Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

Ah, how lightsome Life and Love erewhile were,
Yours and mine, beneath the summer moon,
When the world was glad and all a-smile were
Gardens in the starry nights of June,
When the jasmine stars were breaking,
Making
Mimic heavens of the trellised ways,
And the nightingales were waking,
Shaking
All the echoes with the rose's praise.
Nought but Summer in our life was;
Shadow none of care or strife was
On its stream.
Summer, Summer only I remember:
Autumn was a fable and December
Nothing but a peevish prater's dream.

Dear, have you forgotten how the roses
Ran and revelled in the frolic green,
Broidering the blooming garden-closes
With their white and red and yellow sheen?
Never have I see them blowing,
Glowing
With such glory as possessed them then;
Never since such fragrance growing,
Flowing
From a flower-cup have I known again.
Sure our love it was that thrilled them;
'Twas our happiness that filled them
With Heav'n's wine:
For our love-lit eyes it was they glistened;
And they whispered perfume, as they listened
To our talk and kisses, yours and mine.

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Now, though June again, at its completest,
In the garden-alleys breathes and glows,
Though the nightingales again their sweetest
Ditties trill in honour of the rose,
Though the moon at full is rilling,
Stilling
All to silence with its silver rays,
Yet the flower-scents no more filling,
Thrilling
Are with rapture all the rose-hung ways.
Dear, what is it, then, that ails them?
What is it to-day that fails them?
'Tis our love!
'Twas our love, grown cold since then, our kisses,
Caused them erstwhile in the flooding blisses
Bloom and flourish of the moon above.

THE POETS OF THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE.

[_]

(See my “Flowers of France,” Third Series, The Renaissance Period.)

Dead brothers, whom the world forgets,
— This crackbrain world of ours, that sets
The veriest vanities above
The eternal things of light and love,
From yours into our English tongue,
The songs, in days forgotten sung
Of you in your fair France of old,
I render, knowing that right gold
And true, through whatsoever mint
It pass, whatever stamp or print
It take, can be to otherwhat
Than very gold transmuted not.

You were of France, of England I:
Yet, under whatsoever sky

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They harbour who their hearts to song
Have given for ever to belong,
Born were they under one same star
And citizens of one land are,
The land of love and lutany.
Nay, song no country hath, but free
Of all is, as the nightingale
In every language tells her tale;
The rose in every garden grows;
Yet everywhere it is the rose.

So, in your honour, brothers dear,
This sheaf of flowers, transplanted here
From where in sunny France they grew,
In English soil I set anew
And to your memory dedicate,
So, an it please fantastic Fate,
They may by this our sun and rain,
As erst in Anjou and Touraine,
As freely profit, all and some,
And thus, for many a year to come,
As fairly flourish in our air
As in the fields of France whilere.

Rommany Proverb. Stephen Grail.

COWPER.

Cowper, methinks, thy gentle name
Will longer yet than many shine
That fairlier on the roll of Fame
Are writ than thine:
Thy modest measures kiss the ear
Kindlier than many more sublime,
As, in the woods of winter-time,

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The robin's flute
More dear
Is oft and in the memory still
Lingers, when many a song more shrill
Is mute.

Another name with thine shall dure,
Thine, Newton, whose capacious heart
Fair friendship's use, Life's ills to cure,
Raised to an art:
The memory of thy gracious gift,
The spirit's wounds to salve and half
Fordo, in Cowper's cenotaph
Shall Time enbalm
And lift
To Heaven friend's and poet's name,
Two voices joining in one same
Clear psalm.

One thing, beside thy winsome word,
Cowper, my heart to thee doth draw,
Whereto the love of beast and bird
Is as Heav'n's law;
My creed, for which all things that be
One same soul quickens, beast and man,
Still for Creation's humbler clan
Thy kindness shares;
Like thee,
I scorn the “sport” that baits the brute;
And through the years my cats salute
Thy hares.

