The Autumn Garden :: :: University of Virginia Library

Of Epicurus it is told
That growing weak, and faint, and cold,
And falling towards that torpid state
By doctors held as desperate,
He drowned his senses in a flood
Of th' ancient vine's ebullient blood,
Ingurgitating draughts of fire
To lull his fear and his desire.

But was he sober when he died?—
Whereto an epigram replied:
“He was too mad to taste or care
How bitter Stygian waters were;
Blest was he therefore.” Can we draw
A sweetness from this cynic saw,
Or of this mithridate distil
An antidote for life's long ill?

Perchance! since, as we linger thus,
'Twixt dawn and dark swung pendulous,
Supported through our irksome state
By fond illusions of old date,

The mind within itself retires,
And there inspects its dead desires—
A soothsayer, revolving thrice
Around the ambiguous sacrifice.

In vain we toil to waken flame
Where once with scarce a breath it came;
In vain old auguries invoke
Of swarming bees and stricken oak;
The spirit feels no secret stir
O' the exquisite remembrancer,
And into depths, unsealed in vain,
Drop hollow-sounding tears like rain.

But still, in philosophic sense,
A purple cluster glows intense,
And from an intellectual vine
Rich madness gushes, half divine;
Droops the dull vein in chill eclipse?
A heavenly beaker slakes our lips,
And cups of thrilling freshness lend
Fantastic aid as we descend.

So, drunk with knowledge, only fed
With rapture from the fountain-head,
Until the bells of God shall call
The flush'd, insatiate bacchanal,
Let her go smiling toward her rest
On tottering footsteps, faintly blest,
And, in that fair delirium dight,
Walk down to darkness in great light.

A London Fog

In blue-gray fog, as in the sea, we drown;
The unseen rain soaks down;
Like broken phantom pillars, from each roof
The chimneys soar aloof.

The sky, lost, like some ocean from below,
Melts in one general flow;
Vague, dull, immense, splashed with the light of tears,
The long dim pavement sheers.

And now, and now, across its sullied glass,
The blotted figures pass;—
Hope, poverty, ambition, lust, and pain
Glide, muffled, thro' the rain.

And she whom most we love, or that fell head
Our thoughts hate most, and dread,
Might cleave the blueness at our cheek, nor make
One sentry-nerve awake.

This is an image of indifferent death,
That chokes the ardent breath,
Bids the warm eye be veiled, the heart beat slow,
The tide of self slip low;

And with its universal chill prepares
This creature of bright airs
For faint eternal grades of misty blue,
And mazes without clue.

Sursum

The Alpine pasture stirs
With rattling grasshoppers,
Some green, some gold, some gray with crimson wings;
Antic or grim or fair,
They glitter everywhere,
Without a path or aim, brisk foolish blundering things.

On stiff legs issuing forth,
They fling to greet the North,
But veer by South in air, and perch by West;
Nor o'er those horny eyes
Floats shadow of surprise
To find the impelling hope so instantly repressed.

Thus, with no goal or plan,
The headlong race of man
Bounds in the void at each uncertain sign,
Take grass-flowers for the stars,
Ants' holes for hell's black bars,
The lustrous eyes of mice for Providence Divine.

Yet, with a knotted scourge,
The instinctive forces urge
Their helpless slaves to leap in hollow air;

No matter what the flight,
Nor where the feet alight,
To leap and pause and leap is all our human care.

Nor at this fate would I,
Shrill insect, wail and cry,
Demand a goal, and shake the stems with rage,
Claim that our fretful race
Should know their hour and place,
Should whirr with faultless aim across their grassy stage.

Rather for spurs that prick
My dulness to the quick,
Whither I know not, forcing upward flight—
For blind desires to rise
Toward blank phantasmal skies,
To vault in fruitless curve beneath a larger light,—

For instincts vague and wide—
So humbling to my pride—
I thank the Will I own not, yet adore;
Content to leap astray,
Content to lose my way,
While still I hold in joy the mastering wish to soar.

