My Old Letters

Front matter

MY OLD LETTERS. o.s .' 6 yipiav /AtTerjcnv, ajxo. irpoaiTiij Kai oirtcrca) Xd.o-0-ei, O7T0.S _x' apLorra (iæt ap-cpOTepOLcri yanyrai. Iliad, Book III. 109. MY OLD LETTERS BV HORATIUS BONAR, D.D. LONDON JAMES NISBET & CO., BERNERS STREET Nos tecta fovebimus ossa Violis et fronde frequent. : Titulumque et frigida saxa Liquido spargemus odore. Prudentius. Murray <_. Gib b, Edinburgh, Printers to Her Majesty's Stationery Office. Not written down in haste, but in the quiet Of thoughtful seasons, still to memory dear, When the -whole soul was calm, and the world's riot, Even in its echo, came not io my ear ; What I have thought, and felt, and seen, and heard is here. Sometimes the cloud, but oft the happier noonlight Floated above me, as I mused and sung: At times the stars, at times the mellow moonlight Gave ripeness to the fruit of pen and tongue, While o'er my ravelled dreams the years and ages hung.

In days of public strife, when, sharp and stinging, The angry words went daily to and fro. Friend against friend the polished missiles flinging. Each seeking who could launch the keenest blow, I went to thee, my harp, and bade thy numbers flow. In hours of heaviness thy solace seeking, I took thee up and woke the trembling tone Of the deep melody within thee, speaking Like the heart-broken thrush, that sits alone, Mourning its spoiled nest and all its nestlings gone. Into these pages peace-thoughts weave their brightness • The peace that has been, is, and is to be, Is here ; peace-blossoms in their tranquil whiteness I've shaken, as I passed from tree to tree, Relics of many a strange and broken history. Lie there, my pen I Only a little longer, And then thy work shall be for ever done : Death in these pulses daily groweth stronger ; Life's ruby drops are oozing one by one ; The dreams that flowed thro' thee shall soon be dreamed alone !

Rest kindly now, beside what thou hast written : Let that a little longer linger here ; By age unwithered, and by time unsmittett, True leaves of health, that never can grow sere. From the great tree of life, plant of a purer sphere ! Thou art the lute with which I sang my sadness. When sadness like a cloud begirt my way ; Thou art the harp whose strings gave out my gladness, When burst the sunshine of a happier day, Resting upon my soul with sweet and silent ray. The sickle thou with which I have been reaping My great life-harvest here on earth ; and now 'Mid these my sheaves I lay me down unweeping, — Nay, full of joy, in life's still evening-glow. And wipe the reapers sweat from this toil-furrowed brow. From this right hand its cunning is departing. This wrinkled palm proclaims its work is done : Look back, fond reaper, to thy place of starting, — Days, months, and years, a lifetime past and gone , — ■ Say, which is best, thy rising or thy setting sun f I may not stay.

Book I

Like the November leaves they lie around me, In broken heaps, or spread out one by one ; Older or newer, in their varied forms, Memorials of a spring too quickly past : Each leaf the relic of a well-known tree, Now bare, or vanished from the forest crowd, Of which it was in other Mays the king. The sun of yesterday has set for ever, The beacon-gleam across the wave is quenched, The sparkle of last midnight's torch is gone, The footprints on the sand are all erased, The snow has melted from the rock, the dew Has at the dawn dissolved : all these are things That go, and come not back again to us. Far more abiding are these time-stained pages, Dumb, and yet eloquent in every line ; Old love and faith making the faded fresh, And lights of other years still beaming there, Unblanched and tender as when first they shone.

Half-folded, disarranged, they lie ; yet each A Distinct with a deep history of its own. Like the ancestral portraits on the wall, Or names engraven on the granite plinth, Or golden locket which enshrines the love Of loving years and hearts, they alter not With the caprice of time or fickle seasons ; Dead, yet alive, retaining in their folds Perpetual vigour and perennial youth. Not like the pressure of now clay-cold fingers, Nor like the dream of faces seen no more ; Nor echoes of dear footsteps passing by, Nor songs once heard from voices long since mute ; Theirs is a yesterday that changes not, Except to ripen and grow mellower still ; Theirs is a register of soul, which shall Remain unblotted, perfect as at first, Till he who reads them now shall close his eyes, And lay down thankfully his wearied head Upon the pillow of the restful earth.