Thy life was covered with a cloud,
Whose shadow, well-nigh from thy birth,
Oppressed thee and too often bowed
Thy head to earth;
Thy peace was poisoned with a doubt

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Lest thou in Heaven shouldst have no place
And sole of all be from God's grace,
Beneath the sun,
Cast out,
A fear lest hope for thee, poor wight,
Of finding favour in His sight
Were none.

Nay, tremble not, sad soul. Who here
Hath led, whilst yet the earth he trod,
So innocent a life need fear
No jealous God;
And to believe, indeed, 'twere hard
That in Our Father's house, in which
So many mansions are, no niche
To find for thee,
Sweet bard,
Kind chronicler of common things,
Whose homely verse to memory clings,
Might be.

Written for the Cowper-Newton Centenary, 1907.

ADAM AND EVE.

In the Springtide of Creation,
When the stars in heaven were new
And the sun and moon their station
Took in the astonished blue,
When new flowers, each morning springing,
Crowded on the ravished sight
And the blossomed hours fled, singing,
Through the blissful day and night,

When the haggard earth rejoiced yet
In the flush of love and ruth
And with virgin lips Life voiced yet
All the ecstasies of youth,

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Ere the thought of Time that passes
Filled and saddened all the air,
Ere the flowers and trees and grasses
Shrivelled from the smoke of care,

When our greybeard world yet young was,
When, no Future to affray,
On the blissful Present strung was
Happy day to happy day,
When the year had no December
And no canker marred the rose,
I was Adam, I remember;
But who Eve was, Heaven knows.

I was Adam; yes, I feel it,
Whether you were Eve or not.
Nay, my dreams anights reveal it
And by day each garden-plot
Brings me back the airs of Eden,
With its flowers and birds' descant.
What says Heine? “Krieg und Frieden,
“Hab' ich alles schon gekannt.”

All I've felt of pain and pleasure,
All Life's sweet and bitter things:
As from some forgotten treasure,
Forth remembrance to me brings
Glimpses of the garden closes
Where in endless May I dwelt,
Fragrance of their faded roses,
All I thought and all I felt;

All the bliss and all the longing
For Elysium known and lost
On my soul come flooding, thronging,
All the sin and all the cost.

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Ay, the angel at the portal
I remember and the lot,
That from deathless made me mortal.
Only Eve have I forgot.

Were you Eve, I wonder, darling?
Ah, you smile and will not say.
Yet what was it piped the starling,
Perching yonder on the spray?
“Show her apples, ('Tis September)
“Red against the green aglow.
“Haply, yet she will remember
“Whether she was Eve or no.”

By the Snake's eternal stigma,
On your curling lip that plays,
Through your silent smile's enigma,
Now I see it, as you gaze
On the fruits, the leaves that dapple
With their gold and crimson sheen;
You it was that plucked the apple,
Woman-like, and plucked it green.

Yes, my Eve you were for certain;
'Twas your vain and curious hand
After me the flaming curtain
Drew, that barred the Promised Land;
You it was that had the guerdon;
I had nothing but the fret:
Yet, in fine, I bear the burden;
I remember. You forget.

FATUI AMBO.

1.

In the morning mirkness, before the dark is done,
The lark is winging, singing, toward the coming sun.

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In the foredawn dreamtide, before the Maying-time,
My heart is welling, swelling with presage of the Prime.

2.

Nay, know'st thou not that never thy straitest stress, o lark,
The sun's first flicker quicker might conjure from the dark?

Hast thou not learned Life's lesson, old heart, nor knowest yet
That May oft flouteth, routeth our hopes with wind and wet?

SEX AND SEX.

Grief and gladness
Grow together,
As the rose grows with the thorn;
Hope and sadness
In heart's weather
As the night are and the morn.

Love and lightness
Are in ladies
As the shadow and the sun;
As his brightness
To his shade is,
So is this to the other one.

Lightness show I
Not, my fairest,
Nor injustice in the saw.
Man, well know I,
Service sharest
Thou with woman to this law.

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One half dozen,
Six the other,
Each will each for ever vex,
Plague and cozen,
Sister, brother,
Man and maiden, sex and sex.

DISEASE AND REMEDY.

