The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

Truly it is a deed presumptuous, very daring,
Thus to devise in song a golden frame, preparing
To set therein thy face:
It is as if God gave the rough stern wind the power
To sing for evermore the soul of some white flower
And this flower's soul before the world to place.

The task is very large.—Love, give thy singer passion
Pure as the sea and sun, that pure strong words may fashion
A frame wherein to place,
So that the world may see (and never, having met it
Once eye to eye, could heart of mortal man forget it!)
Love's portrait of the loveliest living face.

I. ETERNAL JUNES

Guard her for ever for my great love's sake,
Lord God.—Be as a light about her head:
Shield her through solemn hours of darkness dread,
And when the golden summer mornings break.
If one must suffer, let not her heart ache,
But pierce my own strong suffering heart instead!
If sacrificial blood-drops must be shed
Wilt thou not honour me, and my blood take?—

Thou couldst not give us that one sweet June-day!
Most hard it seems, and ever will seem hard.
But give to her eternal Junes, I pray,
Full of flower-happiness, divine, unmarred
E'en by one petal falling from one spray:
And let me share with thee the right to guard.

June 30, 1883.

II. LOVE AND LOVE

I

I raised my arms to heaven in agony
And cried out wildly, “Frail are women fair!
Their love is as a breath of sunlit air
Or white cloud floating o'er a summer sea.
What is her passion of soul compared to me,
Me—for the storm-wreaths nestle in my hair
And I the inexorable anguish bear
Of one whose love outstrips eternity.

“Her love is measured by the sands of time,—
But mine is as the mountains or the stars:
It snaps all manacles, it laughs at bars,
Nor findeth the high blue airs too sublime.
Her love is dainty as a rose's wings,—
But through the plumes of mine the thunder sings.”

II.

I weeping said, “What is her love to this?”
But, smiling, God said, “What is yours to mine?
I am the sun that lightens the sea-line,
And my lips meet the fragrant morning's kiss.
I die with love for all. Yet all that is
United my one pale thorn-wreath to twine.
Because my love is perfect and divine
It never knows fruition's final bliss.

“What is her love to yours? Small, it may be.
But yours to mine is as the rippling lake
To the shore-margin where the vast waves break
Full of song-echoes from the open sea.
Your song is as the singing of a day:—
My song laughs golden-haired when Time turns grey.”

III. THE SEA'S BLESSING

I would give the sea's blessing unto thee,
O London blossom; as the salt sea-flowers
Send up their blessing to our inland bowers
And all the tameless freshness of the sea.
The greeting of the sea-shore thyme and bee
And of the wild spray's laughter-riven showers
I bring thee,—and the gladness of long hours
When inland thoughts recede eternally.

Thou art not quite a daughter of the sea!
Thou art so beautiful that he must claim
Surely in the end thy beauty and thy name
And in his strong divine arms gather thee,
And add one inland sweet flower to his store
Where fair-stemmed buds rejoice for evermore.

IV. “I THINK OF THEE”

If thou forgettest, love, I think of thee.—
What if the white light-hearted wandering foam
That hath the whole waste for its passionate home
Of blue broad strong interminable sea
Thinks little more of this than thou of me?
What if the ferns, wherethrough the sun's rays roam
Fostering, are heedless as smooth fronds they comb
Of their sun's warm and genial potency?

It matters little. Back into the breast
Of the deep sea the foam-bell falls at last,
And, when the hot sun's chariot seeks the West,
The sweet ferns' sweetest tenderest hours are past.—
So wouldst thou through the world have walked in shade
Had not song's sunlight round about thee played.

V. “IF I HAD NEVER SEEN THEE!”

If I had never seen thee, what had then
My life been! Just as much the lesser thing
As the whole sea without one sea-bird's wing,
Or the Scotch rocky deep grouse-haunted glen
Without one blade of heather,—or, again,
The fervent merry boyish-hearted Spring
Without its festive choir of birds that sing,
Or the dull world without the sun's gold ken.

So much the lesser had my life been, love,
Hadst thou not stepped therein its worth to seal.—
God, when he made me a poet, knew that I,
Born just to feel and sing, and sing and feel,
Thee seeing, should leap my song's old heights above
And in Love's name forbid thy name to die.

VI. “WHAT CAN I DO FOR THEE?”

This much at least, O love, for thee I do.—
I give thee songlight round about thine head:
Song's starlight and song's moonlight round thy bed
And song's strong sunlight when the skies are blue.
I hold thy beauty up to the world's view:—
Death thou hast feared: I give thee life instead;
Yea, life that shall not pause though we be dead
And o'er our graves falls the soft tearless dew.

Beautiful eyes and blue-black lovely hair!
Sweet is it just to think that but for me
Few might have known how passing sweet ye were.
Even as no eyes might deem, far out at sea,
The white sea-bird so nobly fair a thing
Save for yon cloud that outlines breast and wing.

VII. “I WANDERED ALL THROUGH HEAVEN”

I wandered all through heaven, and saw its leafy arches,
And breathed its scent of pines and fragrance of its larches,
And watched its white seas break;
I saw the clover wave upon its hill-sides spacious,
And saw the gold corn bend in undulations gracious,
And marked green islands float on many a lake:

I wandered through new towns in heaven, and marked fair faces
Full of the wondrous light that gleams through heavenly places,—
Eyes brown and all divine:
But, all through heaven, I saw, though far and wide I wandered,
And where I wandered, searched, and sought and dreamed and pondered,
No eyes so clear, so beautiful, as thine.

VIII. FROM THE THEATRE TO THE COUNTRY

My whole heart longs to see thee, sweetheart mine,
No longer where the gaslights flame and flare,
But where the pure sweet-scented country air
Plays with green tender boughs of larch and pine.
Had ever forest Dryad eyes like thine
I wonder, or wood-nymph with leafy hair
So sweet a smile?—For thee the ferns prepare
Their soft fresh scent, and the beech-leaves their shine.

I long to see thee where the sunlight falls
Upon some grassy bank which bees pervade
Or where some giant oak-tree casts deep shade,
Or where the circling sea-mew curves and calls.
Thine are not only the theatric boards,
But also dew-kissed leaves and velvet swards.

Aug. 8, 1883.

IX. CENTRALISATION

It is so strange to think that of ten thousand faces
Thine have I loved and sung.—The summer wind embraces
The flowers of all the hills,
And yet it tarries, perhaps, with special love and yearning
Beside some hare-bell,—back, and ever backward turning,
While with deep love the wild wind's dark glance fills.

And God turns back at times from all the tropic blossoms
That with their warm white deep sweet-scented tropic bosoms
Lure down from heaven the sun
And concentrates his love on English fern, or daisy
Whose gold heart heavenward gleams through English grasses mazy,
Turns from all other flower-loves,—loves that one.

For ages through the stars' wild endless complication
God steered his course,—and through the struggles of each nation
And history's streams of gore,
His eyes on you and me:—just as to-day's azalea
Or purple-petalled deep strong sun-confronting dahlia
Was planned in Eden, and designed of yore.

Then through the crush and crowd of fierce star-systems meeting
And tides of human strife advancing and retreating
And all the clash of things
God makes that we should meet: and foldeth round about me,
That I may quite forget the rattle of arms without me,
Thy white eternal soft angelic wings.

X. “THE SUNSETS CAME TO ME”

The sunsets came to me, with red cheeks flushed and burning:
“Not one of us survives, for all our love and yearning
And beauty,” so they said.
The honeysuckle came; and violets from the meadows;
And king-cups; and their eyes were full of soft sad shadows:
“Lo!” said they, “soon we too shall join the dead.”

And many blue waves came, and green waves, and grey waters,
And dark-eyed woodland nymphs the dark-leaved forests' daughters,
And mermaids from the sea,
And river-maids with blue long dripping watery tresses:
And each one said, “How sweet are Love's warm soft caresses;
Why should Love's lustrous white wings ever flee?”

