Because her words had fretted me;
Not warbling quite her merriest tune
Bird-like from tree to tree.
I chose a book to read and dream:
Yet all the while with furtive eyes
Marked how she made her choice of flowers
Intuitively wise,
And ranged them with instinctive taste
Which all my books had failed to teach;
Fresh rose herself, and daintier
Than blossom of the peach.
By birthright higher than myself,
Tho' nestling of the self-same nest:
No fault of hers, no fault of mine,
But stubborn to digest.
I watched her, till my book unmarked
Slid noiseless to the velvet floor;
Till all the opulent summer-world
Looked poorer than before.
Just then her busy fingers ceased,
Her fluttered colour went and came;
I knew whose step was on the walk,
Whose voice would name her name.
Well, twenty years have passed since then:
My sister now, a stately wife
Still fair, looks back in peace and sees
The longer half of life—
The longer half of prosperous life,
With little grief, or fear, or fret:
She loved, and, loving long ago,
Is loved and loving yet.
A husband honourable, brave,
Is her main wealth in all the world:
And next to him one like herself,
One daughter golden-curled;
Fair image of her own fair youth,
As beautiful and as serene,
With almost such another love
As her own love has been.
Yet, tho' of world-wide charity,
And in her home most tender dove,
Her treasure and her heart are stored
In the home-land of love:
She thrives, God's blessed husbandry;
She like a vine is full of fruit;
Her passion-flower climbs up toward heaven
Tho' earth still binds its root.
I sit and watch my sister's face:
How little altered since the hours
When she, a kind, light-hearted girl,
Gathered her garden flowers;
Her song just mellowed by regret
For having teased me with her talk;
Then all-forgetful as she heard
One step upon the walk.
While I? I sat alone and watched
My lot in life, to live alone,
In mine own world of interests,
Much felt but little shown.
Not to be first: how hard to learn
That lifelong lesson of the past;
Line graven on line and stroke on stroke;
But, thank God, learned at last.
So now in patience I possess
My soul year after tedious year,
Content to take the lowest place,
The place assigned me here.
Yet sometimes, when I feel my strength
Most weak, and life most burdensome,
I lift mine eyes up to the hills
From whence my help shall come:
Yea, sometimes still I lift my heart
To the Archangelic trumpet-burst,
When all deep secrets shall be shown,
And many last be first.
MY FRIEND
(Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1864.)
TWO days ago with dancing glancing hair,
With living lips and eyes:
Now pale, dumb, blind, she lies;
So pale, yet still so fair.
We have not left her yet, not yet alone;
But soon must leave her where
She will not miss our care,
Bone of our bone.
Weep not; O friends, we should not weep:
Our friend of friends lies full of rest;
No sorrow rankles in her breast,
Fallen fast asleep.
She sleeps below,
She wakes and laughs above:
Today, as she walked, let us walk in love;
Tomorrow follow so.
LAST NIGHT
(Macmillan's Magazine, May 1865.)
WHERE were you last night? I watched at the gate;
I went down early, I stayed down late.
Were you snug at home, I should like to know,
Or were you in the coppice wheedling Kate?
She's a fine girl, with a fine clear skin;
Easy to woo, perhaps not hard to win.
Speak up like a man and tell me the truth:
I'm not one to grow downhearted and thin.
If you love her best speak up like a man;
It's not I will stand in the light of your plan:
Some girls might cry and scold you a bit,
And say they couldn't bear it; but I can.
Love was pleasant enough, and the days went fast
Pleasant while it lasted, but it needn't last;
Awhile on the wax, and awhile on the wane,
Now dropped away into the past.
Was it pleasant to you? To me it was:
Now clean gone as an image from glass,
As a goodly rainbow that fades away,
As dew that steams upward from the grass,
As the first spring day, or the last summer day,
As the sunset flush that leaves heaven grey,
As a flame burnt out for lack of oil,
Which no pains relight or ever may.
Good luck to Kate and good luck to you:
I guess she'll be kind when you come to woo.
I wish her a pretty face that will last,
I wish her a husband steady and true.
Hate you? not I, my very good friend;
All things begin and all have an end.
But let broken be broken; I put no faith
In quacks who set up to patch and mend.
Just my love and one word to Kate:
Not to let time slip if she means to mate;—
For even such a thing has been known
As to miss the chance while we weigh and wait.
CONSIDER
(Macmillan's Magazine, Jan. 1866.)
CONSIDER
The lilies of the field whose bloom is brief:—
We are as they;
Like them we fade away,
As doth a leaf.
Consider
The sparrows of the air of small account:
Our God doth view
Whether they fall or mount,—
He guards us too.
Consider
The lilies that do neither spin nor toil,
Yet are most fair:—
What profits all this care
And all this coil?
Consider
The birds that have no barn nor harvest-weeks;
God gives them food:—
Much more our Father seeks
To do us good.
HELEN GREY
(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1866.)
BECAUSE one loves you, Helen Grey,
Is that a reason you should pout,
And like a March wind veer about,
And frown, and say your shrewish say?
Don't strain the cord until it snaps,
Don't split the sound heart with your wedge,
Don't cut your fingers with the edge
Of your keen wit; you may, perhaps.
Because you're handsome, Helen Grey,
Is that a reason to be proud?
Your eyes are bold, your laugh is loud,
Your steps go mincing on their way;
But so you miss that modest charm
Which is the surest charm of all:
Take heed, you yet may trip and fall,
And no man care to stretch his arm.
