Poems Real and Ideal :: :: University of Virginia Library

O Ireland, Ireland,—and we love thee well!—
Lo! thy green meadows are made foul with red
Blood-stains by thine own sons' mad folly shed;
The land was heavenlike: thou hast made it hell.
Thou hast set murder on the lonely fell,
And filled the night with shadows of the dead,
And made the moonlight shudder at the tread
Of monstrous deeds too horrible to tell.

And this is love of Ireland! Pause and think.
Would not your love on nobler pinions soar
If it were taught from cowardly crimes to shrink,—
Murder to hate, injustice to abhor?
Ye your own chains are forging link by link,
And barring on yourselves your prison-door.

SONNET XVII. THE GHOSTLY ARMIES.

Over each city hangs a cloud of dead!—
Far more in number than our living faces
They fill with shadowy wings the crowded places,
By their old leaders gathered still and led.—
My eyes were opened. Lo! our parks were red
With troops that Wellington at Waterloo
Watched die before him:—Nelson I saw too,
And round him sailor-hosts in myriads sped.

And round fair Paris a great army stands:—
Paris is now besieged, and by an host
Outnumbering all the armies of live lands;
But every warrior is a bloodless ghost.
They mount guard o'er the Seine, these warrior-bands,
And dead Napoleon visits every post.

SONNET XIX. AN EASTERN YEARNING.

Oh, be thou just a rose! Why, thou canst kiss,
And is not that enough? This weary “soul”
That women cultivate, what heaven, what goal,
Can it supply as sweet as passion's bliss!
Half the delights of womanhood we miss
Here in the West.—Woman and flowers are one.
Instruct your flower:—flower-rapture all is done
Straightway, and you forget what woman is.

Oh, God deliver me from Western dreams
Of culture! Give me just an Arab tent,
And sweetly-moulded limbs within it pent,
And sun and flowers, and stars, and pale moon-beams:
This dark slave's shining bosom o'er me bent,
In that she cannot spell, more shapely seems.

SONNET XXI. GOD AND WOMAN.

God made a woman,—and he stood aghast
For very wonder. There she stood quite white,—
Naked and perfect. God's eyes waxèd bright;
Before him like a carven dream she passed.
Her black hair on the heaven-breeze floated light;
God watched her slowly vanish till at last
The soft superb shape glimmered out of sight:
Then on the trembling earth his tools he cast.

“Now do I for the first time envy Man”
He said: “The woman never will be mine;
Those dark thick tresses darker than the pine
And sweeter than the rose,—that body wan
And soft and scented like the dim woodbine,—
I cannot own for ever:—but he can.”

SONNET XXII. GOD.

Think you that God is moral? God is Love—
But Love that transcends every mortal law:—
The singer climbs with strange desire and awe
These low green misty earthly hills above
And sees the sun come nearer,—and he finds
That God is not as man;—He laughs to scorn
The petty creeds of petty fancies born,
And scatters all our goodness with his winds.

Oh, God is not as man! Love in God's sight
Is ever sweet, and passion ever pure:
The God who made the wild hedge-rose so white
Gave it besides the scent that doth allure;
There is a holiness in all delight;
The sweeter is the nobler law, be sure.

SONNET XXIII. FORSAKEN.

And shall thy sweetness wither, woman fair
Set in the midst of lonely desert days?
Dost thou lift up to heaven thy weary gaze
And see nought round thee but the void blue air?
Have no soft lips of lover kissed thine hair?
Hath thine hand never toyed with myrtle sprays?
Hast thou not wandered by the green-blue bays
In summer, full of mystic dreams and rare?

Oh, it were sin to leave thee blossoming so—
Alone, unplucked, unloved:—as great a sin
As to pass by some lily set within
A jungle,—where with heavy gait and slow
The loveless monstrous beasts lurch to and fro,
Piercing the rush-beds with their gaze unclean.

SONNET XXVII. THE SONG-BRIDE.

God hath his waters, and his winds and trees:
Think you that in God's eyes one single rose
Less beautiful and pure of petal blows
Because no mortal the bright blossom sees?
The haunt of every violet God's heart knows:
And all the golden gorse upon the leas
That loads with lavish scent the lingering breeze
For God in its rich glory of colour glows.

