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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Channel Passage and Other Poems, by
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere 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
+
+
+Title: A Channel Passage and Other Poems
+       Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
+       Swinburne--Vol VI
+
+Author: Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2006 [EBook #18871]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Paul Murray, Lisa Reigel, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE: Greek words in this text have been transliterated
+and placed between +marks+. The word "Phoebus" was rendered with an oe
+ligature in the original.]
+
+
+
+
+A Channel Passage and other poems
+
+
+By
+
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+
+Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles
+Swinburne--Vol VI
+
+
+
+
+THE COLLECTED POETICAL WORKS OF ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
+
+VOL. VI
+
+
+A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER TALES
+
+
+
+
+SWINBURNE'S POETICAL WORKS
+
+
+  I. POEMS AND BALLADS (First Series).
+
+ II. SONGS BEFORE SUNRISE, AND SONGS OF TWO NATIONS.
+
+III. POEMS AND BALLADS (Second and Third Series), and SONGS OF THE
+       SPRINGTIDES.
+
+ IV. TRISTRAM OF LYONESSE, THE TALE OF BALEN, ATALANTA IN CALYDON,
+       ERECHTHEUS.
+
+  V. STUDIES IN SONG, A CENTURY OF ROUNDELS, SONNETS ON ENGLISH DRAMATIC
+       POETS, THE HEPTALOGIA, ETC.
+
+ VI. A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY, ASTROPHEL, A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS.
+
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+
+
+A MIDSUMMER HOLIDAY: ASTROPHEL: A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
+
+
+By
+
+Algernon Charles Swinburne
+
+
+1917
+
+LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+
+
+_First printed_ (_Chatto_), 1904
+
+_Reprinted_ 1904, '09, '10, '12
+
+(_Heinemann_), 1917
+
+
+_London: William Heinemann_, 1917
+
+
+
+
+A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
+
+
+                                                   PAGE
+
+A CHANNEL PASSAGE                                   279
+
+THE LAKE OF GAUBE                                   284
+
+THE PROMISE OF THE HAWTHORN                         288
+
+HAWTHORN TIDE                                       289
+
+THE PASSING OF THE HAWTHORN                         296
+
+TO A BABY KINSWOMAN                                 297
+
+THE ALTAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS                          301
+
+A NEW YEAR'S EVE                                    321
+
+IN A ROSARY                                         324
+
+THE HIGH OAKS                                       326
+
+BARKING HALL: A YEAR AFTER                          331
+
+MUSIC: AN ODE                                       334
+
+THE CENTENARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE NILE             336
+
+TRAFALGAR DAY                                       338
+
+CROMWELL'S STATUE                                   340
+
+A WORD FOR THE NAVY                                 342
+
+NORTHUMBERLAND                                      346
+
+STRATFORD-ON-AVON                                   349
+
+BURNS: AN ODE                                       350
+
+THE COMMONWEAL: A SONG FOR UNIONISTS                355
+
+THE QUESTION                                        359
+
+APOSTASY                                            363
+
+RUSSIA: AN ODE                                      366
+
+FOR GREECE AND CRETE                                370
+
+DELPHIC HYMN TO APOLLO                              372
+
+A NEW CENTURY                                       374
+
+AN EVENING AT VICHY                                 375
+
+TO GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS                           378
+
+ON THE DEATH OF MRS. LYNN LINTON                    379
+
+IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI                          382
+
+CARNOT                                              383
+
+AFTER THE VERDICT                                   384
+
+THE TRANSVAAL                                       385
+
+REVERSE                                             386
+
+THE TURNING OF THE TIDE                             387
+
+ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL BENSON                      388
+
+ASTRAEA VICTRIX                                      389
+
+THE FIRST OF JUNE                                   393
+
+A ROUNDEL FROM VILLON                               395
+
+A ROUNDEL OF RABELAIS                               396
+
+LUCIFER                                             397
+
+THE CENTENARY OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS                    398
+
+AT A DOG'S GRAVE                                    400
+
+THREE WEEKS OLD                                     402
+
+A CLASP OF HANDS                                    403
+
+PROLOGUE TO DOCTOR FAUSTUS                          405
+
+PROLOGUE TO ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM                      407
+
+PROLOGUE TO OLD FORTUNATUS                          409
+
+PROLOGUE TO THE DUCHESS OF MALFY                    411
+
+PROLOGUE TO THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY                  413
+
+PROLOGUE TO THE BROKEN HEART                        415
+
+PROLOGUE TO A VERY WOMAN                            417
+
+PROLOGUE TO THE SPANISH GIPSY                       419
+
+PROLOGUE TO THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN                   421
+
+THE AFTERGLOW OF SHAKESPEARE                        423
+
+CLEOPATRA                                           427
+
+DEDICATION                                          435
+
+
+
+
+A CHANNEL PASSAGE AND OTHER POEMS
+
+
+IN MEMORY
+
+OF
+
+WILLIAM MORRIS
+
+AND
+
+EDWARD BURNE JONES
+
+
+
+
+     A CHANNEL PASSAGE
+
+     1855
+
+
+     Forth from Calais, at dawn of night, when sunset summer on autumn
+           shone,
+     Fared the steamer alert and loud through seas whence only the sun
+           was gone:
+     Soft and sweet as the sky they smiled, and bade man welcome: a dim
+           sweet hour
+     Gleamed and whispered in wind and sea, and heaven was fair as a
+           field in flower.
+     Stars fulfilled the desire of the darkling world as with music: the
+           starbright air
+     Made the face of the sea, if aught may make the face of the sea,
+           more fair.
+
+     Whence came change? Was the sweet night weary of rest? What anguish
+           awoke in the dark?
+     Sudden, sublime, the strong storm spake: we heard the thunders as
+           hounds that bark.
+     Lovelier if aught may be lovelier than stars, we saw the lightnings
+           exalt the sky,
+     Living and lustrous and rapturous as love that is born but to
+           quicken and lighten and die.
+     Heaven's own heart at its highest of delight found utterance in
+           music and semblance in fire:
+     Thunder on thunder exulted, rejoicing to live and to satiate the
+           night's desire.
+
+     And the night was alive and anhungered of life as a tiger from
+           toils cast free:
+     And a rapture of rage made joyous the spirit and strength of the
+           soul of the sea.
+     All the weight of the wind bore down on it, freighted with death
+           for fraught:
+     And the keen waves kindled and quickened as things transfigured or
+           things distraught.
+     And madness fell on them laughing and leaping; and madness came on
+           the wind:
+     And the might and the light and the darkness of storm were as storm
+           in the heart of Ind.
+     Such glory, such terror, such passion, as lighten and harrow the
+           far fierce East,
+     Rang, shone, spake, shuddered around us: the night was an altar
+           with death for priest.
+     The channel that sunders England from shores where never was man
+           born free
+     Was clothed with the likeness and thrilled with the strength and
+           the wrath of a tropic sea.
+     As a wild steed ramps in rebellion, and rears till it swerves from
+           a backward fall,
+     The strong ship struggled and reared, and her deck was upright as a
+           sheer cliff's wall.
+     Stern and prow plunged under, alternate: a glimpse, a recoil, a
+           breath,
+     And she sprang as the life in a god made man would spring at the
+           throat of death.
+     Three glad hours, and it seemed not an hour of supreme and supernal
+           joy,
+     Filled full with delight that revives in remembrance a sea-bird's
+           heart in a boy.
+     For the central crest of the night was cloud that thundered and
+           flamed, sublime
+     As the splendour and song of the soul everlasting that quickens the
+           pulse of time.
+     The glory beholden of man in a vision, the music of light
+           overheard,
+     The rapture and radiance of battle, the life that abides in the
+           fire of a word,
+     In the midmost heaven enkindled, was manifest far on the face of
+           the sea,
+     And the rage in the roar of the voice of the waters was heard but
+           when heaven breathed free.
+     Far eastward, clear of the covering of cloud, the sky laughed out
+           into light
+     From the rims of the storm to the sea's dark edge with flames that
+           were flowerlike and white.
+     The leaping and luminous blossoms of live sheet lightning that
+           laugh as they fade
+     From the cloud's black base to the black wave's brim rejoiced in
+           the light they made.
+     Far westward, throned in a silent sky, where life was in lustrous
+           tune,
+     Shone, sweeter and surer than morning or evening, the steadfast
+           smile of the moon.
+     The limitless heaven that enshrined them was lovelier than dreams
+           may behold, and deep
+     As life or as death, revealed and transfigured, may shine on the
+           soul through sleep.
+     All glories of toil and of triumph and passion and pride that it
+           yearns to know
+     Bore witness there to the soul of its likeness and kinship, above
+           and below.
+     The joys of the lightnings, the songs of the thunders, the strong
+           sea's labour and rage,
+     Were tokens and signs of the war that is life and is joy for the
+           soul to wage.
+     No thought strikes deeper or higher than the heights and the depths
+           that the night made bare,
+     Illimitable, infinite, awful and joyful, alive in the summit of
+           air--
+     Air stilled and thrilled by the tempest that thundered between its
+           reign and the sea's,
+     Rebellious, rapturous, and transient as faith or as terror that
+           bows men's knees.
+     No love sees loftier and fairer the form of its godlike vision in
+           dreams
+     Than the world shone then, when the sky and the sea were as love
+           for a breath's length seems--
+     One utterly, mingled and mastering and mastered and laughing with
+           love that subsides
+     As the glad mad night sank panting and satiate with storm, and
+           released the tides.
+     In the dense mid channel the steam-souled ship hung hovering,
+           assailed and withheld
+     As a soul born royal, if life or if death be against it, is
+           thwarted and quelled.
+     As the glories of myriads of glowworms in lustrous grass on a
+           boundless lawn
+     Were the glories of flames phosphoric that made of the water a
+           light like dawn.
+     A thousand Phosphors, a thousand Hespers, awoke in the churning
+           sea,
+     And the swift soft hiss of them living and dying was clear as a
+           tune could be;
+     As a tune that is played by the fingers of death on the keys of
+           life or of sleep,
+     Audible alway alive in the storm, too fleet for a dream to keep:
+     Too fleet, too sweet for a dream to recover and thought to remember
+           awake:
+     Light subtler and swifter than lightning, that whispers and laughs
+           in the live storm's wake,
+     In the wild bright wake of the storm, in the dense loud heart of
+           the labouring hour,
+     A harvest of stars by the storm's hand reaped, each fair as a
+           star-shaped flower.
+     And sudden and soft as the passing of sleep is the passing of
+           tempest seemed
+     When the light and the sound of it sank, and the glory was gone as
+           a dream half dreamed.
+     The glory, the terror, the passion that made of the midnight a
+           miracle, died,
+     Not slain at a stroke, nor in gradual reluctance abated of power
+           and of pride;
+     With strong swift subsidence, awful as power that is wearied of
+           power upon earth,
+     As a God that were wearied of power upon heaven, and were fain of a
+           new God's birth,
+     The might of the night subsided: the tyranny kindled in darkness
+           fell:
+     And the sea and the sky put off them the rapture and radiance of
+           heaven and of hell.
+     The waters, heaving and hungering at heart, made way, and were
+           wellnigh fain,
+     For the ship that had fought them, and wrestled, and revelled in
+           labour, to cease from her pain.
+     And an end was made of it: only remembrance endures of the glad
+           loud strife;
+     And the sense that a rapture so royal may come not again in the
+           passage of life.
+
+
+
+
+     THE LAKE OF GAUBE
+
+
+     The sun is lord and god, sublime, serene,
+       And sovereign on the mountains: earth and air
+     Lie prone in passion, blind with bliss unseen
+       By force of sight and might of rapture, fair
+       As dreams that die and know not what they were.
+     The lawns, the gorges, and the peaks, are one
+     Glad glory, thrilled with sense of unison
+     In strong compulsive silence of the sun.
+
+     Flowers dense and keen as midnight stars aflame
+       And living things of light like flames in flower
+     That glance and flash as though no hand might tame
+       Lightnings whose life outshone their stormlit hour
+       And played and laughed on earth, with all their power
+     Gone, and with all their joy of life made long
+     And harmless as the lightning life of song,
+     Shine sweet like stars when darkness feels them strong.
+
+     The deep mild purple flaked with moonbright gold
+      That makes the scales seem flowers of hardened light,
+     The flamelike tongue, the feet that noon leaves cold,
+       The kindly trust in man, when once the sight
+       Grew less than strange, and faith bade fear take flight,
+     Outlive the little harmless life that shone
+     And gladdened eyes that loved it, and was gone
+     Ere love might fear that fear had looked thereon.
+
+     Fear held the bright thing hateful, even as fear,
+       Whose name is one with hate and horror, saith
+     That heaven, the dark deep heaven of water near,
+       Is deadly deep as hell and dark as death.
+       The rapturous plunge that quickens blood and breath
+     With pause more sweet than passion, ere they strive
+     To raise again the limbs that yet would dive
+     Deeper, should there have slain the soul alive.
+
+     As the bright salamander in fire of the noonshine exults and is
+           glad of his day,
+     The spirit that quickens my body rejoices to pass from the sunlight
+           away,
+     To pass from the glow of the mountainous flowerage, the high
+           multitudinous bloom,
+     Far down through the fathomless night of the water, the gladness of
+           silence and gloom.
+     Death-dark and delicious as death in the dream of a lover and
+           dreamer may be,
+     It clasps and encompasses body and soul with delight to be living
+           and free:
+     Free utterly now, though the freedom endure but the space of a
+           perilous breath,
+     And living, though girdled about with the darkness and coldness and
+           strangeness of death:
+     Each limb and each pulse of the body rejoicing, each nerve of the
+           spirit at rest,
+     All sense of the soul's life rapture, a passionate peace in its
+           blindness blest.
+     So plunges the downward swimmer, embraced of the water unfathomed
+           of man,
+     The darkness unplummeted, icier than seas in midwinter, for
+           blessing or ban;
+     And swiftly and sweetly, when strength and breath fall short, and
+           the dive is done,
+     Shoots up as a shaft from the dark depth shot, sped straight into
+           sight of the sun;
+     And sheer through the snow-soft water, more dark than the roof of
+           the pines above,
+     Strikes forth, and is glad as a bird whose flight is impelled and
+           sustained of love.
+     As a sea-mew's love of the sea-wind breasted and ridden for
+           rapture's sake
+     Is the love of his body and soul for the darkling delight of the
+           soundless lake:
+     As the silent speed of a dream too living to live for a thought's
+           space more
+     Is the flight of his limbs through the still strong chill of the
+           darkness from shore to shore.
+     Might life be as this is and death be as life that casts off time
+           as a robe,
+     The likeness of infinite heaven were a symbol revealed of the lake
+           of Gaube.
+
+     Whose thought has fathomed and measured
+       The darkness of life and of death,
+     The secret within them treasured,
+       The spirit that is not breath?
+     Whose vision has yet beholden
+       The splendour of death and of life?
+     Though sunset as dawn be golden,
+       Is the word of them peace, not strife?
+     Deep silence answers: the glory
+       We dream of may be but a dream,
+     And the sun of the soul wax hoary
+       As ashes that show not a gleam.
+     But well shall it be with us ever
+       Who drive through the darkness here,
+     If the soul that we live by never,
+       For aught that a lie saith, fear.
+
+
+
+
+     THE PROMISE OF THE HAWTHORN
+
+
+     Spring sleeps and stirs and trembles with desire
+       Pure as a babe's that nestles toward the breast.
+     The world, as yet an all unstricken lyre,
+       With all its chords alive and all at rest,
+     Feels not the sun's hand yet, but feels his breath
+       And yearns for love made perfect. Man and bird,
+     Thrilled through with hope of life that casts out death,
+       Wait with a rapturous patience till his word
+     Speak heaven, and flower by flower and tree by tree
+       Give back the silent strenuous utterance. Earth,
+     Alive awhile and joyful as the sea,
+       Laughs not aloud in joy too deep for mirth,
+     Presageful of perfection of delight,
+     Till all the unborn green buds be born in white.
+
+
+
+
+     HAWTHORN TIDE
+
+
+     I
+
+     Dawn is alive in the world, and the darkness of heaven and of earth
+     Subsides in the light of a smile more sweet than the loud noon's
+           mirth,
+     Spring lives as a babe lives, glad and divine as the sun, and
+           unsure
+     If aught so divine and so glad may be worshipped and loved and
+           endure.
+     A soft green glory suffuses the love-lit earth with delight,
+     And the face of the noon is fair as the face of the star-clothed
+           night.
+     Earth knows not and doubts not at heart of the glories again to be:
+     Sleep doubts not and dreams not how sweet shall the waking beyond
+           her be.
+     A whole white world of revival awaits May's whisper awhile,
+     Abides and exults in the bud as a soft hushed laugh in a smile.
+     As a maid's mouth laughing with love and subdued for the love's
+           sake, May
+     Shines and withholds for a little the word she revives to say.
+
+     When the clouds and the winds and the sunbeams are warring and
+           strengthening with joy that they live,
+       Spring, from reluctance enkindled to rapture, from slumber to
+           strife,
+     Stirs, and repents, and is winter, and weeps, and awakes as the
+           frosts forgive,
+       And the dark chill death of the woodland is troubled, and dies
+           into life.
+     And the honey of heaven, of the hives whence night feeds full on
+           the springtide's breath,
+       Fills fuller the lips of the lustrous air with delight in the
+           dawn:
+     Each blossom enkindling with love that is life and subsides with a
+           smile into death
+       Arises and lightens and sets as a star from her sphere withdrawn.
+     Not sleep, in the rapture of radiant dreams, when sundawn smiles on
+           the night,
+       Shows earth so sweet with a splendour and fragrance of life that
+           is love:
+     Each blade of the glad live grass, each bud that receives or
+           rejects the light,
+       Salutes and responds to the marvel of Maytime around and above.
+
+     Joy gives thanks for the sight and the savour of heaven, and is
+           humbled
+       With awe that exults in thanksgiving: the towers of the flowers
+           of the trees
+     Shine sweeter than snows that the hand of the season has melted and
+           crumbled,
+       And fair as the foam that is lesser of life than the loveliest of
+           these.
