FullReads

XII.

Smokeless–and voiceless–
Majestic and fair–
No roar of its whirlpool
Of struggle and care,
Broke the sweet silence
Enfolding the air.
Peace might have made it
A palace and dome,
Could our wild passions
Allow it a home.
Peace! no; it cannot rest
On the earth’s teeming breast;–
War is our life!
Sleep is the truce of God
Plucked from the strife!
To-morrow, that comes not,
Shall Peace have her throne
Low in the sleepy air
Trumpets are blown.
Wake thee, great city.
To-day is thine own.

XIII.

Whence came the tremor,
The flush and the start?
What sent the dancing blood
Back to his heart?
He saw as if mirror’d,
That he might behold.
Phantoms of Pride and Hope,
Glory and Gold;
Phantoms that dazzled him
All his life long,
Leading him, tempting him,
Luring him wrong.

XIV.

He saw his dark scroll of life
Bared to his sight,
Spreading before him
In darkness or light,
All his heart’s history,
All his thought’s mystery;
Back through the years
To the dim distance
Of his first tears;
Back to the early days,
When a fair boy,
Spotless and artless
He carolled in joy.
Plaiting green rushes,
And gathering flowers,
Full of wild fancies
As April of showers;
Back to the happy time,
Crowned with his youth.
When his heart’s visions
Were Beauty and Truth;
Back to his moonlights.
His yearnings and sighs,
When the best Heaven he sought
Lay in a maiden’s thought,
Or her blue eyes;
Back to the darkness
Clouding his morn;
Darkness and discord.
And longings forlorn,
Errors and frailties
And sufferings keen,
With flashes of gladness
And glory between.

XV.

Moodily, sullenly
Watching the tide,
Still the bad angel
Stood at his side;
Black o’er his path
Fell her shadow of fear,
Angrily whispered
Her voice in his ear;
Her voice of reproaches
Too dreadful to bear.
“Look in thy heart,” she said,
“Fool! and despair!
Fool–that would’st live
With such guilt on thy head–
Grief is for living men
Peace for the dead.”

XVI.

Out from the sunshine
An answer there went,–
“Hush thee, false spirit.
The man shall repent,
God’s mercy shall save him!”
Dear angel of love!
He looked through the morning,
And saw thee above:
The light of thy garment’s hem
Dazzled the day;
Soft through the purple air
Borne far away
Voices ecstatic
Seemed mingling to say,
“The man shall not perish!”
Shine brighter, bright dream!
O’er his dark memory,
Sparkle and beam;
Linger to charm him!
The struggle shall cease,
The spirit of evil
Shall leave him to peace.
The passions that rack him
Shall dwindle and die,
Hope points above him,
Sole star in the sky.
Shine vision of Beauty
His heart to allume,
Good angels be with him,
Day dawns on his gloom!

Part the Second

I.

Embowered amid the Surrey Hills
The quiet village lay,
Two rows of ancient cottages
Beside the public way,
A modest church, with ivied tower,
And spire with mosses grey.

II.

Beneath the elm’s o’erarching boughs
The little children ran;
The self-same shadows flecked the sward
In days of good Queen Anne;
And then, as now, the children sang
Beneath its branches tall–
They grew, they loved, they sinned, they died–
The tree outlived them all.
But still the human flow’rets grew,
And still the children played,
And ne’er the tree lacked youthful feet
To frolic in its shade,
The ploughboy’s whistle in the spring.
Or chant of happy maid.