The point of view (some talks and disputations) :: :: University of Virginia Library

Atween brown banks these nut-brown waters slip,
The hurrying nut-brown wavelets ripple by,
And like one tree the forest seems to dip,
Uttering one sigh.

Under yon bank, like some stream-haunting beast,
The archaic hermit fed his peaceful soul,
Kept his long fasts, enjoyed some meagre feast,
These woods his whole.

Ah, if to-night we two might meet that sage,
Might know for one brief hour what he has known,
Surprise his secret; step inside his age;
Forget our own!

Here, where in chequered shade we stand to-night,
Some earlier pilgrim may adown this stream
Have seen a coming world all bathed in light,
In one swift gleam.

Vision less stable than the ocean foam
To me; to you! Yet how divinely clear
To that wild heart whose little earthly home
Lies round us here.

II

Speak, grey survivors of a vanished age,
Gaunt Ossory oaks, with thick-set boughs still green,
Of that strange book, the world, what younger page
Have your boughs seen?

Leaf-choked and thick old Nore with accents hoarse
Mutters some inarticulate reply.
No other! Not a sound from any source,
Tree, stream, or sky.

Yet stay! What movement now the forest fills?
Splashes and tremblings mid the water weeds,
Small sudden nibblings; little darts and thrills
Amongst the reeds—

The twittering stir of some belated bird,
Slow moving currents, tiny gurgling moans,
Where, clogged with twigs, the ripples softly gird
Against their stones.

And hark again! Beyond that grass-fringed turn,
Where swifter, deeper, darker waters fleet,
Across a breeze-blown league of billowy fern,
One lonely bleat!

And fainter still, scarce heard amongst the leaves,
Thin elfish murmurings, only born to die,
The soul of this last woodland softly breathes
In one last sigh.

III

Think if we two for one short hour could share
The old, young life of all this sister throng,
Make it our own; even as He whose ear
Heeds the full song

Of deathless potencies that chaunting span
The argent throne—lords of the star-strewn skies—
Or muttered prayers breathed by some broken man
Who loves—and dies.

Small wordless sisters of the wood,
Deep gulfs in truth betwixt us reach,
Yet nearer is our sisterhood,
And breath than speech.

Beyond, beneath the spoken word
That earlier wordless language spreads,
From man to beast, from beast to bird,
It knits and weds

Life, as the seamless ocean tide
Whose single sovereign waters pour,
By different names through severance wide,
To the same shore.

IV

Can we, can you, whom thought has swept
High o'er these vales where earth-mists roll,
Barter that birthright, or accept
Less than the Whole?

Less than that vast and mystic scroll
Our Mother proffers; no mere part;
Her undivided realm; her whole
Exhaustless heart?

That heart whose universal flow
Warms the least crawler of this sod,
Wakes the wild pulses of yon glow,
And beats from God?

From God? Ah little, potent word,
On which we climb towards the light,
Till, deep within, the cry is heard
—“Behold the night!”

And round us, as we dream or pray,
It gathers; murky fold on fold,
Blotting the comfortable way,
Remorseless, cold;

Cold as the clay-cold foe of life;
The night-winds hurtle roughly by,
We cease the vain delusive strife,
And falling, lie

Without a word; with no more prayer
Than some crushed thing which, falling, feels
Across it, amid dust and glare,
The whirling wheels.

V

So fallen, comfortless we lie,
While hours come, while hours go,
Till far off, like a voiceless sigh,
As soft, as low,

A whisper trickles to our ears,
And down a dark unfriendly sky,
One little flickering gleam appears
And Hope glides by

Not glory-crowned as once her brows,
Not chaunting now loud songs of spring,
She lilts but as amid grey boughs
Brown robins sing.

Yet holds she out her friendly hands,
And we? Ah God! we grasp them then!
—Sole helper of unhappy lands,
And friendless men—

Whose eyes are full of kindly dreams,
Whose smile holds heaven itself in store,
Whose light 'cross bitter currents gleams
On a still shore.

Hope—solace of a desperate Past—
Hope—landmark in a maddening sea—
Of Love's whole starry brood the last,
All live in thee!

No offspring of a frozen creed,
Of man's warm hidden heart the child,
From Life's hard bond of custom freed,
Still young, still wild;

Young as these leaves, these waves are young,
Light as when from Fate's grip she sprang
And, where his shadow darkest hung,
Her challenge rang

Loud shrilling up at heaven's own gate,
Till every star and sphere replied
In joy and wonder, love or hate,
That challenge wild.

VI

Oh brother humans, heirs of God,
We were not born to glut decay!
What boots these trammels of the sod
Chains of a day,

Worn fetters of a bovine earth,
When loud the eternal tocsin rings,
And Hope her song of love and mirth
Divinely sings?

Mark but the strength of one brave verse,
How weak a thing, how small its weight,
Yet this brute clanging universe
Is scarce as great!

For on that ancient uttered word
Prophet and seraph, sea and land,
The immeasurable orbs, once heard,
Devoutly stand

Submissive till its accents fade,
Or down the gulfs of Silence die,
One word—the earth anew is made,
New shines the sky.

Shall Custom, withered, dull, and stale,
On us her beldam fingers lay?
Not so. The golden goal we hail,
First seen to-day.

Deep in Life's leafage sleeps the beast,
But thro' the flickering tree-tops shine
On us new lights; redeemed; released;
Human, divine.

Whose source we guess, yet cannot know,
Whose warmth we feel, but dare not name,
Lights whose divine, whose mystic glow
Slay Death and Shame.

VII

Alas, my words ring flat and tame,
And you? For you how speaks the night?
Dark as Time's purpose? Still the same?
Or pierced with light?

You answer, yet I cannot hear,
For ancient waves betwixt us roll,
And—sundering hearts however near—
The evasive soul!

Even as now, while you and I
Stroll back along these ferny glades,
Their furtive earlier inmates fly
To deeper shades,

So, smit with viewless fears and shames,
Each soul to its own covert hies,
Nor once its hidden self proclaims,
But silent dies.

We wait the embracing Unity;
In dreams alone that silent call
Steals earthwards 'cross infinity
To us; to all.

Oh longed-for end of human tasks.
Yet,—tireless rebel-born, fierce Soul—
Will thy rash spirit bend, one asks,
Even to that Whole?

Fond question! Here the summer swings
Her garlands; nights like these prolong
Their beauty, and the linnet sings
Her daybreak song,

For you. For me. Oh dull and dead,
Unfit to share so fair a fate,
To walk where shows like these are spread
For those who wait;

Who wait in laughter, wait in tears,
Lover by lover, friend by friend,
Yet each alone; while slowly nears
The accomplished end.

See the dusk deepens! Turn again,
River and forest now are still,
Some new-come presence seems to reign
O'er dale and hill.

Some pitying spirit seems to call,
Stretching a kind, if viewless, hand
Towards you, towards me, and over all
This tear-washed land.

This small, sad, much-loved speck of earth,
Of mother-earth, who holds her way,
Bowed 'neath what load of pain, death, birth,
Through Night towards Day.

July 1903