The Bust

My daughters, on my birthday-dawn,
Deep midst our London garden-trees,
Set up the image of a Faun,
All garlanded and tricked to please.

Against the door's dark cinnabar
The white bust twinkles, like a star,
High on its slender pedestal:
The heavy chestnuts, green and brown,
Throw verdurous lights and shadows down,
While birds about it flit and fall.
The serpent-locks bear stain on stain
From loose crushed leaf and sudden storm;
Within the laughing eyes, the rain
Has channelled out the dainty form.

In Greece 'twas marble long ago,
Pentelican, as pure as snow
And crystalline as mountain frost,
But here, in London, sculpture's breath
Pants to a plaster-cloudy death,
Till all the lovelier gleam is lost.

Yet fondly, from my trellised bower,
I gaze, this magic twilight hour,
Upon the Faun that smiles, and smiles,
And mystifies, and still beguiles.

His curling lips are reft apart
With folds of that grimacing stain
Which now exaggerates the art
That modelled, with a drift of rain;
I see him as he lived in Greece;
I see the pipes, the humble fleece,
The fillet and the bunch of nuts,
The little gifts which shepherds laid
Upon the wild thyme in the glade
That sloped down softly towards their huts;
Ambiguous apparition, made
To tell their terror and their trade!

O Faun, within the folding night
Thou fadest to a star of white;
Thy lidded eyes, thy serpent-hair,
Thy twisted throat of mystery,
Thy narrow brows unscored by care,
I still divine, yet hardly see.
Instead of purple Attic wine,
Satyric ghost, I pour to thee
Pure water, flung out far and fine,
In drops that pierce the night, and shine.
O Faun, be bountiful to me!

O bless my hearth and home, as when,
Outspeeded by the Maenades,
Thou paused'st near the haunts of men,
To bless the fishers of the seas;
Or leaning to the reddened rocks
To watch the fleecy, loitering flocks
Of shepherds in the darkling glen;
Or bending with illusive smile
To see the rustic troop defile,
And lights spring out at eve as now;
Then on thy goat-feet sped'st amain
To join the timbrel-whirling train
Of nymphs upon the mountain's brow.

O bless my empty ears with song,
Since thou hast flung from laughing lips
The reedy pipes that did them wrong,
That thy mouth's music might eclipse
All pastoral fluting! In this heart,—
This old, weak, weary heart of mine,—
An ancient spirit stands apart
And listens for a sound from thine.
Sing, Faun, of all the opening world,
So delicate, so dewy-pearled,
That budded round thy daring eyes,
When first amid the strain and stir
Of many a fragrant, whispering fir
Thou gazed'st with a babe's surprise,
And from thy russet-needled bed,
Down the long avenue of pines,

Saw'st the slow sunrise ridge with red
The dim white Ocean's long-drawn lines.

O speak, eternal lips of youth,
Some word to age that flags so fast!
Hast thou no tenderness, no ruth
For wingèd years that flutter past?
Immortal Faun, tho' cold thou art,
In thy unaltered smile I read
A presage to my smouldering heart
That can but leap to thee, and bleed.
O guide it through this darker day,
When all has sunk to cloud and clay,
When even thine own immortal form
Has lost the marble of its birth,
And shadows of the final storm
Close over this dejected earth!

O lift me, cold sardonic Bust,
Above the silence and the dust;
Teach me thine old, sublime, severe
Philosophy of light and love,
Bid me be calm, as leaves are green,
And humble, as the stars above.

Stars? They are salt around my head,
And brushed by leaves like quivering hands.
The ancient goatherd, that was dead,
Lives, and condones, and understands.

