MOTHERHOOD.

FROM out the front of being, undefiled,
    A life hath been upheaved with struggle and pain;
    Safe in her arms a mother holds again
That dearest miracle--a new-born child.
To moans of anguish terrible and wild--
    As shrieks the night-wind through an ill-shut pane--
    Pure heaven succeeds; and after fiery strain
Victorious woman smiles serenely mild.


Yea, shall she not rejoice, shall not her frame
    Thrill with a mystic rapture! At this birth,
The soul now kindled by her vital flame
    May it not prove a gift of priceless worth?
Some saviour of his kind whose starry fame
    Shall bring a brightness to the darkened earth.

THE AFTER-GLOW.

IT is a solemn evening, golden-clear--
    The Alpine summits flame with rose-lit snow
    And headlands purpling on wide seas below,
And clouds and woods and arid rocks appear
Dissolving in the sun's own atmosphere
    And vast circumference of light, whose slow
    Transfiguration--glow and after-glow--
Turns twilight earth to a more luminous sphere.


Oh heart, I ask, seeing that the orb of day
Has sunk below, yet left to sky and sea
    His glory's spiritual after-shine:
I ask if Love, whose sun hath set for thee,
May not touch grief with his memorial ray,
    And lend to loss itself a joy divine?

TO THE OBELISK.
DURING THE GREAT FROST, 1881.

THOU sign-post of the Desert! Obelisk,
Once fronting in thy monumental pride
Egypt's fierce sun, that blazing far and wide,
Sheared her of tree and herb, till like a disk
Her waste stretched shadowless, and fraught with risk
To those who with their beasts of burden hied
Across the seas of sand until they spied
Thy pillar, and their flagging hearts grew brisk:


Now reared beside out Thames so wintry grey,
Where blocks of ice drift with the drifting stream,
Thou risest o'er the alien prospect! Say,
Yon dull, blear, rayless orb whose lurid gleam
Tinges the snow-draped ships and writhing steam,
Is this the sun which fired thine orient day?

MANCHESTER BY NIGHT.

O'ER this huge town, rife with intestine wars,
Whence as from monstrous sacrificial shrines
Pillars of smoke climb heavenward, Night inclines
Black brows majestical with glimmering stars.
Her dewy silence soothes life's angry jars:
And like a mother's wan white face, who pines
Above her children's turbulent ways, so shines
The moon athwart the narrow cloudy bars.


Now toiling multitudes that hustling crush
Each other in the fateful strife for breath,
And, hounded on by diverse hungers, rush
Across the prostrate ones that groan beneath,
Are swathed within the universal hush,
As life exchanges semblances with death.

THE RED SUNSETS, 1883.

THE twilight heavens are flushed with gathering light,
    And o'er wet roofs and huddling streets below
    Hang with a strange Apocalyptic glow
On the black fringes of the wintry night.
Such bursts of glory may have rapt the sight
    Of him to whom on Patmos long ago
    The visionary angel came to show
That heavenly city built of chrysolite.


And lo, three factory hands begrimed with soot,
    Aflame with the red splendour, marvelling stand,
And gaze with lifted faces awed and mute.
    Starved of earth's beauty by Man's grudging hand,
O toilers, robbed of labour's golden fruit,
    Ye, too, may feast in Nature's fairyland.

THE RED SUNSETS, 1883.

THE boding sky was charactered with cloud,
    The scripture of the storm--but high in air,
    Where the unfathomed zenith still was bare,
A pure expanse of rose-flushed violet glowed
And, kindling into crimson light, o'erflowed
    The hurrying wrack with such a blood-red glare,
    That heaven, igniting, wildly seemed to flare
On the dazed eyes of many an awe-struck crowd.


And in far lands folk presaged with blanched lips
Disastrous wars, earthquakes, and foundering ships,
    Such whelming floods as never dykes could stem,
Or some proud empire's ruin and eclipse:
    Lo, such a sky, they cried, as burned o'er them
    Once lit the sacking of Jerusalem!

THE SLEEPING BEAUTY.

