The Victories of Love, and Other Poems Part 10

Love's best is service, and of this, Howe'er devout, use dulls the bliss.

Though love is all of earth that's dear, Its home, my Children, is not here: The pathos of eternity Does in its fullest pleasure sigh.

Be grateful and most glad thereof.

Parting, as 'tis, is pain enough.

If love, by joy, has learn'd to give Praise with the nature sensitive, At last, to G.o.d, we then possess The end of mortal happiness, And henceforth very well may wait The unbarring of the golden gate, Wherethrough, already, faith can see That apter to each wish than we Is G.o.d, and curious to bless Better than we devise or guess; Not without condescending craft To disappoint with bliss, and waft Our vessels frail, when worst He mocks The heart with breakers and with rocks, To happiest havens. You have heard Your bond death-sentenced by His Word.

What, if, in heaven, the name be o'er, Because the thing is so much more?

All are, 'tis writ, as angels there, Nor male nor female. Each a stair In the hierarchical ascent Of active and recipient Affections, what if all are both By turn, as they themselves betroth To adoring what is next above, Or serving what's below their love?

Of this we are certified, that we Are shaped here for eternity, So that a careless word will make Its dint upon the form we take For ever. If, then, years have wrought Two strangers to become, in thought.

Will, and affection, but one man For likeness, as none others can, Without like process, shall this tree The king of all the forest, be, Alas, the only one of all That shall not lie where it doth fall?

Shall this unflagging flame, here nurs'd By everything, yea, when reversed, Blazing, in fury, brighter, wink, Flicker, and into darkness shrink, When all else glows, baleful or brave, In the keen air beyond the grave?

Beware; for fiends in triumph laugh O'er him who learns the truth by half!

Beware; for G.o.d will not endure For men to make their hope more pure Than His good promise, or require Another than the five-string'd lyre Which He has vow'd again to the hands Devout of him who understands To tune it justly here! Beware The Powers of Darkness and the Air, Which lure to empty heights man's hope, Bepraising heaven's ethereal cope, But covering with their cloudy cant Its ground of solid adamant, That strengthens ether for the flight Of angels, makes and measures height, And in materiality Exceeds our Earth's in such degree As all else Earth exceeds! Do I Here utter aught too dark or high?

Have you not seen a bird's beak slay Proud Psyche, on a summer's day?

Down fluttering drop the frail wings four, Missing the weight which made them soar.

Spirit is heavy nature's wing, And is not rightly anything Without its burthen, whereas this, Wingless, at least a maggot is, And, wing'd, is honour and delight Increasing endlessly with height.

11

If unto any here that chance Fell not, which makes a month's romance, Remember, few wed whom they would.

And this, like all G.o.d's laws, is good; For nought's so sad, the whole world o'er, As much love which has once been more.

Glorious for light is the earliest love; But worldly things, in the rays thereof, Extend their shadows, every one False as the image which the sun At noon or eve dwarfs or protracts.

A perilous lamp to light men's acts!

By Heaven's kind, impartial plan, Well-wived is he that's truly man If but the woman's womanly, As such a man's is sure to be.

Joy of all eyes and pride of life Perhaps she is not; the likelier wife!

If it be thus; if you have known, (As who has not?) some heavenly one.

Whom the dull background of despair Help'd to show forth supremely fair; If memory, still remorseful, shapes Young Pa.s.sion bringing Eshcol grapes To travellers in the Wilderness, This truth will make regret the less: Mighty in love as graces are, G.o.d's ordinance is mightier far; And he who is but just and kind And patient, shall for guerdon find, Before long, that the body's bond Is all else utterly beyond In power of love to actualise The soul's bond which it signifies, And even to deck a wife with grace External in the form and face.

A five years' wife, and not yet fair?

Blame let the man, not Nature, bear!

For, as the sun, warming a bank Where last year's gra.s.s droops gray and dank, Evokes the violet, bids disclose In yellow crowds the fresh primrose, And foxglove hang her flus.h.i.+ng head, So vernal love, where all seems dead, Makes beauty abound.

Then was that nought, That trance of joy beyond all thought, The vision, in one, of womanhood?

