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IV. Vol. IV

1

LOVE-LYRICS

(1882)

3

FOR EVER AND EVERMORE

I

The woods are no less rich for all the flowers within them,
But richer, richer far:
The pine-leaves stoop above the daisies and would win them;
They kiss each white small star.

II

The world is no less rich for all the songs within it,
But far more heavenly-sweet.
No nightingale can hush the happy homely linnet;
God hears its soft “tweet, tweet.”
4

III

The skies are no less blue because the gold stars fill them;
Nor are the hills less bright
When wings on wings of breeze on breeze caress and thrill them
With lavish love and light.

IV

The shores are no less glad when breaker after breaker
With soft light laugh of glee
Charges along the sand and fills gold acre on acre
With foam-pearls from the sea.

V

And so the heart of man is nobler for caresses
That fashion life anew.
What lightens with young joy the solemn pine's dark tresses?
The clear sky glistening through.
5

VI

The more the spirit loves, the richer is the spirit,—
So self-love crawls not in.
When we win one sweet love, that moment our souls merit
Another love to win!

VII

Star elboweth star throughout the blue fields without number
Wherethrough their cohorts wheel:
And eyes on eyes pervade our hearts and thrill our slumber,
And lips on lips appeal!

VIII

Roses on roses redden leagues on leagues sweet-smelling;
Foam-bells on foam-bells shine:
And in God's world are women sweet beyond all telling;
Lips countless and divine.
6

IX

More than the stars are they in number, and far sweeter
Than fields the May-winds tread:
Beyond the praise of bard's most passionate honeyed metre
And all words Love has said.

X

Like hosts on hosts of angels wait they at the portal
Of life: we never know
What glance sent straight from heaven, impassioned and immortal,
A new day's light will show.

XI

Beyond all dreams are they in beauty and in number:
The tired heart sinks to sleep,—
But through the golden aisles and marble courts of slumber
Flash glances new and deep.
7

XII

If thou dost gather a rose, there will be still carnations
By next day's garden-beds!
Thou hast won a love? Yet new loves bring thee sweet oblations.
New stars exalt bright heads.

XIII

New, new, and ever new. Oh God, I faint for pleasure,
And worship and adore.
Love beyond love, and lips on lips, and treasure on treasure,
For ever and evermore!
Sept. 23, 1882.
8

A GIFT OF SPRING

I

For all thy youth given up to me so worn and weary,
For thy soft days of Spring given up to Winter dreary,
What shall I, love, return?
What do the black pines give to the roses in the thicket?
What doth the searcher say as swift he stoops to pick it
To the first budding fern?

II

Thou art so young and sweet,—and all is still before thee:
The whole long summer day's unbroken blue beams o'er thee;
But as for me, for me,
My summer days are far behind yon range of mountains;
For thee the light of morn still lingers in fresh fountains;
My face is set towards nightfall and the sea.
9

III

Thou mightst have had so much,—and I can give so little!
Just a stray song or two to spread soft wings and settle
Within thy braided hair:
Young was I never, and now I am the dark grave's suitor;
Least fitted of all bards to be sweet Beauty's tutor;
And thou,—thou art so fair.

IV

And dost thou care for me,—and wilt thou swiftly follow
My steps from dreary mount to drearier murky hollow
Just out of love for me?
Why thou mightst, with that face, have all the world in bondage!
Wilt thou, the daughter of Spring, bind thy bright brow with frondage
Autumnal, such as I can give to thee!

V

The laughter of the Spring is in thine eyes, and round thee!
The crocus-spirit I found, O true love, when I found thee,—
And all the daffodils
10

Flash forth for thee along the meadows, and the thrushes
Sing out for thee among the newly blossomed bushes
And newly robed green hills.

VI

And I will never take thy flower-help without saying
How in mine elder years I went one morn a-Maying
(To gather thorns, I thought!)
And found thee,—sweeter than the bloom of all the May-trees
And whiter than flower-clouds upon the gayest of gay trees;
Found thee, so far beyond the gifts I sought.

VII

If I can give thee little, yet what I have I bring thee.
Thou hast given me honey of love,—and I, I can but sing thee;
Yet sing I must and may.
Thou hast made the face of Spring in late and dark September
Smile: thou hast made a flame leap up from a grey ember:
Thou hast gilded a dark day.
11

VIII

The azure of thy youth,—this thou hast taken and brought me;
With thine own bloom within thy sweet hands thou hast sought me;
My youth again returns:
Again I stand knee-high in clover and wild grasses
And drink deep in my lungs the sea-wind as it passes,
While round my head the golden midday burns.
Sept. 27, 1882.
12

AUTUMN MESSAGES

I

The flowers that as they fade fling parting kisses tender
From valley and hill and lea
Towards Autumn, know that Spring will mark fresh blossoms' splendour;
But when Spring comes, love, I shall not have thee.

II

The blue waves now along September gold shores gleaming
Will change to an angry sea;
But when the next Spring's ocean smiles, with eyes love-dreaming,
It will not smile on thee.
13

III

Thou art gone! thou art gone! thou art gone!—And I, I may not follow!
When with swift wings and glee
Returns to England's shores the now-departing swallow,
God will not let my heart return to thee.

IV

Of all the autumn words methinks this is the saddest:
To know that love must flee;
That one more love of mine, most sweet though it be the maddest,
Hath no more part in me.

V

The blossoms die. But then the new Spring brings their beauty
Again for our eyes to see:
But when love falls stricken down by Time, his helpless booty,
What blooms again? Oh, love, no flower of thee!
14

VI

The swift years pass. But then new years bring tidings sweeter,
Delights undreamed,—and we
Sing to the Spring's soft lips and hasten fast to meet her;
But ah!—not to meet thee.

VII

To-day I feel as if my years of labour and singing
Were fruitless as the sea.
No song is worth its pang, no gift is worth the bringing;
For all my songs will never bring back thee.

VIII

Not all the songs of Spring, nor Spring's own song, the fairest
Of all the songs that be,
Shall ever ring the same,—since thou no longer carest
That I should care for thee!
Sept. 27, 1882.
15

THE RIVER AND THE SEA

I

Yes; sweet it was. Most sweet to watch your Spanish glances
Rove o'er the Stage, and through the gauzy mazy dances:
And yet how little part
Can I have ever in thee! Thou art the Morning's daughter!
Thy laugh is as the sound of silver running water!
How little art thou akin to my worn heart!

II

I love thee. Yes. But as the night might love the morrow;
Or as the spirit of joy might be beloved of sorrow,
So art thou loved of me!
Or as an inland stream that glances 'neath the bushes,
All fenced about with flowers and grass and scented rushes,
Might win the homage of the weary sea.
16

III

We have met and we shall part. Deep through my soul I know it.—
And half I would retard, and half would not forego it,
The moment sure to come
When thou wilt pass away, and leave the sun's rays duller
And the blue sea less blue,—the sunset dimmed of colour,—
And every flower (for me) less full of bloom.

IV

We have met and we shall part. And thou wilt sorrow a little:
But ah! how the thin stalk of love is frail and brittle
In a young girl's white hands!
A poet's doom it is that even his lightest giving
Hath something in it of soul that ends not with his living
But follows him beyond the sunlit lands.

V

I go towards that strange night that knows not dawn nor waking:
But as for thee thine eyes are on the morning breaking
O'er vale and wood and hill.
17

Mine eyes are on the dark; my feet are seaward beckoned:
Thy days and hours by days and hours of joy are reckoned,
And of God's future thou wilt drink thy fill.

VI

And yet from all my heart I thank God that I met thee!
My very soul must change before I can forget thee,
Or thy deep Spanish eyes.
Oh, never doth the sea forget the rills which slaking
Its infinite wide thirst allay its endless aching
And bring it news of far-off flowers and skies.

VII

If I can help thee, well. I would not pain nor hurt thee:
Win thy soft river-love, to wound thee and desert thee.
Nay, never let it be
That one soft silver stream, one white-foot mountain's daughter,
Trusted with simple trust the limitless grey water,
Yet found no answering stern faith in the sea!
18

VIII

I am the sea,—to thee. Thou art the bright-foot river
Darting amid the reeds with tender pulse and shiver
Of guardian aspen-stems.
Thou hast had one glimpse,—just one,—of life beyond thy dreaming:
Of the far treeless waste illimitably gleaming,
Crowned with the cold stars' scentless diadems.

IX

Thou hast given me life quite new. I, in the world no stranger,
Long versed in love and song, and passion's charm and danger,
To thee am unknown quite:
Therein for me doth lurk the subtle joy and gladness;
I bid farewell to grief, I laugh at mist-wreathed sadness,
And simply bask in thine eyes' sunny light.

X

I might have been re-born the other night when sitting
Close by thy side I watched the fairy figures flitting
Across the magic stage.
19

I was no more myself, but twenty summers younger.
And all that night the stars seemed lightened of their hunger,
And my heart lightened of the hunger of age.

XI

Ah! when I seek alone the shadowy water glooming
On my last night of all, and all life's deeds are looming
Large in the unearthly light
That then gleams over and round about me, may I, meeting
The sea's full glance of strong inquiring love and greeting,
Feel that I left thee, as I found thee, white.

XII

I perhaps have made an hour or two for thee pass quicker,
And made thy lamp of life more brightly flame and flicker
Just for a little space:
I have not given thee pain. And thou hast given a poet
Joy for a month or two, and pain that will outgrow it,
And the eternal memory of thy face.
Oct. 2, 1882.
20

SONGS OF NIGHT TO MORNING

I. AT THE THEATRE

Thine eyes are set upon the dancing-girls before thee:
I only gaze at thee. Then far beyond and o'er thee
My soul-gaze travels far.
I see the moment when thou wilt be crowned with roses
And violets of young love, just when my journey closes
Where flowerless sea-waves watch each flowerless star.
This is the charm and yet the pang,—the gulf betwixt us.
The sorceress, I trow, whose cunning cold hand mixed us
The magic draught we drink
Mixed in it honey and gall. For thee the flowing honey,
So sweet and clear and fresh and bright and golden-sunny;
For me the dark gall when the thick dregs sink.
21

Thou gazest at the Stage. My fixed looks travel theeward.
Just as a swimmer who makes strong gallant headway seaward
Plunges within the breast
Of some white warm soft wave, my whole soul in thy beauty
Revels and plunges deep,—and clasps the peerless booty,
And in its loveliness finds perfect rest.
Thou art glad at the lights and music. I am gladder
At thee than at all lights and music, and a madder
And wilder tide doth dart
Throughout my veins and nerves, through watching thee, than floweth
Throughout the brain to which the strong red fierce wine goeth;
Thou dost intoxicate both head and heart.
22

II. AND YET

And yet it seems to me that something of paternal
Desire within my soul is guardian to thy vernal
Sweet soft days full of leaf:—
And that, if thou didst pass beyond my sight, and, sinning,
Didst mar the fairy life that thou art now beginning,
A sword would pierce me of eternal grief.
There is a love that hath within it nought but passion.
But there are souls who love in nobler sunnier fashion,
With far more starlike will.
There is a love that bends, with something of a mother
Within its yearning deep, and somewhat of a brother,
Above the heart wild love might wound or kill.
23

Oh, if my doom is this,—that I must see thee turning
From the true road, and know that even God's own yearning
Could hardly stay thy feet;—
If I am doomed to watch the girlish soft eyes harden,
Just as a man who sees a rosebud in his garden
Rusted and withered by the wind and sleet;—
If I am doomed to watch the fairy brown bright glances
That I have loved, God knows!—fling conscious cunning lances
Against the shields of men;—
If as thou growest in years thou hast to lose that tender
And nameless charm that now with more than mortal splendour
Doth clothe thy spirit often and again;—
If I must see all this and feel the cold sword sinking
Within my heart, yet bear in silence, without shrinking,
The utmost keen deep pang;
Yet may I know that I, according to my measure,
Lifted and never sank thy white soul's priceless treasure,
And loved thee purely, as I purely sang.
24

May never a bud of thine through me be wind-tossed roughly!
Thou art not made of harsh coarse clay, nor fashioned toughly
As some thy sisters are:
Thou wast not made to hear rude merriment and laughter;
Surely thou hast before thee some divine hereafter;
Grow starlike, having soft eyes like a star.
No man can grow a woman as he groweth roses.
Nay, God himself at times from the long task reposes,
And weary he turns, and sighs.
Thine own path thou must take.—And I thy swift-winged swallow
May be forbidden for years thy summer laugh to follow
And the dear summer sunshine in thine eyes.
God's hand is over both.—Because I love thee dearly
A pitiless sword may pierce my soul,—I see it clearly,—
I know my risk full well.
Yet were there a thousand swords in front, or blazing trenches,
Mine would not be the eye or hand or heart that blenches,—
If I could save thee just one shadow of hell.
Oct. 5, 1882.
25

III. “PERHAPS A DREAM IT IS”

Perhaps a dream it is,—but far too sweet for breaking.
Give me another month to dream on without waking,
Or even another day!
What are the sweetest things but dreams? What is the summer
But just a gorgeous dream to every blossom-comer
That laughs encircled in the clasp of May!
The real nights are the nights when, golden, beyond number,
Star-thoughts and starlike eyes pervade and haunt our slumber:
The real days are the days
When over and round about us sunny Love is gleaming:—
False days and nights are those that have no heart for dreaming,—
When no thoughts thrill our stormy souls to lays.
26

IV. “THINK WHAT IT IS TO ME”

Think what it is to me with life's black tempest blowing
Still through my hair, and still the weary rain-drops flowing
Adown my face and hands,
To meet thee full of summer,—and full of morning sweetness!
Think how it rounds my life to passionate completeness,
And brings me visions of green laughing lands!
And thou art linked to me,—for thou dost love the rivers,
And the deep woods wherein the chequered sunlight quivers
Through maze of leaf on leaf:
And thy feet have not feared the pathways of the mountains,
And thou hast caught the laugh of far-off silvery fountains;
Thou hast kissed pleasure,—as I have kissed grief.
Think what it is to me, after long years of bondage,
Again with thee to see the light wind kiss the frondage
And the free sunlight dance!
27

Think what it is to be in the green woods embowered,
And for a season short of risen life empowered
To watch thy sweet face smile, thy dark eyes glance.
My song,—I know it well,—hath death's wild wail within it;
It is not all a chant of lark or thrush or linnet;
Strange sounds along it leap:
It is not fit for thee: it is not bright or cheery;
But full of moorland sound, and sound of storm, and eerie,
And haunted by the moaning of the deep.
Yet have I loved thee so that if I sang hereafter
Never again, meseems one ripple of thy laughter
Through this my song would ring:
So I have poured my soul along the singing measure
That something in it of thee the singer's deathless treasure
May to the mortal notes, death-conquering, cling.
Just as a man imprisoned for years in dungeon gloomy
Plunges his every sense in rapture at the roomy
First large sight of the sea,
So I for years in chains and far from joy and daylight
Hail,—as he hails the sea's divine expanse of grey light,—
The chainless sight and touch and sound of thee.
28

V. “AND SHALL I THEN COMPLAIN?”

And shall I then complain if thou, the sea-wind meeting,
Dost sigh for flowers and woods and the soft warm wind fleeting
Along the forest-glades?
I sitting close by thee am like the midnight olden
Watching the young sun, full of gorgeous mirth and golden,
Gild one by one the green groves' colonnades!
Behind me stretch long leagues of weary desert marches:
Before thee open out gay miles of forest-arches:
Life is to thee quite new.
I lived before the flood, and saw the ancient cities,
And sang amid the white weird walls old strange love-ditties,
And watched with young wide eyes the old cloudless blue.
29

While thou dost yearn for life, and softly sighest after
The thyme on river-banks, I yearn for the great laughter
That through the lips of death
Sallies. While thou dost pluck wherever bright green hill is
The stems of hare-bells blue and sisterly white lilies,
I pant to meet the far sea's flowerless breath.
And yet thou art mine! thou art mine! Because my whole soul sorrows
To think how little part in thy bright golden morrows
Of sunny life have I:
Because I have loved thee not with selfish soulless yearning,
But with the sea's deep love, and with the sinless burning
Passion of stars and hills, and of the sky:
Because I have loved thee thus,—where'er thy pathway leadeth,
As through the vales of flowers thy happy young foot speedeth,
I follow; I follow amain:
And when the darkness comes and other loves are failing,
And, watching death's grim sea, thou feelest doubt assailing,
Call thou for me. Thou shalt not call in vain.
30

Then looking in my face it may be thou shalt, growing
At last to larger life, behold the strong love glowing
Within me, and shalt rise,
And meet the sea's wide glance, triumphal, strong, and tearless,
And my glance, and love's glance, soul-virginal and fearless,
With equal kindred deep impassioned eyes.
31

A PRAYER

May the strong arms of God be ever round about thee!
Yea, mayest thou feel the sense of summer sun throughout thee
Pass, even on the gaslit boards!
I can do nothing more. Lo! I can only love thee.
But the great love of God around thee and above thee
Can flow, and guard thee more than shields or swords.
“To-night and every night”—so doth my deep strong yearning
Float upward towards God's throne—“do thou, Lord God, with burning
Impassioned fence of angels' wings
Guard her and hold her safe: or guard her with my passion,
Changed to a fiery sword of unexampled fashion!
Change to an iron shield this heart that sings!
32

“Make thou my soul so pure that prayer may find and reach her
And with strong fervent mouth and might divine beseech her,
If e'er her footsteps turn aside.
Oh, let me be the voice of rivers and of mountains:
Give thou my song the ring of old flower-bordered fountains:
Let somewhat of me in her heart abide.
“I have the love, but not the power to guard and shield her.
Thou hast the power, O God. To thee then, God, I yield her:—
To thee: but not to mortal man.
Yet, this I ask,—this much: if thou must ever save her
By gift of death, Lord God,—take this, the heart I gave her;
Die not thou for her,—never,—for I can.”
Oct. 15, 1882.
33

