ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

{Poems and Love Lyrics 1857}

                                                                                                                                                                 3

POEMS AND LYRICS.

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MARY GURNEY.

_____

RICH June, in smiling majesty attired,
Sprinkles soft sunshine o’er the throbbing plains;
Lying in mighty labour of the flowers,
Earth, in her wealth of gold, foreshadows Heaven—
We wander out into the woods and fields,
To scan the page of Nature, Kate and I.
Say we: “We learn more in a Summer’s day;
Learn more of Wisdom, Charity, and Love
Out in the meadows, peering in the face
Of God, revealed in Nature, than all books,                                      4
Wise in the knowledge of a thousand years,
Can ever teach the pent-up human heart.
The hand of an unseen divinity
Sows a rich seed in our rejoicing hearts,
With every look and change thou wearest, mother!
Yon brook—that in the caverns of the hills,
Ice-bound, was Winter’s songless prisoner—
That now inhales the sunshine’s very soul,
By the glad Spring, triumphant queen, set free,
Tinting with gold the lilies on its brim—
Teaches a varied lesson every hour:
It is the mirror of all poesy;
And poesy, Nature’s true poesy,
Is purest wisdom. O, the beautiful
Is ever wise as is its author, God.”
With this philosophy upon our lips,
My Kate and I hie rambling: In the lark
Rejoicing heaven with song, we hear thy heart,
O, mighty mother, palpitate; the breeze
Of Summer fans us, thy delicious breath!
The meanest thing that crawls the earth is thine;
And so we love that thing, howe’er so low;                                       5
So feel that, being thine, Eternal one!
That it must needs be wise, be beautiful.

Groping for gems in thy eternal heart,
Mother! we rambled through a pleasant vale,
Whose face smiled, freckling with white villages.
Atween the eastern hills that drowsily gape,
The city, like a foul sea-monster, basks,
Stifling itself and all its gasping brood
With its own killing breath. White lambkins dot
The sleepy mounds, and cool the air with sound,
’Mong careless kine that calmly ruminate.
Gay Dick, the shepherd, whistles on the stile;
The throstle, warbling ’mong the yellow furze,
Strives to out-hymn the songful lord of Heaven;
And prattling rills skip, giggling maiden like,
From the impending bushes, that would kiss,
Into the stream, meand’ring thro’ the heart
Of the green valley. Like an Eastern bride,
Rich Heaven glows beneath her veil of gold—
Till eyes, up gazing, falling dazzled, think
All the huge sky is one diffusing sun.                                                 6
The mountains slumber awful, and the pines—
The pious pines—whose thousand fingers point
Up ever from their crimson throats, are sheathed
In living flame. ’Tis Nature’s holiday.
We hung with rustics by a new made grave,
And saw the tear of honest pity given—
Both mourning with the mourner. A sad old man
Was he who laid his loved one down that day;
Whose every lock, so bleached with pain and care,
Called for a tear. A musing villager,
Whose massive brow inferred the active brain,
Lingered behind the throng. “What heart of love
Has Death this time bereaven?” He replied,
And shook his head with weight of sympathy:
“’Tis the old story, Sir, of sin and death—
The story of Will Gurney and his child.
Thank God her woes are ended!” Then he breathed
With simple heart the tale we craved to hear;
And sitting ’neath the shadow of the spire,
’Mong the rough stones, rude relics of the past,
Where halting couplets epitaphed the dead,
Among the verdant heaving waves of Death                                       7
We wept o’er Mary’s sufferings and her sins:—

“Alas! Will Gurney is an altered man
Since first we knew him. He had a warm word
And a loud jest for every one. Gay Will!
But sorrow makes the blythest spirit sad;
And all the hopes and joys that stirred him then
Lie in his breast—a wreath of withered flowers!

“He had been wed for twenty good long years—
His brow wore forty summers. Two bright eyes
Peeped on his wedding path, to beam more bright
As years rolled on—till, blest in joyous Spring,
Mary, of eighteen summers, daughter dear,
Diffused congenial gladness thro’ his heart.
An eye as azure, and as chaste a soul
As e’er adorn unfolding maidenhood
Had Mary; ’mong the village maids preferred;
And well he might, in consolation’s arms
O’er his cold spouse, with honest pride peruse
The beauties of his offspring and be glad.
Full oft hale Will upon his hammer leant                                             8
In the grey smithy, and, with swelling breast,
Recounted Mary’s virtues to the throng
That clustered on the threshold. Happy Will!
He, on the seventh day, rigged trimly out,
Bending his steps toward the sweet old church,
Stood full two inches higher in his shoes
When Mary hung upon his arm, as hangs
The early rose upon the vine. Proud Will!

“Among the tight, trim lads whose hearts would dance
With their swift twinkling feet on gala days,
When loving fingers clung to yielding waists,
Pre-eminent the youthful Edwin stood:
A soul unstained by evil, rich in good,
Feeding the warmest flowers that may entwine
About the true and loving heart, he breathed—
His outer goodly as his inner man.
Full oft sly Sleep, beneath the midnight moon
Bore like a steed his all unconscious form
Down gentle by-ways into maiden hearts,
To join the airy waltz with wanton dreams;
And bright eyes peeping o’er the motley sill—                                    9
Damasked with flowers, fair fruit of maiden care—
Would fall on Edwin tripping briskly by,
To grow by day full moist as Spring’s first rose,
In love-lorn fondness wat’ring for his arms.

“Young Edwin was an orphan.—Now, the cot
Where clung the vine, the lily, and the rose,
Will’s sunny cot, was situate some mile
Without the village, where his daily hand
Startled the sparks that in the smithy shone
As fire-flies in the sober western eve.
Four years had past since Gurney’s wedding day;
Hugging black night, his drunken paramour,
Huge Winter raved out o’er the groaning plains,
And smote Earth’s helpless cheek, that paled beneath
His savage hand. With the deep draughts yon sky
Held in its cloudy heart intoxicate,
Now beats he Beauty, Summer’s stolen child,
O’er the cold plains, nor lets the aching form
That stumbles ever and anon, worn out,
Across the wold, one moment’s quiet find.
He scatters wildly on the howling winds                                            10
The lint-white locks that deck her helpless head.

