Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

by Lewis Carroll

  My happier life was dying:

  My heart was sad, my voice was gay.

  And unawares, I knew not how,

  I kissed her dainty finger-tips,

  I kissed her on the lily brow,

  I kissed her on the false, false lips—

  That burning kiss, I feel it now!

  “True love gives true love of the best:

  Then take,” I cried, “my heart to thee!”

  The very heart from out my breast

  I plucked, I gave it willingly:

  Her very heart she gave to me—

  Then died the glory from the west.

  In the gray light I saw her face,

  And it was withered, old, and gray;

  The flowers were fading in their place,

  Were fading with the fading day.

  Forth from her, like a hunted deer,

  Through all that ghastly night I fled,

  And still behind me seemed to hear

  Her fierce unflagging tread;

  And scarce drew breath for fear.

  Yet marked I well how strangely seemed

  The heart within my breast to sleep:

  Silent it lay, or so I dreamed,

  With never a throb or leap.

  For hers was now my heart, she said,

  The heart that once had been mine own:

  And in my breast I bore instead

  A cold, cold heart of stone.

  So grew the morning overhead.

  The sun shot downward through the trees

  His old familiar flame:

  All ancient sounds upon the breeze

  From copse and meadow came—

  But I was not the same.

  They call me mad: I smile, I weep,

  Uncaring how or why:

  Yea, when one’s heart is laid asleep,

  What better than to die?

  So that the grave be dark and deep.

  To die! To die? And yet, methinks,

  I drink of life, to-day,

  Deep as the thirsty traveler drinks

  Of fountain by the way:

  My voice is sad, my heart is gay.

  When yestereve was on the wane,

  I heard a clear voice singing

  So sweetly that, like summer-rain,

  My happy tears came springing:

  My human heart returned again.

  “A rosy child,

  Sitting and singing, in a garden fair,

  The joy of hearing, seeing,

  The simple joy of being—

  Or twining rosebuds in the golden hair

  That ripples free and wild.

  “A sweet pale child—

  Wearily looking to the purple West—

  Waiting the great For-ever

  That suddenly shall sever

  The cruel chains that hold her from her rest—

  By earth-joys unbeguiled.

  “An angel-child—

  Gazing with living eyes on a dead face:

  The mortal form forsaken,

  That none may now awaken,

  That lieth painless, moveless in her place,

  As though in death she smiled!

  “Be as a child—

  So shalt thou sing for very joy of breath—

  So shalt thou wait thy dying,

  In holy transport lying—

  So pass rejoicing through the gate of death,

  In garment undefiled.”

  Then call me what they will, I know

  That now my soul is glad:

  If this be madness, better so,

  Far better to be mad,

  Weeping or smiling as I go.

  For if I weep, it is that now

  I see how deep a loss is mine,

  And feel how brightly round my brow

  The coronal might shine,

  Had I but kept mine early vow:

  And if I smile, it is that now

  I see the promise of the years—

  The garland waiting for my brow,

  That must be won with tears,

  With pain—with death—I care not how.

  May 9, 1862.

  THE WILLOW-TREE.

  The morn was bright, the steeds were light,

  The wedding guests were gay:

  Young Ellen stood within the wood

  And watched them pass away.

  She scarcely saw the gallant train:

  The tear-drop dimmed her ee:

  Unheard the maiden did complain

  Beneath the Willow-Tree.

  “Oh Robin, thou didst love me well,

  Till, on a bitter day,

  She came, the Lady Isabel,

  And stole thy heart away.

  My tears are vain: I live again

  In days that used to be,

  When I could meet thy welcome feet

  Beneath the Willow-Tree.

  “Oh Willow gray, I may not stay

  Till Spring renew thy leaf;

  But I will hide myself away,

  And nurse a lonely grief.

  It shall not dim Life’s joy for him:

  My tears he shall not see:

  While he is by, I’ll come not nigh

  My weeping Willow-Tree.

  “But when I die, oh let me lie

  Beneath thy loving shade,

  That he may loiter careless by,

  Where I am lowly laid.

  And let the white white marble tell,

  If he should stoop to see,

  ‘Here lies a maid that loved thee well,

  Beneath the Willow-Tree.’”

  1859.

  ONLY A WOMAN’S HAIR.

  ‘Only a woman’s hair’! Fling it aside!

  A bubble on Life’s mighty stream:

  Heed it not, man, but watch the broadening tide

  Bright with the western beam.

  Nay! In those words there rings from other years

  The echo of a long low cry,

  Where a proud spirit wrestles with its tears

  In loneliest agony.

