Poems with Fables in Prose :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ah, sleepless race,
Ye that a thousand years sail'd to destroy
Past Lemnos Isle and Samothrace
The cloud-rebuilded pirate fort of Troy—
Who perish'd not for Helen's face
To keep for kings her beauty's joy,
But died to burst the Asian robbers' gate
And send Athena sailing thro' the iron strait
On lifted shield,—

Sleep now in pride!
Asia shall yield to you to-day once more
When beak'd ships of the freemen ride
Past Holy Wisdom's wave-wash'd templedoor!
Across the Hellespont's astride
Power darker than the Minotaur.
But in your Goddess Virgin's battle-wake
Again shall we the sea-path into freedom break
That you reveal'd.

1917.

Who art Thou, Starry Ghost

Who art thou, starry ghost,
That ridest on the air
At head of all the host,
And art so burning-eyed
For all thy strengthlessness?
World, I am no less
Than She whom thou hast awaited;
She who remade a Poland out of nothingness,
And hath created
Ireland out of a breath of pride
In the reed-bed of despair.

1917.

Lines from Salonica

On the Pass up from the plain
In the land of Macedon
We halted and drew rein,
And, looking backward down,
Beheld Amphipolis,
Vast-ruined, in Thracian valleys
Where to-day's village is
A rat's nest in a palace.
And gazing on that scene
We trembled, and were dumb.
O, great as Man has been
Can he become?

Hellenes may hold that pass
In the land of Macedon
And walk where Plato was,
But Plato's soul—has gone.

What are our minds, to his—
And what are we become?
Even as Amphipolis
That filled the Thracian valleys
Where to-day's village is
A rat's nest in a palace.

'Twas then, O spirits bow'd,
Snow-shoulder'd Rhodope
Sent a keen wind from her cloud
That called to us aloud:
Russia is free!

Spring, 1917.

Thou Stream

Thou Stream of immortality and fire
Embank'd in crumbling bound,
Splendour of impulse and desire
On through the blue profound!

Thy human atoms break, for ever fleeing.
But still through them unrolled
In waves, and loves, and purposes of being,
Through them made manifold,
Doth Life beyond thy seeing
Bear on, not waxing old—
Flood on, not growing cold.

Deep in a High Valley

Deep in a high valley, soft-footed, lonely,
Guarded by happy snow-hung woods for him only,
(Slopes of the green combe were in flower with the cherry,)
Danced, on an oak storm-fallen, one that was merry.
Look at the boy aloft, with one finger to stay him,
Toss'd on a frail bough wildly to weigh him,
Lording, on one bare foot, old Kronos occulted,
Long that had lain uprooted, stript, and insulted.
Up and down, the young villain, giddily swinging,
Gusty with creaking flight and the soar of singing,
Higher and higher yet his balladry launches
Skyward, last carol to float from its branches,
Until grey-weather'd Cotswolds, themselves not sorry,
Ring with his small glee, quarry by quarry!
O heavenly flowering orchards, that one who peruseth
The song of Prometheus freed, cunningly chooseth
To rove in at early dawn, bold downs and mazes
Of milk-white alleys, rising to far blue hazes

Of Stratford—a valiant barefoot master bestrides you!
As 'twere that lost truant, that hedger and ditcher
Escaped us, horseboy sage and the world's bewitcher.
His is the flood that churns in amongst woods to deliver—
Rocking in under us, mighty as Severn river.
Upheave, ye foaming shires, at sound of his coming!
Awake and arise, white canyons, fluttering and humming,
Again the abundant genius of joy betides you—
Loose, magnificent Spring in this brown whelp rides you!

Flame-footed Youth

Flame-footed youth, have you a mind
To follow Ecstasy—
To woo pale Ecstasy for friend?
Is that the crock of gold you'd find
Under the rainbow's end?

The wooing-wisdom they reap so
Who win from fever free,
'Tis not a crop that fools may scorn—
But do you know, boy, do you know
How late true love is born?

First-love's a star will flare to nought—
Will fall and coasting flee—
Escaping, as it falls, like fire;
But true love's old—a singing thought
More lovely than desire.

On the State

Of Man, from Woman's knees,
No great state shall remain,
Until the woman sees
And helps with equal brain
And as radiant energy
To build the walls of Rome;
And to make the laws of Rome
Just, as her loves at home.
All else is frailty.

TO AROLILIA

O might I only leave the song
More beautiful than silence!

I: A SONG TO AROLILIA, DWELLER BY THE FOUNTAIN

When you were born, the Earth obeyed;
(Call her, Echo!)
Fragrancies from the distance blew,
Beanfields and violets were made,
And jasmine by the cypress grew—
Jasmine by the cloudy yew—
(Call, her, Echo!
(Call Arolilia by her name!)

When you were born, despairs must die,
(Call her, Echo!)
Sweet tongues were loosened from a spell—
Snow mountains glistened from on high
And torrents to the valleys fell—
A song into Man's bosom fell—
(Call her, Echo!
Call Arolilia by her name!)

When you were born, hid lightning's shape
(Call her, Echo!)
Took up the poor man's altar coal,
His green vine throbbed into the grape,

And in the dastard sprang a soul—
Even in the dastard sprang a soul!
(Call her, Echo!
Call Arolilia by her name!)

When you were born, all golden shot
(Call her, Echo!)
Fountains of daybreak from the sea,
And still, if near I find you not—
If steps I hear, but you come not—
Darkness lies on the world for me!
(Call her, Echo!
Call Arolilia by her name!)

2: THE CROCUS

I

On mountains the crocus
Ere hollows be clear
In the bed of the snowdrift
Will rise and appear;
Aloft the pure crocus
Born under the snow
In the sun is left trembling,
All bare to his glow,
Like the heart of the woman who listens to
love in the forests below:

II

“O light-born, how oft
Shall I drink in, like wine,
Thy body cloud-soft,
Earth's marvel, yet mine?
How oft shall I dare,
Unabsolvèd by death,
In the flood of thy hair,
In the flame of thy breath?
From the incense-boat Sun hast thou wandered,
a dream from a time beyond death?”

III

She yearns to respond
To that strain out of reach,
To that glowing and subtle
Stream-spirit of speech.
But she weeps—ah, too childish—
For love is the span
Of the half-bestrung lyre
Of the language of man;
She breathes the sun-song of the crocus,—
reveal it, repeat it, who can!

In the Jura, June.

3: THE NIGHT

I put aside the branches
That clothe the Door in gloom;
A glow-worm lit the pathway
And a lamp out of her room
Shook down a stifled greeting.
How could it greet aright
The thirst of years like deserts
That led up to this night?

But she, like sighing forests,
Stole on me—full of rest;
Her hair was like the sea's waves,
Whiteness was in her breast.
(So does one come, at night, upon a wall of roses.)

As in a stone of crystal
The cloudy web and flaw
Turns, at a flash, to rainbows,
Wing'd I became—I saw,
I sang—but human singing
Ceased, in a burning awe.
Slow, amid leaves, in silence,
Rapt as the holy pray,
Flame into flame we trembled,
And the world sank away.

4: THE REPARATION

When Man was hounded from glens of Eden, a rover,
By reason of her, his mate,
And under the pair lay the stone of the world, and over
Terrors of Night and Fate,
O then did the sorrowful hands of the Woman discover
A roof against despair,
And spread for the rebel head of her dreaming lover
The shadow of her hair.

5: THINE EYES IN MINE EYES

Thine eyes in mine eyes
Swift though the flame dies
Each to each, mirror-wise,
Open infinities.

Freely without end
Light may the soul spend.
Rings of the pool blend;
So thou and I, friend.

6: COME, LET US MAKE LOVE DEATHLESS

Come, let us make love deathless, thou and I,
Seeing that our footing on the Earth is brief—
Seeing that her multitudes sweep out to die
Mocking at all that passes their belief.
For standard of our love not theirs we take;
If we go hence to-day
Fill the high cup that is so soon to break
With richer wine than they!

Ay, since beyond these walls no heavens there be
Joy to revive or wasted youth repair,
I'll not bedim the lovely flame in thee
Nor sully the sad splendour that we wear.
Great be the love, if with the lover dies
Our greatness past recall,
And nobler for the fading of those eyes
The world seen once for all!

7: SONG ON BLACKDOWN

Since it was love of you that first revealed
Rapture of glens and blown dance of the sky,
The march of storm and rivers in the field
And hanging blaze of ocean, how should I
Without your presence feel that spirit strong
That kissed my soul to song,
And showed me the moon's race, of dreamy nights,
When through the pearly reefs she foams along
Zoned with a flame athwart the wine-dark heights
To build about the night-paths of the summer
Her sunken palaces of silver lights?

Come, come, and climb with me to this great Down
Where the sea-roar of pines puts care to sleep,
And 'midst the blaeberry and heather brown
Watch far below resistless shadows sweep
The Wealden plain whose villages ray fire
From many a chanted shire—
Walk with me now above the plains and seas,
Ere in us both the springs of life expire—
And leave with hearts flung open to the breeze
Self-muttering cities, that have lost horizons,
To sink behind the mountains and the trees!

8: THERE IS A PLANT THAT BLOSSOMS AT MIDNIGHT

There is a plant that blossoms at midnight
And fosters in itself a sombre dawn;
And some in passion only find delight
Leaping to sorrow, like seed furnace-drawn;

But thou upon the forces that enslave
Breakest like light, where the deep chasms immure,
For thou art of the race of them that save,
And where thy footstep passes it makes pure.

Like the first hour of morning, sleep-washed, free,
When every pulse of man's collected soul
Ascends to be what it was born to be,
Returning like the needle to the pole,

Noiselessly as a perfume or a prayer,
Or lake-born cloud, the flame that in thee lies
Unseals over the mountains of dense care
The welling golden water of sunrise.

Gignese, above Lago Maggiore, 1912.

9: SHE COMES NOT WHEN NOON IS ON THE ROSES

She comes not when Noon is on the roses—
Too bright is Day.
She comes not to the soul till it reposes
From work and play.

But when Night is on the hills, and the great Voices
Roll in from sea,
By starlight and by candlelight and dreamlight
She comes to me.

10: A SONG

Her, my own sad love divine,
Did I pierce as with a knife,
Stabbed with words that seemed not mine
Her more dear to me than life.

And she raised, she raised her head,
Slow that smile, pale to the brow:
“Lovely songs when I am dead
You will make for me; but how
Shall I hear them then?” she said,
“Make them now, O make them now!”

11: REQUICKENING VOICE

Tired with the day's monotony of dreamèd joys
I turn to a requickening voice,
A voice whose low tone devastates with nightly thrill
The cities I have wrought at will:
Stone forts depart, and armies heroic flee away
Like the wild snow of spray,
Deep down the green Broceliande's branch'd corridors
That voice of April pours;
Light as a bird's light shadow fled across my pages
A touch disturbs the ages,
And the crags and spears of Troy and the courts of Charlemain,
Odin, and the splendid strain
Of Cuchullain's self, that with his heart's high brother strove,—
Fade at the low voice I love!

12: TO-NIGHT DARK SEAS AND LANDS

To-night dark seas and lands
Between us lie
And, to taunt these graceless hands,
Stern mountains high.
Yet to-night your voice from home
Most soft, most clear,
Over the gulfs hath come
Straight to mine ear.

Still chain'd between two poles
Must mortals move
Fronting with Janus souls
On war, on love?
Descend on them that steer it—
Our ship ill-guided—
Descend, sweet-counsell'd spirit,
On Earth divided!

Long since, in the desert's heat,
I swooned, I fell,
To find your love at my feet
Like the desert's well;
Now, loftier and more profound
Than the Dawn at sea,
Your spirit, like heavenly sound,
Delivers me.

