Alexander Smith

“ Are high above your order, as the stars
Sit large and tranquil o'er the restless clouds
[Pg 120] That weep and lighten, pelt the earth with hail,
And fret themselves away. The truly great
Rest in the knowledge of their own deserts,
Nor seek the confirmation of the world.
Wouldst thou be calm and still?
WALTER.
I'd be as lieve
A minnow to leviathan, that draws
A furrow like a ship. Away! away!
You'd make the world a very oyster-bed.
I'd rather be the glad, bright-leaping foam,
Than the smooth sluggish sea. O let me live
To love and flush and thrill—or let me die! ”

“ WALTER.
O fool! fool! fool!
These hands are brown with toil; that brow is seamed,
Still must you sweat and swelter in the sun,
And trudge, with feet benumbed, the winter's snow,
Nor intermission have until the end.
Thou canst not draw down fame upon thy head,
And yet would cling to life! I'll not believe it;
The faces of all things belie their hearts,
[Pg 99] Each man's as weary of his life as I.
This anguish'd earth shines on the moon—a moon.
The moon hides with a cloak of tender light
A scarr'd heart fed upon by hungry fires.
Black is this world, but blacker is the next ”

“ Filled my lorn heart with gladness, as the moon
Filled the great vacant night with moonlight, till
Its silver bliss ran o'er—so after prayer
I slept in the lap of peace—next morn you came.
WALTER.
And then I found you beautiful and pale—
Pale as that moonlight night! O Violet,
I have been undeceived. In my hot youth
I kissed the painted bloom off Pleasure's lips
And found them pale as Pain's,—and wept aloud.
Never henceforward can I hope to drain
The rapture of a lifetime at a gulp.
My happiness is not a troubled joy;
'Tis deep, serene as death. ”

“ CHARLES.
He told me once,
The saddest thing that can befall a soul
Is when it loses faith in God and Woman;
For he had lost them both. Lost I those gems—
Though the world's throne stood empty in my path,
I would go wandering back into my childhood,
Searching for them with tears.
EDWARD.
Let him go
Alone upon his waste and dreary road,
He will return to the old faith he learned
Beside his mother's knee. That memory
That haunts him, as the sweet and gracious moon
Haunts the poor outcast Earth, will lead him back
To happiness and God.
CHARLES.
May it be so! ”

“ God is a worker. He has thickly strewn
Infinity with grandeur. God is Love;
He yet will wipe away Creation's tears,
And all the worlds shall summer in His smile.
Why work I not? The veriest mote that sports
Its one-day life within the sunny beam
Has its stern duties. Wherefore have I none?
[Pg 189] I will throw off this dead and useless past,
As a strong runner, straining for his life,
Unclasps a mantle to the hungry winds.
A mighty purpose rises large and slow
From out the fluctuations of my soul,
As, ghost-like, from the dim and tumbling sea
Starts the completed moon. ”

“ Say, alas! that years should harry
Gloss from life and joy from lips,
Love-lustre from the eyes of Clari!
Moon! that walkest the blue deep,
Like naked maiden in her sleep;
Star! whose pallid splendour dips
In the ghost-waves of the main.
Oh, ye hear me not! old Night,
[Pg 72] My tears and cries are vain."
He ceased to sing; queenly the lady lay,
One white hand hidden in a golden shoal
Of ringlets, reeling down upon her couch,
And heaving on the heavings of her breast,
The while the thoughts rose in her eyes like stars,
Rising and setting in the blue of night. ”

“ This empired planet with its load of crowns,
And thought himself enriched. If ye are fair,
Mankind will crowd around you thick as when
The full-faced moon sits silver on the sea,
The eager waves lift up their gleaming heads,
Each shouldering for her smile."
The lady dowered him with her richest look,
Her arch head half aside, her liquid eyes,
From 'neath their dim lids drooping slumberous,
Stood full on his, and called the wild blood up
All in a tumult to his sun-kissed cheek,
As if it wished to see her beauty too—
Then asked in dulcet tones, "Dost think me fair?" ”

“ The blushing blood miraculous doth range
From tender dawn to sunset. When she speaks
Her soul is shining through her earnest face,
As shines a moon through its up-swathing cloud—
My tongue's a very beggar in her praise,
It cannot gild her gold with all its words.
[Pg 128]
WALTER.
Hath unbreeched Cupid struck your heart of ice?
You speak of her as if you were her lover.
Could you not find a home within her heart?
No, no! you are too cold, you never loved.
EDWARD.
There's nothing colder than a desolate hearth. ”

