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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/24363-h.zip b/24363-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..d82d91e --- /dev/null +++ b/24363-h.zip diff --git a/24363-h/24363-h.htm b/24363-h/24363-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..00a6126 --- /dev/null +++ b/24363-h/24363-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1863 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Song of the Sword</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.headingsummary { margin-left: 5%;} + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Song of the Sword, by W. E. Henley</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Song of the Sword, by W. E. Henley + + +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: The Song of the Sword + and Other Verses + + +Author: W. E. Henley + + + +Release Date: January 18, 2008 [eBook #24363] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF THE SWORD*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1892 David Nutt edition by David Price, +email ccx074@pglaf.org</p> +<h1>THE SONG<br /> +OF THE SWORD<br /> +<span class="smcap">and other verses</span></h1> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">by</span></p> +<p style="text-align: center">W. E. HENLEY</p> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +Published by DAVID NUTT<br /> +in the Strand<br /> +1892</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page vii--><a +name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vii</span>To R. T. +Hamilton-Bruce</p> +<p><i>Edinburgh</i>, <i>Mar.</i> 17, 1892</p> +<p style="text-align: center"><!-- page xii--><a +name="pagexii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xii</span><i>With +three exceptions</i>, <i>these numbers have appeared in</i> +‘<i>The National Observer</i>,’ <i>by permission of +whose proprietors they are here reprinted</i>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 1--><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +1</span>THE SONG OF THE SWORD<br /> +(To Rudyard Kipling)</h2> +<p><!-- page 3--><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +3</span><i>The Sword</i><br /> +<i>Singing</i>—<br /> +<i>The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword</i><br /> +<i>Clanging imperious</i><br /> +<i>Forth from Time’s battlements</i><br /> +<i>His ancient and triumphing Song</i>.</p> +<p>In the beginning,<br /> +Ere God inspired Himself<br /> +Into the clay thing<br /> +Thumbed to His image,<br /> +The vacant, the naked shell<br /> +Soon to be Man:<br /> +<!-- page 4--><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +4</span>Thoughtful He pondered it,<br /> +Prone there and impotent,<br /> +Fragile, inviting<br /> +Attack and discomfiture:<br /> +Then, with a smile—<br /> +As He heard in the Thunder<br /> +That laughed over Eden<br /> +The voice of the Trumpet,<br /> +The iron Beneficence,<br /> +Calling His dooms<br /> +To the Winds of the world—<br /> +Stooping, He drew<br /> +On the sand with His finger<br /> +A shape for a sign<br /> +Of His way to the eyes<br /> +That in wonder should waken,<br /> +For a proof of His will<br /> +To the breaking intelligence:<br /> +<!-- page 5--><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +5</span>That was the birth of me:<br /> +I am the Sword.</p> +<p>Hard and bleak, keen and cruel,<br /> +Short-hilted, long-shafted,<br /> +I froze into steel:<br /> +And the blood of my elder,<br /> +His hand on the hafts of me,<br /> +Sprang like a wave<br /> +In the wind, as the sense<br /> +Of his strength grew to ecstasy,<br /> +Glowed like a coal<br /> +At the throat of the furnace,<br /> +As he knew me and named me<br /> +The War-Thing, the Comrade,<br /> +Father of honour<br /> +And giver of kingship,<br /> +The fame-smith, the song-master,<br /> +<!-- page 6--><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +6</span>Bringer of women<br /> +On fire at his hands<br /> +For the pride of fulfilment,<br /> +<i>Priest</i> (saith the Lord)<br /> +<i>Of his marriage with victory</i>.<br /> +Ho! then, the Trumpet,<br /> +Handmaid of heroes,<br /> +Calling the peers<br /> +To the place of espousal!<br /> +Ho! then, the splendour<br /> +And sheen of my ministry,<br /> +Clothing the earth<br /> +With a livery of lightnings!<br /> +Ho! then, the music<br /> +Of battles in onset<br /> +And ruining armours,<br /> +And God’s gift returning<br /> +In fury to God!<br /> +<!-- page 7--><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +7</span>Glittering and keen<br /> +As the song of the winter stars,<br /> +Ho! then, the sound<br /> +Of my voice, the implacable<br /> +Angel of Destiny!—<br /> +I am the Sword.</p> +<p>Heroes, my children,<br /> +Follow, O follow me,<br /> +Follow, exulting<br /> +In the great light that breaks<br /> +From the sacred companionship:<br /> +Thrust through the fatuous,<br /> +Thrust through the fungous brood<br /> +Spawned in my shadow<br /> +And gross with my gift!<br /> +Thrust through, and hearken,<br /> +O hark, to the Trumpet,<br /> +<!-- page 8--><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +8</span>The Virgin of Battles,<br /> +Calling, still calling you<br /> +Into the Presence,<br /> +Sons of the Judgment,<br /> +Pure wafts of the Will!<br /> +Edged to annihilate,<br /> +Hilted with government,<br /> +Follow, O follow me<br /> +Till the waste places<br /> +All the grey globe over<br /> +Ooze, as the honeycomb<br /> +Drips, with the sweetness<br /> +Distilled of my strength:<br /> +And, teeming in peace<br /> +Through the wrath of my coming,<br /> +They give back in beauty<br /> +The dread and the anguish<br /> +They had of me visitant!<br /> +<!-- page 9--><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +9</span>Follow, O follow, then,<br /> +Heroes, my harvesters!<br /> +Where the tall grain is ripe<br /> +Thrust in your sickles:<br /> +Stripped and adust<br /> +In a stubble of empire,<br /> +Scything and binding<br /> +The full sheaves of sovranty:<br /> +Thus, O thus gloriously,<br /> +Shall you fulfil yourselves:<br /> +Thus, O thus mightily,<br /> +Show yourselves sons of mine—<br /> +Yea, and win grace of me:<br /> +I am the Sword.</p> +<p>I am the feast-maker:<br /> +Hark, through a noise<br /> +Of the screaming of eagles,<br /> +<!-- page 10--><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +10</span>Hark how the Trumpet,<br /> +The mistress of mistresses,<br /> +Calls, silver-throated<br /> +And stern, where the tables<br /> +Are spread, and the work<br /> +Of the Lord is in hand!<br /> +Driving the darkness,<br /> +Even as the banners<br /> +And spears of the Morning;<br /> +Sifting the nations,<br /> +The slag from the metal,<br /> +The waste and the weak<br /> +From the fit and the strong;<br /> +Fighting the brute,<br /> +The abysmal Fecundity;<br /> +Checking the gross,<br /> +Multitudinous blunders,<br /> +The groping, the purblind<br /> +<!-- page 11--><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +11</span>Excesses in service,<br /> +Of the Womb universal,<br /> +The absolute Drudge;<br /> +Changing the charactry<br /> +Carved on the World,<br /> +The miraculous gem<br /> +In the seal-ring that burns<br /> +On the hand of the Master—<br /> +Yea! and authority<br /> +Flames through the dim,<br /> +Unappeasable Grisliness<br /> +Prone down the nethermost<br /> +Chasms of the Void;<br /> +Clear singing, clean slicing;<br /> +Sweet spoken, soft finishing;<br /> +Making death beautiful,<br /> +Life but a coin<br /> +To be staked in the pastime<br /> +<!-- page 12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +12</span>Whose playing is more<br /> +Than the transfer of being;<br /> +Arch-anarch, chief builder,<br /> +Prince and evangelist,<br /> +I am the Will of God:<br /> +I am the Sword.</p> +<p><i>The Sword</i><br /> +<i>Singing</i>—<br /> +<i>The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword</i><br /> +<i>Clanging majestical</i>,<br /> +<i>As from the starry-staired</i><br /> +<i>Courts of the primal Supremacy</i>,<br /> +<i>His high</i>, <i>irresistible song</i>.</p> +<h2><!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +13</span>LONDON<br /> +VOLUNTARIES<br /> +(To Charles Whibley)</h2> +<h3><!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +15</span>I</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Andante con mote</i></p> +<p>Forth from the dust and din,<br /> +The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,<br /> +The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,<br /> +The wrangle and jangle of unrests,<br /> +Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and win—<br /> +As from swart August to the green lap of May—<br /> +To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts<br /> +Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware<br /> +In any of her innumerable nests<br /> +Of that first sudden plash of dawn,<br /> +Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,<br /> +Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day<br /> +<!-- page 16--><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +16</span>In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn<br /> +Forward and up, in wider and wider way<br /> +Shall float the sands and brim the shores<br /> +On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars<br /> +And spins into the outlook of the Sun<br /> +(The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial +charge)<br /> +With light, with living light, from marge to marge,<br /> +Until the course He set and staked be run.</p> +<p>Through street and square, through square and street,<br /> +Each with his home-grown quality of dark<br /> +And violated silence, loud and fleet,<br /> +Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,<br /> +The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O hark,<br /> +Sweet, how the old mare’s bit and chain<br /> +<!-- page 17--><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +17</span>Ring back a rough refrain<br /> +Upon the marked and cheerful tramp<br /> +Of her four shoes! Here is the Park,<br /> +And O the languid midsummer wafts adust,<br /> +The tired midsummer blooms!<br /> +O the mysterious distances, the glooms<br /> +Romantic, the august<br /> +And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees<br /> +Tunis to a tryst of vague and strange<br /> +And monstrous Majesties,<br /> +Let loose from some dim underworld to range<br /> +These terrene vistas till their twilight sets:<br /> +When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand<br /> +Beggared and common, plain to all the land<br /> +For stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hour<br /> +Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power!<br /> +Still, still the streets, between their carcanets<br /> +<!-- page 18--><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +18</span>Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep:<br /> +But see how gable ends and parapets<br /> +In gradual beauty and significance<br /> +Emerge! And did you hear<br /> +That little twitter-and-cheep,<br /> +Breaking inordinately loud and clear<br /> +On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?<br /> +’Tis a first nest at matins! And behold<br /> +A rakehell cat—how furtive and acold!<br /> +A spent witch homing from some infamous dance—<br /> +Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade<br /> +Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade!<br /> +And lo! a little wind and shy,<br /> +The smell of ships (that earnest of romance),<br /> +A sense of space and water, and thereby<br /> +A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky.<br /> +And look, O look! a tangle of silver gleams<br /> +<!-- page 19--><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +19</span>And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams,<br /> +His dreams of a dead past that cannot die!</p> +<p>What miracle is happening in the air,<br /> +Charging the very texture of the gray<br /> +With something luminous and rare?<br /> +The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,<br /> +And, as one lights a candle, it is day.<br /> +The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire<br /> +On the formal little church is not yet green<br /> +Across the water: but the house-tops nigher,<br /> +The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean,<br /> +How new, how naked! See the batch of boats,<br /> +Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!<br /> +And those are barges that were goblin floats,<br /> +Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!<br /> +And in the piles the water frolics clear,<br /> +<!-- page 20--><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,<br /> +And we—we can behold that could but hear<br /> +The ancient River singing as he goes<br /> +New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea.<br /> +The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:<br /> +The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake,<br /> +And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take<br /> +His hobnailed way to work!<br /> + Let us too +pass:<br /> +Through these long blindfold rows<br /> +Of casements staring blind to right and left,<br /> +Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece<br /> +Of life in death’s own likeness—Life bereft<br /> +Of living looks as by the Great Release<br /> +(Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows),<br /> +Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows.