University of Virginia Library

DOWN MEADS

Soft-falling rain
Blown by warm winds abroad at evening,
Flying and gathering together again,
Anoints mine eyes that strain
Against a wonderful and solemn thing,
Visible in the vaulted height.
A light, but no light from a fallen sun,
A light, that sleepless eyes look not upon,
An angry light,
Cavernous and unrejoicing, floods with fire,
Even such as leaps on a smoke-lurid pyre,
The western space of sky,
Casting grim shadows on the ways of men.
Hushed is each bird's homing cry,
And all the air is fearsome to their ken.
But lo! the holier orient
Shows keen and gray-blue as a trenchant sword,
While faery drifts of flashing cloud,
Tenderly aureoled
With flushes of pale primrose gold,
Are flowers afloat where mounts on high light's Lord
At dawn triumphant on the starry crowd
Driven to their continent
Dusk-barred and viewless, and their day-long fold.
The face o' the world grows unfamiliar;
And from afar
Trembles a voice of wailing utterless
Lingered along the blowing of the wind,
If haply it may find
A spirit to touch with fear, or eyes to fill
With tears that not express
The passion of the pity of their sight,
When to their hungering sense
The secret purpose of the world seems ill,
And ruined each high old-world excellence.
Strange miracle of gloom
With dreadful splendour travelling across
The untroubled glory of a summer sky!
Yet now no thunders dear to fierce July
Expend their heart of doom;
Silence prevails,
Silence, until the tortured spirit quails,
And life is at a loss,
Confronted with so rare a stress of pain
As this that grasps the brain
Despite the gentle rain,
Turning the twilight to a haunt of cares.
Still through fast-trampling depths of dark
Discoloured cloud drives the fleet fire
That soars and flares
On sombre wings about the next vault; mark
The horror of its hurrying! hark
The moaning of tall trees beneath its glare,
When on their shaken spires fall and expire,
While lime-flowers load the air,
The sullen after-glows that leave them bare,
As from a deathward face dies the mind's fire.
Ah, winds and airs, tempests of cloud and flame,
Ah, deep strange language and beyond our thought,
Ah, world hushed for an hour!
Is melancholy all that you have brought,
Sorrow and shame,
And dust foreshadowed in the fragrant flower?
Yet pity dwells with perfect power,
Crystalline at the centre of just wrath,
And somewhere on your path,
Angels of dreadful grace, pity hath shed
Balm for the health of souls discomforted;
Shining, a star of the unchastened sea,
From twilight to twilight;
Whilst love eternal out of night
Lingers a faultless plenitude of light,
The Sun that is not fearful, but of Love
Daily the splendid ensign, set above
All moods and phantasies of men forlorn
Who fear, as I this hour. O music-borne,
Crystalline, fire-bringer, thou Sun the priest
Of constant benediction to thine East,
Thine house fragrant with frankincense, with light
Innumerable a splendour and delight;
Sun, king of loveliness, fashion my thought
With the deep beauty of thine eyes flame-wrought
That flood their light upon all things that live:
Light, light and fire! these gifts thou givest, give
Unto me too, thy lover, fain to sing.
Ever in honour of thy triumphing.
O Sun, through melancholy and through mirth.
O light-giver on Earth,
Constrain me to the music that expires
At evening along thy fallen fires;
Compel me to the thunders wherewithal
Thine orient voice makes morning musical.
Inflame my lips with strength of song, set free
The pulses of my heart to beat for thee,
That so, thine unction on my brow, even I,
'Mid thoughts of musical accord may die;
And pass through purity of loving fires,
To hear heaven's lovelier lyres
Make music of all days in high-exalted quires.