+     But the sense of a life more lustrous with joy and enkindled of
+           glory
+       Than man's was ever or may be, and briefer than joys most brief,
+     Bids man's heart bend and adore, be the man's head golden or hoary,
+       As it leapt but a breath's time since and saluted the flower and
+           the leaf.
+     The rapture that springs into love at the sight of the world's
+           exultation
+       Takes not a sense of rebuke from the sense of triumphant awe:
+     But the spirit that quickens the body fulfils it with mute
+           adoration,
+       And the knees would fain bow down as the eyes that rejoiced and
+           saw.
+
+
+     II
+
+     Fair and sublime as the face of the dawn is the splendour of May,
+     But the sky's and the sea's joy fades not as earth's pride passes
+           away.
+     Yet hardly the sun's first lightning or laughter of love on the sea
+     So humbles the heart into worship that knows not or doubts if it be
+     As the first full glory beholden again of the life new-born
+     That hails and applauds with inaudible music the season of morn.
+     A day's length since, and it was not: a night's length more, and
+           the sun
+     Salutes and enkindles a world of delight as a strange world won.
+     A new life answers and thrills to the kiss of the young strong
+           year,
+     And the glory we see is as music we hear not, and dream that we
+           hear.
+     From blossom to blossom the live tune kindles, from tree to tree,
+     And we know not indeed if we hear not the song of the life we see.
+
+     For the first blithe day that beholds it and worships and cherishes
+           cannot but sing
+       With a louder and lustier delight in the sun and the sunlit earth
+     Than the joy of the days that beheld but the soft green dawn of the
+           slow faint spring
+       Glad and afraid to be glad, and subdued in a shamefast mirth.
+     When the first bright knoll of the woodland world laughs out into
+           fragrant light,
+       The year's heart changes and quickens with sense of delight in
+           desire,
+     And the kindling desire is one with thanksgiving for utter fruition
+           of sight,
+       For sight and for sense of a world that the sun finds meet for
+           his lyre.
+     Music made of the morning that smites from the chords of the mute
+           world song
+       Trembles and quickens and lightens, unfelt, unbeholden, unheard,
+     From blossom on blossom that climbs and exults in the strength of
+           the sun grown strong,
+       And answers the word of the wind of the spring with the sun's own
+           word.
+
+     Hard on the skirt of the deep soft copses that spring refashions,
+       Triumphs and towers to the height of the crown of a wildwood tree
+     One royal hawthorn, sublime and serene as the joy that impassions
+       Awe that exults in thanksgiving for sight of the grace we see,
+     The grace that is given of a god that abides for a season,
+           mysterious
+       And merciful, fervent and fugitive, seen and unknown and adored:
+     His presence is felt in the light and the fragrance, elate and
+           imperious,
+       His laugh and his breath in the blossom are love's, the beloved
+           soul's lord.
+     For surely the soul if it loves is beloved of the god as a lover
+       Whose love is not all unaccepted, a worship not utterly vain:
+     So full, so deep is the joy that revives for the soul to recover
+       Yearly, beholden of hope and of memory in sunshine and rain.
+
+
+     III
+
+     Wonder and love stand silent, stricken at heart and stilled.
+     But yet is the cup of delight and of worship unpledged and
+           unfilled.
+     A handsbreadth hence leaps up, laughs out as an angel crowned,
+     A strong full fountain of flowers overflowing above and around.
+     The boughs and the blossoms in triumph salute with adoring mirth
+     The womb that bare them, the glad green mother, the sunbright
+           earth.
+     Downward sweeping, as song subsides into silence, none
+     May hear what sound is the word's they speak to the brooding sun.
+     None that hearken may hear: man may but pass and adore,
+     And humble his heart in thanksgiving for joy that is now no more.
+     And sudden, afront and ahead of him, joy is alive and aflame
+     On the shrine whose incense is given of the godhead, again the
+           same.
+
+     Pale and pure as a maiden secluded in secret and cherished with
+           fear,
+       One sweet glad hawthorn smiles as it shrinks under shelter,
+           screened
+     By two strong brethren whose bounteous blossom outsoars it, year
+           after year,
+       While earth still cleaves to the live spring's breast as a babe
+           unweaned.
+     Never was amaranth fairer in fields where heroes of old found rest,
+       Never was asphodel sweeter: but here they endure not long,
+     Though ever the sight that salutes them again and adores them
+           awhile is blest,
+       And the heart is a hymn, and the sense is a soul, and the soul is
+           a song.
+     Alone on a dyke's trenched edge, and afar from the blossoming
+           wildwood's verge,
+       Laughs and lightens a sister, triumphal in love-lit pride;
+     Clothed round with the sun, and inviolate: her blossoms exult as
+           the springtide surge,
+       When the wind and the dawn enkindle the snows of the shoreward
+           tide.
+
+     Hardly the worship of old that rejoiced as it knelt in the vision
+       Shown of the God new-born whose breath is the spirit of spring
+     Hailed ever with love more strong and defiant of death's derision
+       A joy more perfect than here we mourn for as May takes wing.
+     Time gives it and takes it again and restores it: the glory, the
+           wonder,
+       The triumph of lustrous blossom that makes of the steep sweet
+           bank
+     One visible marvel of music inaudible, over and under,
+       Attuned as in heaven, pass hence and return for the sun to thank.
+     The stars and the sun give thanks for the glory bestowed and
+           beholden,
+       For the gladness they give and rejoice in, the night and the dawn
+           and the day:
+     But nought they behold when the world is aflower and the season is
+           golden
+       Makes answer as meet and as sweet as the flower that itself is
+           May.
+
+
+
+
+     THE PASSING OF THE HAWTHORN
+
+
+     The coming of the hawthorn brings on earth
+       Heaven: all the spring speaks out in one sweet word,
+       And heaven grows gladder, knowing that earth has heard.
+     Ere half the flowers are jubilant in birth,
+     The splendour of the laughter of their mirth
+       Dazzles delight with wonder: man and bird
+       Rejoice and worship, stilled at heart and stirred
+     With rapture girt about with awe for girth.
+
+     The passing of the hawthorn takes away
+       Heaven: all the spring falls dumb, and all the soul
+     Sinks down in man for sorrow. Night and day
+       Forego the joy that made them one and whole.
+     The change that falls on every starry spray
+       Bids, flower by flower, the knell of springtime toll.
+
+
+
+
+     TO A BABY KINSWOMAN
+
+
+     Love, whose light thrills heaven and earth,
+     Smiles and weeps upon thy birth,
+     Child, whose mother's love-lit eyes
+     Watch thee but from Paradise.
+     Sweetest sight that earth can give,
+     Sweetest light of eyes that live,
+     Ours must needs, for hope withdrawn,
+     Hail with tears thy soft spring dawn.
+     Light of hope whose star hath set,
+     Light of love whose sun lives yet,
+     Holier, happier, heavenlier love
+     Breathes about thee, burns above,
+     Surely, sweet, than ours can be,
+     Shed from eyes we may not see,
+     Though thine own may see them shine
+     Night and day, perchance, on thine.
+     Sun and moon that lighten earth
+     Seem not fit to bless thy birth:
+     Scarce the very stars we know
+     Here seem bright enough to show
+     Whence in unimagined skies
+     Glows the vigil of such eyes.
+     Theirs whose heart is as a sea
+     Swoln with sorrowing love of thee
+     Fain would share with thine the sight
+     Seen alone of babes aright,
+     Watched of eyes more sweet than flowers
+     Sleeping or awake: but ours
+     Can but deem or dream or guess
+     Thee not wholly motherless.
+     Might they see or might they know
+     What nor faith nor hope may show,
+     We whose hearts yearn toward thee now
+     Then were blest and wise as thou.
+     Had we half thy knowledge,--had
+     Love such wisdom,--grief were glad,
+     Surely, lit by grace of thee;
+     Life were sweet as death may be.
+     Now the law that lies on men
+     Bids us mourn our dead: but then
+     Heaven and life and earth and death,
+     Quickened as by God's own breath,
+     All were turned from sorrow and strife:
+     Earth and death were heaven and life.
+     All too far are then and now
+     Sundered: none may be as thou.
+     Yet this grace is ours--a sign
+     Of that goodlier grace of thine,
+     Sweet, and thine alone--to see
+     Heaven, and heaven's own love, in thee.
+     Bless them, then, whose eyes caress
+     Thee, as only thou canst bless.
+     Comfort, faith, assurance, love,
+     Shine around us, brood above,
+     Fear grows hope, and hope grows wise,
+     Thrilled and lit by children's eyes.
+     Yet in ours the tears unshed,
+     Child, for hope that death leaves dead,
+     Needs must burn and tremble; thou
+     Knowest not, seest not, why nor how,
+     More than we know whence or why
+     Comes on babes that laugh and lie
+     Half asleep, in sweet-lipped scorn,
+     Light of smiles outlightening morn,
+     Whence enkindled as is earth
+     By the dawn's less radiant birth
+     All the body soft and sweet
+     Smiles on us from face to feet
+     When the rose-red hands would fain
+     Reach the rose-red feet in vain.
+     Eyes and hands that worship thee
+     Watch and tend, adore and see
+     All these heavenly sights, and give
+     Thanks to see and love and live.
+     Yet, of all that hold thee dear,
+     Sweet, the dearest smiles not here.
+     Thine alone is now the grace,
+     Haply, still to see her face;
+     Thine, thine only now the sight
+     Whence we dream thine own takes light.
+     Yet, though faith and hope live blind,
+     Yet they live in heart and mind
+     Strong and keen as truth may be:
+     Yet, though blind as grief were we
+     Inly for a weeping-while,
+     Sorrow's self before thy smile
+     Smiles and softens, knowing that yet,
+     Far from us though heaven be set,
+     Love, bowed down for thee to bless,
+     Dares not call thee motherless.
+
+     _May 1894._
+
+
+
+
+     THE ALTAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
+
+
+     +es to pan de soi lego,+
+     +bomon aidesai dikas;+
+     +mede nin+
+     +kerdos idon atheo podi lax atises;+
+     +poina gar epestai.+
+     +kyrion menei telos.+
+
+                   AESCH. _Eum._ 538-544
+
+     +para to phos idein.+
+
+                   AESCH. _Cho._ 972
+
+
+
+
+     THE ALTAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
+
+
+     I
+
+       Light and night, whose clouds and glories change and mingle and
+           divide,
+       Veil the truth whereof they witness, show the truth of things
+           they hide.
+       Through the darkness and the splendour of the centuries, loud or
+           dumb,
+       Shines and wanes and shines the spirit, lit with love of life to
+           come.
+       Man, the soul made flesh, that knows not death from life, and
+           fain would know,
+       Sees the face of time change colour as its tides recoil and flow.
+       All his hope and fear and faith and doubt, if aught at all they
+           be,
+       Live the life of clouds and sunbeams, born of heaven or earth or
+           sea.
+       All are buoyed and blown and brightened by their hour's evasive
+           breath:
+       All subside and quail and darken when their hour is done to
+           death.
+       Yet, ere faith, a wandering water, froze and curdled into creeds,
+       Earth, elate as heaven, adored the light that quickens dreams to
+           deeds.
+
+     Invisible: eye hath not seen it, and ear hath not heard as the
+           spirit hath heard
+     From the shrine that is lit not of sunlight or starlight the sound
+           of a limitless word.
+     And visible: none that hath eyes to behold what the spirit must
+           perish or see
+     Can choose but behold it and worship: a shrine that if light were
+           as darkness would be.
+     Of cloud and of change is the form of the fashion that man may
+           behold of it wrought:
+     Of iron and truth is the mystic mid altar, where worship is none
+           but of thought.
+     No prayer may go up to it, climbing as incense of gladness or
+           sorrow may climb:
+     No rapture of music may ruffle the silence that guards it, and
+           hears not of time.
+     As the winds of the wild blind ages alternate in passion of light
+           and of cloud,
+     So changes the shape of the veil that enshrouds it with darkness
+           and light for a shroud.
+     And the winds and the clouds and the suns fall silent, and fade out
+           of hearing or sight,
+     And the shrine stands fast and is changed not, whose likeness was
+           changed as a cloud in the night.
+
+       All the storms of time, and wrath of many winds, may carve no
+           trace
+       On the viewless altar, though the veil bear many a name and face:
+       Many a live God's likeness woven, many a scripture dark with awe,
+       Bids the veil seem verier iron than the word of life's own law.
+       Till the might of change hath rent it with a rushing wind in
+           twain,
+       Stone or steel it seems, whereon the wrath of chance is wreaked
+           in vain:
+       Stone or steel, and all behind it or beyond its lifted sign
+       Cloud and vapour, no subsistence of a change-unstricken shrine.
+       God by god flits past in thunder, till his glories turn to
+           shades:
+       God to god bears wondering witness how his gospel flames and
+           fades.
+       More was each of these, while yet they were, than man their
+           servant seemed:
+       Dead are all of these, and man survives who made them while he
+           dreamed.
+
+     Yet haply or surely, if vision were surer than theirs who rejoiced
+           that they saw,
+     Man might not but see, through the darkness of godhead, the light
+           that is surety and law.
+     On the stone that the close-drawn cloud which veils it awhile makes
+           cloudlike stands
+     The word of the truth everlasting, unspoken of tongues and
+           unwritten of hands.
+     By the sunbeams and storms of the centuries engraven, and approved
+           of the soul as it reads,
+     It endures as a token dividing the light from the darkness of
+           dreams and of deeds.
+     The faces of gods on the face of it carven, or gleaming behind and
+           above,
+     Star-glorified Uranus, thunderous Jehovah, for terror or worship or
+           love,
+     Change, wither, and brighten as flowers that the wind of eternity
+           sheds upon time,
+     All radiant and transient and awful and mortal, and leave it
+           unmarred and sublime.
+     As the tides that return and recede are the fears and the hopes of
+           the centuries that roll,
+     Requenched and rekindled: but strong as the sun is the sense of it
+           shrined in the soul.
+
+
+     II
+
+     In the days when time was not, in the time when days were none,
+     Ere sorrow had life to lot, ere earth gave thanks for the sun,
+     Ere man in his darkness waking adored what the soul in him could,
+     And the manifold God of his making was manifest evil and good,
+     One law from the dim beginning abode and abides in the end,
+     In sight of him sorrowing and sinning with none but his faith for
+           friend.
+     Dark were the shadows around him, and darker the glories above,
+     Ere light from beyond them found him, and bade him for love's sake
+           love.
+     About him was darkness, and under and over him darkness: the night
+     That conceived him and bore him had thunder for utterance and
+           lightning for light.
+     The dust of death was the dust of the ways that the tribes of him
+           trod:
+     And he knew not if just or unjust were the might of the mystery of
+           God.
+     Strange horror and hope, strange faith and unfaith, were his boon
+           and his bane:
+     And the God of his trust was the wraith of the soul or the ghost of
+           it slain.
+     A curse was on death as on birth, and a Presence that shone as a
+           sword
+     Shed menace from heaven upon earth that beheld him, and hailed him
+           her Lord.
+     Sublime and triumphant as fire or as lightning, he kindled the
+           skies,
+     And withered with dread the desire that would look on the light of
+           his eyes.
+     Earth shuddered with worship, and knew not if hell were not hot in
+           her breath;
+     If birth were not sin, and the dew of the morning the sweat of her
+           death.
+     The watchwords of evil and good were unspoken of men and unheard:
+     They were shadows that willed as he would, that were made and
+           unmade by his word.
+     His word was darkness and light, and a wisdom that makes men mad
+     Sent blindness upon them for sight, that they saw but and heard as
+           he bade.
+     Cast forth and corrupt from the birth by the crime of creation,
+           they stood
+     Convicted of evil on earth by the grace of a God found good.
+     The grace that enkindled and quickened the darkness of hell with
+           flame
+     Bade man, though the soul in him sickened, obey, and give praise to
+           his name.
+     The still small voice of the spirit whose life is as plague's hot
+           breath
+     Bade man shed blood, and inherit the life of the kingdom of death.
+
+     "Bring now for blood-offering thy son to mine altar, and bind him
+           and slay,
+     That the sin of my bidding be done": and the soul in the slave
+           said, "Yea."
+     Yea, not nay, was the word: and the sacrifice offered withal
+     Was neither of beast nor of bird, but the soul of a man, God's
+           thrall.
+     And the word of his servant spoken was fire, and the light of a
+           sword,
+     When the bondage of Israel was broken, and Sinai shrank from the
+           Lord.
+     With splendour of slaughter and thunder of song as the sound of the
+           sea
+     Were the foes of him stricken in sunder and silenced as storms that
+           flee.
+     Terror and trust and the pride of the chosen, approved of his
+           choice,
+     Saw God in the whirlwind ride, and rejoiced as the winds rejoice.
+     Subdued and exalted and kindled and quenched by the sense of his
+           might,
+     Faith flamed and exulted and dwindled, and saw not, and clung to
+           the sight.
+     The wastes of the wilderness brightened and trembled with rapture
+           and dread
+     When the word of him thundered and lightened and spake through the
+           quick and the dead.
+     The chant of the prophetess, louder and loftier than tempest and
+           wave,
+     Rang triumph more ruthless and prouder than death, and profound as
+           the grave.
+     And sweet as the moon's word spoken in smiles that the blown clouds
+           mar
+     The psalmist's witness in token arose as the speech of a star.
+     Starlight supreme, and the tender desire of the moon, were as one
+     To rebuke with compassion the splendour and strength of the godlike
+          sun.
+     God softened and changed: and the word of his chosen, a fire at the
+          first,
+     Bade man, as a beast or a bird, now slake at the springs his
+          thirst.
+     The souls that were sealed unto death as the bones of the dead lie
+          sealed
+     Rose thrilled and redeemed by the breath of the dawn on the
+          flame-lit field.
+     The glories of darkness, cloven with music of thunder, shrank
+     As the web of the word was unwoven that spake, and the soul's tide
+          sank.
+     And the starshine of midnight that covered Arabia with light as a
+          robe
+     Waxed fiery with utterance that hovered and flamed through the
+          whirlwind on Job.
+     And prophet to prophet and vision to vision made answer sublime,
+     Till the valley of doom and decision was merged in the tides of
+          time.
+
+
+     III
+
+           Then, soft as the dews of night,
+           As the star of the sundawn bright,
+             As the heart of the sea's hymn deep,
+             And sweet as the balm of sleep,
+           Arose on the world a light
+             Too pure for the skies to keep.
