The Poetical Works of George Barlow :: :: University of Virginia Library

When this strange stormy nineteenth century closes,
Reaching the goal towards which its wild wheels move,
Though earth's green banks will bear their countless roses
Will there be women born whom man may love?

There will be—doubtless—brains so full of learning
That in them will be room for nought beside:
Will there be eyes to awake the old love-yearning,
Lips sweet as those for whose sake men have died?

In Shakespeare's England—“merry,” then they named it!
In truth it was another realm than ours;
Woman's unsexed mad champions had not claimed it,
Robbing the soul of love, the land of flowers.

No women-prophets then had risen to teach us
That man is wholly sensual, wholly vile;
Eager with frown and stamp of foot to reach us
(Though woman once could conquer with a smile!)

The platforms trembled not—in happier ages—
At the impassioned sisters' manly tread:
No bands of wild-eyed youths and hoary sages
Followed supine, while martial woman led.

Man had not cast his sword away—he grasped it—
Nor had he set his helm on woman's brow;
'Twas on his own till Mona Caird unclasped it;
He was not swordless, helmless then, as now.

He had not learned that occult lore reposes
On woman's lips; his earlier creed was this—
That Nature made them when she made the roses,
And that they preach most purely in a kiss.

Still of love's bark man was the patient steerer:
He had not, cowardly when the waves arose
And when the threatening towering rocks loomed nearer,
Let woman steer the doomed bark as she chose.

A woman's “mission” was the mission ample
And all divine, and wholly, nobly, sweet—
To lift by love and exquisite example,
Not to downtrample with exultant feet.

A woman's “right” was that one right unmeasured,
The right to give, the “mission” to be won:
That right supreme shall by man's heart be treasured
As long as God's hand treasures stars and sun.

To-day the women calculate and ponder,
And calculation's woman's deadliest sin
—“Is love's crown wrought of flawless gold, I wonder?
If I give so much, how much shall I win?

“Is this kiss worth a brooch, that kiss a carriage?
What is the value in jewels of my embrace?
How may I compass best a wealthy marriage?
What is the market value of my face?”

Oh, not in ways like these did England's daughters
Aid England's sons to found an empire wide
As the moon's silent path across the waters,
An endless realm in which the sun took pride:

Nay! love and beauty were the themes inspiring
The poets who at England's dawning rose
—There were no lecture-rooms, mayhap, for hiring,
Where woman might descant upon her woes.

In Shakespeare's England Mona Cairds were powerless;
No Westminster Review his eyes had seen:
Yet was that grand age songless, loveless, flowerless?
Whence sprang that deathless cry of Egypt's queen?

“Husband, I come!” Was that cry not inspired
By English wifehood, death-defying, true?
Must not some living Desdemona have fired
The heart conceiving and the hand that drew?

Ophelia, Portia, Juliet,—names unnumbered
Leap to the lips or linger on the tongue.
Their models woke, and lived and loved—then slumbered,
But still song's magic makes their sweetness young.

Was woman's soul inferior then—inferior
Her grace unspeakable of brow and hand?
Was she not, being unconscious, far superior
To those whose wild shrieks tire a weary land?

When Raphael made fair womanhood immortal,
When Titian on the undying canvas wrought,
Woman was goddess at the blue heaven's portal,
But now her forehead wrinkles with its thought.

She thinks too much to-day, and loves too little,
She who was once the priestess of the heart.
The chains of love the thinker weaves are brittle,
But love weaves chains death's hand shall fail to part.

In ages too remote for man's frail counting
Some youth, it may be, pausing on his oar
Watched a girl-swimmer the blue waves surmounting,
Bound for the green-robed silver-girdled shore:

He, ere his dream of matchless beauty perished,
Speaking impassioned to the folk at home,
Launched the fair legend that all time has cherished
Of Venus born from the enchanted foam.

From that one woman whom the waters tossing
Steered shoreward gently in some Southern clime
Sprang the strange Venus-legend, all engrossing,
Whose sweet resistless charm will baffle time.

But who from women of to-day will gather
A legend glorious as that tale of old,
Legend to which the fiery sun was father,
Flaming from heaven, arrayed in cloudless gold?

Not love, but Hebrew and Greek and physiology,
And scientific secrets deep and strange,
Astronomy, and Chinese, and conchology
—Through all these regions woman now must range.

And yet in one young cheek's soft merry dimple
There lies the witchery most potent far:
One girl's glance, full of trustful love and simple,
Sparkles more sweetly than the evening star.

O women of England, new stars gleam and glisten,
The moulding of the future as of the past
Lies in your hands—yet, if it may be, listen
To one voice from the century closing fast:

Heed your own hearts, not this wail never-ending
From over-burthened souls who have gone astray;
Love as of old from the bright skies is bending;
Speak ye his message—man's heart will obey.

The women-teachers of to-day are flightiest
Of all who have taught—remember, for your part,
That youth will gain its impulse purest, mightiest,
Never from woman's brain—from woman's heart.

The future may be dark—man's soul climbs slowliest
Of all things living towards the starlit skies:
Yet, ever, youth will learn its lessons holiest
Not from the stars, but from a woman's eyes.

KENSAL GREEN

I

O'er the graveyard burning noonday poured its flood of stainless golden light;
In that hour the sun seemed victor over all the doubts and dreams of night.

II

From the heavens of boundless azure, from the air superb with summer's breath,
Came, it seemed, a thrill of triumph, wide-winged triumph over wingless death.

III

Though the dead around lay silent, though a thousand souls had watched in vain,
Summer's heart of endless sweetness seemed to soothe man's heart of endless pain.

IV

“Rest within the arms of summer; fearless, meet the summer's sunlit gaze:”
So the soft breeze seemed to whisper, roaming through dim paths and sombre ways.

V

Yet, I wondered, hath the summer in its glory share or part with those
Who have passed beyond all summers, far beyond the sunlight and the rose?

VI

Though the rose again be radiant, though June's dazzling banners flame and gleam,
Are the silent eyes regardful, do the ghosts within the dark graves dream?

VII

While the waves of life pass o'er them, are they resting blank of gaze below,
Neither reached by summer sunshine, nor the shafts of frost nor spears of snow?

VIII

All the mighty life of London pours its ceaseless giant stream along:
Here at Kensal Green is silence, iron silence after reckless song.

IX

Here the warrior's sword is broken, here the flower-bright heart that loved and gave
Fades within the leaden blackness, like one roseleaf in a boundless grave.

X

Here the love that, like the ocean, seemed to compass all the shores of time
Cowers within its lampless prison, weak and broken, like a halting rhyme.

XI

Love that found the whole of starland space too small for aspiration's breath,
Here where mightiest stars are helpless, pants and struggles in the cage of death.

XII

Love that cried “I am immortal! part of God as God is part of me,”
Love that felt its strength pulse through it, like the pulse of tide-waves of the sea;

XIII

Love that cried “I too am deathless, like the God who sways the heights of space,”
Meets within death's vaulted chambers, shuddering, only death's own spectral face.

XIV

Love that deemed the stars were kindled for its sake, and for its sake alone,
Meets decay the fleshless horror swaying the darkness from its starless throne:

XV

Love that held that all creation moved to mandate of a loving Lord
Sees the white throat of creation drip from blood-red stabs of terror's sword:

XVI

Love that found all flowers most fragrant nought beside the charm that passion brings,
Loveless, sinks amid corruption, mocked by grave-stained ghosts of crownless kings:

XVII

Love that dreamed it had no ending, fair and proud with many a rainbow-gleam,
Ends as all past life hath ended, dreams it lives and closes as a dream.

1895.

XVIII

So I pondered. Since I pondered, I have seen a living face arise;
Seen a face from out death's darkness flash with still unchanged and loving eyes.

1901.

NEW SUMMERS

Just as the summer smote the deep
Of winter's awful frost-bound sleep,
And lo! the rivers ran,
And songs began;
As laughter sounded on the sea
And through the leaves of every tree,
And flowers, forgetting pain,
Kissed flowers again:

Just as new summer for the old
Clothed every barren heath with gold—
With raiment of bright furze
That crowns the hill-spurs;
Just as, e'en redder than before,
The roses round each cottage-door
Smiled, and the bell-flower blue
Of tenderer hue:

Just as our dreams of mist-winged weeks
Fly when the ardent summer streaks
The blazing skies with gold,
Grand as of old;
Just as our dark dreams flee away,
Our hatred of the skies grim-grey,
And all our hearts respond
To summer fond:

Just so our fear that Love had fled
And that his rose-like face was dead
Is changed to laughter sweet
When Love we meet,
More beautiful for winter rest,
With summer plumage in his crest,
And in his hands the sprays
Of summer days.

Has winter seized one love of ours?
New loves shall blossom with new flowers.
Loves fairer than of old
Thou shalt behold!

Loves more bewitching than the past
In summers new shall follow fast;
Eyes lovelier than the eyes
That lit past skies.

Oh, wait for summer! Like a dream,
With hands that lure and eyes that gleam,
Some woman waits for thee
By moonlit sea:—
Hear how her laugh along the lone sand rings!
Mark her neck whiter than that sea-bird's wings!
Lo! summer brings her near:
Wait thou,—and have no fear.

July 3, 1881.

A LONDON SEASON

Hour follows hour, and day succeeds to day,
And the short night gives place to morning grey,
And still our feet pursue
The phantom, Pleasure, glimmering o'er the way
But never quite in view.

One day is weary, and the next the same:
We have no high pursuit, no settled aim;
We follow Pleasure hard.
Still, as we follow her, and strive to claim,
We meet some window barred.

Just as a lover, on some summer night
In Italy, pursuing, loses sight
Of the sweet form he seeks
Within some shrubbery, and her floating white
Robe haunts his dream for weeks:

So Pleasure shuns us, yea we find her not
Amid the heated rooms and in no spot
Where languid Fashion dwells;
She loves, perhaps, bright beach, or ferny grot,
Or green stream-cloven dells.

Through the sweet summer night in country lanes
And country gardens after soft slight rains
Scents numberless delight;
Beside the sea's great green dim houseless plains
Fringed with their bordering white

The wet glad wholesome sand smells fresh and strong,
And the sea's limitless June-chastened song
Rises upon the air:
What have the weary house-pent London throng
That can with this compare?

Our seasons follow each other, and they find
New hearts of men made deaf and women blind
To all that Nature brings:
Ever the mass of imbecile mankind
Will live devoid of wings.

But for the poet love alone, and flowers,
And woman's heart, make lovely mortal hours;
If these he hath he breathes.
Without them, curséd are all Fashion's bowers
And withered Fashion's wreaths.

July 6, 1881.

IN LONDON

The lips of Venus are as sweet
Though sipped within a London street,
And her rich hair
Is just as soft for lips to meet
In London air.

And Daphne's limbs are pure and white
Though darkness of a London night
Beholds them kissed,
Not skies with tints of sapphire bright
Or amethyst.

And Psyche's lips are no less red
In that two thousand years have fled
With all their flowers
Since her old namesake sweet was wed
In Southern bowers.

And passion is no less divine
Though round the brows of love we twine
No amorous leaves,
Nor white limbs through the water shine
On summer eves.

For many an age may pass away
But still love's eyes confront the day,
Challenge the morn,
As fair as when, the legends say,
Sweet Eve was born.

Yea, though a thousand hearts have sung
Of woman, woman still is young;
Her heart's the same
As when round Trojan turrets clung
The leaping flame.

We find in our old mist-robed land
Bright eyes, soft lips, and loving hand,
And golden curls:
Love wrought with genius when he planned
Our English girls.

Not Venus rising from the seas
Was tenderer of limb than these
Whom London rears;
We need not give one age that flees
Our hopeless tears.

July 13, 1881.

TO GERTRUDE

And dost thou understand me, spirit-stranger,
Whose eyes are sweet?
Dost thou watch over me, and shield from danger
My wandering feet?
Art thou, love, with me when the sea's grey billows
Would quite cast down?
Dost thou then lead me forth beside green willows,—
Dost soothe me and crown?

I am repaid, if thou dost love me, O stranger,
Gertrude (art thou?)—
Leading me through defiles of death and danger,
With snow-white brow.
If thou dost hear me, and all thy spirit listens,
I am repaid:
If once in thy clear eye the soft tear glistens,
Sorrow is outweighed.

I am repaid for trouble and tribulation,
For grief and pain,
If thou, descending from thy queenly station,
Dost hear my strain.
When mortal women fail, do thou immortal,
Uphold my feet:
Let white wings shine athwart heaven's golden portal,
Where all is sweet.

Do thou by night upon my heart descending,
With lips more fair
Than fairest rose its lavish perfume blending
With summer air
Console me, and uplift me and restore me
To joyous things,
Bending rose-soft and snow-ethereal o'er me,
With snow-soft wings.

1882.

“AS WE GROW OLDER”

As we grow older, life grows more divine:
Slow word by word and tedious line by line
We learn the next world's lore.
Then all our hearts are changed, the temporal ends;
We bid farewell to old, we make new friends
Upon the eternal shore.

Wife, mother, brother, sister, father, these
Pass, like the passing of a summer breeze;
The soul is that which stays.
No local earthly frail relationship
Hallowed by grasp of hand or touch of lip
Defies the fleeting days.

Our personality grows wholly new,—
Differs from yesterday's as morning dew
From dew-drops now absorbed.

Closer we cleave to God, and more apart
We live, it may be, from the human heart:
Our soul's sun shines full orbed.

So we pass onward, till we stand at last
With every struggle, each love, in the past;
Our soul surmounts its throne.
Then the large deathless rapture through us thrills:
We turn from human hearts, from flowers and hills,
And meet God's eyes, alone.