Life the disease of the soul,
(I'faith,
Novalis it is, not I, that saith,)
And Death is the drug that maketh whole.
But, if the remedy harsh thou rate
And fain
A cheaper solace wouldst have for pain,
A pipe of tobacco's an opiate.

Love the disease is of Life,
(Not I,
But every lover, forsooth, doth cry.)
The cure is to make thy love thy wife.
But if the cure for the aching nerve
Of love
Severe to thee seem, its worth above,
A hair of the dog that bit will serve.

THIS AND THAT.

Light and Life,
Heavenly husband, earthly wife,
One to other
More than brother
Is to sister, Day to Night.

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In Death's ocean,
World of wonder,
Light that setst the spheres in motion,
Shorn and orphaned of thy sight,
Life goes under.
Who shall sunder
Life and Light?

White and Black,
Bloom of Being, Being's lack,
That to this is
Even as bliss is
Unto sorrow, wrong to right.
To its noneness
Back for ever,
Of thy brightness, hue of oneness,
Unenlightened, Black forthright
Passes. Never
May they sever,
Black and White.

Dark and Death,
Lack of brightness, lack of breath,
Each to each is
That which speech is
Unto thought and fire to spark.
Dark unending,
Underiving,
Life, except thy veils descending
Wove for Death a fostering ark,
Still were striving:
There's no riving
Death and Dark.

Pain and Love,
Each with each, as glove and glove,
Paired and twinned is,

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As the wind is
With the cloud-rack and the rain.
Pain undying,
Ever-smarting,
Fanning Passion's fire with sighing,
Soon without thee Love would wane
And sweethearting:
There's no parting
Love and Pain.

THE MIGHT-HAVE-BEEN.

They lapse and look not back,
Our hours of gold and grey;
Thought ceases from their track:
But that which might one day
Have been for us, alack!
We cannot cast away.

Pain, passion, fear and fret
Flit from us on Time's wings;
We owe the Past no debt
Of glad rememberings:
But thought may not forget
The unaccomplished things.

The occasions cast aside,
The chances met and missed,
Hopes slain of sloth or pride,
The tale of Had-we-wist,
These all with us abide
And fret us at their list.

The loves we might have had,
If eyes had not been blind,
The dark hours, that might glad

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Have been, had sense inclined,
How sad it is, how sad
To call these all to mind!

There wanted but a word
Between my love and me,
There wanted but a bird
On yonder leafless tree,
And Life might yet have stirred
With hope and ecstasy.

A windwaft in the air,
A touch of hand and hand,
Of Winter's desert bare
Had made a summer land;
Foul might have turned to Fair
And Life been bright and bland.

A glint of summer-sheen
Upon Thought's frozen rill,
And Life with flower and green
Had blossomed at Love's will.
Ah me, the Might-have-been,
How hard it is to kill!

WHO KNOWS?

The world said, “Sever!”
Our hearts said, “Never!”
My hair was brown, then; your lips were red.
Life's roses drooped for the long endeavour;
Your lips grew pale, dear, and grey my head.

We knew not whether
To be together
Our lot in happiness was. Who knows?
The stars sing only in Heaven's weather;
There only blossoms Love's deathless rose.

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The new years borrow
The old years' sorrow;
The Winter cometh: the sun grows cold.
Shall Life reblossom in Heaven's morrow?
Who knows? You're dead, dear, and I am old.

ON THE BERNINA.

I turned at the turn of the way;
No breeze was abroad in the vale;
The mists over meadow and dale
Spread wan as a water and grey
And lone as a sea without sail.

The gentians were blue in the grass
As dreams fallen down from on high:
The heavens o'er the head of the pass
Hung clear as a mirror of glass;
No cloud was afloat in the sky.

The larks in the azure were loud;
The air was alive with their trills:
Like them, far away from the crowd,
I stood, with my feet on the cloud,
Alone with the heavens and the hills.

AT SILVAPLANA.

Here, where, murmuring low, the infant Inn
Sings its ditty scrannel,
Slow meandering on through shoal and linn,
Of the sunlight drinking
And to Campfer Silvaplana linking,
Mother as to daughter,

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With the network of its double channel,
Here, where now it open to the sight is
And the sunshine, light is fluid water,
Water liquid light is.