+
+     With music sweeter and stranger than heaven had heard
+     When the dark east thrilled with light from a saviour's word
+     And a God grew man to endure as a man and abide
+     The doom of the will of the Lord of the loud world's tide,
+     Whom thunders utter, and tempest and darkness hide,
+     With larger light than flamed from the peak whereon
+     Prometheus, bound as the sun to the world's wheel, shone,
+     A presence passed and abode but on earth a span,
+     And love's own light as a river before him ran,
+     And the name of God for awhile upon earth was man.
+
+     O star that wast not and wast for the world a sun,
+     O light that was quenched of priests, and its work undone,
+     O Word that wast not as man's or as God's, if God
+     Be Lord but of hosts whose tread was as death's that trod
+     On souls that felt but his wrath as an unseen rod,
+     What word, what praise, what passion of hopeless prayer,
+     May now rise up to thee, loud as in years that were,
+     From years that gaze on the works of thy servants wrought
+     While strength was in them to satiate the lust of thought
+     That craved in thy name for blood as the quest it sought?
+
+           From the dark high places of Rome
+           Far over the westward foam
+             God's heaven and the sun saw swell
+             The fires of the high priest's hell,
+           And shrank as they curled and clomb
+             And revelled and ravaged and fell.
+
+
+     IV
+
+     Yet was not the work of thy word all withered with wasting flame
+     By the sons of the priests that had slain thee, whose evil was
+           wrought in thy name.
+     From the blood-sodden soil that was blasted with fires of the
+           Church and her creed
+     Sprang rarely but surely, by grace of thy spirit, a flower for a
+           weed.
+     Thy spirit, unfelt of thy priests who blasphemed thee, enthralled
+           and enticed
+     To deathward a child that was even as the child we behold in
+           Christ.
+     The Moors, they told her, beyond bright Spain and the strait brief
+           sea,
+     Dwelt blind in the light that for them was as darkness, and knew
+           not thee.
+     But the blood of the martyrs whose mission was witness for God,
+           they said,
+     Might raise to redemption the souls that were here, in the sun's
+           sight, dead.
+     And the child rose up in the night, when the stars were as friends
+           that smiled,
+     And sought her brother, and wakened the younger and tenderer child.
+     From the heaven of a child's glad sleep to the heaven of the sight
+           of her eyes
+     He woke, and brightened and hearkened, and kindled as stars that
+           rise.
+     And forth they fared together to die for the stranger's sake,
+     For the souls of the slayers that should slay them, and turn from
+           their sins, and wake.
+     And the light of the love that lit them awhile on a brief blind
+           quest
+     Shines yet on the tear-lit smile that salutes them, belated and
+           blest.
+
+     And the girl, full-grown to the stature of godhead in womanhood,
+           spake
+     The word that sweetens and lightens her creed for her great love's
+           sake.
+     From the godlike heart of Theresa the prayer above all prayers
+           heard,
+     The cry as of God made woman, a sweet blind wonderful word,
+     Sprang sudden as flame, and kindled the darkness of faith with
+           love,
+     And the hollow of hell from beneath shone, quickened of heaven from
+           above.
+     Yea, hell at her word grew heaven, as she prayed that if God
+           thought well
+     She there might stand in the gateway, that none might pass into
+           hell.
+     Not Hermes, guardian and guide, God, herald, and comforter, shed
+     Such lustre of hope from the life of his light on the night of the
+           dead.
+     Not Pallas, wiser and mightier in mercy than Rome's God shone,
+     Wore ever such raiment of love as the soul of a saint put on.
+     So blooms as a flower of the darkness a star of the midnight born,
+     Of the midnight's womb and the blackness of darkness, and flames
+           like morn.
+     Nor yet may the dawn extinguish or hide it, when churches and
+           creeds
+     Are withered and blasted with sunlight as poisonous and blossomless
+           weeds.
+     So springs and strives through the soil that the legions of
+           darkness have trod,
+     From the root that is man, from the soul in the body, the flower
+           that is God.
+
+
+     V
+
+               Ages and creeds that drift
+               Through change and cloud uplift
+         The soul that soars and seeks her sovereign shrine,
+               Her faith's veiled altar, there
+               To find, when praise and prayer
+         Fall baffled, if the darkness be divine.
+           Lights change and shift through star and sun:
+     Night, clothed with might of immemorial years, is one.
+
+               Day, born and slain of night,
+               Hath hardly life in sight
+         As she that bears and slays him and survives,
+               And gives us back for one
+               Cloud-thwarted fiery sun
+         The myriad mysteries of the lambent lives
+           Whose starry soundless music saith
+     That light and life wax perfect even through night and death.
+
+               In vain had darkness heard
+               Light speak the lustrous word
+         That cast out faith in all save truth and love:
+               In vain death's quickening rod
+               Bade man rise up as God,
+         Touched as with life unknown in heaven above:
+           Fear turned his light of love to fire
+     That wasted earth, yet might not slay the soul's desire.
+
+               Though death seem life, and night
+               Bid fear call darkness light,
+         Time, faith, and hope keep trust, through sorrow and shame,
+               Till Christ, by Paul cast out,
+               Return, and all the rout
+         Of raging slaves whose prayer defiles his name
+           Rush headlong to the deep, and die,
+     And leave no sign to say that faith once heard them lie.
+
+
+     VI
+
+     Since man, with a child's pride proud, and abashed as a child and
+           afraid,
+     Made God in his likeness, and bowed him to worship the Maker he
+           made,
+     No faith more dire hath enticed man's trust than the saint's whose
+           creed
+     Made Caiaphas one with Christ, that worms on the cross might feed.
+     Priests gazed upon God in the eyes of a babe new-born, and therein
+     Beheld not heaven, and the wise glad secret of love, but sin.
+     Accursed of heaven, and baptized with the baptism of hatred and
+           hell,
+     They spat on the name they despised and adored as a sign and a
+           spell.
+     "Lord Christ, thou art God, and a liar: they were children of
+           wrath, not of grace,
+     Unbaptized, unredeemed from the fire they were born for, who smiled
+           in thy face."
+     Of such is the kingdom--he said it--of heaven: and the heavenly
+           word
+     Shall live when religion is dead, and when falsehood is dumb shall
+           be heard.
+     And the message of James and of John was as Christ's and as love's
+           own call:
+     But wrath passed sentence thereon when Annas replied in Paul.
+     The dark old God who had slain him grew one with the Christ he
+           slew,
+     And poison was rank in the grain that with growth of his gospel
+           grew.
+     And the blackness of darkness brightened: and red in the heart of
+           the flame
+     Shone down, as a blessing that lightened, the curse of a new God's
+           name.
+     Through centuries of burning and trembling belief as a signal it
+           shone,
+     Till man, soul-sick of dissembling, bade fear and her frauds
+           begone.
+     God Cerberus yelps from his throats triune: but his day, which was
+           night,
+     Is quenched, with its stars and the notes of its night-birds, in
+           silence and light.
+     The flames of its fires and the psalms of their psalmists are
+           darkened and dumb:
+     Strong winter has withered the palms of his angels, and stricken
+           them numb.
+     God, father of lies, God, son of perdition, God, spirit of ill,
+     Thy will that for ages was done is undone as a dead God's will.
+     Not Mahomet's sword could slay thee, nor Borgia's or Calvin's
+           praise:
+     But the scales of the spirit that weigh thee are weighted with
+           truth, and it slays.
+     The song of the day of thy fury, when nature and death shall quail,
+     Rings now as the thunders of Jewry, the ghost of a dead world's
+           tale.
+     That day and its doom foreseen and foreshadowed on earth, when
+           thou,
+     Lord God, wast lord of the keen dark season, are sport for us now.
+     Thy claws were clipped and thy fangs plucked out by the hands that
+           slew
+     Men, lovers of man, whose pangs bore witness if truth were true.
+     Man crucified rose again from the sepulchre builded to be
+     No grave for the souls of the men who denied thee, but, Lord, for
+           thee.
+
+     When Bruno's spirit aspired from the flames that thy servants fed,
+     The spirit of faith was fired to consume thee and leave thee dead.
+     When the light of the sunlike eyes whence laughter lightened and
+           flamed
+     Bade France and the world be wise, faith saw thee naked and shamed.
+     When wisdom deeper and sweeter than Rabelais veiled and revealed
+     Found utterance diviner and meeter for truth whence anguish is
+           healed,
+     Whence fear and hate and belief in thee, fed by thy grace from
+           above,
+     Fall stricken, and utmost grief takes light from the lustre of
+           love,
+     When Shakespeare shone into birth, and the world he beheld grew
+           bright,
+     Thy kingdom was ended on earth, and the darkness it shed was light.
+     In him all truth and the glory thereof and the power and the pride,
+     The song of the soul and her story, bore witness that fear had
+           lied.
+     All hope, all wonder, all trust, all doubt that knows not of fear,
+     The love of the body, the lust of the spirit to see and to hear,
+     All womanhood, fairer than love could conceive or desire or adore,
+     All manhood, radiant above all heights that it held of yore,
+     Lived by the life of his breath, with the speech of his soul's will
+           spake,
+     And the light lit darkness to death whence never the dead shall
+           wake.
+     For the light that lived in the sound of the song of his speech was
+           one
+     With the light of the wisdom that found earth's tune in the song of
+           the sun;
+     His word with the word of the lord most high of us all on earth,
+     Whose soul was a lyre and a sword, whose death was a deathless
+           birth.
+     Him too we praise as we praise our own who as he stand strong;
+     Him, AEschylus, ancient of days, whose word is the perfect song.
+     When Caucasus showed to the sun and the sea what a God could
+           endure,
+     When wisdom and light were one, and the hands of the matricide
+           pure,
+     A song too subtle for psalmist or prophet of Jewry to know,
+     Elate and profound as the calmest or stormiest of waters that flow,
+     A word whose echoes were wonder and music of fears overcome,
+     Bade Sinai bow, and the thunder of godhead on Horeb be dumb.
+     The childless children of night, strong daughters of doom and
+           dread,
+     The thoughts and the fears that smite the soul, and its life lies
+           dead,
+     Stood still and were quelled by the sound of his word and the light
+           of his thought,
+     And the God that in man lay bound was unbound from the bonds he had
+           wrought.
+     Dark fear of a lord more dark than the dreams of his worshippers
+           knew
+     Fell dead, and the corpse lay stark in the sunlight of truth shown
+           true.
+
+
+     VII
+
+     Time, and truth his child, though terror set earth and heaven at
+           odds,
+     See the light of manhood rise on the twilight of the Gods.
+     Light is here for souls to see, though the stars of faith be dead:
+     All the sea that yearned and trembled receives the sun instead.
+     All the shadows on the spirit when fears and dreams were strong,
+     All perdition, all redemption, blind rain-stars watched so long,
+     Love whose root was fear, thanksgiving that cowered beneath the
+           rod,
+     Feel the light that heals and withers: night weeps upon her God.
+     All the names wherein the incarnate Lord lived his day and died
+     Fade from suns to stars, from stars into darkness undescried.
+
+     Christ the man lives yet, remembered of man as dreams that leave
+     Light on eyes that wake and know not if memory bid them grieve.
+     Fire sublime as lightning shines, and exults in thunder yet,
+     Where the battle wields the name and the sword of Mahomet.
+     Far above all wars and gospels, all ebb and flow of time,
+     Lives the soul that speaks in silence, and makes mute earth
+           sublime.
+     Still for her, though years and ages be blinded and bedinned,
+     Mazed with lightnings, crazed with thunders, life rides and guides
+           the wind.
+     Death may live or death may die, and the truth be light or night:
+     Not for gain of heaven may man put away the rule of right.
+
+
+
+
+     A NEW YEAR'S EVE
+
+     CHRISTINA ROSSETTI DIED DECEMBER 29, 1894
+
+
+     The stars are strong in the deeps of the lustrous night,
+     Cold and splendid as death if his dawn be bright;
+       Cold as the cast-off garb that is cold as clay,
+     Splendid and strong as a spirit intense as light.
+
+     A soul more sweet than the morning of new-born May
+     Has passed with the year that has passed from the world away.
+       A song more sweet than the morning's first-born song
+     Again will hymn not among us a new year's day.
+
+     Not here, not here shall the carol of joy grown strong
+     Ring rapture now, and uplift us, a spell-struck throng,
+       From dream to vision of life that the soul may see
+     By death's grace only, if death do its trust no wrong.
+
+     Scarce yet the days and the starry nights are three
+     Since here among us a spirit abode as we,
+       Girt round with life that is fettered in bonds of time,
+     And clasped with darkness about as is earth with sea.
+
+     And now, more high than the vision of souls may climb,
+     The soul whose song was as music of stars that chime,
+       Clothed round with life as of dawn and the mounting sun,
+     Sings, and we know not here of the song sublime.
+
+     No word is ours of it now that the songs are done
+     Whence here we drank of delight as in freedom won,
+       In deep deliverance given from the bonds we bore.
+     There is none to sing as she sang upon earth, not one.
+
+     We heard awhile: and for us who shall hear no more
+     The sound as of waves of light on a starry shore
+       Awhile bade brighten and yearn as a father's face
+     The face of death, divine as in days of yore.
+
+     The grey gloom quickened and quivered: the sunless place
+     Thrilled, and the silence deeper than time or space
+       Seemed now not all everlasting. Hope grew strong,
+     And love took comfort, given of the sweet song's grace.
+
+     Love that finds not on earth, where it finds but wrong,
+     Love that bears not the bondage of years in throng
+       Shone to show for her, higher than the years that mar,
+     The life she looked and longed for as love must long.
+
+     Who knows? We know not. Afar, if the dead be far,
+     Alive, if the dead be alive as the soul's works are,
+       The soul whose breath was among us a heavenward song
+     Sings, loves, and shines as it shines for us here a star.
+
+
+
+
+     IN A ROSARY
+
+
+     Through the low grey archway children's feet that pass
+     Quicken, glad to find the sweetest haunt of all.
+     Brightest wildflowers gleaming deep in lustiest grass,
+     Glorious weeds that glisten through the green sea's glass,
+     Match not now this marvel, born to fade and fall.
+
+     Roses like a rainbow wrought of roses rise
+     Right and left and forward, shining toward the sun.
+     Nay, the rainbow lit of sunshine droops and dies
+     Ere we dream it hallows earth and seas and skies;
+     Ere delight may dream it lives, its life is done.
+
+     Round the border hemmed with high deep hedges round
+     Go the children, peering over or between
+     Where the dense bright oval wall of box inwound,
+     Reared about the roses fast within it bound,
+     Gives them grace to glance at glories else unseen.
+
+     Flower outlightening flower and tree outflowering tree
+     Feed and fill the sense and spirit full with joy.
+     Nought awhile they know of outer earth and sea:
+     Here enough of joy it is to breathe and be:
+     Here the sense of life is one for girl and boy.
+
+     Heaven above them, bright as children's eyes or dreams,
+     Earth about them, sweet as glad soft sleep can show
+     Earth and sky and sea, a world that scarcely seems
+     Even in children's eyes less fair than life that gleams
+     Through the sleep that none but sinless eyes may know.
+
+     Near beneath, and near above, the terraced ways
+     Wind or stretch and bask or blink against the sun.
+     Hidden here from sight on soft or stormy days
+     Lies and laughs with love toward heaven, at silent gaze,
+     All the radiant rosary--all its flowers made one.
+
+     All the multitude of roses towering round
+     Dawn and noon and night behold as one full flower,
+     Fain of heaven and loved of heaven, curbed and crowned,
+     Raised and reared to make this plot of earthly ground
+     Heavenly, could but heaven endure on earth an hour.
+
+     Swept away, made nothing now for ever, dead,
+     Still the rosary lives and shines on memory, free
+     Now from fear of death or change as childhood, fled
+     Years on years before its last live leaves were shed:
+     None may mar it now, as none may stain the sea.
+
+
+
+
+     THE HIGH OAKS
+
+     BARKING HALL, JULY 19TH, 1896
+
+
+             Fourscore years and seven
+             Light and dew from heaven
+       Have fallen with dawn on these glad woods each day
+             Since here was born, even here,
+             A birth more bright and dear
+             Than ever a younger year
+       Hath seen or shall till all these pass away,
+         Even all the imperious pride of these,
+     The woodland ways majestic now with towers of trees.
+
+             Love itself hath nought
+             Touched of tenderest thought
+       With holiest hallowing of memorial grace
+             For memory, blind with bliss,
+             To love, to clasp, to kiss,
+             So sweetly strange as this,
+       The sense that here the sun first hailed her face,
+         A babe at Her glad mother's breast,
+     And here again beholds it more beloved and blest.
+
+             Love's own heart, a living
+             Spring of strong thanksgiving,
+       Can bid no strength of welling song find way
+             When all the soul would seek
+             One word for joy to speak,
+             And even its strength makes weak
+       The too strong yearning of the soul to say
+         What may not be conceived or said
+     While darkness makes division of the quick and dead.
+
+             Haply, where the sun
+             Wanes, and death is none,
+       The word known here of silence only, held
+             Too dear for speech to wrong,
+             May leap in living song
+             Forth, and the speech be strong
+       As here the silence whence it yearned and welled
+         From hearts whose utterance love sealed fast
+     Till death perchance might give it grace to live at last.
+
+             Here we have our earth
+             Yet, with all the mirth
+       Of all the summers since the world began,
+             All strengths of rest and strife
+             And love-lit love of life
+             Where death has birth to wife,
+       And where the sun speaks, and is heard of man:
+         Yea, half the sun's bright speech is heard,
+     And like the sea the soul of man gives back his word.
+
+             Earth's enkindled heart
+             Bears benignant part
+       In the ardent heaven's auroral pride of prime:
+             If ever home on earth
+             Were found of heaven's grace worth
+             So God-beloved a birth
+       As here makes bright the fostering face of time,
+         Here, heaven bears witness, might such grace
+     Fall fragrant as the dewfall on that brightening face.
+
+             Here, for mine and me,
+             All that eyes may see
+       Hath more than all the wide world else of good,
+             All nature else of fair:
+             Here as none otherwhere
+             Heaven is the circling air,
+       Heaven is the homestead, heaven the wold, the wood:
+         The fragrance with the shadow spread
+     From broadening wings of cedars breathes of dawn's bright bed.
