A Child of the People :: :: University of Virginia Library

A Child of the People

And Other Poems. By James Chapman Woods

Woods, James Chapman

[section]

[O perfect Poet-choir whose voices ring]

A CHILD OF THE PEOPLE.

A SPRAY OF SONGS.

SOUL SONGS.

SONNETS.

Collapse All | Expand All expand section

[O perfect Poet-choir whose voices ring]

O perfect Poet-choir whose voices ring
Like gathering trumpets as the ages go,
Each in its part, or resonant or low,—
Flute-throated one as any bird in Spring,
One full-toned as the surges' thundering,
One compassing all chords in even flow,—
So sweet, so full, your stately measures grow,
Men care no more to hear their fellows sing.

Vex not your endless strain with scorn of me,
That, in years shadowed with your fame, I play
With words your breath to songs immortal drew,
Since ye be mighty lords of melody,—
I, a poor harp whereon the winds essay
Soon-dying numbers, may-be learned from you.

A CHILD OF THE PEOPLE.

I.

Let me look at you, child!
How you have grown of late!—
Slim as a reed and as straight,
With just a touch of the wild
Street-tiger I caught and tamed,
In the tiptoe tenseness of limb,
And will perverse for a whim;—
Don't cry; you're not to be blamed.

Whatever the world may say
Of my creed, half scorn, half pride,
Say nothing; stand by my side,
And let the world have its way.
You cannot afford to laugh,
For that creed, in a crack-brained whirl,
Took you out of the gutter, girl:—
Would the world have done it, or half?

Good, am I? Don't thank me, though:
'Twas a riddle I tried to read,
To let light in on my need,—
Just for a whim, you know,—
To see if love of a lie
And baseness of heart and brain
Were dismal dye of the grain,
Or mere skin-wash of the sty.

What matter of mine? Why, none,
Save this,—I had all to lose
Of comfort and holy dues
I had set my heart upon,
And a dwindling dream obscure
In spite of the wise world's scowl,—
Thought the People's tongues are foul,
Yet the People's heart is pure.

So I chose you out of the rest
In the slimy cesspool at play,
For a proud imperial way
That made you mate of the best,
And the gipsy brown of your skin,
And eyes aswim with the South,
And the curled-up rose of a mouth,
Too sweet for bought kisses of sin.

“Mad,”—said the world,—“to take
The brat of a bawd to nurse!”
Hinted, I heard, at worse,
Surmising some nearer stake
Than the crotchet born of a creed;—
My stake has grown in you since;
I would not price for a prince
My pearl,—thank God there's no need!

Now I have told you all,
With a purpose,—tell Sir John,
When he puts his passion on
With his gloves, next time he may call.
Blaze your birth in his face:
You shall be no man's debtor;
A drop in your veins is better
Than the blood of all his race!

II.

Have I done right to tell her?
I, with my poisoned pride,
Should go straight back to my cellar,
Or die with a knife in my side.
She, with her woman's weakness,
Will bend in the storm, at worst,—
Bear it with angel meekness:—
Thank God that I kissed her first!

III.

Why should my sweet go weeping
That she is lowly born?
God has the man in keeping,
The man's descent in scorn,
Nor where the soul is sleeping
Cares how the clothes are worn.

Beauty and grace and goodness
Like forest seeds fall wild,
Found 'mid the foul court's lewdness,
In loathliest lanes enisled:—
I had chosen you in your rudeness
Ere any lord's curlèd child.

Why weeps my sweet to borrow
From such her taintless life,—
You, kin to the world's to-morrow
Of grand victorious strife,
You, like to be, to my sorrow,
Sir John's bejewelled wife?

Sprung of no knightly bastard
Proud of a bull-like thew,
Whom his own thralls unmastered
With his own dog-whip slew,—
Your sires count no such dastard,—
Child of the People you!

Why should my sweet go sighing
Over her lowly birth?—
Nay, back her tears are buying
Her part in the People's dearth:
Her heart is heaving and crying
With the human heart of the earth.

IV.

Child, we will go for a week or two
All alone to my hill-nest high,
Where you may bathe hot brows in dew,
Breathe airs blown round the sky,
Mark through cloud-curtains of the blue
Which star is an angel's eye.

Here in the heart of the poisoned town
If we tarry, you will die;
The pavement bakes the shod foot brown
The water-cart seethes by,
And ere the dust has settled down,
The streets are drained and dry.

Full in the windows falls the sun,
Flames and flares in every pane;
We half expect the glass to run
And trickle down in rain;
The parks are scorched to dusty dun
Hand-blistering, rail and chain.

Sad with the weight of a woe unmeet,
All day long you sit and sigh,
Parched and pale in the furnace heat,
Hearing the People cry,
Plague-possessed, from the burning street
And stew and gutter and sty.

You can do nothing in this wild mood,
You can pray afar as nigh.
Poison in daily drink and food,
In all they breathe or buy,
Say, would God suffer it were He good?
Bear to be made a lie?

You would be nursing, who should be nursed.
Come a little week, and stain
Your cheeks red as the roses first,
Ere I give back again
The People's child at the People's worst
To the People's heart of pain.

V.

She may forget this fever-fit
In summer gardens flush with flower;
Shall she watch by the plague an hour?—
Ah, God, I groan to think of it!

VI.

My white-walled cottage twinkles in the woody heart of the hills;
Its crag-kept valley tinkles with tunes of tumbling rills;
The heaven's blue is bluer, and a sad life's years seem fewer,
And lost are heaven's cloud-wrinkles, and life outlives its ills.

Round lakelets heron-haunted bow wind-swept bulrushes;
The lilies' gold is flaunted by beds of watercress.
Aloft on brambly ledges soft leaves sigh to the sedges
Pan shrills his pipes undaunted in his last fastnesses.

Deep in a tangled thicket my happy garden grows;
Beyond an ivied wicket wind mazy walks of rose.
Hid fount and lawn and bower behind a hedge of flower;
No foot, for thorns that prick it, shall scale my gardenclose.

And here the ringdoves crooning 'mid million-nested trees,
The rustled ferns a-swooning about the Dryads' knees,
And bees that all day hover about the bells of clover,
Blend in one soft attuning of saddened hearts to ease.

Here, while the branches brighten with autumn-kindled blaze,
My love's eyes too shall lighten, her steps spring through the ways:
Pan, mightiest magician, will be her best physician;
His heart-whole gladness frighten her dreams of drearier days.

VII.

Hither has followed my girl
Sir John with whiskers a-curl,
Lips made for lisping and dinners;
A lazily wicked nonentity,
Confounding his own identity
With his latest Derby winner's.

Hence has gone from my sweet
Sir John, with his Chinese feet
Tripping in smooth paths shady,
Back to his hocussed horses,
And dinners of twenty courses;—
She would not leap at “My Lady”!

VIII.

“Why should we trifle here,” she said,
“Though to glad days the wild bee hums,
And babble of many a brooklet's head
Dropped down the far crag-channels comes,
While the dead half of the city waits
To hear, behind its churchyard gates,
How they a new day's plague has killed
Will groan that all the graves are filled?

“God gave the rich the poor in trust,
Yet every hour some silken chariot
Whirls up the country-side in dust
About a lolling, curled Iscariot,
Who, till by terror driven from town,
Afraid to let his windows down,
Breathed all day in a myrrh-mist dim;
And would you have us peers with him?”

I hear the People's cry of pain
O'er bird and bee and waterfall,
Who never thought to feel again
A sore heart till my funeral,
Nor lift the load of any one,
To curse me for the service done,
Or, like a fangless serpent, spit;
Go you! I will have none of it.

IX.

And yet,—and yet,—I half forget
The past, since you rode first my knee:
What if the People, fuller set
In the fair flame of charity,
Show whiter than I witnessed them!—
O child, the magic of your tears
And piteous mouth hath strength to stem
The gathering hate of wintry years!

X.

Back in the blinding brick-kiln, tainted
With plague-breath we shut out and in!
See, with the sudden breast-spot painted,
Drops down the harlot in her sin!
Long in one street the dead-carts linger;
Pale nuns flit past with crossing finger;
On drunken lips that hoot the hearses
Death's damning signet stays the curses.

Will God give help, give rest, have pity?
Let cease your Lenten fast and prayer.
He, for ten righteous, Sodom city
Had saved, who knew but one was there!
Why for such grace should Sodom praise Him
Who behind such safe promise stays Him?
And hath the stone of salt forgetting,—
The woman her slain friends regretting?

All day in churches the sweet Saviour
In mellow window-glory falls
On mattress-straw of priest and paviour,
And corpses stiff against the walls.

Purple and rose, on dead and dying,
The shadow of the Lord is lying;
Yet comes nor help nor intervention;
Christ looks not back in His ascension.

Across the beds that dozens die on
Roam gloss and glow, in rainbow channels!
What if this Lord the children cry on
Be risen but in window panels!
Lips gasping for a God once human
Gain greater pity of a woman:
Boom for Him, bells, high up the steeple:—
Go, sweet! I give you to the People!

XI.

Shall we say then, “God hath forgotten?”
Though bone be cankered and flesh grow rotten,—
Writhing flesh that the worm trails through,—
Though all the glory of flowerful graces
Turn ash-colour on comely faces,
Still God's priests cry, “Ye have half your due!”

Crying, “God in a throat of thunder
Held His brooding curses under
Years on years when no praise ye gave.
Now He hath spoken and will not hearken,
Though the steam of your worship darken
Your gleaming acres of mound and grave!”

Ye have said it, O priests, and therefore
What shall we give God praise or prayer for,
Who hears best when the least is said?
Give us a God that will hear our crying;
Give us a God that will help our dying;
What lot have we in a Lord of the dead?

Men, my brothers, since fair faiths fail you,
Turn at last to the hearts that hail you;
Measure a span-breadth with a span:
Let cease this clangour of tocsin-ringing;
The one spar safe for our human clinging
Is human love in the heart of a man!

XII.

Alas, what love in hearts turned purses,
Or coated close with rust of gold,—
Whose heeded prayers were others' curses,—
Whose Saviour still is bought and sold,
While broader aye the gold-heaps glisten?
This in your ears,—Pray God you listen!

O languid lords of odorous psalters
And stalls on Intercession day,
Loungers at crimson-litten altars
To hold a haunting thought at bay,
The price is more for those we bury
Than mourning bands and millinery!

Burn your crimped crape from hat and shoulder;
Throw once for all your broad-cloth by;
Bring once your loaves before they moulder,
Nor men's mouths with sour wine-dregs wry.
Spur dragging prayers with manful labour,
And let God be, and help your neighbour.

O world, we are damned with growing wealthy!
The cursèd caste of hands kept white,
And filtered blood, and sleek soul, stealthy
To do its sinning out of sight,
These are the things men's thousands pay for,
Not for the bread that thousands pray for.

Plague-startled from their lusts they scatter,
Blown cedar-cabined down the waves
To prate o' the pest, “No laughing matter!”
And grudge the poor their pauper graves.
Gleam, sword of God! What reck they of it,
Save as a sword that pares their profit!

I pray these men, housed worse than cattle,
These famished, scorned, forgotten poor,
Bridge not the breach with wreck of battle,
Nor swell their sobs with cannon roar;
That clink of gold and keys that lock it
Draw not red knives round every pocket!

XIII.

In narrow lanes, with odours reeking
Of late-flung garbage underfoot,
Where crazy window stalls are creaking
With a dead burglar's last night's loot,
And baby-thieves take shrouds for wages,
And draggled birds die in the cages,
We have found the fastness of our seeking,—
The rank bed where the plague hath root.

Horse-shoe or cross guards here a portal,—
Here bright blood on the lintel wet:
Death's hand defies the old faiths immortal,
And mocks each sick creed's marvel, set
To scare the foul pest from the dwelling.
Round the dim lanes, with hoarse bell knelling.
Sweeps the high Host 'mid white escortal,
Men deem hath might of healing yet.

Up stairs that rains and rats have rotted,
To fetid floors that rats have fled,
Where pest-sick mothers hug, besotted,
Corpses and children in one bed,

With love-anointed hands of healing,
And bread of life, my sweet goes stealing,
And smooths the wrung brows anguish-knotted,
And prays God's pity from the dead.

