University of Virginia Library

previous section Sonnets of the Wingless Hours
next section
1

SECTION I. A WHEELED BED
1873-1893

3

TO THE MUSE.
I.

To keep through life the posture of the grave,
While others walk and run and dance and leap;
To keep it ever, waking or asleep,
While shrink the limbs that Nature goodly gave;
In summer's heat no more to breast the wave;
No more to wade through seeded grasses deep;
Nor tread the cornfield where the reapers reap;
Nor stretch free limbs beneath a leafy nave:
'Tis hard, 'tis hard; and so in winter too,
'Tis hard to hear no more the sweet faint creak
Of the crisp snow, the frozen earth's clear ring,
Where ripe blue sloes and crimson berries woo
The hopping redbreast. But when thou dost seek
My lonely room, sweet Muse, Despair takes wing.
4

TO THE MUSE
II.

Oh, were it not for thee, the dull dead weight
Of Time's great coils, too sluggishly unroll'd,
Which seem to creep across me fold on fold
As I lie prostrate, were for strength too great:
For health and motion are not all that Fate,
As years go by, continues to withhold;
A yet more noble birthright once was sold
For one small mess of pottage that I ate;
And like that king, who, prison'd underground
In caves of treasure, saw his starving self
Derided by uneatable gold all round,
I fix my hungry eyes where, cruelly near,
Are standing closed, on every mocking shelf,
The books I dare not read and dare not hear.
5

FAIRY GODMOTHERS.

I think the Fairies to my christening came:
But they were wicked sprites, and envious elves,
Who brought me gall, as bitter as themselves,
In tiny tankards wrought with fairy flame.
They wished me love of books—each little dame—
With power to read no book upon my shelves;
Fair limbs—for palsy;—Dead Sea fruits by twelves
And every bitter blessing you can name.
But one good Elf there was; and she let fall
A single drop of Poesy's wine of gold
In every little tankard full of gall:
So year by year, as woes and pains grow old,
The little golden drop is in them all;
But bitterer is the cup than can be told.
6

IN DREAMS.

Think not I lie upon this couch of pain
Eternally, and motionless as clay—
Summer and winter, night as well as day—
Appealing to the heartless years in vain:
For now and then the dreams at night unchain
My stiffened limbs, and lift the links that weigh
As iron never weighed, and let me stray
Free as the wind that ripples through the grain.
Then can I walk once more, yea, run and leap;
Tread Autumn's rustling leaves or Spring's young grass;
Or stand and pant upon some bracing steep;
Or, with the rod, across the wet stones pass
Some summer brook; or on the firm skate sweep
In ceaseless circles Winter's fields of glass.
7

TWILIGHT.

A sudden pang contracts the heart of Day,
As fades the glory of the sunken sun.
The bats replace the swallows one by one;
The cries of playing children die away.
Like one in pain, a bell begins to sway;
A few white oxen, from their labour done,
Pass ghostly through the dusk; the crone that spun
Outside her door, turns in, and all grows grey.
And still I lie, as I all day have lain,
Here in this garden, thinking of the time,
Before the years of helplessness and pain;
Or playing with the fringes of a rhyme,
Until the yellow moon, amid her train
Of throbbing stars, appears o'er yonder lime.
8

TO HEALTH.

O Health, the years are passing one by one,
The Springs succeed the winters; but each Spring
Finds me where Autumn left me, and thy wing
Touches me not, though priceless life-sands run.
I see Life's pleasures lost, Life's work undone,
And scan life's waste, which knows no altering,
Like those whose eyes, on sea or desert, cling
To the horizon which engulfs the sun.
Not the ten thousand, when they saw the sea,
A pale blue streak, from Asia's endless sand,
Shouted as I should shout at sight of thee;
No, nor Columbus, when the dawn-breeze fanned
His long strained eyes, and round him thund'ringly
Rose to the clouds the cry, ‘The land! the land!’
9

LOST YEARS.

My boyhood went: it went where went the trace
Left by the pony's hoofs upon the sand;
It went where went the stream, sought rod in hand;
It went where went the ice on the pond's face.
Then went my youth: it went where Dawn doth chase
The ballroom's lights away with pearly wand;
It went where went the echoes of the band;
It went where go the nights that steal day's place.
And now my manhood goes where goes the song
Of captive birds, the cry of crippled things;
It goes where goes the day that unused dies.
The cage is narrow and the bars are strong
In which my restless spirit beats its wings;
And round me stretch unfathomable skies.
10

FOR THE FLY-LEAF OF ‘LE MIE PRIGIONI.’