God hears all Nature singing unto him:—
And so the poet inwardly is 'ware
Of his own song's divine blue summer air,
And, though the world of man should wax quite dim,
Still would he stand triumphant,—for his Bride
Is his own song, for ever at his side.

SONNET XXVIII. ALONE.

Though England quite condemn me, yet am I
Very content in lonely calm to stand
Waiting,—my ceaseless lyre within my hand
And over me the uncondemning sky.
O England, England, England,—if we try
Our strange high visions unto thee to show,
'Tis ever the same answer—ever “No”!—
So one by one the baffled poets die.

Yet hold I fast my vision. Though not one
Were with me, I should hold it all the more.—
The spirit of Beauty at the heart of things
Is my one God, and till my life is done
I'll follow her moonlit feet along the shore
And mark the far faint glimmer of moonlit wings.

SONNET XXIX. RELIGION AND ART.

“Religion and Art are best kept apart, I think.”—

Ah!—Just so. Keep your God, and give me mine.
Keep you your Sunday God, black-coated, grim,—
Sever all Art and sweet delight from him,—
Sip in his name your sacramental wine.
My God is in these carven limbs that shine
Upon the smooth blue sea's soft buoyant rim;
My God is in these full rich lips that brim
With kisses sweeter than rain-washed woodbine.

Beauty is my God:—I am well content.
All wonder of form ye see not; ye are blind.
Pursue your road in peace,—ye were not meant
The tabernacle of my God to find.
My God is hidden from all your evil eyes
In dark-blue folds of thunder-guarded skies.

SONNET XXX. IN ST. JAMES'S PARK.

I watched the towers of Westminster shine grey
Across the Park, beneath an April sun:
The trees their first fresh verdure just had won:
I thought of all those silent towers could say;—
Of many a wild and blood-stained former day
And grim deeds by the Thames' grey margin done;
I called up English crowned heads one by one;
I thought of Whitehall: and of Fotheringay.

I mused:—Then lifted up my head and lo!
A girl was passing by, in jacket brown
Of soft stamped velvet,—she passed, looking down,
And towards historic Westminster did go:
After awhile I rose, and followed slow:
What drew me?—Westminster, or fluttering gown?

SONNETS XLIV., XLV., XLVI. A MORAL VICTORY: AND ITS RESULT.

I.

A lover conquered passion,—and he let
The great sweet chance slip through his fingers quite:
But was he closer unto God that night,
Knowing that passion's golden sun had set?
Did no wild storms of anguish and regret
Sweep o'er his lonely couch,—whereon a white
Soft figure should have lain?—the battle of right
Had been fought out—the victory won,—and yet....

All through that night he tossed about,—in dreams
Seeing a rose ungathered beckoning him:
Seeing the sudden flash of white that gleams
Above the bodice-lacework's loosened rim:
Waking and grasping—just the cold moonbeams!
Till morning broke,—rainy and weird and dim.

II.

Then forth he went and wandered by the sea:
The horizon cleared and the fair golden sun
Flashed on the waves that answered one by one,
And,—turning inland,—many a wet rose-tree
Flung rainbow dew-drops at him merrily.
The battle he the previous night had won
Seemed like a fierce defeat,—a hot race run
For worse than nothing: such strange beings are we!

“And she”—he thought—“my rose-bush all this night
Of perfect passionate summer left alone:
With never a kiss imprinted on the white
Rose-breast that might have been my own . . . my own . . .
To-night is left us still: the ways untrod
Shall ring to-night to passion's steeds,—by God!”

III.

And that night,—having sent a letter first,—
He waited her beside the blue still sea.
The ripples at his feet plashed tenderly,—
Now he was ready,—let Fate do its worst,
No night than last night could be more accursed!
Now he felt oneness with the rich rose-tree,
And watched the sunset,—and it did not flee,
Then passion grasped his throat with giant thirst.

