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1

I. PART I. IN CORNWALL.

3

ALICE OF THE LEA.

(Founded upon a Legend Related by the Rev. R. S. Hawker.)

In the castle of the Grenvilles
Beside the Cornish sea,
There was to be a wassail
And dance and revelrie,
And who should be the fairest
But Alice of the Lea?
With eyes as blue as heaven
When summer days are bright,
And like “the summer waters
When the sea is soft with light,”
But tresses like the raven,
On murk December night.
4

As graceful as the ash-tree
Down in her native west,
As stately as Tintagel,
With castle-cinctured crest,
In all the bounds of Cornwall,
Of all the maids the best.
The daring knights of Devon
And squires of Cornish strand,
And lords from o'er the Severn Sea
Came courting for her hand.
But she loved the lordly Grenvilles
Alone of all the land.
And who of all the Grenvilles
The maiden's heart should move?
Sir Bevil, the king's captain,
Who with the Roundheads strove,
Who battled like a hero
And died as heroes love.
5

But Bevil, the king's captain,
He thought not of the maid,
Who all her tender girlhood
And stately beauty laid
Before him, in rich sacrifice,
And little heed he paid.
In the castle of the Grenvilles
Beside the Cornish Sea,
They gathered for a wassail
And dance and revelrie,
And who should be the fairest
But Alice of the Lea?
But what availed it Alice
Though queen of all were she
If the proud heart of the Grenville
Should still unaltered be—
The peerless Lady Alice
Lady Alice of the Lea?
6

“O mother and my maidens,
My velvet to me bring,
My gown of the black velvet—
Fit fabric for a king;
And from my jewel-casket
Give out the pixies' ring—
“The ring won from the pixies
By a wise wife of the Lea—
The mightiest in magic
Of all the West-countree?
To give the love of her true love
Whoever he might be.”
But, because the ring was given
Against the pixies' will,
It never won a lover
Without a dower of ill,
And whenever lady wore it
There was thunder in the hill.
7

“O Alice, daughter Alice,
Wear not that ring to-night,
For whoso wears that jewel
Defies the pixies' might,
And to-night the pixies are abroad
From dusk to dawn of light.
“O Alice, daughter Alice,
I pray thee set it by;
When thou art in thy velvet,
No queen with thee may vie
For stately grace and lovely face
And glamour of the eye.
“O Alice, daughter Alice,
The ladies of the Lea
Have jewels of their own enow
Without the pixies' fee;
I prayed thee then, I pray thee now,
To let that jewel be.
8

“O Alice, daughter Alice,
I would see thee fairly wed,
And comely children by thee
Before that I am dead,
By thine own royal beauty
Not by the pixies sped.”
But the lovely lady Alice,
The lady of the Lea,
Answered her weeping mother,
Proudly and scornfully,
“I will wear the ring and win his love
Whatever knight it be.”
Then did she on her velvet
(Fit fabric for a king),
And on her slender finger
She drew the pixies' ring,
And then looked on her beauty
In the mirror glorying.
9

“O Alice, daughter Alice,
There is thunder in the hill,
And I feel a brooding boding,
In mine inmost soul, of ill;
I pray thee, daughter mine, to pray,
If wear this ring thou will.
“And I pray to Him in heaven
That thou mayest win the love
Of him, whose heart thou settest
Thy mother's prayers above,
And pray thou win not harm, like all
Who pixies' power would prove.”
She gazed into the mirror
Upon her loveliness,
And on the flashing jewel
And her rich velvet dress,
And felt a glow of conscious pride
Through her whole being press.
10

And she gazed into the mirror
Upon her glorious eyes,
And she muttered, “Pray, or pray not,
Not Sir Bevil can despise
The glitter and the glamour
Which all my lovers prize.
“I will not pray, my mother,
For surely he must yield
To mine own beauty had I
No pixies' ring to wield;
Nor care I for the pixies aught,
In hall or in the field.
“I will not pray, my mother;
There's little done by pray'r
But may be done by woman's face
Or man's right arm, or care;
The pixies I defy to do
Whatever they may dare.
11

Forthwith there shone a glare of light
Which dazzled all the place,
But when the glare had vanished
None saw the maiden's face,
Although they scoured the country side
For twelve long hours' space,
And in the Grenvilles' castle
Beside the Cornish Sea
There was a gloom of sorrow,
For the fairest, where was she,
The queen of all who graced each ball,
The lady of the Lea?
But when the news was brought them
They hasted, one and all,
Bedizened in the splendour
Done on them for the ball,
To scour the manor of the Lea
And search the ancient hall,—
12

The daring knights of Devon
And squires of Cornish strand,
And lords from o'er the Severn Sea
Who sought the maiden's hand.
And Bevil whom the maiden loved
Alone of all the land.
But never spied the maiden
Even a moment's space,
And they sorrowed, some for years,
O'er the beauty of her face,
And Bevil for her evil hap,
But no whit for her grace;
Though he, alone, of all men
The maiden's heart might move,
But in a score of battles
Against the Roundheads strove,
And bore him like a hero,
And died as heroes love.
13

Only the pixies' jewel
Beneath the earth was found,
Laid lightly near the surface
Of a mole's new-built mound—
The first of all the molehills
Cast up on Cornish ground.
And the simple country people
Said that the little mole,
With her fur like rich black velvet
And her eye with hidden hole,
Was the lost and scornful maiden
Whom the angry pixies stole,
With fur of rich black velvet,
Like the robe which she had worn,
And the eyes she was so proud of
That prayer she should scorn,
As a judgment for vain-glory,
Out of their sockets torn.
14

And they say that at the seasons
When pixies feast and jest,
She regains her shape and beauty
And is their honoured guest,
As honest folks have witnessed
In the borders of the West.
15

THF BELLS OF FORRABURY.

(Founded upon a Legend related by the Rev. R. S. Hawker.)

The Lord of Bottreaux Castle,
Was of all men haughtiest,
He could not brook the waft of bells
Borne on the breeze's breast
From the church-tower of Tintagel
When the wind blew from the west.
And he charged a famous founder,
Who lived in London town,
To cast a peal of bells to be
A glory and renown
To the tower of Forrabury
Upon the windy down.
16

The founder in his foundry,
Great bells he founded three
The first was for St Michael named,
For merciful is he
To shipwrecked folk and strangers
Upon the land or sea;
The second was named after
The sons of Zebedee,
Because that they were fishermen
In far off Galilee;
And the third for Mother Mary
And the infant at her knee.
The bells were wrought and graven
And carried to be blest,
With holy water, hand and voice
By bishop, choir and priest,
Then put upon the vessel
To bear into the west.
17

The west wind blew them fairly
From London to the sea:
The east wind sped the good ship on
Till past the land was she:
And then the west wind took them
And bore them merrily,
Until they cast their anchor
Right under Willapark,
Not daring, till the tide was in
And dawn had chased the dark,
To thread the tortuous harbour
With their rich-laden bark.
The Vespers of Tintagel
Once more resounded clear;
But filled they not the Bottreaux folk
With envy now but cheer,
For the bells had come to Bottreaux
After so many a year.
18

