University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

(1882)

SONNET I
MARY MAGDALENE

Of all high crowns and sweet the green earth gave,
Or the still height of Galilean air,
Or white Jerusalem that shone so fair,
Or blue Gennesaret with rippling wave,
Not one was sweet or high or winged to save
As hers who flooded with repentant hair
Christ's feet, and brought the ointment soft and rare
Of her own broken heart,—as “for his grave.”
So she first saw him when his spirit rose:—
And through all time, through scene on changing scene,
Who is there, knowing Christ, but also knows
The soiled heart made by soul-deep sorrow clean?
Aye! half his deathless halo Jesus owes
To the harlot: gold-haired Mary Magdalene.

SONNET II
TO IRELAND

O Ireland, Ireland,—yet we love thee well!—
Lo! thy green meadows are made foul with red
Blood-stains by thine own sons' mad folly shed;
The land was heavenlike: thou hast made it hell.
Thou hast set murder on the lonely fell,
And filled the night with shadows of the dead,
And made the moonlight shudder at the tread
Of monstrous deeds too horrible to tell.
And this is love of Ireland! Pause and think.
Would not your love on nobler pinions soar
If it were taught from cowardly crimes to shrink,—
Murder to hate, injustice to abhor?
Ye your own chains are forging link by link,
And barring on yourselves your prison-door.

SONNET III
A SON TO A MOTHER

Ah! mother, hadst thou died when I was young
I could not then have borne it. Then my eyes
Would have lost sight of thee within vague skies:
My youth would chiefliest of all shafts have stung.
I should have seen the far blue hill-tops rise
Peak above peak,—and to the lowest rung
Of the celestial stair I should have clung
Hopeless; or hoping but with wild surmise.
But, now that I am old, I feel so near
Thy dwelling. “Soon” I say with humble glee
“The day will come when I shall follow thee.
Thy country on my vision rises clear;
The whispers of its summer winds I hear;
Its populous streets I very soon shall see.”

SONNET IV
IN VENICE

What sound is this that soundeth through the night,
Like falling drops upon the marble floor,
In Venice?—“Doth some tender goddess pour
Dew from her finger-tips,—or sheds she bright
Rose-leaves in showers upon the marble white,—
Or is it but the plash of passing oar?”
The sleeping husband wondered. Evermore
The drops fell tinkling: many and soft and light.
He woke, and stretched out hand, and it was wet
When he withdrew it. Then upright he sprang!
Half-naked, white and stabbed, with hair like jet,
His true wife lay. A woman's footstep rang
Far-off.—Oh, horror! Stabbed in her young bloom?
Yes. And the worst thing was, he guessed by whom.

SONNET V
GOD AND WOMAN

God made a woman,—and he gazed aghast
For very wonder. There she stood quite white,—
Naked and perfect. In the golden light
Before him like a carven dream she passed.
Her black hair gleamed against her shoulder bright;
Backward, as ever, one quick look she cast:
God watched her slowly vanish, till at last
The pure superb shape glimmered out of sight.
“Now do I for the first time envy Man”
He said. “The woman never will be mine;”
Those dark thick tresses darker than the pine
And sweeter than the rose,—that body wan
And soft and scented like the dim woodbine,—
I cannot own for ever:—but he can.”

SONNET VI
FORSAKEN

Shall thy divineness wither, woman fair
Set in the midst of lonely desert days?
Dost thou lift up to heaven thy weary gaze
Yet see nought round thee but the void blue air?
Have no soft lips of lover kissed thine hair?
Hath thine hand never toyed with myrtle sprays?
Hast thou not wandered by the green-blue bays
In summer, full of dreams no heart could share?
Oh, it were sin to leave thee blossoming so—
Alone, unplucked, unloved:—as great a sin
As to pass by some lily set within
A jungle,—where with heavy gait and slow
The loveless monstrous beasts lurch to and fro,
Piercing the rush-beds with their gaze unclean.

SONNET VII
“GOD LOVES ALL THINGS”

God loves all things. Yes, even the spotted snake,—
The lion and tiger, and the bird of prey;
The spider's white web hanging o'er the way;
The pike who lurks within the weedy lake;
The leopard sidling through the tangled brake;
The shark who spots with blood the Southern bay;
The gnats who muster at the close of day;—
Can God who made, relinquish or forsake?
One day the tiger shall be pure and clean
From bloodshed,—and the human tiger too.
What hate degraded, sweet love shall renew.
Judas along with Jesus shall be seen:
The priest shall cease on Satan's arm to lean,
The pulpit cease to thunder to the pew.

