Growing weary, he
slackened
his pace.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v21 - Rab to Rus
DUTCH TILES
From Old Kensington. ' Published by Harper & Brothers
HERE are many disconnected pictures in Dorothea Vanborough's
gallery, drifting and following each other like the images of
a dissolving view. There are voices and faces changing;
people whom she hardly knows to be the same, appearing and
disappearing. Looking back nowadays through a score or two of
years, Dorothea can see many lights crossing and reflecting one
another, many strange places and persons in juxtaposition. She
can hear, as we all can, a great clamor of words and of laughter,
cries of pain and of sorrow and anger, through all of which sound
the sacred voices that will utter to her through life—and beyond
life, she humbly prays.
Dorothea's pictures are but mist and fancy-work; not made of
paint and canvas, as is that one which hangs over the fireplace
in the wainscot dining-room at Church House in Kensington,
where my heroine passed so much of her life. It is supposed
by some to be a Van der Helst. It represents a golden-brown
grandmother, with a coiffe and a ruffle and a grand chain round
her neck, and a ring on her forefinger, and a double-winged
house in the background. This placid-faced Dutchwoman, exist-
ing two centuries ago, has some looks still living in the face
of the Dorothea Vanborough of these days. Her descendants
have changed their name and their dress, cast away their ruffles,
forgotten the story of their early origin; but there is still a
something that tells of it,-in Dolly's slow quaint grace and
crumpled bronze hair, in her brother George's black brows, in
## p. 12289 (#335) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12289
their aunt Lady Sarah Francis's round brown eyes and big ears,
to say nothing of her store of blue Dutch china. Tall blue pots,
with dragon handles, are ranged in rows upon the chimney-board
under the picture. On either side of the flame below are blue
tiles, that Lady Sarah's husband brought over from The Hague
the year before he died. Abraham, Jonah, Noah, Balaam tum-
bling off his blue ass,-the whole sacred history is there, lighted
up by the flaring flame of the logs.
When first George and Dolly came to live in the old house,
then it was the pictures came to life. The ass began to call out
"Balaam! Balaam! " the animals to walk two by two (all blue)
into the ark. Jonah's whale swallowed and disgorged him night
after night, as George and Dolly sat at their aunt's knee listen-
ing to her stories in the dusk of the "children's hour"; and the
vivid life that childhood strikes even into inanimate things awak-
ened the widow's dull heart and the silent house in the old by-
lane in Kensington.
The lady over the fireplace had married in King Charles's
reign: she was Dorothea Vanborough, and the first Countess of
Churchtown. Other countesses followed in due course, of whom
one or two were engraved in the passage overhead; the last was
a miniature in Lady Sarah's own room, her mother and my
heroine's grandmother,—a beautiful person, who had grievously
offended by taking a second husband soon after her lord's demise
in 1806. This second husband was himself a member of the
Vanborough family, a certain Colonel Stanham Vanborough, .
a descendant of the lady over the chimney-piece. He was after-
ward killed in the Peninsula. Lady Sarah bitterly resented her
mother's marriage, and once said she would never forgive it.
It was herself that she never forgave for her own unforgiveness.
She was a generous-hearted woman; fantastic, impressionable, re-
served. When her mother died soon after Colonel Vanborough,
it was to her own home that Lady Sarah brought her little half-
brother, now left friendless, and justly ignored by the 'Peerage,'
where the elder sister's own life was concisely detailed as
«dau.
John Vanborough, last Earl of Churchtown, b. 1790, m. 1807, to
Darby Francis, Esq. of Church House, Kensington. "
Young Stanham Vanborough found but a cold welcome from
Mr. Francis; but much faithful care and affection, lavished, not
without remorse, by the sister who had been so long estranged.
The boy grew up in time, and went out into the world, and
XXI-769
―
## p. 12290 (#336) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12290
became a soldier as his father had been. He was a simple,
straightforward youth, very fond of his sister and loath to leave
her, but very glad to be his own master at last. He married in
India the daughter of a Yorkshire baronet; a pretty young lady,
who had come out to keep her brother's house. Her name was
Philippa Henley, and her fortune consisted chiefly in golden hair
and two pearly rows of teeth. The marriage was not so happy
as it might have been: trouble came, children died; the poor
parents, in fear and trembling, sent their one little boy home to
Lady Sarah to save his life. And then, some three years later,
their little daughter Dolly was making her way, a young traveler
by land and by sea, coming from the distant Indian station where
she had been born, to the shelter of the old house in the old
by-lane in Kensington. The children found the door open wide,
and the lonely woman on her threshold looking out for them.
Mr. Francis was dead, and it was an empty house by this time,
out of which a whole home had passed away. Lady Sarah's
troubles were over, leaving little behind; the silence of mid-life
had succeeded to the loving turmoils and jealousies and anxieties
of earlier days; only some memories remained, of which the very
tears and words seemed wanting now and then,-although other
people may have thought that if words failed the widow, the
silent deeds were there that should belong to all past affection.