</p> +<p>Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel,<br /> +<!-- page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +21</span>These colonies of dreams! And as we steal<br /> +Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze<br /> +That frolics at our heel,<br /> +Greeting the town with news of the summer seas,<br /> +We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are—<br /> +Be wandering some depopulated star,<br /> +Some world of memories and unbroken graves,<br /> +So broods the abounding Silence near and far:<br /> +Till even your footfall craves<br /> +Forgiveness of the majesty it braves.</p> +<h3><!-- page 22--><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +22</span>II</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Scherzando</i></p> +<p>Down through the ancient Strand<br /> +The Spirit of October, mild and boon<br /> +And sauntering, takes his way<br /> +This golden end of afternoon,<br /> +As though the corn stood yellow in all the land<br /> +And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.</p> +<p>Lo! the round sun, half down the western slope—<br /> +Seen as along an unglazed telescope—<br /> +Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:<br /> +Gifting the long, lean, lanky street<br /> +And its abounding confluences of being<br /> +With aspects generous and bland:<br /> +Making a thousand harnesses to shine<br /> +<!-- page 23--><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +23</span>As with new ore from some enchanted mine,<br /> +And every horse’s coat so full of sheen<br /> +He looks new-tailored, and every ’bus feels clean,<br /> +And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;<br /> +And every jeweller within the pale<br /> +Offers a real Arabian Night for sale;<br /> +And even the roar<br /> +Of the strong streams of toil that pause and pour<br /> +Eastward and westward sounds suffused—<br /> +Seems as it were bemused<br /> +And blurred, and like the speech<br /> +Of lazy seas upon a lotus-eating beach—<br /> +With this enchanted lustrousness,<br /> +This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caress<br /> +Brings back to some faded face beloved before<br /> +A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore<br /> +Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech)<br /> +Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless<br /> +<!-- page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more;<br /> +Till the sedate and mannered elegance<br /> +Of Clement’s is all tinctured with romance;<br /> +The while the fanciful, formal, finicking charm<br /> +Of Bride’s, that madrigal in stone,<br /> +Glows flushed and warm<br /> +And beauteous with a beauty not its own;<br /> +And the high majesty of Paul’s<br /> +Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls—<br /> +Calls to his millions to behold and see<br /> +How goodly this his London Town can be!</p> +<p>For earth and sky and air<br /> +Are golden everywhere,<br /> +And golden with a gold so suave and fine<br /> +The looking on it lifts the heart like wine.<br /> +Trafalgar Square<br /> +(The fountains volleying golden glaze)<br /> +<!-- page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +25</span>Gleams like an angel-market. High aloft<br /> +Over his couchant Lions in a haze<br /> +Shimmering and bland and soft,<br /> +A dust of chrysoprase,<br /> +Our Sailor takes the golden gaze<br /> +Of the saluting sun, and flames superb<br /> +As once he flamed it on his ocean round.<br /> +The dingy dreariness of the picture-place,<br /> +Turned very nearly bright,<br /> +Takes on a certain dismal grace,<br /> +And shows not all a scandal to the ground.<br /> +The very blind man pottering on the kerb,<br /> +Among the posies and the ostrich feathers<br /> +And the rude voices touched with all the weathers<br /> +Of all the varying year,<br /> +Shares in the universal alms of light.<br /> +The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires,<br /> +The height and spread of frontage shining sheer,<br /> +<!-- page 26--><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and +spires—<br /> +’Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain,<br /> +The Golden City! And when a girl goes by,<br /> +Look! as she turns her glancing head,<br /> +A call of gold is floated from her ear!<br /> +Golden, all golden! In a golden glory,<br /> +Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky,<br /> +The day not dies but seems<br /> +Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed<br /> +Upon a past of golden song and story<br /> +And memories of gold and golden dreams.</p> +<h3><!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +27</span>III</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Largo e mesto</i></p> +<p>Out of the poisonous East,<br /> +Over a continent of blight,<br /> +Like a maleficent Influence released<br /> +From the most squalid cellarage of hell,<br /> +The Wind-Fiend, the abominable—<br /> +The hangman wind that tortures temper and light—<br /> +Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,<br /> +Hard on the skirts of the embittered night:<br /> +And in a cloud unclean<br /> +Of excremental humours, roused to strife<br /> +By the operation of some ruinous change<br /> +Wherever his evil mandate run and range<br /> +Into a dire intensity of life,<br /> +<!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +28</span>A craftsman at his bench, he settles down<br /> +To the grim job of throttling London Town.</p> +<p>And, by a jealous lightlessness beset<br /> +That might have oppressed the dragons of old time<br /> +Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime,<br /> +A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams,<br /> +Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet,<br /> +The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark<br /> +In shameful occultation, seems<br /> +A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting,<br /> +With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting<br /> +Rent in the stuff of a material dark<br /> +Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale,<br /> +Shows like the leper’s living blotch of bale:<br /> +Uncoiling monstrous into street on street<br /> +<!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +29</span>Paven with perils, teeming with mischance,<br /> +Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread,<br /> +Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet<br /> +Somewhither in the hideousness ahead;<br /> +Working through wicked airs and deadly dews<br /> +That make the laden robber grin askance<br /> +At the good places in his black romance,<br /> +And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose<br /> +Go pinched and pined to bed<br /> +Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way<br /> +From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey.</p> +<p>Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows,<br /> +His green garlands and windy eyots forgot,<br /> +The old Father-River flows,<br /> +His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom,<br /> +As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore,<br /> +Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides,<br /> +<!-- page 30--><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +30</span>Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot<br /> +In the squalor of the universal shore:<br /> +His voices sounding through the gruesome air<br /> +As from the ferry where the Boat of Doom<br /> +With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides:<br /> +The while his children, the brave ships,<br /> +No more adventurous and fair<br /> +Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides,<br /> +But infamously enchanted,<br /> +Huddle together in the foul eclipse,<br /> +Or feel their course by inches desperately,<br /> +As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted,<br /> +From sinister reach to reach—out—out—to +sea.</p> +<p>And Death the while—<br /> +Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile,<br /> +Death in his threadbare working trim—<br /> +<!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +31</span>Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland,<br /> +And with expert, inevitable hand<br /> +Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung,<br /> +Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:<br /> +Thus signifying unto old and young,<br /> +However hard of mouth or wild of whim,<br /> +’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient +watch—to part<br /> +With books and women and talk and drink and art:<br /> +And you go humbly after him<br /> +To a mean suburban lodging: on the way<br /> +To what or where<br /> +Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say:<br /> +And you—how should you care<br /> +So long as, unreclaimed of hell,<br /> +The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable,<br /> +Thus vicious and thus patient sits him down<br /> +To the black job of burking London Town?</p> +<h3><!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +32</span>IV</h3> +<p style="text-align: right"><i>Allegro maëstoso</i></p> +<p>Spring winds that blow<br /> +As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may;<br /> +Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow,<br /> +Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglow<br /> +With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay,<br /> +What makes this insolent and comely stream<br /> +Of appetence, this freshet of desire<br /> +(Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!),<br /> +Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam<br /> +In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre?<br /> +Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn<br /> +The wealth of her enchanted urn<br /> +Till, over-billowing all between<br /> +<!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +33</span>Her cheerful margents grey and living green,<br /> +It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing,<br /> +An estuary of the joy of being?<br /> +Why should the buxom leafage of the Park<br /> +Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing?<br /> +—As if my paramour, my bride of brides,<br /> +Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides<br /> +In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark,<br /> +Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade,<br /> +In the divine conviction robed and crowned<br /> +The globe fulfils his immemorial round<br /> +But as the marrying-place of all things made!</p> +<p>There is no man, this deifying day,<br /> +But feels the primal blessing in his blood.<br /> +The sacred impulse of the May<br /> +Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins,<br /> +<!-- page 34--><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +34</span>There is no woman but disdains<br /> +To vail the ensigns of her womanhood.<br /> +None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes,<br /> +Bounteous in looks of her delicious best,<br /> +On her inviolable quest:<br /> +These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those,<br /> +But all desirable and frankly fair,<br /> +As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst,<br /> +And in the knowledge went imparadised.<br /> +For look! a magical influence everywhere,<br /> +Look how the liberal and transfiguring air<br /> +Washes this inn of memorable meetings,<br /> +This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings,<br /> +Till, through its jocund loveliness of length<br /> +A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,<br /> +A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,<br /> +It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,<br /> +<!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +35</span>Some vision multitudinous and agleam,<br /> +Of happiness as it shall be evermore!</p> +<p>Praise God for giving<br /> +Through this His messenger among the days<br /> +His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living!<br /> +For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan—<br /> +Not dead, not dead, as dreamers feigned,<br /> +But the lush genius of a million Mays<br /> +Renewing his beneficent endeavour!—<br /> +Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned<br /> +Since in the dim blue dawn of time<br /> +The universal ebb-and-flow began,<br /> +To sound his ancient music, and prevails<br /> +By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme<br /> +Here in this radiant and immortal street<br /> +Lavishly and omnipotently as ever<br /> +<!-- page 36--><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +36</span>In the open hills, the undissembling dales,<br /> +The laughing-places of the juvenile earth.<br /> +For lo! the wills of man and woman meet,<br /> +Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared<br /> +As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell,<br /> +To share his shameless, elemental mirth<br /> +In one great act of faith, while deep and strong,<br /> +Incomparably nerved and cheered,<br /> +The enormous heart of London joys to beat<br /> +To the measures of his rough, majestic song:<br /> +The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell<br /> +That keeps the rolling universe ensphered<br /> +And life and all for which life lives to long<br /> +Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.</p> +<h2><!-- page 37--><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +37</span>RHYMES<br /> +AND RHYTHMS</h2> +<h3><!