Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

Over the glimmering plain,
Lowly and full of unfathomable mystery
As the faint far surge of the summer sea,
Wayward and soft
As the wave-song's whispering wane,
Murmur, o voice of the Western Wind, to me!
Now that on field and croft,
River and house and tree,
Creeping as a tide, the flooding shadows fill
Earth's sun-awearied ways and from aloft
The darkness, sinking, swallows heath and hill,
The blesséd silence bringing and with it
Balsam of healing for Day's every ill,
Come through the twilight still,
Come, as some cushat, on the limes alit,
All-nightly, murmuring, in the leaves doth sit,
Before my garden door,
And soothe the soul in me
With medicine of mystic melody
And phantasies of fair and long-forgotten lore!

Breath of the bygone days,
Thou, that in hand the key
Hast of the dreamland's and the wishland's ways,
Blow from thy home beyond the Western beams
And bring with thee
All the mild magic of the sunset-haze,

All the fair fancies, all the darling dreams,
As in Thought's treasury,
That dwell, eternal, midst the setting rays!
Speak from the thither shore
Of Time's untracked, innavigable sea
And on my spirit, wounded passing sore,
Mild ministering, pour,
Pour, as an oil, the tale of Memory,
Rehearsing o'er and o'er,
For me, that of the Present's piteous war
And the waste Now am wearied utterly
And sick with seeking for the obscure To-be,
The ditties of the days that are no more!

2.

Old Janus' gates
Stand open, one upon the year forsped
And one upon the new, without that waits
To take upon its back the burden of the dead.

Sign, not of peace,
His yawning temple-portals are, but war;
And for a further token, with their fleece
Funereal, see, the snows have lapped the landscape o'er.

Still in the air
The wild winds brawl and battle without stay;
The armies of the hail drive here and there,
Hurtling, and clouds from view blot out the darkling day.

Unto my breast,
New year, wilt thou, belike, bring peace again?
Or will the old sad thoughts, the old unrest,
Still of my bosom make their wonted battle-plain?

3.

The fields of ice spread, straitening, Eastward, Westward;
The dull sky darkles, threatening, earth above;
The air of birds is empty, winging questward
To Light and Love.

Forgotten have the forests life and leaving;
Beneath the frosts of February dumb,
The world-all cow'rs, unhoping, unbelieving
In Spring to come.

Love in your eyes died down with Autumn ending;
It fled, like birds, afar with Winter time.
Will it, as they, return, when Spring, descending,
Brings back the Prime?

I know not, I; but this I know, that, ever,
When Winter slackens from the woods and fields,
Each year my straitened breast to Spring's endeavour
Uneather yields;

And soon, meseems, like some old beggar, chosen,
When hope is past the healing, to be king,
My overweathered heart will be too frozen
To welcome Spring.

4.

The snows are melted; but a waste of waters
Lies o'er the landscape, 'neath the skies unlit;
The heavy hearts of Adam's sons and daughters
Still in the ark of expectation sit.

Hidden are the heavens by the mists upsteaming
From earth's o'erflooded visage far and nigh;
The season 'tis of sad and darkling dreaming,
Of speechless yearning for the unclouded sky.

Our winter-straitened souls, like Noah's raven,
Forth through the brume their idle wishes send,
In quest of Hope's well-nigh despaired-of haven
To roam the wayless world from end to end.

No sign to see is for the heart that yearneth
Of Winter ebbing from the waking earth;
Faith's dove for evermore to us returneth,
No footing finding in the watery dearth.

But forth again and yet again we send it,
In quest of Spring's prophetic olive-leaf,
Hoping it back to us at last shall wend it,
With the green token of determined grief,

The token of the term of Winter-waiting,
Of Spring, consoler of our doubts and fears,
The token of the long-desired abating
Of all the troubled waters of our tears.

Who knows? The tale of Time alone can show it.
Nay, by the writ of things bygone, some day
Spring will not come again, as now we know it,
And Winter will the world for ever sway.

Yet, long ere this betideth, shall we, sleeping,
Have passed away unto the Land of Peace,
Where there is neither Winter neither weeping,
Laughter nor Spring, but silence there and cease.

5.

The hunt is up in heaven; the winds go whirling,
Spent February spurning, far and nigh;
March as a conqueror comes, his cloud-hosts hurling
Across the sky.

The citadels of Heaven he cleaves in sunder;
The deep woods heave and tremble, as he goes;
And the great trees rain boughs and branches under
His swashing blows.

Was ever such a pother, such commotion?
For Winter's passage why keep such a coil?
The earth shakes like a jelly and the ocean
Is all a-boil.