One of the first things Dolly remembers is a landing-place
one bitter east-winded morning, with the white blast blowing
dry and fierce from the land, and swirling out to sea through
the leafless forest of shipping; the squalid houses fast closed and
double-locked upon their sleeping inmates; the sudden storms of
dust and wind; the distant clanking of some awakening peal; and
the bewildered ayah, in her rings and bangles, squatting on the
ground and veiling her face in white muslin.
By the side of the ayah stands my heroine, a little puppy-like
girl, staring as Indian children stare, at the strange dismal shores.
upon which they are cast; staring at the lady in the gray cloak
who had come on board, with her papa's face, and caught her in
her arms, and who is her Aunt Sarah; at the big boy of seven
in the red mittens, whose photograph her papa had shown her in
the veranda, and who is her brother George; at the luggage as
it comes bumping and stumbling off the big ship; at the passen-
gers departing. The stout little gentleman who used to take her
to see the chickens, pats Dolly on the head, and says he shall
## p. 12291 (#337) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12291
come and see her; the friendly sailor who carried her on shore
shakes hands, and then the clouds close in, and the sounds and
the faces disappear.
Presently into Dolly's gallery come pleasanter visions of the
old house at Kensington, to which Lady Sarah took her straight
away; with its brick wall and ivy creepers and many-paned win-
dows, and the stone balls at either side of the door,- on one of
which a little dark-eyed girl is sitting, expecting them.
"Who is dat? " says little three-year-old Dolly, running up
and pulling the child's pinafore, to make sure that she is real.
Children believe in many things: in fairies, and sudden dis-
appearances; they would not think it very strange if they were
to see people turn to fountains and dragons in the course of
conversation.
"That is a nice little girl like you," said Lady Sarah kindly.
"A nice little girl lite me? " said Dolly.
"Go away," says the little strange girl, hiding her face in her
hands.
"Have you come to play wiss me? My name is Dollicia-
vanble," continues Dolly, who is not shy, and quite used to the
world, having traveled so far.
"Is that your name? What a funny name! " says the little
girl, looking up. "My name is Rhoda, but they call me Dody
at our house. I's four years old. "
Dolly was three years old, but she could not speak quite plain.
She took the little girl's hand and stood by the ayah, watching
the people passing and repassing, the carriage being unpacked,
Lady Sarah directing and giving people money, George stumping
about in everybody's way, and then, somehow, everything and
everybody seem going up and down stairs, and in confusion;
she is very tired and sleepy, and forgets all the rest.
It is not
Next day Dolly wakes up crying for her mamma.
the ship any more. Everything is quite still, and her crib does
not rock up and down. "I sought she would be here," said poor
little Dolly, in a croaking, waking voice, sitting up with crum-
pled curls and bright warm cheeks. It is not her mamma, but
Aunt Sarah, who takes her up and kisses her, and tries to com-
fort her; while the ayah, Nun Comee, who has been lying on the
floor, jumps up and dances in her flowing white garment, and
snaps her black fingers, and George brings three tops to spin all
## p. 12292 (#338) ##########################################
12292
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
at once. Dolly is interested, and ceases crying; and begins to
smile and to show all her little white teeth.
Lady Sarah rarely smiled. She used to frown so as not to
show what she felt. But Dolly from the first day had seemed
to understand her; she was never afraid of her, and she used to
jump on her knee and make her welcome to the nursery.
"Is you very pretty? " said little Dolly one day, looking at
the grim face with the long nose and pinched lips. "I think
you is a very ugly aunt. " And she smiled up in the ugly aunt's
face.
"O Dolly! how naughty! " said Rhoda, who happened to be
in Dolly's nursery.
Rhoda was a little waif protégée of Lady Sarah's. She came
from the curate's home close by, and was often sent in to play
with Dolly, who would be lonely, her aunt thought, without a
companion of her own age. Rhoda was Mr. Morgan's niece, and
a timid little thing: she was very much afraid at first of Dolly;
so she was of the ayah, with her brown face and ear-rings and
monkey hands: but soon the ayah went back to India with silver
pins in her ears, taking back many messages to the poor child-
bereft parents, and a pair of Dolly's shoes as a remembrance,
and a couple of dolls for herself as a token of good-will from
her young mistress. They were for her brothers, Nun Comee
said; but it was supposed that she intended to worship them on
her return to her native land.
The ayah being gone, little Rhoda soon ceased to be afraid of
Dolly; the kind, merry, helpful little playmate, who remained be-
hind, frisking along the passages and up and down the landing-
places of Church House. She was much nicer, Rhoda thought,
than her own real cousins, the Morgans in Old Street.