-- page 39--><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +39</span>I</h3> +<p>Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade<br /> +On desolate sea and lonely sand,<br /> +Out of the silence and the shade<br /> +What is the voice of strange command<br /> +Calling you still, as friend calls friend<br /> +With love that cannot brook delay,<br /> +To rise and follow the ways that wend<br /> +Over the hills and far away?</p> +<p>Hark in the city, street on street<br /> +A roaring reach of death and life,<br /> +Of vortices that clash and fleet<br /> +And ruin in appointed strife,<br /> +<!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +40</span>Hark to it calling, calling clear,<br /> +Calling until you cannot stay<br /> +From dearer things than your own most dear<br /> +Over the hills and far away.</p> +<p>Out of the sound of ebb and flow,<br /> +Out of the sight of lamp and star,<br /> +It calls you where the good winds blow,<br /> +And the unchanging meadows are:<br /> +From faded hopes and hopes agleam,<br /> +It calls you, calls you night and day<br /> +Beyond the dark into the dream<br /> +Over the hills and far away.</p> +<h3><!-- page 41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +41</span>II</h3> +<p>A desolate shore,<br /> +The sinister seduction of the Moon,<br /> +The menace of the irreclaimable Sea.</p> +<p>Flaunting, tawdry and grim,<br /> +From cloud to cloud along her beat,<br /> +Leering her battered and inveterate leer,<br /> +She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,<br /> +Her horrible old man,<br /> +Mumbling old oaths and warming<br /> +His villainous old bones with villainous talk—<br /> +The secrets of their grisly housekeeping<br /> +Since they went out upon the pad<br /> +<!-- page 42--><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +42</span>In the first twilight of self-conscious Time:<br /> +Growling, obscene and hoarse,<br /> +Tales of unnumbered Ships,<br /> +Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance<br /> +In some vile alley of the night<br /> +Waylaid and bludgeoned—<br /> +Dead.</p> +<p>Deep cellared in primeval ooze,<br /> +Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled,<br /> +They lie where the lean water-worm<br /> +Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides<br /> +Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide,<br /> +Thus fouled and desecrate,<br /> +The summons of the Trumpet, and the while<br /> +These Twain, their murderers,<br /> +Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued,<br /> +<!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>Hang at the heels of their children—She aloft<br +/> +As in the shining streets,<br /> +He as in ambush at some fetid stair.</p> +<p>The stalwart Ships,<br /> +The beautiful and bold adventurers!<br /> +Stationed out yonder in the isle,<br /> +The tall Policeman,<br /> +Flashing his bull’s-eye, as he peers<br /> +About him in the ancient vacancy,<br /> +Tells them this way is safety—this way home.</p> +<h3><!-- page 44--><a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +44</span>III<br /> +(To R. F. B.)</h3> +<p>We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word<br +/> +That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;</p> +<p>Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw,<br /> +And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.</p> +<p>East and west and north, wherever the battle grew,<br /> +As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do.</p> +<p><!-- page 45--><a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +45</span>Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy +cease—<br /> +(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of +peace!)—</p> +<p>Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire,<br /> +Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire.</p> +<p>Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark;<br /> +Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark;</p> +<p>We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very +thrones;<br /> +The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones;</p> +<p><!-- page 46--><a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>Till now the name of names, England, the name of +might,<br /> +Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of the northern +night;</p> +<p>And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound,<br +/> +Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and +round;</p> +<p>And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the +mother-breeze,<br /> +Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas;</p> +<p>And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her +flowers,<br /> +And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and +showers!</p> +<p><!-- page 47--><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +47</span>Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and +die,<br /> +While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky?</p> +<p>For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their +father’s debt,<br /> +And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set:</p> +<p>And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall +brave,<br /> +Is but less strong than Time and the all-devouring Grave.</p> +<h3><!-- page 48--><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +48</span>IV</h3> +<p>It came with the threat of a waning moon<br /> + And the wail of an ebbing tide,<br /> +But many a woman has lived for less,<br /> + And many a man has died;<br /> +For life upon life took hold and passed,<br /> + Strong in a fate set free,<br /> +Out of the deep, into the dark,<br /> + On for the years to be.</p> +<p>Between the gleam of a waning moon<br /> + And the song of an ebbing tide,<br /> +Chance upon chance of love and death<br /> + Took wing for the world so wide.<br /> +<!-- page 49--><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +49</span>Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land,<br /> + Wave out of wave of the sea;<br /> +And who shall reckon what lives may live<br /> + In the life that we bade to be?</p> +<h3><!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +50</span>V</h3> +<p>Why, my heart, do we love her so?<br /> + (Geraldine, Geraldine!)—<br /> +Why does the great sea ebb and flow?<br /> + Why does the round world spin?<br /> +Geraldine, Geraldine,<br /> + Bid me my life renew,<br /> +What is it worth unless I win,<br /> + Love—love and you?</p> +<p>Why, my heart, when we speak her name<br /> + (Geraldine, Geraldine!),<br /> +Throbs the word like a flinging flame?—<br /> + Why does the spring begin?<br /> +<!-- page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +51</span>Geraldine, Geraldine,<br /> + Bid me indeed to be,<br /> +Open your heart and take us in,<br /> + Love—love and me.</p> +<h3><!-- page 52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +52</span>VI</h3> +<p>Space and dread and the dark—<br /> +Over a livid stretch of sky<br /> +Cloud-monsters crawling like a funeral train<br /> +Of huge primeval presences<br /> +Stooping beneath the weight<br /> +Of some enormous, rudimentary grief;<br /> +While in the haunting loneliness<br /> +The far sea waits and wanders, with a sound<br /> +As of the trailing skirts of Destiny<br /> +Passing unseen<br /> +<!-- page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +53</span>To some immitigable end<br /> +With her grey henchman, Death.</p> +<p>What larve, what spectre is this<br /> +Thrilling the wilderness to life<br /> +As with the bodily shape of Fear?<br /> +What but a desperate sense,<br /> +A strong foreboding of those dim,<br /> +Interminable continents, forlorn<br /> +And many-silenced in a dusk<br /> +Inviolable utterly, and dead<br /> +As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes<br /> +In hugger-mugger through eternity?</p> +<p>Life—life—let there be life!<br /> +Better a thousand times the roaring hours<br /> +When wave and wind,<br /> +<!-- page 54--><a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +54</span>Like the Arch-Murderer in flight<br /> +From the Avenger at his heel,<br /> +Storm through the desolate fastnesses<br /> +And wild waste places of the world!</p> +<p>Life—give me life until the end,<br /> +That at the very top of being,<br /> +The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,<br /> +Out of the reddest hell of the fight<br /> +I may be snatched and flung<br /> +Into the everlasting lull,<br /> +The immortal, incommunicable dream.</p> +<h3><!-- page 55--><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +55</span>VII</h3> +<p>There’s a regret<br /> +So grinding, so immitigably sad,<br /> +Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. . . .<br /> +Do you not know it yet?</p> +<p>For deeds undone<br /> +Rankle, and snarl, and hunger for their due<br /> +Till there seems naught so despicable as you<br /> +In all the grin o’ the sun.</p> +<p>Like an old shoe<br /> +The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie<br /> +About the beach of Time, till by-and-by<br /> +Death, that derides you too—</p> +<p><!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +56</span>Death, as he goes<br /> +His ragman’s round, espies you, where you stray,<br /> +With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way;<br /> +And then—and then, who knows</p> +<p>But the kind Grave<br /> +Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm,<br /> +In that black bridewell working out his term,<br /> +Hanker and grope and crave?</p> +<p>‘Poor fool that might—<br /> +That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be,<br /> +Think of it, here and thus made over to me<br /> +In the implacable night!’</p> +<p>And writhing, fain<br /> +And like a lover, he his fill shall take<br /> +Where no triumphant memory lives to make<br /> +His obscene victory vain.</p> +<h3><!-- page 57--><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +57</span>VIII<br /> +(To J. A. C.)</h3> +<p>Fresh from his fastnesses<br /> +Wholesome and spacious,<br /> +The north wind, the mad huntsman,<br /> +Halloos on his white hounds<br /> +Over the grey, roaring<br /> +Reaches and ridges,<br /> +The forest of ocean,<br /> +The chace of the world.<br /> +Hark to the peal<br /> +Of the pack in full cry,<br /> +As he thongs them before him<br /> +Swarming voluminous,<br /> +Weltering, wide-wallowing,<br /> +<!-- page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +58</span>Till in a ruining<br /> +Chaos of energy,<br /> +Hurled on their quarry,<br /> +They crash into foam!</p> +<p>Old Indefatigable,<br /> +Time’s right-hand man, the sea<br /> +Laughs as in joy<br /> +From his millions of wrinkles:<br /> +Laughs that his destiny,<br /> +Great with the greatness<br /> +Of triumphing order,<br /> +Shows as a dwarf<br /> +By the strength of his heart<br /> +And the might of his hands.</p> +<p>Master of masters,<br /> +O maker of heroes,<br /> +<!-- page 59--><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +59</span>Thunder the brave,<br /> +Irresistible message:—<br /> +‘Life is worth living<br /> +Through every grain of it<br /> +From the foundations<br /> +To the last edge<br /> +Of the cornerstone, death.’</p> +<h3><!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +60</span>IX</h3> +<p>‘As like the Woman as you can’—<br /> + (<i>Thus the New Adam was beguiled</i>)—<br /> +‘So shall you touch the Perfect Man’—<br /> + (<i>God in the Garden heard and smiled</i>).<br /> +‘Your father perished with his day:<br /> + ‘A clot of passions fierce and blind<br /> +‘He fought, he slew, he hacked his way:<br /> + ‘Your muscles, Child, must be of mind.</p> +<p>‘The Brute that lurks and irks within,<br /> + ‘How, till you have him gagged and bound,<br +/> +‘Escape the foullest form of Sin?’<br /> + (<i>God in the Garden laughed and frowned</i>).<br +/> +<!-- page 61--><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>‘So vile, so rank, the bestial mood<br /> + ‘In which the race is bid to be,<br /> +‘It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood:<br /> + ‘Live, therefore, you, for Purity!</p> +<p>‘Take for your mate no buxom croup,<br /> + ‘No girl all grace and natural will:<br /> +‘To make her happy were to stoop<br /> + ‘From light to dark, from Good to Ill.<br /> +‘Choose one of whom your grosser make’—<br /> + (<i>God in the Garden laughed +outright</i>)—<br /> +‘The true refining touch may take<br /> + ‘Till both attain Life’s highest +height.</p> +<p>‘There, equal, purged of soul and sense,<br /> + ‘Beneficent, high-thinking, just,<br /> +‘Beyond the appeal of Violence,<br /> + ‘Incapable of common Lust,<br /> +<!-- page 62--><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>‘In mental Marriage still prevail’—<br +/> + (<i>God in the Garden hid His face</i>)—<br /> +‘Till you achieve that Female-Male,<br /> + ‘In Which shall culminate the race.</p> +<h3><!-- page 63--><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +63</span>X</h3> +<p>Midsummer midnight skies,<br /> +Midsummer midnight influences and airs,<br /> +The shining sensitive silver of the sea<br /> +Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn:<br /> +And all so solemnly still I seem to hear<br /> +The breathing of Life and Death,<br /> +The secular Accomplices,<br /> +Renewing the visible miracle of the world.</p> +<p>The wistful stars<br /> +Shine like good memories. The young morning wind<br /> +Blows full of unforgotten hours<br /> +<!