“THE RIGHT TO DIE”

To have the right to die!—Yes: it will come,—the pleasure
Of drawing one long breath, sweet, deep, beyond all measure,
Then at the head of the awful ranks
With swords that spurn the sheath and light still left to charge in
Triumphant right along great red death's river-margin
Leaping, and by death's blood-besprinkled banks.
Yes: weary are the delays. I know it. Pale with yearning
All day the steady ranks held in their wild souls burning
With fiery might at Waterloo:
At last the sunset came. With one fierce leap gigantic
The long red line advanced and broke like foam the frantic
Defeated eddying lines of surging blue!
34

And so it is with us. One day along our serried
Calm lines where faces grim with life-long deep hopes buried
Gleam pale and stern and set and still,
Will ring from the lips of God the joyful awful order—
“The time has come. Advance.” Death is the great rewarder
To many a heart no gift of life could fill.
Ah! God, through the June day of battle keep us steady,
Though round about us foes innumerable eddy
And wheel and charge and break and fly:
Keep our stern souls yet waiting for the order ringing
Along the ranks, the eternal gift of freedom bringing,
And thy one deathless gift,—the right to die.
Oct. 15, 1882.
35

SUNRISE AND SUNSET

I. SUNRISE.

Ages and ages since my boyhood woke from slumber
And all the hills grew bright
And flowers no man can name, nor mortal heart can number,
Gleamed in the gorgeous morning light.
The sunrise shone around. And thou the spirit of morning,
O sweet first love, wast there:
And thou and I alone watched the green hills adorning
Their fresh robes and their sun-kissed hair.
The first sweet light of dawn fell o'er the ocean hollows
And gilded the waves' way:
And o'er the water danced and glanced the white sea-swallows,
And our hearts were as winged as they.
36

All things were then in front. Life's golden gateway glittered
In the dawn's golden rays.
Ah! one could never have dreamed that woodland paths were littered
Ever with damp autumnal strays!
I thought that I would sing thy beauty and thy glory,
O far first love of mine!
I knew not what snowfields, waste, trackless, sunless, hoary,
Lay on the wild horizon-line!
And now that I have sung, and thirteen years have fluttered
Their weary wings away,
Is there one soft look gained through all that I have uttered,—
Hast thou one word of love to say?
Have thirteen years of song no voices and no pinions
To reach and cry to thee?
Hast thou no yearning still for our old royal dominions
Of deep-blue sky and bluer sea?
37

Is love of nothing worth now that the love is longer
And of more passionate might?
Now that the mounting sun of riper age flames stronger,
Are the old sun-kissed hills less bright?
If I have crowned thy brow with leaves time may not wither
For all his wayward will,
Wilt thou not, once at least, for old love's sake turn hither,
Thy singer's heart once more to thrill?
Wilt thou not look this way, that once again the splendour
Of morning over me
May flash?—as ever it flashed when thou, first love, wast tender
By the old ever-tender sea.
Oct. 23, 1882.
38

II. SUNSET

Ah!—Here I stand and dream, and sunset's red dominions
Burn, high before my sight.
Who am I that my thought should stretch young eager pinions
Towards the far golden morning-light?
Between me and the past lie fields on fields of sorrow:
Yet, brown-eyed maiden, thee
I have to-day—and perhaps to-morrow,—and to-morrow,—
And then the dark night, and the sea.
Once more before my death, old dreams and thoughts romantic
Have leaped up high again:
And passion's wind with laugh half silver-sweet, half frantic,
Has swept around the shores of pain.
39

I weary with sad days and sick at heart with climbing
Far past youth's sunlit dells
Have sought anew for thee the old streams silver-chiming
And sought for thee the haunted fells.
Yes: I have found a love,—and yet a fair white sister
In her, too, I have found.
I felt my soul awake when my glad lips had kissed her,
With more than common passion crowned.
For ever it is the soul that gives all joy to passion:—
The slightest gift is sweet
If given in soulful holy virginal pure fashion;
The red lips need not even meet.
Beyond all love, the love that loves just for the pleasure
Of giving love away:
And this,—the love of God,—can never lose its treasure
Nor see joy's rose wings turn to grey.
Beyond all love the love that, full of deepest yearning,
Can still that yearning deep,
And wait,—though far within the great soul-fires are burning
And through the soul wild longings leap.
40

This is the love that wins. And though to mortal seeming
It win not here at all;
Though half its triumph seem to careless eyes mere dreaming,
Mere dallying while life's blossoms fall;
Yet still I say that this, the love of soul, prevaileth,
And no love else at last:
Is all afire with joy when every faint love paleth,—
Wins, when all lesser loves are past.
Oct. 23, 1882.
41

A VINDICATION

I

I claim the eternal right to love,—without conditions.
To crown thee with my love, and crown thee with love's visions,
Though all men stand i' the way.
Oh, is not Love enough? If in a golden carriage,
Sweet, thou wast drawn along, towards a golden marriage,
Could Love have more triumphant words to say?

II

I love thee with my soul. Heaven knows I love thee truly.
Each time I see thy face, the tide of love flows newly
Round laughing happier shores.
Each time I see thine eyes, my soul bursts into gladness
And every swift pulse throbs with passion's mirth and madness,
And all the poethood within me adores.
42

III

What do I give? Why, love. And, if a prince besought thee
And to his gilded house of regal pleasure brought thee,
Could he do more than I?
Is there in this wild world one great exceeding treasure
That hath, like passionate love, nor bound nor mate nor measure,
Spreading wide wings co-equal with the sky?

IV

Ah! marriage hath its gifts. It hath its pleasures waiting:
Rich jewels and priceless robes,—and life behind a grating:—
Rubies,—and prison-bars:—
Bright emeralds, diamonds, pearls,—yet never love's free laughter:—
Rank, wealth, and friends,—and deep heart-sickness following after:—
Gay frescoed walls and ceilings,—not the stars.

V

Have others prayed to be so pure that prayer might aid thee?
Have others at thy gate lest hostile spears invade thee
Watched, night on night indeed?
43

Who yearns as I have yearned? Who follows as I follow?—
Has love no awful rights when all rights else ring hollow?—
Is love not just the crown of Christ's own creed?—

VI

Who has seen thy soul but I? Who of the men who watch thee,
O flower of mine, and from thy dainty stem would snatch thee,
Wear,—tire,—then cast away—
Which of them all has loved, or will love, as I love thee?
Would bend for sacred hours, O fairy flower, above thee,—
Yet leave thee smiling on thy parent spray?

VII

Nay, the soul knows the soul. Of all things sad and deadly
To yield a woman back into life's loveless medley
When once the souls have met
Is just the deadliest and saddest and most grievous:
The very stars cry out “For God's sake do not leave us!”
When once Love's soul-kiss on their lips is set.
44

VIII

The deep soul sees the soul. A man knows when a woman,
Beyond all laws and rules and tests and quibbles human,
Belongs, through the great might
Of his own fiery love all laws, save Love's, transcending,
To him. He knows light love: and love which hath no ending.
Love boundless gives infinity of right.

IX

Why should I give thee up? Why should I, the possessor
Of thy sweet spirit and heart, yield up to any lesser
And weaker lover than I
These spotless priceless gifts,—in that I have no power
To give thee more than love's imperishable flower
And for thy sake to yearn and battle,—and die?

X

“No greater love is there than this,”—that love be willing
To spend its very life, its sacred life-blood spilling
Just for another's sake.
No greater love hath woman than that a man be ready
To stand before her door till death, a sentry steady;
Lest any foe therein an entrance make.
45

XI

I stand before thy door. Never shall foeman enter
Till fifty spears have made my guardian heart their centre
Or targeted my brain.
As long as thou dost need thy sentry, thou wilt find me:
Were there an army in front, thou wouldst be safe behind me:
Safe,—till they slew me:—and then God would remain.

XII

God then would take my shield, and on thy threshold standing
Would carry on the strife. My own death notwithstanding,
Thou wouldst be safe: for he
With all the holy and loyal great manhood of a brother
Unto the very death would wrestle with every other
Till he restored thee, smiling, unto me.
Nov. 2, 1882.
46

ONE PRAYER

I

And now must I lose thee, O dark-eyed love, O darling?
Will the bright eyes of Spring greet thrush and lark and starling,
But shall I not greet thee?
I will not sing again. What is the worth of singing
When thus thy farewell voice around my path is ringing?
Let the great silence deepen around me.

II

I will not sing again. For years and years I, early,
When all the morning clouds were washed in gold and pearly,
Have sung to the morning light,—
And through the midday heat I still have sung, and followed
The song-god till in gloom the purple meads were swallowed:
And then the stars have heard me, through the night.
47

III

Summer has heard my song, and Winter too has listened,
And the soft eyes of Spring have wept at times and glistened
At some sad passionate strain:
And flowers I've twined in the hair of Autumn round her flowing,
And with red leaves of song have carpeted her going;
But now,—love, love,—I shall not sing again!

IV

Pang follows upon pang, and spear on spear hath sought me.
Never one day hath dawned but that day's hands have brought me
New sorrow, untried grief:
And now if I lose thee—ah God! if I must follow
The old wild griefward track once more,—why let Apollo
Henceforward flaunt his uncontested leaf!

V

In the far early Spring of life my lady faltered,
And sweet youth's passionate hopes and ardent dreams were altered,
But life was then so young!
48

My work was yet to do. My lady must be lifted
Towards a high throne of fame, and with my laurel gifted.
Love had been cruel: still love must be sung.

VI

But now that years on years to songs on songs have hearkened:
Now that the solemn path has narrowed in and darkened:
Now that the flowers are gone:
Now that my sunset through the forest black trees flashes
And lights the grim fir-trunks already with red splashes,—
How can the old light song-stream ripple on?

VII

O God! God! spare me this. I who not oft beseech thee
Come now with this one prayer. Oh, let its passion reach thee!
Not often do I ask.
But now that, this once more, I have the silence broken,
And from my very soul of souls have once more spoken,
Is thy response, God, all too hard a task?
49

VIII

By all the pangs of years: by bright days turned to weeping:
By the sad eyes of old far-off pale lost dreams sleeping:
By all my love and pain:
God, spare me this one pang. I, once too proud to implore thee,
Do from my soul entreat that this cloud fall not o'er me!
For, if it fall, I cannot sing again.

IX

The young have all their life in front. The days may darken;
But still to May's glad birds their sorrowing hearts may hearken;
Yea, still the May-flower blows
For these. Bright loves in front wave hands and beckon onward.
Through lanes festooned with green their pathway stretches sunward.
They faint not at the death of the first rose.

X

But, when long years have done their dreary work and vanished,—
50

When hopes that filled the soul have long been dead and banished,—
When age hath set its mark
Upon the spirit, and when all things have changed their fashion,—
Then to love once again with manhood's stormy passion
And lose,—this is to see the sun grow dark.

XI

God! spare me this. I have borne thy darts without a murmur:
I mortal have endured immortal torture, firmer
Than stern rock set at sea:
Yet,—here I tremble. I own I dread the keen sword hanging,
God, at thy side. I dread to hear thy scabbard clanging.
God with the sword, deal graciously with me.

XII

Spare me this final pang.—I am no croaking raven
Flying around thy towers with prayers perpetual,—craven
And coward of heart and weak.
So hear me when I come,—and let thy great heart soften
In that I clamour not and ask not audience often.
This once I look thee in the eyes and speak.
Nov. 5, 1882.
51

TWO SONNETS

DEATH

I.

Death!—Shalt not thou reveal all things unseen,
And teach me why the roses faded quite,
And why a dawn that brake in golden light
Over blue Isis and far meadows green
Became so thunder-dark at noon, I ween!—
Death!—Thou shalt teach me why my lady bright
Fled with fleet steps till she was lost to sight,—
And sweet things were as if they had not been.
Death! Surely thou hast life within thy hands.
Thou canst reveal the secret: thou canst pour
(It may be) the old light along the shore:
Thou canst disclose the numberless star-lands
When daylight fadeth. Lo! beside thee stands
My lost love, found,—and found for evermore.
52

DEATH

II.

Yes: this is the great crown of life,— to know
That death is nearer:—twelve years nearer me
Than when the sunlight filled that Northern sea
With glory infinite, and passion's glow
Fell over the blue waters. Even so,
Death, calm-browed God and Lord, I wait for thee:
With those I love, Lord, I would also be;
For one by one my loved ones, smiling, go.
And I shall follow. I am nearer those
Who have died and left me,—nearer every day.
Soon I shall join the unspeakable repose
Of mighty souls and true who have passed away.
Straight from death's sea to-night the sea-wind blows:
What touched my forehead?—Ah, the spray, the spray!
April 9, 1882.
53

A DEDICATION TO JOHN ALEXANDER BLENCOWE, MY OLDEST FRIEND

Friend, when at Harrow twenty years ago,
Long ere my passion coveted the bays,
We wandered o'er the green hill's winding ways,
Our young hearts full of boyhood's eager glow,
We knew not what should be, nor sought to know:—
Now, somewhat of life's lengthening shadow strays
Across our path, and in the summer days
The perfume-laden winds more sadly blow.
But still the world is fair, though Harrow days
Are gone from us for ever; though no more
Will Isis break to silver at our oar
Or Cornish moorland purple meet our gaze.
Friend, let me give thee these my latest lays,
Full of old dreams of many a far-off shore.
54

UPON THE PIER AT NIGHT

I.

I watch the silent night fall o'er the sea.—
Is this strange sombre mantle, Death, like thee?
Doth this dim starless void
Whence the faint breath of summer air floats meward
Hold all the souls whose wings have travelled seaward
By the awful deep decoyed?
Where are the myriad souls who went before?
Who watched the same seas break on the same shore,—
Then trusted Death, and went?
Sometimes an army on the golden beach
Encamps, with hum of multitudinous speech;
The next day, not one tent!
55

The next day not one white-topped tent is seen:
Only the white-topped billows, dark and green,
And the dark threatening skies.
The foot-prints of the host are on the shore,
But the bright-armoured warriors mix no more;—
No shouts, and no replies.
Can there be room in the celestial fields
For such a concourse of gay swords and shields?
Would all the stars provide
Home for the increasing countless hosts of these,
Or all the untravelled dark-blue billowy seas
Of heaven from side to side?
Nor only human souls have gone. The flowers
Have sent their delegates from woods and bowers
To try the land of death:
To bring back tidings whether sister-stems
Within that land wave petalled diadems
And mingle fragrant breath.
56

Armies of blossoms past all mortal thought
Since Eve amid their primal host was brought
Have dared the fatal track:
And of these blossoms not one single rose
Breathes answer to our doubt. No hare-bell throws
One faint blue petal back.
The winds of night come scented from afar
As though from worlds where deathless blossoms are:
Sisters perhaps of these.
But never flower from that far land returns:—
No violet-messengers: no risen ferns:
No flushed anemones.
And yet the land where these dead blossoms meet
Must surely be beyond all gardens sweet,
Beyond all woodlands fair.
The land whereto our loved ones, smiling, passed
Cannot be lonely. Though the land be vast
We shall be welcomed there.
57

II.

O over-crowded fields of starry death
What message lingers in the sea's faint breath
Of you to me to-night?
Just like a blind man passing through a camp
I guess an army round me by the tramp,
Yet no forms loom in sight.
The pulsing of the innumerable feet
Of all the dead seems now mine ear to meet:
This sombre sea and air
Seem full of viewless hints and whispers strange,
And cloud-girt hosts the watch-word interchange;
Great shadowy plumes they bear.
58

Ah! we shall join you. Ready or the reverse,
With lips that bless or foaming mouths that curse,
We shall be summoned,—each.
Some from laborious days and some from rest:
But all the unfailing and fatigueless quest
Of equal Death shall reach.
The woman waiting in the summer night
With hair unfastened and a glimpse of white
Bosom that pants for breath
Sees a strange face against her window shining,
Where those green helpful ivy-stalks are twining:—
“No, not thy lover. Death!”
What fingers steal around this girl's slim waist
In the ball-room, and cannot be displaced,—
Strong fingers, stiff and cold?
Death's, the eternal partner's.—And he twists
Around his fingers and remorseless wrists
Reluctant locks of gold.
59

III.

Yes: all will pass.—The cities where we trod
When youth was with us like a laughing god,
Guarding our joyous track,—
These all will pass, and leave no trace behind.
The days when round our brows bright flowers were twined
Pass,—and not one comes back.
The old loves pass. With soft eyes full of tears
They fill the autumnal gardens of the years
Where the grey daisies grow;
And their breath makes the gardens sweet as those
Wherein their cheeks were once red like the rose,
That now are like the snow.
60

We see them pass. They stretch out pallid hands
Towards ours from lanes and fields of many lands
And far-off streets and ways.
But when we kiss their lips, their touch is cold,
And damp and clammy are the hands we hold,
And dull the eyes they raise.
They all are dead. Cold Death lays hand on each.—
The bride within her chamber he can reach,
And smite the glad bridegroom.
He lusts for lips that man has never kissed:
His fingers grip the dainty blue-veined wrist:
He storms the bridal room.
He climbs upon the fragrant bridal bed
And lo! the bright lips hardly kissed are dead
And death the ravisher
Hath carried off the blossom as it lay
To regions where the very sun is grey
And chill the summer air.
61

The cities that we loved shall perish too:
The skies of Paris shall no more be blue;
They shall be dark and dread;—
Venice shall die: and all the seas that filled
Her streets and at the touch of love-oars thrilled
Shall wash around the dead.
62

IV.

