The collected poems of Arthur Edward Waite :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sciendum est igitur, dona omnia, in quibus vita nostra consistit, sacramontis et extcrnis quibusdam sensibilibus signis tecta ac involuta esse.—Speculum Domini Joannis; Rusbrochii Divinissimi Contemplatoris, Caput ix.

THE WORK OF OUR HANDS

Haunted by memories of his first abode,
Man, in the shadows of this earthly road,
Still vindicates the past his legends claim:
Home is for him the semblance of a name,
Although with steadfastness and frighten'd haste—
By need impell'd—he builds him in the waste
Rude inns and falling houses of his hands—
To overlook the melancholy lands
And all his shrouded, sad environment.

When first, from Life Divine, to exile sent,
About his soul inhibited he wrought
A body fitted to the halting thought
Of those who slowly yield to fever'd sleep,
Praying, if long, it may be also deep,
Yet counting scarcely on a true repose,
Since strife in place of peace such slumber knows.
And then, because that frame was frail and cold,
He built him other tenements to hold
His nakedness, lamenting in the gloom—
Tent, temple, palace—ere, in fine, the tomb.
But though the body, warm'd by hearth and bed,
Came through some makeshifts to be comforted,
His haunted soul, mourning the exile's fate.
Still cried aloud that it was desolate.

Moreover, houses of the heart he made—
The House of Love—but Death therein was laid;
The House of Faith—and there a foeman set
Those strange, sad cups which cause us to forget.
Devices also on the walls he wrote
Which uninscribed all nothingness denote
And writ are nothing. Then the House of Pride
High did he raise, and therein magnified
The hopes and works beguiling his distress—
Yet this was cold through utter emptiness.
So passing thence to where some false lights shone,
He raised up Houses of Ambition;
But through the portals and the windows pour'd
The vacant faces of a spectral horde.
And the soul built with shame the House of Lust,
Where hands emblazon:—“Here is also dust;”
And though strange voices—crying: “Come away!”—
Sound in the darkness, to this latest day
The transient buildings round about us rise.
One bond connects them in fantastic wise—
Houses of Sleep they are, to anxious dreams
Devoted—semblances of things and themes,
Dim images derived from otherwhere.
Yea, this is also true: the House of Prayer
Is part and parcel of that mystic trance
Through which our Momus pageantries advance,
And no one wakes of all whom sense enrings.

Only the evidence of secret things
Bears witness in us of a kindling hour;
Through all strange seizures still it speaks with power,
And those most conscious of their sleeping state
Are haply drawing to the waking gate.
Peace on the Houses of their trance! Unfold,
Great Dawn, on tarnish'd eyes, thy wells of gold!
And past all melancholy, clouded lands
Bring tidings of the House not built with hands.

ALTERNATION

I

Thou dost hear the ocean's tale
In the moonlight, very pale,
Since thy chamber opens wide
One great casement towards the tide.
But another window looks
Over marshes and their brooks;
And thy garden paths, between
Brooks and window, intervene:
When the evening breezes blow,
Hear me in these paths below!

II

Lest the great, insistent sea—
Day and night adjuring thee—
By the secret word it sings,
Take too far from human things;
For a little space apart,
Hear the singing in my heart!
And if things beyond thee make
So much music for thy sake,
Hearken, from thy seat above,
The unmeasured deep of love!

THE SECOND SENSE

Renew'd for ever are the lives of books
For every eye that in their pages looks;
And many are the meanings which they bear:
Like limpid depths of lakes and water-brooks,
Does each who reads discern his image there.

Nature and great books have their second sense,
In still cool wells, and some can charm it thence;
The purports deep by which the soul is stirr'd
Lurk seldom in the manifested word,
As many intimations darkly shew,
Suggesting higher search to those who know.
Far in ourselves the secret meaning lies,
And till we read therein with our own eyes
We miss those heights we dream of and grow lean
Through famish'd longing after things unseen—
Divined, not held.

We give that meaning shapes
Symbolic—in such signs the force escapes.
We take the letter of life's Word; our wit,
In strange metathesis, we wear on it
And so all trace of any point expel.
We say, the Word is lost: but who shall tell?
And who has found? A few fond souls proclaim
Their mission to make known its scope and aim:
O vain assurance of the heart! As if
Earth's wisest speak, except in hieroglyph,
Or offer more than images! The deep
Gives these up; from still tarns of silence leap
Visions and voices, but the things discern'd
Are neither new nor those for which we yearn'd.
One testifies: “The dead in Him abide,
And His forgiveness sets all wrath aside.”

One whispers: “Sweet sleep!” One, with bended head,
Says: “Tears of joy!” One: “Here is Living Bread!”
And an absolving voice, with strength untold
Of pity and sweetness, breathes: “Be then consoled!”
But underneath them all still flows the sea
Of the soul's unexpress'd immensity.

So leave it therefore, friends—with one last word
I also leave it thus: the sense unheard
Which lies for ever those bright veils behind
Of all the books of Nature and of Mind,
Eluding all approximating art,
Shall yield to—God known truly of the heart.
O did I start in mountain or abyss,
I could not choose but end at last in this!
From wayside taverns turning should behold
That this one key unlocks all towers of gold;
Or rising fever'd out of beds of sin
Most truly feel it and to speak begin;
Nor more in cloisters praying could recall
That this is end of end and all in all.
If things so many underneath the sun
Thus lead me ever to the arms of One,
Ye who do likewise deeply crave, forgive—
Turn to this last again and, turning, live.

So much, without distortion or offence,
A man may venture towards the second sense.
All pools heaven rains in and all seas untrod
Go on reflecting heaven—beyond is God;
And 'twixt the gentleness of Nature's spell
And the unsleeping heights, His people dwell.

Great is the ministry of books, and great
Their consolation in our mean estate;
But bearts, whose aches prolong with every beat,
Find them, like Nature's breathings, incomplete.

CUPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

Great were the taverns where we used to dwell,
Fired by strong cups which we could drain of yore;
The stories great which once we used to tell
And maxims, now repeated never more;
Could any scribe have follow'd us—how great
Were truths we found in cups at early hours and late.

First there was chaos, out of brooding bred—
Silent, inseparate, dispirited—
And yet with shapeless semblances impress'd—
Like one who drinks alone beside the dead,
Breast over breast!—

He, dipping deeply in a vintage rare,
Sees it is his own body lying there,
And, in confusion, calls on ghosts without
As boon companions in his watch to share—
A sorry rout.

So chaos moved, distracted in the night,
Conceiving horror of its depth and height,
Saw self in self reflect with deadly fear;
Till that which cried above, Let there be Light,
Made light appear.

Then all great forces strove its rays to reach—
As travellers at an inn the cups of each—
And Tohu held with Bohu orgie high;
From which creation, full of silver speech,
Sprang by and bye.

Then did the morning stars together sing,
As feasting princes who their glasses ring;
The Dionysian chorus swell'd above;
Joy's shout was lifted upon transport's wing,
As love lifts love.

And still creation holds that joy divine,
As the uplifted cup holds blood-red wine;
And still the Cosmos, in its Mœnad dance,
From age to age, with eyes that brighter shine,
Spins into trance.

We too are copies of the cosmic plan,
From earth's quintessence shaped to make us man,
And that which Nature sketches in first place
We raise through purlieus—out of bar and ban—
Towards gifts of grace.

Like chaos once, we dwelt, old friend, alone,
And drank with cold hearts, foreign to our own,
Or, in our solitude, perchance with none;
So to true life were dead as any stone
Or corpse 'neath sun.

But now through purple hours of Bacchic night
We pass our cups, and in the depth and height
Do each in each reflect with love, not fear;
And—when the heart within us cries for light—
Great lights appear.

We, like the morning stars, together sing,
What time in unison our glasses ring,
With cosmic minds matured in vintage fine,
Exalting ever upon rapture's wing
Æonian wine.

And as creation, on some purpose bent,
Moves grandly forward, fill'd with high content,
We, slowly down the road of years withdrawn,
Note from each tavern where the night is spent
Each breaking dawn.

O world, created in a vintage song,
We know thy goal is good, though ways be long!
Strange cups pass too among the stars encrown'd—
The ecstasy is great, the wine is strong:
What graals are found!

THE SCARLET SWAN

Here is high teaching from the far blue lift,
For Madeline, sweet maid of Mary's gift,
By certain stars transmitted—on a beam
Of argent splendour—through a lilac haze;
A legend of the land which is not dream
Or waking, as of eyes in earthly ways,
Under the crimson splendours of the morn,
But something greater which from both is born
And far o'er life abides, in joyful stress,
Full of high state and thoughtful solemnness.

Now, list! That Madeline of white and red
Rose-blooms was wrought, who doubts?—The wise have said—
And the gold hair, assuredly, of her
Shone once upon the King-Sun's royal head,
As all the speaking parables aver,
Whence sunshine loves so well to brood thereon;
But all of scarlet was the Flying Swan

Which, on the day that Madeline was made,
God in such glory of bright plumes array'd,
And so commission'd over starry tides,
Saying:—Dear heart, have courage, a rest abides!

Now thus it is that through the breathless deeps
Of heaven's great space upon his flight he keeps:
Star after star upon the Scarlet Swan,
Pours floods of light, and ever and anon,
Athwart his path, the comets with a crash
Hurtle, the falling meteors seethe and flash;
Dark worlds, bereft of all the fire within,
Blind in the void about him feebly spin;
And where in luminous mists the starry eyes
Shew myriad points of light, swift-wing'd, he flies.

Must he not weary? For deep rest indeed
Longs he not, dreaming of the waters cool,
The clear brown stillness of some shaded pool,
A nest engirded by a world of reed?
I know at least, with keen eyes fix'd before,
And fill'd with frighten'd longing, evermore
He labours night and day to reach his end;
On Madeline, of Mary's gift, alone,
As legends tell, for help his wings depend,
Lest he faint somewhere on his paths unknown.

The Scarlet Swan to Mary's gift is bound;
With her it rests that he shall reach his end:
When she on earth is full of goodness found,
Strength and high purpose to his heart ascend.
When Mary's gift aspires to Mary's throne,
And with the will of heaven unites her own,
Asleep on dreaming wings he softly glides
And towards his end is drawn by silent tides;
But when from maiden grace and fair estate
She stoops awhile, sad is the wanderer's fate;

His flagging wings athwart the stir and stress
Of hostile currents wildly forward press;
Against dark worlds he strikes, and stars that fall
With desolating shrieks his heart appal—
Alone, St. Mary's gift; what weariness!

Now, therefore, Madeline shall, inly stirr'd
By this most faithful legend's secret word,
Reflect for ever in her heart thereon,
That so all grace and strength the Scarlet Swan
May visit in his flight, and sleep be his,
With winds that favour, till he reach where is—
O joy!—the refuge of a restful town.
Then, Swan no more, Bright Spirit under crown,
After such struggles, shall God applaud the pains,
Saying:—Dear heart, be welcome; peace remains!

Stars, and a thousand stars, and lilac lift—
God save the Scarlet Swan, save Mary's gift!

THEY THAT WORK IN SILENCE

A space of sleep vouchasafe the Lords of love;
To wake at length they grant who reign above;
Meanwhile, but substitutes for rest their schemes
Dispense, till pity those great hearts shall move
To free us from our dreams.

They that have rock'd us into swoon so well
Alone can break the bars and bonds of spell;
But surely comes the wakening at last,
When each to each of his strange toils shall tell
As of old dangers past.

And towards the place of exile, far away,
We shall look back in our relief and say:
Hard was the bed whereon we writhed in sleep;
But now the vigils of true life repay
With rest divinely deep.

THE HEIGHTS REMAIN

We saw thee drop this day in circles down,
Dear lark, to win thy nest! The stream is brown,
With silver streak'd; upon the left it glows,
Broad in the summer floods. A South-wind blows,
The road is white in front, and blue thou art,
O summer sky! Thy beauty takes the heart.
What gleams high up on yonder distant hill,
This moment brought in view? The white road still!
Great soul, to stand upon that soaring peak
And feel the wind of heaven on either cheek!
But at the base three several tracks divide,
And that which we must take turns there aside;
Wide uplands slope upon the left and right,
The trees grow denser towards the airy height,
Freshens the wind advancing. We shall pass
A furlong's space over the light lawn-grass;
The quickset hedge will part, the path will take
Our steps a little into bower and brake,
Then into forest shade and mystery.
So, if we lose the heights, we yet shall see
What revelations may, in glades conceal'd
And sudden clearings, be to eye reveal'd;
What shapes of beauty down green vistas wait
And who sings sweetly at the farmyard gate;
Or, when those distant bells' sweet jangles cease,
Feel what it is which gives the woodland peace,

And why the spring, which keeps so still through noon,
Begins towards eve to chatter for the moon;
Till, after winding for a mile or less,
The path comes gaily from the wilderness
And gives us back once more to wind and sky.
There, over pleasant meadows, soaring high,
The peak again invites the climber's feet.
So we who have explored the green retreat,
And something of its lesser secrets learn'd,
Lose nothing, from our course a moment turn'd,
Since the exulting heights still rest to climb—
To-day, to-morrow, or in after time.