“Puss purred upon the hearth; and Mary (then
A tiny maid, as sunny as the morn,
Plump as a partridge) by its side reposed;
One little arm of merriest dimples, where
Seemed to have clustered all the cares she knew,
To starve deep in the pits of tinted snow,
Lain o’er Grimalkin’s proud patrician back.
Will slowly smoked his yard of seasoned clay
Before the fire, and ever and anon
Would wet his glowing lips with something hot.
His Jane sewed by the ingle; and his looks
From wife to child, from child to wife, recurred,
Telling as plain as words how full his heart.

“High ’gainst the door lay snow—a dreary pile!
Shiv’ring with cold a tongue without implored
Shelter and warmth—a woman’s woeful tones!
And a child’s voice half choked with sluggish tears,
A-freezing in the birth, chimed sadly in,
Cracked as the pane. Roar on, O wintry wind!                                 11
Will’s cot retains the comfortable smile.
The faggot blazes on the joyous hearth,
And laughs the stranger child right merrily.
Roar on, thou passionate and wintry wind,
And roar thy life away. Beneath their roof,
That night the woman rendered up the ghost.
Yet, ere her soul to God serenely soared,
In Gurney’s ears she poured so sad a tale
Of wedlock and of wrong, that the bluff heart
Melted. In her expiring ear he vowed
To keep the boy and rear him as his own.

“He kept his word. No truer sire reared son
In industry and honesty than Will
His infant charge. And when he saw the lad
Stood upright in the theatre of mind,
A very virtuous lad, he entertained
Sweet visions for his future, in the which
Mary was mingled. He with gladness gazed
Upon their virtuous interchange of love,
Gave in his smiling silence fond consent.

“Poor tongueless fellow! Edwin many a day                                      12
Had silently embraced the passionate love,
That like a wind provoked his sea of life
To crescent tempest. But he plucked up soul:
One evening tripping o’er the lengthy moor—
Like a hound dozing in the nascent moon,
Some half a mile without the village—he,
The damsel tucked beneath his trembling arm,
Poured warmly in her ears his sudden tale.
And with such fond persuasive eloquence
That Mary then and there (a wonder, mark!
For maids are in such revelations slow)
Unlocked the virgin volume of her heart—
Where, sweetly limned on every crimson page,
Behold his image placidly reposed—
And spread it open to his ardent gaze.
I warrant you lips met that self-same eve.

“Squire Watts dwelt in the hall, a hearty man
And good, who had a son less virtuous;
A wealthy mongrel of some thirty springs,
A braggart and a liar; his sole pride
That sweet profusion of moustache, whose roots                             13
Were nourished by a foul and empty brain;
A thing whose sole employment was to gnaw
The live long day the handle of his cane,
And test the flexibility of words
Within a gaping jaw; a gentleman
Who picked his teeth, and stained his shallow life
With the fallen souls of fond, confiding maids,
Noting each damned action coldly down
Among the list of conquests. Bravely done!
My gentleman of odour! Gentleman!
If such the precious type—bah!—of the class
I’d sooner starve than be a gentleman.
Young Edward from the town’s polluting breast
Came with the shade of autumn to the hall,
And Mary Gurney might have cursed the day.

“’Twas Christmas-day, always a merry time
With Will and with his little household. Rose
O’er hills of snow the monarch of the light,
Whose morning face before the biting blast
Grew ruddy as an urchin’s. Gurney woke                                         14
Full early with the sun, and gaily knocked
At the closed door of Mary’s little room,
Wishing a merry Christmas. He received
No answer, and he merrily tript off,
A-styling her his little lie-a-bed;
Nor dreamt of aught unusual. But the hour
At which the punctual matin meal was made
Arrived, and not a spark yet warmed the hearth—
That shivered, cheated of its usual heat.
Another hour passed by: her door moved not;
And, meeting Edwin on the threshold, Will
Expressed his fears. Together they repaired
Toward her chamber; knocking loudly, called
Upon her name beloved. No answer came—
They burst the door, and entered. Lo! the room
Was vacant! She was gone. The unpressed bed
Told how a sleepless night had wronged those eyes.
And the few things that she could call her own
Had disappeared: the tiny chest—the fruit
Of the damp brow, Will’s present—was withdrawn
From its sweet corner of three springs. The cage,                            15
Where through the summer hours her bird had sung
So merrily, was vacant now, its door
Thrown open; and the father’s anxious eye,
Oft glancing through the casement in despair,
Across the sullen plains of drifted snow,
All sunless, quickly lighted on poor Dick,
High perched upon the mossy apple-tree
That lingered in the garden, peering up
Into the olden room with wistful eyes.
Distraction crushed poor Edward’s bleeding heart,
And crushed the heart of Will. They wept together;
And ’neath that roof, so sad with memories,
By kindred sorrow firmly knit in love,
Breathed sadly truer father, truer son.
Now when the tempest of their grief was o’er,
When each poor heart had sunk in sadder calm,
The calm of deep despair, a paper caught
Poor Edward’s eye; and from the wind’s rough hand
That toss’d it here and there about the floor
He snatched it wildly. ’Twas a hasty note—
Writ ’mid the agonies of self-reproach:
The hand was not so steady, and the words                                      16
Were soaked in frozen tears. ’Twas Mary’s hand
She spoke of broken filial ties, of bonds
Still dearer in her eyes; and how her soul
Was pained to leave the dear old home, she told.
Sadly she spoke of each remembered scene—
Poor stormy heart! its very words they wept.
When his foul name defiled her trembling hand,
Of all his tender love she fondly spake;
And ended thus: ‘My father, curse us not!
I am no daughter—deeply have I wronged thee—
I feel it—to the soul; but curse us not.
I loved my Edward, still do fondly love him,
And that he loves your child in fond return
My poor heart tells me. Comfort Edwin, sire,
Calm the sad soul that I have injured so;
And bid him seek some purer, fitter one
To tread with him the rosy marriage-path.
O bid him name me gently! We shall quit
England ere long—commercial enterprise
Drags Edward o’er the ocean. I go with him.
God bless thee, father! Weep thee not for me.
I am not worth the foulest villain’s tears.                                          17
Alas! I weep enow for both of us.
God bless thee, sire. Again, O comfort him.
Farewell! God bless him!—
                                             ‘MARY.’
                                               It was there!
Their sorrow, their despair, and all was lost.
The lily, in the knowledge of its sin,
Laid bare her bosom to the butterfly,
Whose transient colours dazzled but to blight—
Laid bare her bosom, bare her hopes, her joys.
Alas! it was a woeful Christmas day.

