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diff --git a/old/52366-0.txt b/old/52366-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 092ac26..0000000 --- a/old/52366-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,2355 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Veil, by Walter de la Mare - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Veil - and other Poems - -Author: Walter de la Mare - -Release Date: June 18, 2016 [EBook #52366] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VEIL *** - - - - -Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive) - - - - - - - - - - THE VEIL - _and other_ - POEMS - - - _By_ - - WALTER DE LA MARE - -[Illustration] - - NEW YORK - HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY - 1922 - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1922, - - BY - - HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY - - - PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - - NOTE - - -Seven of the poems included in this collection were written for Drawings -by Miss Pamela Bianco, and were first published by Mr. Heinemann in a -volume entitled _Flora_. The author's thanks are due to Mr. Sydney -Pawling for permission to reprint these poems; to Mr. Cyril Beaumont for -the use of 'Tidings' from a Play for Children, entitled _Crossings_; -and, for permission to include several other poems, to the Editors of -the _London Mercury_, the _New Republic_, the _Spectator_, the _Nation_, -the _Century Magazine_, the _Cambridge Magazine_, the _Literary Review_, -the _Sphere_, the _New Statesman_, the _Bookman's Journal_, the _Broom_, -the _Outlook_, the _Athenæum_, and the _Westminster Gazette_. - - - - - CONTENTS - - - PAGE - THE IMP WITHIN 3 - THE OLD ANGLER 5 - THE WILLOW 10 - TITMOUSE 11 - THE VEIL 12 - THE FAIRY IN WINTER 13 - THE FLOWER 14 - BEFORE DAWN 15 - THE SPECTRE 17 - THE VOICE 18 - THE HOUR-GLASS 19 - IN THE DOCK 20 - THE WRECK 21 - THE SUICIDE 22 - DRUGGED 23 - WHO'S THAT? 25 - HOSPITAL 26 - A SIGN 28 - GOOD-BYE 30 - THE MONOLOGUE 31 - AWAKE! 34 - FORGIVENESS 35 - THE MOTH 36 - NOT THAT WAY 37 - CRAZED 39 - FOG 40 - _SOTTO VOCE_ 42 - THE IMAGINATION'S PRIDE 44 - THE WANDERERS 46 - THE CORNER STONE 48 - THE SPIRIT OF AIR 50 - THE UNFINISHED DREAM 51 - MUSIC 54 - TIDINGS 56 - THE SON OF MELANCHOLY 57 - THE QUIET ENEMY 60 - THE FAMILIAR 61 - MAERCHEN 63 - GOLD 64 - MIRAGE 65 - FLOTSAM 67 - MOURN'ST THOU NOW? 68 - THE GALLIASS 69 - THE DECOY 70 - SUNK LYONESSE 71 - THE CATECHISM 72 - FUTILITY 73 - BITTER WATERS 74 - WHO? 76 - A RIDDLE 77 - THE OWL 79 - THE LAST COACHLOAD 80 - AN EPITAPH 84 - - - - - THE VEIL AND OTHER POEMS - - - - - THE IMP WITHIN - - - 'ROUSE now, my dullard, and thy wits awake; - 'Tis first of the morning. And I bid thee make— - No, not a vow; we have munched our fill of these - From crock of bone-dry crusts and mouse-gnawn cheese— - Nay, just one whisper in that long, long ear— - Awake; rejoice. Another Day is here:— - - 'A virgin wilderness, which, hour by hour, - Mere happy idleness shall bring to flower. - Barren and arid though its sands now seem, - Wherein oasis becks not, shines no stream, - Yet wake—and lo, 'tis lovelier than a dream. - - 'Plunge on, thy every footprint shall make fair - Its thirsty waste; and thy foregone despair - Undarken into sweet birds in the air, - Whose coursing wings and love-crazed summoning cries - Into infinity shall attract thine eyes. - - 'No...? Well, lest promise in performance faint, - A less inviting prospect will I paint. - I bid thee adjure thy Yesterday, and say: - "As _thou_ wast, Enemy, so be To-day.— - Immure me in the same close narrow room; - Be hated toil the lamp to light its gloom; - Make stubborn my pen; sift dust into my ink; - Forbid mine eyes to see, my brain to think. - Scare off the words whereon the mind is set. - Make memory the power to forget. - Constrain imagination; bind its wing; - Forbid the unseen Enchantresses to sing. - Ay, do thy worst!" - - 'Vexed Spectre, prythee smile. - Even though that yesterday was bleak and sour, - Art thou a slave beneath its thong to cower? - Thou hast survived. And hither am I—again, - Kindling with mockery thy o'erlaboured brain. - Though scant the moments be wherein we meet, - Think, what dark months would even one make sweet. - - 'Thy quill? Thy paper? Ah, my dear, be true. - Come quick To-morrow. Until then, Adieu.' - - - - - THE OLD ANGLER - - - TWILIGHT leaned mirrored in a pool - Where willow boughs swept green and hoar, - Silk-clear the water, calm and cool, - Silent the weedy shore: - - There in abstracted, brooding mood - One fishing sate. His painted float - Motionless as a planet stood; - Motionless his boat. - - A melancholy soul was this, - With lantern jaw, gnarled hand, vague eye; - Huddled in pensive solitariness - He had fished existence by. - - Empty his creel; stolen his bait— - Impassively he angled on, - Though mist now showed the evening late - And daylight well-nigh gone. - - Suddenly, like a tongueless bell, - Downward his gaudy cork did glide; - A deep, low-gathering, gentle swell - Spread slowly far and wide. - - Wheeped out his tackle from noiseless winch, - And furtive as a thief, his thumb, - With nerve intense, wound inch by inch - A line no longer numb. - - What fabulous spoil could thus unplayed - Gape upward to a mortal air?— - He stoops engrossed; his tanned cheek greyed; - His heart stood still: for there, - - Wondrously fairing, beneath the skin - Of secretly bubbling water seen, - Swims—not the silver of scale and fin— - But gold immixt with green. - - Deeply astir in oozy bed, - The darkening mirror ripples and rocks: - And lo—a wan-pale, lovely head, - Hook tangled in its locks! - - Cold from her haunt—a Naiad slim. - Shoulder and cheek gleamed ivory white; - Though now faint stars stood over him, - The hour hard on night. - - Her green eyes gazed like one half-blind - In sudden radiance; her breast - Breathed the sweet air, while gently twined, - 'Gainst the cold water pressed, - - Her lean webbed hands. She floated there, - Light as a scentless petalled flower, - Water-drops dewing from her hair - In tinkling beadlike shower. - - So circling sidelong, her tender throat - Uttered a grieving, desolate wail; - Shrill o'er the dark pool lapsed its note, - Piteous as nightingale. - - Ceased Echo. And he?