  I. 1. I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood, Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath, The red-ribb'd ledges drip with a silent horror of blood, And Echo there, whatever is ask'd her, answers 'Death.' 2. For there in the ghastly pit long since a body was found, His who had given me life—O father! O God! was it well?— Mangled, and flatten'd, and crush'd, and dinted into the ground: There yet lies the rock that fell with him when he fell. 3. Did he fling himself down? who knows? for a vast speculation had fail'd, And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair, And out he walk'd when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands drove thro' the air. 4. I remember the time, for the roots of my hair were stirr'd By a shuffled step, by a dead weight trail'd, by a whisper'd fright, And my pulses closed their gates with a shock on my heart as I heard The shrill-edged shriek of a mother divide the shuddering night. 5. Villainy somewhere! whose? One says, we are villains all. Not he: his honest fame should at least by me be maintained: But that old man, now lord of the broad estate and the Hall, Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain'd. 6. Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace? we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone? 7. But these are the days of advance, the works of the men of mind, When who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman's ware or his word? Is it peace or war? Civil war, as I think, and that of a kind The viler, as underhand, not openly bearing the sword. 8. Sooner or later I too may passively take the print Of the golden age— why not? I have neither hope nor trust; May make my heart as a millstone, set my face as a flint, Cheat and be cheated, and die: who knows? we are ashes and dust. 9. Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell'd and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie; Peace in her vineyard—yes!?-but a company forges the wine. 10. And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, While chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 11. And Sleep must lie down arm'd, for the villainous centre-bits Grind on the wakeful ear in the hush of the moonless nights, While another is cheating the sick of a few last gasps, as he sits To pestle a poison'd poison behind his crimson lights. 12. When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones, Is it peace or war? better, war! loud war by land and by sea, War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones. 13. For I trust if an enemy's fleet came yonder round by the hill, And the rushing battle-bolt sang from the three-decker out of the foam, That the smoothfaced snubnosed rogue would leap from his counter and till, And strike, if he could, were it but with his cheating yardwand, home.——— 14. What! am I raging alone as my father raged in his mood? Must I too creep to the hollow and dash myself down and die Rather than hold by the law that I made, nevermore to brood On a horror of shatter'd limbs and a wretched swindler's lie? 15. Would there be sorrow for me? there was love in the passionate shriek, Love for the silent thing that had made false haste to the grave— Wrapt in a cloak, as I saw him, and thought he would rise and speak And rave at the lie and the liar, ah God, as he used to rave. 16. I am sick of the Hall and the hill, I am sick of the moor and the main. Why should I stay? can a sweeter chance ever come to me here? O, having the nerves of motion as well as the nerves of pain, Were it not wise if I fled from the place and the pit and the fear? 17. There are workmen up at the Hall: they are coming back from abroad; The dark old place will be gilt by the touch of a millionnaire: I have heard, I know not whence, of the singular beauty of Maud; I play*d with the girl when a child; she promised then to be fair. 18. Maud with her venturous climbings and tumbles and childish escapes, Maud the delight of the village, the ringing joy of the Hall, Maud with her sweet purse-mouth when my father dangled the grapes, Maud the beloved of my mother, the moon-faced darling of all,— 19. What is she now? My dreams are bad. She may bring me a curse. No, there is fatter game on the moor; she will let me alone. Thanks, for the fiend best knows whether woman or man be the worse. I will bury myself in my books, and the Devil may pipe to his own. II. Long have I sigh'd for a calm: God grant I may find it at last! It will never be broken by Maud, she has neither savour nor salt, But a cold and clear-cut face, as I