And then I thought: “If these survive not, what, I wonder,
Of thee, fair lady mine? Will death's malign black thunder,
Across thy pathway roll
Never? If all the world thus groans in ceaseless bondage,—
Wave, sunset, river, lake, mermaiden, golden frondage—
Nymphs of the woodland, daisies of the knoll—

“If this be so with each,—if each be born to suffer,
Do death and pain on these lay hands less courteous, rougher,
Than they will lay on thee?
Canst thou escape thy fate more than the dark-eyed maiden
Whose leafy hair with scent of dim pine-woods is laden,
Or than the blue-haired goddess of the sea?”

XI. CONTRASTS

After the tossed white sea a pool of green still water
Wherein some white-limbed nymph the great green oaktree's daughter
Bathes with blue laughing eyes:
After the fierce wild storm the blue sky pure and tender:
After bronzed brows of men a woman's untanned splendour:
After the night the royal red sunrise:

After the weary day the night-time cool and gracious:
After the city-walls a golden cornfield spacious
Wherein red poppies gleam:
Upon the Atlantic surge a lonely wave-tossed vessel
Whose masts in the mad wind bend, shriek, and toil, and wrestle,—
Yet in the cabin eyes where love-thoughts dream;

100

These contrasts all are sweet:—Yet sweeter than the sweetest
It was when thou didst come, of all loves far the fleetest,
The swiftest tenderest thing,—
Contrasting with my past thine own ethereal brightness
And with the black pain-cloud thy more than sea-bird's whiteness,
As through yon rain-cloud flashes one white wing.

101

XII. ENGLISH ART

I long for the great day when English Art
Shall be the outcome of the English race.
When every woman shall have Venus' face
And the Madonna's beauty, and her heart.
When we shall seek no longer strength to impart
And beauty, and a far-off foreign grace,
To our own Art from any alien place,
In English field and street and house and mart
Seeking our models:—for the day I long
When beauty, love, like thine shall fill the land
Inspiring some great English Titian's hand
And some great English Dante's sea-winged song.
I wait the day when English Art shall be
Commensurate with sunlight, and with thee.

102

XIII. THEE, THE CROWN OF HISTORY

Time through the patient centuries struggled hard
And moulded many an English face divine
And set song's sunlight round each for a sign
And brought to Beauty's feet full many a bard.
Time moulded the supreme charm evil-starred
Of Mary, and Time wove the golden shine
Of countless tresses, and prolonged the line
Of English beauty, keeping patient guard
Over the English type through year on year:—
But now Time's work is over and complete
For, sweetheart, thou, the crown of all, art here.
Now the whole past of history giveth ear:
The English ages bend before thy feet:
The English white-browed chainless waves revere.

103

XIV. “WHEN BEAUTY LIKE THINE”

When beauty like thine is a common thing
(If ever such surpassing grace may be!)—
When English womanhood doth copy thee
As the white sea-foam copies the white wing
That hovers o'er it: when the far years bring
Grace in their train: when senseless fashions flee:
When future artists' happier eyes may see
A nobler English architecture spring
Upward around them: when the clothes we wear,
The homes we build, are no more deadliest foes
To Art: when England wins a great repose
And for the first time sees how very fair
Her towns and people might be—she will bear
Art that will blossom like her heavenliest rose.

104

XV. THE REVOLT OF NATURE

If thou dost go, Summer will follow thee
With eager lips and eager hair back-blown,
Leaving one hasty sandal by his throne;
And moon and sun and stars and white-waved sea
And flowers and leaves will cry, “Let not this be!”
And Spring will start and stay her girlish laughter
And, seeing thee go, will straightway follow after;
And in thy wake the fall's red leaves will flee.

Summer will dally with the expectant rose,
Waiting for thee to flush its cheek to red:
Lorn he will stand beside the garden bed:
The sun's brush by the sunset will repose
Ungrasped; and not one love-word will be said
To any flower by any wind that blows.

105

XVI. A SUNSET

I watched a sunset,—and I noted down
The cosmic river of colours as they came.
First golden splendour: then clear crimson flame:
Then one pale-blue pure sky-spot like a crown.
But the wind saw me writing with a frown
And drove new clouds across the heavens so fast
That new tints shone before I seized the last,—
Green, lemon-colour, lilac, purple-brown.

Half in despair I flung my “notes” aside,
And owned the cosmic spirit's superb excess.—
So, lady, having for a long year tried
Thee to describe, I feel defeat no less.
The cosmic spirit has set more beauty in thee
Even than in sunsets over windy sea.

106

XVII. THE MARVELLOUS NIGHT

This was the glory of thee,—that all the sweet night found me
Because of thee, and wound its starlit wings around me
And kissed me into sleep.
Yea, every star stepped forth, between me and the sorrow
Of pale accustomed life that waited on the morrow:
Thine was the army of night's purple deep.

Between me and my past the whole star-army waited.—
Therefore it was that all my soul, set loose, elated,
Sprang forth with chainless glee.
The innumerable stars were as a hedge behind me
That never one fell throb of old-world pain might find me;
And all this vast star-army followed thee.

107

Thou wast the chieftainess of all the gathered legions
Whose golden serried spears filled the blue heavenly regions,
Each spear a valiant friend:
Yea, onward through the night the star-hosts marched together,
A night so still that one might hear a falling feather;
Onward they came, an army without end.

And then I heard strange voices;—voices of the flowers
And voices of my past; the voices of old hours
Of summers long since dead;
Voices of streams and hills, and voices of the mountains,
And voices of far-off white-footed laughing fountains;
Whispers of autumn sunsets golden-red;

Voices of leaves of trees, and voices of green meadows,
And voices of the limes tender with summer shadows;
And last of all to me
Came thrilling through the dark, sudden, without a presage,
The deep-voiced stern immense inevitable message,
Winged with large storm-winds, of the awful sea.

And this was what they said: “Deep in thy spirit know it;
Grasp this with grasp intense; cling to the knowledge, poet!
Through all thy days be sure

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That never again the night will open thus her bosom
Nor ever again the leagues of golden star-flowers blossom
Enfolding thee in vast embrace and pure.

“This night thou hast the deep of heaven spread out before thee
And all the golden stars shake out their banners o'er thee
And rapture like a sea
Surges. But not again shall the deep heaven be tender.”—
Yet, love, that sacred night's unfathomable splendour
Took all its deathless boundless light from thee.

Sept. 17, 1883.

109

XVIII. FOR ONE HOUR

I heard a voice that said: “Take up thy pen
And write. Tell all the world how vast a deed
The star-winged God of starry love decreed
Once, that can come to pass now never again.
Tell the world how the whole night's endless fane
Opened, and all the armies of the night
Filled the black vistas with gold flow and flight
And all dark things and doubtful were made plain.

“Tell all the world how strange and great a thing
Then came to pass, that for one silent hour
The hosts who the deep walls of heaven embower
Halted, and peered from heaven's heights wondering:
Gazing with all the eyes of all their throng
Upon one form,—the lady of thy song.”

110

XIX. A YEAR AGO

A year ago to-day we met: and yet it seemeth
That in thine eyes, as then, to-day my whole soul dreameth—
And ever, evermore,
I shall dream in thine eyes, and call to mind our meeting;
Not only through the years of earth-life pale and fleeting,
But where blue heaven's waves strike a golden shore.

Thy beauty never fades: thine eyes will never darken:
Still to thy silvery laugh with my whole soul I hearken:
Yes, in a thousand years,
If I could be alive, the mere thought of our meeting
Would set my ancient heart's each giant pulse a-beating
And fill my eyes with the forgotten tears.

111

XX. GOD'S GOSPEL

This day, one year ago, God preached his Gospel to me
And sent his spirit of flame with fiery shaft that through me
All on a sudden sped:
This day, one year ago, God woke old dreams of wonder
And brake long ages' chains with sudden stroke asunder
And raised Love's Christlike pale form from the dead.

This day, one year ago, God sent his servant passion
To recreate the world in golden gracious fashion
And renovate the skies.
This day, one year ago, not needing marble “table”
Nor priest nor prophet grim, nor help of myth nor fable,
God preached his Gospel through a woman's eyes.

