I looked without, and lo! my sonne
Came riding downe with might and main. He raised a shout as he drew on, Till all the welkin rang again, "Elizabeth! Elizabeth!"
(A sweeter woman ne'er drew breath
Than my sonne's wife, Elizabeth.)
"The olde sea-wall (he cried) is downe,
The rising tide comes on apace,
And boats adrift in yonder towne
Go sailing uppe the market-place." He shook as one that looks on death: "God save you, mother!" straight he saith; "Where is my wife, Elizabeth?"
"Good sonne, where Lindis winds away
With her two bairns I marked her long;
And ere yon bells beganne to play
Afar I heard her milking-song."
He looked across the grassy sea,
To right, to left, "Ho Enderby!"
They rang "The Brides of Enderby!"
With that he cried and beat his breast;
For lo! along the river's bed
A mighty eygre reared his crest,
And uppe the Lindis raging sped.
It swept with thunderous noises loud;
Shaped like a curling snow-white cloud,
Or like a demon in a shroud.
And rearing Lindis backward pressed,
Shook all her trembling banks amaine;
Then madly at the eygre's breast
Flung uppe her weltering walls again.
Then banks came downe with ruin and rout-
Then beaten foam flew round about--
Then all the mighty floods were out.
So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
The heart had hardly time to beat,
Before a shallow seething wave
Sobbed in the grasses at oure feet:
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,
And all the world was in the sea.
Upon the roofe we sate that night,
The noise of bells went sweeping by: I marked the lofty beacon-light
Stream from the church-tower, red and high,
A lurid mark and dread to see;
And awsome bells they were to mee,
That in the dark rang "Enderby."
They rang the sailor-lads to guide
From roofe to roofe who fearless rowed;
And I-my sonne was at my side,
And yet the ruddy beacon glowed:
And yet he moaned beueath his breath,
"O come in life, or come in death!
O lost! my love, Elizabeth."
And didst thou visit him no more?
Thou didst, thou didst, my daughter deare, The waters laid thee at his doore,
Ere yet the early dawn was clear. Thy pretty bairns in fast embrace, The lifted sun shone on thy face, Downe drifted to thy dwelling-place.
And mine, they are yet to be;
I've conned thee an answer, it waits thee tonight."
No listening, no longing shall aught, aught dis- By the sycamore passed he, and through the
You leave the story to me.
The foxglove shoots out of the green matted
And hangeth her hoods of snow;
She was idle, and slept till the sunshiny
Oh children take long to grow.
I wish, and I wish that the spring would go faster,
Nor long summer bide so late;
And I could grow on like the foxglove and aster, For some things are ill to wait.
I wait for the day when dear hearts shall discover,
While dear hands are laid on my head: "The child is a woman, the book may close
For all the lessons are said."
I wait for my story-the birds cannot sing it, Not one, as he sits on the tree;
The bells cannot ring it, but long years, O bring it!
I LEANED out of window, I smelt the white clo
Dark, dark was the garden, I saw not the gate;
I pray you, what is the nest to me,
My empty nest?
And what is the shore where I stood to see
My boat sail down to the west ?
Can I call that home where I anchor yet,
Though my good-man has sailed?
Can I call that home where my nest was set,
Now all its hope hath failed?
Nay, but the port where my sailor went,
And the land were my nestlings be:
There is the home where my thoughts are sent,
The only home for me--
Ir was a village built in a green rent,
But our folk call them syle, and naught but syle, And when they 're grown, why then we call them herring.
I tell you, sir, the water is as full
Of them as pastures be of blades of grass;
You'll draw a score out in a landing-net,
And none of them be longer than a pin.
"Syle! ay, indeed, we should be badly off,
I reckon, and so would God Almighty's gulls,"
He grumbled on in his quaint piety,
"And all His other birds, if He should say
I will not drive my syle into the south;
The fisher folk may do without my syle,
And do without the shoals of fish it draws
To follow and feed on it."
This said, we made
Our peace with him by means of two small coins,
And down we ran and lay upon the reef,
And saw the swimming infants, emerald green,
In separate shoals, the scarcely turning ebb
Bringing them in; while sleek, and not intent
On chase, but taking that which came to hand,
The full-fed mackerel and the gurnet swam
Between; and settling on the polished sea,
A thousand snow-white gulls sat lovingly
In social rings, and twittered while they fed.
The village dogs and ours, elate and brave,
Lay looking over, barking at the fish;
Fast, fast the silver creatures took the bait,
And when they heaved and floundered on the
rock,
In beauteous misery, a sudden pat
Some shaggy pop would deal, then back away,
At distance eye them with sagacious doubt,
And shrink half frighted from the slippery things.
And so we lay from ebb-tide, till the flow
Rose high enough to drive us from the reef;
The fisher-lads went home across the sand;
We climbed the cliff and sat an hour or more,
Talking and looking down. It was not talk
Of much significance, except for this-
That we had more in common than of old,
For both were tired, I with overwork,
Between two cliffs that skirt the dangerous bay. He with inaction; I was glad at heart
A reef of level rock runs out to sea,
And you may lie on it and look sheer down,
Just where the "Grace of Sunderland" was lost,
And see the elastic banners of the dulse
Rock softly, and the orange star-fish creep
Across the laver, and the mackerel shoot
Over and under it, like silver boats
Turning at will and plying under water.
There on that reef we lay upon our breasts,
My brother and I, and half the village lads,
For an old fisherman had called to us
With "Sirs, the syle be come." "And what
are they?"
