Chapter III

O the rosy light! it fleets.
Dearer dying than all sweets.
That is life: it waves and goes;
Solely in that cherished Rose
Palpitates, or else ’tis death.
Call it love with all thy breath.
Love! it lingers: Love! it nears:
Love! O Love! the Rose appears,
Blushful, magic, reddening air.
Now the choice is on thee: dare!
Mortal seems the touch, but makes
Immortal the hand that takes.
Feel what sea within thee shames
Of its force all other claims,
Drowns them. Clasp! the world will be
Heavenly Rose to swelling sea.

THE ORCHARD AND THE HEATH.

I chanced upon an early walk to spy
A troop of children through an orchard gate:
The boughs hung low, the grass was high;
They had but to lift hands or wait
For fruits to fill them; fruits were all their sky.

They shouted, running on from tree to tree,
And played the game the wind plays, on and round.
’Twas visible invisible glee
Pursuing; and a fountain’s sound
Of laughter spouted, pattering fresh on me.

I could have watched them till the daylight fled,
Their pretty bower made such a light of day.
A small one tumbling sang, ‘Oh! head!’
The rest to comfort her straightway
Seized on a branch and thumped down apples red.

The tiny creature flashing through green grass,
And laughing with her feet and eyes among
Fresh apples, while a little lass
Over as o’er breeze-ripples hung:
That sight I saw, and passed as aliens pass.

My footpath left the pleasant farms and lanes,
Soft cottage-smoke, straight cocks a-crow, gay flowers;
Beyond the wheel-ruts of the wains,
Across a heath I walked for hours,
And met its rival tenants, rays and rains.

Still in my view mile-distant firs appeared,
When, under a patched channel-bank enriched
With foxglove whose late bells drooped seared,
Behold, a family had pitched
Their camp, and labouring the low tent upreared.

Here, too, were many children, quick to scan
A new thing coming; swarthy cheeks, white teeth:
In many-coloured rags they ran,
Like iron runlets of the heath.
Dispersed lay broth-pot, sticks, and drinking-can.

Three girls, with shoulders like a boat at sea
Tipped sideways by the wave (their clothing slid
From either ridge unequally),
Lean, swift, and voluble, bestrid
A starting-point, unfrocked to the bent knee.

They raced; their brothers yelled them on, and broke
In act to follow, but as one they snuffed
Wood-fumes, and by the fire that spoke
Of provender, its pale flame puffed,
And rolled athwart dwarf furzes gray-blue smoke.

Soon on the dark edge of a ruddier gleam,
The mother-pot perusing, all, stretched flat,
Paused for its bubbling-up supreme:
A dog upright in circle sat,
And oft his nose went with the flying steam.

I turned and looked on heaven awhile, where now
The moor-faced sunset broaden’d with red light;
Threw high aloft a golden bough,
And seemed the desert of the night
Far down with mellow orchards to endow.

MARTIN’S PUZZLE.

I.

There she goes up the street with her book in her hand,
And her Good morning, Martin! Ay, lass, how d’ye do?
Very well, thank you, Martin!--I can’t understand!
I might just as well never have cobbled a shoe!
I can’t understand it. She talks like a song;
Her voice takes your ear like the ring of a glass;
She seems to give gladness while limping along,
Yet sinner ne’er suffer’d like that little lass.

II.

First, a fool of a boy ran her down with a cart.
Then, her fool of a father--a blacksmith by trade--
Why the deuce does he tell us it half broke his heart!
His heart!--where’s the leg of the poor little maid!
Well, that’s not enough; they must push her downstairs,
To make her go crooked: but why count the list?
If it’s right to suppose that our human affairs
Are all ordered by heaven--there, bang goes my fist!

III.

For if angels can look on such sights--never mind!
When you’re next to blaspheming, it’s best to be mum.
The parson declares that her woes weren’t designed;
But, then, with the parson it’s all kingdom-come.
Lose a leg, save a soul--a convenient text;
I call it Tea doctrine, not savouring of God.
When poor little Molly wants ‘chastening,’ why, next
The Archangel Michael might taste of the rod.

IV.

But, to see the poor darling go limping for miles
To read books to sick people!--and just of an age
When girls learn the meaning of ribands and smiles!
Makes me feel like a squirrel that turns in a cage.
The more I push thinking the more I revolve:
I never get farther:--and as to her face,
It starts up when near on my puzzle I solve,
And says, ‘This crush’d body seems such a sad case.’

