Complete Poetical Works

Were not his words delicious, I a beast To take them as I did? but something jarr'd ;

Whether he spoke too largely; that there seem'd

A touch of something false, some self-
conceit,

Or over-smoothness: howsoe'er it was,
He scarcely hit my humor, and I said:

"Friend Edwin, do not think yourself
alone

Of all men happy. Shall not Love to me,
As in the Latin song I learnt at school,
Sneeze out a full God-bless-you right and
left?

But you can talk yours is a kindly vein:
I have, I think, Heaven knows
much within;

Clung to the lake. I boated over, ran My craft aground, and heard with beating heart

The Sweet-Gale rustle round the shelving keel;

And out I stept, and up I crept: she moved, Like Proserpine in Enna, gathering flowers:

Then low and sweet I whistled thrice; and she,

She turn'd, we closed, we kiss'd, swore faith, I breathed

In some new planet a silent cousin stole Upon us and departed: "Leave,"she cried, "O leave me!" "Never, dearest, never: here

as I brave the worst" and while we stood like fools

Have, or should have, but for a thought
or two,

That like a purple beech among the greens
Looks out of place: 't is from no want in

her:

It is my shyness, or my self-distrust,
Or something of a wayward modern mind
Dissecting passion. Time will set me
right."

So spoke I knowing not the things
that were.
Then said the fat-faced curate, Edward
Bull;

To lands in Kent and messuages in York, | And I had hoped that ere this period closed And slight Sir Robert with his watery Thou wouldst have caught me up into smile thy rest,

And educated whisker. But for me,
They set an ancient creditor to work:
It seems I broke a close with force and

arms:

There came a mystic token from the king
To greet the sheriff, needless courtesy !
I read, and fled by night, and flying
turn'd:

Her taper glimmer'd in the lake below:
I turn'd once more, close-buttoned to the
storm;

Denying not these weather-beaten limbs The meed of saints, the white robe and the palm.

O take the meaning, Lord: I do not breathe,

Not whisper, any murmur of complaint. Pain heap'd ten-hundred-fold to this, were still

Less

burden, by ten-hundred-fold, to bear,

Than were those lead-like tons of sin,
that crush'd

So left the place, left Edwin, nor have seen
Him since, nor heard of her, nor cared to My spirit flat before thee.
hear.

O Lord, Lord, Thou knowest I bore this better at the first, For I was strong and hale of body then; And tho' my teeth, which now are dropt

away,

Would chatter with the cold, and all my beard

Was tagg'd with icy fringes in the moon, I drown'd the whoopings of the owl with sound

Of pious hymns and psalms, and sometimes saw

An angel stand and watch me, as I sang.
Now am I feeble grown; my end draws
nigh;

I hope my end draws nigh: half deaf I am,
So that I scarce can hear the people hum
About the column's base, and almost
blind,

And scarce can recognize the fields I know;
And both my thighs are rotted with the
dew;

Yet cease I not to clamor and to cry, While my stiff spine can hold my weary head,

Till all my limbs drop piecemeal from the stone,

Have mercy, mercy take away my sin.

O Jesus, if thou wilt not save my soul, Who may be saved? who is it may be saved?

Who may be made a saint, if I fail here?
Show me the man hath suffer'd more
than I.

For did not all thy martyrs die one death?
For either they were stoned, or crucified,
Or burn'd in fire, or boil'd in oil, or sawn
In twain beneath the ribs; but I die here
To-day, and whole years long, a life of
death.

Bear witness, if I could have found a way

(And heedfully I sifted all ny thought)

say,

And yet I know not well,

'Fall down, O Simeon: thou hast suffer'd long

More slowly-painful to subdue this home For that the evil ones come here, and
Of sin, my flesh, which I despise and hate,
I had not stinted practice, O my
66
God.
For not alone this pillar-punishment,
Not this alone I bore: but while I lived
In the white convent down the valley
there,

For ages and for ages! then they prate Of penances I cannot have gone thro', Perplexing me with lies; and oft I fall, Maybe for months, in such blind lethargies,

That Heaven, and Earth, and Time are choked. But yet

Bethink thee, Lord, while thou and all the saints

Enjoy themselves in heaven, and men on earth

House in the shade of comfortable roofs, Sit with their wives by fires, eat wholesome food,

And wear warm clothes, and even beasts have stalls,

I lived up there on yonder mountain side. My right leg chain'd into the crag, I lay | I, 'tween the spring and downfall of the Pent in a roofless close of ragged stones; Inswathed sometimes in wandering mist, and twice

light,

Bow down one thousand and two hundred times,

To Christ, the Virgin Mother, and the
Saints;

Or in the night, after a little sleep,
I wake the chill stars sparkle; I am wet
With drenching dews, or stiff with crack-
ling frost.

I wear an undress'd goatskin on my back;
A grazing iron collar grinds my neck;
And in my weak, lean arms I lift the

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Than many just and holy men, whose | Made me boil over.

names

Are register'd and calendar'd for saints.
Good people, you do ill to kneel to me.
What is it I can have done to merit this?
I am a sinner viler than you all.
It may be I have wrought some miracles,
And cured some halt and maim'd; but
what of that?

