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diff --git a/27297-h/27297-h.htm b/27297-h/27297-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0bfa45d --- /dev/null +++ b/27297-h/27297-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2991 @@ +<!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" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Path Flower and Other Verses, by Olive T. Dargan + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; margin-bottom: .75em;} + p,.trn,.bk1 {text-align: justify;} + h1,h2,h3 {clear: both; font-weight: normal; word-spacing: .5em;} + h1,h2,.hd1 {line-height: 1.5em;} + h3 {margin: 2em 0 1em;} + hr {width: 65%; margin: 2em auto; clear: both;} + table,.poem,.bk1 {margin: 1em auto;} + .td1 {text-align: left; padding-right: 8em;} + .td2 {text-align: right;} + body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; right: 1%; font-size: small; font-style: normal; text-align: right; text-indent: 0em;} + .center,h1,h2,h3,.hd1,.hd2 {text-align: center;} + .smcap,.td1 {font-variant: small-caps;} + .figc {margin: 3em auto; width: 52px;} + .poem {text-align: left; width: 18em;} + .poem br + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0;} + .i0,.i2,.i4,.i6 {display: block; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .i0 {margin-left: 0em;} + .i2 {margin-left: 2em;} + .i4 {margin-left: 4em;} + .i6 {margin-left: 6em;} + .trn {border: solid 1px; margin: 3em 15% 1em; padding: 1em;} + img {border: none;} + a:link,a:visited {text-decoration: none;} + .sp1 {font-size: medium;} + .hd2 {margin-top: 2em;} + .bk1 {width: 20em;} +// --> +/* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's Path Flower and Other Verses, by Olive T. Dargan + +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: Path Flower and Other Verses + +Author: Olive T. Dargan + +Release Date: November 20, 2008 [EBook #27297] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PATH FLOWER AND OTHER VERSES *** + + + + +Produced by David Garcia, Stephen Blundell and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This +file was produced from images generously made available +by The Kentuckiana Digital Library) + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<h1>PATH FLOWER</h1> + +<hr /> + +<p class="center"><i>All rights reserved</i></p> + +<hr /> + +<h1><big>PATH FLOWER</big><br /> +<span class="sp1">AND</span><br /> +OTHER VERSES</h1> + +<h2><span class="sp1">BY</span><br /> +OLIVE T. DARGAN</h2> + +<div class="figc"> +<img src="images/001.png" width="52" height="75" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class="hd1">MCMXIV<br /> +<big>LONDON: J. M. DENT & SONS LTD.</big><br /> +NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS</p> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td class="td2" colspan="2"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Path Flower</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Piper</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">To a Hermit Thrush</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Thanksgiving</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_14">14</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Road</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">La Dame Revolution</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Rebel</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">These Latter Days</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_25">25</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Abnegation</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Little Tree</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Game</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Ballad</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">A Dirge</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">His Argument</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Conqueror</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">To Moina</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">"There's Rosemary"</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">At the Grave of Heine</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">To a Lost Comrade</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_45">45</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">For M. L. P.</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_46">46</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">To Sleep</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_47">47</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">"Le Penseur"</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_48">48</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Vision</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_49">49</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Safe</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">On Bosworth Field</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Old Fairingdown</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_53">53</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Kiss</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_58">58</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Youth</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_60">60</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">To Mirimond</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Sorolla</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_63">63</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">In the Blue Ridge</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_66">66</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Ye who are to Sing</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">"And the Last shall be First"</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Magdalen to her Poet</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Friends</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Tryst</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">In the Studio</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Lovers' Leap</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_91">91</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Havened</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Mid-May</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_102">102</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">The Loss</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Called</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Song of To-morrow</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_108">108</a></td></tr> +<tr><td class="td1">Little Daughters</td><td class="td2"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<hr /> + +<div class="bk1"><i>The author thanks the editors of +"Scribner's Magazine," "The Century," +"The Atlantic Monthly," and "M'Clure's" +for permission to reprint the greater part +of the verse included in this volume.</i></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> +<h2>PATH FLOWER</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">A red-cap</span> sang in Bishop's wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A lark o'er Golder's lane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As I the April pathway trod<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bound west for Willesden.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">At foot each tiny blade grew big<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And taller stood to hear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every leaf on every twig<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Was like a little ear.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">As I too paused, and both ways tried<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To catch the rippling rain,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So still, a hare kept at my side<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His tussock of disdain,—<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Behind me close I heard a step,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A soft pit-pat surprise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And looking round my eyes fell deep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Into sweet other eyes;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span><span class="i0">The eyes like wells, where sun lies too,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So clear and trustful brown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Without a bubble warning you<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That here's a place to drown.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"How many miles?" Her broken shoes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Had told of more than one.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She answered like a dreaming Muse,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">"I came from Islington."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"So long a tramp?" Two gentle nods,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then seemed to lift a wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And words fell soft as willow-buds,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">"I came to find the Spring."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A timid voice, yet not afraid<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In ways so sweet to roam,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As it with honey bees had played<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And could no more go home.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her home! I saw the human lair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I heard the hucksters bawl,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I stifled with the thickened air<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of bickering mart and stall.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span><span class="i0">Without a tuppence for a ride,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Her feet had set her free.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her rags, that decency defied,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seemed new with liberty.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But she was frail. Who would might note<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The trail of hungering<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That for an hour she had forgot<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In wonder of the Spring.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So shriven by her joy she glowed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It seemed a sin to chat.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(A tea-shop snuggled off the road;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Why did I think of that?)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Oh, frail, so frail! I could have wept,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But she was passing on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I but muddled "You'll accept<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A penny for a bun?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then up her little throat a spray<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of rose climbed for it must;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A wilding lost till safe it lay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hid by her curls of rust;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span><span class="i0">And I saw modesties at fence<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With pride that bore no name;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So old it was she knew not whence<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It sudden woke and came;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But that which shone of all most clear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Was startled, sadder thought<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That I should give her back the fear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of life she had forgot.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And I blushed for the world we'd made,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Putting God's hand aside,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till for the want of sun and shade<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His little children died;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And blushed that I who every year<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With Spring went up and down,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Must greet a soul that ached for her<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With "penny for a bun!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Struck as a thief in holy place<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whose sin upon him cries,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I watched the flowers leave her face,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The song go from her eyes.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span><span class="i0">Then she, sweet heart, she saw my rout,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And of her charity<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A hand of grace put softly out<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And took the coin from me.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A red-cap sang in Bishop's wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A lark o'er Golder's lane;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But I, alone, still glooming stood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And April plucked in vain;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Till living words rang in my ears<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And sudden music played:<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Out of such sacred thirst as hers</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>The world shall be remade.</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Afar she turned her head and smiled<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As might have smiled the Spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And humble as a wondering child<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I watched her vanishing.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE PIPER</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">I met</span> a crone 'twixt wood and wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who pointed down the piper's road<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With shaken staff and fearsome glance,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Ware, ware the dance!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But when the piper me did greet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wind, the wind was in my feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The rose and leaf on eager boughs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unvestalled them of dew-writ vows,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I as light as leaf and rose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Danced to the summer's close.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now every tree is weary grown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of singing birds there is not one;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All, all the world droops into grey,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O piper Love, must thou yet play?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wildest note of all he blew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fast my worn feet flew.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span><span class="i0">Old is the year, the leaf and rose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are long, long gone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So chill, so chill the grey wind blows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through heart and bone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No grasses warm the winter ways<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That wound my feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But with unwearied fingers yet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bold, undelayed on stop and fret,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unmercifully sweet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The piper plays....<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO A HERMIT THRUSH</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 21em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Dweller</span> among leaves, and shining twilight boughs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That fold cool arms about thine altar place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What joyous race<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of gods dost serve with such unfaltering vows?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Weave me a time-fringed tale<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of slumbering, haunted trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And star-sweet fragrances<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No day defiled;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of bowering nights innumerable,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And nestling hours breath-nigh a dryad's heart<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That sleeping yet was wild<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With dream-beat that thou mad'st a part<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of thy dawn-fluting; ay, and keep'st it still,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Striving so late these godless woods to fill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With undefeated strain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in one hour build the old world again.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wast thou found singing when Diana drew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her skirts from the first night?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Didst feel the sun-breath when the valleys grew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Warm with the love of light,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span><span class="i0">Till blades of flower-lit green gave to the wind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mystery that made sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The earth forever,—strange and undefined<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As life, as God, as this thy song complete<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That holds with me twin memories<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of time ere men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ere our ways<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lay sundered with the abyss of air between?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4"><i>List, I will lay</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>The world, my song,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Deep in the heart of day,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Day that is long</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>As the ages dream or the stars delay!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Keep thou from me,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Sigh-throated man,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Forever to be</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Under the songless wanderer's ban.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>I am of time</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>That counteth no dawn;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Thy æons yet climb</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>To skies I have won,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Seeking for aye an unrisen sun!</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span><span class="i0">Soft as a shadow slips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Before the moon, I creep beneath the trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even to the boughs whose lowest circling tips<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whisper with the anemones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thick-strewn as though a cloud had made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its drifting way through spray and leafy braid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sunk with unremembering ease<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To humbler heaven upon the mossy heaps.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here a warmer flow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Urges thy melody, yet keeps<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The cool of bowers; as might a rose blush through<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its unrelinquished dew;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or bounteous heart that knows not woe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Put on the robe of sighs, and fain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would hold in love's surmise a neighbour's pain.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah, I have wronged thee, sprite!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So tender now thy song in flight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So sweet its lingerings are,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It seems the liquid memory<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of time when thou didst try<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy gleaning wing through human years,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span><span class="i0">And met, ay, knew the sigh<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of men who pray, the tears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That hide the woman's star,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The brave ascending fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That is youth's beacon and too soon his pyre,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yea, all our striving, bateless and unseeing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That builds each day our Heaven new.