And sudden mirths out-gleaming
Through eyes yet hung with tears.
There's not a care-a watching
A hope-a laugh—a fear
Of all her little bringing
But we shall find it here;
Then tiny golden warder,
Oh safely ever hold
This glossy silken memory,
This little curl of gold.
Here are some epitaphs for infants of great sweetness and ten
Here the gusts of wild March blow
But in murmurs faint and low;
Ever here, when Spring is green,
Be the brightest verdure seen-
And when June's in field and glade,
Here be ever freshest shade;
Here hued Autumn latest stay,
Latest call the flowers away;
And when Winter's shrilling by,
Here its snows the warmest lie;
For a little life is here,
Hid in earth, forever dear,
And this grassy heap above
Sorrow broods and weeping love.
On this little grassy mound
Never be the darnel found;
Ne'er be venomed nettle seen
On this little heap of green;
For the little lost one here
Was too sweet for aught of fear,
Aught of harm to harbor nigh
This green spot where she must lie;
So be naught but sweetness found
On this little grassy mound.
Here in gentle pity, Spring,
Let thy sweetest voices sing;
Nightingale, be here thy song
Charmed by grief to linger long-
Here the thrush with longest stay
Pipe its speckled song to day-
And the blackbird warble shrill
All its passion latest still;
Still the old gray tower above
Her small nest, the swallow love,
And through all June's honeyed hours
Booming bees hum in its flowers,
And when comes the eve's cold gray
Murmuring gnats unresting play
Weave, while round the beetle's flight
Drones across the shadowing night;
For the sweetness dreaming here
Was a gladness to the year,
And the sad months all should bring
Dirges o'er her sleep to sing.
Haunter of the opening year,
Ever be the primrose here;
Whitest daisies deck the spot,
Pansies and forget-me-not,
Fairest things that earliest fly,
Sweetness blooming but to die;
For this blossom, o'er whose fall
Sorrow sighs, was fair as all,
But, alas, as frail as they,
All as quickly fled away.
These four stanzas, on a subject so hackneyed that many writers would have shrunk from attempting it, would make four charming pictures.
A blue-eyed child that sits amid the noon,
O'erhung with a laburnum's drooping sprays,
Singing her little songs, while softly round
Along the grass the chequered sunshine plays.
All beauty that is throned in womanhood
Pacing a summer garden's fountained walks,
That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down
To hide her flushing cheek from one who talks.
A happy mother with her fair-faced girls,
In whose sweet Spring again her youth she sees,
With shout and dance and laugh and bound and song
Stripping an Autumn orchard's laden trees.
An aged woman in a wintry room,
Frost on the pane, without the whirling snow-
Reading old letters of her far-off youth,
Of sorrows past and joys of long ago.
The next specimen shows one of Mr. Bennett's strongest characteristics; his sincere sympathy with the privations of the working classes, especially the privations that shut them out from natural beauty.
THE SEMPSTRESS TO HER MIGNONETTE.
I love that box of mignonette,
Though worthless in your eyes,
Above your choicest hot-house flowers
My mignonette I prize-
Thank heaven not yet I've learned on that
A money worth to set
'Tis priceless as the thoughts it brings,
My box of mignonette.
I know my own sweet mignonette
Is neither strange nor rare,
Your garden flaunters burn with hues
That it may never wear;
Yet on your garden's rarest blooms
No eyes were ever set
With more delight than mine on yours,
My box of mignonette.
Why do I prize my mignonette
That lights my window there?
It adds a pleasure to delight-
It steals a weight from care—
What happy daylight dreams it brings-
Can I not half forget
My long, long hours of weary work
With you, my mignonette.
It tells of May, my mignonette,
And as I see it bloom
I think the green bright pleasant Spring
Comes freshly through my room;
Our narrow court is dark and close,
Yet when my eyes you met
Wide fields lay stretching from my sight,
My box of mignonette.
What talks it of, my mignonette,
To me it babbles still
Of woodland banks of primroses,
Of heath and breezy hill
Through country lanes and daisied fields
Through paths with morning wet
Again I trip as when a girl
Through you, my mignonette.
For this I love my mignonette,
My window garden small
That country thoughts and scents and sounds
Around me loves to call
For this though low in rich men's thoughts
Your worth and love be set,
I bless you, pleasure of the poor,
My own sweet mignonette.
I add "Ariadne" to show how Mr. Bennett can strike the classic lyre.
Morn rose on Naxos,-golden dewy morn,
Climbing its eastern cliffs with gleaming light,
Purpling each inland peak and dusky gorge
Of the gray distance,-morn, on lowland slopes,
Of olive-ground and vines and yellowing corn,
Orchard and flowery pasture, white with kine,
On forest-hillside cot, and rounding sea,
And the still tent of Theseus by the shore.
Morn rose on Naxos-chill and freshening morn,
Nor yet the unbreathing air a twitter heard
From eave or bough,-nor yet a blue smoke rose
From glade or misty vale, or far-off town;
One only sign of life, a dusky sail,
Stole dark afar across the distant sea
Flying; all else unmoved in stillness lay
Beneath the silence of the brightening heavens,
Nor sound was heard to break the slumbrous calm,
Save the soft lapse of waves along the strand.
A white form from the tent,—a glance,- -a cry.
Where art thou, Theseus ?-Theseus! Theseus! where?
Why hast thou stolen thus with earliest dawn,
Forth from thy couch-forth from these faithless arms,
That even in slumber should have clasped thee still! Truant! ah me! and hast thou learnt to fly
So early from thy Ariadne's love!
Where art thou? Is it well to fright me thus,-
To scare me for a moment with the dread
Of one abandoned! Art thou in the woods
With all that could have told me where thou art!
Cruel! and couldst thou not have left me one,
Ere this to have laughed away my idle fears!
He could have told thee all-the start-the shriek-
The pallid face, with which I found thee gone,
And furnished laughter for thy glad return;
But thus to leave me, cruel! thus alone!
There is no sound of horns among the hills,
No shouts that tell they track or bay the boar.
O fearful stillness! O that one would speak!
O would that I were fronting wolf or pard
But by thy side this moment! so strange fear
Possesses me, O love! apart from thee;
The galley? gone? Ye Gods! it is not gone?
Here, by this rock it lay but yesternight?
Gone? through this track its keel slid down the shore;
And I slept calmly as it cleft the sea?
Gone? gone? where gone?-that sail! 'tis his! 'tis his!
Return, O Theseus! Theseus! love! return!
Thou wilt return? Thou dost but try my love?
Thou wilt return to make my foolish fears
Thy jest? Return, and I will laugh with thee!
Return! return! and canst thou hear my shrieks,
Nor heed my cry! And wouldst thou have me weep,
Weep! I that wept-while with wild fear the while
Thou slew'st the abhorred monster! If it be
Thou takest pleasure in these bitter tears,
Come back, and I will weep myself away-
A streaming Niobe-to win thy smiles!
O stony heart! why wilt thou wring me thus !
O heart more cold unto my shrilling cries
Than these wild hills that wail to thee, return,
Than all these island rocks that shriek, return.
Come back!-Thou seest me rend this blinding hair;
Hast thou not sworn each tress thou didst so prize,
That sight of home, and thy gray father's face,
Were less a joy to thee, and lightlier held!
Thy sail! thy sail! O do my watery eyes
Take part with thee, so loved! to crush me down!
Gone! gone! and wilt thou-wilt thou not return?
Heartless, unfearing the just Gods, wilt thou,
Theseus! my lord! my love! desert me thus !
Thus leave me, stranger in this strange wild land,
|