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

For those who once have marvelled at her splendour
And known it no alternative remains,—
For ever doomed to suffer endless pains,
Or else in emptiness their souls surrender
That Beauty in a vision may engender
The new-born power of singing endless strains.
A wave of mounting melody most tender
From sweet rose-scented subtle mouth she rains
Upon them: they must echo it, or never
Win rest, or cushioned couch, or conscious ease;
Their souls from Beauty they will not dissever;
The stern-eyed Goddess they cannot appease
Save by a manful choice to sing for ever
All that, and nothing save what, she shall please.

1870.

SONNET II
THE LOVE OF THE FUTURE

The loves of men as yet are icy floes,
Imperfect, shapeless, in tumultuous motion,
Rolled aimlessly about the mad mid-ocean:
With shocks that shatter and with blinding blows,
Heart-pangs of agony, convulsive throes,
Abandonment of being, death-devotion,
A death that strangles every previous notion,
Harmoniously the glittering ice-berg rose.

I stand beyond the future, and I see
Rise passion-pinnacled the crystal palace,
Awful with unimagined purity;
A frozen rainbow, an inverted chalice,
A dream-encircled dream of what shall be
When labourer love has drained the world of malice.

1870.

SONNET III
CONFESSION OF MY FAITH

I.

Love, thou art sweet, but thou art not for me:
Only to love thee more than other men
Is mine, a fleeting vision now and then
Of garments passing rapidly to see,
But never in thine arms alas! to be,
Never to hold thee in a close embrace
And only see the eyes and not the face,
So near that all things else are forced to flee
Save the expression of the life—to die
Ten thousand deaths ecstatic in a kiss,
Low at annihilation's feet to lie
Unconscious in abandonment of bliss—
The lovers who are capable of this
By fate are left for loss of it to sigh.

1870.

SONNET IV
CONFESSION OF MY FAITH

II.

Love crowns the careless men who seek her not
With hand capricious, but she leaveth those
Who loyally the first her service chose
With tears the path of every day to blot;
She leaveth them, it seemeth, quite forgot;
The current of her favour onward flows
And over heads of former victims goes
In haste to fertilize some other spot.
But, O my brothers, let us yet be true,
And though she slays us, gives us no relief,
Yet notwithstanding let us be the chief
Of those who on the earth are found to do
Her work, and prominently bring to view
The lineaments that smite us low with grief.

1870.

SONNET V
THE CHASE OF BEAUTY

We follow her fast, we follow her through the gloom,
We follow her through the gladsome glare of day,
And through the evening shadows sad we stray,
We are ready to follow her even to the tomb
If only light of eyes of hers may loom
From out the dark and dance across the way
Paved with the bones of poet-heroes—they
Whose hearts the passionate constant fires consume.

We follow her hard—she glances round at times,
But once or twice in a thousand years or so,
And sets some singer's being in a glow,
And burns from out his soul a rage of rhymes
That ring perhaps some twenty centuries' chimes
And through the mouths of men for ages go.

1870.

SONNET VI
THE PURPLE WINGS

If on my shoulders never shall be seen
The puissant purple fluttering of the wings
Wherewith the poet beateth as he sings
The high celestial atmospheric sheen,
If I may never say the thing I mean,
And only half an ear my audience brings,
And misdirected are my ambitious slings,
And no Goliath blazing eyes between
My stone hits full—at least she lets me die,
Queen Beauty, as my gentle brother died
Who lies on the Italian mountain-side,
In one long passion of an outpoured sigh
That seemeth tremblingly to wonder why
The kiss of satisfaction is denied.

1870.

SONNET VII
THE WAKING OF BEAUTY

Take courage, friends, for she hath but been sleeping
These eighteen centuries underneath the snow;
She whom we loved and worshipped long ago
In Hellas, for whose face we have been weeping,
And long look-out the sons of men are keeping,
Shall burn upon us with her early glow
Of sweetest rosy gladness; we shall know
Her resurrection—we who have been reaping
The bitter harvest of her absent shame.
From end to end of our awakened earth
Shall roll upon the wings of morning mirth
The great reverberation of her name,
And she shall rule the ages, she the same
To whom the foam of Grecian waves gave birth.

1870.

SONNET VIII
POESY

I.

Sweet Poesy, I love thee; as a bride
Plays with a lover's locks and crowns his hair
With kisses, finding him exceeding fair,
So do thou prattle, sweet one, by my side,
And let me on thy gentle converse glide
As softly as a swallow on the air;
Be kind to me, let me some secrets share;
Thou knowest for how long my soul hath sighed
After thy Beauty, shall I not attain
One day the inner vision of thy face?
Are all a poet's passionate pleadings vain?
—I care for nothing else if but thy grace
Be present, making summer of each place,
Wringing a melody out of every pain.

1870.

SONNET IX
POESY

II.

Let us be joinéd hand in hand and go
Along the secret dim mysterious shore
Where wave succeedeth wave for evermore,
Each following each with an incessant flow
Of music most bewitching,—let us row
Beside strange banks with a half-sleepy oar
Under a moon of magic, and explore
The world together, say, shall it be so?
The glamour of the mornings and the nights
Of sacred summer we will make our own,
My Poesy,—the laughter of the dawn,
The music from the heart of midday drawn,
All lusty loves ecstatic and delights,
And, best of all for me, thy silvery tone!

1870.

SONNET X
“PRAISE BEAUTY!”

I.

Praise Beauty! So say I—although the seas
Of loss of being choke the effort down,
And universes armed against me frown,
I stand upright and speak the thing I please,
Not bending feeble supplication knees
To any petty bully of the town,
Be he philosopher or sage or clown,
Whether his glances petrify or freeze.

Praise Beauty! and if Beauty loves me not,
And never on my brow may cool be laid
Aught sweeter than the sorry cypress shade,
Nor pointed tips of bay-leaves touch the spot
With inward brain-desires and panting hot,
Yet unto Beauty be my tribute paid!

1870.

SONNET XI
“PRAISE BEAUTY!”

II.

Ah! sweet one, why thus lure us on by day,
And send us flying phantom dreams by night
That lips may smart for unattained delight?
Why, treacherous, teach our vehement tongues to pray
Just to annihilate us with a “Nay,”
A cold still countenance after smiles so bright?
Sweet, thou wast rosy once, why now be white?
Thou who didst hasten towards us, why delay?

Why tarry thus the backward lingering wheels
Of Beauty's chariot harnessed to the sun,
And swift by rights as dawn's approach begun,
Or echoes following hard triumphant peals
When all the brain brimful of rapture reels
With melodies that beat and burst and stun?

1870.

SONNET XII
THE ROSE OF NIGHT

“She kept me awake, as a tune of Mozart's might do.” —Keats

And she kept me awake, but not the same
The vision, or the phantasy of sound
That kept my sleepless senses still unbound
And all my heart encircled by a flame,
But rather as if some splendid flower came
Waving a magic mist of perfume round,
And occupied my being itself, and wound
About me with a most imperious claim,
Coloured as is a choice kaleidoscope;
And ever and anon the clouds would rise,
And, as a moon, would beam before my eyes
That, far from closing, ever wider ope,
The form that to the craving clasp of hope
Pursuing, she retreating still denies.

1871.

SONNET XIII
A HORROR AND A CALM

“Sweet, gather me some clover”—and he stepped
Over the stile into the crimson field,
And she with a green hedge behind for shield
Leaned back and waited, dreamed and smiled and slept,
The while he wandered onward far, and leapt
To seize another flower fairer still;
But, on a sudden, came a cold sharp thrill
Across him, and a horror grew and crept
With slimy sickening feet throughout his brain,
The sense that she was gone—he hurried back,
And let the grasses fall upon the track,
And with his eyes stretched wide in eager pain
Met—that full tender hazel glance again!
Of flowers of love they did not find a lack.

1871.

SONNET XIV
A MARRIAGE PRAYER

O tender Mother on high that hast the four
Clear winds for breath, be gracious unto these;
That hers may mix the savour of the seas
Of Italy, and scents from every shore
Thy sweet South West wind sweeps her odours o'er;
That his may bear the banners of the breeze
That rides where the pure keen blue glaciers freeze
And Alpine heights ascend for evermore.

O Mother, mingle in their meeting breath
Thine own soul gathered from the East and West
And North and South, and extreme peaks of death
And passes of new life,—and bare thy breast
That either soul may nestle safe therein,
And let its melted snow-wreaths cleanse from sin.

1871.

SONNET XV
LOVE'S RELIEF

Each rain-shower is an evidence to the air
Of the relief of heaven, and each storm
Of sobs the pressure of God's bosom warm,—
A token sent our spirits to prepare
For a closer tenderness, a joy more rare,
A weeping purer and more clear and sweet,
Deliverance after yet more fervent heat,
A trouble greater than our souls could bear.

Just as a husband weeps upon the breast
Of his wife, and in that holy shower of rain
The thunder-clouds and copper skies of pain
Expand, and sob their terror into rest,
Till he sleeps as calmly in that quiet nest
As a child who wakes to smile and sleep again.

1871.

SONNET XVI
THINE HANDS

Thine hands do smite me like the perfect chords
Of music, every finger brings a tune;
They draw me like the drawing of the moon,
They thrill my heart like beautiful sharp swords,
Or as God's sweet unerring touch rewards
His heroes; they pervade me like a stream
Of honeyed influence, or as a dream
The milk-white bosom of the night affords.

Oh, that my heaven may be the ceaseless rain
Of swords and soft flowers clustered in thy hands,
Or as the ceaseless music that expands
From these, the founts of music, when they strain
Above me, touching me; and do retain
The sweetness of the women of all lands.

1873.

SONNET XVII
WHITE AND BLACK

A most sweet vision holds my spirit now,
And Music adds its magic (for before
My dreams were silent as a moonless shore
At midnight, or a vessel's midnight prow).
Over a woman's stately marble brow
A pure cascade of coal-black hair doth pour:—
The black-brown tresses that I loved of yore,
Darkened by contrast of her body of snow.

Ah! lady, goddess, is it not enough
To overcome me with thy body of white
Surrounded with that mist of tresses black,
As the moon rides serene upon the rough
Dark breakers of invulnerable night?—
Must eyes and fiery mouth pursue my track?

1873.

SONNET XVIII
YEARNING AND ITS MUSIC-ANSWER

I. The Beauty of Woman

Who shall possess the whole of any flower,—
Both petals, leaves, and fragrance that abides
In the sweet golden core where God resides,
Casting that fragrance forth with lavish power?
Man doth possess a woman for an hour:—
Upon her ample bosom's roseate tides
Softly and sweetly for a month he rides;
Then winter shakes the rose-leaves from his bower.

How shall we grasp in one excessive bliss
The beauty and fragrance that the world has seen,
Even from the rose-red blossom of Eve's kiss
To the rare laughter of the Egyptian queen,
Enclosing, sacred shuddering palms atween,
The imperial pure significance of this?

1874.

SONNET XIX
YEARNING AND ITS MUSIC-ANSWER

II. The Musical Blending

There is a love beyond the love we hold
In earthly grasp of over-eager hand,—
A love that bloometh in another land,
With petals of divine untarnished gold.
When from the shuddering organ notes are rolled
Conveying hints we fail to understand,
Or when with slender moonlight on the sand
A distant horn blends pæans clear and bold:—

When music at these seasons wakes in us
Some glimpse of evanescent heavenly fire,
We learn that love is consummated thus!
Yea, woman's hands in heaven are a lyre,
And all her snow-white body a stream of sound
Whereby we are caught; close-chained, caressed, close-bound.

1874.

SONNET XX
PSYCHE'S ZONE

As Love bestowed on Psyche a bright snake
To twist in belted beauty round her waist,
That so she might be kept for ever chaste,
And every prying hand might tremble and shake,—
So have I given my Lady a zone to take
And round her beating side to wind and clasp;
A rustling girdle of song doth grip and grasp
The far-off heart that quivers for song's sake.

Intrude not, any wandering lover, lest
This serpent that around her body fair
In tortuous coils of gleaming colours hangs
Should strike you with irreparable fangs:—
Leave unto me her snow-white body and breast;
Leave unto me her red lips and brown hair.

1874.

SONNET XXI
PURSUIT AND CAPTURE

Is there a sweeter thing than when one feels
The breast of Love brought closely to one's own,
So that each sigh or softly-murmured moan
Is caught and changed to laughter's silver peals?
Yea, this is sweeter—that the world conceals
No love for ever, though she flee away
Through woods and endless forests fierce and grey;
Beware! the avenging Love is at thine heels.

In some sequestered glade of that wild wood
The pale pursuer is upon thee, sweet;
Love's angered advent thou shalt not elude,—
Turn rather, soft-eyed, that approach to meet!
He treadeth after thee with footstep rude,
And pauseth not for poisonous swamps, or heat.

1874.

SONNET XXII
AN EMBODIED MUSIC

Thou art indeed the very spirit of song:
Thou art in truth the essence of fair sound.
All chants upon thy rose-red lips abound;
When thou dost speak, it is as music strong
And sweet and clear: I hear one dream-tune long
Whene'er I hear, see, worship, watch for thee,—
The spirit of gracious speech descends on me,
And through me thoughts float, in one white-winged throng.

O lady fair, thou art the spirit of singing;
A sweet embodied music,—nought besides.
Lo! through thy white white body the pure tides
Of universal sound are softly ringing,
Delighting, dazzling, changing fast, and bringing
My soul towards some fair rest that God provides.

1876.

SONNET XXIII
“THOU SHALT DRAW ME”

Thou shalt draw me: it shall be changed at last.
I am the stronger now—I have to draw
Thy soul by some magnetic simple law
Towards mine, till every idol is downcast.
Then when thy spirit is wholly free from flaw,
Thou shalt draw me; my work will then be past:
Thou shalt allure by thine own yearning vast
My spirit; and it shall follow, pale with awe.

My ecstasy shall then at last begin,—
My cup of glorious pleasure shall be full,—
As into silver waters soft and cool
That purge with many a lovely surge from sin
I joyous then shall plunge: thy great desire
Shall clothe me, as in measureless white fire.

1876.

SONNET XXIV
DAY BY DAY

As day by day the void doth greater grow
Between thee and the world, 'tween thee and friends;
As life's wide wintry landscape now extends
Before thee, its chill meadows deep with snow;
As, silently, thou pacest to and fro,
Revolving in thy spirit silent ends;
As over thee the eternal azure bends,
Like love's skies stooping o'er thee long ago;
When things are thus,—when thou dost yearn to hear
Some word from thine own country, where the air
Of softest love once lifted thy brown hair,
Some note of recompence, some sound of cheer,—
Remember then that, in Art's sunny lands,
Thou hast for ever one who understands.

1876.

SONNET XXV
“GRECIAN AND ENGLISH”

Am I a pagan? Am I set at nought
Because I worship here in English air
The goddess whom Keats' fancy found so fair,—
The gold-haired Venus whom his genius brought
Hither, sweet queen of songs and amorous thought?
No more need blue-bell weep or rose despair:
Though Greece she loved, she did not linger there;
Drawn Westward ever, the land of Keats she sought.

Her light of beauty is upon our hills:
She haunts our Isis, and her soft eyes shine
On sun-kissed ripples of our Northern rills,
And her white limbs repose 'neath birch and pine,
And our grey waves with marvellous foot she thrills,
Grecian and English,—and as both divine.

1881.

SONNET XXVI
“ANGER IS OFTTIMES HOLY”

[_]

Suggested by Keble's poem regretting the disuse of excommunication in the Church of England.

“Il faut que le poëte, aux semences fécondes,
Soit comme ces forêts vertes, fraîches, profondes,
Pleines de chants, amour du vent et du rayon,
Charmantes, où, soudain, l' on rencontre un lion.”
Victor Hugo, Les Contemplations.

Anger is ofttimes holy. Half the worth
Of song lies in the singer's sudden sword,
Along which burns the anger of the Lord
To smite “the high priests and rulers” of the earth.
A thing most holy was Elijah's mirth,—
The awful mocking gibes his lips outpoured
Midmost the palsied powerless priestly horde
Who shrieked in vain round their stone altars' girth.

Great anger at small anger is no crime:
So when we open Keble's page and lo!
We find a malediction in his rhyme
And spite's stream foaming in weak overflow
We volley back the curse of Man and Time,
And render scourge for scourge and blow for blow.

1882.

SONNET XXVII
“BORN OUT OF DUE TIME”

If I be born too late, and if for me
Beside the sea-wave still white Venus stands
With tenderest witchery in soft outstretched hands,—
If still along the moonlight-dimpled sea
I hear far sounds as of the silver glee
Of sea-nymphs making for the weed-flecked strands,—
If summer beckons me from balmier lands,
Why must ye, O ye people, turn from me?

Oh, worship ye your gods, and leave me mine!
Think ye that never ripples shone so fair
As those of Galilee? A sweeter air
Trembles along the blue waves' creamy line
And lifts the tresses of dark groves of pine
Whereby the old gods' passionate temples were!

1882.

SONNET XXVIII
MY GIFT

Ah! what gifts have I?—Here I try to sing:
The roses mock at all my similes;
The mavis, casting sweet notes on the breeze,
Mocks me; the leafage mocks me in the spring,
And the high eagle with triumphant wing
Mocks me,—and the sheer music of the seas
Mocks me, and the broad laughter of the trees
And all the silvery mirth of everything.

Yet one gift have I which I yield to none:
One supreme sense which doth my being fill:
One passionate instinct stronger than the sun:
One changeless masterful marked bent of will:—
The beauty of Woman doth my spirit thrill
As never it thrilled a singer yet,—not one.

1882.

ENGLAND AND PALESTINE

O shores and lakes and dells
Of England! asphodels
And lilies of the East are not so fair
As tender blossoms born
Beneath the breath of morn
Within your folds and nursed by Western air:
Nor are the Eastern maids
Crowned with the dim black braids
As sweet as flowing crowns of sun-kissed golden hair.

O England! cliffs and downs
And bustling fervent towns
And long grey shores and myriad-manéd sea,
And gardens, close, red-walled,
And mountains weird and bald
And white-plumed torrents tossing o'er the lea
And green sequestered nooks
And pebbly trout-loved brooks—
Give all your glory of soul, ye wild domains, to me!

Crown me not with a hand
Burnt red with sultry sand,
But with the clear palm of an English maid;
Stars that above us shine,
O'er mountain-ash and pine,
And fluctuant birch and tangled oak-tree's shade
And silvery mute stream,
Mix ye with my fond dream,—
And flowers that flush in spring the English mossy glade.

And English women fair,
Sweet for the Northern air,
Breathed as the English rose and white as high
Lilies that round us stand,
Stretch forth from all the land
Hands lily-white and fragrant ere I die,
And crown the English song
That sweeps in tide-flood strong
Across my eager heart and through my soul doth sigh.

Oh, never yet avail
Our songs that seek the pale
And sunburnt maidens of the Eastern land;

That leave the land of pines
For weak low-growing vines:
Never avail the feet that feebly stand
Upon our sounding shores:
Never avail the oars
That shun the dark-blue deep, that strike against the sand.

Grant me the perfect kiss
Of England,—give me this,
O time, O life, O death with down-bowed wings!
I ask this; nothing more:
One swift scent of the shore
That the blue endless English ocean rings
With ring of sweet white foam;
One rosebud from my home,
One flower whereto my hand in the death-grapple clings.

One rustling heather-bell,
One tuft of furze to smell,
One woman's mouth, dearer than rose, to kiss;
One vision, nothing more,
Of limitless wide shore;
One awful rush of music; only this:

One breath of the bright sky
Of England;—then I die
Content, clasped in a wild unfathomable bliss.

One wondrous London day,
To watch the torrent play,
The flood of life, along the murmuring shore
Of endless seething streets;
One with the heart that beats
In giant pulses through them evermore:
Then let the veil be rent
And let me pass content
The ever-rippling, waiting, yearning death-stream o'er.

Crowned with my own sweet land,
Her hand within my hand,
Her eyes upon my eyes, her tender gaze
Deeply intent on me,
And all her wind-sweet sea
Laughing as children laugh in primrose ways;
Thus would I pass,—nor fear
Lest in a new land drear
I pass beyond the reach of love and flowers and bays.

Where God is, children are,
And sweet love, and the star
Of labour and of hope,—and woman's tread;
Woman whose tender breath
Fills all the vales of death
Like the far miles of countless rose-scent shed
In the Caucasian vales:
Such death no spirit pales,
For where there lasts a rose, no death-pale soul is dead.

Where love is, death is not;
Yea, not o'er any spot
Where sweet love treads hath bitter death the power:
Not over England's seas,
Nor the immortal breeze,
Nor one white pure imperishable flower
Of English womanhood,
Nor one true bard who stood
True to his love and land through life's fast-flitting hour.

1880.

NINETEENTH CENTURY SONNETS

[_]

I retain these Sonnets, written in 1881, as accurately expressing the sadness felt at that time by thoughtful minds, overshadowed by the gloomy suggestions of Positivism and materialistic science. To-day, I need hardly say, the universe, far from seeming Godless and material, appears to me to be simply saturated with God and spiritual potency. G. B. August, 1902.

I.

Love is worth having: this we know and preach.
Though heartless, mindless, soulless, Nature be,
And all the voices of her wild white sea
Have nought of loving helpful God to teach;
Though, piercing far beyond the stars, we reach
More stars,—but no high heaven of sacred glee;
Though summer laughing in the dense green tree
Hath but a mocking restless helpless speech;
Though this be so, yet love is passing fair
And more than ever do we seek her face,
And seek her breast, and nestle in her hair,
And dream of her delight in every place.
What have we left to do, now God is gone,
Save just to love and weep and labour on?

II.

And yet the sadness! All the flowers are dead.
The blue skies bend above us,—but no more
They fill with strange glad light the laughing shore,
Nor buoyant swings the lily's orange head,
Nor smiles the moss-rose, large and sweet and red:
Hushed are the joyous sounds we heard of yore;
The planet's sweet spring-days of love are o'er;
The planet's summer-jocund days have fled.

We know, and knowing, cease to love and feel:—
O great God, art thou dead,—canst thou not be?
May we no more adore thy face and kneel?
Grim is our triumph, and forlorn are we.
Mournful the silvery moonrays round us steal,
And very mournful shines the Godless sea.

III.

Have we been loving, when we fondly dreamed
God loved,—and watched and guarded us and held?
Is the swift world by soulless wings impelled
And hath the sun for ever heartless gleamed?
Are the blue depths just blue and nothing more
That once with countless habitations teemed
And steps o'er which great armies used to pour
And walls that with the eternal glory beamed?

O simple sweet world hanging in the void
Of tremulous ether, terribly alone
Thou art,—by thine own innate forces buoyed
And through the air's dense populous eddies thrown
With pale Chance at the helm. O world forlorn,
Better it had been hadst thou ne'er been born!

IV.

And is the Christ who rose with heaven-bright wings
Dead, dead for ever? Did he never rise
And cleave with helm and plume the shadowy skies?
What is this message that our sad age brings?
Oh, weird the low disastrous whisper rings
And fast around the darkening planet flies:
“Man stands alone; all former creeds were lies;
Truth open every heavenly doorway flings!”

The doors are open, and we gaze in dread
Thinking perchance some living God to see,—
Great eyes that burn from some divine vast head,
Or golden sceptre flaming terribly:
But our own shadow we behold instead,
And but for that the rooms would empty be!

V.

Something is left: to love and wrestle on
Beneath the soulless glaring loveless sky;
To toil and bleed and suffer, till we die
When the swift circle of our years hath gone.
Sweet selfless love at least is not a lie;
Love hath its own eternal Godhead still,
And we may live as Gods through might of will
And mix our souls with all thoughts pure and high.

Strength is in Man, if Man created God
And through his own thought wove the awful Name
And reared God's great grand palace on earth's sod
And ringed it round with hell's red guardian flame:—
Strength is in Man,—and he with fire is shod
And he the earth's wide fruitful fields may claim.

PRIESTS AND POETS

SONNET

Why are the priests and poets never at one?
Because the poet's heart is like the sea
Boundless and fearless, and his song should be
Equal with stars and with the changeless sun.
Because a priest speaks, and his work is done,
But poets' words sound on eternally.
Because the poet's soul is wide and free,
But priests' souls cease, like stagnant streams, to run.

Because their Christ bled nobly once, but now
Their souls are too insensitive to bleed
And gold, not thorns, circles their turgid brow;
For this it is that singers and the seed
Of singers hate and spurn and disallow
Their sealess flowerless sunless starless creed.

July 2, 1881.

“IN A STRANGE DREAM”

SONNET

In a strange dream I passed beyond the host
I led, and stood upon the field alone.—
Round me were corpses pale and overthrown;
No living friend,—but many a blood-stained ghost.
Beaconed in front the fires from post to post:
I heard the ringing passionate trumpets blown;
Ten thousand eyes were focussed in my own;
Like endless waves upon an endless coast
The enemy's army stretched in front of me.
I caught the ravening eyes of all of these
Within my own like spears upon a shield
And held them till that army seemed to yield
Vanquished, as at the cliff's glance sink the seas.—
Then I looked round for God. And where was he?

1883.

A DEATH-SONG

Bury me not
In some lone spot,
Though tender flowers be there of love's own training;
Yea, not the meadow-sweet
And ferns about my feet
Would keep my lonesome spirit from complaining;
My soul would fly afar
Where human spirits are,
In sight of human forms some solace gaining.

Take me to where
In weighted air
Of mine own well-beloved eternal city
Great fervid thoughts arise,
Yea, where men's glowing eyes
Gleam ever with fresh hope or love or pity;
Oh set me but within
London's impassioned din,
And even my dead pale lips may chant a ditty.

Plant fragrant bloom
Above my tomb,
Yea, all the season's gentlest maiden flowers;
Ferns, and the creamy grace
Of lilies thereon place,
And build above me rose-hung shaded bowers;
But take my body not
To any country plot,
There to be tortured by the brainless showers.

Let flowers of thought
To me be brought,
Yea, all the pent-up city's burning treasures;
When lovers young begin
Their new sweet life to win,
Let me in spirit smile amid their pleasures;
Let the strange sunset red
That crowns dim London's head
Be the first air of heaven my wing-sweep measures.

No rest I crave,
No quiet grave,
But ceaseless passionate life,—yea, this for ever;

A living spirit high
I would not stoop to die
Or cease the old songful turbulent endeavour;
I would for ever know
Sweet love, though that be woe,
And passion, though its pain abateth never.

Give me, O Death,
Not slumbering breath
As of a child, but all a man's completeness;
Grant me the perfect strength
And risen power at length
Of man, and pour upon me woman's sweetness
From lips of women dear
Whom thy hand may bring near,
Staying for me their heavenly swift-foot fleetness.

I fear thee not
If but my lot
Bring me love's sacred gifts and spotless favour:
Yea, if love's utmost glow
My living soul may know
And love's fruit's innermost most precious savour,

Methinks I have a force
Thee, pale Death, to unhorse,
And never at thy thundering tilt need waver.

O woman sweet
Whose gentle feet
Have brought me in this world mine holiest blessing,
Be near me, kiss me, when
No help avails of men,
But only thine help, godlike and caressing;
Lift me above the tomb,
Yea, sever thou the gloom,
And deaden thou death's fleshly pangs distressing.

Rise with me, love,
This life above,
Long ere the actual death the doorway shadeth;
That when his real step sounds
And his cold breath abounds,
And his deep sword our fast-joined heart invadeth,
Victors already we
May, in our calm strength, be—
And conquerors then, as each the other aideth.

Then in no tomb,
No death-crowned gloom,
We—you and I, sweet love—will rest or tarry;
No blossoms shall we need,
Nor priests to intercede,
Nor prayers our air-light souls towards heaven to carry:
For death died long ago
When, white as just-fallen snow,
God stooped, august from heaven, our souls to marry.

TO THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY

Lo! through the dismal tides of tribulation
We struggle long.
Chained are thy chosen souls in every nation:
Fettered, though strong.

Lift thou thy face, and all the dark is broken
As with great light.
Through all the blackness speak one word of token,
One word of might.

We trust thee with a trust that cannot alter
Though skies be grim.
Our foemen gather around: we do not falter
Though hope grows dim.

We know in the end that thy great hand shall find us;
That we shall sleep
Within thy bosom as in the home assigned us,
Reward to reap.

By all the scent of gracious summer filling
Thy neck and hands;
By thy sweet touch our souls and bodies thrilling
And saving lands,

Deliver us, and with the ancient splendour
Imbue the skies,
Till the old hymns of happy hearts and tender
To thy throne rise.

We are forlorn and weary and forsaken,
So men declare:
Yet are we firm and changeless and unshaken,
For yet thou art fair

Before us in the great eternal meadows
Where spring shines bright,
And in the purple fathomless far shadows
Of boundless night.

We trust thee and we flinch not, O our deathless
God, love and queen!
We follow thee with all the old rapture breathless
And thy robes' sheen.

Not pain can turn, nor death destroy who follow
The bloom of thee,
From morning's flame till evening's shadows swallow
Thy shore and sea.

May 21, 1881.

A HYMN

I

Great God of the wide seas, king too of the space
Severing star from gold star, with thy dwelling-place
Far amid the cloud-lands, fold in thine embrace
Hearts whose intense emotion
Like world-wide tides of ocean
Yearneth for thy blessing, panteth for thy grace.

II

Pure as are the roses, white as is the foam,
Great God of the mountains, through the starry dome
Passing like the night-wind, lift us, waft us, home;
For we cry with daring,
Suffering souls upbearing,—
Souls that through life's desert, stricken, struggling, roam.

III

Art thou in the heavens? dost thou, high God, care
Nothing for the torment which with winged swift spear
Blood-dyed at the sharp point, doth assail us here?
Are we alone for ever?
Wilt thou redeem us never?
Nor sweep the thunderous dark-hued threatening fierce skies clear?

IV

Grant us thy redemption: make us one with thee
In thy rapture-dawn in morning o'er the sea,
In thy passion-calm in sunset's purity;
Let the strange white cloud-billows
For our souls too as pillows
Gleam forth; let man victorious o'er outspread nature be.

V

God, thou art immortal; burn us with thy flame,
With the soul-deep longing that for utter shame
Purifies each effort, cleanses every aim,—
That we may find the death-land
But one divine rose-breath land,
Treading it triumphant, trusting in thy Name.

VI

Oh, thy flowers are endless; why should human feet
Vanish, when thou fillest woods with meadow-sweet
Every fresh year gently, for the woods to greet?
Canst thou not save the nations
Who bring thee heart-oblations
As thou yearly savest, God, the golden wheat?

VII

Raise us from our sins, God,—lift us from the tomb;
Make each woman's soul pure as a rose in bloom;
In each strong man's spirit every sin consume;
With sacred selfless love fulfil us;
With thy sweet spirit's yearning thrill us;
A sun of hope, divide thou all the wavering gloom.

VIII

Strengthen us to march on, stedfast day by day,
Brace us, purge us, guide us, guard us, God we pray;
Through the burning noontide, through the twilight grey,
Be with us, great God, to deliver;
Fill thou with shafts our spirit's quiver;
Be our brazen buckler in the blind affray.

IX

Be to us in love-land timely shield and shade;
As a giant oak-tree watching o'er a glade:
Let thy perfect calm bright passion-land pervade;
Bend thou above the perfect sleep
Of lovers with thy wings that weep
Dewdrops divine above them, ready e'er to aid.

X

Thou art the spirit of love, God: thou thy love instil;
With thy power of passion all our soul's veins fill;
We would love in one line with thy loving will;
Let all things else save love be dead,
But love lift high her timeless head,—
Love with the force to fashion, make alive or kill.

XI

Let our souls be music: thou art music, Lord—
Music's stainless awful rapture-wingéd sword;
Thy great heart respondeth, answereth, chord by chord,
The music of the ages
That now desponds, now rages,
Triumphs again, tremendous, through vast channels poured.

XII

God, through pain, through anguish, make us one with thee:
One with hill and sky-line: one with surging sea:
One with thine own splendid death-surmounting free
Great soul that fills all things
With music of sweet wings
Floating above the tides of years that flee.

1880.

AN ADJURATION

By the old white maze of swift bewildering billows
That stormed the strand;
By the old dear woods' autumnal mossy pillows,
By thy white hand;
By far streams washing tips of bended willows,
A far-off land!

By all sweet sacred memories I adjure thee,
By cliff, by star,
By maze of garden shrubs that now secure thee
Where no songs are;
By the old soft dreams that once, sweet, did allure thee,
By pain's red scar!

By all the tossing tides of bitter sorrow,
A foaming main;
By love's low whispers when he sought to borrow
New hope in vain;
By nightly prayers for nobler dawns to-morrow,
New heights to gain!

By moons that swam serenely o'er the ocean,
Gilding the foam;
By our young hearts' sustained intense emotion,
By passion's home;
By the long deep Lethean nightshade potion
Given while we roam.

By mine own heart that never can forget thee;
By flowers of song;
By my swift lyre that ceaseless doth regret thee
Forlorn so long;
By every tender flower that since hath met thee,
By yearning strong.

By silvery moonlight flooding garden reaches
Long leagues inland,
Reminding thee of rays that lit the old beaches,
The wave-swept strand;
By this sad song itself whose mouth beseeches
Touch of thine hand;

Be gracious:—as the summer rose is tender,
Be thou to me!
Unveil, white love, thy white eternal splendour

As by the sea
Love saw soft lips and shaking hands surrender:
So let it be.

Lo! how the moonlight o'er the mountains hoary
Of time yet beams:
Rise thou, O woman moon, haloed with glory,
With gentle gleams;
Close thou the wandering wail of passion's story,
Of passion's dreams.

Before the October winds the grasses harden
Tarry for me
In quiet nook of red-leaved autumn garden,
Or by the sea:
Thyself give for sweet token of sweet pardon,
The bloom of thee.

By burning light of sunrise on the spaces
Of old fair seas;
By the swift laughing light of love that chases
The quick-winged breeze;
By our words' wings and the immemorial races,
O love, of these;

Rise thou, a woman at last, and, flower-delightful,
In close embrace
Pour through mine eyes the unforgotten rightful
Dream of thy face;
Let love be ardent, masterful and mightful,
Some little space.

Rose of all roses, wait within the garden,
Wait thou alone,
Woman's soft thrill of over-tender pardon
Within thy tone;
Wait ere the stealthy frosts the first blades harden,
Ere chill winds moan!

1880.

MAN'S OVERTHROW

Straight through the strongest heart God's arrow goes
At God's unerring will.
The strongest spirit knows
Deepliest how God can make alive or kill.

Man stands erect and challenges the Lord
With fiery soul to fight.
But lo! God's sudden sword
Pierces his spirit in the midmost night.

In the deep dreary moonless midnight gloom
Beside the couch One stands:
Not empty is the room:
The darkness parts at touch of unseen hands:

And God says, “Thou wast strong and full of fire
And valiant as the sea;
I know thine heart's desire;
If I reject thy longing, what of thee?”

Then, face to face with the eternal Thought,
With not one star to aid,
Man feels himself as nought:
The fieriest spirit is the most afraid.

The strongest spirit is exposed the most
To the stern swordlike Thought,
And soonest of the host
Of rebels to supreme repentance brought.

For on his strength God's strength with fiery shock
Impinges, and he cries,
“I am smitten as by a rock
Hurled from the watchful hollows of the skies!”

The strength of God seeks out the strongest soul
To combat,—and it breaks
The strongest, and makes whole
Soonest the heart whose very roots it shakes.

THE PERSONAL GOD

Through youth the poet dreams of God arrayed
In the gold sunset-light
Or the dark robes of night:
God dwells in flowers and stars and leafy shade.

God dwells amid the rocks
Or 'mid the thunders of the seas is heard
Or in the spring-taught songs of many a bird
Or bleating of the flocks.

But then there comes a time when God no more
Is visible in these
Dark waters and dim trees
Nor mixes with the music of the shore.

Before the singer towers,
Person to person, solemn face to face,
The very God who led the Jewish race
And who is leading ours.

TO THE UNKNOWN FATHER OF JESUS

A word for thee, thou poor forgotten Jew,
Who loving Mary dreamedst not that she
(Thy kiss worked wonders vaster than she knew!)
Would bear the King of all posterity.

Thou left'st within the world its fairest light,
Obscure begetter of the Nazarene,
Whose passionate love-act in an Eastern night
Produced the grandest soul the world has seen.

Hail, unknown father, undiscerned bridegroom,
Who, having passed to regions dim and far,
Lost in the ages, buried in time's gloom,
Yet left'st within man's world its loveliest star!

A thousand shrines for her, the undefiled,
By blue Italian lake, Italian sea;
Wild worship for the mother of the child—
But from men's lying tongues what word for thee?

What word for thee, without whom none the less
The world had suffered an unmeasured loss?
The Saviour was the fruit of thy caress:
Without thy love had been nor crown, nor cross,—

No cross, no crown, no Jesus. Not one church
Had reared its sacred sign in any land!
And yet no thinker ever thought to search
For thee,—no dreamer cared to understand.

Thou wast not good, it may be—high nor great:
And yet to thee our greatest owed his breath.
Thou wast the watcher at his birth's bright gate,
As Pilate watched beside his gate of death.

Thee thy son's church has chosen to ignore.
The world, with its false sighs and foolish tears,
Crying, “Mary virgin! Mary we adore!”
Has passed thee by for eighteen hundred years.

And what of fatherhood it cared to ascribe
To Jesus' father, this to God it gave;
Dismissed the thought of thee with jeer and gibe
—Thou wast a dead man deep within the grave!

Thou hast been wronged.—The mighty God of flowers,
Of storms, of sunsets, of the human race;
He whose hand sways all destinies of ours;
He with the unseen ever-present face:

He, herder of the clouds, whose right hand drives
The sun's gold chariot through the gleaming sky;
Lord of our birth and master of our lives;
He at whose word red battle's millions die:

He at whose word the chargers of the waves
Leap snowy-maned upon the trembling shore;
Who in the blue gulf digs the great ships' graves;
He whom the stars in all their shrines adore:

Could he not leave to Mary and to thee
Thy child and hers? Why must the Lord divorce
Father from mother? Why must purity,
Truth, love, all suffer through man's fancies coarse?

The truth is grandest. Years may pass away:
Yet by one night's wild love-kiss thou hast won,
Poor Jew, the right through every age to say,
“I loved the mother. Jesus is my son.”

MAY: AN EPISODE

I. SEPTEMBER TO MAY

A song of storm-blown dark-browed sad September,
A song of autumn to the light of May;
A song for spring's soft girl-heart to remember
When autumn's tired heart passes quite away.

How many loves have stood with looks of gladness
Within the portals memory's stars illume!
But in the end the laughter changed to sadness
And passion's heart grew ice-cold at a tomb.

Now, give me not the passion-flower that perishes,
But love that hath within it friendship's light:
The starlike love Time's conquering strong hand cherishes
When passion's sun sinks, foundering in the night.

Be May, divinely bright, divinely tender,
With eyes wherethrough my last romance may gleam.
O flower-sweet heart, bring back the lost years' splendour,
As May restores each year the dead springs' dream.

