will stand beside that shrine,

Occult, withheld, untrod,

Whose lamps are stirr’d continually

With prayer sent up to God;

And see our old prayers, granted, melt

Each like a little cloud.

We two will lie i’ the shadow of

That living mystic tree

Within whose secret growth the Dove

Is sometimes felt to be,

While every leaf that His plumes touch

Saith His Name audibly.

And I myself will teach to him,

I myself, lying so,

The songs I sing here; which his voice

Shall pause in, hush’d and slow,

And find some knowledge at each pause,

Or some new thing to know”.

(Alas! We two, we two, thou say’st!

Yea, one wast thou with me

That once of old. But shall God lift

To endless unity

The soul whose likeness with thy soul

Was but its love for thee?)

“We two”, she said, “will seek the groves

Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret and Rosalys.

Circlewise sit they, with bound locks

And foreheads garlanded;

Into the fine cloth white like flame

Weaving the golden thread,

To fashion the birth-robes for them

Who are just born, being dead.

He shall fear, haply, and be dumb:

Then will I lay my cheek

To his, and tell about our love,

Not once abash’d or weak:

And the dear Mother will approve

My pride, and let me speak.

Herself shall bring us, hand in hand,

To Him round whom all souls

Kneel, the clear-rang’d unnumber’d heads

Bow’d with their aureoles:

And angels meeting us shall sing

To their citherns and citoles.

There will I ask of Christ the Lord

Thus much for him and me: —

Only to live as once on earth

With Love, — only to be,

As then awhile, for ever now

Together, I and he”.

She gaz’d and listen’d and then said,

Less sad of speech than mild, —

“All this is when he comes”. She ceas’d.

The light thrill’d towards her, fill’d

With angels in strong level flight.

Her eyes pray’d, and she smil’d.

(I saw her smile.) But soon their path

Was vague in distant spheres:

And then she cast her arms along

The golden barriers,

And laid her face between her hands,

And wept. (I heard her tears.)

The Burden of Nineveh

In our Museum galleries

To-day I lingered o’er the prize

Dead Greece vouchsafes to living eyes,—

Her Art for ever in fresh wise

From hour to hour rejoicing me.

Sighing I turned at last to win

Once more the London dirt and din;

And as I made the swing-door spin

And issued, they were hoisting in

A wingèd beast from Nineveh.

A human face the creature wore,

And hoofs behind and hoofs before,

And flanks with dark runes fretted o’er.

’Twas bull, ’twas mitred Minotaur,

A dead disbowelled mystery:

The mummy of a buried faith

Stark from the charnel without scathe,

Its wings stood for the light to bathe,—

Such fossil cerements as might swathe

The very corpse of Nineveh.

The print of its first rush-wrapping,

Wound ere it dried, still ribbed the thing.

What song did the brown maidens sing,

From purple mouths alternating,

When that was woven languidly?

What vows, what rites, what prayers preferr’d,

What songs has the strange image heard?

In what blind vigil stood interr’d

For ages, till an English word

Broke silence first at Nineveh?

Oh when upon each sculptured court,

Where even the wind might not resort,—

O’er which Time passed, of like import

With the wild Arab boys at sport,—

A living face looked in to see —

Oh seemed it not — the spell once broke—

As though the carven warriors woke,

As though the shaft the string forsook,

The cymbals clashed, the chariots shook,

And there was life in Nineveh?

On London stones our sun anew

The beast’s recovered shadow threw.

(No shade that plague of darkness knew,

No light, no shade, while older grew

By ages the old earth and sea.)

Lo thou! could all thy priests have shown

Such proof to make thy godhead known?

From their dead Past thou liv’st alone;

And still thy shadow is thine own,

Even as of yore in Nineveh.

That day whereof we keep record,

When near thy city-gates the Lord

Sheltered His Jonah with a gourd,

This sun, (I said) here present, pour’d

Even thus this shadow that I see.

This shadow has been shed the same

From sun and moon, — from lamps which came

For prayer, — from fifteen days of flame,

The last, while smouldered to a name

Sardanapalus’ Nineveh.

Within thy shadow, haply, once

Sennacherib has knelt, whose sons

Smote him between the altar-stones:

Or pale Semiramis her zones

Of gold, her incense brought to thee,

In love for grace, in war for aid:.

Ay, and who else?. till ’neath thy shade

Within