OF TRUE AND FALSE MARRIAGES

Earth has its nuptials, and the flesh shall know
What flesh can learn of unions here below;
But the soul, coming from some far-off place,
Beholds not now the Royal Bridegroom's face,
And therefore goeth sadly here along.
Give up, O void of voids, the marriage-song!
Above earth's jarring measures and their noise,
Call us in peace unto the nuptial joys.

“Whom God hath join'd”—aye, that leaves room for wonder,
Granting—who doubts?—that none can put asunder:
But seeing that two lovers in one bed
—So Love itself will teach—
Seem parted each from each,
As star from star is parted overhead,
This question still recurs:
Whom hath God join'd?

Think you, his flesh to hers
Whom stratagem from other arms purloin'd,
And she not surely first, nor he the last—
While simple passion is so quickly past
Or courts remain to utter their decrees?
But think you any marriage of the flesh?
True, they shall part not when their earth is dead
Who, few and rarely, in their souls are wed.
Past doubt, eternity, assuming these,
Transfigures the old bonds or welds afresh;
But their true souls how few on earth have found,
Much less with others have their own been bound,
And skin-deep wedlock—with the joys it brings—
Scarce counts among indissoluble things.

Alas, the souls which once God join'd, through some
Deep-seated mischief, to divorce have come;
And it is only when desires within
From height exceeding height some lustre win;
From space-immensities of winter's clime—
Cold, inaccessible and clear—
Or great distractions fallen on the sea,
Bring subtly-quickening intimations near,
That pasts withdrawn in worlds of memory—
Beyond all deeps of time—
Send faint reports—though bands of sense enfold—
Of great free unions which obtain'd of old.

Naked we are, divorced from our true ends,
And conscious only of what pain attends
The isolation on our course imposed,
The bar on prospects from all points disclosed;
Yea, on the nuptial night man lies alone
And lonely sleeps the wife he calls his own:
Veil'd limbs and shrouded lips—
Of such are our most close companionships,

Sad travesty of joys that once we knew.
Pass as we can this mournful exile through,
But ask not constancy and faith too much;
Of loving kindness seek the healing touch,
And let us deal with those who share our lot
As if all mercy were, all judgment not;
Keep, if we may, through this life's stormy weather,
But say not rashly God hath join'd together.
What did God join? Man to the star he seeks,
Sea to the soul to which the sea-deep speaks?
But here are also types: O symbols fair,
Reflecting faintly light from otherwhere!
Off with these bonds! Over the great abyss
The far-off hope proclaims what union is,
And all that cannot rest in man's vast deep
Till it returns to God and there finds sleep
Has since creation in our inmost cried:
What God hath join'd who was it dared divide?

GREAT SILENCES

Ah, sighing grass! Ah, trees that know not rest!
All life of earth, pressing to ends afar,
Heart's flight of man and hurry of every star—
What go ye forth to find? Where ends your quest?

VIATICUM

He who hath made it will mend it,
He who began it must end it—
Leave it to Him.
Weary and poor thou art,
Weak of purpose and frail in heart—
Thy hopes are vague and dim.
Stretch forth a hand and try
If thou canst touch the sky;
Lift up thine eyes and see
How far 'tis over thee—
Over all reach!
Quit then—the hour is late—
Leave unto Him, to fate;
Great may take care of great,
Each star of each!

Those books, my friend, you purchased yester eve,
Though treating faithfully a certain art,
Contain not that you fondly now believe:
(Brother, a little while—and we depart!)

This habitation by the mere and stream,
For wood-shade peace, self-promised long ago,
Will not afford the rest of which you dream:
(Come, lock up house, my friend, and leave it so!)

The wealth which took you hand in hand with sin—
When you stand knocking at a certain gate,
Will forge no golden key to let you in:
(Make haste, one further step, the hour is late!)

Now, well-away! What treasures some things were—
Ah, woe is mine!—which soon are utter dross:
(Toll slowly!—Stifle the unseemly stir—
A horror falls upon the house of loss!)

Be still, pale prophets of disaster, yet
In pace, in idipsum, dormiet!

HEMLOCK

You know that, in the last resource of all,
It matters scarcely how the light may fall,
Or what stars in the night their beacons lift.
So little also brings the morning's gift
That whether late or early Nature stir,
We mark but idly how it fares with her
When in the East the scarlet glories spill,
Or how at noon her children take their fill
Of all the good which warmth in brightness brings.
Who counts these other than as trivial things,
Having so much, unmurmuring, left behind
Of all the morning splendours of the mind
And all life's midway majesty and pride?
One great detachment puts the soul aside
From the fair outward fields which Nature owns,
Since some time sadly seeking certain thrones,
Remember'd ever through a world of wrong,
The soul went forth. She, having journey'd long
Amidst the sorrows of secluded tracts,
Among cold snows and frozen cataracts,
Above the common zones of human thought,
One burden of sad knowledge thence has brought:—
That in such altitudes all stars look thin.
So, 'twixt the throne you surely thought to win

And that last dizzy peak of precipice
Where you have dared to stand, the great abyss
Its void unfathom'd offers silently.

Now, hence it is that though the eye may see,
With sight herein it is not satisfied,
Nor is the ear by hearing occupied,
And nothing ministers of all things round.
For as the man who looking to be crown'd
Amidst high pageantry at eve, if left
Outside the palace, of all state bereft,
Would little comfort find that Western skies
Shew over wide meads phantom pageantries,
And though the stars might shine in all their state
Would still keep knocking at the Palace Gate;
So, dedicated unto larger things
Than all solicitudes of earthly kings,
And having strongly striven to ascend
Where great gods are, but having miss'd our end,
By reason of the gulfs which intervene:
What wonder now that all this earthly scene
Spectral and pallid to the soul appear?

And this is desolation; hemlock here
We drink henceforth through all the aching void,
Taking the cross of our fair hope destroy'd,
No longer with the scheme of things in touch.
But—lest our mingled cup should over-much
Embitter us, and those whom thought intense
Has worn, seem ravaged by the work of sense,
Like any worldling underneath the sun—
We still remember that which once was done,
When, some time sadly seeking certain thrones,
Beyond the outward fields which Nature owns,
On that last dizzy peak of precipice
We were held only by the great abyss;

And when we most may turn from mortal things
It is in longing for unearthly wings,
Or—at the utmost solitary ridge—
Still in the end to find a secret bridge.

AT THE END OF THINGS

The world uprose as a man to find Him—
Ten thousand methods, ten thousand ends—
Some bent on treasure; the more on pleasure;
And some on the chaplet which fame attends
But the great deep's voice in the distance dim
Said: Peace, it is well; they are seeking Him.

When I heard that all the world was questing,
I look'd for a palmer's staff and found,
By a reed-fringed pond, a fork'd hazel-wand
On a twisted tree, in a bann'd waste-ground;
But I knew not then what the sounding strings
Of the sea-harps say at the end of things.

They told me, world, you were keen on seeking;
I cast around for a scrip to hold
Such meagre needs as the roots of weeds—
All weeds, but one with a root of gold;
Yet I knew not then how the clangs ascend
When the sea-horns peal and the searchings end.

An old worn wallet was that they gave me,
With twelve old signs on its seven old skins;
And a star I stole for the good of my soul,
Lest the darkness came down on my sins;
For I knew not who in their life had heard
Of the sea-pipes shrilling a secret word.

I join'd the quest that the world was making,
Which follow'd the false ways far and wide,
While a thousand cheats in the lanes and streets
Offer'd that wavering crowd to guide;
But what did they know of the sea-reed's speech
When the peace-words breathe at the end for each?

The fools fell down in the swamps and marshes;
The fools died hard on the crags and hills;
The lies which cheated, so long repeated,
Deceived, in spite of their evil wills,
Some knaves themselves at the end of all—
Though how should they hearken when sea-flutes call?

But me the scrip and the staff had strengthen'd;
I carried the star; that star led me:
The paths I've taken, of most forsaken,
Do surely lead to an open sea:
As a clamour of voices heard in sleep,
Come shouts through the dark on the shrouded deep.

Now it is noon; in the hush prevailing
Pipes, harps and horns into flute-notes fall;
The sea, conceding my star's true leading,
In tongues sublime at the end of all
Gives resonant utterance far and near:—
“Cast away fear;
Be of good cheer;
He is here,
Is here!”

And now I know that I sought Him only
Even as child, when for flowers I sought;
In the sins of youth, as in search for truth,
To find Him, hold Him alone I wrought.
The knaves too seek Him, and fools beguiled—
So speak to them also, sea-voices mild!

Which then was wisdom and which was folly?
Did my star more than the cozening guide?
The fool, as I think, at the chasm's brink,
Prone by the swamp or the marsh's side,
Did, even as I, in the end rejoice,
Since the voice of death must be His true voice.

A BRIDGE FROM EARTH

Away with time-worn thought! Who gives free space
For inward silence, in some form of tongue
Not wholly secret, not at least unknown,
May hear God speak, and shall that speech to men,
His brothers, by the haste of eager days
Distracted, in due season, if in part,
Interpret. A fair world before me now
Spreads, past indeed most bounds of daily walk,
But yet not more than commonly removed,
And, strong and sweet, God's voice moves over it
In winds which freshen; in the burnish'd sky—
The high, clear sky swept bright by Autumn winds—
His eyes are shining. What if in the South
Some dark clouds roll, and, gather'd in the West
Below great banks, of black, foreboding mien,
Far droop long tendrils down of angry light?
These hold some other mystery of God
Behind them; and a pearl is in the mist
On certain fields before me. At my feet,
O'er all this down, the heath's dark green and rich
Begins to burst with blossom. Now it breaks—
Yes, breaks the sunshine forth; all heaven looks out,
Earth strips all shades to greet me. Like a voice,
The beauty round me calls on every side:
“Awake! Arise!” And broad on farther slopes

The road ascends, while all the loose brown earth
Of fields plough'd newly glows with amber hues.
Fair sleeps the vale between us—pastures rich,
Dark gold of woods. Speech in the winds indeed—
Eyes in the light; but in the still life too
An eloquence of silence, in the holds
Of solemn shadow such a frequent hint
Of high intelligence, on secret things
So wisely brooding; by our doors, our hearts,
On every side the earth puts forth a bridge,
Or lifts a ladder, or a path makes smooth
From less to more, till earth of all the worlds
Is nighest thing to heaven and star to man.

Hereof is looking from the world within,
When something learn'd in silence fills the heart
And finds the kindred message spell'd without.

AT THAT DOOR

In the late night—full sorrowful and cold—
I stood by mine own door and knock'd;
White mists against the vacant windows roll'd;
The house was barr'd and lock'd.

The house was lock'd, and desolate and void,
The forecourt wild and damp without;
The rose was scatter'd and the vine destroy'd;
Loose tiles were strewn about.

From ragged eaves the stealthy moisture dripp'd;
The moss upon the steps was green;
The foot along the reedy pathways slipp'd
On fungus growths unclean.

No link was set within the time-worn sconce,
No lamp in porch to shew the way;
Cypress and yew made ominous response
To wind more sad than they.

No loving hand was there to let me in,
No voice behind the portal spoke,
But at the knocker's unaccustom'd din
The hall's deep echoes woke.

And yet, meseem'd, I went forth yester morn
From warmth and light and peace within;
Whence, if I tarried in this state forlorn,
Eftsoons must day begin.

But still for ever, in the vapour's shroud,
The moon leans sideways from the sky,
And in the dark East speaks no saffron cloud
Of morrow's morning nigh.

Ah, what distress!—By mine own house denied,
Acold beside its portals dumb
And vacant windows, staring blind and wide—
If dawn should never come.

ILLUMINATION

I

With native ease the serpent sloughs his skin,
But cannot change his old snake-heart within;
Man does not lay his outward form aside,
Yet can his old life from his new divide.