'Tis well to know that when the whole hereafter
Seems dark, when wrinkled pain courts sorrow's eyes,
Pain's brow grows smooth before a young girl's laughter
And sorrow owns her sovereignty, and flies.

Our England needs her hills and singing waters,
Her ever-virgin zone of sunlit sea;
But most of all she needs her fair-souled daughters:
The mist-veiled future hath its task for thee.

Bear ever in mind, of all her pure girl-roses
Each stainless rose makes England's armour strong;
Renews her force as each wild century closes,
Till war's fierce clarion cheers her like a song.

And bear in mind that dim September, seeking
Nought now but rest within the darkening grove,
Found still within his heart the strength for speaking
One strange sweet word, and that one word was love.

II. A SONG OF MAY

Like a beam of the sun she glittered
On a world grown dark and old:
She touched grief's brow and crowned it,
And the sorrowless crown was of gold.
The green woods laughed for gladness;
The sea tossed rainbow spray;
And the hills shook off their sadness,
And the wild rose whispered, “May.”

At the glory in girls' young faces
A man's heart throbs and it stirs:
But I know where the sovereign grace is;
Their beauty is not like hers!
June gladdens, or April pains us:
But their spell is an hour's, or a day's.
They have no strange charm that chains us;
Their magic is not like May's.

And now, if the sunlight leaves me,
If a parting comes with its pang,
If I meet the white ghost Silence
In the room where the young laugh rang,
I shall murmur, in darkness dreaming
Of a girl's bright looks and ways,
“There was never a glance so peerless!
There was never a smile like May's!”

III. A CHRISTMAS EVE

Over London, wintry London, fell the darkness and the gloom:
In my heart was leaden silence, even the silence of the tomb.
Like a monster on the city rushed the grim night, sablemailed;
Lamps that tossed their spears against it, seemed but sparks that flashed and failed.

Was it Christmas, “merry” Christmas? Were there sounds of mirth and song?
Or would only ghostly faces round about my footpath throng?
Is it Christmas to earth's mourners? Are the holly-berries red
When the hands that used to love them are the cold hands of the dead?

Not an island far in ocean, by the foot of man untrod,
Where the flowers send virgin sweetness through the still air up to God,
Not a death-doomed star and voiceless, void of song of bird or leaf,
Is so lonely as our London, when the heart is wrung with grief.

But the gloom was changed to sunlight when a woman's swift step came,
And the gold sun smote the darkness with his shafts of sudden flame.
How the light of some one's beauty and the brightness in her eyes
Brought again lost light of summers, brought again June's fervent skies!

For the gift of your sweet presence through one golden afternoon,
May, my heart's own love, I thank you—for the blessing, for the boon
Of two hours of happy laughter, for the sense of long pain done,
For the scent of flowers in winter, and the comfort of the sun.

IV. AT A GRAVE

A young world's laughter rang at summer's word:
My heart within me grew most strangely stirred
While life that left the dead form flowed through one
Full of the rose and splendid with the sun.
Beauty that once had flowered in perfect bloom
Within that darkling cavern slept in gloom;
The eyes that held all hearts with starlike flame
Knew not what stars had set, nor what stars came;
The lips that, speaking, chained, the hands that drew,
One with the unpitying earth in silence grew;
Immortal beauty, mortal found alas!
Mixed with the mould and blended with the grass;
The charm we thought would mock the conquering years
Now wins no tribute save the gift of tears.

But by the grave above the ill-omened earth
Stands sovereign morning, not with morning's mirth

But, ten times sweeter, ten times more divine,
With downcast eyes wherein the soft tears shine.
With more than summer in most perfect smile
Beside a girl's grave pauses for awhile
A girl; around her all the glad world gleams;
Her pitying eyes grow tender while she dreams
Of dreams that shone through eyes that never more
Will watch green hills, blue waters, golden shore.

She brings the dark world news: she tells the graves
Of sunlit laughter on a thousand waves
Death clouds not ever,—she brings the dead girl dreams
Of moonlit whispers in a thousand streams,
Of radiant summer tinging every leaf
With hues that know not death, that dread not grief,
Secrets by her pure soul from Nature won,
Love from the stars, a greeting from the sun.
Still doth the eternal life by its own laws
Proceed, with never check, no lasting pause.
Where beauty vanished deep within the gloom,
Lo! beauty stands. Where ruled the iron-browed tomb,
Where Winter reigned, behold Spring's sun-kissed skies
And deathless light in unimagined eyes.

Deep thanks I render. I, brow-wreathed with night,
Past language weary, rest within thy light.
Dark-eyed sweet sorceress, friend whose help bestowed
Turned wandering footsteps towards a happier road,
My love, mine Iseult, for thy birth-star gleamed
On those same waters where dead Iseult dreamed,
For thee I tarry; as the thunder's car
Changes its course and pauses at a star.

V. LOVE, THE TEACHER

Not by standing at their graves and weeping
Win we audience of the ghostly throng:
Those we left beneath the green grass sleeping
Need not tears it may be, only song.

Not by ceaseless groans and bitter anguish
Shall we reach their hearts and bring them nigh:
Not by wringing idle hands that languish;
Not by watching starless wastes of sky.

Where the strong sun gilds the morning mountains,
Where the ceaseless crystal waters leap
Laughing from the depths of rainbow fountains,
There are those we left alone, asleep.

Death may claim, and for one moment blinds them—
As he blinds us with his sudden hand.
Then the unconquered glance of morning finds them,
As it finds the slumbering sea and land.

Morning finds, and with sweet violence wakes them,
Pointing towards the red lips of the day.
Towards the embraces of the noon it takes them,
Bidding suffering's wan signs pass away.

Clearly 'tis so. How did I discern it?
Deem no sunset burns with wasted gold?
By one road the singer's heart may learn it;
From the lips of woman, as of old.

By sweet love within his soul renewing
All the strength that vanished when a tomb
Closed against his maddened step pursuing
Sunless doors of iron, gates of gloom.

By the knowledge, daily stronger growing,
That the love of woman hath no end:
By hope's fountain from the dark rock flowing
Through the love and sweet help of a friend.

VI. “SUMMER IN HIS SONG”

Not for thee the rose with sudden bloom
Springs from out the grass around a tomb,
Not for thee.
All the world for thee is glad and bright:
Still the stars adore the purple night;
Still the purple night adores the sea.

Still the birds' blue eggs within the nest,
Girdled by the heart of spring-time, rest
Safe and warm.
Still the sun is full of golden rays;
Still the ceaseless light of summer days
Cows the storm.

Not for thee the ever-darkening years
Weave their wayward crowns with pearls of tears,
Crowns of grief.

When the autumn's fiery glory gleams,
'Tis to thee a season full of dreams
Fluttering round in every crimson leaf.

Spring that clothes the glowing meads in gold
Takes thy girlish hand in hers to hold,
Holds it tight:—
Quitting April, hand in hand with May,
Spring will smile and whisper through the day,
Through the night.

Every year's each season brings its charm:
June hath starry bracelets for thine arm,
For thine hair
Snowy circlets of the vestal rose.
Summer nights that bring to thee repose
Bring to singers sleepless-eyed despair.

Not for thee the bitter wreaths of thorns,
But the golden flowers of golden morns
Glad and long.
Though the singer's locks are touched with grey
Spring-time in his heart he gives to May,
Summer in his song.

VII. “ONE HOUR OF MAY'S”

After Metaphysic's dreary song
Back to thee I turn,
Finding much of love's pure lore I long
Yet to learn.

After all the feasts of learning spread
Grand before my gaze,
Love's sweet mandate thrills my heart instead
At a glance of May's.

After all the lengthy windy words
Spun from mankind's tongue,
Strange relief to hear a girl's, or bird's,
Said or sung.

After wandering through the weary days,
Sad, alone,
Glad delight to feel one hour of May's
Is my own.

VIII. “IF I GO FIRST”

If I go first, convey to all the flowers
Thanks for the fragrance of a thousand hours:
My thanks return to all the bowers of June;
To friendly stars, to ever-faithful moon.
When sweet in spring the lilac-clusters smell
Remember there was one who loved them well:
But take no thanks, no greeting to the sea,
For that is even a part, the soul, of me;
May ever the soul within my slumbering form
Thrill to the blast, and madden at the storm!

When thou dost note the purple pansy, bright
Just in the centre with one gold star's light,
Or when thou gatherest from the wildwood sprays
Pink shell-like roses in the glad June days,
Remember one who loved—or loves, who knows?—
Night in the pansy, sundawn in the rose.

This sculptured bust of one in days that were
Not deeplier loved than thou art, nor more fair,
This, if thou wilt, in soft remembrance take,
And, with her picture, cherish for my sake.
As thou hast watched full oft beside her tomb,
Watch beside mine; and pierce the lampless gloom
With stars more potent than the stars on high,
The starry love that sways eternity.

IX. “CHRISTMAS EVE AND NEW YEAR'S DAY”

Christmas Eve and New Year's Day
Both in one
Bade the shadows flee away,
Brought me sun:

Brought me many thoughts and dreams
Glad and bright;
Silver voice of summer streams
Through the night;

Scent of many a rose in bloom
Through the day:
Changed to glorious light the gloom
And the grey:

Woke again within my heart
Clear and strong
What had threatened to depart,
Passion's song:

Lit once more the starlike thought
In my brain,
Which exulted to be brought
Once again;

Thought I had not known for years,
Pure and sweet;
Thought that brings the sudden tears
To repeat;

Thought that after all the days
And their whirl
Of despair and blank amaze,
Just a girl

With the emerald in her eyes
Mixed with gleam
Of the agate as it lies
In the stream,

With the darkness in her hair
Of the night,
On her lips the morning's fair
Rosy light,

Hope with tender hands might save
From the tomb,
Open heaven beyond the grave
And its gloom:

Just the thought it would be sweet,
Passing fair,
To lie wounded at her feet,
Dying there,

So the death might bring her bliss,
Bliss divine,
And by love's eternal kiss
Make her mine.

X. ARMED FOR THE BATTLE

Give my hand a sword to hold,
Bring a helmet wrought of gold,
A cuirass
Where the sun may see his rays
Flame and pass,
As he treads the cloudy ways.

Place a weapon in my hand
That will welcome and withstand
Many blows,
In my helmet fix a white
Snowy rose,
For I battle for the right.

On my breastplate let a star
That will glitter from afar
Flash and gleam;

For the night with all its wrong
Like a dream
Shall be scattered at my song.

Every girl in London needs
One who proves him by his deeds
Beauty's thrall;
One whose ready weapon leaps
At a call
From the scabbard where it sleeps:

One who wins him in the fray,
The wild struggle of each day,
Force and fame;
Adding somewhat hour by hour
To his name,
Till it breaks to golden flower.

Then this blossom bright and blown
Shall be hers and hers alone,
Shall expand
If she wills it at her breast,
When the hand
That bestowed it is at rest.

XI. MY SEA-BIRD

Here in London where the days
March forlorn through misty ways,
Damp and dun,—
Looking long for golden rays,
Finding none;

In our city, where the year
Follows spring-time on its bier,
Decked in showers,—
Where our summers bring severe
Sunless flowers;

Sweet it is to gaze at thee,
Dark-haired daughter of the sea,
Of the West,
Supple, pliant as a tree
Wind-carest.

From old Cornwall's windy shore
Comest thou, whom I adore
In thy grace,
Seeing Tristram's wave-kissed oar,
Iseult's face.

All the sense of sea and sun
Thou hast brought us, thou hast won,
May divine,
With the eyes that never shun
Love in mine.

Like a sea-bird fain to rest
Thou art wind-swept from the West
To our home,
Sea-willed ever, and with breast
White as foam.

XII. REST AT LAST

After years upon the sea
Passing sweet it is to me
Here to rest
As in island full of bloom,
Hearing far away the boom
Of the billows as they break,
Eager, each, its wrath to slake
On the coral-reef's lone crest.

After years of strife and pain
Passing sweet it is to gain
For a space,
May, my darling, rest with thee
Far from thunders of the sea,
And to watch within thine eyes
Mingled colours of the skies,
Light and shadow on thy face.

If I had not fought so hard,
Were my helmet not so scarred,
Dinted deep,
Then it would not be the same;
But my life until you came
Was a life of swords and blows—
Now I find in thee repose:
Very sweet are rest and sleep.

Sweet it must be unto one
After labours 'neath the sun,
Labours long,
Now at last to see thee stand
With a garland in thine hand,
And to feel that peace at last
When the foam-white reefs are past
Waits for singer and for song.

XIII. THE HIGHER LOVE

If I may not see thee much,
Sweet at least it is to touch
Hand and hand;
Sweet at least it is to know
That a heart can understand
And that sympathy can grow.

If I may not win thee now,
I can worship thy pure brow
Where the hair
Coils so lovingly for crown—
Can rejoice to find thee fair,
And may win for thee renown.

That is much to do indeed:
If the world shall give its heed
As it goes

With swift footstep on its way,
Saying, “Here there blooms a rose
Worth an instant of delay;”

Saying, “Here was passion strong
Nobly shrined within a song,
Purely framed:”
Then, my darling, when I pass,
I shall not be all ashamed,
Leaving you above the grass;

Leaving you above the mould,
Watching silver stars and gold
Evermore,
For your eyes are in my song,
And the wings of verse can soar
And the prayer of love is strong.

If I may not hold you quite
To my heart, I may delight
To be near;
I may clasp you in my thought;
At a distance I may hear,
By a sigh I may be brought.

100

That is love—the love supreme
That outlasts wild passion's dream;
That can stand
When the very stars must fall,
For it travels hand in hand
With the mighty Lord of all.

That is love—the love that gives,
And rejoices while it lives
Still to bring
Gifts eternal to the shrine:
Flowers of summer, flowers of spring,
Gifts unselfish, gifts divine.

That is love, at which men say,
“Though the sunlit month of May
Passes soon
Yet his May, the song-god saith,
Shall be subject not to June
Nor to winter, nor to death.”

101

XIV. “JUST A YEAR”

Just a year 'tis since we met,
Just a year!
Many suns have risen and set;
Many stars have waxed and waned,
Flowers have fled, but love remained;
Love's bright presence has been here
Just a year.

Will he linger, will he pass,
He who stays
Never 'mid the meads of grass,
Never on the mountain-steeps;
For his swift foot never sleeps,
And his progress he delays
Not for Mays.

102

Not for May, and not for June
Will he wait,
Not for August's cheery tune;
Not for hungry-hearted prayer
Flung against the hollow air,
Hurled against his golden gate:
Love is Fate.

Will he tarry, love, for thee?
Will he pause,
Looking down on thee and me?
Will he grant another year,
Moved by song or prayer or tear
To relax his iron laws
By a clause?

When another year has gone
Shall we say,
“Time may threaten, love lives on”?
When a million roses red
Change to white and join the dead,
Fallen, and trodden into clay,
Flung away!

103

When another year has flown
With its light,
Then will one love on alone?
Will a lonely lover say,
“Wings I fashioned for her: May
With those very wings took flight
Through the night”?

104

XV. “PASSION BLOSSOMS, THEN DIES”

Passion blossoms, then dies
And its bloom
Passes quite, and its eyes
Sunlit once like the skies
Close in gloom.

Give me love that will last
When the fire
Of romance in the past
Sunsetlike fadeth fast
On its pyre.

Give me love more divine
Than the light
Of a star that can shine
For a month, then decline
In a night.

105

If you love me, why so
Let it be:
But with love that will grow
From a stream's quiet flow
To a sea.

106

XVI. LOVE IN LONDON

In London far from grass or tree
Our love took form;
Far-off from wild song of the sea
In storm.

Not where the forest's silent bride,
The white moon, dreams,
Nor where the iris glows beside
The streams:

Not by green bank or scented mound,
By burn or mere,
My sad eyes caught thy glance and found
Thee dear.

In London, city of ceaseless gloom,
Grim sunless place,
I found one girlish flower in bloom,—
Thy face.

107

In London, where no stars are seen,
For all light dies,
I found two stars of deathless sheen,—
Thine eyes.

For London, though it gives no flowers
And gives no light,
Gives priceless crowns of passionate hours
Most bright.

In winter, when our fire was red,
The curtains drawn,
Who longed to see the gold-helmed head
Of dawn?

Who cared what shafts of sunset flew
Through blood-stained air?
Not I—for you were sunshine, you
Were there!

When leaped the amber stream of tea
From silver spout,
Was not with joy the surly sea
Shut out?

108

Or when our lamp with rose-red shade
At dusk was lit,
Who missed the moon, that thankless jade,
One bit?

Ah! London after all's the friend
To court and claim.
It gives us love, and in the end
Gives fame.

109

XVII. “LOVE ALONE”

The poet, victor over words,
Coy wayward things,
Deems he can snare the stars, those gold-plumed birds,
Because he sings!

He dreams of endless conquest, he—
While others plod
He must win thunder-music from the sea,
Epics from God.

The fragrance of the lips of June
In sunlit dales
His song must steal. The slender white-breast moon
His hand unveils.

110

Because one hour of mortal breath
He makes sublime,
His fond heart dreams of victory over death
And space, and time.

And woman most of all he dreams
His song can hold;
As Orpheus lured the nymphs from silent streams
With harp of gold.

Her, chainless, full of force and charm
Whom gods have sought
In vain, the singer dreams he can disarm
By one winged thought.

Whom centuries fail to understand
He, strong to dare,
Dreams he can win, and lay a conqueror's hand
On sun-crowned hair.

In vain, in vain, O singer proud!
No songs disthrone.
The free heart yields, the sovereign head is bowed
To love alone.

111

XVIII. A MESSENGER

Two years within the lonely room
I watched. No sweet ghost came:
No hand that sought mine, grasping through the gloom;
No wings more sun-bright than the dawn's bright flame.

All waited, silent, as of old;
The pictures and the chair:
The merry firelight touched to dancing gold
The mantle, framed, of her who was not there.

Then lo! one winter night it happed
That I sat there alone,
Lonely in heart as moonless hills snow-capped,
Dreaming of love's pale desecrated throne;

When through the door there passed a form
With beauty crowned and light
Whose wings imperious took the dark by storm,
As sunrise storms the rampires of the night.

112

The night's pure freshness wreathed her head:
The live soul of the sun
Shone through her eyes She gazed at me and said,
“Behold! the living and the dead are one.”

With living voice that strangely sweet
Upon my spirit fell
She said: “I come to comfort and to greet;
I come to tell thy spirit that all is well.”

113

XIX. THE TEMPTER

When Satan found that woman's heart
Was strong and brave,
To tempting woman all his art
And subtlest thought he gave.

And since he knew that flowers are nought,
Frail gifts, wind-blown,
His hand with peerless cunning wrought
Bright deathless flowers of stone.

All forms, all colours, he combined
And sought strange ways
To lure and charm the loitering mind
And snare the greedy gaze.

One woman's soul was stainless still:
The ruby came
With rays that weakened spirit and will
And conquering blood-red flame.

114

Another's heart was heart of steel,
Till sapphires drew
That heart to theirs with fond appeal
Of eyes of heavenly blue.

Another's heart was cold and hard:
The emerald gleamed;
Of lovers' steps on moonlit sward
That heart with passion dreamed.

Another heart resisted long:—
What heart, a girl's,
For ever can resist the song
The sea chants through its pearls?

So one by one the dark king took
The women all.
Lest any should refuse to look,
Predestined not to fall,

He set within the turquoise, bright,
The blue sky's noon,
And in the opal sunset-light
And rays of stars and moon.

115

But some hearts yet remained unbought,
Unbribed, unwon:
Keen Satan softly smiled, and brought
Diamonds, that held the sun.

E'en so he failed to move each will,
To bend all knees;
For woman's true soul values still
Love's diamond more than these.

