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333

AUTUMN VOICES:

SONNETS AND LYRICS.

(1883.)
335

I. THE LATER LOVE.

Yes: first love was most sweet. But, fourteen long years nearer
To death (and God?), one sees all things with vision clearer
And larger is the might
Of love that gathers force from all the years receding
And glances back and back along the roadway bleeding,
Till thoughts of past pains fill its eyes with light.
So, greater is the love that God and death watch over
Now, than the love that wings of meadow-sweet and clover
Guarded in early days.
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And grander is the scent of salt waves large and leaping
Than scent of the old pines in mountain-meadows sleeping
Under the suns of youth, and their warm rays.
The whole soul gathers force, and all the force it gathers
Adds to the might of love, and strong love ever fathers
Stronger delight and glee:
Even as the laughing might of the blue-bubbling river
Is nought beside the jests whose strong wings flash and quiver
Over the surface of the windy sea.
First love is very sweet. But later love is sweeter:
For the near face of death adds sweetness to the metre
In which the last love sings.
Sweet is the touch of love when life is all before us,
But sweeter is love's touch when round about and o'er us
Rustle the untouched and immortal wings.
Sept.. 17, 1883.
337

II. THE ETERNAL BOYHOOD.

This I would do, start fresh with thee,—through sweet France dreaming,
Or marking wealth of blue or purple night-time gleaming
In fragrant Italy.
Start fresh—quite fresh,—I could; and watch the moonlight chasing
The sea-bird's pure white wings with laughter and love amazing
Across new azure leagues of Southern sea.
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Yes: I could be a boy again.—I could to-morrow
Banish all thoughts of old and sombre-hearted sorrow
And enter life anew.
Wonder at all the skies, as if the ethereal azure
Never, not once before, gave eyes and spirit pleasure:
Marvel, as if new-born, at ocean's blue.
I could start quite afresh,—young, passionate, boy-hearted.
God gave the poets youth for ever when he parted,
Weary, with all his own.
And when God tired of love, he gave the poets power
To enter love's bright fields, and gather love's white flower,
With all the force that from himself had flown.
So I could be quite young. The poppies in the meadows;
The tender flower of blue that 'mid the cornstalks' shadows
Rests, and it shines between;
339

The iris in the pond; the water-flags, and follies
Of the blue-capped titmice amid the yews and hollies;
The dusky pinewoods' depths of darkening green;
The splendour of the sky; the wonder of great cities;
The glory of the moon that soars above and pities
The town's dim smoky roar;
The summer waves that plash upon the shingly gravel;
The wintry white large waves whose threatening swift crests travel
Out from wild ocean to the trembling shore;
The robin on the rail with plaintive soft note piping;
The crimson bars of cloud the lilac background striping
When sunset gilds the air:—
All this could be as new to me as when God saw it
For the first time, without one human pang to flaw it,
When first creation shone supremely fair.
340

For the whole world is ever virgin to the poet.
The thinker's brain he brings,—but the boy's heart to know it;
The youth's heart to adore:—
Sweet as first love to him the world for ever gleameth,
And in her deep sweet eyes his answering deep heart dreameth,
Full of wild worship,—yes, for evermore.
341

IX. THE SOUL-GAME.

This is the game that thrills the giant veins
Of God himself with most impassioned life:
Soul against soul to balance in wild strife;
Heart against heart. No battling warrior gains
So fierce a sense of joy as he who drains
In the soul-struggle large and sweet and long
The cup of passion and the cup of song;
Then loosens for the charge his bridle-reins.
Command an army? Yes: the joy is large.
But far more terrible and far more deep
The joy of feeling stern against one's targe
A woman's pitiless soul-arrows leap;
The joy of holding 'mid the thunderous charge
Of passion the soul's battlemented keep.
351

XII. THE SWEETEST LOVE.

Yes: marriage-love is sweet. But sweeter far
The love that perfect Freedom crowns and brings:
The love that underneath the midnight sings
And weaves through sorrow's dark locks star on star.
The love that though the whole world rose to bar
Its kingly road would sweep with fiery wings
Far from its path all fierce opposing things
And seek the regions where the great souls are.
O holiest love of all!—the love that links
Two souls in one for very love's own sake.
The love that not time's jarring thunders shake:
The love that at heaven's clearest sweet fount drinks:
The love that loves till every thought else sinks:
The love that bends not, though the heart may break.
354

XXII. AT LAST.

I heard a voice that said: “The time has come.
Let the whole line of bayonet-points advance”.—
I looked around the field with one last glance,
And saw once more a blackberry-hedge in bloom.
And then through curdled smoke and powdery gloom
I saw the quick fires round the cannons dance,
And saw wild pennons wave from many a lance,
And saw strange helmets flash and mad steeds loom.
I drew my sword ere that great final sound
“Let the whole line advance” had fully past,
Tightened my sword-belt, and drew in my breath.
Then as the red line with a giant bound
Plunged after me, my whole soul laughed at last.—
And this was life supreme,—and this was death.
Dec. 30, 1883.
366

SONNET. CHRIST'S LOVE.

