“To a mysteriously consorted pair
This place is consecrate; to death and life,
And to the best affections that proceed
From this conjunction.” Wordsworth.

[At Hindlebank, near Berne, she is represented as bursting from the sepulchre, with her infant in her arms, at the sound of the last trumpet. An inscription on the tomb concludes thus:—“Here am I, O God! with the child whom thou hast given me.”]

How many hopes were borne upon thy bier,
O bride of stricken love! in anguish hither!
Like flowers, the first and fairest of the year,
Pluck’d on the bosom of the dead to wither;
Hopes from their source all holy, though of earth,
All brightly gathering round affection’s hearth.
Of mingled prayer they told; of Sabbath hours;
Of morn’s farewell, and evening’s blessed meeting;
Of childhood’s voice, amidst the household bowers;
And bounding step, and smile of joyous greeting;—
But thou, young mother! to thy gentle heart
Did’st take thy babe, and meekly so depart.
How many hopes have sprung in radiance hence!
Their trace yet lights the dust where thou art sleeping!
A solemn joy comes o’er me, and a sense
Of triumph, blent with nature’s gush of weeping,
As, kindling up the silent stone, I see
The glorious vision, caught by faith, of thee.
Slumberer! love calls thee, for the night is past;
Put on the immortal beauty of thy waking!
Captive! and hear’st thou not the trumpet’s blast,
The long, victorious note, thy bondage breaking?
Thou hear’st, thou answer’st, “God of earth and heaven!
Here am I, with the child whom thou hast given!”

THE EXILE’S DIRGE.

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone and ta’en thy wages.” Cymbeline.

[“I attended a funeral where there were a number of the German settlers present. After I had performed such service as is usual on similar occasions, a most venerable-looking old man came forward, and asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther’s Hymns, and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and using the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea from the Vaterland, a word which often occurred in this hymn. It was a long, slow, and mournful air, which they sung as they bore the body along: the words ‘mein Gott,’ ‘mein Bruder,’ and ‘Vaterland,’ died away in distant echoes amongst the woods. I shall long remember that funeral hymn.”—Flint’s Recollections of the Valley of the Mississippi.]

There went a dirge through the forest’s gloom.
—An exile was borne to a lonely tomb.
“Brother!” (so the chant was sung
In the slumberer’s native tongue,)
“Friend and brother! not for thee
Shall the sound of weeping be:
Long the exile’s woe hath lain
On thy life a withering chain;
Music from thine own blue streams
Wander’d through thy fever-dreams;
Voices from thy country’s vines
Met thee midst the alien pines;
And thy time heart died away,
And thy spirit would not stay.”
So swell’d the chant; and the deep wind’s moan,
Seem’d through the cedars to murmur—“Gone!”
“Brother! by the rolling Rhine
Stands the home that once was thine;
Brother! now thy dwelling lies
Where the Indian arrow flies!
He that bless’d thine infant head
Fills a distant greensward bed;
She that heard thy lisping prayer
Slumbers low beside him there;
They that earliest with thee play’d
Rest beneath their own oak-shade,
Far, far hence!—yet sea nor shore
Haply, brother! part ye more;
God hath call’d thee to that band
In the immortal Fatherland!”
“The Fatherland!”—with that sweet word
A burst of tears midst the strain was heard.
“Brother! were we there with thee
Rich would many a meeting be!
Many a broken garland bound,
Many a mourn’d and lost one found!
But our task is still to bear,
Still to breathe in changeful air;
Loved and bright things to resign,
As even now this dust of thine;
Yet to hope!—to hope in heaven,
Though flowers fall, and ties be riven—
Yet to pray! and wait the hand
Beckoning to the Fatherland!”
And the requiem died in the forest’s gloom;
They had reach’d the exile’s lonely tomb.

THE DREAMING CHILD.