He turned to meet her,—for the hour had come.
Then lo! a carriage by the sea-side wall,
And into his a woman's eyes once flashed;
Then on towards Venice the grey horses dashed.
He saw it now,—Last night or never at all:—
Aye—never, never, never!—till the tomb.

SONNET XLVII. ALL OVER AGAIN.

A poet thought:—“Ah! to start quite afresh!
To die to the old passions and begin
In some new city a new life to win!
To break from every old entangling mesh!
No more 'mid London's rough discordant din
To love,—but in white Paris or in Rome
Or Venice—anywhere far off from home—
To gather a golden new love-harvest in!

“Oh, I could love”—he thought—“as though I ne'er
Had loved before,—within me doth remain
Limitless youth: I could meet woman's eyes
As a glad boy of fourteen meets June skies
Upon a holiday morning:—in the air
Of Italy I could love all over again!”

SONNET LI. FORGOTTEN JESUS.

I stood beside the Galilean Lake
And what was left of Jesus?—Bright and blue
Just as in the old days they used to do
The ripples laughed, and soft mist flake on flake
Brooded above the rushes in the brake,—
Yet every human face I met was new:—
Ah me! The world has never yet been true
For any woman's love or hero's sake!

Christ was forgotten of the hills and skies!—
New fishermen their brown nets dragged and flung
Within the waters,—and their chants they sung
Towards other dark-skinned maidens' answering eyes
Than those who in the far-off summers hung
On Jesus' lips, and harkened to his sighs.

SONNET LIV. THE COQUETTE-WORLD.

The world is a coquette. She kissed, and clung
Round Jesus as an actress clings around
Her long-lost lover on a sudden found,—
And over him her tearful hands she wrung.
For nineteen centuries round his tomb she sung
And her strong passion seemed to know no bound:—
White craving supple lithesome arms she wound
About the throat that on the black cross hung.

What was it worth?—She hath a new love now,
A young love,—and she marks within his eyes
The far-off light of summers of new skies,
And flowers unfaded ring his lineless brow:—
Christ and his centuries pass,—and, laughing, she
Flings white arms round the Twentieth Century.

SONNET LVII. HEAVEN AND WOMAN.

And what are twenty centuries unto God!
Just one swift starry night, and nothing more;
Just one light speedy footfall on the floor
Of time: one summer blossoming the sod.
So mused I in Bond Street: and the ceaseless roar
Of carriages seemed like the centuries wheeling
Red ranks round God's throne, with wet eyes appealing
For pity,—crime on crime and war on war.

Through the blue sky I gazed as in a dream:—
Then my eyes fell, and in a carriage lo!
An olive-skinned clear face and lips that glow
With loveliest power of passion, and a gleam
Of Italy in the eyes, and forehead low
And shapely.—How far-off those star-thoughts seem!

102

SONNET LIX. LOST RICHES.

O riches of all the ages we have missed!—
Dark eyes, dark tresses, in old Eastern lands,—
Wonderful thrilling of electric hands,—
Lips fairer than all flowers, alas! unkissed.
Blue tender veins on Cleopatra's wrist,—
Eyes gazing over red burnt Indian sands,—
Eyes sweeter than the blue sea that expands
Round Venice;—oh, the long heart-piercing list!—

And whom of all that long list have we seen?
Poets, who have the eternal heart of Time
Mixed with your own in magnitude sublime,
Ye have kissed the lips it may be of one queen
Of love and song, and crowned her in your rhyme,—
One!—yet red lips are numberless, I ween!

104

SONNET. IN BOHEMIA: A CONTRAST.

A scanty room:—poor furniture indeed:
Just one thin-blanketed small tressel-bed,
And over it a washed-out grey shawl spread;
Wall-paper showing some green wide-branched weed.
Cracked low discoloured ceiling overhead
And on the floor a rug,—no carpet there;
A picture opposite that seemed to stare,
Full of great colour-blots of blue and red.

Such was the bower of love:—and on the bed
A woman, beautiful as early morn.
Soft cool lips, full of love, or full of scorn,
And breast whose sweet touch might awake the dead.
No golden palace,—yet within this place
More than a Cleopatra's eyes and face.

May, 1882.