Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

PROËM TO POEMS COLLECTED IN MSS. AN. ÆT. 18 AND 19.

‘Neque chorda sonum reddit quem vult manus et mens.’

Fair flocks of rainbow-plumed imaginings,
Flown hitherward from some untrodden dell
In the soul's mid forest, scarce accessible!
Lured by the lustre of your sheeny wings,
Perforce I chase you, and with patient care
Outspread in vain — in vain too oft, the snare;
Or take at last but bruised and faded things.
Yes, wayward Speech, thou dost still falsify
Mine inmost thoughts and dearest; and still I
Mourn over all thy maimed interpretings—
For all the subtler senses 'scaped like birds
From the coarse meshes of these woven words—
For the poor half-truth left, so like a lie!

An. æt. 19.

A CHILD'S LOVE-SONG.

[_]

(COMPOSED IN A SWING.)

I

The breezes are sighing
About me, above me!
Oh, I should be happy,
If Celia would love me!

II

But without Celia's love
The breezes may blow;
And, for all that I care,
To the devil may go!

An. æt. 8.

A BOY'S LOVE-SONG.

I

If Celia won't have you, fond lover,
Why squander in sighing the day?
If all your entreaties won't move her,
Resent it, and meet her half way.

II

Suppose you were now to possess her,
Her beauty and all you desired;
How soon you would cease to caress her!
How soon of the beauty be tired!

III

Then sing a more resolute measure,
Nor squander in sighing the day;
It cannot be much of a treasure
Whose charms with possession decay.

An. æt. 13.

A BOY'S DREAM.

I

My life is overhung with cold grey shade
Of frozen clouds that will not weep and die:
Hope's orphan flowers hang languid heads, and fade
'Neath such a wintry sky.

II

But though my sun be quenched, of thy pale beams,
O Moon enchantress, let the man forlorn
Weave for his soul a dædal woof of dreams,
Proof against all cold scorn!

III

Yes, let me here forget my life, my home,
In a rapt dream o'er these hypastral seas,
Charmed by the luminous fall of silver foam,
In foamy melodies:

IV

Far gazing where the ocean moonlight fades
Into the starry mystery of night;
Watching the wandering shudders of soft shades
That skim the quivering light;

V

Till, as shed snows in water, more and more
That which I am be lost in that I see.
Oh, dreamy, foamy moonlight! dreamy shore!
Oh, dreamy ecstasy!

VI

My spirit's plumes expand, and a mute wind
Lifts them, and I am floated far away
From this dull world of loveless men and blind,
Close wedded to their clay,

VII

Into new realms of buried mystery,
Whose secret gates some sudden hand unbars,
Where the wild beauties of old ages lie,
Looked down upon by stars.

VIII

Strange sounds and musical are on the gales,
Of tongues long mute; and lo! beneath my eyes
Sweep carven-prows, and shadowy glimmering sails
Of ancient argosies;

IX

And triremes with the measured flash of oars,
And foam-wan plumes, and breastplates luminous,
And calm-eyed pilots, helming toward the shores
Of leagured Pergamus.

X

My soul goes forth over the isles of fame,
White temples, and dark frondage; panting seas
That wash with wavering fringe of liquid flame
The sacred Cyclades.

XI

Now once again the startled stars behold
Wan throngs of faces turned towards the skies;
Phantoms adoring phantom gods, in old
Hypæthral sanctuaries,

XII

That stand mid lawns, for ages long unknown,
Islanded in the deep heart of forest-seas,
And resonant ever with the low lorn moan
Of Hamadryades.

XIII

Now great lone lands, with feverish interchange
Of hollow shadows and pale sickly gleams,
Perplex my eyes; wild places, vague and strange,
And veined with silvery streams—

XIV

Streams rock-born, down from splintered mountains dashing,
Girdling below, with sparkling lines of light,
White skeletons of old mammoth cities flashing
On purple plains of night.

XV

Rising o'er billowy mountain-lands unknown,
Wrecks of faint light strewn on a shadowy sea,
The aching moon looks down upon the lone
Caucasian Calvary;

XVI

And peering, pale over pale mountain snows,
On the worn watcher and the cruel chain,
Carves on the livid marble of his brows
Keen hieroglyphs of pain.

XVII

He lieth there, calm, beautiful, and bound,
Walled by vast crags and roofed by fretted skies.
What anguish speaks in that pure gaze profound
Of star-ward, earnest eyes!

XVIII

But what is here—this darker prison-place—
These friends with muffled faces and held breath?
And what is this—this one unearthly face—
This hemlock-draught of death?

XIX

Ah see, he lifts the elixir to his lips,
And, like the moon unclouding by degrees,
Breaks from the dimness of terrene eclipse
The soul of Socrates.

XX

Hail, my one love, old beauty born again,
Dear lovely things of ages long gone by,
Whose last smiles minish from the world, as men,
Grown loveless, multiply!

XXI

As a lone sitter on a sea-rock craves
Headlong to plunge into the clear green seas,
Catching the wavering lustre through the waves
Of ocean-palaces,

XXII

So have I longed, ye beautiful dead years,
For you and yours, seeing the things that be
Touch me with cold that nips, or heat that sears,
And have small part in me.

XXIII

For what to me is man, whose ruthless tread
Tramps beauty's flame to ashes day by day;
And, even with its death not satiated,
Sweeps the poor dust away?

XXIV

Wherefore, dear things of ages long gone by,
My one own love, dead Beauty born again,
I hail you and I worship you—yea I,
An alien among men,

XXV

Unloved of all. But ye, ye long-closed lids,
Unfold for me; comfort me, splendid eyes!
Smile lips, embalmed beneath the pyramids
Of heaped-up centuries!