“Alas! what kind of grief should thy years know?
Thy brow and cheek are smooth as waters be
When no breath troubles them.”
Beaumont and Fletcher.
And is there sadness in thy dreams, my boy?
What should the cloud be made of? Blessed child!
Thy spirit, borne upon a breeze of joy,
All day hath ranged through sunshine clear, yet mild:
And now thou tremblest!—wherefore?—in thy soul
There lies no past, no future. Thou hast heard
No sound of presage from the distance roll,
Thy heart bears traces of no arrowy word.
From thee no love hath gone; thy mind’s young eye
Hath look’d not into death’s, and thence become
A questioner of mute eternity,
A weary searcher for a viewless home:
Nor hath thy sense been quicken’d unto pain
By feverish watching for some step beloved:
Free are thy thoughts, an ever-changeful train,
Glancing like dewdrops, and as lightly moved.
Yet now, on billows of strange passion toss’d,
How art thou wilder’d in the cave of sleep!
My gentle child! midst what dim phantoms lost,
Thus in mysterious anguish dost thou weep?
Awake! they sadden me—those early tears,
First gushings of the strong, dark river’s flow,
That must o’ersweep thy soul with coming years,
Th’ unfathomable flood of human woe!
Awful to watch, even rolling through a dream,
Forcing wild spray-drops but from childhood’s eyes!
Wake, wake! as yet thy life’s transparent stream
Should wear the tinge of none but summer skies.
Come from the shadow of those realms unknown,
Where now thy thoughts dismay’d and darkling rove;
Come to the kindly region all thine own,
The home still bright for thee with guardian love.
Happy, fair child! that yet a mother’s voice
Can win thee back from visionary strife!—
Oh, shall my soul, thus waken’d to rejoice,
Start from the dreamlike wilderness of life?

THE CHARMED PICTURE.

“Oh! that those lips had language! Life hath pass’d
With me but roughly since I saw thee last.”
Cowper.
Thine eyes are charm’d—thine earnest eyes—
Thou image of the dead!
A spell within their sweetness lies,
A virtue thence is shed.
Oft in their meek blue light enshrined
A blessing seems to be,
And sometimes there my wayward mind
A still reproach can see:
And sometimes pity—soft and deep,
And quivering through a tear;
Even as if love in heaven could weep
For grief left drooping here.
And oh, my spirit needs that balm!
Needs it midst fitful mirth!
And in the night-hour’s haunted calm,
And by the lonely hearth.
Look on me thus, when hollow praise
Hath made the weary pine
For one true tone of other days,
One glance of love like thine!
Look on me thus, when sudden glee
Bears my quick heart along,
On wings that struggle to be free,
As bursts of skylark song.
In vain, in vain!—too soon are felt
The wounds they cannot flee:
Better in childlike tears to melt,
Pouring my soul on thee!
Sweet face, that o’er my childhood shone!
Whence is thy power of change,
Thus ever shadowing back my own,
The rapid and the strange?
Whence are they charm’d—those earnest eyes?
—I know the mystery well!
In mine own trembling bosom lies
The spirit of the spell!
Of Memory, Conscience, Love, ’tis born—
Oh! change no longer, thou!
For ever be the blessing worn
On thy pure thoughtful brow!

PARTING WORDS.

“One struggle more, and I am free.”—Byron.
Leave me! oh, leave me! Unto all below
Thy presence binds me with too deep a spell;
Thou makest those mortal regions, whence I go,
Too mighty in their loveliness. Farewell,
That I may part in peace!
Leave me!—thy footstep, with its lightest sound,
The very shadow of thy waving hair,
Wakes in my soul a feeling too profound,
Too strong for aught that loves and dies, to bear—
Oh! bid the conflict cease!
I hear thy whisper—and the warm tears gush
Into mine eyes, the quick pulse thrills my heart;
Thou bid’st the peace, the reverential hush,
The still submission, from my thoughts depart:
Dear one! this must not be.
The past looks on me from thy mournful eye,
The beauty of our free and vernal days;
Our communings with sea, and hill, and sky—
Oh! take that bright world from my spirit’s gaze!
Thou art all earth to me!
Shut out the sunshine from my dying room,
The jasmine’s breath, the murmur of the bee;
Let not the joy of bird-notes pierce the gloom!
They speak of love, of summer, and of thee,
Too much—and death is here!
Doth our own spring make happy music now,
From the old beech-roots flashing into day?
Are the pure lilies imaged in its flow?
Alas! vain thoughts! that fondly thus can stray
From the dread hour so near!
If I could but draw courage from the light
Of thy clear eye, that ever shone to bless!
—Not now! ’twill not be now!—my aching sight,
Drinks from that fount a flood of tenderness,
Bearing all strength away!
Leave me!—thou com’st between my heart and Heaven;
I would be still, in voiceless prayer to die!—
Why must our souls thus love, and then be riven?
Return! thy parting wakes mine agony!
Oh, yet awhile delay!

THE MESSAGE TO THE DEAD.

