by Dinah Roe
With gems, and loveliest cheer.
5 Then sleep the seasons, full of might;
While slowly swells the pod,
And rounds the peach, and in the night
The mushroom bursts the sod.
The winter comes: the frozen rut
10 Is bound with silver bars;
The white drift heaps against the hut;
And night is pierced with stars.
Stars and Moon
Beneath the stars and summer moon
A pair of wedded lovers walk,
Upon the stars and summer moon
They turn their happy eyes, and talk.
EDITH
5 ‘Those stars, that moon, for me they shine
With lovely, but no startling light;
My joy is much, but not as thine,
A joy that fills the pulse, like fright.’
ALFRED
‘My love, a darken’d conscience clothes
10 The world in sackcloth; and, I fear,
The stain of life this new heart loathes,
Still clouds my sight; but thine is clear.
‘True vision is no startling boon
To one in whom it always lies;
15 But if true sight of stars and moon
Were strange to thee, it would surprise.
‘Disease it is and dearth in me
Which thou believest genius, wealth;
And that imagined want in thee
20 Is riches and abundant health.
‘O, little merit I my bride!
And therefore will I love her more;
Renewing, by her gentle side,
Lost worth: let this thy smile restore!’
EDITH
25 ‘Ah, love! we both, with longing deep,
Love words and actions kind, which are
More good for life than bread or sleep,
More beautiful than Moon or Star.’
FROM THE ANGEL IN THE HOUSE:
THE BETROTHAL
The Gracious Chivalry
May these my songs inaugurate
The day of a new chivalry
Which shall not feel the mortal fate
Of fashion, chance, or phantasy.
5 The ditties of the knightly time,
The deep-conceiving dreams of youth,
With sweet corroboration chime,
And I believe that love’s the truth.
I do and ever shall profess
10 That I more tenderly revere
A woman in her gentleness
Than all things else I love or fear;
And these glad songs are good to prove
To loyal hearts convincingly,
15 That he who’s orthodox in love
Can hold no kind of heresy.
Long lease of his low mind befall
The man who, in his wilful gust,
Makes waste for one, to others all
20 Discourteous, frigid, and unjust!
Untrue to love and ladies he
Who, scarf on arm and spear in rest,
Assail’d the world with proof that she,
Being his, was also nature’s best.
25 That chivalry do I proclaim
Alone substantial, wise, and good,
Which scorns to help one woman’s fame
With treason against all womanhood.
Each maid, (albeit to me my own
30 Appears and is past others rare,)
When aptness makes her beauty known,
May seem as singularly fair;
And each is justly most desired;
And no true Knight will care to prove
35 That there is more of what’s admired
In his than in another’s love.
Love Liberal
‘Whenever I come where women are,
How sad soe’er I was before,
Though like a ship frost-bound and far
Withheld in ice from the ocean’s roar,
5 Third-winter’d in that dreadful dock,
With stiffen’d cordage, sails decay’d,
And crew that care for calm and shock
Alike, too dull to be dismay’d;
Though spirited like that speedless bark,
10 My cold affections like the crew,
My present drear, my future dark,
The past too happy to be true;
Yet if I come where women are,
How sad soever I was before,
15 Then is my sadness banish’d far,
And I am like that ship no more;
Or like that ship if the ice-field splits,
Burst by the sudden polar Spring,
And all thank God with their warmed wits,
20 And kiss each other and dance and sing,
And hoist fresh sails that make the breeze
Blow them along the liquid sea,
From the homeless North where life did freeze,
Into the haven where they would be.’
25 So thought the melancholy boy,
Whose love-sick mind, misreading fate,
Scarce hoped that any Queen of Joy
Could ever stoop to be his mate.
Thus thinks the man, who deems, (tho’ life
30 Has long been crown’d with youth’s desire,)
That he who has his Love to wife
Has all that heart may well require: –
Though bonded unto one, my best,
My faith to whom is pleasure and ease,
35 Shall I despise or shun the rest
Of nature’s queens and priestesses?
Rather by loving one I learn
To love her like, who still recall
My nuptial pale, and teach in turn
40 That faith to one is debt to all:
For I’m not of so dull a wit
As not to know that what I admire
And the sweet joy of loving it
Would both be slain by false desire;
45 Therefore, though singly her’s till death,
(And after, I hope,) with all I’m free,
Inhaling love’s delighted breath
In the bright air of chastity.
