University of Virginia Library

VOL. I

ESTHER

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3

A SONNET SEQUENCE

ESTHER, A YOUNG MAN'S TRAGEDY

I

When is life other than a tragedy,
Whether it is played in tears from the first scene,
In sable robes and grief's mute pageantry,
For loves that died ere they had ever been,
Or whether on the edge of joys set keen,
While all the stage with laughter is agog,
Death stepping forward with an altered mien
Pulls off his mask, and speaks the epilogue?
Life is a play acted by dying men,
Where, if its heroes seem to foot it well
And go light-tongued without grimace of pain,
Death will be found anon. And who shall tell
Which part was saddest, or in youth or age,
When the tired actor stops and leaves the stage?

II

Yes, who shall tell the value of our tears,
Whether we wept aright or idly grieved?
There is a tragedy in unloved years,
And in those passionate hours by love deceived,
In lips unkissed and hopes too soon bereaved,
And youth's high courage which no strength could save,
And manhood's web of fate by folly weaved,
And grey-haired grief brought down into the grave.
Who shall distinguish truly and be wise
'Twixt grief and grief, 'twixt night and night? The sun
Has its own sorrow and a voice that cries
Louder than darkness of its joys undone,
And pleads with that exceeding bitter cry,
“I have tasted honey, and behold, I die!”

III

A little honey! Ay, a little sweet,
A little pleasure when the years were young,
A joyous measure trod by dancing feet,
A tale of folly told by a loved tongue.
These are the things by which our hearts are wrung
More than by tears. Oh, I would rather laugh,
So I had not to choose such tales among
Which was most laughable. Man's nobler half
Resents mere sorrow. I would rather sit
With just the common crowd that watch the play
And mock at harlequin and the clown's wit,
And call it tragedy and go my way.
I should not err, because the tragic part
Lay not in these, but sealed in my own heart.

IV

And thus it is. The tale I have to tell
Is such another. He who reads shall find
That which he brings to it of Heaven or Hell
For his best recompense where much is blind,
A jest-book or a sermon or mere wind,—
Each as he may,—for life's least godly mirth
Is mingled strangely here with fate unkind,
And this is a true story of the Earth.
The passionate heart of youth with its desires
Is not all noble, and some baseness clings
For ever mixed with its eternal fires,
Else were it single among human things.
And all life's wisdom learns but this last plan,
To jest at tears and weep Man's mirth and Man.

V

I had been an hour at Lyons. My breath comes
Fast when I think of it. An hour, no more,
I trod those streets and listened to the drums,
The mirth, the music, and the city's roar,
And found no sermon for me in her stones.
It was the evening of St. Martin's fair,
And all the world, its working bees and drones,
Had gone out to the quays in the sweet air,
To taste that thing more sweet to human breath,
Its own mad laughter at its own mad kind.
“An hour of prayer,” I mused, “for men of faith.”
Yet all these worshippers were only blind.
And I, no whit less blind, among them went
In search of pleasure for my punishment.

VI

The Lyons fair! In truth it was a Heaven
For idlers' eyes, a feast of curious things,
Swings, roundabouts, and shows, the Champions Seven,
Dramas of battles and the deaths of kings,
The whole Place d'Armes grown white as if with snow,
With canvas booths arrayed in triple lines,
And jugglers, lions, snakes from Mexico,
Dancers on tight ropes, clowns and columbines.
I went among them all with grave intent,
I, too, to find it may be some delight.
I was a boy and knew not what life meant,
Nor what the pleasures were men seek in it.
Only I knew that mingling with that throng,
I was a stranger a strange world among.

VII

I had made my round, as yet with little gain
Of undiscovered good in that gay place.
I had sought my share of pleasure, but in vain.
Laughter was not for me, and hid her face.
I had asked for mirth. The oracles were dumb.
No sound of Folly with her tinkling feet
Had bid my own feet follow, and no home
Was mine for merriment or musings sweet.
I had ceased to hope and almost ceased to seek,
When, from the farthest booth of all, the bray
Of brass and drums and fiddling and the shriek
Of a dwarf's voice invited me to stay.
The crowd, as scenting some more mirthful thing,
Surged round that booth agape and wondering.

VIII

It was a booth no larger than the rest,
No loftier fashioned and no more sublime,
As poor a shrine as ever youth possessed
In which to worship truth revealed in time.
Yet to my soul the mean remembrance clings
With all the folly of that far fair eve,
And my pulse throbs with lost imaginings,
And passion rises from its grave to grieve.
Vain dreams, brute images! and over all
The shrill-voiced dwarf its hierarch and priest,
Vaunting its praise, a pagan prince of Baal.
It scared me as of some wild idol feast.
“The Booth of Beauty,” thus it was I read,
Blazoned in scarlet letters overhead.

IX

I stopped, I listened, and I entered in,
With half-a-dozen more, that sight to see.
“The Booth of Beauty,” 'twas a name of sin
Which seemed to promise a new mystery.
There was a crowd already in the place,
And 'twixt me and the stage, now darkly hid,
The gathering evening had come down apace,
And all was dim within and overspread.
I know not by what instinct or mute proof
Of Providence it was, but this is true,
Even as I stepped 'neath that ignoble roof,
A prescience warned me there of portents new,
And a voice spoke with no uncertain sound
Warning me back as from ungodly ground.

X

An instant, just an instant, and no more,
And it was gone, and I with eyes unsealed
Saw the bald pageant stripped to its thought's core,
And naked there to my scared eyes revealed.
Upon a throne which filled the upper space
Two female monsters sat, the first a girl
Marked like a leopard with pied arms and face,
And restless eyes aflame and teeth of pearl.
Her as we ventured near, I heard awhile
Say she was hungry, and a gleam like blood
Lighted her lips and died in a fierce smile.
A woman's hand behind me in the crowd
Clutched at my arm, and through the booth there went
A shiver of half fear, half merriment.

XI

Beyond her sat a second monster. She
In shape and sense was undisguisedly real,
An ox-eyed queen of full-fed majesty
And giant height and comeliness ideal.
She too her tale related, as was due,
In measured tones, her age, her birth, her name,
Bourgeois her parents, friends of order too,
And good Imperialists of honest fame,
Her age eighteen, her height seven feet, her waist
An ell and more in its circumference,
Her leg above the knee, and where was placed
Its point of full development. . . The sense
Of the rest I lost, for laughing half aloud
Again a woman touched me in the crowd.

XII

She was a little woman dressed in black,
Who stood on tiptoe with a childish air,
Her face and figure hidden in a sacque,
All but her eyes and forehead and dark hair.
Her brow was pale, but it was lit with light,
And mirth flashed out of it, it seemed in rays.
A childish face, but wise with woman's wit,
And something, too, pathetic in its gaze.
In the bare dusk of that unseemly place
I noted all, and this besides, a scar
Which on her cheek had left a paler trace.
It seemed to tell its tale of love and war.
That little scar! Doubt whispered of this one,
Boy as I was, she had not lived a nun.

XIII

A second warning, nor unheeded. Yet
The thought appealed to me as no strange thing,
Pure though I was, that love impure had set
Its seal on that fair woman in her Spring.
Her broken beauty did not mar her grace
In form or spirit. Nay, it rather moved.
It seemed a natural thing for that gay face
It should have known and suffered and been loved.
It kindled in me, too, to view it thus,
A mood of daring which was more than mine,
And made my shamefaced heart leap valorous,
And fired its courage to a zeal divine.
All this, in one short instant, as I gazed
Into her eyes, admiring, yet amazed.

XIV

Me, too, she doubtless read. For, with her hand
Raised as for help and pointing to a chair,
She bade me, with a gesture, part command
And part entreaty, I would set her there.
She could not see, she said, the Queen of Love
My eyes so coveted, and laughed and laid
Upon my lips the fingers of her glove
When I protested at the words she said.
I hardly know how it all came about
But did her bidding as she would, and she
From her new vantage bore the humour out
And mocked the more at each new mockery.
And still she held my arm and I her dress,
“Lest she should fall,” she said, in waywardness.

XV

Thus it began with laughter. But anon
The ox-eyed queen, who had resumed by rote
The tale of her perfections one by one,
Turned by some ominous chance towards the spot
Where we two stood. “And take good note,” said she,
“All here is honest beauty, flesh and blood,
As any in the world. Yet, if there be
A doubt between you, let me make it good.
Which of you two will honour me so near
As to prove the truth?” My cheeks in spite of me
Flamed in the dark, and I was seized with fear
And a wild doubt lest mine the choice should be.
The little woman on the chair began
To shout aloud and bid me play the man.

XVI

Oh, 'tis a terrible thing in early youth
To be assailed by laughter and mute shame,
A terrible thing to be befooled forsooth
By one's own foolish face betrayed in flame.
The little traitor, when she saw me dumb,
Went on to clap her hands, till all and each
Took up the jest and called on me to come
And prove my courage in the manly breach.
The imperious queen stood waiting for me there,
Pointing and beckoning, and the crowd closed in.
Under the cover of a wilder air
From the brass band, the darkness and the din,
I know not how it was, in fear or fun,
I touched that monster's knee, and all was done.

XVII

I touched that knee. She did not show surprise,
And the earth had not opened at our feet.
She did not even laugh. Her foolish eyes
Twinkled a moment in her cheeks, then set
Like fog-bound stars for ever from my sight.
And at a signal from the little woman,
Who clung to me still, a chorus left and right
Of laughter rose Homeric and inhuman,
Drowning all further sense in one wild roar.
I heard the spotted girl with leopard lips
Complain that she was hungry as before,
And all the world was merged in an eclipse,
Darkening the air around and overhead,
And then I broke away and turned and fled.

XVIII

Alas, poor Queen of Beauty! In my heart
I could weep for you and your sad graceless doom.
You stand at my life's threshold in the part
Of king's chief jester in the ante-room,
And none more near the throne. You made us sport
According to your folly, and passed on,
And now you live with pension in Love's Court,
And privilege to jest and wear the crown.
Yes, I could weep for you. Your part it was
To strike the cymbals on a night sublime
For Love's first bridal dance. Alas, alas!
Time, the avenger of our manhood's prime,
Is gathering all life courtiers to his cell,
And you among the rest. So fare you well.

XIX

I fled the booth with feelings as of Cain,
Yet laughing at my own bewilderment.
My cheeks had blushed till it was physical pain,
And my eyes smarted. Through my head there went
The little woman's last appealing word
Bidding me stop, in tones that smote afresh.
And 'twixt my finger and thumb there throbbed and stirred
The semblance of that monstrous pound of flesh,
The knee that I had handled. With it too
The jet beads of the little woman's skirt,
Where I had held her, left an impress new
And touched my conscience to a deeper hurt.
I was ashamed of all with shame intense,
My youth, my frailty, and my innocence.

XX

I fled into the bosom of the night,
Leaving the Fair behind me. I had need
Of the sweet healing darkness to my sight,
As a bruise needs a poultice. And in speed
I went thus half through Lyons, loath to win
Back to the crowd, and doubly loath to go
Thus foolishly transfigured to my inn.
Strange fateful night! Even to this hour 'tis so.
Night in a city with the distant hum
Of laughing crowds, the silence of strange streets,
My own mute footfalls and the redolent gloom
Of oil-lit thresholds brings it back and cheats
My sorrow still to the last dreams of good
I dreamed that evening in my solitude.

XXI

If I have since done evil in my life,
I was not born for evil. This I know.
My soul was a thing pure from sensual strife.
No vice of the blood foredoomed me to this woe.
I did not love corruption. Beauty, truth,
Justice, compassion, peace with God and man,
These were my laws, the instincts of my youth,
And hold me still, conceal it as I can.
I did not love corruption, nor do love.
I find it ill to hate and ill to grieve.
Nature designed me for a life above
The mere discordant dreams in which I live.
If I now go a beggar on the Earth,
I was a saint of Heaven by right of birth.

XXII

You know the story of my birth, the name
Which I inherited for good and ill,
The secret of my father's fame and shame,
His tragedy and death on that dark hill.
You know at least what the world knows or knew,
For time has taken half the lookers-on,
As it took him, and leaves his followers few,
And those that loved him scarce or almost none.
To me, his son, there had remained the story,
Told and retold by her who knew it best,
A mystery of love, perhaps of glory,
A heritage to hold and a bequest.
Ah, how it loved him, that sad woman's heart,
What faith was hers and what a martyr's part!

XXIII

Nor later, when with her my childhood died,
Was life less sealed to me. The Church became
My guardian next and mother deified,
Who lit within me a more subtle flame
Of constancy, and clothed me in her mood.
No sound, no voice within that sanctuary
Told me of common evil. Unsubdued
And vast and strange, a thing from which to flee,
The world lay there without us. We within,
Fenced in and folded safe in our strong home,
Knew nothing of the sorrow and the sin.
'Tis no small matter to have lived in Rome,
In the Church's very bosom and abode,
Cloistered and cradled there, a child of God.

XXIV

Thus through these griefs I had been set apart,
As for a double priesthood. Life to me,
In those first moments when I probed my heart,
Less an enchantress seemed than enemy.
My knowledge of the world had nothing human.
I saw Mankind a tribe, my natural foe,
Whom I must one day battle with; and Woman,
Ah! Woman was a snare I did not know.
Indeed, it may be that already hope
Knocked at my soul with tales it dared not own
Of woman's kindness in my horoscope.
Man, only Man I feared with eyes bent down,
Man the oppressor, who with pale lips curled
Sheds blood in the high places of the world.

XXV

My childhood, then, had passed a mystery
Shrouded by death, my boyhood a shut thing.
The passion of my soul as it grew free
With growing youth, a bird with broken wing,
Knew nothing of its strength to dare or do,
Or, if it dreamed of battle still to come,
That was its secret hidden in the blue
Of life's great vault of tears which was its doom,
A duty of revenge some day for blood.
Enough! You know I held me from the press
To whom base things are nothing, that I stood
Parted from this world's weekday wickedness
By a whole legend of romance sublime,
Perhaps by the dead virtue of a crime.

XXVI

I linger on the threshold of my youth.
If you could see me now as then I was,
A fair-faced frightened boy with eyes of truth
Scared at the world yet angry at its laws,
Plotting all plots, a blushing Cataline
Betrayed by his own cheeks, a misanthrope
In love with all things human and divine,
The very fool of fortune and high hope,
You would deny you knew me. Oh, the days
Of our absurd first manhood, rich in force,
Rich in desire of happiness and praise
Yet impotent in its heroic course,
And all for lack of that one worthless thing,
Knowledge of life and love and suffering!

XXVII

At such a time indeed of youth's first morn,
There is a heaving of the soul in pain,
A mighty labour as of joys unborn,
Which grieves it and disquiets it in vain.
The soul is scared at her own lack of peace,
Her cradle song is mute, and she has fled
From her old life as to a wilderness.
She finds herself awake and without bread.
'Tis then the body, her new counsellor,
Speaks in her ear, and still with eloquence
Pleads for more action, and his voice to her
Is sweet with love, and sadly she consents.
There is a day of youth which needs must come
When each must learn his life and leave his home.

XXVIII

The summer I had passed in my own fashion
High in the Alps, a proselyte to toil.
I was released and free, and spent my passion
On the bare rocks as on a fruitful soil.
I had soothed my soul with labour, and its fire
Borne to those naked heights where I unfurled
My flag with new ambitions, high and higher
Even to the last bleak outposts of the world.
My soul had needed courage, and behold!
Here in these battles with the hosts of air
And rock and snow and storm she had grown bold
And proved her temper for the coming war.
This was her gain, the strife she must engage
With physical fear, her childhood's heritage.

XXIX

A glorious triumph. On that day of days
When, standing on the summit's utmost edge
Of my first mountain-top, I viewed the maze
Which I had travelled upwards, ledge on ledge,
And all that wilderness of rock and plain
Rolled at my feet, and, when with heel fast set
On Nature's neck, I knew the giant slain,
My thrall, my prisoner, on the parapet,
I was transfigured. Slowly in me rose
The throb of courage as a sense new born.
“Even Man,” I cried, “Man's self, my foe of foes,
The phantom of my fears, shall feel my scorn
Yet in a nobler war.” And trembling then
I seemed to stand, I too, a man with men.

XXX

Thus was my soul enfranchised. But anon,
With courage fired to full-fledged enterprise,
And pushing still the vantage I had won,
I sought communion with a world less wise,
The living world. I mixed with not a few,
Shepherds and countrymen, and village priests,
Bagmen at inns, and all the motley crew
Which comes and goes on market days and feasts
In old-world hostelries of old-world towns.
These gave a second schooling, till the grace
Of the summer ended on the upper downs,
And, carrying still its glory on my face,
I came to Lyons where these things befell.
The why and wherefore of it who shall tell?

XXXI

The booths were shut. The Fair was at an end,
And the crowd gone with multitudinous feet
Noisily home, or lingering still to spend
At Café doors or at the turn of the street
In twos and threes its laughter with good-night.
All turned to silence. Even my heart had peace
As, self-possessed and freed from its vain fright,
I found myself once more upon the quays.
I stopped before the theatre grown dark,
With its extinguished lamps and blank repose
A scene of melancholy sad to mark,
Made sadder too by the white moon which rose
Behind it virginal with vaporous wings,
Aloof and careless of all earthly things.

XXXII

I had stopped to read a handbill of the play,
Caught by the lettering. Thus it was I read,
“Programme of this night's pieces, Saturday
The twentieth of October, ‘X. Y. Z.,’
A piece in one act, and ‘Les Bergers Fous,’
These to be followed by the well-known ‘drame’
Of ‘Manon Lescaut,’ here brought out anew
For the first time at Lyons.” And a name
Followed in giant type of one who then
Illustrious stood in all the world of folly,
The most sublime Comedian known to men,
“Mademoiselle Esther, Muse of Melancholy.”
She in her part of Manon, so 'twas writ,
Three nights would play in honour infinite.

XXXIII

Such was the legend. I had read it through
Twice ere I thought of thinking what it meant.
And as I turned with a sigh because I knew
That I alone perhaps of all who went
Homewards that night should bid good-night to none,
From a side door thrust open on the street
And calling as she passed in petulant tone
To one within who seemed to rouse her heat,
“Ah, mauvais plaisant!” ere she slammed it to,
Out stepped my little woman of the Fair.
Her face was altered, but its form and hue,
If I had doubted in the moonlight there,
Was marked for me by that unaltered sign,
The little scar, its beauty's underline.

XXXIV

She saw me in an instant, and stopped short
With a sudden change of look from fierce to gay.
Her black eyes gleamed with triumph as they caught,
Like some wild bird of chase, their natural prey.
“Ha, ha,” she cried, “c'est lui, c'est l'ingénu.
Ah, vagabond! 'Tis thus you find me out.
Standing en faction, and at midnight too,
At the actors door, with no more fear or doubt
Than any sinner of them all. Oh wise!
Who would have guessed it? No. You shall not speak.
You shall not soil your innocent lips with lies
For any foolish reason in the week,
Nor for the year together if you told
Your stories here till both of us grew old.

XXXV

“Silence. I will not listen!” “And for what?”
She added strangely, in a softer mood.
“You see I am not angry. Do you not?
Only soft-hearted, and alas! too good.
Why did you follow me?” She took my hand
With a sudden action so devoid of guile
That I, who could not choose but understand,
Was softened too and fooled into a smile.
“Why did you follow me? Here, feel,” she said,
“How my heart beats. It frightens me to find
So much of cunning in so young a head,
So young a heart,—and mine which is not blind!”
She pressed my hand to her side. In truth, her heart
Was beating there, my own heart's counterpart.

XXXVI

She watched me curiously with mocking eyes,
Yet tenderly, till once again her mirth
Prevailed with her, and quick in feigned surprise
Thrusting me back, “Ah, traitor!” she broke forth,
“'Twas not for me then you were waiting there,
Not me, poor foolish me. The Queen of Love,
The woman of the booth! She was your care!
Monster! to dare me thus! And yet you prove
Your wit in vain, for, look, you foolish boy,
She cannot walk the streets like you and me,
Or the town would be at her heels.” Convulsed with joy
At this new jest she laughed remorselessly,
Till I was almost angry and inclined
To leave her there. And then she changed her mind.

XXXVII

She seemed to change as if with a change of the wind,
And growing serious sighed, “Now look,” she said,
“You think me a mad woman and unkind,
But that is nonsense. I am sound of head
And not unsound of heart, ah, no, not there!
But you turn my head with your John the Baptist's face.
I will not be made jealous, so beware.”
She looked entreatingly as if for grace,
And held me by the arm. “We are strangers both
Among these heavy Lyonnese. By right
We so should hold together. Tell me truth.
You never saw me, did you, till to-night?”
I said, “I came here not twelve hours ago!
Why should you think it?” “No,” she broke in, “no.

XXXVIII

“I do not doubt it. You have a look of truth
Which is beyond suspicion. But the world
Is as full of knaves as fools. You have your youth
And I my wisdom. Then your head is curled
Just as I like it, and your face is smooth,
And it can blush like your red innocent hands.
I saw it in an instant in the booth
That we should know each other and be friends.
It does not do to question. Look at me.
I am not pretty, yet the world's best sense
Has raved about my beauty foolishly
These five years past in every mood and tense!
Say. Would you like we should be friends for good?”
Not knowing what I said, I said I would.

XXXIX

“We shall be friends. How friends? You must know me first.
What? Like the Pont Neuf? Should you wish it? Well,
None ever yet repented it who durst.
Oh! you shall know me as I dare not tell.
You said I was not pretty. 'Tis the paint
That ruins the complexion and the hours
Spent at the footlights. These would rob a saint,
Much more a sinner, of her natural powers.
Voilà la casse du métier! Then, this scar,
Some praise it as a beauty. They are fools.
At best it but an honour is of war,
And beauty is not measured by foot-rules.
So you forgive it me, what need we care?
Fair faces are but signs of things more fair.”

