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diff --git a/old/54719-8.txt b/old/54719-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5f57c2e..0000000 --- a/old/54719-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4315 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Happy Ending, by Louise Imogen Guiney - -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: Happy Ending - The Collected Lyrics of Louise Imogen Guiney - -Author: Louise Imogen Guiney - -Release Date: May 14, 2017 [EBook #54719] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY ENDING *** - - - - -Produced by Emmy, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive). This project is dedicated with love to -Emmy's memory. - - - - - - - - - -HAPPY ENDING - -[Illustration: - - _G.F. Watts, pinx._ - _Hollyer, Photo._] - - _Rower maul'd in the Sea, ah, Rower - Limp as Grasses behind the Mower. - Pity'd most that thy Woes deny thee - Sight of the Spirit Steersman by thee!_ - - _Tho' more near than a hinted Haven - Lie the Port that is coral-paven, - All is well: the Unseen Befriending - Makes of either the Happy Ending._ - - - - -HAPPY ENDING - - - _The Collected Lyrics of_ - LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - - -[Illustration: TOUT BIEN OU RIEN] - - - HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY - BOSTON AND NEW YORK: 1909 - - - - -COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - -ALL RIGHTS RESERVED - -_Published December 1909_ - - - - -TO - -ANNE WHITNEY - - - - -PREFACE - - -THIS volume has been garnered from the author's earlier -books. Two poems have been chosen from "The White Sail" (1887); -nine Oxford Sonnets from a privately printed booklet (1895), since -added to, and much altered; and many lyrics, under a revised form, -from "A Roadside Harp" (1893), and "The Martyrs' Idyl" (1899), plus -some twenty newer titles transferred, with grateful acknowledgments, -from _McClure's Magazine_, _The Atlantic_, _Harper's_, _Scribner's_, -and _The Century_. The principle of exclusion goes far enough to -cover all poems in narrative form, or of any appreciable length, or -translated; also, any which seemed out of keeping with the character -of the present collection. Such as that is, it comprises the less -faulty half of all the author's published verse. - -L.I.G. - -BOSTON, October 21, 1909. - - - - -CONTENTS - - - _The Kings_ 3 - - _The Squall_ 5 - - _Open, Time_ 9 - - _The Knight Errant_ (_Donatello's Saint George_) 11 - - _To a Dog's Memory_ 13 - - _Memorial Day_ 15 - - _Romans in Dorset: A.D. MDCCCXCV_ 16 - - _Horologion_ 19 - - _His Angel to his Mother_ 21 - - _Autumn Magic_ 23 - - _Five Carols for Christmastide_: - - _I. The Ox he Openeth wide the Doore_ 25 - - _II. Vines Branching Stilly_ 26 - - _III. Three without Slumber Ride from Afar_ 27 - - _IV. Was a Soule from Farre Away_ 28 - - _V. The Ox and the Ass_ 29 - - _On Leaving Winchester_ 32 - - _Cobwebs_ 34 - - _Astræa_ 35 - - _The Yew-Tree_ 36 - - _Ten Colloquies_: - - _I. The Search_ 38 - - _II. Fact and the Mystic_ 39 - - _III. The Poet's Chart_ 40 - - _IV. Of the Golden Age_ 41 - - _V. On Time's Threshold_ 42 - - _VI. Wood-Pigeons_ 42 - [Transcriber's Note: original erroneously has "Wood-Doves"] - - _VII. Predicaments_ 43 - - _VIII. The Co-Eternal_ 44 - - _IX. Stern Aphrodite_ 44 - - _X. The Jubilee_ 45 - - _Winter Boughs_ 46 - - _W.H.: A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_ 47 - - _The Vigil-at-Arms_ 48 - - _A Friend's Song for Simoisius_ 49 - - _To an Ideal_ 51 - - _In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm_ 53 - - _Beati Mortui_ 54 - - _Two Irish Peasant Songs_: - - _I. In Leinster_ 57 - - _II. In Ulster_ 58 - - _The Japanese Anemone_ 61 - - _Orisons_ 63 - - _The Inner Fate: A Chorus_ 64 - - _The Acknowledgment_ 66 - - _By the Trundle-Bed_ 67 - - _Arboricide_ 68 - - _The Cherry Bough_ 70 - - _The Wild Ride_ 73 - - _Bedesfolk_ 75 - - _In a City Street_ 77 - - _Florentin: A.D. MDCCCXC_ 79 - - _A Song of the Lilac_ 80 - - _Monochrome_ 81 - - _Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_ 82 - - _An Estray_ 83 - - _Friendship Broken_ 85 - - _A Talisman_ 87 - - _Heathenesse_ 88 - - _For Izaak Walton_ 89 - - _Fifteen Epitaphs_ 91 - - _Deo Optimo Maximo_ 98 - - _Charista Musing_ 99 - - _The Still of the Year_ 100 - - _A Footnote to a Famous Lyric_ 102 - - _T.W.P.: A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_ 104 - - _Summum Bonum_ 105 - - _When on the Marge of Evening_ 106 - - _Hylas_ 107 - - _Nocturne_ 109 - - _To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey_ 110 - - _Planting the Poplar_ 111 - - _To One Who would not Spare Himself_ 113 - - _Winter Peace_ 114 - - _Sleep_ 116 - - _Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_ 117 - - _In a February Garden_ (_Somerset, England_) 118 - - _A Valediction._ (_R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_) 120 - - _A Footpath Morality_ 121 - - _The Light of the House_ 123 - - _An Outdoor Litany_ 125 - - _Of Joan's Youth_ 127 - - _In a Brecon Valley_ 128 - - _A Song of Far Travel_ 130 - - _Spring_ 131 - - _The Colour-Bearer_ 132 - - _Sanctuary_ 134 - - _Emily Brontë_ 135 - - _Pascal_ 136 - - _Borderlands_ 137 - - _Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore_ 138 - - _Oxford and London: XXVI Sonnets_ - - _Oxford_: - - _I. The Tow-Path_ 145 - - _II. Ad Antiquarium_ 146 - - _III. Martyrs' Memorial_ 147 - - _IV. Parks Road_ 148 - - _V. Tom_ 149 - - _VI, VIa. On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford_ 150 - - _VII. A December Walk_ 152 - - _VIII. The Old Dial of Corpus_ 153 - - _IX. Rooks: New College Gardens_ 154 - - _X. Above Port Meadow_ 155 - - _XI. Undertones at Magdalen_ 156 - - _XII, XIIa. A Last View_ 157 - - _London_: - - _I. On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ 159 - - _II. Fog_ 160 - - _III. St. Peter-ad-Vincula_ 161 - - _IV. Strikers in Hyde Park_ 162 - - _V. Changes in the Temple_ 163 - - _VI. The Lights of London_ 164 - - _VII. Doves_ 165 - - _VIII. In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ 166 - - _IX. Sunday Chimes in the City_ 167 - - _X. A Porch in Belgravia_ 168 - - _XI. York Stairs_ 169 - - _XII. In the Docks_ 170 - - _Notes_ 171 - - - - -HAPPY ENDING - - - - -_The Kings_ - - - A MAN said unto his Angel: - "My spirits are fallen low, - And I cannot carry this battle: - O brother! where might I go? - - "The terrible Kings are on me - With spears that are deadly bright; - Against me so from the cradle - Do fate and my fathers fight." - - Then said to the man his Angel: - "Thou wavering witless soul, - Back to the ranks! What matter - To win or to lose the whole, - - "As judged by the little judges - Who hearken not well, nor see? - Not thus, by the outer issue, - The Wise shall interpret thee. - - "Thy will is the sovereign measure - And only event of things: - The puniest heart, defying, - Were stronger than all these Kings. - - "Though out of the past they gather, - Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain, - And pallid Thirst of the Spirit - That is kin to the other twain, - - "And Grief, in a cloud of banners, - And ringletted Vain Desires, - And Vice, with the spoils upon him - Of thee and thy beaten sires,-- - - "While Kings of eternal evil - Yet darken the hills about, - Thy part is with broken sabre - To rise on the last redoubt; - - "To fear not sensible failure, - Nor covet the game at all, - But fighting, fighting, fighting, - Die, driven against the wall." - - - - -_The Squall_ - - - WHILE all was glad, - It seemed our birch-tree had, - That August hour, intelligence of death; - For warningly against the eaves she beat - Her body old, lamenting, prophesying, - And the hot breath - Of ferny hollows nestled at her feet - Spread out in startled sighing. - - Across an argent sea, - Distinct unto the farthest reef and isle, - The clouds began to be. - Huge forms 'neath sombre draperies, awhile - Made slow uncertain rally; - But as their ranks conjoined, and from the north - The leader shook his lance, Oh, then how fair - Unvested, they stood forth, - In diverse armour, plumed majestically, - Each with his own esquires, a King in air! - - Up moved the dark vanguard, - With insolent colours that o'erdusked the skies, - And trailed from beach to beach: - Massed orange and mould-green; vermilion barred - On bronze or mottled silver; saffron dyes - And purples migratory - Fanned each in each, - As the long column broke, athirst for glory. - - Sudden, the thunder! - Upon the roofed verandas how it rolled, - Twice, thrice: a thud and flame of doom that told - New-fallen, nor far away, - Some black destruction on the innocent day. - And little Everard - Deep in the hammock under, eyes alight - With healthful fear and wonder - The brave do ne'er unlearn, - Clenched his soft hand, and breathing hard, - Smiled there against his father, like a knight - Baptized on Cressy field or Bannockburn. - - A moment gone, - Into our paradise from Acheron, - With imperceptive sorcery crawled ashore - Odours unnamable: an exhalation - Of men and ships in oozy graves. (Ah, cease, - Derisive nereids! cease: - Be it enough, that even ye can pour, - From crystal flagons of your ancient peace, - So strange obscene libation.) - But with the thunder-peal - Sprang the pure winds, their thurible swung wide, - To chase that tainted tide; - Fresh from the pastures and the cedar-grove, - They rode the copper ridges of the main, - And bared