Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

A dreamer, with my dream,
But as a bubble on Life's troubled stream,
I fare among the folk who play at toil,
Who toil at play,
In labour vain the light, the midnight oil
Who waste nor dark from day
Know in pursuance of the things that seem.

No word to me they speak:
If, once-a-while, among the toys they seek
So eagerly, their eyes upon me light,
With dull amaze
They overlook me and unseeing sight
And their indifferent gaze
Turn to the wishward of their goal unique.

Rain, wind, moon, sun, sky, star,
All witness for me that my dream by far
More real is than their unreal strife;
My visions sooth
And splendid truer than their things of life,
Whose days and nights, age, youth,
After a dull delusion wasted are.

So let them go their way!
What matter how they waste Life's little day?
But I withal unto my dream I hold;
For that, at least,
My thought yet young, when all around is old,
Keeps, with plant, bird and beast,
And holds my heart green, if my head be grey.

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EGOMET.

I have been young and now am old,
Yet never garnered other gold
Than that of song, the sweet, the never-dying,
Nor sought for other silver still
Than that which pipe and string distil,
To set, at music's hest, the magic echoes flying.

I now am old, that have been young,
Yet ne'er of otherwhat have sung
Than that I loved, though all the world might scoff it:
I never sought the praise of slaves
Nor spared to blame the cheating knaves
Who fool, in Freedom's name, the people for their profit.

I have been young and now am old,
Yet never let my heart grow cold
To that which fair and true and good I wotted,
Still strove in silence to ensue
The highest things whereof I knew
And from this woeful world to hold myself unspotted.

I now am old, that have been young,
Yet never sought by hand or tongue
To pleasure fools or cringe for fame and riches.
Else had I eath been one of those
Who take the public taste and pose
As temporary Gods in temporary niches.

My cap (a cap of darkness dead
To most) I kept upon my head
Nor would, for vantage' sake, to dulness doff it
Nor mingle with the huckst'ring throng,
That drive their trade in art and song,
And made me many a foe of knave and lying prophet.

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The thrushes and the nightingales
My tutors were and told me tales
Of their own heaven, its music to me bringing,
That deafened me to meaner notes:
And so, when many other throats,
That once were full of song, are mute, I still am singing.

SONG-STRESS.

High-water time
And the world all aflood with the flush of the incoming rhyme!
What matter for Winter and fogtime and frost-time and snow,
When the floodgates are up and the river of rhyme is aflow?

Trouble and toil
And the world with the surges of sorrow and strife all aboil!
What matter for sorrow and morrow and doubting and dole,
When the songbirds of Heaven are abroad in the spheres of the soul?

Long is it, long
Since thou heark'nedst and camest to comfort me, Spirit of Song!
Now that thou here art, I care not: the world is forgot:
Love, Love lord once more in my life is. The rest matters not.

SONG-TIDE.

When the sweetheart Spring
Comes its pleasantness to bring
And its broideries for the bridal of the year,
When the season is of singing
And the woods and wolds are ringing
With the carols loud and clear

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Of the many-coloured flying feathered choir,
When the world upon the wing
Brings its homage to the king
And the earth and sea and heavens are grown a living lyre,
I am silent, only I:
From the concert of the songsters far and nigh,
Forth their soaring souls for joy to heaven that fling,
Only absent is my note;
For the throstle in my throat
Fallen dumb is, why I know not, and I have no song to sing.

Nay, the case the same
Is when Summer's skies aflame
For the festival of June are and July,
When the riot of the roses
In the radiant garden-closes
And the jessamines runs high,
When the daisies fill the fields up to the brink,
When the tall white lilies rise,
Like archangels in flower-guise,
And the hollyhocks stand sentinel o'er pæony and pink.
In the hot midsummer hush,
I am silent with the blackbird and the thrush,
As when all the world in slumber steeping lies
Under August's heaven of brass
And the cricket in the grass
To the land-rail and the wheatear in the corn alone replies.

Nor, when autumn weaves
Webs of gold and crimson leaves
For the faded woods' funereal wede of state,
When the wandering winds go sighing
For the year that lies a-dying
And the Winter's at the gate,
When, like herbs and spices strewn upon a bier,
The sense from the dead sheaves,
That strew the ways, perceives

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A bitter breath of incense for the funeral of the year,
When the robin flutes alone,
For the other birds are either mute or flown,
And the swallows hold high council in the eaves
For departure to the South,
Disenchanted is my mouth;
And still the same mysterious spell of silence to me cleaves.

