University of Virginia Library

Sonnets chiefly in my Library

ADVICE TO SONNET-WRITERS

1
If thou canst mould thy work as Winter does

If thou canst mould thy work as Winter does,
Who helps, not hides, its beauty line on line,
Intricately maintaining his design
Through all the infinite intaglios
Pent on a narrow pane; if to a rose
A diamond thou canst cut—it may be thine
The sonnet's subtle secret to divine.
Chiefly if thou thy central thought dispose
So that through words by brevity made pale
They who look studiously shall see at last
Thy thought grow large—as in a misty zone
At sea through the grey gazed-on grows a mast
Obscurely carring noble heights of sail
Miles through the dim magnificent unknown;

2
If thou hast merely art mosaicwise

If thou hast merely art mosaicwise
To cramp just fourteen lines with rhymes just five;
If thou our Shakespeare's sonnet half despise
Because he greatly spurn'd so strict a gyve,
Because he royally allows rhymes seven,
Because that glorious couplet at the close
Flower'd like the spring, and starry like the heav'n
Seem to uphold a world in its repose;
If thou so let thy fingers count away
That all uncountable music of renown,
Those sonnets dark, yet full of fadeless day,
Little, yet living half the epics down—
Give thine own sonnets to the fire that lies
Ready for all correct stupidities.

3
A CRITIC OF POETRY

I heard a critic in a certain town
Lecture on Poetry. As butterflies,
Like sapphire spangles fallen from splendid skies,
On a stiff piece of cardboard are pinn'd down,
So dealt he with great verses, of renown
Them disenchanting, and their rich surprise.
He told the poets off by families,
Scarce one with beauty of his very own.
‘I hold song separate from the man himself;
I hold it for a delicate verbal trick.
Dainty work here!—this is the way he does it:
He puts me up a private colour-shelf;
Drawing a flower, he steals red tints to rose it.
Poetry's a pretty branch of rhetoric!’

4
THE CRITIC ANSWERED

Vexed by this voluble talker, I turn'd home,
Half-angry with myself for a half ‘yes.’
Hush! a lark sings. Uplifted littleness,
Airy Longinus of the azure dome,
Poet so born, who didst not so become!
Thou tellest me what yon critic did not guess—
Our songs are just ourselves, not more nor less,
High just as they are high the song starts from.
Voice that voyagest over vibrant seas,
Joy well content with thine own rich enjoyment,
Traveller up from daisies to the sun,
Glorious perfection in a small employment,
Tuned triumph, wing'd, transcendently at ease,
Thou and thy ditty are entirely one.

SONNETS CHIEFLY SUGGESTED BY ST. AUGUSTINE

5
WHAT WE LOVE IN LOVING GOD

What love I when I love Thee, O my God?
Not corporal beauty, nor the limb of snow,
Nor of loved light the white and pleasant flow,
Nor manna showers, nor streams trickling abroad,
Nor flowers of Heaven, nor small stars of the sod.
Not these, my God, I love, who love Thee so.
Yet love I something better than I know:—
A certain light on a more golden road;
A sweetness, not of honey or the hive;
A scent, a music, and a blossoming,
Fair, fadeless, undiminish'd, never dim;
Eternal, timeless, placeless, without gyve,
The unknown desire of each created thing—
This, this is what I love in loving Him.

6
This, this is what I love, and what is this?

This, this is what I love, and what is this?
I ask'd the beautiful earth, who said—‘Not I.’
I ask'd the depths, and the immaculate sky
And all the spaces said—‘Not He, but His.’
And so, like one who scales a precipice,
Height after height, I scaled the flaming ball
Of the great universe—yea, pass'd o'er all
The world of thought, which so much higher is.
Then I exclaimed—‘To whom is mute all murmur
Of phantasy, of nature, and of art,
Who seeks not earthly sweetnesses to win,
He, than articulate language hears a firmer
And grander meaning in his own deep heart.’
O voiceless voice—‘My servant, enter in!’