a league of distance to reveal - A sail, aslant, astrain, - Impetuous for the cove; - And tossing after, panic-stricken, - Another, and a third: white spirits, fain to sicken, - Nor out of natural harm salvation gain. - - The selfsame hunter winds that drave - The horror down, as faithful-hearted drew - The sad clouds from their carnage, and up-piled - Their rebel gonfalons, or jocund threw - Their cannon in the wave; - And subtly, with a parting whisper, gave - An eve most mild: - A sunset like a prayer, a world all rose and blue: - - A good world, as it was, - And as it shall be: clear circumferent space, - Where punctual yet, for worship of their Cause, - The stars came thick in choir. - Sleep had our Everard in her cool embrace, - Else from his cot he hardly need have stooped - To see (and laugh to see!) the headland pine - Embossed on changing fire: - For close behind it, cooped - Within a smallest span, - In fury, to and fro and round and round, - The routed leopards of the lightning ran: - Bright, bright, inside their dungeon-bars, malign - They ran; and ran till dawn, without a sound. - - - - -_Open, Time_ - - - OPEN, Time, and let him pass - Shortly where his feet would be! - Like a leaf at Michaelmas - Swooning from the tree, - - Ere its hour the manly mind - Trembles in a sure decrease, - Nor the body now can find - Any hold on peace. - - Take him, weak and overworn; - Fold about his dying dream - Boyhood, and the April morn, - And the rolling stream: - - Weather on a sunny ridge, - Showery weather, far from here; - Under some deep-ivied bridge, - Water rushing clear: - - Water quick to cross and part - (Golden light on silver sound), - Weather that was next his heart - All the world around! - - Soon upon his vision break - These, in their remembered blue; - He shall toil no more, but wake - Young, in air he knew. - - He hath done with roofs and men. - Open, Time, and let him pass, - Vague and innocent again, - Into country grass. - - - - -_The Knight Errant_ - -(_Donatello's Saint George_) - - - SPIRITS of old that bore me, - And set me, meek of mind, - Between great dreams before me, - And deeds as great behind, - Knowing humanity my star - As first abroad I ride, - Shall help me wear with every scar - Honour at eventide. - - Let claws of lightning clutch me - From summer's groaning cloud, - Or ever malice touch me, - And glory make me proud. - Oh, give my youth, my faith, my sword, - Choice of the heart's desire: - A short life in the saddle, Lord! - Not long life by the fire. - - Forethought and recollection - Rivet mine armour gay! - The passion for perfection - Redeem my failing way! - The arrows of the upper slope - From sudden ambush cast, - Rain quick and true, with one to ope - My Paradise at last! - - I fear no breathing bowman, - But only, east and west, - The awful other foeman - Impowered in my breast. - The outer fray in the sun shall be, - The inner beneath the moon; - And may Our Lady lend to me - Sight of the Dragon soon! - - - - -_To a Dog's Memory_ - - - THE gusty morns are here, - When all the reeds ride low with level spear; - And on such nights as lured us far of yore, - Down rocky alleys yet, and through the pine, - The Hound-star and the pagan Hunter shine: - But I and thou, ah, field-fellow of mine, - Together roam no more. - - Soft showers go laden now - With odours of the sappy orchard-bough, - And brooks begin to brawl along the march; - Steams the late frost from hollow sedges high; - The finch is come, the flame-blue dragonfly, - The marsh-born marigold that children spy, - The plume upon the larch. - - There is a music fills - The oaks of Belmont and the Wayland hills - Southward to Dewing's little bubbly stream,-- - The heavenly weather's call! Oh, who alive - Hastes not to start, delays not to arrive, - Having free feet that never felt a gyve - Weigh, even in a dream? - - But thou, instead, hast found - The sunless April uplands underground, - And still, wherever thou art, I must be. - My beautiful! arise in might and mirth, - (For we were tameless travellers from our birth); - Arise against thy narrow door of earth, - And keep the watch for me. - - - - -_Memorial Day_ - - - O DAY of roses and regret, - Kissing the old graves of our own! - Not to the slain love's lovely debt - Alone. - - But jealous hearts that live and ache, - Remember; and while drums are mute, - Beneath your banners' bright outbreak, - Salute: - - And say for us to lessening ranks - That keep the memory and the pride, - On whose thinned hair our tears and thanks - Abide, - - Who from their saved Republic pass, - Glad with the Prince of Peace to dwell: - _Hail, dearest few! and soon, alas, - Farewell_. - - - - -_Romans in Dorset_ - -_A.D. MDCCCXCV_ - - - A STUPOR on the heath, - And wrath along the sky; - Space everywhere; beneath - A flat and treeless wold for us, and darkest noon on high. - - Sullen quiet below, - But storm in upper air! - A wind from long ago, - In mouldy chambers of the cloud had ripped an arras there, - - And singed the triple gloom, - And let through, in a flame, - Crowned faces of old Rome: - Regnant o'er Rome's abandoned ground, processional they came. - - Uprisen as any sun - Through vistas hollow grey, - Aloft, and one by one, - In brazen casques the Emperors loomed large, and sank away. - - In ovals of wan light - Each warrior eye and mouth: - A pageant brutal bright - As if once over loudly passed Jove's laughter in the south; - - And dimmer, these among, - Some cameo'd head aloof, - With ringlets heavy-hung, - Like yellow stonecrop comely grown around a castle roof. - - An instant: gusts again, - Then heaven's impacted wall, - The hot insistent rain, - The thunder-shock; and of the Past mirage no more at all, - - No more the alien dream - Pursuing, as we went, - With glory's cursèd gleam: - Nor sin of Cæsar's ruined line engulfed us, innocent. - - The vision great and dread - Corroded; sole in view - Was empty Egdon spread, - Her crimson summer weeds ashake in tempest: but we knew - - What Tacitus had borne - In that wrecked world we saw; - And what, thine heart uptorn, - My Juvenal! distraught with love of violated Law. - - - - -_Horologion_ - - - THE frost may form apace, - The roses pine away: - Nomæa! if I see thy face, - Then is the summer day. - - A word of thine, a breath, - And lo! my joy shall seem - To peer far down where life and death - Stir like a forded stream; - - Or else shall misery sound - And travel in that hour - All utmost things in their shut round, - As a bee feels his flower. - - Thought lags and cries Alas, - Love ranges quick and free. - Oh, figured clock and sanded glass, - They mark no term for me. - - And since I can but rue - The calendar gone wrong, - And dials never telling true - If dreams be short or long, - - Dear, from these arts that fail - To thee I will repair. - Till the last eve dance down the gale - With no star in her hair, - - Be thou my solar chime, - Be thou my wheel of night, - Be thy bright heart, not ashen Time, - My measure, law, and light. - - - - -_His Angel to his Mother_ - - - WHAT would you do for your fairest one, - Wild as the wind and free as the sun, - Born a fugitive, sure to slip - Soon from secular ownership? - Men in search of the heart's desire, - Wearily trampling flood and fire, - Rove betimes into some abyss - Darker far than eternity's. - (Ah, the hazard! it awes one so!) - - _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? - Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ - - Happy the Frontier to have gained - Undetaining and undetained, - Quick and clean, like a solar ray - Shot through spindrift across the bay! - Men would follow a long vain quest, - Feed on ashes and forfeit rest, - Bleed with battle and flag with toil, - Only to stifle in desert soil. - (Ah, the failure! it stings one so!) - - _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? - Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ - - Vats fill up, and the sheaves are in: - Never a blessing is left to win - Save for the myrtle coronal - Round the urn at the end of all. - Men will clutch, as they clutched of old, - Souring honey or dimming gold, - Not the treasure-trove of the land - Here shut fast in a roseleaf hand. - (Ah, the folly! it irks one so!) - - _And shall it be thus with the boy, or no? - Sweet, if you love him, let him go._ - - - - -_Autumn Magic_ - - - SOON as divine September, flushing from sea to sea, - Peers from the whole wide upland into eternity, - - Soft as an exhalation, ghosts of the thistle start: - Never a poet saw them but ached in his baffled heart. - - Gossamer armies rising thicker than snowflakes fall, - Waken in blood and marrow, aware of the unheard call. - - Oh, what a nameless urging through avenues laid in air, - Hints of escape, unbodied, intricate, everywhere, - - Sense of a feared denial, or access hard to be won; - Gleams of a dubious gesture for guesses to feed upon! - - Flame goes flying in heaven, the down on the cool hillside: - Earth is a bride-veil glory to show and conceal the Bride. - - - - -_Five Carols for Christmastide_ - - -I - - THE OX he openeth wide the Doore, - And from the Snowe he calls her inne, - And he hath seen her Smile therefor, - Our Ladye without Sinne. - Now soone from Sleep - A Starre shall leap, - And soone arrive both King and Hinde: - _Amen, Amen_: - But O, the Place co'd I but finde! - - The Ox hath hush'd his voyce and bent - Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, - And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, - The Blessed layes her Browe. - Around her feet - Full Warme and Sweete - His bowerie Breath doth meeklie dwell: - _Amen, Amen_: - But sore am I with Vaine Travèl! - - The Ox is host in Judah stall - And Host of more than onelie one, - For close she gathereth withal - Our Lorde her littel Sonne. - Glad Hinde and King - Their Gyfte may bring, - But wo'd to-night my Teares were there, - _Amen, Amen_: - Between her Bosom and His hayre! - - -II - - VINES branching stilly - Shade the open door, - In the house of Zion's Lily, - Cleanly and poor. - Oh, brighter than wild laurel - The Babe bounds in her hand, - The King, who for apparel - Hath but a swaddling-band, - And sees her heavenlier smiling than stars in His command! - - Soon, mystic changes - Part Him from her breast, - Yet there awhile He ranges - Gardens of rest: - Yea, she the first to ponder - Our ransom and recall, - Awhile may rock Him under - Her young curls' fall, - Against that only sinless love-loyal heart of all. - - What shall inure Him - Unto the deadly dream, - When the Tetrarch shall abjure Him, - The thief blaspheme, - And scribe and soldier jostle - About the shameful tree, - And even an Apostle - Demand to touch and see?