1885.

A LOVE-SONG

God made us both, and sent the storm to sing
Round me:
He sent for messenger the crocused spring
To thee.
He sent the butterflies most bright of wing
To thee,—
Bade sorrow like a constant sweetheart cling
To me.
Am I thy lord? Am I as lover and king
To thee?
Bitter and grievous are the gifts I bring:
Love, see!

I bring my own unutterable despair
To thee:
Thou givest thine own beauty, passing fair,
To me.

Thou biddest summer light suffuse the air
For me:
My storm of sorrow sweeps the green earth bare
For thee.
Yet wilt thou hold to me,—with love most rare,
Most free?
Then God, perhaps, will after all declare
For me.

Dec. 1, 1885.

THOU AND I

Oh, this I say of thee, that thy sweet face,
When passion else were undisputed king,
Reminds me ever of a fairer thing
Than passion,—even love, whose gentle grace
Fills as with shine of flowers each barren place
And makes the birdless sunless mountains sing.

Thou bringest back to me, O love divine,
O gentle girl-heart full of God indeed,
Hope, and a tenderer higher nobler creed.
Thou makest this despairing soul of mine
Just for one moment bright-hued even as thine:
Thou hast the power to lift and power to lead.

Just for one moment, while I meet thine eyes,
I pass from out the temple of despair
And cease to breathe the Dantesque gloomy air,

And the dim light of purgatorial skies
Brightens. I feel that death's malign mouth lies
And that sweet life lasts ever, and ever is fair.

And then, thee leaving, back again I pass,
Again, God help me! to my proper tomb,
Ringed all about with sable starless gloom
And blue-green patches of disastrous grass:
Thee leaving, I become myself alas!
I am despair. Thou art a lily in bloom.

1885.

ONE LOVE

Let this be said of me, if aught be thought or uttered
When I am dead: “The heart that at her coming fluttered,
Unshaken, firm before,
True till the end remained. While all old dreams forsook him,
This one eternal dream with very sweetness shook him
As the sea's white soft foam-touch shakes the shore.

“A thousand times he dreamed of love. But once love found him,
And with an endless wreath of pain and anguish crowned him:
Once strong love held him fast.
And, when he loved, he loved,—and whom he loved he cherished
Till time and life and death, grey-haired and pallid, perished;
One love was fadeless till the very last.”

1885.

WOMANHOOD AND MANHOOD

When womanhood is loved by manhood with the tender
Love wherewith I love thee, when manhood's heart can render
Homage to her like this,
The world will be redeemed. When woman's soul can fashion
In the deep heart of man a stainless worldwide passion,
Evil will flee before their stainless kiss.

This waits,—that every heart of woman win the power
To be to some one man his pure immortal flower,
His holiest pride and bliss.
When womanhood is loved, as I love thee, the yearning
Of earth will be fulfilled, and man's will give the burning
And woman's mouth will give the angelic kiss.

1886.

“HEAVEN IS NO LAND REMOTE”

Heaven is not any place. And hell with ardent arches
May be discerned amid the feathery-foliaged larches
Gleaming.—Our own hearts make
The golden towers of heaven, the ramparts high and solemn
Relieved by marble white, and wealth of jewelled column:—
Our own souls' yearnings fan the fiery lake.

From our own thought the waves take life and exultation;
The earth moves nearer heaven with each new generation;
Heaven is no land remote,
Heaven is our old green earth. We can, if we will give it,
Impart more heavenly scent to London thick-leaved privet
Than fills the airs wherethrough the gold wings float.

The fragrance of the soul,—this only brings heaven near us.
The eyesight of the soul—this glance we need to cheer us.
The soul-glance gives their blue

To lake and river and sea: tide-ripples else were duller
Than ripples wrought of lead. They win their warmth and colour
From warmth within ourselves, and our hearts' hue.

Rack weary brain on brain—fatigue the flagging fancy!
Search far for heaven!—One square with yellow-hearted pansy
Beside its borders set
May be to you a heaven far fairer and completer
Than soul of prophet dreamed. What Eden scents are sweeter
Than rain-washed scent of London mignonette?

The storm within the soul takes from the hills their lustre.—
The tempest of the heart urges the black fierce cluster
Of clouds across the sky.
When Love beside us stands, the sun is ever shining;
Each cirrhus-band of mist laughs with a golden lining;
When Love departs, all stars and suns must die.

1886.

“ONLY THE STARS AND SEA”

From far beyond my death I seem now to regard thee:
Earth's flowers and grass, earth's hills and streams, for thee!
The sweet earth seems to have seized thy soul, and closed and barred thee
For evermore from me.

I seem to feel the breath of sacred death flow round me:
The breath of August blossoms floats round thee.
Not thine hands, not thine hands to-day have loved and crowned me;
Only the stars and sea.

The breath of death is sweet, but oh! thy love is sweeter,
Thou art more fair, O love,—I moan for thee.
In this strange land I faint. Wilt thou, than death's foot fleeter,
Hasten, O love, to me?

Only the stars and waves, and the black night whose breathing
Is cold beside the passionate breath of thee!
Only the clouds and stars, the far white waters seething:
Only the stars and sea!

1886.

“DRIFTING ALONE”

I

Drifting, drifting alone
O'er the wild waste of waters, while the day
Sinks swallowed in a haze of sullen grey
That hides cliff, shore, and down and creek and bay.
No sound save waves that wail and winds that moan:
Drifting, drifting, drifting,
Drifting on alone!

II

Drifting, drifting alone
Into the darkness of the inhuman sea.
Love aided once, sweet Love,—now where is he?
Only the boat, the waves, the sky, and she.
The sail shrieks out, the racked planks creak and groan:
Drifting, drifting, drifting,
Drifting on alone!

III

Drifting, drifting alone
Into the midnight, ninety miles away
From the old sunlit shores of yesterday.
Between her and the land one ceaseless grey
Desert, whose billows in fierce monotone
Cry “Drifting, drifting, drifting,
Drifting to death, alone!”

Feb. 3, 1886.

THE WOMANHOOD OF FRANCE

The womanhood of France is travestied,
Held up to scorn
By the lewd Art of France. Yet many a heart
In France is nobler than all Gallic Art:
Love hath not wholly died,
Though love may mourn.

Though sweet-lipped harlots on the Gallic stage
Still hold their own,
Sweet-lipped, sweet-bosomed, but with hearts as black
And deadly as the midnight's moonless rack,
Yet Hugo thrilled the age
With sound as of a sudden trumpet blown.

Hugo, with Shakespeare's sweetness in his eyes,
And in his heart
A strength as of the Northern waves that break,
Sang how pure love for love's own deathless sake
Can face death's flaming skies:
His was the Art

Of England in some sort, the Art that knows
How more divine
Than passion's wildest most delirious breath
And more triumphant over utmost death
Is noble love that grows
To kingly stature in the soul's deep shrine.

Dec. 13, 1885.

THE LONELY YEARNING

And dost thou feel, O bard, that in thine heart
There are strange powers
Unshared of men;
That in thine Art
Is something cognate to the fields of flowers
Or clouds that storm the granite-bouldered glen?

And dost thou feel that like another sense
Unknown, undreamed of by the common crowd,
The beauty of woman thrills thy soul,
A joy intense:
That thou hast ever to proclaim aloud
That Beauty sways beginning, course, and goal?

Then, if thou feelest this,
If unto thee
There is a marvel in the sunset-air
And in the swoop of swift or song of bee,—
In the sea's kiss
A glory that thy fellows may not share;

If most of all in Her,
Woman, who sways the heart of endless time,
The ceaseless years,
Thou findest a plenipotence sublime,
Beyond thy peers,—
If at her eyes thy soul's deep pulses stir;

Then strive thou to excel
Those unto whom thy vision is not given:
If they live nobly, well!
But strive thou after even a lordlier heaven.
Sink not below the rest. Let blind folk be!
Climb thou the mountains thy dream-glances see.

1885.

MARRIAGE

The woman brings her purity divine:
She takes her girlish wreath and lets it shine
Upon the man's tired head.
The woman brings sweet thoughts and rainbow gleams;
The man brings half a life of selfish dreams
And selfish thoughts instead.

This ought not so to be. They cannot meet,
The man, the woman, in eternal sweet
High marriage-union so.
The man's deep purity should mix with hers:
This is the marriage-dower that God confers;
This is the gift we owe.

All marriage short of this is spoilt and marred,
Imperfect, poor, inadequate, ill-starred,
Unblessed and undivine.
No strange unearthly rapture through it flows;
No viewless fragrance, as if mystic rose
With lily did combine.

When manhood first asserts its inborn strength,
Becomes as pure as womanhood at length
And meets with noble eyes
The fearless eyes of woman, then the race
Conquering old lusts and every instinct base
To its true height will rise.

For then sweet mystery will dawn before
Both man and woman, a strange golden shore
Of ardent joys and dreams,
A griefless wonderful untrodden strand,
A flowerful region, an immortal land
Of star-rays and moonbeams.

All violent grasping after love is sheer
Madness and loss. Love lends no earnest ear
To eager shouts and cries.
Those who will reverence woman she will bless
With nobler rapture than the wild caress
Of temporal love supplies.

The perfect marriage-love is that which breathes
Its own still sweetness through the bridal wreaths,
The love that joins in one;
The love that brings a never-failing peace,
The love that though the stars died, could not cease,
That must outlive the sun.

The love that will not prematurely grasp
At pleasure (which then melteth through man's clasp!)
The love that waits its time:
This love alone can conquer and possess;
This love can make the gentlest pure caress
Beyond all words sublime.

1886.

CHRIST'S WOMANHOOD

Woman and man in perfect man unite;
The marvellous light
Of Christ's eyes had its fount and source in this.
In true man strength and sweetness blend their powers,
Like diverse flowers
Wedded for ever in one marriage-kiss.

Through Christ's eyes shone the light, most pure, divine,
Which soon shall shine
Like God's own sunlight through all women's eyes.
The Magdalen caught that saving glance and knew
One man was true,
And in her soul the harlot straightway dies.

When this light shines through all the eyes of men
There shall be then
No lost souls left on earth to moan and weep.
Woman, who is but as a worn-out child
Whom pain makes wild,
Shall mark that light, and smile, and fall asleep

Then she shall wake,
And all old pangs that throbbed with weary ache
Shall in that healing rest have passed away.
New sunlit skies
Shall meet the laughing sunlight in her eyes,
And on the earth shall dawn love's perfect day.

The womanhood
Whose sweetness ever in Christ's heart abode
Yearning to lift, to gladden, to redeem,
Shall purify
The earth, and set new stars within the sky,
And change life to the likeness of Christ's dream.

The Magdalen,
Whom Christ by understanding hallowed then,
Was the precursor of all women saved.
When manhood wills,
The blind mad soulless tyranny that kills
Shall ended be, and woman unenslaved.

Woman first spoke
And the first gleam of her far sunrise broke
When through Christ's eyes the woman who shall be
Loved all the race;
When through the sweet sad splendour of his face
Shone the true glory of manhood, purity.

1886.

“DEATH EQUALIZES ALL”

Death equalizes all.
The humblest ragged beggar, when he dies,
May win a golden bright crown in the skies
And at his feet the Seraphim may fall.

1886.

THE PERSONALITY OF WOMAN

The centuries pass away. In each age woman gaineth
A portion of her strength,—but ah, how much remaineth!
How much is yet to win!
When woman is herself, a free pure soul aspirant,
No longer half a slave, and half a sweet-lipped tyrant,
Man's freedom will begin.

Man is himself a slave, while woman he enslaveth.
The roadway straight to hell for his own soul he paveth
Who hellward paves her way.
Who poisons woman's soul pours poisonous juice abundant
Through his own veins, wherethrough the foul stream runs redundant:
He toils, and wins his pay.

Woman is dwarfed as yet; she cannot win her glory.
She cannot shape her fate, nor yet complete her story,
And man is dwarfed as well.
The final fate of each upon the other's hinges:
Her life on man's abuts, and presses and impinges,—
And half her life is hell.

Weary she is of love that in the same old fashion
Sings of her lips and hair, with musical soft passion
And words that thrill her heart.
Weary she is of this, for all the tender thrilling;
And, while her eyes with tears at the sweet song are filling,
Higher things she asks of Art.

She asks that Art will aid her soul to grow diviner;
That love shall lift to God,—apportion and assign her
Her place beside her lord.
She asks that she shall take her share in strife and labour,
She wielding sometimes too her golden-tasselled sabre
While man's hand wields his sword.

She asks no more the praise of lips and eyes and tresses:
Though all her pure soul longs for love's divine caresses
She longs yet more for this,
For constancy and calm,—and that within the holy
Rapture of love the light of heaven may glitter, slowly
Heightening from kiss to kiss.

She freely gives her lips, she freely gives her beauty;
But asks that love may seek the table-land of duty
And not the valleys dim.
Man she will follow fast, and follow to his gaining,
If only after God she knows his soul is straining:
Then, she will worship him.

Her whole heart yearns to love, and yearns to worship truly.
When man be worthy of her, she'll give herself quite newly.
Man brings the love of change:
But woman shapes the home, and pours from fairy chalice
Gifts that can make the home a never-ending palace
Of endless scope and range.

Weakness still seeketh change. The strong heart holds its station.
The purest is the strong most manly conquering nation.
By faithfulness supreme
To love in all its depth Rome reached her queenly power.
When purity was lost, she faded like a flower
And ended like a dream.

1886.

THE STAR-GARDENS

In the dark fields of space the stars are like the flowers:
They fill the heavenly meads, and light the heavenly bowers,
Some great and strong and grand,
Some small and weak perhaps; some scentless orbs and homely;
Some proud and haughty stars; some queenly stars and comely;
Some, wastes of rock and sand.