II

The simple words which follow shall direct
Right well and pleasantly all hearts elect,
And little children of the world to come;
But unto others be in meaning dumb—
Vague voices which delight on inward seas—
All storm and wrath—in cryptic images:
May hearts that read these maxims sweetly reach—
Late, if not soon—the truths exceeding speech!

III

What makes us say that underneath the sun
The toil we call our own is toil undone—
Finds work, when others sleep, for hand and heart,
And from repose shapes obstacles to art?
It is the sense of trust which burdens thought:
In these wild ways, ungovern'd and untaught,
We came some solemn purpose to fulfil,
But till encompass'd in its whole extent
We cannot prove that we indeed were sent,
Nor yet be sure we do the Master's will.

IV

Something has gone before us in the past,
And something more must follow at the last.

V

Man enters life expectant, and departs
With expectation in his heart of hearts.

VI

He dwelt in darkness ere his birth occurr'd
And oft in darkness still his strife is heard,
Toiling a higher title to attain:
His throes are those of being born again.

VII

The universe he enters here bestows
Such earthly lights on him as Nature knows,
And sustenance is his from brimming wells
Of its white sacraments and parables;
Through all its veils the presages are brought
Of greater orders—passing human thought—
Which interpenetrate at times our own:
In Grace and Nature nothing stands alone.

VIII

When souls come down into this world they take
The letter of the books, their thirst to slake;
The spirit in the Temple's place conferr'd
Is in the inmost Temple only heard;
And that which darkness doth from dawn divide
Renders it always night, the soul outside.

IX

As every witness in the heart avers,
No dispensation of the light occurs,
Save in that shrine which earth's eye never sees,
The place withdrawn of the Great Mysteries.
Subject and object there Plotinus found
United truly on a common ground.
What place is that? Ye neophytes—it lurks
Deep in the heart of these external works!

X

High rites in all their stages can dispense
Only the sanctuary's secret sense,
And can at most in empty hearts arouse
The hunger for the beauty of the House.

XI

Now, last, remember that which none deny—
Clean life can enter into sanctity,
And yet no mere morality shall gain
That vision which the pure in heart attain.

XII

But what is raised magnetically draws
All things to reach it: this is law of laws.

XIII

A golden ring unites such scatter'd Keys,
Which open portals to the Mysteries.

A DREAM OF JUNE

A splendid pageantry of sunset takes
The dreamer forth along this winding road,
What time the dew-fall in the roses makes,
Descending silently, its night abode;
What time the hedge-rose lifts a coral cup,
About the dew's cool treasure closing up.
Now sunset roses o'er the wintry way
Alone recall the rose of yesterday.

With fragile petals delicate of hue—
The sweetest flower that in our country blooms—
This wayside rose, 'neath heaven's imperial blue,
Dispenses its ineffable perfumes,
While dying daylight's gold and scarlet flood
With sudden glory tinges leaf and bud.
The snow-drift quenches now the dying beam;
Rose and deep rose of sunset—both a dream.

O floral chalice, on the hedge so high,
May gentle rains, that soothe the thirsty land,
Refresh thy blossom from a gracious sky!
May thorns for ever from the rustic hand
Thine elfin beauties jealously defend,
And thy last petal to its latest end!
May dark December's bleak and dreary stress
Be soothed with memories of thy loveliness!

May temper'd winds about thy spaces green
Breathe light in modulated music low!
May golden bees, when thy full bloom is seen,
Extract its mellow sweets to overflow
The deep recesses of their tree-built homes,
To fill with winter stores their honeycombs!
And in man's image-haunted hives of thought
Not all in vain may thy June sweets be sought!

Those Ariel children, born of summer's bliss,
The moths that flit through fruitful fields beyond,
With wings of azure, where thy beauty is
For ever hover in a silence fond!
And, with deep rapture all the day long ringing,
May thy fair world ne'er want a lark's blithe singing!
The leaves of thought which thy sere petals hold
Shall echoes also of that song enfold.

O may thy fabled love, the nightingale,
Through all night's calm and visionary space,
In glow-worm haunted thicket, or deep vale,
Abide at hand, musician of thy grace;
And all the senses of thy floral soul
With rapture ravish, by delight control!
Soft falls the snow from leaden lift above;
Soft in our hearts repose, O flower of love!

The poet's benediction dowers thee well—
Was that thy blush upon the western sky?
Was that thy beauty over field and fell
Investing all in gorgeous panoply?
Ah, when deep night envelops all things here,
Thy fragrance still proclaims that thou art near!
Still art thou with us under Christmas snows,
For us the Rose ne'er dies—long live the Rose!

The Rose and Rose, for evermore the Rose,
While days are dwindling towards the least of all
And every utterance sadly sets towards close;
The shadow of life itself has ceased to fall;
Ferment and sap of life no longer work;
All the quick light is still'd in shroud of murk:
Yet it is daylight shortly, torrid sun;
A thousand Roses in the place of one!

A FREE WAY

The green hedge grows by the dull wayside,
And, for no sweet reason or artful sense,
But merely a landmark, rises the fence,
While a gate in that fence stands wide.
Close—on the further side of the hedge—
To the weedy bank is the oozy edge
Of a shoal and torpid pond.
A random foot-way falters beyond,
Its narrow track in the woodland screening.
The hedge is ragged, the shoots spring high;
Through gaps and breaches one sees the sky—
You would doubt if even a dreamer's eye
Could clothe it with secret meaning:
Nor seems that twig, from the rest up-rising
Twelve inches straight in the air or more,

A guide-post pointing an unknown shore
For a good stout heart's emprizing.

Yet on certain nights—when the moon is late—
In front of the moon's disc, dark and straight,
With a single leaf will the twig stand clear,
Moved by the night-wind's hand unseen;
And a still small voice in the dreamer's ear
Begins to murmur and keen.
Very softly there, very sadly here,
Sway'd South or North by the viewless hand,
The leaf says: “Here it is Faërie Land!”
And then, more plainly:
“He that looks further is searching vainly:
Near, near—never so near:
The gate is open, the path is free;
It is now, if ever, to hear and see!”

And I see for one—through this message coming
In the midst of the dusk night's drowsy humming—
That to him who can hear and understand
Why this is the entrance of Faërie Land,
May even a twig and a leaf impart
Some secrets hidden in Nature's heart.
Hence I conclude that the end of things
Exceeds not the sweep of an angel's wings,
And, by these spread widely from base to marge,
We know He has given His angels charge.

SEASONS

For ever the autumn and spring
And for ever, on shining wing,
A Summer which goes and returns;
But oh for the cleansing fount,
Dear heart, of the Holy Mount,
For which ever the true heart yearns!

A NIGHT PIECE

On the drench'd sands and shallow, windless sea,
On that one boat which rocks, with one bare mast,
At anchor, on a hundred naked groynes,
And on the desolate and sinking house,
With crumbling turrets facing towards the tide,
There falls, like stillness on the close of Time—
In soft and mournful mist—the sad, grey night.

OF SLEEPING AND WAKING

That virgin peer who sought the Holy Grail
Found in the castle hall his senses fail,
By heavy slumber strangely overweigh'd.
The pomp, through smoke of censers slowly sway'd,
Swept by him, prone with limbs that never stirr'd
And lips that moved not with the questing word,
Which would the hidden mystery reveal
And the King's hurts and all the country heal.
Therefrom the woe wax'd greater, more and more.
So also we, who our sad state deplore,
Of hidden oracle and holy lips
Ask secret lights, the passwords and the grips;
But when the vision from the veil replies
Sleep falls full heavy on our souls and eyes,
And, whatsoe'er is spoken or withheld,
It utters nothing to our senses spell'd.
O Knight of Arthur's court, after great stress
You saw the hallows which could heal and bless:
May we in time our long enchantment break
And to the word of life from sleep awake!

LOSS AND GAIN

We lost it long ago; we dream not how,
We know not where. The spirit—with a brow
Which high thoughts hallow'd, full of peace in them—
Wore, as some say, its royal diadem;
But crowns are nothing to the soul, and this
High legend only or a symbol is.
Ah, friends! What, therefore, did we lose and why?
Was it our home beyond the far blue sky?
But home is only where the soul, above
These anxious ways, finds sleep of perfect love,
While the same heaven which draws our hearts, we know,
Extends not more above us than below.
Whence, therefore, this so dimly understood
Yet haunting sense within us of the good
Wherein we once rejoiced; which evermore
Through mournful ways of life we now deplore?
Ah, if the heart could learn, the heart might find!
Or, at least, less inhibited and blind,
Move on more conscious where the ways direct,
What to avoid aware and what expect.
Here is the measure of our loss—perchance
One gain is theirs who thus in dark advance
As best they can, peering with hoodwink'd eyes:
Light comes at last more splendid, and surprise
The sweeter, for the gloom and its dismay,
When night in fine and hoodwinks pass away:
A hand has guided and a hand shall lead
Till loss be loss no more, but gain indeed.

OF CONSUMMATION

Wise, O heart, is the heart which loves; but what of the heart which refrains—
Not as if counting the cost, and preferring the ease to the pains,
But knowing how treasures of all are neither received nor given,
The aching void that is under love and above it the aching heaven?

Wise are the lips which have learn'd how long may linger the lips' caress,
But wiser they who the hungering lips can chasten and repress,
For that which our fain mouths burn to kiss and loving arms to embrace
Has never been given to lips or arms in the world of time and space.

Wise therefore, and wise above all, is he who does not swerve aside,
But knows to his greatest need on earth is service of earth denied;
Who, least things asking of flesh and blood, and less than the least of rest,
Goes on demanding the perfect good and disdaining the second best.

After much conquest and toil no doubt, but high in his starry tracks,
Shall the greater ministers come to him burning the sacred flax,

Saying: So passes the world and so the glory and light expend;
But the High Term, follow'd unflinching, cries: I can repay at the end.

IN ANY GARDEN

I

I dream'd in a garden when noon was past,
On a thyme-sweet bank reclining—
Half dream'd, half thought of the peace unbroken
After the breeze to the rose has spoken,
And ere it rises, where light so still is,
To breathe of love to the shining lilies.
Over the bower was the bindweed twining,
And beyond the lily's last white cup
Life's mystery yielded its secret up:
So the end seem'd clear at last—
As in any garden, when noon is past.

II

They came who lead me, the Sons of Thought,
That ever my steps attend,
And the first is named the Sense of the End,
But the second the Way that the End is sought:
Now as to the third, I have search'd my soul,
But I know not well, for His face is dim,
If love can divine the great name of Him,
Yet I dream that His name is The Goal—
Say, have you also by these been taught?
Have you not seen them, from first to last,
In any garden, when noon is past?

THE KING'S SECRET

Kept well—too closely kept—or so it seems—
Few quests disclose the Secret of the King.
That Presence, manifest in evening's cool
Long since in the first garden of the world,
Withdrawn to-day in the most secret place
Of all concealment, baffles reason's search.
God veils His glory from our questing eyes—
We know not why; few claims are ours to press:
But still the longing and the hope remain.
Poor baffled reason in the end perchance
Finds her spent forces unto new give place,
While in the soul at length, from all apart,
The glory dawns, and in the depths thereof
A still voice breathes the Secret of the King.

THE INWARD MAJESTY

Our mental dalliance with the lighter vein
Is possible in cities of the plain,
In pleasant meadows, or where gardens are;
And on the fringe and margin of the sea,
Such happy refuge comes to you and me.
But compass'd by the immeasurable main,
Or on those heights where nothing intervenes
Betwixt the climber and a certain star,
Let inward majesty to outward scenes
So consciously respond,
That, when the shallows into silence fall,
Our soundless deeps within the soul may call
And Words of Life make answer from beyond.

HAUNTINGS

From life's first dawn till now, when life's new stress
Drives all things swifter into consciousness,
Earth has been full of those strange secret things
Which we touch sometimes in our quickenings.
So in the veils which commonly divide
From what we vaguely term the further side,
Rent or thin place makes possible to see
That which encompasses so pressingly.
There is no man, however steep'd in sense,
But can recall some such experience,
When dusk or dark or daylight dimly gave
Suggestions which are deeper than the grave,
Till soul in body for a moment felt
Contact with souls that in no flesh have dwelt.
'Tis then we know there is a houseless host
Of incomplete humanities, of ghost
And spectral people, who, from dregs and lees
And depths of stagnant and unconscious seas
Exhaled, their evolution's course begin,
But, though remote, are still our kith and kin,
And by the process of the years advanced
Shall reach, like us, their share of light enhanced.
You cannot draw your blinds at eventide
And not leave thousands in the dark outside;
You cannot fling the windows wide at morn
But there are thousands, as on sunbeams borne:
Sad is their lot, midst all their crowds alone,
To none responding and by all unknown.
And yet the pity in the human heart
For life's great travail, of which theirs is part,
By solidarity of all things here,
Helps such poor souls, so far and yet so near;

Just as our kindness to the dear, dumb beasts
First hallows us, making us Nature's priests,
Then helps their prison'd yearning to assuage,
And lastly leads them in their pilgrimage.

