Clasped in the air's soft arms the world doth sleep, Asleep its moving seas, its humming lands; With what an hungry lip the ocean deep Lappeth for ever the white-breasted sands; What love is in the moon's eternal eyes, Leaning unto the earth from out the midnight skies!

Thy large dark eyes are wide upon my brow, Filled with as tender light As yon low moon doth fill the heavens now, This mellow autumn night!

On the late flowers I linger at thy feet, I tremble when I touch thy garment's rim, I clasp thy waist, I feel thy bosom's beat-- O kiss me into faintness sweet and dim!

Thou leanest to me as a swelling peach, Full-juiced and mellow, leaneth to the taker's reach.

Thy hair is loosened by that kiss you gave, It floods my shoulders o'er; Another yet! Oh, as a weary wave Subsides upon the sh.o.r.e, My hungry being with its hopes, its fears, My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest, Yet strong as is despair, as weak as tears, Doth faint upon thy breast!

I feel thy clasping arms, my cheek is wet With thy rich tears. One kiss! Sweet, sweet, another yet!

I sang this song some twenty years ago, (Hot to the ear-tips, with great thumps of heart), On the gold lawn, while, Caesar-like, the sun Gathered his robes around him as he fell.

ARTHUR.

Struck by some country cousin, a rosy beauty Of the Dutch-cheese order, riched with great black eyes, Which, when you planned a theft upon her lips, Looked your heart quite away!

Oh, Love! oh, Wine! thou sun and moon o' our lives, What oysters were we without love and wine!

Our host, I doubt not, vaults a mighty tun, Wide-wombed and old, cobwebbed and dusted o'er.

Broach! and within its gloomy sides you'll find A beating heart of wine. The world's a tun, A gloomy tun, but he who taps the world Will find much sweetness in 't. Walter, my boy, Against this sun of wine's most purple light Burst into song.

WALTER.

I fear, Sir, I have none.

ARTHUR.

Hang nuts in autumn woods? Then 't is your trade, Spin us a new one. Come! some youth love-mad, Reading the thoughts within his lady's eyes, Earnest as One that looks into the Book, Seeking the road to bliss-- Clothe me this bare bough with your sunny flowers.

WALTER.

The evening heaven is not always dressed With frail cloud-empires of the setting sun, Nor are we always in our singing-robes.

I have no song, nor can I make you one; But, with permission, I will tell a tale.

ARTHUR.

If short and merry, Heaven speed your tongue; If long and sad, the Lord have mercy on us!

WALTER.

Within a city One was born to toil, Whose heart could not mate with the common doom To fall like a spent arrow in the grave.

'Mid the eternal hum, the boy clomb up Into a shy and solitary youth, With strange joys and strange sorrows, oft to tears He was moved, he knew not why, when he has stood Among the lengthening shadows of the eve, Such feeling overflowed him from the sky.

'Mong crowds he dwelt, as lonely as a star Unsphered and exiled, yet he knew no scorn.

Once did he say, "For me, I'd rather live With this weak human heart and yearning blood, Lonely as G.o.d, than mate with barren souls; More brave, more beautiful, than myself must be The man whom truly I can call my Friend; He must be an Inspirer, who can draw To higher heights of Being, and aye stand O'er me in unreached beauty, like the moon; Soon as he fail in this, the crest and crown Of n.o.ble friendship, he is nought to me.

What so unguessed as Death? Yet to the dead It lies as plain as yesterday to us.

Let me go forward to my grave alone, What need have I to linger by dry wells?"

Books were his chiefest friends. In them he read Of those great spirits who went down like suns, And left upon the mountain-tops of Death A light that made them lovely. His own heart Made him a Poet. Yesterday to him Was richer far than fifty years to come.

Alchymist Memory turned his past to gold.

When morn awakes against the dark wet earth, Back to the morn she laughs with dewy sides, Up goes her voice of larks! With like effect Imagination opened on his life, _It_ lay all lovely in that rarer light.

He was with Nature on the sabbath-days; Far from the dressed throngs and the city bells He gave his hot brows to the kissing wind, While restless thoughts were stirring in his heart.

"These worldly men will kill me with their scorns, But Nature never mocks or jeers at me; Her dewy soothings of the earth and air Do wean me from the thoughts that mad my brain.

Our interviews are stolen, I can look, Nature! in thy serene and griefless eyes But at long intervals; yet, Nature! yet, Thy silence and the fairness of thy face Are present with me in the booming streets.

Yon quarry shattered by the bursting fire, And disembowelled by the biting pick, Kind Nature! thou hast taken to thyself; Thy weeping Aprils and soft-blowing Mays, Thy blossom-buried Junes, have smoothed its scars, And hid its wounds and trenches deep in flowers.

So take my worn and pa.s.sion-wasted heart, Maternal Nature! Take it to thyself, Efface the scars of scorn, the rents of hate, The wounds of alien eyes, visit my brain With thy deep peace, fill with thy calm my heart, And the quick courses of my human blood."