found when her carriage past, Perfectly beautiful: let it be granted her: where is the fault? All that I saw (for her eyes were downcast, not to be seen) Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null, Dead perfection, no more; nothing more, if it had not been For a chance of travel, a paleness, an hour's defect of the rose, Or an underlip, you may call it a little too ripe, too full, Or the least little delicate aquiline curve in a sensitive nose, From which I escaped heart-free, with the least little touch of spleen. III. Cold and clear-cut face, why come you so cruelly meek, Breaking a slumber in which all spleenful folly was drown'd, Pale with the golden beam of an eyelash dead on the cheek, Passionless, pale, cold face, star-sweet on a gloom profound; Womanlike, taking revenge too deep for a transient wrong Done but in thought to your beauty, and ever as pale as before Growing and fading and growing upon me without a sound. Luminous, gemlike, ghostlike, deathlike, half the night long Growing and fading and growing, till I could bear it no more. But arose, and all by myself in my own dark garden ground, Listening now to the tide in its broad-flung shipwrecking roar, Now to the scream of a madden'd beach dragg'd down by the wave, Walk'd in a wintry wind by a ghastly glimmer, and found The shining daffodil dead, and Orion low in his grave. IV. 1. A million emeralds break from the ruby-budded lime In the little grove where I sit—ah, wherefore cannot I be Like things of the season gay, like the bountiful season bland, When the far-off sail is blown by the breeze of a softer clime, Half-lost in the liquid azure bloom of a crescent of sea. The silent sapphire-spangled marriage ring of the land? 2. Below me, there, is the village, and looks how quiet and small! And yet bubbles o'er like a city, with gossip, scandal, and spite; And Jack on his ale-house bench has as many lies as a Czar; And here on the landward side, by a red rock, glimmers the Hall; And up in the high Hall-garden I see her pass like a light; But sorrow seize me if ever that light be my leading star! 3. When have I bow'd to her father, the wrinkled head of the race? I met her to-day with her brother, but not to her brother I bow'd; I bow'd to his lady-sister as she /div> XVIII. 1. I have led her home, my love, my only friend. There is none like her, none. And never yet so warmly ran my blood And sweetly, on and on Calming itself to the long-wish'd-for end, Full to the banks, close on the promised good. 2. None like her, none. Just now the dry-tongued laurels' pattering talk Seem'd her light foot along the garden walk, And shook my heart to think she comes once more; But even then I heard her close the door, The gates of Heaven are closed, and she is gone. 3. There is none like her, none. Nor will be when our summers have deceased. O, art thou sighing for Lebanon In the long breeze that streams to thy delicious East, Sighing for Lebanon, Dark cedar, tho' thy limbs have here increased, Upon a pastoral slope as fair, And looking to the South, and fed With honey'd rain and delicate air, And haunted by the starry head Of her whose gentle will has changed my fate, And made my life a perfumed altar-flame; And over whom thy darkness must have spread With such delight as theirs of old, thy great Forefathers of the thornless garden, there Shadowing the snow-limb'd Eve from whom she came. 4. Here will I lie, while these long branches sway, And you fair stars that crown a happy day Go in and out as if at merry play, Who am no more so all forlorn, As when it seem'd far better to be born To labour and the mattock-harden'd hand, Than nursed at ease and brought to understand A sad astrology, the boundless plan That makes you tyrants in your iron skies, Innumerable, pitiless, passionless eyes, Cold fires, yet with power to burn and brand His nothingness into man. 5. But now shine on, and what care I, Who in this stormy gulf have found a pearl The countercharm of space and hollow sky, And do accept my madness, and would die To save from some slight shame one simple girl. 6. Would die; for sullen-seeming Death may give More life to Love than is or ever was In our low world, where yet 'tis sweet to live. Let no one ask me how it came to pass; It seems that I am happy, that to me A livelier emerald twinkles in the grass, A purer sapphire melts into the sea. 7. Not die; but live a life of truest breath, And teach true life to fight with mortal wrongs. O, why should Love, like men in drinking-songs, Spice his fair banquet with the dust of death? Make answer, Maud my bliss, Maud made my Maud by that long lover's kiss, Life of my life, wilt thou not answer this? 