-- - But she hath kissed her Flower where the Wounds are to be. - - -III - - THREE without slumber ride from afar, - Fain of the roads where palaces are; - All by a shed as they ride in a row, - "Here!" is the cry of their vanishing Star. - - First doth a greybeard, glittering fine, - Look on Messiah in slant moonshine: - "_This have I bought for Thee!_" Vainly: for lo, - Shut like a fern is the young hand divine. - - Next doth a magian, mantled and tall, - Bow to the Ruler that reigns from a stall: - "_This have I sought for Thee!_" Though it be rare, - Loath little fingers are letting it fall. - - Last doth a stripling, bare in his pride, - Kneel by the Lover as if to abide: - "_This have I wrought for Thee!_" Answer him there - Laugh of a Child, and His arms opened wide. - - -IV - - WAS a Soule from farre away - Stood wistful in the Hay, - And of the Babe a-sleeping hadde a sight: - Neither reck'd hee any more - Men behind him and before, - Nor a thousand busie Winges, flitting light: - But in middle of the night - This few-worded wight - (_Yule! Yule!_) - Bespake Our Ladye bright: - - "Fill mee, ere my corage faints, - With the lore of all the Saints: - Harte to harte against my Brother let mee be. - By the Fountaines that are His - I wo'd slumber where Hee is: - Prithee, Mother, give the other Brest to mee!" - The Soule that none co'd see - She hath taken on her knee: - (_Yule! Yule!_) - Sing prayse to Our Ladye. - - -V - - _The Ox and the Ass, - Tell aloud of them: - Sing their pleasure as it was - In Bethlehem._ - - STILL as blowing rose, sudden as a sword, - Maidenly the Maiden bare Jesu Christ the Lord; - Yet for very lowlihood, such a Guest to greet, - Goeth in a little swoon while kissing of His feet. - - Mary, drifted snow on the earthen floor, - Joseph, fallen wondrous weak now he would adore,-- - (Oh, the surging might of love! Oh, the drowning bliss!) - Both are rapt to Heaven and lose their human Heaven that is. - - From the Newly Born trails a lonely cry. - With a mind to heed, the Ox turns a glowing eye; - In the empty byre the Ass thinks her heart to blame: - Up for comforting of God the beasts of burden came, - - Softly to inquire, thrusting as for cheer - There between the tender hands, furry faces dear. - Blessing on the honest coats! tawny coat and grey - Friended Our Delight so well when warmth had strayed away. - - Crooks are on the sill; sceptres sail the wave; - All the hopes of all the years are thronging to the Cave. - Mother slept not long, nor long Father's sense was dim, - But another twain the while stood parent-wise to Him. - - _The Ox and the Ass, - Be you glad for them - Such a moment came to pass - In Bethlehem!_ - - - - -_On Leaving Winchester_ - - - WINTON, my window with a mossy marge, - My lofty oriel, whence the soul hath sight - Of passionate yesterdays, all gold and large, - Arisen to enrich our narrow night: - Though others bless thee, who so blest before - Hath pastured from the violent time apart, - And laved in supersensual light the heart - Alone with thy magnificent No More? - - Sweet court of roses now, sweet camp of bees! - The hills that lean to thy white bed at dawn - Hear, for the clash of raging dynasties, - Laughter of boys about a branchy lawn. - Hast thou a stain, let ivy cover all; - Nor seem of greatness disinhabited - While spirits in their wonted splendour tread - From close to close, by Wolvesey's idle wall. - - Bright fins against thy lucid waters leap, - And nigh thy towers the nesting ring-doves dwell; - Be lenient winter, and long moons, and sleep - Upon thee; but on me the sharp Farewell. - Happy art thou, O clad and crowned with rest! - Happy the shepherd (would that I were he!) - Whose early way is step for step with thee, - Whose old brow fades on thine immortal breast. - - - - -_Cobwebs_ - - - WHO would not praise thee, miracle of Frost? - Some gesture overnight, some breath benign, - And lo! the tree's a fountain all a-shine, - The hedge a throne of unimagined cost; - In wheel and fan along a wall embossed, - The spider's humble handiwork shows fine - With jewels girdling every airy line: - Though the small mason in the cold be lost. - - Web after web, a morning snare of bliss - Starring with beauty the whole neighbourhood, - May well beget an envy clean and good. - When man goes too into the earth-abyss, - And God in His altered garden walks, I would - My secret woof might gleam so fair as this. - - - - -_Astræa_ - - - SINCE I avail no more, O men! with you, - I will go back unto the gods content; - For they recall me, long with earth inblent, - Lest lack of faith divinity undo. - I served you truly while I dreamed you true, - And golden pains with sovereign pleasure spent: - But now, farewell! I take my sad ascent, - With failure over all I nursed and knew. - - Are ye unwise, who would not let me love you? - Or must too bold desires be quieted? - Only to ease you, never to reprove you, - I will go back to heaven with heart unfed: - Yet sisterly I turn, I bend above you, - To kiss (ah, with what sorrow!) all my dead. - - - - -_The Yew-Tree_ - - - AS I came homeward - At merry Christmas, - By the old Church tower - Through the Churchyard grass, - - And saw there circled - With graves all about, - The Yew-tree paternal, - The Yew-tree devout, - - Then this hot life-blood - Was hard to endure, - O Death! so I loved thee, - The sole love sure. - - For stars slip in heaven, - They wander, they break; - But under the Yew-tree - Not one heartache. - - And ours, what failure - Renewed and avowed! - But ah, the long-buried - Is leal, and is proud. - - * * * * * - - At eve, o'erlooking - The smooth chilly tide, - With age-hidden meaning - The Yew-tree sighed, - - By the square grey tower, - In the short grey grass, - As I came homeward - At merry Christmas. - - - - -_Ten Colloquies_ - - -I. THE SEARCH - - "WHY dost thou hide from these - Out along the hills halloaing? - Why hast forbade - Thy face, O goddess! to thy votaries?" - - "_Unasking and unknowing - Is he whom I make glad, - Like Dian grandly going - To the sleeping shepherd-lad. - Men that pursue learn not - To follow is my lot._" - - "Happiness, secret one, - Heartbeat of the April weather, - Where art thou found? - Tell; lest I err too, yonder in the sun." - - "_Call in thine eye from ether, - Thy feet from far ground; - Seek Honour in this heather, - With austere purples wound. - Serve her: she will reveal - Me, hound-like at thy heel._" - - -II. FACT AND THE MYSTIC - - "GOOD-MORROW, Symbol."--"_Call me not - The name I neither love nor merit._" - --"That grave eternal name inherit, - Thine ever, though all men forgot." - - "_Mistake me not; secure and free - From rock to rock my falchion passes: - But Symbols trail through grey morasses - The tattered shows of faëry._" - - "My Symbol thou, of phantom blood, - With starlight from thy temples raying; - Along thy floated body playing - Are withering wings, and wings in bud." - - "_Alas, thine eye with clay is sealed._" - --"Symbol, before the clay's denial, - While yet I had a god's espial, - I saw thee in a solar field!" - - "_Nay: I am Fact._"--"Then lose thy praise; - And lest to-day no song behoove thee, - Lest mine impeach thee, or reprove thee, - Ah, Symbol, Symbol! go thy ways." - - -III. THE POET'S CHART - - "WHERE shall I find my light?" - - "_Turn from another's track: - Whether for gain or lack, - Love but thy natal right. - Cease to follow withal, - Though on thine up-led feet - Flakes of the phosphor fall. - Oracles overheard - Are never again for thee, - Nor at a magian's knee - Under the hemlock tree, - Burns the illumining word._" - - "Whence shall I take my law?" - - "_Neither from sires nor sons, - Nor the delivered ones, - Holy, invoked with awe. - Rather, dredge the divine - Out of thine own poor dust, - Feebly to speak and shine. - Schools shall be as they are: - Be thou truer, and stray - Alone, intent, and away, - In a savage wild to obey - Some dim primordial star._" - - -IV. OF THE GOLDEN AGE - - "RECALL for me, recall - The time more true and ample; - The world whereon I trample, - How tortuous and small! - Behold, I tire of all. - - "Once, gods in jewelled mail - Through greenwood ways invited; - There how the moon is blighted, - And mosses long and pale - On lifeless cedars trail." - - "_Child, keep this good unrest: - But give to thine own story - Simplicity with glory; - To greatness dispossessed, - Dominion of thy breast._ - - "_In abstinence, in pride, - Thou, who from Folly's boldest - Thy sacred eye withholdest, - Another morn shalt ride - At Agamemnon's side._" - - -V. ON TIME'S THRESHOLD - - "_See: brood: remember: this thy function only; - Neither to have nor do is meet for thee._" - "Ah, earth's a palace where I must go lonely!" - "_Nay: earth's a dungeon which thou passest, free._" - - -VI. WOOD-PIGEONS - - "I CANNOT soar beside, but must for ever suffer - Blue air athrill with thee to lap against my breast, - And dream it is thy wing." - --"_Dear, sighs about thee hover: - Among the dewy leaves my longing is thy guest. - Yet, lone and far apart, shall we no joy discover - To travel the same sky, and by one sea to rest? - Say, mate in all this world?