7
IDEAS FADING IN THE MEMORY

Quickly they vanish to a land unlit,
Things for which no man cares to smile or mourn,
Forgotten in the place where they were born;
Each hath a marvellous history unwrit,
A fathomless river floweth over it.
Quickly they fade, with no more traces worn
Than shadows flying over fields of corn
Wear, as in soft processional they flit.
The thought (much like the children of our youth)
Doth often die before us, and presents,
With tints much faded and with lines effaced,
The very semblance of the monuments
To which we are approaching still in sooth,
Although the brass and marble do not waste.

8
REVIVAL OF MEMORY

Sadly, O sage, thine images are told.
Think we of cornfields, where again there fall
At Memory's touch, that is so magical,
All the long lights that ever rippled gold
Across their surface, all the manifold
Wavelets of tremulous shadow; and withal
Through doors and windows of a haunted hall
Those buried children of the days of old,
Those evanescent children of dead years,
Clouded or glorious, glide into the room,
Sudden as yellow leaves drop from the tree,
And all the moulder'd imagery reappears,
And all the letter'd lines are fair to see,
And all the legend lives above the tomb?

9
MARVELS OF MEMORY

Strange dying, resurrection stranger yet!
In the deep chamber, Memory, let me dwell,
Folded in a recess ineffable.
Lo! in that silent chamber sometimes set,
I music hear, and breath of violet
(Though flowers be none within a mile to smell)
From breath of lily I can finely tell,
And I with joy remember my regret,
And I, regretful, think how I was glad.
O men! who roam to see world-famous tracts,
Visits to many a lovely land ye weave
In looms of fancy—but yourselves ye leave,
Yourselves more marvellous than all Alps snow-clad,
All great white wonders of the cataracts.

SONNETS ON PRAYER

10
ON PRAYER

What is the saddest, sweetest, lowest sound
Nearest akin to perfect silence? Not
The delicate whisper sometimes in the hot
Autumnal morning heard the cornfields round;
Nor yet to lonely man, now almost bound
By slumber, near his house a murmuring river
Buzzing and droning o'er the stones for ever.
Not such faint voice of Autumn oat-encrown'd,
And not such liquid murmur, O my heart!
But tears that drop o'er doubts as well as graves,
A sound the very weeper scarcely hears,
A music in which silence hath some part.
O! the all-gentle by all-hearing saves—
Hold not Thy peace then, Saviour, at my tears.

11
AN ETERNAL ROSE AND MOTHER

Look, if eternally a fair rose grew,
And if therefrom suns near yet not intense
Won out a purple-flamèd opulence,
Impassioning the paleness through and through
Eternally beneath the unchanging blue;
Then should that rose eternally from thence
Offer its beauty to the eyes and sense.
And if eternally some mother knew
Her gentle babe born under some ill star
Eternal—but eternally most weak—
Then should she ever wail her child of woe!
Such children, surely, are the dearest far.
For ever have her tenderest words to speak,
For ever have her purest tear to flow.

12
The roses and the mothers cannot choose

The roses and the mothers cannot choose
But give forth what of beautiful they have,
But give forth what fair love and sunshine gave
In tender sympathy, or delicate hues,
Soft scents eternal, love's undying dews.
And He who bore the man's heart from earth's wave
To Heaven's calm shore that He might sweetly save,
Cannot but pity as our wail renews.
Fragrant eternally were the eternal rose,
Eternal were compassion for the child,
Eternal are our sorrows in His sight;
And everlastingly compassion flows
From Him who bears Humanity undefiled,
For infinite pathos pity infinite.

13
WHAT PRAYER IS NOT

Prayer is not eloquence nor measured tone
Nor memory musical of periods fair.
The son forlorn forgetteth half his prayer.
Faith sighs its prayers, or weeps them with long moan,
Its periods have a grammar of their own.
Babes have no words, but only weep or e'er
The mother reads the little hunger there.
Faith looks its prayers. Behold, before the throne
There be full many love-looks of the saints;
And David's upward look from the earth's din
To yon long silence may be read, I think,
Legibly in Heaven's hymn-book of complaints.
Ah! the best prayers that we can ever win
Can scarcely be imprison'd by our ink.