And I, a hound to bear her basket,—
No star hath nobler work, I know,—
Close eyes lest God behold the casket
That sheds such lustre here below,
And long to store Heaven's treasures in it;—
Groan lest He hear my lute-throat linnet
Praising Him alway, and should ask it
Of her to teach His angels so!

XIV.

As from a stricken court we reeled
Last midnight toward less plagueful air,
Like a lake stone-sphered far afield,
Round us strange terror orbed despair;
In heaven it seemed God's arm did wield
A swift-stretched sword and bare.

But ere the soul caught certain sight,
Burst doors, as from a hundred hells,
Unsheeted deaths, stark mad for fright,
With grim death-rattle drawn to yells,
And brazen-tongued, above the night
As madly stormed the bells.

More baleful blast of God than blew
In Egypt heaped the corpses high:
Men, women, whom no plague-spot slew,
Fell foaming on the flags to die,
Such time as that red sword trailed through
A God-span of the sky.

Near us one whispered, “Lo, the last!
Tender and stern is Nature's way:
This comet-curse foregathers fast
Them whom the plague had marked for prey.
Straight to the heart her knife speeds past;—
To save, she dares to slay.

“Home, till the worst work out the best;—
Still Death the fuller days leads on!”
He caught my sweet from off my breast,
Fainting, with “Follow!” and was gone.
Are all his horses dead o' the pest,
That this should be Sir John?

XV.

Your scorn, child, stung him from his sloth
Of drunken dreams, 'mid harlot's musk;—
Struck out the spark of a pure oath,
Shrivelling his true heart's leprous husk;
And lo with the desire, the time
To wash life white from soil and stain!
No Circe lures him to the slime
Who hath got his manhood back again.

XVI.

Now, penned in a poisoned alley,
The plague, like a hunted snake,
Spits venom still, till a sheer stroke kill;
Nor long shall the death-worm dally
With the hunters at last awake.

Now these two, working together,
Join hands 'mid their work begun;
And their eyes shine so, that I know, I know,
All years of mutable weather
Will find them working as one.

The shrewd birds spy on the lovers,
And scold when a step comes near;
No swallow flies, though the first leaf dies,
And strange fires flame in the covers
To lighten the waning year.

Last week the swallows were spreading
Wide wings for the lands of drouth:
Has a sly bird guessed, or my sweet confessed
That there'll be news of a wedding
To carry soon to the South?

This, making her such a woman,—
The blood in her veins that runs,
Which more and more he shall love her for,—
Shall leaven with love for the human
The high hearts of his sons.

And here is the height of honour,—
Result in a God's degree,—
That the world reveal through all years the seal
Of a perfect soul upon her
In the souls of her men to be.

XVIII.

I walked last eve through the twisted lanes;—
What a star-trail of my sweet shone there!
The people pressed to the doors to know
What of the lady that loved them so?
And the courts, for all their gutters and drains,
Grew sweet with many a silent prayer.

There were jail-birds, callous with years of crime,
Whose eyes grew soft as they prayed for me,—
Me who had scorned them worse than the worst,
Had not their angel saved me first.
They have hearts, these men, to be kings in time,
Did our hearts show what a king's should be.

“I read them,” one said sitting alone,
“Of a king's child, stolen by travelling men,
Who comes at last, grown mighty and wise,
To the dungeon where his father lies,
And lifts him back to his ancient throne;—
We call her the People's child since then!”

XVIII.

And I who had found hearts hollow,
Most glad that my old creeds gall,
Have I faith in the world to follow?
Have I hope of the years to fall?
Yea, if two hearts in every clime
Fight 'neath one battle-flag sublime,
I have heart of hope for all!

O pitiful men, my brothers,
This work, which the world so shuns,
Is ours, not God's or another's,—
All work of the world outruns!
Give these men homes and wives to lure;
Give these men motive to be pure;
Give knowledge to their sons.

God sent, do you say, this woman?
Yes, juggle and intertwine
Twin wills, Divine and human,
To blend on an undrawn line!
We are not puppets worked with strings;
But reason at the roots of things
Affirms my thought is mine.

When the rebel stars asunder
Rive their set ranks and fly,
He follows them with His thunder
All round the echoing sky;—
Hounds His blind storms on every path,
And, shrivelled with His distant wrath,
Before they pass, we die.

Chancetimes on the sky's swift spindle
A red sun tatters the shroud:
Anon, ere the rainpools dwindle,
A red bolt drops from a cloud.
I, with no heart for Godward prayer,
Voice the world's clarion of despair
With one long death-note loud,

To men who shall lurk no longer
In palace or prison van:—
To women, for pure hearts stronger,—
To women beneath the ban.
Be this the faith to bind the whole,—
Faith in the everlasting soul
Of love in men for Man!

A SPRAY OF SONGS.

PRELUDE.

One day last summer,—in a burning noon
When not an aspen stirred,
And life lay languid in a sultry swoon,
Nor twittered any bird,
But slept amid the cool green of the trees
Until an opening eye
Might see leaves nodding in an evening breeze
And day begin to die,—
My love and I a-wandering, came for shade
Into an orchard old,
Where on the long grass bolder sunbeams played
And flecked the green with gold.
And crumbling grim-grey walls frowned chastely chill
Around that dim retreat;
There came no stir of life to break the still,
No tread of noisy feet,
But fruitful, deep-roofed apple-trees shut in
The lilies' tender snows;—
It was the time when early fruits begin
To redden into rose;—

And as we lingered there, love-linked, she said,
“You are a poet, you!
Here as we sit, Love's wings above us spread,
Give me my promised due,—
Some quaint word-sculptures, rich with leaf and flower,
Rose-buds and murmuring bees;
And call them, mindful of this happy hour,
‘Under the Apple-trees!’”

So then I chose stray thoughts from out the throng
Snared in the hands of Time,
And moulded them ephemeral forms of song,
And tinsel crowns of rhyme.
Old songs, new name: that scarce-flown summer-tide,
Which seems such years ago,
Buried the name she gave them. Since she died
I have not called them so.

Then my love rose, and, blindfold, plucked a spray
Six leaves were clinging to.
She clapped her hands; “Six songs you sing to-day;
But hear my fancy through,—
These shall be sibyl's leaves, wherewith I wait
For you with songs to buy:—

The first shall be for Fame, the second, Fate;
The third for Courtesy;
Nor shrink from Failure that shall fairer be;
This,—hark, “the Past,” it saith;—
O sweet sad Past, dear leaf of Memory,—
What should come next but Death!

“These be your songs,—six leaflets on one stem,
And Love the stalk thereof;
Yours shall be Fame, Fate, Memory, all of them,
Save Death and half of Love!”

FAME.

Sigh not, sweet, that the fair days fail us;
Vex not love with a chance word fretful:
What though we, while the years avail us,
Win no name for the years forgetful,—
Though the world say its last of you
Ere the first of the roots creep nigh us,
What care we, so we live love through,
That the words of the world blow by us?

What gat greater these famous lovers,
Save more sorrow to mar their laughter?
Dearth and dole for a life Time covers,—
Scant amends,—with a scant song after.
Though we faint from the world like dew,—
Hill-side haze that the sunrise raises,—
Why should we, so we live love through,
Greatly dread to die with the daisies?

Can a breath of the flowers we lavish
Garland-wise on our graves blow through them?
Can our songs in the silence ravish
Souls that were life-long strangers to them?

Nay, thrice nay! to the dead their due,—
Silent sadness and swift forgetting;
Happy they to have lived love through:
Ours the solace whose suns are setting.

All we, dreaming of praise undying,
Learn in a mad moon how praise passes.
Heart, last week world-heard, who art sighing
Mute songs now to your graveyard grasses,
In the world there are songs more new;—
In the world there are things would fret you
Of the hundred who read you through,
Half mistake you and half forget you.

Us in turn too will death resistless
Shut from summer and stars and singing;
Fold and fetter the hands laid listless
On the bosoms o'er-cold for clinging.
Half, for love, I could hold it true,—
Though praise pass us and fame forgetteth,
What if love that has lived life through
Rise, a sun, when, a star, it setteth!

We, whatever the world say of us,
Have within us what scorns the earthy.
Shall not we, who have gods to love us,
Be of better than worms held worthy?

Ay or nay, but for naught we sue,
If love last till the glad day goeth:
Most content to have lived love through;
Fame or not, in the end who knoweth?

“Toil not for Fame, neither, for scorn of it,
Let slip the pregnant days;
But live beyond the sting of slanderous wit,
The steam of short-lived praise.”
So ran her comment; of the deathless love
No word her lips would tell,
But never lips with loveliest speech thereof
Filled silence half so well.

FATE.

High up above all cross and change,
And war of wind and storm of sea,
In sunless space where no gods range,
Or life is, dwell the sisters three.
High up above the highest star,—
Above all suns and moons of time,
Whose hush no murmur mounts to mar,
Whose height no tireless wing can climb,—
In a drear land, where light is lost
In wreaths and folds of ashen cloud,
And lurid flame of torches tossed
Flares blood-red through the leaden shroud,—
Where gaunt rocks gleam in depths of gloom
And mountain walls shut in the dark,
Blackened with many a misty plume,
Crowning the pine-trunks close and stark,
Sit three weird women, worn and grey,
With faces whiter than the dead;—
Hard eyes that seem the same alway,—
Cold eyes that never tears have shed;

And broad brows frozen in a frown,
And vexed with counsel grave and wise
Of love and death, desire and hate.
O cruel, sleepless lids, drop down;—
Drop down and hide them, lest our eyes
Freeze at the eyes of Fate!

My love lifts wondering eyes:—“What songs for June!
I should have laughed at Fate,—
A phantom whom some prank of the mad moon
Sent from her ivory gate
To frighten fools! We women grow the men,—
Must we grow poets too,
Or lose all lightning out of song? Say then
If a girl's songs ring true!”

THE LADY'S LEAF.

We rode to Camelot, I and he.
It was the time of Spring turned lover.
A wind, caught in the greenery,
Shredded with glancing shafts the cover,
Crept out and in, and stirred the rill
That ran beside us round the hill
Onward to Camelot, it and we.

We rode to Camelot, he and I.
The bells rang ever on his bridle.
I said, “What sing the bells, and why,
Whose silver tongues are never idle?”
He said, “Of joy-bells whisper these,
When we beneath the balconies
Ride into Camelot, thou and I!”

We rode to Camelot, I and he.
Far off we heard its joy-bells ringing.
Anon, the sun smote suddenly,
High up, a golden dragon clinging.
“To-day the dragon clings,”—he said;
“To-morrow,”—half his thought I read,
Riding to Camelot, I and he.

We rode to Camelot, he and I.
His eyes sought ever crowns to win them;
Yet when they sought mine with a sigh
There was a hint of sorrow in them.
He spake not often; when he spake,
With fear my woman's heart would ache,
Riding to Camelot, he and I.

We rode to Camelot, I and he.
“None of us ride here, save we only.
All ride with Arthur over-sea,
So ever now the roads are lonely.
Where are no knights the heathen are;
Pray we pass safe 'neath sun and star,
To Camelot on, the rill and we!”

We rode to Camelot, he and I.
Three ravens crossed us for an omen;
A trampled lawn we rested nigh
At noon, gave signal of near foemen.
He leapt like bloodhound on the slot:—
“Who rides so close to Camelot?”
We were alone, just he and I.

We rode to Camelot, I and he,
Adown the heathen tracks disdainful.
Their horses half a score may be;—
He had ridden faster 'gainst a plainfull.

The stream ran muddy just below;—
“They watered here an hour ago,
Riding to Camelot, they and we.”

We rode to Camelot, he and I.
“Lo you, their lance-heads gleaming golden,
That dripping life-blood by and by
May be of the low sun beholden!
God knows, Sir Launcelot would allow
Our day's diversion rare enow,
Riding to Camelot, thou and I!”

We rode to Camelot, I and he.
Full speed he sped,—a heathen crossed him;
Would Launcelot had been there to see
How my knight twice a lance-length tossed him!
Three in that tilt he overbore:—
Could Launcelot's self with twelve do more,
Riding to Camelot, I and he?

In sight of Camelot, he and I!
They drove him back: I called on Heaven!
The life-blood in my heart 'gan dry;—
Two more down! Still their swords are seven!—
Ah joy! Who drives across the field,
Three ramping lions in his shield?—
Now on to Camelot, you and I!