Thus would he muse and wander, till the sun Reached the red west, where all the waiting clouds, Attired before in homely dun and grey, Like Parasites that dress themselves in smiles To feed a great man's eye, in haste put on Their purple mantles rimmed with ragged gold, And congregating in a shining crowd, Flattered the sinking orb with faces bright.

As slow he journeyed home, the wanderer saw The labouring fires come out against the dark, For with the night the country seemed on flame: Innumerable furnaces and pits, And gloomy holds, in which that bright slave, Fire, Doth pant and toil all day and night for man, Threw large and angry l.u.s.tres on the sky, And shifting lights across the long black roads.

Dungeoned in poverty, he saw afar The shining peaks of fame that wore the sun, Most heavenly bright, they mocked him through his bars, A lost man wildered on the dreary sea, When loneliness hath somewhat touched his brain, Doth shrink and shrink beneath the watching sky, Which hour by hour more plainly doth express The features of a deadly enemy, Drinking his woes with a most hungry eye.

Ev'n so, by constant staring on his ills, They grew worse-featured; till, in his great rage, His spirit, like a roused sea, white with wrath, Struck at the stars. "Hold fast! Hold fast! my brain!

Had I a curse to kill with, by yon Heaven!

I'd feast the worms to-night." Dreadfuller words, Whose very terror blanched his conscious lips, He uttered in his hour of agony.

With quick and subtle poison in his veins, With madness burning in his heart and brain, With words, like lightnings, round his pallid lips, He rushed to die in the very eyes of G.o.d.

'Twas late, for as he reached the open roads, Where night was reddened by the drudging fires, The drowsy steeples tolled the hour of One.

The city now was left long miles behind, A large black hill was looming 'gainst the stars, He reached its summit. Far above his head, Up there upon the still and mighty night, G.o.d's name was writ in worlds. Awhile he stood, Silent and throbbing like a midnight star, He raised his hands, alas! 'twas not in prayer-- He long had ceased to pray. "Father," he said, "I wished to loose some music o'er Thy world, To strike from its firm seat some h.o.a.ry wrong, And then to die in autumn with the flowers, And leaves, and sunshine I have loved so well.

Thou might'st have smoothed my way to some great end-- But wherefore speak? Thou art the mighty G.o.d.

This gleaming wilderness of suns and worlds Is an eternal and triumphant hymn, Chanted by Thee unto Thine own great self!

Wrapt in Thy skies, what were my prayers to Thee?

My pangs? My tears of blood? They could not move Thee from the depths of Thine immortal dream.

Thou hast forgotten me, G.o.d! Here, therefore, here, To-night upon this bleak and cold hill-side, Like a forsaken watch-fire will I die, And as my pale corse fronts the glittering night, It shall reproach Thee before all Thy worlds."

His death did not disturb that ancient Night.

Scornfullest Night! Over the dead there hung Greats gulfs of silence, blue, and strewn with stars-- No sound--no motion--in the eternal depths.

EDWARD.

Now, what a sullen-blooded fool was this, At sulks with earth and Heaven! Could he not Out-weep his pa.s.sion like a bl.u.s.tering day, And be clear-skied thereafter? He, poor wretch, Must needs be famous! Lord! how Poets geck At Fame, their idol. Call 't a worthless thing, Colder than lunar rainbows, changefuller Than sleeked purples on a pigeon's neck, More transitory than a woman's loves, The bubbles of her heart--and yet each mocker Would gladly sell his soul for one sweet crumb To roll beneath his tongue.

WALTER.

Alas! the youth Earnest as flame, could not so tame his heart As to live quiet days. When the heart-sick Earth Turns her broad back upon the gaudy sun, And stoops her weary forehead to the night, To struggle with her sorrow all alone, The moon, that patient sufferer, pale with pain, Presses her cold lips on her sister's brow, Till she is calm. But in _his_ sorrow's night He found no comforter. A man can bear A world's contempt when he has that within Which says he's worthy--when he contemns himself, There burns the h.e.l.l. So this wild youth was foiled In a great purpose--in an agony, In which he learned to hate and scorn himself, He foamed at G.o.d, and died.

MR. WILMOTT.

Rain similes upon his corse like tears-- The youth you spoke of was a glowing moth, Born in the eve and crushed before the dawn.

VIOLET.

He was, methinks, like that frail flower that comes Amid the nips and gusts of churlish March, Drinking pale beauty from sweet April's tears, Dead on the hem of May.

EDWARD.

A Lapland fool, Who, staring upward as the Northern lights Banner the skies with glory, breaks his heart, Because his smoky hut and greasy furs Are not so rich as they.

ARTHUR.

Mine is pathetic-- A ginger-beer bottle burst.

WALTER (_aside_).

And mine would be The pale child, Eve, leading her mother, Night.

[MR. WILMOTT, ARTHUR, _and_ EDWARD, _converse_--VIOLET _approaches_ WALTER.

VIOLET.