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diff --git a/1568-0.txt b/1568-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e7f292a --- /dev/null +++ b/1568-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5649 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Poems, by William Ernest Henley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Poems + + +Author: William Ernest Henley + + + +Release Date: February 27, 2015 [eBook #1568] +[This file was first posted on August 23, 1998] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS*** + + +Transcribed from the 1907 David Nutt edition by Diarmuid Pigott with some +additional material and proofing by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org + + [Picture: Book cover] + + [Picture: Bust of William Ernest Henley] + + + + + + POEMS + + + _By_ + + WILLIAM ERNEST HENLEY + + * * * * * + + _The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet_, + _Though to itself it only live and die_. + + SHAKESPEARE + + * * * * * + + _Tenth Impression_ + + * * * * * + + LONDON + _Published by DAVID NUTT_ + at the Sign of the Phœnix + IN LONG ACRE + 1907 + +_First Edition printed January_ 1898 +_Second Edition printed March_ 1898 +_Third Edition printed September_ 1898 +_Fourth Edition printed January_ 1900 +_Fifth Edition printed December_ 1901 +_Sixth Impression printed August_ 1903 +_Seventh Impression printed 1904 +February_ +_Eighth Impression printed May_ 1905 +_Ninth Impresion printed April_ 1906 +_Tenth Impression printed Nov._ 1907 + + * * * * * + + Edinburgh: T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty + + + + +_TO MY WIFE_ + + + _Take_, _dear_, _my little sheaf of songs_, + _For_, _old or new_, + _All that is good in them belongs_ + _Only to you_; + + _And_, _singing as when all was young_, + _They will recall_ + _Those others_, _lived but left unsung_— + _The bent of all_. + + W. E. H + +APRIL 1888 + SEPTEMBER 1897. + + + + +_ADVERTISEMENT_ + + +_My friend and publisher_, _Mr. Alfred Nutt_, _asks me to introduce this +re-issue of old work in a new shape_. _At his request_, _then_, _I have +to say that nearly all the numbers contained in the present volume are +reprinted from_ ‘_A Book of Verses_’ (1888) _and_ ‘_London Voluntaries_’ +(1892–3). _From the first of these I have removed some copies of verse +which seemed to me scarce worth keeping_; _and I have recovered for it +certain others from those publications which had made room for them_. _I +have corrected where I could_, _added such dates as I might_, _and_, _by +re-arrangement and revision_, _done my best to give my book_, _such as it +is_, _its final form_. _If any be displeased by the result_, _I can but +submit that my verses are my own_, _and that this is how I would have +them read_. + +_The work of revision has reminded me that_, _small as is this book of +mine_, _it is all in the matter of verse that I have to show for the +years between_ 1872 _and_ 1897. _A principal reason is that_, _after +spending the better part of my life in the pursuit of poetry_, _I found +myself_ (_about_ 1877) _so utterly unmarketable that I had to own myself +beaten in art_, _and to addict myself to journalism for the next ten +years_. _Came the production by my old friend_, _Mr. H. B. Donkin_, _in +his little collection of_ ‘_Voluntaries_’ (1888), _compiled for that +East-End Hospital to which he has devoted so much time and energy and +skill_, _of those unrhyming rhythms in which I had tried to +quintessentialize_, _as_ (_I believe_) _one scarce can do in rhyme_, _my +impressions of the Old Edinburgh Infirmary_. _They had long __since been +rejected by every editor of standing in London—I had well-nigh said in +the world_; _but as soon as Mr. Nutt had read them_, _he entreated me to +look for more_. _I did as I was told_; _old dusty sheaves were dragged +to light_; _the work of selection and correction was begun_; _I burned +much_; _I found that_, _after all_, _the lyrical instinct had slept—not +died_; _I ventured_ (_in brief_) ‘_A Book of Verses_.’ _It was received +with so much interest that I took heart once more_, _and wrote the +numbers presently reprinted from_ ‘_The National Observer_’ _in the +collection first_ (1892) _called_ ‘_The Song of the Sword_’ _and +afterwards_ (1893), ‘_London voluntaries_.’ _If I have said nothing +since_, _it is that I have nothing to say which is not_, _as yet_, _too +personal—too personal and too a afflicting—for utterance_. + +_For the matter of my book_, _it is there to speak for itself_:— + + ‘_Here’s a sigh to those who love me_ + _And a smile to those who hate_.’ + +_I refer to it for the simple pleasure of reflecting that it has made me +many friends and some enemies_. + + _W. E. H._ + +_Muswell Hill_, 4_th_ _September_ 1897. + + + + +CONTENTS + + IN HOSPITAL + PAGE + I. Enter Patient 3 + II. Waiting 4 + III. Interior 5 + IV. Before 6 + V. Operation 7 + VI. After 9 + VII. Vigil 10 + VIII. Staff-Nurse: Old Style 13 + IX. Lady Probationer 14 + X. Staff-Nurse: New Style 15 + XI. Clinical 16 + XII. Etching 19 + XIII. Casualty 21 + XIV. Ave, Caeser! 23 + XV. ‘The Chief’ 24 + XVI. House-Surgeon 25 + XVII. Interlude 26 + XVIII. Children: Private Ward 28 + XIX. Srcubber 29 + XX. Visitor 30 + XXI. Romance 31 + XXII. Pastoral 33 + XXIII. Music 35 + XXIV. Suicide 37 + XXV. Apparition 39 + XXVI. Anterotics 40 + XXVII. Nocturn 41 + XXVIII. Discharged 42 +ENVOY 44 +THE SONG OF THE SWORD 47 +ARABIAN NIGHTS’ ENTERTAINMENTS 57 + BRIC-À-BRAC +Ballade of the Toyokuni Colour-Print 79 +Ballade of Youth and Age 81 +Ballade of Midsummer Days and Nights 83 +Ballade of Dead Actors 85 +Ballade Made in the Hot Weather 87 +Ballade of Truisms 89 +Double Ballade of Life and Death 91 +Double Ballade of the Nothingness of Things 94 +At Queensferry 98 +Orientale 99 +In Fisherrow 100 +Back-View 101 +_Croquis_ 102 +Attadale, West Highlands 103 +From a Window in Princes Street 104 +In the Dials 105 +The gods are dead 106 +Let us be drunk 107 +When you are old 108 +Beside the idle summer sea 109 +The ways of Death are soothing and serene 110 +We shall surely die 111 +What is to come 112 + ECHOES + I. To my mother 115 + II. Life is bitter 117 + III. O, gather me the rose 118 + IV. Out of the night that covers me 119 + V. I am the Reaper 120 + VI. Praise the generous gods 122 + VII. Fill a glass with golden wine 123 + VIII. We’ll go no more a-roving 124 + IX. Madam Life’s a piece in bloom 126 + X. The sea is full of wandering foam 127 + XI. Thick is the darkness 128 + XII. To me at my fifth-floor window 129 + XIII. Bring her again, O western wind 130 + XIV. The wan sun westers, faint and slow 131 + XV. There is a wheel inside my head 133 + XVI. While the west is paling 134 + XVII. The sands are alive with sunshine 135 + XVIII. The nightingale has a lyre of gold 136 + XIX. Your heart has trembled to my tongue 137 + XX. The surges gushed and sounded 138 + XXI. We flash across the level 139 + XXII. The West a glimmering lake of light 140 + XXIII. The skies are strown with stars 142 + XXIV. The full sea rolls and thunders 143 + XXV. In the year that’s come and gone 144 + XXVI. In the placid summer midnight 146 + XXVII. She sauntered by the swinging seas 148 + XXVIII. Blithe dreams arise to greet us 149 + XXIX. A child 152 + XXX. Kate-A-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams 154 + XXXI. O, have you blessed, behind the stars 155 + XXXII. O, Falmouth is a fine town 156 + XXXIII. The ways are green 158 + XXXIV. Life in her creaking shoes 169 + XXXV. A late lark twitters from the quiet skies 161 + XXXVI. I gave my heart to a woman 163 + XXXVII. Or ever the knightly years were gone 164 + XXXVIII. On the way to Kew 166 + XXXIX. The past was goodly once 168 + XL. The spring, my dear 169 + XLI. The Spirit of Wine 170 + XLII. A Wink from Hesper 172 + XLIII. Friends. . . old friends 173 + XLIV. If it should come to be 175 + XLV. From the brake the Nightingale 179 + XLVI. In the waste hour 178 + XLVII. Crosses and troubles 181 + LONDON VOLUNTARIES + I. _Grave_ 185 + II. _Andante con Moto_ 187 + III. _Scherzando_ 192 + IV. _Largo e Mesto_ 186 + V. _Allegro Maëstoso_ 200 + RHYMES AND RHYTHMS +PROLOGUE 207 + I. Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade 209 + II. We are the Choice of the Will 211 + III. A desolate shore 214 + IV. It came with the threat of a waning moon 216 + V. Why, my heart, do we love her so? 217 + VI. One with the ruined sunset 218 + VII. There’s a regret 219 + VIII. Time and the Earth 221 + IX. As like the Woman as you can 223 + X. Midsummer midnight skies 225 + XI. Gulls in an aery morrice 227 + XII. Some starlit garden grey with dew 228 + XIII. Under a stagnant sky 229 + XIV. Fresh from his fastnesses 231 + XV. You played and sang a snatch of song 233 + XVI. Space and dread and the dark 234 + XVII. Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook 236 + XVIII. When you wake in your crib 239 + XIX. O, Time and Change 242 + XX. The shadow of Dawn 243 + XXI. When the wind storms by with a shout 244 + XXII. Trees and the menace of night 245 + XXIII. Here they trysted, here they strayed 247 + XXIV. Not to the staring Day 249 + XXV. What have I done for you 251 +EPILOGUE 256 + + + + +IN HOSPITAL + + + _On ne saurait dire à quel point un homme_, _seul dans son_ + _lit et malade_, _devient personnel_.— + + BALZAC. + + + +I +ENTER PATIENT + + + THE morning mists still haunt the stony street; + The northern summer air is shrill and cold; + And lo, the Hospital, grey, quiet, old, + Where Life and Death like friendly chafferers meet. + Thro’ the loud spaciousness and draughty gloom + A small, strange child—so agèd yet so young!— + Her little arm besplinted and beslung, + Precedes me gravely to the waiting-room. + I limp behind, my confidence all gone. + The grey-haired soldier-porter waves me on, + And on I crawl, and still my spirits fail: + A tragic meanness seems so to environ + These corridors and stairs of stone and iron, + Cold, naked, clean—half-workhouse and half-jail. + + + +II +WAITING + + + A SQUARE, squat room (a cellar on promotion), + Drab to the soul, drab to the very daylight; + Plasters astray in unnatural-looking tinware; + Scissors and lint and apothecary’s jars. + + Here, on a bench a skeleton would writhe from, + Angry and sore, I wait to be admitted: + Wait till my heart is lead upon my stomach, + While at their ease two dressers do their chores. + + One has a probe—it feels to me a crowbar. + A small boy sniffs and shudders after bluestone. + A poor old tramp explains his poor old ulcers. + Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame. + + + +III +INTERIOR + + + THE gaunt brown walls + Look infinite in their decent meanness. + There is nothing of home in the noisy kettle, + The fulsome fire. + + The atmosphere + Suggests the trail of a ghostly druggist. + Dressings and lint on the long, lean table— + Whom are they for? + + The patients yawn, + Or lie as in training for shroud and coffin. + A nurse in the corridor scolds and wrangles. + It’s grim and strange. + + Far footfalls clank. + The bad burn waits with his head unbandaged. + My neighbour chokes in the clutch of chloral . . . + O, a gruesome world! + + + +IV +BEFORE + + + BEHOLD me waiting—waiting for the knife. + A little while, and at a leap I storm + The thick, sweet mystery of chloroform, + The drunken dark, the little death-in-life. + The gods are good to me: I have no wife, + No innocent child, to think of as I near + The fateful minute; nothing all-too dear + Unmans me for my bout of passive strife. + Yet am I tremulous and a trifle sick, + And, face to face with chance, I shrink a little: + My hopes are strong, my will is something weak. + Here comes the basket? Thank you. I am ready. + But, gentlemen my porters, life is brittle: + You carry Cæsar and his fortunes—steady! + + + +V +OPERATION + + + YOU are carried in a basket, + Like a carcase from the shambles, + To the theatre, a cockpit + Where they stretch you on a table. + + Then they bid you close your eyelids, + And they mask you with a napkin, + And the anæsthetic reaches + Hot and subtle through your being. + + And you gasp and reel and shudder + In a rushing, swaying rapture, + While the voices at your elbow + Fade—receding—fainter—farther. + + Lights about you shower and tumble, + And your blood seems crystallising— + Edged and vibrant, yet within you + Racked and hurried back and forward. + + Then the lights grow fast and furious, + And you hear a noise of waters, + And you wrestle, blind and dizzy, + In an agony of effort, + + Till a sudden lull accepts you, + And you sound an utter darkness . . . + And awaken . . . with a struggle . . . + On a hushed, attentive audience. + + + +VI +AFTER + + + LIKE as a flamelet blanketed in smoke, + So through the anæsthetic shows my life; + So flashes and so fades my thought, at strife + With the strong stupor that I heave and choke + And sicken at, it is so foully sweet. + Faces look strange from space—and disappear. + Far voices, sudden loud, offend my ear— + And hush as sudden. Then my senses fleet: + All were a blank, save for this dull, new pain + That grinds my leg and foot; and brokenly + Time and the place glimpse on to me again; + And, unsurprised, out of uncertainty, + I wake—relapsing—somewhat faint and fain, + To an immense, complacent dreamery. + + + +VII +VIGIL + + + LIVED on one’s back, + In the long hours of repose, + Life is a practical nightmare— + Hideous asleep or awake. + + Shoulders and loins + Ache - - - ! + Ache, and the mattress, + Run into boulders and hummocks, + Glows like a kiln, while the bedclothes— + Tumbling, importunate, daft— + Ramble and roll, and the gas, + Screwed to its lowermost, + An inevitable atom of light, + Haunts, and a stertorous sleeper + Snores me to hate and despair. + + All the old time + Surges malignant before me; + Old voices, old kisses, old songs + Blossom derisive about me; + While the new days + Pass me in endless procession: + A pageant of shadows + Silently, leeringly wending + On . . . and still on . . . still on! + + Far in the stillness a cat + Languishes loudly. A cinder + Falls, and the shadows + Lurch to the leap of the flame. The next man to me + Turns with a moan; and the snorer, + The drug like a rope at his throat, + Gasps, gurgles, snorts himself free, as the night-nurse, + Noiseless and strange, + Her bull’s eye half-lanterned in apron, + (Whispering me, ‘Are ye no sleepin’ yet?’), + Passes, list-slippered and peering, + Round . . . and is gone. + + Sleep comes at last— + Sleep full of dreams and misgivings— + Broken with brutal and sordid + Voices and sounds that impose on me, + Ere I can wake to it, + The unnatural, intolerable day. + + + +VIII +STAFF-NURSE: OLD STYLE + + + THE greater masters of the commonplace, + REMBRANDT and good SIR WALTER—only these + Could paint her all to you: experienced ease + And antique liveliness and ponderous grace; + The sweet old roses of her sunken face; + The depth and malice of her sly, grey eyes; + The broad Scots tongue that flatters, scolds, defies; + The thick Scots wit that fells you like a mace. + These thirty years has she been nursing here, + Some of them under SYME, her hero still. + Much is she worth, and even more is made of her. + Patients and students hold her very dear. + The doctors love her, tease her, use her skill. + They say ‘The Chief’ himself is half-afraid of her. + + + +IX +LADY-PROBATIONER + + + SOME three, or five, or seven, and thirty years; + A Roman nose; a dimpling double-chin; + Dark eyes and shy that, ignorant of sin, + Are yet acquainted, it would seem, with tears; + A comely shape; a slim, high-coloured hand, + Graced, rather oddly, with a signet ring; + A bashful air, becoming everything; + A well-bred silence always at command. + Her plain print gown, prim cap, and bright steel chain + Look out of place on her, and I remain + Absorbed in her, as in a pleasant mystery. + Quick, skilful, quiet, soft in speech and touch . . . + ‘Do you like nursing?’ ‘Yes, Sir, very much.’ + Somehow, I rather think she has a history. + + + +X +STAFF-NURSE: NEW STYLE + + + BLUE-EYED and bright of face but waning fast + Into the sere of virginal decay, + I view her as she enters, day by day, + As a sweet sunset almost overpast. + Kindly and calm, patrician to the last, + Superbly falls her gown of sober gray, + And on her chignon’s elegant array + The plainest cap is somehow touched with caste. + She talks BEETHOVEN; frowns disapprobation + At BALZAC’S name, sighs it at ‘poor GEORGE SAND’S’; + Knows that she has exceeding pretty hands; + Speaks Latin with a right accentuation; + And gives at need (as one who understands) + Draught, counsel, diagnosis, exhortation. + + + +XI +CLINICAL + + + HIST? . . . + Through the corridor’s echoes, + Louder and nearer + Comes a great shuffling of feet. + Quick, every one of you, + Strighten your quilts, and be decent! + Here’s the Professor. + + In he comes first + With the bright look we know, + From the broad, white brows the kind eyes + Soothing yet nerving you. Here at his elbow, + White-capped, white-aproned, the Nurse, + Towel on arm and her inkstand + Fretful with quills. + Here in the ruck, anyhow, + Surging along, + Louts, duffers, exquisites, students, and prigs— + Whiskers and foreheads, scarf-pins and spectacles— + Hustles the Class! And they ring themselves + Round the first bed, where the Chief + (His dressers and clerks at attention), + Bends in inspection already. + + So shows the ring + Seen from behind round a conjurer + Doing his pitch in the street. + High shoulders, low shoulders, broad shoulders, narrow ones, + Round, square, and angular, serry and shove; + While from within a voice, + Gravely and weightily fluent, + Sounds; and then ceases; and suddenly + (Look at the stress of the shoulders!) + Out of a quiver of silence, + Over the hiss of the spray, + Comes a low cry, and the sound + Of breath quick intaken through teeth + Clenched in resolve. And the Master + Breaks from the crowd, and goes, + Wiping his hands, + To the next bed, with his pupils + Flocking and whispering behind him. + + Now one can see. + Case Number One + Sits (rather pale) with his bedclothes + Stripped up, and showing his foot + (Alas for God’s Image!) + Swaddled in wet, white lint + Brilliantly hideous with red. + + + +XII +ETCHING + + + TWO and thirty is the ploughman. + He’s a man of gallant inches, + And his hair is close and curly, + And his beard; + But his face is wan and sunken, + And his eyes are large and brilliant, + And his shoulder-blades are sharp, + And his knees. + + He is weak of wits, religious, + Full of sentiment and yearning, + Gentle, faded—with a cough + And a snore. + When his wife (who was a widow, + And is many years his elder) + Fails to write, and that is always, + He desponds. + + Let his melancholy wander, + And he’ll tell