Hesperus by Charles Sangster (book club suggestions TXT) 📖

example to the world;
Great in thy well-earned fame,
Beloved in heart and name,
Wherever Britain's banner is unfurled.

Through all our leafy glades,
Through all our green arcades,
The living torrents, sweeping in, evince
That from their manly hearts
The Yeoman chorus starts:
'Honour to England's Heir!--long live the Prince!'

Oh, England! in this hour
We own thy sov'reign pow'r;
To thee and thine our best affections cling,
And when thy crown is laid
On Royal Albert's head,
With heart and soul we'll shout--GOD SAVE THE KING!


{61}

MALCOLM.

Boy! this world has ever been
A bright, glad world to me;
Through each dark and checkered scene
God's sun shone lovingly.
But Content I've never known;
Hoping, trusting that the years,
With their April smiles and tears,
Would yet bring me one like thee
That I could call my own.

With thy soft and heavenly eyes
In deep and pensive calm,
I seem looking at the skies,
And wonder where I am!
Something more than princely blood
Courses in thy tranquil face:
When she lent thee such a grace,
Nature lit life's earnest flame
In her most queenly mood.

Such a sweet intelligence
Is stamped on every line,
Banqueting our craving sense
With minist'rings divine.
If thy Boyhood be so great,
What will be the coming Man,
Could we overleap the span?
Are there treasures in the mine,
To pay us, if we wait?

{62}

Doth the voice of Music live
In that majestic brain,
Waiting for the Hand to give
Expression to the strain?
Are there wells of Truth--pure, deep,
Where the patient diver, Thought,
Finds the pearl that has been sought
Many a weary age in vain,
Entrusted to thy keep.

Doth the fire of Genius burn
Within that ample brow?
Or some patient spirit yearn
For things that are not now?
Hidden in the over-soul
Of the Future, to be born
When the world has ceased its scorn,
When the sceptic's heart will bow
To the divine control.

Patiently we'll watch and hope,
And wait, alternately;
Trusting that, when time shall ope
The casket's mystery,
We will be made rich indeed
With the wonders it contains;
Rich beyond all previous gains;
Richer for thy thought and thee,
Beyond our greatest meed.


{63}

THE COMET--OCTOBER, 1858.

Erratic Soul of some great Purpose, doomed
To track the wild illimitable space,
Till sure propitiation has been made
For the divine commission unperformed!
What was thy crime? Ahasuerus' curse
Were not more stern on earth than thine in Heaven!

Art thou the Spirit of some Angel World,
For grave rebellion banished from thy peers,
Compelled to watch the calm, immortal stars,
Circling in rapture the celestial void,
While the avenger follows in thy train
To spur thee on to wretchedness eterne?

Or one of nature's wildest fantasies,
From which she flies in terror so profound,
And with such whirl of torment in her breast,
That mighty earthquakes yearn where'er she treads;
While War makes red its terrible right hand,
And Famine stalks abroad all lean and wan?

To us thou art as exquisitely fair
As the ideal visions of the seer,
Or gentlest fancy that e'er floated down
Imagination's bright, unruffled stream,
Wedding the thought that was too deep for words
To the low breathings of inspirèd song.

{64}

When the stars sang together o'er the birth
Of the poor Babe at Bethlehem, that lay
In the coarse manger at the crowded Inn,
Didst thou, perhaps a bright exalted star,
Refuse to swell the grand, harmonious lay,
Jealous as Herod of the birth divine?

Or when the crown of thorns on Calvary
Pierced the Redeemer's brow, didst thou disdain
To weep, when all the planetary worlds
Were blinded by the fulness of their tears?
E'en to the flaming sun, that hid his face
At the loud cry, "Lama Sabachthani!"

No rest! No rest! the very damned have that
In the dark councils of remotest Hell,
Where the dread scheme was perfected that sealed
Thy disobedience and accruing doom.
Like Adam's sons, hast thou, too, forfeited
The blest repose that never pillowed Sin?