112

XXI. “THIS CHANGELESS GRACE”

If thou must ever come, then pass away,
Like the sad ending of a dream too sweet
For treading therein with cold wakeful feet—
A dream that vanishes when morning grey
Peers in the chilly loveless face of day
And summons him from his forlorn retreat
Long hours of pain and labour to repeat—
If thou must thus the laws of time obey,
Yet is it not unalterably good
That once at least in life I have seen thy face,
Once touched thy hand, and once beside thee stood?
Have I not won at least this changeless grace
That in the heart of him who loved and sang
Thou hast left love endless,—and an endless pang?

113

XXII. LOVE'S FINAL SWEETNESS

For this it is which is so sweet to me,
To suffer for thee:—When the last days came
And Byron with his eyes and heart aflame
Looked round the earth to see what cause might be
Worthy to die for, had he known but thee
His grim forlorn heart had not tarried long
Seeking an altar meet for love and song
And sacrifice heaven-sweet eternally.

To die for Greece! Yes, sweet: but sweeter far
To die for thee, if only so I might
Prove that my love for thee is winged with light
And passionately true, O one sweet star
Brightening with glory of one golden bar
My shield that else were sable as the night.

“Lui qui, rassasié de la grandeur humaine,
Comme un cygne à son chant sentant sa mort prochaine,
Sur terre autour de lui cherchait pour qui mourir.”

—Alfred de Musset

114

XXIII. “REMEMBER”

If ever comes the day when thou dost fail
My heart's deep inner truth to understand,—
If sorrow invades us,—if this songful land
Be ever darkened and love's skies turn pale
While summer's bright leaves tremble at the gale,—
Remember then—remember evermore—
I loved thee, loved thee, loved thee; through the roar
Of evil wintry winds, let that wild wail
“I loved thee, loved thee, loved thee,” reach thine ear.
By heaven, by God, if all else were untrue,—
If all the stars in heaven's height quaked for fear
And tremor shook the sea's eternal blue,—
“I loved thee, loved thee, loved thee” yet would be
Heard above death-throes of the stars and sea.

115

XXIV. MY LIFE'S BEST DEED

Think gently of me, if the day should come
When thou (ah God, the sorrow!) hast to go.
Think gently of me when the blossoms blow:
Think gently of me when the lilac-bloom
Covers Spring's brow with many a purple plume:
Think gently of me when the wintry snow
Whitens the streets, and when the red flames glow
On the bright hearth at Christmas, in thine home.

Think gently of me, if the day should dawn
When thou must (God, the sorrow!) pass from sight:
Think how thy passing makes the whole world night:
I shall be very tired, when thou art gone.
Think gently,—even tenderly,—of me:
Far my life's best deed was my love of thee.

116

XXV. STARLIGHT

What I would ask thee is to let me give—
Give love, give help, give perfect tenderness.
I ask no flower: I ask no soft caress:
But only just to worship while I live.
Love's dreams alas! are often fugitive:
Only the love whose chief joy is to bless
Outlasts life's anguish and its stormy stress;
Love that bestows, not hoping to receive.

Let me love so. And let me sometimes see
Thy face.—God sets ten million stars each night
Upon the brow of heaven to give man light;
Do thou my sweet eternal star-love be:
Let me when starlight gleams upon my grave
Feel—“I asked nothing. I but loved and gave.”

117

XXVI. MY SONG

I am so far, far, nearer death than thou
That I can love thee with the next world's strong
Sweet love, and hear its music in my song
And set its sacred starlight on thy brow.
Not for to-day do I allegiance vow,
But for all time. Not for to-day I long
To crown thee,—but to crown thee 'mid the throng
Before whose feet even Time himself must bow.

If thou must leave me, let my song be thine
For ever; let it be a token of this
That though God never let me win thy kiss
Yet in some strange sweet sense he made thee mine.
Mine,—for till God's hand smite the heaven and sea
Man's heart will love not as my heart loves thee.

118

XXVII. NEVER

Never will any man be stricken deep
By thy sweet arrow of beauty quite as I
When after weary passionless long sleep
I looked up suddenly,—and thou wast nigh!
No man will ever love thy wondrous face
Quite as I love it. Though a thousand may
Admire thy beauty and thy girlish grace,
Still true it is that I am not as they.
They gaze and they pass on. But I adore.
They think they love. I love till time doth grow
Weary of rose-hung hill and wave-white shore:
Yea, till the Alps wax weary of their snow.
I stand alone in this—that no man brings
His heart, and counts its blood-drops while he sings.

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XXVIII. THE PATH OF DEATH

At last the sacred path is opening out before me:
Its mists and dews of night and scents of flowers fold o'er me
Ceaseless and sudden wings.
The path that Byron trod, and Keats,—are we to tread it?
So many have passed along the road, and shall we dread it?
Lo! the whole road with weird soft whispers rings.

Whispers there are of men, and whispers soft of lovers
Among the groves that line the path and fill the covers
With soft luxuriant bloom.
Ah! this is not the path of death. Nay surely, surely
Death's path is darker far, and tenanted obscurely
By grey-winged ghost-shapes shuddering from their tomb.

This path is very fair. We mark old well-known faces:
Full are the banks of ferns, and full are the wild places
Of flowers whose scent is meet:—

120

We deemed the path of death was terrible. We tread it,
And lo! that moment cease, for ever cease, to dread it;
And even its terrors wax exceeding sweet.

What terror can be left when, rocky, grassy, gravelled,
Flowerless or full of flowers, not one yard is untravelled
Of the once lonely way?
Thousands have gone before, and made the pathway brighter:
Yea, women's souls have left the roadside blossoms whiter
And men's strong souls have left its ghosts less grey.

We soon shall have the right to tread the lonely valley.
The buglers of the ghosts will sound their wrathful rally;
But we reck not of these:
We think of poets great who trod the valley-border
And entered heaven beyond in spite of watch and warder
And drank the fragrance of the heavenly breeze.

And I,—I think of thee. No road that thou wilt travel,
Though o'er it mists and fogs their wild wet locks unravel,
Can deadly or dangerous be.
If thou must one day pass along the road, it follows
That Love dreads not the path's dim darkest deepest hollows
More than sea-birds the green gulfs of the sea.

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XXIX. “YET THIS I ASK”

Yet this I ask, this simple thing, of thee.
Be always good and noble for my sake.—
Because thou hast the very power to break
The heart of man, and move it utterly,
Use thy divine sweet gift unselfishly:—
While I the cloud-swept lonely sea-path take
Let me look back to the furze-golden brake
Of morning, bright with butterfly and bee,
Remembering one, bright as the morning, there,
Who powerless yet with the sea-wind to cope
Still gathered from her singer heart of hope
Ever towards heights of nobleness to dare,
And, queen of all the flowers, was queen besides
Of her own spirit, and sovereign of its tides.

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XXX. “FATHER AND LOVER”

Father and lover am I all in one.—
Father; since half my life was lived before
I met thy glance,—and loved thee evermore:
Father; since more than half my work was done
Before I knew thee, daughter of the sun
And child of morning:—Lover, since I found
Heaven in thy presence, heeding nought around
So only one sweet answering look was won.

Father; since ever greedily I sought
To shield thee from the world and all its woes:
Lover; since songful flower on flower I brought,—
Violet and jonquil and great trembling rose:
And madman too; since all I gave had nought
Of power my true deep yearning to disclose.

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XXXI. MY ANCHOR

Thou art my anchor in a stormy sea,
My one sweet anchor,—holding fast my life
In the dim mist of trouble and wild strife
To the pure vision of the love of thee.—
Without thine help where would my harbourage be?
Life's billows fierce and iron-tongued and strong
Would slay my spirit, and engulf my song,
And the fair golden hope of heaven would flee.

This thou hast taught me,—that a weary man,
Weary with life and tired-out past all speech,
May suddenly a new road-corner gain
Whence, fair beyond all hope of words to reach,
New lovely flowerful meads may stretch away,
While golden sunset gilds the death of day.

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XXXII. “THIS THOU HAST TAUGHT ME”

This thou hast taught me,—that it may be grand
Beyond all words to feel oneself grow old:
To watch the mists from brightening summits rolled
And pass from sweet youth's to strong manhood's land.
Thou hast turned my life's page with thy dear white hand;
Lo! with glad gaze my wondering eyes behold
Undreamed-of mountains touched by morning's gold,
And at the borders of new realms I stand.