Ah! pity, tenderness and love—these three
And the Great God above—and these are He!

THE BRIDAL JOURNEY

He call'd her with a mighty cry:—
“Come forth! I need thee, eye to eye!”
Then all of mortal life she set
Aside thereat and, featly, came—
A virgin soul of purest flame:
Their deep eyes met.

From out her house of flesh came she;
He stood, a spirit grandly free
From mortal veil and bond.
They left their bodies side by side—
The blessed bridegroom and the bride—
And soar'd beyond.

The paths of light their presence own
And zones beyond the starry zone;
A light outshining suns for them
Is granted as a diadem;
And, where no mortal steps have trod,
They follow the high quest of God.

DREAMS OF DEATH

In storm, in darkness and in stress,
In languor and deep weariness,
What wonder if, o'er life's dark deep—
That tossing sea which dare not sleep—
From time to time, on each should come
An exile's sickness for his home?

The troubled sleep of man endures, it seems,
Long—and too long—laid waste with evil dreams
Which end not even with his latest breath,
And sad and lonely are the dreams of death.
May those who did with sleep of sense inbind
Vouchsafe, compassioning, to free the mind,
For heavy vapour doth the heart enring!
I, more than all, should pray for wakening—
These many years in mortal slumber kept.
What if, indeed, my time is overstept
And the great hour I should have known is past,
So that the only tenant in the vast
And silent place of sleep, in vain I beat
Wings weariful and weary hands and feet
Against the gates, with clamour and ado;
But there is no more hope of passing through!

If morn will come! It is so long to wait;
Long seem'd it never at the cottage gate—
That space of day the morn and night betwixt
When forth I went, and bore, to lighten toil,
A hallow for the crowded day's turmoil,
My bride within the gate, an image fix'd,
Till eve and love should come to hearten me.

But I went forth one morning when the free
Spring breath found ambush in her sunny hair,
Which opulence of light encompass'd, there
Standing so statue-tall, as saints might, crown'd,
And the child with her in the garden ground,
Where heavy scent of hyacinths abode.
Hard by the dusty tumult of the road,
That artless picture shone in equal grace
With any sacrament of angel's face;
And in my soul, as in the street, it stirr'd
The solemn rumours of that secret word
Which Nature must not utter lest she cease.
So as I pass'd abroad, with inward peace,
All suddenly methought that it was long
Betwixt the Matins-time and Evensong;
Then, midst a strange confusion in the mind
At many cries before me and behind,
I knew that I should go back never more—
That never gate should open as before,
Nor door swing back, nor scented dusk reveal
The eyes which welcome and the hands which heal—
Being by sad calamity or sin
Absorb'd for ever by the gulf within;
And, disinherited of earthly shape,
Doom'd self in self to find, nor e'er escape
Even by plunging deeper in the gloom—
Such is the unlighted secret of my tomb.

Long have I sought, yet no relief is found,
And my soul sickens in this aching round,
Amidst the purblind air and vapours dim;
For it seems idle now to call on Him
Who having put to sleep, as I have said,
Is my sole hope of waking from the dead
And all the ghostly semblances which fill
With their own dread these halls of voided will.

O but I pray that I may find some track
At least to my old life directing back,
And that my dreaming arms may there enfold
The wife who shared with me the sleep of old,
The little child whose innocence and mirth
Seem'd newly waken'd in the life of earth
Rather than aught which play'd in dreams of sleep.

There is an anthem full of meaning deep
Which evil thought from souls entranced could drive,
And save from phantoms of the night alive;
There is a promise which from old has said
How rest from labour on the blessed dead
In peace descends: Give me their balm once more,
And they, perchance, repeated o'er and o'er,
Shall yet become to me a gospel word,
With grace to die hereafter in the Lord.

Ah, let us rest—as much as men may do—
Those faithful homes within where hearts are true,
Because—without—the darkness and the cold
Hide laidly shapes and monstrous growths from view,
And hard it fares with those who shall behold!

WORLDS OF DREAM

The sun descended in a flaming mist
And all God's world beneath it—wide, waste downs,
Blue sky, serene and beautiful, and thou,
Half-shrouded sea, mysterious, with smooth,
Far-reaching bay, for miles and miles the land
Embracing—steep'd therein, divinely glow'd
Through deepening orange clouds ... A sudden change,

A shifting wind, a lifting mist, and lo!
Eastwards the sea shone cold and steely grey,
While downs and headlands, with the chalky roads
That wound among them—as the wan, white moon
Rose over like a phantom grandiose—
All these grew sombre. Facing there the main,
I stood, rich Sunset Land upon my right,
With capes and cliffs, with towns and towers therein,
Enchanted, dreaming; on the left, this world,
Which sober'd sadly towards a single tint
As night fell down thereon. It did not sleep,
It did not wake, but ever as the wind
Grew keener, utter'd its disquietude,
Sole sign of life. Of which of these could one
Apart from both—in such a mood—have said
This and not that was true reality?

THE SWOONING CASTLE

Suddenly, wide in the night awake—
Do you know what that means?—with a start
And a tremulous heart,
In the dark of the night rose I:
Had a voice unknown of a day to break
Utter'd some warning cry? ..
But the East was cold, and the thin white fold
Of a light mist up to the windows roll'd,
And the leaves by the windows wept.
'Tis a mournful thing, at a time so dead,
To wake uncall'd and with stealthy tread—
And the hush'd breath inward kept—
From room to room, in the curtain'd gloom,
Pass, and from bed to bed.

They slept:
Some in their peace and some in their grace,
And some there were with a haunted face
And a fever'd head.
Once at the corridor's end I drew
Toward a sheeted figure which glided through
To the top of a stairway steep:
It carried a darken'd lamp and pass'd:
There was none in the house that slept so fast
As he who walk'd in his sleep.
Over the stairs I peer'd and found,
With head to breast, by his lantern's side,
On the porter's bench was the porter bound,
I knew not whether in sleep or swound,
While heavy-eyed by the doorway wide
Lay drowsy henchman and dreaming hound.

With none to challenge, I slipp'd the latch
And, issuing under the streaming thatch,
I visited stable and stall and stye,
But I never came on an open eye,
For the roosting fowl, that crow'd unbidden,
Slept with his beak in his plumage hidden.
Far and sad, in a world of reeds,
A shoal brook slipp'd through the marsh and meads,
With no more sound than the dark lagoon,
Dead still, outstaring the dripping moon:
The moon on her side in the mist lay red—
Green leaves, but they stirr'd not overhead!

So, seeing the swoon of the world outside
Has more of sorrow and less of kin
Than the torpid heart of the house within—
Like the hush which falls when a ghost has cried—
My heart with its yearning drew me back,
By the creaking stairway's winding track.

In an upper room of the roof which faces
East, with the sense of a hope subdued
That a light may whiten the mist-fill'd spaces,
Sleep being out of my thoughts, I brood
And watch; but I feel that they watch me too,
The unseen ones, sitting this long night through—
Near, as it may be, though out of reach—
Till sleepers shall waken to life and speech
At the end of this sorrowful spell.
And since high up in the belfry tower
There hangs a listless bell,
Some voice may bid me proclaim the hour:
Whence in my comfortless mood I gain
The sense of a vigil not wholly vain.
Shall I not, seeing the Rising Sun,
Cry: “Look; It is Morning”—when night is done?
If I fell at the end into slumber deep,
I should call out such good news in my sleep.

HOW IT FALLS BY THE SEA

The air was cool, the wind was fresh, the sky
Before him violet, westward tinged with deep
And angry red. Behind him, loose and black,
Great clouds roll'd up; a church, impending, loom'd;
He pass'd with awe beneath its tower of stone—
Square, tall and grey—the graveyard cross'd in haste
And reach'd the wood; beyond its gentle slope
Far stretch'd a plain; and there thin, early mists
Had gather'd; from the orange in the West
A dull glow fell on quiet pool and pond;
The lamps in scatter'd hamlets there and here
Began to glisten. All his later way
The scarlet sunset and the stormy South

Made splendid, and with images sublime
The boy's mind fill'd; while overhead the pale,
Translucent vault of heaven was thinly sown
With gleaming stars; while, above sea, the pure
Unclouded moon her white and crescent disc
Reveal'd, suffusing light sky-wandering clouds
And ether's pensive lilac.

By the shore
He paused, still'd waters washing at his feet,
But far through distance, mingling with the wind,
Giving forth solemn sounds. And turning then,
One mile or more, against keen breeze he kept
His set face steadfast. By his path the wan
And shrinking silverweed, midst stones, maintain'd
A struggling life. A mile or more, sea-waves
Charm'd him with music, moon on moon look'd down
Mirror'd in trembling bosom of the deep.
A mile or more, he watch'd their communing
Till thin clouds stay'd it, till there shew'd alone
One pallid phantom. Then the sun burst forth,
Glory of storm-fill'd wonder, light on dark
Of formless cloud, crying to melt in light.
He stood; heaven's blaze upon his cheek and brow
Smote him. One moment every field and tree—
Great haystacks, fragrant hedges and the thatch
Of cottages—shone in that gorgeous light
As things transfigured. Suddenly the sun—
Beneath grim ruins of empurpled cloud—
Fell swift; the twilight over hills behind
And low champaign in utter gloom devolved.

Awhile the waning glory of the West—
Its broken pageant and fire-shards thereof—
He watch'd; the sullen purple, tinged with gold,
Grew lurid; leaden vapours far away
Were stain'd with blood; but here and there the sky
Laid bare far depths of melancholy blue.

The boy turn'd northward, down a lane which led
Straight from the sea. Beside some stunted elms
He paused; the darkness chill'd him; far and near
He heard loud chafing of incessant waves,
As suddenly a violet dark involved
Their vast expanse, and he, more lone than they,
Knew well how night discourses to the soul.
He started, as a bird, with whirring wings,
Broke forth from covert. The wind died and rose,
But darkness deepening on the early wheat,
Left every green blade visible: his path
Wound pale before him; waver'd stars above;
And still the phantom of the moon behind
Mourn'd at him as he pass'd into the night.

A GREY WORLD

The horse is warm in his stall,
Warm in his but lies the thrall;
A measured music, grand and dim,
Heard from afar, is the angels' hymn.
Turn horse in stall and churl on bed;
Angels of Issa, bend the head:
Let all waif-children be comforted!

These things in a vision saw I,
But they rest with me till I die;
And ever the pity grows in my heart
For all earth's stray'd ones, her counterpart.

Now, the child was striving where great downs rose,
And about those downs did the steep hills close;
Peak above peak, with a frozen crown,
Each mountain over the hills look'd down.

The sky was snow, and within it all
Was a sense of night that could not fall;
While the wind, which seem'd to carry a cross,
Scream'd the eternal sense of loss:
Yet through that wailing world of grey
The white waif follow'd her woful way.

The child was wretched, the child was bare,
And, for greater horror, was lonely there;
No single face in that stricken zone
Had bent in kindness to meet her own;
None offer'd the grasp of a helping hand,
For no man dwelt in the dreadful land;
And the tender heart of a woman had not
Sweeten'd or lighten'd her orphan lot.
It seem'd that since the beginning of things
Such feet came less than an angel's wings,
And the kind, sweet angels, it is known,
Only encircle a great white throne,
Or if below them they turn their faces,
'Tis not to gaze on accursèd places.

She went on trying some goal to reach,
As a lost child strives who has none to teach;
But she knew not whence she had come, nor whither
Tended the path which had brought her thither,
While fear—which is worse than a frozen track
Through an ice-world stretching, at front and back—
Forbade the pulses of thought to stir
And wither'd the poor little heart of her:
One thing only, by waste and hill
Something drove her to hasten still,
Lest cross more dreadful and greater woes,
In that world's unrest, should befall repose.

