The Poetical Works of John Payne :: :: University of Virginia Library

I love the grey old City's storied walls.
Not all the glare and turmoil of the day,
The hum and whirl of commerce in the streets,
Can dim for me the light of old romance,
That gilds its hoary monuments and towers.
I love to see the quiet dignity
With which, when work is done and night draws on
And all the din of footsteps fades away,
It shakes from off its flanks the ebbing tide
Of busy life, slips off the glare of day,
Wraps round its walls the mantle of the past
And settles back to its historic calm,
As if no break divided its long rest.
And ever, in the golden calm of eve,
When the clear sky grows dim toward the dusk,
Its streets for me are thick with memories,
Stately and sweet and sorrowful. I hear
The feet of Sidney echo on the stones
And see, in silence, noble Raleigh's face,
Pale with long prison, peer from out the bars
Upon a shadowy crowd. But not alone
My fancy dwells upon the peopled past.
I have no taint of that unlovely scorn
Which sees no beauty save in things long dead,
No sweetness in the world we live amongst.

I feel that, in the new as in the old,
Great deeds are possible, heroic lives
Lived nobly and true deaths died faithfully,
And please myself to find out quiet flowers,
That have bloomed bravely in the City smoke,
And souls whose clear eternal Spring of love
Has made their thought immortal. Many such,
Unknown to fame, have blossomed, lived and died,
Quiet dull lives, whose course the peace of God
Has, as the sky on broad, unrippled streams,
Filled with reflected heaven. Such a life,
Uncelebrate and sweet, my memory holds
Within its holiest casket, as one lays
A graven gem in velvet. One, whose path
Of years I love to follow, all his life
Dwelt in the City's dim and sunless shade
And there, from early youth to quiet death,
Worked hardly at dull toil for daily bread.
One of those earnest, tender-hearted men
We find sometimes among hard-handed folk,
Whose souls' mute poetry, expressionless,
Is hidden by the sameness of their lives,
To him God's world was one great fairy tale,
As sad and sweet as such tales use to be.
With heart too large to hold aught else but love,
He had but few to love. The delicate
And shrinking clearness of his mental sense
Held him aloof from those who shared his task
And he was lonely in the world of men.
His soul was full of sweet and tender doubt.
Across the hum and whirl of toil he oft
Looked, with mute wistfulness, at that great world
Of fame and action which, thus seen afar,
Was lovely to him as the rainbow is,
That is our symbol of unreal hope;
And there were times when he would grieve to think
He could not serve God in some nobler way.

He felt a barrier lay 'twixt him and it,
A wall of crystal, that he might not pass;
And so he did but yearn and to his work
Turned dumbly. Yet the chrism of his love
Rounded his life-work to ideal shape,
Unknown to him, and all his heart was full
Of such a deep and sweet humanity,
His life grew fragrant with the inner soul;
And weary folk, who passed him in the streets,
Saw Christ's love beam from out the wistful eyes
And had new confidence in God and man.
And so he worked and longed and lived and loved,
Did noble deeds, unknowing what he did,
Thought noble thoughts, unconscious of their worth,
And lived that greatness he desired in vain.
One friend he had, as poor as he, perchance,
But rich in hope; one of those wide-souled men
Whose natural mission seems the cure of souls,
Lark-hearted, with a native trick of song,
He looked on all with clear and hopeful eyes
And with a thinker's austere tenderness,
Tried all things in the crucible of thought.
He loved the gentle humble-minded man
And had long drawn from him his secret soul
As tenderly as Spring draws primrose-blooms
From the young earth. And once, when they had talked
Awhile together and some chance had turned
The converse on the worker's long desire,
The other rose and pacing up and down,
Said to his friend, “Had you told Hafiz this,
The poet who brought down the golden sun
And with it made his verses glad and bright,
He might have answered somewhat on this wise,
Veiling, as was his wont, the barb of thought
Under the wreathing blooms of metaphor.”
Then he took up his parable and spoke.

“A lily grew upon the plains of Fars

And drank the living radiance of the sun
And fed her fill upon those golden dews
That Persian poets call the tears of God.
About her lay a paradise of sweets.
Narcissus-cups and stately amaranths
And many another gorgeous Eastern flower
Hid the brown earth with rainbow-coloured blooms:
And now and then, when the light morning breeze
Inclined the lily's stalk toward the dim
Horizon's golden marge, the regal bloom
Of roses met her vision and she knew
Their scent upon the perfumed winds of heaven,
Wherewith the evening cooled the glowing plains.
But she herself stood on a little hill,
Unmated and alone, a stretch of sand
Parting her from the crowd of kindred blooms.
Great grief to her this was; it seemed as if
Her place had been forgotten in the plan
And she alone could have no part in God
Nor work for Nature, as her comrades did.
The distant hum of some small neighbouring towns,
Where afar off dwelt sparsely-scattered men,
Came to her, sweetened by the breath of flowers.
At times she heard the tinkling camel-bells,
Sparkles of sound upon a murmurous sea,
And her heart yearned to grow toward the world
And take her share of duty with the rest.
And with the yearning brighter grew her bloom
And richer waxed the fragrance of her breath,
Until the air was filled with that sweet scent,
The soul and essence of desireful love;
And from afar the perfume of the flower
Was wafted unto many a toiling man,
So that he felt refreshed and comforted
And said, “What angel hovers in the air?
I smell the almond-blooms of Paradise.”
So sweet it was that, over all the rest,

An angel, hovering o'er the neighbouring flowers,
Caught the unearthly fragrance, which recalled
To him the odorous balms of his own heaven;
Then, nestling in the lily's cup, he felt
The stir of yearning at its fragrant heart
And comprehending, with the skill of love,
All that lay hidden in its candid soul,
‘Take heart,’ said he, ‘white lily. God is sweet
And life that is not sweet has little God.
Who thinks a life, unstirred by sounding deeds
And void of settled aim save love and peace,
Is dutiless, knows little of the links
Of purpose that conjoin all natural things.
Life is lived less in action than in thought
And all its aims are summarised in love.
Thou givest all thyself. Can God give more?
Would'st thou give more than God, love more than Love?
Be comforted; thou hast the praise of God.’
And the white flower was sorrowful no more.”

II.AN IDYLL OF THE PLAGUE.

(A. D. 1866.)

A stretch of river broadening to the sea;
Long tracts of marsh and sandy-bottomed shore,
Through which the full tide, in the evening light,
Glistens, broad-mirrored, and with liberal flow,
Laps o'er the marge its lavish liquid gold:
Sunset-enlightened sky, clear with the fires
Of dying day and in the faint far blue,
Gold-glinting spires and rosy-tinted white
Of roofs, where sleeps the little seaside town:
Upon the eager, seaward running flood,

A stately vessel, gay with glistering flags
And brilliant with the snow of stainless sails,
That blossom out along their pine-stem spires,
Rocks in the light breath of the coming wind:
And on the shore three figures, in whose eyes
The grief of parting dims the golden blink
Of sunset and the rosy-purple glow
Of clouds that float upon the western haze.
A woman, clad as women use to be
Who, poor, are yet not needy, to whose lot
Some share of ease has fallen, and two girls,
Her daughters, one fifteen, the other twelve;
All with sad faces turned toward the ship
And eyes that strive to hold her back with looks.
Awhile the wistful sorrow of their gaze
Seems gifted with some strange magnetic force;
For still the light breeze puffs and dies away
And the loose sails flap idly 'gainst the masts.
At last, the faint breaths freshen into wind
And the smooth current ripples to its kiss.
Some white thing flutters from the deck; the sails
Bend slowly to the breezes and the ship
Glides, with the tide-flow, past the line of foam,
That marks the river's boundary, and so
Into the rougher waters of the main.
A little while, their eyes, who watch from shore,
Strained to the utmost, follow, in her course,
The hastening ship, that bears their dearest one
Into the western distance; then the glow
Fades from the track of the departed sun;
The glints of light upon the distant crests
Die slowly and the sunned snow of the sails
Sinks, with the dying day, into the dusk.

Then, back again, with aching hearts, they turned
To where, within the smoke-enshrouded heart
Of the great town they lived, amidst a maze
Of narrow tortuous streets, that wound about

The region of the docks and ran along
The river ramparted with many a wharf.
All day the hum and roar of traffic whirled
About the place and even in the night
The air was full of noise: across the streets
Huge waggons toiled and patient labouring hacks
Tugged mighty burdens up the long steep lanes.
Three rooms they had, poor, but yet not without
Some touch of grace and comfort to conceal
Their poverty. The place was bright and warm
With gorgeous shells and corals, red and gold,
Rose-pink and pearly, that the husband's care
And father's thought had brought as memories
Of cruises in the wondrous southern seas;
And spangled foreign birds, that once had hopped
And chirrupped 'mid the palm and banian boughs,
In the clear air of golden-stranded isles,
Under the blue of rainbow-flowered skies,
With their emblazoned plumage, emerald
And gold and purple, lighted up the place
With an unreal unfamiliar air
Of foreign splendour. Very dear to them,
For whom long use had sanctified its walls
And love had lent its very poverty
A beauty of its own, the dwelling was,—
To them, who never in their lives, perhaps,
Had seen a field of cowslips all in bloom
Nor gathered violets in the early spring;
For love did hallow for them all mean things
And gilded City smoke with hope and peace.
Long had they dwelt there, many quiet years,
The oft-recurring pangs of waiting fear
And doubt as oft forgotten in the bright
Alternate joy of meeting and the rare
Short sudden sweetness of the dear one's stay,
Year after year, with these that were his all.
This time a longer voyage had he gone,

Into the gold of Polynesian seas;
And grave forebodings had made sad the hearts
Of wife and children: for their fearful love,
True-womanly, saw nought but certain ill
In the unknown. They shuddered at the tales
Of fierce sea-monsters, that old sailors told,
And all their yarns of horror and affright
About that false Pacific, whose clear blue
Seethes at the heart with unsuspected storms,
And pictured to themselves their sailor tossed,
Helpless, upon the hungry pitiless waves
Or struggling in the jaws of some foul shark,
Whilst the clear deep ran crimson with his blood.
In vain had he, who had small thought of fear,
Save for his dear ones, striven to divert
Their fears to quiet hope's expectancy,
With tales of all the wonders and delights,
That lay within that coral-hearted main,
And all the golden-fronded palms, that spread
Their waving fans toward the roseate heaven,
And promises of strange and lovely things,
The magic spoils of Nature's fairyland,
From that rich treasury of emerald isles,
He meant to bring with him on his return.
'Twas all in vain, he could not ease their hearts
Of that deep-seated longing, which foretold
Some vague calamity, as summer air
Is big with thunder, though the sky seem clear.
And so, a little while, when he was gone,
They went about their work all listlessly;
But soon the ancient wont came to their aid
And they fell back into the olden groove
Of quiet expectation and resigned.
They did not let confessed inquietude
Disturb the eventless current of their lives,
Spent in hard work, with little time for doubt:
But yet the seedlets of that brooding fear,

Whose vague unrest they even to themselves
Acknowledged not, lay latent in their hearts,
Ready to burst into a deadly flower,
When hap should will it. Onward went the days
And now the time began to draw toward
The ending of their fears. Two years, not more,
(Had he assured them) would have filled their span,
Before the “Kelpie” should again ascend
The river and cast anchor in the docks
And he again should press them to his heart.
The expected day passed by, and then a week,
A month and many weary, weary months;
And still they had no tidings of the ship.
As yet they had no thought of wreck or death;
The thought was far too awful to be thought,
—God could not be so cruel,—till, at last,
Well nigh a year beyond the rightful time,
When he, according to his word, again
Should have set foot within their ready doors,
They read a brief note in some journal's coign,
Which said, the ship, now twelve months overdue,
Had not for long been heard of (Oh, how cold
And bloodless seemed the formal printed words,
That were so fateful to them!) and 'twas feared
She had, with all her crew, gone down at sea;
And this seemed the more probable (it said)
That some, who held like course, had, far from land,
Picked up a board from off a vessel's stern,
That bore, in half-obliterated words,
The name of “Kelpie”. Yet 'twas possible
She had been stranded on some distant isle
Of many, that were known to stud those seas,
Innumerous, and many of the crew,
If not the whole, might still be living there,
Mayhap detained by savages or else
Devoid of means to leave the island shore,
Their boats all shattered by the self-same storm

That might have wrecked the ship. A straw of hope,
To which they clung, as only women cling,
When those they love are hoped for. So they lived,
Still thinking he could not be lost to them
And looking ever for his near return.
The months went by and still no tidings came
And still they watched and longed for him and hoped
A hopeless hope, more anguishful than fear.
Meantime, the money he had left with them,
To fend them from privation and avert
The grim necessity of ceaseless toil
For scanty bread, though hoarded with close care,
Was all expended and the stern, hard times
Exacted labour far beyond their wont.
One after one the little luxuries
And fanciful adornments, that the lost
Had gathered with such loving care for them,
Were bartered for bare food, and naked walls
Joined with wan looks to make the place look drear,
That erst had worn so homely bright an air.
Stern want began to pinch their toiling souls
And harder and yet harder grew the times,
Until unceasing labour scarce could earn
Sufficient food to hold the weary souls
Within the spare starved bodies. Hollow-eyed
And gaunt, mere spectres of their former selves,
They could have been contented, whilst the hope,
That had so long sustained them, stayed with them.
But now four years had passed and every chance
Seemed gone for them; and slowly hope died out
And one great gloom of unillumined pain
Shrouded the bitter struggle of their lives.

One night, as, cowered o'er the scanty fire,
With weary eyes bent on the pitiless work,
They toiled, with hearts from which hard use had chased
All feeling save a horrible dull pain
And (God be thanked) all-blest undying love,

The youngest girl let fall her half-done work
And laying down her yet all-childish head
Upon her mother's bosom, faintly said,
“Mother, forgive me; I can work no more;
My heart is sick with pain.” And so was dead.

Thus had death blotted from their book of life
Its Alpha and Omega, first and last,
Father and youngest child, and there were left
But two poor women, sorrow-struck and wan,
All lonely with each other in the world.
Left by themselves to breast the pitiless world,
Nearer and nearer drew their faithful hearts
And brighter burned their mutual love (half pain),
As harder grew the misery and the toil.
And now the June of the fifth year was come
And vague forebodings hovered in the air
Of coming horrors. From the distant East,
Each mail bore tidings how the Indian shores
Lay prostrate in the grasp of that fell plague,
That had some dozen years before laid waste
All Europe with the hell-wind of its breath:
And as the summer waned, the time grew fierce
With heat scarce known in England and the pest
Flew nearer through the neighbouring continents.
Foul mists began to hover o'er the town,
Significant of coming pestilence,
And weird miasmas in the dead of night
Rose from the river's rank and sweltering flood
And wrapped the sleepers in their fell embrace.
And gradually folk heard of awful deaths,
Unknown to ordinary summer-time;
And men said “Cholera”, with bated breath,
And laid their hands upon each other's lips,
As if they feared the pest would hear its name
And come as if invoked to come. At length,
September came, and with it came the plague.
Into fell life the hidden germs of death

Leapt with an awful swiftness and the air
Was deadly with the poison of their breath.
Folk died like sheep and every workhouse hole
Was crammed to overflowing with the dead.
The sextons could not do their dismal work
Swiftly enough: the dead outstripped the live
And arms that plied the spade grew numb with toil.
Day after day up rose the pitiless sun
And rained down flame on the deserted streets:
Strong men dropped smitten in the open ways
And funerals choked the city's avenues.
All round them died, in hundreds, of the plague,
The gaunt, half-starved poor folk; women and men
And children fell to death the easier prey,
That they could scarce be said to live; and soon
The wave of pestilence swept over them.

One evening, from her work the mother came
Back to the one poor room still left to them,
Where sat the daughter and her scanty meal
Awaited her return, and staggering in,
Fell down upon the bed, with trembling hands
And nerveless limbs. Her eyes were wild and glazed
And all her aspect to her child too well
Revealed the fatal symptons of the plague.
But, when her daughter strove to raise her up
And tend her with the fearlessness of love,
She started up with a despairing strength
And with death written in her flaming eyes,
Conjured the girl to “let her die alone
And save herself. She must not touch her now;
She had the pest;” and strove to fend her off
From nearing her. But she (so strong is love)
Said, “Mother, you are all I have on earth:
For me life is not glad, and without you,
'Twere worthless. Please God, if He bid you die,
I will die with you. Nay, you could not have
The heart to die without me and to leave

Me quite deserted in this dreary world!
We have too long been one in misery
And love, for God to part our love in death.”
So saying, round her mother's thin worn neck
Her arms she threw and drew her burning head
To its old refuge on her faithful breast.
The morning came and found them still so clasped,
Sleeping the fitful sleep of feveredness.
All day they lay, in helpless agony,
Unnoticed and alone; for they who lived
Around them had no aid to waste on them,
Being well nigh as stricken as themselves;
And darkness came and found them sick to death.
The weary hours went by and still they lay
In death-like silence, till the gloom of night
Began to blend into the gray of morn;
And then the daughter turned and feebly cried,
With failing voice, “Mother!” And she who, dumb
With agony, grew stiff in the death-trance,
(O mighty effort of immortal love!)
Lifted her arms, already stark with death,
And strained her daughter closer to her heart.
A little while they lay and then again
The daughter spoke; “Mother, are you asleep?
I feel so weary, yet not now in pain:
I think this must be death; I seem to see
Father at last again. Kiss me once more,
For the last time;” and feebly strove to press
Her pallid lips to those belovéd ones,
Where all her love was centred, and to rouse
The torpid senses to some feeble spark
Of animation. But the mother lay
Moveless and stiff in death and she herself
Already felt the angel of the plague
Draw with chill finger-tips the film of death
Over her eyes. The dawn came creeping up
The eastern sky and gradually the hand

Of friendly death relaxed the pain-strung mouth
Into a smile of peace; the lids dropped down
And the wan features settled into rest.

Suddenly footsteps sounded on the stair;
The door flew open and a sun-bronzed man,
Haggard and toil-worn, burst into the room,
With mingled hope and fear inscribed upon
His eager face. The naked walls first caught
His gaze: where erst he had been wont to see
Comfort and plenty, all too plainly showed
Despair and want. And then his haggard eyes
Fell on the two dead women on the bed,
That lay, yet warm, clasped in each other's arms,
Unseparate in death as in their lives;
And with an awful cry of agony,
He fell upon his knees and hid his face
Against the coverlet. A moment passed,
Dumb with undying pain; and then a sob,
Big with the dead hope of five weary years,
Broke up out of his breast, too fiercely strained
With agony to yield its woe in tears;
And with that one sob burst in twain his heart.
The dawn crept on; and when the neighbours came,
Hearing no stir, as there was wont to be
For early morning toil, to know the cause
(Too well suspecting, in that awful time,
What was the cause) of the unwonted calm,
They found him dead by his belovéd dead,
Whilst blue broke day across the Eastern hills
And the glad sun rained gold upon the earth.

III.QUIA MULTUM AMAVIT. )

JUST a drowned woman, with death-draggled hair
And wan eyes, all a-stare;
The weary limbs composed in ghastly rest,
The hands together prest,
Tight holding something that the flood has spared
Nor even the rough workhouse folk have dared
To separate from her wholly, but untied
Gently the knotted hands and laid it by her side.

A piteous sight,—yet not without some sign
Of handiwork divine;
Some faint, mysterious traces of content
About the brows, unbent
At last from toil and misery,— some mark
Of child-like, tired composure in the stark,
Wan features, on whose calm there is imprest
At last the seal of rest.

See, she was fair,—and now she's rid of strife,
She's comelier than in life;
For death has smoothed the tresses of her hair
And stroked the lines of care,
With no ungentle hand, from off her brow.
She seems at peace at last,—no matter how.
Death has been angel-sweet to her tired soul;
She has no need of dole.

You know her story? Just the sad, old tale,
Whose victims never fail!
Common enough and mean, but yet not quite
Without its gleam of light;
Not all devoid of some redeeming spark
Of nobleness to lighten its grim dark.
You turn away. You've heard of many such?
“She was so wicked!” But she loved so much.

I tell you, this poor woman you despise,
From whom you turn your eyes,
Loved with an ardour, side by side with which
Our lives, so seeming rich
In virtues and in grandeurs, fade away
Into the dusk, as night before the day.
Yet of her life you fear to hear me tell.
“She was so wicked!” But she loved so well.

You saw the portrait taken from her grasp,
Stiffened in Death's cold clasp?
Two little children, poorly clad and plain,
Sun-scorched and worn with pain,
Wan with mean cares, too early for their years,
Their child-eyes eager with unchildish fears
And sordid, bitter yearnings. “But a smutch!”
You say. “And after all it's nought to me
What was her life and what her hopes might be.
She was so wicked!” Oh, she loved so much!

True, a mere daub, whereon the beneficent sun
Has written, in faint, dun,
Unbeauteous lines, a hard and narrow life,
Wherein dull care was rife
And little thought of beauty or delight
Relieved the level blackness of the night:
And yet I would not change those pictured two
For all the cherubs Raphael ever drew.

Two little faces, plain enough to you,
Nothing of bright or new;
Such faces as one meets amongst each crowd,
Sharp-visaged and low-browed;
And yet to her, her picture-books of heaven,
The treasuries from which the scanty leaven,
Wherewith she stirred her poor mean life to joy,
Was drawn,—pure gold for her without alloy.

They were her all, and by no sacred tie,
No pure maternity.
To her the name of wife had been denied;
In sin she lived and died.
She was an outlaw from the pale of right
And yet there was that in her had such might,
That she would not have shamed our dear Lord Christ.
She loved and that sufficed.

They were her shame and pride, her hope and fear,
To her how dreadly dear
We scarce can feel. You happy, virtuous wives,
Whose quiet, peaceful lives
Flow on, unstirred by misery or crime,
Can have no thought how high these souls can climb
For love; with what a weird, unearthly flame
These wretched mothers love their babes of shame;
How they can suffer for them, dull and mean
As they may seem, and sell their souls to screen
Their darlings, dealing out their hearts' best blood,
Drop after drop, to buy them daily food.

And so for years she toiled for them, as none
Could ever toil, save one
Who had nought else to care for, night and day,
Until her hair grew gray
With labour such as souls in Dante's hell
Might have been bound to, and with fiends as fell
To act as her taskmasters and compel
The poor, thin fingers;—yet was honest still
For many a weary day and night, until
She found, with aching heart and pain-crazed head,
Her toil could not suffice to earn her children bread.

They were her all; and she, ground down by want,
With hollow eyes and gaunt,
Saw but their misery, small beside her own,
Heard but their hungry moan,
Could not endure their piteous looks and sold
Herself to infamy, to warm their cold,
To feed their hunger and assuage their thirst,
Not hers. And yet, folk say, she is accurst!

Cruel as fate was, there was yet in store
More pain for her and more
Fierce anguish. Famine and the plague combined,

In league with her own kind,
To steal from her her one source of content,
The one faint gleam of higher things, that blent
Its glimmer with her life's unbroken grey;
The one pale star, that turned her night to day,
Sank in the chill of death's delivering wave,
Extinguished in the grave.

Not even the omnipotence of Love
Had power to rise above
The sullen stern unpitying sweep of Fate,
That left her desolate.
O wretched mother! Wretched time of ours!
When all enlightenment's much-vaunted powers
To save this Magdalen's all could only fail,
When Love has no avail!

Starved even to death! For this she'd sold her soul;
This was her striving's goal!
Life had no longer aught that might suffice
To hallow all its dreary want and vice.
Nothing but death remained to her, the crown
Of all whose lives are hopeless. So fell down
Her star of life into the dusk of night
And she gave up the fight.

So calm and peaceful seemed the dark grey flood,
Foul with much human blood.
God help her! Death was kinder than the world.
The sullen waters whirled
A moment o'er a circling plash, and then
She was forgotten from the world of men
And it was nought to her what folk might say.
Quiet at last she lay.

I know not if this poor soul's martyrdom
For you be wholly dumb.

To me, I own, her sin seems holier far
Than half our virtues are;
For hers was of that ore which, purged of dross,
Yields gold that might have gilded Christ's own cross
And He have smiled. And yet you fear her touch?
“She was so wicked!” But she loved so much.

And of her common, mean and awful fate
Our righteous ones will prate,—
A fruitful text for homily!—until
Another come to fill
Her vacant place. And yet none sees the bloom
Of love, that opened in her life's blank gloom
And made it angel-bright. Folk turn aside
And know not how a martyr lived and died.

“Accurséd,” say they, “is the suicide.
In sin she lived and died.
We have in her, and she in us, no part.
Our lives, thank heaven! dispart.
At least we're holier than she.” Alas!
My brethren, when reflected in God's glass,
I doubt me much if many of our lives
Will, when the day of reckoning arrives,
Or all our virtues, with her sin compare
Or as her life be fair.

Even grim Death was pitiful to her;
Her rest he did not stir.
Shall we be, who with her drew common breath,
Less pitiful than Death?
We, who have heard how Christ once lived and died,
With whom His love is fabled to abide,
Shall we avoid a poor dead sinner's touch?
So wicked, say we? Oh, she loved so much!

For me, I cannot hold her life's long pain
To have been all in vain.
I cannot think that God will let her go,
After this life of woe;
Cannot believe that He, whose deathless love
She aped so well, will look on from above
With careless righteousness, while she sinks down
Into hell's depths, and with a pious frown,
Leave her to struggle in the devil's clutch.
True, she was wicked;—but she loved so much.

At an inquest held at the Whitehorse Tavern, before Mr. Cooper, Coroner for the Western district, on the body of Eliza Farrell, unfortunate female, found drowned below Waterloo Bridge on Monday last, Rosse Farrell said, “Deceased was my sister. She was an unfortunate. She was unmarried. She had worked as a seamstress till trade was so bad last year that she could not earn a living at the prices paid by the sweaters and she then went upon the streets.” Witness believed she would never have done so but for her two illegitimate children, of whom she was passionately fond. Witness had no doubt that deceased's mind had been affected by their death. They died of neglect and starvation, owing to a woman, whom deceased paid to take care of them, having spent the money in drink. She paid the woman every penny she could scrape together and witness had known her sell the dress off her back to make up the weekly money. Deceased came to her on Saturday night, after having been to see the children, and told her she had found they were dead and had been already buried by the parish. She seemed quite distracted and rushed out of the house like a mad thing and witness had never seen her again. The photograph produced (found on deceased) was that of the children. After a few remarks from the coroner, the jury returned a verdict of “Suicide in a state of temporary insanity.” —Extract from daily paper.

IV.A CHRISTMAS VIGIL.

“LET me but see the light of heaven again!”
And with chill fingers, from the window pane
I drew the curtain. All the glass was starred
With quaint frost-tracery, intercrossed and barred
With the cold mimic blossoms of the time,
The death in life of flowerage of the rime.
The day grew dark toward the Christmas Eve:
Without, each hanging gable-edge and eave
Was looped and curtained with the trellised snow
And all the sky was drear for winter woe.
The streets were still for weariness and all
The fields lay dead beneath a death-white pall;
Whilst o'er the fretted silver such as went
About the ways, in that drear wonderment,
Broke not the deathly silence with their tread.
It seemed a city of the risen dead,
Awsome with living ghosts, that stalked along
The pallid highways in a ghastly throng,
Flitting as noiselessly as shades. Within,
My grief seemed with the grief of Nature twin:

There was a drearier winter at my heart
Than bound the fields and meadows. There, no part
Of that bright ecstasy—wherewith the voice
Of angels bade the shrouded earth rejoice
For that upon the keen-aired Christmas morn
There was in Bethlehem of Juda born
One who should bring to bloom the bud of peace
And be Himself the blossom,—brought decrease
Of sadness; nor,—O sweet Lord Christ! Alas!
Has not thy memory withered like dry grass,
When summer-winds are pitiless!—the chime
(A hollow mockery of the loveless time)
Of bells, whose song was tuneless with the sense
Of its unmeaning, cheered the sad suspense
That weighed upon me. Long past every fear,
Because past hope for ever, one all-dear,
All precious to me, lay at odds with Death
And I already felt the icy breath
Of the dread angel stir the frost-stilled air,
As I did watch. The battle and the care
Were over and the dim cold hour was come,
When my sad heart, like the sad streets, was dumb
With its dead hopes, unknowing if the gloom
Were big with ecstasy or if some doom
Of unexperienced horror lay concealed
Within its awful bosom, where ensealed
Slept the mysterious Future. Very dear
To my most God-like sympathies, no mere
Convenient friend, with whom the only tie
Is mutual ease and use of amity,
Was he who lay a-dying. He had been
My comrade, when the hopes of Spring were green,
My help in autumn's dreary blank of gray,
In winter's night of doubt my cheer and stay.
Together we had trod the path of years,
Hoped hopes together, feared each other's fears,
Seen morning lighten in each other's eyes

And soul to soul had striven for the prize
Of perfect vision, that should help us read
In Nature's tangles the eternal creed.
We had so long been habited to share
Each other's pain and pleasure, joy and care,
To live and breathe each other's life and breath,
To think I could not share with him his death
Seemed cruel wonder; and to me, his soul
Felt the least portion of the common dole,
For that but death in life was left to me,
Condemned thenceforth in life alone to be,
Whilst to his lot fell life in death. And so
I sat and watched him, as the fire burnt low,
And wondered, in my numbing trance of pain,
How long before the morn should come again
And puzzled over trifles, whilst there lay
Within my heart one gloom of winter's gray
And paralysed all thought. My mind went back
Along the dim years' memory-misted track
And lost itself in woodbine-tangled lanes
And saw the silken poppies' crimson stains
Sprinkle the russet moorland. Or I stood
Within a maze of hawthorn-blossomed wood
And knew the bedded violets by their scent
And primroses, wide-eyed for wonderment,
That glittered in the tender tree-foot green,
Under the golden shadow of the treen.
And he, who lay a-dying, held once more
My hand and walked with me that flowered floor,
Filled the sweet air with wise and lovely words
Or songs as Spring-like as the pipe of birds;
Reasoned of fair and wondrous things and turned
All thoughts to beauty, as within him burned
The Spring's full glory; took the things of Earth
And made them bright with an immortal mirth.
So sat I, dreaming o'er dead youth again,
Half-conscious, half-forgetful of my pain,

Whilst, out of doors, the dream-mist of the snow
Fell through the Christmas twilight soft and low.
And as the evening darkened into night,
Toning to grey the snow's relentless white,
I heard his voice, that called me to his side,
So faint, another would have thought he sighed.
I leant me o'er the bed and took his hand,
Seeing by his face how very fast life's sand
Ran from the hour-glass. And he, as it were,
Renewing life awhile, to hold me there,
Raised himself up and lay upon my breast,
Silent awhile, whilst day died in the west;
And then, “The gates of death do gape for me,”
He said. “My feet from life are slipping free.
Dear friend, I linger but a second, then
Launch out upon the sea unplumbed of men.
I go into the darkness; yet you stay
And I go lonely on my lightless way.
I look into the mystery. Is it rest,
Long-yearned-for rest, tow'rd which the chill swift tide
Of ebbing life so ceaselessly doth glide?
O God, to whom I come, a bidden guest,
Let it be peace, I pray! No heaven of psalms,
No charm of bended heads and folded palms!
My life too long has been a psalm of woes;
I crave that Rest to which all Being flows.
O Buddha, sweet thy faith was aye to me,
That holds us loosed from life in death to be,
Absolved and safe from love and pain and dole,
Lost in the calm sea of the one great Soul.
O God, how fair this lovely Eastern dream,
Haply the truth, to my tired soul doth seem,—
To lose one's weary personality
In the unconsciousness of Deity!
I cannot think but Jesus meant the same,
Despite the sophisms that debase his name
And turn his sweet humanity to gall

With priests' and monks' inventions, as with all
Great souls and pure, who read the signs of God
And leave their dreams to coarser minds, that plod
Over their bright imaginings and tread
Into the dust each flower that shows its head.
Dear Christ! How men have blackened thy white faith
And blurred thy heaven with the shadow of death!
I enter on the path thy tender feet
Trod once,—not bitter to me nor yet sweet;
For I am weary and desire to rest,
And I am sorely with vague doubt opprest,
Lest other toils await me. Yet I hope
And fear not, though my feet in darkness grope;
For, whilst I hold thy hand, dear friend, I know
Christ's love can still in human bosoms glow
And love will round all troubles into peace,
Although the springs of light and being cease
To cheer us. I may say, with Rabelais,
As farewell word to living, ‘Je m'en vais
Querir le grand Peut-être.’ It is the end.
I carry into night thy love, O friend,
'Spite death, 'spite doubt and cold.” And spake no more.
And I, down looking if his soul still wore
That web of flesh it long had found so sore,
Saw that the appointed peace had made him dumb
And knew that the deliverer Death was come.

V.A DREAM OF FAITHS.

WITHIN a maze of narrow, tortuous streets,
Whose convolutions deaden the day's din
And roar of City turmoil to that hum
Of softly murmuring sound one hears within

The pearly chambers of a twisted shell,
A gray old church stands in a little space
Of swarded churchyard, green and variegate
With plaited flower beds; in the City's heart,
A flowered nest of peace and restfulness.
But one of many other quiet nooks
That nestle in the mirky City's midst,
To me long use and knowledge made it dear
Beyond its fellows, for it seemed to me,
The ancient fane, all lonely as it was
And resonant to but few human steps,
Wore an especial air of friendly peace
And seemed to tender comfort to my soul.
Ay, and the very flowers had in their eyes,
Upturned to seek the friendly heaven's blink
Between the long lines of encroaching walls,
A deeper meaning than flowers use to show
To general sight, as who should say, “We long
After the open freedom of the plains
And breezy freshness of the blossomed fields
With an incessant longing; yet, resigned
To do God's service where He bids it us,
We are content to live beneath the smoke
And give our scent and comfort of our bloom
As freely as our brethren of the meads,
Feeding our yearning on the infrequent sun
And the rare love of some few weary souls,
That gather consolation from our life.”

Hard by the church, a little parsonage,
Gray as itself, but green with clustering wealth
Of ivy tendrils, nestled to its side,
As if for shelter from the encroaching world:
And therein dwelt an old and reverend man,
Who was the priest of that neglected fane,
Uncomraded, except by memories
And the vague creatures of his own sweet thoughts.
A man who, working God's work in the world,

Had little commerce with world's use, but dwelt
Within the heaven of his own clear faith,
'Spite age's frosts, he was a child at heart
And had still childhood's generous confidence,
Its pure delight in bright and innocent things.
For him, the dreams, that had made sweet his youth
And glorified his manhood, still relieved
The sunset-shadow of his waning life
And lighted up the gloom of those stern hours,
When, in the gray of the descending years,
The sea of memory gives up its dead.
He had not lost his early purity
Of joy in all the sweet and rare delights,
The delicate and shrinking mysteries,
That swarm, for those who love, in this our world:
He had yet faith in all the lovely myths
And fables, that do symblize God's love
In picture-speech of bird-song and of bloom;
Relived dead youth in every violet's scent,
Saw Ophir in each lily's golden dust,
Golconda in each flower-cup's crystal dew.

The sceptic murmur of the unquiet age,
Eager for light, no matter though it lose,
In the cold gleam, some glow of ancient warmth,
Had reached him in his peaceful solitude;
And to his mild but clear intelligence
It could not but be patent that the doom
Of death was passed for many a thing he loved,
Much good, that had for many weary years
Outlived its use, and many an old belief,
That, in its time, had been the breath of life
To millions, but was now long since worn out
And sunk to superstition. Much he grieved
A natural grief (as one who, in a dream,
Sees the phantasmata of his sweet thoughts
Fade from him and will not be comforted,
But mourns them waking, though he knew them not

For real or seeming) and his soul was full
Of troubling doubt. For him the coming years
Were big with fears; he could not shape his hope,
That had so long run all unquestioningly
In the worn channel of the ancient faith,
Into the stronger current of new thought,
That swept old landmarks from his way of life.
The clinging dogmas of time-honoured creeds
Fettered his spirit with the knitted webs
Of their exanimate subtleties, so that
He was not free to let his simple love
(That else might, with the magic of its own
All-powerful menstruum, have solved for him
The weary problem) work its natural work,
Clogged as it was by age-old fallacies.
And so his spirit in the tangling doubts
Strove, like a fly caught in a spider's web,
That twines itself more inextricably,
With every effort, in the unyielding toils.

One night, he dreamt, an angel came to him,
As Beatrice to Dante, in the shape,
Thrice sublimate, of one whom he had loved
In the clear Spring-time of his vanished youth,
And took him by the hand and led him up
To a high mountain's snow-incoronate top
And showed him all the kingdoms of the world.
Before him lay the glory and the power
Of all that has on earth been fair and bright,
Stately and wonderful, since being was;
All teachings that have swayed the souls of men,
All that has aye been powerful to save,
All faiths, were imaged for him in the dream,
Living a symbol-life in definite shapes;
And all high thoughts and solemn mysteries
Moved, radiant, o'er the surface of the world,
Clothed in their own fulfilment's acted shape,
Or stood in statue-majesty, enshrined

In snow of marble and gold-glitterance.
Beneath his feet the earth spread far and wide,
Veined with the tortuous silver of its streams,
And here and there majestic temples rose,
Graven to all cunning shapes of human art
And vivid at the heart with fire-cored gems.
Strange lustres flashed from the enchanted shapes
And met each other in the throbbing air,
Weaving a dazzling, iridescent haze
About the path of those weird phantasies.
The netted radiance hid the constant sky
And made, for those that dwelt beneath its spell,
A new and seeming heaven, bright and strange,
Here sweet with glancing lights, there stern with storms,
And holding, on its topmost pinnacle,
A painted dream of earthly luxury,
That men had wrought from their fantastic hopes
And set it in the sky and called it “heaven.”

The priest gazed long upon the changing play
Of those phantasmal semblances, and soon
He saw the gradual light fade out from them;
The gem-fire died within its ancient haunts
And all the radiant shapes grew etiolate
And colourless as darkness-blanching flowers.
It seemed to him, the essence of their life
Had left them and their source of radiance,
Impermanent, had dried up at the spring.
And as he looked, a crash of thunderous song,
Wherein all awful sweetness was expressed,
Pealed out across the surface of the earth
And rent the charmed veil of that seeming heaven,
Letting in on it the eternal light.
The dream-forms shrank and shrivelled in the blaze
Of new irradiance, “alba sicut lux,”
And all the structures of that wondrous birth
Sank into ruin. All the earth was strewn
With one huge waste of gray and lifeless wrecks.

He looked and knew the symbolled destiny,
Pre-eminent among the other shapes,
Of that old faith, which was so dear to him;
And with a sudden dreary consciousness
And sense how blank was life thenceforth to him,
Shorn of its own particular star of hope,
Sank down upon his knees and bowed his head
Upon his hands. The angel looked at him
With eyes in which there shone compassionate love
And peace; and then to him, “Be not dismayed:
These are but earthly things thou seëst die,
But fabrics of a human phantasy,
That men have fashioned, after their own shape,
From their unreasoning fears and baseless hopes,
From their unreal pains and feverish joys,
And knelt and worshipped their own handiwork.
And so they are but mortal, do but live
So long as the quick, animating soul
Throbs in their confines. When it flees from them,
They crumble into vague and shapeless wreck.
The hearts of men do ofttimes cleave to them,
For that they feel in them their godlike part,
The sympathetic presence of the soul,
And worship, all unconscious, their own selves.
Many have drawn from them the breath of life,
Whilst that their living virtue yet had force;
And folk still cling to them with desperate faith,
Long after every spark of life has fled,
As one who seeks deliverance in the arms
Of his once powerful friend, now old and weak,
And will not lightly credit his decay.
But, ere they had their being, God was God
And will be yet, although the heavens pass.
Be not dismayed: there is no change in Him
Alone. Thy refuge is the Eternal God
And under thee the everlasting arms.”

The listener's heart drank comfort from the clear

Sustaining words, and from the shade of doubt
His soul leapt out into the day of hope,
As waters leap from out the dim rock-rifts
Into the morning splendour of the sun.
Before him still the waste of ruins lay,
But over all things, as within himself,
He felt some healing influence had passed
And softened their stern aspect of despair.
The garish sun died out and all the earth
Lay in the moonlit sanctity of death:
And as he stood, the air was all astir
With that blithe mystery, that ushers in
The Spring-time, and the summer-hearted world
Throbbed with the coming rapture of the May.
The buds burst out into a new flower-birth
And all the eager host of passionate blooms
Spread, rustling, o'er the surface of the earth.
Spring's fresh leaf-green and delicate-petalled blooms
Hid the gray ruins with a fragrant shroud;
All-mother Earth put forth her flowerful hand
And took the dead again to her embrace,
All things forgiven, all but love forgotten
In the new peace of that assoiling death.
The air was sweet with carol; all the woods
Were budded and the sudden flowering sky
Flamed with the tender promise of new dawn.

Then, “Lift thine eyes,” the angel said to him,
“Toward the golden region of the East.”
He raised his head and looked across the mists
To where the sun ran, reddening, through the brume,
And burning through the opal-hearted veil,
He saw the jasper hills of a new heaven.

VI.A PORTRAIT.

I knew a poet once, a lonely man,
Whose soul dwelt in the dim wood-glooms of thought
And dreamt strange visions of enchanted Spring:
Whose song, in that bright bloom-tide when the May
Quickens life's pulses and the summer lies,
Sun-weary, on the painted meadow-grass,
Was solemn, strange and sorrowful: scant trace
Was there of Spring-tide glory or the craze
Of ecstasy, that turns the air to wine,
When in the rose-hearts burns the July splendour.
What little joy there was was weird and still,
Stately and serious, with an undersong
That sounded like the night-bird's wailing notes
Or the quaint ripple of some low-voiced rill,
That murmurs of earth's hidden soul of pain
Under her robe of blooms; one heard in it
The chariot-thunder of the shrouded hours,
That swept across the autumn-verging skies.
But, in the winter, when the sky was clear
With silver frost and crystal-feathered snow
Fell softly through the air, when streamlets lay
Fast-locked in dreamless sleep, his soul bloomed out
To a new flow'rage and his song grew bright
With exquisite strange splendour. In the lines,
The ringing sweetness of bird-haunted woods
Replaced the crash of snow-enladen boughs:
The blooms ran wreathing o'er the broidered page:
One smelt the summer in his scented verse
And one eternal rose of cloudless sky
Glittered, from opal dawn to golden eve,
In the clear setting of his pictured words.
For why? He saw the complements of things

And knew how Nature's ever-changing pulse
Throbbed with strange secrets, how the flower of death
Bore at its heart the ovary of life.
He felt that winter held the germs of Spring
And summer's roses slept beneath the snow.
And so no joy was sorrowless to him,
No sorrow joyless, and his spheral life
Lay in the equipoise of perfect peace.

In the great city's crowded heart he dwelt
And all his life had passed there. Little he
Knew of the Spring-sweet glories of the May
Or of the rare deep magic of the time
When summer brims the jewel-chaliced flowers
With wine of wonder and the woods burst out
A-bloom with singing. Yet the flowers of May
Bloomed in the shaded woodlands of his soul
And in his heart a chastened glow of Spring
Lived ever. Life for him was sweet and calm,
The sweeter for a touch of pain in it,
As music saddens to its sweetest key;
And so he lived a kind of moonlight life,
Where all things remedied their opposites
And joy and pain were ever softened down
To the calm light of that Eternal Pearl
That Dante tells of in his “Paradise.”

VII.A DREAM-LIFE.

A man lived once within the busy town
And filled his days with labour hard and sore:
From break of morn, until the night fell down,
He worked for bread amid the city's roar.

His toil was with no love or friendship blest,
His path of life was blank and cold and sere;
The one faint hope that lingered in his breast
Served but to make his present lot more drear.

He had once loved and (dead to all but him)
Love's memory yet lingered in his heart;
Although his soul was sere and eyes grown dim,
That guest from him might nevermore depart.

A lonely man, throughout the weary day
His hands ceased not from dull and cheerless strife;
The outer world for him had long grown gray
And little beauty blossomed in his life.

But in his heart there was a quiet nook,
Where lay old memories, adust and dim;
He read on Sundays in the Hebrew book,
And dreams of his dead youth came back to him.

He read of king and warrior and priest,
Heard in his ears the battle's thunderous din,
And from his heart the pain of toiling ceased
And all his soul had peace from care and sin.

He read; and Spring flowered round his weary life;
He smelt the sweet faint primroses again
And saw white wind-flowers in the woodglooms rife,
Heard on the grass the apple-blossoms rain:

He saw the azure canopy of heaven,
With white-winged clouds that glittered in the sun;
He saw the wood-deeps by the sunbeams riven
And gold lights flower through the shadows dun.

He read; and he was ankle-deep in grass,
With cowslip-umbels nodding at his feet,
And saw the shadows of the sun-clouds pass,
Where with the brook the heavens seemed to meet.

He heard the songful babble of the stream,
That from its pebbles drew sweet undertones,
And watched the minnows, in the golden gleam,
Dart in and out the brown and dappled stones.

He read; and fragrance of the scented pines
Rose round his spirit, like a mist of balm;
He saw red fruitage on the strawberry-bines
Glow in the hedges in the summer calm.

Nesh eyebright looked at him and meadow-sweet;
He smelt the scent of the crushed grass again
And wild-thyme sent up perfume from his feet,
The plant that yields us fragrance from its pain.

Once more he passed through woods by autumn worn
And trod brown carpets of the rustling leaves;
He saw the gold sun glitter on the corn
And heard the sickle shear the russet sheaves.

He heard sweet voices through the mists of years
And quaint wild snatches of forgotten rhyme;
And many a love he had embalmed in tears
Re-lived for him its early blossom-time.

The week-day toil was but a dreary dream,
In which the voices of the birds were hushed;
It was the things of life that did but seem;
The true things on his Sabbath vision rushed.

A dream of summer held his weary soul,
Although his life seemed echoless and dumb,
His spirit from the webs of working stole,
And when he died, he thought the Spring was come.

VIII.THE RED ROSE.

ONE day, as from my bed I went,
I saw one stand before the door,
Whose hands a bough of blossom bore,
Snow-white and very sweet of scent.

His visage was full grave and sweet
And awful as the morning red,
When in the east the night is dead;
And lilies grew about his feet.

His hair was of a tender gold,
As cowslips in the middle Spring,
And clad his shoulders, ring on ring;
It was full pleasant to behold.

White roses in his arms he held
And snow-white roses round his head;
But on his breast one rose was red,
As if his heart's blood there had welled;

And in one hand a lily-bell,
That garments of fair silver wore
And burnt red-golden at the core,
As 'twere the sun therein did dwell.

“Sir,” said I, “if I may be told,
What is the meaning of these flowers,
Whose like ne'er drank the Spring's soft showers
Nor ever grew on hill or wold?”

“These are the roses of the city
Of God and eke of Christ,” he said,
“That erst in crimson were arrayed,
But now are turned all white for pity

“Of human dolour and compassion
For blindness of mortality;
But in this other that ye see
The hue, in token of Christ's passion,

“Abides, that men may, in its sight,
The blood shed for them have in mind
And in its bloom fair hope may find
And in its smell may have delight.

“For this red rose I bear is Love,
That sweetens life and softens pain,
And thereto should all things be fain
And set its sweets all sweets above.”

“Sir,” said I, “if I may be told,
What is that lily that is dight
With leaves of such a lovely white
And at the heart is burning gold?”

And he, “This is the sign of death,
That is without both white and cold,
But at the core is burning gold
And holdeth store of fragrant breath.

“Choose which of these thou willest take,
For the dear God, in heaven that lives,
Such grace unto all mortals gives,
For Christ His Son's belovéd sake,

“That each may once within his life
Make choice of roses red or white
Or lily with the heart of light,
To solace him in pain and strife.”