Some stars are like a rose, and some are as carnations,
And some are hedge-flower stars. We needs must still have patience
If our star be but small:
A hedge-flower star indeed,—a weed perhaps, comparing
Its glory with the rest; a planet very daring
To tread the lists at all.

Patience! the earth is ours. One day, when man is hoary,
When every field of earth with battle-blood is gory,
When the great task is done,
When pain is at an end, pain having taught its lesson,
The earth will win a calm beauty beyond expression
And rival the old sun.

For every star a heaven, for every soul a heaven:
This hope supreme and fair to each man's heart is given
From Hebrew days to these.
The Hebrew prophets preached the end of sorrow and sinning;
And now, as if the song of hope were but beginning,
It chimes in English seas.

Although our star be ranked, in the vast astral order,
Low down indeed, though it be but posted on the border,
The outlying edge of space,
Yet two things hath the earth supremely meritorious
Achieved, supremely grand and past man's praising glorious,—
She hath this crowning grace,—

This grace:—that from her waves with infinite soft laughter
Love rose, and never quite, though Sorrow followed after,
Forsook the earth reborn:
This grace;—that, when the world was sick at heart and weary,
Earth found a Christ to die, and found a hill-side dreary
And found a wreath of thorn.

1886.

TRUST

Can I not trust the God who brought me here
And made my road a starry or sunlit way?
The God who led me on from year to year,—
Made fresh flowers spring around me day by day:

The God who, knowing that I was to be,
Provided beauty for mine every road;
Spread out before my wondering eyes the sea,—
Wove golden clouds wherethrough his sunsets glowed:

The God who made the whole wide earth so fair
That I therein for years on years might dwell;
Made the white wings of sea-birds throng the air
And purple heather-blossoms throng the fell:

The God who, having made flower, sun and star,
Made one thing fairer,—even love supreme,
And thrilled me with its light and sweetness, far
Beyond the light and sweetness of a dream.

Can I trust God in that strange realm beyond,
The which I see not, yet whereto I go,
To follow me with faithful love and fond,—
To strike new rocks, that forth new streams may flow?

Can God, when all the skies of earth grow dark,
In new immortal heavens relight the sun?
When all the stars of life grow pale and stark
Can God's great word requicken every one?

Can God provide new rivers and new streams
To cleave through heavenly plains their silver way?
Make the sweet eyes I only met in dreams
Meet mine in regions of eternal day?

Can God, who made all earthly love so fair,
Complete in heaven the task that he began
And shape some nobler woman-angel there,
To cling more close than woman clings to man?

July 30, 1887.

TILL DEATH

There are those who love the sunny Southern ocean
With its olive-clad and myrtle-scented shore
And its waves that know no wrestling tides' commotion;
They will dream of its clear waters evermore:
For in Italy—perhaps—Love bent and blessed them,
Smiling angel-like from depths of bluest sky.
So they love the land where perfect Love caressed them
More than all lands, and will love it till they die.

Others heard Love whisper through the English larches,
Heard in gentle spring his gentleness of tone;
Saw Love stepping through the fragrant forest-arches,
And the banks of yellow primrose were his throne.
Or they heard Love's message ever-new though olden,
When the autumn winds came sobbing through the sky
Strewing forest-paths with crimson leaves and golden:
They will love the autumn forest till they die.

Others met Love in the darkness of the city,
Underneath the dreary fog-wreaths and the smoke:
Knew Love's sweetness and his pureness and his pity;
Felt the world awake to gladness when he spoke.
So they love the grim old city—aye, for ever—
Better than the bluest depths of Southern sky.
They will love the red moon over our old river:
They'll be true to our old city till they die!

Nov. 19, 1887.

“THE HOUR LONG WAITED FOR”

The dim night's solemn sweetness seemed her own:
God's very heart of passion bent to heed.
The world receded, leaving us alone;
The hour long waited for had come indeed.

ALFRED TENNYSON

While our poets, restless-hearted, wandered far from English cliffs and trees,
Seeking nobler inspiration—so they thought—by shores of sunnier seas—

While they left the grey old island sung by Shakespeare by their harps unsung
England still to thee was flower-crowned, still the splendour on her brow was young:

Still for thee her clear waves sparkled with a phraseless magic all their own;
Freedom, quitting snowier summits, held the peaks of England like a throne.

Freedom to the world-wide peoples spake, thou thoughtest, never mightier word
Than the lips of Milton uttered, than among the lone hills Wordsworth heard.

At thy very dawn of singing—far o'er English waves the music rolled—
Thou didst sing the dawn of Maytime, when the kingcups pave the land with gold.

Through a thousand years of history, England's joyous history it may be,
English hearts will read thy “May-queen”—as they read it, thrill with love for thee.

Never yet the soul of poet, full of passion of spring's lovely prime,
Wove within the enmeshed fair verses more of sweetness of the fragrant time:

Sweetness of the bright May season, and a sweetness tenderer than of May,
Girlish sweetness of the May-queen, queen of all the green land for a day.

Queen too, when the sad song ended, of the skies of death she filled with light,
Crowning darkness with new starshine, maiden-empress of the impervious night.

That was when thy singing lightened first upon the land it was to claim,
Hold with all the spell of genius, all the magic of a mighty name.

Then to other queens thou turnedst, adding yet another deathless word
To the praise of Cleopatra which the unwearying centuries have heard:

Making with thy marvellous music earth's fair passionate daughters fairer far,
Joining to their crowns for ever yet another matchless lyric star.

When the centuries, gazing backward, take account of this our century's song
Though but few songs be remembered, clear will ring thy music, sweet and strong.

Thou with Hugo and with Browning then wilt win time's great approving word,
This, that through thy stately singing ever hope's exhilarant note was heard:

This, that as on Browning, Hugo, though the century darkened with despair
Still on thee heaven's pure light glittered, still to thee heaven's mountain-heights were fair.

Still, for all the scowls of Science, sombre power tyrannic for awhile,
Thou didst see beyond the ephemeral darkness radiant morning's golden smile:

Morning flashing on the nations, vast exultant morning yet to be,
Morning, when the ships of battle yield to ships of commerce on the sea;

Morning, when the Russian midnight owns the conquering sun its lord at last,
When the days of kings and prisons, hours of chains and tyrants, all are past;

Morning, when through Afric's deserts wind no longer, bleeding as they crawl,
Slaves who spot the tawny sand-waste with yet redder patches as they fall;

Morning, when the people's mandate bids us only crown and recognize
Valour, wisdom, stainless merit, and the soul that flames from genius' eyes;

Morning, when the love of woman wins at last in that far future hour
Scope and room, and right to blossom forth from lovely bud to lovelier flower;

Morning, when man's love, developed, manlier now for touch of gentle grace,
Treading down the brute within it, looks with godlike eyes in woman's face;

Morning, when God's worship merges, as with Christ that nobler creed began,
In the service of our fellows, in the limitless pure love of man;

Morning, when the Churches teach us, not their bitter parties' rallying-cry,
But the wonders of the gospel preached from star to star across the sky,—

Marvels of the mighty mountains, shadowy lessons of the purple deep,
Secrets of the impassioned summer whose soft kisses lull the winds to sleep;

These are morning's far-off glories—these, O singer, thou didst recognize;
As in trance on earth thou sawest them, now thou seest with fully awakened eyes.

THE POET AND FATE

Fate.
Singers who charmed the earth are dead:
Why singest thou to-day?

The Poet.
Because the laughing rose is red
And white the scented may,
And new-born golden light is shed
On silver stream and bay.

Fate.
Thou dwellest 'mid a heedless race:
They worship nought but gold.

The Poet.
Yet will I lift a tearless face
Towards Beauty as of old.
Her boons of love, her gifts of grace,
Are won but by the bold.

Fate.
Shelley is dead, and Keats is gone,
And who will lift the lute?

The Poet.
Though these be dead, the same strong sun
Still changes flower to fruit:
The birds' hearts waken, one by one;
So why should I be mute?

Fate.
Sing! who will listen in our time?
The poet lives alone.

The Poet.
Though men reject an idle rhyme,
The song-god knows his own,—
Inspires them with his breath sublime
That they may share his throne.

THE SINGER'S DOOM

I

Defeat and sorrow drive us to despair,
But still we sing.
Spring mourns all past springs' leaves, but yet is fair,
And scents with hawthorn bloom the lazy air,
Each spring.

II

We vow that we will never sing again,
But still we sing.
“Silence is best,” we say, “for deep heart-pain.
Why give our lives to song,—to song, so vain
A thing!”

III

“What is the gain of singing?” so we say—
But still we sing.
Just as the gold sun rises every day
Because some supreme will he must obey,
Ordering.

IV

So we are driven along by some strange will,
And still we sing.
Frost gives a respite to the singing rill,
And winter can arrest the wild bird's chill
Stiff wing.

V

Nought can arrest our singing, for a force
Still bids us sing.
The same strong power that urges on their course
The stars, and clothes anew the hills with gorse
And ling.

VI

We cannot rest, or pause. This is our fate,
Half joy, half sting,—
To tarry ever at the song-god's gate,
And, whether mankind love or mankind hate,
Ever to sing.

1885.

“NOT ALWAY”

Not alway will the heart of woman suffer anguish
And her soul's sweetest flowers droop down, decay, and languish,
For man's heart will arise
And slay, with sword of love, lust the malign slave-master
And self, whose worship brings disaster on disaster:
Man shall restore the queenhood to her eyes.

Not alway can the soul of woman be degraded
In this our world,—the world whose dells have been invaded
By the rich virgin rose;
The world where Dante dreamed, the world where Hugo, later,
Took up his chant of love,—the world where Christ, yet greater,
Wept God's own tears, even then, for woman's woes.

Two thousand years have passed, well nigh,—yet woman weepeth.
Not yet the golden star of her redemption leapeth
Above the ill-omened shade.
Christ saved from plunging deep in black pollution's river
The women-souls he loved.—Could even Christ deliver
The souls our cities day by day degrade?

Hardly, it sometimes seems.—And yet the light is stronger
Than all the darkest dark, and love can hold out longer
Than hate, the devil's own creed.
We need the love of Christ, we need the wrath of Dante
(For where the wrath is slight, the noble love is scanty)
And Hugo's harp, to raise the dead indeed.

1885.

THE UNSEEN LAND

I

We shall not lonely be:
The breakers of death's sea
Fringe with their white line no inhuman shore.
Within death's valleys meet
The faces we found sweet,
The hearts and hands that sought our own of yore.
Upon death's uplands, lo!
Full many a voice we know
And flowers like those our living green earth bore.

II

All, young and old, are there;
The child with golden hair,
The blue-eyed girl, the man with earnest look.
Death's is no lonely land,
No waste of desert sand,

But glad with silvery laugh of many a brook,
And bright with suns like those
That in the old days rose,
And moonlight floods each ghostly forest-nook.

III

We need not doubt nor dread:
The armies of the dead
Beckon us on with many a living hand.
The lonelier we are here
The less we have to fear
For on the other side more dear ones stand:
Each summer sends its ghosts
Of flowers to death's dim coasts;
Each year new loved ones seek that unseen land.

THE LONG PARTING

They parted beside the cottage door
On a beautiful night in June.
The soft sea sang to the listening shore
And the silver ripples sang to the oar
And the dark trees sang to the moon.
She said “Good-bye” to her sailor lad
And she kissed him with all her heart:
And she said, “God speed. It is but for a year..
One year...that we have to part.”

A year passed on, and she stood once more
On a beautiful moonlit night
In the cottage garden as before,
And she said, “The sorrowful time is o'er;
To-morrow will bring delight.
To-morrow my sailor-love will be here;
I shall see white sails in the bay:
And the long long months of the long long year
Will seem but as one short day!”

To-morrow!...The bright sun smiled in its glee
And the rose smelt sweet by the gate.
The thrush bustled out of the great elm-tree:
He thought he had news of a wedding to be
And he dreaded to start too late.

A girl's eyes waited the long day through
And the sea-gulls' wings flashed white
—When the stars and the moon gleamed out in the blue
Clear sky, and the rose was kissed by the dew,
Over the wires this message flew:
Lost—with all hands—in the night!

“THE SONG OF THE BELLS”

Once more, once more, rings out on earth
The old glad sound of Christmas mirth;
Once more the ivy-wreaths we twine
And again the bright red berries shine;
Hearts that were severed are one to-day
And sad souls dare to hope and pray;
Jealousy, envy, hatred, scorn,
All die in the light of Christmas morn.
The chorus swells
Of the Christmas bells:
Merry and loud is the song of the bells.

Yet, as the red glad berries gleam,
Some sadness mixes with our dream.
So many we loved have passed away
Who once were with us on Christmas Day;
Before next Christmas heart from heart
In sorrow and gloom may have to part;

Sweet is the sound of the bells that chime,
Yet some hearts mourn at Christmas-time.
The chorus swells
Of the Christmas bells,
But sadness lurks in the song of the bells.

Not wholly pain and sad-eyed grief
Claim golden berry and fair green leaf;
Rather the message of hope and love
To-day descends on earth from above;
Though rivers be frozen and fields be white
The keen stars glitter with added light;
In countless hearts the gladness glows
That comes with the holly, not with the rose.
The chorus swells
Of the Christmas bells:
“Labour and hope” is the song of the bells.

SONNET To my Wife, on the Seventeenth Anniversary of our Wedding Day

(Oct. 2, 1889.)

