Thomas Woolner

“ Can flowers that breathe one little day
In odorous sweetness life away,
And wavering to the earth decay,
Have any claim to rank with her,
Warmed in whose soul impulses stir,
Then bloom to goodness, and aver
Her worth through spheral joys shall move
When suns and systems cease above,
And nothing lives but perfect Love?
p. 53VI. MY LADY’S GLORY.
Strong in the regal strength of love,
Enthroned by native worth
Her sway is held on earth:
Whose soul looks downward from above
Exalted stars, whose power
Brightens the brightest flower. ”

“ From her large eyes full gazing through the gloom
Love darkly wedded to eternal doom,
p. 82As she were gazing from the dead:
Falling at her feet I said,
“Bless me, dear Love, bless me before I go;
With love divine a beam of comfort throw,
For guidance and support, that I through woe
Be raised and purified in grace
Worthy to behold your face.”
She bowed her head in stately tenderness
Low whispering as her hands my brow did press,
“I pray that He will your lone spirit bless,
And if to leave you be my fate,
Pray you for me while I wait.” ”

“ Richer than fruit, more than whole lands of corn,
Fairer than glories of the brightest day,
Dearer than any old familiar sound
Of childhood hours, than every glittering joy
Thrown from the teeming fountain of the earth,
Is our impulsive answer to the call
Of Duty.
They who would be something more
Than they who feast, and laugh and die, will hear
The voice of Duty, as the note of war,
Nerving their spirits to great enterprise,
And knitting every sinew for the charge. ”

“ A man so poor that want assaults his health,
Blessed with relief one morn in boundless wealth,
Breathes no such joy as mine, when she
Stands statelier, expecting me,
Than tall white lilies be:
And the white flutter of her robe to trace,
Where clematis and jasmine interlace,
Expands my gaze triumphantly:
Even such his gaze, who sees on high
His flag, for victory.
p. 33We wander forth unconsciously, because
The azure beauty of the evening draws;
When sober hues pervade the ground,
And universal life is drowned
Into hushed depths of sound. ”

“ Quite fails, there gold will prick the sluggard loon.
It wakes the drowsy lounger of the East,
Who lolls in sunshine idle as a gourd,
To toil like Irish hodmen. Roused, he hears
Coin ringing lively music; falls to work,
And digs, and hews, and grinds: he sees, not far,
Himself, a chief of horsemen richly clad,
Armed with long spears and silver-halted blades,
Seizing pachalic power by a swift blow.
But labour, having brought him gold, brings fears.
The weight of wealth has made his footfall staid ”

“ With death and danger, heaven and earth and sea;
When men’s belief grows wild, seeing alone
p. 161The dreadful black abominable sin,
Forgetful that the light still shines beyond;
And doubting last the very truth of God,
They hate their fellow creatures and themselves;
Groaning beneath a Despot, who thinks less
Of precious human blood, than shipwrights count
Of water in the dock, so many feet
Will bear so many tons, if it but aid
One little step his brutalising aims,
Who as an armed thief sacks his people’s wealth.
Then shines my Love’s star-brightness thro’ the gloom ”

“ To state as fact what unto all men seems,
Who watch cloud-struggles blown through stormy ranges!
p. 46Why fill they not with love the printed page,
Illuminating, as yon moon the night,
Serenely shining on a world of beauty,
Where love moves ever hand in hand with duty;
And life, a long aspiring pilgrimage,
Makes labour but a pastime of delight!
It was delightfulness to him I found
Whistling this afternoon behind his team,
That stepped an easy comfortable pace;
While off the mould-iron curved in rolling grace
Dark earth, wave lapping wave, without a sound ”

“ Making edged danger discipline his strength,
That changes hindrance into past delight,
Fair Duty dowers with her celestial love,
From which the mystic blessing glory grows:
And glory born of Duty is a crown
Of light.
And all thus crowned illume their work
In splendour that no earthly eye may pierce,
And know that every seed they set, and stone
p. 172They fix, and truth they reach, unite to found
A well-planned city in a governed land
That rising babes high a Temple built
Firm in its centre to the praise of God. ”

“ To send a true voice over, for delight and support of earnest workers who open their hearts wide to a good book in a way that we can hardly understand,—we who live wastefully in the midst of plenty, and are apt sometimes to leave to feed on the fair mountain and batten on the moor,—is worth the while of any man of genius who puts his soul into his work, as Mr. Woolner does. ”