you pretty stories + Of the women that have wooed him + Long ago; + Or he’ll sing of bonnie lasses + Keeping sheep among the heather, + With a crackling, hackling click + In his voice. + + + +XIII +CASUALTY + + + AS with varnish red and glistening + Dripped his hair; his feet looked rigid; + Raised, he settled stiffly sideways: + You could see his hurts were spinal. + + He had fallen from an engine, + And been dragged along the metals. + It was hopeless, and they knew it; + So they covered him, and left him. + + As he lay, by fits half sentient, + Inarticulately moaning, + With his stockinged soles protruded + Stark and awkward from the blankets, + + To his bed there came a woman, + Stood and looked and sighed a little, + And departed without speaking, + As himself a few hours after. + + I was told it was his sweetheart. + They were on the eve of marriage. + She was quiet as a statue, + But her lip was grey and writhen. + + + +XIV +AVE CAESER! + + + FROM the winter’s grey despair, + From the summer’s golden languor, + Death, the lover of Life, + Frees us for ever. + + Inevitable, silent, unseen, + Everywhere always, + Shadow by night and as light in the day, + Signs she at last to her chosen; + And, as she waves them forth, + Sorrow and Joy + Lay by their looks and their voices, + Set down their hopes, and are made + One in the dim Forever. + + Into the winter’s grey delight, + Into the summer’s golden dream, + Holy and high and impartial, + Death, the mother of Life, + Mingles all men for ever. + + + +XV +‘THE CHIEF’ + + + HIS brow spreads large and placid, and his eye + Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still. + Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfill— + His face at once benign and proud and shy. + If envy scout, if ignorance deny, + His faultless patience, his unyielding will, + Beautiful gentleness and splendid skill, + Innumerable gratitudes reply. + His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties, + And seems in all his patients to compel + Such love and faith as failure cannot quell. + We hold him for another Herakles, + Battling with custom, prejudice, disease, + As once the son of Zeus with Death and Hell. + + + +XVI +HOUSE-SURGEON + + + EXCEEDING tall, but built so well his height + Half-disappears in flow of chest and limb; + Moustache and whisker trooper-like in trim; + Frank-faced, frank-eyed, frank-hearted; always bright + And always punctual—morning, noon, and night; + Bland as a Jesuit, sober as a hymn; + Humorous, and yet without a touch of whim; + Gentle and amiable, yet full of fight. + His piety, though fresh and true in strain, + Has not yet whitewashed up his common mood + To the dead blank of his particular Schism. + Sweet, unaggressive, tolerant, most humane, + Wild artists like his kindly elderhood, + And cultivate his mild Philistinism. + + + +XVII +INTERLUDE + + + O, THE fun, the fun and frolic + That _The Wind that Shakes the Barley_ + Scatters through a penny-whistle + Tickled with artistic fingers! + + Kate the scrubber (forty summers, + Stout but sportive) treads a measure, + Grinning, in herself a ballet, + Fixed as fate upon her audience. + + Stumps are shaking, crutch-supported; + Splinted fingers tap the rhythm; + And a head all helmed with plasters + Wags a measured approbation. + + Of their mattress-life oblivious, + All the patients, brisk and cheerful, + Are encouraging the dancer, + And applauding the musician. + + Dim the gas-lights in the output + Of so many ardent smokers, + Full of shadow lurch the corners, + And the doctor peeps and passes. + + There are, maybe, some suspicions + Of an alcoholic presence . . . + ‘Tak’ a sup of this, my wumman!’ . . . + New Year comes but once a twelvemonth. + + + +XVIII +CHILDREN: PRIVATE WARD + + + HERE in this dim, dull, double-bedded room, + I play the father to a brace of boys, + Ailing but apt for every sort of noise, + Bedfast but brilliant yet with health and bloom. + Roden, the Irishman, is ‘sieven past,’ + Blue-eyed, snub-nosed, chubby, and fair of face. + Willie’s but six, and seems to like the place, + A cheerful little collier to the last. + They eat, and laugh, and sing, and fight, all day; + All night they sleep like dormice. See them play + At Operations:—Roden, the Professor, + Saws, lectures, takes the artery up, and ties; + Willie, self-chloroformed, with half-shut eyes, + Holding the limb and moaning—Case and Dresser. + + + +XIX +SCRUBBER + + + SHE’S tall and gaunt, and in her hard, sad face + With flashes of the old fun’s animation + There lowers the fixed and peevish resignation + Bred of a past where troubles came apace. + She tells me that her husband, ere he died, + Saw seven of their children pass away, + And never knew the little lass at play + Out on the green, in whom he’s deified. + Her kin dispersed, her friends forgot and gone, + All simple faith her honest Irish mind, + Scolding her spoiled young saint, she labours on: + Telling her dreams, taking her patients’ part, + Trailing her coat sometimes: and you shall find + No rougher, quainter speech, nor kinder heart. + + + +XX +VISITOR + + + HER little face is like a walnut shell + With wrinkling lines; her soft, white hair adorns + Her withered brows in quaint, straight curls, like horns; + And all about her clings an old, sweet smell. + Prim is her gown and quakerlike her shawl. + Well might her bonnets have been born on her. + Can you conceive a Fairy Godmother + The subject of a strong religious call? + In snow or shine, from bed to bed she runs, + All twinkling smiles and texts and pious tales, + Her mittened hands, that ever give or pray, + Bearing a sheaf of tracts, a bag of buns: + A wee old maid that sweeps the Bridegroom’s way, + Strong in a cheerful trust that never fails. + + + +XXI +ROMANCE + + + ‘TALK of pluck!’ pursued the Sailor, + Set at euchre on his elbow, + ‘I was on the wharf at Charleston, + Just ashore from off the runner. + + ‘It was grey and dirty weather, + And I heard a drum go rolling, + Rub-a-dubbing in the distance, + Awful dour-like and defiant. + + ‘In and out among the cotton, + Mud, and chains, and stores, and anchors, + Tramped a squad of battered scarecrows— + Poor old Dixie’s bottom dollar! + + ‘Some had shoes, but all had rifles, + Them that wasn’t bald was beardless, + And the drum was rolling _Dixie_, + And they stepped to it like men, sir! + + ‘Rags and tatters, belts and bayonets, + On they swung, the drum a-rolling, + Mum and sour. It looked like fighting, + And they meant it too, by thunder!’ + + + +XXII +PASTORAL + + + IT’S the Spring. + Earth has conceived, and her bosom, + Teeming with summer, is glad. + + Vistas of change and adventure, + Thro’ the green land + The grey roads go beckoning and winding, + Peopled with wains, and melodious + With harness-bells jangling: + Jangling and twangling rough rhythms + To the slow march of the stately, great horses + Whistled and shouted along. + + White fleets of cloud, + Argosies heavy with fruitfulness, + Sail the blue peacefully. Green flame the hedgerows. + Blackbirds are bugling, and white in wet winds + Sway the tall poplars. + Pageants of colour and fragrance, + Pass the sweet meadows, and viewless + Walks the mild spirit of May, + Visibly blessing the world. + + O, the brilliance of blossoming orchards! + O, the savour and thrill of the woods, + When their leafage is stirred + By the flight of the Angel of Rain! + Loud lows the steer; in the fallows + Rooks are alert; and the brooks + Gurgle and tinkle and trill. Thro’ the gloamings, + Under the rare, shy stars, + Boy and girl wander, + Dreaming in darkness and dew. + + It’s the Spring. + A sprightliness feeble and squalid + Wakes in the ward, and I sicken, + Impotent, winter at heart. + + + +XXIII +MUSIC + + + DOWN the quiet eve, + Thro’ my window with the sunset + Pipes to me a distant organ + Foolish ditties; + + And, as when you change + Pictures in a magic lantern, + Books, beds, bottles, floor, and ceiling + Fade and vanish, + + And I’m well once more . . . + August flares adust and torrid, + But my heart is full of April + Sap and sweetness. + + In the quiet eve + I am loitering, longing, dreaming . . . + Dreaming, and a distant organ + Pipes me ditties. + + I can see the shop, + I can smell the sprinkled pavement, + Where she serves—her chestnut chignon + Thrills my senses! + + O, the sight and scent, + Wistful eve and perfumed pavement! + In the distance pipes an organ . . . + The sensation + + Comes to me anew, + And my spirit for a moment + Thro’ the music breathes the blessèd + Airs of London. + + + +XXIV +SUICIDE + + + STARING corpselike at the ceiling, + See his harsh, unrazored features, + Ghastly brown against the pillow, + And his throat—so strangely bandaged! + + Lack of work and lack of victuals, + A debauch of smuggled whisky, + And his children in the workhouse + Made the world so black a riddle + + That he plunged for a solution; + And, although his knife was edgeless, + He was sinking fast towards one, + When they came, and found, and saved him. + + Stupid now with shame and sorrow, + In the night I hear him sobbing. + But sometimes he talks a little. + He has told me all his troubles. + + In his broad face, tanned and bloodless, + White and wild his eyeballs glisten; + And his smile, occult and tragic, + Yet so slavish, makes you shudder! + + + +XXV +APPARITION + + + THIN-LEGGED, thin-chested, slight unspeakably, + Neat-footed and weak-fingered: in his face— + Lean, large-boned, curved of beak, and touched with race, + Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, mutable as the sea, + The brown eyes radiant with vivacity— + There shines a brilliant and romantic grace, + A spirit intense and rare, with trace on trace + Of passion and impudence and energy. + Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck, + Most vain, most generous, sternly critical, + Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: + A deal of Ariel, just a streak of Puck, + Much Antony, of Hamlet most of all, + And something of the Shorter-Catechist. + + + +XXVI +ANTEROTICS + + + LAUGHS the happy April morn + Thro’ my grimy, little window, + And a shaft of sunshine pushes + Thro’ the shadows in the square. + + Dogs are tracing thro’ the grass, + Crows are cawing round the chimneys, + In and out among the washing + Goes the West at hide-and-seek. + + Loud and cheerful clangs the bell. + Here the nurses troop to breakfast. + Handsome, ugly, all are women . . . + O, the Spring—the Spring—the Spring! + + + +XXVII +NOCTURN + + + AT the barren heart of midnight, + When the shadow shuts and opens + As the loud flames pulse and flutter, + I can hear a cistern leaking. + + Dripping, dropping, in a rhythm, + Rough, unequal, half-melodious, + Like the measures aped from nature + In the infancy of music; + + Like the buzzing of an insect, + Still, irrational, persistent . . . + I must listen, listen, listen + In a passion of attention; + + Till it taps upon my heartstrings, + And my very life goes dripping, + Dropping, dripping, drip-drip-dropping, + In the drip-drop of the cistern. + + + +XXVIII +DISCHARGED + + + CARRY me out + Into the wind and the sunshine, + Into the beautiful world. + + O, the wonder, the spell of the streets! + The stature and strength of the horses, + The rustle and echo of footfalls, + The flat roar and rattle of wheels! + A swift tram floats huge on us . . . + It’s a dream? + The smell of the mud in my nostrils + Blows brave—like a breath of the sea! + + As of old, + Ambulant, undulant drapery, + Vaguery and strangely provocative, + Fluttersd and beckons. O, yonder— + Is it?—the gleam of a stocking! + Sudden, a spire + Wedged in the mist! O, the houses, + The long lines of lofty, grey houses, + Cross-hatched with shadow and light! + These are the streets . . . + Each is an avenue leading + Whither I will! + + Free . . . ! + Dizzy, hysterical, faint, + I sit, and the carriage rolls on with me + Into the wonderful world. + +THE OLD INFIRMARY, EDINBURGH, 1873–75 + + + + +ENVOY +_To_ CHARLES BAXTER + + + DO you remember + That afternoon—that Sunday afternoon!— + When, as the kirks were ringing in, + And the grey city teemed + With Sabbath feelings and aspects, + LEWIS—our LEWIS then, + Now the whole world’s—and you, + Young, yet in shape most like an elder, came, + Laden with BALZACS + (Big, yellow books, quite impudently French), + The first of many times + To that transformed back-kitchen where I lay + So long, so many centuries— + Or years is it!—ago? + + Dear CHARLES, since then + We have been friends, LEWIS and you and I, + (How good it sounds, ‘LEWIS and you and I!’): + Such friends, I like to think, + That in us three, LEWIS and me and you, + Is something of that gallant dream + Which old DUMAS—the generous, the humane, + The seven-and-seventy times to be forgiven!— + Dreamed for a blessing to the race, + The immortal _Musketeers_. + + Our ATHOS rests—the wise, the kind, + The liberal and august, his fault atoned, + Rests in the crowded yard + There at the west of Princes Street. We three— + You, I, and LEWIS!—still afoot, + Are still together, and our lives, + In chime so long, may keep + (God bless the thought!) + Unjangled till the end. + + W. E. H. + +CHISWICK, _March_ 1888 + + + + +THE SONG +OF THE SWORD + + + (_To_ Rudyard Kipling) + + 1890 + + _The Sword_ + _Singing_— + _The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword_ + _Clanging imperious_ + _Forth from Time’s battlements_ + _His ancient and triumphing Song_. + + In the beginning, + Ere God inspired Himself + Into the clay thing + Thumbed to His image, + The vacant, the naked shell + Soon to be Man: + Thoughtful He pondered it, + Prone there and impotent, + Fragile, inviting + Attack and discomfiture; + Then, with a smile— + As He heard in the Thunder + That laughed over Eden + The voice of the Trumpet, + The iron Beneficence, + Calling his dooms + To the Winds of the world— + Stooping, He drew + On the sand with His finger + A shape for a sign + Of his way to the eyes + That in wonder should waken, + For a proof of His will + To the breaking intelligence. + That was the birth of me: + I am the Sword. + + Bleak and lean, grey and cruel, + Short-hilted, long shafted, + I froze into steel; + And the blood of my elder, + His hand on the hafts of me, + Sprang like a wave + In the wind, as the sense + Of his strength grew to ecstasy; + Glowed like a coal + In the throat of the furnace; + As he knew me and named me + The War-Thing, the Comrade, + Father of honour + And giver of kingship, + The fame-smith, the song-master, + Bringer of women + On fire at his hands + For the pride of fulfilment, + _Priest_ (saith the Lord) + _Of his marriage with victory_ + Ho! then, the Trumpet, + Handmaid of heroes, + Calling the peers + To the place of espousals! + Ho! then, the splendour + And glare of my ministry, + Clothing the earth + With a livery of lightnings! + Ho! then, the music + Of battles in onset, + And ruining armours, + And God’s gift returning + In fury to God! + Thrilling and keen + As the song of the winter stars, + Ho! then, the sound + Of my voice, the implacable + Angel of Destiny!— + I am the Sword. + + Heroes, my children, + Follow, O, follow me! + Follow, exulting + In the great light that breaks + From the sacred Companionship! + Thrust through the fatuous, + Thrust through the fungous brood, + Spawned in my shadow + And gross with my gift! + Thrust through, and hearken + O, hark, to the Trumpet, + The Virgin of Battles, + Calling, still calling you + Into the Presence, + Sons of the Judgment, + Pure wafts of the Will! + Edged to annihilate, + Hilted with government, + Follow, O, follow me, + Till the waste places + All the grey globe over + Ooze, as the honeycomb + Drips, with the sweetness + Distilled of my strength, + And, teeming in peace + Through the wrath of my coming, + They give back in beauty + The dread and the anguish + They had of me visitant! + Follow, O follow, then, + Heroes, my harvesters! + Where the tall grain is ripe + Thrust in your sickles! + Stripped and adust + In a stubble of empire, + Scything and binding + The full sheaves of sovranty: + Thus, O, thus gloriously, + Shall you fulfil yourselves! + Thus, O, thus mightily, + Show yourselves sons of mine— + Yea, and win grace of me: + I am the Sword! + + I am the feast-maker: + Hark, through a noise + Of the screaming of eagles, + Hark how the Trumpet, + The mistress of mistresses, + Calls, silver-throated + And stern, where the tables + Are spread, and the meal + Of the Lord is in hand! + Driving the darkness, + Even as the banners + And spears of the Morning; + Sifting the nations, + The slag from the metal, + The waste and the weak + From the fit and the strong; + Fighting the brute, + The abysmal Fecundity; + Checking the gross, + Multitudinous blunders, + The groping, the purblind + Excesses in service + Of the Womb universal, + The absolute drudge; + Firing the charactry + Carved on the World, + The miraculous gem + In the seal-ring that burns + On the hand of the Master— + Yea! and authority + Flames through the dim, + Unappeasable Grisliness + Prone down the nethermost + Chasms of the Void!— + Clear singing, clean slicing; + Sweet spoken, soft finishing; + Making death beautiful, + Life but a coin + To be staked in the pastime + Whose playing is more + Than the transfer of being; + Arch-anarch, chief builder, + Prince and evangelist, + I am the Will of God: + I am the Sword. + + _The Sword_ + _Singing_— + _The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword_ + _Clanging majestical_, + _As from the starry-staired_ + _Courts of the primal Supremacy_, + _His high_, _irresistible song_. + + + + +ARABIAN NIGHTS’ +ENTERTAINMENTS + + + (_To_ Elizabeth Robins Pennell) + + 1893 + + ‘O mes chères _Mille et Une Nuits_!’—_Fantasio_. + + ONCE on a time + There was a little boy: a master-mage + By virtue of a Book + Of magic—O, so magical it filled + His life with visionary pomps + Processional! And Powers + Passed with him where he passed. And Thrones + And Dominations, glaived and plumed and mailed, + Thronged in the criss-cross streets, + The palaces pell-mell with playing-fields, + Domes, cloisters, dungeons, caverns, tents, arcades, + Of the unseen, silent City, in his soul + Pavilioned jealously, and hid + As in the dusk, profound, + Green stillnesses of some enchanted mere.