They tell that oft, when the old walls are down, And their foundations flung upon the moor, Evanishing amid the ebb of ages ; When every stone of the paternal hall Has crumbled, and commingled with the soil ; When the rough elm, first planted ages since On the heir's wedding-day, or shining beech That lined the avenue or graced the lawn, Has fallen, the old garden-flowers are found Springing unbidden from the faithful earth, True to the soil, the season, and the sun ; While here and there a moss-wrapt relic grey LINE 52.]

BOOK I.

3 Of ancient orchard, not without its fruit, Spreads wide its boughs to the bland August breeze. They say that in some spots (I know them well, The quiet slope, the glen, the purple moor), Where martyrs died, or holy men once met Under the watchful sky to worship God, Sounds sweet as heaven are heard in sunny hours (When the year's round recalls the faded past), Rising like fragrance from the sod, as if The soil had drunk the notes of holier days, And loved at times to give them out again, Sweetened with age, rich with unearthly peace. Such are to me these fragments of green years, These pages that give out, each time I touch them, The unchanged melodies locked up within ; Still full of noon, and noon-day life, though they Who wrote them long have left us for the tomb. Each letter, with its wonted signature, The seal and date, and place of dear abode, The street, the city, or the rural home, Takes the soul back to unforgotten scenes, To hopes and fears of the calm long ago, Features and friendships of more radiant days, The dreams and passions of the swelling soul, Voices once warm and eloquent, now dumb.

The rocks o'er which the breakers went and came, The valley with its stream, the beckoning hill Which oft we climbed together, or the room In which we sat with some lost friend or child A shrub, a flower, a tree beneath whose shade We lay in summer as we talked and read ; S3 4 A book, a thought, a sorrow, or a joy, A jest, an argument, a dreamy tale ; A death, a birth, a wedding, or a tomb, A parting or a meeting ; or a stroll Of love or friendship, when one soul pours out Into another all its busy dreams, Gazing upon the sea, or wondering stars, Or gold-begotten clouds of royal morn, Or earth-enamoured moon, that smiles in love Upon a scene that answers smile for smile: — These are the things which, graven deep on each Pale line, bring back whole worlds of history. They who made up our life are dying daily, Yet the life-current of the world flows on, And we have but to wander by its edge, And gather up the relics flung ashore.

We are all orphans ; every leaf that falls But addeth to the orphanage of earth ; And as each yesterday breaks off, and joins The past, we feel our being less complete. In every line, — some clear as at the first, Like the new-carved inscription, others like Grey tombstones with their half-worn epitaphs, — I feel the throbbing of a kindred heart That beats no more ; I recognise the flash Of eyes now closed ; I clasp the hand that once Clasped mine and pledged immortal constancy, As if it never could relax its grasp, Or lose the warmth with which it folded mine. Looking at these mute relics of the spring, — My spring and theirs whom love had knit to me, LINE 114.]

BOOK I.

5 not Preserved like pearls from robber or decay, — Turning their withered pages o'er and o'er, I seem to sit upon a cliff of echoes, Round which float up from the still vales below Or woods beyond, all voices and all sounds Of melody and speech, of harp and tongue ; The music of a lifetime garnered there : Some the first breathings of a clinging heart, Some the last syllables of love, as if, Stretched to its full, the last string broke in twain With the low note that ended the last song. More in the garden grows than what is sown ; Not weeds alone, but flowers come up unbidden, Sown by the careful winds. So here I mark Not the parched petal, but the vital seed ; For each word dropping from the lip or pen Of man or woman is a seed that dies not, Wafted afar, to spring we know not where. O loving winds, that bear such seeds as these Into my garden, and there lay them down To be a lifetime's sweetness, in which all The hoarded essence of the past I find ; To be to me, in this the gentle twilight And silence of these now retreating years, Like the night-blooming flower, that only spreads Its beauty and its odour to the stars.

