Poems. Volume 1

CHILLIANWALLAH ¹

 
Chillanwallah, Chillanwallah!
   Where our brothers fought and bled,
O thy name is natural music
   And a dirge above the dead!
Though we have not been defeated,
   Though we can’t be overcome,
Still, whene’er thou art repeated,
   I would fain that grief were dumb.
 
 
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
   ’Tis a name so sad and strange,
Like a breeze through midnight harpstrings
   Ringing many a mournful change;
But the wildness and the sorrow
   Have a meaning of their own—
Oh, whereof no glad to-morrow
   Can relieve the dismal tone!
 
 
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
   ’Tis a village dark and low,
By the bloody Jhelum river
   Bridged by the foreboding foe;
And across the wintry water
   He is ready to retreat,
When the carnage and the slaughter
   Shall have paid for his defeat.
 
 
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
   ’Tis a wild and dreary plain,
Strewn with plots of thickest jungle,
   Matted with the gory stain.
There the murder-mouthed artillery,
   In the deadly ambuscade,
Wrought the thunder of its treachery
   On the skeleton brigade.
 
 
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
   When the night set in with rain,
Came the savage plundering devils
   To their work among the slain;
And the wounded and the dying
   In cold blood did share the doom
Of their comrades round them lying,
   Stiff in the dead skyless gloom.
 
 
Chillianwallah, Chillianwallah!
   Thou wilt be a doleful chord,
And a mystic note of mourning
   That will need no chiming word;
And that heart will leap with anguish
   Who may understand thee best;
But the hopes of all will languish
   Till thy memory is at rest.
 

THE DOE: A FRAGMENT
(FROM‘WANDERING WILLIE’)

 
And—‘Yonder look! yoho! yoho!
Nancy is off!’ the farmer cried,
Advancing by the river side,
Red-kerchieft and brown-coated;—‘So,
My girl, who else could leap like that?
So neatly! like a lady!  ‘Zounds!
Look at her how she leads the hounds!’
And waving his dusty beaver hat,
He cheered across the chase-filled water,
And clapt his arm about his daughter,
And gave to Joan a courteous hug,
And kiss that, like a stubborn plug
From generous vats in vastness rounded,
The inner wealth and spirit sounded:
Eagerly pointing South, where, lo,
The daintiest, fleetest-footed doe
Led o’er the fields and thro’ the furze
Beyond: her lively delicate ears
Prickt up erect, and in her track
A dappled lengthy-striding pack.
 
 
Scarce had they cast eyes upon her,
When every heart was wagered on her,
And half in dread, and half delight,
They watched her lovely bounding flight;
As now across the flashing green,
And now beneath the stately trees,
And now far distant in the dene,
She headed on with graceful ease:
Hanging aloft with doubled knees,
At times athwart some hedge or gate;
And slackening pace by slow degrees,
As for the foremost foe to wait.
Renewing her outstripping rate
Whene’er the hot pursuers neared,
By garden wall and paled estate,
Where clambering gazers whooped and cheered.
Here winding under elm and oak,
And slanting up the sunny hill:
Splashing the water here like smoke
Among the mill-holms round the mill.
 
 
And—‘Let her go; she shows her game,
My Nancy girl, my pet and treasure!’
The farmer sighed: his eyes with pleasure
Brimming: ‘’Tis my daughter’s name,
My second daughter lying yonder.’
And Willie’s eye in search did wander,
And caught at once, with moist regard,
The white gleams of a grey churchyard.
‘Three weeks before my girl had gone,
And while upon her pillows propped,
She lay at eve; the weakling fawn—
For still it seems a fawn just dropt
A se’nnight—to my Nancy’s bed
I brought to make my girl a gift:
The mothers of them both were dead:
And both to bless it was my drift,
By giving each a friend; not thinking
How rapidly my girl was sinking.
And I remember how, to pat
Its neck, she stretched her hand so weak,
And its cold nose against her cheek
Pressed fondly: and I fetched the mat
To make it up a couch just by her,
Where in the lone dark hours to lie:
For neither dear old nurse nor I
Would any single wish deny her.
And there unto the last it lay;
And in the pastures cared to play
Little or nothing: there its meals
And milk I brought: and even now
The creature such affection feels
For that old room that, when and how,
’Tis strange to mark, it slinks and steals
To get there, and all day conceals.
And once when nurse who, since that time,
Keeps house for me, was very sick,
Waking upon the midnight chime,
And listening to the stair-clock’s click,
I heard a rustling, half uncertain,
Close against the dark bed-curtain:
And while I thrust my leg to kick,
And feel the phantom with my feet,
A loving tongue began to lick
My left hand lying on the sheet;
And warm sweet breath upon me blew,
And that ’twas Nancy then I knew.
So, for her love, I had good cause
To have the creature “Nancy” christened.’
 