Have we not had enough of Winter scurvy,
But thou must ape him with thy blustering
And seek to turn the whole world topsy-turvy
With wanton wing?

Nay, learn a lesson from the buds that cluster
Deep in the grass, the white anemones:
They bloom and take no notice of thy bluster,
Beneath the trees;

Ay, and the primroses, whose pallid faces,
Upturned to heaven, in April skies foresay
The speedy end of all thine airs and graces
And coming May.

So, in my soul, though Passion's wind Life's vessels
Drive hither, thither, o'er the ocean's scope,
A flower there is, from them that sheltered nestles
And buds in hope.

There, in the leaf-soil left of perished passions,
In the tree-shadow of the Past-time's gloom,
It sleeps, unhindered of the waste world's fashions,
And waits to bloom.

Nor May nor August is a second comer
In the heart's seasons, but too well it knows.
It waits, to flower, for Peace's Indian Summer,
Before the snows.

6.

March on the way
And the snowtime over and gone, thank heaven, for many a day!
Yet a ring
Of the Past
And a voice from the land of Long Ago
There stirs in the breath of the bitter blast,
As it sweeps the budded boughs with its icy wing,
That sighs, “Heigho!
“Is there youth enough in thee,
“Old heart, to be glad, to be glad again in Spring
“And in Summer yet to be?”

Buds on the thorn
And crocuses purple and white and golden with each new morn!
Each tree
Beseen,
Each hedge of the wrack of the Winter's dole
New-soothed and fostered with leaves to be,
Each sward new-quickened with promise of swift-springing green!
But thou, sad soul,
Hast thou any germ of flowers,
To burgeon and blossom again in May's soft sheen,
After the April showers?

7.

Earth had no thought of snow,
For March was near its end and Spring was in the air;
But with the night it came, down-fluttering soft and slow,
Like orange-blossoms, fallen from out some sun-bride's hair.

On every bush and tree,
No Winter's burden laid upon the labouring earth,
Light as a dream it lay, as 'twere in mockery
Of the bright blossom-suits of Springtime's tardy birth.

The bridal of the year
With woven wreaths it seemed to celebrate of rime,
Foretelling of the feast of Springtide drawing near
And wistful Earth new-wed to the returning Prime.

But with the morrow's sun
The snow had disappeared and all was green once more:
'Twas but a passing whim of Winter well-nigh done,
To fright the infant Spring with this his flowerage frore.

8.

Oh, the glamour and the gladness of the time
When the Winter's on the wing
And the pleasance day by day long of the Prime
Wakes and waxes, with the sweetness of the Spring,
Life all grown one great celestial lover-clime!

Was there ever any grief could hold the field,
When the lilacs are in bud?
Was there ever any ail but must be healed,
When the primroses the banks and hedges flood
And the fountains of the flowertime are unsealed?

Hark, the throstle tells the tale of coming May!
See, the ash is budding red!
Put the pity of the Past from thee away:
Come, let age and Winter bury their own dead
And be young and glad with Spring again to-day!

9.

The sun is on high
In the bluebell-hued sky;
Clouds flit, like a stain,
O'er his gold:

The tale of the hours
With the shimmer of showers
And the ripple of rain
Is told.

Ah, April, lieve lady,
The sunny, the shady,
First fruits of the flowery
Prime,
What glory of June
Can compare with thy tune,
With thy showery, thy bowery
Time?

The lark is aloft
Over meadow and croft;
New life he foresaith
In his psalm;
The lark on the wing
Is the Spirit of Spring,
As the violet its breath
And its balm.

Ah Springtime, year's morning,
What booteth forewarning
Of Winter and eld, when thou'rt here?
A dotard's the mortal
Who looks through thy portal
Of blue to the end of the year.

10.

God, how lovesome life is,
Now that Spring loose-strife is
Here again,
Now that, Winter past and over

And the wind-time on the wane,
April cometh, like a lover,
Clad in gold and blue,
All the naked earth to cover
With its robe of blossom-rain,
Trinketed with sun and dew,
Winter-wounded hill and plain
Comforting with leafage new!

Now, in singing-season,
All but Love is treason
To the Spring.
Love me, love, for April this is,
Venus' month, when everything
Couples. In the month of blisses,
Midst the blossom-snow,
Marry, what indeed but kisses
(Was it Hafiz that did sing?)
Should two tulip-lips bestow?
Love me now, for swift of wing
April is and soon must go.

11.

I never yet might see the primrose-faces
But needs must dream
Of things which are beyond the spheral spaces
And here but seem.

They are so pure, so pale, so wan, so wistful,
Here in earth's mire
To see them makes mine eyes perforce wax mistful
With wandesire.