We rode to Camelot, all we three.—
“Had you not hard, Sir Launcelot, ridden,
The rill had run alone for me,—
Of me all bells had rung unbidden,
And dust had dimmed the dragon's pride,
And my maid saddened. Now we ride
Gaily to Camelot, thou and we!”

“No art could tell how Launcelot's blade ran blood,”
I said, “as silence did!
You, Sibyl? Nay, I tell you, 'tis the mood
Of a mad Bassarid,
Driven swifter than the sting on a snake's hiss
To the heart of prophecy.
Lame follows yours my song of a queen's kiss,
Which your third leaf shall buy.”

ALAIN CHARTIER.

O God, Thou hast made my life so sweet
In this last hour of dusking sky,—
Though all too dim and over fleet,—
With stifled bubblings of a sigh
Heard in her silver-fluted throat,
The while her lips their honey smote
On mine sleep-parted, that I fain
Had never waked again!

O rarest dream that ever yet
Was fashioned in a poet's soul!
O sweetest signet ever set
In dream or deed, to claim the whole
Of love and life and soul and song,
And in one image mould the throng
Of fiery fancies that are wrought
Red on the forge of thought!

Was it a dream? Judge you for me,
Who have not 'neath her kissing lips
Felt the fierce blood tumultuously
Crimsoning to the finger-tips;

But this I know,—whatever fall,—
God and our Lady hear it all,—
Through life, in death, I am her slave,—
Her bondsman to the grave!

Along the glowing garden-ways
We loitered, half a score of us,
This afternoon, through maze on maze
Of cool vine-greenery, pendulous
With clusters, deepening in the sun
From shade to shade of purple-dun,
Toward river-glimpses, silvery-brown,
Seen ever further down.

The laughing heart-strings of the lute
Shivered, as 'neath a summer breath
Strewn rose-leaves, and all birds grew mute
To hear its faintest murmur's death.
Then one trolled rondels of that star
Of fight, who wielded Adalmar.
One sang of Mary, maid above;
For me, I sang of love.

Down dim-lit walks that, ev'n at noon,
Were loud with tireless nightingales,
Like glimpses of a cloudy moon
We saw the white of ladies' veils

Gleam out amid the garden-growth;—
Heard little laughs the air was loth,
Laden with all its balm, to bring,
And dulcet trebles sing.

One after one my comrades strayed
Down deep-roofed alleys, jasmine-grown,
In searches after denser shade,
And left me at the last alone.
Beetle and drowsy humming bee
Droned in slow mazes over me,
And, 'mid monotonous melodies,
Sleep sank upon my eyes.

Yet in the self-same place I lay;
Into my dream all murmurs grew
Of bird and bee and girlish play;
Chance-times I saw the sun peep through,
When soft breaths of the summer time
Fluttered the broad leaves of the lime;
Still sweet song-snatches floated by,
Or paused to fall and die.

When, hark! a nearing overflow
Of maiden mirth,—a rustling close
Of silken robes,—a sudden snow
On silken grass of leaves of rose,—

And then, upon my dazzled sight
A burst of mingled gold and white,—
White maidens, each with hair that rolled
A backward stream of gold!

And she, the Princess, she, my queen,
Swinging a rose-chain 'midst of them!
Ah, God! her shoulders 'gainst the green
Shone like a frosty diadem
Of stars that crown mid-winter skies;—
Ah, God! the love-dew in her eyes!—
Rare as in speechless nights of June
Drips from the vase o' the moon!

Frozen to stillness poised they there,
Lips sundered, eyes like limpid wells,
To see me fall'n asleep to fair
Faint tinklings of swung king-cup bells
That chime in poets' dreams alone:—
Then one,—“'Tis Alain, drowsy grown,
With all the wonders of the South
Sealed in his singing mouth!”

Then, or e'er one could say her nay,—
God, can Thy heaven give more than this!—
She stooped beside me where I lay,
Her ripe lips rounding with a kiss,

And laid their burden down on mine;
Then, raising her flushed face divine,
Spake thus,—“Read ye aright my deed!
It is a Poet's meed!”

Was it a dream? I cannot tell;
But that pure kiss hath freed my tongue,
Like God's own spark, from some strong spell
That kept my nobler songs unsung.
Now shall my songs be born afar,
Beside the pearl-stairs of that star
Which she was queen of, where is pain
Until she comes again.

And this, O Margaret, to thee!—
I may not love thee, save as one
Who, severed by infinity,
Yet, for its shining, loves the sun.
Men will forget my songs: your hair,—
The moth as soon will banquet there;
But Heaven's high choir shall whisper this,—
“His songs won that Queen's kiss!”

Love's lips from mine kissed the last words away;—
“Sing,” said she, “for my sake,
Whose golden hair your hand finds soft all day,—
Who kisses you, awake!
Nay, I half think poor Alain's head was turned;—
What princess dares extremes?
Besides, he slept; I first to kiss you learned,
Not in, but for your dreams.”

FAILURE.

I.

The Lord's elect, with gracious feet that glide
Down heaven's white stair of stars, and come and go
Soft as dove's wings, or feather-drift of snow,
Meet work for this man and for that provide:—
For him to tame the purple heart of pride
By wearing a world's crown, nor ever know;
This gives his life away for his life's foe;
This for the poor. Such grow next to God's side.

And they who fail,—who die with nothing won,—
Whose lives yield scantly for the pains they spend!—
These, whom the world deems profitless, undone,
So souls stand true, have honour in the end.
Failure is but the other face o' the sun,—
Just the success men cannot comprehend.

II.

Of climbing purpose, clogged with feet fall'n lame,
And singing soul sour-throated, God alone
Can gauge the greatness. Bruisèd spice storm-blown
Pleaseth Him more than all fair-weather flame
Of frankincense. He doth not praise or blame
Results, or blazoned moods the world is shown;
But by the inner spirit's undertone
Judgeth the act,—the arrow by the aim.

So I sing on, although my May-day rhyme
Noon-born, die ere the even: God from me
No thunder-throated battle-psalm sublime
Demandeth, but a song in my degree.
Discords! He hath not heard one any time;—
They are His concords in a minor key!

“Crown Failure here, the frequent feast-day leaves
No wreaths men's brows to bind!
We mark the first for honour; God perceives
The place of each behind.
See, too, for fairest deeds men's lavish praise,
Ere the dew dries, is spent!
He will not grudge us everlasting bays
To crown a crossed intent.”

“WHERE TWO YEARS MEET.”

A moment here the storm of battle stands,
Then westward rolls away;
We wait with wistful eyes and clinging hands
What comes with the new day.

Dead year, that taught at least our hands to cling,—
Flown hours wherein we met,
Though Time stood now at everlasting Spring,
Still would we not forget.

Thine eyes were stars of promise, but thine arm
Thrust ever sharp between;
Dreaming of all to be, still holds the charm
Of all that might have been.

We say farewell, half-souled 'twixt hope and fear;
More yet the years may give;
Not all fair days are bound in one dead year
For us, who have lives to live!

“Who shall not mourn the fair day almost done,
He cannot live again,
Knowing how oft is lost Life's mid-day sun
Behind a haze of rain?
But though the last leaf dies on my live spray,
Though dulls Heaven's dazzling cope,
Yet let your death-song crystal round the ray
Of some immortal hope!”

A GRAVE IN THE HILLS.

“N., aged 20.”

“Until the day dawn and the shadows flee away.”

Just a poet's dream, you know.
On the hill-height, all alone there,
One white grave with flowers ablow,
And the legend terse and tender,—
How my heart must hear a moan there!—
Make me sad for all spring's splendour.

Oh, be sure she shall sleep well!
Solemn hills lift each a finger,
And the wild winds heed the spell.
Sad rooks restful music make her.
Very still are we who linger,
Stepping softly lest we wake her.

Do you ever dream she dreams?
That the flowers all summer woo her
In the dark with songs of streams,—
Shine, her lamps amid the shadows?
Creeping rains too carry to her
Stories of the golden meadows.

What a little life she had!
How could burst the aloe-blossom?
Should we, say, be grieved or glad,
Seeing, ere they triple seven,
Set in many a stainless bosom,
Souls grown ripe enough for heaven?

“'Till the shadows flee away!”
Ah! the creed is over-cruel.
Chokes the soul then in its clay?
Shall the shadows, for a minute,
Hide the lustre of a jewel
That has God's own glory in it?

Ah, but rest! How sweet it were
To lie still with worn hands crossing,
Weary, with no need to stir,—
Dreaming of no load to carry!
There should be no fretful tossing,
Though awhile the dawn might tarry.

Just a poet's dream, you know.
Round her grave the shadows wander
Half a circle ere I go,—
Ere I bid the dead “Good even!”
She will see the dawning yonder
Early, lain so near to heaven!

Her grave is on the hill-top all alone;
Her years scarce twenty told.
If she look up, she sees upon the stone
That text in graven gold.
The shadows lift not yet, the dawn is hid;
Heed not how far it be;
But when they lay me next your coffin-lid,
Waken and turn to me!

SOUL SONGS.

[O God, I have striven to grasp a straw]

“What know we greater than the soul?”

I.

O God, I have striven to grasp a straw
Whirled from Thy central mystery,—
Some merest fragment of Thy law,
To bring me somehow nearer Thee:

To give me foothold but to span
A moment of Thy wealth of years,
Who drinkest up the life of man,—
Whose heart-throbs keep alive the spheres.

Star after star floats up the sky;
They sing in rapture as they go.
I hear; they know no more than I;
They are contented not to know.

The secrets of the world I probe;
Nature and all her laws are dumb.
Saith the great heart-voice of the globe,—
“From thine own soul must knowledge come.”

I search my soul, but find no key
To unlock the door shut fast on Him.
The whole world murmurs, “Where is He?”
Is the voice His, when storms grow grim?

I were content with any mite
Of knowledge, for the sky is black
With hungry wolf-hounds, born of night,
And Death is hard upon the track;

And I am as a little child
That feebly gropes along the wall,
A moment walks, then totters wild,
And thrusts blind hands to meet its fall,

And cannot rise, and night is nigh,
And spectres gibber in the grey,
And the destroyer, passing by,
Will find me fall'n across the way.

II.

Year after year fulfils the word
God spake of it when speech was new,
'Mid storms and thunder-throbs that stirred
The roots of order through and through.

His finger thrills along the nerves
Of space that weave the worlds in one.
His changeless will nor shrinks nor swerves
To wreck a star, to spare a sun.

How then shall man, with half a day
To build his flimsy walls of thought,
Hem in a God with hands of clay,
Whose footfall shivers worlds to nought,—

Unveil the heart o' the universe,
And dwarf it to his human mind?
Before the prime there came the curse
Of Time on us, and made us blind

To all beyond the grasp of sense.
We drift upon creation's round,
Nor know what wave of consequence,
God-driven, hath caught us, whither bound.

Yet once, may be, the soul may burst
Her bonds in some ecstatic hour,
When years of tireless toil have nursed
Closed buds of knowledge into flower:—

Gaze blenchless through the mist and mark
Faint gleams of swiftly flying feet,—
Far lightnings flooding all the dark
Inwards toward God's world-circled seat!

Back shrinks the soul! the gleam is gone;
Through rifts of cloud night oozes gloom.
Down her dim path the earth spins on,
And, darkling, we fulfil our doom.

III.

Slow swings the earth round her own core,
Swift swings the earth about the sun,
Nor rests from either evermore
Till God hath thundered, “It is done!”

But lo, this human heart of mine,
That whirls with every gust of sin;
That fain would follow Love divine
In cycling flight till Life begin;

Yet fain would taste of earthly love,
And win the goal of earthly fame;
And hath its idols, and would prove
Each one a god till turned to shame;

And follows every wandering fire
That seems a beacon in the mist;
And deems some unknown faith were higher
Than that whose God's lips Judas kissed;

And throbs to every faith men hold,
And knows not what itself believes;
Gleans from all creeds chance shreds of gold,
And thence its motley garment weaves.

Yet this it hath, O God, and this
Is vain;—a will to find out Thee
And die, Thy raiment's hem to kiss,
Scorched with the blasts of Deity!

