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REST
Poor restless heart! still thy lament,
Crave not for rest, refusèd still,
There is some struggle, – discontent,
That stays thy will.
Be brave to meet unrest,
Nor seek from work release,
Clasp struggle close unto thy breast,
Until it brings thee peace.
Seek not in creed a resting-place
From problems that around thee surge,
But look doubt bravely in the face,
Till truth emerge.
Work out the problem of thy life,
To no convention chainèd be,
Against self-love wage ceaseless strife,
And thus be free.
Then, if in harmony thou livest,
With all that’s in thy nature best,
Who “Sleep to his beloved giveth,”
Will give thee rest.
REST
His Mother was a Prince’s child,
His Father was a King;
There wanted not to that proud lot
What power or wealth could bring;
Great nobles served him, bending low,
Strong captains wrought his will;
Fair fortune! – but it wearied him,
His spirit thirsted still!
For him the glorious music roll’d
Of singers, silent long;
Grave histories told, in scrolls of old,
The strife of right and wrong;
For him Philosophy unveil’d
Athenian Plato’s lore,
Might these not serve to fill a life?
Not this! he sigh’d for more!
He loved! – the truest, newest lip
That ever lover pressed,
The queenliest mouth of all the south
Long love for him confess’d:
Round him his children’s joyousness
Rang silverly and shrill;
Thrice blessed! save that blessedness
Lack’d something – something still!
To battle all his spears he led,
In streams of winding steel;
On breast and head of foeman dead
His war-horse set its heel;
The jewell’d housings of its flank
Swung wet with blood of kings;
Yet the rich victory seem’d rank
With the blood taint it brings!
The splendid passion seized his soul
To heal, by statutes sage,
The ills that bind our hapless kind.
And chafe to crime and rage;
And dear the people’s blessing was,
The praising of the poor;
But evil stronger is than thrones,
And hate no laws can cure!
He laid aside the sword and pen,
And lit the lamp, to wrest
From nature’s range the secrets strange,
The treasures of her breast;
And wisdom deep his guerdon was,
And wondrous things he knew;
Yet from each vanquish’d mystery
Some harder marvel grew!
No pause! no respite! no sure ground,
To stay the spirit’s quest!
In all around not one thing found
So good as to be “best;”
Not even love proved quite divine;
Therefore his search did cease,
Lord of all gifts that life can give
Save the one sweet gift – Peace!
Then came it! – crown, sword, wreath – each lay,
An unregarded thing!
The funeral sheet from head to feet,
Was royal robe to that king!
And strange! – Love, learning, statecraft, sway,
Look’d always on before,
But those pale, happy, lips of clay,
Lack’d nothing! – nothing more!
GOSSIP
I FEEL impelled to say a word, and it shall be but a word – and so more patiently endured – in defence of that much abused, much maligned thing – gossipry. Johnson, among many other designations, gives for “gossipred,” “spiritual affinity;” a very good definition, and the one I shall adopt; that is, sympathy, the need to give and to receive it; and I must say I know few things more charming than this sympathy in small things, this gossipry between kindly hearts and well filled heads. That light pouring out the thoughts and feelings and observations of the passing hour, which, while it commences with the external, is sure to touch, ever and anon, those deeper springs of thought, and feeling, and action, from which well up pleasant memories, apt thoughts, and pertinent reflections.