_" - --"Ah, mute forbidden lover, - Ah, song I shall not hear!" - --"_Ah, sweet unbuilded nest!_" - - -VII. PREDICAMENTS - - "IF the gods ruin send?"-- - "_Make that thy bride and friend._" - - "If the gods cheat?"--"_They say - The one true word alway._" - - "If for some loss I pine?" - "--_The past is theirs, yet thine._" - - "If I sue not?"--"_Vain cares! - The morrow's thine, not theirs._" - - -VIII. THE CO-ETERNAL - - "_Is it thou, silly heart, - Not prone on thy pallet, but grieving apart?_" - --"Natal Star, even so." - "_I miss thee to-night, while thou smoulderest low._" - --"Live in beauty! but I - For bloodshed of spirit, here dwindle and die." - - "_Are we two not the same, - By law everlasting one mystical flame? - Aloft if I burn, - Every ray of my light be thy stair of return: - Up, up! to our lot - Where warfare and time and the body are not._" - - -IX. STERN APHRODITE - - "IOLE is coy with me, - Goddess! for a month I suffer - Knowing not how far I be: - Teach me softer arts, or rougher, - Well to sail that sea." - - "_Fie: how long could Love divine - Venturing, abstain from answer, - Nor look landward for a sign! - Niggard, take of thine entrancer - Shipwreck in the brine._" - - -X. THE JUBILEE - - "_Master of your wounded heart, regent of your pleasure! - We that long defied your art, tamèd Moods at leisure, - All with you, nor now apart, would tread out our measure._" - - "Welcome, equal powers benign, quit of ancient madness! - Dance with me beneath the vine, not ungentle Sadness; - Link your little hand in mine soberly, my Gladness." - - - - -_Winter Boughs_ - - - HOW tender and how slow, in sunset cheer, - Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! - A broidery of ebon seaweed, laid - Long in a book, were scarce more fine and clear. - Frost and sad light and windless atmosphere - Have breathed on them, and of their frailties made - Beauty more sweet than summer's builded shade, - Whose green domes fallen, leave this wonder here. - - O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, - With not a plume, gay in the joust before, - Left for the Archer! so, in evening's eye, - So stilled, so lifted, let your lover die, - Set in the upper calm no voices rouse, - Stript, meek, withdrawn, against the heavenly door. - - - - -_W.H._ - -_A.D. MDCCLXXVIII-MDCCCXXX_ - - - BETWEEN the wet trees and the sorry steeple, - Keep, Time, in dark Soho, what once was Hazlitt, - Seeker of Truth, and finder oft of Beauty; - - Beauty's a sinking light, ah, none too faithful; - But Truth, who leaves so here her spent pursuer, - Forgets not her great pawn: herself shall claim it. - - Therefore sleep safe, thou dear and battling spirit, - Safe also on our earth, begetting ever - Some one love worth the ages and the nations! - - Falleth no thing that was to thee eternal. - Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, - Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches. - - - - -_The Vigil-at-Arms_ - - - KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting - Till morning break, and every bugle play; - Unto the One aware from everlasting - Dear are the winners: thou art more than they. - - Forth from this peace on manhood's way thou goest, - Flushed with resolve, and radiant in mail; - Blessing supreme for men unborn thou sowest, - O knight elect! O soul ordained to fail! - - - - -_A Friend's Song for Simoisius_ - - - THE breath of dew and twilight's grace - Be on the lonely battle-place, - And to so young, so kind a face, - The long protecting grasses cling! - (Alas, alas, - That one inexorable thing!) - - In rocky hollows cool and deep, - The honey-bees unrifled sleep; - The early moon from Ida steep - Comes to the empty wrestling-ring; - - Upon the widowed wind recede - No echoes of the shepherd's reed; - And children without laughter lead - The war-horse to the watering; - - With footstep separate and slow - The father and the mother go, - Not now upon an urn they know - To mingle tears for comforting. - - Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! - What to the lovely hast thou done, - That nevermore a maid may run - With him across the flowery Spring? - - The world to me has nothing dear - Beyond the namesake river here: - Oh, Simois is wild and clear! - And to his brink my heart I bring; - - My heart, if only this might be, - Would stay his waters from the sea, - To cover Troy, to cover me, - To haste the hour of perishing. - (Alas, alas, - That one inexorable thing!) - - - - -_To an Ideal_ - - - THAT I have tracked you from afar, my crown I call it and my height: - All hail, O dear and difficult star! All hail, O heart of light! - No pleasure born of time for me, - Who in you touch eternity. - If I have found you where you are, I win my mortal fight. - - You flee the plain: I therefore choose summit and solitude for mine, - The high air where I cannot lose our comradeship divine. - More lovely here, to wakened blood, - Sparse leaf and hesitating bud, - Than rosaries in the dewy vales for which the dryads pine. - - Spirit austere! lend aid: I walk along inclement ridges too, - Disowning toys of sense, to baulk my soul of ends untrue. - Because man's cry, by night and day, - Cried not for God, I broke away. - On, at your ruthless pace! I'll stalk, a hilltop ghost, with you. - - - - -_In a Ruin, after a Thunder Storm_ - - - KEEP of the Norman, old to flood and cloud! - Thou dost reproach me with thy sunset look, - That in our common menace I forsook - Hope, the last fear, and stood impartial proud: - Almost, almost, while ether spake aloud, - Death from the smoking stones my spirit shook - Into thy hollow as leaves into a brook, - No more than they by heaven's assassins cowed. - - But now thy thousand-scarrèd steep is flecked - With the calm kisses of the light delayed, - Breathe on me better valour: to subject - My soul to greed of life, and grow afraid - Lest ere her fight's full term, the Architect - See downfall of the stronghold that He made. - - - - -_Beati Mortui_ - - - BLESSED the Dead in Spirit, our brave dead - Not passed, but perfected: - Who tower up to mystical full bloom - From self, as from a known alchemic tomb; - Who out of wrong - Run forth with laughter and a broken thong; - Who win from pain their strange and flawless grant - Of peace anticipant; - Who cerements lately wore of sin, but now, - Unbound from foot to brow, - Gleam in and out of cities, beautiful - As sun-born colours of a forest pool - Where Autumn sees - The splash of walnuts from her thinning trees. - - Though wondered-at of some, yea, feared almost - As any chantry ghost, - How sight of these, in hermitage or mart, - Makes glad a wistful heart! - For life's apologetics read most true - In spirits risen anew, - Like larks in air - To whom flat earth is all a heavenward stair, - And who from yonder parapet - Scorn every mortal fret, - And rain their sweet bewildering staves - Upon our furrow of fresh-delvèd graves. - - If thus to have trod and left the wormy way - Makes men so wondrous gay, - So stripped and free and potently alive, - Who would not his infirmity survive, - And bathe in victory, and come to be - As blithe as ye, - Saints of the ended wars? Ah, greeting give; - Turn not away, too fugitive: - But hastening towards us, hallow the foul street, - And sit with us at meat, - And of your courtesy, on us unwise - Fix oft those purer eyes, - Till in ourselves who love them dwell - The same sure light ineffable: - Till they who walk with us in after years - Forgetting time and tears - (As we with you), shall sing all day instead: - "How blessed are the Dead!" - - - - -_Two Irish Peasant Songs_ - - -I. IN LEINSTER - - I TRY to knead and spin, but my life is low the while. - Oh, I long to be alone, and walk abroad a mile; - Yet if I walk alone, and think of naught at all, - Why from me that's young should the wild tears fall? - - The shower-sodden earth, the earth-coloured streams, - They breathe on me awake, and moan to me in dreams, - And yonder ivy fondling the broke castle-wall, - It pulls upon my heart till the wild tears fall. - - The cabin-door looks down a furze-lighted hill, - And far as Leighlin Cross the fields are green and still; - But once I hear the blackbird in Leighlin hedges call, - The foolishness is on me, and the wild tears fall! - - -II. IN ULSTER - - 'TIS the time o' the year, if the quicken-bough be staunch, - The green like a breaker rolls steady up the branch, - And surges in the spaces, and floods the trunk, and heaves - In jets of angry spray that is the under-white of leaves; - And from the thorn in companies the foamy petals fall, - And waves of jolly ivy wink along a windy wall. - - 'Tis the time o' the year the marsh is full of sound, - And good and glorious it is to smell the living ground. - The crimson-headed catkin shakes above the pasture-bars, - The daisy takes the middle field and spangles it with stars, - And down the hedgerow to the lane the primroses do crowd, - All coloured like the twilight moon, and spreading like a cloud! - - 'Tis the time o' the year, in early light and glad, - The lark has a music to drive a lover mad; - The rocks are dripping nightly, the breathèd damps arise, - Deliciously the freshets cool the grayling's golden eyes, - And lying in a row against the chilly north, the sheep - Inclose a place without a wind for tender lambs to sleep. - - 'Tis the time o' the year I turn upon the height - To watch from my harrow the dance of going light; - And if before the sun be hid, come slowly up the vale - Honora with her dimpled throat, Honora with her pail, - Hey, but there's many a March for me, and many and many a lass!