Later poems by John B. Tabb

For man or for your fellows die,
Ye bleeding victims, e'en as I
The life they spare not freely give
That in Me all again may live.
The lamb, the fish, I fed upon
With my Humanity are one.

AD BESTIAS

Ye have the power to lift us higher.
The Prodigal among the swine
Refound the pearl cast forth in mire,
The wisdom lost in wine.

And he, the outcast of the East—
The lord of luxury, discrowned—
Again the dawn of reason found
In darkness of the beast.

Aye, when a Babe He laid Him down
Among the beasts in Bethlehem,
Of brutal power He gave to them
To forge the Martyr's crown.

MOMENTS

Like the manna, mute as snow,
Swift the Moments come & go,
Each sufficient for the needs
Of the multitude it feeds;
One to all, and all to one,
Superfluity to none,
Ever dying but to give
Life whereon alone we live.

LONELINESS

I walk beside a lonely lake
Where, ere thy natal day,
I loved for contemplation's sake
At eventide to stray.

The mist, rewakened from the wave,
Enfolds me as before,
But from thy solitary grave
Thou comest now no more.

ABASHED

The cock crows; & behold the hidden Day—
The thrice-denied—appears,
And Darkness, conscience-stricken, steals away
His face bedewed with tears.

CHRISTMAS

The world His cradle is;
The stars His worshippers;
His “place on earth,” the mother's kiss
On lips new pressed to hers.

For she alone to Him
In perfect light appears,
The one horizon never dim
With penitential tears.

THE BABE TO THE GIFT-BEARER

I cannot hold within My hands
Thy gift, but here My mother stands
To take it as My own.
It is thro' her I come to thee,
And now our go-between is she
Till I am older grown.

SPECULUM AMORIS

My GOD the Baby is
That rests upon my knee.
Into those eyes of His
I gaze mine own to see.
And He looks up to meet in mine
Reflected all the love Divine.

A Maid my mother is:
And I a sireless Son.
No other deed like this
Has Love eternal done—
To make her motherhood for Me
The mirror of Divinity.

THE BREEZE AT BETHLEHEM

I that have lashed the sea
And from the forest torn the rooted tree,
Come now, my passion spent,
A lowly penitent,
Sweet Child, to Thee.

Alike Thy sovereign will
The strong & weak, O slumbering Babe, fulfil.
As I before Thee now
Shall waves submissive bow,
And storms be still.

PRISONER'S BASE

Tho' Almighty, far from me,
Little Babe, you cannot be;
If perchance you get away,
Back you come on Christmas-day,
And we children hold you here
In our hearts, a Prisoner.

AT THE MANGER

When first her Christmas watch to keep
Came down the silent angel, Sleep,
With snowy sandals shod,
Beholding what His mother's hands
Had wrought, with softer swaddling-bands
She swathed the Son of God.

Then skilled in mysteries of night,
With tender visions of delight
She wreathed His resting place,
Till wakened by a warmer glow
Than heaven itself had yet to show,
He saw His mother's face.

EPIPHANY

Reason, have done!
Of thee I'll none
While face to face I see the sun.

Be thine the ray
To point the way
In darkness: but, behold, 'tis day.

Should faith divine
Forbear to shine,
Again I'll place my hand in thine.

For in thy sight
To walk aright
Is prelude to the perfect light.

CHRIST AND THE WINDS

From Bethlehem to Calvary,
By night and day, by land and sea,
His closest followers were we.

We soothed Him on His mother's breast;
We shared with John the place of rest;
With Magdalen His feet we pressed.

We saw His twilight agony;
To us He breathed His latest sigh;
With us He sought again the sky.

And now of all to whom His tone,
His face and gesture once were known,
We, wanderers, remain alone.

IN EXTREMIS

Lord, as from Thy body bleeding,
Wave by wave is life receding
From these limbs of mine:
As it drifts away from me
To the everlasting sea,
Blend it, Lord, with Thine.

HOLY SATURDAY

O earth, who daily kissed His feet
Like lowly Magdalen,—how sweet
(As oft His mother used) to keep
The silent watches of His sleep,
Till love demands the Prisoner,
And Death replies, “He is not here.
He passed my portal, where, afraid,
My footsteps faltered to invade
The region that beyond me lies:
Then, ere the dawn, I saw Him rise
In glory that dispelled my gloom
And made a Temple of the Tomb.”