And I, “Sir, sorrow is enough
Within this life and world of ours
And death comes with the evening hours;
And so I choose the rose of Love.”

Whereat my hand I stretchéd out,
That lovely crimson bloom to bear
From him and in my bosom wear;
But lo! my hand drew back in doubt

Which it should take; for that one rose,
That in the wreath of white was red,
Had loren all its lustihead
And had put on the hue of those

Which were upon the bough y-sprent;
And these, in stead, to crimson turned,
As 'twere new fire within them burned;
Nay, to the lily there was lent

A flush of colour; so I knew
Not which was lily nor which rose,
Which was the blossom that I chose,
So like a bloom on each one blew.

Then to the bearer, “Sir,” said I,
“Who art thou that, as no man may,
Dost make these colours change and play,
So that their semblants mock the eye?”

And he, “I draw no mortal breath:
The Lord, in heaven that reigns above,
Did give to me the name of ‘Love’;
But oftentimes men call me ‘Death’.”

And as he spoke, his seeming fled
And melted into empty air,
And I into this world of care
Went with knit brows and drooping head.

And as among the folk I walked,
Along wide place and sunny street,
Meseemed mine eyes bytimes did meet
His form with whom I late had talked,

As in the ways he went and strewed
White flowers and red with viewless hands;
And often in my dreams he stands
Before me, as that morn he stood.

IX.CHRISTMAS BELLS.

O silver-chiming bells, in the misty Christmas morning,
Filling with glad ripples the frost-enlightened air,
What song is it you sing to us,
What tidings that you bring to us,
What burden that the clamours of your changeful cadence bear?
Do ye still recall the advent of the star-enkindled dawning,
When 'mid flower-calm the lily of old Christendom was born?
Still hail the domination,
In many a land and nation,
Of Him who opened baby eyes upon that thronéd morn?

Alas! sad bells, this many a day, your tune has lost its meaning;
The earth to your bright jubilance is echoless for woe:
A strange, prophetic sadness
Lies heart-deep in your gladness;
Ye can never stir the world again into the olden glow.
Ye should rather mourn for hope and faith, that in Christ's grave lie buried,
Never again, it seems to us, to see the daybreak beam.
The tender, sweet old story
Has lost its morning glory;
The trace of Christ has faded and His Gospel is a dream.

Or is it for the year that's past your brazen throats are clanging,
To celebrate its harvesting of righteousness and peace?

And is your carol's burden
The happy golden guerdon,
That love and faith have garnered up to swell the years' increase?
Are hope and peace so rife, O bells, is Christ-like love so plentiful,
That ye must wake the world that sleeps, worn out with toil and care,
That ye must rend night's quiet
With your rejoiceful riot
And from tired eyes forgetfulness of blesséd sleep must scare?

Are this dead year's last moments, the coming one's dim prospect
So fair with happy memories, with Spring-sweet hope so bright?
Was that which fades so sweet for us
And were its steps so fleet for us
That ye must needs proclaim it to the startled ear of night?
Is it for our glad progress, in the year that lies a-dying,
Toward the dream prophetic of God's kingdom upon earth,
Ye break the Yule-night glamour
With your clarion-throated clamour,
Whilst men are mute for shame before the morning of Christ's birth?

Alas! there is no peace for us: the earth is full of misery;
The folk are crazed with lust of gain and mean unknightly strife:
The earth with blood is weary
And the world is bare and dreary,
For crime and greed have choked with thorns the amaranth of life.
In vain ye fill the air with notes, that tell of hope and gladness:
Your throats should ring with dirges for the year that's growing cold,

Should wake the folk from sleeping
To the coming time of reaping
For what they've sown in this dead year, whose days are almost told.

Ring, weary bells, from out your spires, and wake the world to consciousness
Of all the weary work that lies before the failing feet.
Toll for the pest-scathed city,
In which there is no pity,
Where crime infests each alley and famine chokes each street.
Toll for the craze of sightless greed, that blinds the folk to righteousness
And bids them set no price on aught that is not bought or sold;
Toll for the past year's madness
And the coming one's vague sadness;
Toll, sad bells, for the new year and the old.

BALLADS AND ROMANCES.

I.THE RIME OF REDEMPTION.

“Traditur etiam nonnullos vi pervincente amoris ipsum
contra summum Domini judicium prævaluisse.”
Euseb. de Fid. rebus Epist.

THE ways are white in the moon's light,
Under the leafless trees;
Strange shadows go across the snow,
Before the tossing breeze.

The night, meseems, is full of dreams,
Ghosts of the bygone time:
Full many a sprite doth walk to-night
Over the soundless rime.

The burg stands grim upon the rim
Of the steep wooded height;
In the great hall, the casements tall
Flame with the fireside light.

From the hearth's womb, athwart the gloom,
Rays out the firelight red:
Sir Loibich there before the flare
Sits in a dream of dread.

The tower-light glows across the snows,
In the black night defined:
The cresset-fire flares high and higher,
Tossed by the raging wind.

The knight sits bent, with eyes intent
Upon the dying fire;
Sad dreams and strange in sooth do range
Before the troubled sire.

He sees the maid the past years laid
Upon his breast to sleep,
Long dead in sin, laid low within
The grave unblest and deep.

He sees her tears, her sobs he hears,
Borne on the shrieking wind;
He sees her hair, so golden-fair,
Stream out her form behind.

He hears her wail, with lips that fail,
To him to save her soul;
He sees her laid, unhouselèd,
Under the crossless knoll.

His heart is wrung, his soul is stung
To death with memories:
His face grows white as the moon's light
And all his words are sighs.

“Ah! would, dear Christ, my tears sufficed
To ransom her!” he cries:
“Sweet Heaven, to win her back from sin,
I would renounce the skies.

“Might I but bring her suffering
To pardon and to peace,
I for mine own sin would atone,
Where never pain doth cease:

“I for my part would gnaw my heart,
Chain'd in the flames of hell;
I would abide, unterrified,
More than a man shall tell.”

The flame burns red; he bows his head
Upon his joining hands;
The wraiths of old are shown and told
Upon the dying brands.

A hoarse scream tears athwart his ears,
Strange howls are in the air;
The wolves do stray in search of prey
Across the moorlands bare.

Red eyes flame forth from south to north,
The beasts are all a-chase;
God help the wight that goes to-night
Among the wild wood-ways!

The moon is pale, the night-winds wail,
Weird whispers fill the night:
“Dear heart, what word was that I heard
Ring out in the moonlight?

“Methought there came to me my name,
Cried with a wail of woe;
A voice whose tone my heart had known
In the days long ago.”

'Twas but the blast that hurried past,
Shrieking among the pines;
The souls that wail upon the gale,
When the dim starlight shines.

Great God! The name! Once more it came
Ringing across the dark!
“Loibich!” it cried. The night is wide,
The dim pines stand and hark.

The lead-grey heaven by the blast is riven;
God! How the torn trees shriek!
The wild wind soughs among the boughs,
As though the dead did speak.

“Loibich! Loibich! My soul is sick
With hungering for thee!
The night fades fast, the hours fly past;
Stay not, come forth to me!”

Great Heaven! The doubt is faded out;
It was her voice that spake;
He made one stride and open wide
The casement tall he strake.

The cloudwrack grey did break away;
Out shone the ghostly moon;
Off slid the haze from all the ways,
Before her silver shoon.

Pale silver-rayed, out shone the glade,
Before the castle wall,
And on the lea the knight could see
A maid both fair and tall.

Gold was her hair, her face was fair,
As fair as fair can be,
But through the night the blue corpse-light
About her could he see.

She raised her face toward the place
Where Loibich stood adread;
There was a sheen in her two een,
As one that long is dead.

She looked at him in the light dim
And beckoned with her hand:
“Sir Knight,” she said, “thy prayer hath sped
Unto the heavenly land.

“Come forth with me: the night is free
For us to work the thing
That is to do, before we two
Shall hear the dawn-bird sing.”

He took his brand within his hand,
His dirk upon his thigh:
And he hath come, through dusk and gloom,
Where wide the portals lie.

“Saddle thy steed, Sir Knight, with speed,
Thy faithfullest,” quoth she,
“For many a tide we twain must ride
Before the end shall be.”

The steed is girt, black Dagobert,
Swift-footed as the wind;
The knight leapt up upon his croup,
The maid sprang up behind.

A stately pair the steed doth bear
Upon his back to-night:
The sweatdrops rain from flank and mane,
His eyes start out for fright.

Her weight did lack upon his back;
He trembled as he stood;
It seemed as 'twere a death-cold air
Did freeze the courser's blood.

She threw the charms of her white arms
About Sir Loibich's neck:
It seemed as if 't had been a drift
Of snow on him did break.

The spurs are dyed deep in the side
Of the destrere amain;
The leaves do chase behind his race
And far out streams his mane.

The wind screams past; they ride so fast,—
Like troops of souls in pain
The snowdrifts spin, but none may win
To rest upon the twain.

So fast they ride, the blasts divide
To let them hurry on;
The wandering ghosts troop past in hosts
Across the moonlight wan.

They fly across the frozen floss,
Across the frost-starred mead:
Hill, wood and plain they cross amain;
Hill, plain and wood succeed.

The wild wind drops, the snow-whirl stops,
Frost fades from grass and brere;
The dim clouds die from out the sky
And forth the moon shines clear.

A sudden hush, and then a rush
Of magic melodies;
A summer wood, with moon-pearls strewed
And jasmine-girdled trees.

The lady laid her hand of shade
Upon the hurrying horse,
And suddenly, upon the lea,
He halted in his course.

To them there came a fragrant flame,
A light of elfinry:
The haggard night poured forth delight
And flowers of Faërie.

A wondrous song did wind along
The moon-besilvered glades,—
And all the things the elf-night brings
Did glitter from the shades.

“Light down, Sir Knight, in the moonlight;
Light down and loose my hand;
I must be gone; but thou hast won
Unto the Faery land.”

“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,
“No Faery land for me,
Except thou light thee down to-night,
Therein with me to be.”

“Alas, Sir Knight, I must this night
Harbour me far away;
Far be 't from thee to rest with me
Where I must dwell for aye.”

He smote his breast: “By Christ His rest,
No Faery land will I!
Rather in hell with thee to dwell
Than lonely in the sky!”

The thunder broke, the lightning-stroke
Fell down and tore the earth;
The firm ground shook, as though there took
The world the throes of birth.

The elf-song died, the moon did hide
Her face behind the haze,
And once again they ride amain
Across the wild wide ways.

The night grew black; the grey cloudwrack
Whirled fast across the skies;
What lights are those the white snow throws
Reflected in their eyes?

What flames are those the blackness shows,
Rising like rosy flowers
Up to the lift? What ruddy rift
Shines out in the night hours?

The night is wide: they ride and ride,
The lights grow bright and near;
There comes a wail upon the gale
And eke a descant clear.

There comes a plain of souls in pain
And eke a high sweet song,
As of some fate whose grief is great,
But yet whose hope is strong.

Aye louder grow the sounds of woe,
But the song sweeter still,
Until the steed doth slacken speed,
At foot of a high hill.

The hazes grey before their way
Divided are in two;
A wondrous sight midmost the night
Lies open to their view.

The hill is strewn beneath the moon
With strange and singing fires;
In every flame a soul from shame
And soil of sin aspires.

From every fire, higher and higher
The song of hope doth rise:
These are the sprights that God delights
To fit for Paradise.

“Light down, Sir Knight; I pray, alight;
This is the purging-place;
Here shalt thou win to cast off sin
And come to Christ His grace.”

“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,
“That will I not,” quoth he,
“Unless thou too, my lover true,
Therein shalt purgèd be.”

“Would God,” she said, “the lot were laid
For me to enter here!
Alack! my stead is with the dead,
All in the place of fear.

“But thou light down; the gate is thrown
Wide open in the ward;
See where they stand on either hand,
Angels with downdropt sword.”

“By Christ His rest!” he smote his breast;
“No grace of God will I!
Rather with thee damnèd to be
Than lonely in the sky!”

The night closed round, there came a sound
Of trumpets in the air;
The steed leapt on, the fires were gone,
And on the twain did fare.

Through storm and night again their flight
They urge o'er hill and plain:
What sounds smite clear upon the ear,
Through dusk and wind and rain?

“Meseems I heard as if there stirr'd
A sound of golden lyres;
Methought there came a sweet acclaim
Of trumpets and of choirs.

“So sing the saints, where never faints
The sunlight from the skies;
So pulse the lyres among the choirs
Of God in Paradise.”

A singing light did cleave the night;
High up a hill rode they;
The veils of Heaven for them were riven
And all the skies poured day.

The golden gate did stand await,
The golden town did lie
Before their sight, the realms of light
God-builded in the sky.

The steed did wait before the gate;
Sheer up the street look'd they;
They saw the bliss in Heaven that is,
They saw the saints' array.

They saw the hosts upon the coasts
Of the clear crystal sea;
They saw the blest, that in the rest
Of Christ for ever be.

The choirs of God pulsed full and broad
Upon the ravished twain;
The angels' feet upon the street
Rang out like golden rain.

They felt the sea of ecstasy
That flows about the throne;
The bliss of heaven to them was given.
Awhile to look upon.

Then said the maid, “Be not afraid;
God giveth heaven to thee;
Light down and rest with Christ His blest
And think no more of me!”

Sir Loibich gazed, as one amazed,
Awhile upon the place;
Then, with a sigh, he turned his eye
Upon the maiden's face.

“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,
“No heaven for me shall be,
Except God give that thou shalt live
Therein for aye with me.”

“Ah, curst am I!” the maid did cry;
“My place thou knowest well;
I must begone before the dawn,
To harbour me in hell.”

“By Christ His rest!” he beat his breast,
“Then be it even so;
With thee in hell I choose to dwell
And share with thee thy woe.

“Thy sin was mine. By Christ His wine,
Mine too shall be thy doom;
What part have I within the sky,
And thou in Hell's red gloom?”

The vision broke, as thus he spoke,
The city waned away:
O'er hill and brake, o'er wood and lake
Once more the darkness lay.

O'er hill and plain they ride again,
Under the night's black spell,
Until there rise against the skies
The lurid lights of hell.

The night is wide: they ride and ride;
The air with smoke grows crost
And through the dark their ears may hark
The roaring of the lost.

The dreadful cries they rend the skies,
The plain is ceil'd with fire:
The flames burst out, around, about;
The heats of hell draw nigher.

Unfear'd they ride; against the side
Of the red flameful sky
Grim forms are shown, strange shades upthrown
From out Hell's treasury:

Black grisly shapes of demon apes,
Grim human-headed snakes,
Red creeping things with scaly wings,
Born of the sulphur lakes.

The flames swell up out of the cup
Of endless agony,
And with the wind there comes entwined
An awful psalmody;

The hymning sound of fiends around,
Rejoicing in their doom,
The fearsome glee of things that be
Glad in their native gloom.

Fast rode the twain across the plain,
With hearts all undismayed,
Until they came where all a-flame
Hell's gates were open laid.

The awful stead gaped wide and red,
To gulph them in its womb:
There could they see the fiery sea
And all the souls in doom.

There came a breath, like living death,
Out of the gated way:
It scorched his face with its embrace,
It turned his hair to grey.

Then said the maid, “Art not dismayed?
Here is our course fulfilled:
Wilt thou not turn, nor rest to burn
With me, as God hath willed?

“By Christ His troth!” he swore an oath,
“Thy doom with thee I'll share.
Here will we dwell, hand-linked in hell,
Unseparate fore'er.”

He spurr'd his steed; the gates of dread
Gaped open for his course:
Sudden outrang a trumpet's clang
And backward fell the horse.

The ghostly maid did wane and fade,
The lights of hell did flee;
Alone in night the mazèd wight
Stood on the frozen lea.

Out shone the moon; the mists did swoon
Away before his sight,
And through the dark he saw a spark,
A welcoming of light.

Thither he fared, with falchion bared,
Toward the friendly shine;
Eftsoon he came to where a flame
Did burn within a shrine.

A candle stood before the Rood,
Christ carven on the tree:
Except the shrine, there was no sign
Of man that he could see.

Down on his knee low louted he
Before the cross of wood,
And for her spright he saw that night
Long prayed he to the Rood.

And as he prayed, with heart down-weighed,
A wondrous thing befell:
The air waxed white and through the night
There rang a silver bell.

The earth-mists drew before his view;
He saw God's golden town;
He saw the street, he saw the seat
From whence God looketh down.

He saw the gate transfigurate,
He saw the street of pearl,
And in the throng, the saints among,
He saw a gold-haired girl.

He saw a girl as white as pearl,
With hair as red as gold:
He saw her stand among the band
Of angels manifold.

He heard her smite the harp's delight,
Singing most joyfully,
And knew his love prevailed above
Judgment and destiny.

Gone is the night; the morn breaks white
Across the eastward hill;
The knightly sire by the dead fire
Sits in the dawning chill.

By the hearth white, there sits the knight,
Dead as the sunken fire;
But on his face is writ the grace
Of his fulfilled desire.

II.THE BALLAD OF ISOBEL.

I.

THE day is dead, the night draws on,
The shadows gather fast:
Tis many an hour yet to the dawn,
Till Hallow-tide be past.

Till Hallow-tide be past and sped,
The night is full of fear;
For then, they say, the restless dead
Unto the live draw near.

Between the Saints' day and the Souls'
The dead wake in the mould;
The poor dead, in their grassy knolls
They lie and are a-cold.

They think upon the live that sit
And drink the Hallow-ale,
Whilst they lie stark within the pit,
Nailed down with many a nail.

And sore they wonder if the thought
Live in them of the dead;
And sore with wish they are distraught
To feel the firelight red.

Betwixt the day and yet the day
The Saints and Souls divide,
The dead folk rise out of the clay
And wander far and wide.

They wander o'er the sheeted snow,
Chill with the frore of death,
Until they see the windows glow
With the fire's ruddy breath.

And if the cottage door be fast
And but the light win out,
All night, until their hour is past,
The dead walk thereabout.

And all night long, the live folk hear
Their windy song of sighs
And waken all for very fear,
Until the white day rise.

But if the folk be piteous
And pity the poor dead
That weary in the narrow house,
Upon the cold earth's bed,

They pile the peats upon the fire
And leave the door ajar,
That so the rosy flame aspire
To where the grey ghosts are.

And syne they sweep the cottage floor
And set the hearthside chair:
The sad sprights watch beside the door
Till midnight still the air.

And then toward the friendly glow
Come trooping in the dead;
Until the cocks for morning crow,
They sit by the fire red.

II.

“Oh, I have wearied long enough!
I'll weary me no more;
But I will watch for my dead love
Till Hallow-tide be o'er.”

He set the door across the sill;
The moonlight fluttered in;
The sad snow covered heath and hill,
As far as eye could win.

The thin frost feathered in the air;
All dumb the white world lay;
Night sat on it as cold and fair
As death upon a may.

He turned him back into the room
And sat him by the fire:
Night darkened round him in the gloom;
The shadowtide rose higher.

He rose and looked out o'er the hill
To where the grey kirk lay;
The midnight quiet was so still,
He heard the bell-chimes play.

Twelve times he heard the sweet bell chime;
No whit he stirred or spoke;
But his eyes fixed, as if on Time
The hour of judgment broke.

And as the last stroke fell and died,
Over the kirkyard grey
Himseemed he saw a blue flame glide,
Among the graves at play.

A flutter waved upon the breeze,
As of a spirit's wings:
A wind went by him through the trees,
That spoke of heavenly things.

Him seemed he heard a sound of feet
Upon the silver snow:
A rush of robes by him did fleet,
A sighing soft and low.

He turned and sat him down again;
The midnight filled the place:
The tears ran down like silent rain
Upon his weary face.

“She will not come to me,” he said;
“The death-swoon is too strong:
She hath forgot me with the dead,
Me that she loved so long.

“She will not come: she sleeps too sweet
Within the quiet ground.
What worth is love, when life is fleet
And sleep in death so sound?

“She will not come!”— A soft cold air
Upon his forehead fell:
He turned him to the empty chair;
And there sat Isobel.

His dead love sat him side by side,
His minnie white and wan:
Within the tomb she could not bide,
Whilst he sat weeping on.

Ah, wasted, wasted was her face
And sore her cheek was white;
But in her eyes the ancient grace
Burnt with a feeble light.

Upon her breast the grave-wede grey
Fell to her little feet;
But still the golden tresses lay
About her bosom sweet.

“Ah, how is't with ye, Isobel?
How pale ye look and cold!
Ah, sore it is to think ye dwell
Alone beneath the mould!

“Is't weary for our love ye've grown
From dwelling with the dead,
Or shivering from the cold grave-stone
To find the firelight red?”

“Oh, 'tis not that I'm lorn of love
Or that a-cold I lie:
I trust in God that is above
To bring you by-and-by.

“I feel your kisses on my face,
Your kisses sweet and warm:
Your love is in the burial-place;
I fear nor cold nor worm.

“I feel the love within your heart
That beats for me alone:
I fear not change upon your part
Nor crave for the unknown.

“For to the dead no faint fears cling:
All certainty have they:
They know (and smile at sorrowing)
Love never dies away.

“No harm can reach me in Death's deep:
It hath no fear for me:
God sweetens it to lie and sleep,
Until His face I see:

“He makes it sweet to lie and wait,
Till we together meet
And hand-in-hand athwart the gate
Pass up the golden street.

“But where's the babe that at my side
Slept sweetly long ago?
So sore to me to-night it cried,
I could not choose but go.

“I heard its voice so full of wail,
It woke me in the grave:
Its sighs came to me on the gale,
Across the wintry wave.

“For though death lap her wide and mild,
A mother cannot rest,
Except her little sucking child
Be sleeping at her breast.”

“Ah, know'st thou not, my love?” he said:
“Methought the dead knew all.
When in that night of doom and dread
The moving waters' wall

“Smote on our ship and drove it down
Beneath the raging sea,
All of our company did drown,
Alas! save only me.

“And me the cruel billows cast
Aswoon upon the strand;
Thou dead within mine arms held fast,
Hand locked in other's hand.

“The ocean never to this day
Gave up our baby dead:
Ah, woe is me that life should stay,
When all its sweet is fled!”

“Go down,” said she, “to the seashore:
God taketh ruth on thee:
Search well; and I will come once more
Ere yet the midnight be.”

She bent her sweet pale mouth to his:
The snowdrift from the sky
Falls not so cold as did that kiss:
He shook as he should die.

She looked on him with yearning eyes
And vanished from his sight:
He heard the matin cock crow thrice;
The morning glimmered white.

Then from his place he rose and sought
The shore beside the sea:
And there all day he searched; but nought
Until the eve found he.

At last a pale star glittered through
The growing dusk of night
And fell upon the waste of blue,
A trembling wand of light.

And lo! a wondrous thing befell:
As though the small star's ray
Availed to break some year-old spell
That on the water lay,

A white form rose out of the deep,
Where it so long had lain,
Cradled within the cold death-sleep:
He knew his babe again.

It floated softly to his feet;
White as a flower it lay:
Christ's love had kept its body sweet
Unravished of decay.

He thanked God weeping for His grace;
And many a tear he shed
And many a kiss upon its face
That smiled as do the dead.

Then to the kirkyard where the maid
Slept cold in clay he hied;
And with a loving hand he laid
The baby by her side.

III.

The dark fell down upon the earth;
Night held the quiet air:
He sat before the glowing hearth,
Beside the empty chair.

Twelve times at last for middle night
Rang out the kirkyard bell:
Ere yet the twelfth was silent quite,
By him sat Isobel.

Within her arms their little child
Lay pillowed on her breast:
Death seemed to it as soft and mild
As heaven to the blest.

Ah, no more wasted was her face,
Nor white her cheek and wan!
The splendour of a heavenly grace
Upon her forehead shone.

She seemed again the golden girl
Of the long-vanished years:
Her face shone as a great sweet pearl,
Washed and made white in tears.

The light of heaven filled her eyes
With soft and splendid flame;
Out of the heart of Paradise
It seemed as if she came.

He looked upon her beauty bright;
And sore, sore sorrowed he,
To think how many a day and night
Between them yet must be.

He looked at her with many a sigh;
For sick he was with pain,
To think how many a year must fly
Ere they two met again.

She looked on him: no sadness lay
Upon her tender mouth;
And syne she smiled, a smile as gay
And glad as in her youth.

“Be of good cheer, dear heart,” said she:
“Yet but a little year
Ere thou and I together see
The end of doubt and fear.

“Come once again the saints' night ring
Unto the spirits' feet,
Glad with the end of sorrowing,
Once more we three shall meet;

“We three shall meet no more to part
For all eternity:
'Gin I come not to thee, sweetheart,
Do thou come then to me.”

IV.

Another year is past and gone:
Once more the lingering light
Fades from the sky and dusk falls down
Upon the Holy Night.

The hearth is clear; the fire burns red;
The door stands open wide:
He waits for the belovèd dead
To come with Hallow-tide.

The midnight rings out loud and slow
Across the frosty air:
He sits before the firelight-glow,
Beside the waiting chair.

The last chime dies into the night:
The stillness grows apace:
And yet there comes no lady bright
To fill the empty place.

No soft hand falls upon his hair;
No light breath fans his brow:
The night is empty everywhere;
The birds sleep on the bough.

“Ah woe is me! the night fades fast;
Her promise is forgot:
Alas!” he said, “the hours fly past,
And still she cometh not!

“So sweet she sleeps and sleeps with her
The baby at her breast,
No thought of earthly love can stir
Their undesireful rest.

“Ah, who can tell but Time may lay
Betwixt us such a space
That haply at the Judgment Day
She will forget my face.”

The still night quivered as he spoke;
He felt the midnight air
Throb and a little breeze awoke
Across the heather bare.

And in the wind himseemed he heard
His true love's voice once more:
Afar it came, and but one word
“Come!” unto him it bore.

A faint hope flickered in his breast:
He rose and took his way
Where underneath the brown hill's crest
The quiet kirkyard lay.

He pushed the lychgate to the wall:
Against the moonless sky
The grey kirk towered dusk and tall:
Heaven seemed on it to lie.

Dead darkness held the holy ground;
His feet went in and out
And stumbled at each grassy mound,
As one that is in doubt.

Then suddenly the sky grew white;
The moon thrust through the gloom:
The tall tower's shade against her light
Fell on his minnie's tomb.

Full on her grave its shadow fell,
As 'twere a giant's hand,
That motionless the way doth tell
Unto the heavenly land.

He fell upon his knees thereby
And kissed the holy earth,
Wherein the only twain did lie
That made life living-worth.

He knelt; no longer did he weep;
Great peace was on his soul:
Sleep sank on him, a wondrous sleep,
Assaining death and dole.

And in the sleep himseemed he stood
Before a high gold door,
Upon whose midst the blessèd Rood
Burnt like an opal's core.

Christ shining on the cross to see
Was there for all device:
Within he saw the almond-tree
That grows in Paradise.

He knew the fallen almond-flowers
That drop without the gate,
So with their scent the tardy hours
Be cheered for those that wait.

And as he looked, a glimmering light
Shone through the blazoned bars:
The wide tall gate grew blue and bright
As Heaven with the stars.

A postern opened in his face;
Sweet savours breathed about;
And through the little open space
A fair white hand came out:

A hand as white as ermolin,
A hand he knew full well,
Beckoned to him to enter in—
The hand of Isobel.

Lord Christ, Thy morning tarrieth long:
The shadows come and go:
These three have heard the angels' song;
Still many wait below.

These three on Heaven's honey feed
And milk of Paradise:
How long before for us indeed
The hills of Heaven rise?

How long before, joined hand-in-hand
With all the dear-loved dead,
We pass along the heavenly land
And hear the angels' tread?

The night is long: the way is drear:
Our hearts faint for the light:
Vouchsafe, dear Lord, the day draw near,
The morning of Thy sight!

III.INTO THE ENCHANTED LAND.

WHEN the end of the enchantment of the Summer is at hand,
In the month that closes
The blue Midsummer weather,
When the passionate red roses
Faint for the heat
And the lilies fold together
Their petals pale and sweet,—
In the burning noontide hazes

And the golden glory of the flowers that blazes
Over the happy valleys and the wold,
There swells to me a breeze ofttimes
Out of the dreams of old.
And in the breeze the murmur of old rhymes
Rises and falls,
Like some enchanted singing,
And my tired brow is fanned
By odours from the halls
Of dreamland, such as in the moonlight white
Float round a wandering knight,
When through the country of the elves he fares
And marvels at the dances,
That glitter through the moon-glow, and the ringing
Of elfin bells;
And through the fluttering of the frolic airs,
In all the song there swells
A voice well known to me of bygone days,
That calls me to forsake
The weary worldly ways
And as of olden times my way to take
Into the dreamland of the old romances,
Into the enchanted land.

Down falls the evening on the weary plains,
And I, I stand and wait
Where, at the verge
Of the green fields, the stains
Of sunlight fade upon the trees that surge
Out of the falling night,
Dim as the dreamland's gate.
And so there comes to me a flash of light
Across the shadow and my faint eyes know
The robe of her I love
And the bright crown of tresses aureoled,
Star-glorious, above
Her face's rosy snow,

Spangling the shades with gold.
‘Sweet love, sweet welcome! I had need of thee,
Sore, sorest need!’
Still doth she grow
Nearer and lovelier till my arms may press
Almost her charms and all my soul may feed
Upon her loveliness.
But lo! I clasp the wind
And in mine arms entwined
Is nothing but a fair and painted dream.
‘Dear love, why dost thou seem
And torture me with hope in vain?’
And the fair shape doth weep
And comforteth my pain
With lovely looks and words of amity;
And so my yearnings sleep
And there is peace once more for me.

‘Come, love,’ she saith, ‘the dream-gates gape for thee.
The hour of glamorous delight
Is come for thee and me.
Under the silver night
We shall walk hand in hand
In the enchanted land
And see the moon-flowers blossom to the sound
Of the sweet elfin tune,
As in the days gone by.
Dost thou not hear the horns of Faerie wound
Among the elfland bowers
And all the rush of splendid song that floods
The silver winds that lie
And idle in the pearl-work of the moon,
Woven about the woods?
Come, love! the day is dead,
With all its weary hours,
And ours is newly born.
Thou shalt have easance of thy woes this night,

Amid the glory of the flowers that swoon
With magical delight,
Ere in the sky creeps up the weary morn
And the pale East grows red.’

So, in the pale faint flush of the twilight,
Softly I ope the door
And hand in hand,
Across the fields we go, before
The day is parted from the night,
Among the cloisters where the tall trees stand,
White in the woodland ways,
Under the moonlight, till a wall of mist
Rises before us in the evening haze,
Silver and amethyst.
Then doth my love loose hands
And in the spangled green
Of the thick moss she stands
Within the wood-verge, where the sun has been
And is not faded quite;
And to the hovering night
Sweet mystic lays
And songs she singeth, very pure and high,
Until there answereth
From out the heart-green of the woodbine maze
A magic singing, as it were
A woven music of the scents that lie
In all the night-flowers' breath;
And with the song upon the fragrant air
Strange mystic memories do swell and die
Of Love and Life and Death.

The gate of dreamland opens to the singing
And hand in hand we go,
My love and I,
Along the woodways with the elf-songs ringing,
Under the silver night;

And down the vistas of the trees, that lie
And bathe in the moonlight,
There swells to us a murmur sweet and low,
As of some magic river,
That glitters through its ranks of waving reeds
And makes the flower-bells quiver
With haunting melodies;
And from its ferny nest
The runnel of a brooklet sings and speeds
Across the pearlèd network of the grass,
Murmuring its loveliest,
Songs of a heart at ease,
That in its joy doth pass
Into a tune; and lo!
Upon the diamond ripples to our feet
A little shallop floats,
Out of a rush-work woven all and wrought
With pearls and ivory.
Then in the skiff do we
Embark and down the silver stream we fleet,
Under the thronging notes
Of the night-birds;
And as we go,
The air is all astir with lovely things;
Sweet music, twinned and fair with magic words,
Rises from elfin throats,
And in the leaves we see the rush and glow
Of jewelled wings.

There lies all glamour in the arching banks,
Through which our river runs:
Over us wing the dreams
And in the pale sweet trances of the moon,
Along the stretching glades,
The silver fawns of Faërie do pass,
White in the sweet white beams;
And now and then the tune

Of horns is clear
And the elf-hunt sweeps by, with glittering ranks,
Across the velvet grass:
The king's tall knightly sons
Ride through the aisles, with many a doucepere;
And now there comes a throng
Of snow-white maids,
Gold-haired,
That with sweet song
And pleasance wander in the fragrant maze
Of the cool woodland ways,
Sweet one with sweet one paired,
All through the summer night,
And win the enchanted air
Unto melodious trances with the ring
Of their flute-voices and the rare delight
Of their gold-rippled hair,
Soft as the songs they sing.

The high trees bend above us lovingly,
As on the stream we go,
Mingling their boughs above
Into a flower-starred roof
Of lovely greenery;
And through the night
The fireflies glow
And glitter, as it were
The stars had left their places for delight
And through the woodland air
Sped, singing.
The stream makes music to the cleaving prow,
Answering the birds' descant
And the soft ringing
Of bindweed bells.
The night is filled with spells
Of old delight;
The summer air is hazed and jubilant

With ripples of the glory of song-gold
And elfin blisses;
And in the lovely light,
A maiden more than earthly fair to see,
With moon-webs aureoled,
My lady sits by me,
Answering my thought with kisses.

The river shallows through the grass and flowers,
Athwart the waning night;
And now the boat is gone
From underneath our feet;
And eke the stream has faded
Into the ripple of the white moonlight.
So, in the midwood bowers
I stand alone
In the still time and sweet
Before the hour when night and morning meet.
Sweet sooth, the moon has braided
The air with pearl
And down the haunted glades
The shadows dance and whirl
Among the sheeny hosts of the grass-blades,
In the cool glitter of the time:
And lo! my thought takes rhythm from their dances
And to my lips comes rhyme
And many a lovely tune,
Such as the minstrels of the old romances
Sang to the moon.

My singing echoes through the elfland aisles,
Waking the silver bells,
That lie and dream in the flower-sleep,
Deep in the mossy dells;
And as I sing,
The timid rabbits creep
From all their soft warm nests among the fern;

And in the wood-deeps, gold and silver strewn,
The fawns stand listening.
Then down the columned way,
Through which the moonlight smiles,
There rings the trample of a horse's feet.
Nearer it grows along the ripple-play,
Beside the tinkling burn,
Until the silver armour of a knight
Shines in the moon
And a clear voice trolls songs of war and love,
Ditties of strange and mystical delight,
That through the trees do rove,
Telling of Day and Night,
Of Love and Life and Death,
With strains as bright and sweet
As is the linnet's breath.

My weak song ceases as I look on him:
‘Fair knight,
Fair minstrel, teach me all thy might.
I know thee as of old:
Clear through the twilight of the legends dim,
Thy name like gold
Doth shine
And the fair nobleness of thy white life
Sweetens the lips of men,
O Percivale, Christ's knight!’
And then he gazes on me with mild eyes
And the clear rapture floods me like a wine
Of some old Orient tale,
Purging my heart from sighs
And memories of strife.
And so he rides into the gloaming pale,
Scattering on every hand
Sweet singings, till they die upon the ear.
Then, looking round again,
I see the night has ceased

And in the dawning drear
My dream fades from me, as the skies are spanned
By the red bars of morn
And in the East
The cold gray day is born.

IV.SIR WINFRITH.

I.

THE woodlarks welcome the risen day;
The ringdoves croon in the cool wood-way;
The meads are telling the tale of May.

Sir Winfrith fares through the forest wide;
The glad Spring greets him on every side;
The brakes are ablaze with the blossom-tide.

The glades, as he rideth, with glee-notes ring;
The cuckoos call him, the woodlarks sing,
“Ah, whither away, Sir Son of the King?”

“Ah, whither so sadly?” The throstles cry.
“Who ever the son of a king heard sigh,
When the sun is aloft in the love-month's sky

And the larks are a-lilt in the blue above?”
“Alack for the lurdane,” rejoins the dove,
“Who fareth alone for default of love,

Who goeth a-gloom in the gladsome day,
Who's dumb for desire in the merry May,
When all things else in the world are gay?

Who ever heard tell of the son of a king,
That sitteth forlorn in the flowered Spring,
When the brakes are a-bloom and the birds do sing?”

The king's son rideth; he heareth nought:
His brows are bound with the thorns of thought;
He fareth alone, unsquired, unsought.

He rideth sans huntsman or merry moot;
His eyes are heedless, his lips are mute;
He's deaf to the beck of the blackbird's flute;

He lendeth no ear to the linnet's lyre;
His soul is aflame with a seething fire;
His heart is heavy for wandesire.

But hark! what hushes the throstle's throat?
What wild sweet sound in the air's afloat,
That all-to muteth the wild merle's note?

A surge of song through the flowered trees,
A flood of fair tones and melodies,
That fareth a-wing on the wayward breeze;

A surge of singing so sweet and high,
It floodeth the forest far and nigh,
It beareth the soul to the bovemost sky.

It stirreth the spright with its blithesome breath;
It filleth the heart with hope and faith,
With love undeeming of life and death.

The sweet sounds waken Sir Winfrith's ear;
His sense they deluge, his dreams they stir;
He stayeth his steed anon to hear.

So still he sitteth that who alone
Had lighted on him thus stirless grown
Had held him a man on a steed of stone.

Awhile he sitteth, till all around
The magic music hath weft and wound
His heart with its viewless webs of sound:

Then, fenceless drawn by his longing's force,
He lighteth down from his careless course
And tethereth thereanigh his horse.

Through thorn and thicket, through bog and brake,
'Twixt doubt and deeming, 'twixt sleep and wake,
He fareth on for that sweet song's sake.

Down sinketh the sun in the dark'ning West
And still Sir Winfrith, with panting breast,
Unfeared, ensueth that fleeting quest:

And still the singing before him flees,
Now farther borne by the faithless breeze,
Now nearer turning among the trees.

Good heart, Sir Winfrith! The goal is nigh.
Good heart to the chase! The tree-tops high
Show thinlier ever against the sky.

And lo! where he comes, in the sunset hour,
To a glade in the midmost forest bower,
And there in the midst a darkling tower.

No cresset flares from the turret's height;
No beacon beckons with lovesome light;
No window welcomes the wandering knight:

Nay, there all darkling the tower doth stand,
The finger like of a giant hand
Uplift to threaten the heavenly land.

But lo! from the top, like a golden bell,
The tones of the voice ineffable
In refluent melodies wane and swell.

Blithe is Sir Winfrith; he thinketh fast
The bird and the music to have at last;
He holdeth the pain and the labour past.

But, though he seeketh on all sides four,
No sign he seeth of gate or door,
Nor port nor postern, behind, before,

Nor wicket nor window open-eyed.
Blank is the bastion's every side,
Nought but the walls and the forest wide.

His horn he windeth both loud and high;
The wild wood echoes it far and nigh:
Except the echo there's no reply.

But still that voice from the turret tall
In waves of music doth rise and fall,
With maddening melody flooding all.

Sad is Sir Winfrith: the bird is there;
But built is its nest in the topmost air;
'Tis far from his hand as heaven's stair.

The music holds him; he may not flee;
And something warns him to wait and see;
He wakes and watches behind yon tree.

II.

The sun dips under and all about
The tents of the moon a rabble-rout
Of clouds is camping; no star shines out.

The birds are silent both far and nigh;
The breeze in the boughs hath ceased to sigh;
The black night blindeth the earth and sky.

The voice is dumb with the vanished light,
The music mute for the fallen night;
Dead darkness holdeth the turret's height.

But lo! in the midnight mirk and drear
A shudder runs through the air of fear,
A sense of somewhat of evil near.

The live night throbs with the thrill of dread
That stirs in the heart whose blood runs red
At sight and sense of the risen dead.

And sudden he feels, though his eyes see nought,
There pass him by, with the speed of thought,
A thing as swift as the thin fire-flaught;

A wraith from the middle darkness' womb,
Of curses compound and death and doom:
And down by the tower-foot there rends the gloom

A voice like an osprey's shriek a-scare,
A cry that shrills through the shrivelled air;
“Rapunzel! Minion! Down with thy hair!”

There beams at the tower-top something bright
And down by the wall, through the startled night,
There slides what himseems is a ladder of light;

A glittering fleece of golden hair,
From top to tower-foot it floateth there;
It hangs from the height like a shining stair.

Some black beast-thing on the tress lays hold
And speeds to the top by that stair of gold:
Ah God! 'tis a wizened witch-wife old!

A beldam, whose hands like bird-claws show,
With nose like a beak and eyes that glow
Like red-hot coals through her locks of snow.

She wins to the top: without a sound,
The fleece floats up, as a skein is wound;
In dusk and silence the night is drowned.

The gleam is gone from the turret's height;
Abideth nothing for sound or sight;
All dark and still as the still dark night.

Frozen with fear is Sir Winfrith's blood;
He knows the witch-wife that haunts the wood,
Who hateth all that is fair and good.

The glad day gleams on the Eastern hill;
The tower stands darkling and stern and still;
Sir Winfrith forth of the forest will.

Through thorn and thicket his last night's track
He follows; he springs on his horse's back;
He fares to his father's palace back.

III.

Again on the morrow, with risen day,
Ere morning have done the mists away,
Again through the forest he takes his way.

He wins to the tower at the time of noon,
The hour when enchantments wane and swoon,
That work their most with the waxing moon.

The tower stands darkling; on all sides four
He seeketh it round, as he sought before,
But no sign seeth of gate or door;

Then stands and calls through the sunlit air,
“Rapunzel! Sweet one! Down with thy hair!”
And down, like a fleece, falls the golden stair.

There, full at his feet, is the shining stream,
A stairway wrought of the gold sun's beam,
A pathway of price in a fairy dream.

The King's son grippeth the shimmering strand;
A tress he holdeth in either hand;
They rise and raise him at his command.

In less than a score of time to tell,
He wins to the topmost turret-cell;
He stands by the side of Rapunzel.

Before him standeth a maiden bright,
With eyes of heaven and locks of light;
Ne'er live man looked on a lovelier sight.

She gazes on him and he on her;
The Spring and love in them live and stir,
Youth's blood aflame with the blossomed year.

Love to love, longing to longing, call;
They kiss, in each other's arms they fall;
The night with its curtain covers all.

IV.

Once more, on the morrow, the morning sun,
Arising, ready its course to run,
Awakens from sleep the stout King's son.

He armeth him well against assail,
Himself and his steed from head to tail
In armour of proof of Milan mail.

He giveth him out for bounden war
To wage to the death on the fierce wild boar
That haunteth the heart of the forest core.

The mass of the hunter for him they sing
Who dareth alone a deathly thing,
Who setteth his life on the venturing.

The cross in the chapel he hath adored;
The priest hath hallowed his broad bright sword,
Hath sacred it o'er with the sign of the Lord.

A ladder of silk he hath letten make,
A ladder of proof, that may not break,
He hath letten twist for his true love's sake.

He hath bounden it on his saddle-bow;
With him is he minded to bear it, so
She win with it may from aloft alow.

But time hastes by and the hour grows late;
The sun hangs high in the noontide strait,
Ere forth he fareth the palace-gate.

Through thorn and thicket again his way
He takes, till the land with the parting ray
Is all adream of the dying day.

To the midwood glade, with the darkling tower,
Where black on the blaze is the maiden's bower,
He wins at the wane of the sunset hour.

He lights, he calls to the maiden fair,
“Rapunzel! Dearest! Down with thy hair!”
And down to his feet floats the fairy stair.

He grips on the tresses, he holds them well;
They bear him aloft to the turret-cell;
Alack! there finds he no Rapunzel.

But there, in the damsel's stead, ah woe!
The witch-wife waiteth, with hair of snow,
With hands like talons and eyes aglow.

She falls on the knight with tooth and nail;
His weapons against her nought avail;
She claws for his heart through his shirt of mail.

She clutches his heart with claws of steel;
Already his limbs the death-sweats feel;
Already his eyes the death-mists seal.

His forces fail him; his heart bleeds sore;
His sense is swooning; he can no more:
Yet but a moment and all is o'er.

But sudden the thought of the holy sign
There thrills through his heart like a levin-shine,
And gripping his blade by the steel so fine,

He calleth aloud on the name of the Lord;
Then strikes at the witch with the cross of the sword
And dead she drops on the tower-foot sward.

V.

Now blithe is Sir Winfrith, the son of the King;
He hath broughten him home his tenderling;
He hath wedded his bird with book and ring.

He sitteth in joy and him beside,
There sitteth with him his lovesome bride;
No longer lonely he needs must ride;

No longer the linnets to him shall sing,
“Who ever heard tell of the son of a king,
That fareth forlorn in the sunny Spring?”

VI.

Still frowns on the forest the darkling tower;
But never again in the midnight hour
The walls with the flashing tresses flower;

And never again from the turret-cell
The voice of the viewless Rapunzel
Soars up to the sky like a golden bell.

The place of magic is void and mute;
No sound is there, save the throstle's flute,
The nightingale's note and the howlet's hoot;

And never again, in the midnight-air,
The voice of the witch will the silence scare
With “Rapunzel! Minion! Down with thy hair!”

V.THE KING'S SLEEP.

‘BURY me deep,’ said the king,
‘Deep in the mountain's womb;
For I am weary of strife.
Hollow me out a tomb,
So that the golden sun
Pierce not the blackness dun
Where I shall lie and sleep;
Lest haply the light should bring
Again the stirring of life,
Or ever the time be come
To waken. Bury me deep.

‘Let not the silver moon
Search out the graven stone
That lieth above my head,
In the tomb where I sleep alone,
Nor any ray of a star
Come in the night to unbar
The gates of my prison-sleep.
I shall awake too soon
From the quiet sleep of the dead,
When the trumps of the Lord are blown.
If you love me, bury me deep.

‘I feel in my heart of hearts
There cometh a time for me,
Far in the future's gloom,
When there no more may be
Rest for my weary head,
When over my stony bed
The wind of the Lord shall sweep
And scatter the tomb in parts
And the voice of the angel of doom
Shall thrill through and waken me
Out of my stirless sleep.

‘For a king that has been a king,
That has loved the people he swayed,
Has bound not his brows in vain
With the gold and the jewelled braid;
Has held not in his right hand
The symbol that rules the land,
The sceptre of God for nought.
He may not escape the thing
He compassed: in death again
His sleep is troubled and weighed
By wraiths of the deeds he wrought.

‘And if he has evil done,
There may he lie and rest
Under the storied stone,
Slumber, uneasy, opprest
By the ghosts of his evil deeds,
Till Death with his pallid steeds
Have smitten the world with doom:
And the moon and the stars and the sun
Will leave him to sleep alone,
Fearing to shine on him, lest
The wicked arise from the tomb!

‘But if the ruler be wise,
Have wrought for his people's good

Sadly and like a god;
Whenever the plague-mists brood
Over the kingless land,
When fire and famine and brand
Are loose and the people weep,
They cry to the king to rise;
And under the down-pressed sod,
He hears their pitiful cries
And stirs in his dreamful sleep.

‘And the sun and the stars and the moon
Look down through the creviced tomb
And rend with their arrows of light
The sepulchre's friendly gloom,
Stirring the life again
In pulse and muscle and vein;
And the winds, that murmur and sweep
Over his resting-place, croon
And wail in his ear: “The night
Is past and the day is come;
O king, arise from thy sleep!”

The sleeper murmurs and sighs,—
Rest is so short and sweet,
Life is so long and sad,—
And he throws off his winding-sheet:
The gates of the tomb unclose
And out in the world he goes,
Weary and careful, to reap
The harvest, on hero-wise
To garner the good, and the bad
To burn, ere the Ruler shall mete
Him yet a portion of sleep.