—a life's remorse - Welled to a tongue unapt to charm, - But never a word broke harsh and hoarse - To quiet her alarm. - - With infinite stealth his twitching thumb - Tugged softly at the tautened gut, - Bubble-light, fair, her lips now dumb, - She moved, and struggled not; - - But with set, wild, unearthly eyes - Pale-gleaming, fixed as if in fear, - She couched in the water, with quickening sighs, - And floated near. - - In hollow heaven the stars were at play; - Wan glow-worms greened the pool-side grass; - Dipped the wide-bellied boat. His prey - Gazed on; nor breathed. Alas!— - - Long sterile years had come and gone; - Youth, like a distant dream, was sped; - Heart, hope, and eyes had hungered on.... - He turned a shaking head, - - And clumsily groped amid the gold, - Sleek with night dews, of that tangling hair, - Till pricked his finger keen and cold - The barb imbedded there. - - Teeth clenched, he drew his knife—'Snip, snip,'— - Groaned, and sate shivering back; and she, - Treading the water with birdlike dip, - Shook her sweet shoulders free: - - Drew backward, smiling, infatuate fair, - His life's disasters in her eyes, - All longing and folly, grief, despair, - Daydreams and mysteries. - - She stooped her brow; laid low her cheek, - And, steering on that silk-tressed craft, - Out from the listening, leaf-hung creek, - Tossed up her chin, and laughed— - - A mocking, icy, inhuman note. - One instant flashed that crystal breast, - Leaned, and was gone. Dead-still the boat: - And the deep dark at rest. - - Flits moth to flower. A water-rat - Noses the placid ripple. And lo! - Streams a lost meteor. Night is late, - And daybreak zephyrs flow.... - - And he—the cheated? Dusk till morn, - Insensate, even of hope forsook, - He muttering squats, aloof, forlorn, - Dangling a baitless hook. - - - - - THE WILLOW - - - LEANS now the fair willow, dreaming - Amid her locks of green. - In the driving snow she was parched and cold, - And in midnight hath been - Swept by blasts of the void night, - Lashed by the rains. - Now of that wintry dark and bleak - No memory remains. - - In mute desire she sways softly; - Thrilling sap up-flows; - She praises God in her beauty and grace, - Whispers delight. And there flows - A delicate wind from the Southern seas, - Kissing her leaves. She sighs. - While the birds in her tresses make merry; - Burns the Sun in the skies. - - - - - TITMOUSE - - - IF you would happy company win, - Dangle a palm-nut from a tree, - Idly in green to sway and spin, - Its snow-pulped kernel for bait; and see, - A nimble titmouse enter in. - - Out of earth's vast unknown of air, - Out of all summer, from wave to wave, - He'll perch, and prank his feathers fair, - Jangle a glass-clear wildering stave, - And take his commons there— - - This tiny son of life; this spright, - By momentary Human sought, - Plume will his wing in the dappling light, - Clash timbrel shrill and gay— - And into time's enormous nought, - Sweet-fed, will flit away. - - - - - THE VEIL - - - I think and think; yet still I fail— - Why does this lady wear a veil? - Why thus elect to mask her face - Beneath that dainty web of lace? - The tip of a small nose I see, - And two red lips, set curiously - Like twin-born cherries on one stem, - And yet she has netted even them. - Her eyes, it's plain, survey with ease - Whatever to glance upon they please. - Yet, whether hazel, grey, or blue, - Or that even lovelier lilac hue, - I cannot guess: why—why deny - Such beauty to the passer-by? - Out of a bush a nightingale - May expound his song; beneath that veil - A happy mouth no doubt can make - English sound sweeter for its sake. - But then, why muffle in, like this, - What every blossomy wind would kiss? - Why in that little night disguise - A daybreak face, those starry eyes? - - - - - THE FAIRY IN WINTER - - - (For a drawing by Dorothy Puvis Lathrop) - - THERE was a Fairy—flake of winter— - Who, when the snow came, whispering, Silence, - Sister crystal to crystal sighing, - Making of meadow argent palace, - Night a star-sown solitude, - Cried 'neath her frozen eaves, 'I burn here!' - - Wings diaphanous, beating bee-like, - Wand within fingers, locks enspangled, - Icicle foot, lip sharp as scarlet, - She lifted her eyes in her pitch-black hollow— - Green as stalks of weeds in water— - Breathed: stirred. - - Rilled from her heart the ichor, coursing, - Flamed and awoke her slumbering magic. - Softlier than moth's her pinions trembled; - Out into blackness, light-like, she flittered, - Leaving her hollow cold, forsaken. - - In air, o'er crystal, rang twangling night-wind. - Bare, rimed pine-woods murmured lament. - - - - - THE FLOWER - - - HORIZON to horizon, lies outspread - The tenting firmament of day and night; - Wherein are winds at play; and planets shed - Amid the stars their gentle gliding light. - - The huge world's sun flames on the snow-capped hills; - Cindrous his heat burns in the sandy plain; - With myriad spume-bows roaring ocean swills - The cold profuse abundance of the rain. - - And man—a transient object in this vast, - Sighs o'er a universe transcending thought, - Afflicted by vague bodings of the past, - Driven toward a future, unforeseen, unsought. - - Yet, see him, stooping low to naked weed - That meeks its blossom in his anxious eye, - Mark how he grieves, as if his heart did bleed, - And wheels his wondrous features to the sky; - As if, transfigured by so small a grace, - He sought Companion in earth's dwelling-place. - - - - - BEFORE DAWN - - - DIM-BERRIED is the mistletoe - With globes of sheenless grey, - The holly mid ten thousand thorns - Smoulders its fires away; - And in the manger Jesu sleeps - This Christmas Day. - - Bull unto bull with hollow throat - Makes echo every hill, - Cold sheep in pastures thick with snow - The air with bleatings fill; - While of his mother's heart this Babe - Takes His sweet will. - - All flowers and butterflies lie hid, - The blackbird and the thrush - Pipe but a little as they flit - Restless from bush to bush; - Even to the robin Gabriel hath - Cried softly, 'Hush!' - - Now night is astir with burning stars - In darkness of the snow; - Burdened with frankincense and myrrh - And gold the Strangers go - Into a dusk where one dim lamp - Burns faintly, Lo! - - No snowdrop yet its small head nods, - In winds of winter drear; - No lark at casement in the sky - Sings matins shrill and clear; - Yet in this frozen mirk the Dawn - Breathes, Spring is here! - - - - - THE SPECTRE - - - IN cloudy quiet of the day, - While thrush and robin perched mute on spray, - A spectre