+
+             Once a dawn rose here
+             More divine and dear,
+       Rose on a birth-bed brighter far than dawn's,
+             Whence all the summer grew
+             Sweet as when earth was new
+             And pure as Eden's dew:
+       And yet its light lives on these lustrous lawns,
+         Clings round these wildwood ways, and cleaves
+     To the aisles of shadow and sun that wind unweaves and weaves.
+
+             Thoughts that smile and weep,
+             Dreams that hallow sleep,
+       Brood in the branching shadows of the trees,
+             Tall trees at agelong rest
+             Wherein the centuries nest,
+             Whence, blest as these are blest,
+       We part, and part not from delight in these;
+         Whose comfort, sleeping as awake,
+     We bear about within us as when first it spake.
+
+             Comfort as of song
+             Grown with time more strong,
+       Made perfect and prophetic as the sea,
+             Whose message, when it lies
+             Far off our hungering eyes,
+             Within us prophesies
+       Of life not ours, yet ours as theirs may be
+         Whose souls far off us shine and sing
+     As ere they sprang back sunward, swift as fire might spring.
+
+             All this oldworld pleasance
+             Hails a hallowing presence,
+       And thrills with sense of more than summer near,
+             And lifts toward heaven more high
+             The song-surpassing cry
+             Of rapture that July
+       Lives, for her love who makes it loveliest here;
+         For joy that she who here first drew
+     The breath of life she gave me breathes it here anew.
+
+             Never birthday born
+             Highest in height of morn
+       Whereout the star looks forth that leads the sun
+             Shone higher in love's account,
+             Still seeing the mid noon mount
+             From the eager dayspring's fount
+       Each year more lustrous, each like all in one;
+         Whose light around us and above
+     We could not see so lovely save by grace of love.
+
+
+
+
+     BARKING HALL: A YEAR AFTER
+
+
+             Still the sovereign trees
+             Make the sundawn's breeze
+       More bright, more sweet, more heavenly than it rose,
+             As wind and sun fulfil
+             Their living rapture: still
+             Noon, dawn, and evening thrill
+       With radiant change the immeasurable repose
+         Wherewith the woodland wilds lie blest
+     And feel how storms and centuries rock them still to rest.
+
+             Still the love-lit place
+             Given of God such grace
+       That here was born on earth a birth divine
+             Gives thanks with all its flowers
+             Through all their lustrous hours,
+             From all its birds and bowers
+       Gives thanks that here they felt her sunset shine
+         Where once her sunrise laughed, and bade
+     The life of all the living things it lit be glad.
+
+             Soft as light and strong
+             Rises yet their song
+       And thrills with pride the cedar-crested lawn
+             And every brooding dove.
+             But she, beloved above
+             All utterance known of love,
+       Abides no more the change of night and dawn,
+         Beholds no more with earth-born eye
+     These woods that watched her waking here where all things die.
+
+             Not the light that shone
+             When she looked thereon
+       Shines on them or shall shine for ever here.
+             We know not, save when sleep
+             Slays death, who fain would keep
+             His mystery dense and deep,
+       Where shines the smile we held and hold so dear.
+         Dreams only, thrilled and filled with love,
+     Bring back its light ere dawn leave nought alive above.
+
+             Nought alive awake
+             Sees the strong dawn break
+       On all the dreams that dying night bade live.
+             Yet scarce the intolerant sense
+             Of day's harsh evidence
+             How came their word and whence
+       Strikes dumb the song of thanks it bids them give,
+         The joy that answers as it heard
+     And lightens as it saw the light that spake the word.
+
+             Night and sleep and dawn
+             Pass with dreams withdrawn:
+       But higher above them far than noon may climb
+             Love lives and turns to light
+             The deadly noon of night.
+             His fiery spirit of sight
+       Endures no curb of change or darkling time.
+         Even earth and transient things of earth
+     Even here to him bear witness not of death but birth.
+
+
+
+
+     MUSIC: AN ODE
+
+
+     I
+
+       Was it light that spake from the darkness, or music that shone
+           from the word,
+       When the night was enkindled with sound of the sun or the
+           first-born bird?
+     Souls enthralled and entrammelled in bondage of seasons that fall
+           and rise,
+     Bound fast round with the fetters of flesh, and blinded with light
+           that dies,
+     Lived not surely till music spake, and the spirit of life was
+           heard.
+
+
+     II
+
+       Music, sister of sunrise, and herald of life to be,
+       Smiled as dawn on the spirit of man, and the thrall was free.
+     Slave of nature and serf of time, the bondman of life and death,
+     Dumb with passionless patience that breathed but forlorn and
+           reluctant breath,
+     Heard, beheld, and his soul made answer, and communed aloud with
+           the sea.
+
+
+     III
+
+       Morning spake, and he heard: and the passionate silent noon
+       Kept for him not silence: and soft from the mounting moon
+     Fell the sound of her splendour, heard as dawn's in the breathless
+           night,
+     Not of men but of birds whose note bade man's soul quicken and leap
+           to light:
+     And the song of it spake, and the light and the darkness of earth
+           were as chords in tune.
+
+
+
+
+     THE CENTENARY OF THE BATTLE OF THE NILE
+
+     AUGUST 1898
+
+     '_Horatio Nelson_--_Honor est a Nilo_'
+
+
+     A hundred years have lightened and have waned
+     Since ancient Nile by grace of Nelson gained
+       A glory higher in story now than time
+     Saw when his kings were gods that raged and reigned.
+
+     The day that left even England more sublime
+     And higher on heights that none but she may climb
+       Abides above all shock of change-born chance
+     Where hope and memory hear the stars keep chime.
+
+     The strong and sunbright lie whose name was France
+     Arose against the sun of truth, whose glance
+       Laughed large from the eyes of England, fierce as fire
+     Whence eyes wax blind that gaze on truth askance.
+
+     A name above all names of heroes, higher
+     Than song may sound or heart of man aspire,
+       Rings as the very voice that speaks the sea
+     To-day from all the sea's enkindling lyre.
+
+     The sound that bids the soul of silence be
+     Fire, and a rapturous music, speaks, and we
+       Hear what the sea's heart utters, wide and far:
+     "This was his day, and this day's light was he."
+
+     O sea, our sea that hadst him for thy star,
+     A hundred years that fall upon thee are
+       Even as a hundred flakes of rain or snow:
+     No storm of battle signs thee with a scar.
+
+     But never more may ship that sails thee show,
+     But never may the sun that loves thee know,
+       But never may thine England give thee more,
+     A man whose life and death shall praise thee so.
+
+     The Nile, the sea, the battle, and the shore,
+     Heard as we hear one word arise and soar,
+       Beheld one name above them tower and glow--
+     Nelson: a light that time bows down before.
+
+
+
+
+     TRAFALGAR DAY
+
+
+     Sea, that art ours as we are thine, whose name
+     Is one with England's even as light with flame,
+       Dost thou as we, thy chosen of all men, know
+     This day of days when death gave life to fame?
+
+     Dost thou not kindle above and thrill below
+     With rapturous record, with memorial glow,
+       Remembering this thy festal day of fight,
+     And all the joy it gave, and all the woe?
+
+     Never since day broke flowerlike forth of night
+     Broke such a dawn of battle. Death in sight
+       Made of the man whose life was like the sun
+     A man more godlike than the lord of light.
+
+     There is none like him, and there shall be none.
+     When England bears again as great a son,
+       He can but follow fame where Nelson led.
+     There is not and there cannot be but one.
+
+     As earth has but one England, crown and head
+     Of all her glories till the sun be dead,
+       Supreme in peace and war, supreme in song,
+     Supreme in freedom, since her rede was read,
+
+     Since first the soul that gave her speech grew strong
+     To help the right and heal the wild world's wrong,
+       So she hath but one royal Nelson, born
+     To reign on time above the years that throng.
+
+     The music of his name puts fear to scorn,
+     And thrills our twilight through with sense of morn:
+       As England was, how should not England be?
+     No tempest yet has left her banner torn.
+
+     No year has yet put out the day when he
+     Who lived and died to keep our kingship free
+       Wherever seas by warring winds are worn
+     Died, and was one with England and the sea.
+
+     _October 21, 1895._
+
+
+
+
+     CROMWELL'S STATUE[1]
+
+
+     What needs our Cromwell stone or bronze to say
+     His was the light that lit on England's way
+       The sundawn of her time-compelling power,
+     The noontide of her most imperial day?
+
+     His hand won back the sea for England's dower;
+     His footfall bade the Moor change heart and cower;
+       His word on Milton's tongue spake law to France
+     When Piedmont felt the she-wolf Rome devour.
+
+     From Cromwell's eyes the light of England's glance
+     Flashed, and bowed down the kings by grace of chance,
+       The priest-anointed princes; one alone
+     By grace of England held their hosts in trance.
+
+     The enthroned Republic from her kinglier throne
+     Spake, and her speech was Cromwell's. Earth has known
+       No lordlier presence. How should Cromwell stand
+     With kinglets and with queenlings hewn in stone?
+
+     Incarnate England in his warrior hand
+     Smote, and as fire devours the blackening brand
+       Made ashes of their strengths who wrought her wrong,
+     And turned the strongholds of her foes to sand.
+
+     His praise is in the sea's and Milton's song;
+     What praise could reach him from the weakling throng
+       That rules by leave of tongues whose praise is shame--
+     Him, who made England out of weakness strong?
+
+     There needs no clarion's blast of broad-blown fame
+     To bid the world bear witness whence he came
+       Who bade fierce Europe fawn at England's heel
+     And purged the plague of lineal rule with flame.
+
+     There needs no witness graven on stone or steel
+     For one whose work bids fame bow down and kneel;
+       Our man of men, whose time-commanding name
+     Speaks England, and proclaims her Commonweal.
+
+     _June 20, 1895._
+
+
+[Footnote 1: Refused by the party of reaction and disunion in the House
+of Commons on the 17th of June, 1895.]
+
+
+
+
+     A WORD FOR THE NAVY
+
+
+     I
+
+     Queen born of the sea, that hast borne her
+       The mightiest of seamen on earth,
+     Bright England, whose glories adorn her
+       And bid her rejoice in thy birth
+         As others made mothers
+           Rejoice in births sublime,
+         She names thee, she claims thee,
+           The lordliest child of time.
+
+
+     II
+
+     All hers is the praise of thy story,
+       All thine is the love of her choice
+     The light of her waves is thy glory,
+       The sound of thy soul is her voice.
+         They fear it who hear it
+           And love not truth nor thee:
+         They sicken, heart-stricken,
+           Who see and would not see.
+
+
+     III
+
+     The lords of thy fate, and thy keepers
+       Whose charge is the strength of thy ships,
+     If now they be dreamers and sleepers,
+       Or sluggards with lies at their lips,
+         Thy haters and traitors,
+           False friends or foes descried,
+         Might scatter and shatter
+           Too soon thy princely pride.
+
+
+     IV
+
+     Dark Muscovy, reptile in rancour,
+       Base Germany, blatant in guile,
+     Lay wait for thee riding at anchor
+       On waters that whisper and smile.
+         They deem thee or dream thee
+           Less living now than dead,
+         Deep sunken and drunken
+           With sleep whence fear has fled.
+
+
+     V
+
+     And what though thy song as thine action
+       Wax faint, and thy place be not known,
+     While faction is grappling with faction,
+       Twin curs with thy corpse for a bone?
+         They care not, who spare not
+           The noise of pens or throats;
+         Who bluster and muster
+           Blind ranks and bellowing votes.
+
+
+     VI
+
+     Let populace jangle with peerage
+       And ministers shuffle their mobs;
+     Mad pilots who reck not of steerage
+       Though tempest ahead of them throbs.
+         That throbbing and sobbing
+           Of wind and gradual wave
+         They hear not and fear not
+           Who guide thee toward thy grave.
+
+
+     VII
+
+     No clamour of cries or of parties
+       Is worth but a whisper from thee,
+     While only the trust of thy heart is
+       At one with the soul of the sea.
+         In justice her trust is
+           Whose time her tidestreams keep;
+         They sink not, they shrink not,
+           Time casts them not on sleep.
+
+
+     VIII
+
+     Sleep thou: for thy past was so royal,
+       Love hardly would bid thee take heed
+     Were Russia not faithful and loyal
+       Nor Germany guiltless of greed.
+         No nation, in station
+           Of story less than thou,
+         Re-risen from prison,
+           Can stand against thee now.
+
+
+     IX
+
+     Sleep on: is the time not a season
+       For strong men to slumber and sleep,
+     And wise men to palter with treason?
+       And that they sow tares, shall they reap?
+         The wages of ages
+           Wherein men smiled and slept,
+         Fame fails them, shame veils them,
+           Their record is not kept.
+
+
+     X
+
+     Nay, whence is it then that we know it,
+       What wages were theirs, and what fame?
+     Deep voices of prophet and poet
+       Bear record against them of shame.
+         Death, starker and darker
+           Than seals the graveyard grate,
+         Entombs them and dooms them
+           To darkness deep as fate.
+
+
+     XI
+
+     But thou, though the world should misdoubt thee,
+       Be strong as the seas at thy side;
+     Bind on but thine armour about thee,
+       That girds thee with power and with pride.
+         Where Drake stood, where Blake stood,
+           Where fame sees Nelson stand,
+         Stand thou too, and now too
+           Take thou thy fate in hand.
+
+
+     XII
+
+     At the gate of the sea, in the gateway,
+       They stood as the guards of thy gate;
+     Take now but thy strengths to thee straightway,
+       Though late, we will deem it not late.
+         Thy story, thy glory,
+           The very soul of thee,
+         It rose not, it grows not,
+           It comes not save by sea.
+
+
+
+
+     NORTHUMBERLAND
+
+
+     Between our eastward and our westward sea
+         The narrowing strand
+     Clasps close the noblest shore fame holds in fee
+     Even here where English birth seals all men free--
+         Northumberland.
+
+     The sea-mists meet across it when the snow
+         Clothes moor and fell,
+     And bid their true-born hearts who love it glow
+     For joy that none less nobly born may know
+         What love knows well.
+
+     The splendour and the strength of storm and fight
+         Sustain the song
+     That filled our fathers' hearts with joy to smite,
+     To live, to love, to lay down life that right
+         Might tread down wrong.
+
+     They warred, they sang, they triumphed, and they passed,
+         And left us glad
+     Here to be born, their sons, whose hearts hold fast
+     The proud old love no change can overcast,
+         No chance leave sad.
+
+     None save our northmen ever, none but we,
+         Met, pledged, or fought
+     Such foes and friends as Scotland and the sea
+     With heart so high and equal, strong in glee
+         And stern in thought.
+
+     Thought, fed from time's memorial springs with pride,
+         Made strong as fire
+     Their hearts who hurled the foe down Flodden side,
+     And hers who rode the waves none else durst ride--
+         None save her sire.
+
+     O land beloved, where nought of legend's dream
+         Outshines the truth,
+     Where Joyous Gard, closed round with clouds that gleam
+     For them that know thee not, can scarce but seem
+         Too sweet for sooth,
+
+     Thy sons forget not, nor shall fame forget,
+         The deed there done
+     Before the walls whose fabled fame is yet
+     A light too sweet and strong to rise and set
+         With moon and sun.
+
+     Song bright as flash of swords or oars that shine
+         Through fight or foam
+     Stirs yet the blood thou hast given thy sons like wine
+     To hail in each bright ballad hailed as thine
+         One heart, one home.
+
+     Our Collingwood, though Nelson be not ours,
+         By him shall stand
+     Immortal, till those waifs of oldworld hours,
+     Forgotten, leave uncrowned with bays and flowers
+         Northumberland.
+
+
+
+
+     STRATFORD-ON-AVON
+
+     JUNE 27, 1901
+
+
+     Be glad in heaven above all souls insphered,
+     Most royal and most loyal born of men,
+     Shakespeare, of all on earth beloved or feared
+     Or worshipped, highest in sight of human ken.
+     The homestead hallowed by thy sovereign birth,
+     Whose name, being one with thine, stands higher than Rome,
+     Forgets not how of all on English earth
+     Their trust is holiest, there who have their home.
+     Stratford is thine and England's. None that hate
+     The commonweal whose empire sets men free
+     Find comfort there, where once by grace of fate
+     A soul was born as boundless as the sea.
+         If life, if love, if memory now be thine,
+         Rejoice that still thy Stratford bears thy sign.
+
+
+
+
+     BURNS: AN ODE
+
+
+     A fire of fierce and laughing light
+     That clove the shuddering heart of night
+     Leapt earthward, and the thunder's might
+         That pants and yearns
+     Made fitful music round its flight:
+         And earth saw Burns.
+
+     The joyous lightning found its voice
+     And bade the heart of wrath rejoice
+     And scorn uplift a song to voice
+         The imperial hate
+     That smote the God of base men's choice
+         At God's own gate.
+
+     Before the shrine of dawn, wherethrough
+     The lark rang rapture as she flew,
+     It flashed and fired the darkling dew:
+         And all that heard
+     With love or loathing hailed anew
+         A new day's word.
+
+     The servants of the lord of hell,
+     As though their lord had blessed them, fell
+     Foaming at mouth for fear, so well
+         They knew the lie
+     Wherewith they sought to scan and spell
+         The unsounded sky.
+
+     And Calvin, night's prophetic bird,
+     Out of his home in hell was heard
+     Shrieking; and all the fens were stirred
+         Whence plague is bred;
+     Can God endure the scoffer's word?
+         But God was dead.
+
+     The God they made them in despite
+     Of man and woman, love and light,
+     Strong sundawn and the starry night,
+         The lie supreme,
+     Shot through with song, stood forth to sight
+         A devil's dream.
+
+     And he that bent the lyric bow
+     And laid the lord of darkness low
+     And bade the fire of laughter glow
+         Across his grave,
+     And bade the tides above it flow,
+         Wave hurtling wave,
+
+     Shall he not win from latter days
+     More than his own could yield of praise?
+     Ay, could the sovereign singer's bays
+         Forsake his brow,
+     The warrior's, won on stormier ways,
+         Still clasp it now.
