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

Still each day the glad sun rises, still its conquering light surprises
Flower and flower together clinging 'mid the darkness and the dew:
Still the sea with flash of greeting smiles in heaven's face, proudly meeting
The gold sunshine in its robes of emerald green or sapphire blue.

II

Rose by rose shines out for ever, their gay groups will vanish never
Filling garden after garden, scenting all the summer breeze:
From the fern-lined quiet valleys still the silver streamlet sallies
And the white foam flings its stainless wedding-garment o'er the seas.

III

Or by orb the stellar legions fill the far sky's viewless regions
And the pale moon sails resplendent through the purple seas of space.
Darkness still is full of fancies for the hearts that weave romances,
Finding all the heavens' pure starlight in one human worshipped face.

IV

Still within the forest covers mix the hearts and hands of lovers,
Still the lover seeks the eternal in the moment's endless bliss:
Still the silences are broken by the mystic old words spoken
And the rose becomes self-conscious and divine in woman's kiss.

V

But the souls that pass and leave us, as the swift fierce years bereave us
Of our pleasures, of our gladness, of our health and hopes and ease,

Where are they? What darkness holds them? What of awful light enfolds them?
What of Shelley when above him closed the mantle of the seas?

VI

He who sang the bright world's wonder, when he heard alone the thunder
And beheld alone the curving loveless white breasts of the waves,
Did he then, no more a dreamer, pass to life and love supremer
Than our noblest living passion in this earth of flowers and graves?

VII

Or did speechless terror grasp him, as the waves' hands sought to clasp him,
As the flower-sweet glad earth vanished from his thoughts and from his ken,—
As he turned towards one who waited, one for evermore unmated,
Or yearned back in that dread moment towards a lost love once again?

VIII

That is what to-day we wonder, striving madly now to sunder
Death's serene and sombre curtain, full of starlight or of gloom.
What of sins and wild offences when the human nerves and senses
Fail, or change their form and message at the gateway of the tomb?

IX

What of pain and expiation, what of undreamed tribulation,
What of horror, what of anguish, what of darkness closing round,
When the soul, a conscience only, pays for life's sins, joyless, lonely,
Naked, helpless, homeless, loveless, in a realm without a sound?

X

What of souls for ever dying? Though we hear no groans nor crying
Yet there may be round about us in the starshine, in the air,

Fieriest torment past our speaking, mad revenge that fiends are wreaking
On the souls we counted victors, on the faces we found fair.

XI

Passion changeless, love eternal! Yes: but this by hate infernal
May be dogged and dogged for ever. Life's dim secrets who shall tell?
Through unmeasured tribulations, on through endless incarnations
Still may toil the human spirit, changing fairest heaven for hell.

XII

What of noblest love that perished, unredeemed, uncrowned, uncherished,
In the far-off silent eras that no legend may restore?
If in one life pain is boundless, what of pain's grim footsteps soundless
Over years that know no limit, or on seas that know no shore?

XIII

Love eternal may for ever bring sweet joy that lessens never,
Growing upward, upward alway, gathering flowers in heavenly meads:
Love unchanging, stern and deathless, crowned with starless agony, breathless,
May for ever pant pursuing a pale ghost that still recedes.

XIV

Oh, we apprehend so little, we who deem love's bonds are brittle,
What of mystery, strange, unfathomed, lurks within the gentlest eyes!
With her soul the woman holds us, when her soft embrace enfolds us,
And the soul releases never, and the last kiss never dies.

XV

Are not lovers still abiding in some union death-deriding?
Are not all stars linked together? Is not changeless law supreme?

Love eternal, hate unfailing, endless struggle, hopeless wailing,
Now and then one mighty vision of God's face, one marvellous gleam!

XVI

Is it triumph, is it terror? Is it victory over error
That the human race is winning, or a larger power of pain?
Is the crown of love most tender, after all, a blood-stained splendour?
Is it joy or is it anguish? Is it loss or is it gain?

1904.