13: TO AROLILIA, URGING HIM

Not laurels,—were they lying at my feet!
Let hot-foot boys hunt the gold leaves of Fame.
Received at thy hands, once they had been sweet,
But not now; less than silence is a name.

Fame! When thy thousand graces ask no praise—
When all that perfect soul shall disappear,
And leave no footprint of thy lovely ways
Save in the desperate heart that held thee dear!

Namelessly still, and yet all Fame surviving
Beyond Death's baulk thy very self shalt move—
All that's most thou in thee light on the living,
Never to hear of thee, nor of thy love.

We once found, where the Alpine forests blow,
Columbine floating, heavenliest dreamer there;
Nothing of its own beauty could it know,
And for nothing less than for our praises care.

That chalice would not last! O, had it choice
'Twould drain at once the whole illumin'd sky
That enters it in rushing light and voice,
To change into an “I” greater than “I”!

Thy leaves ask not to last! Too close, too fine,
That glow of the Absolute, inhung, they feel;
The quick breath-sweeping thrill of the divine—
Its very warmth left fresh on thee for seal!

What's Fame to me, when thou wilt smile and pass
Dew-like? For mean lives trumpets shall be blown;
Thou wilt go wandering through the gate of grass,
And thy place after thee be all unknown.

Stanzas to Tolstoi in his Old Age

I

Is this some glowering Titan, inly bright,
Angered that summer grasses bloom and seethe
Only to taunt him—strange to the upper light—
Born at the mouth of Tartarus to breathe
And lodged where vapour-dripping chasms ensheathe
The groping ire of his tremendous hands?
Are these the thews that kept in swaddling bands
The wingèd Reason, and would now compel
Beauty, that Spirit clear,
And every art wherein the few excel
Under a peasant's smock to serve as drudges?
Is it one forgetful of a long career
Through many wars and loves, who now begrudges
To youth its fair love-season—one who quarrels
With all not abject—one whose mood would bind
Under one law the wearers of the laurels
With feet upon the uplands, in the wind?

II

Or may this peasant demiurge not mask
Mimir himself—the friend of right in hell,
Him that gave Odin on his awful task
Water of insight from the world-deep well,
And stayed as the god's hostage, and so fell?
Perhaps this soul, half-savage, half-divine,
Is some freed ghost—the slave from Palestine,
Grim Christopher, who strove as he had sworn
To bear through the mid-flood
That little Child—so hardly to be borne?. . .
No, no, this is the prophet of the poor!
That face is theirs—that heart hath understood
Their piteous certainty in things unsure.
And stay!—those shaggy brows, and haunting them
Unrest, unrest—O in the Dolorous Street
Have I not seen thee in Jerusalem,
With sheepskin coat and hat and dusty feet,

III

Like a poor herdsman, pilgrim from the snows
Far north of Volga, where his little hut
Lay warm, who on some glittering night arose
And blessed his old wife in the dark, and shut
On her the door, and took his newly-cut
Staff from the eaves—a sapling iron-shod—
And set forth for the sepulchre of God?

Yes, thence by great plains, Taurus passes bleak
And fire-lit caravanserai
On, on—though fever sapped his bony cheek
Month after month, intent and still unbaulked,
Counting the dawns that met his wind-clear eye,
Thousands of miles to find it had he walked!
But now—since thou hast kissed the very stone,
Why restless still, gaunt shepherd, come so far?
Why mourn because the ray that led thee on
Shines from a long-annihilated star?

IV

The Man upraised on the Judaean crag
Captains for us the war with death no more.
His kingdom hangs as hangs the tattered flag
Over the tomb of a great knight of yore;
Nor shall one law to unity restore
Races or souls—no staff of thine can urge
Nor knotted club compel them to converge,
Nor any backward summit lead them up:
The world-spring wherein hides
Formless the God that forms us, bursts its cup—
Is seen a Fountain—breaking like a flower
High into light—that at its height divides;
Changelessly scattering forth,—in blaze and shower—

In drops of a trembling diaphaneity—
Dreams the God-breathings momently upbuoy
To melt a myriad ways. Those dreams are we,
Chanted from some unfathomable joy.

V

What! Wouldst to one conception mould mankind?
Hast thou not felt—on thy lone mountain track
Seeing, from some ridge of forest-rushing wind
Where the oak-boughs overhead wrestle and crack,
Night-plains be-starred with cities mirror back
The naked deeps of stars—hast thou not felt
The whole high scheme wherein we move and melt
With the swift world—that its last secret is
Not Good, nor Immortality,
But Beauty,—once to behold the immensities
Filled with one soul, then to make room and die?
Hence the true faith:—to the uttermost to be
Thyself—to follow up that ecstasy

Compelling—to let being take its course,
Rise like a song, and like a dream be free,
Poised on the breath of its own soul and source:
Enough—the Fountain will re-gather thee!

VI

Rejoice then, Master, at the multitude
Of wills in the many-coloured nations—yea
At the clouds of destinies distinct—the flood
Of exploring visions—all the radiant spray
Of hostile forces on their upward way,
Spirals of the interweaving elements
And species, these are but the long ascents
Of the self-poised waters of the Universe
Opening like a rose,
Ingathering all it loses—to disperse
Its soul in fragrance on the night's abyss,
Yet to build for aye the rainbow as it flows;
Rejoice that we have spectacle of this—
Of the Fountain opening, opening like a rose,
And Eternal Wisdom rising from its core;
For the light increases, and the rapture grows,
And the love, in them that perish, waxes more.

This Ode was printed in an English Review, and received by L. Tolstoi, many years before his attempted pilgrimage and death.

Stanzas on Poetry

Here in the Pentecostal woods are seen
Mid glens of floating odours, shifting sheen,
Motionless yews and scintillating green
Of birches young; and here in wandering mood
Our feet brushed through the drifts of listless leafage
When quick and flame-like Spring was on the bough.

Distinct each budding tongue could tell its tale
And underfoot the tide of flowers, that pale
Firmament, so eternal and so frail,
Powdered the woody bosoms of the combes,
And everywhere infinity was hinted,
Stealing in clouds of gems into the air.

And here, in stillness of this stately place,
I asked my musing friend to lift the grace
On me of her immortal speech and face,
And to reveal how in this roaring world
A man may tune his lips, and she replied:
“So sing, that nothing of thee shall grow old!

“This is your end, and this is your reward,
To become attuned to the universal chord
Wherein all life makes answer to its Lord.
O spectator of the sun and night and sea,
Great waters with a song-born ocean-sighing
Revolve their everlasting floods through thee!

“Lift up thy head! tear off the servile mask,
Salute the dead, and take on thee their task!
In thee man's sleeping powers assemble. Ask!
Choose—wilt thou like a cow-boy ride savannahs?
Attend the Delian high solemnity?
Unbury Egypt, or by Newton kneel?

“Be thou, thrice-hot forewafted heart and sight,
A wingèd creature, questing for delight,
Released from bonds, and by augurial flight
Before the gaze of the earth-hungering horde
Show thou the pass over Caucasus, the barrier!
Or divine thou the sunk waters of the moon!

“Chant like the head of that slain king they found
The night after the battle by sweet sound
In a cluster of rushes on the battle-ground,
That sang at his beheaders' feast such truth
They would kneel to the pallid lips upon the pillar
For saving wisdom and clear prophecy!

“Inscription on the lightless dungeon be!
Far trumpet that may set the prisoner free!
Ray from the battleship on Futurity!
Soar, thou blue mosque of lapis-lazuli
Whose mortar with rare incense hath been mingled,
Fragrant for ever at the sultry noon!

“In thee Man's choir assembles, and finds tongue!
Thy soul like Roland's horn of echoes flung
Must seize the mountains that it gropes among,
Must strike and must betray the Invisible—
Black peaks that like a crowd of humbled Gods
Attend the benediction of the Dawn!”

“Goddess,” I cried, “the task is far too great!
Spare, overwhelming energies of Fate!
Turn aside—shoulders cannot bear your weight;
Descend not on us weaklings, us the living!”
“I speak to Man!” she said. “The millwheel turns:
Between thee and thy son lies but a sleep.

“Is not the statue inwardly impaled
On iron, when 'tis set aloft and hailed
For beauty? Smiling have my noblest failed!
Playful as Socrates, the ungainly seer,
Or the glorious Persian, whom, when Balkh was stormed,
Turanians at his blackened altar slew.

“There is no light except the light they saw!
There is no song except that song of awe,
The slow-unscrolling palimpsest of Law,
Where here and there a mighty word ye read
(O rushlights seeking on the battlefield!)
In haste, by the hasty taper of yourselves!

“Thy song shall be imperfect, never fear,
Seeing but the half, the half of it is here;
Yet fall'n to the heart out of the atmosphere

(If the symbol in thy hands ring metal true)
Flake soft electric touches of that Life
Whose heart-beats are sun-rises, slow and clear.

“Do not thy windows every morning hail
The sheen of Thames, curved in the forest vale?
What splendour, though its reach from vision fail!
More than a brief arc you may never scan
Of the sweep o' the world, or the destiny of man,
Yet now begins to dawn on you the curve—
The sense of scale, the orbit's formula.

“Love, Courage, Truth, these are; and, while these stand,
Who can say Gods inhabit not this land?
If wise men sifting light from Saturn's band
Discern the rainbowed metals there, what wonder
If these passions in your dust shine back to Saturn,
If the Soul, regnant in you, reign everywhere!

“And if the chorded metals and the fine
Elements, in ethereal discipline,
Be spaced about the orchestra divine

So thou canst gauge a gap, and prove the curve
Celestial—even unveil the dark companion
Of devious orbs—may not thy soul intense

“In its unfrontier'd and illumined mood
Hear, far beyond its borders, as it would,
At the due interval, with certitude,
Transcendent harmony, transcendent Good?
The Gods themselves are pipes in one great organ
Wherethrough the nations send their shuddering breath;
And, were they mute, that music is eternal.”

Prelude to a Masque

The “Prelude to a Masque” was first spoken by Mrs. Patrick Campbell in June 1911, at His Majesty's Theatre.

Princes, behold a Masque, a vizored Image of things—
A merry shadow of things eternal—dust of a Rose
Gathered, three centuries gone, for a merrymaking of Kings:
Life it hath still and fragrance, infinity and repose.

Swift as the flame of a Cloud, a summer Cloud high-hung,
Mock you not our poor Masque for the transiency of its sweetness.
Our time's a time for Symbols—who can with fullness of tongue
Utter this widening World to-day with the old completeness?

Not as a Play that is played out orderly, clear to the end,
Rounded from simple beginnings, unveils the Show universal.

All's but a dim-lit Fragment, a fragment with much to amend,
Much to rehearse and excuse. The whole crude World's a Rehearsal!

And so some Dance like a wind, some snatch of a Song or a Stave,
Is our time's best incarnation—all we can humbly demand
Who feel a power through the ages thrilling, wave upon wave,
Each wave by a greater that follows compelled to expand, expand!

For lo! by the lyric touch of some God behind the scenes
Are the walls of this Players' house, like a rude shell, sounded!
And the tears that surge in you are the tears of ancient Queens,
And by the soul in your eyes shall the Future be founded!

I see the Earth, outscrolled like a glittering Map, lie here,
Her Indian snows and seas, her minarets, palms and isles,

And Time, from his last generation, his topmost encircling Tier
Looks down on the glittering Map, and salutes . . . and smiles.

The Playhouse itself enlarges, seems to transcend, surpass,
Melt into the scene of the World. And shall there be the ultimate close?
Or wave-like shall Man, enkindled, and, mirrored from glass unto glass,
Become at length aware of an audience divine? Who knows?

Written as a prelude to a Masque of Ben Jonson's given at the Coronation Gala Performance at His Majesty's Theatre, June 27, 1911. In the audience were representatives of many countries.

