Full cold my greeting was and dry:
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
I saw with half-unconscious eye
She wore the colors I approved.
She took the little ivory chest,
With half a sigh she turn'd the key, Then raised her head with lips comprest, And gave my letters back to me. And gave the trinkets and the rings,
My gifts, when gifts of mine could please; As looks a father on the things
Of his dead son, I look'd on these.
She told me all her friends had said; I raged against the public liar; She talk'd as if her love were dead, But in my words were seeds of fire. "No more of love; your sex is known: I never will be twice deceived. Henceforth I trust the man alone, The woman cannot be believed.
"Thro' slander, meanest spawn of Hell (And women's slander is the worst), And you, whom once I lov'd so well, Thro' you, my life will be accurst." I spoke with heart, and heat and force, I shook her breast with vague alarms- Like torrents from a mountain source We rush'd into each other's arms.
We parted: sweetly gleam'd the stars, And sweet the vapor-braided blue, Low breezes faun'd the belfry bars,
As homeward by the church I drew. The very graves appear'd to smile,
So fresh they rose in shadow'd swells; "Dark porch," I said, "and silent aisle, There comes a sound of marriage bells."
Mourn, for to us he seems the last, Remembering all his greatness in the Past. No more in soldier fashion will he greet With lifted hand the gazer in the street. O friends, our chief state-oracle is dead: Mourn for the man of iong-enduring blood, The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, Whole in himself, a common good. Mourn for the man of amplest influence, Yet clearest of ambitious crime, Our greatest yet with least pretence, Great in council and great in war, Foremost captain of his time, Rich in saving common-sense, And, as the greatest only are,
In his simplicity sublime.
O good gray head which all men knew,
O voice from which their omens all men drew,
O iron nerve to true occasion true,
O fall'n at length that tower of strength
Which stood four-square to all the winds that blew! Such was he whom we deplore.
The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er.
The great World-victor's victor will be seen no more.
All is over and done: Render thanks to the Giver, England, for thy son. Let the bell be toll'd. Render thanks to the Giver, And render him to the mould. Under the cross of gold That shines over city and river, There he shall rest forever Among the wise and the bold. Let the bell be toll'd:
And a reverent people behold
The towering car, the sable steeds: Bright let it be with his blazon'd deeds Dark in its funeral fold.
Let the bell be tolled:
And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd; And the sound of the sorrowing anthem roll'a Thro' the dome of the golden cross; And the volleying cannon thunder his loss; He knew their voices of old.
For many a time in many a clime His captain's-ear has heard them boom
ÚDE ON THE DEATH OF THE DUKE Bellowing victory, bellowing doom;
With an empire's lamentation,
Let us bury the Great Duke
When he with those deep voices wronght, Guarding realms and kings from shame; With those deep voices our dead captain taught The tyrant, and asserts his claim
In that dread sound to the great name, Which he has worn so pure of blame,
To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation, In praise and in dispraise the same,
Mourning when their leaders fall,
Warriors carry the warrior's pall,
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.
Where shall we lay the man whom we deplore? Here, in streaming London's central roar. Let the sound of those he wrought for,
And the feet of those he fought for, Echo round his bores forevermore,
Lead out the pageant: sad and slow,
As fits an universal woe,
Let the long long procession go,
And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, And let the mournful martial music blow; The last great Englishman is low.
A man of well-attemper'd frame. O civic muse, to such a name, To such a name for ages long, To such a name,
Preserve a broad approach of fame, And ever-ringing avenues of song.
Who is he that cometh, like an honor'd guest,
With banner and with music, with soldier and with
With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest? Mighty seaman, this is he
Was great by land as thou by sea.
Thine island loves thee well, thou famous man,
The greatest sailor since our world began, Now, to the roll of muffled drums, To thee the greatest soldier comes: For this is he
Was great by land as thou by sea;
His toes were thine; he kept us free O give him welcome, this is he, Worthy of our gorgeous rites, And worthy to be laid by thee; For this is England's greatest son, He that gain'd a hundred fights, Nor ever lost an English gun; This is he that far away Against the myriads of Assaye
Clash'd with his fiery few and won; And underneath another sun, Warring on a later day, Round affrighted Lisbon drew The treble works, the vast designs Of his labor'd rampart-lines, Where he greatly stood at bay, Whence he issued forth anew, And ever great and greater grew, Beating from the wasted vines Back to France her banded swarms, Back to France with countless blows, Till o'er the hills her eagles flew Past the Pyrenean pines, Follow'd up in valley and glen With blare of bugle, clamor of men, Roll of cannon and clash of arms, And England pouring on her foes. Such a war had such a close. Again their ravening eagle rose
In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing wings, And barking for the thrones of kings; Tif. one that sought but Duty's iron crown On that loud sabbath shook the spoiler down; A day of onsets of despair!