“ To scorn the fluttering vanities of wealth
As poisoned sweets and baubles should they dim
His eyes one instant to that awful light
Wherein he moves; who do and who have done
All that has ever aided man to free
Himself, imperfectly, from grosser self
And made his seeing pure:—such souls sublime
Will never want for blessed joy in work,
Working for Duty which can never die.
Men may seem playthings of ironic fate:
One stoutly shod paces a velvet sward ”

“ Ascending, glory-guarded, into heaven.
p. 131Then feeding on the past, and fondling death,
I grew in livid horror: soon had grown,
By foul self cankered, to a charnel ghoule,
Had not Almighty God, gracious in love,
Permitted her own presence once again,
Mysterious as a vision, yet once more
To come a shining warning and reveal
Athwart my path unfathomable gulfs,
And kindle hope wherewith I still might gain
The hills that shine for ever to the blessed. ”

“ Rich hues, a richer blush.
My Lady’s name, when I hear strangers use,
Not meaning her, sounds to me lax misuse;
I love none but My Lady’s name;
Maud, Grace, Rose, Marian, all the same,
Are harsh, or blank and tame.
p. 31My Lady walks as I have seen a swan
Swim where a glory on the water shone:
There ends of willow branches ride,
Quivering in the flowing tide,
By the deep river’s side.
Fresh beauties, howsoe’er she moves, are stirred:
As the sunned bosom of a humming bird
At each pant lifts some fiery hue,
Fierce gold, bewildering green or blue ”

“ Smiles now as smiles a plain of corn
When in the winds of June,
Lit by a shining noon.
A gap of sunlight in the storm;
A blossom ere the spring;
Immortal whispering;
A spirit manifest through form
Which we can touch and kiss,—
To life such beauty is.
p. 57Ah! who can doubt, though he may doubt
Our solid earth will run
A future round the sun,
That gentle impulse given out
Can never fail or die,
But throbs eternally! ”

“ Whose severed heads stretch round in scattered gleam
Of mitre jewelled, coronet and crown.
Sharp cut on gem, set in a thick gold ring,
The size and roundness of a lady’s nail,
Love bleeding on the dart himself doth point ”

“ Support confusion, and pervert the right;
p. 21Set up the weakling in the strong man’s place;
And yoke the great one’s strength to idleness;
Pour gold into the squanderer’s purse, and suck
The wealth, which is a power, from their control
Who would have turned it unto noble use.
And oftentimes a man will strike his friend,
By random verbiage, with sharper pain
Than could a foe, yet scarcely mean him wrong ”

“ A giant glowworm in the odorous gloom.
Ah, stands she smiling there in loose white gown,
Hearing the music of her future drown
The stillness and hushed whispering of the vines,
Whose lattice-clasping leaves o’ershade her room!
p. 48Or kneels she worshipful beside her bed
In large-eyed hope and bended lowliness,
To crave that He, the Giver, may impart
Enough of strength to bind her trembling heart
Steadfast and true; and that her will be led
To own His chastening cares pain but to bless? ”

“ Man, nerved by Love, can steadily endure
Clash of opposing interests; perplexed web
Of crosses that distracting clog advance:
In thickest storm of contest waxes stronger
At momentary thought of home, of her,
His gracious wife, and bright-faced joys.
To him
The wrinkled patriarch, who sits and suns
His shrunken form beneath the boughs he climbed
A lissom boy, whence comes that brooding smile,
Whose secret lifts his cheeks, and overflows
His sight with tender dew? What through his frame
p. 27Melts languor sweeter than approaching sleep
To one made weary by a hard day’s toil? ”

“ And rainy wind that in an ocean-roar
Bore down the forest tops the livelong day,
Through straggling gleams, through random wafts of shade,
Rejoicingly I trod the glistening paths.
Yes, I it was, in dreamy golden haze,
Beheld poor men hard toiling all the hours,
And thought them happier than the birds that sang,
That sang and trilled in gurgles of delight.
Dallying I loitered in the golden time
Long after the loved nightingale had ceased
To pour his passionate impulse over plains
Of shivering corn, now ripened into wealth ”