Where is thy father? In the grave he lies,—
And the keen worms are busy with his eyes,
And his pale mistress, death,
With scentless bloodless breast above him hangs,
And lo! her lips are as a vampire's fangs
And poisonous is her breath.
He had his day and passed. And then the sun
Was bright for thee, and thy day was begun
And all the air was sweet:
Soft loves flocked round thee, and the summer flamed,
And thou wast young and strong and unashamed;
Winged were thy passionate feet.
63

Yet dost thou not remember, when thy breath
(On some June night when all is still as death,—
No murmur in the trees)
Passes, caressing, through a woman's hair,
That some day God will plant the black mould there,
Or stray shells from the seas?
That tossed about from wandering wave to wave
The body thou wouldst give thy life to save
May on the next night be?
Hurled in its naked whiteness by white tides
Against the unkissing grim cliff's iron sides,—
Sport to the wanton sea.
So it has been and shall be.—For the dead
Now round and over us are poured and shed:—
They fill the vital air.
The rose is redder in this hedge to-day
For Cleopatra's blood: the waves less grey
That Shelley's soul is there.
64

Thy little day shall pass,—and then the great
New centuries shall roll in regal state
Along their destined road.
Art thou renowned? Yet see how small a mark
Thy light hath made upon the eternal dark,
The eternal fates' abode!
Just like one foot-print on the desert sand
Is one frail human life. Grey leagues expand
In front, behind, around.
There is the foot-print,—and the endless waste,
And the cold stars interminably chaste
Far up, and never a sound.
65

V.

No lover ever kissed the eternal blue
Broad sky. No eyes of stars have e'er shone through
A golden star-wife's eyes.—
In lonely loveless silence through the waste
Trackless abysses must their footsteps haste.
Forlorn are all the skies.
If we set forth from this our planet's rim
And sailed the sky-sea to the farthest brim
We should not find one fair
Oasis-island thronged by human faces:—
Vacant and eyeless are the abysmal spaces:
No laugh thrills the blue air.
66

No woman's silvery laughter rings along
The far heights,—only the dull wind's bleak song:
No children's shouts are heard.
The gold stars have not found one single harp:—
They swim the purple seas like golden carp,
One dense and brainless herd.
Death reigns through all the heights and all the deep,
One lone interminable dreary sleep.
The stars have golden wings—
Yet oh how far more sweet one dear green glade
On earth, wherein beneath tall pine-trees' shade
A grey-eyed glad girl sings.
Just earth we know, and love,—and nothing more.
The far star-spaces are an unknown shore
Whereon the unknown tides beat.
Oh, let us love, and kiss, and hand in hand
Upon our poor small homely planet stand:—
A cottage-home is sweet.
67

Our planet, though it be not first nor third
Nor tenth in order, none the less hath heard
Divine love-laughter sound.
In its green vales the amorous myrtle grows,
And red carnations, and the sovereign rose:
Its nights are passion-crowned.
Here live we, here we die. The gods have bent
Above our planet's forests well content:
Here they have dwelt of old.
What gods dwell in the air? We know not these
We know the nymphs of our own woodland trees
And elves o' the purple wold.
O earth, thou art our own! The stars shine far
Above our heads: we know not what they are:
Great gold grand dreary things.
We love our earth because she is a bride
For ever near us, seated at our side;
She hath no hurtling wings!
68

She hath a sunburnt bosom good to kiss:
Sweet with the smell of corn and with the bliss
Of countless summer flowers.
We covet not a bride with breast more white;
We know her beauty waits us every night
In her deep-scented bowers.
69

VI.

The great dark sunders, and its curtains dread
Are as the curtains of a bridal bed.
What new love waits therein?
What lips the flower-god's very hand has fashioned?
What eyes like blue seas, fervid and impassioned?
What strange delights to win?
Ah! is the dark not lonely after all,
But full of voices like a festive hall
Where laughter rings around?
Full of glad feet that thread gay marriage-dances
And sweet with love's inexorable glances—
Crowded, and full of sound?
70

Are the great spirits we have dreamed of there?
Is the next world's sun brighter for the hair
Of Helen, and the grace
Of countless women whom our souls have missed,—
Who wander through the shades with lips unkissed
And light the lonely place?
Are women there from white strange Eastern halls
Wherethrough the night-wind's sombre footstep falls
But finds no sweethearts now?
Are all Death's sweethearts in that far-off land?
Myriads:—sweet eyes on eyes, soft hand on hand,
Angelic brow on brow?
September, 1882.
71

A SPIRIT

A spirit wandered through the earth, and found
No rest from pain:—
He longed to widen outward without bound
Or check or chain!
He longed to be as God,—with Godlike soul
To dare and do;
To touch some passionate and Godlike goal
Untouched and new.
He longed to bind around his brow the flowers
Of all sweet songs
And all the pleasures of soft moonlit hours,
And sunlit throngs
72

Of ardent dreams. One life was not enough:
More he must know.
Calm seas are sweet; but sweeter are the rough
Great tides that grow!
Blue waves are lovely; but the iron-grey
Tumultuous tides
That lash the granite of the deadly bay
And smite its sides,
These have a kinglier charm for kingly souls:
The plunging seas
When over them the North wind's chariot rolls
Delight all these.
And so all uncontent with sunlit lands
This spirit must seek
Rapture where tossing waves with grey salt hands
Search many a creek.
The laurel-crown that God upon white brow
For ever wears,
This he had envy of; and of the bow
Apollo bears.
73

Him nought but being God, or being part
Of God, would e'er
Content: for limitless was his wide heart,
Like chainless air.
And not one soul of woman could content
Nor prison him.
They held!—Then suddenly the walls were rent
And, free of limb,
He darted forth,—and o'er all history's bowers
Would linger long:
He touched fair Rosamond with lips like flowers
And flowerlike song.
And deep within the Scotch queen's ardent eyes
He gazed, and deep
Within the eyes of Helen; and his sighs
Smote Venus' sleep.
Yet he was not content:—is God content?
Can ever he
By whom all suns and clouds and storms are sent
And all blue sea
74

And all grey storm-struck waters, and all sweet
Triumphant air
Of summer when the breaths of roses meet
And laughter rare
Of tall white shining lilies rings around
The garden's hem;—
Can God who moulds and sends these things be bound
By bonds of them?
Is God who sways all far-off starry bowers
With one content?
Is his soul satiate with one planet's flowers
And tired and spent?
Nay! rather through wild maze of star on star
God wanders long:—
And so this spirit, fatigueless, wandered far,
Crowned with his song.
God twines his hand in the strange fiery hair
Of stars unseen
And robes him with unknown and virgin air:—
This spirit hath been
75

Along the unknown and awful road with God
Where planets wait,—
And he the sun's gold morning-path hath trod,
And through the gate
Of sunset hath he passed. Some singers long
To be inspired
By dead great poets, and to catch their song:
But he desired
To widen day by day and night by night
His own soul far
Beyond the reach of rays of previous light,
Be it sun or star.
Had others nobly sung? Then he would sing,
But not as they:
Not with another's,—with its own bright wing
Athwart the spray
The glimmering sea-bird glides: the English seas
Are still the same
As when, soft-tongued as the soft English breeze,
Our Shelley came,
76

And never hath the red rose dropped one tint
Of perfect bloom
For sorrow at death of Keats, or given one hint
Of added gloom.
No. New for singer new the morning shines
Down hill and vale,
And the red sunrise through the pillared pines
Flames an All-hail!
What was the past? Like God he would begin
Creation now,
And wind all leaves of love his heart might win
Round untouched brow;
And sweep into his stores all blossoms pale
And blossoms bright;
And sing as though he first of all cried “Hail,
Thou first morn's light!”
And sing as though the flowers of Eden shone
Before his gaze,
And Eve's white figure wandered through the wan
Soft twilight ways—
77

And sing as though four red lips never yet
Had fastened fast:—
For him the grass with dewy dawn was wet;
There was no past.
The golden future gleamed before his sight,
And woman there,
With pure eyes like the matchless morning light,
But far more fair,
Stood waiting,—and his being's task was still
To follow through
All lives her form, and mould her to his will
With passion true.
For he who knoweth woman knoweth God:
Who knoweth a rose
The inmost Holy of holies' floors hath trod
And found repose.
God in his heaven of heavens was restless till
He fashioned her,
And on her form put forth his utmost skill
And tenderest care.
78

But when he saw her stand alive and white,
His great heart leapt
With sudden joy: he marvelled at the sight,—
And then he wept.
For she was fairer than God's utmost dreams,
Though these be fair:
And still with the eternal magic gleams
Her soft thick hair:
And still her eyes have more than mortal power
All hearts to draw,
And still her lips are like a living flower,
Full of sweet awe.
In each new city of earth this spirit found
A life new-born:
With fillets of fresh flowers his head was crowned
At every morn.
Death he knew not of,—nor the thought of death:
For soft lips made
His heart eternal with their tender breath
And loving aid.
79

Each morning through the waves of being he
Could plunge anew
And bathe wide soul-limbs in the tameless sea,—
And round him grew
A host of recollections starry-eyed,
Like living things
Through leafage on a summer night descried
With mothlike wings.
So his life deepened, and became no more
A thing of earth,
But a tide rippling on some heavenly shore
With silvery mirth.
And he could widen into life divine
With strange delight:—
As when one leaves green larch and beech and pine
And lilies white
And flowers of all the valleys and the hills
And maiden-hair
And silvery tossing laughing reckless rills
And mountain air
80

And forests where the fairies dance in rings
And smooth soft dales
And trunks whereto the golden lichen clings
And daisied vales:
As when one leaves all these, and with divine
Deep joy past speech
Sees the long white unsearchable foam-line
Fringe the far beach,—
And, after, steering outward, hears the song
Of the sea-breeze
And thanks God for the absence of the throng
Of stifling trees!
Those close-branched choking trees and woods ashore:
Yes, all their flowers
Were never half so sweet as these dim hoar
Waste foam-bell showers!
The houseless plain receives us, and we sail
For ever on,
Till night at the first trembling kiss grows pale
Of morning wan.
81

Flower-scents to him were rapture, bringing dreams
No word could tell:—
Where for wild miles the gold furze-blossom gleams
And its rich smell
Fills all the air, he wandered, with delight
Supreme: a rose
By its mere scent could charm the summer night
To strange repose;
And the red honeysuckle 'mid its peers,
That wafted him
A scented lovely kiss, made sacred tears
Rise and o'erbrim.
And all the gods of every land shone real
Before his gaze;
Each nation's fairest dream and highest ideal
He crowned with lays.
White Venus lightly stepped our reeds between,
And Pan was there,
And all old goddesses, bright queen on queen,
Living and fair.
82

And for each soul,—yea, every living thing,—
Justice he sought.
Prometheus-like he stood before heaven's king
And feared not aught.
For every petal of each flower he claimed
Justice entire,
And for each pale heart stricken and ashamed,
Each bud, each briar.
He saw and said that till all souls are white
And all at peace
God's robes and hands are red and marred of might,—
Till all sighs cease.
For with creation God its king is one;
And the king weeps
At death of butterfly, and lapse of sun,
And war's rank heaps:
For this is greatness—not to miss the small,
Beholding great
Events and creatures,—but to hold them all,
One equal Fate.
83

So nothing can escape God's endless hand;
No red sea-flower,
Nor heart of man or woman, nor rent land,
Nor ravished bower.
August, 1882.
85

MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS

(1882)

87

SONNET I
TO THEE

As the slow weary life-hours stroll along
And I find nought of gladness, nought of rest,
And win small pleasure from white softest breast,
And smaller pleasure from the summer throng
Of flowers whose early scent was sweet and strong,—
I yearn the more to be again caressed
By thee, at whose voice once my weary quest
Was ended—dead at whose feet fell each wrong!
The longer that the past behind us grows,
The more we need each other. Life turns pale,
And withering petals cluster on each rose,
And through gold beech-leaves sounds the wind's wild wail,
And what of pain may be in front who knows?
Oh, stand thou stedfast by me. Never fail!
88

SONNET II
TO L. S. B.

One breath of passion surging into song
Hath far more worth than philosophic dreams.
Why waste thine instrument on rugged themes,
Or by the tuneless fountains tarry long?
When thou art just thine own self, thou art strong,
But weak when for thine own heart's sunny gleams
Over and round thee the cold moonlight beams.
To thine own self thou doest the deadliest wrong!
If thou wouldst have thy soul's clear song abide
Changeless and endless in the hearts of men,
Sing thou of love,—never hath love-song died!
Sing thou of passion,—and be deathless then!
Sing of the sea's soul,—be thy soul as wide:
Its chant shall echo back thy chant again.
89

SONNET III
CLEOPATRA'S NEEDLE

Ah! longest thou, grim obelisk beside
Our eddying muddy Thames, for days of yore
When by a sun-kissed smooth far other shore
Thou watchedst the dim brown-sailed boats collide,
Midmost the Nile's broad reptile-haunted tide,
And heardest the strange desert monsters roar?
What scenes thou hast marked! what galleys with gold oar
And silken perfumed sail thou hast descried!
And now thou art here, and round about thee flows
The breathless life of London. Thou art torn
From thine ancestral measureless repose:
Us thou regardest with Egyptian scorn:
What dateless dreams are in thine heart who knows?
Dreams of the princes and the gods of morn.
90

SONNET IV
TO VICTOR HUGO

Measureless spirit! In whom the winds unite
Their viewless strength,—for whom the stars and seas
Sing,—and the soft voice of the fragrant breeze
Of summer, and the snow-storms wild and white;
Through whom the human limitless delight
Of passion trembles:—at whose kingly knees
Love rests content, while evil quails and flees;
Thy brow with God's own golden dawn is bright.
All blood-stained terror, and pale sin, and crime,
Thou viewest with equal, yet most burning, eyes:—
Before thee open the blue folds of skies:—
Thou canst outsing the stormiest surge of time,—
Stand where the rocks and rolling thunders chime,—
Yet through thy song the prayers of children rise.
91

SONNET V
ON READING “LES CONTEMPLATIONS” OF VICTOR HUGO

First through the early ways of love made bright
With tenderest blossoms, holding his strong hand
I wandered. Airs of morning soft and bland
Played round us; through the greenwood's dense delight
Of tangled flowers and shrubs shone Venus white:—
The silver-fringed small wavelets kissed the land;
We mixed with many a laughing lover-band;
The world was fair to touch and fair to sight.
Then came a change. By many a river-steep
We passed: the blossoms less abundant grew.
Still the same gold stars watched above our sleep,
And the same high interminable blue.
At last before the poet who led and me
Following, a grey waste gleamed:—Death and the sea.
92

SONNET VI
VICTOR HUGO'S RETURN TO FRANCE IN 1870

Yes: the same meadows,—the horizon clear,—
The same tall poplars by the unchanged streams;
For just one moment the pale exile dreams
That sweet unchanged fair former France is here.
But what is this that seizes eye and ear?—
What is that far-off smoke,—those fiery gleams?
A sound of shouts,—a sound of women's screams,—
French soldiers, wild and blood-stained, fleeing in fear!
This was his welcome. As his eager glance
Shot forth, it met a mixed ill-omened throng,—
Blue tunics flying before the Uhlans' lance;
Red-trousered weary troops who limped along;
This was the payment given by Fate and France
For nineteen years of exile and of song.
93

SONNET VII
WORDSWORTH'S SONNETS ON CAPITAL PUNISHMENT

O one grey dead leaf in a poet's wreath!
Is it this the sunlit mountains taught to thee,
This? When the moon above the impurpled lea
Soared, did her soft lips chant to thee of death?
O gentlest of all bards who e'er drew breath,
What were the whispers of the hollow sea?
What were the hints of bird and flower and tree
And stormy upland,—and of pathless heath?
In this sole thing, O bard, thou hast been untrue
To thine own soul,—nor only unto this;
Untrue besides to Nature's kindly kiss
Upon thy lips,—faithless to mountains blue
And golden sunsets and the bright lakes' hue:
False to the whole world's higher sympathies.
94

SONNET VIII
LOUIS BONAPARTE

O one great stain upon the English race,—
That when the third Napoleon's warriors slew
Women and children (though at Waterloo
His uncle's men looked strong men in the face!)—
When Paris reeked with blood, and when the base
Came to the front, and exiled were the few
Heroic souls to love and freedom true—
That then this man at our blind hearts found grace.
That, when the soul through whom the century sings
Found nought of help or refuge but the sea,
And must for nineteen years an exile be,
Guarded by lone stars and the tempest's wings,
Our England's statesmen could so low descend
As to call Louis Bonaparte a friend!
95

SONNET IX
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

When quiet meadows shine beneath the sun
Of the grand twentieth century: when the race
Lifts up towards cloudless heaven a tearless face:
When the far hills we cannot climb are won,
Strange prospects seen, and deeds undreamed of done:
Look back,—look back,—ye dwellers in the land,
To us who at the century's strong gates stand
But pass them not—fast falling one by one!—
We sang the future, though the past loomed dread
Behind us: sang the morning though the night
Had not yet opened full-fledged wings for flight;
Born in the mid-strife of a century red,
We sang the advent of a century white:—
We sang the living,—knee-deep in the dead.
96

SONNET X
“IF EVER, ROUSED BY SOME INVADER'S TREAD”

If ever, roused by some invader's tread,
England awaketh from her centuries' sleep
And findeth with a heart-thrill strange and deep
That she must rise in earnest,—or fall dead;
If ever alien hands our harvests reap,
And our chalk roads are splashed with angry red,
And village houses riddled with fierce lead,—
While in the houses English women weep:—
If ever this be so, what chance have we?
Little: if our one friend who, ages long,
Has hemmed us in with walls of billows strong
Forsakes us,—lost through our own treachery.
Little: if we have hushed the warning song
Of pathless winds, and bridged the bridgeless sea.
97

SONNET XI
THE CITY OF THE DEAD

In early youth how far that City seems!—
When our friends die, they seem to pass away
Into some land where all the airs are grey,—
Some viewless region too remote for dreams
Even,—where never sun of daylight gleams:—
Our own steps loiter onward day by day;
O'er many a dark-blue lake and sunny bay
We sail; we kiss white hands on moonlit streams.
We gather flowers: the City of the dead
Is still remote. “Which is the fairest thing,”
We say—“a red mouth, or this rose of red?”
Along the May-bright lanes we laugh and sing.
We turn a sudden corner:—Lo! the dread
City before us,—in the sunsetting.
98

