Chapter 8 of 12 · 3997 words · ~20 min read

Part 8

My letters! all dead paper, ... mute and white!— And yet they seem alive and quivering Against my tremulous hands which loose the string And let them drop down on my knee to-night. This said, ... he wished to have me in his sight Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring To come and touch my hand ... a simple thing, Yet I wept for it!—this, ... the paper’s light ... Said, _Dear, I love thee_; and I sank and quailed As if God’s future thundered on my past. This said, _I am thine_—and so its ink has paled With lying at my heart that beat too fast. And this ... O Love, thy words have ill availed, If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!

_108. xliii_

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight. I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise. I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith. I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints,—I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

_109. A Musical Instrument_

What was he doing, the great god Pan, Down in the reeds by the river? Spreading ruin and scattering ban, Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat, And breaking the golden lilies afloat With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan, From the deep cool bed of the river: The limpid water turbidly ran, And the broken lilies a-dying lay, And the dragon-fly had fled away, Ere he brought it out of the river.

III

High on the shore sate the great god Pan, While turbidly flowed the river; And hacked and hewed as a great god can, With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed, Till there was not a sign of a leaf indeed To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan (How tall it stood in the river!), Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man, Steadily from the outside ring, And notched the poor dry empty thing In holes, as he sate by the river.

‘This is the way,’ laughed the great god Pan (Laughed while he sate by the river), ‘The only way, since gods began To make sweet music, they could succeed.’ Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed, He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan! Piercing sweet by the river! Blinding sweet, O great god Pan! The sun on the hill forgot to die, And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly Came back to dream on the river.

VII

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, To laugh as he sits by the river, Making a poet out of a man: The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, For the reed which grows nevermore again As a reed with the reeds in the river.

_110. The Cry of the Children_

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers, Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers, And _that_ cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows, The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows, The young flowers are blowing toward the west— But the young, young children, O my brothers, They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others, In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow, Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost. But the young, young children, O my brothers, Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosom of their mothers, In our happy Fatherland?

III

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their looks are sad to see, For the man’s hoary anguish draws and presses Down the cheeks of infancy. ‘Your old earth’, they say, ‘is very dreary; Our young feet’, they say, ‘are very weak! Few paces have we taken, yet are weary— Our grave-rest is very far to seek. Ask the aged why they weep, and not the children; For the outside earth is cold; And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering, And the graves are for the old.’

‘True,’ say the children, ‘it may happen That we die before our time; Little Alice died last year—her grave is shapen Like a snowball, in the rime. We looked into the pit prepared to take her: Was no room for any work in the close clay! From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her, Crying, “Get up, little Alice! it is day.” If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower, With your ear down, little Alice never cries; Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes: And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in The shroud by the kirk-chime! It is good when it happens’, say the children, ‘That we die before our time.’

Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have; They are binding up their hearts away from breaking, With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city, Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do; Pluck you handfuls of the meadow cowslips pretty, Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through! But they answer, ‘Are your cowslips of the meadows Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows, From your pleasures fair and fine!

‘For oh,’ say the children, ‘we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, We fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow; For, all day, we drag our burden tiring Through the coal-dark, underground— Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron In the factories, round and round.

VII

‘For, all day, the wheels are droning, turning,— Their wind comes in our faces,— Till our hearts turn,—our head, with pulses burning, And the walls turn in their places; Turns the sky in the high window blank and reeling, Turns the long light that drops adown the wall, Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling, All are turning, all the day, and we with all. And all day, the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray, “O ye wheels” (breaking out in a mad moaning), “Stop! be silent for to-day!”’

VIII

Aye! be silent! Let them hear each other breathing For a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other’s hands, in a fresh wreathing Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals: Let them prove their living souls against the notion That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!— Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children’s souls, which God is calling sunward, Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers, To look up to Him and pray; So the blessèd One who blesseth all the others, Will bless them another day. They answer, ‘Who is God that He should hear us, While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred? When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word. And _we_ hear not (for the wheels in their resounding) Strangers speaking at the door: Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him, Hears our weeping any more?