This thou hast taught me,—that the land of death
To which, long ere thou tread'st it, I shall go
May be a sweet and gracious land to know
If only till his last long mortal breath
A man shall strive to love unselfishly,
As God's sure stars love the tumultuous sea.

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XXXIII. GOD'S LAURELS

Not fame; not high repute; not praise of men;
Not to be worshipped loudly when he died
As king or poet,—honoured far and wide;
No pedestal of large renown to gain;
Only the pangs of immemorial pain:—
For his chief honour? To be crucified.—
For his companions? Thieves on either side.—
For his bright cordon? The slow red blood-stain.—

This was his crown. To die 'mid shouts of scorn;
Lonely, forsaken, yes of God it seemed,
Pain-stricken, cursed, unutterably forlorn,—
While even yet with love the deep eyes gleamed.
To be the man of all men most downtrod—
These were the laurels of the Son of God.

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XXXIV. ANOTHER YEAR

Another year has passed,—and still my soul may love thee,
And still my wings of song may hover, sweet, above thee:
God still lets this thing be.
Then shall I not be glad, yea past all strong words grateful,
That still I have the right in this world wild and hateful
To love, to love,—to break my heart for thee.

That still I have the right, supreme and past denial,
To pray to God to lift thy soul through every trial;
That still God looks to me
By prayer and anguish strong to be thy guardian lover
And with stern wings, blood-splashed but outspread yet, to cover
And shield thine head; that still I fight for thee.

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Another whole long year,—and still I stand before thee,
And still song's sword is drawn and flames and flashes for thee
Like lights far out at sea
Seen through the sombre mirk and rain-splashed deadly weather
When the great ships shriek out and wail and plunge together
Towards the wild whiteness thundering on their lee.

Another whole long year,—and still I am thy lover;
And still my song may seek, and still my shield may cover,
Protect and safeguard thee.
This is most good and great,—that all the flowers of summer
Have passed and died, yet thou most sweet autumnal comer
With the wild autumn comest back to me.

This is most sweet to think,—that flowers beyond all number
Have sought the Western slopes and sunk in pallid slumber,
Soft bloom of shrub and tree,
But still thou art mine own. Not all the stormiest weather
Can move my soul when thou and I stand close together,
For then the fierce winds seem to shout for glee.

128

It is so sweet to know that though the summer passes,
And all its scented flowers and all its feathery grasses
Tremble and weep and flee,
Yet thou art still the same. Thank God, thou hast not vanished!
Oh, God, when, weary at last, the summer's face he banished
Dreaded to banish thee.

Yes, though the year has passed, the same glad love-chains bind me.
So sweet thou art to me I dare not look behind me
Or round, lest thou shouldst flee:
When thou art with me, love, I only watch thy glances
Lest thou shouldst pass away, and all the world's romances
Vanish along with thee.

129

XXXV. MY REWARD

This reward have I for my love and pain:
To feel through pain the sweet love deeper grow;
The more I sacrifice, the more to know
Of the pure secrets of love's inner fane.
Yes, this is great and worth sharp pangs,—to gain
Exquisite tender priceless knowledge so
Of how the passionate heart of Love can glow
Immortally, while mortal we remain.

To feel my love wax deeper day by day:
This is love's tender and divine reward;
To find that perfect love no boundary keeps,
But ever with inevitable sword
That hurls all base and evil things away
Through heights and depths of light and darkness sweeps.

130

XXXVI. “HAUNTED FOR EVER”

Not once in many days,—once in a generation,
Doth beauty such as thine dawn forth upon a nation:—
As, ever, Romney's art
Struggled, in vain, to paint the beauty that he cherished
Which but for him had past from the eyes of men and perished,
So would I picture thee ere I depart.

Yes: I was born for this. Wherever now I wander,
Whatever dreams of life or dreams of Art I ponder,
Most surely I still shall see,
Down to my day of death, and far beyond (if over
The mystic stream may pass the soul of man or lover),
Through all far future time, the eyes of thee.

131

For this end was I born, and sense of form and metre
God gave me,—that thy laugh, than all fair music sweeter,
Might in my song abide:
For this God let us meet,—that I might ever after
Be haunted by a dream—the dream of thy soft laughter,
And by one yearning—to be at thy side.

God trained my soul for this, and gave me power of singing,
That when the moment came and thy soft laugh went ringing
Down valley and sunlit dell
My ear and soul might catch the deathless music in it
And through all time be thine, to death-land from that minute,
Haunted for ever by its mystic spell.

132

XXXVII. THE CROWNING GRACE

No wonder I was dazed: no wonder I was gladdened.
Thy beauty is of the type that now and then hath maddened
A whole great nation's heart:
Priceless to all who meet the sacred God-sent jewel;
Priceless if it be kind, death's dart if it be cruel,
But ever deathless in the land of Art.

This hath been given to thee. The beauty that can harm us,—
Redeem or sink to hell,—lift us, delight us, charm us
Into a worship wild.
But oh be more than this! Add to thy beauty's splendour
The grace that crowneth all, when through a woman's tender
Deep eyes shine forth the pure eyes of a child.

133

XXXVIII. PERFECT REST

This gives me perfect rest,—this is my exceeding rapture.
Quite to forget myself, and my own thoughts, and capture
Some new sweet sense of thee.
To lose myself in thee. To watch, soul-pale and breathless,
The beauty that gleams forth, inevitably deathless:
To see nought else but this,—yet this to see.

I never knew the rest that God could give a poet
Till thee I saw, and now I never more can know it
Save when thou art with me.
It rests my whole deep soul past words and past all measure
And gives my weary heart unfathomable pleasure
To wonder and gaze, and gaze and wonder at thee.

134

XXXIX. “IF CHRIST BE ‘RISEN INDEED’”

If Christ be “risen indeed,” is this not then the presage
Of a strange deathless sweet immeasurable message,—
A token of what shall be
Not only for the hills and limitless blue mountains
And silver-laughing hearts of fern-embroidered fountains
And for all flowers, but also, love, for thee?

Not only will all lands hear somewhat of the token:
Not only will death's deep dark evil spell be broken
For the immemorial past:
Not only will the stars rejoice and sing together
And newly risen birds spread forth bright deathless feather
As on the laughing winds their wings they cast:

Not only will the heaven to Cleopatra's splendour
Sweeter and nobler now, great peerless homage render:
All past fair queens shall rise

135

With the eternal light of heaven within their glances
And all the fire of old beloved and high romances,
Flaming, shall be rekindled at their eyes.

The message is for all: for all the world of roses
And for the violet blue whose humbler head reposes
Beside the roses' feet.
The message is for each: for every generation;
For the deep heart of each vast struggling heaving nation:—
Lo! “Christ is risen.” Is not the news most sweet?

The news that Love and Life are after all the stronger:
That if pale hate holds out, sweet rose-flushed Love lasts longer:
The news that death is dead,
And that triumphant Love, though weary with long labour
And fiercer strife, may sheathe at last his bloodied sabre
And raise towards stainless airs his golden head.

The beauty that struck deep,—the wondrous look that maddened,—
The summer sunful eyes that, as they glistened, gladdened
The whole world like the morn,—
These shall not pass away. Nay, with a glance supremer
Thine eyes shall seek in heaven for me thy poet-dreamer,
Demanding that new nobler song be born.

136

XL. MY POST

Oh, have I not this post—to sing for ever for thee?
To shed the glory of song and love's vast sunshine o'er thee,
Watchful lest harm befall.
Oh, have I not this right, supremely grand and fateful,
For which of all God's gifts I am to God most grateful,—
The right to suffer for thee more than all?

This is my part, my post. No man can take it from me.
No strength can now disarm, no sword-edge can displume me:
In front of thee I stand.
To die for thee were sweet. To live for thee is harder.
Yet, patient, this I do,—an ever watchful warder
At the sweet golden gates of fairy-land.

137

XLI. STARS AND THE SUN

All other faces fade before thy face imperial.
As the dark night fades out when once the blue ethereal
Bright daylight fills the air:
As all the flowers draw back behind their leafy curtain
Instinctively afraid when regnant, red-lipped, certain
Of amplest homage, the grand rose draws near.