 
He paused, and in the moment’s pause,
His eyes and Willie’s strangely glistened.
Nearer came Joan, and Bessy hung
With face averted, near enough
To hear, and sob unheard; the young
And careless ones had scampered off
Meantime, and sought the loftiest place
To beacon the approaching chase.
 
 
‘Daily upon the meads to browse,
Goes Nancy with those dairy cows
You see behind the clematis:
And such a favourite she is,
That when fatigued, and helter skelter,
Among them from her foes to shelter,
She dashes when the chase is over,
They’ll close her in and give her cover,
And bend their horns against the hounds,
And low, and keep them out of bounds!
From the house dogs she dreads no harm,
And is good friends with all the farm,
Man, and bird, and beast, howbeit
Their natures seem so opposite.
And she is known for many a mile,
And noted for her splendid style,
For her clear leap and quick slight hoof;
Welcome she is in many a roof.
And if I say, I love her, man!
I say but little: her fine eyes full
Of memories of my girl, at Yule
And May-time, make her dearer than
Dumb brute to men has been, I think.
So dear I do not find her dumb.
I know her ways, her slightest wink,
So well; and to my hand she’ll come,
Sidelong, for food or a caress,
Just like a loving human thing.
Nor can I help, I do confess,
Some touch of human sorrowing
To think there may be such a doubt
That from the next world she’ll be shut out,
And parted from me!  And well I mind
How, when my girl’s last moments came,
Her soft eyes very soft and kind,
She joined her hands and prayed the same,
That she “might meet her father, mother,
Sister Bess, and each dear brother,
And with them, if it might be, one
Who was her last companion.”
Meaning the fawn—the doe you mark—
For my bay mare was then a foal,
And time has passed since then:—but hark!’
 
 
For like the shrieking of a soul
Shut in a tomb, a darkened cry
Of inward-wailing agony
Surprised them, and all eyes on each
Fixed in the mute-appealing speech
Of self-reproachful apprehension:
Knowing not what to think or do:
But Joan, recovering first, broke through
The instantaneous suspension,
And knelt upon the ground, and guessed
The bitterness at a glance, and pressed
Into the comfort of her breast
The deep-throed quaking shape that drooped
In misery’s wilful aggravation,
Before the farmer as he stooped,
Touched with accusing consternation:
Soothing her as she sobbed aloud:—
‘Not me! not me!  Oh, no, no, no!
Not me!  God will not take me in!
Nothing can wipe away my sin!
I shall not see her: you will go;
You and all that she loves so:
Not me! not me!  Oh, no, no, no!’
Colourless, her long black hair,
Like seaweed in a tempest tossed
Tangling astray, to Joan’s care
She yielded like a creature lost:
Yielded, drooping toward the ground,
As doth a shape one half-hour drowned,
And heaved from sea with mast and spar,
All dark of its immortal star.
And on that tender heart, inured
To flatter basest grief, and fight
Despair upon the brink of night,
She suffered herself to sink, assured
Of refuge; and her ear inclined
To comfort; and her thoughts resigned
To counsel; her wild hair let brush
From off her weeping brows; and shook
With many little sobs that took
Deeper-drawn breaths, till into sighs,
Long sighs, they sank; and to the ‘hush!’
Of Joan’s gentle chide, she sought
Childlike to check them as she ought,
Looking up at her infantwise.
And Willie, gazing on them both,
Shivered with bliss through blood and brain,
To see the darling of his troth
Like a maternal angel strain
The sinful and the sinless child
At once on either breast, and there
In peace and promise reconciled
Unite them: nor could Nature’s care
With subtler sweet beneficence
Have fed the springs of penitence,
Still keeping true, though harshly tried,
The vital prop of human pride.
 

