University of Virginia Library

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS

A DAY OF DEFECTION

This day among the days will never stand,
Carven and clear, a shape of fair delight,
With singing lips, and gaze of innocent might,
Crown'd queenwise, or the lyre within her hand,
And firm feet making conquest of a land
Heavy with fruitage; nay, from all men's sight
Drop far, cold sun, and let remorseful Night
Cloke the shamed forehead, and the bosom's brand.
Could but the hammer rive, the thunder-stone
Flung forth from heaven on some victorious morn
Grind it to dust! Slave, must I always see
Thy beauty soil'd? Must shining days foregone
Admit thee peer, and wondering new-born
To-morrow meet thy dull eyes' infamy?

SONG AND SILENCE

While Sorrow sat beside me many a day,
I,—with head turned from her, and yet aware
How her eyes' light was on my brow and hair,
The light which bites and blights our gold to grey,—
Still sang, and swift winds bore my songs away
Full of sweet sounds, as of a lute-player
Who sees fresh colours, breathes the ripe soft air,
And hears the cuckoo shout in dells of May,
Being filled with ease and indolent of heart.
So sang I, Sorrow near me: chide me not,
O Joy, for silence now! Hereafter wise,
Large song may come, life blossoming in art,
From this new fate; but leave me, thou long sought,
To gaze awhile into those perfect eyes.

LOVE-TOKENS

I wear around my forehead evermore,
The circlet of your praise, pure gold; and how
I walk forth crown'd, the approving angels know,
And see how I am meeker than before
Being thus proud. For roses my full store,
Upon a cheek where flowers will scantly blow,
Is your lips' one immortal touch, and lo!
All shame deserts my blood to the heart's core.
Dare I display love's choicest gift—this scar
Still sanguine-hued? Here ran your sudden brand
Sheer through the starting flesh, and let abroad
A traitor's life; your wrathful eyes afar,
Had doom'd him first. Ah, gracious, valiant hand
Which drew me bleeding to the feet of God!

A DREAM

I dreamed I went to seek for her whose sight
Is sunshine to my soul; and in my dream
I found her not; then sank the latest beam
Of day in the rich west; upswam the Night
With sliding dews, and still I searched in vain,
Through thickest glooms of garden-alleys quaint,
On moonlit lawns, by glimmering lakes where faint
The ripples brake and died, and brake again.
Then said I, “At God's inner court of light
I will beg for her;” straightway toward the same
I went, and lo! upon the altar-stair,
She knelt with face uplifted, and soft hair
Fallen upon shoulders purely gowned in white
And on her parted lips I read my name.

MICHELANGELESQUE

Shaping thy life what if the stubborn stuff
Grudge to inform itself through each dull part
With the soul's high invention, and thy art
Seem a defeated thing, and earth rebuff
Heaven's splendour, choosing darkness,—leave the rough
Brute-parts unhewn. Toilest thou for the mart
Or for the temple? Does the God see start
Quick beauty from the block, it is enough.
The spirit, foiled elsewhere, presses to the mouth,
Disparts the lips, lives on the lighted brow,
Fills the wide nostrils, flings the imperious chin
Out proudly. Now behold! the lyric youth,
The wrestler stooping in the act to win,
Pythian Apollo with the vengeful bow.

LIFE'S GAIN

“Now having gained Life's gain, how hold it fast?
The harder task! because the world is still
The world, and days creep slow, and wear the will,
And Custom, gendering in the heart's blind waste,
Brings forth a wingèd mist, which with no haste
Upcircling the steep air, and charged with ill,
Blots all our shining heights adorable,
And leaves slain Faith, slain Hope, slain Love the last.”
O shallow lore of life! He who hath won
Life's gain doth hold nought fast, who could hold all,
Holden himself of strong, immortal Powers.
The stars accept him; for his sake the Sun
Hath sworn in heaven an oath memorial;
Around his feet stoop the obsequious Hours.

COMPENSATION

You shake your head and talk of evil days:
My friend, I learn'd ere I had told twelve years
That truth of yours,—how irrepressible tears
Surprise us, and strength fails, and pride betrays,
And sorrows lurk for us in all the ways
Of joyous living. But now to front my fears
I set a counter-truth which comes and cheers
Our after-life, when, temperate, the heart weighs
Evil with good. Do never smiles surprise
Sad lips? Did the glad violets blow last spring
In no new haunts? Or are the heavens not fair
After drench'd days of June, when all the air
Grows fragrant, and the rival thrushes sing,
Until stars gather into twilight skies?

TO A CHILD DEAD AS SOON AS BORN

A little wrath was on thy forehead, Boy,
Being thus defeated; the resolvèd will
Which death could not subdue, was threatening still
From lip and brow. I know that it was joy
No casual misadventure might destroy
To have lived, and fought and died. Therefore I kill
The pang for thee, unknown; nor count it ill
That thou hast entered swiftly on employ
Where Life would plant a warder keen and pure.
I thought to see a little piteous clay
The grave had need of, pale from light obscure
Of embryo dreams; thy face was as the day
Smit on by storm. Palms for my child, and bay!
Thus far thou hast done well, true son: endure.

BROTHER DEATH

When thou would'st have me go with thee, O Death,
Over the utmost verge, to the dim place,
Practise upon me with no amorous grace
Of fawning lips, and words of delicate breath,
And curious music thy lute uttereth;
Nor think for me there must be sought-out ways
Of cloud and terror; have we many days
Sojourned together, and is this thy faith?
Nay, be there plainness 'twixt us; come to me
Even as thou art, O brother of my soul;
Hold thy hand out and I will place mine there;
I trust thy mouth's inscrutable irony,
And dare to lay my forehead where the whole
Shadow lies deep of thy purpureal hair.