‘Great is the Master of Life
And I bow my head to His will!
When He needs me, the Lord will call
And I shall arise and fill

The span of duty once more.
But now I am weary and sore
With travail and need of sleep;
And I fear lest the clangour and strife
Upon me again should fall,
Ere sleep shall have healed my ill.
I pray you, bury me deep!’

So the good king was dead
And the people wrought him a grave
Deep in the mountain's womb,
In a place where the night-winds rave
And the centuries come and go,
Unheard of the dead below;
Where never a ray might creep;
In the rocks where the rubies red
And the diamonds grow in the gloom,
They hollowed the king a tomb,
Low and vaulted and deep.

And there they brought him to lie:
With wailing and many a tear,
The people bore to the place
The good king's corpse on the bier.
They perfumed his funeral glooms
With lily and amaranth blooms,
In a silence sweet and deep;
They piled up the rocks on high
And there, with a smile on his face,
In doubt and sadness and fear,
They left the monarch to sleep.

Onward the centuries rolled
And the king slept safely and sound
In the heart of the faithful earth,
In the still death-slumbers bound:
And the sun and the moon and the stars
Looked wistfully down on the bars

Of the sepulchre quiet and deep,
Where he lay, while the world grew old
And death succeeded to birth,
And heard not an earthly sound
And saw not a sight in his sleep.

And it came to pass that the Wind
Spake once and said to the Sun:
‘O giver of summer-life!
Is not the time fordone
And the measure of God fulfilled,
Wherein He, the Lord, hath willed
The king should arise from sleep?
I go in the night and I find
The folk are weary of strife,
And joyless is every one
And many an eye doth weep!’

But the Sun said, shaking his hair,
His glorious tresses of gold:
“Brother, the grave is deep;
And the rocks so closely do fold
The king, that we may not win
A place where to enter in
And trouble his slumber deep.”
And the Wind said: “Where I fare,
The rays of the sun can creep,
Through the thin worm-holes in the mould,
And rouse the king from his sleep!”

Then the Moon and the Stars and the Sun
Arose and shone on the grave,
And it was as the Wind had said:
Yea, up from the vaulted cave
The worms had crept in the night
And opened a way for the light
And the winds of the air to creep.
And they entered, one by one;

Yea, down to the house of the dead,
Through cranny and rock they clave,
To wake the king from his sleep.

And the king turned round in his dream,
As he felt the terrible rays
Creeping down through the mould
In the track of the false worms' ways;
And he quaked as the light drew near
And he called to the earth for fear,
To aid him his rest to keep;
For the time he had slept did seem
But an hour, nor the wheels of gold
Had circled the span of days
When he should arise from sleep.

But the mother all-faithful heard
The dreaming call of the king,
And she seized on the wandering rays
And of each one she made a thing
Of jewelries, such as grow
In the dim earth-caves below,
From the light kept long and deep;
For she loved the man and she feared
Lest the fateful glitter and blaze
Of the light too early should bring
The dead from his goodly sleep.

She moulded pearls of the moon
And diamonds of the sun;
Rubies and sapphires she made
Of the star-rays, every one.
There was never an one might 'scape
Some luminous jewel-shape
Of all the rays that did creep
Down through the earth, too soon
To rend the sepulchre's shade;

But she seized on them all, and none
Might trouble the dead man's sleep.

Then did she mould him a crown
Of silver and cymophane
And in it the gems she set,
For a sign that never again,
Till God should beckon to him,
On the silence quiet and dim
Of the sepulchre low and deep
Should the rays of the stars look down
To trouble his rest. And yet
The centuries wax and wane
And the king is still in his sleep.

VI.MADONNA DEI SOGNI.

“La veggio scintillar d'amore,
Quando spiega la notte il negro velo.”
Tasso, Sonetti Amorosi, cix

O come, for I am weary of the day,
White-wingéd Night, that holdest to thy breast
The sorrowing and dost give the weary rest,
And fan the sunshafts of the noon away!
For one, that is full fair and kind alway,
Waits in the gloaming, till the aspiring moon
Have whelmed the world with silver, to untune
The tense harsh harp of day and soothe the air
With ravishment of music wild and rare
And stir my soul to harmonies of dreams.
Where dost thou tarry, sweet? The night is fair
And every star thine eyes' far radiance seems.

O haste! Too soon the flowerful hands of dawn
Shall strew with roses every eastern lawn.

In that fair pleasaunce, where on Beatrice
The eyes of Dante slaked their lifelong thirst,
My eyes did light upon my lady first.
I had been wandering through the night, I wis
Not how, and came to where soft airs did kiss
The frondage and the trees shone everydele
With silver of the moon; and I did feel
That there the Springtime never died away
Nor ripened to fierce summer; but the May
Did ever consecrate the place to sleep
And silver dreams. There did my fain steps stray:
And there I saw thee on a bank's slow steep;
And thou didst on my coming turn my way
And look'dst upon me with mild eyes and deep.

Thou wast upon a plaited bed reclined
Of hyacinths, the colour of thine eyes.
The moon of dreams did reign in those sweet skies
And therein such entrancements did I find
Of fantasy and wisdom intertwined,
That my faint soul became its satellite
And drew new radiance from that loveliest light.
Beside thee blew the flower-dream of the Spring,
Faint primrose, delicat'st and sweetest thing
Of all the lush year brings us; and its scent
Ethereal, on the cool dusk hovering,
Seemed as the fragrance of thy soul and blent
Itself and thee in my remembering,
As 'twere the Spring and thou but one bliss meant.

Thy hair lay gold upon the silvered grass
And floated on it, as a flower's full cup
And golden tassels float and waver up
Athwart a lake's cool crystal, through whose glass
The flooding moon forbids the eye to pass.

I deemed thee but a dream within a dream,
When first thou shon'st upon me,— all agleam
With glamour,— and did look to see thee fade
Into the faint far purple of the glade,
As I approached; but lo! thou didst arise,
And nearing, on my lips thy finger laid,—
Then, smiling with a sweetness high and wise,
Withdrew'st that wand of white and in its stead,
Didst kiss me welcome on the mouth and eyes.

The night was fragrant as a violet
With perfume of the early bloom of love;
The silence hovered o'er us, like a dove
Of peace, and in the ferns the brook did fret
Its stones to music. All my dreams were set
In silver and all sad old memories,
Reflected in the glory of thine eyes,
Did change to jewels, as a pebble laves
Its brown to pearl and jacinth, in the wave's
Alchymic crystal. Through the weary day,
I courted woes, that thou mightst dig them graves
Deep in thy bosom and upon them lay
Balsam of kisses and the love that saves
The holy sweets of sorrow from decay.

Can I forget how all the night did pause
And hung upon the wonder of thy words?
How, whilst thou spokest comfort, all the birds
Did intermit their lays? Thou wast the cause
That all were silent; for the woodland laws
Forbid the lesser songsters to prevail
Against the flutings of the nightingale.
Thou didst attune to mnsic all my sighs
And told'st my sorrows on such lovely wise,
That every fierce old sting of barbed wrong
Seemed rounded with a dream of Paradise
And linked into a cadence sweet and long

Of haunting thoughts and tender memories,
Fallen in the ripple of a perfect song.

My heaven with the setting sun was red:
Life was for me a waste without a smile
And I a Philoctetes on his isle.
But at thy kiss my gladness, that was dead,
Did burst the bonds of night; the shadows fled
And all the curtains of the dusk were drawn;
My sky once more was amber with the dawn
And I could watch to hail the new day's sun
With daybreak hope; for I at last had won
Full-breasted Love, that is the flower of life;
What though in dreams? If living, scarce begun,
Be bitter in the mouth with pain and strife
And loveless, 'tis in it we are undone
And in our dreams we have the truer life.

I reach into the ancient troubled deep—
Where many a rank old poison-weed has lain
And ripened to corruption— and again
Uproot them from their long and sullen sleep,
Expecting but that tears of blood they'll weep
And wring my heart to bleeding. Through the flood,
Curdled and foul and sick with year-old mud,
They rise, all hideous with remembered woe,
Up to the surface of the pool, and lo!
Thine eyes have won their nature to such fair
And exquisite forswearing, with their glow
Of tender glory, that the dank stems wear
A sudden garb of flowerage sweet and rare
And are all consecrate with blossom-snow.

So I forget the present in thine eyes,
And all my future is but one embrace
Of thine encircling arms, my hope thy face
And guerdon of thy kisses. Sorrow dies

And lives again in such delightsome guise
That pain is pleasure and the weary past
With Spring-flower-chains is bounden close and fast
To wait on Love and wring a sharp sweet pain
Out of old bitter cypress and vervain,
To lend new savour to his charmèd wine.
The bitter herbs that erst have been my bane,
Curdling the young blood's valour in each vein,
Striking new root in that rich heart of thine,
To change their souls to balsam have been fain.

I cull for thee a garland of sweet names,
Made fragrant with the perfume of fair deeds:
And lo! meseems they fade to scentless weeds;
For there is that in thee that naming shames
And wills to be Love's only, and not Fame's.
How shall I call thee, sweet? or not at all?
Yet mine ears weary till upon them fall
The linkèd music of thy name's sweet sound,
That with its phrases may entwine around
My heartstrings all the memories of thy breath,
Thy kisses and thine arms about me wound.
How shall I call thee, love? “Love,” Echo saith.
What if for thee my foolish wit have found
No other name save Love,—or haply Death?

Sweet, I have tracked thy footsteps in the wood,
Hard by the river of the death of pain
And for my heart's poor solace have been fain
To gather violets where thy feet have stood
And wooed the earth to flowering. Oh, I would
That I might see thee standing in the dawn
Upon the glad green of some upland lawn,

100

Before the blue day's waking,—aureoled
With some pale tender flush of early gold,
Saint-purely vestured as a lily's bell
In fair white garments, falling fold on fold,
And just one blush of purple, such as fell
Upon the wounded white-rose-leaves of old,
To show Love's light does in that sweet snow dwell!

O lady of my dreams, the night is past;
The pale day wakens and the east is red.
Thou, that dost shun the young day's lustihead,
Where dost thou harbour, when the stars fade fast
Into the burning and the world is ghast
With wraiths of dawning? Do thy swift feet skim
The primrose tufts that edge the rill's full brim
Or dost thou sit in gold-green woodland nooks
And weave new store of dream-sweet words and looks,
In place of those worn weary by the night's
Long inter-ravishments, and twine thy hair
Into new webs of woven eye-delights,
Following the brook's clear glitter and the air
Waved with a softened ripple of gold-lights?

A place of woven flowers and singing winds,
Jewelled with moss and plumed with nodding ferns;
A hall of silver silence, wherein burns
A soft star-glamour. Through the moss that binds
Fern-roots with gold, a slow clear water winds
And slackens into tiny pools of light,
Pale topaz, amethyst and chrysolite,
Set in the gilded tracery of the grass:
And there the charmèd hours do lingering pass,
Unwilling to forsake so fair a place.
In such a haunt I picture thee by day,
Stirring the air to rapture with the grace
Of thy sweet songs and wonder of thy face,
Until the slow West gloom to purple-grey.

101

The daytime is my Purgatory hill,
Up which I climb with halt and weary feet
Until the gold of sunset streams to meet
The purple of the dusk. Then stand I still
And watch the fire-crown'd pinnacles, until
Star-silver glimmers on the robe of night
And all the wood, that hides thee from my sight,
Is voiceful with the evening. Entering
By the strait pathway,— where the close boughs cling
Together o'er the path, as if to exclude
The soiling step of any uncouth thing,—
I see afar thy robe's white fluttering
And hear, through all that columned solitude,
The ripples of thy song's wood-silver ring.

“Da questa parte con virtù discende, Che toglie altrui memoria del peccato; Dall' altra d'ogni ben fatto la rende.” Dante, Purgatorio, xxviii. 127—9.,

VII.THE HOUSE OF SORROW.

THERE is a story, told with many a rhyme
In dusty tomes of old,
Of how folk sailed, in the fresh ancient time,
Into the sunset's gold:

Into the land of Western hope they sailed,
To seek the soul of joy,
That from the modern life of men had failed,
Crushed by the dull annoy

Of pain and toil; the gladness of the age,
When Love was king on earth
And summer, midmost in the winter's rage,
In men's warm hearts had birth:

102

This did they seek. Beyond the sun, they thought,
Deep in the purple West,
There lay the charm of joyance that they sought,
Awaiting some high quest;

Charm to be won by earnest souls and pure
And brought anew to life;
Wherewith provided, one might hope to cure
Men's endless dole and strife.

So, from the chains of love and toil and gold,
The love of wife and maid,—
All human ties had they cast loose,—unrolled
The fluttering sails and weighed

Swift anchor, steering tow'rd the dying day,
Hope in their hearts most high
That they should win the charm that therein lay
For men's sake, ere to die

The angel bade them. And the high heart fell
Not in them, though the wind
Blew fresh and swift for many a day, the swell
Ran pearled the keel behind,

Along the emerald, and the golden dawn
Sank ever sad and pale
Into the westering distance and was gone,
Whenas the dew did fail;

And nothing met their vision, save the streaks
Of gold and crimson, wound
About the westward, when the dead day's cheeks
Flushed with the sun, that drowned

His glory sullenly in amber foam,
And the dim mists that lay
Along the sapphire marges of the dome
Of heaven, in the gray

103

Of the pale dawning, and the narrowing wheel
Of sea-birds round the sail
And silver fish that played about the keel,
With many a golden scale

And fin of turquoise glancing through the spray:
But never the fair line
Of green and golden shores, the long array
Of palaces divine,

That held the dream of their long venturings,
Rose in the changeful West;
But still the ship sped with its silver wings
Over the fretted crest

Of the slow ripple; still the sea was green
And calm on every side
And the swift course unto their vision keen
Brought but the weary wide

Gray circle bounded by the silver foam;
And still they looked and hoped
For the fair land where the true joy had home
For which they sighed and groped

Amid the mirk of living. Ever pale
And paler grew the skies
And less refulgent in its crimson mail
The hour when the day dies:

And every day the dawn was tenderer
And sadder in its white
And rosy pudency; and still the stir
Of the sad winds of night

Crept closelier on the noontide, till the day
Was hardly much more glad
Than the pale night and morning was as gray
As when the hours are sad

104

With stormy twilight. So at last they came
When, in the dreaming West,
The scarlet last of sunset's fading flame
Lay on the billows' breast

Still climbing skyward, as it were to catch
The day's last fluttering sigh—
In sight of a fair city, that did match
The tender amethyst sky,

Pale purple with the setting. Very fair
And lucent were the walls;
And in the evening the enchanted hair
Of some pale star, that falls

From azure heights of mystery, did seem
To compass it about
And girdle it with glamours of a dream,
Webs of desire and doubt:

So that for those sweet clinging veils of mist,
Amber and vaporous,
One might but faintly note the amethyst
And jewels of the house,

That rose with many a stately battlement
Out of the pulsing sea,
And could but dimly trace the forms that went,
Most fair and sad to see,

About the silver highways and the quays
Of gold and chrysoprase,
Tender and tristful as the shapes one sees,
In some sweet autumn haze,

Flit, in the gloaming, through the enchanted air;
When there is none to know,
Save some pale poet, that may never dare
To tell the lovely woe,

105

The witching ecstasy of sad delight
He has seen pictured there
Upon the canvas of the lingering light,
Under the evening air.

But they that sailed in that enchanted ship,
No whit cast down, drew sail
And came to where the amber-polished lip
Of the gold shore grew pale

Under the kisses of the purpled sea:
And there they landed all;
And wandering inward through the blazonry
Of portico and hall,

They came to where the soul of sadness sat,
Throned in a woman's form—
Most holy and most lovely—and forgat
In her sweet sight the worm

Of yearning that had gnawed their hearts so long
And knew at last,
From her low whispers and the sad sea's song,
That thither had Life past

As to its goal-point: for the golden thing,
That they had lacked on earth,
Was not (as they had deemed) the god rose-wing
Of gladness and of mirth—

The god of vine-and-ivy-trellised brow
And sunny orient eyes—
For he doth haunt men ever, did they know
But to be linnet-wise:

But that best gift of the Immortal Ones,
That men have lost for aye;
The pure sweet sadness that we know but once,
And then wepassa way:

106

The mingled love and pain we Sorrow call,
There did it dwell alone,
The tender godlike pain once known to all,
Now but to poets known.

There sit they through the long unwearying years,
At that fair lady's knees,
Lulled by the ripple of her songs and tears
And the sweet sighful breeze

Into forgetting of the things of life
And the weird shapes that fleet
Across its stage of mingled dole and strife;
For sorrow is so sweet,

There is no gladness that may equal it
Nor any charm of bliss.
And fain would I from the pale seekers wit
Which way the steering is

That may, with helm and sail and oar pursued,
Bring me where she doth dwell,
The lovely lady of that solitude.
Is there no one can tell?

VIII.IN ARMIDA'S GARDEN.

(Gluck's ‘Armide,’ Act ii. Scene 3.)

[_]

(Introduction and Aria.)

THIS is the land of dreams: these waving woods
And the dim sunlit haze that hangs on all
And the clear jewels of the murmuring stream;
These flowered nooks through which the bird-notes fall,
Like silver Spring-showers,—here sweet Silence broods,
And here I dream.

107

Prone in the shadow of the flowers I lie
And watch the lizards glitter through the grass
And listen to the tinkle of the stream:
Unmindful of the weary hours that pass,
Here do I lie and let the years go by:
I dream and I dream.

Life and the world forsake me in the calm
Of these enchanted woodways, green and still,
Wherein the very sunlight's wavering gleam
Sleeps on the lazy ripples of the rill
And in the mist of the droopt flowers' faint balm
I dream and I dream.

There is no future in these glades of ours
Nor any whisper of the stern to-morrow;
Life is a woven thing of a sunbeam:
Nor in the grass is any snake of sorrow,
Nor comes remorse anigh where 'mid the flowers
I dream and I dream.

Here are the bird-songs neither glad nor sad:
Sleep drones in every note of their delight;
Not even throstles with the olden theme
Of tender grieving sadden the pale night;
But veiled is all their song, as 'twere they had
Dream within dream.

Here are no roses of the sharp sweet scent
Nor the sad violets' enchanted breath,
Nor jasmines cluster by the slumbering stream;
But the drowsed hyacinths with umbels bent
And the gold-hearted lilies of sweet death,
Flowers of a dream.

108

I know not if life is with me or how
I come to lie and sleep away the years:
I only know, but yesterday did seem
Sad life amid a swarm of sordid fears
And hopes. Then came the god of Sleep—and now
I dream and I dream.

There swell faint breaths to me of earthly jar,
As 'twere a wild-bee humming in the thyme,
And the dim sounds of what pale mortals deem
The aims of life come back like olden rhyme
Upon mine ears, whilst, from the world afar,
I dream and I dream.

I hear the sweep of pinions in the air
And see dim glories glitter through the skies,
As if some angel from the blue extreme
Of heaven strewed gold and balm of memories
Upon the woods and the dim flowers that bear
Spells of a dream.

There hover faces o'er me oftentimes
Of lovely women that I knew of old,
Set like a jewel in a golden stream
Of fairest locks; and from the aureoled
Sweet lips there swell faint echoes of old rhymes;
(I dream and I dream.)

And sweet white arms enclose me as I lie,
(Still do I lie and fold me in a sleep);
Yea, and faint-fluttering tresses, all a-gleam,
Fall down about my brow full tenderly
And wind me in a glamour soft and deep.
(I dream and I dream.)

109

Yet is there nothing that therein is rife
That for the world forsaken makes me sigh,
More than the empty motes of a sunbeam.
Unheeding them, in the dim dream I lie;
Far from the flutter of the wings of Life,
I dream and I dream.

When wraiths of pleasure are so true and leal,
Why should I seek for flesh and blood to love me?
Who shall tell what things are and what things seem?
I am content, unquestioning, to feel
The folding of the shadow-arms above me.
I dream and I dream.

There are two shapes that reign in the clear air,
Holding the hours with their alternate feet:
Under the lindens and along the stream
The twin shapes walk and make the noonday sweet
With their clear songs and their aspéct most fair:
(I dream and I dream)

The one of them is white and lockèd with gold
And the sea's blue is cloudless in his eyes;
And therein comes and goes the glad sun's gleam,
When in the morn the sloping shadow lies
Of his fair form upon the golden wold:
(I dream and I dream)

But dark the other is and sad as night
And his eyes purple as the evening sky,
When in the midnight falls the silver beam
Of the pale moon upon the flowers that lie
And faint for the excess of their delight:
(I dream and I dream)

110

The fair shape's songs are joyous as the day;
The other's sad as is the violets' breath;
And of their lovely semblance, this I deem,—
Life is the name of him that is so gay;
The name men know the other by is Death.
(I dream and I dream.)

The fair shape holds the day for his domain
And wakes the linnets with his golden song,
Clear as the jewelled tinkle of the stream;
The dark shape walks the cloistered night along
And weaves descants of a divine sweet pain.
(I dream and I dream.)

But in the middle day the twain do meet,
And hand in hand right lovingly they go
Along the wood-ways in the noontide gleam;
Mingling their songs in a sweet chant and low;
And where the grass is pressed by their twin feet,
I dream and I dream.

Nor are these all that haunt the wooded bowers:
There is another shape much sought of them,
That something of the twain to have doth seem;
For there is life in his sweet eyes' blue gem
And death upon his tender mouth's red flowers.
(I dream and I dream.)

Walking alone, along the wood he goes
And plucks the flowers, to breathe their scent and tell
The issue of the things that he doth deem,
And idles with the ripple's babbling swell,
Murmuring sweet ditties that he only knows.
(I dream and I dream.)

111

Him do the twin shapes seek by hill and wood,
He flying ever with an arch despite
Along the meadows in the sight's extreme;
And when upon the fringe of the spent night
The broidery of morning is renewed,
(I dream and I dream)

They touch him often; yet but seldom win
To make him walk with them the path beside,
Along the flowered marges of the stream;
And often joyous Life hath grieving sighed
And Death hath sorrowing sat beside the linn,
(I dream and I dream)

For that he would not come: but, comes the wight,
Then do they crown him, as their lord, above
The twain, with laurels and an anademe
Woven out of sun-gold and the moon's delight;
And so I know that the fair shape is Love.
(I dream and I dream.)

These all are but the figures of a sleep,
Being too fair for aught but the dream-world,
Being too lovely to do aught but seem;
And so I will to lie and them to reap:
In these dim hazes of the night impearled,
I dream and I dream.

Come Death,—it is but night more sweet and deep;
Come Life,—it is but morning come again;
Come Love,—it is but the first Spring's sun-beam,
With the sweet primrose-scents of rapturous pain;
For Love, Life, Death, are but the terms of sleep.
I dream and I dream.

112

IX.THE WESTWARD SAILING.

OH, blithe and glad the liege-folk were
In all the Norway strand!
For home the king a bride did bring,
The king of all the land.

With many a gay gold flag they decked
The city of the king;
Loud sang the choirs and from the spires
The bells for joy did ring.

There was no man in all the land
But laid his grief aside,
What time the king with holy ring
Was wedded to his bride.

Within the royal banquet-hall
The bridal feast was spread;
The cup went round, with garlands crowned,
And eke the wine ran red.

The harpers smote the silver strings,
The gleemen all did sing
Thereto a song so sweet and strong,
That all the hall did ring.

And therein sat upon his throne,
Among his barons all,
The king, beside his trothplight bride,
And ruled the festival.

He kissed his bride, his bride kissed him,
From the same cup drank they;
And therewithal the minstrels all
Did sing a joyous lay.

113

Oh, merry, merry went the feast
And fast the red wine ran!
The gates gaped wide and in did stride
An old seafaring man.

In russet leather was he clad,
As those that use the sea,
And three times rolled, a chain of gold
About his neck had he.

Gray was his head, his beard was gray
And furrowed was his brow;
But in his eye a might did lie
That made all heads to bow.

He gazed upon the crownèd king,
Upon his barons all;
And there befell a sudden spell
Of silence in the hall.

With steel-gray eyes he gazed on them,
Whilst none the hush might break,—
The words to come were stricken dumb,—
And thus to them he spake:

“The lift is clear, the wind blows free
Toward the sunset land;
Oh, who with me will sail the sea
Unto the Western strand?

“Now let the courtier leave his feast
And plough the deep with me!
The king his bride let leave, to ride
Over the briny sea!

“Now let the baron leave his hall,
The minstrel leave his song!
For in the West is set the quest
Whereafter all men long.

114

“There are the forests thick with flower
And there the winds breathe balm
And there gold birds sing wonder-words
Under the summer calm.

“There is the earth thick-strewn with gems,
The sands are golden-shelled
And in the skies the magic lies
That gives new youth to eld.

“Oh, who will sail the seas with me
Unto the shores of gold?
There lieth rest, that is the best
For all men, young or old.”

Then up there leapt the crownèd king,
The king of all the land:
“Oh, I with thee will sail the sea
Unto the Western strand!

“Whate'er thou art, thy words have wrought
Such yearning in my breast,
That I will sail, come weal or bale,
Unto the golden West!”

His bride hath laid upon his arm
Her hand more white than snow;
She kissed him thrice, with tearful eyes
And mouth all white for woe;

And on his finger, for a sign
That he should ne'er forget,
A ring threefold of good red gold
And sapphires hath she set.

The seaman led them with his eye
Out of the high gold door;
And they are come, for wonder dumb,
Down to the white sea-shore.

115

Before the city, on the sea,
A fair tall ship there lay,
With sails of silk as white as milk
And ropes of seagreen say.

Into the vessel tall and stout
He brought them every one;
And as he bade, all sail they made
Toward the setting sun.

Oh, many a weary day they sailed
Across the silver spray!
And ever due the West wind blew,
But never land saw they:

A wild wide waste of emerald sea,
Flecked with the argent foam;
A sun of gold that westward rolled
Over the blue sky-dome;

The twilight gray, that ends the day,
And then the moon on high;
The purple night, with moonlight white
And stars thick set in sky.

So fifty days were wellnigh past,
And on the fiftieth day,
At eventide, the sad wind sighed,
The sapphire lift grew gray.

The icebergs rose about the ship,
All in a death-white ring,
And grimly round with ice they bound
The vessel of the king.

The helmsman stood beside the helm;
The flesh from off him fell;
And in his stead there reared its head
A grisly Death from Hell.

116

The Death-King stood upon the deck,
High as the topmost mast,
And thrice among that pallid throng
He blew a deathly blast.

With the first breath the sky turned black,
The sun a red fire grew,
And ghastly pale, the hearts did fail
Of all that luckless crew.

A second time he breathed on them
Under the heavens' pall,
And with his breath the sleep of death
Fell down upon them all.

A third time with his mouth he blew—
His mouth without a lip—
And far below the chill tide-flow
Down sank the doomèd ship.

Deep in the bosom of the sea
The frozen Norsemen rest;
Each mother's son the prize hath won
That for all men is best.

All in the trance of that strange sleep,
Upon the deck they stand;
And Death the King, he hath the ring
Upon his bony hand.

117

X.SIR ERWIN'S QUESTING.

‘OH, whither, whither ridest thou, Sir Erwin?
The glitter of the dawn is in the sky;
And I hear the laverock singing,
Where the silken corn is springing
And the green-and-gold of summer's on the rye.’

‘O lady fair, I ride toward the setting;
For the glamour of the West is on my heart
And I hear a dream-voice calling
To the land where dews are falling
And the blossoms of the Springtide ne'er depart.’

‘Oh, what, oh, what thing seekest thou, Sir Erwin?
Is life no longer pleasant to thy soul?
Am I no more heart's dearest,
Though the summer skies are clearest
And the gold of June is fresh on copse and knoll?’

‘O sweet, I seek the land where love is holy
And the bloom of youth is ever on the flowers;
The land where joy is painless
And the eyes' delight is stainless
And the break of hope faints never in the weary noontide hours.’

‘Oh, rest awhile, oh, rest awhile, Sir Erwin!
The hills are yet ungilded by the sun.
Oh, tarry till the morning
Have chased the mists of dawning
And the weariness of noon be past and done!’

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‘O lady fair, I may not tarry longer!
The sun is climbing fast above the grey
And I hear the trumpets blowing,
Where the eastern clouds are glowing
And the mists of night are breaking from the city of the day.’

Far out into the greenwood rides Sir Erwin,
Oh, far into the wild wood rideth he!
And there meet him sisters seven,
When the sun is high in heaven
And the gold of noon is bright on flower and tree.

Oh, wonder-lovely maidens were the seven,
With mantles of the crimson and the green,
With red-gold rings and girdles
And sea-blue shoes and kirtles
And eyes that shone like cornflowers in their locks' corn-golden sheen.

‘Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's dearest!
And we will sing thee wonder-lovely songs
And we will strew with roses
The place where thy repose is
And teach thee all the rapture that unto love belongs.

‘Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's dearest!
We have full many a secret of delight:
Thy day shall be one sweetness
Of love in its completeness
And the nightingale shall sing to thee the whole enchanted night.’

‘Oh, woe is me! I may not stay, fair maidens;
My quest is for a country far and wild;
The land where springs the Iris,
Where the end of all desire is
And the thought of love lives ever undefiled.’

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‘Oh, light thee down and dwell with us, heart's dearest!
Thou wilt wear thy youth to eld in such a quest:
For it lies beyond the setting,
In the land of the Forgetting,
In the bosom of the everlasting rest!’

Far on into the greenwood rides Sir Erwin,
Oh, far into the wild wood rideth he!
And he sees a fair wife sitting,
At the hour when light is flitting
And the gold of sunset gathers on the sea.

Oh, very fair and stately was her seeming
And very sweet and dreamful were her eyes!
And as she sat a-weaving,
She sang a song of grieving,
Full low and sweet to anguish, mixt with sighs.

‘Oh, tell me what thou weavest there, fair lady,
I prithee tell me quickly what thou art!’
‘I am more fair than seeming
And I weave the webs of dreaming,
For the solace of the world-awearied heart.’

‘Oh, prithee tell me, tell to me, fair lady,
What song is that thou singest and so sweet?’
‘I sing the songs of sorrow,
That is golden on the morrow,
And I charm with them the sad hours' leaden feet.

‘Oh, light thee down and dwell with me, heart's dearest!
Thou hast wandered till thy face is furrowed deep;
But I will charm earth's cumbers
From the rose-meads of thy slumbers
And will fold thee in the lotus-leaves of sleep.’

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‘Oh, woe is me! oh, woe is me, fair lady!
A hand of magic draws me on my quest
Toward the land of story,
Where glows the sunset-glory
And the light of love fades never from the West.’

‘Oh, light thee down and dwell with me, heart's dearest!
Thine eyes will lose their lustre by the way;
For it lies far out to yonder,
Where the setting sun dips under
And the funeral pyres are burning for the day.’

Oh, far thorough the greenwood rides Sir Erwin,
Oh, far out of the wild wood rideth he!
And he comes where waves are plashing
And the wild white crests are dashing
On the pebbles of a gray and stormy sea.

Far down toward the tide-flow rides Sir Erwin,
Oh, far adown the shingle rideth he!
And he sees a shallop rocking
Upon the wild waves' flocking,
And an ancient steersman sitting in the lee.

Oh, very weird and gruesome was that steersman,
With hair that mocked for white the driven snow!
The light of some strange madness
Was in his eyes' gray sadness
And he showed like some pale ghost of long ago.

‘Oh, sail with me! oh, sail with me, Sir Erwin!
Thou hast wandered in thy questing far enough.
I will bring thee where Love's ease is
For ever, though the breezes
Blow rudely and the broad green way be rough.’

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‘Reach hand to me, reach hand to me, old steersman!
I will sail with thee for questing o'er the main.
Although thine eyes look coldly,
I will dare the venture boldly;
For I weary for an ending of my pain.’

Oh, long they rode on billows, in the glory
Of the gold and crimson standards of the West!
So came they, in the setting,
To the land of the Forgetting,
Where the weary and the woeful are at rest.

‘Oh, what can be this land that is so peaceful,
That lies beyond the setting of the sun?
I hear a dream-bell ringing
And I hear a strange sweet singing
And the tender gold of twilight's on the dun.

‘Oh, what are these fair forms that float toward me
And what are these that hold me by the hand,
As if they long had sought me?
And what art thou hast brought me
O'er the ocean to this dream-enchanted strand?’

‘Fair knight, this is the land of the Hereafter
And the name that men do know me by is Death:
For the love, from life that's flying,
Lives ever for the dying
And the stains of it are purged with 'scape of breath.’

There is a legend that the more distant-seeming end of the rainbow begins in Fairyland.

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XI.THE BALLAD OF SHAMEFUL DEATH.

‘Le regard calme et haut,
Qui damne tout un peuple autour d'un échafaud.’
Baudelaire.

I GO to an evil death, to lie in a shameful grave,
And I know there is never a hope and never a God that can save;
Yet I smile, for I know that the end of my toil and my striving is come;
I shall sleep in the bosom of death, where the voice of the scorners is dumb.

I go in the felons' cart, with my hands bound fast with the cord
And nothing of brave or bright in the death that I ride toward:
The people clamour and jeer, with a fierce and an evil glee,
And the mothers and maids that pass do shudder to look on me.

For the deed that I did for men, the life that I crown with death,
Was a crime in the sight of all, a flame of the pestwind's breath;
And the good and the gentle pass with a sad and a drooping head,
As I go to my punished crime, to lie with the felon dead.

But lo! I am joyful and proud, as one that is newly crowned:
I heed not the gibes and the sneers and the hates that compass me round;
I come not, with drooping head, to the death that a felon dies;
I come as a king to the feast, with a deathless light in mine eyes.

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I ride with a dream in mine eyes and the sound of a dream in mine ears
And my spirit wanders again in the lapse of the bygone years;
I smile with the bygone hope and I weep for the bygone grief
And I weave me the olden plans for the world's and the folk's relief.

I build me over again the time of my yearning youth,
When my heart was sick for men's grief and my gladness failed me for ruth;
For I saw that their lives were weary and maddened with bitter toil
And there came no helper to heal, no prophet to purge the soil.

I mind me how all the joys, a man in his manhood's prime
May have in the new sweet world and the strength of his blossom-time,
Were saddened and turned to gall by the cry of the world's lament,
That withered the roses' bloom and poisoned the violets' scent.

My heart is full of the thoughts that gathered within my soul
And the anguish that held my life at the sight of my fellows' dole;
I mind me how, day by day, the passion grew in my breast,
The voices cried in my sleep and hindered my heart of rest.

It rises before me now, in its fragrance ever the same,
The time when my soul found peace and my yearning soared like a flame,
The day when my shapeless thought took spirit and speech and form,
The hour when I swore alone to front the fire and the storm.

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It rises before me now, the little lane by the wood,
With the golden-harvested fields, where the corn in its armies stood,
The berries brown in the hedge, the eddying leaves in the breeze
And the spirits that seemed to speak in the wind that sighed through the trees.

The path where I went alone, in the midst of the swaying sheaves,
Through the landscape glowing with gold and crimson of Autumn leaves;
The place where my full resolve rose out of my tears and sighs,
Where my life was builded for me and my way lay clear in mine eyes.

I mind me the words I spoke, the deeds that I did to save,
The life that I lived to rescue the world from its living grave;
I mind me the blows I smote at the thronèd falsehood and blame,
The comfort I spoke for the lost, the love that I gave to shame.

I mind me of all the hates that gathered about my strife,
The gibes that poisoned my speech, the lies that blackened my life,
The fears that maddened the folk, the folly that shrank with dread
From the love I spoke for the live, the hope I held for the dead.

For the folk, with their purblind souls, chose rather to live and die
In the olden anguishful slough, to weary and groan and sigh
In the old familiar toil and the old unvarying hate,
Than rise to a joy unknown, a love to free them from Fate.

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And the words that I spoke for love, the deeds that I did for hope,
The future I showed for life in the new sweet credence's scope,
They deemed them a tempting of hell, a blasphemy and a crime;
They thought the angel a fiend, that called them out of their slime.

The yearning that cried in their breasts, that met mine own like a flood,
They thought to quench it with fire, to stay its passion with blood,
To deaden my voice with death, (their own should be silent then;)
And so I come to atone for the love that I bore to men.

My enemies laugh in their glee, as the people jeer at my fate;
They know not the seed of love that lies at the heart of hate:
They give me hatred for love and death for the life I brought;
But I smile, for I know that love shall come at the last, unsought.

I look far on in the years and see the blood that I shed
Crying a cry in men's ears, crying the cry of the dead;
I see my thought and my hope fulfilling my work for men
In the folk that jeer at me now, the lips that spat at me then.

I know that for many a year my life shall be veiled with shame,
That many an age shall hate me and make a mock of my name;
I know that the fathers shall teach their children many a year
To hold my hope for a dread and know my creed for a fear.

But I know that my work shall grow in the darkness ever the same;
Its seed shall stir in the earth in the shade of my evil fame;
My thought shall conquer and live, when the sound of my doom is fled
And my name and my crime are buried, to lie with the unknown dead.

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Wherefore I smile as I go and the joy at my heart is strong
And I gaze with a peace and a hope on the cruel glee of the throng;
I live in my thought and my love, I conquer Time with my faith
And I ride with a deathless hope to crown my living with death.

I loved thee, beautiful Death, in the fresh sweet time of the Spring,
And I will not fail from my troth in the wind of the axe's swing;
I come to thy bridal bed, O Death my belovéd, I come!
I shall sleep in thine arms at the last, when the voice of the scoffers is dumb.

O friends that are faithful yet, if your love shall bear me in mind
With a graven stone on the tomb where I sleep with my felon kind,
Write me as one that fell in the way of a punished crime,
‘Hated of men he died, in the heart of the evil time!’

And yet I would not be thought to glose o'er my full stern fate
Or leave weak words of complaint for the ages that lie in wait.
Rase out the final words; I will rest with the first content;
‘Hated of men he died’ shall stand for my monument.

I was never in love with the praise nor afraid of the censure of fools:
Mean they as well as they may, they were ever the dastard's tools.
Strike out the words of complaint; I will stand by the rest alone:
‘Hated of men’ shall pass for the roll of my virtues on stone.

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And yonder on in the years, some few of the wise, perad-venture,
Shall read in the things laid bare the truth of my lifelong venture,
Shall see my life like a star in the shrouding mists of the ages
And set my name for a light and a patriot's name in their pages.

And then shall the clearer sight and the tenderer thought fulfil
The things that I left unsaid, the words that are lacking still:
A poet shall set my name in the gold of his noble rhyme;
‘Hated of men he died, in the heart of the evil time.’

XII.THE BALLAD OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER.

I.

THE still earth sleeps in the Summer night,
The air is full of the moon;
All over the land, in her silver sight,
The roses blossom, ruddy and white;
The world is joyous with June.

There goes a moan in the greenwood hoar,
A moan, but and a wail:
What sighing is that the breezes bore?
What plaining is that which shrilleth o'er
The note of the nightingale?

A green glade lies in the middle wood:
Under the moonlight pale,
The greensward glitters many a rood.
Who lies on the grass, bedabbled with blood?
A knight in his silver mail.

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A murdered knight on the greensward lies,
Under the witch-white moon:
The air is thick with his dying sighs;
The nightbirds flutter about his eyes;
The corbies over him croon.

II.

The night-wind wails,
The moon-silver pales,
The stars are faint in the mist;
The king's daughter rides over hill and dale,
Under the arch of the pine-shade pale,
A lily of gold in the moon-mist's veil.
And as she rides
Where the mill-stream glides,
A raven is sitting on the tree by the brown water,
With ‘Woe to thee! oh, woe to thee, king's daughter!
Thou ridest to an evil tryst.’

The silence quivers,
The pine-shade shivers,
Sad flute-notes wake in the gloom.
The king's daughter rides in the hawthorn track;
Gold is her hair on the black steed's back.
Whose steps are those
That the echo throws
Back on the startled ear of the night?
What form is that in the moonlight white
That follows the track of her horse's feet?
Whose hands on the red-gold bridle meet?
Whose spells are they that such scath have wrought her,
That the night-winds cry to her, ‘Woe, king's daughter!
Thou ridest to thy place of doom.’

The moon brims up
In her pearlèd cup,

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The air grows purple as gore;
The stars are red
With blood to be shed;
The king's daughter sees in the purple sky
The wings of the birds of ill omen fly,
And the broidered lights in the cloud-rack burn
With a word that is weary and fierce and stern;
The shadows of the night in their arms have caught her
And the night-winds cry to her, ‘Woe, king's daughter!
Thy pleasant place of life shall never know thee more.’

Out of the maze
Of the woodbind ways,
Into a moonlit glade,
The maiden rides, with the shape of gloom
Casting a shade on her cheek's rose-bloom,
A shadow of surely hastening doom.
What glitter is that of silvered mail,
Prone on the grass in the moonlight pale?
A sword-hilt joined to a broken blade:
Whose blood is red on the bright brown steel?
Who lies in the sleep of death?
It is her knight, that was true and leal,
Whose lips so often her lips have kissed,
To whom the shades of the night have brought her;
And she hears in the echo his dying breath:
‘Ah! woe is me for thee, king's daughter!
Thou comest to a woful tryst.’

III.

She hath alighted from off her steed
And she hath raised her lover's head
And laid it on her knees;
The rose of her heart begins to bleed
And on her breast his blood is red;
Her heart begins to freeze.

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She hath arisen from off the ground
And she hath ta'en the bloodied blade
And dug with it a grave;
She hath diggèd a grave both deep and round
And there his body hath she laid:
His soul the dear Christ save!

She hath folded her round her mantle gray
And she hath stepped into the tomb
And laid her by his side:
The dead and the live, the knight and his may,
They are wedded at last in night and gloom:
The grave is fair and wide.

IV.

The day-flower blows on the eastern hills.
(Woe is me for the king's daughter!)
The throstle in the morn
Sings blithely on the thorn
And golden is the sun on the grave of the king's daughter.

The wind of dawn through the forest shrills,
With leaves for the grave of the king's daughter.
A lily of red gold
Its flower-flames doth unfold
And glisters in the sun from the heart of the king's daughter.

XIII.THE ROSES OF SOLOMON.

SOLOMON of ancient story
Of the Lord had roses seven,
Roses of the morning-glory,
Dropping with the dews of heaven.

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Angels plucked them in the garden
Of the city high and golden,
Ere the dews had time to harden,
That within their cups were holden,

Into jewels for the adorning
Of the Cherubim immortal,
Of the Chamberlains of Morning,
Of the Seraphs of the Portal.

Flowers from a celestial far land,
With the breath of blessing o'er them,
Woven, gathered in a garland,
Still for benison he bore them.

From the chrysoberyl ceiling
Of his chair of state suspended,
All the air with fragrance filling,
Bright with blossom never ended,

Hung the heaven-descended flowers,
Each its proper boon of blessing,
Each its own enchanted powers
By the grace of God possessing.

Kingship this and domination
Gave of all the worldly spaces,
Over every land and nation,
Over all the tribes and races.

That the dark world's sons and daughters
Bent to, spirits earthy, airy,
Angels of the fires and waters,
Demon, seraph, afrit, fairy.

Empire this which never dieth
Gave o'er all with life and motion,
All that creepeth, fareth, flieth
In the earth and air and ocean.

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That command of all the courses
Gave of land and sea and heaven,
Winds and waters, flames and forces,
Sun and moon and planets seven.

This o'er soulless things had power,
All that sees not, speaks not, hears not,
Stone and metal, herb and flower,
Everything that stands and stirs not.

That continuance eternal
Gave and life that never faded,
Youth renewing, sempervernal,
Age and death fore'er evaded.

Sapience the last celestial
Gave and power all hearts of reading,
Wit t solve all doubts terrestrial,
Wisdom for all worldly needing.

With these talismans provided,
Angel-armied, Naiad-navied,
Wisdom-warranted, God-guided,
Who was like the son of David?

All his nights with love he meted,
All his days with war and kingcraft,
On the breezes fared and fleeted,
From the birds caught song- and wingcraft;

Moulded Israel to his measure,
Swayed all Syria, lowlands, highlands,
Swept the Indian seas for treasure,
Levied tribute from the islands;

Filled earth's faces with his armies,
With his navies oared the ocean;
Made Judæa, vi et armis,
Laughing as the land of Goshen;

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Ceiled his palaces with cedar,
Garnered pearls and gems for money,
Dan to Gilead, Gath to Kedar,
Made the realm run milk and honey.

Never monarch was that flourished
As did he: with power and praises
Fed to fulness, pleasure-nourished,
Glorious in all men's gazes,

In Jerusalem high-builded,
Over all the land prevailing,
Mid his graven halls and gilded,
Lapt in love and fame unfailing,

Life on his commandments waiting,
All its rocky places levelled,
Nothing lacking, nothing bating,
Many a year he reigned and revelled:

Till at last, with sweetness sated,
Tired of thrones and dominations,
Turned he to the things God hated,
Followed on abominations;

Worshipped Ishtar, Moloch, Tanit,
Sought Canopus and Orion,
Bowed to stock and stone and planet,
Quite forgot the God of Zion.

Then did Jahveh rise and blast him,
Beggared him of gifts and graces,
From his chair of kingship cast him,
Throned an afrit in his places.

Virtue all forsook the roses;
Withered weeds, from heaven banished,
For the Paradisal closes
Languishing, they pined and vanished.

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What of David's son remained is?
All his greatness, all his glory,
How he revelled, how he reigned, is
Nothing now but idle story.

XIV.THE BALLAD OF MAY MARGARET.

OH, sweet is the Spring in coppice and wold
And the bonny fresh flowers are springing!
May Margaret walks in the merry greenwood,
To hear the blithe birds singing.

May Margaret walks in the heart of the treen,
Under the green boughs straying;
And she hath met the king of the elves,
Under the lindens playing.

‘Oh, wed thou with me, May Margaret,
All in the merry green Maytime,
And thou shalt dance all the moonlit night
And sleep on flowers in the daytime!’

‘O king of the elves, it may not be,
For the sake of the folk that love me;
I may not be queen of the elfland green,
For the fear of the heaven above me.’

‘Oh, an thou wilt be the elfland's queen,
Thy robe shall be blue and golden
And thou shalt drink of the rose-red wine,
In blue-bell chalices holden.’

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‘O king of the elves, it may not be.
My father at home would miss me;
An if I were queen of the elfland green,
My mother would never kiss me.’

‘Oh, an thou wilt be the elfland's queen,
Thy shoon shall be seagreen sendal;
Thy thread shall be silk as white as milk
And snow-white silver thy spindle.’

He hath led her by the lilywhite hand
Into the hillside palace:
And he hath given her wine to drink
Out of the blue-bell chalice.

Now seven long years are over and gone,
Since the thorn began to blossom;
And she hath brought the elf-king a son
And beareth it on her bosom.

‘A boon, a boon, my husband the king,
For the sake of my babe I cry thee!’
‘Now ask what thou wilt, May Margaret;
There's nothing I may deny thee.’

‘Oh, let me go home for a night and a day,
To show my mother her daughter
And fetch a priest to my bonny wee babe,
To sprinkle the holy water!

‘Oh, let me go home for a day and a night
To the little town by the river!
And we will turn to the merry greenwood
And dwell with the elves for ever.’

Oh, out of the elfland are they gone,
Mother and babe together,
And they are come, in the blithe Springtime,
To the land of the blowing heather.

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‘Oh, where is my mother I used to kiss
And my father that erst caressed me?
They both lie cold in the churchyard mould
And I have no whither to rest me.

‘Oh, where is the dove that I used to love
And the lover that used to love me?
The one is dead, the other is fled;
But the heaven is left above me.

‘I pray thee, sir priest, to christen my babe
With bell and candle and psalter;
And I will give up this bonny gold cup,
To stand on the holy altar.’

‘O queen of the elves, it may not be!
The elf must suffer damnation,
But if thou wilt bring thy costliest thing,
As guerdon for its salvation.’