“ Wrapt in Thy skies, what were my prayers to Thee?
My pangs? My tears of blood? They could not move
Thee from the depths of Thine immortal dream.
Thou hast forgotten me, God! Here, therefore, here,
To-night upon this bleak and cold hill-side,
Like a forsaken watch-fire will I die,
[Pg 148] And as my pale corse fronts the glittering night,
It shall reproach Thee before all Thy worlds."
His death did not disturb that ancient Night.
Scornfullest Night! Over the dead there hung
Greats gulfs of silence, blue, and strewn with stars—
No sound—no motion—in the eternal depths. ”

“ I will go forth 'mong men, not mailed in scorn,
But in the armour of a pure intent.
Great duties are before me and great songs,
And whether crowned or crownless, when I fall
It matters not, so that God's work is done.
I've learned to prize the quiet lightning-deed,
Not the applauding thunder at its heels
Which men call Fame. Our night is past;
We stand in precious sunrise, and beyond
A long day stretches to the very end.
Look out, my beautiful, upon the sky!
Even puts on her jewels. Look! she sets,
Venus upon her brow. ”

“ He called them 'cruel gods,' and then he said,
'We have a Father, One who dwells serene,
'Bove thunder and the stars, Whose eye is mild,
And ever open as the summer sky;
[Pg 224] Who cares for everything on earth alike,
Who hears the plovers crying in the wind,
The happy linnets singing in the broom,
Whose smile is sunshine.' When the old man ceased,
Forth from the murmuring crowd there stepped a youth,
As bright-haired as a star, and cried aloud,
'Friends! I've grown up among the wilds, and found
Each outward form is but a window whence
Terror or Beauty looks. ”

“ Sitting the silent term of stars to watch
Your own thought passing into beauty, like
An earnest mother watching the first smile
Dawning upon her sleeping infant's face,
Until she cannot see it for her tears?
And when the lark, the laureate of the sun,
Doth climb the east, eager to celebrate
His monarch's crowning, goeth pale to bed,—
Art thou such denizen of book-world, pray?
[Pg 26]
WALTER.
Books written when the soul is at spring-tide,
When it is laden like a groaning sky
Before a thunder-storm, are power and gladness,
And majesty and beauty. ”

“ Watch the lightnings dart like swallows round the brooding thunder-eaves,
To lose the sense of whirling streets, 'mong breezy crests of hills,
Skies of larks, and hazy landscapes, with fine threads of silver rills,—
Stand with forehead bathed in sunset on a mountain's summer crown,
[Pg 38] And look up and watch the shadow of the great night coming down,
One great life in my myriad veins, in leaves, in flowers, in cloudy cars,
Blowing, underfoot, in clover; beating, overhead, in stars!
Once I saw a blissful harvest-moon, but not through forest-leaves ”

“ WALTER.
Ay; and he suffered.—His was not that love
[Pg 28] That comes on men with their beards. His soul was rich;
And this his book unveils it, as the night
Her panting wealth of stars. The world was cold,
And he went down like a lone ship at sea;
And now the fame that scorned him while he lived
Waits on him like a menial.——
When the dark dumb Earth
Lay on her back and watched the shining stars,
A Soul from its warm body shuddered out
To the dim air and trembled with the cold ”

“ WALTER.
The man I loved
Wrought this complaint of thine into a song,
Which I sung long ago.
EDWARD.
We must reverse
[Pg 119] The plans of ages. Let the Body sweat,
So that the soul be calm, why should it work?
Say, had I spent the pith of half my life,
And made me master of our English law,
What gain had I on resurrection morn,
But such as hath the body of a clown,
That it could turn a summerset on earth?
A single soul is richer than all worlds,
Its acts are only shadows of itself,
And oft its wondrous wealth is all unknown ”

“ By the sea-shore and the ships,
'Neath the stars I sat with Clari;
Her silken bodice was unlaced,
My arm was trembling round her waist,
I plucked the joys upon her lips;
Joys that plucked still grow again!
Canst thou say the same, old Night?
[Pg 71] Ha! thy life is vain.
Oh, that death would let me tarry
Like a dewdrop on a flower,
Ever on those lips of Clari!
Our beings mellow, then they fall,
Like o'er-ripe peaches from the wall;
We ripen, drop, and all is o'er;
On the cold grave weeps the rain;
I weep it should be so, old Night.
Ah! my tears are vain. ”

“ All my blood was in a moment glowing in my ardent face!
Half-blind, I looked up to the host of palpitating stars,
'Gainst my sides my heart was leaping, like a lion 'gainst his bars,
For a thought was born within me, and I said within my mind,
"I will risk all in this moment, I will either lose or find."
"Dost thou love me?" then I whispered; for a minute after this,
I sat and trembled in great blackness—On my lips I felt a kiss;—
Than a roseleaf's touch 'twas lighter,—on her face her hands she prest,
[Pg 41] And a heaven of tears and blushes was deep buried in my breast. ”