XL

She went on talking like a running stream,
Without more reason or more pause or stay
Than to gather breath and then pursue her whim
Just where it led her, tender, sad, or gay.
Her moods seemed all alike to her. But soon
With a little shudder, for the wind was chill
And we had lingered on there in the moon,
She bade me follow, and I bowed my will.
The torrent of her words had drowned in me
What humour of resistance there had been,
And the last sense of danger ceased to be
In the first joy of yielding to such sin.
There is no pleasure in the world so sweet
As, being wise, to fall at folly's feet.

XLI

Who might describe the humours of that night,
The mirth, the tragedy, the grave surprise,
The treasures of fair folly infinite
Learned as a lesson from those childlike eyes?
When we had left our river of fair hope,
The world once more engulfed us in its ways,
And street on street we passed, and shop on shop,
Still loitering by to peer within and praise.
At each new stall we stopped as if in doubt,
Asking a price, and in pretence to buy.
I thought she would have worn men's patience out
With her fool's talk while I stood idly by.
And still, as each grew warm, with cunning word
She turned their wrath from surly to absurd.

XLII

And so we went our way,—yes, hand in hand,
Like two lost children in some magic wood
Baffled and baffling with enchanter's wand
The various beasts that crossed us and withstood.
Each step was an experience. Every mood
Of that fair woman a fresh gospelling,
Which spoke aloud to me and stirred my blood
To a new faith, I knew not with what sting.
One thing alone I knew or cared to know,
Her strange companionship thus strangely won.
The past, the future, all of weal or woe
In my old life was gone, for ever gone.
And still to this I clung as one who clings
To hope's last hencoop in the wreck of things.

XLIII

How shall I tell my fall? The life of man
Is but a tale of tumbles, this way thrown
At his beginning by mere haste of plan
In the first gaping ditch with flowers o'ergrown;
Anon more cautious for his wounded knees,
Yet falling still through much expectancy;
And so to age, the goal of his heart's ease,
Stumbling in blindness on he knows not why.
How shall I tell it? As the poets tell
Who wrap love in a garment of vain light?
Or plainly naked, the poor child of Hell
And laughter that it is and starless night?
I like the truth best. Yet this love, sad thing,
Mired and defiled, I saw it once a king.

XLIV

We came at last, alas! I see it yet,
With its open windows on the upper floor,
To a certain house still stirring, with lights set,
And just a chink left open of the door.
Here my companion stopped and bade me in;
Her dressmaker's, she said. And I, who heard
A sound of women's voices from within,
Shrank back alarmed and ready at a word
From any damsel stoutly to deny.
But “Madame Blanche,” she said to ease my fears,
“Is a good soul, and far too wise to pry
Or fancy evil of her customers
At any hour of the night they choose to come,
Much less of me.” And so I followed dumb.

XLV

I followed dumb and shrinking like a thief
Close in her shadow from the women's guess,
Yet ruthlessly betrayed for my cheeks' grief
From head to foot in the tall pier-glasses.
My vagabond attire, my coat all rags,
My tattered plaid stained with the summer's dust,
The sash which bound my waist all gaps and jags,
With gaiters frayed and such sad shoes as must
Have served Ulysses at his journey's close;
All these I saw revealed to my disgrace,
My hat still crowned with its last Alpine rose,
And what she had called my “John the Baptist's face”
Red with confusion and the rage of youth,
I saw it all, the whole remorseless truth.

XLVI

Not so my little sponsor. She, with eyes
Proudly unconscious of my fool's display,
Talked volubly to all and scorned disguise,
While Madame Blanche herself, no less than they,
Smiled us a welcome, and with upraised hands
Disclaimed excuse and led us straightway through
To an inner room as to a Conference.
There I first saw to my amazement new
That fair white mystery, a woman's dress,
And heard its language spoken. Stuffs were brought
And cards unrolled before us, braids and lace
Lauded and handled and their merits taught
To ears that listened and to eyes that saw
Their secret sense, the law within the law.

XLVII

Sublime discussions! Let who will be wise!
These are the things that touch us and transcend.
The logic of all beauty is surprise,
The reason of all love the unseen end.
Still as they argued on of this and that,
Turning perchance to me as arbiter
Where in my corner I still speechless sat
To end their strife, my vision seemed to clear,
The scales fell from my eyes of ignorance,
The terror from my heart. One thing alone
Stood plain before me, the supreme fair chance
Of a first fortune, glorious and unknown,
Which beckoned me with no uncertain hand
To touch and taste and learn and understand.

XLVIII

Suddenly then my strange companion cried,
“Bring me the body.” In a moment more
She had thrown off her hat, her veil untied,
And motioning all the women to the door,
While I sat speechless by who would have gone,
Undid her jacket and anon her dress,
With the jet buttons of it one by one,
And stood but clothed the more in loveliness,
A sight sublime, a dream, a miracle,
A little goddess from some luminous field
Brought down unconscious on our Earth to dwell,
And in an age of innocence revealed,
Naked but not ashamed. Nay, wherefore shame?
And I, ah, who shall blame me, who shall blame?

XLIX

I will not tell the secrets of that place.
When Madame Blanche returned to us again
I was kneeling there, while Esther kissed my face
And dried and comforted my tears. O vain
And happy tears! O griefs thrice comforted!
I trembled, but not with fear. If I was dumb,
'Twas not for lack of speech where all was said.
My doubts were ended and my fears o'ercome,
And joy had triumphed. Life has given me much
And pleasure much, and Heaven may yet have store
Of nobler hopes to kindle and to touch,
But never for all time, ah, never more,
That delicate dawn of wonder when lips move
First to the love of life and love of love.

L

He who has once been happy is for aye
Out of destruction's reach. His fortune then
Holds nothing secret, and Eternity,
Which is a mystery to other men,
Has like a woman given him its joy.
Time is his conquest. Life, if it should fret,
Has paid him tribute. He can bear to die.
He who has once been happy! When I set
The world before me and survey its range,
Its mean ambitions, its scant fantasies,
The shreds of pleasure which for lack of change
Men wrap around them and call happiness,
The poor delights which are the tale and sum
Of the world's courage in its martyrdom;

LI

When I hear laughter from a tavern door,
When I see crowds agape and in the rainWatching on tiptoe and with stifled roar
To see a rocket fired or a bull slain,
When misers handle gold, when orators
Touch strong men's hearts with glory till they weep,
When cities deck their streets for barren wars
Which have laid waste their youth, and when I keep
Calmly the count of my own life and see
On what poor stuff my manhood's dreams were fed
Till I too learned what dole of vanity
Will serve a human soul for daily bread,
—Then I remember that I once was young
And lived with Esther the world's gods among.

LII

I lived with Esther, not for many days,
If days be counted by the fall of night
And the sun's rising, yet through years of praise,
If truth be timepiece of joys infinite.
And what a life it was! No vain sweet dream
Of love in idleness which all men know,
But a full drama fashioned on the theme
Of strength victorious over death and woe.
Here was no faltering. Ours the triumph was
Of that strong logic which beholds each day
As a new world to conquer, and the cause
Itself complete of a more glorious fray.
To-day our cycle was. In it sublime
We sat enthroned as on the neck of Time.

LIII

For Esther was a woman most complete
In all her ways of loving. And with me
Dealt as one deals who careless of deceit
And rich in all things is of all things free.
She did not stop with me to feel her way
Into my heart, because she all hearts knew,
But, like some prodigal heir of yesterday
Just in possession, counted not her due
And grandly gave. O brave humility!
O joy that kneels! O pride that stoops to tears!
She spent where others had demanded fee,
Served where all service had of right been hers,
Casting her bread of life upon love's ways,
Content to find it after many days.

LIV

I must not speak of it. Even yet my heart
Is but a feeble thing to fret and cry,
And it might chance to wake and with a start,
When nights were still and stars were in the sky,
Sit up and muse upon its lonely state,
With the same stars to mock at it as then,
And certain chords that touched might touch it yet,
And griefs find issue and tears come again.
I must not venture farther in this mood.
Grief is forsworn to me. I will not grieve,
Nor think too much on Esther's womanhood,
Rather on that which was its make-believe.
And yet awhile she loved me. In this thought
I long found rest when all was come to nought.

LV

We stayed at Lyons three days, only three,
In Esther's world of wonder and renown,
She, glorious star, each night immortally
Playing her Manons to the listening town.
I glorious too, but in Love's firmament,
Watching her face by which alone I moved,
A shadow near her raptured and intent,
And seeking still the signs that I was loved.
Thrice happy days! Thrice blessed tragedy!
Her Des Grieux was I, her lover lorn
Bound to her fortunes, blest to live or die,
And faithful ever though to faith forsworn,
Waiting behind the scenes in that stage-land
To greet her exits and to squeeze her hand.

LVI

Who has not wept with Manon? Of all tales
That thrill youth's fancy or to tears or mirth
None other is there where such grief prevails,
Such passionate pity for the loves of Earth.
Who has not wept with Manon in her sin,
Wept in her punishment? What angry heart
Has been unmoved in youth to see her win
With those sad archers to the inhuman cart?
Who has not followed her beyond the seas,
And sold his life for her, and bowed his pride,
And sinned all sins to buy her back to ease,
And died all deaths to venge her when she died?
And I, blest boy, who each new happy night
When all was done still lived in her delight!

LVII

This was my term of glory. All who know
Something of life will guess untold the end.
In love, one ever kisses for his woe,
One lends his cheek, alas! or seems to lend,
One has the pleasure, one the penalties,
One is in earnest, one has time to laugh,
One turns impatient from imploring eyes,
And one in terror spells love's epitaph.
There was no wisdom in this love of mine,
Therefore it perished earlier than the rest,
Although I poured out all my heart like wine
And watered it with tears, and prayed unblest
In my soul's rage to all the Saints of heaven
To give me this and yet to be forgiven.

LVIII

It might not be. Some things are possible,
And some impossible for even God.
And Esther had no soul which Heaven or Hell
Could touch by joy or soften by the rod.
She could not really love me. The day came,
How soon, how late, I need not to devise,
When passion prayed its last, and only shame
Stood for my portion in a world grown wise,
And I went forth for ever from her sight
Knowing the good and evil. On that day
I did her wrong by anger. Now life's light
Illumines all, and I behold her gay
As I first knew her in my love purblind,
Dear passionate Esther, soulless but how kind!

THE LOVE SONNETS OF PROTEUS

I
TO ONE IN A HIGH POSITION

To you, a poet, glorious, heaven-born,
One who is not a poet but a son
Of the earth earthy, sick and travel-worn
And weary with a race already run,
A battle lost e'er yet his day is done,
Comes with this tribute, shattered banners torn
From a defeat. You reign in Macedon,
My Alexander, as at earlier morn
You reigned upon Parnassus, hero, king.
I reign no more, not even in those hearts
For which these songs were made, and if I sing
'Tis with a harsh and melancholy note
At which my own heart like an echo starts.
Yet sometimes I can deem you listening,
And then all else is instantly forgot.

I. PART I.—TO MANON

II
COMPARING HER TO A FALCON

Brave as a falcon and as merciless,
With bright eyes watching still the world, thy prey,
I saw thee pass in thy lone majesty,
Untamed, unmated, high above the press.
The dull crowd gazed at thee. It could not guess
The secret of thy proud aërial way,
Or read in thy mute face the soul which lay
A prisoner there in chains of tenderness.
—Lo, thou art captured. In my hand to-day
I hold thee, and awhile thou deignest to be
Pleased with my jesses. I would fain beguile
My foolish heart to think thou lovest me. See,
I dare not love thee quite. A little while
And thou shalt sail back heavenwards. Woe is me!

III
ON HIS FORTUNE IN LOVING HER

I did not choose thee, dearest. It was Love
That made the choice, not I. Mine eyes were blind
As a rude shepherd's who to some lone grove
His offering brings, and cares not at what shrine
He bends his knee. The gifts alone were mine;
The rest was Love's. He took me by the hand,
And fired the sacrifice, and poured the wine,
And spoke the words I might not understand.
I was unwise in all but the dear chance
Which was my fortune, and the blind desire
Which led my foolish steps to Love's abode,
And youth's sublime unreasoned prescience
Which raised an altar and inscribed in fire
Its dedication: “To the unknown god.”

IV
IN PRAISE OF HIS FATE

When I hear others speak of this and that
In our fools' lives which might have better gone,
Complaining idly of too niggard fate
And wishing still their senseless past undone,
I feel a childish tremor through me run,
Stronger than reason, lest by some far chance
Fate's ear to our sad plaints should yet be won
And these our lives be thrown back on our hands.
I tremble when I think of my past years,
My hopes, my aims, my wishes. All these days
I might have wandered far from Love and thee.
But kind fate held me, heedless of my prayers,
A prisoner to its wise mysterious ways,
And forced me to thy feet—ah fortunate me!

V
ON THE POWER OF HER BEAUTY

I am lighthearted now. An hour ago
There was a tempest in my heaven, a flame
Of sullen lightning under a bent brow
And a dull muttering which breathed no name.
Now all is changed. The very winds are tame,
And the birds sing aloud from every bough,
And my heart leaps. What empire dost thou claim,
Child, o'er this Earth, that nature serves thee so?
Sublime magician! Well may Earth and Heaven
Change at thy bidding, and the hearts of men.
Didst thou but know the power that beauty hath,
The sea should leave his bed, the rocks be riven,
And wise men, deeming chaos come again,
Should kneel before thee and conjure thy wrath.

VI
DEPRECIATING HER BEAUTY

I love not thy perfections. When I hear
Thy beauty blazoned, and the common tongue
Cheapening with vulgar praise a lip, an ear,
A cheek that I have prayed to;—when among
The loud world's gods my god is noised and sung,
Her wit applauded, even her taste, her dress,
Her each dear hidden marvel lightly flung
At the world's feet and stripped to nakedness—
Then I despise thy beauty utterly,
Crying, “Be these your gods, O Israel!”
And I remember that on such a day
I found thee with eyes bleared and cheeks all pale,
And lips that trembled to a voiceless cry,
And that thy bosom in my bosom lay.

VII
ON HER VANITY

What are these things thou lovest? Vanity.
To see men turn their heads when thou dost pass;
To be the signboard and the looking-glass
Where every idler there may glut his eye;
To hear men speak thy name mysteriously,
Wagging their heads. Is it for this, alas,
That thou hast made a placard of a face
On which the tears of love were hardly dry?
What are these things thou lovest? The applause
Of prostitutes at wit which is not thine;
The sympathy of shop-boys who would weep
Their shilling's worth of woe in any cause,
At any tragedy.—Their tears and mine,
What difference? Oh truly tears are cheap!

VIII
AS TO HIS CHOICE OF HER

If I had chosen thee, thou shouldst have been
A virgin proud, untamed, immaculate,
Chaste as the morning star, a saint, a queen,
Scarred by no wars, no violence of hate.
Thou shouldst have been of soul commensurate
With thy fair body, brave and virtuous
And kind and just; and, if of poor estate,
At least an honest woman for my house.
I would have had thee come of honoured blood
And honourable nurture. Thou shouldst bear
Sons to my pride and daughters to my heart,
And men should hold thee happy, wise, and good.
Lo, thou art none of this, but only fair.
Yet must I love thee, dear, and as thou art.

IX
ON HER WAYWARDNESS

This is rank slavery. It better were
To till the thankless earth with sweat of brow,
Following dull oxen 'neath a goad of care
To a boor's grave agape behind the plough.
It better were to linger in some slow
Unnatural case, the sport of flood or fire,
To be undone by some inhuman vow
And robbed in youth of youth and its desire.
It better were to perish than thus live
Thy pensioner and bondsman, day by day
Doing fool's service thus for love of thee.
How shall I save thee if thou wilt not grieve
Even for shames like these? How shall I slay
The foes thou lovest, thou, their enemy?

X
ON HER FORGIVENESS OF A WRONG

This is not virtue. To forgive were great
If love were in the issue and not gold.
But wrongs there are 'tis treason to forget,
And to forgive before the deed was cold
Was a strange jest. Ah, Manon, you have sold
The keys of heaven at a vulgar rate,
A sum of money for the wealth untold
Of a just anger and the right to hate.
—Well. It is done and the price paid. Now make
Haste to betray them as you me betrayed.
These are no longer foes to be forgiven.
Remember they are friends, that peace is made,
That you are theirs. Then rend them for love's sake,
And let your hatred with your love be even.

XI
ON HER LIGHTHEARTEDNESS

I would I had thy courage, dear, to face
This bankruptcy of love, and greet despair
With smiling eyes and unconcerned embrace,
And these few words of banter at “dull care.”
I would that I could sing and comb my hair
Like thee the morning thro', and choose my dress,
And gravely argue what I best should wear,
A shade of ribbon or a fold of lace.
I would I had thy courage and thy peace,
Peace passing understanding; that mine eyes
Could find forgetfulness like thine in sleep;
That all the past for me like thee could cease
And leave me cheerfully, sublimely wise,
Like David with washed face who ceased to weep.

XII
ON READING CERTAIN LETTERS

Reading these lines, this record of lost days
Where I am not, and yet where love has been,
This tale of passions consecrate to men
Other than me, unwitting of my ways,
I seem to hear some pagan chaunt of praise
Hymned to an idol shrine in gardens green,
Some wild soft worship of a god obscene,
Some idle homage to an idol face.
I shut my ears, yet hear it still. My eyes
See not, yet see the unchaste the unlawful fire;
I scent the odour of the sacrifice,
And feel the victim's shriek. Then in my ire
I rise up, as on Horeb, and I cry,
“There is none other god, but only I!”

XIII
HE DARES NOT DIE

Four hours by the clock! How strange it is! Four hours
Since love and life, the future and the past,
Died with the shutting of these silent doors,
And thought became to me one purpose vast.
I have not moved from where she sat. The cast
Of her fingers on this cushion lightly scores
Its surface still; and still I hear the last
Tones of her laughter, and here lie her flowers.
Poor flowers! The ugliness of grief has wrought
Your change already. No besotted bloom
Of a false dawn has lured you to base life.
You at the pinch were brave and trifled not,
Going ungrudging to our common doom.
And I? Ah God! I have not faced the knife!

XIV
HE HAS FALLEN FROM THE HEIGHT OF HIS LOVE

Love, how ignobly hast thou met thy doom!
Ill-seasoned scaffolding by which, full-fraught
With passionate youth and mighty hopes, we clomb
To our heart's heaven, fearing, doubting, naught!
Oh love, thou wert too frail for such mad sport,
Too rotten at thy core, designed too high:
And we who trusted thee our death have bought,
And bleeding on the ground must surely die.
—I will not see her. What she now may be
I care not. For the dream within my brain
Is fairer, nobler, and more kind than she;
And with that vision I can mock at pain.
God! Was there ever woman half so sweet,
Or death so bitter, or at such dear feet?

XV
COMPLAINING THAT HE HAD FALLEN AMONG THIEVES

Oh, Lytton, I have gambled with my soul,
And, like a spendthrift, pawned my heritage
To pitiless Jews, and paid a monstrous toll
To knaves and usurers,—and all to wage
Fair war with black-legs, men who dared to gauge
My youth's bright honour as an antique thing,
A broadsword to their fencing point and edge.
So the game went. And even yet I cling
To my mad humour, reckoning up each stake,
Each fair coin lost.—O miserable slaves,
Who for the sake of gold, the poorest thing
Man ever won from the earth's bosom, take
To rope or poison, and who labour not
Even to “dig dishonourable graves,”
See one who has lost a pound for every groat,
For every penny of your squandering!

XVI
HE ARGUES WITH HIS LIFE

My life, what strange mad garments hast thou on,
Now that I see thee truly and am wise!
Thou wild, lost Proteus, strangling and undone!
What shapes are these, what metamorphoses
Of a god's soul in pain? I hear thy cries
And see thee writhe and take fantastic forms,
And strike in blindness at the destinies
And at thyself, and at thy brother worms.
Ah, foolish worm, thou canst not change thy lot,
And all like thee must perish 'neath the sun.
Why struggle with thy fellows? Nay, be kind,
Kinder than these. Behold, the flower-pot
Of fate is emptied out, and one by one
The fisher takes you, and his hooks are blind.

XVII
JOY'S TREACHERY

I had a live joy once and pampered her,
For I had brought her from the “golden East,”
To lie when nights were cold upon my breast
And sit beside me the long days and purr,
Until her whole soul should be lapped in fur,
Deep as her claws; a beautiful sleek beast,
Which I might love.—But, when I deemed it least,
Her topaz eyes were on my stomacher,
Athirst for blood. Thus, for I loathed her since
I learned her guile, one night I had her slain
And thrown upon a dunghill to the flies,
Who bred in her fair limbs a pestilence,
Whereof I sickened.—Thus it ever is:
Dead joys unburied breed us death and pain.

XVIII
HE LAMENTS THAT HIS LOVE IS DEAD

My love is dead, dead and in spite of me,—
Dead while I lived,—while yet my blood was rife
With hope and pleasure and the pride of life.
For my love ended unexpectedly
During the Winter, stricken like a tree
By a night's cold, and frozen to the blood,
Whose leaves fell off and never were renewed
By any promise of the years to be.
And, when the Spring came, and the birds, to mate
Among its branches, lo! they found it bare,
Though all around was Summer in the wood.
Yet they took heart awhile, incredulous
That such a tree should be for ever dead.
“'Tis early yet,” they cried. “The Spring is late.
It shall still be as in the days that were.”
But Summer came and went while the tree stood
Bare in the sun like a deserted house.
—Then the birds suddenly despaired and fled.

XIX
HE PROTESTS, NOTWITHSTANDING, HIS LOVE

To be cast forth from the fair light of heaven
Into the outer darkness and there lie,
Through unrecorded years of agony,
Unseen, unheard, unpitied, unforgiven;
To be forgotten of the earth and sky,
Forgotten of the womb that once did bear,
The eyes that cheered, the voice that comforted,
The very breast where love had laid his head;
To be alone with darkness and despair,
Alone with endless death, and not to die:
All these be punishments within the hand
Of an avenging deity to deal.
To these I bow in weakness as behoves.
Yet not in anger but in love I stand
'Gainst heaven, a new Prometheus, and appeal
From God to my own soul which ceaseless loves.
His be the wrath, the burning and the rod.
Hell shall not make me traitor to my God.

