Old and New :: :: University of Virginia Library

O Autumn leaves!
Bind in thy tresses, maiden fair,
These Autumn leaves.
See Hope fulfilled in rangèd sheaves:
See in dead Nature Love's despair:
For brooding joy, for russet care,
These Autumn leaves.

II.—THE POEM

Her brow upon thy pages bent,
Thy volume, Poet, in her hands;
She knows not, she so innocent,
How like a pictured maid she stands.

Sing, Singer, to thy heart's content!
Paint, Painter! shall he rival thee?
Twin arts have equal graces lent:
So art thou, Maiden, fair—and free.

110

AN UNFINISHED PORTRAIT

How shines the gold amid the brown
Of heavy tresses tumbling down,
In Art's despite!
How Nature blends her red and white!

Ah, happy painter, it is thine
That ‘sweet disorder’ to confine:
If thou shouldst order it aright,
Ah, what delight!

111

TO WILLIAM THOMPSON

[_]

(Dedication to Chambers Twain)

Old friend, it was my earliest thought
That your name should be written here;
For sooth, if Friendship counts for aught,
I hold no living man so dear.

Yet o'er my pages now I look,
And am, for very shame, deterred:
Of Love unending tells the book,
But of our Friendship not a word.

112

A BIRTHDAY

Dear sister, with an idle line,
There comes no dainty thing
To grace thy dress, to deck thy hair;
These may some other bring.

Love, of an essence volatile,
Will oft elude the string
That bindeth sure the decent gift
Of formal offering.

So in no cumbering parcel tied,
But swift, on his own wing,
Love, faring forth to gain thy side,
Has only love to bring.

113

FRIENDS

Hands clasped a moment on the strand:
The one must stay, the other go:
There is not any sign to show
That friends have parted, hand from hand.

The years roll on; the two friends stand:
The welcome spoken, speech is slow;
Still is there not a sign to show
Friend dead to friend, as hand strikes hand.

114

IN A BACHELOR'S GARDEN

It seems, ah me! but yesterday
She plucked, half jesting was she not?
And blushed (so near my heart they lay)
Yon flowers that plead—‘Forget-me-not.’

Ah, ageing heart! old memories throng!
Again, meseems, her kiss strikes hot:
Her voice, long mute, bursts into song
Who planted that Forget-me-not.

115

A SCIENCE OF HISTORY

Think you it would be good indeed
(Surveying on the walls of Time
The hurried finger trace) to climb
The heights of Fancy, and to read

The import of the coming years?
Or would the load be heavier yet?
A paler grief unheeded, wet
The Rock of Destiny with tears?

116

QUESTION

To one who long a worldly gain
In worldly paths has sought,
May aught of better worth remain,
Save peradventure caught
On cobwebs in the brain,
Some fragment of untainted thought?

117

TWICE DEAD

The spirit ever hath desire
To pierce, thro' forms of Friendship, higher,
And somewhere gain its promised part
Of true communion, heart with heart.

Ah, friend of Youth! thy fresh-cut grave
Is warmer than the hand you gave:
Else were not (strangers many years)
Lost friend, lost friend! these tears, these tears.

118

MAGDALENE

‘You are a beautiful woman,’ he said.
Oh, a long night followed that day.
The whole long night rang rang in my head
His words, and his look as I lay

I could not forget. I lay weeping, and vowed—
‘I will hold hereafter in trust
This Beauty of mine: I will live and be proud,
Not humbled, as now, in the dust.’

We met, as one meets men, any way,
I've met, it may be, men by the score.
And talked about nothing, as any one may
When one has to spend ten minutes or more.

119

Then parted—a light matter parting with men?
But the eyes of this man were aflame in his head—
He gave a great hand, and was silent, and then,
‘You are a beautiful woman,’ he said.

120

ALMA MATER

Lady, my thanks: this night my dream
Is of a pathway stretching fair
Through meadows bordering a stream,
And flowers, thy gift, spring everywhere.

By Grandchester, by Trumpington,
Our quiet Cam-side pacing slow,
At eve I pass, still musing on
The unseen years, as years ago.

My flower-dream annulling time
Gives back the garnered hours to me;
Gives back a perished trick of rhyme
That hardly shapes these words to thee;

Gives crowding thoughts of earlier days:—
Lost friend, whose love I ask in vain,
I walk the old oft-trodden ways
Thy hand within mine arm again.

121

Ah, the old days! The sun sank there:
Ah, the old days! Thus sped the hours:
But dream-born seems the perfumed air,
And of the dream my path of flowers.

122

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Dead sage, dead priest, unheard ye call
Up from the valleys where ye sleep:
Love's clarion soundeth over all;
His fires glow from steep to steep.

Professor, I have little store
Of learning you may fitly seek,
I covet no Department's lore—
Egyptian, Syriac, or Greek.

But oft I tread these halls alone,
And mark where, treasured with the rest,
There lies a stone, no common stone.
‘A fragment’—of a ‘woman's breast.’

Profess, Professor, all you know!
I ask, among the spoils you heap,
Has Time a greater thing to show?
Have we a holier thing to keep?

Reprinted from The Speaker.

123

REMEMBER

Remember, love, how Burns would bring
His verses to the ingle-side,
And bid his dear-loved Jeanie sing,
And by that test abide.

