The Poems of A. C. Benson

Singer most melancholy, most austere,
So overcharged with greatness, that thy frame
Was all too frail to feed the aspiring flame,
And sank in chill disdain and secret fear,

Save that thy idle fingers now and then
Touched unawares a slender chord divine;
Oh, if but half the silence that was thine
Were shared to-day by clamorous minstrel-men!

I thread the woodland where thy feet have strayed;
The gnarled trunks dreaming out their ancient tale
Are fair as then; the same sad chime I hear
That floats at eve across the purple vale;
The music of thy speech is in my ear,
And I am glad because thou wast afraid.

GILBERT WHITE

Thou wast a poet, though thou knew'st it not,
Then, on a merry morning, when the thrush
Fluted and fluted briskly in the bush,
And blackbirds whisked along thy garden-plot;

Didst watch an hour beside thy hanger's foot
The quivering kestrel hung aloft the skies
To mark aught stirring, or with pensive eyes
In cherry-orchards didst forecast the fruit.

And shall I deem it idle thus to scan
The myriad life, and reverently wait,
A patient learner, auguring, behind
The restless hand, the unhesitating mind?
This was thy daily task, to learn that man
Is small, and not forget that man is great.

OMAR KHAYYAM

Out of the tombs, across the centuries
The chill voice called and answered, “Yea, I knew!
I prayed the prayers that bring no peace to you,
I paid the same sad price for growing wise;

I knew the sick despairs that vex you still,
The same dumb night, the old unwavering stars,
The same wild lust that in a moment mars
The patient barriers of the labouring will.

And this was mine, to inweave the tender dream
With shame and pain, and all that hope ignores;
To catch the whispers of Eternity;
To gaze beyond the whirlpool, see the stream,
The steady stream, that sets to desert shores
Far off, and those dim continents to be.”

EDWARD FITZGERALD

I hear a stronger music in the air,
I mark a richer harmony combine
With those thin eager melodies of thine;
I look for thee and find another there;—

And dost thou beckon from the ages dim,
My cynic minstrel, Omar? Is it thou?
Or do I trace, behind the furrowed brow,
The shy and sober lineaments of him

Who lingered listless in a land of streams;—
As when some laughing child endues a mask
Of frozen horror, whence the pure eye shines
In smiling softness; 'twas thy destined task
To dig new ores from those ungarnered mines,
And flush with young desires those pallid dreams.

SHADOWS

The imperious soul that bows to no man's will,
That takes by right the service of his kind,
Floats in free air, unchastened, unconfined,
Strikes what he lists, enslaving, spoiling still.

But when he falls upon the common ground,
Swift, swift the visions falter: his brave wing
Sustains him not; and that swift shadowy thing
Runs from the darkness, and enwraps him round.

So you may see the hovering kestrel beat
Over the crag, slow-circling, pinions stiff,
Then fall through wind and sunshine, check his flight,
And as he wheels to perch below the cliff,
His shadow fleets across the limestone white,
And closes with him, settling at his feet.

THE DEEPS OF GOD

O Truth! how vast thy empire, how immense,
Lost in thy gracious nearness, we forget;
Our narrow bounds we strenuously set
About us, too intent to wander thence:

We dream of majesty and innocence
Among a thousand trivial mockeries,
Till some high deed soars up, and draws the eyes
Aloft, and lightens the bewildered sense.

So when we creep beneath the lowering skies,
The lonely hern above the marshland sails
High overhead, slow flapping down the wind;
And all at once the grey veil seems to rise
And tower, and as the lowlit evening pales,
The illimitable cloudland looms behind.

WASTE

Blind fate, that broodest over human things,
That through thy long inheritance of tears
Dost bring to birth, through sad and shapeless years,
One poet, heart and voice: but ere he sings,

Thou dost delight to sever, to estrange,
To bid the restless brain reluctant sleep,
And toss his glories to the common heap,
Waiting thy leisure, and the world's slow change.

As some dishevelled garden, when the frost
Crusts the dry turf, and blunders through the lines
Of summer's green battalions, laying low
The towering lupines that untimely blow;
And o'er the leaves in rich disorder tossed
The unavailing sun in mockery shines.

BY THE CAVE

Without 'twas life and light; the large air rolled
Down from the hill; the merry heather-bird
Strutted and drummed, or through the hillocks whirred,
Scattering the dew, and bade his mates be bold.