THERE was intoxication in the air;
    The wind, keen blowing from across the seas,
    O'er leagues of new-ploughed land and heathery leas,
Smelt of wild gorse whose gold flamed everywhere.
And undertone of song pulsed far and near,
    The soaring larks filled heaven with ecstasies,
    And, like a living clock among the trees,
The shouting cuckoo struck the time of year.


For now the Sun had found the earth once more,
    And woke the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss;
Who thrilled with light of love in every pore,
    Opened her flower-blue eyes, and looked in his.
Then all things felt life fluttering at their core--
    The world shook mystical in lambent bliss.

THE ROBIN REDBREAST.

THE year's grown songless! No glad pipings thrill
    The hedge-row elms, whose wind-worn branches shower
    Their leaves on the sere grass, where some late flower
In golden chalice hoards the sunlight still.
Our summer guests, whose raptures used to fill
    Each apple-blossomed garth and honeyed bower,
    Have in adversity's inclement hour
Abandoned us to bleak November's chill.


But hearken! Yonder russet bird among
    The crimson clusters of the homely thorn
Still bubbles o'er with little rills of song--
A blending of sweet hope and resignation:
    Even so, when life of love and youth is shorn,
One friend becomes its last, best consolation.

A WINTER LANDSCAPE.

ALL night, all day, in dizzy, downward flight,
    Fell the wild-whirling, vague, chaotic snow,
    Till every landmark of the earth below,
Trees, moorlands, roads, and each familiar sight
Were blotted out by the bewildering white.
    And winds, now shrieking loud, now whimpering low,
    Seemed lamentations for the world-old woe
That death must swallow life, and darkness light.


But all at once the rack was blown away,
    The snowstorm hushing ended in a sigh;
    Then like a flame the crescent moon on high
Leaped forth among the planets; pure as they,
Earth vied in whiteness with the Milky Way:
    Herself a star beneath the starry sky.

ON THE LIGHTHOUSE AT ANTIBES.

A STORMY light of sunset glows and glares
    Between two banks of cloud, and o'er the brine
    Thy fair lamp on the sky's carnation line
Alone on the lone promontory flares:
Friend of the Fisher who at nightfall fares
    Where lurk false reefs masked by the hyaline
    Of dimpling waves, within whose smile divine
Death lies in wait behind Circean snares.


The evening knows thee ere the evening star;
    Or sees that flame sole Regent of the bight,
When storm, hoarse rumoured by the hills afar,
    Makes mariners steer landward by thy light,
Which shows through shock of hostile nature's war
    How man keeps watch o'er man through deadliest night

BEAUTY.

EVEN as on some black background full of night
    And hollow storm in cloudy disarray,
    The forceful brush of some great master may
More brilliantly evoke a higher light;
So beautiful, so delicately white,
    So like a very metaphor of May,
    Your loveliness on my life's sombre grey
In its perfection stands out doubly bright.


And yet your beauty breeds a strange despair,
    And pang of yearning in the helpless heart;
To shield you from time's fraying wear and tear,
    That from yourself yourself would wrench apart,
How save you, fairest, but to set you where
    Mortality kills death in deathless art?

IN THE ST. GOTTHARDT PASS.

THE storm which shook the silence of the hills
And sleeping pinnacles of ancient snow
Went muttering off in one last thunder throe
Mixed with a moan of multitudinous rills;
Yea, even as one who has wept much, but stills
The flowing tears of some convulsive woe
When a fair light of hope begins to glow
Athwart the gloom of long remembered ills:


So does the face of this scarred mountain height
Relax its stony frown, while slow uprolled
Invidious mists are changed to veiling gold.
Wild peaks still fluctuate between dark and bright,
But when the sun laughs at them, as of old,
They kiss high heaven in all embracing light.

CAGNES.
ON THE RIVIERA.

IN tortuous windings up the steep incline
    The sombre street toils to the village square,
    Whose antique walls in stone and moulding bear
Dumb witness to the Moor. Afar off shine,
With tier on tier, cutting heaven's blue divine,
    The snowy Alps; and lower the hills are fair,
    With wave-green olives rippling down to where
Gold clusters hang and leaves of sunburnt vine.


