The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fair eyes of women, many had I seen,
Eyes deep as darkness, bright as noontide ray,
And others bluer than the depths of day,
Bluer than turquoise-jewels of a queen.
But none so sweet, so wonderful, I ween,—
With power to quicken, power to pierce and slay,
A twin-born wonder, green and brown and grey,
Three colours blended, mixed in loveliest sheen.

Gazing in awe, I saw myself therein,
My past and future mingled into one,—
A picture harmonized from taint of sin,
A poem finished, or a race well run,
The melody I long had gasped to win,
A moon completed, a full-circled sun.

II.
FAIR EYES

II.

Nor have I ceased to wonder at those eyes,
Nor have they lost their power to make me tremble;
My sweet love-shivering I cannot dissemble,
Nor can I meet them yet without surprise.
Most wonderful! were all the thoughts that rise
Within me to be told with facile fingers,
There'd still remain some loiterer that lingers,
A fancy that eludes, a form that flies.

Had I the sacred lyres full softly strung
Of all the poets who have touched the ages,
Those lyres would not suffice to get it sung;
To tell the beauty which my soul engages,—
To tell the torments which my heart have wrung,—
Though I should rustle through ten thousand pages.

Feb. 10, 1870.

III.
QUEEN BEAUTY

Backward Queen Beauty darts her maiden glances;
With lips that quiver as she glances back
The poet urges on the sweet attack,
With feet that flutter, and with heart that dances.
The distance all her loveliness enhances;
He sinks exhausted, footsteps growing slack,—
She waits him at some turning of the track,
Till once again hope's tremulous flood advances.

So goes it: but from time to time he seizes
Some cadence of the melody she sings,
And even that distant silver echo pleases
His spirit more than any earthly things,—
And the odour of her hair on flying breezes
Mad worship and a wilder longing brings.

IV.
FRUITION

O Beauty, kiss me, kiss me on the lips:
As frightened children to their mother cry
I cry to thee,—Oh tell me, why should I
Be like the bee that sucks, the fly that sips,
The swallow that her wings in water dips,—
Why cannot I possess thee? I would die
But once to hear thee, see thee, feel thee nigh,—
But ever from my mouth the goblet slips.

Take pity on me, O my gracious Queen,—
Immerse my soul in sweetness; let the waves
Of rapture writhe around the mouth that craves,
And choke it in fruition; rend the screen!
Stand forth and let thy majesty be seen!
The majesty that slays the souls it saves.

V.
PSYCHE AND MERCURY

ONE OF RAPHAEL'S FRESCOES

A face of moulded mystery that combines
All sweet expression in one perfect whole,
All lights and shadows of my lady's soul:
Chiefly the rippling laugh that softly shines
Across the corresponding facial lines.
Gaze with intensity! Why I could swear
I've seen it move as I was standing there,
And look to me and speak to me by signs.

It is my lady's face made pure for ever
By the undying power of perfect art.
So Dante, with wild passionate endeavour,
Portrayed the endless mistress of his heart,—
As her image gleamed beyond the seas that sever
The immortal from our transitory part.

VI.
WEAK AND WEARY

I wander ever onward, weak and weary:—
At times there comes a great desire for rest:
The days are sad, the nights are dark and dreary;
I long to sink into my love's soft breast,
My home, my abiding place, my snowy nest,—
I long to run and hide my head therein,
My face all scarred and marred with shame and sin,—
And yet she loves me! why, she knoweth best.

My sweet, my life, my all, my golden treasure,
My bower of buds and blossoms of delight,
What joy for us, what pale pursuit of pleasure,
What sound of sighs and kisses through the night!
What echoes of low laughter without measure
From dewy eve till morning clear and bright!

VII.
DREAMS

I.

At last have passed the blanks and dreary spaces
And chilling hours of the white windy day!
My soul set free descends to happier places,
Where golden-wingéd dreams, a bright array,
Wait for me,—glimpses of sweet smiling faces,
And chords of light that round my pillow play.
Oh welcome, welcome, gladsome hours of night-time
When fancy loosed exerts her wondrous spell,
A joy to me, a marvel, a delight-time,
A rainbow-coloured realm I love right well,
My region of reality, my bright time
(For nights are sometimes heaven when days are hell)—
The time in which in dreams comes peeping in
The face of her I'd give the world to win.