Within, severe and sad, the cold cave wept;
The filmy tear-drop splashed, or quivering stood
Full-orbed, as in the ancient solitude
Pendant to base minutely nearer crept.

Though still 'tis mine to linger in the sun,
To drink the pure keen scent of heathery miles,
Catching the busy minutes as they run,
Yet I remember that my joys are brief,
That in the sunless dark eternal grief
Its monumental record slowly piles.

BY THE STREAM

Blow, breeze, and whisper somewhat from the hill,
From cool grey stones and beds of heather brown;
Lay down thy languid schemes, poor heart, lay down
Thy piteous hopes, thy fears of shadowy ill.

And listen, listen where the water runs
Under the peaty bank, by shingle white,
Washed through and through when winter floods unite,
And delicately dried by summer suns.

Let thy free thought flow down with gentle speed
Along the vale, beyond the headland dim,
To drink the sharp scent of the briny weed,
Where on the sandy spit the brooding throng
Of pensive gulls pipe clear their plaintive hymn,
Pipe all at once, like nuns at evensong.

A LILY OF ANNUNCIATION

Buried and based in dull uncleanly mould,
Amazed I see my patient lily climb,
Who all unseen, about the bones of time
Lays hidden hands of faith: then brave and bold

The sleek stem soars, knowing how firm and deep
Her fibres wind and wander: soon she weaves
Hope's ladder high with strong and stately leaves,
And smiles embattled, being throned so steep.

Last, her precarious citadel she arms,
Trims and anoints with subtlest alchemy
Green spearheads, mutely folded, soon to be
White trumpets, breathing peace, not raw alarms;
And smites with meek artillery whate'er
Wounds and deflowers the else ambrosial air.

WOUNDS

The wounded bird sped on with shattered wing,
And gained the holt, and ran a little space,
Where briar and bracken twined a hiding-place;
There lay and wondered at the grievous thing.

With patient filmy eye he peeped, and heard
Big blood-drops oozing on the fallen leaf;
There hour by hour in uncomplaining grief
He watched with pain, but neither cried nor stirred.

The merry sportsmen tramped contented home,
He heard their happy laughter die away;—
Across the stubble by the covert-side
His merry comrades called at eventide;
They breathed the fragrant air, alert and gay,
And he was sad because his hour was come.

IN THE CLOISTER

Spire, that from half-a-hundred dainty lawns,
O'er battlemented wall and privet-fence,
Dost brood and muse with mild indifference,
Through golden eves and ragged gusty dawns;—

O cloistered court, O immemorial towers,
O archways, filled from mouldering edge to edge
With sober sunshine, O bird-haunted ledge,
Say, have ye seen her? Shall she soon be ours?

She, whom we seek, most dear when most denied,
Seen but by sidelong glances, past us slips,
Waves from a window, beckons from a door,
Calls from a thicket by the minster-side,
Presses a flying finger to her lips,
Smiles her sad smile, and passes on before.

FATIDICA

Oh, I had thought to find some haggard, stern,
Harsh prophetess, with dim and cloudy brows,
With eyes like winter suns, that under boughs
Knotted and black, in frosty silence burn.

But thou, methinks, art innocent and fair,
With childish hand and gracious pitying eye,
Too sweet to hold the veils of mystery,
And solve the stubborn riddle of despair.

Yet suddenly through guarded eyes breaks forth
A smile that ripples all the face of Death,
And penetrates and glorifies my fears;
As icy stars that shiver from the North,
Frosting my sleeve, at touch of human breath
Fall, and dissolve, and tremble into tears.

GASTON DE FOIX

Half sunk in marble, soft as down, he lies,
Smiling with that inscrutable content
That comes when brows are grey, and shoulders bent,
But seldom deigns to brood in younger eyes.

Armed as he fell, he needs no braveries,
Nor wreath, nor curious gaud, nor jewelled ring,
Who was not loth to perish, that a king,
A careless king, might sit an hour at ease.

Happy the hero who hath served the truth,
And, full of years, is borne through weeping streets
Amid a weeping nation. Happier he
Who in one glorious hour his fate completes,
Setting the seal of immortality
On all the grace and goodliness of youth.