116

XX. “FORGIVE, FORGET”

If I have pained thee by a word,
If, May, when last we met,
A doubt shot through me, wild, absurd,
Forgive, forget.

Love is so scarce, truth is so rare,
So swift-winged is regret,
So keen the spear-points of despair—
Forgive, forget.

Believe me, if the quick tears sprang,
If thy soft eyes were wet
Almost, I also felt a pang:
Forgive, forget.

Be gracious, love, and for love's sake
Bear with me even yet.
The best of me discern and take;
The rest forget!

117

XXI. “THE HEART OF MAY”

The green Spring comes with gladness;
Its golden meadows gleam;
But sometimes full of sadness
Those golden meadows seem.
So long ago they glittered
With that same fairy gold:
But now our hearts are weary;
The West Wind's touch seems cold.

We and our hearts have travelled
Through many a grove and glade;
Have marked the shadows lengthen,
Have watched the sunlight fade.
The voices now that summon
Sound weirdly from afar:
The sun we seek and worship
Is evening's first white star.

118

But still the lilac blossoms
With soul that mocks at gloom,
And tosses snowier plumelets
Above each silent tomb:
If we are old and weary,
Our best songs long since sung,
The soul of Spring is deathless,
The heart of May is young!

119

XXII. SPRING

Just as a maiden newly wed,
Whose lips half long, whose heart half fears,
Meets love with smiles, while soft eyes shed
Triumphant tears,

The moon, that through the winter slept
In dreary caves of iron night,
Arose and smiled, arose and wept,
Arose, most bright.

The sun, with ardent amorous thirst
And lips that scoffed at cold delay,
Went madly craving for the first
Warm kiss of May.

The stars, that missed with grief and pain
The scent of flowers, the sound of mirth,
Smiled down from heaven and kissed again
The flower-sweet earth.

120

And Winter paled—aye, Winter fled
And rubbed his chapped old hands,
All cracked and roughened, seamed and red,
And sought far lands.

And I rejoiced. I heard, I felt,
A voice, a hand, that bade the grey
Grim winter from within me melt;
The voice, the touch, of May.

121

XXIII. ONE DAY IN SPRING

From fields made bright with flowers in bloom
A young girl turned
And sought a darkling London room,
Wherein one gas-jet burned.

She left the blossoming meads behind,
The silent nooks
Where fragrant violets wooed the wind
Or whispered to the brooks:

She passed through streets where wild wheels roar
And dust-wreaths race,—
Brought sunshine to a sunless door,
Light to a weary face:

She left the golden furze to scent
The soft air's wing;
Made for one hour one heart content,
And filled it with the spring.

122

XXIV. A SPRING-SONG

To thee the flower-bright season brings
Glad thoughts of days and years unknown.
Thou see'st not summer's restless wings;
Thou see'st his light alone.

The thought of summers lying dead
With quiet hands most still and white
Comes not, when summer's rose blooms red
And summer's sun flames bright.

Before thee Love, superb and fair,
With summoning eyes that seek thee stands.
No ghost-love, sister to despair,
Wrings pale and piteous hands.

The lilies all, arrayed in white
Around thy path fresh fragrance pour.
No lily from beyond thy sight
Has passed, for evermore.

123

For thee life's harp triumphant rings;
The glad notes mingle not with tears:
No strange sigh shivers through the strings,
No wail from far-off years.

No proud carnation, fiery red,
No sun-crowned joy-delirious rose,
To thee with sudden doubt has said,
“What comes, when sunshine goes?”

The wan tomb's gates gleam not each morn;
No spectres haunt thy sinless sleep.
Death trembles at a young girl's scorn;
Sin turns aside to weep.

Let many a summer smile and shine
For thee when ours have passed away,
And many a griefless thought be thine
On many a first of May!

124

XXV. “LOVE'S GREETING FROM THE SEA”

To thee far-off on sunlit land,
'Mid fragrant meads, 'neath blossomy tree,
I send this gift to heart and hand,
This song, O love, to thee.

Here, where the green waves curve and curl
And where the wide-winged winds are free,
I think of one far-off, a girl
Whose eyes are as the sea.

The sea's strange light within them shines,
The light whose gleam may never be
'Mid forests green, 'mid oaks or pines,
But only on the sea.

Here, where the sun's gold arrows dart
On waves to windward and to lee,
I send thee, love, with faithful heart
Love's greeting from the sea.

125

XXVI. PURENESS' CROWN

England shall fill the centuries' hands with flowers
And through the mortal years immortal be
If woman's truth defends her swordless bowers,
As guards her shores the sea.

Then England shall abide; she shall not fail.
No iron monsters of the deep secure:
She needs not cunning suits of woven mail,
If only her heart be pure.

Though round us loom the thunders of the night
And Europe ring with trumpet-peals of war,
If in one English home pure love gleams bright
On England shines a star.

Not surelier down the cloud-veiled valleys move
The sun's gold chariot-wheels at close of day
Than lands decline, wherein men cease to love
And women cease to pray.

126

No jewelled crown that mocks the stars is grand
As that soft white-rose crown pure women wear.
No other sheds such lustre on the land,
That for its sake grows fair.

Nought weighs with us the centuries' smile or frown
If England's daughters, sovereign, fearless, free,
Wear on their brows for ever pureness' crown,
As sunlight crowns her sea.

127

XXVII. MAY-DAY

“Give me the dark sky's windy gates,”
I said:
“The doors at which the sunset waits
With threatening robes of lurid red.

“I love the beating of the storm's
Black wing;
With its own hues pale grief informs
The world, and poisons with its sting.

“When through the wet leaves pours the hail
Malign,
I love the cold darts that assail
The timorous rose, the shivering vine.

128

“The dark heart loves the gloom, and dreads
The sun;
It loves the wind that tears to shreds
The blossom-petals, one by one.”

But on my heart, that struggled hard
And long
The sunlit moment to retard,
There fell the sound of song:—

“The leaves are green, the sky is blue,
The air
That lifts the gloom from earth, from you
Lifts somewhat of despair.

“Canst thou be sad, when blossoms weave
Their crowns
From fragrant morn till fragrant eve,
Aye, even in heart of towns?

“Canst thou be dark of soul, when bright
And gay
Upon thee gleams with loving light
The sunniest smile of May?”

129

XXVIII. “TWO RUBIES”

The lilacs scented all the perfect air;
Bright living emeralds flashed on every spray:
Spring, ever fair to see, grew yet more fair
Within the eyes of May.

And I—I let my frost-bound heart expand;
I let the soft air lull me to repose.
I felt a joy the sun could understand,
The sun that courts the rose.

For, when the sun has striven through clouds and gloom
For many a weary league, for many an hour,
How must its strange soul worship all the bloom
Of one cloud-conquering flower.

There came a word those sunlit hours to mar.
Two rubies glittering on a golden ring
Said: “Soon will vanish some one dearer far
Than all the flowers of spring!”

130

A DAY AND A NIGHT IN ROME

All day I gazed at pictures—passionate eyes
Flashed from the canvas. Prisoned in pure stone
I heard Diana's laugh and Daphne's sighs:
Venus enthralled me from her timeless throne.

I worshipped those whose ever-living Art
Could make the marble breathe, the canvas glow;
The spirit who spake through Raphael's hand and heart,
The God who wrought through Michael Angelo.

Lost in my dream of ages past and dead
I heeded not the chariot of the sun,—
Till all the western sky gleamed weird and red,
And that long day of strange delight was done.

Then, wandering homeward, lo! a laughing girl
With lips not marble, and with heart not stone:—
Round her brow coiled full many a blue-black curl;
I won a joy to statue-lips unknown.

131

I found that still in that fair wondrous land
Beauty that baffled mortal speech was born:
The sceptre fell from Theodora's hand;
From Faustine's face I turned in silent scorn.

Lucretia Borgia swayed no more my heart:
Moreover now I knew that lustrous eyes
Unknown to history, undiscerned by Art,
Had mocked the moonlight in a thousand skies;

That wild romances, while past starlight gleamed,
Had thrilled the old streets and byeways of the land—
That hearts had loved and died, or lived and dreamed,
Yet moved no poet's heart, no painter's hand.

For still the same strange beauty as of old
Flashed forth from eyes that lit the darkening air,
And still, but half confined by band of gold,
Fell over shoulders smooth the Roman hair.

Living! the change complete—the contrast clear.
Above us shone the stars, most golden-bright.
Soft lips—no statue's—whispered in my ear:
Sweet heaving breast was tender-veined and white.

132

O dead-cold bosoms! O voiceless Venus-lips!
O eyes where love has slept through ages long!
O waists o'er which the marble cincture slips!
One warm live mouth outblossoms all your throng.

Yes: then I knew that one dear red-lipped maid,
Through whose sweet breathing breast live blood-throbs leap,
Mocked all pale statues,—that her smile outweighed
All loveliest dimples fixed in marble sleep.

133

TO S. THORNE

I. LINES WRITTEN IN MID WINTER

The flowers of summer died, the winter came
Clothing the hills in gloom, the fields in shame;
The groves, where stride by stride the frost-king won,
Pined for warm airs and clamoured for the sun.
But then, with regnant charm that smote dismay
And mocked June's flowers, a fairer came than they;
The sweetest rose of love that e'er was born
Bloomed 'mid the snow, and blossomed on a thorn!

134

II. A NEW YEAR'S GREETING

I

To thee far-off beside the waves
That even in winter gleam with light
This greeting from a realm of night
And streets like graves.

II

I send thee, love, the tenderest kiss
That ever thrilled across the air
To change December's gaunt despair
To summer's bliss.

III

All health, all gladness, love, be thine;
Bright days, soft slumbers, till we meet,—
Till laughter flashes from thy sweet
Young eyes on mine!

135

IV

To reach and cheer thee where thou art
I send my love, best hopes I send,
And New Year wishes without end,
And all my heart.

136

III. “THY LIPS ON MINE!”

I

When am I most at peace, when have I most
Of faith in sunlit heaven and light divine,
And least in death the shadowy sunless ghost?
—When, all the world shut out, with thee I sit;
The fire aglow, the red-shade candles lit,
Thy hand in mine.

II

When have I most of gladness here within
This stormy rain-dark town, where gas-jets shine
But for full many a year no star has been?
—When in thy glance I catch the sudden gleam
Of far-off waves, and pass into a dream,
Thine eyes on mine.

137

III

When have I most of joy's delicious throes,
The unearthly joy that baffles verse and line,—
Most sense of sweetness of the sovereign rose?
—When towards our bower of passion I retreat
And find love's mystic rapture strangely sweet,
Thy lips on mine!

138

IV. THE SIBYL

I

The sunless world seemed full of sound of doom;
Love's reign seemed well nigh done:
There came a bright-eyed sibyl through the gloom,
And with her came the sun.

II

Upon her brow the glory of youth was set
And from her eyes the morn
Flashed till it pierced the clouds of sombre jet,
Till laughter and song were born.

III

Before she came, all flowerless seemed the earth,
A silent waste of woes:
But with her came the silver flute of mirth
And with her came the rose.

139

IV

Yea, round her footstep fell the fostering dews;
Gold-girdled shone the shore;
The fields were jewelled in a thousand hues,
And death seemed slain once more.

140

V. A YEAR OF LOVE

I

A year of love, and not one quarrel yet!
Most strange it seems to some that this should be.
Nothing to pain us! nothing to regret!
Bright sunlight in the eyes that gaze at me!

II

Yet this is as it should be. Life is short:
Not long enough to make a loved one weep.
We love in sober earnest, not in sport;
Where quiet waters flow, the stream runs deep.

III

Love, who hast aided where so many failed
And given me rest and solace for awhile,
Light in the evening skies where sunshine paled,
At sunset's hour the sunrise of thy smile;

141

IV

Love, whom for thy sweet soul's sake I esteem
Seeing all the truth and pureness of thine heart
And in thine eyes fulfilment of love's dream,
Peace follows thee and sojourns where thou art.

V

Thine hazel eyes, so trustful and serene,
Have wondrous power to soothe me and to bless.
The night needs stars: I need thee, O my queen,—
Thy look, thy laughter, and thy soft caress.

VI

Life unto me is now an open scroll;
Life to thine eyes is still a tale unread:
I can expound life's mysteries to thy soul
And guard, while worshipping, thy young proud head.

VII

In all thy pride of beauty I am proud;
Proud when that stately snow-white neck I see,
Like some superb sweet lily untouched, unbowed,
Sovereign to all, but bending over me:

142

VIII

Proud am I of the voice that rings and charms
Thousands, my queen who givest the world delight;
Proud am I of thy throat and rounded arms
And hair more fragrant than a summer night:

IX

Proud am I most of all that, while dark days
Have spread wide wings of gloom o'er land and sea
This winter, thou with April in thy gaze
Hast given the springtide of thy love to me.

143

VI. MY “DUCHESS”

I

They call thee “Duchess.” Calm and proud
And cold, and full of high disdain,
Thou movest, starlike, through the crowd
Who scoff, and scoff in vain.

II

They know not, these, poor soulless clods
Whose vulgar touch and glance degrade,
That sovereign sweetness brings a God's
Most sovereign arm to aid.

III

They know not that the “Duchess”' power
From her own jewel of pureness springs;
That, while her lips are like a flower,
Her chainless soul has wings.

144

IV

Be “Duchess” ever—brave and strong,
Most cold to all unworthy of thee;
And charm the myriads with thy song,
But with thy kiss charm me!

145

VII. SINGER AND SINGER

I

You sing with voice, I sing with words:
But both are one
In loving music like the birds
And loving flowers and sun.

II

The voice of radiant youth is thine;
Youth's glance supreme,
Most sweet of all things, most divine,
That makes all life a dream.

III

Mine only this—the while I may
Before thy throne
To bend, and call the dawn of day
Within thy heart my own.

146

VIII. A BIRTHDAY

I

“Many and many bright returns,”
As runs the good old phrase,
Of this thy birthday, this that burns
Starlike 'mid dimmer days.

II

Just twenty-one! How strange it seems.
I who have outlived a thousand dreams,
Can I make love to one
Whose dreams are just begun?

III

O girlish heart, thou art sublime
In that thou comest straight
To this the shadowed land of time
From morning's timeless gate.

147

IV

Within thine eyes the morning's light
Shines softly proud, superbly bright:
We, gazing from afar,
Seem gazing at a star.

V

So fair, so pure the golden rays
Thy golden birthday brings;
Time loves and honours such birthdays
Who mocks the birth of kings.

VI

Time, sunless, pauses for awhile
To catch one sunbeam from thy smile.
I steal it!—Swift-winged rhyme
Can outwit even Time.

148

IX. “A YOUNG GIRL'S HEART”

I

The new spring comes again most bright;
Again our London squares behold
The snowdrop robed in white,
The crocus crowned with gold.

II

But sweeter than the spring to me
And thoughts of summer following after
It is thine eyes to see,
It is to hear thy laughter.

III

When summer and spring with pride and pleasure
Weave buds and flowers with daintiest art,
“I know a lovelier treasure”
I cry,—“a young girl's heart.”

151

A MAN'S VENGEANCE

Read this letter, read it slowly. You'll remember as you read
If 'tis written in blood, your action made the heart that penned it bleed:
If it throbs and aches with anguish, bear in mind, remember too,
That the anguish was your doing, all the soul-pangs caused by you.

Take your memory to a moment when we lived as closest friends,
I a toiler, you an artist following Art's impassioned ends:
I immersed in daily labour, studying law with cobwebbed brain;
You the rather studying woman—studying pleasure, shirking pain.

From your shadowy grove of lime-trees, looking westward, you could see
'Mid the blossoms a white blossom in my garden close to me

152

In the radiant summer evens—one than blossoms fairer far,
Her my wife, my joy, my rainbow, my dim life's imperial star.

For she was my heaven of fulness, rapture past all utterance deep:
Her first whisper brought the sunrise, her last kiss brought softest sleep.
Even her slightest laugh was music; and one knew not when she smiled
If the sun shone through her glances, or an angel through a child!

—Yes, you saw her and you loved her; lusted rather, should I say?
Felt that here another victim gracious Art set in your way:
Noble Art, so true and tender! Art who poisons countless lives,—
Looks on women all as models, be they maidens, be they wives.

When I saw the new look coming as her brown eyes met your own,
When I felt within my spirit daily chillier, more alone,

153

Then I knew that you were praising with an artist's eager heart
The one god who knows no pity, calm-eyed blood-stained bay-crowned Art.

I might see her in the sunlight, watch her beauty day by day
Garbed in glowing silks and satins, radiant blue or pearly grey;
I might see her,—safely shielded by her jewels, her brocade;
See her glory at the noonday, covered chastely, if displayed:

I might see her thus—the husband—you might see her in the gloom,
Crush the blossoms that adorned her, crush her young soul's whiter bloom,
Lift off jewel after jewel, till you took the fairest one
That the starlight gives the lover, not the noonday, not the sun.

I might see her all surrounded by a host of friends to guard,
Call her wife, and yet between us find a hundred gateways barred:

154

I might see her fair and queenly, chiding subjects from her throne
In the sunshine,—you might see her in the friendlier dark, alone.

I might hear her merry laughter, I might hear her lightly jest;
You might see her sob with passion, be the midnight's starcrowned guest:
I might hold her hand and kiss it, I might worship, I might weep;
You might strain her to your bosom, hear her call you in her sleep.

Yet your rapture was a moment's,—for the death-god bent and seized
Her my priceless love, my darling; with desire but half appeased,
While her mouth to yours was cleaving, like the sea-flower to the rock,
Death's hand tore the mouths asunder, with an ice-cold sudden shock.

155

Did a thought of me, I wonder, at that moment cross her heart,
Stay the pulse and freeze the life-blood? was it that which made her start,
Draw her lips from yours and, moaning, with her hand upon her side,
Pass from this world in a moment, in mid-frenzy's hottest tide?

Strange it was and wildly sudden. You were holding in your arms
Her a living breathing woman, with the touch, the scent, that charms:
In one instant all was altered; now your lust was left alone
With a body pure as marble, but as breathless as the stone.

Half I smiled when first I heard it. It was hard to lose her so;
Hard that when the thirst was urgent, all that quenched the thirst should go;
Hard that when the wine to please you, a girl's amorous mouth, was found,
Death should dash the glass to pieces, spill the sweet draught on the ground.

156

Spring would gleam again—the summer still would raise the rose from death,
Not the flower-scent in her kisses, not the rose within her breath:
As a lily dead and withered she the queen of lilies lay;
You for ever now were vanquished, you the victor of a day.

She was buried in the summer,—and the green grass closed above
All the love-god's hand had fashioned, all that lust had stolen from love:
But the flowers, the grass, received her—she was nineteen—with a sigh;
It was early yet to join them, she was over-young to die.

As I thought the matter over, as I turned it in my brain,
Having nought but vengeance left me, nothing else to seek or gain,
As it seemed a spirit whispered, “Let thy vengeance for a crime
Monstrous, be more monstrous even; let the struggle be sublime.

157

“Puny mortals war like mortals—as the sun-god warred of old,
Crushing down the night's dim armies with his sword and shafts of gold,
As the Titans fought the giants, let the deathless struggle be;
Lo! a sword and shield immortal in the darkness wait for thee.

“Venture down into the darkness, and observe within the tomb
All that once confronted morning like a flower in fullest bloom,
All that once with sovereign beauty unashamed smiled at the sun:
Venture down; observe and ponder what a mortal's hand has done.

“In the deep unholy darkness, under stones of monstrous size,
Mixed with horror of corruption, lurk what once were sunbright eyes:
In the foul and hideous darkness, by the crawling worms caressed,
Lies what once was peerless sweetness, what was once a woman's breast.

