within a thick-leaved wood,
It kept its quiet shadowy grace,
As round it all things had been good.
Was the boy deaf—the tender palm
Of him that made him folded round
The little head to keep it calm
With a hitherto to every sound—
And so nor curse nor shout nor psalm
Could thrill the globe thus grandly bound?
Or came in force the happy law
That customed things themselves erase?
Or was he too intent for awe?
Did love take all the thinking place?
I cannot tell; I only saw
An earnest, fearless, hopeless face.
The Sheep and the Goat
The thousand streets of London gray
Repel all country sights;
But bar not winds upon their way,
Nor quench the scent of new-mown hay
In depth of summer nights.
And here and there an open spot,
Still bare to light and dark,
With grass receives the wanderer hot;
There trees are growing, houses not—
They call the place a park.
Soft creatures, with ungentle guides,
God’s sheep from hill and plain,
Flow thitherward in fitful tides,
There weary lie on woolly sides,
Or crop the grass amain.
And from dark alley, yard, and den,
In ragged skirts and coats,
Come thither children of poor men,
Wild things, untaught of word or pen—
The little human goats.
In Regent’s Park, one cloudless day,
An overdriven sheep,
Come a hard, long, and dusty way,
Throbbing with thirst and hotness lay,
A panting woollen heap.
But help is nearer than we know
For ills of every name:
Ragged enough to scare the crow,
But with a heart to pity woe,
A quick-eyed urchin came.
Little he knew of field or fold,
Yet knew what ailed; his cap
Was ready cup for water cold;
Though creased, and stained, and very old,
’Twas not much torn, good hap!
Shaping the rim and crown he went,
Till crown from rim was deep;
The water gushed from pore and rent,
Before he came one half was spent—
The other saved the sheep.
O little goat, born, bred in ill,
Unwashed, half-fed, unshorn,
Thou to the sheep from breezy hill
Wast bishop, pastor, what you will,
In London dry and lorn!
And let priests say the thing they please,
My faith, though poor and dim,
Thinks he will say who always sees,
In doing it to one of these
Thou didst it unto him.
The Shadows
My little boy, with smooth, fair cheeks,
And dreamy, large, brown eyes,
Not often, little wisehead, speaks,
But hearing, weighs and tries.
“God is not only in the sky,”
His sister said one day—
Not older much, but she would cry
Like Wisdom in the way—
“He’s in this room.” His dreamy, clear,
Large eyes look round for God:
In vain they search, in vain they peer;
His wits are all abroad!
“He is not here, mamma? No, no;
I do not see him at all!
He’s not the shadows, is he?” So
His doubtful accents fall—
Fall on my heart, no babble mere!
They rouse both love and shame:
But for earth’s loneliness and fear,
I might be saying the same!
Nay, sometimes, ere the morning break
And home the shadows flee,
In my dim room even yet I take
Those shadows, Lord, for thee!
An Old Sermon with a New Text
My wife contrived a fleecy thing
Her husband to infold,
For ’tis the pride of woman still
To cover from the cold:
My daughter made it a new text
For a sermon very old.
The child came trotting to her side,
Ready with bootless aid:
“Lily make veckit for papa,”
The tiny woman said:
Her mother gave the means and ways,
And a knot upon her thread.
“Mamma, mamma!—it won’t come through!”
In meek dismay she cried.
Her mother cut away the knot,
And she was satisfied,
Pulling the long thread through and through,
In fabricating pride.
Her mother told me this: I caught
A glimpse of something more:
Great meanings often hide behind
The little word before!
And I brooded over my new text
Till the seed a sermon bore.
Nannie, to you I preach it now—
A little sermon, low:
Is it not thus a thousand times,
As through the world we go?
Do we not tug, and fret, and cry—
Instead of “Yes, Lord—No?”
While all the rough things that we meet
Which will not move a jot,
The hindrances to heart and feet,
The Crook in every Lot,
Mean plainly but that children’s threads
Have at the end a knot.
This world of life God weaves for us,
Nor spares he pains or cost,
But we must turn the web to clothes
And shield our hearts from frost:
Shall we, because the thread holds fast,
Count labour vain and lost?
If he should cut away the knot,
And yield each fancy wild,
The hidden life within our hearts—
His life, the undefiled—
Would fare as ill as I should fare
From the needle of my child.
As tack and sheet unto the sail,
As to my verse the rime,
As mountains to the low green earth—
So hard for feet to climb,
As call of striking clock amid
The quiet flow of time,
As sculptor’s mallet to the birth
Of the slow-dawning face,
As knot upon my Lily’s thread
When she would work apace,
God’s “Nay” is such, and worketh so
For his children’s coming grace.
Who, knowing God’s intent with him,
His birthright would refuse?
What makes us what we have to be
Is the only thing to choose:
We understand nor end nor means,
And yet his ways accuse!
This is my sermon. It is preached
Against all fretful strife.
Chafe not with anything that is,
Nor cut it with thy knife.
Ah! be not angry with the knot
That holdeth fast thy life.
The Wakeful Sleeper
When things are holding wonted pace
In wonted paths, without a trace
Or hint of neighbouring wonder,
Sometimes, from other realms, a tone,
A scent, a vision, swift, alone,
Breaks common life asunder.
Howe’er it comes, whate’er its door,
It makes you ponder something more—
Unseen with seen things linking:
To neighbours met one festive night,
Was given a quaint and lovely sight,
That set some of them thinking.
They stand, in music’s fetters bound
By a clear brook of warbled sound,
A canzonet of Haydn,
When the door slowly comes ajar—
A little further—just as far
As shows a tiny maiden.
Softly she enters, her pink