As days go by, Dolly's pictures warm and brighten from
early spring into summer-time. By degrees they reach above
the table, and over and beyond the garden-roller. They are
chiefly of the old garden, whose brick walls seem to inclose sun-
shine and gaudy flowers all the summer through; of the great
Kensington parks, where in due season chestnuts are to be found.
shining among the leaves and dry grasses; of the pond where
the ducks are flapping and diving; of the house which was little
Rhoda's home. This was the great bare house in Old Street,
with plenty of noise, dried herbs, content, children without end,
## p. 12293 (#339) ##########################################
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
12293
There was also cold stalled ox on
and thick bread-and-butter.
Sundays at one.
In those days life was a simple matter to the children: their
days and their legs lengthened together; they loved, they learned,
and they looked for a time that was never to be,- when their
father and mother should come home and live with them again,
and everybody was to be happy. As yet the children thought
they were only expecting happiness.
George went to school at Frant, near Tunbridge Wells, and
came home for the holidays. Dolly had a governess too; and she
used to do her lessons with little Rhoda in the slanting school-
room at the top of Church House. The little girls did a great
many sums, and learned some French, and read 'Little Arthur's
History of England' to everybody's satisfaction.
Kind Lady Sarah wrote careful records of the children's
progress to her brother, who had sent them to the faithful old
sister at home. He heard of the two growing up with good.
care and much love in the sunshine that streamed upon the old
garden; playing together on the terrace that he remembered so
well; pulling up the crocuses and the violets that grew in the
shade of the white holly-tree. George was a quaint, clever boy,
Sarah wrote; Dolly was not so quick, but happy and obedient,
and growing up like a little spring flower among the silent old
bricks.
Lady Sarah also kept up a desultory correspondence with
Philippa, her sister-in-law. Mrs. Vanborough sent many minute
directions about the children: Dolly was to dine off cold meat for
her complexion's sake, and she wished her to have her hair
crimped; and George was to wear kid gloves and write a better
hand; and she hoped they were very good, and that they some-
times saw their cousin Robert, and wrote to their uncle, Sir
Thomas Henley, Henley Court, Smokethwaite, Yorkshire; and
she and dear papa often and often longed for their darlings.
Then came presents: a spangled dress for Lady Sarah, and silver
ornaments for Dolly, and an Indian sword for George with
which he nearly cut off Rhoda's head.
## p. 12294 (#340) ##########################################
12294
ANNE THACKERAY RITCHIE
MY FATHER'S MOTHER
From Chapters from Some Unwritten Memoirs. Copyright 1894, by Harper
& Brothers
ON
NE's early life is certainly a great deal more amusing to look
back to than it used to be when it was going on. For one
thing, it isn't nearly so long now as it was then; and re-
membered events come cheerfully scurrying up one after another,
while the intervening periods are no longer the portentous cycles
they once were. And another thing to consider is, that the peo-
ple walking in and out of the bygone mansions of life were not,
to our newly opened eyes, the interesting personages many of
them have since become: then they were men walking as trees
before us, without names or histories; now some of the very
names mean for us the history of our time. Very young people's
eyes are certainly of more importance to them than their ears,
and they all see the persons they are destined to spend their
lives with, long before the figures begin to talk and to explain
themselves.
My grandmother had a little society of her own at Paris, in
the midst of which she seemed to reign from dignity and kind-
ness of heart; her friends, it must be confessed, have not as yet
become historic, but she herself was well worthy of a record.
Grandmothers in books and memoirs are mostly alike, stately,
old-fashioned, kindly, and critical. Mine was no exception to the
general rule.
She had been one of the most beautiful women
of her time; she was very tall, with a queenly head and carriage;
she always moved in a dignified way. She had an odd taste in
dress, I remember, and used to walk out in a red merino cloak
trimmed with ermine, which gave her the air of a retired empress
wearing out her robes. She was a woman of strong feeling,
somewhat imperious, with a passionate love for little children,
and with extraordinary sympathy and enthusiasm for any one in
trouble or in disgrace. How benevolently she used to look round
the room at her many protégés, with her beautiful gray eyes!
Her friends as a rule were shorter than she was, and brisker,
less serious and emotional. They adopted her views upon poli-
tics, religion, and homœopathy, or at all events did not venture to
contradict them. But they certainly could not reach her heights,
and her almost romantic passion of feeling.
-
## p. 12295 (#341) ##########################################
12295
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
(1860-)
T
HE writings of Charles G. D. Roberts are distinguished by
an imaginative quality, which in its most perfect expres-
sion elevates them to a high plane of originality; and even
in its fainter manifestations lends charm to them. This quality is
instinct in both his prose and his verse; like a subtle fragrance it
attracts and eludes the reader, who will return to his poems and his
stories when works of more palpable excellence are forgotten. He
is an exquisite poet of the minor order; his limitations are well de-
fined, but within them he is complete and
satisfying. The writer of 'An Epitaph for
a Husbandman' and 'The Deserted City'
has not the range of the earth and sky;
but the fields which are his he has made
beautiful.