— + + I shut mine eyes . . . And lo! + A flickering snatch of memory that floats + Upon the face of a pool of darkness five + And thirty dead years deep, + Antic in girlish broideries + And skirts and silly shoes with straps + And a broad-ribanded leghorn, he walks + Plain in the shadow of a church + (St. Michael’s: in whose brazen call + To curfew his first wails of wrath were whelmed), + Sedate for all his haste + To be at home; and, nestled in his arm, + Inciting still to quiet and solitude, + Boarded in sober drab, + With small, square, agitating cuts + Let in a-top of the double-columned, close, + Quakerlike print, a Book! . . . + What but that blessed brief + Of what is gallantest and best + In all the full-shelved Libraries of Romance? + The Book of rocs, + Sandalwood, ivory, turbans, ambergris, + Cream-tarts, and lettered apes, and calendars, + And ghouls, and genies—O, so huge + They might have overed the tall Minster Tower + Hands down, as schoolboys take a post! + In truth, the Book of Camaralzaman, + Schemselnihar and Sindbad, Scheherezade + The peerless, Bedreddin, Badroulbadour, + Cairo and Serendib and Candahar, + And Caspian, and the dim, terrific bulk— + Ice-ribbed, fiend-visited, isled in spells and storms— + Of Kaf! . . . That centre of miracles, + The sole, unparalleled Arabian Nights! + + Old friends I had a-many—kindly and grim + Familiars, cronies quaint + And goblin! Never a Wood but housed + Some morrice of dainty dapperlings. No Brook + But had his nunnery + Of green-haired, silvry-curving sprites, + To cabin in his grots, and pace + His lilied margents. Every lone Hillside + Might open upon Elf-Land. Every Stalk + That curled about a Bean-stick was of the breed + Of that live ladder by whose delicate rungs + You climbed beyond the clouds, and found + The Farm-House where the Ogre, gorged + And drowsy, from his great oak chair, + Among the flitches and pewters at the fire, + Called for his Faëry Harp. And in it flew, + And, perching on the kitchen table, sang + Jocund and jubilant, with a sound + Of those gay, golden-vowered madrigals + The shy thrush at mid-May + Flutes from wet orchards flushed with the triumphing dawn; + Or blackbirds rioting as they listened still, + In old-world woodlands rapt with an old-world spring, + For Pan’s own whistle, savage and rich and lewd, + And mocked him call for call! + + I could not pass + The half-door where the cobbler sat in view + Nor figure me the wizen Leprechaun, + In square-cut, faded reds and buckle-shoes, + Bent at his work in the hedge-side, and know + Just how he tapped his brogue, and twitched + His wax-end this and that way, both with wrists + And elbows. In the rich June fields, + Where the ripe clover drew the bees, + And the tall quakers trembled, and the West Wind + Lolled his half-holiday away + Beside me lolling and lounging through my own, + ’Twas good to follow the Miller’s Youngest Son + On his white horse along the leafy lanes; + For at his stirrup linked and ran, + Not cynical and trapesing, as he loped + From wall to wall above the espaliers, + But in the bravest tops + That market-town, a town of tops, could show: + Bold, subtle, adventurous, his tail + A banner flaunted in disdain + Of human stratagems and shifts: + King over All the Catlands, present and past + And future, that moustached + Artificer of fortunes, Puss-in-Boots! + Or Bluebeard’s Closet, with its plenishing + Of meat-hooks, sawdust, blood, + And wives that hung like fresh-dressed carcases— + Odd-fangled, most a butcher’s, part + A faëry chamber hazily seen + And hazily figured—on dark afternoons + And windy nights was visiting of the best. + Then, too, the pelt of hoofs + Out in the roaring darkness told + Of Herne the Hunter in his antlered helm + Galloping, as with despatches from the Pit, + Between his hell-born Hounds. + And Rip Van Winkle . . . often I lurked to hear, + Outside the long, low timbered, tarry wall, + The mutter and rumble of the trolling bowls + Down the lean plank, before they fluttered the pins; + For, listening, I could help him play + His wonderful game, + In those blue, booming hills, with Mariners + Refreshed from kegs not coopered in this our world. + + But what were these so near, + So neighbourly fancies to the spell that brought + The run of Ali Baba’s Cave + Just for the saying ‘Open Sesame,’ + With gold to measure, peck by peck, + In round, brown wooden stoups + You borrowed at the chandler’s? . . . Or one time + Made you Aladdin’s friend at school, + Free of his Garden of Jewels, Ring and Lamp + In perfect trim? . . . Or Ladies, fair + For all the embrowning scars in their white breasts + Went labouring under some dread ordinance, + Which made them whip, and bitterly cry the while, + Strange Curs that cried as they, + Till there was never a Black Bitch of all + Your consorting but might have gone + Spell-driven miserably for crimes + Done in the pride of womanhood and desire . . . + Or at the ghostliest altitudes of night, + While you lay wondering and acold, + Your sense was fearfully purged; and soon + Queen Labé, abominable and dear, + Rose from your side, opened the Box of Doom, + Scattered the yellow powder (which I saw + Like sulphur at the Docks in bulk), + And muttered certain words you could not hear; + And there! a living stream, + The brook you bathed in, with its weeds and flags + And cresses, glittered and sang + Out of the hearthrug over the nakedness, + Fair-scrubbed and decent, of your bedroom floor! . . . + + I was—how many a time!— + That Second Calendar, Son of a King, + On whom ’twas vehemently enjoined, + Pausing at one mysterious door, + To pry no closer, but content his soul + With his kind Forty. Yet I could not rest + For idleness and ungovernable Fate. + And the Black Horse, which fed on sesame + (That wonder-working word!), + Vouchsafed his back to me, and spread his vans, + And soaring, soaring on + From air to air, came charging to the ground + Sheer, like a lark from the midsummer clouds, + And, shaking me out of the saddle, where I sprawled + Flicked at me with his tail, + And left me blinded, miserable, distraught + (Even as I was in deed, + When doctors came, and odious things were done + On my poor tortured eyes + With lancets; or some evil acid stung + And wrung them like hot sand, + And desperately from room to room + Fumble I must my dark, disconsolate way), + To get to Bagdad how I might. But there + I met with Merry Ladies. O you three— + Safie, Amine, Zobëidé—when my heart + Forgets you all shall be forgot! + And so we supped, we and the rest, + On wine and roasted lamb, rose-water, dates, + Almonds, pistachios, citrons. And Haroun + Laughed out of his lordly beard + On Giaffar and Mesrour (_I_ knew the Three + For all their Mossoul habits). And outside + The Tigris, flowing swift + Like Severn bend for bend, twinkled and gleamed + With broken and wavering shapes of stranger stars; + The vast, blue night + Was murmurous with peris’ plumes + And the leathern wings of genies; words of power + Were whispering; and old fishermen, + Casting their nets with prayer, might draw to shore + Dead loveliness: or a prodigy in scales + Worth in the Caliph’s Kitchen pieces of gold: + Or copper vessels, stopped with lead, + Wherein some Squire of Eblis watched and railed, + In durance under potent charactry + Graven by the seal of Solomon the King . . . + + Then, as the Book was glassed + In Life as in some olden mirror’s quaint, + Bewildering angles, so would Life + Flash light on light back on the Book; and both + Were changed. Once in a house decayed + From better days, harbouring an errant show + (For all its stories of dry-rot + Were filled with gruesome visitants in wax, + Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), + I wandered; and no living soul + Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared + Upon them staring—staring. Till at last, + Three sets of rafters from the streets, + I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room, + With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene, + Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set, + Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, + With an aspect of frills + And dimities and dishonoured privacy + That made you hanker and hesitate to look, + A Woman with her litter of Babes—all slain, + All in their nightgowns, all with Painted Eyes + Staring—still staring; so that I turned and ran + As for my neck, but in the street + Took breath. The same, it seemed, + And yet not all the same, I was to find, + As I went up! For afterwards, + Whenas I went my round alone— + All day alone—in long, stern, silent streets, + Where I might stretch my hand and take + Whatever I would: still there were Shapes of Stone, + Motionless, lifelike, frightening—for the Wrath + Had smitten them; but they watched, + This by her melons and figs, that by his rings + And chains and watches, with the hideous gaze, + The Painted Eyes insufferable, + Now, of those grisly images; and I + Pursued my best-belovéd quest, + Thrilled with a novel and delicious fear. + So the night fell—with never a lamplighter; + And through the Palace of the King + I groped among the echoes, and I felt + That they were there, + Dreadfully there, the Painted staring Eyes, + Hall after hall . . . Till lo! from far + A Voice! And in a little while + Two tapers burning! And the Voice, + Heard in the wondrous Word of God, was—whose? + Whose but Zobëidé’s, + The lady of my heart, like me + A True Believer, and like me + An outcast thousands of leagues beyond the pale! . . . + + Or, sailing to the Isles + Of Khaledan, I spied one evenfall + A black blotch in the sunset; and it grew + Swiftly . . . and grew. Tearing their beards, + The sailors wept and prayed; but the grave ship, + Deep laden with spiceries and pearls, went mad, + Wrenched the long tiller out of the steersman’s hand, + And, turning broadside on, + As the most iron would, was haled and sucked + Nearer, and nearer yet; + And, all awash, with horrible lurching leaps + Rushed at that Portent, casting a shadow now + That swallowed sea and sky; and then, + Anchors and nails and bolts + Flew screaming out of her, and with clang on clang, + A noise of fifty stithies, caught at the sides + Of the Magnetic Mountain; and she lay, + A broken bundle of firewood, strown piecemeal + About the waters; and her crew + Passed shrieking, one by one; and I was left + To drown. All the long night I swam; + But in the morning, O, the smiling coast + Tufted with date-trees, meadowlike, + Skirted with shelving sands! And a great wave + Cast me ashore; and I was saved alive. + So, giving thanks to God, I dried my clothes, + And, faring inland, in a desert place + I stumbled on an iron ring— + The fellow of fifty built into the Quays: + When, scenting a trap-door, + I dug, and dug; until my biggest blade + Stuck into wood. And then, + The flight of smooth-hewn, easy-falling stairs, + Sunk in the naked rock! The cool, clean vault, + So neat with niche on niche it might have been + Our beer-cellar but for the rows + Of brazen urns (like monstrous chemist’s jars) + Full to the wide, squat throats + With gold-dust, but a-top + A layer of pickled-walnut-looking things + I knew for olives! And far, O, far away, + The Princess of China languished! Far away + Was marriage, with a Vizier and a Chief + Of Eunuchs and the privilege + Of going out at night + To play—unkenned, majestical, secure— + Where the old, brown, friendly river shaped + Like Tigris shore for shore! Haply a Ghoul + Sat in the churchyard under a frightened moon, + A thighbone in his fist, and glared + At supper with a Lady: she who took + Her rice with tweezers grain by grain. + Or you might stumble—there by the iron gates + Of the Pump Room—underneath the limes— + Upon Bedreddin in his shirt and drawers, + Just as the civil Genie laid him down. + Or those red-curtained panes, + Whence a tame cornet tenored it throatily + Of beer-pots and spittoons and new long pipes, + Might turn a caravansery’s, wherein + You found Noureddin Ali, loftily drunk, + And that fair Persian, bathed in tears, + You’d not have given away + For all the diamonds in the Vale Perilous + You had that dark and disleaved afternoon + Escaped on a roc’s claw, + Disguised like Sindbad—but in Christmas beef! + And all the blissful while + The schoolboy satchel at your hip + Was such a bulse of gems as should amaze + Grey-whiskered chapmen drawn + From over Caspian: yea, the Chief Jewellers + Of Tartary and the bazaars, + Seething with traffic, of enormous Ind.— + + Thus cried, thus called aloud, to the child heart + The magian East: thus the child eyes + Spelled out the wizard message by the light + Of the sober, workaday hours + They saw, week in week out, pass, and still pass + In the sleepy Minster City, folded kind + In ancient Severn’s arm, + Amongst her water-meadows and her docks, + Whose floating populace of ships— + Galliots and luggers, light-heeled brigantines, + Bluff barques and rake-hell fore-and-afters—brought + To her very doorsteps and geraniums + The scents of the World’s End; the calls + That may not be gainsaid to rise and ride + Like fire on some high errand of the race; + The irresistible appeals + For comradeship that sound + Steadily from the irresistible sea. + Thus the East laughed and whispered, and the tale, + Telling itself anew + In terms of living, labouring life, + Took on the colours, busked it in the wear + Of life that lived and laboured; and Romance, + The Angel-Playmate, raining down + His golden influences + On all I saw, and all I dreamed and did, + Walked with me arm in arm, + Or left me, as one bediademed with straws + And bits of glass, to gladden at my heart + Who had the gift to seek and feel and find + His fiery-hearted presence everywhere. + Even so dear Hesper, bringer of all good things, + Sends the same silver dews + Of happiness down her dim, delighted skies + On some poor collier-hamlet—(mound on mound + Of sifted squalor; here a soot-throated stalk + Sullenly smoking over a row + Of flat-faced hovels; black in the gritty air + A web of rails and wheels and beams; with strings + Of hurtling, tipping trams)— + As on the amorous nightingales + And roses of Shíraz, or the walls and towers + Of Samarcand—the Ineffable—whence you espy + The splendour of Ginnistan’s embattled spears, + Like listed lightnings. + Samarcand! + That name of names! That star-vaned belvedere + Builded against the Chambers of the South! + That outpost on the Infinite! + And behold! + Questing therefrom, you knew not what wild tide + Might overtake you: for one fringe, + One suburb, is stablished on firm earth; but one + Floats founded vague + In lubberlands delectable—isles of palm + And lotus, fortunate mains, far-shimmering seas, + The promise of wistful hills— + The shining, shifting Sovranties of Dream. + + + + +BRIC-À-BRAC + + + 1877–1888 + + ‘_The tune of the time_.’—HAMLET, _concerning_ OSRIC + + + +BALLADE OF A TOYOKUNI COLOUR-PRINT + + + _To_ W. A. + + WAS I a Samurai renowned, + Two-sworded, fierce, immense of bow? + A histrion angular and profound? + A priest? a porter?—Child, although + I have forgotten clean, I know + That in the shade of Fujisan, + What time the cherry-orchards blow, + I loved you once in old Japan. + + As here you loiter, flowing-gowned + And hugely sashed, with pins a-row + Your quaint head as with flamelets crowned, + Demure, inviting—even so, + When merry maids in Miyako + To feel the sweet o’ the year began, + And green gardens to overflow, + I loved you once in old Japan. + + Clear shine the hills; the rice-fields round + Two cranes are circling; sleepy and slow, + A blue canal the lake’s blue bound + Breaks at the bamboo bridge; and lo! + Touched with the sundown’s spirit and glow, + I see you turn, with flirted fan, + Against the plum-tree’s bloomy snow . . . + I loved you once in old Japan! + + _Envoy_ + + Dear, ’twas a dozen lives ago; + But that I was a lucky man + The Toyokuni here will show: + I loved you—once—in old Japan. + + + +BALLADE +(DOUBLE REFRAIN) +OF YOUTH AND AGE + + + I. M. + Thomas Edward Brown + (1829–1896) + + SPRING at her height on a morn at prime, + Sails that laugh from a flying squall, + Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme— + Youth is the sign of them, one and all. + Winter sunsets and leaves that fall, + An empty flagon, a folded page, + A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball— + These are a type of the world of Age. + + Bells that clash in a gaudy chime, + Swords that clatter in onsets tall, + The words that ring and the fames that climb— + Youth is the sign of them, one and all. + Hymnals old in a dusty stall, + A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage, + The scene of a faded festival— + These are a type of the world of Age. + + Hours that strut as the heirs of time, + Deeds whose rumour’s a clarion-call, + Songs where the singers their souls sublime— + Youth is the sign of them, one and all. + A staff that rests in a nook of wall, + A reeling battle, a rusted gage, + The chant of a nearing funeral— + These are a type of the world of Age. + + _Envoy_ + + Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl— + Youth is the sign of them, one and all. + A smouldering hearth and a silent stage— + These are a type of the world of Age. + + + +BALLADE +(DOUBLE REFRAIN) +OF MIDSUMMER DAYS AND NIGHTS + + + _To_ W. H. + + WITH a ripple of leaves and a tinkle of streams + The full world rolls in a rhythm of praise, + And the winds are one with the clouds and beams— + Midsummer days! Midsummer days! + The dusk grows vast; in a purple haze, + While the West from a rapture of sunset rights, + Faint stars their exquisite lamps upraise— + Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! + + The wood’s green heart is a nest of dreams, + The lush grass thickens and springs and sways, + The rathe wheat rustles, the landscape gleams— + Midsummer days! Midsummer days! + In the stilly fields, in the stilly ways, + All secret shadows and mystic lights, + Late lovers murmur and linger and gaze— + Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! + + There’s a music of bells from the trampling teams, + Wild skylarks hover, the gorses blaze, + The rich, ripe rose as with incense steams— + Midsummer days! Midsummer days! + A soul from the honeysuckle strays, + And the nightingale as from prophet heights + Sings to the Earth of her million Mays— + Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! + + _Envoy_ + + And it’s O, for my dear and the charm that stays— + Midsummer days! Midsummer days! + It’s O, for my Love and the dark that plights— + Midsummer nights! O midsummer nights! + + + +BALLADE +OF DEAD ACTORS + + + I. M. + Edward John Henley + (1861–1898) + + WHERE are the passions they essayed, + And where the tears they made to flow? + Where the wild humours they portrayed + For laughing worlds to see and know? + Othello’s wrath and Juliet’s woe? + Sir Peter’s whims and Timon’s gall? + And Millamant and Romeo? + Into the night go one and all. + + Where are the braveries, fresh or frayed? + The plumes, the armours—friend and foe? + The cloth of gold, the rare brocade, + The mantles glittering to and fro? + The pomp, the pride, the royal show? + The cries of war and festival? + The youth, the grace, the charm, the glow? + Into the night go one and all. + + The curtain falls, the play is played: + The Beggar packs beside the Beau; + The Monarch troops, and troops the Maid; + The Thunder huddles with the Snow. + Where are the revellers high and low? + The clashing swords? The lover’s call? + The dancers gleaming row on row? + Into the night go one and all. + + _Envoy_ + + Prince, in one common overthrow + The Hero tumbles with the Thrall: + As dust that drives, as straws that blow, + Into the night go one and all. + + + +BALLADE +MADE IN THE HOT WEATHER + + + _To_ C. M. + + FOUNTAINS that frisk and sprinkle + The moss they overspill; + Pools that the breezes crinkle; + The wheel beside the mill, + With its wet, weedy frill; + Wind-shadows in the wheat; + A water-cart in the street; + The fringe of foam that girds + An islet’s ferneries; + A green sky’s minor thirds— + To live, I think of these! + + Of ice and glass the tinkle, + Pellucid, silver-shrill; + Peaches without a wrinkle; + Cherries and snow at will, + From china bowls that fill + The senses with a sweet + Incuriousness of heat; + A melon’s dripping sherds; + Cream-clotted strawberries; + Dusk dairies set with curds— + To live, I think of these! + + Vale-lily and periwinkle; + Wet stone-crop on the sill; + The look of leaves a-twinkle + With windlets clear and still; + The feel of a forest rill + That wimples fresh and fleet + About one’s naked feet; + The muzzles of drinking herds; + Lush flags and bulrushes; + The chirp of rain-bound birds— + To live, I think of these! + + _Envoy_ + + Dark aisles, new packs of cards, + Mermaidens’ tails, cool swards, + Dawn dews and starlit seas, + White marbles, whiter words— + To live, I think of these! + + + +BALLADE OF TRUISMS + + + GOLD or silver, every day, + Dies to gray. + There are knots in every skein. + Hours of work and hours of play + Fade away + Into one immense Inane. + Shadow and substance, chaff and grain, + Are as vain + As the foam or as the spray. + Life goes crooning, faint and fain, + One refrain: + ‘If it could be always May!’ + + Though the earth be green and gay, + Though, they say, + Man the cup of heaven may drain; + Though, his little world to sway, + He display + Hoard on hoard of pith and brain: + Autumn brings a mist and rain + That constrain + Him and his to know decay, + Where undimmed the lights that wane + Would remain, + If it could be always May. + + _Yea_, alas, must turn to _Nay_, + Flesh to clay. + Chance and Time are ever twain. + Men may scoff, and men may pray, + But they pay + Every pleasure with a pain. + Life may soar, and Fortune deign + To explain + Where her prizes hide and stay; + But we lack the lusty train + We should gain, + If it could be always May. + + _Envoy_ + + Time, the pedagogue, his cane + Might retain, + But his charges all would stray + Truanting in every lane— + Jack with Jane— + If it could be always May. + + + +DOUBLE BALLADE +OF LIFE AND FATE + + + FOOLS may pine, and sots may swill, + Cynics gibe, and prophets rail, + Moralists may scourge and drill, + Preachers prose, and fainthearts quail. + Let them whine, or threat, or wail! + Till the touch of Circumstance + Down to darkness sink the scale, + Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance. + + What if skies be wan and chill? + What if winds be harsh and stale? + Presently the east will thrill, + And the sad and shrunken sail, + Bellying with a kindly gale, + Bear you sunwards, while your chance + Sends you back the hopeful hail:— + ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’ + + Idle shot or coming bill, + Hapless love or broken bail, + Gulp it (never chew your pill!), + And, if Burgundy should fail, + Try the humbler pot of ale! + Over all is heaven’s expanse. + Gold’s to find among the shale. + Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance. + + Dull Sir Joskin sleeps his fill, + Good Sir Galahad seeks the Grail, + Proud Sir Pertinax flaunts his frill, + Hard Sir Æger dints his mail; + And the while by hill and dale + Tristram’s braveries gleam and glance, + And his blithe horn tells its tale:— + ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’ + + Araminta’s grand and shrill, + Delia’s passionate and frail, + Doris drives an earnest quill, + Athanasia takes the veil: + Wiser Phyllis o’er her pail, + At the heart of all romance + Reading, sings to Strephon’s flail:— + ‘Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance.’ + + Every Jack must have his Jill + (Even Johnson had his Thrale!): + Forward, couples—with a will! + This, the world, is not a jail. + Hear the music, sprat and whale! + Hands across, retire, advance! + Though the doomsman’s on your trail, + Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance. + + _Envoy_ + + Boys and girls, at slug and snail + And their kindred look askance. + Pay your footing on the nail: + Fate’s a fiddler, Life’s a dance. + + + +DOUBLE BALLADE +OF THE NOTHINGNESS OF THINGS + + + THE big teetotum twirls, + And epochs wax and wane + As chance subsides or swirls; + But of the loss and gain + The sum is always plain. + Read on the mighty pall, + The weed of funeral + That covers praise and blame, + The —isms and the —anities, + Magnificence and shame:— + ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’ + + The Fates are subtile girls! + They give us chaff for grain. + And Time, the Thunderer, hurls, + Like bolted death, disdain + At all that heart and brain + Conceive, or great or small, + Upon this earthly ball. + Would you be knight and dame? + Or woo the sweet humanities? + Or illustrate a name? + O Vanity of Vanities! + + We sound the sea for pearls, + Or drown them in a drain; + We flute it with the merles, + Or tug and sweat and strain; + We grovel, or we reign; + We saunter, or we brawl; + We answer, or we call; + We search the stars for Fame, + Or sink her subterranities; + The legend’s still the same:— + ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’ + + Here at the wine one birls, + There some one clanks a chain. + The flag that this man furls + That man to float is fain. + Pleasure gives place to pain: + These in the kennel crawl, + While others take the wall. + _She_ has a glorious aim, + _He_ lives for the inanities. + What comes of every claim? + O Vanity of Vanities! + + Alike are clods and earls. + For sot, and seer, and swain, + For emperors and for churls, + For antidote and bane, + There is but one refrain: + But one for king and thrall, + For David and for Saul, + For fleet of foot and lame, + For pieties and profanities, + The picture and the frame:— + ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’ + + Life is a smoke that curls— + Curls in a flickering skein, + That winds and whisks and whirls + A figment thin and vain, + Into the vast Inane. + One end for hut and hall! + One end for cell and stall! + Burned in one common flame + Are wisdoms and insanities. + For this alone we came:— + ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’ + + _Envoy_ + + Prince, pride must have a fall. + What is the worth of all + Your state’s supreme urbanities? + Bad at the best’s the game. + Well might the Sage exclaim:— + ‘O Vanity of Vanities!’ + + + +AT QUEENSFERRY + + + _To_ W. G. S. + + THE blackbird sang, the skies were clear and clean + We bowled along a road that curved a spine + Superbly sinuous and serpentine + Thro’ silent symphonies of summer green. + Sudden the Forth came on us—sad of mien, + No cloud to colour it, no breeze to line: + A sheet of dark, dull glass, without a sign + Of life or death, two spits of sand between. + Water and sky merged blank in mist together, + The Fort loomed spectral, and the Guardship’s spars + Traced vague, black shadows on the shimmery glaze: + We felt the dim, strange years, the grey, strange weather, + The still, strange land, unvexed of sun or stars, + Where Lancelot rides clanking thro’ the haze. + + + +ORIENTALE + + + SHE’S an enchanting little Israelite, + A world of hidden dimples!—Dusky-eyed, + A starry-glancing daughter of the Bride, + With hair escaped from some Arabian Night, + Her lip is red, her cheek is golden-white, + Her nose a scimitar; and, set aside + The bamboo hat she cocks with so much pride, + Her dress a dream of daintiness and delight. + And when she passes with the dreadful boys + And romping girls, the cockneys loud and crude, + My thought, to the Minories tied yet moved to range + The Land o’ the Sun, commingles with the noise + Of magian drums and scents of sandalwood + A touch Sidonian—modern—taking—strange! + + + +IN FISHERROW + + + A HARD north-easter fifty winters long + Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck; + Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck; + Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong. + A wide blue cloak, a squat and sturdy throng + Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck, + A white vest broidered black, her person deck, + Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong. + Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh, + Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers, + The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye, + Ever and anon imploring you to buy, + As looking down the street she onward lingers, + Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry. + + + +BACK-VIEW + + + _To_ D. F. + + I WATCHED you saunter down the sand: + Serene and large, the golden weather + Flowed radiant round your peacock feather, + And glistered from your jewelled hand. + Your tawny hair, turned strand on strand + And bound with blue ribands together, + Streaked the rough tartan, green like heather, + That round your lissome shoulder spanned. + Your grace was quick my sense to seize: + The quaint looped hat, the twisted tresses, + The close-drawn scarf, and under these + The flowing, flapping draperies— + My thought an outline still caresses, + Enchanting, comic, Japanese! + + + +CROLUIS + + + _To_ G. W. + + THE beach was crowded. Pausing now and then, + He groped and fiddled doggedly along, + His worn face glaring on the thoughtless throng + The stony peevishness of sightless men. + He seemed scarce older than his clothes. Again, + Grotesquing thinly many an old sweet song, + So cracked his fiddle, his hand so frail and wrong, + You hardly could distinguish one in ten. + He stopped at last, and sat him on the sand, + And, grasping wearily his bread-winner, + Stared dim towards the blue immensity, + Then leaned his head upon his poor old hand. + He may have slept: he did not speak nor stir: + His gesture spoke a vast despondency. + + + +ATTADALE WEST HIGHLANDS + + + _To_ A. J. + + A BLACK and glassy float, opaque and still, + The loch, at furthest ebb supine in sleep, + Reversing, mirrored in its luminous deep + The calm grey skies; the solemn spurs of hill; + Heather, and corn, and wisps of loitering haze; + The wee white cots, black-hatted, plumed with smoke; + The braes beyond—and when the ripple awoke, + They wavered with the jarred and wavering glaze. + The air was hushed and dreamy. Evermore + A noise of running water whispered near. + A straggling crow called high and thin. A bird + Trilled from the birch-leaves. Round the shingled shore, + Yellow with weed, there wandered, vague and clear, + Strange vowels, mysterious gutturals, idly heard. + + + +FROM A WINDOW IN PRINCES STREET + + + _To_ M. M. M‘B. + + ABOVE the Crags that fade and gloom + Starts the bare knee of Arthur’s Seat; + Ridged high against the evening bloom, + The Old Town rises, street on street; + With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, + Like rampired walls the houses lean, + All spired and domed and turreted, + Sheer to the valley’s darkling green; + Ranged in mysterious disarray, + The Castle, menacing and austere, + Looms through the lingering last of day; + And in the silver dusk you hear, + Reverberated from crag and scar, + Bold bugles blowing points of war. + + + +IN THE DIALS + + + TO _Garryowen_ upon an organ ground + Two girls are jigging. Riotously they trip, + With eyes aflame, quick bosoms, hand on hip, + As in the tumult of a witches’ round. + Youngsters and youngsters round them prance and bound. + Two solemn babes twirl ponderously, and skip. + The artist’s teeth gleam from his bearded lip. + High from the kennel howls a tortured hound. + The music reels and hurtles, and the night + Is full of stinks and cries; a naphtha-light + Flares from a barrow; battered and obtused + With vices, wrinkles, life and work and rags, + Each with her inch of clay, two loitering hags + Look on dispassionate—critical—something ’mused. + + + +THE GODS ARE DEAD + + + THE gods are dead? Perhaps they are! Who knows? + Living at least in Lemprière undeleted, + The wise, the fair, the awful, the jocose, + Are one and all, I like to think, retreated + In some still land of lilacs and the rose. + + Once higeh they sat, and high o’er earthly shows + With sacrificial dance and song were greeted. + Once . . . long ago. But now, the story goes, + The gods are dead. + + It must be true. The world, a world of prose, + Full-crammed with facts, in science swathed and sheeted, + Nods in a stertorous after-dinner doze! + Plangent and sad, in every wind that blows + Who will may hear the sorry words repeated:— + ‘The Gods are Dead!’ + + + +_To_ F. W. + + + LET us be drunk, and for a while forget, + Forget, and, ceasing even from regret, + Live without reason and despite of rhyme, + As in a dream preposterous and sublime, + Where place and hour and means for once are met. + + Where is the use of effort? Love and debt + And disappointment have us in a net. + Let us break out, and taste the morning prime . . . + Let us be drunk. + + In vain our little hour we strut and fret, + And mouth our wretched parts as for a bet: + We cannot please the tragicaster Time. + To gain the crystal sphere, the silver dime, + Where Sympathy sits dimpling on us yet, + Let us be drunk! + + + +WHEN YOU ARE OLD + + + WHEN you are old, and I am passed away— + Passed, and your face, your golden face, is gray— + I think, whate’er the end, this dream of mine, + Comforting you, a friendly star will shine + Down the dim slope where still you stumble and stray. + + So may it be: that so dead Yesterday, + No sad-eyed ghost but generous and gay, + May serve you memories like almighty wine, + When you are old! + + Dear Heart, it shall be so. Under the sway + Of death the past’s enormous disarray + Lies hushed and dark. Yet though there come no sign, + Live on well pleased: immortal and divine + Love shall still tend you, as God’s angels may, + When you are old. + + + +BESIDE THE IDLE SUMMER SEA + + + BESIDE the idle summer sea + And in the vacant summer days, + Light Love came fluting down the ways, + Where you were loitering with me. + + Who has not welcomed, even as we, + That jocund minstrel and his lays + Beside the idle summer sea + And in the vacant summer days? + + We listened, we were fancy-free; + And lo! in terror and amaze + We stood alone—alone at gaze + With an implacable memory + Beside the idle summer sea. + + + +I. M. +R. G. C. B. +1878 + + + THE ways of Death are soothing and serene, + And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. + From camp and church, the fireside and the street, + She beckons forth—and strife and song have been. + + A summer night descending cool and green + And dark on daytime’s dust and stress and heat, + The ways of Death are soothing and serene, + And all the words of Death are grave and sweet. + + O glad and sorrowful, with triumphant mien + And radiant faces look upon, and greet + This last of all your lovers, and to meet + Her kiss, the Comforter’s, your spirit lean . . . + The ways of Death are soothing and serene. + + + +WE SHALL SURELY DIE + + + WE shall surely die: + Must we needs grow old? + Grow old and cold, + And we know not why? + + O, the By-and-By, + And the tale that’s told! + We shall surely die: + Must we needs grow old? + + Grow old and sigh, + Grudge and withhold, + Resent and scold? . . . + Not you and I? + We shall surely die! + + + +WHAT IS TO COME + + + WHAT is to come we know not. But we know + That what has been was good—was good to show, + Better to hide, and best of all to bear. + We are the masters of the days that were: + We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered . . . even so. + + Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow? + Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe— + Dear, though it spoil and break us!