and friends of mankind.
Servants of God!—or sons
Shall I not call you? because
Not as servants ye knew
Your Father’s innermost mind,
His, who unwillingly sees
One of his little ones lost—
Yours is the praise, if mankind
Hath not as yet in its march
Fainted, and fallen, and died!
See! In the rocks of the world
Marches the host of mankind,
A feeble, wavering line.
Where are they tending?—A God
Marshall’d them, gave them their goal.—
Ah, but the way is so long!
Years they have been in the wild!
Sore thirst plagues them; the rocks,
Rising all round, overawe.
Factions divide them; their host
Threatens to break, to dissolve.
Ah, keep, keep them combined!
Else, of the myriads who fill
That army, not one shall arrive!
Sole they shall stray; in the rocks
Labour for ever in vain,
Die one by one in the waste.
Then, in such hour of need
Of your fainting, dispirited race,
Ye, like angels, appear,
Radiant with ardour divine.
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
Ye alight in our van; at your voice,
Panic, despair, flee away.
Ye move through the ranks, recall
The stragglers, refresh the outworn,
Praise, re-inspire the brave.
Order, courage, return.
Eyes rekindling, and prayers,
Follow your steps as ye go.
Ye fill up the gaps in our files,
Strengthen the wavering line,
Stablish, continue our march,
On, to the bound of the waste,
On, to the City of God.
Men of Genius
Silent, the Lord of the world
Eyes from the heavenly height,
Girt by his far-shining train,
Us, who with banners unfurl’d
Fight life’ many-chanc’d fight
Madly below, in the plain.
Thus saith the Lord to his own:—
“See ye the battle below?
Turmoil of death and of birth!
Too long let we them groan.
Haste, arise ye, and go;
Carry my peace upon earth.”
Gladly they rise at his call;
Gladly they take his command;
Gladly descend to the plain.
Alas! How few of them all—
Those willing servants—shall stand
In the Master’s presence again!
Some in the tumult are lost:
Baffled, bewilder’d, they stray.
Some as prisoners draw breath.
Others—the bravest—are cross’d,
On the height of their bold-follow’d way,
By the swift-rushing missile of Death.
Hardly, hardly shall one
Come, with countenance bright,
O’er the cloud-wrapt, perilous plain:
His Master’s errand well done,
Safe through the smoke of the fight,
Back to his Master again.
Stanzas Composed at Carnac
Far on its rocky knoll descried
Saint Michael’s chapel cuts the sky.
I climb’d;—beneath me, bright and wide,
Lay the lone coast of Brittany.
Bright in the sunset, weird and still,
It lay beside the Atlantic wave,
As though the wizard Merlin’s will
Yet charm’d it from his forest grave.
Behind me on their grassy sweep,
Bearded with lichen, scrawl’d and grey,
The giant stones of Carnac sleep,
In the mild evening of the May.
No priestly stern procession now
Moves through their rows of pillars old;
No victims bleed, no Druids bow;
Sheep make the furze-grown aisles their fold.
From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,
The orchis red gleams everywhere;
Gold broom with furze in blossom vies,
The bluebells perfume all the air.
And o’er the glistening, lonely land,
Rise up, all round, the Christian spires.
The church of Carnac, by the strand,
Catches the westering sun’s last fires.
And there across the watery way,
See, low above the tide at flood,
The sickle-sweep of Quiberon bay,
Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!
And beyond that, the Atlantic wide!—
All round, no soul, no boat, no hail!
But, on the horizon’s verge descried,
Hangs, touch’d with light, one snowy sail!
Ah! where is he, who should have come39
Where that far sail is passing now,
Past the Loire’s mouth, and by the foam
Of Finistère’s unquiet brow,
Home, round into the English wave?—
He tarries where the Rock of Spain
Mediterranean waters lave;
He enters not the Atlantic main.
Oh, could he once have reach’d this air
Freshen’d by plunging tides, by showers!
Have felt this breath he loved, of fair
Cool northern fields, and grass, and flowers!
He long’d for it—press’d on!—In vain.
At the Straits fail’d that spirit brave.
The South was parent of his pain,
The South is mistress of his grave.
A Southern Night
The sandy spits, the shore-lock’d lakes,
Melt into open, moonlit sea;
The soft Mediterranean breaks
At my feet, free.
Dotting the fields of corn and vine,
Like ghosts the huge, gnarl’d olives stand;
Behind, that lovely mountain-line!
While, by the strand,
Cette, with its glistening houses white,
Curves with the curving beach away
To where the lighthouse beacons bright
Far in the bay.
Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone,
So moonlit, saw me once of yore40
Wander unquiet, and my own
Vext heart deplore!
But now that trouble is forgot;
Thy memory, thy pain, to-night,
My brother! and thine early lot,41
Possess me quite.
The murmur of this Midland deep
Is heard to-night around thy grave
There where Gibraltar’s cannon’d steep
O’erfrowns the wave.
For there, with bodily anguish keen,
With Indian heats at last fordone,
With public toil and private teen,
Thou sank’st, alone.
Slow to a stop, at morning grey,
I see the smoke-crown’d vessel come;
Slow round her paddles dies away
The seething foam.
A boat is lower’d from her side;
Ah, gently place him on the bench!
That spirit—if all have not yet died—
A breath might quench.
Is this the eye, the footstep fast,
The mien of youth we used to see,
Poor, gallant boy!—for such thou wast,
Still art, to me.
The limbs their wonted tasks refuse;
The eyes are glazed, thou canst not speak;
And whiter than thy white burnous
That wasted cheek!
Enough! The boat, with quiet shock,
Unto its haven coming nigh,
Touches, and on Gibraltar’s rock
Lands thee, to die.
Ah me! Gibraltar’s strand is far,
But farther yet across the brine
Thy dear wife’s ashes buried are,
Remote from thine.
For there where Morning’s sacred fount
Its golden rain on earth confers,
The snowy Himalayan Mount
O’ershadows hers.
Strange irony of Fate, alas,
Which for two jaded English saves,
When from their dusty life they pass,
Such peaceful graves!
In cities should we English lie,
Where cries are rising ever new,
And men’s incessant stream goes by;
We who pursue
Our business with unslackening stride,
Traverse in troops, with care-fill’d breast,
The soft Mediterranean side,
The Nile, the East,
And see all sights from pole to pole,
And glance, and nod, and bustle by;
And never once possess our soul
Before we die.
Not by those