VIII.
DREAMS

II.

Therefore I love the darkness, and right gladly
I lay me down, and close my eyes and wait,
Wait,—wondering half smilingly, half sadly,
What dreams will issue through the Ivory Gate.
'Tis bliss to feel that I perchance may meet her,
And talk to her, and walk with her till morn,
And falling low before her feet entreat her
Till dreams at daylight-advent fly forlorn;
To think that ere I wake to brave the morrow
Closed eyes may feast in rapture on her face,
And heart forget its pain, and soul its sorrow,
And life its labour, for some little space,
While I, with lips half parted for delight,
Follow my lady through the halls of night.

IX.
DREAMS

III.

The thought of such sweet company forsaking
Is odious,—would that I could stay the sun!
Put back the clock, dream on without awaking,
Nor rise to meet a sad new day begun!
But days will pass,—they do not last for ever,
And then there comes again the sweet warm night,
A gentle lady, sent our souls to sever
From all the wear and labour of the light.
Thrice welcome art thou! brood about my pillow,
And cover me with darkness as a shield,
And touch my eyes with sleep—into the billow
Of soft unconsciousness my soul I yield,
And sinking, dying into sleep, I pray
To dream of her who stole my heart away.

X.
THE DISCOVERY OF LOVE

A youth was walking in the early hours
Of life, along a garden-alley fair,
When on a sudden, lo! a rose was there,—
Unseen by him before among the flowers
That wove a many-coloured mist of bowers,
And redolent of sweetness made the air.
He came the next day, but would hardly dare
To hope the night's attendant band of showers
Had spared the rose; but lo! the rose was red,
And fragrant, far more fragrant than before,
And fuller petals had unfolded more,
And round about it brighter bloom was shed:
The rose the lover fondly feared was dead,
Was blushing beauty to the very core.

XI.
IN THE FUTURE

I fancy somewhere waits for every one
A bride, a bridegroom, far in future years:
The way thereunto sodden deep with tears
It may be, or parched fiery dry with sun
Of lonely misery; but when 'tis done,
With gladness each shall garland memory's biers,
And make away with faces of old fears,
And hail the advent of new life begun.

And such a spot is waiting on the road
Of each of us,—a place where three paths meet,
Two sad ones into this that shall be sweet
Converging: towards which our foreboding showed
That ever since we can remember flowed
The expectant eager current of our feet.

XII.
THOSE FLOWERS

I have them still those flowers—ah! those flowers,
They blossom in my heart, not withered yet,
Though more than twelve months 'tis since they were wet
With tender nourishing of Northern showers,
Since they were beautiful in Northern bowers.
Sweet savours even now of soft regret
Hang round them, and a fragrant misty net
Of memory, having most miraculous powers
To wake the past and bring it near again.
Ah! that sweet past of mine—that most sad past—
Most sad, most sweet,—set thick with thorns of pain,
With many a cloudy canopy overcast,
Yet bearing roses one or two to last,
A smile or two predestined to remain.

XIII.
MY LADY

I said, “My love is sweet, and I will seek
Whereto to liken her; her eyes are grey
As the grey water mingled in a creek
With green, and greener than the seas are they,
And browner than the golden moor-fed stream;
Her hands are wonderful, her lips are red,
And as the light of morning is the beam
That like a coronet crowns my lady's head;
She hath a supple fawn's advancing grace,
She hath the flushing of a mountain rose,—
Like some sweet lily in a shady place
My lady, quiet yet most queenly, grows,
Waiting for one to pluck the tender flower
Whose beauty floods with white the garden bower.”

XIV.
DANTE AND BEATRICE

He circled round his Queen, and nearer grew
Each fainting circle; at each meeting-place
His hands with some sweet flower she would grace,
Diverse in perfume, different in hue—
A gracious rose, or hyacinth-bud blue,
To summon up the vision of her face,
To burn before him till his steps retrace
The well-worn path his former footing knew.