BEAUTY ROHTRAUT
(FROM MÖRICKE)

 
What is the name of King Ringang’s daughter?
   Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
And what does she do the livelong day,
Since she dare not knit and spin alway?
O hunting and fishing is ever her play!
And, heigh! that her huntsman I might be!
I’d hunt and fish right merrily!
         Be silent, heart!
 
 
And it chanced that, after this some time,—
   Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut,—
The boy in the Castle has gained access,
And a horse he has got and a huntsman’s dress,
To hunt and to fish with the merry Princess;
And, O! that a king’s son I might be!
Beauty Rohtraut I love so tenderly.
         Hush! hush! my heart.
 
 
Under a grey old oak they sat,
   Beauty, Beauty Rohtraut!
She laughs: ‘Why look you so slyly at me?
If you have heart enough, come, kiss me.’
Cried the breathless boy, ‘kiss thee?’
But he thinks, kind fortune has favoured my youth;
And thrice he has kissed Beauty Rohtraut’s mouth.
         Down! down! mad heart.
 
 
Then slowly and silently they rode home,—
   Rohtraut, Beauty Rohtraut!
The boy was lost in his delight:
‘And, wert thou Empress this very night,
I would not heed or feel the blight;
Ye thousand leaves of the wild wood wist
How Beauty Rohtraut’s mouth I kiss’d.
         Hush! hush! wild heart.’
 

THE OLIVE BRANCH

 
A dove flew with an Olive Branch;
It crossed the sea and reached the shore,
And on a ship about to launch
Dropped down the happy sign it bore.
 
 
‘An omen’ rang the glad acclaim!
The Captain stooped and picked it up,
‘Be then the Olive Branch her name,’
Cried she who flung the christening cup.
 
 
The vessel took the laughing tides;
It was a joyous revelry
To see her dashing from her sides
The rough, salt kisses of the sea.
 
 
And forth into the bursting foam
She spread her sail and sped away,
The rolling surge her restless home,
Her incense wreaths the showering spray.
 
 
Far out, and where the riot waves
Run mingling in tumultuous throngs,
She danced above a thousand graves,
And heard a thousand briny songs.
 
 
Her mission with her manly crew,
Her flag unfurl’d, her title told,
She took the Old World to the New,
And brought the New World to the Old.
 
 
Secure of friendliest welcomings,
She swam the havens sheening fair;
Secure upon her glad white wings,
She fluttered on the ocean air.
 
 
To her no more the bastioned fort
Shot out its swarthy tongue of fire;
From bay to bay, from port to port,
Her coming was the world’s desire.
 
 
And tho’ the tempest lashed her oft,
And tho’ the rocks had hungry teeth,
And lightnings split the masts aloft,
And thunders shook the planks beneath,
 
 
And tho’ the storm, self-willed and blind,
Made tatters of her dauntless sail,
And all the wildness of the wind
Was loosed on her, she did not fail;
 
 
But gallantly she ploughed the main,
And gloriously her welcome pealed,
And grandly shone to sky and plain
The goodly bales her decks revealed;
 
 
Brought from the fruitful eastern glebes
Where blow the gusts of balm and spice,
Or where the black blockaded ribs
Are jammed ’mongst ghostly fleets of ice,
 
 
Or where upon the curling hills
Glow clusters of the bright-eyed grape,
Or where the hand of labour drills
The stubbornness of earth to shape;
 
 
Rich harvestings and wealthy germs,
And handicrafts and shapely wares,
And spinnings of the hermit worms,
And fruits that bloom by lions’ lairs.
 
