Verse in bloom :: :: University of Virginia Library

When the clock of my heart runs down, refusing
To tick in a case too old for using,
If I live new life, and, for good behaviour,
Am allowed to speak to my Lord and Saviour,
I shall beg His pardon with humble boldness
For the folly of love-resisting coldness
And the shame of a tongue that, loose and careless,
Pattered a prayer, which was almost prayerless.

THE GOD

Graybeard, annotating Love,
What is all this cold blaspheming?
Love is known to change to scorn
Between an evening and a morn.
Men have been stricken dead
For less than you have said.

Lust, the cunning parasite,
Breaks the oath he's fond of swearing;
Quarter-Love and Half-Love play
Forgetful of a yesterday;
But Love—the god—is strange
To aught of central change.

Scholarly barbarian,
While you spill your drops of acid,
Love recalls with what a bliss
You stirred him when he ran to kiss
The child too little then
To wound him with a pen.

Stars of melted radiance learn
How to fade from fire to darkness;
Steady for a million years,
The mountains dance like barley-ears;
But Love was born to brave
Both Passion and the Grave.

TESTIMONY

Yes. Close beside that double-may. Behold
The rounded length of newly-fretted mould.
Beneath it, as in calm obedience, lies
One of the loveliest daughters of Surprise.
To know her was to hear the heart engage
To purge itself of what had come by rage
Or prompting such as needs an evil hour
To sicken Conscience with a poisonous flower.
She drew toward her by a holy thread
The shrunken soul, the long-discomfited,
And bent her body hastily to share
The rugged cross a friend was told to bear.
Her village was a sky, and she a sun
That did not set because the day was done.
Never to be forgotten, she is part
Of every household, every stricken heart;
And when a gate shall creak, the hand not seen,
Starved love will watch the doorway that has been

The frame of Tenderness. No longer here
Those lips and eyes shall bid the voice of Fear
Become a whisper (for, when she was still
A breathing presence of the Heavenly Will,
She gave in heartfuls of the virtue lent
To her by Him, the Star of Testament),
But, radiant in a new discipleship,
Elsewhere she hands a cup for Pain to sip;
Elsewhere, as once with us, she lamps the gloom,
Binds up a grief, and helps a home to bloom.

IT SHALL COME TO PASS

Having worked in the Vineyard till evening and liberty came,
Having heard His encouraging voice and acknowledged His pence,
I am free from the care of the vines, and I turn to the flame
Of the sun, who is resting his chin on a far-away fence
In the western division of sky. If these shovel-worn hands
Are a signal of duty well done; if the grit on my brow
Is a proof of my vigorous service on hearing commands,
I may square my obedient shoulders, relaxing the vow,
And may drop, as a cone, in the bracken, and wonder my fill
In the dominant huddle of pines on the crest of the hill.

While the years, with their sane intermingling of acid and sweet,
Are at work on my soul, as my hands daily work on the vines
In the vineyard controlled by the pulses that steadfastly beat
For the sake of the juice in the clusters, the pith of the pines,
It were strange if the spirit they model should be as a flint
On the patch of a road, never seeking to question the Source,
Never flaming and aching—yes, dying!—to capture a hint
Of the Fountain of agony, ecstasy, gentleness, force;
The Designer of studious suns, the Conceiver of space,
And the Lender of Christ to the world as the blossom of grace.

I refuse to accept any legend of Godhead as clothed
With a flame for concealing the Author and Giver of light.
I believe that the beautiful Earth and the Heaven are betrothed,
As conveyed by the Prophets God sent to establish the right
And announce His regard. It is true. I am working His will

If I look for His face (as I shall) when a cloud rushes clear
Of the pines that belong to His cloistered abode on the hill,
Or the cheep of a motherless nightingale hurries Him near.
If the best that my heart can desire is forbidden to me,
May the loss of the Vision help friends in the Vineyard to see!

It is true. He is certainly here. At each bend of surprise
In the lane, He is there, as expectant, my brother, as thou,
With a look of redeeming benignance alert in His eyes,
And the warmth of compassionate love overspreading His brow.
As expectant as I, whose infirm and irregular mind
Is but blackness, compared with the fire of the hallowing beam
That was given for a lamp on the Cross, He is waiting to find
If I know, even yet, how His price is the Deed, not the Dream;
For the gift of His face to the children belongs to His plan,
And the only obscurer of God is the darkness of Man.

LATE-COME LOVE

Let us not hurriedly consent
To lose ourselves in bliss
Before we gather what is meant
To ripen to a kiss.

But let me sit upon the ground
And breathe your nearness, Child,
And muse on what my heart has found
To make it warm and wild.

Then let my honoured head enjoy
The pillow of your knee,
And learn how strangely like a toy
A past of grief can be.

If then I feel your fingers smooth
The roughened years away,
And touch the forehead you can soothe
With hope and holiday,

How fails the world? It neither fails
Of fire, nor starves my need,

But, like a ship of wonder, sails
The zenith, gathering speed,

And foams toward the harbour where
My head shall learn to rest
By rising, falling, on the fair
Young tideway of your breast.

Let us not hurriedly consent
To lose ourselves in bliss
Before we harvest what is meant
To ripen to a kiss.

ENOUGH

A friend is fond of telling me
That when at last my covered face
Is hidden, I shall only be
A nerveless traveller in space
To whom the ages will assign
The simple office of a clod.
I answer: Is the end so fine?
Thank God!

Another tells me I shall hear
My name announced, and stand before
The marvellous Eyes, supremely clear,
That search me to the very core;
Shall hear Him bid me tend His vine,
Collect the stones, upturn the sod.
I answer: Is the end so fine?
Thank God!

For me, I shall not ask to know
If Prophets here are false or true,
Since plainly I am meant to go
Alert among my kind, and do

My best unfalteringly to keep
Love's ploughshare straight, as in a field,
And bid my neighbours come to reap
The yield.

UNWORTHINESS

Who knocks?
'Tis He for whom thou hast not cared to spend
A pennyweight of love on God, thy Friend,
This day.

Come in!
If I have failed so long, 'tis surely meet
That I should kneel and wash my Saviour's feet
To-night.

Since noon,
Though journeying through the ripened harvest-lands,
I rubbed no ear of corn between my hands
For food.

This loaf,
With all that now is spread upon the board,
Together with my instant service, Lord,
Is thine.

Convey
Thy heart to love! A furlong from thy door
Live those to whom thou should'st have run before
With bread.

Behold!
The very loaf that thou hast given to Me
I give to God, Who gives it back to thee,
In faith.

Now run,
And with the tears of those sad friends of Mine,
Mingle, if thou would'st be forgiven, thine,
At last.

But think,
Before thou runnest, why it was not meet
That thou should'st bring a bowl and wash my feet
To-night.

THEIR SACRAMENT

“While you and I are standing underneath
An edge of moon, before the birth of rest,
To hear the nightjar calling on the heath
That England lends him as a bridal guest,
Our hearts, being mated now and well-content,
So call each other by the deathless tune
Of ecstasy, that lips on lips are spent
In teaching dawn the miracle of noon,
And Love himself is satisfied with June.

“This is new knowledge honied to delight;
And we, as scholars of emotion, stand
In quick and grave acceptance of a night
By wings of Joy and Revelation fanned.
I bend my head above the touching grace
Of hair and temples, studying the gleam
Of bright unearthliness upon the face

That, even snowier than an infant beam
Surrendered by the moon, is living dream.

“This is the meeting-point of pilgrims tired
By uncompanioned travel in the vast
Expanse of duty; valorous, and fired
With hope of exultation won at last.
This is the moment when the thirsty miles
Accept their fountains; when the saviour green
Conceals the rock; when all the desert smiles
Forgetful of the sand that once had been,
For half a life, the only footing seen.

“Had I but known how certainly I fared
Toward the bright oasis that is You,
The leagues of desert had been bravelier dared,
The scorching furnace in the naked blue;
Yet now Immensities are satisfied
To grant this absolution from the test:
I feel beneath my hand your bending side,
And know that when my head desires to rest
You want it as the loading of your breast.

“Once more the nightjar sounds the piercing truth
Entrusted to his brain when Wisdom's hand

Fell open, and a child of Love and Youth
Was dropped upon the sheltering heatherland.
You turn to me and sing your heart with eyes
Of stilly music. In the world above,
Beyond the veiling of a million skies,
The angels, watching as we homeward move,
Run to their King and cry for human love.”

HIS MARRIAGE

“Across the moor a solemn rook
Flaps bedward. Turn, Delight, and look
From east to west, where downward slips
The midday student of your lips
And freckles. He would have you stay,
Before you touch that disarray
Of hair, as when he wildly threw,
Or so it seemed, his heart to you
In joy from his tremendous tower of blue.

“How worthy of a whispering bride
This ceremonial eventide,
This shutting of the golden book,
This moorland's benedictory look!
Are we together? Is it true
That I am handfast here with you
At nightfall where at noon we found
A harebell camp, with bracken round,
And hid, and smiled, and loved on holy ground?

“How long we lived apart! How long
Did letters, each a clearer song,
Convey the truth from shire to shire
Till hearts were aching with desire
To hear the living voice, and tell
In sound what Love had writ so well.
Time dropped at last a thornless day
While faring smoothly on his way,
And his September was our First of May.

“You blossomed near a furze-bush. There
My startled spirit was aware
That Tenderness had given birth
To you, and consecrated Earth,
And chosen both of us to be
Renowned in Love's Anthology.
Flower of the heathland, yet again,
Before we find the curving lane,
Bloom on my heart and whisper of my reign!”

HIS BRIDE

All work is over, Fragrance! Come and bloom
Among the books and papers in my room.