‘Oh, surely my life is my costliest thing!
I give it and never rue it.
An if thou wilt save my innocent babe,
The blood of my heart ensue it!’

The priest hath made the sign of the cross,
The white-robed choristers sing;
But the babe is dead ere blessing be said,
May Margaret's costliest thing.

Oh, drearly and loud she shrieked, as if
The soul from her breast should sever!
And she hath gone to the merry greenwood,
To dwell with the elves for ever.

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XV.THE MARSH-KING'S DAUGHTER.

I.

A WIND came over the Western water,
(Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh Spring-time!)
‘Weary of life,’ it said, ‘poor lover?
Sick for a love that is dead and gone?
(Winds blow over her, earth's above her.)
Sick for a day that was faded at dawn?
The cure is the kiss of the marsh-king's daughter.’

Weary of life, I answered and said,
‘O wind of the Western water!’
Sick for a day and a love that are dead,
‘Why should I seek,’ I answered and said,
‘The kiss of the marsh-king's daughter?’

II.

The wind came over the Western water:
(The death-flower blows in the Summer's prime!)
‘If one be weary and sick of living,
Sick for the sake of a vanished love,
Sick of the glow and blossom of Spring,
Sick of the Summer's glitter and ring;
If colour lack in the Autumn's weaving
And the Winter hold not sorrow enough,
The cure is the kiss of the marsh-king's daughter.’

Weary of life, I answered and said,
‘O wind of the Western water!’
Bitter with tears that I could not shed,
‘Tell me, West-wind,’ I answered and said,
‘The home of the marsh-king's daughter.’

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III.

‘It lies far over the Western water.
(Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh Spring-time!)
Under the arch of the sun at setting,
‘Twixt gold of sunset and dusk of night,
Under the sound of the sea-winds' fretting;
In the purple heart of the marish mist,
That the shafts of the dying day have kiss'd,
Under the ceiling where stars are bright,
There is the home of the marsh-king's daughter.’

Weary of life, I answered and said,
‘O wind of the Western water!
My hopes lie close in the house of the dead;
But I will go,’ I answered and said,
‘To seek for the marsh-king's daughter.’

IV.

I wandered over the Western water,
(Oh sweet is the rose in the fresh Spring-time!)
And I came in the evening, when light was dying,
To a land where the hum of the world was still,
Where the voice of the evening wind was sighing
And the spells of sleep were over the air;
And I saw in the setting the golden hair
Of the sunset broider the mists, until
They grew to the robe of the marsh-king's daughter.

Golden starlets were over her head,
(A crown for the marsh-king's daughter.)
‘Come to my arms,’ I answered and said;
And she came, with the West-wind's murmurous tread,
To me that so long had sought her.

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V.

A voice came over the Western water:
(The deathflower blows in the Summer's prime!)
‘Dearly,’ it said, ‘hast thou won and bought her.
Her kisses are cold as are the dead
And the gold of her hair o'er thee is shed,
As wings of the birds that fly to the slaughter!
The lips thou shouldst kiss are living and red,
Thine eyes should feast on the joys of earth,
Thy hands pluck flowers in the golden prime.
Youth was not made for sorrow and dearth:
Get thee back, whilst there yet is time;
For Death is the name of the marsh-king's daughter!’

Weary of life, I answered and said,
‘O wind of the Western water!
My lips shall kiss but the lips of the dead.’
Sick of the day, I answered and said,
‘Kiss me, O marsh-king's daughter!’

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SONNETS.

143

INTROIT.

THIS is the House of Dreams. Whoso is fain
To enter in this shadow-land of mine,
He must forget the utter Summer's shine
And all the daylight ways of hand and brain:
Here is the white moon ever on the wane
And here the air is sad with many a sign
Of haunting myst'ries; here the golden wine
Of June falls never nor the silver rain
Of hawthorns hueless with the joy of Spring;
But many a mirage of pale memories
Curtains the sunless aisles: upon the breeze
A music of waste sighs doth float and sing
And in the shadow of the sad-flowered trees,
The ghosts of men's desire walk wandering.

AD DANTEM.

TO thee, my master, thee, my shining one,
Whose solitary face, immovable,
Burning athwart the midmost glooms of Hell,
Calls up stern shadows of the things undone,—
To thee, immortal, shining like the sun
In the blue heart of Heaven's clearest bell,
Circled with radiances ineffable,—
These pale sad flowers I bring,—how hardly won

144

From this grey night of modern lovelessness,
How hardly and how wearily God knows!
These at thy feet I lay, whose hues confess
Thy mighty shade, so haply they may shine
With some pale reflex of that light divine
Which ripples round thine own supernal rose.

TROPIC FLOWER.

AS I went walking in the air one day—
Sadly enough—a thought laid hold on me
With flower-soft hands and would not set me free.
It was, meseemed, as if a rose of May
Blew suddenly against a wintry way
Of snow and barren boughs; for I could see
No cause why such a lovely light should be
In my dull soul, nor how my heart's dismay
Should have lent life to any pleasant thing.
But, with remembering, presently I knew
That this was but the scarlet flowering
Of some most bitter aloe-root that grew
In my sick soul an hundred years and drew
All my lost summers to its single Spring.

HAUNTED LIFE.

HOW shall I 'scape the presence of this death?
Sleeping, the Dream-God folds me in his wings;
And with the grey pale day comes Thought and brings
With him the sad enchantments of the breath
Of some dumb ghost-world that envelopeth
My narrow life with many-woven rings
Of imminent mystery. The viewless things
Are thick and tyrannous on me, a sheath

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Of unseen mists, that prison up my hands.
The wraiths of things long dead and things undone,
Memories and forecasts, lives that yet shall be
Or might be compassed, with such strangling bands
They bind me, that this world beneath the sun
Fails from my grasp and life is death to me.

HESPERIA.

MY dream is of a city in the West,
Built with fair colours, still and sad as flowers
That wear the blazon of the autumn hours,
Set by the side of some wide wave's unrest;
And there the sun-filled calm is unimprest,
Save by a flutter as of silver showers,
Rain-rippled on dim Paradisal bowers,
And some far tune of bells chimed softliest.
About the still clear streets my love-thoughts go,
A many-coloured throng, some pale as pearl,
Some bright as the gold brow-locks of a girl:
And midst them, where the saddest memories teem,
My veiled hope wanders, musingly and slow,
And hears the sad sea murmur like a dream.

WINTER ROSES.

I SOUGHT thee when the world was full of flower,
O wide-winged love! and seeking, found thee not.
In vain the linnets sang, the lilies got
Them robes of silver and the roses' shower
Of blossom tapestried each fragrant hour;
The skies were idly blue; the glad heats wrought
Their summer sorcery of flowers for nought;
The autumn brought the bridal year its dower

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Of jewelled fruits and sunlight-coloured corn.
But for my part I took no heed of them,
Wandering, grave-eyed, along the meadows' hem,
Following my dream, unfriended and apart,
Sad in the noon-day, joyless in the morn,
Mirroring all things in my empty heart.

And as I went and communed with my pain,
Unknowing all the glories of the day
And all the radiance of the stars' array
For lack of love, the hope began to wane
Within my breast and to myself, “In vain,
In vain, sad soul,” I said, “thou dost essay
The weary path of years and Life's waste way
Of lengthening memories! If Love were fain
To turn his wings to thee-ward and to tread
Thy way with equal feet, he would forego
His fair intent, seeing thy stern wan face
And thy sad eyes that fill the fields with woe,
And marvel in himself how one should trace
Life's path with feet that linger for the dead.”

Lo! for I said, Love loveth allegresse
And fair wise joyance in all pleasant things:
It likes him not that in the waverings
Of saddened fancy one should seek to press
His grapes of heaven, that in the loneliness
Of deathward thought a man should bind his wings
And prison all his rare sweet wanderings
Within a labyrinth of deep duresse,
Hoarding his wine up in strange poison-flowers
And sucking bitters from his passionate sweets.
Lo! for Love walketh in the pleasant hours
Of life and passeth by the lonely seats
Of delicate sadness, where the veilèd powers
Do weave strange dreams, far from the noontide heats.

147

And yet, methinks, I had made sacrifice
To pleasant Love with many a faint sweet thing,
Done homage to him with much flowering
Of tender dreams and many a rare device
Of songs, half sad, half joyous, to suffice
For such rude pastoral rounds as shepherds sing,
When the winged arrow bites them. Offering
Of many flowers of night and many a spice
Of tropic forests, darkening to their deep
Of delicate shade for horror of the sun,
I would have made him: all the flowers that sleep
Within the wilder solitudes of thought,
All faint-hued fancies that the day do shun,
Loving, to thee, O Love! these had I brought.

Methinks thou didst not well my prayers to scorn,
O tyrant Love, that never pardoneth!
I with my songs the victor over Death
Had laurelled thee; and all the shades forlorn
Should for thine hour of triumphing have worn
Thy hues of noon; and eke thy linnets' breath
Should have rung resonant—as one that saith,
‘The dim night passeth: welcome in the morn!’
—Athwart the woods and fastnesses of grief.
Now dost thou wear for crownal flowers of day,
Glad myrtles and the passionate-petalled rose:
Me serving, I had crowned thee with a sheaf
Of lilies silver with their blanching woes
And violets dropping with the tears of May.

Thus with myself devising, did I pass
Along the summer meadows and the woods
Aflame with autumn's many-blazoned moods:
And now the rime did jewel all the grass
And on the plains the silver snows did mass
Within the hollows. Over all the floods
The winter brooded, as a spell-work broods,

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And the ice-sleep compelled the river's glass.
Then did my heart take comfort from the time:
The dim white woodlands held more hope for me
Within the cloisters of their leafless aisles
Than all the summer's gold; the speechless rime
Was grateful to me and the pale sky's smiles
Stirred all my wintry soul to harmony.

Then, as I strayed among the silent ways,
Much comforted from all my old despite,
Love came to me across that world of white,
With drooping wings and winter-saddened gaze;
And as I looked on him with still amaze,
He took my hand within his palms of light
And with full many a promise of delight,
Prevailed on me that I should work his praise.
But I, “My heart has all forgot the songs
Of summer and the full-toned autumn-lays:
I have no memory of the jewelled throngs,
That blew for thee about the August ways:
My soul is dumb with winter. Let me rest:
Love has no empery in this sad breast.”

Nay, (but he said,) the summer's songs are sweet,
When June is golden; and the autumn's tide
Befits full harmonies. Whilst these abide,
The songs of joyance gracious are and meet:
But when the winter comes, with silver feet
A-walking in the snows, one lays aside
The passionate descants that glorified
The goodlier hours; and then the heart doth greet,
With doubled ease, the tender plaining notes
Of shy and suffering souls, that have in vain
Sought flying favour in the joy that floats
About the summer; and the altar-flame
Of love burns brightlier for their offered pain
Who spared to love, until life's winter came.

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So he with softest words prevailed on me:
And I, with heart half-glad, half-wearying,
Did at his hest address myself to sing,
Holding his hand as link of fealty.
Singing of all the strange delights that be
In sad sweet musing and the illumining
That Love doth pour upon each sombre thing,
Among the dreaming trees I went. And he
The while retraced my visions in the air,
Colouring my dreams with all his magic light
And murmuring o'er the songs that I did sing,
With a new added accent of delight.
So, hand in hand, along the woodways bare
We went, nor wearied for the tardy Spring.

DORIC MODE.

SEEK, then, no more to sweep the unwilling strings
To tempest nor to harrow up the skies
With the void passion of Titanic sighs;
Thou shalt not scale the heaven on thunderous wings
Of resonant prayer. The terror of sweet things
Mounts up, sure-winged, to where the whirlwind dies,
Unechoed; and the eternal harmonies
Are stirred more surely, when the poet sings
Bird-softly, bent above the low-voiced lute.
Thunders lie low; the middle air is mute
To their reverberance; but, when there rings
Through heaven the cadence of the Dorian flute,
The great gods hearken from their sojournings
And life flowers forth with immemorial Springs.

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THE GARDEN OF ADONIS.

[_]

(Spenser's Faery Queene. The Legend of Britomart, vi, 29.)

THERE lies a garden in the westward hills,
Compassed about with walls of mystery
And girt with an inviolable sea
Of silentness; and there no linnet trills:
But, in the witchery of peace that fills
The voiceless lawns, sleep unawakeningly
The sweet lost dreams, that there englamoured be
And may not pass those thrice-enchanted sills.
There have I laid my wounded love to sleep
And heal its dole among the unstirred dells;
And thence, methinks, when many a gradual sweep
Of years has purged life's passion in the wells
Of restfulness, my soul its flower shall reap,
Made whole and fair with many mystic spells.

SOVRAN SORROW.

DEATH came to me and took me by the hand,
What time the earth had girt her first with Spring
And all the meadows put on blossoming.
“Come forth,” said he, “and see my flowers expand:”
And forth we passed into the pleasant land.
And as we went, the small birds all did sing
And all the flowers praised Death in everything.
Then, as I looked, amazed, to see the brand
And sign of that his dreadful sovranty,
Behold, a crown of holiest sorrowing
Flamed on the angel's brow; and unto me,
Knee-bent for reverence, these words did ring
Most softly, “Lo! he ruleth all that be,
Seeing he sorrows more than anything.”

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FRANCOIS RABELAIS.

MASTER, whose glad face lightens through the years,
Awful and fair with laughter against wrong,
We that have loved thee loyally and long,
Laid heart to thine with laughter and with tears,
Glorying to see thee with thy golden spears
Smite through, Apollo-like, the Python-throng
Of woes, and no less pitiful than strong,
Salve with thy smile the dolours and the fears,
Fain would we have thy presence once again,
In these our tragic times of doubt and stress,
To purge the air with ridicule; ay, fain
Would we behold, athwart the mist that seals
Our toil-gray skies, thy brow's strong sunniness,
The visage of a god that laughs and heals.

EVOCATION.

METHINKS in some far sunset-coloured place
Of dreams and flowers, the stress of my desire
Must have grown up to flowerage of fire
And snow in a fair maiden's dream-filled face
And pearly limbs, washed round with all the grace
Of Spring-tide thought; a lady like a lyre
For the harmonious waftings that aspire
From all things amorous of her being's trace.
I picture her to me,—my love of dreams,—
Pacing the gold shore of that magic land,
Pensive and fair with many a half-filled thought;
And to each pulse of my strained soul, meseems,
Her essence answers, as to wafts wind-brought
Of charms cast out from some far wizard's hand.

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How many times, sweetheart, how many times
I have made running rivers of my sighs,
Poured out my yearning into melodies
Of love, that on the torrent of my rhymes
My thought might voyage to those golden climes
Of mystery, jewelled o'er with sapphire skies,
Where thy feet walk and make life Paradise!
And unto thee, mayhap, as 'twere the chimes
Of some far dream-bell fluttering the air,
The echo of my great desire has won,
Like to a sigh of spirits far away;
And thou, with some still sadness filled and fair,
Hast for a dream-space stood and watched the sun
And the clear colours fading from the day.

ROCOCO.

STRAIGHT and swift the swallows fly
To the sojourn of the sun;
All the golden year is done,
All the flower-time flitted by;
Through the boughs the witch-winds sigh:
But heart's summer is begun;
Life and love at last are one;
Love-lights glitter in the sky.
Summer-days were soon outrun,
With the setting of the sun;
Love's delight is never done.
Let the turn-coat roses die;
We are lovers, Love and I:
In Love's lips my roses lie.

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LIFE UNLIVED.

HOW many months, how many a weary year
My soul had stood upon that brink of days,
Straining dim eyes into the treacherous haze
For signs of life's beginning. Far and near
The grey mist floated, like a shadow-mere,
Beyond hope's bounds; and in the lapsing ways,
Pale phantoms flitted, seeming to my gaze
The portents of the coming hope and fear.
“Surely,” I said, “life shall rise up at last,
Shall sweep me by with pageant and delight!”
But, as I spoke, the waste shook with a blast
Of cries and clamours of a mighty fight;
Then all was still. Upon me fell the night
And a voice whispered to me, “Life is past.”

BELPHOEBE.

[_]

(Spenser's Faery Queene, Book III. Cantos v. and vi.)

SHE may not give thee love nor any hate:
Her life is calm and senseless as the flowers
That fall around her in such scented showers:
Snow-calm, she standeth in the present's gate,
Unmindful if the world is wound with fate
About her life, knowing not hope nor doubt
Nor any yearning for the things without.
Her days are folded in a flowerful state,
A charm of lily-snows and jasmine-sweets.
It irks her nothing if the pale god broods
Above the haunts of toil or sorrow beats
With leaden wing: she knoweth not the goods
Nor ills of men, standing where summer meets
With Spring upon the marges of the woods.

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ON LECONTE DE LISLE'S PROSE TRANSLATION OF HOMER.

THERE is a legend of the northland fells,
Fabling that in the middle mountain-caves,
Soundless and dumb, a mighty music waves,
Frozen into silence by eternal spells,
Till some fair hero pierce the mist that dwells
Above the music's mystery-hearted graves.
Then shall the song soar with a noise of glaives
To-smitten and the trumpet's silver swells
Rehearse the glories of the ancient time.
So hast thou, poet from the tropic isles,—
Coming, breast-armoured with the gold sun's smiles,
Into our Northland,—set old Homer free
From all the tangling coil of modern rhyme
And loosed the sheer song on us like a sea.

AFTER LONG YEARS.

THE memories of summer are not dead,
The roses and the bird-songs and the sun:
Though autumn shadow all the skies with dun
And all the golden year be overspread
With shrouding snows, yet roses have been red,
Linnets have sung and June has gilt the day;
And Springtide, peering through the winter's grey,
Calls up pale phantasms of the glories fled,
Primroses budding through the scarce-thawed rime,
A memory and a foreshadowing.
So with these firstlings of my second Spring,
March-prophecies of summer-tided rhyme,
After long years I bring as offering
To the pale memories of that pleasant time.

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FATAL ATTAINMENT.

HAPLY, my hope shall find me unawares,
Fall on me from a thunder-smitten sky,
As Spring-light changed to lightning-flash; and I,—
Bent to some gross dull web of clinging cares,
Having forgot the aim of all my prayers
But for that second,—see the thing on high
And knowing it for awful and so nigh,
Lose heart to grasp it or to mount the stairs
Of light let down to lift me heavenward.
So all my soul shall shrink into a sigh
Of impotence; and with its sense outpoured
Into one unrelenting ecstacy
Of yearning for the mirage golden-shored,
My life shall fold its frail faint wings and die.

JACOB AND THE ANGEL.

[_]

(For a design by J. T. Nettleship.)

SHALL he not bless me? Will he never speak
Those words of proud concession, “Let me go:
For the day breaketh?” Wearily and slow
The shrouded hours troop past across the peak,
Eastering; and I, with hands grown all too weak
And strength that would have failed me long ago,
But for the set soul, strain to overthrow
The instant God.—Alas! 'tis I that speak—
Not Jacob—I that in this night of days
Do wrestle with the angel Art, till breath
And gladness fail me. Yet the stern soul stays
And will not loose him till he bless me; ay,
Even though the night defer my victory
Until the day break on the dawn of death.

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SIBYL.

THIS is the glamour of the world antique:
The thyme-scents of Hymettus fill the air
And in the grass narcissus-cups are fair.
The full brook wanders through the ferns to seek
The amber haunts of bees and on the peak
Of the soft hill, against the gold-marged sky,
She stands, a dream from out the days gone by.
Entreat her not. Indeed, she will not speak.
Her eyes are full of dreams and in her ears
There is the rustle of immortal wings;
And ever and anon the slow breeze bears
The mystic murmur of the songs she sings.
Entreat her not: she sees thee not nor hears
Aught but the sights and sounds of bygone Springs.

LONG DESIRE.

SURELY the world is sad with my sick hope.
There comes no stirring in the air for Spring,
No sweep of wings nor any blossoming
Of leaf-buds, red against the grey cloud-scope.
The mocking sunlight falls athwart the slope
Of the pale flowerless fields, as if to find
Some faint flower-trace, mayhap remained behind
Of the past happy time. And I, I grope
For aye amongst the ashes of old bliss,
Seeking some unpaled spark wherewith to light
The torch of Hope, that well-nigh faded is
Within my breast, if haply from the height
Of heaven should come, on wings of memories,
Some soft-plumed angel of the old delight.

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ON THE BORDERS OF THE NIGHT.

THE imminent fulness of the days to come;
The nameless terror of the half-seen hills,
Whereo'er the storm broods and the thunder fills
The dreadful palaces of Space and Doom;
The long-drawn silences; the mists that loom
Across the sun-break and the radiant sills
Of morning; these it is that blunt the wills
Of wingless men and weigh them to the tomb
With unspent souls and lives that have outcast
No seed of hope upon the fields of day:
So that they wander in a lightless way,
Hand-lifting ever; “Will it come at last,
(If God live), that fair Present, purged away
From the black Future and the bitter Past?”

Ay, will it come? Alas, alas! the night
Flies low and swift along the greying West.
Which of our dreams shall fare the swiftliest?
Our hopes of Life to flower in the light
Of full mid-Present or the noiseless flight
Of that sad angel of the sorely-prest,
That brings the balsams and the wine of rest?
The “must” of sleep comes hard upon the “might”
Of action, filling up the hollow years
And the blank days left flowerless for the time
When the rent cloud shall certify our fears
Or crown our hopes of heaven, as it nears
With flame-lined flanks or crests up which there climb
Rain-mists that drop with all the hoarded tears.

Lo! if the sleep came, haply it were well.
How should we face it, if it came too near,
Too full and bright on us for eyes to bear,
That terrible glory of the Invisible,

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A splendour like a fire, ineffable,
More dreadful than the thunder, all too fair,
Too wholly perfect in the kindling air
Of upper heaven? Or if there befell
To us the other fortune, the sheer sight
Of all the glooms of Fate and Fear and Hell,
The full abysmal presence of the Night,
The night unsanctified by any bell
Of starlit heavens, blotting out Life's light
With rays of darkness unendurable?

Sure, it were well for us to lay life down
And sleep the undawning slumber of the dead;
Whilst over us the appointed levins sped
And the bolts broke upon the mountains brown;
Uncareful if the middle air were strown
With the blue flowers of day or sunset's red
Of coming thunder-blasts,—if night were spread,
A lurid vault of storm-clouds all wind-blown
Into the furnace of the wrath to come,
Or else a dome of many-coloured light.
Sleep should be whole for us and kindly gloom,
Unstirred by any pain or love-delight;
A kind child-slumber in its mother's womb;
An overfolding of the wings of Night.

Peace! for the shadow draws on us apace,
Hiding the unattained and painful years:
Peace! for the storm-wind fades from off our ears
And out of heaven the grey veil spreads a space
Of friendly shade before the upbraiding face
Of that To-be which never, never nears.
Night shall assoil us of our hopes and fears
And our tired sense drink slumber and the grace
Of stillness, solacing the restless souls.
Let us link hands and sleep, unsorrowing

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For all the undone hopes, the unwon goals.
Haply, some day, from out our wearying—
Healed with the years—a new fair life shall spring.
Till then, sleep sweet beneath the grassy knolls!

FEMME FELLAH DE LANDELLE.

O THOU that hold'st the desert in thine eyes,
With that long look into the world of dreams,
As of deep yearning for the distant streams
Of some green oasis that haply lies
Beyond the torrid glow of Orient skies
In the blue distance! I have known thee long
In that dim dreamland, where the fluted song
Of nightingales is mixed with dulcet sighs
Of scented winds and balm of mystic flowers;
And in the white warm moonlight, all bestrewn
About the trellised woodways and the bowers
Vine-clustered, I have often known the tune
Of birds swell sweetlier and the hurrying hours
Halt, as thy face grew clear beneath the moon.

PROJECTED SHADOWS.

AH, memory! ah, ruthless memory!
Shall I not have one hour unfilled for thee?
Why wilt thou thus usurp the days to be,
Unsatisfied with all thy realms that lie
Behind the Present? Why o'ercloud the sky,
Glad with gold star-scripts of Futurity?
Hast thou not made the fleeting hours for me
Sunless enough, but thou must flicker by
The shrouding years and hovering on the verge

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Of my horizon's blue, blot out the forms
Of all my pleasant creatures of delight,
Won with much wrestling from the haggard night,
And in their stead paint up a sky of storms
And the stern Fury sworded with the scourge?

AZALEAS.

[_]

(A Picture by Albert Moore.)

SHE hath no knowledge of the things that stir
This modern life of men to toil and stress:
Her life is folded in the loveliness
Of its sweet self. Around and over her,
Flower-petals hover; scents of rose and myrrh
Cloister her in from all the worldly ways.
Life flows about her, like her pale robe's haze
Or the blue vapour round a thurifer,
Folding her being in an equal dream,
Wherein the birds sing ever, where the flowers
Renew Spring's gladness with the new sun's beam
And all the year is peaceful in the hours,
Heedless of all the weary shapes that seem
And wander in this sad wan life of ours.

Fair as an alabaster vase she stands,
Wherein the unchecked soul is luminous
And glorifies its peaceful dwelling-house;
Gathering the forspent blossoms with her hands
Into the dainty cup, with azure bands
Enwound; for all the things she cherisheth
Are lovely as herself, even in death,
And glitter with the glory of the lands
Beyond the ken of man, where Venus waits
And Eros sleeps beside Adonis' bed,

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Low-laid in lilies, where the dreamland's gates
Enclose all loveliest things that men deem dead,
Until the weary span of years be sped,
That shall reclothe them with their pristine states.

Dim flowers of dreams, white maiden of a dream,
She knoweth not that we are kin to her:
She heareth not the clamour and the stir
Of joyless men about her gates. The stream
Wakes her with babbling and the gold sun's beam
Beckons her forth into the budded day.
Standing upon the marble silver-grey,
Blush-white in myrtle-green and orange-gleam,
She strokes her doves and sees the swans adown
The ripples waver in the brooklet's glass:
Then, folding in her hands her broidered gown,
She wanders, smiling, through the jewelled grass,
Plucking the violets from their moss-deeps brown;
And all things smile to her as she doth pass.

BRIDE-NIGHT.

[_]

(Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, act ii. sc. 2.)

SWEET summer, if thy roses knew the song
The linnet sang in that dear dream of old,
Flooding the night with ripples of song-gold,
What while two lovers did their bliss prolong,
They would have garnered it from earthly wrong
Within their golden hearts, folded it up
Deep in the scented purple of their cup,
Against the harsh world's griefs and the sad throng
Of love-destroying cares; and holding so
Within their hearts that essence of all bliss,
They would have felt its magic pierce and glow

162

Athwart their veins, till, with the fire of this,
All hue had left them for that lovely woe,
As lovers pale upon a lingering kiss.

FLITTING HOPE.

FAIR angel, I have sought thee many a day,
Through many mingling ways of smiles and tears,
And watched thy shadow flutter through the years.
Ay, evermore, the outline cool and grey
Of thy soft pinions on the landscape lay,
Softening the mocking sunlight and the spears
Of the cold silver moon; and still, with ears
Eager and strained, I listened for the sway
Of thy wide wings across the trembling air.
Ah! never to my sight thy presence came,
Nor in the midnight nor the noonday's flame;
But on the ecstasy of my despair,
Worn down to silence, falls the shade the same,
A far faint angel with outfluttering hair.

LOVE'S EPITAPH.

BRING wreaths and crown the golden hours!
Pile up the scented snows of Spring!
If Love be dead of sorrow's sting,
Shall we make dark this day of ours,
This day of scents and silver showers
And lilts of linnets on the wing?
Sing out and let the shadow ring
And all the grave run o'er with flowers!
If Love, you say, indeed be dead,

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We will not spare to turn the leaf :
Spring is as sweet as aye and red
And sweet as ever is the rose;
He was so fickle, Love! Who knows?
He might arise and mock our grief.

“Qu'ils tournent le feuillet: sous le pampre est le fruit.” Louis Bertrand.

INDIAN ISLE.

I FOUND in dreams a dwelling of delight
And did possess it with my soul's desire:
An island, cinctured with the radiant fire
Of orient noons and girt about with white
Of wave-washed reefs, wherein there slumbered bright,
Ah! dream-bright bays. that brought the blue sky nigher
Down to my wish; and many a flower-sheathed spire
Of mystic splendid trees bare up that height
Of imminent azure, flowered above the earth.
There, for my spirit's ease, my hope I laid,
To dwell within that golden-hearted shade
And drink the splendour of the things that be,
Renewing ever with the new sun's birth
And rounded with the slumber of the sea.

SIREN.

A DREAM came to me in the winter night,
A dream of flowers and songs and summer skies,
Made beautiful with bloom of memories;
And as I fed my long-divorcèd sight

164

Upon that vision of a dead delight,
I saw therein a white sad face arise
And gold hair fluttered with a wind of sighs.
“Ah, mocking dream,” I said, “that dost incite
My hope, that sleeps at last, to rise again
And seek anew the ways where Life is strong—
Knowing it should but weary there in vain—
My hope that in the lily-fields full long
Of peaceful Death to dreamless rest is lain!”
And the dream ended like a broken song.

NIRWANA.

I WANDER in the halls of memory,
Death-dumb and rounded with a web of dreams;
And for long fervour of desire, meseems
My soul is parted from the things that be
And the glad forms of life. Upon a sea
Of fluctuant imaginings, that gleams
With phosphorescent moony-coloured beams
Of lurid fancy, all my days do flee,
Seeking for aye some pale and shadowy land
Of sweet and delicate sadness, wearying
To be poured out like wine into some spring
Of wishless being, welling through the sand
Of some sun-consecrated sojourning
Of souls come back into the Maker's hand.

SLEEPERS AND ONE THAT WATCHES.

[_]

(A Sketch by Simeon Solomon.)

WILL the day never dawn? The dim stars weep
Great tears of silver on the pall of night
And the sad moon, for weariness grown white,

165

Crawls like a mourner up the Eastern steep.
I strain my eyes for morning, while these sleep;
Dreaming of women, this one with the lips
Half-parted, haply,—that in the eclipse
Of a child-slumber, dreamless, folded deep,
Eyes sealed, as though the hand of sleep strewed flowers
Upon their lids, and mouth a fresh-dewed rose,
Wet with the kisses of the night. The hours
Are very heavy on my soul, that knows
No rest: for pinions of the unseen powers
Winnow the wind in every breath that blows.

Surely, a lance-point glittered in the West;
Some trumpet thundered out its voice of doom.
But no: my eyes are hazy with the gloom.
'Twas but the moon-rays glancing on the crest
Of the tall corn; some bittern from her nest
Roused by a snake: for, see, the twain sleep on
And nothing stirs their slumber, Oh for one
Sweet hour of falling through the deeps of rest,
Within that lake of sleep, the dreamy-shored!
One little hour of overlidded eyes
And folded palms! Ah me! the terror lies
Upon my soul; I may not loose my sword,
Lest I should wake beneath flame-girdled skies
And tremble to the thunders of the Lord.

The blackness teems with shapes of fearful things;
Weird faces glare at me from out the night
And eyes that glitter with the lurid light
Of lust and all the horror that it brings.
The air is stressful with the pulse of wings;
And what time clouds obscure the constant star
That overlooks my vigil from afar,
Strange voices tempt me with dread whisperings;
Dank hands clasp mine and breathings stir my hair,
That are no mortal's, wooing me to leap

166

Over the hill-crest, through the swarthy air,
Into the hollow night and thence to reap
The wonder and the weirdness hidden there.
Ah God! the day comes not; and still these sleep.

ALTISIDORA.

IN the mid-wood I strayed; and as I went,
I saw a lady sitting all alone
Upon a bank with primroses o'ergrown,
With tear-stained eyes and tresses all to-rent.
“Sweetheart,” said I, “is all thy joy forspent
And all the stir of Spring unfelt for thee,
That thou dost linger here so wearily,
Flouting the flowers with sorrow and lament?”
And she, “Is Spring then blossomed on the lands?
Methought the world wore winter with my soul
And these pale flowers, dim-set in weft green bands,
Blew but as wraiths of the bright host that stands
Within the summer-gardens winter stole,
To mock my sorrow with his flowerful hands.”

LONELY THOUGHT.

THE thoughts grow up and blossom in my breast;
And some do mock the sun-gold and the blue
Of June-clear heavens, some the angry hue
Of stormful sundowns blazoned in the West;
And others (fairest these and deadliest)
Hive in their cups a scented poison-dew,
Some honey-sweet and bitter some as rue.
And all spring up and die, alike unblest.
But in the secret cloisters of my soul

167

A white flower sleeps upon a forest-pool,
Undying, and athwart the tree-shade cool
Sends up a blended breath of peace and dole:
And round the flower strange birds do flit and throng,
Sacring the silence with a low, clear song.

WESTERING HOPE.

THE dainty dream of dawn had swooned away
And all the golden chains of noon opprest
The pleasance of the woods. Upon the breast
Of Spring Life slumbered and the innocent day
Linked hands and garlands with the fair mid-May.
So for awhile, meseemed, the long unrest
Died down to sleep within me; peace outprest
Her wine of balms upon me; and I lay
Unmemoried, deep-bowered in a nest
Of dreams, whose perfumes misted up the way
Of Past and Future, till the soft day's wane
Piled towers of sunset on the blue hills' crest.
Then all my grief came back and once again
My soul stretched out sad hands toward the West.

SILENTIA LUNÆ.

IT seemed to me, this night of many nights,
What time the moon lay full on wood and lea,
That over all my life there spread one sea
Of pearl; and thereupon the mirrored lights
Of the soft stars shone out like petal-whites
Of gold-heart lilies, floating waveringly
Upon the clear moon-silences. Ah me!

168

Might it not be, my sweet, these many nights
Of old, that we have steeped our love by-past
In the white peace of night, that we have cast
Our twinned souls out with kisses and with tears
Upon the flooding moon,—that haply we
Should with joined hands yet rescue from the sea
Some sweetness of the irrevocable years?

IGNIS FATUUS.

MY soul is like some pale phantasmal light,
That flickers o'er a marsh of mystery
And with its baleful phosphorescency
Stretches long hands of blue into the night.
It may not give the fair world to men's sight
Nor rescue back the lovely things that be
Out of the shrouding gloom; but, from the sea
Of dreams, the shadowy armies infinite
Of the Invisibles flock forth to it
And many a wraith of worlds fantastical
Breaks into lurid lapses, stretching through
The interambient glooms, with many a hall
And cloister, grey with flitting ghosts and lit
With many a witch's torch of livid blue.

BEATRICE.

SWEET, I have sung of thee in many modes,
If haply singing I might ease my pain;
And still the unwearying Fates bring me again
Back by the flowery and the thorny roads
To the old goal-point: still my soul forebodes

169

The coming of the sad sweet dreams of old
And in my Occident the sunset's gold
Grows dim and sad above the lost abodes.
Dear, had I loved thee less or loved life more,
Had had more hope in men, in love less faith,
I should not now be seeking, as of yore,
For the faint sadness of dream-violets' breath;
I should not now be weaving, o'er and o'er,
These bitter melodies of Love and Death.

MAY MEMORIES.

THE Spring was very glad upon the hills;
The sweet pale wind-flowers waited in the grass;
And the white lilies, in the river's glass,
Floated and fell, with the delight that fills
The May-time. So I stood upon the sills
Of Faërie (for such to me the wood
And all the glamours folded in its flood
Of greenery were) thinking the joy, that kills
March-sadness in the flowers, might make me whole.
But, as I went, the crocus-flames did borrow
White lights and sad, as sombre as my soul:
Ah me! (the linnet sang) sweet love, sweet sorrow!
A golden evening and a sad to-morrow!
Spring could not hold from mocking at my dole.

Life unfulfilled! The windy scents tha shook
The pink-blown glory of the apple-trees,
The surge of song that hung upon the breeze,
The pale eyes of the primrose-stars, that took
Faint heart to peer into the painted book
Flower-writ by Spring upon the wide-waved leas;
These all made moan to me of my unease:
And as I pulled the cresses in the brook,

170

The thin slow water lapsed against my hand,
With some faint cadence of blithe murmuring
Broken to sadness. Over all the land,
As I drew near, the linnets ceased their song,
Saying (meseemed), “What wight goes thus in Spring,
Songless and sad, the dreamy day along?”

My feet turned back into the well-worn ways,
Hollowed between the tree-marge and the rill;
And as I went, old memories did fill
My soul with longing for the bygone days.
The lush scents from the grey-pearled hawthorn maze,
The birds' and breezes' babble and the stream's
Brought back to me the songs I made in dreams,
In the old days long dead; the bright sweet lays,
Hymning high valour in the world's despite;
The long untroubled lapses of swift song,
Brimming with ecstasy the luminous night,
As a thrush, piping, fills it; sweet and strong
And pure as ripples of the fresh sun's light,
Falling the glad wide ways and aisles along.

There walked for me along the flower-hung glades
The shadowy figures of the world of song
Of my pure youth, a white and rosy throng
Of fair tall queens and lily-drooping maids,
Shadowing pink cheeks with hyacinthine braids
And feathered gold of many-glancing locks.
The mailed knights clash'd together in the shocks
Of clamorous war and through the spangled shades,
The mystic echoes of old questing went.
There was no thing in all that dream untold
For me, upon the woods with hawthorn sprent,
Of the old life; and in the primrose-gold,
The new came back to me with dreariment,
In memories of the love that long lies cold.

171

OUTSTRETCHED HANDS.

IS there no sweetness save of ripened fruit?
Lies all men's gladness in fulfilled desire?
Is no flame blander than fruition's fire,
That with swift flowerage burns away its root?
Life passes by, and still my heart is mute.
Day follows night; and yet the sky no nigher
Leans to my hope. Shall all my days expire
And all my soul grow grey with the pursuit?
Shall life waste alway in this torrid blast
Of unstayed passion? Oh! it cannot be
But that some day the spirit shall have cast
Its slough of lusts, that in some luminous sea
Surely a man's desire shall purgèd be,
Surely the early peace come back at last.

ANGEL DEATH.

LO! I have made an end of many things,
Singing; yet never have I sung to thee,
Belovèd angel, that by Life's sad sea
Standest star-crowned, whilst all the dusk air rings
With the quick spirit-pulse of viewless wings:
No voice of mine has lifted litany
To thee with song, no hand of mine set free
The soul of praise that slumbers in the strings.
For am I not to thee as one (in this)
That lingers by some shining water-deeps,
When the slow tide sings in its moon-stilled sleeps,
Until his heart-strings catch its harmonies
And his life pulses to the time it keeps:
And yet thereof no thing he speaks, ywis.

172

BURIED CITIES.

IF one should wander, in a boat of dreams,
Upon the charmèd ocean of the Past,
Peering, with paddling hands and eyes down-cast,
Into the amethystine deeps, meseems
He should see many wonders, by the beams
Of backward memory; the phantoms vast
And awful of the cities of the past
Uplooming through the deeps with sudden gleams
Of glancing towers and jewel-wroughten spires;
And therein too there should be visible,
Methinks, about the streets strange flitting fires,
Wearing his hopes' soul-semblance; and the spell
Should be sung round with silver sound of lyres
And the sad song of some far golden bell.

EXIT.

THIS is my House of Dreams—a house of shade,
Built with the fleeting visions of the night:
Here have I set my youth and all its white
Sad mem'ries—in this dwelling that I made
With idle rhyme, as lonely fancy bade.
If any wonder at the strange sad might
The God of Visions holds upon my sight
And set himself my weak song to upbraid
For all the wailing notes therein that teem,
I pray him of his favour that to lands
Of sunnier clime he wend; for things that seem
Are here the things of life and give commands
To living; for a dream is on my hands
And on my life the shadow of a dream.

173

WITH A COPY OF THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

FRIEND, in this book I proffer thee hereby,
The angelic voice of him my song obeys,
The well-nigh God and master of my lays,
With various speech, of matters rare and high,
That harpnotes now, now thunder doth outvie,
Discourseth in his verses passing praise.
This treasured work of all who bear the bays,
A poet, to thee, poet, offer I,
That evermore a pledge betwixt us twain
Of friendship and to boot a sign it may
Be of the common travel in the Way
Of our two souls, that various of strain
More than in heaven benighted star and star,
But none the less conjoined in variance are.

174

SUNFLOWER SOUL.

LIKE as the sunflower lifts up to the sun
Its star of summer, in the noontide heat,
Following the sacred circuit of his feet,
What while toward the house of Night they run;
Nor when the glad Day's glory is fordone
And the sun ceases from the starry street,
It leaves to turn to his celestial seat,
Seeking his face behind the shadows dun;
Even so my heart, from out these darkening days,
Whose little light is sad for winter's breath,
Strains upward still, with song and prayer and praise,
Ensuing ever, through the gathering haze,
Those twin suns of our darkness, Love and Death,
That rule the backward and the forward ways.

WITH A COPY OF HENRY VAUGHAN'S SACRED POEMS.

LAY down thy burden at this gate and knock.
What if the world without be dark and drear?
For there be fountains of refreshment here
Sweeter than all the runnels of the rock.
Hark! even to thy hand upon the lock
A wilding warble answers, loud and clear,
That falls as fain upon the heart of fear
As shepherds' songs unto the folded flock.
This is the quiet wood-church of the soul.
Be thankful, heart, to him betimes that stole,
Some Easter morning, through the golden door—
Haply ajar for early prayer to rise—
And brought thee back from that song-flowered shore
These haunting harmonies of Paradise.

175

J. B. COROT.

Died 22nd February, 1875.

BEFORE the earliest violet he died,
Who loved the new green and the stress of Spring
So tenderly. He knew that March must bring
The primrose by the brook and all the wide
Green spaces of the forest glorified
With scent and singing, when each passing wing
Would call him and each burst of blossoming:
He knew he could not die in the Spring-tide.
Yet he was weary, for his task was done
And sleep seemed sweet unto the tiréd eyes:
Weary! for many a year he had seen the sun
Arise; so in the season of the snows
He put off life—ere Spring could interpose
To hold him back—and went where Gautier lies.

ALOE-BLOSSOM.

LIFE stayed for me within a breach of days,
Sundered athwart the grey and rocky years:
Above, the day was dim to me for fears
And memories of the many-chasmed ways
Through which my feet had struggled. At amaze,
Silent I stood and listened with wide ears,
As for the coming of some Fate that nears
At last across the moon-mist and the haze.
The haggard earth lay speechless at my feet;
But, as I waited, suddenly there came
Within me as the flowering of a flame;
And like the mystic bud that bursts to meet
Its hundredth Spring with thunder and acclaim,
Love flowered upon me, terrible and sweet.

176

DREAM-LIFE.

IT seems to me sometimes that I am dead
And watch the live world in its ceaseless stream
Pass by me through the pauses of a dream.
The dawn breaks blue on them, the sunset's red
Burns on their smiles and on the tears they shed;
The moonlight floods them with its silver gleam:
To me they are as ghosts that do but seem;
Their grief is strange to me, their gladness dread.
Life lapses, like a vision dim and grey,
Before my sight, a cloud-wrack in the sky.
Since I am dead I can no longer die:
Ah, can it be this doom is laid on me,
To see the tired world slowly pass away
Nor die, but live on everlastingly?

AD ZOÏLOS.

CHIDE me who will for that my song is sad
And all my fancy follows on the wave
That bears our little being to the grave!
When did it fail that those—whose lives were glad
For lack of light and want of virtue had
To know the mystery and the hair-hung glaive
That shadow all our life so seeming brave—
The accusing wail of those that weep forbad?
Peace, triflers! Peace, dull ears and heedless eyne!
Yet haply Time unto your foolish fears
Shall yield a mocking áccord and the years,
Falling full-fated on these days of mine,
Crush from the grapes of grief a bitter wine
Of laughters, sadder than the saddest tears.

177

INDIAN SUMMER.

I SAID, “The time of grief is overpast:
The mists of morning hold the plains no more;
The flowers of Spring are dead; the woods that wore
The silver suits of Summer o'er them cast
Are stripped and bare before the wintry blast.
Is it for thee to weary and implore
The ruthless Gods, to beat against their door
For ever and for ever to the last?
Rise and be strong; yonder the new life lies.
Who knows but haply, past the sand-hills traced
Bounding the prospect, Destiny have placed
A sunny land of flowers and sapphire skies,
For balm of hearts and cure of loves laid waste?
Up, and leave weeping to a woman's eyes!”

Then turned I sadly to the olden signs
By which I had so long lived lingering;
The faded woods, the birds long ceased to sing,
The withered grapes dried on the withered vines
And the thin rill that through the time-worn lines
Of grey-leaved herbs fled, faintly murmuring
Its ghostly memories of the songs of Spring,
Weird whispers of the wind among the pines.
Farewell I bade them all, with heart as sad
Well-nigh as when Love left me long ago,
And turned into the distance. Long I had
Their murmur in my ears, as long and slow
The melancholy way did spread and wind
That left the memories of youth behind.

At last a new land opened on my view:
No phantom of the dear dead Spring of old
It was, but a fair land of Autumn gold
And corn-fields sloping to a sea of blue:

178

And I looked down upon its face and knew
The Autumn land of which my heart had told,
The land where Love at last should be consoled
And balm flower forth among Life's leaves of rue.
A sunset-land it was; and long and sweet,
The shadows of the setting lay on it:
And through the long fair valleys there did flit
Strange birds with pale gold wings, that did repeat
The loveliest songs whereof men aye had wit;
And over all the legend “Peace” was writ.

And as I gazed on it, my heart was filled
With rapture of the sudden cease of pain:
And in my spirit, ever and again,
There rang the golden legend, sweet and stilled
With speech of birds; and in the pauses rilled
Fair fountains through the green peace of the plain,
That with the tinkle of their golden rain
Made carol to the songs the linnets trilled;
Whilst, over all, the waves upon the shore
Throbbed with a music, sad but very sweet,
That had in it the melodies of yore,
Softened, as when the angels do repeat,
In heaven, to souls in rapture of new birth,
The names that they have sadly borne on earth.

FADED LOVE.

FAREWELL, sweetheart! Farewell, our golden days!
So runs the cadence, ringing out the tune
Of sighs and kisses: for the tale of June
Is told and all the length of flowered ways
Fades in the distance, as the new life lays
Its hand upon the strings and all too soon
Breaks the brief song of birds and flowers and moon

179

That held the Maytime. What is this that stays?
—A white-robed figure, with sad eyes that hold
A far-off dream of never-travelled ways;
Wan with white lips and hands as pale and cold
As woven garlands of long-vanished Mays,
And the sun's memory halo-like above
Its head.—It is the wraith of faded Love.

SAD SUMMER.

AH Summer, lady of the flowered lands,
When shall thy lovely looks bring back to me,
—To me who strain into the grey sad sea
Of dreams unsatisfied and with stretched hands
Implore the stern sky and the changeless sands
For some faint sign of that which was to be
So perfect and so fair a life to see,—
The time of songs and season of flower-bands?
At least, for guerdon of full many a lay
In praise of thee and of thy youngling Spring,
What time my lips were yet attuned to sing,
Let not thy roses redden in my way
Too flauntingly nor all thy golden day
Insult my silence with too glad a ring.

THE LAST OF THE GODS.

THE world is worn with many weary years;
The day is dim for long desire of death;
Life languishes amid its burning breath
Of nights and days, of barren hopes and fears,
Of joys that sing in vain to listless ears.
For Love and Spring are dead for lack of faith

180

And in the bird-songs goes a voice that saith,
“Who shall absolve us of this life of tears?”
Ah, who indeed? Who shall avail to save
Our souls that wither on the wrecks of life?
Is any strong among the Gods men crave
Enough to take again the gifts He gave,
To draw death like a dream upon our strife
And soothe the sick world to its grateful grave?