ST. JOHN AT PATMOS

14
What be his dreams in Patmos?

What be his dreams in Patmos? O'er the seas
Looks he toward Athens, where the very fall
Of Grecian sunlight is Platonical?
Or, peradventure, towards the Cyclades,
The Delian earth-star, ray'd with laurel-trees—
From ribbon'd baskets where Demeter threw
Flowers the colour of the country blue
Oat-garlanded in Paros—or where bees
Humming o'er Amalthæa, who fed Zeus
With goatmilk, goldenly the forest starr'd—
Where Dionysus, driven o'er the brine,
Triumphant as his prow went Naxosward,
Ivied the mast, and cream'd the crimson wine,
Crimson, or yellow-colour'd Grecian juice.

15
IN GALILEE

Not fancies of the soft Ionian clime,
Nor thoughts on Plato's page, that greener grow
Than do the plane-trees by the pleasant flow
Of the Ilissus in the summer time,
Came to the Galilean with sweet chime.
Blanch'd in the blaze of Syrian summers, lo!
He gazes on Gennesareth, aglow
Within its golden mountain cup sublime.
The sunset comes. Behind the Roman tower
The dark boat's circled topsails shift and swell,
Quench'd is the flickering furnace of the dust,
The mountains branded as with red gold rust,
The tunic'd boatmen dip their nets an hour
And the sun goeth down on Jezreel.

16
GROWTH OF KNOWLEDGE OF CHRIST

But ere heaven's cressets burn along its plain,
The Master comes. And as a man, all night
Lull'd in a room full fronting ocean's might,
First waking sees a whiteness on his pane,
A little dawning whiteness, then again
A little line insufferably bright
Edging the ripples, orbing on outright
Until the glory he may scarce sustain;
And as a mighty city far-descried,
Although the same from each ascension high
Looks strangely different to the merchantmen
Who wend their way thereto by hill or glen—
So by St. John's deep meditation eyed
That Nature grew to God's own majesty.

LEGEND: HOW ST. JOHN'S BETROTHAL WAS BROKEN

17
An antique legend speaks to this effect:

An antique legend speaks to this effect:
‘John in his youth had woo'd and won a maid,
But, of his own felicity afraid,
Fear'd to be its triumphant architect.
Wherefore from week to week did he expect
Until his Lord and Master should have said
“Thou mayest,” or “mayest not.” One night, wind-stay'd,
The fishers saw the o'ercast sky fire-fleck'd.
Then through the blinding spindrift of the storm
There seem'd to walk a Shape on Galilee
Whose footsteps were not wetted of the spray.
And by the boat the white mysterious form
Stood closest John, and seem'd to him to say,
Looking him through, “John! I have need of thee.”’

18
Then follow'd something more. A little space

Then follow'd something more. A little space
The sea ceas'd working. Thereon dimlythrough
The darkness upon John's weak soul there grew
A sad, white, sorrowing, reproachful face,
With eyes that look'd through life and every place,
As if the end of all our works it knew,
Seeing through all things to the one thing true,
To the lost glory, and the fading grace.
And a voice came moaning across the Lake:
‘My servant John! if thou hadst not been mine,
I would have suffer'd thee to marry her.’
And of the heart He was about to break,
Broken His own by that stern love divine,
Too sadly well He was the interpreter.

19
FALSE ETHICAL CONCEPTION OF THIS LEGEND

Thanks that the legend bids not for belief,
That the true John begins not with a high
And flagrant treason 'gainst humanity;
That the true Christ rejoices not in grief
Which robs life's harvest of its richest sheaf,
But doth begin from Cana, where there lie
The finest wine-drops of festivity
In life's poor water—much delight, in brief,
Briefly insphered, where young hearts chasten well
The single selfishness by doubling it,
And ask another strongly to say yes,
Perchance within a richer home to dwell,
Perchance to share a shadowy quietness,
But always richer if by love 'tis lit.

ST. LUKE'S HELLENIC CHARACTER

20
Methought I saw one pass, son of the race

Methought I saw one pass, son of the race
Wherein the splendid mediate we seek
Betwixt the West and Asia, a quick Greek
Hellenic, out of Antioch. I could trace
Moods ever flitting o'er his mobile face.
Pathetic was his voice, and seemed to break
With pity for the hearts of those who ache.
He look'd for beauty in some lovely place,
Perfect but unattainable. His glance
Had something piercing various natures through
Down to the deep foundations of our life,
Yet seeking in heav'n an unimagined blue;
And round about our vile and vulgar strife,
Beauty and charm, the magic and romance.