But, when Winter's hand,
Laid and heavy on the land,
All the life in field and flood with frost benumbs,
When the snows, like a dead lover,
Earth with shrouds of ermine cover
And the starving robin comes
To the window for the food he cannot find,
When the trees like spectres stand,
By some strong enchanter's hand
Struck and starkened into stillness and the ways with snow are blind,
Then at last my heart awakes
From its slumber and the seal of silence breaks;
And like tides that roll and riot o'er the strand,
From my loosened lips once more,
With the wave-rush and the roar
Of the orchestra, the songs flock forth, a multisonous band.

SONGS' END.

These forty days,
Alone have I with thee, dear Spirit of Delight,
That lov'st the Wintertide, gone wandering, noon and night,
Song's solitary ways.

On wonted wise,
Stooping from heaven sudden, upon thy wings of rhyme,
Thou bor'st me off from snows and sorrows to the clime
Of sun and summer skies.

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No desert lands
Are those whereto thou me, too little oft, alas!
Bear'st, no Sahara-waste, ceiled with a sky of brass,
Fire raining on red sands.

A mild sun there
Tendeth eternal Spring and 'neath the plumy palms,
With roses red and white mimics the radiant calms
Of Paradise's air.

By its field-paths
Not asphodels alone and amaranths etern
Glitter, but cornflowers there and crimson poppies burn
In the lush meadow-swaths.

There land and sea
Are rounded with a rhyme. The breezes, as they go,
Vie in a verse and songs for wayside blossoms blow
On every hedge and tree.

There, Soul of Song,
In that fair land with thee have I gone wandering
Once more and filled my sheaf with the bright flowers that spring
Its sunny ways along.

And now, alack!
My six weeks' harvesting in hand, (Ah, how much more
Fain had I gathered in from off that flowerful shore!)
Perforce thou bring'st me back

And without word
Of promise or farewell, sudden, as thou didst alight
With me, fleest back again to where in Heaven's height
Thou dwell'st, celestial bird;

Whilst, from my dream,
With vision-dazzled eyes, awakening, I, anon,
Through workday windows, frost-bedizened, stare upon
This world of things that seem.

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THE POET'S LOT.

He who from Heaven, by grace
Of the Supernal Powers, his ancestry doth trace,
Who in Life's Babel speaks the language of the Gods
And in our woeful world of cant and commonplace,
Treads, with uplifted front, with thought-transfigured face
And eyes withinward turned, Earth's fallow fruitless clods,
His breast with triple brass
Must mail, if he would pass,
Unshaken in his faith, athwart this battle-space
Of greed and dullness, one against unnumbered odds.

Unsparing is the scorn
Wherewith the rogue, the fool regard the heaven-born.
In this our sorry scheme of dull humanity,
Our madhouse of mankind, of love and faith forlorn,
The darkness hates the day, the night reviles the morn,
The weed disdains the rose, the bramble flouts the tree;
And they, by light Divine
Their fellows who outshine,
No crown can hope but one that's tressed with many a thorn
And persecuted still of men must look to be.

“Do as thy fellows do,”
The voice of humankind proclaims; “or thou shalt rue:”
And he who sets his face toward another goal,
Following the beacon-light shed by the Fair, the True,
Than that which all folk else, like silly sheep, pursue,
Shall find himself outcast from fellowship and sole.
No friend's, no lover's smile
His travail shall beguile,
No comrade clasp his hand: but he, till death ensue,
Shall walk the world alone, a solitary soul.

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Nor solitude alone
Enough shall holden be his trespass to atone.
No common vengeance may the raging rancour sate,
The spite of the mean soul, to whom perforce his own
Dark by the shining beams of other's light is shown.
Needs th'unconfessed despair in his own breast to abate,
To appease the gnawing smart
Of envy in his heart,
Seek must he him who shames his dulness to dethrone
And crucify his name upon the cross of hate.

Yet, though to mortal pain
The poet, mortal born, to bow the head must deign,
Nay, by the gift his soul that opens to the Fair,
The True, far deeplier feels the Foul than the profane,
One solace still he hath, that never was in vain.
Nature is on his side; her things his secret share:
The flowers with him are one,
The shadows and the sun;
He communes with the rills, the sunlight and the rain,
And his heart's language hears in all the winds of air.