And all the months are here ; true way marks, Linked only with old seasons and old suns, But with the changes of a human heart : Here are life's hues, its marvellous mosaic, The rough and smooth of mortal history. Capricious April with its clouds is here, Scattering its daffodils, or showering down Daisies like silver rain to stud the fields : May with its forest-buds and orchard-bloom : June with its length of fervent day, all light, All incense : July taking on the tinge Of chastened calm, as if the hastening year Had passed its noon ; maturer sunshine now Kindly dispensing, when the ripe rich air Breathes o'er the burnished corn, by day and night, Pouring its magic wealth into each blade Of swelling grain, and bidding harvest haste To the embrace of the impatient sickle : Dear August, month of sunny memories, Of idle wanderings by the welcome sea, Of reveries by rock and waterfall ; Its fields of white, with the lark's chant above, The reaper's song below at joyous dawn ; Its school-boy holidays of liberty, Its shadowy mountains blazing to the top With the full-blossomed heath : October brown, Type of the worn-out year, disrobing earth For her dark wintry sleep : November dull, Fickle as April, with its falling stars, Seeming as if the torches of the heavens, In preparation for the coming dark, Were shaken, that they might shine freshly out With keener brilliance thro' the crystal air : Austere December, sternly laying down Its bed of ice and coverlet of snow, For the o'er-weary earth, till spring return. LINE 176.]

BOOK I.

7 We bear with winter, for it has its sweets ; But never long for it, and always sigh For the green spring-life, and the summer-breath, The months of resurrection and of song. Go, Winter, go, we say, and let the snowdrops, Like buried stars, burst up ; the primroses, Fair daughters of the forest and the shade, Wave their pale golden coronets around ; The leafless almond-bloom invite the bee To taste its new-born nectar, virgin-pure ; The willow-buds by the glad watercourse Swell into rounded freshness ; in the wood The wind-flower woo the breeze it loves so well. They go and come again, these months of change, But they who made them what they were come not : The casket is the same, the gem is fled ; The chalice sparkles, but the wine is drained ; The sky endureth, but the stars have left. Graves far and near are all that now remain, And Memory, taking up each cherished name, Hides it securely in her holiest urn.

Strange is the life of others seen by us Onlooking quietly, as from the shore Appears the silent ship in the dim offing, Passing us by we know not whither bound. More strange the life now gone, of which we once Formed part, but which long since has quitted us Outstripping us and moving out of sight On the broad deep, or at our very side, In some tempestuous midnight, going down With its large freightage 'neath the surge of time. [line 207. 8 MY OLD LETTERS. Strange, too, our own lives, giving forth each hour Their mysteries of motion or of rest. But yesterday my heart could not be still For joy ; the throbbing sunshine shook it all ; The very air was trembling with the light. To-day that heart refuses to be calm For grief, which as a tempest seizes me, And sweeps me on like cloud of night that has No anchor, and no pilot, and no helm.

And in these letters all this life of mine, Mirrored in lives of others, rises up. My perplexed being is unriddled here, And I begin to understand myself, Tho' shrinking from the mirror held up thus ; I see what once I was, what now I am, And many a mystery becometh clear. I see the path, the thicket, and the goal, The folly that I chose, the truth I shunned ; The error, and the evil, and the light, The prison-house and the deliverance ; The half-fought battle and the vile defeat, Yet sometimes, too, the noble victory ; The spoken or unspoken thought of sin ; The hasty word, uttered and then recalled, The angry tone when yet the speech was gentle ; The weariness and the reviving strength, The low despair and the rekindling hope ; The fearless faith or dark uncertainty ; The tangled hours of this mis-shadowed life Becoming clear and eloquent as day ; The brave confronting with the jealous gale, LINE 238.]

BOOK I.

9 And then the gliding into the still haven. These read I here in all these many lives, Woven into one, like rich embroidery Upon some antique hanging. In these scrolls I recognize the interpreters of days And doings in which lie the feeble germs Of unenfolded being, just preparing To start upon the everlasting race, Begun down here, to be completed yonder In the fair realm from whose blue battlements The stars look down upon us in their love. A mother's love is ever in its spring, It knows no frost ; with true Peneian verdure All over green, unseared by age or clime. A mother's letters, broken tho' they be, And brief perhaps, yet, like the mellow fruit Of a perpetual autumn, daily yield Their unexhausted sweetness, and impart Strength in the hours of feebleness and doubt. A sister's arm, like a white silken cord, Stronger than iron chain, and like asbestos Proof against fire, folds round our boyhood's life, Infusing tenderness, yet giving strength ; Smoothing the rough, and into harmony, By its soft touch, as by a spell from heaven, Bringing the youthful discords of the heart.