BROTHER ASS AND ST. FRANCIS

It came to pass
That “Brother Ass”
(As he his Body named,)
Unto the Saint
Thus made complaint:
“I am unjustly blamed.

“Whate'er I do,
Like Balaam you
Requite me with a blow,
As for offence
To recompense
An ignominious foe.

“God made us one,
And I have done
No wickedness alone;
Nor can I do
Apart, as you,
An evil all my own.

“If Passion stir,
'Tis you that spur
My frenzy to the goal:
Then be the blame
Where sits the shame,
Upon the goading soul.

“Should one or both
Be blind or loth
Our brotherhood to see,
Remember this,
You needs must miss
Or enter heaven through me.”

To this complaint
The lowly saint
In tears replied, “Alas,
If so it be,
God punish me
And bless thee, Brother Ass.”

NATURE

It is His garment; and to them
Who touch in faith its utmost hem
He, turning, says again, “I see
That virtue hath gone out of me.”

HELPLESSNESS

In patience as in labour must thou be
A follower of Me,
Whose hands & feet, when most I wrought for thee,
Were nailed unto a tree.

THE VIGIL

“Stay for me here”—Ah, well doth Love obey
Thy mandate: for the stars have burnt away
The web of darkness, & disrobe the day
In twilight chill.

“Stay for me here”—I cannot choose but wait.
The day is spent: & at the ponderous gate
Of sunset, still I linger desolate.—
Was this thy will?

“Stay for me here”—An echo in the gloom
Of midnight warns me of approaching doom.
As at the temple, so before the tomb,
I wait thee still.

MY PORTION

I know not what a day may bring;
For now 'tis Sorrow that I sing,
And now 'tis Joy.
In both a Father's hand I see;
For one renews the Man in me,
And one the Boy.

BEATITUDE

And is it well with thee?
Ay, past all dreaming, well!
For here we dwell
Where none may weep,
And Paradise is ours again to keep—
The tree of knowledge in the midst thereof.
Time-ripened love—
The leaves no more for healing, but for food
Of life renewed,
Fresh with the dew, from vanished faith distilled,
Of hope fulfilled.
All round us angels be
To guard the gateways, not with sword of flame,
But fragrant breathings of the holy Name,
That never more an after thought of sin
May enter in.

MY NEIGHBOUR

My neighbour as myself to love,
Thou hast commanded me,
And in obedience I prove
That Thou Thyself art he.

O'ERCOME

I pause for tears. But thou, my lute,
Why art thou, like thy master, mute?
Hath harmony within thee bred
The hope thou hast interpreted?

Nay; if thou falter, Love may deem
Our passion but an idle dream.
Speak then, my lute, that all may hear
How silence holds me prisoner.

BEAUTY

She sleeps—her hiding-place unknown
To other worshippers,
Till Art, her lover, comes alone
To press his lips to hers.

THE VOYAGER

Far inland, where the sea,
Throughout the day,
Lives but in memory—
From twilight gray
As foamless tides of sleep
Their heights attain—
Back to the distant deep
I drift again;

And, as of old, a boy
Seem I to be,
With Innocence and Joy
Afloat with me,
Till, all too soon, the star
Of Morn appears,
And on the slumber-bar
We part in tears.

DEPRECATION

Low, I listen in my grave
For the silence soon to be
When a slow-receding wave,
Hushed, is memory.

Now the falling of a tear
Or the breathing half-suppressed
Of a sigh, re-echoed here,
Holds me from my rest.

O, ye breakers of the past
From the never-resting deep,
On the coast of slumber cast,
Cease, and let me sleep.

AT THE EBB-TIDE

O marshes that remain
In anguish dumb
Till over you again
The waters come!

So must thy life abide
In silent pain,
Till Love, the truant tide,
Come back again.

IN ÆTERNUM

If Life and Death be things that seem,
If Death be sleep, and Life a dream,
May not the everlasting sleep
The dream of life eternal keep?

THE STROKE OF THE HOUR

If I were dead, and yonder chime
Retold the fairy-tale of Time,
At distance I perchance might hear,
And half in pity, half in fear,
Perceive the future life to be
But an immortal Memory.

LOSS

For one extinguished light
Of Love, all heaven is night;
For one frail flower the less,
The world a wilderness.