“That night they stood in presence of the Squire,
And poured their sorrows in an angry ear.
With close clenched hand the Squire breathed Edward’s name,
And cursed his offspring’s villainy. ‘Alas!
Poor souls, I cannot aid ye. The brief hour
When I controlled his rebel spirit is past,
And he but laughs to scorn a father’s words.’
They left his trellised door with heavier hearts.                                                                                                                                                              18

               *         *          *         *

“One Winter pass’d. A man with tottering steps
And aching heart about the village moved,
Muttering a woman’s name with wistful tongue—
Will Gurney’s wreck. Edwin had gone to sea,
And in his country’s cause unsheathed the steel:
He found in death a balm for hopeless love.
Poor Will in by-gone days thro’ honest thrift
Had saved a penny; and existed now
On that which he had fondly laid aside
For Edwin and for Mary. A stranger came,
And plied the dinsome hammer in his stead.

“The cottage was a dreary dwelling now:
The roses ran to waste; and the sere vine
Trail’d o’er the undug earth. The flowers, unwatch’d,
Untended, withered on the trampled plots.
The gay green gate was worn to dingy brown,
And creaked on rusty hinges. All within
Was careless uproar, save the little room
Where Mary’s unpolluted breast was wont
To rise and fall in virgin dreams. Somehow
Poor Will could never bear to gaze on it,                                          19
Save when it wore its former cheerful look;
And half the weary day he sadly spent
In making it look happy.
                                       One calm night,
Gurney sat with his customary pipe—
Alas! it was his sole companion now—
The London coach reined at his lonely door,
And one descended. Will was sheath’d in thought,
And ’mid the clouds of smoke two leaden drops
Obscured his faded eyes. The latch was raised;
And a pale face peer’d in. There was a shriek,
A sob, a throbbing of the startled heart;—
Poor Mary wept a pool of bitter tears,
And knelt imploring at her father’s feet.
With choking words, she told of love, of wrong,
Of Edward’s falsehood, and her own despair;
And of a hope that urged her footsteps back
To that, her father’s door—forgiveness, love!
Will bent his brow, and strove to wear the frown—
Ah! Nature gave him but a tender heart.
A flood of passionate tears bore down his wrath,
As torrents may their barriers, and he clasped                                 20
The lost one warmly to a bursting heart;
He smooth’d those locks, so prematurely grey,
Uttering words of dulcet gentleness,
And laid that weary head, as mother might,
To nestle in his breast—a poor, lorn dove!
And all the while those sad, expressive eyes,
In whose pure depths of azure swam the soul
Holy and unpolluted, sadly shone—
Up-darting a rich world of thankful love,
Shone star-like up, beamed up thro’ stifling tears.
Alas! a rifled lily, but how dear!

“Will Gurney was a mortal wise as good,
A father ’neath God’s holiest, purest light,
In body and in soul. He loved his child,
Nor on her soul would fresher anguish heap,
Reproach in word or look; but ’tween them now
A torrent rolled unpassable—to be
Dried up but in the sepulchre. He saw—
In vain he strove to sink the fearful thought
In the pure sea of love;—a swimmer stout,
It floated on the marge, and quaffed his tears—                                21
In Mary still a harlot, though a child.
Shadow like—thro’ his clutching fingers stole
Respect—and stole for ever!
                                               Ere the dawn
’Neath Gurney’s roof an infant saw the light—
The fruit of love illicit. Saw the light,
And, with that gleam of life between his hands,
Ran back to God to show how foul it was.

“They laid the tiny thing of beauteous clay
By the old church where broods the antique owl,
Where rooks resort and motley swallows build—
They laid it down in private by the side
Of Will’s dead partner in the firm of love.
Mary stood by and spilt as from a cup
Great tears of woe, that crushed, like molten lead,
The fragile flowers. All thickly veiled she stood:
So that the gaping five who viewed the scene—
Old hearts, who had beheld her ’mid her joys—
Knew not the maiden in her shame and sorrow.
’Twas some small comfort to that aching heart
To know it slumbered in the sunniest spot                                        22
Of all God’s acre. Ere the mourner left
The gateless entrance to the House of Prayer—
Grey in the wisdom of three hundred Summers—
She led the sexton, musty as the garb
He wore, aside; and, pressing in his palm
A piece of silver (’twas the last she had),
Besought the hoary man to keep that grave
Peculiar in flowers; to keep it green
And holy—nor let sacrilegious foot
Compress the mound that heaved above her babe.
Her tears they streamed into his frozen heart,
Warming the chill old roots that blossomed there:
The gelid ice it melted, and diffused
A shower of honest pity o’er his cheek.
That grave is greener in the Summer sun,
And richer far in flowers than all the waves
That surge there on the weedy shore of Death.