-- page 64--><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>As over a region of roses. Life and Death<br /> +Sound on—sound on. . . . And the night magical,<br /> +Troubled yet comforting, thrills<br /> +As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart<br /> +Of the wood’s dark wonderment<br /> +Swung wide his valves and filled the dim sea-banks<br /> +With exquisite visitants:<br /> +Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires<br /> +With living looks intolerable, regrets<br /> +Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child<br /> +Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been—<br /> +Beautiful, miserable, distraught—<br /> +The Law no man may baffle denied and slew.</p> +<p>The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze<br /> +To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . .<br /> +<!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +65</span>Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O there where +it fades,<br /> +What grace, what glamour, what wild will,<br /> +Transfigure the shadows? Whose,<br /> +Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours?</p> +<p>Ghosts—ghosts—the sapphirine air<br /> +Teems with them even to the gleaming ends<br /> +Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts,<br /> +Everywhere—everywhere—till I and you<br /> +At last—dear love, at last!—<br /> +Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death,<br /> +Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will.</p> +<h3><!-- page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +66</span>XI</h3> +<p>Gulls in an aëry morrice<br /> + Gleam and vanish and gleam . . .<br /> +The full sea, sleepily basking,<br /> + Dreams under skies of dream.</p> +<p>Gulls in an aëry morrice<br /> + Circle and swoop and close . . .<br /> +Fuller and ever fuller<br /> + The rose of the morning blows.</p> +<p>Gulls in an aëry morrice<br /> + Frolicking float and fade . . .<br /> +O the way of a bird in the sunshine,<br /> + The way of a man with a maid!</p> +<h3><!-- page 67--><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +67</span>XII</h3> +<p>Some starlit garden grey with dew,<br /> +Some chamber flushed with wine and fire,<br /> +What matters where, so I and you<br /> + Are worthy our desire?</p> +<p>Behind, a past that scolds and jeers<br /> +For ungirt loin and lamp unlit;<br /> +In front the unmanageable years,<br /> + The trap upon the pit;</p> +<p>Think on the shame of dreams for deeds,<br /> +The scandal of unnatural strife,<br /> +The slur upon immortal needs,<br /> + The treason done to life:</p> +<p><!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +68</span>Arise! no more a living lie<br /> +And with me quicken and control<br /> +A memory that shall magnify<br /> + The universal Soul.</p> +<h3><!-- page 69--><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +69</span>XIII<br /> +(To James McNeill Whistler)</h3> +<p>Under a stagnant sky,<br /> +Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom,<br /> +The River, jaded and forlorn,<br /> +Welters and wanders wearily—wretchedly—on;<br /> +Yet in and out among the ribs<br /> +Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles<br /> +Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls,<br /> +Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories,<br /> +Lingers to babble, to a broken tune<br /> +(Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!)<br /> +So melancholy a soliloquy<br /> +It sounds as it might tell<br /> +The secret of the unending grief-in-grain,<br /> +<!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +70</span>The terror of Time and Change and Death,<br /> +That wastes this floating, transitory world.</p> +<p>What of the incantation<br /> +That forced the huddled shapes on yonder short<br /> +To take and wear the night<br /> +Like a material majesty?<br /> +That touched the shafts of wavering fire<br /> +About this miserable welter and wash—<br /> +(River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!—)<br /> +Into long, shining signals from the panes<br /> +Of an enchanted pleasure-house<br /> +Where life and life might live life lost in life<br /> +For ever and evermore?</p> +<p>O Death! O Change! O Time!<br /> +Without you, O the insufferable eyes<br /> +Of these poor Might-Have-Beens,<br /> +These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays!</p> +<h3><!-- page 71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +71</span>XIV</h3> +<p>Time and the Earth—<br /> +The old Father and Mother—<br /> +Their teeming accomplished,<br /> +Their purpose fulfilled,<br /> +Close with a smile<br /> +For a moment of kindness<br /> +Ere for the winter<br /> +They settle to sleep.</p> +<p>Failing yet gracious,<br /> +Slow pacing, soon homing,<br /> +A patriarch that strolls<br /> +Through the tents of his children,<br /> +The Sun, as he journeys<br /> +His round on the lower<br /> +<!-- page 72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +72</span>Ascents of the blue,<br /> +Washes the roofs<br /> +And the hillsides with clarity;<br /> +Charms the dark pools<br /> +Till they break into pictures;<br /> +Scatters magnificent<br /> +Alms to the beggar trees;<br /> +Touches the mist-folk<br /> +That crowd to his escort<br /> +Into translucencies<br /> +Radiant and ravishing,<br /> +As with the visible<br /> +Spirit of Summer<br /> +Gloriously vaporised,<br /> +Visioned in gold.</p> +<p>Love, though the fallen leaf<br /> +Mark, and the fleeting light<br /> +<!-- page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +73</span>And the loud, loitering<br /> +Footfall of darkness<br /> +Sign, to the heart<br /> +Of the passage of destiny,<br /> +Here is the ghost<br /> +Of a summer that lived for us,<br /> +Here is a promise<br /> +Of summers to be.</p> +<h3><!-- page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +74</span>XV</h3> +<p>You played and sang a snatch of song,<br /> + A song that all-too well we knew;<br /> +But whither had flown the ancient wrong;<br /> + And was it really I and you?<br /> +O since the end of life’s to live<br /> + And pay in pence the common debt,<br /> +What should it cost us to forgive<br /> + Whose daily task is to forget?</p> +<p>You babbled in the well-known voice—<br /> + Not new, not new, the words you said.<br /> +You touched me off that famous poise,<br /> + That old effect, of neck and head.<br /> +<!-- page 75--><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>Dear, was it really you and I?<br /> + In truth the riddle’s ill to read,<br /> +So many are the deaths we die<br /> + Before we can be dead indeed.</p> +<h3><!-- page 76--><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +76</span>XVI</h3> +<p>One with the ruined sunset,<br /> + The strange forsaken sands,<br /> +What is it waits and wanders<br /> + And signs with desperate hands?</p> +<p>What is it calls in the twilight—<br /> + Calls as its chance were vain?<br /> +The cry of a gull sent seaward<br /> + Or the voice of an ancient pain?</p> +<p>The red ghost of the sunset,<br /> + It walks them as its own,<br /> +These dreary and desolate reaches . . .<br /> + But O that it walked alone!</p> +<h3><!-- page 77--><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +77</span>XVII<br /> +<i>CARMEN PATIBULARE</i><br /> +(To H. S.)</h3> +<p>Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook<br /> + And the rope of the Black Election,<br /> +’Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule<br /> + Can never achieve perfection:<br /> +And ‘It’s O for the time of the New Sublime<br /> + And the better than human way<br /> +When the Wolf (poor beast) shall come to his own<br /> + And the Rat shall have his day!’</p> +<p>For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam<br /> + And the power of provocation,<br /> +<!-- page 78--><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +78</span>You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit<br +/> + Till your thought is mere stupration:<br /> +And ‘It’s how should we rise to be pure and wise,<br +/> + And how can we choose but fall,<br /> +So long as the Hangman makes us dread<br /> + And the Noose floats free for all?’</p> +<p>So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign<br /> + And the trick there’s no recalling,<br /> +They will haggle and hew till they hack you through<br /> + And at last they lay you sprawling:<br /> +When ‘Hey! for the hour of the race in flower<br /> + And the long good-bye to sin!’<br /> +And ‘Ho! for the fires of Hell gone out<br /> + For the want of keeping in!’</p> +<p><!-- page 79--><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough<br /> + And the ghastly Dreams that tend you,<br /> +Your growth began with the life of Man<br /> + And only his death can end you:<br /> +They may tug in line at your hempen twine,<br /> + They may flourish with axe and saw,<br /> +But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs<br /> + In the living rock of Law.</p> +<p>And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork,<br /> + When the spent sun reels and blunders<br /> +Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit<br /> + As it seethes in spate and thunders,<br /> +Stern on the glare of the tortured air<br /> + Your lines august shall gloom,<br /> +And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed<br /> + In the ruining roar of Doom.</p> +<h3><!-- page 80--><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +80</span>XVIII<br /> +(To M. E. H.)</h3> +<p>When you wake in your crib,<br /> +You, an inch of experience—<br /> +Vaulted about<br /> +With the wonder of darkness;<br /> +Wailing and striving<br /> +To reach from your feebleness<br /> +Something you feel<br /> +Will be good to and cherish you,<br /> +Something you know<br /> +And can rest upon blindly:<br /> +O then a hand<br /> +(Your mother’s, your mother’s!)<br /> +By the fall of its fingers<br /> +<!-- page 81--><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>All knowledge, all power to you,<br /> +Out of the dreary,<br /> +Discouraging strangenesses<br /> +Comes to and masters you,<br /> +Takes you, and lovingly<br /> +Woos you and soothes you<br /> +Back, as you cling to it,<br /> +Back to some comforting<br /> +Corner of sleep.</p> +<p>So you wake in your bed,<br /> +Having lived, having loved:<br /> +But the shadows are there,<br /> +And the world and its kingdoms<br /> +Incredibly faded;<br /> +And you grope in the Terror<br /> +Above you and under<br /> +For the light, for the warmth,<br /> +<!-- page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>The assurance of life;<br /> +But the blasts are ice-born,<br /> +And your heart is nigh burst<br /> +With the weight of the gloom<br /> +And the stress of your strangled<br /> +And desperate endeavour:<br /> +Sudden a hand—<br /> +Mother, O Mother!—<br /> +God at His best to you,<br /> +Out of the roaring,<br /> +Impossible silences,<br /> +Falls on and urges you,<br /> +Mightily, tenderly,<br /> +Forth, as you clutch at it,<br /> +Forth to the infinite<br /> +Peace of the Grave.</p> +<h3><!-- page 83--><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +83</span>XIX</h3> +<p>O Time and Change, they range and range<br /> + From sunshine round to thunder!—<br /> +They glance and go as the great winds blow,<br /> + And the best of our dreams drive under:<br /> +For Time and Change estrange, estrange—<br /> + And, now they have looked and seen us,<br /> +O we that were dear we are all-too near<br /> + With the thick of the world between us.</p> +<p>O Death and Time, they chime and chime<br /> + Like bells at sunset falling!—<br /> +They end the song, they right the wrong,<br /> + They set the old echoes calling:<br /> +<!-- page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +84</span>For Death and Time bring on the prime<br /> + Of God’s own chosen weather,<br /> +And we lie in the peace of the Great Release<br /> + As once in the grass together.</p> +<h3><!-- page 85--><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +85</span>XX</h3> +<p>The shadow of Dawn;<br /> +Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams<br /> +Of Life and Death and Sleep;<br /> +Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging sound<br /> +Of the old unchanging Sea.</p> +<p>My soul and yours—<br /> +O hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts,<br /> +Into the ghostliness,<br /> +The infinite and abounding solitudes,<br /> +Beyond—O beyond!—beyond . . .</p> +<p><!-- page 86--><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>Here in the porch<br /> +Upon the multitudinous silences<br /> +Of the kingdoms of the grave,<br /> +We twain are you and I—two ghosts Omnipotence<br /> +Can touch no more—no more!</p> +<h3><!-- page 87--><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +87</span>XXI</h3> +<p>When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern +sea-caves<br /> +Exult in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves,<br /> +Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life<br /> +Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of +strife—<br /> +Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves.</p> +<p>But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before,<br /> +When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore,<br /> +<!-- page 88--><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +88</span>Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no +wrong,<br /> +Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire’s old +song—<br /> +O you envy the blessèd dead that can live no more!</p> +<h3><!