Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold By "F. Harald Williams"[i.e. F. W. O. Ward]. First Edition |
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 | I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
HOME SICKNESS. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
 | Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold |  |
HOME SICKNESS.
I often have a sense of other lands,
A glow, a glimmer
Of unremembered unforgotten times,
When earth grows dimmer;
Which moves me like the touch of loving hands,
Mixed with the music as of distant chimes.
A thing familiar
And yet so alien, most remote and near;
A sweet auxiliar
Beyond all language beautiful and dear,
While past the unmeasured bounds and awful rounds
Of unpathed planets, through their purple dome
For ever swinging and for ever singing;
A strange dim dwelling far, and still a Home.
A glow, a glimmer
Of unremembered unforgotten times,
When earth grows dimmer;
Which moves me like the touch of loving hands,
Mixed with the music as of distant chimes.
A thing familiar
And yet so alien, most remote and near;
A sweet auxiliar
Beyond all language beautiful and dear,
While past the unmeasured bounds and awful rounds
Of unpathed planets, through their purple dome
For ever swinging and for ever singing;
A strange dim dwelling far, and still a Home.
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Betwixt the sorrow and the parent sin
It draweth nigher
From an inviting and forbidden shore,
With message higher;
It seems unknown, and is in all akin,
And brings me earnest of no foreign lore.
Betwixt the falling
Of shadows tempting me to shame and wrong,
And the calm calling
Of holy bells that chant the evensong;
It cometh to me then with larger ken,
Like the unsealing of a sacred tome.
I feel a drawing and an overawing
Of something great, which is and is not Home.
It draweth nigher
From an inviting and forbidden shore,
With message higher;
It seems unknown, and is in all akin,
And brings me earnest of no foreign lore.
Betwixt the falling
Of shadows tempting me to shame and wrong,
And the calm calling
Of holy bells that chant the evensong;
It cometh to me then with larger ken,
Like the unsealing of a sacred tome.
I feel a drawing and an overawing
Of something great, which is and is not Home.
And in the bosom of warm love and light,
When pulses quicken
With rest and rapture, for another hope
I dumbly sicken;
For solace more than meets the ear and sight,
The vision of a vaster horoscope.
My soul seems banished
From grander courts that rouse my fear and faith,
A kingdom vanished
But veiled not quite by earth's refulgent wraith;
And from the tenderest ties of lower skies
Bright with the grace of Hellas and of Rome,
I turn unsated like a life unmated,
And stretch dark hands to a conjectured home.
When pulses quicken
With rest and rapture, for another hope
I dumbly sicken;
For solace more than meets the ear and sight,
The vision of a vaster horoscope.
My soul seems banished
From grander courts that rouse my fear and faith,
A kingdom vanished
But veiled not quite by earth's refulgent wraith;
And from the tenderest ties of lower skies
Bright with the grace of Hellas and of Rome,
I turn unsated like a life unmated,
And stretch dark hands to a conjectured home.
I know by these blind stirrings in my heart
Which beats in prison,
I yet have might though fettered that would mount
To suns unrisen,
Wherein I have a birthright and a part,
And drink the fulness of its native fount.
The sense of sadness
Which never leaves me in my work or play,
Proclaims the gladness
Elsewhere of the old lost unsetting day.
I find the closest bond has links beyond,
And mirth the mocking of an evil gnome,
While in my weeping and the haunted sleeping
I feel the fretful wings that crave their home.
Which beats in prison,
I yet have might though fettered that would mount
To suns unrisen,
Wherein I have a birthright and a part,
And drink the fulness of its native fount.
The sense of sadness
Which never leaves me in my work or play,
Proclaims the gladness
Elsewhere of the old lost unsetting day.
I find the closest bond has links beyond,
358
While in my weeping and the haunted sleeping
I feel the fretful wings that crave their home.
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