               *         *          *         *

“Last May Will Gurney and his daughter took
Passage for distant climes—with June they sailed.
But, lingering at an intervening port,
Mary, o’ercome by woe and self-reproach,                                     23
In her poor father’s arms gave up the ghost.
He brought the body back but yesterday:
For, swimming to the fair Elysian shores,
Breasting the billows of tempestuous Death,
Poor panting thing, did Mary beg her sire
To stretch her corse in this, her natal vale,
And smother it with flowers. He laid her down
To-day beside her infant, and embalmed
Her beloved dust with the last tears he had.
Sorrow had wrung the weary old heart dry.”

We thanked the honest fellow for his tale;
And, pressing through the thinly crescent gloom,
Saw poor old Will, pale as a ghost, glide by.
Slumbering in “the Stag” that night, we heard
Upon the morrow morn that he had left
His native village by the midnight mail;
Dead to the present, dying in the past,
Departed none knew where. That night I saw
Gurney in visions. Lonely as a bark
That loosens plank by plank ’mid silent seas,
He fluttered vaguely through my pervious dreams.                             24
Eyes dim with prayers, I saw him sow his heart
In Mary’s grave, and take instead a stone.
Dragging out life as beasts do burdens drag,
I viewed him struggling up the rugged path
To Death—to Heaven. I felt the air grow cool
With the last breath that weary bosom drew;
Beheld the lamp of being flicker out
In the old frame, so bowed with weighty woes!
I saw him slumber ’neath the orient sun,
Calm as a babe, in Death’s fraternal arms;
Then, joyful, plunged in deep Oblivion.

[Notes:
Robert Buchanan’s first book, Poems and Love Lyrics, was published in November, 1857. On 5th December, the following poem appeared in The Glasgow Sentinel (editor: Robert Buchanan Snr.):

A LOVE LYRIC.
BY “MARY GURNEY.”

I.

Naked the boughs where the blackbird and merle
Sang out their souls in the music of gladness;
Wither’d the sward where the dew-drooping daisy
Folded its tips in the beauty of sadness.
Yet lighter my heart than the full-throated love-song—
The love-song of lark in the wide ear of morning;
For a rosebud is ripening, unblighted by winter,
The rosebud of love, this glad bosom adorning.

II.

Frozen the streams where the gay trembling dimples
Laughed in the sun’s face, and sang evermore;
Cold, cold the rill in its leapings and rovings,
Sad the deep anthem that thrills from the shore.
Yet the verdure of spring is alive in this bosom,
The fond light of true love is painting new flowers;
’Mid the rudeness, the darkness, the madness of winter,
Love’s opening rosebud this blest bosom dowers.

III.

“The light of love dies not, the bloom of love pales not,
A flower amaranthine!” we whisper each other;
As, safe from the chill of drear-nighted December,
I lie on his bosom as that of a brother.
Holy our love as a whisper of heaven,
And warmer than any, still burning in song;
I dote on thee, dearest, too fondly, too blindly,
Full certain that true love thinks never of wrong.

It should also be noted that ‘Will Gurney’ was a nom de plume of David Gray. And, on the text itself, whereas the Errata slip mentions a missing letter, Buchanan failed to spot that on page 15, lines 11 and 19, he had mixed up his Edwins and Edwards.]

__________

                                                                                                                                                               27

ABSENCE.*

_____

     [The poet, mourning for the loss of his mistress, parted from him by fortune in the past, wanders by the shore whence she has sailed. Musing on the sands, he falls into a dream, and sails in fancy over the seas to the Isle of her distant abode. His rapture in her society; dissolving of the vision; and the revulsion of feeling in the dreamer’s heart].

THE moody day broods vaguely o’er the sea,
     Her eye, life’s sun, closed coldly on the scene,
Beams thro’ the cloudy lashes drearily,
     Streaks of dim light across the opiate green.

—    * This poem is among the most immature of the attempts to which I have given publicity in this volume. Its short-coming may be, therefore, more readily pardoned by the reader. —

White o’er the wrinkling waves the sea-mews flock,                         28
     Where clouds of gloom their lengthy shadows cast,
The billow basks upon the weedy rock.
     Its mistress, as my heart upon the Past.

Shake I warm hands with Mem’ry and the ocean;
     Heart antecedes, and drags my footsteps on—
So on the strand stretch I, in fond emotion,
     So muse I sadly, sadly and alone.

         *          *         *          *

Old Ocean sang, and each melodious shell
     Responsive echoed back the opiate hymn.
Through the wide heart did sacred cadence swell,
     As life seemed on the ambient wave to swim.

Far o’er the sea, with elevated mind,
     Swift in my pinnace I sublimely flew:
Love fed with lilies the propelling wind,
     Prospective hope embraced the bright’ning view.

With what a factious heart Impatience burned,                                  29
     Awoke by Joy, soft empress of the fair;
In Hope’s dear arms Anticipation yearned,
     With kisses dried the eye-lids of Despair.

The ripples lay in universal sleep,
     Sweet sunshine slaked their fervid lips of blue;
Like crystal spread the surface of the deep,
     Where far below the ocean-lilies blew.

O’erwhelming beauty did my senses drown,
     An opiate garland hands immortal wreathed;
The sea swelled up, the fervid sun sank down,
     Till close to Heaven and God the breath I breathed.

         *          *         *          *

All lightly leapt I on the destined shore,
     Ere on the festive shells my pinnace grazed;
Joy’s instantaneous language stirred the core,
     My soul involuntary tribute raised.

Fleet as a wind far up the banks I sped,                                           30
     Light as a zephyr o’er the flowers I trode;
The lily e’en knew not my downy tread,
     So high on tiptoe leant I up to God.

Innumerable birds at each rich breath
     Poured out their hearts in mighty melody;
While myriad flowers embraced delicious Death,
     With odour choked, fresh myriads saw them die.