-- page 89--><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +89</span>XXII</h3> +<p>Trees and the menace of night;<br /> +Then a long, lonely, leaden mere<br /> +Backed by a desolate fell<br /> +As by a spectral battlement; and then,<br /> +Low-brooding, interpenetrating all,<br /> +A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky,<br /> +So beggared, so incredibly bereft<br /> +Of starlight and the song of racing worlds<br /> +It might have bellied down upon the Void<br /> +Where as in terror Light was beginning to be.</p> +<p>Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night<br /> +(Night and the wretchedness of the sky)<br /> +<!-- page 90--><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +90</span>Is it the hurry of the rain?<br /> +Or the noise of a drive of the Dead<br /> +Streaming before the irresistible Will<br /> +Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land<br /> +Between their place and ours?</p> +<p>Like the forgetfulness<br /> +Of the work-a-day world made visible,<br /> +A mist falls from the melancholy sky:<br /> +A messenger from some lost and loving soul,<br /> +Hopeless, far wandered, dazed<br /> +Here in the provinces of life,<br /> +A great white moth fades miserably past.</p> +<p>Thro’ the trees in the strange dead night,<br /> +Under the vast dead sky,<br /> +<!-- page 91--><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +91</span>Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead<br /> +Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell,<br /> +And the unimagined vastitudes beyond.</p> +<h3><!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +92</span>XXIII<br /> +(To P. A. G.)</h3> +<p>Here they trysted, here they strayed,<br /> + In the leafage dewy and boon,<br /> +Many a man and many a maid,<br /> + And the morn was merry June:<br /> +‘Death is fleet, Life is sweet,’<br /> + Sang the blackbird in the may;<br /> +And the hour with flying feet<br /> + While they dreamed was yesterday.</p> +<p>Many a maid and many a man<br /> + Found the leafage close and boon;<br /> +Many a destiny began—<br /> + O the morn was merry June.<br /> +<!-- page 93--><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +93</span>Dead and gone, dead and gone,<br /> + (Hark the blackbird in the may!),<br /> +Life and Death went hurrying on,<br /> + Cheek on cheek—and where were they?</p> +<p>Dust in dust engendering dust<br /> + In the leafage fresh and boon,<br /> +Man and maid fulfil their trust—<br /> + Still the morn turns merry June.<br /> +Mother Life, Father Death<br /> + (O the blackbird in the may!),<br /> +Each the other’s breath for breath,<br /> + Fleet the times of the world away.</p> +<h3><!-- page 94--><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +94</span>XXIV<br /> +(To A. C.)</h3> +<p>What should the Trees,<br /> +Midsummer-manifold, each one,<br /> +Voluminous, a labyrinth of life—<br /> +What should such things of bulk and multitude<br /> +Yield of their huge, unutterable selves,<br /> +To the random importunity of Day,<br /> +The blabbing journalist?<br /> +Alert to snatch and publish hour by hour<br /> +Their greenest hints, their leafiest privacies,<br /> +How can he other than endure<br /> +The ruminant irony that foists him off<br /> +<!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +95</span>With broad-blown falsehoods, or the obviousness<br /> +Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade,<br /> +And disappearances of homing birds,<br /> +And frolicsome freaks<br /> +Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs?</p> +<p>Now, at the word<br /> +Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night,<br /> +Night of the many secrets, whose effect—<br /> +Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread—<br /> +Themselves alone may fully apprehend,<br /> +They tremble and are changed:<br /> +In each, the uncouth individual soul<br /> +Looms forth and glooms<br /> +Essential, and, their bodily presences<br /> +Touched with inordinate significance,<br /> +Wearing the darkness like the livery<br /> +<!-- page 96--><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +96</span>Of some mysterious and tremendous guild,<br /> +They brood—they menace—they appal:<br /> +Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring<br /> +Wild hands of warning in the face<br /> +Of some inevitable advance of doom:<br /> +Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing,<br /> +As in some monstrous market-place,<br /> +They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime,<br /> +In that old speech their forefathers<br /> +Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard<br /> +The troubled voice of Eve<br /> +Naming the wondering folk of Paradise.</p> +<p>Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell<br /> +The tale of their dim life and all<br /> +Its compost of experience: how the Sun<br /> +<!-- page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +97</span>Spreads them their daily feast,<br /> +Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine;<br /> +Of the old Moon’s fitful solicitude<br /> +And those mild messages the Stars<br /> +Descend in silver silences and dews;<br /> +Or what the buxom West,<br /> +Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat,<br /> +Said, and their leafage laughed;<br /> +And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain<br /> +Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the +Year—<br /> +The sting of the stirring sap<br /> +Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring,<br /> +Their summer amplitudes of pomp<br /> +And rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill,<br /> +Embittered housewifery<br /> +Of the lean Winter: all such things,<br /> +And with them all the goodness of the Master<br /> +<!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +98</span>Whose right hand blesses with increase and life,<br /> +Whose left hand honours with decay and death.</p> +<p>So, under the constraint of Night,<br /> +These gross and simple creatures,<br /> +Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years,<br /> +A servant of the Will.<br /> +And God, the Craftsman, as He walks<br /> +The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer<br /> +In thus accomplishing<br /> +The aims of His miraculous artistry.</p> +<h3><!-- page 99--><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +99</span>XXV</h3> +<p>What have I done for you,<br /> + England, my England?<br /> +What is there I would not do,<br /> + England my own?<br /> +With your glorious eyes austere,<br /> +As the Lord were walking near,<br /> +Whispering terrible things and dear<br /> + As the Song on your bugles blown,<br /> + England—<br /> + Round the world on your bugles blown!</p> +<p>Where shall the watchful Sun,<br /> + England, my England,<br /> +Match the master-work you’ve done,<br /> + England my own?<br /> +<!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +100</span>When shall he rejoice agen<br /> +Such a breed of mighty men<br /> +As come forward, one to ten,<br /> + To the Song on your bugles blown,<br /> + England—<br /> + Down the years on your bugles blown?</p> +<p>Ever the faith endures,<br /> + England, my England:—<br /> +‘Take and break us: we are yours,<br /> + ‘England, my own!<br /> +‘Life is good, and joy runs high<br /> +‘Between English earth and sky:<br /> +‘Death is death; but we shall die<br /> + ‘To the Song on your bugles blown,<br /> + ‘England—<br /> + ‘To the stars on your bugles blown!’</p> +<p><!-- page 101--><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +101</span>They call you proud and hard,<br /> + England, my England:<br /> +You with worlds to watch and ward,<br /> + England, my own!<br /> +You whose mailed hand keeps the keys<br /> +Of such teeming destinies<br /> +You could know nor dread nor ease<br /> + Were the Song on your bugles blown,<br /> + England,<br /> + Round the Pit on your bugles blown!</p> +<p>Mother of Ships whose might,<br /> + England, my England,<br /> +Is the fierce old Sea’s delight,<br /> + England, my own,<br /> +Chosen daughter of the Lord,<br /> +Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword,<br /> +<!-- page 102--><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>There’s the menace of the Word<br /> + In the Song on your bugles blown,<br /> + England—<br /> + Out of heaven on your bugles blown!</p> +<p style="text-align: center">Edinburgh: <span +class="smcap">T.</span> and <span class="smcap">A. +Constable</span>, Printers to Her Majesty</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF THE SWORD***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 24363-h.htm or 24363-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/4/3/6/24363 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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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: The Song of the Sword + and Other Verses + + +Author: W. E. Henley + + + +Release Date: January 18, 2008 [eBook #24363] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SONG OF THE SWORD*** + + +Transcribed from the 1892 David Nutt edition by David Price, email +ccx074@pglaf.org + + + + + +THE SONG +OF THE SWORD +AND OTHER VERSES + + +BY + +W. E. HENLEY + +LONDON +Published by DAVID NUTT +in the Strand +1892 + +To R. T. Hamilton-Bruce + +_Edinburgh_, _Mar._ 17, 1892 + +_With three exceptions_, _these numbers have appeared in_ '_The National +Observer_,' _by permission of whose proprietors they are here reprinted_. + + + + +THE SONG OF THE SWORD +(To Rudyard Kipling) + + +_The Sword_ +_Singing_-- +_The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword_ +_Clanging imperious_ +_Forth from Time's battlements_ +_His ancient and triumphing Song_. + +In the beginning, +Ere God inspired Himself +Into the clay thing +Thumbed to His image, +The vacant, the naked shell +Soon to be Man: +Thoughtful He pondered it, +Prone there and impotent, +Fragile, inviting +Attack and discomfiture: +Then, with a smile-- +As He heard in the Thunder +That laughed over Eden +The voice of the Trumpet, +The iron Beneficence, +Calling His dooms +To the Winds of the world-- +Stooping, He drew +On the sand with His finger +A shape for a sign +Of His way to the eyes +That in wonder should waken, +For a proof of His will +To the breaking intelligence: +That was the birth of me: +I am the Sword. + +Hard and bleak, keen and cruel, +Short-hilted, long-shafted, +I froze into steel: +And the blood of my elder, +His hand on the hafts of me, +Sprang like a wave +In the wind, as the sense +Of his strength grew to ecstasy, +Glowed like a coal +At the throat of the furnace, +As he knew me and named me +The War-Thing, the Comrade, +Father of honour +And giver of kingship, +The fame-smith, the song-master, +Bringer of women +On fire at his hands +For the pride of fulfilment, +_Priest_ (saith the Lord) +_Of his marriage with victory_. +Ho! then, the Trumpet, +Handmaid of heroes, +Calling the peers +To the place of espousal! +Ho! then, the splendour +And sheen of my ministry, +Clothing the earth +With a livery of lightnings! +Ho! then, the music +Of battles in onset +And ruining armours, +And God's gift returning +In fury to God! +Glittering and keen +As the song of the winter stars, +Ho! then, the sound +Of my voice, the implacable +Angel of Destiny!-- +I am the Sword. + +Heroes, my children, +Follow, O follow me, +Follow, exulting +In the great light that breaks +From the sacred companionship: +Thrust through the fatuous, +Thrust through the fungous brood +Spawned in my shadow +And gross with my gift! +Thrust through, and hearken, +O hark, to the Trumpet, +The Virgin of Battles, +Calling, still calling you +Into the Presence, +Sons of the Judgment, +Pure wafts of the Will! +Edged to annihilate, +Hilted with government, +Follow, O follow me +Till the waste places +All the grey globe over +Ooze, as the honeycomb +Drips, with the sweetness +Distilled of my strength: +And, teeming in peace +Through the wrath of my coming, +They give back in beauty +The dread and the anguish +They had of me visitant! +Follow, O follow, then, +Heroes, my harvesters! +Where the tall grain is ripe +Thrust in your sickles: +Stripped and adust +In a stubble of empire, +Scything and binding +The full sheaves of sovranty: +Thus, O thus gloriously, +Shall you fulfil yourselves: +Thus, O thus mightily, +Show yourselves sons of mine-- +Yea, and win grace of me: +I am the Sword. + +I am the feast-maker: +Hark, through a noise +Of the screaming of eagles, +Hark how the Trumpet, +The mistress of mistresses, +Calls, silver-throated +And stern, where the tables +Are spread, and the work +Of the Lord is in hand! +Driving the darkness, +Even as the banners +And spears of the Morning; +Sifting the nations, +The slag from the metal, +The waste and the weak +From the fit and the strong; +Fighting the brute, +The abysmal Fecundity; +Checking the gross, +Multitudinous blunders, +The groping, the purblind +Excesses in service, +Of the Womb universal, +The absolute Drudge; +Changing the charactry +Carved on the World, +The miraculous gem +In the seal-ring that burns +On the hand of the Master-- +Yea! and authority +Flames through the dim, +Unappeasable Grisliness +Prone down the nethermost +Chasms of the Void; +Clear singing, clean slicing; +Sweet spoken, soft finishing; +Making death beautiful, +Life but a coin +To be staked in the pastime +Whose playing is more +Than the transfer of being; +Arch-anarch, chief builder, +Prince and evangelist, +I am the Will of God: +I am the Sword. + +_The Sword_ +_Singing_-- +_The voice of the Sword from the