V.

Not that she’s for complaining: she reads to earn pence;
And from those who can’t pay, simple thanks are enough.
Does she leave lamentation for chaps without sense?
Howsoever, she’s made up of wonderful stuff.
Ay, the soul in her body must be a stout cord;
She sings little hymns at the close of the day,
Though she has but three fingers to lift to the Lord,
And only one leg to kneel down with to pray.

VI.

What I ask is, Why persecute such a poor dear,
If there’s Law above all? Answer that if you can!
Irreligious I’m not; but I look on this sphere
As a place where a man should just think like a man.
It isn’t fair dealing! But, contrariwise,
Do bullets in battle the wicked select?
Why, then it’s all chance-work! And yet, in her eyes,
She holds a fixed something by which I am checked.

VII.

Yonder riband of sunshine aslope on the wall,
If you eye it a minute’ll have the same look:
So kind! and so merciful! God of us all!
It’s the very same lesson we get from the Book.
Then, is Life but a trial? Is that what is meant?
Some must toil, and some perish, for others below;
The injustice to each spreads a common content;
Ay! I’ve lost it again, for it can’t be quite so.

VIII.

She’s the victim of fools: that seems nearer the mark.
On earth there are engines and numerous fools.
Why the Lord can permit them, we’re still in the dark;
He does, and in some sort of way they’re his tools.
It’s a roundabout way, with respect let me add,
If Molly goes crippled that we may be taught:
But, perhaps, it’s the only way, though it’s so bad;
In that case we’ll bow down our heads,--as we ought.

IX.

But the worst of me is, that when I bow my head,
I perceive a thought wriggling away in the dust,
And I follow its tracks, quite forgetful, instead
Of humble acceptance: for, question I must!
Here’s a creature made carefully--carefully made!
Put together with craft, and then stamped on, and why?
The answer seems nowhere: it’s discord that’s played.
The sky’s a blue dish!--an implacable sky!

X.

Stop a moment. I seize an idea from the pit.
They tell us that discord, though discord, alone,
Can be harmony when the notes properly fit:
Am I judging all things from a single false tone?
Is the Universe one immense Organ, that rolls
From devils to angels? I’m blind with the sight.
It pours such a splendour on heaps of poor souls!
I might try at kneeling with Molly to-night.

EARTH AND MAN.

I.

On her great venture, Man,
Earth gazes while her fingers dint the breast
Which is his well of strength, his home of rest,
And fair to scan.

II.

More aid than that embrace,
That nourishment, she cannot give: his heart
Involves his fate; and she who urged the start
Abides the race.

III.

For he is in the lists
Contentious with the elements, whose dower
First sprang him; for swift vultures to devour
If he desists.

IV.

His breath of instant thirst
Is warning of a creature matched with strife,
To meet it as a bride, or let fall life
On life’s accursed.

V.

No longer forth he bounds
The lusty animal, afield to roam,
But peering in Earth’s entrails, where the gnome
Strange themes propounds.

VI.

By hunger sharply sped
To grasp at weapons ere he learns their use,
In each new ring he bears a giant’s thews,
An infant’s head.

VII.

And ever that old task
Of reading what he is and whence he came,
Whither to go, finds wilder letters flame
Across her mask.

VIII.

She hears his wailful prayer,
When now to the Invisible he raves
To rend him from her, now his mother craves
Her calm, her care.

IX.

The thing that shudders most
Within him is the burden of his cry.
Seen of his dread, she is to his blank eye
The eyeless Ghost.

X.

Or sometimes she will seem
Heavenly, but her blush, soon wearing white,
Veils like a gorsebush in a web of blight,
With gold-buds dim.

XI.

Once worshipped Prime of Powers,
She still was the Implacable: as a beast,
She struck him down and dragged him from the feast
She crowned with flowers.

XII.

Her pomp of glorious hues,
Her revelries of ripeness, her kind smile
Her songs, her peeping faces, lure awhile
With symbol-clues.

XIII.

The mystery she holds
For him, inveterately he strains to see,
And sight of his obtuseness is the key
Among those folds.

XIV.

He may entreat, aspire,
He may despair, and she has never heed.
She drinking his warm sweat will soothe his need,
Not his desire.