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More deep in time's unnearing blue,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Farther and ever fleeing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The dream that ever must pursue.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4"><i>Heart-need is sorest</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>When the song dies:</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Come to the forest,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Brother of the sighs.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Heart-need is song-need,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Brother, give me thine!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Song-meed is heart-meed,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Brother, take mine!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>I go the still way,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Cover me with night;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Thou goest the will way</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Into the light.</i><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span><span class="i4"><i>Dust and the burden</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Thou shall outrun;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Bear then my guerdon,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i4"><i>Song, to the sun!</i><br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O little pagan with the heart of Christ,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I go bewildered from thine altar place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These brooding boughs and grey-lit forest wings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor know if thou deniest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My destiny and race,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man's goalward falterings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To sing the perfect joy that lay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Along the path we missed somewhere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That led thee to thy home in air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While we, soil-creepers, bruise our way<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Toward heights and sunrise bounds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That wings may know nor feet may win<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all their scars, for all their wounds;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or have I heard within thy strain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not sorrow's self, but sorrowing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That thou did'st seek the way more free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor took with us the trail of pain<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span><span class="i0">That endeth not, e'er widening<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To life that knows what Life may be;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ere thou fall'st to silence long<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would golden parting fling:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Go, man, through death unto thy star;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I journey not so far;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>My wings must fail e'en with my song.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p> +<h2>THANKSGIVING</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Supremest</span> Life and Lord of All,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I bring my thanks to thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not for the health that does not fail,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And wings me over land and sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not for this body's pearl and rose,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And radiance made sure<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By thine enduring life that flows<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In sky-print swift and pure;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not for the thought whose glowing power<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Glides far, eternal, free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And surging back in thy full hour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bears the wide world to me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not for the friends whose presence is<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The warm, sweet heart of things<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where leans the body for the kiss<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That gives the soul its wings;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span><span class="i0">Not for the little hands that cling,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The little feet that run,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And make the earth a fitter thing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For thee to look upon;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not for mine ease within my door,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My roof when rains beat strong,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My bed, my fire, my food in store,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My book when nights are long;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But, Lord, I know where on lone sands<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A leper rots and cries;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Find thou my offering in his hands,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My worship in his eyes.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As thou dost give to him, thy least,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou givest unto me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As he is fed I make my feast,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lift my thanks to thee.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE ROAD</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 20em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">On</span> Gilead road the shadows creep;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">('Tis noon, and I forget;)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By Gilead road the ferns are deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And waves run emerald, wind-beset,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To some unsanded shore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of doe and dove and fay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I for love of that before,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Forget the hindward way.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By Gilead road a river runs,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(To what unshadowed sea?)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bough-hidden here,—there by the sun's<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gold treachery unbared to me.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O Beauty in retreat,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From beckoned eyes you steal,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the pursuing heart, more fleet,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lifts your secretest veil.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span><span class="i0">A thrush! What unbuilt temples rear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their domes where thrushes sing!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My heart glides in, a worshipper<br /></span> +<span class="i2">At shrines that ne'er knew offering,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor eye hath seen, and yet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What soul hath not been there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Deep in song's fane where we forget<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To pray, for we are prayer.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And now the shadows start and glide;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I hear soft, woodland feet;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And who are they that deeper bide<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where beechen twilights meet?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What trancèd beings smile<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On things I may not see?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As with a dream they would beguile<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Their own eternity?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I too shall find my own as they;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">('Tis eve, and I forget;)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here in this world where mortals play<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As gods with no god's leave or let.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span><span class="i0">My hope in high purlieus<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Desire erst lockt and kept,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On wing unbarred shall seek and choose,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ay, choose, when I have slept.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For happy roads may yet be long,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And bliss must sometime bed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fern-deep I fall, lose sight and song,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The slim palms close above my head,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Life, the Shadow, weaves<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The charm on sleepers laid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till Time's spent ghost comes not nor grieves<br /></span> +<span class="i2">An hourless Gilead.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ay me, I dream my eyes are wet;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I sigh, I turn, I weep.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Alack, that waking we forget<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But to remember when we sleep!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O vision of closed eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That burns the heart awake!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O the forgotten truth's reprise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the forsaken's sake!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span><span class="i0">Far land, blood-red, I feel again<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy hot, unsilenced breath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Meet thy unburied eyes of pain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That, dying ever, find no death;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">See childhood's one gold hour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bartered for crust and bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And man's o'erdriven noon devour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">His evening peace and bread.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I hear men sob,—ay, men,—and shout<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To souls on Gilead road:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Tell us the way—we sent ye out—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We bought ye free—we paid our blood!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gaunt arms make signal mad;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O, feel the woe-waves break!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Does no one hear in Gilead?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Will one, not one turn back?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rolls higher from the land blood-red<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That sea-surge of despair!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A flame creeps over Gilead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Unseen, unfelt by any there.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span><span class="i0">They look not back, the while<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Doom shadows round them dance,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And smile meets slow, unstartled smile<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As in it sleep's mid-chance.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We give our days, we give our blood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We send ye far to see!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We break beneath the double load<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That ye may walk unbowed and free!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis ours, the healing shade;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Tis ours, the singing stream;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'Tis ours, the charm on sleepers laid;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Tis ours, the toil-won dream!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dim grown is Gilead, ashen, lost<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To me who hear that cry.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Our every star is hid with dust;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The way, the way! Let us not die!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up from the trampled ferns,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(O Beauty's praying hands!)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I stricken start, as one who turns<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From plague's unholy lands.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span><span class="i0">Pale is the dream we dream alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">An unresolving fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till beacon hearts make it their own<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And men are lit with man's desire.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I mourn no Gilead fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Back to my own I speed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all my tears are falling where<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They sell the sun for bread.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Mine too the blow, the unwept scar;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Mine too the flames that sere;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on my breast not one proud star<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That leaves a brother's heaven bare.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life is the search of God<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For His own unity;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I walk stone-bare till all are shod,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No gold may sandal me.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I come, O comrades, faster yet!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For me no bough-hung shade<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till every burning foot be set<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In ferns of Gilead.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span><span class="i0">The old, old pain of kind,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once mine, is mine once more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I forget the way behind,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So dear is that before.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span></p> +<h2>LA DAME REVOLUTION</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Red</span> was the Might that sired thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">White was the Hope that bore thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heaven and Earth desired thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Hell from thy lovers tore thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But barren to the ravisher,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou bearest Love thy child,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Immortal daughter, Peace; for her<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Waits Man, the Undefiled.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE REBEL</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">A riot-maker</span>! Can the fruit<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of frenzy be a gracious thing?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His soul has hands; above the bruit<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They lift a song-bird quivering.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">World-wrecker! Shall he trampling go<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till Beauty's drenched and lonely eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mourn a deserted earth? But no!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Men go not down till men arise.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The game is Life's. She plays to win;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And whirls to dust her overlings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her abluent winds shall spare no sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though hidden in the breast of kings;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And Earth is smiling as she takes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To her old lap their fallen bones,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For down the throbbing ways there wakes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The laughter of her greater sons.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p> +<h2>THESE LATTER DAYS</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Take</span> down thy stars, O God! We look not up.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In vain thou hangest there thy changeless sign.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We lift our eyes to power's glowing cup,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor care if blood make strong that wizard wine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So we but drink and feel the sorcery<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of conquest in our veins, of wits grown keen<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In strain and strife for flesh-sweet sovereignty,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The fatal thrill of kingship over men.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What though the soul be from the body shrunk,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And we array the temple, but no god?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What though, the cup of golden greed once drunk,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our dust be laid in a dishonoured sod,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While thy loud hosts proclaim the end of wars?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We read no sign. O God, take down thy stars!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p> +<h2>ABNEGATION</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 21em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Christ</span>, dear Christ, were the wood-ways sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the long, white highway bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the hot road dust made grey Thy feet?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ay,—but the woman's hair!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Brother, my Christ, when thou camest down<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The cup of water to give,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Did a poet die on the mount's cool crown?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ay,—and for that dost thou live!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE LITTLE TREE</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">It</span> pushed a guided way between<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The pebbles of her grave;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A poplar hastening to be green<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And silver signals wave.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And we who sought her with the moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Were met by branches stirred,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And whiter grew as grew the croon<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That seemed her hidden word.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O, she would speak!" my heart-beat said;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My eyes were on the mound;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lowlier hung my waiting head<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Above the prisoning ground.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then smiled the lad and whispered me,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The lad who most did love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"She stoops to us; the little tree<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is wakened from above!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE GAME</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">'Tis</span> played with eyes; one uttered word<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Would cast the game away.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As silent as a sailing bird,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The shift and change of play.