heart of the Sword_ +_Clanging majestical_, +_As from the starry-staired_ +_Courts of the primal Supremacy_, +_His high_, _irresistible song_. + + + + +LONDON +VOLUNTARIES +(To Charles Whibley) + + +I + + +_Andante con mote_ + +Forth from the dust and din, +The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare, +The odour and sense of life and lust aflare, +The wrangle and jangle of unrests, +Let us take horse, dear heart, take horse and win-- +As from swart August to the green lap of May-- +To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breasts +Of the still, delicious night, not yet aware +In any of her innumerable nests +Of that first sudden plash of dawn, +Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large, +Which tells that soon the flowing springs of day +In deep and ever deeper eddies drawn +Forward and up, in wider and wider way +Shall float the sands and brim the shores +On this our haunch of Earth, as round she roars +And spins into the outlook of the Sun +(The Lord's first gift, the Lord's especial charge) +With light, with living light, from marge to marge, +Until the course He set and staked be run. + +Through street and square, through square and street, +Each with his home-grown quality of dark +And violated silence, loud and fleet, +Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp, +The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O hark, +Sweet, how the old mare's bit and chain +Ring back a rough refrain +Upon the marked and cheerful tramp +Of her four shoes! Here is the Park, +And O the languid midsummer wafts adust, +The tired midsummer blooms! +O the mysterious distances, the glooms +Romantic, the august +And solemn shapes! At night this City of Trees +Tunis to a tryst of vague and strange +And monstrous Majesties, +Let loose from some dim underworld to range +These terrene vistas till their twilight sets: +When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they stand +Beggared and common, plain to all the land +For stooks of leaves! And lo! the wizard hour +Whose shining, silent sorcery hath such power! +Still, still the streets, between their carcanets +Of linking gold, are avenues of sleep: +But see how gable ends and parapets +In gradual beauty and significance +Emerge! And did you hear +That little twitter-and-cheep, +Breaking inordinately loud and clear +On this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere? +'Tis a first nest at matins! And behold +A rakehell cat--how furtive and acold! +A spent witch homing from some infamous dance-- +Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fade +Through shadowy railings into a pit of shade! +And lo! a little wind and shy, +The smell of ships (that earnest of romance), +A sense of space and water, and thereby +A lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky. +And look, O look! a tangle of silver gleams +And dusky lights, our River and all his dreams, +His dreams of a dead past that cannot die! + +What miracle is happening in the air, +Charging the very texture of the gray +With something luminous and rare? +The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire, +And, as one lights a candle, it is day. +The extinguisher that fain would strut for spire +On the formal little church is not yet green +Across the water: but the house-tops nigher, +The corner-lines, the chimneys--look how clean, +How new, how naked! See the batch of boats, +Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam! +And those are barges that were goblin floats, +Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream! +And in the piles the water frolics clear, +The ripples into loose rings wander and flee, +And we--we can behold that could but hear +The ancient River singing as he goes +New-mailed in morning to the ancient Sea. +The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass: +The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake, +And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and take +His hobnailed way to work! + Let us too pass: +Through these long blindfold rows +Of casements staring blind to right and left, +Each with his gaze turned inward on some piece +Of life in death's own likeness--Life bereft +Of living looks as by the Great Release +(Perchance of shadow-shapes from shadow-shows), +Whose upshot all men know yet no man knows. + +Reach upon reach of burial--so they feel, +These colonies of dreams! And as we steal +Homeward together, but for the buxom breeze +That frolics at our heel, +Greeting the town with news of the summer seas, +We might--thus awed, thus lonely that we are-- +Be wandering some depopulated star, +Some world of memories and unbroken graves, +So broods the abounding Silence near and far: +Till even your footfall craves +Forgiveness of the majesty it braves. + + + +II + + +_Scherzando_ + +Down through the ancient Strand +The Spirit of October, mild and boon +And sauntering, takes his way +This golden end of afternoon, +As though the corn stood yellow in all the land +And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon. + +Lo! the round sun, half down the western slope-- +Seen as along an unglazed telescope-- +Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day: +Gifting the long, lean, lanky street +And its abounding confluences of being +With aspects generous and bland: +Making a thousand harnesses to shine +As with new ore from some enchanted mine, +And every horse's coat so full of sheen +He looks new-tailored, and every 'bus feels clean, +And never a hansom but is worth the feeing; +And every jeweller within the pale +Offers a real Arabian Night for sale; +And even the roar +Of the strong streams of toil that pause and pour +Eastward and westward sounds suffused-- +Seems as it were bemused +And blurred, and like the speech +Of lazy seas upon a lotus-eating beach-- +With this enchanted lustrousness, +This mellow magic, that (as a man's caress +Brings back to some faded face beloved before +A heavenly shadow of the grace it wore +Ere the poor eyes were minded to beseech) +Old things transfigures, and you hail and bless +Their looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more; +Till the sedate and mannered elegance +Of Clement's is all tinctured with romance; +The while the fanciful, formal, finicking charm +Of Bride's, that madrigal in stone, +Glows flushed and warm +And beauteous with a beauty not its own; +And the high majesty of Paul's +Uplifts a voice of living light, and calls-- +Calls to his millions to behold and see +How goodly this his London Town can be! + +For earth and sky and air +Are golden everywhere, +And golden with a gold so suave and fine +The looking on it lifts the heart like wine. +Trafalgar Square +(The fountains volleying golden glaze) +Gleams like an angel-market. High aloft +Over his couchant Lions in a haze +Shimmering and bland and soft, +A dust of chrysoprase, +Our Sailor takes the golden gaze +Of the saluting sun, and flames superb +As once he flamed it on his ocean round. +The dingy dreariness of the picture-place, +Turned very nearly bright, +Takes on a certain dismal grace, +And shows not all a scandal to the ground. +The very blind man pottering on the kerb, +Among the posies and the ostrich feathers +And the rude voices touched with all the weathers +Of all the varying year, +Shares in the universal alms of light. +The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires, +The height and spread of frontage shining sheer, +The glistering signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires-- +'Tis El Dorado--El Dorado plain, +The Golden City! And when a girl goes by, +Look! as she turns her glancing head, +A call of gold is floated from her ear! +Golden, all golden! In a golden glory, +Long lapsing down a golden coasted sky, +The day not dies but seems +Dispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shed +Upon a past of golden song and story +And memories of gold and golden dreams. + + + +III + + +_Largo e mesto_ + +Out of the poisonous East, +Over a continent of blight, +Like a maleficent Influence released +From the most squalid cellarage of hell, +The Wind-Fiend, the abominable-- +The hangman wind that tortures temper and light-- +Comes slouching, sullen and obscene, +Hard on the skirts of the embittered night: +And in a cloud unclean +Of excremental humours, roused to strife +By the operation of some ruinous change +Wherever his evil mandate run and range +Into a dire intensity of life, +A craftsman at his bench, he settles down +To the grim job of throttling London Town. + +And, by a jealous lightlessness beset +That might have oppressed the dragons of old time +Crunching and groping in the abysmal slime, +A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams, +Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet, +The afflicted city, prone from mark to mark +In shameful occultation, seems +A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, +With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting +Rent in the stuff of a material dark +Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, +Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: +Uncoiling monstrous into street on street +Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, +Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, +Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet +Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; +Working through wicked airs and deadly dews +That make the laden robber grin askance +At the good places in his black romance, +And the poor, loitering harlot rather choose +Go pinched and pined to bed +Than lurk and shiver and curse her wretched way +From arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey. + +Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows, +His green garlands and windy eyots forgot, +The old Father-River flows, +His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom, +As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore, +Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides, +Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rot +In the squalor of the universal shore: +His voices sounding through the gruesome air +As from the ferry where the Boat of Doom +With her blaspheming cargo reels and rides: +The while his children, the brave ships, +No more adventurous and fair +Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides, +But infamously enchanted, +Huddle together in the foul eclipse, +Or feel their course by inches desperately, +As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted, +From sinister reach to reach--out--out--to sea. + +And Death the while-- +Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile, +Death in his threadbare working trim-- +Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland, +And with expert, inevitable hand +Feels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung, +Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart: +Thus signifying unto old and young, +However hard of mouth or wild of whim, +'Tis time--'tis time by his ancient watch--to part +With books and women and talk and drink and art: +And you go humbly after him +To a mean suburban lodging: on the way +To what or where +Not Death, who is old and very wise, can say: +And you--how should you care +So long as, unreclaimed of hell, +The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable, +Thus vicious and thus patient sits him down +To the black job of burking London Town? + + + +IV + + +_Allegro maestoso_ + +Spring winds that blow +As over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may; +Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow, +Like matrons heavy-bosomed and aglow +With the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay, +What makes this insolent and comely stream +Of appetence, this freshet of desire +(Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!), +Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleam +In genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre? +Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churn +The wealth of her enchanted urn +Till, over-billowing all between +Her cheerful margents grey and living green, +It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing, +An estuary of the joy of being? +Why should the buxom leafage of the Park +Touch to an ecstasy the act of seeing? +--As if my paramour, my bride of brides, +Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abides +In some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark, +Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade, +In the divine conviction robed and crowned +The globe fulfils his immemorial round +But as the marrying-place of all things made! + +There is no man, this deifying day, +But feels the primal blessing in his blood. +The sacred impulse of the May +Brightening like sex made sunshine through her veins, +There is no woman but disdains +To vail the ensigns of her womanhood. +None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes, +Bounteous in looks of her delicious best, +On her inviolable quest: +These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those, +But all desirable and frankly fair, +As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst, +And in the knowledge went imparadised. +For look! a magical influence everywhere, +Look how the liberal and transfiguring air +Washes this inn of memorable meetings, +This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings, +Till, through its jocund loveliness of length +A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore, +A brimming reach of beauty met with strength, +It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream, +Some vision multitudinous and agleam, +Of happiness as it shall be evermore! + +Praise God for giving +Through this His messenger among the days +His word the life He gave is thrice-worth living! +For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan-- +Not dead, not dead, as dreamers feigned, +But the lush genius of a million Mays +Renewing his beneficent endeavour!