But what has changed in this sweet glen
As we from what our hearts were then?
Say you, the glow of hope is bright,
And if it be a meteor light,
That hurtles through the thick'ning sky,
'Tis wise to catch it ere it die?
Tell you me, 'tis a joy to feel
Our toil increase a fellow's weal?
That, 'mid these fainting, fading, bowers,
There linger still some am'ranth flowers,
And honest will, and honest prayer,
Will find them lurking every where?-
Say on, I can but add, Amen,-
We are not now as we were then.
"Oh, Brother! when I gaze upon
These tombs of little blisses gone,-
When, through the dense and steamy air,
Which we with men are wont to share,
A breeze of distant youth has stole
In freshness on my fevered soul,-
I feel like one who long has lain
With madness gath'ring in his brain,
And, bursting from the strong distress,
Wakes to a terrible consciousness.
Then blame you, that my pulse beat now,
Blame you the agony on my brow?
There was, when fear was all a stranger,
Ere knowledge showed the way to danger—
When love was firm-when faith was sure,
And head and heart alike secure ;-
But now.... Remember you a flower
Which we with care, from sun and shower,—
It was our mother's,-loved to guard,
And how we joyed in our reward,
When first we watched its bloom appear,
When it was old so many a year;
And how we heard, with tearful eye,
The good old gardener's prophecy,-
For he was deep in nature's lore,—
That that bright plant would bloom no more?
The flowers fell off,-the stalk was gathered,-
The root grew dry,—the lank leaves withered,―
And, sad to lose its only pride,
The poor Agave sunk and died:
Our one, our only bloom is gone,
But, brother, still we linger on.
"Between the cradle and the shroud, If chance, amid the pilgrim crowd,
Though strange the time and strange the place,
We light on some familiar face,
Once loved and known, as friend knows friend,
In whom a thousand memories blend,
Which whilom slumbered dull and dim,
But rise in light and cling to him;
Though not a trait of old as wont,
Though care has knit the ample front,
And vice unstrung the well-toned frame,
Still something,-something is the same.
But if we ever hope to find
Some traces in that life-worn mind
Of its pure self, its simple being,
Such as it was, when, unforeseeing,
We thought that Nature's laws would fail,
Ere Sin could make its boldness quail;
Such as it was, ere sensuous things
Had clipt the bird of Eden's wings,
Ere stifled groan and secret sigh
Replaced the tear so soon brushed by,-
'Tis vain,-alas, for human shame!
There nothing, nothing is the same.
"O that the painter's fav'rite scheme
Were not alone a painter's dream!
O that the Paradise he feigns,
Where Innocence with Childhood reigns,
And cherub forms and infant guise
Inclose the heart divinely wise,
Were not alone a poet's creed,-
No symbol,-but a truth indeed!
That all this circling life might close
Its wearied course where first it rose,
And that our second life must be
A new, eternal, infancy,
Keeping the bliss we lose as men,
To be for aye as we were then!"
THE FRIENDSHIP FLOWER.
"When first the friendship-flower is planted Within the garden of your soul,
Little of care or thought are wanted
To guard its beauty fresh and whole;
But when the one impassioned age
Has full revealed the magic bloom,
A wise and holy tutelage
Alone can shun the open tomb.
"It is not absence you should dread,—
For absence is the very air
In which, if sound at root, the head
Shall wave most wonderful and fair;
With sympathies of joy and sorrow
Fed, as with morn and even dews,
Ideal colouring it may borrow
Richer than ever earthly hues.
"But oft the plant, whose leaves unsere
Refresh the desert, hardly brooks
The common-peopled atmosphere
Of daily thoughts and words and looks;
It trembles at the brushing wings
Of many a careless fashion-fly,
And strange suspicions aim their stings
To taint it as they wanton by.
"Rare is the heart to bear a flower,
That must not wholly fall and fade,
Where alien feelings, hour by hour,
Spring up, beset, and overshade;
Better, a child of care and toil,
To glorify some needy spot,
Than in a glad redundant soil
To pine neglected and forgot.
"Yet when, at last, by human slight,
Or close of their permitted day,
From the sweet world of life and light
Such fine creations lapse away,—
Bury the relics that retain
Sick odours of departed pride,—
Hoard as ye will your memory's gain,
But let them perish where they died."
"We read together, reading the same book, Our heads bent forward in a half embrace, So that each shade that either spirit took Was straight reflected in the other's face;
We read, not silent, nor aloud, but each
Followed the eye that pass'd the page along,
With a low murmuring sound, that was not speech,
Yet with so much monotony,
In its half slumbering harmony,
You might not call it song;
More like a bee, that in the noon rejoices,
Than any customed mood of human voices.
"Then if some wayward or disputed sense
Made cease awhile that music, and brought on
A strife of gracious-worded difference,
Too light to hurt our souls' dear unison,
We had experience of a blissful state,
In which our powers of thought stood separate,
Each, in its own high freedom, set apart,
But both close folded in one loving heart;
So that we seemed, without conceit, to be
Both one and two in our identity.
"We prayed together, praying the same prayer,
But each that prayed did seem to be alone,
And saw the other in a golden air
Poised far away, beneath a vacant throne,
Beckoning the kneeler to arise and sit
Within the glory which encompassed it:
And when obeyed, the Vision stood beside,
And led the way through the upper hyaline,
Smiling in beauty tenfold glorified,
Which, while on earth, had seemed enough divine,
The beauty of the Spirit-Bride,
Who guided the rapt Florentine.
"The depth of human reason must become
As deep as is the holy human heart,
Ere aught in written phrases can impart
The might and meaning of that ecstasy
To those low souls, who hold the mystery
Of the unseen universe for dark and dumb.
"But we were mortal still, and when again
We raised our bended knees, I do not say
That our descending spirits felt no pain
To meet the dimness of an earthly day;
Yet not as those disheartened, and the more
Debased, the higher that they rose before,
But, from the exaltation of that hour,
Out of God's choicest treasury, bringing down
New virtue to sustain all ill,— -new power
To braid life's thorns into a regal crown.
We past into the outer world, to prove
The strength miraculous of united love."
Strange that with all our love of nature, and of art, we never were a painter. True that in boyhood we were no contemptible hand at a lion or a tiger-and sketches by us of such cats springing or preparing to spring in keelavine, dashed off some fifty or sixty years ago, might well make Edwin Landseer stare. Even yet we are a sort of Salvator Rosa at a savage scene, and our blacklead pencil heaps up confused shatterings of rocks, and flings a mountainous region into convulsions, as if an earthquake heaved, in a way that is no canny, making people shudder as if something had gone wrong with this planet of ours, and creation were falling back into chaos. But we love scenes of beautiful repose too profoundly ever to dream of "transferring them to canvass." Such employment would be felt by us to be desecration—though we look with delight on the work when done by othersthe picture without the process-the product of genius, without thought of its mortal instruments. We work in words, and words are, in good truth, images, feelings, thoughts; and of these the outer world as well as the inner is composed, let materialists say what they will. Prose is poetry-we have proved that to the satisfaction of all mankind. Look! we beseech you-how the little loch seems to rise up with its tall heronry-a central isle -and all its sylvan braes, till it lies almost on a level with the floor of our cave, from which in three minutes we could hobble on our crutch down the inclining greensward to the bay of waterlilies, and in that canoe be afloat among the swans. All birches-not any other kind of tree-except the pines, on whose tops the large nests repose and here and there a still bird standing as if asleep. What a place for roes!
Why, we are absolutely writing an article, and to fill a sheet how pleasant to have recourse again to such a man as Milnes! Thus
|