21
BEARING ON HIS GOSPEL

So when he turned Evangelist, see what came,—
Writ on his page were stories, with sweet tears
Baptized by all the yearnings of the years.
The King looks forth from beauty, not from flame;
The earth grows prouder and puts off her shame
With loftier companionship than appears
In Fauns and Dryads when the wanderer nears,
And the idyllic earth is not the same.
Still by the Grecian taught each age surveys
Things fairer than are song's creations all,
Yet in historic verity strongly set
The symphony of Bethlehem's pastoral,
The broken litanies, the men who gaze
On the ascending Form from Olivet.

COWLEY'S POEMS

22
Thee, far-off poet near the first of all

Thee, far-off poet near the first of all,
Fain would I give the best I have to give.
Little thou hast of false or fugitive,
Though they misname thee metaphysical.
Our glorious Tennyson to rise and fall
Of thy Pindaric greatly did arrive,
Listen'd fastidiously, and bade it live,
Ancient and modern mated to enthrall.
Nor only war and state were for thy lyre.
Thou sawest on the brow of science drawn
The passionate look whereto thy peers were blind.
Thine was the genuine Idean fire,
The anticipation dark yet disciplined,
Prophetic, hailing heralds of the dawn.

CRASHAW'S POEMS

23
Among earth's poets certain known of few

Among earth's poets certain known of few
Pass into deathlessness o'er death's frontiers,
Unpraised, unprized, unlaurell'd of their peers.
Yet in time's patient light their work shows true:
The far-off generations find it new.
In happy mornings of immortal years
Immortal is the colour that it wears.
Great poets greatly borrow of its blue,
Or pass into the heights that few attain,
Humming some bars of it 'neath brows starcrown'd.
O Poet of the poets! so with thee.
With tints of thine did Pope his marble stain,
And Milton's spirit in thy music found
Majestic swell, soft fall of infinite sea.

24
Sensuous, some say, a very amorist

Sensuous, some say, a very amorist
In spiritual spheres of mystic sweets—
Drowsy with incense-fumes, a feebler Keats
Who made the realm of prayer his own acquist.
Nay! let us hail thee palmer, harmonist,
Young heart of fire whose life-consuming beats
Panted it dead, longing for bless'd retreats.
They must love thee who love the love of Christ.
‘Not Spanish, but heav'n,’ here Theresa spake.
The mother intemerate outsnows snow.
The cross is purple with its Passion-wine;
And penitent sinners weep with such sweet woe,
That you might think the nightingales awake
In the long dusk of dark-draped aisles divine.

25
In our tongue's youth something he strongly wrought

In our tongue's youth something he strongly wrought
With the intrícacies of the octave rhyme.
Sweetness was his, and awe, a manifold chime
Of church-bells, and a wealth of sacred thought.
Years fail'd him, and his purpose came to nought.
The silver measure chosen in his prime
Died with him; and thereafter tide and time
Pass'd, and none else its difficult beauty sought.
Then Byron made it classical for sin—
Sin's wild wit and theatrical despair,
Its passionate rapture and hysteric woe.
When shall Heav'n raise a poet wise to win
That various melody for itself, and so
Make our song richer by one sacred air?

GIBBON'S ‘MEMOIRS’

26
He lived to learn, to watch his knowledge grow

He lived to learn, to watch his knowledge grow,
Nightly to question what advance precise
Twelve hours had given to that tide of ice.
If passionate, passionate only to lay low
Soul-highness, polishing his word-gems slow
As tides work pebbles smooth, until his nice
Sarcastic taste could say—‘Let this suffice!’
Marvel not then that to love's creed his no
He hiss'd, and in the volume of his book
Suspected every lily for its whiteness,
All large heart-poetry for lack of prose.
The Alpine majesty, the ample rose,
The novelties of God he could not brook—
The love that is of love the essential Brightness.

27
Wherefore his picture evermore was hued

Wherefore his picture evermore was hued
Over with colours, peradventure fine,
But mixed not for a Heav'n-conceived design.
A creed that like the sacred mountains stood
Sunlighted depth or moonlit amplitude,
Majestic, measureless, with trim tape-line
Did he attempt, and scorn'd, being undivine,
The excess divine, the tropic rain of God.
Faith's flowers must die where heart-air is so chilly;
Fair must seem false when love's so little kind,
Denying love when love is nobly new.
The virgin's fingers fold a tarnish'd lily
For those who scorn virginity. The blind
Are proof against sweet proof that Heav'n is blue.

