Their twofold voices’ deeper tone

Utters the Name which all things own,

And each ecstatic treble dwells

On one whereof none other tells;

And we, sublimed to song and fire,

Take order in the wheeling quire,

Till from the throbbing sphere I start,

Waked by the heaving of my heart.

There comes a smile acutely sweet

Out of the picturing dark; I meet

The ancient frankness of her gaze,

That soft and heart-surprising blaze

Of great goodwill and innocence,

And perfect joy proceeding thence!

Ah! made for earth’s delight, yet such

The mid-sea air’s too gross to touch.

At thought of which, the soul in me

Is as the bird that bites a bee,

And darts abroad on frantic wing,

Tasting the honey and the sting.

I grew so idle, so despised

Myself, my powers, by Her unprized,

Honouring my post, but nothing more,

And lying, when I lived on shore,

So late of mornings: weak tears stream’d,

For such slight cause,—if only gleam’d,

Remotely, beautifully bright,

On clouded eves at sea, the light

Of English headlands in the sun,—

That soon I deem’d ’twere better done

To lay this poor, complaining wraith

Of unreciprocated faith.

RACHEL

You loved her, and would lie all night

Thinking how beautiful she was,

And what to do for her delight.

Now both are bound with alien laws!

Be patient; put your heart to school;

Weep if you will, but not despair;

The trust that nought goes wrong by rule

Should ease this load the many bear.

Love, if there’s heav’n, shall meet his dues,

Though here unmatch’d, or match’d amiss;

Meanwhile, the gentle cannot choose

But learn to love the lips they kiss.

Ne’er hurt the homely sister’s ears

With Rachel’s beauties; secret be

The lofty mind whose lonely tears

Protest against mortality.

THE VOICE OF ONE I KNEW

All the bright past seems,

Now, but a splendour in my dreams,

Which shows, albeit the dreamer wakes,

The standard of right life. Life aches

To be therewith conform’d; but, oh,

The world’s so stolid, dark, and low!

That and the mortal element

Forbid the beautiful intent,

And, like the unborn butterfly,

It feels the wings, and wants the sky.

But perilous is the lofty mood

Which cannot yoke with lowly good.

Right life, for me, is life that wends

By lowly ways to lofty ends.

I well perceive, at length, that haste

T’ward heaven itself is only waste;

And thus I dread the impatient spur

Of aught that speaks too plain of Her

There’s little here that story tells;

But music talks of nothing else.

Therefore, when music breathes, I say,

(And urge my task,) Away, away!

Thou art the voice of one I knew,

But what thou say’st is not yet true;

Thou art the voice of her I loved,

And I would not be vainly moved.

IN THE WOODS

And then, as if I sweetly dream’d,

I half-remember’d how it seem’d

When I, too, was a little child

About the wild wood roving wild.

Pure breezes from the far-off height

Melted the blindness from my sight,

Until, with rapture, grief, and awe,

I saw again as then I saw.

As then I saw, I saw again

The harvest-waggon in the lane,

With high-hung tokens of its pride

Left in the elms on either side;

The daisies coming out at dawn

In constellations on the lawn;

The glory of the daffodil;

The three black windmills on the hill,

Whose magic arms, flung wildly by,

Sent magic shadows o’er the rye.

Within the leafy coppice, lo,

More wealth than miser’s dreams could show,

The blackbird’s warm and woolly brood,

Five golden beaks agape for food;

The Gipsies, all the summer seen

Native as poppies to the Green;

The winter, with its frosts and thaws

And opulence of hips and haws;

The lovely marvel of the snow;

The Tamar, with its altering show

Of gay ships sailing up and down,

Among the fields and by the Town;

And, dearer far than anything,

Came back the songs you used to sing.

And, as to men’s retreating eyes,

Beyond high mountains higher rise,

Still farther back there shone to me

The dazzling dusk of infancy.

Thither I look’d, as, sick of night,

The Alpine shepherd looks to the height,

And does not see the day, ’tis true,

But sees the rosy tops that do.

Debtor to few, forgotten hours

Am I, that truths for me are powers.

Ah, happy hours, ’tis something yet

Not to forget that I forget!

LEAH

Your love lacks joy, your letter says.

Yes; love requires the focal space

Of recollection or of hope,

E’er it can measure its own scope.

Too soon, too soon comes Death to show

We love more deeply than we know!

The rain, that fell upon the height

Too gently to be call’d delight,

Within the dark veil reappears

As a wild cataract of tears;

And love in life should strive to see

Sometimes what love in death would be!

No magic of her voice or smile

Suddenly raised a fairy isle,

But fondness for her underwent

An unregarded increment,

Like that which lifts, through centuries,

The coral-reef within the seas,

Till, lo! the land where was the wave.

Alas! ’tis everywhere her grave.

HER COUNSEL

Oh, should the mournful honeymoon

Of death be over strangely soon,

And life-long resolutions, made

In grievous haste, as quickly fade,

Seeming the truth of grief to mock,

Think, Dearest, ’tis not by the clock

That sorrow goes. A month of tears

Is more than many, many years

Of common time. Shun, if you can,

However, any passionate plan.