by the window sat, - Brooding thereat. - - He marked the greenness of the Spring, - Daffodil blowing, bird a-wing— - Yet dark the house the years had made - Within that Shade. - - Blinded the rooms wherein no foot falls. - Faded the portraits on the walls. - Reverberating, shakes the air - A river there. - - Coursing in flood, its infinite roars; - From pit to pit its water pours; - And he, with countenance unmoved, - Hears cry:—'Beloved, - - 'Oh, ere the day be utterly spent, - Return, return, from banishment. - The night thick-gathers. Weep a prayer - For the true and fair.' - - - - - THE VOICE - - - 'WE are not often alone, we two,' - Mused a secret voice in my ear, - As the dying hues of afternoon - Lapsed into evening drear. - - A withered leaf, wafted on in the street, - Like a wayless spectre, sighed; - Aslant on the roof-tops a sickly moon - Did mutely abide. - - Yet waste though the shallowing day might seem, - And fainter than hope its rose, - Strangely that speech in my thoughts welled on; - As water in-flows: - - Like remembered words once heard in a room - Wherein death kept far-away tryst; - 'Not often alone, we two; but thou, - How sorely missed!' - - - - - THE HOUR-GLASS - - - THOU who know'st all the sorrows of this earth— - I pray Thee, ponder, ere again Thou turn - Thine hour-glass over again, since one sole birth, - To poor clay-cold humanity, makes yearn - A heart at passion with life's endless coil. - Thou givest thyself too strait a room therein. - For so divine a tree too poor a soil. - For so great agony what small peace to win. - Cast from that Ark of Heaven which is Thy home - The raven of hell may wander without fear; - But sadly wings the dove o'er floods to roam, - Nought but one tender sprig his eyes to cheer. - Nay, Lord, I speak in parables. But see! - 'Tis stricken Man in Men that pleads with Thee. - - - - - IN THE DOCK - - - PALLID, mis-shapen he stands. The world's grimed thumb, - Now hooked securely in his matted hair, - Has haled him struggling from his poisonous slum - And flung him mute as fish close-netted there. - His bloodless hands entalon that iron rail. - He gloats in beastlike trance. His settling eyes - From staring face to face rove on—and quail. - Justice for carrion pants; and these the flies. - Voice after voice in smooth impartial drone - Erects horrific in his darkening brain - A timber framework, where agape, alone - Bright life will kiss good-bye the cheek of Cain. - Sudden like wolf he cries; and sweats to see - When howls man's soul, it howls inaudibly. - - - - - THE WRECK - - - STORM and unconscionable winds once cast - On grinding shingle, masking gap-toothed rock, - This ancient hulk. Rent hull, and broken mast, - She sprawls sand-mounded, of sea birds the mock. - Her sailors, drowned, forgotten, rot in mould, - Or hang in stagnant quiet of the deep; - The brave, the afraid into one silence sold; - Their end a memory fainter than of sleep. - She held good merchandise. She paced in pride - The uncharted paths men trace in ocean's foam. - Now laps the ripple in her broken side, - And zephyr in tamarisk softly whispers, Home. - The dreamer scans her in the sea-blue air, - And, sipping of contrast, finds the day more fair. - - - - - THE SUICIDE - - - DID these night-hung houses, - Of quiet, starlit stone, - Breathe not a whisper—'Stay, - Thou unhappy one; - Whither so secret away?' - - Sighed not the unfriending wind, - Chill with nocturnal dew, - 'Pause, pause, in thy haste, - O thou distraught! I too - Tryst with the Atlantic waste.' - - Steep fell the drowsy street; - In slumber the world was blind: - Breathed not one midnight flower - Peace in thy broken mind?— - 'Brief, yet sweet, is life's hour.' - - Syllabled thy last tide— - By as dark moon stirred, - And doomed to forlorn unrest— - Not one compassionate word?... - 'Cold is this breast.' - - - - - DRUGGED - - - INERT in his chair, - In a candle's guttering glow; - His bottle empty, - His fire sunk low; - With drug-sealed lids shut fast, - Unsated mouth ajar, - This darkened phantasm walks - Where nightmares are: - - In a frenzy of life and light, - Crisscross—a menacing throng— - They gibe, they squeal at the stranger, - Jostling along, - Their faces cadaverous grey. - While on high from an attic stare - Horrors, in beauty apparelled, - Down the dark air. - - A stream gurgles over its stones, - The chambers within are a-fire. - Stumble his shadowy feet - Through shine, through mire; - And the flames leap higher. - In vain yelps the wainscot mouse; - In vain beats the hour; - Vacant, his body must drowse - Until daybreak flower— - - Staining these walls with its rose, - And the draughts of the morning shall stir - Cold on cold brow, cold hands. - And the wanderer - Back to flesh house must return. - Lone soul—in horror to see, - Than dream more meagre and awful, - Reality. - - - - - WHO'S THAT? - - - WHO'S that? Who's that?... - Oh, only a leaf on the stone; - And the sigh of the air in the fire. - Yet it seemed, as I sat, - Came company—not my own; - Stood there, with ardent gaze over dark, bowed shoulder thrown - Till the dwindling flames leaped higher, - And showed fantasy flown. - - Yet though the cheat is clear— - From transient illusion grown; - In the vague of my mind those eyes - Still haunt me. One stands so near - I could take his hand, and be gone:— - No more in this house of dreams to sojourn aloof, alone: - Could sigh, with full heart, and arise, - And choke, 'Lead on.' - - - - - HOSPITAL - - - WELCOME! Enter! This is the Inn at the Cross Roads, - Sign of the _Rising Sun_, of the _World's End_: - Ay, O Wanderer, footsore, weary, forsaken, - Knock, and we will open to thee—Friend. - - Gloomy our stairs of stone, obscure the portal; - Burdened the air with a breath from the further shore; - Yet in our courtyard plays an invisible fountain, - Ever flowers unfading nod at the door. - - Ours is much company, and yet none is lonely; - Some with a smile may pay and some with a sigh; - So all be healed, restored, contented—it is no matter— - So all be happy at heart to bid good-bye. - - But know, our clocks are the world's; Night's wings are leaden, - Pain languidly sports with the hours; have courage, sir! - We wake but to bring thee slumber, our drowsy syrups - Sleep beyond dreams on the weary will confer. - - Ghosts may be ours; but gaze thou not too closely - If haply in chill of the dark thou rouse to see - One silent of foot, hooded, and hollow