Come with a bubble of laughter. Firmly hug
Your knees while flowering radiant on the rug,

And be a language better than the Tongue
That's proud to keep the heart of Shakespeare young.

Three hours have passed since, bending down to share
The sunrise captive in a web of hair,

I learned again what Love is glad to teach:
How beautifully Silence fails of speech.

Three hours have perished. Adjectives and nouns,
Frettings, and tiny trenches made by frowns,

And duels fought between my work and play,
And violent magnets tearing me away

From foolscap to the circle of the bed
Of pansies brightly looking at your head,

Have wearied me at last, though Duty tried
To imitate the sweetness of a bride.

Swift as a startled blackbird, speed to bloom
Amid the paper jungle in my room,

And, with the hurry of your panting breath,
Puff Tyrant Semi-colon to his death!

Then sit as you delight to sit, and hug
Your knees while dimpling on the Persian rug;

Or bend above the manuscript, to look
How fast you grow and blossom in my book;

Or dart behind the sofa when I say
I've kissed you only fifty times to-day.

I think the pansies have already spent
The whole, or most, of their astonishment

At being petted here for half an hour
By such a velvety and puzzling Flower.

All work is done, my Radiance! Smile and bloom—
A bud of immortality—in my room;

For there, with you to listen and reply,
The rug's a flower-bed, and the ceiling sky.

TO ALFRED HAYES

'Tis very sad; for you, my Friend,
Have scarcely time to talk to me,
Though once we often used to wend
Along the lanes of liberty
To watch the peaceful pigeons flow
By airy rivers to the oaks;
But that was when the world could go
By leisures, not by lightning-strokes.

What tribute we have paid to Time,
In puckers, dreams, perplexities,
Since last we saw a generous lime
Give alms of gold to woodland bees!
Warm in the grass, without a care,
Our hearts unloaded, senses blithe,
We watched the swallow reap the air
Above us with his feathered scythe.

We gazed across Religion's sky
To many worlds succeeding this,
With lives to live, with deaths to die,
And even then but threatened bliss;

Till, daunted by the very heat
Ourselves had fed, we dropped from pain
And loved an English heaven, sweet
With angels flowering in the lane.

Do you recall, my more than friend,
My brother almost, what we heard
When there was time for us to spend
In seeking night's delicious bird?
Raptured we stood, as if one breast,
One finer breathing, held the pair
As holy pilgrims near the nest
That Love had built so wisely there.

'Tis Memory's bird in Memory's ear
That nowadays must sing his song;
For daylight's work is more severe,
And dark must daylight's work prolong.
Not with the peace we knew of yore
We rise from sleep and front our load;
A wolf (beware!) is at the door,
And others wait along the road.

Seldom again shall we possess
As country gods the moor and down,
And watch the arrowy streamlet press
His lips against the banks of brown;
For man, by daring to despise
Such riches as he would not count,
Has filled with tears the startled eyes
Of Him that preached upon the Mount.

There follow wrongs and agonies
In multitudes that shame the Cross
Established for the death of these
By Love that shone divine in loss;
There follow crippled souls, and hate,
Distorted hearts and bleeding time,
Hypocrisy in robes of state,
And labour blackened to a crime.

The Spring is here. We see the Spring
From windows misted by our sighs.
The Summer comes, to add the sting
Of prison while the Summer dies.
How many years have left us since
We bronzed in company, and stood
Beneath the shepherd's hoary quince
(Now dead) near Consolation Wood!

Lift up your head, my Friend, to look
Across the widening gulf to me.
Imagine by the careless brook
The daffodils we used to see.
Although the town will have us stay
To share its follies and unrest,
We keep (thank God!) the windy play
Of cowslips nodding in the breast.

I often think the very flowers
Along the lane we loved to roam
Must wonder in the shine and showers
Why both are kept so fast at home.

What of the lustrous clearings set
Within the hyacinth-haunted wood?
Turn, turn to foolscap! We forget
How many covet us our food.

'Tis very sad. My dearest Friend
Has scarcely time to lift his head;
And yet we often used to wend
Along the fields with blossoms spread,
And watch the peaceful pigeons flow
Down airy rivers to the oaks;
But that was when the world could go
By leisures, not by lightning-strokes.

THE PUBLISHER

There came a merry publisher
To publish in the pears,
Without a biting thought of gold,
His well-selected wares.
From tall and budded premises
He meant with easy skill
To advertise his book of song
As far as Ladslove Hill.
Cuckoo!

The shop was full of blossoming
Convenience for his wares,
With May's entrancing pigeon-holes
And several flights of stairs.
A house of business never looked
So fresh and cool and clean
Beneath its coat of vivid white
With shadowings of green.
Cuckoo!

When Beauty drummed upon my pane,
As only Beauty dares,

She told me how the publisher
Was vaunting local wares.
We ran together in delight
Toward the fragrant shop,
And ere we reached its open door
We heard a volume drop.
Cuckoo!

I glanced at Beauty. In her eyes,
Which blueness ever shares
With grey half-willing to be blue,
She worshipped place and wares.
At once there frolicked in my heart
A fancy meet to tell
Her whispering breast; when suddenly
Another volume fell.
Cuckoo!

Perhaps the publisher alone
Could not have killed my cares
By dropping in the orchard grass
Two samples of his wares;
But when my Love was pleased to add
Her catalogue of grace,
What happy springs of boyish blood
Gushed hotly to my face!
Cuckoo!

THE SETTLEMENT

Inside the room a mother's breath
Issued in grievous moans;
Outside the chamber Life and Death
Haggled in undertones.

They passed the doorway. Life bent down,
Kissing the new-come child;
Death, who had entered with a frown,
Looked at his share, and smiled.

THE IMMORTAL LEAF

The dove, while perched upon the camel's hump,
Was wounded by the mother in her breast;
A faded eagle, souring on a stump
Of olive-wood, desired a king and nest.

To many a fierce and fretted nature, Life
Recalled the melody of cub and chick:
The little leopards' sinewy game of strife,
The goslings, coloured as a wheaten rick.

Then Noah, taking in his hand the dove,
Called Japhet's bonny daughter from her friend,
The tall flamingo. Help me now, my Love!
For backs as old as mine are stiff to bend.

The wish to live and pair in native pride
Is burning in our midst. The Father willed
The dove's demand. She shall not be denied
A search for twigs, that she may plan and build.

The shutter creaked and opened. Then the bird,
Convulsive, tore away from Noah's hand
While every creature in the prison stirred
With newborn hope of liberty and land.

The dove flew home. She perched, without a sign
Of exultation, on the camel's hump,
And watched a lamb (too young as yet to pine)
Distrust the faded eagle on her stump.

A seven-days' grieving followed till again
The feathered scout leapt roughly to the air
To search for woods that whispered in her brain
Of children she had loved and guarded there.

Then was it found—the one immortal leaf!
Then was it found and gathered. In the Ark
It stung with joy the prisoners stung with grief,
And glistened in their dreams throughout the dark.

THE GAME

Though Lizzie clearly heard
His step, she did not speak,
But waited for his lips
Upon her cheek.

The Father in the gloom
Went softly to the bed,
And laid his own beside
His daughter's head.

Yet not a single word
Was spoken by the pair
Of lovers with a love
They lived to share;

For Lizzie had to wait,
And Father had to choose
The moment for his voice
To murmur, “Whose?”

This spoken, with the heart's
Amazing tenderness,

He heard the little child's
Low whisper, “Guess!”

There, in the peaceful dark,
The game was now half played
Between the wifeless man
And raptured maid.

The Father whispered then,
As part of the design,
The beauty and the love
Contained in “Mine.”

To Lizzie fell the bliss
At last of making known
The truth by calling out,
“Your—very—own!”

Thus, in the peaceful dark,
The game was once more played
Between the stricken man
And blissful maid.

AFTER THE CONFLICT

I

This is what the Snowdrop said
To the Crocus in the bed
Near the old green potting-shed:
Shall we, in our simple way,
Show the Peoples how to pray
For Christian Peace from day to day?

Near the old green potting-shed,
This is what the Crocus said
To the Snowdrop in the bed:
Empty dreaming. While we stay
Do not fret our holiday.
As Man's a slayer, let him slay.

But the Snowdrop, thus denied
When her bosom-friend replied,
Breathing very quickly, cried:
Little temples would be wrong
Not to call the Fierce and Strong
To Matins and to Evensong.

Thereupon the Crocus, led
Suddenly to Mercy, said,
Bending down his conquered head:
Neighbour, have your gentle way.
Plead with God for Man, and say
That I, His Crocus, also pray.

II

Two hours a day he used to come
And bend above a masterpiece
The head that sculptors would have longed
To copy for the World of Greece.

Men taught him how to kill his kind,
And shipped him off to Italy;
And there the boy was stung to death
In April by a leaden bee.

In falling thus so very soon
Where Right and Wrong and Passion trod,
He went, as he desired to go,
With hands unbloodied to his God.

III

Because I felt the largeness of a little loss,
I went to see my Saviour hanging on His Cross
Beside the road to Headley, where I found the grace
Of moonlight slumbering on His holy face.
Behind Him, in three rows, each underneath the sign
That Jesus Christ of Nazareth made divine,
One hundred troopers, late of Canada, reposed,
Their fighting over and their living stories closed
By Death, who, glancing at the gentle Figure raised
As Shepherd of that folded flock, in silence praised
The wounds that did not heal. While lonely there I stood,
Bareheaded in the moonlight, lifting to the Good
And Patient both my hands, and in my hands the pride

I felt at being a scholar of the Crucified,
I grieved that I had walked across the silvered moor
So fast, with such a starveling sorrow to deplore,
When Christ was sadly listening to the prayers that sped
From mothers' lips in Canada to where the dead,
While waiting for the end of all this earthly loss,
Rest near their meek Commander on His Cross
Beside the road to Headley. If you pass that way,
Christian, improve your heart by stopping there to pray.