XX
ON FALLING ILL THROUGH GRIEF

Truce to thee, Soul! I have a debt to pay,
Which I acknowledge and without thy pleading.
I like thee little that thou barrest my way
With prayers too late for one well past thy heeding,
Truce to these tears! Thy fellow lieth bleeding,
Wounded by thee; and thou, forsooth, dost say,
“I have a servant who is sick and needing
Care at men's hands.” The care was thine to pay.
—When this same Soul was sick, a while ago,
The Body watched her, till his eyes grew dim
And his cheeks pale for very sympathy,
Because she grieved. His love has wrought him woe,
For he is sick and she despiseth him.
Poor Body, I must take some thought of thee.

XXI
HIS BONDAGE TO MANON IS BROKEN

From this day forth I lead another life,
Another life! A life without a tear!
To-day has ended the unequal strife;
My service and my sorrow finish here.
See, my soul cuts her cable of belief
And sails towards the ocean. She shall steer
Sublime henceforth o'er accidents of grief.
Her storm has rolled to a new Hemisphere.
I have loved too much, too loyally, too long.
To-day I am a pirate of the sea.
Let others suffer. I have suffered wrong.
Let others love, and love as tenderly.
Oh, Manon, there are women yet unborn
Shall rue thy frailty, else am I forsworn.

II. PART II.—JULIET

XXII
ON THE NATURE OF LOVE

You ask my love. What shall my love then be ?
A hope, an aspiration, a desire?
The soul's eternal charter writ in fire
Upon the earth, the heavens, and the sea?
You ask my love. The carnal mystery
Of a soft hand, of finger-tips that press,
Of eyes that kindle and of lips that kiss,
Of sweet things known to thee and only thee?
You ask my love. What love can be more sweet
Than hope or pleasure? Yet we love in vain.
The soul is more than joy, the life than meat.
The sweetest love of all were love in pain,
And that I will not give. So let it be.
—Nay, give me any love, so it be love of thee.

XXIII
ASKING FOR HER HEART

Give me thy heart, Juliet, give me thy heart!
I have a need of it, an absolute need,
Because my own heart has thus long been dead.
I live but by thy life. The very smart
Of this new pain which has been born of thee
Is thine, thy own great pleasure's counterpart.
I stand before thee naked. Clothe thou me.
Bring out a robe,—thy truth, thy chastity.
Put rings upon my fingers,—honour's meed.
For thou canst give, nor ever reck the cost,
Being the royal creature that thou art,
The fountain of all honour, whose high boast
Is to be greatest when thou givest most.

XXIV
THE SAME CONTINUED

Give me thy soul, Juliet, give me thy soul!
I am a bitter sea, which drinketh in
The sweetness of all waters, and so thine.
Thou, like a river, pure and swift and full
And freighted with the wealth of many lands,
With hopes, and fears, and death and life, dost roll
Against the troubled ocean of my sin.
Thou doubtest not, though on these desert sands
The billows surge against thee black with brine,
Unwearied. For thy love is fixed and even
And bears thee onward, and thy faith is whole.
Though thou thyself shouldst sin, yet surely Heaven
Hath held thee guiltless and thou art forgiven.

XXV
THE SAME CONTINUED

Give me thy kiss, Juliet, give me thy kiss!
I with my body worship thee and vow
Such service to thy needs as man can do.
I ask no nobler servitude than this.
Am I not thine, the bondsman of thy love,
Whom thou hast bought and ransomed with a price,
And therefore worthy to be ranked above
The very stars that in the heavens move?
And, Juliet, since I thus am one with you,
And kinglier than Plantagenet or Guelph,
What price were meet for my high mightiness?
What gold of joy, what hope, what heavenly pelf
Hast thou to give? Nay, sweetest, give thyself.

XXVI
THE SAME—A CHRISTMAS SONNET

Since thou hast given me these, Juliet, given me these,
There have been tidings told of a great joy,
Of peace on Earth, good-will without annoy.
Thou hast put on my soul's infirmities
And stooped to succour me, and thou hast trod
The way of sorrows with me, on thy knees,
Making thyself a little less than God,
That I might worship him in womanhood,
A new redemption. Therefore, Juliet,
The choirs of Heaven multitudinous
Make all their songs to thee this happy night,
In praise of thy great love incarnate thus,
A very “word made flesh” to dwell with us.

XXVII
ASKING THE FULFILMENT OF HER LOVE

I ask for love who famished am in plenty,
Not scorning the dear manna of your tears
But being vexed with that too froward twenty
Which heads the sum of my rebellious years.
My soul is fallen “in lust of cucumbers,
Of fish, of melons,” through its long abstaining.
Unworthy Egypt yet enslaves my fears.
Ah, love, I thirst, but not for heaven's raining.
Why speak to me, alas, of heavenly joys
Who ask for joys of earth these cannot cheat?
What are these clouds, these pillars of fire to me?
The wilderness is long. Youth cannot be
For ever fed on these unnatural toys
And needs must murmur if it have not meat.

XXVIII
IN ANSWER TO A QUESTION

Why should I hate you, love, or why despise
For that last proof of tenderness you gave?
The battle is not always to the brave,
Nor life's sublimest wisdom to the wise.
True courage often is in frightened eyes,
And reason in sweet lips that only rave.
There is a weakness stronger than the grave,
And blood poured out has overcome the skies.
—Nay, love, I honour you the more for this,
That you have rent the veil, and ushered in
A fellow soul to your soul's holy place.
And why should either blush that we have been
One day in Eden, in our nakedness?
—'Tis conscience makes us sinners, not our sin.

XXIX
TO HER WHO WOULD COMFORT HIM

I did not ask your pity, dear. Your zeal
I know. It cannot cure me of my woes.
And you, in your sweet happiness, who knows,
Deserve it rather I should pity feel
For what the coming years from you conceal.
I did but cry, thou dear Samaritan,
Out of my bitterness of soul. Each man
Has his own sorrow treading on his heel,
Ready to strike him, and must keep his shield
To his own back. Fate's arrows thickly fly,
And, if they strike not now, will strike at even.
And so I ask no pity. On life's field
The wounded crawl together, but their cry
Is not to one another but to Heaven.

XXX
THE RELIGION OF LOVE

So thou but love me, dear, with thy whole heart
What care I for the rest, for good or ill?
What for the peace of soul good deeds impart,
What for the tears unholy dreams distil?
These cannot make my joy, nor shall they kill.
Thou only perfect peace and virtue art
And holiness for me and strength and will,
So thou but love me with a perfect heart.
I ask thee now no longer to be wise;
No longer to be good, but loving me.
I ask thee nothing now but only this.
Henceforth my Bible, dear, shall be thine eyes,
My beads thy lips, my prayers thy constancy,
My heaven thine arms, eternity thy kiss.

XXXI
TO ONE WHO LOVED HIM

I cannot love you, love, as you love me,
In singleness of soul, and faith untried:
I have no faith in any destiny,
In any Heaven, even at your side.
Our hearts are all too weak, the world too wide,
You but a woman. If I dare to give
Some thought, some tenderness, a little pride,
A little love, 'tis yours, love, to receive.
And do not grieve, though now the gift appear
A drop to your love's ocean. Time shall see.
—Oh, I could prophesy:—That day is sure,
Though not perhaps this week, nor month, nor year,
When your great love shall clean forgotten be,
And my poor tenderness shall yet endure.
'Tis not the trees that make the tallest show,
Which stand out stoutest when the tempests blow.

XXXII
EXHORTING HER TO PATIENCE

Why do we fret at the inconstancy
Of our frail hearts, which cannot always love?
Time rushes onward, and we mortals move
Like waifs upon a river, neither free
To halt nor hurry. Sweet, if destiny
Throws us together for an hour, a day,
In the back-water of this quiet bay,
Let us rejoice. Before us lies the sea,
Where we must all be lost in spite of love.
We dare not stop to question. Happiness
Lies in our hand unsought, a treasure trove.
Time has short patience of man's vain distress;
And fate grows angry at too long delay;
And floods rise fast, and we are swept away.

XXXIII
REMINDING HER OF A PROMISE

Oh, Juliet, we have quarrelled with our fate,
And fate has struck us. Wherefore do we cry?
We prayed for liberty, and now too late
Find liberty is this, to say “good-bye.”
The Winter which we loved not has gone by,
And Spring is come. The gardens, which were bare
When we first wandered through them, you and I,
The prisoners of our own vain wishes, are
Now full of golden flowers. The very lane
Down to the sea is green. The cactus hedge
We saw cut down has sprouted new again,
And swallows have their nests on the cliff's edge
Where we so often sat and dared complain
Because our joy was new, and called it pain.

XXXIV
THE SAME CONTINUED

Yes, Spring is come, but joy alas is gone,—
Gone ere we knew it, while our foolish eyes,
Which should have watched its motions every one
Were looking elsewhere, at the hills, the skies,
Chasing vain thoughts, as children butterflies,
Until the hour struck and the day was done,
And we looked up in passionate surprise
To find that clouds had blotted out our sun.
Our joys are gone. And what is left to us,
Who loved not even love when it was here?
What but a voice which sobs monotonous
As these sad waves upon the rocks, the dear
Fond voice which once made music with our own,
And which our hearts now ache to think upon.

XXXV
THE SAME CONTINUED

Old memories are sweet, but these are new
And smart like wounds yet green. But one there is
Which, for the cause that it was dear to you
In days which counted upon greater bliss,
Is fairer now and dearer far than these;
And this the memory is of some hours spent
One afternoon when, seated at your knees,
I made narration (it was middle Lent
And you with Judas flowers had filled your lap),
Of the wise secret of these rhymes of mine,
And gave a promise, which behold I keep,
To write them out for you, each idle line,
Throwing you all my rubbish in one heap.
Poor stuff perhaps. And yet it made you weep.

XXXVI
FEAR HAS CAST OUT LOVE

'Tis not that love is less or sorrow more
Than in the days when first these things began.
Even then you doubted, and our hearts were sore
And you rebelled because I was a man.
Even then you fought and wrestled with my plan
Of earthly bliss. What bitter anguish too
When at the hour decreed our passion ran
Out of our keeping and love claimed its due!
'Tis not love's fault we part, or grief's. Alas,
One mightier now compels us with His nod.
The fire of Heaven has touched us, and we pass
From pleasure's chastenings to a fiercer rod;
And fear has cast out love, for flesh is grass
And we are withered with the wrath of God.

XXXVI
TO ONE WHO WOULD “REMAIN FRIENDS”

What is this prate of friendship? Kings discrowned
Go forth, not citizens but outlawed men.
If love has ceased to give a loyal sound,
Let there at least be silence. Once again
I go, proscribed, exiled, dominionless
Out of your coasts, yet scorning to complain.
I grudge not your allegiance nor my bliss,
I yield the pleasure as I keep the pain.
Rebellion's rights are limited though strong.
The right to take gives not the right to give.
Mine were the sole right and prerogative
To give a title or forgive a wrong.
This gift of friendship was not yours to bring.
As I have lived in love I still will live
Or die, if needs must, and without reprieve,
Your lover yet, and kingdomless a king.

XXXVIII
TO ONE NOW ESTRANGED

Why did you love me? Was it not enough
That the world loved you, all the world and I?
Or was your heart of so sublime a stuff
That it might trifle with inconstancy
And love and cease to love and yet not die?
Heaven was your throne by right of happiness
And Earth your footstool. All things great and high
Waited your bidding, love itself no less.
Yet, if you deigned to love, if from your place
In Heaven you stooped, if, when your heart was moved,
A thrill of human pleasure tinged your face,
If 'twas in weakness not in strength you loved,
Then there was cause to blush. Yet, loving, how
Shall you blush less to be apostate now?

XXXIX
FAREWELL TO JULIET

Juliet, farewell. I would not be forgiven
Even if I forgave. These words must be
The last between us two in Earth or Heaven,
The last and bitterest. You are henceforth free
For ever from my bitter words and me.
You shall not at my hand be further vexed
With either love, reproach or jealousy
(So help me Heaven), in this world or the next.
Our souls are single for all time to come
And for eternity, and this farewell
Is as the trumpet note, the crack of doom,
Which heralds an eternal silence. Hell
Has no more fixed and absolute decree.
And Heaven and Hell may meet,—yet never we.

XL
THE SAME CONTINUED

'Tis strange we are thus parted, not by death
Or man's device, but by our own mad will,
We who have stood together on life's path
Through half a youth of good repute and ill,
Friends more than lovers. See, Love's citadel
We held so stoutly 'gainst a world in arms
Lies all dismantled now, a sight to fill
The Earth with lamentations and alarms.
Whose was the fault? I dare not ask nor say.
If there was treachery, 'tis best untold.
The price of treason we receive to-day
Is paid to both of us in evil gold.
Ay, take thy bitter freedom. 'Tis the fee
Of love betrayed and faith's apostasy.

XLI
THE SAME CONTINUED

We may not meet. I could not for pride's sake
Dissemble further, and I suffer pain,
A palpable distinct and physical ache,
When our eyes meet by accident, and when
I hear you talk in your pathetic strain
Which always moved me. Only yesterday,
As I was standing with a crowd of men
In the long corridor, you came my way
And chanced to stop, and thus by chance I heard
A score of phrases uttered in that sad
Half-suppliant voice which once my spirit stirred
To its foundations. Yet your theme was glad—
Strangers your hearers. What was in these spells
To move me still? A trick, and nothing else!

XLII
THE SAME CONTINUED

We vex each other with our presence, I
By my regrets and by my mocking face,
You by your laughter and mad gaiety,
And both by cruel thoughts of happier days.
Is then the world so narrow that we pace
These streets like prisoners still with eyes askance,
As bound together in the fell embrace
Of a dark chain which bars deliverance?
Nay, go your ways. I will not vex you more.
Make your own terms with life, while you are fair.
There is none better learned in woman's lore.
You yet may take revenge on grief and care,
And 'twas your nature ever to be gay,
Why should I scoff? Be merry while you may.

XLIII
THE SAME CONTINUED

I do not love you. To have said this once
Had seemed to both of us a monstrous lie,
An idle boast, love's last extravagance
Or the mere paradox of vanity.
Now it is true and yet more hideously
More strangely monstrous. I, no less than you,
Here own at length the worm which cannot die,
The burden of a pain for ever new.
This is the “pang of loss,” the bitterest
Which Hell can give. We are shut out from Heaven
And never more shall look upon Love's face,
Being with those who perish unforgiven.
Never to see Love's face! Ah, pain in pain,
Which we do well to weep and weep again!

XLIV
THE SAME CONTINUED

Yet we shall live without love, as some live
Without their limbs, their senses, maimed or deaf.
We even shall forget love, and shall thrive
And prosper and grow fat upon our grief.
You are consoled already more than half,
And wear your sorrow lightly. I will boast
No longer the refusal of relief
Than as a decent mourner of hopes crossed.
We yet shall laugh, and laughter is more loud
When following tears. The men who drive a hearse
Are not the least lighthearted of the crowd.
See, we have made love's epitaph in verse
And fairly buried him. God's ways are best.
Then home to pleasure and the funeral feast.

XLV
THE SAME CONTINUED

Do you remember how I laughed at you
In the Beaulieu woods, and how I made my peace?
It was your thirtieth birthday, and you threw
Stones like a school-girl at the chestnut trees.
The heavens were light above us and the breeze.
Your Corydon and all the merry crew
Had wandered to a distance, busier bees
Than we, who cared not where the hazels grew.
We were alone at last. I had been teasing
You with the burden of years left behind.
You were too fair to find my wit displeasing,
And I too tender to be less than kind.
Your pebbles struck me. “Wretch,” I cried. The word
Entered our hearts that instant like a sword.

XLVI
THE SAME CONTINUED

Thrice happy fools! What wisdom shall we learn
In this world or the next, if next there be,
More deep, more full, more worthy our concern
Than that first word of folly taught us? We
Had suddenly grown silent. I could see
Your cheek had lost a little of its hue,
And your lips trembled, and beseechingly
Your blue eyes turned to mine, and well I knew
Your woman's instinct had divined my speech,
The meaning of a word so lightly spoken.
The word was a confession, clear to each,
A pledge as plain and as distinct a token
As that of Peter at his master's knees,
“Thou knowest that I love thee more than these.”

XLVII
THE SAME CONTINUED

I see you, Juliet, still, with your straw hat
Loaded with vines, and with your dear pale face,
On which those thirty years so lightly sat,
And the white outline of your muslin dress.
You wore a little fichu trimmed with lace
And crossed in front, as was the fashion then,
Bound at your waist with a broad band or sash,
All white and fresh and virginally plain.
There was a sound of shouting far away
Down in the valley, as they called to us,
And you, with hands clasped seeming still to pray
Patience of fate, stood listening to me thus
With heaving bosom. There a rose lay curled.
It was the reddest rose in all the world.

XLVIII
THE SAME CONTINUED

I think there never was a dearer woman,
A better, kinder, truer than you were,
A gentler spirit more divinely human
Than yours with your sweet melancholy air
Of tender gaiety, which seemed like care,
And in your voice a sob as of distress
At the world's ways, its sin and its despair,
Being yourself all strange to wickedness.
Now you are neither gentle, kind, nor good,
And you have sorrows of your own to grieve,
And in your mirth compassion has no mood;
You wear no more your heart upon your sleeve,
And if your voice still sobs 'tis with a sense
Of sorrow's power, grief's wealth, experience.

XLIX
THE SAME CONTINUED

A “woman with a past.” What happier omen
Could heart desire for mistress or for friend?
Phœnix of friends, and most divine of women,
Skilled in all fence to venture or defend
And with love's science at your fingers' end,
No tears to vex, no ignorance to bore,
A fancy ripe, the zest which sorrows lend!—
I would to God we had not met before!
—I would to God! and yet to God I would
That we had never met. To see you thus
Is grief and wounds and poison to my blood.
Oh, this is sacrilege and foul abuse.
You were a thing for honour not vile use,
Not for the mad world's wicked sinks and stews.

L
THE SAME CONTINUED

What have I done? What gross impiety
Prompted my hand thus against God and good?
Was there not joy on Earth enough for me
That I must scale the Heaven where you stood,
And with my sinful blood pollute your blood?
You were the type of wise sweet sanctity,
Of that unearthly half of womanhood
Which well redeems the rest. Oh, Juliet, we
Sinned in a temple, and our tears to-day
Appeal in vain to Heaven which dares not hear.
God is not always mocked. And thus we pay
Our uttermost debt unheeded, tear on tear
And scoff on scoff and sin heaped up on sin,
While there is justice on the Earth to men.

LI
THE SAME CONTINUED

We planted love, and lo it bred a brood
Of lusts and vanities and senseless joys.
We planted love, and you have gathered food
Of every bitter herb which fills and cloys.
Your meat is loud excitement and mad noise,
Your wine the unblest ambition of command
O'er hearts of men, of dotards, idiots, boys.
These are the playthings fitted to your hand,
These are your happiness. You weep no more,
But I must weep. My Heaven has been defiled.
My sin has found me out and smites me sore,
And folly, justified of her own child,
Rules all the empire where love reigned of yore,
Folly red-cheeked but rotten to the core.

LII
THE SAME CONTINUED

Lame, impotent conclusion to youth's dreams
Vast as all heaven! See, what glory lies
Entangled here in these base stratagems,
What virtue done to death! O glorious sighs,
Sublime beseechings, high cajoleries,
Fond wraths, brave ruptures, all that sometime was
Our daily bread of gods beneath the skies,
How are ye ended, in what utter loss!
Time was, time is, and time is yet to come,
Till even time itself shall have its end.
These were eternal. And behold, a tomb!
Come, let us laugh and eat and drink. God send
What all the world must need one day as we,
Speedy oblivion, rest for memory.

LIII
THE SAME CONTINUED

Farewell, then. It is finished. I forgo
With this all right in you, even that of tears.
If I have spoken hardly, it will show
How much I loved you. With you disappears
A glory, a romance of many years.
What you may be henceforth I will not know.
The phantom of your presence on my fears
Is impotent at length for weal or woe.
Your past, your present, all alike must fade
In a new land of dreams where love is not.
Then kiss me and farewell. The choice is made
And we shall live to see the past forgot,
If not forgiven. See, I came to curse,
Yet stay to bless. I know not which is worse.

III. PART III.—GODS AND FALSE GODS

LIV
HE DESIRES THE IMPOSSIBLE

If it were possible the fierce sun should,
Standing in heaven unloved, companionless,
Enshrinèd be in some white-bosomed cloud,
And so forget his rage and loneliness;
If it were possible the bitter seas
Should suddenly grow sweet, till at their brink
Birds with bright eyes should stoop athirst and drink;
—If these were possible; and if to these
It should be proved that love has sometimes been
'Twixt lambs and leopards, doves and hawks, that snow
Clasps the bare rocks, that rugged oaks grow green
In the west wind, that pinkest blossoms blow
Upon May's blackest thorn;—then, only then,
I might believe that love between us two
Was still in heaven's gift, sweet child.—And you?

LV
ST. VALENTINE'S DAY

To-day, all day, I rode upon the Down,
With hounds and horsemen, a brave company.
On this side in its glory lay the sea,
On that the Sussex Weald, a sea of brown.
The wind was light, and brightly the sun shone,
And still we galloped on from gorse to gorse.
And once, when checked, a thrush sang, and my horse
Pricked his quick ears as to a sound unknown.
I knew the Spring was come. I knew it even
Better than all by this, that through my chase
In bush and stone and hill and sea and heaven
I seemed to see and follow still your face.
Your face my quarry was. For it I rode,
My horse a thing of wings, myself a god.