To mark them, patient eyes to heaven upturning
From their green plot,
I feel my world-worn heart brim up with yearning
Nor know for what.

But this I know; they, too, are exiles, banished
From heaven, like me,
And lift vain eyes to where their loveland vanished
They think to see.

12.

Ah, Winter, stern king,
What ails thee at Spring?
Why mak'st thou the Prime
Thus drear?
Who willed thee o'ercast,
With thy snows and thy blast,
The blossoming-time
Of the year?

The limes are in leaf;
But thine East wind, the thief,
The tassels hath torn
From the ash:
And now, in the night,
Is a frost come, to blight
The buds of the thorn
Over-rash.

Sure, all is not right
With the day and the night,
With the way that the world goes
Entire,
When Spring must in May
Turn from Winter away,
To warm its cold nose
At the fire!

13.

Between the tides of night and day
There came to me the olden dream;
My feet went back the wonted way,

The borderland 'twixt Be and Seem.
It was a rapturous night in May;
The moonlight slept along the stream.

The brown bird's ditty was the same
As that it sang in days long spent;
The cowslips' fairy fragrance came
Still from the pastures, as I went;
The meadows in the silver flame
Were mad with moon and song and scent.

The lindens broidered all the blue
With the same patterns o'er my head;
The hawthorn-tangle, drenched with dew,
The same ecstatic perfume shed;
There was nought changed, save me and you:
But I am old and you are dead.

14.

Clover, nothing everywhere but clover,
In the flush of May,
Carpeting the flowering fields all over,
As it were the breaking of the day,
From the shadowy interstellar spaces,
Where it shelters from the swarthy night,
With the darkness gone,
Coming sudden on them, they
Had, awaking to the wildering light,
Dipped and bathed their dimpled blooming faces
In the rosy, pearly flush of dawn.

Green and gold and red and blue the shore is,
Like an Indian dove;
Glittering with the spreading sunset-glories

Is the sea below, the heaven above;
In the rainbow splendours sleeping, steeping,
Of the many-coloured death of Day,
Lies the emerald corn.
Natheless, true to their first love,
Rosy yet the meadows spread away,
Faithful ever the remembrance keeping
And the colour of the crimson morn.

As the clover-meadows thou, old soul, art
Faithful to the end;
Constant thou through Life's delight and dole art;
Though the clouds soar upward or descend,
Whether Summer, in the skies unfolding,
Flood the world-all with the whelming sun
Or, with iron glove,
Winter's snows all life suspend,
Faithful art thou to the things fordone,
To Life's morn in thought forever holding
And the rosy memory of first love.

15.

Daylight dies;
Shadows rise
From the moors, the meadows and the sea:
In the twilight dim
Fades the thrush's hymn
And the merle is mute upon the tree.

Evening comes;
Darkness dumbs
All the voices of the earth and sky:
Only hill and hill
Each with other still
Speak in fading flashes far and nigh.

Silence grows,
As night flows,
In its tide engulphing East and West:
See, what is it rays
In the heavenly ways?
'Tis the moon-bird rising from her nest.

All, that late
Dumb was, straight
Quickens, at her coming, into speech;
In the silvered trees
Stirs the songful breeze
And the waves make music on the beach.

Nightingales,
In the vales,
Tell their tale of passion never old,
As the new May moon
For the shadows' shoon
Paves the glades and glens with paly gold.

What is this
That, in a kiss,
Earth's lips presses unto Heaven's above?
From the moon-stirred shades,
From the dells and glades,
Rises, many-voiced, a hymn of love.

Young or old,
Who so cold
Is of heart but must in middle May,
When the moon's at height,
Child-wise, for a night,
Put Life's painful lore from him away?

Who but must
Hopes, long dust
In the grave, feel stir in him with youth?
Who but what the Past
Taught him must off-cast
And Love's leasing take again for truth?

Through the land,
Hand in hand,
Let us fare beneath the silver skies.
In this world of hate,
When the ringdoves mate,
Who as they do are the only wise.

Who but fools
Of the schools
With Life's bitter learning fain would leaven
Ignorance the blest?
When the turtles nest,
Love the only law is under heaven.

16.

In the mid-Spring,
When heaven and earth,
When land and sea
And all that are within them stir and sing,
For rapture of new birth,
There fell on me
Inexorciseable calamity:
The love that lit my life from me took wing.

For many a day,
The sky was blue
For me in vain;
'Twixt Spring and Winter, January and May,

Scant difference I knew:
A trance of pain
Life was, o'er which the years' funereal train
Lapsed, like a stream, unnoted, on its way.