28
Yet with what art, thro' what enormous space

Yet with what art, thro' what enormous space,
With what innumerous threads how deftly plann'd,
Silverly separate in the subtle hand,
He winds the stories to their central place!
Nothing so false as may such art disgrace;
But colours here deliberately wann'd,
There as of fabled sunsets fading grand
Upon grey gods of high pathetic face.
Faint thro' the laurel groves of Antioch
The last hymn dies, and the earth's large regret
Divinely wails thro' many a dusk-gold lawn.
Then a stern symbol rises from the rock—
The cross of Roman Syria grimly set,
Leafless, dim-lit in leaden-colour'd dawn.

THE HEREAFTER

29
THE DEISTS ON ETERNAL PUNISHMENT

Finite offence, infinite punishment!
No other finite works out infinite.
And what is sin? Full often to the light
Of life's main sea merely a shadow lent
From a thin cloud—a momentary bent
Of wills not adamant in their own despite
Hastily touch'd; on shields of argent white
A blur avenged by deep self-discontent.
Cruel the creeds that disproportionate
To transitory sin eternal fire;
Condemn'd by love's great logic that forgives,
By all the helplessness of human lives,
By all the Fatherhood our hearts desire,
By all Christ's sweet anathemas of hate.

30
ETERNAL SIN

‘A sin that passes!’ Lo, one sad and high,
Bearing a taper stately like a queen,
Talks in her sleep—‘Will these hands ne'er be clean?’
‘What's done cannot be undone.’ She walks by
As she must walk thro' her eternity,
Bearing within her that which she hath been.
‘The sin that I have sinn'd is but one scene,
Life is a manifold drama,’ so men cry.
Alas! the shadow follows thee too well.
The interlude outgrows its single part,
And every other voice is stricken dumb.
That which thou carriest to the silent dell
Is the eternal sin thou hast become,
The everlasting tragedy thou art!

31
FREEWILL

If God be love, will He not cause His sun
Of happiness one day its beams to thrust
Alike upon the just and the unjust,
His silver rain to fall on every one?
Not highest to the highest bliss alone,
Nor dearest love that loves because it must,
Nor trust much trusted if constrain'd to trust.
What, when the battle of our lives is done,
Hath God reserved for His peculiar prize?
The willing, undivided human soul.
Were hearts unwilling forced to will God's will,
For them, unfreely freed, mere lucid skies
Their home would be, love's self a harsh control,
And half the Heaven's long music lose its thrill.

32
CONJECTURAL HOPE—THE UNIVERSALISTS

Yet after all we cry, Shall God devise
No way to bring His banish'd ones again?
Shall there not some aspersion of sweet rain
Fall on those faded faces, those hard eyes?
Shall not a sudden tenderness surprise
Their hearts with its relief, as babies drain
With their soft lips away the mother's pain,
As in a great grief sometimes madness dies?
I hear no certain news of their estate—
Ofttimes is utter silence; then comes much
Of love's soft hand and of her silver key
Obscurely prophesying some wondrous touch.
But ever in the distance a ‘Too late!’
Dies as among dark hills a moaning sea.

33
THE HOPE OF OUR FOREFATHERS

Methought a dear one came from death's retreat:
The pale presentment of his face was thin.
Ruin sat greyly there, a shadow of sin.
Fire needed none, nor any such red beat
Of rain as soak'd Canute's snow winding-sheet;
Only the recollection that can win
No pause, the footsteps that cannot pass in,
The restless recollection, the tired feet.
‘Thou art not happy?’ and he answered, ‘No!’
‘Come to me! Jesus saith,’ I made reply.
‘Hast thou not part in that, though so forlorn?’
‘Yes; but the time is long, and my feet slow.’
He spake, and with a faint, immortal sigh
Left me—yet hope grew thro' the grey of morn.