LVI
TO ONE WHOM HE DARED NOT LOVE

As one who, in a desert wandering
Alone and faint beneath a pitiless sky,
And doubting in his heart if he shall bring
His bones back to his kindred or there die,
Finds at his feet a treasure suddenly
Such as would make him for all time a king,
And so forgets his fears and with keen eye
Falls to a-counting each new precious thing:
—So was I when you told me yesterday
The tale of your dear love. Awhile I stood
Astonished and enraptured, and my heart
Began to count its treasures. Now dismay
Steals back my joy, and terror chills my blood,
And I remember only “We must part.”

LVII
ON A LOST OPPORTUNITY

We might, if you had willed, have conquered Heaven.
Once only in our lives before the gate
Of Paradise we stood, one fortunate even,
And gazed in sudden rapture through the grate.
And, while you stood astonished, I, our fate
Venturing, pushed the latch and found it free.
There stood the tree of knowledge fair and great
Beside the tree of life. One instant we
Stood in that happy garden, guardianless.
My hands already turned towards the tree
And in another moment we had known
The taste of joy and immortality
And been ourselves as gods. But in distress
You thrust me back with supplicating arms
And eyes of terror, till the impatient sun
Had time to set and till the heavenly host
Rushed forth on us with clarions and alarms
And cast us out for ever, blind and lost.

LVIII
TO ONE ON HER WASTE OF TIME

Why practise, love, this small economy
Of your heart's favours? Can you keep a kiss
To be enjoyed in age? And would the free
Expense of pleasure leave you penniless?
Nay, nay. Be wise. Believe me, pleasure is
A gambler's token, only gold to-day.
The day of love is short, and every bliss
Untasted now is a bliss thrown away.
'Twere pitiful, in truth, such treasures should
Lie by like miser's crusts till mouldy grown.
Think you the hand of age will be less rude
In touching your sweet bosom than my own?
Alas, what matter, when our heads are grey,
Whether you loved or did not love to-day?

LIX
THE HAUNTED HOUSE

How loud the storm blew all that bitter night!
The loosened ivy tapping on the pane
Woke me and woke, again and yet again,
Till I was full awake and sat upright.
I listened to the noises of the night,
And presently I heard, disguised yet plain,
A footstep on the stair which mounted light
Towards me, and my heart outbeat the rain.
I knew that it was you. I knew it even
Before the door, which by design ajar
Waited your coming, had disclosed my fate.
I felt a wind upon my face from heaven.
I felt the presence of a life. My hair
Was touched as by a spirit. Insensate
I drew you to my bosom. Ah, too late!
I clutched the darkness. There was nothing there.

LX
THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE

Ah Love, dear Love. In vain I scoff. In vain
I ply my barren wit, and jest at thee.
Thou heedest not, or dost forgive the pain,
And in thy own good time and thy own way,
Waiting my silence, thou dost vanquish me.
Thou comest at thy will in sun or rain
And at the hour appointed, a Spring day,
An Autumn night—and lo, I serve again.
Forgive me, touch me, chide me. What to thee,
God that thou art, are these vain shifts of mine?
Let me but know thee. Thou alone art wise.
I ask not to be wise or great or free
Or aught but at thy knees and wholly thine,
Thus, and to feel thy hand upon mine eyes.

LXI
TO ONE EXCUSING HIS POVERTY

Ah! love, impute it not to me a sin
That my poor soul thus beggared comes to thee.
My soul a pilgrim was, in search of thine,
And met these accidents by land and sea.
The world was hard, and took its usury,
Its toll for each new night in each new inn;
And every road had robber bands to fee;
And all, even kindness, must be paid in coin.
Behold my scrip is empty, my heart bare.
I give thee nothing who my all would give.
My pilgrimage is finished, and I fare
Bare to my death, unless with thee I live.
Ah! give, love, and forgive that I am poor.
Ah! take me to thy arms and ask no more.

LXII
TO ONE WHO WOULD MAKE A CONFESSION

Oh! leave the Past to bury its own dead.
The Past is naught to us, the Present all.
What need of last year's leaves to strew Love's bed?
What need of ghosts to grace a festival?
I would not, if I could, those days recall,
Those days not ours. For us the feast is spread,
The lamps are lit, and music plays withal.
Then let us love and leave the rest unsaid.
This island is our home. Around it roar
Great gulfs and oceans, channels, straits, and seas.
What matter in what wreck we reached the shore,
So we both reached it? We can mock at these.
Oh! leave the Past, if Past indeed there be.
I would not know it. I would know but thee.

LXIII
THE PLEASURES OF LOVE

I do not care for kisses. 'Tis a debt
We paid for the first privilege of love.
These are the rains of April which have wet
Our fallow hearts and forced their germs to move.
Now the green corn has sprouted. Each new day
Brings better pleasures, a more dear surprise,
The blade, the ear, the harvest—and our way
Leads through a region wealthy grown and wise.
We now compare our fortunes. Each his store
Displays to kindred eyes of garnered grain,
Two happy farmers, learned in love's lore,
Who weigh and touch and argue and complain.
Dear endless argument! Yet sometimes we
Even as we argue kiss. There! Let it be.

LXIV
HE APPEALS AGAINST HIS BOND

In my distress Love made me sign a bond,
A cruel bond. 'Twas by necessity
Wrung from a foolish heart, alas, too fond,
Too blindly fond, its error to foresee.
And now my soul's estate, in jeopardy,
Lies to a pledge it never can redeem.
Love's loan was love, one hour of ecstasy,
His penalty eternal loss of him.
—See, I am penniless, the forfeit paid,
And go a beggar forth from thy dear sight,
My pound of more than flesh too strictly weighed
And cut too near the heart. Fair Israelite,
Thy plea was just. Thy right has been confessed.
And yet a work of mercy were twice blessed.

LXV
TO ONE WHO SPOKE ILL OF HIM

What is your quarrel with me, in love's name,
Fair queen of wrath? What evil have I done,
What treason to the thought of our dear shame
Subscribed or plotted? Is my heart less one
In its obedience to your stern decrees
Than on the day when first you said “I please,”
And with your lips ordained our union?
Am I not now, as then, upon my knees?
You bade me love you, and the deed was done,
And when you cried “Enough” I stopped, and when
You bade me go I went, and when you said
“Forget me” I forgot. Alas, what wrong
Would you avenge upon a loyal head,
Which ever bowed to you in joy and pain,
That you thus scourge me with your pitiless tongue?

LXVI
THE THREE AGES OF WOMAN

Love, in thy youth, a stranger, knelt to thee,
With cheeks all red and golden locks all curled,
And cried, “Sweet child, if thou wilt worship me,
Thou shalt possess the kingdoms of the world.”
But you looked down and said, “I know you not,
Nor want I other kingdom than my soul.”
Till Love in shame, convicted of his plot,
Left you and turned him to some other goal.
And this discomfiture which you had seen
Long served you for your homily and boast,
While, of your beauty and yourself the queen,
You lived a monument of vain love crossed,
With scarce a thought of that which might have been
To scare you with the ghost of pleasures lost.

LXVII
THE SAME CONTINUED

Your youth flowed on, a river chaste and fair,
Till thirty years were written to your name.
A wife, a mother, these the titles were
Which conquered for you the world's fairest fame.
In all things you were wise but in this one,
That of your wisdom you yourself did doubt.
Youth spent like age, no joy beneath the sun.
Your glass of beauty vainly running out.
Then suddenly again, ere well you knew,
Love looked upon you tenderly, yet sad:
“Are these wise follies, then, enough for you?”
He said;—“Love's wisdom were itself less mad.”
And you: “What wouldst thou of me?” “My bare due,
In token of what joys may yet be had.”

LXVIII
THE SAME CONTINUED

Again Love left you. With appealing eyes
You watched him go, and lips apart to speak.
He left you, and once more the sun did rise
And the sun set, and week trod close on week
And month on month, till you had reached the goal
Of forty years, and life's full waters grew
To bitterness and flooded all your soul,
Making you loathe old things and pine for new.
And you into the wilderness had fled,
And in your desolation loud did cry,
“Oh for a hand to turn these stones to bread!”
Then in your ear Love whispered scornfully,
“Thou too, poor fool, thou, even thou,” he said,
“Shalt taste thy little honey ere thou die.”

LXIX
SIBYLLINE BOOKS

When first, a boy, at your fair knees I kneeled,
'Twas with a worthy offering. In my hand
My young life's book I held, a volume sealed,
Which none but you, I deemed, might understand.
And you I did entreat to loose the band
And read therein your own soul's destiny.
But, Tarquin-like, you turned from my demand,
Too proudly fair to find your fate in me.
When now I come, alas, what hands have turned
Those virgin pages! Some are torn away,
And some defaced, and some with passion burned,
And some besmeared with life's least holy clay.
Say, shall I offer you these pages wet
With blood and tears? And will your sorrow read
What your joy heeded not?—Unopened yet
One page remains. It still may hold a fate,
A counsel for the day of utter need.
Nay, speak, sad heart, speak quick. The hour is late.
Age threatens us. The Gaul is at the gate.

LXX
ON READING THE MEMOIRS OF M. D'ARTAGNAN

Why was I born in this degenerate age?
Or rather why, a thousand times, with soul
Of such degenerate stuff that a mute rage
Is all its reason, tears the only toll
It takes on life, and impotence its goal?
Why was I born to this sad heritage
Of fierce desires which cannot fate control,
Of idle hopes life never can assuage?
Why was I born thus weak?—Oh to have been
A merry fool, at jest with destiny;
A free hand ready and a heart as free;
A ruffler in the camps of Mazarin!
Oh for the honest soul of d'Artagnan,
Twice happy knave, a Gascon and a man!

LXXI
THE TWO HIGHWAYMEN

I long have had a quarrel set with Time,
Because he robbed me. Every day of life
Was wrested from me after bitter strife,
I never yet could see the sun go down
But I was angry in my heart, nor hear
The leaves fall in the wind without a tear
Over the dying summer. I have known
No truce with Time nor, Time's accomplice, Death.
The fair world is the witness of a crime
Repeated every hour. For life and breath
Are sweet to all who live; and bitterly
The voices of these robbers of the heath
Sound in each ear and chill the passer by.
—What have we done to thee, thou monstrous Time?
What have we done to Death that we must die?

LXXII
FROM THE FRENCH OF ANVERS

My heart has its secret, my soul its mystery,
A love which is eternal begotten in a day.
The ill is long past healing. Why should I speak to-day?
For none have ears to hear, and, least of all, she.
Alas I shall have lived unseen tho' ever near,
For ever at her side, for ever too alone.
I shall have lived my life unknowing and unknown,
Asking naught, daring naught, receiving naught from her.
And she, whom Heaven made kind and chaste and fair,
Shall go undoubting on, the while upon her way
The murmur of my love shall fill the land,
Till, reading here perchance severe and unaware
These lines so full of her, she shall look up and say
“Who was this woman then?” and shall not understand.

LXXIII
TO ONE TO WHOM HE HAD BEEN UNJUST

If I was angry once that you refused
The bread I asked and offered me a stone,
Deeming the rights of bounty thus abused
And my poor beggary but trampled on,
Believe me now I would that wrong atone
With such submission as a heart can show,
Asking no bread of life but that alone
Your dear heart proffered and my pride let go.
Give me your help, your pity, what you will,
Your pardon for a sin, your act of grace
For a rebellion vanquished and undone,
The stone I once refused, that precious stone
Your friendship, so my thoughts may serve you still
Even if I never more behold your face.

LXXIV
THE MOCKERY OF LIFE

God! What a mockery is this life of ours!
Cast forth in blood and pain from our mother's womb,
Most like an excrement, and weeping showers
Of senseless tears: unreasoning, naked, dumb,
The symbol of all weakness and the sum:
Our very life a sufferance.—Presently,
Grown stronger, we must fight for standing-room
Upon the earth, and the bare liberty
To breathe and move. We crave the right to toil.
We push, we strive, we jostle with the rest.
We learn new courage, stifle our old fears,
Stand with stiff backs, take part in every broil.
It may be that we love, that we are blest.
It may be, for a little space of years,
We conquer fate and half forget our tears.

LXXV
THE SAME CONTINUED

And then fate strikes us. First our joys decay.
Youth, with its pleasures, is a tale soon told.
We grow a little poorer day by day.
Old friendships falter. Loves grow strangely cold.
In vain we shift our hearts to a new hold
And barter joy for joy, the less for less.
We doubt our strength, our wisdom, and our gold.
We stand alone, as in a wilderness
Of doubts and terrors. Then, if we be wise,
We make our terms with fate and, while we may,
Sell our life's last sad remnant for a hope.
And it is wisdom thus to close our eyes.
But for the foolish, those who cannot pray,
What else remains of their dark horoscope
But a tall tree and courage and a rope?

LXXVI
THE SAME CONTINUED

And who shall tell what ignominy death
Has yet in store for us; what abject fears
Even for the best of us; what fights for breath;
What sobs, what supplications, what wild tears;
What impotence of soul against despairs
Which blot out reason?—The last trembling thought
Of each poor brain, as dissolution nears,
Is not of fair life lost, of Heaven bought
And glory won. 'Tis not the thought of grief;
Of friends deserted; loving hearts which bleed;
Wives, sisters, children who around us weep.
But only a mad clutching for relief
From physical pain, importunate Nature's need;
The search as for a womb where we may creep
Back from the world, to hide,—perhaps to sleep.

LXXVII
WHO WOULD LIVE AGAIN?

Oh who would live again to suffer loss?
Once in my youth I battled with my fate,
Grudging my days to death. I would have won
A place by violence beneath the sun.
I took my pleasures madly as by force,
Even the air of heaven was a prize.
I stood a plunderer at death's very gate,
And all the lands of life I did o'errun
With sack and pillage. Then I scorned to die,
Save as a conqueror. The treasuries
Of love I ransacked; pity, pride and hate.
All that can make hearts beat or brim men's eyes
With living tears I took as robes to wear.
—But see, now time has struck me on the hip.
I cannot hate nor love. My senses are
Struck silent with the silence of my lip.
No courage kindles in my heart to dare,
No strength to do. The world's last phantoms slip
Out of my grasp, and naught is left but pain.
Love, life, vain strength!—Oh who would live again?

LXXVIII
COLD COMFORT

There is no comfort underneath the sun.
Youth turns to age; riches are quickly spent;
Pride breeds us pain, our pleasures punishment.
The very courage which we count upon
A single night of fever shall break down,
And love is slain by fear. Death last of all
Spreads out his nets and watches for our fall.
There is no comfort underneath the sun!
—When thou art old, O man, if thou wert proud
Be humble; pride will here avail thee not.
There is no courage which can conquer death.
Forget that thou wert wise. Nay, keep thy breath
For prayer, that so thy wisdom be forgot
And thou perhaps get pity of thy God.

LXXIX
AMOUR OBLIGE

I could forgive you, dearest, all the folly
Your heart has dreamed. Alas, as we grow old,
We need more vigorous cures for melancholy,
A stronger nutriment for hearts grown cold.
We need in face of weakness to be bold.
We need our folly to keep fate at bay.
Oh, we need madness in the manifold
Doubts and despairs which herald our decay.
I could forgive you all and more than all.
Yet, dearest, though for us fate waves his hand
And we accept it as the common lot
To meet no more at this life's festival,
It were unseemly you should take your stand,
Now my heart's citadel is laid in siege,
In open field with those who love me not.
Love has a rank which surely should oblige.

LXXX
TO ONE UNFORGOTTEN

You are not false perhaps, as lovers say
Meaning the act,—Alas, that guilt was mine.
Nor, maybe, have you bowed at other shrine
Than the true god's where first you learned to pray.
I know the idols round you. They are clay,
Mere Dagons to the courage half divine
Which bears you scathless still thro' sap and mine
And breach and storm upon your virgin way.
Alas, I know your virtue. But your heart,
How have you treated it? I sometimes see,
When nights are long, a vision chaste and true
Of pale pathetic eyes which gaze on me
In love and grief eternal. Then I start,
Crying aloud, and reach my arms to you.

LXXXI
TO ONE WHOM HE HAD LOVED TOO LONG

Why do I cling to thee, sad love? Too long
Thou bringest me neither pleasure to my soul
Nor profit to my reason save in song,
My daily utterance. See, thy beggar's dole
Of foolish tears cannot my tears cajole;
Thy laughter doth my laughter grievous wrong;
Thy anger angereth me; thou heapest coal
Of fire upon my head the drear night long
With thy forgiveness. What is this thou wilt?
Mine ears have ceased to hear, my tongue to speak,
And naught is left for my spent heart to do.
Love long has left the feast; the cup is spilt.
Let us go too. The dawn begins to break,
And there is mockery in this heaven of blue.

LXXXII
HE WOULD LEAD A BETTER LIFE

I am tired of folly, tired of my own ways,
Love is a strife. I do not want to strive.
If I had foes I now would make my peace.
If I less wedded were I now would wive.
I would do service to my kind, contrive
Something of good for men, some happiness
For those who in the world still love and live,
And, as my fathers did, so end my days.
I would earn praise, I too, of honest men.
I would repent in sackcloth if needs be.
I would serve God and expiate my sin,
Abjuring love and thee—ay, even thee.
I would do this, dear love. But what am I
To will or do? As we have lived we die.

IV. PART IV.—VITA NOVA

LXXXIII
A DAY IN SUSSEX

The dove did lend me wings. I fled away
From the loud world which long had troubled me.
Oh lightly did I flee when hoyden May
Threw her wild mantle on the hawthorn tree.
I left the dusty high road, and my way
Was through deep meadows, shut with copses fair.
A choir of thrushes poured its roundelay
From every hedge and every thicket there.
Mild, moon-faced kine looked on, where in the grass
All heaped with flowers I lay, from noon till eve.
And hares unwitting close to me did pass,
And still the birds sang, and I could not grieve.
Oh what a blessed thing that evening was!
Peace, music, twilight, all that could deceive
A soul to joy or lull a heart to peace.
It glimmers yet across whole years like these.

LXXXIV
IN ANNIVERSARIO MORTIS

If I can bring no tribute of fresh tears
To mingle with the dust which covers thee;
If in this latest dawn of evil years
My rebel eyes withhold their sympathy;
If of a truth my thoughts so barren be
Of their old griefs, so numb to tenderness
That they nor hear nor taste nor feel nor see
The sweetness of thy presence in this place;
If I now drowse,—'tis that the flesh is weak
More than the spirit. See, by thy dear bed
Once more I kneel in sorrow and in love.
See, I still watch by thee if thou shouldst move,
If thou shouldst raise thy hand or turn thy head,
Or speak my name. And yet thou dost not speak.

LXXXV
THE SAME CONTINUED

These flowers shall be my offering, living flowers
Which here shall die with you in sacrifice,
Flowers from the empty fields which once were yours
And now are mine. No gold, nor myrrh, nor spice,
Nor any dead man's offering may suffice.
I love not flowers: but thus to deck a grave
Which has no need of things of greater price.
Life is the only tribute death would have.
—Ah, thou art dead. Mine is this fair domain
With all its living beauty and brave shows
Of lawn, and lake, and garden; mine the increase
Of the year's harvest, the slow growth of trees,
And that fair natural wealth we loved in vain,
Flowers, which shall never more adorn my house.

LXXXVI
THE SAME CONTINUED

It is not true the dead unhonoured were
If they returned to life. Nay, claim thine own,
And see how gladly I, thy “thankless heir,”
Will yield thee back possession of thy throne.
I am not so in love with riches grown
That such can comfort me. Alas, too long
The fields are furrowed and the wheat is sown
For my sole grief that these should do thee wrong.
I hold these things not wholly as in fee,
But thinking that perhaps some happy day
We yet may walk together, and devise
Of the old lands we loved, in Paradise,
And I shall give account, as best I may,
How I thy tenant was awhile for thee.

LXXXVII
THE SAME CONTINUED

Thy ways were not my ways. Thy life was peace,
And mine has been a battle. Thou didst store
Thy soul's wealth sternly to a sure increase,
And thy revenue's much still swelled to more.
Thou squanderedst nothing on the pomp of war,
The lust of glory. No mad covetous eyes
Were thine upon thy neighbour's lands afar,
His wealth, his wife, his fenceless vanities.
Thou wert a brave, just man, whom all men knew
And trusted, and some loved, and thou to me
Wert as a tower of strength, a sanctuary
To which I fled from the world's maddened crew,
Wounded by me, and there with bloodstained hands
Clung to the altar of thy innocence.

LXXXVIII
THE SAME CONTINUED

There were two with thee in thine agony,
I and another. In that hour supreme
We stood beside thy cross and gazed at thee,
Waiting till death should wake thee from thy dream.
Thy hands held both our hands and clung to them
And drew them to each other. We could see
Thy dumb lips open as to either name
And thy eyes turn to our eyes wistfully.
O eloquent eyes! Ye were not closed in vain.
Still from the grave ye speak, “Behold a son,
Behold a mother.” From that rite of pain
We two went home together bone of bone
And flesh of flesh, distinguished among men,
Thy witnesses till death shall come again.

LXXXIX
THE LIMIT OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

There is a vice in the world's reasoning. Man
Has conquered knowledge. He has conquered power;
He has traced out the universal plan
Of the Earth's being; and in this last hour
He has unmade the God which he had made.
I cannot doubt but he at length has read
The riddle of the Earth; that he is wise.
He also hath dominion charterèd
Over the lands, the oceans, and the skies,
Which toil and sweat to give him daily bread.
—Knowledge he hath, and power upon the Earth,
And long ago he had himself been God,
But for the cruel secret of his birth,
Which gave him kindred with the dust he trod,
And for the hideous ending of his mirth,
A fly-blown carrion festering 'neath the sod.

XC
THE PRIDE OF UNBELIEF

When I complained that I had lost my hope
Of life eternal with the eternal God;
When I refused to read my horoscope
In the unchanging stars, or claim abode
With powers and dominations, but, poor clod,
Clung to the earth and grovelled in my tears,
Because I soon must lie beneath the sod
And close the little number of my years,—
Then I was told that pride had barred the way,
And raised this foul rebellion in my head.
Yet, strange rebellion! I, but yesterday,
Was God's own son in His own likeness bred.
And thrice strange pride! who thus am cast away
And go forth lost and disinherited.