Five lustres past;
And still, unsung,
The Spring went by:
Insensible to sunshine, rain and blast,
Tearless and mute, among
Life's tides went I.
Though Summer reigned or Winter in the sky,
The songbirds mute were in my soul aghast.

But nothing here,
Not even grief,
Endureth still:
My soul once more, after so many a year,
Begins to put forth leaf;
Once more, at will,
Life flowereth, fruiteth for me good and ill
And on the boughs the birds once more sing clear.

17.

Wet ways and sullen skies!
The faint airs fall and rise;
The breeze brings up a breath of saltness from the sea.
Why is our summer day
Thus overceiled with grey?
What world-woe can it be
That thus to saddened autumn turns our latter end of May?

The faint airs rise and fall;
Still sadness broods o'er all;
No sun is out in heaven; no bird is on the wing:
And yet with flush of green

The trees are all beseen;
The birds but wait to sing
For heaven to draw the veil that spreads itself and earth between.

O birds, like me, meseems,
Ye cannot tell your dreams,
What while heaven's eye is closed and all is blank above:
Ye cannot sing aright,
Except Life's sky be bright
With sun and hope and love:
Even as the flowers and I, the God you worship is the light.

Nay, how should we be glad,
When all the world is sad,
That but the voices are of Nature's joy and pain?
Since she to May denies
Its due of sunny skies
And veils her face with rain,
We can but wait till she withdraws the cloud-veil from her eyes.

But let the blessed sun,
The cloud-cliffs overwon,
Shine out and tell the world the tale of joy and June,
And flower and bird and me
Straight shall you hear and see
For the reconquered boon,
Each, in his various voice, give thanks, of love and light and glee.

18.

Misted roses of rathe-red Morn,
Blowing o'er peak and plain,
Cold is your comfort for folk forlorn;
Bright are your beams; but your fingers frorne
Are and your vantage vain.

Golden glory of noiseless Noon,
Dreaming of harvest done,
Harsh is thy hope as the corn-crake's tune
To him whose harvest, sprung too soon,
Was lost for lack of sun.

Splendid sadness of dying Day,
Wide-weltering in the West,
How many a heart hast thou led astray,
How many have trod thy fair false way
And wrecked been in thy quest!

Silver silence of newborn Night,
Thou, too, art false, God wot!
How long wilt thou speak with thy lying light
Of solaced pain to the pining spright
And peace, that cometh not?

19.

The lightning comes and goes across the skies of June,
Sundering the sable clouds beneath its steely shoon;
And lo! from out the rift the newly-blossomed moon,
Soaring the wrack above,
High on the hills of heaven hangs like a silver dove.
'Tis as the fable old, that tells how Death and Life,
Conjoining, in accord, for solving of their strife,
Made Love.

Sudden the thunder rolls and volleys o'er the plain;
Forth of the darkening lift the levins dart again
And from the clouds compact the hurtling, hurrying rain
Falls, at the tempest's breath.
The moon into the dark, abashed, reëntereth.
'Tis as in this our world, when, born of Life and Love,
Accoupling, each with each, like sparrow-hawk and dove,
Is Death.

Yet from the distant woods the cushat's voice I hear,
Voice melancholy still unto the happy ear
But now to me it bears a message as of cheer
And minds me how in strife,
In suff'rance and despair, the seeds of hope are rife.
'Tis as a tale from spheres of other-worldly breath,
Where from the accouplement in night of Love and Death
Comes Life.

20.

Ah, Summer, too late
Thou com'st with thy state
Of meadow and plain
In bloom!
The winter o'erlong
My soul with its wrong
Hath poisoned, my brain
With its gloom.

Thou, also, o Love,
Too late from above
Thou comest, sweet bird,
To mate.
My world-wasted heart
In thee hath no part;
“Too late!” is the word,
“Too late!”

21.

Roses, roses, nothing everywhere but roses,
Pink and crimson, damask, red and white and yellow
Running riot in the gladsome garden-closes,
Each one brighter, sweeter, fresher than its fellow!
And the jessamine, the Persians' “Hand of Moses,”
Each star thrusting up to heaven above the next,
With its silver comment-scripture how it gloses
On the flower-queen's royal text!

I could never bear the smell of roses, never
Since you died;
There's a sharpness in their scent that seems to sever
All the chords of life within my sorry side;
And the jessamine, o'er all you loved and cherished,
Hath a bitter in its breath,
As of herbs upon the pall of pleasance perished
Or of drugs upon the livery laid of death.

You in June were born, in middle flower-and sun-time,
When the revel of the roses is most high,
I at August-ending, hard on Summer-done time,
When the world is growing grave for Autumn nigh.