-- - I fall to work and song again, and let Honora pass. - - - - -_The Japanese Anemone_ - - - ALL summer the breath of the roses around - Exhales with a delicate passionate sound; - And when from a trellis, in holiday places, - They croon and cajole, with their slumberous faces, - A lad in the lane must slacken his paces. - - Fragrance of these is a voice from a bower: - But low by the wall is my odourless flower, - So pure, so controlled, not a fume is above her, - That poet or bee should delay there and hover; - For she is a silence, and therefore I love her. - - And never a mortal by morn or midnight - Is called to her hid little house of delight; - And she keeps from the wind, on his pillages olden, - Upon a true stalk in rough weather upholden, - Her winter-white gourd with the hollow moon-golden. - - While ardours of roses contend and increase, - Methinks she has found how noble is peace, - Like a spirit besought from the world to dissever, - Not absent to men, though resumed by the Giver, - And dead long ago, being lovely for ever. - - - - -_Orisons_ - - - ORANGE and olive and glossed bay-tree, - And air of the evening out at sea, - And out at sea on the steep warm stone, - A little bare diver poising alone. - - Flushed from the cool of Sicilian waves, - Flushed as the coral in clean sea-caves, - "I am!" he cries to his glorying heart, - And unto he knows not what: "THOU art!" - - He leaps, he shines, he sinks and is gone: - He will climb to the golden ledge anon. - Perfecter rite can none employ, - When the god of the isle is good to a boy. - - - - -_The Inner Fate: a Chorus_ - - - NOT weak with eld - The stars beheld - Proud Persia coming to her doom; - Not battle-broke, nor tempest-tossed, - The long luxurious galleys lost - Their souls at Actium. - - Not outer arts - Of hostile hearts - Seduced the arm of France to be - The wreckage of his wars at last, - The orphan of the kingdoms, cast - Upon the mothering sea. - - Man evermore doth work his will, - And evermore the gods are still, - Applauding him alone who stands - Too just for Heaven-accusing groans, - But in his house of havoc owns - The doing of his hands: - Transgressor, yet divinely taught - To suffer all, blaspheming naught, - When fair-begun must foul conclude: - Himself progenitor of death - Who breeds, within, the only breath - Can kill beatitude. - - - - -_The Acknowledgment_ - - - SINCE first I knew it our divine employ - To beat beyond the reach of soiling care, - As at Philippi, well of doom aware, - The Prætor called and heard the singing-boy; - Since first my soul so jealous was of joy, - That any facile linden-bloom in air, - Or fall of water on a wildwood stair, - Annulled for her all dragging dull annoy; - Though word of thanks I lacked, though, dumb, I smiled - Long, long, at such august amends up-piled, - Let this the debt redeem: that when Ye drop - Death's aloe-leaf within my honeyed cup, - On thoughtful knee your much-beholden child, - Immortals! unto You will drink it up. - - - - -_By the Trundle-bed_ - - - LOST love, be never beyond Love's calling! - For this I claim of you, strong heart, sweet - As fontal water in Arden falling, - As first-mown hay in the April heat: - - To tend from heaven, to rear, to harden, - And bring to bloom in the outer cold, - Our daffodil bud of a walled-in garden, - Our son that is like you, and six years old; - - And lest his worth be the worth unreal, - To ward him not from the mortal blast, - But suffer your own, through a long ordeal, - Verily like you to be at the last, - - And hear men murmur, if so he merit - In your old place with your look to arise: - "The sign of a saved soul who can inherit?-- - You have earned, O King! those beautiful eyes." - - - - -_Arboricide_ - - - A WORD of grief to me erewhile: - _We have cut the oak down, in our isle._ - - And I said: "Ye have bereaven - The song-thrush and the bee, - And the fisher-boy at sea - Of his sea-mark in the even; - And gourds of cooling shade, to lie - Within the sickle's sound; - And the old sheep-dog's loyal eye - Of sleep on duty's ground; - And poets of their tent - And quiet tenement. - Ah, impious! who so paid - Such fatherhood, and made - Of murmurous immortality a cargo and a trade." - - For the hewn oak a century fair, - A wound in earth, an ache in air. - - And I said: "No pillared height - With a summer daïs over, - Where a dryad fled her lover - Through the long arcade of light; - Nor 'neath Arcturus rolleth more, - Since the loud leaves are gone, - Between the shorn cliff and the shore, - Pan's organ antiphon. - Some nameless envy fed - This blow at grandeur's head: - Some breathed reproach, o'erdue, - Degenerate men, ye drew! - Hence, for his too plain heavenliness, our Socrates ye slew." - - - - -_The Cherry Bough_ - - - IN a new poet's and a new friend's honour, - Forth from the scornèd town and her gold-getting, - Come men with lutes and bowls, and find a welcome - Here in my garden, - - Find bowers and deep shade and windy grasses, - And by the south wall, wet and forward-jutting, - One early branch fire-tipped with Roman cherries. - Oh, naught is absent, - - Oh, naught but you, kind head that far in prison - Sunk on a weary arm, feels no god's pity - Stroking and sighing where the kingly laurels - Were once so plenty; - - Nor dreams, from revel and strange faces turning, - How on the strength of my fair tree that knew you - I lean to-day, when most my heart is laden - With your rich verses! - - Since, long ago, in other gentler weather, - Ere wrath and exile were, you lay beneath it - (Your symbol then, your innocent wild brother - Glad with your gladness), - - What has befallen in the world of wonder, - That still it puts forth bubbles of sweet colour, - And you, and you that fed our eyes with beauty, - Are sapped and rotten? - - Alas! When my young guests have done with singing, - I break it, leaf and fruit, my garden's glory, - And hold it high among them, and say after: - "O my poor Ovid, - - "Years pass, and loves pass too; and yet remember - For the clear time when we were boys together, - These tears at home are shed; and with you also - Your bough is dying." - - - - -_The Wild Ride_ - - - I HEAR in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses - All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, - All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing. - - Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle - Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion, - With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him. - - The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses; - There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: - What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding. - - Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, - And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam: - Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing. - - A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, - A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty: - We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers. - - (I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses - All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, - All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.) - - We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind; - We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. - Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow. - - - - -_Bedesfolk_ - - - WHO is good enough to be - Near the never-stainèd sea? - Ah, not I, - Who thereby - Only sigh: - _Pray for me._ - - Standing underneath some free - Innocent magnanimous tree, - To be true, - There anew - Must I sue: - _Pray for me._ - - Ere I pass on hilly lea - Fellow-lives of glad degree, - Without shame, - Name by name - These I claim: - _Pray for me._ - - Fail not, then, thou kingly sea! - Aid the needy, sister tree! - March herds, - Ye have words! - April birds, - _Pray for me_! - - - - -_In a City Street_ - - - THOUGH sea and mount have beauty and this but what it can, - Thrice fairer than their life the life here battling in the van, - The tragic gleam, the mist and grime, - The dread