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">So many eyes to me are dear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So many do me bless;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hazel, deep as deep wood-mere<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where leaves are flutterless;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The brown that most bewildereth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With dusking, golden play<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of shadows like betraying breath<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From some shy, hidden day;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The black whose torch is ever trimmed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let stars be soon or late;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The blue, a morning never dimmed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Opposing Heaven to fate;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span><span class="i0">The grey as soft as farthest skies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That hold horizon rain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or when, steel-darkling, stoic-wise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">They bring the gods again;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And wavelit eyes of nameless glow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fed from far-risen streams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But oh, the eyes, the eyes that know<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The silent game of dreams!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Three times I've played. Once 'twas a child,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lap-held, not half a year<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Heaven, looked at me and smiled,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And far I went with her.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Out past the twilight gates of birth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And past Time's blindfold day,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beyond the star-ring of the earth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We found us room to play.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And once a woman, spent and old<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With unavailing tears,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who from her hair's down-tangled fold<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shook out the grey-blown years,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span><span class="i0">Sat by the trampled way alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lifted eyes—what themes!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I could not pass, I sat me down<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To play the game of dreams.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And once ... a poet's eyes they were,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though earth heard not his strain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And since he went no eyes can stir<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My own to play again.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p> +<h2>BALLAD</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">When</span> I with Death have gone on quest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And grief is mellowed in your breast;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When you do nothing fret<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If jest come gently in with tea,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Purr is stroked for want of me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When thought robust bestirs your mind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And with a candid start you find<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The world must move<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To living love<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And you forthright on travel set;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I do not ask you strive to keep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Awake the woe that winks for sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or swell the lessening tear;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I do not ask; dear to me still<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May be the eyes regret would fill;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span><span class="i0">And, sooth, in vain I'd Nature sue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To go a little out for you;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But whether 'tis<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or that or this<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is from the matter there and here.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Forget the kisses dying not<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till each a thousand more begot;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Such easy progeny<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You with small trouble still may have;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Though women die, love has no grave;)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forget the quaint, the nest-born ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And ponder things more to my praise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That I may long<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be worth a song<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though deep in tongueless clay I be.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Admit my eye, than yours less keen,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Still knew a bead of Hippocrene<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From baser bubbles bright;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My ear could catch, or short or long,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The echo of true-hammered song;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span><span class="i0">And many a book we journeyed through;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Some turned us home again, 'tis true,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(Not all who pen<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Are more than men,)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And some, like stars, outwore the night.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Say I could break a lance with Fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Took half, at least, my troubles straight,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(Let women have their boast;)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Homed well with chance, and passing where<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The gods kept house would take a chair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Perchance at ease, with naught ado,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With Jove would toss a quip or two;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The nectar stale,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A mug of ale<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On goodly earth would serve a toast.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And if I left thee by a stile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where thou didst choose to dream, the while<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I sought a farther mead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or clomb a ridge for flowers that wore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of earth the less, of stars the more,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span><span class="i0">I hastened back, confess of me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lay my treasure on thy knee;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor didst thou hear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of stone or brere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or how my hidden feet did bleed.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And in the piping season when<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The whole round world takes heart again<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To rise and dance with Spring;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When robin drives the snow-wind home,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sweetened is the warmèd loam,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When deeper root the violets,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And every bud its fear forgets<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With upward glance<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For lovers' chance<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In Venus' dear and fateful ring;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Let not a thought of my cold bed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bechill thy warm heart beating red,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And thy new ardours dim;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But if, good hap, you rove where I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Beneath the twinkling moss then lie,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span><span class="i0">Be glad to see me decked so gay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(Spring's the best handmaid without pay,)<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I like things new,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In season too,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fain must smile to be so trim.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then hie thee to some bonny brake<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Another mate to woo and take,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And as thy soul to love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rise with the dew, stay not the noon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What's good cannot be found too soon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wind will not be always south,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor like a rose is every mouth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Time's quick to press,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Do thou no less,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And may the night thy wisdom prove.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And as all love doth live again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In great or small that loved hath been,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Keep this sole troth with me,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forget my name, my form, my face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But meet me still in every place,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span><span class="i0">Since we are what we love, and I<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Loved everything beneath the sky.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So may I long<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be worth a song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though I who sang forgotten be.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span></p> +<h2>A DIRGE</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 17em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Mortal</span> child, lay thee where<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Earth is gift and giver;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Midnight owl, witch, or bear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall disturb thee never!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Softly, softly take thy place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turn from man thy waning face;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fear not thou must lie alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sleep-mates thou shalt have anon.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">(Clock of Time none commands,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Driveth not the winter floods,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the silent, tireless sands<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Run the ages of the gods.)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thine is not a jealous bed;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pillow here hath every head;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All that are and all to be<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall ask a little room of thee.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span><span class="i0">(Feet of flame, haste nor creep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where the stars are of thy pace;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heart of fire, in shadows sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With the sun in thy embrace.)<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Babe of Time, old in care,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sweet is Earth, the giver;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Owlet, witch, or midnight bear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall disturb thee never.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p> +<h2>HIS ARGUMENT</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 24em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">One</span> time I wooed a maid (dear is she yet!)<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All in the revel eye of young Love's moon.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Content she made me,—ah, my dimpling mate,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My Springtime girl, who walked with flower-shoon!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But near me, nearer, steals a deep-eyed maid<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With creeping glance that sees and will not see,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blush that would those yea-sweet eyes upbraid,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">O, might I woo her nor inconstant be!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But is not Autumn dreamtime of the Spring?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">(Yon scarlet fruit-bell is a flower asleep;)<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And I am not forsworn if yet I keep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dream-faith with Spring in Autumn's deeper kiss.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then so, brown maiden, take this true-love ring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lay thy long, soft locks where my heart is.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE CONQUEROR</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">O Spring</span>, that flutter'st the slow Winter by,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To drop thy buds before his frosty feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dost thou not grieve to see thy darlings lie<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In trodden death, and weep their beauty sweet?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet must thou cast thy tender offering,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And make thy way above thy mournèd dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or frowning Winter would be always king,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And thou wouldst never walk with crownèd head.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So gentle Love must make his venturous way<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Among the shaken buds of his own pain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And many a hope-blown garland meekly lay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Before the chilly season of disdain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But as no beauty may the Spring outglow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So he, when throned, no greater lord doth know.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO MOINA</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 24em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">There</span> were no heaven but for lovers' eyes;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Save in their depths do all Elysiums fade;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gods were dead but for the life that lies<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In kisses sweet on sweeter altars laid.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There were no heroes did not lovers ride,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And pyramid high deeds upon new time;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor tale for feast, or field, or chimney-side,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And harps were dumb and song had ne'er a rhyme.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then live, proud heart, in happy fealty,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor sigh thee more thy dear bonds to remove;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art not thrall to liege of mean degree,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For all are kings who bear the lance of love;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No wight so poor but may his tatters lose,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And find his purple if his lady choose.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> +<h2>"THERE'S ROSEMARY"</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 24em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">O love</span> that is not love, but dear, so dear!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That is not love because it goes so soon,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like flower born and dead within one moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And yet is love for that it comes full near<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The guarded fane where love alone may peer,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ere like young Spring by Summer soon outshone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It trembles into death, but comes anon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As thoughts of Spring will come though Summer's here.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">O star full sweet, though one arose more fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Within my heart I'll keep a heaven for thee<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Where thou mayst freely come and freely go,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Touching with thy pale gold the twilight air<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where dream-closed buds could never flower show,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Yet fragrant keep the shadowy way for me.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> +<h2>AT THE GRAVE OF HEINE</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 20em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4"><span class="smcap">South-heart</span> of song<br /></span> +<span class="i6">In winter drest,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Death mends thy wrong;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">That is life's best.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Bird, who didst sing<br /></span> +<span class="i6">From a bare bough,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Call, and what Spring<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Will answer now!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">And haste with her<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Bud-legacy,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">O, not to share,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To take of thee!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">Thy night, slow, dark,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Yet song-lit shone,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Till who did hark<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Missed not the moon;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span><span class="i4">When Morning found<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Thy cold, pierced breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">'Twas she who moaned,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">To thy thorn pressed.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Here lies the thorn-wound of the dawn</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Through whose high morn the bird sings on.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO A LOST COMRADE</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">We</span> found the spring at eager noon,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And from one cup we drank;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then on until the forest croon<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In twilight tangle sank;<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The night was ours, the stars, the dawn;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The manna crust, bird-shared;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And never failed our magic shoon,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whatever way we fared.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">If caged at last, ceased not the flow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of sky-gleam through the bars;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And where were wounds I only know<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Tear-kisses hid the scars.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And when, as round the world death-free<br /></span> +<span class="i2">We wind-embodied roam,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I hear the gale that once was thee<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cry "Hollo!" I will come.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p> +<h2>FOR M. L. P.</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Rose</span> Love lay dreaming where I passed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like flower blown from careless stem;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So still I dared to touch at last<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Her white robe's hem.