XCI
LAUGHTER AND DEATH

There is no laughter in the natural world
Of beast or fish or bird, though no sad doubt
Of their futurity to them unfurled
Has dared to check the mirth-compelling shout.
The lion roars his solemn thunder out
To the sleeping woods. The eagle screams her cry.
Even the lark must strain a serious throat
To hurl his blest defiance at the sky.
Fear, anger, jealousy have found a voice.
Love's pain or rapture the brute bosoms swell.
Nature has symbols for her nobler joys,
Her nobler sorrows. Who had dared foretell
That only man, by some sad mockery,
Should learn to laugh who learns that he must die?

XCII
WRITTEN IN DISTRESS

We sometimes sit in darkness. I long while
Have sat there, in a shadow as of death.
My friends and comforters no longer smile,
And they who grudge me wrongfully my breath
Are strong and many. I am bowed beneath
A weight of trouble and unjust reproach
From many fools and friends of little faith.
The world is little worth, yet troubles much.
But I am comforted in this, that I,
Although my face is darkened to men's eyes
And all my life eclipsed with angry wars,
Now see things hidden; and I seem to spy
New worlds above my heaven. Night is wise
And joy a sun which never guessed the stars.

XCIII
A DISAPPOINTMENT

Spring, of a sudden, came to life one day.
Ere this, the Winter had been cold and chill.
That morning first the Summer air did fill
The world, making bleak March seem almost May.
The daffodils were blooming golden gay;
The birch trees budded purple on the hill;
The rose, that clambered up the window-sill,
Put forth a crimson shoot. All yesterday
The winds about the casement chilly blew,
But now the breeze that played before the door
So caught the dead leaves that I thought there flew
Brown butterflies up from the grassy floor.
—But someone said you came not. Ah, too true!
And I, I thought that Winter reigned once more.

XCIV
A YEAR AGO

A year ago I too was proud of May,
I too delighted in the blackbird's song.
When the sun shone my soul made holiday.
When the rain fell I felt it as a wrong.
Then for me too the world was fresh and young.
Oh what a miracle each bluebell was!
How my heart leaped in union with my tongue,
When first I lit upon a stag's horn moss!
—A year ago! Alas, one Summer's fire,
One autumn's chill, one Winter's discontent,
And now one Spring of joy and hope deferred
Have brought me to this pass of undesire
That I behold May's veil of beauty rent
And stand unmoved by sun and flower and bird.

XCV
HE IS NOT A POET

I would not, if I could, be called a poet.
I have no natural love of the “chaste muse.”
If aught be worth the doing I would do it;
And others, if they will, may tell the news.
I care not for their laurels but would choose
On the world's field to fight or fall or run.
My soul's ambition will not take excuse
To play the dial rather than the sun.
The faith I held I hold, as when a boy
I left my books for cricket-bat and gun.
The tales of poets are but scholars' themes.
In my hot youth I held it that a man
With heart to dare and stomach to enjoy
Had better work to his hand in any plan
Of any folly, so the thing were done,
Than in the noblest dreaming of mere dreams.

XCVI
ON THE SHORTNESS OF TIME

If I could live without the thought of death,
Forgetful of time's waste, the soul's decay,
I would not ask for other joy than breath
With light and sound of birds and the sun's ray.
I could sit on untroubled day by day
Watching the grass grow, and the wild flowers range
From blue to yellow and from red to grey
In natural sequence as the seasons change.
I could afford to wait, but for the hurt
Of this dull tick of time which chides my ear.
But now I dare not sit with loins ungirt
And staff unlifted, for death stands too near.
I must be up and doing—ay, each minute.
The grave gives time for rest when we are in it.

XCVII
CHANCLEBURY RING

Say what you will, there is not in the world
A nobler sight than from this upper Down.
No rugged landscape here, no beauty hurled
From its Creator's hand as with a frown;
But a green plain on which green hills look down
Trim as a garden plot. No other hue
Can hence be seen, save here and there the brown
Of a square fallow, and the horizon's blue.
Dear checker-work of woods, the Sussex Weald!
If a name thrills me yet of things of earth,
That name is thine. How often I have fled
To thy deep hedgerows and embraced each field,
Each lag, each pasture,—fields which gave me birth
And saw my youth, and which must hold me dead.

XCVIII
SONNET IN ASSONANCE

A thousand bluebells blossom in the wood,
Shut in a tangled brake of briar roses,
And guarded well from every wanton foot,
A treasure by no eye of man beholden,
No eye but mine. No other tongue hath spoken
Out to the joyless world what hidden joys
Lie there untasted, mines of wealth unnoted,
While a starved world without lives blank and void.
—Ah, couldst thou know, poor wretch, what I have known,
See what I saw upon that bank enshrinèd,
Soft pity had not wholly left thy soul
And tears had dimmed thy hard eyes uninvited.
Eyes that are cruel-bright with hunger's brightness,
Hunger for beauty, solitude, and peace.
There hadst thou found a beauty and a silence,
Such as nor tongue can tell nor fancy dream.

XCIX
YOUTH

Youth, ageless youth, the old gods' attribute!
—To inherit cheeks a-tingle with such blood
As wood nymphs blushed, who to the first-blown flute
Went out in endless dancing through the wood.
To live, and taste of that immortal food
After the wild day's waste prepared for us
By deathless hands, and straightway be renewed,
Like the god's entrails upon Caucasus.
To rise at dawn with eye and brain and sense
Clear as the pale green edge where dawn began,
While each bold thought full shapen should arise,
Cutting the horizon of experience,
Sharp as an obelisk.—Ah, wretched Man!
'Tis little wonder that the gods are wise.

C
AGE

O Age, thou art the very thief of joy,
For thou hast rifled many a proud fool
Of all his passions, hoarded by a rule
Of stern economy. Him, yet a boy,
Harsh wisdom governed. Others turned to toy
With lusty passion. He was chaste and cool
As a young Dorian in Lycurgus' school.
Ah me, that thou such souls shouldst dare annoy.
Thus did he gather him a store of pleasure,
Nor cared to touch what he so hardly won,
But led long years of solitary strife;
And, when the rest should have consumed their treasure,
He thought to sit him in the evening sun
And taste the sweet fruits of a sober life.

CI
THE SAME CONTINUED

But thou didst come upon him ere he wist,
A silent highwayman, and take his all
And leave him naked, when the night should fall
And all the road was conjured in a mist.
Too well thou keepedst thy unholy tryst,
As long ago that eastern seneschal
Rode all day long to meet at evenfall
Him he had fled ere yet the sun uprist.
—But I have spent me like a prodigal
The treasure of my youth, and, long ago,
Have eaten husks among the hungry swine,
And when I meet thee I will straightway fall
Upon thy neck, and if the tears shall flow,
They shall be tears of love for thee and thine.

CII
THE VENUS OF MILO

What art thou? Woman? Goddess? Aphrodite?
Yet never such as thou from the cold foam
Of ocean, nor from cloudy heaven might come,
Who wast begotten on her bridal night
In passionate Earth's womb by Man's delight,
When Man was young. I cannot trace in thee
Time's handiwork. Say, rather, where is he
For whom thy face was red which is so white?
Thou standest ravished, broken, and thy face
Is writ with ancient passions. Thou art dumb
To my new love. Yet, whatsoe'er of good,
Of crime, of pride, of passion, or of grace
In woman is, thou, woman, hast in sum.
Earth's archetypal Eve. All Womanhood.

CIII
WRITTEN AT FLORENCE

O world, in very truth thou art too young,
When wilt thou learn to wear the garb of age?
World, with thy covering of yellow flowers,
Hast thou forgot what generations sprung
Out of thy loins and loved thee and are gone?
Hast thou no place in all their heritage
Where thou dost only weep that I may come
Nor fear the mockery of thy yellow flowers?
O world, in very truth thou art too young.
The heroic wealth of passionate emprize
Built thee fair cities for thy naked plains.
How hast thou set thy summer growth among
The broken stones which were their palaces!
Hast thou forgot the darkness where he lies
Who made thee beautiful, or have thy bees
Found out his grave to build their honeycombs?

CIV
THE SAME CONTINUED

O world, in very truth thou art too young,
They gave thee love who measured out thy skies,
And, when they found for thee another star,
Who made a festival and straightway hung
The jewel on thy neck. O merry world,
Hast thou forgot the glory of those eyes
Which first looked love in thine? Thou hast not furled
One banner of thy bridal car for them.
O world, in very truth thou art too young.
There was a voice which sang about thy Spring,
Till Winter froze the sweetness of his lips,
And lo, the worms had hardly left his tongue
Before thy nightingales were come again.
O world, what courage hast thou thus to sing?
Say, has thy merriment no secret pain
No sudden weariness that thou art young?

CV
PALAZZO PAGANI

This is the house where, twenty years ago,
They spent a Spring and Summer. This shut gate
Would lead you to the terrace, and below
To a rose garden long since desolate.
Here they once lived. How often I have sat
Till it was dusk among the olive trees,
Waiting to hear their coming horse-hoofs grate
Upon the gravel; till the freshening breeze
Bore down a sound of voices. Even yet
A broken echo of their laughter rings
Through the deserted terraces; and see,
While I am speaking, from the parapet
There is a hand put forth, and some one flings
Her very window open overhead.
—How sweet it is, this scent of rosemary!
—These are the last tears I shall ever shed.

CVI
THE SUBLIME

To stand upon a windy pinnacle,
Beneath the infinite blue of the blue noon,
And underfoot a valley terrible
As that dim gulf, where sense and being swoon
When the soul parts; a giant valley strewn
With giant rocks; asleep, and vast, and still,
And far away. The torrent, which has hewn
His pathway through the entrails of the hill,
Now crawls along the bottom and anon
Lifts up his voice, a muffled tremulous roar,
Borne on the wind an instant, and then gone
Back to the caverns of the middle air;
A voice as of a nation overthrown
With beat of drums, when hosts have marched to war.

CVII
THE SAME CONTINUED

Clutching the brink with hands and feet and knees,
With trembling heart, and eyes grown strangely dim,
A part thyself and parcel of the frieze
Of that colossal temple raised to Time,
To gaze on horror, till, as in a crime,
Thou and the rocks become accomplices.
There is no voice, no life 'twixt thee and them.
No life! Yet, look, far down upon the breeze
Something has passed across the bosom bare
Of the red rocks, a leaf, a shape, a shade.
A living shadow! Ay, above thee there,
Weaving majestic circles overhead,
Others are watching.—This is the sublime
To be alone, with eagles in the air.

CVIII
A FOREST IN BOSNIA

Spirit of Trajan! What a world is here,
What remnant of old Europe in this wood,
Of life primæval rude as in the year
When thy first legions by the Danube stood.
These are the very Dacians they subdued,
Swineherds and shepherds clad in skins of deer
And fox and marten still, a bestial brood,
Than their own swine begotten swinelier.
The fair oak-forest, their first heritage,
Pastures them still, and still the hollow oak
Receives them in its bosom. Still o'erhead
Upon the stag-head tops, grown hoar with age,
Calm buzzards sit and ancient ravens croak,
And all with solemn life is tenanted.

CIX
ROUMELI HISSAR

The Empire of the East, grown dull to fear
By long companionship with angry fate,
In silent anguish saw her doom appear
In this dark fortress built upon the strait,
And Sultan Mahmoud standing at her gate,
For she must perish. Hissar many a year
Struck terror into all who gazed thereat,
Till in his turn the Turk had learned to wear
The purple and fine linen of the State,
And fell in impotence. These walls to-day,
With Judas tree and lilac overgrown,
Move all men's hearts. For close on barbarous power
Tread lust and indolence, and then decay,
Till we forgive.—The very German boor,
Who in his day of fortune moves our scorn,
Purged of his slough, in after ages may
Invite the tears of nations yet unborn.

CX
THE OASIS OF SIDI KHALED

How the earth burns! Each pebble underfoot
Is as a living thing with power to wound.
The white sand quivers, and the footfall mute
Of the slow camels strikes but gives no sound,
As though they walked on flame, not solid ground.
'Tis noon, and the beasts' shadows even have fled
Back to their feet, and there is fire around
And fire beneath, and overhead the sun.
Pitiful heaven! What is this we view?
Tall trees, a river, pools, where swallows fly,
Thickets of oleander where doves coo,
Shades, deep as midnight, greenness for tired eyes.
Hark, how the light winds in the palm-tops sigh.
Oh this is rest. Oh this is paradise.

CXI
TO THE BEDOUIN ARABS

Children of Shem! Firstborn of Noah's race,
But still forever children; at the door
Of Eden found, unconscious of disgrace,
And loitering on while all are gone before;
Too proud to dig; too careless to be poor;
Taking the gifts of God in thanklessness,
Not rendering aught, nor supplicating more,
Nor arguing with Him when He hides His face.
Yours is the rain and sunshine, and the way
Of an old wisdom by our world forgot,
The courage of a day which knew not death.
Well may we sons of Japhet in dismay
Pause in our vain mad fight for life and breath,
Beholding you. I bow and reason not.

CXII
GIBRALTAR

Seven weeks of sea, and twice seven days of storm
Upon the huge Atlantic, and once more
We ride into still water and the calm
Of a sweet evening screened by either shore
Of Spain and Barbary. Our toils are o'er,
Our exile is accomplished. Once again
We look on Europe, mistress as of yore
Of the fair Earth and of the hearts of men.
Ay, this is the famed rock, which Hercules
And Goth and Moor bequeathed us. At this door
England stands sentry. God! to hear the shrill
Sweet treble of her fifes upon the breeze
And at the summons of the rock gun's roar
To see her red coats marching from the hill.

CXIII
TO ONE WITH HIS SONNETS

This is the book. For evil and for good,
What my life was in it is written plain.
These are no dreams, but things of flesh and blood,
The past that lived and shall not live again.
This is the book. I dare not bid you read.
Too much of my poor soul you would unlock.
Your own soul, if it tender were, might bleed.
I could not bear that you should only mock.
My life lies here. And yet in vain, dear heart,
The tale is told. One page it yearns to see,
One play where one best actor should find part.
But that, alas for love! shall never be.
Yet, if a sign you seek between these lines,
One hidden lies for you, a sign of signs.

CXIV
A LATER DEDICATION

1892

To her the sweetest, fairest, worthiest one,
Who the inspirer is of my new praise,
Whom lately once, one Autumn afternoon,
I walked with nor told aught a lover says,
And yet who knows I love her in all ways
A maiden dreams: the suppliant at her throne,
The counsellor of strength, the lord of lays
Loyal to chastity and her alone,
These rhymes I dedicate. Oh, if there be
Still in this world of vanished creeds and kings
Some faith in royal blood and right divine,
Some lingering reverence paid to majesty,
Here seek it and here find it, for it clings
To each hushed verse like incense to a shrine.

THE LOVE LYRICS OF PROTEUS

SONG.—LOVE ME A LITTLE

SONG.—OH FOR A DAY OF SPRING

TWENTY DAYS

LOVE'S LIKENINGS

He.
To what, love, shall I liken thee?
Thou, methinks, shalt firstly be
A blue flower with nodding bells
In the hollow of a tree.
When the wind blows wantonly,
Thou shalt ever shake thy head
At the idle tale he tells.
But at evening from the clover,
When the world is all abed,
And the noisy day is over,
And the birds have gone to rest,
In the darkness will I hover
Till thou bid me come to thee,
Till I creep into thy nest,
I thy long-expected lover,
I thy sweet, thy honey bee.
To what, love, shall I liken thee?
Tell me, love, what wouldst thou be?

She.

He.
To what more shall I liken thee?
Thou, my love, shalt lastly be
A clear silver-tonguèd brook
Running downwards to the Sea,
And the reeds shall seek to stay thee
Under every shaded nook,
And the pebbles shall waylay thee,
With their bald heads to dismay thee,
Till thy pretty face grows white,
Half in anger, half in fright.
See, thy troubles are forgot
In the still pool suddenly,
And a smile has found thee out,
Taking shape of thy delight,
Laughing, weeping, onward ever
Till thou join thyself to me,
For my love shall be the river.
Thou and I shall run together
Ever till we meet the Sea.

SONG.—RED, RED GOLD

A RHAPSODY

SONG.—WHY DO I LOVE?

PICTURES ON ENAMEL

ADONIS

A NOCTURNE

The Moon has gone to her rest,
A full hour ago.
The Pleiads have found a nest
In the waves below.
Slow, the Hours one by one
In Midnight's footsteps creep.
Lovers who lie alone
Soon wake to weep.
Slow-footed tortoise Hours, will ye not hasten on,
Till from his prison
In the golden East
A new day shall have risen,
And the last stars be gone,
Like guests belated from a bridal feast?
When the long night is done
Then shall ye sleep.

SONG.—THE DEATH OF THE ROSE

SONG OF THE DESERT LARK

SONG.—GLAD BIRD, I DO BEWAIL THEE

SONG.—WILT THOU TAKE ME FOR THY SLAVE?

SONG.—FOR THEE

THE STRICKEN HART

SONG.—LILAC AND GOLD AND GREEN

SONG.—TO HER WHOSE NAME

DEAD JOYS

AT A FUNERAL

THE BROKEN PITCHER

AN UNWRITTEN TRAGEDY

REQUIESCIT

IN THE NIGHT

TO HESTER ON THE STAIR

A SUMMER IN TUSCANY

SONG.—THEY SHALL NOT KNOW

SONG.—IF WE HAD MET

SONG.—IF I HAD KNOWN YOU

SONG.—BUTTERFLIES

SONG.—NOT A WORD

SONG.—YOU HAVE LET THE BEAUTY OF THE DAY GO OVER

A DREAM

LOVE AFTER SORROW

THE SOUL'S MUTINY

SONG.—THINK NO MORE OF ME

SONG.—COME WITH THE SUMMER LEAVES

THE EVICTION

GOOD-BYE

WRITTEN AT SEA

A DAY IN THE CASTLE OF ENVY

A BALLAD OF THE HEATHER

ON THE WAY TO CHURCH

GIACINTA

THE WANDERER'S RETURN

FROM THE ARABIC

I
THE CAMEL-RIDER

II
THE DESOLATE CITY

III
THE GRIEF OF LOVE

IV
A LOVE SECRET

V

[THE DAYS OF OUR YOUTH]

THE IDLER'S CALENDAR

TWELVE SONNETS FOR THE MONTHS

JANUARY

COVER SHOOTING

FEBRUARY

UNDER THE SPEAKER'S GALLERY

MARCH

A WEEK AT PARIS

APRIL

TROUT-FISHING

MAY

THE LONDON SEASON

JUNE

A DAY AT HAMPTON COURT

JULY

GOODWOOD

AUGUST

ON THE THAMES

SEPTEMBER

FEAST OF ST. PARTRIDGE

OCTOBER

GAMBLING AT MONACO

NOVEMBER

ACROSS COUNTRY

DECEMBER

AWAY TO EGYPT

GRISELDA

A SOCIETY NOVEL IN RHYMED VERSE

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

NATALIA'S RESURRECTION

A SONNET SEQUENCE

I

Oh! woe is me for beauty idly blown!
And woe for passionate youth and joys that wait!
And woe for foolish love that is undone
By woman's fear, and fortune come too late!
And woe for empty words and hours that were
Squandered in weeping! Woe, because of Death
Who was at hand, and, while joy languished near
Fearing to enter, quickly from its sheath
Drew out his sword and laid its point unto
That virgin breast, and there in stern embrace
Did all that happiness had dared not do,
Rifling the treasures of that holy place,
And heeding not Love's shriek. Alas, poor Love!
Death will not spare what thou hast spared to prove.

II

'Twas thus with my Natalia, suppliant soul,
Who loved young Adrian to her heart's despite,
And loved him dearly, yet could not cajole
Her fears of ill nor use her woman's right
To grant his wish, but ever put away
The sweet fulfilment of each day's desire
To a new to-morrow void as yesterday.
Adrian in vain, with wild hopes high and higher,
Essayed to make her convert to his creed.
No laggard he to do, devise or dare.
But still she failed him ever at his need,
And still she gave but tears to his heart's prayer.
And days and nights went cheerless for them both,
And not a flower was gathered of love's troth.

III

Matron was she of a great Roman house,
And wed in youth to one she might not love;
Her birth, her fortune, her name luminous,
Such as all noblest virtues most behove.
How dare she trifle with ignoble things,
Or yield her fair fame to a stranger's care,
Or let her passionate desire take wings,
Or be of those unchastely debonnaire?
Yet with him she was well, and far from him
A bird shaft-stricken which no more may fly.
She deemed his smile as of the seraphim,
And in his frown she was one like to die.
For his dear sake 'twixt niggard hopes and fears
She lived in death for two long weary years.

IV

But Adrian, who was young and all athirst
For human joy, and turbulent and strong,
Grew discontent with her despairs and curst,
Nor spared he her the jibings of his tongue.
He mocked at her vain virtue and the words
She used to comfort him when sometimes she
With weak heart battling, like a troubled bird's
Which sees the nets, would ease his misery
With telling her own pain and making show
Of her soul's hunger to his hungry soul.
It only angered him, this prate of woe,
And back he thrust on her her beggar's dole
Of idle sighs. And “If I have not bread,
For pity let me be and starve,” he said.

V

Until it happened, as such things will be,
That she, who had a proud man for her spouse
None the less loving that unloved was he,
Must bear a child, the heir to his high house.
Then Adrian left her. It was idle sorrow
Longer to wait a suppliant at her door,
Weeping the promise of a lost to-morrow
Which never could be his nor valued more.
And he was tired of tears and nightly needed
To feed his manhood's strength on stronger meat,
And neither word of hers nor vow he heeded,
Who was thus proved a daughter of deceit;
And he was wrath with her and womanhood,
And with himself, and chiefly wrath with God.