SONNET XII
ROSSETTI AND LONGFELLOW

O great dead poet who thine English lyre
With somewhat of the Italian charm didst sweep,
Is thy sweet song thus early lulled to sleep?
Hast thou too passed beyond our strong desire?—
But yesterday the wild world paused to weep
For Longfellow,—yet Spring new-clothed with fire
Is flushing as of old green bank and briar,
And through the perfumed woods the flowers' eyes peep.
Ye both are gone. Ye leave the Spring behind;
But, singers, is it summer where ye go?
Do there the eternal golden blossoms blow
That here just through one sunny May we find?
Is new strange fragrance wafted on the wind?
We ask, and doubt, and wonder,—but ye know.
April 12, 1882.
99

SONNET XIII
ENGLAND AND ITALY

Talk not to me of Italy!—Hast thou seen
The fern-draped vales of Devon? Hast thou felt
The sweetness of the morning through thee melt
Within the moist dense tangled woods that screen
Blue Derwentwater, stretching broad and green
Along the mountain-margins, belt on belt?
Hast thou through months of golden summer dwelt
Where white Penzance basks, sunlit and serene?—
Talk not to me of Italy!—In our clime
Wonders undreamed of I will show to thee:
Is not this black-tressed pine-forest sublime?
Inhale (could Southern fragrance daintier be?)
This slumbrous scent of meadow-sweet and thyme
Mixed with the scent that comes up from the sea.
100

SONNET XIV
ART

Art is a jealous mistress. Who will hold
My lady in his arms, must serve her long:
Yet must he follow her with footstep strong,
And woo her fickle heart with pleading bold.
If ever in fair arms he would enfold
The goddess, he must quit the noisy throng
And follow her the silent hills among,—
Marking far off her gleaming locks of gold.
A time shall come when by some lonely lake,
Some mountain-tarn, she shall look round at him:
And all the distant view shall seem to swim
In passionate tears as he doth fully take
My lady to his breast, and fully slake
Years of forlorn desire and yearning grim.
101

SONNET XV
THE SONG-BRIDE

God hath his sea-waves, and his flowers and trees:
Think you that in God's eyes one single rose
Less beautiful and pure of petal blows
Because no mortal the bright blossom sees?
The haunt of every violet God's heart knows:
And all the golden gorse upon the leas
That loads with lavish scent the lingering breeze
For God in its rich glory of colour glows.
God hears all Nature singing unto him:—
And so the poet inwardly is 'ware
Of his own song's divine blue summer air,—
Yea, though the world of man should wax quite dim,
Still would that summer of his song be fair
And fill the cup of rapture to the brim.
102

SONNET XVI
THE SPEECH OF THE DEAD MAN

Ah! was it worth while?—Yes, I have renown.
Through the white folds of this embracing shroud
I hear them crying my old name aloud
On earth: they bring my silent corpse a crown.
But ah, the fruitless gift! Could I bend down
Just once again, though even in humble bower,
And gather once again love's humblest flower—
Could I gaze deep into soft eyes of brown—
Could I feel once again the gracious hand
Of woman,—waiting as the sweet night grows
One with the passionate heart of every rose
In every garden of the moonlit land,—
'Twould be worth more than mightiest labours reap,
Crowned or uncrowned, that end in unkissed sleep.
103

SONNET XVII
THE WORLD'S MODEL

Not till thine eyes shine, are the sea-waves blue:
Not till the beauty of thy breast was born,
Did white foam put white lily-cups to scorn:
No stars were golden till thy hair's bright hue
Flashed on the planet's morning. Over and through
The woodlands sighed no tender summer breeze
Till thy voice gave its key-note melodies
To every leaf, to every wind that blew.
Never an ash-tree bent with supple charm
Till thou didst teach the boughs and stem their skill
By curve of gracious body or throat or arm:—
Till thou didst sing, the bird-choirs all were mute:
Thy laughter gave its music to the rill;
And thy lips reddened the yet pallid fruit.
104

SONNET XVIII
THE FIRST KISS

Lo! the first kiss of Eve when the first night
Fell over Paradise,—the blue profound
Far heaven of darkness slowly closing round
And silent star-ships steering into sight.
The world is shadowed, but Eve's eyes are bright
And sunshine in her golden locks is bound:—
First they had feared the unheard-of dark,—but found
The passionate darkness sweeter than the light.
Yes: the first kiss. And since that far-off hour
Lips tender and innumerable have met;
And lips shall meet sweeter than any yet;
But in that star-watched and God-hallowed bower
Man's hand first gathered love, the dark night's flower,
And when the sun rose, dropped it with regret.
105

SONNET XIX
THE LAST KISS

Yes: the last kiss. For there shall come a last.—
When the whole race has dwindled, and the air
No longer serves us,—dense or over-rare;
When human history hath an endless past,
But not one future day: when tired winds cast
About for flowers, but find no flowers to wear:
When the last rose on the sparse hedge is fair:
When the whole living world's flag flies half-mast:—
Then there shall come a last kiss.—Shall not it,
Full of a desperate sweetness unforeseen,
Something of all past history's raptures win,—
And shall the woman's wild eyes not be lit
With stranger light than of the setting sun?
Will all life die not, when that kiss is done?
106

SONNET XX
MY ISLAND

“O one sweet island in my soul's waste sea!” —Philip Bourke Marston.

Thou art my island in some Southern sea!
Brood over me with long green tender hair
And kiss me with strange blossoms, and with air
Of speechless and undreamed-of purity.
O island, give thy magic calm to me:
Embrace me with thy night, when thou dost wear
The jewels of all the skies,—and with thy fair
Blue lustrous morning: clasp me laughingly.
Within thine island-arms no death abides,
Nor sin, nor any horror. Lift me and save
With thine unsearchable and viewless bloom.
Sing to me with thy coral-kissing tides:
Flow round my body with thine amorous wave:
And, when sweet life is over, be my tomb!
107

SONNET XXI
OUR LOVE-LEGACY

O lovers of the future, unto you
I give the wreath my love took joy to wear—
In summer woven, when the golden air
Kissed from the meadow-sweet its pearls of dew.
I give the passion of the wide sea's blue
And the star-blossoms that the black meads bear
To you;—and all we found so very fair,—
The honeysuckle's scent, the tulip's hue.
Love ye the better that we leave you this,
Our passion-legacy:—the lofty night,
The morning's rapture and the storm-wind's bliss;
Aye, more, love's strange immeasurable delight.
Be yours—as ours—the memory of a kiss
To tarry with you till pale time takes flight.
108

SONNET XXII
“THOU ART THE SAME”

I.

Death! Still thou art the same. We know thee well,
And yet we know thee not.—The son to thee
Gives up his grey-haired mother, and the sea
Yields up its lords; the green stalk yields its bell.
The first-born rose at night's first footstep fell,
And last night's deaths solved not the mystery:—
We know not what behind the veil may be—
Limitless heaven, or unimagined hell!
Thou art not changed. While love and passion veer
Like storm-beat ships, and all the ways of man
Waver, thou dost one changeless straight course steer:
Tight on the tiller are thy fingers wan:
Thy lips have never lost that mocking sneer
With which their cruel curséd work began.
109

SONNET XXIII
“THOU ART THE SAME”

II.

Thou hast not changed since far-off Rachel wept
For her first-born. A million mothers more
Have wailed as through their hearts thine arrow tore
And their hearts' darlings on a sudden slept.
O'er countless battle-fields thy foot has leapt,
Splashing exhilarate 'mid the dull red gore:—
Thine ears have bent to hear their hollow roar,
When over choking ships thy waves' lips crept.
Thou art the same. And, long ere history spoke,—
Ages ere e'en papyrus-leaves preserved
The deeds of man,—thou wast as cruel; thou
Watching the ruin wrought by thy sword-stroke
In some dim heart and tawny body curved
Over her dead in lands the sea holds now.
110

SONNET XXIV
THE MIRAGE-RIVER

Between us after loving faithful years
An ever-widening river seemed to spread;
The grass on either side was dank and dead;
We seemed too far apart even for tears.
Smaller to each, each other's figure grew
And fainter,—till against the sunset red
Gleamed only an expanse of steely blue:—
Where joy had been, waste water stretched instead.
But on a sudden lo! a thrush sang out.—
Then we took heart and towards each other came
And lo! the river was a mirage. Flame
Of deep green grass and flowers gleamed all about:
Where ripples desolate had plashed and rolled,
Our hands were powdered with the lilies' gold.
111

SONNET XXV
FIRST LOVE

O first love,—tender holy blind pure phase!—
For then it seemeth to the soul that one
And but one woman liveth,—that the sun
Finds but one blossom worthy of his gaze.
Is it a snowdrop?—Then by green hedge-ways
We think no gleaming rose-bush ever grew!
White is our flower,—so never harebells blue
The sun loved, nor the rich gorse' golden blaze!
Ah!—Some day blind eyes open and we see
On every side far fairer than the old
New blossoms springing,—marvelling we behold
Petunia, cowslip, heath, anemone:—
As from our heart a sudden veil is rolled,—
We revel in Woman's sweet diversity.
112

SONNET XXVI
NEW LANDS, NEW POETS

New lands will bring new poets. By the streams
Of far Australia poets will be heard,
Choosing their similes from strange-fledged bird,—
Writing love-sonnets where blue water gleams
By banks of flowers more gorgeous than our dreams!—
In South America, or Mexico,
Or where the Indian feathery palm-fronds grow,
Song will awake,—and search out untried themes.
New Beatrices in those far-off lands
Shall thrill new Dantes into song as large:
When songless is our old grey ocean's marge,
Sonnets shall watch the moon from far-off sands;
And song shall find a new diviner bower
When the new hemisphere breaks into flower!
113

SONNET XXVII
LOST RICHES

O riches of all the ages we have missed!
Dark eyes, dark tresses, in old Eastern lands,—
Wonderful thrilling of electric hands,—
Lips fairer than all flowers, alas! unkissed.
Blue tender veins on Cleopatra's wrist,—
Eyes gazing over thirsty Indian sands,—
Eyes watching wild waves break on Northern strands
Pine-shadowed;—oh, the long heart-piercing list!
And whom of all that long list have we seen?
Poets, who have the eternal heart of Time
Mixed with your own in magnitude sublime,
Ye have kissed the lips it may be of one queen
Of love and song, and crowned her in your rhyme,—
One!—yet red lips are numberless, I ween!
114

SONNET XXVIII
EVEN IN HELL

In what strange places have our spirits met!—
Sometimes upon the green downs high and bare;
Sometimes amid the tossed sea's stormy air;
Sometimes in gladness; often in regret.
Only one thing has happened never yet,—
That I should call, and thou shouldst not be there!
Desire,—and find no answer to my prayer;—
I owe thy faithfulness a ceaseless debt.
Such woes we have conquered, and such barriers scaled,
And after such defeats have risen upright,
That, if hell's fiery storm-bolts round me hailed,
I should expect thee to divide that night
And, vainly by the lurid ghosts assailed,
To bring me with thyself the old delight.
115

SONNETS

(1876, 1877)

117

I.
“OUT OF PLACE” AND “IN PLACE”

Now I have seen thee, and I hereby swear
That all those sonnets never were “in place”
Except when smiling upward towards thy face
Or nestling, starlike, in thy raven hair.
Thine actual presence has but added grace
And charm to the Ideal: how could it e'er
Do aught but charm and help? Could it impair
Thought's image, sought by me in lengthened chase?
Thy face and voice have been with me. They stayed
When thy slight girlish figure in the shade
Of night was hidden, and I was left alone:
Yet not so! for the memory is so clear
That I can almost see thee standing here
And listen, as I listened, for each tone.
118

II.
TO “YOU”

I name thee not. Thou art too sweet to name.—
In heaven thou shalt be music or a flower,
A portion of God's bright sky, or a flame,
Or singing-bird in some celestial bower.
I seal thee mine by true love's kingly power,
Aye, mine the more for this world's empty blame:
I only love thee more, sweet hour by hour,
Though loveless voices cry, “Such love is shame!”
We will caress in roses,—and when night
Is on the earth our passion shall be one
With the vast passion of the moon and stars.
When morning puts the starry hosts to flight
Our lips shall meet, in presence of the sun:
Yea, in earth's prison, we kiss between the bars.
119

III.
PAIN'S PURPOSE

They are not good, the sorrow and the pain,
Save only as leaders unto higher things:
When agony, with black or blood-red wings,
Flaps round our brows it is that we may gain
Some higher gift that God's stern servant brings.
The thorn-crown means that some day we shall reign
Crowned not with thorns but flowers,—as queens and kings
Able the imperial sceptre to retain.
Through mortal pain we pass towards being painless:
Yea, towards the kingly life that God lives; stainless,
Purged of desire, and perfect in its scope.
The daily agony whose hot darts pierce
With flight unintermittent, swift and fierce,
Is wreathed with this unintermittent hope.
120

IV.
THE ONE STAR

There are sad places where no starbeam shines,
Waste desolate abysses of the dark,
Where no glad light the wandering soul may mark,—
Whereover the black waves in stormy lines
Pour ceaselessly:—spots where no angel's foot
Has trodden; lurid as deep deadly mines:
Hell-pits wherein the lingering captive pines;
Devoid of buds and flowers and gracious fruit.
What star can light them, or what step traverse
These regions branded with a mystic curse?
What help can reach the prisoners therein bound,—
Cold pulses there shall throb at what glad sound?
What flame, what fire, can comfort there impart?
Only the sweet fire of a woman's heart.
121

V.
“I SEE FOR THEE”

I see for thee, where thou canst never see.
I fight for thee, where thou canst never fight.
I bear for thee a radiant torch of light
From Art's pure temple, burning high and free.
Blossoms I gather too from hill and lea,
Some sad, all tender, some divinely bright:
I clothe thee with a portion of love's might;
Lo! in my arms, when tired I carry thee.
And all I ask is that thou wilt be glad
And pure and sweet and true-souled; as thou art:
True to the intuition of thine heart,
And happy—'tis enough that one be sad!
Be thyself simply; and, love, lady, friend,
Trust me,—oh, trust me to the very end!
122

VI.
A RED SEA-WEED (A NEW YEAR'S GIFT)

A gracious present! for it carries all
The past wrapped fondly in its blood-red folds.
Utterly deep significance it holds:
Across the silent years it seems to call.
It tells of countless bitter tears let fall
And of bright early happiness besides:
It speaks too of the buoyant summer tides,
And wintry waves that stormed the grey sea-wall.
I take it as a token from the graves
Of thy sad past. Thou givest it, and lo!
This blood-red frond that bloomed amid sea-caves
Hath power thy present heart of love to show:
This weed that still preserves the scent of waves
Which broke at Whitby twenty years ago!
123

VII.
ANOTHER HILL

Another hill surmounted hand in hand
We pass towards other suns and other days:
Before us, glittering through the noon-tide haze,
Gleam the far portals of another land.
The summits whereon you and I must stand,
Snow-clad, enrapture now our upward gaze;
We quit the valleys and the rose-hung ways,
And follow out Love's uttermost command.
Ah sweet! when you and I alone succeed
With hearts that quiver and with feet that bleed
In reaching that strange mountain-summit there,
Shall we not smile—as round our close-linked hearts
The unsullied wind, straight from the sunrise, darts!
Shall we not laugh—amid that sinless air!
124

VIII.
“MORE, MORE, HAD I THE POWER’

More, more, had I the power, my soul would do.—
Am I content,—till all thy soul is bright
With God's own passionate unearthly light,
And on thy forehead all God's heaven of blue
Set like a jewel? Lo! I would renew
Thy soul, long-lost amid the pathless night,—
Be thine eternal champion in the fight,—
Bring thee from false ends towards love's purpose true.
O love, thou knowest me not! My love hath lightened
From end to end of heaven, and heaven hath brightened;
It is a tender gift:—it is a sword
To cut all chains and armlets that surround thee.
Astray thou wast,—but lo! thy love hath found thee.
Rise. Thou art free to meet thy rightful lord.
125

SPIRITUAL PASSION: TWO SONNETS

I.

[I feel towards God just as a woman might]

I feel towards God just as a woman might
Who hears her lord praised by the adoring crowd:—
Who hears them hymn his strength with pæan loud—
His glory in thought or speech, his force in fight.
She knows him better. Through the silent night
She has watched his face beneath keen sorrow bowed;
Him she has cherished with embraces white;
She has kissed the lips that seem to men so proud
She cannot fear: she loves. She can but smile
That men should dread like some disastrous wand
His sceptre wielded o'er the people, while
She knows the sea-deep love that lies beyond.
She trusts her lord without one thought of guile,
Knowing her union holier and more fond.
126

II.