Oh! Christ, in truth it was a glorious land!
     Of all in Earth’s broad lap the bower best prized
By Beauty; such as Poesy has scanned
     With ideal eye, or love has realised.

My very eyes grew languid with delight
     And softly shut upon the orient scene;
Through the closed lids the sunshine glinted bright—
     Till sense sank dazzled, Sleep arose serene.

         *          *         *          *

Sensitive fingers with mesmeric power,                                             31
     As on an opiate harp, harmonious played
O’er my hot temples, and a dreamy shower
     Of dew-drops fell. Love summoned, I obeyed.

Again mine eyes, merry as urchins, skipped,
     Clapping glad hands, across the mellow scene;
I woke. With milder beauty Nature dript,
     Love’s dews hung softening on the emerald green.

A Summer beam in lilies cool attire,
     An amethyst in April tear-drops bathe,
Mingle innocuous morn with sunset’s fire;
     Voluptuous Venus nude in snow-drops swathe:—

The warmer and the milder beauty, she,
     By Expectation, Memory idolised,
Stood dear—circumfluous with chastity.
     Her duty done, Hope slumbered, realised.

         *          *         *          *

Pinioned with pleasure, how the instants fled                                    32
     That hung attendant o’er that orient isle!
Love mounted proudly to her nuptial bed,
     To throb and bask in beauty’s ardent smile.

Even as a monarch o’er some radiant queen,
     To regal fondness, regal wedlock given,
Thus did I o’er my better spirit lean,
     Till earth I spurned and swam to kindred heaven.

In our keen bark we left the festive strand,
     To roam Love’s archipelago. We passed!
As at each isle our keel caressed the land,
     We gazed—found each more lovely than the last.

Thus evermore ’neath Love’s immortal hand
     The latest hour is fairest, purest, dearest;
Thus evermore, by sorrow’s noxious wand
     Polluted, frowns it saddest, foulest, drearest.

The Past sank on the Present’s bursting breast;                                33
     Love’s chaste ideal, like a sun, hung o’er
My heart. The hours swam on; each instant blest
     Tripped—stumbling with the load of bliss it bore.

And Beauty smiled with Gladness where she trode;
     Flowers blossomed in her footprints; shrill and deep
The lark sang in her voice. I bowed to God!

         *          *         *          *

     Christ! it is past; and I have learned to weep.

A dream—Good God! upon the weedy shoe,
     Beneath the clouds, I prone as sorrow lie;
Vague sight strains o’er her threshold. It is o’er—
     Yon withered flowers intone, “’Tis sweet to die.”

__________

                                                                                                                                                               37

EXTRACT

FROM AN

UNPUBLISHED PLAY.

_____

     [OCTAVIO comes suddenly on INEZ, his seduced and crazed sister, at her infant’s grave].

     SCENE.—The infant’s grave in the forest. INEZ discovered (solo) weaving a fantastic garland of leaves and flowers.

INEZ. (singing).

MERRY the bride in the bridal bright,
                   Rosemarie, sweet rosemarie;
Smiles ’tween the arms of her own true knight,
                   Rosemarie!

Soft, soft the zephyrs that rustle the grove,                                        38
                   Rosemarie, sweet rosemarie;
Softer and sweeter their whispers of love,
                   Rosemarie!

Welcome the darkness, away with the light,~
                   Rosemarie, sweet rosemarie;
“Sweet, sweet the day, love, but sweeter the night,”
                   Rosemarie!

Cold, cold the bride when the night it is fled,
                   Rosemarie, sweet rosemarie;
Hapless the living and happy the dead,
                   Rosemarie!

Ah! she smiles on her face in the mirror of death,~
                   Rosemarie, sweet rosemarie;
Hush! smooth ye her pillow—sweet flowers! not a breath,
                   Rosemarie!

     INEZ. (sola). How sweet the Summer, pretty one. I would                             39
The sunshine might thy tender image paint,
That, in the laughing rills and dimpling dew,
I could thine image trace, my beautiful.
Nay! fear not for thy secret, wanton one—
Ha! ha! ’tis hidden, hidden like a pearl
In a fond shell, here in my bosom, here!
And they would thrust in hands and grope for it—
To wrench it from me; but I’ll smuggle thee
So deep!—the very sun thou lovest so
Shall seek—but seek in vain!
They call thee dead, thou very beautiful:
Ah! could they hear thee sing, my little lark!
How soft the angels tread. I scarce could think
So sweetly of them till I looked on thee.
Ha! ha! they little know the spirit here!
And thou would’st whisper not, sly beautiful,
What thing thou wert—but grinned so roguishly!
Ha! ha! I caught thy secret, tho’:—
Thou flutterd’st by a lily yestermorn,
The fairest, sweetest lily of the vale—                                                                  40
Ha! ha! I saw thee.—As thou smiledst by
My heart did ache with very joy, to see
How bent the beauty down her haughty head—
To wither, sooth, in very enviousness;
And then I saw a mellow smile laugh out
From Heaven, and sit upon they forehead fair;
And well I knew thee, tiny spirit-one.
’Tis strange: since yestermorn I’ve kissed thee not,
And I did sing thee not to sleep last Eve!
Yet, oh! my witless memory—
I do remember now thou promisedst
To build me up a tender cot of flowers
Beside the sea of angels;
And with a lapful of our best thou’rt gone
A-wandering on thy task. How fond thou art!
Thou wilt return, methinks, ere yonder bud,
A-pouting—wanton! drops its tender leaves
Into the lap of Summer. Pretty one,
Hist! I would have thee not forget to send
A loving messenger ere thou shalt come—
That I may have a goodly banquet spread:
So prithee, cast a dew-drop from the sky                                                           41
Here on my heart where last thy kisses fell,
And I shall know thou comest, love. Farewell!
Hush! stay thee, prithee, blue-eyes—spread thy lap
That I may drop an hundred kisses there—
To nourish my fair sweetling by the way.
Sweet wanderer!
Alas! ’twould break my heart to see thee starve.