Nay, for all women holding good, Should marriage such a prologue want, 'Twere sordid and most ignorant Profanity; but, having this, 'Tis honour now, and future bliss; For where is he that, knowing the height And depth of ascertain'd delight, Inhumanly henceforward lies Content with mediocrities!

AMELIA.

Whene'er mine eyes do my Amelia greet It is with such emotion As when, in childhood, turning a dim street, I first beheld the ocean.

There, where the little, bright, surf-breathing town, That shew'd me first her beauty and the sea, Gathers its skirts against the gorse-lit down And scatters gardens o'er the southern lea, Abides this Maid Within a kind, yet sombre Mother's shade, Who of her daughter's graces seems almost afraid, Viewing them ofttimes with a scared forecast, Caught, haply, from obscure love-peril past.

Howe'er that be, She scants me of my right, Is cunning careful evermore to balk Sweet separate talk, And fevers my delight By frets, if, on Amelia's cheek of peach, I touch the notes which music cannot reach, Bidding 'Good-night!'

Wherefore it came that, till to-day's dear date, I curs'd the weary months which yet I have to wait Ere I find heaven, one-nested with my mate.

To-day, the Mother gave, To urgent pleas and promise to behave As she were there, her long-besought consent To trust Amelia with me to the grave Where lay my once-betrothed, Millicent: 'For,' said she, hiding ill a moistening eye, 'Though, Sir, the word sounds hard, G.o.d makes as if He least knew how to guard The treasure He loves best, simplicity.'

And there Amelia stood, for fairness shewn Like a young apple-tree, in flush'd array Of white and ruddy flow'r, auroral, gay, With chilly blue the maiden branch between; And yet to look on her moved less the mind To say 'How beauteous!' than 'How good and kind!'

And so we went alone By walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plume Shook down perfume; Trim plots close blown With daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen, Engross'd each one With single ardour for her spouse, the sun; Garths in their glad array Of white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay, With azure chill the maiden flow'r between; Meadows of fervid green, With sometime sudden prospect of untold Cowslips, like chance-found gold; And broadcast b.u.t.tercups at joyful gaze, Rending the air with praise, Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shout Of Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout; Then through the Park, Where Spring to livelier gloom Quicken'd the cedars dark, And, 'gainst the clear sky cold, Which shone afar Crowded with sunny alps oracular, Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom; And everywhere, Amid the ceaseless rapture of the lark, With wonder new We caught the solemn voice of single air, 'Cuckoo!'

And when Amelia, 'bolden'd, saw and heard How bravely sang the bird, And all things in G.o.d's bounty did rejoice, She who, her Mother by, spake seldom word, Did her charm'd silence doff, And, to my happy marvel, her dear voice Went as a clock does, when the pendulum's off.

Ill Monarch of man's heart the Maiden who Does not aspire to be High-Pontiff too!

So she repeated soft her Poet's line, 'By grace divine, Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine!'

And I, up the bright steep she led me, trod, And the like thought pursued With, 'What is gladness without grat.i.tude, And where is grat.i.tude without a G.o.d?'

And of delight, the guerdon of His laws, She spake, in learned mood; And I, of Him loved reverently, as Cause, Her sweetly, as Occasion of all good.

Nor were we shy, For souls in heaven that be May talk of heaven without hypocrisy.

And now, when we drew near The low, gray Church, in its sequester'd dell, A shade upon me fell.

Dead Millicent indeed had been most sweet, But I how little meet To call such graces in a Maiden mine!

A boy's proud pa.s.sion free affection blunts; His well-meant flatteries oft are blind affronts, And many a tear Was Millicent's before I, manlier, knew That maidens s.h.i.+ne As diamonds do, Which, though most clear, Are not to be seen through; And, if she put her virgin self aside And sate her, crownless, at my conquering feet, It should have bred in me humility, not pride.

Amelia had more luck than Millicent, Secure she smiled and warm from all mischance Or from my knowledge or my ignorance, And glow'd content With my--some might have thought too much--superior age, Which seem'd the gage Of steady kindness all on her intent.

Thus nought forbade us to be fully blent.

While, therefore, now Her pensive footstep stirr'd The darnell'd garden of unheedful death, She ask'd what Millicent was like, and heard Of eyes like her's, and honeysuckle breath, And of a wiser than a woman's brow, Yet fill'd with only woman's love, and how An incidental greatness character'd Her unconsider'd ways.

