Nor will that book, whate'er its page contain,
Convince thee that the world is false and vain.
E'en now there is a something at thy heart
That would be off, but may not, dare not, start;
Yes, yes! thy face, thine eyes, thy closed lips, prove
Thou wert intended to be loved and love.
Poor maiden! victim of the vilest craft
At which e'er Moloch grinn'd or Belial laugh'd,
May all thy aimless wishes be forgiven!
May all thy sighs be register'd in Heaven!
And God his mercy and his love impart
For what thou should'st have been, to what thou art!
OH! why is beauty still a bud, infolding
A greater beauty that can never be,
Yet always is its faint fair self beholding,
In all of fair and good that man may see?
Nay, beauty is with thee the power of life,
The germ and sweet idea of thy being;
As beauty fashion'd that first maid and wife,
That made primeval man rejoice in seeing.
He dream'd of beauty, and he wish'd to see
A form to be the substance of his dream;
So want begot a child on vacancy,
And that now is which did before but seem.
Adam did love before he look'd on Eve;
He found himself unblest in Eden's bower. A love there is that does not yet conceive
Its own existence: 'tis a simple power,—
A power that most does recognise its might
In weakness, want, and everlasting yearning; Whose heaven is soaring, seeking, ceaseless flight, Whose hell is thirst and everlasting burning.
For what is hell, but an eternal thirst,
And burning for the bounty once rejected? And what is heaven, but good on earth rehearsed, In the calm centre of the Lord perfected?
Then ask not why is beauty but a bud,
That never more than half itself discloses ; Sweet flower, like thee is every human good, And love divine is seen in unblown roses.
YES, I am old, and older yet must be,
Drifting along the everlasting sea;
And yet, through puzzling light and perilous dark,
I bear with me, as in a lonely ark,
A precious cargo of dear memory;
For, though I never was a citizen,
Enroll'd in Faith's municipality,
And ne'er believed the phantom of the fen
To be a tangible reality,
Yet have I loved sweet things, that are not now,
In frosty starlight, or the cold moonbeam.
I never thought they were; and therefore now
No doubt obscures the memory of my dream.
My Fairy Land was never upon earth,
Nor in the heaven to which I hoped to go;
For it was always by the glimmering hearth,
When the last fagot gave its reddest glow,
And voice of eld wax'd tremulous and low,
And the sole taper's intermittent light,
Like a slow-tolling bell, declared good night.
Then could I think of Peri and of Fay,
As if their deeds were things of yesterday.
I felt the wee maid in her scarlet hood
Real as the babes that wander'd in the wood,
And could as well believe a wolf could talk
As that a man beside the babes could stalk,
With gloomy thoughts of murder in his brain;
And then I thought how long the lovely twain
Threaded the paths that wound among the trees,
And how at last they sunk upon their knees,
And said their little prayers, as prettily
As e'er they said them at their mother's knee,
And went to sleep. I deem'd them still asleep
Clasp'd in each other's arms, beneath a heap
Of fragrant leaves;-so little then knew I
Of bare-bone Famine's ghastly misery.
Yet I could weep and cry, and sob amain,
Because they never were to wake again;
But if 'twas said, "They 'll wake at the last day!" Then all the vision melted quite away;
As from the steel the passing stain of breath,
So quickly parts the fancy from the faith.
And I thought the dear babes in the wood no more true
Than Red Riding Hood,-ay, or the grim loup-garou,
That the poor little maid for her granny mistook;
I knew they were both only tales in a book.
OH, thou sweet daughter and last lingering flower
Of a great nation's loyal hope and love,
Last of a line of kings whose royal dower
Is virgin loveliness sublimed to power,
The yearning blossom of the expectant dove
On the strong eagle's spacious wings upborne ;
Or shall I call thee prophecy of spring,
In thine own virgin pureness blossoming,
Like the white May-bloom on the naked thorn;
Nay, rather art thou like a flower
Crowning some high crazy tower,
So sweetly smiling on the rifted wall,
That, for thy sake, we would not see it fall.
Oh, royal maid, excuse the idle brain
That, knowing thee but in thy loved ideal,
Plays with thine image, and would very fain
Love and revere thee too as something real;
Yet never having seen thee, never heard
The human accents of thine innocent thought,
Would rather think thee flower, or happy bird,
Than the dull lesson that thou hast been taught;
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