Here, where slantwise 'tis with sunlight shot,
All is topaz-yellow,
Olive there or green as peridot,
Purple there as mallow,
There moss-agate brown, as deep or shallow
Runs the river shining,
Every thread of water than its fellow
Brighter, as it of the glitterance dual's
Pierced, a still entwining, unentwining
Woven work of jewels.

Like some elfin web of light and colour,
Changing and renewing,
With the sunshine growing brighter, duller,
Some phantasmagoric
Painted window in some prehistoric
Sorcerer's castle-eyry,
Picture upon picture still ensuing,
Shines it. I could stand and gaze for ever:
But Life calls me from this dream of Faerie
Back to dull endeavour.

WILLOW-SONG.

Night and Day,
Get you gone from me away!
Of Life's smooth and of its rough
Tired am I. Enough, enough
Have I had of dark and light,
Day and Night.

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Light and Love,
Get you back to Heaven above!
Weary am I of you both:
In the one there is no troth,
In the other no delight;
Love and Light.

Life and Death,
Leave your battle for my breath!
Both I hold you nothing worth:
This a slave to second birth,
That is sad with thought and strife,
Death and Life.

Nought and Sleep,
Come and gulph me in your deep!
You, to you alone I'm fain.
Come and cover me from pain;
Shelter me from sorry thought,
Sleep and Nought!

COUNTERPARTS.

I.

When the Spring is in the bud
And the sap is in the spray,
When the young year's flowering blood
Runs in rapture night and day
And a-carol's every wood
With the promise of the Prime,
I know not whence it cometh, in the middle-sweets of May,
But my soul is sick bytime
With a sickness of dismay.

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It may be that they mind me,
With their bird-song and their bloom,
Of the Springs that are behind me,
In the silence of the tomb,
Of the years that have consigned me
To the close of Sad Content:
It may be, nay, it must be, that the sadnesses which bind me,
In the time of song and scent,
Are from memory's treasure-room.

II.

When the brakes are brown
And the underwood is sere,
When the leaves drop down,
When the fields are blank and drear
And the heavens are all a-frown
For the waning of the year,
I know not what the portent is for pleasance or for fear,
But my soul is oft astir
With a strange and subtle cheer.

It may be that it cometh
Of the thought of life in death,
Of the tune the ruddock hummeth,
Of the word the spicy breath
Of the dying leaves that summeth,
“Life must die to live again.”
It may be, nay, it must be, that the heart in me becometh
Stirred to solace out of pain,
Out of death that life foresaith.

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LOVE'S END.

In the deep woods we went, dim with the nearing night:
The dying sunset gilt the tree-stems with its light:
A star or two on high already was in sight.

We followed, without speech, the sombre forest-way:
Each unto each, indeed, no more we had to say;
For to an end, alas! our love was come, like Day.

Night hovered o'er our heads, as 'twere a vulture, fain
To swoop upon its prey; but, ere in Heaven inane
It grew, dead night it was within our souls in pain.

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Forth to the plain we passed from out that heart of green:
Upon the yellowing wheat, like some primaeval queen,
The dying sunlight lay, impassive and serene.

A quail afar kept up its shrill continuous cry.
Then, sudden as a flood down-loosened from on high,
The darkness fell and night enveloped earth and sky.

The quail had ceased to chant its monotone of dole;
The shadows swallowed up the sunset, pole to pole;
Void everywhere and void eternal in my soul.

Through the wide meadows, set with oaks a century old,
The lone hay-scented ways, in silence stern and cold,
We followed, till the ground, slow-sloping, fold on fold,

Left open to our sight, across the narrow stream,
The belfry's feudal tower, that, blank of cresset-beam,
Stood sentinel above the drowsing hamlet's dream.

Silence o'er all and night: nought but the ripples' flow
To hearken. In the West, upon the horizon low,
A trembling star diffused its melancholy glow.

Our wandering steps we stayed, whereas the meadow-ways
Bent to the burgh, amidst the fleecy herds a-graze,
That with their mild slow air of doubt on us did gaze.