of visage, - Pause, with secret eyes, to peer out at thee. - - He is the Ancient Tapster of this Hostel, - To him at length even we all keys must resign; - And if he beckon, Stranger, thou too must follow— - Love and all peace be thine. - - - - - A SIGN - - - HOW shall I know when the end of things is coming? - The dark swifts flitting, the drone-bees humming; - The fly on the window-pane bedazedly strumming; - Ice on the waterbrooks their clear chimes dumbing— - How shall I know that the end of things is coming? - - The stars in their stations will shine glamorous in the black; - Emptiness, as ever, haunt the great Star Sack; - And Venus, proud and beautiful, go down to meet the day, - Pale in phosphorescence of the green sea spray— - How shall I know that the end of things is coming? - - Head asleep on pillow; the peewits at their crying; - A strange face in dreams to my rapt phantasma sighing; - Silence beyond words of anguished passion; - Or stammering an answer in the tongue's cold fashion— - How shall I know that the end of things is coming? - - Haply on strange roads I shall be, the moorland's peace around me; - Or counting up a fortune to which Destiny hath bound me; - Or—Vanity of Vanities—the honey of the Fair; - Or a greybeard, lost to memory, on the cobbles in my chair— - How shall I know that the end of things is coming? - - The drummers will be drumming; the fiddlers at their thrumming; - Nuns at their beads; the mummers at their mumming; - Heaven's solemn Seraph stoopt weary o'er his summing; - The palsied fingers plucking, the way-worn feet numbing— - And the end of things coming. - - - - - GOOD-BYE - - - THE last of last words spoken is, Good-bye— - The last dismantled flower in the weed-grown hedge, - The last thin rumour of a feeble bell far ringing, - The last blind rat to spurn the mildewed rye. - - A hardening darkness glasses the haunted eye, - Shines into nothing the watcher's burnt-out candle, - Wreathes into scentless nothing the wasting incense, - Faints in the outer silence the hunting cry. - - Love of its muted music breathes no sigh, - Thought in her ivory tower gropes in her spinning, - Toss on in vain the whispering trees of Eden, - Last of all last words spoken is, Good-bye. - - - - - THE MONOLOGUE - - - ALAS, O Lovely One, - Imprisoned here, - I tap; thou answerest not, - I doubt, and fear. - Yet transparent as glass these walls, - If thou lean near. - - Last dusk, at those high bars - There came, scarce-heard, - Claws, fluttering feathers, - Of deluded bird— - With one shrill, scared, faint note - The silence stirred. - - Rests in that corner, - In puff of dust, a straw— - Vision of harvest-fields - I never saw, - Of strange green streams and hills, - Forbidden by law. - - These things I whisper, - For I see—in mind— - Thy caged cheek whiten - At the wail of wind, - That thin breast wasting; unto - Woe resigned. - - Take comfort, listen! - Once we twain were free; - There was a Country— - Lost the memory ... - Lay thy cold brow on hand, - And dream with me. - - Awaits me torture, - I have smelt their rack; - From spectral groaning wheel - Have turned me back; - Thumbscrew and boot, and then— - The yawning sack. - - Lean closer, then; - Lay palm on stony wall. - Let but thy ghost beneath - Thine eyelids call: - 'Courage, my brother,' Nought - Can then appal. - - Yet coward, coward am I, - And drink I must - When clanks the pannikin - With the longed-for crust; - Though heart within is sour - With disgust. - - Long hours there are, - When mutely tapping—well, - Is it to Vacancy - I these tidings tell? - Knock these numb fingers against - An empty cell? - - Nay, answer not. - Let still mere longing make - Thy presence sure to me, - While in doubt I shake: - Be but my Faith in thee, - For sanity's sake. - - - - - AWAKE! - - - WHY hath the rose faded and fallen, yet these eyes have not seen? - Why hath the bird sung shrill in the tree—and this mind deaf and cold? - Why have the rains of summer veiled her flowers with their sheen - And this black heart untold? - - Here is calm Autumn now, the woodlands quake, - And, where this splendour of death lies under the tread, - The spectre of frost will stalk, and a silence make, - And snow's white shroud be spread. - - O Self! O self! Wake from thy common sleep! - Fling off the destroyer's net. He hath blinded and bound thee. - In nakedness sit; pierce thy stagnation, and weep; - Or corrupt in thy grave—all Heaven around thee. - - - - - FORGIVENESS - - - 'O thy flamed cheek, - Those locks with weeping wet, - Eyes that, forlorn and meek, - On mine are set. - - 'Poor hands, poor feeble wings, - Folded, a-droop, O sad! - See, 'tis my heart that sings - To make thee glad. - - 'My mouth breathes love, thou dear. - All that I am and know - Is thine. My breast—draw near: - Be grieved not so!' - - - - - THE MOTH - - - ISLED in the midnight air, - Musked with the dark's faint bloom, - Out into glooming and secret haunts - The flame cries, 'Come!' - - Lovely in dye and fan, - A-tremble in shimmering grace, - A moth from her winter swoon - Uplifts her face: - - Stares from her glamorous eyes; - Wafts her on plumes like mist; - In ecstasy swirls and sways - To her strange tryst. - - - - - NOT THAT WAY - - - NO, no. Guard thee. Get thee gone. - Not that way. - See; the louring clouds glide on, - Skirting West to South; and see, - The green light under that sycamore tree— - Not that way. - - There the leaden trumpets blow, - Solemn and slow. - There the everlasting walls - Frown above the waterfalls - Silver and cold; - Timelessly old: - Not that way. - - Not toward Death, who, stranger, fairer, - Than any siren turns his head— - Than sea-couched siren, arched with rainbows, - Where knell the waves of her ocean bed. - - Alas, that beauty hangs her flowers - For lure of his demoniac powers: - Alas, that from these eyes should dart - Such piercing summons to thy heart; - That mine in frenzy of longing beats, - Still lusting for these gross deceits. - Not that way! - - - - - CRAZED - - - I know a pool where nightshade preens - Her poisonous fruitage in the moon; - Where the frail aspen her shadow leans - In midnight cold a-swoon. - - I know a meadow flat with gold— - A million million burning flowers - In noon-sun's thirst their buds unfold - Beneath his blazing showers. - - I saw a crazèd face, did I, - Stare from the lattice of a mill, - While the lank sails clacked idly by - High on the windy hill. - - - - - FOG - - - STAGNANT this wintry gloom. Afar - The farm-cock bugles his 'Qui vive?' - The towering elms are lost in mist; - Birds in the thorn-trees huddle a-whist; - The mill-race waters grieve. - Our shrouded day - Dwindles away - To final black of eve. - - Beyond these shades in space of air - Ride exterrestrial beings by? - Their colours burning rich and fair, - Where noon's sunned valleys lie? - With inaudible music are they sweet— - Bell, hoof, soft lapsing cry? - - Turn marvellous faces, each to each?