Grieve with the heart; let not the head

Grieve on, when grief of heart is dead;

For all the powers of life defy

A superstitious constancy.

SPONSA DEI

What is this Maiden fair,

The laughing of whose eye

Is in man’s heart renew’d virginity;

Who yet sick longing breeds

For marriage which exceeds

The inventive guess of Love to satisfy

With hope of utter binding, and of loosing endless dear despair?

What gleams about her shine,

More transient than delight and more divine!

If she does something but a little sweet,

As gaze towards the glass to set her hair,

See how his soul falls humbled at her feet!

Her gentle step, to go or come,

Gains her more merit than a martyrdom;

And, if she dance, it doth such grace confer

As opes the heaven of heavens to more than her,

And makes a rival of her worshipper.

To die unknown for her were little cost!

So is she without guile,

Her mere refused smile

Makes up the sum of that which may be lost!

Who is this Fair

Whom each hath seen,

The darkest once in this bewailed dell,

Be he not destin’d for the glooms of hell?

Whom each hath seen

And known, with sharp remorse and sweet, as Queen

And tear-glad Mistress of his hopes of bliss,

Too fair for man to kiss?

Who is this only happy She,

Whom, by a frantic flight of courtesy,

Born of despair

Of better lodging for his Spirit fair,

He adores as Margaret, Maude, or Cecily?

And what this sigh,

That each one heaves for Earth’s last lowlihead

And the Heaven high

Ineffably lock’d in dateless bridal-bed?

Are all, then, mad, or is it prophecy?

‘Sons now we are of God,’ as we have heard,

‘But what we shall be hath not yet appear’d.’

O, Heart, remember thee,

That Man is none,

Save One.

What if this Lady be thy Soul, and He

Who claims to enjoy her sacred beauty be,

Not Thou, but God; and thy sick fire

A female vanity,

Such as a Bride, viewing her mirror’d charms,

Feels when she sighs, ‘All these are for his arms!’

A reflex heat

Flash’d on thy cheek from His immense desire,

Which waits to crown, beyond thy brain’s conceit,

Thy nameless, secret, hopeless longing sweet,

Not by-and-by, but now,

Unless deny Him thou!

BONDS

For, ah, who can express

How full of bonds and simpleness

Is God,

How narrow is He,

And how the wide, waste field of possibility

Is only trod

Straight to His homestead in the human heart,

And all His art

Is as the babe’s that wins his Mother to repeat

Her little song so sweet!

TO THE BODY

Creation’s and Creator’s crowning good;

Wall of infinitude;

Foundation of the sky,

In Heaven forecast

And long’d for from eternity,

Though laid the last;

Reverberating dome,

Of music cunningly built home

Against the void and indolent disgrace

Of unresponsive space;

Little, sequester’d pleasure-house

For God and for His Spouse;

Elaborately, yea, past conceiving, fair,

Since, from the graced decorum of the hair,

Ev’n to the tingling, sweet

Soles of the simple, earth-confiding feet,

And from the inmost heart

Outwards unto the thin

Silk curtains of the skin,

Every least part

Astonish’d hears

And sweet replies to some like region of the spheres;

Form’d for a dignity prophets but darkly name,

Lest shameless men cry ‘Shame!’

So rich with wealth conceal’d

That Heaven and Hell fight chiefly for this field;

Clinging to everything that pleases thee

With indefectible fidelity;

Alas, so true

To all thy friendships that no grace

Thee from thy sin can wholly disembrace;

Which thus ’bides with thee as the Jebusite,

That, maugre all God’s promises could do,

The chosen People never conquer’d quite;

Who therefore lived with them,

And that by formal truce and as of right,

In metropolitan Jerusalem.

For which false fealty

Thou needs must, for a season, lie

In the grave’s arms, foul and unshriven,

Albeit, in Heaven,

Thy crimson-throbbing Glow

Into its old abode aye pants to go,

And does with envy see

Enoch, Elijah, and the Lady, she

Who left the roses in her body’s lieu.

O, if the pleasures I have known in thee

But my poor faith’s poor first-fruits be,

What quintessential, keen, ethereal bliss

Then shall be his

Who has thy birth-time’s consecrating dew

For death’s sweet chrism retain’d,

Quick, tender, virginal, and unprofaned!

AURAS OF DELIGHT

And Him I thank, who can make live again

The dust, but not the joy we once profane,

That I, of ye,

Beautiful habitations, auras of delight,

In childish years and since had sometime sense and sight,

But that ye vanish’d quite,

Even from memory,

Ere I could get my breath, and whisper ‘See!’

But did for me

They altogether die,

Those trackless glories glimps’d in upper sky?

Were they of chance, or vain,

Nor good at all again

For curb of heart or fret?

Nay, though, by grace,

Lest, haply, I refuse God to his face,

Their likeness wholly I forget,

Ah, yet,

Often in straits which else for me were ill,

I mind me still

I did respire the lonely auras sweet,

I did the blest abodes behold, and, at the mountains’ feet,

Bathed in the holy Stream by Hermon’s thymy hill.