Enter OCTAVIO.

     OCT. Ah! Inez!

     INEZ. Hush! speak softly—he is gone.
Hist! an he should return o’ the sudden, I
Am mute as morn, and he shall look in vain;
Yet when he dances o’er the glist’ning dew
To snatch his rosy goblet from the bough,
The merry rogue shall trip into mine arms:
Methinks I hear his laugh a-tinkling now!

(Singing).

Merry thro’ the greenwood,
     Merry thro’ the grove,
Flies his voice a-wantoning—
     “Love, love, love!”

Come sit thee, gentle stranger, by my side,                                                          42
And aid me wreathe a garland for my dear.
See, there are lilies, and here violets,
With every flower that in the forest blows;
And as thou wreathest, listen to the lark—
Sooth, ’tis his voice of merry melody:—
Thou out of very love wilt form it fair.

     OCT. Oh! Inez, is Octavio then so strange?
Is then the mind so vacant that it knows
No fond electric touch of recognition;
Nor concentrates fond memory on a brother?

     INEZ. Brother! methinks it has a gentle sound;
And I remember once upon a time
One prattled o’er that name—alas! he’s dead!

     OCT. Alas! my Inez, he heart-broken lives;
And thus peers up into thy frenzied eye!
Oh! say that eye is opened on his love,
Give his sad heart one dear acknowledgment
Of recognition—but a word, a look.

     INEZ. Wanton, arise. Behold!—alas! thy knee
Has crushed the sweetest violet of the wood.
Alack! and should my true love see thee thus.                                                      43
Poor soul! I pity that thou lovest so;
For I was wed some seven years aback.
Thou wrongs’t my gentle true love. He might weep:
And if he wept, his tears would stab my heart.
If thou dost love so very, very well,
Fain must thy bosom ache. I could not wrong him.

     OCT. Oh! bitter, bitter hour. Each empty word
In my heart’s pool drops sadly as a stone,
Bidding the bitter brine swim o’er and up,
And soak the quivering lash. Alas! alas!

     INEZ. Nay, wilt thou have me blush and weep—or frown?
Truth, I am chaste and would not be ashamed.
Nay, hark thee, if my wand’ring beautiful
Returned o’ sudden he might wrathful be,
And deal dark words—that I had wronged his sire.
Tho’ yet, sweet sir, methinks the violet
Is fairest of the flowers—hark’ee, it is
My pretty sweetling’s eye.

     OCT.                Good God, look down!                                                       44
In love and pity to Octavio
One smile of tender comfort dedicate;
Unlock the brain of madness; on its tongue
Write one dear word of Recollection, Love,
Ere cracks this aching heart.

     INEZ.                Alas! thou weepest.
Poor fellow, I do pity thee—thou art
So very fond, to wring thy heart is hard.
Come! let me wipe away thy weary tears—
Thus! Prithee, smile, and aid me wreathe my flowers.

(Singing).

Oh! the moonlight, saucy moonlight,
     Prying where no eye should see—
Thro’ the casement, merry moonlight,
     Peeping on my love and me.

Ah! the moonlight, mocking moonlight,
     Prying where no eye should see—
Thro’ the casement, weary moonlight,
     Peeping where my love should be.

’Mid the moonlight, solemn moonlight,                                    45
     May my gentle pillow be—
Hush! I’ll slumber, happy moonlight,
     Peacefully, ah! peacefully!

     INEZ.                    Smile again!
In truth, it does me good to see thee smile;
And, tho’ I cannot love thee as my dear,
I’ll to the Elfins take thee; take thee, sooth,
To my green bower among them. I am queen!
Hist! ’twas but yestermorn they crowned me so;
And he, my loving bridegroom, knows it not.
Ha! ha! methinks I see his loving eyes
A-brim with smiles and goodly merriment,
Hearing the tale of my sweet monarchy.
He shall be king; and, let me think—yes, thou
Shalt be my pretty page,
My cup and train-bearer, my gentle guard—
So, if thy heart be leal, and flows with these
Thy words, thou canst, the live-long loving day,
Feast thy fond eyes upon my regal pride;
And I shall feed thy glutton heart with smiles.

     OCT. Alas! this wounded soul gapes wide in woe!                                         46
Stupendous sorrow!

     INEZ.                    Hark thee! Hush!
Ha! ha! they call his merry voice the wind,
And, as his breath comes steaming o’er the dew,
Will murmur: “Sweet the perfume of the flowers.”
Hark! ’twas his call, methought; and see! the rose,
The white wild rose, yon lady-bush’s pearl,
On tiptoe stands, and laughs right merrily—
To think of him and Love’s sweet nuptial bed.
Good truth, the white rose is his bride,
His lawful, lovely bride. ’Twas yestermorn
The west wind murmured in their am’rous ears
How much they were akin; and with a smile
Priest Sunshine wedded them; their couch was one.

     OCT. Alas! angelic madness! Thought is choked,
In the fierce ocean of intense despair.
Are these the orbs that flashed out vernal joy,
Stript of expression, rayless as the fog?
This the mild brow that nursed such tender thoughts
In earlier hours—thus, furrowed as despair?
Or this the heart that sang so like the lark
Of Love, of Gladness—this poor panting dove                                                    47
On the lean bars of yon tempestuous bosom,
Beating out beauty, quietude, and life,
Bare, bruised, and bleeding? This the Inez, this
The sole, sad relic of the sunny Past.
Ah! ill-starred Passion, such thy sacrifice.

         *          *         *          *

__________

                                                                                                                                                               51

AGE: RETROSPECTION.