Then what her ear determined true
Her lips gave ringing to the night;
And Burns was glad, and surely knew
That he had sung aright.

Dear love, for me play such a part;
If I sing truly thou canst tell:
I bring my verses to thy heart;
If any enter, it is well.

124

QUESTION

The inmost tenant of my heart,
Dearest, thou knowest well thou art;
But love alone can solve a doubt
If I love thee, Love, out and out.

125

GIFTS

Take back the song you sang, Love:
Take back the gift you brought:
Take back the word you gave, Love:
Let me only keep the thought

That you knew not what you said, Love:
You deemed a song was naught:
You brought a gift to me, Love;
And knew not what you brought.

126

EVER AND A DAY

He murmured, ‘Love, for ever!’
She whispered, ‘and a day?’
And I, whose pain ends never,
Saw her stand in her bride's array,
And knew that her love was for ever,
And his false love for a day.

127

G. D. R.

1879

Dearest sister, Sorrow dwells
In the home as sound in shells
That whisper evermore
Along a silent shore:
Evermore, and mournfully,
The gathered sadness of the sea.

1889

A voice unheard these many years;
A face long summers shut from sight;
That face I saw, that voice to-night
Gave quiet in a world of fears.
Sister, ten years may serve for tears;
In twice ten years I shall not miss
His very look, the ring of his
Great voice abideth in mine ears.

128

W. H. WIDGERY

‘He worketh still,’
Superior to Death's smart,
He worketh still.
What his spent years could not fulfil
I shall endeavour for my part,
For ever, living in my heart,
He worketh still.

129

TO JOSEPH SKIPSEY

[_]

With the Book of the Rhymers' Club

If I herein have phrased a thought
In words that jar not on your ear,
I shall be happy: Love has wrought
So in my heart that words are naught
To me at all, if insincere.
Unless with sacred meanings fraught
Words are but words. To ‘perfect praise’
Is the sole aim of Art: the Thought
Of daily bread, too dearly bought,
Deters no poet—Time repays.

130

OF QUIET

Tired brain, there is a place of rest
On the broad bosom of the Land,
Where quiet will reward the quest
Of Quiet; and the iron hand
Of Toil upon the rolling hills
Will be unheard.—Ah, there shall we
Find quiet in the tumbling rills;
Or in the tumult of the sea,
The quiet that my dream fulfils
Of Quiet-aching tho' it be.

131

R. A. LEDWARD, SCULPTOR

Mark how with loving hand he wrought
Here on the dial that counts the hours
Thy sad great figure, wingèd Time,
Set heavy-hearted 'mid the flowers.

Ah, even while he wrought did he
Close a great bargain with the years
The sooner with these flowers to be
That for their nurture have thy tears.

132

FOR AN URN

She chose to die.
Grave here beneath our helpless flowers
‘She chose to die.’
Alas! the sun forsook her sky
What while he gladdened other bowers:
She tasted life—a few sad hours;
And chose to die.

133

ART'S EXTREMES

Proudly the father,
Lowly the wife,
Bends o'er a child sleeping,
Dearer than life.
Pride speaks in the father,
Love is mute in the wife,—
‘Did ever a painter
Paint like Life?’

Heavy the footfall,
Laboured the breath;
One quitteth the chamber
Held by Death.
His gaze is estranged,
All strangely he saith—
‘Was there ever a sculptor
Wrought like Death?’

134

THE PROTEST OF SPRING

O Spring!
Say not that She is dead.
Green month of bursting flower and leaf
Say not that She is dead.
For joy of life thy tears are shed;
Naught, naught to thee are mine of grief;
April! Fling wide thy disbelief
That She is dead.

135

LET REST

What art was lavished on the bower;
What nameless beauty hers for dower;
What perfect moments made the hour!

They steal like death from room to room;
They stifle sobs that break the gloom;
They keep the silence of the tomb.

Bring up old friends to view the bed;
Bring up, with slow, mock-solemn tread,
The hired transport of the dead.

Let rest the gold that holds her hair;
Let rest the ring none else might wear;
Let rest the strong man weeping there.

136

LIFE—LIFE

Life, life, if murmuring there be
Of low estate, or scanty pelf,
The plaint upgoeth not from me.
Thy toys lie broken on the shelf—
Love swept them with an idle breath:
Life, life! Love overmastereth thee:
Grant gentle passage unto death.

137

TRIOLET

Lo, thy poor ring is broken!
These kisses bind for aye.
Let but this word be spoken,
Now thy poor ring is broken:
‘True love outlasts his token,
Yet cannot choose but stay.’
Lo, thy poor ring is broken!
These kisses bind for aye.

138

THE UNDERSONG

To-day shall be no song, Love,
Here quiet now with thee;
No song holds all my love, Love,
So singing shall not be.

Let my hands frame thy face, Love;
Take this kiss for thy brow;
And these for thy tired lids, Love;
Ah! tears, not singing, now.

Lay thy cheek to my cheek, Love;
Rest thy dear hand in mine;
Let thy heart search my heart, Love.
If it indeed be thine.

And let there be no song, Love,
Save only this that tells
How deep, beneath all singing,
Song in the heart upwells.