A sister's letters, best of chronicles, Like faithful sun-prints, give us back ourselves, Recording the fond household's history Of undivided fellowship and love, MY OLD LETTERS. [line 268, 10 Till death or distance snapped the holy chain ; — The bitters and the sweets, the heights and hollows, The meetings and the partings, the mishap Ending in mirth, the deeper ill in tears ; Loquacious joy that cannot hold its peace, Mute sorrow, yet more eloquent than joy. And from these shreds of other days floats up The fragrance of the venerable life, In midst of which we grew to manhood's prime, Becoming thus what now we are, the sons Of the past age and fathers of the future. Their touch has calmness in it, and the fire That breathed in some has died out with the years ; The warmth remains, but the fierce blaze has sunk ; And when the ruffled spirit seeks repose Or soothing in the midst of weary frets, It turns to these ; and as it turns, the storm Smooths into stillness, and each chafing wave Obeys the charm.

However far I go, These scrolls recall me to old love and rest. I hear dead voices saying, Wander not ! Return ! I cannot but comply ; I come, — Won by the spell of unforgotten tones, That still retain their heart-controlling power, And, like Ulysses, wander back to home. Oh my own Ithaca, my home, my home ! (Spake he not thus, the wanderer of the isles ?) Where the child rose into the boy, the boy Into the man, with sunshine all about him ! Oh my own Ithaca, my home, my home ! Barren it may be, but oh, beautiful LINE 299.]

BOOK I.

11 Beyond all other islands of the wave ! In thoughts and dreams I turn to thee ; but thou Canst never be to me what once thou wert. All changed art thou, and they, the loved and loving Who made thee what thou wert, have left thy shore. Neither in life nor death are we alone ; We cannot isolate our being from That of our fellows, more than can the stars Unlace their mingled radiance. The great race Is one, each age and clime together clasped, And each man, like each ocean-drop, or more Or less affecting all his fellows round. In ways we know not, and at points of which We dream not, daily we on all are telling. We cast a shadow as we pass along, Unthinkingly, or give out silent light, Dispensing joy or sorrow, ill or good, From that occult and passive influence Which man breathes out on man unconsciously.

The turret-clock in the great city's depths, That strikes the dreaded or the welcome hour, Knows not what bitterness or joy it brings With the resounding stroke, that, like a knell, Enters some trembling ear, and breaks the heart, Or, like a flash from heaven, lights up the soul ; Yet none the less it does its certain work. The balance knows not whether lead or gold Is laid upon it, just alike to all. The book, each page inanimate and mute, Cares not who reads it, nor can understand The tears or smiles that thickly fall upon it, [line 330. MY OLD LETTERS. 12 The peace or trouble which its words provoke. The silent clouds above us feed the springs Which swell into the mighty streams on which Earth's cities rise, and by which they are fed. We may be but the cloud ; it matters not, So be it that we fill our place, and do Our work on earth until earth's work is done.

That doing is no sport ; done well or ill, It is no dream, but tells on all around ; And no man from his fellow ever can Shake himself wholly free on any side, Present or future, or for good or ill : Our fathers mould us, and we mould our sons. So work these pages their unconscious work ; They know not what they say to him who cons them, Like tree unwitting of the fruit it bears. What are they doing who have passed the bourne ? They whom we loved so well, and lost long since, — What are they feeling ? Do they love as once They loved when here ? We still are passing thro' A life of tempest ; are they in the calm ? Are the unsettled interests of time, That swayed them to and fro with fear and hope, Absorbed in the eternal settlement ? And the disharmonies of misyoked life All sweetened into happy unison ?

Is the remorseless roughness of the road Once trod, when side by side we walked below, Now sweetly levelled ? Is all pain unknown, And heaviness and heartache and unrest ? Is darkness now submerged in tranquil light LINE 361.]