So many stormy suns have sought the night,
So many stormless noontides passed away,
Since that far-off fair stormless autumn day
When all the young world seemed so full of light.
The world seems darker now, but yet more bright,
The more the dark sky gathers robes of grey,
Thy love—that shines with holier tenderer ray
When all heaven's stars spread golden sails for flight.

The one thing stedfast in a world of change,
The one light quenchless in a world of gloom,
Is love like thine, my noble-hearted wife!
And (if man's thought beyond the stars may range)
Such love may live, if aught outlast the tomb,
In the unknown land where love is light and life.

“DREAM-LOVE”

When round the paths of boyhood fell the eternal
Pure light of morning, mixed with heaven's own gleams;
When heaven's own emeralds through the foliage vernal
Shone, heaven's own sapphires on the sunlit streams;

Then, in those days when all the world was fairer
Than ever again this sombre world will be;
Then, when the silver moon, love's standard-bearer,
Poured stainless light upon a sinless sea;

Then, in those days, I loved—and in strong fashion.
“Dream-love,” you say? But dream-love is sublime.
Ofttimes I think a boy's exalted passion
Is the only love that stands the test of time.

For then the sense of love with mystery blended
Brings heaven to earth, makes all existence grand:
But passion understood is passion ended;
Love's realm is loveliest as an unknown land.

Yet is it ever known? What heart of poet
Has ached not as its splendour disappears!
Can mortal ever with full knowledge know it,—
The land whose sweetness moves the soul to tears?

How often have I with eager gaze and burning
Striven but once more that far-off land to see:
In vain the effort! Fruitless is the yearning—
That prize is lost for all eternity.

Man's eager gifts bribe not the mute stern warders:
The boy might enter, but the man must stand
For ever waiting just outside the borders
—Angels with flaming swords safeguard the land.

O forest-glades wherethrough one fair form wandered!
O flower-clad land which I shall ne'er behold!
How often have I in riper sad years pondered,
Striving again to pass your gates of gold.

Alas! the gates are barred, the spell is broken:
The purest passion of my life is o'er.
O love of dreams, thy soft last word is spoken!
O land of light, thy light is mine no more!

SHELLEY

Through golden years the fame of Shelley grows.
From height to height
His name is echoed.—In his song the rose
Became more bright.

He recreated all this world of things:
He made all new.
Whiter he made the sea-bird's flashing wings,
The waves more blue.

He thrilled the Italian air with heavenlier gleams
His genius brought.
Mankind is nearer God for Shelley's dreams
And Shelley's thought.

And yet, while thousands journey to his tomb
And mourn and weep,
What of the child who through the dark waves' gloom
Passed to her sleep?

Never have human sorrowing eyes grown dim
At her young grave:
Who wails for her, while all hearts weep for him?
The wind, the wave!

Yet less than his I think her spirit erred
Who could not bear
Love's loss. She gave him love, but he conferred
Man's gift, despair.

THE TRIUMPH OF THE BARDS:

An Answer to “The Battle of the Bards”

Nay! not among the “bards” the “battle” rages,
Not there—but rather 'mid the snake-tongued throng
Whose hate nor truth disarms nor time assuages,
Who, hating sunlight, hate the kings of song.

“Where I have failed, shall others triumph? Never!
My voice is hushed. Shall other songs succeed?”
So whines the ephemeral songless creature ever:
Lies are his weapons, hatred is his creed.

While in the mist and mire these reptiles quarrel,
Emerging, each, from some malodorous lair,
To bard on bard time's hand concedes the laurel,
Star after star lights darkling wastes of air.

While poets' steps ascend the sunlit mountains,
While fair before them shines the untrodden snow,
While blue beside them gleam the unsullied fountains,
The pigmies' “battle” rages far below.

The poet's fame is sure and safe for ever;
His is the realm of everlasting Art:
The songs that move men's souls can perish never,
For nought can die that thrills one human heart.

While Spring arrays in gems each tenderest flower,
Yet fairer in his song their bloom shall be;
His is the wild wind's strength, the tempest's power,
Morn's splendour on the imperishable sea.

While human souls are stormed by passion's madness,
While sweet love's joy pours starlight through the gloom,
Still is the poet king of grief, of gladness,
Master of time and conqueror of the tomb.

THE FOUNTS OF SONG

Whence springs the sweetness of pure golden rhyme
That fills the soul with fragrant dreams for hours?
From rose and lily and furze and pink and thyme:
The poet's earliest teachers are the flowers.

Then, when he craves the thunder for his strain,
The strength of song at which the centuries flee,
His stern inspiring motive he must gain
From the wild waters, worshipping the sea.

Another step—and upward. Let the race
Of man pour through him its tempestuous might!
Let him find marvel in the lowliest face
And on the dullest brow a crown of light.

Another step—still upward. From above
There flows an inspiration higher than this:
Through woman's pureness speaks the eternal love,
As woman's beauty speaks through woman's kiss.

Another step—the last. When all these things
Are one by one discerned, all pathways trod,
Choosing the road that mocks the eagle's wings
The poet's heart must seek the heart of God.

Aug. 14, 1891.

FROM ETERNITY TO ETERNITY

O weird pale pitiless stars, so wan and cold,
Planets that knew no youth, yet are not old,
Ye watch with deathless eyes
Our death-filled years,our bitter days and hours:
Yet are ye heartless,—just mere golden flowers
Crowding the purple skies?

O strong strange stars that glitter through the night,
Are ye all speechless? Are your eyes so bright,
Yet do they never weep?
Are mortal agonies mere passing gleams
That flash across the darkness of your dreams
But never break your sleep?

Out of the far eternity ye came:
Into the far eternity ye flame:
Our time-realm lies between
The twin eternities that ye can hold
Fast linked in your slight chains of glittering gold,
Joined by your fitful sheen.

Between your twain eternities are we;
We and our surging lives, our tossing sea
Of human strife and care.
But ye—long ere the earliest race began,
Long ere the moulding God first fashioned man,
Your lamps flashed through the air.

Before one woman's soft eyes thrilled the light
Of far-off morning, ye, star-eyes, were bright,
Bright as in this our day.
Ere children's voices sounded 'mid the trees,
Ye heard the rustling melancholy breeze
Wail, on its lonely way.

Ye shine to-night on England; and when she
Sleeps, silenced in the dim futurity,
Past rapture or desire,
Still will ye gaze from heaven,—unchanged, as bright
As when the darkness of the primal night
Leaped at your touch to fire.

1886.

ONCE MORE

I

“Far out where waves are breaking,
Where never song-bird sings,
My soul would fly, forsaking
All flowers and inland things.
I am weary of the bowers
Where summer's heart is won;
I am weary of the flowers;
I am weary of the sun:
Where only star-rays sunder
The darkness, I would be;
At rest, while wild waves thunder
The anthems of the sea.”

II

Ah! so my soul went crying—
And yet Love lured me back:
I heard the soft winds sighing
Again round summer's track.

Once more the old earth drew me,
Though in my soul was scorn;
Again love's dart thrilled through me
For love again was born.
Once more the summer's splendour
Descending from above
In woman's eyes grew tender,
On woman's lips was love.

1889.

“HER LAST COURT”

If thou wert dead, there could be no to-morrow!
Darkness would veil the glory of the sun.
—If thou wert dead, the bright blue sky would sorrow:
Summer would shiver on his lonely throne.

Spring, with its hosts of buds and flowers advancing
Alert and joyous to the bare earth's siege,
Would miss thy laughter's old clear sound entrancing
And pause upon some forest's leafless edge.

Autumn in vain, with crowns of crimson splendour
In sunburnt grasp, would gaze around for thee.
Winter would miss thy touch so warm and tender:
Despair would chill the light heart of the sea.

The fairies in the woods would whisper, weeping:
“Earth's sweetest lady, and most to us akin,
Lies now beneath the grass, for ever sleeping.
What prize is left on earth for man to win?

“The hair whose lustrous black might once have maddened
The hearts of kings, before the worms is spread.
Death's lips at touch of lovelier lips are gladdened:
Death's cold hand rests beneath the stately head.

“The voice that won the soul of Art to love it,
That thrilled men like the music of the wave,
Is silent as the soulless weeds above it:
Beauty now holds her last court...in her grave.”

March 27, 1890.

THE PALACE OF THE DEAD

Sometimes, when music sounds,
Towards some strange palace I am led
Where meet, methinks, the dead:
I travel through enchanted grounds.

Within those palace-walls, bright-eyed,
They dance, converse,—as love or music leads.
But I, within the darkness, left outside,
Shiver, and hear the hoarse wind through the reeds.

1892.

“HOPE DIES’

Hope dies in many a heart, as life grows older:
No more with young bright dazzled eyes we see
A thousand diamonds on each wave's white shoulder,
A thousand emeralds in each sun-kissed tree.

No more the road to heaven seems all placarded
From starlit side to side: “Admission free.”
Love, seeking woman's heart, is checked, retarded;
Winged love must pause, and pay his entrance fee.

A poor man toils to win a girl's devotion:
Some rich man wins her in a night, maybe!
Man's thoughts are rocks that breast time's tossing ocean,
But woman's thoughts are changeful as the sea.

TWO SONNETS WRITTEN AFTER WITNESSING SARAH BERNHARDT'S PERFORMANCE OF THE PART OF “LA TOSCA”

I.

Forget the flowers of summer, even forget
The world-wide reign of daylight and the sun;
Share with the stars of night the glory of one
Star-crowned for ever, one whom never yet
Being born of heaven hath mortal equal met:
Forget the sands that through the hour-glass run;
Forget, disdain, till these charmed hours are done
The moans of grief, the storm-cries of regret.

For just one moment lo! the peace of Art
Triumphant ever, let who will withstand,
Renews the brain and sanctifies the heart
For one thing sorrowing, that the power that gave
Nobly so much may raise not from the grave
Dead Shakespeare's genius, here in Shakespeare's land.

II.

Yet here in England, though dark dreams have sway,
Though in the sea-girt isle where blooms the rose
Art, rose-crowned, sea-voiced, hath a thousand foes,
When genius speaks ten thousand hearts obey.
On England's stage pale shadows have their day,
Then to the land of shades each shadow goes
And England wakes to welcome one who knows
What Art's deep soul through woman's voice can say.

We who have worshipped from our natal hour
Art, following eager even her slightest glance,
Praise heaven that flowerless fields at length may flower,
That through the gloom Art's sunlit steps advance,
While England honours her whose matchless power
The gods who give to man first gave to France.

June 27, 1892.

100

A GREETING

“We are not so shrouded as we seem, and there is dawn close on the heels of darkness.” —L. C. B.

Though still the darkness on the hills is lying
And still the starless horror of the night
There comes a voice that cries, “The gloom is dying!”
There comes a sound and rumour of the light.

We who have watched through sunless years and waited
Nor seen the hosts of darkness once withdrawn
Nor felt the stress of anguish once abated
Hear half in doubt a whisper of the dawn.

The light we see not yet superbly gleaming
Across the wastes of unaccustomed skies
May reach a younger soul, may now be streaming
Athwart the clouds that part for younger eyes.

101

Hail, friend, who seest the far-off morning bringing
Triumph the Church's treacherous spears delay:
Greeting from those who 'mid the gloom are singing
To one whose song shall sound beneath the day.

Greeting to one who, when thought's host advances,
When morning's jewels flash on flower and tree,
Shall meet morn's sun-bright look with equal glances
And see the face we love but shall not see.

Greeting to one who, though the dark around him
Grew loud with tongues that clamoured and defamed,
Knew none the less the sun-god's hand that found him,
The smile that drew, the regnant touch that claimed.

Greeting from hearts which in the darkness fighting,
Lit by the flame alone of flashing swords,
Bound at the news of bright-helmed morning smiting
With golden bow the raven-armoured hordes.

Greeting from one whose troubled note gave warning
Though starless robes swept flowerless field and lawn
Of the rich plumes and crimson robes of morning,
The lustrous pomp and pageant of the dawn.

102

The singer passes, but the dream he cherishes
With heart that chides the insufficient tongue,
This passes not; it fades not out, nor perishes:
The dream that thrilled him once, now thrills the young.

He saw fair love approach, whose touch discloses
Veiled secrets hidden in history's moonless night:
He saw love, lying dead among white roses,
With brow and cheek than roses even more white.

He watched the sunset on cold mountains dying;
He watched the hopeless foam on sunless seas:—
Now waves and mountains cry, “Too self-relying,
Young hearts are living—thy thought lives in these!

“Around thy path have stormed with onset breathless
Truth's foes, the lovers of old crime and wrong;
But England lives, and fearless thought is deathless,
And on youth's brows abides the light of song.

“Thy sword that, if it conquered not, ne'er rusted,
Thy shield that bears the dints of countless blows,
Thine helmet—these, to England's youth entrusted,
Shall watch the flight and downfall of thy foes.”

March 11, 1894.

103

“LOVE YIELDS HIS SLAVES UP NEVER”

I

Once more, with skies above her
Of endless perfect air,
With sunlit leaves to love her
And whisper, “Thou art fair;”
Once more—and statelier, surer,
When summer's hymn was done—
From woman's mouth came purer
The anthems of the sun:
Once more, in honeyed metre
That charmed grief to repose,
From woman's lips came sweeter
The lyrics of the rose.

II

Once more the word was spoken
That fills with mirth and might
The heart,—then leaves it broken:—
Grief once more slew delight.

104

Delight again came saying
(And I believed again!)
“When pleasure goes a-maying
Grief is not of his train.”
When silvery may-bloom glistens
Is there one whitethorn leaf
Sun-kissed and glad which listens
To the cold song of grief?