‘Two words, indeed, of praying we remember, And at midnight’s hour of harm, “Our Father,” looking upward in the chamber, We say softly for a charm. We know no other words, except “Our Father”, And we think that, in some pause of angels’ song, God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather, And hold both within His right hand which is strong. “Our Father!” If He heard us, He would surely (For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely, “Come and rest with Me, My child.”

‘But, no!’ say the children, weeping faster, ‘He is speechless as a stone; And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on. Go to!’ say the children,—‘up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find. Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving— We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.’ Do you hear the children weeping and disproving, O my brothers, what ye preach? For God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving, And the children doubt of each.

XII

And well may the children weep before you! They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without its wisdom; They sink in man’s despair, without its calm; Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom, Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm,— Are worn, as if with age, yet unretrievingly The harvest of its memories cannot reap,— Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly. Let them weep! let them weep!

XIII

They look up with their pale and sunken faces, And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of their angels in high places, With eyes turned on Deity!— ‘How long,’ they say, ‘how long, O cruel nation, Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart,— Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O goldheaper, And your purple shows your path! But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath.’

_111. To Flush, My Dog_

Loving friend, the gift of one Who her own true faith has run Through thy lower nature, Be my benediction said With my hand upon thy head, Gentle fellow creature!

Like a lady’s ringlets brown, Flow thy silken ears adown Either side demurely Of thy silver-suited breast, Shining out from all the rest Of thy body purely.

III

Darkly brown thy body is, Till the sunshine striking this Alchemize its dullness, When the sleek curls manifold Flash all over into gold, With a burnished fullness.

Underneath my stroking hand, Startled eyes of hazel bland Kindling, growing larger, Up thou leapest with a spring, Full of prank and curveting, Leaping like a charger.

Leap! thy broad tail waves a light, Leap! thy slender feet are bright, Canopied in fringes; Leap—those tasselled ears of thine Flicker strangely, fair and fine, Down their golden inches.

Yet, my pretty, sportive friend, Little is’t to such an end That I praise thy rareness! Other dogs may be thy peers Haply in these drooping ears, And this glossy fairness,

VII

But of _thee_ it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary,— Watched within a curtained room, Where no sunbeam brake the gloom Round the sick and dreary.

VIII

Roses, gathered for a vase, In that chamber died apace, Beam and breeze resigning; This dog only, waited on Knowing that when light is gone Love remains for shining.

Other dogs in thymy dew Tracked the hares and followed through Sunny moor or meadow; This dog only, crept and crept Next a languid cheek that slept, Sharing in the shadow.

Other dogs of loyal cheer Bounded at the whistle clear, Up the woodside hieing; This dog only, watched in reach Of a faintly uttered speech, Or a louder sighing.

And if one or two quick tears Dropped upon his glossy ears, Or a sigh came double,— Up he sprang in eager haste, Fawning, fondling, breathing fast In a tender trouble.

XII

And this dog was satisfied If a pale thin hand would glide Down his dewlaps sloping,— Which he pushed his nose within, After,—platforming his chin On the palm left open.

XIII

This dog, if a friendly voice Call him now to blyther choice Than such chamber-keeping, ‘Come out!’ praying from the door,— Presseth backward as before, Up against me leaping.

XIV

Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render praise and favour: With my hand upon his head, Is my benediction said Therefore, and for ever.

And because he loves me so, Better than his kind will do Often, man or woman, Give I back more love again Than dogs often take of men, Leaning from my Human.

XVI

Blessings on thee, dog of mine, Pretty collars make thee fine, Sugared milk make fat thee! Pleasures wag on in thy tail, Hands of gentle motion fail Nevermore, to pat thee!

