XVII. THE CHILD'S PURCHASE.

A PROLOGUE.

As a young Child, whose Mother, for a jest, To his own use a golden coin flings down, Devises blythe how he may spend it best, Or on a horse, a bride-cake, or a crown, Till, wearied with his quest, Nor liking altogether that nor this, He gives it back for nothing but a kiss, Endow'd so I With golden speech, my choice of toys to buy, And scanning power and pleasure and renown, Till each in turn, with looking at, looks vain, For her mouth's bliss, To her who gave it give I it again. Ah, Lady elect, Whom the Time's scorn has saved from its respect, Would I had art For uttering this which sings within my heart! But, lo, Thee to admire is all the art I know. My Mother and God's; Fountain of miracle! Give me thereby some praise of thee to tell In such a Song As may my Guide severe and glad not wrong Who never spake till thou'dst on him conferr'd The right, convincing word! Grant me the steady heat Of thought wise, splendid, sweet, Urged by the great, rejoicing wind that rings With draught of unseen wings, Making each phrase, for love and for delight, Twinkle like Sirius on a frosty night! Aid thou thine own dear fame, thou only Fair, At whose petition meek The Heavens themselves decree that, as it were, They will be weak! Thou Speaker of all wisdom in a Word, Thy Lord! Speaker who thus could'st well afford Thence to be silent;—ah, what silence that Which had for prologue thy 'Magnificat?'— O, Silence full of wonders More than by Moses in the Mount were heard, More than were utter'd by the Seven Thunders; Silence that crowns, unnoted, like the voiceless blue, The loud world's varying view, And in its holy heart the sense of all things ponders! That acceptably I may speak of thee, Ora pro me! Key-note and stop Of the thunder-going chorus of sky-Powers; Essential drop Distill'd from worlds of sweetest-savour'd flowers To anoint with nuptial praise The Head which for thy Beauty doff'd its rays, And thee, in His exceeding glad descending, meant, And Man's new days Made of His deed the adorning accident! Vast Nothingness of Self, fair female Twin Of Fulness, sucking all God's glory in! (Ah, Mistress mine, To nothing I have added only sin, And yet would shine!) Ora pro me! Life's cradle and death's tomb! To lie within whose womb, There, with divine self-will infatuate, Love-captive to the thing He did create, Thy God did not abhor, No more Than Man, in Youth's high spousal-tide, Abhors at last to touch The strange lips of his long-procrastinating Bride; Nay, not the least imagined part as much! Ora pro me! My Lady, yea, the Lady of my Lord, Who didst the first descry The burning secret of virginity, We know with what reward! Prism whereby Alone we see Heav'n's light in its triplicity; Rainbow complex In bright distinction of all beams of sex, Shining for aye In the simultaneous sky, To One, thy Husband, Father, Son, and Brother, Spouse blissful, Daughter, Sister, milk-sweet Mother; Ora pro me! Mildness, whom God obeys, obeying thyself Him in thy joyful Saint, nigh lost to sight In the great gulf Of his own glory and thy neighbour light; With whom thou wast as else with husband none For perfect fruit of inmost amity; Who felt for thee Such rapture of refusal that no kiss Ever seal'd wedlock so conjoint with bliss; And whose good singular eternally 'Tis now, with nameless peace and vehemence, To enjoy thy married smile, That mystery of innocence; Ora pro me! Sweet Girlhood without guile, The extreme of God's creative energy; Sunshiny Peak of human personality; The world's sad aspirations' one Success; Bright Blush, that sav'st our shame from shamelessness; Chief Stone of stumbling; Sign built in the way To set the foolish everywhere a-bray; Hem of God's robe, which all who touch are heal'd; To which the outside Many honour yield With a reward and grace Unguess'd by the unwash'd boor that hails Him to His face, Spurning the safe, ingratiant courtesy Of suing Him by thee; Ora pro me! Creature of God rather the sole than first; Knot of the cord Which binds together all and all unto their Lord; Suppliant Omnipotence; best to the worst; Our only Saviour from an abstract Christ And Egypt's brick-kilns, where the lost crowd plods, Blaspheming its false Gods; Peace-beaming Star, by which shall come enticed, Though nought thereof as yet they weet, Unto thy Babe's small feet, The Mighty, wand'ring disemparadised, Like Lucifer, because to thee They will not bend the knee; Ora pro me! Desire of Him whom all things else desire! Bush aye with Him as He with thee on fire! Neither in His great Deed nor on His throne— O, folly of Love, the intense Last culmination of Intelligence,— Him seem'd it good that God should be alone! Basking in unborn laughter of thy lips, Ere the world was, with absolute delight His Infinite reposed in thy Finite; Well-match'd: He, universal being's Spring, And thou, in whom are gather'd up the ends of everything! Ora pro me! In season due, on His sweet-fearful bed, Rock'd by an earthquake, curtain'd with eclipse, Thou shar'd'st the rapture of the sharp spear's head, And thy bliss pale Wrought for our boon what Eve's did for our bale; Thereafter, holding a little thy soft breath, Thou underwent'st the ceremony of death; And, now, Queen-Wife, Sitt'st at the right hand of the Lord of Life, Who, of all bounty, craves for only fee The glory of hearing it besought with smiles by thee! Ora pro me! Mother, who lead'st me still by unknown ways, Giving the gifts I know not how to ask, Bless thou the work Which, done, redeems my many wasted days, Makes white the murk, And crowns the few which thou wilt not dispraise. When clear my Songs of Lady's graces rang, And little guess'd I 'twas of thee I sang! Vainly, till now, my pray'rs would thee compel To fire my verse with thy shy fame, too long Shunning world-blazon of well-ponder'd song; But doubtful smiles, at last, 'mid thy denials lurk; From which I spell, 'Humility and greatness grace the task Which he who does it deems impossible!'