IV

When Cousin stood
In Consolation Wood,
She flung her gloves away
And chattered like a jay.

When Father found
Sweet violets on a mound,
He said, We ought to pick
A cross of them for Dick.

When Mother stood
In Consolation Wood,
She lifted both her hands
To God. He understands.

Had Jesus found
Us gathering on the mound,
He would have told us news
Of him we had to lose.

V

A face like hers I had never seen:
The lips were leaden, the eyes were green;
Each bone declared itself, and thrust
Against the skin with the force of lust.
The teeth were such as the winter years
Yellow and slant in the mouth when nears
The thud of the graveyard spade; the hair
(Such as the ravening Furies wear
In many a golden master-strain
Sung by the fine Athenian brain),
Reeking of liniment, ether and smoke,
Was fit for only a devil to stroke.
Over the desert and famine of breast
The hands of a seeming corpse were pressed
Hard on a gown that was sticky with rum
And blood of the colour of rotten plum.

How roughly had Passion worked to cake
The feet with poisonous mud, and make

Her daunting body a guy, to stand,
As a gift for God, in a Christian Land!

She begged a copper or two of me
By right of her name. She was Victory.

VI

The Messenger returned
And glorious burned
With glory not his own
Beside the Throne.

“How fares my world?” God said.
He bowed his head.
“Love they the Son I lent?”
He lower bent.
“Worship the Crucified?”
The Angel sighed.
“Honour the Law He kept?”
The Angel wept.
“Thy speechlessness,” said God,
“Is like a rod.
Almost I wish my Son
Elsewhere had gone;
For children of the dust
Reproach my trust.
Too long have they denied
His broken side
A balm; they use each year

That traitor spear;
They write above His head
A mock, instead
Of kneeling to accept
The tears He wept;
But still His shining love
Endures above
All follies and all sins,
And, therefore, wins.”

“My only Son, draw near
To us and hear.
Hast thou the heart to go
Again below,
To tread afresh for Me
Gethsemane,
And stretch Thyself in loss
Upon the Cross
In mortal bitterness?”

Christ answered, Yes.

FOUND

Last Night I dreamed my happy way to Heaven.
How many books had told of gate and guard,
Of Spirits crowding near their battlements
To watch a giant sun's cohering gold
Alarm the distant comet! Not a gate
Of jasper glistened; not an angel scanned
The road of sky between his world and ours;
No seraph, travelling Godward to report
His news of far dominions quick with life,
Magnificently drove along the air
A splendour such as fasting Vision saw
And named for ever in the Testament
Of Israel. In front of me there stretched,
With flanking woods and shrubberies, a space
Of lawnland green as January moss
And level as a sea when unprovoked
To wrath by heady challenges of storm.

Though plainly far from home, I did not guess
(Because the trees and shrubs and blossoming
Were like familiars greatly loved on Earth)
That then, in truth, I walked the very Land
Renowned in books of angel-hearted song
By those on whom descended spiritual fire;
Yet Apprehension, fretting mind and soul,
By nothing louder than her voicelessness
Proclaimed the instant death of what was old,
Announced the cry and stir of what was new.

No power forbidding, I began to move
Toward the far-off point where wooded edge
And wooded edge, as friends allowed to meet,
By curving, neared at last a green embrace;
And did not pause, till underneath a foot
I heard the voice of brittleness, and found
A leaf, and then beheld a sister leaf
As brown as withered finery strewn above
The hopeful bracken working underground
To be a bridesmaid on the wedding-day
When Earth and Autumn marry. Then I thought,
As one by many a prophet told that Death

Can never blight a lily-bud in Heaven,
“This leaf, being dead, reveals that I as yet
Have failed to reach the Tomb of Sinfulness,
Where God alone is central and supreme;
For seasons are but foam upon the tides
Of birth and perishing; and here those tides
Advance, recede, since what was green is brown.”

While standing thus to think about the leaf
I heard a footstep very close behind,
And, turning, saw a girl about to pass.
Her eyes, so confident, so purely beamed,
Sent holiness to mine. As cool as leaves,
As grave as hills, without allure, she passed
And showed her tallness, and (for thus I thought)
A motion that proceeded less from her
Than from a shadowed fount of beauty known
To none but Music. Often had I seen,
Walking as though in harmony with that
On which they trod, the feet of earth-born maids
Convey the sense of song; but none had moved

As moved the girl in front of me. Our world
And she were not companions; yet I felt
How very far she was from being a proof
That I explored a lonely part of Heaven,
And deemed her studious in a halting-place
Betwixt Mortality and Angelhood.

Now far ahead, she paused awhile, then ran
Toward the left, and made as if she sought
To look behind a tree, or down a path
Of woodland invitation. Then I saw
Another come, a basket full of flowers
Upon her arm. The golden tint of these
Reminded me of Surrey daffodils
In days of yore, when beds of blossoming
(Not understood) prevented me from play,
Because my Mother often called to me
And begged my pinafore. (I thank her now.)
The women stopped to kiss, and she whose flowers
Had made my memory bloom, began to ask,
As clearly showed, if I were known to them.
The girl turned round, and underneath her palm
Looked long and hard at me. They kissed again,

And then the girl moved on toward the path.
The other drew a blossom from the store
Within her basket, held it on her lips,
And, motionless as marble, gravely stood
To watch me come across the level lawn;
But when perhaps no more than ninety yards
Withheld from me the colouring of her lips,
The Statue dropped the flower; yet even then
Remained a Statue. The basket likewise fell,
Rolled over, rocked a little, lay as stone.
One heartbeat more, and Mother, loud with love,
So quickly ran that, almost ere I knew,
The triumph and the tumult of her heart
Were beating on my own; her lips were held
As fast to mine as moss to roots of oak.

Now, having kissed my boy once more—once more,
I want to sit and spend my heart with him
Among the frolic memories of time
Endeared to me by Breathing Littleness.
Do you remember strawberries growing wild
Three fields away from home? And where we went
On many a Sabbath afternoon to tell
The ferns how much we loved them, Norman dear,

And ask a married blackbird or a thrush
To sing again his loveliest piece of song?
Do you remember when you tore my frock
By clinging while the adder raised his head
To daunt us near the camp of marigolds?
Can you recall—

How else could I have learnt
The style and greatness of that noble Land?
'Twas Heaven, in truth; for where my Mother dwells
She makes for me the one and only Heaven.

HONEYSUCKLE

I thank the Honeysuckle! Both perplexity and grief
Are lessened when I find her at the bottom of the lane,
Since the confidence and courage of her young green leaf
Revive my own again.

She hurries to be verdant, as though she understands
How Winter can be conquered by the beauty that was stored
In the buds so long preparing to be clean and wholesome hands
Uplifted to her Lord.

She notes the greedy flowering of black-thorn by her side,
And wonders how he cares to spend his excellence so soon;
For the shaping of her miracle is slow and dignified,
And busies her till June.

I thank the Honeysuckle! If I guard the holy bloom
Entrusted to my keeping, in as diligent a way,
I shall be alert and helpful in the Master's ante-room,
And scent my little day.

MY LOVE-SONG

I am chuckling to myself
While I think about you, Death,
And the progress of your plan
For the stopping of my breath,
Since I quiver with a love
You can never overwhelm
Though you stretch me on my back
In a narrow box of elm.

Though you creep to give my eyes
What you say is lasting rest;
Though you stoop to hold my hands
Till they stiffen on my breast;
Though you hammer at the nails
In the lid above my face,
I shall live as long as Time
Whirls the planet round in space.

Though you fidget with the spade
Till the parson's prayer is said,
And begin to shovel clods
In a fury on my head,

I shall merely nod to Love
My amusement at the sound
While you fill the cheated trap
To the brim with useless ground.

How mistakenly you toil!
Do you think that I can die
Of an illness on the earth
Or an illness in the sky?
Having felt the longed-for heart
Tell its story on my own,
I shall pulse with endless youth
Underneath my cross of stone.

DAVID, GOLIATH, THOU

Every evening came a lad,
Ere the coming of the dark;
Whirled the leathern sling he had,
Loosed his pebbles at the mark.

When the spearmen paled and shook,
When the Captains held their breath,
David, running to the brook,
Bent to find the foeman's death.

Using still his ancient plan,
Evil comes in rage and throws
Broadcast into every man
Seed from which Goliath grows.

Then's the time to do and dare!
Run as David ran, and take
Quickly from the Stream of Prayer
Pebbles for thy Captain's sake.

TO A THRUSH SINGING MADLY

I'm getting old, delirious bird,
I'm getting old and grey,
But still I echo every word
Of all the words you say.
The planet beaming with a girl
So feather-fine as she
Upon the lilac is the pearl
Of planets? I agree.

I'm getting old, delirious thrush.
My back is not so straight
As when I often used to rush
To leap the five-barred gate
That meant a nearer way to Nance,
Whose eyes and lips were mine
When days were roses of romance
And air itself was wine.

I'm getting old, delirious bird,
I'm getting old and slow;
Yet April thanked me when she heard
My heartbeat long ago!

The little patch of reverend white
To-day above my ears
Is less than nothing in the light
Of all my dimpled years.

'Tis time will play some other tricks
Before my final bed,
And make me, with a pair of sticks,
A human quadruped.
So be it. I shall crawl along
My few untrodden miles,
In love with thrushes for their song,
And Memory for her smiles.

THE PAIN

To-day, a little after four,
I heard behind me on the floor
The feet of Death approach my table.

The killing pain was doubled; yet
His nod was dared, his eyes were met,
His hand was shaken off my shoulder.

