How did he like it when the live creatures Tickled and toused and browsed him all over, And worm, slug, eft, with serious features, Came in, each one, for his right of trover? When the water beetle with great blind deaf face Made of her eggs the stately deposit, And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet? All that life and fun and romping, All that frisking and twisting and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping And clasps were cracking and covers suppling! As if you had carried sour John Knox Fastened him into a front-row box, And danced off the ballet with trousers and tunic. Come, old martyr! What, torment enough is it? Back to my room shall you take your sweet self! Good-bye, mother-beetle; husband-eft, sufficit! See the snug niche I have made on my shelf. A.'s book shall prop you up, B.'s shall cover you, Here's C. to be grave with, or D. to be gay, And with E. on each side, and F. right over you, Dry-rot at ease till the Judgment-day! SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER [1842.] GR-R-R there go, my heart's abhorrence! At the meal we sit together: Whew! We'll have our platter burnished, Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horsehairs, - Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary's corsair's? (That is, if he'd let it show!) When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Drinking watered orange-pulp- Oh, those melons! If he 's able We're to have a feast; so nice! One goes to the Abbot's table, All of us get each a slice. How go on your flowers? None double? Not one fruit-sort can you spy? Strange! And I, too, at such trouble, Keep them close-nipped on the sly! beynote impels to love rivals extition. that Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder, I am not in haste! Better sit thus, and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King's. That in the mortar - you call it a gum? Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come! And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly, is that poison too? Had I but all of them, thee and thy treasures, What a wild crowd of invisible_pleasures! To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree-basket! Soon, at the King's, a mere lozenge to give And Pauline should have just thirty minutes to live! But to light a pastille, and Elise, with her head And her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead! Quick- is it finished? The colour 's too grim! Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim? Let it brighten her drink, let her turn it and stir, And try it and taste, ere she fix and prefer! What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me That's why she ensnared him: this never will free The soul from those masculine eyes, say, 'no!' To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go. For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all! Not that I bid you spare her the pain! not morose; It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close: The delicate droplet, my whole fortune's fee If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me? Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on my mouth if you will! But brush this dust off me, lest horror it brings Ere I know it-next moment I dance at the King's! CRISTINA [1842.] SHE should never have looked at me And yet leave much as she found them: But I'm not so, and she knew it When she fixed me, glancing round them What? To fix me thus meant nothing? But I can't tell (there's my weakness) What her look said! - no vile cant, sure, About 'need to strew the bleakness Of some lone shore with its pearl-seed, That the sea feels'- -no 'strange yearn ing That such souls have, most to lavish Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! Stand out plainly from its false ones, There are flashes struck from midnights, There are fire-flames noondays kindle, Whereby piled-up honours perish, Whereby swoln ambitions dwindle, While just this or that poor impulse Which for once had play unstifled Seems the sole work of a lifetime That away the rest have trifled. Doubt you if, in some such moment, As she fixed me, she felt clearly, Ages past the soul existed, Here an age 'tis resting merely, And hence fleets again for ages, While the true end, sole and single, It stops here for is, this love-way, With some other soul to mingle? Else it loses what it lived for And eternally must lose it; Better ends may be in prospect, Deeper blisses (if you choose it) But this life's end and this love-bliss Have been lost here. Doubt you whether This she felt as, looking at me, Mine and her souls rushed together. Oh, observe! Of course, next moment, Lest we walk the earth in rapture! - Making those who catch God's secret Just so much more prize their capture. Such am I the secret's mine now! She has lost me, I have gained her; Her soul's mine: and thus, grown perfect, I shall pass my life's remainder. Life will just hold out the proving Both our powers, alone and blended; And then, come the next life quickly! This world's use will have been ended. So, the year's done with! MEETING AT NIGHT THE grey sea and the long black land; Be a god and hold me Be a man and fold me I will speak thy speech, Love, Meet, if thou require it, That shall be to-morrow, I must bury sorrow Must a little weep, Love, And so fall asleep, Love, EVELYN HOPE [1855.] BEAUTIFUL Evelyn Hope is dead! Sit and watch by her side an hour. That is her book-shelf, this her bed; She plucked that piece of geraniumflower, Beginning to die too, in the glass; Little has yet been changed, I think: The shutters are shut, no light may pass Save two long rays thro' the hinge's chink. Sixteen years old when she died! Perhaps she had scarcely heard my name; It was not her time to love; beside, Her life had many a hope and aim, Duties enough and little cares, And now was quiet, now astir, Till God's hand beckoned unawares, And the sweet white brow is all of her. Is it too late then, Evelyn Hope? What, your soul was pure and true, The good stars met in your horoscope, Made you of spirit, fire and dew And, just because I was thrice as old And our paths in the world diverged so wide, Each was nought to each, must I be told? We were fellow mortals, nought beside? No, indeed! for God above Is great to grant, as mighty to make, Much is to learn and much to forget I O'er the hundred-gated circuit of a wall Bounding all, Made of marble, men might march on no be prest, In the lower earth, in the years long still, And what you would do with me, in fine, In the new life come in the old one's stead. I have lived, I shall say, so much since then, Given up myself so many times, Gained me the gains of various men, Ransacked the ages, spoiled the climes; Yet one thing, one, in my soul's full scope, Either I missed or itself missed me: And I want and find you, Evelyn Hope! What is the issue? let us see! I loved you, Evelyn, all the while! My heart seemed full as it could hold There was place and to spare for the frank young smile And the red young mouth and the hair's young gold. So, hush, I will give you this leaf to keep See, I shut it inside the sweet cold hand. There, that is our secret! go to sleep; You will wake, and remember, and understand. Such a carpet as, this summer-time, o'er spreads Every vestige of the city, guessed alone Stock or stone Where a multitude of men breathed joy and Lust of glory pricked their hearts up dread of shame Struck them tame; Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his dames Viewed the games. And I know, while thus the quiet-coloured eve Smiles to leave To their folding, all our many-tinkling fleece In such peace, And the slopes and rills in undistinguished grey Melt away That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair Waits me there In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul For the goal, When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb Till I come. But he looked upon the city, every side, Far and wide, A 11 |