Mathilde Blind

“ Ne'er bore such blooming gold as glows in thine:
Thou green Oasis on the tides of Time
Where no rude blast disturbs the azure clime;
Thou Paradise whence man can ne'er be driven,
Where, severed from the world-clang and the roar,
Still in the flesh he yet may reach that shore
Where want is not, and, like the dew from heaven,
There drops upon the fevered soul
The balm of Thought's divine control
And rapt absorption in the whole:
Delivery in the realm of art
Of the world-racked human heart—
Forms and hues and sounds that make
Life grow lovelier for their sake. ”

“ But Sam, whose arm with iron force could smite,
Knocked his cowed rival down, and won his bride.
May wept and smiled, swayed like a wild red rose
As the wind blows.
She married Sam, who loved her with a wild
Strong love he could not put to words—too deep
For her to gauge; but with her first-born child
May dropped off, flower-like, into the long sleep,
And left him nothing but the memory of
His little love.
Since then the silent teamster lives alone,
The trusted headman of his master Steer;
One only passion seems he still to own—
The passion for the foals he has to rear ”

“ And they bound it with gold, and they crowned it with glory,
This thing they called love, which was bond slave to hate.
"And they bowed down before it with brown heads and hoary,
They worshipped it nightly, loud hymning its praise,
While out in the cold blast, none heeding its story,
"Love staggers, an outcast, with lust in its place."
Love shivered and sighed like a reed that is shaken,
And lifting his hunger-nipped face to my face:
[74]
"Nay, if of the world I must needs die forsaken,
Say thou wilt not leave me to dearth and despair. ”

“ Worn as thou art, thou shalt bloom as my bride:
"Bloom as the flower of the World for the lover
Whom thou hast found in a lost little Child."
And as he kissed my lips over and over—
Child now, or Man, was it who thus beguiled?—
Even as I looked on him, Love, waxing slowly,
Grew as a little cloud, floating enisled,
Which spreads out aloft in the blue sky till solely
It fills the deep ether tremendous in height,
With far-flashing snow-peaks and pinnacles wholly
Invisible, vanishing light within light. ”

“ Hope lies aghast on the ruinous floor,
The halls that were thronged once with star-browed immortals,
"With gods statue-still o'er the world-whirr and roar,
With fauns of the forest and nymphs of the river,
Are cleft as if lightning had struck to their core.
"The luminous ceilings, where soaring for ever
Dim hosts of plumed angels smoked up to the sky,
With God-litten faces that yearned to the giver
"As vapours of morning the sun draws on high,
Now ravaged with rain hear the hollow winds whistle
Through rifts in the rafters which echo their cry. ”

“ His blue eyes flashed wildly through tears as they fell.
Strange eyes full of horror, yet fuller of heaven,
Like eyes that from heaven have looked upon hell.
The eyes of an angel whose depths show where, burning
And lost in the pit, toss the angels that fell.
"Ah," wailed he in tones full of agonized yearning,
Like the plaintive lament of a sickening dove
On a surf-beaten shore, whence it sees past returning
The wings of the wild flock fast fading above,
As they melt on the sky-line like foam-flakes in motion:
So sadly he wailed, "I am Love! I am Love! ”

“ Came like a love-song, as, with arms entwining,
Our hearts were mixed in unison supreme.
The wind lay spell-bound in each pillared pine,
The tasselled larches had no sound or motion,
As my whole life was sinking into thine—
Sinking into a deep, unfathomed ocean
Of infinite love—uncircumscribed, divine.
Night held her breath, it seemed, with all her stars:
Eternal eyes that watched in mute compassion
Our little lives o'erleap their mortal bars,
Fused in the fulness of immortal passion,
A passion as immortal as the stars. ”

“ Close in Sam's face, and left him dazed without
In the fierce sunshine, blazing in his path
Like fire of wrath.
Unheeding, he went forth with hot wild eyes
Past fields of feathery oats and wine-red clover;
Unheeded, larks soared singing to the skies,
Or rang the plaintive cry of rising plover;
Unheeded, pheasants with a startled sound
Whirred from the ground.
On, on he went by acres full of grain,
By trees and meadows reeling past his sight,
As to a man whirled onwards in a train
The land with spinning hedgerows seems in flight ”

“ Crouched a mourner white of face;
Wild her eyes—unheeding
Circling pomp of night and day—
Ever crying, "Well away,
Love lies a-bleeding!"
And her sighs were like a knell,
And her tears for ever fell,
With their warm rain feeding
That purpureal flower, alas!
Trailing prostrate in the grass,
Love lies a-bleeding.
[176]
Through the yews' black-tufted gloom
Crimson light dripped on the tomb,
Funeral shadows breeding:
In the sky the sun's light shed
Dyed the earth one awful red—
Love lies a-bleeding. ”

“ Still, while the blasts of heaven around us hooted,
To cleave to thee and weather every shock.
I would I were the rill, and thou the river;
So might I, leaping from some headlong steep,
With all my waters lost in thine for ever,
Be hurried onwards to the unfathomed deep.
I would—what would I not? O foolish dreaming!
My words are but as leaves by autumn shed,
That, in the faded moonlight idly gleaming,
Drop on the grave where all our love lies dead. ”