endearing stain of time, - The sullied heart of man. - - Mine is the clotted sunshine, a bubble in the sky, - That where it dare not enter steals in shrouded passion by; - And mine the saffron river-sails, - And every plane-tree that avails - To rest an urban eye; - - The bells, the dripping gable, the tavern's corner glare; - The cab in firefly darting; the barrel-organ air, - While one by one, or two by two - The hatless babes are waltzing through - The gutters of the Square. - - Not on Thessalian headlands of song and old desire - My spirit chose her pleasure-house, but in the London mire: - Long, long alone she loves to pace, - And find a music in this place - As in a minster choir. - - O names of awe and rapture! O deeds of legendry! - Still is it most of joy within your altered pale to be, - Whose very ills I fain would slake - Mine angels are, and help to make - In Hell a Heaven for me. - - - - -_Florentin_ - -_A.D. MDCCCXC_ - - - HEART all full of heavenward haste, too like the bubble bright - On wild little waters floating half of an April night, - Fled from the ear in music, fled from the eye in light, - - Dear and stainless heart of a boy! No sweeter thing can be - Drawn to the quiet centre of God who is our sea: - Whither, through troubled valleys, we also follow thee. - - - - -_A Song of the Lilac_ - - - ABOVE the wall that's broken, - And from the coppice thinned, - So sacred and so sweet - The lilac in the wind! - For when by night the May wind blows - The lilac-blooms apart, - The memory of his first love - Is shaken on his heart. - - In tears it long was buried, - And trances wrapt it round; - Oh, how they wake it now, - The fragrance and the sound! - For when by night the May wind blows - The lilac-blooms apart, - The memory of his first love - Is shaken on his heart. - - - - -_Monochrome_ - - - SHUT fast again in Beauty's sheath - Where ancient forms renew, - The round world seems above, beneath, - One wash of faintest blue, - - And air and tide so stilly sweet - In nameless union lie, - The little far-off fishing fleet - Goes drifting up the sky. - - Secure of neither misted coast - Nor ocean undefined, - Our flagging sail is like the ghost - Of one that served mankind, - - Who in the void, as we upon - This melancholy sea, - Finds labour and allegiance done, - And Self begin to be. - - - - -_Saint Francis Endeth his Sermon_ - - - "AND now, my clerks who go in fur or feather - Or brighter scales, I bless you all. Be true - To your true Lover and Avenger, whether - By land or sea ye die the death undue. - Then proffer man your pardon; and together - Track him to Heaven, and see his heart made new. - - "From long ago one hope hath in me thriven, - Your hope, mysterious as the scented May: - Not to Himself your titles God hath given - In vain, nor only for our mortal day. - O doves! how from The Dove shall ye be driven? - O darling lambs! ye with The Lamb shall play." - - - - -_An Estray_ - - - WELL we know, not ever here is a footing for thy dream: - Thou art sick for horse and spear beside an Asian stream, - - For the hearth-smoke in the wild, for the goatherd's stave, - For a beauty far exiled, a belief within its grave. - - While another sky and ground orb thy strange remembering, - And no world of mortal bound is the master of thy wing, - - Canst thou yet thy fate forgive, that the godhead in thy breast - Has this life at least to live as a force in rhythmic rest, - - As a seed that bides the hour of obscureness and decay, - Being troth of flower to flower down the long dynastic day? - - Child whom elder airs enfold, who hast greatness to maintain - Where heroic hap of old may return and shine again, - - As too oft across thy heart flits the too familiar light, - How alarms of love upstart at the token quick and slight! - - Lest captivity be o'er, lest thou glide away, and so - From our tents of Nevermore strike the trail of Long Ago. - - - - -_Friendship Broken_ - - -I - - WE chose the faint chill morning, friend and friend, - Pacing the twilight out beneath an oak, - Soul calling soul to judgment; and we spoke - Strange things and deep as any poet penned, - Such truth as never truth again can mend, - Whatever art we use, what gods invoke; - It was not wrath, it made nor strife nor smoke: - Be what it may, it had a solemn end. - - Farewell, in peace. We of the selfsame throne - Are foeman vassals; pale astrologers, - Each a wise skeptic of the other's star. - Silently, as we went our ways alone, - The steadfast sun, whom no poor prayer deters, - Drew high between us his majestic bar. - - -II - - MINE was the mood that shows the dearest face - Through a long avenue, and voices kind - Idle, and indeterminate, and blind - As rumours from a very distant place; - Yet, even so, it gathered the first chase - Of the first swallows where the lane's inclined, - An ebb of wavy wings to serve my mind - For round Spring's vision. Ah, some equal grace - (The calm sense of seen beauty without sight) - Befell thee, honourable heart! no less - In patient stupor walking from the dawn; - Albeit thou too wert loser of life's light, - Like fallen Adam in the wilderness, - Aware of naught but of the thing withdrawn. - - - - -_A Talisman_ - - - TAKE Temperance to thy breast, - While yet is the hour of choosing, - As arbitress exquisite - Of all that shall thee betide; - For better than fortune's best - Is mastery in the using, - And sweeter than any thing sweet - The art to lay it aside! - - - - -_Heathenesse_ - - - NO round boy-satyr, racing from the mere, - Shakes on the mountain lawn his dripping head - This many a May, your sister being dead, - Ye Christian folk! your sister great and dear. - To breathe her name, to think how sad-sincere - Was all her searching, straying, dreaming, dread, - How of her natural night was Plato bred - (A star to keep the ways of honour clear), - - Who will not sigh for her? who can forget - Not only unto campèd Israel, - Nor martyr-maids that as a bridegroom met - The Roman lion's roar, salvation fell? - To Him be most of praise that He is yet - Your God through gods not inaccessible. - - - - -_For Izaak Walton_ - - - CAN trout allure the rod of yore - In Itchen stream to dip? - Or lover of her banks restore - That sweet Socratic lip? - Old fishing and wishing - Are over many a year. - Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. - - Again the foamy shallows fill, - The quiet clouds amass, - And soft as bees by Catherine Hill - At dawn the anglers pass, - And follow the hollow, - In boughs to disappear. - Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. - - Nay, rise not now, nor with them take - One amber-freckled fool! - Thy sons to-day bring each an ache - For ancient arts to cool. - But, father, lie rather - Unhurt and idle near; - Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. - - While thought of thee to men is yet - A sylvan playfellow, - Ne'er by thy marble they forget - In pious cheer to go. - As air falls, the prayer falls - O'er kingly Winchester: - Oh, hush thee, Oh, hush thee! heart innocent and dear. - - - - -_Fifteen Epitaphs_ - - -I - - I LAID the strewings, darling, on thine urn; - I lowered the torch, I poured the cup to Dis. - Now hushaby, my little child, and learn - Long sleep how good it is. - - In vain thy mother prays, wayfaring hence, - Peace to her heart, where only heartaches dwell; - But thou more blest, O mild intelligence! - Forget her, and Farewell. - - -II - - GENTLE Grecian passing by, - Father of thy peace am I: - Wouldst thou now, in memory, - Give a soldier's flower to me, - Choose the standard named of yore - Beautiful Worth-dying-for, - That shall wither not, but wave - All the year above my grave. - - -III - - LIGHT thou hast of the moon, - Shade of the dammar-pine, - Here on thy hillside bed; - Fair befall thee, O fair - Lily of womanhood, - Patient long, and at last - Here on thy hillside bed, - Happier: ah, Blæsilla! - - -IV - - ME, deep-tressèd meadows, take to your loyal keeping, - Hard by the swish of sickles ever in Aulon sleeping, - Philophron, old and tired, and glad to be done with reaping! - - -V - - UPON thy level tomb, till windy winter morn, - The fallen leaves delay; - But plain and pure their trace is, when themselves are torn - From delicate frost away. - - As here to transient frost the absent leaf is, such - Thou wert and art to me: - So on my passing life is thy long-passèd touch, - O dear Alcithoë! - - -VI - - HAIL, and be of comfort, thou pious Xeno, - Late the urn of many a kinsman wreathing; - On thine own shall even the stranger offer - Plentiful myrtle. - - -VII - - HERE lies one in the earth who scarce of the earth was moulded, - Wise Æthalides' son, himself no lover of study, - Cnopus, asleep, indoors: the young invincible runner. - They from the cliff footpath that see on the grave we made him, - Tameless, slant in the wind, the bare and beautiful iris, - Stop short, full of delight, and cry out: "See, it is Cnopus - Runs, with white throat forward, over the sands to Chalcis!" - - -VIII - - ERE the Ferryman from the coast of spirits - Turn the diligent oar that brought thee thither, - Soul, remember: and leave a kiss upon it - For thy desolate father, for thy sister, - Whichsoever be first to cross hereafter. - - -IX - - JAFFA ended, Cos begun - Thee, Aristeus. Thou wert one - Fit to trample out the sun: - Who shall think thine ardours are - But a cinder in a jar? - - -X - - TWO white