University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

[You say, Columbus with his argosies]

You say, Columbus with his argosies
Who rash and greedy took the screaming main
And vanished out before the hurricane
Into the sunset after merchandise,
Then under western palms with simple eyes
Trafficked and robbed and triumphed home again:
You say this is the glory of the brain
And human life no other use than this?
I then do answering say to you: The line
Of wizards and of saviours, keeping trust
In that which made them pensive and divine,
Passes before us like a cloud of dust.
What were they? Actors, ill and mad with wine,
And all their language babble and disgust.

[They say that Cleopatra who of yore]

They say that Cleopatra who of yore
Received the moon on her dishevelled hair,
Looking into his eyes, and breathed the fair
Low wind along Mediterranean's shore
When Summer swelled the stars,—Now at her door
The wanderer sees her like a jewel flare,
And drawn by passion thro' the beating air
To her, he falls, her dagger at the core.
Through rifts of scudding shadow, while his trance
Blackens in death, he feels about him lean
Her olive breasts and arms, and in her glance
Great wings of fire and midnight closing in:
His wasting arms do make a vain advance.
So I unto the life I would have been.

[They lived enamoured of the lovely moon]

They lived enamoured of the lovely moon,
The dawn and twilight on their gentle lake.
Then Passion marvellously born did shake
Their breasts and drave them into the mid-noon.
Their lives did shrink to one desire, and soon
They rose fire-eyed to follow in the wake
Of one eternal thought,—when sudden brake
Their hearts. They died, in miserable swoon.
Of all their agony not a sound was heard.
The glory of the Earth is more than they.
She asks her lovely image of the day:
A flower grows, a million boughs are green,
And over moving ocean-waves the bird
Chases his shadow and is no more seen

ON RODIN'S “L'ILLUSION, SŒUR D'ICARE”

She started up from where the lizard lies
Among the grasses' dewy hair, and flew
Thro' leagues of lower air until the blue
Was thin and pale and fair as Echo is.
Crying she made her upward flight. Her cries
Were naught, and naught made answer to her view.
The air lay in the light and slowly grew
A marvel of white void in her eyes.
She cried: her throat was dead. Deliriously
She looked, and lo! the Sun in master mirth
Glowed sharp, huge, cruel. Then brake her noble eye.
She fell, her white wings rocking down the abyss,
A ghost of ecstasy, backward to earth,
And shattered all her beauty in a kiss.

[I My friend, who in this March unkind, uncouth]

My friend, who in this March unkind, uncouth,
Biding the full-blown Summer and the skies
That change not, stayest unmoved and true and wise
That in thy love thou lovest not me but Truth,
What should we fear that Age corrode with ruth
Our loves, who love the thing that never dies,
Building us archways unto Paradise
Of all that greets the soul's all-flowering youth?
So is it, that often parted, rarely met,
And never blessed with gifts of genial Time
Wherein might grow the seed we have but sown,
Our hearts remember tho' our minds forget
How on from year to year and clime to clime
Stretches the love that makes of all but one.

[II Your image walks not in my common way]

Your image walks not in my common way.
Rarely I conjure up your face, recall
Your language, think to hear your footstep fall
In my lost home or see your eyes' sweet play.
Rather you share the life that sees not day,
Immured within the spirit's deep control,
Where thro' the tideless quiets of the soul
Your kingdom stretches far and far away.
For these our joys and griefs are less than we.
The deeper truths ask not our daily thought—
Their strength is peace, they know that we believe.
And whatsoever of sublime there be
Reaches and deepens and at last is wrought
Into that life we are but do not live.

[III Were you called home and I were left to grief]

Were you called home and I were left to grief,
I'd not go down disconsolate to the shore
And brooding mix my language in the roar
Of waves in spasm upon the tortured reef;
Nor climb the lonely mountain where the leaf
Sings its wide whisper and the ravens soar
From shadows of unholy ellebore
Loved by the owlets, blind and dull and deaf.
I should not loudly mourn and vex the earth
With strewings of my ashes; none would find
My reft soul's sorrow in the gushing eye.
But my dull world would be a world of dearth,
Cheerless the sunrise, the sweet sky unkind
And life grayer, my heart not asking why.

IN A CHURCHYARD

How strange, beneath the blue and happy sky
And the reviving greenery of the trees
So pale their shadow blows along the breeze,
To read on polished graves the little cry
Of this delirious immortality!
Well was it said for all, for each of these
“The poor in heart,” who still in death displease
The flowers and wind and youth that passes by.
How but for them the children of the earth
Here, where the grass is fresh and glittering,
Would share with herb and beast the common birth!
And when they 'd played away this day of Spring
How sweetly would they fold at evening
Their petals, hands, and wings at nature's hearth.

[When I hereafter shall recover thee]

When I hereafter shall recover thee
And, on the further margin fugitive
Silently bringing up, if aught survive
The raging wind and old disastrous sea,
I disembark, O darling, verily
To hold thee to my heart, to feel alive
The tremor of thy lips, thy bosom,—it will drive
The dark in shreds out of eternity.
Sometimes I ask me why the morning sun
Returns, or later, when the day is done,
I let the dreams about my pillow strain;
But then it sounds across my dying brain
Like torrents in the moonlight foaming on
Between enormous mountains to the plain.