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rose Love looked up and caught my hand,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though in her eyes the sea-birds were;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When o'er my brow there blew a strand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of cold, grey hair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Rose Love stood up unriddling this,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till shadows in my eyes grew old;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then warmed the lock with sudden kiss;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now flames it gold.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO SLEEP</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 24em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">O silent</span> lover of a world day-worn,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Taking the weary light to thy dusk arms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stealing where pale forms lie, sun-hurt and torn,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Waiting the balm of thy oblivious charms,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Make me thy captive ere I guess pursuit,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And cast me deep within some dreamless close,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where hopes stir not, and white, wronged lips are mute,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And Pain's hot wings fold down o'er hushèd woes.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And if ere morn thou choosest me to free,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Let it not be, dear jailer, through the door<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That timeward opes, but to eternity<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Set thou the soul that needs thee nevermore;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So I from sleep to death may softly wend<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As one would pass from gentle friend to friend.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span></p> +<h2>"LE PENSEUR"</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Warm</span> in this marble, that is stone no more,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life at wound-pause lifts ear to woundless mind;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Backward the ages their slow clew unwind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And step by step, and star by star, lead o'er<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The trail again, where eyeless passion tore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Its red way to a soul. Mist-bound and blind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No more, the thinker waits, and God grown kind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flashes a foot-print where He goes before.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not to be followed! Falls the cloud again;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Folds the stern form around the striving doubt,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And curve betrays to curve the silent birth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That shall be voice to later times and men;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">While lone in unlit dark, within, without,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">He sits immortal on a godless earth.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p> +<h2>VISION</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Look</span> in, O Mystic, on thy lease,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou tenant soul in God's demesne;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Forego the show of eyes that fail,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And walk the world that cannot pale,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thine by a sealed and termless lien<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Within His met eternities.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yet look thou out from thy still hour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With eyes that know and bear His fire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till kindling on thy wonder's verge<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The transient days immortal merge<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In Him fulfilled as worlds expire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In nestled love, a song, a flower.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p> +<h2>SAFE</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 19em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">My</span> dream-fruit tree a palace bore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In stone's reality,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And friends and treasure, art and lore,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Came in to dwell with me.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But palaces for gods are made;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I shrank to man, or less;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gold-barriered, yet chill, afraid,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My soul shook shelterless.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I found a cottage in a wood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Warmed by a hearth and maid,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fed and slept, and said 'twas good,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ah, love-nest in the shade!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The walls grew close, the roof pressed low,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Soft arms my jailers were;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">My naked soul arose to go,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And shivered bright and bare.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span><span class="i0">No more I sought for covert kind;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The blast blew on my head;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lo, with tempest and with wind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I felt me garmented.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Here on the hills the writhing storm<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cloaks well and shelters me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I wrap me round and I am warm,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Warm for eternity.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span></p> +<h2>ON BOSWORTH FIELD</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Here</span>, Richard, didst thou fall, caparisoned<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With kingdoms of thy lust;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here wouldst lie, by Fame's bent gleaners shunned,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But came unto thy dust<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A swaggerer, perdy!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who cried "A horse, a horse!" and straight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou wert abroad again on kingly feet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To tread eternity.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p> +<h2>OLD FAIRINGDOWN</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 25em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Soft</span> as a treader on mosses<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I go through the village that sleeps;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The village too early abed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For the night still shuffles, a gipsy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In the woods of the east,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the west remembers the sun.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not all are asleep; there are faces<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That lean from the walls of the gardens;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look sharply, or you will not see them,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or think them another stone in the wall.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I spoke to a stone, and it answered<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like an aged rock that crumbles;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each falling piece was a word.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Five have I buried," it said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"And seven are over the sea."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span><span class="i0">Here is a hut that I pass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So lowly it has no brow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dwarfs sit within at a table.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A boy waits apart by the hearth;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On his face the patience of firelight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But his eyes seek the door and a far world.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It is not the call to the table he waits,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the call of the sea-rimmed forests,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And cities that stir in a dream.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I haste by the low-browed door,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest my arms go in and betray me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A mother jealously passing.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He will go, the pale dwarf, and walk tall among giants;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The child with his eyes on the far land,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fame like a young, curled leaf in his heart.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The stream that darts from the hanging hill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a silver wing that must sing as it flies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is folded and still on the breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the village that sleeps.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each mute, old house is more old than the other,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And each wears its vines like ragged hair<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span><span class="i0">Round the half-blind windows.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If a child should laugh, if a girl should sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Would the houses rub the vines from their eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And listen and live?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A voice comes now from a cottage,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A voice that is young and must sing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A honeyed stab on the air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the houses do not wake.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I look through the leaf-blowzed window,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And start as a gazer who, passing a death-vault,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sees life sitting hopeful within.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She is young, but a woman, round-breasted,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Waiting the peril of Eve;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she makes the shadows about her sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As the glooms that play in a pine-wood.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She sits at a harpsichord (old as the walls are),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And longing flows in the trickling, fairy notes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like a hidden brook in a forest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seeking and seeking the sun.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I have watched a young tree on the edge of a wood<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the mist is weaving and drifting.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span><span class="i0">Slowly the boughs disappear and the leaves reach out<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like the drowning hands of children,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till a grey blur quivers cold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where the green grace drank of the sun.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So now, as I gaze, the morrows<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Creep weaving and winding their mist<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Round the beauty of her who sings.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They hide the soft rings of her hair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dear as a child's curling fingers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They shut out the trembling sun of eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That are deep as a bending mother's;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And her bridal body is scarfed with their chill.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For old and old is the story;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Over and over I listen to murmurs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That are always the same in these towns that sleep;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where grey and unwed a woman passes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She holds with grief and silence;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mumbles the tale by her affable gate;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How the lad must go, and the girl must stay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Singing alone to the years and a dream;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span><span class="i0">Then a letter, a rumour, a word<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From the land that reaches for lovers<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gives them not back;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the maiden looks up with a face that is old;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her smile, as her body, is evermore barren,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her cheek like the bark of the beech-tree<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where climbs the grey winter.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Now have I seen her young,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lone girl singing,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the full round breast and the berry lip,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And heart that runs to a dawn-rise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On new-world mountains.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The weeping ash in the dooryard<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gathers the song in its boughs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the gown of dawn she will never wear.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I can listen no more; good-bye, little town, old Fairingdown.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I climb the long, dark hillside,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the ache I have found here I cannot outclimb.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O Heart, if we had not heard, if we did not know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There is that in the village that never will sleep!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE KISS</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">I stole</span> into the secret room<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where Love lay dying;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mystic and faint perfume<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Met me like sighing;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As heaven had cast a still-born star<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He lay nor stirred; the shell-thin hand<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nerveless of high command<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where once the lord-veins sped their fire.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And I had thought me glad<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To let him go. "He reaps<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His own," I pious said.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But this, ah, this<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unpleading helplessness!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Give me thy death," I cried,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And took it from his lips.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span><span class="i0">The windows burst them wide.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The sun came in;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Love high at my side<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stood sovereign.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span></p> +<h2>YOUTH</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">He</span> hears the hour's low hint and springs<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the chariot-side of Truth, while fast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wild car swings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Through dust and cloud;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the watchful elders, prophet-proud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Give o'er his bones<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To the wracking stones—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But he has passed!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">A weft of sky, and castles stare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High from a wizard shore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sun-arrowed, tower-strong;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gold parapets in air<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down-pour, down-pour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sea-falls of peri song;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then earth, the dragon's lair;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cave eyes and burning breath;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the lance the Grail lords bore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This day flies swift and fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This day of the dragon's death.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span><span class="i0">Must doff the wind-wreath, find thee lone?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Put on meek age's hood?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Feel but the frost within the dawn?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wrap courage in a swaddling mood?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His bare throat flings<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All-powered nay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The world, his vast, unfingered lyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stirs in her thousand strings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lit with redemptive flame<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burns miracle desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And dedicated day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is long as freedom's dream.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Youth of the lance, youth of the lyre,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">How far, how far shalt go?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where will the halting be?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sun-courier, whose roads of fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bridge God's delay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hearts that know thee, ah, they know,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ageless in clay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sole immortality!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p> +<h2>TO MIRIMOND<br /> +<small>(HER BIRTHDAY, IN DECEMBER)</small></h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Dost</span> think that Time, to whom stars vainly sue,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Will for thy beauty keep one fixèd place?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Or that he may, o'er-weighed with seasons due,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Forget one Spring where veinlet tendrils lace<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Rose over rose to make this flower, thy face?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look round thee now, dear dupe of sweet hey-day!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of what once blooming joy canst thou find trace<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save in the bosom of a cold decay?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">What violet of Summer's yester sway<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Usurps these clouds to throne her slender moon?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look on the wrinkling year, the shrunken way,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wintry bier of all that gaudy shone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And gather love ere loveliness wear pall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If thou, when all is gone, wouldst still have all.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> +<h2>SOROLLA</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 20em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">"I am</span> fleet," said the joy of the sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Trembling then on the breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the summer, white, still;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"I am fleet, I am gone!