[Or, as a man might love some haughty queen]

Or, as a man might love some haughty queen
I love God. How the lover might rejoice
At accents he finds silvery of that voice
Which makes the base slaves tremble, and the mean!
The lover faces her with look serene,
Who knows the grey eyes and the clinging breast
By him in sweet proximity possest
Are all too sweet for wrath to intervene.
O sweet sweet gleaming body of a God!
No wrath there is in thee: the lover trod
Unchidden that queen's palace-chamber through—
And so I likewise fearlessly embrace
Thy form, and look thy glory in the face;
Thine inmost woman-heart is gentle too.
January, 1877.
127

THE BRIDEGROOM OF VENUS

Not with the autumnal leaves so red and golden
Nor with the autumnal light
Crowned art thou, Venus, when strong suns embolden
Thy coming yet more bright.
Thou art not springlike, nor of mortal seeming,
Nor must thy bridegroom wear
The buds of April, tender, soft and gleaming,
Within gold spring-blown hair.
Thou art as summer. When thy June around thee
Burns splendid through the blue
We know that then the fervent year has found thee
Robed in thy raiment new.
128

And then thy bridegroom, weary of the daughters
Of earth though sweet they be,
Yearneth for thy gold locks beside the waters
Of thine own amorous sea.
And he must mix his soul with summer glory,—
Not craving for cool shades,
Or autumn hues, brown, radiant, gold and gory,
Or springlike colonnades.
Thy mouth is summer: and thy bridegroom knowing
The flower so strange and fair
Must kiss the amorous gorgeous petals glowing
Against the torrid air.
Not ever again can common loves content him:
This is his sad great doom!
Now that thine arrow of golden love hath rent him,
Point-poisoned from thy bloom.
But evermore, until his spirit find thee,
He wanders and must seek,
Weary and mad till love again may bind thee:
Weary and pale and weak.
129

Thou liftest up for him thy soft long lashes
And gazest in his eyes
And o'er him the wild sense of summer dashes
And light of summer skies.
Thou holdest him in arms that know no limit
To pleasure of embrace:—
With mouth that hath nor age nor death to dim it
And deathless queenlike face
Thou liftest him to regions past man's dreaming
And makest him sublime;
Inspiring all the swift thoughts that whirl streaming
Along the tides of rhyme.
Equal with thee in majesty of yearning
Must he, thy bridegroom, be;
Loves lesser than thine awful one love spurning
Like the contemptuous sea.
This is the doom of him who loving summer
Knew not the summer's charm,
But thought to hold her like a frail new-comer
By force of mortal arm.
130

Not knowing that the sweet June's very favour
Is death to him who breathes
The intoxicating sweet month's flower-fed savour,
Or dallies with its wreaths.
For Venus in the sweet air spreads her pinions
Whose plumage sways and flows,
And flowers she hath for ministers and minions,
A slave in every rose:
So that her breath enchanting and entrancing
Saddens and hurts and slays;
Man cannot bear her shield of sunlight glancing
Across the bright-helmed days.
Autumn we bear; but not the summer's brightness
And not the summer's bloom.
Sorrow we bear; but not love's perfect whiteness
And tender close perfume.
So, truly, when the queen of all love's splendour,
Venus, takes in her arms,
More than all earthly tenderest women tender,
A mortal spirit and charms
131

And chains him, he must reach through strength of passion
And kingly force of will,
Loving in limitless immortal fashion,
Heaven's heights,—or love must kill.
But, whether slain or unslain, let love find us,
And with her sunlike hair
Enchant and ravish and pervade and bind us,—
For love alone is fair.
May, 1881.
132

THE DEATH OF LONDON

When the great city sleeps amid the reeds,—
Yea, when the silent far-off centuries bring
Peace on their wing,—
When to wild toil the supreme rest succeeds,—
When linnets sing
Where now through Blackfriars Bridge the brown stream speeds,—
When Westminster is deep in water-weeds,—
Death shall be lord and king.
The Thames comes circling from wild days afar;
Once matted rushes filled the water-way
Where grand and grey
The tall-towered Abbey meets the morning-star;
From day to day
The awful weary ceaseless town has grown,—
The skies have heard its multitudinous moan,—
Centuries have fled away.
133

Centuries have seen the sorrow of the town:
O'er the grey Abbey close beside the stream
Moonrays that gleam
And fiery suns of summer have flung down
Through deed and dream
Their love and pity;—and the water brown
Has surged around the bridges as they frown
Over the waves with heavy arch and beam.
What cries of woe the silent skies have heard!
Shrieks not of bird
But of lone desolate pale human thing,
With fluttered wing
Seeking the peace the river's dark waves bring.
What secrets strange and deep
In the grim tideway sleep:
And yet in June how the blue ripples sing!
What awful speechless pain of woman and man,
Since the great stream began
To eddy around the roadways of a town,
Its dark waves drown!
134

What tides of strife have coursed along the streets!
Yet still to-day the city's live heart beats;
And still within its leaf-embosomed squares
The gold laburnum kisses the spring airs.
O London, thou most terrible of cities!
What was primeval Babylon to thee?
Or Carthage, or old Rome, or Nineveh?
Thee the red moon that riseth o'er thee pities,—
Yea, the sun weeps for thee:
The Thames is but the river of thy tears
Seeking through wooden arch and granite piers
The sea.
Paris,—ah! Paris. White and fair she sits,
Crowned and a queen.
Through her bright fairy streets the light air flits
Soft and serene.
Her streets have foamed with blood;—and yet most fair
Like a sweet tourney-queen she sitteth there,
And all her pain seems vanished like the pain
Of dead flowers that no June brings here again.
135

Paris has seen Napoleon,—and has heard
The tread of conquerors—twice: but our grim town
Unconquered ever wears its own grim crown,
And hearkens ever to its river's word.
Its grey and sunless springs
Have witnessed wilder things
Than e'en the springs of Paris,—though they be
Blood-bright and sun-illumed alternately.
Ah! the fair eyes that in the city's deep
Have sunk to sleep:
Ah! the strong hearts that underneath the light
So weird and white
Of that same moon have yielded to despair:
The golden hair
On which the London gaslight has shone down,—
The soft lips slain by horrors of the town!
Through century after century the same cry
Still storms the sky:
Men still are born; and passion's rose is born
And lives one morn;—
136

But still the pitiless brown river leaps
Through arch and pier,
And still the moonlight on the water sleeps,
So silver-clear!
Wars we have had: ah! many a stirring day.
How in that grey
Cold spring the Guards' battalions marched away
To the Eastern plains!
Little the skies and stars and clouds can care;
Still the same river singeth in our ear
Through suns and rains
Its one same endless soulless note and clear.
And so it shall be to the very end;
Till all towers fall:
Till the high stones of Westminster descend;
Till night clothes all:
Till in the peace that knows not change nor waking
The city rests, a ruin: till moonlight making
The ripples silver,—sunset and day-breaking,—
See nought but sand and weeds, or perhaps a moss-grown wall.
137

It shall be better then: all shall be peace
Again the reeds shall fill
The quiet stream; all human sounds shall cease:
All shall be sweet and still.
The thrush again shall trill
Forth tender love-notes to his listening mate
Amid tall trees where once was pomp and state:
Grass shall deck Holborn Hill.
Oh how the lark shall soar above green meadows
Where once lost women strolled!
Across the Strand shall stretch great elm-trees' shadows!
Bright buttercups of gold
Shall fill the silent deserts of the squares,
And birch and hazel and oak
Shall glisten under fogless summer airs
Where men's hearts sank, and women's spirits broke.
March, 1882.
 

War was declared against Russia on March 28, 1854.

138

GOD AND THE SUN

The sun has strength to fill the far untrodden places
With flowers, and force to fold in infinite embraces
Through all the centuries long
Mead after mead, and hill on hill, and valley on valley:
Can ye forbid his fiery love-shafts forth to sally?
Can one monopolise the solar song?
Can one flower quite usurp the bounty of Apollo?
The garden of roses first: but then the green deep hollow
His rays with violets fill.
He kisses the bright sea whose whole face gleams to meet him:
Then, next, the lordly mounts with sheeny spears entreat him;
And next he kisses the brown moorland rill.
139

The sun is like to God,—of infinite compassion
And full of awful might of universal passion
And full of force supreme.
The pale star loves but one. The sun loves where he listeth:
Yea whatsoever sweet and fragrant thing existeth,—
In far green valley or by fair blue stream.
The pale star loves but one. The strong fierce fiery solar
Sublime bright endless rays from southern unto polar
Strange regions dart their flame.
What flower of all the flowers within the world resisteth
Or deeplier in the grass its pliant soft stem twisteth,
Sad at his advent? Unto each he came.
Godlike and full of God, the amazing sun hath crowned us
And poured his ceaseless flame of golden bounty round us—
Resistless, endless, great.
Hath yonder sweet and fair soft lily of the valley
Strength into one to bind his red spears when they sally
Forth through the awestruck morn's columnar gate?
140

The armies of the sun march forth in endless legions
And flowers they find and win from infinite far regions
And lead in triumph home.
Not one blue hyacinth the great sun into glory
Of azure tints doth kiss, but each,—and all the hoary
Wild wind-spread masses of the wandering foam.
The cold moon loveth little. But can ye bind Apollo,—
Unto the fiery god prescribe what path to follow?
Haply he tires to-day
Of English chill-lipped loves, and seeks in southern places
New flower-lips sweet to kiss and new soft flower-embraces;
Who hath the power the sun-god's course to stay?
Chain ye your stars and moons. The sun not God's hand chaineth.
The sun hath will like God and every chain disdaineth
And all your ropes and bars.
As is God than the sun, so is the sun supremer
In fiery might of deed than every planet-dreamer,—
Than all your thin-lipped hosts of moons and stars.
141

What hand can touch the sun? What power lay down a limit
To his own fiery force, or reach his flame to dim it
Or hinder on its way
The cataract of his rays that pours in endless torrent
Down airy void vast steeps, a burning golden current,—
Who shall the sun's impassioned will gainsay?
Before the earth was born the great sun loved the flowers
On other hills than these,—in other vales than ours:
And, when the earth is dead,
The sun will still illume his pathway wintry and vernal
And pour forth still the same vast loving light eternal
And still lift Godward his gold fearless head.
God and the sun.—If none were left but these two only
Still would they each pursue their silent pathway lonely;
The sun would, Godlike, shine,
And God would, sunlike, still rule o'er the empty spaces
Though never more his eyes met answering human faces
Nor, more, his nostrils smelt the rose or pine.
142

These two, and these alone, have power of life undying
Within them, fiery sun to fiery God replying;
These: and these two are one.
Love is the spirit that pours its fountains fierce and deathless
Through the vast solar flame. Though all things else lay breathless,
Still would these two abide: God and the sun.
April, 1883.
143

MY SEA-BIRDS

I would have led the way from hill to wooded hollow
And shown to these the paths the larks and linnets follow
And where the violets sleep.
I would have led the way up mountain roads and valleys
And through the yellow-green primrose-embroidered alleys,
And led them by the keen-breathed white-waved deep.
I would have loved them well,—with tender love immortal.
What canst thou do for these? Canst thou pass through the portal
Wherethrough the singers throng?
Canst thou upon thy loves bestow the wide sea's blessing
And the gold morning's kiss, impassioned and caressing,
And all thy soul's kiss in an endless song?
144

These are sea-birds of mine. And thou dost seize and bind them!
With dark-green haze of woods thou bafflest and dost blind them,
My panting white sea-birds!—
This is a deadly wrong. Their wings look strange and homeless
Amid the billowing woods wind-stricken and yet so foamless;
The leaves hide from them the wind's lips and words.
O robber-hand,—and ye who heed the robber's calling!
Lo! over the wide sea the purple dusk is falling:
The stars shine one by one.
Amid this tangled maze of green leaves will ye linger?
Nay, spread white wings and join your lover and your singer
Long ere the morning's blue waves kiss the sun!
March, 1883.
145

THREE SONNETS

147

I.
ON THE PROPOSED CHANNEL TUNNEL

O England! England! whose bright stormy breast
Hath met the kiss of sunlight and of sea
For ages; round whose white sheer cliff-sides flee
Winds only and sea-birds: why wilt thou divest
Thine own self of thine armour? Rather rest
In thine own water-walled security;—
Let tempests and the waves conspire with thee;
Leave thou thine eaglets in their pathless nest.
Keen brains are plotting,—wild foes lurk around:
Through tunnelled glooms how vast an host might pour.
Oh! never let the English heart be found
Who, hearkening to the billows' friendly roar,
Will say—though love is in their very sound—
“Sea, thou hast been our shield. Be so no more.”
March 30, 1882.
148

II.
WRITTEN AFTER SEEING MADAME SARAH BERNHARDT, AS DOÑA SOL IN VICTOR HUGO'S “HERNANI”

I have not lived in vain, for I have heard
The voice of Doña Sol: the voice that brings
Tears to the heart and eyes, and giveth wings
Immortal and divine to every word.
O strange voice, fluting now like some soft bird,
Now full of resonant fieriest wrath that stings
And pierces, dagger-like,—how each note rings
In the soul's very depths, supremely stirred!
It is thy glory that thou hast the power
Even on Hugo's greatness to bestow
An added greatness, and from hour to hour
To hold us so completely rapt that, lo!
If sunrise round us brake in golden shower,
Or death came, we should neither care nor know.
June 8, 1882.
149

III.
LEON GAMBETTA

This is his title of honour. On the day
When, dealing out across the circling snows
Their countless fierce-tongued cannons' iron blows,
The German hordes around his city lay;
When ravaged armies knew not whom to obey,
And half the Imperial Guard in red repose
Slept in the meadows, and no man arose
With any voice save only of dismay:
Then he stood up, and with clear scornful glance
Defied the intruder. Now he lieth dead,
Smitten by keener than the German lance:
Yet by our sons' sons shall it not be said,
“This man alone, when all men's hopes had fled,
Despaired not of the Republic, or of France”?
Jan. 4, 1883.
150

TO A YOUNG AMERICAN LADY

We met upon the pier and parted,
That August evening fair:
I pass the same spot, weary-hearted;
You are not there!
The continent will soon receive you;
Paris will hold you fast
And lure your love, and never leave you
One vision of the past:
And Switzerland with snowy mountains
Will rise upon your sight,
And by the Rhone's green swift-foot fountains
You will forget that night.
151

We might have done so much together,
If Fate had kinder been!
Paced summer woods in still blue weather,
My grey-eyed stranger-queen!
I English and an English singer,
You from America,
If time had had the heart to linger,
Had had so much to say!
But lo! the chance was missed. I never
Asked even of your name,
And now the eternal time-waves sever,
And you I may not claim.
But take this song, and let my yearning
Across far skies and seas
Fly winged, and reach you slowly turning
Through moonlit orange-trees.
And let me say how through the flying
Swift years that are to be
I still shall bear in mind that dying
Gold sun across the sea.
152

That sun we saw, and star that lightened
Above the calm blue deep:—
New dawns have flamed, new sunsets brightened,—
But still you haunt my sleep.
You come in dreams, and will come ever
While wind and sun and sea
Are still the same. I know that never
Your image quite will flee.
Just twenty minutes' talk,—then parted!
So life and love are spent:
But I am always heavy-hearted;
And are you quite content?
Aug. 9, 1882.
153

SONNET TO PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON

O thou who seeing not with thy mortal eyes
Yet hast the sacred spirit of sight to see
The soul of beauty in Nature more than we;
Yea, thou who see'st indeed the sunset skies
And all the blue wild billows as they rise
And summer sweetness of each bower and tree,—
Who see'st the pink glad thyme-tuft kiss the bee,
The silver wing that o'er the grey wave flies:
We hail thee, singer who hast sight indeed
If to see Beauty and Truth and Love be sight;
For whom the soul of the white rose is white,
And fiery-red the fierce-souled red sea-weed;
We hail thee,—thee whom all things love and heed,
Pouring through thee their music and their might.
March 7, 1882.
154

WRITTEN ON A WARM DAY IN DECEMBER

I

Round and round the weary land
Run the signs of Venus' hand
Most fair:
Blue the gentle skies, and bland
The air!

II

Surely in the mossy nooks
There are violets, and the brooks
Are edged
By soft petals,—and the rooks
Are fledged!
155

III

Surely roses soon will blow,
For the starry bloom of snow
This year
Not a meadow seems to know
Nor fear!

IV

Surely Love will soon arise
With the summer in his eyes,
And dreams
Of the tender moonlit skies
And streams!

V

In the winter when the cold
Starves the sheep within the fold,—
Nor shines
The hair of tawny gold
Love twines;
156

VI

Then dreary are the days,—
But the meadows and blue bays
This year
Mark the summer sound of lays
Most clear!

VII

For the mellow skies are bright,
And the plumage of the white
Snow-storm
Scatters not the clouds so light
And warm.

VIII

And the nights are still as fair
As in June, when all the air
Was gay,
And when beauty shone too rare
For day!
December, 1881.
157

A SINGER'S EPITAPH

“Nay, think not evil of him; he is dead:
His heart was white, if warring hands were red:
He rests in peace: forgive him”—so God said.
“He fought a battle that ye cannot see,
And sought with terrible great passion Me:
His work is over; let the singer be.
“He fiercely strove for the superb embrace
I grant my chosen,—met Me face to face,
Standing like Moses in an awful place.
“He sought the kiss of Deity,—and now
It rests for ever on the dead calm brow:
He lived in Me,—ye understand not how.
158

“His soul was one with all the stars and seas
And with my vast inspiring spirit in these;
He heard the messages of flowers and trees.
“He worshipped Beauty with a love divine,
Pure at the root and passionate like mine;
Red roses for his wreath with white combine.
“Red roses,—for his heart was ever red
With weary sweet swift-dropping life-blood shed
For man and woman; twist them round his head.
“White roses,—for his heart was pure within,
And some was sorrow that ye counted sin;
He sought what most have little zeal to win.
“He sought with vast and ultimate desire
His soul to mingle with my Godhead's fire,
And, lifted once, to struggle ever higher.
“His sins were many: but the love that trod
That awful upward road towards me, me God,
Hath cleansed his sin: he ever walked thorn-shod.
159

“Not ever for one moment of one day
Was suffering's bitter harrowing goad away:
With him, to love and battle was to pray.
“They are not what ye think; these poets shed
Their blood for man, and, ere ye know, are dead:
Lo! I can love and honour”—so God said.
June, 1881.
160

QUEEN BEAUTY

I

Queen Beauty far beyond the battle,
Amid those hills divine,
Far from the muskets' weary rattle,
In groves of odorous pine
Or soft green fields where russet cattle
With the deep grass combine,
Reposes:—and her tresses deep
Are scattered o'er her limbs asleep.

