Transcriber's note:
The original hyphenation, spelling, and use of accented words has been retained. Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the original text.

LAYS AND LEGENDS
(SECOND SERIES)

BY
E. NESBIT
(Mrs. Hubert Bland)

AUTHOR OF "LAYS AND LEGENDS," "LEAVES OF LIFE,"
ETC.

WITH PORTRAIT

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
1892

[All Rights reserved]

My thanks are due to the Editors and Publishers who
have kindly allowed me to use here verses written
for them.

TO

ALICE HOATSON,

HELEN MACKLIN,

AND

CHARLOTTE WILSON,

In token of indebtment.

ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS

BRIDAL BALLAD.

"Come, fill me flagons full and fair

Of red wine and of white,

And, maidens mine, my bower prepare—

It is my wedding night.

"And braid my hair with jewels bright,

And make me fair and fine—

This is the day that brings the night

When my desire is mine."

They decked her bower with roses blown,

With rushes strewed the floor,

And sewed more jewels on her gown

Than ever she wore before.

She wore two roses in her face,

Two jewels in her e'en,

Her hair was crowned with sunset rays,

Her brows shone white between.

"Tapers at the bed's foot," she saith,

"Two tapers at the head!"

It seemed more like the bed of death

Than like a bridal bed.

He came; he took her hands in his,

He kissed her on the face;

"There is more heaven in thy kiss

Than in our Lady's grace".

He kissed her once, he kissed her twice,

He kissed her three times o'er;

He kissed her brow, he kissed her eyes,

He kissed her mouth's red flower.

"O Love, what is it ails thy knight?

I sicken and I pine;

Is it the red wine or the white,

Or that sweet kiss of thine?"

"No kiss, no wine or white or red,

Can make such sickness be,

Lie down and die on thy bride-bed

For I have poisoned thee.

"And though the curse of saints and men

Upon me for it be,

I would it were to do again

Since thou wert false to me.

"Thou shouldst have loved or one or none,

Nor she nor I loved twain,

But we are twain thou hast undone,

And therefore art thou slain.

"And when before my God I stand

With no base flesh between,

I shall hold up this guilty hand

And He shall judge it clean."

He fell across the bridal bed

Between the tapers pale:

"I first shall see our God," he said,

"And I will tell thy tale.

"And if God judge thee as I do,

Then art thou justified.

I loved thee and I was not true,

And that was why I died.

"If I could judge thee, thou shouldst be

First of the saints on high;

But ah, I fear God loveth thee

Not half so dear as I!"

THE GHOST.

The year fades, as the west wind sighs,

And droops in many-coloured ways,

But your soft presence never dies

From out the pathway of my days.

The spring is where you are, but still

You from your heaven to me can bring

Sweet dreams and flowers enough to fill

A thousand empty worlds with Spring.

I walk the wet and leafless woods;

Your shadow ever goes before

And paints the russet solitudes

With colours Summer never wore.

I sit beside my lonely fire;

The ghostly twilight brings your face

And lights with memory and desire

My desolated dwelling-place.

Among my books I feel your hand

That turns the page just past my sight,

Sometimes behind my chair you stand

And read the foolish rhymes I write.

The old piano's keys I press

In random chords until I hear

Your voice, your rustling silken dress,

And smell the violets that you wear.

I do not weep now any more,

I think I hardly even sigh;

I would not have you think I bore

The kind of wound of which men die.

Believe that smooth content has grown

Over the ghastly grave of pain—

"Content!" ... O lips, that were my own,

That I shall never kiss again!

THE MODERN JUDAS.

For what wilt thou sell thy Lord?

"For certain pieces of silver, since wealth buys the world's good word."

But the world's word, how canst thou hear it, while thy brothers cry scorn on thy name?

And how shall thy bargain content thee, when thy brothers shall clothe thee with shame?

For what shall thy brother be sold?

"For the rosy garland of pleasure, and the coveted crown of gold."

But thy soul will turn them to thorns, and to heaviness binding thy head,

While women are dying of shame, and children are crying for bread.

For what wilt thou sell thy soul?

"For the world." And what shall it profit, when thou shalt have gained the whole?

What profit the things thou hast, if the thing thou art be so mean?

Wilt thou fill, with the husks of having, the void of the might-have-been?

"But, when my soul shall be gone,

No more shall I fail to profit by all the deeds I have done!

And wealth and the world and pleasure shall sing sweet songs in my ear

When the stupid soul is silenced, which never would let me hear.

"And if a void there should be

I shall not feel it or know it; it will be nothing to me!"

It will be nothing to thee, and thou shalt be nothing to men

But a ghost whose treasure is lost, and who shall not find it again.

"But I shall have pleasure and praise!"

