Poems and Dramas by "Fiona MacLeod" (William Sharp)

“Love is as a vapour that is licked up of the wind. Let whoso longeth after this lovely mist—that as a breath is, and is not—beware of this wind. There is no sorrow like unto the sorrow of this wind.” Leabhran Mhòr-Gheasadaireachd. (The Little Book of the Great Enchantment.)

“The waves of the sea have spoken to me; the wild birds have taught me; the music of many waters has been my master.” Kalevala.

201

THE SECRET DEWS

Poor little songs, children of sorrow, go.
A wind may take you up, and blow you far.
My heart will go with you, too, wherever you go.

As the little leaves in the wood, they pass:
The wind has lifted them, and the wind is gone.
Have I too not heard the wind come, and pass?

The secret dews fall under the Evening-Star,
And there is peace I know in the west: yet, if there be no dawn,
The secret dews fall under the Evening-Star.

202

THE ENCHANTED VALLEYS

By the Gate of Sleep we enter the Enchanted Valleys.
White soundless birds fly near the twilit portals:
Follow, and they lead to the Silent Alleys.

Grey pastures are there, and hush'd spellbound woods,
And still waters, girt with unwhispering reeds:
Lost dreams linger there, wan multitudes:

They haunt the grey waters, the alleys dense and dim,
The immemorial woods of timeless age,
And where the forest leans on the grey sea's rim.

Nothing is there of gladness or of sorrow:
What is past can neither be glad nor sad:
It is past: there is no dawn: no to-morrow.

203

THE VALLEY OF WHITE POPPIES

Between the grey pastures and the dark wood
A valley of white poppies is lit by the low moon:
It is the grave of dreams, a holy rood.

It is quiet there: no wind doth ever fall.
Long, long ago a wind sang once a heartsweet rune.
Now the white poppies grow, silent and tall.

A white bird floats there like a drifting leaf:
It feeds upon faint sweet hopes and perishing dreams
And the still breath of unremembering grief.

And as a silent leaf the white bird passes,
Winnowing the dusk by dim forgetful streams.
I am alone now among the silent grasses.

204

THE VALLEY OF SILENCE

In the secret Valley of Silence
No breath doth fall;
No wind stirs in the branches;
No bird doth call:
As on a white wall
A breathless lizard is still,
So silence lies on the valley
Breathlessly still.

In the dusk-grown heart of the valley
An altar rises white:
No rapt priest bends in awe
Before its silent light:
But sometimes a flight
Of breathless words of prayer
White-wing'd enclose the altar,
Eddies of prayer.

205

DREAM MEADOWS

Girt with great garths of shadow
Dim meadows fade in grey:
No moon lightens the gloaming,
The meadows know no day:
But pale shapes shifting
From dusk to dusk, or lifting
Frail wings in flight, go drifting
Adown each flowerless way.

These phantom-dreams in shadow
Were once in wild-rose flame;
Each wore a star of glory,
Each had a loved sweet name:
Now they are nameless, knowing
Nor star nor flame, but going
Whither they know not, flowing
Waves without wind or aim.

But later through the gloaming
The Midnight-Shepherd cries:
The trooping shadows follow
Making a wind of sighs:

206

The fold is hollow and black;
No pathway thence, no track;
No dream ever comes back
Beneath those silent skies.

207

GREY PASTURES

In the grey gloaming where the white moth flies—
When I, quiet dust on the forgetful wind,
Shall be untroubled by any breath of sighs—

It may be I shall fall like dew upon
The still breath of grey pastures such as these
Wherein I wander now 'twixt dusk and dawn.

See, in this phantom bloom I leave a kiss:
It was given me in fire; now it is grey dust:
Mayhap I may thrill again at the touch of this.

208

LONGING

O would I were the cool wind that's blowing from the sea,
Each loneliest valley I would search till I should come to thee.

In the dew on the grass is your name, dear, i' the leaf on the tree—
O would I were the cool wind that's blowing from the sea.

O would I were the cool wind that's blowing far from me—
The grey silence, the grey waves, the grey wastes of the sea.

209

THE SINGER IN THE WOODS

“Were Memory but a voice....”

Where moongrey-thistled dunes divide the woods from the sea
Sometimes a phantom drifts, like smoke, from tree to tree:
His voice is as the thin faint song when the wind wearily
Sighs in the grass, and sighing, dies: barely it comes to me.

Sometimes I hear the sighing voice along the shadowy shore;
Sometimes wave-borne it comes, as when on labouring oar
Dying men sigh once, and die, at the closing of the door
They hear below the muffled tides or the dull drowning roar.