III

Not one. So, each spring season
The human heart awakes,
Forgets past grief and treason:
Man's whole heart never breaks.
One woman's heart is broken,
One man's heart flags and dies:
Love's last word is not spoken;
The sun is in the skies.
A thousand souls each summer
Would learn Love's rites and laws:
Dead lies the pale last-comer;
They glance, but never pause.

105

IV

Each says: “Though hearts preceding
Were broken one by one,
Yet follow we Love's leading
As hope pursues the sun.
A thousand shipwrecks follow
The North wind's course, maybe:
Does one fierce shipwreck hollow
One slight gulf in the sea?
Nay! all the sea is smiling,
As if no ship were slain;
The blue waves are beguiling
The white sails forth again.

V

“Some new ship, newly starting,
May win the unseen far goal;
May bribe the waves swift-darting,
Evade the thunder's roll;
May reach the magic islands
Where perfect pleasure waits,
Soft fragrance from whose highlands
May float through morning's gates.—

106

So we, past wild winds' capture,
Past waves that wail and moan,
May win the unfading rapture
No man has ever known.”

VI

Aye, so man argues daily.
The very fields that saw
Love's death, hear voices gaily
Proclaim love's deathless law.
Within these forest alleys
To-day two histories close;
To-morrow forth love sallies
Pearl-laden from the rose:—
Here some sad heart was broken;
Sad eyes saw nought beyond;
Here love's first word is spoken
And new soft eyes respond.

VII

We force Fate's gates asunder;
The young, the glad, the old,
The sad, hear August's thunder,
See autumn's forest gold:

107

All souls, together blended,
See all the year go by;
See June's wild rapture ended,
Watch hoar December die:
Yea, even the deadliest weather
When ocean's victory's won
To glad hearts linked together
Seems gracious with the sun.

VIII

Is hope in one heart dying?
Is rapture wholly fled?
The great sun is not sighing:
The bright stars are not dead.
With footsteps surer, firmer,
New lovers tread the vale;
Their young red soft lips murmur
The same sweet glad old tale.—
Love yields his slaves up never;
He grants no soul release:
Love haunts all hearts for ever,
Yet brings not one heart peace.

108

SONNET To L. Cranmer-Byng

The Crown of Song.

Seek thou the crown that brightest shines of all,—
That ever has gleamed before man's envious eyes
Seductive most, and most inviolate prize:—
Proud beauty wanes, and world-wide empires fall;
Rank ivy chokes some king's old banquet-hall;
Friendship may fail, the flower of passion dies;
But Thought within the imperishable skies
Sets stars that make the ages' festival.

Great is the power of golden-voicéd rhyme:
Yea, though the grief-scarred centuries one by one
Flag, and their wings grow weary of the sun,
The song that makes an hour of bliss sublime
Endures, when all works wrought and all deeds done
Sink in the eddying foam-white waves of Time.

Oct. 22, 1894.

109

If life's sad days were endless,
If no to-morrow's sun
Brought peace into our sadness,
Sometimes a note of gladness,
A whisper sweet and cheering,
A sign of dark clouds clearing,
Then well might man the friendless
Sigh, “Would that life were done!”

110

Though heights tower unsurmounted,
And though the sunshine waits
And longer seems to tarry
The heavier load we carry,
Though tenderest dreams of ours
Die like the pale dead flowers,
Yet are there stars uncounted
Behind the dark night's gates.

111

LYRICS

113

I. THE GIFTS OF TIME

The gifts of Youth are passing fair:
Through many a soft spring day
Their tender fragrance scents the air,
But—then they pass away!
—Hope, dying ere its blossom glows:
Faith in the false world's truth:
Faith in the swiftly fading rose:—
These are the gifts of Youth.

But fairer are the gifts Love brings;
Is there one humble cot,
One palace of a thousand kings
Where star-crowned Love is not?

114

—A rapture passing earthly speech:
Light stolen from heaven above:
The power, it seems, that heaven to reach:—
These are the gifts of Love.

But yet one other figure waits:
In sunshine or in shade,
With eyes that meet and conquer Fate's,
It tarries undismayed.
—Life's harvests, bright on either hand:
Joy changeless, deep, sublime:
Peace filling all the golden land:—
These are the gifts of Time.

115

II. ANOTHER MEETING

The sense of leaving thee is pain severer
Each time the moment comes when we must part:
And yet by this I know that thou art dearer,
Dearer than ever to my doting heart!
Love's sacred pain hath power to bless
Even in its very piteousness;
It makes a thousand love-stars shine out plain,
For though we part, we soon shall meet again!

Yes, there will come another hour of meeting,
More love-sweet moments—moments tenderer far;
Wild moments, when the heart with passion beating
Feels oneness with all flowers, with every star.
Are last night's roses pale and dead?
Behold, a new rose lifts its head!
One moon's deposed? Another moon will reign,
Acclaimed by new stars, when we meet again!

116

—When there are no more meetings in the meadow
And no more meetings by the moonlit sea,
What will be left within the eternal shadow,
Within the shadow of death, for you and me?
What will be left us? What but love,
Supreme on earth, supreme above?
Immortal love, and passion without pain:
We'll meet once more—but not to part again.

117

III. GOLDEN LOVE

“Oh, well I love the red red gold,”
So sang the maiden fair:
“I love to twine in fold on fold
My bright soft golden hair.
In spring the golden daffodils
Shine out in field and lane,
And when red gold the coffer fills
Why should a girl complain—
And when red gold the coffer fills
Why should a girl complain, complain,
Why should a girl complain?”

There came a lover bold and strong
To worship and to dare;
His voice of gold sang passion's song,
He stroked the golden hair.

118

And now her thought cared nought, cared nought,
For all past golden gleams;
'Tis golden love, by heaven's hand brought,
That flashes through her dreams—
'Tis golden love, by angels sought,
That flashes through her dreams, her dreams,
That flashes through her dreams!

“I have no gold nor lands,” he said—
She said, “But love is fair;
Kiss once again my golden head,—
Place, thus, love's circlet there.”
Then, doubly bright, bright flower and star
With golden beauty gleamed,
For love makes all things lovelier far
Than mortal's heart has dreamed—
For love makes all things lovelier far
Than mortal's heart has dreamed, has dreamed,
Than mortal's heart has dreamed!

119

IV. HAPPIER DAYS

In youthful days the woods and hills
Seemed full of fairies pure and bright:
Their voices mingled with the rills;
Their beauty dazzled mortal sight.
In youthful days, in youthful days,
On moonlit cliffs, by sun-kissed bays,
Our hearts could hear the fairy lays
—In youthful days, in youthful days!

But then a silence weird and strange
Fell on the hills and on the sea:
Death, sorrow, falsehood, sickness, change,
Had hushed the fairy minstrelsy.
The fairy queen—so it was said—
Lay dying on a cowslip bed,
Death-white beneath the moon's pale rays
—In later days, in later days!

120

But happier days brought back the light
To earth and heaven and sea and grove.
Love's starry splendour mocks the night!
Time tilts with pointless spears at love!
True eyes, pure hearts, and loving hands,
Bring blessing deep as fairy land's,
And fill man's thankful heart with praise
—In happier days, in happier days!

121

V. SOME ONE

I loved in life's glad morning,
When summer airs were sweet:
I brought my heart to some one
And laid it at her feet.
But ah! the glad dream vanished:
Then all the summer fled;
The green leaves shook and trembled,
My heart for years seemed dead.
I gave my heart to some one.
How changed the world would be
If only that lost some one
Had given her heart to me!

122

So dreamed I in life's morning,
So dreamed I in despair.
But time brought noble solace;
New sunlight filled the air.
Time brought me my true sweetheart,
My some one, good and bright:
Time filled my day with sunshine
And filled with stars my night.
Now all my song is, “Sweetheart,
An altered world I see
Since you, my love and darling,
Have given your heart to me!”

123

VI. “ONE DAY’

Upon a perfect starry night
We stood beside the silent deep,
Tranced in a still supreme delight,
While all the earth was tranced in sleep.
“O holy stars that gaze from heaven above,
Guard us,” I murmured—“shield true hearts who love!
Watch over him, watch over him and me”
—A threatening strange moan answered from the sea,
“Ah me! Ah me!”

And now upon a wintry night,
While at my feet the breakers roar
Flecking the beach with angry white,
I stand just where we stood of yore.

124

There are no stars to-night in heaven above;
Dead is my darling, dead are hope and love:
Dear beyond words my darling was to me,
But he was dearer to the jealous sea,
Ah me! Ah me!

Not till the sea gives up its dead
Shall he and I stand face to face:
No soul once clasped has ever fled
Back from the mighty sea's embrace.
But when the sea yields up its hosts of dead
Our marriage-bells shall ring—so love has said:
One day from out the vast imprisoning sea
My dead lost darling shall return to me;
One day—Ah me!

125

VII. “FAR IN THE YEARS BEHIND”

Somewhere far in the years behind
A true heart loved me well:
But Fate was fickle, and I was blind—
It's nothing new to tell.
I acted madly...we had to part...
The dear spring daisies came;
But I had broken a loving heart
And they never seemed the same.

Ah! darling love of the days gone by,
The daisies were lovely then:
They smiled up each to the summer sky;
They never will smile so again.
For I broke the hearts of the loving flowers
When I broke that heart so brave:
They never will smile as in olden hours,
Unless they smile on my grave.

126

For not upon earth shall I know sweet rest,
The rest that I might have attained:
Each day, when the red sun sinks in the West,
It is one more victory gained!
For my hope lies far beyond the sun,
In the heaven that is to be
When the sorrow of life at last is done
And my darling comes to me.

127

VIII. RUSHLIGHT LOVE

He gave you love for an hour,
He gave you gold for a day,
My sweetheart, my wonderful flower;
He tempted you, led you astray.
But I would have given my heart to you,
Darling, my love and my pride;
Opened its every part to you,
Made you my being's bride!

What did he give you? Riches!
What are they all but a dream?
Wait but till Death's hand twitches
The curtain—away they stream.
I would have given you passion
Pure as God's love, and as free:
I would have loved in the fashion,
Love, of the stars and the sea.

128

Love, you have chosen the lesser:
Mine was an infinite boon.
You might have been the possessor,
Queen, of the stars and the moon!
What did you choose? No sky-gift,
Endless, marvellous, grand,
But a rushlight dear at a farthing
That flickers and melts in your hand.

129

IX. WAITING

They had waited and waited and waited,—
But the struggle was sad and long.
He was only a writer of poems,
And what is the worth of a song?
She was poor, she was true, she was noble:
She loved him with all her heart.
They waited and waited and waited,
And they watched the days depart.

The sweet springs came with their glory
Of primrose and crocus trim;
The summers glittered and vanished,—
And still she waited for him.

130

For the fortune they once had dreamed of
Was still in the dreamer's land.
Through summer and winter they waited,
And they toiled on hand in hand.

They have waited and waited and waited;
Far-off is their life's young spring:
But their love is as tender as ever
And has grown to a heavenly thing.
I think that the angels love them:
One night through the starlit air
They will pass to the heaven above them
And the angels will marry them there.

131

X. “GOOD-NIGHT!”

Good-night! the tenderest sweetest word
That our sad restless world has heard.
“Good-night!” saith dew-kissed flower to flower,
When comes the peaceful sunset-hour:
“Soft rest be yours and slumbers light;”
“Good-night!” saith rose to rose—“Good-night!”

Good-night! and then the world swings round,
Till once again its brow is crowned;
Till, when the new glad day's begun,
Its forehead lightens with the sun.
Then, when the sun's broad wings take flight,
The tired world sleeps—Good-night! Good-night!

132

Good-night! O word of hope and peace!
Word uttered when vain longings cease;
Word uttered when wild dreams are done,
When stormy grief wanes with the sun.
Love's voice serene from starriest height
To all the world breathes soft Good-night, Good-night!

133

“THE WAY THE WORLD GOES ROUND”

SONG

I

Spring and summer, joy and sorrow,
Rose and lily and autumn leaf;
Laughter now, but tears to-morrow,
Rapture followed fast by grief;
Grass, then snows upon the ground:
That's the way the world goes round!

II

Peace for years and hedgerows hoary
With the fragrant bloom of may;
War for months, and meadows gory;
Stars that weep and turn away
From the reeking battle-ground:
That's the way the world goes round!

134

III

Brave old world! It pauses never.
Soon the voices of to-day,
Lessening in the vast for ever,
Shall be hushed and pass away:
But the world shall sweep along,
Chanting its old endless song.

135

THE ROSE AND THE LILY

I.

The Lily watched the stately Rose
And envied her her bloom.
“I wait,” she said, “in white repose,
I might be in my tomb.
The Rose is sweet, the Rose is red,
Her lover is the Sun:
But I—I might as well be dead!
I'm loved and sought of none!

I never shall be happy,
I never shall be red!
The Rose has won my sweetheart,
I might as well be dead.”

136

II.

But oh! one marvellous morning came:
The Sun passed by the Rose;
He said, “I seek in love to-day
The sweetest flower that blows.
A rose is sweet, a rose is red,
Adorned with endless art,—
But as for me, I've sworn to wed
Nought but a lily's heart.

I never shall be happy”
—So sang the Sun so bright—
“Without my love, my Lily,
So tender and so white.”

137

“HOW SWEET THE WORLD CAN BE!”

SONG

I

The world was sweet to some, love,
'Twas sweet perhaps to thee,
Long years before we met, love,
And just as blue the sea.
But never till we met, love,
Were all things sweet to me;
I never, never, knew, love,
How sweet this world can be!

II

No doubt the sea was blue, love,
And white the white may-tree—
But I, I never knew, love,
Until love taught it me.