You may perchance, I never shall forget
    When, between twofold glory of land and sea,
We leant together o'er the old parapet,
    And saw the sun go down. For, oh, to me,
The beauty of that beautiful strange place
Was its reflection beaming from your face.

HEART'S-EASE.

AS opiates to the sick on wakeful nights,
    As light to flowers, as flowers in poor men's rooms,
    As to the fisher when the tempest glooms
The cheerful twinkling of his village lights;
As emerald isles to flagging swallow flights,
    As roses garlanding with tendrilled blooms
    The unweeded hillocks of forgotten tombs,
As singing birds on cypress-shadowed heights,


Thou art to me--a comfort past compare--
    For thy joy-kindling presence, sweet as May,
    Sets all my nerves to music, makes away
With sorrow and the numbing frost of care,
    Until the influence of thine eyes' bright sway
Has made life's glass go up from foul to fair.

UNTIMELY LOVE.

PEACE, throbbing heart, nor let us shed one tear
    O'er this late love's unseasonable glow;
    Sweet as a violet blooming in the snow,
The posthumous offspring of the widowed year
That smells of March when all the world is sere,
    And, while around the hurtling sea-winds blow--
    Which twist the oak and lay the pine tree low--
Stands childlike in the storm and has no fear.


Poor helpless blossom orphaned of the sun,
    How could it thus brave winter's rude estate?
    Oh love, more helpless, why bloom so late,
Now that the flower-time of the year is done?
Since thy dear course must end when scarce begun,
    Nipped by the cold touch of relentless fate.

THE PASSING YEAR.

NO breath of wind stirs in the painted leaves,
    The meadows are as stirless as the sky,
    Like a Saint's halo golden vapours lie
Above the restful valley's garnered sheaves.
The journeying Sun, like one who fondly grieves,
    Above the hills seems loitering with a sigh,
    As loth to bid the fruitful earth good-bye,
On these hushed hours of luminous autumn eves.


There is a pathos in his softening glow,
    Which like a benediction seems to hover
O'er the tranced earth, ere he must sink below
    And leave her widowed of her radiant Lover,
A frost-bound sleeper in a shroud of snow,
    While winter winds howl a wild dirge above her.

CHRISTMAS EVE.

ALONE--with one fair star for company,
The loveliest star among the hosts of night,
While the grey tide ebbs with the ebbing light--
I pace along the darkening wintry sea.
Now round the yule-log and the glittering tree
Twinkling with festive tapers, eyes as bright
Sparkle with Christmas joys and young delight,
As each one gathers to his family.


But I--a waif on earth where'er I roam--
Uprooted with life's bleeding hopes and fears
From that one heart that was my heart's sole home,
Feel the old pang pierce through the severing years,
And as I think upon the years to come
That fair star trembles through my falling tears.

THE EVENING OF THE YEAR.

WAN mists enwrap the still-born day;
The harebell withers on the heath;
And all the moorland seems to breathe
The hectic beauty of decay.
Within the open grave of May
Dishevelled trees drop wreath on wreath;
Wind-wrung and ravelled underneath
Waste leaves choke up the woodland way.


The grief of many partings near
Wails like an echo in the wind:
The days of love lie far behind,
The days of loss lie shuddering near.
Life's morning-glory who shall bind?
It is the evening of the year.

NEW YEAR'S EVE.

ANOTHER full-orbed year hath waned to-day,
And set in the irrevocable past,
And headlong whirled long Time's winged blast
My fluttering rose of youth is borne away:
Ah rose once crimson with the blood of May,
A honeyed haunt where bees would break their fast,
I watch thy scattering petals flee aghast,
And all the flickering rose-lights turning grey.


Poor fool of life! plagued ever with thy vain
Regrets and futile longings! were the years
Not cups o'erbrimming still with gall and tears?
Let go thy puny personal joy and pain!
If youth with all its brief hope disappears,
To deathless hope we must be born again.