+
+     He loved, and sang of love: he laughed,
+     And bade the cup whereout he quaffed
+     Shine as a planet, fore and aft,
+         And left and right,
+     And keen as shoots the sun's first shaft
+         Against the night.
+
+     But love and wine were moon and sun
+     For many a fame long since undone,
+     And sorrow and joy have lost and won
+         By stormy turns
+     As many a singer's soul, if none
+         More bright than Burns.
+
+     And sweeter far in grief or mirth
+     Have songs as glad and sad of birth
+     Found voice to speak of wealth or dearth
+         In joy of life:
+     But never song took fire from earth
+         More strong for strife.
+
+     The daisy by his ploughshare cleft,
+     The lips of women loved and left,
+     The griefs and joys that weave the weft
+         Of human time,
+     With craftsman's cunning, keen and deft,
+         He carved in rhyme.
+
+     But Chaucer's daisy shines a star
+     Above his ploughshare's reach to mar,
+     And mightier vision gave Dunbar
+         More strenuous wing
+     To hear around all sins that are
+         Hell dance and sing.
+
+     And when such pride and power of trust
+     In song's high gift to arouse from dust
+     Death, and transfigure love or lust
+         Through smiles or tears
+     In golden speech that takes no rust
+         From cankering years,
+
+     As never spake but once in one
+     Strong star-crossed child of earth and sun,
+     Villon, made music such as none
+         May praise or blame,
+     A crown of starrier flower was won
+         Than Burns may claim.
+
+     But never, since bright earth was born
+     In rapture of the enkindling morn,
+     Might godlike wrath and sunlike scorn
+         That was and is
+     And shall be while false weeds are worn
+         Find word like his.
+
+     Above the rude and radiant earth
+     That heaves and glows from firth to firth
+     In vale and mountain, bright in dearth
+         And warm in wealth,
+     Which gave his fiery glory birth
+         By chance and stealth,
+
+     Above the storms of praise and blame
+     That blur with mist his lustrous name,
+     His thunderous laughter went and came,
+         And lives and flies;
+     The roar that follows on the flame
+         When lightning dies.
+
+     Earth, and the snow-dimmed heights of air,
+     And water winding soft and fair
+     Through still sweet places, bright and bare,
+         By bent and byre,
+     Taught him what hearts within them were:
+         But his was fire.
+
+
+
+
+     THE COMMONWEAL
+
+     A SONG FOR UNIONISTS
+
+
+     Men, whose fathers braved the world in arms against our isles in
+           union,
+       Men, whose brothers met rebellion face to face,
+     Show the hearts ye have, if worthy long descent and high communion,
+       Show the spirits, if unbroken, of your race.
+
+     What are these that howl and hiss across the strait of westward
+           water?
+       What is he who floods our ears with speech in flood?
+     See the long tongue lick the dripping hand that smokes and reeks of
+           slaughter!
+       See the man of words embrace the man of blood!
+
+     Hear the plea whereby the tonguester mocks and charms the gazing
+           gaper--
+       "We are they whose works are works of love and peace;
+     Till disunion bring forth union, what is union, sirs, but paper?
+       Break and rend it, then shall trust and strength increase."
+
+     Who would fear to trust a double-faced but single-hearted dreamer,
+       Pure of purpose, clean of hand, and clear of guile?
+     "Life is well-nigh spent," he sighs; "you call me shuffler,
+           trickster, schemer?
+       I am old--when young men yell at me, I smile."
+
+     Many a year that priceless light of life has trembled, we remember,
+       On the platform of extinction--unextinct;
+     Many a month has been for him the long year's last--life's calm
+           December:
+       Can it be that he who said so, saying so, winked?
+
+     No; the lust of life, the thirst for work and days with work to do
+           in,
+       Drove and drives him down the road of splendid shame;
+     All is well, if o'er the monument recording England's ruin
+       Time shall read, inscribed in triumph, Gladstone's name.
+
+     Thieves and murderers, hands yet red with blood and tongues yet
+           black with lies,
+        Clap and clamour--"Parnell spurs his Gladstone well!"
+     Truth, unscared and undeluded by their praise or blame, replies--
+       "Is the goal of fraud and bloodshed heaven or hell?"
+
+     Old men eloquent, who truckle to the traitors of the time,
+       Love not office--power is no desire of theirs:
+     What if yesterday their hearts recoiled from blood and fraud and
+           crime?
+       Conscience erred--an error which to-day repairs.
+
+     Conscience only now convinces them of strange though transient
+           error:
+       Only now they see how fair is treason's face;
+     See how true the falsehood, just the theft, and blameless is the
+           terror,
+       Which replaces just and blameless men in place.
+
+     Place and time decide the right and wrong of thought and word and
+           action;
+       Crime is black as hell, till virtue gain its vote;
+     Then--but ah, to think or say so smacks of fraud or smells of
+           faction!--
+       Mercy holds the door while Murder hacks the throat.
+
+     Murder? Treason? Theft? Poor brothers who succumb to such
+           temptations,
+       Shall we lay on you or take on us the blame?
+     Reason answers, and religion echoes round to wondering nations,
+       "Not with Ireland, but with England rests the shame."
+
+     Reason speaks through mild religion's organ, loud and long and
+           lusty--
+       Profit speaks through lips of patriots pure and true--
+     "English friends, whose trust we ask for, has not England found us
+           trusty?
+       Not for us we seek advancement, but for you.
+
+     "Far and near the world bears witness of our wisdom, courage,
+           honour;
+       Egypt knows if there our fame burns bright or dim.
+     Let but England trust as Gordon trusted, soon shall come upon her
+       Such deliverance as our daring brought on him.
+
+     "Far and wide the world rings record of our faith, our constant
+           dealing,
+       Love of country, truth to friends, contempt for foes.
+     Sign once more the bond of trust in us that here awaits but
+           sealing,
+       We will give yet more than all our record shows.
+
+     "Perfect ruin, shame eternal, everlasting degradation,
+       Freedom bought and sold, truth bound and treason free."
+     Yet an hour is here for answer; now, if here be yet a nation,
+       Answer, England, man by man from sea to sea!
+
+     _June 30, 1886._
+
+
+
+
+     THE QUESTION
+
+     1887
+
+
+     Shall England consummate the crime
+       That binds the murderer's hand, and leaves
+       No surety for the trust of thieves?
+     Time pleads against it--truth and time--
+       And pity frowns and grieves.
+
+     The hoary henchman of the gang
+       Lifts hands that never dew nor rain
+       May cleanse from Gordon's blood again,
+     Appealing: pity's tenderest pang
+       Thrills his pure heart with pain.
+
+     Grand helmsman of the clamorous crew,
+       The good grey recreant quakes and weeps
+       To think that crime no longer creeps
+     Safe toward its end: that murderers too
+       May die when mercy sleeps.
+
+     While all the lives were innocent
+       That slaughter drank, and laughed with rage,
+       Bland virtue sighed, "A former age
+     Taught murder: souls long discontent
+       Can aught save blood assuage?
+
+     "You blame not Russian hands that smite
+       By fierce and secret ways the power
+       That leaves not life one chainless hour;
+     Have these than they less natural right
+       To claim life's natural dower?
+
+     "The dower that freedom brings the slave
+       She weds, is vengeance: why should we,
+       Whom equal laws acclaim as free,
+     Think shame, if men too blindly brave
+       Steal, murder, skulk, and flee?
+
+     "At kings they strike in Russia: there
+       Men take their life in hand who slay
+       Kings: these, that have not heart to lay
+     Hand save on girls whose ravaged hair
+       Is made the patriot's prey,
+
+     "These, whom the sight of old men slain
+       Makes bold to bid their children die,
+       Starved, if they hold not peace, nor lie,
+     Claim loftier praise: could others deign
+       To stand in shame so high?
+
+     "Could others deign to dare such deeds
+       As holiest Ireland hallows? Nay,
+       But justice then makes plain our way:
+     Be laws burnt up like burning weeds
+       That vex the face of day.
+
+     "Shall bloodmongers be held of us
+       Blood-guilty? Hands reached out for gold
+       Whereon blood rusts not yet, we hold
+     Bloodless and blameless: ever thus
+       Have good men held of old.
+
+     "Fair Freedom, fledged and imped with lies,
+       Takes flight by night where murder lurks,
+       And broods on murderous ways and works,
+     Yet seems not hideous in our eyes
+       As Austrians or as Turks.
+
+     "Be it ours to undo a woful past,
+       To bid the bells of concord chime,
+       To break the bonds of suffering crime,
+     Slack now, that some would make more fast:
+       Such teaching comes of time."
+
+     So pleads the gentlest heart that lives,
+       Whose pity, pitiless for all
+       Whom darkling terror holds in thrall,
+     Toward none save miscreants yearns, and gives
+       Alms of warm tears--and gall.
+
+     Hear, England, and obey: for he
+       Who claims thy trust again to-day
+       Is he who left thy sons a prey
+     To shame whence only death sets free:
+       Hear, England, and obey.
+
+     Thy spoils he gave to deck the Dutch;
+       Thy noblest pride, most pure, most brave,
+       To death forlorn and sure he gave;
+     Nor now requires he overmuch
+       Who bids thee dig thy grave.
+
+     Dig deep the grave of shame, wherein
+       Thy fame, thy commonweal, must lie;
+       Put thought of aught save terror by;
+     To strike and slay the slayer is sin;
+       And Murder must not die.
+
+     Bind fast the true man; loose the thief;
+       Shamed were the land, the laws accursed,
+       Were guilt, not innocence, amerced;
+     And dark the wrong and sore the grief,
+       Were tyrants too coerced.
+
+     The fiercest cowards that ever skulked,
+       The cowardliest hounds that ever lapped
+       Blood, if their horde be tracked and trapped,
+     And justice claim their lives for mulct,
+       Gnash teeth that flashed and snapped.
+
+     Bow down for fear, then, England: bow,
+       Lest worse befall thee yet; and swear
+       That nought save pity, conscience, care
+     For truth and mercy, moves thee now
+       To call foul falsehood fair.
+
+     So shalt thou live in shame, and hear
+       The lips of all men laugh thee dead;
+       The wide world's mockery round thy head
+     Shriek like a storm-wind: and a bier
+       Shall be thine honour's bed.
+
+
+
+
+     APOSTASY
+
+     _Et Judas m'a dit: Traitre!_--VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+     I
+
+     Truths change with time, and terms with truth. To-day
+         A statesman worships union, and to-night
+         Disunion. Shame to have sinned against the light
+     Confounds not but impels his tongue to unsay
+     What yestereve he swore. Should fear make way
+         For treason? honour change her livery? fright
+         Clasp hands with interest? wrong pledge faith with right?
+     Religion, mercy, conscience, answer--Yea.
+
+     To veer is not to veer: when votes are weighed,
+     The numerous tongue approves him renegade
+         Who cannot change his banner: he that can
+     Sits crowned with wreaths of praise too pure to fade.
+         Truth smiles applause on treason's poisonous plan:
+         And Cleon is an honourable man.
+
+
+     II
+
+     Pure faith, fond hope, sweet love, with God for guide,
+         Move now the men whose blameless error cast
+         In prison (ah, but love condones the past!)
+     Their subject knaves that were--their lords that ride
+     Now laughing on their necks, and now bestride
+         Their vassal backs in triumph. Faith stands fast
+         Though fear haul down the flag that crowned her mast
+     And hope and love proclaim that truth has lied.
+
+     Turn, turn, and turn--so bids the still small voice,
+         The changeless voice of honour. He that stands
+         Where all his life he stood, with bribeless hands,
+     With tongue unhired to mourn, reprove, rejoice,
+         Curse, bless, forswear, and swear again, and lie,
+         Stands proven apostate in the apostate's eye.
+
+
+     III
+
+     Fraud shrinks from faith: at sight of swans, the raven
+         Chides blackness, and the snake recoils aghast
+         In fear of poison when a bird flies past.
+     Thersites brands Achilles as a craven;
+     The shoal fed full with shipwreck blames the haven
+         For murderous lust of lives devoured, and vast
+         Desire of doom whose feast is mercy's fast:
+     And Bacon sees the traitor's mark engraven
+     Full on the front of Essex. Grief and shame
+         Obscure the chaste and sunlike spirit of Oates
+     At thought of Russell's treason; and the name
+     Of Milton sickens with superb disgust
+         The heaving heart of Waller. Wisdom dotes,
+     If wisdom turns not tail and licks not dust.
+
+
+     IV
+
+     The sole sweet land found fit to wed the sea,
+         With reptile rebels at her heel of old,
+         Set hard her heel upon them, and controlled
+     The cowering poisonous peril. How should she
+     Cower, and resign her trust of empire? Free
+         As winds and waters live the loyal-souled
+         And true-born sons that love her: nay, the bold
+     Base knaves who curse her name have leave to be
+     The loud-tongued liars they are. For she, beyond
+     All woful years that bid men's hearts despond,
+         Sees yet the likeness of her ancient fame
+     Burn from the heavenward heights of history, hears
+     Not Leicester's name but Sidney's--faith's, not fear's--
+         Not Gladstone's now but only Gordon's name.
+
+
+
+
+     RUSSIA: AN ODE
+
+     1890
+
+
+     I
+
+     Out of hell a word comes hissing, dark as doom,
+     Fierce as fire, and foul as plague-polluted gloom;
+     Out of hell wherein the sinless damned endure
+     More than ever sin conceived of pains impure;
+     More than ever ground men's living souls to dust;
+     Worse than madness ever dreamed of murderous lust.
+     Since the world's wail first went up from lands and seas
+     Ears have heard not, tongues have told not things like these.
+     Dante, led by love's and hate's accordant spell
+     Down the deepest and the loathliest ways of hell,
+     Where beyond the brook of blood the rain was fire,
+     Where the scalps were masked with dung more deep than mire,
+     Saw not, where the filth was foulest, and the night
+     Darkest, depths whose fiends could match the Muscovite.
+     Set beside this truth, his deadliest vision seems
+     Pale and pure and painless as a virgin's dreams.
+     Maidens dead beneath the clasping lash, and wives
+     Rent with deadlier pangs than death--for shame survives,
+     Naked, mad, starved, scourged, spurned, frozen, fallen, deflowered,
+     Souls and bodies as by fangs of beasts devoured,
+     Sounds that hell would hear not, sights no thought could shape,
+     Limbs that feel as flame the ravenous grasp of rape,
+     Filth of raging crime and shame that crime enjoys,
+     Age made one with youth in torture, girls with boys,
+     These, and worse if aught be worse than these things are,
+     Prove thee regent, Russia--praise thy mercy, Czar.
+
+
+     II
+
+     Sons of man, men born of women, may we dare
+     Say they sin who dare be slain and dare not spare?
+     They who take their lives in hand and smile on death,
+     Holding life as less than sleep's most fitful breath,
+     So their life perchance or death may serve and speed
+     Faith and hope, that die if dream become not deed?
+     Nought is death and nought is life and nought is fate
+     Save for souls that love has clothed with fire of hate.
+     These behold them, weigh them, prove them, find them nought,
+     Save by light of hope and fire of burning thought.
+     What though sun be less than storm where these aspire,
+     Dawn than lightning, song than thunder, light than fire?
+     Help is none in heaven: hope sees no gentler star:
+     Earth is hell, and hell bows down before the Czar.
+     All its monstrous, murderous, lecherous births acclaim
+     Him whose empire lives to match its fiery fame.
+     Nay, perchance at sight or sense of deeds here done,
+     Here where men may lift up eyes to greet the sun,
+     Hell recoils heart-stricken: horror worse than hell
+     Darkens earth and sickens heaven; life knows the spell,
+     Shudders, quails, and sinks--or, filled with fierier breath,
+     Rises red in arms devised of darkling death.
+     Pity mad with passion, anguish mad with shame,
+     Call aloud on justice by her darker name;
+     Love grows hate for love's sake; life takes death for guide.
+     Night hath none but one red star--Tyrannicide.
+
+
+     III
+
+     "God or man, be swift; hope sickens with delay:
+     Smite, and send him howling down his father's way!
+     Fall, O fire of heaven, and smite as fire from hell
+     Halls wherein men's torturers, crowned and cowering, dwell!
+     These that crouch and shrink and shudder, girt with power--
+     These that reign, and dare not trust one trembling hour--
+     These omnipotent, whom terror curbs and drives--
+     These whose life reflects in fear their victims' lives--
+     These whose breath sheds poison worse than plague's thick breath--
+     These whose reign is ruin, these whose word is death,
+     These whose will turns heaven to hell, and day to night,
+     These, if God's hand smite not, how shall man's not smite?"
+     So from hearts by horror withered as by fire
+     Surge the strains of unappeasable desire;
+     Sounds that bid the darkness lighten, lit for death;
+     Bid the lips whose breath was doom yield up their breath;
+     Down the way of Czars, awhile in vain deferred,
+     Bid the Second Alexander light the Third.
+     How for shame shall men rebuke them? how may we
+     Blame, whose fathers died, and slew, to leave us free?
+     We, though all the world cry out upon them, know,
+     Were our strife as theirs, we could not strike but so;
+     Could not cower, and could not kiss the hands that smite;
+     Could not meet them armed in sunlit battle's light.
+     Dark as fear and red as hate though morning rise,
+     Life it is that conquers; death it is that dies.
+
+
+
+
+     FOR GREECE AND CRETE
+
+
+     Storm and shame and fraud and darkness fill the nations full with
+           night:
+     Hope and fear whose eyes yearn eastward have but fire and sword in
+           sight:
+     One alone, whose name is one with glory, sees and seeks the light.
+
+     Hellas, mother of the spirit, sole supreme in war and peace,
+     Land of light, whose word remembered bids all fear and sorrow
+           cease,
+     Lives again, while freedom lightens eastward yet for sons of
+           Greece.
+
+     Greece, where only men whose manhood was as godhead ever trod,
+     Bears the blind world witness yet of light wherewith her feet are
+           shod:
+     Freedom, armed of Greece was always very man and very God.
+
+     Now the winds of old that filled her sails with triumph, when the
+           fleet
+     Bound for death from Asia fled before them stricken, wake to greet
+     Ships full-winged again for freedom toward the sacred shores of
+           Crete.