Nay, who shall hope, when God Himself implores,
With piteous hands, the unremorseful sleep,—
When Gods and men, from one abysmal deep
Of loveless life, lift hands toward the shores
Of the unnearing rest—through Time, that roars
With wave on wave of years to come—and weep
In undistinguished anguish, as they keep
Life's hopeless vigil at Death's stirless doors?
Lo! of all Gods that men have knelt unto,—
Of all the dread Immortals fierce and fair,
That men have painted on the vault of blue,—
There is but one remains, of all that were.
DEATH hath put on their crowns; and to Him sue
Mortals and Gods in parity of prayer.

182

ENGLAND'S HOPE.

(KITCHENER OF KHARTOUM.)

WHELP of the lion-breed of Wellington;
Careless to fit the date unto the deed
Or trumpet forth, that all who run may read,
His valiant worth to every mother's son;
In the lost field, as in the victory won,
Steadfast alike, unrecking whose the meed,
So but the achievement of his country's need
And honour saved attend on duty done:
Diluting action not with vain debate;
Contemptuous of Fortune's good and ill;
Not blown about, as is the unstable soul,
Hither and thither with each shift of fate,
But constant as the compass to the pole,
Fast founded on th'unconquerable will.

Nov. 1900.

SARVARTHASIDDHA-BUDDHA.

THE desert of the unaccomplished years
Fills the round compass of our careful eyes
And still, from age to age, the same suns rise
And life troops past, a masque of smiles and tears:
The same void hopes vie with the same vain fears
And in the grey sad circuit of the skies,
To the monotonous music of our sighs,
We plod toward the goal that never nears.

183

Ah, who shall solve us of the dreary days,
The unlived life and the tormenting dreams,
That on the happy blank of easeful night
Paint evermore for us the backward ways
And the old mirage, with its cheating streams,
And urge us back into the unwon fight?

We turn for comfort to the wise of old,
For tidings of the land that lies ahead,
The land to which their firmer feet have led,
Hymning its shores of amethyst and gold.
We ask; the answer comes back stern and cold;
“Gird up your loins! Rest is not for the dead.
“Beyond the graveyard and the evening-red,
“New lives and ever yet new lives unfold.”
—Ye speak in vain. If rest be not from life,
What reck we of new worlds and clearer air,
Of brighter suns and skies of deeper blue,
If life and all its weariness be there?
Is there no sage of all we turn unto
Will guide us to the guerdon of our strife?

Yes, there is one: for the sad sons of man,
That languish in the deserts, travail-worn,
Five times five hundred years ago was born,
Under those Orient skies, from whence began
All light, a saviour from the triple ban
Of birth and death and life renewed forlorn.
Third of the Christs he came to those who mourn:
Prometheus, Hercules had led the van.
His scriptures were the forest and the fen:
From the dead flower he learnt and the spent night
The lesson of the eternal nothingness,
How what is best is ceasing from the light
And putting off life's raiment of duresse,
And taught it to the weary race of men.

184

He did not mock the battle-broken soul
With promise of vain heavens beyond the tomb,
As who should think to break the boding gloom
Of stormful skies, uplifting to the pole
Gilt suns and tinsel stars. Unto their dole,
Who batten on life's galls, he knew no doom
Is dread as that which in death's darkling womb
Rewrites life's endless and accurséd scroll.
Wherefore he taught that to abstain is best,
Seeing that to those, who have their hope in nought,
Peace quicklier comes and that eternal rest,
Wherein enspheréd thou, Siddartha, art,
Chief of the high sad souls that sit apart,
Throned in their incommunicable thought.

OMAR KHEYYAM.

O THOU, the Orient morning's nightingale,
That, from the darkness of the Long Ago,
Thy note of unpropitiable woe
Cast'st out upon the Time-travérsing gale,
—Its burden still Life's lamentable tale,
Too late come hither and too soon to go,
Whence brought and whither bounden none doth know
Nor why thrust forth into this world of wail,—
We, thy sad brethren of the Western lands,
Sons of the Secret of this latter day,
We, who have sailed with thee the sea of tears,
Have trod with thee the BLOOD-DEVOURING WAY,
We, thy soul's mates, with thee join hearts and hands
Across the abysses of eight hundred years.

185

FROM BOCCACCIO.

TO PETRARCH DEAD.

NOW, dear my lord, unto those realms of light
Thou'rt mounted, whither looketh still to fare
Each soul of God elect unto that share,
On its departure from this world of spite;
Now art thou where full oft the longing spright
Drew thee, with Laura to commune whilere:
Now art thou come whereas my lovely fair
Fiammetta sitteth with her in God's sight.
Yea, with Sennuccio , Cino , Dante, thou
Assured of ease enternal dwellest now,
Things seeing our intelligence above.
Oh, in this world if I was dear to thee,
Draw thou me straight to thee, where I may see,
Joyful, her face who fired me first with love.

Boccaccio's mistress, the Princess Maria of Naples.

Sennuccio del Bene, a fourteenth-century Florentine poet and a friend of Petrarch, who celebrated him in his verse.

Cino da Pistoia, the contemporary and friend of Dante.

TO HIS OWN SOUL, EXHORTING IT TO REPENTANCE.

TURN, turn thee, weary soul: nay, hearken me.
Turn thee and note where thou hast run astray,
The course of idle lusts ensuing aye,
And in the fosse thy feet enmired thou'lt see.
Wake, ere thou fall! What dost thou? Presently
Return to Him, Him who the true allay
To who will giv'th and from the sore affray

186

Of woeful death, whereto thou far'st, doth free.
Return thee unto Him and thy last years
Yield, at the least, unto His will and gree,
Mourning the ills done in the days bygone.
Let the late season waken not thy fears;
He will accept thee, doing unto thee
That which He did erst with the last hired one.

Alluding, of course, to the parable of the labourers in the vineyard, Matt. XX, 1—16.

OF THREE DAMSELS IN A MEADOW.

ABOUT a well-spring, in a little mead,
Of tender grasses full and flow'rets fair,
There sat three youngling angels, as it were
Their loves recounting; and for each, indeed,
Her sweet face shaded, 'gainst the noontide need,
A spray of green, that bound her golden hair;
Whilst, in and out by turns, a frolic air
The two clear colours blended at its heed.
And one, after a little, thus heard I
Say to her mates, “Lo, if by chance there lit
The lovers of each one of us hereby,
Should we flee hence for fear of quiet sit?”
Whereto the twain made answer, “Who should fly
From such a fortune sure were scant of wit.”

Angiolette, lit. “she-angellings”, i.e. pretty young girls.

187

EXOTICA.

189

CHANT ROYAL OF THE GOD OF LOVE.

O MOST fair God! O Love both new and old,
That wast before the flowers of morning blew,
Before the glad sun in his mail of gold
Leapt into light across the first day's dew,
That art the first and last of our delight,
That in the blue day and the purple night
Holdest the heart of servant and of king,
Lord of liesse, sovran of sorrowing,
That in thy hand hast heaven's golden key
And hell beneath the shadow of thy wing,
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee!

What thing rejects thine empery? Who so bold
But at thine altars in the dusk they sue?
Even the strait pale Goddess, silver-stoled,
That kissed Endymion when the Spring was new,
To thee did homage in her own despite,
When, in the shadow of her wings of white,
She slid down trembling from her moonèd ring
To where the Latmian youth lay slumbering.
And in that kiss put off cold chastity.
Who but acclaim, with voice and pipe and string,
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee?

Master of men and gods, in every fold
Of thy wide vans, the sorceries that renew
The labouring earth tranced with the winter's cold
Lie hid, the quintessential charms that woo

190

The souls of flowers, slain with the sullen might
Of the dead year, and draw them to the light.
Balsam and blessing to thy garments cling:
Skyward and seaward, whilst thy white palms fling
Their spells of healing over land and sea,
One shout of homage makes the welkin ring,
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee!

I see thee throned aloft: thy fair hands hold
Myrtles for joy and euphrasy and rue:
Laurels and roses round thy white brows rolled,
And in thine eyes the royal heaven's hue:
But in thy lip's clear colour, ruddy bright,
The heart's blood burns of many a hapless wight.
Thou art not only fair and sweet as Spring:
Terror and beauty, fear and wondering,
Meet on thy front, amazing all who see.
All men do praise thee, ay, and every thing:
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee!

I fear thee, though I love. Who shall behold
The sheer sun blazing in the orbèd blue,
What while the noontide over hill and wold
Flames like a fire, except his mazèd view
Wither and tremble? So thy splendid sight
Fills me with mingled gladness and affright.
Thy visage haunts me in the wavering
Of dreams and in the dawn, awakening,
I feel thy splendour streaming full on me.
Both joy and fear unto thy feet I bring:
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee!

ENVOI.

God above gods, high and eternal king!
Whose praise the symphonies of heaven sing,
I find no whither from thy power to flee
Save in thy pinions' vast o'ershadowing:
Thou art my Lord to whom I bend the knee!

191

VIRELAY.

AS I sat sorrowing,
Love came and bade me sing
A joyous song and meet:
For see (said he) each thing
Is merry for the Spring
And every bird doth greet
The break of blossoming,
That all the woodlands ring
Unto the young hours' feet.

Wherefore put off defeat
And rouse thee to repeat
The chime of merles that go,
With flutings shrill and sweet,
In every green retreat,
The tune of streams that flow
And mark the young hours' beat
With running ripples fleet
And breezes soft and low.

For who should have, I trow,
Such joyance in the glow
And pleasance of the May,
In all sweet bells that blow,
In death of winter's woe
And birth of Springtide gay,
When in wood-walk and row
Hand-link'd the lovers go,
As he to whom alway

God giveth, day by day,
To set to roundelay
The sad and sunny hours,
To weave into a lay

192

Life's golden years and grey,
Its sweet and bitter flowers,
To sweep, with hands that stray
In many a devious way,
Its harp of sun and showers?

Nor in this life of ours,
Whereon the sky oft lowers,
Is any lovelier thing
Than in the wild wood bowers
The cloud of green that towers,
The blithe birds welcoming
The vivid vernal hours
Among the painted flowers
And all the pomp of Spring.

True, life is on the wing,
And all the birds that sing
And all the flowers that be
Amid the glow and ring,
The pomp and glittering
Of Spring's sweet pageantry,
Have here small sojourning;
And all our blithe hours bring
Death nearer, as they flee.

Yet this thing learn of me:
The sweet hours fair and free
That we have had of yore,
The glad things we did see,
The linkèd melody
Of waves upon the shore
That rippled in their glee,
Are not lost utterly,
Though they return no more.

But in the true heart's core
Thought treasures evermore
The tune of birds and breeze;

193

And there the slow years store
The flowers our dead Springs wore
And scent of blossomed leas;
There murmurs o'er and o'er
The sound of woodlands hoar
With newly burgeoned trees.

So for the sad soul's ease
Remembrance treasures these
Against time's harvesting;
And so, when mild Death frees
The soul from Life's disease
Of strife and sorrowing,
In glass of memories
The new hope looks and sees
Through death a brighter Spring.

RONDEAU REDOUBLÉ.

MY day and night are in my lady's hand;
I have none other sunrise than her sight:
For me her favour glorifies the land,
Her anger darkens all the cheerful light.
Her face is fairer than the hawthorn white,
When all a-flower in May the hedge-rows stand:
Whilst she is kind, I know of none affright:
My day and night are in my lady's hand.

All heaven in her glorious eyes is spanned:
Her smile is softer than the Summer night,
Gladder than daybreak on the Faery strand:
I have none other sunrise than her sight.
Her silver speech is like the singing flight
Of runnels rippling o'er the jewelled sand;
Her kiss a dream of delicate delight;
For me her favour glorifies the land.

194

What if the Winter slay the Summer bland!
The gold sun in her hair burns ever bright:
If she be sad, straightway all joy is banned:
Her anger darkens all the cheerful light.
Come weal or woe, I am my lady's knight
And in her service every ill withstand:
Love is my lord, in all the world's despite,
And holdeth in the hollow of his hand
My day and night.

DOUBLE BALLAD

OF THE SINGERS OF THE TIME.

WHY are our songs like the moan of the main,
When the wild winds buffet it to and fro,
(Our brothers ask us again and again)
A weary burden of hopes laid low?
Have birds left singing or flowers to blow?
Is Life cast down from its fair estate?
This I answer them—nothing mo'—
Songs and singers are out of date.

What shall we sing of? Our hearts are fain,
Our bosoms burn with a sterile glow.
Shall we sing of the sordid strife for gain,
For shameful honour, for wealth and woe,
Hunger and luxury,—weeds that throw
Up from one seeding their flowers of hate?
Can we tune our lutes to these themes? Ah no!
Songs and singers are out of date.

Our songs should be of Faith without stain,
Of haughty honour and deaths that sow
The seeds of life on the battle-plain,
Of loves unsullied and eyes that show

195

The fair white soul in the deeps below.
Where are they, these that our songs await
To wake to joyance? Doth any know?
Songs and singers are out of date.

What have we done with meadow and lane?
Where are the flowers and the hawthorn-snow?
Acres of brick in the pitiless rain,—
These are our gardens for thorpe and stow.
Summer has left us long ago,
Turned to the lands where the turtles mate
And the crickets chirp in the wild-rose row.
Songs and singers are out of date.

We sit and sing to a world in pain;
Our hertstrings quiver sadly and slow:
But, aye and anon, the murmurous strain
Swells up to a clangour of strife and throe
And the folk that hearken, or friend or foe,
Are ware that the stress of the time is great
And say to themselves, as they come and go,
Songs and singers are out of date.

Winter holds us, body and brain:
Ice is over our being's flow;
Song is a flower that will droop and wane,
If it have no heaven tow'rd which to grow.
Faith and beauty are dead, I trow;
Nothing is left but fear and fate:
Men are weary of hope; and so
Songs and singers are out of date.

196

BALLAD OF POETS.

WHAT do we here, who with reverted eyes
Turn back our longings from the modern air
To the dim gold of long-evanished skies,
When other songs in other mouths were fair?
Why do we stay the load of life to bear,
To measure still the weary worldly ways,
Waiting upon the still-recurring sun,
That ushers in another waste of days,
Of roseless Junes and unenchanted Mays?
Why but because our task is yet undone?

Were it not thus, could but our high emprise
Be once fulfilled, which of us would forbear
To seek that haven where contentment lies?
Who would not doff at once life's load of care,
To sleep at peace amid the silence there?
Ah, who, alas?—Across the heat and haze,
Death beckons to us in the shadow dun,
Favouring and fair. “My rest is sweet,” he says:
But we reluctantly avert our gaze;
Why but because our task is yet undone?

Songs have we sung and many melodies
Have from our lips had issue rich and rare:
But never yet the conquering chant did rise,
That should ascend the very heaven's stair,
To rescue life from anguish and despair.
Often and again, drunk with delight of lays,
“Lo,” have we cried, “this is the golden one
That shall deliver us!”—Alas! Hope's rays
Die in the distance and life's sadness stays:
Why but because our task is yet undone?

197

ENVOI.

Great God of Love, thou whom all poets praise,
Grant that the aim of rest for us be won!
Let the light shine upon our life that strays,
Disconsolate, within the desert maze,
Why but because our task is yet undone?

VILLANELLE.

THE air is white with snow-flakes clinging;
Between the gusts that come and go
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Methinks I see the primrose springing
On many a bank and hedge, although
The air is white with snowflakes clinging.

Surely, the hands of Spring are flinging
Wood-scents to all the winds that blow:
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Methinks I see the swallow winging
Across the woodlands sad with snow;
The air is white with snowflakes clinging.

Was that the cuckoo's wood-chime swinging?
Was that the linnet fluting low?
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

Or can it be the breeze is bringing
The breath of violets? Ah no!
The air is white with snowflakes clinging.

It is my lady's voice that's stringing
Its beads of gold to song; and so
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

198

The violets I see upspringing
Are in my lady's eyes, I trow:
The air is white with snowflakes clinging.

Dear, whilst thy tender tones are ringing,
E'en though amidst the winter's woe
The air is white with snowflakes clinging,
Methinks I hear the woodlark singing.

RONDEL.

[KISS me, sweetheart; the Spring is here]

KISS me, sweetheart; the Spring is here
And Love is lord of you and me.
The bluebells beckon each passing bee;
The wild wood laughs to the flowered year:
There is no bird in brake or brere
But to his little mate sings he,
“Kiss me, sweetheart; the Spring is here
And Love is lord of you and me.”

The blue sky laughs out sweet and clear;
The missel-thrush upon the tree
Pipes for sheer gladness loud and free;
And I go singing to my dear,
“Kiss me, sweetheart; the Spring is here
And Love is lord of you and me.”

BALLAD OF PAST DELIGHT.

WHERE are the dreams of the days gone by,
The hopes of honour, the glancing play
Of fire-new fancies that filled our sky,
The songs we sang in the middle May,
Carol and ballad and roundelay?
Where are the garlands our young hands twined?
Life's but a memory, wellaway!
All else flits past on the wings of the wind.

199

Where are the ladies fair and high—
Marie and Alice and Maud and May
And merry Madge with the laughing eye—
And all the gallants of yesterday
That held us merry,—ah, where are they?
Under the mould we must look to find
Some; and the others are worn and grey.
All else flits past on the wings of the wind.

I know of nothing that lasts, not I,
Save a heart that is true to its love alway;
A love that is won with tear and sigh
And never changes or fades away,
In a breast that is oftener sad than gay;
A tender look and a constant mind;
These are the only things that stay.
All else flits past on the wings of the wind.

ENVOI.

Prince, I counsel you, never say,
“Alack for the years that are left behind!”
Look you keep love when your dreams decay;
All else flits past on the wings of the wind.

RONDEAU.

ONE of these days, my lady whispereth,
A day made beautiful with Summer's breath,
Our feet shall cease from these divided ways,
Our lives shall leave the distance and the haze
And flower together in a mingling wreath.
No pain shall part us then, no grief amaze,
No doubt dissolve the glory of our gaze;
Earth shall be heaven for us twain, she saith,
One of these days.

200

Ah love, my love! Athwart how many Mays
The old hope lures us with its long delays!
How many winters waste our fainting faith!
I wonder, will it come this side of death,
With any of the old sun in its rays,
One of these days?

BALLAD OF LOVE'S DESPITE.

Plaisir d'amour ne dure qu'un instant;
Chagrin d'amour dure toute la vie.

IN my young time, full many a lady bright
I wooed and recked but little how I sped.
Was one unkind, it caused me small despite;
With careless heart a light “Farewell!” I said
And wooed another maiden in her stead.
Thus fared I joyously and thought no wrong
To mock at lovers in a jesting song
And heeded not if one to me did say,
“Beware! Love's bliss endureth not for long;
Love's sadness lasts for ever and a day!”

I made a mock of Love and his delight,
Styled it a fever of fond fancies bred
And women toys, too idle and too slight
To be remembered, when desire was dead.
Alack! the sword hung o'er me by a thread;
I too must kneel among the love-lorn throng
And prove how high Love's power is and how strong.
For lo! I loved a maiden bright and gay
And learnt, alas! though Love be little long,
Love's sadness lasts for ever and a day!

201

True, she loved me in turn and life was light
For many a day, whilst in her eyes I read
The sweet confession of Love's rosy might:
But soon, alack! her flitting fancy fled
And settled lightly on another's head.
Ah, who so hapless then as I! Among
The woods I wandered, smarting 'neath the thong
Of his fell scourge and wailing out alway
The old refrain, “Love's bliss is little long;
Love's sadness lasts for ever and a day.”

ENVOI.

Prince, in delight that walk'st the world along,
Chiefest of those that unto Love belong,
Take heed unto the burden of my lay
And know, Love's pleasance is but little long;
Love's sadness lasts for ever and a day.

RONDEAU.

LIFE lapses by for you and me,
Our sweet days pass us by and flee
And evermore Death draws us nigh:
The blue fades fast out of our sky,
The ripple ceases from our sea.
What would we not give, you and I,
The early sweet of life to buy?
Alas! sweetheart, that cannot we;
Life lapses by.

Yet, though our young years buried lie,
Shall love with Spring and Summer die?
What if the roses faded be?
We in each other's eyes will see
New Springs nor question how or why
Life lapses by.

202

VILLANELLE.

[_]

(With a copy of Swinburne's Poems and Ballads. Second Series.)

THE thrush's singing days are fled;
His heart is dumb for love and pain:
The nightingale shall sing instead.

Too long the wood-bird's heart hath bled
With love and dole at every vein:
The thrush's singing days are fled.

The music in his breast is dead,
His soul will never flower again:
The nightingale shall sing instead.

Love's rose has lost its early red,
The golden year is on the wane;
The thrush's singing days are fled.

The years have beaten down his head,
He's mute beneath the winter's rain:
The nightingale shall sing instead.

Hard use hath snapped the golden thread
Of all his wild-wood songs in twain;
The thrush's singing days are fled.

His voice is dumb for drearihead:
What matters it? In wood and lane
The nightingale shall sing instead.

Sweet, weary not for what is sped.
What if, for stress of heart and brain,
The thrush's singing days are fled?
The nightingale shall sing instead.

203

KYRIELLE.

A LARK in the mesh of the tangled vine,
A bee that drowns in the flower-cup's wine,
A fly in the mote's each mother's son:
All things must end that have begun.

A little pain, a little pleasure,
A little heaping-up of treasure;
Then no more gazing upon the sun.
All things must end that have begun.

Where is the time for hope or doubt?
A puff of the wind, and life is out;
A turn of the wheel, and rest is won.
All things must end that have begun.

Golden morning and purple night,
Life that fails with the failing light.
Deathless but Death alone is none:
All things must end that have begun.

Ending waits on the brief beginning.
Is the prize worth the stress of winning?
E'en in the dawning the day is done.
All things must end that have begun.

Weary waiting and weary striving,
Glad outsetting and sad arriving;
What is it worth when the race is run?
All things must end that have begun.

Speedily fades the morning glitter;
Love grows irksome and wine grows bitter;
Two are parted from what was one.
All things must end that have begun.

204

Toil and pain and the evening rest:
Joy is weary and sleep is best;
Fair and softly life's spool is spun:
All things must end that have begun.

PANTOUM.

THE wind brings up the hawthorn's breath,
The sweet airs ripple up the lake:
My soul, my soul is sick to death,
My heart, my heart is like to break.

The sweet airs ripple up the lake,
I hear the thin woods' fluttering:
My heart, my heart is like to break;
What part have I, alas! in Spring?

I hear the thin woods' fluttering;
The brake is brimmed with linnet-song:
What part have I, alas! in Spring?
For me, heart's winter is lifelong.

The brake is brimmed with linnet-song;
Clear carols flutter through the trees;
For me, heart's winter is lifelong;
I cast my sighs on every breeze.

Clear carols flutter through the trees;
The new year hovers like a dove:
I cast my sighs on every breeze;
Spring is no Spring, forlorn of love.

The new year hovers like a dove
Above the breast of the green earth:
Spring is no Spring, forlorn of love;
Alike to me are death and birth.

205

Above the breast of the green earth,
The soft sky flutters like a flower:
Alike to me are death and birth;
I dig Love's grave in every hour.

The soft sky flutters like a flower
Along the glory of the hills:
I dig Love's grave in every hour;
I hear Love's dirge in all the rills.

Along the glory of the hills
Flowers slope into a rim of gold:
I hear Love's dirge in all the rills;
Sad singings haunt me as of old.

Flowers slope into a rim of gold
Along the marges of the sky:
Sad singings haunt me as of old;
Shall Love come back to me to die?

Along the marges of the sky
The birds wing homeward from the East:
Shall Love come back to me to die?
Shall Hope relive, once having ceased?

The birds wing homeward from the East;
I smell spice-breaths upon the air:
Shall Hope relive, once having ceased?
Hope would lie black on my despair.

I smell spice-breaths upon the air;
The golden Orient-savours pass:
Hope would lie black on my despair,
Like a moon-shadow on the grass.

The golden Orient-savours pass;
The full Spring throbs in all the shade:
Like a moon-shadow on the grass,
My hope into the dusk would fade.

206

The full Spring throbs in all the shade;
We shall have roses soon, I trow;
My hope into the dusk would fade;
Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow.

We shall have roses soon, I trow;
Soon will the rich red poppies burn:
Bring lilies on Love's grave to strow;
My hope is fled beyond return.

Soon will the rich red poppies burn;
Soon will blue iris star the stream:
My hope is fled beyond return;
Have mine eyes tears for my waste dream?

Soon will blue iris star the stream;
Summer will turn the air to wine:
Have mine eyes tears for my waste dream?
Can songs come from these lips of mine?

Summer will turn the air to wine.
So full and sweet the mid-Spring flowers!
Can songs come from these lips of mine?
My thoughts are gray as winter-hours.

So full and sweet the mid-Spring flowers?
The wind brings up the hawthorn's breath.
My thoughts are gray as winter-hours;
My soul, my soul is sick to death.

215

SONGS OF LIFE AND DEATH.

217

DEDICATION

TO RICHARD WAGNER.

The “Dedication to Richard Wagner”, commenced in 1869 and completed in February 1872, was first printed in 1872, as a Prelude to the first Edition of my “Songs of Life and Death”, at a time when to avow oneself an enthusiastic admirer of the great German composer, (to say nothing of his equally great contemporaries and in part precursors, Berlioz and Liszt,) was to be popularly considered something like a malignant maniac.

MASTER and chief of all for whom the singers
Strain with full bosoms and ecstatic throats,
For whom the strings beneath the flying fingers,
The sackbuts and the clarions, yield their notes,—

Lord over all for whom the tymbals thunder,
For whom the harps throb like the distant sea,
For whom the shrill sweet flutings cleave in sunder
The surges of the strings that meet and flee,—

O strong sweet soul, whose life is as a mountain
Hymned round about with stress of spirit-choirs,
Whose mighty song leaps sunward like a fountain,
Reaching for lightnings from celestial fires,—

O burning heart and tender, highest, mildest,
Nightingale-throated, with the eagle's wing,—
This sheaf of songs, culled where the ways are wildest
And the shade deepest, to thy feet I bring.

I hail thee as from many hearts that cherish,
Serve and keep white thy thought within their shrines,
Where the flame fades not, though its lustre perish,
Midmost the lurid and the stormy signs.

218

I greet thee as from those great mates departed
Who first taught Song to know the ways of Soul,
Fit harbingers of thee, the eagle-hearted,
Saw in the art the new sun-planets roll.

I greet thee with a promise and a cheering,—
I, that have loved thee many weary years,
I, that, with eyes strained for the dawn's appearing,
Have clung to thee for hope and healing tears;

I, that am nought, whose weakling voice has in it
The shrill sole sadness of one wailing note;
No nightingale I, but a sad-voiced linnet,
Piping thin ditties from a bleeding throat;

I—since the masters lift no voice to-thee-ward
To stay thy battle in the weary time—
Send forth for thee these weak-winged songs to seaward,
To bear to thee their freight of idle rhyme.

Ah, how weak-voiced and little worth, my master!
Yet haply, as a lark-song on the breeze,
That, winging through the air, black with disaster,
Heartens some exile pacing by the seas,

So even mine, my weak and unskilled singing
May smite thine ear with no unpleasing notes,
What time the shrill sounds of the fight are ringing
About thee and the clamour of dull throats.

And peradventure (for least love is grateful)
The humble song may, for a little while,
Smoothe from thy brow the sadness high and fateful,
Call to thy lips the rare and tender smile.

My harmonies are harmonies of sadness,
My light is but as starlight on the wane:
Far nobler bards shall cheer thee with their gladness;
I bring thee but the song-pulse of my pain.

219

Be not disheartened, O our Zoroaster,
O mage of our new music-world of fire!
Thou art not all unfriended, O my master!
Let not the great heart fail thee for desire.

What matter though the storm-wind round thee rages,
Though men judge weakly with imperfect sight?
O master-singer of the heroic ages,
Each dawn is brighter with the appointed light.

Hate's echoes on the inconstant air but languish,
Win not within the world's true heart to be,—
Faint wails for us of far-off souls in anguish,
That chide their own sick selves in all they see.

Thine is the Future—hardly theirs the Present,
The flowerless days that put forth leaf and die—
Theirs that lie steeped in idle days and pleasant,
Letting the pageant of the years pass by.

For the days hasten when shall all adore thee,
All at thy spring shall drink and know it sweet;
All the false temples shall fall down before thee,
Ay, and the false gods crumble at thy feet.

Then shall men set thee in their holy places,
Hymn thee with anthems of remembering;
Faiths shall spring up and blossom in thy traces,
Thick as the violets cluster round the Spring.

And then, perchance, when, in the brighter ages,
Men shall awake and know the god they scorned
And mad with grief, grave upon marble pages
(That therewithal the Future may be warned)

The tale of their remorse and shame undying,
They, coming where thy name has kept these sweet,
—These idle songs of mine,—shall set with sighing
My name upon the marble at thy feet;

220

For that, when all made mock of and denied thee,
Seeing not the portent and the fiery sword,
I, from my dream, in the mid-heaven descried thee,
Saw and confessed thee, knew and named thee Lord.

February 1872.

A PRELUDE.

WHAT shall my song be of these latter days,
These darkened days of toil and weariness?
Lo! for sheer burden of the grief that slays
The adventure in men's hearts and for the stress
Of doubt, my feet turn from the sunlit ways,
My eyes drink darkness from the morning rays
And my tongue curses where it fain would bless.

Ah! who shall cure the sickness of the time?
Who shall bring healing to the wounded age?
Not I, forsooth. I—with my idle rhyme—
Right gladly would I blazon all the page
Of life with flowers and with the happy chime
Of heart-free songs, lift up the folk to climb
The peaks that soar out of the tempest's rage;

Ah, how soul-gladly! But the life in me
Is worn with doubt and agony and care:
Fain would I lead: alas! I cannot see
Myself the way. The presage in the air
Weighs on my thought and will not set it free.
Ah God! the helpless, saddened soul of me!
How shall I sing glad songs of my despair?

How shall I sing of aught but that I love?
How should I be in love with aught but sleep?
I, that have watched the morning mists remove

221

And heaven break open to its grayest deep,
Straining my eyes around me and above,
Only to see the dreams that erst I wove
Melt in the noonday, leaving me to weep!

I, that thought once no ills should daunt my faith,
That hope should pluck the laurel from the abyss,
Can this be I of old, this world-worn wraith
Of brighter days, living on memories
And bitter food of dreams, in love with Death,
Seeking no laurel but a cypress-wreath,
Can this be I, with all my hopes grown this?

Alas! the long gray years have vanquished me,
The shadow of the inexorable days.
I am grown sad and silent: for the sea
Of Time has swallowed all my pleasant ways.
I am grown weary of the years that flee
And bring no light to set my bound hope free,
No sun to fill the promise of old Mays.

For, let the summer throne it as it will,
Life and the sun are sad and sere to him
(Sadder than Death and Night) who wearies still
For his desire and sees upon the rim
Of the pale sky no sign that shall fulfil
The covenant of promise every rill,
Each flower swore to him, whilst the dawn broke dim.

How shall the sunlight thaw his wintry thought?
His eyes look past the harvest and the throng
Of flower-crowned hours, to where the peace long sought
Lies on the fields and all the stress life-long
Into the ice-calm woof of sleep is wrought:
Needs must he wander, with void hope distraught,
Measuring his sad life with a less sad song.

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A SONG BEFORE THE GATES OF DEATH.

Sed satis est jam posse mori.

SMITE strings and fill the courts with thy lament!
Yea, let the singing thunder through the halls;
Wake all the echoes from the funeral walls,
From aisle to roof and porch to battlement!
Give forth thy sorrow till the roses' scent
Is blent for dole into the lilies' breath
And all the air is faint with balms of death,
Seeing the glory of the day is spent
And Death treads very nigh upon our feet.
Sing out and let the winds be filled with song!
Haply, the clangours of the chant shall greet
The great gods' senses, till the unheeding throng
Immortal hear in it the thunderous beat
Of Fate and tremble for remembered wrong.

Give me the vase. Drink deep as for the dead!
Drink Life and all its joys a long good-bye!
Surely, the wine shall hearten us to die.
Blood of the grape! Wine, that the earth has bled
From her slit painful veins, living and red
With all the deaths that have won life for thee!
I pour thee out for sign and memory,
For thanksgiving to life and goodlihead
Of the green earth and all her friendly hours:
The homage of the dead, that in her sods
Shall soon lie low and rot beneath the showers
Of the round year; yet, when the kind Fate nods,
Mayhap shall glorify the grass in flowers:
A godlike homage! For the dead are gods.

The dead are gods, seeing they lie and sleep,
Folded within the mantle of the night;

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Ay, more than gods! For lo! the heavy might
Of Death enrounds them. Never do they weep
Nor smile sad smiles nor strain against the sweep
Of rugged Doom. There is no Fate for them,
Lying, close-companied, within the hem
Of the pale fateful god: the long years creep
Over their heads and may not break their rest.
Who would not choose to die, when life is worn
And wan with wrong unto the utterest?
The fierce gods chase us to the brink with scorn;
Yet smite the strings! We are not so forlorn
But we may die, seeing that death is best.

Curse we the gods and die! Give me the lyre.
Now, Zeus, fling thunders from thine armouries
And Helios, rain down sunbolts from thy skies!
We die and fear you not and all your ire,
Impotent as the flaming of a fire
Against the dead. There is no hope for us,
Save of a sinking sweet and slumberous
Into the arms of rest. Pile up the pyre!
Great father Zeus, we reck not of thy grace:
It is thy wrath we crave with our last breath.
Look down in all thy terrors, King of Life!
Consume us with the splendours of thy face!
So shall the keen fire solve us from our strife
And our sad souls be ravished unto death.

FALSE SPRING.

THE linnet tapped at the window-pane,
The hawthorn shook down its silver rain,
The flower-scents called me again and again:
‘Come, for the Spring is here!’

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O linnet! the day is golden for thee;
O hawthorn! thy snow is pleasant to see;
O flowers! will the flower-scents waken for me
The dreams that are dead and sere?

‘Come out, come out, O poet!’ they said;
‘The violets wait in their cool green bed,
The windflowers beckon with silver head,
The pale blue crocuses linger
For thee, like a flame of the winter's end,
The hyacinth-clusters tinkle and bend,
The cowslips thrill with the scents they send
To comfort the weary singer.

‘The earth is singing her songs of green;
The cuckoo pipes in the heart of the treen;
There is no sadness in any, I ween,
Under the new Spring glamour.
Come out and live with the flowers again!
Thou hast fretted thy soul o'erlong in vain
With the olden strife and the olden pain
And the weary worldly clamour.’

‘O breezes and birds!’ I said, ‘I fear
Ye should bring me again the past-time drear
And the vanished shapes that I held so dear,
With their tender tearful grace.
I fear ye should raise in the hawthorn-bowers
The sad sweet wraiths of the bygone hours
And sadden my sight in the primrose-flowers
With a dear dead maiden's face.’

‘O poet,’ they said, ‘the Spring is glad;
The earth has buried the grief it had;
The fields have forgotten the winter sad,
The woods are laughing with blossom:

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There cometh no wraith of the bygone days
To moan in the wreaths of the woodbine maze;
But a golden glory of sunbeams plays
Over the young land's bosom!’

‘O birds! I fear ye will sing me anew
The golden songs that I taught to you,
When life was a kiss of the summer dew,
Under the blossomed flowers.
O breezes! I fear lest the voice of the dead
Should ring in your wafts, with the words she said
And the silver rain of the tears she shed,
In the old sweet happy hours.’

‘O poet!’ they said, ‘we will comfort thee,
No more shall our voices deceitful be;
We will sing to thee songs of the things we see
In the happy future's gold!
We will weave for thee delicate dreams and deep;
We will vex thee no longer nor make thee weep;
We will leave unstirred in their dreamless sleep
The happy days of old!’

There was no nay; so out I went,
Under the apples blossom-sprent;
And the Springtime kissed me, as I came,
With blue-bell breath and crocus-flame;
The birds did wreathe the air with singing
And on the breeze there came a ringing,
A noise of silver bells and gold,
From out the woodlands, as of old.

My feet did turn toward the wood;
And as I went, the hawthorns strewed
White snow and rosy in my way
And throstles piped from every spray.

226

There seemed no dole in aught, nor guile:
The happy earth was all a-smile
With cowslip-gold and windflower-white;
Spring held all things with its delight.

So to the forest's edge I came
And saw the brooklet, like a flame
Of liquid silver, flow between
Lush column-work of arching green;
Fair flowers laughed archly in the moss;
The daffodils their heads did toss
For joyance and the gladsome bees
Hummed in the blue anemones.

There seemed no sadness in the air
Nor any thought of things that were
For me of old and are no more;
Nor any of the sad old lore
That in my heart the years laid deep,
To lie and sleep a troubled sleep,
Did seem to stir in that sweet shade;
And so I entered, undismayed.

O birds, 'twas not well done of you!
O flowers and breeze, right well ye know
The weary glamour that the Spring
Had laid for me on everything!
'Twas but to bring me back again
The memory of the olden pain,
Ye lured me out, with song of birds,
With violet-breath and fair false words!

For lo! my feet had hardly past
The woven band of flowerage, cast
Betwixt the meadows and the trees,
When, in the bird-songs and the breeze,

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Another strain was taken up
And out of every blue-bell's cup,
The mocking voices sang again
The olden songs of love and pain.

The flowers did mimic the old grace;
The wan white windflowers wore her face
And in the stream I heard her words;
Her voice came rippling from the birds.
Dead love, I saw thy form anew
Bend down among the violets blue,
And like a mist, the memory
Of all the past rose up in me.

HYMN TO THE NIGHT.

O NIGHT, that holdest all the keys of dreams,
Unfolding o'er the azure of the sea!
I give thee welcome with a flowerful hand,
For lo! I have been very fain for thee.
I give thee loving welcome, for meseems
Thou knowest well that I do love thee so
And in return dost hold my homage dear
And usest well to pour celestial balms
Of comfort, that thy servant winds have fanned
Together, on me from thy cool dusk palms
And from the jewelled hollow of thy sphere,
Brimmed with moon-pearl and silver of the stars.
For often, when my heart was sore with scars
Of striving and I could not weep for woe,
Thine airs have brought sweet singings to mine ears
And loosened all the silver springs of tears;
Thy hands have soothed the fierceness from my grief
And in thy robe's wide purple thou hast drawn
And folded all my sorrows, while the sills

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Of heaven dropped sapphire. So I had relief
Of sadness, ere the primrose of the Dawn
Budded pale gold upon the emerald hills.

Thou knowest I have ever been to thee,
Fair, simple Night, full constant in my love,
How I have cherished, all delights above,
The folding of thy pinions over me.
Mine has been no ephemeral fantasy,
That loves and loves not in one short hour's span
And knows not if Day's rose have sweeter breath
Than thine own violets. Ere the noon began
To burden all the air with weary gold
And doom all wandering winds to fiery death,
My spirit to thy sheltering arms did flee.
Ere yet the chariot of the sunset rolled
Fierce to the dying as an ancient knight
And many a mist grew painted o'er the sea,
I saw thee in the haze, with silent feet,
Sweep o'er the distance, Mother of the Night,
Wrapping the hills in shadow, fold on fold:
I saw thy vans across the landscape meet
And my faint soul arose to welcome thee.

My faint soul sinks into thy windless deeps,
Misted with gold, O Mother of the Dreams!
And gazes with a wonderless content,
Up through thy lymph, to where the azure floors
Of heaven are with a gradual glory rent,
That through the cloisters of the æther leaps
And in thy lap its spreading splendours pours,
In flood on flood of golden-crested streams.
For slow sweet wonders lie for me impearled
Within thy womb and in thy jewelled sands;
And all the lute-strings of my soul are swept,
By the unfolding ripples of thy tide
And rhythmic pulsing of thy tender hands,

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To melodies of some enchanted world,
That through the ardour of the day has slept
And will not glimmer through its veiling groves
Of tender mystery, till the Night divide
The gates of slumber: songs of half-felt bliss
And dreams, through which a strange sweet echo roves
And murmurs in a mist of fragrances
And all sound's sweets do wane and swell and kiss,
Like night-birds in the blossomed oranges.

My faint eyes loathe the ardours of the noon
And fiery splendours of the dying sun;
Joys that are stretched to madness, love that burns
And fierce delights that weary, scarce begun.
The roses wound me with their passionate bloom;
I weary of the lilies' laden breath;
And all the flowerage of my yearning turns
Toward its pearlèd lodestar of the moon
And tarries for thy grave and kindly gloom,
O thronèd Night! to soothe the hot fierce blue
Of heaven with its webs of amethyst;
My sad soul listens for thine airs to bring
Soft harmonies and low to me and sing
Sweet songs of thee and of thy shadow Death
And strains to see thy woven hands of mist
The meadows of the upper æther strew
With fair and tender lavishment of flowers
And sow thick goldcups in the purple meads,
Far dearer than the gay and flaunting weeds
That drink the sunlight in the noontide hours.

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MADRIGAL TRISTE.

IF we should meet,
You and I,
My sweet,
In some fair land where under the blue sky
The scents of the fresh violets never die
And Spring is deathless under deathless feet,
Should we clasp hands and kiss,
My sweet,
With the old bliss?
Would our eyes meet
With the same passionate frankness as of old,
When the fresh Spring was in the Summer's gold?
Ah, no! my dear.
Woe's me! our kisses are but frore;
The blossoms of our early love are sere
And will be fresh no more.

If we should stand,
You and I,
My sweet,
On that bright strand
Where day fades never and the golden street
Rings to the music of the angels' feet,
Would our rent hearts find solace in the sky?
Should we lose heed,
My dear,
Of the sad years?
Would our souls cease to bleed
For the past anguish and our eyes grow clear,
In heaven, from all the furrows of the tears?
Ah, no! my dear.
Needs must we sigh and stand aloof.
Once riven,
God could not heal our love,
Even in heaven.

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A SONG OF ROSES.

MANY a time and oft,
In the July weather,
When the breeze was soft
And the pleasant land
Purple with the heather,
Went we hand in hand,
Love and I together.

Round our happy feet
Twinkled out the roses,
Roses red and sweet,
Ruddy as the sky
When the dawn uncloses,
White as chastity,
Yellow as primroses.

Were the roses red,
Lo! my love was brighter.
Did the moonlight shed
Lilies on the ground,
Lo! my love was whiter
And her footsteps' sound
Than the breeze was lighter.

God! how glad we were!
All the birds were jealous.
Hovering in the air,
All the larks and linnets,
All the white-breast swallows,
Envied all our minutes
More than they could tell us.

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Thrushes knew no song
Like thy golden singing:
In the woodbirds' throng
There was no such sweetness
As thy voice's ringing
And thy footsteps' fleetness
O'er the heather springing.

Heavens! how we kissed!
Flowers to one another
Bending through the mist
Of the summer-calm,
Kissing each his brother,
With their breath of balm,
Filled not one the other

With such golden bliss,
With such tender glory
Prisoned in a kiss;
All the sweet Spring-gladness,
All the summer-story
And the autumn-sadness,
When the sky is hoary.

Through the harebells blue
Went the bees a-humming,
Singing of the dew,
Of the summer ceased
And the harvest coming
And the honey-feast
In the winter-gloaming.

Flower-dew, like the bee,
From thy lips so bonny,
'Gainst the flower-time flee,
Stole I in Love's name,
While July was sunny,
That, when winter came,
I too might have honey.

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Roses red and white
In my breast I treasured,
Whilst the sky was bright
And the fragrant ways
With the flowers were measured,
That in autumn's days
I might be rose-pleasured.

On my happy breast
Didst thou weep for gladness;
And thy tears, out-prest,
Falling on the roses,
Filled them with strange sadness,
Sweet as birdsong-closes,
In the new May-madness.

Then I learnt the song
That thy lips did utter;
Caught each jewelled throng,
Every glad clear trill,
Every low sweet mutter,
At thy voice's will
That did fly and flutter;

Treasured every note
In my heart's recesses,
Learnt them all by rote,
All the golden falls,
All the silver stresses,
All the joy that thralls,
All the love that blesses;

Stored them dearly up
In the hidden places,
In the white closed cup
Of my flower-bell fancies;
That, when white earth's face is
And the old romances
Gone with summer's graces,

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When my soul should grope
In the earth-mists sordid,
Far from love and hope,
I might turn for balm
To the music hoarded
And in its sweet psalm
Hope and be rewarded.

So the summer fled
And the autumn mellowed
All the leaves to red,
All the corn to gold;
And the winter followed,
With its silent cold
And its snows wind-hollowed.

Then I went alone;
For light Love had left me,
When the birds had flown
And the flowers were dead:
Winter had bereft me
Of the roses red
And the bliss Love weft me.

Then I said, “Have heart!
Thou hast yet thy treasure.
Though light Love depart,
Thou canst summon up
All the summer leisure
From its silver cup,
All the bygone pleasure.”

So I searched my heart
For the hoarded sweetness,
Honey set apart
'Gainst the days of sadness;
For the songs whose fleetness
Gave the summer gladness,
Gave my bliss completeness.

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Lo! the songs were wails,
Like the wind that surges
Through the moaning sails.
Lo! the sweets were gall.
Lo! the thoughts were scourges,
Bitter honey all;
And the pæans dirges.

Then from out my breast
Did I take the roses,
Roses tear-caressed,
Roses red and white,
That in the reposes
Of the noon-delight
I had plucked for posies.

Lo! the flowers were dead,
By the frost invaded;
But the tears she shed
Had, within the fronds
Of the petals shaded,
Grown to diamonds,
Lights that never faded.

So Love's gladness flees
And its sweets wax bitter;
But the memories
Of its hours of sorrow,
Holier and fitter,
On the winter morrow,
Turn to gems and glitter.

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A FAREWELL.

TO part in midmost summer of our love,
When first the flower-scents and the linnets' tune
Have fallen into harmonies of June
About our lives new linked and all above
The flower-blue heaven lies for bliss aswoon,—
Were this not sad? Yet love must live by pain,
If one would win its fragrance to remain.

Were it not sadder, in the years to come,
To feel the hand-clasp slacken for long use,
The untuned heartstrings for long stress refuse
To yield old harmonies, the songs grow dumb
For weariness and all the old spells lose
The first enchantment? Yet this thing must be.
Love is but mortal, save in memory.

Too rare a flower it is, its bloom to keep
In the raw cold of our unlovely clime,
Too frail to thrive in this our weary time.
I would not have thy kisses, sweet, grow cheap
Nor thy dear looks round out an idle rhyme;
And so I hold that we loose hands and part.
Dear, with my hand you do not loose my heart.

Sweet is the fragrance of remembered love;
The memory of clasped hands is very sweet,
Joined lips that did not once too often meet
And never knew that saddest word ‘Enough!’
And so 'tis well that, ere our Springtime fleet,
Thus in the heyday of our love part we:
Farewell, and all white omens go with thee!

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Is it not well that we should both retain
The early bloom of love, untouched and pure?
There is no way by which it may endure,
Save if we part before its sweetness wane
And wither; since that life is so impure
And love so frail, it may not blossom long,
Unscathed, in this our stress of care and wrong.

We were not sure of love, my sweet,—and yet
The fragrance of its Spring shall never die.
Sweetheart, we shall be sure of memory,
That amber of the years, where Time doth set
The dear-belovèd shapes of things gone by,
That so their gentle semblance may evade
The ills that lurk in eld's ungenial shade.

So, sweet, our love shall, in the death of it,
Relive, as corn that withers in the ground,
Yet with fresh blades doth presently abound
And yields full golden sheavage in time fit.
It may be that new flowers will too be found
Among the stubble and the pale sweet blooms
Of Autumn glorify our woodland glooms.

The memory of our kisses shall survive
And in Time's treasure-house be consecrate.
Our love shall with the distance grow more great
And shall for us be sweeter than alive,
When dead; for memory shall reduplicate
The sweetness of the past, till you and I
Cherish as angels' food each bygone sigh.

238

AUBADE.

