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99
OCCASIONAL SONNETS
100
[_]
The Italian Sonnet is admirably suited to the Italian language, by reason of the opulence, perhaps the excessive opulence, of rhymes in that tongue. But though there are not a few Italian Sonnets in our own, of the highest merit and of spontaneously natural construction, the form associated with the practice of Shakespeare lends itself more readily to English verse. Its weakness lies in the closing couplet too often following the quatrains with an anti-climax. In some of the Sonnets here printed the final line is an Alexandrine; a deviation from precedent left to the judgment of the reader.
101
A WINTRY PICTURE
Now in the woodlands from the creaking boughsThe last sere leaves are loosened and unstrung,
Where once the tender honeysuckle clung,
And the fond mavis fluted to his spouse.
Already dreaming of her winter drowse,
And brooding dimly on her unborn young,
The dormouse rakes the beechmast, and among
The matted roots the moldwarp paws and ploughs.
Over the furrows brown and pastures grey
The melancholy plovers flap and 'plain;
And, along shivering pool and sodden lane,
As lower droop the lids of dying day,
Like to a disembodied soul in pain,
The homeless wind goes wailing all the way.
102
TIME'S DEFENCE
“Why am I deemed an enemy of menWho would beyond Life's limit life prolong?
If they believe that they will live again,
How can it be that I have done them wrong?
Is it not I who rout the Winter snows,
And Spring's melodious symphonies renew,
Bring back the blush unto the budding rose,
And christen Summer's birth with morning dew?
'Tis I that ring the silvery nuptial peal,
When streams the Bridal up the rustic nave,
And if around the bier where mourners kneel
I toll the passing-bell and dig the grave,
From death and grief I half dispel the gloom,
Inscribing words of hope upon the loved one's tomb.”
103
RESIGNATION
Since we the march of Time can not arrest,Keep you in step with him till Time shall end:
Thus will you journey with more easeful breast,
Nor mar the rhythm that you cannot mend.
Nor ever yearn impatiently to reap
Harvest allotted unto mellower years,
But, having sown the seed, take care to keep
Its growth from tares till soaring stem appears.
Neither, when Summer from your life shall wane,
And Autumn fruit keep dropping from the bough,
Look back and sigh regretfully in vain
For joys no longer seasonable now:
Thus will your hours make music to the end,
And Life, you loved so, become Death your friend.
104
TIME'S WEARINESS
Slow Time, that carrieth such a monstrous loadFrom every stage and hostel of the Past,
Do you not weary of the endless road,
And ask how long Life's journeying will last?
Still growing burden on your patient back,
Piled are the medley miseries of mankind,
No bourne in sight along the lengthening track,
No comfort seen, before you or behind.
Should you but swerve or stagger in your pace,
Hope with strained halter tuggeth you along,
And where old sores still leave their smarting trace,
Hard on your heels Fate plies its knotted thong.
So must you on, though panting and distressed,
Not even death for solace or for rest.
105
ANY POET AT ANY TIME
Time, thou supreme inexorable Judge,Whom none can bribe, and none can overawe,
Who unto party rancour, private grudge,
Calmly opposeth equitable law,
Before whom advocacy vainly strives
To make the better cause to seem the worse,
To thy Tribunal, when our jangling lives
Are husht, I leave the verdict on my verse.
Irrevocably then wilt thou proclaim
What should have been, what now must ever be,
If in oblivion perish should my name,
Or shine aloft in mighty company.
I to my kind proffering of my poor best,
Remit to Time's arbitrament the rest.
106
LOVE OF LIFE
Why love life more, the less of it be left,And what is left be little but the lees,
And Time's subsiding passions have bereft
One's taste for pleasure, and one's power to please?
Is it not better, like the waning year,
Without lament resignedly to fade,
Since by enduring ordinance all things here
Are in their season shattered and decayed?
If you have shared in April's freshet song,
And Summer can without reproach recall,
Yearn not Autumnal harvest to prolong,
Nor shrink from Winter that awaits us all;
But, lightened of the load of earthly ties,
Pursue with homeward step your journey to the skies.
107
TOO LATE
Had you but shown me living what you show,Now I am gone, to keep my grave-plot green,
And I but known what vainly now I know,
Lying here alone, how happy had I been!
If you with smiles had gladdened our joint home,
As now you drench my tenement with tears,
Up life's ascent together had we clomb,
And traversed hand-in-hand the slope of years.
Still is it solacing to feel you lay
Upon my sepulchre devoted flowers,
When hitherward you wend your widowed way
'Neath scorching sunshine or through drifting showers.
Pity that love is ofttimes forced by Fate,
In this unpunctual World, to come—too late!
108
FORGIVENESS
Now bury with the dead years conflicts deadAnd with fresh days let all begin anew.
Why longer amid shrivelled leaf-drifts tread,
When buds are swelling, flower-sheaths peeping through?
Seen through the vista of the vanished years,
How trivial seem the struggle and the crown,
How vain past feuds, when reconciling tears
Course down the channel worn by vanished frown.
How few mean half the bitterness they speak!
Words more than feelings keep us still apart,
And, in the heat of passion or of pique,
The tongue is far more cruel than the heart.
Since love alone makes it worth while to live,
Let all be now forgiven, and forgive.
109
SPIRITUAL LOVE
Could you but give me all that I desire,I should be richer, and you no more poor,
Companionship beside the household fire,
And common cares that train one to endure.
'Tis not your senses, but your self, I want,
Kinship of vision, sympathy of mind,
That so the bond be based on adamant,
And Love made fast by sanctities that bind.
Yet do not think insensible my gaze
To delicate loveliness of form and face,
But that I covet in the same embrace
The Spirit's yearnings with the body's grace.
Give me all these, and add, with lengthening years,
The sweet sad smile, and piety of tears.
110
AN AUTUMN HOMILY
Here let us sit beneath this oak, and hearThe acorns fitfully fall one by one,
The final harvest of the fading year
Now Summer eves and Autumn days are done.
The orchard rows stand desolate and bare,
Even the mellow quince is gathered now;
The furrow yields the sickle to the share,
And lonely trunks stretch out the leafless bough.
Thus wanes the body ere the mind decays,
And through the heart the vernal sap still flows,
While warm within, on short-lived winter days,
The soul's clear lamp unflickeringly glows.
So are we one with Nature, in the round
Of seasonable change, knit by some tie profound.
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