+
+     There was God born man, the song that spake of old time said: and
+           there
+     Man, made even as God by trust that shows him nought too dire to
+           dare,
+     Now may light again the beacon lit when those we worship were.
+
+     Sharp the concert wrought of discord shrills the tune of shame and
+           death,
+     Turk by Christian fenced and fostered, Mecca backed by Nazareth:
+     All the powerless powers, tongue-valiant, breathe but greed's or
+           terror's breath.
+
+     Though the tide that feels the west wind lift it wave by widening
+           wave
+     Wax not yet to height and fullness of the storm that smites to
+           save,
+     None shall bid the flood back seaward till no bar be left to brave.
+
+
+
+
+     DELPHIC HYMN TO APOLLO
+
+     (B.C. 280)
+
+     DONE INTO ENGLISH
+
+
+     I
+
+           Thee, the son of God most high,
+           Famed for harping song, will I
+     Proclaim, and the deathless oracular word
+     From the snow-topped rock that we gaze on heard,
+           Counsels of thy glorious giving
+           Manifest for all men living,
+     How thou madest the tripod of prophecy thine
+     Which the wrath of the dragon kept guard on, a shrine
+           Voiceless till thy shafts could smite
+           All his live coiled glittering might.
+
+
+     II
+
+           Ye that hold of right alone
+           All deep woods on Helicon,
+     Fair daughters of thunder-girt God, with your bright
+     White arms uplift as to lighten the light,
+           Come to chant your brother's praise,
+           Gold-haired Phoebus, loud in lays,
+     Even his, who afar up the twin-topped seat
+     Of the rock Parnassian whereon we meet
+           Risen with glorious Delphic maids
+           Seeks the soft spring-sweetened shades
+     Castalian, fain of the Delphian peak
+     Prophetic, sublime as the feet that seek.
+           Glorious Athens, highest of state,
+           Come, with praise and prayer elate,
+     O thou that art queen of the plain unscarred
+     That the warrior Tritonid hath alway in guard,
+           Where on many a sacred shrine
+           Young bulls' thigh-bones burn and shine
+     As the god that is fire overtakes them, and fast
+     The smoke of Arabia to heavenward is cast,
+           Scattering wide its balm: and shrill
+           Now with nimble notes that thrill
+     The flute strikes up for the song, and the harp of gold
+     Strikes up to the song sweet answer: and all behold,
+           All, aswarm as bees, give ear,
+           Who by birth hold Athens dear.
+
+
+
+
+     A NEW CENTURY
+
+
+     An age too great for thought of ours to scan,
+       A wave upon the sleepless sea of time
+       That sinks and sleeps for ever, ere the chime
+     Pass that salutes with blessing, not with ban,
+     The dark year dead, the bright year born for man,
+       Dies: all its days that watched man cower and climb,
+       Frail as the foam, and as the sun sublime,
+     Sleep sound as they that slept ere these began.
+
+     Our mother earth, whose ages none may tell,
+       Puts on no change: time bids not her wax pale
+     Or kindle, quenched or quickened, when the knell
+       Sounds, and we cry across the veering gale
+     Farewell--and midnight answers us, Farewell;
+       Hail--and the heaven of morning answers, Hail.
+
+
+
+
+     AN EVENING AT VICHY
+
+     SEPTEMBER 1896
+
+     WRITTEN ON THE NEWS OF THE DEATH OF LORD LEIGHTON
+
+
+     A light has passed that never shall pass away,
+       A sun has set whose rays are unquelled of night.
+     The loyal grace, the courtesy bright as day,
+       The strong sweet radiant spirit of life and light
+       That shone and smiled and lightened on all men's sight,
+     The kindly life whose tune was the tune of May,
+       For us now dark, for love and for fame is bright.
+
+     Nay, not for us that live as the fen-fires live,
+       As stars that shoot and shudder with life and die,
+     Can death make dark that lustre of life, or give
+       The grievous gift of trust in oblivion's lie.
+       Days dear and far death touches, and draws them nigh,
+     And bids the grief that broods on their graves forgive
+       The day that seems to mock them as clouds that fly.
+
+     If life be life more faithful than shines on sleep
+       When dreams take wing and lighten and fade like flame,
+     Then haply death may be not a death so deep
+       That all things past are past for it wholly--fame,
+       Love, loving-kindness, seasons that went and came,
+     And left their light on life as a seal to keep
+       Winged memory fast and heedful of time's dead claim.
+
+     Death gives back life and light to the sunless years
+       Whose suns long sunken set not for ever. Time,
+     Blind, fierce, and deaf as tempest, relents, and hears
+       And sees how bright the days and how sweet their chime
+       Rang, shone, and passed in music that matched the clime
+     Wherein we met rejoicing--a joy that cheers
+       Sorrow, to see the night as the dawn sublime.
+
+     The days that were outlighten the days that are,
+       And eyes now darkened shine as the stars we see
+     And hear not sing, impassionate star to star,
+       As once we heard the music that haply he
+       Hears, high in heaven if ever a voice may be
+     The same in heaven, the same as on earth, afar
+       From pain and earth as heaven from the heaving sea.
+
+     A woman's voice, divine as a bird's by dawn
+       Kindled and stirred to sunward, arose and held
+     Our souls that heard, from earth as from sleep withdrawn,
+       And filled with light as stars, and as stars compelled
+       To move by might of music, elate while quelled,
+     Subdued by rapture, lit as a mountain lawn
+       By morning whence all heaven in the sunrise welled.
+
+     And her the shadow of death as a robe clasped round
+       Then: and as morning's music she passed away.
+     And he then with us, warrior and wanderer, crowned
+       With fame that shone from eastern on western day,
+       More strong, more kind, than praise or than grief might say,
+     Has passed now forth of shadow by sunlight bound,
+       Of night shot through with light that is frail as May.
+
+     May dies, and light grows darkness, and life grows death:
+       Hope fades and shrinks and falls as a changing leaf:
+     Remembrance, touched and kindled by love's live breath,
+       Shines, and subdues the shadow of time called grief,
+       The shade whose length of life is as life's date brief,
+     With joy that broods on the sunlight past, and saith
+       That thought and love hold sorrow and change in fief.
+
+     Sweet, glad, bright spirit, kind as the sun seems kind
+       When earth and sea rejoice in his gentler spell,
+     Thy face that was we see not; bereft and blind,
+       We see but yet, rejoicing to see, and dwell
+       Awhile in days that heard not the death-day's knell,
+     A light so bright that scarcely may sorrow find
+       One old sweet word that hails thee and mourns--Farewell.
+
+
+
+
+     TO GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS
+
+     ON THE EIGHTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF HIS BIRTH, FEBRUARY 23, 1897
+
+
+     High thought and hallowed love, by faith made one,
+       Begat and bare the sweet strong-hearted child,
+     Art, nursed of Nature; earth and sea and sun
+       Saw Nature then more godlike as she smiled.
+     Life smiled on death, and death on life: the Soul
+       Between them shone, and soared above their strife,
+     And left on Time's unclosed and starry scroll
+       A sign that quickened death to deathless life.
+     Peace rose like Hope, a patient queen, and bade
+       Hell's firstborn, Faith, abjure her creed and die;
+     And Love, by life and death made sad and glad,
+       Gave Conscience ease, and watched Good Will pass by.
+     All these make music now of one man's name,
+     Whose life and age are one with love and fame.
+
+
+
+
+     ON THE DEATH OF MRS. LYNN LINTON
+
+
+     Kind, wise, and true as truth's own heart,
+           A soul that here
+     Chose and held fast the better part
+           And cast out fear,
+
+     Has left us ere we dreamed of death
+           For life so strong,
+     Clear as the sundawn's light and breath,
+           And sweet as song.
+
+     We see no more what here awhile
+           Shed light on men:
+     Has Landor seen that brave bright smile
+           Alive again?
+
+     If death and life and love be one
+           And hope no lie
+     And night no stronger than the sun,
+           These cannot die.
+
+     The father-spirit whence her soul
+           Took strength, and gave
+     Back love, is perfect yet and whole,
+           As hope might crave.
+
+     His word is living light and fire:
+           And hers shall live
+     By grace of all good gifts the sire
+           Gave power to give.
+
+     The sire and daughter, twain and one
+           In quest and goal,
+     Stand face to face beyond the sun,
+           And soul to soul.
+
+     Not we, who loved them well, may dream
+           What joy sublime
+     Is theirs, if dawn through darkness gleam,
+           And life through time.
+
+     Time seems but here the mask of death,
+           That falls and shows
+     A void where hope may draw not breath:
+           Night only knows.
+
+     Love knows not: all that love may keep
+           Glad memory gives:
+     The spirit of the days that sleep
+           Still wakes and lives.
+
+     But not the spirit's self, though song
+           Would lend it speech,
+     May touch the goal that hope might long
+           In vain to reach.
+
+     How dear that high true heart, how sweet
+           Those keen kind eyes,
+     Love knows, who knows how fiery fleet
+           Is life that flies.
+
+     If life there be that flies not, fair
+           The life must be
+     That thrills her sovereign spirit there
+           And sets it free.
+
+
+
+
+     IN MEMORY OF AURELIO SAFFI
+
+
+     Beloved above all nations, land adored,
+     Sovereign in spirit and charm, by song and sword,
+       Sovereign whose life is love, whose name is light,
+     Italia, queen that hast the sun for lord,
+
+     Bride that hast heaven for bridegroom, how should night
+     Veil or withhold from faith's and memory's sight
+       A man beloved and crowned of thee and fame,
+     Hide for an hour his name's memorial might?
+
+     Thy sons may never speak or hear the name
+     Saffi, and feel not love's regenerate flame
+       Thrill all the quickening heart with faith and pride
+     In one whose life makes death and life the same.
+
+     They die indeed whose souls before them died:
+     Not he, for whom death flung life's portal wide,
+       Who stands where Dante's soul in vision came,
+     In Dante's presence, by Mazzini's side.
+
+     _March 26, 1896._
+
+
+
+
+     CARNOT
+
+
+     Death, winged with fire of hate from deathless hell
+       Wherein the souls of anarchs hiss and die,
+       With stroke as dire has cloven a heart as high
+     As twice beyond the wide sea's westward swell
+     The living lust of death had power to quell
+       Through ministry of murderous hands whereby
+       Dark fate bade Lincoln's head and Garfield's lie
+     Low even as his who bids his France farewell.
+
+     France, now no heart that would not weep with thee
+       Loved ever faith or freedom. From thy hand
+       The staff of state is broken: hope, unmanned
+     With anguish, doubts if freedom's self be free.
+       The snake-souled anarch's fang strikes all the land
+     Cold, and all hearts unsundered by the sea.
+
+     _June 25, 1894._
+
+
+
+
+     AFTER THE VERDICT
+
+
+     France, cloven in twain by fire of hell and hate,
+       Shamed with the shame of men her meanest born,
+       Soldier and judge whose names, inscribed for scorn,
+     Stand vilest on the record writ of fate,
+     Lies yet not wholly vile who stood so great,
+       Sees yet not all her praise of old outworn.
+       Not yet is all her scroll of glory torn,
+     Or left for utter shame to desecrate.
+     High souls and constant hearts of faithful men
+     Sustain her perfect praise with tongue and pen
+     Indomitable as honour. Storms may toss
+       And soil her standard ere her bark win home:
+     But shame falls full upon the Christless cross
+       Whose brandmark signs the holy hounds of Rome.
+
+     _September 1899._
+
+
+
+
+     THE TRANSVAAL
+
+
+     Patience, long sick to death, is dead. Too long
+       Have sloth and doubt and treason bidden us be
+       What Cromwell's England was not, when the sea
+     To him bore witness given of Blake how strong
+     She stood, a commonweal that brooked no wrong
+       From foes less vile than men like wolves set free
+       Whose war is waged where none may fight or flee--
+     With women and with weanlings. Speech and song
+     Lack utterance now for loathing. Scarce we hear
+       Foul tongues that blacken God's dishonoured name
+       With prayers turned curses and with praise found shame
+     Defy the truth whose witness now draws near
+       To scourge these dogs, agape with jaws afoam,
+       Down out of life. Strike, England, and strike home.
+
+     _October 9, 1899._
+
+
+
+
+     REVERSE
+
+
+     The wave that breaks against a forward stroke
+       Beats not the swimmer back, but thrills him through
+       With joyous trust to win his way anew
+     Through stronger seas than first upon him broke
+     And triumphed. England's iron-tempered oak
+       Shrank not when Europe's might against her grew
+       Full, and her sun drank up her foes like dew,
+     And lion-like from sleep her strength awoke.
+
+     As bold in fight as bold in breach of trust
+       We find our foes, and wonder not to find,
+       Nor grudge them praise whom honour may not bind;
+     But loathing more intense than speaks disgust
+       Heaves England's heart, when scorn is bound to greet
+       Hunters and hounds whose tongues would lick their feet.
+
+     _November 1, 1899._
+
+
+
+
+     THE TURNING OF THE TIDE
+
+
+     Storm, strong with all the bitter heart of hate,
+       Smote England, now nineteen dark years ago,
+       As when the tide's full wrath in seaward flow
+     Smites and bears back the swimmer. Fraud and fate
+     Were leagued against her: fear was fain to prate
+       Of honour in dishonour, pride brought low,
+       And humbleness whence holiness must grow,
+     And greatness born of shame to be so great.
+
+     The winter day that withered hope and pride
+     Shines now triumphal on the turning tide
+       That sets once more our trust in freedom free,
+     That leaves a ruthless and a truthless foe
+     And all base hopes that hailed his cause laid low,
+       And England's name a light on land and sea.
+
+     _February 27, 1900._
+
+
+
+
+     ON THE DEATH OF COLONEL BENSON
+
+
+     Northumberland, so proud and sad to-day,
+       Weep and rejoice, our mother, whom no son
+       More glorious than this dead and deathless one
+     Brought ever fame whereon no time shall prey.
+     Nor heed we more than he what liars dare say
+       Of mercy's holiest duties left undone
+       Toward whelps and dams of murderous foes, whom none
+     Save we had spared or feared to starve and slay.
+
+     Alone as Milton and as Wordsworth found
+     And hailed their England, when from all around
+       Howled all the recreant hate of envious knaves,
+     Sublime she stands: while, stifled in the sound,
+       Each lie that falls from German boors and slaves
+       Falls but as filth dropt in the wandering waves.
+
+     _November 4, 1901._
+
+
+
+
+     ASTRAEA VICTRIX
+
+
+             England, elect of time,
+             By freedom sealed sublime,
+         And constant as the sun that saw thy dawn
+             Outshine upon the sea
+             His own in heaven, to be
+         A light that night nor day should see withdrawn,
+           If song may speak not now thy praise,
+     Fame writes it higher than song may soar or faith may gaze.
+
+             Dark months of months beheld
+             Hope thwarted, crossed, and quelled,
+         And heard the heartless hounds of hatred bay
+             Aloud against thee, glad
+             As now their souls are sad
+         Who see their hope in hatred pass away
+           And wither into shame and fear
+     And shudder down to darkness, loth to see or hear.
+
+             Nought now they hear or see
+             That speaks or shows not thee
+         Triumphant; not as empires reared of yore,
+             The imperial commonweal
+             That bears thy sovereign seal
+         And signs thine orient as thy natural shore
+           Free, as no sons but thine may stand,
+     Steers lifeward ever, guided of thy pilot hand.
+
+             Fear, masked and veiled by fraud,
+             Found shameful time to applaud
+         Shame, and bow down thy banner towards the dust,
+             And call on godly shame
+             To desecrate thy name
+         And bid false penitence abjure thy trust:
+           Till England's heart took thought at last,
+     And felt her future kindle from her fiery past.
+
+             Then sprang the sunbright fire
+             High as the sun, and higher
+         Than strange men's eyes might watch it undismayed:
+             But winds athwart it blew
+             Storm, and the twilight grew
+         Darkness awhile, an unenduring shade:
+           And all base birds and beasts of night
+     Saw no more England now to fear, no loathsome light.
+
+             All knaves and slaves at heart
+             Who, knowing thee what thou art,
+         Abhor thee, seeing what none save here may see,
+             Strong freedom, taintless truth,
+             Supreme in ageless youth,
+         Howled all their hate and hope aloud at thee
+           While yet the wavering wind of strife
+     Bore hard against her sail whose freight is hope and life.
+
+             And now the quickening tide
+             That brings back power and pride
+         To faith and love whose ensign is thy name
+             Bears down the recreant lie
+             That doomed thy name to die,
+         Sons, friends, and foes behold thy star the same
+           As when it stood in heaven a sun
+     And Europe saw no glory left her sky save one.
+
+             And now, as then she saw,
+             She sees with shamefast awe
+         How all unlike all slaves and tyrants born
+             Where bondmen champ the bit
+             And anarchs foam and flit,
+         And day mocks day, and year puts year to scorn,
+           Our mother bore us, English men,
+     Ashamed of shame and strong in mercy, now as then.
+
+             We loosed not on these knaves
+             Their scourge-tormented slaves:
+         We held the hand that fain had risen to smite
+             The torturer fast, and made
+             Justice awhile afraid,
+         And righteousness forego her ruthless right:
+           We warred not even with these as they;
+     We bade not them they preyed on make of them their prey.
+
+             All murderous fraud that lurks
+             In hearts where hell's craft works
+         Fought, crawled, and slew in darkness: they that died
+             Dreamed not of foes too base
+             For scorn to grant them grace:
+         Men wounded, women, children at their side,
+           Had found what faith in fiends may live:
+     And yet we gave not back what righteous doom would give.
+
+             No false white flag that fawns
+             On faith till murder dawns
+         Blood-red from hell-black treason's heart of hate
+             Left ever shame's foul brand
+             Seared on an English hand:
+         And yet our pride vouchsafes them grace too great
+           For other pride to dream of: scorn
+     Strikes retribution silent as the stars at morn.
+
+             And now the living breath
+             Whose life puts death to death,
+         Freedom, whose name is England, stirs and thrills
+             The burning darkness through
+             Whence fraud and slavery grew,
+         We scarce may mourn our dead whose fame fulfils
+           The record where her foes have read
+     That earth shall see none like her born ere earth be dead.