Eyes fixed on other's eyes, long looked we, each on each,
As if, in that supreme sad moment, fain to reach
The secret of our souls; then parted, without speech,

In silence. What availed discourse? It was the end.
Without handclasp or kiss, farewell of friend to friend,
We each of us our way disconsolate did wend.

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Then, “Of Eternity,” quoth I unto the case,
“Why speak and say that death is but a halting-place,
“Wherefrom the soul shall rise, reclad with a new grace?

“Who shall be found to deem such doctrine credit-worth,
“Since Love, the source of life and principle of birth,
“Comes quicklier to an end than anything on earth?

“If we must rise again from underneath the grass,
“Why, then, of holiest Love, that brings all life to pass,
“Should nought (excepting hate it be) abide, alas?”

WELTSCHMERZ.

I.

Birds in the night
Thrilled my heart with their warning
Of woe;
Birds in the morning
Clamoured in choir, till the sun was in sight,
High and low,
Saddened my soul with a presage of sorrows,
Bade me bemoan me for weariful morrows.
In the noon-glow
Still went they wailing their message of warning,
Till the sun sank in the seas of forgetting:
Then, as the night
Followed, wide-winged, in the steps of the setting
And the day gathered its garments to go,
Took up the tale with the last of the light,
Whispered, “Heigho!”

II.

What was their meaning?
Nay, as I hearkened and hearkened, at first, it a warning

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Given to me,
A presage of evil to come, to my weening,
Seemed it must be.
Yet, as I listened, came daybreak, and morning on morning,
Night upon night;
Dawn after dawn through the deeps of the darkness outhollowed
Its way to the light;
Sun after sun rose and set; moons waxed red and waxed white:
Yet, in despite
All that I feared, there came nought of the stress I awaited;
None of the buffets I looked for from Fortune's unright
Fell on my head from the cloud-rack above me; nought followed
Other than that of the courses of night and of day,
Other than that by world's wont and life's usance forefated.
Brighter my day than of wont was, indeed, not nor duller;
Still went the stream of my life its monotonous way;
Nothing there happened to hasten it: yet was its colour Still the same grey.

III.

Then to myself, Why perturb thee, I said, with the seeking
Ill, where there's none?
Why in the bird-voices hear, with their dole thine own eking,
Up from their graves sorrows calling long dead and fordone,
Auguries evil of days and of nights unbegun?
Knowest thou not, by the Past, how the theme of their speaking
Nowise thou art?
Nay, but the canker incurable, still that lies eating
At the world's heart,
All the wild pulses of pain passing words that are beating
Still in its veins,
All the despair that dumb Nature is ever repeating,
Still in her speech inarticulate for the outspelling
Striving, with thunders and lightnings and tempests and rains,
This, this it is that the birds in their fashion are telling,
Not of thy dole

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Chanting nor yet at thy fortune for fair or foul guessing.
Nay, still in song, they, the sorrows of Nature expressing,
Tell the ineffable tale of the pain that is pressing
On the world's soul.

ALAS!

I saw a woman with your eyes to-day,
My love, long-lost unto my sorry sight;
Your graceful, tender, birdlike turn of head,
Your very same half-hesitating play
Of humour round the lips, your delicate
Rose-campion mouth and forehead wildflower-white,
Your dainty trick of speech, my love long dead,
Your very voice she had and kind child-air.
The same half-fluttering, half-lingering gait,
As of a linnet on the point of flight,
The same soft-scrolled volute of shimmering hair,
The same ineffable mysterious flame
In the shy glance, the same caressing light
In the faint smile, half frolicsome, half sad,
That none might see but needs withal must name
The April dawning's flush of rosy shame,
Your every fashion, every trait she had,
Nothing there lacked of all your grace. My dear,
It was yourself of many a bygone year.

I deemed you dead and buried long ago,
Nought left of you except two words on stone
And in my heart a charact'ry of woe
And rapture for remembrance misery grown.
But there, before my waking sight, again,
In the sheer sunshine, — no mere phantom vain
From out the sorry storehouse of the Past,
On the blank night by mocking Memory cast,
To waken sorrow with its wavering show, —
In flesh and blood you stood and shone. Heigho!