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Smiling came one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With brush and a will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Undelaying, unpressed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the glancing gold of the tremulous sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lingers for man, inescapable, won.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Not here, nor yet there,"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cried the waves that fled,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Shall ye set us a snare.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Motion is breath of us,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stillness is death of us;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We live as we run,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We pause and are sped!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Laughing came one<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span><span class="i0">With brush and a will,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the waves never die and are nevermore still.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I pass," said the light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the joy-child's face;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But softly came one<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And it leaves not its place.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here Time shall replight<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His faith with the dawn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his ages, gaunt grey,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ever cycling, behold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their youth never flown<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In a world never old,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though they pass and repass with their trailing decay.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"We stay," said the shadows, and hung<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On the brush of the master; "we are thine own."<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fearless he flung<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The magical chains around them, and said,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Ye too shall be light, and to life bring the sun!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And man delayed<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span><span class="i0">By the captive pain's revealing glow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Feeleth earth's breathing woe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his vow is made;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"Ye shall pass, ye shadows, yea;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And life, as the sun, be free;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The God in me saith!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the shadows go;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For joy is the breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of eternity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sorrow the sigh of a day.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span></p> +<h2>IN THE BLUE RIDGE</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 26em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">The</span> mountain night is shining, Jim of Tellico,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shining so it hurts the heart to see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The gleam upon the laurel leaf, the locust shaking snow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To the rippling Nantahala that is laughing up to me,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hurts till the cry comes and the big tears are free.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O, why should my heart cry to you that will not hear,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yonder where the ridges lie so still above the town?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But the pain that's calling seems to bring you near,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As the tears in my eyes bring the stars a-swimming down.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Mother sits and cries, with my baby on her knee;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Father curses deep, a-breathing hard your name;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span><span class="i0">But never do I hear and never do I see,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I with my head low, working out my shame,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For I hate you then—I hate you, Jim of Tellico,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just to lay you in.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">But the slow sun passes with its day-long stare,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like a bold eye at the window when the blind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is missing and you mustn't know the eye is there,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Just shut your heart up close and hide the thing you mind;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And comes the blessed twilight calling of its kind,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When all the little creatures with soft voices stir,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Little hiding things that cry so tremblingly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till I lay my needle by,—O, how the sweet woods whirr!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And fly down to the river that is laughing up to me.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span><span class="i0">Then the hate goes out o' me with the moonlight creeping in,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the water crooning cool-like in my veins.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who could smell the white azalea thinking then of sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or look on laurel buds a-caring for her pains?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It's just my heart breaks open and the wild flood rains.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O beauty of the moon-mist winding, winding slow,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till the tall lynns quiver vainly up to hold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One leafy moment more the breathing, gliding flow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of the loosened wreath of silver lifting into gold!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The moosewood bride is glowing, all her curls awave,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The colt's-foot in millions makes the ground like a bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So sweet-breathed and green now, in winter scarlet brave,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And blossom lips of tulip trees are meeting overhead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But never shall a tear fall for their love spent and dead.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span><span class="i0">Doves are building yonder in that clump of maples deep,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Do maple leaves come soonest for they love to hide<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The earliest nest and hear the first faint cheep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Telling them of joy too dear, too sweet to bide?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The joy that was my own, Jim, when our birdling came,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Telling me that love is never spent and dead,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Though you left the tears to me, and left to me the shame,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For the wildwood broke in blossoms round my bed,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the fairest on my bosom laid its stainless head.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Can God who made this night His own great heart to please,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And made that other night like this a year ago,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Be mad at us for loving? I fall upon my knees<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And beg Him bless you, bless you ever, Jim of Tellico!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> +<h2>YE WHO ARE TO SING</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 26em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">O silence</span> of all silences, where wait<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fame's unblown years whose choir my soul would greet!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Graves, nor dead Time, are sealed so dumb in fate,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For Death and Time must pass on echoing feet.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No grass-locked vault, no sculptured winding-sheet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No age-embalmèd hour with mummied wing,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is bosomed in such stillness, vast, complete,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As wraps the future, and no prayer may bring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From that unfathomed pause one minstrel murmuring.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yet never earth a lyreless dawn shall know;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No moon shall move unharped to her pale home;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No midnight wreathe its chain of choric glow<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But answering eye flash rhythmic to the dome.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No path shall lie too deep in forest gloam<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span><span class="i0">For the blithe singer's tread; no winds fore'er<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Blow lute-lorn barks o'er unawakened foam;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor hidden isle sleep so enwaved but there<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall touch and land at last Apollo's mariner.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And soon shall wake that morrow's melody,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">When men of labour shall be men of dream,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With hand seer-guided, knowing Deity<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That breathes in sonant wood and fluting stream,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shapes too the wheel, the shaft, the shouldering beam,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor ceased to build when Magian toil began<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To lift its towered world. What chime supreme<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall turn our tuneless march to music when<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sings the achieving God in conscious hearts of men!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And one voice shall be woman's, lifting lay<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till all the lark-heights of her being ring;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Majestic she shall take the chanted way,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And every song-peak's golden bourgeoning<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall thrill beneath her feet that lyric spring<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From ventured crest to crest. Strong, masterless,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">She, last in freedom, as the first shall sing,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span><span class="i0">Who, great in freedom, takes by Love her place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wife, mother,—more, her starward moving self—the race.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ay, ye shall come, ye spirits girt with light<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That falls o'er heaven's hills from dawn to be;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ye warders in the planet house of night,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gliding to unguessed doors with prophet key,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And out where dim paths stir with minstrelsy<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wordless and strange to man until your clear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Doubt-shriven strain interprets to the clay.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, might I hear ye as the world shall hear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nearer, a poet's journey, to the Golden Year!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dear, honoured bards of centuries dim and sped,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet glowing ever in your fadeless song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No dust shall heap its silence o'er ye dead,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No cadent seas shall drown your chorus strong<br /></span> +<span class="i2">In more melodious waves. I've lingered long<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By your brave harps strung for eternity;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But now runs my wild heart to meet the throng<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who yet shall choir. O wondrous company,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If graves may listen then, I then shall listening be!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p> +<h2>"AND THE LAST SHALL BE FIRST"</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Of</span> the dumb, bayed god in men,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the burdened mother eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the little, lifted hands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the passion and the dream<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sighing up from trodden lands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fearless, he is born again;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bold inquisitor of skies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Treading earth unmastered, free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the way grows wide for him<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Walking with the day to be.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Dead the grasp of custom then,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Silent grows her voice and pen;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Part as air the birth-wrong bands,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Break as thread the steel-drawn strands,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span><span class="i0">Graves no longer over-awe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dust is dust and men are men;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A living tongue again gives living law.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Trophies ours by gold and gun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Little treasures, houses,—nay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Guerdons of our dearest fight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now are fuel for his sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the dreams that lit the night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burn as candles in the day.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet we made thee, Man of Right,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As our being plead to rise;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of our straining arm thy might;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Even as we prayed for sight,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lo, afar thou hadst thy prophet eyes.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ay, thy gleaming spear is ours;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ours thy fearless, golden bow;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And our shining arrows go<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From thy bright untaken towers.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art what we will to be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sceptre, star, and wingèd cloud;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span><span class="i0">We are blood and brawn of thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glowing up through sod and stone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Burning through thy rended shroud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Moving with thee, chainless, on,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till the world, a quickened whole,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truth-delivered, naked, free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Once again hath found its deathless soul.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p> +<h2>MAGDALEN TO HER POET</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 22em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Take</span> back thy song; or let me hear what thou<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Heardst anciently from me,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The woman; now<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This wassail drift on boughless shores;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once lyre-veined leading thee<br /></span> +<span class="i4">To singing doors<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Out of the coiling dark;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Teaching thee hark<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Earth's virgin candours, blossomed wonderings,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sanctities inaudible till strings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of lyric gentleness<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wooed Heaven to confess<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Her world, and I was near,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The earliest listener,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who of my bosom then made Arcady,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And drew thy forest feet to Castaly.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span><span class="i0">Take back thy pity. Is it not from man<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who made that world his own?<br /></span> +<span class="i4">As barbican<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sends out its darts, and after flings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A dole of myrrh where groan<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Is loudest, sings<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy grace to me, me thus<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Unbeauteous<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By thee. Uneased thy covenanted bit<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From Levite ark till now. Thy judges sit,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gods ruminant, to keep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Earth pure for dulcet sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of babe and mother. Ay,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Drones yet the lulling lie,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whilst I, Disease uncinctured, darkly mate<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With guard and sentry of thy hierarchate.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Thine ages, are they fair? Shall they yet draw<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Child-homage from our eyes?<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The woman awe<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As her own babe? Far stretch the avid spans<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of fame-drunk emperies,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And all are man's;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span><span class="i2">But from what tower of praise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Does Justice gaze?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Art is thy boast? "See how we garland her,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The goddess of our hands?" Yea, yea, but where<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Is Truth, save by whose breath<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Art is a laurelled death?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">"Our churches these, and this<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Our Holy Writ; there wis<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Our altars high, and sanctuarised sod!"<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But what, care-taking soul, hast done with God?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The bairning time I knew, the whispering breast,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But in thy world no place<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Was for my nest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fragrant for perilous brooding pause.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou went'st thy pace;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">My gathered straws<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And grasses cast to dust<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To make thy lust<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A wayside couch. Deep from the nation's root,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bower-tree where homes are nesting fruit,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy blight creeps up unseen<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On bitten way to the green,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span><span class="i2">Till no hope-banneret<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Makes Spring in windy fret<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of flagellant boughs that whip my fingers bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Too chill at last to build, to bleed, to care.