“ Brainful of dreams, as summer hive with bees;
And round her in the pale and spectral light
Flock bats and grisly owls on noiseless wings.
The flying sun goes down the burning west,
Vast night comes noiseless up the eastern slope,
And so the eternal chase goes round the world.
Unrest! unrest! The passion-panting sea
Watches the unveiled beauty of the stars
Like a great hungry soul. The unquiet clouds
Break and dissolve, then gather in a mass,
And float like mighty icebergs through the blue.
Summers, like blushes, sweep the face of earth;
Heaven yearns in stars. ”

“ Drawing its filth as doth an evil soul
Attract all evil things; putrid and black
It mingles with the clear and stainless sea.
So into pure eternity my soul
Will disembogue itself.
Good men have said
That sometimes God leaves sinners to their sin,—
He has left me to mine, and I am changed;
My worst part is insurgent, and my will
Is weak and powerless as a trembling king
When millions rise up hungry. Woe is me!
My soul breeds sins as a dead body worms!
They swarm and feed upon me. Hear me, God!
Sin met me and embraced me on my way;
Methought her cheeks were red, her lips had bloom ”

“ The trembling earth. God's eye doth follow her
[Pg 117] With far more love than doth her maid, the moon.
Speak no harsh words of Earth, she is our mother,
And few of us, her sons, who have not added
A wrinkle to her brow. She gave us birth,
We drew our nurture from her ample breast,
And there is coming, for us both, an hour
When we shall pray that she will ope her arms
And take us back again. Oh, I would pledge
My heart, my blood, my brain, to ease the earth
Of but one single pang!
EDWARD.
So would not I.
Because the pangs of earth shall ne'er be eased. ”

“ Am richer than ye all, despite your bales,
Your streets of warehouses, your mighty mills,
Each booming like a world faint heard in space:
Your ships; unwilling fires, that day and night
Writhe in your service seven years, then die
Without one taste of peace. Do ye believe
A simple primrose on a grassy bank
Forth-peeping to the sun, a wild bird's nest,
The great orb dying in a ring of clouds,
Like hoary Jacob 'mong his waiting sons;
The rising moon, and the young stars of God,
Are things to love? With these my soul is brimmed ”

“ Is sternly just to sun and grain;
'Tis laving at this moment Saturn's sides,—
[Pg 19] 'Tis in my blood and brain.
All things have something more than barren use;
There is a scent upon the brier,
A tremulous splendour in the autumn dews,
Cold morns are fringed with fire;
The clodded earth goes up in sweet-breathed flowers;
In music dies poor human speech,
And into beauty blow those hearts of ours,
When Love is born in each. ”

“ I laid it down in silence, and went forth
Burdened with its sad thoughts: slowly I went;
And, as I wandered through the deepening gloom,
I saw the pale and penitential moon
Rise from dark waves that plucked at her, and go
Sorrowful up the sky. Then gushed my tears—
The tangled problem of my life was plain—
I cried aloud, "Oh, would he come to me!
I know he is unhappy; that he strives
As fiercely as that blind and desperate sea,
[Pg 207] Clutching with all its waves—in vain, in vain.
He never will be happy till he comes." ”

“ Frost-pearl'd are all the boughs in forests old,
The sheep are huddling close upon the wold,
And over them the stars tremble on high.
Pure joys these winter nights around me lie;
'Tis fine to loiter through the lighted street
At Christmas time, and guess from brow and pace
The doom and history of each one we meet,
What kind of heart beats in each dusky case;
Whiles startled by the beauty of a face
In a shop-light a moment. Or instead,
To dream of silent fields where calm and deep
The sunshine lieth like a golden sleep—
Recalling sweetest looks of Summers dead. ”

“ Lo! the song of Earth—a maniac's on a black and dreary road—
Rises up, and swells, and grandeurs, to the loud triumphal ode—
[Pg 45] Earth casts off a slough of darkness, an eclipse of hell and sin,
In each cycle of her being, as an adder casts her skin;
Lo! I see long blissful ages, when these mammon days are done,
Stretching like a golden ev'ning forward to the setting sun.
He sat one winter 'neath a linden tree
In my bare orchard: "See, my friend," he said,
"The stars among the branches hang like fruit,
So, hopes were thick within me. ”

“ And stirred his curls. Soft fell the summer night.
Then he arose, and with inspired lips said,—
"Stars! ye are golden-voicèd clarions
To high-aspiring and heroic dooms.
To-night, as I look up unto ye, Stars!
I feel my soul rise to its destiny,
Like a strong eagle to its eyrie soaring.
Who thinks of weakness underneath ye, Stars?
A hum shall be on earth, a name be heard,
An epitaph shall look up proud to God.
Stars! read and listen, it may not be long."
[Pg 168]
VIOLET (leaning over him) .
I'll see that grand desire within your eyes—
Oh, I only see myself!
WALTER.
Violet! ”