The Vespers of Tintagel
Were wafted to the sea;
The Pilot crossed himself and dropped
Down on his bended knee,
And for safe voyage and speedy
His thanksgiving breathed he.
“What dost thou, Master Pilot,
Upon thy bended knee?
What words are those thou mutterest,
I prythee, tell to me?”
“I am praising Mother Mary
For her mercies on the sea.”
“Fie on thee, Master Pilot,
Are we not good enow,
On summer-seas as soft as these
To bring to port our bow?
Thy captain and his seamen,
Not saints, should have thy vow.
19

“Fie on thee, Master Pilot!”
And a dread oath he swore,
That he could save his ship alone
Though all the winds did roar
And all the saints in heaven
Should keep him from the shore.
The pilot bowed him meekly
And turned to heaven once more,
That God the captain might forgive
For the dread oath he swore,
And no ill hap might take them
Ere they should reach the shore.
When the red sunset gilded
The castle of Bottreaux,
The sea was like a little lake,
Where never ripples flow,
By wooded banks veiled closely
From all the winds that blow:
20

When rose the moon, the waters
Shone like a mirror-glass,
Not clear but lined with silver sheen,
Where all things that may pass
Cast shadows on its surface
Like breath on polished brass.
The waters lapped as gently
Upon the headland's crags
As a deep sluggish-river tide,
Wherein the reedy flags
Move little, as the watchful pike
Who in their arbours lags.
The torch-fire in the cresset
Rose straight, a shaft of flame,
Steady as light of well-trimmed wick
When shielded by a frame
Of graven glass pourtraying
Some deed of ancient fame.
21

“Go sleep thee, whining pilot,”
The scornful captain said,
“Thou needst no crossings, bended knees
Or beads to save thy head:
Thou art as safe on shipboard
To-night as in thy bed.”
“I will not sleep, Sir Captain,
I will not sleep to-night:
We shall be safe by grace of heaven,
When morning brings the light:
Who stays his hand in battle,
Not often wins the fight.”
But went that scornful captain
And laid him down to sleep,
As careless in his fragile bark
Upon the vengeful deep,
As the lord of Bottreaux Castle
In his mighty feudal keep.
22

But while the scornful captain
And all his seamen slept,
A great wave, in mid-ocean born,
Of storm or earthquake, swept
And on the fated vessel
Like a huge serpent leapt.
And, fettered with her anchors,
The gallant little bark
Was strangled in the serpent's folds,
Right under Willapark,
In the hour before the morning,
The hour of all most dark.
But the prayerful pilot standing
At his post upon the deck,
Was borne in safety to the land
Upon the monster's neck,
While the captain and the seamen
Were strangled in the wreck.
23

And rising in the morning,
The vassals of Bottreaux
Looked for the ship which bore their bells,
But saw a sight of woe,
The shipwrecked pilot wailing
The stout ship whelmed below.
“Tell us, thou mournful seaman,
What mournest thou?” they said,
“Or hast thou lost thy boat or nets?
Or is some comrade dead?
Or tell us art thou shipwrecked
And all thy substance sped?”
Then spoke the pilot wailing,
“Shipwrecked I am,” he said,
“But mourn not only boat or net,
Or trusty comrade dead;
For the bells of Bottreaux church-tower
Swing on the ocean's bed.
24

Long centuries are over
Since the good ship went down,
With Forrabury's bells on board,
In sight of Bottreaux town,
Yet the “silent tower of Bottreaux”
No chime hath ever known.
But the bells of Forrabury
Give forth a muffled knell,
From their belfry in the sunken ship,
The danger to foretell,
When from the far Atlantic
There strides a sudden swell.
And the fishers of the haven,
Though smooth as glass the sea,
And though the heavens overheard
From rack or cloud are free,
Though breeze enough there is not
A signal flag to see,
25

If they think they hear the knelling
Of the Forrabury bells,
Say 'tis the scornful captain who
A coming storm foretells,
And he his boat who launches
Hears his own funeral knells.
But the bells of high Tintagel
Still merrily ring on,
As, long ere Norman William came,
They haughtily have done,
While the bells of Forrabury
Were not, have come, have gone.
26

ST IVES, CORNWALL.

The day that I wandered down to St Ives
I saw no man with a number of wives,
Or cats or anything else of the kind
Of which the old legend put me in mind,
But only the town with its quaint old streets
And the quaint old quay with its fisher fleets
And sunburnt fishermen watching the tide
Or drying their nets on the Island side,
And fisherwomen hard-worked but gay
For fine it was nor the boats away,
And sturdy children some swimming about
Some bare on the sand when the tide was out.
27

When the tide was out there was gleaming sand
Stretching leagues away upon either hand,
Dividing the dark blue sea and the shore
With its crown of boulder and heathy moor.
There's little to laugh at about St Ives:
Its story's a serious story of lives
Nightly in risk on the pitiless sea
To earn the fisher's inadequate fee,
A story of lifeboat, rocket and belt,
A story of woe not talked of but felt
When a lugger puts out to sea and goes
The way which all know of but no one knows.
Good-bye, little town by the Severn sea
With your sands and old inns and your busy quay,
And your carven church and your antique streets,
And your sun-burned heroes of fisher fleets!
28

Good-bye! when I read the name of St Ives
The wives I shall think of are fishermen's wives,
Rearing their sons to be heroes at home
While the wild wind lashes the western foam
Round the boats, in which brothers and husbands sail,
To win their bread from the teeth of the gale,
Or to carry a chance of life to wrecks
At the risk of their own stout hearts and necks.
29

THE MERMAID OF ZENNOR—A BALLAD.

O strangers from Australia,
And strangers born at home,
Who know no more of England
Than those from o'er the foam,
There is a church at Zennor,
By the North Cornish sea,
Where our forefathers worshipped
And worship still may we
In an old-fashioned building,
In the old-fashioned style;
The church has still a Saxon floor
And early-English aisle.
30

The carving of the chancel
Is plaster-overlaid;
'Twas done two centuries ago
When sturdy Roundheads prayed.
But the bench ends carved grotesquely
Of honest English oak
Have all, save two, departed,
In the common way of folk.
And these two are Zennor's glory,
More especially the one
With the figure of a mermaid
Rudely and oldly done.
Why the figure of a mermaid
Should grace a Christian church
Has defied whole generations
Of original research.
31

But we know no better reason
Than the Zennor people told,
In the days when men believed things,
In the fairy days of old.
For the squire's son of Zennor,
So the ancient legend said,
Sang so sweetly that he drew to land
A wondering sea-maid,
Who loved him and allured him
Down to her ocean home,
To go and be a merman
Beneath Atlantic foam.
And they never saw him after
And carved the maid in oak
To show how she was fashioned,
Who lured him from his folk.
32

For of all the men in Cornwall
There are none can sing a glee
Like the singing men of Zennor
Beside the Severn sea.
But the neighbours say the reason
Why the maid was carved in oak
Was because a heathen mermaid
Had taught the Zennor folk.
And the parson said the mermaid
Was a figure of the sea,
Because the first apostles
Had fished in Galilee.
Well—anyhow the mermaid
Is carved in heart of oak,
And Zennor men sing better
Than any other folk—
So Zennor people tell you,
In earnest or in joke.
33

THE CAPTIVE RIVER.