Did Christ love many women? Yes. But he
Not only with strong sweet lips held them fast,
But with his soul he loved them to the last
And with the incarnate pulse of Deity.
The spirit of love in him was like a sea,
Immutable, eternal, wondrous, vast:
Yet when the wave of passionate joy was past,
His love throbbed onward through eternity.
Christ never lost a love.—He held his own
Safe though the winds of dark time round them rang.
No woman whose glad mouth with passion sang,
Touched by his mouth, her Master did disown.
Through Peter came the treacherous deadly pang:
The love of woman made Christ's cross a throne.
March 7, 1884.
367

A VISION OF THE DEAD.

I

Through all my former life as in a dream
I passed.—I saw the Dover cliffs again,
Where the bright “clouded yellows” used to gleam
And “azure blues” in many a leafy lane.
Yet o'er the cliffs when sunset grim and red
Flamed, I beheld the faces of the dead.

II

Keswick I tried. The birch and oak were there;
And blue and tranquil Derwentwater shone:
O'er the high hills the floating clouds were fair;
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The moon hung o'er the green glens, sweet and wan.
Yet when the golden day had waned and fled,
There also I was haunted by the dead.

III

I went to Paris. The dear city white
Was beautiful as ever: by the Seine
I wandered, when the sacred starlit night
Folded the city in soft peace again.
But here too fluttered round about my head
Dim pinions of the innumerable dead.

IV

Nor only my dead. O'er the river wide
I seemed a silent breathless host to see:
They swept with awful starry gaze, flame-eyed,
Around, above, on every side of me.
I heard a voice that from the blue air said,
“Behold! each live soul hath an host of dead”.
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V

And through the host one pale majestic face,
Crowned like a leader of all men, I saw.
A ghostly army at his heels did race:
He and his phantom-soldiers smote with awe
My spirit:—a gigantic host he led,
And yet each warrior of the host was dead.

VI

Dim bearskins I could see, and helmets bright
Over the Seine: and he amid them all
Shone with that clear-cut face so deadly-white,—
He led the old Guard now without bugle-call.
O'er Paris he and they, an army dread,
Floated: Napoleon and Napoleon's dead.

VII

I sought Geneva. Blue and clear the lake
Gleamed, and afar Mont Blanc was touched to rose:
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Still doth the sunsets' fire the mountains take,
Breaking their sombre measureless repose.
Then all grew dark and darker,—and instead
Of stars I saw the star-eyes of the dead.

VIII

I sought Lausanne: and round about the place
Still the old orchards full of quiet charm;
Still mountain streamlets run their foaming race,
And still the mountains fold with dusky arm
The glittering water. From each orchard-shed
A grey ghost peeped: some well-loved friend long dead.

IX

And then to England my sad spirit came,
To Whitby: and the old white waves were there,
And blue far waters, and the sun's fierce flame,
371

And ferns and green woods,—and a woman fair.
Sweeter than words the scent her loose locks shed!
And yet here too I communed with the dead.

X

I went to Oxford. Still the fields were green,
And still the yellow marigold most bright
Clustered along the frequent dykes was seen,
And still the Isis laughed with ripples light.
But ah, the old days! For ever each had sped.
Old days, old faces . . . all my friends were dead.

XI

Again I saw the green rough Cornish waves
Pour giant masses on the rocky shore;
Still in the hollow cliff-side granite caves
The maiden-hair lurks hidden as of yore:
The brown streams as of old the moorland fed.
Yes. But here too I met the cloud of dead.
372

XII

I sought the streets of Edinburgh. There
Frowned the old castle; all was still the same:
Still the same mountains,—mossy rocks and bare:
Towards Holyrood one quiet night I came,
When lo! the august inevitable tread
About my path of legions of pale dead.

XIII

And midmost these shone Mary, with the eyes
That held the hearts of lovers magic-bound:
And after her through haunted heights of skies
Swept hosts of followers, gliding without sound
Along the airs,—and in their looks I read
That these were shadows, shadows of the dead.

XIV

Darnley was there and Bothwell: Chastelard,
And pallid Rizzio; and a thousand more.
373

The guarded gates of Holyrood were barred,
Yet through the gates their grisly hosts did pour.
The sentry's living eyes were dull as lead:
He saw not Mary; no, nor Mary's dead.

XV

Next Balcombe. Quiet undergrowth of firs,
And yellow sunsets, and the smell of pines,
And purple heather on the green hill-spurs,
And red fruit of the withering eglantines.
Yes, all was as of old. Yet my heart bled.
Here too I heard soft whispers of the dead.

XVI

Then London. There I wait:—till I too pass
Beyond all flowers and songs to that dim room
Where never summer scent of rose or grass
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Mingles with the dull omnipresent gloom;
Till I too join with sombre wings outspread,
Their last recruit, the army of the dead.
April, 1882.
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