INITIATED

Thou hast put on the livery,
And learned the shibboleth,
And pledged for all eternity
The brotherhood of Death.

Yet to thy wonder-wakened eyes
The light, however clear,
But solves the deeper mysteries
That lay about thee here.

THE LUTE-PLAYER

He touched the strings; & lo, the strain—
As waters dimple to the rain—
Spontaneous rose and fell again.

In swaddling clothes or silence bound,
His genius a soul had found,
And wakened it to light and sound.

DEPARTURE

Go now thy way, but whereso'er thou art,
If sick again for home,
Know that the place forsaken in my heart
Is vacant till thou come.

DEJECTION

The sun is gone; & the forsaken sea—
Her glance a tear
Wherein all depths of tenderness appear—
Looks back at me,
Where I upon the strand,
The centre of the lone horizon, stand
Forlorn as she,
To know that when her darkness drifts away
Mine own must stay.

SONG

Fade not yet, O summer day,
For my love hath answered yea.
Keep us from the coming night,
Lest our blossom suffer blight.

Fear thou not: if love be true,
Closer will it cleave to you;
'Tis the darkened hours that prove
Faith or faithlessness in Love.

NOMADS

We are but pilgrims; and the skin
That covers us, the tent wherein,
Awake or sleeping, we abide
Till death a dwelling-house provide.

FINIS

O to be with thee sinking to thy rest,
Thy journey done;
The world thou leavest blessing thee and blest,
O setting sun;
The clouds, that ne'er the morning joys forget,
Again aglow,
And leaf and flower with tears of twilight wet
To see thee go.

QUO VADIS?

The sedge was sere; the water still,
As waiting for the wintry chill;
When, shadow-like along the hill,
She moved alone.

The owl, upon a blasted limb,
From sepulchres of silence dim
Made charnel echoes mock for him
Their dying moan.

Upon the forehead of the night
The moon, foreboding in affright—
A film of solitary light—
Above her shone.

What meant the omen of the bird?
The moon with blinding vapours blurred?
What in her heart of anguish stirred
The stifled groan?

A plunge, a ripple, and a sigh
Of waters;—fleeting soul, reply,
Was it for death of Love to die,
Or to atone?

LEAVES

All your sylvan prophecies
But a phantom sigh!
“Yea, we listened to the breeze
Tempting us to fly
Like the summer birds and bees
From the branches high:
Now beneath our naked trees
Shadowless we lie,
In the autumn mysteries
Doomed, alas, to die.”

VICTIMS

Behold, throughout the land,
On many a smoking pyre
The maple-martyrs stand
Ablaze in autumn fire.

The winds are hushed in prayer,
Till, falling one by one,
Dumbfounded leaves declare
The sacrifice is done.

FOG

The ghost am I
Of winds that die
Alike on land or sea,
In silence deep
To shroud and keep
Their mournful memory.

A spirit white
I stalk the night,
Or, shadowing the skies,
Forbid the sun
To look upon
My noonday mysteries.

NIGHTFALL

Now, weary, one by one we lay
Aside the panoply of day;
And, like to little children, creep
Defenceless, to the arms of sleep.

Our heads upon her bosom, soon
Forgotten are the cares of noon,
That, shorn of shadows, helpless lie
As Samson in captivity.

CLIFFS

For ever face to face,
As towered of old
Within the Holy Place
The wings of gold.

One heralding the day
With kindled crest;
One reddened with the ray
That fires the west.

The bosom-vale between
Alike their own;
To each a heaven unseen,
A world unknown.

TO THE WHEATFIELD

Give us this day our daily bread.
“Oh wheat,” the wind, in passing, said,
“'Tis you that answer everywhere
This call of Life's incessant prayer;
Bow, then, in reverence your head,
For 'tis the Master's gift you bear.”

THE FORFEITURE

Who first beneath the mistletoe
On Christmas night is found,
Must pay a forfeiture, we know,
To them that stand around.
Approach, ye angel choirs, and then
Make way for happier sons of men.

HEREDITY

I died at sea; and homeward bound,
I journey half the world around
To rest where native dust is found.

'Tis strange, if dust be dust, that I
E'en now to dust returning, sigh
As dust with kindred dust to lie.

But haply, as from sire to son,
From son to sire emotions run
That make the lineal current one.

