‘Each day I have come to tell him, and failed, with my hand on the gate. I bore the dreadful knowledge, and crushed my heart with its weight. The letter brought by your comrade—he has but just read it aloud! It only reached him this morning!’ Her head on his shoulder she bowed. Then Tom with pity’s tenderest lordliness patted her arm, And eyed the old white-head fondly, with something of doubt and alarm.
O, take to your fancy a sculptor whose fresh marble offspring appears Before him, shiningly perfect, the laurel-crown’d issue of years: Is heaven offended? for lightning behold from its bosom escape, And those are mocking fragments that made the harmonious shape! He cannot love the ruins, till, feeling that ruins alone Are left, he loves them threefold. So passed the old grandfather’s moan.
John’s text for a sermon on Slaughter he heard, and he did not protest. All rigid as April snowdrifts, he stood, hard and feeble; his chest Just showing the swell of the fire as it melted him. Smiting a rib, ‘Heigh! what have we been about, Tom! Was this all a terrible fib?’ He cried, and the letter forth-trembled. Tom told what the cannon had done. Few present but ached to see falling those aged tears on his heart’s son!
Up lanes of the quiet village, and where the mill-waters rush red Thro’ browning summer meadows to catch the sun’s crimsoning head, You meet an old man and a maiden who has the soft ways of a wife With one whom they wheel, alternate; whose delicate flush of new life Is prized like the early primrose. Then shake his right hand, in the chair— The old man fails never to tell you: ‘You’ve got the French General’s there!’
HOW low when angels fall their black descent, Our primal thunder tells: known is the pain Of music, that nigh throning wisdom went, And one false note cast wailful to the insane. Now seems the language heard of Love as rain To make a mire where fruitfulness was meant. The golden harp gives out a jangled strain, Too like revolt from heaven’s Omnipotent. But listen in the thought; so may there come Conception of a newly-added chord, Commanding space beyond where ear has home. In labour of the trouble at its fount, Leads Life to an intelligible Lord The rebel discords up the sacred mount.