I long for scenes where man has never trod- And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, J. Clare CLXXI THE BOURNE Underneath the growing grass, By the shadows as they pass. Youth and health will be but vain, Can hold round what once the earth Seem'd too narrow to contain. C. G. Rossetti CLXXII SONG When I am dead, my dearest, Sing no sad songs for me; Be the green grass above me With showers and dewdrops wet; And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget. I shall not see the shadows, I shall not feel the rain; And dreaming through the twilight That doth not rise nor set, Haply I may remember, And haply may forget. C. G. Rossetti CLXXIII THE FOUNTAIN OF TEARS If you go over desert and mountain, You shall come, with a heart that is bursting Very peaceful the place is, and solely And it flows and it flows with a motion You shall surely-without a word spoken, Kneel down there and know your heart broken, And yield to the long curb'd emotion That day by the Fountain of Tears. For it grows and it grows, as though leaping Yea, so blessed and good seems that fountain, Then, alas! while you lie there a season, Nor wonder indeed for what reason But perhaps, while you lie, never lifting O perhaps the mere silences round youAll things in that place grief hath found you, Yea, e'en to the clouds o'er you drifting, May soothe you somewhat through your tears. You may feel, when a falling leaf brushes Your face, as though some one had kiss'd you, Or think at least some one who miss'd you Hath sent you a thought,-if that cheers; Or a bird's little song, faint and broken, May pass for a tender word spoken: -Enough, while around you there rushes That life-drowning torrent of tears. And the tears shall flow faster and faster, Brim over, and baffle resistance, And roll down blear'd roads to each distance Of past desolation and years; Till they cover the place of each sorrow, But the floods of the tears meet and gather; The sound of them all grows like thunder: Is pour'd the whole sorrow of years? Account of the great human weeping: A. O'Shaughnessy CLXXIV THE WRECK Hide me, Mother! my Fathers belong'd to the church of old, I am driven by storm and sin and death to the ancient fold, I cling to the Catholic Cross once more, to the Faith that saves, My brain is full of the crash of wrecks, and the roar of waves, My life itself is a wreck, I have sullied a noble name, I am flung from the rushing tide of the world as a waif of shame, I am roused by the wail of a child, and awake to a livid light, And a ghastlier face than ever has haunted a grave by night, I would hide from the storm without, I would flee from the storm within, I would make my life one prayer for a soul that died in his sin, I was the tempter, Mother, and mine was the deeper fall; I will sit at your feet, I will hide my face, I will tell you all. He that they gave me to, Mother, a heedless and innocent bride I never have wrong'd his heart, I have only wounded his pride Spain in his blood and the Jew-dark-visaged, stately and tall A princelier-looking man never stept thro' a Prince's hall. And who, when his anger was kindled, would venture to give him the nay? And a man men fear is a man to be loved by the women they say. And I could have loved him too, if the blossom can doat on the blight, Or the young green leaf rejoice in the frost that sears it at night; He would open the books that I prized, and toss them away with a yawn, Repell'd by the magnet of Art to the which my nature was drawn, The word of the Poet by whom the deeps of the world are stirr'd, The music that robes it in language beneath and beyond the word! My Shelley would fall from my hands when he cast a contemptuous glance From where he was poring over his Tables of Trade and Finance; My hands, when I heard him coming, would drop from the chords or the keys, But ever I fail'd to please him, however I strove to please- All day long far-off in the cloud of the city, and there Lost, head and heart, in the chances of dividend, consol, and share And at home if I sought for a kindly caress, being woman and weak, His formal kiss fell chill as a flake of snow on the cheek: And so, when I bore him a girl, when I held it aloft in my joy, He look'd at it coldly, and said to me 'Pity it isn't a boy.' The one thing given me, to love and to live for, glanced at in scorn! The child that I felt I could die for-as if she were basely born! |