138

Then how the sea gained hue, love,
How brightly bloomed the tree;
Yes, everything seemed new, love,
Because you smiled at me.

III

And now I know at last, love,
How bright God's world can be;
The bloomless days are past, love,
A light is on the sea.
New life thy love has brought me,—
I give that life to thee,
For thou alone hast taught me
How sweet the world can be!

139

THE RIVER'S BRIDE

I

The River's silver laughter
But yesterday I heard:
A blither note rang after
Than note of brook or bird.
A maiden's laughing gladness
Made all the bright world sweet:
The stream forswore its sadness,
And felt its old heart beat.

II

But ah! the River loved her;
Her voice to him was song:
It would not yield or spare her;
The River's love was strong.

140

With cold white curling wavelets
It bore her from the bank:
The River laughed for rapture
As in his arms she sank.

III

O cruel, cruel River!
Her lips were warm and red;
But now thy waves have kissed them,
They are so cold and dead!
O River, fierce wild River,
Thy love was strange and strong,
But ah! thy love has slain her,
And where is now thy song?

141

HELL

I

“Traitress!” he cried, “aye, traitress!”
And then the dagger smote,
And with its point it traversed
The white and slender throat.
One glance the woman gave him:
It was not anger there,
But somewhat like the pleading
Of infinite despair.

II

“Harlot!” he cried, “God curse you,
Who gavest love to me
And then”...the slow stream trickled
From her throat wearily.

142

One other glance she gave him,
And love was in the look,
And as she fell he knew his hell,
And even his wild heart shook.

III

The hell that ever, ever,
Till time itself is o'er,
Will close around his spirit bound
And fettered evermore.
Is it not hell to know that she
By his own hand did fall?
Yes, she is dead, and that gold head
Was sinless after all.

143

SONNET To L. Cranmer-Byng

Past and Future

Thou hast the whole dim past whereon to draw:
The past, with all its fury of sword-lit days,
Its bitter love matured in hidden ways,
Its nights whose secret joys the dead stars saw,
When giant passions knew no rein nor law.
For thee the past her chariot-wheels delays;
She opens murder's lone haunts to thy gaze;
She tells of love that pale gods watched with awe.

Man's past means rapturous crime and savage wrong:—
Round history's steps the bright blood foams and seethes,
And with that dew she tinges thy young wreaths;
Yet thine own history thou must write ere long:
Take all of weird strange power the past bequeaths,
But write thy drama not in blood, but song.

Oct. 22, 1894.

144

A SONG OF THE SEA

I

Creeds we build up, then dismantle, many gods we mould and break,
But the vast sea's towering godship what most venturous hand shall shake?
Human loves give ghostlike rapture, passing joys, ephemeral pain;
When a starlike glance has vanished, never shines that star again.

II

Though a hundred women greet us, though the stars of night return,
Still our souls and hearts long wildly, still our wandering fancies yearn:

145

Though the hundred women yield us all their sweetness, as they yield
We desire the flower ungathered and the fragrance unrevealed.

III

Then our thoughts and eyes turn seaward, then the sails of fancy roam
O'er the glimmering plains untravelled, o'er the green hills streaked with foam,
Chasing her the unconquered goddess, seeking hers the stainless form
Robed by day in gleaming sunlight, veiled at night-time in the storm.

IV

Though the soul of Byron loved her, not to him she wholly gave
All her inmost mystic sweetness—just the kiss of wave and wave,
This she yielded, this she granted; but the next who sought the prize
Found her white neck chainless ever, met the indomitable eyes.

146

V

Poet after poet rises, every fiery heart is stirred:
Not the strongest, not the lordliest, speaks as yet the final word.
After Shelley, song grew weary of the green earth and the sun;
After Hugo's song of ocean, still that chant seemed not begun.

VI

Nought can turn aside the singer from the loves that lure his praise,
From the gold-tressed wood-nymph smiling underneath the tangled sprays,
From the red-lipped Naiad laughing with a mouth where summer burns,
From the maiden stepping gently through the flowers and clinging ferns:

VII

Nought arrests him, nought can turn him, save the shadow of mighty wings,
Save the form of the sea-goddess, save the joy her strange touch brings;

147

Save the sense that in the darkness as it overspreads the deep
Rapture undiscerned is waiting, amorous-bosomed wondrous sleep.

VIII

Virgin ever, unexhausted, are the great sea's loving arms.
Who hath ever wholly won her, who hath numbered all her charms?
Who hath said “I am her bridegroom, she for me alone is fair,”
Lifting star by star her jewels from the midnight of her hair?

IX

Who hath said, when all the meadows fling their blossoms at his feet,
“There is fragrance more seductive and a flowerless air more sweet”?
Who hath murmured, tempted softly by some mortal maid's embrace,
“I have mingled with the immortal, seen the eternal face to face”?

148

X

Human spirit cannot venture: when we pass into the night,
When a century's singing closes, still with amorous arms and white
Will the ocean seek new lovers, still their noblest chant will be
Caught in rapture from the rapture of the wild lips of the sea.

149

LOVE AND LEARNING:

A Midsummer Sonnet

In Winter gifts at Learning's feet we fling:
The sunshine finds us, but through poets' pages;
The stars gleam, but the stars of bygone ages;
Spenser wreathes Winter with the bloom of Spring.
The birds are silent, but the poets sing:
In Shelley's verse the undying Summer glows;
At Keats' touch smiles again the frost-nipped rose,
And Virgil rules mid-winter like a king.

Crowned with a wreath of ferns and golden flowers
To our pale star bright joyous Love returns,
As if his radiant reign were but begun.
Let cold-browed Learning sway the wintry hours!
But Love, through whose wild heart June's rapture burns,
Leaps up to greet the summer and the sun.

150

A POET'S MADNESS

The tender love and worship of a child,
These gifts she brought:
Wreaths simple, like the blossoms of the wild,
For him she wrought.

And these he valued not.—When men proclaim
His glory alas!
Let men remember also the deep shame
That cannot pass.

Not all his gifts are worth the simple heart
Whose faith he shook:
The sins of genius in the name of Art
We overlook.

151

This is a curséd thing. The truth indeed
Is otherwise:
Far higher than of Art, the simple creed
Of loving eyes.

Not genius-garlands with their luscious scent,
Not these she wove,
Not these she sought. She would have been content
With truth and love.

152

THE IVORY FAN

SONG

I

“Buy me that ivory fan,” said she,
“So daintily carved and white.
In all Bond Street, there's nothing so sweet,
I love it from morn till night.
I gaze all day at that lovely fan,
Fair in the window wide;
Buy me the fan, love, if you can,
And I shall be satisfied.”

II

“You never were satisfied yet,” said I.
“I bought you a bracelet, dear,
And a brooch of jet, and a green aigrette,
Just at the close of the year.

153

A sealskin jacket, a rosewood bracket,
A parrot from Ispahan,
An opera cloak, and a stand of oak,
And now you are wild for a fan!”

III

So we quarrelled. 'Twas just a year ago,
And where is the voice to-day
That said, “If you can, give me the fan”?
Hushed, and taken away.
She halts no more at the fan-shop door,
She needs no gifts from man,
And I say to myself with a sad strange smile,
“I wish she had had her fan!”

154

A WORD OF WISDOM

I

Love with all thy strength of being, while the summer days are long,
While thy heart can mix its music with the lark's and thrush's song;
While the heart of woman seeks thee for the sake of love alone,
While thine ardour wins her sweetness, lures her from her starry throne.

II

Love with all thy might of manhood, while the summer nights are sweet,
While the honeysuckle listens for the sound of lovers' feet;

155

While thy voice can ring with passion, while keen rapture can be won,
While there's magic in the moonlight, while there's splendour in the sun.

III

For the time is surely coming when the flowers will still arise,
When the rose will meet the sunshine glittering down from azure skies
With an undiminished joyance, when the laughter of the sea
Still will ring forth to the sea-bird, but no laugh will sound for thee.

IV

Yes: the time is surely coming when the sunrise with its gold
Will seem just a mocking glory, when the thrush will sing, “You're old!”
When the light in woman's glances will seem just a mocking gleam,
Saying, “Gaze at me and worship—think I love you—fools may dream.

156

V

“Fools may dream of love at fifty, or at sixty—let them know
Though they win the red-ripe beauty of young lips in fullest glow
They are loved not for their sweetness, they are loved for what they bring:
Woman loves not mankind's winter, though she maddens at his spring.”

157

NATURE AND MAN

Nay! this silvery moonlight making all your bridal room sublime
Is the moonlight of vast ages hid in dateless depths of time,
And the scent of blossoms wafted round the stainless marriage-bed
Is the breath of old-world violets and the roses that are dead.

All of history surges through you: all the past with wings of flame
Swept resplendent through the doorway, when your sweetheart's footstep came.
In your vain conceit and fancy ye may deem yourselves alone:
Ye are watched by ghosts uncounted, ye are tracked by hosts unknown.

158

Sweeter are your loved one's kisses for each kiss that clung of old
In far-off forgotten woodlands, or by sands of sunlit gold:
When your darling's eyes are tender, when they shine with mystic gleams,
They resume the light and magic of dead lovers' joys and dreams.

When the maiden says “I love you,” she is speaking not—you hear
Man's imperious summons sounding on your heart and at your ear;
When ye stand with hands that tremble, silent lovers face to face,
Not your own wild passion urges, but the love-power of the race.

Kiss that human life may die not—find one hour supremely sweet
That a million souls may mingle, that a million mouths may meet:
Dreaming in your pride and rapture that ye love alone, apart,
Know that Nature triumphs with you, laughing low with amorous heart.

159

From your love ten thousand lovers shall draw forth a life superb:
That is why keen Nature urges, why her whispered hints perturb;
Why she lures you, why she tempts you—why her wanton hands in haste
Lift the robe from the white shoulder, loose the girdle from the waist.

Only one thing Nature curses, finds but one thing wholly base—
Not to aid with each man's passion the vast love-joy of the race;
To remain in lonely pureness—which, to Nature, is to be
Just a rock of lifeless granite in her star-kissed boundless sea.

Just a sterile rock and deadly, spurned of Nature, mocked, abhorred:
“Let the lips grow grey that touch not woman's mouth, divine, adored;

160

Let the red warm life-blood leave them,—let man's eyes grow cold and dim,”
So she murmurs, “if they seek not the soft eyes that yearn for him!”

While the Churches scowl and mutter, Nature smiles and holds her way;
Well she knows her force resistless, knows that all worlds must obey:—
Star by star the wide heaven kindles, tree by tree grows bright with leaves,
Through the kiss of lips that perish the death-conquering race conceives.

Lest our feet by night should stumble, she has set in heaven the moon;
Lest our souls forget to praise her, given the rose's scent to June:
Lest the race itself should vanish, lest it fail at sun or storm,
Wrapped the womb for ever fruitful in creation's loveliest form.

Oct. 14, 1894.

161

BEYOND!

I

There's not a flower that ever blows
But tells of blossoms fairer far.
Who ever saw the sweet queen rose?
What eye hath reached the furthest star?
There's not a joy that earth can bring
But tells of something holier yet:
Delight that bears no hidden sting,
And joy not followed by regret.
This is the gladdening word of time
To hearts that sorrow and despond;
Each hill-top that our footsteps climb
Reveals a grander peak beyond.

162

II

Beyond! Beyond each sorrow waits
The joy for which it paved the way.
Beyond all storms the sunset's gates!
Blue skies beyond the clouds and spray!
Beyond the hopes and fears of youth
The sober strength of manhood's soul:
Beyond all doubts eternal truth;
Beyond the course the certain goal.
Beyond the stars that flash and gleam
The heaven unseen by mortal eyes:
Beyond earth's sorrow-haunted dream
The perfect peace of Paradise!

163

“WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS BRIGHT WITH MORN”

When all the world is bright with morn,
When sunlight shines on tree and flower,
When pain and grief are yet unborn,
In life's first golden dazzling hour,—
Ah! then when all the world is fair,
Its fairest sweetest gifts we claim;
Love's rose that scents the enchanted air,
The laurels of eternal fame.
The world with all its wealth is ours:
We steal with laughter and with glee
A thousand rubies from the flowers,
A thousand sapphires from the sea!

164

A SONG FOR ENGLAND

I

Lo! another mighty century dying
Bears to deathland many a hero's form:
Some who saw Napoleon's banners flying;
Some who faced red Alma's leaden storm.
Yet in passing towards the shadowy portal
Fleeting years with fiery tongues proclaim,
“Ages wane, but England is immortal;
Deathless through each unforgotten name.”

II

Deathless through her children crowned and deathless,
Hearts who battled with a thousand foes
Till among star-nations watching breathless
In its lonely strength her sun arose.
“Isolation?” Needless is the warning.
Force supremer isolation brings
When the wrath of England flashes, scorning
Lies of statesmen and the plots of kings.

165

III

Though the leaders one by one are falling
Still the nation marches to its goal;
Still, as ever, Freedom's voice is calling;
Still it rings within the exultant soul.
Still the strife of England is not over:
Still she needs the sword-arms of her sons,
Needs, from Scottish crags to Deal and Dover,
Hands on rifles, gunners at the guns.

IV

Still she needs, from coast to coast patrolling,
Kissing white-maned waves with stormy glee,
Cleaving tides that round the world go rolling,
Fortress-ships to range the unfortressed sea.
While her dark-browed forts on cliff and highland
Guard the flower-bright gateways of her home,
Still she needs to feel that round the island
Thunder-bearing bulwarks guard the foam.

Feb., 1896.

