As smiled Elisha on the widow's child
In Shunam. For, although her lips were sad
As a broken bow, if you had read their meaning
You would have learned the sense that smiling had
Was less of sorrow than of joy beguiled
To grief at the sad world and its revealing,
As when the name of death is whispered to a child.
Doubtless that lady knew the spell to win
The life-blood back; for, when she bent her down
And laid her cheek to his that was so thin,
The shut lips quivered and let fall a moan,
As in sweet pain. And next Somandolin
Put her white hand upon the sleeper's arm
Entangled in his tresses. She could feel
The curls crisp back like leaves when they grow warm
Before a watchfire. Then she took his chin
In her two palms, and bade his eyes unseal
Their close-shut lids, and laid her lips upon his own.
Slowly, as in a trance of wonderment,
Those blue eyes opened wide, as from the dead
His spirit stole. Old memories came and went
Like summer lightnings, and a murmur sped
To his dull ear, until he deemed it said,
In a new tongue which none might heed but he,
"Arise and worship, for behold thy bed
And all about thee is as holy ground!"
And then he cried, " Behold, dear love, I rise!'
And on a sudden, waking from his swound,
A countenance of tearful majesty
And strange ecstatic love looked in his eyes.
These things were written for a mystery
In the book of life, lest lovers in their need
Should faint for hunger by the road and die.
Thus were they written. Though a god should read,
He could not choose but learn a newer creed,
Transcending his own knowledge. For anon,
The mass being ended, came the rest with speed,
Bearing with them the blest viaticum
And holy oils, nor guessed he needed not,
Who sought him a long hour. The warder told
Erewhile a knight, belike Sir Astraled,
With a white lady rode the castle out,
And all his harness was of burnished gold,
Who, pricking fast towards the rising sun,
Was gone beyond the hills upon his battle-steed.
Chanclebury Ring.
SAY what you will, there is not in the world
A nobler sight than from this upper down.
No rugged landscape here, no beauty hurled
From its Creator's hand as with a frown;
But a green plain on which green hills look down
Trim as a garden plot. No other hue
Can hence be seen, save here and there the brown
Of a square fallow, and the horizon's blue.
Dear checker-work of woods, the Sussex weald!
If a name thrills me yet of things of earth,
That name is thine. How often I have fled
To thy deep hedgerows and embraced each field,
Each lag, each pasture,-fields which gave me birth
And saw my youth, and which must hold me dead.
THE dove did lend me wings. I fled away
From the loud world which long had troubled me.
Oh lightly did I flee when hoyden May
Threw her wild mantle on the hawthorn-tree.
I left the dusty high road, and my way
Was through deep meadows, shut with copses fair.
A choir of thrushes poured its roundelay
From every hedge and every thicket there.
Mild, moon-faced kine looked on, where in the grass
All heaped with flowers I lay, from noon till eve.
And hares unwitting close to me did pass,
And still the birds sang, and I could not grieve.
Oh what a blessed thing that evening was!
Peace, music, twilight, all that could deceive
A soul to joy or lull a heart to peace.
It glimmers yet across whole years like these.
THE Wood is bare: a river-mist is steeping
The trees that winter's chill of life bereaves: Only their stiffened boughs break silence, weeping Over their fallen leaves;
That lie upon the dank earth brown and rotten,
Miry and matted in the soaking wet :
Forgotten with the spring, that is forgotten
By them that can forget.
Yet it was here we walked when ferns were springing, And through the mossy bank shot bud and blade; Here found in summer, when the birds were singing, A green and pleasant shade.
'Twas here we loved in sunnier days and greener;
And now, in this disconsolate decay,
I come to see her where I most have seen her,
And touch the happier day.
For on this path, at every turn and corner,
The fancy of her figure on me falls :
Yet walks she with the slow step of a mourner,
Nor hears my voice that calls.
So through my heart there winds a track of feeling,
A path of memory, that is all her own:
Whereto her phantom beauty ever stealing
Haunts the sad spot alone.
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