I felt God close to me, and said,
“Dost thou demand my fallen head,
And is this Presence of Thy sending?”

I did not hear Him speak; but Death
Frowned as in rage, and caught his breath,
And left me livid at my table.

THE QUEST IN THE VINEYARDS

'Tis often asked of me if I desire,
Through an advantage somehow won from Death,
To struggle back to heartbeats from the grave
(When Time has won his victory over breath
And Passion's double furnace and that brave
Conjunction of a god and of a slave
Here known as Man) and be alert once more
On a globe throbbing with surprises.

To bear the load of manhood for the hours
Decreed, and bear it always with content,
Is duty to the Vineyard where I give
My sinews to the Master who has lent
Such fires and forces as continual live

To supplement the wise provocative
Compelling us from sloth toward the stars
In the hushed wilderness of ether.

Believe me, in my honest way I dig
Among the vines, and heap the sombre stones.
Yet while I stoop to prune the Master's grapes,
Aware in secret of His heartening tones,
I breathe my yearning for celestial shapes
In whispered song that brokenly escapes
And shows how waveringly my heart belongs
To the broad bosom of my homeland.

Not even if the friends that used to work,
When I was young, not many yards from me,
Came back, with consolations learnt above,
And gathered at my side, would I agree
To bear afresh man's load of hate and love,
And fevers that as evil spirits move
Along the orbit of his blood, to pulse
In the old theatre of existence;

For always with invisible lips a voice
Well known is murmuring, “Come to me”; and so
I cannot burn with zeal again to tread

From purpling row of vines to purpling row
And duly take from God, with reverent head,
At eve His punctual penny for my bread,
When dewiness has come, and planets stare
At the dark clusters in the grapefields.

Yet how I thank Him for His warming gift
Of streams and birds and flowers and trees!
If granted in a second world to strain
The rope of twisted life, I beg that these
Enrich me there and help me to refrain
From honied folly, wrath, and ruinous gain,
And dastardly retreats from holiness
On the broad battlefield of Conscience.

Great Master, though my shoulders plainly bear
The livid bruises proper to the weight
Of baskets loaded to the brim for Thee,
I must not wince, nor murmur at my fate,
Nor hang my lip, nor turn as if to flee
If heavier Vineyard burdens fall to me.
Since Thou art Knowledge, I must be alert
For the clear syllables of Wisdom.

Shall once again my spirit overflow
With joy among deliberative throngs
Of oaks and elms and beeches, where the best
Of natural balm and holiness belongs?
And shall I feel again the conquering zest
That filled a heart nigh bleeding for the guest
Of love? Shall I have songs to sing
Of the flushed umber of the elm-bloom?

What balm has fallen upon me from the bough,
Only Thy measuring heart could ever tell,
Creator of the Songbird! Yet my dreams
Are radiant with an unfamiliar dell
Surrounded by a pair of brother streams
With babble on their lips, where stands and gleams
My starlit Mother pointing to a nest
In the bent elbow of a sapling.

I needs must follow Her from world to world
And pay for Her with such laborious strife
As means the strange unfolding of Thy plan

For life that grows and blossoms out of life.
Once more renew the Nazareth ban
Of poverty, and set me in the van
Of those with sorest shoulders, to be strong
In the slow plucking of Thy harvest.

Since man is of Thy lineage, and designed,
As overshadowed littleness, to break
At last his palace-prison, and to rise
To larger truth, he shall not then forsake
The wearied sinew. In his clearing eyes
Shall brood his faith in yet forbidden skies
Above a richer vineyard. He will glow
With the bright hardship of his lesson.

For Thou art Work. Thy holiday hath been,
And still must be, the splendour of the task;
And Thou wilt lift us high, and higher yet,
And never grant the languid Heaven we ask;
But teach us how with truth to pay our debt
In loyal service, eager to forget
The dream of thornless roses told to us
In the waste leisures of indulgence.

Thou, Ceaseless Worker, wilt not have me stand
Breast-deep in heavenly lilies day by day
Among recovered friendships; yet allow
Me time to search where haply She might stray,
As here of old, beneath the forest bough
In solitude, before I breathe a vow
Conveying me to Thee, and smile, and stoop
To the next labour of Redemption.

THE TALENT

Where is the Talent that I lodged with Thee?
Lord, I have saved it all.
What the enlargement thou hast brought to Me?
Lord, it is very small.
How comes it that thou hast not spent
Thy heart and soul to supplement
In fitting measure what was lent?

Most of my days were full of piercing dread.
Christ taught thee not to cower.
Many came often, asking me for bread.
I sent thee heavenly flour.
These shoulders and these hands were sore;
Thus, thinking I could do no more,
I failed to make the Talent four.

How if thy Saviour had not worked in loss?
Lord, I confess the wrong.
How if thy Saviour had refused the Cross?
Thy question makes me strong.

Be sure that I have seen thy ways,
As I have heard thy frozen praise
And counted thy destructive days.

Since I can hear the quiet breath of prayer,
Which comes from Earth, to tell,
More than thou dreamest, of the living care
Of those that love thee well,
Once more receive the Talent. Let it be
An urgent signalling to thee
That sloth and coldness anger Me.

Trust me to work, however dark the road.
My lamp is filled and lit.
Tenderly put Thy hand upon the load.
I steady thee and it.
If heart and spirit swear to bow
Beneath My will, and hold the vow,
Thy Talent trebles even now.

THE LIKENESS

Elizabeth is floating on the tide of sleep
That drifts her onward to the Holy Day
Of Him whose star was bright above the sheep.

Elizabeth is stirring. Will the Old Man dare
To put his sack of toys upon the floor
And kiss a trail of wonder-woven hair?

Elizabeth, the pillow and the trail are wet.
The Old Man loved your Mother; and he shed
Those tears for one too precious to forget.

LOVE

If Love were only kissing, then
Love were a sorry thing for men;

But Love is trying how to bless
A home with strength and tenderness;

And working hard to buy the bread,
And bonnets for a little head;

And daily bringing home a life
Of honour to an earnest wife;

And duly naming at the board
The style and mercy of the Lord;

And watching in the children's growth
The beauty of the marriage-oath;

And proving that a young desire,
Though flame, was consecrated fire.

If Love were only kissing, then
Love were a sorry thing for men.

AN APOLOGY

I beg your pardon, Life! Had I been fair,
And done you simple justice, hour by hour,
I often should have helped you not to wear
A look as if you tasted something sour.

When discipline was over, how you ran
To bring, as consolation after strife,
The very joy a desert-faring man
Desired the most! I beg your pardon, Life!

THE CLUSTER OF TEMPTATION

The carriers of the figs were far ahead
With them that bore the gathered load
Of pomegranates, since they had lighter sped
Than two that ached along the desert road.

These twain had lost the vanguard. Full of care,
They toiled across a ridge of billowed sand
Beneath the rocks that weariness must dare
While journeying homeward from the Promised Land.

Cried sunburnt Joshua, the resolute,
Yet almost travel-broken, pioneer,
While lifting down the glorious bunch of fruit
From off his shoulder, “Eventide is near;

Go, Caleb! It were like our God to give,
Perchance for but an hour of time, to quell
The thirst that barely suffers us to live
His honest servants, a reviving well.

Go, Caleb! Yet, if thou wilt guard the prize
We vowed upon our knees to carry whole
To where the anxious heart of Moses tries
To be as valiant as his valiant soul,

Thy friend and comrade, howsoever spent
By what has been for thee a hard distress,
Will go to look if haply God has lent
A jewel of water to His wilderness.”

Then Caleb answered, “Thou hast given thy work
Not only to the bunch and to the stern
Commandment of thyself, too brave to shirk
The perilous going and the rough return,

But also hast created for thy friend
A second heart, and lifted him beyond
Betrayal of the promise to defend,
In union with thyself, his sacred bond.

Be mine the search for water! Mine the joy,
If God permit, of bringing it to thee!
Guard thou the grapes, that nothing shall destroy
The cluster thou hast often saved from me.”

Then Caleb tottered forward. Keen his look
Among the broken rocks; intent his prayer
For but the cool beginning of a brook,
Till darkness gloomed his spirit with despair.

In turn anear the prize the heroes slept,
And dreamed of home and peril and escapes;
And, loyal as the stars above them, kept
Their faith as flawless as the bunch of grapes.

Such were Jehovah's Captains. Such the hearts
He made and reared, He strengthened and controlled.
We find them beating in a hundred parts
Of Scripture. We, not they, are growing old.

HOME FROM BUSINESS

Our little bud of Paradise
Is wakeful, Father. I suppose
His clever brain already knows
That if he bubbles long enough
His head will lean against the rough
Attraction of your overcoat.
The more I sing him lullabies,
The more persistently he tries
To tell me frankly to my face
That what he wants is Daddy's bass,
Especially the deepest note.
I heard you in the hall, and flew—
How lovely! This is mine for you!—
At once to disarrange your hair
And turn you into Baby's bear.
Now, while I set the cloth for tea
And make the toast, run up and be
A sleepy sound instead of me!

IN SCHOOL

Not what I ought to be,
To-day, is vexing me.
I have not finished yet
The lesson I was set;

And, being still intent
On what the Master meant,
I shall not always try
The patience of the Sky.

For if I stoop above
The lesson-book, in love
Of Him by whom were made
The rules to be obeyed,

I know that He will bless
With praise my steadiness,
And show me, in a while,
His rare and sudden smile.