But at the last she stood fair, flowerless, white
To meet him: even herself he shall attain
This time, and having traversed icy plain
And fiery seas and penetrated night,
Shall stride—worn weary Dante—into light,
And share the sceptre of his lady's reign.

XV.
ROSES FOR HER!

Roses for her! the dark-green bays for him,
To adorn the furrowed brows, the weary head,
Over which leaves of sorrow had been shed,
As many as on the autumn breezes swim.
Lilies for her! for Dante wreathe a dim
Grey crown as for one risen from the dead,—
Through every cell of purgatory led,—
For whom hell's horror mantled to the brim.

For her the flowers of spring, for him the sere
And withered branches of the later days:
O Dante, great worn Dante, whom we praise
By all the ages counted first and dear,
Be thine the flaming offerings of the year
Being ended,—hers its softer opening sprays!

XVI.
TO HAVE BEHELD

To have beheld is something—for I might
Alone with my Ideal have sought in vain
Through centuries of passionate absent pain
Along the sunbeam's path the casting light.
But I have found it! Though the end be night,
At least the fact of finding doth remain
Eternal,—that a lily without stain
Hath blossomed, that a woman hath been white.

To have beheld and loved! If nothing more,
Yet can there be a greater thing than this?
If I behold and love, what do I miss?
Am I within the shrine, or at the door?
Though heart be fainting, every fibre sore,
If I behold and love, I also kiss.

XVII.
THE ROSIER STATUE

This hath been given, that the thing I sought
I have also found: a flower I might love,
A bird to sing to,—soft as any dove,
And supple, and as wayward as a thought.
Towards me such a worship hath been brought,
And is it not enough? I might have sighed
For such a vision vainly till I died,
Building my silent statue all for nought.

It is not so; God gives me better things:—
The stone is moved and flushes, and I see
No longer a white maid with marble wings,
A cold ideal rounded mournfully,
A shape to which thought's speechless chisel clings,
But living woman's ripe reality.

XVIII.
LOVE AND IMMORTALITY

Those magic dreams of boyhood! passing sweet
They were,—the glimpses swift as when we see,
Ourselves fast-moving, field and tower and tree
Torn by us on the wings of motion fleet;
The flashes of a future joy to meet,
A heaven all untrodden yet to be.
But present love transcends foreboded glee
As April suns are pale in August heat,
And youth's romance was but a star beside
The moon of riper passion; so I think
It shall be when we float upon death's tide
To a new shore's, another ocean's, brink;
The draught shall deeper, sweeter, be to drink
Than dimly in the distance we descried.

XIX.
MY WORK

Have I left out a flower, or a shade
Of colour on the wind-swept changing grass?
Has any tint of sunset seemed to pass
Into the silence of a thing unsaid?
Or have I failed to count each single braid
As you might, sweet, before your looking-glass?
Each sigh, each leaf, each fleeting cloud, alas!
Deep in abysses of my memory laid,
Is present with me—have I told them all?
Good: then my work is over, and I may
Lean head upon the table, and let fall
The pen that had so many things to say:
Each second of a summer to portray;
All your forgotten glances to recall.

XX.
GOLDEN LILIES

Sweet, teach me gentle secrets that thy soul
Has learnt of God in early girlish years;
Let me with outpouring of sweet calm tears
Pass from self's kingdom into thy control,
And humbly touch with lips the crystal bowl
Thou holdest out with timid hands and fears:
No, sweet one, I have made away with sneers;
The cynic perished when his heart you stole
And wrapped it in your mantle mute and pure.
See I am seated, quiet, at your feet,
Waiting to gather golden lilies, sweet:
Preach to me, and be confidently sure
That what God's tenderness has taught to you
Must be for me delicious, perfect, true.

XXI.
THE BIRD LOVERS

I.

“He that hath loved deserveth not to die.”
So thought I; and a sudden vision came
Of birds of splendour, crowned with crimson flame,
Wings touched with brilliance of the azure sky,
Breasts sapphire, throats of emerald, flying high
In the old forest-haunts without a name,—
The sweet green palaces that shone the same
Millions of centuries ere a man was nigh.