An Ode to Beauty

I

Beauty, thou secret lamp, awake!
Tremble into sound!
Burn in me now, as thou didst break
Those glooms profound
When with laughter of Olympians we
Marched to a song,
Vagabonds young, vagabonds free,
Up the mountains long.
Our road over roots of Apennine
Wound up, star-proof,
For the thick-enwoven forest pine
Made it a roof
Trebled for the foot-weary wight—
The knapsack bowed—
By shade of precipices, night
And brooding cloud.
Came a yellow diligence flashing down
Cheerily jingling,
Rocking from side to side, and soon
With the valleys mingling;
And we overtook a team up-hill,
Some woodman's load,
Struggling though halted, breasting still
The invisible road.

Long after, his whip's crack and cry
And axle's plaint
Followed us up the forests high,
Submerged and faint.

II

We sang no more; each aching sense
Craved silence, caring
But to climb on, on—forgetful whence
Or whither faring.
Cold sweat dript from us as we marched,
Grim fancies smote,
Imprisoned grew the spirit—parched
The stifled throat.
O for a breath up the ravines
To rift and rend
This muffling web of branchy screens
That never end!
Dulness, even melancholy, stole
From friend to friend
As we left the dark high-road where whole
Forests impend
And took the path up the cliff's face,
Brushwood and stones,
Clambering up from base to base
On the Earth's bones. . . .
So hour by hour, until the escape.
At last—look back!
Low in the gorge 'twixt cape and cape
Battalion'd, black,

Creeps radiance: a flush aureoles
Yon crag! It bridges
Veiled chasms—floods the expectant souls
Of sombre ridges. . . .
Hail to thee, Moon! Sudden she surged,
Far out and sheer
Over vague plains immense, and purged
Our spirits clear,
Bathed our dust-heavy eyes with awe
And scope untold—
All sleeping Italy we saw
Fold beyond fold. . . .
We watch'd far down one cloudlet curl
Glimmering and frail,
Opal and green and blue and pearl
Swam on its veil;
And about us rocky pastures spoke
In herds of bells,
And hark! the waterfalls like smoke
Blown from the fells;
And aloft the fading arch of all
The stars, whose pouring
Maketh no thunder in its fall
Nor any roaring.

III

And then, ah then! while in the bliss
That yet is fear
Ranging with thee the great abyss,
O lovely Sphere,

Did I remember, by some wand
Invoked from sleep,
Another lamp, rising beyond
Another deep. . . .
How I, a wandering lute of verse,
When grapes grew heavy
Had lodged in France with vintagers
In a tavern leafy,
And in a vine-dark corridor
Of that rude inn
Had glimpse through a half-open door
Of an arm within,
A woman's arm—bare, simple, pure,
Holding a light
Shielded (herself the while obscure)
In exquisite
Fingers translucent as a grape,
Bird-wings or wine,
Enshading in soft blood-hued shape
The candle-shine. . . .
A poise, a ray, a moment's gleam,
But, when they went,
Against the wall as in a dream
Witless I leant,
Knowing by that divine contour
Of warmth and bloom
Some thought immortal lit that poor
Rough-paven room.
Some eddy of the Infinite
Wave on its way

Had caught that arm and moulded it
In mood of play;
That curve was of the primal Will
Whose gesture high
Waved forth the choir of planets, still
In ecstasy;
And the rhythm of its dreamèd lines
Shall still flood on
Through souls beyond to-day's confines
When we are gone,
Shall bear to the unborn without name
The inurnèd light
Secret as life, signal as flame,
And in that flight—
Vaster than Moon's o'er Apennine's
Sepulchral doors
When from the breathless gap of pines
Golden she soars—
To the tranced rock, deep-sunken, dumb,
Shall murmur, shall smile,
“Glorious the dance of passions! Come
To life awhile!
I, Beauty, travelling heaven on the hoar
Faint-phosphor'd wave
Of Being, charge ye to explore
And dare the grave!”

Camaldoli.

A Silver Birch

I

Muse, I will show thee, on a grassy mound
Moving with tufted shadows, albeit bare
Herself, for yet young April primes the air
And bloom snow-laden boughs, the tree I love.
London doth compass it with shores of sound
And thrills the buds when there's no breath above
To shake its fountain beauty. Thus I came
Along the courtly mere of thicket isles,
And Spring entoil'd me in a hundred wiles,
Bringing the heart content without a name.
Broods, russet-plumed and emerald, steer'd on
With arrowy wake adown the placid tide,
And in that gloomy pool there rode enskied,
Aloof, the stately languor of a swan.
But now the lake sets hither with a breeze
And crooks the peel'd bole of its planes.—Ah there
Thou shalt find audience—yon's my shadowy love!—
O'er head a rose-grey pigeon beat his wings
About his 'lighted mate and wooed the bough,
And passion born of sight of mortal things

In warmth of living, moved and moves me now
As from the careless height that sways above
Floateth his voice, the soul of greening trees!

II

Approaching 'twixt the herald saplings pale
Whose light arrayment is a whirl of green,
Of flamelets dropping for a virgin veil,
I come. Though Hades' crocus-jets are stayed,
Soft! for a golden troop instead upsprung
Gossips apart in yon unfooted glade.
Broke we on earshot of that frolic tongue
Straightway would all be husht, they being afraid
To sing't to simple ear of mutest maid.

III

But thou, still silver Spirit, unappall'd
Standest alone, and with thy senses dim
Feeling the first warmth fledge the unleafèd limb
Hearest no tread of mine, O Sun-enthrall'd!
What buried God conceived thee, and forestall'd
In the dull depth thy white and glistening graces—
That fume of netted drops and subtle laces
And listening statue-air, by men miscall'd?

Shower o'er the blue, and sister of blown surf!
Dream-daughter of the silences of turf!
Couldest thou but waken, and recall the Mind
Lifts thee to image, then could I reveal
Wherefore thou seem'st remember'd, and I feel
In thee mine own dream risen and divined!

IV

Surely the hymn that charm'd thee from the grass
Fashion'd me also, and the selfsame lyre
Sounded accords that out of darkness pass
And in thy beauty and my song conspire?
The drum of streets, the fever of our homes,
Clangours and murk metallurgy of gnomes,
All are by thee unheard, who dost ignore
The wisdom of the wise, in dead pasts now
Dungeon'd, as never to ascend; but thou
Whose being is for the light, and hath no care
To know itself nor root from whence it sprang,
Would'st only murmur, in the heavenly air,
“The sun, the sun!” if but thy spirit sang!

V

O might I show thee, by the lute's devising,
Man, from thy soft turf, flown with light, arising
Him, too, doth hope, the boon without a pang,

Summon with thrilling finger forth to hang—
To cast a heaving soul to the wave of wind,
Sun-passion'd and earth-lodged. Ah, Tree serene,
Dilating in the glow of the unseen,
We and our roofs and towers magnifical,
Our Fame's heroic head against the sky,
Our loves, and all
That, with our briefness perfect, bloom and die,—
Like thee must find
Beauty in a besieging of the dark;
Our glories on expectancy embark,
And the height of our ecstasy,
The touch of infinity,
Is blind!

Woman's Song for a Soldier

From spans of the rosy cloud spread wide and clear,
(Sing aloft, rare bugles!)
From Atlantean headlands and seas aglow
The moon uplifted her cold, enchanted sphere,
And ghostly cruisers rode in the straits below.
“I had rather this moment's bliss than to bide in story
Famous ten thousand years on the lips of man,
And this light touch of thee, than the kiss of Glory!”
But I bade, “Go!” for his heart to the battle ran,
“Go, lover and mate!”

Glory shall know him not nor his memory save,
(Peal, ye gay camp-bugles!)
Gone like the marsh-bird's shadow over his sleep.
The kiss that I gave him then was the last I gave,
And the cruisers are strown and crumbling in many a deep.

But they who at nightfall pierce and wax not dim,
And clouds, the white-fire-spirited flood of forms,
Who shine for ever, shall gather in dance for him,
The daughters of light and the hearts full of noble storms.
Hail, lover and mate!

Let them that are weariless wander there into thee,
(Sound on, on, rare bugles!)
Let the white and exultant-spirited flood of forms,
Let the veils of the lightning assemble and dance for thee,
And the daughters of light and the mothers of noble storms.
Dark powers in whose veins runs blood of the sunrise
Arose for thee, so that thy proud ear was filled
With the beat so great that who obeys it dies,
And the chant so high that whoso sang was killed.
Hail, my lover and mate!

Song for the Funeral of a Boy

I

On stems from silver woods
Carry him, young companions, to the glen
Where white Olympus broods.
Flushes of rustlers shall precede you then
By bush and glade
Low-thrilling and afraid;
And, as along its curve of shore ye pass,
The dark tarn ruddied with the pine shall glass,
Moving to hymns out of its lonely ken,
The boy's light bier, with beaded rushes laid.

II

In beeches shall the fawn
An hoof suspend, to learn from that clear sound
His eager mate withdrawn
For ever unto free and sylvan ground.
Up in her hold
The wide-wing'd Azure cold

Mantling in gyre on gyre shall mark him come
By paths root-paven borne, and great bee's hum
Swing through your brief procession, winding round
The endless alleys up that Mountain old.

III

In some low space of green
Where fleecy mists, bright runnels newly rain'd
And springing wands are seen,
But nothing yet to gnarlèd eld attain'd,
Let his head nigh
The chrisom violet lie;
And put at hand the sling to him most dear,
The sheaf of arrows light, the dauntless spear
The lute untroubled on the heart unstain'd;
Then, taking hands around him, sing good-bye!

IV

Praise limbs that robb'd the cloud
Of vengeful eagles, and for this rough nest,
This egg, embraced the loud
And everlasting sea-crag's salty breast!
Praise to the face
That smiled on nothing base!

Hymn ye the laughter of his happy soul—
His secret kindness to your secret dole;
The heavenly-minded brook shall mourn him best
When ye have kiss'd his cheek, leaving the place.

V

This ditty from the brake,
This rainbow from the waters, fades; and Night
That little pyre shall take
In flame and cloud; but O! when the bloom of light
With breathless glow
Along the tops of snow
Tells out to all the valleys Night is done,—
Think of the boy, ye young companions bright,
Not without joy; for he hath loved and gone
As dews that on the uplands shine and go!

Written in memory of the twelve-year-old son of Mr. Douglas Freshfield, the explorer.

Chant Sung in Darkness

I

Though the fool—the old gainsayer—
The passionate inveigher
Whose passion is a prayer
To one beyond his view,
Said, “Is He dumb? Defy, then!
Art thou indignant? Die, then,
Bowed down and battle-writhen,
But never stoop to sue!”
Yet Man, although he grieveth
And the pride of him upheaveth
Still in that God believeth,
Still in a goal whereto
Those heaven-plunging horses
Whose neck no rein enforces,
Unspent as from the sources
Of light and life they flew,
Sweep the earth-chariot. (Never
Shall the Charioteer's endeavour
Govern them—Man for ever
Must bide what they may do!)
And though the breast maternal
Of the stream of lights eternal
Bears down a gorge nocturnal
Our little raft and crew,

And always wider, dimmer,
The coasts recede and glimmer,
And colder yet and grimmer
Unfold to oceans new—
Not here my wonder halteth
To trust Whom it exalteth,
Not here my soul defaulteth
To pay its worship due;
Yet, yet it mounteth fearing
Voices of darkness, rearing
Challenges persevering
That nothing can subdue:—

II

“The evil and offenceless
Thou smit'st, and both are senseless,
Against thine eye defenceless
The false man and the true;
Our simplest, our sublimest,
Our bravest and our primest,
Are in thy hand who climbest
The heavens without a clue;
Crush these, the brazen-throated,
But these, the self-devoted,
The deep-loved and unnoted,
Why dost Thou crush them too?
Speak, Thou, who Earth evolvest
And the globe of stars revolvest
And the night of life dissolvest,
Solve us this riddle too:—

Why to our young committing
The faults of the unwitting
Dost Thou award as fitting
Irreparable rue?
Is not Thy justice deathless?
Why let ten thousand faithless,
Wise and unclean, go scatheless
But not the faithful few?
Thy face in cloud enswathing
Why visit'st Thou with scathing
The child, the beast our plaything
And them that never knew?”