Sometimes he passes through the caves where twilight dies;
His voice like mist from a valley then doth rise,

210

Or, in a windy flight of gathered sighs,
Is blown like perishing smoke against the midnight skies.

But oftenest in the dark woods I hear him sing
Dim, half-remembered things, where the old mosses cling
To the old trees, and the faint wandering eddies bring
The phantom echoes of a phantom Spring.

Lost in the dark gulf of the woods, his song sinks low:
I listen: and hear only the long, inevitable, slow
Falling of wave on wave, the sighing flow:
In the silence I hear my heart sobbing its old woe.

211

BY THE GREY STONE

It is quiet here: the wet hill-wind's sigh
Sobs faintly, as though behind a curtain of thick grass.
The vanishing curlew wails a fading cry.

I can hear the least soft footfall pass.
Is that the shrewmouse I hear, or does the night-moth whirr?
I have waited so long, so long, so long, alas!

No one. No one. I hear no faintest stir.
Yet Love spake once, with lips of flame and eyes of fire,
With breath of burning frankincense and myrrh—

Spake, and the vow was even as Desire...
Terrible, winged, magnific, crested with flame,
So that I bowed before it, mounting gyre upon gyre....

212

I see now a grey bird by the grey stone of no name:
It is blind and deaf, and its wings are tipped with mire.
Is it Love's lordly vow or mine own bitter shame?

213

THE VALLEY OF PALE BLUE FLOWERS

In a hidden valley a pale blue flower grows.
It is so pale that in the moonshine it is dimmer than dim gold,
And in the starshine paler than the palest rose.

It is the flower of dream. Who holds it is never old.
It is the flower of forgetfulness: and oblivion is youth:
Breathing it, flame is not empty air, dust is not cold.

Lift it, and there is no memory of sorrow or any ruth;
The grey monotone of the low sky is filled with light;
The dim, terrible, inpalpable lie wears the raiment of truth.

214

I lift it, now, for somewhat in the heart of the night
Fills me with dread. It may be that, as a tiger in his lair,
Memory, crouching, waits to spring into the light.

No, I will clasp it close to my heart, overdroop with my hair:
I will breathe thy frail faint breath, O pale blue flower,
And then...and then...nothing shall take me unaware!

Nothing: no thought: no fear: only the invisible power
Of the vast deeps of night, wherein down a shadowy stair
My soul slowly, slowly, slowly, will sink to its ultimate hour.

215

REMEMBRANCE

No more: let there be no more said.
It is over now, the long hope, the beautiful dream.
The poor body of love in his grave is laid.

I had dreamed his shining eyes eternal, alas!
Now, dead love, I know, can never rise again.
Never, never again shall I see even his shadow pass.

A star has ceased to shine in my lonely skies.
Sometimes I dream I see it shining in my heart,
As a bird the windless pool over which it flies.

No: no more: I will not say what I see, there:
Sorrow has depths within depths...silence is best:
Farewell, Dead Love: no more the same road we fare.

216

THE VEILED AVENGER (FRAGMENT)

A Voice
...I am He,
The Veiled Avenger. I am clothed with shadow
The silence and the shadow of your soul
Where it has withered slowly from the light.

Unseen Chorus
The Veiled Avenger speaks. He knows him not.

The Man
I hear a honey voice that murmureth peace,
Peace and oblivion. O ye secret doves
That feed the mind with sweet and perilous breaths
And murmur ever among gossamer dreams,
Bring me the tidings out of the hidden place
Wherein your wings wake fire. Come once again, wild doves

217

The Veiled Avenger
Of Beauty and Desire and the Twin Flame!
Wild doves, wild doves, bear unto me the flame
That rises moonwhite amid scarlet fire...
(A lapwing wails.)
O melancholy bird, Dalua's messenger!
I am too weary now for further thought.

The Veiled Avenger
Pillows of sleepless sorrow.... Bow your head.
To-night I shall build up for you a place
Where sleep shall not be silent and where dreams
Shall whisper, and a little infinite voice
Shall wail as a wailing plover in your ears.
Then you shall know that shaken voice, and wake,
Crying your own name.

The Man
Again, the wheeling cry
Where in the dusk the lapwing slips and falls
From ledge to ledge of darkness.

Unseen Chorus
He knoweth not
His own bitter infinite cry we hear him cry!

218

THE BELLS OF SORROW

It is not only when the sea is dark and chill and desolate
I hear the singing of the queen who lives beneath the ocean:
Oft have I heard her chanting voice when noon swings wide his golden gate,
Or when the moonshine fills the wave with snow-white mazy motion.