WHEN the flocks of the morning gather in the East,
Golden-fleeced,
And the star-sparkles of the night are drawn
Into one great orient pearl of dawn,
The voice of my soul is as a bird that mourns
Because the night has ceased.
My voice is as a sorrowful sweet singing,
That murmurs o'er dim notes of faded morns,
Thick-misted with pale memories round them clinging,
Whose faint fresh bud of dawning did unfold
Into the noonday's burning flower of gold;
And all the cloisters of the air are ringing
With dreams of things that have been done and told
For me in days of old.

Amber of dawn, thou bringest me scant pleasure;
Sad treasure
Of fair and precious jewels that the years
Have worn and dulled with bitter rills of tears.
Thy gold is as the wraith of bygone hope
Poured without measure
Upon the upland meadows of my youth,
When Edens glittered on each cloudward slope
And all the sweet old lies seemed fairest sooth,
When all things wore the tender glow of dreaming.
(Alas! that such sweet error should have blown
To seeding and such bitter fruit have sown!)
Ah me! meseems the halls of heaven are streaming
With many a sweet old memory that has flown
And left me sad and lone.

Time was, the dawnflower, on the hills unfolding,
To me, beholding

239

Brought visions of a fair and far ideal
And seemed the chalice of a new Sangreal.
I dreamt that I might win life's balm and bid
My fellows to the holding
Of the banquet of a new and nobler being,
Wherefrom old glooms and horrors should be rid
And no one eye should be shut out from seeing;
Where the despairing soul of man, grown faithful
To its own self, should find life no more scathful
With weary doubt and thrice accursèd ease
And the enfranchised air no more be wraithful
With phantoms of time-honoured wrong, that freeze
The speech in him that sees,—

Sees and is sick to vent his soul in singing,
That the song, ringing
Athwart the wild waste beauty of the world,
May free it from the dragons that lie curled
Round its sad heart, back, to the glory golden
Of old, Earth's deserts bringing,—
And may not work his will for damnèd use.
I dreamt that I might bring the unbeholden
Fear, that doth steep with such a venomed juice
The cup of being, to the light of dawn
And show it powerless; and that curse withdrawn,
Life should bloom fresh and fair with healthful dews.
This was my dream, O amber of the dawn,
In days long since bygone.

Lo! I have fought and perished in the striving;
Lo! and arriving
Before my goal of crystal and of gold,
Have seen its glories shrink off, fold by fold,
Leaving the bare waste hopelessness exposed.
I have grown sick with riving,
Mist after mist, the opals of the mirage,
That for my sight, blinded with dreams, enclosed

240

The prize of some new hero-high aspirage,
Gold to be won by who should dare the winning,
Who should cast off and leave in the beginning
The cumber of the fatal Past's empirage
And to old signs a new rich meaning giving,
Through death and sin win living!

Lo! I have failed and fallen in the gaining.
In the attaining
Life, has Death entered deep into my soul.
Lo! I have sunk defeated at the goal.
Eos, thy banners of the triumph, streaming
Over the pale night's waning,
Are wraiths to me of old deceptive glory,
Gold of the victory of the darkness, gleaming
Over the hills with pennants red and gory.
For me, thy downward heaven-reddening flood
Is as the river of the flush of blood
That hearts of men have shed for thy false story,
Since day first glittered on the new-born world,
Sun-crowned and iris-pearled.

Long to my sight the night has been the fairer,
The bearer
Of comfort to the souls of those that languish
With hopeless hope and weary with the anguish
Of saddening joy: the glamour of the setting
Sweeter and rarer,—
In the faint sadness of its purple fading
Toward the silver night and her forgetting,
Where there is only balm and no upbraiding,—
Is to my soul, that wearies for reposing,
More grateful than dawn-Daphne's fierce unclosing,
Wherein for aye I see old hopes evading
My grasp, and with a mocking light regilded,
Waste dreams my young hands builded.

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COURANTE.

SILVER Spring;
Hawthorn-white,
Violet-scent,
May-delight;
Birds that sing
Noon and night,
Meadows sprent
With sunlight;
Woods that ring
With the pent
Streams that twine
In their flight
Shade and shine:
Whose content
Do they bring?
Whose delight?
Ah, not mine!

Gold of June;
Days afire
With flower-flush
Of desire:
Sun-sprent noon,
Hedge and brier
Rose a-blush
High and higher;
Linnet's tune,
Trill of thrush,
Nightingales
In the hush
Of the moon:
What avails

242

All the flush
Of the grass,
All the rush
Of the hours,
That o'erpass
Earth and sea,
Crowned with flowers,
Unto me?
What, alas?

Light of Love;
Lips that cling,
Hands that meet,
Souls that wing
Heavens above,
Wandering,
Joined and sweet;
Thoughts that sing,
Lives that move
To the beat
Of the hours,
Murmuring,
“Heaven is ours,
Ours that love,
While we twine
Hand in hand,
In the shine
Of Love's land;”
Whose glad feet
Tread that strand,
All divine?
Whose blest hand
Gathers flowers
In Love's land?
Ah, not mine!

243

Who complains?
Ah, not I!
Not a tear,
Not a cry.
All the rains
Of the sky
Cannot clear
Souls that sigh
Of their stains:
But I lie
Many a year,
Grief-opprest,
And the pains
In my breast
Never rest,
Never die.

THE DEAD MASTER.

A THRENODY.

“The Dead Master” in question was Walter Savage Landor, whose “Hellenics” were the delight of my youth.

Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis?

WAST thou not with us, when the night departed,
O strong sweet singer that art ours no more!
Was not the harping thine that first gave o'er
The song of wailing, when the daybreak parted
And the glad heavens broke open, shore from shore,
Sun-crowned and iris-hearted?

Didst thou not smite the strings to jubilation,
Hymning the grand sweet scope of the To-be?
Did not our midnight dole and doubting flee
From thy glad strength and all our lamentation
Swell with thy song into an ecstasy
Of aspiration?

244

No more we wept and wailed for Life's undoing,
Following the golden notes that brake from thee,
Riding star-crowned upon that sudden sea
Which from thy soul poured forth for our renewing
Oceans of hope and jubilance, that we
Drank of, ensuing.

Didst thou not rend for us the gloom descending,
Scatter the veils of doubting from our sight,
Bring to our lives again the flower-delight,
Bird-songs and field-scents in thy verses blending?
Didst thou not save our spirits from the night
Stern and impending?

Lo! and the night has bound thee, O our master!
Lo! and the shadows gather round thy place!
Shall we then no more look upon thy face?
Surely the shades will fold to night the faster.
Surely Death's torches quicklier replace
Life's lamp of alabaster.

Shall we then no more see thee, O our singer,
Passing the love of women to our souls?
Shall then our lives be darkened and our goals
Deep in the gray dim distance fade and linger,
Since that no more thy voice our steps controls,
No more thy finger

Points and is clear along the hills that darken,
Clear with the distant glimmer of the day?
Will then the cliff-walls never roll away,
That thy song's sweetness hide from us that hearken,
Us that are weary in Life's mazèd way,
Weary of mists that starken?

245

Have we then heard thy singing for the last time
Shape us the glories of the olden days?
Have we a last time listened to the lays,
Wherein thou scaledst the ancient heavens for pastime
And in the future's iridescent haze
Buildedst the past-time?

Can we forget thee, high sweet soul and faithful,
Homer and Pindar of our modern time,
Lord of our thought and leader of our rhyme,
Thou that didst clear the air that was so deathful,
Filled it anew with scents of rose and thyme,
Made it bird-breathful?

Thou that for us wast some sublime Silenus,
Full to the lips of wise and lovely words,
Shaping to song the speech of flowers and birds,
Wast as a god on whose strength we might lean us,
And, our Apollo, piped to us thy herds
Songs of Camœnus!

What doth it irk us if we never saw thee,
Knew but thy presence as a god's afar,
Heard but thy song as music of a star?
Were we not with thee, part in thee and of thee?
Were not our souls akin to thine and are?
Did we not love thee?

With thee we lived in some enchanted Arden,
Glad with the echo of the wood-nymphs' feet,
Bright with old memories, very strange and sweet,
That in the shade of that Armida's garden
Did from our cold pale daylight hide and fleet,
Where all things harden.

246

Thou wast no wailer, no sweet-voiced unmanner,
That for weak men within an idle clime
Builded vain dreams to sweet and idle rhyme:
Thou hast built souls after the antique manner,
Souls that shall march through many a lapse of time,
Bearing thy banner,

Thy standard with its burden high and golden,
Daring to love and loving, know no shame,
Wit to reject the let of age-old blame,
Faith to rekindle altar-ashes olden,
Fan the old love of Nature to full flame,
Long unbeholden.

Friend, we have mourned and longed for thee with mourning;
Poet, our ears are sad with listening,
Straining for songs no breeze shall ever bring;
Master, thy lapse has dulled with dusk Life's morning,
Dimmed with black death each bright and lovely thing,
That in the adorning

Of thy high verse had erst been wont to sparkle,
Glitter and glow with glories of the past;
Spirit of song and flame of faith, the blast
Of thine eclipse has reft from us, anarchal,
Robbed us with thee of all the things thou wast,
Bard patriarchal!

Master, in vain we listen for thy singing,
Listen and long and languish for desire!
Unto our ears no echoes of thy lyre
Pulse from the darkness, no glad breeze comes bringing
Voices, no sparkles of the ancient fire
Reach us, wide-winging.

247

Will then thy song no more translate our yearning,
Mould our harsh cries to music of the spheres?
Will thy verse glitter no more with our tears?
Has then the sun of thy bright soul, whose burning
Lightened so oft the midnight of our fears,
Set, unreturning?

Or hast thou found thy dream in plains supernal,
Shapes of fair women, forms of noble men,
That, at the magic summons of thy pen,
Did, from the snows and solitudes hybernal,
Where they so long had slept, seek out again
The meadows vernal?

Do the long lapses of the ghost-land, lying
Stretched out beyond the portals of the grave,
Teem with fresh fruits and flowers for thee and wave
With the clear shapes of thine old dreams undying?
Has the dark flood been powerful to lave
From thy soul sighing,

Grief and the very memory of grieving,
Hope and the very thought of wearying
After the glow and glory thou didst sing?
Hast in the air such unimagined giving,
Splendour and flush of every godlike thing,
Wherefor thy living

Struggled and wearied in the bitter days?
Dost thou live out thy phantasies of gold
Under Greek skies and Attic woods of old,
Walk, crowned with myrtle, in the Dorian ways,
Peopled with all the dreams that did unfold
In thy high lays?

248

Surely, this thing alone could hold thee speechless,
Surely, in this alone couldst thou forget
Us that are left to struggle in the net
Of the sad world, to feel the days grow each less
Sweet to our souls, to weary with the fret,
Dumb and beseechless.

Surely, thy soul would yearn to us with longing:
Surely, no grave could keep thy voice from us,
Were not this so. The silence dolorous
Surely is voiceful of the years prolonging
Long bliss for thee and us to come, that thus
Unto the thronging,

Unto the cry and clamour of our yearning,
Still is the air and stirless is the light,
That from the grey grim bosom of the night
Comes back no sign or voice of thy returning,
Echoes no memory of the old delight,
Weariness spurning!

Well, be it so; mayhap, some day, unknowing,
We too shall rest and come to where thou art,
Press thee again full-raptured to our heart,
Gaze in thine eyes with eyes no less fire-glowing
And in like bliss forget the olden smart,
The weary going

Friendless and dumb about the ways of being,
Cast off the memory of the years we sighed
After thy song and presence sunny-eyed,
In the new splendour of thy lays, the seeing
All the old hopes fulfilled and sanctified,
No longer fleeing

249

Mirage-like from us through the earthly hazes;
Haply we too shall leave our olden pains
Off with our life and all its weary stains,
Put on like joy amid the light that blazes
There, the glad day that floods those golden plains,
Those songful mazes!

Till then, farewell! The joy shall be the greater
When we clasp hands and hearts to part no more:
For that the long lone life has been so sore,
For that no sign of thee to death played traitor,
Sharper shall be the bliss for us in store,
Sweeter if later.

VOCATION SONG.

‘La poésie est semblable à l'amandier: ses fleurs sont parfumées et ses fruits sont amers.’
Louis Bertrand, Gaspard de la Nuit.

LORD, what unto Thy servants shall be given,
That have so long, in pain and doubt and strife,
For Thee with hand and heart and song hard striven,
What time Thou givest out the crowns of life?

What time the lances of the light are driven
Athwart the gloom that holds Life's holiest throne,
What time the curtains of the mist are riven,
What time the trumpets of the dawn are blown?

We, who to tunes of love and light, unknowing,
Have chastened all the jarring chords of life,—
We, who, with lips with milk and honey flowing,
Have fed on galls of bitterness and strife,—

250

We do not ask of Thee, as this our guerdon,
To live a shining life among Thy blest;
'Twould be for us but shifting of our burden,
Not the fulfilment of the longed-for rest.

We have no kin with those uplifted faces,
Those ordered minstrels that before Thee bow,
Set rank on rank upon the holy places,
With stiff sharp laurel fringing every brow.

For us, no balms of Heaven could stay our yearning,
No crown of woven lilies and pale palms,
No City with eternal glory burning,
Set in the golden stress of ceaseless psalms.

Our souls are weary with the stress of seeing,
Wasted with burning thoughts that throb and throng,
Worn with the straining ecstasy of Being,
That passes through our heart-strings into song.

Our lives are sick with seeing all things' sadness,
Sad earth beneath us and sad heaven above;
Life's sweets to us are but as herbs of madness,
Sweet poison of the bitter bliss of Love.

Our souls are weary of the changing courses,
The sick alternative of smiles and tears,
Are weary of the unrelenting forces,
Are weary of the burden of the years;

The burden of the winds in river-sedges,
The burden of the torrents and the sea,
The burden of the woodbirds in the hedges:
‘Time is, Time was and Time will cease to be!’

Is it as nothing that the same flame courses
Athwart Thy veins that riots in our own?
Is it as nothing that the selfsame sources
Of light and life to us as Thee are known?

251

Shall we 'scape smiting with the 'scape of breath?
Shall we aye rest from bitter song's fierce smarts?
Will not the song-stress thrill the brain of death?
Will not the song-pulse throb in our cold hearts?

Lord God, wilt Thou not help us, that have striven
To do Thy work so hardly and so long?
Wilt Thou not give us rest from Thy high heaven
And peace from bitter weaving of sweet song?

Save us, O Lord, before the fire consume us,
Ere the hot chrism shrivel body and soul!
Let the soft arms of some sweet death entomb us
And hold us fast from love and joy and dole!

SUNDOWN.

I KNOW not whence it was, nor how it came,
That I should dream again the sad old dream,
That the recurrent years should bear the same
Sun-brightened bubbles to my life's dull stream.
So sad and sweet it was, both life and death
Did mingle in the perfume of its flowers;
It was compounded of the Spring's sweet breath
And of the gusty winter's snow-white hours.
The tender cadence of the soft May-wind
Fanned lovingly the misty winter air;
The old enchanted Mährchen-blooms combined
With chill frost-flowers to make it sad and fair.
Armida's garden was it for my feet,
Its air with magical delights was rife:
'Twas death to me, and yet so living sweet,
I welcomed death that was more fair than life.

252

‘Surely, the bitterness of death is past!’
I said, when once that weary dream was o'er;
‘Surely, the corpse of memory at last
Will rest in peace and trouble me no more!’
And so I buried sadly my dead love,
Laid it to sleep beneath the sands of Time.
It was no phœnix, but a wounded dove,
(I thought,) and would live only in my rhyme.
Alas! God's essence could not lightly die!
Its life was quickened by no mortal breath;
It rose again and filled my life's gray sky
With all the cold wan loveliness of death.
This phantom is it, whose persistence mars
The tender beauty of the summer hours,
Whose image blots from me the kindling stars
And saddens all the splendour of the flowers.

The months slid swiftly down the year's decline,
The flowers went drooping to their autumn tomb;
The dying leaves did, dolphin-like, outshine
With gold and red the summer's lavish bloom.
Springtide and summer did my grief assain
With primrose-blooms and rose-embalsamed air;
With dying summer seemed to die my pain
And for awhile the cruel foe did spare.
But all too soon I found the ancient fire
Slept only 'neath the rose and jasmine blooms:
It needed but a breath of dead desire
To stir old memories in their flowery tombs.
For one light flower-touch of thy white white hand,
One glance from out thy blue blue eye again,
Could call the dead Spring from the shadow-land
And bid relive for me the vanished pain.

Ah me, Madonna! we too have our hearts,
(Strange, seems it not?) and lose them sometimes, too!
Ay, and they break too, spite of all our arts!

253

‘'Tis true, 'tis pity! Pity 'tis, 'tis true!’
If I should say in earnest what in jest
So oft I've told you in an idle song,
Would you not treat it lightly as the rest
And deem it fancy? Yet you would be wrong;
For it is true, my sweet, as God is true,
I have no heart, no soul, that is not thine:
For it is true, as that the heavens are blue,
My heart's blood throbbed within the passionate line.
If stars give light, my love is star and moon;
If June bear roses, love is my heart's June.

If life be sleep and love the balm of death
And faith and beauty be but hour-long dreams;
If hoping faint, as faints the night-flowers' breath,
And pass away upon the years' cold streams;
If dreams be ghast with long-dead hopes and fears
And pale sad phantasms dim the glass of time;
If the unceasing rivulet of the years
Run no more lucent with the gold of rhyme;
If all Spring-blooms be chalices of woe
And all June-sweets with winter's breath be rife,
Ice-flowers shall mock for me the summer's glow;
If Love be Death, then Death shall be my life:
Sweet Death, sweet enemy, welcome to my breast;
For, pressing thee, I see, beyond thee, rest.

It is the old complaint we rhymers bear—
Half-known in heaven, wholly strange to earth—
The banquets of the Immortals now to share
And now to wake unto our mortal dearth.
Our souls a twofold burden must sustain;
And so, although we have no twofold joy,
Our double life is marred with double pain,
Our brightest hopes are dulled with earth's alloy.

254

We must have both—both love and fame—and strive
The golden chariot of the god of Day
Along the star-emblazoned track to drive,
With one immortal steed and one of clay.
Poor Phaëtons! no wonder that we fail,
Who would alike in earth and heaven prevail!

O tender beauty of the fleeting years,
O gilding glory of the sweet sad Past,
God's most effectual healing, that endears
To us our bitterest memories at last!
O exquisite strange magic, by whose powers
We live in an immortal wonderland,
Framed in the mist-screen of the fading hours,
A golden image in a mould of sand!
The memory of past loving gilds our lives;
New flower-times blossom from the brief annoy;
The olden beauty through a mist revives,
A faint sweet image of the ancient joy.
The fitful sunheat of the youthful sky
Mellows to sweetness as the years go by.

I would not have that love of ours revive,
(If I could backward tread the years again,)
Much as I prized it: life could scarce survive
A second access of the old sweet pain.
I would not, if I could; and in this strife
I cannot; for our man's heart has but room
For one short life: and Love itself is life
And can have but one summer and one bloom.
Is it so short, this love and life of ours?
Short in its sweetness, in its sadness long;
And yet we find, among its fleeting hours,
Some that are perfect as a linnet's song.
Dear, it was brief and left the sweeter peace:
The thought of true love lives, though loving cease.

255

SHADOW-SOUL.

‘Destiné à n'avoir que le songe de mon existence, pour moi je ne prétends pas vivre, mais seulement regarder la vie. . . . . Des jours pleins de tristesse, l'habitude rêveuse d'une âme comprimée, les longs ennuis qui perpétuent le sentiment du néant de la vie.’ —Senancourt.

‘On m'a demandé, “Pourquoi pleurez-vous?”
Et quand je l'ai dit, nul n'a
pleuré, parce que l'on ne me comprenoit
point. . . . . Je soupire parce
que la vie n'est pas venue jusqu'à moi.’ —
Lamennais.

THERE is a tale of days of old
Of how a man, by sorcery,
Wrought to defeat the spells that hold
The soul in bonds and spirit-free,
At will to wander, naked-souled,
About the earth and air and sea.

Long thus he went (the legend says)
Until at length a counter-spell,
Flung out upon the worldly ways
From some abysmal crack of hell,
Seized on him and, for all his days,
Doomed him to walk invisible;

Doomed him to pass among the things
Of life, its joy and strife and dole,
Note all men's hopes and wearyings,
Feel all their tides beside him roll,
Yet have in all no communings,
But walk a lone, unfriended soul.

256

So oftentimes to me it seems
As if some sad enchantment laid
Upon my life its hand, that teems
With many-mingling spells of shade,
And walled me in a web of dreams,
Shut out and sole from human aid.

For life has nought to do with me;
I stand and watch its pageant pass,
Stream by with pomp and blazonry
Of many goodly things. Alas!
Before my gaze its glories flee,
Like moon-motes on a dream-lake's glass.

Life's guerdons melt beneath my hands;
Its sweets fade from me like a mist:
I see folk conquer in the lands;
I know men crowned for what I missed;
I see my barren gray life-sands
Yield to them gold and amethyst.

My life is such a shadow-thing,—
So all unmixed with other lives,
With all men's joy and suffering
And all the aims for which life strives,—
I think sometimes each hour must bring
The nothingness whence it derives.

For men pass by me through the air,
Hot with bright stress of eager aims
Or furrowed with a sordid care,
Seeking sweet ease or blazoned names;
Glance at me with a passing stare
And vanish from me like swift flames.

257

My soul is like a wandering light
Born of marsh-solitudes and lost,
A hollow flame of heatless white,
Among a ruddy lifewarm host
Of living fires,—that may unite
With none, a solitary ghost.

My voice is like the voice of woods,
When the wind shrills between the pines;
An echo of sad Autumn moods,
Wherein the listening ear divines
A tale of endless solitudes,
Dim vistas stretched in shadowy lines.

My eyes are like some lake of dun,
Hid in the shadow of the hills;
Where all around, by day, the sun
Shines nor may pass athwart its sills
Of firs, but, when the day is done,
The white moon all the silence fills.

I gaze around me as I go,
A pale leaf drifting down the stream;
Men's lives flit by me on the flow,
Made dark or bright with shade or gleam:
For me, I feel them not, nor know;
Life passes by me like a dream.

I wander with sad yearning eyes
And heart a-longing for the lost,
(Known but in some dream-Paradise):
And ever as my way is crossed
By folk, my sad soul shrinks and flies,
Among live men a sighing ghost.

258

My feet love well to haunt the meads
And wander where the thrush is loud;
And yet some sad enchantment leads
Me aye among the busy crowd
And with bent head, my life proceeds,
Where the smoke hovers like a cloud.

And as I wander, once-a-while
I turn to gaze on folk gone by,
That seem to me not wholly vile,
Having some kindred in their eye:
They pass me mutely, and I smile
And my heart pulses like to die.

My heart feeds on its own desire:
The flowers that blossom in my breast
Blow out to frail life and expire,
Unknown, unloved and uncaressed;
And the pale phantom-haunted fire
Burns inward aye of my unrest.

I see twinned lovers, hand in hand,
Walk in the shadow of the trees;
Across the gold floor of the sand
Life passes by with melodies:
Alone upon the brink I stand
And hear the murmur of the seas.

I see afar full many a maid
Walk, musing of the love to come;
But, as I near them, in the shade
Of my sad eyes they read my doom
Of lonely life and fly afraid
And leave me silent in my gloom.

259

None may take hold upon my soul:
No spirit flies from men to me;
Billows of dreams between us roll,
Waves spreading out to a great sea:
Neither in gladness nor in dole
Can our desires conjoinèd be.

I have no heart in their delight;
My aim has nothing of their aim;
And yet the same flowers soothe our sight;
The air that rounds us is the same;
The same moon haunts our ways by night;
The same sun rises like a flame.

But over me a charm is cast,
A spell of flowers and fate and fire;
My hands stretch out through wastes more vast,
My dreams from deeper deeps aspire:
Life throbs around me, like a blast
That sweeps the courses of a lyre.

The merest unregarded thing,
Dropped into this my solitude,
Fills all my soul with echoing
Of dreams, as in some haunted wood
A pebble's plash into a spring
Is by the circling air renewed.

And yet there stirs a great desire
For human aid within my breast;
Men's doings haunt me like a fire,
My heart throbs loud with their unrest;
And now and then, as hope draws nigher,
My soul leaps to them, unrepressed.

260

For, though my feet in silence move
Alone across this waste of hours,
My heart strains hopeward like a dove,
My soul bursts out in passion-flowers;
My life brims o'er with a great love,
Alone in this wide world of ours.

My full soul quivers with a tide
Of songs; my head heaves with a hum
Of golden words, that shall divide
The dusk and bid the full light come.
Alas! men pass me, careless-eyed;
And still my lips are cold and dumb.

I go beneath the moon at night,
Along the grey deserted streets;
My heart yearns out in the wan light,
A new hope pulses in its beats;
Meseems that in the radiance white
My soul a like pale spirit meets;

As if the trance of the sad star
Were the mute passion of some spright,
That (like my own) some Fate did bar
From all Life's fruits of dear delight;
Some soul that aye must mourn afar
And never with its love unite.

Then doth my heart in blossoms ope;
A new sweet music sweeps along
The courses of my soul; the scope
Of heaven is peopled with a throng
Of long-pent thoughts and all my hope
Pours forth into a flood of song.

261

Bytimes, too, as I walk alone,
The mists roll up before my eyes
And unto me strange lights are shown
And many a dream of sapphire skies;
The world and all its cares are gone;
I walk awhile in Paradise.

But, in the day unfolded clear,
When the fresh life is all begun,
My soul into the old sad sphere
Falls off; my dull feet seem to shun
Once more the daylight and I fear
To face the frankness of the sun.

Alone and dumb, my heart yearns sore;
I am nigh worn with waste desire:
I stand upon a rocky shore,
Watch life and love sail nigh and nigher;
Then all pass by for evermore
And leave me by my last hope's pyre.

And yet I grieve not nor complain;
The time for me has long gone by,
When I could half assuage my pain
By giving it delivery:
My grief within my breast has lain
Unspoken and my eyes are dry.

I am confirmed in this my fate;
I lock my love within my breast
Nor look to find my soul a mate
Nor match with hope my hope unblest:
I am content to watch and wait,
Impassible in my unrest.

262

Long have I ceased the idle stress
Toward the rending of my gloom:
I am made whole in loneliness;
I lay no blame on this my doom;
I curse not, if I do not bless:
My life is silent as the tomb.

And yet (methinks) some day of days,
The silence, that doth wrap me round,
Shall at its heart of soundless ways
With some faint echoing resound
Of my own heart-cry and the rays
Of a like light in it be found.

Haply, one day these songs of mine
Some world-worn mortal shall console
With savour of the bitter wine
Of tears crushed out from a man's dole;
And he shall say, tears in his eyne,
There was great love in this man's soul!

Ay, bitter crushed-out wine of love,
Pressed out upon his every word;
A note as of some sad-voiced dove,
As of some white unfriended bird,
Dwelling alone in some dim grove,
Whose song no man hath ever heard;

But only the pale trackless sea
And the clear trances of the moon
Have quivered to his melody;
And for the rapture of the tune,
Their attributes, sad sanctity
And peace, they gave to him for boon;

263

So that his sadness, in the womb
Of the mild piteous years, has grown
A holy thing; and from the tomb,
Where in the shade he lies alone,
(As was in life his lonely doom)
The seed of his desire has blown

Into a flower above his grave,
Full of most fair and holy scent;
Most powerful and sweet to save
And to heal men from dreariment.
And I shall turn me in my grave
And fall to sleep again, content.

A BIRTHDAY SONG.

WHAT shall I say to my dearest dear,
On the sweetest day of the whole sweet year?
Shall I tell her how dainty she is and sweet,
From her golden head to her silver feet?
Love of my loves, shall I say to her—
Till the breeze catch tune and the birds repeat
The chime of my song—thou art bright and rare,
(Eyes of the gray and amber hair)
Who is so white as my love, my sweet?
Who is so sweet and fair?

Ah, no! for my song would faint and die,
Faint with a moan and a happy sigh,
For a kiss of her lips so clear and red,
For a touch of her dainty gold-wrought head
And a look of her tender eye!
And even the words, if words there were said,

264

Would fail for the sound of her lovely name,
Till the very birds should flout them to shame,
That they strove to render silver with lead,
To image with snow the flame!

So e'en I must sing her over again
The old old song with its one refrain,
The song that in Spring like the cooing dove
Has nothing for burden but just ‘I love.’
Go, O my songs, like a silver rain,
And flutter her golden head above;
Sing in her walks and her happy day,
Fill all her dreams with the roundelay,
‘I love’ and ‘I love her,’ again and again,
‘I love her,’ sorry or gay!

Is she thinking of me, my lady of love?
(Heart of my heart, is the day enough
For the thought and the wish of her daintiness
And the memory of the last caress?)
Do her lips seek mine, my gold-plumaged dove—
My little lady with glass-gray eyne—
In long sweet dreams of the night to press
From the grapes of delight Love's golden wine?
Does thought seem more and the world seem less,
As her hand strays, seeking mine?

Fly to her, fly, O my little song!
(Fly to her quickly; the way is long
And your little dove-coloured wings are weak.)
Nestle your head on her roseleaf cheek;
Say what I would, if my wings were strong
And the heaven were near to seek:
Take all the tender fancies that lie
And flower in my heart so silently;
Sing her the love I can never speak
Wholly, but in a sigh!

265

IN THE NIGHT-WATCHES.

‘The days are prolonged, and every vision faileth.’
Ezekiel.

I CRIED to myself in the night,
O God! is the day at hand?
My spirit longs for the light,
I weep in the shadow-land;
For the black night brings to me bitter tears,
The shadows call up the vanished years,
The past troops by with its many biers,
Ghosts in a ghastly band.

Very sad is the day,
I said; but the night I weep,
Weep for the woes that slay,
The terrors that compass sleep:
For the sounds of the wailing never cease,
The tides of the tears for aye increase,
The shadows will never have rest and peace,
What though the grave be deep.

I lay me down in the dusk,
After the day is done
And the clouds in their hodden husk
Have folded the golden sun:
Now shall I cease from travail, I say,
Now shall I put off the woes of day,
Now shall I bury me far away
Under the shadows dun.

266

Vulture-winged cometh the dark,
Brimming the air with the night;
And I, I lie and I hark
And strain mine eyes for a sight.
I watch and hope, with a faith unfed,
I lie and dream of a life unsped,
I live in the things that are long since dead,
I fancy the darkness light.

I strive with a mighty stress
To hold the terror from me,
To ward off the ghastliness
Of night and its mystery;
I spread out my hope like a sail on seas
That toss in the void to an unknown breeze,
I strain my sense for a faith that flees
And a joy that may not be.

But pitiless cometh the gloom
And the gray-winged spectres of Death,
And stealthily creepeth the doom
And the worm that continueth:
The night is full of the shapes of ill,
Strange phantoms moan at the window-sill,
The voices wail at the wild wind's will;
My heart grows cold with their breath.

The moon is a ghostly face,
The wraith of a radiance dead,
That wanders across the space,
Dead, but unhouselèd:
The stars are the eyes of the sad still sprights,
The lone lost souls that wander anights
And mock the day with their weirdly lights
And their flitting drearihead.

267

There wavers about my bed,
In the lurid gloom of the night,
The awful host of the dead,
Prisoned in spectral white:
I read in their eyes the dreadful scrolls,
The record of all the wrong that rolls,
The pain that gathers about the souls,
The terror that darkens light.

I read in their sightless eyes
The record of burning tears,
The writing that never dies,
The graven anguish and fears:
I hear in their silent mouths the sound
Of the wails that are mute and the cries that are drowned
In the sombre heart of the passionless ground
And the dead unburied years.

One by one, without end,
On through the night they go:
As each through the gloom doth rend,
I see a face that I know;
I feel a sorrow a man has known,
A brother-pain that has burnt and grown,
Through the long sad years and the midnights lone,
To a spectral shape of woe.

I see the life of my fear,
A ghastly wraith of the dead;
I hear his cry in my ear,
Though never a word be said.
I feel a pang that was dumb before,
I stand and gaze from a shadow-shore;
I hear the waves of the death-sea roar
And I know my heart has bled.

268

The terrors revive again;
The victims moan on the blast:
I weep with the world in pain;
I bleed with the wounded past:
My heart is heavy with memories,
My breast is weary with hopeless sighs;
The moon weeps tears of blood in the skies
And the stars with grief are ghast.

My heart leaps up to my mouth
With a mighty suffering;
My soul is sick with a drouth,
A nameless horrible thing:
I may not seize on the shape of my fear,
I may not close with my visions drear
And lay my wraiths on the saving bier;—
Ah, that my lips might sing!

Oh, that my soul might soar
On the living pinions of song
And open the prison door
Of life for that ghastly throng!
Ah, would I might call each shape by his name,
That my voice might chase them with singing flame
To the quiet graves from whence they came
And the slumber cold and long!

The stress of the things of life
With a throbbing agony stirred;
The night and its spectral strife
Took spirit and speech and word:
‘Shall none be potent to save?’ it cried;
‘Shall no light dawn in the darkness wide?
Shall no voice roll back the shadow-tide?
No saving song be heard?’

269

‘Lo!’ and it said, ‘For the stress,
The love fades out in men's hearts
And there fadeth the loveliness
From singers' and limners' arts;
For a man must work for the bitter bread,
Till his life has forgotten its goodlihead,
Till his soul is heavy with doubt and dread
And the bloom of his dream departs!

‘Surely a singer shall weep
And a poet shall weave his verse
With a pity tender and deep,
With love instead of a curse;
For all things thirst for a word of ruth;
The sweet Spring even has lost its youth:
The world is very dreary in truth
And pain grows daily worse.

‘Lo! if a prophet should come
And a singer to speak for men,
To give a voice to the dumb,
The world should be shriven then;
The folk should be freed from the unknown woes,
The griefs that are crimes and the pain that grows
To a fruit of hate from the unshared throes
And the unassoilzied pain.

‘The tyrant should recognize
His spirit's bitterness,
The sound of the agonies
That crush his heart with their stress,
The pain that has gathered to rage in his breast,
In the stifled sobs of the folk opprest;
The slayer should know his hopes unblest
In his victims' hopelessness.

270

‘The folk should turn in a day
To love and its years of gold;
The tyrant should cease to slay,
The years of anguish be told;
For the eyes of the folk should be cleared to know
That crime and sin and tyranny grow
From a common root in a common woe,
A sorrow dumb and cold.

‘Alas for the folk unsung
In the dark and sorrowful ways!
The earth is weary and wrung
For lack of the poet's lays!
O hearts of men, has the world no tears,
Is there none to weep for the vanished years
And the waste life troubled with doubts and fears
And the weary dying days?’

Alas! for I may not speak!
Alas! for my lips are dumb,
And the words that the spell would break,
Alas! for they will not come!
I lie and groan with a dumb desire,
I toss and burn with a sleepless fire
And I long for the sound of a golden lyre
And a poet's voice to come.

I long for a poet's voice
To lighten the sunless ways,
To say to the earth, ‘Rejoice!’
To hearten the dreary days,
To burst the chains of the silentness
That holds the world in its dismal stress,
To rend from being the prides that press
And the terrors that amaze!

271

I wait and am waiting still,
I lie and suffer and long;
How long shall the silence fill
The haunts of sorrow and wrong?
How long shall the great dumb host of the sad
Hold sternly aloof, whilst the heaped years add
To their anguish, for want of a singer had
And a succour? O God! How long?

A SONG OF DEAD LOVE.

THERE came to me a dream in the midnight
Of a fair shape beseen with glittering hair,
The semblance of a woman, very fair,
Yea, and most sorrowful; for all the light
Within her eyes was faded for despite

Of worldly woe, and all her bloom was fled,
For grieving over ghosts of dead delight
And wearying for Love and all his might,
That in the petals of the rose lay dead,
Mourned over by the lily's heavy head.

‘If any love,’ to me the shape did say,
(And as she spoke I turned me in my bed,
Wondering to look upon her goodlihead,)
‘Most meet it is, I should upon thee lay
The task of warning him from love away.

‘For bitter sooth it is that Love doth lie
All sadly buried from the eyes of day,
Under the shredded petals of the May;
And with his death did ease of lovers die
And nought is left for them but tear and sigh.

272

‘Wherefore, if one have the desire of it,
Unknowing what withal he must aby,
This strait commandment unto thee give I,
That thou with song do of Love's death let wit
Those foolish souls that still their lives do knit

‘About an idle woman's gold-red hair
And in the empty courts of Love do sit,
Watching the torches for his funeral lit,
That they should win their senses to forbear
From loving aught, because the thing is fair.

‘For, of a truth, henceforth the end of love
Shall be no more as it hath been whilere;
Since he is dead, to whom there did repair
Sick souls for solace. Whoso tastes thereof
Heart-hunger all his days shall surely prove

‘And shall on no wise come to ease his pain;
For, since Love's light is faded from above
The world into the grave, his silver dove—
That wont whilom all lovers to assain
With balm and quickly make them whole again,

‘Nestling soft wings against their wounded hearts—
Has for the sorrow of its Lord's death ta'en
The semblance of a falcon, all a-stain
With blood and milk, that of his rancour darts
His ruddy beak into each heart that smarts

‘With lover's woe and delving in the breast,
Doth tear and lacerate the inward parts,
Until all hope of future ease departs
From the sad soul and men are all opprest
With unsalved love unto the utterest.

273

‘Wherefore, sing thou and warn the folk of ill!’
And I: ‘O lady, would my tongue were blest
With happy words! But lo! I have no rest
For agonies of love, that doth fulfil
My sleepless soul and all its cruel will

‘Doth wreak on me, to bring me to despair.
How shall I ward from men the darts that kill,
When I myself am of their poison still
Nigh stricken unto death? O lady fair!
Teach me how I may win the bird to spare,

‘And then I will make shift for men to sing,
As thou dost bid.’ But she, with such an air
Of pity, answered, ‘First the song must fare,—
And haply salve shall rest upon its wing.’
Wherefore I made this song, awakening.

CADENCES.

(MINOR.)

THE olden memories buried lie,
And the ancient fancies pass;
The old sweet flower-thoughts wither and fly
And die as the April cowslips die,
That scatter the bloomy grass.

All dead, my dear! And the flowers are dead
And the happy blossoming Spring;
The winter comes with its iron tread,
The fields with the dying sun are red
And the birds have ceased to sing.

274

I trace the steps on the wasted strand
Of the vanished Springtime's feet:
Withered and dead is our Fairyland;
For Love and Death go hand in hand,
Go hand in hand, my sweet.

(MAJOR.)

OH, what shall be the burden of our rhyme
And what shall be our ditty when the blossom's on the lime?
Our lips have fed on winter and on weariness too long:
We will hail the royal summer with a golden-footed song!

O lady of my summer and my Spring,
We shall hear the blackbird whistle and the brown sweet throstle sing
And the low clear noise of waters running softly by our feet,
When the sights and sounds of summer in the green clear fields are sweet.

We shall see the roses blowing in the green,
The pink-lipped roses kissing in the golden summer-sheen;
We shall see the fields flower thick with stars and bells of summer-gold
And the poppies burn out red and sweet across the corncrowned wold.

The time shall be for pleasure, not for pain;
There shall come no ghost of grieving for the past betwixt us twain;
But in the time of roses our lives shall grow together
And our love be as the love of gods in the blue Olympic weather.

275

AREOPAGITICA.

It may be expedient to note that the word “kings” is, by a quasi-elliptical figure, necessitated by the concision of expression inseparable from verse-composition, employed in this poem in a general sense, as a comprehensive term denoting, not only the traditional and semifabulous type of the bloodthirsty and heartless monarch of popular legend, but all kinds of egotistical and irresponsible oppressors of humanity, whether aristocratic or plebeian, ancient tyrants or modern exploiters of the Jacobin gospel of Liberty-to-oppress-one's-fellows, Flails of God or political breedbates, slavers or beanbaggers, worldwasters or Trade-union agitators, Philip II or Krüger, Lopez or Lassalle, Gengis Khan or Gambetta, Tiberius or Marat, Attila or O'Connell, Richard of Gloucester or Charles James Fox, Sylla or Moraes, Cromwell or Couthon, Borgia or Barère, Nero or Robespierre. (I confess that, for my part, I can see no moral difference,—except it be in favour of the superior frankness of the Roman ruffian, who, at least, did not claim to benefit humanity by the indulgence of his delirious appetites, —between the frenzied antics of the Imperial corybant, rhapsodizing over the ruins of his capital, and the hyena-orgies celebrated by the obscene cutthroats of the self-styled Comité du Salut Public, the dastardly purveyors of the guillotine, whilst engaged in organizing the cold-blooded murder of thousands of innocent victims of the best and worthiest blood of France.) The monarchical tyrant of the legendary type has for centuries past ceased to exist, the last (and imperfect) example having perhaps been offered by Louis XIV, although it must be confessed that the late Prince Bismarck and his “empéreur mécanique” presented many of the characteristic features of the genus. The debonair and soft-hearted rulers of our own days, Franz Josef of Austria, Leopold I of Belgium, Maximilian of Mexico, Ludwig I of Bavaria, Napoleon III, Humbert of Italy, Frederick of Germany, Dom Pedro II of Brazil, &c., men illustrious for all the virtues calculated to adorn a private station and greatly to be pitied for the accident of fate which placed them in a position where their very qualities could not but militate against their security,—can in general be reproached with one sole default, to wit, the lack of the (to a monarch) indispensable capacity of sternness and determination, necessary for the protection, by the unsparing enforcement of justice and discipline, of themselves and their subjects from the irreconcilable enemies of society. Since the monstrous latter-day development (for its origin we must go back to the Garden of Eden or, yet farther into the dark backward of Time, to the birth of those eldest of the passions, greed and envy,) of the shameless and heartless juggle best known by the modern euphemism of “Liberalism” and the forcible inoculation of society with the Radical doctrines of “Ôte-toi de là, que je m'y mette” and “La carrière ouverte aux non-talents,” (notwithstanding the terrible object-lesson of the French Revolution, which demonstrated, once and for all and past all appeal, the radical falsity of the optimistic views of human nature maintained by Rousseau and his fellow-sentimentalists of the hysteric school and proved, with crushing conclusiveness, that the human animal, especially of the inferior ethnical strains, is, when unrestricted by laws and uncurbed by social and religious conventions, a ferocious and heartless wild beast, dangerous and pernicious to the world as to himself, the attempted realization of humanitarian theories and Republican chimeras, although absolutely unhindered and pursued, under exceptionally favourable circumstances, to its logical issue, having resulted in the absolute domination of the criminal classes and the utter ruin of France under the frightful oppression of the Jacobin leaders, men stained with the foulest vices, who would, under any decent system of government, have passed their whole lives in prison,) the equivalent of the old despot-type must be sought in the ranks of the so-called “popular” party, among the cynical and unscrupulous social and political agitators, who, in pursuit of their own private advantage, deliberately address themselves to excite class against class and to exploit, to their own profit, the brute passions and cupidities of the ignorant and gullible masses, upon whom the balance of political power has, by the incredible folly and weakness of their natural guardians and directors, been allowed to devolve; the “sophisticated rhetoricians” and professional humbuggers, the “tonguesters”, who, however carefully they may dissimulate the alliance, are the natural and inevitable abettors and coadjutors of the “knifesters”; the shameless jackpuddings who allow no consideration, public or private, to interfere with the flagrant indulgence of their raging vanity and of whom a fair sample is the crew of malignant busybodies who flood the less reputable portions of the press with their anti-patriotic vapourings and vent their spleen upon the country, which treats them with the well-merited contempt due to those who have an insatiable appetite for notoriety, but are naturally ungifted to achieve reputation by fair means, by heaping the filthiest calumnies on our armies and their commanders and extolling as saints and heroes the bandit hordes of froward and faithless churls, (notable for but one quality, a brute tenacity, an animal hardihood having little in common with the combination of magnanimous virtues, which we in England honour under the name of “courage”,) from whom our soldiers are now (March 1902) proceeding, with the noblest patience and with unexampled magnanimity, to deliver suffering South Africa; brief, among the tribe of fishers in troubled waters, who have, in the service of their own mean ends, extirpated the sense of moral obligation from the minds of the intellectually and morally lower classes (I speak of the wilfully ignoble “smart” class, so-called, at the top, no less than of the far more excusable, because passive and helpless, ethnical residuum at the bottom of the social scale) and have gone far to undermine the moral basis of society, the principle, incomparably formulated by Mazzini, of the performance of duty as the indispensable condition precedent of the enjoyment of any right, which is the necessary foundation of every social fabric. The names of such pests of society, men who have founded their fortunes, social, material and political, upon the ruin and misery of their dupes and the often irreparable injury of their native land, will suggest themselves (alas!) in abundance to all impartial students of contemporary politics and sociology,— names which will, it may safely be prophesied, be held by future generations in at least equal execration with those of the typical tyrants of tradition, as those of heartless and ruthless oppressors of their kind and enemies of humanity, who have brought more widespread ruin upon the world than Napoleon or Gengis Khan and who, by pursuing their private aims under the pretence of philanthropic enthusiasm and of engrossing concern for the welfare of their poorer fellows, have added the crowning sin of hypocrisy to the franker vices of their predecessors.

‘Parle aux oppresseurs; enveloppe-les des plaintes, des gémissements, des cris de leurs victimes; qu'ils les entendent dans leur sommeil et les entendent encore dans leur veille; qu'ils les voient errer autour d'eux comme des pâles fantômes, comme des ombres livides; que partout les suive l'effrayante vision; que ni le jour ni la nuit elle ne s'éloigne d'eux; qu'à l'heure du crépuscule, lorsqu'ils s'en vont à leurs fêtes impies, ils sentent sur leur chair l'attouchement de ces spectres et qu'ils frissonnent d'horreur.’ Lamennais, Une voix de prison.

I WENT in the night of the summer, under the woods in the gloaming,
Under the crown of the oaks and the solemn shade of the pines;
I followed the lamps of the angels, over the firmament roaming,
And sought for the ciphers of fate in their inscrutable signs.

And lo! as I went in the shade, at the hour when the sky is darkened
And the silver disc of the moon under the cloud-line dips,
I heard a sound in the air, as if the forest-world hearkened;
A power there was born in my breast and a spirit spoke from my lips,

Saying, ‘Come forth and be judged, O ye that have darkened living,
Ye that have stolen the sweet and the savour from pleasant life!
I tell you, the hour is at hand that shuts you out from forgiving,
The time you shall answer for all you've sown of anguish and strife.

276

‘Stand forth, o ye kings, in your purple! Stand forth, o ye priests, in your shame!
Merchants and slavers, ye all that thrive on the blood of your kind!
Ye all that have helped in men's bosoms to stifle the sacred flame,
Have stolen their fruit of gladness and left but the bitter rind!

‘Stand forth and give ear to the wrongs, as the bards and the sages have told them,
Your fellows have done to men, in the dusk of the bygone time!
Hearken and tremble for fear, as the eyes of your soul behold them
Bound in the singing hell of the poet's terrible rhyme!

‘Stand forth, o ye kings, in your purple; masters of nations and armies!
Ye all that have held in your hands the keys of evil and good!
Ye all that have ransacked life to search and to see where the charm is,
Have rifled the blossoms of hell to stay your hunger with food!

‘Ye all that have not been content with lusting and riot and madness,
Have sucked for a sharper delight in your people's anguish and fears,
Have made your life joyous with pain and glad from your servants' sadness,
Fair, fair with the horror of blood, sweet, sweet with the bitter of tears!

277

‘Behold! I will summon you up from the heart of the glooms infernal;
Up, up from your darksome graves; up, up from your slumbers of stone.
I will make you your shame for a sign and your anguish a thing eternal;
I will spare not a whit to your souls of the ruin and wrack you have sown.