Sir Lamourac

The day was curs'd, the day was black,
When that bright knight, Sir Lamourac,
Brought Mark the fatal faery horn
Which proved Sir Tristram's faith forsworn;
When, to the chapel near the sea,
Sir Tristram, bound at wrist and knee,
Was roughly haled by forty knights:
This was the end of love's delights,
And all the sorrows of the world
From that dark trumpet were unfurled.
No more the happy sparkling wold
Would gleam at daybreak like wet gold;
No more the wave of fishes break
In silver on the low moon's wake;
No more the slim brown nightingale,
Against the twilight primrose-pale,
Make Tristram's heart leap hard with bliss.
The beauty of the world must miss
Some glamour of the soul of a boy,
Some rapture of unbidden joy;
And it was Lamourac,—and not
Another with blind passion hot,—

The pure cold spirit of Lamourac,
For ever strained upon the rack
And stabbed by pangs of knightliness,
That did this deed of cruel stress.

Ah! life is thrid with paths like these,
That lead to sorrow and to disease
From spirit-heights of lifted bliss!
The lover to the loved it is
Who serves the bitter bowl of hate;
The cheerful hand is the hand of fate.
An innocent child will spread the gin,
A priest in prayer lead straight to sin;
The climber, blind in her own hair,
The pitiful missioner of despair,
The wind that bloweth the smoking flax,—
To Tristrams all are Lamouracs.

A Night in Time of War

The clouds are up, to sweep and tune
That inharmonious harp, the moon;
The north wind blows a harsh bassoon.

An old astrologer might say,
By signs, by portents whirled this way,
That earth was nearing her decay.

All apprehensions stir to-night
With fluttering issues infinite,
Conjunction, phantom, famine, blight;

The woodland shakes its agèd bones
And shrieks; beyond, in deeper tones
The ceremonial cypress groans;

And I, the microcosm of all,
Quake, shuddering, underneath the pall
Of nature's hurrying funeral.

Yes! though my sceptic brain rejects
My sires' chain'd causes and effects,
The nerves retain their deep defects;

And still my heart leaps in my side,—
A fluctuant ark upon its tide,—
With throbs and throes unsanctified,

And knows not how to brave the stir
Of sounds that beckon and shout to her
Of sins that clouds and winds aver.

I dare not sleep to-night, for dread
Of spectral lights obscurely shed
About my plum'd and shadowy bed.

Faint, faint, these mildew'd chords that twang
So feebly, where the music rang
Deep organ-notes when Homer sang!

Ah! strange to find the quivering crests
Of long-laid faiths, forgotten guests,
Rise up at memory's dim behests!

Ah! strange to feel the soul resume
Its cast-off heritage of gloom,—
The savage turning in his tomb!

June

Ah! why my heart is beating is more than I can tell,
At the hawthorn-bloom like incense in the air,
And the cuckoo in the woodland that is calling like a bell,
Like a cracked bell calling me to prayer;

But I think the ringing cuckoo, with its hard hysteric cry,
Is youth in the spring-movement of the blood,
And the richness of the blossom a reminder we must die,
While life is tasting exquisitely good.

Ah! the falling of the petals in the shivering silver night!
Ah! the turning wheel of years that will not stay!
I'd relinquish all the chances of to-morrows bold and bright
For one clutch at the delirium of to-day.

Abishag

O little tender rose of Bethlehem,
Lo! I am harsher than the salt sea-shore,
And purblind, like some beggar of the plain,
With knotted hair, and beard that hath not known
The comb's caress for wandering wasted years.

I know thy fingers are too fresh and cool
To lie within my gnarled and leathern hands;
I know thy kiss drops on my mouth like dew
On dust, or like those petals of the peach
Starring the ruined road to Olivet.

But I have left the pilgrims in the path
To wrangle round their creeds with shaken staves,
And I have left the thought that I am old,
For, gazing in the pools of thy dark eyes,
The mirrored portrait of myself seems young.

Monad and Multitude

Deep in high woods, where none pass by,
Strange fancies haunt the ear and eye,
And human forms are inly seen
Where human foot hath seldom been:
So, to my restless thought to-day,
Grows populous the woodland gray—
Young, stalwart, silent warriors these
Battalions of beleaguering trees;
Each living bole, awakened, lifts
Toward golden cloud and azure rifts
Slim, slippery limbs, but lately curl'd
In coverts of the savage world,
Each naked, with its silver guard,
Soft skin, and muscle folded hard.

