The Collected Poems of Philip Bourke Marston

Oh, ye whose hearts on happy things are set,
Ye lovers who love well and have no fear,
Come ye no farther, do not enter here;
This is the land where Love and Death are met,—
A land ye may not easily forget,
Once having entered. When your eyes see clear,
Oh, lover, into hers, and lips draw near,
And kisses multiply, and lids shine wet,

'T were ill if visions of this land should rise
Between you, overshadowing your bliss;
Live on and love, nor think each time ye kiss
This kiss may be the last,—for all joy dies!
Think not on death, lest so love's peace ye miss,
Wasting your breath in unavailing sighs.

II.

Will ye come in, and sit in this dark house?—
'T were better, as I think, for ye to go
Where blackbirds sing and early violets blow,
And watch Spring dawning in the fields and boughs.
Here, with pale wreaths around their blanched, cold brows,
Lie dead the days whereof ye nothing know.
Ye say the dead are harmless; is it so?
Nay; uncompassionating Death allows

The ghosts of their dead selves to come again;
And, if ye tarry, ye will see them rise,—
Dim shapes intangible, that wax and wane.
Some gaze with pleading, some with wrathful eyes,
“Mere ghosts,” ye say; yet go, before ye cry,—
“We have seen the immortal faces, and we die!”

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III.

Upbraid me not, O world, that I forbear
To make this song of mine a sword to smite
The wrongs of nations and defend the right;
Nor that I fail, through some remoter air,
To follow proud philosophy even where
Through soundless skies she tracks the lonely height.
You say the world's in darkness; in the fight
Of creeds conflicting bid me take my share:

In truth I am no coward, but I say,
Strive for the right you love so; quell the wrong.
I cannot rise and join you in the fray;
All I could give you would not be for long,
And might avail you nothing; go your way!
The grief that weds my soul requires my song.

IV.

As looking on a river that progresses
Through some loud, populous city, till it gains
The acrid sea,—thought tracks it through the plains
O'er which it flowed, to innermost recesses
Of hills the earliest light of morn caresses,
Where, nursed by Nature, fed by fragrant rains,
Sung to by birds, swayed by all varying strains
Of winds the very soul of spring possesses,

It sprang a slender stream, which, gath'ring force.
Grew to a river hurrying to the sea;
So, on this current of my song look ye.
Think not upon its dark unalterable course,
Nor of drowned hopes that in its eddies be;
But dream ye know and wander near its source.

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V.

Not as who gives to some belovèd one,—
Some dear belovèd one whose altered eyes
May not the face above them recognize,—
The roses he has taken from the sun
To deck her cold, sweet body, saying, “None
Shall give thee gifts hereafter,”—one rose lies
Upon the breast that doth not sink or rise,
And in the hand whose pressures are all done

Another rests,—not so to thee, my love,
Give I these songs of thee; I do but give
Because I love, and for thy memory live;
As swaying pines, that winds to dirges move,
Give to the winds again what winds have given,
Give I these songs to thee, my life, my heaven.

VI.

I said to you, my songs, in other days,
Go forth! and say now, in my lady's ear,
“From love's intense and stormy atmosphere
Our life is given. Where fierce passions blaze,
And great despair through the soul's echoing ways
Rolls thunder-like, we circle: but are here,
To say the storm shall cease, the heavens clear,
If so thou wilt have pity, in thy grace.”

And as men read, the Saviour of mankind,
When his disciples in their hour of dread
Called on Him, rose, and quell'd the waves and wind,—
So at her answer all the tempest fled,
And love's high heaven was filled from end to end
With light no lesser heavens can apprehend.

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VII.

And yet again I said, “Go forth, and see!
Your tones are glad and solemn as the strains
To which men worship in their holiest fanes.
Proclaim the glory of the days to be,
When Love himself, in sovereign ministrelsy,
From lands where he in visible godhead reigns,
Shall wake that lordlier music which sustains
All souls to look on his divinity.”

O songs! my songs, did I not bid ye say,
“Pardon, O queen, wherein we failed to show
The bliss that turns his night to glorious day?”
So did ye say, my songs; and well I know
She took your singing voices to be part
Of the diviner music of her heart.

VIII.

Go down, my songs, now to the land unknown,—
The starless kingdom that has Death for king,—
About the silent porches close and cling.
Through windless air, where bird hath never flown,
Or waste, gray fields, wherein no flower hath blown,
Hills from whose barren bosom wells no spring,
Let your tones rise, and die in echoing;
And by their sadness let my love be shown.

Then, like the echo lasting, it may be
A voice shall answer; but if otherwise,
Cease not! nor strive to solve Death's mystery,
For she may hear you, though no voice replies.
Go then! and say, “He follows in our wake,
Who bade us hasten here for his love's sake.”

University of Virginia Library

PRELUDES.

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