From Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems by James Inglis Cochrane.

I. The Sonnet.

The Sonnet is the cherished rose de Meaux

Of poesy, all perfect in its kind,

Albeit small. It is a cameo,

Of size just fitted on the heart to bind.

The poet, and initiated know,

And they alone, the beauties of this gem,

The choicest in the Muse’s diadem,

Whose classic form we to Italia owe.

It is an oratory off the aisle

Of the cathedral epic, interlaced

With ornaments elaborate, yet chaste,

And not unworthy of the grander pile.

It is a dome, whose just proportion vails

Its amplitude, and seemingly curtails.

XXV. Summer Evening.

(Addressed to Richmond and Euphemia.)

There are some evenings which we ne’er forget,

Albeit than others not more beautiful,

But which some talisman with mystic tool

In Memory’s tablet silently will set;

And this is one. The flowers with dew all wet,

That late were drooping round my rustic stool;

The burning day remembered, but now cool;

And lofty Ben, like Night, one mass of jet:

Low on the hills, the skies of saffron hue,

Changing to sapphire where the stars they meet;

Trees in full foliage, lake of gleaming blue;

Birds singing, and flocks nibbling at our feet:

But more than all th’ affection of ye two,

Than skies, or dews, or songs, or flowers more sweet.

XXVIII. Twilight.

How strange is the analogy between

Man’s seeming long, yet little pilgrimage

Of feverish life on this eventful stage,

And the Sun’s circuit through the blue serene !

All have remarked it since the world hath been,

So obvious is it; yet it strikes me most,

Yea startles me, in Twilight, when at e’en

Alone I sit, in contemplation lost.

The day declines apace, but ere it fades

A short bright glimmer all the air pervades;

Before man passes from his anxious strife,

A placid smile oft o’er his features flits:

Light in the one, and in the other life,

We fondly deem, yet both but counterfeits!

XXXII. To The Linden-Tree.

In balmy May the Linden-tree puts on 

Her citron vesture, delicately bright, 

What time the poplar ceases to invite 

All eyes to gaze on it, its fragrance gone ; 

And when the branches like a mighty fan 

Wave to and fro, the pendant blossoms swell 

Like blobs of honey dropping from the cell ; 

Look up, and count the clusters if ye can 

And listen to the never-ending hum 

Of honey-bees in myriads there that come ! 

When frost-winged tempests howl in Hallow- tide,

A skeleton thou standest, Linden-tree ;

Thy graceful foliage scattered far and wide ;

Preaching to beauty a sad homily.

LVI. Night.

Now Night attires herself in sable hood, 

Through the damp pitchy air, dim-seen, to walk, 

While injured ghosts (as some imagine) stalk 

The earth abroad, portending nothing good, 

And the horned owl hoots ominous in the wood. 

The jewel sockets in her crown are blank, 

Her tangled tresses hang about her lank, 

And her black stole is over all bedewed. 

She holds a lantern in her chilly hand, 

And walks like one a precipice who nears. 

Look ! look ! she stops to satisfy her fears, 

And moves again, and then again does stand ! 

Her countenance demure she hardly shows, 

And, wrapt in thought, all unattended goes.

 ~ Cochrane, James Inglis, Sonnets and Miscellaneous Poems, Edinburgh, Johnstone and Hunter, 1853. https://archive.org/details/sonnetsmiscellan00coch/

From Hand and Soul by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

[...]

“I am an image, Chiaro, of thine own soul within thee. See me, and know me as I am. Thou sayest that fame has failed thee, and faith failed thee; but because at least thou hast not laid thy life unto riches, therefore, though thus late, I am suffered to come into thy knowledge. Fame sufficed not, for that thou didst seek fame: seek thine own conscience (not thy mind’s conscience, but thine heart’s), and all shall approve and suffice. For Fame, in noble soils, is a fruit of the Spring: but not therefore should it be said: ‘Lo! my garden that I planted is barren: the crocus is here, but the lily is dead in the dry ground, and shall not lift the earth that covers it: therefore I will fling my garden together, and give it unto the builders.’ Take heed rather that thou trouble not the wise secret earth; for in the mould that thou throwest up shall the first tender growth lie to waste; which else had been made strong in its season. Yea, and even if the year fall past in all its months, and the soil be indeed, to thee, peevish and incapable, and though thou indeed gather all thy harvest, and it suffice for others, and thou remain vext with emptiness; and others drink of thy streams, and the drouth rasp thy throat;—let it be enough that these have found the feast good, and thanked the giver: remembering that, when the winter is striven through, there is another year, whose wind is meek, and whose sun fulfilleth all.”

While he heard, Chiaro went slowly on his knees. It was not to her that spoke, for the speech seemed within him and his own. The air brooded in sunshine, and though the turmoil was great outside, the air within was at peace. But when he looked in her eyes, he wept. And she came to him, and cast her hair over him, and, took her hands about his forehead, and spoke again:

“Thou hast said,” she continued, gently, “that faith failed thee. This cannot be so. Either thou hadst it not, or thou hast it. But who bade thee strike the point betwixt love and faith? Wouldst thou sift the warm breeze from the sun that quickens it? Who bade thee turn upon God and say: “Behold, my offering is of earth, and not worthy: thy fire comes not upon it: therefore, though I slay not my brother whom thou acceptest, I will depart before thou smite me.” Why shouldst thou rise up and tell God He is not content? Had He, of His warrant, certified so to thee? Be not nice to seek out division, but possess thy love in sufficiency: assuredly this is faith, for the heart must believe first. What He hath set in thine heart to do, that do thou; and even though thou do it without thought of Him, it shall be well done: it is this sacrifice that He asketh of thee, and His flame is upon it for a sign. Think not of Him; but of His love and thy love. For God is no morbid exactor: He hath no hand to bow beneath, nor a foot, that thou shouldst kiss it.”