AN IDYLL OF THE CORNISH MINES.

I sprang to life upon the heights,
Which frown on Zennor and the ocean.
A fairy, born for daring flights
From rock to rock, for wayward motion
'Twixt overarching banks of heather
On the wild moorlands of my birth,
A mate for gossamer or feather
Almost too pure a thing for earth.
34

Impatient of my tardy growth,
I hastened down toward the valley,
Like many, who repent it, loath
In childhood's fairyland to dally.
I grew, with gifts of tribute waters
By humbler sister fairies brought,
Until, of all the mountain's daughters
The greatest, I the lowlands sought.
I scorned my soft brown moorland bed,
I scorned the gleaming floor of gravel,
Which stained my feet not, as I sped
Upon my downward path of travel.
I longed to show a crowded city
My pure, wild beauty, knowing not
That hunger's victims cannot pity
Or praise, but only bruise and blot.
35

In quest of praise in peopled lands
I gained a little mining village,
Only, with my free limbs in bands,
To find myself constrained to pillage
The bright ore from the mountain bower
Where it and I were born, and drive
The mighty wheel that yields the power
Which animates the busy hive.
Freed from the wheel I hoped in vain
Once more at my caprice to ramble,
To cross the open moors again
Amid the heather, brake and bramble.
In vain, still captive, was I hurried
'Twixt narrow wooden walls to find,
When I emerged befoamed and flurried,
Only some other wheel to grind.
36

At last, my captors I escaped,
Only to find the wished-for city,
Through which my passage now I shaped,
A sight to move my wrath and pity.
My banks were void of leaf or flower,
My path as closely straitened in
With vice and want in all their power,
With views of strife and smoke and sin.
My only hope was now the sea,
The pure, untainted, fragrant ocean.
Might not to mingle waters be
A cleansing, health-restoring potion?
Were not the Cornish sands a-sparkle,
The Cornish seas of that rare hue,
Which, as they grow alight or darkle,
Varies from beryl-green to blue?
37

Alas! the seas and sands were bright,
Until the mountain's fairy daughter
Defiled their pureness, quenched their light,
By contact with her sullied water.
Stained was I, with my violence, ruddy
When I the mountain's wealth out-forced;
And now the very seas turned bloody,
Fouled by my touch, where'er I coursed.
O welcome, welcome, open sea!
O welcome, welcome, stormy ocean!
Though lost in your wide arms I be,
Lost is my stain in your commotion.
My feet upon the moor are spotless,
But I my guilty head must hide,
No matter where, so it be blotless,
And what I plunge it in be wide.
38

SIR TRISTRAM AT TINTAGEL.

Written after a Visit to Tintagel in Aug 1884.
Ysolde.
Sir Tristram back? O wherefore art thou here?
The King will slay thee, and an outlawed man
Breaking his ten years' parol, as thou dost,
The Barons dare not shield thee.

Tristram.
But, O Queen,
The King himself released me, holding me
Hard-fastened by the hand. With him I came.

Ysolde.
The King?

39

Tristram.
The King, for haled to Arthur's Court,
A yielded recreant, by Launcelot
And there appeached of treason on a Knight,
Sir Bersules, cleaving him unawares,
And for no cause but that he would not aid
In compassing my treasonable death,
Arthur, as penance, bade him join accord
And pass with me to ride into his realm.

Ysolde.
Sir Tristram, trust him not! He is my lord,
God knows to my dishonour and sore pain—
And well I know that in his shrewd black heart,
Full of foul treason, hate and subtle guile,
With thee he never truly will accord.
He hates thee first for thy well-favouredness,
Being himself ill-favoured—more than that
For good which thou hast wrought him, winning him
His crown of Cornwall and deliverance
40

From tribute to my father, and for praise
The people give thee, calling thee the grace
And mirrour of all knighthood in the west,
Here and in Lyonesse and most of all—
Ah me that I confess it—for my love
Which thou hast won from him—nay thou hast held
From the beginning thine in his despite.
Oh! Tristram, he will slay thee, when thy limbs
Are fast in bands laid treacherously on,
Or smite thee through the back, or set on thee
One man unarmed with half a score of Knights.

Tristram.
Fear not, great heart, I fear not!

Ysolde.
Tristram, heed!
Behold this rock we stand on how immense,
Towering aloft, joined to the Cornish hills
With rocky wall so thick that chariots
Might pass upon its brow, and yet leave space
41

For rows of other chariots to stand
On either side where the two chariots passed.
See you black pool beneath us, 'tis not great
And it is far below, and yet that pool
Little by little in the course of time
Our rock will sever (rock) from the friendly shore,
And maybe afterwards o'erwhelm the rock,
Or strip it of the fabric fair, which crowns
Its stately head.—Mayhap, where we two stand,
In after days, but a low ruinous wall
Or crumbling bank shall show the royal hill
From any desert tor upon the moors.
Mark is the pool tireless and deep and black,
And far below thee as it lies below.
Thou art the stately promontory joined
To the whole land of Cornwall in men's hearts.
But as beneath this—even now—are caves
Sapped by the sea, through which on stormy nights
The breakers with low ominous thunder roar,
So there are signs.
42

See Tristram, here is samphire,
Which grows not but on sheer sea-beaten cliffs.
This samphire with its golden flowers and leaves,
So gentle to soft touch, but being bruised,
So pungent is for thee and Launcelot
To wear upon your casques, you two who stand
Like island-cliffs for wind and wave to lash.
O Tristram, thou and Launcelot: but nay,
I must not talk of Launcelot and thee;
For folk will think of me and Guinevere,
Twin Queens disloyal—yet we had our loves
Before our Lords. Did I not give my love,
Tristram, to thee for ever? It was lent,
But for a while, to Mark at thy behest;
And being thine, thou mayest call it back
At thy good pleasure. Tristram, mindest thou,
When we were yet in Ireland and unwed?
And how I healed thee of thy grievous hurt?
And how I hated Sir Palamides,
And gave thee the white armour, which thou worest
43

When thou so greatly overthrewest him—
White armour from a maid to maiden Knight?
Our hearts were white then, white had they been now
Had we but kept them true unto themselves,—
Nay! they are white; for a great love, once given
And never faltered from, must needs be white;
And we have never faltered in our love,
Although obedience and circumstance
Have crossed the hands, which should have only met.
Oh Tristram, I should bid thee hold thine arm
From round my body, and forbear my lips.
What would men say who saw the imperious Queen,
Ysolde the proud, Ysolde the stern and high,
The dark repellant Ysolde, yielding her,
To love's caresses like a budding girl
Who hath not lost the lesson of the child
Though she hath learned the lore of womanhood?
And yet I cannot bid thee. Child I am
With thee: for hast thou not the countersign
To take thee past each line of my defence
44

Right to the keep? I have no gate for thee,
No watch, no ward. Nay! Kiss me not again!
Thy kisses are thy Queen's—the fair Ysolde's,
The lily-fingered Ysolde's. O my love
Why didst thou wed this beautiful Ysolde,
This chaste, this sweet unquestioning Ysolde,
This noble Ysolde, asking thee for nought
But giving thee her all, thy children's mother,
Upbraiding not for absence, nor for love
Pre-mortgaged to another, and forespent,
And me thereby upbraiding ten times more
Than if she heaped ten thousand curses on me?
Thinkest thou if I loved Mark—impossible!—
But if I could, that I would have his love,
His time, his thoughts, his presence, everything
Wasted upon an old discarded love?
Nay, Tristram, by “discarded” I mean nought,
No querulousness; but, when I think on her,
I can but sigh for that which might have been
If thou hadst not obeyed thine uncle-king
45

So loyally, when he demanded me,
Nor I fulfilled my word so loyally,
Which unto thee I sware that I would wed
Whomso thou wishedst, deeming if not thee
'Twere somewhat to have wed thy chosen friend.
Had we not been so childish-loyal then,
We had been loyaller now. Oh! 'tis a sin
To bind oneself to fealty, which leaves
No choice but wrong or disobedience.
And as with me so with Queen Guinevere:
I cannot but compare myself with her,
A king's wife, as I am, so royally loved
And honoured and dishonoured by that love.