But Thou art hidden, and my heart,
Blinded with searching, calls in vain,
“Wilt Thou not show me where Thou art?”
Storms shout my anguish back again.

Until the silences of space
Break up and, shrivelling, leave Thee bare,
My soul must sorrow in its place,
Whirled on its pivot of despair.

[Strange isolation hath the soul]

I.

Strange isolation hath the soul;
A germ which God informs with breath,
Whence thought and will evolve a whole,—
A circle broadening into death.

Viewless, yet visible through flesh;
Forging deep-shrined, self-ruling laws;
Fain oft to burst her bounding mesh,
Updrawn toward her primal Cause;

Oft, self-involved, constrained to dwell
Sole warder of the gates of sense,
Lord of her life-ramped citadel,
Till death shall scale its last defence.

Sitting alone, she broods in tears
On many a half-remembered sight,
Which, ere she measured life by years,
Made splendour in her primal night.

This body she is bound unto
She chose, whom her own thoughts consumed,
To blossom into action through:—
But gone the God-light that illumed.

She with her greatness bought her gains;
Strange grows the Heaven's eternal law:
Now nothing unto her remains
But shadows of the things she saw.

Sure but of one thing,—“I am I!
I think, act, feel, desire, apart;
To me, I am God's mystery,
And the world's centre is my heart!”

Yet some self-knowledge hath she won,
Whence self-contempt. She knows what fires
Flame where still streams were wont to run;
She shudders at her own desires.

She sits as one round whom are hurled
The remnants of a harried feast,
'Mid jumbled creeds of all the world,—
Creeds of which she alone is priest;—

Hopes, visions, dreams, imaginings,
Birth-blighted all. Her frosty eyes
Stare stonily past all these things,
To see a dawn adown the skies

Steal out beneath the skirts of grey,
And set the sombre heavens astir.
Then will she wake, and laugh away
This ghost of life that haunteth her.

II.

I heard an echo falling down
The steep where sang the quiet stars,
Into the hot heart of the town,
Foul with its festering sores and scars,—
An echo that had burst God's bars,
Sweet as the reed-throat bird of brown.

It came, a message to my soul,
Mad with her doubtings of the creeds,
And hungry search from pole to pole
For God made manifest by deeds;—
Crutchless amid her broken reeds
Wherewith lame feet might reach the goal.

A voice, myself with being banned
While still the soul was body-free;
Now, captive in a stranger land,
I hear it sigh along the sea.
The strain has second birth in me:
The words I cannot understand.

Backward to grasp my thought I strain;
In life's dim light, I lose the clue:
Yet but to hear my soul's refrain
Thrilling the darkness through and through,
Wakes half a hope the dream is true
That life from death may something gain.

III.

What gain, alas? A permanence
Of aimless being all unknit,
Lopped of the grappling arms of sense
Wherewith the worlds were caught to it?

The soul a waif upon the tide
That storms along eternity?
Is this the end of all her pride
Of power, her half-divine degree?

Or shall she slumber, vision-fed,
Penned torpid in her body-shroud,
Hearing the thunder overhead
Boom in the bosom of a cloud,

A voice that saddens all her dreams?
Yet bounding to God's pulse, that runs
Through all His balanced worlds, and streams
His life-blood into furthest suns,

She strikes her vigour up the clod,
And bursts in blossom on the plain;
Then, with a waning sense of God,
Drones in her deathly dreams again.

Oh, better far did Death make end
Of soul and body and have done,
Than that Eternity should lend
Her years to death-in-life begun,—

A dying fire that will not die,
Red-hearted 'mid its embers still!
Up then, doomed soul, give God the lie,
Mock, dare, defy Him; He may kill!

Better that thou shouldst rot than rust.
When life has grown a barren thing,
And thought is stifled in the dust
That chokes its baffled water-spring,

And not the will remains to urge
The flagging wheels of action on,
Pray God to cast thee o'er the verge
Of being, blessed to be gone!

Gain! if she deemed life ended so,
The soul that groans for God's embrace
And portion in His life, would throw
His gift of being in His face!

[The ripe fruit swung, dainty and fair]

I.

The ripe fruit swung, dainty and fair,
Islanded in the autumn air:
Wind-wavelets surged against the stem.
The ripe fruit lay, yellow and red,
Rotting upon the garden-bed:
Death claimeth tithe of them.

The seedling maggot at the core
Leapt, while the sun at every pore
Drank dry the life that walled it round.
A maiden, come to count the crop,
Sighed sadly, “How the apples drop!”
And left it on the ground.

The wind wailed o'er it half a breath,—
“My fingers on thy stalk were death;
For love of mine how all unfit!”
Shrills there to thee, O soul, no cry,—
“Windfall of time!—Eternity?
Fool, what would'st thou with It?”

II.

Oft as the footstep of my thought
Grows firm upon a higher stair,
I deem the lesson clearer taught,
No boundless life the soul could bear.

Higher the standard she must reach,
Fairer her fitness, ere the soul
Takes all Eternity can teach,
And gathers to a perfect whole.

But year by year the progress won
We count,—much more then God,—so small:
And oft the rung we stand upon
Snaps at a doubt, and straight we fall

Into as drowning-deep a hell
As high the heaven whereto we climb.
We were God's eaglets from the shell,
Tossed from His eyrie into Time,

To beat about the world and grow
Broad-winged, strong-sighted, straining back;
But life hath clogged our wings with woe,
And clouds have drawn across the track.

How much of toil! how little gain!
The ant-hill half a lifetime rears,
To scale the heavens, an hour of rain
Crumbles: no more return our years.

Must life be counted then a test
To prove to God what ore is base;
We but His rough-hewn models, drest
For types unto some nobler race?

And all we are and dream and do,
But foils unto the souls He forms
Of perfect pattern, strange and new,
Behind the curtain of His storms?

What if the mighty mystery
That walls us in have answer thus:—
“Ye have your sole eternity
In that ye were God's types of us!”

And ye of others! They of more,
Till, down the ages drifted far,
God crowns His works with all His store,
And hoards His glory in one star!

III.

Anon my veering soul will say,
Self-scorned into a stormier mood,—
“Has thy day been so fair a day,
Or gleaned thee such a store of good,

Or wrought thee to such steadfast might,
That thou durst wish thy being drawn
Through lampless chasms of the night,
A flimsy thread from dawn to dawn?

Since life, whose limits loom defined
Ever more near, doth hateful grow,
What were the loathing of the mind
For life, whose end not God doth know?”

Then shapes, herself, the world's reply;—
“Thy dread is God's best argument;
Once wert thou thrilled with fear to die,
Lest life should some day all be spent:

Though thy bark ground on its own shore,
It yet may harbour o'er the sea.
Time's miseries make the chances more
Of Futures that shall fairer be.

What recompense hath life in death?
Lo, this we cling to, more than all,
That somewhere with unvexèd breath
We may forget our draughts of gall;

Not blindly, as who, dying, leaves
His memories waifs in miry ways,
But as one, binding golden sheaves,
Forgets the frost and thankless days.”

Thereto the soul responds again,—
“What if the all-pervading Soul,
Whence issuing, whither drunk like rain,
All forms of life and being roll,

Bleeds from a flesh-wound in the side!
If we, a misbegotten race,
Far from creation's seething tide,
Drip, God-forgotten, into space!”

Alas, my soul would find a doubt,
Though on a sudden He should call
My name in a fierce thunder-shout;
Still sob—“Is there a God at all?”

A NEW YEAR'S EVE.

O death-night of another year,
O birth-night of a year to be,
That shakest, like a leaf grown sere,
Time's mellowed youngling from the tree,
Yet, with a breath blown tenderer,
Smites through his frozen rings a stir,
And thrills his latest-moulded sphere
With pulses of Eternity!—

O night that leadest to the vast
Another of Time's tottering kings,
Leaving to him who cometh last
A heritage of loveless things,
Blossoms that never shall be more,—
Fruit with a canker at the core,—
Germs in the pest-house of the Past,
Ripening from long-forgotten Springs!—

I would some strong one, girt with might
And starless thunders of the sky,
Would clog the swift wings of thy flight,
And chain thee 'neath my feet to lie;
That for a moment life might stand,—
Knowledge be heaped within my hand,
And star-beams of some perfect light
Illume my soul before I die.

A New Year's Eve! and since the time
When thy dead sister nearest-born
Rang greetings, in bell-throated chime,
Through star-kept chambers of the morn,
We have but better learned to know
That life can ne'er to knowledge grow,—
That death climbs with us as we climb,
And laughs our dauntless dreams to scorn.

For now we climb the unfooted crag
And gain a foot-hold as we can,
Yet slip upon some treacherous jag,—
Our failure serves some other man.
Life hath no triumph, toil no crown;
Death drags the span-off victor down;
And we shall see no battle-flag
Unfurled on this, the world's Redan.

Why was life given us thus accursed?
What god, to glut himself with pain,
Sowed seeds of fierce desire, sharp thirst,
Some end to achieve, some goal to gain,—
Set where it seems but sport to touch,
But, as our hands draw near to clutch,
And the soul's bands are almost burst,
Binds us in death's eternal chain?

Life's promise then is all a lie
That will not ripen into fruit?
Suns sink and shine; stars turn that fly;
Winds wail on many a forest lute,
Waves moan upon the barren beach,—
“The end will bring the crown!” their speech.
They to the end endure; we die;
For us fulfilment's voice is mute.

Deep in the past our spring-time hides
Mid grave-mounds of forgotten graves;
Mourned but of Memory, it abides
Afar, in sea-surrounded caves.
Sour-sweet the spices wafted thence,
That once were balm and frankincense;
Strange spoils drift on the in-washing tides,—
Soiled, amber-scented waifs of waves.

And now betwixt life's bud and flower,
While heedless hearts are caught with gleams
Of maiden's eyes, our hearts, grown sour,
Sigh for the slow Lethean streams,
And peel the poppy's heart, and weep
Because its poison gives not sleep,
And seek Persephone's sad bower,
Enbuilded in a world of dreams.

Alas! can ever life forget,
Or but remember with a smile,
The tears with which youth's cheeks were wet,
The dreams which did its years beguile:—
That the world still had wrongs to right
By virtue of some hero's might;—
That captive maidens languished yet
In every ocean-girdled isle;—

That to the wizard who could hold
His will unthralled by doubts and fears,
Would wisdom's back-swung gates unfold
The hoarded treasures of the years:—
That from her wooer, fond yet stern,
Knowledge could hide no mystic urn,
No sacred store, no guarded gold,
No God-born secret of the spheres?

But we have lived, alas, too long
Not to have learned the lesson grim,
That from the world none drives a wrong,
Nor slays the hydra nearest him.
Naught we achieve save this, O God,—
To follow where our fathers trod,
Through dreams to darkness, with a song
Thou hear'st not for Thy cherubim!

See! in the fiery-footed East
Blind motion of the dawn begins.
Shot through and through with shafts, released
From signal bows, the grey mist thins,
And, folding fleecy wings, unfurled
To be the curtains of the world,
Shows where earth's silver-sandalled priest
Up the clear heaven his pathway wins.

Steeped in a golden glow, the year
Spends the first morning of his days.
The hill-drawn streamlet babbles here,
And gurgles yonder sweetest lays.
Sap stirs in many an oak-tree's core,
Fain to thrust twigs through every pore,
And up the face of hill-sides sheer
Thin vapour curls, a silver haze.

We only, Nature's lordliest born,
Sadden, nor will be comforted.
Stay, Old Year Night, stay, New Year Morn,
And show us whither we are led!
Show us at least what after-birth
Awaits us, banished from the earth,
When with the vesture we have worn
Foul flies are housed and worms are fed?

Saddening with rain, winds whisper low,—
“Man dieth and is walled with clay:
The founts of knowledge cease to flow;
Wisdom is but a played-out play;
And all the Future vast and dim,
Is an eternal dream to him.
Æons of ages come and go;—
For him there dawns no later day!”

ALCESTIS.

When Love the lily-handed fought with Death,
And through her scorn was strong to win,
How suffered he who watched the ebbing breath
In the dead-heavy night grow faint and thin,
Glazed eyes and sharpening chin!

He saw not him, the lion-hided, leap
The last ravine that clove the plain.
He saw alone the leaden-lidded sleep
Mask her pale face, and marble out the pain,
And groaned for all his gain.