heads the grasses cover: - Dorcas, and her lifelong lover. - While they graced their country closes - Simply as the brooks and roses, - Where was lot so poor, so trodden, - But they cheered it of a sudden? - Fifty years at home together, - Hand in hand, they went elsewhither, - Then first leaving hearts behind - Comfortless. Be thou as kind. - - -XI - - AS wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, - And mars the golden breakers in the bay, - Hurtful and sweet from heaven for ever blows - Sad thought that roughens all our quiet day; - - And elder poets envy, while they weep, - Ion, whom first the gods to covert brought, - Here under inland olives laid asleep, - Most wise, most happy, having done with thought. - - -XII - - COWS in the narrowing August marshes, - Cows in a stretch of water - Motionless, - Neck on neck overlapped and drooping; - - These in their troubled and dumb communion, - Thou on the steep bank yonder, - Pastora! - No more ever to lead and love them, - - No more ever. Thine innocent mourners - Pass thy tree in the evening - Heavily, - Hearing another herd-girl calling. - - -XIII - - GO you by with gentle tread. - This was Paula, who is dead: - Dear grey eyes that had a look - Like some rock-o'ershadowed brook, - Voice upon the ear to cling - Sweeter than the cithern string. - With that spirit shy and fair - Quietly and unaware - Climbing past the starry van - Went, for triple talisman, - They to whom the heavens must ope: - Candour, Chastity, and Hope. - - -XIV - - TAKE from an urn my vow and salutation - Unto the land I never now shall see: - Laid here exiled, my heart in desolation - Frets like a child against her breast to be. - - Far from the sky, a rose that opes at even - (One liquid star for dewdrop on the rose), - Far from the shower that nesting low in heaven - Thrice in an hour light-wingèd comes and goes, - - Far from my lost and blessèd and belovèd - Nightfall of June beside the Rhodian wave, - Mine is the pain another isle to covet, - Though all in vain, for gardener of my grave. - - -XV - - PRAISE thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, - A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee. - - - - -_Deo Optimo Maximo_ - - - ALL else for use, One only for desire; - Thanksgiving for the good, but thirst for Thee: - Up from the best, whereof no man need tire, - Impel Thou me. - - Delight is menace if Thou brood not by, - Power a quicksand, Fame a gathering jeer. - Oft as the morn (though none of earth deny - These three are dear), - - Wash me of them, that I may be renewed, - And wander free amid my freeborn joys: - Oh, close my hand upon Beatitude! - Not on her toys. - - - - -_Charista Musing_ - - - MOVELESS, on the marge of a sunny cornfield, - Rapt in sudden revery while thou standest, - Like the sheaves, in beautiful Doric yellow - Clad to the ankle, - - Oft to thee with delicate hasty footstep - So I steal, and suffer because I find thee - Inly flown, and only a fallen feather - Left of my darling. - - Give me back thy wakening breath, thy ringlets - Fragrant as the vine of the bean in blossom, - And those eyes of violet dusk and daylight - Under sea-water, - - Eyes too far away, and too full of longing! - Yes: and go not heavenward where I lose thee, - Go not, go not whither I cannot follow, - Being but earthly. - - Willing swallow poisèd upon my finger, - Little wild-wing ever from me escaping, - For the care thou art to me, I thy lover - Love thee, and fear thee. - - - - -_The Still of the Year_ - - - UP from the willow-root - Subduing agonies leap; - The field-mouse and the purple moth - Turn over amid their sleep; - The icicled rocks aloft - Burn amber and blue alway, - And trickling and tinkling - The snows of the drift decay. - Oh, mine is the head must hang - And share the immortal pang! - Winter or spring is fair; - Thaw's hard to bear. - Heigho! my heart's sick. - - Sweet is cherry-time, sweet - A shower, a bobolink, - And trillium, fain far under - Her cloistering leaf to shrink; - But here in the vast, unborn, - Is the bitterest place to be, - Till striving and longing - Shall quicken the earth and me. - What change inscrutable - Is nigh us, we know not well; - Gone is the strength to sigh - Either to live or die. - Heigho! my heart's sick. - - - - -_A Footnote to a Famous Lyric_ - - - TRUE love's own talisman, which here - Shakespeare and Sidney failed to teach, - A steel-and-velvet Cavalier - Gave to our Saxon speech: - - Chief miracle of theme and touch - That all must envy and adore: - _I could not love thee, dear, so much, - Loved I not Honour more._ - - No critic born since Charles was King - But sighed in smiling, as he read: - "Here's theft supreme of everything - A poet might have said!" - - Young knight and wit and beau, who won - Mid war's upheaval, ladies' praise, - Was't well of you, ere you had done, - To blight our modern bays? - - Oh, yet to you, whose random hand - Struck from the dark whole gems like these - (Archaic beauty, never planned - Nor reared by wan degrees, - - Which leaves an artist poor, and Art - An earldom richer all her years); - To you, dead on your shield apart, - Be "_Ave!_" passed in tears. - - 'Twas virtue's breath inflamed your lyre: - Heroic from the heart it ran; - Nor for the shedding of such fire - Lived, since, a manlier man. - - And till your strophe sweet and bold - So lovely aye, so lonely long, - Love's self outdo, dear Lovelace! hold - The parapets of Song. - - - - -_T.W.P._ - -_A.D. MDCCCXIX-MDCCCXCII_ - - - FRIEND who hast gone, and dost enrich to-day - New England brightly building far away, - And crown her liberal walk - With company more choice, and sweeter talk, - - Look not on Fame, but Peace; and in a bower - Receive at last her fulness and her power: - Nor wholly, pure of heart! - Forget thy few, who would be where thou art. - - - - -_Summum Bonum_ - - - WAITING on Him who knows us and our need, - Most need have we to dare not, nor desire, - But as He giveth, softly to suspire - Against His gift with no inglorious greed, - For this is joy, though still our joys recede; - And, as in octaves of a noble lyre, - To move our minds with His, and clearer, higher, - Sound forth our fate: for this is strength indeed. - - Thanks to His love let earth and man dispense - In smoke of worship when the heart is stillest, - A praying more than prayer: "Great good have I, - Till it be greater good to lay it by; - Nor can I lose peace, power, permanence, - For these smile on me from the thing Thou willest!" - - - - -_When on the Marge of Evening_ - - - WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, - And winds of dreamy odour are loosened from afar, - Or when my lattice opens, before the lark hath spoken, - On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning's dying star, - - I think of thee (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!), - Whose greater noonday splendours the many share and see, - While sacred and for ever, some perfect law is keeping - The late, the early twilight, alone and sweet for me. - - - - -_Hylas_ - - - (THERE'S a thrush on the under bough - Fluting evermore and now: - "_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?) - - Jar in arm, they bade him rove - Through the alder's long alcove, - Where the hid spring musically - Gushes to the ample valley. - - Down the woodland corridor, - Odours deepened more and more; - Blossomed dogwood in the briars - Struck her faint delicious fires; - Miles of April passed between - Crevices of closing green, - And the moth, the violet-lover, - By the wellside saw him hover. - - Ah, the slippery sylvan dark! - Never after shall he mark - (On his drownèd cheek down-sinking), - Noisy ploughman drinking, drinking. - - Quit of serving is that wild - Absent and bewitchèd child, - Unto action, age, and danger - Thrice a thousand years a stranger. - - Fathoms low, the naiads sing, - In a birthday welcoming; - Water-white their breasts, and o'er him, - Water-grey, their eyes adore him. - - (There's a thrush on the under bough - Fluting evermore and now: - "_Keep--young!