 
Come, read the meaning of the deep!
The use of winds and waters learn!
’Tis not to make the mother weep
For sons that never will return;
 
 
’Tis not to make the nations show
Contempt for all whom seas divide;
’Tis not to pamper war and woe,
Nor feed traditionary pride;
 
 
’Tis not to make the floating bulk
Mask death upon its slippery deck,
Itself in turn a shattered hulk,
A ghastly raft, a bleeding wreck.
 
 
It is to knit with loving lip
The interests of land to land;
To join in far-seen fellowship
The tropic and the polar strand.
 
 
It is to make that foaming Strength
Whose rebel forces wrestle still
Thro’ all his boundaried breadth and length
Become a vassal to our will.
 
 
It is to make the various skies,
And all the various fruits they vaunt,
And all the dowers of earth we prize,
Subservient to our household want.
 
 
And more, for knowledge crowns the gain
Of intercourse with other souls,
And Wisdom travels not in vain
The plunging spaces of the poles.
 
 
The wild Atlantic’s weltering gloom,
Earth-clasping seas of North and South,
The Baltic with its amber spume,
The Caspian with its frozen mouth;
 
 
The broad Pacific, basking bright,
And girdling lands of lustrous growth,
Vast continents and isles of light,
Dumb tracts of undiscovered sloth;
 
 
She visits these, traversing each;
They ripen to the common sun;
Thro’ diverse forms and different speech,
The world’s humanity is one.
 
 
O may her voice have power to say
How soon the wrecking discords cease,
When every wandering wave is gay
With golden argosies of peace!
 
 
Now when the ark of human fate,
Long baffled by the wayward wind,
Is drifting with its peopled freight,
Safe haven on the heights to find;
 
 
Safe haven from the drowning slime
Of evil deeds and Deluge wrath;—
To plant again the foot of Time
Upon a purer, firmer path;
 
 
’Tis now the hour to probe the ground,
To watch the Heavens, to speak the word,
The fathoms of the deep to sound,
And send abroad the missioned bird,
 
 
On strengthened wing for evermore,
Let Science, swiftly as she can,
Fly seaward on from shore to shore,
And bind the links of man to man;
 
 
And like that fair propitious Dove
Bless future fleets about to launch;
Make every freight a freight of love,
And every ship an Olive Branch.
 

SONG

 
Love within the lover’s breast
Burns like Hesper in the west,
O’er the ashes of the sun,
Till the day and night are done;
Then when dawn drives up her car—
Lo! it is the morning star.
 
 
Love! thy love pours down on mine
As the sunlight on the vine,
As the snow-rill on the vale,
As the salt breeze in the sail;
As the song unto the bird,
On my lips thy name is heard.
 
 
As a dewdrop on the rose
In thy heart my passion glows,
As a skylark to the sky
Up into thy breast I fly;
As a sea-shell of the sea
Ever shall I sing of thee.
 

THE WILD ROSE AND THE SNOWDROP

 
The Snowdrop is the prophet of the flowers;
It lives and dies upon its bed of snows;
And like a thought of spring it comes and goes,
Hanging its head beside our leafless bowers.
The sun’s betrothing kiss it never knows,
Nor all the glowing joy of golden showers;
But ever in a placid, pure repose,
More like a spirit with its look serene,
Droops its pale cheek veined thro’ with infant green.
 
 
Queen of her sisters is the sweet Wild Rose,
Sprung from the earnest sun and ripe young June;
The year’s own darling and the Summer’s Queen!
Lustrous as the new-throned crescent moon.
Much of that early prophet look she shows,
Mixed with her fair espoused blush which glows,
As if the ethereal fairy blood were seen;
Like a soft evening over sunset snows,
Half twilight violet shade, half crimson sheen.
 
