University of Virginia Library

IN MY LIBRARY.

I dwell among my people, all my own,
And commune with them in a speech unknown
To others, woven of faiths and pleasant fears
And crimson kisses and the joy of tears,
With murmur as of wind that dies and drops
In passing music on the pine-tree tops
To play a moment as a harper might,
And surf of distant seas on lands of light
That wash white feet of maidens, and the sound
Of wings that follow what is never found;
Familiar to the wraiths that rise and flee
At morning, and to butterfly and bee
Like splashes of bright colours on the flowers,
And whispered by the yellow-lichened towers
That seem to prop (as centuries go by)
The heavens and rooted in Eternity;
Talked by the ripples of the running brooks
That laugh and weep, but not in science books
Though read betwixt the lines, and heard at night
By poet ears when song melts into sight.
The dear old volumes are to me most fair,
Some gallant knights and some with golden hair
And all my comrades, living and not dead
In silks or harness clanging as they tread.
The dust of ages goes, the stains are stars
Of beauty, and the walls no longer bars
Burst into space and blossom through all Time
And mingle every stage and every clime.
They come to me at eve from haunted shade
With lisp of satin or in crisp brocade
Of costly stuffs, and rustle as they go
Their stately circuits, through the gloom and glow
Of dusk and firelight; tall untroubled Queens
Majestic step from depths of silver screens,
And move to slow and secret melody;
Then visored forms tramp from the tapestry
In armoured death, and splendid with their spears,
Red from the glory of undying years.
I hear the clash of conflict far away,
As if all buried hosts made holiday
Of battle, upon sad and sullen moors,
And struggle foot to foot; till dreadful doors
Of dungeons, black and bottomless, shut in
The hurly-burly and the hell and sin.
Then pretty Baby Innocents, with eyes
Of wonderment that open as the skies
Poems of blue, run as from radiant bowers
And sport and flutter off in light and flowers,
But leave the perfume of their presence. Next
A prophet broad and grim, with blood as text,
The stormy petrel of his age, leans out
With testifying hands and hurls a shout
Of wrath and thunder down the tide of time
And disappears in blood, sole and sublime.
Here forth from ancient chivalry's gray tome
Troop revellers, and crowd the castled home
With mirth and madness and the wealth of wine;
The torches flare, the brows of beauty shine
Pre-eminent, and yellow locks and brown
And sworded doublet and bepearlèd gown
Mix in the strife of joy. The jewelled wrist
And belted waist pass, in a sudden mist
Of morning. Figures too of fiction start
From populous deep shelves and walls of art,
More delicate than life, exceeding fair
With voice of laughing waters and proud hair
Of moonlit darkness in which day and night
Perfected meet and for the victory fight
In vain. Old realms of magic and romance
Give up each scene and solemn circumstance
Of riot and of rapture yet to be,
Evolved in cunning pageantries for me
Alone; the pictured face in pomp and flame
And shadow leaves the shelter of its frame
Wrought curiously and well, and paces bright
And conquering yet in music from the sight,
But casting back shy Parthian shafts of love,
A rose of red, the glimmer of a glove
For tournament. The statue from its niche
Steps down, and robed with many memories rich
Discourses of the dead heroic times
That are not dead and wake a thousand chimes
Of slumbering grandeurs, crown and judgment rod,
When men were nearer Heaven and walked with God.
The bust of Shakspeare moves, the mighty brow
Descends again to earth and to the vow
Of homage uttered by my heart, and sends
Deep rolling music to the utmost ends
Of thought and passion, words that breathe and burn
Whereon the axles of all Nature turn.
And not unequal from his carven rest
Consenting too, most beautiful and blest
Milton with step magnificent and strong
Outpours his heart in one great sea of song,
And bids the darkness bloom in elder skies
Of heathen faiths and hoar cosmogonies.
Till as I gaze and dream the books depart
And in their stead unnumbered forms upstart,
Civilisations dead, and dying some,
And whiter graces of the worlds to come