III

And God saith, If ye hear it,
This weeping of the Spirit
For the world which ye inherit,
Do I not hear it too?
Arise, and to your stations,
Ye lighted living nations!
These be my dark foundations—
To raise them is for you.

An early poem.

To a Dead Poet

I

If the meteor mind, swift-ranger,
Destroyer and all-changer,
Must die on earth a stranger
Leaving a trail
Of brilliance frail,
A portent and a danger,

Hail, Death—thou kindly goader,
Most subtle-cloak'd corroder,
Whom Man, the blind foreboder,
Who feels thee come
With footfall dumb,
Holds ever in malodour—

Hail! friendly overthrower,
Sifter of fames, foreknower,
Before whom eyelids lower
And droop away
The gods of day;
Death, thou art sight-bestower!

For all men's fames, O sternest
Deific priest, thou burnest
On altars deeply furnaced.
Aloft the peak
All climbers seek
Thou winnowest, thou discernest!

And when thy embrace uncloaketh
The false and true it yoketh,
When slow libation smoketh,
And all the host
That wronged him most
The singer's urn convoketh,

How utterly remouldeth
The flame that all enfoldeth!
No more the arrainger scoldeth,
One would have said
Some God were dead;
He worships who beholdeth.

Then, then, the crowd bemoaneth
As though such grief atoneth
The beauty it dethroneth;
It shrines the pen
The mantle then,
The man himself it stoneth!

Night sinks unto the verges,
Dull hate no longer urges,
Foe beside foe emerges,
The wild beasts slake
At one fell lake
The desert in their gurges.

Now by the brain they blunted,
Now by the heart they hunted,
Now by the soul they stunted
Even here to-night,
In the banquet-light,
The cowards are confronted!

And at last the songs confuted
Of this vagabond wild-luted,
Celestial, persecuted,
Mad mystagogue,
Or drunken rogue,
Are by the world saluted.

Ah, wise and worldly legion!
Unearthly pride took siege on
The brow ye thrust prestige on;
This star-lit pall
Disdains us all
And Earth's discordant region.

II

When I think of him, comes gliding
A perfume strange, abiding,
Of a flower I saw when riding
One summer night
In the Dolomite
When stars did all the guiding.

Earth shone an ice-cold planet
With never an eye to scan it
And no God's breath to man it,
And below me fell
Heights, sheer to hell,
One gloomy wall of granite.

Dismounted, I leaned over
And the dim chasm did discover
Far down, where eagles hover,
On a footless place
In the precipice-face
Sky-coloured flowers, in clover.

As I gazed down, fear-dissembling,
Their moon-lit bells, assembling
Azure virgins, resembling
Exquisite dancers,
Waved me up answers
Out of that gulf of trembling.

So 'mid inhuman splendour
Chaotic, bleak, untender
To all that skies engender
In giddy air
These poems rare
Do flutter, wild and slender.

III

Therefore we hail him, wingèd poet undated,
Backward-gazer, seer Chaldean belated,
Hymning Terror and Chaos, as Earth in her vagrance
Leaves long behind her in space wild tresses of fragrance,—
Hymning all wonder, as momently grey Earth breaketh
Still into spaces new, and new-eyed awaketh!

He floats in the ivory boat he hath carven for pleasure,
On, down a faery gorge, as one treads a measure,
Bound for the paradise still where his heart hath treasure.
Deep-wombed valleys delight him, ambrosial clouded,
Clear streams wan with lilies and forestshrouded,

Walled by autumnal mountains, all sunsetlustred,
Streams that mirror the cypress, dark, cedarclustered.

Down the mid-flood he bears through a vaporous Rhineland
Borne in his plumèd shallop by pool and vineland
(Strange and phantasmal country!) by towers enchanted
Ablaze with his enemies' souls or by demons haunted.
Broideries droop no longer from keep or casement,
Ruins honeycombed with horror and foul abasement.
Rats swim off in the water—dead shoulders welter—
Cold on the bulwark, lo, a dead hand craves shelter.
No, he must hasten past, this poet unfriended,
He, too, is shelterless, cold, till this voyage be ended.

Melodies dark he sings, low-toned, melancholy,
He, too, has wrestled with Gods in his radiant folly,

He, too, has felt the breath of passion too near him,
Still the lost ecstasy clings, and lost arms ensphere him.
O high houses crumbling down to the water,
He seeks one lost and gone, the heaven's wise daughter!
Named under many names, although none recalls her—
Ligeia or Berenice, ah, what befalls her?

Valleys and forests and cities that Time enchanteth,
Have they not marked her passing for whom he panteth?
“None hath gone by, O Genius serene and sombre!
Whom dost thou still pursue, through waking and slumber?”
“I seek one face alone on my soul's arrival
At Hades' glimmering wharves, one divine survival!”
“Lo! thy lost one is she, who in airs above thee
Urges thy faery sail with the lips that love thee!
She takes thy sore heart hence, and shall heal its bruises
Far in the deathless country, the land of Muses. . . .”

IV

Glory unto thee, high Beauty, light in the drearness,
Poised fragility, pure with the spirit's clearness!
Strengths ungauged, unguessed, in thy petals shining,
Blown from the deeps of God through the heart divining.
Again and again for ever to Beauty returning
Back must the eyes revert, and the ears be yearning,
Panting we pause, for a sibylline whisper reigneth;
By its perfection only the song enchaineth.
Here at the tempest's core is that windless zone
Of poise. . . . Here the wave of Beauty, spreading its tone
Bell-like, the light Uranian, ringing unknown
Wider than the wave æthereal, murmurs alone. . . .

Lines written at request on the previous day, read at a public banquet in London to commemorate the birth of Edgar Allan Poe.

Fraternity

LINES WRITTEN AT ASSOUAN ON THE NILE

I

In your amphitheatres of flood-worn rock,
Granite escarpments that the desert rings
Of quarries whence grey Egypt hewed her kings—
Hail! stark beginnings that the fool can mock—
Sun-obelisks half-hewn, prone architraves—
Hail to you, every scarred and prostrate block!
And hail to you, poor plot of English graves
Ranked in the sun, a little martial flock!
What sudden-quencht, impossible command
Say, were you uttering to this drift of sand
For England? Your command shall be fulfilled.
A temple housing kingdoms doth she build
Whose beams are ye, and whose foundations wide
The bones of sons; and you therein shall bide!

II

There shall be lifted from the Earth at last
One Temple, O my soul, consummate, fair,
Whiter than lightning, rock-set, and so vast
That the hopes even of the young may enter there!

Round shall it be as that horizon old
About its steeps and clear dominions seen,
And girt with columns in the antique mould,
And doors, one for each nation, stand between
Statues heroic—doors, yea, numberless
And open. Yellow hands and black and white
Shall cast them—so that every race may press
Up always to that altar never cold!

III

There shall be none cast out—nor any fears
Fraternal. Unknown music shall aspire
About that altar, nor shall human tears
Quench the high flame, or still the trembling choir
Of man ascendant. Chiefest symbol there,
Whereon the eyes of all the host shall wait,
The wingèd chalice of the holy sun
Lifted above the dome from gate to gate.
Its only priesthood thoughts, that range on high
In the soft and changeful vestures of the sky;
And the slow-built, straggling village of this ball
Thither shall mount to worship One, the All;
And every soul find there, ere it depart,
That thing which fills the craving of its heart.

1888.

Adam Outside the Gate

“Be not afraid: it was some wise
Dæmon amid that glade of Fate
Tore off the bandage from our eyes
And stamped us mate and mate.

I am all yours. I kneel, I burn—
Feel every naked rushing nerve
And tendril of my being yearn
For you; for you I starve!

I am all yours. What creature else
Exists but you? Passion divine,
Pursued through half-a-thousand hells,
I make, I keep you mine!

Endless you yield what else none gives,
That torturing, acutest bliss
That quenches self-hood while it lives
Enheavened in your kiss.

So as the eagle on his ledge
Ponders and broods above his prey
Eternal terrors in me rage
Lest some one take away;

Lest I be not the universe
For you (as you, my mate, for me)
Of every sense—all that confers
This fearful ecstasy.

None other living shall feel thus
The blaze consummate light the breast,
For like Death I am covetous
Of this too perfect zest;
None shall share what possesses us
Nor what I have possessed!”

Since I have given Thee all my very Heart

Since I have given thee all my very heart,
Since I have staked so deep and dangerously
All that I have of hope till breath depart,
And flung my little kingdom on a die;

Since now there streams over my land and sea
This dread Love—strange as light—beyond recall,
I am thy prisoner; yes, and thou art free
With but a touch to lay in ruin all.

Far off, may be, the Heart's Eyes shall Behold You

Far off, may be, the heart's eyes shall behold you.
A year ago it would have groan'd unseen,
“O could I once attain to you and hold you
The world might perish then!”

But now I cry to you (as ghost to ghost),
“All the world's harvest is not crush'd to this:
‘That you love not.’ Apart! Each to his post!
No sob—no sigh—no kiss!”

I would not be your master; nor with chiding
Embitter our deep music as it fades.
In the throng'd forest one can hear no griding
Save when tree, tree invades.

The error old, that error infinite
Even at this hour shall not be made by me!
I will not take my passion for my right.
Be free, be free, be free!

The Questioners

I

A man made a journey once over half the world
To come at the journey's end to no more than this:
The cottage where he and another had long been happy;
But lilac-bushes had closed right over the path,
And the stones of the place, it seemed, had become alive.

II

Threshold, familiar Threshold, may I not pass?
Not till thou tell me my name!
Stone of wonder, on thee were the wedding flowers
When I bore in to my hearth a silken-haired stranger—
Strange unto me was her heart, strange to her mine,
And soft and doubtful she trembled, like the blue eve. . . .
Pass on, pass on!

III

Naked and sounding Stair, may I not pass?
Tell me my name!
Stair of meeting, where nightly I called the call
Of the exultant, the earth-engirdling, the nightingale,
And she from the stairhead, infinite-eyed and slow,
Came down in her gliding brightness into my soul. . . .
Pass on, pass on!

IV

Window, O far-seen Window, may I not pass?
Tell me my name!
Window of parting,—here would my proud one stand
Arrayed in dreams and roses, —here, if by chance
Any that she loved much, in going looked not back,
Stooped she to mingle sighs and tears with the rose. . . .
Pass on, pass on!

V

Chest, O thou oaken Chest, may I not pass?
Tell me my name!
Coffer of vision, with bloom upon far mountains,

With rays upon ocean isles when their thunders were still,
With these did she weave her dresses, simple and secret,
Fragrant and here compacted, sealed even from me. . . .
Pass on, pass on!

VI

Table, ah! merry Table, may I not pass?
Tell me my name!
Table of honour, here in the vast evening
On the head of that pale companion, that more than friend,
A man I remember inflicted his lordly anger
In words that return, return, return to him now.
Pass on, pass on!

VII

Cradle, O Cradle, wilt thou not let me pass!
Tell me my name!
Other children she bare, but this, the beloved one,
This was taken from her, this that most needed care,
And the eyes of her turned from earth, and she rose and followed it
At dawn, when the birds and the young children sing. . . .
Pass on, pass on!

VIII

Bed, thou snow-silent Bed, may I not pass?
Tell me my name!
Ask him not, terrible image, ask not, for she
The woman by whom he lay down to whisper “Forgive!”
Sings here no more, but only in thoughts of friends—
Sleeps here no more, but heaven'd in the souls of children. . . .
Pass on, pass on!