“ Haunts ever the mysterious gates of Death;
And waits in patient reverence till his doom
Unfolding them fulfils immortal Love.
As from some height, on a wild day of cloud,
A wanderer, chilled and worn, perchance beholds
Move toward him through the landscape soaked in gloom
A golden beam of light; creating lakes,
And verdant pasture, farms, and villages ”

“ And peevish doubts destroy the soul that’s loth
To strive for duty, merged in shameful sloth,
And lolls a weary wretch forlorn,
While men reap the mellow corn.
“It is not man’s to dream in sweet repose;
He toils and murmurs, as he wondering goes,
Poor changeful glitter on the stream that flows
In lapses huge and solemn roar,
Ever on without a shore.
p. 74“The plantlet grown in darkness puts forth spray;
Through loaded gloom yearns feebly toward some ray
Of bounty golden from the outer day
That shines eternally sublime
On the dancing motes of time.” ”

“ Where mountains gleam and bank to silvery heights
That scarce the greatest angel’s wing can reach;
p. 43Where wondrous creatures float beneath the shade
Of growths sublime, unknown to mortal race;
Where hazes opaline lie tranced in dreams,
Where melodies are heard and die at will,
And little spirits make hot love to flowers. ”

“ Swelled gently to a whispering sound, and died.
With joy I wandered on from knoll to knoll
p. 130And lost in marvel, drank the lisping winds,
The fairy winds that lisped me all was good.
Nor marked I when the clogged horizon flew
In dusky vapour crowding up the skies;
But woke anon when deathlike pallor thrown
From wrathful drift laid the whole land in gloom;
When war, enormous war, broke through the heavens,
In sheets and streaking fire and thunderous clap,
With shock on shock, that crushed the ripened corn,
And swept the piled up midsummer to ruin. ”

“ Of rich delight that beauty I could see,
For broadening generations yet to be.
p. 63VIII. HER GARDEN.
The wind that’s good for neither man nor beast
Weeks long incessant from the blighting East
Drove gloom and havoc through the land and ceased.
When swaying mildly over wide Atlantic seas,
Bland and dewy soft streamed the Western breeze.
In walking forth, I felt with vague alarm,
Closer than wont her pressure on my arm,
As through morn’s fragrant air we sought what harm
That Eastern wind’s despite had done the garden growth;
Where much lay dead or languished low for drouth. ”

“ A poet’s mind has given life to his work on the marble, and when he was an associate with Mr. Millais, Mr. Holman Hunt, and others, who, in 1850, were endeavouring to bring truth and beauty of expression into art, by the bold reaction against tame and insincere conventions for which Mr. Ruskin pleaded and which the time required, Mr. Woolner joined in the production by them of a magazine called “The Germ,” to which some of the verses in this volume were contributed.
There is no more to say; but through another page let Wordsworth speak the praise of Books ”

“ For which I paid him tinsel; “She want shoes!
Her feet will press the flowers of paradise,
And, being angel, she will need no food.”
“Eugh! Get your tackle, let us catch some trout.”
She never stayed a long while from her home,
But lived a quiet life; contentedly
Taking the continent and many things
On trust; feeling our landscapes satisfied
Her love for scenes. When from a visit she
Returned, no lovelier picture ever blessed
My sight than when she swam into his arms,
p. 144And stood in beauty, frail, against his strength
Supporting her, and kissed his lips and cheeks
And brow. ”

“ That smother up domed heaven’s scud-fleckered height
And form like mortal armies ranged for fight.
This lighted gloom spreads ghastly on the land;
Sheep do crowd; and herds
Collecting, bellow pitifully bland. ”

“ Yet gentleness is still a noble gain,
And we will trust such freaks are nobly meant.
To touch the power we hold, what work has been
Of vigorous brawn, and keen contriving brains!
Stout men with mighty battle in their limbs ”

“ This Library is based on a belief in worth, and p. 6on a knowledge of the wide desire among men now to read books that are books, which “do,” as Milton says, “contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.” ”

“ And painted scene, and portrait, figured vase,
Each print unique, and gem, we once beheld
When visiting a mansion near, enriched
By generations of collected Art:
The masters, by whose hands the works were wrought,
Long mouldered into dust. Ah, well I know
Why some have burned their symbols in my brain
p. 146And rise before me now!
Stone-bound, Narcissus
Droops melting in himself; and Echo by,
In shrunk despair, hangs envying what he wastes.
Through smouldering morning mists a glorious sun
The mountain-shoulder burns ”