Lugano

In Mary’s Church of Angels by the shore—
        Wherein Luini, labouring for his bread,
        Painted the Bread of Heaven, a Saviour dead,

And gained not gold, but fame for evermore—
Is Christ the Child, and She whom men adore:
        He rides no horse, bestrides a lamb instead,
        Facing the boy Saint John with curly head,
And heart ripe-full of frolic to the core.

But I might see how still the Saviour-Child
    Looked for communion to His Mother’s eyes,
        And questioning held the lambkin by its ear,
    While She, as if She felt how sacrifice
        And some dark day of doom was drawing near,
With sweet assent most pitifully smiled.

(Sonnets in Switzerland and Italy, p. 67)

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The brave blacksmith of Calvinia who died rather than betray our Empire’s cause.

Prince-Loyalist of all the black man’s race,
    Tho’ someone blundered and the bloody deed
    That sealed your murderer’s shame must wait
            its meed
Before God’s great White Throne; and though your
            case
Men left unnoted, Justice sure shall trace
    Endictment on that scroll the angels read,
    And we who reap your death’s heroic seed
Shall one day meet and thank you face to face.

For you alone in dread Calvinia’s day
    Dared face the furious rebels’ cruel lust,
        Dared yield your body to the scourge and
            thong,
Rather than cast your Empire’s cause away,
        And with your spirit’s hammer brave and
            strong
    You welded black to white in bonds of trust.     

(A Sonnet Chronicle, p. 7)

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Singer of songs most simple & most sweet,
With artlessness that only Art commands,
Thy notes are hushed, thy lute has slipped thy hands,
And lies, still echoing with thy heart’s last beat,
Full tuned and fit for service, at thy feet.
But whoso would enlist its strands
Must have the touch its melody demands,
And eyes of love that lowliest things will greet.
A willing prisoner in thy dainty sphere
In thee the dumb creation found a voice;
No wings that flashed but did thy song rejoice,
No hedge-row cry but found a listening ear.
Child-hearted thou, by nature as by choice—
True Christian Poet, blameless Sonneteer!

(Sonnets at the English Lakes, 1881, p. 1)

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Here might the lover, with a heart like June,
        Go whistling on from sunshine into shade,
From shade to sunshine; here the gentle maid
Might think the summer twilight came too soon;
Here, while o’erhead, with sympathetic croon,
The doves made memory sadder as he strayed,
Some sorrowful old man, his last hopes laid
In ashes, yet might find thy woods a boon.
The beauty, Glaisdale, of thy stream and wood
Has ages incommensurate by man;
It knows not time, it feels not any change.
In yonder narrow vale, each cot and grange
Must sing and weep alternate; but thy mood
Is joy since buds broke forth or river ran.

(Sonnets Round the Coast, p. 193)

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