XVII

Downy pillow take thy head, Silken coverlid bestead, Sunshine help thy sleeping! No fly’s buzzing wake thee up, No man break thy purple cup, Set for drinking deep in.

XVIII

Whiskered cats arointed flee, Sturdy stoppers keep from thee Cologne distillations; Nuts lie in thy path for stones, And thy feast-day macaroons Turn to daily rations!

XIX

Mock I thee, in wishing weal?— Tears are in my eyes to feel Thou art made so straitly, Blessing needs must straiten too,— Little canst thou joy or do, Thou who lovest _greatly_.

Yet be blessèd to the height Of all good and all delight Pervious to thy nature; Only _loved_ beyond that line, With a love that answers thine, Loving fellow creature.

_112. The Deserted Garden_

I mind me, in the days departed, How often underneath the sun With childish bounds I used to run To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite; And wheresoe’er had struck the spade, The greenest grasses Nature laid, To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness, For no one entered there but I; The sheep looked in, the grass to espy, And passed it ne’ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild, And spread their boughs enough about To keep both sheep and shepherd out, But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me! I crept beneath the boughs, and found A circle smooth of mossy ground Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in, Bedropt with roses waxen-white Well satisfied with dew and light And careless to be seen.

Long years ago it might befall, When all the garden flowers were trim, The grave old gardener prided him On these the most of all.

Some lady, stately overmuch, Here moving with a silken noise, Has blushed beside them at the voice That likened her to such.

And these, to make a diadem, She often may have plucked and twined, Half-smiling as it came to mind That few would look at _them_.

Oh, little thought that lady proud, A child would watch her fair white rose, When buried lay her whiter brows, And silk was changed for shroud!—

Nor thought that gardener (full of scorns For men unlearned and simple phrase), A child would bring it all its praise By creeping through the thorns!

To me upon my low moss seat, Though never a dream the roses sent Of science or love’s compliment, I ween they smelt as sweet,

It did not move my grief to see The trace of human step departed: Because the garden was deserted, The blither place for me!

Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken Has childhood ’twixt the sun and sward: We draw the moral afterward— We feel the gladness then,

And gladdest hours for me did glide In silence at the rose-tree wall; A thrush made gladness musical Upon the other side.

Nor he nor I did e’er incline To peck or pluck the blossoms white; How should I know but roses might Lead lives as glad as mine?

To make my hermit-home complete, I brought clear water from the spring Praised in its own low murmuring, And cresses glossy wet.

And so, I thought, my likeness grew (Without the melancholy tale) To ‘gentle hermit of the dale’, And Angelina too.

For oft I read within my nook Such minstrel stories till the breeze Made sounds poetic in the trees,— And then I shut the book.

If I shut this wherein I write I hear no more the wind athwart Those trees,—nor feel that childish heart, Delighting in delight.

My childhood from my life is parted, My footsteps from the moss which drew Its fairy circle round: anew The garden is deserted.

Another thrush may there rehearse The madrigals which sweetest are; No more for me!—myself afar Do sing a sadder verse.

Ah me, ah me! when erst I lay In that child’s-nest so greenly wrought, I laughed unto myself and thought ‘The time will pass away’.

And still I laughed, and did not fear But that, whene’er was past away The childish time, some happier play My womanhood would cheer.

I knew the time would pass away, And yet, beside the rose-tree wall, Dear God, how seldom, if at all, Did I look up to pray!

The time is past;—and now that grows The cypress high among the trees, And I behold white sepulchres As well as the white rose,—

When graver, meeker thoughts are given, And I have learnt to lift my face, Reminded how earth’s greenest place The colour draws from heaven,—

It something saith for earthly pain, But more for Heavenly promise free, That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again.

_113. Grief_

I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless; That only men incredulous of despair, Half-taught in anguish, through the midnight air Beat upward to God’s throne in loud access Of shrieking and reproach. Full desertness In souls, as countries, lieth silent-bare Under the blanching, vertical eye-glare Of the absolute Heavens. Deep-hearted man, express Grief for thy Dead in silence like to death:— Most like a monumental statue set In everlasting watch and moveless woe, Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet; If it could weep, it could arise and go.