The man who has seen thee may well draw back in wonder.—
O man, the years may pass, the purple skies may thunder,
The clear spring freshets run,
New crimson dawns may break, new golden mist-wreaths brighten,
Yet till thy head at last with weary hair doth whiten
What stars are left thee, having seen the sun?

138

XLII. FAIRY-LAND

Pure must the warder be whose anxious footstep waits,
Watchful for evermore, beside the fairy-gates:
But who would enter there
Must even purer be, and stronger, and his hand
Spotless,—if he would tread the sacred fairy-land
And breathe its mystic air.

If I would worship thee, and tread, with thee beside,
The grass of fairy-land, how pure and strong and wide
And deep my soul must be!
“God! purify my heart,—that it may have the power
To enter fairy-land with this sweet fairy flower.’
“Fairy: I follow thee!’

139

XLIII. OLD DREAMS

Old dreams of fairy-land, pure boyish dreams delightful,
Returned along with thee. My soul once more with rightful
Strong energy took flame.
Old dancing glancing thoughts the long sad years had hidden
Sprang forth to life renewed, at thy sweet mandate bidden:
Along thy path the dead romances came.

These all leapt up alive, and sang in chorus round thee.
The boyish woods took leaf, and bloom of old flowers found thee
And pure old dreams once more
Filled all my heart. Again I longed with knightly daring
To carry thee away, through some green forest faring,
Captive and hostage of some border war.

140

Ah! those old days are dead. We cannot reillume them,
Nor wake their worn-out hearts; we cannot disentomb them;
We cannot bring them back,
Nor mark once more, divine, and bright with laughter airy,
Titania, loveliest queen and most delicious fairy,
Weaving red heather-bloom beside the track.

But thou hast brought them back. Thou in triumphant measure
Hast quite renewed for me the lost days' boyish pleasure
And given me heart to hear
Slow, sweet, throughout the woods the fairy voices calling,
And thine own laugh is like Titania's laughter, falling
With lovelier cadence on my ravished ear.

141

XLIV. A MESSAGE

I want thee, dear, to know—if my life's work is over
Nearly,—how proud I am that as thy songful lover
I entered these last lists.
Of all strong final work this I would choose the sureliest:
A true man sings the best, as ever too the pureliest,
With love's gold fetters round about his wrists.

There is not any work,—if this indeed be nearly
The end of all,—that I with vision keen, and clearly
Discerning all, would take
Sooner than this. To sing thy girlish beauty peerless
And then to pass,—content and satisfied and fearless,—
While all hearts love thee for the sweet song's sake.

142

XLV. MADAME

Madame!—no English word gives quite the shade of meaning,—
What will you do when I on heaven's white sills am leaning
Or singing high songs there?
Will you bestow a thought on the old vanished lover
As through the green-blue grass where lurks the scented clover
You wander, breathing the June evening air?

Madame! will you think much,—when at the play your laughter
Rings out,—of one who heard and marvelled ever after
With tenderest sweet surprise?
As your soft blue-black hair falls round your shapely shoulder
Will you remember one to whom all life grew colder
When that dark hair-knot vanished from his eyes?

143

XLVI. “THEE I CANNOT ESCAPE”

Thee I cannot escape.—The whole great world remindeth
My soul of thee. Whate'er of joy my spirit findeth
It longs with thee to share:
The glory of the moors alight with purple heather;
The splendour of the calm untroubled summer weather;
The low soft laughter of the moonlit air.

When I behold the tides for ever surging, breaking,
Against the granite walls that guard with base unshaking
The wind-swept Cornish shore,
I long for thee to see with me the vast Atlantic
As the great waves with leap delirious and gigantic
Charge upward,—and foam backward evermore.

144

When I see white clear walls, and Southern hills and towers,
I long for thee to thread the Southern vine-tressed bowers,
Sweetheart, along with me:
And so it comes to pass that I escape thee never;
That every star of night bids me love on for ever,
And every fern and flower suggest but thee.

145

XLVII. LATE IN LIFE

God! thou hast late in life bestowed upon me a treasure
And given me one late sweet illimitable pleasure,—
This maiden's eyes to see.
God, turn them not away,—or how can I behold thee?
God, take her not away. For mists will then enfold thee,
And faith and hope will perish out of me.

This treasure cometh late,—and after years of sorrow.
O God of life and love, ward off the awful morrow
When I shall wake and find
Her hand removed from mine, and death's cold fingers grasping
The poet's hand that laughed for tenderest pleasure clasping
The slender fingers now by force untwined.

146

XLVIII. ONLY AT TIMES

'Tis only at times I know how much my spirit loves thee.—
When a brief sudden strain of heavenliest music moves me
And thrills my soul to tears,
I see my love designed and shadowed out before me
And see its power and force still fierce and urgent o'er me
Beyond the furthest years.

It is as if God knew by briefest glimpses only
The wonders of his worlds—the measureless weird lonely
Star-space,—as if the dim
Vast legions of his flowers defiled in ranks amazing
Once in a thousand years, with spears and petals blazing
Sunlike in front of him.

147

It is as if the sea spake once in voice of thunder
To God its Maker and Lord, and God was wrapt in wonder
Even at the sea his child:
Then spake not thus again for centuries long and weary,
Lapping along time's shores with whisper grey and dreary,
No more stern-voiced and wild.

Even so I see my love spread out at times before me
And awe and trembling dread and deep delight fall o'er me
To think that time will cease
And pain and death will end, and star on star grow tired,
Ere thou shalt fail to be by my whole soul desired,—
Ere love's strife end in peace.

148

XLIX. WEARY

Yes: I am weary indeed. But thou,—thou art not weary.
What hath thy soul to do with grey thoughts dim and dreary?
Thou art the morning's rose!
Long after I am dead, the flowers will gather round thee:
But still my glory is that mine the first hand crowned thee
With love no heart else knows.

This is my glory and gift; that I of all men brought thee
The deepest truest love, and with sweet singing sought thee
And gifts through long pain won.
This is my crown; to know that though love's sword was keener
Than grief's, I met its point with heart and glance serener
Than flowers that meet the sun.

149

L. STRENGTH AND SWEETNESS

True love is very strong; yet love is very tender.—
Just as the breeze to which the sea-waves' crests surrender
First o'er the sea-waste goes
Exulting in its strength: then seeks the garden bowers
And mixes with the dreams of even the softest flowers
And adds new beauty to the red-cheeked rose.

True love is very strong; yet is it full of sweetness.
Strength gives it grace, and grace adds to its full completeness
Of power and force of wing.
Sweetness and strength are one,—divinely, purely blended
In love; in love that through the golden stars descended
With thee, and gave me strength of soul to sing.

150

LI. “EVER UPON THY LIPS A GLEAM OF SADNESS LINGERS”

Ever upon thy lips a gleam of sadness lingers.—
As if the god of love when with caressing fingers
He touched thy lips and cheek
Had sad thoughts in his mind, and some of these had wandered
To thee,—and thou hadst since, upon the sad thoughts pondered
And ceased sweet dreams to seek.

More beautiful thou art for this one touch of sadness.
Not all God's blossoms speak of infinite heaven-gladness:
Not all the rivers dream
Of joy. The blue waves sing, and laughter rings above them:
Yet though we smile as well, and in our souls' depths love them,
Far-off faint foam-crests gleam.

151

Not all the woods are bright. Deep forest-arches darken.
Not to the songs of birds do all the dense leaves hearken:
Nay, some are sombre green.
Sweeter they are for this.—With tenderer fascination
The forest-vistas lure our love and admiration
For shadows through them seen.

So thou art sweeter far for this strange touch of sadness
Upon thy lips and cheek.—It is as if when gladness
Flushed all the rose's bloom
One petal still was left devoid of scent and colour,
In that behind sweet thought lurks ever the cold duller
Dark sad thought of the tomb.

152

LII. LOVE'S TASK

I think a task so sweet, and yet so strangely solemn,
Was never given to man.—Not with bright shaft and column
A temple high to raise:
No sculptured stone to blend with dreams of love and passion:
Not through sweet music-chords to wander in wild fashion:
Not by large song to win the Epic bays.