There was a Poet whom the Austrians cast
From dungeon into dungeon; one whose pains,
Writ in this little book which ne'er complains,
Helped to raise Italy, like him chained fast;
Whose countless counted minutes, in the vast
Silence of Spielberg, were to be as grains
For Freedom's golden harvest; till his chains,
Made of mere steel, were stricken off at last.
What of the shadowy grates, the clankless links,
Which no lands watch, but which, like iron bars,
Quench Hope's thin flame, which slowly sinks and sinks?
They serve no cause; they rouse no patriot wars;
But through the bars of shadow and their chinks
A face can look, and twilight's few great stars.
11

A SNAILS' DERBY.

Once, in this Tuscan garden, Noon's huge ball
So slowly crossed the sky above my head,
As I lay idle on my dull wheeled bed,
That, sick of Day's inexorable crawl,
I set some snails a-racing on the wall—
With their striped shells upon their backs, instead
Of motley jockeys—black, white, yellow, red;
And watched them till the twilight's tardy fall.
And such my life, as years go one by one:
A garden where I lie beyond the flowers,
And where the snails outrace the creeping sun.
For me there are no pinions to the hours;
Compared with them, the snails like racers run:
Wait but Death's night; and, lo, the great ball lowers.
12

RIVER BABBLE.
I.

The wreathing of my rhymes has helped to chase
Away despair from many a wingless day;
And in the corners of my heart I pray
That they may last, or leave at least some trace:
Yet would I tear them all, could that replace
The fly-rod in my hand, this eve of May;
And watch the paper fragments float away
Into oblivion, on a trout-stream's face.
Thou fool, thou fool! thou weary, crippled fool!
Thou never more wilt leap from stone to stone
Where rise the trout in every rocky pool;
Thou never more wilt stand at dusk alone
Beside the humming waters, in the cool,
Where dance the flies, and make the trout thy own!
13

RIVER BABBLE.
II.

And yet I think—if ever years awoke
My limbs to motion, so that I could stand
Again beside a river, rod in hand,
As Evening spreads his solitary cloak—
That I would leave the little speckled folk
Their happy life—their marvellous command
Of stream's wild ways—and break the cruel wand,
To let them cleave the current at a stroke,
As I myself once could.—Oh, it were sweet
To ride the running ripple of the wave
As long ago, when wanes the long day's heat;
Or search, in daring headers, what gems pave
The river bed, until the bold hands meet,
In depths of beryl, what the trick'd eyes crave
14

TO OTHERS.

Ye who can roam where thrills the tawny corn,
Or wade through seeded grass, or who can stray
Across the meadows as they make the hay,
Or where the dewdrop sparkles on the thorn—
If you could lose, but for a single day,
Your use of limb, your power to pluck the may
In rutty lanes where thrushes sing all day,
I wonder, would you speak of life with scorn?
God knows, I would not keep you pent for long
In that close cage where anguish pecks the husk
Of Life's spilt millet, upon which it thrives;
But long enough to let you learn the song
Which captive thrushes sing from dawn to dusk:
An hour or two would make you love your lives.
15

KING CHRISTMAS.

Now Old King Christmas, bearded hoary-white,
Comes with his holly and carousing noise,
Barons of beef, mince pies, and wassail joys,
And flame surrounds the pudding blue and bright;
And now the fir-trees, as he comes in sight,
Acclaimed by eager blue-eyed girls and boys,
Burst into tinsel fruit and glittering toys,
And turn into a pyramid of light.
I love, in fancy, still to see them all,
Those happy children round the dazzling tree
Which fills the room with scents of fir and wax;
For still I love that life's sweet things should fall
Into the lap of others; though, for me,
The gift of Christmas is but pain that racks.
16

AN ELFIN SKATE.
I.

They wheeled me up the snow-cleared garden way,
And left me where the dazzling heaps were thrown;
And as I mused on winter sports once known,
Up came a tiny man to where I lay.
He was six inches high; his beard was gray
As silver frost; his coat and cap were brown,
Of mouse's fur; while two wee skates hung down
From his wee belt, and gleamed in winter's ray.
He clambered up my couch, and eyed me long.
‘Show me thy skates,’ said I; ‘for once, alas!
I, too, could skate. What pixie mayst thou be?’
‘I am the king,’ he answered, ‘of the throng
Called Winter Elves. We live in roots, and pass
The summer months in sleep. Frost sets us free.’
17

AN ELFIN SKATE.
II.

‘We find by moonlight little pools of ice,
Just one yard wide,’ the imp of winter said;
‘And skate all night, while mortals are in bed,
In tiny circles of our Elf device;
And when it snows we harness forest mice
To wee bark sleighs, with lightest fibrous thread,
And scour the woods; or play all night instead
With snowballs large as peas, well patted thrice.
But is it true, as I have heard them say,
That thou canst share in winter games no more,
But liest motionless year in, year out?
That must be hard. To-day I cannot stay,
But I'll return each year, when all is hoar,
And tell thee when the skaters are about.’
18

AN ELFIN SKATE.
III.