BOOK I.

13 Poured from no earthly sun ? Are wounds all healed, Hot passions soothed to rest, deep blanks re-filled ? And disappointments that o'ershadowed life As with one dense eclipse, are they forgotten In the redeeming sweetness of that love Which is itself the very heaven of heavens ? They have passed on before, at height of day Outstripping us, yet beckoning us to come. Above us now the once sense-fettered soul Roams in the liberty of ripened being, Without a burden and without a chain. These pages tell me what they did and felt ; But what they now are, I must learn elsewhere : Earth's records are for earth, and of the things Of earth alone can tell. For that which is Within the screen, I must consult with those Whose eyes have seen afar, whose ears have heard The songs that celebrate eternal peace.

Dear as these pages are, they but record A few faint beatings of some human hearts Amid the fevers and the frosts of life. The history of suns long set is here ; Pictures of skies o'er which the sudden cloud Of tempest in a moment rolled ; the dreams Of treasure-laden barques that never came ; Of stars that never rose ; of radiant flowers That never blossomed ; of pellucid founts That never saw the sunshine, nor poured forth Their hidden sparkles to the kindly morn ; Of angel forms, which in these later days (Oh, sad for man to be denied such guests !) [LINE 392. MY OLD LETTERS. 14 Have ceased to visit our forsaken earth. Here are the waymarks of a mistaught mind, The fitful footprints of a faltering life ; The driftwood flung amid the rocks, and left Beyond the tide-line and the surge, on this The foreshore of th' immeasurable main That men and angels call eternity.

Here, too, I find mild gleams of cheerful light, The episodes of grave and graceful being, Of life in sunshine, — voyages across A land-locked sea, on which the scourging wind Can lay no hold, o'er which the luminous sail Glides with invisible motion, like the planets Over the upper azure, unalarmed ; The episodes of wise and earnest life, Filled up with words that live and deeds that tell ; The life of noble growth, in which to-day Is yesterday's apt scholar, and to-morrow, The docile, pensive pupil of to-day ; The meek life, into which the scalding words Of human passion have not found their way, But which the cooling notes of heavenly love Pervade in all its parts, and saturate The air with genial music, till the peace Spreads out on all sides, like the widening ripple Of the still lake, touched by the swallow's wing.

Strange scraps of life are here, like pages torn At random from some volume of the past ; Fragments of being, not without a meaning. As the split rock shows where the lightning struck, As the torn flag shows what the banner was, LINE 423.]

BOOK I.

15 As the old song recalls some noble name, Or the worn coin an empire's history ; So each of these frail symbols links itself With man's whole circle, asking us to solve The riddle of an immortality Whose twisted coil was to itself a chaos ; For our own lives are little understood, Even by ourselves. That mazy labyrinth We call existence ; that pure mystery By us named soul ; that silent rudder-power Which we term will ; that sacred lamp, the mind That marvellous aurora of the dark Which we style fancy ; that sweet morning dew Which we call love ;— these in their several parts And acts are all enigmas, to be read By light not of this sky, by subtlety Transcending that of man's keen intellect ; And what we know not now we then shall know, When from the heights of the eternal hills We shall look back on time, interpreting Old dreams, unravelling the tangled network Of life, and knowing even as we are known.

All after-thoughts belong to man, with all The doubts that hang around us here ; to God Pertains the eternal forethought, and pure light That knows no shadow of a shade : to Him All space, all time, are ever, ever clear ; Himself the present, and Himself the future, Himself the first and last, the ALL IN ALL. High souls are here, that rose on mighty wing Above the multitude and found a name, MY OLD LETTERS. [line 454. Not soon to drop from earth's large history ; Some brave in perilous action, other some Braver in perilous endurance ; some Are here whose steps were peace, whose eyes were light ; Some with a chequered sky of cloud and blue, Like northern summers, sad with many a storm ; Some pressing on with silent earnestness, Calm, yet without the brilliant glow of sunshine ; Others, life-weary men, who, sick at heart, And crossed in hope, found not which way to look, Or into what safe port of peace to turn From the cross-currents of a blustering age ; Some light of heart and free, but other some Steeped in earth's bitter absinthe, and made drunk With wine of sorrow ; some that swept thro' earth Like torches thro' the desert night ; and some Hidden from sight, yet from their secret nooks Telling like violets on the general air ; Some much with men, a few much with themselves ; And others much with God, from Him receiving The power supernal by which men are moved, The force divine, which, like electric fire, Goes out resistless, tho' unseen, to do Its work of goodness against all things evil, Its work of life against the strength of death.