Praise shall not pleasure thee then, nor pleasure laugh in thy days:

For as colour is not, without light, so happiness is not, without

Thy Brother, the Lord whom thou soldest—and the soul that thou hast cast out!

THE SOUL TO THE IDEAL.

I will not hear thy music sweet!

If I should listen, then I know

I should no more know friend from foe,

But follow thy capricious feet—

Thy wings, than mine so much more fleet—

I will not go!

I will not go away! Away

From reeds and pool why should I go

To where sun burns, and hot winds blow?

Here sleeps cool twilight all the day;

Do I not love thy tune? No, no!

I will not say!

I will not say I love thy tune;

I do not know if so it be;

It surely is enough for me

To know I love cool rest at noon,

Spread thy bright wings—ah, go—go soon!

I will not see!

I will not see thy gleaming wings,

I will not hear thy music clear.

It is not love I feel, but fear;

I love the song the marsh-frog sings,

But thine, which after-sorrow brings,

I will not hear!

A DEATH-BED.

A man of like passions with ourselves.

It is too late, too late!

The wine is spilled, the altar violate;

Now all the foolish virtues of the past—

Its joys that could not last,

Its flowers that had to fade,

Its bliss so long delayed,

Its sun so soon o'ercast,

Its faith so soon betrayed,

Its prayers so madly prayed,

Its wildly-fought-for right,

Its dear renounced delight,

Its passions and its pain—

All these stand gray about

My bed, like ghosts from Paradise shut out,

And I, in torment, lying here alone,

See what myself have done—

How all good things were butchered, one by one.

Not one of these but life has fouled its name,

Blotted it out with sin and loss and shame—

Until my whole life's striving is made vain.

It is too late, too late!

My house is left unto me desolate.

Yet what if here,

Through this despair too dark for dreams of fear,

Through the last bitterness of the last vain tear,

One saw a face—

Human—not turned away from man's disgrace—

A face divinely dear—

A head that had a crown of thorns to wear;

If there should come a hand

Drawing this tired head to a place of rest

On a most loving breast;

And as one felt that one could almost bear

To tell the whole long sickening trivial tale

Of how one came so utterly to fail

Of all one once knew that one might attain—

If one should feel consoling arms about,

Shutting one in, shutting the black past out—

Should feel the tears that washed one clean again,

And turn, made dumb with love and shame, to hear:

"My child, my child, do I not understand?"

THE LOST SOUL AND THE SAVED.

I.

Oh, rapture of infinite peace!

Many are weeping without;

From the lost crowd of these,

God, Thou hast lifted me out!

Though strong be the devil's net,

Thy grace, O God, is more strong;

I never was tempted yet

To even the edge of wrong.

The world never fired my brain,

The flesh never moved my heart—

Thou hast spared me the strife and strain,

The struggle and sorrow and smart.

The dreams that never were deeds,

The thought that shines not in word,

The struggle that never succeeds—

Thou hast saved me from these, O Lord!

I stood in my humble place

While those who aimed high fell low;

Oh the glorious gift of Thy grace

The souls of Thy saved ones know!

And yet if in heaven at last,

When all is won and is well,

Dear hands stretch out from the past,

Dear voices call me from hell—

My love whom I long for yet,

My little one gone astray!—

No; God will make me forget

In His own wise wonderful way.

Oh the infinite marvels of grace,

Oh the great atonement's cost!

Lifting my soul above

Those other souls that are lost!

Mine are the harp and throne,

Theirs is the outer night.

This, my God, Thou has done,

And all that Thou dost is right!

II.

Lost as I am—degraded, foul, polluted,

Sunk in deep sloughs of failure and of sin,

Yet is my hell by God's great grace commuted,

For what I lose the others yet may win.

I—sport of flesh and fate—in all my living

Met the world's laughter and the Christian's frown,

Ever the spirit fiercely vainly striving,

Ever the flesh, triumphant, laughed it down.

Down, lower still, but ever battling vainly,

Dying to win, yet living to be lost,

My soul through depths where all its guilt showed plainly

Into the chaos of despair was tossed.

Yet not despair. I see far off a splendour;

Here from my hell I see a heaven on high

For those brave men whom earth could never render

Cowards as foul and beasts as base as I!

Hell is not hell lit by such consolation,

Heaven were not heaven that lacked a thought like this—

That, though my soul may never see salvation,

God yet saves all these other souls of His!

The waves of death come faster, faster, faster;

Christ, ere I perish, hear my heart's last word—

It was not I denied my Lord and Master;

The flesh denied Thee, not the spirit, Lord.

And God be praised that other men are wearing

The white, white flower I trampled as I trod;

That all fail not, that all are not despairing,

That all are not as I, I thank Thee, God!

AT THE PRISON GATE.

And underneath us are the everlasting arms.

Once by a foreign prison gate,

Deep in the gloom of frowning stone,

I saw a woman, desolate,