Thou’rt passing hence, my brother!
O my earliest friend, farewell!
Thou’rt leaving me, without thy voice,
In a lonely home to dwell;
And from the hills, and from the hearth,
And from the household tree,
With thee departs the lingering mirth,
The brightness goes with thee.[373]
But thou, my friend, my brother!
Thou’rt speeding to the shore
Where the dirge-like tone of parting words
Shall smite the soul no more!
And thou wilt see our holy dead,
The lost on earth and main:
Into the sheaf of kindred hearts,
Thou wilt be bound again!
Tell, then, our friend of boyhood
That yet his name is heard
On the blue mountains, whence his youth
Pass’d like a swift, bright bird.
The light of his exulting brow,
The vision of his glee,
Are on me still—oh! still I trust
That smile again to see.
And tell our fair young sister,
The rose cut down in spring,
That yet my gushing soul is fill’d
With lays she loved to sing.
Her soft deep eyes look through my dreams,
Tender and sadly sweet;—
Tell her my heart within me burns
Once more that gaze to meet.
And tell our white-hair’d father,
That in the paths be trode,
The child he loved, the last on earth,
Yet walks and worships God.
Say, that his last fond blessing yet
Rests on my soul like dew,
And by its hallowing might I trust
Once more his face to view.
And tell our gentle mother,
That on her grave I pour
The sorrows of my spirit forth,
As on her breast of yore.
Happy thou art that soon, how soon,
Our good and bright will see!—
O brother, brother! may I dwell,
Ere long, with them and thee!

[373] “Messages from the living to the dead are not uncommon in the Highlands. The Gaels have such a ceaseless consciousness of immortality, that their departed friends are considered as merely absent for a time, and permitted to relieve the hours of separation by occasional intercourse with the objects of their earliest affections.”—See the Notes to Mrs Brunton’s Works.

THE TWO HOMES.

“Oh, if the soul immortal be,
Is not its love immortal too?”
See’st thou my home? ’Tis where yon woods are waving,
In their dark richness, to the summer air,
Where yon blue stream, a thousand flower-banks laving,
Leads down the hills a vein of light,—’tis there!
Midst those green wilds how many a fount lies gleaming,
Fringed with the violet, colour’d with the skies!
My boyhood’s haunt, through days of summer dreaming,
Under young leaves that shook with melodies.
My home! The spirit of its love is breathing
In every wind that blows across my track;
From its white walls the very tendrils wreathing,
Seem with soft links to draw the wanderer back.
There am I loved—there pray’d for—there my mother
Sits by the hearth with meekly thoughtful eye;
There my young sisters watch to greet their brother—
Soon their glad footsteps down the path will fly.
There, in sweet strains of kindred music blending,
All the home-voices meet at day’s decline;
One are those tones, as from one heart ascending,
There laughs my home—sad stranger! where is thine?
Ask’st thou of mine? In solemn peace ’tis lying,
Far o’er the deserts and the tombs away;
’Tis where I, too, am loved with love undying,
And fond hearts wait my step—But where are they?
Ask where the earth’s departed have their dwelling;
Ask of the clouds, the stars, the trackless air!
I know it not, yet trust the whisper, telling
My lonely heart that love unchanged is there.
And what is home, and where, but with the loving
Happy thou art, that so canst gaze on thine!
My spirit feels but, in its weary roving,
That with the dead, where’er they be, is mine,
Go to thy home, rejoicing son and brother!
Bear in fresh gladness to the household scene!
For me, too, watch the sister and the mother,
I well believe—but dark seas roll between.

THE SOLDIER’S DEATH-BED.

“Wie herrlich die Sonne dort untergeht! da ich noch ein Bube war—war’s mein Lieblingsgedanke, wie sie zu leben, wie sie zu sterben!”

Die Rauber.

Like thee to die, thou sun!—My boyhood’s dream
Was this; and now my spirit, with thy beam,
Ebbs from a field of victory!—yet the hour
Bears back upon me, with a torrent’s power,
Nature’s deep longings. Oh! for some kind eye
Wherein to meet love’s fervent farewell gaze;
Some breast to pillow life’s last agony,
Some voice, to speak of home and better days,
Beyond the pass of shadows! But I go,
I that have been so loved, go hence alone;
And ye, now gathering round my own hearth’s glow,
Sweet friends! it may be that a softer tone,
Ev’n in this moment, with your laughing glee,
Mingles its cadence while you speak of me—
Of me, your soldier, midst the mountains lying,
On the red banner of his battles dying,
Far, far away! And oh! your parting prayer—
Will not his name be fondly murmur’d there?
It will!—A blessing on that holy hearth!
Though clouds are darkening to o’ercast its mirth.
Mother! I may not hear thy voice again;
Sisters! ye watch to greet my step in vain;
Young brother, fare thee well!—on each dear head
Blessing and love a thousandfold be shed,
My soul’s last earthly breathings! May your home
Smile for you ever!—May no winter come,
No world, between your hearts! May ev’n your tears,
For my sake, full of long-remember’d years,
Quicken the true affections that entwine
Your lives in one bright bond! I may not sleep
Amidst our fathers, where those tears might shine
Over my slumbers; yet your love will keep
My memory living in th’ ancestral halls,
Where shame hath never trod. The dark night falls,
And I depart. The brave are gone to rest,
The brothers of my combats, on the breast
Of the red field they reap’d:—their work is done—
Thou, too, art set!—farewell, farewell, thou sun!
The last lone watcher of the bloody sod
Offers a trusting spirit up to God.

