University of Virginia Library

[[SONNETS 42–47]]

42
THE HOME OF THE DYMOCKS

Beneath the couchant lion, grey and grim,
We lit upon the last of state romance,
The last of chivalrous circumstance;
The Champions—each his banneret over him,
Moth-eaten, fluttering in its faded rim—
Who gather'd on their ineffectual lance
Death's dust and rust, their gallant utterance
Thinn'd, the coronations waxing dim
As are the memories of the long-dead kings,
As are the memories of the knight and squire,
Here where Time's self sleeps stirless 'neath the sky
In all this courtly, ghostly Scrivelsby,
And shadows are the only moving things
In all the quiet land of Lincolnshire.

43
FROST—MORNING

The morn is cold. A whiteness newly brought
Lightly and loosely powders every place,
The panes among yon trees that eastward face
Flash rosy fire from the opposite dawning caught,—
As the face flashes with a splendid thought,
As the heart flashes with a touch of grace
When heaven's light comes on ways we cannot trace,
Unsought, yet lovelier than we ever sought.
In the blue northern sky is a pale moon,
Through whose thin texture something doth appear
Like the dark shadow of a branchy tree.—
Fit morning for the prayers of one like me,
Whose life is in midwinter, and must soon
Come to the shortest day of all my year!

44
SUNSET

The early sunset occupies the entire
Variety of heav'n with various dyes,
Enough to glorify a hundred skies.
Far west five lines of crimson and of fire
I count, rigid and straight as if of wire,
Like a fan, first with shell-like bands doth rise
Something of silvery texture, to surprise
The spaces overhead, and what is higher
By changing sudden into many a fleece
Faint flush'd with unimaginable rose,
That slowly steels itself with sternest blue.
The heav'n is peaceful with an ominous peace
As of a nation waiting for its throes,
And feeling strong enough to see things through.

45
THE VOICE OF OCEAN

The ocean's voice is vast, and only one,
Yet still as its great messages are lent
To different hearts it seemeth different.
The child finds fairy music in its tone,
Sweet fear, dim bells of silver unison;
To the young fair adventure they present,
Singing him off to isle or continent,
Where deeds of high results are to be done.
The old man hears them—‘Grey we are and lorn.’
‘Lonely and grey,’ he thinks; ‘and some old sin
Under the starlight or the storm always
Drives you a work to do, a bourne to win,
Baffled through long æonian yesterdays,
To end in peace some unapparent morn.’

46
THE LAST DAY OF SUMMER

All the sweet summer azure is not fled—
What hath the woodland, then, to do with grief?
The apparition of a yellow leaf,
The half-suspected russet overhead—
Of this it dreams, and is disquieted.
Snowdrops and other dainty things as brief,
Whereof the young anemones were chief,
The tremulous anemones are dead.
Long since the snowdrops have been fain to die;
Long since the anemones have pass'd away:
Some colour'd leaves discolour every morn—
Touch'd by the thought of which chronology
The trees have something that they long to say,
Inaudible, multitudinous, forlorn.

47
A HOT DAY BY LOUGH SWILLY

A hot day in September. A white mist
Clung to the vale, and up the hill a blur,
As of thin smoke, part blue, part tenderer,
Stretch'd o'er the corn. The ripples lazily kiss'd
As on the bent I lay their sound to list.
Between Lough Swilly and the mountain spur
I saw a green down stretch without a stir.
A curlew was the only harmonist.
The sole shapes there were gulls, that in the heat
Strutted upon the sward a space each way,
White-plumed; and crows, like crones in shawls of black
Dropp'd glossy from the shoulders to the feet.
But far afield, howe'er may burn the day,
Harvesters work—work's lessons never lack.