And Chiaro held silence, and wept into her hair which covered his face; and the salt tears that he shed ran through her hair upon his lips; and he tasted the bitterness of shame.

Then the fair woman, that was his soul, spoke again to him, saying:

“And for this thy last purpose, and for those unprofitable truths of thy teaching,—thine heart hath already put them away, and it needs not that I lay my bidding upon thee. How is it that thou, a man, wouldst say coldly to the mind what God hath said to the heart warmly? Thy will was honest and wholesome; but look well lest this also be folly,—to say, ‘I, in doing this, do strengthen God among men.’ When at any time hath he cried unto thee, saying, ‘My son, lend me thy shoulder, for I fall?’ Deemest thou that the men who enter God’s temple in malice, to the provoking of blood, and neither for his love nor for his wrath will abate their purpose,—shall afterwards stand with thee in the porch, midway between Him and themselves, to give ear unto thy thin voice, which merely the fall of their visors can drown, and to see thy hands, stretched feebly, tremble among their swords? Give thou to God no more than he asketh of thee; but to man also, that which is man’s. In all that thou doest, work from thine own heart, simply; for his heart is as thine, when thine is wise and humble; and he shall have understanding of thee. One drop of rain is as another, and the sun’s prism in all: and shalt not thou be as he, whose lives are the breath of One? Only by making thyself his equal can he learn to hold communion with thee, and at last own thee above him. Not till thou lean over the water shalt thou see thine image therein: stand erect, and it shall slope from thy feet and be lost. Know that there is but this means whereby thou may’st serve God with man:—Set thine hand and thy soul to serve man with God.”

And when she that spoke had said these words within Chiaro’s spirit, she left his side quietly, and stood up as he had first seen her; with her fingers laid together, and her eyes steadfast, and with the breadth of her long dress covering her feet on the floor. And, speaking again, she said:

“Chiaro, servant of God, take now thine Art unto thee, and paint me thus, as I am, to know me: weak, as I am, and in the weeds of this time; only with eyes which seek out labour, and with a faith, not learned, yet jealous of prayer. Do this; so shall thy soul stand before thee always, and perplex thee no more.”

And Chiaro did as she bade him. While he worked, his face grew solemn with knowledge: and before the shadows had turned, his work was done. Having finished, he lay back where he sat, and was asleep immediately: for the growth of that strong sunset was heavy about him, and he felt weak and haggard; like one just come out of a dusk, hollow country, bewildered with echoes, where he had lost himself, and who has not slept for many days and nights. And when she saw him lie back, the beautiful woman came to him, and sat at his head, gazing, and quieted his sleep with her voice.

The tumult of the factions had endured all that day through all Pisa, though Chiaro had not heard it: and the last service of that Feast was a mass sung at midnight from the windows of all the churches for the many dead who lay about the city, and who had to be buried before morning, because of the extreme heats.

~ Rossetti, Dante Gabriel. "Hand and Soul." The Germ: Thoughts Toward Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art, vol. 1, no. 1, 1850, pp. 23-33. Edited by Rachel Haynes. Victorian Short Fiction Project, 12 May 2022, https://vsfp.byu.edu/index.php/title/hand-and-soul/.

From Fantasy and Passion by Edgar Fawcett.

Reverie.

Below the headland, with its cedar plumes,

A lapse of spacious water twinkles keen;

An ever-shifting play of gleams and glooms,

And flashes of clear green.

The sumach's garnet pennons, where I lie,

Are mingled with the tansy's faded gold;

Fleet hawks are screaming in the light-blue sky

And fleet airs rushing cold.

The plump peach steals the dying rose's red;

The yellow pippin ripens to its fall;

The dusty grapes, to purple fulness fed,

Droop from the garden-wall.

And yet where rainbow foliage crowns the swamp,

I hear in dreams an April robin sing,

And memory, amid this Autumn pomp,

Strays with the ghost of Spring! 

p. 4

To the Evening Star.

Again, pale noiseless prophetess of night,

I watch you dawn, your immemorial way,

And watch again your calm immaculate light

Beam wistful on the dying smile of day!

Star wherewith dusk so chastely is impearled,

If that you live for love indeed be true,

This yearning sorrowing sinful weary world

Hath deep unutterable need of you!

Does Love in truth make your white bloom his own

And thrill to blander gleams your luminous breast,

Meek silver lily, blossoming all alone

In those dim flowerless meadows of the West?

Aloof your glimmering kindred burn and beat,

High up in boundless quietudes of space,

And gazing on their dark domain, we meet

The cold and awful infinite face to face!