Poring over old letters and papers which chanced recently to come into my hands, I came upon an old leaf of yellow paper and faded ink, which caught my attention; it appeared to be either a scrap of an old diary, or of a letter; it seemed to me somewhat germane to our present subject, and being venerable from its antiquity, I venture to quote it. Its date is too indistinct to be sure of, but it seems to be 1700 and something. Thus it runs: – “My husband was bidden to dinner yesterday to our Rector’s, I with him; my husband was pleased thereat, because there was, he said, to be there a man of parts, from London; so I laid out my husband’s best coat and long flowered waistcoat, and his kerseys and silk stockings, which he did not often wear, for I desired him to be seemly in his attire, that he might do fitting honour to our Rector; I was a little flustered at first with the notion of this great man; but I noted that my husband bore himself towards him exactly as if he had been an ordinary man. At table I found myself set next to him. The gardens at the great house are very fine, and kept excellently well, as indeed is not wonderful, as there are two whole gardeners and a boy to do the work. Looking out of the large bay-window which looked upon the flower garden, and stood open, for it was mighty warm, I could not keep my eyes off the flowers, they were so exceeding gay; the sun shone out surprisingly; one spot in particular took my attention: a large clump of daffodils had been allowed on the lawn, the grass was high round them, and on the top of every blade there was a drop that sparkled like a diamond – for there had been a slight shower – and as I looked upon them, I thought of the description in holy writ of the gates of the temple of Jerusalem, all studded with sapphires and emeralds and diamonds; and I was so taken up that I forgot it was the great man that was sitting by me, and I asked him if it was not beautiful? ‘It is vastly fine indeed, ma’am,’ he said; but he looked at me with wonderment, I thought, and from the look in his eyes, I am sure he did not know a daffodil from a daisy, poor man. So I felt very much abashed, and sat still and said no more; and there was not much discourse, but everybody looked wise and silent; and I remembered that somewhere it is said, it is a grand thing to know how to be silent; but I thought a little talking would have been more agreeable, only perhaps not so wise-like, only of course I knew I was quite a common person, and had no parts at all; so when it was about three of the clock – the hour fixed for the dinner was rather late, as it was a bye common occasion – and we ladies left the gentlemen to settle down to their wine, I thought I would go home to my children, for I thought our lady Rector looked somewhat puffed up and stately with the great honour she had had, and done to us; and to say the very truth, I felt longing to speak and to hear in the ordinary way. So I took my leave in a beseeming and courteous manner, and stepped across to my own place; and my eldest daughter came running to me and said she had got so many things to tell me; and then out of her little heart she poured out all her little troubles and pleasures; and oh! she said, little brother had been so naughty, and had cried dreadfully for the pretty cup from China, and stamped and fought her when she would not let him have it, because dear mamma liked it so much, and would be sorry to have it broken. ‘But then, mamma,’ she said, ‘when he got a little quieter, I talked to him, and hushed him and kissed him, and so he was soon good, and we had a great game at horses.’ Then I kissed the little maid, and called her a ‘dear little mother,’ but she was greatly puzzled, and said, ‘Oh, mamma, I am only a little girl.’ Then she said I must tell her all about the gentleman that she had heard papa say had a great many parts – ‘more, I suppose, mamma, than any of us.’ I only kissed her at this, and told her of the golden daffodils and many other flowers I had noticed; and of two great blackbirds I had seen hopping very lovingly together upon the lawn. She said she liked to hear of these extremely; and I told of the roast sucking-pig with an orange in its mouth, which was at the top of the table; but she did not like this; she said it would remind her of the little piggy running about, which that little pig would never do any more. Then she said she would tell me of one of her little misfortunes, which she thought was almost a big one: ‘the poor brown hen with ten little chicks had been shut up by themselves, because the little chicks would run about too far; and the boy had forgotten them, and they had been shut up without anything to eat for ever so many hours; and when we put some barley in, dear old browney clucked and clucked, and showed the grains to the chicks, but never touched one herself, mamma, and when the little chicks had eaten till they were quite full, she called them all under her wings, and they went fast asleep; but then, mamma, there was not one single barley left near the poor mother; and so I do believe mamma, she would have been quite starved to death, only we put some barley and some nice crumbs quite close to her; so she got them without moving a bit, or waking the chicks, and oh, mamma, she did gobble it up so fast; I know she was so hungry, for she did not eat one single barley-corn before, for I watched her all the time; wasn’t it sweet and good of her, mamma? I shall love that dear old browney for always.’ And so my little daughter and I chatted away and enjoyed ourselves hugely, till my dear good man, who I had thought was sitting over his wine, and perhaps his pipe – but I don’t know about that because of the company – came suddenly behind us. He kissed us both, saying, ‘My two sweet gossips, it does my heart good to hear you. It seems to me, my Margery,’ he said, ‘that our little one here hath both a sound heart and a wise head.’”