HELEN SELINA, LADY DUFFERIN

1807-1867

_114. Lament of the Irish Emigrant_

I’m sittin’ on the stile, Mary, Where we sat side by side On a bright May mornin’ long ago, When first you were my bride; The corn was springin’ fresh and green, And the lark sang loud and high— And the red was on your lip, Mary, And the love-light in your eye.

The place is little changed, Mary, The day is bright as then, The lark’s loud song is in my ear, And the corn is green again; But I miss the soft clasp of your hand And your breath warm on my cheek, And I still keep listnin’ for the words You never more will speak.

’Tis but a step down yonder lane, And the little church stands near, The church where we were wed, Mary, I see the spire from here. But the graveyard lies between, Mary, And my step might break your rest— For I’ve laid you, darling! down to sleep, With your baby on your breast.

I’m very lonely now, Mary, For the poor make no new friends, But, O, they love the better still The few our Father sends! And you were all _I_ had, Mary, My blessin’ and my pride; There’s nothin’ left to care for now Since my poor Mary died.

Yours was the good, brave heart, Mary, That still went hoping on, When the trust in God had left my soul, And my arms’ young strength was gone: There was comfort ever on your lip, And the kind look on your brow— I bless you, Mary, for that same, Though you cannot hear me now.

I thank you for the patient smile When your heart was fit to break, When the hunger pain was gnawin’ there, And you hid it for my sake! I bless you for the pleasant word, When your heart was sad and sore— O, I’m thankful you are gone, Mary, Where grief can’t reach you more.

I’m biddin’ you a long farewell, My Mary, kind and true! But I’ll not forget you, darling! In the land I’m goin’ to; They say there’s bread and work for all, And the sun shines always there— But I’ll not forget old Ireland, Were it fifty times as fair.

And often in those grand old woods I’ll sit, and shut my eyes, And my heart will travel back again To the place where Mary lies; And I’ll think I see the little stile Where we sat side by side: And the springin’ corn, and the bright May morn, When first you were my bride.

THE HON. CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH NORTON

1808-1877

_115. I Do Not Love Thee_

I do not love thee!—no! I do not love thee! And yet when thou art absent I am sad; And envy even the bright blue sky above thee, Whose quiet stars may see thee and be glad.

I do not love thee!—yet, I know not why, Whate’er thou dost seems still well done, to me: And often in my solitude I sigh That those I do love are not more like thee!

I do not love thee!—yet, when thou art gone, I hate the sound (though those who speak be dear) Which breaks the lingering echo of the tone Thy voice of music leaves upon my ear.

I do not love thee!—yet thy speaking eyes, With their deep, bright and most expressive blue, Between me and the midnight heaven arise, Oftener than any eyes I ever knew.

I know I do not love thee! yet, alas! Others will scarcely trust my candid heart; And oft I catch them smiling as they pass, Because they see me gazing where thou art.

CHARLOTTE BRONTË

1816-1855

_116. He Saw My Heart’s Woe_

He saw my heart’s woe, discovered my soul’s anguish, How in fever, in thirst, in atrophy it pined; Knew he could heal, yet looked and let it languish, To its moans spirit-deaf, to its pangs spirit-blind.

But once a year he heard a whisper low and dreary, Appealing for aid, entreating some reply; Only when sick, soul-worn and torture-weary, Breathed I that prayer—heard I that sigh.

He was mute as is the grave, he stood stirless as a tower; At last I looked up, and saw I prayed to stone: I asked help of that which to help had no power, I sought love where love was utterly unknown.

Idolater, I kneeled to an idol cut in rock, I might have slashed my flesh and drawn my heart’s best blood, The Granite God had felt no tenderness, no shock; My Baal had not seen nor heard nor understood.