Dash'd on every rocky square
Their surging charges foam'd themselves away; Last, the Prussian trumpet blew;
Thro the long-tormented air
Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray.
And down we swept and charged and overthrew. So great a soldier taught us there, What long-enduring hearts could do In that world's-earthquake, Waterloo! Mighty seaman, tender and true,
And pure as he from taint of craven guile,
O saviour of the silver-coasted isle,
O shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, If aught of things that here befall Touch a spirit among things divine, If love of country move thee there at all,
Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine! And thro' the centuries let a people's voice In full acclaim,
A people's voice! we are a people yet. Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget Confused by brainless mobs and lawless Powers; Thank Him who isled us here, and roughly set His Saxon in biown seas and storming showers, We have a voice, with which to pay the debt Of boundless love and reverence and regret To those great men who fought, and kept it ours. And keep it ours, O God, from brute control; O Statesmen, guard us, guard the eye, the soul Of Europe, keep our noble England whole, And save the one true seed of freedom sown Betwixt a people and their ancient throne, That sober freedom out of which there springs Our loyal passion for our temperate kings;
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust, And drill the raw world for the march of mind, Till crowds at length be sane and crowns be just But wink no more in slothful overtrust. Remember him who led your hosts;
He bade you guard the sacred coasts. Your cannons moulder on the seaward wall; His voice is silent in your council-hall Forever; and whatever tempests lower Forever silent; even if they broke
In thunder, silent: yet remember all
He spoke among you, and the Man who spoke ; Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power; Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow Thro' either babbling world of high and low; Whose life was work, whose language rife With rugged maxims hewn from life; Who never spoke against a foc: Whose eighty winters freeze with one rebuke All great self-seekers trampling on the right: Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named: Truth-lover was our English Luke, Whatever record leap to light He never shall be shamed.
Lo, the leader in these glorious wars Now to glorious burial slowly borne, Follow'd by the brave of other lands, He, on whom from both her open hands Lavish Honor shower'd all her stars, And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn. Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great,
But as he saves or serves the state. Not once or twice in our rough island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory: He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden Love of self, before his journey closes, He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting Into glossy purples, which outredden All voluptuous garden-roses.
Not once or twice in our fair island-story, The path of duty was the way to glory: He, that ever following her commands, On with toil of heart and knees and hands, Thro' the long gorge to the far light has won His path upward, and prevail'd,
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled Are close upon the shining table-lands
To which our God Himself is moon and sun.
Such was he: his work is done.
But while the races of mankind endure,
Let his great example stand
Colossal, seen of every land,
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure;
Till in all lands and thro' all human story
The path of duty be the way to glory:
And let the land whose hearths he saved from shame For many and many an age proclaim At civic revel and pomp and game, And when the long-illumined cities flame, Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, Eternal honor to his name.
Peace, his triumph will be sung By some yet unmoulded tongue
Far on in summers that we shall not see. Peace, it is a day of pain
For one about whose patriarchal knee Late the little children clung:
O peace, it is a day of pain
For one upon whose hand and heart and brain Once the weight and fate of Europe hung.
Ours the pain, be his the gain!
More than is of man's degree Must be with us, watching here At this, our great solemnity. Whom we see not we revere. We revere, and we refrain
From talk of battles loud and vain,
And brawling memories all too free For such a wise humility
As befits a solemn fane:
We revere, and while we hear The tides of Music's golden sea Setting toward eternity,
Uplifted high in heart and hope are we, Until we doubt not that for one so true There must be other nobler work to do Than when he fought at Waterloo, And Victor he must ever be. For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill And break the shore, and evermore Make and break, and work their will: 'Tho' world on world in myriad myriads roll Round us, each with different powers, And other forms of life than ours, What know we greater than the soul?