158

“'Mid the terror of the darkness, far from scents of flower and tree,
Rest remains of what was sweeter than all blossoms once to thee;
Heeding not the bitter North wind, nor the West wind, nor the South,
Lies what lured a world to worship, what was once a woman's mouth.

“In the silence of the darkness, in the blackness dense, supreme,
Where no whisper now may travel, where no star may ever gleam,
Rests, the one thing still unchanging though nought else unchanged be there,
Raven as the raven darkness, lovely still, a woman's hair.

“Ponder this, discern and heed it,—mark the thing with equal eyes;
In the spring be ever mindful, when the sunlight floods the skies,
When the flowers awake from dreaming and put on their robes of bloom,
That, though heaven be full of splendour, it is dark within the tomb.

159

“When in summer the blue ocean spreads its wide expanse for thee,
When thy soul may daily commune with the pure soul of the sea,
With the stars by night, remember there is one whom darkness bars
From the joy of the wide water, from communion with the stars.

“When the groves in autumn shiver, as their red leaves one by one
Whirl around the waning chariot of the fast receding sun,
When the waves grow fierce, remember there is one who never more
Will rejoice when autumn's storm-blasts toss the pale foam on the shore.

“When imperial winter lords it with his robes of spotless white,
Loading every branch with blossoms than the summer's bloom more bright,
Think of one who loved the winter—then remember that the snow
Reigns on earth with sovereign whiteness, but grim darkness reigns below.

160

“There the sword thou seekest flashes. Take it from the hand divine.
Let the sword God's hand wields alway for one hour be poised in thine.
Wouldst thou know where thou mayest find it? Venture once more through the gloom:
Lo! the Avenger's sword is lying by thy dead wife in her tomb.

“Yes: the sword that through the eras flashes forth and cleaves its way
Through the struggling human myriads rests within a grave to-day.
Stoop once more the tomb to enter. From thy dead wife's hand adored
Take the bright blade never tarnished, take the living glittering sword.

“Not with any rapier human shalt thou slay her slayer. No:
Let him live till perfect vengeance has full time to bud and grow;
Let his soul be slowly tortured—then when twenty years have sped
Thou mayest challenge him to battle, thou mayest strike the body dead.

161

“That a mortal sword can compass; but for this thou hast to wait
Till the twenty years have vanished, till revenge more fierce and great
Crowns with blood-red flowers of triumph her whom death's cold fingers grasp:
When the heavenly sword is crimson, put it back within her clasp.'

So I sought the tomb at midnight. All the clustering flowers were sweet:
There were fuchsias, red geraniums,—their soft petals brushed my feet,
Their pure fragrance floated round me. But their dewkissed tender bloom
Well I knew could never reach her, her I worshipped in the tomb.

At the flowers I gazed and loved them: she had loved all blossoms so.
“Heartless flowers,” I thought, “to blossom since my loved one cannot know!

162

How your beauty gleams triumphant, how your fragrance fills the air
With delight and peace unmeasured, though it sharpens my despair!”

Something touched my hand and roused me—not a cold touch but a warm.
From the flowers my head I lifted. Lo! beside me stood a form.
Well my whole thrilled spirit knew it; just the same old haunting grace,
And the deep hair deep as darkness, framing still the imperial face.

But its sweetness was the one thing, just the one thing that I knew:
Sweeter still and ever sweeter the bright marvellous same smile grew:
Vainly strove the waning moonlight, and the stars forsook the skies,
For a softer light and lovelier shone within a woman's eyes.

163

Then the fragrance of the blossoms grew intenser, but it seemed
That with her their fragrance blended, that for her their beauty gleamed,
And I knew that I was waking, that I dreamed not now nor slept:
For the first time since she left me, leaning on the cross, I wept.

Then I raised my head and watched her, and she spoke at last and said:
“I am living and I love thee. Since I love thee, hate is dead.
Since I give thee all my sweetness, thine for ever, thy reward,
By this marble cross for ever leave thy vengeance and thy sword.”

For a moment I stood awestruck: in my hands I hid my face.
Then I looked, but all was lonely. Very silent was the place.
She had vanished. Gazing Eastward, morning's first soft golden gleam
Showed that hell and death and darkness had passed nightward like a dream.

164

That was all, but that was ample. From the moment when I knew
That the living woman waited, that her living soul was true,
All things changed their form, their colour. All was altered by the sun
As it rent the clouds proclaiming that an endless night was done.

As I pondered, while the sunlight o'er the graveyard poured its flame,
Every tomb was there unaltered,—yet not one tomb seemed the same.
Had not she, the dead sweet woman whom I thought no God could save,
Stood with living foot triumphant 'mid the blossoms on her grave?

Had not she who loved all roses touched the roses by her tomb
With the feet the blossoms worshipped, mixed her own white deathless bloom
With the sweetness, with the whiteness, of the flowers that clustered there?
Had not she who banished gladness, with the same hand slain despair?

165

Yes: the crosses stood unaltered,—nay, transfigured every one
In the pure light of the morning, in the sweet flame of the sun.
What was lying beneath was simply the worn raiment of the dead;
By each tomb a figure standing lifted heavenward sun-bright head.

I could see the mighty army in that golden glad sunrise
With my vision now exalted, with my purged illumined eyes.
By one tomb a mother waited: lo! the love eternal smiled
On the face that change had touched not. By the next grave stood a child.

They were there, the host immortal; they were safe, and they were glad:
Though I marked a hundred faces, not one face of all was sad.
All the iron-bound gates I dreaded, gates that fiendlike legions guard
By one hand—and it was love's hand—in one instant were unbarred.

166

In the graves the raiment rested—set apart, just put aside,
Like the robes that shine and glitter at the noonday on a bride:
It is not the gorgeous raiment, not the lustrous wedding-white,
That the bridegroom claims and covets on the exultant wedding-night.

Star by star God shapes and shatters, but each star's task may be done
When to golden dust he grinds it,—and the gold dust makes a sun.
From the sun new life proceedeth, and a universe anew
Soon exults with emerald leafage, ocean-wastes of boundless blue.

It may be the Force that leads us, labouring on from age to age,
Hath the power to cause all anguish, and the strength too to assuage.
He who struck aside my fetters, changed to rapture speechless pain,
In each star we see may loosen, after ages, every chain.

167

Though vast hosts of men be martyred, though their blood be freely poured
By the hands of fate that tracks them on each planet's emerald sward,
Greener grows the grass, it may be: and the dead may rise again
More than conquerors through the death-stroke, more than deathless through their pain.

It may be the Power immortal has no power to raise or crown
Till the life that seems so precious we ourselves disdain, lay down:
On the eyes that search for morning everlasting light may stream;
There may be, beyond earth's beauty, beauty passing thought or dream.

Though the prophet, growing hoary, feels his task not wholly done;
Sees the peaks his foot will tread not, gilded by the setting sun;
Though he knows the dream that lured him, glorious in the morning light,
Now with gentle hands must lead him towards the silence, towards the night;

168

Though he knows that he will reap not, though his hand the seed has sown,
That the brazen towers will fall not, till a mightier blast be blown,
He remembers, as his sword-arm wearier grows, while eyes grow dim,
That the host goes marching onward, that it tarries not for him.

Onward ever towards its triumph, though the leaders' forms may fall,
Moves that never-pausing army, following Freedom's trumpet-call:
And the victors, when their glances scan the path by which they came,
Will remember their dead leaders, iron hearts and swords of flame.

I will carry out my vengeance, on myself the stroke shall fall;
I who would have slain all foemen, I myself will die for all:
Yes, to-morrow when the sunlight bids the blossoms smile and bloom,
You will find my body lying by the cross that crowns a tomb.

169

—Yet . . . the hardest is the highest. It is harder far to live
With that sweet ghost of the darkness still elusive, fugitive;
Once again mine eyes have seen her—now life's task is harder far,
For mine eyes that searched the darkness, having found, have lost a star.

Still to hold fast to the vision; to believe that love is near;
Daily still to struggle onward, without rapture, without fear;
To retain one's faith in sunset, when the sun has left the sky,
In gold blossoms in white winter,—this is harder than to die.

Harder, harder was it doubtless, when the risen Jesus turned
Heavenward, still to toil and wrestle though the whole soul upward yearned;
Harder was it, stranger was it, than the wrestle ere he came:
One may grope 'mid utter darkness, one is dazed by flickering flame.

170

None the less, 'tis life that beckons. I'll renounce, if so God wills,
For the grander hope that quickens even the grand despair that kills:
Setting forth by strenuous labour, earnest words or heartfelt song,
That the highest noblest vengeance is to prove, and spare, the wrong.

171

THE GOSPEL OF SCIENCE

At last the silence of the years is broken;
We apprehend at last creation's plan:
Time's word the centuries waited for is spoken;
Thought's pulpits echo with the doom of man.

Our century, closing, hears with awe and wonder
Truth's golden trumpet ring to heaven's blue dome,—
Outgrowing Christ's love, outgrowing his Church's blunder,
Sees Science lift the veil of things to come.

With one hand red from labours anatomical,
The other pointing to the stars on high,
Science proclaims—as if the thing were comical—
“Sun, moon, and stars, and man's whole race, must die!”

Man in the viewless past sprang not from heaven,
Gifted with angel-powers and angel-shape.
Upward from slimy pulp the race has striven:
Eden's fair sovereign was, no doubt, an ape.

172

That was commencement, noble and exalted,
Of Homer's, Milton's, Hugo's, Shakespeare's race.
We walk. Our hairy predecessors vaulted
From tree to tree with far more agile grace!

Fate's blind force working through its countless creatures
Blundered upon a thousand stars maybe,
But on our globe by chance struck out man's features;
Mixed various salts and made—by chance—the sea.

Fate's blind force through all time experimenting,
After exploding planets, many a one,
At last succeeded, for the gas relenting
In new proportions mixed—and made the sun.

The trees were all results of chance expedients.
A rose, that was blind Fate's most glorious flight!
The scents of flowers were mixed of strange ingredients:
Ten million centuries' efforts made—a mite.

But one day all went wrong. Fate's yeasty crucible
Boiling all over with fierce frothy flakes
From elements inharmonious, irreducible
To fair results, produced the venom of snakes!

173

Chance, nought but chance! A cobra di capello,
A rattle-snake, a shark, a humming-bird,
A Desdemona, Iago or Othello,
All sprang to being at blind Fate's casual word.

And history, with its sickening sights that freeze us
To silent horror, all is chance as well.
Chance brought to birth a Buddha or a Jesus:
A freak of thought dug the red pit of hell.

However long man's work endures, it perishes,
Fades in the end as surely as 'twas born:
The noblest poet the heart of mankind cherishes
Is as the may-fly of one summer morn.

Shakespeare's immortal? While his tongue is spoken:
But England's very self shall pass away,
Pass to the darkness starless and unbroken,
The unsounded depth that knows not night from day.

All shall be wasted—effort, labour endless,
Sin, suffering, virtue,—all shall be as one.
Pale shall the earth be, lonely, helpless, friendless,
When time chills deep the bright heart of its sun.

174

What shall it avail that in ten thousand churches
Man's soul to Christ its ceaseless tribute brings?
Earth whereon Death the dark-winged vulture perches
Forgets its heroes and dethrones its kings.

No compensation waits in heaven for any:
There is no heaven to compensate or bless.
Some few were happy; but the suffering many
Groan without hope, are wronged without redress.

Woman is slave, and shall be slave for ever.
She weeps, she toils, she sins,—this is her doom.
Purity, brightness, gladness, freedom never!
The streets for home, the river for a tomb.

Her struggles all are fruitless. Fate will surely
Maintain the sovereignty of man the strong.
Poets have sung of her, and yet securely
Chained with a wreath and ruined with a song.

It matters little what her soul long bearing
Has moaned beneath, what torments and what rod;
For centuries towards the stars her cries despairing
Have risen and risen, yet never reached a God!

175

There is no God to reach, no ear to hear her,
No tender heart in heaven to heed her prayer.
Christ stooped, she thought, from heaven to aid and cheer her;
But now that very heaven is voiceless air.

The race had hope that one man had evaded
The spear of Death, the universal doom,
And that by Christ's victorious right hand aided
Man too might reach the stars beyond the gloom.

Not so! That hope ineffable and tender,
That faith transfiguring man's heart with its gleam
Of more than mortal light, for all its splendour
Was woven in fairy-land—it was a dream.

Aye, each redeemer of the race, surrounded
By signs and portents, journeyed on his road:
At Buddha's birth what miracles abounded!
In his queen-mother's womb a strange star glowed.

One system ever it is, one range of wonders;
Air-castles builded, till the air-turrets fall:
Till Time with but one tremor of its thunders,
One slight sufficient earth-shock, levels all.

176

The coming centuries have to love, to labour,
To sing, to enjoy, to struggle, in the light.
Darkness was ever miracle's near neighbour,
But now thought's sunshine makes an end of night.

The twentieth century's doom's exceeding dismal!
It has to march, with stern-browed Truth to lead,
Towards moonless plains and forest-depths abysmal,
Past many a cold, once fairy-haunted, mead.

No Puck to break our sleep with gambols tricksy!
Night's paths, so full of music once, are mute.
Within the moonlit woods no harp of pixy!
No cloven-footed Faun with wanton flute!

Nothing to break the dreary desolation;
All secrets probed, all mystery solved at last!
In truth ours is a luckless generation:
Happier, I think, was almost all the past.

177

AN ASPIRATION

I

Oh, where the immortal may with fiery heart
Become of man's own flesh a very part,
Spirit divine,
Become thou mine:
Stoop thou, that I may reach thee where thou art.

II

Thou art the Lord of all the heaven of night
Where star hands on to star the undying light.
Stoop thou to me
As to the sea
The high heaven stoops, and loves for all its might.

178

III

Thou art the Lord of all the heaven of morn
When the stars shudder, for the sun is born.
Yet be thou mine,
Spirit divine:
Regard not me, the sunless soul, with scorn.

IV

Thou art the Lord of all the heaven of flowers.
Say to me, “Mortal, this one rose is ours;
Ours, mine and thine.
I bade it shine
For thee,—for thee I searched a thousand bowers.”

V

Thou art the Lord of the eternal sea.
I am one wavelet,—mix thine heart with me.
Let my soul know
The mighty flow
Lord, of the waves of immortality.

179

ARTISTIC LOVE

Not through the poet's heart one rapture flows
When love, that rules him to the end, is won.
He wins the raptures of the past,—he knows
The joy of deeds in old-world eras done.

Nor only in fancy,—for each brain contains,
Writ small but clear, the history of the race,
A thousand pleasures and a thousand pains:—
Thought conquers time, and passion baffles space.

The magic touch of woman's hand restores
With thrilling present half miraculous power
The sense of all the past—its sunlit shores,
The glory of its stars, its every flower.

The poet breathes, when some new love pervades
His being, filling life with warmth and glow,
The scent of forest-firs beneath whose shades
Two lovers rode a thousand years ago.

180

He sees the very sunlight on the leaves;
He hears the clank of wild hoofs that pursue:
Though all the living world to-day deceives,
The phantom-love within his brain is true.

He sees the sunlight glisten through the grove;
He sees his prize, sweet, tearful, standing there:
His heart that doubts—with reason—living love
Finds ghost-love faithful, and dead eyes most fair.

181

A CONTRAST

SONNET

Poor was the bower of love:—within the bower
One most divine with girlhood's swanlike grace;
Lips proudly curved to scorn of all things base,
Passion's bright bow, yet lovelier than a flower.
No silken canopy,—yet within this place
The holiest sense of great Love's sovereign power,
Who there had prisoned for one priceless hour
Immortal beauty in a mortal face.

What marvels can the eternal god achieve,
The god of love, who still on man bestows
In hut or cottage, measureless delight.
In every woman there's a hint of Eve;
In every flower a soupçon of the rose;
In every star one jewel of the night.

182

A MONTH

A month,—and then no more?
What would the horror of the parting be
When the sweet light that lightened hill and sea
And shore
Fled,—and returned no more!

The night would come again!
But thou wouldst not be waiting in the night,
Tender and gentle, blossom-sweet and white,
And pain
Would fill the night's old fane.

Again the day would break
But thou wouldst not be waiting by my side,
The spirit of the dawn, the morning's bride:
To wake
Would double all heart-ache!

183

One month?—we should be wed
For ever, married into perfect bliss:
And then would come the parting, the last kiss,
The red
Slow blood-stream where the rent dazed soul-halves bled,—
Can we face this?

July 18, 1881.

184

“THE RED ROSE HATH ITS SPLENDOUR”

The red rose hath its splendour,—
The lily its white gleam,
And tender
It floats above the stream.

The sea hath sun to lighten,—
The lover hath his maid
To heighten
Love-pleasure long-delayed.

The green leaves interlacing
Have the wind's subtle breath
Embracing:—
The poet hath but death.

July 18, 1881.

185

SUFFERING

SONNET

Suffering hath brought me nearer unto thee.
Not till love dies, is risen love sublime.
Love slain and risen again hath power to climb
God's mountains, and to thread the trackless sea.
Now I am dead, love, thou canst listen to me!
Thou canst hear other voices in my rhyme
Than reckless voices of the old past time
When passion dreamed of what was ne'er to be.

Now am I strong, and I can breathe the breath
Unflinching from the icy lips of death
And find the eyes of death a thing most fair
And the strange hands of death a woman's hands
That usher me towards hill-tops of far lands,
And death's shroud is but as thy robing hair.

1882.

186

FLOWER-FRAGRANCE

In every flower a woman's spirit dwells,
Sweet, undeveloped, undefined as yet.
The dewy petals with her tears are wet:
She smiles from out the softly-curving bells
Or droops in fern-fronds over rustic wells;
She gives the wholesome scent to mignonette;
Her lips within the foxglove may be met
Or in the hyacinthine honeyed cells.

And still to-day the difference is there!
This woman lurked within the luscious furze
Millions of years ago. What lips are hers,
Thrilling the lips that touch them with a rare
And occult sweetness past man's power to bear.
What passionate gifts the rose-woman confers!
How the white lily-maiden moves and stirs
Her lover to a worship like despair!

187

The blossom-phases woman has passed through
Leave signs and tokens we may recognise.
This woman by the blueness of her eyes
Was surely in Paradise a hare-bell blue:
Another was a rose of loveliest hue,
Sweet as God's dawning fancy could devise.
Woman has loved us under other skies;
Faithful, while era after era flew.

1885.

188

ACTING

Imagination makes the actor's art:
The eager brain, the emotional swift heart
That realizes all;
The power to live and move and have one's being
In that same sphere the audience now is seeing,
Whether it be bright room, or haunted hall.

Imagination, everything on this
Depends: the power to feel through kiss on kiss
The living passion leap;
The power to magnetise oneself the first;
To feel, to be, most blessed or accurst;
The power of rapturous joy, the power to weep:

The power to feel within some quiet room
Ghost after ghost, if need be, fill the gloom
With shadowy shapes and sound;

189

The power to love as if a life depended
On winning sweet lips ere the evening ended:
This gift we seek. How seldom is it found!

Then how the power speeds forth and holds each heart
Recipient and responsive to its Art,
Art being life indeed.
How the spectators hush their souls to hear,
Yea, listen with the spirit's intense ear,
When a real genius-spirit takes the lead.

1885.

190

LONDON IN NOVEMBER

Long streets of omnipresent fog and gloom:
A very hell, wherethrough there move to doom
Strange figures ceaseless.
O for one flower, one rose, one sea-gull's flight,
To bring me visions of vast air and light,
For here I wander sad-eyed, sombre, peaceless.

Could any deepest hell that Dante knew
Be worse than this which circles me and you
In London weather?
Rain, rain and fog,—and fog, and fog, and rain;
Ten minutes' dismal sun—then clouds again:
Till all of us turn mildewy-souled together!