But you are rich with radiance more divine,

And pulsing as with balmiest pity's birth,

And tenderer, like a star not proud to shine,

And lowlier, like a star that loves the earth!

And I, who watch your splendors quivering clear,

Dream, ere from heavenly distance you depart,

Of some invisible mercy's falling tear,

Of some invisible mercy's throbbing heart!

p. 9

Ivy.

Ill canst thou bide in alien lands like these,

Whose home lies overseas,

Among manorial halls, parks wide and fair,

Churches antique, and where

Long hedges flower in May and one can hark

To carollings from old England’s lovely lark!

Ill canst thou bide where memories are so brief,

Thou that hast bathed thy leaf

Deep in the shadowy past, and known strange things

Of crumbled queens and kings;

Thou whose green kindred, in years half forgot,

Robed the gray battlements of proud Camelot!

Through all thy fibres’ intricate expanse

Hast thou breathed sweet romance;

Ladies that long are dust thou hast beheld

Through dreamy days of eld;

Watched in broad castle-courts the merry light

Bathe gaudy banneret and resplendent knight!

And thou hast seen, on ancient lordly lawns,

The timorous dappled fawns;

Heard pensive pages with their suave lutes play

Some low Provencal lay;

Marked beauteous dames through arrased chambers glide,

With lazy graceful staghounds at their side!

And thou hast gazed on splendid cavalcades

Of nobles, matrons, maids,

Winding from castle gates on breezy morns,

With golden peals of horns,

In velvet and brocade, in plumes and silk,

With falcons, and with palfreys white as milk!

Through convent-casements thou hast peered, and there

Viewed the meek nun at prayer;

Seen, through rich panes dyed purple, gold, and rose,

Monks read old folios;

On abbey- walls heard wild laughs thrill thy vine

When the fat tonsured priests quaffed ruby wine!

O ivy, having lived in times like these,

Here art thou ill at ease;

For thou art one with ages passed away,

We are of yesterday!

Short retrospect, slight ancestry is ours,

But thy dark leaves clothe history’s haughty towers!

pp. 26-27

Hemlocks.

(Terza Rima.)

I knew a forest, tranquil and august,

Down whose green deeps my steps would often stray

When leisure met my life as dew meets dust!

Proud spacious chestnuts verged each winding way,

And hickories in whose dry boughs winds were shrill,

And tremulous white-boled birches. Here, one day,

Strolling beside the scarce-held steed of will,

I found a beautiful monastic grove

Of old primeval hemlocks, living still!

Round it the forest rustled, flashed, and throve,

But here was only silence and much gloom, 

As though some sorcerer in dead days had wove,

With solemn charms and muttered words of doom,

A cogent spell that said to time “Depart!”

And locked it in the oblivion of a tomb!

Thick was its floor, where scant ferns dared to start,

With tawny needles, and an old spring lay

Limpid as crystal in its dusky heart!

Vaguely enough can language ever say

What sombre and fantastic dreams, for me,

Held shadowy revel in my thought that day!

How stern similitudes would dimly be

Of painted braves that grouped about their king;

Or how, in crimson firelight, I would see

Some ghostly war-dance whose weak cries took wing

Weirdly away beyond the grove’s dark brink;

Or how I seemed to watch, by that old spring,

The timid phantom deer steal up to drink!

pp. 28-29

Moss.

Strange tapestry, by Nature spun

On viewless looms, aloof from sun,

And spread through lonely nooks and grots

Where shadows reign and leafy rest, —

O moss, of all your dwelling-spots, 

In which one are you loveliest?

Is it when near grim roots that coil

Their snaky black through mellow soil?

Or when you wrap, in woodland glooms,

The great prone pine-trunks, rotted red?

Or when you dim, on sombre tombs,

The requiescats of the dead?

Or is it when your lot is cast

In some quaint garden of the past,

On some gray crumbled basin’s brim,

Where mildewed Tritons conch-shells blow,

While yonder, through the poplars prim,

Looms up the turreted château?

Nay, loveliest are you when time weaves

Your emerald films on low dark eaves,

Above where pink porch-roses peer

And woodbines break in fragrant foam,

And children laugh . . . and you can hear

The beatings of the heart of Home!

p. 31

Dew.

Soft tears that Nature keeps to show,

In human way, her joys and pains,

Now shed when summer splendors glow,

Or now when gaudy Autumn reigns!

Chaste pearls, whose lustres love to hide

In deeps of grassy seas for hours!

Dear secrets that the skies confide

To the warm bosoms of the flowers!

Kind almoners, that hold as peers

Proud garden or wild woodland maze!

Beautiful nightly souvenirs

Of all the perished elves and fays!

Cool benedictions of the dawn!

Eve’s lowlier starlight, vague and shy!

Profoundly is my spirit drawn

By your sweet spells to question why

So many hearts, as flowers might do,

Dry lips in thirsting pain must tend,

And though they dumbly plead for dew,

Must die without it in the end!

p. 41

Chiaroscuro.

The garden, with its throngs of drowsy roses,

Below the suave midsummer night reposes,

And here kneel I, whom fate supremely blesses,

In the dim room, whose lamplit dusk discloses

Your two dark stars of eyes, your rippled tresses,

Whose fragrant folds the fragrant breeze caresses!