PSYCHE

‘What awful pleasure do thine eyes bespeak,

What shame is in thy childish cheek,

What terror on thy brow?

Is this my Psyche, once so pale and meek?

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

And all thy life looks troubled like a tree’s

Whose boughs wave many ways in one great breeze.’

DAWN

‘Ah, say not yet, farewell!’

‘Nay, that’s the Blackbird’s note, the sweet Night’s knell.’

‘Thou leav’st me now, like to the moon at dawn,

A little, vacuous world alone in air.’

THE EDGE OF BLISS

‘Sadness and change and pain

Shall me for ever stain;

For, though my blissful fate

Be for a billion years,

How shall I stop my tears

That life was once so low and Love arrived so late!’

‘Sadness is beauty’s savour, and pain is

The exceedingly keen edge of bliss;

Nor, without swift mutation, would the heav’ns be aught.’

EROS

‘Accept the sweet, and say ’tis sacrifice!

Sleep, Centre to the tempest of my love,

And dream thereof,

And keep the smile which sleeps within thy face

Like sunny eve in some forgotten place!’

AMELIA

Whene’er mine eyes do my Amelia greet

It is with such emotion

As when, in childhood, turning a dim street,

I first beheld the ocean.

There, where the little, bright, surf-breathing town,

That shew’d me first her beauty and the sea,

Gathers its skirts against the gorse-lit down

And scatters gardens o’er the southern lea,

Abides this Maid

Within a kind yet sombre Mother’s shade,

Who of her daughter’s graces seems almost afraid,

Viewing them ofttimes with a scared forecast,

Caught, haply, from obscure love-peril past.

Howe’er that be,

She scants me of my right,

Is cunning careful evermore to balk

Sweet separate talk,

And fevers my delight

By frets, if, on Amelia’s cheek of peach,

I touch the notes which music cannot reach,

Bidding ‘Good-night!’

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

And there Amelia stood, for fairness shewn

Like a young apple-tree, in flush’d array

Of white and ruddy flow’r, auroral, gay,

With chilly blue the maiden branch between;

And yet to look on her moved less the mind

To say ‘How beauteous!’ than ‘How good and kind!’

And so we went alone

By walls o’er which the lilac’s numerous plume

Shook down perfume;

Trim plots close blown

With daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen,

Engross’d each one

With single ardour for her spouse, the sun;

Garths in their glad array

Of white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay,

With azure chill the maiden flow’r between;

Meadows of fervid green,

With sometime sudden prospect of untold

Cowslips, like chance-found gold;

And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze,

Rending the air with praise,

Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shout

Of Jacob camp’d in Midian put to rout;

Then through the Park,

Where Spring to livelier gloom

Quicken’d the cedars dark,

And, ’gainst the clear sky cold,

Which shone afar

Crowded with sunny alps oracular,

Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom;

And everywhere,

Amid the ceaseless rapture of the lark,

With wonder new

We caught the solemn voice of single air,

‘Cuckoo!’

·       ·       ·       ·       ·

Now would I keep my promise to her Mother;

Now I arose, and raised her to her feet,

My best Amelia, fresh-born from a kiss,

Moth-like, full-blown in birthdew shuddering sweet,

With great, kind eyes, in whose brown shade

Bright Venus and her Baby play’d!

At inmost heart well pleased with one another,

What time the slant sun low

Through the plough’d field does each clod sharply shew,

And softly fills

With shade the dimples of our homeward hills,

With little said,

We left the ‘wilder’d garden of the dead,

And gain’d the gorse-lit shoulder of the down

That keeps the north-wind from the nestling town,

And caught, once more, the vision of the wave,

Where, on the horizon’s dip,

A many-sailed ship

Pursued alone her distant purpose grave;

And, by steep steps rock-hewn, to the dim street

I led her sacred feet;

And so the Daughter gave,

Soft, moth-like, sweet,

Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk,

Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.

And now ‘Good-night!’

Me shall the phantom months no more affright.

For heaven’s gates to open well waits he

Who keeps himself the key.

AFTER STORM

So lay the Earth that saw the skies

Grow clear and bright above,

As the repentant spirit lies

In God’s forgiving love.

The lark forsook the waning day,

And all loud songs did cease;

The robin, from a wither’d spray,

Sang like a soul at peace.

Far to the South, in sunset glow’d

The peaks of Dartmoor ridge,

And Tamar, full and tranquil, flow’d

Beneath the Gresson Bridge.

There, conscious of the numerous noise

Of rain-awaken’d rills,

And gathering deep and sober joys

From the heart-enlarging hills,

I sat, until the first white star

Appear’d, with dewy rays,

And the fair moon began to bar

With shadows all the ways.

O, well is thee, whate’er thou art,

And happy shalt thou be,

If thou hast known, within thy heart,

The peace that came to me.

O, well is thee, if aught shall win

Thy spirit to confess,

God proffers all, ’twere grievous sin

To live content in less!

VENUS AND DEATH

With fetters gold her captivated feet

Lay, sunny sweet;

In that palm was the poppy, Sleep; in this

The apple, Bliss;

Against the mild side of his Spouse and Mother

One small God throve, and in’t, meseem’d, another.

