By soul the soul's gains must be wrought, The Actual claims our coarser thought, The Ideal hath its higher duties. ON A PORTRAIT OF DANTE BY GIOTTO CAN this be thou who, lean and pale, Didst look upon those writhing souls in bale, And note each vengeance, and pass by Unmoved, save when thy heart by chance Cast backward one forbidden glance, And saw Francesca, with child's glee, Subdue and mount thy wild-horse knee And with proud hands control its fiery prance ? With half-drooped lids, and smooth, round brow, And eye remote, that inly sees In some sea-lulled Hesperides, By her gift-blossom in thy hand, Yet there is something round thy lips Notches the perfect disk with gloom; From men and their unworthy fates, Though Florence had not shut her gates, And Grief had loosed her clutch and let thee free. Ah! he who follows fearlessly The beckonings of a poet-heart Shall wander, and without the world's decree, A banished man in field and mart; Harder than Florence' walls the bar Which with deaf sternness holds him far From home and friends, till death's release, And makes his only prayer for peace, Like thine, scarred veteran of a lifelong war! ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND'S CHILD This poem was printed in the Democratic Review, October, 1844, and the friend was doubtless C. F. Briggs. See the letter of consolation addressed to him in August, Letters I. 78-81. DEATH never came so nigh to me before, Nor showed me his mild face: oft had I mused Of calm and peace and safe forgetfulness, Of folded hands, closed eyes, and heart at rest, And slumber sound beneath a flowery turf, Heaven is not mounted to on wings of dreams, Nor doth the unthankful happiness of youth Aim thitherward, but floats from bloom to bloom, With earth's warm patch of sunshine well farm to farm, His cheery brothers, telling of the sun, It is most strange, when the great miracle Hath for our sakes been done, when we have had Our inwardest experience of God, When with his presence still the room expands, And is awed after him, that naught is changed, That Nature's face looks unacknowledging, And the mad world still dances heedless on After its butterflies, and gives no sign. "T is hard at first to see it all aright: In vain Faith blows her trump to summon back Her scattered troop: yet, through the clouded glass Of our own bitter tears, we learn to look Undazzled on the kindness of God's face; Earth is too dark, and Heaven alone shines through. It is no little thing, when a fresh soul scope For good, not gravitating earthward yet, no little thing, When this unbounded possibility Into the outer silence is withdrawn. Ah, in this world, where every guiding thread Ends suddenly in the one sure centre, death, The visionary hand of Might-have-been How changed, dear friend, are thy part and thy child's! He bends above thy cradle now, or holds His warning finger out to be thy guide; Thou art the nursling now; he watches thee Slow learning, one by one, the secret things Which are to him used sights of every day; He smiles to see thy wondering glances con The grass and pebbles of the spirit-world, Nor hath thy babe his mission left undone. More near approaches meditates, and clasps Even now some dearer, more reluctant hand, God, strengthen thou my faith, that I may see That 't is thine angel, who, with loving haste, Unto the service of the inner shrine, Doth waken thy beloved with a kiss. EURYDICE HEAVEN'S cup held down to me I drain, The sunshine mounts and spurs my brain; Bathing in grass, with thirsty eye I suck the last drop of the sky; With each hot sense I draw to the lees A supernaculum of summer: Not, Bacchus, all thy grosser juice Though for its press each grape-bunch had Through our coarse art gleam, now and then, The features of angelic men: 'Neath the lewd Satyr's veiling paint And who can say what luckier beam I feel ye, childhood's hopes, return, As, at one bound, our swift spring heaps An angel stood and met my gaze, Oh, when the room grows slowly dim, THE CHANGELING I HAD a little daughter, And she was given to me To lead me gently backward To the Heavenly Father's knee, That I, by the force of nature, Might in some dim wise divine The depth of his infinite patience To this wayward soul of mine. I know not how others saw her, And as many changes took, To what can I liken her smiling Upon me, her kneeling lover, How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids, And dimpled her wholly over, Sending sun through her veins to me! She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, And it hardly seemed a day, But they left in her stead a changeling, That seems like her bud in full blossom, Alone 'neath the awful sky. As weak, yet as trustful also; For the whole year long I see All the wonders of faithful Nature Still worked for the love of me; Winds wander, and dews drip earthward, Rain falls, suns rise and set, Earth whirls, and all but to prosper A poor little violet. This child is not mine as the first was, I cannot sing it to rest, I cannot lift it up fatherly And bliss it upon my breast: Yet it lies in my little one's cradle And the light of the heaven she's gone to |