No! none can tell thy fate, thou wandering Sphinx!
Pale Science, searching by the midnight lamp
Through the vexed mazes of the human brain,
Still fails to read the secret of its soul
As the superb enigma flashes by,
A loosed Prometheus burning with disdain.


{65}

AUTUMN.

If seasons, like the human race, had souls,
Then two artistic spirits live within
The Chameleon mind of Autumn--these,
The Poet's mentor and the Painter's guide.
The myriad-thoughted phases of the mind
Are truly represented by the hues
That thrill the forests with prophetic fire.
And what could painter's skill compared to these?
What palette ever held the flaming tints
That on these leafy hieroglyphs foretell
How set the ebbing currents of the year?
What poet's page was ever like to this,
Or told the lesson of life's waning days
More forcibly, with more of natural truth,
Than yon red maples, or these poplars, white
As the pale shroud that wraps some human corse?
And then, again, the spirit of a King,
Clothed with that majesty most monarchs lack,
Might fit old Autumn for his royal rule:
For here is kingly ermine, cloth of gold,
And purple robes well worthy to be worn
By the best monarch that e'er donned a crown.

Proclaim him Royal Autumn! Poet King!
The Laureate of the Seasons, whose rare songs
Are such as lyrist never hoped to fling
On the fine ear of an admiring world.
Autumn, the Poet, Painter, and true King!
His gorgeous Ideality speaks forth

{66}

From the rare colors of the changing leaves;
And the ripe blood that swells his purple veins
Is as the glowing of a sacred fire.
He walks with Shelley's spirit on the cliffs
Of the Ethereal Caucasus, and o'er
The summits of the Euganean hills;
And meets the soul of Wordsworth, in profound
And philosophic meditation, rapt
In some great dream of love towards
The human race. The cheery Spring may come,
And touch the dreaming flowers into life,
Summer expand her leafy sea of green,
And wake the joyful wilderness to song,
As a fair hand strikes music from a lyre:
But Autumn, from its daybreak to its close,
Setting in florid beauty, like the sun,
Robed with rare brightness and ethereal flame,
Holds all the year's ripe fruitage in its hands,
And dies with songs of praise upon its lips.

And then, the Indian Summer, bland as June:
Some Tuscarora King, Algonquin Seer,
Or Huron Chief, returned to smoke the Pipe
Of Peace upon the ancient hunting grounds;
The mighty shade in spirit walking forth
To feel the beauty of his native woods,
Flashing in Autumn vestures, or to mark
The scanty remnants of the scattered tribes
Wending towards their graves. Few Braves are left;
Few mighty Hunters; fewer stately Chiefs,
Like great Tecumseth fit to take the field,
And lead the tribes to certain victory,

{67}

Choosing annihilation to defeat:
But having run thy gauntlet of their days,
This Autumn remnant of some unknown race,
Nearing the Winter of their sad decay,
Fall like dry leaves into the lap of Time;
Their old trunks sapless, their tough branches bare,
And Fate's shrill war-whoop thund'ring at their heels.


{68}

COLIN.

Who'll dive for the dead men now,
Since Colin is gone?
Who'll feel for the anguished brow,
Since Colin is gone?
True Feeling is not confined
To the learned or lordly mind;
Nor can it be bought and sold
In exchange for an Alp of gold;
For Nature, that never lies,
Flings back with indignant scorn
The counterfeit deed, still-born,
In the face of the seeming wise,
In the Janus face of the huckster race
Who barter her truths for lies.

Who'll wrestle with dangers dire,
Since Colin is gone?
Who'll fearlessly brave the maniac wave,
Thoughtless of self, human life to save,
Unmoved by the storm-fiend's ire?
Who, Shadrach-like, will walk through fire,
Since Colin is gone?
Or hang his life on so frail a breath
That there's but a step 'twixt life and death?
For Courage is not the heritage
Of the nobly born; and many a sage
Has climbed to the temple of fame,
And written his deathless name
In letters of golden flame,
Who, on glancing down

{69}

From his high renown,