There the paper is torn, and I could see no other word. It appears to me that this, and many other gossipries, are, in their small way, good, and that when they are not good, it is because the heart is cankered, and the head empty; and so we come round to the conclusion on all subjects and on all difficulties, especially social difficulties – educate, educate, educate; teach the mind to find subjects for thought in all things, and purify the heart by enabling it to find “sermons in stones, and good in everything;” then will Gossip be the graceful unbending of the loving heart and well-filled head.
CHIPS
Chips! chips!
We had climb’d to the top of the cliff that day,
Just where the brow look’d over the bay;
And you stood, and you watch’d the shifting ships
Till I found you a seat in the heather.
As we reach’d the top you had touch’d me thrice;
I had felt your hand on my shoulder twice,
And once I had brush’d your feather.
And I turn’d at last, and saw you stand,
Looking down seaward hat in hand,
At the shelving sweep of the scoop’d-out sand,
And the great blue gem within it.
The bright, sweet sky was over your head,
Your cheek was aflame with the climber’s red,
And a something leapt in my heart that said, —
Happy or sorry, living or dead, —
My fate had begun that minute.
And we sat, and we watch’d the clouds go by
(There were none but the clouds and you and I
As we sat on the hill together);
As you sketch’d the rack as it drifted by,
Fleece upon fleece through the pathless sky,
Did you wonder, Florence, whether,
When you held me up your point to cut,
I had kept the chips, when the knife was shut, —
For none of them fell in the heather.
Chips! chips! —
Yet what was I but the cousin, you know? —
Only the boy that you favour’d so —
And the word that stirr’d my lips
I must hide away in my heart, and keep,
For the road to you was dizzy and steep
As the cliff we had climb’d together.
There was many an older lover nigh,
With the will and the right to seek your eye;
And for me, I know not whether,
If I chose to live, or I chose to die,
It would matter to you a feather.
But this I know, as the feather’s weight
Will keep the poise of the balance straight,
In the doubtful climb – in the day’s eclipse,
In the stumbling steps, in the faults and trips,
I have gain’d a strength from the tiniest scraps
That ever were help to a man, perhaps, —
Chips! chips!
Look, these are “the tiniest scraps,” you see,
And this is their casket of filigree,
That I bought that year “far over the sea,”
With a volley of chaff, and a half-rupee,
From a huckstering, fox-faced Bengalee,
That set himself up for a dealer.
They have slept with me by the jungle fires,
They have watch’d with me under Indian spires,
I have kept them safe in their gilded wires
From the clutch of the coolie stealer;
And when at last they relieved “the Nest,” —
Alick, and Ellis, and all the rest, —
March’d into Lucknow four abreast,
That I had the chips still under my vest,
That they pray’d with me, must be confess’d,
Who never was much of a kneeler.
And now that I come, and I find you free,
You, that have waken’d this thing in me,
Will you tell me, Florence, whether,
When I kept your pencil’s chips that day,
Was it better perhaps to have let them stay
To be lost in the mountain heather!
CHIPS
Chips! It may be well disputed
If a word exists, less suited,
Or more odd and uninviting
As a theme for rhyme or writing;
Coinage of that dull Max Müller,
Title of a book still duller.
Fill’d with words so cabalistic,
That methought the German mystic
Must have found the dialect
Spoken ere man walk’d erect.
Never mind! what must be, must;
Men must eat both crumb and crust.
And the dodge of many a poet
(Half the verses publish’d show it),
When his Pegasus rides restive,
Is to make his rhymes suggestive.
If in what you chance to seize on
Rhyme and reason will not chime,
Better rhyme without the reason
Than the reason and no rhyme;
Better anything than prose,
So, as Milton says, “here goes.”
“When the Grecian chiefs in ships
Sail’d on Argonautic trips!”
“When the Furies with their whips
Flogg’d Orestes all to strips!
“When the sun in dim eclipse
In the darken’d ocean dips!”
Still I see no clue to chips!
“Meadows where the lambkin skips,
Where the dew from roses drips
And the bee the honey sips..”
Odd, that nothing leads to chips!
Then I thought of “cranks and quips,”
Wanton wiles and laughing lips,
Luring us to fatal slips,
And leaving us in Satan’s grips.
Then I made a desperate trial,
With the sixth and seventh vial —
Thinking I could steal some Chips
From St. John’s Apocalypse.
Then there came a long hiatus,
While I kept repeating Chips,
Feeling the divine afflatus
Oozing through my finger-tips.
Gone and going hopelessly,
So, in my accustom’d manner,
Underneath my favourite tree,
I began a mild havannah —
’Twas indeed my favourite station,
For recruiting mind and body;
Drinking draughts of inspiration,
Alternate with whisky toddy.
’Twas an oak tree old and hoary.
And my garden’s pride and glory;
Hallow’d trunk and boughs in splinters,
Mossy with a thousand winters.
Here I found the Muses’ fountain,
And perceived my spirits mounting,
And exclaim’d in accents burning,
To the tree my eyes upturning,
“Venerable tree and vast,
Speak to me of ages past!
Sylvan monarch of the wold,
Tell me of the days of old!
Did thy giant boughs o’er-arching
View the Roman legions marching?
Has the painted Briton stray’d
Underneath thy hoary shade?
Did some heathen oracle
In thy knotty bosom dwell,
As in groves of old Dodona,
Or the Druid oaks of Mona?
Dwelt the outlaw’d foresters
Here in ‘otium cum dig.’
While the feather’d choristers
In thy branches ‘hopp’d the twig?’
Help me, Nymph! Fawn! Hamadryad!
One at once, or all the Triad.”
Lo! a voice to my invoking!
’Twas my stupid gardener croaking,
“Please, Sir, mayn’t I fall this tree,
’Cos it spoils the crops, you see:
And the grass it shades and lumbers,
And we shan’t have no cowcumbers.
Some time it will fall for good,
And the Missis wants the wood.”
Shock’d at such a scheme audacious,
Faint, I gasp’d out, “Goodness gracious!”
“Yes,” I said, “the tree must fall,
’Tis, alas! the lot of all;
But no mortal shall presume
To accelerate its doom.
Rescued from thy low desires,
It shall warm my poet fires.
Let the strokes of fate subdue it,
Let the axe of Time cut through it;
When it must fall, let it fall,
But, oh! never let me view it.”
Seeing that my phrase exalted
Fell upon his senses vainly,
In my full career I halted,
And I spoke my orders plainly.
“Never seek to trim or lop it,
Once for all I charge thee, drop it.”
And I added, to my sorrow,
“You shall ‘cut your stick’ to-morrow
Know what that means, I suppose?”
“Yes,” he said, “I thinks I does.”
So I left him at this crisis,
Left him to his own devices,
Left him like the royal Vandal,
Leaning on his old spade handle.
Oh! those vulgar slang expressions, —
How I smart for my transgressions!
Judge my wrath, surprise, and horror,
When I rose upon the morrow,
To behold my tree in ruin,
And be told ’twas all my doing,
While the villain grinn’d in glee!
“Wretch!” I thunder’d, “Where’s my tree?”
And these words came from his lips,
“There’s the tree, and them’s the Chips.”
TRANSFORMATION
THE LAST SPEECH AND CONFESSION OF A MAHOGANY-TREE NYMPH
You’ve heard in Greek mythology
Of nymph and hamadryad
Who had their being in a tree;
Perchance, the tale admired.
Yet live we, in oblivion sunk;
Though strange, my tale’s as sure as
That I was once a stately trunk
In the forests of Honduras.