Tristram.
Nay, Ysolde, I am liker her than thou,
For she hath wed the gentlest Knight alive
And I the gentlest maid. And Launcelot,
He never had a lover but the Queen,
Or thou but me. For Mark was not thy love
46

But my behest. I am like Guinevere
And Launcelot the truest Knight alive,
Who ever bears his great love for the Queen
Between him and all maids.—What greater love
Can any cherish than to stay unwed,
Because the woman of his love is wed,
And wait upon the lady of his love,
By day and night, when be it that he may,
To do her what true service he may chance?

Ysolde.
And thou, O Tristram, what dost thou but this?

Tristram.
Nay, sweet, I did not so as Launcelot
But wedded me.

Ysolde.
O Tristram, blame to me
That ever I was wed. Why did not I,
Failing thy choice of me to be thy wife,
47

Go out to be a handmaid to thy wife,
I the proud Ysolde, I the stern and high
Whom men, for my unbending spirit dread
As more than woman, shun as one possessed?
Oh! how I would that I were with thy wife
As chamber-woman, menial—what not,—
To be about thee alway, and to smooth
Thy life with faithful service vigilant,
And yet not take thee from her. She hath won
Upon me with her gentleness so well
That I could spare her any grace but one—
Thy presence. Were I by, she might be Queen.
Oh! how I hate Tintagel! Its huge cliffs,
Black pools and wrathful waves are ominous
Of wild, precipitous, storm-beaten lives.
The place is fraught with magic and with storm;
Merlin bewitched it—here another Queen
Was loved by one—not her own Lord—too well;
And here was found a little naked babe—
Her babe say some and some say Gothlois—
48

Which brought by the enchanter and bred up,
Hath grown to be the source of many battles,
Albeit it grew to be the blameless king.
Nor do I think this rock will e'er be blest
Or any castle long will stand thereon
Though many there be built.

Tristram.
Nay, fear not, sweet!
We shall spend many golden days herein,
On velvet turf reposing with the breeze
Fresh blowing from the west to feed our lungs,
With the rich Cornish sun to mellow us,
And league-long cliffs to gaze at, and blue seas
Surf-crested by the reefs with fringe of foam,
And sough or roar of waves to lull our ears,
And ferns for me to gather from sea-caves
To deck thy glossy hair. The king-seal's fur
Shall wrap thy slim form from the winter's blast,
For am I not renowned the hunter-knight?
49

And I will hear thee harp with that same touch
I taught thee when thou satest on my knee,
In Ireland as thou healed'st me of my hurt,
Rewarding thee with kisses, little one,
For thou wast little then in years, though grown
Into a budding wealth of womanhood.
And we will ride and hawk upon the hills
And chase the swift red stag upon the moors
And—

Ysolde.
Nay, my love, but, Mark!

Tristram.
I fear not Mark.

Ysolde.
Nor I, in field; but Mark is treacherous
And full of wiles, face-friendly, unrelaxed,
Relentless, unforgetting.

Tristram.
He hath sworn.

50

Ysolde.
A thousand times, but when kept he an oath
Longer than he had need to save his skin
From present peril. Mark will not forgive.

Tristram.
But—

Ysolde.
But what?

Tristram.
But Mark will not forget,
And Launcelot hath sworn upon his head
To visit treason done in my despite
On Mark's own head, though heaven and earth shall fall.

51

CORNISH SONNETS.

CORNWALL.

Cornwall, thou rivallest the border-land
In the romance, which thrills the poet's heart:
Indeed a border-land thyself thou art,
Where British Douglases did stoutly stand
'Gainst Saxon Percies—wouldest have as grand
A roll of ballad-heroes on thy part
If only the true tale of what thou wert
Had not been blurred with Time's obscuring hand
In the long centuries, like the granite stone
On tombs in thine old churchyards. Lyonnesse,
Tintagel, maybe Camelot, are thine own:
And on thine uplands lingered the impress
Of pixy, giant, exorcist so long
That still they leaven cottage tale and song.
52

II.

Nor hast thou only legend and romance:
For does not dusty board, in wayside fane,
Oft to the antiquary's search make plain
How stoutly Cornish halberds did advance
King Charles's cause? And where could artist glance
On boulders like Treen's Castle-of-the-Dane,
Or mightier billows rolling from the main
Than those which hurl their winter puissance
Against Tintagel and the Land's-end cliffs,
While from the dim recesses of thine heart
The stream of wealth has risen, since the skiffs
Of the Phœnicians took that to the mart
Which gave those islands of the northern seas
Their ancient name of Cassiterides.
53

SONNETS OF THE CORNISH MOORS.

ON THE CORNISH MOORS.

He, whom the Muse beguiles, doth seldom note
The flight of time or covering of space,
But rambles on with absent-minded face,
Oft with light tread, though blistered be his foot
His body weary and his goal remote;
The mind's impatience wearies more than pace;
And he who feeds or lulls his mind, can brace
A weary frame to task too heavy put.
I had been climbing all a summer day:
Over rough Cornish moors had been my roam:
Jaded and footsore was I, far from home,
And thrice as far it seemed to lie away,
When suddenly the Muse spoke, and I sped
As lightly home as though enchantment-led.
54

II.

The Cornish moors! what visions raise they not
Of fairies, pixies, giants, knights, and kings?
For here the latest fairies danced their rings
And pixies lurked in every lonely spot
To lure the traveller: and giants wrote
Their history in stones whose vastness sings,
As never minstrel might who harped on strings,
The giants' mighty lives. Here Tristram smote
In his first fight, and Arthur in his last
Beside the slaughterous bridge of Camelford
After the power of his knights had passed,
And here the loyal Cornishmen have poured
Times out of mind their blood in any cause
Which seemed to simple folk for Nature's laws.
55

CASTLE CHUN.

I.

A mighty ring of granite stones, unhewn,
Like beaches raised by the Atlantic tide
On Cornish coasts, a brambled moat outside,
And, bounding that, a giant's wall—half strewn,
Half indestructible—are Castle Chûn.
Within it is one carpet, fairy-dyed,
Of heather-crimson and gorse-gold allied,
Fern-fringed with green. Late on an afternoon
We scaled the castle-hill: the sun had gone,
But on the ruins of long-vanished pride
The haze of the departed godhead shone,
So lately 'neath horizon did he glide.
Was it not meet? His rays would have revealed
The ravages his haze did fondly shield.
56

II.