NIRVANA.

DIVEST thyself, O Soul, of vain desire!
    Bid hope farewell, dismiss all coward fears;
    Take leave of empty laughter, emptier tears,
And quench, for ever quench, the wasting fire
Wherein this heart, as in a funeral pyre,
    Aye burns, yet is consumed not. Years on years
    Moaning with memories in thy maddened ears--
Let at thy word, like refluent waves, retire.


Enter thy soul's vast realm as Sovereign Lord,
And, like that angel with the flaming sword,
    Wave off life's clinging hands. Then chains will fall
From the poor slave of self's hard tyranny--
And Thou, a ripple rounded by the sea,
    In rapture lost be lapped within the All.

Bruce and the Spider

FOR Scotland's and for freedom's right
The Bruce his part had played,
In five successive fields of fight
Been conqured and dismayed;
Once more against the English host
His band he led, and once more lost
The meed for which he fought;
And now from battle, faint and worn,
The homeless fugitive forlorn
A hut's lone shelter sought.

And cheerless was that resting-place
For him who claimed a throne:
His canopy devoid of grace,
The rude, rough beams alone;
The heather couch his only bed, --
Yet well I ween had slumber fled
From couch of eider-down!
Through darksome night till dawn of day,
Absorbed in wakeful thought he lay
Of Scotland and her crown.

The sun rose brightly, and its gleam
Fell on that hapless bed,
And tinged with light each shapeless beam
Which roofed the lowly shed;
When, looking up with wistful eye,
The Bruce beheld a spider try
His filmy thread to fling
From beam to beam of that rude cot;
And well the insect's toilsome lot
Taught Scotland's future king.

Six times his gossamery thread
The wary spider threw;
In vain the filmy line was sped,
For powerless or untrue
Each aim appeared, and back recoiled
The patient insect, six times foiled,
And yet unconquered still;
And soon the Bruce, with eager eye,
Saw him prepare once more to try
His courage, strength, and skill.

One effort more, his seventh and last!
The hero hailed the sign!
And on the wished-for beam hung fast
That slender, silken line;
Slight as it was, his spirit caught
The more than omen, for his thought
The lesson well could trace,
Which even "he who runs may read,"
That Perseverance gains its meed,
And Patience wins the race.

The Sea

BEAUTIFUL, sublime, and glorious;
    Mild, majestic, foaming, free, --
Over time itself victorious,
    Image of eternity!

Sun and moon and stars shine o'er thee,
    See thy surface ebb and flow,
Yet attempt not to explore thee
    In thy soundless depths below.

Whether morning's splendors steep thee
    With the rainbow's glowing grace,
Tempests rouse, or navies sweep thee,
    'Tis but for a moment's space.

Earth, -- her valleys and her mountains,
    Mortal man's behests obey;
The unfathomable fountains
    Scoff his search and scorn his sway.

Such art thou, stupdendous ocean!
    But, if overwhelmed by thee,
Can we think, without emotion,
    What must thy Creator be?

Lamp of Our Feet

LAMP of our feet whereby we trace
    Our path when wont to stray;
Stream from the fount of heav'nly grace,
    Brook by the traveler's way.

Bread of our souls whereon we feed,
    True manna from on high;
Our guide and chart wherein we read
    Of realms beyond the sky.

Pillar of fire, through watches dark,
    Or radiant cloud by day;
When waves would break our tossing bark,
    Our anchor and our stay.

Word of the ever living God,
    Will of His glorious Son;
Without Thee, how could earth be trod
    Or heav'n itself be won?

Lord, grant us all aright to learn
    The wisdom it imparts
And to its heavenly teaching turn
    With simple, childlike hearts.

ALL things bright and beauteous,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wondrous,
The LORD GOD made them all.

Each little flower that opens,
Each little bird that sings,
He made their glowing colours,
He made their tiny wings.