THE MAGE

When I shall sing my songs the world will hear,
—Which hears not these,—I shall be white with age,
My beard on breast great as befits a mage
So skilled; but song is young, and in no drear
Tome-crammed, lamp-litten chamber shall mine fear
To pine ascetic. Where the woods are deep,
Thick leaves for arras, in a noonday sleep
Of breeze and bloom, gaze, but my art revere!
There I will sit, and score rare wisardry
In characters vermilion, azure, gold,
With bird, starred flower, and peering dragon-fly
Limned in the lines; and secrets shall be told
Of greatest Pan, and lives of wood-nymphs shy,
Blabbed by my goat-foot servitor overbold.

WISE PASSIVENESS

Think you I choose or that or this to sing?
I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream
Dreaming among green fields its summer dream,
Which takes whate'er the gracious hours will bring
Into its quiet bosom; not a thing
Too common, since perhaps you see it there
Who else had never seen it, though as fair
As on the world's first morn; a fluttering
Of idle butterflies; or the deft seeds
Blown from a thistle-head; a silver dove
As faultlessly; or the large, yearning eyes
Of pale Narcissus; or beside the reeds
A shepherd seeking lilies for his love,
And evermore the all-encircling skies.

THE SINGER'S PLEA

Why do I sing? I know not why, my friend;
The ancient rivers, rivers of renown,
A royal largess to the sea roll down,
And on those liberal highways nations send
Their tributes to the world,—stored corn and wine,
Gold-dust, the wealth of pearls, and orient spar,
And myrrh, and ivory, and cinnabar,
And dyes to make a presence-chamber shine.
But in the woodlands, where the wild-flowers are,
The rivulets, they must have their innocent will
Who all the summer hours are singing still,
The birds care for them, and sometimes a star,
And should a tired child rest beside the stream
Sweet memories would slide into his dream.

THE TRESPASSER

Trespassers will be prosecuted,—so
Announced the inhospitable notice-board;
But silver-clear as any lady's word
Come in, in, in, come in, now rich and low,
Now with tumultuous palpitating flow,
I swear by ring of Canace I heard.
“Sure,” said I, “this is no brown-breasted bird,
But some fair princess, lost an age ago
Through stepdame's cursed spell, till the saints brought her
Who but myself, the knight foredoomed of grace.”
Alas! poor knight, in all that cockney place
You found no magic, save one radiant sight,
The huge, obstreperous house-keeper's grand-daughter,
A child with eyes of pure ethereal light.

RITUALISM

This is high ritual and a holy day;
I think from Palestrina the wind chooses
That movement in the firs; one sits and muses
In hushed heart-vacancy made meek to pray;
Listen! the birds are choristers with gay
Clear voices infantine, and with good will
Each acolyte flower has swung his thurible,
Censing to left and right these aisles of May.
For congregation, see! real sheep most clean,
And I—what am I, worshipper or priest?
At least all these I dare absolve from sin,
Ay, dare ascend to where the splendours shine
Of yon steep mountain-altar, and the feast
Is holy, God Himself being bread and wine.

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

I, who lie warming here by your good fire,
Was once Prometheus and elsewhere have lain;
Ah, still in dreams they come,—the sudden chain,
The swooping birds, the silence, the desire
Of pitying, powerless eyes, the night, and higher
The keen stars; (if you please I fill again
The bowl, Silenus)—; yet 'twas common pain
Their beaks' mad rooting; O, but they would tire,
And one go circling o'er the misty vast
On great, free wings, and one sit, head out-bent,
Poised for the plunge; then 'twas I crushed the cry
“Zeus, Zeus, I kiss your feet, and learn at last
The baseness of this crude self-government
Matched with glad impulse and blind liberty.”

KING MOB

Dismiss, O sweet King Mob, your foot-lickers!
When you held court last night I too was there
To listen, and in truth well nigh despair
O'ercame me when I saw your greedy ears
Drink such gross poison. I could weep hot tears
To think how three drugged words avail to keep
A waking people still on the edge of sleep,
And lose the world a right good score of years.
I love you too, big Anarch, lately born,
Half beast, yet with a stupid heart of man,
And since I love, would God that I could warn
Work out the beast as shortly as you can,
Till which time oath of mine shall ne'er be sworn,
Nor knee be bent to you, King Caliban.

THE MODERN ELIJAH

What went ye forth to see? a shaken reed?—
Ye throngers of the Parthenon last night.
Prophet, yea more than prophet, we agreed;
No John a' Desert with the girdle tight,
And locusts and wild honey for his need,
Before the dreadful day appears in sight
Urging one word to make the conscience bleed,
But an obese John Smith, “a shining light”
(Our chairman felt), “an honour to his creed.”
O by the gas, when buns and tea had wrought
Upon our hearts, how grew the Future bright,—
The Press, the Institutes, Advance of Thought,
And People's Books, till every mother's son
Can prove there is a God, or there is none.

DAVID AND MICHAL

(2 Samuel vi. 16)

But then you don't mean really what you say—
To hear this from the sweetest little lips,
O'er which each pretty word daintily trips
Like small birds hopping down a garden way,
When I had given my soul full scope to play
For once before her in the Orphic style
Caught from three several volumes of Carlyle,
And undivulged before this very day!
O young men of our earnest school confess
How it is deeply, darkly tragical
To find the feminine souls we would adore
So full of sense, so versed in worldly lore,
So deaf to the Eternal Silences,
So unbelieving, so conventional.