Some names are here, on whose dark tombs I gaze As on extinct volcanoes, burning once With wasting fire that scorched where'er it came ; Who might have loved, and healed, and comforted, But never loved, nor healed, nor comforted. Theirs were but names of wonder, and no more : ■7 •» line 485.]

BOOK I.

The gentle charities of happy being, The wayside flowers of mild and suasive life, That shed their genial softness thro' the soul, Grew not within a circle such as theirs. Their paths of sullen, self-willed wandering Skirted the blighted heath or splintered cliff; They sought the echo of the cataract, Or flowerless ruggedness of ocean's strand. In them the human heart seemed ever beating In lawless pulses ; swift and stormy now, As if its channels would give way ; again, Too slow for life, as if congealed within. Some here I find whose placid course was all A voyage of pleasure o'er an inland lake, Studded with islands and girt round with green, Over v/hose sunny crystal tempests breathe not ; Others whose life, vexed with time's wasting strife, Seemed like a strong sail, riddled with the shot Of life -long battle, into pieces falling. — And yet I find that, even in some of these, Defeat, altho' disaster, was not shame.

Ah me ! the affections of this life grow old, And die like spring-buds in the pinching wind ! Love, even the deepest, cannot last : at morn, 'Tis fair as light ; ere even, exhaled like dew, Or like a rainbow buried in the cloud From which it rose, and upon which it hung. The dearest tie that ever knit two hearts (Each like the other as two budding roses) Snaps, and the loved one passes out of sight ; The brightest eyes are fading, and their sparkle B [line 516. 18 MY OLD LETTERS. Is vanishing amid the mortal mist That wraps this globe and darkens earthly homes. Yet, 'mid the ruins of the human heart, I sit me down and sing the song of hope, The song of the rebuilding and the joy. Most of earth's history has passed away, Like the spring torrents of Arabian sands, Which leave behind no record of their flow ; Yet doubt I not that it is written somewhere, To be brought forth, and speak the buried truth Contained within all things which God has made, Or man has done, however small and poor.

Nothing is lost, tho' what becomes of all The light, the force, the motion that for ages Have flowed, reflowed, crossed, and recrossed the vastness Of boundless space, we know not, save but this, That thus the fabric of the universe Is woven into its endless perfectness, And wrought into the stedfast harmony For which all things above, below, are ripening, Unfolding purposes we understand not. And such old letters are the seeds of what Shall one day, in new resurrection-power, Arise to tell of all that once has been Spoken or done or felt beneath the sun. The story of this earth is one of shipwreck, — Of parted anchors and of sunken hulls, Torn sails, lost helms, and buried argosies, O'er which the unfurrowed sky still bends unmoved, And for which man has long since ceased to mourn. The good goes down, the evil floats above : line 547-]

BOOK I.

19 'Tis not the face of ocean, but its floor That holds the gems of time ; its precious things Are far beyond the search of human eye. Rude Scythia 'neath her black unhammered rocks Buries the emerald ; the chalcedony Hard by the dark Symplegades hides deep Its yellow splendour ; man is wandering o'er A city of the dead, some lost Pompeii, Whose ruins and whose riches and whose life Lie heaped together in one hopeless tomb. That Book of heaven, the gift of Him whose thoughts Are only truth, is but the epitome Of one whose range is both eternities. We turn its leaves, and note in each with awe The unlikeness to all words of man, — the abrupt Yet steady flow throughout the ages past ; Its breaks and links, its chaste variety, Yet its mysterious and unstudied oneness. The symbols that have marked the ages past, And done true pilot-service to the world, — The buds of truth which throughout every land Have burst and ripened, are all here ; and here The under-showings of the coming life, Of full-developed beauty, are contained.