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Must surge so late with Nature's spawning ruse?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Her stintless passioning<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Lest she should lose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The younglet of her dearest pang?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To thee, her tenderling,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">She gave lust-fang<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To run the jungle's harm;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now strives thee to disarm,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fend Life from that weapon lent thy wear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till thou, forsaking dust, mightst capture her.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">What need now of the blood<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whose wasteful plenitude<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Swept thee through hostile slime<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To shores of light and time,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Man-minim safe mid frost and poison dews<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where naught could live that had not life to lose?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span><span class="i0">Yet dost thou foster it as thy veinèd sun;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy Heaven and Holy Rood<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Build toppling on<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its strifeful hell; root there thy art,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy dreams of tenderest bud;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Gaze on the heart<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of its fetidity,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This wreck of me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And sing. O God, what death, in eyes so bound,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They see Life's beauty in her draining wound!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Lay thou the blind thing down<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With saurian tusk and bone,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With dust of sworded maw<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And peril's fossil claw,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest sexton Earth even Man inter, nor trover<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of after-law untomb for Love her Lover!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Her lover yet uncarnate; of thy race<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To be; long-dreamèd mate<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of her embrace;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose godling fruit, too prized, too dear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For bandit breath, shall wait<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The Garnerer.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span><span class="i2">Not then mute, anguished wives,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dumb in law's gyves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall shrink to mother a soul-famined brood,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unbudding sentiencies of flowerhood,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shut miracles no wand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May touch, that from the hand<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of Toil, the reaver, fall<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To dust, their grudgèd pall,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leaving imperial web to those who wear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That woof of blood and tears as gossamer.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not then! Where now the wailing way o'erteems,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And baffled starvelings bar<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The way of dreams;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pouring to Want, grey-veined Disease,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To Greed, and lurking War,—<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Brute goblinries<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With horde-lip sateless on<br /></span> +<span class="i2">God-food dust-thrown,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lover and Love shall pass, each babe of theirs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Darling of Life, born for the higher wars<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where knights of spirit sway,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Summoned to holiest fray<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span><span class="i2">By heralds never bare<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To clodded vision. There,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shriven and sure, the sun-dipped lance shall leap<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till Dream uncorselet clay and put off sleep.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">For me one rift! Through this sepultural blight<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A breath runs living, new;<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Unburdening light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As when the flame-borne prophet on<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The Syrian ploughman threw<br /></span> +<span class="i4">A people's dawn.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The world is Heaven worth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The cradle earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Casts orphanhood, a Bethlehem God-swung<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From crimson grapple with his lyric young.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here triumph I, so low,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Knowing that Lust shall go,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With whited, anarch train,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shall pass, this curbless, vain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Usurping deity that would compel<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The Mary-longing Love to yet mould Jezebel.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span><span class="i0">Drag me with life that keeps Death shadow-near<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till I, unfrighted, wake<br /></span> +<span class="i4">His charnel fear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In every face that wariful<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Meets mine; this bud-mouth make<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Unkissable<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With kisses; and up-lap<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My soul's youth sap<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till 't withers to a clutch about the gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">You think pays all; yet from this reedy mould,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">This swamped, unfructant sedge,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gentility's marsh edge,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I, on free wing, shall take<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My swan-course o'er the brake,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Leaving the chanson of thy sin to thee<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who hast not seen, not touched the unstainable me.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yet art thou dear, O singer! When we rest<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Past all Life's hostel doors,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">On her home crest;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And 'neath our feet the dark vat night<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From pain's crushed star-grapes pours<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The climbing light;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span><span class="i2">There thou, beside me then,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With moteless ken,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Remembering these, thy pity and thy song,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dropped at the cross where thou didst nail me long,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Shalt sereless 'scape the aim<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of hot, lance-darting shame,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For over thee shall fall<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The dawn-tressed coronal<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of Love I then shall be, wrapping thee in<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The pity at whose touch dies every sin.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span></p> +<h2>FRIENDS</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 26em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">There's</span> one comes often as the sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fills my room with morning; comes with step<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Light as a youth's that joy has hurried home.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If he should greet my cheek, so might a wind<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Blow roses till they touch, silk leaf to leaf,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And on their beauty leave no deeper dye;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But with that touch an old world is untombed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Gay, festal-gowned; and two with nuptial eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Walk arm-locked there, flinging the curls of Greece<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From proud, smooth brows. As trapped between two throbs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their laughter dies in silent passion's kiss;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I from glow of ancient dust look up<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To meet the untroubled eyes of my friend's bride,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her pretty, depthless eyes that smile and smile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Possessingly, not grudging alien me<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A footstool place about her sceptred love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I, too, from imperial largess, smile.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span><span class="i0">Another comes more rarely than new moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And always with a flower,—one; pours tea<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like an old picture softly made alive,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sings me a ballad that once teased the ears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of golden Bess, and reads the book I love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If he must journey, first he comes to lay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Knight-service on my hand; no passion then<br /></span> +<span class="i0">More swift than when a last cool petal falls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To faded summer grass; but as he goes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I see a girl deep in a forest lane,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A narrow lane dark-roofed with locking firs;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And there are purple foxgloves shoulder high,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And round the girl's knees Canterbury bells.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon the air is scent of wounded trees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As though a storm had passed there, and great owls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ruffle a shade unloved of birds that sing.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But at the green lane's end, far down<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A bit of heart-shaped sun tells where the road<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lies wide and open; on the sun the still<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dark shadow of a steed: and by the girl<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One who shall ride,—unvisored now, and pale.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"And when I come," he says, to me who know<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span><span class="i0">He'll come that way no more; then hear my door<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Closed softly on a sob ten centuries old.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And there is one whom never sun or moon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Brings to my gate; but when amid a throng<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That fills some worldly room I see him pass.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The light about me is of regions where<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cold peaks are blue against a colder sky,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in the dusk-line where begins the Doubt<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Men call the Known, we stand in wingless pause,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unheavened weariness in untaught feet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in our hearts sad longing for the fire<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of stars from whence we came. "The earth," he says,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And warms in his my hand amazed to lie<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In strange, near comfort,—blossom of first pain.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then low we dip into the clinging night<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That is the Lethe of God-memories;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Stumble and sink in chains of time and sense<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Tangle in treacheries of a weed-hung globe,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And tread the dun, dim verges of defeat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till spirit chafes to vision, and we learn<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span><span class="i0">What morning is, and where the way of love.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In that gold dawn we part, knowing at last<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That earth can not divide us. With a smile<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He goes, and Fate leads not but runs before<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like an indulgèd child. That smile again<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I sometimes see across the world—a room.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span></p> +<h2>TRYST<br /> +<small>(AFTER READING FROM SHAKESPEARE)</small></h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Night</span>, thou art heavy, with no stars to chain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thy darkness unto heaven, that thy feet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">May dance along these cliffs in gay retreat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of the pursuing sea; heavy as pain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where eyes see not the end, or tears that stain<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The joy of him who conquers by defeat;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or this dark sea whose heart doth climb and beat<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The stones that make no sign, then falls again.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Cry with the night and wrestle with the wave,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Ye two-edged winds that cut this shore and me;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I warm me still with thinking of a grave<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That can not hold the dust's eternal part;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For here across the centuries and the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A dead hand lies like flame upon my heart.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p> +<h2>IN THE STUDIO</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 23em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Bowed</span> in the firelight's softly climbing gleam,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I sit a shadow, in a shadow's place;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While through the great, grey window vaguely stream<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Twilight caresses on each pictured face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That one hour gone was cold in art's repose;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Now each still canvas answers tremblingly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till eyes unveil and living spirit glows<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where no light was while the rude Day went by.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And rudest Day, that passed so sternly bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Cold as the life that walks without desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unbeauteous as duty or despair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Plucked by a hope that will not set her free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turns back, while memory's soft, informing fire<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Falls on her face, and Beauty looks at me.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> +<h2>LOVERS' LEAP</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 22em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">In</span> Greece I found the place, though earth<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has many such; and wandering there alone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One Autumn evening when the moon rose late,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I heard this song, though none was there to sing.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A ghostly rune, yet left the alarmèd dark<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Quivering with life, tear-warm and murmuring:<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">No morrow is if hearts say no;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life is gone when love doth go.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No tear to weep, no prayer to pray;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Endeth time with lovers' day.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">This trailing night will pale and flee,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And dawn again creep o'er the sea;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Light's tender hands will earth attire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Aloft will swim the golden fire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And every bird begin his lay,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But I shall know there is no day.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span><span class="i2">And Spring shall come. With teary cheek,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But heart of Bacchus, she will seek<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With healing eyes each winter wound,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till little minstrels of the ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The choral buds, in wonder wake<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To croon the dewy songs they take<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From brooks that haunt the woodman's glade<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And lose a dream in every shade.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And ere the Spring has vanished,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Summer will make her rosy bed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And new loves take with every wind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Till earth be laden with her kind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And foster-bosomed Autumn come<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To nurse the darlings of her womb.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">But naught of season, change, or sun,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Recks the heart whose love is done.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Oh, ne'er again will beauty wear<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For my sad eyes a robe more fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And ne'er again will music make<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A sweeter song for my poor sake.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No tear to weep, no prayer to pray!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Endeth time with lover's day.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span><span class="i2">No morrow is if hearts say no;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Life is gone when love doth go.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Death, O Death, why dost thou flee<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From one whose wish is but for thee?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Here is thy pillow, on my breast.