VI

So he departed angry and in haste,
A bitter wanderer on the ways of life:
He cared not whither so he found a feast
Spread for his hunger which should need no strife.
He went out silent, scornful and alone,
That none might pity him. He would not make
Of his too public grief a public moan,
Nor yet feign laughter for his manhood's sake,
For now that love was lost he less had heart
To cast his pride too on the dunghill there,
And his were griefs where none could bear a part,
And his a cup of pain no lips could share.
He went his way, to Germany some said,
And some to Naples, some that he was dead.

VII

But where he fared and how, it matters not.
He and his mourning ere a month had run
Were out of mind with all and clean forgot,
Kinsman and friend and foe: save only one,
Only Natalia. She with tightened breath
Heard his name spoken in reproof's vain way
And gave her melancholy soul to death.
Foolish Natalia, who in love's full day
Had spent her grief, had nothing now to give
Of greater woe to her soul's agonies.
Living she yet had hardly dared to live.
She had wept dry the fountains of her eyes,
And never on her sorrow broke a gleam
Of that assuagement tears on others stream.

VIII

And so it was that, sitting ever thus
Dumb to all speech of those that knew her woe
And bare with her sole sorrow in the house,
And ever watching with sad eyes below
To see if any came with help for her
Whom none could help with pity or with pride
Or word of patience, ere her time was near,
She bore her yet unliving child and died.
There was great mourning for her in those days
Because of her high lineage and fair youth.
Men knowing her spoke nobly in her praise,
Or knowing not yet mourned for very ruth.
And all Rome wept for her, and far and wide
The fame was noised how of her love she died.

IX

Thus Adrian learned it. And behold, his heart,
Which he had hardened against all dismay,
And wrapped up secretly and laid apart
As something which should not be used to-day,
Woke with a pang, and tremulously wan
Started and listened. There in the new morn
Of this grey wakening, like a long drowned man
Brought back to life, he knew the world forlorn
By the dull ache which was in every limb.
The ghastly pleasures which had gorged his care
Paled as he looked at them. His dead lusts dim
Stank like lost corpses in the morning air.
And yet 'twas passing sweet, despite the pain,
To feel and move and live and love again.

X

But with full daylight finding no relief,
Though he had spent the newness of his fears
And looked with altered eyes upon his grief,
For sorrow often drowses in its tears,
And men sleep deepest on a wound, he rose
And taking horse made in all haste for Rome,
Thinking if thus he might assuage his woes
By visiting his dead Natalia's tomb
And asking of her dear new-buried lips
What secret thought had been of love and him
When the world left her in its last eclipse.
And still in passionate words he made his theme,
That she was waiting yet to hear his cry:
“O my soul's soul, I did not bid thee die.”

XI

So in his agony at noon he came,
On the third day, to where without the walls
Stood San Lorenzo with its front of flame,
Where mourners wait the accustomed funerals.
Here to a cypress having tied his steed,
He lighted down sore weary on the grass,
Seeking such comfort for his body's need
As rest could lend till the day's heat should pass
And no man stopped him, either friend or foe
Or knight or citizen or friar or priest;
Nor sought he more companionship of woe
Than the dumb presence of his jaded beast.
There, hidden in the shade where he had crept,
Adrian o'erspent with sorrow soundly slept.

XII

He slept as only under the free heaven
It is given to sleep, a slumber shadowless
As the broad river to whose banks at even
That spirit comes which brings forgetfulness,
A silence undisturbed by the world's tread,
Which sees not, hears not, feels not, yet is girt
With sound and light and sense; which seeming dead
Drinks in Earth's life in cure of every hurt
And so takes consolation. Dreams anon
Come for the soul's refreshment, apparitions
Begot of heaven's beauty and the sun,
No meaningless expectance of sad visions
But tales prophetic of new days more fair
And to be numbered with the things that are,

XIII

A heritage for ever. Such a sleep
Came upon Adrian and such a dream,
As in the shade he lay a weary heap.
For, while he rested, still it seemed to him
He rode towards the city of his love,
Only in mirth not sadness. And, behold,
In his soothed bosom Hope, a brooding dove,
Had made again her nest, and manifold
Fair pleasures round him seemed to perch and sing
Like wild birds in the branches overhead,
And his heart leaped in joy with everything,
As in the days ere yet his joys were dead,
Until he found himself, it seemed, in Rome
And knocking at the doors of his own home.

XIV

His servants opened. None appeared to doubt
How it might happen their young lord stood there,
But led him in. The house as for a rout
Stood swept and garnished and exceeding fair.
Adrian's strange eyes, long widowed of the sight,
Found all things larger, nobler and more proud
Than on the day he left them in his flight,
A love-sick boy by a long sorrow bowed.
And still through halls and corridors he went
And found new treasures still at every door,
Mirrors and silks and fretwork excellent,
And panelled tapestry and marbled floor.
He paused in wonder and delight at each,
Pleased to his soul to find himself thus rich.

XV

Anon, ere yet his pleasure was aware
Of other presence with him in that place,
A growing murmur in the jubilant air,
With hum of voices gathering apace,
And laughter interchanged, and tones well known,
And steps approaching him familiar-wise,
And names that seemed an echo of his own,
Broke on his musing. Turning in surprise
He saw around him a gay company,
Faces of kinsmen or of friends as near,
But dead or changed or wed: all now in joy,
Such as they showed him once in days more dear
Ere yet his manhood had been touched with pain,
Stood forth to greet him to their hearts again.

XVI

Among the rest ('twas thus his dream went on
While Adrian slept) in more than courteous mood
And smiling welcome, fairer scarce was none,
That noble knight Natalia's husband stood,
A gentle man whom of a truth in life,
Alas for jealous youth and wit too keen!
Adrian loved little though he loved his wife,
But now beheld as the most blest of men,—
Because Natalia was not dead, he thought,
Seeing him thus unconscious of all grief,—
And in that cloudless face where pain was not
Adrian found omen to his soul's relief,
And looked beyond if haply he should see
Her face too following fixed in constancy.

XVII

Nor yet in vain. For to him through the rout
Behold, 'mid herald whispers of her name
And laughing eyes and welcome hands held out,
Natalia's self behind her husband came,
Her face arrayed in smiles, as who should say
She held a secret string of happiness
Joined to her heart grief could not take away.
And Adrian gazed at her in rapturous bliss,
Knowing his love had triumphed o'er the grave
And she at last was his, a heritage
For ever for his heart to hold and have,
In spite of change and death's untimely rage
And the long tempest of forgotten tears,
The pain, the anger and the grief of years.

XVIII

Nor were the rest astonished. Even he,
Natalia's lord, in all complacent grace
Looked on approving of her act when she
Stepped forward with her face to Adrian's face,
And touched his lips and told him of the truth
How all was ended now of her old life,
With the sad barrier that had marred their youth:
Husband no longer and no longer wife,
Natalia had grown free. Then the proud lover
Gave thanks to God and took her arm in his,
Fearless how now their love they should discover
To any anger of suspicious eyes,
And led her forth his bride before them all
With solemn music to the banquet-hall.

XIX

And still the music sounded near and near,
Loud and more loud on Adrian's nuptial way,
Preluding soft, as 'twere a dulcimer,
But gathering strength and volume with delay,
And sadness too. In truth, as strange a chaunt
As ever bridegroom's ear might choose to know,
Or lover's voice to listening lover vaunt,
(Thus Adrian argued in his dream) for, lo,
The dirge resolved itself to words of pain,
And “Miserere mei Domine”
Became the burden of its dolorous strain,
Till the love faded from Natalia's glee,
And with a sudden shudder in the sun
Adrian awoke and his brave dream was done.

XX

Oh, pitiful awaking! What was Adrian's pleasure,
That it had earned for him such bitterness?
What his soul's pride that its new tender measure
Should find its echo in a dirge like this?
The chaunters chaunting slow were sable priests
Robed for a requiem; the laughters clear,
Women that wept; the untasted marriage feasts,
Death's banquet spread, and she upon the bier,
Natalia's self in her white robe of death,
Mourned by the hard eyes of unfriendly men,
And with them he, her husband, with set teeth
And visage pale which ne'er should smile again
In any welcome. Adrian neither moved
Nor spoke, but gazed upon the form he loved.

XXI

But when they had gone past him every one,
With new resolve begotten of his dream,
Adrian arose and followed where the stone
Yawned for his love, and there unseen by them
In the dark chauntry he beheld them lay
Her body in the grave with his own heart.
A bitter jest it seemed to him that they
Should all stand near and only he apart,
And through his soul a wind of anger swept
When any in the sad crowd chanced to be
Betwixt him and the woman he so wept,
And oftentimes he cursed them bitterly
That hands not his should touch her in the tomb,
Waiting till night and his revenge should come.

XXII

The thought of night consoled him. To his vision
Natalia was dead only in false death,
The sleeping treason of some false misprision,
Some silent mystery of shortened breath,
Not dead in truth for ever and to him,
Or to that other life his dream foretold:—
Her murderers these. And in his heart the whim
Rose he should draw her from her cincture cold,
And set his lips upon her lips once more,
And free her spirit thus from its dull trance,
And all should be between them as before,
Only more dear for her deliverance.
And darkly there he smiled as, their work done,
The mourners left him with their dead alone.

XXIII

But, when the church was hushed in the night wind,
And all were gone who might his zeal disclaim,
Or hinder the firm purpose of his mind,
A silent man among the tombs he came,
Stooping to listen if so be some sound
Of living thing with speech or power to breathe
Should issuant be from the dark underground,—
And last to hers. There on that home of death
He kneeled him down and called aloud to her,
“Natalia, O Natalia, my beloved,
Am I not here thy soul's petitioner
Whom thou so lovedst?” And around him moved
The phantoms of the night. And the wind's sigh
Answered his prayer, “Beloved, it is I.”

XXIV

And, feeling round him, lo, upon the mould
A pick and spade cast down by accident.
And Adrian laughed when in those engines cold
He guessed the furtherers of his heart's intent.
And all night through he wrought with them in rage,
As miners do who know the prize at hand.
Blest Adrian! Now thy lips thou shalt engage
In the full solace thy long love has planned.
Her face is near thee. Speed thee on thy task.
Her breast's fair purity is thine to kiss.
She shall not now deny though thou shouldst ask
Her whole soul's prize in ransom of thy bliss.
Thrice happy Adrian! See, thy hands have slid
Trembling on thy Natalia's coffin lid.

XXV

Oh, miracle of love! That death, which seems
So hard a master when he holds his prize,
Whom no cajoleries, nor stratagems
Of beauty's power, nor wisdom's sophistries,
E'er turned aside from his appointed way,
But falcon-like, who with relentless foot
And pinions spread above his captured prey,
Holds his high way in heaven absolute,
Nor heeds our questionings: that this same death
Should have grown soft and yielded to love's tears,
And drawn his talons from their fleshly sheath,
And spared awhile his harvest of the years!
Oh, miracle in sooth renowned above
All other wonders of miraculous love!

XXVI

Yet so it was. Adrian had hardly set
His lips to those cold lips where death had been,
His eyes those clammy eyelids scarce had wet
With his warm tears and poured his soul between,
Nor yet with eager hands had he undone
That bosom's fastness of its snowy fold,
Ere, lo, on his rapt ear there fell a moan
As of one waking in the night grown cold.
And, even as he held her in his arms,
And gazed into her face by the dim light,
He saw her blue eyes open in alarms,
As wondering who was with her in the night,
And a long shudder pass through all her frame,
And her lips move as half she breathed his name.

XXVII

She wakes, she breathes, she rises from her bed,
That bed of death where she has lain so long;
The flowers they set there fall from her fair head
Withered, while she, sweet soul, has known no wrong.
Forth from her grave miraculously white,
And all unstained by the dull earth's decay,
Natalia rises, a last star of night,
Just as the dawn is breaking into day.
Upon the stones they kneeled them down and prayed,
For hearts grow soft with a long danger past,
And both were young and for a while dismayed
At their great joy nor deemed they held it fast;
Then, having kissed and wept, they turned to go
Through the dark church with faltering steps and slow.

XXVIII

Away! Away! Away with her, young lover,
Away with her in haste lest dawn should break;
If that her kinsmen should thy deed discover
Ill might it fare with thee for her love's sake.
Away with her to thine own palace walls,
Where thou shalt cherish her, and none may know.
Thy grief alone in those sad funerals
Was left behind and thou art quit of woe.
Oh, happy bridal! Now let songs be sung,
Lead forth the dances, let the minstrels play,
Bring her thou lovest thy own kith among,
A stranger bride, and who shall say thee nay?
Death's mighty river whoso hath passed through
Stands clear of blame, do fate what it may do.

XXIX

He bore her to his home 'twixt life and death,
By mute connivance of the slumbering streets,
Bore her redeemed to a new world of breath
And peace divine, belike the Paraclete's.
There lay she in his hands for many days
Speechless, unasking,—only in her soul
The wonder grew at love's mysterious ways
Which had outwitted grief and proved her fool.
Ay, fool in sooth, unblest by her own will,
Yet now by chiding of love's guidance blest,
Who, sparing all, of all now found her fill,
And lost to love was now of love the guest.
Dreaming she lay, with visions in her eyes
Of a new world where women all were wise.

XXX

Thus was Natalia loved and lost and won.
Some say that Adrian, having gained the goal
Of his long hopes, and being of those who run
Too lightly for their constancy of soul,
Or finding maybe that in spite of fate
She he had saved from death was ill at ease,
And halted still in doubt 'twixt this and that,
Grudging her frightened soul its ecstasies,
At a high feast in presence of her kin
Gave back Natalia to her husband's care:
A fair resolve, mayhap, and lesser sin,
If that sin be which love hath made so fair.
Yet do I doubt me all so blindly ended,
Since both from Adam were and Eve descended.

XXXI

Rather I hold with those that tell it thus,
That they, who had made proof of their great faith,
Were joined no less with honour in love's house
By Holy Church, which binding looseneth,
Since it is written that 'twixt maid and man
The wedded contract joining hand and heart
For this life is and passeth not the span
Of victor death which all our bonds doth part.
And it were grievous one should suffer all,
Even death's last pang and an untimely grave,
If overcoming he again should fall
Prisoner to penance and to sorrow slave.
Ah, no! They lived the life their love had given,
And we too all, so grant it kindly Heaven!

A NEW PILGRIMAGE

A SONNET SEQUENCE

1887

I

Care killed a cat, and I have cares at home,
Which vex me nightly and disturb my bed.
The things I love have all grown wearisome;
The things that loved me are estranged or dead.
I have a house most fair, but tenanted
With shadows only, gardens of tall trees,
Fenced in and made secure from every dread
But this one terror, my soul's lack of ease.
I have much wealth of pleasure, horse and hound,
Woods broad for sport, and fields that are my own,
With neighbours of good cheer to greet me round,
And servants tried by whom my will is done.
Here all things live at peace in this dear place,
All but my pride, which goes companionless.

II

How shall I ransom me? The world without,
Where once I lived in vain expense and noise,
Say, shall it welcome me in this last rout,
Back to its bosom of forgotten joys?
Sometimes I hear it whispering with strange voice,
Asking, “Are we forever then cast out,
The things that helped thee once in thy annoys,
That thou despairest? Nay, away with doubt!
Take courage to thy heart to heal its woes.
It still shall beat as wildly as a boy's.”
This tempts me in the night-time, and I loose
My soul to dalliance with youth's broken toys.
Ay, wherefore suffer? In this question lies
More than my soul can answer, and be wise.

III

I will break through my bondage. Let me be
Homeless once more, a wanderer on the Earth,
Marked with my soul's sole care for company,
Like Cain, lest I do murder on my hearth.
I ask not others' goods, nor wealth nor worth,
Nor the world's kindness, which should comfort me,
But to forget the story of my birth,
And go forth naked of all name, but free.
Where the flowers blow, there let me sit and dream.
Where the rain falls, ah! leave my tears their way.
Where men laugh loud, I too will join the hymn,
And in God's congregation let me pray.
Only alone—I ask this thing—alone,
Where none may know me, or have ever known.

IV

Behold the deed is done. Here endeth all
That bound my grief to its ancestral ways.
I have passed out, as from a funeral,
From my dead home, and in the great world's gaze
Henceforth I stand, a pilgrim of new days,
On the high road of life. Where I was thrall,
See, I am master, being passionless;
And, having nothing now, am lord of all.
How glorious is the world! Its infinite grace
Surprises me—and not as erst with fear,
But as one meets a woman face to face,
Loved once and unforgotten and still dear
In certain moods and seasons. So to me
The fair world smiles to-day, yet leaves me free.

V

The physical world itself is a fair thing
For who has eyes to see or ears to hear.
To-day I fled on my new freedom's wind,
With the first swallows of the parting year,
Southwards from England. At the Folkestone pier
I left the burden of my sins behind,
Noting how gay the noon was, and how clear
The tide's fresh laughter rising to no wind.
A hundred souls of men there with my own
Smiled in that sunshine. 'Tis a little measure
Makes glad the heart at sea, and not alone
Do wise men kindle to its pulse of pleasure
Here all alike, peers, pedlars, squires, and dames
Forswore their griefs fog-born of Father Thames.

VI

Away from sorrow! Yes, indeed, away!
Who said that care behind the horseman sits?
The train to Paris, as it flies to-day,
Whirls its bold rider clear of ague fits.
Who stops for sorrows? Who for his lost wits,
His vanished gold, his loves of yesterday,
His vexed ambitions? See, the landscape flits
Bright in his face, and fleeter far than they.
Away! away! Our mother Earth is wide;
And our poor lives and loves of what avail?
All life is here; and here we sit astride
On her broad back, with Hope's white wings for sail,
In search of fortune and that glorious goal,
Paris, the golden city of our soul.

VII

Ah, Paris, Paris! What an echo rings
Still in those syllables of vain delight!
What voice of what dead pleasures on what wings
Of Mænad laughters pulsing through the night!
How bravely her streets smile on me! How bright
Her shops, her houses, fair sepulchral things,
Stored with the sins of men forgotten quite,
The loves of mountebanks, the lusts of kings!
What message has she to me on this day
Of my new life? Shall I, a pilgrim wan,
Sit at her board and revel at her play,
As in the days of old? Nay, this is done.
It cannot be; and yet I love her well
With her broad roads and pleasant paths to Hell.

VIII

I will sit down awhile in dalliance
With my dead life, and dream that it is young.
My earliest memories have their home in France,
The chestnut woods of Bearn and streams among,
Where first I learned to stammer the French tongue.
Fair ancient France. No railroad insolence
Had mixed her peoples then, and still men clung
Each to his ways, and viewed the world askance.
We, too, as exiles from our northern shore,
Surveyed things sparsely; and my own child's scorn
Remained, how long, a rebel to all lore
Save its lost English, nor was quite o'erborne
Till, as I swore I'd speak no French frog's word,
I swore in French, and so laid down my sword.

IX

These were in truth brave days. From our high perch,
The box-seat of our travelling chariot, then
We children spied the world 'twas ours to search,
And mocked like birds at manners and at men.
What wonders we beheld, Havre, Rouen, Caen,
The Norman caps, the Breton crowds in church,
The loyal Loire, the valorous Vendéen,
And all the Revolution left in lurch
That very year—things old as Waterloo.
But when we neared the mountains crowned with snows,
And heard the torrents roar, our wonder grew
Over our wit, and a new pleasure rose
Wild in our hearts, and stopped our tongues with dread,
The sense of death and beauty overhead.

X

Whence is our pleasure in things beautiful?
We are not born with it, we do not know,
By instinct of the eye or natural rule,
That naked rocks are fairest, or flowers blow
Best in their clefts, or that the world of snow
Has other glory than of cold and ice.
From our mother's hand we viewed these things below
Senseless as goats which browse a precipice,
Till we were taught to know them. With what tears
I con the lessons now I learned so well,
Of mountain shapes, from those dead lips of hers;
And as she spoke, behold, a miracle
Proving her words,—for at our feet there grew,
Beauty's last prodigy, a gentian blue.

XI

I have it still, a book with pages sewn
Cross-wise in silk, and brimming with these flowers,
Treasures we gathered there, long sere and brown,
The ghosts of childhood's first undoubting hours,
Of childhood in the mountains ere the powers
Of wrong and pain had turned our joys to gall.
That summer stands to me a tower of towers,
To which my gladness clings in spite of all.
There was one special wonder in the hills,
A place where nets were hung from tree to tree
For flights of pigeons. This beyond all else
Touched my boy's fancy for its mystery,
And for the men who, caged aloft on poles,
Scared down the birds, as Satan scares men's souls.

XII

Dear royal France! I fix the happy year
At forty-seven, because that Christmas-tide
There passed through Pau the Duke of Montpensier,
Fresh from his nuptials with his Spanish bride;
And because I, unwilling, shared their pride,
As youngest of the English children there,
By offering flowers to the fair glorified
Daughter of Bourbon standing on the stair—
A point in history. When we came at last
To this gay Paris I was doomed to love,
There were already rumours of the blast
That swept the Orleans songsters from their grove
In flight to London, after Polignac
And the true king, at their King Bourgeois' back.

XIII

And what strange sights have these threewindows seen,
Mid bonnes and children, in the Tuileries!
What flights of hero, Emperor and Queen,
Since first I looked down from them, one of these!
Here, with his Mornys and his Persignys,
Louis Napoleon, the Prince President,
Rode one December past us, on the breeze
Of his new glory, bloodstained and intent.
Later, I too my love's diplomacies
Played at Eugenia's court,—blest Empress! Then
How did men curse her with their Marseillaise,
When the foe's horse was watered in her Seine,
And the flames, lit for her last festival,
Licked out her palace and its glories all.