Over the waste, through the mist so wan,
The tortuous path went on and on—

What purpose serving exceeded wit:
Say, is there light at the end of it?
And after all, in the scheme of things,
Is the child protected by unseen wings?
Or is this only a show which seems?—
Shall the waif wake up from uneasy dreams
On a bed of down, where bright rays are falling,
To hear the voice of her mother calling,
Saying: “Sweet maid, it is late, so late,
And out in the garden your sisters wait
In the morning shine, while the bells begin
To usher my dear one's birthday in?”

The grey clouds gather from rim to lift
And the child enters a great snow-drift;
The sharp flakes stifle her wailing cry,
The peaks are lost in a blank of sky.
If God is behind this doom and wrath,
She will haply issue on smoother path,
But I know not, granting all crowns of bliss,
For what good end it is ruled like this:

While the horse is warm in his stall,
And warm in his hut lies the thrall;
And a high chant filling the heavens says thus:—
“But Thou, O Lord, have mercy on us!”
Angels of Issa, bow the head,
Till all waif-children are comforted.

BURDENS OF BABYLON

When the stars cease to speak to thee; when all
The silent messages which softly fall
From liquid skies, over dark groves, have said
Their final word; when ministries are dead,

When winds are voiceless and, from distance brought,
Sea-sounds give up no more the forms of thought;
Then faded Nature, once in life so glad,
Wears sadder mien than ever mourner had;
And if one utterance in the world is yet,
'Tis but the burden of a vain regret.

When with a melancholy, helpless trend,
All settles slowly into silent end,
Then the soul also, fickle and deranged,
Too weak for action and from peace estranged,
If offer'd straightway an immortal cup
Might lack the power of hand to lift it up;
Then hearts no longer struggle to get breath,
But through deep lethargy subside towards death;
And underneath the swooning moon or sun
There comes no help from any, no not one;
While of all things that are of least avail,
Love, which we lean'd on, seems the first to fail.
Yet, signs and sacraments of death, bereft
Of death's bleak graces, is there nothing left?

O inexpressible! O deeps forlorn!
O wild clouds, collocated eve and morn!
O eyes, imparting through their glooms a sense
Of vast abysses of impenitence,
With gulfs behind of sorrow unreveal'd
And bitter springs of loss in gulfs unseal'd!
Say, is there nothing? Do ye hold at length
Far off suggestions of some fount of strength—
Far as the stars of peace o'er stars of strife,
And far as life is from the life of life?

Wrecks on the tide-ways, wrecks upon the sea;
Black frozen heights, wherein no breath can be;
Hearts that have broken, hearts in ardent heat
To ashes burnt—vain ways and vain conceit—

Yet, through immeasurable loss and need,
Come hints of One still strong to intercede,
And to the prostrate soul in poison'd lands
Comes grip of the unseen, uplifting hands.

ONWARD

Beyond the breakers lies the free,
Unfathomable space of sea;
Beyond the sea some harbour far;
And that beyond new countries are.
From cliff to hill, from hill to plain,
We pass and find a further main;
Until we reach where time is not,
Brothers! But then beyond it—what?
Peace, doubting heart which questions thus—
Peace! Do not all things answer us?
Or if they speak not, all and each,
Silence gives deeper hints than speech.

GABRIEL

Do you remember, wheresoe'er you keep
Your sponsion with eternity, asleep
Or waking, but at least transported now
Beyond all bounds our dreams to earth allow,
And so, I trust, set free from time and space—
Do you remember his unearthly face,
Shining so softly in the temple's band?
If I spoke riddles, you would understand
Who are—I pray!—intelligence unmix'd;
But even then, on secret graces fix'd,

You saw with me great miracles in him,
White-vested walking through the cloisters dim.
Hence, knowing that none except yourself above,
With me below, will penetrate our love,
However plainly stands the written word,
Let me conceal no more, whose heart is stirr'd
To tell outright what then I spoke alone
Either to you, apart in undertone,
Or but in parables to other men.
Far have we travell'd both, 'twixt now and then;
You, as I dream, are something more than earth,
Brought through cold deeps of death to your new birth,
While I have follow'd for so long the shades
And lights reserved in strange and secret grades
For few indeed, that, set from man apart—
In spite of all corruptions of the heart—
Pursuing a peculiar path of quest,
Shunn'd am I or forgotten by the rest.

As in your ear then, plainly let me tell
When first it was we look'd on Gabriel,
At mass or vespers, guarded, earnest, blythe,
A white-robed, censer-bearing acolythe;
Only a face amidst an incense cloud—
Silent within the chants which swell'd so loud.
Lovely he was, as human beauty goes—
The lily's lustre, the faint blush of rose,
Met in his face; his lips were chaste and fair;
Like a dim nimbus was his auburn hair;
While his deep eyes had caught, as in a net,
All the dark glories of the violet.
Youth though he was, in our two hands we could
Have ta'en his face to kiss as lovers should,
But on his earthly presence had come down
So high a sense of vision and of crown,

That out of any place where lovers lean
And whisper, he, with his uplifted mien,
So bright uprose that, like the ground he trod,
We knew him seal'd and set apart to God.

As Dante standing in the market-ways,
Who saw his blest Madonna many days,
But did, continually spell'd, defer
Each opportunity of speech with her;
We with the boy adored the Sacred Host
But challenged not that spiritual ghost—
Until at length his apparition ceased.
This day, perchance, a consecrated priest,
He celebrates, all fairly alb'd and stoled,
The holy mass at which he served of old.
Well, you are dead, and God is strong to save;
But certain secret matters to my grave
I carry heavily concerning you,
Who were through all so good and more than true:
Still in your heart make them a safe retreat,
If you can do so, at the judgment-seat.
But through the sorrows of your later years,
That boy's face hallow'd you for purer spheres;
'Mid derelictions of my longer road,
So has it also with myself abode.
Still in the vigils of a wakeful night
It serves like prayer because it shines so white,
And brings, in ushering to slumber deep,
Some of their peace who fall in Christ asleep.

Old friend, whate'er our early verse may tell,
Here is the mystery of Gabriel;
But the rare seeds sown thus in earth of ours
Once gave us many miracles of flowers;
Fair fruits too promised—what of these to say?—
Oh, you are dead, and he has gone away!

A LADDER OF LIFE

From age to age in the public place,
With the under steps in view,
The stairway stands, having earth for base,
But the heavens it passes through.

O height and deep,
And the quests in sleep,
Yet the Word of the King says well,
That the heart of the King is unsearchable.

Of the upmost steps there are legends grand,
And far stars shine as they roll;
But, of child or man in the wonderful land,
Is there one who has scaled the whole?

Yet the great hope stirs,
Though His thoughts as yours
Are not, since the first man fell;
For the heart of the King is unsearchable.

A pulsing song of the stairway strange
Sing, lark, dissolved in the sky!
But no, for it passes beyond the range
Of thy song and thy soaring high.

The star is kin
To our soul within—
God orders His world so well:
Yet the heart of the King is unsearchable.

They say that the angels thereby come down,
Thereby do the saints ascend,
And that God's light shining from God's own Town
May be seen at the stairway's end:

For good and ill
May be mix'd at will,
The false shew true by a spell,
But the heart of the King is unsearchable.

Now, the stairway stands by the noisy mart
And the stairway stands by the sea;
About it pulses the world's great heart
And the heart of yourself and me.

We may read amiss
Both in that and this,
And the truth we read in a well;
Since the heart of the King is unsearchable.

For a few steps here and a few steps there
It is fill'd with our voices loud,
But above these slumbers the silent air
And the hush of a dreaming cloud.

In the strain and stress
Of that silentness,
Our hearts for the height may swell;
But the heart of the King is unsearchable.

Some few of us, fill'd with a holy fire,
The Cross and the Christ have kiss'd;
We have sworn to achieve our soul's desire
By mass and evangelist:

Of step the third
I can bring down word,
And you on the fifth may dwell;
Yet the heart of the King is unsearchable.

As each of us stands at his place assign'd
And ponders the things we love,
It is meet and right we should call to mind
That some must have pass'd above:

Yes, some there are
Who have pass'd so far,
They have never return'd to tell;
And the heart of the King is unsearchable.

Some glimpse at least of the end we glean,
Of the spiral curve and plan;
For stretch as it may through the worlds unseen,
They are ever the worlds of man;

And—with all spaces—
His mind embraces
The way of the stairs as well—
For his heart, like the King's, is unsearchable.

SEVEN WATCHERS

A certain Son of the Desire which springs,
From life's heart-deeps unfathom'd, towards the things
Withdrawn in undetermined altitude,
Sat in his silence shrouded and subdued;
On many fragments of his splendid dreams—
Vocations shadow'd forth by ardent schemes
And haunting insights—pondering alone.
But the height's secrets are a world unknown,
And though we recognise in these our rest,
That which we look to find—has heart express'd
Save in the glowing symbols of the heart?
Therefore the quest seems vague, and far apart

Desire stands, vainly reaching towards its end:
So deeper glooms than with the night descend
Fell on the soul of that aspiring Son.

Thereat, a little space and, after, one
Who enter'd softly in the gloom, and fill'd
A seat beside him, said: “Perchance He will'd
To keep us doubtful of the soul's true aim;
But there are earthly gifts—and these are Fame
And Wealth and Honour and all high estate.”
“I also enter'd by that barren gate,”
The Son of Heaven replied, “and surely found
By what strange sorrows is ambition crown'd.”
“Yea,” said the other, “I endured as well.”

To these a third came in, made visible
By shining eyes—and spake: “The ways of Love
Are to be counted, as I deem, above
All other paths, and he who enters them
Has life in fulness and the diadem.”
The Son made answer: “Hast thou counted Loss?”
But he: “My sorrow is my crown and cross;
The tears of Loss are bitter as the sea,
And, sword in heart, behold I wait with thee.”

Then silence follow'd, till a fourth broke in,
Flush'd from the revel, singing: “I am Sin,
And I have known all raptures and the bliss
Of shame which meets with shame, to mix and kiss.”
Then said the Son of the Desire which lifts
The heart in search of the unearthly gifts:
“What wages, brother, doth thy rapture earn?”
“From death they come and unto death return,”
The child of Bacchus and the Mœnads cried,
“And many deaths in life my soul has died;

But I will wait with thee for evermore.”

“Kings of the earth,” said one, who through the door
Had enter'd suddenly, “and crowns of such,
May haply melt to ashes at a touch,
But Knowledge treasures still its proud estate,
And Wisdom's shining grows from less to great.”
“O fair, sweet friend! What therefore knowest thou?”
Spake the First Watcher. But with bended brow
The other answer'd—yea, with eyes which burn'd:
“That dust for ever has to dust return'd;
I also therefore wait dejectedly,
And Truth, though out of sight, perchance is nigh.”

There follow'd him who said: “Though all things fail,
Faith's sacred consolations still avail.”
“Yea,” said the Son, “did we indeed believe,
The star and dust perchance should interweave;
But the star also into dust may fall.”

A deeper silence fill'd that gloomy hall,
And gloom was on the watchers, while the feet
Of hurried passers died along the street.
So all that night the solemn guard was kept:
Some pray'd within them sobbingly, some wept,
As they that melt towards prayer, and other some
Through windows look'd to see if morn would come.
But the air gave up at the darkest hour
A sudden sense of presence and of power,
And where the six had waited through the night,
There stood a Seventh with a guiding light;
Who said: “May peace be with you! I have been
Through the great gates of death, and I have seen
That which I testify as surely true.
Give me your hands, for I am made as you,
And look into mine eyes, and speak my Name.”
Whereat the Watchers cried with one acclaim:

“Master of All, for Thee we waited long
Who to enlighten and to save art strong.”
He answer'd: “Watch with me a little space!”
But they stood raptured, gazing on His face,
So that the world and all therein went by,
And from the eastern heaven the sun rose high.

LOOKING WESTWARD

Worlds beyond worlds of sunset pageantry—
Wild West: the spirit with a yearning deep
Springs forth to thee! Like ripples are thy long
Low lines of violet cloud: all dreams, all hopes
Seem possible within these earthly bounds
Which heaven enrings and thy bright marge of light—
Set in cerulean circle, jewel-wise.