THE BIRTHDAY

Another blossom blooms for thee
Upon the never-failing Tree
Of Life—the same in breath and hue
As was the first that drank the dew,
When God within His garden stood
Alone, and found it “very good.”

So be it, when—thy garden done,
And all thy labours one by one
Recorded—thro' the twilight dim
He comes to bid thee walk with Him
Into a vaster solitude,
Thou too behold it very good!

SICUT IN PRINCIPIO

A pentecostal breath—
The wind that baffles Death—
Moves: and from sterile sand
The sea brings forth the Land,
Out of whose wounded side
All life is satisfied.

MEMORY

I go not to the grave to weep,
But to my heart, wherein I keep
A hidden manna that hath fed
Alike the living and the dead.

We gathered it as, day by day,
It fell from heaven upon our way,
To be, if haply one were gone,
The bread for both to feed upon.

RACERS

The winds from many a cloudy mane
Shake off the sweat of gathering rain
And whicker with delight;
No slope of pasture-lands they need,
Whereon to rest, or drink, or feed,
Their life the rapture of the speed,
The frenzy of the flight.

NOCHE TRISTE

The night that bore me to my dead,
Along the dreary way
The meadow-frogs in chorus said,
“We sing the vanished day;
Think not that life is all with you:
Her night hath stars and voices too.”

CONSOLATION

Henceforth alone to bear
The cross thou canst not share
Is sweet to me;
For 'twas the heavier part
That lay upon thy heart
Which now is free.

UNIGENITUS

After the man-child morn,
Of night no babe is born:
After a God, no room
For man in Mary's womb.

A WIND-CALL

Dust thou art, and unto dust,
Playfellow, return thou must;
Lingering death it is to stay
In the prison-house of clay—
Bricks of Egypt, year by year,
Walling up a sepulchre.

Better far the soul to free
From its cold captivity,
And with us, thy comrades, go
Wheresoe'er we list to blow.
Come, for soon again to dust
Playfellow, return thou must.

WITHDRAWN

I miss thee everywhere.
The places dear to thee,
Familiar shadows wear
Henceforth for memory.

And where thou hast not been,
Thou seemest to repose
As near—tho' never seen—
As fragrance to the rose.

WRINKLES

This, biting Frost—this, branding Sun—
This, Wind or drenching Rain hath done:
Each perfecting the Sculptor's plan
Upon the godlike image, Man.

DEATH

I passed him daily, but his eyes,
On others musing, missed me,
Till suddenly, with pale surprise,
He caught, & clasped, & kissed me.
Since then his long-averted glance
Is fixed upon my countenance.

IN AUTUMN

Now that the birds are gone
That sang the summer through,
And now that, one by one,
The leaves are going too,
Is all their beauty but a show
To fade for ever when they go?

Nay; what is heard and seen,
In time must pass away;
But Beauty, born within,—
The blossom of a day—
Unto its hiding place again
Returns for ever to remain.

THE BREEZE

Thro' thee the ocean knows
The fragrance of the rose;
And inlands, far away,
The blossom of the spray.

Thro' thee, to every wave
A whisper of the grave;
And to each grave a sigh
Of Life that cannot die.

FULFILLED

'Twas August: and a Gypsy Breeze
Came wandering thro' the wood.
“Our fortunes!” cried the lover Trees
That first before her stood.

“Sir Hickory the king shall be
Of all this wide demesne;
And you,” she added tenderly,
“Fair Maple, shall be queen.”

They listened, smiling as she spoke,
Nor heeded what she told,
Till came the morning when they woke
Arrayed in red and gold.

LOVE IMMORTAL

The soul that sees no hell below,
No heaven above,
All other mysteries may know,
But never Love.

If from the prison-walls of Time
No life may fly,
Then Love and Innocence and Crime
Alike must die.

WINTER RAIN

Rain on the roof and rain
On the burial-place of grain;
To one a voice in vain;
To one, o'er hill and plain
The pledge of life again.

Rain on the sterile sea,
That hath no need of thee,
Nor keeps thy memory—
'Tis thou that teachest me
The range of charity.

THE STAR TO THE WATCHER

Farewell! I may not meet thee till the day
Hath passed away;
But in the bosom of the noontide sea,
I'll dream of thee.