The Requital

“What shall I give you, woman dear?
Kiss for your eyes, pearl for your ear,
Praise to requite you,
Toils to delight you,
Or trophies that shall leave your name
Canopied by outlasting fame?”
Ah no! much less!
Give me, O give me faithfulness!

“Kindness I'll give—with sovran care
Harbour you like some temple fair,
With care that shields
Your way through fields
Flower-soft, and makes the wise of ages
Only your ministers and mages . . .”
Nay, would you bless,
Give me, O give me faithfulness!

“Take this instead—this throbbing rose,
Passion, whose cloudy cups disclose,
Core within core,
Sea-and-moon-lore,
The breath of lovers, whose exchange
Of being and worship still is strange . . .”
Fair it is, yes . . .
But give, O give me faithfulness!

'Tis true, you came with silvery zone
All the world's dayspring in your own;
True that you gave
All he could crave;
True, on your bosom warm and pure
His children smile in sleep secure;
But no! Ask less—
He will not give you faithfulness.

To a Nightingale heard upon a Hilltop before Dawn

The “traveller” mentioned is Colonel Younghusband.

The “clansmen” on the heights under the mountain range Elburz (or Elbrûs) are the Kysty tribe of the Tchen Tchen.

Yes, Nightingale, I lie awake
And wondering hear thee sing
Over the deep world from thy brake
While every other thing
Sleepeth—the deep world like a lake
Stirred round thee, ring on ring!

More than the chanters of the light
Thy passion men confounds
Because like ours 'tis born in sight
Of that which hath no bounds:
How the dark-streaming infinite
Wells in those golden sounds!

Some traveller once in Himalay
Chanced on a tribe so lone,
So dungeoned from the world away,
They deemed it all their own.
And any human race but they
Incredible, unknown.

But up, up where the snowy crest
Of Elburz mounts the blue
And Caucasus sinks east and west

Precipitous, some few
Clansmen are found, high on its breast
Where half the earth's in view;

And these by that great prospect thrilled
Perhaps, in joy or fear,
Poor hunters wild and rudely skilled,
Have raised an altar there
“To the God Unknown”; and this they build
Of horns of goat and deer.

Their humble, dark, and lofty song
Where shining gulfs expand
Beyond the Caspian—Death, Time, Wrong
That few can understand—
Is launched, and low and clear and strong
Floats out to all the land!

In Summer when the Vales are clear

In summer when the Vales are clear
And lowland hedges toss their flowery lights,
How oft the great Alps disappear
And mists invade your foreheads, O ye sovran heights!

But when midwinter's bitterest power
Must be endured, and the chill rose is done
And little farms in valleys cower,
Ye, everlasting summits, do abide in sun!

The Horn of the Moon

“Iroofed my roof-tree at the wane of the moon
That nothing might warp it or burn it,
And wished a deep wish at the new of the moon
And sealed it where no man should learn it.

We stood by the oak at the full of the moon
Where all the far country was clearest,
The bird of the forest kept singing a tune—
The word I would say to my dearest.

She branded my heart at the new of the moon
And the hurt grew a harm beyond measure,
And I sent her soft gallant, that begged for a boon,
A blade that was red, for his pleasure.

Bright my love's tresses at full o' the moon,
Nothing in beauty shone rarer,
Sleeping her fill in the face of the moon—
Never a footfall to scare her!

But these hands that slew her at rise of the moon
Did mix him with night everlasting . . .

The bird of the forest keeps singing abune
That mine is a care there's no casting.

Hang my powder-horn on the horn o' the moon!
The deer of the bracken may flout me,
The hunt shall be up at the pale of the moon
And the lordings go hunting without me!”

Mounting the Hill

Mounting the hill I found it long
Until I met a merry song
That kissed mine eyes to blind me;
It mocked at me and turned and fled
But played on, fluttering overhead,
Till I forgot I went footsore
And the dusty road that rose before
Was the blue hill far behind me!

The Shepherd

In this poem the author owes a line and a half to Hale White (“Mark Rutherford”).

I

When I am worn amid the burning dust
Of high wall'd cities, round the milltrack drear
Bearing the beam and yoke, as mortals must
Who by their lower selves win lodging here,
Oft, as among some ancient desert horde
Their King flung up the netted bird on high
Whose flight should show the nearest pass whereby
To cross the mountains from the sands abhorred,
Even so cut I the cord,
Dismiss my soul on its delirious wings
Spurning the dull den where the body dwells
In yon green cabinets of grass to stray,
Along the liquid mirrors to delay,
Yonder, in the wishèd land of wells,
By the throbbing of full waters, gleamy springs!

II

Distilled out of the swift enormous skies
But nursed in darkness old, inscrutable,

'Twixt Sinodun and its twin mount Harphill
By Thames I know a Wood-Spring takes its rise,
Azured and overbough'd, a margin still
Untainted, only known to beasts and birds,
And alive, like all things wholly beautiful,
Exquisite, deathless, seeming self-engendered.
Sand-pulses, bubbles, are its only words;
How wide the region of the mountainous earth
Cistern'd for the making of that little pool!
And there what spirit-freshness comes to birth!
Thither I voyage, to a dream surrendered,
And rays are golden there, and noon is cool.

III

Or I, a Shepherd, am in Thessaly;
And the twilight village cries, “Hath he not come
On the last scented load of myrtle home?”. . .
He sits in the great valley green and still
Blocked by the snow-capt Mountain, and his sheep,
Tawny and dark, roam far and crop their fill
In the wide pastures, by the river deep;
His wandering fingers teach the stops at will
Melodies cool as water, soft as sleep.

IV

And once to him the Mountain spake,
“Climb! Here canst larger music make!
I know thy heart, and all its ache!
For, since thy craving is and ban
Conquest of earth to plan,
And to come up as if by right
All the kingdoms of earth to scan
With the soul and the sight of a seraph,
The strength of a man,
Therefore, lest it should break,
Thy heart for my arch-lute I take;
My tarns and ghylls shall sing through thee
All Olympus and all Thessaly!”

V

And lo, on a peak above the peaks am I!
Above the waves of forest, vale and fell,
Above the torrent's voice, the clink of bell,
The flock, the scythe, of sparse humanity;
Above the earth-enflamèd ring of sky
That hems our footing; so I stand alone
Isled in the last and dreadful light on high
And sovran silence of the air and stone . . .
Slowly the plains, those warm and breathing plains,
The hearth-lit villages that sleep and play,
Whose ceaseless blood and its in-dwelling pains

In volumes of sea-darkness surge and sway
In the heart most solitary, sink away. . . .
Nothing but starred immensity remains.

Chilly withdrawals yours, vast Light, vast Love!
Though the skies swarm with tremblers faintly bright
We are exiles in this glimmering infinite;
For centuries Man may see but stars above!
Yet shall those summits of scarred ages burn
Afresh, and all those lights be quenched in One!
Pure new breath shall arouse
Our sunk horizons and our sapless boughs!
The wrinkled Æons brood on that return,
And seal'd in's prison-house
The changeless blood keeps memory of the Sun.

VI

And so when Night hath rolled away undone,
Joyful my foot is bounding down the peak;
Rich-memoried, I am eager for the yoke,
Like some young torrent swollen white with rains
How willing then my strength rejoins the plains!
“Where is our Shepherd?” cry the villagefolk. . . .

He sits in the great valley green and still
Block'd by the snow-capt Mountain, and his sheep,
Tawny and dark, roam far and crop their fill
In the wide pastures, by the river deep;
His wandering fingers teach the stops at will
Melodies cool as water, soft as sleep.

O Dreamy, Gloomy, Friendly Trees

Odreamy, gloomy, friendly Trees,
I came along your narrow track
To bring my gifts unto your knees,
And gifts did you give back;
For when I brought this heart that burns—
These thoughts that bitterly repine—
And laid them here among the ferns
And the hum of boughs divine,
Ye, vastest breathers of the air,
Shook down with slow and mighty poise
Your coolness on the human care,
Your wonder on its toys,
Your greenness on the heart's despair,
Your darkness on its noise.

Lindisfarne

Our Seer, the net-mender,
The day that he died
Looked out to the seaward
At ebb of the tide.
Gulls drove like the snow
Over bight, over barn,
As he sang to the ebb
On the rock Lindisfarne:
“Hail, thou blue ebbing!
The breakers are gone
From the stormy coast-islet
Bethundered and lone!
Hail, thou wide shrinking
Of foam and of bubble—
The reefs are laid bare
And far off is the trouble!
For through this withdrawal
As soft as a smile,
The isle of the flood
Is no longer an isle. . . .

“By the silvery isthmus
Of the sands that uncover,
Now feet as of angels
Come delicate over—
The fluttering children
Flee happily over!

To the beach of the mainland
Return is now clear,
The old travel thither
Dry-shod, without fear. . . .

“At last, at the wane,
When foundations expand,
Doth the isle of my soul,
Lindisfarne, understand
She stretcheth to vastness
Made one with the land!”

100

The Shell

I am a shell out of the Asian sea,
But my sad Pearl is gone,
Risen to be Goddess—Venus green is she—
And I cast up alone.

Yet some night shall her brilliance stoop and take
Unto her ear this shell,
And hear the whisper of her own heart-break . . .
All that I serve to tell!

101

Old Anchor Chanty

First Voice
With a long heavy heave, my very famous men. . . .
(Chorus. Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
And why do you, lad, look so pale? Is it for love, or lack of ale?

First Voice
All hands bear a hand that have a hand to len'—
And there never was a better haul than you gave then . . .
(Chorus. Bring home!)

102

First Voice
Heave hearty, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
Curl and scud, rack and squall—sea-clouds you shall know them all . . .

First Voice
For we're bound for Valparaiso and round the Horn again
From Monte Desolado to the parish of Big Ben! . . .
(Bring home!)

103

First Voice
Heave hearty, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
Bold through all or scuppers under, when shall we be back, I wonder?

First Voice
From the green and chancy water we shall all come back again
To the Lizard and the ladies—but who can say for when? . . .
(Bring home!)

104

First Voice
Heave and she's a-trip, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
When your fair lass says farewell to you a fair wind I will sell to you . . .

First Voice
You may sell your soul's salvation, but I'll bet you two-pound-ten
She's a-tripping on the ribs of the devil in his den. . . .
(Bring home!)

105

First Voice
Heave and she's a-peak, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
You shall tread, for one cruzado, Fiddler's Green in El Dorado . . .

First Voice
Why, I've seen less lucky fellows pay for liquor with doubloons
And for 'baccy with ozellas, gold mohurs, and ducatoons! . . .
(Bring home!)

106

First Voice
Heave and a-weigh, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
And drop her next in heat or cold, the flukes of England they shall hold! . . .

First Voice
Ring and shank, stock and fluke, she's coming into ken—
Give a long and heavy heave, she's a-coming into ken. . . .
(Bring home!)

107

First Voice
Heave and in sight, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
With her shells and tangle dripping she's a beauty we are shipping . . .

First Voice
And she likes a bed in harbour like a decent citizen,
But her fancy for a hammock on the deep sea comes again. . . .
(Bring home!)

108

First Voice
Heave and she's a-wash, my very famous men . . .
(Bring home! heave and rally!)

Second Voice
O never stop to write the news that we are off upon a cruise . . .

First Voice
For the Gulf of Californy's got a roller now and then,
But it's better to be sailing than a-sucking of a pen. . . .
(Bring home!)

109

Chorus at the Green Bear Inn

Traveller
“Ruddy old Shepherd, blithe of cheer,”

Chorus
(Here's to the leg that's lusty!)

Traveller
“When comes to you the pick of the year?”

Chorus
(Mark what he says . . . he's trusty!)

Shepherd
“When I watch yon Fire in the chimney roar . . .”

Chorus
(What in the embers dreamt he?)