34
HOPE AGAIN

The far-off darkness that we cannot pierce,
Seen distant when we reach the other side,
By love's light shall be over-canopied.
Far off shall rise above all temporal curse,
Above all falling-off from fair to worse,
Above all death, the Church-song yet untried;
So that no surface discords then shall hide
The under harmony of the universe.
So, poised immeasurably high, the lark
O'er fields of battle, upturn'd faces white,
Sings her heart out above the redden'd wold
Thro' miles that stretch away to God in gold;
So a far town of dim lamps in the dark
Constructs itself a coronal of light.

35
VICTRIX DELECTATIO

An ocean child lived on a northern strand
In a hut—bent-thatch'd, blown around with foam;
One found and bore him to a lovely home,
Folded in a sweet valley far inland.
The boy's heart pointed seaward, as a wand
Points to hid fountains. Once he chanc'd to roam
Till he clomb upward to a mountain dome:
Far off he saw a blue speck tremulous spann'd
By azure sky. ‘The sea, the sea!’ he cried,
Weeping; for sorely he had missed the dawn,
The movement and the music of the sea.
Who loves it once in love for aye shall be
With the victorious sweetness of the tide,
Its long, strange, sweet sighs slowly backward drawn.

36
Spiritual ocean, measurelessly broad!

Spiritual ocean, measurelessly broad!
Who loves thee once truly shall evermore
Be drawn to thee, fair sea without a shore!
Surely and indeclinably, not over-awed,
Not over-mastered(for such force were fraud
Where sweet love is in question): conqueror
Of these our human hearts when they are sore,
The true friend's suasion truly doth persuade—
The touch'd heart at thy magic moves, blue tide!
Thine own victorious sweetness draws us nigher.
There is no fragrance and no fall like thine.
They by thine ancient beauty who abide,
Spirits emancipated, see no fire
But that of rose and gold which is divine.

THE PRINCESS ALICE

37
Child, with the soft hymn by a father's bed

Child, with the soft hymn by a father's bed
Sung soothing; maiden, whose bright face did stir
All our rough England with the love of her,
For the dear help she gave the aching head
Of our good Queen—beyond all sung or said
Of fair adventure and of golden skies
The morning dawn'd for those delighted eyes;—
Woman most happy, most serenely wed!
Is there aught better, aught that angels care
To look on more intently as they wait
For their ascension from this lower earth,
Than lives thus doubly, delicately fair,
With double coronation, double state,
One fortune's crown, one fairer far of worth?

38
Sweet watcher by the wounded

Sweet watcher by the wounded; undefiled
Pitier, in whom earth's fallen might behold
The crystal's purity without its cold;
Pale, passionate weeper o'er a princely child;
Thoughtful and thorough learner of the mild
But difficult lesson Charity can unfold;
Calm, honest thinker, gently overbold,
Who for a little trod the glacial wild
Of doubt, but found it more than doubly sweet
After the silence of that frozen sea,
After the absence of Christ's living face,
To clasp with her cut hands the bleeding feet.
More beauty than in beauty's self may be
In thought-won faith and grief which angels trace.

39
The brightness and the shadow finely blent

The brightness and the shadow finely blent,
The beauty and the sorrow, all the twin
Delight and desolation have pass'd in
Behind the veil; and our Princess present,
Not with the white face of a monument,
But with a wondrous look of vanish'd sin,
And such serenity as only win
Souls that have fought their way to full content.
So be she seen by love that ne'er forgets,
Pathetic with such pathos as God wills,
A presence on the happy Highland braes,
A memory like a breath of violets
In letters from a land that sunshine fills,
Perfumed though paler after many days.

ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT CARNOT

40
What voice is that which o'er the ocean

What voice is that which o'er the ocean,
Through what is lit and what obscure no less,
Night's coruscations and its darknesses,
Still rises starward, linking man to man?
It is the sorrow metropolitan
Of all earth's kings, the voice of their distress
For one who never sought their crown or dress,
The gentle-manner'd good republican.
Our England, too, sends France across the deep
Love's message no new wars shall ever shake,
Her human sense of all that comes with time;
The dreams which are the hopes of men asleep,
The hopes which are the dreams of men awake,
The tragedy around life's pantomime.