My brother said. "Good lack!" the old man
cried,
And shook his head, "to think you gentlefolk
Should ask what syle be! Look you; I can't
What syle be called in your fine dictionaries,
Nor what name God Almighty calls them by
When their food 's ready and He sends them
south;
To rest, and he was glad to have an ear
That he could grumble to, and half in jest
Rail at entails, deplore the fate of heirs,
And the misfortune of a good estate-
Misfortune that was sure to pull him down,
Make him a dreamy, selfish, useless man:
Indeed, he felt himself deteriorate
Already. Thereupon he sent down showers
Of clattering stones, to emphasize his words,
And leap the cliffs and tumble noisily
Into the seething wave. And as for me,
I railed at him and at ingratitude,
While rifling of the basket he had slung
Across his shoulders; then with right good-will
We fell to work, and feasted like the gods,
Like laborers, or like eager workhouse folk
At Yuletide dinner; or, to say the whole
At once, like tired, hungry, healthy youth,
Until the meal being o'er, the tilted flask
Drained of its latest drop, the meat and bread
And ruddy cherries eaten, and the dogs
Mumbling the bones, this elder brother of mine,
This man, that never felt an ache or pain
In his broad, well-knit frame, and never knew
The trouble of an unforgiven grudge,
The sting of a regretted meanness, nor
The desperate struggle of the unendowed
For place and for possession-he began
To sing a rhyme that he himself had wrought;
Sending it out with cogitative pause,
As if the scene where he had shaped it first
Had rolled it back on him, and meeting it
Thus unaware,
he was of doubtful mind
Whether his dignity it well beseemed
To sing of pretty maiden:
Goldilocks sat on the grass,
Tying up of posies rare,
Hardly could a sunbeam pass
Through the cloud that was her hair.
Purple orchis lasteth long,
Primrose flowers are pale and clear;
O the maiden sang a song
It would do you good to hear!
Sad before her leaned the boy, "Goldilocks that I love well, Happy creature fair and coy,
Think o' me, sweet Amabel." Goldilocks she shook apart,
Looked with doubtful, doubtful eyes,
Like a blossom in her heart,
Opened out her first surprise.
As a gloriole sign o' grace,
Goldilocks, ah fall and flow,
On the blooming, childlike face,
Dimple, dimple, come and go.
Give her time; on grass and sky
Let her gaze if she be fain,
As they looked ere he drew nigh,
They will never look again.
Ah! the playtime she has known,
While her goldilocks grew long,
Is it like a nestling flown,
Childhood over like a song?
Yes, the boy may clear his brow,
Though she thinks to say him nay,
When she sighs, "I cannot now,
Come again some other day."
"Hold! there," he cried, half angry with himself,
"That ending goes amiss: " then turned again To the old argument that we had held: "Now look you!" said my brother, "you may talk
Till, weary of the talk, I answer' Ay,
There's reason in your words;' and you may talk
Till I go on to say, 'This should be so ;'
And you may talk till I shall further own
'It is so; yes, I am a lucky dog!'
Yet not the less shall I next morning wake,
And with a natural and fervent sigh,
Such as you never heaved, I shall exclaim,
'What an unlucky dog I am!'" And here
He broke into a laugh. "But as for you-
You! on all hands you have the best of me;
Men have not robbed you of your birthright-
work,
Nor ravaged in old days of peaceful field,
Nor wedded heiresses against their will,
Nor sinned, nor slayed, nor stooped, nor overreached,
That you might drone a useless life away,
Mid half a score of bleak and barren farms
And half a dozen bogs."
"O rare!" I cried, "His wrongs go nigh to make him eloquent; Now we behold how far bad actions reach! Because five hundred years ago a Knight Drove geese and beeves out from a Franklin's yard;
Because three hundred years ago a 'squire-
Against her will, and for her fair estate-
Married a very ugly red-haired maid,
The blest inheritor of all their pelf,
While in the full enjoyment of the same
Sighs on his own confession every day.
He cracks no egg without a moral sigh,
Nor eats of beef, but thinking on that wrong;
Then, yet the more to be revenged on them,
And shame their ancient pride, if they should
Works hard as any horse for his degree,
And takes to writing verses."
"Ay," he said,
Half laughing at himself, "yet you and I,
But for those tresses which enrich us yet
With somewhat of the hue that partial fame
Calls auburn when it shines on heads of heirs,
But when it flames round brows of younger sons,
Just red-mere red; why, but for this, I say,
And but for selfish getting of the land,
And beggarly entailing it, we two,
To-day well fed, well grown, well dressed, well read,
We might have been two horny-handed boors-
Lean, clumsy, ignorant, and ragged boors-
Planning for moonlight nights a poaching scheme,
Or soiling our dull souls and consciences
With plans for pilfering a cottage roost.
"What, chorus! are you dumb? you should have cried,
'So good comes out of evil;'" and with that, As if all pauses it was natural
To seize for songs, his voice broke out again :
Coo, dove, to thy married mate,
She has two warm eggs in her nest, Tell her the hours are few to wait
Ere life shall dawn on their rest; And thy young shall peck at the shells, elate With a dream of her brooding breast.
Coo, dove, for she counts the hours,
Her fair wings ache for flight:
By day the apple has grown in the flowers,
And the moon has grown by night;
And the white drift settled from hawthorn bowers,
Yet they will not seek the light.
Coo, dove; but what of the sky!
And what if the storm-wind swell, And the reeling branch come down from on high To the grass where daisies dwell, And the brood beloved should with them lie, Or ever they break the shell?
Coo, dove; and yet black clouds lower, Like fate, on the far-off sea;
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