O soul, my soul, when Love is slain for thee,
And all the pleasant springs are dry,—
When thou hast probed life's torturing mystery,
The wisdom teaching thee how best to be
Will make thee glad to die!

But thee, alas! no great-heart Herakles
Will give again thy golden day.
For Love thou wilt have left Love's memories,
Like song-birds frozen in the storm-swept trees,
Life's music blown away.

TIME'S WEFT.

Still at the loom of Time goes on the toil;
Still at his task th' unresting craftsman strives,
And some strange purpose that no god can foil
Grows shapelier in our lives.

What pattern weaves he all these years of ours?
How blend the colours? Is the texture rare?
I pray he fashion, dearest, nought but flowers,
To make thy future fair.

Is the skein ravelled? Runs the woof awry?
Not always does the weaver work by line:—
Distortions these that vanish by-and-bye,
Or ground the life-design.

How shall these threads combine? What care dispart
These tangles? Lo, my soul knows only this,—
One purpose sure; Time hideth in his heart
How its fulfilment is.

Ah me, what will the years do with us, sweet?
Weave us what web of life? I know not, I.
I dream we grow toward something more complete,
Made perfect when we die.

So this result of living we shall see
Foreshadowed only. Death, that maketh end,
Will round our lives to some divine degree
We shall not apprehend.

Dream we look back on life when, for an hour,
Silence has held the loom and Time's swift hand;
And lo! each life has grown a glorious flower,
Ev'n as the craftsman planned,

Lily and leaf, a glory of gloom and gold!—
Hark, down star-baffling heights what voices glide?—
“See, first, life's face: life doth of life behold
Only the under-side!”

FOR THE CHILDREN.

O children, fresh-foot travellers,
Who onward pass through flowers as yet,
Nor see the sharp-spiked hedge of furze
Across the pathway set,

With mimic world in narrow bounds,
And sorrow, spent when falls a tear,
To what wide ends God moulds and rounds
Your lives' hereafter here!

Must you, who half in heaven now tread,
The furthest stray? It is God's plan
To leave the chains unriveted
Wherewith he tethers man.

I, mounted to life's barren brow,
Turning to mark the lower place,
Find Truth was nearer then than now,
And fairer far God's face.

Listen! You children are God's glass,
Wherein His whiteness mirrors best.
Time's breathings o'er the surface pass;
It clouds beneath the test.

Deem not, young hearts, my love untrue,
That I could pray for you to die,
Ere I grow sadder, seeing you
Outlive all faith as I!

EARLY OLD.

Sweet, we grow old, grow old!
We have learned what living is,
Heaping dead friends with mould.
Dying,—what will it be?
Time some day will teach this,
Alas, to you and me.

We are not getting grey;
Men would say we were young;
But the heart hath a woeful way
Of ageing before its prime.
Or ever our noon has rung,
We have somehow passed our prime.

You remember our talk last night?
I would believe, if I dare,
That our souls shall come to a light
Beyond the sorrowful years,
And finish our converse there,
And laugh at our old-world fears;

But I cannot. For, given we rise,
I find in this Christian creed
An end of all earthly ties
And friendships,—a separation
Of lover and loved,—no need
Of any human relation.

Believe it or not as you can;
But I cannot endure the thought
That the bonds between me and a man,
Whose very souls are as one,
Shall be utterly brought to nought,
Unriveted and undone.

So I challenge the creed which is all,
For the revelation given
Of what shall hereafter fall
In its Paradise which is part.
I care not for such a heaven,
Who have still a human heart.

But this riddle of what shall be,
And the doubt and the nearing gloom,
And the world, on a writhing knee,
Godward pealing its prayers
To tear the veil from the tomb,
When no God calls nor cares,

Make me grow old, grow old,
And sadden while life is glad
To others with glint of gold,
Wine-cups or a woman's breath:
And where most are the whirlpools mad,
I shall drift in the dark on death.

DEATH'S SECRET.

If my soul gain a glimpse of death
With seven days' journey still to run,
She shall not waste her lessening breath
With groanings for great deeds undone,
Nor cramp with palsies of the grave,
Nor, stupor-smitten, shrink, adread
Lest the lone silences which gave
Wait to reclaim their doubly dead;

Nor lavish, in a woman's mood,
Her tears for sweets slipped like a wind;
Nor holding death the greatest good,
And life a bane left best behind,
But glad to know the chance anigh
That all her days have dreamed of yet;
Half glad, half sad, to live or die,
And all to know, or all forget.

Her crystalled thoughts shall turn afar;—
“O soul, shall it be thus or thus?
At the white gateway of a star
Doth some white soul wave hands for us?
A little while, a little while,
And life shall drown in sea on sea!”
Then sun her sad heart with a smile,
Content, howe'er the issue be.

(Not all content; her thoughts sublime,
Borne in each flight on stronger wing
O'er the low-hanging skies of Time,
Found nowhere roof to anything.
What after shall content the soul?
Will she have heart for walls of clay?
Be glad to think her course and goal
Shut in the scantness of a day?)

Then, careless of the body's needs,
Nor heeding if it fast or faint,
Deaf to the wrangles of the creeds,
World-dead as any trancèd saint,
Her eyes, fast on the flawless white
O' the Soul of worlds, first blind for shame,
Shall afterward grow stars for sight,
And she the thin ghost of a flame.

Girt round in no sick bedchamber
With low lamps and laborious feet,
And muffled motions, noisier
Than honest hubbub of the street,
And drooping heads turned sharp awry
To hear the death-watch ticking slow,
Or sudden gust of wings go by;—
O soul, thou shalt not meet death so!

When all save one o' the hours have flown,
And round me puffs of sharp cold creep,
Thence, where his wings make nearing moan,
Like darkening storms, along the deep,
Then bear me to some frowning shore,
Where the sea hurls his heaving chain
On sheer crag-steeps, that evermore
Shatter the surges into rain;

And leave the litter with no word,
Nor wait the last sob of the shell.
Lone as on Nebo one, the Lord
Laid out of sight of Israel,
My soul shall stand on guard as stout,
And, ere the clouds draw close, slip past
And back, and ring death's secret out
Into the weary world at last!

PHANTOMS.

Oft in my haunted soul will flit
Some blind-born thought about the gloom,
That, ere the soul's hands compass it,
Creeps to its lidded tomb;

And, fearful of the phantom dawn,
Stirs out no more to wile or lure;
Yet, when the watch is well withdrawn,
Gleams forth untrapped, secure.

Then if I spur a stumbling sense
Along the labyrinths, straight has passed;
And, shackled with my impotence,
I lose it at the last.

My soul is full of ghosts like this,
That breed and brood in starless caves;
She cannot sound the black abyss,
Or, reaching, search these graves.

Yet but to reach perchance is gain;
For though the spectral thought eludes,
Still may she clutch some slenderest chain
That threads the solitudes.

So then the flying forms are kind
That, though they flee, their track betray
If, on a star's trail, stars I find,
I am no cast-away.

And since her mystery hath no shore,
Nor half her treasures can she guess,
She saith, “God yet may give me more,
But gives me first the less!”

NIGHT.

Night! In the balcony now in the heart of the heart of this London,
Still from pavement to sky,—still as the graves shut at noon.
Still the trees in the square, and behind them like sleep-stricken fireflies,
Lights burn steady and still, hung in a visible dark.
One by one in the windows the lights go out; where they linger,
Lo there are watchers within; shadows will move on the blinds.
Dead to the bodily eye is the world, but the soul's eye hath vision,—
Fiery realities, throes, most where the curtains are drawn.
What of this night will the world-soul say when the years by a hundred
More shall be told? Of the world, history grows in the dark.

100

Why may not also the skies be, drawn round the windows of heaven,
Masks of a merciless might, veils of imagineless deeds?
Forgings for Time and Eternity round us,—who saith, “Not above us!”
Still the soul straineth beyond: Lo there, yon storm-drift of clouds,—
Shadows of gods, may-be, who, banished at last by a greater,
Linger with desolate eyes fast on the thrones that were theirs!
Shall then some god-scribe record of this hour that it slept, when the ancient
Lordship of heaven changed hands? Giants of chaos and night
Strained to the zenith to snatch from its rulers the tyrannous sceptre?
What if the morrow on us burst in a tempest of fire,—
Wild upheaval of worlds when the fresh gods first handle the thunder?
Madmen are many around,—what if mad gods be above?

Soul, it is well for thee, greater than Time and the worlds that he changes;
Faint not though folds of the sky haunt thee with truths that they hide:

101

Thou who conceivest of them art of them; the day is thy prison,
Holding thee back from the quest; night hath no cords to confine.
Thine is the will to attain to the heart of the infinite secret;
Flag not nor falter; the night broadens about thee for wings.

102

A FLY-BY-NIGHT.

My soul hath freedom with the night.
Sleep shears her body-bonds away,
And every sense grows infinite
For service, an enchanted wight,
That turns her tyrant with the day.

Ah, then, what steadfast eyes she hath!
Quick ears for all melodious sounds!
Strong wings to drive her random path,—
Clogged not, as day's, with fear of scathe,—
Where the stars pace eternal rounds.

No harsh note jars the symphonies
That in the silence round her ring;
Oft her high thought, on Heaven's own keys,
Will improvise in ordered ease
Strains whereto spheres thenceforth might sing.

Hers too the gift of gracious speech
Wherewith all ways men's hearts incline.

103

It is her pastime still, from each
Of all impossibles, to reach
Results which, single, were divine.

Or she will track a hunted word
Or truant memory down the slot:
Ring out, like heart-notes of a bird,
Rare rhymes toward which no thought had stirred;
Or twist the tangles of a plot.

Then she is strong wild storms to scare
Back to their bellowing rocks again.
All spirits of the earth and air
That jostle round her path must wear
Fantastic fetters in her train.

But what mis-shapen, phantom hosts!
Such reckless marriage of extremes,
Whence monstrous broods! Above her coasts,
Grotesque as gargoyles, wander ghosts,
Buoyed with the bubbles of her dreams.

You shall not find in elfin lore
Or goblin annals such a crew,
Whom she deems fair, till to the door
Of waking come, a thrall once more,
She shudders lest they follow through.

104

O, further than her fancy spans
I wish this waking morn by morn!
A sleep-song sings itself and scans,
But fierce its birth-throes as a man's,
In the soul's house of bondage born.

My soul doth for the death-night wait.
Free then to soar through all the skies,
She shall new worlds of dreams create,
When first she feels, emancipate,
Sleep from all day-light seal her eyes.

105

APOLOGIA.

O linked with cycling forms of change,—
Tides, tempests, seasons, shadow, shine,—
O body-bridled to the range
Of death and that, why hold it strange
No nobler songs are thine?

We may not utter what we could;
Voiceless our fieriest thoughts must wait,
May-be, for nature's millionth mood:
And if it comes in time, why good;
Oftener it cometh late.

This song the sun drew; that the rain:
One blossomed in a field of flowers:
You the blank void of a bare plain
Voiced with its yearning; fairer grain
Ripens in fairer hours.

Alas! more oft the frolic day
Unfriends our spirit-preludings,

106

And thought must burn itself away,
And frustrate life's melodious lay
Shriek on the snapping strings.

Or, if the music match the time,
Nature's next mask so soon is on,
That, like enough, we clang the chime,
Trip here or stumble, lest the rhyme
End not ere this be gone.

Last Spring my heart for songs found room
Of life, that somewhere might be more,
Born of wild lilies round a tomb:—
Fell one sad hour of dripping gloom;—
My songs fell dead before.

Oh, could we lift the last disguise
And see the very face a breath,
Whose, whose would be the changeless eyes?
In ours what sudden sharp surprise,
Full face with Truth or Death!

Dying, have done; or, freed with fire
From taint of change, our songs be born
One with the universal choir,—
Voiced with the heart o' the world's desire
Like Memnon with the morn!

109

THE BIRTH OF A RIVER.