Nov. 4, 1885.

191

THE SUDDEN GLANCES

I seemed to see the Saviour stretched along
The cruel wood. I gazed within his eyes
When lo! with trembling of a sweet surprise
I met the glance that changed my youth to song.

The brown limbs quivered into amorous white.
Each hasty blood-drop, hurrying from the blows
Seemed like the round shape of a sanguine rose,
And all God's face was wonderful with light.

As if sweet Venus panted on a cross
The body panted, and the breasts became
Like breasts of Venus, yea the very same
In rounded outline and in silken gloss.

For every drop of blood, a flower was there;
For every tear, a jewel had been earned;
In the dark tresses orange lilies burned:
I knew my lady's form and worshipped her.

192

And, more than this, I knew the sacred signs
Of noble love and of the cross are one;
That through the dark of Calvary the sun
Shall pierce, as the red arrows pierce the pines.

Christ vanished, and his cross, and lo! I stood
Watching my lady twine within her hair
White meadow-sweet, and fern-fronds soft and fair,
Beneath gold arches of an autumn wood.

I turned from Palestine, and from the hill,
And marked the love within my lady's eyes,
And over us beheld the English skies,
And nigh our feet a moorland English rill.

And then our lips clung fast, but through the kiss
The wild sense pulsed that Christ himself was here;
That all true love-songs rise and reach his ear
And call him down to share pure passion's bliss.

Then the thought passed, and left me face to face
With love and with my lady—only her;
And with the sunlight crowning larch and fir,
And with the silent magic of the place.

Nov. 28, 1885.

193

“IN THE GLAD PSALMS”

In the glad psalms on Sundays ye recite
In this cold loveless sunless English air
Ye see not, but the poet sees the light
Of passion, he knows that Bathsheba is there.

194

ANGEL-VISION

Love bringeth vision. All the world is new:
The sky's clear raiment of unsullied blue;
The night's robe, star-bestrewn;
Each wave that gleams and curves, each flower that blows;
Each scented petal of soft pink or rose;
Each leaf of leafy June.

We see as God and Love see. Never more
Will colour now forsake the hills and shore
Or light forsake the skies.
Who slayeth self shall see, as angels see,
The whole world in its Eden-purity
With pure immortal eyes.

1886.

195

THE CONQUEST OF DEATH

The violets shudder at thee, the roses dread
Along the garden-paths thy ghostly tread,
O death!
The sea-birds dart across the rocky narrows:
Their white wings would evade thy dark-winged arrows;
They would evade and shirk thy venomed breath.

All things have fear of thee. The very sun
Dies in the Western sea, its bright day done;
The light
Gives up to thee its glory, and the bloom
Of every summer passes into gloom
As surely as day passes into night.

Yet what if all things breathe, beyond all death,
Breathe with a sweeter drawing of the breath
Another air than ours?
What if a purpler tinge, a tenderer bloom,
Suffuses violets risen from their tomb;
Are there no fragrant ghosts of risen flowers?

196

What if within the starry night of sleep
Or death, all dead things win a rapture deep
And nobler than of day?
What if rose saith to rose, and heart to heart,
“Lo! death is weak. Why should we ever part?
Arise and live! Death wounds, but cannot slay.”

1886.

197

GOD'S DIRECT VOICE

God sometimes speaks through tenderest summer flowers
And sometimes through the waves.
He speaks throught sunlit noons, and moonlit hours:
Through daisies white on graves.

He speaks through Nature, and through woman's eyes
And through her gentle heart:
Through red autumnal leaves, through thunderous skies
Wherethrough the levins dart.

Obscure weak human messengers he sends
To souls obscure and weak.
Through bitter enemies, or foolish friends,
The voice divine can speak.

But unto those he loves through friend or flower
God speaks not, distantly.
Nay! heart to heart in some most sacred hour:
They know that it is He!

1887.

198

TWO SONNETS

I. ON THE IMPENDING EXECUTION OF FLORENCE MAYBRICK

This crime will darken England, and dethrone
Justice.—On one side, human, prone to err,
Twelve men, and men, moreover, judging her
For one sin mainly—sin confessed and known.
But on the other side, as hourly shown,
The soul of England, greater than her laws:
The voice that bids the ermined Hangman pause:
The nation's sob, that deepens to a groan.

Carry out the sentence? What dishonour then
Shall rest for ever on the hands that slew,
Though England cried, “This woman's cause is mine!”
Reverse it? From the hearts of living men
Honour, and time's vast tribute nobly due
To those who held the helm in 'eighty-nine.

Aug. 13, 1889.

This Sonnet appeared, at the time in question, in the New York Herald.

199

II. THE FIRST STONE

When English justice had the strength to spare,
That so the August morning might not see
A woman carried to the gallows-tree
For Death with huge delight to bind her there
And watch her dangling in the summer air—
When England felt that this crime must not be;
When women said, “Be ours the penalty,
So she be saved from that supreme despair;”
When all the avengers vanished, one by one,
No sinless hand being found to seize and fling
Death's missiles, so that she was left alone,
One writer felt his task was not yet done,
Looked straight at Jesus—cried, “My lord and king,
Let me thy sinless servant hurl the stone!”

Aug. 24, 1889.

In the Spectator, I regret to say.

200

TO ARTHUR HERVEY

SONNET

O friend, who hast the power along with me
To worship at this dim world's shadowy shrine
The God whose eyes behind the shadows shine—
Who knowest that Love through music speaks to thee,
As I, triumphant, murmur, “It is he!”
When through my soul vibrates some sudden line;
Thou who canst hear the voice we call divine
Speak from the stars, or thunder through the sea:
There is a power within our souls to know
That, though the Church's God be earless stone,
Yet, armed and mighty for his overthrow,
Behind him stands the deathless God we own,
He who can tame the stormiest winds that blow
Defiant trumpets round about his throne.

Oct. 20, 1889.

201

TWO SONNETS

TO L. Cranmer-Byng

I. LIFE

A thousand dreams will draw thy feet aside
And tempt the suffrage of thy ready lyre:
Fair life will proffer thee a fair empire,—
This world's wild splendour, all its power and pride.
Seek thou the untrodden paths, where none may guide
Save thine own soul's strong star that shines like fire:
Beyond our dying century's bards aspire
With Byron, be with Shelley deified.

England expects far greater things from thee
Than from the puny crew who chant and wail,
The club their heaven, and Primrose Hill their throne.
O'er wastes of thought whereon no glimmering sail
Has flashed she drives thee forth, and bids thee be
For ever fearless, though for ever alone.

202

II. LOVE

But yet within life's ocean there are isles
Where for calm sunlit seasons thou mayest be
Safe from the cold arms of the sullen sea,
Press arms divine, and meet diviner smiles.
White hands shall beckon through dim forest-aisles,
And yet a fragrance not of flower or tree
Shall lure thee forth to roam eternally:
The known joy palls, the unknown joy beguiles.

In some fair island under sapphire skies
A woman waits, with queenly lips unkissed
And heart that throbs with unacknowledged flame.
That island still is wrapped in robes of mist:
No dream discloses yet the heavenly eyes;
Time whispers not as yet the sovereign name.

Oct. 21, 1894.

203

ON THE RUMOURED RESIGNATION OF LORD SALISBURY

SONNET

The last of England's statesmen! Through the haze
Of mocking mirth his spirit of love shone clear,
And ever one whose heart could heed might hear
The great strong mandate of the former days
When storm-kissed England sought not windless ways,
Boastful at moments, shivering next with fear,
Afraid to tack, or onward straight to steer,—
Lost in dim indecision's starless maze.

Who shall succeed? At England's crucial hour,
When round about her snake-tongued myriads loom
Eager by some wild stroke their ends to gain,
Shall we entrust the realm where Freedom's flower
Still finds a space and moment left for bloom
To the pert cap and bells of Chamberlain?

Aug. 31, 1901.

204

WAR AND PEACE

SONNET

“We have not conducted the war unrighteously and cruelly. War, at its best, is an awful curse, and brings with it untold loss of blood and treasure, and the inevitable suffering of the innocent. The exigencies of the war will always require the burning of farms, and even of villages, which are used by the enemy to harass the opposing army and harbour combatants and ammunition; terrible as the farm-burning has been, it was only ordered when absolutely necessary by a British General whose character for humanity and Godliness is beyond dispute.”—The Bishop of Liverpool.

“Never before has anything approaching to such wholesale and reckless destruction or abduction of families been enacted by a British army. . . . So ignorant of facts, or so blunted have become the minds of our people on the subject of the women and children that they have come to believe that the Press is justified in extolling the great kindness and liberality which have been shown to these poor prisoners.” —Sir Neville Chamberlain.

So speaks the man of God, and so replies
The man of war.—How strange a thing is here!
The man of God o'er blood-red lists can peer:
The soldier longs for peace, and sunnier skies.
Confused by folly, and misled by lies,
The Churchman lends the mob too ready an ear;
The warrior-soul, whose record knows no fear,
Knows War's nude horror, sees with prescient eyes.

205

Remember, all, that when the Bishop pleaded
And found our war on women Christianlike,
“Righteous,” expedient, godly, and the rest,
The Soldier rose when one stern word was needed,
Alert in honour's name and truth's to strike
Aside the swords the hasty Bishop blest.

Aug. 31, 1901.

Sir Neville Chamberlain, who thus takes up the cause of humanity against the Bishop of Liverpool, is no puling sentimentalist or disappointed warrior. He enjoys the distinction of having been wounded more often than any other officer in the service, and his Indian record is as brilliant as that of Lord Roberts himself.”—Daily News, Aug. 30, 1901.

206

“MELODRAMATIC, OVER-SWEET.”— A Critic.

SONNET

The rose is over-red, the sunset-air
Is over-golden, and the moonlit sea
Is over-radiant, critic-friend, for thee,
And the wide starlit night is over-fair,—
The summer's blossom-breath too sweet to bear,
Too white the snowdrop in its purity,
Too rich the furze-bloom on the wind-swept lea,
Too delicate the scent of flower-sweet hair.

Go thou thy way in peace, and dwell with those
Who, knowing not God nor woman, never knew
Eternal life within the folded rose
That gives her lips their fragrance and their hue.
How canst thou dream what secrets these impart,
Woman and God, when one in body and heart?

Dec. 28, 1901.

207

“THE GREATER NEEDS THE LESS”

SONNET

The greater needs the less,—and so God needs
In deeper modes than we can understand
Each wave's soft kiss that leaps against the land,
Each rippling laugh of humblest river-reeds.
Creation's loneliest smallest sob he heeds:
The Eternal seeks each child's weak outstretched hand.
In this is God the vast, the pure, the grand,
That from star-founts the glow-worm's lamp he feeds.

The tiniest golden flower is deathless part
Of God who moulded and who watches all
And holds the whole encircled in his heart:—
No sunlit wing can soar, no foot can crawl,
Without the safeguard of his eye that knows
Each tenderest petal of the world's each rose.

Jan. 13, 1902.

208

TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON

SONNET

O thou whose heart, here wrapped in saddest gloom,
I sought to help upon its sunless way
And cheer by rumours of the golden day
That waited just outside thy darkened room,
Thou who now standest, conqueror of the tomb,
Above all sorrow, far beyond the sway
Of this dim dream of life that fills with grey
Harsh scentless tints our flowers that barely bloom,—
If thou canst turn aside a moment's space
From high work fashioned underneath the sun
Flame with the glory of thy gaze on one
Who loved on earth heaven's calm within thy face:
Now that for me life's brighter hours are done
Hold thou my hand, while through dark paths I pace.

Jan. 13, 1902.

209

“HEROD” AND “ULYSSES”

SONNET

“I have been very patient.” Through my ears
The wail most hopeless of that love-doomed King
Herod, re-echoed, and through Time will ring
And o'er Night's tides where desolation steers.
Not through the grimly grand dramatic years
Elizabethan, where song-giants sing,
Was seen more wildly pitiful a thing
Than Herod's madness, Mariamne's tears.

But now, Calypso vainly on the breeze
Whispering, while dreams of Ithaca gild the foam,
Past islands where white arms invite to ease
And softest dalliance weariest breasts that roam,
Past pleasure's temples, past all rock-strewn seas,
Poet, thou guidest great Ulysses home.

Feb. 11, 1902.

210

TWO SONNETS

To Stephen Phillips

I. “TIME'S FLOWERS AND FRUIT”

This chance Life gives thee,—proudly seize it, friend:
The chance to sound once more in English ears
The trumpet dropped when Shakespeare and his peers
Saw their long line of mighty triumphs end.
Lift once again the trumpet, and extend
The line of triumph. Make man's hopes and fears
Thine own, the pangs and passions of the years
That glimmer in the past, or still impend.

Yes, England needs a singer. She requires
No mere frail chanting, no sweet childish lute,
But some strong soul, equal to man's desires;
Through whom strange histories, dark and sad and mute,
May wail their anguish, hurl their pent-up fires,
That we may garner Time's lost flowers and fruit.

211

II. “INTERPRETERS SUPREME”

Interpreters supreme thine Art will find.
Not in fair France, though flower-crowned France may be
Art's soft-voiced slave, could women range round thee
So purely fair as those by heaven designed
To make thy song a garland for mankind
But chiefliest for this land that, ringed by sea,
Must ever even in Art divinely free
Abide, love-guarded, watched by wave and wind.

This all who sing, bay-wreathed in other lands,
Phillips, our English bard, may wildly long,
In vain, to win—that souls so sweet and strong
And such sweet eyes, such lips and such white hands,
Should speak their verses and expound their song:—
The woman who looks the part, she understands.

Feb. 11, 1902.

212

NEMESIS

SONNET

In the concentration camps in South Africa fourteen thousand children died “like faded flowers.”

I dreamed that England in strange far-off days
Stood fiercely wrestling with embattled foes:
As each fell writhing lo! another rose,
And round our headlands and blue sunlit bays
Brooded a sinister and smoke-stained haze.
Each morning brought a prophecy of woes
Fulfilled in monstrous sequence. At the close
Of day the shuddering moon lit blood-red ways.

At last the brave land triumphed, and the light
Of morn was shining forth on hill and plain
When lo! between our England and the sun
Rose the pale ghosts of countless children slain;
And England wholly immersed in hopeless night
Fell prone, by one vast crime for ever undone.

Feb. 13, 1902.

Up to the close of January, 1902.

213

A CORONATION POEM

August 9, 1902

King, to-day thou takest over from the hands of Time the viewless lord
More than man can dream of greatness, realms no monarch won by plot or sword.

Never yet to man was given dower so strangely fair to hold and keep:
Empire stretching into Empire, blue sea rolling into bluer deep.

Far from this our white-cliffed island, far beyond the red sun's dying gold,
Thou art king and chosen ruler, thou whom here our grey old towers behold.

London stands to-day the centre of an earth that gazes at thy throne:
As great friendly stars, it may be, watch to-day the tiny star we own;

214

Small amid the constellations,—yet a mightier task may here be done
By the hugely toiling races than the task of many a soulless sun.

Here on earth is love and England, here on earth the sweet face of thy Queen:
Here Victoria reigned, and passing, linked our land to heavens as yet unseen.

Here the princely Consort laboured, as he labours still with force divine,
Leading Science on to conquest, Art from noble unto nobler shrine.

Here must woman be delivered from her stifling bonds of timeless wrong:
Here must all that wail of children change at morning's soft kiss to a song.

Not by size of stars and planets is the worth of starry toil appraised;
Only by the deeds that lift them, righteous acts whereby the Soul is raised.

215

Soul must be the same for ever, changeless through the dim night's purple hall,—
Still the same, alert, progressive, plastic ever in farthest star of all;

Pliant still beneath the moulding of the mighty God whose wings pervade
All the ceaseless night of shadow, all the sunlit day that knows not shade.

All the suns and stars united chant one chorus round God's central Throne;
Unto Love they all pay homage, Love they worship, lightcrowned Love alone.

Earth's vast mission who shall measure, who shall say what victories may be planned
Here, our hearts but feebly guessing at the marvels wrought by mortal hand.

For we men may work with angels, eyes regard us from the heights of air;
Not for us alone our planet twines the pearls of morning in her hair.

216

Nay, for angel-eyes she shineth, meet for angel-armies to behold;
Radiant with her wild seas' sapphires, rich with sundawn's and with sunset's gold.

Not alone she treads the ether, sister-orbs beside her pathway tread;
She can gaze in loving faces, watch bright star-helms clustered round her head.

But to-day her heart is joyous, for in England lordliest of her lands
Ring the trumpets wild, acclaiming one who grave before an Empire stands.

Loneliest heart in clamorous London, uncompanioned in his vast demesne:
Yet for ever royally mated to the bright divine heart of his Queen.

Lonely, in his power far-reaching: for an Empire such as he must sway
Never Greek or Roman dreamed of, earth beheld its like not till to-day.

217

Lonely: yet with millions watching, loving, praying, hoping—through the air
Never yet such blessings speeded, launched upon the golden plumes of prayer.

Lonely: yet with God to aid him, and the fearless hearts of England's sons;
Flash of English swords, if need be, and at need the baying of England's guns.

Round the blue-waved coast, if need be, such a mighty chant as never of yore
Pealed from iron throats of cannon, thundering past the virgin-girdled shore.

Great ancestral hearts are with him,—hearts of kings who watched our island rise
First of all to starry grandeur, sunlike then confront superber skies.

Souls of England's strong-brained statesmen, all are heeding, summoned from afar;
Called to-day towards spheres we traverse, drawn again to this their well-loved star.

218

Many a mighty gaze is watching, eyes beyond our surmise pure and bright
Flash to-day on English faces somewhat of their own world's mystic light.

Deep communion with their spirits England's King and Queen to-day may hold;
Meet to-day in thought and yearning hearts that swayed their warrior-realm of old:

Hearts sweet-dowered as English roses, souls who made the world-wide waves their home,
Hands that held the swords that conquered, hearts that loved the storm-birds and the foam.

All the future gleams before him, King of England, Ruler of the strange
Mystic East no soul has fathomed, where man's dreams beyond man's vision range.

Ruler of far Afric's hill-sides, where our English slain lie densely strown;
Men who gave their lives for Empire, holding Empire one with Freedom's throne.

219

Ruler of the young vast nations, who with hearts most pure and souls most free
Sent their sons to aid our children, racing each with each from sea to sea.

All the future gleams before him: priceless, awful is the gift Time brings
To this latest English Monarch, gift undreamed-of by past queens or kings.

Chance to aid at moulding England, and through England this our whole strange star
Into something pure and stainless, such it may be as pure planets are.

Chance of lifting upward, heavenward, towards the realm whence ever, grand and sweet,
Bends Victoria, this her England that her star-smile loves to guide and greet.

Chance of winning, when the moment comes for laying both sword and sceptre down,
Even a higher than of England, even God's loyal Servant's deathless Crown.

220

“NOT BY THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD”

Not by the conquest of the world
Would England triumph most.
Round such a bride her strong arms furled
Would find that bride a ghost.

Not by grim victories in far lands
And streams that run with gore
And wild blows dealt by savage hands
And countless cannons' roar:

Not by the gallows planted where
Should rise bright Freedom's tree;
Not thus will England hold the fair
Pure empire of the sea.

Only by love within her eyes
And peace abroad, at home;
Peace here, beneath calm sunlit skies,
And peace upon the foam.

Feb. 14, 1902.

221

THE INDELIBLE STAIN

While London streets contain the crowd
Of faces marred and sad
That once were pure, and once were proud,
And once were fair and glad;

While through the gaslit London night
These lost girl-thousands stroll,
Our Empire has not won the might
Its own fate to control.

Lost souls, lost hearts, lost faces,—what
That City's doom must be
Which sees its own frail children's lot
Yet will not, cannot see!

