University of Virginia Library

MANE ET VESPERE

VER

ISRAEL'S WRESTLING

Lo, of a sudden spring is in our lands,
Troubling dim mortals; happy those she lays
To rest back in their dreams again or gaze
And ponder on her and the wild commands
She issues hither, thither, as she stands
At vantage, and the universe obeys.
I rise reluctant and with wise delays....
A knot of snowdrops wrestled from my hand,
And I am taught, as Israel of the angel
He braved, how it enfeebles to contend—
Drawn onward, threaded by the spring's own spell,
At once to life's immeasurable end:
While, unsuspected of my fall, again
I take my place, quiet 'mid pondering men.

VER

Ver, sweetest Ver, that sets the birds to sing—
Not through the sky, not through the fields this year
Pierces her pang: all pain is to the ear.
What like the thrush's note the heart can wring,
Piping against the thunder of the spring,
And Nature hot and secret from her bier?
What is more sharp than in these tardy, drear,
And burthened dawns to catch the twittering
Of a robin on the thorn? Ver, lonely Ver!
Hers is a kingdom where Love draws tight breath;
And incommensurate the things he saith
To the great things that he would say to her....
She is so mortal, and the time so brief:
Quickly she passes on from leaf to busy leaf.

SULLENNESS

The year is sullen, sullen is the day;
Nor is the heaviness for summer gone:
It issues from a garden wrapt in clay,
And shooting boughs of pale mezereon.
The wind heaves slow, and yet no dirge is rung;
There is no burthen from a distant shore;
A strain, a cry is there for things so long,
So very far away, so long before.
Nor is there any pain regret can bring
Of so sharp pang as virgin appetite
That can but brood upon its famishing,
Till unwarmed suns shall furnish its delight.
So long the winter dures, breath is so brief!
—If one should fail before the flower has leaf?

JULY

There is a month between the swath and sheaf
When grass is gone
And corn still grassy;
When limes are massy
With hanging leaf,
And pollen-coloured blooms whereon
Bees are voices we can hear,
So hugely dumb
This silent month of the attaining year.
The white-faced roses slowly disappear
From field and hedgerow, and no more flowers come;
Earth lies in strain of powers
Too terrible for flowers:
And, would we know
Her burthen, we must go
Forth from the vale, and, ere the sunstrokes slacken,
Stand at a moorland's edge and gaze
Across the hush and blaze
Of the clear-burning, verdant summer bracken;
For in that silver flame
Is writ July's own name—
The ineffectual, numbed sweet
Of passion at its heat.

THE FOREST YEAR

Frailness of Time! O bitter moment drear!
Lo, the green summer learns that she must die!
Down the damp fungus-path the forest year
Comes weeping to the forest. Silently
The untarnished firs drop stubborn some few spines;
A flicker trembles through the moist sweet-gale;
The sunflower, high above the brake, declines
Her head untoward o'er the garden pale.
The winter woods no more will feel the clip
Of rose, of woodbine garland, glossy leaf
Of creeping briony....Ah, but a brief
Spinning of dewy webs, a little while,
And the slack flowers in bunches will down-drop,
Tumble and waste into the holly pile!

INEPT

What is the burthen of this gold sunshine
That burns across the voidness of decay,
Or stamps its splendour on the forest pine,
Or lifts—a token torch—one sweet-fern spray?
Why would it brand so deep? The meadows spread
Untarnishable in their pomp of dew,
Or frost, or clear meridian: overhead
Droppeth the night; but one must creep into
The brake to hide one from the harvest moon,
So wide she stares. Great stars that shed no boon
Flame through the orchard apples laid in heaps.
Why this profusion of September fire
Poured where the thistle in the tilth grows higher,
Laid over the broad fields where no man reaps?