Glorious it were to spend a summer night,—
A sweet soft night in June,—within these walls,
Listening to distant owl and curlew calls,
And conjuring up a vision of the fight,
Which strewed the moor, a cloth-yard arrow's flight,
With barrow, cist, and cromlech. What appals
The ignorant and timid only thralls
The lover of the mystic with delight.
Giant or fay were no unwelcome guest,
Or ghost of Norseman, or Round-Table knight
Still of the phantom Sangreal in quest.
If such there came, might not there come a sight
Of the huge castle in its ancient pride,—
High-walled, deep-moated, and with kings inside?
57

III.

It weighs but little in the poet's mind
By whom 'twas reared—the dark Euskarian
(Who named us “Britons,” our primæval man,)
Against the Celt, or by the Celt designed
To stay the Teuton conqueror and find
Brief respite from the Viking. If blood ran
In great old battles, if for long months' span
'Twas resolutely held, when hope had pined,
And food had wasted, it is haunted ground;
Even if a bandit, preying on his kind,
In these stupendous stones a fastness found.
It matters not who stone to stone doth bind.
Castles we love as stages where great plays
By famous men were acted in old days.
58

RIALOBRAN, THE SON OF CUNOVAL.

Rialobran, the Son of Cunoval,
This is inscribed in Latin on a stone,
Rough hewn and rudely lettered, standing lone
Beneath Carn Galva. Was he general
Or hero? Did he valiantly fall
Fighting the Saxon? Did wild women moan
Over a bulwark of the people gone?
Why shared he not the common fate of all,
Who lived and died and were forgotten here,
That his one stone the moors of Penwith hold,
Gay-gardened at the season of the year
With bramble-fruit, heath-purple, and gorse-gold,
And with two castles of his ancient race
Guarding in ruined pride his burial place.
59

SONNETS OF MOUNTS BAY.

PENZANCE.

Penzance, I gazed upon you many a time
Across the bay: now tropically blue,
Now white with wrath and threatening to strew
Ship and sea-wall in common wreck sublime.
I gazed upon you when the morning prime
Gilt tower and dome, and when the summer threw
A veil of mist and splendour over you
As seven of the even rang its chime.
In pensive mood I gazed upon your lights
Guiding the pilchard-fisher through the gloom,
When I threw up the window of my room
For the cool breeze on fine September nights,
And hope for many a pleasant ramble still
Through your quaint streets or up Lescudjack's hill.
60

MOUNT'S BAY.

SEPTEMBER 6th, 1884.
The storm had passed, the breakers died away,
The setting sun, a crown of glory, pressed
On ocean's sinking head, while from the west
A fresh wind blew, no longer fierce but gay.
One ray illumed St Michael's Mount, one ray
The Land's last range, and one the meadowy nest
Beneath the leas of Ludgvan, and the rest
The foaming locks of ocean tossed and grey.
I called the legend to my mind, which told
That round the Mount for miles a forest grew,
Where sands have blown, meads bloomed, and waters rolled,
For centuries; and could not deem it true,
Had not the workmen, digging in the ground
Two fathoms deep, the ancient forest found.
61

MARAZION.

SEPTEMBER 14TH, 1884.
The day was warm, as many an Austral day,
And all day the September sun had rained
On sand and old seawall rough-weather-stained
And on the tide-filled waters of the bay
So pitilessly that the idler lay
In each chance shadow, or if he had gained
The friendly shelter of a house, remained
Until the storm of heat had passed away.
Yet, ere the sun waned, when the tide ran down
And I the causeway to the Mount had crossed
In search of cool, the East wind blew so cold
That I remembered winter days I'd known
In New South Wales with scorch at noon but frost
At eve, like strong men suddenly grown old.
62

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT.

SEPTEMBER 25TH, 1884.
St Michael's Mount! four weeks did I abide
Beneath its shadow; yet I entered not
Its castle though I haunted the wild spot
Moated with ocean every flush of tide.
Oft was I tempted sore to pass inside;
It seemed so heedless, when it was one's lot
To be so near, to miss it, and I wot
That I enjoy the oft-derided pride
Of seeing all the wonders of the earth,
As wonders, though 'twere but a fleeting glance.
Yet what was vain inquisitiveness worth
When put into the scales with the romance,
Which I could weave about each ancient wall,
Which distance held me in enchantment's thrall?
63

II.

While I was shielded from the common round
And commonplace of modern social life,
Piano, Paris-dress and paperknife,
Afternoon tea and tennis, I was crowned
An ancient king, could tread enchanted ground
With fairy queens, and couch a lance in strife
With mailed knights-errant. Might not Tristram's wife—
Did he not dwell in Lyonnesse's bound?—
Be in you tower, or else the Cornish Queen
For whom he died. And if I heard a fount
Of music from the church, it must have been
The Norman Fathers from the elder mount.
Was the hall lit? The valiant cavalier
Offered the ruined Stuart-Queen high cheer.
64

III.

With dreams and visions of Arturian knight
And monk from Mont St Michel d'Outremer
Migrated to the Guarded Mount, the air
Which floated round the castle rock was bright.
Once more the Norman scorning terms and flight
Opened his resolute veins, and stout De Vere
Extorted his free pardon. Then a pair
Of strangely mated lovers met my sight,
Scotland's white rose, child of an honoured name,
And he, who born of Flemish chapman, yet
So like to England's royal Edward came
That Edward's sister had the will to set
The ancient crown of England on his head,
And Scotland gave her choicest flower to wed.
65

IV.

We know but little of this fair mock-queen
Left in the castle, while her mock-king went
To lead the angered Cornish into Kent
And rouse the riversiders, who had been
Foremost, whenever force did intervene
'Twixt wrong and weakness. When, with marching spent,
His troops were routed, thou wast ta'en and sent
To the crowned King. What was it in thy mien
That melted that stern heart? how didst thou weep
And blush thy shame, that he who spared so few
Should pardon thee and bid his White Rose keep
This Scottish Rose beside her? Thou hast shared
The fate of many a flow'r of olden time,
Whose tale has passed from history to rhyme.
66

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT, CORNWALL, AT SUNSET.

I.

After a burning day, when even came,
I climbed a cliff which looked across the bay,
And glanced to where St Michael's Mountain lay
Dissevered by a mirrored shaft of flame,—
As ruddy as a maiden's blush of shame,—
And a flood-tide with evening shadows grey
From Marazion. There I mused away
On Tristram's early praise and later blame,
And how upon this very rock once stood
The gleaming castle called through Lyonesse
In Tristram's day, “The White Tower in the wood,”
While forest, meadow, towns and palaces
Were bowered from here to Scilly's utmost bound,
Where long the ocean hath usurped the ground.
67

II.