IMAGINATION

Weary and weak, alone and ill at ease,
I summon subtle sprites that serve me well:
Then, at the bidding of the sudden spell,
The world slips from me; then the thundering breeze

Whirls my frail bark beyond the Orcades,
And o'er me hangs, with spire and pinnacle,
A fretted ice-crag stooping through the swell,
Over the broad backs of the ranging seas.

The rapture fades; the fitful flame flares out,
Leaving me sad, and something less than man,
Pent in the circle of a rugged isle,
A later Prospero, without his smile,
Without his large philosophy, without
Miranda, and alone with Caliban.

THE SECRET

I dreamed of peace, and woke to find unrest;
I laid rash hands upon the sweeping train
Of honour, but I bent and clutched in vain,
And patience frowned and mocked my bitter quest.

But one, who slipped unnoted through the throng,
Drew near me, and upheld my faltering feet,
And “Here” he said, “where faith and failure meet,
Here is the secret thou hast sought so long!”

As when the traveller, who long hours has scanned,
Beyond the blue horizon, wide outspread,
The sober solemn shadow of the hills,
Starts from his sleep to see how close at hand,
Fretted and channelled by a thousand rills,
Looms out the broad sun-dappled mountain-head.

OUTWARD BOUND

As sailors loitering in a luscious isle,
A southern land, a land of fire and snow,
Where all night long a still and secret glow
Gilds the rich gloom through many a fragrant mile,

Pulp of exotic fruitage crush, and smile
To hear a strange speech bandied to and fro,
Then, when the sea-horn hums, arise and go
To thankless toil, to bitter food and vile.

So I, without one backward thought, one clasp
Of hands desired, without one shrinking fear
Of seas that thunder over shingly bars,
Would don my battered garb, and strongly grasp
The tiller, worn by faithful toil, and steer
Right onwards for the everlasting stars.

NEVERTHELESS

Ah me! I thought that life had been more sweet,
More radiant, more triumphant; I had thought
Some harbourage were here for minds distraught,
Some hope fulfilled, some goal for patient feet;

Yet, in my tempered grief, my bitterness
That halts upon the threshold of despair,
I too have dreams of somewhat far and fair;
What others prate and preach, I softly guess.

As one, who walks at dusk, in sordid care
Enwrapt, through ancient streets and gateways grim,
Is smit with sudden wonder as he sees
The minster lights strike through the misty air,
To find them hang so high among the trees,
And show so subtly fair, so gorgeous-dim.

REPROOF

You chide me for my sadness; “hope,” you say,
“Is urgent, and the marching years are just;
Take heart and hearken; through the din and dust
Thrills the calm music of a sweeter day;”

Yet when the strident voice of toil is low,
I bend and hearken for the music sweet,
And ah! the harmony is incomplete,
And blurred with discords of untimely woe.

God help us, for His saints have waited long,
Watched early, suffered hardness, laboured late;
And yet the air is thick with patient cries,
The world is wounded sore, and cannot rise,
Shot through and through with flying shafts of fate,
And weighted with irreparable wrong.

REGRET

I hold it now more shameful to forget
Than fearful to remember; if I may
Make choice of pain, my Father, I will pray
That I may suffer rather than regret;

And this dull aching at my heart to-day
Is harder far to bear than when I set
My passionate heart some golden thing to get,
And, as I clasped it, it was torn away.

“The world is fair,” the elder spirit saith,
“The tide flows fast, and on the further shore
Wait consolations and surprises rare.”
But youth still cries “The love that was my faith
Is broken, and the ruined shrine is bare,
And I am all alone for evermore.”

I AM SMALL AND OF NO REPUTATION; YET DO I NOT FORGET THY COMMANDMENTS

How small a thing am I, of no repute,
Whirled in the rush of these eternal tides;
Spun daily round upon this orb that rides
Among its peers, itself how most minute!

Yet as I muse in sad comparison,
Restless and frail, I thrill with sudden awe,
Clasped in the large embrace of life and law
That, howsoe'er I falter, bear me on.

So should a drop within the sluggish vein
Of some vast saurian—that slumbers deep
In seas undreamed of, rolling through the swell—
In labyrinthine artery swim and creep,
Yet hear far off, again and yet again,
The vasty heart beat in his central cell.