THE LOVER OVERWHELMED

Another week must perish ere the rose
That ebbed from scarlet when the world was young
And reached at last the colour of the moon
She envied, while a second blossom yearned
Toward the tinting of a woodgirl's mouth,
Can breathe her fragrant willingness to give
A golden cargo to the merchant bee;
But many a month shall wither, as the leaves
That wait in brownness for the birth of Christ,
Ere You, a bud become a flower, shall hear
The voice of Love's convincing majesty
Demand your bosom, sweetened by a pain,
And such as almost lags the foot of Time
And causes Death himself to envy Life.

Not yet the broken sleep; the wilderness
Of wondering if the only man whose head
Is fit to share your pillow names a star
Afresh, and loves you in a home of sky;

Or frets to learn how often in his book
A studied page becomes a tyrannous blank,
Its verses barren of their central truth,
Because the singer is less strong than Love.
Not yet the morning clouded by the sun;
The cheek entrusted to the roughened bark
Of cool and comforting oak; the sudden tears
When lilac breathes too heavily, and fills
The cup of Longing with her loyal scent.

I see you take the air with lips as vowed
To steadiness as fronded moss to elm.
Within your clouded eyes not yet are seen
Those other eyes that, when the body and soul
Begin to whisper in the June of life
A music sweeter than a quivering harp
Can give at eventide to God in Heaven,
Must open for the lamping of a truth
So long kept prisoner in the holy place
Where girlishness, content by drawing breath,
And breathing with a pansy's quietude,
Awaits beside a rosebush laden with buds
The sceptre and the master-word of Love.

You blossom in the heavy soil of work
From sunleap till the hooding of the day.
Beneath my sober diligence you move,

A melody and haunting. If I touch
A leaf or flower, I seem to touch your hand;
The snow-white lupin tells me of your neck;
The softness of the forest bee is yours;
The whitethroat in the bramble, she is you;
The bubbling of the streamlet near a cove
Of watercress is merriment as fair
As yours when happy with a kitten held
Against the mouth that coaxes him to purr.
My heart is quick to feel the grief of love;
And when a blackbird, darting from the hedge,
Goes anguished down a lane, as though assured
That home is lost for ever, I bewail
Her panic, and the bitterness among
The tiny naked copies of herself.

My heart is spoken. If the minute comes
When long restraint is shattered, and, as leaves,
My useless words have withered in the air,
Defeat shall stand a conqueror till the end,
Since love, if finely dedicated, burns
A man to godhead, giving such a light
As makes his very coffin seem a star.

SNOWDROP

To-day I stood for half an hour
To watch a little Christian flower
That prayed beside a fence.
Her humble and devoted look,
As if she read a sacred book,
Was breathless reverence.

I think the Snowdrop must have been
Quite close to Jesus once, and seen
A revelation then
That made her promise Him to be
His angel of humility
For women and for men

POOR, PLAIN, AND PALE

I know her sort in many a street,
Thanks be to God! since thus He wills
His poorer servants to defeat
With roughened hands a thousand ills.
So hard in Life's Tremendous Shop
We hunt successes, that we find
Ourselves too rarely moved to stop
And wait for stragglers far behind.
Though unattractive, as you say,
She's loyal to her daily load
From six o'clock till nearly ten.
Remove her from the list of souls
The great Machine of Life controls,
And how's the World to manage then?

She's flat of chest, untimely hurt
By pushing up the topless hill
Through pain and poverty and dirt
The load that never may be still.
But, singing on her daily round,
With crumbs to reckon, babes to nurse,

In many a troubled home she's found
Declaring things might well be worse.
She's unattractive, it is true,
But what a star of shabbiness,
With light to give, with pluck to dare!
Remove her from the list of souls
The vast Machine of Life controls,
And how's the worried World to fare?

The roses of her maiden hours
Upon her cheeks no more are found;
Too soon, too soon these welcome flowers
Dropped in the washtub and were drowned.
No wonder wrinkles hurrying came,
For signs of how, at war with life,
She withered grimly in the flame
That burns the hunger-haunted wife!
She's unattractive, it is true,
While toiling in her threadbare gown
To make the right come out of wrong.
Remove her from the list of souls
The queer Machine of Life controls,
And how's the world to rub along?

Behold her planning late at night,
With furrowed brows and eyelids red,
The morrow's struggle, in the sight
Of Him who gives the daily bread!

She begs of God with heart and mind
That at the entrance of the day
Her toilworn hands shall fail to find
A stone too big to roll away.
She's unattractive, be it said,
But not the kind to sit and groan,
Or rust because her eyes are wet.
Remove her from the list of souls
The grim Machine of Life controls,
And how's the world to pay its debt?

She's working in a throng of cares,
As woman never worked before,
To drive away the wolf that tears
Its dreadful message on her door.
She's scrubber, comforter, and nurse,
Supporting hand, forgiving face,
Consoler, fairy, bootblack, purse,
Hymn and cathedral of the place!
She's unattractive, as you know,
But how she helps the sunshine warm
The days that God is pleased to give!
Remove her from the list of souls
The huge Machine of Life controls,
And how's the tangled World to live?

MOTHER'S LILAC

Twenty times to-day, at fewest,
Have I left my work and room,
Just to stand beside the newest
Bunch of fragrant lilac-bloom.

Twenty times to-day my worry
Vanished; and an eager child,
Listening to a voice in Surrey,
Clapped his rosy hands and smiled.

How my Mother loved to bring me
Where the lilac's breath was sweet,
Stoop, and gather force, and swing me
Off my pair of little feet!

Such a Mother, true and merry,
Must have held me to the plum,
Apple, bullace, damson, cherry
When their wedding-days had come;

Yet, in moods of recollection,
Ere the evening lamp is lit,

When her blossoms of affection
Scent my room, and hallow it,

Mother comes again and brings me
Sunshine at a darkened hour;
Stoops, and gathers force, and swings me
Only to the lilac-flower.

Thus the lilac will not let me
Bend for long a weary head
Over toil my duties set me
Now that labour buys the bread.

Twenty times to-day, at fewest,
Have I left my work and room,
Just to stand beside the newest
Bunch of Long Ago in bloom.

UNSHEPHERDED

If Christ prepares another John to say,
Ye cold and stubborn! is the only way
A Second Coming and a Second Loss,
Redeeming thus the failure of the Cross?

Shall not His lovers answer?—Stricken Lord,
Where doves were sold, Thy Bishops bless the sword.
Come down and make us what we should have been,
Thy only Westminster the Village Green.

THE FIRST RAINBOW

Compelled to punish for their sin
The stubborn children on His earth,
The Master called His angels in
From parks of melody and mirth,

And charging them in faith to keep
Their Paradise with seriousness
Till He returned from out the deep,
He lifted up His hands to bless.

As there they knelt, the Master showed
The mighty stature of His wings,
And, fronting the celestial road,
Flew earthward with His sorrowings.

But when the swiftness of His pace
Had won for Him the half-way part,
There blossomed in His eyes a face,
And thoughts of Jesus touched His heart.

He turned, and, quicker far than light,
In homeward travel pierced the blue

Till towers and temples in His sight
From glory unto glory grew.

The little Christ was held by dreams,
And neither felt beneath Him pressed
The hands, as soft as starry beams,
Nor knew the change from bed to breast.

Companioned by the sleeping Child,
The Father in His splendour swept;
Whene'er He glimpsed the Babe, He smiled,
Whene'er He looked on earth, He wept.

At length, where desolate mountains stood,
The Maker of the world descried
The bleakness of His angered mood
Expressed below in deepening tide.

He warmed the harebells. On a blue
Expanse He laid His Son asleep
Before, to win a wider view,
He trod the fern along the steep;

But ere He gained the topmost ground
His treasured Boy from slumber woke,
And, in amazement looking round,
Saw heath and harebells, pine and oak.

Now when He glimpsed the dark and wild
Approach to Heaven, because of cloud
(His heart being melted in the Child),
The infant Saviour cried aloud.

The Father, deep in thought above,
Made answer to His Son distressed,
And, with the lovely speed of love,
Him caught and cradled on His breast.

But Jesus, hardly yet assured
Of safety in those welcome arms,
His tears of dread continuous poured,
And felt afresh the first alarms.

At length the Saviour raised His head,
And smiled to God in tremulous glee.
“Depth of My Depth,” the Father said,
“Behold the cloud that frightened Thee!”

He pointed. What the Child had feared
Redeemed the terror it had made.
Upon the darkling bank appeared
The Rainbow. Thus the debt was paid.

THE ABSENT FLOWER

The foxglove now is half asleep,
Forgetful of his gloves;
The woodland bee was warned to flee
An hour ago from honied loves.
Campanulas with cups of blue
Set sideways on a pale green stem
Prepare to pledge in drops of dew
The stars that spend the night with them.

Now it were well for thee to stand,
Thy shoulder touching mine,
And cause the pink and rose to think
Their breathing not so sweet as thine;
And prove again the noble care
That Beauty spent in giving thee
Her body and her soul to bear
Across the hills of Time to me.

Fountain and Fragrance, quickly change
This northland to the south
By trusting here once more the clear
And scarlet girlhood of thy mouth.

Come back! Amid this wealth of bloom
I learn how easily a bower
Of musk and lilies can be gloom
That has not thee, my Flower, in flower!

THE CLEANSING

I could not come before.
An Angel barred the door
And bade me not to press
Toward thy loveliness.
Though we so nearly met,
The Warden said, Not yet.
Deservest thou content?
Look down! Work on! Repent!

I waited one world more;
And then beyond the door
I glimpsed thee in the clear
Of midday drawing near.
When we had almost met,
The Angel said, Not yet.
Wait till thy heart is pure.
Look down! Work on! Endure!

I questioned, “Have I strength
To journey all the length
Of one more world alone,
Till I at last have grown

Unblemished?” Then he said,
Be sure that souls are fed
If worthy to receive.
Look down! Work on! Believe!