I gazed upon the castle of to-day,
At first behind a halo amber-dyed,
Which half-concealed it and half fairified
Until no mortal pencil could convey
The glory of the picture—fit for fay
Or Knight of old romance. I turned aside,
Forgetful that a vision might not bide,
And, when I looked again, the pageant gay
Had vanished and a sorcerer's fastness rose
Black from the precipice,—no aperture
For door or window,—such as Doré shows
With his grim brush, till the sun grew obscure.
And every point of tower and crag did leave
In bold relief with the clear light of eve.
68

III.

The bay around was placid as a lake,
And locked with land on every side save one;
The pilchard boats had, with the setting sun,
Launched out their nightly task to undertake;
Some few small feathered songsters were awake,
Their evensong of thanksgiving scarce done;
And to their pastures with their udders run
The cows slow way were wending through the brake.
Bathed in warm sunset, sate we there until
The first bleak breeze of even warned us home,
Fain on the fairy scene to linger still
But fearful to be caught, while we might roam,
By the cold outstretched fingers of the night
Stripping its iris-vesture from the sight.
69

ST MICHAEL'S MOUNT BY MOONLIGHT.

At Marazion, I remember well
How that I stood half a September night,
To feast my eyes on the enchanted sight
Exceeding all the poet's art to tell,
St Michael's Mountain with its citadel
Against the moonlit sky outstanding bright,
And long dark headlands stretching left and right
Around the placid bay, that rose and fell,
With soft melodious, incessant sough,
And gently heaving far off lights, which marked
Fishers. I mused how here the Tyrian
Ages ago adventured and embarked
Tin from this haven, when the Aryan man
Had not emerged from Aryan highlands rough.
70

TO A YOUNG AUSTRALIAN LADY E. M. S.

Lady, I met thee on the Austral shore,
Fresh from the very threshold of the grave,
And pale as if thou never wouldest have
Health's purple hue and springing footstep more.
A few months passed, and on a ball-room floor
Thou glidedst fair and graceful, though too brave.
I saw thee then on that side of the wave
No further. Now upon a Cornish moor
Thou standest sunburnt, lithe, and strong of limb
As a young Dian, making the wild heath
And fallen cromlechs echo with health's hymn
Of laughter. Futures who foreshadoweth?
How could I dream four years ago of thee
Robust, and on these far off hills with me?
71

SONNETS OF THE LAND'S END.

THE LAND'S END.

I.

The Land's End is it? with calm beryl sea
Stretching before me for a score of miles
To the low, distant, broken rim of isles?
The Land's End pictured in my reverie
Had been a wall of granite on the lee
Of waves, that mimicked mountains and defiles,
And flung themselves upon the giant piles
Of boulders, swooping irresistibly,
Like eagles driving through a wild swan's back
Their greedy talons deep. Was Lyonnesse
Submerged beneath this sleeping, gleaming track?
Here was it one alone escaped the stress
Of wind and wave, when o'er Sir Tristram's realm
The angry ocean rushed to overwhelm?
72

II.

But stay! Where'er an islet rock appears,
Where the “Armed Knight” stands sentry o'er the strait,
And fabled “Irish lady” met her fate,
Where the “Long Ships” their warning light uprear,
And the dark “Brisons” rise, cliff-castled sheer,
A prison for a giant, springs a spate
Of frosted, seething foam beneath the weight
Of every pounding wave. It leaps up clear,
(Like a white ostrich feather shot in air,
Or like a sunny fountain in the court
Of palace old) falls, ripples everywhere
Hissing, then drains straight back with respite short,
Islanding each projecting jag of rock,
To break or merge in the next billow's shock.
73

SENNEN—THE VILLAGE UPON THE LAND'S END.

I.

Sennen, mere hamlet—with a tiny fane,
A tavern and farmhouses, what is here
That pilgrims thread in hundreds year by year
Through the long village past the Table-maen
And roadside-cross? it is that they would gain
The end of England's land, and gaze down sheer
From her last cliffs on billows running clear,
Without a barrier, from the Spanish Main.
Majestic is the sight, which strikes the eye,
Whether the sea is calm—of that rare hue
Greener than sapphire, more than beryl blue,
Which gleams in Cornish coves—or threats the sky
With waves that o'er the cliff tops leap on high
And rend the rocks, and sand with wreckage strew.
74

II.

Nor is the little cove next Whitesand bay,
With shelving slide of granite carried down
Below low-water from the Fishers' Town,
Without its history. For in his day
After the crowning slaughter at Boleit,
King Athelstan, to wear his English crown
E'en to the utmost isles, from hence was blown
By cruel east winds to the lands which lay
A few leagues off, a bulwark from the west.
Here later Stephen landed for a throne,
And coming from his Irish wars King John;
And here, in her extremity, sore-pressed,
She who, of proudest Scottish birth possessed,
Linked the pretender's fortunes to her own.
75

III.

White Rose of Scotland, be thy slumber sweet,
Who, after thy roi-faineant was ta'en,
Taken thyself on Michael's Mount, didst gain
The favour of all eyes which thou didst meet,
Up to cold Henry on his judgment seat,
From whom with blushes and thine eyes' soft rain,
Thou, sole of all his captives, didst obtain
Life-mercy. Was thy girlhood so replete
With all which sweetens and illumines life,
That thou thy forfeit neck couldst lightly win
From these stern men not slow to slay their kin,
In the long years of internecine strife
That followed on the baring of the knife
Which finished the two Roses' council-din.
76

VELLANDREATH—WHITESAND BAY.

By Whitesand Bay report beholds at night
The spirits of the folk who have been drowned
In what was ancient Lyonnesse's bound,
And fisher-folk still shrink in strange affright
From treading on its shores before the light
Or after dusk. Why this is haunted ground
We know not if 'tis not that here are found,
The corpses which have foundered in the bight,
After the storm blows over. Once we know
The cruel Spaniard beached upon these sands,
Ready to lay his torch or violent hands
On all he met: but that was long ago,
And burn the mill was all that he might do
Which named the place, but now no longer stands.
77

SONNETS OF THE LIZARD.

TO THE LIZARD.

I.

We drove betimes from Marazion town,
Skirted Breage church, and, threading Helston streets,
First sighted, where the tilth the moorland meets,
The Cornish heather roving on the down,
With full pale bells eyelashed with dainty brown.
No heather such as this the sportsman greets
As up and down his moor for grouse he beats
In Yorkshire or the Highlands. Cornwall's own
It will not leave the sanguine serpentine
And soil magnesian, but in this far place
It blossoms and the marble gleams divine.
'Tis like a dream some poet's pen might trace
To have this strange fair stone and flower pressed
In one wild corner of the scarce-known west.
78

II.

We lighted down and roamed across the moor,
'Twixt stunted plants of heather and sea-pink,
Until we found ourselves upon the brink
Of Kynance—Kynance with its sandy floor
And “Cow-rock” like a marble Kohinoor
Blood-hued, upstanding. When the sea did shrink
The “Bellows” brayed with every rise and sink
Of waves that round the island-base did roar,
Even in the calm of a still summer day.
In spacious caverns neath the cliff we walked
With shimmering green and white and crimson gay
For salon fit or banquet-hall, then stalked
Along a dizzy path upon the isle,
To gaze into the Devil's mouth a while.
79

III.