“ Thou all in all for which my heart-blood yearns!
⁠Yea, near or far—
Where the unfathomed ether throbs and burns
⁠With star on star,
Or where, enkindled by the fires of June,
⁠The fresh earth glows,
Blushing beneath the mystical white moon
⁠Through rose on rose—
Thee, thee I see, thee feel in all live things,
⁠Beloved one;
In the first bird which tremulously sings
⁠Ere peep of sun;
In the last nestling orphaned in the hedge,
⁠Rocked to and fro,
When dying summer shudders in the sedge,
⁠And swallows go ”

“ Our futile lives in flashing by illume—
Lightning which mocks the darkness of the night.
Nay—but consider, though we change and die,
If men must pass shall Man not still remain?
As the unnumbered drops of summer rain
Whose changing particles unchanged on high,
Fixed, in perpetual motion, yet maintain
The mystic bow emblazoned on the sky.
[60]
TIME'S SHADOW.
Thy life, O Man, in this brief moment lies:
Time's narrow bridge whereon we darkling stand,
With an infinitude on either hand
Receding luminously from our eyes. ”

“ Where in security he seems to stand,
His apprehensive life is compassed round
By baffling mysteries he cannot sound,
Where, big with terrors and calamities,
The future like a foe in ambush lies:
A muffled foe, that seems to watch and wait
With the Medusa eyes of stony fate.—
Great floods o'erwhelm and ruin his ripening grain,
His boat is shattered by the hurricane,
[20] From the rent cloud the tameless lightning springs—
Heaven's flame-mouthed dragon with a roar of wings—
And fires his hut and simple household things ”

“ Eyes may have the hyacinth's glowing blue,
[102] Rounded cheeks the velvet bloom of roses,
Taper necks the rain-washed lily's hue.
But a rustic blossom! Love and duty
Bound up in a child whom hunger slays!
Ah! but one thing still is left her—beauty
Fresh, untarnished yet—and beauty pays.
Beauty keeps her child alive a little,
Then it dies—her woman's love with it—
Beauty's brilliant sceptre, ah, how brittle,
Drags her daily deeper down the pit. ”

“ Sometimes the thought of you is like
A lilac bush in flower,
Yea, honey-sweet as hives in May.
And then the pang of it will strike
My bosom with a fiery smart,
As though love's deeply planted dart
Drained all its life away. ”

“ Man and woman glaring at each other
Like two gaunt wolves with a famished brood.
Till he snatched a stick, and, madly staring,
Struck her blow on blow upon the head;
And she, reeling back, gasped, hardly caring—
"Ah, you've done it now, Jim"—and was dead.
Dead—dead—dead—the miserable creature—
Never to feel hunger's cruel fang
Wring the bowels of rebellious nature
That her infants might be spared the pang.
"Dead! Good luck to her!" ”

“ Surely all life is seed!
All life is seed, dropped in Time's yawning furrow,
Which with slow sprout and shoot,
In the revolving world's unfathomed morrow,
Will blossom and bear fruit.
[116]
A SPRING SONG.
Dark sod pierced by flames of flowers,
Dead wood freshly quickening,
Bright skies dusked with sudden showers,
Lit by rainbows on the wing.
Cuckoo calls and young lambs' bleating
Nimble airs which coyly bring
Little gusts of tender greeting
From shy nooks where violets cling.
Half-fledged buds and birds and vernal
Fields of grass dew-glistening ”

“ Never, enamoured of light, will meet the dawn on the wing.
Ah, what pæans of joy, what raptures no mortal can measure,
Sweet as honey that's sealed in the cells of the honey-comb,
Would have ascended on high in jets of mellifluous pleasure.
Would have dropped from the clouds to nest in its gold-curtained home.
Poor, pathetic brown eggs! Oh, pulses that never will quicken!
Music mute in the shell that hath been turned to a tomb! ”

“ The house-dog barks; then, with a startled cry,
The window is flung open, shout on shout
Wakes the hard-sleeping farm where man and maid
Start up dismayed.
And with wild faces wavering in the glare,
In nightcaps, bedgowns, clothes half huddled on
Some to the pump, some to the duck-pond tear
In frantic haste, while others splashing run
With pails, or turn the hose with flame-scorched face
Upon the blaze. ”

“ This is distinctly a novel to read."—Echo, June 16, 1886.
"This powerful and pathetic tale has carried us more completely out of ourselves and along with it than any work of fiction we have read for many a day.... Her (Miss Blind's) word-pictures glow with rich local colours; she is a complete mistress of the art of dramatic cause and effect. When once fairly under weigh, she never allows the interest to flag for a single moment. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ascend, oh my Soul, on the wings of the choral strain,
Invisible tier above tier upbuilding sublime;
Note as it scales after note in a rhythmical chain
Reaching from chaos and welter of struggle and pain,
Far into vistas empyreal receding from time.
Ascend! take wing on the thoughts of the Dead, my Soul,
Breathing in colour and stone, flashing through epic and song:
Thoughts that like avalanche snows gather force as they roll,
Mighty to fashion and knead the phenomenal throng
Of generations of men as they thunder along. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Now we fared o'er sweltering wastes whose steaming
Clouds of tawny sand the wanderer blind.
Herds of horses with their long manes streaming
Snorted thirstily against the wind;
O'er the waste they scoured in shadowy numbers,
Gasped for springs their raging thirst to cool,
And, like sick men mocked in fevered slumbers,
Stoop to drink—and find a phantom pool.
What of antelopes crunched by the leopard?
What if hounds run down the timid hare? ”

“ Chattering tap against the pane;
And the midnight wind is wailing
Till your very life seems quailing
As the long gusts shudder and sigh:
Know you not that homeless cry
Is my love's, which cannot die,
Wailing through Eternity? ”