So, with unbended head,
As one a desert fares, that's peopled by the dead,
With his own heaven's clear air encompassed, passeth he.
If to his songs the folk, by lies and hate misled,
List not, he knows that these will live, when those are sped,
Being with the voices one of earth and sky and sea;
And ended when Life's night,
He goes back to the Light,
As who returneth home to his ancestral stead,
One with the One Great Soul content again to be.

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NOT ALL IN VAIN.

Not all in vain
The lightning and the thunder and the rain!
Without the Winter's sufferance and the snows,
The earth uneath might bear the lily and the rose.

Not all in vain,
Poet, for thee the stress of heart and brain!
'Tis from the opposing shock of Right and Wrong
The electric flash proceeds that stirs the seeds of song.

Not all in vain
Life's seeding-stage of unenlightened pain!
Without its chastening stress, unfit, sad soul,
Wert thou to be made one with the Undifferenced Whole.

POPULO.

Ne'er have I stooped to pipe, o public of the day,
For thine indifference,
Nor ever was of those the mountebank who play,
To stir thy dullard sense.

Well wist I of the price which he must pay perforce,
Who dares to hold aloof
From thy dull marts and feasts, who scorns thy vain discourse,
Thy blame and thine approof.

I knew thou holdst the keys of earthly good and ill,
That those who flatter not
Thy foolishness nor fawn on thine unreasoning will
Have here a lonely lot;

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That they must look to pass their lives in gloom and cold,
From all that they have sown
But Sad Content, at best, to reap and to grow old,
Unfriended and alone.

The unspeakablest of sins, the unpardonable crime,
Lése-majesté in chief,
It is one's way to go nor halloo with the time's
Base joy and senseless grief.

Rob, murder, slander, forge, lie, wanton; yet no stroke
Of blame on you shall fall,
So but you bend your neck beneath the general yoke
And do as others all.

All else may pardoned be; but he his life who lives,
Who breathes with his own breath,
The sin unspeakable commits, which none forgives,
And hated is to death.

This all I knew and made my choice to be of those
Who will not wear thy chain:
The ways of thy mislike, not of thy praise, I chose
And yet would choose again.

For those whom thou hast banned in every age and clime
Are hallowed of thy hate;
The cause o'er thee they've won in the High Court of Time
And left those desolate

Whom thou with thine approof exaltedst to the skies
And who, to judgment brought,
Must shrink, without appeal, back from that stern assize
Into their native nought.

The same art thou as those, Ben Jonson heretofore
To Shakspeare who preferred,
Who hailed Béranger king, in triumph Musset bore
And Gautier left unheard,

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Who suffered Schubert starve and passing Berlioz by,
The feet of Auber kissed,
Tchaikowsky, Dvorak, Brahms, applauded to the sky
And scorned tbe name of Liszt.

So look thou not for me to be of those who pipe
For thee to dance unto:
None am I of the base lickspittle gutter-snipe,
The vulgar, venal crew,

That kiss thy foolish feet and please thine idiot pride,
So on thy meat and wine
They may feed full and in thy praise's chariots ride
And fatten with thy swine.

Far rather the dry bread of poverty I'd eat
Than batten on thy love;
The cup of water cold of freedom I hold sweet,
Thy richest wines above.

Far rather would I see thee spit upon my name
Than be of thine elect;
Far fainer be of those who're belted with thy blame
And crowned with thy neglect.

QUIA AMORE LANGUEO.

That which of the pleasant Prime,
Of the splendid summer hours,
Of the sad enchanted time
Of the mists and snows and showers,
Of the Winter and the Spring,
Clouds and sunshine, flowers and trees,
Skies and butterflies and bees,

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Willy nilly, makes me sing,
That which of the beasts and birds
Makes me carol with winged words,
Like the lark-notes on the breeze,
Neither lore nor art nor skill
Is nor stress of straining thought,
Into measured music wrought
By the labour of the will:
Nay, a higher 'tis than these,
Otherwhat, beyond, above;
'Tis the power by which they are,
That which moveth sun and star,
'Tis the world-creator, Love.