II

There Beauty rests,—and will surrender
If thou wilt seek her there.
Then she will clothe thee with gold splendour
Of outpoured fragrant hair,
And cleave to thee with lips most tender,
And all the summer air
Shall fold thee round about with dim
Robe swathing every weary limb.
161

III

Is this not better than the shaking
Of all the cornfields red
Beneath the tramp of cannon waking
Wild echoes with wheeled tread?
Is this not fairer than the breaking
Of dawn o'er countless dead?
Is her hair softer than the hue
Of dead men's locks at Waterloo?

IV

Lo! this for each soul waits,—the pleasure
Of love when battle ends:
Love's limitless immortal treasure
That Beauty's hand extends,
And soft delight that knows no measure
But deepens on and blends
With the sea-surges whence she came,—
A woman-heart, and goddess-flame.
December, 1881.
162

LIFE AND DEATH

I

The roses all are dead: the wintry winds are blowing
Along the shivering streets and o'er the sighing field.
Barren is every bed where once bright flowers were glowing:
No more the hedgerows green their fragrant clusters yield.

II

And so it is with life. The days are growing greyer:
The old loves depart and wither roselike, one by one;
Nought can escape the spear of Time the blossom-slayer;
Something of glory fades at every set of sun.
163

III

The hills shine still the same; the purple-robed dim mountains
Are joyous as of old: but man from day to day
Ages. The silver sea with undiminished fountains
Sparkles: but some hope dies with every shower of spray.

IV

We are helpless in the hand of Force that urges onward:
We cannot stay our feet; no faster can we go.
Whither are we to turn? Moonward or seaward? sunward?
Or to the hills' disdain? or to the fountains' flow?

V

O terrible blind God who urgest on our legions,
Hast thou no eyes nor heart,—hast thou no heed nor care?
Is there no conscious soul within the viewless regions?
Only the silent void of unresponsive air?
164

VI

“And we shall mix with rose”—so say they—“and with lily;
And with the tigers' joys and with the lions' glee:
Laugh in the breeze that floats above the upland hilly:
Smile in the stars that shine above the summer sea!”

VII

Folly! one single hour of warm sweet human living,
With woman's lips to kiss and power her heart to sway,
Surpasses all the joys wide Nature hath for giving:
Outburgeons the full rose and mocks the starry ray.

VIII

Others again: “The dream of conscious living over,
Our influence shall abide and flow throughout the race:
We shall relive in souls of many a future lover;
Burn through the flamelit love in many a future face.
165

IX

“All that we gave shall last. More glorious for cessation
Of the small human life, our words like wingéd things
Shall haunt the hills and meads of many a future nation,—
Become to future souls their revelation-springs.”

X

Madness! a single day of winds' and waters' riot,
While through the wild salt airs the sea-birds' pinions beat,
Is lordlier than long years of rotten dead mute quiet
Within the churchyard green, or underneath the street.

XI

And higher than all words ranks pure love o'er the glory
Of posthumous renown, how high soever this:
And nobler than new dawns o'er mountains grim and hoary
Is the first sense of love within the throbbing kiss.
October, 1881.
166

IN TOWN AT THE END OF A LONDON SEASON

Oh, for the sea's far splendour,—
The cool wet sound of waves
And tender
Ripple within dark caves!
Oh, for the wide-winged breezes
That churn the waves to foam,—
Heat seizes
And slays us here at home!
The weary head reposes
On pillows hot in town:
No roses
The tired-out forehead crown.
167

Oh for cool sound of waters
And quiet sight of fern!
Heat slaughters
The hearts and heads that burn.
Oh for green grass-leaves plashing
In depth of crystal pool,
And splashing
Of surges blue and cool!
Oh for cool arms of maiden
And wave-cool wave-white breast,
That laden
Spirits therein may rest!
Oh for far sound of rivers,
And bowers with green entwined
That shivers
In the cool soft night-wind!
We are weary and sick and deadened
With heat in this close town
Sun-reddened:—
The roads are parched to brown.
168

Take me, O loved one, take me
Through green woods to the sea:
Awake me,—
I slumber drearily.
Where the fresh seas are whiter
Even than thy white breast,
And brighter,
Take me,—and let me rest!
July 19, 1881.
169

THE FLOWERS' FLIGHT

Yea, all forsook him. Some had kissed his lips;
They fled:
They could not bear joy's gaunt eclipse
And red.
They followed him through many a summer day
And smiled:
They could not face the great waves grey
And wild.
They twisted roses in his sun-crowned hair,
But when
The thorns drew blood from fingers fair,—
What then?
170

They shuddered, and they flung the tender flowers
Down hard.
They had deemed him but for summer hours
A bard.
Their soft love-oath included not the night
Storm-blown.
Their hearts were pale, their hands were white:
They have flown!
The stars watch on, the garden flowers watch on,
Most brave!
But some star-spirits should have shone
To save!
The skies watch with him, and the foam of seas
Gives light:
The waves are gentle near his knees
And bright.
But ah! the spirits who promised many things
And fair:
Who gave the poet flowers and rings
And hair.
171

Where are they? Ask the shallow crowd that fills
Hot rooms,
Led hither and there as fashion wills
And dooms.
Where are they? Ask the floating clouds that sail
The sky.
Ask the wind's ceaseless weary wail
And high!
Where are their kisses? Ask the roses dead
To tell!
Ask the winged fairy feet that fled
So well!
And where is he? Beneath the night he stands
Uncrowned:
The blossoms woven by loving hands
Unwound.
Alone, yet not alone: there is a Power
Supreme
Who crowneth not with kiss or flower
Or dream,—
172

A Power who lifteth to his great embrace
The man
Alone, forlorn, with tired-out face
And wan.
July, 1881.
173

TWO SONNETS

I.
SINKAT

Men slaughtered, women ravished, children slain:
Men, women, children, who for months had dreamed
That English bayonets ere long would have gleamed
Over the sunburnt hopeless southern plain.—
I think there never thrilled a deeper pain
Quite through the heart of England than to-day!
To know that each soul as it passed away
Left first on England's hands its own blood-stain.
O heart of England and great warring eyes
That met the armies of the world and smiled
And hands wherein the silent thunder lies
Sleeping,—are ye now found too weak to save
From slaughter's weltering ravening monstrous wave
One weeping woman or one helpless child?
Feb. 13, 1884.
174

II.
SINKAT AND MR. GLADSTONE

The English heart was leashed.—We watched afar
The desert hosts engirdling day by day
The prostrate city where our duty lay
Prisoned. From rise of sun to set of star
Men called for England's help.—Who rose to bar
The English spirit upon its fiery way?
Who by weak deeds and imbecile delay
Seared honour's white brow with a shame-red scar?
One man: who when the heart of England burned
Held back that heart, and said “Thou shalt not go.”
Whose lips alone in all the land said “No;”
Whose hands alone the pleading pale hands spurned.
Who only in all the land quite tearless turned
From that wild spectacle of lonely woe.
Feb. 26, 1884.
175

ONE LOOK

I

Have not I been as Love through all these years and given
The bloom of flowers and light of stars to thee?
Have not I raised thee high within song's bright-blue heaven?—
What hast thou given to me?

II

Lo! flower on flower and star on star the bright months bring thee,
And songs on songs have floated o'er the sea.
My harp were traitor indeed if ever it failed to sing thee:
What wilt thou give to me?
176

III

The flowers of fourteen years and all their love and laughter;
The singing leaves of every green spring-tree;
These have I given,—and more. And now what cometh after?
Just one swift look for me!

IV

Just one look from the eyes that smote my youth, and slew me;
That now will leave not even my manhood free.
Just one swift flash of light that, lightning-like, darts through me:
This,—and no more for me.

V

For songs and flowers and love and pain that Christ might covet,—
Pain deep as fathomless eternity—
Thy face to see once more, with hardly time to love it,—
This, this is given to me!
177

VI

For limitless strong love, and shoreless wild devotion,
What meet reward, love, think'st thou, can there be?
What can the river give to the white-crested ocean?
Trust.—Give that trust to me.
June 30, 1883.
178

TO A FACE

I

O virginal fair face, and eyes whose fire with sweetness
Blends in divine soft flame and mystical completeness,
I never knew
How sweet the world might be, till thee I saw within it
And felt all old mad dreams of love revive that minute
And the sky's old blue.

II

Forgive me that I am old. Forgive me, face so peerless,
That, though I cannot meet thy gaze unmoved and tearless,
I was born afar
From this to-day's bright world wherethrough, divine, thou movest
And with thine eyes' strange light of inward force reprovest
God's every star.
179

III

Forgive me that the world is fair and bright before thee
But thunder-dark to me. Lo! let me just adore thee,
O face! O face!
Lo! half my life is lived,—or nearly all, it may be.
But thou—what shall the light of heaven within thy day be!
What, love's far embrace!

IV

I have to die. Forgive me.—All ye flowers, forgive me,
Whose splendid summer bloom and glory shall outlive me:
White rose newly blown
Forgive me that I died while thou was just evading
The soft green sheath of leaves thy tender beauty shading,
Half coyly shown.

V

I have the love for all,—for flowers of stars preceding
Our planet-star in space. I weep for blossoms bleeding
In far-off lands.
Yet I grow old while stars and blossoms beyond number
Wax and increase. I seek death's sempiternal slumber:
They seek Love's strong hands.
180

VI

Forgive me, all ye flowers whom I shall never furnish
With soft love-songs whose wings beneath far suns that burnish
Their bright plumes might fly,
Forgive me that I love, but yet am not immortal:
That ye wait at love's porch, while I wait at the portal
Where love must die.
May 20, 1883.
181

MANY LOVES, YET EACH INTENSE

SONNET

“There is but one love pure and strong and deep
In the whole life of each. No loves have power
Again like first love into passionate flower
To bloom. When first love fades, all love-songs sleep.”
So thinkest thou? Nay! the whole soul can weep,
Rejoice, and love, with limitless desire
As many times as there are stars on fire
To light the darkling fields the wild winds reap.
If loves were many as all these starry fires
That beacon, far on high, from void to void,
There would be room for some new star-love buoyed
By the dark air whose tender breath suspires
Around it.—All past constellations' scorn
Hinders no new sweet star from being born.
January, 1883.
182

WORDSWORTH AND THE MODERN SCHOOL

I

Of far-off purple hills and mist-crowned mountains hoary
Wordsworth dreamed.
His soul was one with clouds and golden sunsets' glory
As they gleamed.

II

With mystic strength of soul and prophet's exaltation
He beheld
The glittering hosts of stars take up their nightly station,
God-impelled.

III

Fair Nature was his Queen, and on her bosom ample
He reposed.
He heard not Passion's steeds, whose fiery swift hoofs trample:
He disclosed
183

IV

The secrets of the hills, the secrets of the rivers
And the skies,—
Yet never felt the stroke that woman's soul delivers
Through her eyes.

V

Ah! than the hills more fair, and than the rivers sweeter
Unto me,
And tenderer than the pulse of silver-voiced soft metre
Of the sea,

VI

A woman's face and voice. Though hills and valleys bound me
And the streams,
I'd push them all aside if once my true love crowned me
In her dreams.
March, 1884.
184

A SONG OF THE EARTH

I

Not of thee, Melancholy,
But rather of joy's ceaseless summer sky
And all the rapture holy
That on the snow-white breast of love doth sigh
I'd sing,—and not of heaven
With endless golden harp and golden crown
But of the stars of even
And all the autumnal waving corn gold-brown
And all the woodlands' glory
When wild October gilds them with bright hand
And the long sea-waves hoary
Which fleck with rainbow foam the glittering sand:—
Not of the angelic glances
But of our women's eyes of sober grey
185

Through which the sweet love dances
And of their feet that linger in the way
And of their heaven of passion
Wherein the souls that worship them may dwell
I sing,—in the old Greek fashion,
For flowerless loveless heaven to me is hell.

II

I sing of hedgerow roses
And quiet violets nestling in the green
And vales where love reposes
And meads where in the grass his hand is seen
Flowerlike amid the flowers,
White 'mid the lilies, scented 'mid the may:
I sing of the soft bowers
Where love was radiant in the world's young day
Before the need of higher
And holier loftier rapture—so they said—
Thwarted love's living lyre
And marred the sunshine on his golden head.

III

I sing of woman diviner
Than loveless shapeless women of our day:
186

I crown her, and assign her
The chiefest holiest place within my lay.
Before she sought for other
Than the sweet love of earth, lo! it was well;
Beauty was perfect mother
To passion: she was godlike ere she fell.
But now strange thoughts possess her
And dreams of far-off stars and alien skies
And the cold winds caress her
And the sweet laugh hath vanished from her eyes
And the old-world rapture ceases
And woman bends beneath another yoke
Than man's,—and care increases
And what her hand first fashioned, then it broke.

IV

But for us life suffices
And all its tender joys and dreamful ways:
It lures us and entices
With all its suns and winds and moony rays
And magic months of summer
When the soft air breathes infinite sweet calm
And each rose, glad new-comer,
Folds secrets infinite in pink-white palm.
187

And when these fail, and, weary,
We face the wintry gloom and death draws nigh
With garb and brow most dreary
And secrets of the tomb in sunless eye
And laughter indecorous,
It shall be sweet and of avail to know
That loves in passionate chorus
Sang round us, rose-wreathed, long strange years ago
And that we sang, soft-timing
Our song to all the waters' gracious tune
With winds for ever chiming
And following the chaste guidance of the moon:—
That once for us the splendour
Of the undying summer's bosom beamed,
Ripe, copious, bounteous, tender,
And once for us the summer's dark eyes gleamed
Responsive and alluring
Till our young hearts sprang forth upon the road,
Fierce, eager, long-enduring,
While round us all the rident morning glowed;
And though the night hath found us
And we too fade and fall and pass away
Once sacred morning crowned us
And love our call would answer and obey
188

And we were full of daring
And swift hearts failed not at love's voice to leap
Though night is now preparing
Gloom for us, and the inevitable sleep.
May, 1881.
189

UNITY IN COMPLEXITY

The poet's work is one.—He sings in divers places
Of summer and of spring, and soft and deep-lined faces,—
Of rapture and despair:
Of all the sorrow of love, and joy that this surpasses;
Of the lark's nest amid the deep May-scented grasses;
Of floating sea-weed and drowned golden hair.
The universe is one to him.—He passes through it
And at one glance, at times, like large-eyed God can view it:
The whole of things he owns:—
Death, horror, and the cry of human pain he fears not;
There is not any note amid the whole he hears not,—
Laughter of love, or sorrow's piercing tones.
190

And then ye take his work and say “There's evil in it!”
—Because the eagle is there, and not alone the linnet:
—The lion, and yet the fawn:
—The bitter cry of men upon the midnight tossing,
When o'er their vessel's bows the white-maned waves are crossing:
—The smile with which creation meets the dawn.
Shall he say but one thing? Shall he sing but one season?
Give all his heart to Spring? That were unheard-of treason
To Summer's wishful gaze!
Not fields are bright with corn alone, but also bloody
With gaping wounds of men when the August moon gleams ruddy
Over the landscape through a smoky haze.
Doth the high god of dawn drape ever his bridal-chamber
In the old yellow tints and glorious gold-washed amber?
Doth he not deck the sky
With splendid vast superb rich crimson radiation
And with strange azure dyes and sudden deep carnation
That blushes deeper as his bride draws nigh?
191

Are all the forests full of flowers of but one colour?
If roses grew alone, how infinitely duller
This ruddier world would be!
If ever the white manes of maddening mad sea-horses
Raged, whirling round about the black ships' plunging courses,
How we should miss our blue and foamless sea!
So is the poet's song a diverse thing and ample.—
He saw the wild red steeds the yielding corn-blades trample
At far-off Waterloo.
He heard the weird strange shrieks and deep groans of the dying,
And saw upon the field the blood-stained bear-skins lying,—
Blood on the scarlet coats, blood on the blue.
He hears to-day the wind sweep o'er the same wide meadows
And sees the gold corn flecked with countless dancing shadows;
No dying forms are there;
Only the blaze of calm triumphant summer sunlight,—
Not as when all lights merged their lustre in the one light,
The light that flames from battle's eyes and hair.
192

Just as the wind has purged with infinite filtration
That far-off battle-field where nation against nation
Wrestled, for life or death:
Just as the sea heeds not the dead vast hordes within it
But laughs in God's clear eyes as virginal this minute
As under the first morning's golden breath:
Just as the forest heeds the countless dying flowers
Within it not at all, but buildeth up new bowers
More fair than all the old:
Just as within the streets of white immortal Paris
No sign to-day of red mad Revolution tarries
But only gay wheels where the cannon rolled:
So in the poet's song are all things found united:—
Are lovers when they wind close clinging arms affrighted
In that their marriage-bed
Hath ere this heard the sighs of lonely souls unmarried?
What is it unto them that their white couch hath carried
The helpless cold weight of the inamorous dead?
193

What is it that the moon through their bright curtains peeping
Hath, through those curtains bright, gazed once upon the weeping
Of some forsaken heart?—
Just so, all-seeing at once, from palace unto prison
Passes the undisturbed and all-embracing vision
Of pitying pitiless soul-sleepless Art.
In one house lo! a death. A marriage in another.
The strange joy mixed with tears of some pale new-made mother
Perhaps in an upper room.
Perhaps in a room below some sorrow past expression.—
Art graspeth all alike, and taketh full possession
Alike of sunlit space and starless gloom.
So with superb strong poise of pinions never-ending
The soul of Art flies forth, her force of being blending
With God's own power of will:
Seeing with equal sight in plunging white sea-valleys
The overburthened ship that pants but never rallies
And groups of children playing on yon green hill.
April, 1883.
194

TO J. A. B.