He is still a young man, so judgment of
his work must take account of the unknown
element of the future. He was born in
New Brunswick, Canada, in 1860; and was
the son of a Church of England clergyman,
from whom he received his early educa-
After graduation from the University
Two
of New Brunswick, he became in 1879 head- CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
master of Chatham Grammar School.
years later he edited the Toronto Week for a short time.
In 1885
he was appointed professor of modern literature in King's College,
Windsor. He has lately resigned his chair to devote himself entirely
to literature. His first volume of poetry is entitled 'Orion and Other
Poems. ' 'In Divers Tones' appeared in 1887, and subsequently
'Songs of the Common Day,' and 'The Book of the Native. '
Much of Mr. Roberts's most finished and significant work appears
in these two last-named volumes. Songs of the Common Day' con-
tains an ode on the Shelley centenary, entitled 'Ave,' which attains
in parts to a high degree of impassioned strength and beauty. This
collection includes also a number of sonnets; in which form of verse
he is peculiarly successful, understanding as he does the spiritual
requirements of the sonnet, its temper of restraint, its frugal music.
'The Book of the Native' is rich in poems most characteristic of
## p. 12296 (#342) ##########################################
12296
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
the author's peculiar gifts. These are not alone a delicate sense of
melody, and a sympathetic understanding of the requirements of the
various verse forms: they include those endowments without which
true poetry cannot come into being,-passion, insight, sympathy.
Mr. Roberts's poems of nature are warm with life. To him—
"Life is good and love is eager
In the playground of the sun. »
In his Epitaph for a Husbandman' this simple, objective exulta-
tion in nature's bounties gives place to the recognition of the silent
companionship of man with Mother Earth and her creatures. The
poem bears about it the cool gray air of the twilit farm, the kindly
scent of the soil. The pathos of this, as of other of his poems, is
hidden in the general and the impersonal. It is the pathos of all
human life,— running its course, coming back at last to the great
Mother, as a child at evening. The sailor, "wooing the East to win
the West," whose "will was the water's will"; the farmer in his
fields, the child among "the comrade grasses," return to sleep on the
bosom of nature.
His lyrics are graceful and full of melody: there is the rush of
the tide in the movement of The Lone Wharf'; the passionate heart
of the night throbs in the first two verses of the Trysting Song. '
His ballads have not the same beauty; although there are lines in
them, as in all of his poems, of the true poetical quality.
Mr. Roberts's prose possesses the same imaginative quality as his
verse, though its manifestation is along different lines. In Earth's
Enigmas,' a volume of unique short stories, there is contained some
very subtle work. The scenes of these tales are nearly all laid out
of doors, in Canadian regions with which the author is familiar:
nature is less a background in them than a wild, disturbing element,
a gigantic actor in the scene itself. In two of them, 'The Young
Ravens that Call upon Him,' and 'Strayed,' there is no trace of a
human footstep. The wandering lonely winds of the wilderness are
the very spirit of these stories. In 'The Perdu' and 'The Stone
Dog' there is a certain weird imagination, which seems unlike any-
thing but the strange quality which informs the works of Poe. The
former has a mysterious beauty which impels a re-reading, although
the tale seems nothing in itself. In this entire collection, Mr. Roberts
exhibits a high degree of sensitiveness to nature, although not always
without that mixture of the pathetic fallacy which seems inevitable in
the attitude of the present-day generation towards the natural world.
Mr. Roberts's latest book, "The Forge in the Forest,' is an Aca-
dian romance; being the narrative of the Acadian ranger, Jean de
Mer, Seigneur de Briart. Like his short stories, it is instinct with
the spirit of the wilderness.
## p. 12297 (#343) ##########################################
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
12297
•
STRAYED
From 'Earth's Enigmas. Copyright 1895, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
N THE Cabineau Camp, of unlucky reputation, there was a
young ox of splendid build, but of a wild and restless nature.
He was one of a yoke, of part Devon blood, large, dark-
red, all muscle and nerve, and with wide magnificent horns. His
yoke-fellow was a docile steady worker, the pride of his owner's
heart; but he himself seemed never to have been more than half
broken in. The woods appeared to draw him by some spell.
He wanted to get back to the pastures where he had roamed un-
trammeled of old with his fellow-steers. The remembrance was
in his heart of the dewy mornings when the herd used to feed
together on the sweet grassy hillocks; and of the clover-smelling
heats of June, when they would gather hock-deep in the pools
under the green willow shadows. He hated the yoke, he hated
the winter; and he imagined that in the wild pastures he remem-
bered, it would be forever summer. If only he could get back
to those pastures!