Love for plant and bird and beast
Hath in me the major part;
Love for Nature's most and least
Thrones it in my heart of heart:
Not that men withal I hate;
But the things which fly and fare
On the earth and in the air
More at one with me I rate;
Better, purer, to my mind,
Kinder are they than my kind.
Birds, beasts, flowers and breezes share
Not alone my hours of ease,
But my sadder sorrier case
Cheer and solace; wherefore these
All of Nature's humbler race,
All the beasts that burdens bear,
All the birds upon the wing,
All the things of sea and shore,
Wood and meadow, more and more,
Year by year, I love and sing.

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IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN OF GOLD, THEY THOUGHT.

“It should have been of gold, they thought: but Jupiter was poor; this was the best the God could give them.” Ruskin. Preface to “The Crown of Wild Olive.”

I.

What matter for the stuff?
So but the crown,
The symbol of renown,
Be on thy head set by the Gods, enough
Is't not, of iron black, although, or copper brown
The coronal be wrought.
Although of silver scrolls and golden horns
It lack, it skilleth nought.
The highest soul, from Heaven that e'er came down
To earth, for prophet-gown
A cere-cloth had, for crown a wreath of thorns.
Though rough thy crown to see,
What matter if it be?
When all is done,
The metal's value oft the jewel mars:
What gold can give the semblance of the sun,
What silver ape the splendour of the stars?

What matter for the kind?
Whether beneath
The massive mural wreath
The temples ache, whether soft parsley bind
The brows or olive-leaves, for chaplet cool and eath,
Circle the heavy head,
Whether sweet violets crown thee or the cirque
Of iron furnace-red,
That tears the martyr's flesh with flaming teeth,
Thy front in fire ensheath,

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The glory 'tis that's reckoned, not the irk.
If gold it be or not,
The form's the thing, God wot,
The form that is the symbol of the spheres;
The pearls that sort with it are happy tears,
The sobs from song-delivered hearts that well,
The sapphires solaced griefs, the rubies fears,
To hopes transmuted by the poet's spell.

II.

What matter for the cost?
To the true soul,
So but it gain its goal,
The world and all its treasures were well lost.
It maketh no account of suffered stress or dole
Endured in honour's quest.
The glory gotten and the worship won,
If fate permit, to rest
Were sweet. If not, having drained its wish's bowl,
It taketh leave, heart-whole,
Nor sighs to have looked its last upon the sun.
Though sore have been the stress
Of winning, none the less
Worth is the prize
That through Hell's furnace one should fare, unshod.
Alcides but on flames ascends the skies;
It is the crucifixion crowns the God.

What matter how or when?
The crown's the thing.
King calleth unto king,
Above the heads of miserable men,
Who for the thunder take their speech's echoing
Athwart the ages dim,
Their looks for lightnings and their tears for rain,
Falling from Heaven's blue rim,

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Their voices for the Gods', the spheres', that ring
An instant, volleying,
And then for many a day are mute again.
Though long the waiting years
And dark with doubts and fears
The days when all upon their heads heaped scorn,
The dearer is the diadem, when torn
From the dull folk and the despiteful Fates,
As in the heavens brightlier beams the morn,
When the new sun hath stormed the tempest's gates.

III.

The poet's crown is thorns;
Its broidery keen,
Its web of wreathing sheen,
Are woven of weary nights and woeful morns,
For scrolls with strange delights, beyond men's wit, beseen,
For jewelry with joys,
Such to the meaner vision of his mates
As seem but idle toys,
The spirit-gladnesses, whereof few ween,
In this our world terrene,
But which his soul transport to Eden's gates.
His life is lived in these;
This that he hears and sees
Insensible
Makes him to earthly joys, to pleasures cold,
And causes him regard as pains of hell
Much that his fellow-men for sweet and solace hold.

His joys wealth cannot buy:
Upon the breeze
There comes, to give him ease,
Some waft of scent celestial from on high,
Some robin's lilt, that flutes upon the leafless trees,
Some stirring in the air,

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Some tone of tender colour in the cloud,
Some strain unearthly fair,
Some song of waves in other-worldly seas,
Some glimpse of far-off leas,
Some fair face shining from the senseless crowd,
Some wind-voice in the elms,
With message from the realms
Full-fraught, whereof this world of woe and wail
Is but the sense-spun, eye-deluding veil,
— Things over-subtle for our sphere of cease,
That soothe his spirit, sick of Life's long ail,
With passing breaths of balm and strange celestial peace.

IV.