Only to sing thy face: this is the task Love giveth.
To sing the soul as well that in the deep eyes liveth:
To sing,—as best I can.
The task seems simple at first; yet, as the work proceedeth
It seems, the while the heart is pierced of love and bleedeth,
The cruellest sweet task ever set to man.

153

LIII. LOVE'S MESSAGE

All Nature hath its voice.—The meadows have their message.
The river leaping down the rocky narrow passage
Hath its own voice and heart.
Each star hath its own voice, each sun its speech excelling;
The fountain its soft voice of mystery upward welling.
Tongued is the lightning's dart.

Each poet hath his word.—Some in triumphant measure
Sing of the reign of sweet old-world Saturnian pleasure:
Some thunder like the sea.
I sing of Love, Love, Love. I give the world for token
The message that strong Love with sweetness never broken
Himself has given to me.

154

LIV. “HOW LITTLE DOES IT MATTER!”

So, after thee comes death? How little does it matter!
When Summer's fragrant hand has no more flowers to scatter
And Autumn's keen-edged breath
Thrills all the saddened fields that once were full of laughter,
It matters little then if swiftly following after
The Autumn's foot, comes death.

If one face is so fair that all the others darken:
If one laugh is so sweet one cares not now to hearken
To laughter less divine:
What matters it if death, upon their passing, follow?—
What help is it to one forlorn autumnal swallow
To see three red leaves on the eglantine?

155

LV. THE SUMMER AND LOVE

The Summer fluttered south, and gathered all its flowers
From English woods and hills, and English lanes and bowers;
Soft leaves from every tree:
All these it gathered up, bright fragrant laughing legions,
And sought with footstep glad the southern stormless regions,—
But on a sudden paused and looked for thee.

Love saw sweet rest at last spread meadowlike before him
And felt the robe of death fall soft and dewlike o'er him
And knew what peace may be
Within the arms of death; but, as he sighed for pleasure
Supreme, he felt the loss, still, of one earthly treasure,—
And with large eyes Love looked around for thee.

156

LVI. THE DEATH OF ALL FLOWERS

Now that I see thee, sweet, so very very little,
It is as if the world lacked every blossom-petal.
Bright golden stars abound
And the fair silver moon is full of light, and tender,
And all along the shore the white waves' olden splendour
Breaks, with the same large sound:

The world is full of grace: the summer dawns superber
Even than of old: the wind finds still no hand to curb her
As o'er the hills she flies:—
But, when I see thee not, it is as if all flowers
Lay dead.—All else is here, but bloomless are the bowers;
Like me, they miss the sunlight of thine eyes.

157

LVII. “MORE THAN THE FLOWERS FOR JUNE”

More than the flowers for June,—more than the lonely surges
Long for the sweet West wind that combs their crests and urges
Their white steeds on the way:—
More than the lonely stars when all the heaven is pallid
Long for the countless hosts that round about them rallied
Ere the first gleam of morning's banner grey:

More than the river's heart that longs to hear the laughter
Of the strong far-off sea, and yearneth wildly after
The shadeless waves and sun:
More than the dark-green woods, their bowers with leaves adorning,
Long for the eager kiss of buoyant-hearted morning,
I long for thee,—till love and pain grow one.

158

LVIII. LIKENESS IN UNLIKENESS

Because my soul is strong, but thine is as a flower;
Because I am a cloud that stoops above thy bower
With thunder in its song:
Because thou art so sweet, and full of beauty gracious;
Because my soul is large, and through its vistas spacious
Roam dreams of pain all day and all night long:

Because we are alike in nothing, and can never
Be more like than the flower and cloud that shields for ever
The simple flower and fair:
Because the bitter god, the singing god Apollo,
Is ever unto me the one god whom I follow,
I love past loving thy black bayless hair.

159

LIX. FAIRY-TALES

Yes: “fairy-tales” you love.—But was there ever fairy
So full of love and life, and laughter light and airy,
And soft coquettish glee,
As thou art? All the tales the thought of man has fashioned
Held never yet a queen so graceful and impassioned:
The sweetest fairy never equalled thee.

Ah, dear old fairy-tales! I would that thou mightst love them
For ever, and with eyes quite tearless bend above them
For ever and evermore.
Life is no fairy-tale. There comes an hour for waking.
Yet when I gaze at thee, I see the soft waves breaking
On sacred dreamland's ever-golden shore.

160

LX. GIFTS

And still I may bring gifts?—As, on a sudden waking,
God hears the same soft waves upon the same shores breaking
And knows that he may bring
Gifts to the waves, and laughs for very joy and pleasure,
I laugh for very joy in my small mortal measure,
Glad that my heart may still bring gifts, and sing.

The whole expanse of sea needs sea-birds, and the ocean
Of blue tumultuous air in wild incessant motion
Needs radiant plumes of stars:
The fiery vast superb broad-meadowed sunset-region
Needs flowers of crimson clouds and many a vaporous legion
And fleecy coronets and golden bars.

161

And ever God exults that day by day new-waking
The right to pour out stars and flowers with hand unshaking
Is his,—the right supreme.
The power and right to deck the world his love eternal
With infinite blue sky sun-lighted and diurnal
And stars her hand caresses in a dream.

The world is God's own love. He hastens to adorn her:
Her robe is bright with stars; it gleams at every corner;
And sunshine fires by day
The splendour of the world's illimitable raiment:—
God takes his own delight for amplest sweetest payment
When laughter flashes from her eyes of grey.

And, when thine eyes of brown flash tenderer sweeter pleasure,
I am repaid, O love, in measureless sweet measure
For any gifts I bring.—
God gives the world each day gifts sacred and eternal:
The glory of its noon; its moonlit peace nocturnal;
Its jewelled flash of many a sea-bird's wing.

162

And I,—I do rejoice to know that I may bring thee
Just one small gift or two; that, living, I may sing thee
With love's own tuneful breath:
That, living, I may love,—and if I die to-morrow
May love thee in the world that knows not change or sorrow
With love that bridges the abysm of death.

163

LXI. STARS, AND STARS

I kept account of all the times we met,
Just as a prisoner watching through his bars
Might keep account of the few friendly stars
On which each night his longing eyes were set.
And each star-meeting was an endless debt
To God and Fate for infinite delight:—
Those sweet star-meetings! few and soft and bright
Upon life's background carved in starless jet.

But now it may be we may oftener meet.—
The thought thrills through me just as if there went
Along the prisoner's soul a large content
And sudden sense of something strangely sweet
When, free at last, outside his prison-door
He saw his five stars lost in millions more.

164

LXII. “SO GREAT A THING”

If Life with all its songs and all its dreams—
Its flowers and scents of June, its songs of May,—
Its early dreams of love that pass away
And float like red leaves down the autumn streams
Of pale remembrance; Life with all its gleams
Of moonlit storm-clouds seen through sheets of spray
And sunny noons that merge themselves in grey
Dim afternoons wherethrough no sunlight beams:—

If all these things be but of little worth—
If it be hardly worth while to be born
Just to feel Fate's black-browed sinister scorn
And watch all sunlight slowly fade from earth,—
Yet to have seen thee is so great a thing
That even Life was worth encountering.

165

LXIII. SONG

I

The fleet-winged sea-bird stays not for the sea,
Nor thou for me
O love most fleet!
The strongest prayer that passionate love can pray
Holds not one day
The rose's feet.

II

God weeps each night to see the flying beams
And golden gleams
Of stars that fail.
Love's very soul would die to hold the flowers,
But sweetest bowers
Turn soonest pale.

166

III

One little moment, love, I hold thee fast;
Then is it past?
One fairy day!
One little tender moment;—ah, how soon
The woods of June
Turn gaunt and grey!

167

LXIV. “IF SO THINE EYES WOULD NOT FORSAKE THE DREAM!”

I dreamed of thee last night.—All night thine eyes before me
Shone strangely clear and sweet, and strange delight flowed o'er me
In rippling wave on wave.
All night I dreamed of thee: and dreamed in tenderest fashion
Of the great boon of death that crowns a perfect passion
And of large light that gleams beyond the grave.