+
+
+
+
+     THE FIRST OF JUNE
+
+
+     Peace and war are one in proof of England's deathless praise.
+       One divine day saw her foemen scattered on the sea
+     Far and fast as storm could speed: the same strong day of days
+       Sees the imperial commonweal set friends and foemen free.
+     Save where freedom reigns, whose name is England, fraud and fear
+       Grind and blind the face of men who look on her and lie:
+     Now may truth and pride in truth, whose seat of old was here,
+       See them shamed and stricken blind and dumb as worms that die.
+     Even before our hallowed hawthorn-blossom pass and cease,
+       Even as England shines and smiles at last upon the sun,
+     Comes the word that means for England more than passing peace,
+       Peace with honour, peace with pride in righteous work well done.
+     Crowned with flowers the first of all the world and all the year,
+     Peace, whose name is one with honour born of war, is here.
+
+
+
+
+     ROUNDEL
+
+     FROM THE FRENCH OF VILLON
+
+
+     Death, I would plead against thy wrong,
+       Who hast reft me of my love, my wife,
+       And art not satiate yet with strife,
+     But needs wilt hold me lingering long.
+     No strength since then has kept me strong:
+       But what could hurt thee in her life,
+           Death?
+
+     Twain we were, and our hearts one song,
+       One heart: if that be dead, thy knife
+       Hath cut me off alive from life,
+     Dead as the carver's figured throng,
+           Death!
+
+
+
+
+     A ROUNDEL OF RABELAIS
+
+
+     Theleme is afar on the waters, adrift and afar,
+     Afar and afloat on the waters that flicker and gleam,
+     And we feel but her fragrance and see but the shadows that mar
+           Theleme.
+
+     In the sun-coloured mists of the sunrise and sunset that steam
+     As incense from urns of the twilight, her portals ajar
+     Let pass as a shadow the light of the sound of a dream.
+
+     But the laughter that rings from her cloisters that know not a bar
+     So kindles delight in desire that the souls in us deem
+     He erred not, the seer who discerned on the seas as a star
+           Theleme.
+
+
+
+
+     LUCIFER
+
+     _Ecrasez l'infame._--VOLTAIRE
+
+     _Les pretres ont raison de l'appeler Lucifer._--VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+     Voltaire, our England's lover, man divine
+       Beyond all Gods that ever fear adored
+       By right and might, by sceptre and by sword,
+     By godlike love of sunlike truth, made thine
+     Through godlike hate of falsehood's marshlight shine
+       And all the fume of creeds and deeds abhorred
+       Whose light was darkness, till the dawn-star soared,
+     Truth, reason, mercy, justice, keep thy shrine
+     Sacred in memory's temple, seeing that none
+     Of all souls born to strive before the sun
+       Loved ever good or hated evil more.
+     The snake that felt thy heel upon her head,
+     Night's first-born, writhes as though she were not dead,
+       But strikes not, stings not, slays not as before.
+
+
+
+
+     THE CENTENARY OF ALEXANDRE DUMAS
+
+
+     Sound of trumpets blowing down the merriest winds of morn,
+       Flash of hurtless lightnings, laugh of thunders loud and glad,
+     Here should hail the summer day whereon a light was born
+       Whence the sun grew brighter, seeing the world less dark and sad.
+     Man of men by right divine of boyhood everlasting,
+       France incarnate, France immortal in her deathless boy,
+     Brighter birthday never shone than thine on earth, forecasting
+       More of strenuous mirth in manhood, more of manful joy.
+     Child of warriors, friend of warriors, Garibaldi's friend,
+       Even thy name is as the splendour of a sunbright sword:
+     While the boy's heart beats in man, thy fame shall find not end:
+       Time and dark oblivion bow before thee as their lord.
+     Youth acclaims thee gladdest of the gods that gild his days:
+     Age gives thanks for thee, and death lacks heart to quench thy
+           praise.
+
+
+
+
+     AT A DOG'S GRAVE
+
+
+     I
+
+     Good night, we say, when comes the time to win
+     The daily death divine that shuts up sight,
+     Sleep, that assures for all who dwell therein
+                 Good night.
+
+     The shadow shed round those we love shines bright
+     As love's own face, when death, sleep's gentler twin,
+     From them divides us even as night from light.
+
+     Shall friends born lower in life, though pure of sin,
+     Though clothed with love and faith to usward plight,
+     Perish and pass unbidden of us, their kin,
+                 Good night?
+
+
+     II
+
+     To die a dog's death once was held for shame.
+     Not all men so beloved and mourned shall lie
+     As many of these, whose time untimely came
+                 To die.
+
+     His years were full: his years were joyous: why
+     Must love be sorrow, when his gracious name
+     Recalls his lovely life of limb and eye?
+
+     If aught of blameless life on earth may claim
+     Life higher than death, though death's dark wave rise high,
+     Such life as this among us never came
+                 To die.
+
+
+     III
+
+     White violets, there by hands more sweet than they
+     Planted, shall sweeten April's flowerful air
+     About a grave that shows to night and day
+                 White violets there.
+
+     A child's light hands, whose touch makes flowers more fair,
+     Keep fair as these for many a March and May
+     The light of days that are because they were.
+
+     It shall not like a blossom pass away;
+     It broods and brightens with the days that bear
+     Fresh fruits of love, but leave, as love might pray,
+                 White violets there.
+
+
+
+
+     THREE WEEKS OLD
+
+
+     Three weeks since there was no such rose in being;
+       Now may eyes made dim with deep delight
+     See how fair it is, laugh with love, and seeing
+       Praise the chance that bids us bless the sight.
+
+     Three weeks old, and a very rose of roses,
+       Bright and sweet as love is sweet and bright.
+     Heaven and earth, till a man's life wanes and closes,
+       Show not life or love a lovelier sight.
+
+     Three weeks past have renewed the rosebright creature
+       Day by day with life, and night by night.
+     Love, though fain of its every faultless feature,
+       Finds not words to match the silent sight.
+
+
+
+
+     A CLASP OF HANDS
+
+
+     I
+
+     Soft, small, and sweet as sunniest flowers
+         That bask in heavenly heat
+     When bud by bud breaks, breathes, and cowers,
+         Soft, small, and sweet.
+
+     A babe's hands open as to greet
+         The tender touch of ours
+     And mock with motion faint and fleet
+
+     The minutes of the new strange hours
+         That earth, not heaven, must mete;
+     Buds fragrant still from heaven's own bowers,
+         Soft, small, and sweet.
+
+
+     II
+
+     A velvet vice with springs of steel
+         That fasten in a trice
+     And clench the fingers fast that feel
+         A velvet vice--
+
+     What man would risk the danger twice,
+         Nor quake from head to heel?
+     Whom would not one such test suffice?
+
+     Well may we tremble as we kneel
+         In sight of Paradise,
+     If both a babe's closed fists conceal
+         A velvet vice.
+
+
+     III
+
+     Two flower-soft fists of conquering clutch,
+         Two creased and dimpled wrists,
+     That match, if mottled overmuch,
+         Two flower-soft fists--
+
+     What heart of man dare hold the lists
+         Against such odds and such
+     Sweet vantage as no strength resists?
+
+     Our strength is all a broken crutch,
+         Our eyes are dim with mists,
+     Our hearts are prisoners as we touch
+         Two flower-soft fists.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO DOCTOR FAUSTUS
+
+
+     Light, as when dawn takes wing and smites the sea,
+     Smote England when his day bade Marlowe be.
+     No fire so keen had thrilled the clouds of time
+     Since Dante's breath made Italy sublime.
+     Earth, bright with flowers whose dew shone soft as tears,
+     Through Chaucer cast her charm on eyes and ears:
+     The lustrous laughter of the love-lit earth
+     Rang, leapt, and lightened in his might of mirth.
+     Deep moonlight, hallowing all the breathless air,
+     Made earth and heaven for Spenser faint and fair.
+     But song might bid not heaven and earth be one
+     Till Marlowe's voice gave warning of the sun.
+     Thought quailed and fluttered as a wounded bird
+     Till passion fledged the wing of Marlowe's word.
+     Faith born of fear bade hope and doubt be dumb
+     Till Marlowe's pride bade light or darkness come.
+     Then first our speech was thunder: then our song
+     Shot lightning through the clouds that wrought us wrong.
+     Blind fear, whose faith feeds hell with fire, became
+     A moth self-shrivelled in its own blind flame.
+     We heard, in tune with even our seas that roll,
+     The speech of storm, the thunders of the soul.
+     Men's passions, clothed with all the woes they wrought,
+     Shone through the fire of man's transfiguring thought.
+     The thirst of knowledge, quenchless at her springs,
+     Ambition, fire that clasps the thrones of kings,
+     Love, light that makes of life one lustrous hour,
+     And song, the soul's chief crown and throne of power,
+     The hungering heart of greed and ravenous hate,
+     Made music high as heaven and deep as fate.
+     Strange pity, scarce half scornful of her tear,
+     In Berkeley's vaults bowed down on Edward's bier.
+     But higher in forceful flight of song than all
+     The soul of man, its own imperious thrall,
+     Rose, when his royal spirit of fierce desire
+     Made life and death for man one flame of fire.
+     Incarnate man, fast bound as earth and sea,
+     Spake, when his pride would fain set Faustus free.
+     Eternal beauty, strong as day and night,
+     Shone, when his word bade Helen back to sight.
+     Fear, when he bowed the soul before her spell,
+     Thundered and lightened through the vaults of hell.
+     The music known of all men's tongues that sing,
+     When Marlowe sang, bade love make heaven of spring;
+     The music none but English tongues may make,
+     Our own sole song, spake first when Marlowe spake;
+     And on his grave, though there no stone may stand,
+     The flower it shows was laid by Shakespeare's hand.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO ARDEN OF FEVERSHAM
+
+
+     Love dark as death and fierce as fire on wing
+     Sustains in sin the soul that feels it cling
+     Like flame whose tongues are serpents: hope and fear
+     Die when a love more dire than hate draws near,
+     And stings to death the heart it cleaves in twain,
+     And leaves in ashes all but fear and pain.
+     Our lustrous England rose to life and light
+     From Rome's and hell's immitigable night,
+     And music laughed and quickened from her breath,
+     When first her sons acclaimed Elizabeth.
+     Her soul became a lyre that all men heard
+     Who felt their souls give back her lyric word.
+     Yet now not all at once her perfect power
+     Spake: man's deep heart abode awhile its hour,
+     Abode its hour of utterance; not to wake
+     Till Marlowe's thought in thunderous music spake.
+     But yet not yet was passion's tragic breath
+     Thrilled through with sense of instant life and death,
+     Life actual even as theirs who watched the strife,
+     Death dark and keen and terrible as life.
+     Here first was truth in song made perfect: here
+     Woke first the war of love and hate and fear.
+     A man too vile for thought's or shame's control
+     Holds empire on a woman's loftier soul,
+     And withers it to wickedness: in vain
+     Shame quickens thought with penitential pain:
+     In vain dark chance's fitful providence
+     Withholds the crime, and chills the spirit of sense:
+     It wakes again in fire that burns away
+     Repentance, weak as night devoured of day.
+     Remorse, and ravenous thirst of sin and crime,
+     Rend and consume the soul in strife sublime,
+     And passion cries on pity till it hear
+     And tremble as with love that casts out fear.
+     Dark as the deed and doom he gave to fame
+     For ever lies the sovereign singer's name.
+     Sovereign and regent on the soul he lives
+     While thought gives thanks for aught remembrance gives,
+     And mystery sees the imperial shadow stand
+     By Marlowe's side alone at Shakespeare's hand.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO OLD FORTUNATUS
+
+
+     The golden bells of fairyland, that ring
+     Perpetual chime for childhood's flower-sweet spring,
+     Sang soft memorial music in his ear
+     Whose answering music shines about us here.
+     Soft laughter as of light that stirs the sea
+     With darkling sense of dawn ere dawn may be,
+     Kind sorrow, pity touched with gentler scorn,
+     Keen wit whose shafts were sunshafts of the morn,
+     Love winged with fancy, fancy thrilled with love,
+     An eagle's aim and ardour in a dove,
+     A man's delight and passion in a child,
+     Inform it as when first they wept and smiled.
+     Life, soiled and rent and ringed about with pain
+     Whose touch lent action less of spur than chain,
+     Left half the happiness his birth designed,
+     And half the power, unquenched in heart and mind.
+     Comrade and comforter, sublime in shame,
+     A poor man bound in prison whence he came
+     Poor, and took up the burden of his life
+     Smiling, and strong to strive with sorrow and strife,
+     He spake in England's ear the poor man's word,
+     Manful and mournful, deathless and unheard.
+     His kind great heart was fire, and love's own fire,
+     Compassion, strong as flesh may feel desire,
+     To enkindle pity and mercy toward a soul
+     Sunk down in shame too deep for shame's control.
+     His kind keen eye was light to lighten hope
+     Where no man else might see life's darkness ope
+     And pity's touch bring forth from evil good,
+     Sweet as forgiveness, strong as fatherhood.
+     Names higher than his outshine it and outsoar,
+     But none save one should memory cherish more:
+     Praise and thanksgiving crown the names above,
+     But him we give the gift he gave us, love.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO THE DUCHESS OF MALFY
+
+
+     When Shakespeare soared from life to death, above
+     All praise, all adoration, save of love,
+     As here on earth above all men he stood
+     That were or are or shall be--great, and good,
+     Past thank or thought of England or of man--
+     Light from the sunset quickened as it ran.
+     His word, who sang as never man may sing
+     And spake as never voice of man may ring,
+     Not fruitless fell, as seed on sterile ways,
+     But brought forth increase even to Shakespeare's praise.
+     Our skies were thrilled and filled, from sea to sea,
+     With stars outshining all their suns to be.
+     No later light of tragic song they knew
+     Like his whose lightning clove the sunset through.
+     Half Shakespeare's glory, when his hand sublime
+     Bade all the change of tragic life and time
+     Live, and outlive all date of quick and dead,
+     Fell, rested, and shall rest on Webster's head.
+     Round him the shadows cast on earth by light
+     Rose, changed, and shone, transfiguring death and night.
+     Where evil only crawled and hissed and slew
+     On ways where nought save shame and bloodshed grew,
+     He bade the loyal light of honour live,
+     And love, when stricken through the heart, forgive.
+     Deep down the midnight of the soul of sin
+     He lit the star of mercy throned therein.
+     High up the darkness of sublime despair
+     He set the sun of love to triumph there.
+     Things foul or frail his touch made strong and pure,
+     And bade things transient like to stars endure.
+     Terror, on wings whose flight made night in heaven,
+     Pity, with hands whence life took love for leaven,
+     Breathed round him music whence his mortal breath
+     Drew life that bade forgetfulness and death
+     Die: life that bids his light of fiery fame
+     Endure with England's, yea, with Shakespeare's name.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY
+
+
+     Fire, and behind the breathless flight of fire
+     Thunder that quickens fear and quells desire,
+     Make bright and loud the terror of the night
+     Wherein the soul sees only wrath for light.
+     Wrath winged by love and sheathed by grief in steel
+     Sets on the front of crime death's withering seal.
+     The heaving horror of the storms of sin
+     Brings forth in fear the lightning hid therein,
+     And flashes back to darkness: truth, found pure
+     And perfect, asks not heaven if shame endure.
+     What life and death were his whose raging song
+     Bore heaven such witness of the wild world's wrong,
+     What hand was this that grasped such thunder, none
+     Knows: night and storm seclude him from the sun.
+     By daytime none discerns the fire of Mars:
+     Deep darkness bares to sight the sterner stars,
+     The lights whose dawn seems doomsday. None may tell
+     Whence rose a world so lit from heaven and hell.
+     Life-wasting love, hate born of raging lust,
+     Fierce retribution, fed with death's own dust
+     And sorrow's pampering poison, cross and meet,
+     And wind the world in passion's winding-sheet.
+     So, when dark faith in faith's dark ages heard
+     Falsehood, and drank the poison of the Word,
+     Two shades misshapen came to monstrous birth,
+     A father fiend in heaven, a thrall on earth:
+     Man, meanest born of beasts that press the sod,
+     And die: the vilest of his creatures, God.
+     A judge unjust, a slave that praised his name,
+     Made life and death one fire of sin and shame.
+     And thence reverberate even on Shakespeare's age
+     A light like darkness crossed his sunbright stage.
+     Music, sublime as storm or sorrow, sang
+     Before it: tempest like a harpstring rang.
+     The fiery shadow of a name unknown
+     Rose, and in song's high heaven abides alone.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO THE BROKEN HEART
+
+
+     The mightiest choir of song that memory hears
+     Gave England voice for fifty lustrous years.
+     Sunrise and thunder fired and shook the skies
+     That saw the sun-god Marlowe's opening eyes.
+     The morn's own music, answered of the sea,
+     Spake, when his living lips bade Shakespeare be,
+     And England, made by Shakespeare's quickening breath
+     Divine and deathless even till life be death,
+     Brought forth to time such godlike sons of men
+     That shamefaced love grows pride, and now seems then.
+     Shame that their day so shone, so sang, so died,
+     Remembering, finds remembrance one with pride.
+     That day was clouding toward a stormlit close
+     When Ford's red sphere upon the twilight rose.
+     Sublime with stars and sunset fire, the sky
+     Glowed as though day, nigh dead, should never die.
+     Sorrow supreme and strange as chance or doom
+     Shone, spake, and shuddered through the lustrous gloom.
+     Tears lit with love made all the darkening air
+     Bright as though death's dim sunrise thrilled it there
+     And life re-risen took comfort. Stern and still
+     As hours and years that change and anguish fill,
+     The strong secluded spirit, ere it woke,
+     Dwelt dumb till power possessed it, and it spoke.
+     Strange, calm, and sure as sense of beast or bird,
+     Came forth from night the thought that breathed the word;
+     That chilled and thrilled with passion-stricken breath
+     Halls where Calantha trod the dance of death.
+     A strength of soul too passionately pure
+     To change for aught that horror bids endure,
+     To quail and wail and weep faint life away
+     Ere sovereign sorrow smite, relent, and slay,
+     Sustained her silent, till her bridal bloom
+     Changed, smiled, and waned in rapture toward the tomb.