Alike are we the votaries of Night;
A voice hath said,
Let there for other worshippers be light,
For lovers, shade.

HARBOURS

Full many a noonday nook I know
Where memory is fain to go
And wait in silence till the shade
Of sleep the solitude invade.

For these the resting-places are
Of dreams that, journeying afar,
Pause in their migratory flight
This side the continent of night.

ST MARY OF EGYPT

Strong to suffer, strong to sin,
Loving much, and much forgiven,
In the desert realm a queen,
Penance-crowned, to cope with Heaven,
Solitude alone could be
Room enough for God and thee.

Long the vigil, stern the fast;
Morn, with night's anointing, chill;
Noon with passion overcast;
Night with phantoms fouler still;
Prayer and penitential tears
Battling with the lust of years.

Low upon the parching sand,
Shrivelled in the blight of day,
As beneath a throbbing brand
Prone thy ghastly shadow lay,
Till the manacles of hell
From thy fevered spirit fell.

Then, O Queen of Solitude!
Silence led thee as a bride,
Clothed anew in maidenhood,
To an altar purified,
Lit with holy fires, to prove
Self the sacrifice of Love.

LIFE'S GULF STREAM

Stars, that in the darkness bloom
Wither in the light;
Dreams, begotten of the gloom,
Take their morning flight.

And, the gleam of fancy gone,
From the current of the dawn
Tidal memories are drawn
To the coast of Night.

THE LIFE-GIVER

The earth to us her bread
Of life doth give;
And we to her, our dead,
That they may live.

In vain the vision blest
Of Heaven were found,
Did Faith no ladder rest
Upon the ground.

REVISITED

A lonely road I tread again,
As once with Love's companion, Pain,
Who faltered, “Love is fled.”

To-day, a shadow not mine own
Along a lonelier path is thrown,
That tells me “Pain is dead.”

INSCRIPTIONS

The epitaph of Night
The Sunbeams write;
The epitaph of Day,
The Shadows gray;
One requiem of Wind & Wave
Above each grave.

THE GRAVE-DIGGER

Here underneath the sod,
Where night till now hath been,
With every lifted clod
I let the sunshine in.

How dark soe'er the gloom
Of Death's approaching shade,
The first within the tomb
Is light, that cannot fade.

And from the deepest grave
I banish it in vain;
For, like a tidal wave,
Anon 'twill come again.

THE OLD YEAR'S BLESSING

Like Simeon of old,
The new-born Babe I hold
Upon my heart:
According to thy word,
Let now thy servant, Lord,
In peace depart.

THE TEST

The dead there are, who live;
The living, who are dead:
The poor, who still can give;
The rich, who lack for bread;
To Love it is and Love alone
That Life or Luxury is known.

THE SOUL'S QUEST

I laid my vesture by
Upon this spot,
And here returning, I
Behold it not.
Dost thou, O earth, resume
The relics of the tomb?

Whereto the Earth replies:
“Be not afraid;
Safe in my keeping lies
What here was laid:
A thousand forms refine
What shall again be thine.”

TO AN AMATEUR

Love thy violin:
Let thy soul therein
Learn the unity
Of the mystic three,
When the string and bow—
Parted lovers—meet,
And in music know
Life in Love complete.

HIDDEN

The sweetest warblers—one in light,
And one in darkness, screened from sight—
By voice alone prevail;
So let the Poet sing his song,
As far secluded from the throng
As Lark or Nightingale

THE DAWN STAR

Feed me, O morning, till the ray
That love hath kindled in the shade,
Lost in the satisfying day
Of Light's perfection, fade.

NEIGHBOUR

Full many a heedless fellow-man
Had passed him on the way,
But Night, the Good Samaritan,
Beholding where he lay,
Upbore him to the Inn of Sleep,
And there I heard him say,
Whate'er the charges of his keep,
O Landlord, I'll repay.

TEARS

Out of the deep are we,
Out of that inland sea
Whereof the briny wave
Beats to the yawning grave.

TWO EASTER LILIES

Behold the reed of scorn,
Like Aaron's rod,
Hath blossomed to adorn
The risen God.

And she, the broken bloom
That balmed His feet,
Is first before His tomb,
Her Lord to greet.

ANIMULA VAGA

Do quickly what thou hast to do;
For, till to dust again,
O coffin-worm, the temple fall,
A fledgling I remain.