None other recompense
Than this hath he.
The things, that sweet to see
Are in men's eyes, to his diviner sense
Are meaningless and vain as shadows on the lea;
Excepting only Love:
But this, whereby his fellows glorified
And raised themselves above
Whiles are, of him alone forsworn must be.
(To Him of Galilee,
Prometheus, Buddha, was not Love denied?)
Here must he walk alone;
No queen may share his throne,
No friend the way fare with him, hand in hand.
His kingship, being of an unknown land,
Of men accounted is to him for blame
And from this world, based on Time's shifting sand,
But when he is by death delivered, works for fame.

V.

Yet, poet, wear thou this
Thy crown, content.

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What though thy brows intent
Its thorn-embroidery o'er-roughly kiss?
It solveth thee from need of earthly solacement.
Since first the world grew green,
Fools only earthly happy, now as then,
Have in Life's dustheap been.
Sorrow with those who've known Heaven's ravishment
And smelt its roses' scent
Still dwells and Gods are sad and kings of men.
Yet better far a king
To be, through suffering,
Than, swine-like glad,
In ignorant slavery to grovel here;
Better the highest to have known and sad
For lack thereof to live than drowse in dullard cheer.

FORSITAN.

In the clay
Lie and rot thou must some day.
'Twixt thy pleasures and thy woes
Death his hand shall interpose,
Making even these as those.

In that hour
One Life's sweet shall and its sour
Be unto thy lips, and one
Shall things done be and undone,
Day and darkness, shade and sun.

Then of thee
Nothing shall remembered be:
Other men shall by thy thought
Profit and to honour brought
Be by that which thou hast wrought.

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On thy dust
Other men shall upward thrust
From thine ashes, like a flame,
Burying thy forgotten name
Underneath their borrowed fame.

Worth and wit,
Goodness, genius, learned writ,
Toilful hand and careful mind,
Skill to seek and faith to find,
All shall pass as idle wind.

Only this
Shall thy memory from the abyss
Save, belike, that thou some rhyme
Mayst begotten have, whose chime
In the measure falls of Time;

Which, its beat
To the rhythm of his feet
Answering, — he may not deny
Far to fare with him and nigh,
Still with him to live and die;

Such as he,
Fast unto his company
Finding cleave, as flesh to bone,
And withal accustomed grown,
Takes and keeps it for his own.

For that strong,
Over all things, is true song,
Song, that, soughten not with art,
Surges, as the wellsprings start,
From the sources of the heart.

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Hew and build;
Statues in thy memory gild;
Grave thy name on steel and brass;
Make the world thy looking-glass:
All shall fade and all shall pass.

Song alone
Overdureth steel and stone,
Overweigheth toil and treasure,
Still with its harmonious measure
Modulating pain and pleasure.

CROSS-PURPOSES.

The wind, where it listeth, still bloweth
Nor recketh of you or of me;
The tide, when its season is, floweth;
Its voice is the voice of the sea.

The bird, in its nesting-time, singeth,
For song is the voice of its soul;
The thought, where it willeth, still wingeth,
Uncareful of aught but its goal.

The earth bears its fruits in their season,
For all that the critics may say,
Nor ever will “listen to reason”
Nor barter December for May.

Each tree, its own kind after, fruiteth,
Some acid and sweet other some.
To say to the apple what booteth,
“A peach shouldst thou be or a plum?”

Each bird hath its song-singing minute,
Night, morning, noon, even, light, dark.
What skilleth it blackbird as linnet
Or nightingale bid be as lark?

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Each flower hath its bloom, willy nilly:
The fool's part to bid 'twere, God knows,
The wallflower be white as the lily,
The violet red as the rose.

The thought that is born in the poet
He renders anew in his song
Nor asks if the dunce for good know it
Or evil, for right or for wrong.

The things that are given him he giveth,
Unknowing of good or of bad;
The life that is lent him he liveth
Nor recketh of sorry or glad.

One biddeth him this and another
Be that; but the poet, trust me,
Himself is, my critical brother,
And may not be other than he.

THE LIGHTS OF HEAVEN.

Flowers of daybreak, growing, glowing, in the East,
For the feast
On the blue horizon blossomed of the birth of merry morn,
Sure your influences you showered on my head, when I was born;
It was you that salved me then
With the spells that drew my dreams up, through the bars
Of this gaol of pride and passion, to the spheres beyond the stars;
And you gave me for a dower
Then to love the morning hour
And its peace yet unpolluted by the stress of striving men.