XV.

She prompts him to rejoice,
Yet scares him on the threshold with the shroud.
He deems her cherishing of her best-endowed
A wanton’s choice.

XVI.

Albeit thereof he has found
Firm roadway between lustfulness and pain;
Has half transferred the battle to his brain,
From bloody ground;

XVII.

He will not read her good,
Or wise, but with the passion Self obscures;
Through that old devil of the thousand lures,
Through that dense hood:

XVIII.

Through terror, through distrust;
The greed to touch, to view, to have, to live
Through all that makes of him a sensitive
Abhorring dust.

XIX.

Behold his wormy home!
And he the wind-whipped, anywhither wave
Crazily tumbled on a shingle-grave
To waste in foam.

XX.

Therefore the wretch inclines
Afresh to the Invisible, who, he saith,
Can raise him high: with vows of living faith
For little signs.

XXI.

Some signs he must demand,
Some proofs of slaughtered nature; some prized few,
To satisfy the senses it is true,
And in his hand,

XXII.

This miracle which saves
Himself, himself doth from extinction clutch,
By virtue of his worth, contrasting much
With brutes and knaves.

XXIII.

From dust, of him abhorred,
He would be snatched by Grace discovering worth.
‘Sever me from the hollowness of Earth!
Me take, dear Lord!’

XXIV.

She hears him. Him she owes
For half her loveliness a love well won
By work that lights the shapeless and the dun,
Their common foes.

XXV.

He builds the soaring spires,
That sing his soul in stone: of her he draws,
Though blind to her, by spelling at her laws,
Her purest fires.

XXVI.

Through him hath she exchanged,
For the gold harvest-robes, the mural crown,
Her haggard quarry-features and thick frown
Where monsters ranged.

XXVII.

And order, high discourse,
And decency, than which is life less dear,
She has of him: the lyre of language clear,
Love’s tongue and source.

XXVIII.

She hears him, and can hear
With glory in his gains by work achieved:
With grief for grief that is the unperceived
In her so near.

XXIX.

If he aloft for aid
Imploring storms, her essence is the spur.
His cry to heaven is a cry to her
He would evade.

XXX.

Not elsewhere can he tend.
Those are her rules which bid him wash foul sins;
Those her revulsions from the skull that grins
To ape his end.

XXXI.

And her desires are those
For happiness, for lastingness, for light.
’Tis she who kindles in his haunting night
The hoped dawn-rose.

XXXII.

Fair fountains of the dark
Daily she waves him, that his inner dream
May clasp amid the glooms a springing beam,
A quivering lark:

XXXIII.

This life and her to know
For Spirit: with awakenedness of glee
To feel stern joy her origin: not he
The child of woe.

XXXIV.

But that the senses still
Usurp the station of their issue mind,
He would have burst the chrysalis of the blind:
As yet he will;

XXXV.

As yet he will, she prays,
Yet will when his distempered devil of Self;--
The glutton for her fruits, the wily elf
In shifting rays;--

XXXVI.

That captain of the scorned;
The coveter of life in soul and shell,
The fratricide, the thief, the infidel,
The hoofed and horned;--

XXXVII.

He singularly doomed
To what he execrates and writhes to shun;--
When fire has passed him vapour to the sun,
And sun relumed,

XXXVIII.

Then shall the horrid pall
Be lifted, and a spirit nigh divine,
‘Live in thy offspring as I live in mine,’
Will hear her call.

XXXIX.

Whence looks he on a land
Whereon his labour is a carven page;
And forth from heritage to heritage
Nought writ on sand.

XL.

His fables of the Above,
And his gapped readings of the crown and sword,
The hell detested and the heaven adored,
The hate, the love,

XLI.

The bright wing, the black hoof,
He shall peruse, from Reason not disjoined,
And never unfaith clamouring to be coined
To faith by proof.

XLII.

She her just Lord may view,
Not he, her creature, till his soul has yearned
With all her gifts to reach the light discerned
Her spirit through.

XLIII.

Then in him time shall run
As in the hour that to young sunlight crows;
And--‘If thou hast good faith it can repose,’
She tells her son.

XLIV.

Meanwhile on him, her chief
Expression, her great word of life, looks she;
Twi-minded of him, as the waxing tree,
Or dated leaf.

A BALLAD OF FAIR LADIES IN REVOLT.