Nay; till the utmost particle
Another form hath found,
Tho' plumed for the empyrean,
I flutter near the ground.

INFLUENCES

Each separate life is fed
From many a fountain-head:
Tides that we never know
Into our being flow,
And rays of the remotest star
Converge to make us what we are.

AT THE LAST

Little squirrel in the tree,
Faithless other friends to me,
Therefore to the birds and thee
Have I come.

Men have reason; ye have love
—Gift all other gifts above—
Proving what, alas, to prove
They are dumb.

100

THE DIAL

A dreamer in the dark, I grow
Prophetic in the morning glow;
Thereon a slender shade I throw—
A sign in Babylon to say
“Thou'rt in the balance weighed, O Day,
Found wanting, and shalt waste away.”
And now in Night's pavilion, all
The stars are writing on the wall,
“Behold, thy kingdom too must fall.”

101

BREAKERS

'Tis well the dimples sweet
To kiss away—
The marks of little feet
That love the spray;

For, once the children gone,
'Twere mockery
The vestiges upon
The sand to see.

102

HER PILOT

Death seemed afraid to wake her;
For, traversing the deep,
When home he came to take her,
He kept her fast asleep.

And, haply, from her dreaming
Of many a risk to run
She woke, with rapture beaming,
To find her voyage done.

103

SURVIVAL

The tempest past—
A home in ruin laid;
But lo! where last
The little children played
At hide-and-seek,
A footprint small
Pleads silently,
As if afraid to speak.
“Behold in me
A memory,
The least & last of all!”

104

THE HAUNTED MOON

Still closer doth she cowl with night
Her visage white,
To hide her from the spectre grey
Of yesterday—
Deep buried in his sepulchre
To all but her.

106

FIAT LUX

“Give us this day our daily bread,” and light:
For more to me, O Lord, than food is sight:
And I at noon have been
In twilight, where my fellow-men were seen
“As trees” that walked before me. E'en to-day
From time to time there falls upon my way
A feather of the darkness. But again
It passes; and amid the falling rain
Of tears, I lift, O Lord, mine eyes to Thee,
For, lo! I see!

107

GOING BLIND

Back to the primal gloom
Where life began,
As to my mother's womb
Must I a man
Return:
Not to be born again,
But to remain:
And in the School of Darkness learn
What mean
“The things unseen.”

108

BLIND

Again as in the desert way,
Behold my guides—a cloud by day,
A flame by night:
For darkness wakens with the morn,
But dreams, of midnight slumber born,
Bring back the light.

109

MAMMY

I loved her countenance whereon,
Despite the longest day,
The tenderness of visions gone
In shadow seemed to stay.
And now, when faithless sight is fled
Beyond my waking gaze,
Of darkness I am not afraid,—
It is my Mammy's face.

This is the American Southern child's name for the negro nurse.

110

IN BLINDNESS

For me her life to consecrate,
My Lady Light
Within her shadowy convent gate
Is lost to sight.

I may not greet her; but a grace—
A gleam divine—
The rapture of her hidden face
Suffuses mine.

111

IN TENEBRIS

The dawn to ours is dusk to other eyes;
And, light away,
Our stars returning to their native skies
Forget the day.

If then, some life be brighter for the shade
That darkens mine,
To both, O Lord, more manifest be made
The light divine.

112

PROXIMITY

The day is nearer to the night
Than to another day:
If closer to the living Light,
In darkness let me stay.

113

BENIGHTED

Her mistress would not have her stay;
And so the fair hand-maiden, Day—
My Hagar—banished from my sight,
Has left me to her rival, Night.

But still she lingers in the glow
Of life above us and below:
The stars my Sarah's progeny;
My Hagar's, sands beside the sea.

114

OUR STARS

My twilight is before the dark,
And thine before the day;
O'er both alike a beacon-spark
To keep us in the way.
The darkness can but brighten mine;
Let not the noon extinguish thine.

115

THE SMITER

They bound Thine eyes, & questioned, “Tell us now
Who smote Thee.” Thou wast silent. When to-day
Mine eyes are holden, and again they say,
“Who smote Thee?” Lord, I tell them it is Thou.

University of Virginia Library

CHRIST AND THE PAGAN

THE GOOD THIEF

CHRIST TO DUMB CREATURES