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No dove but would its spicèd nest<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Forego to couch in this sweet bed<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That here I open for thy head.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Thou wilt not hear? Thou wilt not come?<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Then must I seek thee in thy home.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Once more lift up this stone-dead heart,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And leap to find thee where thou art!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> +<h2>HAVENED</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 25em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Come</span>, Flower of Life, and lay thy beauty's rose<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Upon the breast that storm and thee divide;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And like true knights whose queen no laggard knows,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Forth gently shall my love-bid fancies ride<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To serve thy heart, and bring thy wishes in;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And shuttling rhyme a web shall make thee then<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Whilst thou dost gaze, nor thy poor weaver chide.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Sweet wonder lay upon my opening eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That showed me in a gracious court of trees<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose leaves were clouds that caught and lost sunrise,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And fell in mist upon a twirling breeze<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That traced the ground and to a river grew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Casting its tender spray in tinted dew<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As curved its silver way with laughing ease.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span><span class="i0">I followed, forest deep, this wooing guide<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Through fragrant gloom of cliff and bower o'ergrown,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Free as a fawn the stream 'twas born beside,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Nor held my step with fear at sounds unknown,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">High murmurings among the cloudy leaves,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As when some dull and dreamy throng receives<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Strange lyric stir from power not its own.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And more and more the murmurs grew like song,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Save that no song could drop such honey-rain;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The lyre-god's self would do it unsweet wrong,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Were he that golden sound to breathe again;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And as my guide into a cave did pass,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That closèd seemed, and yet unclosèd was,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That airy cadence stooped and bore me in.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then wandered life from out my memory,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Gone from desire, as ghost at last must go;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor shadow fell, where shadow could not be,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">From those dark lures that make our worldly woe.<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span><span class="i0">O Sweet, forgive that my inconstant tongue<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Should dim the glories that I moved among<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With name of gloom that wrongs the world we know.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The dome was fair as Heaven, or Heaven, in sooth,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">It might have been, but that there shone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The centre 'neath, a fountain-featured truth<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That might no rival of its radiance own.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, this was Heaven's heart, if Heaven be,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And the bright dome but its gold boundary;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Yet gleamèd here no crown or mounted throne.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">The music budded till it dropped soft showers;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">All things to other changed, though here no mage;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clouds turned to light, and light to sweeter powers,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And chance and change to all was privilege;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The air was full of phantom-stirring things,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And I not breathed but that I touched new wings,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And sent some dream on airy pilgrimage.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ere my delight had held me pausing long<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Beneath a cloud that rained me lilies cool,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span><span class="i0">A stir awoke amid a ferny throng<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That leaned their trembling grace above a pool,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And following the flutter of a song<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To feathery rest where blossoms minute-young<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Oped arms of vermeil soft, and dawning gule,<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Mine eye saw Love. White on a verge's mount,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That swelled to show its burden dear, she lay;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A sighing mist that partly filled the fount,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And o'er the brink sought tenderly to stray,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For her fair body pillowed soft the ground,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Growing glad upward arms to clasp her round<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And of each grace take new and sweet account.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">In nymphlike mould her gentle figure ran,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Though nymph so bright did never sport in dell;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her eyes an angel's were, if angels' can<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Be thousand times more fair than dream can tell;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unfalling tears they held, yet so could please<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They might have hermits made forget their knees<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And kings find out they had them, such their spell.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span><span class="i0">Above her forehead hovered close a star,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Like spirit guard, whose ever-changing ray<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was fed with fires of sacrifice that are<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Love's life,—the offerings earth lovers lay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon her shrine, and as they pale or glow<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She smiles or droops as this true star doth show,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Or dim or bright as serve we or betray.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Beside her was an instrument of tune,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of changeful beauty as her couch of cloud,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And as I looked she woke it to strange rune,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As in low murmur moved her thoughts aloud,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For all Love's thoughts are music,—but to make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ditty o'er, what heart would undertake,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And with a mortal chant her utterance shroud?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Anear her stood a youth bare of all guise<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Save when a light enwrapped him in its flame;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He bore the ages in his listening eyes,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And prophecy there waited for a name;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joy loved him best, and gave eternity,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And his lithe, lustrous being seemed to say<br /></span> +<span class="i2">"I am the aspiration of all dream."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span><span class="i0">Upward he gazed as though he would read o'er<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The scroll of rising winds, the burst of suns,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lists—ah, might it be earth's shore<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Freed of her epic hates and tunèd groans!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">War's passion beat, and woe's sad chorus past,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And all her song pure-winnowed, clear at last,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Pouring the music of her happy moons!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then moved his lips, but yet unborn is he<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Who may with their resound make sweet his own;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He who shall come as morning walks the sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Mate of the Wind when all her harps are one;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So much we know by frail yet quenchless light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That creeps through shadows of our lute-poor night,—<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The brave rose-glimmers of his singing dawn.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lo, every dream new-homing from far ways<br /></span> +<span class="i2">On silent wing or spirit wave of air,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Came circling o'er his head in hovering maze,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Seen not, nor heard, albeit I knew them there;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But as each passed before his lifted face,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They gleamed to sight, and grace so mounted grace<br /></span> +<span class="i2">My eyes seemed there anointed, though afar.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span><span class="i0">Then radiant couriers shook the fountain Heart<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And turned me thither. Sweet and bold surprise<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Took all my being with such tremorous start<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I marvelled how aught else had held my eyes.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I could not tell what the bright wonder was<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose garner-breast held every beauteous cause<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Makes earth remember, and forget, the skies.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">There shone the star that lit man's first desire,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And there his hope that latest fluttered bare;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One look translating made me as a lyre<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Swept with a joy the heart of Truth might share,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Truth that is silent, wanting joy to sing,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But ere I breathèd had for wondering,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A face out-flashed wreathed with sun-flinging hair.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Youth was the angel of that countenance,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where graces sprang in ever fairer throng;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet she was old ere any star's birth-dance,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">If word of earthly time, or old or young,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Means aught of eyes whose brooding splendour swept<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The silences when Uncreation slept<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And gave the dream that woke the suns in song.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span><span class="i0">Each age that left a glory left it writ<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Upon her brow, as with a pen of light<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose track was pearls, and as each whiter lit<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The story there, the court grew softlier bright;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Each dullsome thing—Oh, no thing there was dull!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Flushed o'er itself with glow more beautiful,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As might fair, sleeping gods wake to delight.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then all the wonder that made vague her form,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Oped on a figure splendent so to view;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mine eyes an instant swooned; and as from storm<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of warring rainbows it endearèd grew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To shape of her who 'gan descending slow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fair Love looked up, and Poesy knelt low:<br /></span> +<span class="i2">'Twas Beauty's self, and mother of the two.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Whilst yet I gazed all vanished were the three;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And as a sighing shore no more may hold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mermaid wave that would go out to sea,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">So slipped the vision from my fancy bold.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O Flower of Life, no rest for me but this,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To dream awhile, and then awake to press<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Upon my heart thy curls' beloved gold!<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p> +<h2>MID-MAY</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 14em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Hand</span> clamped to desk,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And eyes on task undone,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I see a meadow pool,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With shaken willows silvering.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O, gods that trouble me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Wherefore, wherefore?—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pan is at the door.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">An arabesque<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of sifted sun<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And forest star-grass, cool<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With shadows tunnelling:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Witch-work that tauntingly<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Webs my bare floor:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ah, Pan is at the door.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">I'm civilized,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in my veins<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The mountain brook is still<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span><span class="i0">As water in a jar;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But oh, the heart hill-born,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It paineth sore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For Pan is at the door.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ye sacrificed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of earth, what rains<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Have wept their will<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And drowned your rebel star,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That ye should sit forlorn,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Telling Greed's score,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Pan is at the door?<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p> +<h2>THE LOSS</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 22em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">When</span> thou shalt search thy glass nor find the flower<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That there so long smiled gay, unwithering,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And from sad vantage of a forlorn hour<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That fore nor aft unmasks one hint of Spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou mourn'st the barrenness of beauty spent<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With no reservèd treasure for the day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When all that youth and sunny fortune lent<br /></span> +<span class="i2">No more should light adoring eyes to thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And fear'st thyself a-cold, by the last storm<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Beat to thine inn, a still, uncarping guest,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy once bright eye a pilot to the worm<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Making his dungeon way to his new feast,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drop not a tear then for thy beauty fled,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">But for the wounds it healed not bow thy head.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> +<h2>CALLED</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 21em;"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">I rise</span>, I pass;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The feast is on, bright is the board,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Undrained the comrade glass;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love's sheltering eyes are deep and nigh;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fame waits with shining word;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But sweeter, goldening the sphere,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A voice falls from another sky;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The wasting world I do not hear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And no god laughs as I pass by,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A wanderer.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Unpausing lowers<br /></span> +<span class="i2">The gleam of her from other airs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And Being's guarded doors<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are open wide for journey free<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where wait my chosen stars;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And o'er me, O what lustres break<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span><span class="i0">Of that desire, Reality,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That burns a thousand suns to make<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One nightingale to sing for me,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A soul awake!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Far, far I sped<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Down moonless lanes from doubt to doubt;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With hasting, hungry tread<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up slopes of frost unpitying<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where the last star went out;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">There fell I in unlifting dark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And lying while an æon's wing<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dragged o'er me bare, wind-stript and stark,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As leafless planets dream of Spring,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Dreamed she would hark.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Then by me bound,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Came one who wore my lost career<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With star on star pinned round,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And stood him by my bones to stare.<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With pity's ancient sneer<br /></span> +<span class="i0">He mocked my bleachen nudity;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span><span class="i0">Then did she turn, then did she care,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And pausing where I might not see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She let the winds blow back her hair<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And cover me.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> +<h2>SONG OF TO-MORROW</h2> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Sound</span>, O Harp of Being, set<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Deathless in the winds of time!