One day there came the longed-for opportunity; and he seized
it. He was standing unyoked beside his mate, and none of the
teamsters were near. His head went up in the air, and with a
snort of triumph he dashed away through the forest. For a little
while there was a vain pursuit. At last the lumbermen gave it
up. "Let him be! " said his owner, "an' I rayther guess he'll
turn up ag'in when he gets peckish. He kaint browse on spruce.
buds an' lungwort. "
Plunging on with long gallop through the snow, he was soon
miles from camp.
Growing weary, he slackened his pace. He
came down to a walk. As the lonely red of the winter sunset
began to stream through the openings of the forest, flushing
the snows of the tiny glades and swales, he grew hungry, and
began to swallow unsatisfying mouthfuls of the long moss which
roughened the tree-trunks. Ere the moon got up he had filled
himself with this fodder, and then he lay down in a little thicket
for the night.
But some miles back from his retreat a bear had chanced
upon his footprints. A strayed steer! That would be an easy
prey. The bear started straightway in pursuit. The moon was
high in heaven when the crouched ox heard his pursuer's ap-
proach. He had no idea what was coming, but he rose to his
feet and waited.
## p. 12298 (#344) ##########################################
12298
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
The bear plunged boldly into the thicket, never dreaming of
resistance. With a muffled roar the ox charged upon him, and
bore him to the ground. Then he wheeled, and charged again,
and the astonished bear was beaten at once. Gored by those
keen horns, he had no stomach for further encounter, and would
fain have made his escape; but as he retreated, the ox charged
him again, dashing him against a huge trunk. The bear dragged
himself up with difficulty beyond his opponent's reach; and the
ox turned scornfully back to his lair.
At the first yellow of dawn, the restless creature was again
upon the march. He pulled more mosses by the way; but he
disliked them the more intensely now, because he thought he
must be nearing his ancient pastures, with their tender grass and
their streams. The snow was deeper about him, and his hatred
of the winter grew apace. He came out upon a hillside, partly
open, whence the pine had years before been stripped, and where
now grew young birches thick together. Here he browsed on
the aromatic twigs; but for him it was harsh fare. As his hun-
ger increased he thought a little longingly of the camp he had
deserted; but he dreamed not of turning back. He would keep
on till he reached his pastures, and the glad herd of his com-
rades, licking salt out of the trough beside the accustomed pool.
He had some blind instinct as to his direction, and kept his course
to the south very strictly, the desire in his heart continually lead-
ing him aright.
That afternoon he was attacked by a panther, which dropped
out of a tree and tore his throat. He dashed under a low branch,
and scraped his assailant off; then, wheeling about savagely, put
the brute to flight with his first mad charge. The panther sprang
back into his tree, and the ox continued his quest.
Soon his steps grew weaker; for the panther's cruel claws had
gone deep into his neck, and his path was marked with blood.
Yet the dream in his great wild eyes was not dimmed as his
strength ebbed away. His weakness he never noticed or heeded.
The desire that was urging him absorbed all other thoughts,-
even, almost, his sense of hunger. This however it was easy for
him to assuage, after a fashion; for the long, gray, unnourish-
ing mosses were abundant.
----
By-and-by his path led him into the bed of a stream, whose
waters could be heard faintly tinkling on thin pebbles beneath
their coverlet of ice and snow. His slow steps conducted him
far along this open course. Soon after he had disappeared around
## p. 12299 (#345) ##########################################
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
12299
a curve in the distance, there came the panther, following stealth-
ily upon his crimsoned trail. The crafty beast was waiting till
the bleeding and the hunger should do its work, and the object of
its inexorable pursuit should have no more heart left for resist-
ance.
This was late in the afternoon. The ox was now possessed
with his desire, and would not lie down for any rest.
All night
long, through the gleaming silver of the open spaces, through
the weird and checkered gloom of the deep forest, heedless even
of his hunger,- or perhaps driven the more by it as he thought
of the wild clover bunches and tender timothy awaiting him,-
the solitary ox strove on. And all night, lagging far behind in
his unabating caution, the panther followed him.
At sunrise the worn and stumbling animal came out upon the
borders of the great lake, stretching its leagues of unshadowed
snow away to the south before him. There was his path, and
without hesitation he followed it. The wide and frost-bound
water here and there had been swept clear of its snows by the
wind, but for the most part its, covering lay unruffled; and the
pale dove-colors and saffrons and rose-lilacs of the dawn were
sweetly reflected on its surface.