—need we care + What is to come? + + Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, + Or the gold weather round us mellow slow: + We have fulfilled ourselves, and we can dare + And we can conquer, though we may not share + In the rich quiet of the afterglow + What is to come. + + + + +ECHOES + + + 1872–1889 + + _Aquí está encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcías_. + + GIL BLAS _AU LECTEUR_. + + + +I +TO MY MOTHER + + + CHIMING a dream by the way + With ocean’s rapture and roar, + I met a maiden to-day + Walking alone on the shore: + Walking in maiden wise, + Modest and kind and fair, + The freshness of spring in her eyes + And the fulness of spring in her hair. + + Cloud-shadow and scudding sun-burst + Were swift on the floor of the sea, + And a mad wind was romping its worst, + But what was their magic to me? + Or the charm of the midsummer skies? + I only saw she was there, + A dream of the sea in her eyes + And the kiss of the sea in her hair. + + I watched her vanish in space; + She came where I walked no more; + But something had passed of her grace + To the spell of the wave and the shore; + And now, as the glad stars rise, + She comes to me, rosy and rare, + The delight of the wind in her eyes + And the hand of the wind in her hair. + + 1872 + + + +II + + + LIFE is bitter. All the faces of the years, + Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears. + Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep? + In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers, + Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . . + Let me sleep. + + Riches won but mock the old, unable years; + Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears; + Love must wither, or must live alone and weep. + In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers, + While we slumber, death approaches though the hours! . . . + Let me sleep. + + 1872 + + + +III + + + O, GATHER me the rose, the rose, + While yet in flower we find it, + For summer smiles, but summer goes, + And winter waits behind it! + + For with the dream foregone, foregone, + The deed forborne for ever, + The worm, regret, will canker on, + And Time will turn him never. + + So well it were to love, my love, + And cheat of any laughter + The fate beneath us and above, + The dark before and after. + + The myrtle and the rose, the rose, + The sunshine and the swallow, + The dream that comes, the wish that goes, + The memories that follow! + + 1874 + + + +IV +I. M. +R. T. HAMILTON BRUCE +(1846–1899) + + + OUT of the night that covers me, + Black as the Pit from pole to pole, + I thank whatever gods may be + For my unconquerable soul. + + In the fell clutch of circumstance + I have not winced nor cried aloud. + Under the bludgeonings of chance + My head is bloody, but unbowed. + + Beyond this place of wrath and tears + Looms but the Horror of the shade, + And yet the menace of the years + Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. + + It matters not how strait the gate, + How charged with punishments the scroll, + I am the master of my fate: + I am the captain of my soul. + + 1875 + + + +V + + + I AM the Reaper. + All things with heedful hook + Silent I gather. + Pale roses touched with the spring, + Tall corn in summer, + Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms— + Reaping, still reaping— + All things with heedful hook + Timely I gather. + + I am the Sower. + All the unbodied life + Runs through my seed-sheet. + Atom with atom wed, + Each quickening the other, + Fall through my hands, ever changing, still changeless + Ceaselessly sowing, + Life, incorruptible life, + Flows from my seed-sheet. + + Maker and breaker, + I am the ebb and the flood, + Here and Hereafter. + Sped through the tangle and coil + Of infinite nature, + Viewless and soundless I fashion all being. + Taker and giver, + I am the womb and the grave, + The Now and the Ever. + + 1875 + + + +VI + + + PRAISE the generous gods for giving + In a world of wrath and strife + With a little time for living, + Unto all the joy of life. + + At whatever source we drink it, + Art or love or faith or wine, + In whatever terms we think it, + It is common and divine. + + Praise the high gods, for in giving + This to man, and this alone, + They have made his chance of living + Shine the equal of their own. + + 1875 + + + +VII + + + FILL a glass with golden wine, + And the while your lips are wet + Set their perfume unto mine, + And forget, + Every kiss we take and give + Leaves us less of life to live. + + Yet again! Your whim and mine + In a happy while have met. + All your sweets to me resign, + Nor regret + That we press with every breath, + Sighed or singing, nearer death. + + 1875 + + + +VIII + + + WE’LL go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. + November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June. + The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere. + We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear. + + We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. + The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune. + Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year. + We’ll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear. + + We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. + If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon. + No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear, + We’ll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear. + + 1875 + + + +IX +_To_ W. R. + + + MADAM Life’s a piece in bloom + Death goes dogging everywhere: + She’s the tenant of the room, + He’s the ruffian on the stair. + + You shall see her as a friend, + You shall bilk him once and twice; + But he’ll trap you in the end, + And he’ll stick you for her price. + + With his kneebones at your chest, + And his knuckles in your throat, + You would reason—plead—protest! + Clutching at her petticoat; + + But she’s heard it all before, + Well she knows you’ve had your fun, + Gingerly she gains the door, + And your little job is done. + + 1877 + + + +X + + + THE sea is full of wandering foam, + The sky of driving cloud; + My restless thoughts among them roam . . . + The night is dark and loud. + + Where are the hours that came to me + So beautiful and bright? + A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . . + O, dark and loud’s the night! + + 1876 + + + +XI +_To_ W. R. + + + THICK is the darkness— + Sunward, O, sunward! + Rough is the highway— + Onward, still onward! + + Dawn harbours surely + East of the shadows. + Facing us somewhere + Spread the sweet meadows. + + Upward and forward! + Time will restore us: + Light is above us, + Rest is before us. + + 1876 + + + +XII + + + TO me at my fifth-floor window + The chimney-pots in rows + Are sets of pipes pandean + For every wind that blows; + + And the smoke that whirls and eddies + In a thousand times and keys + Is really a visible music + Set to my reveries. + + O monstrous pipes, melodious + With fitful tune and dream, + The clouds are your only audience, + Her thought is your only theme! + + 1875 + + + +XIII + + + BRING her again, O western wind, + Over the western sea: + Gentle and good and fair and kind, + Bring her again to me! + + Not that her fancy holds me dear, + Not that a hope may be: + Only that I may know her near, + Wind of the western sea. + + 1875 + + + +XIV + + + THE wan sun westers, faint and slow; + The eastern distance glimmers gray; + An eerie haze comes creeping low + Across the little, lonely bay; + And from the sky-line far away + About the quiet heaven are spread + Mysterious hints of dying day, + Thin, delicate dreams of green and red. + + And weak, reluctant surges lap + And rustle round and down the strand. + No other sound . . . If it should hap, + The ship that sails from fairy-land! + The silken shrouds with spells are manned, + The hull is magically scrolled, + The squat mast lives, and in the sand + The gold prow-griffin claws a hold. + + It steals to seaward silently; + Strange fish-folk follow thro’ the gloom; + Great wings flap overhead; I see + The Castle of the Drowsy Doom + Vague thro’ the changeless twilight loom, + Enchanted, hushed. And ever there + She slumbers in eternal bloom, + Her cushions hid with golden hair. + + 1875 + + + +XV + + + THERE is a wheel inside my head + Of wantonness and wine, + An old, cracked fiddle is begging without, + But the wind with scents of the sea is fed, + And the sun seems glad to shine. + + The sun and the wind are akin to you, + As you are akin to June. + But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about, + And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?— + He’s playing your favourite tune. + + 1875 + + + +XVI + + + WHILE the west is paling + Starshine is begun. + While the dusk is failing + Glimmers up the sun. + + So, till darkness cover + Life’s retreating gleam, + Lover follows lover, + Dream succeeds to dream. + + Stoop to my endeavour, + O my love, and be + Only and for ever + Sun and stars to me. + + 1876 + + + +XVII + + + THE sands are alive with sunshine, + The bathers lounge and throng, + And out in the bay a bugle + Is lilting a gallant song. + + The clouds go racing eastward, + The blithe wind cannot rest, + And a shard on the shingle flashes + Like the shining soul of a jest; + + While children romp in the surges, + And sweethearts wander free, + And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . . + I would it were deep over me! + + 1875 + + + +XVIII +_To_ A. D. + + + THE nightingale has a lyre of gold, + The lark’s is a clarion-call, + And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute, + But I love him best of all. + + For his song is all of the joy of life, + And we in the mad, spring weather, + We two have listened till he sang + Our hearts and lips together. + + 1876 + + + +XIX + + + YOUR heart has trembled to my tongue, + Your hands in mine have lain, + Your thought to me has leaned and clung, + Again and yet again, + My dear, + Again and yet again. + + Now die the dream, or come the wife, + The past is not in vain, + For wholly as it was your life + Can never be again, + My dear, + Can never be again. + + 1876 + + + +XX + + + THE surges gushed and sounded, + The blue was the blue of June, + And low above the brightening east + Floated a shred of moon. + + The woods were black and solemn, + The night winds large and free, + And in your thought a blessing seemed + To fall on land and sea. + + 1877 + + + +XXI + + + WE flash across the level. + We thunder thro’ the bridges. + We bicker down the cuttings. + We sway along the ridges. + + A rush of streaming hedges, + Of jostling lights and shadows, + Of hurtling, hurrying stations, + Of racing woods and meadows. + + We charge the tunnels headlong— + The blackness roars and shatters. + We crash between embankments— + The open spins and scatters. + + We shake off the miles like water, + We might carry a royal ransom; + And I think of her waiting, waiting, + And long for a common hansom. + + 1876 + + + +XXII + + + THE West a glimmering lake of light, + A dream of pearly weather, + The first of stars is burning white— + The star we watch together. + Is April dead? The unresting year + Will shape us our September, + And April’s work is done, my dear— + Do you not remember? + + O gracious eve! O happy star, + Still-flashing, glowing, sinking!— + Who lives of lovers near or far + So glad as I in thinking? + The gallant world is warm and green, + For May fulfils November. + When lights and leaves and loves have been, + Sweet, will you remember? + + O star benignant and serene, + I take the good to-morrow, + That fills from verge to verge my dream, + With all its joy and sorrow! + The old, sweet spell is unforgot + That turns to June December; + And, tho’ the world remembered not, + Love, we would remember. + + 1876 + + + +XXIII + + + THE skies are strown with stars, + The streets are fresh with dew + A thin moon drifts to westward, + The night is hushed and cheerful. + My thought is quick with you. + + Near windows gleam and laugh, + And far away a train + Clanks glowing through the stillness: + A great content’s in all things, + And life is not in vain. + + 1877 + + + +XXIV + + + THE full sea rolls and thunders + In glory and in glee. + O, bury me not in the senseless earth + But in the living sea! + + Ay, bury me where it surges + A thousand miles from shore, + And in its brotherly unrest + I’ll range for evermore. + + 1876 + + + +XXV + + + IN the year that’s come and gone, love, his flying feather + Stooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk together. + In the year that’s coming on, though many a troth be broken, + We at least will not forget aught that love hath spoken. + + In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tether + All of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together. + In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of roses + We shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes. + + In the year that’s come and gone, in the golden weather, + Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of life together. + In the year that’s coming on, rich in joy and sorrow, + We shall light our lamp, and wait life’s mysterious morrow. + + 1877 + + + +XXVI + + + IN the placid summer midnight, + Under the drowsy sky, + I seem to hear in the stillness + The moths go glimmering by. + + One by one from the windows + The lights have all been sped. + Never a blind looks conscious— + The street is asleep in bed! + + But I come where a living casement + Laughs luminous and wide; + I hear the song of a piano + Break in a sparkling tide; + + And I feel, in the waltz that frolics + And warbles swift and clear, + A sudden sense of shelter + And friendliness and cheer . . . + + A sense of tinkling glasses, + Of love and laughter and light— + The piano stops, and the window + Stares blank out into the night. + + The blind goes out, and I wander + To the old, unfriendly sea, + The lonelier for the memory + That walks like a ghost with me. + + + +XXVII + + + SHE sauntered by the swinging seas, + A jewel glittered at her ear, + And, teasing her along, the breeze + Brought many a rounded grace more near. + + So passing, one with wave and beam, + She left for memory to caress + A laughing thought, a golden gleam, + A hint of hidden loveliness. + + 1876 + + + +XXVIII +_To_ S. C. + + + BLITHE dreams arise to greet us, + And life feels clean and new, + For the old love comes to meet us + In the dawning and the dew. + O’erblown with sunny shadows, + O’ersped with winds at play, + The woodlands and the meadows + Are keeping holiday. + Wild foals are scampering, neighing, + Brave merles their hautboys blow: + Come! let us go a-maying + As in the Long-Ago. + + Here we but peak and dwindle: + The clank of chain and crane, + The whir of crank and spindle + Bewilder heart and brain; + The ends of our endeavour + Are merely wealth and fame, + Yet in the still Forever + We’re one and all the same; + Delaying, still delaying, + We watch the fading west: + Come! let us go a-maying, + Nor fear to take the best. + + Yet beautiful and spacious + The wise, old world appears. + Yet frank and fair and gracious + Outlaugh the jocund years. + Our arguments disputing, + The universal Pan + Still wanders fluting—fluting— + Fluting to maid and man. + Our weary well-a-waying + His music cannot still: + Come! let us go a-maying, + And pipe with him our fill. + + When wanton winds are flowing + Among the gladdening glass; + Where hawthorn brakes are blowing, + And meadow perfumes pass; + Where morning’s grace is greenest, + And fullest noon’s of pride; + Where sunset spreads serenest, + And sacred night’s most wide; + Where nests are swaying, swaying, + And spring’s fresh voices call, + Come! let us go a-maying, + And bless the God of all! + + 1878 + + + +XXIX +_To_ R. L. S. + + + A CHILD, + Curious and innocent, + Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicing + Loses himself in the Fair. + + Thro’ the jostle and din + Wandering, he revels, + Dreaming, desiring, possessing; + Till, of a sudden + Tired and afraid, he beholds + The sordid assemblage + Just as it is; and he runs + With a sob to his Nurse + (Lighting at last on him), + And in her motherly bosom + Cries him to sleep. + + Thus thro’ the World, + Seeing and feeling and knowing, + Goes Man: till at last, + Tired of experience, he turns + To the friendly and comforting breast + Of the old nurse, Death. + + 1876 + + + +XXX + + + KATE-A-WHIMSIES, John-a-Dreams, + Still debating, still delay, + And the world’s a ghost that gleams— + Wavers—vanishes away! + + We must live while live we can; + We should love while love we may. + Dread in women, doubt in man . . . + So the Infinite runs away. + + 1876 + + + +XXXI + + + O, HAVE you blessed, behind the stars, + The blue sheen in the skies, + When June the roses round her calls?— + Then do you know the light that falls + From her belovèd eyes. + + And have you felt the sense of peace + That morning meadows give?— + Then do you know the spirit of grace, + The angel abiding in her face, + Who makes it good to live. + + She shines before me, hope and dream, + So fair, so still, so wise, + That, winning her, I seem to win + Out of the dust and drive and din + A nook of Paradise. + + 1877 + + + +XXXII +_To_ D. H. + + + O, FALMOUTH is a fine town with ships in the bay, + And I wish from my heart it’s there I was to-day; + I wish from my heart I was far away from here, + Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear. + For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be. + Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea. + O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree + They’re all growing green in the old countrie. + + In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meet + With her babe on her arm, as she came down the street; + And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing ready + For the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie. + And it’s home, dearie, home . . . + + O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring; + And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king: + With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blue + He shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do. + And it’s home, dearie, home . . . + + O, there’s a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west, + And that of all the winds is the one I like the best, + For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free, + And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie. + For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be. + Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea. + O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken tree + They’re all growing green in the old countrie. + + 1878 + + NOTE.—The burthen and the third stanza are old. + + + +XXXIII + + + THE ways are green with the gladdening sheen + Of the young year’s fairest daughter. + O, the shadows that fleet o’er the springing wheat! + O, the magic of running water! + The spirit of spring is in every thing, + The banners of spring are streaming, + We march to a tune from the fifes of June, + And life’s a dream worth dreaming. + + It’s all very well to sit and spell + At the lesson there’s no gainsaying; + But what the deuce are wont and use + When the whole mad world’s a-maying? + When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows, + And the air’s with love-motes teeming, + When fancies break, and the senses wake, + O, life’s a dream worth dreaming! + + What Nature has writ with her lusty wit + Is worded so wisely and kindly + That whoever has dipped in her manuscript + Must up and follow her blindly. + Now the summer prime is her blithest rhyme + In the being and the seeming, + And they that have heard the overword + Know life’s a dream worth dreaming. + + 1878 + + + +XXXIV +_To_ K. de M. + + + _Love blows as the wind blows_, + _Love blows into the heart_.