So dreamed I, with that army round
Of forms alert, and—ne'er a sound.

Then as I lay across the bed
Of cold moss temper'd to my head,
I sang: “O million shafts of pines,
On each of whom the god-light shines,
In you the miracle I see

Of multitude in unity.
Each silken pillar stands alone;
From root to quivering twig 'tis one;
Its body drawn from earth's gray lap,
Its branches fed with gem-like sap;
Through dreamy frosts, submerged in snow,
Which spreads a twilight here below,—
Through summer opened fanlike out,
By flame of spice made smooth and stout,—
Each watched and fed and bound and guarded
As if alone of all regarded,
Yet standing in this forest fast
An atom in the tree-world vast,
One of a million—swarms that are
Mere velvet from the vale afar,
Uncounted items covering wide
The old heroic mountain-side,
Mere units from whose sacrifice
Broad complicated forests rise.”

So, in the mystic world of man,
We see the endless double plan—
The single spirit, for whose boon
Alone God lighted sun and moon,
You, or you other soul, or I,
The central wonder of the sky,
A solitary force that came
From heaven, and holds the heavenly flame;
Whose life alone contains the fears
And joys of time's unending years;
Fixed goal round which for ever stirs

The ministering universe,
Whose mighty sinew, whose clear nerve,
Whose pulse and satin skin, deserve
The best that eons can supply
Of vivid immortality.

So, gaze at the sufficing pine
For one view of your being, and mine!
But, in another view, how slight
Your hold and mine on love and light!

Items we are, of no account,
As pushing toward the sun we mount,
And 'tis but in our own conceit
We feign a godhead round our feet.
Since,—this one stunted, that one tall,
And boughs here mildewed, fit to fall,
This soiled from owls' nests, this one clean,
With shimmering fans of stainless green—
We are but parts of one design,
Monotonous and unbenign.

Last night along this huge expanse
I saw a crookèd lightning dance;
The thunder roared in hollow fit,
And all the forest moaned with it.
If from the vault in darkness steeped
A shaft of angry lightning leaped,
And tipped one pine in elfin mirth,
And scored and blasted it to earth,

Fed on its spices, burned within,
And shrivelled up its satin skin,
Where is that stricken pine to-day,
In all the forests' plumed array?

What tho' the single life be broken,
The broad, sweet woodland gives no token;
Its oneness left no wounded sense
On the undisturbed circumference,
Nor can the eye, though searching well,
Deplore that vanished miracle.

Such is the wonder of man's soul,
God-guarded, an essential whole;
Yet, in life's broad and mighty scheme,
God-unregarded, and a dream.

The Train of Life

We traced the bleak ridge, to and fro,
Grave forty, gay fourteen;
While yellow larks, in heaven's blue glow,
Like laughing stars were seen,
And rose-tipp'd larches, fringed below,
Shone fabulously green.

And as I watched my restless son
Leap over gorse and briar,
And felt his golden nature run
With April sap and fire,
Methought another madpate spun
Beside another sire.

Sudden, the thirty years slip by,
Shot like a curtain's rings!
My father treads the ridge, and I
The boy that leaps and flings,
While eyes that in the churchyard lie
Seem smiling tenderest things.

At a Casino

The night was scented like a peach,
The balustrade was cold to touch;
The words that linked us, each to each,
Expressed too little,—or too much!
The music sobbed beneath the trees
That soared into a purple sky;
On nights so delicate as these
We dare not dream that we must die.

The breeze came scented o'er the vines
Down limestone mountains ghostly pale;
What boundless hopes the heart confines!
And hopes should never faint nor fail.
The plaintive string, the wailing brass
Struck up a livelier note of glee;
But moods, like clouds at midnight, pass—
And who so sorrowful as we?