‘Stand forth and be judged, o ye merchants! that heap you up gold without measure,
That wither to sparkling dross the golden fruit of the years,
That gather the incense of sighs and the sweat of men's blood for your treasure,
That fashion to gold our griefs and make coined gold of our tears!

‘Ye all that have thrived on the pain and the griefs and the need of the toilers,
Have bounden your burdens on life, that hold it tearless and dumb!
Ye all that, to lengthen the scope and the harvest-time for the spoilers,
Have sealed up the portals of Life, lest Death the deliverer come!

In allusion to the civil and religious prohibition of suicide, a truly fiendish invention of Semitic origin.

‘Stand forth and be judged, o ye priests! that suck out the souls of the nations,
That darken the azure of heaven into the gloom of a pall,
That fetter men's health and their strength with your prayers and your imprecations,
That poison their hopes with doubting and mingle their gladness with gall!

278

Ye all that have ever been ready to work out the will of the tyrants,
To toll, at a despot's bidding, fair Freedom's funeral knell!
Ye all that to strangle thought and to shackle its upward aspirance,
Have lengthened the struggles of life into the horrors of hell!

Behold! I will summon you up the pale sad shapes without number,
That gave up the ghost without speaking, the spoil of your pitiless hands!
I will call up the unnamed victims that whelm all the world with their cumber,
That fester the fields with their anguish and shade with their sorrow the lands!

‘You think ye have silenced them now; and the spirit within you rejoices!
You think that requital is none and none shall rebuke you again!
I tell you, I hear in mine ears the dumb inarticulate voices,
That speak with the clearness of thunder from ocean and forest and plain!

‘I tell you, the hollow graves, where the tyrants that went before you
Lie in the prison-sleep of the middle sepulchre's gloom,
Are bound with the selfsame fate that threatens and hovers o'er you,
Ring with the selfsame curse and quake with the selfsame doom!

279

‘For the doom that their victims wrought not, the curse that they died unspeaking,
Grew and shall grow for aye with their mouldering forms in the earth:
The vengeance they might not wreak, the winds and the worms are wreaking,
Breaking the sleep of the dead with a fierce and terrible mirth.

‘But lo! a more horrible doom and a nearer vengeance are waiting
For you, if ye turn not away from your sins and humble your heads.
For the fate, that is ripened for you, shall wait no death for its sating,
Shall grow in your living hearts and lie in your silken beds.

‘I tell you, the soul of the dead and the wailing dumb in their dying
Is gathered again by the winds and garnered up in the flowers:
I tell you, their yearning is hid and their curses and prayers are lying,
Ready to burst on your heads, in the womb of the coming hours.

‘For a season shall be when the meat that you eat shall be sad with their curses,
The drink that you drink shall be deadly and bitter to death with their tears,
The garments you wear shall burn and eat to your hearts like Dirce's,
The sights that you see shall be as a fire that maddens and sears.

280

‘The eyes of the dead shall look, with a doom and an accusation,
From the eyes of the friends you love and the maidens that kiss your lips;
The voice of the dead in your ears shall clamour without cessation;
The shade of their hate shall darken your lives with its fell eclipse.

‘And if you shall say: The grave will give us the peace we burn for,
Will bring us the senseless sleep and the rest untroubled by thought;
We shall sleep with our fathers of old and have the ease that we yearn for,
Free from the memory's pain and the wraiths of the things we wrought;

‘The doom that you laid on others shall fall on yourselves, unsparing;
The anguish you felt of old shall seem as nought to the new:
For the earth, that shall wrap you about, shall shutter you in from all sharing,
Shall fetter you fast in her arms, where nothing can succour you.

‘The lapses you had in life, when the anguish failed for a second
And the memory slid away from the moment's glitter and glow,
You shall never have them again, when once the angel hath beckoned,
When once your bodies are dust and your heads in the tomb are low.

281

‘For the wraiths of the wrongs you wrought shall compass you round, unceasing;
The spirits of all the dead you crushed in your bitter strife
Shall gird you about with a fire and an anguish for aye increasing,
Shall fashion for you in death a new and terrible life.

‘Wherefore I bid you repent. For the time draws nigh to the reaping;
The harvest ripens apace and the sickle lies in the tares.
I counsel you turn from your sins with fear and sorrow and weeping,
Whilst yet the trumpets are dumb and the fire of the judgment spares.’

‘Kein Gott, kein Heiland erlöst ihn je
Aus diesen singenden Flammen!’

—

Heine.

A BACCHIC OF SPRING.

‘Le beau Dionysos, dont le regard essuie
Les cieux et fait tomber la bienfaisante pluie,
Qui s'élance, flot d'or, dans les pores ouverts
De notre terre et fait gonfler les bourgeons verts.’
Théodore de Banville.

I.

OUT of the fields the snowdrops peep:
To work, O land!
Awake, O earth, from the white snow-sleep,
Shake off the coverlet soft and deep;
Spring is at hand.
Thou hast slumbered the months away long enough;
'Tis time for the winter rude and rough
To die and give way
To the bloomy May:
Awake and shake off the tyrant gruff!

282

Up from the numbing clasp of the snow!
Shake off the winter weather!
The breath of the year grows warm apace,
As the snowflakes melt from his fresh young face,
And the eastern moorlands are all aglow
With their budding heather.
Already the swallows are calling, “Cheep! cheep!
All things are waking from their long sleep,
We and the Spring together.”

See where the battle-host of the blooms
Waits for the fray;
See where the cowardly tyrant glooms:
He knows the scent of those soft bright dooms,
That say to him, ‘Hence away!’
Over the meadows their squadrons glitter,
Orange and purple and white and blue,
Jewel-helmed with the diamond-dew,
A fairy army of sweet Spring roses,
Of bluebell-blossoms and pale primroses,
Spreads out its ranks in the balmy air,
Whilst the lark and linnet and blackbird twitter
A quaint war-march for each elfin Ritter,
That troops in the alleys fair.

II.

Wearyful winter is gone at last,
With its wild winds sighing,
And the blooms of the Spring are flocking fast:
Primrose and cowslip and windflower-bells
Broider the grass in the cool wood-dells;
Cloud-roses over the sky are flying.
Evoë! the chill of the year is dying!
Good-bye to the bitter blast!
Iö! the hillocks are mad with bliss,
As the new sweet stirring

283

Quickens their hearts with the vernal kiss!
Silver and azure and golden green,
The meadows shine in the warm Spring-sheen
And the music of myriad wings is whirring,
As the birds, that fled from the winter frore,
Back to the isle with the silver shore
Hasten from spice-forests far away
In the Indian seas,
To revel in blossom-embroidered May,
As the flower-hosts chase out the winter gray
From the newly wakened leas.

Bacchus returns from the Eastern skies;
Welcome his train with their bright wood-sheen!
Evoë! he brings us the golden prize,
The charm of the Indian queen,
He battled so long for and won at last;
He brings us the spell that unchains the flowers
And loosens the wheels of the golden hours,
When the power of the frost is waning fast,
When the chill snowflakes from the landscape fly
And the dying eastwinds wearily sigh,
‘Alas! our winter is past!’
See! to the eastward his lance-points gleam!
Iö! the time is near!
Evoë! the winter wanes like a dream,
As the diamond helms of the Bassarids beam
And the May-blooms glow in the sun's full stream,
That glitters on every spear.
Already I hear their voices' hum
And the pipe and clang of their silver reeds
And their songs of the Spring-god's sweet flower-deeds,
As back from the golden East he leads
His sea-shell car with the tiger steeds:
Evoë! the Spring is come!

Evoë, Lyæus! the Spring is here!
Onward they come apace.

284

See how the landscape, bare and sere,
Flushes at once with a golden bliss,
As the earliest touch of the vernal kiss
Gilds with a tender grace
The grand old winter-enwounded trees,
That throb and sway in the balmy breeze,
Sweet from the flower-strewn plains;
Whilst the radiant train of the wine-god sweeps
Through the inmost heart of the woodland deeps
And the 'wildering thrill of the Springtide creeps
Up through their frost-dried veins.

A SOUL'S ANTIPHON.

I.

MY soul burst forth in singing,
My heart flowered like a rose;
Chimes of sweet songs fled ringing
Along the forest close.
Is it the new year springing?
Is it the May that blows?
No; it was none of those.

Among the trees came flying
A spirit like a flame;
A sound of songs and sighing,
Mixed, round his presence came;
A sound of soft airs dying,
The music of a name,
Fainting for its sweet shame.

A white shape wreathed with flowers,
A winged shape like a dove;
Hands soft as peach-bloom showers;
Eyes like an orange-grove

285

In whose enchanted bowers
The magic fire-flies rove:
I knew his name;—'twas Love.

‘O soul!’ I said, ‘the voices
That flutter in thy breast,
The yearning that rejoices
In its own vague unrest,
Are all in vain: the choice is
'Twixt Life's and Love's behest.
Choose now, which is the best.’

The winged white Love came calling,
With words like linnet-lays,
When hawthorn-snows are falling
About the forest ways.
His speech was so enthralling,
Such spells were in his gaze,
My heart flowered with his praise.

He came to me with kisses
And looked into mine eyes;
My soul brimmed up with blisses;
But with the bliss came sighs,
As when a serpent hisses
Beneath flower-tapestries
And moss piled cushion-wise.

The sad old thoughts came flocking
Up to that look of his:
For memory and its mocking,
I could not smile, ywis;
It was as the unlocking
Of doors on an abyss
Wherein old living is.

It was like grief recounting
The happy times of yore;

286

It was like gray waves mounting
A lost sun-golden shore,
Like sad thoughts over-counting
The sweet things gone before,
The days that are no more.

And as I looked with sighing
Into the sweet shape's eyes,
I saw a serpent lying
'Mid balms of Paradise;
I knew my dole undying,
The presage sad and wise,
The worm that never dies.

Love laughed and fled, a-leaping,
Between the flower-flushed breres,
And left my sad thoughts keeping
The vigil of the years:
My soul burst out in weeping;
I saw my hopes and fears
Troop by, embalmed in tears.

II.

My soul burst forth in weeping,
My heart swelled like a sea;
There came sad wind-notes sweeping
Across the golden lea:
Is autumn past, and reaping?
Is winter come for me?
No, no, it cannot be.

Among the trees came slowly
A spirit like a flower,
A lily pale and holy,
White as a winter hour:

287

Sad peace possessed him wholly;
Around him, like a sower,
He cast a silver shower;

A shower of silver lilies,
Each one a haunting thought:
It was as when a rill is
Across waste rose-bowers brought
And all the heart's grief still is
And one has pain in nought:
Such peace their perfumes wrought.

‘O soul!’ I said, ‘the sadness
That is in this one's breath
Is sweeter than the madness
That round Love fluttereth:
This one shall bring heart's gladness
And balms of peace and faith;
For lo! his name is Death.’

The pale sweet shape came strewing
Flower-tokens on the grass;
His face was the renewing
Of love in a dream-glass;
His speech was like bird-wooing,
When moonlight-shadows pass.
My soul sighed out, ‘Alas!’

He came to me with sighing,
My hand in his he took;
My soul wept nigh to dying,
For all his piteous look:
Yet in his eyes was lying
Peace, as of some still brook
Laid through a forest-nook.

The memories of past sorrow
Brimmed up mine eyes with tears;

288

I could not choose but borrow
Fresh grief from the waste years:
And yet some sweet to-morrow
Smiled through, as when rain clears
Off, and the sun appears.

It was as if one, peering
Into a well of woe,
Saw all the shadow clearing
From the brown deeps below;
Saw sapphire skies appearing
And woods with moss aglow
And Spring in act to blow.

With tearful looks, I, gazing
Into the sad shape's eyes,
Saw a new magic tracing
New lovely mysteries;
I saw new hope upraising
A new love-paradise
And clear moon-silvern skies.

My soul fled forth in singing,
My heart flowered like a rose;
Death smiled, with sweet tears springing,
'Twixt smile and smile that rose.
His arms closed round me, clinging:
Peace came and clipt me close;
Peace, such as no love knows.

A SONG OF WILLOW.

LOVE and Life have had their day,
Long ago;
Hope and Faith have fled for aye,
With the roses and the May;
This is but an idle show:
Come away!

289

Seekest thou for flowers of June,
Roses red?
Listenest for the linnet's tune?
Here the night-fowl wails the moon;
Here are lilies of the dead,
Tear-bestrewn.

Thinkest Love will come again,
Fresh and sweet,
With the apple-blossoms' rain?
Many a day dead Love has lain,
Folded in the winding-sheet.
Hope is vain.

See, Death beckons from the gloom;
(Come away!)
Life is wasted from its room,
Love is faded from its bloom;
Come and shelter in the gray
Of the tomb.

Come away! The bed is laid,
Soft and deep;
In the blossomed lindens' shade,
Underneath the moon-pale glade,
In the quiet shalt thou sleep,
Unaffrayed.

Kiss thy love, ‘Farewell’, and say,
‘Joy and pain!’
In the shadow come thee lay
Of the night that hath no day,
Where sleep healeth heart and brain:
Come away!

290

SONGS' END.

THE chime of a bell of gold
That flutters across the air,
The sound of a singing of old,
The end of a tale that is told,
Of a melody strange and fair,
Of a joy that is grown despair:

For the things that have been for me
I shall never have them again;
The skies and the purple sea
And day like a melody
And night like a silver rain
Of stars on forest and plain.

They are shut, the gates of the day;
The night has fallen on me:
My life is a lightless way;
I sing yet, while as I may.
Some day I shall cease, maybe:
I shall live on yet, you will see.

TOURNESOL.

These two poems served as Prelude and Postlude respectively to my “New Poems” published in 1880.

GEOFFREY of Rudel! How the name
Leaps to the lips like a flower of flame,
Holding the heart with a dream of days
When life lay yet in the flowered ways
And the winds of the world were stirred and strong
With blast of battle and silver of song;
When love was long and women were true
And the bell of the steadfast sky was blue

291

Over a world that was white as yet
From load of labour and fruitless fret
Of hunger for gain and greed of gold,
That now have made us our young world old!
I hail thee, honest and tender time!
I, last of many, that with rude rhyme
Ring out reproach to the cheerless air
And chide the age that it is not fair.
And first of any the blames I bring,
I chide it for lack of love-liking,
For fall of faith and hope grown cold,
For love turned lusting and youth grown old.
For where, I pray you, in this our day
Lives there the lover that loves alway
And where is the lady whose constant eye
Shall seek one only until she die?
Alack for Rudel and Carmosine,
Whose loves, as the constant sun his sheen,
Burn like a beryl in lays of yore!
Their day is dead as the bale they bore
For faithful fancy; and now alone
In minstrels' making their name is known.
Their thought is perished, their peerless fame
Faded and past as the marish flame
That flees from the blink of the breaking day;
And love is dead with them, wellaway!
For now men's love is a fitful fire,
A wayless desert of waste desire;
And women's love is a cold caprice,
A wind that changes without surcease.
For the lifelong love that in days of old
Was dearer than lands and grain and gold,
The love that possessed men's heart and soul
In life and leisure, in death and dole,
That stirred their spirits to many a deed
Of noble daring, that was the meed
Of haughty honour and high emprize,

292

That made men look in their lady's eyes
For gain and guerdon of all their strife,
This love lack we in our modern life.
For the folk through the fretful hours are hurled
On the ruthless rush of the wondrous world
And none has leisure to lie and cull
The blossoms that made life beautiful
In that old season when men could sing
For dear delight in the risen Spring
And Summer ripening fruit and flower.
Now carefulness cankers every hour;
We are too weary and sad to sing;
Our pastime's poisoned with thought-taking.
The bloom is faded from all that's fair
And grey with smoke is the grievous air.
None lifts to luting his hand and voice
Nor smites the strings with a joyful noise;
For all who sing in the land are pale;
Their voice is the voice of those that wail
For beauty buried and hang the head
For the dream of a day evanishèd.
How shall we say sweet things in rhyme
Of this our marvellous modern time,
We that are heavy at heart to sing,
But may not rejoice for remembering?
We care not, we, for the gorgeous glow
Of wealth and wonder, the stately show
Of light and luxury, that sweeps past,
Unheeded, before our eyes downcast.
The pageant of passion and pride and crime,
That fills the face of the turncoat time,
The gold that glitters, the gems that glow,
Hide not from us the wasting woe
That gnaws at the heart of the hungry age.
The starving soul in the crystal cage
Looks through the loop of the blazoned bars,
As out of heaven the sorrowing stars

293

Gaze on the grief of the night newborn.
What shall we do for the world forlorn,
We that drink deep of its sorrowing?
What can we do, alas! but sing?
Sing as the bird behind the wire,
That pours out his passion of dear desire,
His fret for the forest far away,
His hunger of hope for the distant day
When peradventure shall ope for him
The door that darkens on heaven's rim;
What can we do, bird-like, but pour
Into our singing the dreams of yore,
The long desire of the soul exiled
From some sweet Eden laid waste and wild?
And if, by fortune, we turn our feet,
Torn with long travel, toward that sweet,
That happy haven of “long ago”
And tune our lutany soft and low
To some dear ditty of things that were,
Memoried with melodies faint and fair,
Shall any blame us for this that we
Fordid Time's tyranny and forgot
Awhile life's lovelessness? I trow not;
For song is sinless and fancy free.

A FUNERAL SONG FOR THÉOPHILE GAUTIER.

WHAT shall our song be for the mighty dead,
For this our master that is ours no more?
Lo! for the dead was none of those that wore
The laurel lightly on a heedless head,
Chanting a song of idle lustihead
Among the sun-kissed roses on the shore:
This our belovèd, that is gone before,

294

Was of the race of heroes battle-bred
That, from the dawn-white to the sunset-red,
Fought in the front of war.

Lo! this was he that in the weary time,
In many a devious and darkling way,
Through dusk of doubt and thunder of dismay,
Held our hearts hopeful with his resonant rhyme,
Lifting our lives above the smoke and slime
Into some splendid summer far away,
Where the sun brimmed the chalice of the day
With gold of heaven and the accordant chime
Of woods and waters to the calm sublime
Carolled in roundelay.

This was our poet in the front of faith;
Our singer gone to his most sweet repose,
Sped to his summer from our time of snows
And winter winding all the world with death.
Who shall make moan or utter mournful breath
That this our noblest one no longer knows
Our evil place of toil and many woes,
Lying at the last where no voice entereth?
Who shall weave for him other than a wreath
Of laurel and of rose?

Hence with the cypress and the funeral song!
Let not the shrill sound of our mourning mar
His triumph that upon the Immortals' car
Passes, star-crowned; but from the laurelled throng,
That stands await, let every voice prolong
A noise of jubilance that from afar
Shall hail in heaven the new majestic star
That rises with a radiance calm and strong,
To burn for ever unobscured among
The courts where the Gods are.

295

Ay, let the hautboys and the clarions blow,
The air rain roses and the sky resound
With harpings of his peers that stand around,
What while the splendours of the triumph go
Along the streets and through the portico.
I, too, who loved the dead, as from the ground
The glow-worm loves the star, will stand, browbound
With winter-roses, in the sunset-glow,
And make thin music, fluting soft and low
Above his funeral mound.

I, too, who loved him, from beyond the sea,
Add my weak note to that sublime acclaim
That, soaring with the silver of his name,
Shall shake the heavens with splendid harmony,
Till all who listen bend in awe the knee,
Seeing a giant's spirit, like a flame,
Remounting to that heaven from which it came,
And many weep for very shame to see
The majesty they knew not till 'twas free
From earthly praise or blame.

Hail, O our master! From the hastening hours
This one we set above its grey-veiled peers,
Armed with thy name against the night that nears.
We crown it with the glory of the flowers,
We wind it with all magic that is ours
Of song and hope and jewel-coloured tears;
We charm it with our love from taint of fears;
We set it high against the sky that lowers,
To burn, a love-sign, from the topmost towers,
Through glad and sorry years.

296

ANOTHER BIRTHDAY SONG.

THE rose-time and the roses
Call to me, dove of mine;
I hear the birdsong-closes
Ring out in the sunshine;
In all the wood-reposes
There runs a magic wine
Of music all divine.

All things have scent and singing;
The happy earth is ringing
With praise of love and June:
Have I alone no tune,
No sound of music-making
To greet my love's awaking
This golden summer noon?

Ah, love! my roses linger
For sunshine of thine eyes;
For Love the music-bringer
My linnets wait to rise;
All dumb are birds and singer:
The song in kisses dies
And sound of happy sighs.

What need of songs and singing,
When love for us is ringing
Bells of enchanted gold?
Dear, whilst my arms enfold
My love, our kisses fashion
Tunes of more perfect passion
Than verses new or old.

297

LOVE'S AMULET.

SONG, be strong and true to hold
Love within thy locks of gold:
Bind my lady's thought with rhyme;
Kiss her if her lips grow cold;
Bring her thoughts of summer-prime,
Lest her heart catch winter-time.
Song, be quick and bold.

Take her flowers of love and light,
Blossoms of her soul's delight,
Roses of her heart's desire;
Bind her brow with lilies white;
Lilies' snow and roses' fire
Hold love's summer ever by her,
In the world's despite!

Strew the Springtime in her way,
Lest she weary of the day,
Lest the lonely hours be long;
Be her season ever May,
May, when Love is safe from wrong
And with larks' and linnets' song
All the world is gay.

Sweet, I wind thee with a chain,
Verses linked in one refrain,
“Love me, love, who love but thee,”
Piping ever and again;
Bind thy thought and heart to be
Constant aye to Love and me
Thorow joy and pain.

298

MADRIGAL GAI.

THE summer-sunshine comes and goes;
The bee hums in the heart of the rose:
Heart of my hope, the year is sweet;
The lilies lighten about thy feet.

A new light glitters on land and sea;
The turtles couple on every tree.
Light of my life, the fields are fair;
Gossamers tangle thy golden hair.

The air with kisses is blithe and gay;
Love is so sweet in the middle May.
Sweet of my soul, the brook is blue;
Thine eyes with heaven have pierced it through.

Now is the time for kisses, now
When bird-songs babble from every bough.
Sweetest, my soul is a bird that sips
Honey of heaven from out thy lips.

LOVE'S AUTUMN.

[_]

(Field's Nocturne in D Minor).

YES, love, the Spring shall come again;
But not as once it came:
Once more in meadow and in lane
The daffodils shall flame,
The cowslips blow, but all in vain;
Alike, yet not the same.

299

The roses that we plucked of old
Were dewed with heart's delight:
Our gladness steeped the primrose-gold
In half its lovely light:
The hopes are long since dead and cold,
That flushed the wind-flowers' white.

Ah, who shall give us back our Spring?
What spell can fill the air
With all the birds of painted wing
That sang for us whilere?
What charm reclothe with blossoming
Our lives grown blank and bare?

What sun can draw the ruddy bloom
Back to hope's faded rose?
What stir of summer re-illume
Our hearts' wrecked garden-close?
What flowers can fill the empty room
Where now the nightshade grows?

'Tis but the Autumn's chilly sun
That mocks the glow of May;
'Tis but the pallid bindweeds run
Across our garden way,
Pale orchids, scentless every one,
Ghosts of the summer day.

Yet, if it must be so, 'tis well:
What part have we in June?
Our hearts have all forgot the spell
That held the summer noon;
We echo back the cuckoo's knell
And not the linnet's tune.

300

What should we do with roses now,
Whose cheeks no more are red?
What violets should deck our brow,
Whose hopes long since are fled?
Recalling many a wasted vow
And many a faith struck dead.

Bring heath and pimpernel and rue,
The Autumn's sober flowers:
At least their scent will not renew
The thought of happy hours
Nor drag sad memory back unto
That lost sweet time of ours.

Faith is no sun of summer-tide,
Only the pale calm light
That, when the Autumn clouds divide,
Hangs in the watchet height,
A lamp, wherewith we may abide
The coming of the night.

And yet, beneath its languid ray,
The moorlands bare and dry
Bethink them of the summer day
And flower, far and nigh,
With fragile memories of the May,
Blue as the August sky.

These are our flowers: they have no scent
To mock our waste desire,
No hint of bygone ravishment
To stir the faded fire:
The very soul of sad content
Dwells in each azure spire.

301

I have no violets: you laid
Your blight upon them all:
It was your hand, alas! that made
My roses fade and fall,
Your breath my lilies that forbade
To come at summer's call.

Yet take these scentless flowers and pale,
The last of all my year:
Be tender with them; they are frail:
But, if thou hold them dear,
I'll not their brighter kin bewail,
That now lie cold and sere.

ASPECT AND PROSPECT.

“Cup of wine, heart's blood, on each One or other They bestow.” —
Hafiz. ccxxvi, 5.

I.

THE time is sad with many a sign and token;
Desire and doubting in all hearts have met;
The ancient orders of the world are broken;
The night is spent, the morning comes not yet:
Men go with face against the Future set,
Each asking each, “When shall the wreak be wroken?
When shall the God come and the word be spoken
To end Life's passion and its bloody sweat?”

For sowing-time hath failed us even at reaping;
Time hath torn out the eyes and heart of faith;
Of all our gladness there abideth weeping;
Of all our living we have woven us death:
For many a hope is dead for lack of breath
And many a faith hath fallen and is sleeping,
Weary to death with the long hopeless keeping
The watch for day that never morroweth.

302

For all our lives are worn with hopeless yearning;
There is no pleasantness in all our days:
The world is waste and there is no returning
For our tired feet into old flowered ways.
Long use hath shorn our summer of its rays;
Of all our raptures there is left but burning;
We are grown sadly wise and for discerning,
The sweet old dreams are hueless to our gaze.

We trust not Love, for he is God no longer:
Another hath put on his pleasant guise:
The greater God hath bowed him to the stronger;
Death looks at life from many a lover's eyes:
And underneath the linden-tree he lies,
The gracious torch-bearer of ancient story,
His sweet face faded and his pinions' glory
Dim as the gloss of grass-grown memories.

No gods have we to trust to, new or olden;
The blue of heaven knows their thrones no more:
The races of the gods in death are holden:
Their pale ghosts haunt the icy river's shore.
Availeth not our beating at their door:
There is no presence in their halls beholden;
The silence fills their jewelled thrones and golden;
The shadow lies along their palace-floor.

And lo! if any set his heart to singing,
Thinking to witch the world with love and light,
Strains of old memories set the stern chords ringing;
The morning answers with the songs of night.
For who shall sing of pleasance and delight,
When all the sadness of the world is clinging
About his heart-strings and each breeze is bringing
Its burden of despairing and despite?

303

Help is there none: night covers us down-lying
To sleep that comes uneath with devious dreams:
The morning brings us sadness but and sighing:
We gather sorrow from the noontide beams:
And if a man set eyes on aught that seems
An oasis of peace, he finds, on nighing,
Its promise false, and sad almost to dying,
Turns from the mirage and its treacherous streams.

II.

And yet one hope by well-nigh all is cherished,—
Albeit many hold it unconfest,—
The dream of days that, when this life has perished
And all its strife and turmoil are at rest,
Shall rise for men out of some mystic West,—
A paradise of peace, where death comes never
And life flows calmly as some dreamy river
That wanders through the islands of the Blest;

A dream of love-lorn hearts made whole of sorrow,
Of all life's doubts and puzzles fleeted by,
Of severed lives reknit in one to-morrow
Of endless bliss beneath the cloudless sky;
A dream of lands where hope shall never die,
But in the fair clear fields, browbound with moly,
Our dead desires shall wander, healed and holy,
And over all a mystic peace shall lie;

A peace that shall be woven of old sadness
And bitter memories grown honey-sweet,
Where our lost hopes shall live again in gladness,
Chaining the summer to their happy feet;
Where never fulness with desire shall meet
Nor the sweet earth divide from the clear heaven
Nor mortal grossness shall avail to leaven
The ecstasy of that supernal seat.

304

III.

Ah! lovely dreams that come and go!
Shall ever hope to harvest grow?
Of all that sow shall any reap?
I know not, I: but this I know;
Whether the years bring weal or woe,
Whether the Future laugh or weep,
I shall not heed it;—I shall sleep.

I have lived out this life of ours;
I can no more.—Through shine and showers,
March lapses into full July:
The May sun coaxes out the flowers,
And through the splendid summer hours
Their tender little lives go by;
And when the winter comes, they die.

But in the Spring they live again.
Not so with us, whose lives have lain
In ways where love and grief are rife,
Whose seventy years of sadness strain
Toward the gates of rest in vain;
Our souls are worn with doubt and strife;
We have no seed of second life.

And yet for those whose lives have been
Through storm and sun alike serene,
Drinking the sunshine and the dew
In every break of summer sheen,
I doubt not but the unforeseen
May treasure for these flower-like few
A life where heart and soul renew;

A life where Love no more shall bring
The pains of hell upon its wing,
Where perfect peace at last shall dwell,

305

That happy peace that is the king
Of all the goods we poets sing,
That all with aching hearts foretell,
Yet know them unattainable.

But we, whom Love hath wrecked and torn,
Whose lives with waste desire are worn,
Whose souls life-long have been as lyres
Vibrating to each breath that's borne
Across our waste of days forlorn,
Whose paths are lit with funeral fires,
The monuments of dead desires,

We, for whom many lives have past,
Through storm and summer, shine and blast,
Within our one man's span of years,
We may not hope for peace at last
Save where the shade of Sleep is cast
And from our eyes Death's soft hand clears
The thought alike of smiles and tears.

Yet (for we loved you, brothers all,—
That love us not,—despite the wall
Of crystal that between us lies,)
We, to whose eyes, whate'er befall,
No angel could the hope recall,
We dream for you of brighter skies,
Of life new-born in Paradise:

We hope for you that golden day
When God (alas!) shall wipe away
The tears from all the eyes that weep;
And from our lonely lives we pray
That, of that happy time, some ray
Of your filled hope, your souls that reap,
May reach us, dream-like, in our sleep.

306

MELISANDE.

These two poems served as Prelude and Postlude respectively to my “New Poems” published in 1880.

I.

AH lady of the lands of gold!
Who shall lay hands on thee and hold
Thy beauty for a space as long
As pausing of a linnet's song?
Ah lady of the lays of old,
When love is life and right is wrong!

Ah lady of the dear old dream!
We watch Love's roses on the stream
That spins its silver in the land
Where garlands glitter from thy hand:
Ah singer of the sweets that seem!
When shall the dream take shape and stand?

Ah dear in dreams, lost long ago!
A sound of lutings soft and low,
A scent of roses newly prest,
Cease never from the dreamful West:
When shall a man draw near to know
The sweetness of thy perfect breast?

II.

A dream of days too far to fill:
The thin clear babble of the rill
That trickles through the fainting flowers;
A monotone of mourning hours;
The dim dawn coming sad and still;
The evening's symphony of showers.

307

A lone land under a sere sky;
And stretching tow'rd the veil on high,
My soul, a flower that seeks the sun;
The dull days dropping, one by one;
The darkness drawing ever nigh;
And still nor dream nor life is won.

III.

Ah sunflower-heart! ah Melisande!
When shall the dream take shape and stand?
When shall thy lips melt into mine?
When shall I drink thy looks like wine?
Shall earth for once turn fairyland
And all the past take shape and shine?

Alas! such hopes were vain indeed:
The waste world knoweth not the seed
That bears the blossom of delight.
Shall one go forth to sow the night
And look to reap sun-coloured weed
And lilies of the morning light?

Who would not be content to know
That at the last,—when sin and woe
Had done their worst and life had lain
Before the gates that shut out pain,—
The bitter breeze of death should blow
The mirage from the sullen plain

And for a little sun-filled space
His sight should feed on his love's face
And in her eyes his soul drink deep,—
And then upon him death should creep
And snatch him, sudden, to the place
Where all things gather to a sleep?

308

Ah lovers, God but grant you this,
To breathe your life out in a kiss,
To sleep upon your lady's breast
The hour life lapses into rest!
For me, I ask none other bliss
Than Rudel's, deeming his the best.

IN MEMORIAM

OLIVER MADOX BROWN ob. Nov. 5, 1874.

FRIEND, whom I loved in those few years and fleeting
The envious fates, which hound all things that be
From death to birth, appointed thee and me
To be together in the nether air
Of this our world of care,
Swift severance and brief and seldom meeting,
I cry to thee with one last word of greeting,
Across the darkness and the unknown sea.

With one last word I cry to thee, my brother,
One word of love and memory and grief,
That on thy grave, even as an autumn leaf
Fallen from the tree of my sad soul, all sere
With winter drawing near,
May lie, for lack of rose or lys or other
Bloom of the Spring or Summer, that our mother
Hath ta'en from me, to fill her funeral sheaf,—

Our mother Death; for thou too knewst of sadness,
Even in the brief sweet season of thy Spring;
Ay, and the stroke of thine upmounting wing,
Thus early pointing to the eternal height,
Even in its callowest flight,
Bore thee far up above men's careless gladness
Into those realms of lone, yet glorious madness,
Where all God's poets suffer, see and sing.

309

I cry into the dark with lamentation,
A cry of grief and love-longing and pain
For lack of that rich heart and teeming brain,
Which, had not envious Fate denied, were fain
To soar to such a strain
As should have gladdened folk in many a nation
And made men's hearts flower full with jubilation,
Even as the roses in the summer rain:

Yea, and regret for him my friend departed,
For solace lost to me and friendly cheer
And sympathy that made the world less drear,
Regret and memory and bitter dole
For that bright noble soul,
Swift-spirited, yet true and tender-hearted,
With whom full many a joy and pain I parted,
In that brief season he was with us here.

Ah, what is left, from Death's supreme surrender,
Of that bright wit, to all fair ends attuned,
That vaulting thought, which soared nor ever swooned
Nor drooped its pinions in the ethereal air
Of noble dreams and fair?
Only for us, to whom no prayers can render
Thy presence or thy heart so true and tender,
Memory abides, to solace and to wound.

Thou shalt not be of those whom Time effaces,
Whilst yet the mould is moist above their head,
Whose memories fade and pass and all is said;
Nay, for us all, who loved thee and who love,
Shining life's fret above,
Thy thought shall throne it in our hearts' high places,
Till Death blot past and present from our faces;
Thou shalt not be of the forgotten dead.

310

Thy face in many a page of mystic poet
Shall haunt me and thy voice in many a strain
Of strange sad music, to whose weird refrain
Our souls made answer with so whole a might
Of delicate delight
We grudged well-nigh that any else should know it,
Should bear its frail fair seed abroad and sow it,
To wither on the general heart and brain.

Thy speech, with all its high and generous passion
For noble things, its scorn of all untruth,
And all the dainty blossom of thy youth,
Thy youth oft wiser than my riper age,
Shall on the picturing page
Of memory itself anew refashion
And live, though time on thee took no compassion
And Death on us thy lovers had no ruth.

What though no power on earth avail to move thee
To sight or speech of any mother's son,
Thee, that art shut from sight of moon and sun?
For me, thy high sweet spirit, like a flower,
In this memorial hour,
Pierces the grass-grown earth that lies above thee;
Thou knewst I loved thee and thou knowst I love thee;
And in that knowledge still our souls are one.

And if thy life's untimely ended story,
Thy life so thick with many an early bloom
And seed of blooms yet brighter, hold no room,
For very ratheness, in the inconstant ken
Of quick-forgetting men,
Yet, for our hearts, though Time himself grow hoary,
The lily of love, if not the rose of glory,
Shall flower and fade not on thy timeless tomb.

311

SALUT D'AMOUR.

LOVE of leafy days,
Whilst the summer stays,
Whilst the fields are golden and the skies are blue,
I am sure of you.
Whilst the sunshine plays
In the scented ways
And the world is new,
In the glory of your gaze,
Sweet of summer, Love looks through.

Then I hold you, joy of June,
When the woods burst out in tune
And the marigolds are shining with their mirrors of the sun,
When the day and night are one,
When the sunlight's golden shoon
And the silver-sandalled moon
After one another run,
Through the pearl and opal cloisters of the sky,
Like a youth and maid that fly
From each other nor draw nigh
But at morning and at evening, when the twilight is begun.

Bird of August skies,
Love that never dies,
Whilst the sunshine lingers, hovers on your brow;
Still the love-looks rise
In your happy eyes:
Hap what may when winter rages,
In your breast when frosty age is
And the bleak and surly snowtime turns your blood to ice,
Now, at least, whilst throstles tarry and the blossom's on the bough,
Ours is present Paradise:
Come what will, you love me now.

312

EPILOGUE

TO THE BOOK OF THE THOUSAND NIGHTS AND ONE NIGHT.

The “new and valued friend” referred to in this “Epilogue” was the late Sir R. F. Burton.

TWELVE years this day,—a day of winter, dreary
With drifting snows, when all the world seemed dead
To Spring and hope,—it is since, worn and weary
Of doubt within and strife without, I fled

From the mean workday miseries of existence,
From spites that slander and from hates that lie,
Into the dreamland of the Orient distance,
Under the splendours of the Syrian sky,

And in the enchanted realms of Eastern story,
Far from the lovelessness of modern times,
Garnered the rainbow-remnants of old glory
That linger yet in those ancestral climes.

And now, the long task done, the journey over,
From that far home of immemorial calms,
Where, as a mirage, on the sky-marge hover
The desert and its oases of palms,

Lingering, I turn me back, with eyes reverted,
To this stepmother world of daily life,
As one by some long pleasant dream deserted,
That wakes anew to dull unlovely strife.

Yet, if none other weal the quest have brought me,
The long belovéd labour now at end,
This gift of gifts the untravelled East hath brought me,
The knowledge of a new and valued friend.

5th Feb. 1889.

313

DUST TO DUST.

DEAREST, when I am dead,
Fold not this form of mine
In webs of wool or silk or linen fine;
Nay, pillow not my head,
When there is no more breath in me, on down
Nor my cold brows with flowers funereal crown.
Coffin me not in epicedial elm;
Let them not seal
My slumbering sense with straitening bands nor whelm
My weary body in sepulchral steel.
Be not my breathless breast
With the accurséd winding-sheet opprest;
Let them not lap my nerveless limbs in lead
Nor nail me down,
Wound, like a wine-flask, in some woolly fleece,
Within the choking chest.
Indeed, I could not rest,
Enchained and prisoned in that narrow bed;
I could not sleep
Until the term of time be oversped
Nor slumber out the appointed years in peace,
If left to strangle in that darkling deep.

Lay me not in the ground,
In some sad city of the nameless dead,
Whose heaped-up hosts should let me from the light,
Where all about me, under, overhead,
Their million multitudes, untold, unknown,
Encompassing me round,
Pressing and crowding on me day and night,
To all eternity should elbow me
And straiten me beneath my funeral stone.
Enough in life it was with men to be,
To see
Their smileless faces pass me in the ways,

314

To meet
Their senseless eyes, wherein my wistful gaze
Could note no noble heat,
No hope of heavenly things, no care of right,
No heed of aught that is not bought and sold,
No thought, no wish, except the greed of gold.
Fain in my death from them I would be free.
Let them not mar the eternal rest for me,
Enforcing me the unvictorious fight
Fight on and on for all eternity,
Who hunger for deliverance at last
From the base present and the bitter past.

Not in the earth me lay:
I would not moulder lingeringly away
Within the stifling clay
Nor cower helpless in corruption's hold,
Midmost the darkness and the nether cold,
A prison-palsied prey
To the mean creatures of the middle earth.
I would not have my rottenness affray
Each delicate flower-birth
And cause it shun my foulness of decay.
I could not brook to think
The lilies or the violets should shrink
From my pollution, leaving the fat weed
And the base creatures that corruptions breed
Alone upon my festering flesh to feed,
Nor that the primrose or the cowslip's root,
Delving with dainty foot
In the earth's bosom for its sustenance,
Should flinch and shrivel from my funeral stance,
Deeming my mouldering dust not fair and good
Enough to be its food.

Nay, leave me overground;

315

Let me not lie to perish and to pine
Under the mould in some sepulchral mound;
But lay me, leave me in the open air;
On some wild moorland or some mountain bare,
Upon Helvellyn's crown or Snowdon's chine
Cast down these bones of mine.
There let me moulder underneath the skies;
Let the birds batten on my brain and eyes,
The wild fox tear me and the forest swine.
Yea, let me wither in the wind and rain;
The air shall purge me and the sun from stain;
The rains shall wash away
The soil of death, defilement and decay
And the breeze blow me clean and pure and white:
Nothing shall be in me to soil the sight,
To fright the fancy or the sense affray.
The winds shall be the playmates of my dust,
As in the air they waft it near and far;
The grass its spear-spikes through my ribs shall thrust
And the sweet influences of night and day
Look loving on me, sun and moon and star.
Yea, better far to wither in the wind,
To wait the fulness of the days assigned,
In the fair face of sky and stars and sun,
To feed the flying and the faring things,
The creatures in the grass that creep and run,
To scatter on the birds' and breezes' wings,
To mingle with the sunshiné and the rain
And with my breeze-borne ashes germ on germ
Of herb and grass and weed
To birth of beauty ever and again
To bring and help to harvest grain and seed,
Than in the clay to moulder, heart and brain,
The creatures of corruption there to breed,
To rot out tediously the ruthless term
And in the dark to feed
The foul blind beetle and the writhing worm.

316

There, in the sight of sky and moon and sun,
The elements shall garner, one by one,
Each gift, each grace they gave,
To make this body brave;
Let the four work-mates, earth, fire, water, air,
Resume again from me
That which I had of them and leave me bare;
Let all my parts again be what they were,
Before the fiat fell for me to be.

There, in the course of many a day and night,
Some gentian of the height,
Some rose, belike, shall blossom from my clay;
Some amaryllis of the wind-swept hills,
Some pansy, purple as the morning's sills,
Some fragrant flush of meadow-sweet, some white
Celestial lily of the morning-light,
Borne, yet in germ, upon the gracious gale,
Whereas I waste away,
The fragrances of wordless wistfulness
And longing love shall smell,
The overmastering spell
Of passion disembodied and desire
Purged and made pure of life's polluting stress
Mark, that my ashes on the air exhale,
Nor their sweet seeds and frail
Fear to the bosom of my love to trust,
Electing so to blossom from my dust
And their fair brightness found in my decay.

So shall I one anew
Be with the natural things I held so dear,
One with the sunshine and the waters clear,
One with the larks and linnets, flowers and grass,
Mountain and moor and torrent, herb and tree,
The candid creatures of the air and dew.
Nay, in the days to be,

317

It peradventure yet may come to pass
That, as your free foot strays
Along the moorland or the mountain-ways,
Noting the shadows in the brooklet's glass
Or following on the interlacing rays
That chase each other through the tangled trees,
Mayhap it shall be yours to recognize
My spirit in the bird-notes and the breeze,
My face in flowers, my thought in butterflies,
The subtle scions of the sun and skies:
Belike, some wandering breath
Of perfume, in the summer air afloat,
Shall to your senses speak of me in death:
Yea, by the brooklet straying, you shall note
Some bloom of gold and blue,
Some riverside ranunculus, of me
That haply shall remember you, shall see
Some flowering weed look on you with my eyes
Or hear
Some windwaft murmur of me in your ear,
Some birdsong answer with my speech to you.

VERE NOVO.

Since the writing (in March last) of this poem, my little Angora cat “Rover,” mentioned in v. 2, has died in her tenth year, to the infinite regret of all who knew her. She was the most loving and engaging of little creatures, far more intelligent than the majority of human beings, and was less to be described as a cat than as half-a-dozen pounds of affection and devotion done up in tabby fluff. Peace to her gentle memory! As Burton says, in the delightful “We and our Neighbours,” (one of the series of homely masterpieces by which the late Mrs. Beecher Stowe well-nigh atoned for her terrible political and literary crime of “Uncle Tom's Cabin”) “One's pets will die, and it breaks one's heart.”

OUT in my little garden
The crocus is a-flame;
The hyacinth-buds harden;
The birds no more are tame;
No more are they the same
That, in the sad snow-season,
Their Kyrie Eleison
Sang at my window-frame;
Lark, linnet, throstle, ousel,
With carol and carousal
For food to me that came.

318

The winter's woes are over;
My cats upon the wall,
Gruff, Top, Shireen and Rover,
Are basking one and all.
Soon will the cuckoo call
His “Summer, summer's coming!”
Soon will the bees be humming
About the tulips tall.
The lilac-buds are breaking;
A new blithe world is waking,
To gladden great and small.

I look on all things' gladness,
Half-gladdened, half opprest,
Delight at once and sadness
Debate it in my breast.
From out their winter's nest
My thoughts peep out at Springtime,
Misdoubting of their wing-time,
If sleep or wake be best;
For in me are two voices,
Whereof the one rejoices,
The other sighs for rest.

I know the old Spring story,
That stirs in every flower;
How Life grows never hoary,
But sleeps to gather power;
Then, with some passing shower,
Its face it laves from slumber
And casting off sleep's cumber,
Blooms forth in field and bower,
Unresting, still renewing,
For evermore ensuing
The ever-fleeting hour.

319

Ah Spring, thou tell'st me ever
The same contentless tale,
How spirit may not sever
Fore'er from body frail,
How, though the old forms fail,
In others yet imprisoned,
The soul, anew bedizened
With webs of joy and wail,
Still from the future's pages
Must spell, through endless ages,
Life's script of weal and bale.

I cannot dight my dreaming
To fit thy frolic glee;
Thy sweet, thy simple seeming,
Thine eager ecstasy
Are dulled with doubt for me.
I, who am heavy-hearted
For days and hopes departed,
I cannot joy with thee,
Unthoughtful, for the present,
Because to-day is pleasant,
Of Past and of To-be.

Yet, who shall still go glooming,
When Spring is on the stair,
When every bough is blooming
And every field is fair?
I stand in the soft air
And watch the grasses growing
And feel the March-breeze blowing
Away my winter's care.
A peace, as of sunsetting,
Is on me, a forgetting
Of joys and griefs that were.

320

This is the Springtide's magic:
Needs must, when April's nigh,
Its mask of winter tragic
The hardest heart lay by;
Beneath its watchet sky
The saddest soul despairing,
The coldest thought leave caring
To question how or why;
Content, while each day's bringing
New birds, new blossoms springing,
To live and not to die.

PRELUDE TO HAFIZ.

HITHER, hither, o ye weary, o ye sons of wail and woe,
Ye, who've proved the hollow shimmer of this world of fleeting show,
Ye, who've seen your hearts' hopes vanish, like the firstlings of the snow;

Ye, who scorn the brutal bondage of this world of misbelief,
Ye, who bear the royal blazon of the heart afire with grief,
Hearken, hearken to my calling; for I proffer you relief.

I am he whom men call teller of the things that none may see,
Tongue of speech of the Unspoken, I am he that holds the key
Of the treasuries of vision and the mines of mystery.

I am he that knows the secrets of the lands beyond the goal,
I am he that solves the puzzles of the sorrow-smitten soul,
I am he that giveth gladness from the wine-enlightened bowl;

I am he that heals the wounded and the weary of their scars,
I am Hafiz, son of Shiraz, in the pleasant land of Fars,
Where I flung my flouting verses in the faces of the stars.

321

See, my hands are full of jewels from the worlds beyond the tomb:
Here be pearls of perfect passion from the middle dreamland's womb;
Here be amethysts of solace, for the purging of your gloom:

Here be rubies red and radiant, of the colour of the heart,
Here be topazes sun-golden, such as rend the dusk apart,
Here be sapphires steeped in heaven, for the salving of your smart.

If your souls are sick with sorrow, here is that which shall appease;
If your lips are pale with passion, here is that which hath the keys
To the sanctuaries of solace and the halidomes of ease.

Let the bigot tend his idols, let the trader buy and sell;
Ears are theirs that cannot hearken to the tale I have to tell,
Eyes that cannot see the treasures which are open to my spell.

Where is he that's heavy-laden? Lo, my hand shall give him peace.
Where are they that dwell in darkness? I am he that can release.
Where is he that's world-bewildered? I will give his cares surcease.