—NILE BOAT-SONG. + + LIFE in her creaking shoes + Goes, and more formal grows, + A round of calls and cues: + Love blows as the wind blows. + Blows! . . . in the quiet close + As in the roaring mart, + By ways no mortal knows + Love blows into the heart. + + The stars some cadence use, + Forthright the river flows, + In order fall the dews, + Love blows as the wind blows: + Blows! . . . and what reckoning shows + The courses of his chart? + A spirit that comes and goes, + Love blows into the heart. + + 1878 + + + +XXXV +I. M. +MARGARITÆ SORORI +(1886) + + + A LATE lark twitters from the quiet skies; + And from the west, + Where the sun, his day’s work ended, + Lingers as in content, + There falls on the old, grey city + An influence luminous and serene, + A shining peace. + + The smoke ascends + In a rosy-and-golden haze. The spires + Shine, and are changed. In the valley + Shadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun, + Closing his benediction, + Sinks, and the darkening air + Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night— + Night with her train of stars + And her great gift of sleep. + + So be my passing! + My task accomplished and the long day done, + My wages taken, and in my heart + Some late lark singing, + Let me be gathered to the quiet west, + The sundown splendid and serene, + Death. + + 1876 + + + +XXXVI + + + I GAVE my heart to a woman— + I gave it her, branch and root. + She bruised, she wrung, she tortured, + She cast it under foot. + + Under her feet she cast it, + She trampled it where it fell, + She broke it all to pieces, + And each was a clot of hell. + + There in the rain and the sunshine + They lay and smouldered long; + And each, when again she viewed them, + Had turned to a living song. + + + +XXXVII +_To_ W. A. + + + OR ever the knightly years were gone + With the old world to the grave, + I was a King in Babylon + And you were a Christian Slave. + + I saw, I took, I cast you by, + I bent and broke your pride. + You loved me well, or I heard them lie, + But your longing was denied. + Surely I knew that by and by + You cursed your gods and died. + + And a myriad suns have set and shone + Since then upon the grave + Decreed by the King in Babylon + To her that had been his Slave. + + The pride I trampled is now my scathe, + For it tramples me again. + The old resentment lasts like death, + For you love, yet you refrain. + I break my heart on your hard unfaith, + And I break my heart in vain. + + Yet not for an hour do I wish undone + The deed beyond the grave, + When I was a King in Babylon + And you were a Virgin Slave. + + + +XXXVIII + + + ON the way to Kew, + By the river old and gray, + Where in the Long Ago + We laughed and loitered so, + I met a ghost to-day, + A ghost that told of you— + A ghost of low replies + And sweet, inscrutable eyes + Coming up from Richmond + As you used to do. + + By the river old and gray, + The enchanted Long Ago + Murmured and smiled anew. + On the way to Kew, + March had the laugh of May, + The bare boughs looked aglow, + And old, immortal words + Sang in my breast like birds, + Coming up from Richmond + As I used with you. + + With the life of Long Ago + Lived my thought of you. + By the river old and gray + Flowing his appointed way + As I watched I knew + What is so good to know— + Not in vain, not in vain, + Shall I look for you again + Coming up from Richmond + On the way to Kew. + + + +XXXIX + + + THE Past was goodly once, and yet, when all is said, + The best of it we know is that it’s done and dead. + + Dwindled and faded quite, perished beyond recall, + Nothing is left at last of what one time was all. + + Coming back like a ghost, staring and lingering on, + Never a word it speaks but proves it dead and gone. + + Duty and work and joy—these things it cannot give; + And the Present is life, and life is good to live. + + Let it lie where it fell, far from the living sun, + The Past that, goodly once, is gone and dead and done. + + + +XL + + + THE spring, my dear, + Is no longer spring. + Does the blackbird sing + What he sang last year? + Are the skies the old + Immemorial blue? + Or am I, or are you, + Grown cold? + + Though life be change, + It is hard to bear + When the old sweet air + Sounds forced and strange. + To be out of tune, + Plain You and I . . . + It were better to die, + And soon! + + + +XLVI +_To_ R. A. M. S. + + + _The Spirit of Wine_ + _Sang in my glass_, _and I listened_ + _With love to his odorous music_, + _His flushed and magnificent song_. + + —‘I am health, I am heart, I am life! + For I give for the asking + The fire of my father, the Sun, + And the strength of my mother, the Earth. + Inspiration in essence, + I am wisdom and wit to the wise, + His visible muse to the poet, + The soul of desire to the lover, + The genius of laughter to all. + + ‘Come, lean on me, ye that are weary! + Rise, ye faint-hearted and doubting! + Haste, ye that lag by the way! + I am Pride, the consoler; + Valour and Hope are my henchmen; + I am the Angel of Rest. + + ‘I am life, I am wealth, I am fame: + For I captain an army + Of shining and generous dreams; + And mine, too, all mine, are the keys + Of that secret spiritual shrine, + Where, his work-a-day soul put by, + Shut in with his saint of saints— + With his radiant and conquering self— + Man worships, and talks, and is glad. + + ‘Come, sit with me, ye that are lovely, + Ye that are paid with disdain, + Ye that are chained and would soar! + I am beauty and love; + I am friendship, the comforter; + I am that which forgives and forgets.’— + + _The Spirit of Wine_ + _Sang in my heart_, _and I triumphed_ + _In the savour and scent of his music_, + _His magnetic and mastering song_. + + + +XLII + + + A WINK from Hesper, falling + Fast in the wintry sky, + Comes through the even blue, + Dear, like a word from you . . . + Is it good-bye? + + Across the miles between us + I send you sigh for sigh. + Good-night, sweet friend, good-night: + Till life and all take flight, + Never good-bye. + + + +XLII + + + FRIENDS . . . old friends . . . + One sees how it ends. + A woman looks + Or a man tells lies, + And the pleasant brooks + And the quiet skies, + Ruined with brawling + And caterwauling, + Enchant no more + As they did before. + And so it ends + With friends. + + Friends . . . old friends . . . + And what if it ends? + Shall we dare to shirk + What we live to learn? + It has done its work, + It has served its turn; + And, forgive and forget + Or hanker and fret, + We can be no more + As we were before. + When it ends, it ends + With friends. + + Friends . . . old friends . . . + So it breaks, so it ends. + There let it rest! + It has fought and won, + And is still the best + That either has done. + Each as he stands + The work of its hands, + Which shall be more + As he was before? . . . + What is it ends + With friends? + + + +XLIV + + + IF it should come to be, + This proof of you and me, + This type and sign + Of hours that smiled and shone, + And yet seemed dead and gone + As old-world wine: + + Of Them Within the Gate + Ask we no richer fate, + No boon above, + For girl child or for boy, + My gift of life and joy, + Your gift of love. + + + +XLV +_To_ W. B. + + + FROM the brake the Nightingale + Sings exulting to the Rose; + Though he sees her waxing pale + In her passionate repose, + While she triumphs waxing frail, + Fading even while she glows; + Though he knows + How it goes— + Knows of last year’s Nightingale + Dead with last year’s Rose. + + Wise the enamoured Nightingale, + Wise the well-belovèd Rose! + Love and life shall still prevail, + Nor the silence at the close + Break the magic of the tale + In the telling, though it shows— + Who but knows + How it goes!— + Life a last year’s Nightingale, + Love a last year’s Rose. + + + +XLVI +MATRI DILECTISSIMÆ +I. M. + + + IN the waste hour + Between to-day and yesterday + We watched, while on my arm— + Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone— + Dabbled in sweat the sacred head + Lay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange: + Till the dear face turned dead, + And to a sound of lamentation + The good, heroic soul with all its wealth— + Its sixty years of love and sacrifice, + Suffering and passionate faith—was reabsorbed + In the inexorable Peace, + And life was changed to us for evermore. + + Was nothing left of her but tears + Like blood-drops from the heart? + Nought save remorse + For duty unfulfilled, justice undone, + And charity ignored? Nothing but love, + Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth, + But for this passing + Into the unimaginable abyss + These things had never been? + + Nay, there were we, + Her five strong sons! + To her Death came—the great Deliverer came!— + As equal comes to equal, throne to throne. + She was a mother of men. + + The stars shine as of old. The unchanging River, + Bent on his errand of immortal law, + Works his appointed way + To the immemorial sea. + And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home:— + That she in us yet works and shines, + Lives and fulfils herself, + Unending as the river and the stars. + + Dearest, live on + In such an immortality + As we thy sons, + Born of thy body and nursed + At those wild, faithful breasts, + Can give—of generous thoughts, + And honourable words, and deeds + That make men half in love with fate! + Live on, O brave and true, + In us thy children, in ours whose life is thine— + Our best and theirs! What is that best but thee— + Thee, and thy gift to us, to pass + Like light along the infinite of space + To the immitigable end? + + Between the river and the stars, + O royal and radiant soul, + Thou dost return, thine influences return + Upon thy children as in life, and death + Turns stingless! What is Death + But Life in act? How should the Unteeming Grave + Be victor over thee, + Mother, a mother of men? + + + +XLVII + + + CROSSES and troubles a-many have proved me. + One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me. + I have worked and dreamed, and I’ve talked at will. + Of art and drink I have had my fill. + I’ve comforted here, and I’ve succoured there. + I’ve faced my foes, and I’ve backed my friends. + I’ve blundered, and sometimes made amends. + I have prayed for light, and I’ve known despair. + Now I look before, as I look behind, + Come storm, come shine, whatever befall, + With a grateful heart and a constant mind, + For the end I know is the best of all. + + 1888–1889 + + + + +LONDON VOLUNTARIES + + + (_To_ Charles Whibley) + + 1890–1892 + + + +I +_Grave_ + + + ST. MARGARET’S bells, + Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles, + Sing in the storied air, + All rosy-and-golden, as with memories + Of woods at evensong, and sands and seas + Disconsolate for that the night is nigh. + O, the low, lingering lights! The large last gleam + (Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!) + Touching these solemn ancientries, and there, + The silent River ranging tide-mark high + And the callow, grey-faced Hospital, + With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream! + The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees, + And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky + (Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!) + Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall. + The sober Sabbath stir— + Leisurely voices, desultory feet!— + Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street, + Where in their summer frocks the girls go by, + And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer, + Just as they did an hundred years ago, + Just as an hundred years to come they will:— + When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low, + And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil, + Nor any sunset fade serene and slow; + But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die. + + + +II +_Andante con moto_ + + + FORTH from the dust and din, + The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, + The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, + The wrangle and jangle of unrests, + Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win— + As from swart August to the green lap of May— + To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts + Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware + In any of her innumerable nests + Of that first sudden plash of dawn, + Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, + Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day + In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn + Forward and up, in wider and wider way, + Shall float the sands, and brim the shores, + On this our lith of the World, as round it roars + And spins into the outlook of the Sun + (The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial charge), + With light, with living light, from marge to marge + Until the course He set and staked be run. + + Through street and square, through square and street, + Each with his home-grown quality of dark + And violated silence, loud and fleet, + Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, + The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O, hark, + Sweet, how the old mare’s bit and chain + Ring back a rough refrain + Upon the marked and cheerful tramp + Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, + And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust, + The tired midsummer blooms! + O, the mysterious distances, the glooms + Romantic, the august + And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees + Turns to a tryst of vague and strange + And monstrous Majesties, + Let loose from some dim underworld to range + These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: + When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand + Beggared and common, plain to all the land + For stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour, + His silent, shining sorcery winged with power! + Still, still the streets, between their carcanets + Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep. + But see how gable ends and parapets + In gradual beauty and significance + Emerge! And did you hear + That little twitter-and-cheep, + Breaking inordinately loud and clear + On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? + ’Tis a first nest at matins! And behold + A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold! + A spent witch homing from some infamous dance— + Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade + Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! + And now! a little wind and shy, + The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), + A sense of space and water, and thereby + A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky, + And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleams + And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, + His dreams that never save in our deaths can die. + + What miracle is happening in the air, + Charging the very texture of the gray + With something luminous and rare? + The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, + And, as one lights a candle, it is day. + The extinguisher, that perks it like a spire + On the little formal church, is not yet green + Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, + The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean, + How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, + Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! + And those are barges that were goblin floats, + Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! + And in the piles the water frolics clear, + The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, + And we—we can behold that could but hear + The ancient River singing as he goes, + New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea. + The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: + The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, + And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take + His hobnailed way to work! + + Let us too pass— + Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows— + Through these long, blindfold rows + Of casements staring blind to right and left, + Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece + Of life in death’s own likeness—Life bereft + Of living looks as by the Great Release— + Pass to an exquisite night’s more exquisite close! + + Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel, + These colonies of dreams! And as we steal + Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze, + Fitfully frolicking to heel + With news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas, + We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are— + Be wandering some dispeopled star, + Some world of memories and unbroken graves, + So broods the abounding Silence near and far: + Till even your footfall craves + Forgiveness of the majesty it braves. + + + +III +_Scherzando_ + + + DOWN through the ancient Strand + The spirit of October, mild and boon + And sauntering, takes his way + This golden end of afternoon, + As though the corn stood yellow in all the land, + And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon. + + Lo! the round sun, half-down the western slope— + Seen as along an unglazed telescope— + Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day: + Gifting the long, lean, lanky street + And its abounding confluences of being + With aspects generous and bland; + Making a thousand harnesses to shine + As with new ore from some enchanted mine, + And every horse’s coat so full of sheen + He looks new-tailored, and every ’bus feels clean, + And never a hansom but is worth the feeing; + And every jeweller within the pale + Offers a real Arabian Night for sale; + And even the roar + Of the strong streams of toil, that pause and pour + Eastward and westward, sounds suffused— + Seems as it were bemused + And blurred, and like the speech + Of lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach— + With this enchanted lustrousness, + This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caress + Brings back to some faded face, beloved before, + A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore + Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech) + Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless + Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more: + Till Clement’s, angular and cold and staid, + Gleams forth in glamour’s very stuffs arrayed; + And Bride’s, her aëry, unsubstantial charm + Through flight on flight of springing, soaring stone + Grown flushed and warm, + Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown; + And the high majesty of Paul’s + Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls— + Calls to his millions to behold and see + How goodly this his London Town can be! + + For earth and sky and air + Are golden everywhere, + And golden with a gold so suave and fine + The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. + Trafalgar Square + (The fountains volleying golden glaze) + Shines like an angel-market. High aloft + Over his couchant Lions, in a haze + Shimmering and bland and soft, + A dust of chrysoprase, + Our Sailor takes the golden gaze + Of the saluting sun, and flames superb, + As once he flamed it on his ocean round. + The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, + Turned very nearly bright, + Takes on a luminous transiency of grace, + And shows no more a scandal to the ground. + The very blind man pottering on the kerb, + Among the posies and the ostrich feathers + And the rude voices touched with all the weathers + Of the long, varying year, + Shares in the universal alms of light. + The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, + The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, + The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires— + ’Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain, + The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, + Look! as