ONWARD

Life's the bird,
Time the spray.
Love and build,
Work and play.

Who was that
Robbed the nest,
Snapped the branch,
Froze the breast?

Earthly Death?
Then we know
What to sing,
Where to go.

CALVARY

Calvary crosses every sea.
Look on the left-hand side,
Coming from Grayshott. You will be
Close to the Crucified.

Filling my soul with dread of pangs
Sharper than spear or sword,
Facing the Headley road there hangs
Jesus, the living Lord.

Heeding no more who comes, who goes,
Deaf to the lips of Spring,
Canada's soldiers sleep in rows
Under their carven King.

Well would it be if every one
Passing should bow the head,
First for the Father's sacred Son,
Then for the cheated dead.

DEEP LOVE

Deep love will have its way. Remember how
The exile Joseph, master of the corn,
Gave Egypt and her cares a darkened brow
What time he sorrowed for the youngest born;
And how he plotted, for his heart's relief,
To bring his desert-faring brother back,
Pretending that the lad, become a thief,
Had stolen the silver cup within the sack.

Deep love will have its way. Remember how
The Shepherd turned from safety in the sky
And looked on slander with a beaming brow,
As if it were a trivial thing to die;
And how, albeit his flesh was roughly torn
And drained of blood, his pure and hallowed mind

Found comfort in the hope that thus was borne
The golden cup of love to all mankind.

STRONG IN DEATH

Because the blinds were down I knew
That he I loved so much had started
To travel hence beyond my view
And leave me lonely-hearted.

Farewell was spoken then with tears.
But when I whispered, “Life is colder,”
The hand that helped my bitter years
Seemed firm again upon my shoulder.

MY THANKS

All that the noble sun
Can do for me is done,
And he with fiery hands
Is touching other lands.

For all the beauty he had spread
Before I left my bed
And whispered on my knees a vow,
I thank him fully now.

I thank him for the gems he showed
Along the moorland road,
Where dew was waiting to arise
And perish in his eyes.

To prove the purple on a rook
What eager pains he took!
With how much gaiety he told
The pheasant's brown and gold!

I thank him for a dazzling view
Of pigeons in the blue;

I thank him for the beams with which
He made my Love's hair rich.

Now, grateful here beneath the pines,
Among the yellow signs
Of summer fallen in defeat,
Though breathing treasured heat,

I thank him; not alone for this
Sure bread and wine of bliss,
Accepted by my soul, to be
A food for memory,

But also for his riches spent,
Without acknowledgment,
On other days along the high
Blue moorlands of the sky;

And tell, as nuns their holy beads,
The hours that fed my needs
With blessings fine enough to pay
For deserts of delay.

All that the noble sun
Can do for me is done,
And now with fiery hands
He touches other lands.

SECOND BIRTH

In darker days I trod a land
Of rock and thistle, briar and sand;
In darker days I bent my head
As one preparing to be dead,
And bore the burden of the light
In patience, hoping for the night.

But now, since I have lived to find
The healing blossom of your mind;
Since I have lived at last to share
In love the flowering of your hair,
I ask no more of Time and Tide,
Being born again, and satisfied.

DEEPHEART WOOD

I've dreamed in many an ancient wood
Of many a sweet and byegone kiss
Exchanged between a god and girl;
But never in a wood like this.

Had it not grown a long-loved haunt
Of deities swift as tongues of fire,
Its leafy pulse could never throb
In recollection of desire.

Recalling how he used to count
Bright acorns in a Beauty's lap,
A god gave knowledge to the trees
And mingled memory with their sap.

So long as father oaks beget
Their baby patterns, and the strength
Of sunshine, working on the young,
Gives bark and bough, and leaf and length;

So long as passion comes in bud,
And history returns in green,

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The Wood of Deepheart shall inform
The sensitive of what has been.

Be sure the now departed race
Of Dryads once was numerous here!
Be sure a dimpling god has lain
Among the ferns, to catch a Dear!

With threads of moss upon her skin
She neared the trap. The god leapt tall
And filled his hands with dark-brown hair . . .
Enchanted sap remembers all,

And tells the foliage; this reports
The lovely unmolested truth
Of Long Ago, and frets my heart
With stabbings of recovered youth.

101

A RECOMMENDATION

Behind the Nebula there lives
In loneliness, we bravely think,
An Overseer, who constant gives
Our feet direction to the brink
Of Death, that we may slip our shell,
As butterfly the chrysalis,
And in another kingdom tell
The truth we failed to tell in this.

Perhaps the Master planned it so;
And yet the thought may be a dream
Among the many dreams that go
As halves of shadow and of gleam
In front of us. For fear we miss
New life when Death has laid us flat,
Suppose we learn to do in this
The good we hope to do in that.

102

THE BEREAVED

I saw her Angel in my room
Stand watching by the bed
That now belongs to grief and gloom,
Because its bride is dead.

Long time in pensiveness she stayed,
Forgetful of her skies,
As though the spirit were afraid
To burn as burned the eyes.

At last she stooped. The treasured face
Bowed to the heart's request
To leap triumphant in the place
Where once it used to rest.

To think so sweet a hope should be
Beyond all strain and stir!
No nearer might she come to me,
No closer I to her.

The Truant held her wounded side
Fast with her rigid hand.

103

Poor child! so little had she died
She scarce could understand.

104

BETHLEHEM

An Infant very long ago
To Bethlehem was given.
Around his head was seen to glow
His memory of Heaven.
While cradled in a manger there,
He heard the oxen sighing
Because they knew not how to share
His Mother's lullabying.

Our hearts must go to Bethlehem
With joy on Christmas morning,
And take the fair and sweet in them
To Him for his adorning.
We all should give without pretence
A gift of such behaviour
As breathes alone the frankincense
Accepted by our Saviour.

105

A PUPIL

While she bent
To her lesson, intent
On duty, and her eyes
Were stars for Latin,
And her sighs

Gently told
That the classic of gold
Was master, I believed
That dead Catullus
Woke and grieved.

When she came,
With her excellent flame
Of newness, and her bell
Of softened laughter,
It was well.

106

LATE AUTUMN

Who grumbles? We have lost to Love the battle of the breast
And gone, as prisoners at night, beneath a yoke of stars.
Who grumbles? We have elbowed Death along a mountain-crest,
And taken from the hands of Life his royal gift of scars.

We touched the world, and weighed the world, and called it half a load.
So many tunes were on our lips, we sang the blackbird's way,
And jested at the heels of Time. The master of that road
Moves on unwrinkled. We have grown veteran, stiff, and grey;

But neither soured nor listless. We are marching still to find
The kingdoms lost at Folly's word when Prayer and Faith were mute.

107

What matter if the Chieftain at the cross-road stare us blind
And bid us yield our heartbeats? We are ready to salute.

Look yonder, where the warrior beech, allied with frost and sun,
Now spreads in careless disarray his leaves along the ground,
As though to bare his muscles for the conflict just begun
With storms that want to see him fall in death across his mound.

Not otherwise than he prepares to front the stress and gloom,
And counter in his sinewy style the legions of the north,
Let those of us whose feet are near the trysting-place of doom
Greatheartedly give battle till the hour of setting forth.

Though splintered heights refuse us, though crags are only dreams,
Though Death is but a field away from scything in our wheat,
There's still the lowland murmuring of confidential streams,
And still a rainbow curving on the cloud of our defeat.

108

So you, my friend, and you, my friend, and I, prepared for Home,
As grey as album lavender, unsteady, stiff, and bent,
Must never shame the colours of the General soon to come
And march us through the defile where our worn-out fathers went.

109

DEPARTURE

“How little did I think to die
Thus splendidly!” he said,
“With God so near my chamber-door
In quest of me, and all these four
Great Angels round my bed.

“The secret dam has burst; the race
Of blood is running low.
Without a mortal hand to hold,
I lie and feel the creep of cold,
And drift where I must go.

“But Life and Death and Hope and Love
Are here, at last agreed.
As slaves obedient to their lord
While feasting at his laden board,
They offer all I need:

“A cup of water from the spring
Of never-known Content,
And startled Memory's bread to eat
(Some bitter, some intensely sweet)—
The whole a sacrament.

110

“Before my hands were fit to play,
My dazzled eyes to see,
God stooped, although I was so small,
And laughed, and gave a coloured ball
Of Heavenly Earth to me.

“Refreshed by Angels round me here,
I think of it again;
Confess the damage I have wrought
To many souls by lack of thought,
And tremblingly explain.

“Such folly, arrogance, and sin
Are grievous to my view;
And yet, there sounds the thrilling voice
Of Mercy saying,” I rejoice
To share my home with you.

Although the grieving Father counts
With sorrow every loss
Inflicted by an unjust heart,
He whispers that the greater part
Is cancelled by the Cross.

Enough that you were quick to name
The worth of all you owed,
And did not constantly forget
The signposts your Redeemer set
In love along the road.

111

The Angels in a glorious group
Came nearer to his bed.
“How little did I think to die
Thus splendidly, with God so nigh
The chamber-door!” he said.

112

THE VICTOR

Love, who's a giant, has been known to bring,
Of men and women destined not to meet,
The hearts together, and through life to sing
The only song that renders absence sweet.
This is the love that, learning without eyes,
Feasting on hardship, wins the supernal prize
That passion shall not hold, because it dies.

113

THE BATTLE

The Wood is very sad to-night.

An hour before the set of sun
The Battle of Raided Flowers was won.

The lovers of Spring had charged again,
And bruised and crushed and torn and slain.

The lovers of Spring had come and stayed
Three hours too long in the primrose glade.

Bunches of broken necks were tied
With pieces of string and flung aside.

The Wood bemoaned her heavy loss
In shattered ferns and wounded moss.

