Wamberal
Just a shell, to which the seaweed glittering yet with greenness clings,Like the song that once I loved so, softly of the old time sings—Softly of the old time speaketh—bringing ever back to meSights of far-off lordly forelands—glimpses of the sounding sea!Now the cliffs are all before me—now, indeed, do I beholdShining growths on wild wet hillheads, quiet pools of green and gold.And, across the gleaming beaches, lo! the mighty flow and fallOf the great ingathering waters thundering under Wamberal!
Back there are the pondering mountains; there the dim, dumb ranges loom—Ghostly shapes in dead grey vapour—half-seen peaks august with gloom.There the voice of troubled torrents, hidden in unfathomed deeps,Known to moss and faint green sunlight, wanders down the oozy steeps.There the lake of many runnels nestles in a windless wildFar amongst thick-folded forests, like a radiant human child.And beyond surf-smitten uplands—high above the highest spur—Lo! the clouds like tents of tempest on the crags of Kincumber!
Wamberal, the home of echoes! Hard against a streaming strand,Sits the hill of blind black caverns, at the limits of the land.Here the haughty water marches—here the flights of straitened seaMake a noise like that of trumpets, breaking wide across the lea!But behold, in yonder crescent that a ring of island locksAre the gold and emerald cisterns shining moonlike in the rocks!Clear, bright cisterns, zoned by mosses, where the faint wet blossoms dwellWith the leaf of many colours—down beside the starry shell.
Friend of mine beyond the mountains, here and here the perished daysCome like sad reproachful phantoms, in the deep grey evening haze—Come like ghosts, and sit beside me when the noise of day is still,And the rain is on the window, and the wind is on the hill.Then they linger, but they speak not, while my memory roams and roamsOver scenes by death made sacred—other lands and other homes!Places sanctified by sorrow—sweetened by the face of yore—Face that you and I may look on (friend and brother) nevermore!
Seasons come with tender solace—time lacks neither light nor rest;But the old thoughts were such dear ones, and the old days seem the best.And to those who’ve loved and suffered, every pulse of wind or rain—Every song with sadness in it, brings the peopled Past again.Therefore, just this shell yet dripping, with this weed of green and grey,Sets me thinking—sets me dreaming of the places far away;Dreaming of the golden rockpools—of the foreland and the fall;And the home behind the mountains looming over Wamberal.
In Memoriam—Alice Fane Gunn Stenhouse
—* Daughter of Nicol Drysdale Stenhouse.—
The grand, authentic songs that rollAcross grey widths of wild-faced sea,The lordly anthems of the Pole,Are loud upon the lea.
Yea, deep and full the South Wind singsThe mighty symphonies that makeA thunder at the mountain springs—A whiteness on the lake.
And where the hermit hornet hums,When Summer fires his wings with gold,The hollow voice of August comes,Across the rain and cold.
Now on the misty mountain tops,Where gleams the crag and glares the fell,Wild Winter, like one hunted, stopsAnd shouts a fierce farewell.
Keen fitful gusts shoot past the shoreAnd hiss by moor and moody mere—The heralds bleak that come beforeThe turning of the year.
A sobbing spirit wanders whereBy fits and starts the wild-fire shines;Like one who walks in deep despair,With Death amongst the pines.
And ah! the fine, majestic griefWhich fills the heart of forests lone,And makes a lute of limb and leafIs human in its tone.
Too human for the thought to slip—How every song that sorrow singsBetrays the broad relationshipOf all created things.
Man’s mournful speech, the wail of tree,The words the winds and waters say,Make up that general elegy,Whose burden is decay.
To-night my soul looks back and sees,Across wind-broken wastes of wave,A widow on her bended kneesBeside a new-made grave.
A sufferer with a touching faceBy love and grief made beautiful;Whose rapt religion lights the placeWhere death holds awful rule.
The fair, tired soul whose twofold griefFor child and father lends a toneOf pathos to the pallid leafThat sighs above the stone.
The large beloved heart whereonShe used to lean, lies still and cold,Where, like a seraph, shines the sunOn flowerful green and gold.
I knew him well—the grand, the sweet,Pure nature past all human praise;The dear Gamaliel at whose feetI sat in other days.
He, glorified by god-like lore,First showed my soul Life’s highest aim;When, like one winged, I breathed—beforeThe years of sin and shame.
God called him Home. And, in the calmBeyond our best possessions priced,He passed, as floats a faultless psalm,To his fair Father, Christ.
But left as solace for the hoursOf sorrow and the loss thereof;A sister of the birds and flowers,The daughter of his love.
She, like a stray sweet seraph, shedA healing spirit, that flamed and flowedAs if about her bright young headA crown of saintship glowed.
Suppressing, with sublime self-slight,The awful face of that distressWhich fell upon her youth like blight,She shone like happiness.
And, in the home so sanctifiedBy death in its most noble guise,She kissed the lips of love, and driedThe tears in sorrow’s eyes.
And helped the widowed heart to lean,So broken up with human cares,On one who must be felt and seenBy such pure souls as hers.
Moreover, having lived, and learnedThe taste of Life’s most bitter spring,For all the sick this sister yearned—The poor and suffering.
But though she had for every oneThe phrase of comfort and the smile,This shining daughter of the sunWas dying all the while.
Yet self-withdrawn—held out of reachWas grief; except when music blentIts deep, divine, prophetic speechWith voice and instrument.
Then sometimes would escape a cryFrom that dark other life of hers—The half of her humanity—And sob through sound and verse.
At last there came the holy touch,With psalms from higher homes and hours;And she who loved the flowers so muchNow sleeps amongst the flowers.
By hearse-like yews and grey-haired moss,Where wails the wind in starts and fits,Twice bowed and broken down with loss,The wife, the mother sits.
God help her soul! She cannot see,For very trouble, anythingBeyond this wild GethsemaneOf swift, black suffering;
Except it be that faltering faithWhich leads the lips of life to say:“There must be something past this death—Lord, teach me how to pray!”
Ah, teach her, Lord! And shed through griefThe clear full light, the undefiled,The blessing of the bright beliefWhich sanctified her child.
Let me, a son of sin and doubt,Whose feet are set in ways amiss—Who cannot read Thy riddle out,Just plead, and ask Thee this;
Give her the eyes to see the things—The Life and Love I cannot see;And lift her with the helping wingsThou hast denied to me.
Yea, shining from the highest blueOn those that sing by Beulah’s streams,Shake on her thirsty soul the dewWhich brings immortal dreams.
So that her heart may find the great,Pure faith for which it looks so long;And learn the noble way to wait,To suffer, and be strong.