  And, as I touch that lock, strange visions throng

  Upon my soul with dreamy grace—

  Of woman’s hair, the theme of poet’s song

  In every time and place.

  A child’s bright tresses, by the breezes kissed

  To sweet disorder as she flies,

  Veiling, beneath a cloud of golden mist,

  Flushed cheek and laughing eyes—

  Or fringing, like a shadow, raven-black,

  The glory of a queen-like face—

  Or from a gipsy’s sunny brow tossed back

  In wild and wanton grace—

  Or crown-like on the hoary head of Age,

  Whose tale of life is well-nigh told—

  Or, last, in dreams I make my pilgrimage

  To Bethany of old.

  I see the feast—the purple and the gold—

  The gathering crowd of Pharisees,

  Whose scornful eyes are centred to behold

  Yon woman on her knees.

  The stifled sob rings strangely on mine ears,

  Wrung from the depth of sin’s despair:

  And still she bathes the sacred feet with tears,

  And wipes them with her hair.

  He scorned not then the simple loving deed

  Of her, the lowest and the last;

  Then scorn not thou, but use with earnest heed

  This relic of the past.

  The eyes that loved it once no longer wake:

  So lay it by with reverent care—

  Touching it tenderly for sorrow’s sake—

  It is a woman’s hair.

  Feb. 17, 1862.

  THE SAILOR’S WIFE.

  See! There are tears upon her face—

  Tears newly shed, and scarcely dried:

  Close, in an agonised embrace,

  She clasps the infant at her side.

  Peace dwells in those soft-lidded eyes,

  Those parted lips th
at faintly smile—

  Peace, the foretaste of Paradise,

  In heart too young for care or guile.

  No peace that mother’s features wear;

  But quivering lip, and knotted brow,

  And broken mutterings, all declare

  The fearful dream that haunts her now.

  The storm-wind, rushing through the sky,

  Wails from the depths of cloudy space;

  Shrill, piercing as the seaman’s cry

  When death and he are face to face.

  Familiar tones are in the gale:

  They ring upon her startled ear:

  And quick and low she pants the tale

  That tells of agony and fear:

  “Still that phantom-ship is nigh—

  With a vexed and life-like motion,

  All beneath an angry sky,

  Rocking on an angry ocean.

  “Round the straining mast and shrouds

  Throng the spirits of the storm:

  Darkly seen through driving clouds,

  Bends each gaunt and ghastly form.

  “See! The good ship yields at last!

  Dumbly yields, and fights no more;

  Driving, in the frantic blast,

  Headlong on the fatal shore.

  “Hark! I hear her battered side,

  With a low and sullen shock,

  Dashed, amid the foaming tide,

  Full upon a sunken rock.

  “His face shines out against the sky,

  Like a ghost, so cold and white;

  With a dead despairing eye

  Gazing through the gathered night.

  “Is he watching, through the dark

  Where a mocking ghostly hand

  Points a faint and feeble spark

  Glimmering from the distant land?

  “Sees he, in this hour of dread,

  Hearth and home and wife and child?

  Loved ones who, in summers fled,

  Clung to him and wept and smiled?

  “Reeling sinks the fated bark

  To her tomb beneath the wave:

  Must he perish in the dark—

  Not a hand stretched out to save?

  “See the spirits, how they crowd!

  Watching death with eyes that burn!

  Waves rush in——” she shrieks aloud,

  Ere her waking sense return.

  The storm is gone: the skies are clear:

  Hush’d is that bitter cry of pain:

  The only sound, that meets her ear,

  The heaving of the sullen main.

  Though heaviness endure the night,

  Yet joy shall come with break of day:

  She shudders with a strange delight—

  The fearful dream is pass’d away.

  She wakes: the grey dawn streaks the dark:

  With early song the copses ring:

  Far off she hears the watch-dog bark

  A joyful bark of welcoming!

  Feb. 23, 1857.

  AFTER THREE DAYS.

  I stood within the gate

  Of a great temple, ’mid the living stream

  Of worshipers that thronged its regal state

  Fair-pictured in my dream.

  Jewels and gold were there;

  And floors of marble lent a crystal sheen

  To body forth, as in a lower air,

  The wonders of the scene.

  Such wild and lavish grace

  Had whispers in it of a coming doom;

  As richest flowers lie strown about the face

  Of her that waits the tomb.

  The wisest of the land

  Had gathered there, three solemn trysting-days,

  For high debate: men stood on either hand

  To listen and to gaze.