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I deemed you dead, my dear, and there you were,
Grown live and warm again and young and fair.

But, when I moved to greet you and to ask
For tidings of the world from which you came, —
The world beyond the darkness and the day,
Of which this world is but the fleeting mask, —
When my lips parted with the lovely name
I knew you by, before you passed away,
You looked upon me with a blank dismay,
As one, accosted by a stranger, starts,
Amazed, affrighted at she knows not what
In one whose voice she doth not recognize.
In the far dream of death you had forgot
My face and all that was between our hearts
Of love; and from your dear-beloved eyes
A stranger soul looked out that knew me not.

Five times five years, lapsed over my dismay,
Had softened down my sufferance to regret.
Still for the piteous Past I grieved and yet
I would not have the sad sweet days that were
Unlived, their sorrow was so far more fair
Than all Life's joys; nor would I fain forget
One single pain of all their sacred pains.
Grief, with the early and the latter rains,
Had mellowed down to somewhat far more rare
And sweet than joy, as, in the April lanes,
Rarer than roses is the violet.
In dreams, indeed, you have come back to me;
And sadder still you left me with the day:
Yet were you still yourself, to touch and see,
Not only such as you were wont to be
In flesh and blood; but in your eyes Love lay
Still lieger and in all your lips might say,
The old sweet harmony betwixt us two
Still stirred and showed in all that you might do.

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Alack! What cruel hand this web of ours
Is it that weaves? What spirit of despite
Can it have been that stirred the cynic powers,
Who cast the courses of the day and night,
To raise you up again in the sun's sight
And the full face of stars and moon and flowers,
In the old semblance, but on inner wise
How different, alas! — my sorry eyes
To mock, to blow the embers of my grief,
Time-tempered, up into the old despair
And rob my sorrow of its sole relief,
The thought that, still, unchanged, however Death
May mangle this our life of mortal breath,
Your soul mine own awaiteth otherwhere?
Less woe it were to know you in the tomb,
With the old halo yet about your head,
Than see you walk the world in all your bloom
Of youth and sweetness, Time-untouched and whole,
Yet other than you were! For, you being dead,
I had not lost in you, as now, all part.
Your body lives, but by a stranger soul,
Whose heart no memory bindeth to my heart,
Alien to all our loves, inhabited.
Ah, sadder far than any death could be,
You live, but not, but not, alas! for me.

POLARITIES.

If life were love
And joy came down with men from Heaven above
To dwell and ease them of the eternal stress,
Think you that humankind
Were better, lovesomer
Than now it is, in this our purblind press
Of loveless striving, driven before the wind
Of need to all excess

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Of hate and greed by Fate's relentless spur?
Not so. Were life all love and gladness, we,
As hate now, love would flee
And venture all, despair, as pleasance now, to find.

If fear to hope
Transmuted were and men no more to grope
Were in the darkling galleries doomed of doubt,
Think you, the world would be
A happier then than now,
When for bare life, against the rabble rout
Of pains and cares, from which we may not flee,
We needs, year in, year out,
Must battle with strained sense and bursting brow?
Not so. If such a case might happen, men
Would die for gladness then,
As now, in this old world, they live for misery.

Even as of shade
The counterpart to be hath light been made,
So joy of sorrow, pleasance of annoy
And justice of unright
Are natural complements
And mates inseparable. Repose would cloy,
Were labour not, to teach us its delight:
There comes no spark of joy
But from the cease of pain unto our sense.
Love's self is but the counterpart of hate,
As peace is of debate;
And nothing here exists but by its opposite.

As without night
Day might not be nor darkness without light,
As Summer Autumn makes and Winter Spring,
As, without snow-time, May
No seeds would have for bloom,

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So joy with us, except for sorrowing,
Might not abide nor love our cares allay,
Except hate were, to bring
Its radiance out with keen-contrasting gloom.
Faith, save by unfaith shaded, none might see;
And still in Life must be
Unto the Eternal Yes opposed the Eternal Nay.