—Memorials of George Heath, The Moorland Poet - 1870 Edition—

(MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.)

DECEMBER.

Outside the storm swayed
In the palpable darkness.
     The lamp quivered faintly
On the wan and drawn features,
The white breathing stillness
On a bosom of pillows:
Hands clasped in a tremour,
A fever of waiting,
While wandering, troubling,
The prisoned vitality
Talked down in its silence.
     “Cease, O my spirit,
Cease from thy travail,
Thy deep perturbation;
The darkness is round thee;
Thou art come to the silence,
The winter of nature.
The land of thy promise,
The goodly, the pleasant,
Is slipping and sliding
From under thy footsteps.
The strife of endeavour,
The tumult of peoples,
Lands, races, and cities,
In darklings and glowings,
Turbid forces, mysterious;
Shard fragments of tempests
With pale, silent lightnings,
Are failing and fading,
Are dropping behind me.
     A shore, dim and sorrowful,
Winding hither and thither,
Disconsolate, solitary,
Is around and beneath thee.
     A black fringe of waters,
Laving ever—for ever
Mourning utterly, utterly,
Is nearing and nearing.
     And the new state of being,
The future, the unknown
Eternity of ocean,
Wrapt in duskings and dawnings,
Faintly lit by the glimmerings
Of Faith—the mysterious
And veiled conductor,
Is widening before thee.
The shreds of mortality,
The mistings and fadings
Of dreams that were precious
In life’s day of dreaming,
Are trailing about thee.
     And Time, the unwearied,
Beats solemnly, slowly
In the distance—receding
And dying to silence,
As the faint, solemn sweepings,
The wonder-pulsations
Of the harp of Eternity
Swim soft in the borders
Of infinite distance,
And waken the spirit
To the new inspiration
Of marvel and motion.
     Oh, the panting, the panting,
The quiver of tension!
Be still and be patient,
Till the naked tree-stirrings,
The wailings of waters,
And the wind-sobbings fail
On the quick chords of being,
Till the frost-stars that glimmer
Through boundless abysses,
Take on them new meanings;
Be patient, O spirit,
Be patient.
     The calmness
Grows calmer and calmer!
The widening æther
Hath warm palpitations,
And Life, in suspense
O’er the cold womb of Death,
Waits the new parturition—
In the far-off revealing.
The profluent surges,
Sweep inward and onward,
In a calm preterition,
Eternally, endlessly.
And beyond an horizon
Dimcast and uncertain,
Pale luminous lashes,
Like dawnings of sunlight
In eyes that are blinded,
Flush up the dead vapours,
And mystical breathings
Of an imminent waking
To a great revelation;
Float fainter than whispers.
     Soft! Drifting and drifting,
The bright skirts of hazes
Revolving and folding,
Wrap golden about me.
While, thrilling, recumbent,
On ethereal wing-pulsings
Through thin waves of music,
’Neath gathering splendours
In breathless gradations
Borne glory-ward, floating,
For ever—for ever!
     Lo! death was upon him,
Till the grey of the morning
Broke cold on the moorlands,
And the storm had abated.
Then his features a moment
Flushed out a great radiance;
Then died into blackness,
The blackness of ashes,
As the moon of the midnight
Pours light through a cloud-rift
And is suddenly darkened.
     All was done—and they placed him
In shape for his coffin,
And turned down the lamplight,
Let the few glowing embers
Die down into ashes;
Drop the blind o’er the window
And leave him to darkness.

 

_____

THE POET’S GRAVE

by H. W. Foster

_____

TIRED OUT.

(The last Poem he wrote.)