The doves began to think her breast
Unfriendly to their marriage-nest.

The tiny quadrupeds in fur
Looked up reproachfully at her,

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As if she had not kept her troth
With children of the undergrowth.

The Wind began to shriek, and filled
The air with news: Ten Thousand Killed!

The Wood is very sad to-night.

115

THE INSPIRATION

Grown very weary of my work
Afar from brook and breeze,
How willingly I grant my brain
A little holiday again,
And spend it with the trees!

Languidly musing in my chair,
I make the haughty wood
My servant here, and bid the throng
Of doves delight me with a song
To lull me while I brood.

Hinges of bark begin to stir,
And winds of Fancy toss
The Dryad's hair in disarray
As soon as she comes out to play
With friends upon the moss.

Oaks tell me of the steadiness
My heart and spirit lack,
And teach me how to clench my hand
Upon the hilt of life, and stand
With shoulders pressing back.

116

How often, when my nature seems
Rebellious grown, and turns,
Without a thankful tear, aside
So quickly from the Crucified . . .
Beyond that home of ferns

Who trembles into outline there,
Escaped from heavenly bowers?
As noiseless as the air that flows
Along the glade, my Mother goes
In beauty, gathering flowers.

Vision refining, healing, blest!
Thou bringest me the flame
That burns me to the shape decreed
Till sounds my bell and there is need
To send me whence I came.

117

INTERCHANGE

The corner where the irises explain
That Spring is busy in the world again

Delights you, and you watch the solemn growth
That seems to be, but is not, perfect sloth.

Then I, a little farther from the bed,
Can note the reverent bending of your head,

And guess the adoration that is sung
By bosom and spirit, silencing the tongue,

And marvel how it came to pass that Earth,
Not Heaven itself, was sweetened by your birth.

Neither shall you depart the girl you came
Nor shall these infant blossoms be the same

118

As Evening found them when she ran to look
If burly Day had bruised them in their nook;

For when their miracle and yours have met
As sisters, each of you must needs forget

Some privacies, and offer by a strange
And delicate act of subtle interchange

A quality passing at this sacred hour
From bloom to maiden and from maid to flower.

My soul is not too coarse to be aware
That you and they have sanctities to share;

And, being strained and quickened by the sight
Of each illumined by the other's light,

Is cleansed. If very Angels had been sent,
How could their wings have made me more content?

119

CANDOUR

You honour Love and Duty
With syllables of gold
That suit a page of azure
Celestially unrolled
Above the curving beauty
Of Applehaven wold,
My feather-breasted poet
Declaiming in the cold!

This lyric, almost raging
With emphasis, and fed
By what is darkly ancient,
So pulses overhead
That I, whose never-ageing
Delight in verse is wed
To minstrelsy, am feeling
At heart discomfited.

How stalwart is the fashion
In which your verses flow
To angel-folk above you,
To country-folk below!

120

You shake with downright passion
Upon a twig; for so
Your honest kind was counselled
Unnumbered years ago.

Enraptured by the story
You publish in the air,
I stand beside a bean-rick
And search the poplar where,
Amid a steepled glory
Of leaves and branches, fair
With visitors of sunlight,
You lay your passion bare.

To think that we, now banded
So closely that we fear
To tell, except in whispers,
The truth you make us hear,
Were long ago as candid,
As splendidly sincere,
When glimpsing in the woodland
The bosom of our Dear!

121

HUNTING

The girl in blossom, the autumnal maid,
The woman with the feeble knot of hair,
The bankrupt (and behind his saddle Care),
The Hawk, the tattered Birds on whom he preyed,
The clean-heart youngster, the devouring jade,
The penny-wise and frozen millionaire,
The parson and the publican, were there,
To make a fox in Leicestershire afraid.

How poor this sport to me, within whose brain
Another hunt was up! My hounds, unspent
By leagues of running since the lips of Dawn
Had tasted hoarfrost on the windowpane,
Still fevered by the quarry's beauty, went
Along the sweetness of my chosen fawn.

122

A PICTURE

“This room—how gay! how bright!
Who gathered cones for us to burn to-night?”
Love dropped the kitten to the rug, and said,
“Kiss me for doing right.”

“Your voice is like a song,
And—Don't these hyacinths smell a little strong?”
Love, with a scarlet hint of pouting, said,
“Kiss me for doing wrong.”

“The snowdrops make me glad.
But who spilled water on my writing-pad?”
Love, with repentance in a dimple, said,
“Beat me for being bad.”

“How could I dream of blame,
With you and snowdrops, kitten, cones, and flame?”
Love, with a falling of her bosom, said,
“Whisper my sweetest name.”

123

THE MILKY WAY

When Jesus in his heavenly bower
Was yet a little child of mirth
God told him of another flower
He wished to plant upon the earth;

And asking if the boy inclined
To company His wayfaring,
He saw the answer of his mind,
And made him room beneath His wing.

They sped together through the bands
Of travellers busy in the sky;
And Jesus gaily clapped his hands
As world and comet hurried by.

At last in Eden's grove they trod
The lawn of Man's deserted dower,
And, sighing very deeply, God
Took from His breast the Passion-Flower.

'Twas planted. Then the shining Pair
Looked zenithward, and left the earth

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For which the younger's love and care
Were destined, through his second birth.

The rounded constellations flew,
In patterns by their God designed,
Vermilion, opal, emerald, blue;
And Jesus, marvelling, lagged behind.

The Father, silent in His grief,
Swept ever onward into space,
Devising, for the world's relief,
The crown of thorn, the cross of grace.

So deep His thought of human weal,
Of Paradise by sin defiled,
The Lord and Maker did not feel
His wing no longer roofed the child.

But when He knew His son was gone,
He turned Him round, and bent His eyes
To where the boy in beauty shone
Amid the splendour of the skies.

God bridged the distance by a look,
Till, dazzled by the glorious beam,
The eyelids of the Saviour shook
As though they fluttered in a dream.

Waving a hand to deer that fed,
Upon a moon, beside a spring,
Along the road of light he sped,
And brushed against his Father's wing.

125

That anxious look for ever kept
A strip of heaven as white as may:
Where tides of love immortal swept
We point our sons the Milky Way.

126

A PREFERENCE

At Tewkesbury and at Westminster,
At many a holy resting-place,
My kindred glorified the air
With abbeys rich in votive grace.
Triumphantly they spread the roof
Above the aisles below their feet,
And firmly, with laborious power,
Upreared the monumental tower
For Faith to hold, for Time to cheat.

At Errington and Underhill,
At many a bird-contenting place,
The chaffinches, with toe and bill,
As Spring advises, work apace.
Cathedrals? How are they to match
The roofless abbey in the thorn,
That swiftly, with instructed power,
The quiet masons hour by hour
Erect, to prove that love is born?

127

LESSONS

“'Tis hard to be prevented,”
I heard a flower exclaim,
“From being sweetly scented,
Like others I could name!”
But humble little flowers
That haven't any smell
Are safer in their bowers
Than violets in a dell.

“I'd change this very minute,”
I heard a sparrow say,
“My clothes, and be a linnet,
If I could have my way.”
But birds too finely crested,
Too smart in wing or tail,
Are frequently arrested
And hurried off to jail.

“Why haven't we between us
A share of lovely light?
I want to join you, Venus,”
Said Earth, “in being bright.”

128

But devotees of duty
Are often not aware
How glorious is the beauty
Their honest faces bear.

129

THE LOVER'S WISH

All that by day was glad to shield
Thy sweetness now is put aside,
And, only to the dark revealed,
Thou prayest to be sanctified.
Sundered by walls more hard than rock,
Arrows of absence must I bear
Till, by the heart's familiar shock,
I know thy foot is on the stair.

While thou art sleeping in the lawn
Unworthy of so bright a guest,
Dream gently onward till the dawn
By breathing near thee breaks thy rest;
And if within the dream there stands
A lover marvelling at thy grace,
Be mine the trembling of his hands,
And mine the worship on his face.

130

THWARTED

“What is this man to you?
A dwarf beneath a giant's thumb,
He wriggles for his heart. You come,
As sourly as you came before,
And rob me at my very door.
What is this man to you?”
Said Death.

“You shall not have him yet.
He neither frowned nor bid me pay
For bruised and broken yesterday,
But gardened in his pleasant soul
And offered me a buttonhole.
You shall not have him yet!”
Said Life.

131

RESPONSES

Are you happy in the sun,
Dusting partridge?
There's the gun.

Are you happy in the brook,
Dace and gudgeon?
There's the hook.

Are you happy in the oats,
Nimble rabbit?
There are stoats.

Do you suffer any shocks,
Gawky gosling?
There's the fox.

Does your heart go pit-a-pat,
Grey-silk mousie?
There's the cat.

Is your heart a pulse of joy,
Dapper hedgebird?
There's the boy.

132

Are you happy in God's plan,
Subtle woman?
There is man.

Did I hear you catch your breath,
Sinewy Cæsar?
There is death.

133

A CHRISTMAS HYMN

'Tis very strange that we should wait
So self-contented for the time
When belfries, throbbing and elate,
Announce the dearest Christmas-chime;
Should rarely count ourselves as dead,
By wasted treasure, secret shame,
By things not done, by words not said,
With fearlessness in Jesu's name.
Let us prepare to rise and sing,
As new-born subjects, to our new-born King!”

For it is wrong in us to live
The foes of others gone astray,
Perchance refusing to forgive
Their sin, though sinning it to-day;
Leaving the brightness for the dark,
Knowing our shames, yet hugging them;
Nearer to Judas than to Mark,
And out of chime with Bethlehem.
Let us prepare to rise and sing,
As new-born subjects, to our new-born King!