-- +Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reigned +Since in the dim blue dawn of time +The universal ebb-and-flow began, +To sound his ancient music, and prevails +By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme +Here in this radiant and immortal street +Lavishly and omnipotently as ever +In the open hills, the undissembling dales, +The laughing-places of the juvenile earth. +For lo! the wills of man and woman meet, +Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared +As once in Eden's prodigal bowers befell, +To share his shameless, elemental mirth +In one great act of faith, while deep and strong, +Incomparably nerved and cheered, +The enormous heart of London joys to beat +To the measures of his rough, majestic song: +The lewd, perennial, overmastering spell +That keeps the rolling universe ensphered +And life and all for which life lives to long +Wanton and wondrous and for ever well. + + + + +RHYMES +AND RHYTHMS + + +I + + +Where forlorn sunsets flare and fade +On desolate sea and lonely sand, +Out of the silence and the shade +What is the voice of strange command +Calling you still, as friend calls friend +With love that cannot brook delay, +To rise and follow the ways that wend +Over the hills and far away? + +Hark in the city, street on street +A roaring reach of death and life, +Of vortices that clash and fleet +And ruin in appointed strife, +Hark to it calling, calling clear, +Calling until you cannot stay +From dearer things than your own most dear +Over the hills and far away. + +Out of the sound of ebb and flow, +Out of the sight of lamp and star, +It calls you where the good winds blow, +And the unchanging meadows are: +From faded hopes and hopes agleam, +It calls you, calls you night and day +Beyond the dark into the dream +Over the hills and far away. + + + +II + + +A desolate shore, +The sinister seduction of the Moon, +The menace of the irreclaimable Sea. + +Flaunting, tawdry and grim, +From cloud to cloud along her beat, +Leering her battered and inveterate leer, +She signals where he prowls in the dark alone, +Her horrible old man, +Mumbling old oaths and warming +His villainous old bones with villainous talk-- +The secrets of their grisly housekeeping +Since they went out upon the pad +In the first twilight of self-conscious Time: +Growling, obscene and hoarse, +Tales of unnumbered Ships, +Goodly and strong, Companions of the Advance +In some vile alley of the night +Waylaid and bludgeoned-- +Dead. + +Deep cellared in primeval ooze, +Ruined, dishonoured, spoiled, +They lie where the lean water-worm +Crawls free of their secrets, and their broken sides +Bulge with the slime of life. Thus they abide, +Thus fouled and desecrate, +The summons of the Trumpet, and the while +These Twain, their murderers, +Unravined, imperturbable, unsubdued, +Hang at the heels of their children--She aloft +As in the shining streets, +He as in ambush at some fetid stair. + +The stalwart Ships, +The beautiful and bold adventurers! +Stationed out yonder in the isle, +The tall Policeman, +Flashing his bull's-eye, as he peers +About him in the ancient vacancy, +Tells them this way is safety--this way home. + + + +III +(To R. F. B.) + + +We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word +That called us into line, set in our hand a sword; + +Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, +And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law. + +East and west and north, wherever the battle grew, +As men to a feast we fared, the work of the Will to do. + +Bent upon vast beginnings, bidding anarchy cease-- +(Had we hacked it to the Pit, we had left it a place of peace!)-- + +Marching, building, sailing, pillar of cloud or fire, +Sons of the Will, we fought the fight of the Will, our sire. + +Road was never so rough that we left its purpose dark; +Stark was ever the sea, but our ships were yet more stark; + +We tracked the winds of the world to the steps of their very thrones; +The secret parts of the world were salted with our bones; + +Till now the name of names, England, the name of might, +Flames from the austral bounds to the ends of the northern night; + +And the call of her morning drum goes in a girdle of sound, +Like the voice of the sun in song, the great globe round and round; + +And the shadow of her flag, when it shouts to the mother-breeze, +Floats from shore to shore of the universal seas; + +And the loneliest death is fair with a memory of her flowers, +And the end of the road to Hell with the sense of her dews and showers! + +Who says that we shall pass, or the fame of us fade and die, +While the living stars fulfil their round in the living sky? + +For the sire lives in his sons, and they pay their father's debt, +And the Lion has left a whelp wherever his claw was set: + +And the Lion in his whelps, his whelps that none shall brave, +Is but less strong than Time and the all-devouring Grave. + + + +IV + + +It came with the threat of a waning moon + And the wail of an ebbing tide, +But many a woman has lived for less, + And many a man has died; +For life upon life took hold and passed, + Strong in a fate set free, +Out of the deep, into the dark, + On for the years to be. + +Between the gleam of a waning moon + And the song of an ebbing tide, +Chance upon chance of love and death + Took wing for the world so wide. +Leaf out of leaf is the way of the land, + Wave out of wave of the sea; +And who shall reckon what lives may live + In the life that we bade to be? + + + +V + + +Why, my heart, do we love her so? + (Geraldine, Geraldine!)-- +Why does the great sea ebb and flow? + Why does the round world spin? +Geraldine, Geraldine, + Bid me my life renew, +What is it worth unless I win, + Love--love and you? + +Why, my heart, when we speak her name + (Geraldine, Geraldine!), +Throbs the word like a flinging flame?-- + Why does the spring begin? +Geraldine, Geraldine, + Bid me indeed to be, +Open your heart and take us in, + Love--love and me. + + + +VI + + +Space and dread and the dark-- +Over a livid stretch of sky +Cloud-monsters crawling like a funeral train +Of huge primeval presences +Stooping beneath the weight +Of some enormous, rudimentary grief; +While in the haunting loneliness +The far sea waits and wanders, with a sound +As of the trailing skirts of Destiny +Passing unseen +To some immitigable end +With her grey henchman, Death. + +What larve, what spectre is this +Thrilling the wilderness to life +As with the bodily shape of Fear? +What but a desperate sense, +A strong foreboding of those dim, +Interminable continents, forlorn +And many-silenced in a dusk +Inviolable utterly, and dead +As the poor dead it huddles and swarms and styes +In hugger-mugger through eternity? + +Life--life--let there be life! +Better a thousand times the roaring hours +When wave and wind, +Like the Arch-Murderer in flight +From the Avenger at his heel, +Storm through the desolate fastnesses +And wild waste places of the world! + +Life--give me life until the end, +That at the very top of being, +The battle-spirit shouting in my blood, +Out of the reddest hell of the fight +I may be snatched and flung +Into the everlasting lull, +The immortal, incommunicable dream. + + + +VII + + +There's a regret +So grinding, so immitigably sad, +Remorse thereby feels tolerant, even glad. . . . +Do you not know it yet? + +For deeds undone +Rankle, and snarl, and hunger for their due +Till there seems naught so despicable as you +In all the grin o' the sun. + +Like an old shoe +The sea spurns and the land abhors, you lie +About the beach of Time, till by-and-by +Death, that derides you too-- + +Death, as he goes +His ragman's round, espies you, where you stray, +With half-an-eye, and kicks you out of his way; +And then--and then, who knows + +But the kind Grave +Turns on you, and you feel the convict Worm, +In that black bridewell working out his term, +Hanker and grope and crave? + +'Poor fool that might-- +That might, yet would not, dared not, let this be, +Think of it, here and thus made over to me +In the implacable night!' + +And writhing, fain +And like a lover, he his fill shall take +Where no triumphant memory lives to make +His obscene victory vain. + + + +VIII +(To J. A. C.) + + +Fresh from his fastnesses +Wholesome and spacious, +The north wind, the mad huntsman, +Halloos on his white hounds +Over the grey, roaring +Reaches and ridges, +The forest of ocean, +The chace of the world. +Hark to the peal +Of the pack in full cry, +As he thongs them before him +Swarming voluminous, +Weltering, wide-wallowing, +Till in a ruining +Chaos of energy, +Hurled on their quarry, +They crash into foam! + +Old Indefatigable, +Time's right-hand man, the sea +Laughs as in joy +From his millions of wrinkles: +Laughs that his destiny, +Great with the greatness +Of triumphing order, +Shows as a dwarf +By the strength of his heart +And the might of his hands. + +Master of masters, +O maker of heroes, +Thunder the brave, +Irresistible message:-- +'Life is worth living +Through every grain of it +From the foundations +To the last edge +Of the cornerstone, death.' + + + +IX + + +'As like the Woman as you can'-- + (_Thus the New Adam was beguiled_)-- +'So shall you touch the Perfect Man'-- + (_God in the Garden heard and smiled_). +'Your father perished with his day: + 'A clot of passions fierce and blind +'He fought, he slew, he hacked his way: + 'Your muscles, Child, must be of mind. + +'The Brute that lurks and irks within, + 'How, till you have him gagged and bound, +'Escape the foullest form of Sin?' + (_God in the Garden laughed and frowned_). +'So vile, so rank, the bestial mood + 'In which the race is bid to be, +'It wrecks the Rarer Womanhood: + 'Live, therefore, you, for Purity! + +'Take for your mate no buxom croup, + 'No girl all grace and natural will: +'To make her happy were to stoop + 'From light to dark, from Good to Ill. +'Choose one of whom your grosser make'-- + (_God in the Garden laughed outright_)-- +'The true refining touch may take + 'Till both attain Life's highest height. + +'There, equal, purged of soul and sense, + 'Beneficent, high-thinking, just, +'Beyond the appeal of Violence, + 'Incapable of common Lust, +'In mental Marriage still prevail'-- + (_God in the Garden hid His face_)-- +'Till you achieve that Female-Male, + 'In Which shall culminate the race. + + + +X + + +Midsummer midnight skies, +Midsummer midnight influences and airs, +The shining sensitive silver of the sea +Touched with the strange-hued blazonings of dawn: +And all so solemnly still I seem to hear +The breathing of Life and Death, +The secular Accomplices, +Renewing the visible miracle of the world. + +The wistful stars +Shine like good memories. The young morning wind +Blows full of unforgotten hours +As over a region of roses. Life and Death +Sound on--sound on. . . . And the night magical, +Troubled yet comforting, thrills +As if the Enchanted Castle at the heart +Of the wood's dark wonderment +Swung wide his valves and filled the dim sea-banks +With exquisite visitants: +Words fiery-hearted yet, dreams and desires +With living looks intolerable, regrets +Whose voice comes as the voice of an only child +Heard from the grave: shapes of a Might-Have-Been-- +Beautiful, miserable, distraught-- +The Law no man may baffle denied and slew. + +The spell-bound ships stand as at gaze +To let the marvel by. The grey road glooms . . . +Glimmers . . . goes out . . . and there, O there where it fades, +What grace, what glamour, what wild will, +Transfigure the shadows? Whose, +Heart of my heart, Soul of my soul, but yours? + +Ghosts--ghosts--the sapphirine air +Teems with them even to the gleaming ends +Of the wild day-spring! Ghosts, +Everywhere--everywhere--till I and you +At last--dear love, at last!-- +Are in the dreaming, even as Life and Death, +Twin-ministers of the unoriginal Will. + + + +XI + + +Gulls in an aery morrice + Gleam and vanish and gleam . . . +The full sea, sleepily basking, + Dreams under skies of dream. + +Gulls in an aery morrice + Circle and swoop and close . . . +Fuller and ever fuller + The rose of the morning blows. + +Gulls in an aery morrice + Frolicking float and fade . . . +O the way of a bird in the sunshine, + The way of a man with a maid! + + + +XII + + +Some starlit garden grey with dew, +Some chamber flushed with wine and fire, +What matters where, so I and you + Are worthy our desire? + +Behind, a past that scolds and jeers +For ungirt loin and lamp unlit; +In front the unmanageable years, + The trap upon the pit; + +Think on the shame of dreams for deeds, +The scandal of unnatural strife, +The slur upon immortal needs, + The treason done to life: + +Arise! no more a living lie +And with me quicken and control +A memory that shall magnify + The universal Soul. + + + +XIII +(To James McNeill Whistler) + + +Under a stagnant sky, +Gloom out of gloom uncoiling into gloom, +The River, jaded and forlorn, +Welters and wanders wearily--wretchedly--on; +Yet in and out among the ribs +Of the old skeleton bridge, as in the piles +Of some dead lake-built city, fall of skulls, +Worm-worn, rat-riddled, mouldy with memories, +Lingers to babble, to a broken tune +(Once, O the unvoiced music of my heart!) +So melancholy a soliloquy +It sounds as it might tell +The secret of the unending grief-in-grain, +The terror of Time and Change and Death, +That wastes this floating, transitory world. + +What of the incantation +That forced the huddled shapes on yonder short +To take and wear the night +Like a material majesty? +That touched the shafts of wavering fire +About this miserable welter and wash-- +(River, O River of Journeys, River of Dreams!