The doomed ox was now journeying very slowly, and with
the greatest labor. He staggered at every step, and his beau-
tiful head drooped almost to the snow. When he had got a
great way out upon the lake, at the forest's edge appeared the
pursuing panther, emerging cautiously from the coverts. The
round tawny face and malignant green eyes were raised to peer
out across the expanse. The laboring progress of the ox was
promptly marked. Dropping its nose again to the ensanguined
snow, the beast resumed his pursuit, first at a slow trot, and then
at a long elastic gallop. By this time the ox's quest was nearly
done. He plunged forward upon his knees, rose again with
difficulty, stood still, and looked around him. His eyes were
clouding over, but he saw dimly the tawny brute that was now
hard upon his steps. Back came a flash of the old courage, and
he turned, horns lowered, to face the attack. With the last of
his strength he charged, and the panther paused irresolutely; but
the wanderer's knees gave way beneath his own impetus, and his
horns plowed the snow. With a deep bellowing groan he rolled
over on his side, and the longing and the dream of the pleasant
pastures faded from his eyes. With a great spring the panther
## p. 12300 (#346) ##########################################
12300
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
was upon him, and
knew naught of it.
quered him.
the eager teeth were at his throat,— but he
No wild beast, but his own desire, had con-
When the panther had slaked his thirst for blood, he raised
his head and stood with his fore-paws resting on the dead ox's
side, and gazed all about him.
To one watching from the lake shore, had there been any one
to watch in that solitude, the wild beast and his prey would have
seemed but a speck of black on the gleaming waste. At the
same hour, league upon league back in the depth of the ancient
forest, a lonely ox was lowing in his stanchions, restless, refusing
to eat, grieving for the absence of his yoke-fellow.
THE UNSLEEPING
From 'Book of the Native. ' Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
SOOTHE to unimagined sleep
The sunless bases of the deep;
And then I stir the aching tide
That gropes in its reluctant side.
I heave aloft the smoking hill;
To silent peace its throes I still.
But ever at its heart of fire
I lurk, an unassuaged desire.
I wrap me in the sightless germ
An instant or an endless term;
And still its atoms are my care,
Dispersed in ashes or in air.
I hush the comets one by one
To sleep for ages in the sun;
The sun resumes before my face
His circuit of the shores of space.
The mount, the star, the germ, the deep,
They all shall wake, they all shall sleep.
Time, like a flurry of wild rain,
Shall drip across the darkened pane.
Space in the dim predestined hour
Shall crumble like a ruined tower.
I only, with unfaltering eye,
Shall watch the dreams of God go by.
## p. 12301 (#347) ##########################################
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
12301
AN EPITAPH FOR A HUSBANDMAN
From Book of the Native. Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
E WHO Would start and rise
Before the crowing cocks,—
No more he lifts his eyes,
Whoever knocks.
HⓇ
He who before the stars
Would call the cattle home,-
They wait about the bars
For him to come.
Him at whose hearty calls
The farmstead woke again,—
The horses in their stalls
Expect in vain.
Busy and blithe and bold,
He labored for the morrow;
The plow his hands would hold
Rests in the furrow.
His fields he had to leave,
His orchards cool and dim;
The clods he used to cleave
Now cover him.
But the green, growing things
Lean kindly to his sleep; -
White roots and wandering strings,
Closer they creep.
Because he loved them long,
And with them bore his part,
Tenderly now they throng
About his heart.
Β΄
THE LITTLE FIELD OF PEACE
From Book of the Native. ' Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
Y THE long wash of his ancestral sea
He sleeps how quietly!
How quiet the unlifting eyelids lie
Under this tranquil sky!
## p. 12302 (#348) ##########################################
12302
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
The little busy hands and restless feet
Here find that rest is sweet; -
-
For, sweetly from the hands grown tired of play
The child-world slips away,
With its confusion of forgotten toys
And kind, familiar noise.
Not lonely does he lie in his last bed,
For love o'erbroods his head.
Kindly to him the comrade grasses lean
Their fellowship of green.
The wilding meadow companies give heed:
Brave tansy, and the weed
That on the dike-top lifts its dauntless stalk,—
Around his couch they talk.
The shadows of the oak-tree flit and play
Above his dreams all day.
The wind that was his playmate on the hills
His sleep with music fills.
Here in this tender acre by the tide
His vanished kin abide.
Ah! what compassionate care for him they keep,
Too soon returned to sleep!
They watch him in this little field of peace
Where they have found release.
Not as a stranger or alone he went
Unto his long content;
But kissed to sleep and comforted lies he
By his ancestral sea.
MARSYAS
From 'Songs of the Common Day. By permission of Mr. Roberts and his
publishers
LITTLE gray hill-glade, close-turfed, withdrawn
Beyond resort or heed of trafficking feet,
Ringed round with slim trunks of the mountain-ash.
Through the slim trunks and scarlet bunches flash
Beneath the clear, chill glitterings of the dawn —
Far off, the crests where down the rosy shore
-
The Pontic surges beat.
The plains lie dim below. The thin airs wash
The circuit of the autumn-colored hills,
A
## p. 12303 (#349) ##########################################
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
12303
And this high glade whereon
The satyr pipes, who soon shall pipe no more.
He sits against the beech-tree's mighty bole;
He leans, and with persuasive breathing fills
The happy shadows of the slant-set lawn.
The goat-feet fold beneath a gnarlèd root,
And sweet and sweet the note that steals and thrills
From slender stops of that shy flute.