THE IMAGE IN THE HEART.

TO * * *

“True, indeed, it is,
That they whom death has hidden from our sight,
Are worthiest of the mind’s regard; with them
The future cannot contradict the past—
Mortality’s last exercise and proof
Is undergone.”
Wordsworth.
“The love where death hath set his seal,
Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
Nor falsehood disavow.”
Byron.
I call thee bless’d!—though now the voice be fled
Which to thy soul brought dayspring with its tone,
And o’er the gentle eyes though dust be spread,
Eyes that ne’er look’d on thine but light was thrown
Far through thy breast:
And though the music of thy life be broken,
Or changed in every chord since he is gone—
Feeling all this, even yet, by many a token,
O thou, the deeply, but the brightly lone!
I call thee bless’d!
For in thy heart there is a holy spot,
As mid the waste an isle of fount and palm,
For ever green!—the world’s breath enters not,
The passion-tempests may not break its calm:
’Tis thine, all thine!
Thither, in trust unbaffled, may’st thou turn
From bitter words, cold greetings, heartless eyes,
Quenching thy soul’s thirst at the hidden urn
That, fill’d with waters of sweet memory, lies
In its own shrine.
Thou hast thy home!—there is no power in change
To reach that temple of the past; no sway,
In all time brings of sudden, dark, or strange,
To sweep the still transparent peace away
From its hush’d air!
And oh! that glorious image of the dead!
Sole thing whereon a deathless love may rest,
And in deep faith and dreamy worship shed
Its high gifts fearlessly! I call thee bless’d,
If only there.
Bless’d, for the beautiful within thee dwelling
Never to fade!—a refuge from distrust,
A spring of purer life, still freshly welling,
To clothe the barrenness of earthly dust
With flowers divine.
And thou hast been beloved!—it is no dream,
No false mirage for thee, the fervent love,
The rainbow still unreach’d, the ideal gleam,
That ever seems before, beyond, above,
Far off to shine.
But thou, from all the daughters of the earth
Singled and mark’d, hast known its home and place;
And the high memory of its holy worth
To this our life a glory and a grace
For thee hath given.
And art thou not still fondly, truly loved?
Thou art!—the love his spirit bore away
Was not for death!—a treasure but removed,
A bright bird parted for a clearer day,—
Thine still in heaven!

THE LAND OF DREAMS.

“And dreams, in their development, have breath,
And tears and tortures, and the touch of joy;
They leave a weight upon our waking thoughts,
They make us what we were not—what they will,
And shake us with the vision that’s gone by.”
Byron.
O spirit-land! thou land of dreams!
A world thou art of mysterious gleams,
Of startling voices, and sounds at strife—
A world of the dead in the hues of life.
Like a wizard’s magic glass thou art,
When the wavy shadows float by, and part:
Visions of aspects, now loved, now strange,
Glimmering and mingling in ceaseless change.
Thou art like a city of the past,
With its gorgeous halls into fragments cast,
Amidst whose ruins there glide and play
Familiar forms of the world’s to-day.
Thou art like the depths where the seas have birth,
Rich with the wealth that is lost from earth,—
All the sere flowers of our days gone by,
And the buried gems in thy bosom lie.
Yes! thou art like those dim sea-caves,
A realm of treasures, a realm of graves!
And the shapes through thy mysteries that come and go,
Are of beauty and terror, of power and woe.
But for me, O thou picture-land of sleep!
Thou art all one world of affections deep,—
And wrung from my heart is each flushing dye
That sweeps o’er thy chambers of imagery.
And thy bowers are fair—even as Eden fair:
All the beloved of my soul are there!
The forms my spirit most pines to see,
The eyes whose love hath been life to me:
They are there—and each blessed voice I hear,
Kindly, and joyous, and silvery clear;
But under-tones are in each, that say,—
“It is but a dream; it will melt away!”
I walk with sweet friends in the sunset’s glow;
I listen to music of long ago;
But one thought, like an omen, breathes faint through the lay,—
“It is but a dream; it will melt away!”
I sit by the hearth of my early days;
All the home-faces are met by the blaze,—
And the eyes of the mother shine soft, yet say,
“It is but a dream; it will melt away!”
And away, like a flower’s passing breath, ’tis gone,
And I wake more sadly, more deeply lone!
Oh! a haunted heart is a weight to bear,—
Bright faces, kind voices! where are ye, where?
Shadow not forth, O thou land of dreams,
The past, as it fled by my own blue streams!
Make not my spirit within me burn
For the scenes and the hours that may ne’er return!
Call out from the future thy visions bright,
From the world o’er the grave, take thy solemn light,
And oh! with the loved whom no more I see,
Show me my home, as it yet may be!
As it yet may be in some purer sphere,
No cloud, no parting, no sleepless fear;
So my soul may bear on through the long, long day
Till I go where the beautiful melts not away!

