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

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.