And some day will it hap to me, when the black waves are leaping,
Or when within the breathless green I see her shell-strewn door,
The fatal bells will lure me where my seadrown'd death lies sleeping
Beneath the slow white hands of her who rules the sunken shore.

For in my heart I hear the bells that ring their fatal beauty,
The wild, remote, uncertain bells that chant their dim to-morrow;

219

The lonely bells of sorrow, the bells of fatal beauty,
From lonely heights within my heart tolling their lonely sorrow.

220

THE UNKNOWN WIND

[_]

“There is a wind that has no name.” (Gaelic Saying.)

When the day darkens,
When dusk grows light,
When the dew is falling,
When Silence dreams....
I hear a wind
Calling, calling
By day and by night.

What is the wind
That I hear calling
By day and by night,
The crying of wind?
When the day darkens,
When dusk grows light,
When the dew is falling?

221

CANTILENA MUNDI

Where the rainbows rise through sunset rains
By shores forlorn of isles forgot,
A solitary Voice complains
“The world is here, the world is not.”

The Voice the Wind is, or the sea,
Or the Spirit of the sundown West:
Or is it but a breath set free
From off the Islands of the Blest?

It may be: but I turn my face
To that which still I hold so dear:
And lo, the voices of the days—
“The World is not, the World is here.”

'Tis the same end whichever way,
And either way is soon forgot:
“The World is all in all To-day,
To-morrow all the World is not.”

222

LITTLE CHILDREN OF THE WIND

I hear the little children of the wind
Crying solitary in lonely places:
I have not seen their faces
But I have seen the leaves eddying behind,
The little tremulous leaves of the wind.

223

IN THE SILENCES OF THE WOODS

In the silences of the woods
I have heard all day and all night
The moving multitudes
Of the Wind in flight.
He is named Myriad:
And I am sad
Often, and often I am glad,
But oftener I am white
With fear of the dim broods
That are his multitudes.

224

IN THE NIGHT

O wind, why break in idle pain
This wave that swept the seas
Foam is the meed of barren dreams
And hearts that cry for peace!

Lift then, O wind, this heart of mine,
And whirl aside in foam;
No—wander on, unchanging heart,
The undrowning deeps thy home!

Less than a billow of the sea
That at the last doth no more roam,
Less than a wave, less than a wave,
This thing that hath no home,
This thing that hath no grave.

225

THE LORDS OF SHADOW

Where the water whispers 'mid the shadowy rowan-trees
I have heard the Hidden People like the hum of swarming bees:
And when the moon has risen and the brown burn glisters grey
I have seen the Green Host marching in laughing disarray.

Dalua then must sure have blown a sudden magic air
Or with the mystic dew have sealed my eyes from seeing fair:
For the great Lords of Shadow who tread the deeps of night
Are no frail puny folk who move in dread of mortal sight.

For sure Dalua laughed alow, Dalua the fairy Fool,
When with his wildfire eyes he saw me 'neath the rowan-shadowed pool:

226

His touch can make the chords of life a bitter jangling tune,
The false glows true, the true glows false, beneath his moontide rune.

The laughter of the Hidden Host is terrible to hear,
The Hounds of Death would harry me at lifting of a spear:
Mayhap Dalua made for me the hum of swarming bees
And sealed my eyes with dew beneath the shadowy rowan-trees.

227

INVOCATION OF PEACE

[_]

AFTER THE GAELIC

Deep peace I breathe into you,
O weariness, here:
O ache, here!
Deep peace, a soft white dove to you;
Deep peace, a quiet rain to you;
Deep peace, an ebbing wave to you!
Deep peace, red wind of the east from you;
Deep peace, grey wind of the west to you;
Deep peace, dark wind of the north from you;
Deep peace, blue wind of the south to you!
Deep peace, pure red of the flame to you;
Deep peace, pure white of the moon to you;
Deep peace, pure green of the grass to you;
Deep peace, pure brown of the earth to you;
Deep peace, pure grey of the dew to you,
Deep peace, pure blue of the sky to you!
Deep peace of the running wave to you,
Deep peace of the flowing air to you,
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you,
Deep peace of the sleeping stones to you!
Deep peace of the Yellow Shepherd to you,

228

Deep peace of the Wandering Shepherdess to you,
Deep peace of the Flock of Stars to you,
Deep peace from the Son of Peace to you,
Deep peace from the heart of Mary to you,
From Briget of the Mantle
Deep peace, deep peace!
And with the kindness too of the Haughty Father,
Peace!
In the name of the Three who are One,
And by the will of the King of the Elements,
Peace! Peace!

University of Virginia Library

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