WILLIAM ALLINGHAM
The Fairies
A Nursery Song
Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a hunting
For fear of little men;
5 Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
Down along the rocky shore
10 Some make their home,
They live on crispy pancakes
Of yellow tide-foam;
Some in the reeds
Of the black mountain-lake,
15 With frogs for their watch-dogs,
All night awake.
High on the hill-top
The old King sits;
He is now so old and grey
20 He’s nigh lost his wits.
With a bridge of white mist
Columbkill he crosses,
On his stately journeys
From Slieveleague to Rosses;
25 Or going up with music
On cold starry nights,
To sup with the Queen
Of the gay Northern Lights.
They stole little Bridget
For seven years long;
30 When she came down again
Her friends were all gone.
They took her lightly back,
Between the night and morrow,
35 They thought that she was fast asleep,
But she was dead with sorrow.
They have kept her ever since
Deep within the lakes,
On a bed of flag-leaves,
40 Watching till she wakes.
By the craggy hill-side,
Through the mosses bare,
They have planted thorn-trees
For pleasure here and t
here.
45 Is any man so daring
To dig one up in spite,
He shall find the thornies set
In his bed at night.
Up the airy mountain,
50 Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a hunting
For fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
55 Green jacket, red cap,
And white owl’s feather!
Lady Alice
I
Now what doth Lady Alice so late on the turret stair,
Without a lamp to light her, but the diamond in her hair;
When every arching passage overflows with shallow gloom,
And dreams float through the castle, into every silent room?
5 She trembles at her footsteps, although they fall so light;
Through the turret loopholes she sees the wild mid-night;
Broken vapours streaming across the stormy sky;
Down the empty corridors the blast doth moan and cry.
She steals along a gallery; she pauses by a door
10 And fast her tears are dropping down upon the oaken floor;
And thrice she seems returning – but thrice she turns again: –
Now heavy lie the cloud of sleep on that old father’s brain!
Oh, well it were that never shouldst thou waken from thy sleep!
For wherefore should they waken, who waken but to weep?
15 No more, no more beside thy bed doth Peace a vigil keep,
But Woe, – a lion that awaits thy rousing for its leap.
II
An afternoon of April, no sun appears on high,
But a moist and yellow lustre fills the deepness of the sky:
And through the castle-gateway, left empty and forlorn,
Along the leafless avenue an honour’d bier is borne.
5 They stop. The long line closes up like some gigantic worm;
A shape is standing in the path, a wan and ghost-like form,
Which gazes fixedly; nor moves, nor utters any sound;
Then, like a statue built of snow, sinks down upon the ground.
And though her clothes are ragged, and though her feet are bare,
10 And though all wild and tangled falls her heavy silk-brown hair;
Though from her eyes the brightness, from her cheeks the bloom is fled,
They know their Lady Alice, the darling of the dead.
With silence, in her own old room the fainting form they lay,
Where all things stand unalter’d since the night she fled away:
15 But who – but who shall bring to life her father from the clay?
But who shall give her back again her heart of a former day?
The Maids of Elfen-Mere
’Twas when the spinning-room was here,
There came Three Damsels clothed in white,
With their spindles every night;
5 Two and one, and Three fair Maidens,
Spinning to a pulsing cadence,
Singing songs of Elfen-Mere;
Till the eleventh hour was toll’d,
Then departed through the wold.
Years ago, and years ago;
10 And the tall reeds sigh as the wind doth blow.
Three white Lilies, calm and clear,
And they were loved by every one;
Most of all, the Pastor’s Son,
Listening to their gentle singing,
15 Felt his heart go from him, clinging
Round these Maids of Elfen-Mere;
Sued each night to make them stay,
Sadden’d when they went away.
Years ago, and years ago;
20 And the tall reeds sigh as the wind doth blow.
Hands that shook with love and fear
Dared put back the village clock, –
Flew the spindle, turn’d the rock,
Flow’d the song with subtle rounding,
25 Till the false ‘eleven’ was sounding;
Then these Maids of Elfen-Mere
Swiftly, softly, left the room,
Like three doves on snowy plume.
Years ago, and years ago;
30 And the tall reeds sigh as the wind doth blow.
One that night who wander’d near
Heard lamentings by the shore,
Saw at dawn three stains of gore
In the waters fade and dwindle.