Girt with the mountains, his brothers, born more near to the prime,—
Are they not all one mother's,—Nature's, begotten of Time?—
The rivulet danced and chattered, tumbled the pebbles, his toys,
Pounded, piled them and scattered, just for the sake of the noise,—
Leapt on the ledge of crevasses, trilled to the tunes of the wind
Blown through the throats of the passes, heedless of meanings behind.
Still to her youngest clinging, the mother, majestic and mild,
Followed the sound of his singing, loth to be stern with her child,—
Spake at the last, “Wilt thou dally here in the fold of thy birth?
Girt with the hills is the valley; girdling the hills is the earth.

110

Little art thou, for Life still beginneth at least, to give space
For growth unto purpose and will; there can nothing stand long in one place.
The hills have grown taller, O stream; their height hath set props for the skies;
Dim are their brows as a dream; far wonders are seen of their eyes;
But far as they follow the light, thy gathering waters shall glide;
At the uttermost range of their sight thou first shalt come to thy pride!”

Thither the stream's eyes strained where the brawny brothers stood,
With ermined necks that craned from shaggy shoulders of wood.
They were poets, these hills, with time for nought but the terribly far,—
Ragged, unkempt, sublime, and in love with the evening star.
They had forgotten the tale of the years they had yearned for her;
Their beards were matted with hail; the bristles were each a fir;
And when their hoary brows throbbed to behold her go,

111

An avalanche rent the boughs from the olive-bowers below.
Ah, then the trickling tears make seams in each rusty side,
And the restless chamois hears the shuddering crag-teeth gride,
And wails round the rocks are flung, from the caverns trumpeted,—
But the heart of the stream is strung to the height of the hoarest head!

“Hearken, you hills,” he carolled, “My brothers, why, stand you there
With limbs so foully apparelled, with heads so high in the air?
What a time you must have been growing! Do you never mean to have done?
Or, really there seems no knowing how soon you will hit the sun.
But why, when you live so near, do you shiver and seem so cold?
Is it pain, or the night-winds drear, or a palsy one has when old?
But I guess why your life so glooms; you have always stood so still;
They have cramps and stitches and rheums, whose youth leaps not with a will;

112

Mine now is a merrier day, but your sorrow has made me sage:
I also may have to pay for the pleasures of youth in age.
But what is the vision fair, wide-stretched to the far-off shore?
Is it cloudland everywhere, or a world to be wandered o'er?
Where fails your sight at the last? Though the rest of the world be dull,
Since there are my fortunes cast, oh, say it is beautiful!”

Then the mountains spake to the stream in a soft sad voice but deep,
Though to us their words would seem but the roar of winds on the steep;—
“Will you not stay with us in the home we have made for you?
Ah, the sweet lays slumberous, and the vigils you never knew,
And the years we have cheered each other with thoughts of the happy time
When first you should stammer ‘Brother,’ and first to our shoulders climb!
But one is your heart with the rest of the brothers we erst have known:

113

The old may pine in the nest, but the fledglings will fly alone.
Alas that you ask us this! We nought that we know must hide;
So the word of the Mother is, of none of her sons defied.
When the star we love descends the last low stair of the sky,
And the new-roused sungod rends his night-long canopy,
And the phantom mists are furled, and the night's swart shadows flee,
Our eyes look over the world to the faint grey line of the sea;—
To the long white wall of wave, and tides round the earth that roll,
Where the rivers glide to a grave and drown in the infinite soul.
Oh, older than star or earth is the terrible, ageless main,—
The womb whence they sprang to birth,—the tomb that shall take them again!
Some well of innermost ocean hath the heart of life in it,
And the restless undulant motion is the pulse of her fever fit,
For the sea, indrawn in her sobs, its own drowned fields o'erstrides,

114

And ever we count the throbs by times of tyrannous tides.
Would you be waif in the whirl,—a drop in the driven deeps,—
Caught here in a torrent's swirl, tossed now from the roaring steeps,—
Is it this you would wander for,—must our old eyes watch you roam,
And drown at last on the shore? Oh, stay with us here at home!”

Then the stream's heart leapt out straight to the goal of its wanderings,—
To the low-lying sand-locked gate where the great sea shallows, and sings
Of the mystery fathomless,—of the pendulous ebb and flow,—
Of the pain and the dull distress when the wing of a storm stoops low;
And then of the tide-swung bells in the palace of lazuli,
Where the god Poseidon dwells with old-world lords of the sea;—
Of the pomp and the proud array when the high god, dolphin-drawn,
Beats out the bounds of his sway on the edges of even and dawn;—

115

Of the blossoming wave whereof the wonderful foambell sprang,
The laughing mother of love, while the shell that she sailed in sang.
And he spake as one who speaks of a vision he seeth still,—
“Be it yours, O pale-blooded peaks, to pine for a star, an ye will!
Be it yours, in your frost-bitten fashion, to ponder and prate of the strife,
But I am thrilled with the passion and pulse of a measureless life.
For I in the storm would swing, o'ertopping the rack of the cloud,—
In the ranks of the surges spring toward the wild heights thunder-browed,—
Be one with effortless power, with limitless life be one:
Watch you for my victor hour with eyes on the first of the sun!”
And the rivulet slipped his tether, slid through a gorge, and was free;
And he and a wind together went forth to look for the sea.

116

THE FATE OF A FLOWER.

Drawn downward with the stream, the water-lily
Tugged at its roots in vain.
“Cruel to hold me here in dank shades stilly,
Who have yonder all to gain!
My glorious flower would win men's praise and wonder,
Long palled with blacks and browns,
Might I but float where silver waters sunder
The wharves of crowded towns;
And ah, beyond where cloud and wave have meeting,
Through dreamful afternoons,
Broad beds of golden blossoms till my greeting
Furl close their bursting moons!”

“Fair fool,” the roots, rough foster-mother, scolded,—
“Be glad we know your place;
Your pollen-powdered crest was never moulded
For greatness, but for grace:

117

The river-filth would soon your gold bespatter;
Men eye their gold at home,
And the first cloud-caressing wave would shatter
Your flimsy leaves to foam!”

No words might fright the lily from its visions,
Till with the stream it stole
Toward the strange sea.
So ever great ambitions
Ruin a little soul!

118

THE SONG OF THE EARTH.

“Then Azrael said unto his fellow, as they crossed the orbit of the sun, ‘Let us hearken to the song of the earth! Her song is the sum of all her voices, yet her cry is unto God!’”

With the world of stars in spanless orbits swinging,
To the Godward spaces greater than my skies,
In the darkness, in the daylight I am singing,
And the darkness and the daylight are my eyes;
For they lighten when a star sends back rehearsal,
And they darken as it dies along the sea;
For the light is elemental, universal,
But the daylight and the darkness are of me.

I remember when the light-wave rolled unto me,
To my soul came fitful thunders, fiery gleams
Of a momentary glory flashing through me,
Setting lightnings for the pauses of my dreams.
I remember that the flame of my first seeing
Fell on worlds that moved around me in a throng,
And the earliest breath indrawn into my being
Was the last sob of an æon of their song.

119

Then they hailed me new-born sister, fairest blossom
That God's touch had ever kissed out of His deep,
For whose trances had the vastness been a bosom,
With all planets for the warders of her sleep;
Saying, “Hail, O fairest star-birth of the ocean!
Long thy pathway has lain silent 'mid thy peers;
Now, new thrilling with the music of thy motion,
Swell the pæan of our immemorial years!”

Then life burned along my being, as the lightning
Kindles all the sullen storm-wrack where it runs,
And I saw the clouds withdrawing, lifting, brightening,
To the dazzling heights where God-illumined suns
Hid the mainspring of my life from my discerning,—
Hid the law that sets the limits, sways the psalm
Of the myriad worlds, in various orbits turning
On the pivot of His everlasting calm.

Then the clouds drew, drooping, deadening, o'er that wonder,
And the mask of that Divineness shone no more.
Now I can but guess the secret from the thunder,
Or the music of the air-waves on my shore;
And I wander, singing ever, singing ever
To the measures of the choric path I tread,
With a restless heart which nothing can dissever
From its kinship with the glory overhead.

120

For my heart hath fiery motions, adorations,
Yearnings upward, growths to godlike, past control,
That will burst at last these measured modulations,
And up-buoy me to the height of my own soul.
And the mystery in rapture shall have ending;
Nay, not ending, but beginning it shall be,
When I see the clouds unclosing, lightening, rending,
And I whirl into the glory where is He!

121

MIDNIGHT MUSIC.

I know a carven church in a Breton town,
Where angels now will be singing all night long.
There are wonders waiting a poet
In many a mouldering nook 'mid the quaint wharves brown,
But the poets pass post-haste with their glory of song,
So the world never gets to know it.

If you knew how nearly my heart was broken then!
I had given the whole of my hopes of eternity
To have known my friend dead only.
I had hurried fast away from the eyes of men,
But the very motes in the air had eyes to see,
And I dare yet less be lonely:

For devils all down the road would gibber and grin,
And the owl—why, a child could tell he had heard my shame,
As he blinked in mute derision;
And the hideous spouting heads on the gabled inn
Leered, and made mouths, and gurgled about my shame,
And croaked of the last suspicion.

122

So at last I came to this little town by night;—
A bad, black night, when there came no stars to stare,
And the wind had rain to tell of.
Through the dark church door I reeled from the last of the light;—
How it came to be open I never thought to care,—
I had thoughts they will make my hell of.

Pitch-dark, but I knew how the sculptured stone ones stood,
With still eyes suddenly drawn from the altar shrine,
And gazed in their soulless fashion;
While the million baby-angels about the rood
Grew rounder-cheeked, and the twelve made semi-sign
On the very eve of the Passion.

Then I rose up brazen-browed in the midst of them,
Stung into scorn of the scorn of the world, and spake:—
“Sweet saints, unscared of the Prussian,
Though your council sat last night at Jerusalem,
And keep St. Chad in his own church here awake
With your drowsy adjourned discussion,

123

“I budge no further, though every separate hair
Of the holy beard they keep in the coffers, packed
With the plate and gold candelabrum,
Should fit itself to a Holy Innocent there,
Whose sleek, smooth head in the week of his birth was cracked:—
I swear by the beard of Abram!”

What light was that? A globe as of living flame,
Stainless and soft beyond all light of the moon,
O'er the altar poised and floated.
Life to the marble limbs of the martyrs came;
Started the stiff-legged knights from their centuried swoon,
With rust no longer coated;

Stepped saints from the windows, wrapped in wondrous woof;
Flew gilded heads and wings from the galleries
To the floor like apple-blossom;
Last came the mighty angels lost in the roof;
But the climbing cherubs fell from the dizzy frieze,
Like flowers into Mary's bosom.

124

Ah, God, that singing! It rings in my ears to-day!—
Snared, all my soul, in the sweet melodious net
Of a song,—but the angels live it.
My burden of madness now I could cast away;
The festering sin of my hell-false friend forget;
For the world,—poor world,—forgive it!

Then a mighty breath of the wrath of God blew sore,
And bore me back, back ever, into the street,
Through the door to the wind that waited,
And flung me fierce on the wave of the world once more:—
Lost, not for scorn of a beard that's a modern cheat,
But a man that my heart had hated!

All that wild night and the wild night through were driven,
And evermore on a faithful wind float down
Strange melodies on my track.
So now, whenever they come, those waifs of heaven,
I know that the angels sing in the Breton town;—
But I may no more go back!

125

ADRIFT.

Beyond the harbour bar the sun goes down
Into a bank of vapour, rising brown,
And thrusting shadowy arms into the sky;
The church-vane glistens last in the grey town.

Seaward the waters run their scurrying race;
Billows curl upward oftener with white face;
And that long streak where broken waves leap high
The limit of the ocean, nears apace.

The salt spray, born of clashing wave and wave,
Anon a land-wind to the westward drave,
And tangled beds of sea-weed drifted by,
And strong-winged sea-gulls through the spray-showers clave.

The last faint gleam dies off the steadfast vane;
The risen vapour thickens into rain;
The sky stoops downward to the leaden sea,
Veiling the land. Will he see land again?

126

Drifting away upon the ebbing tide,
Oarless, toward an ocean, opening wide
Beyond the bar, o'er which ev'n now in glee
Waves toss him. Only God can be his guide.

Over the bar waves tumble fierce and hoar;
Rude reaches stretch unto a far-off shore,
And wandering tempests rage eternally;
For him the sun shall smite the vane no more!

127

MINETTE.