Stoop fr
om your cold height, Helen Grey,
Come down, and take a lowlier place,
Come down, to fill it now with grace;
Come down you must perforce some day:
For years cannot be kept at bay,
And fading years will make you old;
Then in their turn will men seem cold,
When you yourself are nipped and grey.
BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON
B. C. 570
(Macmillan's Magazine, October 1866.)
HERE where I dwell I waste to skin and bone;
The curse is come upon me, and I waste
In penal torment powerless to atone.
The curse is come on me, which makes no haste
And doth not tarry, crushing both the proud
Hard man and him the sinner double-faced.
Look not upon me, for my soul is bowed
Within me, as my body in this mire;
My soul crawls dumb-struck, sore-bested and cowed.
As Sodom and Gomorrah scourged by fire,
As Jericho before God's trumpet-peal,
So we the elect ones perish in His ire.
Vainly we gird on sackcloth, vainly kneel
With famished faces toward Jerusalem:
His heart is shut against us not to feel,
His ears against our cry He shutteth them,
His hand He shorteneth that He will not save,
His law is loud against us to condemn:
And we, as unclean bodies in the grave
Inheriting corruption and the dark,
Are outcast from His presence which we crave.
Our Mercy hath departed from His Ark,
Our Glory hath departed from His rest,
Our Shield hath left us naked as a mark
Unto all pitiless eyes made manifest.
Our very Father hath forsaken us,
Our God hath cast us from Him: we oppress'd
Unto our foes are even marvellous,
A hissing and a butt for pointing hands,
Whilst God Almighty hunts and grinds us thus;
For He hath scattered us in alien lands,
Our priests, our princes, our anointed king,
And bound us hand and foot with brazen bands.
Here while I sit my painful heart takes wing
Home to the home-land I must see no more,
Where milk and honey flow, where waters spring
And fail not, where I dwelt in days of yore
Under my fig-tree and my fruitful vine,
There where my parents dwelt at ease before:
Now strangers press the olives that are mine,
Reap all the corners of my harvest-field,
And make their fat hearts wanton with my wine;
To them my trees, to them my gardens yield
Their sweets and spices and their tender green,
O'er them in noontide heat outspread their shield.
Yet these are they whose fathers had not been
Housed with my dogs, whom hip and thigh we smote
And with their blood washed their pollutions clean,
Purging the land which spewed them from its throat;
Their daughters took we for a pleasant prey,
Choice tender ones on whom the fathers doat.
Now they in turn have led our own away;
Our daughters and our sisters and our wives
Sore weeping as they weep who curse the day,
To live, remote from help, dishonoured lives,
Soothing their drunken masters with a song,
Or dancing in their golden tinkling gyves:
Accurst if they remember through the long
Estrangement of their exile, twice accursed
If they forget and join the accursèd throng.
How doth my heart that is so wrung not burst
When I remember that my way was plain,
And that God's candle lit me at the first,
Whilst now I grope in darkness, grope in vain,
Desiring but to find Him Who is lost,
To find Him once again, but once again.
His wrath came on us to the uttermost,
His covenanted and most righteous wrath:
Yet this is He of Whom we made our boast,
Who lit the Fiery Pillar in our path,
Who swept the Red Sea dry before our feet,
Who in His jealousy smote kings, and hath
Sworn once to David: One shall fill thy seat
Born of thy body, as the sun and moon
'Stablished for aye in sovereignty complete.
O Lord, remember David, and that soon.
The Glory hath departed, Ichabod!
Yet now, before our sun grow dark at noon,
Before we come to nought beneath Thy rod,
Before we go down quick into the pit,
Remember us for good, O God, our God:—
Thy Name will I remember, praising it,
Though Thou forget me, though Thou hide Thy face,
And blot me from the Book which Thou hast writ;
Thy Name will I remember in my praise
And call to mind Thy faithfulness of old,
Though as a weaver Thou cut off my days,
And end me as a tale ends that is told.
SEASONS
(Macmillan's Magazine, Dec. 1866.)
OH the cheerful Budding-time!
When thorn-hedges turn to green,
When new leaves of elm and lime
Cleave and shed their winter screen;
Tender lambs are born and 'baa',
North wind finds no snow to bring,
Vigorous Nature laughs 'Ha, ha',
In the miracle of spring.
Oh the gorgeous Blossom-days!
When broad flag-flowers drink and blow,
In and out in summer-blaze
Dragon-flies flash to and fro;
Ashen branches hang out keys,
Oaks put forth the rosy shoot,
Wandering herds wax sleek at ease,
Lovely blossoms end in fruit.
Oh the shouting Harvest-weeks!
Mother earth grown fat with sheaves
Thrifty gleaner finds who seeks;
Russet-golden pomp of leaves
Crowns the woods, to fall at length;
Bracing winds are felt to stir,
Ocean gathers up her strength,
Beasts renew their dwindled fur.
Oh the starving Winter-lapse!
Ice-bound, hunger-pinched and dim;
Dormant roots recall their saps,
Empty nests show black and grim,
Short-lived sunshine gives no heat,
Undue buds are nipped by frost,
Snow sets forth a winding-sheet,
And all hope of life seems lost.
MOTHER COUNTRY
(Macmillan's Magazine, March 1868.)
OH what is that country
Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress and Other Poems Page 20