_____

STILL doth the lone highway embrace
     With lean, parched arms the western lake,
Still in its sun-besprinkled face
     Twin trees their wealth of verdure shake;
The amphitheatre of hills,
     Reflected is in every hue:
Forth-pour the thousand vocal rills
     To silence in its bosom blue.

Still ’neath those trees a cottage smiles—
     Smiles through the ivy and the rose,
Smiles out where Derwent’s many isles
     Beneath the drowsing sun repose.
Still, greenly on the water’s brim,                                                    52
     The rushes, frail and thin, incline;—
No more I sing the childish hymn,
     The while my basket rude I twine.

Still grandly ’mid the mists of time
     The rugged hills sublimely stand;
No more their mighty brows I climb,
     And pluck the blae with eager hand.
Still hangs the bridge across the brook,
     Where, when I first thy witch’ry knew,
All day I gazed with vacant look
     Into the water’s bosom blue.

Oft with the step of age, the vale
     Of my nativity I rove,
And with a heart o’erflowing hail
     Each spot that epitaphs young Love.
Dead flowers that have inspired my past
     In each familiar scene I cull,
While double loveliness is cast
     By Beauty o’er the beautiful.

How sweet, my Mary, to review                                                      53
     The Past—its joys, its doubts, its fears—
When we, no more to Nature new,
     Must fain confess the weight of years.
How sweet, with retrospective eye,
     O’er the dead Past to smile, to weep,
To pass the years in vision by,
     To muse upon the acts that sleep.

Her sweetest fabric Mem’ry weaves,
     All argent o’er our earlier dreams—
Like sunshine o’er the jutting eaves,
     The faggot o’er the rafter gleams:
Come, come, my beautiful, my best—
     But first the failing embers rake—
Come, pillowed thus upon my breast,
     Warm hands with re-born moments shake.

We meet in early youth again,
     Again I feel the blush arise,
As in a sort of pleasant pain
     I bend before your conscious eyes;
[I] feel again each pulse to stir                                                          54
     In the hot spirit of the boy,
Scorning the smoking porringer,
     Sup I on mingled pain and joy.

Eve wakes in jewelled splendour still
     The glowing train of starry hours;
I see thee at the motley sill
     Quench the parched lips of thirsting flowers.
Behind the niggard hedge, hard by
     Thy door, I crouch with am’rous arms;
With wistful and impatient eye
     Peruse thy pure unfolding charms.

And by my heart again, more bold,
     Its tones half choked with doubts and fears,
Are all its mute emotions told—
     Poured, trembling, in thy conscious ears.
Again I hear thy lips confess
     Simply the corresponding smart,
And once again thy form I press
     All fondly to a swelling heart.

Again, by brake, by bush, by bower,                                              55
     Love’s dulcet prologue we recite;
Again we hail the silent hour
     Of Eve, and linger in the Night.
From a but half reluctant heart,
     Where ancient ivies long have crept,
I wring with Love’s persuasive art
     The promise thou so well hast kept.

Chaste Hymen’s golden morn again
     Dawns on my spirit; hand in hand
We, ’mid the merry nuptial train,
     Take, ’neath the altar, trembling stand.
Again the argent moon appears
     In splendour o’er the bridegroom’s head;
I revel in thy midnight tears
     Of joy—clasped on the bridal bed.

I smile again upon thy breast,
     Again thy glowing cheek I kiss,
While every vein, in ardour blest,
     Contributes to my sacred bliss.
On Love’s soft sea I fall and rise—                                                  56
     As kindred souls co-mingling run;
Again each morn unopes her eyes
     Of light—to find us doubly one.

Again the crowning blessing pours
     From beatific founts above—
Again within our loving doors
     A life demands paternal love.
Again I see the outstretched arms,
     The mother’s mute expression mild—
Again I view in natal charms,
     Love’s pure and sacred pledge—a child.

The matron now succeeds the bride:
     I in Affection’s Summer sit
Still by the ruddy ingle-side,
     And tiny sweetlings brighten it.
The cottage of our earlier hours,
     The scene of love’s precocious birth,
All laden as our hearts with flowers
     Again is vocal with young Mirth.

Enough! the Past is but the Past,                                                      57
     Love’s mellow Autumn fair appears.
As snows before the sifting blast,
     These scanty locks are bleached with years.
I cannot say I would not run
     My love’s divine career again;
Yet has the Present, too, its sun—
     To scatter—melt the clouds of pain.

My own, into thine eyes I look;
     And there with pangless heart I see,
Mirrored as in some vernal brook,
     My soul re-born incessantly.
I smoothe the snowy locks that crown
     The spotless wife’s serenest brow,
And in my deepest soul I own
     If then I loved—I worship now.

Co-mingling Nature runs no more
     Through the hot veins of girl and boy,
But sweetest cadence fills the core—
     Love’s Autumn smiles in chaster joy.
Still Memory endless pleasure yields,                                                58
     As hours, as days, as seasons roll,
And Hope’s soft moon sublimely gilds
     The harvest of the soul.

[Notes:
Missing letter at start of p. 54, l. 1, suggest: [I] feel again each pulse to stir.
Original of the corrected line from errata p. 55, l 1, v 2: ‘The hymenial morn again’.]

__________

                                                                                                                                                               59

THE INFANT’S GRAVE.