On God and Godlike men we build our trust. Hush, the Dead March wails in the people's ears: The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs and tears: The black earth yawns: the mortal disappears; Ashes to ashes, dust to dust:
He is gone who seem'd so great.- Gone; but nothing can bereave him
Of the force he made his own Being here, and we believe him Something far advanced in state, And that he wears a truer crown
Than any wreath that man can weave him. But speak no more of his renown, Lay your earthly fancies down, And in the vast cathedral leave him. God accept him, Christ receive him. 1852.
WRITTEN AT EDINBURGH,
O LOVE, what honrs were thine and mine, In lands of palm and southern pine; In lands of palm, of orange-blossom, Of olive, aloe, and maize and vine. What Roman strength Turbia show'd In ruin, by the mountain road; How like a gem, beneath, the city Of little Monaco, basking, glow'd.
How richly down the rocky dell The torrent vineyard streaming fell
To meet the sun and sunny waters, That only heaved with a summer swell.
What slender campanili grew By bays, the peacock's neck in hue; Where, here and there, on sandy beaches A milky-beil'd amaryllis blew. How young Columbus seem'd to rove, Yet present in his natal grove,
Now watching high on mountain cornice, And steering, now, from a purple cove,
Now pacing mute by ocean's rim; Till, in a narrow street and dim,
I stay'd the wheels at Cogoletto, And drank, and loyally drank to him.
Nor knew we well what pleased us most, Not the clipt palm of which they boast; But distant color, happy hamlet, A moulder'd citade! on the coast,
Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen A light amid its olives green;
Or olive-hoary cape in ocean; Or rosy blossom in hot ravine, Where oleanders flush'd the bed Of silent torrents, gravel-spread;
And, crossing, oft we saw the glisten Of ice, far up on a mountain head.
We loved that hall, tho' white and cold, Those niched shapes of noble mould, A princely people's awful princes, The grave, severe Genovese of old. At Florence too what golden hours, In those long galleries, were ours;
What drives about the fresh Cascinò, Or walks in Boboli's ducal bowers.
In bright vignettes, and each complete, Of tower or duomo, sunny-sweet,
Or palace, how the city glitter'd, Thro' cypress avenues, at our feet.
But when we crost the Lombard plain Remember what a plague of rain;
Of rain at Reggio, rain at Parma; At Lodi, rain, Piacenza, rain.
And stern and sad (so rare the smiles Of sunlight) look'd the Lombard piles, Porch-pillars on the lion resting, And sombre, old, colonnaded aisles.
O Milan, O the chanting quires,
The giant windows' blazon'd fires,
The height, the space, the gloom, the gioryt
A mount of marble, a hundred spires!
I climb'd the roofs at break of day; Sun-smitten Alps before me lay.
I "tood among the silent statues, And statued pinnacles, mute as they.
How faintly-flush'd, how phantom-fair, Was Monte Rosa, hanging there
A thousand shadowy-pencill'd valleys And snowy dells in a golden air.
Remember how we came at last To Como; shower and storm and blast
Had lown the lake beyond his limit, And all was flooded; and how we past
From Como, when the light was gray, And in my head, for half the day,
The rich Virgilian rustic measure Of Lari Maxume, all the way,
Like ballad-burthen music, kept, As on the Lariano crept
To that fair port below the castle Of Queen Theodolind, where we slept;
Or hardly slept, but watch'd awake
A cypress in the moonlight shake, The moonlight touching o'er a terrace One tall Agavè above the lake.
What more? we took our last adien, And up the snowy Splugen drew, But ere we reach'd the highest summit I pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you.
TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.-THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. 147
It told of England then to me,
And now it tells of Italy.
O love, we two shall go no longer To lands of summer across the sea;
So dear a life your arms enfold Whose crying is a cry for gold:
Yet here to-night in this dark city, When ill and weary, alone and cold,
I found, tho' crush'd to hard and dry, This nurseling of another sky
Still in the little book you lent me, And where you tenderly laid it by:
And I forgot the clouded Forth,
The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth, The bitter east, the misty summer And gray metropolis of the North.
Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain, Perchance, to charm a vacant brain, Perchance, to dream you still beside me, My faucy fled to the South again.
TO THE REV. F. D. MAURICE.
COME, when no graver cares employ, God-father, come and see your boy: Your presence will be sun in winter, Making the little one leap for joy.