Hither, hither with your burdens! I have that shall make them light.
I have salves shall purge the earth-mists from the fountains of your sight;
I have spells shall raise the morning in the middest of your night.

322

Come, o doubt-distracted brother! Come, o heavy-burthened one!
Come to me and I will teach you how the goal of rest is won;
Come and I will cleave your darkness with the splendours of the sun.

Leave your striving never-ending; let the weary world go by;
Let its bondmen hug their fetters, let its traders sell and buy;
With the roses in the garden we will sojourn, you and I.

Since the gladness and the sadness of the world alike are nought,
I will give you wine to drink of from the ancient wells of thought,
Where it's lain for ages ripening, whilst the traders sold and bought.

What is heaven, that we should seek it? Wherefore question How or Why?
See, the roses are in blossom; see, the sun is in the sky;
See, the land is lit with summer; let us live before we die.

THE DOPPER'S LAMENT.

PITY the sorrows of a poor
Perpetually harassed Boer,
The victim of a “beau sabreur”,
Who keeps him ever on the stir,
Without a moment to entrench.
I cannot speak, without a wrench,
The ruffian's name; it is such woe
To think, with folk who love us so,
—Who in their cups cry out, “Bravo!
Go on, brave Boers! Do all you know;
Avenge the wrongs of Jean Crapaud
And lay the brutal Britons low,

323

Those rude Rosbifs who let us crow
And only chuckle when we blow!”
—This pesky, intermeddling foe
Should share the honoured name of “French”.

We Doppers love to sleep at night
And (if we must) by day to fight,
Ensconced behind some rocky height
Or sheltered in some cosy trench,
Like any other decent mensch:
But this chap keeps us on the run
From break of day to set of sun,
Gives us no time to sleep or eat
Or take our schnapps of Hollands neat.
(—Washing and change of clothes, indeed,
Your true-born Burgher does not need;
He, like his sires, the Jews of old,
With soap and water does not hold.—)
What's death to us is just his fun:
Our working day is never done;
We get no rest or next to none;
For hardly have we closed an eye
Ere “Rooineks!” our sentries cry;
Putt! Putt! Whiz! Bang! The bullets fly
And “Look out there! Come on! Hi! Hi!
Give 'em the baggonet, my boys!”
And all the other horrid noise
Disturbs our dreams of dunghill joys:
Here comes that everlasting French!

No, hang it all! It is too mean
To come upon us, unforeseen,
Just when we're settled all serene.
I'll write and grumble to the Queen
And all the bishops on the bench.
Our brother Stead 'twill never suit
If honest Burghers cannot loot

324

And Rooineks in comfort shoot,
Ambushed behind some rock or root,
Without a day-and-night “En route!”
From that confounded fellow French.

Well, for a wonder, here's no sign
Of him just now: I'll stop and dine
And after on the veldt recline
And smoke the pipe of peace, in fine.
Then, when I've had a Dopper drench ,
If I can find some quiet trench,
Just forty winks will come in pat.
Good night! I'm off.—But stop! What's that?
I heard a sort of rat-tat-tat.
Yes! No! It must have been the cat.
Lord! There's a shell just where I sat,
And here's a bullet through my hat!
It cannot be! It is, that's flat,
It is that never-ending French.

Nov. 1900.

A “Dopper drench” is composed of Hollands flavoured with a few drops of coffee.

REQUIEM

FOR OUR DEAD IN SOUTH AFRICA.

Their bodies are buried in peace; but their name liveth for evermore. Ecclesiasticus, XLIV, 14.

HAPPY are our dead that on the veldt are sleeping,
Our dear-belovéd dead, that died for England's sake!
They weary not, as we who watch and wake,
To follow on the war-tide's ebb and flow,

325

The fluctuant fight against the faithless foe,
Nor hear the widows and the orphans weeping.
Upon their graves the shadows come and go;
Their quiet sleep no battle-thunders break,
No shouts of jubilance, no wails of woe:
Their seed of sacrifice and duty shed
Upon the embattled field and with the red
Of their young hearts' blood watered, they lie low
And are content to sleep and wait the reaping:
They are at peace beneath the moonbeams creeping;
They feel the sunblaze not upon their head;
They shiver not beneath the winter's snow.
They need no pity; all with them is well;
O'er them the stars the eternal watch are keeping,
The refluent tides of heaven wane and swell;
The reverent skies rain softly on their bed:
Far oversea, beyond the wild waves' leaping,
They rest in peace, our well-belovéd dead.

Happy are our dead, that oversea are lying,
Our faithful dead, that fought and died to hold us true!
They do not hear the rude reviling crew,
They hearken not the venal nations vying
In slander each with each and vilifying
Of that magnanimous England who of yore
Wrought for their fathers in the front of war;
Who waded for their sakes through seas of gore,
Pouring like water forth her blood and store,—
England, with Sidney, Howard, Drake, who drew,
To free them from the fire and axe of Spain,
Her seraph-sword unconquerable, who,
With Blake and Marlborough, Nelson, Wellington,
From age to age her battle-banner on
Bearing, the braggart Bourbon overthrew
And drove his harlot-pander cohorts flying,
Who to the succour came of Europe sighing
Under the brute Republic's bloody reign,

326

Who loosed them from Napoleon's iron chain;
England, who heard and answered to their crying
So many a time of old and gave them bread;—
—These, who, as beasts that bite the hand which fed
And give for good, as is the churl's use, bane,
Bark at her heels like bandogs,—who, in vain
Fair arms and fairly used in loyal fight
Knowing against her archangelic might,
Catch up the dastard's weapons, filthy lying
And shameless slander, and withal adread
Lest she should turn and rend them, from afar
Hail their envenomed shafts upon her head,
Thinking to whelm her with the poisoned rain,—
Her tangled in a world-involving war;—
These at her heels who follow, fleeing, nighing,
Wolves at once fearful of the chase and fain,
Whilst she, proud Titan, scornful of replying,
Upon her path imperial of domain
Fares tireless on with her unfaltering tread,
The unsetting sun upon her radiant crest
A crown that cleaves the darkness East and West,
Nor heeds the yelping of the jackal train.
Happy are our dead, thrice happy in their dying,
In that their ears are deaf to all is said!
They sleep in peace upon the Afric plain;
No thunders stir their slumbers nor the hum
Of torrent-waters of the tropic rain:
They wait the fulness of the days to come,
When what they've sown shall gathered be for grain,
Nor hearken to the enviers decrying
The righteous cause for which they fought and bled.
They tarry for the harvest's testifying:
'Tis well with them, our well-belovéd dead.

Happy are our dead, o'er whom the grass is growing,
Our noble dead, who fought and fell for liberty!
Our England's arm who were, from oversea

327

Six thousand miles outstretched for the bestowing
Of life upon the sad sons of the soil,
Who braved the ambush and the battle-clash,
Hunger and thirst and death and dearth and tòil
Direr than death, to set the bondman free,
To save him from the bullet and the lash,—
Who blenched not from the bitterest undergoing,
The slave to succour and their human spoil
To rescue from the ruthless Dopper dogs,
The spawn of Holland, with the Bushman hogs
Blood-blended! Where, to all eternity,
They lie and sleep beneath the waste-winds blowing,
They neither mark the mopping and the mowing
Of the sour apes, who, to their country's shame,
For that their rivals in the seats they see
Themselves must void for incapacity,
Spit forth their spite upon our England's name,
Their native land far rather in the mire
Than themselves choosing forced to the foregoing
Of their base aims and baulked of their desire,—
Nor heed the tattling of the traitor horde,
Who, to feed full their raging vanity,
Their vile vainglorious appetites to stay
And fill their lust of hate to overflowing,
With the foul foe for England's overthrowing
Confederate, fain would blunt her conquering sword
And maim her forearm. But what matter they?
What skill such screech-owls in the imperial choir
Of England's praise, that, like a living lyre,
Circles the echoing world from East to West,
Hailing her harbinger of peace and truth,
Sword of the just and shield of the opprest,
Time-honoured temperer of wrath with ruth?
Yet, happy, happy are our dead, unknowing
The shame our own have heaped upon our head,
The tares which these have mingled with their sowing
Who died for duty at their country's hest,

328

Tares with their wheat which shall be harvested,
To feed the future world with bitter bread!
'Tis well they know it not; 'twould stir their rest
Untimely, ere the appointed days be sped,
The term of time fulfilled and truth's forthshowing:
'Tis well they sleep, our dear and sacred dead.

Happy are our dead, that in our hearts are living,
Our holy dead, who died to hold us true and great!
Whatever lie beyond the years in wait,
Whatever webs the future may be weaving,
Theirs shall the glory be, for theirs the giving.
'Twas they that stemmed for us the storm of hate;
'Twas they that turned for us the tides of Fate:
Ours was the wreck; but theirs was the retrieving;
They gave us all and asked for no returning,
Fought on nor looked to know the darkness burning
With the bright signs of morning or to see
The dayspring and the dawn of victory.
Enough their faith for them and the believing
That England never from her fair estate
Should fail whilst yet her lion brood should be,
Each breast a bulwark in her foremost gate,
Strong with the strength of duty for the achieving
Of the impossible by land and sea,
Each one a little England, unafraid
To face the world in arms, where England bade.
Theirs is the triumph; ours is the bereaving;
The trophy theirs; ours but the broken blade,
The bloodstained arms, for love and memory laid,
Wet with our weeping, on the narrow bed
Whereas our heroes sleep, of doubt and dread
Absolved, of sorry thought and sad conceiving.
So leave we them to rest; but, in the leaving,
Let not their perfect peace our mourning mar;
Let not our tears upon their triumph jar.
They live and shall not die! Whilst England stands

329

Upon the Eastern and the Western strands,
The light of virtue haloing her head,
Crowned, from the morning to the evening-red,
Queen of the Orient and the Austral lands,
The memory of their deeds shall never die:
Whilst “England liveth yet!” it shall be said,
Defying Time that maketh low and high,
This one downsetting still and that upheaving,
They shall live on with England. Far and nigh,
Their names shall shine as polestars in her sky,
Till she and all her memories are sped.
Leave them to rest; there is no need of grieving.
Sleep on in peace, our unforgotten dead!

Fan. 1902.

BASSARID'S HORN.

(From “The Book of Hercules”.)

“The Book of Hercules,” here mentioned, is an unfinished epic upon the subject of the life and death of the great legendary successor of Prometheus, from which this song and “The Last of Hercules” (v. Vol. I, 363) are excerpts. Whether it will ever be completed is “upon the knees of the Gods.”

YOUNG, fair land,
Robe thyself with flowers; arise and shine!
Spring, that holdst the summer in the hollow of thy hand,
Come, for the sweetness of the year is thine.

Amethyst sea,
Blossom and birdsong have burst their winter's graves:
See, in the distance the month of storms doth flee:
Laugh with the lucent sapphire of thy waves.

Soul of man,
Shake off thy sadness, for the Spring is here.
Mark how the meadows have braved the winter's ban;
Glow with the gladness of the newborn year.

330

NOCTURN.

THE moon looks in upon me through the casement
And creeping round to where I lie at gaze,
Wide-eyed, and wait in vain coy sleep's embracement,
Upon my face her ghostly fingers lays.

I know that sign; she wills me rise and follow
Her feet; she lures me with her lamp of white,
Till at the window, o'er the wooded hollow,
I stand and look upon the silver night.

Pale lies the world and pure as a dead maiden;
No birdsong breaks the silence, thrush or merle:
The woodlands lie and slumber, heavy-laden
With dreams, beneath a dreaming sea of pearl.

From out that moony sea how many a hoping
Fain would I raise, that is for ever sped;
I go among old memories seeking, groping
For what I know is buried with the dead.

Still the moon calls me. What to wait availeth
For sleep unanswering? Better forth to go,
To wander 'twere, before her fair light faileth,
Before her horn th' horizon dips below.

White moon, thou ever wast my friend and lover;
Ne'er have I asked in vain for aid from thee;
Still all my toils and troubles didst thou cover
And drown'dst my sorrows in thy silver sea.

The doors stand barless all; the gates are gaping;
The ways are open to the open night,
Fulfilled with figures of the moonlight's shaping:
So forth I fare into a world of white.

331

In the wild park I stray, where all is sleeping,
Save in the dreaming avenue of elms,
Where down the moonlit aisles the ghosts are sweeping,
That may not rest in sleep's sepulchral realms.

Like me, they watch and wake whilst all else sleepeth;
Like me, the backward, not the forward ways,
They tread; like me, they sow when all else reapeth;
Like me, they love the nights and not the days.

Like me, outsetting know they, not arriving;
Like me, the night's their day, the moon their sun;
Like me, for ever, ever are they striving
To make the done undone, the undone done.

Among the ghosts I wander, dreaming, deeming,
Mid ghosts and dreams myself a dreaming ghost,
In the loud world of men a thing of seeming,
A wandering wraith amid a living host.

The silence solace brings to thought and feeling;
The quiet fills my bleeding heart with balm;
The moon upon my wounds pours oils of healing;
My cares are half-forgotten in the calm.

But lo! across the hills the dark is breaking;
The breeze of dawn sighs shrilly through the trees;
The world, so sweet that slept and dreamt, is waking,
To run its round of travail and unease.

And thou, who needst must wake, whilst others slumber,
Who, whilst all rest, the weapon-watch must keep,
Will the blue morning quit thee of thy cumber?
Shall the day wind thee in the woofs of sleep?

Nay, for thou ever wast a doubter, dreamer,
And he whose feet the paths of vision tread
Was ever out of grace with Sleep the Seemer;
She hath no crown of poppies for his head.

332

BARCAROLLE.

OUT sails to the fresh breeze!
My heart
Pines for the open seas.
The soft moon flowers, like a dream-delight,
Over the full tide-flow.
Shake out the sails! Sweetheart, we will depart,
We will depart and sail the seas to-night,
Whilst on the foam that flees
The blithe breeze flutters and the weed floats slow,
The moon above us and the tide below.

Where shall we steer to-night?
The moon
Lies, like a lane of white,
Far out beyond our vision in the West,
Over the dreaming sea,
As if some goddess walked with silver shoon
Over the dimples of each white-winged crest.
Sweetheart, the way is bright:
Shall we trim sails and follow it till we
Win to some shimmering world of fantasy?

Folk hold we chase a dream;
They say
That the bright worlds, which beam
Beyond the setting and the dying day,
Are shows begotten of the air and light,
Delusions distance-woven for the sight,
Mere mirages, that seem
And flee before us with unceasing flight:
We lose our lives, they tell us, following
A vain, unreal thing.

333

'Twere better far to bide
On shore,
To delve the round earth's side
For diamonds and golden glittering store
And in the strife for wealth and worldly praise
Join, heaping up the treasure of the days
With great and goodly store
Of what men follow in the mortal ways;
Since, as they say, these only real are
And all things else unreal as a star.

What matter what they say?
We know
That which on dullards' way
They prate but of, as idiots do, who go,
Strange spells and magic words without comprize
Reciting, which, if spoken wizard-wise,
Would overthrow
The world and rend with ruin earth and skies:
We soar, whilst here below they herd like sheep;
We waken, whilst they sleep.

For them, dull life once o'er,
They lie
And rot for evermore;
There is no part of them but all must die,
Since all their thoughts are earthy as their dust,
Their spirits as their bodies rust in rust;
No hope have they, on high
To raise them, but for ever perish must:
What shall avail to lift them from the grave
Of all that here they crave?

With them what shall they bear
Away,
Into the nether air,
Of all the goods they garner night and day?
Shall they regild death's darkness with their gold?

334

Shall their wealth warm them in the utter cold,
Their honour cleave the clay?
Will the worm do them worship in the mould?
Nay, earth to earth and dust to dust must back;
With life, all else shall lack.

But we, whose kingdom is not of the earth,
Whose weal
No world of death and birth
Might work nor fill the yearnings that we feel,
Our visions overlasting life and death,
Our dreams that cease not with the 'scape of breath,
From us death cannot steal
The splendour and the fulness of our faith;
We bear with us into the realms of Night
The seeds of life and light.

Not of the dust our hope,
Our thought,
That soars beyond earth's scope.
If here it gain the glories not it sought,
Itself its warrant is that such things are,
That the bright visions, here from us afar
Which flee, are not for nought;
Nay, though it be beyond the topmost star,
Our dreams, that seem delusions, simple sooth
Are in the air of truth.

Since here our each desire,
Fulfilled,
Becomes a wasting fire,
A mocking counterfeit of what we willed,
Thrice happy they who chase some Golden Fleece,
Beyond man's wit, who seek without surcease
Some vision that they build,
Some lovely land of everlasting peace,
Who, after some divinest dream, o'erstray
The strands of night and day!

335

Come, then, launch out with me
And steer
Into the shoreless sea!
Shake out the sails and follow without fear
Into the distance and the golden West!
We yet shall sight the Islands of the Blest;
We yet the Hesperian Gardens of our quest
Shall compass, if not here,
In this our world of ravin and unrest,
Then in those lands of a serener air
Where truth alone is fair.

ARCADES AMBO.

BIRDS at morning-red
Each to other said,
“See, the winter's over;
Soon it will be Spring.”
But, before the night,
All the world was white
And each feathered rover
For the South a-wing.

Quoth my heart one day,
“Love is come to stay:
Soul, have done with sorrow;
Give thyself to glee.”
But, ere day was done,
Light Love with the sun
Fled, and on the morrow,
Woe, ah woe was me!

Quoth the bud at morn,
“With my girth of thorn,
Who shall do me evil?
Am I not the rose?”

336

But, alack to tell!
Ere the midnight fell,
Came a frost uncivil
And the blossom froze.

Quoth I to my soul,
“Thou hast reached thy goal:
Me no more importune
With thy doubts and fears.”
But, ere I had spoken,
Lo! the spell was broken;
With a back-blow, Fortune
Turned my smiles to tears.

IMPERIA

(A DRAMATIC FRAGMENT.)

NAY, I am tired of kisses: let us sit
Awhile, that I may look into thine eyes
And watch the fair full dawning of desire
Flower out to passion. Nay, I prithee, rest;
I would not have thee kiss me yet awhile,
Lest the one sweetness mar the memory,
Sweeter than life, of that which went before.

Dear, dost thou love me? Nay, sweet, answer not.
'Tis but a lovers' litany, that needs
Responsion but as some half drowsy drone
Of Aves humming through the silver sound
Of the thrilled pipes, when the full hymn floats up
And all the incense shrivels up the nave;
An asking of a thing that is too sure
To need assurance, ay, that takes affright

337

And doubts, if one be careful to assure.

How long a season is it since we met
And looked upon and knew each all to each
And the world turning on our dual selves?
How long, my love? These few, short, golden years,
A whisper of the wind through orange groves,
Lit with the lamps of months and days and hours,
All fed with some sweet perfumed oil of praise,
Burnt to our love? Or else these many lives,
These long, full, dreamy, interfluent lives
Of termless time, that flow beside the years,
Around, between, before and after them,
Eking our pauses of unfilled accords
With complements of strange, sweet harmony.
Tell me, fair lord! Or rather, tell me not:
I will not have thee speak nor break the spell
That, like a flower, sits on thy happy lips,
Holding the silence with a scent of peace.
I will speak for thee, with thy hand in mine,
Nestling, a dove laid in a dove's white breast,
And thine eyes sacring me thy best belov'd,
With that full benediction of calm peace
That I do live by. I have never known
So whole an environment of content,
So golden an investiture of peace
And confidence as this that is on me
To-day; I have a sweetness at my heart,
An autumn glory of accomplished hope,
As of a soul that, with its whole wish won,
Sees Death come walking to it over flowers
And smiles for gladness of perfected peace
And pity of the sad condemned to live.
And to such folk, 'tis said, comes memory,
A fair young child, and takes them by the hand
And leads them, blithe and crowned with mystic palms,
Along the backward ways; and there they note
The by-gone landmarks overgrown with flowers

338

Of fair fulfilment and the rude wild wastes,
Where erst they wandered, sighing to the winds
And casting seeds of longing and despair,
Of hope and love and dole on every side,
Clad like a bride with many-coloured robes
Of blooms imperial. So it is with me;
For thus it seems full bliss doth mimic death,
Being alike fruition. Sit, my love,
And I will sing to thee some sweet sad song,
To spite our happiness; or, soothlier,
I will e'en tell thee yet once more again
The story of my life and how I grew
And fashioned forth myself, expecting thee;
Yet once again, of all these many times;
For, in my thought, each time I tell it thee,
I do once more reconquer me thy love,
Seeing it is to me like some fair fire,
That lights the backward and the forward ways,
Upon some travelled highway. Hearken, then.

I do remember, when I was a child,
A little, pale-faced child with eyes all wide
With the new wonder of the mystic world,
My thoughts were ever strained toward some mist
Of hope unformed, that should, in days to come,
Flower forth to wish. I was scarce fain to sport
And laugh and frolic as my fellows were,
Uncareful of the hopes the future held;
Nay, I was ever seeking for myself
The strange and solemn mysteries of things
Common and everpresent, yet unknown.
I could not touch another playmate's hand
Nor look into another's round void eyes,
The laughing, tearful eyes of infancy,
But something, that I comprehended not,
Stole through my veins and caused the sudden blood
Invade my visage and the nerves of life
Thrill as a harp thrills to the passing touch

339

Of the pale sprites that wander down the winds
Of night. I would build palaces of dreams
About some idle, vain, unanswering thing,
Twine wreaths of strange affection round the brows
Of some rough, careless mate, that half endured
And half repelled my timorous caress.
Or, failing these, I made some flighty goat,
Some silly kindly sheep my heart's delight
And loved the unresponsive world in it,
Decking its coyness with my childish toys,
Ribbons and beads and such like foolish gear. [OMITTED]

V. Les Contes Drôlatiques de Balzac, “La Belle Imperia Mariée.”

LITANY.

NIGHT and day and work and play, time and toil and thrall,
Shade and sun for all and one, death for one and all:

Watch and ward and chain and cord, rose and thorn and rue,
Fence and fate and bolt and gate; time and thought fare through.

Smile and tear and hope and fear still for you and me;
Love and life and sleep and strife; faith alone wins free.

Day and night and dark and light, sea and shore and sky,
Wealth and dearth: farewell to earth! Time it is to die.

Life and Love about, above, flutter to and fro;
Long they're sought and once they're caught, time it is to go.

All as one, the ripe years run, hasten to the night:
Feed thy fill, whilst lingers still, still a little light.

Hap and hope! In heaven's scope is how many a star!
Thick as bees they swarm and these even as we are.

What availing is in wailing or in railing, what?
If Life's weaving be deceiving, death shall cut the knot.

340

Joy is folly, melancholy idle: better be
Sea-birds sleeping on the leaping billows of the sea.

What's to do with me and you, in this world of dream?
Moth and fly are you and I, motes in the sun-beam.

Strife and seeming, doubt and deeming, let them play their play,
Let them flutter out their utter term and pass away.

If thy bosom bear a blossom, cherish it and heed
Not the jealous fools that tell us Love is but a weed.

Pain and pleasant, past and present, future, friend and foe,
All Life's weaving, glee and grieving, must thou leave and go.

Wheel and windle, spool and spindle, let them weave and spin;
Let them wind us what assigned us is, day out, day in.

Sweet and bitter, gold and flitter, all must have its day;
Little matter on Life's platter what for us they lay.

Vain contending, world-amending, dreams of sleep and wake:
Life's whole beauty is in duty done for duty's sake.

Cease thy sighing: day is dying, see, in yonder West:
Yet a little, in sleep's spital thou, too, shalt have rest.

LOVE SOLICITOUS.

LOVE, perfect love,
The loved Apostle tells us, casts out fear.
Ah, thou belovéd of the Lord, that hate
Nor doubt despiteful knewest, being here,
Whose hopes in heaven above
Alone had harbourage, who still await
Watched for Christ's coming through the golden gate

341

Of morn miraculous, straining with bent ear
For the first trumps of the Accepted Year,
What should thy heart, elate
With the sure hope of heaven at hand and near,
Know of the iron laws of loveless Fate,
Which ban content and cheer
From those who anywhat on earth hold dear,
Dooming them still misdoubt, all else above,
The loss of that they cherish, soon or late,
So fearlessness their joys may have for mate
Nor peace? Peace! What hath that celestial dove,
Which broodeth but on Faith's serener sphere,
To do with Love?
In this our sorry scheme of things create,
Is not incertitude Love's born estate?
Are not its sacrifices sigh and tear?
Is it not unto doubt as hand to glove?

He better knew
The laws and statutes of Love's mystery,
The Roman singer, in like time with thee,
By the cold shores of the Cimmerian Sea
Who lived and sighed for Latium's skies of blue
And his lost love's embrace;
Or he, the Tusculan, who did abase,
In the last days of Rome's democracy,
His golden speech the senseless populace
To raise rebellious 'gainst the Fates' decree
Which bids these servants and those masters be.
Well of Love's ordinance he wotted who,
Far from the loved sight of his lady's face,
Weaving his wreaths of rue,
Love all fulfilled of anxious fear did see;
Or he
Who, yearning back unto his youthful case,

342

When all the world was new
In his new eyes and over lawn and lea
The pleasant hours the pleasanter did chase,
Love all for sorrow and anxiety,
Solicitude unceasing, did beshrew,
Inapt for those who run the worldly race,
Concernless being never nor care-free,
To one and all untrue.

Yet, who were fain,
For all Love's miseries and all affrays,
To think that he its ravishments had missed?
Who would for woe desist
From loving? Who, because he'd felt Love's bane,
Would, in his loveless age, that he had kissed
And clipt in brighter days forget again?
For lightning-stroke and thunder, storm and blaze,
Who would sweet summer banish its domain?
Who list
The flowered Spring forbear for wind and rain?
More than the Galilean votarist,
Awatch to see, across the Egean main,
Christ's kingdom flower through the morning mist,
More than the Sulmonéan rhapsodist,
Still sighing, 'neath the chill Cimmerian rays,
For the rebirth of the Saturnian reign,
More than the Volscian revolutionist,
Rehearsing ever to the Alban ways
The time he swayed the commons with his hist,
More than the Syrian and the Romans twain,
Yea, most of all who sing its pleasant praise,
Of Love and all its mysteries he wist,
Our English amorist,
Well skilled the tangles of the wildering maze

343

Of loveful thought to loose and wind again,
Our minnesinger of the latter days,
Who said, nor said in vain,
“All other pleasures are not worth its pain.”

“Res est soliciti plena timoris amor.” —Ovid, Her. I, 12.

“Quam sit omnis amor solicitus et anxius.” —Cicero ad tticum, II, 25.

SUNSET-VOICES.

I.

THERE came a voice to me,
When the sun was like a star,
In the distance far away;
It spoke of worlds afar,
Beyond the sapphire sea,
Beyond the dying day.

Of other worlds it told,
Where Life and Love are one,
In some serener air;
Of shores beyond the sun,
Behind the evening-gold,
Where truth alone is fair;

Where one are thought and deed,
Where wish and will consent,
Where care comes not to blur
The face of fair intent
Nor faith's upspringing seed
Is baulked by falsehood's bur;

Where all our darling dreams,
Which died, whilst yet in leaf,
Shall know a brighter birth,
Where gladness pure from grief,
Where all is what it seems
And heaven unhemmed with earth.

344

II.

Ah, vain, ah vaunting voice,
That wak'st my wounded heart
And mak'st it bleed again!
Yet must I needs rejoice
To hear thy speech, that art
My faded hopes' refrain.

For better, better far
To look and long and sigh
For some ideal thing,
To love some distant star,
Than chase, with churl and king,
Life's ever-changing lie!

Come back, come back to me
And murmur in my ear
Your melodies of yore,
O visions dread and dear,
O hopes of heaven in store,
Of Paradise to be!

For, since in one decay
Both good and ill must meet,
Why then, let run to waste
The dreams that were so sweet?
Why cast the cup away,
If transient its taste?

Since sun and stars and sky,
Since heaven and sea and land
Are mirages of sight,
Which melt, when close at hand,
And all which meets the eye
But visions of the night,

345

Why, then, ah, why disdain
Delusions fond and fair,
Delights that do but seem?
Come back, sweet shapes of air,
And make my days again
A dream within a dream.

TRINITAS TRINITATUM.

LOVE is best:
To lie and rest,
Cradled on some darling breast,
What is sweeter,
What completer
Peace in all the perimeter
Of this round of nights and days?
Go thy ways,
World of weariness and madness,
Passing glee and poisoned gladness,
Ceasing cheer and staying sadness,
Nought have I to do with thee.
Play thy plays
With other preys;
Love is all in all to me.

Peace is best:
O heavenly guest,
North and South and East and West,
What is fairer,
What is rarer,
For the weary, footworn farer
Of the ways of sea and land,
Than thy hand
Laid upon his forehead's burning,
Than to find, in his returning,

346

From his spirit stress and yearning,
From his deeming doubt and care
Barred and banned,
At thy command,
Sorrow silenced, foul made fair?

Sleep is best:
In slumber's nest,
All forgotten, strife and quest,
What is fitter,
What is better
For the weary would-be setter
Of this world, the crooked, straight?
Ope thy gate,
Bird of bliss, and sooth my sorrow;
From thy treasure bid me borrow
Dreams of some serener morrow,
Where with beauty one is truth:
Snatch me straight
From age and hate
To the lands of love and youth!

Whether best
Must be confessed?
Love, peace, sleep, the palm contest.
Love is sweetest,
Peace is meetest,
Sleep for sage and fool is featest:
Each divine is: but the three,
Met together in one treasure,
To the height fill up the measure
Of the heart's ideal pleasure.
Be all three into one sheaf
Bound for me
By fate's decree,
And I'll scoff at glee and grief.

347

DE PROFUNDIS.

COME, o ye nights and ye days of entrancement,
Back to my call!
Ye, with whose help for my spirit's enhancement,
Once I knew not what the strokes of mischance meant,
Feared not to fall;
Once had I youth, love and hope at my bidding,
Faith to enforce me 'gainst Fortune's forbidding;
Once was I ringed with resolve for the ridding
Thought of Time's thrall.
Now from me youth, love and hope have departed;
Left am I lonely and weariful-hearted,
Beggared of all.

Once was I buttressed and bastioned with dreaming,
Fenced from affray,
Vantaged with visions in glory still gleaming,
Fortressed of fancy 'gainst striving and seeming,
Doubt and dismay.
Now from my slumber, alack! I awaken,
Find myself lonely, forlorn and forsaken,
All that I cherished to flight having taken,
Fleeted away.
Fate of my loves, one and all, hath bereft me,
All my bright mates have betrayed me and left me
Naked to-day.

Where, oh my dreams and my visions, ah whither,
Where did ye fly?
Hither, again, oh ye runagates, hither
Come at my cry!
See, my soul sorrows, my bosom is bleeding;
Sore is my sufferance, utter my needing:

348

Surely ye will not pass by me, unheeding,
Leave me to die,
Me that have fostered you, cherished you, cared for you,
When all the world was a desert unshared for you,
All passed you by!

Yet, if ye will not restore me, or may not,
Aught of increase,
If Fate's foreordinance summon you stay not,
Force you to cease,
For the sweet life's sake of old that I led with you,
By the wild ways that my spirit did tread with you,
Give me again my soul's angel that fled with you,
White-wingèd Peace!
Render me back the mild magic that made me,
Midmost the toils and the woes that waylaid me,
Gideon's fleece!

A GHAZEL OF SPRING.

THE bird of the morning pipes in the perfumed meads of Spring:
What shall the lips of the lover do in the May but sing?

What shall the heart of the poet do in the prime but hope,
When loosed are the locks of winter and Love in the land is King?

The larks are aloft in heaven; the finches flute on the bough;
The brakes are alive with birdsong, the meadows with blossoming.

The heart of the dreamer panteth with passion; his thought is thrilled
With glory of coming summer and gladness of harvesting:

349

He heareth the cuckoo calling; he scenteth the rose afar;
He sees in the golden distance the cornfields glittering:

He seeth the ruby clusters aglow on the ripening vines:
'Twixt summer and Spring and autumn his wish is wavering.

The world from the wrack of winter rejoiceth redeemed to be;
The sweet of the year is swelling in every living thing;

The glee of the merry Maytime is glowing in every vein;
There's never a man but the poet that goeth pondering.

Since lover and dreamer revel, since blossom and bird rejoice,
Since all men acclaim the Maytime with carol and pipe and string,

What aileth the sorry singer that he hath no heart to joy,
That he to the new sweet season alone hath no song to sing?

Alack! for the doom he knoweth that doggeth the merry May;
He knoweth the woes of winter tread hard on the heels of Spring:

He knoweth the frost-times follow the track of the flowered year;
He knoweth the autumn cometh and setteth the birds a-wing.

Ye tell him in vain that winter will pass as the Spring hath past;
That May, with the year's returning, new blossoms and birds. will bring:

The joys that are dead, he knoweth, will never again relive;
The hearts that are sere will never again know flowering:

Whatever the future bring us, whatever the new time bear,
It cannot with morning's glamour regild our evening.

350

Though bright be the blooms it proffer, though perfect its linnets' lilt,
It is not our flowers that flourish, it is not our birds that sing:

They all with our bygone gladness are fled to another clime
And there with our hopes are waiting another sun-rising.

‘Tis thus that the poet goeth alone in the May and mute,
When highway and hill with revel and meadow and moorland ring;

‘Tis thus that, when men are merry and all in the land are glad,
When mad is the world with music and fragrance and flowering,

His eyes, betwixt past and future, are blind to the blaze of noon;
His heart and his soul are haunted with thoughts of another Spring,

With dreams of that mother-country where life shall lie down to rest,
Where peace shall be had for passion and silence for sorrowing.

SOLITUDINEM FACIUNT.....

SILENCE on the sea,
Silence in the sky,
Nought aloof, a-lee,
Not a cloud on high;
Emptiness on every hand, Nothing far and nigh.

In this soul of me
Neither smile nor sigh;
All, for grief and gree,
Gone and fleeted by;
Nothing left of life and love, Nothing but to die.

351

Once, afar, anear,
Waves ran high and low;
Once, now dark, now clear,
Heaven above did show;
Once a live sky frowned and smiled O'er a live tide-flow.

Once, with hope and fear
Filled, my life did go;
Once, with smile and tear
Bloomed my heart ablow;
Once with grief and gladness throbbed. Was it better so?

Fain the sea had been
Then unstirred and still;
Fain the sky serene
Then had been at will;
Fain o'er stirless sea had heaven Flawless stretched its fill.

Fain I then had seen
Peace from good and ill,
Peace from high and mean,
Peace from throb and thrill,
Fain from joys that waste had been Free and griefs that kill.

Breeze no more and blast
Now the ocean crease;
Heaven no more o'ercast
Is by fleck or fleece;
Sky and sea are blank of wane Now and of increase.

Now from life, at last,
Hath my soul release;
Now my thoughts from past
And from future cease;
Now in nothingness I have Peace; but is it peace?

352

BIRD-PEEP.

THE birds beset me in the mists of morning,
The chill thin twilight of the dawning day,
A note of urgence, bidding, chiding, warning,
Is in their lay.

“Arise!” So runs the burden of their flyting;
“And to the morrowing day our matins share;
For better far,” they say, Mohammed citing,
“Than sleep is prayer.

“Up, sluggard, up! The night is near its neaptide;
The morning shimmers through the shallowing mirk:
The hour is here that turns the sullen sleeptide
To wake and work.”

Begone, ye wanton, over-early wakers,
Nor tear my tired ears with your shrilling call!
If you have had your twelve hours' sleep, wiseacres,
Not so with all.

Nay, some like me there be who have no choosing,
Who cannot sleep when all are slumbering,
Who needs must watch and wake, whilst you are snoozing,
Head under wing.

Fain must they snatch their sleep, when all are waking,
Who, when all sleep, must watch, whose night is day,
Their scanty stint of rest and ease how taking
And when they may.

And as for prayer, forsooth, methinks the chatter,
With which you rend sleep's cobweb-subtle woof,
No more like prayer is than the pitter-patter
Of rain on roof.

353

Go preach to those who but by day burn eyelight:
Your rede for those whose nights for slumber be,
O pert Muezzins of the morning twilight,
Is, not for me.

For me, who watch in this lugubrious London,
All-nightly wandering in the ways of wake,
Seeking the undone done, the done things undone
Again to make;

For me, whose prayer is work, whose lauds are labour,
Who watch the white stars scale the long sky-steep,
More excellent (permitting noise and neighbour)
Than prayer is sleep.

A LAST LULLABY.

INTO the rose-worlds of reverie, fairest, come follow me;
Cleave with me close to the skirts of the slackening day:
Be, ere the billows of blissfulness shadow and swallow me,
Hand in hand, heart in heart, woven with me for the Way.

Hark, on the strings of the harp of the sunsetting breezes,
Wafted, the voice of the Viewless for burden is borne,
Willing us steer with the sun to the lands where love's ease is,
Fare with night's feet to the shores of the shadowless morn!

Far in the fathomless gold upon gold of the setting,
See, where the love-lands arise from an ocean of rest,
Havens of peace and of healing, fiords of forgetting,
Ports of soul-solacement, infinite isles of the blest!

There, in those meadows and harbours of azure unmeasured,
Sojourns of sorrow sublimed and of peace after pain,
There not a dream of our days and our nights but is treasured,
There not a hope of our hearts but is garnered again.

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See, where the dear ones of old, of whom death hath bereft me,
All who forewent me in faring the shadow-ward ways,
All their fair faces, the friends who have loved me and left me,
Shine in the hovering sheen of the sunsetting haze!

Hark, how they call to me! See, how they beckon and sign to me,
Bidding me launch with the light on the westering wave,
Lapse from this life, which was ever but passion and pine to me,
Steer to the shores where the peace is, the rest which I crave!

Hear'st thou, my soul, how they hail from the sunsetting towers?
Seest how they beckon me sever from bondage and strife?
Feel'st how my feet are impelled by invisible powers?
Thou alone holdest me fast in the fetters of life.

'Ware of the waves and the breezes, that watch to bereave thee!
Hold thou my hand, lest I drown in the halcyon deep:
Clip thou me close, O thou love of my loves, lest I leave thee,
Drawn of the dreams, lest I sink in the surges of sleep!

What, O my heart, were heav'n worth to me, save thou wert there with me?
Even to Paradise will me not pass without thee.
Come with me, comfort me, company, follow and fare with me;
Steer my soul's bark through the brume and the surge of Death's sea.

EVENSONG.

ONE by one,
The pale years pass;
One by one, in being's glass
Drop the sands of time, unheeded,

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Till the appointed term be run.
Faith hath fallen sere, unseeded;
Love is left to waste, unweeded:
What's to do with Life's unneeded
Moon and sun?

Were but life
To live again,
Sure, we fable, we were fain
Follow it on other fashion
Than the old of thrall and strife;
With more reason and less passion
It for the long road we'd ration,
Less contention, more compassion,
Ruth more rife.

Good of gain
Should take the place;
Gentleness should go with grace
Hand in hand in our new being,
Were our lives to live again:
Faith from fears should serve for freeing,
Ears for hearing, eyes for seeing,
Hands for holding, feet for fleeing
Peace and pain.

All above,
In this our new
Life, contentment we'd ensue,
All the world to hope embolden
With the lodestar of our love;
Cause a-brood to be beholden
O'er the world-all Peace, the olden
Eyes of light and pinions golden
Heaven's dove.

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All the hours
Of life we'd fill
With the wonders of our will;
Earth, with glories new, should, gleaming,
Bring to birth new fruits and flowers:
Certitude we'd win for seeming,
Faith fulfilled for doubt and deeming,
Wake to life and love this dreaming
World of ours.

Darling dreams,
Before the day
That must pale and pass away,
Flowers of fancy never blowing
But by Paradisal streams,
Grains that germ from no man's sowing,
Will ye evermore be showing
Us, with glories new still glowing,
What but seems?

Yet ye fill
Our straining eyes
With your dreams of brighter skies,
From Life's bald and barren stubble
Golden cornfields conjure still,
With the world-illusion's bubble
Fool us yet, lest, toil and trouble
Tired, we turn and burst Life's double
Web of Will.

Yet repine
Thou not, sad soul,
If the golden glittering goal
Never, from the mists unweaving,
On thy ravished vision shine.
Better gladsomeness than grieving,
Better than misdoubt believing
And deception than deceiving
Is, in fine.

357

Think not shame
For thy defeat:
Were thy visions vain, though sweet,
But the noble thus mistaken
Were, since life to light first came.
Hold thy heart in hope unshaken:
Hapless those who, faith-forsaken,
Find their dreams, when they awaken,
But a name!

Have no dole
For thy dead dream.
Though thou sawst what did but seem,
There shall flower from thy failing
Hope for many a hapless soul;
Solacement to still his wailing,
Confidence to quell his quailing,
Faith to hold his heart availing
White and whole.

One by one,
The days fill up,
Drop by drop, the Future's cup.
Hold thy hopes of right unrended
By the lapse of moon and sun;
Like the sentinel, watch ended,
Conscience clear, approof-attended,
Pass to rest, work wrought, way wended,
Duty done.

THE GRAVE OF MY SONGS.

BYTIMES, from out the stillness of my days,
Grown silent, as they nigh
The darkness and the undiscovered ways,
I hear folk question why

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The fountain of my songs, that once ran high
And full, is fallen dry;
Why in that concert of the fields and hills
Of poesy, that fills
Our English heaven with music never mute,
There is one broken lute,
One voiceless bird,
One linnet of the woods, whose wilding note,
Erst in the morning hours of some that heard
Held sweet, is dumb within his stricken throat,
Ere yet the glory of the noon be o'er,—
Whose song, though day still shines, is heard no more.
—They ask in very idleness nor pause
For answer; yet the cause
Who will may know:
My voice is dumb for weariness of woe.

I am no night-bird piping in the dark;
For me, as for the lark,
The sun must rise to set me on the wing:
Except hope shine on me, I cannot sing:
I cannot carol in a lightless land
Nor hymn the dawn, except it be at hand.
Love was my dayspring and my evenglow,
The sun that set my April blossoming,
That made my summer carolful; and lo!
My daystar set in darkness long ago.

My sun lies buried in a nameless tomb,
Midmost a mighty desert of the dead,
Where the great city's gloom
Lengthens its skirt of shadow overhead,
Darkening the morning and the evening-red.
There, in the narrow room,
After long pain and many a piteous day
Of hopeless waiting for the hopeless end,
Since love nor care might bend

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The iron course of fore-appointed doom,
Her weary head to lay
She came, for whom my songs were sung of yore,
For whom the barrens of my life ran o'er
With lush and lavish bloom.

Since that sad day, my songs are turned to sighs;
The flowerage of my heart is all fordone:
But she, the eternal rest so hardly won,
At peace she lies
And sleeps as well, frail lover of the sun,
Beneath our English skies,
Our pallid skies of watchet-chequered dun,
As if she lay where the rose-laurels run
Adown Grenada's hillside, torrent-wise,
Or where, amidst the Andalusian vines,
The rosy gold of Seville's turrets shines.

Ah, what is left us of the dear-loved dead?
The dainty gold-fledged head,
The eyes' soft gray,
From which the dreams of childhood never fled;
The mouth's rose-campion red,
The lips, on which the faint smile sat alway,
Sad as the break of April's youngest day;
The rose-blush cheeks and forehead, garlanded
With clustering curls astray,
Like woodbind tendrils in the flush of May;
The voice, too soft for joy, too sweet for pain,
That in its blithest tone
Had yet some note of never-ceasing moan,
Some half-enchanted strain,
As of some sad embodied spirit, fain
To be set free again
From this waste world, that never was its own,
Since in some clime unknown
The airs and flames of heaven to it were blown?

360

These hath Time taken back to its treasury,
In other worlds, mayhap, alas! but ne'er
In this of night and day reborn to be:
Nay, all are gone and even memory
Will fade of what they were.
Might we but deem some lapse of land and sea,
Some brighter sky
Should bring these back to heart and ear and eye,
These that in death's hand lie!
Ah God, to see the daisies springing there,
Year after year, as if life ne'er should die,
And see no sign and know no reason why
Her life that was so fair,
Her soul, that was so sweet, so heavens-high,
Is faded out for e'er
Into the deserts of the abysmal air!

Could we but hope the all-engrossing earth,
That for the eternal rest
Took back her blighted beauty to its breast,
Might yet enrich our dearth
With some unknown, enchanted wonder-birth
Of blossom, brilliant as her starry eyes,
Sweet as her balmy breath,
Some flowerage of heaven defying death,
Wherein our yearning memory might retrace
The frankness of her face,
In whose bright beauty thought might recognize
The spirit-prime of her lost loveliness,
Born as it were again
In some new earth, delivered from the press
Of mortal grossness by the purge of pain,—
Or might we deem the unresponsive air,
—That bore her gentle spirit far away
And scattered it for aye
Beyond the confines of the night and day,
To all the winds of being, nor would e'er

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Vouchsafe to our despair
One echo of her voice's dulcet strain,—
Should yet grow great with graciousness and bear
Some mystic birth of music strange and fair,
Some seraph-song of Paradisal bird,
Some melody of mortals never heard,
Wherein her silver speech
And the far memory of her voice might reach
Our longing ears and witness to our faith,
She was not all disfeatured by the scaith
Of unrespective death,
That something of her sweetness yet survives
In interstellar lands
Or in the sunset-calm of spirit-lives,
Nor was all scattered by the 'scape of breath!

Nay, hope is vain; in vain our lifted hands!
In vain our cryings storm the heaven's stair:
There are no ears to hearken anywhere,
No lips to speak in answer to our prayer.
The heavens are empty as the empty air;
The Gods are dead as she is dead and nought
Abides of her but thought
In one man's brain, who soon himself must go
To join the unnumbered nations that lie low
In that untravelled land where thought is none
And sight is senseless there of star and sun.

One sole man's thought against the grim array
Of Death and Fate her only hope and stay,
Her one
Frail-seeming fortalice! And yet, how slight
Soe'er it show against the iron might
Of the blind Titans of oblivion,
Methinks it shall suffice for many a day
To hinder Time's decay
From blotting out her traces; yea, despite

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The myriad graves that let her from the light,
Th'innumerable throngs
That overcrowd her of the nameless dead,
Remembrance still shall blossom o'er her head
And guard her gentle memory from Time's wrongs;
For in that narrow bed
With her my heart lies buried and my songs.

If you should find the hidden violet there,
Soft'ning the smoky air
With that sad scent of hers, that seems to hold
The very soul of tears, or see the mould
Lit with the lucent gold
Of thronging primrose,—if the breeze should bear
The roses' royal breath
And lilies white,
The fair flower-angels with the heart of light,
With jessamines unite
To glorify that darkling garth of death,—
Think not these are but flowers,
The common creatures of the sun and showers:
Nay, these are no mere scions of the Spring,
No Summer's blossoming,
The tired earth's homage to the lengthening hours;
These are the secret treasures of my prime,
My hoards of love and rhyme,
Which, did she live, were songs, but, she being dead,
Are flowers above her head.

If you should marvel there to hear the lark
Sunder the morning-dark
With that shrill clarion-call of his for light,
Out of the deeps of night,
Or mark the mavis and the ousel make
Their wild free music there for April's sake,—
Nay, if some magic in the air should bring
The nightingales to sing

363

Her requiem who rests beneath the earth
In this grim graveyard city of her birth,
Deem not but birds are these,
But simple songsters of the woods and leas.
These are no common choristers of air,
The singing sprites of heaven's lowest stair,
That hymn the Spring and Summer everywhere;
They are the tuneful creatures of my soul,
My thoughts of joy and dole,
Which, did she live, were music wild and free,
Pageant and jubilee,
Such as had overflooded land and sea
With tides of song, but, she being dead, I gave
To glorify her grave.