 
Twin-born are both in beauteousness, most fair
In all that glads the eye and charms the air;
In all that wakes emotions in the mind
And sows sweet sympathies for human kind.
Twin-born, albeit their seasons are apart,
They bloom together in the thoughtful heart;
Fair symbols of the marvels of our state,
Mute speakers of the oracles of fate!
 
 
For each, fulfilling nature’s law, fulfils
Itself and its own aspirations pure;
Living and dying; letting faith ensure
New life when deathless Spring shall touch the hills.
Each perfect in its place; and each content
With that perfection which its being meant:
Divided not by months that intervene,
But linked by all the flowers that bud between.
Forever smiling thro’ its season brief,
The one in glory and the one in grief:
Forever painting to our museful sight,
How lowlihead and loveliness unite.
 
 
Born from the first blind yearning of the earth
To be a mother and give happy birth,
Ere yet the northern sun such rapture brings,
Lo, from her virgin breast the Snowdrop springs;
And ere the snows have melted from the grass,
And not a strip of greensward doth appear,
Save the faint prophecy its cheeks declare,
Alone, unkissed, unloved, behold it pass!
While in the ripe enthronement of the year,
Whispering the breeze, and wedding the rich air
With her so sweet, delicious bridal breath,—
Odorous and exquisite beyond compare,
And starr’d with dews upon her forehead clear,
Fresh-hearted as a Maiden Queen should be
Who takes the land’s devotion as her fee,—
The Wild Rose blooms, all summer for her dower,
Nature’s most beautiful and perfect flower.
 

THE DEATH OF WINTER

 
When April with her wild blue eye
   Comes dancing over the grass,
And all the crimson buds so shy
   Peep out to see her pass;
As lightly she loosens her showery locks
   And flutters her rainy wings;
      Laughingly stoops
         To the glass of the stream,
      And loosens and loops
         Her hair by the gleam,
While all the young villagers blithe as the flocks
   Go frolicking round in rings;—
Then Winter, he who tamed the fly,
Turns on his back and prepares to die,
For he cannot live longer under the sky.
 
 
Down the valleys glittering green,
Down from the hills in snowy rills,
He melts between the border sheen
   And leaps the flowery verges!
He cannot choose but brighten their hues,
And tho’ he would creep, he fain must leap,
   For the quick Spring spirit urges.
Down the vale and down the dale
He leaps and lights, till his moments fail,
Buried in blossoms red and pale,
   While the sweet birds sing his dirges!
 
 
O Winter!  I’d live that life of thine,
With a frosty brow and an icicle tongue,
And never a song my whole life long,—
Were such delicious burial mine!
To die and be buried, and so remain
A wandering brook in April’s train,
Fixing my dying eyes for aye
On the dawning brows of maiden May.
 

SONG

 
   The moon is alone in the sky
      As thou in my soul;
   The sea takes her image to lie
      Where the white ripples roll
         All night in a dream,
         With the light of her beam,
Hushedly, mournfully, mistily up to the shore.
         The pebbles speak low
         In the ebb and the flow,
As I when thy voice came at intervals, tuned to adore:
         Nought other stirred
         Save my heart all unheard
Beating to bliss that is past evermore.
 

JOHN LACKLAND

 
   A wicked man is bad enough on earth;
   But O the baleful lustre of a chief
   Once pledged in tyranny!  O star of dearth
   Darkly illumining a nation’s grief!
   How many men have worn thee on their brows!
   Alas for them and us!  God’s precious gift
   Of gracious dispensation got by theft—
   The damning form of false unholy vows!
   The thief of God and man must have his fee:
   And thou, John Lackland, despicable prince—
   Basest of England’s banes before or since!
   Thrice traitor, coward, thief!  O thou shalt be
   The historic warning, trampled and abhorr’d
Who dared to steal and stain the symbols of the Lord!
 