The laurels flashed their silver tongues
Within the perfumed moonlit night;
Our pulses overflowed with songs
Of life's ineffable delight,—

Then ebbed with fear of growing old,
With nameless dread, with shadowy care;
The balustrade was marble-cold,
And like a peach the wandering air.

Joy

I have seen, I too, the April face of joy,
The pale wet blue, the flying yellow cloud;
I have felt the wind across the mountain-side,
Cold after hail, and in the primrose dell
The sunlight warmer than a mother's hands.

O to embrace the trembling lips of joy!
O to catch sight, deep in the shivering grass,
Of golden, snow-white, lilac blooms of Spring,
Ghosts from the underworld miraculous,
Saints rearisen from sordid clods of sin.

But what is joy, and what are flowers and clouds,
And what the diapason of the birds,
And what the holiness and bliss of thought,
Unless another shares them? Magic gold
That fades while greedy fingers clutch at it.

Pure would I be, and yet not cold nor thin,
Uplifted in the dream of lovely life
Renascent, yet nor arrogant nor dense,
But like a mirror to reflect the sky
On pensive hearts shut up in silentness.

Ah! how to flash the marvel back on these!
Ah! how to carry in my shining eyes
The April azure, in my thingling hands
The new-born sun-warmth, how to pour them forth
Into cold breasts that languish in the gloom?

Since, while the glory floods me, it is gone!
Gray grow the skies, doleful the dripping boughs;
My eyes and hands are empty as before;
Of all the promised benefactions, hope
And memory, faded memory, sole survive.

Ah! seize the rapturous moment, bind the charm!
Let love run faster than the halcyon gleam
That sanctified these waters and this glade!
Let me be fleet in tenderness, and swift
In kindliest answer to the impulse given.

So, and not otherwise, the blue may shine
In mortal eyes, while all the heavens grow dull;
So, and not otherwise, the breath of balm
Be wafted thro' the dolorous hurricane,
And joy persist through all vicissitude.

Dunster Mill

Here would I live, and watch the light
Ebb down my level lawns at night,
While Avill with his whispering stream
Should mould the music of my dream;
My poplars old should flutter high
Their fairy hands against the sky,
And all the hollow twilight stir
With laughter of the woodpecker.
The hunt should, each a scarlet spark,
Press homeward down the dark-green park,
Yet scarcely wind the horn, or be
Disturbers of my privacy;
Nor from the hollyhocks should scare
One mimic huntsman of the air.
All sounds and scents, all shadowy lights,
That life revolves in careful rites,
Should, on this rustic altar piled,
Beguile me as they once beguiled.
The silvery otter then might spy
My limbs reclined, nor think to fly;
The ousel preen her dazzling breast,
And lead me to her sunken nest;

The wild hind pierce my noontide lair,
Nor start to find a harbourer there;
The heavy-lidded owlet hoot
Her welcome from the pear-tree shoot:
All Nature graciously contend
To claim me for a harmless friend.

Ah! dream enwrapped in wreathèd mist,
Come! fold me in thine amethyst;
Divide from all the jarring years
This heart that hopes and craves and fears;
Still let me live, still take from thee
Thy gifts of stream and poplar-tree.

May Day

Each month of May
The gardens have their way,
Suffusing pale pure light
Thro' foliage clean and bright,
Till suns destroy
The soft enigma of their emerald joy.

Their innocence,
Their paradisal sense,—
As of broad fans outspread
Over an angel's head
To hide the blue,
And catch the gliding constellated dew,—

Each year repeats.
Each year, with magic feats,
Renews the miracle
Of growth and hue and smell,
And, full in sight,
The verdant metamorphosis of light.

A Ballade of the Simple Life

Across the blushing willow-weed in spires
Of fulgent crimson barred with opal grains,
Lit by the ardent sunset's liquid fires
While life seemed mantling in his rosy veins—
The life of life that waxes not nor wanes,—
Courage came first, a javelin in his hand;
The light within his bold black eyes was fanned
By high disdain and ignorance of shame;
And like a bastion then I saw him stand,
A wholesome wood-boy with his cheeks on flame.

