Agnes Maule Machar
William Ewart Gladstone
SANS peur et sans reproche!—our lion-heart
To whom we turn when other hopes betray,
When tyrant-might puts forth her power to slay
Young, struggling Freedom, with her poisoned dart,
And Britain hath forgot the nobler part
She played, as Freedom’s champion,—that proud day
She led a world to break one despot’s sway,—
And from her old traditions stands apart.
Milton hath gone, and Wordsworth,—but, through thee,
Still rings their hate of tyranny defied;
Still breathes the voice whose sound was “of the sea,”
And that one “of the mountains;”—far and wide
Their echoes roll, where’er true Britons be,
Or men for liberty have lived and died!
Schiller’s Dying Vision
(“Many things are growing clearer.”)
I
AS the light beyond draws nearer,
Streaming from the farther shore,
Many things are growing clearer
I but dimly guessed before,—
How those legends quaint and olden
Veiled a truth beyond their ken,
In their tales of ages golden,
When immortals walked with men:
How, in symbol and in shadow,
Light through darkness dimly broke,
Poesy illumed the meadow,
And the woodland’s music woke;
And the spirits, softly sighing
Through the forest, in the stream,
On the wind’s swift pinions flying,
Were not all an idle dream!
Now I see how Faith immortal
Oft hath worn a fable’s guise,
While she lingered at the portal
Of unfathomed mysteries;—
How the vague, half-conscious dreamings
Of earth’s artless, questioning youth
Were but iridescent gleamings
From the inmost heart of Truth.
How the clear Hellenic vision
Read the soul in Nature’s face,
And the gods of her tradition
Made the earth their dwelling place,—
Throned on peaks of hoary mountains,
Walking earth in form divine,
While, in spray of silvery fountains,
Naiads’ gleaming tresses shine!
Dryads, in the forest-shadow,
Whispered light at eve and dawn,
And the fairies, on the meadow,
Danced a measure with the Faun:
Radiant forms to earth descending
In the moonlight, with the dew,—
Earthly grace with heavenly blending,—
Shone before the poet’s view.
II
’Tis a truth profound that dwelleth
In these bright and broken gleams
Of the glory that excelleth
Noblest poet’s fairest dreams!
For, with eyes no longer holden,
We may trace a presence bright
In the sunset’s radiance golden,
In the dawn’s pale rosy light;
In the beauty round us glowing,
And in Nature’s wondrous course,
We may trace, with surer knowing,
Her eternal spring and source;
And, still more, the deathless story
Through the ages we may read,
How infinite Love and Glory
Bent themselves to human need,—
How the asphodel forever
Fades before the amaranth bright—
Light hath touched the Stygian river,
Dawn the Acherontian night!—
For we hear a voice supernal
Tell us Pluto’s reign is o’er,
And the rays of Love eternal
Light our path for evermore!
Love and Hope and Truth and Duty
Guide the upward-striving soul,
Still evolving higher beauty
As the ages onward roll;
Till the light of consecration
Glorify earth’s radiant clod,
And Life’s highest Incarnation—
God in man—draw man to God!
Love and Faith
FAITH spread her wings to seek the realms of day;
Unfathomable depths before her lay.
Hope drooped beside her, as there stretched afar,
Space beyond space, outreaching endlessly,
The faintest gleam of the remotest star.
Her heart grew faint, her wings flagged heavily;
Vain seemed the quest, and endless seemed the way.
Then Love cried out, with voice that pierced the night:
“Lo, I am here!” and straight all space was light;
Darkness had vanished, and the weary way
Was all forgotten in the vision bright—
For Faith had reached the glorious gates of day!
A Madonna of the Entry
I
IN a city of churches and chapels,
From belfry and spire and tower,
In the solemn and starlit silence,
The bells chimed the midnight hour.
Then in silvery tones of gladness
They rang in the Christmas morn—
The wonderful, mystical season
When Jesus Christ was born.
All thought of the Babe in the manger,
—The Child that knew no sin,
That hung on the breast of the mother
Who found no room in the inn!
All thought of the choir of angels
That swept through the darkness then,
To chant forth the glad evangel
Of peace and love to men!
II
In that city of churches and chapels
A mother crouched, hungry and cold,
In a bleak and cheerless entry,
With a babe in her nerveless hold.
Hungry and cold and weary,
She had paced the streets all night—
No room for her in the city,
No food, no warmth, no light!
And just as the bells’ glad chiming
Pealed in the Christmas day,
The angels came through the darkness,
And carried the babe away!
No room for one tiny infant
In that city of churches fair,—
But the Father hath “many mansions”
And room for the baby there!