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
GOD made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

The purple-headed mountain,
The river running by,
The sunset, and the morning,
That brightens up the sky,

The cold wind in the winter,
The pleasant summer sun,
The ripe fruits in the garden,
He made them every one.

The tall trees in the greenwood,
The meadows where we play,
The rushes by the water,
We gather every day;--

He gave us eyes to see them,
And lips that we might tell,
How great is GOD Almighty,
Who has made all things well.

Prologue to Alice

ALL in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied,
While little hands make vain pretence
Our wanderings to guide.

Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather&xclm.
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?

Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict ``to begin it'':
In gentler tones Secunda hopes
``There will be nonsense in it!''
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more than once a minute.

Anon, to sudden silence won,
In fancy they pursue
The dream-child moving through a land
Of wonders wild and new,
In friendly chat with bird or beast--
And half believe it true.

And ever, as the story drained
The wells of fancy dry,
And faintly strove that weary one
To put the subject by
``The rest next time--'' ``It is next time!''
The happy voices cry.

Thus grew the tale of Wonderland:
Thus slowly, one by one,
Its quaint events were hammered out--
And now the tale is done,
And home we steer, a merry crew,
Beneath the setting sun.

Alice! A childish story take,
And with a gentle hand,
Lay it where Childhoood's dreams are twined
In Memory's mystic band,
Like pilgrim's wither'd wreath of flowers
Pluck'd in a far-off land.

How doth the little crocodile...

HOW doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

You are old, father William...

"YOU are old, father William," the young man said,
"And your hair has become very white;
And yet you incessantly stand on your head --
Do you think, at your age, it is right?

"In my youth," father William replied to his son,
"I feared it might injure the brain;
But, now that I'm perfectly sure I have none,
Why, I do it again and again."

"You are old," said the youth, "as I mentioned before,
And you have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door --
Pray what is the reason for that?"

"In my youth," said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
"I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment -- one shilling a box --
Allow me to sell you a couple?"

"You are old," said the youth, "and your jaws are too weak
For anything tougher than suet;
Yet you finished the goose, with the bones and the beak --
Pray, how did you manage to do it?"

"In my youth," said his fater, "I took to the law,
And argued each case with my wife;
And the muscular strength, which it gave to my jaw,
Has lasted the rest of my life."

"You are old," said the youth, "one would hardly suppose
That your eye was as steady as ever;
Yet you balanced an eel on the end of your nose --
What made you so awfully clever?"

"I have answered three questions, and that is enough,"
Said his father. "Don't give yourself airs!
Do you think I can listen all day to such stuff?
Be off, or I'll kick you down stairs.

Speak roughly to your little boy...

SPEAK roughly to your little boy,
And beat him when he sneezes;
He only does it to annoy,
Because he knows it teases.

Cho.-- Wow! wow! wow!

I speak severely to my boy,
And beat him when he sneezes:
For he can thoroughly enjoy
The pepper when ye pleases!

Cho.

The Lobster-Quadrille

"WILL you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle -- will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?

"You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!"
But the snail replied "Too far, too far!" and gave a look askance --
Said he thanked the whiting kindly, but he would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, would not join the dance.
Would not, could not, would not, could not, could not join the dance.

"What matters it how far we go?" his scaly friend replied.
"There is another shore, you know, upon the other side.
The further off from England the nearer is to France --
Then turn not pale, beloved snail, but come and join the dance.
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you joint the dance?

Lewis Carroll

The Voice of the Lobster

"'TIS the voice of the Lobster: I heard him declare
'You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair.'
As a duck with its eyelids, so he with his nose
Trims his belt and his buttons, and turns out his toes.
When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark,
And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark:
But, when the tide rises and sharks are around,
His voice has a timid and tremulous sound."

"I passed by his garden, and marked, with one eye,
How the Owl and the Panter were sharing a pie:
The Panther took pie-crust, and gravy, and meat,
While the Old had the dish as its share of the treat.
When the pie was all finished, the Owl, as a boon,
Was kindly permitted to pocket the spoon:
While the Panther received knife and fork with a growl,
And concluded the banquet by [eating the owl.]