M. E. B.

I think that thou art somewhere, strong and free,
Free in some ampler region, where the same
High love,—that flickers here with fitful flame,
That speaks at times in wafts of memory

On high sequestered hills, or by the sea
Broad-rolling, or in tracts of woodland green,—
Shines forth in steady radiance, full, serene,
Restoring hope, refining purity.

I think that when our hearts are full of mirth,
And glad, without dishonour to the dead,
Thou art consenting from thy secret cell;
As here the electric pulse, that o'er the earth,
From zones remote and under ocean's bed,
Speaks of my friend and whispers he is well.

SELF

I

This is my chiefest torment, that behind
This brave and subtle spirit, this swift brain,
There sits and shivers, in a cell of pain,
A central atom, melancholy, blind,

Which is myself: tho' when spring suns are kind,
And rich leaves riot in the genial rain,
I cheat him dreaming, slip my rigorous chain,
Free as a skiff before the dancing wind.

Then he awakes, and vexed that I am glad,
In dreary malice strains some nimble chord,
Pricks his thin claw within some tingling nerve:
And all at once I falter, start, and swerve
From my true course, and fall, unmanned and sad,
Into gross darkness, tangible, abhorred.

II

Yet I can send my thought from sun to sun,
Behind the stars, beyond the eternal night;
Pierce through the whirling spheres of fervent light,
Or nearer roam: hither and thither run;

Strain to a sharp and icy summit, thread
The poisonous depth of some hot forest maze,
Or haunt the dark sea-bottom's glimmering ways,
Where sunken wrecks hang silent overhead.

Now, in a sun-dried city of the south,
Linger through dusty vineyards, branching palms;—
The shrill cicalas chirping in the drouth;—
Or swim by coral islets, floating free
And eager, parting with imagined arms
The crystal rollers of a sapphire sea.

III

Or I constrain the poets to my call;—
With Homer, staff in hand, and lyre on back,
Stumbling and sightless on the upland track,
Or praised and honoured in the echoing hall,

Hear from his lips the rolling thunders fall;
Or sit with Virgil in the orchard-edge,
Hearing the bees hum in the privet hedge,
And deep-mouthed cattle lowing from the stall.

Or I can follow Una's peerless knight
Riding alone in mountain solitudes,
Where Awbey leaps from Bally-howra hill;
Or trace the clear impetuous Rotha rill,
With Wordsworth, mouthing music in the woods,
His eyes transfigured with a sacred light.

IV

Or I can trace the cycles that have been,
See silent priests, dead Cæsars, face to face;
Laugh with old wits, with serious statesmen pace,
Peep unobserved at many a secret scene.

Thence through wild woods my dreaming way I take,
Through ancient cities piled of ponderous stones,
Or dripping caverns carpeted with bones,
To wattled huts isled in a mountain lake.

Backwards, still backwards, till the glowing earth
Lose beast and tree, and show her haggard scars;
To chaos, and the chill sun's nebulous birth:—
Above, beneath, the flaming æons roll:—
Still in its cold cell sits the brooding soul,
More to itself than thirty thousand stars.

KEATS

Laughing thou said'st, 'Twere hell for thee to fail
In thy vast purpose, in thy brave design,
Ere thy young cheek, with passion's venomed wine
Flushed and grew pale, ah me! flushed and grew pale!

Where is thy music now? In hearts that pine
O'erburdened, for the clamorous world too frail,
Yet love the charmèd dusk, the nightingale,
Not for her sweet sake only, but for thine.

Thy name is writ in water, ay, 'tis writ
As when the moon, a chill and friendless thing,
Passes and writes her will upon the tide,
And piles the ocean in a moving ring:
And every stagnant bay is brimmed with it,
Each mast-fringed port, each estuary wide.

VICTORY

So, I have gained a crown and lost a friend!
What, was he envious of my climbing fame.
Did he aspire to what I did not claim,
Mistake the summit that I dared ascend?

And I, who chiefly toiled that I might spend
My hoarded hopes to crown his tardier name,
Sad and alone, in solitude and shame,
Sit mourning, careless what the fates may send.

So David, when the fiercest fight was won,
Recked not of all the faithful hearts that bled
To comfort him, to guard his troubled days:
He to his Captains spoke no word of praise,
But wailed in cold unreasoning grief, and said:
“Oh my son Absalom, my son, my son!”

