| |
[First published in The Victoria Regia, 1861. Reprinted 1867.]
THE SANDY spits, the shore-lock’d lakes, | |
| Melt into open, moonlit sea; | |
| The soft Mediterranean breaks | |
| At my feet, free. | |
| |
| Dotting the fields of corn and vine | 5 |
| Like ghosts, the huge, gnarl’d olives stand; | |
| Behind, that lovely mountain-line! | |
| While by the strand | |
| |
| Cette, with its glistening houses white, | |
| Curves with the curving beach away | 10 |
| To where the lighthouse beacons bright | |
| Far in the bay. | |
| |
| Ah, such a night, so soft, so lone, | |
| So moonlit, saw me once of yore | |
| Wander unquiet, and my own | 15 |
| Vext heart deplore! | |
| |
| But now that trouble is forgot; | |
| Thy memory, thy pain, to-night, | |
| My brother! and thine early lot, 1 | |
| Possess me quite. | 20 |
| |
| The murmur of this Midland deep | |
| Is heard to-night around thy grave | |
| There where Gibraltar’s cannon’d steep | |
| O’erfrowns the wave. | |
| |
| For there, with bodily anguish keen, | 25 |
| With Indian heats 2 at last fordone, | |
| With public toil and private teen, | |
| Thou sank’st, alone. | |
| |
| Slow to a stop, at morning grey, | |
| I see the smoke-crown’d vessel come; | 30 |
| Slow round her paddles dies away | |
| The seething foam. | |
| |
| A boat is lower’d from her side; | |
| Ah, gently place him on the bench! | |
| That spirit—if all have not yet died— | 35 |
| A breath might quench. | |
| |
| Is this the eye, the footstep fast, 3 | |
| The mien of youth we used to see, | |
| Poor, gallant boy!—for such thou wast, 4 | |
| Still art, to me. | 40 |
| |
| The limbs their wonted tasks refuse, | |
| The eyes are glazed, thou canst not speak; | |
| And whiter than thy white burnous | |
| That wasted check! | |
| |
| Enough! The boat, with quiet shock, | 45 |
| Unto its haven coming nigh, | |
| Touches, and on Gibraltar’s rock | |
| Lands thee, to die. | |
| |
| Ah me! Gibraltar’s strand is far, | |
| But farther yet across the brine | 50 |
| Thy dear wife’s ashes buried are, | |
| Remote from thine. | |
| |
| For there where Morning’s sacred fount | |
| Its golden rain on earth confers, | |
| The snowy Himalayan Mount | 55 |
| O’ershadows hers. | |
| |
| Strange irony of Fate, alas, | |
| Which for two jaded English saves, | |
| When from their dusty life they pass, | |
| Such peaceful graves! | 60 |
| |
| In cities should we English lie, | |
| Where cries are rising ever new, | |
| And men’s incessant stream goes by; | |
| We who pursue | |
| |
| Our business with unslackening stride, | 65 |
| Traverse in troops, with care-fill’d breast, | |
| The soft Mediterranean side, | |
| The Nile, the East, | |
| |
| And see all sights from pole to pole, | |
| And glance, and nod, and bustle by; | 70 |
| And never once possess our soul | |
| Before we die. | |
| |
| Not by those hoary Indian hills, | |
| Not by this gracious Midland sea | |
| Whose floor to-night sweet moonshine fills, | 75 |
| Should our graves be! | |
| |
| Some sage, to whom the world was dead, | |
| And men were specks, and life a play; | |
| Who made the roots of trees his bed, | |
| And once a day | 80 |
| |
| With staff and gourd his way did bend | |
| To villages and homes 5 of man, | |
| For food to keep him till he end | |
| His mortal span, | |
| |
| And the pure goal of Being reach; | 85 |
| Grey-headed, wrinkled, clad in white, | |
| Without companion, without speech, | |
| By day and night | |
| |
| Pondering God’s mysteries untold, | |
| And tranquil as the glacier snows— | 90 |
| He by those Indian mountains old | |
| Might well repose! | |
| |
| Some grey crusading knight austere | |
| Who bore Saint Louis company | |
| And came home hurt to death and here | 95 |
| Landed 6 to die; | |
| |
| Some youthful troubadour whose tongue | |
| Fill’d Europe once with his love-pain, | |
| Who here outwearied sunk, and sung | |
| His 7 dying strain; | 100 |
| |
| Some girl who here from castle-bower, 8 | |
| With furtive step and cheek of flame, | |
| ’Twixt myrtle-hedges all in flower | |
| By moonlight came | |
| |
| To meet her pirate-lover’s ship, | 105 |
| And from the wave-kiss’d marble stair | |
| Beckon’d him on, with quivering lip | |
| And unbound 9 hair, | |
| |
| And lived some moons in happy trance, | |
| Then learnt his death, and pined away— | 110 |
| Such by these waters of romance | |
| ’Twas meet to lay! | |
| |
| But you—a grave for knight 10 or sage, | |
| Romantic, solitary, still, | |
| O spent ones of a work-day age! | 115 |
| Befits you ill. | |
| |
| So sang I; but the midnight breeze | |
| Down to the brimm’d moon-charmed main | |
| Comes softly through the olive-trees, | |
| And checks my strain. | 120 |
| |
| I think of her, whose gentle tongue | |
| All plaint in her own cause controll’d; | |
| Of thee I think, my brother! young | |
| In heart, high-soul’d; | |
| |
| That comely face, that cluster’d brow, | 125 |
| That cordial hand, that bearing free, | |
| I see them still, I see them now, | |
| Shall always see! | |
| |
| And what but gentleness untired, | |
| And what but noble feeling warm, | 130 |
| Wherever shown, howe’er attired, | |
| Is grace, is charm? | |
| |
| What else is all these waters are, | |
| What else is steep’d in lucid sheen, | |
| What else is bright, 11 what else is fair, | 135 |
| What else serene? | |
| |
| Mild o’er her grave, ye mountains, shine! | |
| Gently by his, ye waters, glide! | |
| To that in you which is divine | |
| They were allied. | 140 |