You were born to bask in sun and summer weather,
I the shadow-ways of lonely thought to fare:
There was nothing, dear, to link our lives together,
And they parted, ere the roses faded were.

You a butterfly were born, a flowerbed rover,
I a dreamer in the shadow of the sun;
Yet you died before the summer days were over,
And I live on yet, though Winter is begun.

22.

The sunshine comes, the sunshine goes;
The land is lightened with the rose:
Yet not a bird I hear that sings.
Why, with all Summer's gracious things,
Should life in middle June
Lack tune?

What is the cause, when heaven and earth
Their bridal feast with sun and mirth,
That in the brake no singing-bird,

No minstrel in the meads is heard?
Nay, says the turtle-dove,
'Tis Love.

Love is the cause why music fails,
That hath no need of nightingales,
Its mysteries to celebrate:
Too full at heart it is to prate
Or with uplifted voice
Rejoice.

Love is the soul of summertime:
The careless courtship of the Prime
May eke with song its easy suit;
But love fulfilled was ever mute:
No need, where each loves each,
For speech.

It can but measure with a kiss
Th'assurance of its proper bliss;
It can but murmur o'er and o'er
Its word of magic, “Evermore!”
Nor fain would have that word
O'erheard.

23.

By the wandering waters,
Where there cometh none,
Save the twilight's daughters,
Those the light that shun,
Ferns and mosses, shelter
Seeking from the swelter
Of the shameless sun,
Still the Dryads greet me,
Still the dream-sprites meet me,
When the day is done.

In the forest-crannies
Labyrinthian,
Where no trace of man is,
Since the world began,
Hide the Gods of Hellas,
That (old fables tell us)
Fled the face of man,
When the new Gods' coming,
Delphian voices dumbing,
Tolled the death of Pan.

Thither comes Apollo,
With his silver lyre,
And the Muses follow
In his trace of fire:
Dian there and Venus
Harbour and Silenus
Pipes, the Satyrs' sire;
Bacchus there abideth;
Ay, and Eros hideth
There the world's desire.

There the glad Immortals
Dwell in dale and glen,
From Olympus portals
Chased by foolish men.
Since too high their brightness
Was for mortal lightness,
Since the folk erewhen
Chose to live in sadness,
There they dwell till gladness
Come to earth again.

Save some crackbrain poet,
Wandering with his dream,
Few there be who know it,
Few there be who deem

That the faint shapes, flitting
Through the intermitting
Shade, by brake and stream,
Are the old Gods, biding
For the Future's 'tiding,
For the new days' gleam.

But, bytimes, at setting,
When the sun is dim,
Folk, the way forgetting
By the forest's rim,
From the woodways swelling,
From the waters welling,
Hear an unknown hymn.
'Tis the old Gods crying,
For deliverance sighing
From the Present grim.

24.

The day is sped
And with the day desire in me is dead.
What matter for the morning and the sun?
What part in life hath he whose hope is none?

June's moon is spent
And July triumphs in the firmament.
What matter whether? Hope it is, not June,
That lights the waxing and the waning moon.

Spent is the rose;
The lily reigns in every garden-close.
Love's crimson one, the other wears Death's white.
Both one are to the dweller in the night.

Life lingers still;
The summer laughs serene on lawn and hill.
Scant difference he between December's breath
And August's feels who knows not life from death.

25.

How is the morning perished from its pride!
In the green freshness of the growing day,
Before the undaunted thought the world spread wide
And sea with sky blent in one golden tide,
Billowing toward the dream-realms far away,
Whereas the adventurous soul upon the quest
Might launch of all the lovelands of the West
And look to sight the Islands of the Blest.

This morning how Life gloried, when, to fend
The demons of the dark from earth away,
It felt the angel of the dawn descend
And the faint breeze foresaid the shadows' end,
When of a sudden dusk gave place to day
And morning flowered on the front of night,
As glad and glorious and blue and bright
As when, at God's command, there first was light.

But now desire is dead with morning gone.
Beneath the burden of the noontide star,
Narcotic, overlapping hill and lawn,
Earth hath forgot the freshness of the dawn;
Thought yearns no longer for the fair and far
And Life, in dreams lethargic buried deep,
No care hath, saving in the sun to steep,
No will, no wish, except it be for sleep.

Now out upon the oaf who longed to find
A land where it is always afternoon,
Who would the forenoon-freshness ban and bind
In midday's sullen chains the flowerful wind
Of waking day! Were't mine to buy the boon,
A land where it is morning still for me,
Where ever new there is to do and be,
New birds, new blooms, new light on land and sea.

26.

Among the yellow blades,
Red in the ripening corn, the poppy flames and fades,
Strange flower, that stains the world with gouts of gore and deep
In whose dead ashes lies concealed the soul of Sleep.