Each pale recruit hell's armies gain,
Woman's the blame, or men's,
Stamps deep on England's robes a stain,
A spot no time can cleanse.

Feb. 14, 1902.

222

“THIS EMPIRE'S CORONATION ROBES”

This Empire's Coronation robes
Should be the robes most bright
Of all the fabrics of all globes,
Most shot with sunset's light:

Most beautiful, and most inwrought
With wonder of all flowers;
Most pure and lovely from the thought
Of calm laborious hours:

Most rich with glory of the dawn
And splendour of the rose;
White as the daisies of the lawn,
White as the mountain's snows:

The robes that woman's form shall wear
When, perfect, pure and grand,
She shines, the stars within her hair
And heaven within her hand.

Feb. 15, 1902.

223

“THIS THOUGHT”

This thought, upon the wondrous night
When all the stars lean down
To fill with jewels of great light
King Edward's royal crown;

This thought, when through the bowers of June,
O'er land and purple deep,
Beneath the sun, beneath the moon,
Large sounds of triumph leap;

This thought retain,—that sea and sun
And England's hills and flowers
Are theirs, theirs only, who hate and shun
All evil's monstrous powers;

This thought,—that he alone is crowned
For ever king and lord
Within whose conquering hands is found
A true knight's stainless sword.

Feb. 15, 1902.

224

THE ANGLO-JAPANESE TREATY

SONNET

When Hate's black standard is at length unfurled
And stored-up rancours smite thee,—when from France
Springs Waterloo's for ever poisoned lance
And Germany, like a huge snake uncurled,
Gleams fierce and fork-tongued,—when from Russia hurled
Dark armies down the Asian vales advance
Pitiless, immense, barbaric,—when no glance
Meets thine of friendship, not through all the world,
Though bright through all the world flamed once thy flag,—
Then, while the mad guns rave from crag to crag
And thou art wrestling with the hosts of man,
Thine armour rent even as a woman's scarf,
Who shall stand by thee? This thy loving dwarf,
Thy staunch ally, thy saviour, swart Japan.

Feb. 14, 1902.

225

KRITZINGER

SONNET

Before the gates of vengeful darkness close
Ponder, O England, what thou wilt have done
If thou dost hide for ever from the sun
This man, perhaps the noblest of thy foes.
What woman's heart can here in peace repose
If this most monstrous deed, condemned of none,
Makes horror's blood-stained cup at last o'er-run?
Add not another to unmeasured woes.

The world is watching. Let one pitying cry
Ring forth from England. In the name of heaven
Let mercy, not crude “justice,” win the day!
Forgive: and be for many a sin forgiven.
Beware lest, if this man ignobly die,
Thine own soul with him take the deathward way.

Feb. 25, 1902.

226

THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR, AND ITS FRUITS

What of the anguish and the bitter sorrow
And all the strife and tears?
Shall there be sunshine on some great to-morrow
That shall atone for gaunt War's blood-red years?

The hearts of women pierced, the children lying
Silent, in sunless sleep:
We think of these, and ask, our whole souls sighing,
“Can heaven that sees eternal silence keep?

“Is there no answer, comes no word to cheer us
Who, lifting helpless hands,
Felt grief's wild sword as keen, and death as near us
And wept with those who wept in far-off lands?”

Feb. 15, 1902.

227

“BEWARE!”

While woman deems herself so small,
So frail, so slight a thing,
There seems no hope, no hope at all:
What gifts can mankind bring?

God's sweetness through her eyes should shine,
God's lilies in her hands;
God's tenderest roses she should twine
In soft pure bright hair-bands.

Unless she bringeth heaven to man,
Man cannot reach the sky.
If woman cannot lift, who can?
This earth's last hope must die.

Beware, O earth! O man, beware!
Beware, O woman weak!
Drive not from hands and lips and hair
The angel who would speak.

Feb. 25, 1902.

228

VICTOR HUGO'S CENTENARY

Feb. 26, 1902.

Before the sun all kingliest stars must fade.
When morning's light-beams flash from glade to glade
And o'er the glittering deep,
When crimson dawn leaps on from land to land,
Who shall the conquering sun-god's course withstand
Or hold Night's castle-keep?

So now to-day we hail the deathless one
Who shines alone 'mid singers as the sun,
Crowned for eternal years:
Who reached love's utmost height, thought's lordliest goal;
Who heard unmoved Fate's mightiest thunders roll
Yet wept at children's tears.

229

THE CENTENARY OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS PÈRE

SONNET

July 4, 1902.

When many a type has vanished from the earth
The souls that fiction gives us still shall live,
Imperishable through seasons fugitive,
Regenerate yearly with a strange new birth.
Sweet spirits we loved, pure lips that rang with mirth,
Faces with Beauty's priceless gifts to give,—
These shall man's homage through all time receive,
Tribute to theirs, and their creators' worth.

Brightest of all, I sometimes think, two faces
Will shine upon the future like twin stars,
Full of all gifts of laughter and joy for man:
One most at home in peril's deadliest places;
One whom no cloud despondent ever mars;
Good giant Porthos, deathless d'Artagnan.

230

IRELAND

SONNET

The wild war over, England takes her rest
Sick of mad bloodshed, sick too of display
Of sunlit flags that preach from day to day
Imperial lessons—aye, but not those best
Mandates of Empire that from crest to crest
Of Wordsworth's mountains thundered to the spray
Of waves that wash round headland, beach and bay,
Of England, by her Freedom crowned and blest.

Yet what is this that rises like a wraith
Standing between us and the gold-robed form
Of Peace, with eyes that darken into storm
And hands made red with horror of grim death?
Peace? “Never Peace, never,” so Ireland saith,
“Till wrong is slain by England's own right arm.”

July 25, 1902.

231

SONNETS (1902)

233

SONNET I
“HEROES HOMERIC”

O mighty men and conquerors of renown,
Heroes Homeric, English souls of note,
For whom our sapient trusty rulers vote
Rewards in wealth, and whom the people crown
With adulation in the decked-out town
Through which ye ride while the gay banners float
From roof and window,—what if red War smote
No more the veldt, but English field and down?

Three years to conquer one small race ye took,
Yet England deemed you worthy of high fame
And paved with gold the path by which ye came
Homeward, with ringing rein and jocund look!
At your most dire mistakes all Europe shook
With laughter, and true seers grew hot with shame.

234

SONNET II
THE EDUCATION BILL

Once more in serried ranks the warriors close!
On one side men whose passion is to be
For ever fetterless, for ever free;
Upon the other, Freedom's bitterest foes
Who, while ye sleep and rulers nod and doze
Would bear across the blue protesting sea
Rome's weapons of ancestral devilry
To brand and mar the stainless form that rose
Triumphant once, and hurled Rome's myriads down,
And won from heaven sublime Truth's starry crown,
And saved for ever the human race from hell
More dark and grim and terrible and dire
Than heart can dream. Heed no pale priestly liar,
Lest the world shrink to one black prison-cell.

235

SONNET III
“IN ART'S HIGH NAME”

In Art's high name, in Love's name, in the name
Of man and woman, loose not thou thine hold,
O man, on woman! Woman, still enfold
In thy white arms man's strong form without shame.
Believe not Tolstoy, though the Russian's aim
Be noble. Nay, in lands and epochs old
The eternal truth by angels' lips was told:
Woman is man's sweet heritage to claim.

The truth as preached by Tolstoy is the lie
Most black that yet has darkened sea and sky
And robbed of every flower the fragrant land.
If woman's body be a thing impure
No sun can live, no star's crown can endure
And falls the sceptre from the Lord's right hand.

236

SONNET IV
RE-INCARNATE ENEMIES

We have lived before, and met in ancient days,
Plucked golden flowers beneath strange Eastern light
And watched strange stars resplendent through the night
In epochs past remembrance. In thy gaze
Old magic lingers, and a dream of ways
Wherein wild swords once clashed in desperate fight:
Footsteps have followed us—hate still would smite,
And foemen's armour glitters through time's haze.

O love, my wife, my darling, have we won
So much to lose at length the sweet reward?
Are those alive to-day whose forms abhorred,
Darkling, once towered between us and the sun?
O God, have mercy! Grant us power to shun
To-day the vengeance of some ghostly sword.

237

SONNET V
“PALE TIME IS NOUGHT”

Pale time is nought. Through era on era pass
Our souls in forms enduring for awhile,
Wherein we laugh and weep, and groan and smile,
And struggle fresh experience to amass.
But this time . . . ah! this fateful time, alas,
We should have conquered hate and wrath and guile,
And risen for ever upward. From the Nile
Or Tiber's reeds to Thames' bright flowers and grass
Through life on life we have moved,—but now to-day,
God help me, dark foes bar us on our way,
Foes we have vanquished in the ages dead.
By strange chance aided, they spring forth again
And, with an agony of speechless pain,
I see them threaten thy gold peerless head.

238

SONNET VI
THE UNSEEN STRUGGLE

It may be that on England's fate depends
The future of the planet. Here, maybe,
Beside our English hills, our English sea,
Struggle vast forces for stupendous ends.
Beyond our gaze the unseen strife extends,
Far past the stars, to dim futurity,—
And something of defeat or victory
With England's mighty life our own life blends.

Titanic battling earthly battle implies.
Our puny cannons whisper, but huge hosts
Wield the grim thunders of the awful skies.
Who knows what breathless part with good or ill,
With angel warriors or accurséd ghosts,
England may take? The road lies open still.

239

SONNET VII
ENGLAND AND ART

Be true to Art and Beauty. Milton's creed,
Coldly sublime, grasps not with equal span
The whole of Nature, or the whole of man:
Not by such dreams now prosper or succeed
Nations, whose souls and dawning spirits need
Food other than pale legends Puritan.
Through warmer veins the English red blood ran
When Shakespeare's fire linked thought to ardent deed.

From France and Italy learn the creed of Greece
Renascent. Learn that form is still divine;
Yea, that God's spirit speaks through curve and line
Of shoulder,—that through glory and subtle scent
Of woman's hair angels breathe balm and peace,
On things unutterably pure intent.

The late William Morris confessed himself quite unable to read Milton, on account of that poet's peculiar blending of metaphysical theology with a “cold classicalism.”

“‘For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.’ This verse has been so utterly enigmatical to the translators, and so apparently contradictory to what has preceded it, that they have ventured on an explanation in the margin. ‘That is,’ they say, ‘a covering, in sign that she is under the power of her husband.’ Now the meaning of εξουσια, rendered ‘power’ in the authorised version, is really ‘authority.’ By no possible licence or contortion of terms can it be made to mean ‘covering.’ Still less is there anything to justify an explanation which is in palpable opposition to the words of the text. There can be no better illustration of the pride and ignorance with which man, even to our own day, insists upon woman's subjection to him, than that he should presume to put in a marginal note, which in the minds of the ignorant has almost the authority of the text itself, in explanation of the words, ‘For this cause ought woman to have authority on her head because of the angels,’ this means, ‘a covering, in sign that she is under the power of her husband.’ Had women been the translators, the explanation would have been different. The true internal significance is that woman is the connecting link between man and the angels, and that it is through her affectional atomic union with them that a channel is formed by which alone the Divine Feminine can descend to man; and the reason why the apostles were divinely impressed to forbid the women to shave their heads was, in the inverse sense, analogous to that which caused Delilah to shave the head of Samson when she wished to deprive him of his strength. There is a certain quality which pertains to the electricity that resides in hair, as to its essential atoms, of which, if I spoke further, I should only excite, still more than I have already done, the ridicule and scepticism of men of science, for it is far beyond their ken, which renders it an important factor in the transmission of force derived from those whom Paul calls ‘the angels,’ and to tamper with this transmitting medium of electric magnetic force is to limit woman's power, and therefore her authority in her own special sphere of operations, over man.”—Scientific Religion. By Laurence Oliphant. 1888. Pp. 356, 357.

1 Cor. xi. io.

240

SONNET VIII
“FOR FRANCE”

It may be that the future holds for France
In spite of gloom and languor and decay
The golden glory of a dawn of day,
An untouched fair superb inheritance.
It may be that her restless eyes shall glance
On flowers immortal, when in bloomless grey
Regions our English yearnings fade away
While death's cold waves inexorably advance.

If this be so, the truth is plain to see.
Through errors deadly, sins of lying and lust,
France, proudly faithful to a mighty trust,
Has held that God and beauty of form are one.
For this her faith she deathless, it may be,
Shall shame the starlight and surpass the sun.

241

SONNET IX
TO VIOLET

To think that thou art hurt,—and hurt through me!
Thou—unto whom each gentle flower that blows,
White snowdrop, orange lily, crimson rose,
Each leaf, each breath of summer o'er the sea,
Brought thoughts divine with utter purity,
Dreams no man's coarser spirit shares or knows;
Thou—who didst in thy perfect trust repose
On God's own bosom, safe eternally,
So thou didst deem,—that I should wound or slay
The very spirit the tender Love-God gave
To lift me safely past sin and the grave,
To bring me surely to his heaven at last,
When I consider this, the sunlit day,
Darkens, and all God's skies seem overcast.

242

SONNET X
“REMEMBER”

Remember still the fate of England hangs
Most dubious in the balance. Greece and Rome
Had each their hour, then Time's sea, wave and foam,
Swept over countless joys and countless pangs.
Not yet the gate of dire ill-fortune clangs,
Closed fast for ever. Who shall dream or tell
What waits of golden heaven or black-browed hell
In front,—of joy or pain's remorseless fangs?

Guard England ever, O God whose hand has brought
So far the race upon its stormy way
And given to us far lands to guide and sway,
And the sea's soul for helpmate and for bride.
Grant us the spirit of ceaseless prayer, that nought
May weaken love, confuse us, or divide.

243

SONNET XI
“FOR GOOD OR EVIL”

For good or evil, yea for joy or shame,
For bright truth spoken, or shameless folly and lie,
No city ever yet beneath God's sky
On God's vast womanhood put in a claim
So heavy. Christ's pure dreams and Satan's game
Here blend unceasingly. More women crown
With grace and beauty this our marvellous town
Than earth has ever seen, or star can name.

Most strange, most wonderful! O Wordsworth, bard
Of womanless dim mountains, what a theme
For nobler song is here in streets that teem
With sweet magnetic power that can be felt
By those who can their surface self discard,
That Woman's magic through brain-cells may melt.

244

SONNET XII
Written on the evening of the Coronation Day of King Edward the Seventh.

Aug. 9, 1902.

The great day closes, full of sound and light
And prayerful murmurs, and superb display.
Gently the sunlit moments steal away
Into the magic moments of the night.
All London flames, immeasurably bright
With mimic stars in colourful array,
While overhead the summer heavens are gay
With nobler stars, millions in flow and flight.

London, old London, city of love and crime,
Grim with the sins and passions of the past,
For just one moment, starry-browed, sublime
Shines out, and seems divinely fair to be,
Grand with supreme desire, a yearning vast
As boundless heavens that meet a boundless sea.

I am afraid this must be taken in a somewhat metaphorical sense The day, however, was not wholly sunless.

245

SONNET XIII
“WOE TO THE MAN”

Woe to the man who having touched a Bride
Elect in heaven, a daughter of the spheres,
To earth descends and quits his angel-peers
And lives as man,—his very soul has died.
He who once wandered by a seraph's side
Through groves unearthly now with terror hears
The wizard music that with passionate tears
He heard of old, by hearing deified.

I marked the voices of vast angel-hosts—
And all with one terrific grim accord
Cried out in Love's name, “Keen-edged is the sword
That through that man's most hapless heart shall smite
Who of love-commerce with an angel boasts,
Unless as hers his inmost soul be white.”

246

SONNET XIV
“IS THERE REDEMPTION?”

Is there redemption for the utmost crime
Of having sinned against a love so sweet
It sought the starriest airs with fearless feet
And poured strange fragrance through the fields of time?
May erring man supreme forgiveness meet,
Be raised again, once more God's mountains climb,
Once more the chant of deathless joy repeat
And mix his song with ocean's mighty rhyme?

If all be lost on earth, if hope and love
And health must vanish, are there yet in store
Flowers that shall perish not, but evermore
Deepen in fragrance as our tired steps move
Onward? May awful sorrow one day prove
Of sinless life the channel and the door?

247

SONNET XV
THE SONS OF SCIENCE

I sometimes with a horror past all speech
Shrink from the hands of those we fondly call
Truth-seeking sons of Science. God help all
Whose hapless bodies come within their reach!
Lies are their daily food, and lies they preach
From house to house, in school or lecture hall.
Their coarse foul fleshly blood-tinged hands appal:
Love they disdain, and mercy they impeach.

England is blinded, hood-winked once again.
“Cancer research!” Unutterable crime.
No truth that saves the race, no gift sublime
Was ever wrenched from out the hideous pain
Of writhing rabbits. Mankind will not climb
To heaven through Vivisection's hell-deep drain.

248

SONNET XVI
CHRIST'S METHOD

Not thus did Christ the Eternal loving King
Teach truth to man. Not thus did Christ extract
The core of pain, but by strong word and act,
By touch of hand, by glance o'ermastering
The foul disease, the dark invasive thing
Within the suffering body pent and packed.
Love, ever love—by love he could attract,
And draw from deadliest pain its deepest sting.

Learn, ye whose chosen office is to heal,
That all disease is subject to the power
Of Love,—that Love is as a river sweet
Pouring with silvery ripples of appeal
Gifts pure and priceless at our foolish feet:
Health is Love's fruit and Sympathy's white flower.

249

SONNET XVII
UNIVERSE-SWEETNESS

Ere love's divine ineffable embrace
Be fully won, within some garden-close
Drink all the fragrance of the perfect rose
And let the South West breeze caress thy face.
Give thou to woman the pure inmost grace
Of the delicious-hearted heliotrope:
Love with the rich carnation's power and scope;
Let not God's blossoms worst thee in the race.

See that she giveth thee within her breast
The secret-scented souls of all the flowers
And their strange dim heaven-message in her hair:
Yea, win thou likewise from the summer air
A sweetness unimagined, unconfessed
Save to the starlit night's most sacred hours.

250

SONNET XVIII

I. “FOR LOVE'S SAKE”

For love's sake keep thine inmost body pure:
Pure not in coarse Convention's meagre sense
But pure through effort terribly intense
High joys to gain, whose sweetness shall endure.
The sea is thine, all flowers are thine, the sure
Strong sun is thine, and morning on the hills:
From these win somewhat of the Force that fills
The world with raptures thy soul may secure.

For love's sake let not any stain abide
Upon the deathless body thou mayest give
Supremely splendid to a deathless Bride,
With whom in God's bright mansions thou mayest live
Unfound of grief for ever. Fugitive
Is every joy, to pureness unallied.

251

SONNET XIX

II. “GOD'S MOTHERHOOD”

Yet pure alone through Woman's breath and hands
Thou must be. Not in solitude, apart,
Canst thou win entrance to God's inmost heart.
Through Woman pour upon God's chosen lands
His streams of healing. Whoso understands
Knows that the flower of life divine we meet
Within her lips most saving and most sweet:
Yea, guardian at the gate of heaven she stands.

God's Motherhood is in her snow-white breast
Wherein our souls and bodies sink to rest,
There finding the repose of nerve and limb
That man alone through Womanhood can know
When Womanhood and woman's God bestow
Themselves in union strange and pure on him.

252

SONNET XX
“CONFLICTING GODS”

Conflicting gods above our bodies strive
For empire. Who are we that we should think
That we alone life's mighty fountains drink,
That we alone are passionate and alive?
Through us wild spirits struggle to arrive
At their own ends, fast-forging link by link
Strange chains of deeds at which our souls might shrink,
It may be, to assist or to connive.