+     Terror twin-born with pity kissed and thrilled
+     The lips that Shakespeare's word or Webster's filled:
+     Here both, cast out, fell silent: pity shrank,
+     Rebuked, and terror, spirit-stricken, sank:
+     The soul assailed arose afar above
+     All reach of all but only death and love.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO A VERY WOMAN
+
+
+     Swift music made of passion's changeful power,
+     Sweet as the change that leaves the world in flower
+     When spring laughs winter down to deathward, rang
+     From grave and gracious lips that smiled and sang
+     When Massinger, too wise for kings to hear
+     And learn of him truth, wisdom, faith, or fear,
+     Gave all his gentler heart to love's light lore,
+     That grief might brood and scorn breed wrath no more.
+     Soft, bright, fierce, tender, fitful, truthful, sweet,
+     A shrine where faith and change might smile and meet,
+     A soul whose music could but shift its tune
+     As when the lustrous year turns May to June
+     And spring subsides in summer, so makes good
+     Its perfect claim to very womanhood.
+     The heart that hate of wrong made fire, the hand
+     Whose touch was fire as keen as shame's own brand
+     When fraud and treason, swift to smile and sting,
+     Crowned and discrowned a tyrant, knave or king,
+     False each and ravenous as the fitful sea,
+     Grew gently glad as love that fear sets free.
+     Like eddying ripples that the wind restrains,
+     The bright words whisper music ere it wanes.
+     Ere fades the sovereign sound of song that rang
+     As though the sun to match the sea's tune sang,
+     When noon from dawn took life and light, and time
+     Shone, seeing how Shakespeare made the world sublime,
+     Ere sinks the wind whose breath was heaven's and day's,
+     The sunset's witness gives the sundawn praise.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO THE SPANISH GIPSY
+
+
+     The wind that brings us from the springtide south
+     Strange music as from love's or life's own mouth
+     Blew hither, when the blast of battle ceased
+     That swept back southward Spanish prince and priest,
+     A sound more sweet than April's flower-sweet rain,
+     And bade bright England smile on pardoned Spain.
+     The land that cast out Philip and his God
+     Grew gladly subject where Cervantes trod.
+     Even he whose name above all names on earth
+     Crowns England queen by grace of Shakespeare's birth
+     Might scarce have scorned to smile in God's wise down
+     And gild with praise from heaven an earthlier crown.
+     And he whose hand bade live down lengthening years
+     Quixote, a name lit up with smiles and tears,
+     Gave the glad watchword of the gipsies' life,
+     Where fear took hope and grief took joy to wife.
+     Times change, and fame is fitful as the sea:
+     But sunset bids not darkness always be,
+     And still some light from Shakespeare and the sun
+     Burns back the cloud that masks not Middleton.
+     With strong swift strokes of love and wrath he drew
+     Shakespearean London's loud and lusty crew:
+     No plainer might the likeness rise and stand
+     When Hogarth took his living world in hand.
+     No surer then his fire-fledged shafts could hit,
+     Winged with as forceful and as faithful wit:
+     No truer a tragic depth and heat of heart
+     Glowed through the painter's than the poet's art.
+     He lit and hung in heaven the wan fierce moon
+     Whose glance kept time with witchcraft's air-struck tune:
+     He watched the doors where loveless love let in
+     The pageant hailed and crowned by death and sin:
+     He bared the souls where love, twin-born with hate,
+     Made wide the way for passion-fostered fate.
+     All English-hearted, all his heart arose
+     To scourge with scorn his England's cowering foes:
+     And Rome and Spain, who bade their scorner be
+     Their prisoner, left his heart as England's free.
+     Now give we all we may of all his due
+     To one long since thus tried and found thus true.
+
+
+
+
+     PROLOGUE TO THE TWO NOBLE KINSMEN
+
+
+     Sweet as the dewfall, splendid as the south,
+     Love touched with speech Boccaccio's golden mouth,
+     Joy thrilled and filled its utterance full with song,
+     And sorrow smiled on doom that wrought no wrong.
+     A starrier lustre of lordlier music rose
+     Beyond the sundering bar of seas and snows
+     When Chaucer's thought took life and light from his
+     And England's crown was one with Italy's.
+     Loftiest and last, by grace of Shakespeare's word,
+     Arose above their quiring spheres a third,
+     Arose, and flashed, and faltered: song's deep sky
+     Saw Shakespeare pass in light, in music die.
+     No light like his, no music, man might give
+     To bid the darkened sphere, left songless, live.
+     Soft though the sound of Fletcher's rose and rang
+     And lit the lunar darkness as it sang,
+     Below the singing stars the cloud-crossed moon
+     Gave back the sunken sun's a trembling tune.
+     As when at highest high tide the sovereign sea
+     Pauses, and patience doubts if passion be,
+     Till gradual ripples ebb, recede, recoil,
+     Shine, smile, and whisper, laughing as they toil,
+     Stark silence fell, at turn of fate's high tide,
+     Upon his broken song when Shakespeare died,
+     Till Fletcher's light sweet speech took heart to say
+     What evening, should it speak for morning, may.
+     And fourfold now the gradual glory shines
+     That shows once more in heaven two twinborn signs,
+     Two brethren stars whose light no cloud may fret,
+     No soul whereon their story dawns forget.
+
+
+
+
+     THE AFTERGLOW OF SHAKESPEARE
+
+
+     Let there be light, said Time: and England heard:
+     And manhood grew to godhead at the word.
+     No light had shone, since earth arose from sleep,
+     So far; no fire of thought had cloven so deep.
+     A day beyond all days bade life acclaim
+     Shakespeare: and man put on his crowning name.
+     All secrets once through darkling ages kept
+     Shone, sang, and smiled to think how long they slept.
+     Man rose past fear of lies whereon he trod:
+     And Dante's ghost saw hell devour his God.
+     Bright Marlowe, brave as winds that brave the sea
+     When sundawn bids their bliss in battle be,
+     Lit England first along the ways whereon
+     Song brighter far than sunlight soared and shone.
+     He died ere half his life had earned his right
+     To lighten time with song's triumphant light.
+     Hope shrank, and felt the stroke at heart: but one
+     She knew not rose, a man to match the sun.
+     And England's hope and time's and man's became
+     Joy, deep as music's heart and keen as flame.
+     Not long, for heaven on earth may live not long,
+     Light sang, and darkness died before the song.
+     He passed, the man above all men, whose breath
+     Transfigured life with speech that lightens death.
+     He passed: but yet for many a lustrous year
+     His light of song bade England shine and hear.
+     As plague and fire and faith in falsehood spread,
+     So from the man of men, divine and dead,
+     Contagious godhead, seen, unknown, and heard,
+     Fulfilled and quickened England; thought and word,
+     When men would fain set life to music, grew
+     More sweet than years which knew not Shakespeare knew.
+     The simplest soul that set itself to song
+     Sang, and may fear not time's or change's wrong.
+     The lightest eye that glanced on life could see
+     Through grief and joy the God that man might be.
+     All passion whence the living soul takes fire
+     Till death fulfil despair and quench desire,
+     All love that lightens through the cloud of chance,
+     All hate that lurks in hope and smites askance,
+     All holiness of sorrow, all divine
+     Pity, whose tears are stars that save and shine,
+     All sunbright strength of laughter like the sea's
+     When spring and autumn loose their lustrous breeze,
+     All sweet, all strange, all sad, all glorious things,
+     Lived on his lips, and hailed him king of kings.
+     All thought, all strife, all anguish, all delight,
+     Spake all he bade, and speak till day be night.
+     No soul that heard, no spirit that beheld,
+     Knew not the God that lured them and compelled.
+     On Beaumont's brow the sun arisen afar
+     Shed fire which lit through heaven the younger star
+     That sank before the sunset: one dark spring
+     Slew first the kinglike subject, then the king.
+     The glory left above their graves made strong
+     The heart of Fletcher, till the flower-sweet song
+     That Shakespeare culled from Chaucer's field, and died,
+     Found ending on his lips that smiled and sighed.
+     From Dekker's eyes the light of tear-touched mirth
+     Shone as from Shakespeare's, mingling heaven and earth.
+     Wild witchcraft's lure and England's love made one
+     With Shakespeare's heart the heart of Middleton.
+     Harsh, homely, true, and tragic, Rowley told
+     His heart's debt down in rough and radiant gold.
+     The skies that Tourneur's lightning clove and rent
+     Flamed through the clouds where Shakespeare's thunder went.
+     Wise Massinger bade kings be wise in vain
+     Ere war bade song, storm-stricken, cower and wane.
+     Kind Heywood, simple-souled and single-eyed,
+     Found voice for England's home-born praise and pride.
+     Strange grief, strange love, strange terror, bared the sword
+     That smote the soul by grace and will of Ford.
+     The stern grim strength of Chapman's thought found speech
+     Loud as when storm at ebb-tide rends the beach:
+     And all the honey brewed from flowers in May
+     Made sweet the lips and bright the dreams of Day.
+     But even as Shakespeare caught from Marlowe's word
+     Fire, so from his the thunder-bearing third,
+     Webster, took light and might whence none but he
+     Hath since made song that sounded so the sea
+     Whose waves are lives of men--whose tidestream rolls
+     From year to darkening year the freight of souls.
+     Alone above it, sweet, supreme, sublime,
+     Shakespeare attunes the jarring chords of time;
+     Alone of all whose doom is death and birth,
+     Shakespeare is lord of souls alive on earth.
+
+
+
+
+     CLEOPATRA
+
+     "Her beauty might outface the jealous hours,
+     Turn shame to love and pain to a tender sleep,
+     And the strong nerve of hate to sloth and tears;
+     Make spring rebellious in the sides of frost,
+     Thrust out lank winter with hot August growths,
+     Compel sweet blood into the husks of death,
+     And from strange beasts enforce harsh courtesy."
+
+                      T. HAYMAN, _Fall of Antony_, 1655.
+
+
+
+
+     CLEOPATRA
+
+
+     I
+
+     Her mouth is fragrant as a vine,
+       A vine with birds in all its boughs;
+     Serpent and scarab for a sign
+       Between the beauty of her brows
+     And the amorous deep lids divine.
+
+
+     II
+
+     Her great curled hair makes luminous
+       Her cheeks, her lifted throat and chin
+     Shall she not have the hearts of us
+       To shatter, and the loves therein
+     To shred between her fingers thus?
+
+
+     III
+
+     Small ruined broken strays of light,
+       Pearl after pearl she shreds them through
+     Her long sweet sleepy fingers, white
+       As any pearl's heart veined with blue,
+     And soft as dew on a soft night.
+
+
+     IV
+
+     As if the very eyes of love
+       Shone through her shutting lids, and stole
+     The slow looks of a snake or dove;
+       As if her lips absorbed the whole
+     Of love, her soul the soul thereof.
+
+
+     V
+
+     Lost, all the lordly pearls that were
+       Wrung from the sea's heart, from the green
+     Coasts of the Indian gulf-river;
+       Lost, all the loves of the world--so keen
+     Towards this queen for love of her.
+
+
+     VI
+
+     You see against her throat the small
+       Sharp glittering shadows of them shake;
+     And through her hair the imperial
+       Curled likeness of the river snake,
+     Whose bite shall make an end of all.
+
+
+     VII
+
+     Through the scales sheathing him like wings,
+       Through hieroglyphs of gold and gem,
+     The strong sense of her beauty stings,
+       Like a keen pulse of love in them,
+     A running flame through all his rings.
+
+
+     VIII
+
+     Under those low large lids of hers
+       She hath the histories of all time;
+     The fruit of foliage-stricken years;
+       The old seasons with their heavy chime
+     That leaves its rhyme in the world's ears.
+
+
+     IX
+
+     She sees the hand of death made bare,
+       The ravelled riddle of the skies,
+     The faces faded that were fair,
+       The mouths made speechless that were wise,
+     The hollow eyes and dusty hair;
+
+
+     X
+
+     The shape and shadow of mystic things,
+       Things that fate fashions or forbids;
+     The staff of time-forgotten Kings
+       Whose name falls off the Pyramids,
+     Their coffin-lids and grave-clothings;
+
+
+     XI
+
+     Dank dregs, the scum of pool or clod,
+       God-spawn of lizard-footed clans,
+     And those dog-headed hulks that trod
+       Swart necks of the old Egyptians,
+     Raw draughts of man's beginning God;
+
+
+     XII
+
+     The poised hawk, quivering ere he smote,
+       With plume-like gems on breast and back;
+     The asps and water-worms afloat
+       Between the rush-flowers moist and slack;
+     The cat's warm black bright rising throat.
+
+
+     XIII
+
+     The purple days of drouth expand
+       Like a scroll opened out again;
+     The molten heaven drier than sand,
+       The hot red heaven without rain,
+     Sheds iron pain on the empty land.
+
+
+     XIV
+
+     All Egypt aches in the sun's sight;
+       The lips of men are harsh for drouth,
+     The fierce air leaves their cheeks burnt white,
+       Charred by the bitter blowing south,
+     Whose dusty mouth is sharp to bite.
+
+
+     XV
+
+     All this she dreams of, and her eyes
+       Are wrought after the sense hereof.
+     There is no heart in her for sighs;
+       The face of her is more than love--
+     A name above the Ptolemies.
+
+
+     XVI
+
+     Her great grave beauty covers her
+       As that sleek spoil beneath her feet
+     Clothed once the anointed soothsayer;
+       The hallowing is gone forth from it
+     Now, made unmeet for priests to wear.
+
+
+     XVII
+
+     She treads on gods and god-like things,
+       On fate and fear and life and death,
+     On hate that cleaves and love that clings,
+       All that is brought forth of man's breath
+     And perisheth with what it brings.
+
+
+     XVIII
+
+     She holds her future close, her lips
+       Hold fast the face of things to be;
+     Actium, and sound of war that dips
+       Down the blown valleys of the sea,
+     Far sails that flee, and storms of ships;
+
+
+     XIX
+
+     The laughing red sweet mouth of wine
+       At ending of life's festival;
+     That spice of cerecloths, and the fine
+       White bitter dust funereal
+     Sprinkled on all things for a sign;
+
+
+     XX
+
+     His face, who was and was not he,
+       In whom, alive, her life abode;
+     The end, when she gained heart to see
+       Those ways of death wherein she trod,
+     Goddess by god, with Antony.
+
+
+
+
+     DEDICATION
+
+
+
+
+     DEDICATION
+
+
+     The sea that is life everlasting
+       And death everlasting as life
+     Abides not a pilot's forecasting,
+       Foretells not of peace or of strife.
+     The might of the night that was hidden
+       Arises and darkens the day,
+     A glory rebuked and forbidden,
+       Time's crown, and his prey.
+
+     No sweeter, no kindlier, no fairer,
+       No lovelier a soul from its birth
+     Wore ever a brighter and rarer
+       Life's raiment for life upon earth
+     Than his who enkindled and cherished
+       Art's vestal and luminous flame,
+     That dies not when kingdoms have perished
+       In storm or in shame.
+
+     No braver, no trustier, no purer,
+       No stronger and clearer a soul
+     Bore witness more splendid and surer
+       For manhood found perfect and whole
+     Since man was a warrior and dreamer
+       Than his who in hatred of wrong
+     Would fain have arisen a redeemer
+       By sword or by song.
+
+     Twin brethren in spirit, immortal
+       As art and as love, which were one
+     For you from the birthday whose portal
+       First gave you to sight of the sun,
+     To-day nor to-night nor to-morrow
+       May bring you again from above,
+     Drawn down by the spell of the sorrow
+       Whose anguish is love.
+
+     No light rearising hereafter
+       Shall lighten us here as of old
+     When seasons were lustrous as laughter
+       Of waves that are snowshine and gold.
+     The dawn that imbues and enkindles
+       Life's fluctuant and fugitive sea
+     Dies down as the starshine that dwindles
+       And cares not to be.
+
+     Men, mightier than death which divides us,
+       Friends, dearer than sorrow can say,
+     The light that is darkness and hides us
+       Awhile from each other away
+     Abides but awhile and endures not,
+       We know, though the day be as night,
+     For souls that forgetfulness lures not
+       Till sleep be in sight.
+
+     The sleep that enfolds you, the slumber
+       Supreme and eternal on earth,
+     Whence ages of numberless number
+       Shall bring us not back into birth,
+     We know not indeed if it be not
+       What no man hath known if it be,
+     Life, quickened with light that we see not
+       If spirits may see.
+
+     The love that would see and would know it
+       Is even as the love of a child.
+     But the fire of the fame of the poet
+       Who gazed on the past, and it smiled,
+     But the light of the fame of the painter
+       Whose hand was as morning's in May,
+     Death bids not be darker or fainter,
+       Time casts not away.
+
+     We, left of them loveless and lonely,
+       Who lived in the light of their love,
+     Whose darkness desires it, we only,
+       Who see them afar and above,
+     So far, if we die not, above us,
+       So lately no dearer than near,
+     May know not of death if they love us,
+       Of night if they hear.
+
+     We, stricken and darkling and living,
+       Who loved them and love them, abide
+     A day, and the gift of its giving,
+       An hour, and the turn of its tide,
+     When twilight and midnight and morrow
+       Shall pass from the sight of the sun,
+     And death be forgotten, and sorrow
+       Discrowned and undone.
+
+     For us as for these will the breathless
+       Brief minute arise and pass by:
+     And if death be not utterly deathless,
+       If love do not utterly die,
+     From the life that is quenched as an ember
+       The soul that aspires as a flame
+     Can choose not but wholly remember
+       Love, lovelier than fame.
+
+     Though sure be the seal of their glory
+       And fairer no fame upon earth,
+     Though never a leaf shall grow hoary
+       Of the crowns that were given them at birth,
+     While time as a vassal doth duty
+       To names that he towers not above,
+     More perfect in price and in beauty
+       For ever is love.
+
+     The night is upon us, and anguish
+       Of longing that yearns for the dead.
+     But mourners that faint not or languish,
+       That veil not and bow not the head,
+     Take comfort to heart if a token
+       Be given them of comfort to be:
+     While darkness on earth is unbroken,
+       Light lives on the sea.
+
+
+PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE, BALLANTYNE AND CO. LTD.
+
+LONDON, COLCHESTER AND ETON
+
+
+
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+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Channel Passage and Other Poems, by
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