Then, swiftly, thro' a noise of leaves like lyres,
Unclouded by the weary fret that stains
Our jaded limbs; clean from all sick desires;
Bright as the tossing eglantine that chains
With fairy pink the odorous winding lanes,
Joy leapt to sight; his russet brow was tanned,
Where curls were clustered round, a laughing band;
Beating a lifted tambourine he came,
And flung it flaring upward like a brand,—
A wholesome wood-boy with his cheeks on flame.

Then fell there silence on the adoring choirs
Of birds that celebrate their wedded pains;

The brushwood backward waved the elastic wires
With which its matted undergrowth restrains
The striving foot which little purchase gains,—
And Pity glided towards me. Soft as sand
The fading twilight smouldered in the bland
Loose clusters of his hair. I read his name
By sudden shining tears, through which I scanned
The wholesome wood-boy with his cheeks on flame.

Envoi.

Prince, in the purer empire of our sires,
Threefold the Power that purchased health and fame!
Now the loose web of useless effort tires
Our foolish heart that in a coil expires;
O to regain that age when, void of blame,
Courage and Joy and Pity were our squires,—
Three wholesome wood-boys with their cheeks on flame.

The Butchers' Row

They wandered down the Butchers' Row
In old Limoges the fair;
His love was dressed as white as snow
Under her ruddy hair;
It fared to be St. Maura's fête,
And all the bells rang out,
And through the ruinous English gate
There streamed the merry rout.

The butchers' shops were black as night,
The flags were blue and red;
His love walked on in laughing white,
Merry the word she said;
And down the Row to the river-shore
She passed, so pure and gay,
The people took her for Ste. Maure,
And crossed themselves to pray.

Rosemary

Green bud-stars spangle
The dead, black tree;
Bloom's in a tangle
On holt and lea:
Now elm-boughs shade me,
Now birds have sung,
O heart, persuade me
I still am young!

Ah, no; heart, hush thee!
Be wise, serene,
Lest snow-wreaths crush thee
Ere Hallowe'en;
Though June be jolly,
Though flowers be sweet,
'Tis naught but folly,
And fond deceit.

Heart, thou hast finished
With joys that fade;
Thy strength diminished,
Thy light decayed!

The brain is an ember;
The blood is cold—
O heart, remember
We both are old!

To a Portuguese Measure

If all the stars that glitter
In heaven's high cope, should topple from their places,—
If all the fruits turned bitter
That soothe us with suave graces,
If all young girls bore sad and shrunken faces;

If shivering months should bind us
In chains of darkness, forged of frozen Summer,
With dull dead Spring behind us,
And Autumn growing dumber,
And ice within the beard of each new-comer;

Yet Memory the Beguiler
Would tune her rapid notes in brisk division,
And Fancy, roseate Smiler,
Would build up dreams elysian,
And warm the heart of man with joyful vision.

At Anstey's Cove

The breeze inscribes with ring on ring
The grizzled oily seas of Spring;
Around the headland, gray and pale,
Comes, like a ghost, a gliding sail.

Through brooding tides I see her come
Where once I rowed, where once I swum;
Ah! then that weltering water's hue
Was rainbow-purple, peacock-blue.

She veers and fades; she dies away
In gulfs of universal gray;
And of my boyhood and its boast
She seems the melancholy ghost.

Disillusion

In the mirk that circles us
Starry clear thy image stood,
Like the gold ranunculus
On the black pools in the wood.

While its pure refulgence shone,
Even despair grew thin and bright,
As behind the burning sun
Darkest ether melts to white.

Now that image quits the sky,
Plunges like a falling star,
Slips, out of the pride on high,
Down, down where the pities are.

What an empty world for me!
What a night without a sound!
Suddenly eternity
With its blackness folds me round.