— - Lips innocent of sigh, - Or groan or fear, sorrow and grief, - Clear brow and falcon eye; - Bare foot, bare shoulder in the heat, - And hair like flax? Do their horses beat - Their way through wildernesses infinite - Of starry-crested trees, blue sward, - And gold-chasm'd mountain, steeply shored - O'er lakes of sapphire dye? - - Mingled with lisping speech, faint laughter, - Echoes the Phoenix' scream of joyance - Mounting on high?— - Light-bathed vistas and divine sweet mirth, - Beyond dream of spirits penned to earth, - Condemned to pine and die?... - - Hath serving Nature, bidden of the gods, - Thick-screened Man's narrow sky, - And hung these Stygian veils of fog - To hide his dingied sty?— - The gods who yet, at mortal birth, - Bequeathed him Fantasy? - - - - - _SOTTO VOCE_ - - - (To Edward Thomas) - - THE haze of noon wanned silver-grey - The soundless mansion of the sun; - The air made visible in his ray, - Like molten glass from furnace run, - Quivered o'er heat-baked turf and stone - And the flower of the gorse burned on— - Burned softly as gold of a child's fair hair - Along each spiky spray, and shed - Almond-like incense in the air - Whereon our senses fed. - - At foot—a few sparse harebells: blue - And still as were the friend's dark eyes - That dwelt on mine, transfixèd through - With sudden ecstatic surmise. - - 'Hst!' he cried softly, smiling, and lo, - Stealing amidst that maze gold-green, - I heard a whispering music flow - From guileful throat of bird, unseen:— - So delicate the straining ear - Scarce carried its faint syllabling - Into a heart caught-up to hear - That inmost pondering - Of bird-like self with self. We stood, - In happy trance-like solitude, - Hearkening a lullay grieved and sweet— - As when on isle uncharted beat - 'Gainst coral at the palm-tree's root, - With brine-clear, snow-white foam afloat, - The wailing, not of water or wind— - A husht, far, wild, divine lament, - When Prospero his wizardry bent - Winged Ariel to bind.... - - Then silence, and o'er-flooding noon. - I raised my head; smiled too. And he— - Moved his great hand, the magic gone— - Gently amused to see - My ignorant wonderment. He sighed. - 'It was a nightingale,' he said, - 'That _sotto voce_ cons the song - He'll sing when dark is spread; - And Night's vague hours are sweet and long. - And we are laid abed.' - - - - - THE IMAGINATION'S PRIDE - - - BE not too wildly amorous of the far, - Nor lure thy fantasy to its utmost scope. - Read by a taper when the needling star - Burns red with menace in heaven's midnight cope. - Friendly thy body: guard its solitude. - Sure shelter is thy heart. It once had rest - Where founts miraculous thy lips endewed, - Yet nought loomed further than thy mother's breast. - - O brave adventure! Ay, at danger slake - Thy thirst, lest life in thee should, sickening, quail; - But not toward nightmare goad a mind awake, - Nor to forbidden horizons bend thy sail— - Seductive outskirts whence in trance prolonged - Thy gaze, at stretch of what is sane-secure, - Dreams out on steeps by shapes demoniac thronged - And vales wherein alone the dead endure. - - Nectarous those flowers, yet with venom sweet. - Thick-juiced with poison hang those fruits that shine - Where sick phantasmal moonbeams brood and beat, - And dark imaginations ripe the vine. - Bethink thee: every enticing league thou wend - Beyond the mark where life its bound hath set - Will lead thee at length where human pathways end - And the dark enemy spreads his maddening net. - - Comfort thee, comfort thee. Thy Father knows - How wild man's ardent spirit, fainting, yearns - For mortal glimpse of death's immortal rose, - The garden where the invisible blossom burns. - Humble thy trembling knees; confess thy pride; - Be weary. O, whithersoever thy vaunting rove, - His deepest wisdom harbours in thy side, - In thine own bosom hides His utmost love. - - - - - THE WANDERERS - - - WITHIN my mind two spirits strayed - From out their still and purer air, - And there a moment's sojourn made; - As lovers will in woodlands bare. - Nought heeded they where now they stood, - Since theirs its alien solitude - Beyond imagination fair. - - The light an earthly candle gives - When it is quenched leaves only dark; - Theirs yet in clear remembrance lives - And, still within, I whispered, 'Hark;' - As one who faintly on high has heard - The call note of a hidden bird - Even sweeter than the lark. - - Yet 'twas their silence breathed only this— - 'I love you.' As if flowers might say, - 'Such is our natural fragrantness;' - Or dewdrop at the break of day - Cry 'Thus I beam.' Each turned a head, - And each its own clear radiance shed - With joy and peace at play. - - So in a gloomy London street - Princes from Eastern realms might pause - In secret converse, then retreat. - Yet without haste passed these from sight; - As if a human mind were not - Wholly a dark and dismal spot— - At least in their own light. - - - - - THE CORNER STONE - - - STERILE these stones - By time in ruin laid. - Yet many a creeping thing - Its haven has made - In these least crannies, were falls - Dark's dew, and noonday shade. - - The claw of the tender bird - Finds lodgment here; - Dye-winged butterflies poise; - Emmet and beetle steer - Their busy course; the bee - Drones, laden, near. - - Their myriad-mirrored eyes - Great day reflect. - By their exquisite farings - Is this granite specked; - Is trodden to infinite dust; - By gnawing lichens decked. - - Toward what eventual dream - Sleeps its cold on, - When into ultimate dark - These lives shall be gone, - And even of man not a shadow remain - Of all he has done? - - - - - THE SPIRIT OF AIR - - - CORAL and clear emerald, - And amber from the sea, - Lilac-coloured amethyst, - Chalcedony; - The lovely Spirit of Air - Floats on a cloud and doth ride, - Clad in the beauties of earth - Like a bride. - - So doth she haunt me; and words - Tell but a tithe of the tale. - Sings