Back over twenty years we look. What blasts have sounded
From War's red trumpet!—what fierce deadly strifes abounded:
Strange is it, as back one looks!
Since the old boyish time when you and I together
Walked over purple miles of wind-tossed Cornish heather
And watched the arrowy trout in Cornish brooks.
Since the old Harrow days what bitter devastation
Has smitten low the hopes of nation after nation:—
Wide Europe's fields have bled
Since you and I as boys laughed round the merry wicket;
When all our worldly hopes were centred in our cricket,
Nor mattered it if kings or popes fell dead!
195

What was an Emperor's fate compared to winning merely
A hard-fought racquet-match! The latter struggle clearly
Meant most to gods and men!
Ah! happy days,—ere love steps in with all its passion
And moulds all things in new half-sweet half-mournful fashion:
The days that pass, and glance not back again.
In the long twenty years how many well-loved faces
Have vanished from our gaze! How many vacant places,
Looking around, we see.
Yet still the glad old earth hath flowers to wreathe and cherish
For us, old friend. Past hopes like dead leaves fall and perish,
And young-leaved new hopes spring round you and me.
The seasons come and go. The swift-winged swallow seaward
Turns. The bright eyes of Spring turn hopeward, heavenward, gleeward.
The autumn meadows gleam.
196

Sweet Summer binds her hair in dark-green leafy places.
Men die,—and love is born, and passion's white embraces
Change all things into one wild golden dream.
Some nations fall,—and new great nations rise above them.
Sad human hearts are wrung when the true hearts who love them
Pass, at the death-god's wing.
Some friendships are quite dead, and others fast are going.
Some passion-cups are dry that once were overflowing.
But still our friendship is a living thing.
How little once we thought that I, the Muses wooing,
Should spend my days their shy sweet sidelong gaze pursuing
And, after twenty years,
Bring you these flowers of song,—some where the dew yet lingers,
Some gathered later on with dust-stained weary fingers;
Some bright; some blood-stained; and some wet with tears.
197

Ah! when from Harrow hill we saw the far fields spreading
Gilded with evening light, if life's path we are treading
Had then as clearly showed,
Should we have shrunk in dread, as we drew back the curtain?
God only knows. But this, old friend, we know for certain:
Our friendship has shed light on all the road.
March, 1883.
198

GOD'S JUDGMENT-DAY

From all the ends of the earth the plaintiffs came.—
“I lost my three sons in a day,” one said:
The next, “My white-souled daughter wedded shame.”
Then came a flower with overburthened head
And petals filled with flush of vengeful flame;
Weeping, it plained: “My sister rose was red;
We loved each other, and we rested close
Against the quiet garden's grey old wall
Till the wind shook us roughly from repose
And lo! one day I saw my sister fall.
Now I am lonely; lonelier than those
Who throng the sunlit flower-beds,—yea, than all.
God, give me back my sister.” Then the man:
“God, give me back my daughter. Lo! I saw
Her poor face lit by gas, so peaked and wan,
In a London street. The winter wind blew raw
And down her rouge-red cheeks the rain-drops ran;
Doth this not strike thy listless soul with awe?”
199

Next came an Empress: “Surely thou hast done
Worse things to me and sadder”—so she wept—
“Than unto any soul beneath the sun.
Our kingdom was stolen from us while we slept;
Scattered was all the glory we had won,
And lo! red Revolution's tiger leapt
Upon us, and the people of France forgot
All good deeds, and all bad were brought to light.
My husband died. My son in loneliest spot
Thou didst ordain the savage spears to smite,
So making sonless too my widowed lot.
God of the wide earth, answer. Was this right?”
And then a woman: “Lo! an Empress' tears
Move God perhaps. But has he heed of mine?
Has he watched through the weary weary years
My whole soul yearn and agonize and pine
After the son who 'mid the serried tiers
Of battle fell? Can God my grief divine?
Lo! she was beautiful, that Empress there,
And crowned and happy. I was quite alone
—Save for my son the bond-slave of despair—
Her husband levied to support his throne
Vast armies, and my son they must ensnare:
Empress and Emperor reap what they have sown.”
200

And then another woman: “Lo! the waves
Sucked down my husband on my wedding-day.
God! hast thou not enough white watery graves
Round thee in their interminable array
That thou must add another?”—So she raves,
With madness in her eyes of sunless grey.
And then a prisoner: “In Siberian mines
For fifty years I languished,—while the blue
Sweet sky above me kissed thy waving pines
And laughter came thy palace-gateways through.
If thou dost place me where the sunlight shines
Now, canst thou those lost fifty years renew?
Canst thou restore my wife who 'neath the knout
Perished? Canst thou restore my only child?”
And then there came a grim voice from without,
An Emperor's: “My rule was ever mild
And clement. Yet one day the fires leaped out
And left my limbs a shattered horror, piled
Loose in the roadway.” Then his son exclaimed,
“And my life is a horror likewise! I
Though nowise crippled, blind, deformed, or lamed,
Through palace-windows only see the sky
And know myself through all my land defamed
And stir not out unless my guards are nigh.
201

Is this a life worth having,—knowing well
That round about me murderous creatures wait
To fling the bomb with red fuse dipped in hell?
I dare not move beyond my palace-gate
For fear of dull roar of the deadly shell.
Armed guards surround and watch me early and late.
God, is this just?” And next a butterfly:
“Born on a sunny morning 'mid the flowers
And waving grasses and green leaves was I.
Rapture it was from fragrant fields to bowers
All honeysuckle-girt to hover and hie,
Trying in the swift air my new-born powers.
But lo! a creature caught me in a net
And through my struggling body thrust a pin
(I feel the steely cold pang even yet!)
And just as sweet life promised to begin
Dead was I,—long before my first sun set.
To make me, then to slay me, was a sin,
Lord God! The eternal justice is in fault
That I, when all my white-winged friends were free
And happy, thus was marred by rude assault
And stabbed to death. Lord God, canst thou not see
That thus to pin me and prison in a vault
Airless, with human quick dexterity,
202

Was murder?” Then a poet rose and said:
“I blame thee, God,—for though fair visions pass
Gold-winged and grand and gorgeous through my head
I cannot stay their arrowy flight, alas!
I shall speak no true word till I am dead
And o'er me waves thy never-ending grass!
Why make me at all, if thus I must pursue
Beauty, and never reach her though I follow
With ardent tireless feet the whole world through;
O'er mountain steep and down green-skirted hollow
And over ocean-wastes of endless blue,
Swifter than flight of summer-searching swallow?
Of all created things we have the most
And bitterest cause to blame thee. Thou hast poured
Love in our hearts, and given us but a ghost
Instead of love,—or slain love with thy sword.
Now round about thy throne, a fiery host,
We stand, with tongues that witness 'gainst thee, Lord.”
And then a woman: “What is theirs to this
Sorrow of mine that eats away my soul?
—The bitter longing for love's flame-lipped kiss:
—The daily journeying not towards any goal:
—To dream of love, how passing sweet it is,
And wake to hear love's wheels i'the distance roll.
203

—To long to feel against one's white smooth breast
And white smooth neck a lover's soft lips burn:
—For love's divine unutterable rest
With every pulse of womanhood to yearn:
To follow love in a fatigueless quest,
Yet to watch love's eyes ever shift and turn
Aside,—is this not agony supreme?
Thou, God, in heaven canst know not aught so grim
And deep and terrible.”—But then a scream
Rang round the vaulted judgment-chamber dim;
A blood-stained soldier spoke: “Ah! God, I deem
Thou never hast had in seas of blood to swim!
Thou hast not felt the round-shot tear its way
Through thy rent flesh, and, fallen amid the wheat,
There lingered helpless through the maddening day,
Crushed by the gun-wheels and the chargers' feet.
Thou hast the great white clouds whereon to lay
Thy head when fevered by the summer heat.”
And then a husband: “Day by day my life
Grows yet more wearisome. The flowers outside
Laugh when they hear the shrill voice of my wife
And toss their petals through the window wide,
204

Mocking our endless miserable strife;—
Ah! when I married, all my true soul died.”
But then a woman spoke: “My husband slew
All high thoughts in me,—till my lover came,
And then the sweet and young thoughts bloomed anew;
But now alas! each flower with scarlet shame
Was tipped, and flushed beneath the sunny blue
With trembling dread and streaks of passionate flame.
God's face was in my lover's: yet I felt
That duty drew me from him. When I fled,
The very world beneath me seemed to melt
And hell beneath me yawned wide open and red
And stroke on stroke the sword of agony dealt
Till I alive was mingled with the dead
In all save outward seeming. Then one hour
Again my lover came along the way
And kissed my weary mouth till all aflower
It laughed, and sudden sunlight flushed the grey
Waste thornful branches of my hawthorn bower...
And then—now, God, hast thou one word to say
In thine excuse?—my husband's sword flashed out
Straight from behind our tender bower of green,
And red strange heavy drops ran all about,
And lo! where, even just now, my lips had been
205

Blood from my lover's lips welled slow without:
O murderous God, who witnessedst that scene,
Can I forgive thee?—Never! though the tears
Ran down thy cheeks for ever.” Then a slave:
“For eighty long unutterable years
I watched the free wind through the reed-beds wave,
And heard some women's laughter with mine ears,
Yet never laughed,—till round me closed the grave.”
And then a statesman: “Surely most of all
Slaves are we who upon the people wait;
On whom in turn the vengeful masses fall;
Whom sometimes through the deadly prison-gate
They lead, and sometimes on the steel-spiked wall
Fix our grey heads in their dull poisonous hate,
Though all our lives have done them service true.
God, what of this?” And then a wild-eyed man:
“God! surely thy misdeed thine heart shall rue.
Through all eternity my curse and ban
Shall rest upon thee! Whom thy keen sword slew,
Let her forgive thee; for I never can.”
And then a woman, pale, and all her face
Deep-lined with grief: “I loved, and dreamed that he
Returned my love. My beauty won more grace
From the sweet thought. Yes, I was fair to see!
206

And lovers thronged about me in each place.
God, thou didst bid the tender dream to flee,
As all the golden hues of perfect morn
Flee through the morning's swiftly-closing gate.”
She spake,—and with one voice the wild forlorn
Strange group cried: “God, we crown thee with our hate,
Hate,—and an inextinguishable scorn.”
And then God's answer came in one word. “Wait.”
March, 1883.
207

WINGED LOVE

“Though watched and captive, yet in spite of all,
They found the art of kissing through a wall.”
—Pope.

I

Through walls and doors Love goes:
His lips are in the rose;
His feet are on the hills;
His voice is in the rills.

II

His breath is in the breeze;
He thunders in strong seas;
And through the arcades of morn
He winds his hunting-horn.
208

III

What do ye, ye who bind
Love? Can Love be confined
By earthly bars or grates
Or bolts or brazen gates?

IV

Through walls the winged kiss flies,
And over gloom of skies:
Through foes that cluster round
It speeds without a sound:

V

Then it alights, and brings
Soft gladness on its wings.
What gaoler can descry
The winged kiss hovering nigh!

VI

What prison can retain
Love's plumes of golden grain?
What haunt of woe and death
Can bind Love's sky-sweet breath?
209

VII

At iron chains and steel
Love laughs,—and barriers reel
Drunken before his tread
And light about him shed.

VIII

The sweetest kiss man knows
Is that a woman throws
Through narrowing prison-bars,
So letting in the stars!

IX

So letting in the night
And all its boundless might:
So letting in the blue
That the great moon sails through.

X

The most triumphant lips
Are those which Love's mouth sips
With twenty guards beside,
And every guard defied!
210

XI

Love steals between all bars,
As steal through these the stars.
Foes wait in gaunt array?
Love comes another way!

XII

While every door is sure
And all the locks secure
Behold Love, woman-wise,
In at the window flies!
June, 1881.
211

SONNETS FROM THE ARABIC

(1884)

213

SONNET I
THE MOON-RIVAL

Yes, I am jealous of the moonlight's rays
That met thine eyes in those far mystic lands!
That moon's soft kiss that fell upon thine hands
In far-off girlish unforgotten days
This I am jealous of,—and of the lays
The stars sang to thee, shining over sands
Vast, treeless, limitless. When Love commands
The dead years answer, and open wide their ways.
O Southern stars and moon that met her eyes
In earliest girlhood, when the sweet world came
To lay upon her lips its flowers and flame
And prison in her look its light of skies—
O moon and stars that won from her replies
Tender, hath she a soul for me to claim?
214

SONNET II
THE HIGHEST LOVE

There never should be bitter words or pain
Between a lover and a loving soul.
From the first starting to the faint far goal
Dimly descried on Time's eternal plain
—The goal where white-peaked mountains soar and reign
And where the far-off mountain-thunders roll—
From love's beginning till death maketh whole
Or sundereth, there should be not one tear-stain.
It is within the reach of human hearts
To love and love, and never to bring grief.
The wild and passionate love that carries darts
Within its love and thorns on its rose-leaf
Pales out beside the love whose heart can say
“Love's last is sweeter than love's sweet first day.”
215

SONNET III
“WE CANNOT SAVE ONE ANOTHER FROM DEATH”

Nay, who knows that? Who knows what strength may be
Within the spirit of love? What untried things
Behind death's thunder-dark yet love-sweet wings?
What might of passionate singing in the sea
Of death that shall encompass you and me
When envious Time the final parting brings?
Oh that strange parting which so racks and wrings
The spirit, may join two spirits eternally.
“We cannot save from death”:—Nay, who knows aught
Of what the deathless spirit of love can do?
God who spreads out the eternal ocean's blue
And laughs as star on star surpasses thought
Hath care and love still left for me and you,
And neither star nor we shall come to nought.
216

SONNET IV
A SUDDEN PANG

It smote across me with a sudden pang,
The thought that you must die. It shall not be!
If there is soul of passion in the sea
Or in the moon whose white orb used to hang
Above the wild plains where thy spirit sang
Its girlish love-song to infinity,—
If there was love in sun or flower or tree
Or river whose soft voice beside thee rang,—
If there is love in the Unknown Power or me,—
Thou shalt live onward through the viewless years.
Oh when death calls thee, and thine eyes' bright light
Fails, send for me. If I can see for tears
I'll use my sword once more, and death shall flee,
For love that dies not can put death to flight.
217

SONNET V
GENIUS AND WOMANHOOD

Of all sweet lovely things God ever made
I think the purest sweetest loveliest thing
Was moulded when he let thought's sombre wing
Touch woman's sunlit brow with genius' shade.
It was a great thought when God, unafraid,
First gave to woman passionate arms to cling:—
But when God gave her fiery heart to sing
A greater thought the Master's will obeyed.
There is no greater thought of God than this:
That woman in her spirit should combine
Love and sweet genius,—that her hand should twine
Laurels and roses,—that her lips should kiss,
While her pure genius-hands the while design
Work that outstrips the pale eternities.
218

SONNET VI
THY NAME

Of all sweet names that sing in poets' ears
I think thy name is sweetest. Soft and new
It brought before me the broad Southern blue:
My dreams were sweetened by thy girlish years,
And hand in hand with all thy joys and fears
I wandered thine enchanted uplands through,
And saw the sunlight gild the wild “karroo,”
And saw thy lonely sweet eyes fill with tears.
I love the name,—the very sweetest name
It is that heart of poet ever sung.
I love to hear it linger on my tongue
And feel that through the word the heart I claim:
The heart so gentle, tender, and so young
And yet so full of force, and full of flame.
219

SONNET VII
“IT SEEMS SO STRANGE”

It seems so strange to me to think that thou
Dost love our England and our English song!
And yet before thee strange storms swept along
And strange sweet Southern moonlight touched thy brow.
I think of thee,—and wonder and wonder how
Through thy young spirit eager, pure, and strong
The thought of England darted, ere the throng
Of English pilot-waves around the prow
Of thy home-coming vessel danced and gleamed.
What were thy thoughts in that far wondrous land?
What flowers grew sweeter for thy loving hand?
What stars grew softer as thy star-eyes dreamed
Among them? What words whispered the white band
Of Southern clouds that through the clear blue streamed?
220

SONNET VIII
MY WINGED MESSENGERS

I'll send my messengers with airy feet
And soft ethereal plumage to explore
Those unknown regions, and from every shore
That thou hast trodden to bring whispers sweet.
That is my longing: I to-day would meet
Thy past, and open dreamland's golden door,—
Feel through the woman's lips her girlhood pour
Delight too pure for song's lips to repeat.
Can love not rival elemental things?
Can love not distance star and flower and breeze?
Can I not still the singing of the seas,
Baffle the breezes with melodious wings?
Can I not capture back from rose and pine
Thy girlish love-thoughts, love—and make each mine?
221

SONNET IX
SADNESS

That is what saddens this strange spirit of mine.
Thou wast so far, so many leagues, from me
While I was singing love-songs to the sea
In England, and the English green-browed line
Of rain-swept hills, and English eglantine:—
My songs mixed voices with each summer tree
And with the summer flowers—but not for thee
I sang. The stars that watched thee made no sign.
How could I guess that over leagues of sea
A girl's soft whisper mingled with the night,—
A girl's soft eyes with the far starry light
That fell on plains that mocked eternity
In their smooth endless undulating flight?
Thou wast alive,—and I knew not of thee!
222

SONNET X
LOVE'S MIGHT

That pains me so! To think the sunlight knew,
The blossoms knew (or how could they have bloomed!)
The sunsets knew thee, wild and crimson-plumed,
Spreading their plumage over ceaseless blue.
I was the one heart in the world untrue!
That saddens me; for now so many entombed
Sweet thoughts of thine may never be resumed.
Can Nature's hand repeat one sunset's hue?
I cannot penetrate with fiery speed
The far star-spaces,—search the silent night
For thoughts of thine that made dark spaces bright
And sowed with new stars heaven's exalted mead.
Yet love hath greater than the whole heaven's might
And love can follow where a girl's eyes lead.
223