166

A PRINCE'S RETURN

(Lines Written on the Death of Prince Henry of Battenberg)

I

Over purple leagues of shadowy water,
Heedless now of starshine or of storm,
Watched and wept for by a Sovereign's daughter,
Comes the relic of a princely form.
Now from wave to wave in silence springing,
Not with sounds of battle or of glee,
Glides a lonely ghostlike vessel, bringing
Fever's victim o'er the lonely sea.

II

Not for love of fame or lust of glory,
Not to gain an earthly conqueror's crown,
Not to win a name superb in story,
Was this Prince's gentle life laid down.

167

Just to show that he was one with others,
One with England in her every strife,
One in spirit with his soldier-brothers,
Keen to share their labours and their life.

III

Therefore hath he won a name undying
In the conquering annals of our race:
He who, watching for the spear-storm flying,
Met a grimmer foeman face to face.
This the lesson—that through sternest trial
Flashes forth the light of high deeds done;
That, in all heroic self-denial,
Princes, people, and the Throne, are one.

Feb. 2, 1896.

168

PHANTOM LOVES

All have heard the grim old legend of the ship that ever sailed
Round the Cape, for ever baffled, labouring on though nought availed;
Ghostly bark that ever struggled through the wild encircling deep,
Phantom sails that flashed on sailors startled from their midnight sleep.

Sudden, through the pitchy darkness loomed the great ship—gaunt it gleamed
Guided by the death-pale pilot, when the lurid lightning beamed:
For one moment there it glittered—then it vanished in the gloom,
Working out through nights eternal its eternity of doom.

169

More tremendous, yet more solemn, is the doom some spirits bear
Seeking, seeking, ever seeking, through the fragrant summer air,
Through the sombre nights of winter, through the storm-tossed autumn days,
Love and passion that evade them—as that ship was lost in haze.

“Now at last”—the spirit murmurs—“now at last a love is mine
Wholly pure and wholly tender, wholly sweet and all divine:
Now at last”—the spirit dreameth—“I shall close this weary quest,
Quit the hell of ceaseless travail, win the heaven of endless rest.

“Now I love, and for the last time—Nay, I never loved before!
Never made the silver sea-waves such sweet music on the shore!
Never whiteness in the lily, never splendour in the rose,
Gleamed so rich and so translucent—I have won love's deep repose.”

170

But the noble hope is shattered. When love's joy is once attained
What becomes of all its sweetness, what of lasting peace is gained?
—As the ship toiled on for ever, so must man: his course must be
On from passion unto passion, on from sea to sailless sea.

Yes, the rose again can glitter, and the lily again can gleam
Richer, whiter far than ever through the lost love's tender dream:
For each new love is as Venus—at her touch the ocean glows
Far more sapphire-waved than ever, lovelier ruby stains the rose.

“I was born to give you pleasure”—so the new lips, tender, say:
“Love me, court me, win me, wear me, though it be but for a day.
I am Venus, I am Sappho, I am all the past in one;
I can bring you the lost moon-rays! I can reillume the sun!

171

“All the past is just as nothing, for the future have no care:
Dream of one thing, only one thing—Am I young, love? am I fair?
I am young and fair, thou sayest? Then let all the world repine,
Let the wind through dark leaves murmur—What of that, if I am thine?”

But the new love is a phantom, just a ghost—it passes too,
And the flowers no more are radiant, and the sea no more is blue.
All the soul of man is darkened; hurling hate against the sun
It exclaims, “No heart has loved me, nought of love my life hath won!”

So, the pale ghost-love pursuing, man goes on from hour to hour,—
Wins no fruit of any passion, hardly wins one golden flower:
Till at last his true love finds him—but her strange eyes flash with doom;
Undivorced are they for ever who join hands within the tomb.

172

ENGLAND AND ART

I

While in England, here enisled in sweetness,
Year by year the girl-soft spirit of Spring
Weaves her primrose-crown to pure completeness,
Mixing silver stars the wood-nymphs bring;
While o'er daisied vale and cowslipped hollow
Year by year the white-fleeced clouds float by,
There are those who seeking for Apollo
Seek in vain, and deem that song must die.

II

There are those who deem the land grows olden;
That the fields War's footsteps never trod,
Blossom-gilded, wait in vain the golden
Footprint of a more triumphant god.
There are those who, rancorous grown and jealous,
Ever-envious, mocking from afar,
Longing loud to curse us, haste to tell us
How our sun hath dwindled to a star!

173

III

Win a world-wide empire—overstep it
By a yard, and surely thou shalt fall,
Aged as in a moment, changed, decrepit,
Ready sport, apt stalking-horse for all!
So the hostile thousands clamour, burning,
While their myriad dogs' tongues drip with foam,
Soon to see oblivion's cataracts spurning
England to the depths that buried Rome.

Feb. 3, 1896.

174

A SILVER WEDDING

October 2, 1872: October 2, 1897

With joy and sadness strangely, sweetly, blended
We hail, my wife, the silver-shining morn
That sees so many joys and sorrows ended;
White-winged precursor of the days unborn.

In speedy concourse, thoughts throng round us flinging
Aside the mantles of the buried days.
All live again: old flower-wreathed springs come singing
And risen summers perfume woodland ways.

Again we watch the purple mountains, dreaming
That Wordsworth still their secret heart divines:
Again we see the cataract silver-gleaming
That leaps for evermore through Southey's lines.

175

Again white Paris spreads her streets before us,
Her palaced glories, arched cathedral glooms.
The sky of sunny friendly France smiles o'er us,
A land for us of well-loved worshipped tombs.

For there at Boulogne, where in grey completeness
The rampart looks towards Paris or the sea,
There lived long since in girlhood's simple sweetness
The mother whose young life formed part of me.

There too the brothers who with love most tender
Watched o'er my youth, in far-off golden hours
Plucked 'mid the corn the poppy's crimson splendour
And wove their boyhood's wreath of perfect flowers.

We have not journeyed far or much, wide-wandering;
We know not scents down Indian valleys blown:
We have not stemmed the Nile's brown eddies, pondering,
Or gazed at Athens on her timeless throne.

But we have seen the Bernhardt's glances lighten,
Marked Art wax prouder, as her genius grew;

176

Watched her firm fingers round the dagger tighten
And watched that white hand redden as it slew.

And we have trodden old shadowy paths together,
Heard through “Milady's” lips the serpents hiss,
And loved those sunniest hearts in blackest weather,
D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, Aramis.

Year after year at wind-kissed sea-stormed Brighton
We, studying heaven and sea with earnest eyes,
Have watched the crests of green-blue billows whiten
And watched God paint new sunsets in his skies.

Year after year, returning to the city
Whose turrets seek the blue through smoke-wreaths rent,
We have felt our hearts go out in unfeigned pity
Towards those within the smokeless country pent.

For ever thought has star-crowned heaven for neighbour
And thought steals stars from heaven, and with them crowns
The tireless brows that ever muse and labour
Not in the country, in the flowerless towns.

177

Here in old London year by year retiring
Has seen prayers answered, problems that depart:
We both have laboured,—you my thought inspiring,
I setting thought's raw gold in frame of Art.

And ever through the past's now mist-wreathed portal
Visions of pleasures shared together shine:
Delights that youth's keen senses made immortal
And love made tenderer by his touch divine.

On Dover's heights we chase the “clouded yellows,”
Mocked still by many a winged and jewelled form:
In Balcombe orchards the red apple mellows;
Broad Sussex charms us under sun or storm.

Again, as often and often by me sitting
At Lord's, you watch the rival school-teams play;
Mark with a thrill the Dark Blue's marvellous hitting
And see triumphant Harrow win the day.

Again, on many a night of swift emotion
We see some strong great drama aptly done;
Believe in canvas swaying like the ocean,
And paper moons, and simulated sun.

178

And Mulgrave once again with magic finger
Touches to gold its dark trees' aging locks:
Beside the strange old ruin again we linger;
Again the sea-flowers gem the tide-washed rocks.

Again we leap the stream that seeks the ocean
At Robin Hood's, the immortal outlaw's, Bay:
We leap; but still I have a lurking notion
One cleared the stream—the other stopped half-way!

The sea-gulls that we shot,—or missed them, was it?
The thyme-sweet cliffs we climbed, the jokes that sped!
The sun that, laughing, bent down to deposit
Gold, countless gold, upon your crownless head!

The moon and stars that kissed the silvered billows;
The peace at night upon the stormless deep:
Old Oxford's towers, and blue waves under willows,
And meadows where youth's flower-crowned fancies sleep.

All these we saw and loved. We worshipped Mary,
Her whom each poet dreading, yet adores:

179

Murderess divine, half tigress heart, half fairy,
Whose ghost at Holyrood spurns the blood-stained floors.

We stole, yes stole, bright daffodils, not knowing
The crowned slim beauties were but fostered slaves.
We deemed the sun had set them all a-blowing,
The free wind kissed them into yellow waves!

We watched the Thames, a streak of silver lying
Beneath the windy firs of Abbey Wood;
Across waste moors saw many a sunset dying:
On Scarboro's castled storm-blown crags we stood.

And through it all the sense of pure devotion,
Of wifely love, thrilled ever my young heart;
Adding a splendour to the moonlit ocean,
Adding a glory to all crowns of Art.

Yes: if I, fervid, sought the poet's laurel,
Remember, for your sake I largely sought;
That to your feet past question, doubt or quarrel,
The world turned suppliant might at last be brought.

180

Time spurred the lagging years: we hardly noted,
For love arrests life's steeds upon their road.
We walked and drove, and climbed bright downs, and boated,
And drew strange fishes from their green abode.

We hurled o'er ocean meads the flashing cobble,
The dark-winged fairy of the North Coast fleet;
Her in whose wake the swiftest wild waves hobble,
Pursuing vainly with white spray-splashed feet.

We knew and loved the sun-burned North Coast sailors:
Ah! still true faces on my memory gleam.
Alas! Death's prison, where none may bribe the gaolers,
Holds many of whom our lingering thoughts would dream.

Ah! when upon our race we gaily started,
Youth's sunshine glittering on your golden head,
How many loving souls, divine, great-hearted,
Smiling, beheld us start. The most are dead.

How many watched us then! what loving faces,
What friendly eyes, what hearts who wished our good.

181

But five and twenty years thin crowded places,
As surely as storm-winds thin the gold-leafed wood.

They wished us well; they wish us well, it may be:
They watched us start; they watch us touch this goal.
Glad let our five and twentieth wedding-day be!
For five and twenty years wed soul to soul.

183

FAREWELL:

SIX SONNETS (1897)

185

SONNET I
“ALONE WITH TRUTH”

Through all life's early hours when sunshine fell
In golden floods across the dawn-bright way,
One spirit held a hundred foes at bay
And ever cried: “I fear not. All is well.”
But soon a thousand of the hosts of hell
Sprang forth, and joined the blood-streaked first array
And sought with serried phalanx to dismay
Yet stormed not that one soul's stern citadel.

Then came the night,—first gay with many a star
Flung like wild jewels o'er heaven's velvet-blue,
Next ever lonelier, as they faded far,
Till pitchy black the gemless dim vault grew:
Still the man fought, though hope's foot followed youth,
Alone in darkness, but alone with truth.

186

SONNET II
THE ROSE

O sacred flower whose marvellous fragrance, blent
With our grey planet's golden-haired first dream,
Added strange magic to the first moon-beam
That watched our world's first lovers' deep content;
O flower, within whose luscious petals pent
Lurks as a prisoner woman's kiss I deem,
Above thy sweet abyss of scent I seem
To linger, as over Eve's lips Adam leant.

Oh may I, when my pale gaze fronts the night
Amid whose blackness blind Death reaps and sows
Groping with bloodless wrists and fingers white,
Take with me to the land that no man knows
Memories of zoneless passion's wild delight
Mixed with thy fragrance, never-dying rose!

187

SONNET III
ONE GODDESS

Ever, through darkness and unmeasured gloom,
When after soft arms' scent and warm embrace
I meet the eyeless mute deliberate face
That waits and threatens where no bounteous bloom
Of summer fills the fields no suns illume,
May I bear with me to the joyless place
Eternal dreams of one white goddess' grace
Whom I have served,—and will serve to the tomb.

For she the queen, when once her lips have smiled,
Forbids the soul she smiles on ever to flee:
She lures him as the flowers' smile lures a child
And sways him with most flowerlike sovereignty;
She who first sprang from wavelets undefiled,
Moulded of rose-bloom and the foam-white sea.

188

SONNET IV
ÉMILE ZOLA

Right glad am I that in this sunless spot
Some call the world, some heaven, some grimmest hell,
One man has left in falsehood's citadel
Ass Custom's foul old shapeless form to rot,
Then pointed out what is, and what is not,
In words that through the centuries still will tell
Till all men own that what is true is well
To speak, to read, without one blank or blot.

Right glad am I that, in this world of lies,
Where rough worth fails and polished fraud succeeds
And brazen-browed imposture fronts the skies
While on right's forehead the fierce thorn-crown bleeds,
One man at least has dared to seek the prize,
Eternal truth beyond all gods and creeds.

189

SONNET V
“O SPIRIT OF TRUTH”

O Spirit of Truth, one with the eternal sea,
The scent of summer flowers, the golden sun,
Remember, now my task is well nigh done,
I fought and suffered for the love of thee!
I spurned the glittering crowns by falsehood won
And watched the rose-wreathed hopes spread wings and flee.
Wilt thou, O Spirit of Truth, not fight for me
Who fought for thee, when champion thou hadst none?

Lift me beyond this ceaseless herd of liars
Into calm meadows by great spirits trod,
Where noble acts are one with high desires:
This world weighs on me like a leaden load:
To thee, to thee alone my soul aspires,
For thine eyes ever watch the eyes of God.