all the sweetness of Spring - Even in the nightingale? - Nay, but with echoes she cries - Of the valley of love; - Dews on the thorns at her feet, - And darkness above. - - - - - THE UNFINISHED DREAM - - - RARE-SWEET the air in that unimagined country— - My spirit had wandered far - From its weary body close-enwrapt in slumber - Where its home and earth-friends are; - - A milk-like air—and of light all abundance; - And there a river clear - Painting the scene like a picture on its bosom, - Green foliage drifting near. - - No sign of life I saw, as I pressed onward, - Fish, nor beast, nor bird, - Till I came to a hill clothed in flowers to its summit, - Then shrill small voices I heard. - - And I saw from concealment a company of elf-folk - With faces strangely fair, - Talking their unearthly scattered talk together, - A bind of green-grasses in their hair, - - Marvellously gentle, feater far than children, - In gesture, mien and speech, - Hastening onward in translucent shafts of sunshine, - And gossiping each with each. - - Straw-light their locks, on neck and shoulder falling, - Faint of almond the silks they wore, - Spun not of worm, but as if inwoven of moonbeams - And foam on rock-bound shore; - - Like lank-legged grasshoppers in June-tide meadows, - Amalillios of the day, - Hungrily gazed upon by me—a stranger, - In unknown regions astray. - - Yet, happy beyond words, I marked their sunlit faces, - Stealing soft enchantment from their eyes, - Tears in my own confusing their small image, - Harkening their bead-like cries. - - They passed me, unseeing, a waft of flocking linnets; - Sadly I fared on my way; - And came in my dream to a dreamlike habitation, - Close-shut, festooned and grey. - - Pausing, I gazed at the porch dust-still, vine-wreathèd, - Worn the stone steps thereto, - Mute hung its bell, whence a stony head looked downward, - Grey 'gainst the sky's pale-blue— - - Strange to me: strange.... - - - - - MUSIC - - - O restless fingers—not that music make! - Bidding old griefs from out the past awake, - And pine for memory's sake. - - Those strings thou callest from quiet mute to yearn, - Of other hearts did hapless secrets learn, - And thy strange skill will turn - - To uses that thy bosom dreams not of: - Ay, summon from their dark and dreadful grove - The chaunting, pale-cheeked votaries of love. - - Stay now, and hearken! From that far-away - Cymbal on cymbal beats, the fierce horns bray, - Stars in their sapphire fade, 'tis break of day. - - Green are those meads, foam-white the billow's crest, - And Night, withdrawing in the cavernous West, - Flings back her shadow on the salt sea's breast. - - Snake-haired, snow-shouldered, pure as flame and dew, - Her strange gaze burning slumbrous eyelids through, - Rises the Goddess from the wave's dark blue. - - - - - TIDINGS - - - LISTEN, I who love thee well - Have travelled far, and secrets tell; - Cold the moon that gleams thine eyes, - Yet beneath her further skies - Rests for thee, a paradise. - - I have plucked a flower in proof, - Frail, in earthly light forsooth: - See, invisible it lies - In this palm: now veil thine eyes: - Quaff its fragrancies. - - Would indeed my throat had skill - To breathe thee music, faint and still— - Music learned in dreaming deep - In those lands, from Echo's lip ... - 'Twould lull thy soul to sleep. - - - - - THE SON OF MELANCHOLY - - - UNTO blest Melancholy's house one happy day - I took my way: - Into a chamber was shown, whence could be seen - Her flowerless garden, dyed with sunlit green - Of myrtle, box, and bay. - - Cool were its walls, shade-mottled, green and gold, - In heavy fold - Hung antique tapestries, from whose fruit and flower - Light had the bright hues stolen, hour by hour, - And time worn thin and old. - - Silence, as of a virginal laid aside, - Did there abide. - But not for voice or music was I fain, - Only to see a long-loved face again— - For her sole company sighed. - - And while I waited, giving memory praise, - My musing gaze - Lit on the one sole picture in the room, - Which hung, as if in hiding, in the gloom - From evening's stealing rays. - - Framed in fast-fading gilt, a child gazed there, - Lovely and fair; - A face whose happiness was like sunlight spent - On some poor desolate soul in banishment, - Mutely his grief to share. - - Long, long I stood in trance of that glad face, - Striving to trace - The semblance that, disquieting, it bore - To one whom memory could not restore, - Nor fix in time and space. - - Sunk deep in brooding thus, a voice I heard - Whisper its word: - I turned—and, stooping in the threshold, stood - She—the dark mistress of my solitude, - Who smiled, nor stirred. - - Her ghost gazed darkly from her pondering eyes - Charged with surmise; - Challenging mine, between mockery and fear, - She breathed her greeting, '_Thou_, my only dear! - Wherefore such heavy sighs?' - - 'But this?' One instant lids her scrutiny veiled; - Her wan cheek paled. - 'This child?' I asked. 'Its picture brings to mind - Remembrance faint and far, past thought to find, - And yet by time unstaled.' - - Smiling, aloof, she turned her narrow head, - 'Make thou my face thy glass,' she cried and said. - 'What would'st thou see therein—thine own, or mine? - O foolish one, what wonder thou did'st pine? - - Long thou hast loved me; yet hast absent been. - See now: Dark night hath pressed an entrance in. - Jealous! thou dear? Nay, come; by taper's beam - Share thou this pictured Joy with me, though nought but a dream.' - - - - - THE QUIET ENEMY - - - HEARKEN—NOW the hermit bee - Drones a quiet thren dy; - Greening on the stagnant pool - The criss-cross light slants silken-cool; - In the venomed yew tree wings - Preen and flit. The linnet sings. - - Gradually the brave sun - Drops to a day's journey done; - In the marshy flats abide - Mists to muffle midnight-tide. - Puffed within the belfry tower - Hungry owls drowse out their hour.... - - Walk in beauty. Vaunt thy rose. - Flaunt thy transient loveliness. - Pace for pace with thee there goes - A shape that hath not come to bless. - - I thine enemy?... Nay, nay. - I can only watch and wait - Patient treacherous time away, - Hold ajar the wicket gate. - - - - - THE FAMILIAR - - - 'ARE you far away?' - 'Yea, I am far—far; - Where the green wave shelves to the sand, - And the rainbows are; - And an ageless sun beats fierce - From an empty sky: - There, O thou Shadow forlorn, - Is the wraith of thee, I.' - - 