But all my praise Amelia thought too slight for Millicent And on my lovelier-freighted arm she leant, For more attent; And the tea-rose I gave, To deck her breast, she dropp'd upon the grave.

'And this was her's,' said I, decoring with a band Of mildest pearls Amelia's milder hand.

'Nay, I will wear it for _her_ sake,' she said: For dear to maidens are their rivals dead.

And so, She seated on the black yew's tortured root, I on the carpet of sere shreds below, And nigh the little mound where lay that other, I kiss'd her lips three times without dispute, And, with bold wors.h.i.+p suddenly aglow, I lifted to my lips a sandall'd foot, And kiss'd it three times thrice without dispute.

Upon my head her fingers fell like snow, Her lamb-like hands about my neck she wreathed.

Her arms like slumber o'er my shoulders crept, And with her bosom, whence the azalea breathed, She did my face full favourably smother, To hide the heaving secret that she wept!

Now would I keep my promise to her Mother; Now I arose, and raised her to her feet, My best Amelia, fresh-born from a kiss, Moth-like, full-blown in birthdew shuddering sweet, With great, kind eyes, in whose brown shade Bright Venus and her Baby play'd!

At inmost heart well pleased with one another, What time the slant sun low Through the plough'd field does each clod sharply shew, And softly fills With shade the dimples of our homeward hills, With little said, We left the 'wilder'd garden of the dead, And gain'd the gorse-lit shoulder of the down That keeps the north-wind from the nestling town, And caught, once more, the vision of the wave, Where, on the horizon's dip, A many-sailed s.h.i.+p Pursued alone her distant purpose grave; And, by steep steps rock-hewn, to the dim street I led her sacred feet; And so the Daughter gave, Soft, moth-like, sweet, Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk, Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk.

And now 'Good-night!'

Me shall the phantom months no more affright.

For heaven's gates to open well waits he Who keeps himself the key.

THE DAY AFTER TO-MORROW.

Perchance she droops within the hollow gulf Which the great wave of coming pleasure draws, Not guessing the glad cause!

Ye Clouds that on your endless journey go, Ye Winds that westward flow, Thou heaving Sea That heav'st 'twixt her and me, Tell her I come; Then only sigh your pleasure, and be dumb; For the sweet secret of our either self We know.

Tell her I come, And let her heart be still'd.

One day's controlled hope, and then one more, And on the third our lives shall be fulfill'd!

Yet all has been before: Palm placed in palm, twin smiles, and words astray.

What other should we say?

But shall I not, with ne'er a sign, perceive, Whilst her sweet hands I hold, The myriad threads and meshes manifold Which Love shall round her weave: The pulse in that vein making alien pause And varying beats from this; Down each long finger felt, a differing strand Of silvery welcome bland; And in her breezy palm And silken wrist, Beneath the touch of my like numerous bliss Complexly kiss'd, A diverse and distinguishable calm?

What should we say!

It all has been before; And yet our lives shall now be first fulfill'd.

And into their summ'd sweetness fall distill'd One sweet drop more; One sweet drop more, in absolute increase Of unrelapsing peace.

O, heaving Sea, That heav'st as if for bliss of her and me, And separatest not dear heart from heart, Though each 'gainst other beats too far apart, For yet awhile Let it not seem that I behold her smile.

O, weary Love, O, folded to her breast, Love in each moment years and years of rest, Be calm, as being not.

Ye oceans of intolerable delight, The blazing photosphere of central Night, Be ye forgot.

Terror, thou swarthy Groom of Bride-bliss coy, Let me not see thee toy.

O, Death, too tardy with thy hope intense Of kisses close beyond conceit of sense; O, Life, too liberal, while to take her hand Is more of hope than heart can understand; Perturb my golden patience not with joy, Nor, through a wish, profane The peace that should pertain To him who does by her attraction move.

Has all not been before?

One day's controlled hope, and one again, And then the third, and ye shall have the rein, O Life, Death, Terror, Love!

But soon let your unrestful rapture cease, Ye flaming Ethers thin, Condensing till the abiding sweetness win One sweet drop more; One sweet drop more in the measureless increase Of honied peace.

THE AZALEA.