  The aged brows were bent,

  Bent to a frown, half thought, and half annoy,

  That all their stores of subtlest argument

  Were baffled by a boy.

  In each averted face

  I marked but scorn and loathing, till mine eyes

  Fell upon one that stirred not in his place,

  Tranced in a dumb surprise.

  Surely within his mind

  Strange thoughts are born, until he doubts the lore

  Of those old men, blind leaders of the blind,

  Whose kingdom is no more.

  Surely he sees afar

  A day of death the stormy future brings;

  The crimson setting of the herald-star

  That led the Eastern kings.

  Thus, as a sunless deep

  Mirrors the shining heights that crown the bay,

  So did my soul create anew in sleep

  The picture seen by day.

  Gazers came and went—

  A restless hum of voices marked the spot—

  In varying shades of critic discontent

  Prating they knew not what.

  “Where is the comely limb,

  The form attuned in every perfect part,

  The beauty that we should desire in him?”

  Ah! Fools and slow of heart!

  Look into those deep eyes,

  Deep as the grave, and strong with love divine;

  Those tender, pure, and fathomless mysteries,

  That seem to pierce through thine.

  Look into those deep eyes,

  Stirred to unrest by breath of coming strife,

  Until a longing in thy soul arise

  That this indeed were life:

  That thou couldst find Him there,

  Bend at His sacred feet thy willing knee,

  And from thy heart pour out the passionate prayer

  “Lord, let me follow Thee!”

  But see the crowd divide:

  Mother and sire have found their lost one now:

  The gentle voice, that fain would seem to chide

  Whispers “Son, why hast thou”—

  In tone of sad amaze—

  “Thus dealt with us, that art our dearest thing?

  Behold, thy sire and I, three weary days,

  Have sought thee sorrowing.”

  And I had stayed to hear

  The loving words “How is it that ye sought?”—

  But that the sudden lark, with matins clear,

  Severed the links of thought.

  Then over all there fell

  Shadow and silence; and my dream was fled,

  As fade the phantoms of a wizard’s cell

  When the dark charm is said.

  Yet, in the gathering light,

  I lay with half-shut eyes that would not wake,

  Lovingly clinging to the skirts of night

  For that sweet vision’s sake.

  Feb. 16, 1861.

  FACES IN THE FIRE.

  The night creeps onward, sad and slow:

  In these red embers’ dying glow

  The forms of Fancy come and go.

  An island-farm—broad seas of corn

  Stirred by the wandering breath of morn—

  The happy spot where I was born.

  The picture fadeth in its place:

  Amid the glow I seem to trace

  The shifting semblance of a face.

  ’Tis now a little childish form—

  Red lips for kisses pouted warm—

  And elf-locks tangled in the storm.

  ’Tis now a grave and gentle maid,

  At her own beauty half afraid,

  Shrinking, and willing to be stayed.

  Oh, Time was young, and Life was warm,

  When first I saw that fairy-form,

  Her dark hair tossing in the storm.

  And fast and free these pulses played,

  When last I met that gentle maid—

  When last her hand in mine was laid.

  Those locks of jet are turned to gray,

  And she is strange and far away

  That might have been mine own to-day—

  That might have been mine own, my dear,


  Through many and many a happy year—

  That might have sat beside me here.

  Ay, changeless through the changing scene,

  The ghostly whisper rings between,

  The dark refrain of ‘might have been.’

  The race is o’er I might have run:

  The deeds are past I might have done;

  And sere the wreath I might have won.

  Sunk is the last faint flickering blaze:

  The vision of departed days

  Is vanished even as I gaze.

  The pictures, with their ruddy light,

  Are changed to dust and ashes white,

  And I am left alone with night.

  Jan., 1860.

  A LESSON IN LATIN.

  Our Latin books, in motley row,

  Invite us to our task—

  Gay Horace, stately Cicero:

  Yet there’s one verb, when once we know,

  No higher skill we ask:

  This ranks all other lore above—

  We’ve learned “‘Amare’ means ‘to love’!”

  So, hour by hour, from flower to flower,

  We sip the sweets of Life:

  Till, all too soon, the clouds arise,

  And flaming cheeks and flashing eyes

  Proclaim the dawn of strife:

  With half a smile and half a sigh,

  “Amare! Bitter One!” we cry.

  Last night we owned, with looks forlorn,

  “Too well the scholar knows

  There is no rose without a thorn”—

  But peace is made! We sing, this morn,

  “No thorn without a rose!”

  Our Latin lesson is complete:

  We’ve learned that Love is Bitter-Sweet!