It may be, no one, even among the saints, May match his pains with mine; but what of that?

Yet do not rise; for you may look on me, And in your looking you may kneel to God.

Speak is there any of you halt or

maim'd?

I think you know I have some power with Heaven

From my long penance : let him speak his wish.

Yes, I can heal him. Power goes forth from me.

They say that they are heal'd. Ah, hark they shout

"St. Simeon Stylites." Why, if so, God reaps a harvest in me. O my soul, God reaps a harvest in thee. If this be, Can I work miracles and not be saved? This is not told of any. They were saints. It cannot be but that I shall be saved; Yea, crown'd a saint. They shout,

hold a saint!"

"Be

sleeve;

Devils pluck'd my

Abaddon and Asmodeus caught at me. I smote them with the cross; they swarm'd again.

In bed like monstrous apes they crush'd my chest:

They flapp'd my light out as I read : I saw Their faces grow between me and my book;

With colt-like whinny and with hoggish whine Yet this way

They burst my prayer.
was left,

And by this way I 'scaped them. Mortify
Your flesh, like me, with scourges and
with thorns;
If it may

Smite, shrink not, spare not.
be, fast
Whole Lents, and pray.
slow steps,

I hardly, with

With slow, faint steps, and much exceeding pain,

Have scrambled past those pits of fire,

that still

Sing in mine ears.

praise:

But yield not me the

God only thro' his bounty hath thought fit,

Among the powers and princes of this world,

To make me an example to mankind, Which few can reach to. Yet I do not

Now, now, his footsteps smite the threshold stairs

Of life I say, that time is at the doors When you may worship me without reproach;

For I will leave my relics in your land, And you may carve a shrine about my dust, And burn a fragrant lamp before my bones, When I am gather'd to the glorious saints. While I spake then, a sting of shrewdest

pain

Ran shrivelling thro' me, and a cloudlike change,

In passing, with a grosser film made thick These heavy, horny eyes. The end! the end!

Surely the end! What's here? a shape, a shade, A flash of light. Is that the angel there That holds a crown? Come, blessed brother, come.

I know thy glittering face. I waited long; | I found him garrulously given,
My brows are ready. What! deny it now? A babbler in the land.
Nay, draw, draw, draw nigh. So I clutch

it. Christ!

Tis gone 't is here again; the crown! the crown!

So now 't is fitted on and grows to me, And from it melt the dews of Paradise, Sweet! sweet! spikenard, and balm, and frankincense.

Ah! let me not be fool'd, sweet saints: I trust

That I am whole, and clean, and meet for Heaven.

Speak, if there be a priest, a man of
God,

Among you there, and let him presently
Approach, and lean a ladder on the shaft,
And climbing up into my airy home,
Deliver ine the blessed sacrament;
For by the warning of the Holy Ghost,
I prophesy that I shall die to-night,
A quarter before twelve.

But thou, O Lord, Aid all this foolish people; let them take Example, pattern: lead them to thy light.

THE TALKING OAK.

ONCE more the gate behind me falls;
Once more before my face
I see the moulder'd Abbey-walls,
That stand within the chace.

Beyond the lodge the city lies,
Beneath its drift of smoke;
And ah! with what delighted eyes
I turn to yonder oak.

For when my passion first began,

Ere that, which in me burn'd, The love, that makes me thrice a man, Could hope itself return'd;

To yonder oak within the field
I spoke without restraint,
And with a larger faith appeal'd
Than Papist unto Saint.

For oft I talk'd with him apart,
And told him of my choice,
Until he plagiarized a heart,

And answer'd with a voice.

Tho' what he whisper'd, under Heaven None else could understand;

But since I heard him make reply
Is many a weary hour;
'T were well to question him, and try
If yet he keeps the power.

Hail, hidden to the knees in fern,
Broad Oak of Sumner-chace,
Whose topmost branches can discern
The roofs of Samner-place!

Say thou, whereon I carved her name,
If ever maid or spouse,
As fair as my Olivia, came

To rest beneath thy boughs.

"O Walter, I have shelter'd here Whatever maiden grace

The good old Summers, year by year, Made ripe in Sumner-chace:

"Old Summers, when the monk was fat,
And, issuing shorn and sleek,
Would twist his girdle tight, and pat
The girls upon the cheek,

"Ere yet, in scorn of Peter's-pence, And number'd bead, and shrift, Bluff Harry broke into the spence, And turn'd the cowls adrift:

"And I have seen some score of those
Fresh faces, that would thrive
When his man-minded offset rose
To chase the deer at five;

"And all that from the town would stroll,
Till that wild wind made work
In which the gloomy brewer's soul
Went by me, like a stork :

"The slight she-slips of loyal blood,
And others, passing praise,
Strait-laced, but all-too-full in bud
For puritanic stays:

"And I have shadow'd many a group
Of beauties, that were born
In teacup-times of hood and hoop,
Or while the patch was worn ;

"And, leg and arm with love-knots gay, About me leap'd and laugh'd

The modest Cupid of the day,
And shrill'd his tinsel shaft.

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