On my wheeled bed, I let my fingers play
With a wee silver skate, scarce one inch long,
Which might have fitted one of Frost's Elf throng,
Or been his gift to one whose limbs are clay.
But Elfdom's dead; and what in my hand lay
Was out of an old desk, from years when, strong
And full of health, life sang me still its song;
A skating club's small badge, long stowed away.
Oh, there is nothing like the skater's art—
The poetry of circles; nothing like
The fleeting beauty of his crystal floor.
Above his head the winter sunbeams dart;
Beneath his feet flits fast the frightened pike.
Skate while you may; the morrow skates no more.
19

TO MY WHEELED BED.

Hybrid of rack and of Procrustes' bed,
Thou thing of wood, of leather, and of steel,
Round which, by day and night, at head and heel,
Crouch shadowy Tormentors, dumb and dread;
Round which the wingless Hours, with feet of lead
For ever crawl, in spite of fierce appeal,
And the dark Terrors dance their silent reel;
What will they do with thee when I am dead?
Lest men should ask, who find thee stowed away
In some old lumber room, what wretch was he
Who used so strange an engine night and day,
Fain would I have thee shivered utterly;
For, please the Fates, no other son of clay
Will ever need so dire a bed as thee.
20

CORSO DE' FIORI.

This is the Fight of Roses; and to-day
Florence does credit to its flow'ry name;
And every carriage, rose-wreathed wheel and frame,
Panel and trappings, seeks the dewy fray
To fling its yellow rosebuds, or display
Bright silk-clad human blossoms; till the flame
Of sunset dwindles, and the fair hands aim
Their last wet rose as daylight wanes away.
And all are gone to see it, and to breathe
Great April's breath, who marshals his approach
With such a pomp and pageantry of hue,
That even I have half a mind to wreathe
The wheels of my uncomfortable coach
With rose-buds, too, to give great Spring his due.
21

AT REST.

Make me in marble after I am dead;
Stretched out recumbent, just as I have lain;
That those who care may see me once again
Such as they knew me on my hard wheeled bed:
Save that the motionless and marble head
Will never ache with hope for ever vain;
And down the marble limbs the waves of pain
Will never race, but all be peace instead.
And this be writ: The same blind silent weight
That moves the planets kept him on his back
And forced him in his misery to create.
He lay for years upon a daily rack;
He grudged to none their freer, happier fate;
He hoped no heaven, nor deemed the world all black.
22

EAGLES OF TIBERIUS.

They say at Capri that Tiberius bound
His slaves to eagles, when he had them flung
In the abysses, from the rocks that hung
Beetling above the sea and the sea's sound.
Slowly the eagle, struggling round and round
With the gagged slave that from his talons swung,
Sank through the air, to which he fiercely clung,
Until the sea caught both, and both were drowned.
O eagle of the Spirit, hold thy own;
Work thy great wings, and grapple to the sky;
Let not this shackled body drag thee down
Into that stagnant sea where, by-and-by,
The ethereal and the clayey both must drown,
Bound by a link which neither can untie!
23

TO MY TORTOISE CHRONOS.

Thou vague dumb crawler with the groping head
As listless to the sun as to the show'rs,
Thou very image of the wingless Hours
Now creeping past me with their feet of lead:
For thee and me the same small garden bed
Is the whole world: the same half life is ours;
And year by year, as Fate restricts my pow'rs,
I grow more like thee, and the soul grows dead.
No, Tortoise: from thy like in days of old
Was made the living lyre; and mighty strings
Spanned thy green shell with pure vibrating gold.
The notes soared up, on strong but trembling wings,
Through ether's lower zones; then growing bold,
Spurned earth for ever and its wingless things.
24

THE SUN-DIAL.
I.

The sun is shining through a hot white veil;
And round the faded sun-dial, on the face
Of this old Tuscan house, whose narrow space
Prisons my life, the pointing shade creeps pale.
More sluggish than the dusty sun-baked snail,
On the same wall, it keeps its gnawing pace,
The shadow of a shade, faint as the trace
Of Life's lost pleasures, up the dull old scale.
Thou shade of woe, that creep'st at Fate's command,
Say, must the body wait till it be dead
To quit this numbing stretcher of disease?
Oh, is there no Isaiah in the land,
To raise me from this miserable bed
And make the shadow leap the ten degrees?
25

THE SUN-DIAL.
II.

No, there is no tall prophet at my call
Flame-eyed, imperious, doomed to wooden saws,
To stretch his rod athwart eternal laws
And juggle with the shadow on the wall.
No Ahaz' sun-dial this. The earth's dumb ball,
Through the blind Heaven of effect and cause,
Rolls on and on;—and on, without a pause
The shadow creeps, to merge in Night's great pall.
Then list, ye Hours.—Since it is writ on high
That none shall help me in my silent fight,
Creep but for me, and fast for others fly:
So shall I lie content, and deem things right,
And heave at most a wistful waiting sigh,
For death's unstarr'd, but hospitable night.
previous section Sonnets of the Wingless Hours
next section