Shepherd
“And sparks flee up from the embers' core . . .”

110

Chorus
(Fill up his can—it's empty!)

Shepherd
“While out on the moorland gale I hear . . .”

Chorus
(Here's to the woes we bury!)

Shepherd
“Some Fiddle, ranting and rovering near! . . .”

Chorus
(Hail to that fiddler merry!)

Shepherd
“Yon Fire, so great and so quick with glee . . .”

Chorus
(Here's to the world so stormy!)

Shepherd
“Is Love, the breath o' the world, you see . . .”

111

Chorus
(Here's to the mother that bore me!)

Shepherd
“And . . . hark to the Fiddle! . . . That's Hope! Play on . . .”

Chorus
(Fiddle, we send a chorus!)

Shepherd
“Idling and wheedling, and come and gone! . . .”

Chorus
(Long may it march before us!)

112

Daughters of Joy

I

Long, subtle-floating, the choir
Of strings—soft floods of tone—
In pleading dance-measure, invades
Cloud-like the pavement, where,
With the night wind's vast lament in mine ears, I am walking alone.

II

You, from the dance yonder?
In tears, at this street-corner?
“I am going home, my friend.
(Strange, that you knew me!)
Dances are not for the sore heart, nor lights for the scorner.”

III

How came you to live so, sister!
“Jealous was he I cared for—
False, but jealous—he died—
Flung himself into the river;
And then a child . . . no matter! What should the child be spared for?

113

IV

“What mattered? What matters in London
But the play of the iron mill?
It is full of women who smile,
And heroes live upon them.
There, if a love rise in your heart, 'tis that that you must kill.

V

“Smile under the lamp glare!
To laugh cracks your painting—
There's no place to weep in there
Or bow the head in silence:
Under an archway the clever children mock at a woman fainting.

VI

“Sick, hie to the almshouse—
Lie in your shroud, thinking!
Soiled before you have loved,
When you have loved, betrayed;
And is there, once betrayed, a better end than drinking?

VII

“O wiser ones will save—
And then there may be marriage;

114

After precipitous years
Settling down (with your past
Always to take the opposite seat) in a well-padded carriage!”

VIII

Through Asia sweeps that voice,
Through Christendom and Jewry.
Look up at the tavern-door—
See! A phantom peering in,
The smile of a daughter of joy on the drawn face of a fury.

IX

Down the dark ancient vale
Whirling like leaves, O Daughters
Of Joy, gash'd priestesses,
Night-bound, hectic, marred,
Ye that were lovely once as clouds mirrored in waters,

X

To what dominion dire
Flag your fierce wings, till they
Glide through the dense realms lit
Only by eyes of prey?
Whither, sister-spirits beautiful, sink ye away?

115

XI

“Back to the Past we sink,
Whence the human would be soaring,
To deep-pent Chaos back—
Hold out no hand to us—
Rushing disharmonies, lost, past deploring!

XII

“Our blazing rout shall coil
Unnumbered down for ever,
Our foul shall breed the foul,
The heavenly heights be far,
While man knows not of love, and cannot curb his fever.”

116

The Gemless Ring

Ah, hoop of gold that binds the maid
Within thy faery circuit strayed!
No gem of murdered blood divine,
No dragon green of jasper's thine,
No piping shepherd-boy and flock
Drowsed on the Ethiopian rock
And sovran 'gainst the Bacchic mist
Sleeps in thee, shut in amethyst;
Nor Isis in chalcedony
Protecteth, floating fadelessly.

Why hast no serpent-wreathen wand
Bescored on thee by diamond?
No Wingèd Foot, departure's mark,
Treading out Life in garnet dark,
Or signed in gloomy emerald
Where stands Serapis pedestal'd
'Mid sceptred Æons plumed and starred?
No name they write on Indian sard
Nor dreaded word from Dian's zone
Legends thee, seal without a stone!

Yet, seeing no mage since time began
Hath found a greater talisman,
Since puissant was thy gleaming pure

117

Both to preserve and to allure,
Destroyers of this amulet
May look back, and lament thee yet!

Thou hast outweathered many an age
Hid in the missal's burning page;
Queens unto Christ in pilgrim guise
Tossed thee, with prayer for paradise,
And felt thee rained from Zion's gate
Back to the cold hand laid in state!
Over the fiord of spirits gone
I hear great harpers harp thee on! . . .
But who shall now thy bond endure?
Farewell! thou art too plain and pure!

118

Chinese Drinking Song

The old Bards leapt into the fiery Mountain,
And your wizard Herb-seller was caught away—
The old Seers drank at the Immortal Fountain
And took their flight. But where are such to-day?

Life like a violet flash of lightning blinds us,
And before our eyes recover is gone past,
The Earth and Sky grow giddy, Winter finds us—
Our childish faces wrinkled—far too fast.

Come, friend, whose shaky fist is on the wine here,
Why hesitate to drink? For whom do you wait?
What dancing-girls do you expect to dine here,
Or halt their chariot-wheels before our gate?

119

O Birds of the Air

Obirds of the air—
Wild birds, buoyant, vagabond, light—
Streams may have taught you a stave;
But how are ye born so sure of your flight
Hence over worlds of the wave?
Whose mind remembers in yours as it weaves
Subtlest of houses to sway with the leaves?
We have forgotten the land out of sight—
We build no house but the grave!

120

Almond, Wild Almond

Almond, wild almond,
Give counsel to me,
And hush thy fierce lover
The wind in the tree!

Along the night pasture
I've come through the dew
To tell thee, wild almond,
The old songs are true!

Like the flower on thy branches
The heart in me springs
With airs and upliftings
And hundreds of wings!

I, too, have a lover . . .
Keep, keep it from them—
The wise ones that eye me—
Thou whispering stem!

I deal with him coldly—
I dash him with pride:
Yet he comes of evenings,
And stands at my side.

121

O had he entreated
I could have said nay,
But he, he says nothing,
And then goes away!

Ah, loves he for ever? . . .
And loves me alone? . . .
These things that men say not
How can they be known?

He may, but he may not—
And I would be free:—
Now play not, now sway not,
Thou little black tree,
Almond, wild almond,
Give counsel to me!

122

In Summer-time when Mary bathes

In summer-time when Mary bathes
And floats along as in a sky,
O might I be the stream that swathes
Her beauty with infinity!

O might I be that stealing song
The brown bird sings her from above
While in the dark wood, late and long,
She listens, and forgets to love!

Or else the rose, the rose that bends
To Mary, all its soul to give,
And on her dreamy bosom spends
The only day it has to live!

123

Byron

Byron, what clash in thee of sea and wind,
Wrecking and squandering all we treasure most,
What riches of ungovernable mind
Washed up along some bleak despairing coast!
Rare liquor doth besiege the furious capes,
The iron steeps are splashed with blood of grapes,
All the perfumed cargo of thy heady wine
Flung to inhabitants of rocks and fogs
To grope for, and get drunk out of their clogs
While fades the chaos-tingeing fiery juice divine. . . .

124

In the Roman Amphitheatre, Verona

AFTER SUPPER AT CAN GRANDE'S

Two architects of Italy—austere
Men who could fashion nothing small—refused
To die with life; and for their purpose used
This dim, this topless Amphitheatre.

Caesar, trenching an orbit of ellipse,
Shaped of sun-temple blocks cyclopean
His marbled crater, whence the world would scan,
From tier on roaring tier, fighters and ships.

I, Dante, having raised, as dreamer can,
Like moon-pale Alps those walls immutable,
Sole in the night-arena, grow aware
I am myself the thing spectacular
Seized by the ever-thirsting gaze of Hell,
Here, on the voiceless sand, a banish'd man.

125

Shakespeare

If many a daring spirit must discover
The chartless world, why should they glory lack?
Because athwart the skyline they sank over,
Few, few, the shipmen be that have come back.

Yet one, wrecked oft, hath by a giddy cord
The rugged head of Destiny regain'd—
Who from the maelstrom's lap hath swum aboard—
Who from the polar sleep himself unchain'd.

And he, acquainted well with every tone
Of madness whining in his shroudage slender,
From storm and mutiny emerged alone,
Self-righted from the dreadful self-surrender:

Rich from the isles where sojourn long is death,
Won back to cool Thames and Elizabeth,
Sea-weary, yes, but human still, and whole—
A circumnavigator of the soul.

126

There comes a Moment of the Twilight

There comes a moment of the twilight,
The red-forged Orb at his vastest
Sinking (how swiftly!) behind black-ridged
Intricate harbourage of trees,
When brilliant beds of flowers, amid the dimness
Of warm lawns silently resplendent,
Armies of sapphires and of purples,
Flame-cups of red gold, quietude
Of dusky companies of lilies,
Burn with a light not theirs.

They utter, they give off a singing vapour,
Discompose into rumour as of voices,
A troubled ground-swell, every chalice
Steamy with a yearning murmur
After the descended sun!
Something of the late huge riot
Of cloud-light, to them bequeathèd,
Dwells on, confused, in them,
Thousand by thousand awaiting,
Frail-hung lanterns of some gala
Invisible.

127

Even so are ye,
All standing now at such a moment
Smoulderers objectless, uncertain,
Artists and priests of all religions,
Shapers of clay, sound, colour,
Shapers of perfection and of symbol,
Shapers of passion and of awe!
Hath it gone, last hem of all that glory
For which we came to be?

1900.

128

Schiehallion

Far the grey loch runs
Up to Schiehallion.
Lap, lap the water flows
Where my wee boatie rows,
Greenly a star shows
Over Schiehallion.

She that I wander'd with
Over Schiehallion,—
How far beyond your ken,
Crags of the merry glen,
Stray'd she, that wander'd then
Down from Schiehallion!

Sail of the wild swan
Turn to Schiehallion!
Here where the rushes rise
Low the black hunter lies;
Beat thou the pure skies
Back to Schiehallion!

129

Jean Richepin's Song

The idea of this little song comes through the French from the Finnish.

I

Apoor lad once and a lad so trim,
(Fol de rol de raly O!
Fol de rol!)
A poor lad once and a lad so trim
Gave his love to her that loved not him.

II

And, says she, “Fetch me to-night, you rogue,”
(For de rol de raly O!
Fol de rol!)
And, says she, “Fetch me to-night, you rogue,
Your mother's heart to feed my dog!”

III

To his mother's house went that young man,
(Fol de rol de raly O!
Fol de rol!)
To his mother's house went that young man,
Killed her, and took the heart, and ran.

IV

And as he was running, look you, he fell,
(Fol de rol de raly O!
Fol de rol!)

130

And as he was running, look you, he fell,
And the heart rolled on the ground as well.

V

And the lad, as the heart was a-rolling, heard,
(Fol de rol de raly O!
Fol de rol!)
And the lad, as the heart was a-rolling, heard
That the heart was speaking, and this was the word—

VI

The heart was a-weeping and crying so small,
(Fol de rol de raly O!
Fol de rol!)
The heart was a-weeping and crying so small,
“Are you hurt, my child, are you hurt at all?”

131

Maurya's Song

Rushes that grow by the black water
When will I see you more?
Land of the green, green shore!
When will the field and the small cabin
See us more
In the old country?

What is to me all the gold yonder?
She that bore me is gone.
Knees that dandled and hands that blessed me
Colder than any stone.
Stranger to me than the face of strangers
Are my own
In the old country!

Vein o' my heart, from the lone mountain
The smoke of the turf will die,
And the stream that sang to the young childer
Run down alone from the sky:
On the door-stone, grass,—and the cloud lying
Where they lie
In the old country!

132

Killary

I

When all her brothers in the house
Were lying asleep, my love
Ran before me under the bend of boughs
Till we looked down from above
On the long loch,
On the brown loch,
On the lone loch of Killary!