How gladly would I cease the feverish pain of living
If only thy sweet eyes might ever be forthgiving
The same soul-maddening gleam:
How gladly would I let the one night's dream continue
Into the dream of death, if therein I could win you,—
If so thine eyes would not forsake the dream!

168

LXV. A DREAM

“Since thou hast loved with love so wild and sweet
That life and time have faded quite away
And thou hast learned to count the hours of day
By love's heart's inner and triumphant beat
At the dear coming of thy lady's feet;
Since, when she is not with thee, dark and grey
Is all the world—thy service to repay
And thy soul's strong forlorn desire to meet,
I send a dream:” even so the Love-god said.
Then I was 'ware that round about my bed
Crowded dim forms of angels and of men,
And the next world shone clear as in a glass.
They bowed before my might of love and pain,
And Death, bare-headed, moved to let me pass.

169

LXVI. MY LADY'S POST OF DANGER

Oh have I not beyond all other men
By love's sheer power eternal and supreme
And by the absorbing might of passion's dream
And by the solemn majesty of pain
Earned the great right the foremost post to gain
Where the white wild delirious sword-blades gleam?
Have I not struggled, that love's light might beam
Upon a knightly shield without a stain?

O Lord of love, if recompence there be
In the eternal universe of things
For anguished love that surges like a sea
Yet rides above the rolling waves, and sings,
Grant me for recompence superbly fair
Her foremost post of danger. Put me there.

170

LXVII. PAIN'S AGONY PASSES INTO AN AGONY OF LOVE

As through the winter's gates the joyous spring-tide passes,
Her bright brow wreathed with flowers and buds and clinging grasses,—
And then the summer shines,
With songs of many birds and sound of many rivers
And laughter of the leaves that rustles down and shivers
Through the concordant leafage of the pines:

As still there is a sense of agony just over
That even pales the rose and troubles the sweet clover
At times, and thrills the grove,
So, in our human lives, an agony of weeping,
Though summer's silent peace upon the hills be sleeping,
Becomes, not joy, but agony of love.

171

LXVIII. “IS THIS TOO MUCHO?”

If my deep strong love yearns for sympathy,—
Yearns that at least its solemn depth and height
Should flash before thee like the sudden white
Vision of cliff that overhangs the sea:
If I would by the love that burns through me
Win for my soul the unspeakable delight
Of knowing that my own love's mastering might
Is in a measure understood of thee,
Is this too much? Did not the Lord Christ long
With passionate heart whose yearning knew no bound
That even on earth might some response be found
To his own love most tender and most strong?
Does God himself in heaven not yearn at whiles
For answering tears of man, and answering smiles?

172

LXIX. THY DESCENT

Straight from the Roman women thou art sprung,—
Though many generations intervene
Since in thine home the Roman spears were seen
And the strong steel-bound Roman harness rung.
Thine ancient home is where the wind hath sung
In Cornwall to the Atlantic's vast blue-green
For ages, and Iseult herself hath been
Upon thy cliffs, and heard the wild wind's tongue.

But thou art Roman. Strange it is to think
That through thy Roman (not Italian) eyes
Shines the triumphant light of Latin skies:
That, as new generations rise and sink,
Still the old Roman blood at times appears:—
Thy dark glance traverses a thousand years.

173

LXX. A WINTER'S DREAM

After this winter, sweet beyond a poet's power
To tell, though every word were tender, each a flower,
What shall the new year bring?
If winter is so sweet, can summer days be sweeter?
Can summer's voice sound forth in yet more passionate metre?
Can fairer blossoms deck the brow of spring?

Selfish were such a thought, else I would long to follow
Sweet winter, and to pass from life before the swallow
Returns to English skies.
O love, if thou art gone, my soul will hate the flowers!
I dread to think how dark will be the brightest hours
If summer takes its light not from thine eyes.

174

LXXI. THE DEATH OF SONG

With his soul lost within the rose's scent,
How can the poet or lover sing the rose,
Or discompose
Even for song's sake his passionate content?

When thou art near me, and thine eyes I see,
The very spirit of singing fades away,—
For thou to-day
Art song, and wilt be song eternally.

What are our songs and verses of the deep
When close beside its awful strength we stand
And watch the land
Against whose breast the sweet warm billows leap?

What are all songs and loving words to-day
Save only mere wild mockeries of thee,—
Whom when I see
Song into silent wonder dies away.

175

LXXII. NOT IN VAIN

If through strong strife of mine, my life may shine forth purer,
So that these prayers may fly with steadier flight and surer
Towards God's high throne for thee,
Why then the strife is worth mine uttermost endurance,—
If only so I gain some inward sweet assurance
That thou hast grown in spirit, and grown through me.

If only one strong prayer of mine has brought thee nearer
To happiness and heaven, and made the blue sky clearer
For thee, or lightened pain,
Why then, though weary I am, and heavy at heart, full often,
Gazing at life and death with eyes that seldom soften,
I have not lived, and have not loved, in vain.

176

LXXIII. MY SWEETEST BLOSSOM

I know that day by day death's cypress-grove more clearly
Shines, that the flowers of life for me have perished nearly,
And that the sunrise glows
Far-off, the sunset near.—I know that thou art tender
And young and fair and sweet, like the white maiden splendour
Ere the sun kissed it of the first white rose.—

I know that I shall pass while yet for thee the rivers
Are blue and full of light,—while yet the alder quivers
With young leaves o'er the tide;
That, long ere thou art old, I may feel slowly wreathing
Around my head death's cold inevitable breathing
And mark his shadowy gaunt form at my side.

177

Remember me, if death should take me while thou tarriest
Still with the flowers of earth and thy light laughter marriest
Still to the bright birds' song:
Remember,—like a dream,—the poet-heart which found thee
And the true poet-hand which circled thee and crowned thee
With praise most tender, and with love most strong.

Remember me.—Of all the flowers that I have gathered
On slopes made bright with gorse, or hill-sides purple-heathered,
Or cliffs that front the sea,
The sweetest flower by far, the brightest and the truest,
Of lilies my most white, of fairy bells my bluest,
Is the sweet blossom of my love for thee.

178

LXXIV. UNTRAVERSED TIME

“Le ciel ayant á peine assez d'éternité!”
—Victor Hugo

Not here on earth I find half flowers enough to bring thee,
Nor half the might of voice with which I fain would sing thee:
The heaven with all its stars
Would not be wide enough to give my soul expression;
Nay, even there my heart would feel a grim repression
And love would chafe against its prison-bars.

I want a whole vast deep eternity to love in:
The endless boundless blue for my soul's wings to move in:
A wingless shipless sea
Whereover free and large my spirit of love may wander:
Vast ages for my soul on love's sweet lore to ponder:
Untraversed time wherein to worship thee.

179

LXXV. “IF ANY STRENGTH BE MINE”

Oh, thou wilt be so fair within the deathless region.—
Yea, love shall send a vast and limitless flower-legion
To guard and line thy way:
Thou shalt have for thine own the souls of all the roses;
Armies of risen flowers the darkness sweet discloses
Shall follow thee, and thy white hand obey.

The blossoms that have died in immemorial summers
Shall throng around thy steps, bright fragrant joyous comers
From all the ends of time.
The birds that died and rose shall gather, sweet, around thee,—
And Love who sought for years but never never found thee
Shall bring thee his own wreath of deathless rhyme.

180

Then on the earth thy name shall be beloved and famous;
One with the sweet dead names whose bright lights lure and shame us
And shame our singing skill:—
If any power be mine of meadow or of mountain,
The music of the voice of even the smallest fountain
That laughs with love of the sun-lighted hill,—

If any share be mine of music of the waters,
Thou shalt be well-beloved of earth's white-handed daughters
In other days than these:
If any soul be mine, or magic in my measure,
Or part, however small, in the wild stormy pleasure
And kingly love-song of the singing seas,—

If any strength be mine of love supreme and deathless,
Love that arises grand from every battle breathless
With sorrow and fate and time,—
If any force be mine, I give it, give it over
To thee; I put my strength as singer and as lover
Completely forth in the attempt sublime.