'Are you happy, most Lone?' - 'Happy, forsooth! - Who am eyes of the air; voice of the foam; - Ah, happy in truth. - My hair is astream, this cheek - Glistens like silver, and see, - As the gold to the dross, the ghost in the mirk, - I am calling to thee.' - - 'Nay, I am bound. - And your cry faints out in my mind. - Peace not on earth have I found, - Yet to earth am resigned. - Cease thy shrill mockery, Voice, - Nor answer again.' - 'O Master, thick cloud shuts thee out - And cold tempests of rain.' - - - - - MAERCHEN - - - SOUNDLESS the moth-flit, crisp the death-watch tick; - Crazed in her shaken arbour bird did sing; - Slow wreathed the grease adown from soot-clogged wick: - The Cat looked long and softly at the King. - - Mouse frisked and scampered, leapt, gnawed, squeaked; - Small at the window looped cowled bat a-wing; - The dim-lit rafters with the night-mist reeked: - The Cat looked long and softly at the King. - - O wondrous robe enstarred, in night dyed deep: - O air scarce-stirred with the Court's far junketing: - O stagnant Royalty—A-swoon? Asleep? - The Cat looked long and softly at the King. - - - - - GOLD - - - SIGHED the wind to the wheat:— - 'The Queen who is slumbering there, - Once bewildered the rose; - Scorned, "Thou un-fair!" - Once, from that bird-whirring court, - Ascended the ruinous stair. - Aloft, on that weed-hung turret, suns - Smote on her hair— - Of a gold by Archiac sought, - Of a gold sea-hid, - Of a gold that from core of quartz - No flame shall bid - Pour into light of the air - For God's Jews to see.' - - Mocked the wheat to the wind— - 'Kiss me! Kiss me!' - - - - - MIRAGE - - - ... And burned the topless towers of Ilium - - STRANGE fabled face! From sterile shore to shore - O'er plunging seas, thick-sprent with glistening brine, - The voyagers of the World with sail and heavy oar - Have sought thy shrine. - Beauty inexorable hath lured them on: - Remote unnamèd stars enclustering gleam— - Burn in thy flowered locks, though creeping daybreak wan - Prove thee but dream. - - Noonday to night the enigma of thine eyes - Frets with desire their travel-wearied brain, - Till in the vast of dark the ice-cold moon arise - And pour them peace again; - And with malign mirage uprears an isle - Of fountain and palm, and courts of jasmine and rose, - Whence far decoy of siren throats their souls beguile, - And maddening fragrance flows. - - Lo, in the milken light, in tissue of gold - Thine apparition gathers in the air— - Nay, but the seas are deep, and the round world old, - And thou art named, Despair. - - - - - FLOTSAM - - - SCREAMED the far sea-mew. On the mirroring sands - Bell-shrill the oyster-catchers. Burned the sky. - Couching my cheeks upon my sun-scorched hands, - Down from bare rock I gazed. The sea swung by. - - Dazzling dark blue and verdurous, quiet with snow, - Empty with loveliness, with music a-roar, - Her billowing summits heaving noon-aglow— - Crashed the Atlantic on the cliff-ringed shore, - - Drowsed by the tumult of that moving deep, - Sense into outer silence fainted, fled; - And rising softly, from the fields of sleep, - Stole to my eyes a lover from the dead; - - Crying an incantation—learned, Where? When?... - White swirled the foam, a fount, a blinding gleam - Of ice-cold breast, cruel eyes, wild mouth—and then - A still dirge echoing on from dream to dream. - - - - - MOURN'ST THOU NOW? - - - LONG ago from radiant palace, - Dream-bemused, in flood of moon, - Stole the princess Seraphita - Into forest gloom. - - Wail of hemlock; cold the dewdrops; - Danced the Dryads in the chace; - Heavy hung ambrosial fragrance; - Moonbeams blanched her ravished face. - - Frail and clear the notes delusive; - Mocking phantoms in a rout - Thridded the night-cloistered thickets, - Wove their sorceries in and out.... - - Mourn'st thou now? Or do thine eyelids - Frame a vision dark, divine, - O'er this imp of star and wild-flower— - Of a god once thine? - - - - - THE GALLIASS - - - 'TELL me, tell me, - Unknown stranger, - When shall I sight me - That tall ship - On whose flower-wreathed counter is gilded, _Sleep_?' - - 'Landsman, landsman, - Lynx nor kestrel - Ne'er shall descry from - Ocean steep - That midnight-stealing, high-pooped galliass, _Sleep_.' - - 'Promise me, Stranger, - Though I mark not - When cold night-tide's - Shadows creep, - Thou wilt keep unwavering watch for _Sleep_.' - - 'Myriad the lights are, - Wayworn landsman, - Rocking the dark through - On the deep: - She alone burns none to prove her _Sleep_.' - - - - - THE DECOY - - - 'TELL us, O pilgrim, what strange She - Lures and decoys your wanderings on? - Cheek, eye, brow, lip, you scan each face, - Smile, ponder—and are gone. - - 'Are we not flesh and blood? Mark well, - We touch you with our hands. We speak - A tongue that may earth's secrets tell: - Why further will you seek?' - - 'Far have I come, and far must fare. - Noon and night and morning-prime, - I search the long road, bleak and bare, - That fades away in Time. - - 'On the world's brink its wild weeds shake, - And there my own dust, dark with dew, - Burns with a rose that, sleep or wake, - Beacons me—"Follow true!"' - - 'Her name, crazed soul? And her degree? - What peace, prize, profit in her breast?' - 'A thousand cheating names hath she; - And none fore-tokens rest.' - - - - - SUNK LYONESSE - - - IN sea-cold Lyonesse, - When the Sabbath eve shafts down - On the roofs, walls, belfries - Of the foundered town, - The Nereids pluck their lyres - Where the green translucency beats, - And with motionless eyes at gaze - Make minstrelsy in the streets. - - And the ocean water stirs - In salt-worn casemate and porch. - Plies the blunt-snouted fish - With fire in his skull for torch. - And the ringing wires resound; - And the unearthly lovely weep, - In lament of the music they make - In the sullen courts of sleep: - - Whose marble flowers bloom for aye: - And—lapped by the moon-guiled tide— - Mock their carver with heart of stone, - Caged in his stone-ribbed side. - - - - - THE CATECHISM - - - 'HAST thou then nought wiser to bring - Than worn-out songs of moon and rose?' - 'Cracked my voice and broken my wing, - God knows.' - - 'Tell'st thou no truth of the life that _is_; - Seek'st thou from heaven no pitying sign?' - 'Ask thine own heart these mysteries, - Not mine.' - - 'Where then the faith thou hast brought to seed? - Where the sure hope thy soul would feign?' - 'Never ebbed sweetness—even out of a weed— - In vain.' - - 'Fool. The night comes.... 