_____

SUMMER!—breathing o’er the churchyard, in the mirk suburban gloom;
Summer, in her wealth of gladness mocking aisle and marble tomb.
Summer, softly warbling beauty on the olden churchyard tree;
Summer, Summer with the sexton, king of careless melody.
Summer, lending wings of glory to the fleet, melodious hours,
Round “God’s Acre” peeping golden through her Paradise of flowers.
Summer, Summer, joyous Summer with the lowest of the low;                            60
Winter, Winter with the mourner, deep, unfathomable woe!
In the corner, solemn corner, half in sunshine, half in shade,
Like her life, the mute, cold idol is irrevocably laid—
So calm, so sweet a spot to be the pillow of the dead.
There the greenest, there the deepest, are Death’s grassy mantles spread.
As o’er the earth the seeds of beauty, thinly scattered o’er the tomb,
There the weeping, there the mourning, melancholy violets bloom;
Daisies, too, meek flowers, that every social tie to life endears;
Eloquently sad primroses, pallid grown with constant tears;
While the steeple’s solemn shadow creeps across the coated ground—
Creeps to slumber, sadly slumber, on the bosom of the mound—                         61
Dedicate to Innocence, there Compassion’s tear-drops rain;
There the mourner, there the mother, bows her sad, pale face in pain.
Strange, strange prints are lightly scattered o’er the bosom of the sod—
Words of woe upon the pages of Affection, and of God.
As the shade of lone Affliction o’er the sacred corner creeps,
There the mother, kneeling lowly, sad, heart-broken mourner, weeps.
“Babe of Heaven! babe of Heaven cherub, though immortal, mine!
God’s own blossom, robed in beauty, blooming ’mid the most divine.
Yet this bosom bore thee fondly, felt thy earliest, purest breath—
Little dreamed I thou wouldst quit it for the shrivelled breast of Death!
Heaven within me—Heaven within me sowed thee, sweet, a seed of love—         62
Little dreamt I how the bud would burst in gardens bright above!
Unpolluted, from the gardeners—niggard gardeners of earth—
Thou wert torn, sweet cherub, mournfully departing in the birth.
Pined we sadly, shrieked we loudly, writhing in the weary leaven—
Parched as Sahara’s bowels, glowed the burning breast of Heaven.
All eternally is barren, all is weary, weary ever;
Tears—hot gore—Love’s desert moisten, but a flower awakens never.
Ah! for Summer—Love’s own Summer—in the life to purely spring,
For the meadows, for the brooklets, flowers to bloom, and birds to sing!
Blossom flowers accursed around me, tinted in unwholesome art,
Vital all with venomed sorrow—ah! they mock, they kill my heart.                       63
“Would, wee darling, I might with thee on thy quiet pillow sleep;
Ah! that from these eyes so weary, I the drops of life could weep.
In our mutual bosoms rooting, flowers infinitely should blow
Up above us, like a raiment stretching even white as snow.
Happy ever, happy ever, dreamy ladders would we climb,
Flit o’er Eternity’s dim verge, triumphant over Time.
Death the bridegroom, Death the cherished, I would welcome to my bed,
Like a wife upon his bosom rest my solitary head:
Thou the talisman that bound us, and begat the love divine—
Thou, sweet one, our mutual darling—his, the Conqueror, and mine!”
As wearily the mariner, ’neath the cadence of the deep,                                        64
Hushed by the tears’ sad melody, the mother sinks to sleep.
Sinks softly on the tearful flowers, with sadly swelling breast;
Sinks ’neath some balm, divinity, unto delicious rest;
Sinks while the name of innocence floats out on every breath;
Sinks—smiles upon her pallid cheek—to dream of glorious Death.
The mourners pass, the mourners pass, from the new-strewn grave hard by,
And, gazing on the prostrate form, a tear obscures each eye.
Ah! little think thee as they gaze, and Pity’s sighs are given,
The clay is mute, while high and pure the soul exults in Heaven.

[Notes:
Robert Buchanan’s sister (his only sibling) died at the age of seven weeks on 11th May, 1853, which may explain the number of ‘dead baby’ poems in his early oeuvre. Probably the first of these is ‘On the Death of an Infant Sister’, published in The Glasgow Sentinel, on 18th October, 1856.]

__________

                                                                                                                                                               65

EVANGELINE.

_____

GREAT Summer paints the conscious skies,
     Huge Winter daubs my conscious heart:
     All prone, I trail behind the cart
Of Care, while Anguish chokes mine eyes.

I drain the woe of brimming years
     ’Mid the fierce tumult of each hour;
     Despair is mine—thy mortal dower,
Great mother of these scalding tears.

Good God! that passionate Love should cease
     To smile upon the vernal tide;
     That Love, by mortals deified,
Should spill the precious cup of peace.

She pluck’d a hope from out my breast,                                          66
     Upon the glutton Past it fell:
     There was a pit of inner hell,
That suck’d it in with greed unblest.

There’s scrawled upon mine eye a prayer,—
     Rude words! that bruise the heart of Sleep:
     Yea! Love has taught me how to weep,
“Glad Love!” has taught me to despair!

I’m gazing on the summer sky:
     No happiness, no hope is won—
     No sun sits there—thou wert my sun,
Great empress of the angel-eye!

This head thy shadow hovers o’er
     From Morn to Noon, from Noon to Night:
     Huge wrinkles on this heart to write,
That mock my aching “nevermore.”

There was a rude fantastic form,
     It was our fond resort, my own:
     My heart is splintered like a stone,                                              67
And that has yielded to the storm.

Night, smiling in her aqueous reign,
     Would lead me to my Mary’s bed;
     Dark Night is moonless—as one dead
She guides me to the arms of Pain.

We roamed through teeming visions bright,
     Hearts clasped like hands—a smiling twain;
     Now severed are our hearts in pain,
Our dreams dark as their mother Night.

Bright, pure, like water-lilies, rode
     The words on Love’s rejoicing river;
     They vanished have, alas! for ever—
Flown on it to the heart of God.

A host of flowers had learnt to wave
     In the bold garden of my love;
     Rains crush them—hurled by hands above—
Thou diggest there my lonely grave.

There was a wisdom in thy look,                                                      68
     I read a life’s lore in thine eyes.
     Alas! how sorely am I wise!
Love, thine is now a hidden book.

The sigh, the ceaseless sigh, is given—
     Ah! where the chaste consoling breast?
     My heart was dreary clod at best,
And Mary—Mary!—mocks in Heaven.

__________

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