THE SLEEPING CITY

 
A Princess in the eastern tale
Paced thro’ a marble city pale,
And saw in ghastly shapes of stone
The sculptured life she breathed alone;
 
 
Saw, where’er her eye might range,
Herself the only child of change;
And heard her echoed footfall chime
Between Oblivion and Time;
 
 
And in the squares where fountains played,
And up the spiral balustrade,
Along the drowsy corridors,
Even to the inmost sleeping floors,
 
 
Surveyed in wonder chilled with dread
The seemingness of Death, not dead;
Life’s semblance but without its storm,
And silence frosting every form;
 
 
Crowned figures, cold and grouping slaves,
Like suddenly arrested waves
About to sink, about to rise,—
Strange meaning in their stricken eyes;
 
 
And cloths and couches live with flame
Of leopards fierce and lions tame,
And hunters in the jungle reed,
Thrown out by sombre glowing brede;
 
 
Dumb chambers hushed with fold on fold,
And cumbrous gorgeousness of gold;
White casements o’er embroidered seats,
Looking on solitudes of streets,—
 
 
On palaces and column’d towers,
Unconscious of the stony hours;
Harsh gateways startled at a sound,
With burning lamps all burnish’d round;—
 
 
Surveyed in awe this wealth and state,
Touched by the finger of a Fate,
And drew with slow-awakening fear
The sternness of the atmosphere;—
 
 
And gradually, with stealthier foot,
Became herself a thing as mute,
And listened,—while with swift alarm
Her alien heart shrank from the charm;
 
 
Yet as her thoughts dilating rose,
Took glory in the great repose,
And over every postured form
Spread lava-like and brooded warm,—
 
 
And fixed on every frozen face
Beheld the record of its race,
And in each chiselled feature knew
The stormy life that once blushed thro’;—
 
 
The ever-present of the past
There written; all that lightened last,
Love, anguish, hope, disease, despair,
Beauty and rage, all written there;—
 
 
Enchanted Passions! whose pale doom
Is never flushed by blight or bloom,
But sentinelled by silent orbs,
Whose light the pallid scene absorbs.—
 
 
Like such a one I pace along
This City with its sleeping throng;
Like her with dread and awe, that turns
To rapture, and sublimely yearns;—
 
 
For now the quiet stars look down
On lights as quiet as their own;
The streets that groaned with traffic show
As if with silence paved below;
 
 
The latest revellers are at peace,
The signs of in-door tumult cease,
From gay saloon and low resort,
Comes not one murmur or report:
 
 
The clattering chariot rolls not by,
The windows show no waking eye,
The houses smoke not, and the air
Is clear, and all the midnight fair.
 
 
The centre of the striving world,
Round which the human fate is curled,
To which the future crieth wild,—
Is pillowed like a cradled child.
 
 
The palace roof that guards a crown,
The mansion swathed in dreamy down,
Hovel, court, and alley-shed,
Sleep in the calmness of the dead.
 
 
Now while the many-motived heart
Lies hushed—fireside and busy mart,
And mortal pulses beat the tune
That charms the calm cold ear o’ the moon
 
 
Whose yellowing crescent down the West
Leans listening, now when every breast
Its basest or its purest heaves,
The soul that joys, the soul that grieves;—
 
 
While Fame is crowning happy brows
That day will blindly scorn, while vows
Of anguished love, long hidden, speak
From faltering tongue and flushing cheek
 
 
The language only known to dreams,
Rich eloquence of rosy themes!
While on the Beauty’s folded mouth
Disdain just wrinkles baby youth;
 
 
While Poverty dispenses alms
To outcasts, bread, and healing balms;
While old Mammon knows himself
The greatest beggar for his pelf;
 
 
While noble things in darkness grope,
The Statesman’s aim, the Poet’s hope;
The Patriot’s impulse gathers fire,
And germs of future fruits aspire;—
 
 
Now while dumb nature owns its links,
And from one common fountain drinks,
Methinks in all around I see
This Picture in Eternity;—
 
 
A marbled City planted there
With all its pageants and despair;
A peopled hush, a Death not dead,
But stricken with Medusa’s head;—
 
 
And in the Gorgon’s glance for aye
The lifeless immortality
Reveals in sculptured calmness all
Its latest life beyond recall.