For, being of that honest few, Who give the Fiend himself his due, Should eighty thousand college councils Thunder "Anathema," friend, at you:
Should all our churchmen foam in spite At you, so careful of the right,
Yet one lay-hearth would give you welcome (Take it and come) to the Isle of Wight;
Where, far from noise and smoke of town, I watch the twilight falling brown
All round a careless-order'd garden Close to the ridge of a noble down.
You'll have no scandal while you dine, But honest talk and wholesome wine, And only hear the magpie gossip Garrulous under a roof of pine:
For groves of pine on either hand, To break the blast of winter, stand; And further on, the hoary Channel Tumbles a breaker on chalk and sand;
Where, if below the milky steep Some ship of battle slowly creep, And on thro' zones of light and shadow Glimmer away to the lonely deep,
We might discuss the Northern sin Which made a selfish war begin; Dispute the claims, arrange the chances; Emperor, Ottoman, which shall win:
Or whether war's avenging rod Shall lash all Europe into blood;
Till you should turn to dearer matters, Dear to the man that is dear to God;
How best to help the slender store, How mend the dwellings, of the poor: How gain in life. os fe advances, Valor and charity more and more.
Come, Maurice, come: the lawn as yet
Is hoar with rime, or spongy-wet;
But when the wreath of March has blossom'd, Crocus, anemone, violet,
Or later, pay one visit here,
For those are few we hold as dear: Nor pay but one, but come for many, Many and many a happy year. January, 1854.
O WELL for him whose will is strong! He suffers, but he will not suffer long; He suffers, but he cannot suffer wrong: For him nor moves the loud world's random mock Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound, Who seems a promontory of rock,
That, compass'd round with turbulent sound, In middle ocean meets the surging shock, Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.
But ill for him who, bettering not with time, Corrupts the strength of heaven-descended Will, And ever weaker grows thro' acted crime, Or seeming-genial venial fault, Recurring and suggesting still! He seems as one whose footsteps Toiling in immeasurable sand, And o'er a weary, sultry land, Far beneath a blazing vault,
Sown in a wrinkle of the monstrous hill, The city sparkles like a grain of salt.
THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE
HALF a league, half a league, Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward, the Light Brigade! "Charge for the guns!" he said. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!" Was there a man dismay'd? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd: Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die, Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.
Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd, Storm'd at with shot and shell, Boldiy they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell Rode the six hundred.
Darkening the world. We have lost him: he is gone: Ruled in this isle, and ever waging war
We know him now: all narrow jealousies Are silent; and we see him as he moved, How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise, With what sublime repression of himself, And in what limits, and how tenderly; Not swaying to this faction or to that; Not making his high place the lawless perch Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years Wearing the white flower of a blameless life, Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne, And blackens every blot: for where is he, Who dares foreshadow for an only son A lovelier life, a more unstain'd, than his? Or how should England dreaming of his sons Hope more for these than some inheritance Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine, Thou noble Father of her Kings to be, Laborious for her people and her poor- Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day- Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace- Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art, Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed, Beyond all titles, and a household name, Hereafter, thro' all times, Albert the Good.
Break not, O woman's-heart, but still endure; Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure, Remembering all the beauty of that star Which shone so close beside Thee, that ye made One light together, but has past and leaves The Crown a lonely splendor.
Each upon other, wasted all the land; And still from time to time the heathen host Swarm'd overseas, and harried what was left. And so there grew great tracts of wilderness, Wherein the beast was ever more and more, But man was less and less, till Arthur came. For first Aurelius lived and fought and died, And after him King Uther fought and died, But either fail'd to make the kingdom one. And after these King Arthur for a space, And thro' the puissance of his Table Round, Drew all their petty princedoms under him, Their king and head, and made a realm, and reign'd
And thus the land of Cameliard was waste, Thick with wet woods, and many a beast therein, And none or few to scare or chase the beast; So that wild dog, and wolf and boar and bear Came night and day, and rooted in the fieids, And wallow'd in the gardens of the King. And ever and anon the wolf would steal The children and devour, but now and then, Her own brood lost or dead, lent her fierce teat To human sucklings; and the children, housed In her foul den, there at their meat would growl, And mock their foster-mother on four feet, Till, straighten'd, they grew up to wolf-like men, Worse than the wolves. And King Leodogran Groan'd for the Roman legions here again, And Cæsar's eagle: then his brother king, Urien, assail'd him: last a heathen horde, Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood, And on the spike that split the mother's heart Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed, He knew not whither he should turn for aid.
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