Then to the goat-feet comes the wide-eyed fawn
Hearkening: the rabbits fringe the glade, and lay
Their long ears to the sound;
In the pale boughs the partridge gather round,
And quaint hern from the sea-green river reeds;
The wild ram halts upon a rocky horn
O'erhanging; and unmindful of his prey,
The leopard steals with narrow lids to lay
His spotted length along the ground.
The thin airs wash, the thin clouds wander by,
And those hushed listeners move not.
He pipes, soft swaying, and with half-shut eye
In rapt content of utterance,—
All the morn
Nor heeds
The young god standing in his branchy place;
The languor on his lips; and in his face
Divinely inaccessible, the scorn.
THE FLIGHT OF THE GEESE
From Songs of the Common Day. By permission of Mr. Roberts and his
publishers
HEAR the long wind wash the softening snow,
I
The low tide loiter down the shore. The night,
Full filled with April forecast, hath no light;
The salt wave on the sedge-flat pulses slow.
Through the hid furrows lisp in murmurous flow
The thaw's shy ministers; and hark! the height
Of heaven grows weird and loud with unseen flight
Of strong hosts prophesying as they go!
High through the drenched and hollow night their wings
Beat northward hard on winter's trail. The sound
Of their confused and solemn voices, borne
Athwart the dark to their long arctic morn,
Comes with a sanction and an awe profound,
A boding of unknown, foreshadowed things.
## p. 12304 (#350) ##########################################
CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS
12304
BESIDE THE WINTER SEA
From Book of the Native. ' Copyright 1896, by Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
S ONE who sleeps and hears across his dream
The cry of battles ended long ago,
Inland I hear the calling of the sea.
I hear its hollow voices, though between
AⓇ
My wind-worn dwelling and thy wave-worn strand
How many miles, how many mountains are!
And thou beside the winter sea alone
Art walking with thy cloak about thy face.
Bleak, bleak the tide, and evening coming on;
And gray the pale, pale light that wans thy face.
Solemnly breaks the long wave at thy feet;
And sullenly in patches clings the snow
Upon the low, red rocks worn round with years.
I see thine eyes, I see their grave desire,
Unsatisfied and lonely as the sea's,-
Yet how unlike the wintry sea's despair!
For could my feet but follow thine, my hands
But reach for thy warm hands beneath thy cloak,
What summer joy would lighten in thy face,
What sunshine warm thy eyes, and thy sad mouth
Break to a dewy rose and laugh on mine!
THE DESERTED CITY
From 'Songs of the Common Day. By permission of Mr. Roberts and his
publishers
HERE lies a little city leagues away;
Its wharves the green sea washes all day long,
Its busy sun-bright wharves with sailor's song
And clamor of trade ring loud the livelong day.
Into the happy harbor hastening gay
With press of snowy canvas, tall ships throng.
The peopled streets to blithe-eyed Peace belong,
Glad housed beneath these crowding roofs of gray.
THER
'Twas long ago the city prospered so;
For yesterday a woman died therein,
Since when the wharves are idle fallen, I know,
And in the streets is hushed the pleasant din;
The thronging ships have been, the songs have been.
Since yesterday it is so long ago.
## p. 12305 (#351) ##########################################
12305
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON
(1816-1853)
MONG the souls which refused the haven where Newman had
found peace, because they dreamed of longer voyages and
of undiscovered lands, few so suffered in the lonelier seas
of their choice as did Frederick William Robertson. His short intense
life was spent in a spiritual isolation from his fellows, which was
partly the result of temperament, partly of his ability to see clearer
and farther than most men into the mysteries of existence. He never
found home. It seemed, indeed, as if a divine nostalgia drew him
out of the world. He left it still young,
struggling, the questions upon his lips,
the desire in his heart; faring forth into
the lands of God as one who could not mis-
trust the divine Lover, and would fain learn
of himself the meaning of the confused
earthly existence, which had only deepened
his dejection. He was indeed the embodi-
ment of the religious spirit of the end of
the century. He exhibited its most strik-
ing characteristics: its dependence upon
conduct rather than emotion; its glorifi-
cation of morality; its humanism, its hun-
ger for God, hidden under a pantheistic
composure; its adoration of Jesus, as the
one wholly comforting figure in the bleak perspectives of human
history; finally, he held its conception of Christianity as a life, not a
creed. The man who wrote, "The religion of Christ is not a law
but a spirit, not a creed but a life," had felt within him the forces
of a new realization of religion as yet unperceived by his generation.
He suffered in consequence the pangs of those who travail to bring
forth the new which will supplant the old.
His short life of thirty-seven years was lived in a transitional
period of England's spiritual development, when through the pray-
ers of both ritualist and evangelical might be heard strange voices
speaking of strange things,-of a universe emptied of God, of man
without a soul.