41
Beside the dead man two veil'd women sit

Beside the dead man two veil'd women sit;
All the night long over the catafalque
Twelve tapers burn; from many a precious stalk
Lilies as white as sunshine ever lit
Their fine funereal fragrancy emit.
‘Trifles!’
Yet outside do the heedless walk,
Outside the Elysée the godless talk,
Outside the Elysée is prayerless wit.
Within, the quiet demonstration lies
That the one strength which makes the struggler true
Is in the silent sweetness of belief,
Is in the triple immortalities
Call'd God, creed, prayer. Thus we console our grief,
And half the heav'n of France grows almost blue.

[[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.

THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO IRELAND

49
Each good and perfect gift man's heart to move

Each good and perfect gift man's heart to move
Comes from the heart before it leaves the hand,
At once inspired and exquisitely plann'd.
Kings learn this piece of kingcraft from above;
Men call it tact, the angels know 'tis love!—
Ours is a tragic past, a fatal land,
Which all would heal, but few can understand.
What offering, Lady, bringest thou to prove
Such souls? The sacrifice of hours, by thee
Well-won, exchanged for the continuous strain,—
Renunciation of the Italian morn,
Of the blue Mediterranean sea,
For our grey waves and April fields forlorn,—
Gift such as this will not be made in vain.

50
Writ in a fair charáctery of flowers

Writ in a fair charáctery of flowers
Full oft are queenly names. Some bud that blows
Dreams itself on superbly to a rose,
Wears odorous purple through the passing hours,
And breathes a tale of queenship to its bowers.
What finds our Queen in yonder plant that grows
No iridescent colours to disclose,
No waft of scent wherewith to endow the showers—
That little feeble frond trifoliate,
The symbol of a nation's passionate heart—
In every Irish glen belovèd much?
Lo! with a tender and a subtle art,
As an old Saint with types, a Queen of late
Colour'd it with the summer of her touch.

51
The young alone are fair, the old are great

The young alone are fair, the old are great,
The young have fire made visible to sight;
Young eyes have fire, the old alone have light,—
The light which all earth's weary ones await,
The light that waxes as the day grows late.
Deem not she thinks that now 'tis sunset quite,
That a pathetic majesty of night
Falls grey upon the grandeur of her state.
She thinks of the young valours who went down,
Marching across the battle-zone of fire
In the red baptism of war's martyrdom,
Her glorious Irish soldiers. Her desire
Is quick to see the green land of their home,
And fill the nations with their high renown.

52
So let a ‘favourable speed’ assist

So let a ‘favourable speed’ assist
The keel that bears her yacht across the sea,
Let there no spindrift of the salt spray be,
Let night sleep sweetly, let wild waves be whist,
The calm unstain'd by any wreath of mist.
On land be kindred influence, that we,
From our old panics of suspicion free,
May meet each other in a happy tryst.
Hark! on my ears what sounds are these that strike?
Not of old fierce extremes, but of one cause
Seen now through all variety of form.
Lo! one great people rising oceanlike
By regularity of tidal laws,
Not with the undisciplined passion of the storm.

53
O that a fortnight's Truce of God might sound!

O that a fortnight's Truce of God might sound!
O that this land of eloquence and wit
In the rich tones that almost treble it,
Order more order'd being so lightly bound,
Freedom more free in being so fair encrown'd
And law's stern wrath, unpassionately writ
(Safeguard of homes) by this great presence lit,
Might mutely hear. So on this fateful ground
All sweet consideration; love that starts
At nought as alien in the soul of man;
Not less pathetic, less revengeful, songs;
Might make one right majestic from two wrongs,
And one fair century from a fortnight's span.
So let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts.

L'ENVOI

Essayest thou, poet of a long-past morn,
A new forth-pouring of song's waves to try,
Song's wither'd blooms to fanes again to tie?
Time was when from thy thoughts these waves seem'd borne,
Sunlit and strong, magnificently torn,
Their very fall a flash of victory;
Time was thy flowers seem'd flush'd as by the sky,—
To thee, perchance to others, now a scorn;
Two or three fibrous skeleton-leaves, with story
Of some sweet summer-days and things that died;
Two or three bubbles for the big-brimm'd brine,
Two or three yellow foam-flakes for the glory.
What if the flowers should breathe again, the tide
Tumble sonorous on a strand divine?