181

I put my whole strength out for thee,—this one time only,—
And then pass back again to my old shore-side lonely
And watch the grey-eyed waves,
Content, if I have placed thy soul beyond death's power,
To know that all things else time's gulfing seas imbower
At last, and swallow in their hungry graves.

182

LXXVI. LOVE'S RIGHT

What right have I to thee! What claim in words to fashion!
Merely the right and claim of fiery love and passion
And tenderness outpoured:
Merely the right of Love the large-eyed world-redeemer;
Merely the desperate right of one wild-hearted dreamer,
And, if man doubt it, my most wakeful sword.

Merely the final right of love that knows no limit:
That gazes in death's eyes, but finds no power to dim it
Or dwarf it set therein:
Merely the right supreme by which when all the bowers
Besought the brow of God to wear their choicest flowers
He chose a thorn-crown, the world's love to win.

183

LXXVII. A MASTERING AWE

A mastering awe at times pervades me and possesses,
Remembering that my song of woman's face and tresses
Will silent one day be:
This song may be the last of love-songs I shall fashion
Before I leave behind earth's loveliest sweetest passion
And face the passionless dark storm-lit sea.

The awe is very deep and terrible that holds me
When thus I dream. Its spell with strengthening force enfolds me,
The sense of coming rest,
Not on the heart of love, not on the soul of woman,
But on a larger love than highest and best of human—
Supreme repose upon the darkness' breast.

184

Then if all men forget, it matters little to me;
So that I feel the love of the large night flow through me
And meet the night's sweet breath:
If only each morn and night, when men would gather flowers
And watch new sunrise gild the dew-kissed green-clad bowers,
They think of thee and love thee,—what is death?

I am content to end my songs, if I may fashion
This song with such a wealth within it of sweet passion
And song of flower and tree
That never through all time may man or woman gather
Violet, or leaf of beech, or tenderest stem of heather,
Or hare-bell blue, without remembering thee!

185

LXXVIII. “A DIVINER FACE”

How strange it is to think that of ten thousand faces,
Each lovely for itself, and each with its own graces,
One face stands out supreme:
How strange it is to think my steps have followed after
Face upon face, till love was changed to tears or laughter,
And yet this face outstrips my wildest dream.

It is as if a man might worship flower on flower
God smiling all the while in some eternal bower,
Some moonlit heavenly place:
Then on a sudden God, the moment ripe for meeting,
Puts beauty past aside, and to the deep soul beating
Reveals for ever a diviner face.

186

LXXIX. EACH NIGHT

Each night I think: “To-day has brought me one day nearer
To seeing thee again,”—and still the thought grows clearer
The sadder that it grows.
For if again in life mine eyes should find thee never,
Each day brings nearer death; and, after death, for ever
With happier waves the heart's deep love-song flows.

Yes: after death strange stars that mocked us in our lifetime
Sail within reach, and even the great sea's stormy strife-time
Sinks to superb repose.
And God whose hand can make the loveliest flower diviner,
Artist unequalled yet, omnipotent designer,
Creates for love an unattempted rose.

187

LXXX. LOVE

The sea is very strong.—What is the power exceeding
In strength of deathless voice the storm-wind's passionate pleading
And mightier than the waves
As o'er the rocks they leap in thundering white-lipped millions
Or surge far out at sea by trillions and quadrillions
And chant death-choruses o'er countless graves?

What is the power that o'er the measureless sea-laughter
Triumphs, and scorns the scorn that shouts and follows after
Its fair triumphal feet?
Love: raising nigher to God the love-song of the willows
Than all the angriest chant of the sinister billows,
And nigher to God love's true heart's humblest beat.

188

LXXXI. LOVE'S SORROW

When fair love's fragrant world first opens out before us,
When first its sweet winds sing and golden stars shine o'er us,
Its flowers are so divine
We never never think of what shall follow after:
We only hear the wind's caressing lovely laughter;
We see no white crests on the far sea-line.

Then when the dark days come, and all the flowers are faded,
And the green thickets, dense with leafage once, invaded
By the bleak keen wind's breath,
We have the golden thought of summer days to cling to,
And love's old image deep within the heart to sing to,
Hurling song's utterance in the teeth of death.

189

Yes. Love brings endless pain,—an infinite sword-anguish.
Yet better far to love than through dull life to languish
Devoid of love and pain.
So, sweet, though love for thee has brought me pain exceeding
Yet from my heart's true depths, though love therein lies bleeding,
I cry, “Love's sorrow is immortal gain.”

190

LXXXII. “THOU ART ALIVE”

Yes: thou art still alive. The summer forests hold thee:
The sombre clouds of night and morning's mists enfold thee:
Though thou art not with me
The great world has thee safe. Its golden-smiling meadows
Caress thee, and thy laugh sounds ringing through the shadows
That fall at even over the dim sea.

It is not much to know; yet something is it, even
If one's own soul be far,—past language far,—from heaven,
To know that it is there.
Ah me! the sight that I, each starry night, would die for
The stars and blossoms gain, though this they never sigh for,
Content with visions of the eyeless air.

191

LXXXIII. CONCENTRATION

I concentrate on thee with passionate concentration
An age of undivulged unspoken adoration
Of all things sweet and fair.—
Lo! when I am with thee, the light that fell with glory
Unspoken in my youth o'er mountains grey and hoary
Streams o'er life's hill-tops, and fills all the air.

I seem like one whose heart through years of pain has battled,
Heedless of whistling bolts whose red wings round him rattled,
Heedless of awful grief,—
Who now stands, dead at last and risen and conqueror pallid,
Upon the very field where round about him rallied
The last stern square, ere death brought large relief.

192

Therefore I love thee so. Because thou bring'st the message
Of rest beyond the strife, and art thyself the presage
Of lordlier peace to be,
I love thee as a man might, in the midst of fighting,
Love some sweet sudden glimpse, his angry eye delighting,
Of far-off smokeless blue calm bloodless sea.

The messenger thou art to me of life immortal.
Thou standest evermore by death's dark secret portal
And all its secrets close
Are as the secrets then, most priceless and most tender,
That God's own great hands sealed within the bloom and splendour
Of the august and ever-gracious rose.

It will be very sweet for ever and for ever
To know that through the world with worn-out foiled endeavour
While all things mocked at me
I wandered through my youth, then when my manhood darkened
And when my heart was numb with deadliest long pain hearkened
To Christ and hope,—and to the voice of thee.

193

Yes,—very sweet to know that through my love and yearning
There came a gleam of hope—pale stormy wild hope turning
Towards God its anguished eyes—
Hope that there may be yet for each heart a Redeemer
And that the deep-eyed Christ was more than merely a dreamer;
Hope that love's song may reach supremer skies:

Just one wild gleam of hope that God was in our meeting,
And that thou art mine own beyond the feverish fleeting
Small laws of time and space:
Thou, even thou, O love; thou and the soul that gleameth
For ever through the eyes of which thy singer dreameth
For ever, worshipping thy deathless face.

194

LXXXIV. “YET WHEN I STRIVE TO CEASE”

Yet when I strive to cease, yea when I think of ending,
It is but as a man whose eyes stoop downward, bending
Towards river-banks made sweet
With peppermint and thyme and tall reeds bright and gracious;
Who says, “I am content: I need no more the spacious
High hills and mountains for my wandering feet”:—

It is but as a man who merely loving rivers
And willow green that waves and alder dark that quivers
O'er blue tides tenderly,
Thinking to sing of these in some fair inland prison,
Lifts sudden eyes of awe when lo! before his vision
God stands majestic, and pours out the sea.

195

So, infinite thou art. Though I may cease to sing thee
Yet never will my heart through all time cease to bring thee
Love infinitely strong.
Yes: all the seasons' wealth, and every summer's flowers,
And music of my life's long heavy-hearted hours,
And my heart's tender praise and changeless song.

Yet can I cease to sing? Can sunrise fail us? Never!
My very heart is song, my love is song for ever,
My soul is song for thee:
My heart began to sing when first thy beauty found me
And the sweet love of thee encircled me and crowned me
As thy sole singer through eternity.