What's in a name? men say, Minette;
But I believe,—deny who can,—
That cogs in unseen cogs are set,
And finger-touches mould a man;

That trivial acts, remotest springs,
Each idlest word, each merriest strife,
Work out the destinies of things,
And a name colours all a life.

And yours is such a saucy name,
And so decided in its hue,
That were your nature not the same
Or like it, you would not be you.

Did I not know you, I could draw
Your face, your feelings, and your fate;
For, subject to some hidden law,
Natures and names assimilate.

Your face is like a laughing ray
Of sudden sunlight after rain;
Your nose a trifle retroussé
That speaks perverseness in the grain;

128

Your mouth the sweetest little rose
That ever rounded for a kiss;
Who would not snatch one, goodness knows
Ah, what a pouting mouth it is!

Your eyes are black and sharp and clear,
Like a ger-falcon's, and declare
A little vixen, void of fear,
Whose text is, “Touch me if you dare!”

And what a figure! Straight and slim,
And bosomed like a frozen wave.
That Gaspard, how I envy him!
There's comfort though;—he'll be your slave.

Last year you might have married me,
I was so taken with your ways,
And been a lady over sea
For the remainder of your days.

But now I see your choice was good.
No dreamer would have satisfied
The cravings of your southern mood;
You would have beat your bars and died.

And this to me is comfort too;—
Each pettish little grace and air,
To wild-eyed wooers ever new,
Wedded a week, were worn threadbare.

129

Be sure 'tis best for both of us
You once have wisdom's armour worn;
And I can write cold verses thus,
A week before your wedding morn.

If you these verses chance to get,
How will you treat them? Who can say?
Perhaps you'll burn them in a pet;
Perhaps you'll whisk a tear away.

But this at least, I'll prophesy:—
That in, at most, a fortnight's time,
You'll whisper with a mock-wet eye,—
“Read, love, the English stranger's rhyme.

“Poor boy! he once was mad with love
For me; how soon men's hearts grow strange!
Alas, I wonder if you'll prove
As faithless and as ripe for change!

“Of course you will! All men are frail
As—” here a kiss will seal your lips,
And my poor verses ride the gale,
Tossed from your scornful finger-tips.

Ah, well-a-day! Good-bye, good-bye!
Who would not, in a week, forget
A lover fonder far than I,
Did she but bear your name, Minette!

130

FOR YOU.

“If he keep pure in will,
Crown him a victor still.”

For you, and not for me
You wrote; be yours the palm as yours the lay.
Somewhere the jubilee
Shall sound some day.

This day-long life men live,
Measures the man by its own paltry rule;
But the Immortals give
Marks to the school.

Then, when the gods are judge,
We first shall learn where the first honour lies
At least, I shall not grudge
You the first prize.

I would not pay my debt
With scant praise of a song; 'tis good to owe
So strike no balance yet;
The debt shall grow.

131

Yet, take this scentless spray
From a poor posy, fain to yield its due,
That had not known a May
Except for you;

And though it last no hour,—
True type therein of all these songs of mine,—
Not less let its white flower
Speak for a sign.

132

ON A FLY-LEAF.

Some poets even puff not their wares to-day.
There are who sing to silence, neither heed
Though the world wreathe no bay
For word or deed;

And such the man whose heart I send you is.
What bird-notes of the children, grave and wild,
Pipe in each song of his,
An older child;

Whose hand, by some clear stream he singeth of,
Old nature clasped in days of childish fears,
And holds with lasting love
Through all the years;

Whom follow yet the mystery and the pain,
And moans that from the lips of life o'erflow,—
“Never to be again!”
“I shall not know!”

133

Him the Guide's gracious presence satiates still;—
“I live alone; Fame is not here,” she saith;
“Go, seek her if you will!”
He stays till death.

The children love him; let the world go by:—
“Love be my crown,” saith he,—“Life's perfect end!”—
I should be happy, I
Who call him friend!

134

TO A FALSE FRIEND.

Well, we have drifted far enough apart
Never to heave a half-regretful sigh,
Nor feel a fiercer throb of pulse or heart,
For glad days, grown a bitter memory
Of silent vows which shame forbore to tell,
Lest each should laugh at him who loved so well.

What parted us? No harsh word hotly said,
Repented and forgiven, ere paled a star;
But cold indifference, gathering to a head
Through voiceless months in city-streets afar.
No news, save random rumours flying down,
Of sunnier-souled and falser friends in town.

God knows how I have striven to keep my grip;
But from your soul, new-steeped in worldly oil
Of time-service, my soul's hands could but slip,
Nor grasp it any more for all their toil.
Go, friend, untracked by ban of mine or blame;
Pride keeps us to the world still friends in name;

135

But on the heavy heart I carry here
Fall hammer-blows of Fate, that weld my will
Into a sapless scorn of vow and tear
From lips and eyes that seem to love me still.
Friend, I could curse you for a life awry,
That dare not trust another till it die.

Go, whither as Fate will; get other friends;
Knead narrower loves and aims into your life;
Work, careless of the means, to soul-cramped ends;
Grow rich and great; marry a stately wife;
But, if your carriage down my street should go,
Drive faster, faster; let me never know!

136

A PHARISEE.

Room for her! Let her pass!
Shrink from her, reeking with gin;
Her touch; her forehead of brass,
Seared with the scrawl of her sin.

See her shuffle along,
In the gutter now, in the road,
With a curse or scrap of a song,
To the kennel she claims for abode.

Damn her with your last look;
Little she knows or cares;
Then back to your banking-book
And hypocritical prayers!

O my friend, my friend,
Your charity fits you well!
Some things will be known in the end!
Who first set her straight for hell?

Many a ripe Eve-apple
You've plucked and tossed to the street;
Now you go to a West-end chapel,
And sit in the uppermost seat.

137

“These things are best forgotten;
Youth will be wild,”—say you?
Ay, but this fruit, found rotten,
In somebody's garden grew.

What if your daughters be taken
In a net like that you spread;—
If they tramp the streets forsaken,
And sleep some night in a shed!

There are laws of compensation,
Depend on it, yet unlearned:
Sharp strokes of retaliation,
Or ever the earth be burned.

God works in no worldly way;
He casts her down to the pit;
He lets you alone to-day;
Some day you will smart for it.

Meanwhile shrink back, let her pass;
Pace proud, grow green with your gall.
There is rest for her; but alas
For you, if your God rules all!

138

GOD'S ACRE.

Sharp sprang the streamers, red and grey,
Amid heaven's wanderers.
'Neath a round moon the low earth lay,
With face as white as hers,
And, gemmed with tears, Night's frosty spears
Stood fringe-wise round the firs.

I, loitering while the clanging bells
Adieu and welcome said,
To far and false sighed sad farewells;
But lilies seemed the dead,
Heaven's winter flowers whose roots are ours,
With our tears waterèd.

I have planted flowers Heaven took, and know
There seems no sadder thing
Than if the bell-flower of our woe,
Grown upward toward the Spring
Of God's delight, forgetteth quite
Who round its stem doth cling.

141

But my dead love, grown to God's air
Where no flower fades or dies,
Draws hence my tears to star her hair;—
If there such pearls they prize,
Then she, I trow, hath rich enow
For all God's paradise!

142

A QUIET HAVEN.

I would my love and I were shrined
In the white stillness of a star;
Set beyond seas of storm and wind
In soundless gulfs afar.

There should no carking rumour shrill
Remembrance of an earthlier day,
Nor envious Time with fingers chill,
Pale golden hair to grey.

There should not he who grips the sword,
Wrought on the ringing forge of Fate,
Shear with his deadly stroke abhorred
Our blissful summer state.

Ah, happy star! ah, golden dream!
While white worlds glimmer in the blue,
Our wings are clogged in Time's dull stream,
And may not soar to you.

Bound, and the wintry waves will rise
O'er breast and gurgling throat and head;
Dark end of all,—stars fade, life dies,
Nor Love can warm the dead.

143

MASKED.

Faint lights and shades that skim the plain,
And in the purple woodland blend,
Are emblems of Love's loss and gain
For you and me, fair friend.

Your soul gives colour to your eyes,
Your face of shifting cloud and sun;
My soul, responsive, takes the guise
Of that it gazes on;

But yours is April, with a sound
Of sobbing rain that spoils the tune,
While mine, beneath its mask, were found
Fierce as a fiery June.

Yet, since your love is of the Spring,
I will not seem to love you more,
Lest, deeming love a light-won thing,
You set by it small store.

But love will ripen, Spring will grow
To steadfast Summer, and the days
That dawned with chequered gloom and glow,
Burst out in cloudless blaze.

144

Till then I but reflect your face,
And echo back each varying tone,
Hiding my rose-heart in its place
Till yours be fuller blown.

145

SONNETS.

147

WAITING.

What mellowing maid shall Time make wife to me?
I do not think we know each other yet,
Or, may-be, on one pavement once we met,
Touched, passed; I thought not of the bond to be.
Stirred in her soul strange prescience,—This is he
Whose hand on mine the marriage-ring shall set?
Did she look back, feeling the sudden fret
O' the soul upon its walls of mystery?

O destined bride I dream of half the day,
Do you dream of the destined bridegroom too?
Then our dreams meet in dreamland's dawnless grey,
And straight grow one as here our hearts shall do.
Whirl swiftly, Time, her single hours away,
For I shall soon be over-old to woo!

148

TWENTY-ONE.

I.

O little sister, not so long ago
The Bible names were giants in your path,
Terrible as to Israel he of Gath,
Whom yet you, pigmy, learned to overthrow.
Hardly you reach my shoulder now, tiptoe.
That trustful, wondering look which a child hath
In limpid eyes unvexed of the world's scathe,
Says plain as words, “I am a child's, you know!”

Why, only now the dolls began to grieve,
Imprisoned where, before, the puzzles stood.
I vow I think you stole there yester-eve
To bribe them with caresses to be good:
Yet, for all this, you try to make believe
That vou to-day are crowned with womanhood!

149

II.

Ah me, what woes were yours, what tears you shed!
Still by sick dolls for ever would you sit;
The cat, quick-tempered Tom, would scratch and spit,
Because my sweet must take it still to bed.
Once real sorrow, may-be, when o'erhead
Voices were ever low and lights long lit:
The room where, with a coffin crowding it,
They showed the child a mother lying dead.

But you have grown and left these griefs behind
With Youth, who will not let his burdens last.
Since you will be a woman, you will find
That troubles never more will fade so fast.
O world who hath given her memories fair and kind,
Deal with her Future lightly as with her Past!

150

III.

A woman! and you laugh with stately glee,
And I laugh with you, such a jest it is
To think you have become too old to kiss,
And with unstudied words no longer free.
A woman! you have nothing more to be:
Men may be statesmen, schoolmen, that or this,
Each greater by the honour that is his;
But “woman” is a woman's one degree.

Nay though, not quite! Look upward, little one!
Why should your eyes such thoughts untold retain?
Yes, in your head I guess what fancies run,
Already of a higher title fain:—
You would be wife before the days be done,
And see your daughters dress the dolls again.

151

IV.

What thoughts shall maidens have on days like these?
God knows that mine are always sad enough!
To think my joys are of such subtle stuft
As, shrivelling somehow, fades to memories:
To think what burdens bring men to the knees,
And hold them there in flinty ways and rough;
How choose the work there is such surfeit of,
To help the worn-out world unto some peace?

But do not chide; you need no sermon fear:
With no grave words your birthday shall be vexed.
And yet, my maid, if you will deign to hear,
Take with your life begun this saw for text:—
Only the work is noble which is near,
And after, that is noble which is next.

152

V.

Stand silent, with meek hands against the side,—
Nay, do not pout,—and hear your fortune told.
Deem me a Gipsy woman brown and bold,
Whose nimble wit more than you think has spied,—
Hoards a week's whispers ere her craft be plied,
And needs not that her hand be crossed with gold.
Oh, she tells fortunes rarely, and hath sold
Philtres ere now to win a wished-for bride!

“You have a hundred lovers; one is true,
And in the house of life your stars have met.
Ah, he would cross all stormiest seas for you,
And sends these songs to pay a birthday debt.”
White witch, begone! She reads her fortune through!—
Does the world guess you're not my sister yet?

153

VI.