--) +Into long, shining signals from the panes +Of an enchanted pleasure-house +Where life and life might live life lost in life +For ever and evermore? + +O Death! O Change! O Time! +Without you, O the insufferable eyes +Of these poor Might-Have-Beens, +These fatuous, ineffectual Yesterdays! + + + +XIV + + +Time and the Earth-- +The old Father and Mother-- +Their teeming accomplished, +Their purpose fulfilled, +Close with a smile +For a moment of kindness +Ere for the winter +They settle to sleep. + +Failing yet gracious, +Slow pacing, soon homing, +A patriarch that strolls +Through the tents of his children, +The Sun, as he journeys +His round on the lower +Ascents of the blue, +Washes the roofs +And the hillsides with clarity; +Charms the dark pools +Till they break into pictures; +Scatters magnificent +Alms to the beggar trees; +Touches the mist-folk +That crowd to his escort +Into translucencies +Radiant and ravishing, +As with the visible +Spirit of Summer +Gloriously vaporised, +Visioned in gold. + +Love, though the fallen leaf +Mark, and the fleeting light +And the loud, loitering +Footfall of darkness +Sign, to the heart +Of the passage of destiny, +Here is the ghost +Of a summer that lived for us, +Here is a promise +Of summers to be. + + + +XV + + +You played and sang a snatch of song, + A song that all-too well we knew; +But whither had flown the ancient wrong; + And was it really I and you? +O since the end of life's to live + And pay in pence the common debt, +What should it cost us to forgive + Whose daily task is to forget? + +You babbled in the well-known voice-- + Not new, not new, the words you said. +You touched me off that famous poise, + That old effect, of neck and head. +Dear, was it really you and I? + In truth the riddle's ill to read, +So many are the deaths we die + Before we can be dead indeed. + + + +XVI + + +One with the ruined sunset, + The strange forsaken sands, +What is it waits and wanders + And signs with desperate hands? + +What is it calls in the twilight-- + Calls as its chance were vain? +The cry of a gull sent seaward + Or the voice of an ancient pain? + +The red ghost of the sunset, + It walks them as its own, +These dreary and desolate reaches . . . + But O that it walked alone! + + + +XVII +_CARMEN PATIBULARE_ +(To H. S.) + + +Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Crook + And the rope of the Black Election, +'Tis the faith of the Fool that a race you rule + Can never achieve perfection: +And 'It's O for the time of the New Sublime + And the better than human way +When the Wolf (poor beast) shall come to his own + And the Rat shall have his day!' + +For Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Beam + And the power of provocation, +You have cockered the Brute with your dreadful fruit + Till your thought is mere stupration: +And 'It's how should we rise to be pure and wise, + And how can we choose but fall, +So long as the Hangman makes us dread + And the Noose floats free for all?' + +So Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Coign + And the trick there's no recalling, +They will haggle and hew till they hack you through + And at last they lay you sprawling: +When 'Hey! for the hour of the race in flower + And the long good-bye to sin!' +And 'Ho! for the fires of Hell gone out + For the want of keeping in!' + +But Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Bough + And the ghastly Dreams that tend you, +Your growth began with the life of Man + And only his death can end you: +They may tug in line at your hempen twine, + They may flourish with axe and saw, +But your taproot drinks of the Sacred Springs + In the living rock of Law. + +And Tree, Old Tree of the Triple Fork, + When the spent sun reels and blunders +Down a welkin lit with the flare of the Pit + As it seethes in spate and thunders, +Stern on the glare of the tortured air + Your lines august shall gloom, +And your master-beam be the last thing whelmed + In the ruining roar of Doom. + + + +XVIII +(To M. E. H.) + + +When you wake in your crib, +You, an inch of experience-- +Vaulted about +With the wonder of darkness; +Wailing and striving +To reach from your feebleness +Something you feel +Will be good to and cherish you, +Something you know +And can rest upon blindly: +O then a hand +(Your mother's, your mother's!) +By the fall of its fingers +All knowledge, all power to you, +Out of the dreary, +Discouraging strangenesses +Comes to and masters you, +Takes you, and lovingly +Woos you and soothes you +Back, as you cling to it, +Back to some comforting +Corner of sleep. + +So you wake in your bed, +Having lived, having loved: +But the shadows are there, +And the world and its kingdoms +Incredibly faded; +And you grope in the Terror +Above you and under +For the light, for the warmth, +The assurance of life; +But the blasts are ice-born, +And your heart is nigh burst +With the weight of the gloom +And the stress of your strangled +And desperate endeavour: +Sudden a hand-- +Mother, O Mother!-- +God at His best to you, +Out of the roaring, +Impossible silences, +Falls on and urges you, +Mightily, tenderly, +Forth, as you clutch at it, +Forth to the infinite +Peace of the Grave. + + + +XIX + + +O Time and Change, they range and range + From sunshine round to thunder!-- +They glance and go as the great winds blow, + And the best of our dreams drive under: +For Time and Change estrange, estrange-- + And, now they have looked and seen us, +O we that were dear we are all-too near + With the thick of the world between us. + +O Death and Time, they chime and chime + Like bells at sunset falling!-- +They end the song, they right the wrong, + They set the old echoes calling: +For Death and Time bring on the prime + Of God's own chosen weather, +And we lie in the peace of the Great Release + As once in the grass together. + + + +XX + + +The shadow of Dawn; +Stillness and stars and over-mastering dreams +Of Life and Death and Sleep; +Heard over gleaming flats the old unchanging sound +Of the old unchanging Sea. + +My soul and yours-- +O hand in hand let us fare forth, two ghosts, +Into the ghostliness, +The infinite and abounding solitudes, +Beyond--O beyond!--beyond . . . + +Here in the porch +Upon the multitudinous silences +Of the kingdoms of the grave, +We twain are you and I--two ghosts Omnipotence +Can touch no more--no more! + + + +XXI + + +When the wind storms by with a shout, and the stern sea-caves +Exult in the tramp and the roar of onsetting waves, +Then, then, it comes home to the heart that the top of life +Is the passion that burns the blood in the act of strife-- +Till you pity the dead down there in their quiet graves. + +But to drowse with the fen behind and the fog before, +When the rain-rot spreads and a tame sea mumbles the shore, +Not to adventure, none to fight, no right and no wrong, +Sons of the Sword heart-sick for a stave of your sire's old song-- +O you envy the blessed dead that can live no more! + + + +XXII + + +Trees and the menace of night; +Then a long, lonely, leaden mere +Backed by a desolate fell +As by a spectral battlement; and then, +Low-brooding, interpenetrating all, +A vast, grey, listless, inexpressive sky, +So beggared, so incredibly bereft +Of starlight and the song of racing worlds +It might have bellied down upon the Void +Where as in terror Light was beginning to be. + +Hist! In the trees fulfilled of night +(Night and the wretchedness of the sky) +Is it the hurry of the rain? +Or the noise of a drive of the Dead +Streaming before the irresistible Will +Through the strange dusk of this, the Debateable Land +Between their place and ours? + +Like the forgetfulness +Of the work-a-day world made visible, +A mist falls from the melancholy sky: +A messenger from some lost and loving soul, +Hopeless, far wandered, dazed +Here in the provinces of life, +A great white moth fades miserably past. + +Thro' the trees in the strange dead night, +Under the vast dead sky, +Forgetting and forgot, a drift of Dead +Sets to the mystic mere, the phantom fell, +And the unimagined vastitudes beyond. + + + +XXIII +(To P. A. G.) + + +Here they trysted, here they strayed, + In the leafage dewy and boon, +Many a man and many a maid, + And the morn was merry June: +'Death is fleet, Life is sweet,' + Sang the blackbird in the may; +And the hour with flying feet + While they dreamed was yesterday. + +Many a maid and many a man + Found the leafage close and boon; +Many a destiny began-- + O the morn was merry June. +Dead and gone, dead and gone, + (Hark the blackbird in the may!), +Life and Death went hurrying on, + Cheek on cheek--and where were they? + +Dust in dust engendering dust + In the leafage fresh and boon, +Man and maid fulfil their trust-- + Still the morn turns merry June. +Mother Life, Father Death + (O the blackbird in the may!), +Each the other's breath for breath, + Fleet the times of the world away. + + + +XXIV +(To A. C.) + + +What should the Trees, +Midsummer-manifold, each one, +Voluminous, a labyrinth of life-- +What should such things of bulk and multitude +Yield of their huge, unutterable selves, +To the random importunity of Day, +The blabbing journalist? +Alert to snatch and publish hour by hour +Their greenest hints, their leafiest privacies, +How can he other than endure +The ruminant irony that foists him off +With broad-blown falsehoods, or the obviousness +Of laughter flickering back from shine to shade, +And disappearances of homing birds, +And frolicsome freaks +Of little boughs that frisk with little boughs? + +Now, at the word +Of the ancient, sacerdotal Night, +Night of the many secrets, whose effect-- +Transfiguring, hierophantic, dread-- +Themselves alone may fully apprehend, +They tremble and are changed: +In each, the uncouth individual soul +Looms forth and glooms +Essential, and, their bodily presences +Touched with inordinate significance, +Wearing the darkness like the livery +Of some mysterious and tremendous guild, +They brood--they menace--they appal: +Or the anguish of prophecy tears them, and they wring +Wild hands of warning in the face +Of some inevitable advance of doom: +Or, each to the other bending, beckoning, signing, +As in some monstrous market-place, +They pass the news, these Gossips of the Prime, +In that old speech their forefathers +Learned on the lawns of Eden, ere they heard +The troubled voice of Eve +Naming the wondering folk of Paradise. + +Your sense is sealed, or you should hear them tell +The tale of their dim life and all +Its compost of experience: how the Sun +Spreads them their daily feast, +Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; +Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude +And those mild messages the Stars +Descend in silver silences and dews; +Or what the buxom West, +Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, +Said, and their leafage laughed; +And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain +Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year-- +The sting of the stirring sap +Under the wizardry of the young-eyed Spring, +Their summer amplitudes of pomp +And rich autumnal melancholy, and the shrill, +Embittered housewifery +Of the lean Winter: all such things, +And with them all the goodness of the Master +Whose right hand blesses with increase and life, +Whose left hand honours with decay and death. + +So, under the constraint of Night, +These gross and simple creatures, +Each in his scores of rings, which rings are years, +A servant of the Will. +And God, the Craftsman, as He walks +The floor of His workshop, hearkens, full of cheer +In thus accomplishing +The aims of His miraculous artistry. + + + +XXV + + +What have I done for you, + England, my England? +What is there I would not do, + England my own? +With your glorious eyes austere, +As the Lord were walking near, +Whispering terrible things and dear + As the Song on your bugles blown, + England-- + Round the world on your bugles blown! + +Where shall the watchful Sun, + England, my England, +Match the master-work you've done, + England my own? +When shall he rejoice agen +Such a breed of mighty men +As come forward, one to ten, + To the Song on your bugles blown, + England-- + Down the years on your bugles blown? + +Ever the faith endures, + England, my England:-- +'Take and break us: we are yours, + 'England, my own! +'Life is good, and joy runs high +'Between English earth and sky: +'Death is death; but we shall die + 'To the Song on your bugles blown, + 'England-- + 'To the stars on your bugles blown!' + +They call you proud and hard, + England, my England: +You with worlds to watch and ward, + England, my own! +You whose mailed hand keeps the keys +Of such teeming destinies +You could know nor dread nor ease + Were the Song on your bugles blown, + England, + Round the Pit on your bugles blown! + +Mother of Ships whose might, + England, my England, +Is the fierce old Sea's delight, + England, my own, +Chosen daughter of the Lord, +Spouse-in-Chief of the ancient Sword, +There's the menace of the Word + In the Song on your bugles blown, + England-- + Out of heaven on your bugles blown! + +Edinburgh: T. and A. 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