Bitter as Birth its scent
And bitter is its taste as Death the Omnipotent;
For Life that double draught of bitterness must drink,
Ere in Sleep's surgeless sea of solace it may sink.

Red is it even as blood
And like a bannered host the fields doth overflood.
Peace, as with war, it brings, like Him who thought, the Lord,
Peace unto men to bring and brought withal a sword.

27.

Noon on the plain
Weighs like the cloth of gold that a king must wear.
Heavy and hot, benumbing body and brain,
It holds the air.

Cattle and sheep
Dream in the drowsing trance of the tyrant star;
Bound, save the corn, in the soul-compelling sleep
All creatures are.

Heedless of the heat,
Lifting their fearless fronts to the sun their sire,
The serried strait-ranked hosts of the waxing wheat
Ripen in the fire.

Yet Summer's law,
To which all else in the world must bow, can nought
Hope's ruined harvest in me to raise or thaw
My wintry thought.

To my sad soul
Like are the breaths from South and North that come,
As, at all seasons, Earth at either pole
With ice is dumb.

Yet, as with her,
Still in my breast, 'spite age, youth's fire's aglow
And (as at pole and pole), volcanoes stir
Beneath the snow.

28.

Here on the broad sea-beach the shadow lingers,
Though August burns and blazes over land
And sea,
And in the footsteps of the sun ensuing,
This now effacing and that now renewing,
On the white sand
Draws, in black pigment, with fantastic fingers,
Strange disembodied shapes of rock and stone and tree.

So, in some far phantasmal world, unlighted
By any least consolatory star,
Might one
Imagine phantoms of a past Creation,
Void wrecks of many a vast and nameless nation,
By the faint far
Remembered radiance of some moon benighted
Grave-marked or traced by some long dead and darkened sun.

Here, in the forefront of the summer splendour,
Their sombre ensigns of the underworld
They flaunt,
Memorials of forgot funereal manors,
And to King August, with his blazing banners,
In heaven unfurled,
Homage refusing with the rest to render,
Shake in his face their fists sinister, sable, gaunt.

So in man's soul the sudden resurrection,
In mid-contentment, of the sorry Past,
Above
The shrouding soil by wayward thought projected,
The shadows of old sorrows recollected
On joy doth cast
And blackens present bliss with past dejection,
Recalcitrant to all the rays of Life and Love.

Blacker they stand against the sun, the higher
His radiance blazes in the heaven of bliss:
Their shade
Upon Life's sands obscurer shows, austerer,
The fuller is its summer and the clearer
Its heaven is:
Nay, for their spells, it seems, the clouds draw nigher
And from their aspect oft Life's sun and summer fade.

29.

Alow and aloft,
On crest and in croft,
The end of the summer burns, ember by ember:
The rose-time is gone
And at nightfall and dawn
The mist-curtain drops for the change of September.

The meadows are bare;
Where the corn-sheaves once were,
The earth through the stubble shows shamefast and dreary;
Its year-struggle o'er
And its harvest in store,
It waits for the sleep in the shade of the weary.

The year is a-stand:
'Twixt the Past yet at hand
And the Future, that is not yet present, it falters;
The smoke of the fields
Is as incense that yields
Its sacrifice yet to two Gods and two altars.

What wilt thou, my soul?
'Twixt pole thus and pole
Why stand'st thou, to Past now, to Future now pointing?
Nay, past is the Past,
Nor the Present will last
And the Future will, certes, be still disappointing.

30.

September holds the scene,
Month of the Once-hath-been,
Pale pause of thought between
The rosetide and the rime:
The fields are blank and bare;
The woods in the soft air
Stand silent everywhere;
It is the Autumn-time.

In all the leaf-strewn ways
There floats a filmy haze,
As of the bygone days
Memorial, dim and dear:

Afar, on field and row
The light slopes long and low,
A peaceful, pensive glow,
The sunset of the year.

The leaves are like to fall:
Upon the treetops tall
They waver, dying, all,
Stirred by an unseen breeze:
The scent of their decay,
In the still air astray,
Ghost-hands on me doth lay,
That hold the dreamworld's keys.

The air is full of dreams;
Beneath the level beams
I go; my dull heart teems
With thoughts of days bygone;
The past is strong in me;
I have no care to see
The things which are to be,
The days which yet shall dawn.

Head bowed beneath Time's law,
Can this be I that saw
The rose-red morning daw
In Youth's enchanted clime,
That heard the bluebird sing
In that sweet time of Spring,
That once had voice and wing,
To profit by the Prime?