XVIII. DEAD LANGUAGE.

'Thou dost not wisely, Bard. A double voice is Truth's, to use at will: One, with the abysmal scorn of good for ill, Smiting the brutish ear with doctrine hard, Wherein She strives to look as near a lie As can comport with her divinity; The other tender-soft as seem The embraces of a dead Love in a dream. These thoughts, which you have sung In the vernacular, Should be, as others of the Church's are, Decently cloak'd in the Imperial Tongue. Have you no fears Lest, as Lord Jesus bids your sort to dread, Yon acorn-munchers rend you limb from limb, You, with Heaven's liberty affronting theirs!' So spoke my monitor; but I to him, 'Alas, and is not mine a language dead?'



AMELIA, ETC.

AMELIA.

Whene'er mine eyes do my Amelia greet It is with such emotion As when, in childhood, turning a dim street, I first beheld the ocean. There, where the little, bright, surf-breathing town, That shew'd me first her beauty and the sea, Gathers its skirts against the gorse-lit down And scatters gardens o'er the southern lea, Abides this Maid Within a kind, yet sombre Mother's shade, Who of her daughter's graces seems almost afraid, Viewing them ofttimes with a scared forecast, Caught, haply, from obscure love-peril past. Howe'er that be, She scants me of my right, Is cunning careful evermore to balk Sweet separate talk, And fevers my delight By frets, if, on Amelia's cheek of peach, I touch the notes which music cannot reach, Bidding 'Good-night!' Wherefore it came that, till to-day's dear date, I curs'd the weary months which yet I have to wait Ere I find heaven, one-nested with my mate. To-day, the Mother gave, To urgent pleas and promise to behave As she were there, her long-besought consent To trust Amelia with me to the grave Where lay my once-betrothed, Millicent: 'For,' said she, hiding ill a moistening eye, 'Though, Sir, the word sounds hard, God makes as if He least knew how to guard The treasure He loves best, simplicity.' And there Amelia stood, for fairness shewn Like a young apple-tree, in flush'd array Of white and ruddy flow'r, auroral, gay, With chilly blue the maiden branch between; And yet to look on her moved less the mind To say 'How beauteous!' than 'How good and kind!' And so we went alone By walls o'er which the lilac's numerous plume Shook down perfume; Trim plots close blown With daisies, in conspicuous myriads seen, Engross'd each one With single ardour for her spouse, the sun; Garths in their glad array Of white and ruddy branch, auroral, gay, With azure chill the maiden flow'r between; Meadows of fervid green, With sometime sudden prospect of untold Cowslips, like chance-found gold; And broadcast buttercups at joyful gaze, Rending the air with praise, Like the six-hundred-thousand-voiced shout Of Jacob camp'd in Midian put to rout; Then through the Park, Where Spring to livelier gloom Quicken'd the cedars dark, And, 'gainst the clear sky cold, Which shone afar Crowded with sunny alps oracular, Great chestnuts raised themselves abroad like cliffs of bloom; And everywhere, Amid the ceaseless rapture of the lark, With wonder new We caught the solemn voice of single air, 'Cuckoo!' And when Amelia, 'bolden'd, saw and heard How bravely sang the bird, And all things in God's bounty did rejoice, She who, her Mother by, spake seldom word, Did her charm'd silence doff, And, to my happy marvel, her dear voice Went as a clock does, when the pendulum's off. Ill Monarch of man's heart the Maiden who Does not aspire to be High-Pontiff too! So she repeated soft her Poet's line, 'By grace divine, Not otherwise, O Nature, are we thine!' And