By these a Death-in-Life did foully breathe

Out of a face that was one grate of teeth.

Lift, O kind Angels, lift her eyelids loth,

Lest he devour her and her Godlets both!

SEMELE

No praise to me!

My joy ’twas to be nothing but the glass

Thro’ which the general boon of Heaven should pass,

To focus upon thee.

Nor is’t thy blame

Thou first should’st glow, and, after, fade i’ the flame.

It takes more might

Than God has given thee, Dear, so long to feel delight.

Shall I, alas,

Reproach thee with thy change and my regret?

Blind fumblers that we be

About the portals of felicity!

The wind of words would scatter, tears would wash

Quite out the little heat

Beneath the silent and chill-seeming ash,

Perchance, still slumbering sweet.

THE MARRIED LOVER

Why, having won her, do I woo?

Because her spirit’s vestal grace

Provokes me always to pursue,

But, spirit-like, eludes embrace;

Because her womanhood is such

That, as on court-days subjects kiss

The Queen’s hand, yet so near a touch

Affirms no mean familiarness,

Nay, rather marks more fair the height

Which can with safety so neglect

To dread, as lower ladies might,

That grace could meet with disrespect,

Thus she with happy favour feeds

Allegiance from a love so high

That thence no false conceit proceeds

Of difference bridged, or state put by;

Because, although in act and word

As lowly as a wife can be,

Her manners, when they call me lord,

Remind me ’tis by courtesy;

Not with her least consent of will,

Which would my proud affection hurt,

But by the noble style that still

Imputes an unattain’d desert;

Because her gay and lofty brows,

When all is won which hope can ask,

Reflect a light of hopeless snows

That bright in virgin ether bask;

Because, though free of the outer court

I am, this Temple keeps its shrine

Sacred to Heaven; because, in short,

She’s not and never can be mine.

THE AMARANTH

Feasts satiate; stars distress with height;

Friendship means well, but misses reach,

And wearies in its best delight

Vex’d with the vanities of speech;

Too long regarded, roses even

Afflict the mind with fond unrest;

And to converse direct with Heaven

Is oft a labour in the breast;

Whate’er the up-looking soul admires,

Whate’er the senses’ banquet be,

Fatigues at last with vain desires,

Or sickens by satiety;

But truly my delight was more

In her to whom I’m bound for aye

Yesterday than the day before,

And more to-day than yesterday.

THE LETTERS

Let me, Beloved, while gratitude

Is garrulous with coming good,

Or ere the tongue of happiness

Be silenced by your soft caress,

Relate how, musing here of you,

The clouds, the intermediate blue,

The air that rings with larks, the grave

And distant rumour of the wave,

The solitary sailing skiff,

The gusty corn-field on the cliff,

The corn-flower by the crumbling ledge,

Or, far-down at the shingle’s edge,

The sighing sea’s recurrent crest

Breaking, resign’d to its unrest,

All whisper, to my home-sick thought,

Of charms in you till now uncaught,

Or only caught as dreams, to die

Ere they were own’d by memory.

High and ingenious Decree

Of joy-devising Deity!

You whose ambition only is

The assurance that you make my bliss,

(Hence my first debt of love to show

That you, past showing, indeed do so!)

Trust me, the world, the firmament,

With diverse-natured worlds besprent,

Were rear’d in no mere undivine

Boast of omnipotent design,

The lion differing from the snake

But for the trick of difference sake,

And comets darting to and fro

Because in circles planets go;

But rather that sole love might be

Refresh’d throughout eternity

In one sweet faith, for ever strange,

Mirror’d by circumstantial change.

For, more and more, do I perceive

That everything is relative

To you, and that there’s not a star,

Nor nothing in’t, so strange or far,

But, if ’twere scanned, ’twould chiefly mean

Somewhat, till then, in you unseen,

Something to make the bondage strait

Of you and me more intimate,

Some unguess’d opportunity

Of nuptials in a new degree.

But, oh, with what a novel force

Your best-conn’d beauties, by remorse

Of absence, touch; and, in my heart,

How bleeds afresh the youthful smart

Of passion fond, despairing still

To utter infinite good-will

By worthy service! Yet I know

That love is all that love can owe,

And this to offer is no less

Of worth, in kind speech or caress,

Than if my life-blood I should give.

For good is God’s prerogative,

And Love’s deed is but to prepare

The flatter’d, dear Belov’d to dare

Acceptance of His gifts. When first

On me your happy beauty burst,

Honoria, verily it seem’d

That naught beyond you could be dream’d

Of beauty and of heaven’s delight.

Zeal of an unknown infinite

Yet bade me ever wish you more

Beatified than e’er before.

Angelical were your replies

To my prophetic flatteries;

And sweet was the compulsion strong

That drew me in the course along

Of heaven’s increasing bright allure,

With provocations fresh of your

Victorious capacity.

Whither may love, so fledged, not fly?

Did not mere Earth hold fast the string

Of this celestial soaring thing,

So measure and make sensitive,

And still, to the nerves, nice notice give

Of each minutest increment

Of such interminable ascent,

The heart would lose all count, and beat

Unconscious of a height so sweet,

And the spirit-pursuing senses strain

Their steps on the starry track in vain!