THE END WHICH CROWNS

The music falters on the harp of gold;
That which it longs to say is never told;
Stern silence now indraws it evermore.
The thought which scarcely to the heart before
Was half so keenly or so highly given,
Once and for all to speak the heart has striven;
Once and for all the heart has failed therein.
The word and music of the word begin,
But cannot finish; yet the soul shall see;
Light in the soul shall dawn, that light shall be
Extended surely through the great domain,
Nor towards the summits turn her eyes in vain—
Far end, perchance, but still she sees the end.
Clouds intervene indeed and veils extend,
But gifted inly by those ardent rays—
Clouds and the veils thereof before the gaze

Of soul dissolving—shall the soul descry
That which is hidden from the fleshly eye,
The end and high significance of things.
Of old, great Plato said the soul has wings,
And deem not thou that ne'er the soul has risen,
Flame-wing'd, above the ramparts of her prison.
Think not with bolts and bars she strives in vain,
Who can at need the path of stars attain;
Yet it remains that, stars and heights explored,
Or wheresoe'er the soul has plunged and soar'd,
In deep abysses or on holy hill,
The secret baffles and eludes her still.

Made subject now to terms of time and space,
Drawn by the outward, not the inward place,
She chiefly shares the public pomps and shows:
Therein no star as star that secret knows,
Nor sun divines it. Earth has mighty themes
To guard our sleeping and our waking dreams;
The peaks have ravishment; the great sea-deep
Has other mysteries, to yield or keep;
Those which we lack, the meaning and the goal,
Exceed their depth and height. And hence the soul,
By outward witcheries encompass'd, sees
The glory and the glamour which are these:
She listens, she divines as best she can,
And gathers something of the cosmic plan,
While from the snatches of the secret caught—
Beyond the limit of the world of thought
Withdrawn in regions of which none can tell—
She fashions answers in an oracle
And burning prophecies which inly stir:
She fashions answers, nothing answers her.

Therefore of how it shall at length befall,
The hidden meaning and the end of all—

Life's crown therein—are hidden from the soul,
Which gleans in part but cannot grasp the whole.
Some voices truly at her door have sung,
But in an unintelligible tongue;
And flashes sometimes from her centre strike
Which seem to shew her what the end is like,
As if the centre and the end were there.
Such lesson haply might her labours spare:
That which can answer nothing, or, if heard,
Only some unintelligible word,
Serving for presage in divining art,
May after all have little to impart;
But in the soul herself, if deeply sought,
Will come an answer to our inmost thought.

Let therefore music fail from harps of gold;
Let words be kept within the heart untold;
And let the soul no longer use her wings
For ranging through the outward scheme of things,
But inward turn the light of shining eyes—
Be sure, the end is there, the meaning wise.

OF THE DEEP SEAS

Some world-secret dwells in sadness,
Granting tears at length are dried,
All the cares which mar life's pages,
From the heirship of the ages,
Cast, and once for all, aside.

Take the heights and the abysses,
Those great spaces which are past,
And the forward vistas, blending
With our dreams of life unending—
Holy hopes, attainments vast:

Surely joy, with all its keenness,
Haunts too narrow grooves of change,
On the common sense of pleasure
Draws too much, to serve as measure
Of the world's resource and range.

Morning stars may sing together,
Sons of God for joy may shout;
But beyond the choric pæan
Spreads the stillness empyrean:
There the anthem falters out.

If we came and passed like summer,
Short of sight though joy would be,
It might help us towards forgetting,
Twixt our rising and our setting,
What a moth's-flight space had we.

But confronting earth's unearnest
And yet ever anxious span
With the undeclared hereafter,
Joy must perish and light laughter
Waver on the lips of man.

Life is so far past all searching,
So much hangs from strings so frail,
That the firmest faith must question
And against all dark suggestion
Hope can never quite prevail.

Love remains and Love can save us,
All the keys of doom are there;
But if more with gladness blended
Than dejections deep attended,
Those who love shall first declare.

Well then to be self-reliant,
Highest ends with strength achieve,
Hold that life is best expounded
By the faith in goodwill grounded—
So go forward, so believe.

But ask not that joy be with us;
Light things are by joy express'd:
Unto us the deeps are speaking,
Past the sadness of their seeking
Is God's graveness—and God's rest.

THE WIDER PROSPECTS

On level meads, as smooth as garden lawns,
Rooks swarm with gleaming plumage, then—with screams
Discordant—rise and circle high in air!—
God's splendour brightens now their peaceful flight,
To giant elms returning—dizzy nests,
Poised in the air triumphant.

Here my road
Reveals the open country. I see slopes
Of verdant green, wide fields and marshy lands
Low-lying; I see misty hills against
The distant sky, in outline dimly limn'd—
A long blue line. The land is dark with trees,
Far and away beyond me winds the road,
Ascending; as I follow, evermore
The prospect widens—round me hills and hills,
And round me all things in the clear, sweet air
Give back the sunset light. Soft winds are held

By silver spells of silence.

The whole earth
Seems mine, and shortly will all heaven put forth
Stars o'er my path. Methinks, this road so broad,
So brown, so pleasant, like the rover's life,
Goes on for ever; it is steep, it curves,
It leaps and dips; it follows all the vale,
Then takes a spiral course to climb the slope,
So to be lost amidst a world of downs.
Here silver willows in the evening wind
Begin to stir; by hedges do the oaks
Rich foliage rustle; on the open mead
A brown horse browses, while in one beyond
A stalwart beast—with black and burnish'd sides—
Draws on the loaded wain to reach the track;
And at that bend he gains it. As I walk
Behind, a dry and subtle incense fills
The cool air round me; but I hasten now
And see the farm before me: so mine eyes
At every turn are met by something new
Which gratifies the senses and the mind.

All suddenly the golden air is changed
To purple, passing swiftly into grey,
And there is mist about me; it is chill:
The sense of sadness settles, but I reach
A clear space free upon the West and pause
To mark, in contrast, certain blurr'd, green trees
Thrown on a vivid and illumined sky—
Ere night one hour has fallen—O first star,
With lamp enkindled in the South so high!—
To mark it and to worship. Now the moon,
Out from bleak vapours of the East, aglow,
With not one touch of sadness, o'er the marsh
Her orb uplifts. How fair, how sweet, how blue,
Looks the high zenith, with faint clouds involved!

And as the summer breeze, from flute-notes soft,
Turns to a resonant wind and boldly calls
Among the echoing hills, my transient mood
Of graveness passes, for the night is strong,
And passionately the voices of the night
Speak to deep wells within the heart of man,
Till the deep wells make answer. I, at least,
Walking in summer on the winding road,
With downs about me, with the moon above—
With the bright moon which, as it rises, pours
A light increasing through the lilac sky—
Amidst the wine-like fragrance of the air,
Hear depth to depth make answer, height to height.

JOYS OF LIFE

That light we know to be only seeming;
Those stars in dream looking down on dreaming;
Blank space which cheats us; quick time which slips;
Thin ghosts of wines which deride our yearning;
Pale shadows of love which leave us burning
To gain the rapture of unseen lips:

The faiths too cold for the heart's subsistence;
Hope's light too faint on a bleak existence;
All ways too many for ends in doubt:
But though perplex'd by disorder'd courses—
One strength call'd up from the soul's resources—
Still to go on and to do without!

WATERS OF CREATION

Thou dost reflect alone the changeful skies—
A greater speculation fills our eyes:
We are thy masters, for, exceeding thee,
Above thy wildest storm the mind can rise,
Strong sea, great sea!

THE PALACE OF LIFE

Man's sacramental house has many halls
And secret passages contrived in walls,
With darken'd chambers, suited for repose,
Down quiet corridors—remote from those
Wherein the guests and menials daily tread.
Sad rooms are set for watchers by the dead,
And secret alcoves, plann'd on lonely stairs,
Open, wherein fond lovers unawares
Are seldom taken by the stealthy spy.
There also towers and turrets are built high,
Where those ascend whom solitary thought
Has inward contemplation's sweetness taught.
Halls of convention may be found and vast
Saloons for banqueting and music; last,
There, too, are chapels of a thousand creeds,
By hearts devoted to the greater needs,
And solemn places more remote than these
Wherein adepts set forth their mysteries.

Now, howsoe'er a man his life divide
'Midst things of sanctity or things decried,

One corner cover'd by the dome alone
Can knowledge or mere rumour make his own;
Yet in that house are casements opening
On vistas of the strange and unknown thing
Which spreads without humanity's abode.
Where lead the paths therein? Where leads the road?
What lies beyond the fastness and the fell,
Or the great deeps of sea which surge and swell?
O mist of valleys and æonian snows!
O desperate days and nights without repose!
There is no man that knoweth, save a dream
Shall hint him somewhat of the clouded scheme;
Or voices equally unknown outseek
The watcher on his balcony, and speak
A message in his shrinking ear, about
The joy or sorrow that is stored without.
Thereafter visions and the power of song,
With deep prophetic tongues, to him belong;
Or, by desirable and awful things
O'erwhelm'd, his body from the house he flings,
When in a twinkling of the eye he learns
The all or nothing, but at least returns
Into the mansion of mankind no more.

The house has seemingly no public door
For coming and for going; here the dead
Sleep in the vaults beneath with easy head;
Or if their souls into the unpierced space
Go forth, the watcher cannot see their face;
And if at times against the windows press
Poor phantom aspects full of dreariness,
The horror of the eyes for those within
Cuts off the sympathy of kith and kin.

Now this is, therefore, to dissuade a few
From heeding tidings, whether false or true,

Which in these later days are rumour'd round—
To say some open portal has been found,
Or one which can be open'd by the hand,
For easy entrance in the unknown land;
That Nature high-exalted then is seen;
That dead men greet us with a front serene;
That when the secret mazes have been trod
The mind may feel itself alone with God,
And can see truth and beauty with pure eyes.
In sooth we know not which way beauty lies,
Or on what heights and in what wells and deeps
Truth, which is also beauty, wakes or sleeps,
Much less of how it shall the soul befall
In this place or in that to find the All.
But not denying that a door may be
Set back by him who hath its master-key,
Let one who, ere the ending of his days,
Has much endured and travail'd in strange ways,
Exhort his brothers not in life's short span
To leave unqualified the roof of man,
Or seek, especially in ways unknown,
What it may feel like when with God alone.
Our sacramental house has veils undrawn
And curtains never raised at eve or dawn;
It burns alone the instituted lights
And all that shews therein are only rites.
We know indeed the soul with her strong fires
Beyond these human ministries aspires
In spirit and in truth to reach her end;
But not in vain do veils the soul defend;
Nor yet in vain do Nature, Grace and Art,
Their ceremonial formulæ impart;
And not in vain does God His glory dim
By many clouds, that we can gaze on Him.
A time may come when He shall put them by
And, standing lip to lip and eye to eye,
From all conventions sign the soul's release,
With true Pax tecum and with kiss of peace

More closely married than is rhyme with rhyme.
Great is the speech of parables meantime,
And up and down the house of man there pass
The sacred pageants of a life-long mass:
O let the arid speculations end,
Till from the altar-steps the priests descend!

There is indeed a certain narrow road
Which in a sense leads forth from our abode,
But not by ways from vantage points descried
Through desert places of the world outside.
Open it lies for those to walk therein
Who having put away the life of sin,
With the long quest of their desire and gain,
Do in their own souls seek and so attain
The individual knowledge of their end.
Peace on those paths for the elect attend!
May the great universe expand for them
Through many kingdoms to their diadem!
And underneath the white light of their crown
May those who go to God find God come down,
Since in the secret centre of their heart
Who came from Him from Him did never part.
But howsoe'er encompass'd by the hosts
This is the life of life and not of ghosts,
Nor does it lie beyond the walls of each.
Hard is this path to learn of, hard to reach
And few there are that seek it, or can teach
The rending of the veils that guard it here—
Too well protected since it lies too near.
Therein the waking comes, the rest is dream;
Yet this is also in the mystic scheme
And, steep'd awhile in life's magnetic trance,
The souls that slumber may in sleep advance
And something still behold through their smoked lens—
Sic salve, Domine omnipotens!

THE SECRET GARDEN

Friends, it is fair in garden-bowers conceal'd,
When, round the high, fruit-heavy mural shield,
The white wind washes and the corn-fields roll;
But further still, in the wide world afield,
I found a secret garden of the soul.

O, there is morning glory on the sea,
And fragrant still at eve shall pinewoods be!
While night is grand on mountains, in the glow
And mystery of moonlight; but for me
One place reserve, of all the world I know!

So, having travell'd long, and fain to rest,
I keep that place a secret in my breast
And secret more than all one bower of love,
Where—sweeter far than Araby the blest—
My spikenard giveth forth the fumes thereof.

