Monodies

I. I stand in thought beside my father’s grave: The grave of one who, in his old age, died Too late perhaps, since he endured so much Of corporal anguish, sweating bloody sweat; But not an hour too soon—no, not an hour! Even if through all his many years, he ne’er Had known another ailment than decay, Or felt one bodily pang. For his bruised heart And wounded goodwill, wounded through its once Samsonian vigour and too credulous trust In that great Delilah, the harlot world, Had done with fortune;—nay, his very tastes, Even the lowliest, had by blast on blast Of sorrow and mischance, been blown like leaves Deciduous, when the year is withering out, From every living hold on what we here Call nature; he but followed in their wake. Nor was there in the lives of those he loved, Even had he been susceptible of cheer, Enough of fortune to warm into peace A little longer ere he passed away The remnant of his chilled humanity. Wet are mine eyes, and my heart aches, to think How much of evil ridged his course of time And earthly pilgrimage. Alas! Enough (However bravely struggled with throughout, Or passively accepted) to have slain In almost any other human heart, All comforting reliance on the sure Though still reserved supremecy of good! For few are they, who, on this stormy ball, Can live a long life full of loss and pain, And yet through doubts, dull clouds, uplooking, see In that wide dome which roofs the apparent whole Without or seam or flaw, a visible type Of heaven’s intact infinitude of love. Yet died he a believer in the truth And fatherhood of the Holy One—a God Help-mighty, nor unmindful of mankind; Yea, in the heavenward reaching light of faith His soul went forth, as in a sunbeam’s track Some close-caged bird, from a long bondage freed, Goes winging up—up through the open sky, Rejoicing in the widening glow that paths The final victory of its native wings! And whether all was triumph as it went Piercing eternity, or whether clouds Of penal terror gathered in the way, Not less must death the great inductor be To much that far transcends time’s highest lore, Must be at worst a grimly grateful thing, If only through deliverance from doubt, The clinging curse of mortals. In the flesh What own we but the present, with its scant Assurance of a secular permanence Even in the fact of being? While all that lies Beyond it, lies or in the casual drifts Of embryon needs that, lurking dark, project To-morrow’s world,—or worse, at the wild will Of a demoniac fortune! But the dead Have this immunity at least—a lot Final and fixed, as evermore within The gates of the Eternal! For the past Is wholly God s, and therefore, like himself, Knows no reverse, no change,—but lies for eye Stretched in the sabbath of its vast repose. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. My dear, dear Charley! Can it be that thou Art gone from us for ever! Whilst I sit Amid these forest shadows that now fall In sombre masses mixed with sunny gleams Upon thy early grave, and think of all The household love that was our mutual lot So late, and during all thy little life— Thy thirteen years of sonhood,—it is hard (So dreamlike wild it seems) to realize The shuddering certainty, that thou art now In the eternal world, and reft away In one dread moment from thy father’s heart! Thy young intelligence from his lonely side So reft for ever, leaving him, alas! Thus sitting here forlorn—here by thy grave New-made and bare, as upon life’s bleak brink, To stare out deathward through his blinding tears. And they, thy brothers and thy sisters, Charley, They miss their vanished playmate so beloved, And so endeared by years of happy help, And many a pleasant old-faced memory! I see them often when thy name is breathed Look away askingly out into space, As if they thought thy spirit might be there, Still yearning towards them with a saddened love Like that in their own hearts. And an! To him Who at thy side, when death came swift upon thee, Sent out through the wild forest such a shriek As never until then might break the peace That nestles in its lairs—ah! When to him Shall the drear haggard memory of that day Be other than a horror—such as, clothed In terrible mystery, for ever keeps Stalking beside us in some ghastly dream. But most I pity her who bore thee, Charley, Whose mother-bosom was at once the next And fountain of thy infant life, and who, Through all thy after years, was ever wont To shield thee with her love, and doat the while (Though with some fear) upon those spirited ways And nascent self-reliance, that seemed The promise of a manhood strong and brave; Loving thee more perhaps than ever I— If that be possible; and to whom ’tis plain All things are changed now through the loss of thee! All home consuetudes, and household wonts, And motherly providences, which before Did fill the passing hour so pleasantly, Changed now and irksome, as if life itself With all its motives suddenly had grown Delusive as a dream. Then will she come, And gaze out hitherward, and up to heaven, With eyes so asking that they seem to say, Where is my darling, and why was he torn Away so rudely from a love like mine? In vain! In vain! Art thou so vacant then, O thou wide heaven! That no pitying star May seem to breathe down through the forest trees, With mystical assurance that the past Is living and not dead? That no refrain Of lingering spirit-sympathy may for once Intone the melancholy wind, as thus Its waves surge overhead, with what might seem Some imtimation from beyond the grave That love can never cease? We ask in vain! Voiceless is that dread gulf twixt life and death! And is it wholly well it should be so? That even love (though in the morning glow Of human faith once visioned to have moved The inexorable profound of hell itself) May stare tear-blinded from its hither shore And shriek to it in vain? That from beyond No quieting whisper may across it breathe Of peace from the immortals? Not a glimpse Of that Elysian beauty which enrobes, As with the garment of the Deity, Its heavenward coast, e’er reach us? While we here Sit groaning—full of wild misgivings—full Of mournful memories and embittered wonts, And so engloomed, so overcast by dark Disquieting doubts, that we are often fain To leap from them at once, though out of life, Madly desirous to have done with time? Ah! Whither has emotion, wild with loss, Carried me doubtward? Broken as I am, Let me strive rather to believe that God Has ordered nothing otherwise than well; And thereby strengthened, let me teach my heart That he who now in this bleak world to us Is lost for ever—the bright boy we loved— The Charley of our memory, whose death Came down amongst us in a guise so fierce, Was taken yet in mercy, and is now At home with Him. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. Since thou art dead—since thou art dead, Though to look up is still to see The blue heaven bending o’er my head So big with good, showered bounteously; Though scenes of love he round me spread, And o’er the hills, as once with thee, My brother, still with venturous tread I wander where broad rivers fret And lighten onward to the sea, As erst unchanged, unchanging; yet How different is the world to me. The light, a with a living robe, Doth clothe all nature as of yore; The sun with his great golden globe Doth crown yon hill when night is o’er; The moon and stars o’erwatch the earth As I have seen them from my birth; But O! Thou light, and sun, and moon, And O! Ye stars so bright and boon, Though I as fervently may feel All the great glories you reveal As ever I have felt before— Your genial warmth, your mystic sheen— Yet all to me that you have been You never can be more.