But, reading now the note just come,

With news of you, the babes, and home,

I think, and say, ‘To-morrow eve

‘With kisses me will she receive;’

And, thinking, for extreme delight

Of love’s extremes, I laugh outright.

Dearest, my Love and Wife, ’tis long

Ago I closed the unfinish’d song

Which never could be finish’d; nor

Will ever Poet utter more

Of love than I did, watching well

To lure to speech the unspeakable!

‘Why, having won her, do I woo?’

That final strain to the last height flew

Of written joy, which wants the smile

And voice that are, indeed, the while

They last, the very things you speak,

Honoria, who mak’st music weak

With ways that say, ‘Shall I not be

‘As kind to all as Heaven to me?’

And yet, ah, twenty-fold my Bride!

Rising, this twentieth festal-tide,

You still soft sleeping, on this day

Of days, some words I long to say,

Some words superfluously sweet

Of fresh assurance, thus to greet

Your waking eyes, which never grow

Weary of telling what I know

So well, yet only well enough

To wish for further news thereof.

How sing of such things save to her,

Love’s self, so love’s interpreter?

How the supreme rewards confess

Which crown the austere voluptuousness

Of heart, that earns, in midst of wealth,

The appetite of want and health,

Relinquishes the pomp of life

And beauty to the pleasant Wife

At home, and does all joy despise

As out of place but in her eyes?

How praise the years and gravity

That make each favour seem to be

A lovelier weakness for her lord?

And, ah, how find the tender word

To tell aright of love that glows

The fairer for the fading rose?

Of frailty which can weight the arm

To lean with thrice its girlish charm?

Of grace which, like this autumn day,

Is not the sad one of decay,

Yet one whose pale brow pondereth

The far-off majesty of death?

How tell the crowd, whom passion rends,

That love grows mild as it ascends?

That joy’s most high and distant mood

Is lost, not found, in dancing blood;

Albeit kind acts and smiling eyes,

And all those fond realities

Which are love’s words, in us mean more

Delight than twenty years before?

ONE SPRING

For many a dreadful day,

In sea-side lodgings sick she lay,

Noteless of love, nor seem’d to hear

The sea, on one side, thundering near,

Nor, on the other, the loud Ball

Held nightly in the public hall;

Nor vex’d they my short slumbers, though

I woke up if she breathed too low.

Thus, for three months, with terrors rife,

The pending of her precious life

I watch’d o’er; and the danger, at last,

The kind Physician said, was past.

Howbeit, for seven harsh weeks the East

Breathed witheringly, and Spring’s growth ceased,

And so she only did not die;

Until the bright and blighting sky

Changed into cloud, and the sick flowers

Remember’d their perfumes, and showers

Of warm, small rain refreshing flew

Before the South, and the Park grew,

In three nights, thick with green. Then she

Revived, no less than flower and tree,

In the mild air, and, the fourth day,

Look’d supernaturally gay

With large, thanksgiving eyes, that shone,

The while I tied her bonnet on,

So that I led her to the glass,

And bade her see how fair she was,

And how love visibly could shine.

Profuse of hers, desiring mine,

And mindful I had loved her most

When beauty seem’d a vanish’d boast,

She laugh’d. I press’d her then to me,

Nothing but soft humility;

Nor e’er enhanced she with such charms

Her acquiescence in my arms.

MA BELLE

Farewell, dear Heart! Since needs it must I go,

Dear Heart, farewell!

Fain would I stay, but that I love thee so.

One kiss, ma Belle!

What hope lies in the Land we do not know

Who, Dear, can tell?

But thee I love, and let thy plaint be, ‘Lo,

He loved me well!’

A FAREWELL

With all my will, but much against my heart,

We two now part.

My Very Dear,

Our solace is, the sad road lies so clear.

It needs no art,

With faint, averted feet

And many a tear,

In our opposed paths to persevere.

Go thou to East, I West.

We will not say

There’s any hope, it is so far away.

But, O, My Best,

When the one darling of our widowhead,

The nursling Grief,

Is dead,

And no dews blur our eyes

To see the peach-bloom come in evening skies,

Perchance we may,

Where now this night is day,

And even through faith of still averted feet,

Making full circle of our banishment,

Amazed meet;

The bitter journey to the bourne so sweet

Seasoning the termless feast of our content

With tears of recognition never dry.

DEPARTURE

It was not like your great and gracious ways!

Do you, that have nought other to lament,

Never, my Love, repent

Of how, that July afternoon,

You went,

With sudden, unintelligible phrase,

And frighten’d eye,

Upon your journey of so many days,

Without a single kiss, or a good-bye?

I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon;

And so we sate, within the low sun’s rays,

You whispering to me, for your voice was weak,

Your harrowing praise.

Well, it was well,

To hear you such things speak,

And I could tell

What made your eyes a growing gloom of love,

As a warm South-wind sombres a March grove.

And it was like your great and gracious ways

To turn your talk on daily things, my Dear,

Lifting the luminous, pathetic lash

To let the laughter flash,

Whilst I drew near,

Because you spoke so low that I could scarcely hear.