I, up the bright steep she led me, trod, And the like thought pursued With, 'What is gladness without gratitude, And where is gratitude without a God?' And of delight, the guerdon of His laws, She spake, in learned mood; And I, of Him loved reverently, as Cause, Her sweetly, as Occasion of all good. Nor were we shy, For souls in heaven that be May talk of heaven without hypocrisy. And now, when we drew near The low, gray Church, in its sequester'd dell, A shade upon me fell. Dead Millicent indeed had been most sweet, But I how little meet To call such graces in a Maiden mine! A boy's proud passion free affection blunts; His well-meant flatteries oft are blind affronts; And many a tear Was Millicent's before I, manlier, knew That maidens shine As diamonds do, Which, though most clear, Are not to be seen through; And, if she put her virgin self aside And sate her, crownless, at my conquering feet, It should have bred in me humility, not pride. Amelia had more luck than Millicent: Secure she smiled and warm from all mischance Or from my knowledge or my ignorance, And glow'd content With my—some might have thought too much—superior age, Which seem'd the gage Of steady kindness all on her intent. Thus nought forebade us to be fully blent. While, therefore, now Her pensive footstep stirr'd The darnell'd garden of unheedful death, She ask'd what Millicent was like, and heard Of eyes like her's, and honeysuckle breath, And of a wiser than a woman's brow, Yet fill'd with only woman's love, and how An incidental greatness character'd Her unconsider'd ways. But all my praise Amelia thought too slight for Millicent, And on my lovelier-freighted arm she leant, For more attent; And the tea-rose I gave, To deck her breast, she dropp'd upon the grave. 'And this was her's,' said I, decoring with a band Of mildest pearls Amelia's milder hand. 'Nay, I will wear it for her sake,' she said: For dear to maidens are their rivals dead. And so, She seated on the black yew's tortured root, I on the carpet of sere shreds below, And nigh the little mound where lay that other, I kiss'd her lips three times without dispute, And, with bold worship suddenly aglow, I lifted to my lips a sandall'd foot, And kiss'd it three times thrice without dispute. Upon my head her fingers fell like snow, Her lamb-like hands about my neck she wreathed. Her arms like slumber o'er my shoulders crept, And with her bosom, whence the azalea breathed, She did my face full favourably smother, To hide the heaving secret that she wept! Now would I keep my promise to her Mother; Now I arose, and raised her to her feet, My best Amelia, fresh-born from a kiss, Moth-like, full-blown in birthdew shuddering sweet, With great, kind eyes, in whose brown shade Bright Venus and her Baby play'd! At inmost heart well pleased with one another, What time the slant sun low Through the plough'd field does each clod sharply shew, And softly fills With shade the dimples of our homeward hills, With little said, We left the 'wilder'd garden of the dead, And gain'd the gorse-lit shoulder of the down That keeps the north-wind from the nestling town, And caught, once more, the vision of the wave, Where, on the horizon's dip, A many-sailed ship Pursued alone her distant purpose grave; And, by steep steps rock-hewn, to the dim street I led her sacred feet; And so the Daughter gave, Soft, moth-like, sweet, Showy as damask-rose and shy as musk, Back to her Mother, anxious in the dusk. And now 'Good-night!' Me shall the phantom months no more affright. For heaven's gates to open well waits he Who keeps himself the key.



L'ALLEGRO.