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All thine ancient part forget,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wailing lust, and strife, and crime!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clouds of hate are now sweet rain:<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou shall never moan again.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Harp of Being, O forget<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hesper dead that played on thee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">All her golden fingers wet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">With the blood of misery!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Morning sweeps along thy strings;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou art done with yester things.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Bright thou art with drops that fell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Watering earth's long-buried Spring;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou hast quivered safe through Hell<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Where Love found immortal wing;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span><span class="i0">Sound, while Life unfrenzied calls<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Joy to hallowed Bacchanals!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Harp of Dawn, forget, forget!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Sound thee of the hours now come<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When the vine and violet<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Bind to earth the fallen drum.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Palsied as a dying star<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fails the shaken torch of war!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">From each pennoned pinnacle<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Of the cities of the free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Clasped in time invisible,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Flows the wonder flown to thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou so swift to throb and start<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With the singing earth's new heart!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">By the light that sets mind free,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the night that once it wore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By the soul man is to be,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">By the beast he is no more;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By thy past, unmeasured pain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou shalt never moan again.<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p> +<h2>LITTLE DAUGHTERS</h2> + +<div class="poem" style="width: 22em;"> +<h3>I</h3> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">What</span> is sweeter, sweet, than you?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Not the fairy dew<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of these bee-sipped pastures where<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Time, unsandalled, unaware,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rests him ere he tire.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Shall I his forgotten hour<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Strike for thee?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fatefully,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lift the wand that wakes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Woman in the flower?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then o'er dream's horizon breaks<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rose of other fire;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">From a world more sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rival rise the fragrant floods;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Breath that makes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy morning meadows dun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mutes their dew-bells, misty hoods<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Every leaf that shone;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span><span class="i0">Sets thy daisy-fondled feet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Twinkling to be gone;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Down the ways and up the ways,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hope-fleet, trampling care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As curling buds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Iris goal joy-near;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then a-creep on praying knees,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Frail shoulders bent to bear<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heaven's falling sphere.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Ah, not yet, heart's wonder!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little hour we'll stay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thou wilt give me grace of dawn<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For travelled, dusk array.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This gown of mottled years,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By noon and gnome-light spun,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Enchant me to surrender<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To Ariel ministers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Here poised with thee before<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy summer world's wide door,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And glory that is hers;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This soft, unclamorous sky<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That makes a lotus ship of every eye<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span><span class="i0">Upventuring; song's sail that pilotless<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drifts down, a wing's caress<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On billowed field and climbing shore<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Whose veiny tidelets beat and cling,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bloom-labouring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Invincibly sweet and far,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Up looming cone and scaur,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And clambering spill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To lap of ledge and aproned hill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The heaped and whispering greenery<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of beauty's burden that unburdens me!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">And thou, the fairest thing<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In this fair shaman-ring,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall my sore magic loose thee wandering?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Has Life such faltering need,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mid outlands where she runs,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She cannot reach the suns<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Save thou dost bleed?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall she go fleet,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With heart of stouter cheer,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Because thou givest her<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thy little, bruisèd feet?<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span><span class="i0">Thou'dst earn thy Heaven? Dear, I know<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Heaven must not ban thee shining so!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Why shouldst thou laden bow,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And climb, and slip, and toil,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And blanch thy cheek to keep thy soul as white,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Inviolate as now?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O, we have dreams we shall not put away<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till earth be fair as they;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When all this work-night coil<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall be unwound by wizard fingers bright<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That send our own to play;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And wisdom, wiser than we know, shall find<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The birth trail to the mind;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor spirit waver, panting here and yon<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Seeking sun-vantage, for all heights are won.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall not we then be as the flowers,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Drinking dew dowers<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As now thou dost?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Glad petals that unclose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">About Life's heart,—at last the perfect Rose?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet, I will trust<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Love and the morn;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fold here the wakeful wand,<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span><span class="i0">Leave thee in dewy bond<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of blossomy sleep.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who knows but thou hast won the steep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">By silent, angel way,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hidden and heavenly,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That leaves no trace of thorn?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Star-flower, keep thy sky;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If man must climb, let him go up to thee;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A daisy may be nearer God than he—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Than I.<br /></span></div> +<h3>II</h3> +<div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">What crime was hers, that she lies hushed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Dead with the price, while you and I,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With lifted head, walk sinless by?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pause then,—but spare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That easy tear; the tale I'll bare.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mid stones that pushed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her eager life back, grudged her room<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For root without one bloom,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There strangely blushed<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span><span class="i0">Some little dreams,—not gloriously fine<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As yours and mine,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But vague, and veiled, and few;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She hardly knew their names, but felt the stir<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That filled her heart with whispers as they grew,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And knew that life lay in them, life for her.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When Hunger came she turned her breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And let him feed. Cold followed, gripped<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her veins and sipped<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The thin blood thinner; both she pressed<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As close as lovers, lest<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A darker fiend might creep within<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her empty arms; lest she might buy,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With one swift hour of sin,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A poisoned ease from tooth of need,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little food, a little fire, and die;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she had dreams to shelter, little dreams to feed.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Oh, unresisting dumb!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In wide earth's harvest-gold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She asked no share,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If in the dust a crumb<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Might be for her;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span><span class="i0">If she might round her aching body fold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">One hour's undriven sleep,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But one hour more,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Safe from the Want that pried<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her thin and shaken door,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That hour the shivering dawn denied<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With scream that cut life through,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And made her wretched pillow seem a rose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Her clinging cheek would keep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In soft, ungoaded death! And ah, suppose<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A few more pence the day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Were richly hers, to make youth gay<br /></span> +<span class="i0">With ribbon or a flower ere it flew!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">(So soon toil's wrinkles come!)<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then would she make her dreams a fairer home;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then would her heart be stronger where they grew;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then would she walk more bravely knowing them;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then would her eyes be brighter showing them.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet did they whisper, yet they stirred<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Uptremblingly, till half their breath<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was music, half was song;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Told of free hours and a wild heath<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span><span class="i0">Where wind and sun ran dappling; of a bird<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Bough-throned, whose trill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Turned all the forest leaves to wings,—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">His singing young;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of a moon-goldened hill<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where blossoms danced; of sweeter, holier things;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A sea-beach grey,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Where waves were drownèd twilight, and the day<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Hung in a pause that softly, suddenwise,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Became a soul. She too would have a soul,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And hours with God and friends; no more give all,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Now there were dreams, to the machine.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then rose with young, star-driven eyes<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To face the lords of gain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And here she lies.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Lift up the cotton, thinned with wear,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That hides the poor, starved shoulder; bare<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The bruise shows, like a printed paw.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Haste, draw the dumb, frayed sheet again,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And think you cover so the stain<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Upon our hearts; for—have the truth!—<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span><span class="i0">'Twas we who put the club of law<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Into bought hands to strike her battling youth.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">She kept her virtue's gold,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fought hunger, fiend, and cold<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Unvanquished; when the might of Hell<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Rose in law's name and ours, she broken fell.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O friend, when next you smooth the golden head<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like nestled morning 'gainst your knee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Look farther,—see<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Fair girlhood dead.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">These lips, unvisited by love, were sweet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">As are thy fondling's; this want-hollowed cheek<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A little ease had made<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Playground of dimples, joy's rose-seat;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And could these eyes ope they would speak<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of one who bought her dreams of Death and paid.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If blind thou shrinkest yet<br /></span> +<span class="i0">To meet Truth bare,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then as thou'st dealt with this pale maid<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Life shall thine own besiege.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Injustice holds<br /></span> +<span class="i0">No sanctuary folds;<br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span><span class="i0">To fence out care<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We must the planet hedge;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Justice is God, and waits<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Behind our blood-built tower-gates;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And as indifference<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was once our soul's pretence,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Who then shall heed us, who shall understand,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">When our crushed hearts lie in the vengeant hand?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But is she dead? Faint on my ears<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A far-off singing falls,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sweet from time's sleep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Amid the stainless years<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Yet unawake to men.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nearer it calls,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like music through a rain,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And o'er the distant ridges sweep<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Soft garments and young feet. O maidens, ye<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Are like a cloud in beauty,—nay, more swift!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">If that the milky stream of stars could lift<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Its clustered glory, hasten free,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And while we marvelled pass from east to west,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Then ye would mirrored be!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span><span class="i0">The hills seem lit with brides,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And she whose death-cold breast<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Was shrouded here, is't she who guides<br /></span> +<span class="i0">This fearless company<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Sure of earth's welcome as a maiden Spring?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And in their eyes the dreams she fought for,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">In their hands the flowers she sought for,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">On their lips the songs that here she did not sing!<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Not dead! While Destiny hath need<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of living dream and deed,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ay, she shall deathless be!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">While aught availeth, and God is,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">For in her hope lay His!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">O, ye who mar Love's face<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Ere Love be born, leave not this place,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Pass not this white form by,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Till from assaulted skies ye hear the cry,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">"She is not dead till ye have murdered Me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p class="hd2">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson & Co.</span><br /> +at Paul's Work, Edinburgh</p> + +<div class="trn"><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> +Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. +Original spellings have been retained.</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Path Flower and Other Verses, by Olive T. 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