BACK TO THE LAND

To silent worlds of music, open'd up
Within the present scheme and scope of things
By audible solemnities of sound,
My soul slipp'd through, and traversed endless groves
Of immemorial melody. A storm
Of choral praise, unprefaced, with a crash
Burst on me then, the language of dead gods,
And drew me back amidst a Temple's types—
Sign-words and sacraments of mystery.
So to the end it held me, magnet-wise,

Till thyrsus-bearers pass'd and hierophants;
But when the darken'd Fane reserved alone
The secret god, I follow'd from afar
Behind a veil into the vestibule,
And saw grey ashes of the charcoal fire
Shew one faint spark; the open window shew'd,
All bent and twisted through the floral wilds,
A woodland path whence myrrh-like odours rose;
Low voices came from violets and faint
Song-bursts of birds invisible.

Through such
High offices, the heart, whose seeing sense
Follows election, having Nature heard—
As Nature speaks—has taken to itself
A certain message and the most withdrawn—
To wit, those deeps within the living masque
Of days. Thereafter, in pursuit of signs
More eloquent, of greater testaments,
The heart takes counsel with the sanctuary
And finds the Holy of the Holies, past
All Holy Places, yet at times looks forth,
Where all the chancels of the world without—
Which after their own manner sang of old—
Do now in likeness of One Voice intone.
The chancel walls, expanding thereupon,
Take Nature in; exalting Nature gives
At every point upon the Temple's gates;
And if the fires and lights expend in fine,
Her lights, her fires, assume on man's behalf
The offices—not antiphons alone
Reciting, but responses order'd well.
If therefore priests at altars fall asleep,
And in their stalls the choirs forget the Rites,
No psaltery is wanting in the world.

A RITE OF EXALTATION

I thought at length that haply human love
Might offer refuge from the things above
Which had so long drawn on my life of thought
Through unfrequented pathways, hardly sought,
Full hard to climb; and having climb'd, 'tis still
More dreadful on the summit of such hill
The mind's fastidious balance to preserve,
Nor dizzily towards precipices swerve
And the emerited soul in sense immerge.
Back therefore from the summit and the verge,
Where terribly the known and unknown meet,
For some few seasons baffled, such retreat
As those can find who once the starry track
Have strain'd at and for ever must look back
I made; my peace with Nature, long foregone,
Sign'd, as I best could sign; and so put on
Once more the huddled vesture of my kind.
Then the unearthly beauties, which to find
I strove so long, for me seem'd now to strive;
Their tincture haunted all things here alive,
Suggesting ends desired that were not they;
And that which in the height was far away
On earthly eyes seem'd momently to loom—
Clamour of triumph seized, glorious doom.
And in the place of stillness, brooding deep
On frozen summits, or the awful sleep
Which can the soul amidst the heights infold,
All that which beats within the chains of gold
And iris prison of the public things,
Through mystic music, its invisible wings,
Amidst the outward melodies, began
To speak—as Nature never spoke to man.

I testify that past mere sense alone
Experience spreads her more exalted zone;
That past the common range of human mind
There stretch the royal regions undivined,
An undiscover'd country which if trod
Seems to lead backward and be lost in God.
There is a door, which, when we find its key,
Opens therein from our humanity.
So forth on roof and parapet at times
Stealing, I saw what none can speak in rhymes;
But never came the message to mine ear,
Or saw the visionary eye so near
As when, reluctantly, its potent spell
Breaking, I turn'd from the invisible
And brought the light of all that dwells withdrawn,
The glory of the spiritual dawn,
These fleshly regions to illuminate.

Now, there was one who dwelt within the gate
Of outward dreams, nor ever question'd these,
But rather, awestruck, from realities
Had surely shrunk, if face to face with them.
Yet beauty wore she as a diadem,
And shone in innocence a radiant star:
Gentle and mild was she, as maidens are
Whose souls are subtly link'd with things above
By sanctified capacities of love.
Her from the sons and daughters of the race
I chose, to lift up from her lonely place
Amidst the crowd which sees not where it goes:
I wrought love's work on her, and now she knows.

What follows?—This: that soul can soul uplift;
Those who have dwelt in light can bring that gift
To something more than isolated fruit
Within themselves, and can at will transmute

Such as they take into their heart of heart,
Making an altar set from earth apart,
Whereon is kindled an eternal flame,
And there the Incommunicable Name
Is utter'd. Or—all symbols set aside—
Learn, simple woman can be deified!
I shew this truth—when one, of light possess'd,
Has all his nature to the task address'd.
Know too the work is love's—and love's the call—
While love is also the material.
And at the end such union comes at length
As to the worker brings another strength
Those heights forsaken once again to dare,
Those realms discover which await him there,
With consciousness of ends beyond them still—
The holy palace, the eternal hill!

PLAY-SCENES

Nature is pantomime; some force bestirs
The antic struggles of her characters,
And semblances of life imparts to each,
But no true motion and no gift of speech.
Some mask unknown stands at the stage's wings
And for each mimic actor speaks or sings,
While in the galleries and stalls we sit
But do not rightly catch one word of it.

ABSOLUTION

Here to me, friends!—Have I wrong'd you?—Come to me more than all—
That which my lips would utter, with tenderer lips forestall,

Now that the wardens who watch'd me, breaking the guard they kept—
(Passion and pride)—permit me—(dry-eyed, among those that have wept,
No longer)—to share in your weeping—set free in a sense—
Human amidst the human, not as a rock of offence.
The wand has smitten the rock and a plenteous water springs,
So that my heart is link'd with the pulse at the heart of things.

Ye that are human, pardon! If any I need forgive,
Rest I wish them and joy, with the life that a man would live
Who, in spite of adverse omens written on earth and sky,
Knows well that his Saviour liveth and redemption draweth nigh.

Ye that in secret, below your coats and plumage and skins,
Shelter hearts which are human, free from our follies and sins;
Birds of the air and the beasts, I know by your moans and cries,
Your songs which pant for language, your sad, deep, eloquent eyes;
Ye also have needed love, the want of the world ye know.
Warm be the sunshine about you, soft the winds as they blow;
If I have wrong'd you—it may be—come ye also—forgive;
The life of all life uplift you, that ye may also live!

Nature, gracious of seeming, we have met perchance too late,
Truly to love each other, closely to mingle and mate;
But, in these latter days, less now than we were out of reach,
In part I divine your thought, and in part you have learn'd my speech:
So far as my life has wrong'd you—I pray you also, forgive!
Some one has wounded you surely: may you be heal'd and live!

Grace, from a world pour'd down which I knew in the times of old,
Or ever my star was barter'd, or ever my birthright sold;
Surely I loved thee always, wherever my steps have stray'd;
To leave is still to love thee; I loved thee, though I betray'd!
For all my wrongs forgive me, and here, in this empty heart,
Till it fills, pour down thine unction; the life of my life thou art.

Yet if man and brute deny me, if Nature spurn me back,
If Grace deflect her channels, bear witness, thou starry track!
I know in my heart of hearts the hills that can yet be trod;
I will take up my heart in my hands, and go up to Thee, my God—
I come to Thee last, but I come; they fail'd me in all the strife—
Those signs of help and comfort; here is the end of my life.
I find no refuge but Thee, O last and first in the wide
And empty worlds of the soul; Thou canst not cast me aside!

Yet hearts which are offer'd to anything under the sun
Are not for long rejected, at least by Nature for one;
And though the hands which are wise, high gifts may hold for a space,
We are not defrauded long of all communion with Grace;
Man never truly waited, if man could ease him a smart;
The rudest beast of the field responds to the human heart;
While those who cry, “O, my darling!” with great hearts inly stirr'd,
Are little less than the angels—that is my gospel word!

VEILS OF ISIS

Nature is naked until man's own mind
Has rainbow hues to all her form assign'd;
And she in turn provides his garments dim:
Say, who shall robe her when his hands unbind,
Who unclothe him?

INSUFFICIENCY

Thou, having seen it, art thou satisfied?—
That platform of the morning bulges wide
Above the purple gorges, in the dim,
Exalted light. Far down the sea-mews swim;
Far down the breakers on the crags expend
Their strength in gulfs where never men descend
And thou, awhile from sea and shore aloof,
Art as one issued on a palace-roof
In Esclair-Monde, from its exalted tiers
Gazing serenely-down on moving spheres,

And far above the night's infolding arch
Beholding systems in their stately march,
With dark, dead stars lamenting as they glide:
Say, having seen this, art thou satisfied?

Alas, the halting accents of thy speech
Can scarce another thine experience teach,
Nor can thy brain, by wonders overwrought,
Shape as thou wouldst the higher course of thought,
Since in reflection's hush do thoughts most come!
So pass the moods of ecstasy to some
More temper'd state, which knows not throne or crown,
And at the last thou goest slowly down,
With weaker steps, along the arduous slope,
Somewhat disorder'd with thy former hope—
A little dazed—but conscious on the whole
That these high places cannot fill the soul;
That Nature's peaks, which few before have trod,
Do not specifically lead to God,
And are not therefore of the soul's concern.
Only when recollections shall return
In after hours, the soul may then look back,
From quiet ways, up the precipitous track,
Where saffron morning o'er the sea spreads fair,
And know that the soul's ends are everywhere.

A CONFIDENCE

That which you seek for in your heart of hearts—
That which transcends both Nature and the Arts—
Great beyond conscious grasp of human mind,
But ever as the rest and goal
Acknowledged by your secret soul—
Brother, I promise, you shall surely find.

And if you ask me—knowing it so great—
The solid ground on which I dare to state
That you shall certainly attain at length;
Learn that beyond the things which seem
I have divined your dream,
And also know your hidden source of strength.

Have courage, therefore! Keep your daily road,
And after your own individual mode
Do that which comes to hand—the good, the true;
For failures sometimes made—as such—
Be not concern'd too much;
Fear not yourself—I have no fear for you.

HOW IT IS ATTAINED IN THE SUNSET

Now this is true philosophy, that sense
Is sometimes held in such a high suspense
As might a man be, ravish'd from the ground—
The world beneath him spinning round and round—
Who finds, at length permitted to descend,
Familiar scenes withdrawn to some far end,
And where the runnel by his thatch should be
Hears the loud organ of an open sea.

Of such suspension hear a little space—
That which bechanced me in an hour of grace,
When the time-limits fixing life and thought,
Like landmarks storm-effaced, to nothing brought,
Permit that in the circle of a dream
There slips, unnoticed by, a century's scheme,
Or, twixt the lark's last note and swift descent,
That years of rapture to the soul are lent.

It fell upon an eve made rich with heat
Of spikenard odours and frankincense sweet,
Which the deep-breathing earth gave forth from her—
Item—an ecstasy of nard and myrrh—
That a fair haunt which in the woods I trod
Turn'd on a sudden to a church of God,
And down the path, as down an aisle, I pass'd,
Through umbrage issuing to light at last;
An hundred feet above the plain, some crest
Attain'd, confronted by the burning West.

Scarlet and gold, how vividly, had met,
And gulfs beyond all gulfs of violet
Open'd behind; above was snowy fleece
Of stainless vapour: glory, one with peace,
Was blazon'd there. The heart of solar fire
Outdrew me by ineffable desire,
Till it flashed on me, with o'ermastering force,
That I was native to the starry course,
And that the peace of God, surpassing speech,
Through the light only could my spirit reach.
Deep, deep, I gazed, till deeps within me yearn'd;
Deep, till that light to other splendours turn'd;
Deep, till those splendours to a point drew in,
And the eye's sense alone I lived within—
Lived, from the flesh set free, the soul upcaught
Far past the heaven of stars, the heaven of thought.
And the soul died, but something greater still
Leap'd flame-like into me, her place to fill;
I was keen spirit, from the soul made free,
Which is, which hath been, and through all will be,
And then once more I was an eye which sees
Into unutterable mysteries,
While undiffused, yet limitless, thereon
The searching point of naked splendour shone—
A dreadful rapture rending through and through—
As I was known therein, I also knew.

Yes, in the light, I knew, with all made one
By the same law which poises star and sun;
For moving systems marks a single track;
Which sends forth pilgrim souls and draws them back;
From out of One the multiple evolves
And then the many in the One dissolves,
That when the end—which is no end—shall fall
Nothing be lost, but God be all in all.

Out of all time, in that great day's decline,
All love, all knowledge, for a space were mine,—
But holy words are wanting to declare;
And at the fine thereof, returning where—
Five hundred feet above the plain—that crest
I found, confronted by the burning West:
Lo, scarlet—gold—how vividly!—had met
And deeps beyond all deeps of violet,
While sinking in the lowland at my feet
The lark his brown wings hid in meadow-sweet.