Christ and the gods of Greece are battling still.
Not in Miltonian giant dreams alone
Satan would hurl the Lord God from his throne,
But here in London night's airs leap and thrill
With blasts of mad infernal trumpets blown
And swords celestial flash, to save or kill.

253

SONNET XXI
“THE DIVINE FEMININE”

Herein the everlasting mystery lies
And its solution. Christ himself bestows
Upon the world the purity that glows
In woman's heart, and shines through woman's eyes.
When all my soul yearned out to Grecian skies
And longed to touch the ineffable pure rose
Of Venus' lips, I was not wrong, God knows!
I was immensely right, supremely wise.

The subtle fragrance that through Venus pours
And through all flowers, love-nourished by the sun,
In its most pure and perfect depths is one
With Life that through Christ's sacred body saves.
The eternal Beauty that the poet adores
On Calvary bled, and sprang from Grecian waves.

254

SONNET XXII
THE VIRGIN MARY

Of old I held the grandest simplest thing
Was the sweet human love, and still I hold
Deep in my heart the faith I held of old,
But added light the changing seasons bring.
The Force that stooped from heaven a Christ to mould
Was the strange Mother-power to which we cling
As children,—Love that broods with dovelike wing
O'er all the sorrowing earth it would enfold.

The mystic dream from youth's swift gaze withheld
May yet be fragrant at the very heart
Of this our universe, the crown of Art,
And the most sacred tenderest fact of all:
The fact that God through woman's womb expelled
The poison there induced through woman's fall.

255

“WHEN THE ROSE BECOMES INCARNATE”

When the rose becomes incarnate in the lips of woman, sweet
Will the night's arms be to dream in and the morn's embrace to meet:
When the sea's soul pours its pureness through the eyes of woman, then
Will the angel flash forth godlike through the answering eyes of men.

Woe to man who sees too clearly all love's mystic inner deeps,
For eternal pain pursues him when he wakes or when he sleeps;
Anguish changeless, everlasting,—for he knows love's heaven too well
And he seeks on earth to find it, and he finds not heaven, but hell.

1902.

256

“PERFECT SLEEP”

Through woman only pure and perfect sleep,
The sleep of flowers and children, can be won:
The rest divine and safe that visits none
Save those whose souls the hands eternal keep.

1902.

257

“THE ANGEL”

The poet sees the angel who will be
Within the eyes of woman. Mystic, bright
Within the face that man despises, he
Perceives a glory strange, an unknown light.

He sees the angel that, far centuries hence,
When many a path of agony is trod,
Will stand with brow superb and gaze intense
Within the golden palace-walls of God.

1902.

258

ON THE DEATH OF ÉMILE ZOLA

SONNET

A giant force has vanished. One who fought
For Truth and calmly faced Truth's deadliest foes;
Who, when all France was silent, grandly arose
And slew crowned Falsehood with the sword of Thought;
Who home from exile tortured Dreyfus brought
And bade the huge unnameable grim woes
Of him the saddest of all exiles close;
Who for one soul supreme redemption wrought:
He, Zola, passes forth to lands unknown.
And, even as Hugo left the whole world weak
And friendless for a moment, so it seemed,
When round about him Death's strange starlight gleamed,
So now we feel unutterably alone.
Truth silenced, every paltry liar may speak.

Oct. 6, 1902.

259

HUGO AND ZOLA

I.

Eternal light is in the rhymes
Of Hugo.—Thence the sun
Beams forth on far-off lands and climes:
There Love is wooed, and won.

There, fairer than in all great strains
That listening mankind knows,
Rings forth the song of hills and plains,
The chant of star and rose.

II.

Eternal truth is in the words
Of Zola.—Thence its power
Flames forth on earth's pale servile herds,
To France a deathless dower.

260

Glory to France, the land of Art,
In that, vast ends to gain,
She brought forth Hugo's perfect heart,
Then moulded Zola's brain.

Oct. 7, 1902.

261

EIGHTEEN SONNETS (1903)

263

SONNET I
HECTOR MACDONALD

Is it that fiends whose very breaths consume
Watch ever, and plan the downfall of the great?
Who shall explain or fathom this man's fate
Or pierce behind the veil of hell-deep gloom?
If only Omdurman could have been his tomb!
Majestic then through Fame's most splendid gate
He would have passed. Huge must have been the hate
Unseen that plotted this most piteous doom.

Dead!—he who never feared a human foe.
What strange Powers wrestled in this soldier's brain?
What anguish throbbed with an unheard-of pain
Through that proud spirit no sword-stroke could lay low?
What end had Death and Death's grim hosts to gain,
That such a warrior-soul should perish so?

March 26, 1903.

This Sonnet was first published in the Scotsman.

264

SONNET II
“WHEN MACEDONIA RISES”

When Macedonia rises, when the air
Shivers at red deeds daily and nightly done
Beneath the pitying stars, the sorrowing sun,
Though here in England griefless gardens bear
The rose that shines in ardent Summer's hair,
The lily whose heart is Summer's wooed and won,—
Praise God that here the bloodless blue streams run!
That here no murdered mute eyes heavenward glare!

Praise God, and humble of soul and watchful be.
We are not sinless. Let no crime invoke
Judgment. By breeze-swept beech and whispering oak
And bright pure wavelets of our guardian sea
Think of the strong land's agony if he,
The Power that saves, through gloom and terror spoke.

265

SONNET III
TO A GREAT POET

Now that the clouds of night seem closing round
The planet, bearing horror in their train,
Will England totter in the track of Spain?
Will no great voice of solemn warning sound?
The singer whom Italia's struggle found
Divinely songful, dreams, and dreams in vain.
Will Swinburne's fire of passion never again
Blaze forth, awakening souls but half discrowned?

The tasks are puny, low the hill-tops sought
By bards who trifle in this perilous hour.
Singer who so loved France, whose supreme power
Mingled with Hugo's, yet one deed unwrought
Remains,—to save from hideous death the flower
Of England's heart, by wise death-conquering thought.

266

SONNET IV
“IN FRANCE ALONE!”

I sometimes fancy in France is left alone
The love of beauty.—What our world will be
When foul-breathed iron-clads possess the sea
That once was white-armed Venus' white-waved throne—
When with one piteous cry, one deathless moan,
She feels that fragrance from her rose must flee,—
What then from earth will fade eternally
Art dimly guesses; not the worst is known.

America, with England in her wake,
Worships alone success and wealth. She strives
On the waste débris of uncounted lives
Babels to build that shadow the daybreak
And mock the stars. Vast issues are at stake.
Choose well, before the hour of doom arrives.

“Caste, class, reverence, hereditary right, religion, count for nothing. ‘Business’ is the object and end of existence. . . . . In many things —in transit, in telegraph and postage, in cotton and woollen work— America lags far behind England; but few can doubt that supremacy under these differing conditions is only a matter of time. The future is a change only comparable with the descent of the barbarians upon the Roman Empire; with the triumph of the machine and the race who knows how to use it, a new page will be opened in the history of the world.”—Daily News, April 3, 1903. Article on America at Work, by J. Foster Fraser.

267

SONNET V
“LOVE AND BEAUTY”

But France, fair France, that held her stedfast way
Mocked, cursed or preached at,—France that ever knew
That deep in Beauty's form lay hid the true
Secret that gives its golden life to day
And sends the blue waves leaping through the bay
And on the rose bestows its passionate hue,—
Shall not the Power whose eyes are dawns renew
Her force, and grant her Art's domains to sway?

No voice replies. This only is grandly sure,—
Where God and Love and Beauty and Woman are
There also shines the sun, there flower and star
To flower and star may beckon, bright and pure.
Where Beauty is not, there darkness must endure
And Death with eyes that blight, and hands that mar.

268

SONNET VI
BEAUTY AND HOLINESS

Without the holy spirit of love divine
No man shall ever the eyes of Beauty meet
Or touch with conquering touch the lips most sweet
Or see with sight assured the limbs' white line.
Before us not the Vision's self shall shine
Until all foes are driven in wild retreat
From the soul's temple. Tread of alien feet
Dismays the goddess, and pollutes the shrine.

Until the inmost soul is strong and free
And fair and sinless, no man shall attain
The mount of victory on whose height we gain
The power to grasp that Beauty must be won
By kingly passion mixed with purity
Divine, and deathless toil divinely done.

269

SONNET VII
TO A BROTHER POET

O Friend, how rare and sweet a gift is thine!
Thou canst make lustrous through the Sonnet's measure
Dreams and fair thoughts that men will alway treasure,
Spell-bound for ever by some golden line.
Singing, thy spirit is one with powers divine
Who through thy strain impart immortal pleasure,
Enliven toil, add new delight to leisure,
Song's flowers with Love's in magic meads combine.

Guard well the gift. Frail seems the Sonnet, yet
Within it dwells a force that can defy
Time's deadliest hate, and watch grim nations die
Itself unscathed. Thy sonnets, 'mid their peers,
May live when even England's sun has set,
Storm-winged with wrath, or stained with deathless tears.

270

SONNET VIII
THE WORLD-CONQUEROR

Not he who wanders on the wings of steam
O'er all the earth, rejoicing as the sky,
The hills, the plains, the cities past him fly
In one wild endless brain-bewildering gleam,—
Not he who, yet more eager, yokes for team
The lightnings, tamed in electricity,—
Not this man wins the immortal heights that lie
Beyond his soulless gaze, his sordid dream.

That man is conqueror of the world of things,
He holds the stars of all the heavens encased
Within his hand, and rules the dark-blue waste
Of sky, to whom one small bright violet brings
The gift of vast imagination's wings,
Who on one woman's lips all joys can taste.

271

SONNET IX
THE ELEMENTAL SOUL

Strange part hath Woman with the flowers and streams
And all wild wayward elemental things.
O wingless man, thy partner hath bright wings
O'er which the sunset plays, the rainbow gleams!
The golden morn amid her tresses dreams:
Straight to her heart the tender snowdrop springs.
A message from the Unknown Love she brings:
Mingled with scents of fairy-land she seems.

The Soul that, ever-struggling, ever-chaste,
Toils to be with us in these latter days,
Through Woman its untold desire conveys
And hints sublime of what may one day be
When all the green earth by her love embraced
Whispers her secret to the stars and sea.

272

SONNET X
CHRIST AND APOLLO

The force of Christ, his everlasting might
We need, the spirit superb that through him flows.
We also need the Christ within the rose:
We also need the sun-god's glance of light.
No one Ideal can content us quite.
Ever man's unextinguished yearning glows,
Fervent and deep the more, the more he knows.
Christ's hands were pierced. Apollo's limbs were white

O God, whom all the universe explains,
Reveals, expresses, surely thou art found
Enthroned in every heart, whose shrine contains
The love of thee! Not in earth's sunless fanes
Art thou by hands of priests immured and bound!
Free, ever, thy true worshipper remains.

273

SONNET XI
“LONDON I LOVED”

How few there are on whom their City fair
And sweet as Athens in the old days shines!
London I loved,—her houses' smoke-veiled lines,
Her towers, her sunless stream, her fog-damp air.
The tiger-lily in a London square
To me meant all things. What the soul divines
Of mystery, thrilling through a thousand signs,
This is our own,—this, fearless, we declare.

London I loved,—each Park, and every tree
In each, the red-billed swans, the sparrows gay,
The teeming busy life of every day.
Not the blue wavelets of a summer ocean
Brought more of wonder and magic unto me
Than human crowds in never-ending motion.

274

SONNET XII
“THE ENGLISH SPIRIT IS CHANGED”

The English spirit is changed, or changing fast.
Gold-worshippers, gold-seekers, we forget
Heroes, to whom we owe love's deathless debt,
And part, without one soul-pang, from our past.
Is it that our fortune's tide hath turned at last?
Is it that our star, sublime so long, hath set,
Making man's history one immense regret?
For England's fate involves a fate more vast.

Australian valour, Canada's stern deeds,
We greet on penny trumpets, with gay walls,
With flaming lanterns, reeling through lewd streets
Where woman perishes and no heart heeds.
The nation's true pulse moves with sluggish beats,
But militant madness thrills our Music Halls.

275

SONNET XIII
JOHN MORLEY

Bear witness, Time, when secrets all are known,
All deeds divulged, all statesmen's actions weighed,
To the stern solemn protest one man made,
When first red War's mad trumpet-blast was blown.
One voice was heard, one great man proudly alone
Stood forth, and did not fear to be afraid.
Had England listened to the clear word said,
Less blood-stained, firmer, might have been her throne.

But ever through the records of the race,
Remembered ever with pure love, will shine
John Morley's fame. Not that illustrious line
Who howled for war, not these can meet the face
Of Freedom bending usward, nor divine
The fair land's future, nor her star-path trace.

276

SONNET XIV
WILLIAM WATSON

Singer, who sawest that England loved of old
Was to herself and her own glory untrue,—
Singer, whose passionate heart, unerring, knew
That when the truculent foolish wild drums rolled
It was indeed that Honour's knell was tolled,—
Thou hast thy place among the nobler few
Whose spirits an austere destiny pursue,
Whose thoughts are flames, whose words are flawless gold.

Because thy voice condemned the deadly wrong,
Because thy sword flashed, quivering, from its sheath
When other bards stood mute, and robed in shame,
Time shall not lay one finger on thy wreath.
Loud through the years shall ring thy fearless song
And many lands shall reverence thy name.

277

SONNET XV
“WHERE RUSKIN DREAMED”

Where Ruskin dreamed, where Southey and Wordsworth sung,
Hear now the strange hoot of the motor-car!
Among the mountains, watched by star on star,
Hills unto which the arms of white clouds clung
Soft and divine, what maddening sounds have rung!
What foul petroleum-fumes stream forth and mar
Morn's fragrance where morn's countless blossoms are,
Or were,—in days when England's soul was young.

Had Ruskin marked these conquests fully achieved,
His mountain-paths profaned by poisonous smoke,—
Had Wordsworth's woodlands such defilement known,—
How would their great pure passionate hearts have grieved!
As, humble, I grieve to see my City invoke
New gods, and quit for ever her timeless throne.

278

SONNET XVI
“THE DREAM DIVINE”

I sometimes feel as if the dream divine
Of what fair Woman on this earth might be,
A dream that ever with sweet touch gladdened me
In the old days when youth and hope were mine,
A dream that met me in the soft starshine
Of even, or morn's sunlight o'er the sea,—
I sometimes feel that, if this dream must flee,
Distorted, baffled, is strong Love's design.

If England fails the dream to realize,—
If some pure Angel stooping from bright air
Met no response within dull human eyes,—
If back we have driven towards golden sunset-skies
Her who had made for man the whole world fair,
Death waits in front: behind us Paradise.

279

SONNET XVII
“RECORD!”

Woman herself is led astray by dreams
That lead the heart of man in turn astray.
Oh, will Night's blackness never change to day?
Shall we for ever chase elusive gleams?
Endless and vain the mad pursuing seems!
Soul after soul is born,—then hurled away,
Whither? Will Beauty's white foot ne'er delay,
Bright on an earth of flowers and sunlit streams?

Eternal Beauty, whom I wildly sought
When in my youth the long search first began.
If all my passionate seeking counts for nought,
That I was blinded by fierce light record,
By over-trust, by over-zeal, a man
Throughout whose heart tumultuous love was poured.

280

SONNET XVIII
A LAST WORD

O England, whom my spirit longed to aid,
Supremely loving every plain and hill,
Each flower within green forest, each clear rill,
Each thyme-sweet bank, each bower, each breeze-kissed glade,
A sense of some vast mandate disobeyed
Seems through my heart at this last hour to thrill
With pain unutterable. My country still
Thou art,—but what strange dreams thy soul degrade!

Love,—honour,—justice,—these seem words most vain,
Most empty now. No longer London stands
Superb, with the world's sword-hilt in her hands
And all the world's best thought within her brain.
We have lost a prize no other Power can gain,
And, crownless, court the doom of lesser lands.

University of Virginia Library

X. Vol. X

SONNETS (1870-1882)

SONNET I BEAUTY'S SPLENDOUR

SONNET II THE LOVE OF THE FUTURE

SONNET III CONFESSION OF MY FAITH

I.

SONNET IV CONFESSION OF MY FAITH

II.

SONNET V THE CHASE OF BEAUTY

SONNET VI THE PURPLE WINGS

SONNET VII THE WAKING OF BEAUTY

SONNET VIII POESY

I.

SONNET IX POESY

II.

SONNET X “PRAISE BEAUTY!”

I.

SONNET XI “PRAISE BEAUTY!”

II.

SONNET XII THE ROSE OF NIGHT

SONNET XIII A HORROR AND A CALM

SONNET XIV A MARRIAGE PRAYER

SONNET XV LOVE'S RELIEF

SONNET XVI THINE HANDS

SONNET XVII WHITE AND BLACK

SONNET XVIII YEARNING AND ITS MUSIC-ANSWER

I. The Beauty of Woman

SONNET XIX YEARNING AND ITS MUSIC-ANSWER

II. The Musical Blending

SONNET XX PSYCHE'S ZONE

SONNET XXI PURSUIT AND CAPTURE

SONNET XXII AN EMBODIED MUSIC

SONNET XXIII “THOU SHALT DRAW ME”

SONNET XXIV DAY BY DAY

SONNET XXV “GRECIAN AND ENGLISH”

SONNET XXVI “ANGER IS OFTTIMES HOLY”

SONNET XXVII “BORN OUT OF DUE TIME”

SONNET XXVIII MY GIFT

ENGLAND AND PALESTINE

NINETEENTH CENTURY SONNETS

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

PRIESTS AND POETS

SONNET

“IN A STRANGE DREAM”

SONNET

A DEATH-SONG

TO THE SPIRIT OF BEAUTY

A HYMN

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

AN ADJURATION

MAN'S OVERTHROW

THE PERSONAL GOD

TO THE UNKNOWN FATHER OF JESUS

MAY: AN EPISODE

I. SEPTEMBER TO MAY

II. A SONG OF MAY

III. A CHRISTMAS EVE

IV. AT A GRAVE

V. LOVE, THE TEACHER

VI. “SUMMER IN HIS SONG”

VII. “ONE HOUR OF MAY'S”

VIII. “IF I GO FIRST”

IX. “CHRISTMAS EVE AND NEW YEAR'S DAY”

X. ARMED FOR THE BATTLE

SONNET I
BEAUTY'S SPLENDOUR

SONNET II
THE LOVE OF THE FUTURE

SONNET III
CONFESSION OF MY FAITH

SONNET IV
CONFESSION OF MY FAITH

SONNET V
THE CHASE OF BEAUTY

SONNET VI
THE PURPLE WINGS

SONNET VII
THE WAKING OF BEAUTY

SONNET VIII
POESY

SONNET IX
POESY

SONNET X
“PRAISE BEAUTY!”

SONNET XI
“PRAISE BEAUTY!”

SONNET XII
THE ROSE OF NIGHT

SONNET XIII
A HORROR AND A CALM

SONNET XIV
A MARRIAGE PRAYER

SONNET XV
LOVE'S RELIEF

SONNET XVI
THINE HANDS

SONNET XVII
WHITE AND BLACK

SONNET XVIII
YEARNING AND ITS MUSIC-ANSWER

SONNET XIX
YEARNING AND ITS MUSIC-ANSWER

SONNET XX
PSYCHE'S ZONE

SONNET XXI
PURSUIT AND CAPTURE

SONNET XXII
AN EMBODIED MUSIC

SONNET XXIII
“THOU SHALT DRAW ME”

SONNET XXIV
DAY BY DAY

SONNET XXV
“GRECIAN AND ENGLISH”

SONNET XXVI
“ANGER IS OFTTIMES HOLY”

SONNET XXVII
“BORN OUT OF DUE TIME”

SONNET XXVIII
MY GIFT