Poetical Works of Lionel Johnson

Johnson, Lionel Pigot (1867-1902)

POEMS

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IRELAND WITH OTHER POEMS

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

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POEMS

WINCHESTER

To the fairest!

Then to thee
Consecrate and bounden be,
Winchester! this verse of mine.
Ah, that loveliness of thine!
To have lived enchaunted years
Free from sorrows, free from fears,
Where thy Tower's great shadow falls
Over those proud buttressed walls;
Whence a purpling glory pours
From high heaven's inheritors,
Throned within the arching stone!
To have wandered, hushed, alone,
Gently round thy fair, fern-grown
Chauntry of the Lilies, lying
Where the soft night winds go sighing
Round thy Cloisters, in moonlight
Branching dark, or touched with white:
Round old, chill aisles, where moon-smitten
Blanches the Orate, written
Under each worn, old-world face
Graven on Death's holy place!

To the noblest!

None but thee.
Blest our living eyes, that see
Half a thousand years fulfilled
Of that age, which Wykeham willed
Thee to win; yet all unworn,
As upon that first March morn,
When thine honoured city saw
Thy young beauty without flaw,
Born within her water-flowing,
Ancient hollows, by wind-blowing
Hills enfolded ever more.
Thee, that lord of splendid lore,
Orient from old Hellas' shore,
Grocyn, had to mother: thee,
Monumental majesty
Of most high philosophy
Honours, in thy wizard Browne:
Tender Otway's dear renown,
Mover of a perfect pity,
Victim of the iron city,
Thine to cherish is: and thee,
Laureate of Liberty;
Harper of the Highland faith,
Elf, and faery, and wan wraith;
Chaunting softly, chaunting slowly,
Minstrel of all melancholy;
Master of all melody,
Made to cling round memory;
Passion's poet, Evening's voice,
Collins glorified. Rejoice,
Mother! in thy sons: for all

Love thine immemorial
Name, august and musical.
Not least he, who left thy side,
For his sire's, thine earlier pride,
Arnold: whom we mourn to-day,
Prince of song, and gone away
To his brothers of the bay:
Thine the love of all his years;
His be now thy praising tears.

To the dearest!

Ah, to thee!
Hast thou not in all to me
Mother, more than mother, been?
Well toward thee may Mary Queen
Bend her with a mother's mien;
Who so rarely dost express
An inspiring tenderness,
Woven with thy sterner strain,
Prelude of the world's true pain.
But two years, and still my feet
Found thy very stones more sweet,
Than the richest fields elsewhere:
Two years, and thy sacred air
Still poured balm upon me, when
Nearer drew the world of men;
When the passions, one by one,
All sprang upward to the sun:
Two years have I lived, still thine;
Lost, thy presence! gone, that shrine,
Where six years, what years! were mine.

Music is the thought of thee;
Fragrance, all thy memory.
Those thy rugged Chambers old,
In their gloom and rudeness, hold
Dear remembrances of gold.
Some first blossoming of flowers
Made delight of all the hours;
Greatness, beauty, all things fair
Made the spirit of thine air:
Old years live with thee; thy sons
Walk with high companions.
Then, the natural joy of earth,
Joy of very health and birth!
Hills, upon a summer noon:
Water Meads, on eves of June:
Chamber Court, beneath the moon:
Days of spring, on Twyford Down,
Or when autumn woods grew brown;
As they looked, when here came Keats
Chaunting of autumnal sweets;
Through this city of old haunts,
Murmuring immortal chaunts;
As when Pope, art's earlier king,
Here, a child, did nought but sing;
Sang, a child, by nature's rule,
Round the trees of Twyford School:
Hours of sun beside Meads' Wall,
Ere the may began to fall;
Watching the rooks rise and soar,
High from lime and sycamore:
Wanderings by old-world ways,
Walks and streets of ancient days;

Closes, churches, arches, halls,
Vanished men's memorials.
There was beauty, there was grace,
Each place was an holy place:
There the kindly fates allowed
Me too room; and made me proud,
Prouder name I have not wist!
With the name of Wykehamist.
These thy joys: and more than these:
Ah, to watch beneath thy trees,
Through long twilights linden-scented,
Sunsets, lingering, lamented,
In the purple west; prevented,
Ere they fell, by evening star!
Ah, long nights of Winter! far
Leaps and roars the faggot fire;
Ruddy smoke rolls higher, higher,
Broken through by flame's desire;
Circling faces glow, all eyes
Take the light; deep radiance flies,
Merrily flushing overhead
Names of brothers, long since fled;
And fresh clusters, in their stead,
Jubilant round fierce forest flame.
Friendship too must make her claim:
But what songs, what memories end,
When they tell of friend on friend?
And for them, I thank thy name.

Love alone of gifts, no shame
Lessens, and I love thee: yet
Sound it but of echoes, let

This my maiden music be,
Of the love I bear to thee,
Witness and interpreter,
Mother mine: loved Winchester!

1888.

TO MORFYDD

A voice on the winds,
A voice by the waters,
Wanders and cries:
Oh! what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Mine are your eyes!

Western the winds are,
And western the waters,
Where the light lies:
Oh! what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Mine are your eyes!

Cold, cold, grow the winds,
And wild grow the waters,
Where the sun dies:
Oh! what are the winds?
And what are the waters?
Mine are your eyes!

And down the night winds,
And down the night waters,
The music flies:

Oh! what are the winds?
And what are the waters,
Cold be the winds,
And wild be the waters,
So mine be your eyes!

1891.

PLATO IN LONDON

To Campbell Dodgson.

The pure flame of one taper fall
Over the old and comely page:
No harsher light disturb at all
This converse with a treasured sage.
Seemly, and fair, and of the best,
If Plato be our guest,
Should things befall.

Without, a world of noise and cold:
Here, the soft burning of the fire.
And Plato walks, where heavens unfold,
About the home of his desire.
From his own city of high things,
He shows to us, and brings,
Truth of fine gold.

The hours pass; and the fire burns low;
The clear flame dwindles into death:
Shut then the book with care; and so,
Take leave of Plato, with hushed breath:
A little, by the falling gleams,
Tarry the gracious dreams:
And they too go.

Lean from the window to the air:
Hear London's voice upon the night!
Thou hast held converse with things rare:
Look now upon another sight!
The calm stars, in their living skies:
And then, these surging cries,
This restless glare!

That starry music, starry fire,
High above all our noise and glare:
The image of our long desire,
The beauty, and the strength, are there.
And Plato's thought lives, true and clear,
In as august a sphere:
Perchance, far higher.

1889.

IN FALMOUTH HARBOUR

To Frank Mathew.

I

The large, calm harbour lies below
Long, terraced lines of circling light:
Without, the deep sea currents flow:
And here are stars, and night.

No sight, no sound, no living stir,
But such as perfect the still bay:
So hushed it is, the voyager
Shrinks at the thought of day.

We glide by many a lanterned mast;
Our mournful horns blow wild to warn
Yon looming pier: the sailors cast
Their ropes, and watch for morn.

Strange murmurs from the sleeping town,
And sudden creak of lonely oars
Crossing the water, travel down
The roadstead, the dim shores.

A charm is on the silent bay;
Charms of the sea, charms of the land.
Memories of open wind convey
Peace to this harbour strand.

Far off, Saint David's crags descend
On seas of desolate storm: and far
From this pure rest, the Land's drear End,
And ruining waters, are.

Well was it worth to have each hour
Of high and perilous blowing wind:
For here, for now, deep peace hath power
To conquer the worn mind.

I have passed over the rough sea,
And over the white harbour bar:
And this is Death's dreamland to me,
Led hither by a star.

And what shall dawn be? Hush thee, nay!
Soft, soft is night, and calm and still:
Save that day cometh, what of day
Knowest thou: good, or ill?

Content thee! Not the annulling light
Of any pitiless dawn is here;
Thou art alone with ancient night:
And all the stars are clear.

Only the night air, and the dream;
Only the far, sweet-smelling wave;
The stilly sounds, the circling gleam,
And thine: and thine a grave.

1887.

II

Hence, by stern thoughts and strong winds borne,
Voyaged, with faith that could not fail,
Who cried: Lead, kindly Light! forlorn
Beneath a stranger sail.

Becalmed upon a classic sea;
Wandering through eternal Rome;
Fighting with Death in Sicily:
He hungered for his home.

These northern waves, these island airs!
Dreams of these haunted his full heart:
Their love inspired his songs and prayers,
Bidding him play his part.

The freedom of the living dead;
The service of a living pain:
He chose between them, bowed his head
And counted sorrow, gain.

Ah, sweetest soul of all! whose choice
Was golden with the light of lights:
But us doubt's melancholy voice,
Wandering in gloom, unites.

Ah, sweetest soul of all! whose voice
Hailed morning, and the sun's increase:
We of the restless night rejoice,
We also, at thy peace.

1887.

A FRIEND

To H. B. Irving.

All, that he came to give,
He gave, and went again:
I have seen one man live,
I have seen one man reign,
With all the graces in his train.

As one of us, he wrought
Things of the common hour:
Whence was the charmed soul brought,
That gave each act such power;
The natural beauty of a flower?

Magnificence and grace,
Excellent courtesy:
A brightness on the face,
Airs of high memory:
Whence came all these, to such as he?

Like young Shakespearian kings,
He won the adoring throng:
And, as Apollo sings,
He triumphed with a song:
Triumphed, and sang, and passed along.

With a light word, he took
The hearts of men in thrall:
And, with a golden look,
Welcomed them, at his call
Giving their love, their strength, their all.

No man less proud than he,
Nor cared for homage less:
Only, he could not be
Far off from happiness:
Nature was bound to his success.

Weary, the cares, the jars,
The lets, of every day:
But the heavens filled with stars,
Chanced he upon the way:
And where he stayed, all joy would stay.

Now, when sad night draws down,
When the austere stars burn:
Roaming the vast live town,
My thoughts and memories yearn
Toward him, who never will return.

Yet have I seen him live,
And owned my friend, a king:

All that he came to give,
He gave: and I, who sing
His praise, bring all I have to bring.

1889.

A BURDEN OF EASTER VIGIL

Awhile meet Doubt and Faith:
For either sigheth and saith,
That He is dead
To-day: the linen cloths cover His head,
That hath, at last, whereon to rest; a rocky bed.

Come! for the pangs are done,
That overcast the sun,
So bright to-day!
And moved the Roman soldier: come away!
Hath sorrow more to weep? Hath pity more to say?

Why wilt thou linger yet?
Think on dark Olivet;
On Calvary stem:
Think, from the happy birth at Bethlehem,
To this last woe and passion at Jerusalem!

This only can be said:
He loved us all; is dead;
May rise again.
But if He rise not? Over the far main,
The sun of glory falls indeed: the stars are plain.

1888.

BY THE STATUE OF KING CHARLES AT CHARING CROSS

To William Watson.

Sombre and rich, the skies;
Great glooms, and starry plains.
Gently the night wind sighs;
Else a vast silence reigns.

The splendid silence clings
Around me: and around
The saddest of all kings
Crowned, and again discrowned.

Comely and calm, he rides
Hard by his own Whitehall:
Only the night wind glides:
No crowds, nor rebels, brawl.

Gone, too, his Court: and yet,
The stars his courtiers are:
Stars in their stations set;
And every wandering star.

Alone he rides, alone,
The fair and fatal king:
Dark night is all his own,
That strange and solemn thing.

Which are more full of fate:
The stars; or those sad eyes?
Which are more still and great:
Those brows; or the dark skies?

Although his whole heart yearn
In passionate tragedy:
Never was face so stern
With sweet austerity.

Vanquished in life, his death
By beauty made amends:
The passing of his breath
Won his defeated ends.

Brief life, and hapless? Nay:
Through death, life grew sublime.
Speak after sentence? Yea:
And to the end of time.

Armoured he rides, his head
Bare to the stars of doom:
He triumphs now, the dead,
Beholding London's gloom.

Our wearier spirit faints,
Vexed in the world's employ:
His soul was of the saints;
And art to him was joy.

King, tried in fires of woe!
Men hunger for thy grace:
And through the night I go,
Loving thy mournful face.

Yet, when the city sleeps;
When all the cries are still:
The stars and heavenly deeps
Work out a perfect will.

1889.

LALEHAM

To Arthur Galton.

Only one voice could sing aright
His brother poet, lost in night:
His voice, who lies not far away,
The pure and perfect voice of Gray.
The sleep of humble men he sang,
For whom the tolling church bells rang
Over their silent fields and vales,
Whence no rude sound their calm assails.
He knew their melancholy rest,
And peaceful sleep, on earth's kind breast;
Their patient lives, their common doom,
The beauty of their simple tomb.
One thing he left unsung: how some,
To share those village slumbers, come:
Whose voices filled the world with joy,
Who made high thoughts their one employ.
Ah, loving hearts! Too great to prize
Things whereon most men set their eyes:
The applauding crowd; the golden lure
Of wealth, insatiate and unsure;
A life of noise! a restless death:
The sanctities of life's last breath
Profaned with ritual pride and state;
Last pageant of the little great!
But these, to whom all crowns of song,
And all immortal praise, belong,
Turn from each garish sight and sound,
To lay them down in humble ground:
Choosing that still, enchaunted sleep
To be, where kindly natures keep:

In sound of pleasant water rills,
In shadows of the solemn hills.
Earth's heart, earth's hidden way, they knew:
Now on their grave light falls her dew.
The music of her soul was theirs:
They sleep beneath her sweetest airs.

Beside the broad, gray Thames one lies,
With whom a spring of beauty dies:
Among the willows, the pure wind
Calls all his wistful song to mind;
And, as the calm, strong river flows,
With it his mightier music goes;
But those winds cool, those waters lave,
The country of his chosen grave.
Go past the cottage flowers, and see,
Where Arnold held it good to be!
Half church, half cottage, comely stands
An holy house, from Norman hands:
By rustic Time well taught to wear
Some lowly, meditative air:
Long ages of a pastoral race
Have softened sternness into grace;
And many a touch of simpler use
From Norman strength hath set it loose.
Here, under old, red-fruited yews,
And summer suns, and autumn dews,
With his lost children at his side,
Sleeps Arnold: Still those waters glide,
Those winds blow softly down their breast:
But he, who loved them, is at rest.

1889.

OUR LADY OF FRANCE

To Ernest Dowson.

Leave we awhile without the turmoil of the town;
Leave we the sullen gloom, the faces full of care:
Stay we awhile and dream, within this place of prayer,
Stay we, and pray, and dream: till in our hearts die down
Thoughts of the world, unkind and weary: till Christ crown
Laborious day with love. Hark! on the fragrant air,
Music of France, voices of France, fall piercing fair:
Poor France, where Mary's star shines, lest her children drown.

Our Lady of France! dost thou inhabit here? Behold,
What sullen gloom invests this city strange to thee!
In Seine, and pleasant Loire, thou gloriest from of old;
Thou rulest rich Provence; lovest the Breton sea:
What dost thou far from home? Nay! here my children fold
Their exiled hands in orison, and long for me.

1891.

IN MEMORY

I

Under the clear December sun,
Perishing and cold,
Sleep, Malise! who hast early won
Light of sacred gold.
Sleep, be at rest: we still will keep
Dear love for thee lain down to sleep.

Youth, loving faces, holy toil,
These death takes from thee:
But of our love, none shall despoil
Thy fair soul set free.
The labours of thy love are done:
Thy labour's crown of love is won.

Sleep, Malise! While the winds blow yet
Over thy quiet grave:
We, labouring deathward, will forget
Thee never: wherefore have
Hope, and pure patience: we, too, come
Presently to thee, in thine home.

1885.

II

Ah! fair face gone from sight,
With all its light
Of eyes, that pierced the deep
Of human night!
Ah! fair face calm in sleep.

Ah! fair lips hushed in death!
Now their glad breath
Breathes not upon our air
Music, that saith
Love only, and things fair.

Ah! lost brother! Ah! sweet
Still hands and feet!
May those feet haste to reach,
Those hands to greet,
Us where love needs no speech.

1886.

III

Sea-gulls, wheeling, swooping, crying,
Crying over Maes Garmon side!
Cold is the wind for your white wings' flying:
Cold and dim is our gray springtide.

But an hundred miles and more away,
In the old, sweet city,
Birds of spring are singing to the May,
Their old, sweet ditty.

There he lies, whom I loved so well,
And lies, whom I love so dearly:
At thought of his youth, our buds will swell;
Of his face, our sun shine clearly.

Sea-gulls, wheeling, swooping, crying,
Crying over Maes Garmon side!
Spirits of fire with him are flying,
Souls of flame, to the Crucified.

Yet, far away from the ancient places,
Ancient pleasures, and ancient days:
He too thinks of our exiled faces,
Far away from his whiter ways.

Sea-gulls, over Maes Garmon side,
Flying and crying! flying and crying!
You and all creatures, since Malise died,
I have loved the more, both singing and sighing.

1887.

IV

Glimmering lake, waters of Windermere!
Winchester your name must be:
Or is all an evening dream?
Nay! Winton waters wander here,
Delighting me,
Down through that ancient bridge, that old-world stream.

I lean against the old, pillared balustrade:
Now upon the red, worn mill,
Now upon the rapid race,
Poring: or where, within the shade
Of freshly chill,
Low arches, wallflowers hide their homely grace.

Swiftly descend those waters of the weir:
Sweeping past old cottages,
Curving round, ah, happy tide!
Into sight of towers most dear,
Of ancient trees
Loved all by heart: glad stream, who there may glide!

Farewell, whom I have loved so in gone years!
Up the little climbing street,
To the memoried Church I pass,
Church of Saint John: whence loving tears
Made the way sweet,
Saddest of ways, unto the holy grass.

Up the slow hill, people and holy Cross
Bore thee to the sleeping place,
Malise! whom thy lovers weep.

Spring lilies crown from the soft moss
Thy silent face,
All peaceful, Malise! in thy perfect sleep.

Ah! far away, far by the watered vale,
By the seaward-rolling hills,
Lies he, by the gray-towered walls.
Northern calm lake, wild northern dale,
Gently fulfils,
Each, its serene enchauntment: and night falls.

Windermere gleams: as would some shadowy space
Out from willowed dream-world drawn.
Under the pure silence, earth
Looks up to heaven, with tranquil face:
And patient dawn,
Behind the purple hills, dreams toward the birth.

1888.

V

To think of thee, Malise! at Christmas time!
The Glory of the world comes down on earth,
Malise! at Christmas: but the Yule bells chime
Over thy perfect sleep: and though Christ's birth
Wake other men to melody of heart,
Thou in their happy music hast no part.

Or dost thou wake awhile, to feel thy gloom
Illuminated by the shepherds' light?
To stretch out longing hands from thy still tomb,
And think on days, that were: before that night
Fell on thee, Malise? and the world as well
Was darkened over us, when that night fell!

1888.

VI

When as I knew not clearly, how to think,
Malise! about thee dead: God showed the way.
Thine holy soul among soft fires can drink
The dew of all the prayers, that I can pray.

Prayers for thy sake shall pierce thy prison gate;
Prayers to the Mother of Misericord:
Mary, the mighty, the immaculate;
Mary, whose soul welcomed the appointed sword.

Malise! thy dear face from my wall looks down:
The Crucifix above its beauty lies.
Now, while I look and long, I see a crown
Bright on thy brow, and heaven within thine eyes.

1892.

THE PRECEPT OF SILENCE

I know you: solitary griefs,
Desolate passions, aching hours!
I know you: tremulous beliefs,
Agonized hopes, and ashen flowers!

The winds are sometimes sad to me;
The starry spaces, full of fear:
Mine is the sorrow on the sea,
And mine the sigh of places drear.

Some players upon plaintive strings
Publish their wistfulness abroad:
I have not spoken of these things,
Save to one man, and unto God.

1893.

HILL AND VALE

Not on the river plains
Wilt thou breathe loving air,
O mountain spirit fine!
Here the calm soul maintains
Calm: but no joy like thine,
On hill-tops bleak and bare,
Whose breath is fierce and rare.

Were beauty all thy need,
Here were an haunt for thee.
The broad laborious weald,
An eye's delight indeed,
Spreads from rich field to field:
And full streams wander free
Under the alder tree.

Throw thee upon the grass,
The daisied grass, and gaze
Far to the warm blue mist:
Feel, how the soft hours pass
Over, before they wist,
Into whole day: and days
Dream on in sunny haze.

Each old, sweet, country scent
Comes, as old music might
Upon thee: old, sweet sounds
Go, as they ever went,
Over the red corn grounds:
Still sweeping scythes delight
Charmed hearing and charmed sight.

Gentle thy life would be:
To watch at morning dew
Fresh water-lilies: tell,
How bears the walnut tree:
Find the first foxglove bell,
Spare the last harebell blue:
And wander the wold through.

Another love is thine:
For thee the far world spied
From the far mountain top:
Keen scented, sounding pine,
The purple heather crop:
And night's great glorious tide
Of stars and clouds allied.

1887.

GWYNEDD

To Ernest Rhys.

The children of the mingling mists: can they,
Born by the melancholy hills, love thee,
Royal and joyous light? From dawn of day,
We watch the trailing shadows of the waste,
The waste moors, or the ever-mourning sea:
What, though in speedy splendour thou hast raced
Over the heather or wild wave, a ray
Of travelling glory and swift bloom? Still thou
Inhabitest the mighty morning's brow:
And hast thy flaming and celestial way,
Afar from our sad beauties, in thine haste.

Have thou thy circling triumph of the skies,
Horseman of Goldwhite Footsteps! Yet all fire
Lives not with thee: for part is in our eyes,
Beholding the loved beauty of cold hills:
And part is patron of dear home desire,
Flashing upon the central hearth: it fills
Ingle and black-benched nook with radiances,
Hearts with responding spirit, ears with deep
Delicious music of the ruddy leap,
And streaming strength, and kindling confluences:
The hearth glows, and the cavernous chimney thrills.

Pale with great heat, panting to crimson gloom,
Quiver the deeps of the rich fire: see there!
Was that not your fair face, in burning bloom
Wrought by the art of fire? O happy art!
That sets in living flames a face so fair:
The face, whose changes dominate mine heart,
And with a look speak my delight or doom:
Nay, now not doom, for I am only thine,
And one in thee and me the fire divine!
The fire, that wants the whole vast world for room:
Yet dwells in us contented and apart.

The flames' red dance is done: and we crouch close
With shadowy faces to the dull, red glow.
Your darkling loveliness is like the rose,
Its dusky petals, and its bower of soft
Sweet inner darkness, where the dew lies low:
And now one tongue of flame leaps up aloft,
Brightening your brows: and now it fails, and throws
A play of flushing shadows, the rich mist

Of purple grapes, that many a sun hath kissed;
The delicate darkness, that with autumn grows
On red ripe apples in a mossy croft.

Nay! leave such idle southern imageries,
Vineyard and orchard, flowers and mellow fruit:
Great store is ours of mountain mysteries.
Look, where the embers fade, from ruddy gold
Into gray ashes falling without bruit!
Yet is that ruddy lustre bought and sold,
Elf with elf trafficking his merchandise:
Deep at the strong foot of the eagles' pass,
They store the haunting treasure, and amass
The spirit of dead fire: there still it lies,
Phantom wealth, goodlier than Ophir old.

Across the moor, over the purple bells,
Over the heather blossom, the rain drives:
Art fired enough to dare the blowing fells,
And ford the brawling brooks? Ah, come we then!
Great good it is to see, how beauty thrives
For desolate moorland and for moorland men;
To smell scents, rarer than soft honey cells,
From bruised wild thyme, pine bark, or mouldering peat;
To watch the crawling gray clouds drift, and meet
Midway the ragged cliffs. O mountain spells,
Calling us forth, by hill, and moor, and glen!

Calling us forth, to be with earth again,
Her memories, her splendours, her desires!
The fires of the hearth are fallen: now the rain

Stirs its delight of waters, as the flame
Stirred its delight of heat and spirited fires.
Come! by the lintel listen: clouds proclaim,
That thunder is their vast voice: the winds wane,
That all the storm may gather strength, and strive
Once more in their great breath to be alive;
And fill the angry air with such a strain,
As filled the world's war, when the world first came.

Desolate Cornwall, desolate Brittany,
Are up in vehement wind and vehement wave:
Ancient delights are on their ancient sea,
And nature's violent graces waken there;
And there goes loveliness about the grave,
And death means dreaming, not life's long despair.
Our sister lands are they, one people we,
Cornwall desolate, Brittany desolate,
And Wales: to us is granted to be great:
Because, as winds and seas and flames are free,
We too have freedom full, as wild and rare.

And therefore, on a night of heavenly fires;
And therefore, on a windy hour of noon;
Our soul, like nature's eager soul, aspires,
Finding all thunders and all winds our friends:
And like the moving sea, love we the moon;
And life in us the way of nature wends,
Ardent as nature's own, that never tires.
Born of wild land, children of mountains, we
Fear neither ruining earth, nor stormy sea:
Even as men told in Athens, of our sires:
And as it shall be, till the old world ends.

Your eyes but brighten to the streaming wind,
But lighten to the sighing air, but break
To tears before the labouring hills: your mind
Moves with the passionate spirit of the land.
Now crystal is your soul, now flame: a lake,
Proud and calm, with high scaurs on either hand;
Or a swift lance of lightning, to strike blind.
True child of Gwynedd, child of wilds and fields!
To you earth clings, to you strange nature yields
Far learning, sudden light, fierce fire: these find
Home in your heart, and thoughts that understand.

We will not wander from this land; we will
Be wise together, and accept our world:
This world of the gray cottage by the hill,
This gorge, this lusty air, this loneliness:
The calm of drifting clouds; the pine-tops whirled
And swayed along the ridges. Here distress
Dreams, and delight dreams: dreaming, we can fill
All solitary haunts with prophecy,
All heights with holiness and mystery;
Our hearts with understanding, and our will
With love of nature's law and loveliness.

Old voices call, old pleasures lure: for now
The wet earth breathes ancient fair fragrance forth;
And dying gales hang in the branches, blow
And fall, and blow again: our widest home
Is with rich winds of West, loud winds of North,
Sweeping beneath a gray and vasty dome.
Not with the hearth, whose consolations go,
Our home of homes: but where our eyes grow tired

Of straitened joys, with stretching joys are fired:
Joys of the rolling moor and cloudy brow,
Or worn, precipitous bastions of the foam.

Our fires are fallen from their blossoming height,
And linger in sad embers: but gray bloom
Is on the heather, an enchaunting light
Of purple dusk and vesper air: rich rain
Falls on our hearts, through eve and gentle gloom,
More than upon our foreheads. The world's pain
And joy of storm are proven our delight,
And peace enthroned for ever: ours the mirth,
And melancholy of this ancient earth:
Ours are the mild airs and the starred twilight;
And we, who love them, are not all in vain.

1888.

A CORNISH NIGHT

To William Butler Yeats.

Merry the night, you riders of the wild!
A merry night to ride your wilderness.
Come you from visionary haunts, enisled
Amid the northern waters pitiless,
Over these cliffs white-heathered? Upon mild
Midnights of dewy June, oh, rare to press
Past moonlit fields of white bean-flowers! nor less
To wander beside falling waves, beguiled
By soft winds into still dreams! Yet confess,
You chivalries of air, unreconciled
To the warm, breathing world! what ghostly stress
Compels your visit unto sorrow's child?

What would you here? For here you have no part:
Only the sad voices of wind and sea
Are prophets here to any wistful heart:
Or white flowers found upon a glimmering lea.
What would you here? Sweep onward, and depart
Over the ocean into Brittany,
Where old faith is, and older mystery!
Though this be western land, we have no art
To welcome spirits in community:
Trafficking, in an high celestial mart,
Slumber for wondrous knowledge: setting free
Our souls, that strain and agonize and start.

The wind hath cried to me, all the long day,
That you were coming, chivalries of air!
Between the waters and the starry way.
Fair lies the sea about a land, as fair:
Moonlight and west winds move upon the bay
Gently: now down the rough path sweet it were
To clamber, and so launching out to fare
Forth for the heart of sea and night, away
From hard earth's loud uproar, and harder care!
But you at will about the winds can stray:
Or bid the wandering stars of midnight bear
You company: or with the seven stay.

And yet you came for me! So the wind cried,
So my soul knows: else why am I awake
With expectation and desire, beside
The soothed sea's murmuring nocturnal lake?
Not sleep, but storm, welcomes a widowed bride:
Storms of sad certainty, vain want, that make

Vigil perpetual mine; so that I take
The gusty night in place of him, who died,
To clasp me home to heart. That cannot break,
The eternal heart of nature far and wide!
So now, your message! while the clear stars shake
Within the gleaming sea, shake and abide.

So now, your message! Breathe words from the wave,
Or breathe words from the field, into mine ears:
Or from the sleeping shades of a cold grave
Bring comfortable solace for my tears.
Something of my love's heart could nature save:
Some rich delight to spice the tasteless years,
Some hope to light the valley of lone fears.
Hear! I am left alone, to bear and brave
The sounding storms: but you, from starry spheres,
From wild wood haunts, give me, as love once gave
Joy from his home celestial, so, love's peers!
Give peace awhile to me, sorrow's poor slave!

In sorrow's order I dwell passionist,
Cloistered by tossing sea on weary land.
O vain love! vain, to claim me votarist:
O vain my heart! that will not understand,
He is dead! I am lonely! Love in a Mist
My flower is: and salt tangle of the strand,
The crownals woven by this failing hand:
In the dark kingdom, walking where I list,
I walk where Lethe glides against the sand.
But vain love is a constant lutanist,
Playing old airs, and able to withstand
Sweet sleep: vain love, thou loyal melodist!

You wanderers! Would I were wandering
Under the white moon with you, or among
The invisible stars with you! Would I might sing
Over the charmed sea your enchaunting song,
Song of old autumn, and of radiant spring:
Might sing, how earth the mother suffers long;
How the great winds are wild, yet do no wrong;
How the most frail bloom is at heart a king!
I could endure then, strenuous and strong:
But now, O spirits of the air! I bring
Before you my waste soul: why will you throng
About me, save to take even such a thing!

Only for this you ride the midnight gloom,
Above the ancient isles of the old main.
The spray leaps on the hidden rocks of doom:
The ripples break, and wail away again
Upon the gathering wave: gaunt headlands loom
In the lone distance of the heaving plain.
And now, until the calm, the still stars wane,
You wait upon my heart, my heart a tomb.
Though I dream, life and dreams are alike vain!
Then love me, tell me news of dear death: whom
Circle you, but a soul astray, one fain
To leave this close world for death's larger room?

If barren be the promise I desire,
The promise that I shall not always go
In living solitariness: break fire
Out of the night, and lay me swiftly low!
Soft spirits! you have wings to waft me higher,
Than touch of each my most familiar woe;

Am I unworthy, you should raise me so?
If barren be that trust, my dreams inspire
Only despair: my brooding heart must grow
Heavy with miseries; a mourning quire,
To tell the heavy hours, how sad, how slow,
Are all their footsteps, of whose sound I tire.

Bright seafire runs about a plunging keel
On vehement nights: and where black danger lies,
Gleam the torn breakers. But all days reveal
Drear dooms for me, nor any nights disguise
Their menace: never rolls the thunder peal
Through my worn watch, nor lightning past mine eyes
Leaps from the blue gloom of its mother skies,
One hour alone, but all, while sad stars wheel.
This hour, was it a lie, that bade me rise;
Some laughing dream, that whispered me to steal
Into the sea-sweet night, where the wind cries,
And find the comfort, that I cannot feel?

My lord hath gone your way perpetual:
Whether you be great spirits of the dead,
Or spirits you, that never were in thrall
To perishing bodies, dust-born, dustward led.
Sweet shadows! passing by this ocean wall,
Tarry to pour some balm upon mine head,
Some pity for a woman, who hath wed
With weariness and loneliness, from fall
To fall, from bitter snows to maybloom red:
The hayfields hear, the cornlands hear, my call!
From weariness toward weariness I tread;
And hunger for the end: the end of all.

1888.

MYSTIC AND CAVALIER

To Herbert Percy Horne.

Go from me: I am one of those, who fall.
What! hath no cold wind swept your heart at all,
In my sad company? Before the end,
Go from me, dear my friend!

Yours are the victories of light: your feet
Rest from good toil, where rest is brave and sweet.
But after warfare in a mourning gloom,
I rest in clouds of doom.

Have you not read so, looking in these eyes?
Is it the common light of the pure skies,
Lights up their shadowy depths? The end is set:
Though the end be not yet.

When gracious music stirs, and all is bright,
And beauty triumphs through a courtly night;
When I too joy, a man like other men:
Yet, am I like them, then?

And in the battle, when the horsemen sweep
Against a thousand deaths, and fall on sleep:
Who ever sought that sudden calm, if I
Sought not? Yet, could not die.

Seek with thine eyes to pierce this crystal sphere:
Canst read a fate there, prosperous and clear?
Only the mists, only the weeping clouds:
Dimness, and airy shrouds.

Beneath, what angels are at work? What powers
Prepare the secret of the fatal hours?
See! the mists tremble, and the clouds are stirred:
When comes the calling word?

The clouds are breaking from the crystal ball,
Breaking and clearing: and I look to fall.
When the cold winds and airs of portent sweep,
My spirit may have sleep.

O rich and sounding voices of the air!
Interpreters and prophets of despair:
Priests of a fearful sacrament! I come,
To make with you mine home.

1889.

PARNELL

To John McGrath.

The wail of Irish winds,
The cry of Irish seas:
Eternal sorrow finds
Eternal voice in these.

I cannot praise our dead,
Whom Ireland weeps so well:
Her morning light, that fled;
Her morning star, that fell.

She of the mournful eyes
Waits, and no dark clouds break:
Waits, and her strong son lies
Dead, for her holy sake.

Her heart is sorrow's home,
And hath been from of old:
An host of griefs hath come,
To make that heart their fold.

Ah, the sad autumn day,
When the last sad troop came
Swift down the ancient way,
Keening a chieftain's name!

Gray hope was there, and dread;
Anger, and love in tears:
They mourned the dear and dead,
Dirge of the ruined years.

Home to her heart she drew
The mourning company:
Old sorrows met the new,
In sad fraternity.

A mother, and forget?
Nay! all her children's fate
Ireland remembers yet,
With love insatiate.

She hears the heavy bells:
Hears, and with passionate breath
Eternally she tells
A rosary of death.

Faithful and true is she,
The mother of us all:
Faithful and true! may we
Fail her not, though we fall.

Her son, our brother, lies
Dead, for her holy sake:
But from the dead arise
Voices, that bid us wake.

Not his, to hail the dawn:
His but the herald's part.
Be ours to see withdrawn
Night from our Mother's heart.

1893.

IN ENGLAND

To Charles Furse.

Bright Hellas lies far hence,
Far the Sicilian sea:
But England's excellence
Is fair enough for me.

I love and understand
One joy: with staff and scrip
To walk a wild west land,
The winds my fellowship.

For all the winds will blow,
Across a lonely face,
Rough wisdom, good to know:
An high and heartening grace.

Wind, on the open down!
Riding the wind, the moon:
From town to country town,
I go from noon to noon.

Cities of ancient spires,
Glorious against high noon;
August at sunset fires;
Austere beneath the moon.

Old, rain-washed, red-roofed streets,
Fresh with the soft South-west:
Where dreaming memory meets
Brave men long since at rest.

Evening, from out the green
Wet boughs of clustered lime,
Pours fragrance rich and keen,
Balming the stilly time.

Old ramparts, gray and stern;
But comely clothed upon
With wealth of moss and fern,
And scarlet snapdragon.

Harbours of swaying masts,
Beneath the vesper star:
Each high-swung lantern casts
A quivering ray afar.

From round the ancient quay,
Ring songs with rough refrains:
Strong music of the sea,
Chaunted in lusty strains.

Freshness of early spray,
Blown on me off the sea:
Morning breaks chilly gray,
And storm is like to be.

A cliff of rent, black rock,
About whose stern height flies
The wrangling sea-gull flock,
With querulous, thin cries.

The sea-gulls' wrangling cry
Around the black cliff rings:
I watch them wheel and fly,
A snowstorm of white wings.

With savoury blossoms graced,
A craggy, rusted height:
Where thrift and samphire taste
The sea and wind and light.

A light prow plunges: red,
Red as the ruddy sand,
The tall sail fills: well sped,
The fair boat leaves the land.

I wander with delight
Among the great sea gales:
Exulting in their might,
They thunder through the vales.

Cries of the North-west wind,
Crying from roseless lands:
From countries cold and blind,
Hard seas and unsunned strands.

A dark forest, where freeze
My very dreams: gaunt rows
Rise up, the forest trees;
Black, from a waste of snows.

Long, fragrant pine tree bands,
Behind whose black, straight ranks
The dusky red sun stands,
On clouds in purple banks.

In tree-tops the worn gale
Hangs, weakened to a sigh:
The rooks with sunrise hail
From out the tree-tops fly.

A deep wood, where the air
Hangs in a stilly trance:
While on rich fernbanks fair
The sunlights flash and dance.

I hear the woodland folks,
Each well-swung axe's blow:
And boughs of mighty oaks,
Murmuring to and fro.

My step fills, as I go,
Shy rabbits with quick fears:
I see the sunlight glow
Red through their startled ears.

Mild, red-brown April woods,
When spring is in the air:
And a soft spirit broods
In patience, everywhere.

Primroses fill the fields,
And birds' light matin cries:
The lingering darkness yields,
Before the sun's uprise.

Deep meadows, white with dew,
Where faeries well may dance;
Or the quaint fawnskin crew,
Play in a red moon's glance.

Quivering poplar trees,
Silvered upon the wind:
In watermeads and leas,
With silver streams entwined.

Waters in alder shade,
Where green lights break and gleam
Betwixt my fingers, laid
Upon the rippling stream.

In merry prime of June,
Birds sun themselves and sing:
Mine heart beats to the tune;
The world is on the wing.

The sun, golden and strong,
Leaps: and in flying choirs
The birds make morning song,
Across the morning fires.

Old gardens, where long hours
But find me happier,
Beside the misty flowers
Of purple lavender.

Heaped with a sweet hayload,
Curved, yellow waggons pass
Slow down the high-hedged road;
I watch them from the grass:

A pleasant village noise
Breaks the still air: and all
The summer spirit joys,
Before the first leaves fall.

Red wreckage of the rose,
Over a gusty lawn:
While in the orchard close,
Fruits redden to their dawn.

September's wintering air,
When fruits and flowers have fled
From mountain valleys bare,
Save rowan berries red.

These joys, and such as these,
Are England's and are mine:
Within the English seas,
My days have been divine.

Oh! Hellas lies far hence,
Far the blue Sicel sea:
But England's excellence
Is more than they to me.

1892.

TO OCEAN HAZARD: GIPSY

Burning fire, or blowing wind;
Starry night, or glowing sun:
All these thou dost bring to mind,
All these match thee, one by one:
Ocean is thy name, most fair!
Strangest name, for thee to bear.

Daughter of the sun, and child
Of the wind upon the waste;
Daughter of the field and wild:
Thee, what oceans have embraced?
What great waves have cradled thee,
That thy name is of the sea?

In thy beauty, the red earth,
Full of gold and jewel stone,
Flames and burns: thy happy birth
Made and marked thee for her own.
Winds held triumph in the trees:
Thou wast lying on earth's knees.

For thine ancient people keep
Still their march from land to land:
Ever upon earth they sleep,
Woods and fields on either hand.
Not upon the barren sea
Have thy people dandled thee.

Closer they, than other men,
To the heart of earth have come:
First the wilderness, and then
Field and forest, gave them home:
All their days, their hearts, they must
Give to earth: and then their dust.

Was it, that they heard the sea
In the surging pinewood's voice:
As they pondered names, for thee
Fair enough; so made their choice,
Hailed thee Ocean, hailed thee queen
Over glades of tossing green?

1888.

UPON A DRAWING

To Manmohan Ghose.

Not in the crystal air of a Greek glen,
Not in the houses of imperial Rome,
Lived he, who wore this beauty among men:
No classic city was his ancient home.
What happy country claims his fair youth then,
Her pride? and what his fortunate lineage?
Here is no common man of every day,
This man, whose full and gleaming eyes assuage
Never their longing, be that what it may:
Of dreamland only he is citizen,
Beyond the flying of the last sea's foam.

Set him beneath the Athenian olive trees,
To speak with Marathonians: or to task
The wise serenity of Socrates;
Asking, what other men dare never ask.
Love of his country and his gods? Not these
The master thoughts, that comfort his strange heart,
When life grows difficult, and the lights dim:
In him is no simplicity, but art
Is all in all, for life and death, to him:
And whoso looks upon that fair face, sees
No nature there: only a magic mask.

Or set this man beside the Roman lords,
To vote upon the fate of Catiline;
Or in a battle of stout Roman swords,
Where strength and virtue were one thing divine:
Or bind him to the cross with Punic cords.

Think you, this unknown and mysterious man
Had played the Roman, with that wistful smile,
Those looks not moulded on a Roman plan,
But full of witcheries and secret guile?
Think you, those lips had framed true Roman words,
Whose very curves have something Sibylline?

Thou wouldst but laugh, were one to question thee:
Laugh with malign, bright eyes, and curious joy.
Thou'rt fallen in love with thine own mystery!
And yet thou art no Sibyl, but a boy.
What wondrous land within the unvoyaged sea
Haunts then thy thoughts, thy memories, thy dreams?
Nay! be my friend; and share with me thy past:
If haply I may catch enchaunting gleams,
Catch marvellous music, while our friendship last:
Tell me thy visions: though their true home be
Some land, that was a legend in old Troy.

1890.

THE ROMAN STAGE

To Hugh Orange.

A man of marble holds the throne,
With looks composed and resolute:
Till death, a prince whom princes own,
Draws near to touch the marble mute.

The play is over: gooa my friends!
Murmur the pale lips: your applause!
With what a grace the actor ends:
How loyal to dramatic laws!

A brooding beauty on his brow;
Irony brooding over sin:
The next imperial actor now
Bids the satiric piece begin.

1891.

“TO WEEP IRISH”

To the Rev. Dr. William Barry.

Long Irish melancholy of lament!
Voice of the sorrow, that is on the sea:
Voice of that ancient mourning music sent
From Rama childless: the world wails in thee.

The sadness of all beauty at the heart,
The appealing of all souls unto the skies,
The longing locked in each man's breast apart,
Weep in the melody of thine old cries.

Mother of tears! sweet Mother of sad sons!
All mourners of the world weep Irish, weep
Ever with thee: while burdened time still runs,
Sorrows reach God through thee, and ask for sleep.

And though thine own unsleeping sorrow yet
Live to the end of burdened time, in pain:
Still sing the song of sorrow! and forget
The sorrow, in the solace, of the strain.

1893.

SUMMER STORM

To Harold Child.

The wind, hark! the wind in the angry woods:
And how clouds purple the west: there broods
Thunder, thunder; and rain will fall;
Fresh fragrance cling to the wind from all
Roses holding water wells,
Laurels gleaming to the gusty air;
Wilding mosses of the dells,
Drenched hayfields, and dripping hedgerows fair.

The wind, hark! the wind dying again:
The wind's voice matches the far-off main,
In sighing cadences: Pan will wake,
Pan in the forest, whose rich pipes make
Music to the folding flowers,
In the pure eve, where no hot spells are:
Those be favourable hours
Hymned by Pan beneath the shepherd star.

1887.

TO A TRAVELLER

The mountains, and the lonely death at last
Upon the lonely mountains: O strong friend!
The wandering over, and the labour passed,
Thou art indeed at rest:
Earth gave thee of her best,
That labour and this end.

Earth was thy mother, and her true son thou:
Earth called thee to a knowledge of her ways,
Upon the great hills, up the great streams: now
Upon earth's kindly breast
Thou art indeed at rest:
Thou, and thine arduous days.

Fare thee well, O strong heart! The tranquil night
Looks calmly on thee: and the sun pours down
His glory over thee, O heart of might!
Earth gives thee perfect rest:
Earth, whom thy swift feet pressed:
Earth, whom the vast stars crown.

1889.

IN MEMORY OF M. B.

Old age, that dwelt upon thy years
With softest and with stateliest grace,
Hath sealed thine eyes, hath closed thine ears,
And stilled the sweetness of thy face.

That gentle and that gracious look
Sleeps now, and wears a marble calm:
Death took no more away, but took
All cares away, and left the balm

Of pure repose and peacefulness
Upon thy forehead touched by time:
So shall I know thee, none the less
Than earth unwintered, come the prime.

Gone, the white snows, the lingering leaves,
That once endeared the wintry days:
But the new bloom of spring receives
The old love, and has an equal praise.

Fare then thee well! In Winchester,
Sleep thy last fearless sleep serene.
Friends fail me not; but kindlier
Can no friend be, than thou hast been.

The city that we two loved best,
No fairer place of sleep for thee:
There lay thee down, and take thy rest,
And this farewell of love from me.

1888.

HAWTHORNE

To Walter Alison Phillips.

Ten years ago I heard; ten, have I loved;
Thine haunting voice borne over the waste sea.
Was it thy melancholy spirit moved
Mine, with those gray dreams, that invested thee?
Or was it, that thy beauty first reproved
The imperfect fancies, that looked fair to me?

Thou hast both secrets: for to thee are known
The fatal sorrows binding life and death:
And thou hast found, on winds of passage blown
That music, which is sorrow's perfect breath:
So, all thy beauty takes a solemn tone,
And art, is all thy melancholy saith.

Now therefore is thy voice abroad for me,
When through dark woodlands murmuring sounds make way:
Thy voice, and voices of the sounding sea,
Stir in the branches, as none other may:
All pensive loneliness is full of thee,
And each mysterious, each autumnal day.

Hesperian soul! Well hadst thou in the West
Thine hermitage and meditative place:
In mild, retiring fields thou wast at rest,
Calmed by old winds, touched with aërial grace:
Fields, whence old magic simples filled thy breast,
And unforgotten fragrance balmed thy face.

1889.

GLORIES

To Theodore Peters.

Roses from Paestan rosaries!
More goodly red and white was she:
Her red and white were harmonies,
Not matched upon a Paestan tree.

Ivories blaunched in Alban air!
She lies more purely blaunched than you:
No Alban whiteness doth she wear,
But death's perfection of that hue.

Nay! now the rivalry is done,
Of red, and white, and whiter still:
She hath a glory from that sun,
Who falls not from Olympus hill.

1893.

LINES TO A LADY UPON HER THIRD BIRTHDAY

Dear Cousin: to be three years old,
Is to have found the Age of Gold:
That Age foregone! that Age foretold!
What wondrous names, then, wait thy choice,
High sounding for thine helpless voice!
I choose instead: and hail in thee
A queen of lilied Arcady,
Or lady of Hesperides:
Or, if Utopia lie near these,
Utopian thou, by right divine,
On whom all stars of favour shine.
Vainly the cold Lycean sage
Withheld his praise from childhood's age;
Denied thine happiness to thee;
Nor as a little child would be!
Man to the world he could present,
Magnanimous, magnificent:
Children, he knew not: for of thee
Dreamed not his calm philosophy;
Or Pythias was no Dorothy!
Thou hast good right to laugh in scorn
At us, of simple dreams forlorn:
At us, whose disenchaunted eyes
Imagination dare despise.
Thou hast that freshness, early born,
Which roses have; or billowy corn,
Waving, and washed in dews of morn:
And yet, no flower of woodlands wild,
But overwhelming London's child!

About thy sleep are heard the feet
And turmoil of the sounding street:
Thou hearest not! The land of dreams
More closely lies, and clearlier gleams.
Thou watchest, with thy grave eyes gray,
Our world, with looks of far away:
Eyes, that consent to look on things
Unlike their own imaginings;
And, looking, weave round all, they see,
Charms of their own sweet sorcery.
Thus very London thou dost change
To wonderland, all fair and strange:
The ugliness and uproar seem
To soften, at a child's pure dream:
And each poor dusty garden yields
The fresh delight of cowslip fields.
What is the secret, and the spell?
Thou knowest: for thou hast it well.
Wilt thou not pity us, and break
Thy silent dreaming, for our sake?
Wilt thou not teach us, how to make
Worlds of delight from things of nought,
Or fetched from faery land, and wrought
With flowers and lovely imageries?
Pity us! for such wisdom dies:
Pity thyself! youth flies, youth flies.
Thou comest to the desert plain,
Where no dreams follow in thy train:
They leave thee at the pleasaunce close;
Lonely the haggard pathway goes.
Thou wilt look back, and see them, deep
In the fair glades, where thou didst keep

Thy summer court, thy summer sleep:
But thou wilt never see them more,
Till death the golden dreams restore.
Now, ere the hard, dull hours begin
Their sad, destroying work within
Thy childhood's delicate memory,
Wilt thou not tell us, Dorothy?
Nay! thou art in conspiracy
With all those faeries, children styled,
To keep the secret of the child.
Ah! to be only three years old!
That is indeed an Age of Gold:
And, care not for mine idle fears!
Thou need'st not lose it: the far years,
Touching with love and gentle tears
The treasures of thy memory,
May mould them into poetry.
Then, of those deep eyes, gray and grave,
The world will be a willing slave:
Then, all the dreams of dear dreamland
Wait with their music at thine hand,
And beauty come at thy command.
But now, what counts the will of time?
Enough, thou livest! And this rhyme,
Unworthy of the Golden Age,
Yet hails thee, in that heritage,
Happy and fair: then, come what may,
Thou hast the firstfruits of the day.
Fair fall each morn to thee! And I,
Despite all dark fates, Dorothy!
Will prove me thine affectionate
Cousin, and loyal Laureate.

1889.

CELTIC SPEECH

To Dr. Douglas Hyde.

Never forgetful silence fall on thee,
Nor younger voices overtake thee,
Nor echoes from thine ancient hills forsake thee;
Old music heard by Mona of the sea:
And where with moving melodies there break thee
Pastoral Conway, venerable Dee.

Like music lives, nor may that music die,
Still in the far, fair Gaelic places:
The speech, so wistful with its kindly graces,
Holy Croagh Patrick knows, and holy Hy:
The speech, that wakes the soul in withered faces,
And wakes remembrance of great things gone by.

Like music by the desolate Land's End
Mournful forgetfulness hath broken:
No more words kindred to the winds are spoken,
Where upon iron cliffs whole seas expend
That strength, whereof the unalterable token
Remains wild music, even to the world's end.

1887.

WAYS OF WAR

To John O'Leary.

A terrible and splendid trust
Heartens the host of Inisfail:
Their dream is of the swift sword-thrust,
A lightning glory of the Gael.

Croagh Patrick is the place of prayers,
And Tara the assembling place:
But each sweet wind of Ireland bears
The trump of battle on its race.

From Dursey Isle to Donegal,
From Howth to Achill, the glad noise
Rings: and the heirs of glory fall,
Or victory crowns their fighting joys.

A dream! a dream! an ancient dream!
Yet, ere peace come to Inisfail,
Some weapons on some field must gleam,
Some burning glory fire the Gael.

That field may lie beneath the sun,
Fair for the treading of an host:
That field in realms of thought be won,
And armed minds do their uttermost:

Some way, to faithful Inisfail,
Shall come the majesty and awe
Of martial truth, that must prevail
To lay on all the eternal law.

1893.

THE COMING OF WAR

To John Davidson.

Gather the people, for the battle breaks:
From camping grounds above the valley,
Gather the men-at-arms, and bid them rally:
Because the morn, the battle, wakes.

High throned above the mountains and the main,
Triumphs the sun: far down, the pasture plain
To trampling armour shakes.

This was the meaning of those plenteous years,
Those unarmed years of peace unbroken:
Flashing war crowns them! Now war's trump hath spoken
This final glory in our ears.
The old blood of our pastoral fathers now
Riots about our heart, and through our brow:
Their sons can have no fears.

This was our whispering and haunting dream,
When cornfields flourished, red and golden:
When vines hung purple, nor could be withholden
The radiant outburst of their stream.
Earth cried to us, that all her laboured store
Was ours: that she had more to give, and more:
For nothing, did we deem?

We give her back the glory of this hour.
O sun and earth! O strength and beauty!
We use you now, we thank you now: our duty
We stand to do, mailed in your power.
A little people of a favoured land,
Helmed with the blessing of the morn we stand:
Our life is at its flower.

Gather the people, let the battle break:
An hundred peaceful years are over.
Now march each man to battle, as a lover:
For him, whom death shall overtake!

Sleeping upon this field, about his gloom
Voices shall pierce, to thrill his sacred tomb,
Of pride for his great sake.

With melody about us: heart and feet
Responding to one mighty measure;
Glad with the splendour of an holy pleasure;
Swayed, one and all, as wind sways wheat:
Answering the sunlight with our eyes aglow;
Serene, and proud, and passionate, we go
Through airs of morning sweet.

Let no man dare to be disheartened now!
We challenge death beyond denial.
Against the host of death we make our trial:
Lord God of Hosts! do thou,
Who gavest us the fulness of thy sun
On fields of peace, perfect war's work begun:
Warriors, to thee we bow.

O life-blood of remembrance! Long ago
This land upheld our ancient fathers:
And for this land, their land, our land, now gathers
One fellowship against the foe.
The spears flash: be they as our mothers' eyes!
The trump sounds: hearken to our fathers' cries!
March we to battle so.

1889.

IRELAND'S DEAD

To John O'Mahony.
Immemorial Holy Land;
At thine hand, thy sons await
Any fate: they understand
Thee, the all compassionate.

Be it death for thee, they grieve
Nought, to leave the light aside:
Thou their pride, they undeceive
Death, by death unterrified.

Mother, dear and fair to us,
Ever thus to be adored!
Is thy sword grown timorous,
Mother of misericord?

For thy dead is grief on thee?
Can it be, thou dost repent,
That they went, thy chivalry,
Those sad ways magnificent.

What, and if their heart's blood flow?
Gladly so, with love divine,
Since not thine the overthrow,
They thy fields incarnadine.

Hearts afire with one sweet flame,
One loved name, thine host adores:
Conquerors, they overcame
Death, high Heaven's inheritors.

For their loyal love, nought less,
Than the stress of death, sufficed:
Now with Christ, in blessedness,
Triumph they, imparadised.

Mother, with so dear blood stained!
Freedom gained through love befall
Thee, by thraldom unprofaned,
Perfect and imperial!

Still the ancient voices ring:
Faith they bring, and fear repel.
Time shall tell thy triumphing,
Victress and invincible!

1893.

HARMONIES

To Vincent O'Sullivan.

I

Sweet music lingers
From her harpstrings on her fingers,
When they rest in mine:
And her clear glances
Help the music, whereto dances,
Trembling with an hope divine,
Every heart: and chiefly mine.

Could she discover
All her heart to any lover,
She who sways them all?
Yet her hand trembles,
Laid in mine: and scarce dissembles,
That its music looks to fall
Into mine, and Love ends all.

1889.

II

The airs, that best belong,
Upon the strings devoutly playing,
Your heart devoutly praying:
Now sound your passion, full and strong,
Past all her fond gainsaying.

First, strangely sweet and low,
Slowly her careless ears entrancing:
Then set the music dancing,
And wild notes flying to and fro;
Like spirited sunbeams glancing.

The melodies will stir
Spirits of love, that still attend her:
That able are to bend her,
By subtile arts transforming her;
And all their wisdom lend her.

Last, loud and resolute,
Ring out a triumph and a greeting!
No call for sad entreating,
For she will grant you all your suit,
Her song your music meeting.

1889.

THE LAST MUSIC

To Frederic Herbert Trench.

Calmly, breathe calmly all your music, maids!
Breathe a calm music over my dead queen.
All your lives long, you have nor heard, nor seen,
Fairer than she, whose hair in sombre braids
With beauty overshades
Her brow, broad and serene.

Surely she hath lain so an hundred years:
Peace is upon her, old as the world's heart.
Breathe gently, music! Music done, depart:

And leave me in her presence to my tears,
With music in mine ears;
For sorrow hath its art.

Music, more music, sad and slow! she lies
Dead: and more beautiful, than early morn.
Discrowned am I, and of her looks forlorn:
Alone vain memories immortalize
The way of her soft eyes,
Her musical voice low-borne.

The balm of gracious death now laps her round,
As once life gave her grace beyond her peers.
Strange! that I loved this lady of the spheres,
To sleep by her at last in common ground:
When kindly sleep hath bound
Mine eyes, and sealed mine ears.

Maidens! make a low music: merely make
Silence a melody, no more. This day,
She travels down a pale and lonely way:
Now, for a gentle comfort, let her take
Such music, for her sake,
As mourning love can play.

Holy my queen lies in the arms of death:
Music moves over her still face, and I
Lean breathing love over her. She will lie
In earth thus calmly, under the wind's breath:
The twilight wind, that saith:
Rest! worthy found, to die.

1889.

A DREAM OF YOUTH

TO LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS

With faces bright, as ruddy corn,
Touched by the sunlight of the morn;
With rippling hair; and gleaming eyes,
Wherein a sea of passion lies;
Hair waving back, and eyes that gleam
With deep delight of dream on dream;
With full lips, curving into song;
With shapely limbs, upright and strong:
The youths on holy service throng.

Vested in white, upon their brows
Are wreaths fresh twined from dewy boughs:
And flowers they strow along the way,
Still dewy from the birth of day.
So, to each reverend altar come,
They stand in adoration: some
Swing up gold censers; till the air
Is blue and sweet, with smoke of rare
Spices, that fetched from Egypt were.

In voices of calm, choral tone,
Praise they each God, with praise his own:
As children of the Gods, is seen
Their glad solemnity of mien:
So fair a spirit of the skies
Is in their going: and their eyes
Look out upon the peopled earth,
As theirs were some diviner birth:
And clear and courtly is their mirth.

Lights of the labouring world, they seem:
Or, to the tired, like some fresh stream.
Their dignity of perfect youth
Compels devotion, as doth truth:
So right seems all, they do, they are.
Old age looks wistful, from afar,
To watch their beauty, as they go,
Radiant and free, in ordered row;
And fairer, in the watching, grow.

Fair though it be, to watch unclose
The nestling glories of a rose,
Depth on rich depth, soft fold on fold:
Though fairer be it, to behold
Stately and sceptral lilies break
To beauty, and to sweetness wake:
Yet fairer still, to see and sing,
One fair thing is, one matchless thing:
Youth, in its perfect blossoming.

The magic of a golden grace
Brings fire and sweetness on each face:
Till, from their passage, every heart
Takes fire, and sweetness in the smart:
Till virtue lives, for all who own
Their majesty, in them alone:
Till careless hearts, and idle, take
Delight in living, for their sake;
Worship their footsteps, and awake.

Beside the tremulous, blue sea,
Clear at sunset, they love to be:

And they are rarely sad, but then.
For sorrow touches them, as men,
Looking upon the calm of things,
That pass, and wake rememberings
Of holy and of ancient awe;
The charm of immemorial Law:
What we see now, the great dead saw!

Upon a morn of storm, a swan,
Breasting the cold stream, cold and wan,
Throws back his neck in snowy length
Between his snowy wings of strength:
Against him the swift river flows,
The proudlier he against it goes,
King of the waters! For his pride
Bears him upon a mightier tide:
May death not be by youth defied?

But the red sun is gone: and gleams
Of delicate moonlight waken dreams,
Dreams, and the mysteries of peace:
Shall this fair darkness ever cease?
Here is no drear, no fearful Power,
But life grows fuller with each hour,
Full of the silence, that is best:
Earth lies, with soothed and quiet breast,
Beneath the guardian stars, at rest.

At night, behold them! Where lights burn
By moonlit olives, see them turn
Full faces toward the sailing moon,
Nigh lovelier than beneath high noon!

Throw back their comely moulded throats,
Whence music on the night wind floats!
And through the fragrant hush of night
Their lustrous eyes make darkness bright:
Their laugh loads darkness with delight.

Almost the murmuring sea is still:
Almost the world obeys their will.
Such youth moves pity in stern Fates,
And sure death wellnigh dominates:
Their passion kindles such fair flame,
As from divine Achilles came:
A vehement ardour thrills their breasts,
And beauty's benediction rests
On earth, and on earth's goodliest guests.

The music of their sighing parts
A silence: and their beating hearts
Beat to a measure of despair:
Ah! how the fire of youth is fair,
Yet may not be for ever young!
But night hath yielded; there hath sprung
Morning upon the throne of night:
Day comes, with solemnizing light:
Consuming sorrows take to flight.

Magnificent in early bloom,
Like Gods, they triumph over gloom:
All things desirable are theirs,
Of beauty and of wonder, heirs:
Their cities, vassals are, which give
Them thanks and praise, because they live

Strong, they are victors of dismay;
Fair, they serve beauty every day;
Young, the sun loves to light their way.

Where now is death? Where that gray land?
Those fearless eyes, those white brows grand,
That take full sunlight and sweet air
With rapture true and debonair,
These have not known the touch of death!
The world hath winds: these forms have breath.
But, should death come, should dear life set,
Calm would each go: Farewell! forget
Me dead: live you serenely yet.

See them! The springing of the palm
Is nought, beside their gracious calm:
The rippling of cool waters dies
To nought, before their clear replies:
The smile, that heralds their bright thought
Brings down the splendid sun to nought.
See them! They walk the earth in state:
In right of perfect youth, held great:
On whom the powers of nature wait.

No sceptre theirs, but they are kings:
Their forms and words are royal things.
Their simple friendship is a court,
Whither the wise and great resort.
No homage of the world, they claim:
But in all places lives their fame.
Sun, moon, and stars; the earth, the sea;
Yea! all things, that of beauty be,
Honour their true divinity.

1889.

ROMANS

To Arthur Galton.

How shall I praise thee, Caesar? Thou art he,
Through whom all Europe's greatness came to be:
And the world's central crime is thy swift death.
And thou too, Cicero! the voice of Rome!
The listening world is thy perpetual home:
Earth's plain, thy floor; the embracing sky, thy dome.
No greater things than these, great history saith:
Caesarian sword, and Ciceronian breath.

You were no friends: but you are brothers now:
Equal, the laurels on each victor's brow:
Triumphing generations throng each car.
This night, I hear those measured tides of sound,
Surging above that crownless king discrowned,
Dead on that sacred senatorial ground:
Low in the dark hangs, burning from afar,
With pale and solemn fires, the Julian Star.

1889.

THE TROOPSHIP

At early morning, clear and cold,
Still in her English harbour lay
The long, white ship: while winter gold
Shone pale upon her outward way.

Slowly she moved, slowly she stirred,
Stately and slow, she went away:
Sounds of farewell, the harbour heard;
Music on board began to play.

Old, homely airs were thine, great ship!
Breaking from laughter into tears:
And through them all good fellowship
Spoke of a trust beyond all fears.

Still, as the gray mists gathered round,
Embracing thee, concealing thine;
Still, faintly from the Outward Bound
Came melodies of Auld Lang Syne.

Oh, sad to part! Oh, brave to go
Between the Piers of Hercules,
And through the seas of fame, and so
Meet eastern sun on eastern seas!

O richly laden! swiftly bear,
And surely, thy two thousand men;
Till round them burn the Indian air:
And English lips will hail them then.

NEW YEAR'S DAY: 1890.

DEAD

To Olivier Georges Destrée.

In Merioneth, over the sad moor
Drives the rain, the cold wind blows:
Past the ruinous church door,
The poor procession without music goes.

Lonely she wandered out her hour, and died.
Now the mournful curlew cries
Over her, laid down beside
Death's lonely people: lightly down she lies.

In Merioneth, the wind lives and wails,
On from hill to lonely hill:
Down the loud, triumphant gales,
A spirit cries Be strong! and cries Be still!

1887.

SANCTA SILVARUM

To the Earl Russell.

I

Deep music of the ancient forest!
Through glades and coverts with thy magic winding;
And in the silence of our hushed hearts finding
Tremulous echoes of thy murmur,
Unshapen thoughts thronging and throbbing:
O music of the mystery, that embraces
All forest depths, and footless far-off places!
Thou art the most high voice of nature,
Thou art the voice of unseen singers,
Vanishing ever deeper through the clinging
Thickets, and under druid branches winging
A flight, that draws our eyes to follow:
Yet, following, find they only forest;
But lonely forest, stately melancholy,
A consecrated stillness, old and holy;
Commanding us to hail with homage
Powers, that we see not, hid in beauty:
A majesty immeasurable; a glorious
Conclave of angels: wherewithal victorious,
The Lord of venerable forests,
Murmuring sanctuaries and cloisters,
Proclaims his kingdom over our emotion:

Even as his brother Lord of the old ocean
Thunders tremendous laws, in tempest
Embattled between winds and waters.
O mighty friendship of mysterious forces,
O servants of one Will! Stars in their courses,
Flowers in their fragrance, in their music
Winged winds, and lightnings in their fierceness!
These are the world's magnalities and splendours:
At touch of these, the adoring spirit renders
Glory, and praise, and passionate silence.

1886.

II

The moon labours through black cloud,
Through the vast night, dark and proud:
The windy wood dances.
Still the massed heavens drive along:
And, of all night's fiery throng,
The moon alone glances.

How the lights are wild and strange!
Only one light doth not change,
From living fires flowing:
Where, on fragrant banks of fern,
Steadily and stilly burn
The greenwood worms glowing.

Going down the forest side,
The night robs me of all pride,
By gloom and by splendour.
High, away, alone, afar,
Mighty wills and workings are:
To them I surrender.

The processions of the night,
Sweeping clouds and battling light,
And wild winds in thunder,
Care not for the world of man,
Passionate on another plan:
O twin worlds of wonder!

Ancients of dark majesty!
Priests of splendid mystery!
The Powers of Night cluster:
In the shadows of the trees,
Dreams, that no man lives and sees,
The dreams! the dreams! muster.

Move not! for the night wind stirs:
And the night wind ministers
To dreams, and their voices:
Ah! the wild moon earthward bowed
From that tyranny of cloud:
The dim wood rejoices.

What do I here? What am I,
Who may comprehend nor sky,
Nor trees, nor dreams thronging?
Over moonlight dark clouds drive:
The vast midnight is alive
With magical longing.

1889.

III

Through the fresh woods there fleet
Fawns, with bright eyes, light feet:
Bright eyes, and feet that spurn
The pure green fern.

Headed by leaping does,
The swift procession goes
Through thickets, over lawns:
Followed by fawns.

Over slopes, over glades,
Down dells and leafy shades,
Away the quick deer troop:
A wildwood group.

Under the forest airs,
A life of grace is theirs:
Courtly their look; they seem
Things of a dream.

Some say, but who can say?
That a charmed troop are they:
Once youths and maidens white!
These may be right.

1889.

IV

Over me, beeches broad beneath blue sky
In light winds through their cooling leaves rejoice:
Now, the red squirrel, lithe and wild, runs by;
Anon the wood dove from deep glades, with voice
Of mellow music, lulls the air:
All murmurs of the forest, stirs and cries,
Come stilly down green coverts; the high fern
Smells of rich earth aglow from burning skies.
Hither my greenwood ways love best to turn:
Hither my lone hours gladliest fare.

But not for melancholy solitude;
Not for the fond delight of loneliness:
Though here nor voice, nor alien feet, intrude.
Lone am I: but what lone dreams dare repress
High presences of vanished days?
Long billowy reaches of unnumbered trees
Roll downward from this haunt, and break at length
Against such walls, as no man unmoved sees,
But hails the past of splendour and of strength:
And heights of immemorial praise.

That Castle gray, marvellous with mighty years,
Crowning the forest deeps in pride of place:
Towers, royal in their histories of tears,
And royal in their chronicles of grace:
Am I alone, beholding those?
The solitary forest bowers me round:
Yet companies august go through the glade,
Crowned and resplendent! stately and discrowned!
All, solemn from the tragedies they played:
Remembering, each the doom, the close.

Alone! Nay, but almost, would that I were
Alone: too high are these great things for me.
Immeasurable glooms and splendours here
Usurp the calm noon, where my rest should be:
O proud, O ancient Towers! farewell.
I turn from you, and take the world of men:
Gladly I mix me with the common day:
But should they vex me with their tumult: then,
Hither my feet will find the accustomed way;
Then cast once more your heightening spell.

1889.

BAGLEY WOOD

To Percy Addleshaw.

The night is full of stars, full of magnificence:
Nightingales hold the wood, and fragrance loads the dark.
Behold, what fires august, what lights eternal! Hark,
What passionate music poured in passionate love's defence!
Breathe but the wafting wind's nocturnal frankincense!
Only to feel this night's great heart, only to mark
The splendours and the glooms, brings back the patriarch,
Who on Chaldæan wastes found God through reverence.

Could we but live at will upon this perfect height,
Could we but always keep the passion of this peace,
Could we but face unshamed the look of this pure light,
Could we but win earth's heart, and give desire release:
Then were we all divine, and then were ours by right
These stars, these nightingales, these scents: then shame would cease.

1890.

A SONG OF ISRAEL

To the Rev. Stewart Headlam.

Praise ye Him, with virginals and organs:
Praise ye Him, with timbrel and flute!
Come from the field, glorify His temple,
With red corn, with the ripe first fruit.

He is God, who brought us out from Egypt,
Gave us lands of vineyard and oil:
He is God, who made the Kings of Canaan,
Made their kingdoms, to be our spoil.

Praise ye Him, with psaltery and cymbal:
Praise ye Him, with viol and harp!
Through the Wilderness, through the rough places,
Led He us, for whom Death grew sharp.

Sinai, with thunders and with voices,
Praised our God, the Giver of Law:
Jordan stayed the rushing of his waters;
Israel passed over, and saw:

Saw the plenty, saw the Land of Promise,
Saw, and praised Him, the Lord of lords:
King of armies, terrible and holy;
Light to our eyes, and strength to our swords.

Where be now the gods of all the nations?
Where is Baal? Where Ashtaroth?
Fallen! fallen! before the God of Jacob:
None withstood the day of His wrath.

Praise ye Him, with virginals and organs:
Praise ye Him, with music and voice!
Praise the Name of the Lord God Jehovah:
Praise Him, praise Him, ye Tribes His choice!

1889.

THE DARK ANGEL

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust
To rid the world of penitence:
Malicious Angel, who still dost
My soul such subtile violence!

Because of thee, no thought, no thing,
Abides for me undesecrate:
Dark Angel, ever on the wing,
Who never reachest me too late!

When music sounds, then changest thou
Its silvery to a sultry fire:
Nor will thine envious heart allow
Delight untortured by desire.

Through thee, the gracious Muses turn
To Furies, O mine Enemy!
And all the things of beauty burn
With flames of evil ecstasy.

Because of thee, the land of dreams
Becomes a gathering place of fears:
Until tormented slumber seems
One vehemence of useless tears.

When sunlight glows upon the flowers,
Or ripples down the dancing sea:
Thou, with thy troop of passionate powers,
Beleaguerest, bewilderest, me.

Within the breath of autumn woods,
Within the winter silences:
Thy venomous spirit stirs and broods,
O Master of impieties!

The ardour of red flame is thine,
And thine the steely soul of ice:
Thou poisonest the fair design
Of nature, with unfair device.

Apples of ashes, golden bright;
Waters of bitterness, how sweet!
O banquet of a foul delight,
Prepared by thee, dark Paraclete!

Thou art the whisper in the gloom,
The hinting tone, the haunting laugh:
Thou art the adorner of my tomb,
The minstrel of mine epitaph.

I fight thee, in the Holy Name!
Yet, what thou dost, is what God saith:
Tempter! should I escape thy flame,
Thou wilt have helped my soul from Death:

The second Death, that never dies,
That cannot die, when time is dead:
Live Death, wherein the lost soul cries,
Eternally uncomforted.

Dark Angel, with thine aching lust!
Of two defeats, of two despairs:
Less dread, a change to drifting dust,
Than thine eternity of cares.

Do what thou wilt, thou shalt not so,
Dark Angel! triumph over me:
Lonely, unto the Lone I go;
Divine, to the Divinity.

1893.

A FRIEND

His are the whitenesses of soul,
That Virgil had: he walks the earth
A classic saint, in self-control,
And comeliness, and quiet mirth.

His presence wins me to repose:
When he is with me, I forget
All heaviness: and when he goes,
The comfort of the sun is set.

But in the lonely hours I learn,
How I can serve and thank him best:
God! trouble him: that he may turn
Through sorrow to the only rest.

1894.

TO A PASSIONIST

Clad in a vestment wrought with passion-flowers;
Celebrant of one Passion; called by name
Passionist: is thy world, one world with ours?
Thine, a like heart? Thy very soul, the same?

Thou pleadest an eternal sorrow: we
Praise the still changing beauty of this earth.
Passionate good and evil, thou dost see:
Our eyes behold the dreams of death and birth.

We love the joys of men: we love the dawn,
Red with the sun, and with the pure dew pearled
Thy stern soul feels, after the sun withdrawn,
How much pain goes to perfecting the world.

Canst thou be right? Is thine the very truth?
Stands then our life in so forlorn a state?
Nay, but thou wrongest us: thou wrong'st our youth,
Who dost our happiness compassionate.

And yet! and yet! O royal Calvary!
Whence divine sorrow triumphed through years past:
Could ages bow before mere memory?
Those passion-flowers must blossom, to the last.

Purple they bloom, the splendour of a King:
Crimson they bleed, the sacrament of Death:
About our thrones and pleasaunces they cling,
Where guilty eyes read, what each blossom saith.

1888.

MEN OF ASSISI

To Viscount St. Cyres.

A crown of roses and of thorns;
A crown of roses and of bay:
Each crown of loveliness adorns
Assisi, gleaming far away
On Umbrian heights, in Umbrian day.

One bloomed, when Cynthia's lover sang
Cynthia, and revelry, and Rome:
And one his wounded hands did hang,
Whose heart was lovelier Love's dear home;
And his, an holier martyrdom.

Are the spring roses round thine head,
Propertius! as they were of old?
In the gray deserts of the dead,
Glows any wine in cups of gold?
Not all the truth, dead Cynthia told!

And round thine head, so lowly fair,
Saint Francis! thorns no longer close:
Paradise roses may be there,
And Mary lilies: only those.
Thy sister, Death, hurt not thy rose.

We to thy shade, with song and wine,
Libation make, Propertius!
While suns or stars of summer shine,
Thy passionate music thrills through us:
Hail to thee, hail! We crown thee, thus.

But when our hearts are chill and faint,
Pierced with true sorrow piteous:
Francis! our brother and God's Saint,
We worship thee, we hail thee, thus:
Praying, Sweet Francis! pray for us.

O city on the Umbrian hills:
Assisi, mother of such sons!
What glory of remembrance fills
Thine heart, whereof the legend runs:
These are among my vanished ones.

1890.

MEN OF AQUINO

To Charles Mulvany.

Those angry fires, that clove the air,
Heavy with Rome's imperial lust:
Those bitter fires, that burn and flare
Unquenched, above their kindler's dust:
Aquinum can their birth declare.

The wicked splendours of old time,
Juvenal! stung thy passionate heart.
Wrath learned of thee a scorn sublime;
The Muses, a prophetic art:
Yet pride and lust kept still their prime.

A greater birth, Aquinum knows:
Rank upon rank, in stately wise;
Rank upon rank, in ordered rows;
Like sacred hosts and hierarchies,
The march of holy science goes.

Vain, a man's voice, to conquer men!
Rome fell: Rome rose: Aquinum lent
The world her greater citizen:
Armed for Rome's war, Saint Thomas went,
Using God's voice: they listened, then.

Ah, Juvenal: thy trumpet sound:
Woe for the fallen soul of Rome!
But the high saint, whose music found
The altar its eternal home,
Sang: Lauda Sion! heavenward bound.

A fourfold music of the Host,
He sang: the open Heavens shone plain.
Then back he turned him to his post,
And opened heavenly Laws again,
From first to last, both least and most.

O little Latin town! rejoice,
Who hast such motherhood, as this:
Through all the worlds of faith one voice
Chaunts forth the truth; yet stays not his,
Whose anger made a righteous choice.

1890.

LUCRETIUS

To William Nash.

I

Visions, to sear with flame his worn and haunted eyes,
Throng him: and fears unknown invest the black night hours.
His royal reason fights with undefeated Powers,
Armies of mad desires, legions of wanton lies;
His ears are full of pain, because of their fierce cries:
Nor from his tended thoughts, for all their fruits and flowers,
Comes solace: for Philosophy within her bowers
Falls faint, and sick to death. Therefore Lucretius dies.

Dead! And his deathless death hath him, so still and stark!
No change upon the deep, no change upon the earth,

None in the wastes of nature, the starred wilderness.
Wandering flames and thunders of the shaken dark:
Among the mountain heights, winds wild with stormy mirth:
These were before, and these will be: no more, no less.

1890.

II

Lucretius! King of men, that are
No more, they think, than men:
Who, past the flaming walls afar,
Find nought within their ken:

The cruel draught, that wildered thee,
And drove thee upon sleep,
Was kinder than Philosophy,
Who would not let thee weep.

Thou knowest now, that life and death
Are wondrous intervals:
The fortunes of a fitful breath,
Within the flaming walls.

Without them, an eternal plan,
Which life and death obey:
Divinity, that fashions man,
Its high, immortal way.

Or was he right, thy past compare,
Thy one true voice of Greece?
Then, whirled about the unconscious air,
Thou hast a vehement peace.

No calms of light, no purple lands,
No sanctuaries sublime:
Like storms of snow, like quaking sands,
Thine atoms drift through time.

1889.

III

Mightiest-minded of the Roman race,
Lucretius!
In thy predestined, purgatory place,
Where thou and thine Iphigenia wait:
What think'st thou of the Vision and the Fate,
Wherewith the Christ makes all thine outcries vain?
Art learning Christ through sweet and bitter pain,
Lucretius?

Heaviest-hearted of the sons of men,
Lucretius!
Well couldst thou justify severe thoughts then,
Considering thy lamentable Rome:
But thou wilt come to an imperial home,
With walls of jasper, past the walls of fire:
To God's proud City, and thine heart's desire,
Lucretius!

1887.

ENTHUSIASTS

To the Rev. Percy Dearmer.

Let your swords flash, and wound the golden air of God:
Bright steel, to meet and cleave the splendour of His sun!
Now is a war of wars in majesty begun:

Red shall the cornfields ripen, where our horses trod,
Where scythe nor sickle swept, but smote war's iron rod:
Where the stars rose and set, and saw the blood still run.
So shall men tell of us, and dread our deeds, though done:
New annals yet shall praise time's fiercest period.

Let your swords flash, and wound the glowing air: now play
A glorious dance of death, with clash and gleam of sword.
Did Syrian sun and moon stand still on Israel's day?
Those orbs halt over Ajalon at Joshua's word?
Of us, who ride for God, shall Christian children say:
To battle, see! flash by armed angels of the Lord.

1891.

CADGWITH

To Laurence Binyon.

I

Man is a shadow's dream!
Opulent Pindar saith:
Yet man may win a gleam
Of glory, before death.

Saith golden Shakespeare: Man
Is a dream's shadow! Yet,
Though death do all death can,
His soul toward life is set.

I, living with delight
This rich autumnal day,
Mark the gulls' curving flight
Across the black-girt bay.

And the sea's working men,
The fisher-folk, I mark
Haul down their boats, and then
Launch for the deep sea dark.

Far out the strange ships go:
Their broad sails flashing red
As flame, or white as snow:
The ships, as David said.

Winds rush and waters roll:
Their strength, their beauty, brings
Into mine heart the whole
Magnificence of things:

That men are counted worth
A part upon this sea,
A part upon this earth,
Exalts and heartens me.

Ah, Glaucus, soul of man!
Encrusted by each tide,
That, since the seas began,
Hath surged against thy side:

Encumbering thee with weed,
And tangle of the wave!
Yet canst thou rise at need,
And thy strong beauty save!

Tides of the world in vain
Desire to vanquish thee:
Prostrate, thou canst again
Rise, lord of earth and sea:

Rise, lord of sea and earth,
And winds, and starry night.
Thine is the greater birth
And origin of light.

1892.

II

My windows open to the autumn night,
In vain I watched for sleep to visit me:
How should sleep dull mine ears, and dim my sight,
Who saw the stars, and listened to the sea?

Ah, how the City of our God is fair!
If, without sea, and starless though it be,
For joy of the majestic beauty there,
Men shall not miss the stars, nor mourn the sea.

1892.

III

Mary Star of the sea!
Look on this little place:
Bless the kind fisher race,
Mary Star of the sea!

Send harvest from the deep,
Mary Star of the Sea!
Mary Star of the Sea!
Let not these women weep.

Mary Star of the Sea!
Give wife and mother joy
In husband and in boy:
Mary Star of the Sea!

With intercession save,
Mary Star of the Sea!
Mary Star of the Sea!
These children of the wave.

Mary Star of the Sea!
Pour peace upon the wild
Waves, make their murmurs mild:
Mary Star of the Sea!

Now in thy mercy pray,
Mary Star of the Sea!
Mary Star of the Sea!
For sailors far away.

Mary Star of the Sea!
Now be thy great prayers said
For all poor seamen dead:
Mary Star of the Sea!

1892.

VISIONS

To Mrs. de Paravicini.

I

Each in his proper gloom;
Each in his dark, just place:
The builders of their doom
Hide, each his awful face.

Not less than saints, are they
Heirs of Eternity:
Perfect, their dreadful way;
A deathless company.

Lost! lost! fallen and lost!
With fierce wrath ever fresh:
Each suffers in the ghost
The sorrows of the flesh.

O miracle of sin!
That makes itself an home,
So utter black within,
Thither Light cannot come!

O mighty house of hate!
'Stablished and guarded so,
Love cannot pass the gate,
Even to dull its woe!

Now, Christ compassionate!
Now, bruise me with thy rod:
Lest I be mine own fate,
And kill the love of God.

1893.

II

O place of happy pains,
And land of dear desires!
Where Love divine detains
Glad souls among sweet fires.

Where sweet, white fires embrace
The red-scarred, red-stained soul:
That it may see God's Face,
Perfectly white and whole.

While with still hope they bear
Those ardent agonies:
Earth pleads for them, in prayer
And wistful charities.

O place of patient pains,
And land of brave desires!
Us now God's Will detains
Far from those holy fires.

Us the sad world rings round
With passionate flames impure:
We tread an impious ground,
And hunger, and endure:

That, earth's ordeal done,
Those white, sweet fires may fit
Us for our home, and One,
Who is the Light of it.

1892.

III

Since, O white City! I may be,
I, a white citizen of thee:
I claim no saint's high grace
Mine, but a servant's place.

I think not vainly to become
A king, who knew no martyrdom:
Nor crown, nor palm, I crave;
But to be Christ's poor slave.

Angels! before the Lord of lords,
Shine forth, His spiritual swords!
Flash round the King of kings
The snow of your white wings!

But I, too fresh from the white fire,
Humble the dreams of all desire:
Nay! let me shine afar,
Who am Heaven's faintest star.

Upon the eternal borders let
My still too fearful soul be set:
There wait the Will of God,
A loving period.

Closer I dare not come, nor see
The Face of Him, Who died for me.
Child! thou shalt dwell apart:
But in My Sacred Heart.

1893.

TO LEO XIII

Leo! Vicar of Christ,
His voice, His love, His sword:
Leo! Vicar of Christ,
Earth's Angel of the Lord:

Leo! Father of all,
Whose are all hearts to keep:
Leo! Father of all,
Chief Shepherd of the sheep:

Leo! Lover of men,
Through all the labouring lands:
Leo! Lover of men,
Blest by thine holy hands:

Leo! Ruler of Rome,
Heir of its royal race:
Leo! Ruler of Rome,
King of the Holy Place:

Leo! Leo the Great!
Glory, and love, and fear,
Leo! Leo the Great!
We give thee, great and dear:

Leo! God grant this thing:
Might some, so proud to be
Children of England, bring
Thine England back to thee!

1892.

AT THE BURIAL OF CARDINAL MANNING

To James Britten.

Victor in Roman purple, saint and knight,
In peace he passes to eternal peace:
Triumph so proud, knew not Rome's ancient might;
She knew not to make poor men's sorrow cease:
For thousands, ere he won the holiest home,
Earth was made homelier by this Prince of Rome.

1892.

VIGILS

To C.K.P.

Song and silence ever be
All the grace, life bring to me
Song well winged with sunrise fire;
Silence holy and entire:
Silence of a marble sea,
Song of an immortal lyre.

Take my thanks, who profferest
Wistful song and musical:
Melodies memorial,
Melancholy, augural:
Meaning, that Old World is best:
Ours, a witless palimpsest.

Not cool glades of Fontainebleau
Hold the secret; not French plains,
Crowned with monumental fanes;
Not the Flemish waters' flow:
Light the fair days come, light go:
But the mystery remains.

Here, beneath the carven spires,
We have dreams, revolts, desires:
Here each ancient, haunted Hall
Holds its Brocken carnival;
Where Philosophy attires
All her forms, to suit us all.

In a ring her witches crowd:
Faces passionate and proud,
Luring eyes and voices loud:
Death ends life: And life is death:
Man is dust: The soul a breath:
Who knows aught? Each fair Lie saith.

Master of the revel rout,
Flaunts him Mephistopheles:
Leading up, to where he sees
Faith, alone and ill at ease,
Many a winning, light-foot Doubt:
Knows each other: dance it out!

Ah, the whirling, bacchant dance!
Then no more Faith's crystal glance
Pierces the benighted skies:
Then, for her inheritance,
Hath she but each dream, that lies
Dying in her wildered eyes.

Breaking hearts! For you the lark
Cries at morn: for you the deep
Silence deepens in the dark,
When invisible angels mark
Your tired eyes, that burn and weep,
Hardly wearied into sleep.

Fearful hearts! For you all song
Sighs, and laughs, and soars: for you
Low-preluding winds prolong
Meditative music through
Twilight: till for you there throng
Calm stars, unprofaned and true.

Song and silence ever be
All the grace, life bring to me:
Song of Mary, mighty Mother;
Song of whom she bare, my Brother:
Silence of an ecstasy,
When I find Him, and none other.

Song thou sendest, singing fair:
But what music past compare
That must be when, gathered home,
Poor strayed children kneel in prayer:
Confessors of Christendom
Unto thee, O royal Rome!

Silence all is mine alone
Now, before the altar throne
Darkling, waiting, happier thus,
Till the night watches be gone.
Holy Aloysius!
Holy Mother! pray for us.

1887.

THE CHURCH OF A DREAM.

To Bernhard Berenson.

Sadly the dead leaves rustle in the whistling wind,
Around the weather-worn, gray church, low down the vale:
The Saints in golden vesture shake before the gale;
The glorious windows shake, where still they dwell enshrined;

Old Saints by long dead, shrivelled hands, long since designed:
There still, although the world autumnal be, and pale,
Still in their golden vesture the old saints prevail;
Alone with Christ, desolate else, left by mankind.

Only one ancient Priest offers the Sacrifice,
Murmuring holy Latin immemorial:
Swaying with tremulous hands the old censer full of spice,
In gray, sweet incense clouds; blue, sweet clouds mystical:
To him, in place of men, for he is old, suffice
Melancholy remembrances and vesperal.

1890

THE AGE OF A DREAM

To Christopher Whall.

Imageries of dreams reveal a gracious age:
Black armour, falling lace, and altar lights at morn.
The courtesy of Saints, their gentleness and scorn,
Lights on an earth more fair, than shone from Plato's page:
The courtesy of knights, fair calm and sacred rage:
The courtesy of love, sorrow for love's sake borne.
Vanished, those high conceits! Desolate and forlorn,
We hunger against hope for that lost heritage.

Gone now, the carven work! Ruined, the golden shrine!
No more the glorious organs pour their voice divine;
No more rich frankincense drifts through the Holy Place:

Now from the broken tower, what solemn bell still tolls,
Mourning what piteous death? Answer, O saddened souls!
Who mourn the death of beauty and the death of grace.

1890.

OXFORD NIGHTS

To Victor Plarr.

About the august and ancient Square,
Cries the wild wind; and through the air,
The blue night air, blows keen and chill:
Else, all the night sleeps, all is still.
Now, the lone Square is blind with gloom:
Now, on that clustering chestnut bloom,
A cloudy moonlight plays, and falls
In glory upon Bodley's walls:
Now, wildlier yet, while moonlight pales,
Storm the tumultuary gales.
O rare divinity of Night!
Season of undisturbed delight:
Glad interspace of day and day!
Without, an world of winds at play:
Within, I hear what dead friends say.
Blow, winds! and round that perfect Dome,
Wail as you will, and sweep, and roam:
Above Saint Mary's carven home,
Struggle, and smite to your desire
The sainted watchers on her spire:
Or in the distance vex your power
Upon mine own New College tower:
You hurt not these! On me and mine,
Clear candlelights in quiet shine:

100

My fire lives yet! nor have I done
With Smollett, nor with Richardson:
With, gentlest of the martyrs! Lamb,
Whose lover I, long lover, am:
With Gray, whose gracious spirit knew
The sorrows of art's lonely few:
With Fielding, great, and strong, and tall;
Sterne, exquisite, equivocal;
Goldsmith, the dearest of them all:
While Addison's demure delights
Turn Oxford, into Attic, nights.
Still Trim and Parson Adams keep
Me better company, than sleep:
Dark sleep, who loves not me; nor I
Love well her nightly death to die,
And in her haunted chapels lie.
Sleep wins me not: but from his shelf
Brings me each wit his very self:
Beside my chair the great ghosts throng,
Each tells his story, sings his song:
And in the ruddy fire I trace
The curves of each Augustan face.
I sit at Doctor Primrose' board:
I hear Beau Tibbs discuss a lord.
Mine, Matthew Bramble's pleasant wrath;
Mine, all the humours of the Bath.
Sir Roger and the Man in Black
Bring me the Golden Ages back.
Now white Clarissa meets her fate,
With virgin will inviolate:
Now Lovelace wins me with a smile,
Lovelace, adorable and vile.

101

I taste, in slow alternate way,
Letters of Lamb, letters of Gray:
Nor lives there, beneath Oxford towers,
More joy, than in my silent hours.
Dream, who love dreams! forget all grief:
Find, in sleep's nothingness, relief:
Better my dreams! Dear, human books,
With kindly voices, winning looks!
Enchaunt me with your spells of art,
And draw me homeward to your heart:
Till weariness and things unkind
Seem but a vain and passing wind:
Till the gray morning slowly creep
Upward, and rouse the birds from sleep:
Till Oxford bells the silence break,
And find me happier, for your sake.
Then, with the dawn of common day,
Rest you! But I, upon my way,
What the fates bring, will cheerlier do,
In days not yours, through thoughts of you!

1890.

TO A SPANISH FRIEND

Exiled in America
From thine own Castilia,
Son of holy Avila!
Leave thine endless tangled lore,
As in childhood to implore
Her, whose pleading evermore
Pleads for her own Avila.

102

Seraph Saint, Teresa burns
Before God, and burning turns
To the Furnace, whence she learns
How the Sun of Love is lit:
She the Sunflower following it.
O fair ardour infinite:
Fire, for which the cold soul yearns!

Clad in everlasting fire,
Flame of one long, lone desire,
Surely thou too shalt aspire
Up by Carmel's bitter road:
Love thy goal and love thy goad,
Love thy lightness and thy load,
Love thy rose and love thy briar.

Leave the false light, leave the vain:
Lose thyself in Night again,
Night divine of perfect pain.
Lose thyself, and find thy God,
Through a prostrate period:
Bruise thee with an iron rod;
Suffer, till thyself be slain.

Fly thou from the dazzling day,
For it lights the downward way:
In the sacred Darkness pray,
Till prayer cease, or seem to thee
Agony of ecstasy:
Dead to all men, dear to me,
Live as saints, and die as they.

103

Stones and thorns shall tear and sting,
Each stern step its passion bring,
On the Way of Perfecting,
On the Fourfold Way of Prayer:
Heed not, though joy fill the air;
Heed not, though it breathe despair:
In the City thou shalt sing.

Without hope and without fear,
Keep thyself from thyself clear:
In the secret seventh sphere
Of thy soul's hid Castle, thou
At the King's white throne shalt bow:
Light of Light shall kiss thy brow,
And all darkness disappear.

1894.

TO MY PATRONS

Thy spear rent Christ, when dead for me He lay:
My sin rends Christ, though never one save He
Perfectly loves me, comforts me. Then pray,
Longinus Saint! the Crucified, for me.

Hard is the holy war, and hard the way:
At rest with ancient victors would I be.
O faith's first glory from our England! pray,
Saint Alban! to the Lord of Hosts, for me.

Fain would I watch with thee, till morning gray,
Beneath the stars austere: so might I see
Sunrise, and light, and joy, at last. Then pray,
John Baptist Saint! unto the Christ, for me.

104

Remembering God's coronation day;
Thorns, for His crown; His throne, a Cross: to thee
Heaven's kingdom dearer was than earth's. Then pray
Saint Louis! to the King of kings, for me.

Thy love loved all things: thy love knew no stay,
But drew the very wild beasts round thy knee.
O lover of the least and lowest! pray,
Saint Francis! to the Son of Man, for me.

Bishop of souls in servitude astray,
Who didst for holy service set them free:
Use still thy discipline of love, and pray,
Saint Charles! unto the world's High Priest, for me.

1893.

BRONTË

To Hubert Crackanthorpe.

Upon the moorland winds blown forth,
Your mighty music storms our heart:
Immortal sisters of the North!
Daughters of nature: Queens of art.

Becomingly you bore that name,
Your Celtic name, that sounds of Greece:
Children of thunder and of flame;
Passion, that clears the air for peace.

Stoic, thy chosen title: thou,
Whose soul conversed with vehement nights,
Till love, with lightnings on his brow,
Met anguish, upon Wuthering Heights.

105

Thou, Stoic! Though the heart in thee
Never knew fear, yet always pain:
Not Stoic, thou! whose eyes could see
Passion's immeasurable gain:

Not standing from the war apart,
Not cancelling the lust of life;
But loving with triumphant heart
The impassioned glory of the strife.

Oh, welcome death! But first, to know
The trials and the agonies:
Oh, perfect rest! But ere life go,
To leave eternal memories.

Then down the lone moors let each wind
Cry round the silent house of sleep:
And there let breaths of heather find
Entrance, and there the fresh rains weep.

Rest! rest! The storm hath surged away:
The calm, the hush, the dews descend.
Rest now, ah, rest thee! night and day:
The circling moorlands guard their friend.

Thou too, before whose steadfast eyes
Thy conquering sister greatly died:
By grace of art, that never dies,
She lives: thou also dost abide.

For men and women, safe from death,
Creatures of thine, our perfect friends:
Filled with imperishable breath,
Give thee back life, that never ends.

106

Oh! hearts may break, and hearts forget,
Life grow a gloomy tale to tell:
Still through the streets of bright Villette,
Still flashes Paul Emanuel!

Still, when your Shirley laughs and sings,
Suns break the clouds to welcome her:
Still winds, with music on their wings,
Drive the wild soul of Rochester.

Children of fire! The Muses filled
Hellas, with shrines of gleaming stone:
Your wasted hands had strength to build
Gray sanctuaries, hard-hewn, wind-blown.

Over their heights, all blaunched in storm,
What purple fields of tempest hang!
In splendour stands their mountain form,
That from the sombre quarry sprang.

Now the high gates lift up their head:
Now stormier music, than the blast,
Swells over the immortal dead:
Silent and sleeping, free at last.

But from the tempest, and the gloom,
The stars, the fires of God, steal forth:
Dews fall upon your heather bloom,
O royal sisters of the North!

1890.

107

COMFORT

To Claud Schuster.

Winter is at the door,
Winter! Winter!
Winter is at the door:
For all along the worn oak floor
Waver the carpets; and before
The once warm southern orchard wall,
The last October peaches fall;
In vain behind their fellows all
Belated.

Winter is come apace,
Winter! Winter!
Winter is come apace.
The fireside is the cheeriest place,
To wear unfeigned a merry face:
While music tells, though now 'tis chill,
How merle, and maid, and mavis, will,
When spring comes dancing down the hill,
Be mated.

1887.

MOEL FAMMAU

To Arthur Clutton-Brock.

In purple heather is my sleep
On Moel Fammau: far below,
The springing rivulets leap,
The firs wave to and fro.

108

This morn, the sun on Bala Lake
Broke out behind me: morrow morn
Near Rhual I shall wake,
Before the sun is born;

High burning over Clwyd Vale,
And reddening the mountain dew:
While the moon lingers frail,
High up in skies of blue.

Lovely and loved, O passionate land!
Dear Celtic land, unconquered still!
Thy mountain strength prevails:
Thy winds have all their will.

They have no care for meaner things;
They have no scorn for brooding dreams:
A spirit in them sings,
A light about them beams.

1887.

SORTES VIRGILIANAE

To John Barlas.

Lord of the Golden Branch, Virgil! and Caesar's friend:
Leader of pilgrim Dante! Yes: things have their tears:
So sighed thy song, when down sad winds pierced to thine ears
Wandering and immemorial sorrows without end.
And things of death touch hearts, that die: Yes: but joys blend,

109

And glories, with our little life of human fears:
Rome reigns, and Caesar triumphs! Ah, the Golden Years,
The Golden Years return: this also the Gods send.

O men, who have endured an heavier burden yet!
Hear you not happy airs, and voices augural?
For you, in these last days by sure foreknowledge set,
Looms no Italian shore, bright and imperial?
Wounded and worn! What Virgil sang, doth God forget?
Virgil, the melancholy, the majestical.

1891.

CONSOLATION

Sighing and grief are all my portion now,
Sighing and grief:
But thou art somewhere smiling: thou,
Like a frail leaf,

By winter's mercy spared a little yet,
Canst put aside
The coming shadow: happy to forget,
How thy companion died.

1883.

ORACLES

I

Let not any withering Fate,
With her all too sombre thread,
Flying from the Ivory Gate,
Make thy soul discomforted:

110

From the nobler Gate of Horn,
Take the blessing of the morn.

Eyes bent full upon the goal,
Whatso be the prize of it:
Tireless feet, and crystal soul,
With good heart, the salt of wit:
These shall set thee in the clear
Spirits' home and singing sphere.

Hush thy melancholy breath,
Wailing after fair days gone:
Make thee friends with kindly Death,
That his long dominion,
With a not too bitter thrall,
Hold thee at the end of all.

Sorrow, angel of the night,
Sorrow haughtily disdains
Invocation by our light
Agonies, and passing pains:
Sorrow is but unto pure
Cloven hearts their balm and cure.

1886.

II

And yet, what of the sorrowing years,
Their clouds and difficult event?
Here is a kindlier way than tears,
A fairer way than discontent:

111

The passionate remembrances,
That wake at bidding of the air:
Fancies, and dreams, and fragrances,
That charmed us, when they were.

So breathed the hay, so the rose bloomed,
Ah! what a thousand years ago!
So long imprisoned and entombed,
Out of our hearts the old joys flow:
Peace! present sorrows: lie you still!
You shall not grow to memories:
The ancient hours live yet, to kill
The sorry hour, that is.

1887.

THE DESTROYER OF A SOUL

I hate you with a necessary hate.
First, I sought patience: passionate was she:
My patience turned in very scorn of me,
That I should dare forgive a sin so great,
As this, through which I sit disconsolate;
Mourning for that live soul, I used to see;
Soul of a saint, whose friend I used to be:
Till you came by! a cold, corrupting, fate.

Why come you now? You, whom I cannot cease
With pure and perfect hate to hate? Go, ring
The death-bell with a deep, triumphant toll!
Say you, my friend sits by me still? Ah, peace!
Call you this thing my friend? this nameless thing?
This living body, hiding its dead soul?

1892.

112

OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS

[_]

Upon reading the poem of that name in the Underwoods of Mr. Stevenson.

Far from the world, far from delight,
Distinguishing not day from night;
Vowed to one sacrifice of all
The happy things, that men befall;
Pleading one sacrifice, before
Whom sun and sea and wind adore;
Far from earth's comfort, far away,
We cry to God, we cry and pray
For men, who have the common day.
Dance, merry world! and sing: but we,
Hearing, remember Calvary:
Get gold, and thrive you! but the sun
Once paled; and the centurion
Said: This dead man was God's own Son.
Think you, we shrink from common toil,
Works of the mart, works of the soil;
That, prisoners of strong despair,
We breathe this melancholy air;
Forgetting the dear calls of race,
And bonds of house, and ties of place;
That, cowards, from the field we turn,
And heavenward, in our weakness, yearn?
Unjust! unkind! while you despise
Our lonely years, our mournful cries:
You are the happier for our prayer;
The guerdon of our souls, you share.

113

Not in such feebleness of heart,
We play our solitary part;
Not fugitives of battle, we
Hide from the world, and let things be:
But rather, looking over earth,
Between the bounds of death and birth;
And sad at heart, for sorrow and sin,
We wondered, where might help begin.
And on our wonder came God's choice,
A sudden light, a clarion voice,
Clearing the dark, and sounding clear:
And we obeyed: behold us, here!
In prison bound, but with your chains:
Sufferers, but of alien pains.
Merry the world, and thrives apace,
Each in his customary place:
Sailors upon the carrying sea,
Shepherds upon the pasture lea,
And merchants of the town; and they,
Who march to death, the fighting way;
And there are lovers in the spring,
With those, who dance, and those, who sing:
The commonwealth of every day,
Eastward and westward, far away.
Once the sun paled; once cried aloud
The Roman, from beneath the cloud:
This day the Son of God is dead!
Yet heed men, what the Roman said?
They heed not: we then heed for them,
The mindless of Jerusalem;
Careless, they live and die: but we
Care, in their stead, for Calvary.

114

O joyous men and women! strong,
To urge the wheel of life along,
With strenuous arm, and cheerful strain,
And wisdom of laborious brain:
We give our life, our heart, our breath,
That you may live to conquer death;
That, past your tomb, with souls in health,
Joy may be yours, and blessed wealth;
Through vigils of the painful night,
Our spirits with your tempters fight:
For you, for you, we live alone,
Where no joy comes, where cold winds moan:
Nor friends have we, nor have we foes;
Our Queen is of the lonely Snows.
Ah! and sometimes, our prayers between,
Come sudden thoughts of what hath been:
Dreams! And from dreams, once more we fall
To prayer: God save, Christ keep, them all.
And thou, who knowest not these things,
Hearken, what news our message brings!
Our toils, thy joy of life forgot:
Our lives of prayer forget thee not.

1887.

ASH WEDNESDAY

To the Rev. Father Strappini, S.J.

Ashen cross traced on brow!
Iron cross hid in breast!
Have power, bring patience, now:
Bid passion be at rest.

115

O sad, dear, days of Lent!
Now lengthen your gray hours:
If so we may repent,
Before the time of flowers.

Majestical, austere,
The sanctuaries look stern:
All silent! all severe!
Save where the lone lamps burn.

Imprisoned there above
The world's indifferency:
Still waits Eternal Love,
With wounds from Calvary.

Come! mourning companies;
Come! to sad Christ draw near:
Come! sin's confederacies;
Lay down your malice here.

Here is the healing place,
And here the place of peace:
Sorrow is sweet with grace
Here, and here sin hath cease.

1893.

DESIDERIA

To Mrs. Hinkson.

The angels of the sunlight clothe
In England the corn's golden ears,
Round me: yet would that I to-day
Saw sunlight on the Hill of Howth,

116

And sunlight on the Golden Spears,
And sunlight upon Dublin Bay.

In hunger of the heart I loathe
These happy fields: I turn with tears
Of love and longing, far away:
To where the heathered Hill of Howth
Stands guardian, with the Golden Spears,
Above the blue of Dublin Bay.

1894.

ARMA VIRUMQUE

To Edmund Phipps.

Ah! the keen, blue-bladed sword,
In the strong hands of thy lord
Living, vibrating, inspired!
Thou hast drunk the draught desired,
Blood of battle: now, restored
To the shrouding sheath, thou hatest,
For the trump of war thou waitest.

But thy bright steel grows not dim,
While thou hangest yet by him,
In whose hands thou hast thy life.
Fear not! Thou shalt swell more strife,
Ere death come: last foe most grim!
And shalt lie, that onset over,
Close beside thy lord and lover.

1889.

117

THE DAY OF COMING DAYS

To J.P.Quinn.

Bright seas cast far upon her shore
White flowers of flying spray:
The blossoms of her fields are more,
Than blossomed yesterday:
The music of her winds and birds
Alone can tell the triumph words,
Her children cannot say.

The stars from solemn deeps look down
In favour and delight:
The glories of her day, they crown
With splendours of her night:
The queen of the adoring Gael,
Their radiant mother, Inisfail,
Reigns, by divinest right.

1894.

RENEGADE

To Arthur Chamberlain.

But all that now is over.
Dreamers of dreams shall not in me discover
Fallen remembrances of Holy Land;
Looks in mine eyes, that seem to understand
A banished secret; in my common mien,
A charmed communion with high things unseen.

For all that now is over.
Mere merchant of earth's market-place, no lover,
I keep the dusty, trodden road of all.

118

Though broken echoes fill the mart, and call
Back to my silent memories: down chill air
They die away, and leave me to my care.

Since all that now is over,
And not at any cost can I recover
The abdicated throne, the abandoned crown:
I sit me at the heart of the vast town,
To wear old love looks down to the dull look,
Befitting love unthought on, or forsook.

1887.

WALES

To T.W.Rolleston.

Mother of holy fire! Mother of holy dew!
Thy children of the mist, the moor, the mountain side,
These change not from thine heart, these to thine heart allied:
These, that rely on thee, as blossoms on the blue.
O passionate, dark faces, melancholy's hue!
O deep, gray eyes, so tragic with the fires they hide!
Sweet Mother, in whose light these live! thou dost abide,
Star of the West, pale to the world: these know thee true.

No alien hearts may know that magic, which acquaints
Thy soul with splendid passion, a great fire of dreams;
Thine heart with lovelier sorrow, than the wistful sea.
Voices of Celtic singers and of Celtic Saints
Live on the ancient air: their royal sunlight gleams
On moorland Merioneth and on sacred Dee.

1890.

119

HARVEST

To Nowell Smith.

Not now the rejoicing face of summer glows
In splendour to a blue and splendid sky:
For now hath died each lingering wild rose
Off tangled river banks: and autumn shows
Fields of red corn, that on the downside lie
Beneath a gentle mist, a golden haze.
So shrouded, the red cornlands take an air
Trembling with warm wind: sickle-girt, forth fare
To gather in the fruit of summer days,
Harvesting hinds, with swift arms brown and bare;
Revering well toil's venerable ways.

Most golden music is among the corn,
Played by the winds wavering over it:
A murmuring sound, as when against the morn,
Orient upon calm seas, their noise is borne
Innumerably rippling and sunlit.
Most golden music is in either tide:
And this of radiant corn, before it fall,
Wills not that summer die unmusical,
By no rich surge of murmurs glorified:
Nay! the fields rock and rustle, sounding all
Praise of the fruitful earth on every side.

Good, through the yellow fields to ponder long:
Good, long to meditate the stilly sight.
Afar shone down a brazen sunlight strong,
Over the harvested hillside, along
The laboured meadows, burning with great light:

120

The air trembled with overflow of heat
In the low valley, where no movement was
Of soft-blown wind, ruffling the scytheless grass
Thick-growing by the waters, cool and sweet:
No swing of boughs; there were no airs to pass
Caressing them: all winds failed, when all wheat.

All fair crops murmuring their soft acclaim,
Fell, golden rank on golden rank, and lay
Ruddily heaped along the earth: the flame
Of delicate poppies, rich and frail, became
Wan dying weed; convulvulus, astray
Out from its hedgerows far into the field,
In clinging coils of leaf and tender bloom,
Shared with the stalks it clung and clasped, their doom.
So went the work: so gave the ripened weald
Its fruits and pleasant flowers; and made a room,
Wherein fresh winds might wave a fresh year's yield.

1886.

TO CERTAIN FRIENDS

I thank Eternal God, that you are mine,
Who are His too: courageous and divine
Must friendship be, through this great grace of God;
And have Eternity for period.

1892.

THE PETITION

To Selwyn Image.

Fair, gracious, daughter of those skies,
Wherein nor star, nor angel, flies
More radiant than thy royal beauty:

121

To thee the Hours bring all they have
Of rich, and wonderful, and brave:
Yet do they but their natural duty.

Excelling all, thou cancellest
Their praise, and art alone the best:
Alone the theme of prayers and praises.
Wilt thou not bow thee, and be kind,
As lilies to a pleading wind,
When fragrance the wan air amazes?

The holy angels of God's court
With humble men still deign consort:
For dear love's piteous sake discarding
Their state and their celestial home,
To company poor souls, that roam
Sad and distraught, for lack of guarding.

Fair, gracious, daughter of the spheres!
Be not more proud than those thy peers,
Citizens of so high a city!
Behold the captive of thy chains:
Turn from thy palace to his pains,
And keep thy prisoner by pity.

1892.

THE CLASSICS

To Ion Thynne.

Fain to know golden things, fain to grow wise,
Fain to achieve the secret of fair souls:
His thought, scarce other lore need solemnize,
Whom Virgil calms, whom Sophocles controls:

122

Whose conscience Æschylus, a warrior voice,
Enchaunted hath with majesties of doom:
Whose melancholy mood can best rejoice,
When Horace sings, and roses bower the tomb:

Who, following Caesar unto death, discerns
What bitter cause was Rome's, to mourn that day:
With austere Tacitus for master, learns
The look of empire in its proud decay:

Whom dread Lucretius of the mighty line
Hath awed, but not borne down: who loves the flame,
That leaped within Catullus the divine,
His glory, and his beauty, and his shame:

Who dreams with Plato and, transcending dreams,
Mounts to the perfect City of true God:
Who hails its marvellous and haunting gleams,
Treading the steady air, as Plato trod:

Who with Thucydides pursues the way,
Feeling the heart-beats of the ages gone:
Till fall the clouds upon the Attic day,
And Syracuse draw tears for Marathon:

To whom these golden things best give delight:
The music of most sad Simonides;
Propertius' ardent graces; and the might
Of Pindar chaunting by the olive trees:

Livy, and Roman consuls purple swathed:
Plutarch, and heroes of the ancient earth:
And Aristophanes, whose laughter scathed
The souls of fools, and pealed in lyric mirth:

123

Æolian rose-leaves blown from Sappho's isle;
Secular glories of Lycean thought:
Sallies of Lucian, bidding wisdom smile;
Angers of Juvenal, divinely wrought:

Pleasant, and elegant, and garrulous,
Pliny: crowned Marcus, wistful and still strong:
Sicilian seas and their Theocritus,
Pastoral singer of the last Greek song:

Herodotus, all simple and all wise:
Demosthenes, a lightning flame of scorn:
The surge of Cicero, that never dies:
And Homer, grand against the ancient morn.

1890.

APRIL

To Richard Le Gallienne.

A pleasant heat breathes off the scented grass,
From bright green blades, and shining daisies:
Now give we joy, who sometime cried, Alas!
Now set we forth our melodies, and sing
Soft praises to the spring,
Musical praises.

The flying winds are lovely with the sun:
Now all in sweet and dainty fashion
Goes life: for royal seasons are begun.
Now each new day and each new promise add
Fresh cause of being glad,
With vernal passion.

Few leaves upon the branches dare the spring:
But many buds are making ready,
Trusting the sun, their perfect summer king.

124

Likewise we put away our wintry cares:
We hear but happy airs;
Our hopes are steady.

Cold were the crystal rivers, bitter cold;
And snows upon the iron mountains;
And withering leaves upon the trodden mould.
Hark to the crystal voices of the rills,
Falling among the hills,
From secret fountains!

Long not for June with roses: nor for nights
Loud with tumultuary thunder:
Those hours wax heavy with their fierce delights.
But April is all bright, and gives us first,
Before the roses burst,
Her joy and wonder.

Clear lie the fields, and fade into blue air:
Here, sweet concerted birds are singing
Around this lawn of sweet grass, warm and fair.
And holy music, through the waving trees,
Comes gently down the breeze,
Where bells are ringing.

1889.

A PROSELYTE

Heart of magnificent desire:
O equal of the lordly sun!
Since thou hast cast on me thy fire,
My cloistral peace, so hardly won,
Breaks from its trance:
One glance
From thee hath all its joy undone.

125

Of lonely quiet was my dream;
Day gliding into fellow day,
With the mere motion of a stream:
But now in vehement disarray
Go time and thought,
Distraught
With passion kindled at thy ray.

Heart of tumultuary mught,
O greater than the mountain flame,
That leaps upon the fearful night!
On me thy devastation came,
Sudden and swift;
A gift
Of joyous torment without name.

Thy spirit stings my spirit: thou
Takest by storm and ecstasy
The cloister of my soul. And now,
With ardour that is agony,
I do thy will;
Yet still
Hear voices of calm memory.

1894.

BEYOND

All was for you: and you are dead.
For, came there sorrow, came there splendour,
You still were mine, and I yours only:
Then on my breast lay down your head,
Triumphant in its dear surrender:
One were we then: though one, not lonely.

126

Oh, is it you are dead, or I?
Both! both dead, since we are asunder:
You, sleeping: I, for ever walking
Through the dark valley, hard and dry.
At times I hear the mourning thunder:
And voices, in the shadows, talking.

Dear, are there dreams among the dead:
Or is it all a perfect slumber?
But I must dream and dream to madness.
Mine eyes are dark, now yours are fled:
Yet see they sorrows without number,
Waiting upon one perfect sadness.

So long, the melancholy vale!
So full, these weary winds, of sorrow!
So harsh, all things! For what counts pity?
Still, as each twilight glimmers pale
Upon the borders of each morrow,
I near me to your sleeping city.

1889.

EXPERIENCE

To George Arthur Greene.

The burden of the long gone years: the weight,
The lifeless weight, of miserable things
Done long ago, not done with: the live stings
Left by old joys, follies provoking fate,
Showing their sad side, when it is too late:
Dread burden, that remorseless knowledge brings
To men, remorseful! But the burden clings:
And that remorse declares that bitter state.

127

Wisdom of ages! Wisdom of old age!
Written, and spoken of, and prophesied,
The common record of humanity!
Oh, vain! The springtime is our heritage
First, and the sunlight on the flowing tide:
Then, that old truth's confirming misery.

1889.

ESCAPE

To Charles Weekes.

She bared her spirit to her sorrow:
On the circling hills the morrow
Trembled, but it broke not forth:
Winds blew from the snowy North.

My soul! my sorrow! What wind bloweth,
Knows the wayless way, it goeth?
But before all else, we know
Death's way is the way to go.

She knew no more than that: she only
Knew, that she was left and lonely.
Left? But she had loved! And lone?
She had loved! But love had gone.

So out into the wintry weather
Soul and sorrow fled together:
On the moor day found her dead:
Snow on hands, and heart, and head.

1888.

128

TRENTALS

To Charles Sayle.

Now these lovers twain be dead,
And together buried:
Masses only shall be said.
Hush thee, weary melancholy!
Music comes, more rich and holy:
Through the aged church shall sound
Words, by ancient prophets found;
Burdens in an ancient tongue,
By the fasting Mass-priest sung.

Gray, without, the autumn air:
But pale candles here prepare,
Pale as wasted golden hair.
Let the quire with mourning descant
Cry: In pace requiescant!
For they loved the things of God.
Now, where solemn feet have trod,
Sleep they well: and wait the end,
Love by lover, friend by friend.

1889.

THE RED WIND

To Dr. Todhunter.

Red Wind from out the East:
Red Wind of blight and blood!
Ah, when wilt thou have ceased
Thy bitter, stormy flood?

129

Red Wind from over sea,
Scourging our lonely land!
What Angel loosened thee
Out of his iron hand?

Red Wind! whose word of might
Winged thee with wings of flame?
O fire of mournful night,
What is thy master's name?

Red Wind! who bade thee burn,
Branding our hearts? Who bade
Thee on and never turn,
Till waste our souls were laid?

Red Wind! from out the West
Pour winds of Paradise:
Winds of eternal rest,
That weary souls entice.

Wind of the East! Red Wind!
Thou witherest the soft breath
Of Paradise the kind:
Red Wind of burning death!

O Red Wind! hear God's voice:
Hear thou, and fall, and cease.
Let Inisfail rejoice
In her Hesperian peace.

1894.

130

SERTORIUS

To Basil Williams.

Beyond the straits of Hercules,
Behold! the strange Hesperian seas,
A glittering waste at break of dawn:
High on the westward plunging prow,
What dreams are on thy spirit now,
Sertorius of the milk-white fawn?

Not sorrow, to have done with home!
The mourning destinies of Rome
Have exiled Rome's last hope with thee:
Nor dost thou think on thy lost Spain.
What stirs thee on the unknown main?
What wilt thou from the virgin sea?

Hailed by the faithless voice of Spain,
The lightning warrior come again,
Where wilt thou seek the flash of swords,
Voyaging toward the set of sun?
Though Rome the splendid East hath won,
Here thou wilt find no Roman lords.

No Tingis here lifts fortress walls;
And here no Lusitania calls:
What hath the barren sea to give?
Yet high designs enchaunt thee still;
The winds are loyal to thy will:
Not yet art thou too tired, to live.

No trader thou, to northern isles,
Whom mischief-making gold beguiles

131

To sunless and unkindly coasts:
What spirit pilots thee thus far
From the tempestuous tides of war,
Beyond the surging of the hosts?

Nay! this thy secret will must be.
Over the visionary sea,
Thy sails are set for perfect rest:
Surely thy pure and holy fawn
Hath whispered of an ancient lawn,
Far hidden down the solemn West.

A gracious pleasaunce of calm things;
There rose-leaves fall by rippling springs:
And captains of the older time,
Touched with mild light, or gently sleep,
Or in the orchard shadows keep
Old friendships of the golden prime.

The far seas brighten with gray gleams:
O winds of morning! O fair dreams!
Will not that land rise up at noon?
There, casting Roman mail away,
Age long to watch the falling day,
And silvery sea, and silvern moon.

Dreams! for they slew thee: Dreams! they lured
Thee down to death and doom assured:
And we were proud to fall with thee.
Now, shadows of the men we were,
Westward indeed we voyage here,
Unto the end of all the sea.

132

Woe! for the fatal, festal board:
Woe! for the signal of the sword,
The wine-cup dashed upon the ground:
We are but sad, eternal ghosts,
Passing far off from human coasts,
To the wan land eternal bound.

1889.

SAINT COLUMBA

To Dr. Sigerson.

Dead is Columba: the world's arch
Gleams with a lighting of strange fires.
They flash and run, they leap and march,
Signs of a Saint's fulfilled desires.

Live is Columba: golden crowned,
Sceptred with Mary lilies, shod
With angel flames, and girded round
With white of snow, he goes to God.

No more the gray eyes long to see
The oakwoods of their Inisfail;
Where the white angels hovering be:
And ah, the birds in every vale!

No more for him thy fierce winds blow,
Iona of the angry sea!
Gone, the white glories of thy snow,
And white spray flying over thee!

133

Now, far from the gray sea, and far
From sea-worn rocks and sea-birds' cries,
Columba hails the morning star,
That shines in never nighted skies.

High in the perfect Land of Morn,
He listens to the chaunting air:
The Land, where music is not born,
For music is eternal there.

There, bent before the burning Throne,
He lauds the lover of the Gael:
Sweet Christ! Whom Patrick's children own:
Glory be Thine from Inisfail!

1894.

BELLS

To John Little.

From far away! from far away!
But whence, you will not say:
Melancholy bells, appealing chimes,
Voices of lands and times!

Your toll, O melancholy bells!
Over the valley swells:
O touching chimes! your dying sighs
Travel our tranquil skies.

But whence? And whither fade away
Your echoes from our day?
You take our hearts with gentle pain
Tremble, and pass again.

134

Could we lay hold upon your haunts,
The birthplace of your chaunts:
Were we in dreamland, deathland, then?
We, sad and wondering men?

1887.

135

IRELAND WITH OTHER POEMS

137

IRELAND

To Mrs. Clement Shorter.

Si oblitus fuero tui Ierusalem: oblivioni detur dextera mea.

Thy sorrow, and the sorrow of the sea,
Are sisters; the sad winds are of thy race:
The heart of melancholy beats in thee,
And the lamenting spirit haunts thy face,
Mournful and mighty Mother! who art kin
To the ancient earth's first woe,
When holy Angels wept, beholding sin.
For not in penance do thy true tears flow,
Not thine the long transgression: at thy name,
We sorrow not with shame,
But proudly: for thy soul is as the snow.

Old as the sorrow for lost Paradise
Seems thine old sorrow: thou in the mild West,
Who wouldst thy children upon earth suffice
For Paradise, and pure Hesperian rest;
Had not the violent and bitter fates
Burned up with fiery feet
The greenness of thy pastures; had not hates,
Envies, and desolations, with fierce heat
Wasted thee, and consumed the land of grace,
Beauty's abiding place;
And vexed with agony bright joy's retreat.

138

Swift at the word of the Eternal Will,
Upon thee the malign armed Angels came.
Flame was their winging, flame that laps thee still;
And in the anger of their eyes was flame.
One was the Angel of the field of blood,
And one of lonelier death:
One saddened exiles on the ocean flood,
And famine followed on another's breath.
Angels of evil, with incessant sword,
Smote thee, O land adored!
And yet smite: for the Will of God so saith.

A severing and sundering they wrought,
A rending of the soul. They turned to tears
The laughter of thy waters: and they brought,
To sow upon thy fields, quick seed of fears;
That brother should hate brother, and one roof
Shelter unkindly hearts;
Friend from his ancient friendship hold aloof,
And comrades learn to play sad alien parts;
Province from noble province dwell estranged,
And all old trusts be changed;
And treason teach true men her impious arts.

But yet in their reluctant hands they bore
Laurel, and palm, and crown, and bay: an host,
Heartened by wrath and sorrow more and more,
Strove ever, giving up the mighty ghost;
The field well fought, the song well sung, for sake,
Mother! of thee alone:
Sorrow and wrath bade deathless courage wake,
And struck from burning harps a deathless tone.

139

With palm and laurel won, with crown and bay,
Went proudly down death's way
Children of Ireland, to their deathless throne.

Proud and sweet habitation of thy dead!
Throne upon throne, its thrones of sorrow filled;
Prince on prince coming with triumphant tread,
All passion, save the love of Ireland, stilled.
By the forgetful waters they forget
Not thee, O Inisfail!
Upon thy fields their dreaming eyes are set,
They hear thy winds call ever through each vale.
Visions of victory exalt and thrill
Their hearts' whole hunger still:
High beats their longing for the living Gael.

Sarsfield is sad there with his last desire;
FitzGerald mourns with Emmet; ancient chiefs
Dream on their saffron-mantled hosts, afire
Against the givers of their Mother's griefs.
Was it for nought, captain asks captain old,
Was it in vain, we fell?
Shall we have fallen like the leaves of gold,
And no green spring wake from the long dark spell?
Shall never a crown of summer fruitage come
From blood of martyrdom?
Yet to our faith will we not say farewell!

There the white soul of Davis, there the worn,
Waste soul of Mangan, there the surging soul
Of Grattan, hunger for thy promised morn:
There the great legion of thy martyr roll,

140

Filled with the fames of seven hundred years,
Hunger to hear the voice,
Sweeter than marriage music in their ears,
That shall bid thee and all thy sons rejoice.
There bide the spirits, who for thee yet burn:
Ah! might we but return,
And make once more for thee the martyr choice!

No swordsmen are the Christians! Oisin cried:
O Patrick! thine is but a little race.
Nay, ancient Oisin! they have greatly died
In battle glory and with warrior grace.
Signed with the Cross, they conquered and they fell;
Sons of the Cross, they stand:
The Prince of Peace loves righteous warfare well,
And loves thine armies, O our Holy Land!
The Lord of Hosts is with thee, and thine eyes
Shall see upon thee rise
His glory, and the blessing of His Hand.

Thou hast no fear: with immemorial pride,
Bright as when Oscar ran the morning glades;
The knightly Fenian hunters at his side,
The sunlight through green leaves glad on their blades;
The heart in thee is full of joyous faith.
Not in the bitter dust
Thou crouchest, heeding what the coward saith:
But, radiant with an everlasting trust,
Hearest thine ancient rivers in their glee
Sing themselves on to sea,
Thy winds make melody: O joy most just

141

Nay! we insult thee not with tears, although
With thee we sorrow: not as for one dead
We mourn, for one in the cold earth laid low.
Still is the crown upon thy sovereign head,
Still is the sceptre within thy strong hand,
Still is the kingdom thine:
The armies of thy sons on thy command
Wait, and thy starry eyes through darkness shine.
Tears for the dear and dead! For thee, All hail!
Unconquered Inisfail!
Tears for the lost: thou livest, O divine!

Thou passest not away: the sternest powers
Spoil not all beauty of thy face, nor mar
All peace of thy great heart, O pulse of ours!
The darkest cloud dims thee not all, O star!
Ancient and proud thy sorrows, and their might
That of the murmuring waves:
They hearten us to fight the unceasing fight,
Filled with the grace, that flows from holy graves.
Sons pass away, and thou hast sons as true
To fight the fight anew:
Thy welfare, all the gain their warfare craves.

Sweet Mother! in what marvellous dear ways
Close to thine heart thou keepest all thine own!
Far off, they yet can consecrate their days
To thee, and on the swift winds westward blown,
Send thee the homage of their hearts, their vow
Of one most sacred care;
To thee devote all passionate power, since thou
Vouchsafest them, O land of love! to bear

142

Sorrow and joy with thee. Each far son thrills
Toward thy blue dreaming hills,
And longs to kiss thy feet upon them, Fair!

If death come swift upon me, it will be
Because of the great love I bear the Gael!
So sang upon the separating sea
Columba, while his boat sped out of hail,
And all grew lonely. But some sons thou hast,
Whose is an heavier lot,
Close at thy side: they see thy torment last,
And all their will to help thee helps thee not.
Mother! their grief, to look on thy dear face,
Worn with each weary trace
Of fresh woes, and of old woes unforgot!

And yet great spirits ride thy winds: thy ways
Are haunted and enchaunted evermore.
Thy children hear the voices of old days
In music of the sea upon thy shore,
In falling of the waters from thine hills,
In whispers of thy trees:
A glory from the things eternal fills
Their eyes, and at high noon thy people sees
Visions, and wonderful is all the air.
So upon earth they share
Eternity: they learn it at thy knees.

Eternal is our faith in thee: the sun
Shall sooner fall from Heaven, than from our lives
That faith; and the great stars fade one by one,
Ere fade that light in which thy people strives.

143

Strong in the everlasting righteousness
Triumphs our faith: the fight
Hath holiest hosts to inspire it and to bless;
Thy children lift true faces to the light.
Theirs are the visitations from on high,
Voices that call and cry:
Celestial comfort in the deeps of night.

Charmed upon waters three, forlorn and cold,
The swans, Children of Lir, endured their doom:
From off their white wings flashed the morning gold,
And round their white wings closed the twilight gloom.
Yet on their stormy weird the Christian bell
Broke, and they stirred with dread:
The Coming of the Saints upon them fell;
They woke to joy, and found their white wings fled.
And thou, in these last days, shalt thou not hear
A sound of sacred fear?
God's bells shall ring, and all sad days be dead.

But desolate be the houses of thy foes:
Sorrow encompass them, and vehement wrath
Besiege them: be their hearts cold as the snows:
Let lamentation keen about their path.
The fires of God burn round them, and His night
Lie on their blinded eyes:
And when they call to the Eternal Light,
None shall make answer to their stricken cries.
Mercy and pity shall not know them more:
God shall shut to the door,
And close on them His everlasting skies.

144

How long? Justice of Very God! How long?
The Isle of Sorrows from of old hath trod
The stony road of unremitting wrong,
The purple winepress of the wrath of God:
Is then the Isle of Destiny indeed
To grief predestinate;
Ever foredoomed to agonize and bleed,
Beneath the scourging of eternal fate?
Yet against hope shall we still hope, and still
Beseech the Eternal Will:
Our lives to this one service dedicate.

Ah, tremble into passion, Harp! and sing
War song, O sword! Fill the fair land, great Twain!
Wake all her heavy heart to triumphing:
To vengeance, and armed trampling of the plain!
And you, white spirits on the mountain wind,
Cry between eve and morn!
Cry, mighty Dead! until the people find
Their souls a furnace of desire and scorn.
Call to the hosting upon Tara, call
The tribes of Eire all:
Trump of the Champions! immemorial Horn!

Shall not the Three Waves thunder for their King,
The Captain of thy people? Shall not streams
Leap from thy mountains' heart, and many a spring
Gladden thy valleys, for a joy of dreams
Fulfilled, for the glory of the battle won?
Hast thou no prophet left?
Is all thy Druid wizardry undone,
And thou of thy foreknowledge quite bereft?

145

Nay! but the power of faith is prophecy,
Vision, and certainty:
Faith, that hath walked the waves, and mountains cleft.

As haunting Tirnanoge within the sea,
So hid within the Eyes of God thy fate
Lies dreaming: and when God shall bid it be,
Ah, then the fair perfection of thy state!
Bravely the gold and silver bells shall chime,
When thou art wed with peace:
Far to the desert of their own sad clime
Shall fly the ill Angels, when God bids them cease.
Thine shall be only a majestic joy,
No evil can destroy:
The sorrows of thy soul shall have release.

Thy blood of martyrs to the martyrs' Home
Cries from the earth: the altar of high Heaven
Is by their cries besieged and overcome:
The Rainbow Throne and flaming Spirits Seven
Know well the music of that agony,
That surge of a long sigh,
That voice of an unresting misery,
That ardour of anguish unto the Most High.
Thou from thy wronged earth pleadest with the Just,
Whose loving-mercy must
Hear, and command thy death in life to die.

Golden allies are thine, bright souls of Saints,
Glad choirs of intercession for the Gael:
Their flame of prayer ascends, their stream of plaints
Flows to the wounded Feet, for Inisfail.

146

Victor, the Angel of thy Patrick, pleads;
Mailed Michael with his sword
Kneels there, the champion of thy bitter needs,
Prince of the shining armies of the Lord:
And there, Star of the Morning and the Sea,
Mary pours prayer for thee:
And unto Mary be thy prayers outpoured.

O Rose! O Lily! O Lady full of grace!
O Mary Mother! O Mary Maid! hear thou,
Glory of Angels! Pity, and turn thy face,
Praying thy Son, even as we pray thee now,
For thy dear sake to set thine Ireland free:
Pray thou thy little Child!
Ah! who can help her, but in mercy He?
Pray then, pray thou for Ireland, Mother mild!
O Heart of Mary! pray the Sacred Heart:
His, at Whose word depart
Sorrows and hates, home to Hell's waste and wild.

1894.

JULIAN AT ELEUSIS

To Edmund Gosse.

There lay Eleusis, there: O reverend haunt,
Eleusis, highly favoured! whom the seas
Crown, that once rang with Salaminian shouts
Upon Eleusis' day, when Asia filled
Athens, and all her coasts: the seas, that once
When crouching Sparta hung in clouds of war
On Deceleia, down their glad tide bare
Thine else forgone processions: till in arms

147

Came godsped Alcibiades, and brought
Safely thy pomps along thine Holy Way,
Athens' true servant, then! Thou, who dost lie
From her, the world's chief wonder, separate
By that sweet Sacred Way of roses, lit
With torches tossing in the mystic chace
Though odorous incense clouds! Eleusis, thou
In majesty, in fearfulness, in awe,
Greater than Delphic or than Delian fanes,
Fallen Solyma, or Rome before false gods
Fallen from that high state, she had! But thou
Livest among the immortal mysteries,
Though men have lost thy secret. So our road
Was lonelier than the ancient days beheld
Their Eleusinian companies: for once,
Upon the first morn of the nine days' feast,
In Boëdromion beautiful with sheaves,
To Athens flocked the mystics. Then the cry,
Seaward! Seaward! O mystics! bade them wash
From soil and stain in the clear waters; next,
Together having shared sweet honey cakes,
Wended the first procession, round the car
That bore the basket of symbolic fruits,
Poppy seed with pomegranate: in chaste hands
Followed the sacred arks. On thee they cried,
Demeter! Mother of the fruits of earth!
Yet not by that bland name they hailed thee then:
Lady of Sorrow! Heavy-hearted Queen!
Cried they, remembering thy loneliness,
And lost Persephone. But when night fell,
With faces flashing beneath forest brands,
They sought Persephone along the shores,

148

While murmured all the sea. Then, chiefest right,
Lord of the fiery and devouring vine,
Iacchus, myrtle-coronalled, came forth
From Ceramicus: westward charioted
By thunders of a marching multitude,
And clangour of sonorous bronze. Men plead:
Christ hallows poverty, the Gods cared nought.
Nay! rich with poor one company, on foot
Equal procession kept and equal love.
Unto Demeter's temple vast they came,
Past bridge and holy figtree: at midnight,
Through lustral waters purified, they passed
Within the veil; led by the hierophant,
His body chilled with hemlock, that the fires
Of passion should be hushed, still be his soul.
Without, the hosts of heaven were watching: there,
The dark, that once brooded upon the deep,
Ere any light was, heavy hung: and death,
Mystical death reigned in the vasty air,
And in that world was silence; save each heart
Trembled, each labouring heart and fearful soul.
Then from the ends of earth, sweeping the seas,
Fields, footless mountain tops, and lonely moors,
Wave upon wave of sound gathered: a moan,
Dreary as the thin voice of a forlorn wind
Through Daphne drifting down, fitful and slow;
Soon swelling to the full voice of a sea
Roaring beneath wild winds; till on their fear,
With apparition of the Sacred Corn
And awefulness of imaged history,
Smote the great storm of sound from vault to floor,
Smote: and resigned again to silent gloom

149

The air of adoration: mighty deep
Shuddered to deep of darkness, under God.
Then on their eyes fast sealed, their dreading ears,
Thunder with flame broke through the sanctuary:
And through the thunder, voices; through the flame,
Visions: and in the vision and the voice,
God's light, and the whole melody of God.

Not with the glory of such rites have I
Put on the spirit of Eleusis: yet,
A little company although we be,
Ours are the mysteries; we also mount
With ancient prophets the mysterious way.
Beyond the shadowy threshold and gray bounds
Of purblind life I looked: then I beheld
Death's province peopled proudly! O great Death,
Imperial, perdurable, Ancient of Days!
O Death, Master of mortals! But they passed,
His people, through the limits of that realm,
And places purgatorial, till their brows
Shone; and light fell upon them in fair Fields.
Tellus was there, who by Eleusis died,
And with divine simplicity dethroned
The Lydian's pompous fortune: there he reigned,
Italy's ancient prince, Pythagoras:
And Plato, lost in immortality.

Chance and change; chance and change! strange chance, hard change:
These fashion what I know, and mourning know.
Still am I faithful to the lonely faith.
Dreaming, alone and melancholy here,

150

In Antioch of the Christians; would I saw
Hymettus now, and purple lights of morn:
Apollo leap above Acropolis,
And strike the shrines with gold! They are not here,
They are not mine, who there of old were mine,
Basil and Nazianzen: mighty tongues,
But mighty against all most dear to me.
A peasant has them captive: and the world,
Rome and the world bow down to Nazareth.
I only serve you, royal Gods! I still:
With body's peril, soul's distress, I still.
Would I had lived at morning of the world!
With music caught down from the Sun rang out
The lyres and chaunts of those rejoicing men:
Apollo was a glory on the heights!
Can his day dawn again? O faith most fair!
I doubt not thee. When these ill days are done,
Glad will the cities be once more, with fires
Of sacrifice, and gleaming forms divine;
Fair, as the fair perfection signified:
One great civility of Gods and men,
Calm Gods, and men serenely serving them.
Then to Eleusis would I bring again
Her desolate veneration: setting up
Temple and courts, girt with the sacred bay,
With laurel, and the comely olive branch:
And wisdom from the books of stone once more
Should nourish pure souls, and illuminate.
So, from the ruddy desert East, to her,
The bright Parisian city of my care,
Julian should be remembered by the Gods,

151

Their servant universal. O far dreams!
O far dreams, far beyond these weary eyes!
I shall do nothing: since the first king was,
Wisdom's crowned lover has the world not seen.
Nay! not one sceptred Caesar of them all,
Not grave Aurelius, whom I thought of old
To follow, but has fallen short therein:
Crossed by the grievous troubling of the world.
Yet nothing of your praise have I not paid,
Lords of Olympus! When the great Sun shines,
I am Apollo's priest: hers too I am,
The Mighty Mother, who from land to land
Moves with supreme and battlemented brows.
The robe of her anointing, hangs it not,
Tarnished and worn, upon my shoulder yet;
This robe, still dreadful with the bull's black blood?
The citizens of Antioch scorn my state:
The purple-born, a scholar! the world's king,
Hid in the cloak of sad philosophy.
O servants of a vain and distraught man,
Ill taken for a god: is that your pride?
I, who am Caesar; Caesar's too, these rags;
With a more proud humility disdain,
O Christians! your imperial show and sin;
For I am votarist of Gods, who wore
Man's true flesh never: nor myself have worn
Man's empty shadows of magnificence,
But am the lover of magnificent Gods.
Wondrous Antinous! Oh, fairer thou
Than the dim beauty of Christ crucified;
Thee too among the Everlasting Ones,
With Eleusinian feast, have I adored.

152

Beneath the vast night in old Egypt thou
Gavest thyself for Hadrian: neither foul,
Nor any slave's death, was thy death; for Nile
Took thee. Then in the heavens burned one more star,
And earth reddened with unknown lily flowers,
O consecrate and fair! for joy of thee.
Now am I votarist of thine, as I
Of each magnificent and marvellous God.

In their high converse only is my trust.
Through the dim German forests have I marched,
Prince of the Roman eagles, Mars my lord,
As in the triumphing days of Rome: Mars grant,
That through these oriental empires Rome
Triumph! And Mars will grant it, even as thou
Foretellest me great glory, Maximus!
A golden presage: Julian shall increase,
Till Alexander be less great a name.
Once with tumultuary voice of power,
August! the Legions hailed me: me they bore,
In mail and purple, vehemently crowned
Their monarch, and the world's: who one day yet
May clash their swords through mine unarmoured breast.
But none can take from me the treasure: none
Mine adoration of Divinity.
Caverns of haunted Ephesus! Your gloom,
Sweet with the dreamy incense, showed my youth
Its earliest of mysterious ways: whenceforth,
Up mounting, brightening, labyrinths I traced
Mine homeward journey to the eternal Light:

153

Till at Eleusis, as I strove to it,
The perfect benediction fell. And now,
When the abhorrent voices crowd on me,
Christian with Christian warring, all with truth,
Retired within the secret chambers, there
Eleusis comforts me: I know and live.
The earth has yet her holy motherhood:
The earth has honour yet, and honours some,
True children of her heart, and of the sun;
True masters of the mysteries, who walk
Surely and nobly the vast world, its kings:
Lords of the laws, that bind the Pleiades,
And order the outgoings of the morn.
O kingly prophet of the golden thigh!
O mighty Samian master! Thy mild hand
Stroked in Crotona the white eagle: thou
Wast tamer of man's heart, the wild beast there!
I too, whom nations through the world revere,
Nor suffer me from old Lucretius' height
Contemplate the laborious march of men,
But draw me downward to their wants: I too
Salvation through the terrible midnight
Have seen, lapped round with glory. So my soul,
Up to the golden air in welcome death
Passing, shall fall within the calms of God.
Yet not alone: thou too shalt pass with me,
Brother and friend upon that last of ways,
Divinest of all living men: mine own
Lover and counsellor, Iamblichus!
One year shall free us both: one ecstasy
Make thy soul mine, mine thine; both lost in Light.

1886-7.

154

DE AMICITIA

To “A. E.”

Beauty of Israel! thou on its high places
Fallen, wonderful in thy love to me!
King David! we too love with thee
Dear lovers' faces,
Infinite friendships, golden graces:
Hearts passionate, as the full and stirring sea.
We too have come upon the shining traces
Of white souls, while we walk this darker earth:
Celestial was their birth,
August, and issuing from Uranian races;
Kin to the morning stars, their choral mirth,
A matin melody.
The glory of a crown, gold tried in fire,
Shadows their brows:
They know it not, but hungering desire
For the White City, in their ardent eyes,
Burns: and the pure palm boughs,
Holy and stately from their clean hands rise:
Such brightness and such bravery shall they win!
And this of poor souls red with sin,
Who with the darkness house?
O thought, unkind, unwise!
With perfect faith we look within,
Where the truth lies.
Dew of the morning and the evening falls,
Falls cool and sweet, upon the scarlet flames,
The furnace of each heart:
And through their stormy music, music calls
The wandering children by fond, wistful names,

155

Dear and apart:
Music with gently pleading claims,
Music descending from glad Sion walls.
Whiter than wool, whiter than snow,
By grace and love, the stained souls grow:
Lilies they stand, who lay so low
In shameful mire of wrong and woe;
Lilies, to fill the Queen of Heaven's fair halls.
Angels of Mercy gently come and go
Between the Sacred Heart and these poor hearts:
Plying their ministrant strong parts,
With love in overflow.
Ah, friends too dear and goodly to be lost!
Though you be tempest-tost
On bitter surges, raised by envious arts
Of the great Unholy Ghost,
Prince of ill Angels, Captain of Hell's host!
Ah, friends of loving voices, and kind hands,
And eyes, that with all confidence accost
Ours in the silent eloquence of love,
As the heart understands!
Our faith above
Our fear prevails,
Driving it into desolate lands.
You to the very far off Land your sails
Have stoutly set:
Whatever adverse and malignant gales
Make you awhile forget
The straight course, and the ever faithful star,
Constant above the winds and waves and war.
Ah, yet
The Land, where all true lovers are,

156

Shall greet us with celestial hails:
The Land, that lures us from afar;
Land of the Love, that never fails,
The Light, that never pales;
The long, sweet Patience, that allows no let,
Though with disdain her pains be met,
Saying: They shall be yet
The captives of the Everlasting Love!
O gracious voice and unoracular!
Dove's voice indeed, but not Dodona's dove.
Wherefore above
Our fear triumphs our faith,
And saith
No word of dark and comfortless regret.
Ah, dear our friends, ours past the mists of death!
Ours, where the loved disciple, great Saint John,
Pillows his head upon
The only rest,
God's Breast!
Ours, in the strength of that enamoured breath,
Which rang from Patmos' exile guest:
God is Love! And of all men he knew best,
Who lay upon that Breast,
And heard the beating of the Heart of God:
Who Calvary trod,
And stood,
With Mary in her mourning Motherhood,
Beneath the Rood.
Friends, whose true care for us is our best proof,
From grace and good we keep not quite aloof!
Dear brother and dear brother,
We shall clasp hands beneath the eternal roof,

157

And see Saint John the Loved with Mary Mother!
Friends ever, as of old:
But there, with joy untold;
Joy, mightier than our mortal hearts can hold.
But hearts immortal made can never be
Feeble, nor overbold:
Hearts greatly stationed in eternity.
Friends, dear our friends, O fellowship of gold!
By ways of land and sea,
Ways manifold,
Ways marvellous,
Brought near to us!
Since you have found our friendship something worth,
And in our hearts, not a mere dust, nor dearth
Of what your own hearts hold so perfectly,
Courage and constancy:
Bear with us, while we bear the bonds of earth!
Bear with us, for if friendship pine,
Waver and wane,
Not yours, but ours,
Will be the sad fault, the disastrous sign,
Of friendship's drear decline
And drooping flowers:
But you against ourselves will we maintain
Friends without stain,
Of the true line.
Our visions are not vain!
Yours are the crown, the palm, the blessed reign,
The marvellous high strain
Of triumph trumpets blown from Sion walls.
Fair as her lilies you indeed shall stand,
Hand fast in hand,

158

Along the Queen of Heaven's high halls.
Black wind never yet blew,
Shall whelm and vanquish you
Riding the seas safe homeward to that strand,
Where from of old, though new,
The City of the eternal golden spires,
The valiant City of the Saints, desires
You for her citizens, past seas and fires,
Made white,
Fit for the Angels' and the Saints' delight,
Fit for God's sight.
Amid Seraphic and Uranian quires,
We hear your music celebrate your fight
Well fought, well won:
We know your night
Ended, your everlasting day begun:
We see you splendid in His Living Light,
The Lamb your Sun.
O royal David! we too love, like thee,
Friendship's confederacy:
Friends, than the cedars of Mount Lebanon,
Stronger; than orchards of Isle Avalon,
Fairer: O king! we love, like thee,
Friends, in their charity,
Wonderful: and we know them God's, each one.

1894.

DAWN OF REVOLUTION

To Thomas Hardy.

To-night, there's music on the air;
Strange stirring, and rich turbulence:
Hope turned to pride; crowns for despair;
Night, and night's vast magnificence.

159

The flowers are swaying with delight,
And incense burdens the warm wind:
Now is incomparable night!
Stars in the vault, and Heaven behind.

Night hath fierce loveliness: clouds race
Past star and still unconquered star:
While, rivalling their mighty chace,
Rides, reigns, a marvellous moon afar.

What means the night? Back beats mine heart
Answer: Night teems with prophecy:
And thou! hast thou fore-hailed thy part,
And played thine own posterity?

Praising thy soul of fire, thy sword
Of death, thy death of victory?
Beheld thee on the crimson sward
Slain? Seen the eagles swoop to thee?

And turned thee, where thou standest bronze
Above the passing people's praise:
Or liest marble, where the sons
Of men thank God on triumph days?

The wind witches me; the hot air
Inflames my brows, and burns my blood:
No vehement love night flames so fair,
No feast of the vine pours such a flood.

Faces are wild before me: steel
Whirls its blue lighning, veined with red.
Palaces tremble down, or reel
To ruin, while the stars in dread

160

Fade far into their quiet deeps,
Before the deep destroying roar:
Heavenward the costliest incense leaps,
And madness falls from Heaven the more.

Ah, the strained eyes, the frantic hands,
The bloody, racing feet! Where trod
His priests of sacrifice, now stands
Each gaunt, starved enemy of God.

What is the end? Nay! what know I,
With these drums thundering through mine ears,
Through the changed earth, the unchanging sky:
The wreck of immemorial years?

Liberty! for the end is come:
The end, that shall begin new earth,
And end the old Heavens: that look down dumb
Upon no second fair, calm birth

Of morning stars in melody,
But the sad birth through bitter stress,
And elemental misery,
Of freedom's newfound righteousness.

But I grow tired in a pause of wind:
The clouds drag, the worn flowers are still.
Courage! fresh visions troop behind
That gloomiest cloud, that shadowy hill.

There! from the soft heart of the cloud
Dance forth wild choirs with wantoning hair:
The angels of rebellion, vowed
To pour their passion on the air.

161

Distraught sublimity of death
Wilders them: Oh, to storm life out,
Destroying life at every breath,
With cry of lust, with battle shout!

Over the vines an heady shower
Sweeps, of enamouring windy rain:
Each shrivelled bough and dusty flower
Loves the swift dew, and lives again.

And falling with the vehement streams,
And welling from the violent springs,
Come virtues with their faery dreams:
Bright eyes, and flash of fiery wings.

O piteous eyes, that long and long
To win one welcoming look from God!
O burning brains, and labouring tongue!
O hands that strain, and feet flame-shod!

You grow dim unto death: you grasp
Never the far off wisdom: you
Find not free words: you never clasp
God's hands: you wander the waste through.

Swept down the flooding terror's path,
Into the night the dreamers go:
On earth abide the men of wrath,
For whose delight the stormwinds blow.

So hot the air still: Oh, that morn
Were on me, and with morning, calm!
These tumults of the night downborne,
And peace upon me for a balm!

162

Still strong, you visions! For the strip
Of crawling light below the gloom
Shows like the Pit's unfolding lip:
Menace of fire and hungry doom.

Well I know, truth is in my dream,
With sad and haggard countenance:
Red shafts of sullen sunrise gleam,
And slowly the fierce hours advance.

1888.

A DESCANT UPON THE LITANY OF LORETTO

To Mrs. Meynell.

A flood of chaunted love,
Love white and virginal,
Makes this rich temple gloom more musical,
Than woodland glooms; where slow winds nightly move
Soft leaves, that rise and fall
Upon the branches of clear nightingales;
Whose rapture, touched with lovelier sorrow, wails,
And thrills, and thrills,
Until night fails;
And, in the sunrise on the eternal hills,
The Angels of the Morning stand,
Blessing with lifted hand
The labouring land:
But here the glory of our holy song,
Sorrowless, flies along

163

Reaches of Heaven adoring and adored:
Where Angels worship; whither men aspire,
Wielding their faith, a sword
Tempered and tried in fire.
Sorrowless song! for each predestined pang,
Of Calvary and Nazareth,
Changed to a passion of delight, when rang
An universal breath
Of salutation over death cast down:
When upon Mary's brow the crown,
For all her lowliness, proclaimed her Queen
Of Heaven and of our woes: she, who had been
Woe once incarnate, as high God in her.
Wherefore the pure concent
Of each fair voice, found fit to minister
Its music to her ear,
Floods, with no underflow of doubt and fear,
This sacred house: while infinite content
Urges forgetfulness
Of that, which makes the Angels' rapture less;
The passionate countenance,
Wherewith the Prince of this World still blasphemes
Against its God, and gleams
Angrily against Michael's lifted lance,
Then falls beneath his glance.
So be not quick to take
Your death of beauty on this trembling air!
A little longer yet,
O voices piercing to the golden stair!
A little longer, let the world look fair:
A little longer make

164

Anguish of heart, a light thing to forget:
A little longer yet!
She will not weary of your harmonies,
The gentle Mother: for her memories
Are full of ancient melodies,
Raised in the fashion of old Israel,
Beside the cold rock well:
Under the glow of calm and splendid skies;
Jesus upon her breast,
Fronting the shadowy land, the solemn west.
Ah, Mother! whom with many names we name,
By lore of love, which in our earthly tongue
Is all too poor, though rich love's heart of flame,
To sing thee as thou art, nor leave unsung
The greatest of the graces thou hast won,
Thy chiefest excellence!
Ivory Tower! Star of the Morning! Rose
Mystical! Tower of David, our Defence!
To thee our music flows,
Who makest music for us to thy Son.
So, when the shadows come,
Laden with all contrivances of fear!
Ah, Mary! lead us home,
Through fear, through fire:
To where with faithful companies we may hear
That perfect music, which the love of God,
Who this dark way once trod,
Creates among the imperishable choir.

1885.

165

OUR LADY OF THE MAY

To the Very Rev. Fr. Vassall, C.SS.R.

O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!
Thou gavest us the World's one Light of Light:
Under the stars, amid the snows, He lay;
While Angels, through the Galilean night
Sang glory and sang peace:
Nor doth their singing cease,
For thou their Queen and He their King sit crowned
Above the stars, above the bitter snows;
They chaunt to thee the Lily, Him the Rose,
With white Saints kneeling round.
Gone is cold night: thine now are spring and day:
O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!

O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!
Thou gavest us the blessed Christmas mirth:
And now, not snows, but blossoms, light thy way;
We give thee the fresh flower-time of the earth.
These early flowers we bring,
Are angels of the spring,
Spirits of gracious rain and light and dew.
Nothing so like to thee the whole earth yields,
As these pure children of her vales and fields,
Bright beneath skies of blue.
Hail, Holy Queen! their fragrant breathings say:
O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!

O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!
Breathe from God's garden of eternal flowers
Blessing, when we thy little children pray:
Let thy soul's grace steal gently over ours.

166

Send on us dew and rain,
That we may bloom again,
Nor wither in the dry and parching dust.
Lift up our hearts, till with adoring eyes,
O Morning Star! we hail thee in the skies,
Star of our hope and trust!
Sweet Star, sweet Flower, there bid thy beauty stay:
O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!

O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!
Thou leftest lilies rising from thy tomb:
They shone in stately and serene array,
Immaculate amid death's house of gloom.
Ah, let thy graces be
Sown in our dark hearts! We
Would make our hearts gardens for thy dear care;
Watered from wells of Paradise, and sweet
With balm winds flowing from the Mercy Seat,
And full of heavenly air:
While music ever in thy praise should play,
O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!

O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!
Not only for ourselves we plead, God's Flower!
Look on thy blinded children, who still stray,
Lost in this pleasant land, thy chosen Dower!
Send us a perfect spring:
Let faith arise and sing,
And England from her long, cold winter wake.
Mother of Mercy! turn upon her need

167

Thine eyes of mercy: be there spring indeed:
So shall thine Angels make
A starrier music, than our hearts can say,
O Flower of flowers, our Lady of the May!

1895.

A DREAM

To Edgar Jepson.

Ah, you will not hear! Alone
I must agonize, and keep
Mine own conscience all mine own:
Yet, to sleep the eternal sleep,
Knowing this thing to all unknown!

I shall shudder in the shade
At a fainter shade astir
There, within the gray: some strayed
Melancholy wanderer
Through the misty barricade.

Nought to him were shadowy bounds;
Nought, his far off resting place,
Where the willowed water rounds
Each dim point with gentle grace,
Filled with windy, willow sounds.

He would lie there in his dream:
Parted lips, and wandering hands
Plucking pale blooms; down the stream,
Far against the sad, gray lands,
The soft eyes would gaze and gleam.

168

Ah, so softly! No more wild,
Than a flame of gracious fire
On the altar: like a child,
Would he play with light desire,
Born of fancy, sweet and mild.

All the willow land to him
But a place of echoes were:
Philomel's melodious hymn,
Flowing through the evening air;
The wood doves' faint voices dim.

For dull Lethe, for the blind
Poppy of Oblivion,
Hush, and lull, and thrall his mind:
Deeper memories are undone;
What he would, he cannot find.

Cannot find forthwith: but yet,
As the visions veer and fall,
Rapture now, and now regret:
He will feel it, though not all;
Half remember, half forget.

Half remember, dreaming ghost,
Her, whose heart I stole to break:
Her, who should have loved him most:
Her, whose soul I laughed to make
Ugly, miserable, lost.

He remembers! The lone eyes
Wake to fire: the smiling lips
Clench to iron, cold as ice:

169

Dropped its flowers, the thin hand grips,
Where no venging weapon lies.

This a dreamer in the haunt,
The still haunt, of willow rills!
But a dreamer like to daunt
Death, upon the naked hills
Dight for battle, grim and gaunt!

The gray precincts water-worn
Shiver at a sundering flame,
On a vehement whirlwind borne
Into the drear home of shame,
From the home of souls lovelorn.

He, love's melancholy saint
Cloistered by the innocent plains
Willow-bowered for true love's plaint!
He, to dare the place of pains:
He, to bear the fiery taint!

Fainter shade, said I? But nay!
Strong and strenuous with wrath,
Striding toward my dismal day,
He will front me on the path,
Where my tortured feet shall stray.

Then a thunder, then a storm,
Then a light of rousing Gods!
Justice in her haughtier form,
Vengeance with her living rods:
I, with stricken face deform.

170

There, supreme in Hell's thrilled hall,
He, the angelic challenger!
Hark! he speaks: Before you all
Come I, your petitioner:
Justice! Vengeance! Hear me call:

Love and Death denounce this man!
Silence in the courts of Hell,
Silence for a fearful span:
Such, as ere Gomorrha fell,
And the ruining thunder ran.

I can die. To quit the light,
Hide my misery in gloom,
Well indeed! But in that night,
At his voice, to meet my doom!
And Death's Angels, who may fight?

1887.

173

OXFORD

To Arthur Galton.

Over, the four long years! And now there rings
One voice of freedom and regret: Farewell!
Now old remembrance sorrows, and now sings:
But song from sorrow, now, I cannot tell.

City of weathered cloister and worn court;
Gray city of strong towers and clustering spires:
Where art's fresh loveliness would first resort;
Where lingering art kindled her latest fires.

Where on all hands, wondrous with ancient grace,
Grace touched with age, rise works of goodliest men:
Next Wykeham's art obtain their splendid place
The zeal of Inigo, the strength of Wren.

Where at each coign of every antique street,
A memory hath taken root in stone:
There, Raleigh shone; there, toiled Franciscan feet;
There, Johnson flinched not, but endured, alone.

There, Shelley dreamed his white Platonic dreams;
There, classic Landor throve on Roman thought;
There, Addison pursued his quiet themes;
There, smiled Erasmus, and there, Colet taught.

And there, O memory more sweet than all!
Lived he, whose eyes keep yet our passing light;
Whose crystal lips Athenian speech recall;
Who wears Rome's purple with least pride, most right.

174

That is the Oxford, strong to charm us yet:
Eternal in her beauty and her past.
What, though her soul be vexed? She can forget
Cares of an hour: only the great things last.

Only the gracious air, only the charm,
And ancient might of true humanities:
These, nor assault of man, nor time, can harm;
Not these, nor Oxford with her memories.

Together have we walked with willing feet
Gardens of plenteous trees, bowering soft lawn:
Hills, whither Arnold wandered; and all sweet
June meadows, from the troubling world withdrawn:

Chapels of cedarn fragrance, and rich gloom
Poured from empurpled panes on either hand:
Cool pavements, carved with legends of the tomb;
Grave haunts, where we might dream, and understand.

Over, the four long years! And unknown powers
Call to us, going forth upon our way:
Ah! turn we, and look back upon the towers,
That rose above our lives, and cheered the day.

Proud and serene, against the sky, they gleam:
Proud and secure, upon the earth, they stand:
Our city hath the air of a pure dream,
And hers indeed is an Hesperian land.

Think of her so! the wonderful, the fair,
The immemorial, and the ever young:
The city, sweet with our forefathers' care;
The city, where the Muses all have sung.

175

Ill times may be; she hath no thought of time:
She reigns beside the waters yet in pride.
Rude voices cry: but in her ears the chime
Of full, sad bells brings back her old springtide.

Like to a queen in pride of place, she wears
The splendour of a crown in Radcliffe's dome.
Well fare she, well! As perfect beauty fares;
And those high places, that are beauty's home.

1890.

LONDON TOWN

To Arthur Mackmurdo.

Let others chaunt a country praise,
Fair river walks and meadow ways;
Dearer to me my sounding days
In London Town:
To me the tumult of the street
Is no less music, than the sweet
Surge of the wind among the wheat,
By dale or down.

Three names mine heart with rapture hails,
With homage: Ireland, Cornwall, Wales:
Lands of lone moor, and mountain gales,
And stormy coast:
Yet London's voice upon the air
Pleads at mine heart, and enters there;
Sometimes I wellnigh love and care
For London most.

Listen upon the ancient hills:
All silence! save the lark, who trills
Through sunlight, save the rippling rills:
There peace may be.

176

But listen to great London! loud,
As thunder from the purple cloud,
Comes the deep thunder of the crowd,
And heartens me.

O gray, O gloomy skies! What then?
Here is a marvellous world of men;
More wonderful than Rome was, when
The world was Rome!
See the great stream of life flow by!
Here thronging myriads laugh and sigh,
Here rise and fall, here live and die:
In this vast home.

In long array they march toward death,
Armies, with proud or piteous breath:
Forward! the spirit in them saith,
Spirit of life:
Here the triumphant trumpets blow;
Here mourning music sorrows low;
Victors and vanquished, still they go
Forward in strife.

Who will not heed so great a sight?
Greater than marshalled stars of night,
That move to music and with light:
For these are men!
These move to music of the soul;
Passions, that madden or control:
These hunger for a distant goal,
Seen now and then.

177

Is mine too tragical a strain,
Chaunting a burden full of pain,
And labour, that seems all in vain?
I sing but truth.
Still, many a merry pleasure yet,
To many a merry measure set,
Is ours, who need not to forget
Summer and youth.

Do London birds forget to sing?
Do London trees refuse the spring?
Is London May no pleasant thing?
Let country fields,
To milking maid and shepherd boy,
Give flowers, and song, and bright employ:
Her children also can enjoy,
What London yields.

Gleaming with sunlight, each soft lawn
Lies fragrant beneath dew of dawn;
The spires and towers rise, far withdrawn,
Through golden mist:
At sunset, linger beside Thames:
See now, what radiant lights and flames!
That ruby burns: that purple shames
The amethyst.

Winter was long, and dark, and cold:
Chill rains! grim fogs, black fold on fold,
Round street, and square, and river rolled!
Ah, let it be:

178

Winter is gone! Soon comes July,
With wafts from hayfields by-and-by:
While in the dingiest courts you spy
Flowers fair to see.

Take heart of grace: and let each hour
Break gently into bloom and flower:
Winter and sorrow have no power
To blight all bloom.
One day, perchance, the sun will see
London's entire felicity:
And all her loyal children be
Clear of all gloom.

A dream? Dreams often dreamed come true:
Our world would seem a world made new
To those, beneath the churchyard yew
Laid long ago!
When we beneath like shadows bide,
Fair London, throned upon Thames' side,
May be our children's children's pride:
And we shall know.

1891.

CYHIRAETH

To F. York Powell.

Sunk and set our sun, that shone:
Now are light and glory gone
From glittering Llanarmon!
We heard the doom, the deathcry, wail
Between the mountains and the vale,
Through desolate Llanarmon.

179

For a crown, Llanarmon bears
But a bristling crest of spears:
Fierce are thy joys, Llanarmon!
And older than the Druid oak
His line, the leader of thy folk,
Llewellyn of Llanarmon!

Valiant and divinely proud,
He: till death against him vowed
Malevolence, Llanarmon!
Death, angered at a man so great,
Sent travelling from the Ghostly Gate
The lone deathcry, Llanarmon!

From the Ghostly Gate it came,
Keen as wind, and swift as flame:
Thou knowest it, Llanarmon!
But wildest flame, and fiercest wind,
Less fearful are to strong mankind,
Than that strange fear, Llanarmon!

High in heaven had there been
Horrors heard, and visions seen,
By whispering Llanarmon:
Armed hosts, at onset long and loud
Clashing within the sullen cloud,
Clanged over pale Llanarmon.

On the winds' waste passages,
Dim death's presage angel is
To eyes of man, Llanarmon!
But when, since solemn earth began,
Pierced agony to ears of man,
Clearer than this, Llanarmon?

180

Not a spirit, that, of air,
Earth, or water: past compare,
To agonized Llanarmon
Comes that immitigable cry;
The music sent, before they die,
The princes of Llanarmon!

Through the vasty Druid trees
Murmuring to the mountain breeze
Bravely, above Llanarmon,
Even as it were the sea in surge,
Down swept the dolour and the dirge
At midnight on Llanarmon.

Ah, the waft of plangent breath,
Harbinger of ready death
To shuddering Llanarmon!
A tide of sorrow strongly set
From the gray region of regret
Toward thee, forlorn Llanarmon!

Strong men blaunched to hear that tone,
Lovers closelier clasped their own,
In tremulous Llanarmon:
Until within Llewellyn's halls
Rose, rang, around the trophied walls:
Woe for bereaved Llanarmon!

On the wolfskins he had lain,
Prisoned long in burning pain:
What tears were thine, Llanarmon!

181

Sorrow! upon the thundering field
Not his, his soul in death to yield,
Fighting for thee, Llanarmon!

Bitterness of wounding fire
To his heart drew surely nigher,
As death drew nigh Llanarmon:
Until, while wailed the herald cry,
Upright he sprang, and stood to die,
So: Lion of Llanarmon!

Lion soul and eagle face
Fought with death, a splendid space:
Oh, proud be thou, Llanarmon!
Not man with man, but man with death
Wrestled: thine hoariest minstrel saith
No greater deed, Llanarmon!

Amid lightning of blue swords
Noblier never died thy lords,
Than died this lord, Llanarmon!
Fell the high face, the great heart broke:
Within the Shadowy Isle he woke,
Thy paladin, Llanarmon!

White and stern Llewellyn slept,
While his praising people kept
Vigil in sad Llanarmon:
The cry, that called this Man of men,
Hushed, leaving them but silence then,
Dark silence, in Llanarmon.

1896.

182

LAMB

To Alfred Pollard.

Saint Charles! for Thackeray called thee so:
Saint, at whose name our fond hearts glow:
See now, this age of tedious woe,
That snaps and snarls!
Thine was a life of tragic shade;
A life, of care and sorrow made:
But nought could make thine heart afraid,
Gentle Saint Charles!

Encumbered dearly with old books,
Thou, by the pleasant chimney nooks,
Didst laugh, with merry-meaning looks,
Thy griefs away:
We, bred on modern magazines,
Point out, how much our sadness means;
And some new woe our wisdom gleans,
Day by dull day.

Lover of London! whilst thy feet
Haunted each old familiar street,
Thy brave heart found life's turmoil sweet,
Despite life's pain.
We fume and fret and, when we can,
Cry up some new and noisy plan,
Big with the Rights and Wrongs of Man:
And where's the gain?

Gentle Saint Charles! I turn to thee,
Tender and true: thou teachest me

183

To take with joy, what joys there be,
And bear the rest.
Walking thy London day by day,
The thought of thee makes bright my way,
And in thy faith I fain would stay,
Doing my best.

Along the Mall, along the Strand,
Each turn I take, still thou dost stand,
A patron spirit, at mine hand:
So, should my choice,
Beside the dear book-laden stall,
On books not books perversely fall:
Nay! take the play, the pastoral!
Pleads thy wise voice.

So, though the world be full of noise;
And most new books, but foolish toys;
I share with thee thine ancient joys,
Marvell or Quarles:
So, tired with rambling through the Town,
I taste the rich delights of Browne;
With Elia for the evening's crown,
Gentle Saint Charles!

1891.

185

TO MORFYDD DEAD

I

Would, to the glory of thine eyes might change,
In passionate strange surprise,
Lightning, that in darkness flies

Oh, fairer yet! would, an unbending sheaf
Of steel my grief might end,
And to thine my freed soul send!

Would, I might meet swift death from flight of spears!
I waste in tears the night,
Morfydd, O my lost delight!

186

I would, that on the fiercest field of blood,
Morfydd! I stood, no shield
Sheltering my breast unsteeled!

I would, that swords of death rang round my way,
This weary day, and found
Home within the heart, thine crowned!

I would, that my freed soul within the wind
Might fly, and find, and win
Thine, and joy of death begin!

I would, that with eternal wings we went,
All sorrow spent, all things
Ended, save the song love sings!

Sweet spears and swords, who send his due to death!
My sad heart saith not you
Nay: ah, swift then, pierce it through!

1895.

II

Morfydd at midnight
Met the Nameless Ones:
Now she wanders on the winds,
White and lone.
I would give the light
Of eternal suns,
To be with her on the winds,
No more lone!

187

Oh, wild sea of air!
Oh, night's vast sweet noon!
We would wander through the night,
Star and star.
Nay! but she, most fair!
Sun to me and moon:
I the vassal of her flight,
Far and far.

Morfydd at midnight
Met the Nameless Ones:
Now she wanders on the winds,
White and lone.
Take from me the light,
God! of all Thy suns:
Give me her, who on the winds
Wanders lone!

1896.

THE DARKNESS

To the Rev. Fr. Dover, S.J.

Master of spirits! hear me: King of souls!
I kneel before Thine altar, the long night,
Besieging Thee with penetrable prayers;
And all I ask, light from the Face of God.
Thy darkness Thou hast given me enough,
The dark clouds of Thine angry majesty:
Now give me light! I cannot always walk
Surely beneath the full and starless night.
Lighten me, fallen down, I know not where,

188

Save, to the shadows and the fear of death.
Thy Saints in light see light, and sing for joy:
Safe from the dark, safe from the dark and cold.
But from my dark comes only doubt of light:
Disloyalty, that trembles to despair.
Now bring me out of night, and with the sun
Clothe me, and crown me with Thy seven stars,
Thy spirits in the hollow of Thine hand.
Thou from the still throne of Thy tabernacle
Wilt come to me in glory, O Lord God!
Thou wilt, I doubt Thee not: I worship Thee
Before Thine holy altar, the long night.
Else have I nothing in the world, but death:
Thine hounding winds rush by me day and night,
Thy seas roar in mine ears: I have no rest,
No peace, but am afflicted constantly,
Driven from wilderness to wilderness.
And yet Thou hast a perfect house of light,
Above the four great winds, an house of peace:
Its beauty of the crystal and the dew,
Guard Angels and Archangels, in their hands
The blade of a sword shaken. Thither bring
Thy servant: when the black night falls on me,
With bitter voices tempting in the gloom,
Send out Thine armies, flaming ministers,
And shine upon the night: for what I would,
I cannot, save these help me. O Lord God!
Now, when my prayers upon Thine altar lie,
When Thy dark anger is too hard for me:
Though vision of Thyself, through flying fire,
Have mercy, and give light, and stablish me!

1889.

189

CHRISTMAS

To the Rev. William Busby.

I

Sing Bethlehem! Sing Bethlehem!
You daughters of Jerusalem!
Keep sorrow for Gethsemani,
And mourning for Mount Calvary!

Why are your lids and lashes wet?
Here is no darkling Olivet.
Sing Bethlehem! Sing Bethlehem!
You daughters of Jerusalem!

How should we sing of Bethlehem,
We, daughters of Jerusalem?
We are the people of the Jews:
Our balms would soothe Him not, but bruise.

Ah, Calvary! ah, Calvary!
We wretched women cry to thee:
We, daughters of Jerusalem;
And enemies of Bethlehem.

With faces cast upon the dust,
We weep those things, which do we must:
Our tears embitter Calvary,
And water thee, Gethsemani!

Nay, Bethlehem! Sing Bethlehem!
Poor daughters of Jerusalem!
You know not, what you do: but He
Will pardon you on Calvary.

1888.

190

II

The last week before Christmas,
Hoar lies the orchard grass
From pear tree unto apple tree,
Where feet well shod must pass:
By dripping trees a woodman's fire
Burns the last leaves, alas!
And the blue smoke drifts through the air,
Above the branches bare.

The last week before Christmas,
The last before the snow:
Stand steaming cattle by the hedge,
With meek heads bending low:
The chattering rivulet flows fast,
While there is time to flow:
And the blue smoke drifts through the air,
Above the branches bare.

The last week before Christmas,
Red berries few to find:
The brown fir cones upon the bough
Move to a gentle wind:
Down the gray sky go chilly gleams,
Bringing the sun to mind:
And the blue smoke drifts through the air,
Above the branches bare.

Oh! last week before Christmas,
Second before New Year:
Heap heart of oak upon the hearth,
And keep you now good cheer:

191

With Christus natus for an health,
And Christi Mater dear:
Then blue's the sky, and bright's the air,
Above the blossoms fair!

1888.

III

Tres.
Hail to our brother Gabriel!
Now we, thy brothers, Michael,
And Raphael,
And Uriel,
Hail thee, come home from Israel!

Gabriel.
I saw among the lilies dwell
Mary our Queen, who pleaseth well
The Spirit of our God. All hail,
Mary our Queen! Sing, thou in mail,
Lord Michael! Sing, Uriel; thou,
Clothed with the sun upon thy brow!
And sing thou Hail! whose pilgrims now
Shall climb the steep ways out of Hell,
Joy of poor pilgrims, Raphael!

Michael.
I, Captain of the Lord God's host,
Give glory to the Holy Ghost,
And give to Mary, loved of Him!

Uriel.
I, Chief of the white Cherubim,
Give thanks to Mary: and to Him,
That Holy Child, Who shall be born,
King Jesus Christ, on Christmas morn.

192

Raphael.
I, Prince of burning Seraphim,
Give praise, give praise, to Mary Queen,
With whom the Grace of God hath been.

Omnes.
Now play through Heaven the Angel bell:
Make music of the Angelus!
The King is come to Israel:
The Queen of Heaven is found for us.

1888.

IV

Christ hath Christ's Mother
Dicamus! Canamus!
Borne, our dear Brother,
Canamus! Dicamus!
In the stall of Bethlehem.
Then leave we all Jerusalem,
To kiss the King of Bethlehem:
Cui vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

Come from the city!
Dicamus! Canamus!
God hath had pity
Canamus! Dicamus!
On His people Israel.
And pity will He have as well
On Gentiles beyond Israel:
Nunc vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

193

Laud in the highest!
Dicamus! Canamus!
Now, Death, thou diest:
Canamus! Dicamus!
Lo! God goeth to His grave,
Us dead and dying men to save,
And bring the captives from the grave:
Quo vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

Snows the land cover:
Dicamus! Canamus!
Lo! comes our Lover:
Canamus! Dicamus!
Comes a glory, comes a light:
Gold on snow and in the height:
Glory from the Light of Light!
Quin vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

Praise to the Father!
Dicamus! Canamus!
Now will He gather
Canamus! Dicamus!
Us His helpless little ones
From endless Death's dominions:
Us, God the Father's little ones.
Cui vocibus gaudentibus,
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

194

Praise to Son Jesus!
Dicamus! Canamus!
Him, whose Cross frees us
Canamus! Dicamus!
From the cruel hand of sin.
Now first to Him our songs begin,
Since now our hearts have done with sin.
Sic vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

Praise Mary Mother!
Dicamus! Canamus!
Mary, none other,
Canamus! Dicamus!
Welcome might the Holy Ghost,
Because her soul was pure the most:
Now praise be to the Holy Ghost!
Cui vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

Praise, praise, and praises,
Dicamus! Canamus!
Earth with Heaven raises
Canamus! Dicamus!
To the glorious Trinity!
Sons of new morning, mingle we
With morning stars our melody:
Et vocibus gaudentibus
Dicamus! Canamus!
Gloriam.

1888.

195

CAROLS

To the Rev. Fr. Russell, S.J.

I

Fair snow and winter wind,
Be not unkind
To this your King!
Fall soft, and murmur mild,
About the Child:
Lest His first hour be suffering.

See! with large, gentle eyes,
Close where He lies,
Look ox and ass:
They bow their patient, meek
Heads to the weak
Lamb, Who to sacrifice must pass.

Soon shall come Cross and Crown
In Salem Town:
But now at least,
Rocked upon Mary's breast,
Let Jesu rest:
And all the earth keep Christmas Feast.

With Him your sorrows sleep.
No longer weep,
O pectora mortalia!
Sing you the Angel Song,
Sing loud and long!
Sing: In Excelsis Gloria!

1895.

196

II

To the Rev. Fr. Dawson, O.M.I.

Say, what saw you, Man?
And say, what heard?
I saw, while Angels sang,
Jesus the Word.

Saw you aught else, Man?
Aught else heard you?
I saw the Son of Man,
And the wind blew.

Saw you beside, Man?
Or heard beside?
I saw, while murderers mockea,
The Crucified.

Nay! what is this, Man?
And who is He?
The Holy Child must die
For you and me.

Oh! say, Brother! Oh! say, Brother!
What then shall be?
Home in His Sacred Heart
For you and me.

Oh! what can we give, Brother!
For such a thing?
Body and soul, Brother!
To Christ the King.

1896.

197

CHRISTMAS AND IRELAND

To Miss Milligan.

The golden stars give warmthless fire,
As weary Mary goes through night:
Her feet are torn by stone and briar;
She hath no rest, no strength, no light:
O Mary, weary in the snow,
Remember Ireland's woe!

O Joseph, sad for Mary's sake!
Look on our earthly Mother too:
Let not the heart of Ireland break
With agony, the ages through:
For Mary's love, love also thou
Ireland, and save her now!

Harsh were the folk, and bitter stern,
At Bethlehem, that night of nights.
For you no cheering hearth shall burn:
We have no room here, you no rights.
O Mary and Joseph! hath not she,
Ireland, been even as ye?

The ancient David's royal house
Was thine, Saint Joseph! wherefore she,
Mary, thine Ever Virgin Spouse,
To thine own city went with thee.
Behold! thy citizens disown
The heir of David's throne!

198

Nay, more! The Very King of kings
Was with you, coming to his own:
They thrust Him forth to lowliest things;
The poor meek beasts of toil alone
Stood by, when came to piteous birth
The God of all the earth.

And she, our Mother Ireland, knows
Insult, and infamies of wrong:
Her innocent children clad with woes,
Her weakness trampled by the strong:
And still upon her Holy Land
Her pitiless foemen stand.

From Manger unto Cross and Crown
Went Christ: and Mother Mary passed
Through Seven Sorrows, and sat down
Upon the Angel Throne at last.
Thence, Mary! to thine own Child pray,
For Ireland's hope this day!

She wanders amid winter still,
The dew of tears is on her face:
Her wounded heart takes yet its fill
Of desolation and disgrace.
God still is God! And through God she
Foreknows her joy to be.

The snows shall perish at the spring,
The flowers pour fragrance round her feet:
Ah, Jesus! Mary! Joseph! bring
This mercy from the Mercy Seat!
Send it, sweet King of Glory, born
Humbly on Christmas Morn!

1896.

199

MAGIC

To John Myres.

I

Because I work not, as logicians work,
Who but to ranked and marshalled reason yield:
But my feet hasten through a faery field,
Thither, where underneath the rainbow lurk
Spirits of youth, and life, and gold, concealed:

Because by leaps I scale the secret sky,
Upon the motion of a cunning star:
Because I hold the winds oracular,
And think on airy warnings, when men die:
Because I tread the ground, where shadows are:

Therefore my name is grown a popular scorn,
And I a children's terror! Only now,
For I am old! O Mother Nature! thou
Leavest me not: wherefore, as night turns morn,
A magian wisdom breaks beneath my brow.

These painful toilers of the bounded way,
Chaired within cloister halls: can they renew
Ashes to flame? Can they of moonlit dew
Prepare the immortalizing draughts? Can they
Give gold for refuse earth, or bring to view

Earth's deepest doings? Let them have their school
Their science, and their safety! I am he,
Whom Nature fills with her philosophy,
And takes for kinsman. Let me be their fool,
And wise man in the winds' society.

1887.

200

II

They wrong with ignorance a royal choice,
Who cavil at my loneliness and labour:
For them, the luring wonder of a voice,
The viol's cry for them, the harp and tabour:
For me divine austerity,
And voices of philosophy.

Ah! light imaginations, that discern
No passion in the citadel of passion:
Their fancies lie on flowers; but my thoughts turn
To thoughts and things of an eternal fashion:
The majesty and dignity
Of everlasting verity.

Mine is the sultry sunset, when the skies
Tremble with strange, intolerable thunder:
And at the dead of an hushed night, these eyes
Draw down the soaring oracles winged with wonder:
From the four winds they come to me,
The Angels of Eternity.

Men pity me; poor men, who pity me!
Poor, charitable, scornful souls of pity!
I choose laborious loneliness: and ye
Lead Love in triumph through the dancing city:
While death and darkness girdle me,
I grope for immortality.

1887.

III

Pour slowly out your holy balm of oil,
Within the grassy circle: let none spoil

201

Our favourable silence. Only I,
Winding wet vervain round mine eyes, will cry
Upon the powerful Lord of this our toil;
Until the first lark sing, the last star die.

Proud Lord of twilight, Lord of midnight, hear!
Thou hast forgone us; and hast drowsed thine ear,
When haggard voices hail thee: thou hast turned
Blind eyes, dull nostrils, when our vows have burned
Herbs on the moonlit flame, in reverent fear:
Silence is all, our love of thee hath earned.

Master! we call thee, calling on thy name!
Thy savoury laurel crackles: the blue flame
Gleams, leaps, devours apace the dewy leaves.
Vain! for nor breast of labouring midnight heaves,
Nor chilled stars fall: all things remain the same,
Save this new pang, that stings, and burns, and cleaves.

Despising us, thou knowest not! We stand,
Bared for thine adoration, hand in hand:
Steely our eyes, our hearts to all but thee
Iron: as waves of the unresting sea,
The wind of thy least Word is our command:
And our ambition hails thy sovereignty.

Come, Sisters! for the King of night is dead:
Come! for the frailest star of stars hath sped:
And though we waited for the waking sun,
Our King would wake not. Come! our world is done:
For all the witchery of the world is fled,
And lost all wanton wisdom long since won.

1888.

202

FRIENDS

I

O Guardian Angel! Patron Saints!
You, who have cared for me:
You, who have borne with all my plaints
So patiently!

I ask but one thing now: I pray,
God grant through you, each friend
Be mine within Eternal Day,
World without end.

1894.

II

Poor powerless Sorrow! Helpless Death!
Think they to worst me in the end?
Come when they will, my Faith still saith:
I face them with a single friend.

Were I alone, I could not fight
The imperious Powers: I should but fear,
And tremble in the lonely night,
With never a friend of all friends near.

But in the eyes of every friend,
Voice, or the holding of his hand,
I learn, how love can never end:
Oh, Heart of God! I understand.

1894.

203

III

The haunting hopes, the perfect dreams,
The visionary joys, that fill
Mine heart with sudden gracious gleams:
Through friendship they grow clearer still.

Each friend possesses, each betrays,
Some secret of the eternal things:
Each one has walked celestial ways,
And held celestial communings.

The smiles upon their lips are bright
With beauty from the Face of God:
Their eyes keep something of that Light,
Which knows nor pause, nor period.

1894.

IV

O Patron Saints of all my friends!
O Guardian Angels of them all!
With them begins, with them still ends,
My prayer's most passionate call.

You know my voice: you know their names,
That wing so its least selfish tone
Across your white celestial flames,
And up to the White Throne.

Heaven were not Heaven, and they not there;
Heaven were no Heaven, my friends away:
O Saints and Angels! hear the prayer,
I pray you every day.

1894.

204

INCENSE

To Miss Alice Brown.

I

All the annulling clouds, that lie
Far in wait for years to come,
Shall not force me to forget
All the witcheries of home,
While in the world there linger yet
Heliotrope and mignonette:
In their scent home cannot die.

When the delicate dewdrops gleamed
Tremulous on the early blooms;
The full sweetness of the dawn,
Gathered during twilight glooms,
Rose above the fields and lawn,
Ravishing me with fragrance, drawn
From each flower, that there had dreamed

Then was innocent glory shed
All about the garden ground:
Gods of Helicon well had paced
By the laurels, and around
The bright lawn; nor deemed disgraced
Their high Godhead, nor misplaced
Their descent, since thither led.

By a maze of gossamer dew
Measured, lay the pasture leas:
Ruddy gray the sunlight glanced
Through the rippling poplar trees,

205

On the airy webs, where chanced
Dainty faery feet had danced
Without noise, the soft night through.

That was morn indeed! And yet,
Gone the wondrous witchery;
Gone the charm, the enchauntment gone;
Still to aging memory
Come the scents, the lights, that shone,
That were sweet: dreams lie upon
Heliotrope and mignonette.

Stronger than remembered looks,
Nearer than old written words,
Cling the loved old fragrances;
At the matin time of birds,
Giving birth to memories:
Not one fancy perishes,
Born before we woke to books.

All will come again: once more
We shall fling our arms upon
Morning's wind, and ravish yet
All its load of incense, won
From rich wilding mignonette,
Clustered heliotrope, and wet
Meadows, O fair years of yore!

1887.

II

They do the will of beauty and regret,
Odours and travelling faery fragrances:
The breath of things, I never can forget,

206

The haunting spirit of old memories.
Gray grows the visible world; fair cadences
Break into death: sweet are the field flowers yet.

Softly at evening, hard upon twilight,
Old earth breathes balmy air on hushing winds,
And takes with ravishment the face of night.
Pensive and solitary old age finds
Calm in the vesperal, mild air, that minds
His dwindling hour, of childhood's far delight.

A breath, a thought, a dream! Ah, what a choir
Of long stilled voices: and of long closed eyes,
What a light! So came, so mine heart's desire
Came through the pinewood, where the sunlight dies
To-night. Since now these fragrant memories
Live, lives not also she, their soul of fire?

1887.

TO PASSIONS

To Henry Davray.

I

That hate, and that, and that again,
Easy and simple are to bear:
My hatred of myself is pain
Beyond my tolerable share.

Comfort and joy, I have not claimed:
I ask no vast felicity.
But of myself to live ashamed
Is ever present agony.

207

O haunting thoughts, awhile away!
O brooding memories, go sleep!
Give me one hour of every day:
Yours be the rest to vex and keep.

1894.

II

Darker than death, fiercer than fire,
Hatefuller than the heart of Hell:
I know thee, O mine own desire!
I know not mine own self so well.

Passion, imperious, insolent,
Thou that destroyest me! oh, slay
Me now, or leave me to repent:
I weary of thy lingering way.

1894.

III

Thou fool! For if thou have thy way with me,
Thou wilt be still the same: but victor, I
Should make some fair perfection out of thee,
And reach the starry Heaven of Heavens thereby.

But thou preferrest the dark joy of Hell,
Triumphant over me drawn down to it?
Thou fool! My lost soul ever more would tell
Thy folly, and the anguish of the Pit.

1893.

208

HUGO

To Fernand Ortmans.

I

Silent, who wast so long a voice of fire divine:
Down the world's mighty winds, a chaunt oracular!
Vanished, who wast a light and splendour crystalline:
Highest in Heaven, a star beside the Morning Star!
We, glad in grief, salute that glory, which is thine
Among the Thrones of Death, where Death's Undying are!

May 22.

II

Crowned for thy Throne of Death, this thy last lower night,
Master! thou sleepest well: and we, who love thee, yearn
Beyond the walls of flame, that circle all our days,
On wings of music charioted, and song's delight,
To where the Seven Lamps with endless ardour burn
Before the Sapphire Throne, Spirits of perfect praise.

Victor and loving Lord, who, seeing this poor world
Wasted and worn with wrongs, wouldest not war, but peace,
And little children's laughter, and the law of love!
Now thou art winds, and waves, and terrible thunders hurled
From out night's battling clouds: and when storm voices cease,
Thou art the calm, whereunder gentler waters move.

209

Ah, music from thy lips, light from thy lightning eyes,
Death from thine holy scorn: for these thy gifts of gold,
What thanks, what lauds, what faith, what hearts made whole through fire?
Our silence and our tears thou takest: vainly tries
The passion of our pain by song to pierce the cold
Gulphs of the Shadow of Death, winged by our love's desire.

May 31.

III

Swept through night, ah Master! alone and royal;
Soared past deeps of night to the heights of morning:
What high rapture rang from thy lips, anointed
Son of the sunrise?

What divinest passion of morning music
Rises round those Fields, where the feet of singers
Go through golden flowers of eternal springtide,
Master! to meet thee?

Here love's multitudinous praise of weeping
Hails thee passing home to the heart of earth: nay!
Not in earth, but thou at the heart of Heaven,
Victor! abidest.

There the eyes of Æschylus glow thee welcome:
Virgil hails thee: ah, for thy consecration,
Shakespeare bids thee sit by his side: and Dante,
Dante salutes thee!

June 2: 1885.

210

CROMWELL

To E. K. Chambers.

Now, on his last of ways,
The great September star,
That crowned him on the days
Of Worcester and Dunbar,
Shines through the menacing night afar.

This day, his England knows
Freedom and fear in one;
She holds her breath, while goes
Her mighty mastering son:
His sceptre-sword its work hath done.

O crowning mercy, Death!
Peace to the stormy heart,
Peace to the passionate breath,
And awful eyes: their part
Is done, for thou their victor art!

Yet, is it peace with him?
Answer, O Drogheda's dead!
O ghosts, beside the dim
Waters and shadows dread!
What of his coming shall be said?

Answer, O fatal King!
Whose sad, prophetic eyes
Foresaw his glory bring
Thy death! He also lies
Dead: hath he peace, O King of sighs?

211

His soul's most secret thought,
Eternal Light declares:
He, who in darkness wrought,
To very Truth now bares
All hidden hopes, all deep despairs.

Maintains he in Death's land
The quarrel of the Lord,
As when from his live hand
Leaped lightnings of the sword?
Is Come, good servant! his reward?

Hath the word come, Well done!
Or the pure word of doom,
Sending him from the sun
To walk in bitter gloom,
With the lost angels of the tomb?

Prince of the iron rod
And war's imperious mail,
Did he indeed for God
Fight ever, and prevail,
Bidding the Lord of hosts All Hail?

Or was it ardent lust
Of majesty and might,
That stung and fired and thrust
His soul into the fight:
Mystic desire and fierce delight?

Nay, peace for ever more!
O martyred souls! He comes,
Your conquered conqueror:
No tramplings now, nor drums,
Are his, who wrought your martyrdoms.

212

Tragic, triumphant form,
He comes to your dim ways,
Comes upon wings of storm:
Greet him, with pardoning praise,
With marvelling awe, with equal gaze!

1895.

KINGS OF MEN

I
RENAN AND TENNYSON

From out two golden mouths, the marvellous breath,
France! may not charm thee more; nor, England! thee:
Only between two silences of death
Sounds the vast voice of the unquiet sea:
While moving on the waters God is heard,
Eternal Spirit with Eternal Word.

September: 1892.

II
RENAN AND NEWMAN

In wild October, fifty years ago,
Renan left Saint-Sulpice, a Catholic
No more, no more the child of Holy Rome:
Upon the third day after that day, lo!
Knelt Newman before Father Dominic,
And entered in unto the Holy Home.
O mystery of calling! Who shall say?
Did after joy, with Angel Hosts, outweigh
Woe for the darkness of the earlier day?

October: 1895.

213

SONGS

I

Now in golden glory goes
Autumn toward the time of snows:
Ere white winter come indeed,
Speed the hours, with music speed.

Heed not winter's mournful breath,
Sighing at the thought of death:
Make but music, dearly sad;
Make but music, gravely glad.

Music is a king of kings,
Mightiest of immortal things:
Music is a lord of lords,
Ruling all with royal chords.

Though the woodland ways be chill,
Though the woodland choirs be still:
Music moves the starry choir,
Music sets the soul on fire.

II

Country singers, leave not mute
Music of the voice and lute:
Country singers, come and sing;
Voice with viol rivalling.

Chaunt to Pales, chaunt to Pan,
Gods of country maid and man:
They have blessed the shepherd's fold,
Filled the fields with waves of gold.

214

On the lawns, fair lovers all!
Dance, till Hesper homeward call;
Lapped in dreamland, you will keep
Safely your delightful sleep.

But the red sun lingers yet:
While you sing, he will not set.
He is lord of light and song:
Hail him, and both joys prolong.

1893.

NINETY-EIGHT

To R. Barry O'Brien.

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
He, who despairs of Ireland still:
Whose paltry soul finds nothing great
In honest failure: he, whose will,
Feeble and faint in days of gloom,
Takes old defeat for final doom.

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
The man, who fears to speak of death:
Who clings and clasps the knees of fate,
And whimpers with his latest breath:
Who hugs his comfort to his heart,
And dares not play a Christian part.

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
The renegade, who sells his trust:
Whose love has rottened into hate,
Whose hopes have withered into dust:
He, who denies, and deems it mad,
The faith, his nobler boyhood had.

215

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
The enemy of Ireland fears!
For Ireland undegenerate
Keeps yet the spirit of old years:
He sees, in visions of the night,
A nation arming for the right.

Who fears to speak of Ninety-Eight?
Not he, who hates a poisonous peace:
For, while the days of triumph wait,
And till the days of sorrow cease,
He, with the Lord of Hosts his friend,
Will fight for Ireland to the end.

Let sword cross sword, or thought meet thought:
One fire of battle thrills them both.
Deliverance only can be wrought
By warfare without stay or sloth:
And by your prayers at Heaven's high gate,
True hearts, that beat in Ninety-Eight!

1893.

COMRADES

To Marmaduke Langdale.

At least, it was a life of swords,
Our life! nor lived in vain:
We fought the fight with mighty lords,
Nor dastards have we slain.

We stirred at morn, and through bright air
Swept to the trysting place:
Winds of the mountains in our hair,
And sunrise on each face.

216

No need to spur! our horses knew
The joy, to which we went:
Over the brightening lands they flew
Forward, and were content.

On each man's lips, an happy smile;
In each man's eyes, delight:
So, fired with foretaste, mile on mile,
We thundered to the fight.

Let death come now, and from the sun
Hide me away: what then?
My days have seen more prowess done,
Than years of other men.

Oh, warriors of the rugged heights,
We, where the eagles nest:
They, courtly soldiers, gentle knights,
By kings and dames caressed.

Not theirs, the passion of the sword,
The fire of living blades!
Like men, they fought: and found reward
In dance and feast, like maids.

We, on the mountain lawns encamped,
Close under the great stars,
Turned, when the horses hard by stamped,
And dreamed again, of wars:

Or, if one woke, he saw the gleam
Of moonlight, on each face,
Touch its tumultuary dream
With moments of mild grace.

217

We hated no man; but we fought
With all men: the fierce wind
Lashes the wide earth without thought;
Our tempest scourged mankind.

They cursed us, living without laws!
They, in their pride of peace:
Who bared no blade, but in just cause;
Nor grieved, that war should cease.

O spirit of the wild hill-side!
O spirit of the steel!
We answered nothing, when they cried,
But challenged with a peal.

And, when the battle blood had poured
To slake our souls' desire:
Oh, brave to hear, how torrents roared
Beside the pinewood fire!

My brothers, whom in warrior wise
The death of deaths hath stilled!
Ah, you would understand these eyes,
Although with strange tears filled!

1889.

THE FAITH

To Miss Blanche Fagan.

Mournful Inisfail!
Wind and sea
Sigh and wail,
Sigh and wail, for thee!

218

By the willows we,
Inisfail!
Weep for thee,
Mother of the Gael!

Lonely Inisfail!
Ah, to see
Worn and pale,
Faint and wounded, thee!

How can our hearts be
Strong and hale?
Thine in thee
Cries, O Inisfail!

Cries, in bitter bale,
Venge Thou me!
Inisfail!
God is hearkening thee.

When the storm-winds flee
Gone the gale:
Peace shall thee
Heal, O Inisfail!

Then by hill and vale,
Lough and sea,
Inisfail!
Joy shall sing of thee

Glory, and what glee,
Then shall hail
Thee, ah! thee,
Mournful Inisfail!

1894.

219

SURSUM CORDA

To Francis Thompson.

Lift up your hearts! We lift
Them up
To God, and to God's gift,
The Passion Cup.

Lift up your hearts! Ah, so
We will:
Through storm of fire or snow,
We lift them still.

Lift up your hearts! your hearts!
Ah, yes!
For then a glory parts
Our cloudiness.

Lift up your hearts! Good sooth,
We must:
Shall they, the arks of truth,
Lie filled with dust?

Lift up your hearts! O Christ,
Thine Heart!
Broken, sweet Sacrificed!
By us Thou art.

Lift up your hearts! oh, high!
We make
Wide Wounds to enter by
In His, we brake.

220

Lift up your hearts! Nay, see!
They are
Lifted to His, where He
Is Sun and Star.

Lift up your hearts! But He
Bows His.
Deeps of our infamy:
There that Heart is!

1896.

A MEMORY

To Ernest Radford.

Five miles and more of common land,
Where yellowing elm trees, either hand,
Rise among cottages of thatched
Thick roofs, with massy stonecrop patched;
Old-fashioned blossoms droop before
The lattice windows and low door:
Whilst all around there will not cease
Quaint clamour of the flapping geese;
Gray wings, white breasts, a storm of feathers,
Delighting in the worst of weathers.
The plashy roadway winds along;
And the wind wails in gusty song
Down from the heather hills' far blue
Mists and white clouds, and wanders through
All the sad common: yellowing elms
Moan, as the quick gust overwhelms
Their wintry fellowship of boughs.
One yellow, curved, vast waggon ploughs

221

Homeward through ancient ruts, with creak
And groan of the great wheels, that speak
Their slow and cumbrous travelling.
And winds, and elms, and wheels, all sing
The burden of the wintering;
Of dead leaves rotting, field mists rising;
Melancholy signs of snow surprising
Earth with dreary wonder; rivers,
Where the steely water shivers;
Hedges bare of berries red;
A dead world! all nature dead.
A few drops wake the dull road-pools;
A drizzling rain, that chills, not cools,
The tired and smoking team; while gray
Dolorous clouds make faster way
Over pale skies, with ragged rims.
Their heavy trailing clogs and dims,
What waterish ray of light yet swims
Out from the lamentable sky.
Earth decays, Heavens are weeping: I
Tramp the long common, glad to be
Still summer-hearted, sorrow-free.

1887.

IN A WORKHOUSE.

To Hartley Withers.

Old hopes I saw there: and perchance I saw
Other old passions in their trembling age,
Withered, and desolate, but not yet dead:
And I had rather seen an house of death,

222

Than those live men, unmanned, wasted, forlorn,
Looking toward death out of their empty lives.
They could not with the sad comfort of thought
Fill up the miserable day; nor muse
Upon the shadowy nature of the world,
And on that meditation stay themselves.
Nor wisdom of bright dreaming came there back
To these dulled minds, that never had the time,
The hard day's labour done, to do with dreams.
Nought theirs, but sullen waiting for no end;
Nought, but surrender to necessity.
No solemn faith, nor no impassioned trust,
Mastered their wills: here were no pagan souls,
Grandly enduring dooms, mighty to bear
Stern visitation of majestic fates,
Proudly alone and strong: these had no wills,
These were none else, than worn and haggard things,
Nor men, nor brutes, nor shades: and yet alive.
Bruised victims of the trampling years, hurt souls,
They fell before the march of their own kind:
Now, scarred memorials of laborious war,
Tragic and monumental live these men.

1889.

PAX CHRISTI

To the memory of the Very Rev. Father Lockhart, O.C.

Night has her Stars, and Day his Sun: they pass,
Stars of the Night! it fades, Sun of the Day!
Soft rose leaves lie upon the beaten grass,
Till the wind whirl them, with itself, away.

223

Eyes have their fill of light: in every voice
Lives its own music: but the dear light pales,
The golden music perishes. What choice,
What choice is ours, but tears? For the world fails.

O Sun and Stars! O glory of the rose!
O eyes of light, voices of music! I
Have mourned, because all beauty fails, and goes
Quickly away: and the whole world must die.

Yet, Sun and Stars! Yet, glory of the rose!
Yet, eyes of light, voices of music! I
Know, that from mortal to immortal goes
Beauty: in triumph can the whole world die.

S. Alban's Day: 1891.

WINCHESTER CLOSE

To the Rev. H. C. Dickens.

Holy have been the wanderings here: and here
The beauty hath been shown, of holiness.
Nine hundred years ago, Frithstan the Saint
Put off his mitre, in a rough cowl hiding
The snows of age and care, to go at eve
Among the quiet graves with orison.
The sun fell, and the gentle winds made stir.
By graves, ah! by how many graves, he went,
Old in war's day: then said he: Requiem
Æternam dona eis, Domine!
Eternal rest, eternal rest, O Lord!
Give Thou these dead. The heart of earth, the hearts
Of poor dead, lapped in earth, heard: slowly grew

224

A murmur, and a gathering thunder; slowly
Beneath his feet grew voices of the dead.
And faint, each voice: but sounding as one sea,
Together cried the ghostly multitude,
Cried hungrily to that great prayer: Amen!
Immeasurably surged the Amen: till sank
Softly away the voices of the dead,
Softly: they slept in the cold earth once more
The stilly sleep, glad to have cried that cry.
Frithstan's white face thrilled upward to his God.

1890.

A STRANGER

To Will Rothenstein.

Her face was like sad things: was like the lights
Of a great city, seen from far off fields,
Or seen from sea: sad things, as are the fires
Lit in a land of furnaces by night:
Sad things, as are the reaches of a stream
Flowing beneath a golden moon alone.
And her clear voice, full of remembrances,
Came like faint music down the distant air.
As though she had a spirit of dead joy
About her, looked the sorrow of her ways:
If light there be, the dark hills are to climb
First: and if calm, far over the long sea.
Fallen from all the world apart she seemed,
Into a silence and a memory.
What had the thin hands done, that now they strained
Together in such passion? And those eyes,

225

What saw they long ago, that now they dreamed
Along the busy streets, blind but to dreams?
Her white lips mocked the world, and all therein:
She had known more than this; she wanted not
This, who had known the past so great a thing.
Moving about our ways, herself she moved
In things done, years remembered, places gone.
Lonely, amid the living crowds, as dead,
She walked with wonderful and sad regard:
With us, her passing image: but herself
Far over the dark hills and the long sea.

1889.

DE PROFUNDIS

To Miss Louise Imogen Guiney.

Would, that with you I were imparadised,
White Angels around Christ!
That, by the borders of the eternal sea
Singing, I too might be:
Where dewy green the palm trees on the strand,
Your gentle shelter, stand:
Where reigns the Victor Victim, and His Eyes
Control eternities!
Immortally your music flows in sweet
Stream round the Wounded Feet;
And rises to the Wounded Hands; and then
Springs to the Home of Men,
The Wounded Heart: and there in flooding praise
Circles, and sings, and stays.
My broken music wanders in the night,
Faints, and finds no delight:

226

White Angels! take of it one piteous tone,
And mix it with your own!
Then, as He feels your chaunting flow less clear,
He will but say: I hear
The sorrow of My child on earth! and send
Some fair, celestial friend,
One of yourselves, to help me: and you will,
Choirs of the Holy Hill,
Help me, who walk in darkness, far away
From your enduring day:
Who have the wilderness for home, till morn
Break, and my day be born;
And on the Mount of Myrrh burn golden white
Light from the Light of Light.

1897.

BEFORE THE CLOISTER

To the Hon. Mrs. Henniker.

Sorrow, O sister Sorrow, O mine own!
Whither away hast flown?
Without thee, fiery is the flowery earth,
A flaming dance of mirth,
A marvel of wild music: I grow frail
Amid the perfumed gale,
The rushing of desires to meet delights.
Sweet Queen of holy nights,
Lady of gray, wise hours! come back to me:
Voice of the sighing sea,
Voice of the ancient wind, infinite voice!
Thine austere chaunts rejoice

227

Mine heart, thine anthems cool me: I grow strong,
Drinking thy bitter song,
Rich with true tears and medicinal dews,
O thou Uranian Muse!
Come, vestal Lady! in my vain heart light
Thy flame, divinely white!
Come, Lady of the Lilies! blaunch to snow
My soul through sacred woe!
Come thou, through whom I hold in memory
Moonlit Gethsemani:
Come, make a vesper silence round my ways,
And mortify my days:
O Sorrow! come, through whom alone I keep
Safe from the fatal sleep:
Through whom I count the world a barren loss,
And beautiful the Cross:
Come, Sorrow! lest in surging joy I drown,
To lose both Cross and Crown.

1896.

TO THE DEAD OF '98.

To the Rev. Father Headley, O.P.

I

God rest you, rest you, rest you, Ireland's dead!
Peace be upon you shed,
Peace from the mercy of the Crucified,
You, who for Ireland died!
Soft fall on you the dews and gentle airs
Of interceding prayers,
From lowly cabins of our ancient land,
Yours yet, O Sacred Band!

228

God rest you, rest you: for the fight you fought
Was His; the end you sought,
His; from His altar fires you took your flame,
Hailing His Holy Name.
Triumphantly you gave yourselves to death:
And your last breath
Was one last sigh for Ireland, sigh to Him,
As the loved land grew dim.

II

And still, blessed and martyr souls! you pray
In the same faith this day:
From forth your dwelling beyond sun and star,
Where only spirits are,
Your prayers in a perpetual flight arise,
To fold before God's Eyes
Their tireless wings, and wait the Holy Word
That one day shall be heard.
Not unto us, they plead, Thy goodness gave
Our mother to enslave;
To us Thou gavest death for love of her:
Ah, what death lovelier?
But to our children's children give to see
The perfect victory!
Thy dead beseech Thee: to Thy living give
In liberty to live!

1897.

229

VINUM DAEMONUM

To Stephen Phillips.

The crystal flame, the ruby flame,
Alluring, dancing, revelling!
See them: and ask me not, whence came
This cup I bring.

But only watch the wild wine glow,
But only taste its fragrance: then,
Drink the wild drink I bring, and so
Reign among men.

Only one sting, and then but joy:
One pang of fire, and thou art free.
Then, what thou wilt, thou canst destroy:
Save only me!

Triumph in tumult of thy lust:
Wanton in passion of thy will:
Cry Peace! to conscience, and it must
At last be still.

I am the Prince of this World: I
Command the flames, command the fires.
Mine are the draughts, that satisfy
This World's desires.

Thy longing leans across the brink:
Ah, the brave thirst within thine eyes!
For there is that within this drink,
Which never dies.

1893.

230

AN IDEAL

To Standish O'Grady.

White clouds embrace the dewy field,
Storm's lingering mist and breath:
And hottest Heavens to hot earth yield
Drops from the fire of death.

Come! sigh the shrouding airs of earth:
Be with the burning night:
Learn, what her heart of flame is worth,
And eyes of glowing light.

I come not. Off, odorous airs!
Rose-scented winds, away!
Let passion garnish her wild lairs,
Hold her fierce holiday:

I will not feel her dreamy toils
Glide over heart and eyes:
My thoughts shall never be her spoils,
Nor grow sad memories.

Mine be all proud and lonely scorn,
Keeping the crystal law
And pure air of the eternal morn:
And passion, but of awe.

1888.

231

HEDDON'S MOUTH

To the Viscount Doneraile.

Happy all, who timely know
The bright gorge, that lies below
Trentishoe and Martinhoe.
Down the vale swift Parracombe
Brawls beneath soft alder gloom,
Toward a sea of sunlit sails,
Flashing far away to Wales:
Wales, a faery land afar,
Where sweet Celtic voices are;
Wales, where music rules the land.
Yet upon this hither strand
Burns a brilliant sun at noon,
Beams a gentle midnight moon:
Life upon each mighty slope
Fights at noon, with fire of hope;
Under the moon's dewy sky
Lives on dreaming memory.
And the embracing sea,
Sweet Earth! still brings peace to me,
In thy solitariness.
From the ends of thee there come,
Over every ocean, home,
Thoughts of each man's loneliness;
On the waves, down the strange wind.
Not one lone thought, but can find
Echo in some distant vale,
Where the deep gorge holds the gale:

232

Where the universal sun
Reigns, and moves the quiet moon:
Where one dreamer's hope hath won
Dreams at night of fair things done
In the spirit of strong noon.

1888.

KNIGHT OF THE NORTH

To Edgar Prestage.

Is yonder sunlight sun indeed,
At turn of the green glade?
Or glitters there an armoured steed
In covert, and a blade?
I care not, save to make more speed:
I cannot be afraid:
Knight of the North! who no man fears,
Riding with a plump of spears.

Above me, heartening winds at play:
Beneath me, the good ground:
There, lordly eagles go their way,
To mountain pastures bound:
While stars yet fade upon the day,
I ride the wild land round:
Knight of the North! who no man fears,
Though the air be bright with spears.

Rare in my nostrils, the full earth
Pours perfume of the wood:
Over the hills, nigh mad with mirth,
Sweep storms to fire my blood:

233

Oh! right true Northern is my birth,
Where but to breathe is good:
Knight of the North! who no man fears,
Little needing, save stout spears.

But when the Chauntry, dark and cold,
Shall hide me among dust:
When lowly priests unmoved behold
Mine armour dim with rust:
Oh! then, with foray as of old,
To feed a living lust!
Not to be one, whom no man fears,
Dead! and dull, his flashing spears.

1890.

DEAD

All in the wild West country,
Hard by the Severn Sea:
The blowing, lonely country,
A land of lands for thee:
Where the high purple headlands
Command the sea:

Oh, there in that vast valley,
Full within sight of Wales:
Deep in that mighty valley,
Among the great sea gales:
Whose voice across the waters
Travels from Wales?

234

Blow back from the West country,
Back to the heart of Wales:
Back to that ancient country,
Across the sea, fierce gales!
Love and farewell eternal:
Far into Wales.

For thee the fair West country,
Headland and vale for thee:
No more the dearer country,
Wales beyond Severn Sea:
One lies in Merioneth,
Long lost to thee.

1889.

VESPERS

Solemn, dark hills bastion pale,
Solemn reaches of calm lake:
And night is nearing.
Stilly-souled you speak not, steering
Our light vessel toward the vale,
Where the ripples break.

See! the vesper light: the star
Softest-fired of stars. Heaven fills:
Soon all the starry
Lights will flood all visionary
Haunted valley glooms, that are
High among the hills.

235

How the last cries fall away
From the far and resting fields,
And linger faintly
Through the woodland glades: how saintly
Shows the death of this fair day;
With what sad grace yields!

Only down the shoreland wails
A lone plover: down the mere
Her way is winging
A white owl. Else were there clinging
Perfect silence round our sails,
As you sit and steer.

1888.

236

A DEATH

To Reginald Brinton.

The palms, the desert, the enchaunted East,
Full of fire, burning with an ancient heat:
Those were my dreams of old; now dreams have ceased,
The heart of that old world I hear not beat.
The joy, the calmness, of my soul lie there:
And death hath hallowed all, and made it clear.

We are alone, the loving dead and I:
In a still loneliness and peace profound,
Beside forgetful waters, the dead lie;
By solemn laws to one calm habit bound.
And through the sunlight, and the enthralling heat,
I too am there: and find the silence sweet.

237

Cities and great wastes of the ancient East!
I dwell with you, where you have buried him.
Splendid, the way of death: your spears released
His soul; his eyes saw England, and fell dim.
Now, under the vast silence, and the palm,
I trust him to your loneliness and calm.

Praise to the dead! Love to the dead! devotion
Be to the true and unforgetting dead!
Their measureless and stilly sleep, no motion
Stirs, but the strewing of each comer's bed.
Give lilies! pour the balm! Now all is over:
Death will the rest provide for his new lover.

1889.

GRACE

To William Sharp.

The moorland, the wild moorland knows!
Under these dragging clouds, beneath
These beaten pines, the secret grows
To light within our souls.
Hark! throughout Merioneth rolls
Low thunder down the heath.

Where the vexed life of London drives
Her alien multitudes along:
Will moorland glory brace our lives,
And make the dark hours clear?
Yes! for the lights on hill and mere,
Our lit souls will prolong.

238

Silence, in the most weary stress
Of dinning street or brilliant room:
Pure memory, amid merciless
Cares, and encumbering wants:
Silence and memory! can the haunts
Of London dusk their bloom?

Then were life springless winter, wan
With heavy airs and all decay.
But paradisal yet is man,
And natural life his charm.
Powerless are worldlier powers to harm,
Who love the simpler way.

1888.

AT ETON

To Charles Goodhart.

To have but just that youth once more,
How gladly would I give away
All, the long years may hold in store!
How gladly, for that early day,
Give all, I have! except, may be,
That day's eternal memory.

The boys, on whom I look, and sigh
To be no more, no more, as they;
Might laugh to learn, that such as I,
Scarce older than themselves, can say
Such wistful things, that best beseem,
Surely, an old man's hopeless dream!

239

Old men would understand: they know,
What mighty change, one hour must make;
When to the open world boys go,
And come not back, but turn and take
Their several ways to joy or ruth:
But never a way leads back to youth!

Years hence, your willing feet may find
These Fields beside the royal stream:
And mine will haunt, if fate prove kind,
My Winton Meads, and walk in dream:
But never, as in days of old;
The days of youth! the age of gold!

1889.

THE SILENT

To Ralph Shirley

Sing to me, sing to me,
Voices of all my dead!
From under earth and sea
Send music up, and shed
Melody and memory
Around my dying head.

Once let me hear, ere death,
Your voices, O my friends!
Else will your welcoming breath
Make no true heart's amends
For my lone life beneath
Sad skies: once, ere life ends,

240

Let Death refine mine ears
To catch your thin, far airs:
Breathe from your shadowy spheres
One sigh, to soothe my cares;
One thought, ere death appears,
Ere my worn spirit shares

Your fellowship of gloom.
To warn me of your black,
Chill pathway of the tomb,
Speak from that bitter track:
To mind me of their bloom,
From days of old come back!

1888.

THE GLOOM

To Henry Hinkson.

Is the dark growing gray,
With the thought of the morn?
Does the redness of day
Wait the word to be born?
Has the sun in his splendour his wings on his way?

Inisfail in the night,
With her eyes of desire,
Is athirst for the light,
For the fountain of fire:
And the stars of her doom seem to fade from her sight.

But the winds have a sigh,
The wise winds! They are old:
They have swept the dark sky,
And the stars they have told,
Star by star, through the ages: the stars shall not die!

241

They shall live: and the wrongs
Of their working shall live:
And a sadness of songs
Is the best, they shall give.
Inisfail down the night a fair sorrow prolongs.

1894.

RIGHT AND MIGHT

To Dr. Mark Ryan.

Sad is the cry of the wind on the wastes of the sea:
Sadder the sigh of our hearts, Eire! for thee.
Swift and fierce the lance of the lightning flies;
More swift, more fierce, our wrath, till thine anguish dies.

Who shall stay the surge of the tireless tide?
He, who shall stay our march, and none else beside.
Who shall still the skies, when the thunders roar?
Only he, who shall still our storm of war.

Heart of our hearts, Eire! thou hast the right:
Heart of our hearts! it is thou shalt have the might.
Nay! since thine is the right, this day art thou
Mightier far than the foe, that wrongs thee now.

Be it this year, or be it a thousand hence,
They shall vanish, who do thee violence.
God from His Heavens can bid the sun withdraw:
But not His infinite justice! not His Law!

1896.

242

THE SLEEP OF WILL

Steal sleep over enchaunted eyes,
And sleep over charmed ears:
Scaled be the wellsprings of all tears,
Hushed be all sighs.

Through fingers, long, and thin, and white,
Over your face shall creep
Spells of unfathomable sleep,
A perfect night.

Oh, to the chambers of your brain,
The chambers of your soul,
Those hands will call, and still control,
Sleep, soft as rain.

Were but to me that soul of thine
So vassal, evermore:
Your will were mightier than before,
Made one with mine.

1888.

NIHILISM

To Samuel Smith.

Among immortal things not made with hands;
Among immortal things, dead hands have made:
Under the Heavens, upon the Earth, there stands
Man's life, my life: of life I am afraid.

243

Where silent things, and unimpassioned things,
Where things of nought, and things decaying, are:
I shall be calm soon, with the calm, death brings.
The skies are gray there, without any star.

Only the rest! the rest! Only the gloom,
Soft and long gloom! The pausing from all thought!
My life, I cannot taste: the eternal tomb
Brings me the peace, which life has never brought.

For all the things I do, and do not well;
All the forced drawings of a mortal breath:
Are as the hollow music of a bell;
That times the slow approach of perfect death.

1888.

THE RED MOON

To T. H. McLachlan.

Throned upon golden fires, and queen of night,
Queen of enamoured night! whose mortal heart
Draws thine, Immortal? Not on Latmus height
Thou burnest: thence no shepherds now depart
Homeward at sundown under the flushed pines,
All, save one solitary left for thee:
For whom hast thou enriched thy lily light
With redness of dark roses? Still thou art
That victress, in whose deity combines
With swift love, swifter scorn: so thou art free.

Throned upon crystal air, thou wilt return
With solemn light upon the morrow's dew:

244

No more thine heart, an heart of snow, will burn;
Nor thou thy passionate employ renew.
Nay! thou among the stars thy tranquil way
Wilt take, with steps of silence and of calm:
No Latmus among mountains wilt discern,
No sad Endymion from the shepherd crew:
And, slowly passing onward to the day,
Thou wilt seem one, whom vestal thoughts embalm.

So thou art free. So art thou hard to love:
Whether thou flamest red from out the deep,
Or dost in virginal procession move,
Blessing the lands with universal sleep.
Yet, splendour of the night! be thy lone will
Done thee, so thou preserve thy fair estate!
Proud power of calm! whose majesties reprove
The souls that wanton, and the hearts that weep.
We hail thee, gracious or disdainful, still:
And this thy full uprising celebrate.

1889.

COUNSEL

To Edward Warren.

Milky pearls of India
For the braiding of her hair:
Spice from swart Arabia
For the fragrance of her air:
Coil the pure pearls, wake the sweet spells,
Let lutes and hollow shells
Flatter her, fair, if morn be fair.

245

Stay, no more! Bring not to her
Golden lore of poetry:
Not on those dark eyes confer
Glories of antiquity.
What wouldest thou? She loves too much,
To feel the solemn touch
Of Plato's thought, that masters thee.

She hath drunken wizard dew,
Where the secret faeries dance:
She hath watched the sylvan crew,
When the forests take the glance
Of the white moon: and she is thine.
Could Plato's eyes divine
A soul in her wild countenance?

1887.

VICTORY

To George Moore.

Down the white steps, into the night, she came;
Wearing white roses, lit by the full moon:
And white upon the shadowy lawn she stood,
Waiting and watching for the dawn's first flame,
Over the dark and visionary wood.
Down the white steps, into the night, she came;
Wearing white roses, lit by the full moon.

Night died away: and over the deep wood
Widened a rosy cloud, a chilly flame:
The shadowy lawn grew cold, and clear, and white.
Then down she drew against her eyes her hood,

246

To hide away the inexorable light.
Night died away: and over the deep wood
Widened a rosy cloud, a chilly flame.

Then back she turned, and up the white steps came,
And looked into a room of burning lights.
Still slept her loveless husband his brute sleep,
Beside the comfortless and ashen flame:
Her lover waited, where the wood was deep.
She turned not back: but from the white steps came,
And went into the room of burning lights.

1888.

EVENING IN WALES

To Hubert Cornish.

Laughing at our cold despair,
Spring is come: laud we her name!
Out into this gentler air,
Musical with breath that came
Over seas and islands, where
Suns have fragrance in their flame:
Come with me, and let soft wind
Soothe the chambers of your mind.

Starrier anemones,
Than rich southern woods enfold;
Heavenlier coloured primroses,
Than fair southern maids behold;
Hushed by Alun's cadences,
Kinglier marsh marigold:
Seeing these, be proud to praise
Wales with all her flowered ways.

247

With no grace of Cyclad peaks,
Gleaming crowns for seas of light;
Moel Fammau darkling seeks
Converse with the coming night:
Purple shadowed, how she breaks
The red splendours, out of sight
Fading, until dewy morn
Bid them with new fire be born!

1886.

TIMON

To Ronald Burrows.

Prosper but the wintry cold,
I shall hail a wealth of woe.
Race the rivers, then stand still:
Ice be, what was torrent flow:
Forest ways turn iron mould:
Grow the windy weather chill
More and more, and snows enfold
House and field and garden. So
Winter comes: and such my will.

Has my heart grown overbold,
That its bitterness must show
Open choice of ill for ill?
Yet when old wrongs to and fro
Pace my heart, and sting and scold;
Some way must their wrath distil
Some relief; their tale be told:
That the empty air may know,
The fierce winds, and sullen hill.

248

I was young, and now am old:
Yet, as to the dark I go,
Livelier springs my want to kill
Kindness, as the sickles mow
Good red corn: as through the wold
Sweep the dreary winds, and spill,
Where young lovers lately strolled,
Yellow leaves; and joy to blow,
Where they whispered, harsh and shrill.

1887

UPON READING CERTAIN POEMS

I come, a lost wind from the shores
Of wondering dull misery:
With muttered echoes, heartsick plaints,
And sullen sorrows, filling me.
But all this flowery world abhors
Me, wretched wind and heavy cloud:
Beneath me, as beneath a shroud,
The spirit of summer faints.

The golden angel of delight
Gleams past me, and I shrink away:
A dimness on the dawn am I,
A mist upon the merry day.
Here should be none but Muses bright,
Whose airs go delicately sweet:
With swallow wings, and faery feet,
Eager to dance or fly.

I will drift back to Wearyland,
To wondering dull misery:

249

No champaign rich, nor rosy lawn,
Shall wither by the fault of me.
Where no one takes loved hand in hand,
But with his shadow crawls alone:
They miss the comfort of my moan,
My melancholy long-drawn.

1887.

GUARDIAN ANGELS

To Alfred Ferrand.

Safely, across the ocean track,
O Angel of my friend!
Bear him, and swiftly bear him back:
My loss, his exile, end.
With white wings, mighty and unseen,
Be Guardian of him still, as thou hast been.

Make kind to him the Afric sun,
The Afric stars and moon:
Then, when our Mayflower has begun
To prophesy of June;
Give us himself, lest summer be
Sorrow for lack of him: ah, promise me!

Thee, O his Angel! mine implores
In tenderness to me:
Far flashing toward those southern shores
Mine Angel pleads with thee,
Saying: My charge is friend to thine:
Guard thou him well, or I have fears for mine.

1894.

250

UNION

Wert thou forthwith to die:
Were I
To linger toward a solitary death,
With ever mournful breath:
What life were that of mine,
Forlorn of thine?

251

Were I to leave thee now:
Wert thou
To keep, the maiden mate of loneliness,
Long vigils of distress:
Yet happier life were thine,
Released from mine.

We will not therefore part,
Dear heart!
Thy spiritual fire shall quicken me,
And fit me all for thee:
That thy soul may be mine,
And my soul thine.

1887.

WESTWARD

To Roger Fry.

White Land within the West,
Upon the breast
Of some divine and windless sea:
One of thy musing ghosts make me,
Glad and at rest.

White leaves of poplar there
Move to an air,
Gracious, and musical, and kind:
Under those leaves, let me too find
The cure of care.

But chiefly for their sake,
Whom thou didst take;
Lost to me in thine heart, White Land!
Soon bid me sleep, soon hand in hand
With them to wake.

1894.

252

COLLINS

To C. W. Holgate.

Through glades and glooms! Oh, fair! Oh, sad!
The paths of song, that led through these
Thy feet, that once were free and glad
To wander beneath Winton trees!
Now in soft shades of sleep they tread
By ways and waters of the dead.

There tender Otway walks with thee,
And Browne, not strange among the dead:
By solemn sounding waters ye,
By willow vallies, gently led,
Think on old memories of her,
Courtly and cloistral Winchester.

So memory's mingled measure flows,
In shadowy dream and twilight trance:
Past death, to dawn of manhood, goes
Thy spirit's unforgetting glance;
Through glades and glooms! And hails at last
The lovely scenes long past: long past.

1888.

TE MARTYRUM CANDIDATUS

To the Very Rev. John Canon O'Hanlon.

Ah, see the fair chivalry come, the companions of Christ!
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, the Knights of God!

253

They, for their Lord and their Lover who sacrificed
All, save the sweetness of treading, where He first trod!

These through the darkness of death, the dominion of night,
Swept, and they woke in white places at morning tide:
They saw with their eyes, and sang for joy of the sight,
They saw with their eyes the Eyes of the Crucified.

Now, whithersoever He goeth, with Him they go:
White Horsemen, who ride on white horses, oh fair to see!
They ride, where the Rivers of Paradise flash and flow,
White Horsemen, with Christ their Captain: for ever He!

1895.

254

CORNWALL

To Victor Collier.

O haunted moorlands, haunted heights,
Beloved by haunted wind and sea!
Your dreams have been my long delights,
Your voices have rung clear to me.

O land of ghostly loveliness!
At thy gray Crosses kneeling, I
Fear nought of death: my strong joys press
Far beyond death, and long to die:

To die, and after fire to live
Evermore white and perfected.
Mine the vast faith, that thou canst give:
Thou, and thine immemorial dead.

1894.

HAWKER OF MORWENSTOW

To Mrs. Dalton.

Strong Shepherd of thy sheep, pasturers of the sea;
Far on the Western marge, thy passionate Cornish land!
Oh, that from out thy Paradise thou could'st thine hand
Reach forth to mine, and I might tell my love to thee!

255

For one the faith, and one the joy, of thee and me,
Catholic faith and Celtic joy: I understand
Somewhat, I too, the Messengers from Sion strand;
The voices and the visions of the Mystery.

Ah, not the Chaunt alone was thine: thine too the Quest!
And at the last the Sangraal of the Paschal Christ
Flashed down its fair red Glory to those dying eyes:
They closed in death, and opened on the Victim's Breast.
Now, while they look for ever on the Sacrificed,
Remember, how thine ancient race in twilight lies!

1895.

MOTHER ANN

To George Barton.

White were the ardours of thy soul, O wan Ann Lee!
Thou spirit of fine fire for every storm to shake!
They shook indeed the quivering flame, yet could not make
Its passionate light expire, but only make it flee:
Over the vast, the murmuring, the embittered sea,
Driven, it gleamed: no agonies availed to break
That burning heart, so hot for heavenly passion's sake;
The heart, that beat, and burned, and agonized, in thee!

Thou knewest not: yet thine was altar flame astray;
Poor exiled, wandering star, that might have stayed and stood

256

Hard by the Holy Host, close to the Holy Rood,
Illumining the great one Truth, one Life, one Way!
O piteous pilgrim pure amid night's sisterhood:
For thee doth Mother Mary, Star of Morning, pray!

1896.

MÜNSTER: A.D. 1534.

To R. Ashe King.

We are the golden men, who shall the people save:
For only ours are visions, perfect and divine;
And we alone have drunken of the last, best wine;
And very Truth our souls hath flooded, wave on wave.
Come, wretched death's inheritors, who dread the grave!
Come! for upon our brows is set the starry sign
Of prophet, priest, and king: star of the lion line:
Leave Abana, leave Pharpar, and in Jordan lave!

It thundered, and we heard: it lightened, and we saw:
Our hands have torn in twain the Tables of the Law:
Sons of the Spirit, we know nothing now of sin.
Come! from the Tree of Eden take the mystic fruit:
Come! pluck up God's own knowledge by the abysmal root:
Come! you, who would the Reign of Paradise begin.

1896.

257

DOCTOR MAJOR

To Dr. Birkbeck Hill.

Why, no, Sir! If a barren rascal cries,
That he is most in love with pleasing woe,
'Tis plain, Sir! what to think of him: We know
The dog lies; and the dog, too, knows he lies.
Sir! if he's happy, he will dry his eyes,
And stroll at Vauxhall for an hour or so:
If he's unhappy, it were best he go
Hang himself straight, nor pester us with sighs.

Enough, Sir! Let us have no more of it:
Your friend is little better than a Whig.
But you and I, Sir, who are men of wit,
Laugh at the follies of a canting prig.
Let those who will, Sir! to such whims submit:
No, Sir! we'll to the Mitre: Frank! my wig.

1891.

QUISQUE SUOS MANES

To Charles-Marie Garnier.

What have you seen, eyes of strange fire! What have you seen,
Far off, how far away! long since, so long ago!
To fill you with this jewel flame, this frozen glow:
Haunted and hard, still eyes, malignant and serene?
In what wild place of fear, what Pan's wood, have you been,
That struck your lustrous rays into a burning snow?
What agonies were yours? What never equalled woe?
Eyes of strange fire, strange eyes of fire! on what dread scene?

258

Smitten and purged, you saw the red deeps of your sin:
You saw there death in life; you will see life in death.
The sunlight shrank away, the moon came wan and thin,
Among the summer trees the sweet winds held their breath.
Now those celestial lights, which you can never win,
Haunt you, and pierce, and blind. The Will of God so saith.

1890.

MASTERY

If thou wouldst be a master, learn the way:
Little thou knowest of that sacred joy,
Which haunts the deep of night, and fills the day,
And makes a warrior of a dreaming boy.

To love the austerity of sea and stars:
To love the multitudes of mighty towns:
To love the hardness of thy prison bars:
This must thou know, or lose the eternal crowns.

Bear to be last, though the world's fools were first;
Endure the wealth and wage, thy service brings:
Wages enough, heart's hunger and soul's thirst,
And blessedness beyond the pride of kings.

Knowest thou this? And holds thy purpose still?
Praise thou thy God, O servant of His Will!

1891.

259

FLOS FLORUM

To Mrs Hinkson.

Lily, O Lily of the Vallies!
Lily, O Lily of Calvary Hill!
White with the glory of all graces,
Earth with the breath of thy pure soul fill:
Lily, O Lily of the Vallies!
Lily, O Lily of Calvary Hill!

Rose, O Rose of Gethsemani Garden!
Rose of the Paradise: Mystical Rose!
From thickets of the thornless Eden,
Load with rich odour each wind that blows:
Rose, O Rose of Gethsemani Garden!
Rose of the Paradise: Mystical Rose!

1894.

CULVER CLIFF

To Bruce Richmond.

The one sail on the wild gray sea!
Far down, the rough and churning surge
Leaps up the cliff, and freshens me
With flying spray upon the verge;
The bastion verge, whereon I stand,
To see one solitary sail
Full blown upon a shrieking gale;
To watch the unconvoyed vessel urge
Her voyage to an unknown land.

260

Thou one sail on the wild gray sea!
Far out strange thunder broods, and all
The restless ocean plucks at thee:
Fierce winds would have thy mast to fall,
The swooping winds, that work their will.
Fare thee well, little sail! Meseems,
Thou wilt pass prospering through my dreams,
This night: though purple heavens appal,
Though winds and waters fight their fill.

1887.

PROPHETA GENTIUM

To Arthur Christopher Benson.

Prophet Virgil! thou,
White, and sweet, and stern:
Dante's Master! now
Tell us: may we learn
More than he, whose brow
Bare that dread brand, set there, thou knowest how!
Tremendous to discern?

Nothing more! And yet,
This thing more know we:
That thy throne is set
High, where high Saints be.
Thy song soaring met
David's, Isaiah's: how should God forget,
O thou His prophet! thee?

1896.

261

CHILD OF WAR

To H. R. Beddoes.

Her ivory face, quivering but trembling not,
Upheld against a sky of angry storm;
She stands upon her savage chariot,
Fronting the field of Death, a silent form.
The eagle's daughter, this day she forgot
Pity and peace for the first time, and went
To watch the waves of war break, and be spent.

Homeward, with shadows passing on her face,
Strange lights with strange tears battling in her eyes;
She goes the triumph way of her old race,
Watching the eagles gather in the skies.
Tasted hath she this day death's busy place:
And in her heart called up to equal fight,
Daughter of eagles, loathing and delight.

1887.

THE END

To Austin Ferrand.

I gave you more than love: many times more:
I gave mine honour into your fair keeping.
You lost mine honour: wherefore now restore
The love, I gave; not dead, but cold and sleeping.
You loveless, I dishonoured, go our ways:
Dead is the past: dead must be all my days.

262

Death and the shadows tarry not: fulfil
Your years with folly and love's imitation.
You had mine all: mine only now, to kill
All trembling memories of mine adoration.
That done, to lie me down, and die, and dream,
What once, I thought you were: what still, you seem.

1887.

LATE LOVE

When I had thought to make an home with sorrow,
A gentle, melancholy dwelling;
And there to linger life with telling
Over old fancies of some fair to-morrow:
Sudden, there broke about my way
Laughter, and flowers, and break of day.

Sing, Guardian Angel! One is come, who takes me
Home to the land of loving voices:
And there my risen heart rejoices
To tell each sorrow over, that forsakes me;
And all the unimagined songs,
That a child's carolling voice prolongs.

1887.

OLD SILVER

Behold, what thrones of the Most High
Are here within the common mart!
True God hath entered
These crystal-centred,
Silvern stars: Men! come and buy,
If you have the heart!

263

Melt down the royal throne, break up
The sanctuary of Deity!
Is then God's glory
So transitory,
Mortal men? Christ! is Thy Cup
But a memory?

1887.

WINDERMERE

To Edward Marsh.

Sails on the trembling lake,
White sails! far out at sea
Your glistering road should be:
Spaces of snow, to break
The pearly, pure sea line.

Sails on the inland bay,
Red sails! your road should be
Rounding some cape at sea:
Russet wings, on your way
Brightening the gray sea waves.

1888.

JULY

To More Adey.

Summer lightning, and rich rain:
Roses perfume the hot air.
All the breathless night is faint,
All the flowery night is fair.
Philomel her joy or plaint
Sings, and sings, and sings again.

264

What comes now? The earth awaits
What fierce wonder from those skies?
Thunder, trampling through the night?
Morning, with illustrious eyes?
Morning, from the springs of light:
Thunder, round Heaven's opening gates.

1889.

LOVE'S WAYS

You were not cruel always! Nay,
When I said Come! one year ago:
Could you have lingered by the way?
Did not the very wind seem slow?

Then, had you tarried, I had known
Nor love's delight, nor lost love's pain:
Then, always had I lived alone.
Now, you need never come again.

1887.

265

CHANCES

To Miss Althea Gyles.

To some, it is all easy: Day and Night
Fight on the side of some,
With dreams, and the accomplishment of dreams:
Warfaring as they will, they overcome.

To me all hours oppose the unequal fight:
Night, with dreams: Day makes war,
With wakening of despair; with hope, that gleams
In vain, upon the cloudy hills, too far.

1887.

SEASONS

To Arthur Symons.

See the radiance, hear the trump of summer!
From your hot grass worship
The red roses, thirsty through the thunder,
For a cooling rain!

See the wan land, hear the cry of winter!
From your cold walks wonder
At white snowfields, desolate through the sadness,
For the sun again!

1888.

CHALKHILL

From his Latin epitaph in the Cloisters of Winchester College

Here lies John Chalkhill: years two score,
A Fellow here, and then, no more!

266

Long life, of chaste and sober mood,
Of silence and of solitude;
Of plenteous alms, of plenteous prayer,
Of sanctity and inward care:
So lived the Church's early fold,
So saintly anchorites of old.
A little child, he did begin
The Heaven of Heavens by storm to win:
At eighty years he entered in.

1887.

WINCHESTER

To Campbell Dodgson.

At thought of thee, the old words come:
The old Eia! quid silemus?
Then, Dulce Domum resonemus!
For thou art our true Home.
Praises of thee,
From such as we,
Thy children, well beseem us.

Great, among many great and free;
Of many fair, the fairest:
England's reward of praise thou sharest,
With sisters worthy thee:
But first-born thou,
Who stateliest now
The crown of ages wearest.

267

Thou hast the winning of all hearts:
All the whole wide world over,
In every son thou hast a lover,
Won by thy loving arts:
Good men and true,
All the world through,
Who loved thee, far graves cover.

Though weariness, full hard to bear,
Should fill me many a morrow:
Mine yet, old joys of thee to borrow,
And thoughts of days, that were.
To know me thine,
And know thee mine,
Could comfort many a sorrow.

Our thought of thee is as the thought
Of dawn, when nights are bitter:
The shadowy world begins to glitter;
And lo! the sun hath brought
Bright flames to birth;
While dewy earth
Thrills at the birds' clear twitter.

Our joy in thee is as the joy
Of bells, when airs are stilly:
Through pastures lone, down moorlands hilly,
They ply their grave employ:
Peace lulls the day,
Rest soothes the way;
Hearts glow, that late were chilly.

268

A place of friends! a place of books!
A place of good things olden!
With these delights, the years were golden;
And life wore sunny looks.
They fled at last:
But to that past
Am I in all beholden.

A place of friends indeed! And age
Such friendship only mellows:
And, as our autumn slowly yellows,
Defies the wintry rage.
Good luck befall
You, one and all,
The best of all good fellows!

Soft twilights of enchaunted June,
Gray Courts, green Meads, embracing!
Side by side wandered we, slow pacing,
Till silvered rise of moon:
By Oxford towers
Come scarce such hours,
Her Quads and Gardens gracing.

O Cloister Time, beyond compare,
On Hills, down Meads, down River!
When summer magic could deliver
The soul from every care!
That was to live:
And thanks we give
To Winchester, the giver.

269

Days of May blossom and June heat,
When all the ways were fragrant!
How good it was to play the vagrant,
Over the country sweet!
The long hours through,
In skies, how blue!
The mighty sun stood flagrant.

And ah, those hours of glorious life,
On Playing Fields of Eton!
No better field for foes to meet on,
Foes in a friendly strife.
A right fair place,
With right good grace,
To be beaten, or to beat on.

When Term dies down to Domum Day,
And last farewells draw nearer:
Fairer grows Winchester, and dearer,
To those, who must away.
Gather then round!
Send the old sound
To the heart os every hearer!

Calm glide the streams through Water Meads;
Calmly stand Hills above them.
Hark to the song of those, who love them!
How the old music pleads!
Come, what may come:
No sweeter Home
To deeper love shall move them.

270

But limes are rich in flower, and bees
Make hum, and August follows:
Away we go, like Daulian swallows,
Far from our towers and trees.
Past the way flies,
Where College lies,
Alone in her ancient hollows.

Back too, like birds from overseas,
Birds of a common feather,
Gladly we flock again together,
Back to our towers and trees.
College in sight!
Hills! gently bright
In the golden autumn weather.

And then, each heartening winter day:
When patriot zeal arouses,
In College, Commoners, and Houses,
The spirit of the fray!
Time to begin!
Ah, what glad din
Beneath the wintry boughs is!

Only nine years, but nine ago;
Could dearer rank befall me?
With joy I won the right to call me
A College Junior: so
All those good things,
Tom Warton sings,
Were waiting to enthrall me.

271

How fair the ancient city shone,
That best of red Septembers!
How well my haunted heart remembers
That evening, nine years gone!
O faces bright
With ruddy light!
O dreams beside the embers!

Proud pleasure, beneath Wykeham's roof,
That first of six years' slumbers!
What dreams, more dear than poets' numbers,
Clung round those walls age-proof!
Such dreams as those,
No grown man knows:
No care, nor want, encumbers.

Before us, years that charmed full well:
Five centuries behind us.
So past with future strove to bind us,
Each with its mighty spell.
O fond debate!
No cruel fate,
To either, false shall find us.

Then, with the rising of the sun,
From dreams, to day-dreams woken:
We sang Iam Lucis: happy token
For our new life begun:
Heirs of old race,
In that fair place:
One fellowship unbroken.

272

O pleasant, tranquil time secure!
O comfortable season!
For faith in youth is nature's reason,
Though youth may not endure.
Use, while you may,
The summer day:
Distrust at dawn is treason.

Far off, the battling world was loud,
The cries of war resounded:
In peace our Paradise abounded,
Far from the madding crowd.
Our happier dream,
No angry gleam,
Nor turbulent noise, confounded.

Youth is to love the air of noon,
In virginal clear May time:
The joyous light and heat of haytime,
The full red harvest moon:
To make earth's field
Those first flowers yield,
Which far outlive life's playtime.

O men of sterner stuff! You blame
Light leisure's poor musician?
Your youth was restless with ambition?
Your summer was all flame?
You on your past
May look at last,
Wistful with vain contrition.

273

Know you not, Manners Makyth Man?
O toil and task laborious!
Yet issue forth at last victorious,
Men of a simple plan:
But vexing haste,
And leisure's waste,
Prove graceless and inglorious.

Peace be with you! and let me muse:
Let mind and senses wander
Back to the perfect Home, far yonder!
The fragrant summer dews
Are falling there!
Me no such air
Charms, while I sit and ponder.

Campbell! do you remember still,
How, nine years gone, we breasted
A storm of storms, where pine trees crested
The ridge of snowy hill?
Cold winds and strong
Drove us along:
And wildly well we jested!

And how, through all the country side,
We talked, much like our betters,
Of right and wrong, in arts and letters,
Wanderers far and wide?
Then thought was free;
So young were we,
With years, that feel no fetters.

274

Would, I still wore the long black gown,
In cloistral habit vested:
Would, that all thoughts and cares I rested,
Dreaming on Twyford Down:
Glad but to mark,
How the clear lark,
Singing, the sunlight breasted!

On Hills to lie, some endless hour,
Watching the stream wind slowly
Through verdant Water Meads, past holy
Saint Cross, the grayheads' bower:
While lone Downs brood
In quietude,
And gentle melancholy.

Here walked, by each fair river path,
Good Brothers of the Angle:
Whose sweet thoughts knew to disentangle
Peace from the days of wrath:
Here Walton went,
Here Chalkhill spent,
Calm hours, untaught to wrangle.

And many an haunt I think on now,
Where first I learn to savour
True verse, that won the old world's favour;
Read on some lonely brow,
That overlooks
Old village nooks
With names of homely flavour.

275

Chilcomb or Compton: loved far more,
Than those famed Hinkseys double:
Though none have taken the sweet trouble,
To sing their simple store
Of pastoral joys:
Their wildest noise,
Birds whirring from the stubble.

Still dwell they, where of old they dwelt,
The Muses and the Graces:
We, in their olden, holy places,
We too their influence felt:
We too have been
Their friends, and seen
The sunlight on their faces.

Here was there court: each Muse and Grace
Found votaries full willing:
One prompted to the Splendid Shilling,
And one inspired the Chace:
And one found here
A bard austere;
His Night with grave Thoughts filling.

Here, beneath Winton trees, first breathed
A faery lyre enchaunted:
Ah, Collins! at what cost was granted
To thee the laurel, wreathed
With faery flowers,
At moonlit hours
Plucked in wild woodlands haunted!

276

Still round the Cloisters, airs of Death
Wander, and touch the dreamer:
Music of Death, tired man's redeemer!
Rest thee, lie down! it saith.
Who rested here,
Death's lover were:
Death's friend, not Death's blasphemer.

Thy Browne, who saw the ages pass
In funeral procession;
Whose eyes explored Death's vast possession;
Was it thy holy grass,
And Chauntry dim,
First called on him
To make his soul's Confession?

Here first, perchance, thoughts filled his breast
Memorial, monumental:
The ancient mysteries oriental;
Faiths of the whiter West:
Dark pagan nights;
Fair Christian rites,
The Dirge and Masses Trental.

Eton's great Provost, Wotton, came,
Enriched with courtly glory;
And, calling back his youth's old story,
He found thee still the same:
All things were so,
Se puero:
He alone changed and hoary.

277

For five last months retired, he gave
His soul to contemplation;
His memory to meditation;
Then all, unto the grave:
To Eton's trust,
His reverend dust:
Share we his veneration.

When Death comes nigh, and thoughts grow sad,
And all the skies look dreary:
When other places all are weary,
Save thee, the ever glad:
Sweet will it be
To visit thee,
With an Homeward Heus Rogere!

Timely would shine our Morning Star:
No need, with voices fretful,
To call that herald light forgetful:
Phoshore! quid iubar?
And Hesperus
Would bring to us,
Calm twilight, unregretful.

There would we roam, and haply quote
Some old, well-proven poet:
Plain truth, as Horace loves to show it,
Or Virgil's holier note:
Round us, the noise
Of just such boys,
As we were: could they know it!

278

Ah! fast and dark they lengthen out,
The shadows on the dial:
Winter and age brook no denial,
Nor leave us long in doubt.
Through their bleak hours,
What withered flowers
Put memory on her trial!

Whose face flashed there? What voice was that,
Voice, that comes back and lingers?
Whose hand touched mine with flying fingers?
Whose laugh is this, whereat
Down the dim track
Old joys come back,
And songs of long-lost singers?

Up Hills our years would find the climb,
That grassy climb, grown steeper:
We'd rest in Trench; and Trench was deeper,
We'd fancy, in our time:
Then, passing Maze,
To turn and gaze,
Tranced, like a dreaming sleeper!

The mountainous Cathedral gray;
College, so fairly towered;
And Wolvesey ruins ivy-bowered;
And West Gate, far away:
Silent and still,
To gaze our fill,
By memory overpowered!

279

O Venta! Caer Gwent! great and glad
Wast thou, ere Saxon yeoman,
Ere nobler Normandy's mailed bowman,
Saw thee: Apollo had
His temple bright
Of song and light,
Here, when the world was Roman.

And wert thou Camelot? Wert thou
That shrine of all things knightly?
Through the dark shrouding mists, how brightly
Those glories flash forth now!
High chivalry,
Fair courtesy,
Enriching Winton rightly.

Surely the magic of the Celt,
White City! doth not fail thee:
Whatever change and chance assail thee,
Still is that spirit felt:
That ancient grace
Still haunts thy face;
And long may it avail thee.

Where reigned Apollo, Wykeham trod,
Child of a Saxon peasant:
Surely, Apollo still was present,
The old world's goodliest god:
Light's king, and song's,
His reign prolongs,
Throned in a place so pleasant.

280

On this trenched hill, new come from sea,
The robber Danes have clustered;
On yonder hill, have Roundheads mustered,
Oliver's Battery:
Oh! blade, and ball,
And crossbow, all
Down Itchen vale have blustered!

But dearest far of all to us,
Our College! we confess thee:
Scarce can our simple love address thee;
Silent, we greet thee thus.
While far above,
With perfect love,
Thy vanished children bless thee.

Sweet Home, whose excellent delight
Grows with the growing ages:
Nor sons untrue, nor martial rages,
Have spoiled thee to our sight:
Nurtured by thee,
Time yet shall see
Thy singers and thy sages.

A royal spirit lives in thee,
So loftily descended:
Through five great centuries attended,
By true posterity:
Sons on each hand,
Safe thou dost stand,
So plenteously befriended.

281

With thee my verse begins: thy name
My verse with music closes.
If sounds, like odours of old roses,
Recall, whence first they came:
My verse, may be,
To thoughts of thee
Some hearts of thine disposes.

But vain all song: what need of me,
To sing thee and to praise thee?
No chaunted thanksgiving pourtrays thee,
Limen amabile!
Enough, to own
One praise alone:
His, whose right hand could raise thee.

Only, how hard to stay your flow,
Old memories of pleasure!
O years of everlasting treasure!
O life of light and glow!
Youth was in flower:
Hope was in power;
Hope, without pause or measure.

Ah, fare you well! ah, fare you well!
Dear years of youth and laughter!
Who knows, what time may bring hereafter?
Whose tongue can fate foretell?
Nay! let that pass:
Fill up the glass,
With Auld Lang Syne to the rafter

282

And, Omnibus Wiccamicis!
To honour one another,
Becomes the children of one mother;
A mother, such as this!
Honour, and health,
And righteous wealth,
To brother and to brother!

Ah, truest, sweetest, commonplace!
True lovers nought can sever:
Our love to thee, then, faulters never,
Dear mother of our race!
Wykehamists, we
Cry, Hail to thee!
With a love, that lasts for ever.

Wykeham! to whom our joys are due,
Shall we not fall before thee?
Love thee, and thank thee, and adore thee
With passionate praises true?
What she too owes
To thee, well knows
The motherland, that bore thee!

Year after year, to honour thee,
Thy Wykehamists will gather:
Not strangers, young and old; nay, rather
One loving family:
Thy name, a bond
All ties beyond:
Our Founder and our Father!

283

Before thine altar tomb we fall,
The silence growing vaster:
Our Founder, Father, gracious Master!
Thine always, one and all:
Thine! and as days
Grow, so thy praise
But firmer grows and faster.

Winchester! Home, to whom our hearts,
Full of glad memories, take us:
Let all else fail, thou wilt forsake us
Never: and though time parts
Us from thy side,
We still abide
The lovers, thou didst make us.

Lovers: for we have known thee well,
And love thee, since we know thee.
But how with heart and soul to show thee
Our love, we cannot tell.
Ah! may we be
But worthy thee:
Or evermore forgo thee.

Now once more let the old words come,
The old Eia! quid silemus?
Now, Dulce Domum resonemus!
For love of thee, Sweet Home!
Vivas et stes!
Te indies
Amantius amemus.

1889.

284

UNCOLLECTED POEMS

Videte, finem aum facere cupio, nullum mihi modum statuo. Et quis enim modus adsit amori? Quia vos amo, Wiccammici, de vobis multum ac saepe cogitare, et vobis bene esse cupere debeo.... Richard Willes: 1573.

287

WALTER PATER

Gracious God rest him! he who toiled so well
Secrets of grace to tell
Graciously; as the awed rejoicing priest
Officiates at the feast,
Knowing how deep within the liturgies
Lie hid the mysteries.
Half of a passionately pensive soul
He showed us, not the whole:
Who loved him best, they best, they only, knew
The deeps they might not view;
That which was private between God and him;
To others, justly dim.
Calm Oxford autumns and preluding springs!
To me your memory brings
Delight upon delight, but chiefest one:
The thought of Oxford's son,
Who gave me of his welcome and his praise,
When white were still my days;
Ere death had left life darkling, nor had sent
Lament upon lament:
Ere sorrow told me how I loved my lost,
And bade me base love's cost.
Scholarship's constant saint, he kept her light
In him divinely white:

288

With cloistral jealousness of ardour strove
To guard her sacred grove,
Inviolate by worldly feet, nor paced
In desecrating haste.
Oh, sweet grave smiling of that wisdom, brought
From arduous ways of thought;
Oh, golden patience of that travailing soul
So hungered for the goal,
And vowed to keep, through subtly vigilant pain,
From pastime on the plain,
Enamoured of the difficult mountain air
Up beauty's Hill of Prayer!
Stern is the faith of art, right stern, and he
Loved her severity.
Momentous things he prized, gradual and fair
Births of a passionate air:
Some austere setting of an ancient sun,
Its midday glories done,
Over a silent melancholy sea
In sad serenity:
Some delicate dawning of a new desire,
Distilling fragrant fire
On hearts of men prophetically fain
To feel earth young again:
Some strange rich passage of the dreaming earth,
Fulfilled with warmth and worth.
Ended, his service: yet, albeit farewell
Tolls the faint vesper bell,
Patient beneath his Oxford trees and towers
He still is gently ours:
Hierarch of the spirit, pure and strong,
Worthy Uranian song.

289

Gracious God keep him: and God grant to me
By miracle to see
That unforgettably most gracious friend,
In the never-ending end!

BROTHERS

IN MEMORY OF AUSTIN FARRAND, KILLED IN THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR

Now hath Death dealt a generous violence,
Calling thee swiftly hence
By the like instrument of instant fire,
To join thy heart's desire,
Thy brother, slain before thee; but whom thou,
Slain friend! regainest now.
True brother wast thou, whom from his dear side
Death did not long divide.
How often, till the golden stars grew dim,
Our speech was but of him,
Exiled beneath those Afric stars, whose deep
Radiance adorns your sleep!
Fair warrior brothers, excellently dead,
Your loyal lifeblood shed,
In death's gray distant land do thou and he
Keep any mind of me,
Of old days filled with laughter of delight,
And many a laughing night?
Yes! for although your stars in storm have set,
Nor you, nor I, forget:
Earthward you long and lean, earthward: and I

290

Toward your eternity.
Death cannot conquer all; your love and mine
Live, deathlessly divine.
You wait, I wait, a little while we wait:
And then, the wide-flung Gate,
The impassionate Heavens, the white-horsed, whiterobed Knights,
The chaunting on the heights,
The beauty of the Bright and Morning Star!
Then, burst our prison bar,
Shall we for evermore each other see,
We three, we happy three,
Where, in the white perfection of God's peace,
Old love shall find increase.
In faith and hope endure our hearts till then:
Amen! Amen!

TO A FRIEND

Sweet, hard and wise, your choice so early made,
To cast the world away, a derelict:
To wear within the pure and austere shade
The sacred sable of Saint Benedict.

I give you praise: give me your better prayers.
The nothingness, which you have flung away,
To me seems full of fond delightful cares,
Visions, and dangers of the crowded day.

Give me your prayers: you keep no other wealth,
And therefore are the wealthiest of my friends.
So shall you lure me by an holy stealth
At last into the Land where wandering ends.

291

PROLOGUE

The May fire once on every dreaming hill
All the fair land with burning bloom would fill:
All the fair land, at visionary night,
Gave loving glory to the Lord of Light.
Have we no leaping flames of Beltane praise
To kindle in the joyous ancient ways;
No fire of song, of vision, of white dream,
Fit for the Master of the Heavenly Gleam;
For him who first made Ireland move in chime,
Musical from the misty dawn of time?

Ah, yes: for sacrifice this night we bring
The passion of a lost soul's triumphing:
All rich with faery airs that, wandering long
Uncaught, here gather into Irish song;
Sweet as the old remembering winds that wail
From hill to hill of gracious Inisfail;
Sad as the unforgetting winds that pass
Over her children in her holy grass
At home, and sleeping well upon her breast,
Where snowy Déirdre and her sorrows rest.

Another tale we tell you: how a man,
Filled with high dreams, his race of longing ran
Haunted by fair and infinite desire;
Whose life was music, yet a wounding fire.
Stern is the story: welcome it no less,
Aching and lofty in its loveliness.
Come, then, and keep with us an Irish feast,
Wherein the Lord of Light and Song is priest;

292

Now, at this opening of the gentle May
Watch warring passions at their storm and play;
Wrought with the flaming ecstasy of art,
Sprung from the dreaming of an Irish heart.

Beltaine, 1899.

SYLVAN MORFYDD

White Morfydd through the woods
Went on a moonlit night:
Never so pure a sight
As that, as white
White Morfydd in the woods.

White Morfydd through the woods
Moved, as a spirit might:
The cool leaves with delight
Stirred round the white
White Morfydd in the woods.

White Morfydd through the woods
Went lonely and went bright:
She was those woodlands' light,
My lost, most white
White Morfydd in the woods.

Outlook, 28 Dec. 1901.

PARADISE LOST

There is sorrow on the sea:
For the land of my delight,
Of my love, is lost to me.
I am lonely day and night,
With my sorrow on the sea

293

I and sorrow sail the sea.
Would that I a glad wave were,
Ireland! swift to leap to thee;
But afar from thee I fare:
Now is sorrow on the sea.

Sorrow, sorrow, on the sea!
I no soft Hesperides
Look to find and solaced be:
Losing thee, I seek not these;
Sweeter, sorrow on the sea.

There is sorrow on the sea.
I would wander evermore,
Landing never, might I see
Sometimes something of thy shore,
I and sorrow, from the sea.

Outlook, 12 Oct. 1902.

ENDS OF THE EARTH

What cordial part in you is ours,
Who in the ancient isle had birth:
You, of strange stars and other flowers,
Ends of the endless earth.

You fire us to imperial thought:
Proud passion kindles at your names,
Other Englands, vastly wrought,
Fashioned from our great flames!

294

But some across the worlds of waves
Gaze with more intimate intent:
To lifelong homes and deathlong graves
Half of our hearts we lent:

Half of our hearts! Oh! worlds away
Beat they or sleep, where many a friend
Through luminous night and burning day
Waits, or has found, his end.

Our wastes of fame no more they see,
Our memoried winds they may not hear:
Their worlds to us will ever be
Alien: yet near and dear!

Through Oxford summers, London days,
Who walked with us, now set their feet,
Ends of the earth! on your far ways,
That ours will never meet.

We bide within the English seas
Among the fields of home: but yet,
Far realms and marvellous distances!
On you our eyes are set.

You prison us in loving chains,
You bind us fast with treasured bands:
Our hearts are on your vasty plains,
Afric and Austral lands!

Outlook, 19 Feb. 1898.

295

TO THE QUEEN REGENT OF SPAIN

All mothers of a young man child,
Madam! are praying for you: wild,
Bitter and wild the waves that beat
About your King's, your Son's, young feet:
Too tender yet for aught but play,
Fate sets them on a sterner way.
Ah, can it hold, that little hand,
Teresa's and Cervantes' land?
Must glorious and golden Spain
Pass through the purging fires again,
To learn, with tears and bloody sweat,
The truth, no nation may forget:
That wrong for evermore is wrong,
And vengeances to God belong?
If noble Spain hath once forgot
The way of honour, shall there not
Come God in His own anger? Can
Even proud Spain dare play the man
In a wrong quarrel? Quick, to prayers!
Immeasureable power is theirs:
Christ's Vicar from the heart of Rome
Is praying for his godchild's home;
And all the mothers of a son
Pray for Spain's royal little one.
Peace upon earth! Yes: but if war
Kindle its devastating star,

Madam! be natheless comforted:
You to the memory of your dead
Have paid a queenly homage: you,
To him and Spain devoutly true,

296

Have toiled, and ever manlike worn
A crown, the weariest burden borne.
Fired and inspired by you must be
The Castilian chivalry:
And all the love of all Spain cling
Around the powerless child its King.
God be with him and you! God send
These troubles a courageous end:
God be with you, and with your Spain,
And peace be upon earth again.

Outlook, 7 May 1898.

TO HIS FRIEND SELWYN IMAGE

UPON HIS GIVING HIM A COPY OF SUCKLING'S FRAGMENTA AUREA, THE EDITION OF 1658

To send brave Suckling's Muse so bright
Travelling for a friend's delight,
Is yours by right,
You, who can play and sing.
Upon as fair a string
To me comes like from like: shall I,
Shall I in Suckling's measure fondly try
To make reply?
Dispatching in such a strain
Like to like back again?

That were an idle task for me!
The Muses grant their high degree
And dignity
Only to men of worth
In music and in mirth.

297

So, Muse of Suckling! To my friend,
Where, too, art thou: to him commend
Me to the end,
I from without thy ranks
Give him all hail and thanks.

London, 1900.

LIGHT! FOR THE STARS ARE PALE

“Non, l'avenir n'est à personne.”—Hugo.

“Les morts, les pauvres morts, ont des grandes douleurs.”— Baudelaire.

Light! for the stars are pale; light! for the high moon wanes;
Whither now hides the sun, that all we stricken blind,
Feel not his eyes, hear not the thunders of the wind
Flung round him trumpet-toned about his clear domains?
Morn's rose along night's verge with folded wing disdains
Our twilight miserable and hopes of humankind,
Hardly we catch its breath; is the great sun less kind,
Than falling stars, frail moons, than night's cloud hurricanes?

Darkling we dwindle deathward, and our dying sight
Strains back to pierce the living gloom; ere night be done
We pass from night to night; our sons shall see the light,

298

Children of us shall laugh to welcome the free sun;
Yet pity for the poor dead must mar their fair joy won,—
That all we died too soon, passing from night to night.

The Wykehamist, 26 June 1885.

THAT THOU ART DEAD IS LITTLE

(ON THE MONUMENT SHORTLY TO BE RAISED IN HONOUR OF ROSSETTI)

That thou art dead is little, never a Death
Hath power upon the power of our live love;
Thy breathing verse hath ever thy life breath,
And scarce we heed what our heart's passion saith,—
That thou art dead, who livest in our love.

Yet what we can, we give thee; not alone
Voices of praise and all life hath of love;
Our sun shall strike along thy lips of stone,
That still will make not music's antiphon
As when thy life chaunted past Death to Love.

The Wykehamist, 26 June 1885.

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,

299

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

300

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,

301

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.

The Wykehamist.

302

MORNING TWILIGHT

Now the night's long murmur of awful incense
Breathed away from colourless fields of folded
Flowers about mine eyes to the silent air-vault
Sweeps: paradisal
Airs float down diaphanous lawns of dawnlight
Sloping out from infinite fields of utter
Darkness, whence calm pallor of moonlit cloud-cirques
Glows to the full moon.
Light with light, gloom swiftly with ardent gloom now
Counterchanges; high overhead supernal
Stars with keen flames fluctuating await the
Glory of sunrise.
Sanguine-cinctured, pitiless: yet a little
Longer round me plays the malignant lustre,
Yet a little longer about the night's far
Arduous air-ways
Rings her music, ring the melodious angel
Harps of darkness, cool as upon a low shore
Fall lithe ripples, fall the reluctant ripples,
Fall, till the morning
Backward fold them. Break, for the sun resumes the
Fields with glancing feet; whither linger longer
Now your echoes, voices of argent night, now
Slowly to silence
Dying? dawn upon the supreme of high heaven
Flares, empurpled past the low verge of skyland,
Flares, and flames illimitable relume night's
Holy of Holies.
Equal-sated, shades of the under-world love
Ruined moonlight, wreckage of sunrise fury;

303

Us yet living, us in the hold of sorrows,
Us may the sunlight
Glorify to death of remembered anguish,
Break the labours, shatter the hard remembrance?
Yet us too the chilly revolving waters
Alway await: us
Too the golden passion of instant ardour
Shall not likewise more than a little longer
Glorify to gladness: a little longer
While we go deathward.

The Wykehamist.

VITA VENTURI SAECULI

Be glad with beauty, white with perfect grace,
Sweet Age to come, whose face
Dawns dimly in our prophesying eyes
Eager with good surmise!
Dim we discern thee, Daughter of God's Will,
Descending to fulfil
The august decrees that were when Time was not:
Time, man's compatriot;
Time, but an happy accident of God,
Gone at His dooming nod.
What golden gifts are plenteous in thine hands?
For now the longing lands
Await thee Saviour and expect the Queen,
Beneficent, serene,
Redemptress of wronged beauty, injured grace,
Restoring them their place.
Light on the heights! we hunger for full day
And the high sun's display:

304

Life flooded with bright beauty in full stream;
That is our faithful dream!
Sweet Age to come, whose wings are of white fire,
Deny not our desire:
O kingdom of the Spirit, conquering all
Take willing earth in Thrall!
Let green woods wave thee welcome, and blue seas
Laugh welcome, and each breeze
Be sacred incense round thee: peace appear
Through crystal atmosphere,
Impassioned, perdurable, omnipotent;
Given by God, not lent.
Foretaste of Heaven, ere Heaven be all in all,
Come to the vexed world's call;
Come to the faithful dreaming heart of man,
Whose wistful dreams began
When earth, for earth's no fault, but man's, was marred,
Vastly accursed, and scarred.
Man dreams! and sometimes beneath Olive trees
Plato divinely sees
Divinity, and Dante's pilgrim soul
Toils toward it; and the whole
Vision of Shakespeare craves it, and the least
Of men cast off the beast
At touch of love or sorrow of love's pain,
And Paradise regain.
What, though there be dark perjurers, who swear
To precepts of despair?
The world still tremblingly toward God returns,
And ardently, and yearns
Godward, and knows Him for the First and Last,
All Future and all Past;

305

Knows Him the Innumerable and the One,
Endless and Unbegun.
We perjure not our necessary dreams,
Whatever lie blasphemes
The high necessities of God and man:
Ere the Four Rivers ran,
Dreams and desires were made for men, whereby
They drink eternity
Beforehand, as in ecstasy, and feel
Heirs of its Commonweal,
Heirs of the King of Beauty and of Grace;
Most royal in their race.
Sweet Age to come, declare the doctrine clear;
We wait thee now, wait here!
Sweet Age to come, upon our ready ground
Let lily and rose abound,
With pure supremacy of fragrant state
Sweetening this world of hate,
Which does the wrongs, it knows not, and it knows;
Plant thou thy lily and rose!
Have there not blossomed upon gentle seas
Gentle Hesperides,
Fortunate Isles irrevocably fair?
Ah, to set sail, and there
Landing, lay hold on an immortal rest;
Land, and become the Blest,
Lapped in enamouring Elysian light
And musical delight!
A dream? Ah, dreams! Their poignancy is this:
They are, what only is,
Yet still escapes us: but we know them sure,
Eternal in allure.

306

Sweet Age to come, bring thou our dreams to birth,
Peopling the appealing earth
With all audacities of fiery faith:
Hear me! Hear me! it saith,
And thou, faint Dawnstar, herald of our hope,
Star of our horoscope,
We love thee, prophet light! love thee, but yet
Speed swiftlier to thy set,
That swiftlier prophecy and presage be
Proven of their verity.
Morn bides thy passing! Spring to us, our Morn.
Rejoicing to be born:
Rise on us, suffer us to share with thee
Thy dread immaculacy!
Kings are we, Principalities and Powers,
By right divine not ours,
But God's poured down upon us: help us then
To stand up royal men,
Olympian children, rosy in the light
Streaming from Sion Height;
Compassed about with echoes of its song,
Most heavenly clear and strong!
The impotence of death is plain to us,
Whose faith victorious
Laughs death into defeat, and spurns all dread
Of nothingness, and dead
Lifeblood, and deathless spirit bound to death,
And man an empty breath.
Thou knowest: even when our faith is dumb,
Thou knowest. Come, then, come,
Its passionate silence thou canst pierce; thine ear
Mistakes it not for fear.

307

Thou knowest; the vast silences of night,
Trembling with dumb delight,
Pulse with more passion than the voice of day
Attains, attempts, to say.
But now we hail thee: and our battling speech
Ways to thine heart can reach,
And by its weakness touch thee to our will,
And from the Holy Hill
Woo thee and win thee to the great descent,
Our hope and God's intent.
O mighty Angel of the Eternal Mind,
Shine on us, Predesigned:
Hear us, hear us, hear us, sweet Age to Come!
Our hearts prepare thy home.

University of Virginia Library

POEMS

WINCHESTER

TO MORFYDD

PLATO IN LONDON

IN FALMOUTH HARBOUR

I

II

A FRIEND

A BURDEN OF EASTER VIGIL

BY THE STATUE OF KING CHARLES AT CHARING CROSS

LALEHAM

OUR LADY OF FRANCE

IN MEMORY

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

THE PRECEPT OF SILENCE

HILL AND VALE

GWYNEDD

A CORNISH NIGHT

MYSTIC AND CAVALIER

PARNELL

IN ENGLAND

TO OCEAN HAZARD: GIPSY

UPON A DRAWING

THE ROMAN STAGE

“TO WEEP IRISH”

SUMMER STORM

TO A TRAVELLER

IN MEMORY OF M. B.

HAWTHORNE

GLORIES

LINES TO A LADY UPON HER THIRD BIRTHDAY

CELTIC SPEECH

WAYS OF WAR

THE COMING OF WAR

IRELAND'S DEAD

HARMONIES

I

II

THE LAST MUSIC

A DREAM OF YOUTH

ROMANS

THE TROOPSHIP

DEAD

SANCTA SILVARUM

I

II

III

IV

BAGLEY WOOD

A SONG OF ISRAEL

THE DARK ANGEL

A FRIEND

TO A PASSIONIST

MEN OF ASSISI

MEN OF AQUINO

LUCRETIUS

I

II

III

ENTHUSIASTS

CADGWITH

I

II

III

VISIONS

I

II

III

TO LEO XIII

AT THE BURIAL OF CARDINAL MANNING

VIGILS

THE CHURCH OF A DREAM.

THE AGE OF A DREAM

OXFORD NIGHTS