PASSION AND LOVE

SONNET VIII
I
PASSION

The sense of wrong in passion is the power
That lights all passion: 'tis the subtle charm
That makes so sweet the softness of smooth arm
And adds a magic to each swift night-hour.
It is the moon that lights the mystic bower
Of passion,—and the stars between the trees,—
And the strange glamour of the blue-haired seas;
It is that weirdly perfumed lurking flower.
It is the joy within the joy,—the sense
Of curious ecstasy beyond control,—
The unholy holy strength within the soul;
It is the vial of marvellous wine from whence
The red soft lingering honied round drops roll
That fill the human veins with fires intense.

SONNET IX
II
LOVE

The sense of right in love is the one thing
Within it sweetest and of deathless might:
Its self-denial gives it larger light
Than light of summer, or than light of spring.
The sense of duty plumes love's eagle wing
For loftier trackless leagues of sunlit flight:
The sense of duty is the golden ring
Whereby love weds the morn, and baulks the night.
Ah! passion's eyes are dark: but love's are grey,—
Clear-grey, like greyness of the English seas.
One lives within the noon-tide and the day:
The other 'mid the darkling olive-trees.
Both are most sweet: yet each in her own way;—
And when one comes, the other sister flees.

SONNET X
THE LONELY SENTINEL

The sense of passion,—though the passion grew
Not on the licensed legal common tree,—
Made sudden Spring on every side of me
Flute with a music half divine and new.
It made the grey waves flash with sudden blue:
It filled the air with speechless ecstasy;
With golden gleams it lit the cloud-swept lea;
It tinged the world's white flowers with roseate hue.
And why?—I know not. Only God can tell
Why things that on one side seem pale and wrong
Are flushed and holy and sweet and full of song
Upon the other: why in depths of hell
Wherein black Satan's armoured hosts wax strong
Glitters one lonely seraph-sentinel.

SONNET XI
A LOVER TO HIS MISTRESS

Yes: every manner of creature you caress!
That yellow wanton evil-tongued canary,—
You hold the fluffy bird with laughter airy
Within your blue-silk amorous loosened dress.
You love your lover,—I could swear it,—less
Than that red squirrel! Wild coquettish fairy,
Of gifts to eager man so shy and chary,—
Yet all creation you would bend to bless.
With the dark tresses of that horse's mane
You mix your own: you kiss his shining neck:
You murmur pet names without end to him.
If I would kiss you, lo! you start and check
My passion with cold words: then turn again
To that canary on his saucer's rim.

SONNET XII
THE ANCIENT MOON

O moon, thou gazest on our London night!
Thou see'st the Thames' dark eddies roll along:
Thou hear'st coarse vulgar words, or snatch of song:
Jealous, thou battlest with the electric light.
Thou kissest thine old love, the obelisk white
Whom thou didst toy with in the unknown years.
Thou markest many a bridge with stately piers:
Thou followest steam-boats in their throbbing flight.
Yet how thou sneerest at us in thine heart,—
Thou, most aristocratic of all things!—
Thou who hast seen the Assyrian priestess stand
Where pillars pale abut on endless sand:
Thou who hast watched Gomorrha's black-haired kings,
And lent thy lustre to barbaric Art.

SONNET XIII
TWO NIGHTS

The same blue overhanging vault of sky
And the same stars, and the same breeze that leaps
Along the heavens,—and the same moon that sweeps,
Majestic, through the hedgeless fields on high,
Scanning creation with cold ageless eye.
But what a change in two nights—lo! the lone
And solemn desert, and a town half-shown
Under the moon,—and the warm night-wind's sigh;
White columns, and the brow-bound blue-black hair
Of the Assyrian harlot and her face
Hard and clear-cut within the market-place
(And that same changeless golden moon still there!):—
Another night: our Strand and all its glare,
And gay-gowned wantons of another race.

SONNET XIV
BETHLEHEM AND THE GREEN PARK

The barley-fields of Bethlehem,—the sky
Full of far depths of colour strange and sweet;
Boaz asleep,—and Ruth beside his feet
Dreaming—the feathery swift moths fleeting by.
Through his light sleep he hears a woman sigh
And wakes and finds her, and their spirits meet:—
Around them still that hush of Eastern heat,
And the broad yellow sunburnt plains and dry.
Another night:—the centuries have fled,
Fled fast: in London, underneath a tree
In the Green Park a soldier sits, and he
Circles his sweetheart with strong arm, till lo!
From the white barrack doth the bugle blow.
Love lives, though Ruth the Moabite is dead.