The heart in me is mute;
There lies my broken lute;
Even the robin's flute
Is dumb in me to-day;

Rememorance's store
I reckon o'er and o'er
Nor look to see once more
The miracle of May.

Alack, for Time hath taught
This lesson to my thought,
That all which shall be wrought
Already hath been done;
That pleasantness and pain
But pass to come again,
Even as the sun the rain
Ensues, the rain the sun;

That all things here below,
Unchanging, come and go,
One law of ebb and flow
Ensuing, first and last,
What we the Present name
As what before it came,
And what shall come the same,
The Future as the Past.

Wherefore the wise from earth
Will look for no God-birth,
No wonder-working stirth
Of vantage or increase,
Content, with sorrow healed,
To garner from Time's field
The best that Life can yield,
Soft Autumn's saddened peace.

31.

Moorland and meadowland, see,
Darkle and dream in the net of the fast-falling night;
Land lies and strand lies asleep in the low-lapsing light.
Over the glimmering lea,

Come, let us fare, me and you.
'Tis the mysterious moment when, Death meeting Birth,
Light tells and Night tells the secrets of Heaven to Earth,
Old in one blending with new.

See, through the shadows afar,
Where the fields slope to the shore through the sand-spaces wide,
Sparkles and darkles, alternate, the incoming tide,
Falling in foam on the bar.

All with October is mute;
Not a leaf lispeth its message of morning to come.
Bird pipes nor herd pipes: the robin is silent and dumb
Ditty in field is and flute.

What is it all things await?
Listen and look! Sure some mighty adventure's at hand.
Sea sleeps and lea sleeps; the waves slide, unheard, o'er the sand;
Light is there none in Heaven's gate.

What in the Silence's womb,
What in Fate's vat is abrew that the earth and the sky
Dumb are and numb are, expecting some sign from on high,
Whether for gladness or gloom?

See, on the skyline of grey
Surges a circlet of silver and hill-top and tree
White shine and bright shine and sudden the slumbering sea
Wakes into wavelets and spray.

Forth of the brake comes the call
Of the ringdove aroused and the leaves are astir on the bough.
Hill speaks and rill speaks, acclaiming the Then become Now;
One, the heart pulses in all.

Earth, sky and sea in the tune
Join of the welcoming hymn to the wonder new-come;
Plain sings and main sings. What, what with such mystery dumb
Waited they? Was it the moon?

32.

The winds are abroad in the hail-beaten hills;
The waters are loose in the land.
Hark, hark, to the sound of the rain-swollen rills!
November is here with its fogs and its chills;
The frost-giants wait on the storm-battered sills;
The winter, the winter's at hand.

The cold is upon us; the snows will soon fall.
See, buried already's the mole!
The woes of the Winter are over us all,
And who hath not youth and hot blood at his call
Were best roll himself, like the bear, in a ball
And suck his dry paws in his hole.

The sun reigns no more in the mist-darkened dome;
His rays are half-lost in the fog.
Thrice happy is he who no need hath to roam
Or hunt for bare life on the sands and the foam,
And blest who hath lover or comrade at home,
Be it only a cat or a dog!

33.

November's in the air:
The chill breeze seems to say,

With bated breath, Prepare,
Prepare ye the Lord's way!
His step is on the stair;
His breath is everywhere;
He cometh without stay,
The Lord of Heaven and Earth,
The only worship-worth
Great God of Death and Birth,
Of Night and Day.

The weary world awaits
The coming of the Lord
Whose spell her stress abates.
All things, save man, toward
His presence, who Sleep's gates
Unbars and flouts the Fates,
Lift hands of one accord:
For whom He loveth He
To all eternity
From second birth can free
And Life abhorred.

Man only cannot brook
The nearing of the night;
Man only fears to look
His last upon the light.
Though black be all Life's book
And earth afford no nook
Of easance or delight,
Foiled by his foolish pride,
He turns from peace aside
And will alone abide
In the sun's sight.

But to all else, beast, bird,
Fish, blossom, tree, His breath

Is welcome and His word,
That peace from pine foresaith.
As, like a careful herd,
Within his fold unstirred
His flock he gathereth,
All yield them, tame and wild,
Even as a sleepy child,
Submissive, to the mild
Deliverer Death.

34.

The melancholy month is come,
The month of dark and dule,
When the dull days and nights, for Winter dumb,
Drag on toward the Yule.
Th'infrequent sun his tarnished copper shield
Trails through the sullen sky;
The morning rises but in mists to die;
December holds the field.

The shortening days become our nights,
The lengthening nights our days,
Wherein the finger of remembrance writes
Sad scriptures on the haze.
Through all the darkling hours, from dusk to dawn,
Whose gloom no moonlight cleaves,
Into the tapestry of thought it weaves
The threads of things bygone.