But all at once to leave me at the last,

More at the wonder than the loss aghast,

With huddled, unintelligible phrase,

And frighten’d eye,

And go your journey of all days

With not one kiss, or a good-bye,

And the only loveless look the look with which you pass’d:

’Twas all unlike your great and gracious ways.

THE AZALEA

There, where the sun shines first

Against our room,

She train’d the gold Azalea, whose perfume

She, Spring-like, from her breathing grace dispersed.

Last night the delicate crests of saffron bloom,

For this their dainty likeness watch’d and nurst,

Were just at point to burst.

At dawn I dream’d, O God, that she was dead,

And groan’d aloud upon my wretched bed,

And waked, ah, God, and did not waken her,

But lay, with eyes still closed,

Perfectly bless’d in the delicious sphere

By which I knew so well that she was near,

My heart to speechless thankfulness composed.

Till ‘gan to stir

A dizzy somewhat in my troubled head—

It was the azalea’s breath, and she was dead!

The warm night had the lingering buds disclosed,

And I had fall’n asleep with to my breast

A chance-found letter press’d

In which she said,

‘So, till to-morrow eve, my Own, adieu!

Parting’s well-paid with soon again to meet,

Soon in your arms to feel so small and sweet,

Sweet to myself that am so sweet to you!’

EURYDICE

Is this the portent of the day nigh past,

And of a restless grave

O’er which the eternal sadness gathers fast;

Or but the heaped wave

Of some chance, wandering tide,

Such as that world of awe

Whose circuit, listening to a foreign law,

Conjunctures ours at unguess’d dates and wide,

Does in the Spirit’s tremulous ocean draw,

To pass unfateful on, and so subside?

Thee, whom ev’n more than Heaven loved I have,

And yet have not been true

Even to thee,

I, dreaming, night by night, seek now to see,

And, in a mortal sorrow, still pursue

Thro’ sordid streets and lanes

And houses brown and bare

And many a haggard stair

Ochrous with ancient stains,

And infamous doors, opening on hapless rooms,

In whose unhaunted glooms

Dead pauper generations, witless of the sun,

Their course have run;

And ofttimes my pursuit

Is check’d of its dear fruit

By things brimful of hate, my kith and kin,

Furious that I should keep

Their forfeit power to weep,

And mock, with living fear, their mournful malice thin.

But ever, at the last, my way I win

To where, with perfectly sad patience, nurst

By sorry comfort of assured worst,

Ingrain’d in fretted cheek and lips that pine,

On pallet poor

Thou lyest, stricken sick,

Beyond love’s cure,

By all the world’s neglect, but chiefly mine.

Then sweetness, sweeter than my tongue can tell,

Does in my bosom well,

And tears come free and quick

And more and more abound

For piteous passion keen at having found,

After exceeding ill, a little good;

A little good

Which, for the while,

Fleets with the current sorrow of the blood,

Though no good here has heart enough to smile.

THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

Perchance she droops within the hollow gulf

Which the great wave of coming pleasure draws,

Not guessing the glad cause!

Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go,

Ye Winds that westward flow,

Thou heaving Sea

That heav’st ’twixt her and me,

Tell her I come;

Then only sigh your pleasure, and be dumb;

For the sweet secret of our either self

We know.

Tell her I come,

And let her heart be still’d.

One day’s controlled hope, and then one more,

And on the third our lives shall be fulfill’d!

Yet all has been before:

Palm placed in palm, twin smiles, and words astray.

What other should we say?

But shall I not, with ne’er a sign, perceive,

Whilst her sweet hands I hold,

The myriad threads and meshes manifold

Which Love shall round her weave:

The pulse in that vein making alien pause

And varying beats from this;

Down each long finger felt, a differing strand

Of silvery welcome bland;

And in her breezy palm

And silken wrist,

Beneath the touch of my like numerous bliss

Complexly kiss’d,

A diverse and distinguishable calm?

What should we say!

It all has been before;

And yet our lives shall now be first fulfill’d,

And into their summ’d sweetness fall distill’d

One sweet drop more;

One sweet drop more, in absolute increase

Of unrelapsing peace.

O, heaving Sea,

That heav’st as if for bliss of her and me,

And separatest not dear heart from heart,

Though each ’gainst other beats too far apart,

For yet awhile

Let it not seem that I behold her smile.

O, weary Love, O, folded to her breast,

Love in each moment years and years of rest,

Be calm, as being not.

Ye oceans of intolerable delight,

The blazing photosphere of central Night,

Be ye forgot.

Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy,

Let me not see thee toy.

O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense

Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense;

O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand

Is more of hope than heart can understand;

Perturb my golden patience not with joy,

Nor, through a wish, profane

The peace that should pertain

To him who does by her attraction move.

Has all not been before?

One day’s controlled hope, and one again,

And then the third, and ye shall have the rein,

O Life, Death, Terror, Love!

But soon let your unrestful rapture cease,

Ye flaming Ethers thin,

Condensing till the abiding sweetness win

One sweet drop more;

One sweet drop more in the measureless increase

Of honied peace.