Softly float about me, Music,
     Wrap me up in soothing calms,
Wile my spirit of its demon,
     With the magic of thy psalms;
Wave the meadow’s russet fruitage,
     Thrill the ivy’s clasping bars,
Wake the mountain’s bass intonings,
     Stir the lilac’s bloom of stars;
Loose the fountain of my being,
     Rouse my pulses’ languid beat—
Let me lose the world a little,
     Find my wings and fold my feet.
I am tired of all the doing,
     Tired of all I’ve sung and wrought,
And my brow is damp with anguish,
     And my soul is sick with thought:
And the jar and incompleteness
     Of the things around oppress,
And the sense of baffled yearning,
     And the imploring tenderness,
And the hauntings of the vanished,
     And the sin and the regret,
That upon me lie so heavy,
     I would fain awhile forget.
Thrill around me, mystic music,
     Break in many a slumberous fall,
Charm me of my spirit’s darkness,
     As of old the sullen Saul.
Let me taste Imagination’s
     Sibyl-cup with Lethe blent;
Let my soul expand unfettered
     In her own wide element;
Let me drift along the twilight
     On the white aerial streams,
Starred with Fancy’s constellations,
     Misted with the balm of dreams;
Let me feel the dew about me,
     Sunk on languorous asphodels,
Palm and laurel shadow-braided,
     Philter-charmed with opiate spells;
Let me feel the downy wafting
     Of innumerable wings;
Feel the touch, and gain warm glimpses
     Of the rarest fairy things;
Till a white aurora gathers
     Up my starless arc of sky,
And a love-winged Iris beckons
     ’Cross a summer realm of joy.
Wrap me from myself, O music,
     On thy surging sea of balms:—
Quiet—quiet—let me slumber
     On the lulling after-calms.

*          *          *          *          *          *

And thereupon a dreamy dreaming came.
If I should wake no more?—Oh, hope desired!
How will this body fare—will it repose,
Untouched, unseen by one adventurous eye,
Until the storms have beat it into dust?
Or will it sleep, in widely scattered dust
Where the fair winds of heaven excite the storms,
A fragment in the ambush of the fox;
One in the sea-haunt of the cormorant;
Another in the eagle’s eyrie home?
Where will their ashes sleep? Oh! wearisome
And long is life—bold, friendless, hopeless, bad!
How sweet is sleep when one is wearied out!
How sweet is death when life is gone to aye!
Methinks that I could sleep upon the crest
Of any restless wave, as did my Master
Upon the raging sea of Galilee—
I am so tired; come to me, gentle sleep!

_____

THE FOLLOWING BEAUTIFUL LITTLE

“FRAGMENT”

WAS FOUND AMONGST THE POET’S MISCELLANEOUS PIECES.—ED.

 

And when the first green leaves came budding out
Upon the gooseberry and the currant trees,
We raised him, and he gazed a long wrapt look
Through the green window o’er the daffodil beds;
Then smiled, and said, “Please mother, go and bring
The one small twig with tiny leaves at top.”
I got him one, and then a withey twig
With little yellow goslings dotted o’er.
He look’d them round as if examining
Their web and thread—the marvel of their make;
Then kissing them, looked up and softly said,
“Thank God, thank God! I’ve seen the leaves again.”
  I stand alone amid the human world;
No hand falls softly on my fever’d brow;
No tender voice gives shape to pitying words
That loving, lingering eyes are pregnant with.
’Tis sad to have no friend, no love, and none
To feel a passing interest in one’s dreams.
The Western Bard says, “None was ever yet
So utterly alone and desolate,
But that some kindred heart responded to
The secret beatings of his own.” But, ah!
I stand apart upon the sunless hills,
Outside the centre of all human ties;
I stand upon the hills where nothing grows
But shrivell’d penury and stunted care,
And where the chill wind of adversity
Beats ever on my white and stony brow.

          *          *          *          *          *          *

O Fate! I only asked thee for a friend,
A tender, loving, sympathizing friend;
I never hoped to win a dearer tie.
O Fame! I only ask’d thee for a wreath,
A simple wreath to please my friend withal.
O Life! I only asked thee for a moderate lease,
A simple, quiet lot, ungilded by
The gloss of wealth and power, but blessed with health.
O Earth! they have not deign’d to hear my prayer;
Thou wilt be kinder to me, Mother Earth,
And give me all I ask of thee, I know—
A quiet resting-place.

 

__________

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