XXI-770
F. W. ROBERTSON
## p. 12306 (#352) ##########################################
12306
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON
Robertson was born in 1816, in London. His father was a captain
in the Royal Artillery; the boy grew up therefore in the atmosphere
of the military life, and imbibed not a few of its nobler ideals. Until
he was five years old he was at Leith Fort, where his father was
stationed. In 1821 the latter retired to Beverley; there Robertson
attended the grammar school, going later to Tours for the sake of
learning the French tongue. After a year he returned home, contin-
uing his education at the Edinburgh Academy and then at the Uni-
versity. His elevation of character, his nobility of mind, led to a
proposal from his father that he should enter the church; but he re-
fused on the ground of his unworthiness. At the age of eighteen he
was articled to a solicitor in Bury St. Edmunds; but a year's study
so undermined his health that he was obliged to give up the project
of studying the law. His name was then entered on the list of the
3d Dragoons. He spent two years in preparation for military service;
but on the eve of receiving his commission, in 1837, he matriculated
at Brasenose College, Oxford. There he read extensively, coming
under the influence of Plato and Aristotle, of Butler and Jonathan
Edwards. With the Tractarian movement he seems to have had
little sympathy, his temper at that stage of his development being
evangelical. He was being drawn gradually into the church: in July
1840, he was ordained by the Bishop of Winchester, and immediately
entered upon ministerial work in that place. His enthusiasm led
him, however, into excesses of self-denial and of religious exercises,
so that his health being undermined, he was obliged to go abroad
within a year.
It was during his sojourn in Switzerland that he met and married
Helen, third daughter of Sir George William Denys. Upon his return
to England in 1842 he accepted the curacy of Cheltenham, where he
remained for four years; a period of great importance in his life, for
his religious views were gradually undergoing a radical change. Of
a temperament characterized by its reasonableness and by its sen-
sitiveness to reality, what he considered the extravagance and the
cant of the extreme evangelical party filled him with repugnance.
Moreover he had come under the influence of Carlyle and Emerson,
and was beginning to think that dogma occupied too large a place
in religion. He himself was too much of a man of the world in the
best sense, to remain long fettered by what he believed to be pro-
vincial in a church party. He cut loose therefore from his moorings,
and ventured out upon that sea which stretches beyond the limits
of the world. At first he was to encounter only night and the terror
of the unknown.
"It is an awful moment," he writes, "when the soul begins to find that the
props on which it has blindly rested so long are many of them rotten, and
## p. 12307 (#353) ##########################################
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROBERTSON
12307
begins to suspect them all; when it begins to feel the nothingness of many of
the traditionary opinions which have been received with implicit confidence, and
in that horrible insecurity begins also to doubt whether there be anything to
believe at all. It is an awful hour-let him who has passed through it say
how awful - when this life has lost its meaning, and seems shriveled into a
span; when the grave appears to be the end of all, human goodness nothing
but a name, and the sky above this universe a dead expanse, black with the
void from which God himself has disappeared.
I know of but one
way in which a man may come forth from his agony scathless; it is by hold-
ing fast to those things which are certain still,- the grand, simple landmarks
of morality. If there be no God and no future state, yet even then it is bet-
ter to be generous than selfish, better to be chaste than licentious, better to be
true than false, better to be brave than a coward. »
Like many other noble spirits of the time, he found in right con-
duct, in the keeping of the commandments, that "upon which his soul
might assuredly rest and depend"; despite the suffering incident upon
his growth, he entered through this new hope into a conception of
Christianity as being primarily not a theological system but a life,
not a religion of emotion but one of principle. He believed that
under this aspect of it only could it become a universal religion,
making its appeal not to the changing intellect but to the eternal
conscience of the race.
―――
These new phases in Robertson's development led to his giving up
the curacy of Cheltenham, and after a short residence abroad, and
a few subsequent months at Oxford - to entrance upon his famous min-
istry at Trinity Chapel, Brighton. There he preached sermons which
attracted the attention of all England, and there he endeavored to
realize his new conception of Christianity, which seemed little short
of heretical to his generation. He founded a workingman's institute,
and was called a socialist; he preached the religion of holiness, and
was accused of heresy: yet his sermons seem wholly reasonable and
beautiful to this generation. They exhibit a remarkable clearness of
spiritual insight, profound knowledge of human nature, and a sweet-
ness, born of strength, most winning in its warm humanity. Never-
theless his teachings were misunderstood; in obscure ways he was
persecuted. His sensitive spirit, which could expand only in the at-
mosphere of sympathy, drew into itself in pain. He suffered likewise
from religious doubt and terror. He had chosen the eternal rather
than the finite; but its vastness struck a chill to a nature made for
the uses of love, for the intimacy and definiteness of affection.
He died on the 15th of August, 1853, knowing that his unfinished
life could be completed only in the lives of his spiritual children,
breathing the air of a time more friendly to a wider interpretation
of the gospel.