I saw them frolic through the leafy arches,
And a strange sense came over me that they,
Those two, that loved and laughed amid the larches,
And leaped with glittering feet from spray to spray,
Being in the secret, had my right to stay—
Yet stayed not—Death's indomitable marches.

XXII.
THE BIRD LOVERS

II.

I could have wept to think that these sweet things
Had loved, not lived for ever; that the fire
That lit their eyes with the same soft desire
That stirs a poet's pulses as he sings,
And round the raiment of a sonnet clings,
And sweeps the fingers firm across the lyre,—
That such a flame should faint, subside, and tire,
When final sleep the ice-cold opiate brings.

It ought not so to be; those birds should live
For ever, had I in my power the voice
To bid them blossom onward, and rejoice
In endless spiral ascent—I would give
To every soul Love's song-creating kiss,
Eternity in which to utter this!

II. EARTH DARKENED

XXIII. ONCE MORE

I.

Once more! And can I mix the past and present
Close in a single cup of claspéd hands,
Into a single grasp compress the pleasant
Old memories, the voices of lost lands,
Into a single glance hurl all the passion
That should have been, that is to be no more,
Then say goodbye to you in common fashion
And move to meet the lone waves' hollow roar?
Once more to see you—then—I must be dreaming—
My Lady of the rosebands and the bays,
My sweet hair still divinely downward streaming,
My dimple, and my soft caressing ways—
It is not true? to-morrow I shall wake,
And off my heart the accursed nightmare shake!

XXIV. ONCE MORE

II.

Once more to bring to mind the green old places,
And songs and dreams and tenderness recall,
As in one flash to see my sonnets' faces
In your face, then a long farewell to all;
Sweet eyes...sweet lips...no time for numeration
Have I, I leave a dainty list behind,—
One gaze, one second in the singer's station
With vision clear, the next a poet blind;
Once more to feel the summer thrill flow through me,
Then winter—winter—winter—and the dark,
The last time at the sunrise to renew me,
To the old sweet melody once more to hark,
Once more—once more—then never, love, again,
But one long Arctic solitude of pain.

XXV. THE POET'S ROSE

A poet loved a rose—and watched it grow,—
And every day a sweeter blush was there,
And pouting petals fuller and more fair;
Each eventide “to-morrow it will blow,”
The poet said—“to-morrow I shall know
The perfect splendour of this flower rare;”
Sometimes its beauty more than he could bear
Brought tears for joy's excess akin to woe.

And so he watched it,—and one night he said,
“I see my rose upon the verge of bloom,
To-morrow royal robes she shall assume,
Uplift to heaven a pink most perfect head;”
But when he came next day the rose was dead,
And on that spot they placed—a poet's tomb!

XXVI. THE BITTERNESS OF LIFE

This is the bitterness of life,—to know
That Love lies not in front but far behind:
That not for violent searching shall one find
A sweet-faced rose of hope beneath time's snow,
Nor any flower of new joy below
The furrows swept by the autumnal wind,
Nor any corn-stalk when the maidens bind
The golden ears in a long laughing row.

This is the bitterness of life,—to feel
The slow-limbed noisome minutes crawl away,
But not to mark by any happy peal
Of silver bells the passing of a day,
Tarrying till one more consciousness doth steal
Into death's pine-wood, damp, obscure, and grey.

Christmas Eve, 1871.

XXVII. THE MOONLIT ISLAND

Behind me blooms a mystical far place,
Filled with faint dreams and odours of delight;
As when a mariner beneath the night
Leaves the soft isle that for a little space
Covered his wandering shrouds with warmth and grace,
And sweet strange perfumes wafted from the shore
Follow.—My island shall return no more,
Nor scents of blossoms soothe a sleepless face.

But as in far Pacific hazy seas
Lingers that moonlit island of my soul,
Washed over by a honey-perfumed breeze.
And there the bright birds flit from knoll to knoll,
And dappled fawns are tame among the trees,
And the smooth interminable breakers roll.