The Violet

Beside the dusty road of life,
Deflowered with toil and foul with strife,
Lie hid within a charm of dew
Pure harbours made for me and you.

In such a shadowy nook is set
Rest's purple-wingèd violet;
It nods upon the fitful breeze
Born in the fount's interstices;—

That fount of joy for travellers made,
Ensconced within a dappled shade,
Where still its wings our violet lifts
Beneath the pulsing air that shifts;—

The little fount that bubbles there
Under a veil of maiden-hair,
And coils through many a liquid fold
Its crystal waters dusk and cold.

So small the fount, a hidden thing,—
So weak the violet's throbbing wing,—
The haughty world in dust rides by,
Without a thought, without a sigh.

Loud, in a riot of speed and glare,
About their noisy work men fare;
With shriek of engine, yell of horn,
They glorify a world new-born.

We love the old, the timid ways,
The loose bough shutting out the blaze,
The murmur of an ancient rhyme,
Heard faintly in the ear of Time.

And spirits, here and there, who still
Prefer the mill-stream to the mill,
To riot, quiet, and to speed
The dance of rooted water-weed,

Across a rood or two of grass,
Unseen, into our realm will pass,
Will lean above the whispering spring,
And hear the hidden runnel sing.

And then the crimson cheek will choose
The rainbow of the pulsing dews;
Then silence calm the 'wildered brain,
And life grow sanctified again.

A Mood in Italy

Under the fluted
Velvet datura's
Trumpets of perfume
Virginal white,
Long I waited,
Leaning my elbows
Hard on the marble
Over the lake,
Dreamily questioning
What was the mystery,
What was the secret
Issue of life?
Years pass over us,
Years glide by with us,—
Years like the sandalo
Scoring the blue;
Faint white wake of it,
Noiseless oars of it,
Woundless waters
Melting behind.
What is the worth of it?
What the meaning?
What the issue
When life is done?

So, for ages,
The world has questioned,
So the philosopher,
So the saint;
Bells from the bell-tower
Pink through the chestnuts,
Song from the orchard,
Prayer from the shrine.
Priest and peasant,
Lover and martyr,
Monk in his rock-cell,
King on his throne,
Ever repeating,
Ever resuming,
Ever comparing,
But all—in vain!
The sandalo passes;
Their rich September
Fainting in perfume,—
Their withering March,—
If it bless them or ban them,
Ripen or rot them,
Leaves them silent
Without reply.

Frail and hurrying
Child of darkness,
Spun for a moment
In sparkling blue,
With night behind me,
And night before me,

And blind as the sage is,
And dark as the fool,—
Can I,—presuming,
Where all before me
Have failed, have fall'n
By Sphinx devour'd,—
Can I in this moment
Garner a harvest
Where no man hath gathered
One sheaf from time?
Vain is the effort!
Better in silence
Breathe the datura's
Ineffable breath,—
Take, in patience,
The delicate pleasure
That flowers and waters
And clouds procure.

Nay, but a glimmer,
Faint as a sparkle
Caught from the mirror
Of wind-touch'd wave,
Flashes within me,
Wakens a feeling
Scarce articulate,
Finer than thought;
Hints that the secret
Pulses of being
Aim at no wonder
Beyond themselves;

That light and odour,
Stillness and movement,
The bell that summons,
But not the prayer,
Hope in its progress,
But not fruition,
The oar that impels us,
But not the port,—
Life in living,
The urgent instinct,—
These are the intimate
Issues of life!

Give me the wisdom
To glide, and gliding
Take the happiness,
Take the pain;
Know myself to be
Less than a petal
Floating in fragrance
Down to the lake.
Weakness of mortals!
Impotent butterflies
Beat their tremulous
Radiant vans,
Dream of morrows
Beyond to-morrow,
Probe for honey
In honey-less blooms.
Moment by moment
Ah! to be telling

Ever the pulses
Of perilous time;
This is your answer,
Martyr and lover,
This is the guerdon
This the crown!