Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Cowpers GraveElizabeth Barrett Browning (18061861)
I
It is a place where happy saints may weep amid their praying.
Yet let the grief and humbleness, as low as silence, languish:
Earth surely now may give her calm to whom she gave her anguish.
O Christians, at your Cross of hope, a hopeless hand was clinging!
O men, this man in brotherhood your weary paths beguiling,
Groan’d inly while he taught you peace, and died while ye were smiling!
How discord on the music fell, and darkness on the glory,
And how when, one by one, sweet sounds and wandering lights departed,
He wore no less a loving face because so broken-hearted,
And bow the meekest Christian down in meeker adoration;
Nor ever shall he be, in praise, by wise or good forsaken,
Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken.
With meekness that is gratefulness to God whose heaven hath won him,
Who suffer’d once the madness-cloud to His own love to blind him,
But gently led the blind along where breath and bird could find him;
As hills have language for, and stars, harmonious influences.
The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number,
And silent shadows from the trees refresh’d him like a slumber.
Uplooking to his human eyes with sylvan tendernesses.
The very world, by God’s constraint, from falsehood’s ways removing,
Its women and its men became, beside him, true and loving.
And things provided came without the sweet sense of providing,
He testified this solemn truth, while frenzy desolated,
—Nor man nor nature satisfy whom only God created.
And drops upon his burning brow the coolness of her kisses,—
That turns his fevered eyes around—‘My mother! where ’s my mother?’—
As if such tender words and deeds could come from any other!—
Her face all pale from watchful love, the unweary love she bore him!—
Thus, woke the poet from the dream his life’s long fever gave him,
Beneath those deep pathetic Eyes, which closed in death to save him.
Wherein he scarcely heard the chant of seraphs, round him breaking,
Or felt the new immortal throb of soul from body parted,
But felt those eyes alone, and knew,—‘My Saviour! not deserted!’
Upon the Victim’s hidden face, no love was manifested?
What frantic hands outstretch’d have e’er the atoning drops averted?
What tears have wash’d them from the soul, that one should be deserted?
And Adam’s sins have swept between the righteous Son and Father.
Yea, once, Immanuel’s orphan’d cry his universe hath shaken—
It went up single, echoless, ‘My God, I am forsaken!’
That, of the lost, no son should use those words of desolation!
That earth’s worst frenzies, marring hope, should mar not hope’s fruition,
And I, on Cowper’s grave, should see his rapture in a vision.