GEIST'S GRAVE

(January, 1881)

Four years!--and didst thou stay above
The ground, which hides thee now, but four?
And all that life, and all that love,
Were crowded, Geist! into no more?

Only four years those winning ways,
Which make me for thy presence yearn,
Call'd us to pet thee or to praise,
Dear little friend! at every turn?

That loving heart, that patient soul,
Had they indeed no longer span,

To run their course, and reach their goal,
And read their homily to man?

That liquid, melancholy eye,

From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seem'd surging the Virgilian cry,

The sense of tears in mortal things

That steadfast, mournful strain, consoled

By spirits gloriously gay,

And temper of heroic mould

What, was four years their whole short day?

Yes, only four!—and not the course
Of all the centuries yet to come,
And not the infinite resource

Of nature, with her countless sum

Of figures, with her fulness vast
Of new creation evermore,
Can ever quite repeat the past,
Or just thy little self restore.

Stern law of every mortal lot!

Which man, proud man, finds hard to bear, And builds himself I know not what

Of second life I know not where.

But thou, when struck thine hour to go,
On us, who stood despondent by,

A meek last glance of love didst throw,
And humbly lay thee down to die.

Yet would we keep thee in our heart-
Would fix our favourite on the scene,
Nor let thee utterly depart

And be as if thou ne'er hadst been.

And so there rise these lines of verse

On lips that rarely form them now;
While to each other we rehearse:

Such ways, such arts, such looks hadst thou!

We stroke thy broad brown paws again,
We bid thee to thy vacant chair,
We greet thee by the window-pane,
We hear thy scuffle on the stair;

We see the flaps of thy large ears
Quick raised to ask which way we go;
Crossing the frozen lake, appears
Thy small black figure on the snow!

Nor to us only art thou dear

Who mourn thee in thine English home; Thou hast thine absent master's tear, Dropt by the far Australian foam.

Thy memory lasts both here and there,
And thou shalt live as long as we.
And after that-thou dost not care!
In us was all the world to thee.

Yet, fondly zealous for thy fame,
Even to a date beyond our own
We strive to carry down thy name,
By mounded turf, and graven stone.

We lay thee, close within our reach,
Here, where the grass is smooth and warm,
Between the holly and the beech,

Where oft we watch'd thy couchant form,

Asleep, yet lending half an ear

To travellers on the Portsmouth road;-
There choose we thee, O guardian dear,
Mark'd with a stone, thy last abode!

Then some, who through this garden pass,
When we too, like thyself, are clay,
Shall see thy grave upon the grass,
And stop before the stone, and say:

People who lived here long ago
Did by this stone, it seems, intend
To name for future times to know

The dachs-hound, Geist, their little friend.

LINES WRITTEN IN KENSINGTON GARDENS

(From Empedocles on Etna and Other Poems, 1852)

In this lone, open glade I lie,

Screen'd by deep boughs on either hand;
And at its end, to stay the eye,

Those black-crown'd, red-boled pine-trees stand!

Birds here make song, each bird has his,

Across the girdling city's hum.

How green under the boughs it is!
How thick the tremulous sheep-cries come!

Sometimes a child will cross the glade
To take his nurse his broken toy;
Sometimes a thrush flit overhead
Deep in her unknown day's employ.

Here at my feet what wonders pass,
What endless, active life is here!
What blowing daisies, fragrant grass!
An air-stirr'd forest, fresh and clear.

Scarce fresher is the mountain-sod
Where the tired angler lies, stretch'd out,
And, eased of basket and of rod,
Counts his day's spoil, the spotted trout.

In the huge world, which roars hard by,
Be others happy if they can!

But in my helpless cradle I
Was breathed on by the rural Pan.

I on men's impious uproar hurl'd,
Think often, as I hear them rave,
That peace has left the upper world
And now keeps only in the grave.

Yet here is peace for ever new!
When I who watch them am away,

Still all things in this glade go through
The changes of their quiet day.

Then to their happy rest they pass!
The flowers upclose, the birds are fed,
The night comes down upon the grass,
The child sleeps warmly in his bed.

Calm soul of all things! make it mine
To feel, amid the city's jar,

That there abides a peace of thine
Man did not make, and cannot mar.

The will to neither strive nor cry,
The power to feel with others give!
Calm, calm me more! nor let me die.
Before I have begun to live.

Arthur Hugh Clough

1819-1861

QUA CURSUM VENTUS

(From Ambarvalia, 1843)

As ships, becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail at dawn of day
Are scarce long leagues apart descried;

When fell the night, upsprung the breeze, And all the darkling hours they plied, Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas By each was cleaving, side by side: