Poetical Works of Lionel Johnson

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.

University of Virginia Library

IRELAND WITH OTHER POEMS

IRELAND

JULIAN AT ELEUSIS

DE AMICITIA

DAWN OF REVOLUTION

A DESCANT UPON THE LITANY OF LORETTO

OUR LADY OF THE MAY

A DREAM

OXFORD

LONDON TOWN

CYHIRAETH

LAMB

TO MORFYDD DEAD

I

II

THE DARKNESS

CHRISTMAS

I

II

III

IV

CAROLS

I

II

CHRISTMAS AND IRELAND

MAGIC

I

II

III

FRIENDS

I

II

III

IV

INCENSE

I

II

TO PASSIONS

I

II

III

HUGO

I

II

III

CROMWELL

KINGS OF MEN

IRENAN AND TENNYSON

IIRENAN AND NEWMAN

SONGS

I

II

NINETY-EIGHT

COMRADES

THE FAITH

SURSUM CORDA

A MEMORY

IN A WORKHOUSE.

PAX CHRISTI

WINCHESTER CLOSE

A STRANGER

DE PROFUNDIS

BEFORE THE CLOISTER

TO THE DEAD OF '98.

I

II

VINUM DAEMONUM

AN IDEAL

HEDDON'S MOUTH

KNIGHT OF THE NORTH

DEAD

VESPERS

A DEATH

GRACE

AT ETON

THE SILENT

THE GLOOM

RIGHT AND MIGHT

THE SLEEP OF WILL

I
RENAN AND TENNYSON

II
RENAN AND NEWMAN