THE DESERTED GARDEN

[1838.]

I MIND me in the days departed,
How often underneath the sun
With childish bounds I used to run
To a garden long deserted.

The beds and walks were vanished quite;
And wheresoe'er had struck the spade,
The greenest grasses Nature laid
To sanctify her right.

I called the place my wilderness,
For no one entered there but I;
The sheep looked in, the grass to espy,
And passed it ne'ertheless.

The trees were interwoven wild,
And spread their boughs enough about
To keep both sheep and shepherd out,
But not a happy child.

Adventurous joy it was for me!
I crept beneath the boughs, and found
A circle smooth of mossy ground
Beneath a poplar tree.

Old garden rose-trees hedged it in,
Bedropt with roses waxen-white
Well satisfied with dew and light
And careless to be seen.

Long years ago it might befall,

When all the garden flowers were trim,
The grave old gardener prided him
On these the most of all.

Some lady, stately overmuch,
Here moving with a silken noise,
Has blushed beside them at the voice
That likened her to such.

And these, to make a diadem,

She often may have plucked and twined,
Half-smiling as it came to mind

That few would look at them.

Oh, little thought that lady proud,
A child would watch her fair white rose,
When buried lay her whiter brows,

And silk was changed for shroud!

Nor thought that gardener, (full of scorns
For men unlearned and simple phrase,)
A child would bring it all its praise
By creeping through the thorns!

To me upon my low moss seat,
Though never a dream the roses sent
Of science or love's compliment,
I ween they smelt as sweet.

It did not move my grief to see
The trace of human step departed:
Because the garden was deserted,

The blither place for me!

Friends, blame me not! a narrow ken
Has childhood 'twixt the sun and sward;
We draw the moral afterward,

We feel the gladness then.

And gladdest hours for me did glide
In silence at the rose-tree wall:
A thrush made gladness musical
Upon the other side.

Nor he nor I did e'er incline
To peck or pluck the blossoms white;
How should I know but roses might
Lead lives as glad as mine?

To make my hermit-home complete,
I brought clear water from the spring
Praised in its own low murmuring,
And cresses glossy wet.

And so, I thought, my likeness grew
(Without the melancholy tale)
To "gentle hermit of the dale,"
And Angelina too.

For oft I read within my nook
Such minstrel stories; till the breeze
Made sounds poetic in the trees,

And then I shut the book.

If I shut this wherein I write

I hear no more the wind athwart
Those trees, nor feel that childish heart
Delighting in delight.

My childhood from my life is parted,
My footstep from the moss which drew
Its fairy circle round: anew

The garden is deserted.

Another thrush may there rehearse
The madrigals which sweetest are;
No more for me! myself afar

Do sing a sadder verse.

Ah me, ah me! when erst I lay
In that child's-nest so greenly wrought,
I laughed unto myself and thought
"The time will pass away."

And still I laughed, and did not fear
But that, whene'er was past away
The childish time, some happier play
My womanhood would cheer.

I knew the time would pass away,
And yet, beside the rose-tree wall,
Dear God, how seldom, if at all,
Did I look up to pray!

The time is past; and now that grows,
The cypress high among the trees,
And I behold white sepulchres

As well as the white rose,

When graver, meeker thoughts are given, And I have learnt to lift my face, Reminded how earth's greenest place

The colour draws from heaven, It something saith for earthly pain, But more for Heavenly promise free, That I who was, would shrink to be That happy child again.

CONSOLATION [1838.]

ALL are not taken; there are left behind
Living Belovèds, tender looks to bring
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind:
But if it were not so if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring
Where 'dust to dust' the love from life
disjoin'd;

And if, before those sepulchres unmoving
I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb

Goes bleating up the moors in weary dearth)

Crying, 'Where are ye, O my loved and loving?'

I know a voice would sound, 'Daughter, I

In everlasting watch and moveless woe Till itself crumble to the dust beneath. Touch it; the marble eyelids are not wet: If it could weep, it could arise and go.

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN
[1844.]

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,

Ere the sorrow comes with years? They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,

And that cannot stop their tears. The young lambs are bleating in the meadows.

The young birds are chirping in the nest, The young fawns are playing with the shadows,

The young flowers are blowing toward the west

But the young, young children, O my brothers,

'They are weeping bitterly! They are weeping in the playtime of the others,

In the country of the free.

Do you question the young children in the

sorrow

Why their tears are falling so? The old man may weep for his to-morrow Which is lost in Long Ago; The old tree is leafless in the forest, The old year is ending in the frost, The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest, The old hope is hardest to be lost: But the young, young children, O my brothers,

Do you ask them why they stand Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,

In our happy Fatherland?

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their looks are sad to see, For the man's hoary anguish draws and

"True," say the children, "it may happen That we die before our time: Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapen

Like a snowball, in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her:

Was no room for any work in the close clay!

From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,

Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.' If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

With your ear down, little Alice never cries;

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her,

For the smile has time for growing in her eyes:

And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in

The shroud by the kirk-chime. It is good when it happens," say the children,

"That we die before our time."

Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking Death in life, as best to have: They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,

With a cerement from the grave. Go out, children, from the mine and from the city,

Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;

Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty.

Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!

But they answer, "Are your cowslips of the meadows

Like our weeds anear the mine? Leave us quiet in the dark of the coalshadows,

From your pleasures fair and fine! "For oh," say the children, "we are weary, And we cannot run or leap;

If we cared for any meadows, it were merely

To drop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, We fall upon our faces, trying to go; And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping

The reddest flower would look as pale

as snow.

For, all day, we drag our burden tiring
Through the coal-dark, under-
ground;
Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron
In the factories, round and round.

"For all day the wheels are droning, turning; Their wind comes in our faces, Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,

And the walls turn in their places: Turns the sky in the high window, blank and reeling,

Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,

Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling:

All are turning, all the day, and we with all.

And all day the iron wheels are droning, And sometimes we could pray,

'O ye wheels' (breaking out in a mad moaning),

'Stop! be silent for to-day!'"

Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

For a moment, mouth to mouth! Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathing

Of their tender human youth! Let them feel that this cold metallic motion Is not all the life God fashions or reveals :

Let them prove their living souls against the notion

That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!

Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward, Grinding life down from its mark; And the children's souls, which God is calling sunward,

Spin on blindly in the dark.

Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers.

To look up to Him and pray; So the blessèd One who blesseth all the others,

Will bless them another day. They answer, "Who is God that He should hear us,

While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?

When we sob aloud, the human creatures

near us

Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.

And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

Strangers speaking at the door: Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,

Hears our weeping any more? "Two words, indeed, of praying we remember,

And at midnight's hour of harm,

'Our Father,' looking upward in the chamber,

We say softly for a charm.

We know no other words except 'Our Father,'

And we think that, in some pause of angels' song,

God may pluck them with the silence sweet

to gather,

And hold both within His right hand which is strong.

'Our Father! If He heard us, He would surely

(For they call Him good and mild) Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

Come and rest with me, my child.'

"But, no!" say the children, weeping faster, "He is speechless as a stone: And they tell us, of His image is the master Who commands us to work on.

Go to!" say the children,-"up in Heaven, Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.

Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving:

We look up for God, but tears have made us blind."

Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,

O my brothers, what ye preach? For God's possible is taught by His world's loving,

And the children doubt of each.

And well may the children weep before you!

They are weary ere they run; They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory

Which is brighter than the sun. They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;

They sink in man's despair, without its calm;

Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,

Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm:

Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly The harvest of its memories cannot

reap,

Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly.

Let them weep! let them weep!

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

And their look is dread to see, For they mind you of their angels in high places,

With eyes turned on Deity.

"How long," they say, "how long, O cruel nation,

Will you stand, to move the world, on a child's heart,

Stifle down with a mailèd heel its palpitation,

And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper, And your purple shows your path! But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath."

SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE [Privately printed 1847. Published 1850.]

I

I THOUGHT Once how Theocritus had sung Of the sweet years, the dear and wishedfor years,

Who each one in a gracious hand appears
To bear a gift for mortals, old or young :
And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had
flung

A shadow across me. Straightway I was 'ware,

So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move Behind me, and drew me backward by the

Unlike are we, unlike, O princely Heart!
Unlike our uses and our destinies.
Our ministering two angels look surprise
On one another, as they strike athwart
Their wings in passing. Thou, bethink
thee, art

A guest for queens to social pageantries,
With gages from a hundred brighter eyes
Than tears even can make mine, to play thy
part

Of chief musician. What hast thou to do With looking from the lattice-lights at me, A poor, tired, wandering singer, singing through

The dark, and leaning up a cypress tree? The chrism is on thine head, - on mine, the dew,

And Death must dig the level where these agree.

VIII

What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast brought the gold

And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold,

And laid them on the outside of the wall
For such as I to take or leave withal,
In unexpected largesse? am I cold,
Ungrateful, that for these most manifold
High gifts, I render nothing back at all?
Not so; not cold, but very poor instead.
Ask God who knows. For frequent tears
have run

The colours from my life, and left so dead
And pale a stuff, it were not fitly done
To give the same as pillow to thy head.
Go farther! let it serve to trample on.

XIV

If thou must love me, let it be for nought Except for love's sake only. Do not say "I love her for her smile - her look- her way

Of speaking gently,--for a trick of thought That falls in well with mine, and certes brought

A sense of pleasant ease on such a day"For these things in themselves, Beloved,

may

Be changed, or change for thee, and love, so wrought,

May be unwrought so. Neither love me

for

Thine own dear pity's wiping my cheeks dry,

A creature might forget to weep, who bore Thy comfort long, and lose thy love there

by!

But love me for love's sake, that evermore Thou mayst love on, through love's eternity.

XVI

And yet, because thou overcomest so, Because thou art more noble and like a king,

Thou canst prevail against my fears and fling

Thy purple round me, till my heart shall

grow

Too close against thine heart henceforth to know

How it shook when alone. Why, conquering

May prove as lordly and complete a thing In lifting upward, as in crushing low! And as a vanquished soldier yields his

sword

To one who lifts him from the bloody earth,
Even so, Beloved, I at last record,
Here ends my strife. If thou invite me
forth,

I rise above abasement at the word.
Make thy love larger to enlarge my worth.