134

Who die to sin throughout the year,
Removing many a scarlet stain,
By dying thus are drawing near
To birth in Jesus Christ again.
Through every death, through every birth,
They grow disciples of the Way,
And yearly give a holier earth
To Christ the Lord on Christmas Day.
Let us prepare to rise and sing,
As new-born subjects, to our new-born King!

135

THE STRICKEN WOOD

Hast thou been visited by Death? How still
Thy voiceless congregation on the hill!
What of the dove? the squirrel? and thy vows
Of faith in change, expressed by falling boughs?
If but one syllable of song were heard,
If but the treading of a rabbit chanced,
If but a hedgehog in the bracken stirred,
I might believe this wood were not entranced.

My heart, as though commanding such an hour
As long had been denied, increases power,
And, mastering me, till apprehension speaks
In every vein, and reddens in my cheeks,
So thunders on the anvil of my breast
That I would have thy thousand oaks belong

136

To windy harpers tuning crest and crest,
And forcing every branch of thine to song.

How strangely sounds, above the clamorous beat,
The first and feeble trumpet of defeat!
How swiftly throng within the park of sense
The shapes of murders done amid a dense
Assembly of dishonoured trees! There slips
From out the northern edging of the wood
The stealthy image that for ever drips,
For ever threatens us, with murdered blood.

A thousand harps, yet not a raptured string!
Such silence, that a drift of air might bring
The spoken fondness of a scarlet mouth
That names me in the woodlands of the South!
Pigeons and throstles somehow daunted there,
Resist the trance! Deliver Joy, and send
Consoling remedies along the air
To heal the dumbness of your stricken friend!

137

PARTNERS

The Black Notes said to the White,
“He will come to-night
With his moody heart, and play
As yesterday.”

The White Notes answered, “Yes.
When in keen distress
He returns to you and me
For sympathy.

We know, as the woodland doves,
Of the girl he loves
In his moody heart, and share
Her breast and hair.”

The Black Notes said to the White,
“When he comes to-night
We will tell him how she crept
To us and wept.”

138

THE TOWN

When I have to wander London
As an exile for a season
From the mistlethrush's solo,
That is madness born of reason,
How I long to hear him coaxing
The attractive little lady
He desires to share his fortune
In the oaklands green and shady!

Were it not that gentle Fancy
Gives me glimpses of the bounty
Spread for all whose eyes and bosoms
Deeply love a wildrose county,
Hardly could I bear the roaring
Of the traffic, and the faces
Of the greedy thousands pushing
Even kinsmen from their places.

Let me stand in adoration
Very near the simple altar
Of the country god who teaches
All the song my lips can falter.

139

In the town my secret Angel
Frets me constantly by reaching
Ever backward to the greenwood
That my heart is now beseeching.

140

THE DISGUSTED ROBIN

Having finished a song for the girl of my heart,
I had flung myself down on the toes of a pine
And was humming the words, by the help of a tune
That could marry them prettily, line after line.
I was happy in thinking the place was my own,
When the rudest of robins cried, “Fiddle-de-dee!
What a negative squib of a lover you are!
What contemptible cowardice! Listen to me!”

While I flushed with annoyance, I gazed at the bough
Where my critic was airing his apple-round breast
And was vaunting such eloquent phrases as seemed

141

To be shot by a gun from his resolute chest.
“Now I swear, by the shape of Robina,” he cried,
“That before I would father, and give to a lass,
Such an addled and valueless jingle as that
I would beg to be changed from a bird to an ass!

“If a poet believes he was born to salute
Every grace of his darling in metre and rhyme,
Let him go for a series of lessons in pluck
To the tit on a currant, the finch on a lime.
As a verseman but lately received in a shire
That is sunny and candid, your task is to learn
An imperative ruling, wise, simple, and brief:
Hold your tongue, if a coward; sing fire, if you burn.

“Near the belt of young larches in front, on the right,
There's a dear woman coming, as happy and sweet
As a dewdrop that lives half a day with a rose,

142

And there's love in the sound of her heather-kissed feet.
Do you dare to pretend that your tape-measured song
Has the requisite valour and spirit and rush?
There's a rabbit-hole yonder. Now, run to her lips!
Show her all that she is and compel her to blush!”

143

TWO SLAVES

Had I the old Enchanted Lamp
To rub, that, towering in my view,
Its Slave along the air might spread
His limbs and rear aloft his head
Within a frame of gold and blue,
My starving breast would have him speed,
With haste as violent as my need,
To bring me, Fairest, you.

But then—your panting loveliness
Within his arms! Were he as true
As angels, what a raging test
Of honour startled in a breast
Where pain and passion both were new!
Slave of the Slave, I could not dare
To send him lonely. He should bear
Your worshipper to you.

144

THE BARRIER

Stay! We have gone as far as we can go.
The rest is wisdom not for us to know,
And here we stand, as travellers refused
A welcome after courage fiercely used
Across the world, across the deeps of space,
By pilgrims searching for the Holy Face
That will not suffer us till we have shed
Mortality, and risen from the dead.

Give me your hand. Our wayfaring is done,
Beyond the flashing of the farthest sun.
There would not be this barrier set to pride
Were glory absent on the other side
And beauty worth concealing till the hour
When darkness changes to a sudden flower
As white as snowdrop, and till crags that stand
In front of us are level with the land.

145

The wall of gateless rock is not the end.
The rosebud lives beyond the rampart, Friend,
And Love, with leaping pulses, gentle hands,
Runs, as a brook of life, toward the bands
Of dazzled travellers seeming in a trance
Because of such a fair inheritance.
Then Love will kiss them all, and teach them how
To name the fruit, the flower, the bird, the bough;

And, after many lessons day by day,
As startling proof of how the Heavenly Way
Was thorned and flinted to the sound of mirth
By love-resisting revellers on Earth,
Will bid them journey forward with their load
Of shame and penitence along the road
By which will come to them at eventide
The Shepherd whom they daily crucified.

If you and I accept this end of thought;
Turn back together; labour as we ought,
Believing that the flower of Vision grows
Behind the barrier, as on Earth the rose,
No longer shall we miss the dignity of torn

146

And crippled hands among the flint and thorn,
But, spending Talents thus for Him above,
Retire from musing and advance to love.

Withdrawn, and motionless as silent trees,
Amid a tangle of immensities,
Together, Comrade, we forgot the sign
Of him who gave the wounded oil and wine
And substance for the morrow. Let the clear
Announcement of the Cross, that we are here
For sacrifice, as long ago our Lord,
Enrol two labourers heedless of reward.

147

HONESTY

Love-struck throstle in the pine,
With a clearer voice than mine,
You are not a smooth and grave
Time-defeated slave.

Splendid! Sing for me again
Honest elemental pain.
Let a roadside pupil learn
How you dare to burn.

Feathered scholar of the wild,
Nature's unaffected child,
Man, within his hand a rod,
Itched to be a god.

Thus he fell by rising. Health,
Truth and Peace were sold for Wealth.
Marketing, he glibly priced
Cattle, corn, and Christ.

When he hears, as I hear now,
Radiant truth upon a bough,
Let him count himself a grave
Time-defeated slave.

148

FORERUNNERS

The Snowdrop founded cities
Ere Adam learned to spread
His grains of wheat upon a stone
And powder them for bread.
Though man is wont to flourish
The marvels he has done,
The Snowdrop worked before him,
And will work when he is gone.

A million years the Nettle
Had lived beneath the sky
Before she got a chance to sting
Eve's leg and make her cry.
Though woman soon developed
A weapon she could trust,
The Nettle stung before her,
And will sting when she is dust.

149

THE QUESTIONS

The time must come for me to spill
At last the vivifying cup;
Forget the ledger and the till,
Since Death has put my shutters up.

'Tis written. I must fall, and be
Creation's newly-broken toy.
Has God another shop for me?
And shall I start as errand-boy?

150

THE WAIF

The unseen wings that brought him here
Have wafted far away
The child too delicate to bear
On earth a longer stay.
I often marvel how he chanced
The broad blue road to miss,
Wavered, forgot his world, and glanced
Mistakenly to this.

Perhaps the road was very long,
The wings were very tired;
Perhaps the call of evensong
By many birds was quired
So sweetly that the little breast
Was tempted by a world
Alive with tune, where heart could rest
And jaded wings be furled.

Two years he rested, well content
With what my hands could give
In love and labour fiercely spent
To help the child to live.

151

Love as we will, the skies re-take
A truant of the skies,
Though hearts that fed the wanderer break
To have it otherwise.

As often as I watch the boys
Entrusted to my care,
To whom the oak and elm are toys,
The stream a jump to dare,
I love to think my frailer son,
Now suited by his place,
Is quick to climb, alert to run,
And bonny-brown of face.

Since there was need for him to know
On earth a human nest,
How glad I am he did not go
Beyond my willing breast!
How glad to think the very skies
That lost him for a while
Are keeping for his mother's eyes
That unforgotten smile!

152

WARNING

Still I believe in Song
That's clear, and not too long,
Though others tell me length
Of versemanship is strength.

Were it the blackbird's fate
To sing from eight till eight,
He might not have a nook
In Palgrave's Golden Book.

Herrick, whose shorter breath
Than Milton's conquered death,
Is far more often pressed
In joy against a breast

Than he who lost his way
In Paradise, men say,
And left no comrade song
To help the world along.

Remember, you that try
To reach the singing sky

153

And gleam as stars above
The generation's love,

How deathless is the strength
Of Beauty's little length,
That Time has picked to be
The heart's anthology.

154

ANSWERED

“Now that I see
With clearness what my life should be,
Great Master, shall I walk along with Thee?”

“Not so, my friend.
Thou hast my heart and soul to spend
Elsewhere. But I will meet thee at the end.”