SONNET XV
“IF ONE COULD LIVE FOR EVER!”

If one could live for ever!—carrying on
The life of old Assyria till to-day!
See era after era pass away
Yet be oneself,—though all men else had gone.
The sun to-day is the same sun that shone
On Saul and David: why should man, I pray,
Be less long-lived than its fierce golden spray?
E'en the moon lives, though age has made her wan.
O God, to live for ever!—passing through
Each age, and knowing the ecstasy of each:
The same gaze that to-day, quite youthful, falls
On the dim dome and facade of St. Paul's
Having beheld the Pyramids quite new
And flashed response to Cleopatra's speech.

SONNET XVI
THIS CENTURY,—AND THE NEXT

This century knew Napoleon,—and it knew
Byron and Wordsworth, and its heart has heard
The vast French poet's century-equal word;
And it has seen the smoke of Waterloo.
It has seen France and Germany bestrew
The summer plains with dead. It marked the Third
Napoleon drop from empire. It has stirred
With iron keels the sea's untroubled blue.
Now, nearing its august and solemn close,
It has seen Maytime in the Phœnix Park
Shudder at a crime than which no crime more dark
Has ever stained May's hawthorn or May's rose.
It has seen Revolution's first red spark:
Will its child see the towering flame?—God knows.

SONNET XVII
LOVE THAT ENDURES

Ye poets, think ye that the world will still
Cherish your memory when ye come to die?
Yes, for a little time,—with tear and sigh
Bending above you: for an hour she will.
Then will new song the woods and valleys fill
And new sunrises flush the fickle sky!
Again will passion's golden moments fly,
As shadows race along the wind-swept hill.
Will even the greatest live?—Yes, for awhile.
But ah! the world has endless youth in store
And unborn Shakespeares, Dantes, wait to pour
Song at her feet, and win her fairy smile.
Yet, Love that nought could conquer nor defile
Has its own godhead, safe for evermore.

ODE TO DEATH

“TOO SOON!”

LOVE AND TIME

A LOVING HEART

“YONDER A CLOUD!”

“IF I WERE AS OLD AS YOU!”

CROSS-PURPOSES

POST-MORTEM SURPRISES

I

II

GOD'S SERMON

FATE'S EQUAL MEASURE

DESPAIR

PAST MANY YEARS

“THE SAME FLOWERS BUD, THE SAME FLOWERS BLOW”

“WHEN ALL THE TOIL IS ENDED”

MAN AND THE DEMIURGUS

“IT WERE BETTER FOR HIM—”

Better be fathoms underneath the deep
Where sea-weeds wash and strange sea-creatures creep,
Thy neck enringed with stone,
Than change the eyes and soft lips of one child
Into the hardened eyes and mouth defiled
That haunt the streets, alone.

A MODERN PREACHER

“A YEAR AGO”

THE TWO PROPHETS

I

II

TWO SONNETS

I
MERCY AND JUSTICE

“Mercy, good Lord,” the sea-beach preachers pray:
“Mercy for sinful man; for he deserves
His doom, and thy great justice never swerves,—
Mercy for man in thy grim judgment-day!”
So they exclaim,—beside the sea-waves grey
O'er which that unconverted sea-gull curves.
And some with craven hearts and cowardly nerves
Bend to the lurid God their words portray.
But I—I stand secluded and apart,
And mix my spirit with the sea's great heart,
And with the voice, as it were, of all the sea
I cry: “Not mercy,—justice, we require;
Be thou true-souled, O God,—and be no liar;
Lo! that much sorrowing man demands from thee.”

II
THE GREAT CHANGE

Of old the singers spake of loving ways
Of God towards man, of wondrous mercies shown:
God was the Giver of all things—man alone
Received, and homage of high love and praise
Was due to God,—altars mankind must raise;
With gladness shout or for transgressions moan.—
But now crime's torrent gushes from God's throne!
God seems to us the sinner in these days.
Of old, it seemed, the heavenly eye pursued
Sinners who fled from it beyond the light,
Cowered in the darkness, trembled at the sun.
Now man demands of God: “But art thou good?
Hast thou, Lord God, in every point done right?
Hast thou loved justice? Yea, what hast thou done?”

THE HOLIER SEPULCHRE

“NOUGHT PERISHES”

Nought perishes. All love-dreams of the past
Transfigured, through all future years shall last.