190

SONNET VI
FOR A DREAM

The fiftieth hour has struck!—I know that soon
I part for ever with the strength of youth.
But I part never with the love of truth
Nor with the love of woman, and of June.
I loved the rose at morn, I loved at noon
The rose with heavenlier tints, at close of day
I loved the rose, and till my locks grew grey
Gave all I had to Beauty for a boon.

My song, my toil, my life, my heart I gave:
I worshipped Beauty with a love supreme;
I saw her blue eyes in the summer wave
And kissed her fragrant white limbs in a dream
And, longing ever that sweet dream to save,
Lost for its sake all prizes men esteem.

191

THE LIFE ETERNAL

SONNET

Woman must bring to man the life of flowers
Within her lips and ever-fragrant hair,
And all the sweetness of the summer air
That breathes from heavenly shores and mystic bowers.
She makes this earth the abode of unknown powers
That stoop from heaven, the soul of man to bear
Upward, if he will hearken and prepare
To build on earth the golden deathless towers.

White with the glory of the breast of God,
Scented from fields no foot of man has trod,
She gives herself, a stainless being, to earth.
Without her sweet vicarious subtle grace
No man can meet God's sweetness face to face
Nor know regenerate joys of heavenly birth.

1901.

192

THE LATE BISHOP OF DURHAM

SONNET

A great soul gone! Through many a long hard day
He fought for God and England. Many a soul
He led to Christ's beneficent control:
His heart grew tenderer, as his hair waxed grey.
Yet not to me the Durham towers convey
His inmost spirit's thought. My heart goes back
And gathers blossoms on that earlier track
Where Harrow fields watch Harrow toil and play.

There first I knew and loved,—to know was ever
To love,—the soul of Westcott, most divine
When most he stooped, with manliest pure endeavour
To lead the thoughts of boyhood line by line
Along the road of faith. Death cannot sever
The golden thread that links his heart to mine.

July 29, 1901.

193

LEADERLESS

SONNET

What hope for England, if no man be found
With brain to succour, and with strength to lead?
Earth yet may witness, if no soul gives heed,
A once Imperial race debased, discrowned.
To widen Empire to earth's furthest bound
Is not to rule, to triumph, to succeed.
We fought for Freedom? Nay, we fought for greed.
Wild lust for gold runs noblest states aground.

On Empire's giddiest height to-day we stand:
Who climbs so hugely wins the whole world's hate:
One false step hurls from heaven to deepest hell.
Yet, careless, strolling onward hand in hand,
Our youths and maidens throng round Pleasure's gate,
And our grey statesmen murmur, “All is well.”

July 30, 1901.

194

AUGUST, 1901

SONNET

At home a war of voices never still;
No leader found, no sane or clear desire;
Not even passion that with fierce wild fire
If it destroys, at the very least can thrill.
Abroad, the immense black hatred that would kill,
Had it the power, all souls that yet aspire.
No strong note sounded, save from Watson's lyre:
No singleness of heart, or brain, or will.

What hope in this? What hope save still to grasp
The one great thought that raised us heretofore
And placed an Empire's crown within our hands
And all life's fairest jewels in our clasp—
That Freedom's foot should range from shore to shore
And Love lift up her gaze from subject lands.

195

ENGLAND'S CHOICE

Thou art in peril greater than thou deemest,
O England! What if trial-hours are o'er?
How were it if, while blind and drugged, thou dreamest,
Thy moment came,—then passed for evermore?

Here, 'mid our island's flowers, our songs and laughter,
Peace dwells, thou thinkest, calm-eyed in the sun.
Yet what if War sprang forth, and Hell leaped after?
If days destroyed what centuries have won?

Each warrior, wasted in a worthless quarrel,
Means one sword less when England's strife begins.
We fling our manhood down, defile Fame's laurel,
And deem the blindest heart the heart that wins.

196

Who shall atone for countless corpses, rotten
On those far plains that England's blood makes red?
Whose was the heart, by Justice unforgotten,
That planned the crime? What say the maimed, the dead?

Lo! through the darkness, awful and abiding,
Strange ghosts come floating, gaunt-eyed in the gloom:
White ghosts of children, through the black night gliding,
And ghosts of mothers, pallid from the tomb.

Our women, here, despairing and divided,
Know not which way to turn, what side to take.
Our statesmen palter. Truth wrings hands, derided.
Love wails in heaven, and hearts God moulded break.

A moment yet thou hast. Behold life's portal
That love guards ever and the stars illume.
England! thou mayest choose the gate immortal.
The world's whole future turns upon thy doom.

But here in England still the roses blossom,
Yea, still they watch God's gaze within the sun;
And still man's head may rest on woman's bosom
In peace, and still love's rapture may be won.

197

Still in our homes the wife may sleep securely,
Her calm head pillowed on her husband's breast:
The lips of love, untinged by blood and purely,
On lips that shudder not may softly rest.

Bright girls, with heaven's own light within their glances,
Move through the meadows, through the tranquil towns:
Not in our streets harsh loveless War advances
With touch that soils, dismays, pollutes, discrowns.

Here friends are summoned not to watch with terror
That seeks the throne of God in anguish grim
Friends murdered; friends who fought in grief, in error,
Seeing Freedom's face in vision wild or dim.

No mother, bound, sees Death with hideous pleasure
Hugging in murderous clasp some child's gold head.
Night falls in calm on England. All we treasure
Sleeps safe. God's angels guard the marriage-bed.

Safe—safe—with God to watch and Love to cherish!
Who shall express the ecstasy supreme
Of knowing that here our loved ones cannot perish?
We wake not, shrieking, from some hellish dream.

198

We see not, we, a loved home's beam and rafter
Sink, as the tossing flames win closer hold.
Here, still, we catch the ring of children's laughter:
There, children's bloodless lips grow grey and cold.

Art smiles in England. Night by night we follow
In many a gilded bright theatric fane
Art's steps. Our budding poets court Apollo
Or worship Venus in some listless strain.

Yet is there work to do. While Mars, grim, tearless,
Red-browed, red-sworded, fiercely stalks along,
We need a soul of fire, a singer fearless;
We need in truth an iron-hearted song.

We need the soul of Hugo here, to point us
Towards courage higher than cult of swords and guns.
We need a holier chrism to anoint us
Than that which from the gaping red wound runs.

We need to know that round our island rally
Vast angel-armies who can hold their own
Against the world, though all the world should sally
Against their well-loved sea-beat island throne.

199

Can hold their own—though countless cannon thundered,
Through our strong help, our women's pure-souled power.
England is lost, if we from heaven are sundered:
Alone, our might would wither in an hour.

Each English flower is linked to some flower-spirit,
Each English girl to some bright angel-form.
Through woman we the inmost heavens inherit
And take the palace of the skies by storm.

If England's heart be pure, with clearest laughter
The far-off future she may face indeed,
Win from the present a superb hereafter;
If love be hers in practice as in creed.

But, if the nobler heart of woman fail us,
The enclosing angel-hosts will fail as well.
They cannot stem the huge hosts that assail us,
Hosts numbering myriads trained in darkest hell;

They cannot guard our country's golden portal,
They cannot shield one English girl or flower

200

If we will summon not their aid immortal
And link with theirs our own incorporate power.

The power of England reaches to far regions;
We may claim boldly, count on as our own,
The force of angel-hosts, the might of legions
Whose spotless armour flashes round God's throne.

1901

201

“THROUGH WOMAN”

TWO SONNETS

I.

Through woman still the eternal God-power pours
Its wealth of passion and its glory of form.
God's breast is in the white breast, sweet and warm,
And subtle flower-scents from far heavenly shores
That who inhales in rapturous trance adores.
The impassioned sense of “conjugal repose”
God only, being perfect sex-God, knows
And gives to man from his exhaustless stores.

Dim-seen religions of ancestral lands
Erring, it may be, none the less were nearer
In this to God's heart, and the truth proclaimed
With vision larger and with voice far clearer:
God's own Bride's soft touch thrills through woman's hands
And through her eyes the deathless glance has flamed.

202

II.

Man, over-coarse and gross of heart and head,
Can only lust, or love with slight thin flame.
He knows not that all blossoms' fragrance came,
Yea, every scent of rose of white or red
Or tender breath of lily's gold-crowned head,
Straight from the bloom of God's own Bride. Oh, shame
On creeds that mock at woman's love, and claim
Life, when they grope amid their countless dead.

This is the message that has yet to come
Flinging new light across the sea and land,
The fragrant gospel hidden in woman's bloom;
The blossom-perfumed message of her hand
Sent forth by God to open every tomb
For him who hath the soul to understand.

July 30, 1901.

203

“GOD'S HOLIEST SHRINE”

SONNET

Through woman's body of beauty and of grace,
Through this, this only, man can reach the fair
Soft robe of fragrance that the meadows wear
And kiss the sweetness of the morning's face.
God's Bride, the universe, will stoop to place
If man be willing, if he nobly dare,
Her wealth unending in his hands. The hair
We worship thrills no spirit lewd or base.

The infinite sweetness of the body of earth,
Of stars, of planets countless and divine,
Alone through woman's sweetness can be won.
Man, with a vast unutterable mirth,
This winning, wins the glory of the sun
And, sun-crowned, worships in God's holiest shrine.

July 30, 1901.

204

“THE DREAM THAT WE BEHELD”

The dream that we beheld will never more
On mortal wondering dazzled eyes descend.
The sea, less jewelled, will break along the shore:
Love's voice with music will less softly blend.

The rose will veil its splendour when we die.
“Something there was within its tender bloom”
Each loving heart may say, “which, living, I,
I only, saw,—that ceases at my tomb.”

And woman? Did not one soul find her fair
Beyond all mortals who have lived and died?
Breathe all heaven's fragrance in her marvellous hair?
Touch in her breast the softness of God's Bride?

July 31, 1901.

205

“THE SOUL'S EMBRACE”

SONNET

Who lives not in the heart of woman, lives
In God's heart never, though the hand may press
God's hand. Who knows not the divine caress
Knows not the holiest rapture God's touch gives.
Who wills to win the most, the most receives:
Who never knew the glory of a rose
Full little of God's inmost glory knows
Or of the height of rapture love achieves.

In holiest pureness seek the kiss divine:
Make all its perfect subtle fragrance thine:
Find God revealed in woman's wondrous face.
Did God make woman for a temptress? Nay,
He moulded neck and bosom to convey
To man the sweetness of the soul's embrace.

July 31, 1901.

206

“LOST PARADISE”

SONNET

Cleansed by the embrace of woman, man may meet
Fearless the glances of the imperial sun.
The thrones of golden starland may be won
And all the souls of blossoms pure and sweet
May mix their delicate scents and softly fleet
Throughout the inmost fleshly frame of one
In whom a marvellous mystic work is done
By Her whose lips impassioned angels greet.

Pure from the arms of woman, man obtains
Right to the rapture of the Summer's breast
And in his arms the Summer's children rest,
Even all the blossoms of the hills and lanes.
Saved through the touch of woman, man regains
Lost Paradise, and his whole body is blest.

July 31, 1901.

207

“THE ASTRAL BODY”

TWO SONNETS

I.

The astral body rests within our own
And sometimes flashes through the outer folds.
All things it rules, all matter's forms it moulds;
The earth is unto it subservient throne.
Through its pure flesh the scents of flowers unknown
Can travel,—yea, it gathers from the flowers
Their sweetness, and in love's embrace it showers
Their fragrance on the form its kisses crown.

There are who even on this earth of ours
The pure eternal spirit-form have won,
The risen form as radiant as the sun
And gifted with unfathomable powers,—
The form that every blossom of earth's bowers
Builds up, from soft bloom-atoms woven and spun.

208

II.

This is why woman with her subtle grace,
Her robe of tenderest flesh, in this our day
Hath gained the power to gather and convey
So strange a mystic sweetness,—not of face
Alone, but rather memories of some place
Beyond the stars, beyond the sun's red ray,
Beyond blue ocean, regions far away
That hold dim records of another race.

The angel-form within her form revives:
The old strange beauty now at last returns,
The scent of Eden's roses, Eden's ferns,
The clear remembrance of forgotten lives.
Aye, while man marvels, victory arrives
And Eden's light through the old tree-vistas burns.

July 31, 1901.

209

“WE CANNOT ESTIMATE THE WORTH OF THINGS”

I

We cannot estimate the worth of things
That once seemed small. The value of a rose
With red-lipped beauty and with fragrant wings,
One spirit, the spirit that watched it fading, knows.

II

We cannot tell what rapture we may miss
Who lightly lose what once was nobly won.
God's heart was given in some dead woman's kiss.
One tiny shipwrecked star may wreck the sun.

III

The child can live without the poet's heart
That loved the little face through which heaven smiled.
Ah me! my soul is lost, thus rent apart:
The poet cannot live without the child.

July 31, 1901.

210

LINES WRITTEN BY ONE GRADUALLY GROWING BLIND

The world, the world, God's lovely world
Is fading out of sight!
The great cloud-ships with sails unfurled,
Great sails of snowiest white.

The skies of blue, the forests green,
That I have loved, God knows:
The crimson deep triumphant sheen
Of summer's stateliest rose.

The purple violet's modest hue;
The lily's silver crown:
My sea's wild waves of magic blue;
The light on field and down.

211

To see these things no more, no more,—
O agony supreme!
To feel that life is o'er, is o'er;
To pass into a dream.

But, most of all, to leave unmet
By mine the eyes of thee,
Dear wife,—the eyes that never yet
Turned once away from me.

This is the haunting horror, this
Must wreck at last the brain:
The sweetness in thy look to miss
Is hell's intensest pain.

Aug. 1, 1901.