White flower of womanhood, ah ! how completely,

How strongly, with invisible bonds, yet sweetly,

You bind, as my allegiant love confesses, 

You bind, you bend, immutably and meetly,

This soul of mine, that all its pride represses,

A willing falcon in love’s golden jesses!

To me such hours as these I breathe are holy!

I kneel, I tremble, I am very lowly

While this dear consecrated night progresses,

And faint winds through the lattice-vines float slowly

From all high starriest reaches and recesses,

Night’s heavenly but unseen embassadresses!

p. 68

One Night In Seville.

High and yet higher the slow moon arose,

Mounting in majesty full-orbed and fair,

Till loftily o’er Seville’s pale repose

The great Giralda towered in opal air!

With vagueness all the rich-hued roofs were blent;

Scarce might you tell their lilac from their green;

On languorous breezes came the pungent scent

Of odorous alamedas, faintly seen.

Out from the crowded plaza floated light

A peal of mirth or dulcet trill of song,

And brightening softly to the brightening night,

The shadowy Guadalquivir lapsed along!

The flash of teeth, the gleam of combs, the dark

Mantillas, the quaint gear of old and young,

The rustle of fans, the cigarillo’s spark,

The mellow-syllabled Sevillian tongue!

All these in pleasured memory still are fresh,

But ah! that faultless face which came and fled,

Beaming amid its drapery’s dusky mesh

From the dim balcony above my head!

That face which for a fleet while glimmering through

The abundant jasmines, thrilled me with surprise!

A drowsy smile, two dimpling cheeks and two

Fathomless velvet Andalusian eyes!

A face so marvellous that one rash star,

To see of beauty this rare flower and crown,

Leaned out in heaven its golden head too far,

And dropt, a meteor, over Seville town!

pp. 72-73

Perspectives.

How much in life we utterly forget!

How many pangs, how many smiles and tears!

What joy, what pain, what yearning, what regret

Lies lost within the oblivion of dead years!

And journeying on, inexorably fast,

Accomplishing our fated length of days,

We turn to look upon the ample past,

Clothed bafflingly with indeterminate haze!

Its tracts of shadowy vagueness die away

To meet the shadowy sky-line of all thought;

Dreamily neutral, featurelessly gray,

They are not something, neither are they naught!

But here and there, in such clear-seen relief

As scarce the annulling distance may efface,

We mark the rigid outline of some grief,

Like a great tree that overtops its race!

Or yet like quiet hills, not towering high,

Though proudly rounded, we discern, no less,

Joys that with beauteous dominance defy

These ghostly vapors of forgetfulness!

But ah, how lovelier when our eyes have won,

August in retrospect as we recede,

Like some snow-crested mountain bathed in sun,

The pure firm grandeur of some noble deed!

p. 127

Art.

I saw in dreams a shape of mightiest mold,

Wrought from stern bronze and towering in mid-air;

A grand similitude of some goddess, fair

With a beauty radiant yet supremely cold.

She seemed invisible distance to behold,

Nor ever drooped her languorous look to where,

Down-broadening from her pedestal, a stair

Of ample depth imperially outrolled.

And on these haughty steps, crouched suppliantwise,

I saw, at differing intervals apart,

Sad men who seemed to adore, lament, entreat;

And one, a poet, with anguish in his eyes,

Tore from a wound his own red quivering heart

And flung it against the statue’s brazen feet!

p. 161

Sleep.

(For a Picture.)

A yellow sunset, soft and dreamy of dye, 

Met sharply by black fluctuant lines of grass;

A river, glimmering like illumined glass,

And narrowing till it ends in distant sky;

Pale scattered pools of luminous rain, that lie

In shadowy amplitudes of green morass;

A crescent that the old moon, as moments pass,

Has turned to a silver acorn hung on high!

Now through this melancholy and silent land

Sleep walks, diaphanous- vestured, vaguely fair.

Within her vaporous robe and one dim hand

Much asphodel and lotus doth she bear,

Going lovely and low-lidded, with a band

Of dull-red poppies amid her dull-gold hair!

p. 163

Maples.

Amid this maple-avenue, on the brow

Of this cool hill, while summer suns were bold,

No gaudier coloring could I then behold

Than the deep green of many a breezy bough;

But up the foliaged vista gazing now,

Where Autumn’s halcyon brilliancies unfold

And opulent scarlet blends with dazzling gold,

I feel my wandering fancy dream of how,

In some old haughty city, centuries since,

Before the coming of some conqueror-prince

Back from famed fights with all his war-worn bands,

While jubilant bells in tower and steeple swung,

Down over sculptured balconies were hung

Great gorgeous tapestries out of Eastern lands!

p. 170

A Cobweb.

Lover devout of many a lonely place,

Mute gossamer guest of dimness and repose,

As loyally as lily or balmy rose 

Obey the sunshine, does your delicate lace 

Hang sombre filaments where the stealthy pace 

Of time’s disfeaturing footstep vaguely goes, —

From shelves that bear old ponderous folios,

To some poor yellowing portrait’s dusty face!

Yet though in solemn nooks you rightly reign,

Here, woven across the green of this fresh vine,

The dignity of your wonted state you lose;

For now the halcyon morning on your skein,

As though to merrily challenge its dark sign,

Strings the warm splendors of her jewelling dews!

p. 171

Thistledown.