Felicity! Who ope'st to none that knocks, yet, laughing weak, Yield'st all to Love that will not seek, And who, though won, wilt droop and die, Unless wide doors bespeak thee free, How safe's the bond of thee and me, Since thee I cherish and defy! Is't Love or Friendship, Dearest, we obey? Ah, thou art young, and I am gray; But happy man is he who knows How well time goes, With no unkind intruder by, Between such friends as thou and I! 'Twould wrong thy favour, Sweet, were I to say, 'Tis best by far, When best things are not possible, To make the best of those that are; For, though it be not May, Sure, few delights of Spring excel The beauty of this mild September day! So with me walk, And view the dreaming field and bossy Autumn wood, And how in humble russet goes The Spouse of Honour, fair Repose, Far from a world whence love is fled And truth is dying because joy is dead; And, if we hear the roaring wheel Of God's remoter service, public zeal, Let us to stiller place retire And glad admire How, near Him, sounds of working cease In little fervour and much peace; And let us talk Of holy things in happy mood, Learnt of thy blest twin-sister, Certitude; Or let's about our neighbours chat, Well praising this, less praising that, And judging outer strangers by Those gentle and unsanction'd lines To which remorse of equity Of old hath moved the School divines. Or linger where this willow bends, And let us, till the melody be caught, Harken that sudden, singing thought, On which unguess'd increase to life perchance depends. He ne'er hears twice the same who hears The songs of heaven's unanimous spheres, And this may be the song to make, at last, amends For many sighs and boons in vain long sought! Now, careless, let us stray, or stop To see the partridge from the covey drop, Or, while the evening air's like yellow wine, From the pure stream take out The playful trout, That jerks with rasping check the struggled line; Or to the Farm, where, high on trampled stacks, The labourers stir themselves amain To feed with hasty sheaves of grain The deaf'ning engine's boisterous maw, And snatch again, From to-and-fro tormenting racks, The toss'd and hustled straw; Whilst others tend the shedded wheat That fills yon row of shuddering sacks, Or shift them quick, and bind them neat, And dogs and boys with sticks Wait, murderous, for the rats that leave the ruin'd ricks; And, all the bags being fill'd and rank'd fivefold, they pour The treasure on the barn's clean floor, And take them back for more, Until the whole bared harvest beauteous lies Under our pleased and prosperous eyes. Then let us give our idlest hour To the world's wisdom and its power; Hear famous Golden-Tongue refuse To gander sauce that's good for goose, Or the great Clever Party con How many grains of sifted sand, Heap'd, make a likely house to stand, How many fools one Solomon. Science, beyond all other lust Endow'd with appetite for dust, We glance at where it grunts, well-sty'd, And pass upon the other side. Pass also by, in pensive mood, Taught by thy kind twin-sister, Certitude, Yon puzzled crowd, whose tired intent Hunts like a pack without a scent. And now come home, Where none of our mild days Can fail, though simple, to confess The magic of mysteriousness; For there 'bide charming Wonders three, Besides, Sweet, thee, To comprehend whose commonest ways, Ev'n could that be, Were coward's 'vantage and no true man's praise.



REGINA COELI.

Say, did his sisters wonder what could Joseph see In a mild, silent little Maid like thee? And was it awful, in that narrow house, With God for Babe and Spouse? Nay, like thy simple, female sort, each one Apt to find Him in Husband and in Son, Nothing to thee came strange in this. Thy wonder was but wondrous bliss: Wondrous, for, though True Virgin lives not but does know, (Howbeit none ever yet confess'd,) That God lies really in her breast, Of thine He made His special nest! And so All mothers worship little feet, And kiss the very ground they've trod; But, ah, thy little Baby sweet Who was indeed thy God!



THE OPEN SECRET.