PLUMES OF SABLE

Waste, waste, waste,—but the voice in the waste of the sea!
The dread, sheer height of an empty night! And the heart—Ah, the heart in me!
I know where the deep is wider, I know of a gloom more dread—
O the waste and the night of the heart, when the star from the heart has fled!

THE INTERLOCUTORY DISCOURSE

Forth on our quest, some years agone, we set:
How fares it with us? If the end is yet,
Or if we still must follow otherwhere,
Straightway in brief to each let each declare.
For me, I pause a moment on the road
To mark how far is still the heart's abode.
As one, towards morning-tide, a dream recalls
While heavy sleep as yet his sense enthrals,
I look on those long spaces over-past,
And forward, dreaming if the trance will last,
While round me move the deeper dreamers here.
Perchance for us the waking time is near
Since one advantage over these have we,
Who know how sleep expands her sorcery,
While others in their spell such comfort take
As comes to those who hold they truly wake.
Perchance we felt it from the first—who knows?—
When that bestirr'd to trouble our repose,
The grand debate which did our quest begin—
Life, and the ways of life, and how therein
Best might ambition and its force applied
Insure our getting on before we died.
In either case, whate'er the cost or pain,
Resolved were we to triumph, to attain;
And yet, despite this effort of the will,
Much, it would seem, remains to tax our skill...
Set forth the subject as we view'd it then—
That life one duty has imposed on men:
How to get on—the lesson all must learn;
By open ways if possible to earn
Their high success, if not by ways unknown.
All ends worth seeking, say, from star to stone,

We pass'd in thought before us, ere our choice
Was made; but those which earthly hearts rejoice
Look'd scarcely worth life's dedicated span,
Nor did some greater aims pursued by man
Seem likely to avail him in the end:
Such signal triumphs as on art attend;
The crowns in paths of progress seized at times;
The laurel wreaths of rhymers and their rhymes;
Devotion's guerdon for a country's weal:
Due lauds we gave them, owning their appeal,
But did with blessing true their claim dismiss.
Full long we ponder'd, weighing that with this,
Nor did the humbler walks of life disdain;
But in the end we found that trades were vain,
And all the crowded ways where men compete;
That e'en the daily bread which all must eat
'Twere better, if it might be, to forego
Than daily bread for our sole object know;
That wealth and luxury and social place,
And seats among the mighty of the race,
May in themselves be honourable things,
But insufficient for ambition's wings.
How, therefore, truly to get on? said we;
Then paused a moment, since it seem'd to be
No small achievement that, with hearts content,
We could from public interests dissent
And from all competitions stand aside.
But presently we found that ere he died
Each son of man saw vanity in these,
And now, as then, the saint their contact flees.
What true end, therefore, over and before
All these remains?—O knowledge, evermore
Follow'd and worshipp'd! O ye lights of mind!
Ye secrets of the deeps all deeps behind!
Ye hidden forces! Man—his height, his deep—
Ways of the waking world and world asleep—

Praise we invoked on all who these pursued;
For us we left them to their solitude:
How therefore truly to get on? we said.
And so it came to pass our souls were fed
With glimpses of a causeway seldom trod,
When something told us that our end was God.
Thereat we blest, as paths already tried,
The grand old faiths, but put their claims aside,
And forth upon our varied course we went—
What weary days—on God's attainment bent!
Of many men did you perchance inquire,
To saint and sage spurr'd on by one desire,
And over all the world did learn of all.
But whatsoever did your days befall,
The circle of that world has brought you round
Unto the starting point—and how much found?
How much, how little? ... I inquired of none—
Of One alone by One to seek the One,
For me at least avail'd. Absorb'd in mind,
By blessed contemplation's ruling kind,
From sleep of midnight, watch of noon and dawn
I sought the vision out of these withdrawn;
And me the circle of the deeps has brought
Back to the starting point—but how much taught?
Leastways one lesson both for me and you—
Ours is the way of the attainment true;
No better end than that we two divine
Has shone upon your pathway or on mine,
All paths attempting where all lights have shone,
And ours the only way for getting on.
So forward, therefore; somewhere lurks the end:
All in good time—His time—that's best, my friend!

GROUNDS OF UNION

There is no need to take thy hand,
To touch thy lips, or thee to greet;
Nor must I say in what far land,
Out of all time, we first did meet:
As in this russet hour we stand,
That which has parted us meseems
A curtain in some House of Dreams.

Or, in this aching scheme of things,
If memories like these delude,
My yearning towards thee, taking wings,
Doth ever in the past intrude;
From such dim halls thy picture brings,
And—since it sees thee everywhere—
Can skry no world but thou art there.

I will not speak of love to thee,
For, having look'd in eyes like thine,
Past love's inscrutable mystery,
Something more sacred, more divine
And undeclared than love I see;
And what those secret depths infold,
That, in my heart, for thee I hold.

Taught in strange schools, this earthly place
Finds task-work in my forms of speech;
But, looking on thy chasten'd face,
All hast thou learn'd which I would teach:
By thy tired eyes and tortured grace,
Surely when forming thee God sigh'd—
Thou art so wan, so mortified.

From us, whom Nature never knew,
That common health is far removed
Whereof old saints, with instinct true
But angel-mildness, disapproved:
They read our weakness through and through,
Saw that strong thews and nerves of earth
Win hardly towards the second birth.

The knots which bind our souls are such
As earthly ties would strain and start;
Each would not hold in each so much,
If ill-content on earth to part:
That once the ways we walk should touch
For consolation, not for need,
That which is merciful decreed.

Let then those ways divide, not they
Shall now conjoin or disconnect:
Thou wilt not fail me on a day,
Nor I from love's sheer height deflect
By reaching towards thy house of clay;
But when that day for me and thee
Comes, at the end, remember me!

In the great session, when They meet
For rites of union, thou wilt wait,
Knowing I follow on thy feet,
And I will pause, if thou be late,
A little at the mercy-seat;
Till God shall make us one in Him,
Hide under wings of seraphim.

THEOPHANY

Too long unmindful of the great concern,
We did from errors of our way return,
From strange side-issues and from paths involved.
Thenceforth on reasonable life resolved,
Our sins fell from us; and unloosed with these
Were many morganatic marriages,
Incurr'd regardless of the sacred things
Which life imposes on the Sons of Kings—
Who wait for restoration to their own,
Since old mischance deprived of crown and throne.
Full many plans we tried in vain since then,
Nor did neglect the arts and crafts of men
Uncertain of the ends to which they lead;
But there was little for the greater need
Which on the Sons of Kings full sadly falls,
Hearing their former country's far off calls.

Set now with steadfast feet in these new ways,
What quest might glorify our later days
Whose hearts so high were fix'd on things above?
Ah, friends! Regarding thus the place of love,
What could we seek herein to hear or see
But the sweet rumours of its mystery?
Of Him who shall at length our crown restore
Some faint reflections on this earthly shore?

And so it fell that from the dream we kept
Within our hearts, a flame of ardour leapt,
Till we, drawn forth to seek in every place
The tidings of His presence and His grace,
Did in the end, by golden legends led,
A realm of mystery and wonder tread,
Chosen from all the places of the earth,
To see God manifest by human birth.

Kings which had follow'd, from their realms afar,
The age-long portent of a certain star;
Priests of a line which since the world began
Was set to offer sacrifice for man;
And, far across the melancholy seas,
The silent keepers of the mysteries;
Met in their crowds upon that haunted ground—
And we, the King's Sons, waiting to be crown'd.

But not alone the royal and the wise,
The pontiffs with illuminated eyes,
Or those who, secretly instructed, knew
How old traditions win fulfilment true:
There also came the shepherds from the hills,
And he who sows the ground and he who tills:
From noisy marts the merchants flock'd in haste;
Came too the lawless rovers of the waste;
And from the city hied the child of sin—
To see God born and a new life begin
To make refreshment in a weary world.

So round about the holy place were furl'd
The nations' banners; peace on nations fell,
And the long strife of creeds was ended well.
The spirit of the world its pride gave up,
And kiss'd the hallows and the holy cup;
The flesh dissolving utter'd as it died
The sacred mass-words, and was purified;
And Lucifer, the Prince, who knelt with them,
Turn'd sweetly praying towards Jerusalem.

So thus it fell, upon a certain morn,
All in the hearts of men, that God was born,
And that we also knew what sacred things
Such birth imposes on the Sons of Kings.

OF FAITH AND VISION

The life of light, the light which dwells in life,
With perfect, free and undivided love,
We seers have loved for ever; have abode
In any conscious gloom of heart or mind
Unwillingly; have ever into day,
With strife and clamour of aspiration, sprung;
And when we found true sunlight we were blest.
We have not scorn'd the simpler gifts of faith,
Yet sought in knowledge, with the soul's clear sight,
That lucid world, its scatter'd rays of grace
Receiving and reflecting; but when those
Were granted not, we held to faith and hope;
And any beam diffused along the dark,
Though less than nothing to the world at large,
Our hearts collected, cherish'd, dwelt therein,
And bless'd the Giver; counting all things well;
As grateful for His silence as His speech;
Keeping His silence with the same brave heart
Which, bidden, would have trumpeted His word;
For ever waiting on that word by Him
Withheld for ever. ... To the end of all
Approaching now, we fail but do not faint:
He has not seal'd our mission or granted us
The consolation of His messengers.
We have not heard His voice; we have not work'd
His miracles, nor stood before His world
And testified that we indeed were sent;
But we have loved the light, and here and now,
Before the antechamber of the tomb—
Yea, underneath the quiet wings of death—
Faith helps us still, amidst true calm of soul,

To say: The quest is broken for a while,
But ended not; and, whether life or death,
We still desire the vision and the truth.
Bid therefore, Lord, Thy servants pass in peace,
Beholding Thy salvation with their eyes!

THE PATH

Seeing that all which lives beneath the sun
Is, in the last resource, explain'd by One;
That every will which works or star which sings
In fine goes back into the font of things;
That by a final gathering of force
The soul of man shall, to complete its course,
With a great rush return from whence it came;
The last and first can differ but in name,
And there is one beginning and one end.
How then these varied interests defend
Which now distract and dissipate the soul,
Leading it daily further from the whole—
Wherein we know there lies our only good?
Ah, we have heard but have not understood!
From the confessions of our lips the heart,
Untouch'd and unconvinced, has stood apart,
So that mere words have trick'd us over long.
But, when the soul is search'd, the soul proves strong;
Zenith and Nadir and the Sacred Hill
Shew nothing keener than the human will,
Directed wisely unto wisdom's term.
Let us be therefore bold, and here affirm
That one strong wrench and this alone man needs
To set himself apart from evil deeds;
And if in ceasing utterly from these
The true Path lies, then are all mysteries

So well within the circle of his days
That if, forsooth, there sounds a seraph's praise
About the white light of a central throne,
Not to the end shall angels serve alone.
Man's voice with theirs may join, he stand with them,
Nor fail at last of any diadem
Which can crown souls in any place unknown,
Nor—if the stars have thrones—lose star and throne.

All this, however, is but mystic speech—
Our lip-confessions shew what man must reach;
The soul its origin from One discerns,
And the soul's rest is when the soul returns.
But up that steep incline which once we trod,
When we came down—we know not why—from God,
We know indeed that none to climb begin,
Nor dare, until they cast away their sin.

Now, is it hard for man to sin no more?
To say that all which drew aside before,
Henceforth for him, is of its lure bereft,
That to go upward is the one course left?
Bear with me, friends, if what I know full well,
Of all evasions free, for once I tell:
This is not hard to any heart resolved,
Since in the soul's bent is one change involved,
One simple reconstruction of the will;
Then from the soul shall pass the lust of ill.

Think that outside our end all toil is vain;
Think that who wills can to the end attain;
Know that what does not to that end belong
Is folly always, if not open wrong:
Fix this before you, and you shall not err;
Nothing shall tempt you, nothing shall deter.
These are plain words, but their high sense enrings
The solemn secret of acquiring wings,

And from a complex to a simple mode
Can bring the soul, so that it knows the road;
So, seal'd with all simplicity, discerns
How what was many to the One returns.

VALE

Good-night; the hour is late, the house is cold,
The fires have smoulder'd down, the lamps are spent,
And all the visitors that came and went,
Sleep—which I also need—doth now enfold.
Late, late it grows: how long before we meet—
Beyond the fells, the fastness, the abyss?
O ways too far for over-weary feet!
O heart uncertain what the true goal is!
Somehow, somewhere, in darkness or rich gleam,
Yet shall we meet! Till then—good-night, sweet dream!