[Tho' inland far with mountains prisoned round]

Tho' inland far with mountains prisoned round,
Oppressed beneath a space of heavy skies,
Yet hear I oft the far-off water-cries
And vague vast voices which the winds confound.
While as a harp I sing, touched with the sound
Most secret to its soul, the visions rise
In stately dream, and lifting up my eyes
I see the naked mountains beacon-crowned.
Far in the heaven the golden moon illumes,
The crowded stars toil in the webs of night
And the sharp meteors seam the higher glooms.
Then shifts my dream: the mellow evening falls;
Alone upon the shore in the wet light
I stand, and hear the infinite sea that calls.

ON SOME SHELLS FOUND INLAND

These are my murmur-laden shells that keep
A fresh voice tho' the years be very gray.
The wave that washed their lips and tuned their lay
Is gone, gone with the faded ocean sweep,
The royal tide, gray ebb and sunken neap
And purple midday,—gone! To this hot clay
Must sing my shells, where yet the primal day,
Its roar and rhythm and splendour will not sleep.
What hand shall join them to their proper sea
If all be gone? Shall they forever feel
Glories undone and worlds that cannot be?—
'T were mercy to stamp out this agèd wrong,
Dash them to earth and crunch them with the heel
And make a dust of their seraphic song.

[Tho' lack of laurels and of wreaths not one]

Tho' lack of laurels and of wreaths not one
Prove you our lives abortive, shall we yet
Vaunt us our single aim, our hearts full set
To win the guerdon which is never won.
Witness, a purpose never is undone.
And tho' fate drain our seas of violet
To gather round our lives her wide-hung net,
Memories of hopes that are not shall atone.
Not wholly starless is the ill-starred life,
Not all is night in failure, and the shield
Sometimes well grasped, tho' shattered in the strife.
And here while all the lowering heaven is ringed
With our loud death-shouts echoed, on the field
Stands forth our Nikè, proud, tho' broken-winged.

[Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord]

Live blindly and upon the hour. The Lord,
Who was the Future, died full long ago.
Knowledge which is the Past is folly. Go,
Poor child, and be not to thyself abhorred.
Around thine earth sun-wingèd winds do blow
And planets roll; a meteor draws his sword;
The rainbow breaks his seven-coloured chord
And the long strips of river-silver flow:
Awake! Give thyself to the lovely hours.
Drinking their lips, catch thou the dream in flight
About their fragile hairs' aërial gold.
Thou art divine, thou livest,—as of old
Apollo springing naked to the light,
And all his island shivered into flowers.

[Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream]

Be still. The Hanging Gardens were a dream
That over Persian roses flew to kiss
The curlèd lashes of Semiramis.
Troy never was, nor green Skamander stream.
Provence and Troubadour are merest lies
The glorious hair of Venice was a beam
Made within Titian's eye. The sunsets seem,
The world is very old and nothing is.
Be still. Thou foolish thing, thou canst not wake,
Nor thy tears wedge thy soldered lids apart,
But patter in the darkness of thy heart.
Thy brain is plagued. Thou art a frighted owl
Blind with the light of life thou 'ldst not forsake,
And Error loves and nourishes thy soul.

ON THE CONCERT

When first this canvas felt Giorgione's hand,
From out his soul's intensity he drew
In lines most acrid yet superbly few
A man,—a soul, whose water at command
Of pain had stiffened to ice, whom grief had banned,
Till music even and harmony's rich dew
Fell fruitless. Poised, defiant and calm he threw
To the earth that wronged him his life's reprimand.
Yet, as he drew, a wind mellow with dole
Of past life as of sea-coast pine did rise
And warm the rigour of the painter's soul.
For his tear-moistened fingers warmed the frore
Hard colours of the cheek, and in the eyes
Set the large stare of Sorrow's Nevermore.

[The melancholy year is dead with rain]

The melancholy year is dead with rain.
Drop after drop on every branch pursues.
From far away beyond the drizzled flues
A twilight saddens to the window pane.
And dimly thro' the chambers of the brain,
From place to place and gently touching, moves
My one and irrecoverable love's
Dear and lost shape one other time again.
So in the last of autumn for a day
Summer or summer's memory returns.
So in a mountain desolation burns
Some rich belated flower, and with the gray
Sick weather, in the world of rotting ferns
From out the dreadful stones it dies away.

[As a sad man, when evenings grayer grow]

As a sad man, when evenings grayer grow,
Desires his violin, and call to call
Tunes with unhappy heart the interval;
Then after prelude, suffering his bow,
Along the crying strings his fingers fall
To some persuasion born of long ago,
While mixed in higher melodies the low
Dull song of his life 's heard no more at all:
So with thy picture I alone devise,
Passing on thy uncoloured face the tone
Of memory's autumnal paradise;
And all myself for yearning weary lies
Fallen to but thy shadow, near upon
The void motion of eternities.

[He said: “If in his image I was made]

He said: “If in his image I was made,
I am his equal and across the land
We two should make our journey hand in hand
Like brothers dignified and unafraid.”
And God that day was walking in the shade.
To whom he said: “The world is idly planned,
We cross each other, let us understand
Thou who thou art, I who I am,” he said.
Darkness came down. And all that night was heard
Tremendous clamour and the broken roar
Of things in turmoil driven down before.
Then silence. Morning broke, and sang a bird.
He lay upon the earth, his bosom stirred;
But God was seen no longer any more.