she turns her glancing head, + A call of gold is floated from her ear! + Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, + Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky, + The day, not dies but, seems + Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed + Upon a past of golden song and story + And memories of gold and golden dreams. + + + +IV +_Largo e mesto_ + + + OUT of the poisonous East, + Over a continent of blight, + Like a maleficent Influence released + From the most squalid cellarage of hell, + The Wind-Fiend, the abominable— + The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light— + Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, + Hard on the skirts of the embittered night; + And in a cloud unclean + Of excremental humours, roused to strife + By the operation of some ruinous change, + Wherever his evil mandate run and range, + Into a dire intensity of life, + A craftsman at his bench, he settles down + To the grim job of throttling London Town. + + So, by a jealous lightlessness beset + That might have oppressed the dragons of old time + Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, + A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, + Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, + The afflicted City, prone from mark to mark + In shameful occultation, seems + A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, + With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting, + Rent in the stuff of a material dark, + Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, + Shows like the leper’s living blotch of bale: + Uncoiling monstrous into street on street + Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, + Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, + Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet + Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; + Working through wicked airs and deadly dews + That make the laden robber grin askance + At the good places in his black romance, + And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose + Go pinched and pined to bed + Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way + From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey. + + Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, + His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, + The old Father-River flows, + His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, + As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, + Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, + Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot + In the squalor of the universal shore: + His voices sounding through the gruesome air + As from the Ferry where the Boat of Doom + With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: + The while his children, the brave ships, + No more adventurous and fair, + Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, + But infamously enchanted, + Huddle together in the foul eclipse, + Or feel their course by inches desperately, + As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, + From sinister reach to reach out—out—to sea. + + And Death the while— + Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, + Death in his threadbare working trim— + Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, + And with expert, inevitable hand + Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, + Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: + Thus signifying unto old and young, + However hard of mouth or wild of whim, + ’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient watch—to part + From books and women and talk and drink and art. + And you go humbly after him + To a mean suburban lodging: on the way + To what or where + Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: + And you—how should you care + So long as, unreclaimed of hell, + The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, + Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him down + To the black job of burking London Town? + + + +V +_Allegro maëstoso_ + + + SPRING winds that blow + As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; + Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, + Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglow + With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, + What makes this insolent and comely stream + Of appetence, this freshet of desire + (Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), + Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam + In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? + Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn + The wealth of her enchanted urn + Till, over-billowing all between + Her cheerful margents, grey and living green, + It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, + An estuary of the joy of being? + Why should the lovely leafage of the Park + Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? + —Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides, + Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides + In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, + Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, + In the divine conviction robed and crowned + The globe fulfils his immemorial round + But as the marrying-place of all things made! + + There is no man, this deifying day, + But feels the primal blessing in his blood. + There is no woman but disdains— + The sacred impulse of the May + Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins— + To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. + None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, + Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, + On her inviolable quest: + These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, + But all desirable and frankly fair, + As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, + And in the knowledge went imparadised! + For look! a magical influence everywhere, + Look how the liberal and transfiguring air + Washes this inn of memorable meetings, + This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, + Till, through its jocund loveliness of length + A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, + A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, + It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, + Some vision multitudinous and agleam, + Of happiness as it shall be evermore! + + Praise God for giving + Through this His messenger among the days + His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living! + For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan— + Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned, + But the gay genius of a million Mays + Renewing his beneficent endeavour!— + Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned + Since in the dim blue dawn of time + The universal ebb-and-flow began, + To sound his ancient music, and prevails, + By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme, + Here in this radiant and immortal street + Lavishly and omnipotently as ever + In the open hills, the undissembling dales, + The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. + For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, + Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared, + As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell, + To share his shameless, elemental mirth + In one great act of faith: while deep and strong, + Incomparably nerved and cheered, + The enormous heart of London joys to beat + To the measures of his rough, majestic song; + The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell + That keeps the rolling universe ensphered, + And life, and all for which life lives to long, + Wanton and wondrous and for ever well. + + + + +RHYMES AND RHYTHMS + + + 1889–1892 + + + +_PROLOGUE_ + + + _Something is dead_ . . . + _The grace of sunset solitudes_, _the march_ + _Of the solitary moon_, _the pomp and power_ + _Of round on round of shining soldier-stars_ + _Patrolling space_, _the bounties of the sun_— + _Sovran_, _tremendous_, _unimaginable_— + _The multitudinous friendliness of the sea_, + _Possess no more—no more_. + + _Something is dead_ . . . + _The Autumn rain-rot deeper and wider soaks_ + _And spreads_, _the burden of Winter heavier weighs_, + _His melancholy close and closer yet_ + _Cleaves_, _and those incantations of the Spring_ + _That made the heart a centre of miracles_ + _Grow formal_, _and the wonder-working bours_ + _Arise no more—no more_. + + _Something is dead_ . . . + _’Tis time to creep in close about the fire_ + _And tell grey tales of what we were_, _and dream_ + _Old dreams and faded_, _and as we may rejoice_ + _In the young life that round us leaps and laughs_, + _A fountain in the sunshine_, _in the pride_ + _Of God’s best gift that to us twain returns_, + _Dear Heart_, _no more—no more_. + + + +I +_To_ H. B. M. W. + + + WHERE forlorn sunsets flare and fade + On desolate sea and lonely sand, + Out of the silence and the shade + What is the voice of strange command + Calling you still, as friend calls friend + With love that cannot brook delay, + To rise and follow the ways that wend + Over the hills and far away? + + Hark in the city, street on street + A roaring reach of death and life, + Of vortices that clash and fleet + And ruin in appointed strife, + Hark to it calling, calling clear, + Calling until you cannot stay + From dearer things than your own most dear + Over the hills and far away. + + Out of the sound of the ebb-and-flow, + Out of the sight of lamp and star, + It calls you where the good winds blow, + And the unchanging meadows are: + From faded hopes and hopes agleam, + It calls you, calls you night and day + Beyond the dark into the dream + Over the hills and far away + + + +II +_To_ R. F. B. + + + WE are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word + That called us into line, set in our hand a sword; + + Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, + And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law. + + East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, + As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do. + + Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease— + (Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)— + + Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, + Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire. + + Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark; + Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark; + + We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones; + The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones; + + Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, + Flames from the austral fires to the bounds of the boreal night; + + And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound, + Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round; + + And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze, + Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas; + + And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers, + And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and + showers! + + Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die, + While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky? + + For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father’s debt, + And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set; + + And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave, + Is but less strong than Time and the great, all-whelming Grave. + + + +III + + + A DESOLATE shore, + The sinister seduction of the Moon, + The menace of the irreclaimable Sea. + + Flaunting, tawdry and grim, + From cloud to cloud along her beat, + Leering her battered and inveterate leer, + She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, + Her horrible old man, + Mumbling old oaths and warming + His villainous old bones with villainous talk— + The secrets of their grisly housekeeping + Since they went out upon the pad + In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: + Growling, hideous and hoarse, + Tales of unnumbered Ships, + Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance, + In some vile alley of the night + Waylaid and bludgeoned— + Dead. + + Deep cellared in primeval ooze, + Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, + They lie where the lean water-worm + Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides + Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, + Thus fouled and desecrate, + The summons of the Trumpet, and the while + These Twain, their murderers, + Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, + Hang at the heels of their children—She aloft + As in the shining streets, + He as in ambush at some accomplice door. + + The stalwart Ships, + The beautiful and bold adventurers! + Stationed out yonder in the isle, + The tall Policeman, + Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peers + About him in the ancient vacancy, + Tells them this way is safety—this way home. + + + +IV + + + IT came with the threat of a waning moon + And the wail of an ebbing tide, + But many a woman has lived for less, + And many a man has died; + For life upon life took hold and passed, + Strong in a fate set free, + Out of the deep into the dark + On for the years to be. + + Between the gloom of a waning moon + And the song of an ebbing tide, + Chance upon chance of love and death + Took wing for the world so wide. + O, leaf out of leaf is the way of the land, + Wave out of wave of the sea + And who shall reckon what lives may live + In the life that we bade to be? + + + +V + + + WHY, my heart, do we love her so? + (Geraldine, Geraldine!) + Why does the great sea ebb and flow?— + Why does the round world spin? + Geraldine, Geraldine, + Bid me my life renew: + What is it worth unless I win, + Love—love and you? + + Why, my heart, when we speak her name + (Geraldine, Geraldine!) + Throbs the word like a flinging flame?— + Why does the Spring begin? + Geraldine, Geraldine, + Bid me indeed to be: + Open your heart, and take us in, + Love—love and me. + + + +VI + + + ONE with the ruined sunset, + The strange forsaken sands, + What is it waits, and wanders, + And signs with desparate hands? + + What is it calls in the twilight— + Calls as its chance were vain? + The cry of a gull sent seaward + Or the voice of an ancient pain? + + The red ghost of the sunset, + It walks them as its own, + These dreary and desolate reaches . . . + But O, that it walked alone! + + + +VII + + + THERE’S a regret + So grinding, so immitigably sad, + Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad . . . + Do you not know it yet? + + For deeds undone + Rankle and snarl and hunger for their due, + Till there seems naught so despicable as you + In all the grin o’ the sun. + + Like an old shoe + The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie + About the beach of Time, till by and by + Death, that derides you too— + + Death, as he goes + His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray, + With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way; + And then—and then, who knows + + But the kind Grave + Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, + In that black bridewell working out his term, + Hanker and grope and crave? + + ‘Poor fool that might— + That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, + Think of it, here and thus made over to me + In the implacable night!’ + + And writhing, fain + And like a triumphing lover, he shall take + His fill where no high memory lives to make + His obscene victory vain. + + + +VIII +_To_ A. J. H. + + + TIME and the Earth— + The old Father and Mother— + Their teeming accomplished, + Their purpose fulfilled, + Close with a smile + For a moment of kindness, + Ere for the winter + They settle to sleep. + + Failing yet gracious, + Slow pacing, soon homing, + A patriarch that strolls + Through the tents of his children, + The Sun, as he journeys + His round on the lower + Ascents of the blue, + Washes the roofs + And the hillsides with clarity; + Charms the dark pools + Till they break into pictures; + Scatters magnificent + Alms to the beggar trees; + Touches the mist-folk, + That crowd to his escort, + Into translucencies + Radiant and ravishing: + As with the visible + Spirit of Summer + Gloriously vaporised, + Visioned in gold! + + Love, though the fallen leaf + Mark, and the fleeting light + And the loud, loitering + Footfall of darkness + Sign to the heart + Of the passage of destiny, + Here is the ghost + Of a summer that lived for us, + Here is a promise + Of summers to be. + + + +IX + + + ‘AS like the Woman as you can’— + (_Thus the New Adam was beguiled_)— + ‘So shall you touch the Perfect Man’— + (_God in the Garden heard and smiled_). + ‘Your father perished with his day: + ‘A clot of passions fierce and blind, + ‘He fought, he hacked, he crushed his way: + ‘Your muscles, Child, must be of mind. + + ‘The Brute that lurks and irks within, + ‘How, till you have him gagged and bound, + ‘Escape the foullest form of Sin?’ + (_God in the Garden laughed and frowned_). + ‘So vile, so rank, the bestial mood + ‘In which the race is bid to be, + ‘It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: + ‘Live, therefore, you, for Purity! + + ‘Take for your mate no gallant croup, + ‘No girl all grace and natural will: + ‘To work her mission were to stoop, + ‘Maybe to lapse, from Well to Ill. + ‘Choose one of whom your grosser make’— + (_God in the Garden laughed outright_)— + ‘The true refining touch may take, + ‘Till both attain to Life’s last height. + + ‘There, equal, purged of soul and sense. + ‘Beneficent, high-thinking, just, + ‘Beyond the appeal of Violence, + ‘Incapable of common Lust, + ‘In mental Marriage still prevail’— + (_God in the Garden hid His face_)— + ‘Till you achieve that Female-Male + ‘In Which shall culminate the race.’ + + + +X + + + MIDSUMMER midnight skies, + Midsummer midnight influences and airs, + The shining, sensitive silver of the sea + Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn; + And all so solemnly still I seem to hear + The breathing of Life and Death, + The secular Accomplices, + Renewing the visible miracle of the world. + + The wistful stars + Shine like good memories. The young morning wind + Blows full of unforgotten hours + As over a region of roses. Life and Death + Sound on—sound on . . . And the night magical, + Troubled yet comforting, thrills + As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart + Of the wood’s dark wonderment + Swung wide his valves, and filled the dim sea-banks + With exquisite visitants: + Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires + With living looks intolerable, regrets + Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child + Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been— + Beautiful, miserable, distraught— + The Law no man may baffle denied and slew. + + The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze + To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . + Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O, there where it fades, + What grace, what glamour, what wild will, + Transfigure the shadows? Whose, + Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours? + + Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air + Teems with them even to the gleaming ends + Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, + Everywhere—everywhere—till I and you + At last—dear love, at last!— + Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, + Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will. + + + +XI + + + GULLS in an aëry morrice + Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . + The full sea, sleepily basking, + Dreams under skies of dream. + + Gulls in an aëry morrice + Circle and swoop and close . . . + Fuller and ever fuller + The rose of the morning blows. + + Gulls, in an aëry morrice + Frolicking, float and fade . . . + O, the way of a bird in the sunshine, + The way of a man with a maid! + + + +XII + + + SOME starlit garden grey with dew, + Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, + What matters where, so I and you + Are worthy our desire? + + Behind, a past that scolds and jeers + For ungirt loins and lamps unlit; + In front, the unmanageable years, + The trap upon the Pit; + + Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, + The scandal of unnatural strife, + The slur upon immortal needs, + The treason done to life: + + Arise! no more a living lie, + And with me quicken and control + Some memory that shall magnify + The universal Soul. + + + +XIII +_To_ James McNeill Whistler + + + UNDER a stagnant sky, + Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, + The River, jaded and forlorn, + Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on; + Yet in and out among the ribs + Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles + Of some dead lake-built city, full of skulls, + Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, + Lingers to babble to a broken tune + (Once, O, the unvoiced music of my heart!) + So melancholy a soliloquy + It sounds as it might tell + The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, + The terror of Time and Change and Death, + That wastes this floating, transitory world. + + What of the incantation + That forced the huddled shapes on yonder shore + To take and wear the night + Like a material majesty? + That touched the shafts of wavering fire + About this miserable welter and wash— + (River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!)— + Into long, shining signals from the panes + Of an enchanted pleasure-house, + Where life and life might live life lost in life + For ever and evermore? + + O Death! O Change! O Time! + Without you, O, the insuperable eyes + Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, + These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays! + + + +XIV +_To_ J. A. C. + + + FRESH from his fastnesses + Wholesome and spacious, + The North Wind, the mad huntsman, + Halloas on his white hounds + Over the grey, roaring + Reaches and ridges, + The forest of ocean, + The chace of the world. + Hark to the peal + Of the pack in full cry, + As he thongs them before him, + Swarming voluminous, + Weltering, wide-wallowing, + Till in a ruining + Chaos of energy, + Hurled on their quarry, + They crash into foam! + + Old Indefatigable, + Time’s right-hand man, the sea + Laughs as in joy + From his millions of wrinkles: + Laughs that his destiny, + Great with the greatness + Of triumphing order, + Shows as a dwarf + By the strength of his heart + And the might of his hands. + + Master of masters, + O maker of heroes, + Thunder the brave, + Irresistible message:— + ‘Life is worth Living + Through every grain of it, + From the foundations + To the last edge + Of the cornerstone, death.’ + + + +XV + + + YOU played and sang a snatch of song, + A song that all-too well we knew; + But whither had flown the ancient wrong; + And was it really I and you? + O, since the end of life’s to live + And pay in pence the common debt, + What should it cost us to forgive + Whose daily task is to forget? + + You babbled in the well-known voice— + Not new, not new the words you said. + You touched me off that famous poise, + That old effect, of neck and head. + Dear, was it really you and I? + In truth the riddle’s ill to read, + So many are the deaths we die + Before we can be dead indeed. + + + +XVI + + + SPACE and dread and the dark— + Over a livid stretch of sky + Cloud-monsters crawling, like a funeral train + Of huge, primeval presences + Stooping beneath the weight + Of some enormous, rudimentary grief; + While in the haunting loneliness + The far sea waits and wanders with a sound + As of the trailing skirts of Destiny, + Passing unseen + To some immitigable end + With her grey henchman, Death. + + What larve, what spectre is this + Thrilling the wilderness to life + As with the bodily shape of Fear? + What but a desperate sense, + A strong foreboding of those dim + Interminable continents, forlorn + And many-silenced, in a dusk + Inviolable utterly, and dead + As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes + In hugger-mugger through eternity? + + Life—life—let there be life! + Better a thousand times the roaring hours + When wave and wind, + Like the Arch-Murderer in flight + From the Avenger at his heel, + Storm through the desolate fastnesses + And wild waste places of the world! + + Life—give me life until the end, + That at the very top of being, + The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, + Out of the reddest hell of the fight + I may be snatched and flung + Into the everlasting lull, + The immortal, incommunicable dream. + + + +XVII +CARMEN PATIBULARE +_To_ H. S. + + + TREE, Old Tree of the Triple Crook + And the rope of the Black Election, + ’Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule + Can never achieve perfection: + So ‘It’s O, for the time of the new Sublime + And the better than human way, + When the Rat (poor beast) shall come to his own + And the Wolf shall have his day!’ + + For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam + And the power of provocation, + You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit + Till your fruit is mere stupration: + And ‘It’s how should we rise to be pure and wise, + And how can we choose but fall, + So long as the Hangman makes us dread, + And the Noose floats free for all?’ + + So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign + And the trick there’s no recalling, + They will haggle and hew till they hack you through + And at last they lay you sprawling: + When ‘Hey! for the hour of the race in flower + And the long good-bye to sin!’ + And for the lack the fires of Hell gone out + Of the fuel to keep them in!’ + + But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough + And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, + Your growth began with the life of Man, + And only his death can end you. + They may tug in line at your hempen twine, + They may flourish with axe and saw; + But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs + In the living rock of Law. + + And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, + When the spent sun reels and blunders + Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit + As it seethes in spate and thunders, + Stern on the glare of the tortured air + Your lines august shall gloom, + And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed + In the ruining roar of Doom. + + + +XVIII +I. M. +MARGARET EMMA HENLEY +(1888–1894) + + + WHEN you wake in your crib, + You, an inch of experience— + Vaulted about + With the wonder of darkness; + Wailing and striving + To reach from your feebleness + Something you feel + Will be good to and cherish you, + Something you know + And can rest upon blindly: + O, then a hand + (Your mother’s, your mother’s!) + By the fall of its fingers + All knowledge, all power to you, + Out of the dreary, + Discouraging strangenesses + Comes to and masters you, + Takes you, and lovingly + Woos you and soothes you + Back, as you cling to it, + Back to some comforting + Corner of sleep. + + So you wake in your bed, + Having lived, having loved; + But the shadows are there, + And the world and its kingdoms + Incredibly faded; + And you group through the Terror + Above you and under + For the light, for the warmth, + The assurance of life; + But the blasts are ice-born, + And your heart is nigh burst + With the weight of the gloom + And the stress of your strangled + And desperate endeavour: + Sudden a hand— + Mother, O Mother!— + God at His best to you, + Out of the roaring, + Impossible silences, + Falls on and urges you, + Mightily, tenderly, + Forth, as you clutch at it, + Forth to the infinite + Peace of the Grave. + + _October_ 1891 + + + +XIX +I. M. +R. L. S. +(1850–1894) + + + O, TIME and Change, they range and range + From sunshine round to thunder!— + They glance and go as the great winds blow, + And the best of our dreams drive under: + For Time and Change estrange, estrange— + And, now they have looked and seen us, + O, we that were dear, we are all-too near + With the thick of the world between us. + + O, Death and Time, they chime and chime + Like bells at sunset falling!— + They end the song, they right the wrong, + They set the old echoes calling: + For Death and Time bring on the prime + Of God’s own chosen weather, + And we lie in the peace of the Great Release + As once in the grass together. + + _February_ 1891 + + + +XX + + + THE shadow of Dawn; + Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams + Of Life and Death and Sleep; + Heard over gleaming flats, the old, unchanging sound + Of the old, unchanging Sea. + + My soul and yours— + O, hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, + Into the ghostliness, + The infinite and abounding solitudes, + Beyond—O, beyond!—beyond . . . + + Here in the porch + Upon the multitudinous silences + Of the kingdoms of the grave, + We twain are you and I—two ghosts Omnipotence + Can touch no more . . . no more! + + + +XXI + + + WHEN the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves + Rejoice in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, + Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life + Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife— + Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves. + + But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, + When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, + Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, + Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire’s old song— + O, you envy the blesséd death that can live no more! + + + +XXII + + + TREES and the menace of night; + Then a long, lonely, leaden mere + Backed by a desolate fell, + As by a spectral battlement; and then, + Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, + A vast, gray, listless, inexpressive sky, + So beggared, so incredibly bereft + Of starlight and the song of racing worlds, + It might have bellied down upon the Void + Where as in terror Light was beginning to be. + + Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night + (Night and the wretchedness of the sky) + Is it the hurry of the rain? + Or the noise of a drive of the Dead, + Streaming before the irresistible Will + Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land + Between their place and ours? + + Like the forgetfulness + Of the work-a-day world made visible, + A mist falls from the melancholy sky. + A messenger from some lost and loving soul, + Hopeless, far wandered, dazed + Here in the provinces of life, + A great white moth fades miserably past. + + Thro’ the trees in the strange dead night, + Under the vast dead sky, + Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead + Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, + And the unimagined vastitudes beyond. + + + +XXIII +_To_ P. A. G. + + + HERE they trysted, here they strayed, + In the leafage dewy and boon, + Many a man and many a maid, + And the morn was merry June. + ‘Death is fleet, Life is sweet,’ + Sang the blackbird in the may; + And the hour with flying feet, + While they dreamed, was yesterday. + + Many a maid and many a man + Found the leafage close and boon; + Many a destiny began— + O, the morn was merry June! + Dead and gone, dead and gone, + (Hark the blackbird in the may!), + Life and Death went hurrying on, + Cheek on cheek—and where were they? + + Dust on dust engendering dust + In the leafage fresh and boon, + Man and maid fulfil their trust— + Still the morn turns merry June. + Mother Life, Father Death + (O, the blackbird in the may!), + Each the other’s breath for breath, + Fleet the times of the world away. + + + +XXIV +_To_ A. C. + + + NOT to the staring Day, + For all the importunate questionings he pursues + In his big, violent voice, + Shall those mild things of bulk and multitude, + The Trees—God’s sentinels + Over His gift of live, life-giving air, + Yield of their huge, unutterable selves. + Midsummer-manifold, each one + Voluminous, a labyrinth of life, + They keep their greenest musings, and the dim dreams + That haunt their leafier privacies, + Dissembled, baffling the random gapeseed still + With blank full-faces, or the innocent guile + Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, + And disappearances of homing birds, + And frolicsome freaks + Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs. + + But at the word + Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, + Night of the many secrets, whose effect— + Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread— + Themselves alone may fully apprehend, + They tremble and are changed. + In each, the uncouth individual soul + Looms forth and glooms + Essential, and, their bodily presences + Touched with inordinate significance, + Wearing the darkness like the livery + Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, + They brood—they menace—they appal; + Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring + Wild hands of warning in the face + Of some inevitable advance of the doom; + Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing + As in some monstrous market-place, + They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, + In that old speech their forefathers + Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard + The troubled voice of Eve + Naming the wondering folk of Paradise. + + Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell + The tale of their dim life, with all + Its compost of experience: how the Sun + Spreads them their daily feast, + Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; + Of the old Moon’s fitful solicitude + And those mild messages the Stars + Descend in silver silences and dews; + Or what the sweet-breathing West, + Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, + Said, and their leafage laughed; + And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain + Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year— + The sting of the stirring sap + Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, + Their summer amplitudes of pomp, + Their rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, + Embittered housewifery + Of the lean Winter: all such things, + And with them all the goodness of the Master, + Whose right hand blesses with increase and life, + Whose left hand honours with decay and death. + + Thus under the constraint of Night + These gross and simple creatures, + Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years, + A servant of the Will! + And God, the Craftsman, as He walks + The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer + In thus accomplishing + The aims of His miraculous artistry. + + + +XXV + + + WHAT have I done for you, + England, my England? + What is there I would not do, + England, my own? + With your glorious eyes austere, + As the Lord were walking near, + Whispering terrible things and dear + As the Song on your bugles blown, + England— + Round the world on your bugles blown! + + Where shall the watchful Sun, + England, my England, + Match the master-work you’ve done, + England, my own? + When shall he rejoice agen + Such a breed of mighty men + As come forward, one to ten, + To the Song on your bugles blown, + England— + Down the years on your bugles blown? + + Ever the faith endures, + England, my England:— + ‘Take and break us: we are yours, + ‘England, my own! + ‘Life is good, and joy runs high + ‘Between English earth and sky: + ‘Death is death; but we shall die + ‘To the Song on your bugles blown, + ‘England— + ‘To the stars on your bugles blown! + + They call you proud and hard, + England, my England: + You with worlds to watch and ward, + England, my own! + You whose mailed hand keeps the keys + Of such teeming destinies + You could know nor dread nor ease + Were the Song on your bugles blown, + England, + Round the Pit on your bugles blown! + + Mother of Ships whose might, + England, my England, + Is the fierce old Sea’s delight, + England, my own, + Chosen daughter of the Lord, + Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient sword, + There’s the menace of the Word + In the Song on your bugles blown, + England— + Out of heaven on your bugles blown! + + + +_EPILOGUE_ + + + _These_, _to you now_, _O_, _more than ever now_— + _Now that the Ancient Enemy_ + _Has passed_, _and we_, _we two that are one_, _have seen_ + _A piece of perfect Life_ + _Turn to so ravishing a shape of Death_ + _The Arch-Discomforter might well have smiled_ + _In pity and pride_, + _Even as he bore his lovely and innocent spoil_ + _From those home-kingdoms he left desolate_! + + _Poor windlestraws_ + _On the great_, _sullen_, _roaring pool of Time_ + _And Chance and Change_, _I know_! + _But they are yours_, _as I am_, _till we attain_ + _That end for which me make_, _we two that are one_: + _A little_, _exquisite Ghost_ + _Between us_, _smiling with the serenest eyes_ + _Seen in this world_, _and calling_, _calling still_ + _In that clear voice whose infinite subtleties_ + _Of sweetness_, _thrilling back across the grave_, + _Break the poor heart to hear_:— + ‘Come, Dadsie, come! + Mama, how long—how long!’ + + _July_ 1897. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS*** + + +******* This file should be named 1568-0.txt or 1568-0.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/6/1568 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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