35 Nevermore with song and spindle
Saw we Maids of Elfen-Mere.
The Pastor’s Son did pine and die;
Because true love should never lie.
Years ago, and years ego;
40 And the tall reeds sigh as the wind doth blow.
Three Sisters of Haworth
Three sisters, Charlotte, Emily, and Anne,
Afar in Yorkshire wolds they live together;
Names that I keep like any sacristan;
The human registry of souls as pure
5 As sky in hermit waters on a moor,
Those liquid islands of dark seas of heather;
Voices that reach my solitude from theirs;
Hands that I kiss a thousand miles away,
And send a thousand greetings of my own –
10 But these, alas! only the west wind bears.
Nay, they have vanish’d. Hills and vales are lone
Where Earth once knew them. What is now to say?
Three strangers dead – ’tis little to endure:
Great crowds of strangers vanish every day.
15 Yet will I see those gravestones if I may.
Express
(From Liverpool, Southwards)
We move in elephantine row,
The faces of our friends retire,
The roof withdraws, and curtsying flow
The message-bearing lines of wire;
5 With doubling, redoubling beat,
Smoother we run and more fleet.
By flow’r-knots, shrubs, and slopes of grass,
Cut walls of rock with ivy-stains,
Thro’ winking arches swift we pass,
10 And flying, meet the flying trains,
Whirr – whirr – gone!
And still we hurry on;
By orchards, kine in pleasant leas,
A hamlet-lane, a spire, a pond,
15 Long hedgerows, counter-changing trees,
With blue and steady hills beyond;
(House, platform, post,
Flash – and are lost!)
Smooth-edged canals, and mills on brooks;
20 Old farmsteads, busier than they seem,
Rose-crusted or of graver looks,
Rich with old tile and motley beam;
Clay-cutting, slope, and ridge,
The hollow rumbling bridge.
25 Grey vapour-surges, whirl’d in the wind
Of roaring tunnels, dark and long,
Then sky and landscape unconfined,
Then streets again where workers throng
Come – go. The whistle shrill
30 Controls us to its will.
Broad vents, and chimneys tall as masts,
With heavy flags of streaming smoke;
Brick mazes, fiery furnace-blasts,
Walls, waggons, gritty heaps of coke;
35 Through these our ponderous rank
Glides in with hiss and clank.
So have we sped our wondrous course
Amid a peaceful busy land,
Subdued by long and painful force
40 Of planning head and plodding hand.
How much by labour can
The feeble race of man!
Vivant!
No need, I hope, to doubt my loyalty;
From childhood I was fond of Royalty;
To Kings extravagantly dutiful,
To Queens yet more, if young and beautiful.
5 How rich their robes! What crowns they all had too!
And yet how frien
dly to a small lad too!
At glorious banquets highly gracing him,
Beside the lovely Princess placing him.
Their kingdoms’ names I did not care about;
10 They lay in Fairyland or thereabout;
Their date, though, to forget were crime indeed, –
Exactly, ‘Once upon a time’ indeed.
And still they reign o’er folk contented, there:
I hope to have my son presented there –
15 At every joyous court in Fairyland,
Its Cave-Land, Forest-Land, and Airy-Land.
So down with democratic mania!
Long live great Oberon and Titania,
Imperial Rulers of those regions! – he
20 Be shot who wavers in allegiancy!
And bless all Monarchs in alliance with them,
Who’ve no enchanters, dragons, giants with them,
To keep sweet ladies under lock and key,
And answer challenges in mocking key!
JAMES COLLINSON
From The Child Jesus
A Record Typical of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries
‘O all ye that pass by the way, attend and see if there be any
sorrow like to my sorrow’ – Lamentations 1:12
I
THE AGONY IN THE GARDEN
Joseph, a carpenter of Nazareth,
And his wife Mary had an only child,
Jesus: One holy from his mother’s womb.
Both parents loved him: Mary’s heart alone
5 Beat with his blood, and, by her love and his,
She knew that God was with her, and she strove
Meekly to do the work appointed her;
To cherish him with undivided care
Who deigned to call her mother, and who loved
10 From her the name of son. And Mary gave
Her heart to him, and feared not; yet she seemed
To hold as sacred that he said or did;
And, unlike other women, never spake
His words of innocence again; but all
15 Were humbly treasured in her memory
With the first secret of his birth. So strong