II

Together we ran down the copse
And stood in the rain as close
As the birds that sleep in the soft tops
Of the tree that comes and goes
When the morn moon,
When the young moon,
When the morn moon is on Killary!

III

In tremblings of the water chill
Swans we saw preen their coat,
Biting their plumes with stoop'd bill
And quivering neck, afloat
On the brown shade,
On the deep shade,
The shade of hills on Killary.

133

IV

“Why pale, my belovèd, now
When the first light 'gins to beat?
No sun of autumn is rich as thou,
And honey after thy feet
Shall rise from the grass,
From the wet of the grass,
The brow of the grass over Killary!”

V

“My grief it is only that thou and I
Must part, like swans of the flood
That rise up sorrowful into the sky;
For one goes over the wood,
And one oversea,
And one oversea,
And one oversea from Killary! . . .

VI

“Ah, the little raindrops that hang on the bough,
Together they may run,
But never again shall I and thou
Meet here in the morning sun. . . .
We shall meet no more,
We must kiss no more,
We shall meet no more by Killary!”

Connemara.

134

You were Stay'd

You were stay'd in heart on heaven,
I by none but you forgiven,—
You unto your Light are taken,
I of all, in you, forsaken.

Where the night is never broken,
Where for long no speech hath spoken,
There the ears no longer hearken,
There the eyeballs wane and darken.

Yet at hours my soul, so bounded
By that gloom like blood surrounded—
Sees an ancient daylight burning—
Hears departed feet returning.

135

Musing on a Great Soldier

Fear? Yes . . . I heard you saying
In an Oxford common-room
Where the hearth-light's kindly raying
Stript the empanelled walls of gloom,
Silver groves of candles playing
In the soft wine turned to bloom—
At the word I see you now
Blandly push the wine-boat's prow
Round the mirror of that scored
Yellow old mahogany board—
I confess to one fear; this,
To be buried alive!

My Lord,
Your fancy has played amiss.
Fear not. When in farewell,
While guns toll like a bell
And the bell tolls like a gun,
Westminster towers call
Folk and state to your funeral,
And, robed in honours won,
Beneath the cloudy pall
Of the lifted shreds of glory
You lie in the last stall
Of that grey dormitory—
Fear not lest mad mischance
Should find you lapt and shrouded
Alive in helpless trance

136

Through seeming death-beclouded:
For long ere so you rest
On that transcendent bier
Shall we not have addressed
One summons, one last test,
To your reluctant ear?
O believe it! we shall have uttered
In ultimate entreaty
A name your soul would hear
Howsoever thickly shuttered;
We shall have stooped and muttered
England! in your cold ear . . .
Then, if your great pulse leap
No more, nor your cheek burn,
Enough; then shall we learn
'Tis time for us to weep.

137

Inscription for the Scabbard of a Sword of Honour

Draw me not! Let your laurels round me wreathe—
You that have kept, since you began to breathe,
The soul within you ready to unsheathe!

Engraved on Havelock's sword, presented to Field-Marshal Sir George White, V.C.

138

I Seek Thee in the Heart alone

Fountain of Fire whom all divide,
We haste asunder like the spray,
But waneless doth Thy flame abide
Whom every torch can take away!

I seek Thee in the heart alone,
I shall not find in hill or plain;
Our rushing star must keep its moan,
Our nightly soul its homeward pain.

Song beyond thought, Light beyond power,
Even the consumings of this breast
Advance the clearness of that hour
When all shall poise, and be at rest.

It cracks at last—the glowing sheath,
The illusion, Personality—
Absorbed and interwound with death
The myriads are dissolved in Thee.

139

The Rider on the Shore

As on the Iberian shore wanders some priest of Atlantis,
Son of a vanished race, seek I my own land here.

Ranging to and fro, ranging between the cliffs and the surges,
Carry me whither thou wilt, my galloping beast! But no,

Rocks are at either end, no gate, no gate to the landward;
Gates to the seaward have sunken, what thousands of years ago!

Where, O horse, shall we find the love and the lands that sink not?
How bear this lamp and spear to the foot of the wingèd sun?

“Ride we, master, the reinless foams of the travelling wave!
Ride thou the fierce gulfs and torn streams of the sea!

“And as a veil over Earth shall be drawn her absolving waters,
By the passage of thy hooves shall the new lands be reborn!”

140

Fantasia on Claviers at Night

To Arnold Dolmetsch.

Iwatch'd a withered Figure at the keys
Pause, with a smile, in the great galleries,
And heard his tender fingers, as he went,
Muse on the heart of each blind instrument.

SPINET
“Shoaling through twilight to my silver tinglings
The great-ruff'd ladies beset with pearl
Come out with the gallants in gems of Cadiz,
In lofty capriols, with loud spur-jinglings,
In Roman galliard and in blithe coranto
Learnt in far Otranto
Brought home in the galleys of the Earl—
Storm-riding galleys of the haughty Earl—
To English valleys.
They come
With reverences stately at meeting,
In mockeries sedately retreating,
And stomachers and buckles and rings
Shake a maze of jewels to the measured strings,
Of trembling jewels.
Ay, moonlight's fair in yew-clipt alleys,
And young Love fledges
His shafts 'twixt cypress hedges.
Follow the rout, and watch in gentle wind

141

The springing moonbeam of the fountain sway'd
Like to a mountain maid
Who turns with poisèd jar
From bubbling hollow cool.
‘Behold, how't tosses rain of star-drops hither
Into main blackness of the pool—
Rings ever shimmering out and sheen reborn;
So, thou and I, lady, must die,
To wake, as echoes wake, of yonder horn
With volcelest over the hills of morn.
Ah, satin-quilted kirtle,
Ah, pearlèd bosom,
Let slip one flake of blossom,
Deign but a sprig of myrtle,
To the poor Fool, panting on his bended knee!’
But silent grow the long swards cedar-shaded
Where the young loves were sitting;
And lo, in the silver-candled hall
The bat is flitting, flitting,
The tapestries are dusk upon the wall,
And the ladies bright, brocaded,
All, with their blushes, faded!”

HARPSICHORD
“Now ye, the delicate patterers of the hush,
Birds, hither!
Scarce-rustlers of the sere involvèd leaf
Who mourn for summers past with elfin grief,

142

Ye who can hear along the inmost lawn
Ebbings and flowings shrill
When subtle ballads net the rime-cold daffodil
And drift over the blue turf so nigh dumb
They startle not from's gloom e'en the airy fawn.
Old Antony on his Nile-barge at dawn
Caught your deck-walkings, countless overhead,
And eased with ye a heart eclipsed and dead.
Come swift, come soon,
Drift, like a veil over the moon,
And rising round this crumbling Keep
Shed ye, upon the sleepless, sleep!”

CLAVICHORD
“‘Wherefore, poor Fool, dost lie—
Love, cap and bells put by—
On thy pallet-bed so stark?’
‘I am girt, soul and limb,
'Gainst horror dim.
Ear tense to hark
Mine eyeballs strain and swim
Drowning in foamy dark.
Comes no shock
Nor earthly foot
But the heart's blood, ebb'd with the chill tower-clock
To a single beat,

143

Clots to a fear
That God may appear—
None other eye being near—
And bare of His mantle of law
Stand, a giant Spirit beautiful,
Sombre, pale, in avenging mail,
Wings folded, on this planet's skull;
And before Him dropping like fine rain,
A veil o' the cloud o' the dust of kings
Noiseless descending the old Abyss. . . .
Ah then, after this
How gentle through the dark paths of the brain
Comes the faint noise of outer things;
The whirr and shower of wings—
Satin shufflings of ivy leaves
Ranging like bees the leaden pane—
Jolting of carters, cries of falconers—
The blessed courtyard stirs
That do in mercy say
Thou hast another day!’”

144

The Man Digging

The isle was barren. Far as hawk may scan
Slabb'd ledges heaved up to a headland bare
Save for one narrow patch, by ceaseless care
Sumptuous with corn. Against the sky a Man
Digging the waste I saw, —bow'd veteran
A stubborn spade he drave in stubborn ground
And root and rock flung sheer without a sound
Over the bleak edge. . . . Then anew began.

“You, who have lodged in the teeth of the abyss
Your cabin low, and triumph rich as this
Wrung from the ocean-bitter mountain-side,
What help'd you most to bring such treasure out?”
He stood, and after scrutiny replied,
“The thing on which I lean, the spade of doubt.”

145

The Bloom

Who are these ancients, gnarl'd and moss'd and weigh'd
This way and that, under the sluggard blue
And shine of morning—these whose arms are laid
Low to the grasses and the sheets of dew—
These bowers ruggèd within and thickly knit,
But feather'd over with a roseate white
So frail that the breeze's touch dismantles it
And brings from cradled nurseries in flight—
Snow-soft—the petals down
In shadows green to drown?

We are the matrons. Bent are we and riven
Under such years of ripeness manifold,
But unto us a special grace is given—
To wear a virgin's beauty being old.
Noiseless we wear it; round us in the croft
These whisperers are leaves of other trees,
Babblers that have not learn'd by fruitage oft
To shade the heart with wide serenities
On tendons knit to bear
Sweetness in stormy air.

Holmwood.

146

A Winter Song

TO ALICE MEYNELL

Lady, through grasses stiff with rime
And wraith-hung trees I wander
Where the red sun at pitch of prime
Half of his might must squander.
Narrow the track
As I look back
On traces green behind me—
I go alone
To think upon
A face, where none
Shall find me.

Birds peal; but each grim grove its shroud
Retains, as to betoken
Though the young lawn should wave off cloud
These would have Night unbroken—
Desire no plash
Of the Lake awash—
No gold but gold that's glinted
In still device
From the breast of ice
Whose summer cries
Have stinted.

147

But in a great and glittering space
The black Elm doth restore me
To you. Empower'd with patient grace
Musing she stands before me;
Her webs divine
Ghosted with fine
Remembrance few can capture;
Her very shade
On greenness laid
Is white,—is made
Of rapture!

148

Fragment

Isleep. The panoply of sense,
The buffetings, the din,
The breasts of love, the battle dense,
The roaring drive I know not whence,
The riot curbed within,
Cease, and in dreamless innocence
The Self forgets its sin;
Forgets, unloosing like a robe,
The body and its grief,
Till at the Dawn over the globe
(That soft and silver thief!)
It wakes; nor ever eye can probe
Where it has found relief.

I die. The treasure-ships I sought,
The glories and the glee,
The lives wherewith my own was wrought
(As in some tapestry gem-fraught)
Nearly and tenderly,
And the tune mine ear had almost caught,
All sink away from me.
Dreamless the aeons interpose.
The gap, perchance, is long.
Will the Self wake to strains it knows?
Will the vast star-lit throng
Take up, renewed by deep repose,
The full theme of the song?

An early poem.

149

The Nutter

I

I am the Autumn. Rising from the throne
I watch the pageant of my courtiers pass;
Chestnuts' canary-feather'd beauty strown—
The lime's gold tribute at his foot amass—
Fragile jewels from larches blown
Enrich with disarray the trembling grass,
Until the beggar'd elms, too proud to bend,
Emblaze a hundred winds with my rash kingdom's end.

II

But look! within the beech's burning house
Some Nutter, deaf to shouts of fellow-thieves,
Hath flung him with his crook to dream and drowse
Flush-cheek'd alone, upon the mounded leaves.
The squirrel headlong from his eaves
Creeps curious down: then drops with sudden souse;
The still-come culvers burst away; and flits
The beechmast-feasting multitude of shadowy tits.

150

III

Where are thy friends? Gone on to sack the glades,
My rooms of tatter'd state, not to return.
No moth-bright brambles and no rainy braids
Of ivy, 'mid the sheen and smoke of fern,
Could trammel-up for long their raids.
Up, boy! pursue them down the misty burn!
But on his bosom tann'd, in slumber fast,
Patters the mimic shower of ever-dropping mast.