SONNET XI
REST

O spirit, O love, canst thou bestow on me—
Me who have wandered through the sable night
For lonely ages,—who have watched the flight
Of clouds from God's hand through eternity,—
Who saw the stars when they began to be,—
Who marked the first sun launch its golden light
Upon the stormy blue,—whose weary sight
Followed the breakers on the first grey sea:—
Canst thou, O love, O spirit, on me bestow
The one thing I am most in need of—Rest?
I'd give my very soul to end the quest
Eternal, agonizing, dark with woe.
Sorrow has been my bosom's inmost guest
Since Eden laughed in its first sunset's glow.
224

SONNET XII
THE STING OF DEATH

This is the sting of death, that it includes
The fact that thou must leave me. Oh, death knows
And harps upon the sharpest of our woes!
Not the sweet silences of dim pine-woods,—
Not the bright airs of mountain-solitudes,—
Not the white flashing of the far-off snows,
Nor even the scent on June-nights of the rose
Nor skies whereo'er the royal sunset broods—
To leave these things is agonizing pain,
But worse than all the pain of all these things
And filled with sharper and more poisonous stings
Is the black thought that I may still remain
In this same world, yet never through all springs
Mix thought with fiery thought of thine again.
225

SONNET XIII
“LOVE ALONE”

Through life on weary life I seem to have passed,
Seeking for thee.—Now weariness supreme
Holds me. My lives' long battles like a dream
Melt from me, ghostlike to the very last.
My sword, all notched and blunted, lo! I cast
Into the eddies of death's silent stream,
Whereover floats full many a wan moonbeam:
I meet the stream's pale outlook, weird and vast.
Then lo! thy face burns on me, and thy heart
Turns meward. First for joy's own sake I weep;
And then a pang strikes through me wild and deep,—
A deathly wintry pallid icy dart:
For I can give thee nought but love, my own;
Love, love,—and love again,—and love alone.
226

SONNET XIV
LOVE AND SYMPATHY

Is not love sweeter in that we have dared
To look upon the very face of death?
That we have trembled at his icy breath
Yet have not faltered, but have bravely shared
With him the chaplets laughing love prepared
When life was like one ever-fragrant wreath?—
Is love not sweeter in that underneath
Lurks the grim eyeless terror, serpent-haired?
Is love not sweeter when two souls have said,
“Yes: let us know the worst that can be known.”
Oh, if love cannot hurl death from his throne
Still love can pluck his crown from off his head.
Unloved, unloving,—thus to join the dead—
This turns the passionate human heart to stone.
227

SONNET XV
“THE GREY DAWN”

And yet if thou dost meet it not alone,
That weird grey morning over mountains blue
May be more sweet than thy soul ever knew
Or dreamed,—and lovelier than has yet been shown
To heart of poet which with pang and groan
Has struggled from old pain to suffering new.
When that last awful “grey dawn” thrills us through
Shall love not speak with mastering trumpet-tone?
Shall love not turn the “grey dawn” into gold
And touch the mountain-summits as with fire,
Uplifting from each peak and rocky spire
The vestments of the morning, fold by fold?
May not death's tide of pure delight flow higher
Than living heart hath dreamed or tongue hath told?
228

SONNET XVI
“PERHAPS ONE LOVE UNITES ALL”

Yes: there are many loves.—The love that dreams
Of flowers and songs, and weaves within its hair
Leaves fresh from dalliance with youth's mountain-air
And blossoms dainty from the morning's streams.
Love too that mixes with the pale moonbeams
Its mystic tresses. Passion swift and rare:
Love even than the rose's kiss more fair;
Love whose young heart with wildest fancy teems.
But fairer and more beautiful than these
Is just the love that by its very soul
Swears that from starting till the final goal
Shines like white marble through the cypress trees
There shall be sympathy divine and deep,
From love's first waking,—till love falls asleep.
229

SONNET XVII
“AND NOW THE SAD THOUGHT”

And now the sad thought fills my heart with tears
And stills my very singing for awhile.—
When love is born, the farthest white clouds smile
And fragrance wafted from remotest years
Greets us, and all June's chanting fills our ears.
We linger, as one lingers on a stile
'Tween meadow and meadow. Flowers so fair beguile
Our fancy that it hath no room for fears.
When love is born, the farthest star-lips sing
And music fills the temples of the sky.
Who dreams of Winter when the green-clad Spring
With white hand full of primroses is nigh?
Dear heart, when love's hand strikes his first harp-string
How can we bear to think that love must die!
230

SONNET XVIII
“IF I DIE FIRST”

If I die first, I would unbar the tomb
And fill its gateways full of flowers for thee
If such a gift in mortal love might be:
I'd make for thee the iron meadows bloom
And scatter with my wingéd songs the gloom
That now pervades and chills eternity.
I'd touch to blue the sable-crested sea
Whose waves through night's dark arches peer and loom.
But if no longing may give love the power
To ope death's gateways for another soul
I would leave with thee these few songs in flower
That, when my feet have passed the songless goal,
Death who would rush with harsh tread through thy bower
Destroying part, may not destroy the whole.
231

SONNET XIX
“JUST ONE STAR”

I would give of my being unto thee,
As God gave of himself with love supreme
And filled the bright world with his every dream
And made his thought incarnate in the sea
And in the blossom of the red may-tree
And in the tropic mystic white moon-gleam
And in the lily floating on the stream
And in the passions of humanity.
So I would in my humbler measure bring:
Not having all the suns and stars to take
Wherewith thy spirit's fiery thirst to slake
As slakes creation's thirst creation's king—
But having just the power to love and sing
And just one star to bring thee for love's sake.
232

SONNET XX
“REST AT LAST”

Renew me with thy being.—I would take
Thy young sweet soul and press it close to mine.
I would make all my stormy yearning thine
And in thine heart mine endless longing slake;
Just as the mountain in the mountain-lake
Sees its own thunder-crowned fierce image shine
And in the blue depth doth itself outline,
And ceases then with lonely pain to ache.
Give me thyself.—Do I not sorely need
—I who have fought for years amid the dust
Of trampling hoofs, and parried stroke and thrust,
And snapped the spear of sorrow like a reed—
Do I not need thee sorely? Strife is past.
Love me, and loving, give me rest at last.
233

THE DEEP LOVE

One has to count the cost.—One cannot win love's sweetness,
One cannot grasp fair love in absolute completeness
Without the pain as well.
The sweetest flowers are those which grow not on the mountains
But at the solemn edge, and sprinkled by the fountains,
Of pain's dim red unfathomable hell.
Oh, not the common love is sweetest, but the passion
Which bindeth soul to soul in mystic sacred fashion
In spite of adverse things.
Without pursuit could love exult in priceless capture?
No soul can know love's deep immeasurable rapture
And yet forego the pain the deep love brings.
Feb. 25, 1884.
234

WITHOUT AND WITHIN

SONNET

Iron outside.—To face the world and fate
Strength as of finely-woven subtle steel.
Strength which can conquer time and never kneel
Till the last foe has passed outside the gate.
Strength as of iron to encounter hate
And snap the arrows of the world piecemeal.
A strong brave heart that in no wise doth feel
The shock of spears that strike the blue breast-plate.
Beneath the breast-plate? Silk and tender folds.—
Beneath the tender folds? A most white gleam.
A heart that follows after dream on dream
Of love, and measureless pure sweetness holds.—
Iron outside,—to meet the world. Within?
The sweetest living soul for love to win.
Jan. 24, 1884.
235

AUTUMN VOICES:

SONNETS AND LYRICS (1883)

237

I.
SEVEN YEARS AGO

In this same spot seven years ago the love-god found me
And with a wayward wreath of trivial sweet flowers crowned me,—
Seven wild long years ago.
In this same spot to-day a tender new love finds me
And here again the sweet and wayward love-god binds me
(Though love's bonds melt like snow!)
Ah! ever so it is. For ever and for ever
The love-god haunts our steps, and yet his chains are never
Abiding and supreme.
Love's breath is as the breath of summer's countless roses:
Yet when the sweet long month of sunlit gardens closes
All rose-scent is a dream.
238

Seven years and then a love; and then it may be another;
Till the last strange-eyed love who hath for very brother
The dark-eyed god of death.
Seven years! That love should last so long is surely stranger
Than that, in spite of past love-pain and passionate danger,
A new love should draw breath.
Dark eyes my new love hath. Dark eyes and full of dreaming
Mine old love had. New dreams and very sweet are gleaming
In this girl's eyes to-day.—
Ah! twenty years ago the wanton wild sea-surges
Laughed as to-day. The wind to-day with wet wings urges
The white forgetful spray.
Star passes star. Yet each gave birth to love and glory.—
The very locks of Time grow scantier now and hoary.
Yet, when Time's hair was gold
And when Time's limbs were young, Love laughed amid the flowers
And sang amid the woods, and frolicked through the bowers,
And still Love is not old.
239

Where Nero walked, to-day the Roman maiden tarries
And puts aside the flowers her sunburnt soft hand carries
And gazes down the street.
The walls that oft of old watched old-world deeds with tragic
Mute eyes, see still the deeds of love, and hear the magic
Strange echo of love's feet.
So it goes on.—To-day thine eyes are dark and tender.
But, seven years hence, who knows what starry love and splendour
Of passion they may see?
The love that flies is sweet. The love that stays is sweeter.
But both have ready wings, and every love is fleeter
Than its own ecstasy.
The very stars are winged. Their bright plumes flutter o'er us:
They flaunt their golden shields and golden spears before us:
But these too fade and fall.—
Love is the key of life. A woman's kiss containeth
The secret power whereby strong history's grim god reigneth.
“Mysteries?”—The kiss of woman solveth all.
240

II.
TO ------ AND P. B. M.

To thee, fair love of mine, I used to read my verses.
But now of all Time's blows by far the bitterest curse is
That thou art far away.
But still God sends a friend. Thanks past all thanks I owe him,
Who has given his kindly heed to many a song and poem
By many a night and day.
Love, thou didst wear a crown of many-coloured flowers:
But he has gathered bays from the immortal bowers
Where song's god reigns supreme.
I thank God from my heart that I have had two hearers:
If these, and these alone, for joy's and sorrow's sharers,
My life, though dreary, is not all a dream.
241

III.
ON READING “WIND-VOICES,” BY PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON

“Wind-voices!” Yes: the wind's own voice is here,
The voice of every wind;—the voice that goes
Straight to the soft heart of the listening rose;
The voice that makes the seamen quake for fear
When the grim angry white-lipped reefs rise sheer
To leeward; and the voice that love's heart knows
When on the summer breeze a whisper grows
Yet more intense, more passionately clear.
Here is the thunder of the wind at sea,
And echo of the voice of passion's storm,
And loving message of the gentle warm
West Wind,—and here the North Wind's revelry:
And here the voice that makes the midnight strong
With love's despair transfigured into song.
242

IV.
TO P. B. M.

When the sweet golden unforeseen surprise
Of the eternal morning on thee breaks
And sudden ripples from the large light-lakes
Flood with swift brilliance thine awaking eyes,—
When the old weary dream of sorrow dies
For ever, and thy soul its pathway takes
Through regions where the heart of poet aches
No longer, nor the heart of lover sighs:—
Then, women thou hast loved will first await
Thy coming; I will stand aside for these.
But when their forms have passed outside the gate
To greet thee on the outer terraces,
That foremost greeting finished, then let none
Than my soul sooner, see thee see the sun.
243

V.

------ “Waits till the ship already in sight be free
To bear him back to his far natal shore,—
Back through the darkness and the awful sea.”
—Philip Bourke Marston

Yes, this is our reward.—Not life's fair dreams,
But the new-wakened and majestic sense
That after silent years of pain intense
Light, marvellous light, behind the hill-top gleams.
Not by life's pleasant blossom-bordered streams
To find our long-delayed large recompence,
But in soul-thrilling joy that through the dense
Dark worldly clogging air with golden beams
Darts on a sudden downward:—the wild hope
That not much longer shall this pain endure,—
This agony of fierce desire to cope
With all love's foes in wrestle close and sure;
That Fate shall free, ere long, our long-leashed breath
For the great charge along the slopes of death.
244

VI.
TO P. B. M.

IN MID-STREAM

Not to the placid heights of middle age
Let you and me with loitering steps ascend.
Nay, let us perish in the strife, O friend,
Where round the standard most the war-waves rage
If this be life—to move from stage to stage
And watch life's passion dwindle till the end
And slowly all our power of love expend,
Life then is poorer for each added page.
Nay! If our love and passion may not grow
And all the fire within our spirits gleam
With steadier, stronger, and diviner glow
Daily, mere living is a soulless dream.—
Love ever. Perish, if it must be so.
But perish buffeting the sweet mid-stream.
245

VII.
THE LIGHT OF BATTLE, AND THE LIGHT OF LOVE

The light of battle and the light that gleams
From woman's eyes—these are the rays divine
That on the passionate heart of manhood shine
And fill life's highways with tempestuous dreams.
The sweetest light of all is that which streams
Along the glistening bayonets' serried line
When, just now, under growth of rose or pine
Love lightened forth:—how close the memory seems!
Love in the heart, and the strong sword in hand:
The old Elizabethan bards loved so.
The heart of manhood has waxed faint and slow
To-day, and blood has left our thin-veined land,
And men have lost the power to understand
How through love's eyes the war-god's glances glow.
246

VIII.
AN IDEAL POET

Take Marlowe's splendid and impassioned heart,
Full of divine Elizabethan fire:
Take Shelley's tenderness, and Shelley's lyre,
And touch dim heights wherethrough strange starbeams dart:
Take Hugo's sovereign love and sense of Art,
And Musset's sweet insatiable desire,
And Byron's wrath at king and priest and liar—
These diverse gifts to one swift soul impart:—
Then over and above these several powers
Add Christ's own changeless spirit of love for men;
Mix Shelley's love for stars and birds and flowers
With Christ's unfathomed and immortal pain,—
With some such mingling of yet unmixed hours
Shall poets of the future sing and reign.
247

A HYMN OF IMMORTALITY

I

So many have gone before that now the further valleys
Are far more full of flowers and songs than sunlit alleys
Of earth's green woods forlorn.—
The hills of heaven resound to many a dead love's laughter:—
So many loves have gone! Shall we not hasten after?
So many loves are dead,—dead, or new-born!

II

Oh, surely heaven is full of sweet familiar faces,
And hyacinths are there and ferns from forest-places
That here we know so well!
So many flowers have died, since first the pain of living
Smote through our souls. Our world has been so great at giving.
Heaven must be sumptuous with our pine-woods' smell!
248

III

So many have gone before! The blossoms of all summers:
The leaves of every spring: the bees, those gay-coat mummers:
The gilded butterflies.—
Our generous earth has given so freely of its splendour
That all the shores of heaven must be fulfilled of tender
Light shed from sunlit and from moonlit skies!

IV

Heaven has the best of us! God steals our fairest faces.
Heaven envies earth, it seems, her passionate embraces,
And even her thymy hills,
And even the banks where bloom the violets pure and lowly
And where the green fern-fronds unwind their tresses slowly,
And even the soft low laughter of our rills.

V

God! is thine heaven devoid of children that thou takest
Ours? Is thine heaven devoid of passion that thou breakest
Our love-cups one by one?
God! is thine heaven devoid of starlight that thou stealest
Each morning all the stars,—of light since thou concealest
After earth's every sunset earth's own sun?
249

VI

So many have gone before,—bright petals, wings, and faces,—
That flowerless, loveless, dry, the old green flowerful places
Seem dead for evermore.
Yea: heaven it is which holds, as earth held once, our treasures.
We started first from heaven, and now our bark remeasures
The lonely waters to the primal shore.

VII

Earth we have tried: which lay before us like an island
Divine 'mid waters blue and bright with mist-clad highland
Beneath the morning sun.
Earth we have tried; and tried the love-lips of its daughters,
And stooped our lips to drink its silvery running waters:
And now we are weary,—and our task is done.

VIII

Now in the evening glow that falleth strange and solemn
Across the waters grey and lights the last tree-column
On the old isle of Earth,
250

With hearts too full to speak, with longings unavailing
Towards deathland whence we came, or birthland, we are sailing—
But not now round us rings the morning's mirth.

IX

Not now around us shine the love-looks that we cherished!
How many and many a friend in earth's green vales has perished,
Exploring through the day
The hills and nooks and dells that seemed so fair and harmless.
Full of young strength we came: but strengthless now and armless
We travel backward through the lonely grey.

X

How solemn and how weird, over the silent water,
That far-lit fir-clump gleams! There kissed we an earth-daughter
(How many years ago?)
That far blue lonely hill rang once with shouts so merry
That the birds glanced aside from threatened husk or berry
To wonder what could move man's laughter so!
251

XI

Beside that hazel-copse shone eyes so sweet and fearless
That for their sake it seemed the whole world must be tearless
For ever and evermore!
Where are those eyes to-day? Ah! not on board our vessel.
Gaze backward, as the keel with onward waves doth wrestle:
Mark you that white stone on the sunless shore?

XII

Within that forest sleeps another and another.
A child within that glade: a grey-haired well-loved mother
Within those garden-walls.
Across the foam-flecked deep their dim eyes seem to glisten:
But dimmer are our eyes, as our strained ears would listen
To every voice whose old soft whisper calls.

XIII

Their spirits have crossed the deep before us. As we follow,
Obscurer grow the earth's green glades and very hollow
Her old love-laughter rings!
Oh not behind,—in front the white hands wait and beckon:—
The welcoming looks upon death's stately shores we reckon
By the tombstones of summers and past springs.
252

XIV

The earth fades out of sight. We cross the cold grey water,
Almost alone at last.—Flower-son and blossom-daughter,
Flower-wife and mother-flower,
Not these are with us now. They all have passed before us.
For our death-psalm we have the white waves' sobbing chorus:
Salt air and moonlight for our last love-bower.

XV

But oh how full is death, or heaven, of friendly faces!
More full of joyous bloom than ever the old green places
In the earth's old best days were
Are those wan shores whose peaks now just begin to waver
In the wild light of dawn: whence unknown blossom-savour
Floats towards us faintly through the blue night-air.
July, 1883.
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