We left the isle and clomb the hill once more,
Toward the Lizard, to the great twin lights
Seen by the mariner on stormy nights
To warn him of the perils of the shore,
The “Lions' Den” where when the Lions roar
No ship that sails could live,—so fiercely fights
The lion breaker, from the rocky heights
Flung on succeeding lions. Thence we bore
To where the terrace looks upon the cove
Of fishy Cadgwith, picked our dubious way
To where we might gaze downward from above
Into the “Devil's Frying-pan” and day
Being far spent, our way then wended back
To Lizard-town to take the homeward track.
80

SONNETS OF ARTURIAN CORNWALL.

TINTAGEL.

AUGUST 1884.
Tintagel, huge rock-royal, glad was I
That only here and there a crumbling wall,
Hard to distinguish from the natural,
Still stood upon thy summit. Worthily
Could feudal palace-keep scarce occupy
Such site; and how would newer buildings pall
Where every rood was stamped historical,
Or fancy-tinged, or steeped in legendry?
Dismantled, one can picture on the isle
A shadowy Arthur washed up from the bay,
And rear upon its front a stately pile
Of marble as kings reared them in the day,
Ere time had taught the Briton to neglect
The lesson of the Roman Architect.
81

II.

Arthur and Ysolde, Uther and Ygraine,
Tristram and Mark!—on moon-enchanted nights
At murk mid-dark, or when the island's heights
Peer dimly through a veil of spray and rain
Driven by the western gales—ye live again.
What wilder than this huge rock, ringed with bights
Precipice-walled and reefy, for the fights
Of Uther and the Cornish Duke, both fain
For Arthur's mother? Not in fairy-land
Have they in summer stillness such a cove
With ferny caverns nooked and soft with sand
To take a stranded babe. And hate and love,—
Queen Ysolde's love for Tristram, and Mark's hate—
Thy smooth brow and dark chasms illustrate.
82

III.

I saw thee first late on a summer eve,
Too dusky to distinguish the low block
Of wall fast mingling with the native rock,
So dusky that I could not well perceive
The vast ravine the elements did leave,
When the great drawbridge fell, before the shock
Of giant storms or those strong dwarfs who mock
Adamant—mists which melt and frosts which cleave.
Only the mount loomed black against the sky
And at my feet slow heavy breakers roared,
The while I trampled, musing wistfully,
The stunted gorse and sea-pinks of the sward
Upon the windy height, whereon still stands
The church first founded there by Saxon hands.
83

IV.

Next morn I clomb the mount to seek the well
And all but vanished earthworks. Those were there
When Uther's savage war-cry rent the air;
Those and the mount itself alone could tell,
Had they but tongues, where such a hero fell,
And such a gallant prince won such a fair,
And how Queen Ysolde of the raven hair
Held the stout knight, Sir Tristram, in her spell.
The month was August and the morn was grand
With all that makes an August morning dear
To rain-vexed England; light the west wind chased
The ripples on the bay; the sky was clear,
The sun shone bright, the air was warm and dry:
And Nature held the keep of days gone by.
84

[Not Camelot the towered—the goodly town]

I.CAMELFORD—CAMELOT

Not Camelot the towered—the goodly town
Upon the shining river, whither passed
The Lady of Shalott, when fallen at last
A victim to her spell, slow-wafted down!
Not Camelot the towered, the glittering crown
Of all King Arthur's cities! Yet thou hast
Thy legend of the King—how Modred massed
His traitor legions, where the waters brown
Run neath the Bridge of Slaughter, how the King,
With Launcelot dishonoured, Tristram slain
And half of his Round-table following
Dead or apostate—triumphed; then was ta'en,
Stricken to edath, by bold Sir Bedivere
To Dozmary and passed upon the mere.
85

II.CAMELFORD—SLAUGHTER BRIDGE.

In the soft prelude of an August night
We sallied forth from Camelford in quest
Of where his last great battle in the west
Brought death to Arthur. Grey the gloaming light
Ere we were in the valley of the fight,
A spot by Nature framed for fierce contest,
With ridge commanding ridge, and crest on crest,
On either side a little river, bright
With waving sedge and darting trout. The bridge
Was wreathed with blackhaired spleenwort and wild flowers,
And the rank grass beneath the lowest ridge
Guarded a stone, in characters not ours,
Claimed by the country-folk with wondering eyes
To tell that Arthur underneath it lies.
86

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS WRITTEN IN CORNWALL.

SIR HUMPHREY DAVY'S SEAT, GULVAL CARN.

Mousehole, Penzance, St Michael's at my feet,
Severed by stretch of hill and rock and sand,
But linked together with a gleaming band
Of glassy waves. This was Sir Humphrey's seat,
Which in bright youth he sought, for converse sweet,
As youthful genius will in every land,
With the shy Muse of Poesy, and scanned
The bay below and moors above replete
With Beauty's grace and Freedom's.
Few had thought,
Unless they read the story of his youth,
That first his lamp the sage to Fancy brought
And Wisdom afterward. But love of truth,
Like love of fame, imagination needs
To nerve it and inspire it to great deeds.
87

TO E. M. S. AFTER A TOUR IN CORNWALL.

In solitary Zennor have we been,—
Have trod Chun's mighty castle-heap of stones,
And traced the barrows, where they laid men's bones
After some old-world battle waged between
The natives and invaders—gazed at Treen
Rock-ramparted with boulder-bastions,
As if a king of giants had lived there once
And forced his folk to build—we two have seen
The Atlantic charge unbridled on the wall
Of rock which shields the end of English land,
Have had a calm blue sea on either hand
At Galva's Carn, and watched the sunset fall
And moonlight play and dawn its glitter fount
Over the castle on the Guarded Mount.
 

St Michael's Mount.

88

MARGUERITES.

Lady in the Daisy's vesture,
Dazzling white relieved with gold,
Free from all affected gesture
As the flower, not too bold,
Though thou fearest nought, thou art
Truly the flower's counterpart.
For although in form and features
There are few of womankind
Fair as thou, of all God's creatures
Thou art humblest in thy mind;
Yet thou fearest not to stand
By the proudest in the land.
89

Just as, though in all creation
Flower perfecter is not,
It is with its simple station,
In a quiet garden-plot,
As content as though it were
In a palace sojourner.
Yet if on a queenly bosom
In a chaplet it is laid
With the rose and lily-blossom,
Though their worship first be paid,
Afterwards it is confessed
Lovely, if not loveliest.
Thou art upright as the flower,
Art as purely raimented,
And thou hast a golden-dower,
As it has, upon thy head,
And, like it, dost dread no stain
From the sun or wind or rain.
90

Farewell Daisies, flower-like maiden,
And thou, flower-Marguerite!
May you be with dawn-dew laden
Through the day to keep you sweet,
And no dust or heat of noon
Sully you or make you swoon!
91

BEHIND THE SCENES.

