And God's perpetual blessing, that shall be
Renewed to mankind everlastingly.
This taught, it went to teach to other lands,
And silent darkness fell from God's own hands.
THE SPRING AT TRENTHAM.
(PUBLISHED August, 1857.)
THE Muses' fountains do not flow
Only in some far southern land;
They murmur round on every hand,
And in our English sunshine glow.
Upon one came we yesterday,
Through avenues of brother trees,
Embracing in sweet amities,
In the calm light of passing day.
Down from them dropt an ivy shower
Of greenest, constant loveliness;
The sun, in bounteous lavishness,
Sprinkled their heads with golden glower.
A thousand shades were on the fern,
A softest gleam upon the moss;
While fox-gloves all their beauty toss
Toward the faint sky for which they yearn.
Among them rove we to the spring,
Hearing afar its gentle tone,
That spreads a holy sense among
The trees, like songs that angels sing.
Heard faintly on the raptured air,
Sweeter than silence, harmony
That made the mortal pause and sigh,
Such quietness of soul to share.
Up above the hill-top
This cool autumn night,
Up above the hill-top
Rose a world of light.
Purely, calmly, brightly,
Moved the quiet globe,
Its radiance flowing lightly
As an angel's robe.
Stars above, below it,
Stars beyond all ken ;—
Moving like a poet
Among other men.
(PUBLISHED August, 1858.)
WHEN man in Eden walked,
He heard the voice of flowers;
Joyfully they talked
Through all the summer hours.
And when the night was dark,
The stars began their song;
He loved to stand and hark
To strains so clear and strong.
Sweetly this world of ours
Echoed those voices twain,
Poetry, voice of flowers;
Music, the starry strain.
Mute now are stars and flowers,—
The echoes never die ; And sad this world of ours,
Without such melody.
THE PRESENT.
(PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER, 1857.)
O HAPPY age! and age of clearer sight
Than any past; awaking from a dull
Materialism, cold and pitiful,
Into a region of sublimer light ;—
Of Art-that bodies out the infinite,
Bringing down heaven to man, his soul to lull
To peace, by visions of the beautiful,
And lead through beauty to the true and right.
For Art is history of each by-gone time,
And of the nobler thoughts that therein dwelt;
And prophecy in colour, form, and rhyme,
Of all the glory that shall yet be felt
In coming souls, to make this grand old earth
More beautiful than when it had its birth.
STRATFORD-UPON-AVON.
(PUBLISHED 1857.)
METHINKS the Father looks down with a smile,
When earnest souls, in humble pilgrimage,
Visit the shrines of Poet, or of Sage,
Lit by their light, and sacred by their toil;
For such came only on an embassage
To tell God's truth to man. Their souls came forth
From Him, and are a part of Him; their worth
Is praise to Him through each succeeding age;
And scarcely could we give Him higher praise
Than by our praise of one to whom He gave
Wide mind and tender heart, and sweetest song;
Who shrined the highest truth in loftiest lays :-
Our reverence at his birthplace, home, and grave,
Is to our God a pæan loud and long.
Uncovered, in our homage to the name
Of him whose words have echoed through the earth,
And taught it living wisdom; so we came
Into the humble room where he had birth;
Where the young being struggled into light,
With all its fair remembrance of the skies ;-
Came like a star to make the dull world bright,
And fill the air with spheric harmonies.
Hither had pilgrims come from many a land ;
Here had come monarch, noble, poet, sage,
And left the traces upon every hand,
Of reverence to this Son of every age;
And all the room was hallowed by the trace
Of genius; yea, a glory on the place.
Within this little room he often sat
Upon his mother's knee, or by her side;
And sweeter wisdom he had none than that
She taught him oft at silent eventide,
In the calm dusk. Mothers are very wise
In holy instincts, and high sympathies,
And quiet duties, virtues all allied
To sweet beliefs that in the dear heart rise,
And have their source in heaven. And at times
The mother may have told her gentle thought
To her young son, in simple, tender rhymes.
Mother, be glad in thy meek dignity :
We praise the teacher when we praise the taught;
And honour to thy son is unto thee.
We went through fields, where often he would roam,
Plucking the Mary-buds and wild woodbine,
And the forget-me-not, that he might twine
A coronal for Anna ;-to the home
Where simply lived and loved his peerless fair;
Maiden of tender word and burning glance,
The lady of his castles in the air,
The lovely heroine of his romance.
We paced the garden where he walked with her
Swearing nor rose nor lily was as fair.
We saw the oaken seat where they did rest,
To all but love and hope's bright visions blind,
Painting the roseate future they would find;
While the white stars were sloping to the west.
We in the chancel stood with bated breath,
And held a strange communion with the dead.
It was an hour when truth and feeling wed;
And such a wondrous word the spirit saith,
That we would willingly then welcome death,
Or willingly live on ; when rosy red
All futures gleamed, and holy thoughts were led
To holy purposes. And then, aloud,
"As with the poet, so with us," we vowed.
"In calm ineffable he lowly sleeps ;
His words still live and work; and through the crowd
Perform their mission, and for aye increase:
So will we leave, ere that we seek the deeps,
Like words or deeds, if we would rest in peace."
(PUBLISHED AUGUST, 1857.)
GOD, I have sought to stand up very high,
A poet among men, that clear in me
They might behold the primal symmetry
Of soul, against the glory of the sky;
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