New sister of all women, none of mine,
Who would be more to you than brothers may,
Let this best birthday be your bridal day
Of heart and troth, whereto our lips shall sign.
What, ere the Gipsy came, did you divine?
Ah, little witch, to guess long months away
That, of my soul, Love had some word to say
Which you would hear of! Well your eyes might shine!

And now in turn you shall my fortune tell.
Sweet love, whose head such myriad fancies share,
You know the divination of the well,
And how the loved face at a lover's prayer
Shines upward? In mine eyes essay the spell,
For I must love the face that mirrors there!

154

TWENTY-TWO.

I.

A year ago I sent six songs to you:
Six heart-beats there you heard who read them well;—
Six long vibrations of a birthday bell,
Which, ere they passed, in marriage music drew
Strange echoes out of heaven, till all the blue
Throbbed to the echoing strain that rose and fell,
And every wind had the same tale to tell,
Or so it seemed, and every leaflet knew.

Then to your heart such sense of terror crept
As Eve had, who for joy of her new life,
Danced 'mid the flowers upon her youngest morn,
When out of the blind bower where he slept
The man, awakening, heard, and called her “Wife,”
And love and dread into her world were born.

155

II.

The knell of your last maiden year to-day
Rings in mine ears, like some strange voice that thrills
The frost-time of the iron-hearted hills,
With the first threat of Spring not far away.
Now flame the clearer dawns across the grey,
And the dull east with golden glory fills,
And my heart leaps, as leap the loosened rills,
With pulses of thawed wells and nearing May.

Lo, you white years, to whom she hath given such grace,
Whom her fair life threads like a perfect tune,
I pray you say “Good-morrow,” and be gone,
For now your golden brethren near apace,
And, while in heaven dwindles the harvest moon,
Your perfect maid her wedding wreath hath on!

156

III.

I cannot send you birthday songs this year;
My heart outstrips the days of ripening grain,
Wherein your years complete their loss and gain,
And yearns in dreams the harvest shout to hear
A long moon later, when the fields are clear,
And the last corn-sheaf tops the rumbling wain;
My marriage hymn blends with their harvest-strain,
And in my life love's harvest-time is near.

Straying to-night across such golden fields,
Fast-ripening now, sick with expectancy,
My heart sheds songs to hail your birthday morn,
But of its own fierce dye are all it yields.
When we go reaping, do not start to see
So many seeming poppies 'mid the corn.

157

IV.

It must be strange to her, my heart conceives,—
A maiden in her little sphere of love,
Round whom, like stars, brothers and sisters move
Through the hushed still of settled Summer eves,—
When one, still scarcely known, predestined, weaves
A wily net to snare the nestling dove,
Or lures her forth through the rough world to rove.
Yet for his look her girlhood's home she leaves;—

Leaves to a mist of tears in longing eyes,
While only she can smile and seem content,
Who loseth all, but winneth him she would;
For now her face fastens on fairer skies,
And shadowy orbits in the distance bent,
Where soon fresh stars may ring her womanhood.

158

V.

You come to live with strangers; those you know,
Old friends, dear kinsfolk, soon will seem no more
Than phantoms of some fleeting fairy shore
You touched on once in dreams, that gleam and go.
Not long their looks shall keep the after-glow,
Nor long ev'n I shall tarry as before,
And no new life can the changed world restore,
For this is life—a tide without a flow.

What, shall I change? Ay, love, and more than all;
My face will wear more wrinkled than the sea,
My hair be wintered ere your youth be done,
My fruit-tree wither ere your blossom fall,
But, at my heart, yours hath such hold of me,
That, in Love's eyes, we still shall count for one.

159

VI.

Yet this will grow your very home ere long,
Rich with the rounds of joys that never cease,
As year by year Love's harvest-crops increase;
And, as our roots in the strange soil grow strong,
Old friends and new around our hearths shall throng,
And twilight chambers teem with memories;
Last, gold-haired, happy children climb your knees,
And croon to mother in their baby-song.

And I, whose home waits for its queen to be,
Who sing the birth-song of your crowning year,
Who sing the love-song of the life to come,—
I who shall live beside your heart and see,
Lest my heart burst with gladness or Death hear,
Shall laugh to see you happy, and be dumb.

160

FAITHLESSNESS.

(Two Phases.)

I.

Now branch the roads; your hand, long held in mine,
Sadly, yet sharply here is drawn away,
As one whose wiser heart constrains to stay,
Whose fate impels across the border line,
Thither, where mellow marriage-tapers shine,
And gathering guests chafe at the hour's delay.
Break hands and go; heed not my thoughts to-day;
Do not yon maids for thee that garland twine?

How rich we are! We share the worlds anew;
Take earth and heaven; leave me at least the hells.
How poor we are! You have thoughts to cling to you;
I, thoughts to madden, and your last farewells,
And a blind song my brain beats cadenceto,—
Would I hear first her death or wedding bells?

161

II.

Sweet Spring were this, if half its dreams came true.
One timid tender blossom found most fair,
Twin born with dreams, I tend with subtlest care
Far out of sight,—an orange-blossom too,—
Till, in my maiden's eyes a strange soft dew
Sometime makes bold my heart to hers to unbare,
And hers unfolds a sister-blossom there.
Not yet she guesses: First I tell it you!

But ah! I have small faith in flowers of May,
Nor think vows bind the bloom with one breath strown;
For still, in poets' hearts, it is the way
For many a love to wither ere 'tis grown;
And still my heart, that woos this maid to-day,
Finds, oft, to-morrow waiting with its own.

162

CUCKOO.

This year I have not heard the cuckoo call,
For Winter's offspring, when their father fell,
Rose ruthless at the ringing of his knell,
And hounded Spring with many a shrieking squall
And rime and rheum through garden, grove, and dell;
Pinched every bursting blossom on the wall,
Shut back each hyacinth-heart into its bell,
And whelmed the buds with birthday funeral.

Come, Cuckoo, make a spring-time of thine own!
Thy wistful woodnote shall unthrall the year,
Wake the wan doves since May is maiden-grown,
Strew golden lily-buds about the weir,
And star its green bank beds with eyes of blue:
Cuckoo, our Spring and Summer wait for you!

163

HOLIDAYS.

Hear ye, whose lives along the ridge of toil
Crawl through a dull monotony of days;
Who, with your factories' smoke and forges' blaze,
Clatter and clang, and endless whirl and broil,
Stamp blistering footprints in the virgin soil,
And dull each sense long ere the life decays:—
The drudge works better for his hour of grace;
Ye snap at last, who tighten still the coil.

And Nature dwells in reach of narrowest means,
And woos her weariest children to her rest.
Track to their heads the streams that work your mills:
Will ye grow mockeries of your own machines,
While the kind mother hath a woodland nest
In every cleft and wrinkle of your hills?

164

QUI PALMAM MERUIT.

Take hence the golden scroll of deeds sublime;
This is no roll of heroes: private hate
Sped oft the thrust that freed a fettered State.
Anon, the strangling needs that cursed the time
Anointed cowards or ennobled crime.
For Fame's sake half the martyrs sought their fate.
How many stumbled on the thing called great,
Or deemed the deed predestined from the prime?

Be his the palm who sees the need arise,
And, since none other will, for others' gain
Sets hands unto the task, because it lies
Within the compass of his heart and brain.
Writ in the mighty roll of winds and skies,
About his head Heaven's wreaths shall fall like rain!

165

CODRUS.

January, 1877.

“Let not the king of Athens' life be shed,”
Spake Delphi to the Dorians. So their raid
Poised on Ilissus until dawn, afraid
Of harm to Codrus. Some the horses led
To water. Came a clown;—“This river-bed
Ye shall not foul!”—died on a Dorian blade.
Next morn Athenians came, glad mourners made;
“Yield us the body of our king,” they said.

His monument,—in Athens no more kings,
Lest the name tarnish. Strange heroic breed!
Well may your age have half a fable grown,
For now the tide o' the world all counter swings,
And we may see, anon, a million bleed
To prop a palsied despot's tottering throne.

166

THE SOUL STITHY.

My soul, asleep between its body-throes,
Was watching curiously a furnace glare,
And breastless arms that wrought laborious there,—
Power without plan, wherefrom no purpose grows,—
Welding white metal on a forge with blows,
Whence streamed the singing sparks like flaming hair,
Which whirling gusts ever abroad would bear:
And still the stithy hammers fell and rose.

And then I knew those sparks were souls of men,
And watched them driven like starlets down the wind.
A myriad died and left no trace to tell;
An hour like will-o'-the-wisps some lit the fen;
Now one would leave a trail of fire behind:
And still the stithy-hammers rose and fell.

167

A SPOT IN THE SUN.

The four walls of God's banquet-chamber bright,
Built of a myriad ranks of wide-spread wings,
Glowing as with the glory of full-pulsed springs,
When smitten with the sunbeam of His sight,
And overhead, the silent roofless height,
Rang now with sevenfold shawms and trumpetings,
For that high seven of heavy-sworded kings,
Who bare last eve the brunt of vanward fight.

But, ere the thunder rolled into the chasm
Of soundless space, a trailing shape o'erhead
Froze that proud pæan of victorious breath.
God, in that hour fell first on Thee the spasm
That stays with us, seeing, unbidden shed
Upon Thy festal day the shadow of Death!

168

THE WORLD'S DEATH-NIGHT.

I think a stormless night-time shall ensue
Unto the world, yearning for hours of calm.
Not these the end,—nor sudden-closing palm
Of a God's hand beneath the skies we knew,
Nor fall from a fierce heaven of fiery dew
In place of the sweet dewfall, the world's balm,
Nor swell of elemental triumph-psalm
Round the long-buffeted bulk, rent through and through.

But in the even of its endless night,
With shoreless floods of moonlight on its breast,
And baths of healing mist about its scars,
An instant sums its circling years of flight,
And the tired earth hangs crystalled into rest,
Girdled with gracious watchings of the stars.

169

CHRISTMAS.

The round world hangs 'mid Christmas stars her sphere;
She counts their choirs; no loss nor change they show;
But round our hearths old friends, perplexed and slow,
Gaze each on each, grown foreign in a year.
Then one will wonder, “Why are all not here?
Of old they did not honour Christmas so.”
One tells him: “They are dead; did you not know?”
Nor asks of others lest like news he hear.

Yet to keep merry Christmas we are willed.
This year, as last, all blue the lights shall burn,
And 'mid the fun snap-dragon fires be spilled,
And steaming punch-bowls subtle fragrance spurn,
Though ever empty chairs divide the filled,
And solemn phantoms pledge the guests in turn.

170

OUR OLD SELVES.

Another birthday! How the years have flown!
I found you first scarce weaned from childly ways,
Reining a frolic soul to statelier grace
Of speech and carriage. Now, full woman grown,
Governed of Reason, set on the soul's throne,
You have no hint for me of the old days.
Remembering them, I stand in still amaze
To see you, nun-like, proud to sit alone.

I, too, as one who knows not in his glass
The face that wore no wrinkles formerly,
Start, strangely changed to other than I was,
And hardly guess what ghost waves hands to me.
Life's issues, coiling closer as years pass,
Crowd its beginnings out of memory.

171

ANT-HILLS.

To-day, when I had dreamed of loneliness,
Round me uncounted presences I feel.
Turn but a stone, and unroofed streets reveal
A people, multifold with life's excess,
Dowered with various instincts, arts, address,
Yet linked in labour for the common weal.
I think the crowded ant-hill must conceal
An equal life to mine in all these less.

To some lone angel puzzling out our life
Perchance ev'n we a perfect unit grow,
His peer, to break the silence of his road;
And of His worlds, embroiled in seething strife,
God's eye doth catch the rhythmic pause and flow,
Yet marks each pigmy, busy with his load.

172

A CAIRN.

I, singer, ere I grow unmusical,
Sing now the last lay I have heart to sing;
Glad for my life of love-time that was Spring,
Of labour that is Summer-tide and Fall;
Nor much adread of death, earned rest of all,
Save of the death of no remembering:
I crown my cairn, each stone a song, and bring
All of my life I love for burial.

What relics for the men, my after-peers,
Who search my cairn to make the spoil their own?
Ghosts of their dreams, the fragrance of their tears,
Twins of the thoughts each fancied his alone;
The passions, pains, desires of their dead years;
The stamp of a man's heart on every stone.