Sometimes it is man's privilege
To have a lovely woman, either sister,
Or, being wed himself, a friend
Who seeks his aid and counsel, if he list her,
And lays her mind before his eye,
Confesses herself simple and a mortal,
While those who are her worshippers
Regard her mouth as a Sybilline portal,
From which proceeds the voice of fate,
And look on her as a remorseless power,
That worship by caprice accepts
And tramples on her subjects in her hour.
92

While she, poor girl, is half appalled
By the immense importance thus accruing
To every little word or act
She has been saying carelessly or doing.
Her guide or brother sees it all,
How that she cannot venture to be simple,
However she desires to be,
When destiny is looked for in a dimple,
Doubt in delays and fate in frowns,
And love in happy peals of girlish laughter,
When aught she does or utters bears
She knows not what significance thereafter.
He, happy man, behind the scenes,
Seeing how hard she strives to do her duty
And so to act that what she does
May not deceive, must trebly see her beauty.
93

He knows, besides her outward charms,
That, far from being a remorseless power,
She is the fool of fate herself
And longing for the coming of the hour
When love will let her honestly
Her mind and heart implicitly surrender,
And let her give full liberty
To aspirations and emotions tender.
There is not aught more beautiful
Than watching a fair maid, who feels that beauty
Has won her love she would avoid,
But yet strives tenderly to do her duty.
94

THE CISTERCIANS.

“Behold, bless ye the Lord, all ye servants of the Lord,”
Said the hoary-headed prior to the fair-haired chorister,
And rose the child's pure treble as his little heart out-poured
At matins and at even-song his praise in accents clear.
“Oh, ye that stand by night in the presence of the Lord,”
The hoary-headed prior's hand its task had finished now,
Was echoed to the chorister become a monk, who poured
His praise in dulcet tenor as he took the sacred vow.
95

O ye that in his courts do the service of our God,
“In the sanctuary lift your hands and bless his holy name,”
Sang the brother night and morning, as his holy path he trod,
Unceasing in his song of praise, and prior he became.
Bless ye, and may “the Lord that the earth and heaven made
Give you blessing out of Zion,” in his accents shrill and thin
The chorister, long prior now and hoary-headed, said
To another sweet boy chorister but lately entered in.
To the fair Cistercian abbey by the stately river side
For many generations had the sweet-voiced boys been brought,
And first as choristers, then monks, had gently lived and died
In the perfect peace of God, since then elsewhere so vainly sought.
96

Their life was in their abbey locked, the stirring world beyond
With its passions for fair women and its furious clash of steel,
With its riot in high places and its curse and blow and bond
For poor folk trampled down beneath oppression's iron heel,
Was dead to them: 'twas not for hire or fame that all day long
They wrought and laid the stones so well which made their fabric rise
So glorious a temple for their morn and even-song,
With tower and spire and pinnacle all pointing to the skies.
Their abbeys were not built; they grew beneath the brothers' hand
Till stones would bear no further touch they touched no other block,
Like coral insects slow they worked, and like a coral strand
Their work was perfect in its parts and solid as the rock.
97

Twas not an age of architects who struggled to create
But one of building bees who worked harmonious for a whole
With one idea running through so obvious and great
That master's eyes were needed not to guide them to their goal.
The secret of the olden times which made the work they wrought
Like Nature's master-pieces stand the test of time and change,
Was that not fame or pay for work but perfect work they sought,
And knew perfection was a growth and not a product strange.—
Those frescoes with their humanness were Brother Clement's life;
John to that missal's glowing page two scores of winters gave;
That statue had for Brother Paul the graces of a wife;
Two centuries of brothers wrought before they roofed the nave.
98

How shall we rear a work of art in our degenerate day,
A day when very plants are forced their products to forestall,
A day when seasonable growth is looked on as delay,
When architects scarce care for art and reckon labour all.
Just here and there an artist toils in the old-fashioned style,
Throwing his life into his task and throwing it in vain,
Only by merest chance his work will win the public smile,
And with it may be future fame through little present gain.
'Tis not that in these latter times the sum of art is less;
We may not have the patient art to build a Gothic fane;
But art is growing where was once a howling wilderness,
And even artizans can now its humbler flowers attain.
99

And poets make this overflow of art their joyous text,
Although they mourn the mighty men, the simple antique folk,
Who laid each stone and limned each page, as if there were no next,
And sowed their acorn quite content that it would be an oak.
100

THE HARVEST.

I.

He scattered his seed in due season,
But cruel the early frost;
The rain and the sun were against him;
He dreamed that his crop was lost.
But later it waxed and it whitened,
And harvesters gathered it in,
And some of it went to the windmill,
And some of it bode in the bin.
And, after, they feasted and rested,
The goodman along with his men,
For they knew that their work was over
Till ploughing came round again.
101

II.

Was his brain-seed scattered in season
Or early? He long must doubt,
While censure with winter threatened,
And after-neglect with drought.
But his brain-crop grew and it ripened,
And the reapers, who seek good grain,
Had gathered the harvest exulting,
And then he had sown again.
For little of feasting and resting
Do the sowers of brain-seed know,
Till ploughing and sowing are over
And they go whither all men go.
And when he is resting for ever
His friends will they weep or rejoice,
Beholding the fruits of the sowing
But missing the musical voice?
102

SYLVIA.

Sylvia are you, gentle Lady?
Rightly Sylvia, recalling
Sunlight through the foliage shady,
Cleft by morning breezes, falling.
Sylvia are you? Woodland flowers
Are as delicate as moon-light,
With no brightness and no powers
Like the heather and the noon-light.
But the noon-light and the heather,
Spite of all their strength and splendour,
Cannot match, the two together,
With the Wind-flow'r's beauty tender.
103

“CORN AND ACORN,”

A PARABLE OF POETRY AND PELF.

Who soweth wheat, may see it whiten,
When summer comes again,
And his and other homes may brighten
Thus soon with goodly grain.
The ear has come, is ground, is finished,
And he must sow again,
And work with labour undiminished
To show one sack of grain.
But he who plants an acorn, planteth,
What he may never see
A full-grown oak, but, if God granteth,
Will one day be a tree
104

To shade not only those descended
From him who sowed the tree,
But fill with shape and verdure splendid
The gaze of all who see.
What wilt thou?—sow the grain, which whitens
In some few months and days,
To earn the ready pay which brightens
Life in so many ways?
Or sow the nut, which he who planteth
May never see an oak,
But which will grow, if God so granteth
A shelter to all folk,
A gladness to his kin and neighbours,
A glory to his land,
Proof when he long has done his labours
Of what his head and hand
105

Did for the spot where he was nourished
Whole centuries before,
Though weaker men than he was flourished,
While they were living, more?
What wilt thou?—sow with seed and gather
The harvest of the day,
Or sow with nuts of promise rather
Which may endure for aye?
106

THE LEGEND OF THE LILY AND THE ROSE.

SUGGESTED BY A PARAGRAPH OF THE LATE REV. R. S. HAWKER.

Do you know the old tradition
Which would look on every Rose,
With its thorny crown as emblem
Of the Christ who bore our woes,
Whatsoever be its colour,
Whatsoever shape it grows?
And the Lilies of the valley,
And the Lilies of the lake,
And the Lilies of the garden,
Or whatever form they take,
As the emblems of the Mother
Who bore travail for his sake?
107

You may talk of Tudor Roses,
And of France's Fleur-de-lys,
Or the Lotus of old Egypt,
But these flow'rs will ever be
Just the types of the sweet Saviour,
And his Mother mild to me.
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