XIV

To-day there is no cloud upon thy face,
Paris, fair city of romance and doom!
Thy memories do not grieve thee, and no trace
Lives of their tears for us who after come.
All is forgotten—thy high martyrdom,
Thy rage, thy vows, thy vauntings, thy disgrace,
With those who died for thee to beat of drum,
And those who lived to see thee kingdomless.
Indeed thou art a woman in thy mirths,
A woman in thy griefs which leave thee young,
A prudent virgin still, despite the births
Of these sad prodigies thy bards have sung.
What to thy whoredoms is a vanished throne?
A chair where a fool sat, and he is gone!

XV

For thus it is. You flout at kings to-day.
To-morrow in your pride you shall stoop low
To a new tyrant who shall come your way,
And serve him meekly with mock-serious brow,
While the world laughs. I shall not laugh at you.
Your Bourbon, Bonaparte or Boulanger
Are foils to your own part of ingénue
Which moves me most, the moral of your play.
You have a mission in the world, to teach
All pride its level. Poet, prince and clown,
Each in your amorous arms has scaled the breach
Of his own pleasure and the world's renown.
Till with a yawn you turn, and from your bed
Kick out your hero with his ass's head.

XVI

Gods, what a moral! Yet in vain I jest.
The France which has been, and shall be again,
Is the most serious, and perhaps the best,
Of all the nations which have power with men.
France only of the nations has this plain
Thought in the world, to scorn hypocrisy,
And by this token she shall purge the stain
Of her sins yet, though these as scarlet be.
Let her put off her folly! 'Tis a cloak
Which hides her virtue. Let her foremost stand,
The champion of all necks which feel the yoke,
As once she stood sublime in every land.
Let her forgo her Tonquins, and make good
Her boast to man, of man's high brotherhood!

XVII

For lo! the nations, the imperial nations
Of Europe, all imagine a vain thing,
Sitting thus blindly in their generations,
Serving an idol for their God and King.
Blindly they rage together, worshipping
Their lusts of cunning, and their lusts of gold;
Trampling the hearts of all too weak to bring
Alms to their Baal which is bought and sold.
And lo! there is no refuge, none but Baal
For man's best help, and the mute recreant earth
Drinks in its children's blood, and hears their wail,
And deals no vengeance on its last foul birth;
And there is found no hand to ward or keep
The weak from wrong, and Pity is asleep.

XVIII

Therefore do thou at least arise and warn,
Not folded in thy mantle, a blind seer,
But naked in thy anger, and new-born,
As in the hour when thy voice sounded clear
To the world's slaves, and tyrants quaked for fear.
Thou hadst a message then, a word of scorn,
First for thyself, thy own crimes' challenger,
And next for those who withered in thy dawn.
An hundred years have passed since that fair day,
And still the world cries loud, in its desire,
That right is wronged, and force alone has sway.
What profit are they, thy guns' tongues of fire?
Nay, leave to England her sad creed of gold;
Plead thou Man's rights, clean-handed as of old.

XIX

Alas, that words like these should be but folly!
Behold, the Boulevard mocks, and I mock too.
Let us away and purge our melancholy
With the last laughter at the Ambigu!
Here all is real. Here glory's self is true
Through each regime to its own mission holy
Of plying still the world with something new
To cure its ache, or nobly souled or lowly.
One title Paris holds above the rest
Untouched by time or fortune's change or frown,
One temple of high fame, where she sits dressed
In youth eternal, and mirth's myrtle crown,
And where she writes, each night, with deathless hands,
“To all the glories—of the stage—of France.”

XX

Enough, dear Paris! We have laughed together,
'Tis time that we should part, lest tears should come.
I must fare on from winter and rough weather
And the dark tempests chained within Time's womb.
Southwards I go. Each footstep marks the tomb
Of a dead pleasure. Melun, Fontainebleau,—
How shall I name them with the ghosts that roam
In their deserted streets of long ago?
I will not stop to weep. Before me lie
Lands larger in their purpose, and with dreams
Peopled more purely; and to these I fly
For ever from life's idler stratagems.
France! thy white hand I kiss in suppliant guise,
Too sad to love thee, and alas! too wise.

XXI

To Switzerland, the land of lakes and snow,
And ancient freedom of ancestral type,
And modern innkeepers, who cringe and bow,
And venal echoes, and Pans paid to pipe!
See, I am come. And here in vineyards, ripe
With sweet white grapes, I will sit down and read
Once more the loves of Rousseau, till I wipe
My eyes in tenderness for names long dead.
This is the birthplace of all sentiment,
The fount of modern tears. These hills in me
Stir what still lives of fancy reverent
For Mother Nature. Here Time's minstrelsy
Awoke, some century since, one sunny morn,
To find Earth fortunate, and Man forlorn.

XXII

Unblest discovery of an age too real!
They needed not the beauty of the Earth,
Who held Heaven's hope for their supreme ideal,
And found in worlds unseen a better birth.
What to the eye of faith were the hills worth,
The voiceless forests, the unpeopled coasts,
The wildernesses void of sentient mirth?
In death men praise thee not, Thou Lord of Hosts!
But when faith faltered, when the hope grew dim,
And Heaven was hid with phantoms of despair,
And Man stood trembling on destruction's brim,
Then turned he to the Earth, and found her fair;
His home, his refuge, which no doubt could rob,
A beauty throbbing to his own heart's throb.

XXIII

Voltaire and Rousseau, these were thy twin priests,
Proud Mother Nature, on thy opening day.
The first with bitter gibes perplexed the feasts
Of thy high rival, and prepared the way;
The other built thy shrine. 'Twas here, men say,
De Warens lived, whose pleasure was the text
Of the new gospel of the sons of clay,
The latest born of time, by faith unvexed.
Here for a century with reverent feet
Pilgrims, oppressed with barrenness of soul,
Toiled in their tears as to a Paraclete.
On these white hills they heard Earth's thunders roll
In sneers outpreaching the lost voice of God,
And shouted “Ichabod, ay, Ichabod!”

XXIV

And here too I, the latest fool of Time,
Sad child of doubt and passionate desires,
Touched with all pity, yet in league with crime,
Watched the red sunsets from the Alpine spires,
And lit my poet's lamp with kindred fires,
And dared to snatch my share of the sublime.
There was one with me, master of the choirs
Of eloquent thought, who listening to my rhyme,
And seeing in me a soul set on things
Not wholly base, although my need was sore,
Bade me take courage and essay new wings.
And thus it was I first beheld this shore,
Mourning the loss yet half consoled of gain,
The passionate pleader of youth's creed of pain.

XXV

And what brave life it was we lived that tide,
Lived, or essayed to live—for who shall say
Youth garners aught but its own dreams denied,
Or handles what it hoped for yesterday?
High prophets were we of the uncultured lay,
Supremely scorning all that to our pride
Seemed less than truth. Be truth the thing it may,
Our Goddess she, deformed but deified.
Prophets and poets of the Earth's last birth
Revealed in ugliness, a blind despair,
Only that we were young and of such worth
As still can thrive upon life's leanest fare,
And find in the world's turmoil its full quittance
Of joy denied, however poor the pittance.

XXVI

Youth is all valiant. He and I together,
Conscious of strength, and unreproved of wrong,
Strained at the world's conventions as a tether
Too weak to bind us, and burst forth in song.
The backs of fools we scourged as with a thong,
And falsehood stripped to its last borrowed feather,
And vowed to fact what things to fact belong,
And of the rest asked neither why nor whether.
Gravely we triumphed in that Gorgon time,
Unsexed for us at length thro' lack of faith,
Our barren mistress, from whose womb sublime
No beauty more should spring, but only death.
Like birds we sang by some volcanic brink,
Leaning on ugliness, and did not shrink.

XXVII

The poets, every one, have sung of passion.
But which has sung of friendship, man with man?
Love seeks its price, but friendship has a fashion
Larger to give, and of less selfish plan.
The world grows old. From Beersheba to Dan
We find all barren, ruby lips grown ashen,
Hearts hard with years—and only Jonathan
Weeping with David o'er a ruined nation.
Then in the depth of days and our despair,
We count our treasures, if so be remain
Some loving letters, rings and locks of hair.
Nay, mourn not love. These only are not vain,
Your manlier wounds, when in the front you stood,
For a friend's sake and your sworn Brotherhood.

XXVIII

Yet it is pitiful how friendships die,
Spite of our oaths eternal and high vows.
Some fall through blight of tongues wagged secretly,
Some through strifes loud in empty honour's house.
Some vanish with fame got too glorious,
And rapt to heaven in fiery chariots fly;
And some are drowned in sloth and the carouse
Of wedded joys and long love's tyranny.
O ye, who with high-hearted valliance
Deem truth eternal and youth's dreams divine,
Keep ye from love and fame and the mischance
Of other worship than the Muses nine.
So haply shall you tread life's latest strand
With a true brother still, and hand in hand.

XXIX

How strangely now I come, a man of sorrow,
Nor yet such sorrow as youth dreamed of, blind,
But life's last indigence which dares not borrow
One garment more of Hope to cheat life's wind.
The mountains which we loved have grown unkind,
Nay, voiceless rather. Neither sound nor speech
Is heard among them, nor the thought enshrined
Of any deity man's tears may reach.
If I should speak, what echo would there come,
Of laughters lost, and dead unanswered prayers?
The shadow of each valley is a tomb
Filled with the dust of manifold despairs.
“Here we once lived”: This motto on the door
Of silence stands, shut fast for evermore.

XXX

'Tis time I stepped from Horeb to the plain.
Mountains, farewell. I need a heavier air.
Youth's memories are not good for souls in pain,
And each new age has its own meed of care.
Farewell, sad Alps, you are my barrier
Now to the North, and hold my passions slain
For all life's vultures, as I downward fare
To a new land of love which is not vain.
How staid is Italy! No gardened rose
Scattering its leaves is chaster than she is.
No cloister stiller, no retreat more close.
There is a tameness even in her seas
On which white towns look down, as who should say,
“Here wise men long have lived, and live to-day.”

XXXI

Yes, Italy is wise, a cultured prude,
Stored with all maxims of a statelier age;
These are her lessons for our northern blood,
With its dark Saxon madness and Norse rage.
With these she tempers us and renders sage,
As long ago she stayed the barbarous flood
Surging against her, and her heritage
Snatched from the feet of that brute multitude.
Calmly she waits us. What to her shall be
Our fevers of to-day, who erewhile knew
Cæsar's ambitions? What our pruriency,
Who saw Rome sacked by the lewd Vandal crew?
What our despair, who, while a world stood mute,
Saw Henry kneel in tears at Peter's foot?

XXXII

To-day I was at Milan, in such thought
As pilgrims bring who at faith's threshold stand,
Still burdened with the sorrows they have brought,
And vexed with stranger tongues in a strange land.
And lo, this sign was given me. At my hand
Hung that mysterious supper Vinci wrought
With the sad twelve who were Christ's chosen band,
A type of vows and courage come to nought.
And, while I gazed, with a reproachful look
The bread was broken and the wine was poured,
And the disciples raised their hands and spoke,
Each asking “Is it I? and I too? Lord!”
And there was answered them this mournful cry:
“All shall abandon me to-night.” So I.

XXXIII

So I, I am ashamed of my old life,
Here in this saintly presence of days gone,
Ashamed of my weak heart's unmeaning strife,
Its loves, its lusts, its battles lost and won,
And its long search of pleasure 'neath the sun,
And its scant courage to endure the knife,
And its vain longing for good deeds undone,
Ending in bitter words with railing rife.
I am unworthy, yet am comforted,
As one who driving o'er long trackless roads
Of brake and rock and briar with footsore steed
And springless chariot, searching for vain gods,
Finds the high-road before him, where at ease
The old world plods the rut of centuries.

XXXIV

O fool! O false! I have abandoned Heaven,
And sold my wealth for metal of base kind.
O frail disciple of a fair creed given
For human hope when all the world was blind!
What was my profit? Freedom of the mind,
A little pleasure of the years, some scars
Of lusty youth, and some few thoughts enshrined
In worthier record of my manhood's years.
All else is loss, and unredeemed distress;
The voiceful seasons uninvited come,
And bring their tribute of new flowers, and pass:
Only the reason of the world is dumb;
Nor does God any more by word or sign
Speak to our rebel hearts of things divine.

XXXV

At last I kneel in Rome, the bourne, the goal
Of what a multitude of laden hearts!
No pilgrim of them all a wearier soul
Brought ever here, no master of dark arts
A spirit vexed with more discordant parts,
No beggar a scrip barer of all dole;
No son, alas, steps sorer with the darts
Of that rebellious sorrow, his sin's toll.
I kneel and make an offering of my care
And folly, and hurt reason. Who would not
In this fair city be the fool of prayer?
Who would not kneel, if only for the lot
Of being born again—a soul forgiven,
Clothed in new childhood and the light of Heaven?

XXXVI

The majesty of Rome to me is nought;
The imperial story of her conquering car
Touches me only with compassionate thought
For the doomed nations faded by her star.
Her palaces of Cæsars tombstones are
For a whole world of freedoms vainly caught
In her high fortune. Throned was she in war;
By war she perished. So is justice wrought.
A nobler Rome is here, which shall not die.
She rose from the dead ashes of men's lust,
And robed herself anew in chastity,
And half redeemed man's heritage of dust.
This Rome I fain would love, though darkly hid
In mists of passion and desires scarce dead.

XXXVII

I will release my soul of argument.
He that would love must follow with shut eyes.
My reason of the years was discontent,
My treasure for all hope a vain surmise.
I will have done with wisdom's sophistries,
Her insolence of wit. What man shall say
He comfort takes in the short hour that dies,
Because he knew it mortal yesterday?
The tree of knowledge bears a bitter fruit.
This is that other tree, whose branches hold
Fair store of faith, peace, pity absolute,
And deeds of virtue for a world grown cold.
If by its fruits the tree of life be known,
Here is a truth undreamed of Solomon.

XXXVIII

I saw one sitting on a kingly throne,
A man of age, whom Time had touched with white;
White were his brows, and white his vestment shone,
And white the childhood of his lips with light,
Only his eyes gleamed masterful and bright,
Holding the secrets shut of worlds unknown,
And in his hand the sceptre lay of might,
To bind and loose all souls beneath the sun.
Where is the manhood, where the Godhood here?
The weak things of the world confound the wise.
Here is all weakness, let us cast out fear.
Here is all strength. Ah, screen me from those eyes,
The terrible eyes of Him who sees unseen
The thing that is, and shall be, and has been.

XXXIX

Ancient of days! What word is thy command
To one befooled of wit and his own way?
What counsel hast thou, and what chastening hand
For a lost soul grown old in its dismay?
What penance shall he do, what ransom pay,
Of blood poured out for faith in a far land,
What mute knee-service, weeping here to-day,
In words of prayer no ear shall understand?
Let him thy servant be, the least of all
In the Lord's Courts, but near thy mysteries,
To touch the crumbs which from thy table fall,
Let him—. But lo, thou speakest: “Not with these
Is God delighted. Get thee homeward hence.
They need thee more who wait deliverance!”

XL

Here therefore ends my sad soul's pilgrimage,
In tears for sin and half-redeemed desire.
She was unworthy her high martyr's rage,
Or to be wholly purified by fire.
O Rome, thy ways are narrow and aspire
Too straitly for the knees of this halt age,
And, with the multitude, her forces tire,
Even while she holds thee fast, her heritage.
Path of sublime perfection upon Earth!
Your's is it in the clamour of vain days
To guard the calm eternal of Man's birth
And like an eagle to renew his days.
Give me your blessing, angels, ere I go,
Angels that guard the bridge of Angelo.

IN VINCULIS

SONNETS WRITTEN IN AN IRISH PRISON

1888

CONDEMNED

AT THE GATE

HONOUR DISHONOURED

HOW SHALL I BUILD

A CONVENT WITHOUT GOD

THE TWO VOICES

LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY

A LESSON IN HUMILITY

THE COURT OF PENANCE

MITIGATIONS

GOD IS MY WITNESS

THE DEEDS THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

A DREAM OF GOOD

HER NAME LIBERTY

FAREWELL DARK GAOL

I WILL SMILE NO MORE

LATER SONNETS

LOVE IS BEST

Dare all things for Love's sake, since love is best,
Of Fate ask nothing, rather by your deeds
Rebuke it for its niggard ways unblest,
And trust to Love to shield you in your needs.
Remember in the shade of the new years
Only what Love has given. This shall be
Daily your dole, a safeguard from your tears,
Outwitting change and Time's inconstancy.
—Knock loudly at Love's door. He is awake.
Offer him roses. 'Tis his month of June.
Watch all his ways. Do worship for his sake.
Seek out his service. He shall serve you soon.
Know this of Love, who fears not Fate's disaster
Answers for both and is of Time the master.

SHE SHALL NOT GUESS

Even if I died no sound should tell it her.
Death babbles, but the calm of her dear eyes
In vain would ask, no tell-tale breath should stir
The lips still treasuring a thought unwise.
How vain my life has been in its disguise,
Left unregarded, her least pensioner,
Yielding to all, unasking even with sighs
The dole of hope not Heaven could quite confer.
—To-day behold me on this page her name
Over my own inscribing, with no prayer,
Nor daring even to kneel in my distress.
What I have written in this candle's flame
Shrinks ere 'tis finished, and the incensed air
Bears but betrays it not. She shall not guess.

ALL WHITE

All white, all light, all beautiful she stands,
Love in her eyes, a glory round her brows,
Blanched as the lilies chaste in her chaste hands.
Even so God's saints in their celestial house.
Red only are her lips, ay, red as those
Turned by the Queen, that happy day in France,
As yet unkissed, to him who made his vows,
Victor in fight, to her his soul's romance.
Idly she stands in dreams.—Ah, Launcelot,
Couldst thou but plead here haply and prevail,
Touch her soft cheek, draw tears from her sweet eyes,
Open her lips to passionate words unwise,
Receive her true kiss 'neath thy coat of mail:
In Love's name, I who love, should grudge it not.

ALL WHITE CONTINUED

Ah, beautiful sweet woman, made in vain,
Since Launcelot is dead and only I,
Alas for this new world of recreant men,
Remain in age Love's creed to justify
And prove his right to fools who would deny!
Heaven's help shall win her, though she long hath been
Child of a doubting Age. Or let me die
At her dear feet, my Guenevere, my queen.
—Ride therefore forth, my soul, on this last quest.
Oblivion soon shall fold all in its arms.
Love, if she love thee or love not. The loss
Is hers, not thine, since each thing else is dross;
Not thine, whom Heaven makes whole and no hurt harms,
Even that of death, so thou have loved thy best.

GRATITUDE

If gratitude a poor man's virtue is,
'Tis one at least my sick soul can afford.
Bankrupt I am of all youth's charities,
But not of thanks. No. Thanks be to the Lord!
Praise be, dear Lady of all grace, to you.
You were my mediciner, my one sole friend,
When the world spurned me from its retinue.
And I am yours, your bond-slave to the end.
—How shall I tell it you? There was a time
When I was sordid in my unbelief,
And mocked at all things less robust than crime,
A convict in my prison-house of grief.
But that is past. Your pity was the key
Which sent me forth, a broken man, but free.

O FOR A SOUL

O for a soul surrendered of all guile!
A plain white soul with nothing on it writ,
No creed of mockery to make men smile,
No boast of wisdom travestied as wit;
Only a clean soul where the infinite
Calm of the heavens, as on some tropic isle,
Should have looked down and on the face of it,
Inscribed in sunlight, “Nothing here was vile.”
—Thus to my life I argue it to-day,
Thus chide my heart its too long vanity,
Its lawless strength, its insolence of play,
Its ancient rage of storm-tossed chivalry.
And yet, God wot, should Love's wind breathe my way,
My heart would rise still, a tumultuous Sea.

TO ONE IN A GARDEN

If I were other than, alas, I am,
A soul in strife, whom banded foemen vex,
If toil were folly and good deeds a sham,
And hydra wrong had shed its serpent necks,
And life's dark problems could no more perplex,
How sweet it were, forgotten of all blame,
In that far garden which your summer decks
To dream with you that grief was but a name.
—Ay, dream! For waking which of us were wise
To spell grief's epitaph? Some tears must be
Even in the herald hour of your sunrise.
And in the night? Ah, child, what misery,
Think you, awaits us when life's flood-gates strain
To the full deluge of the descending rain?

TO ONE IN A HOSTILE CAMP

How dare I, Juliet, in love's kindness be
Your counsellor for these mad days of war,
I, a sworn Montagu, to liberty
Bound by all oaths which men least lightly swear?
How shall I aid you, who enlisted are
In a strange camp, 'neath a strange captaincy,
Nor urge rebellion to that lurid star
Which mocks the captive nations held in fee?
—Nay, bid me not thus falsify my griefs.
I cannot turn my creed nor change my King.
Around me crumble my life's last beliefs,
But in the wreck of faiths to faith I cling.
Lo, this my message is, till Time shall die,
“Though all abandon these, yet never I.”

A RELAPSE

I thought that I had done with fleshly things,
That in the azure of high thought my soul
Had learned to fly on less substantial wings
To a new Heaven, a sublimer goal.
I thought that I was wise beneath the cowl
Of my dead hopes, beyond all power of Spring's
Most eloquent music to again cajole,
And that my service was the King of Kings.
—But look, alas, how thoughtless thought can be,
For to me thinking thus one ventured in
Bearing a letter and I read your name.
Then in an instant through my limbs a flame
Of pleasure ran, and wrought such change in me
That I was eager for all loveliest sin.

AN AUTUMN SONNET

These little presents of your tenderness,
Although less grand a gift than was your love,
Are dear to me in this October stress
Of wind and war and whirling leaves above.
They comfort my soul's Autumn, and they prove
How little time can do, to ban or bless,
How much ourselves. You willed the years should move
Back in their cycle. And behold, love, this!
—Now, therefore, let us mark this fortunate day,
And use it for our feast day. Every year
Let us, when winds are high and the leaves fall,
Hold in this house our love's memorial,
Sitting thus hand in hand. Still let me lay
As in the happy days, ere leaves were sere,
My head upon your lap and call you “dear.”