XXVI

Spurn me not, neither scorn me, peerless throng,
Who roam immortal through the fields of verse.
Queens of the wizard universe of song,
Be ye my comforters!

XXVII

Lo, yonder—who is she, who wildly-eyed
Yearneth for somewhat o'er the star-lit sea,
From yon wet rock, whereround the sluggish tide
Sobs slow and heavily?

XXVIII

The flagging wind floats her loose fluctuous hair,
As waves float weed. Unheeded creeping down,
Her raiment leaves her glimmering bosom bare;
Sea-dews are moist thereon.

XXIX

‘Ah, whither through thine eyes hath thy soul fled?
My Dido, he will not return to thee!
We twain are lone: let twain be comforted.
Dost thou think scorn of me?

XXX

‘Kiss me, sweet lips, that have nor cold nor heat,
Thou fair, sweet, supersensual sensuousness!
Lull me with love that sees itself is sweet,
With passion passionless!’

XXXI

The eyes that have been gazing otherwhere
Droop down on mine, as these words strike her ears:
And lo, the hard dry ice of glazed despair
Thaws in slow large warm tears.

XXXII

The relaxed lips, half opening, dreamily,
Breathe soft things over me, her worshipper—
So soft they all melt in the moist wind's sigh,
And the sad wave-water.

XXXIII

I only feel on mine those lips of hers,
And the souls mingling, where the twain mouths cling,
In harmony like sun-blent rain-colours,
Or stricken string with string.

XXXIV

And each soul's aching melts in sighs, as snow,
Spring-charmed, in dew; love making all past pain
Sweet sadness, as a red sun sets a-glow
A dying day of rain.

XXXV

But, hark! a gasping wind is gathering:
I catch a sudden sprinkling of blown spray.
I start: my bubble bursts, and everything—
My whole dream—falls away.

XXXVI

Numbed Self springs up; and, fresh from trance, once more
Clutches my soul, once more made void and cold;
And I, lone on this old familiar shore,
With stupid eyes, behold

XXXVII

A great night hung with starlight, stooping down
Over the tumbled silver of the sea;
And hear a voice, `Is beauty wholly gone?
Let these things comfort thee:

XXXVIII

`And Love, and Good, and Beauty, one thing crowned
With many names, lead on thy swerveless soul
By ways wherein but parts of good are found,
To realms where reigns the whole.

XXXIX

`Thou dost not seek the soul in coffined clay:
Then seek not Beauty in the blind, dead years.
Onward! This life will soon have passed away,
Of prisoned straining tears.

XL

‘To thee the Nile of Time is sourceless ever!
Vain, vain to tempt the upper mystery!
Trim thou thy sails for where the buffeting river
Meets with God's boundless sea.’

Littlehampton, an. æt. 17.

SONG.

[I did not offer thee up mine heart]

I.

I did not offer thee up mine heart,
Nor did I ask, thou know'st, for thine.
I only said, ‘Until we part
Lend it, and I will lend thee mine.’

II.

And have we past those hours in vain?
We met, we smiled—we smile, we sever.
Is it in vain that thus we twain
Have met, though thus we part for ever?

III.

In vain? Shall I ever forget your eyes,
Or the love that died of despair in me?
For my love but lived in despair's despite,
Like a new-born babe that sees the light
For a moment, and smiles, and dies,
And lives in its mother's memory.

An. æt.

LUX MALIGNA.

Her eyes were like Cocytus' midnight deeps,
When far in the transparent darkness sleeps
The moon, whose face, as the waves tremble, flashes
In oily ripples, mid the reedy lashes
Dying incessantly. Who would not shrink,
Shivering, from that sad stream's uncertain brink,
Fancying the noiseless volumes sliding o'er
Strange horrors unconceived, and brimmed with store
Of lizard-footed things? So none there were
Who loved those eyes, and the strange moonlight there.

An. æt. 18.

A FRIEND.

Friend let me call you—may I? friend to me:
And like a casket let that wide word be,
Wherein, perchance, some costlier treasure lies—
Wherein we hide, in clouds of close eclipse,
The faltering few things known to lips and lips—
The many mute things known to eyes and eyes!

An æt. 18.

ALTER ET IDEM.

I

This day, in this same place, we met last year,
And Absence, the omnipotent severer,
Since then on thee and me hath worked his will;
I would, my last year's love, as thou stand'st here,
My last year's love, I would I loved thee still!

II

Does not this place seem strange to thee and me—
This fresh cool wash and whisper of the sea,
We knew so well together? Oh, how strange!
All's out of tune now—jars discordantly.
This old known place, I would it too would change!

III

How miserably the same those cliffs of grey!
And see—a boat again, too, in the bay!
And yon lone sea-girt grey rock, sunset-lit
With those same tints we two admired that day!
My last year's love, hast thou forgotten it?

IV

And thou—ah, wherefore art thou still so fair?
Why are thy smiles still just so what they were,
Save that for me they speak not any love?
Why hast thou still that same bright golden hair,
Now I have no share in the praise thereof?

V

I may not call you now what I did then.
Your lips and smiles are cold and alien.
Those times and these—how like! how wide apart!
I have lost what I shall never learn again.
I have forgotten the by-ways of your heart.

An. æt. 18.

ON LAKE COMO.

The stars are o'er our heads in hollow skies,
In hollow skies the stars beneath our boat.
Betwixt the stars of two infinities,
Midway upon a gleaming film, we float.
My lips are on the sounding horn;
The sounding horn with music fills.
Faint echoes backwards from the world are borne,
Tongued by yon dusky zone of slumbering hills.
The world spreads wide on every side,
But dark and cold it seems to me.
What care I, on this charmèd tide,
For aught save those far stars and thee?

An. æt. 17.