My home was in a jungle low,
And tall tree ferns grew round me;
The humming-birds flew to and fro,
And wild lianas bound me;
The panther, jaguar, and ounce,
Lurk’d ever in my branches
On weary travellers to pounce
While journeying to their ranches.
Me, merchants from Honduras found
Who had not got a log any;
They cut me prostrate on the ground
To make first-rate mahogany.
They pack’d me in a darksome hold;
We cross’d the ocean quivering;
They took me to a region cold
That set my timbers shivering;
Above, an atmosphere of fog;
Around me, masts upstanding —
When they had piled me log by log,
Upon the dockyard landing.
And then they came with rule and chalk
Numb’ring my feet and inches,
And pack’d us high beside that walk
With pullies, cranks, and winches;
And one by one my logs were sold,
And one by one were taken,
Till I, the spirit of the whole,
Was left of form forsaken.
And when the auction sale was past,
Mourning each separate splinter
I flitted formless round the masts,
Through all that ice-bound winter,
Still with benumb’d and torpid sense
All plan or hope deferring,
Till, when the spring sun shone intense,
My spirit’s sap was stirring,
I heard a wordless, whisper’d sound,
(Such as we tree-nymphs utter,)
Of swelling twigs, and buds unbound,
And tremulous leaflets’ flutter, —
And saw a dim, green, glossy face
With eyes like pearly flowers, —
And knew the spirit of our race,
Fresh from Honduras’ bowers.
“Poor disembodied nymph,” I thought
It said; “Go, seek thy children,
A true statistical report
To bring us, though bewild’ring,
Of what with every inch they’ve done,
Each splintering and chipling;
Then, backwards to Honduras flown,
Thou’lt have another sapling.”
I wing’d my way elate with hopes,
To seek each cabinet maker —
To Druse and Heal’s well furnish’d shops,
And the Bazaar of Baker —
Each piano manufactory,
To Broadwood and to Collard —
Where’er a portion of my tree,
Was carried, there I follow’d:
And where’er a sofa or chair I saw,
Or bedstead or wardrobe furnish’d,
Or centre-table with spreading claw,
With my wood all brightly burnish’d,
Each knot, and knob, and scar, and split,
And delicate grain appearing.
Long was my search, made longer yet
By the general use of veneering.
I’ve flitted through a mansion proud
To watch a grand piano,
The centre of a list’ning crowd
High-bred in tone and manner:
I’ve stood by many a shining board,
Were dinners were demolish’d,
And view’d the silver and glass encored—
Seen double in the polish.
And beside a stately bed I’ve stood,
Where curtains of silken splendour
O’er damask hangings and polish’d wood,
Threw a lustre subdued and tender.
A dainty cradle stood near its head,
But no form was in it sleeping,
For the couch of state held the baby dead,
And the mother knelt near it weeping:
I came beneath a gorgeous dome,
With fretted arch and column,
And stained glass windows through the gloom
That made it very solemn.
And by the pulpit stairs I stood
The preacher’s words to follow —
The sounding-board was my own wood —
(That, and the words were hollow):
And I’ve wandered to the library —
The bookshelves there were mine —
Belonging to one of the Ministry;
The whole was wondrous fine.
(I thought the pay seem’d very high,
The work of an easy nature,
And wondered if that was the reason why
They would not suffer women to try
To sit in the Legislature):
And I’ve been up a dismal attic flight,
Not knowing why there I hasten’d,
And I found ’twas the sewing-table bright
To which a machine was fasten’d;
And a girl was working, so pale and drear,
And in such a forlorn condition,
That, ghost as I was, I had shed a tear,
But I knew that that garret was woman’s sphere,
And dressmaking her mission.
Last month I came to a table round
Which cover’d, to my surprise, is,
(Whilst a critical crowd collects around,)
With chips of all lengths and sizes:
And I knew I’d found the last piece of wood;
And back, to my former station,
My spirit crossed the Atlantic flood
To begin a new transformation.
So I laid the glimpses that I had had
Of the motley life of this nation
Upon this table – or good or bad —
For the general delectation.