Gold of noontide, spreading, shedding on the earth
Light and mirth,

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For the banquet of the bridal of the world-all and the sun,
I have cherished you from childhood till my days are well nigh done;
And to-day, when I am old,
More than ever, with new knowledge, now I prize
Your effulgences of glory in the summer-smalted skies;
And of this my wiser eld
Less and less of value held
Are the things of earthly treasure by your Heaven-minted gold.

Sunset-standards, gleaming, streaming in the West,
O'er the breast
Of old Ocean far-outfluttered for the funeral of the Day,
Still my thought was fain to follow on your feet the Westward way;
Still you lured and led me far
In your train and ever farther, o'er the wave,
Tow'rd the mirages upmounting from the dying sun's sea grave:
And with youth long past, alack!
Still I follow in your track
To the spirit's Eldorados underneath the evening star.

Mild moon-silver, steeping sleeping earth and skies,
Hallow-wise,
In the sacrament of silence and the benison of night,
Dulcet influences of Nature, candid creatures of the light,
I have loved you all my life
With a love that passeth passion; and I trust,
When my spirit soars, delivered from this dungeon of the dust,
To be one again with you,
With the flowers, the rain, the dew,
At the term of Fate foreordered for the solving of my strife.

MARCH-MUSIC.

We, that were born
Erst for the travel of the spheres of the sun and the lands of the sky-light,
Sons of the morn,

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Yet that must dwell
In the gloom and the grey
Still of Life's cell,
Here with the folk of the fens and the tribes of the low-lying twilight,
Fenced and forlorn
In the shadow of Hell,
Far from the lilt of the lark and the dream of the day,

How should we do
Here, if we had not the hope and the lore of the lands of our birthright,
Yonder in the blue,
Ever at heart?
How should we live,
If, for our part,
Fancy, foretelling the morning to us and the end of our earth-night,
Dawning nigh due,
Yet, of its art,
Solace and succour to constancy came not to give?

Many is the sign
Cometh to us from the cliffs and the plains of the place of our rearing,
From the Divine
Valleys of our birth:
Here, where we grope
In the gloom of the earth,
Many a token of tenderness send they in season for cheering
Us, in our pine,
Easing our dearth,
Lightening our hearts in Life's darkness with daybeams of hope.

Now an acclaim
'Tis of some angel that hails us and calls, from the far empyrean,
Us by the name
Borne of us, ere
To this den of the dark
Banished we were:

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Now 'tis the song of some bird in the blue, as, with pealing of pæan,
Flowering of flame,
Over Heaven's air,
Daybreak comes broad'ning and brightening, arc upon arc.

Now 'tis some flower,
That, with its innocent face from the hedge-rows itself half-revealing,
Hallows the hour,
Or, though unseen,
Yet with its breath
Solves us of spleen;
Now 'tis some light-streak, some cloud-waft of colour or fragrance, that, stealing
Soft over our
Sense, doth it wean
Back unto life everlasting from darkness and death.

Now 'tis some wave,
That with its light-lymph Life's sea-sands and pebbles to jewels transmuting,
Cometh to save
Us from the gloom
And the poison of thought
In the shadow of doom:
Now 'tis some nightingale, under the blossoming hawthorn-boughs fluting,
Calls from the grave
Of the Past-time to bloom
And to beauty the dreams and the days that have passed into nought.

Mountains and seas,
Meadows, streams, moorlands, woods, fountains, lakes, all with their voices come bringing
Solace and ease
Unto his spright
That is born of the climes
Where day is not nor night.
These the themes give us, the substance, the texture and tune of our singing:
Yea, 'tis of these
Love we and light,
Music and mystery take to transfigure our rhymes.

236

Thus, here below,
Exiles, we solace our souls with the lore and the balms of our birthlands,
Borne to us so:
Thus, through the haze
Of this prison of ours,
Chanting the praise
Of the goods and the glories unprized and unknown of the tribes of the earthlands,
Singing we go,
Heartened the days
So to endure, as they limp through the doubt-darkened hours.

HORAE.

Break of day! The white light enters,
On the bed
Falling, flashing news of morning to the centres
Of the thought within my head.

Morning-tide! The sun-rays glisten
On my chair:
On the hearth-rug sit the waiting cats and listen
For my step upon the stair.