Through summer’s gradual death, how sweet a sight

The flowering thistle’s tardy gleam appears,

Her thorny boughs like intricate chandeliers

When lit for festival with soft rosy light!

Yet closelier watching her, to left and right

You see the odorous beauty that she rears

Girt on all sides with countless emerald spears,

Eager the invading hand to pierce or smite!

But when the autumnal trees in ruin glow,

You meet her white ghost wandering to and fro

Aerially upon the fitful blast,

As though the spirit of this proud blossom came

To haunt the world in expiatory shame,

Repentant of her cold imperious past!

p. 174

~ Fawcett, Edgar, Fantasy and Passion, published in 1878.

From Earth’s voices. Transcripts from nature, Sospitra, and other poems.

XXIV. The Hymn of Autumn.

I love the purple moors and northern hills

Where the deer leap and whirling curlews cry;

I love the breath of the west wind that thrills

The mountain-pines until mellifluously

They send a wild strain through the listening sky:

I love to watch the azure shadows creep 

Across the windless surface of the deep.

But more my joy is in the fields of grain,

In orchards fill’d with fruit, — the ruddy pear,

Peaches that through September suns have lain

And breathed the sweetness of the mellow air,

Vines heavy with the purple weight they bear,

October woodlands where the brown nuts fall

And where the redbreasts still their sweet cries call.

But most I love th’ autumnal peace that broods

When ere the equinox come windless days:

When spreads a golden glory o’er the woods,

An amber-tinted crimson-deepening blaze:

Ah! then I love to dream of Summer’s ways,

And have no fear of Winter stern and dumb,

Because I know sweet Spring again will come.

pp. 37-38

Several stanzas from Sospitra.

VII.

Within her brain each thought that passed

Within the minds of men was held;

Her gaze on each new dream was cast.

To her the mists were all dispelled;

She saw in flawless nakedness

Each truth that man would curse or bless.

***

X.

The nightingales that sang anear

Flew to her call; lithe serpents twined

Before her path; and knew no fear 

The grey-green lizards she would find

On broken marble pedestals.

Or clinging to the ruin’d walls.

XI.

She had strange dreams, she felt the throb

Of the great world-heart pulse and swing;

She heard the low continuous sob

Which universal death did wring,

Amidst the loud and jubilant strife

For ever echoing from life.

XII.

Her days were calm and sweet and still;

Her soul, knowing all things, was at peace:

O’er her no breath of mortal ill

Might blow, nor Time for her increase

The burden of his years: alone.

Death some far day might claim his own.

XIII.

Death, and that other power — Love:

But death would never come to her,

From earth around or world above.

If she ne’er turned idolater

Before the face of him whose eyes

Give man his dreams of paradise.

XIV.

And ever when she thought of this

Sospitra smiled: she saw too clear

The mockery of his transient bliss

To dread though Love should draw anear:

She saw his myriad worshippers

Tread o’er his countless sepulchres.

XV.

To her all passions were as things

Of little heed, like leaves that fall.

And which the wind takes up and flings

Aside: o’er her they had no thrall —

She knew their heights and depths, but wise,

She looked through each with cold calm eyes.

XVI.

But most she loved the mystery

Of night, when o’er the desert plain

The twilight shadows stealthily

Grew into darkness, and like rain

The soft dews cooled the ground and made

A new life thrill through each grass-blade.

XVII.

Oft then she wandered from her home,

And sought the lonely silent sands;

Beneath the stars she loved to roam

And call to her the wandering bands 

Of fleet gazelles, or by her side,

Feel the fierce tawny lion glide.

XVIII.

Or midst the ruins she would sit

And watch the solemn moonrise fill

The ancient halls, where the bats flit

Hither and thither, whistling shrill:

And dream that once again Baal’s priests

Held here their sacrificial feasts.

XIX.

These when she wished alone for peace:

But when the life-blood overbold

Thrilled in her veins and would not cease

To stir strange thoughts she scarce controll’d,

She sat within her home — and then

She looked into the souls of men:

XX.

The inmost secret of each soul

To her was bare; the hearts of all

She read as she might read a scroll:

She saw Death sweep above them all

And ever and again stoop low

And out some flickering life-flame blow.

***

XXIII.

She saw the miner in the womb

Of the dark earth: the diver slim

Deep down in the strange world of gloom

Above the cluster’d pearl-shells swim:

And ever as she heard and saw.

Her soul was fill’d with some strange awe.

***

LXIV.

And then Sospitra left, and through

The silence of the dusk she went;

She saw the same stars in the blue

Dark vault, she felt the same sweet scent

Blown from the wide free plains, saw race

The swift deer fleeing from place to place —

LXV.

The same, and yet to her how strange 

They were: they did not seem her own

Familiar sphere, or else some change

Had over them a dim veil thrown,

As evening mists rise up and steal

And make the landscape seem unreal.

LXVI.

No thoughts were hers, but many sighs:

One prayerful voice alone she heard

‘Midst all the universe; her eyes

Saw one who gazed, whose sudden word

Had lit a fire within her veins

And thrilled her with ecstatic pains.

LXVII.