THE PURSUIT

I had outstripped him on the moorland wide,
The heathery moor, with grassy tracks between
The peaty hills: at eve he should have been
A moving speck upon the far hill-side.

But here within the tangled forest, here
With all these trailing vines about my feet,
Among the tall tree-stems, he steps as fleet
As I, though I be winged with instant fear.

For every clutching branch I rend away,
Each knotted creeper, tremblingly untied,
Each hazel-thicket, where I bend and crawl,
Leaves free the perilous gap for him to glide
Still nearer, till with sobbing breath I fall
Upon my face, and he shall spring and slay.

THE GENTIAN

Say, Gentian, by what daring alchemy
Dost thou distil from cold and weary stones,
From tumbled rocks, the spent earth's staring bones,
The intensest essence of the unclouded sky?

Is it through dreaming, night by weary night,
Through still pale months beneath the drifted snow,
Dreaming of sunshine and warm fields aglow,
Of azure depths, vast leagues of tranquil light?

Not thine the outrageous spiendours of the morn,
The crimson pomp of sunset, the brisk ray
Of the heavenly arch, of watery conflict born,
But the pure radiance of the untroubled heaven
When the eye dives, in headlong rapture driven,
Zone beyond zone, and finds no stop nor stay.

THE GRASSHOPPER

Rest, rest, impatient heart! thou dost not know
What 'tis thou seekest: wilt thou hurl away
For petty praise, a little gilded show,
The lavish treasure of the golden day?

Yon grasshopper, in green enamelled mail,
With waving whisks and blunted nose upthrust,
Draws whizzing thighs athwart his plated tail,
Or trails his belly in the sun-warmed dust,

Or leaps among his fellows, caring nought
Which leaps the highest, which the braver drest;
With solemn face, his edged jaws crossing slow,
He clips the succulent salad: gives no thought
That soon the clouds shall gather from the West,
And all the high hill-pastures ache with snow.

UTTERANCE

I have strung my harp, and tuned each subtle chord
To truest consonance, and day by day
Have trained my tripping fingers how to stray
With swift unerring motions. I have stored

My mind with every grave melodious tone,
Each eager modulation, deftly planned
O'er perilous gaps to reach a welcoming hand:—
Yet cannot frame a music of my own.

O for that hour when, with reverberant wings,
Some airy thought, deliberate, at my call,
Shall drop beside me, whispering in my ear:
And I shall seize my harp, and thrill to hear
The pent-up music ripple and break, with all
My heart's rich secrets echoing down the strings.

ANNIVERSARIES

When I was yet a child, my sparkling days
Spake little with each other, but with joy
Each sprang to life, by favourite friend or toy
Distinguished, walking in familiar ways;

Each in itself a breathing mystery,
Portending nought, save through the lagging weeks,
In restless foot, in flushed and eager cheeks,
Savour and sound of the imagined sea.

But now they talk together, and are sad;—
“To-day,” they say, “how short a time ago,
We laid her, weeping, in the churchyard ground:”
And one saith, “ere the solemn year move round,
Shall this be reft from me that makes me glad?”
And all make answer, saying, “Even so.”

THE POET

He shall be great, and something more than great,
But human first: and nought of human known
Shall slip unnoted from his meshes, thrown
With wary hand in secret seas of fate.

So great, so human, that the song he sings
Seems but the faint effulgence of the soul,
That dived to hell, and rising, pure and whole,
Beat in the sunlit air her happy wings.

His soul shall be a valley full of trees;
Pines for soft sound, and limes for scent and shade,
Where birds may nest, blithe thrush and bright-eyed wren,
Flowers for delight, and fruit for healing made,
And heart of oak, to build the homes of men,
And swim secure in thunder-throated seas.

PRID. KAL. OCT.

O Asian birds, that round me in the gloom
Patter and peck unseen, or with loud stroke
Soar to the covert of some branching oak,—
To-morrow comes the destined hecatomb.

Shout once again your strident orisons,
Thanks for the dewy morning, for the food
By hands unseen at woodland corners strewed,
For water cool, that through the thicket runs.

To-morrow comes the end:—the wood astir
With patient tramping figures, and the noise
Of tree-trunks tapped, the cry of eager boys,
The startled rush, and battling as you rise
Above the copse, beyond the topmost fir,
Death, lightning death, amid the echoing skies.