Noon! The brimming streets before me
Pass and go,
Like phantasmagoric pictures: their uproar me
Heaves and carries to and fro.

Afternoon! The raging roaring
Streets again;
And the rhymes rise, making music, passing, pouring
Through my heartstrings and my brain.

Vespertide! My fingers, straying
O'er the keys,
Make faint music, like the airs of Summer playing
In the orange-laden trees.

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Evenglome! The lamplight falling
On my board;
Busy thought what Day to birth hath brought recalling,
As the pen doth it record.

Middle night! The room lamp-litten:
By the glow
Sit I musing. On my shoulder purrs the kitten
And the cat my feet below.

Sleepingtide! The moon-rays, shining
Through the glass,
Light the dreams, that, still entwining, unentwining,
Through the slumbering fancy pass.

ANIMA CUM ANIMO.

I.

SOUL, (to my soul said I,) what of my stress shall the ending be?
Still shall life lapse for me thus without love, without light?
Shall there no ease for me, shall there no cease from contending be,
Till day go down with me into the graves of the night?

Still from my youth for the things of the spirit I've striven;
All in their stead that Life proffered me scorned have I still:
Still to the quest of the highest myself have I given,
Turned a deaf ear to the whispers of Wish and of Will.

Set was my face, from the first of my course, to the living
The life as in death that they lead who would better than life:
Love and its sweets, for my dream's sake, I grudged not th'upgiving,
Life's flowerpaths forsook for the sandwastes whose flower-age is strife.

238

Pleasantness present, Life's Spring, in the lush and the sweet of it,
Erst in my bloomtide I banished and exiled from me;
Youth and the harvest of joyance it yields, in the heat of it,
Gave up and girt me for battle and travail to be.

Drunk was my soul with a dream of desire for the gaining
That which no man in the world 'neath the moon ever won;
Fevered with phantasms of hope was my heart of attaining
Countries uncompassed by courses of star or of sun,

Realms such as redden in regions beyond the sun's setting,
Homes such as harbour for fancy in dimness of dreams,
Kingdoms of cloudland, that lapse and are gone in the getting,
Blisses that waxen and wane with the westering beams.

My hopes and my dreams to the heedless I pledged for derisions,
Men's praises forswore and the gauds that they follow for goal,
Content on Life's bitters to batten, so only the visions
Might flower in my verse for the folk, that were sown in my soul.

I flung off the bondage of folly, opinion's fetter,
Disdaining to deal with the brethren of barter and sale,
And went mine own desolate way, never doubting but better,
Far better than basely to win it were nobly to fail.

The trader in honours cried out upon me to the schemer;
Against me the rancours arose of the huckstering crew;
And all cast their gibes and their jeers at the dunce and the dreamer,
Who scorned to compound with the slave and the cheat for his due.

239

The world, with its wont-blunted vision, its senses that ween not
Of aught that departs from the feet-furrowed highways of will,
The world my achievement passed over, as if it had been not,
And left it unguerdoned, unnoted for good or for ill.

Yet still have I followed, unfrustred, the quest, never quailing,
Life's lures still disdaining, its pleasures and passions put by,
Still wrought with my might, feet unfaltering and faith never failing,
Still duty my polestar, my landmark to live for and die.

Well wist I who seeketh the crown of the soul's consecration
Must pay down the price, give the gold of the goal at the start,
That the Gods hearken not unto any, except for oblation
He bring them his blood, for waive-offering the wish of his heart.

Well wist I strong dulness still brandeth the dreamers who brave it,
Still doometh them dwell without pleasance and perish alone;
I knew that my kind might not measure the gifts which I gave it,
Yet thought not to fare all unfriended, no hand in mine own.

Some faces, methought, I shall find, that will glow, when they greet me,
Some hearts that will throb, at the sound of my songs, with delight,
Some hands that will stretch over mountain and seascape to meet me,
Some eyes at the sight of my name that will sudden wax bright.

240

Alas, without Death and the Fates that forerule him I reckoned,
The Fates that first bring to the harvest the highest and best,
The fiat the first still that taketh and leaveth the second;
For whom the Gods love unto sleep they call early and rest.

And now all my lovers have left me; no light is that cheereth;
The world is a waste and but phantoms its folk to me seem:
My labour achieved, but its guerdon ungotten, night neareth,
Life lost in the quicksands, and still is my hope but a dream.

