Steeped in the noonlight, glutted with the sun,
But somewhat lacking root in homely earth,
Lacking such human moisture as bedews
His not less starward stem of song, who, rapt
Not less in glowing vision, yet retained
His clasp of the prehensible, retained
The warm touch of the world that lies to hand,
Not in vague dreams of man forgetting men,
Nor in vast morrows losing the to-day;
Who trusted nature, trusted fate, nor found
An Ogre, sovereign on the throne of things;
Who felt the incumbence of the unknown, yet bore
Without resentment the Divine reserve;
Who suffered not his spirit to dash itself
Against the crags and wavelike break in spray,
But ’midst the infinite tranquillities
Moved tranquil, and henceforth, by Rotha stream
And Rydal’s mountain-mirror, and where flows
Yarrow thrice sung or Duddon to the sea,
And wheresoe’er man’s heart is thrilled by tones
Struck from man’s lyric heartstrings, shall survive.

FELICITY

A squalid, hideous town, where streams run black
With vomit of a hundred roaring mills,—­
Hither occasion calls me; and ev’n here,
All in the sable reek that wantonly
Defames the sunlight and deflowers the morn,
One may at least surmise the sky still blue. 
Ev’n here, the myriad slaves of the machine
Deem life a boon; and here, in days far sped,
I overheard a kind-eyed girl relate
To her companions, how a favouring chance
By some few shillings weekly had increased
The earnings of her household, and she said: 
“So now we are happy, having all we wished,”—­
Felicity indeed! though more it lay
In wanting little than in winning all.

Felicity indeed!  Across the years
To me her tones come back, rebuking; me,
Spreader of toils to snare the wandering Joy
No guile may capture and no force surprise—­
Only by them that never wooed her, won.

O curst with wide desires and spacious dreams,
Too cunningly do ye accumulate
Appliances and means of happiness,
E’er to be happy!  Lavish hosts, ye make
Elaborate preparation to receive
A shy and simple guest, who, warned of all
The ceremony and circumstance wherewith
Ye mean to entertain her, will not come.

VER TENEBROSUM

SONNETS OF MARCH AND APRIL 1885

I

THE SOUDANESE

They wrong’d not us, nor sought ’gainst us to wage
The bitter battle.  On their God they cried
For succour, deeming justice to abide
In heaven, if banish’d from earth’s vicinage. 
And when they rose with a gall’d lion’s rage,
We, on the captor’s, keeper’s, tamer’s side,
We, with the alien tyranny allied,
We bade them back to their Egyptian cage. 
Scarce knew they who we were!  A wind of blight
From the mysterious far north-west we came. 
Our greatness now their veriest babes have learn’d,
Where, in wild desert homes, by day, by night,
Thousands that weep their warriors unreturn’d,
O England, O my country, curse thy name!