'Tis late. Arise: - Cold lap the waters of Jordan stream.' - 'Deep be their flood and tranquil thine eyes - With a dream.' - - - - - FUTILITY - - - SINK, thou strange heart, unto thy rest. - Pine now no more, to pine in vain. - Doth not the moon on heaven's breast - Call the floods home again? - - Doth not the summer faint at last? - Do not her restless rivers flow - When that her transient day is past - To hide them in ice and snow? - - All this—thy world—an end shall make; - Planet to sun return again; - The universe, to sleep from wake, - In a last peace remain. - - Alas, the futility of care - That, spinning thought to thought, doth weave - An idle argument on the air - We love not, nor believe. - - - - - BITTER WATERS - - - IN a dense wood, a drear wood, - Dark water is flowing; - Deep, deep, beyond sounding, - A flood ever flowing. - - There harbours no wild bird, - No wanderer strays there; - Wreathed in mist, sheds pale Ishtar - Her sorrowful rays there. - - Take thy net; cast thy line; - Manna sweet be thy baiting; - Time's desolate ages - Shall still find thee waiting - - For quick fish to rise there, - Or butterfly wooing, - Or flower's honeyed beauty, - Or wood-pigeon cooing. - - Inland wellsprings are sweet; - But to lips, parched and dry, - Salt, salt is the savour - Of these; faint their sigh. - - Bitter Babylon's waters. - Zion, distant and fair. - We hanged up our harps - On the trees that are there. - - - - - WHO? - - - 1ST STRANGER. WHO walks with us on the hills? - - 2ND STRANGER. I cannot see for the mist. - - 3RD STRANGER. Running water I hear, - Keeping lugubrious tryst - With its cresses and grasses and weeds, - In the white obscure light from the sky. - - 2ND STRANGER. _Who walks with us on the hills?_ - - WILD BIRD. Ay!... Aye!... _Ay!..._ - - - - - A RIDDLE - - - THE mild noon air of Spring again - Lapped shimmering in that sea-lulled lane. - Hazel was budding; wan as snow - The leafless blackthorn was a-blow. - - A chaffinch clankt, a robin woke - An eerie stave in the leafless oak. - Green mocked at green; lichen and moss - The rain-worn slate did softly emboss. - - From out her winter lair, at sigh - Of the warm South wind, a butterfly - Stepped, quaffed her honey; on painted fan - Her labyrinthine flight began. - - Wondrously solemn, golden and fair, - The high sun's rays beat everywhere; - Yea, touched my cheek and mouth, as if, - Equal with stone, to me 'twould give - Its light and life. - - O restless thought - Contented not. With 'Why' distraught. - Whom asked you then your riddle small?— - 'If hither came no man at all - - 'Through this grey-green, sea-haunted lane, - Would it mere blackened nought remain? - Strives it this beauty and life to express - Only in human consciousness?' - - Oh, rather, idly breaks he in - To an Eden innocent of sin; - And, prouder than to be afraid, - Forgets his Maker in the made. - - - - - THE OWL - - - WHAT if to edge of dream, - When the spirit is come, - Shriek the hunting owl, - And summon it home— - To the fear-stirred heart - And the ancient dread - Of man, when cold root or stone - Pillowed roofless head? - - Clangs not at last the hour - When roof shelters not; - And the ears are deaf, - And all fears forgot: - Since the spirit too far has fared - For summoning scream - Of any strange fowl on earth - To shatter its dream? - - - - - THE LAST COACHLOAD - - - (To Colin) - - CRASHED through the woods that lumbering Coach. The dust - Of flinted roads bepowdering felloe and hood. - Its gay paint cracked, its axles red with rust, - It lunged, lurched, toppled through a solitude - - Of whispering boughs, and feathery, nid-nod grass. - Plodded the fetlocked horses. Glum and mum, - Its ancient Coachman recked not where he was, - Nor into what strange haunt his wheels were come. - - Crumbling the leather of his dangling reins; - Worn to a cow's tuft his stumped, idle whip; - Sharp eyes of beast and bird in the trees' green lanes - Gleamed out like stars above a derelict ship. - - 'Old Father Time—Time—Time!' jeered twittering throat. - A squirrel capered on the leader's rump, - Slithered a weasel, peered a thieflike stoat, - In sandy warren beat on the coney's thump. - - Mute as a mammet in his saddle sate - The hunched Postilion, clad in magpie trim; - Buzzed the bright flies around his hairless pate; - Yaffle and jay squawked mockery at him. - - Yet marvellous peace and amity breathed there. - Tranquil the labyrinths of this sundown wood. - Musking its chaces, bloomed the brier-rose fair; - Spellbound as if in trance the pine-trees stood. - - Through moss, and pebbled rut, the wheels rasped on; - That Ancient drowsing on his box. And still - The bracken track with glazing sunbeams shone; - Laboured the horses, straining at the hill.... - - But now—a verdurous height with eve-shade sweet; - Far, far to West the Delectable Mountains glowed. - Above, Night's canopy; at the horses' feet - A sea-like honied waste of flowers flowed. - - There fell a pause of utter quiet. And— - Out from one murky window glanced an eye, - Stole from the other a lean, groping hand, - The padded door swung open with a sigh. - - And—_Exeunt Omnes!_ None to ask the fare— - A myriad human Odds in a last release - Leap out incontinent, snuff the incensed air; - A myriad parched-up voices whisper, 'Peace.' - - On, on, and on—a stream, a flood, they flow. - O wondrous vale of jocund buds and bells! - Like vanishing smoke the rainbow legions glow, - Yet still the enravished concourse sweeps and swells. - - All journeying done. Rest now from lash and spur— - Laughing and weeping, shoulder and elbow—'twould seem - That Coach capacious all Infinity were, - And these the fabulous figments of a dream. - - Mad for escape; frenzied each breathless mote, - Lest rouse the Old Enemy from his death-still swoon, - Lest crack that whip again—they fly, they float, - Scamper, breathe—'Paradise!' abscond, are gone.... - - - - - AN EPITAPH - - - LAST, Stone, a little yet; - And then this dust forget. - But thou, fair Rose, bloom on. - For she who is gone - Was lovely too; nor would she grieve to be - Sharing in solitude her dreams with thee. - - - - - TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES - - - 1. Silently corrected simple spelling, grammar, and typographical - errors. - 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. - 3. 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