IV

What, lads? The last of my poor banquet lose
To thy wild kin of air? For them the dell
O'er-briar'd hath lean rose-berries and yews
And scarlet fruits of ash, that, ere they swell,
The missel-thrushes, fluttering, choose;
Privet is theirs and briony as well,
And redwings wait for the frost-mellow'd sloe,
Their orchard is the spinney-side—Awake, and go!

V

Leaf-driven, my young October in a while
Awoke bemazed; on ragged knee arose,
Snatch'd at his crook, and hid a shamèd smile
Vaulting the ruddy brambles. As he goes

151

I hear his voice; so freshet flows
Warbling to wander many a forest mile—
So Dryad may the rooty pool forsake
Afraid, or antler'd shadow melt into the brake.

VI

And I go too,—ah! not with mortal things
Naked of riches here to flutter down—
I soar and tremble in a million wings
Above the fen, the coastland, and the town,
By dark sea-sunken islands boune
Sweeping to choir Apollo where he sings
Unslain! The lighthouse lamp, that hears the sky
Roaring all night with passage, knows that it is I!

155

Romney Marshman's Love Song

On Romney Marsh at sunrise
We heard the curlew call,
And the young lambs crying to the sheep
Within the old sea-wall;
The bleak tree that the sea-wind strikes
Is bowed across the lilied dykes,
All heaven drifting with the lark,
The lark that sings for all.

You gathered mushrooms from the grass,
The newborn mushrooms white;
And stooped about with tender cries
That come of pure delight.
The sheep-lit pastures run for miles
With distant villages for isles,
And Lympne's grey castle on the down
Beholds us from the height.

Ah, was your stirring beauty more
Than mortal man can bear,
Or was it that your tresses streamed
Enchantment on the air?
I old the winds how we had lain
With heart to heart laid bare,
In sublimation of desire,

156

Like a singing and outsoaring fire
A-poise in slumber there,
High on the night-world's shaken breast
Hearkening the beat of seas at rest,
You and your worshipper;

Sang of the region beyond song
Where no pale death devours,
Yon light-impassion'd vast of bliss
Whence falls upon us both the kiss
Of new awakening powers.
O'er-vaulting golden cloudlets race
Eastwards, and leave us time and space;
Strange winds and clouds and falls of sheen
Mix'd at this birth of flowers;
We are breakers-in upon some scene
Meant for new eyes like ours.

In rich rebuke of mantling pride
I saw your bosom move.
“Bring it not down to earth!” you cried.
“Keep it in shade, that great exchange
Of life and joy—that rare and strange
And glowing awe of love.
Be it remembered, treasured, sighed,
Be it remembered, dreamed and sighed,
But never spoken of!”

157

Shall then the very core of life
Rouse on the harp no string?
Shall they be dumb, those radiances,
That have so fleet a wing?
Shall it awake, the great sunrise,
To perish, all unheard,
And the soul's wide flights of melodies
Fail for a narrow word?

Since we must forth, like gallant ships,
Far from the haven'd land,
Since we must melt like sandy smoke
That blows along the strand,
Since we must bow and part in grief,
Like the rushes or the driven leaf,
O put not on my singing lips
The proud seal of your hand!

Were the deep heaven's golden hosts
Beneath our feet like these—
Had we outswept the shade of Earth
And the long sound of her seas,
Our wingèd feet for ever meant
Through a thousand lives to run,
Each with a new-dawned firmament,
Breaking from sun to sun—
How well with thee were I content,
Thy mute companion,
Only with thee and beauty blent
Always to journey on!

158

But, lovely Silence!—voices parting,
Answering,—through light we breathe
In clearness and in glory once,—
Are all we can bequeath.
E'en mad winds joy—all that have breath
Arise and break to flame;
Hour ineffaceable as death
Shalt thou not have a name?

Exquisite Spirit, in whose eyes
Floats the unseeing ray,
Though utterance scorch between us two
Let my fierce spirit reach to you,
Be silence torn away!
Now wave meets wave; and dull grief's weight,
O'erwhelming time, ascends,
Now the shaken soul's half-agony
For an instant comprehends,
Now all things travel to a voice—
We see, as from a shore;
Let the heart speak, while yet we see,
Lest it have sight no more.

159

I Heard a Soldier

I heard a soldier sing some trifle
Out in the sun-dried veldt alone;
He lay and cleaned his grimy rifle
Idly, behind a stone.

“If after death, love, comes a waking,
And in their camp so dark and still
The men of dust hear bugles, breaking
Their halt upon the hill,

“To me the slow and silver pealing
That then the last high trumpet pours
Shall softer than the dawn come stealing,
For, with its call, comes yours!”

What grief of love had he to stifle,
Basking so idly by his stone,
That grimy soldier with his rifle
Out in the veldt, alone?

160

A Charge

If thou hast squander'd years to grave a gem
Commissioned by thine absent Lord; and, while
'Tis incomplete,
Others would bribe thy needy skill to them—
Dismiss them to the street!

Shouldst thou at last discover Beauty's grove,
At last be panting on the fragrant verge,
But in the track,
Drunk with divine possession, thou meet Love—
Turn, at her bidding, back!

When round thy ship in tempest Hell appears,
And every spectre mutters up more dire
To snatch control
And loose to madness thy deep-kennell'd Fears—
Then to the helm, O Soul!

Last; if upon the cold green-mantling sea
Thou cling, alone with Truth, to the last spar—
Both castaway
And one must perish—let it not be he
Whom thou art sworn to obey!

161

How shall I find . . .

How shall I find that friend
Of the rare friends, the deep-hearted?
When the delicate revels end
And the masquers have all departed,
At a sudden hour and a drear,
For the sweet hour is the sternest,
Thou shalt know who held thee dear,
Whose hand was thine in earnest.

Then unguess'd at thy side
Ere Terror's ban be lifted,
Though few, few, shall abide
Of the many that are sifted,
Some bugle's charge may wake
Upon thy soul to seal them—
Some battling dawn may break
And eye to eye reveal them.

Yet, yet, should no eye then
Its light or fealty send thee,
No voice of sons of men
Across the wastes befriend thee,
Stand by thyself, for prayer.
For the very God will waken,
When thou shalt shake despair
Out of a heart unshaken.

162

Starlight Distilleth

Tree by tree filleth,
What do they sigh at?
Field by field thrilleth,
Low comes the fiat,
“Let him that willeth
Cease from his riot.
Starlight distilleth;
O World, be quiet!

“Night the tremendous
Grasps thee and veils thee;
Slow thy stupendous
Intelligence fails thee.

“I, the star-crowded,
Outsoar and outsink thee;
No more care-clouded
Need'st thou bethink thee!

“Let my primordial
Stupor that seizes
Cure, with the cordial
For all thy diseases.”

163

Field by field thrilleth—
Tree by tree filleth,
Fled is all riot.
Sleep the soul filleth,
Man no more willeth,
Starlight distilleth;
All Earth is quiet.

164

What Bids me Leave . . .

What bids me leave thee long untouch'd, my lute,
Hanging so dusty, still and mute?
Too many dreams behind these worn eyes throng,
And sight too great for song.

When I was young how quick thy passions pour'd—
Wave on wave, chord on chord—
All simple wingèd transport and high strain
Of Earth made Heaven again.

But I have seen the world, for all its wit,
Dangling on fire over the pit;
And I must dream what taught our dreamless dead
To save Man by a thread.

165

III:LEVIA

168

The Unhappy Marriage

Germany

Tell me but why—since you left and reproved me—
If you respected, you never have loved me?
Tell me but why.

Italy

Merely because of a point you neglected:
If you have loved me, you never respected.
Tell me but why.

169

A Rude Song of the Switzer and his Pine

I

The Pine shall be the Switzer's glee,
The Pine shall be his “chanson,”
The Pine that takes an awkward Point
For Foemen to advance on.
The Pine it was the Ragged Staff
That took an iron lance on
When Charles of Burgundy was pricked
In such a haste from Grandson!

II

The Pine-tree bred the Switzer bold,
The Pine-tree is his Dwelling,
His Hearth it cracks with Pine-tree Stacks—
And what is sweeter smelling?
The Pine-tree is his jagged Hedge,
His hollow trough and Fountain;
The Pine it is the Switzer's Sledge
To horse him down the Mountain.

III

Of Pine are his haymaking Prong,
His Steeple and his Flagon;

170

Of swarthy Pine shall be his Song,
While four Stems make a Waggon!
The brown Cones for his Fruit descend,
The red Trunks for his Harvest.
O Switzer, with a Pine to Vend
There's little fear thou starvest,
For into Bears thy patient Friend
(And cuckoo-clocks) thou carvest!

IV

As the round-shoulder'd Hero clumps
About his steep possession
With something of a Pine-tree Stump's
Dispassionate Expression,
O Switzer, seldom in the Dumps,
To thee I'll make confession:
Thy Gains are Wood, thy Brains are Wood,
At wooden Pins thou Poundest;
But if the heart in thee is Wood,
'Tis Pine, and of the Soundest!

V

The Pine it is the Switzer's Cheer,
The best this World affords him,
And when his Lodging's ended here
The Pine it takes and Boards him—
They nail him in the friendly Pine
When Slumber sound rewards him.

171

Multatuli Remoulded

Once lived a Man who from a Rock broke stone—
For little wage, great labour. Hear him groan,
“O to be rich, and lounging on a bed
With sleepy silken curtains at my head!”
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!

And he was rich, and on a bed at rest
Of silk as soft as roses. From the west
The King came by with horsemen and patrolled
That land, beneath his canopy of gold.

And the Newly Rich gazed from his lattice:“Why
Have I no kingdom and no canopy?
Happy I were with just one little thing:
I would have honour! I would be a King!”
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!

And he was King, with horsemen for a screen
And cloth of gold to fringe his palanquin.
But one day, riding in a desert place,
The King grew angry. The Sun scorched his face.

172

“What is this Sun that doth my face devour—
Heedless of princes at their height of power?
Had I his room, and the arrows of his pride
Vast as the air, I should be satisfied!”
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!

And he became the Sun. Jovial he sent
Arrows abroad to search the firmament
And bake the fields. Everywhere did they pass
And scorched the brows of Princes like the grass,

Till came a Cloud, that darkly overmisted
The plains, and all his sheen of rays resisted.
Long, long he battled, but at last avowed,
“My light is conquered; I would be that Cloud!”
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!

And he became a Cloud of gloom and rain
That cooled and made green pastures of the plain,
Till the floods rose. Houses and herds were swept
Away in rivers, and the homeless wept.

173

And the Earth became a wholly flooded field,
Save for one Rock therein that would not yield.
Wildly the streams beat; it withstood their shock.
Then the Cloud, sullen, yearned to be that Rock.
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!

And the Cloud became a Rock. Stark he remained
Still, whether summer riped or winter rained.
And there came a Man into his solitude
With pickaxe and with hammer; one that hewed

Stones from the Rock. And the Rock groaned oppressed,
“Whose heavy Hammer strikes so sore my Breast?”
And prayed at length, “Deliver me who can!
Make me a hammer-wielder—make me Man!”
And there came an Angel, saying, Be it so!
And he became a Man, old, feeble, bent,
Who for small wages and long labour spent
Broke stones under a Rock, and was content.

174

Then the Earth-Spirit, an Enchanter wise,
Charmed at complete success of his device,
Approached, rubbing his hands in genial wise:
“See now the empty Bubbles that enamour
You, the Enactor of my Fable, Man!
Since you have ended just where you began
Confess how futile was the wish to rise!”. . .
And the Stone-breaker pushed up, in mild surprise,
His spectacles, that Questioner to scan:
“Not so! The World's a Bubble, and mere Glamour;
But just to have been the round, and learned the grammar,
Contents me with my Sitting-pad and Hammer!”