TIRED MEMORY

The stony rock of death’s insensibility

Well’d yet awhile with honey of thy love

And then was dry;

Nor could thy picture, nor thine empty glove,

Nor all thy kind, long letters, nor the band

Which really spann’d

Thy body chaste and warm,

Henceforward move

Upon the stony rock their wearied charm.

At last, then, thou wast dead.

Yet would I not despair,

But wrought my daily task, and daily said

Many and many a fond, unfeeling prayer,

To keep my vows of faith to thee from harm

In vain.

‘For ’tis,’ I said, ‘all one,

The wilful faith, which has no joy or pain,

As if ’twere none.’

Then look’d I miserably round

If aught of duteous love were left undone,

And nothing found.

But, kneeling in a Church one Easter-Day,

It came to me to say:

‘Though there is no intelligible rest,

In Earth or Heaven,

For me, but on her breast,

I yield her up, again to have her given,

Or not, as, Lord, Thou wilt, and that for aye.’

And the same night, in slumber lying,

I, who had dream’d of thee as sad and sick and dying,

And only so, nightly for all one year,

Did thee, my own most Dear,

Possess,

In gay, celestial beauty nothing coy,

And felt thy soft caress

With heretofore unknown reality of joy.

But, in our mortal air,

None thrives for long upon the happiest dream,

And fresh despair

Bade me seek round afresh for some extreme

Of unconceiv’d, interior sacrifice

Whereof the smoke might rise

To God, and ‘mind him that one pray’d below.

And so,

In agony, I cried:

‘My Lord, if thy strange will be this,

That I should crucify my heart,

Because my love has also been my pride,

I do submit, if I saw how, to bliss

Wherein She has no part.’

And I was heard,

And taken at my own remorseless word.

O, my most Dear,

Was’t treason, as I fear?

’Twere that, and worse, to plead thy veiled mind,

Kissing thy babes, and murmuring in mine ear,

‘Thou canst not be

Faithful to God, and faithless unto me!’

Ah, prophet kind!

I heard, all dumb and blind

With tears of protest; and I cannot see

But faith was broken. Yet, as I have said,

My heart was dead,

Dead of devotion and tired memory,

When a strange grace of thee

In a fair stranger, as I take it, bred

To her some tender heed,

Most innocent

Of purpose therewith blent,

And pure of faith, I think, to thee; yet such

That the pale reflex of an alien love,

So vaguely, sadly shown,

Did her heart touch

Above

All that, till then, had wooed her for its own.

And so the fear, which is love’s chilly dawn,

Flush’d faintly upon lids that droop’d like thine,

And made me weak,

By thy delusive likeness doubly drawn,

And Nature’s long suspended breath of flame

Persuading soft, and whispering Duty’s name,

Awhile to smile and speak

With this thy Sister sweet, and therefore mine;

Thy Sister sweet,

Who bade the wheels to stir

Of sensitive delight in the poor brain,

Dead of devotion and tired memory,

So that I lived again,

And, strange to aver,

With no relapse into the void inane,

For thee;

But (treason was’t?) for thee and also her.

THE TOYS

My little Son, who look’d from thoughtful eyes

And moved and spoke in quiet grown-up wise,

Having my law the seventh time disobey’d,

I struck him, and dismiss’d

With hard words and unkiss’d,

His Mother, who was patient, being dead.

Then, fearing lest his grief should hinder sleep,

I visited his bed,

But found him slumbering deep,

With darken’d eyelids, and their lashes yet

From his late sobbing wet.

And I, with moan,

Kissing away his tears, left others of my own;

For, on a table drawn beside his head,

He had put, within his reach,

A box of counters, and a red-vein’d stone,

A piece of glass abraded by the beach

And six or seven shells,

A bottle with bluebells

And two French copper coins, rang’d there with careful art,

To comfort his sad heart.

So when that night I pray’d

To God, I wept, and said:

Ah, when at last we lie with tranced breath,

Not vexing Thee in death,

And Thou rememberest of what toys

We made our joys,

How weakly understood,

Thy great commanded good,

Then, fatherly not less

Than I whom Thou hast moulded from the clay,

Thou’lt leave Thy wrath, and say,

‘I will be sorry for their childishness.’

WINTER

I, singularly moved

To love the lovely that are not beloved,

Of all the Seasons, most

Love Winter, and to trace

The sense of the Trophonian pallor on her face.

It is not death, but plenitude of peace;

And the dim cloud that does the world enfold

Hath less the characters of dark and cold

Than warmth and light asleep,

And correspondent breathing seems to keep

With the infant harvest, breathing soft below

Its eider coverlet of snow.

Nor is in field or garden anything

But, duly look’d into, contains serene

The substance of things hoped for, in the Spring,

And evidence of Summer not yet seen.

On every chance-mild day

That visits the moist shaw,

The honeysuckle, ‘sdaining to be crost

In urgence of sweet life by sleet or frost,

‘Voids the time’s law

With still increase

Of leaflet new, and little, wandering spray;

Often, in sheltering brakes,

As one from rest disturb’d in the first hour,

Primrose or violet bewilder’d wakes,

And deems ’tis time to flower;

Though not a whisper of her voice he hear,

The buried bulb does know

The signals of the year,

And hails far Summer with his lifted spear.