'The dusky strand of Death inwoven here With dear Love's tie, makes Love himself more dear.' 8. Is that enchanted moan only the swell Of the long waves that roll in yonder bay? And hark the clock within, the silver knell Of twelve sweet hours that past in bridal white, And died to live, long as my pulses play; But now by this my love has closed her sight And given false death her hand, and stol'n away To dreamful wastes where footless fancies dwell Among the fragments of the golden day. May nothing there her maiden grace affright! Dear heart, I feel with thee the drowsy spell. My bride to be, my evermore delight, My own heart's heart and ownest own farewell; It is but for a little space I go: And ye meanwhile far over moor and fell Beat to the noiseless music of the night! Has our whole earth gone nearer to the glow Of your soft splendours that you look so bright? I have climb'd nearer out of lonely Hell. Beat, happy stars, timing with things below, Beat with my heart more blest than heart can tell, Blest, but for some dark undercurrent woe That seems to draw—but it shall not be so: Let all be well, be well. XIX. 1. Her brother is coming back to-night, Breaking up my dream of delight. 2. My dream? do I dream of bliss? I have walk'd awake with Truth. O when did a morning shine So rich in atonement as this For my dark-dawning youth, Darkened watching a mother decline And that dead man at her heart and mine For who was left to watch her but I? Yet so did I let my freshness die. 3. I trust that I did not talk To gentle Maud in our walk (For often in lonely wanderings I have cursed him even to lifeless things) But I trust that I did not talk, Not touch on her father's sin: I am sure I did but speak Of my mother's faded cheek When it slowly grew so thin, That I felt she was slowly dying Vext with lawyers and harass'd with debt: For how often I caught her with eyes all wet, Shaking her head at her son and sighing A world of trouble within! 4. And Maud too, Maud was moved To speak of the mother she loved As one scarce less forlorn, Dying abroad and it seems apart From him who had ceased to share her heart, And ever mourning over the feud, The household Fury sprinkled with blood By which our houses are torn: How strange was what she said, When only Maud and the brother Hung over her dying bed— That Maud's dark father and mine Had bound us one to the other, Betrothed us over their wine, On the day when Maud was born; Seal'd her mine from her first sweet breath. Mine, mine by a right, from birth till death, Mine, mine—our fathers have sworn. 5. But the true blood spilt had in it a heat To dissolve the precious seal on a bond, That, if left uncancell'd, had been so sweet: And none of us thought of a something beyond, A desire that awoke in the heart of the child, As it were a duty done to the tomb, To be friends for her sake, to be reconciled; And I was cursing them and my doom, And letting a dangerous thought run wild While often abroad in the fragrant gloom Of foreign churches—I see her there, Bright English lily, breathing a prayer To be friends, to be reconciled! 6. But then what a flint is he! Abroad, at Florence, at Rome, I find whenever she touch'd on me This brother had laugh'd her down, And at last, when each came home, He had darken'd into a frown, Chid her, and forbid her to speak To me, her friend of the years before; And this was what had reddened her cheek When I bow'd to her on the moor. 7. Yet Maud, altho' not blind To the faults of his heart and mind, I see she cannot but love him, And says he is rough but kind, And wishes me to approve him, And tells me, when she lay Sick once, with a fear of worse, That he left his wine and horses and play, Sat with her, read to her, night and day, And tended her like a nurse. 8. Kind? but the deathbed desire Spurn'd by this heir of the liar— Rough but kind? yet I know He has plotted against me in this, That he plots against me still. Kind to Maud? that were not amiss. Well, rough but kind; why, let it be so: For shall not Maud have her will? 9. For, Maud, so tender and true. As long as my life endures I feel I shall owe you a debt, That I never can hope to pay; And if ever I should forget That I owe this debt to you And for your sweet sake to yours; O then, what then shall I say?— If ever I should forget. May God make me more wretched Than ever I have been yet! 10. So now I have sworn to bury All this dead body of hate, I feel so free and so clear By the loss of that dead weight,
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