II.

SOUL, (my soul answered and said to me,) wherefore complainest thou?
Was not the bargain thine own which thou mad'st with the Fates?
Why for the lack thus lament thee of what thou disdainest, thou
That for thy thought's sake hast sundered thyself from thy mates?

Stands not in story the record of prophet and poet?
Burns not in chronicle still the unchangeable word?
Writ is it not that they reap not Truth's harvest who sow it?
When of the giver who throve by his gift was it heard?

Solace of love and world's ease and approof of the many,
When did these fall to his portion who strove for the light?
One is the choice; for the twain the Gods grant not to any:
Peace never mortal knew, wrong who would sunder from right.

Nay, hunger and thirst must he hail who would fill at Truth's fountains,
Would win to the cliffs in the clouds, where deep calleth to deep;

241

For pleasance and peace are the guests of the glens, not the mountains:
Void, void are the heights; 'tis the valleys where huddle the sheep.

Rail not at the stepmother age, at the world-dam that bore thee,
The she-wolf on bitters and briars that willed thee subsist.
No better entreated of her were Life's great ones before thee:
What guerdon had Gautier? what bay-leaves had Berlioz and Liszt?

Who, think you, of yore, in the cripple, the slave Epictetus,
In Socrates' self the soul's lawgivers noted and knew?
Who, think you, was ware of the Sun-God, when he for Admetus,
Heav'n-banished, went herding his kine with the earth-gotten crew?

What comrade in Shakspeare the glory conjectured, that graven
For highest (save one) should once be on the Tables of Praise?
Who guessed, in the law-biding burgess of Stratford-on-Avon,
The bard, who, approof overvaulting, should beggar the bays?

Nay, how did He fare in Whose name we invoke benediction,
The Man above men Whom we know by the name of the Christ?
The wage He deserved of His worldmates they deemed crucifixion;
His Godhead at thirty poor pieces of silver they priced.

242

For seldom in life due appraisement the saint or the sage hath;
For seldom the bays are bestowed but by chance or by fraud:
It is well if the true man bare bread for his hire and his wage hath:
Too oft for the trickster reserved are the meed and the laud.

But seldom the sheaves doth he share whose back beareth the burden;
The huckster still reaps and is rich by the husbandman's sweat;
But high labour and holy endeavour are still their own guerdon
And duty accomplished its own compensation is yet.

Nay, rest thee contented, my soul; for accomplished thy labour,
Achieved for thy task is, 'spite envy and hatred and ail,
And Life draweth near to the realms of its rest-bringing neighbour,
Friend Death not far distant; and Death is the end of the tale.

Bethink thee that life, at the least, thine intendment full measure
To fill hath been lent thee; and more, in the Future, thy dearth,
Thy stress to thine end and thy pain, than world's wealth and world's pleasure,
Thy loss than its gain, to the world-weighing wit will show worth.

The work thou hast wrought to an end, with the life that was lent thee,
Shall stand as a cliff, in Time's clamorous tides unadread,
Shall live, when their names are forgotten that hate thee, (Content thee!)
Shall hold thy name green, when the grasses are over thy head.

243

And now, if Death take thee to-day or to-morrow, what matters it?
Fulfilled is thy labour and forth of its leaf is thy flower:
What recketh the rose, to the waste when the wind of scaith scatters it?
Hath it not bloomed out its holy, its high-blossomed hour?

So rest thou content in thy deed. If thy fellows have spurned it,
Content thee to think that unfoiled thou hast finished the fight.
If guerdon's ungranted, content thee to know thou hast earned it,
That peace is thy portion, the peace of the doer of right.

For the day draweth near when Life's night shall for ever be ended;
The hour is at hand when a term shall be set to thy strife:
Work wrought, duty done, honour safe, heart unfeared, head unbended,
What comes, unadread, thou canst wait it, be't sleep, be it life.

And if rest be the term of our striving, what better than rest is?
Where rest is for ever, no question of right is or wrong.
If sleep be eternal, content thee with sleep, for sleep best is:
What æons of sleep for thy wake-wearied brain were too long?

But if, in new worlds, past the ultimate darkness, unsought-for,
Unwaited, new earths and new heavens for thy harbour abide,
Rejoice, for the just Gods shall grant thee the wreath thou hast wrought for,
The crown thou hast conquered, the wage which the world hath denied.