In this sad season, when their deep
Is chequered with no star,
The endless nights to those who cannot sleep
As purging-places are:
All-nightly now the purgatorial hill
Of memory they climb,
To the faint rhythm of forgotten rhyme,
For light upstraining still.

35.

I wake and watch by night;
I wend and watch by day;
But never a sail in sight
And never a wight in way.
How is the fashion of this world, with all its work and play,
Perished and passed away!

Winter on hill and plain,
And Winter in my soul!
In vain have I wrought, in vain,
And nothing won but dole.
How hath the labour of my life, for all its high-set goal,
Been wasted, part and whole!

Empty below, above,
And empty is my heart.
What have I had of love,
Except its pain and smart?
How hath all turned for which thou strov'st, poor lackluck that thou art,
To ashes, all and part!

Yet hard's the growing old
For Fortune's favoured one.
Patient's the land of cold
That never knew the sun.
How had it been with thee, if thou thy heart's desire hadst won
And lost, when all was done?

36.

The snow is come; upon the higher places,
Among the hills,
To Heaven's blue window-frame, meseems, it traces
White marble sills.

I hear without the tall trees crack and splinter,
With snow opprest,
Bewailing them of heavy-handed Winter,
That stirs their rest.

Yet to the plains the fallen snow brings quiet,
If not increase,
The labouring earth consoling for Life's riot
With palls of peace.

Each year, meseems, snow lingers longer, later,
Upon the peaks;
Each year the Winter's hold grows stronger, straiter,
On days and weeks,

The time foreboding when the world, o'ertaken
With the last sleep,
Shall 'neath the snow-shroud lie nor ever waken
From slumber deep.

As the soul solved is of the stress of passion
By growing old,
So Life seeks shelter from the waste world's fashion
In snow and cold.

As Winter's silver shroud the germs protecteth
Of the new Prime,
So, 'neath the snows of age, the soul expecteth
Its seeding-time.

37.

Ah, Summer, sorry Summer,
How many an age bygone
It seems since thou, loath comer,
Year's noontide after dawn,
Slow following on the feet
Of Spring, thy youngling sweet,

With birds' and breezes' clamour,
Late wakening, soon withdrawn,
Hast flowered field and street,
Hast gladdened lane and lawn
With glory and with glamour!

Alack, the time is Winter!
The ways with snow are sealed
And dumb and fixed as flint are
The furrows of each field:
No birds are left to sing;
Snow-silenced pipe and wing,
Ice-prisoned wood and weald,
Frost-fettered hue and tint are.
What should the snowtide yield?
Done Summer out and Spring
By Winter's witless dint are.

Yet where's the call for sorrow?
Leave dead to bury dead!
For me the winter morrow
Is sweet with summer sped:
Beneath the frost-red moon,
The Yule-pale sun, this boon
God granteth me, to borrow
Spring's memoried goodlihead,
To tell the tale of June
And Summer's golden thread
To weave December thorow.

Forsooth, I do remember
Yet to have smelt the rose;
Yet, in my life's December,
Midmost the Winter's woes,
I mind me of the May,
I hear the throstle's lay:

Though stark in every member
The world is with the snows,
In me the summer day
I feel; for me June glows
Yet in the Yuletide ember.

Yea, Winter gladness bringeth
To this old heart of mine,
Far goodlier than springeth
Of April's flowering wine;
Beneath the frozen pole
Of Yuletide, in my soul
A rarer rapture ringeth
Than stirs in Summer's shine:
Through vernal woods there roll
No tides of tune divine
As this in me that singeth.

This is my singing season;
When mute are sky and sea,
When white with Winter's treason
Are field and lawn and lea
And all is sad, the strong
Sweet spirit of unreason,
That is the soul of song,
Springs up again in me
And carols loud and long,
Rejoicing, as one free
At last that is from prison.

38.

Faces in the fire
Form and fade before me as I look,
Tales of Life and Death from Memory's book,
Past and Present, wraiths of unfulfilled desire.

Hopes and fears bygone,
Castles in the air, long come to nought,
Fantasies of half-forgotten thought,
Dreams, of darkness bred, that died before the dawn.

In the glowing coals
How they live and breathe, the things that were
And that were not, eyes of women fair,
Eidola in vain of unembodied souls!

Through the midnight air,
O'er the snow the Christmas bells ring loud;
These the passing-bells and that the shroud
Of the phantom faiths that filled the world whilere.

In Time's furnace-flame
Melted, like my dreams, to nought are they;
All that lives and lasts of them to-day
As the pictures is the glowing embers frame.