The Heavens repeat no other Song, And, plainly or in parable, The Angels trust, in each man's tongue, The Treasure's safety to its size. In shameful Hell The Lily in last corruption lies, Where known 'tis, rotten-lily-wise, By the strange foulness of the smell. Earth, that, in this arcanum, spies Proof of high kinship unconceiv'd, By all desired and disbeliev'd, Shews fancies, in each thing that is, Which nothing mean, not meaning this, Yea, does from her own law, to hint it, err, As 'twere a trust too huge for her. Maiden and Youth pipe wondrous clear The tune they are the last to hear. 'Tis the strange gem in Pleasure's cup. Physician and Philosopher, In search of acorns, plough it up, But count it nothing 'mong their gains; Nay, call it pearl, they'd answer, 'Lo, Blest Land where pearls as large as pumpkins grow!' And would not even rend you for your pains. To tell men truth, yet keep them dark And shooting still beside the mark, God, as in jest, gave to their wish, The Sign of Jonah and the Fish. 'Tis the name new, on the white stone, To none but them that have it known; And even these can scarce believe, but cry, 'When turn'd was Sion's captivity, Then were we, yea, and yet we seem Like them that dream!' In Spirit 'tis a punctual ray Of peace that sheds more light than day; In Will and Mind 'Tis the easy path so hard to find; In Heart, a pain not to be told, Were words mere honey, milk, and gold; I' the Body 'tis the bag of the bee; In all, the present, thousandfold amends Made to the sad, astonish'd life Of him that leaves house, child, and wife, And on God's 'hest, almost despairing, wends, As little guessing as the herd What a strange Phoenix of a bird Builds in this tree, But only intending all that He intends. To this, the Life of them that live, If God would not, thus far, give tongue, Ah, why did He his secret give To one that has the gift of song? But all He does He doubtless means, And, if the Mystery that smites Prophets dumb Here, to the grace-couch'd eyes of some, Shapes to its living face the clinging shroud, Perchance the Skies grow tired of screens, And 'tis His Advent in the Cloud.



VENUS AND DEATH.

With fetters gold her captivated feet Lay, sunny sweet; In that palm was the poppy, Sleep; in this The apple, Bliss; Against the mild side of his Spouse and Mother One small God throve, and in't, meseem'd, another. By these a Death-in-Life did foully breathe Out of a face that was one grate of teeth. Lift, O kind Angels, lift her eyelids loth, Lest he devour her and her Godlets both!



MIGNONNE.

Whate'er thou dost thou'rt dear. Uncertain troubles sanctify That magic well-spring of the willing tear, Thine eye. Thy jealous fear, With not the rustle of a rival near; Thy careless disregard of all My tenderest care; Thy dumb despair When thy keen wit my worship may construe Into contempt of thy divinity; They please me too! But should it once befall These accidental charms to disappear, Leaving withal Thy sometime self the same throughout the year, So glowing, grave and shy, Kind, talkative and dear As now thou sitt'st to ply The fireside tune Of that neat engine deft at which thou sew'st With fingers mild and foot like the new moon, O, then what cross of any further fate Could my content abate? Forget, then, (but I know Thou canst not so,) Thy customs of some praediluvian state. I am no Bullfinch, fair my Butterfly, That thou should'st try Those zigzag courses, in the welkin clear; Nor cruel Boy that, fledd'st thou straight Or paused, mayhap Might catch thee, for thy colours, with his cap.



ALEXANDER AND LYCON.

'What, no crown won, These two whole years, By man of fortitude beyond his peers, In Thrace or Macedon?' 'No, none. But what deep trouble does my Lycon feel, And hide 'neath chat about the commonweal?' 'Glauce but now the third time did again The thing which I forbade. I had to box her ears. 'Twas ill to see her both blue eyes Settled in tears Despairing on the skies, And the poor lip all pucker'd into pain; Yet, for her sake, from kisses to refrain!' 'Ho, Timocles, take down That crown. No, not that common one for blood with extreme valour spilt, But yonder, with the berries gilt. 'Tis, Lycon, thy just meed. To inflict unmoved And firm to bear the woes of the Beloved Is fortitude indeed.'



SEMELE.

No praise to me! My joy 'twas to be nothing but the glass Thro' which the general boon of Heaven should pass, To focus upon thee. Nor is't thy blame Thou first should'st glow, and, after, fade i' the flame. It takes more might Than God has given thee, Dear, so long to feel delight. Shall I, alas, Reproach thee with thy change and my regret? Blind fumblers that we be About the portals of felicity! The wind of words would scatter, tears would wash Quite out the little heat Beneath the silent and chill-seeming ash, Perchance, still slumbering sweet.



NOTES.

{29} In this year the middle and upper classes were disfranchised by Mr. Disraeli's Government, and the final destruction of the liberties of England by the Act of 1884 rendered inevitable.

{35} The Alabama Treaty.

{62} This Piece was written in the year 1874, soon after the publication of an incendiary pamphlet by Mr. Gladstone against the English Catholics, occasioned by the Vatican Council.

THE END