NOT VINTAGE

A garden heavy with the harvest hops,
Creeping in garlands, glorious as they creep,
Up toward the sun, bearing their blossom-drops
Through coils of leafy light—gold blooms that steep
The air with thunder—fatal flowering round
Of some oppressive spirit, severed quite
From the quick feet of sylvan hunting-ground,
From the fountains of the hills, and from thy sight,
Iacchus, Reveller! Ah, would'st thou come,
Even from many toils and bitter chance,
From the Alcyonian Lake! 'Tis only those
Who have drunk fervently of mortal woes
Can strike the timbrel, can attune the dance.
We have no god, and all our lives are dumb.

SEPTEMBER

But why is Nature at such heavy pause,
And the earth slowly ceasing to revolve?
Only the lapping tides abide their laws,
And very softly on the sand dissolve.
The fruit is gathered—not an apple drops:
In little mists above the garden bed
The petals of the last gold dahlia shed;
The spider central 'mid his wreathed dewdrops!
Oh still, oh quiet!—and no issue found;
No laying up to rest of callow things,
Or scale, or sheaf, or tissue of armed wings:
Open the tilth, open the fallow ground!
The fragrance of the air that has no home
Spreads vague and dissolute, nor cares to roam.

OCTOBER

Honey-bees by little toneless grapes,
Bees that starve and cling,
Flowers that are distorted in their shapes,
Bees wayfaring
To their bowers—
Bees that do not come
To the flowers a-hum,
That rove quiet, trailing up the napes
Of the sunken flowers.

LEAVES

Where are they? I have never missed before
The whole wide kingdom of the cherishing leaves,
Or waft, or drifted into golden heaves
With all their scents, or dead upon the floor!
We left at sundown; but shall see no more
The air a film of multitudinous leaves;
For, lo, a sudden ravishing bereaves
The air that threaded them, the earth that bore!
And now of all their gorgeous, solemn realms
No sign: of unseen arrows came their fall;
They are not. Clematis and ivy curl
Their wavering tissues on the river wall—
Nothing afloat: the river a dark pearl;
The jagged acacia and the misted elms.

OXFORD

Dear city, not for what thou wert of yore
I love thee—for the blotting shades of yew
On thy rare lawns, the rich sweep of the dew
Crystal between the mulberry-berried floor,
The fig-leaf-dropping path; by one low door
The grape-vine with its clustering bunches blue,
And violet, dull leaves; the one or two
Pears ripening round the gargoyles, or before
Thy blackened halls. Thy charm is in the air
And haunts it as a ghost: the balsam scent
And withering of thy flowers is as elsewhere
In autumn meadow-lands it cannot be:
So much fair hope, so many summers spent—
'Tis Nature with the ruth of history.

DEPRESSION

The swans of Worcester with their lifted wings
In wreaths of white make the dull heaven more drear;
The shining water-lily leaves lie clear
Open in sunlessness; no wanderings
Of cloud are on the stream: each shadow clings
Firm to the under pool, the willows sheer,
Lucent as icicles. Then noon draws near
And fastens in the gloom. What is it brings
Such sorrow to the air,—a power, a cold
As from blown flame? Is it from plague, from strife,
Blood crying from the ground? Nay, the young life
Of centuries has hurtled overhead,
And lingers, vanquished, and not growing old,
Youth's stubborn, immature, unburied dead.

EBBTIDE AT SUNDOWN

How larger is remembrance than desire!
How deeper than all longing is regret!
The tide is gone, the sands are rippled yet;
The sun is gone; the hills are lifted higher,
Crested with rose. Ah, why should we require
Sight of the sea, the sun? The sands are wet,
And in their glassy flaws huge record set
Of the ebbed stream, the little ball of fire.
Gone, they are gone! But, oh, so freshly gone,
So rich in vanishing we ask not where—
So close upon us is the bliss that shone,
And, oh, so thickly it impregns the air!
Closer in beating heart we could not be
To the sunk sun, the far, surrendered sea.