DEATH

The soul, sore dizzied with the din of death,
The roar of clamorous blood in failing ears,
Still sees the sickly swimming day, and hears
The rattling intake of his sobbing breath:

Then cleaves the dark slow, tranquillising tide,
And swims in silent waters, careless now
If still they press his hand, and kiss his brow,
But snaps the parting strands, and wanders wide,—

Then, in one glowing instant, that atones
For woe and fear, made one with life and light,
He watches, as he hangs in wondering ease,
Poised in the dusk, the red earth with her seas
And islands, snowy poles and sunlit zones,
Thunder and heave, and leap across the night.

ON THE HILL

I would not dwell with Passion; Passion grows
By what he feeds on—sense and sound and sight—
The myriad bubbles dancing to the light,
The frenzied fragrance of the wanton rose.

But Love may dwell with me: pure Love, that glows
The richer through the cold and lonely night;
And gilds with warm effulgence, brave and bright,
The frosty sparkle of unsullied snows.

When Passion throbs and quivers, Love is still
And piteous; swift to picture, apt to bend
And listen; at the shut of evening gray
He rises, threads the valley, climbs the hill,
To stand beside the milestone, stand and say
So many leagues divide me from my friend.

THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD

Oh, if we are dissevered, you and I,
Some sad, implacable, and far-off day,—
You on the kindly earth designed to stay,
I somewhere in the unsubstantial sky.

I will be patient in the silent world,
Trace all its sombre capes and valleys dim,
Importune of the brisk-eyed cherubim
Where first your spirit-wings must be unfurled.

But if within the vast bewildering throng
Of all the souls of all who ever died,
We miss the meeting, why we will be true;
I think it will not seem so very long—
For you will search for me, as I for you—
When I shall turn and see you at my side.

IN SCHOOL-YARD

Snow underfoot; and outlined white and soft
Statue and plinth and cornice, where the grim
Vast buttresses troop westward, towering dim,
So cold, so comfortless; the air aloft

Yawns into blackness; but below, the bright
Barred casements strike a glow upon the air,
And busy voices hum and murmur there
Of boys who hardly guess their heart is light.

And yet, alone and sad, I hear a voice
That chides me, yearning for that thoughtless bliss,
Amid dark walls that loom, chill airs that freeze.
Oh! dear and hidden Father, grant me this,
When in dark ways Thou lead'st me, to rejoice
Because in light and joy Thou leadest these.

SEEDS

One fell in the dull ground, and hopeless lay
Hearing the secret waters murmuring;
Till his dark life was quickened by the spring,
And with soft hands he climbed to meet the day.

And one was winnowed in his nakedness,
And in the humming mill was bruised and rolled,
And indistinguishably bought and sold,
To feed the folk that toiled in heaviness.

The choice is ours: we know not which to ask;
For either way is bounteous, either blest;
To feed the frail, to give high hearts relief;
And each were well; but oh, the matchless grief,
To fail and falter in the heavenly quest,
And miss meanwhile the homely humble task!

IN THE TRAIN

Bound for the west, I sate alone at ease;
The impatient engine puffed a vaporous curl;
Last came a bustling man, with boy and girl
That bore his baggage, and were fain to please.

He chid them, spake them roughly: then each child
Looked in his face and strove to understand,
And when he slept, they laid small hand in hand,
And softly and compassionately smiled.

As tender souls, on whom some bitter loss
Has fallen, gently name the vanished name,
Tracing the sombre shadow of the cross
With trembling lips, and plead to be forgiven,
And emulate, or wholly put to shame,
The careless magnanimity of heaven.

O LACRIMARUM FONS

O holiest fount of sorrow, treasured tears;
O eager consolation of sick grief;
That bring to burdened sadness pure relief,
Ye have no fellowship with craven fears!

True tears are sorrow's guerdon, for they prove
The worth of suffering, that the sacred dart
Hath struck, and shivered the incredulous heart,
And pierced the secret amplitude of love.

For of thy shafts, that hourly past us flame,
Some taint and mar our innocence, and some
Are bent and blunted by the stubborn mind,
Or throb and rankle in the tortured frame:
But I will pray, if Thy strong hands are kind,
“Let them strike home, my God, let them strike home!”

University of Virginia Library

SONNETS

THOMAS GRAY