eminent in you,
Man’s fundamental life: if to despise
The barren optimistic sophistries
Of comfortable moles, whom what they do
Teaches the limit of the just and true—
And for such doing have no need of eyes:
If sadness at the long heart-wasting show
Wherein earth’s great ones are disquieted:
If thoughts, not idle, while before me flow
The armies of the homeless and unfed:—
If these are yours, if this is what you are,
Then am I yours, and what you feel, I share.
Continued
Yet, when I muse on what life is, I seem
Rather to patience prompted, than that proud
Prospect of hope which France proclaims so loud,
France, fam’d in all great arts, in none supreme.
Seeing this Vale, this Earth, whereon we dream,
Is on all sides o’ershadow’d by the high
Uno’erleap’d Mountains of Necessity,
Sparing us narrower margin than we deem.
Nor will that day dawn at a human nod,
When, bursting through the network superpos’d
By selfish occupation—plot and plan,
Lust, avarice, envy—liberated man,
All difference with his fellow man compos’d,
Shall be left standing face to face with God.
Religious Isolation
To the Same Friend
Children (as such forgive them) have I known,
Ever in their own eager pastime bent
To make the incurious bystander, intent
On his own swarming thoughts, an interest own;
Too fearful or too fond to play alone.
Do thou, whom light in thine own inmost soul
(Not less thy boast) illuminates, control
Wishes unworthy of a man full-grown.
What though the holy secret which moulds thee
Mould not the solid Earth? though never Winds
Have whisper’d it to the complaining Sea,
Nature’s great law, and law of all men’s minds?
To its own impulse every creature stirs:
Live by thy light, and Earth will live by hers!
To a Friend10
Who prop, thou ask’st, in these bad days, my mind?
He much, the old man, who, clearest-soul’d of men,
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen,11
And Tmolus’ hill, and Smyrna’s bay, though blind.
Much he, whose friendship I not long since won,
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian’s brutal son
Clear’d Rome of what most sham’d him. But be his
My special thanks, whose even-balanc’d soul,
From first youth tested up to extreme old age,
Business could not make dull, nor Passion wild:
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole:
The mellow glory of the Attic stage;
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.
Quiet Work
One lesson, Nature, let me learn of thee,
One lesson that in every wind is blown,
One lesson of two duties serv’d in one,
Though the loud world proclaim their enmity—
Of Toil unsever’d from Tranquillity:
Of Labour, that in still advance outgrows
Far noisier schemes, accomplish’d in Repose,
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring,
Man’s senseless uproar mingling with his toil,
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on,
Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting:
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil;
Labourers that shall not fail, when man is gone.
A Memory-Picture
Laugh, my Friends, and without blame
Lightly quit what lightly came:
Rich to-morrow as to-day
Spend as madly as you may.
I, with little land to stir,
Am the exacter labourer.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
But my Youth reminds me—“Thou
Hast liv’d light as these live now:
As these are, thou too wert such:
Much hast had, hast squander’d much.”
Fortune’s now less frequent heir,
Ah! I husband what’s grown rare.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Young, I said: “A face is gone
If too hotly mus’d upon:
And our best impressions are
Those that do themselves repair.”
Many a face I then let by,
Ah! is faded utterly.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Marguerite says: “As last year went,
So the coming year’ll be spent:
Some day next year, I shall be,
Entering heedless, kiss’d by thee.”
Ah! I hope—yet, once away,
What may chain us, who can say?
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Paint that lilac kerchief, bound
Her soft face, her hair around:
Tied under the archest chin
Mockery ever ambush’d in.
Let the fluttering fringes streak
All her pale, sweet-rounded cheek.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Paint that figure’s pliant grace
As she towards me lean’d her face,
Half refus’d and half resign’d,
Murmuring, “Art thou still unkind?”
Many a broken promise then
Was new made—to break again.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
Paint those eyes, so blue, so kind,
Eager tell-tales of her mind:
Paint, with their impetuous stress
Of inquiring tenderness,
Those frank eyes, where deep doth lie
An angelic gravity.
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
What, my Friends, these feeble lines
Show, you say, my love declines?
To paint ill as I have done,
Proves forgetfulness begun?
Time’s gay minions, pleas’d you see,
Time, your master, governs me.
Pleased, you mock the fruitless cry
“Quick, thy tablets, Memory!”
Ah! too true. Time’s current strong
Leaves us true to nothing long.
Yet, if little stays with man,
Ah! retain we all we can!
If the clear impression dies,
Ah! the dim remembrance prize!
Ere the parting hour go by,
Quick, thy tablets, Memory!
A Modern Sappho
They are gone: all is still: Foolish heart, dost thou quiver?
Nothing stirs on the lawn but the quick lilac shade.
Far up gleams the house, and beneath flows the river.
Here lean, my head, on this cold balustrade.
Ere he come: ere the boat, by the shining-branch’d border
Of dark elms come round, dropping down the proud stream,
Let me pause, let me strive, in myself make some order,
Ere their boat-music sound, ere their broider’d flags gleam.
Is it hope makes me linger? the dim thought, that sorrow
Means parting? that only in absence lies pain?
It was well with me once if I saw him: to-morrow
May bring one of the old happy moments again.
Last night we stood earnestly talking together—
She enter’d—that moment his eyes turn’d from me.
Fasten’d on her dark hair and her wreath of white heather—
As yesterday was, so to-morrow will be.
Their love, let me know, must grow strong and yet stronger,
Their passion burn more, ere it ceases to burn:
They must love—while they must: But the hearts that love longer
Are rare: ah! most loves but flow once, and return.
I shall suffer; but they will outlive their