FRIENDS

I fell among the thieves awhile ago,
Who beat and stripped me; and, thus used, If led
For comfort to the arms of one I know
Who is to me a sister, being wed
To my heart's kinsman. But “Alas,” she said,
“Your nakedness will bring our house to woe.
Prithee begone.” She blushed and turned her head,
And left me doubting with which foot to go.
Friends in the street beheld me, old and new.
The new friends nodded; but the older stepped
In haste from my reproachful eyes and me.
They feared a creditor for sympathy,
And so they fled. One only of the crew,
A harlot, stopped me, kissed my wounds and wept.

THE PRE-ADAMITE WORLD

Who shall declare the glory of the World,
The natural World before Man's form was seen?
Fair stainless planet through the heavens hurled,
And clothed in garments of immortal green!
What depths of forest girt her! What serene
Pastures were hers for cattle numberless
Owning no lord save her, their guileless queen,
Dear Nature's self who ruled them but to bless!
If there was war in Heaven, peace reigned on Earth.
Not by disease did the world's life grow tame,
But by the hand of God, in drought or dearth
Or sudden palsy when the lion came.
Death! who should fear him or his mercy sue,
Whose last pang was the first each creature knew?

A VISION OF FOLLY

I saw one rushing madly in pursuit
Of Liberty. With frenzied steps he strode.
Old laws and customs with disdainful foot
He spurned beneath him in a mire of blood.
He stood before the wondering world a god,
A king with Freedom for his spouse and queen.
He felt his empire was divine and trod,
As on a footstool, on the necks of men.
Ruin awhile and havoc strewed his path.
He had his day of glory and his fall.
He stood once more upon his father's hearth,
Sated with pride, and there in frenzy worse
Wrought foul dishonour on that honoured hall,
And left its walls forever with a curse.

AMBITION

I had ambition once. Like Solomon
I asked for wisdom, deeming wisdom fair,
And with much pains a little knowledge won
Of Nature's cruelty and Man's despair,
And mostly learned how vain such learnings were.
Then in my grief I turned to happiness,
And woman's love awhile was all my care,
And I achieved some sorrow and some bliss,
Till love rebelled. Then the mad lust of power
Became my dream, to rule my fellow-men;
And I too lorded it my little hour,
And wrought for weal or woe with sword and pen,
And wounded many, some, alas, my friends.
Now I ask silence. My ambition ends.

AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS

Here our roads part. Go thou by thy green valley,
Thy youth before thee and the river Nile.
My path lies o'er the desert, and my galley
Has rougher seas to plough (and days) the while.
I know not what to offer you: a smile,
A blessing, a farewell? I dare not dally
Even with the thought of tears. 'Twas but a mile
We walked together, and such things were folly.
I will not hope, who have no faith in fate,
That I shall you remember or you me
Beyond to-morrow. Yet, perhaps the wind
Blowing some morning through its Eastern gate
May tell you of my fortune; and behind
The Western star some evening I may see,
As in a vision of far days more kind,
Your dear eyes watching while the night grows blind.

A WOMAN'S SONNETS

NIGHT ON OUR LIVES

Night on our lives, ah me, how surely has it fallen!
Be they who can deceived. I dare not look before.
See, sad years, to your own; your little wealth long hoarded,
How sore it was to win, how soon it perished all!
Beauty, the one face loved, the pure eyes mine so worshipped,
So true, so touching once, so tender in their dreams!
Find me that hour again. I yield the rest uncounted,
Urns for the dust of time, divine in her sole tears.
—Unseen one! Unforgotten! Oh, if your eyes behold it
By chance, this page revealed which trembling hides your name,
Merged in the ultimate wreck of fame and meaner joys!
Co-partner be with me in this my soul's last sorrow,
Pearl of my hidden life, this grief, that not again
Unspoiled love's rose shall blow, the dear love which was ours.

HOW GREY THE WORLD WAS

How grey the world was with its memories,
How dark even this gay room where the motes run!
How black these curtains, thick with murder cries,
These chairs, this floor with things slain in the sun!
'Twas here I strangled love, a year ago,
And hid it 'neath these pillows drenched in blood,
As a mad mother her sweet babe of woe,
Too strong to die, too fair, which shrieks aloud.
How black and bare and bitter the world was
Just yesterday! To-day, this room, dear Heaven,
What laughters fill it! what light footsteps pass!
See, the white chairs dance round me pleasure-driven,
And these sad pillows, where I wept, blab out
The news that you are here, in psalm and shout!

MOONSTRUCK

I have quarrelled with the Moon. I loved her once,
As all boys love one face supremely fair.
I had heard her praised, and I too, happy dunce,
Let my tongue wag and made her my heart's prayer.
My prayer! For what, great heaven? The midnight air
Seemed trembling in her presence, and those nuns
The worshipping host knelt round her, star and star,
And sobbed “magnificat” in antiphons.
She was my saint, queen, goddess. Then, one night,
Another face I saw, which, not a god's,
Moved me to dreams more sweet than reverence,
And we were near our bliss, when from the clouds
Her angry eyes looked down and drove us thence
Moonstruck and blind and robbed of our delight.

POUR QUI SAIT ATTENDRE

All things, they say, come home to those that wait,
Riches, power, fame, lost fortune, hope deferred,
Health to our friends, ill hap to those we hate,
Even love, that glorious paradisal bird,
The woman unattained, whose thought has stirred
Desire to its last chord importunate;
All shall be ours (so runs the common word)
If but our patience lag not on our fate.
—O, indigent consoling, even if true!
Crumbs for the hungry, who thus fasting live
And die deceived in impotence of bliss!
And we, the god-like fortune-favoured few,
Full dowered of joy? What ransom shall we give,
In thanks to Heaven, who did not wait to kiss?

YOUTH AND KNOWLEDGE

What price, child, shall I pay for your bright eyes
(How large a debt!) the light they shed on me?
What for your cheeks, so red in their surprise,
Your lips, your hands, your maiden gestures free,
Your fair brows crowned with grave nobility,
All the delight which in your presence lies,
The words unsaid, the deeds which dare not be,
The dreams undreamed, my meed of Paradise?
—Nay, I can pay naught; your poor bankrupt I,
Since gold may not nor frankincense nor myrrh
Serve my account nor any gift of kings.
Yet be my wealth yours, joys that fools deny,
Knowledge of life, love, power as presbyter,
The wit to teach youth's zeal to use its wings.

LE ROI EST MORT. VIVE LE ROI!

Why wait for Arthur? He too long has slept.
He shall not hear you—no, nor heed your moan,
More than the wail of those fair Queens that kept
Their watch for him what months in Avalon!
He shall not wake for any mother's son
Nor mother's daughter of them all in tears,
His knights, his ladies. How then for this one,
You the last blossom of our world's lost years?
—Ah, let him sleep. For see how in the wood,
Under the dead oak, green new saplings spring,
How the thorn blossoms, while birds cry aloud
In scorn of grief. And, Lady, by the rood!
There rides a knight, new-armed and questing proud,
Who shouts, “The king is dead. Long live the King!”

LOVE RIDES DISGUISED

What name is his, thy knight's? Nay, ask it not.
If fate should hear thee, child, what griefs might come.
Love rides disguised. He fears a counterplot
For his own plot of joy in heathendom.
Restrained he goes; a single rose-red plume
Is all his badge. No blazon hath he wrought,
Device nor sign; his motto “sum qui sum.”
Silent is he of Court and Camelot.
—Be wise, sweetheart, nor tempt time to mischance.
Love at his own hour shall his whole face show.
Oh, if thou hast not seen him, thou shalt see!
Undo shalt thou his helm with thy blest hands,
Nurse his tired head upon thy pitying knee.
Then shall he tell all, and thou all shalt know.

A GLORY GONE

What is my thought of you, beloved one,
Now you have passed from me and gone your ways?
Glory is gone with you from stars and sun,
And all wise meaning from the nights and days.
There is no colour, no delight, no praise
In the deep forest, where your dear eyes shone,
Nor any dryad face with cheeks ablaze
To paint the glades grown sere as Avalon.
—What is my thought of you? No thought have I
But just to weep the pity of lost things,
Grieve with the wind, and rain tears with the rain.
The sun may smile, who knows, in a blue sky,
To-morrow? But to-day Hope's passionate wings
Are folded and Love waits on only Pain.

A DIGIT OF THE MOON

This book is written for Man's ultimate need,
A creed of joy sent down to the aged Earth
From days of happier daring and more mirth
To comfort and console all hearts that bleed.
Here shall ye find how Love, that mastering weed
Of tropic growth and paradisal power,
Sprang in a night and found its fortunate hour
And was fulfilled of glory, flower, fruit, seed,
A wonder to the Forest.—O ye souls
Of men and women, who on Time's whim wait
Nor clutch her hem when Pleasure turns to flee!
Read of these two, who ill content with doles
Rose in their rage and gave assault to Fate
And won their birth-fruit. Read. Nay, dare it ye!

NEW THINGS ARE BEST

What shall I tell you, child, in this new Sonnet?
Life's art is to forget, and last year's sowing
Cast in Time's furrow with the storm winds blowing
Bears me a wild crop with strange fancies on it.
Last year I wore your sole rose in my bonnet.
This year—who knows—who, even the All-knowing,
What to my vagrant heart, for its undoing,
Of weeds shall blossom ere my tears atone it?
—New Spring is in the air with new desirings;
New wonders fructify Earth, Sea, and Heaven,
And happy birds sing loud from a new nest.
Ah, why then grieve Love's recreant aspirings,
His last year's hopes, his vows forgot, forgiven?
Child, be we comforted! New things are best.

UNE FEUILLE MORTE

Je rêve debout devant la porte
Qui vient de se fermer sur moi.
Je colle mes yeux en triste sorte
Sur ce carré de sombre bois.
Je tourne entre mes deux doigts
Une fleur, une petite fleur; qu'importe?
Elle était bien bleue autrefois.
Ce n'est plus qu'une feuille morte.
Pauvre fleur, la douleur t'enlaidit
Les pétales mornes et pendues.
Tu sens mauvais, tu noircis.
Hélas fidèle, que fais-tu?
Mourir! C'est vite prendre ton parti!
Et moi donc, qui ai tant perdu?

THREE PICTURES

I have seen many things in many lands,
And many sorrows known and many joys,
And clutched at pleasure's cup with lawless hands,
And drunk my fill of mirth and lust and noise,
Nor spared to make of human hearts my toys,
But fed with life the brute strength of my pride,
As with a tribute of fair living boys
The monstrous lord of Crete him satisfied.
—But of all pictures laid up in my soul
Are three most beautiful and passionate,
The illumined margin of an ancient scroll,
Which moraliseth pity, love and hate;
And these, when she is sad, she doth unroll
And on their common meaning meditate.

THREE PICTURES CONTINUED

The first, a woman, nobly limbed and fair,
Standeth at sunset by a famed far sea.
Red are her lips as Love's own kisses were,
Yet speak they never though they smile on me.
An old knight, next, and arméd cap-à-pie,
Watcheth the slaughtered clay that was his heir.
The winding-sheet is not more white than he,
Hath sat since dawn and hath not shed a tear.
The third a tortured bull about to die
In the arena. No proud infidel
E'er laid his dripping spears more scornfully
In Spanish dust; for he too, ere he fell,
Hath slain a man. Ah Christ! That murderous eye
Burneth athirst like the red pit of Hell.

FRIENDSHIP'S BLACK AND WHITE

Romance is writ for me with many names
Of fair loved faces, each page a design
Blazoned and tinctured, this with saffron flames
Enshrining fancy, that with opaline
Rays of mad hopes, half sunlight, half moonshine,
This last with the sole gold of passionate blames
Enjoyed and harvested and made divine
By Love's long memory far outlasting Fame's.
—Leave it untouched, the rose-sweet manuscript.
Youth lies asleep in it, its spellbound knight.
Turn not the leaves lest he should wake dismayed.
This page alone stands open, unequipped
Of any hue save friendship's black and white,
Named with one name that needs not be afraid.

IN MEMORIAM W.M. & E.B.J.

Mad are we all, maids, men, young fools alike and old,
All we that wander blind and want the with to dare.
Dark through the world we go, dazed sheep, across life's wold,
Edged from the flowers we loved by our herd's crook of care.
Life? Have we lived it? No. We were not as these were,
Intent, untiring souls who proved time till their death.
Nay we were sluggards, all, how crazed in our despair
Each day of their fame won here nobly witnesseth.
—What is life's wealth? To do. Its loss? To dream and wait.
Years vanish unfulfilled; but work achieved lives on.
Not all Time's beauty died when these two fell asleep.
Dear Madeline, if we grieve our own less strenuous fate,
Heaven send us still this strength, this joy, now they are gone
At least like these to love, even though mad fools we weep.

TO A DISCIPLE OF WILLIAM MORRIS

Stand fast by the ideal. Hero be,
You in your youth, as he from youth to age.
Dare to be last, least, in good modesty,
Nor fret thy soul for speedier heritage.
Even as he lived, live thou, laborious, sage,
Yielding thy flower, leaf, fruitage seasonably,
Content if but some beauty in Time's page
Out of thy being spring and live through thee.
Churl Fame shall grudge (ah, let it grudge!) thee glory.
Knaves have earned that. Behold, the blossoming thorn
Emblazoneth the hedge where fools made foray,
Redeemeth their sad flouts and jibes forlorn.
Ere thou shalt guess, the nightingale thy story
Learning shall speak of thee and shame their scorn.

TO A DEAD JOURNALIST

The busy trade of life is over now,
The intricate toil which was so hard for bread,
The strife each day renewed 'neath this poor brow
By this frail hand to be interpreted,
The zeal, the forethought, the heart's wounds that bled,
The anger roused, the stark blow answering blow,
All that was centred in that aching head
Of black necessity for weal or woe.
—Its use, its purpose what? Nay, less than none,
More blindly naught than even the dull clay
Left on this bed, its corporal union done,
Which we must shovel to its grave to-day.
O soul of Man, thou pilgrim of distress
Lost in Time's void! Thou wind of nothingness!

THE ROWFANT CATALOGUE

Friends had he many, neighbours next to none.
Rowfant and Crabbet lay few fields apart.
Each Sunday saw him here, his church drill done,
Duly stroll in to talk of books and art,
Entrapped, may-be, to share my modest tart,
Roast fowl and claret, and an evening won
In stealth from Sabbath bonds strange to his heart.
Childlike he prized these truant bursts of fun.
—Long years ago! It needs his wit to jog
Old time to life. Yet I remember well
Companioning him home to the hill's top
Keen on his books, and how he paused to tell
Eager the first news of this Catalogue.
Reading it, see, the tears come and I stop.

ON A GRAVE IN THE FOREST

Hush, gentle stranger. Here lies one asleep
In the tall grass whom we must not awaken.
For see, the wildest winds hush here and keep
Silence for her and not a leaf is shaken,
Lest she should wake and find herself forsaken.
Close to my feet aweary did she creep
And slept, and she is sweetly still mistaken
Deeming I stand by her and watch her sleep.
—Hush, gentle stranger! One as gentle lies
In this poor grave, and weep before you go
For one who knew no weeping, yet abode
Among our human sorrows and was wise
With tenderer sympathy than tears can show,
The gentlest kindliest creature made by God.

ALFRED TENNYSON

Tears, idle tears! Ah, who shall bid us weep,
Now that thy lyre, O prophet, is unstrung?
What voice shall rouse the dull world from its sleep
And lead its requiem as when Grief was young,
And thou in thy rapt youth, Time's bards among,
Captured our ears, and we looked up and heard
Spring's sweetest music on thy mourning tongue
And knew thee for Pain's paradisal bird.
We are alone without thee in our tears,
Alone in our mute chauntings. Vows are vain
To tell thee how we loved thee in those years
Nor dream to look upon thy like again.
We know not how to weep without thy aid,
Since all that tears would tell thyself hast said.

IRELAND'S VENGEANCE

This is thy day, thy day of all the years.
Ireland! The night of anger and mute gloom,
Where thou didst sit, has vanished with thy tears.
Thou shalt no longer weep in thy lone home
The dead they slew for thee, or nurse thy doom,
Or fan the smoking flax of thy desire
Their hatred could not quench. Thy hour is come;
And these, if they would reap, must reap in fire.
—What shall thy vengeance be? In that long night
Thou hast essayed thy wrath in many ways,
Slaughter and havoc and Hell's deathless spite.
They taught thee vengeance who thus schooled thy days,Taught all they knew, but not this one divine
Vengeance, to love them. Be that vengeance thine!

A PERFECT SONNET

Oh, for a perfect sonnet of all time!
Wild music, heralding immortal hopes,
Strikes the bold prelude. To it from each clime,
Like tropic birds on some green island slopes,
Thoughts answering come, high metaphors, brave tropes,
In ordered measure and majestic rhyme.
And, presently, all hearts, kings', poets', popes',
Throb to the truth of this new theme sublime.
Anon 'tis reason speaks. A note of death
Strengthens the symphony yet fraught with pain,
And men seek meanings with abated breath,
Vexing their souls,—till lo, once more, the strain
Breaks through triumphant, and Love's master voice
Thrills the last phrase and bids all joy rejoice.

HE MAKES AN END

What shall I tell you, dear, who have told all,
What do, whose wish, whose will is manacled,
What dare, whose duty at your festival
Is but to light the candles round Love's bed?
How can I sing to you uncomforted
By any crumb of kindness Joy lets fall?
Unsexed am I by service, heart and head.
Nay, let me sleep and turn me to the wall.
—Alas there is a day when all joy dies,
Through stress of time and tears' thin nourishment
And that dumb peace of Age which veils the end.
Here am I come, and here I close my eyes,
With what I may of dreams (they naught portend),
Framing your face, the last before Love went.

LATER LYRICS

GHOST OF THE BEAUTIFUL PAST

LOVE IS MASTER STILL

A CHAUNT IN PRAISE

COUPLETS IN PRAISE

SONG: LOVE IN THE SUMMER HILLS

WHOM THE GODS LOVE

WITH ETERNITY STANDING BY

MY ONLY TITLE

SEA LAVENDER

DON JUAN'S GOOD-NIGHT

(From the French)

A STORM IN SUMMER

Nature that day a woman was in weakness,
A woman in her impotent high wrath.
At the dawn we watched it, a low cloud half seen
Under the sun; an innocent child's face
It seemed to us rose-red and fringed with light
Boding no hurt, a pure translucent cloud,
Deep in the East where the Sun's disk began.
We did not guess what strengths in it were pent,
What terrors of rebellion. An hour more,
And it had gathered volume and the form
Of a dark mask, the she-wolf's of old Rome,
The ears, the brow, the cold unpitying eyes,
Through which gleams flashed. And, as we watched, the roll
Of thunder from a red throat muttering
Gave menace of the wild beast close at hand.
Anon a wall of darkness in the South
Black to the Zenith, and a far-off wail,
The wind among the trees.—And then, behold,
Flying before it a mad clamorous rout
Of peewits, starlings, hawks, crows, dishwashers,
Blackbirds and jays, by hundreds, scattering,
While the Earth trembled holding as it were its breath;
Till suddenly an answer from the ground,
And the fields shook and a new mighty roar
Crashed through the oaks, and in a pent-up flow
The storm's rage broke in thunder overhead,
And all the anger of the passionate heaven
Burst into tears.

JEWELLED OFFERING

A WEDDING MARCH

A CUCKOO SONG

Crowns are for kings to wear, sad crowns of gold
Over tired heads that ache, world-cares untold.
Not on thy happy brows, sweet bird of summer,
Set we such crowns to-day, thou Spring's new-comer.
Take from us, rather, thou these our wild posies.
April's and May's we bring, June's with its roses.
Nay and love's Cuckoo flowers, O child of glory!
Cuckoos thine own birds are; these be thy dowry.
Eve of our heart's shut field, need is we grieve thee,
Gone to a world more sweet where we must leave thee.
Russet-clad nightingales, tired of our chaunting,
Out in the dark we weep, our Queen-bird wanting.
Such is the fate of birds. Soon as the Spring comes
Vagrant they flit and fly. Lo! 'tis their King comes.
Endeth our night plaint only when, through the wild wood,
New born the day trips in, laughs as a child would.
O, then we too will laugh, join in the gay chime,
Run to thy marriage bells, birds of the day-time.

MANY ARE CALLED

JACINTHS AND JESSAMINES

Jacinths and jessamines and jonquils sweet,
All odorous pale flowers from Orient lands,
No vain red roses strew I at thy feet,
Emblems of grief and thee, with reverent hands.
Mine is no madrigal of passionate joy,
Or orison of aught less chaste than tears.
Ruth on thy brow sits fairest. Its annoy
Rends not thy beauty's raiment, nor the years.
In thy shut lips what secrets! Who am I
Should seek a sign at that dread sanctuary?

AN INSCRIPTION

At this fair oak table sat
Whilom he our Laureate,
Poet, handicraftsman, sage,
Light of our Victorian age,
William Morris, whose art's plan
Laid its lines in ample span,
Wrought it, trestle board and rib,
With good help of Philip Webb,
For an altar of carouse
In his own home, the Red House.
Thirty years and five here he
Made good cheer and company,
Feasting all with more than bread.
Had men stored the things he said,
Jests profound and foolings wise,
Truths unliveried of lies,
Basenesses chastised and set
Like hounds slain beneath his feet,
Knowledge prodigally poured,
His best wine, at this free board;
Nay, if but the crumbs he shed
Nightly round of heart and head
Gleaned had we, not this good hall
Half the wonders might install,
Wit's wealth lost, which now must sleep
Dumb when we have ceased to weep.

ASSASSINS

Assassins find accomplices. Man's merit
Has found him three, the hawk, the hound, the ferret.

SONG: IF I FORGET THEE

TO NIMUE

PARAPHRASES FROM THE FRENCH

QUEEN MARY'S LETTER TO BOTHWELL

THE DESERT WIND

DEATH IN A BALL-ROOM

THE TOAD

QUATRAINS OF LIFE