SIRENUSA

Caught unawares the moments that enchant!
“Civet or bergamot, or holy basil?—
But close your eyes!”...And while the nostrils pant,
With the kaleidoscopic sweets a-dazzle,
“Oh stay, you strive; draw in a deeper breath:
You cannot fail: do not too quick reply!”
And the great lids before me, not in death,
But vivid as one feels the sea, being by,
Are stretched unsentried. Lovely Gorgon mask,
Kind betwixt me and doom! White siren coast,
And all the sirens whelmèd, in their host
Trembling unseen their perilous harps! Secure,
I leave the chafing senses to their task,
And profit of those brows serene and pure.

MEETING AT BERGAMO

AVOWAL

As two men smoking, though one be a youth,
And one so great he meets him as a peer
Or cannot meet at all, speak open truth,
—The God with me vouchsafing to make cheer:
“Eros, and now in disillusion, now
That thou hast purged me of thy thick blindfold,
Damon is false and Glaphyrus!...Avow,
Are not these creatures, I have doted on,
Thine idols, and eternal sweet to thee?
Dead loves I speak of, loves long dead and gone.”...
A noble silence settled on our glee;
And the sweet mouth grew jocund as he took
The cup to pledge, and all his glorious pinions shook.

RENEWAL

As the young phœnix, duteous to his sire,
Lifts in his beak the creature he has been,
And, lifting o'er the corse broad vans for screen,
Bears it to solitudes, erects a pyre,
And, soon as it is wasted by the fire,
Grides with disdainful claw the ashes clean;
Then spreading unencumbered wings serene
Mounts to the æther with renewed desire:
So joyously I lift myself above
The life I buried in hot flames to-day;
The flames themselves are dead: and I can range
Alone through the untarnished sky I love,
And I trust myself, as from the grave I may,
To the enchanting miracles of change.

LIFE PLASTIC

O Life, who art thou that with scarcely scanned
Mysterious aspect breakest on my way,
And vanishest, leaving a lump of clay
As gift, as symbol, shapeless in my hand?
Kindling and mute, thou gavest no command;
Yet am I left as prompted to obey,
With a great peril at my heart. Oh, say,
Am I a creature from achievement banned?
In my despair, my idle hands are cast,
Are plunged into the clay: they grip, they hold,
I feel them chafing on a moistened line;
Unconsciously my warmth is in the cold.
O Life, I am the Potter, and at last
The secret of my loneliness is mine.

POWER

To-day I am God's very name, I am:
Open to me the tombs of prophets dead;
Open the unbuilt tombs; apparent, red,
The blood of every lie. I probe each sham;
I search each adoration; as a lamb
Isaac is bound for slaughter, but, instead,
Abraham, his eyes in sacrifice, is led
Greatly rejoicing to the briar-caught ram.
His faith is with me; even to this hour
He lives, so simply he received my power:
But ye that question me, that say ye know
Your god, whence am I, ye shall taste of death.
I am the blowing wind—whence do I blow?
I am the blowing wind that shattereth.

BEING FREE

Belovèd, I shall speak of thee no more:
It is thy freedom now that thou art dead.
By speech we are not bound as heretofore,
For thou dost come the way that God doth tread,
Through the great solitudes that lovers use:
With spring and star-break, where deep music is,
After long, lashing storms we interfuse,
And Life requires no more that Lachesis
Sing to her of the Past. Nay, we are free,
Profuse, delicious, giving each to each
Love that we dared not give to memory
To be the guardian of, or trust to speech,
The kindling certitude of lip or eye:
Love one can only taste, Death standing by.

RECOLLECTION

A lion charmèd on the desert rim;
Recent from prey, the blood is on his jaws.
One lifts the mangled carcase and withdraws:
The lion watches in the clear light's swim,
And will not roar, or crouch with chafing limb
Recoiled for spring, but waits in burning pause
Till that relax that laid him 'neath its laws,
So that a noble mildness haunteth him,
A power to stay himself....It doth relax,
And the hyena calls; forth roareth he,
The darkness splits with his jaws' savagery.
Hereafter, in great moods, something he lacks,
Some majesty declined from him—and stands
A sentinel upon the trackless sands.