Long while she wandered to and fro

In this dream-mood, then slowly turned

And sought the room where he lay low

Whom she had saved: a soft flame burned

Therein, and by its crimson light

She saw he slumbered still, death -white.

LXVIII.

And as she watched, sleep came on her;

She in a dreamless slumber lay

As if entranced; no sounds there were

In that still place, though far away

The hoarse hyenas on the plain

Howled in their savage hunger-pain.

LXIX.

And while she slept, he woke: strange awe

Filled him at first — he dimly thought

This was a goddess whom he saw

Beside him, whose pure face he sought

With questioning eyes and heart that thrilled,

But ever with a fear that chilled.

LXX.

But as the strange magnetic gaze

Of human sight can ev’n control

The mind of one whom fevers daze

And waken the sense-clouded soul.

So in her sleep Sospitra stirred,

And muttered dreamily one word –

LXXI.

The one word Love, and through her eyes

Two single tears came forth, and low

From parted lips breath’d sudden sighs:

But he who watched, with heart aglow

With sudden exultation cried,

‘No goddess she who here beside

LXXII.

‘Me dreams, no prophetess austere!

No goddess ever yet did keep

A mind a mortal swayed, no tear

A goddess ev’n in secret sleep

E’er knew, no sad sighs ever moaned

Nor even in dreams Love’s lordship owned!’

LXXIII.

And with his low exulting cry

Sospitra woke, his last words still

Like dream-sounds echoing mockingly —

Love’s lordship — how the words did fill

Her heart with a delirious bliss 

And all her old calm strength dismiss!

LXXIV.

Then as a rain-cloud comes on swift

Aërial wings across the vault

Of heav’n, and the grey rain-mists drift

Till the lost wayfarer, at fault,

Succumbs and drops — so fever drew

A mist across his mind and blew

LXXV.

Phantasmal visions o’er his sight,

Until his struggling soul sank far

In darkness, as when clouds at night

Hide the keen pulse of fieriest star:

For days he lay thus, till at last

One eve the fever ceased and passed.

LXXVI.

The ebb of strength returned and flowed

Till the new life felt sweet and strange:

While day by day Sospitra glowed

With lovelier beauty: some swift change

Had turned the seer into a woman,

Made the divine calm heart grow human.

LXXXVIII.

‘I also am of those who live

A brief swift span, who pass away

With all life’s passions fugitive;

But ah, in that miraculous day

When all Life’s complex mysteries

Were clear unto my steadfast eyes,

LXXXIX.

‘I saw, as I might read a scroll,

That death was but a change, a birth,

A rest, and that th’ enfranchised soul

Reached to a higher life on earth —

That ever upward, upward, went

The soul in its divine ascent:

XC.

‘Therefore I fear no more at all;

Therefore I do not cry again

For the old glory I let fall

From out my life: through joy, through pain

I shall reach onward, till once more

My life is as my dream of yore.’

XCI.

Slowly the long dull hours went by:

No more Sospitra far and wide

Roved o’er the plains, but listlessly

She watched the days to evenings glide.

The moon succeed the sun, the stars the moon,

Each slow dawn lead to fiery noon.

XCII.

Death came to her one lonely eve

And looked upon her pale sad face:

‘Though Love doth pass, I shall not leave

Thee ever in my silent place,’

He whispered gently through her sleep, —

Then breathed o’er her his slumber deep.

XCIII.

The wind blows there with hollow sound;

The circling seasons bring no change:

When sweet Spring’s breath along the ground

Wakens the flow’rs, no footsteps range

The fragrant ways, no song is heard

Save the shrill music of some bird.

XCIV.

The ruined columns, stone by stone,

Stand silent ‘midst the desert vast:

There the hyena howls alone,

Or swells the fierce sirocco-blast

Or the dull roar of lions, like sea

Calling to sea monotonously.

pp. 46 – 68

From Transcripts from Nature, second series.

XII. The Evening Star. (At Sea)

Aflame with silver fires that glow

With ruby-change and amethyst,

Pants, pulses thro’ this sundown mist

The even-star, and to and fro

O’er the sea-depths and weedy caves

It dances in a myriad waves,

Though still it thrills and throbs on high,

The sole flame in the purpling sky.

p. 194

XVL. A Crystal Forest.

The air is blue and keen and cold,

With snow the roads and fields are white;

But here the forest’s clothed with light

And in a shining sheath enrolled.

Each branch, each twig, each blade of grass,

Seems clad miraculously with glass:

Above the ice-bound streamlet bends

Each frozen fern with crystal ends.

p. 196

~ Sharp, William, Earth’s voices. Transcripts from nature, Sospitra, and other poems, published in 1884.

From The collected poems of Wilfred Campbell.

Ode to the Laurentian Hills.

Blue hills, elusive, far and dim,
You lift so high beyond our care;
Where earth's horizon seems to swim,
You dream in loftier air.

Here where our world wends day by day
Its sad, material round,
We know not of that purer ray
By which your heights are bound.

Ignoble thoughts, ignoble aims
Shut us from that high heaven;
Those dawning dreams, those sunset flames,
With which your peaks are riven.

You seem so lone and bleak, so vast
Beneath your dome of sky,
So patient to the heat or blast
That smites or hurtles by;

So vague, withdrawn in mists, remote,
Shut out in glories wide;
The very fleecy clouds that float,
Your dreamings seem to hide.