The gorse-field dark, by sudden, gold caprice,

Turns, here and there, into a Jason’s fleece;

Lilies, that soon in Autumn slipp’d their gowns of green,

And vanish’d into earth,

And came again, ere Autumn died, to birth,

Stand full-array’d, amidst the wavering shower,

And perfect for the Summer, less the flower;

In nook of pale or crevice of crude bark,

Thou canst not miss,

If close thou spy, to mark

The ghostly chrysalis,

That, if thou touch it, stirs in its dream dark;

And the flush’d Robin, in the evenings hoar,

Does of Love’s Day, as if he saw it, sing;

But sweeter yet than dream or song of Summer or Spring

Are Winter’s sometime smiles, that seem to well

From infancy ineffable;

Her wandering, languorous gaze,

So unfamiliar, so without amaze,

On the elemental, chill adversity,

The uncomprehended rudeness; and her sigh

And solemn, gathering tear,

And look of exile from some great repose, the sphere

Of ether, moved by ether only, or

By something still more tranquil.

L’ALLEGRO

Felicity!

Who ope’st to none that knocks, yet, laughing weak,

Yield’st all to Love that will not seek,

And who, though won, wilt droop and die,

Unless wide doors bespeak thee free,

How safe’s the bond of thee and me,

Since thee I cherish and defy!

Is’t Love or Friendship, Dearest, we obey?

Ah, thou art young, and I am gray;

But happy man is he who knows

How well time goes,

With no unkind intruder by,

Between such friends as thou and I!

’Twould wrong thy favour, Sweet, were I to say,

’Tis best by far,

When best things are not possible,

To make the best of those that are;

For, though it be not May,

Sure, few delights of Spring excel

The beauty of this mild September day!

So with me walk,

And view the dreaming field and bossy Autumn wood,

And how in humble russet goes

The Spouse of Honour, fair Repose,

Far from a world whence love is fled

And truth is dying because joy is dead;

And, if we hear the roaring wheel

Of God’s remoter service, public zeal,

Let us to stiller place retire

And glad admire

How, near Him, sounds of working cease

In little fervour and much peace;

And let us talk

Of holy things in happy mood,

Learnt of thy blest twin-sister, Certitude;

Or let’s about our neighbours chat,

Well praising this, less praising that,

And judging outer strangers by

Those gentle and unsanction’d lines

To which remorse of equity

Of old hath moved the School divines.

Or linger where this willow bends,

And let us, till the melody be caught,

Hearken that sudden, singing thought,

On which unguess’d increase to life perchance depends.

He ne’er hears twice the same who hears

The songs of heaven’s unanimous spheres,

And this may be the song to make, at last, amends

For many sighs and boons in vain long sought!

A RETROSPECT

I, trusting that the truly sweet

Would still be sweetly found the true,

Sang, darkling, taught by heavenly heat,

Songs which were wiser than I knew.

To the unintelligible dream

That melted like a gliding star,

I said: ‘We part to meet, fair Gleam!

You are eternal, for you are.’

To Love’s strange riddle, fiery writ

In flesh and spirit of all create,

‘Mocker,’ I said, ‘of mortal wit,

Me you shall not mock. I can wait.’

Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

London & Edinburgh

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

- Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

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Table of Contents

THE POETRY OF PATHOS & DELIGHT From the Works of COVENTRY PATMORE

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

CONTENTS

TO THE UNKNOWN EROS.

ENGLAND

REMNANT OF HONOUR

VICTORY IN DEFEAT

SAINT VALENTINE’S DAY

THE WEDDING SERMON

THE PARAGON

THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

THE LOVER

HEAVEN AND EARTH

THE LETTER

THE REVELATION

THE DOUBT

SECURITY

THE SPIRIT’S EPOCHS

THE MAID

ACCEPTANCE

BETROTHED

THE DANCE

ENTREATY

THE REVULSION

PRAISES

MARRIAGE

THE ROSY BOSOM’D HOURS

WIND AND WAVE

BEATA

IF I WERE DEAD

DELICIÆ SAPIENTIÆ DE AMORE

MIGNONNE

MILDRED

REJECTED

LOVE IN TEARS

DENIED

LOVE’S WILL BE DONE

FIRST LOVE REMEMBERED

LOST LOVE

AWAY

RACHEL

THE VOICE OF ONE I KNEW

IN THE WOODS

LEAH

HER COUNSEL

SPONSA DEI

BONDS

TO THE BODY

AURAS OF DELIGHT

PSYCHE

DAWN

THE EDGE OF BLISS

EROS

AMELIA

AFTER STORM

VENUS AND DEATH

SEMELE

THE MARRIED LOVER

THE AMARANTH

THE LETTERS

ONE SPRING

MA BELLE

A FAREWELL

DEPARTURE

THE AZALEA

EURYDICE

THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

TIRED MEMORY

THE TOYS

WINTER

L’ALLEGRO

A RETROSPECT

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