XXVIII. A PASSING GLIMPSE

I caught a passing glimpse above my head
Of Summer's coronet, pale and tender blue,—
And memory ran my spirit thro' and thro',
Recalling with his piercing lance-point red
Summers and flowery seasons mute and dead,
Long since despatched and hidden from mortal view:
Recalling the sweet sense of evening dew,
And sweeter sense of Love's low whispers said.

It all has vanished, and I add my wailing
To myriads seated by the hollow tomb,
Leaning cold foreheads on its dismal railing:
I mourn the utter overthrow of bloom,
And spirit after tortured spirit sailing
Towards Death's black impenetrable gloom.

XXIX. NEVER AGAIN

Is there no resurrection from the dead?—
Ah, what does this one simple sentence mean?
Never again to watch the grass wax green
In spring-time, and the early rose wax red.
Never again to mark the waving head
Of some fair tuft of cream-white meadow-sweet:
Never again the gold crowns of the wheat,
Nor yellow leaves by autumn breezes shed!

This is the meaning of the simple word;—
Ne'er, after some poor thirty years or so,
To listen to the song of any bird,
Or hear the storm-struck sea's unquiet flow.
Never again to mark a rose's grace,
Nor the sweet smiling of a woman's face.

XXX. HOPELESS

My high hope passes. What is left me now?
Yea, what is all the guerdon of my song?
Why have I laboured, resolute and strong,
Building, with blood-sweat from my weary brow,
This Temple time doth spurn and disallow?—
What recompence is there for suffering long?
What justice in the world,—what wrath for wrong,—
What corn to ingather for the hands that plough?

The old old question: yea, the sad old story.
Just one more spirit passing towards the tomb,
Crowned, yet uncrowned,—brown-haired, yet aged and hoary,—
With every flower of passion in full bloom,
Filled with the poet's sense of life's wild glory,
Yet burthened, likewise, with the poet's doom.

XXXI. THE POET'S DOOM

This is the poet's doom: to love all joys,
To mark them fading, and to mourn them dead.
To see the rose at day-break blushing red:
At night to watch the wind with wanton noise
Scattering the petals from their perfect poise,—
Strewing with pale pink gems the brown cold bed;
To marvel at some woman's curve of head,
Till death both body and carven brow destroys.

This is the poet's doom—far more than others
To feel the life, and so the death far more:
To sing for the sweet sake of tuneless brothers
The beauty of each shell upon the shore:
To see too deep; to love a rose too much,—
And so to mark it fading at his touch!

XXXII. YET SWEETER AND SWEETER

Yet sweeter and yet sweeter as we pass
Towards bitter death that slays all songs and flowers,
Becomes the scent that hovers o'er the bowers
Of youth; yet lovelier the bright green grass;
Yet tenderer fair passion's burning hours;
Yet softer all the varied songs of love;
Yet bluer the clear spotless heavens above;
And yet more manifold life's glorious powers.

Now for the first time human life is fair
In that there is no life beyond the grave:
Now for the first time shines the morning air
With true delight,—now first the branches wave
In genuine glee,—now first the roses wear
In perfect calm those tints no power can save.

University of Virginia Library

I. PART I EARTH

I. EARTH GLADDENED

I. FAIR EYES

I.

II. FAIR EYES

II.

III. QUEEN BEAUTY

IV. FRUITION

V. PSYCHE AND MERCURY

ONE OF RAPHAEL'S FRESCOES

VI. WEAK AND WEARY

VII. DREAMS

I.

VIII. DREAMS

II.

IX. DREAMS

III.

X. THE DISCOVERY OF LOVE

XI. IN THE FUTURE

XII. THOSE FLOWERS

XIII. MY LADY

XIV. DANTE AND BEATRICE

XV. ROSES FOR HER!

XVI. TO HAVE BEHELD

XVII. THE ROSIER STATUE

XVIII. LOVE AND IMMORTALITY

XIX. MY WORK

XX. GOLDEN LILIES

XXI. THE BIRD LOVERS

I.

XXII. THE BIRD LOVERS

II.