Lays and Legends (Second Series)

What prisoned hands have torn at the stone
Where your soft hand lies – oh my heart! – alone?
What prisoned eyes have grown blind with tears
To see what we see after all these years —
The free, broad river go smoothly by
And the free, blithe birds 'neath the free, blue sky?

And now – O Time, how you work your will!
– The pitiless walls are standing still,
But the wall-flowers blossom on every ledge,
And the wild rose garlands the walls' sheer edge,
And where once the imprisoned heart beat low,
The beautiful pigeons fly to and fro!

In the sad, stern arches they build and pair,
As happy as dreams and as free as air,
And sorrow and longing and life-long pain
Man brings not into these walls again;
And yet – O my love, with the face of flowers —
What do we bring in these hearts of ours?

RUCKINGE CHURCH

"And we said how dreary and desolate and forlorn the church was, and how long it was since any music but that of the moth-eaten harmonium and the heartless mixed choir had sounded there. And we said: 'Poor old church! it will never hear any true music any more'. Then she turned to us from the door of the Lady Chapel, which was plastered and whitewashed, and had a stove and the Evangelical Almanac in it, and her eyes were full of tears. And, standing there, she sang 'Ave Maria' – it was Gounod's music, I think – with her voice and her face like an angel's. And while she sang a stranger came to the church door and stood listening, but he did not see us. Only we saw that he loved her singing. And he went away as soon as the hymn was ended, we also soon following, and the church was left lonely as before." —Extract from our Diary.

The boat crept slowly through the water-weeds
That greenly cover all the waterways,
Between high banks where ranks of sedge and reeds
Sigh one sad secret all their quiet days,
Through grasses, water-mint and rushes green
And flags and strange wet blossoms, only seen
Where man so seldom comes, so briefly stays.

From the high bank the sheep looked calmly down,
Unscared to see my boat and me go by;
The elm trees showed their dress of golden brown
To winds that should disrobe them presently;
And a marsh sunset flamed across the wold,
And the still water caught the lavished gold,
The primrose and the purple of the sky.

The boat pressed ever through the weeds and sedge
Which, rustling, clung her steadfast prow around;
The iris nodded at the water's edge,
Bats in the elm trees made a ghostly sound;
With whirring wings a wild duck sprang to sight
And flew, black-winged, towards the crimson light,
Leaving my solitude the more profound.

We moved towards the church, my boat and I —
The church that at the marsh edge stands alone;
It caught the reflex of the sunset sky
On golden-lichened roof and gray-green stone.
Through snow and shower and sunshine it had stood
In the thronged graveyard's infinite solitude,
While many a year had come, and flowered, and gone.

From the marsh-meadow to the field of graves
But just a step, across a lichened wall.
Thick o'er the happy dead the marsh grass waves,
And cloudy wreaths of marsh mist gather and fall,
And the marsh sunsets shed their gold and red
Over still hearts that once in torment fed
At Life's intolerable festival.

The plaster of the porch has fallen away
From the lean stones, that now are all awry,
And through the chinks a shooting ivy spray
Creeps in – sad emblem of fidelity —
And wreathes with life the pillars and the beams
Hewn long ago – with, ah! what faith and dreams! —
By men whose faith and dreams have long gone by.

The rusty key, the heavy rotten door,
The dead, unhappy air, the pillars green
With mould and damp, the desecrated floor
With bricks and boards where tombstones
should have been
And were once; all the musty, dreary chill —
They strike a shudder through my being still
When memory lights again that lightless scene.

And where the altar stood, and where the Christ
Reached out His arms to all the world, there stood
Law-tables, as if love had not sufficed
To all the world has ever known of good!
Our Lady's chapel was a lightless shrine;
There was no human heart and no divine,
No odour of prayer, no altar, and no rood.

There was no scent of incense in the air,
No sense of all the past breathed through the aisle,
The white glass windows turned to mocking glare
The lovely sunset's gracious rosy smile.
A vault, a tomb wherein was laid to sleep
All that a man might give his life to keep
If only for an instant's breathing while!

Cold with my rage against the men who held