WOMAN ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

“Where hath not woman stood
Strong in affection’s might? a reed, upborne
By an o’ermastering current!”
Gentle and lovely form!
What didst thou here,
When the fierce battle-storm
Bore down the spear?
Banner and shiver’d crest,
Beside thee strown,
Tell that amidst the best
Thy work was done!
Yet strangely, sadly fair,
O’er the wild scene,
Gleams, through its golden hair,
That brow serene.
Low lies the stately head,—
Earth-bound the free;
How gave those haughty dead
A place to thee?
Slumberer! thine early bier
Friends should have crown’d,
Many a flower and tear
Shedding around;—
Soft voices, clear and young,
Mingling their swell,
Should o’er thy dust have sung
Earth’s last farewell;—
Sisters, above the grave
Of thy repose,
Should have bid violets wave
With the white rose.
Now must the trumpet’s note,
Savage and shrill,
For requiem o’er thee float,
Thou fair and still!
And the swift charger sweep
In full career,
Trampling thy place of sleep—
Why cam’st thou here?
Why? Ask the true heart why
Woman hath been
Ever where brave men die,
Unshrinking seen?
Unto this harvest ground
Proud reapers came,—
Some, for that stirring sound,
A warrior’s name;
Some for the stormy play
And joy of strife;
And some to fling away
A weary life;—
But thou, pale sleeper! thou
With the slight frame,
And the rich locks, whose glow
Death cannot tame;
Only one thought, one power,
Thee could have led,
So, through the tempest’s hour,
To lift thy head!
Only the true, the strong,
The love, whose trust
Woman’s deep soul too long
Pours on the dust!

THE DESERTED HOUSE.

Gloom is upon thy lonely hearth,
O silent house! once fill’d with mirth;
Sorrow is in the breezy sound
Of thy tall poplars whispering round.
The shadow of departed hours
Hangs dim upon thine early flowers;
Ev’n in thy sunshine seems to brood
Something more deep than solitude.
Fair art thou, fair to a stranger’s gaze,
Mine own sweet home of other days!
My children’s birthplace!—yet for me
It is too much to look on thee.
Too much! for all about thee spread,
I feel the memory of the dead,
And almost linger for the feet
That never more my step shall meet.
The looks, the smiles, all vanish’d now,
Follow me where thy roses blow;
The echoes of kind household-words
Are with me midst thy singing-birds.
Till my heart dies, it dies away
In yearnings for what might not stay;
For love which ne’er deceived my trust,
For all which went with “dust to dust!”
What now is left me, but to raise
From thee, lorn spot! my spirit’s gaze,
To lift through tears my straining eye
Up to my Father’s house on high?
Oh! many are the mansions there,[374]
But not in one hath grief a share!
No haunting shade from things gone by
May there o’ersweep th’ unchanging sky.
And they are there, whose long-loved mien
In earthly home no more is seen;
Whose places, where they smiling sate,
Are left unto us desolate.
We miss them when the board is spread;
We miss them when the prayer is said;
Upon our dreams their dying eyes
In still and mournful fondness rise.
But they are where these longings vain
Trouble no more the heart and brain;
The sadness of this aching love
Dims not our Father’s house above.
Ye are at rest, and I in tears,[375]
Ye dwellers of immortal spheres!
Under the poplar boughs I stand,
And mourn the broken household band.
But, by your life of lowly faith,
And by your joyful hope in death,
Guide me, till on some brighter shore
The sever’d wreath is bound once more!
Holy ye were, and good, and true!
No change can cloud my thoughts of you;
Guide me, like you to live and die,
And reach my Father’s house on high!

[374] “In my father’s house there are many mansions.”—John, chap. xiv.