We in our plots of circumstance
Are prisoners of a grim despair;
While your far shining shoulders glance
From heights where all things dare.

Could we from out this cloak of glooms
That prisons and oppresses,
But reach those large, sky-bounded rooms
Of your divine recesses;

Then might we find that godlike calm,
That peace that holdeth you,
That soars like wordless prayer or psalm
To heaven with your blue.

Then might we know that silent power,
That patience, that supreme
Indifference to day and hour
Of your eternal dream.

Then might we lose, in fire and dew
Of your pellucid airs,
This diffidence to dare and do,
That grovels and despairs.

And dream once more that high desire,
That greatness dead and gone,
When earth's winged eagles eyed the fire
Your sunrise peaks upon.

That power serene, life's vasts to scan,
Beyond earth's futile tears;
Her hopes, her curse, the bliss, the ban
Of all her anguished years.

p. 49

Nature.

Nature, the dream that wraps us round.

     One comforting and saving whole;

And as the clothes to the body of man,

     The mantle of the soul.

Nature, the door that opens wide

     From this close, fetid house of ill;

That lifts from curse of street to vast

     Receding hill on hill,

Nature, the mood, now sweet of night,

     Now grand and splendid, large of day;

From vast skyline and cloudy towers,

     To stars in heaven that stray.

Nature, the hope, the truth, the gleam. 

     Beyond this bitter cark and dole;

Whose walls the infinite weft of dream.

     Whose gift is to console.

p. 93

A Wood Lyric.

Into the stilly woods I go,

Where the shades are deep and the wind-flowers blow,

And the hours are dreamy and lone and long,

And the power of silence is greater than song.

Into the stilly woods I go,

Where the leaves are cool and the wind-flowers blow.

When I go into the stilly woods,

And know all the flowers in their sweet, shy hoods,

The tender leaves in their shimmer and sheen

Of darkling shadow, diaphanous green,

In those haunted halls where my footstep falls,

Like one who enters cathedral walls,

A spirit of beauty floods over me,

As over a swimmer the waves of the sea,

That strengthens and glories, refreshens and fills,

Till all mine inner heart wakens and thrills

With a new and a glad and a sweet delight,

And a sense of the infinite out of sight,

Of the great unknown that we may not know,

But only feel with an inward glow

When into the great, glad woods we go.

O life-worn brothers, come with me

Into the wood's hushed sanctity,

Where the great, cool branches are heavy with June,

And the voices of summer are strung in tune;

Come with me, O heart out-worn,

Or spirit whom life's brute-struggles have torn,

Come, tired and broken and wounded feet,

Where the walls are greening, the floors are sweet,

The roofs are breathing and heaven's airs meet.

pp. 116-117

Walls of Green.

Walls of green where the wind and the sunlight stir,

Rippling windows of light where the sun looks through,

And spaces of day that widen and blur beyond,

Out to the haze-rimmed, purpled edge of the world.

Aisles whose pavements are etched with ghosts of moving

Leaves and phantom branches raftered above;

Wind-swayed arches rocking under the blue,

Breathing under the dim, stirred peace of the world.

Walls of green skirting the high-built heaven,

Dusky pines, poplars clapping their hands,

Arching elms holding the spaces aloft,

Under the wind-swept, argosied dome of sky.

Walls of green. Under their luminous glooms,

Dim and sweet, the fancies of summer lie,

Sylvan murmurs of sun and leafy shadow,

Music of bird and swaying of tenuous bough.

Under here the haunted heart of summer

Hides in its pensive veilings of tremulous green,

Where the sky peers through and the ruddy eye of the sun,

Letting the world, remote, and its roar go by.

Here is the realm of fancy, the poet's land,

This house of breathing leaves and summer and sun;

Where the eye is keen for beauty, the ear intuned,

And the hushed heart glad for silence and slumber and dreams.

And here, chance now and anon when the world is stilled,

And life is afar, and earth of her care swept clean,

Do the gods come back as of old in the gold of the world,

And the elfin creatures dance in their sunbeam dreams:

And the high thoughts wake, and the great ones tread as

of yore.

In olden majesty under these lofty aisles,

Where the woodshade glooms, or the gossamer sunlight smiles,

In the strength of the trees or the wide, blue lift of the sky.

Yea, here they come to the children of earth as of yore,

Bringing their god-gifts, vision and beauty and lore,

Brimming the world with the old-time effort and joy,

And Titan moods of the old world's golden desire.

pp. 122-123

The Elf-Lover.

It was a haunted youth; he spake

Beneath the beechen shade:

“An’ hast thou seen my love go past,

A sunny, winsome maid?

“An’ hast thou seen my love fare past,

Her face with life aflame?

The leaves astir her footsteps tell,

The soft winds blow her name.

“‘Twas when the autumn days were still, —

 It seemeth but an hour, —

I met her on the gold hillside

When elfin loves had power.

“Her voice was like the sound of brooks,

Her face like some wild bloom;

 And in the beauty of her look

I read mine ancient doom.

“And when the world in mist died out

Down toward some evening land,

Betwixt the glinting golden-rod

We two went hand in hand.

“And when the moon a golden disk

Above the night hills came,

Down in a world of midnight haze

I kissed her lips aflame.

“But when the moon was hidden low

Behind each spectre tree;

She loosed from my sad arms and bent

A startled look on me.

“(While wound from out some haunted dusk

A far-off elfin horn,) 

Like one on sudden woke from sleep,

And fled into the morn.

“I follow her, I follow her,

 But never more may see.

The crimson dawn, the stars of night

Know what she is to me.

“I ne'er can rest, I ne’er can stay,

But speed from place to place;

For all my heart is flamed with that

Wild glamor of her face.

“I know her soft arms in my dreams,

All wound about my sleep; 

I seem to hear her silvern voice

In all the winds that creep.

“O saw you not her come this way,

By boughs in waters glassed?

So slight her form, so soft her step.

You'd think a moon ray passed.

“O tell me did you see her wend?

And whence to hill or sea?

The ruddy dawn, the stars of night.

Know what she is to me.”

pp. 249-251

True Insight.

They never know who only know alone.

Who deeply knows must also deeply feel.

Life is a knife ground on a grinder's wheel,

A sea-worn crag, a river-polished stone.

Knowledge for suffering doth to love atone.

O who would not to grim experience kneel,

And feel the fiat of fate's averted heel,

To know in truth the great world's under-moan.

There in her dungeons where her weird mimes flit,

Behind the curtains of her phantom show,

With grim reality for aye to sit,

And watch those puppet-maskers come and go,

Who build the shadow-dreams that rise and fall,

Grotesque, distorted, on life's sombre wall.

p. 279

The House Divine.

Not in the caverned aisles of cloistered gloom,

Or chancelled splendors built in carven stone,

Where censer smoke goes up and choirs intone

Those sad dread litanies of human doom,

That lend an added horror to the tomb;

Nor where the modern dervish maketh moan,

And smites his forehead with impenitent groan,

Doth faith's rare flower of reverence wake and bloom:

But out in hallowed halls of dawn or night.

Where overhead the censer stars outswing,

Eternity and night in one vast ring,

Or hid impulses of inmoving light;

Behind him all the mystery of his race,

Doth man with Deity come close face to face.

p. 280

~ Campbell, Wilfred, The collected poems of Wilfred Campbell, published in 1905.

From Poems on Lake Winnipesaukee.

 The Three-Fold Blue.

The blue above the clouds so calmly sailing

Is crystalline as on a morn of May :

Long have our eyes looked heavenward, unavailing

To see such pure cerulean deck the day

Hail hyaline, thy wind-swept dome of azure

Shines on unnumbered eyes upturned to thee !

Art thou the realm of Summer's latest pleasure

Or of the advancing Autumn, bold and free !

Thou sea-bine lake, a dream of fair September

Mingles thy flood with amethystine dye,

Deepening the softer hues, that we remember

Imperial Juno gave, when, wandering by,

She spread her vail of hyacinthine splendor

Over the sky, the lake and mountain-steep,

Hues like the hill-side violet, soft and tender

As infant's eyes when they awake from sleep.

Thou gem-blue mountains, where the shadows ranging,

Chased by the gales of high, ethereal-air 

Make pictures of the clouds, forever changing, 

Like Nature's soul that shines forever there!

So ever varying is the land of vision,

When dreams half-picture, in the star-lit night

The sapphire-fountains and the bowers elysian

Of kingdoms fading in the morning light.

pp. 16-17

Night, Hastening from the Lake.

    Was it the soul of night

    That charmed my rapturous sight,

Or coming morn, entranced, beyond the wave!

    The crescent moon shone clear

    The ethereal atmosphere

Was pure with breezes that September gave.

    Orion led the band

    That lit the shadowy land;

The royal planets shone on golden throne,

    And all the adoring stars

    Illumed their crystal bars,

Till darkness fled and splendor reigned alone.

    The auroral, boreal arch

    Shone as in skies of March,

That southern skies might shadow back the gleams,

    Vicing with Dian clear

    And diamond-dawning, near,

And twilight suns o'er Scandinavian streams.

    I saw the mountain-lake

    The living picture take,

Till glowed the heavens with light, translucent clear,

    That no man's hand may trace,

    Imperial halls to grace, 

As earth's grand dream till opening heaven draws near.

pp. 19-20

Sunset Splendors.

    Whence those colors golden

        On the sunset wave,

    Blending with the olden

        Hues, that seraphs' gave

To Raphael's soul sublime, and Angelo the brave!

    When on Patmos Island,

        He, whose love is sung,

    Saw a heavenly highland,

        O'er whose height was flung

Hues that arose to light when vaporous worlds were young,

    All the jewelled splendor,

        Every sunlit gem, 

    Shone with a radiance tender

        In the pure pearl diadem 

Of her, the bride of Him, who rules Jerusalem.

    Now that lustre shining

        Lights the earthly stream,

    Man is half divining

        How the diamonds gleam

On those far, fadeless shores, that haunt the poet's dream.

    And perchance the angels,

        All our longings learning,

    Blessed love evangels,

        Answering our deep yearning,

Unclose the twelve pearl-gates to light us, home returning.

pp. 30-31

~ Stickney, Julia Noyes, Poems on lake Winnipesaukee, published in 1884.