_" but who knows how?) - - - - -_Nocturne_ - - - THE sun that hurt his lovers from on high - Is fallen; she more merciful is nigh, - The blessèd one whose beauty's even glow - Gave never wound to any shepherd's eye. - Above our lonely boat in shallows drifting, - Alone her plaintive form ascends the sky. - - Oh, sing! the water-golds are deepening now, - Almost a hush is on the aspen bough; - Her light caresseth thine, as saint to saint - Sweet interchanged adorings may allow: - Sing, Eunoë, that lily throat uplifting: - They are so like, the holy Moon and thou! - - - - -_To Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey_ - - - YOUNG father-poet! much in you I praise - Adventure high, romantic, vehement, - All with inviolate honour sealed and blent - To the axe-edge that cleft your soldier bays; - Your friendships too, your follies, whims, and frays; - And most, that verse of strict imperious bent - Heard sweetly as from some old harper's tent, - And clanging in the listener's brain for days. - - At Framlingham to-night if there should be - No guest beyond a sea-born wind that sighs, - No guard save moonlight's crossed and trailing spears, - And I, your pilgrim, call you, Oh, let me - In at the gate! and smile into the eyes - That sought you, Surrey, down three hundred years. - - - - -_Planting the Poplar_ - - - BECAUSE thou'rt not an oak - To breast the thunder-stroke, - Or flamy-fruited yew - Darker than Time, how few - Of birds or men or kine - Will love this throne of thine, - Scant Poplar, without shade - Inhospitably made! - Yet, branches never parted - From their straight secret bole, - Yet, sap too single-hearted! - Prosper as my soul. - - In loneliness, in quaint - Perpetual constraint, - In gallant poverty, - A girt and hooded tree, - See if against the gale - Our leafage can avail: - Lithe, equal, naked, true, - Rise up as spirits do, - And be a spirit crying - Before the folk that dream! - My slender early-dying - Poplar, by the stream. - - - - -_To One who would not Spare Himself_ - - - A CENSER playing from a heart all fire, - A flushing, racing, singing mountain stream - Thou art; and dear to us of dull desire - In thy far-going dream. - - Full to the grave be thy too fleeting way, - And full thereafter: few that know thee best - Will grudge it so, for neither thou nor they - Can mate thy soul with rest. - - God put thee from the laws of Time adrift. - Lo, He who moves without delay or haste, - Far less may love the sheaves of ghostly thrift, - Than some diviner waste. - - Be mine to ride in joy, ere thou art gone, - The flame, the torrent, which is one with thee! - Saint, from this pool of dying sweep us on - Where Life must long to be. - - - - -_Winter Peace_ - - - APRIL seemed a restless pain, - June a phantom in the rain; - Weary Autumn without grain - Turned her home, full of tears. - O my year, the most in vain - Of the years! - - While the furrowed field was red, - While the roses rioted, - While a leaf was left to shed, - There was storm in the air. - Now that troubled heart is dead, - All is fair. - - 'Neath a glow of copper-grey - Spreads the stubble far away, - And the hilltop cedars play - Interludes in accord, - And the sun adorns the day - Like a sword. - - Even, usual, and slow, - Blue enchanted breakers go - Over carmine reefs in snow, - With a sail in the lee: - There's the godhead that we know - On the sea. - - Ah, let be a promise vast - So mysteriously downcast! - I will love this year that passed - To her grave in the wild, - And is clear of stain at last - As a child. - - - - -_Sleep_ - - - O GLORIOUS tide, O hospitable tide - On whose mysterious breast my head hath lain, - Lest I, all eased of wounds and washed of stain - Through holy hours, be yet unsatisfied, - Loose me betimes: for in my soul abide - Urgings of memory, and exile's pain - Weighs on me, as the spirit of one slain - May throb for the old strife wherein he died. - - Often and evermore, across the sea - Of dark and dreams, to fatherlands of Day, - Oh, speed me: as that outworn King erewhile - By kind Phæacians borne ashore, so me, - Thy loving healèd ward, fail not to lay - Beneath the olive boughs of mine own isle. - - - - -_Writ in my Lord Clarendon's History of the Rebellion_ - - - HOW life hath cheapen'd, and how blank - The Worlde is! like a fen - Where long ago unstainèd sank - The starrie gentlemen: - Since Marston Moor and Newbury drank - King Charles his gentlemen. - - If Fate in any air accords - What Fate deny'd, Oh, then - I ask to be among your Swordes, - My joyous gentlemen; - Towards Honour's heaven to goe, and towards - King Charles his gentlemen! - - - - -_In a February Garden_ - - - ONE rose till after snowtime - O'erlooked the sodden grass; - Now crocuses are twenty - With spear and torch a plenty, - To keep our Candlemas. - - So thin that winter greyness, - So light that sleep forlorn, - No seventh week uncloses - Between the martyr roses - And crocus newly born. - - All doubt is hushed for ever, - Confuted without sound, - All ruin featly ended, - When bulbs begin their splendid - Gay muster overground; - - And mid the golden heralds - That ride the icy breeze, - Man, too, divinely vernal, - Storms into life eternal - Victoriously with these. - - O Beauty, O Persistence - Ineffable and strong! - Would we had borne with Sorrow - In her unlasting morrow: - And Death was not for long. - - - - -_A Valediction_ - -_R.L.S.: A.D. MDCCCXCIV_ - - - WHEN from the vista of the Book I shrink, - From lauded pens that earn ignoble wage - Begetting nothing joyous, nothing sage, - Nor keep with Shakespeare's use one golden link; - When heavily my sanguine spirits sink - To read too plain on each impostor page - Only of kings the broken lineage,-- - Well for my peace if then on thee I think, - - Louis, our priest of letters, and our knight - With whose familiar baldric Hope is girt, - From whose young hands she bears the Grail away. - All glad, all great! Truer because thou wert, - I am and must be; and in thy known light - Go down to dust, content with this my day. - - - - -_A Footpath Morality_ - - - ALONG the Hills, height unto height - Tosses the dappled light, - Rills in a torrent flow, - And cuckoo calls beyond the third hedgerow. - Young winds nothing can quell - Scale the wild-chestnut citadel, - Again to make - Its thousand faëry white pagodas shake. - Up many a lane - The blue vervain - A coverlid hath featly spread - For the bees' bed, - That those tired sylvan thieves - May lie most soft on the sweet and scalloped leaves. - And by to-morrow morn - Bright agrimony, in the thickets born, - Will high uphold - Each cinquefoil of plain gold; - Dogwood in white will hood herself apace, - And betony flaunt a varied gypsy mace, - And copper pimpernel, true as a clock, - On some waste common, by a rock - Her small dark-centred wheel draw in - Long, long ere dusk begin. - - This day - Of infinite May - Is far more fitly yours than ours, - O spirit-bodied flowers! - What heart disordered sore - Comes through the greenwood door, - Shall for your sake - Find sap and soil and dew, and shall not break; - And hearts beneath no ban - Will in your sight some penance do for man, - Poor lagging man, content to be - Sick with the impact of eternity, - Who might keep step with you in the low grass, - Best part of one strange pageant made in joy to pass! - Not ye, not ye, the privilege disown - To flourish fair and fall fair, and be strewn - Deep in that Will of God, where blend - The origin of beauty and the end. - - - - -_The Light of the House_ - - - BEYOND the cheat of Time, here where you died, you live; - You pace the garden walk, secure and sensitive; - You linger on the stair: Love's lonely pulses leap! - The harpsichord is shaken, the dogs look up from sleep. - - Here, after all the years, you keep the heirdom still; - The youth and joy in you achieve their olden will, - Unbidden, undeterred, with waking sense adored; - And still the house is happy that hath so dear a lord. - - To every inmate heart, confirmed in cheer you brought, - Your name is as a spell midway of speech and thought, - And to a wonted guest (not awestruck heretofore), - The sunshine that was you floods all the open door. - - - - -_An Outdoor Litany_ - - _Donec misereatur nostri._ - - - THE spur is red upon the briar, - The sea-kelp whips the wave ashore; - The wind shakes out the coloured fire - From lamps a-row on the sycamore; - The bluebird with his flitting note - Shows to wild heaven his wedding-coat; - The mink is busy; herds again - Go hillward in the honeyed rain; - The midges meet. I cry to Thee - Whose heart - Remembers each of these: Thou art - My God who hast forgotten me! - - Bright from the mast, a scarf unwound, - The lined gulls in the offing ride; - Along an edge of marshy ground - The shad-bush enters like a bride. - Yon little clouds are washed of care - That climb the blue New England air, - And almost merrily withal - The hyla tunes at evenfall - His oboe in a mossy tree. - So too, - Am I not Thine? Arise, undo - This fear Thou hast forgotten me. - - Happy the vernal rout that come - To their due offices to-day, - And strange, if in Thy mercy's sum, - Excluded man alone decay. - I ask no triumph, ask no joy, - Save leave to live, in law's employ. - As to a weed, to me but give - Thy sap! lest aye inoperative - Here in the Pit my strength shall be: - And still - Help me endure the Pit, until - Thou wilt not have forgotten me. - - - - -_Of Joan's Youth_ - - - I WOULD unto my fair restore - A simple thing: - The flushing cheek she had before! - Out-velveting - No more, no more, - On our sad shore, - The carmine grape, the moth's auroral wing. - - Ah, say how winds in flooding grass - Unmoor the rose; - Or guileful ways the salmon pass - To sea, disclose: - For so, alas, - With Love, alas, - With fatal, fatal Love a girlhood goes. - - - - -_In a Brecon Valley_ - - _Patulis ubi vallibus errans - Subjacet aëriis montibus Isca pater._ - H.V. _Ad Posteros._ - - -I - - I FOLLOWED thee, wild stream of Paradise, - White Usk, for ever showering the sunned bee - In the pink chestnut and the hawthorn tree; - And all along had magical surmise - Of mountains fluctuant in those vesper skies, - As unto mermen, caverned in mid-sea, - Far up the vast green reaches, soundlessly - The giant breakers form, and fall, and rise. - - Above thy poet's dust, by yonder yew, - Ere distance perished, ere a star began, - His clear monastic measure, heard of few, - Through lonelier glens of mine own being ran; - And thou to me wert dear, because I knew - The God who made thee gracious, and the man. - - -II - - IF, by that second lover's power controlled, - In sweet symbolic rite thy breath o'erfills - Fields of no war with vagrant daffodils, - From distance unto distance trailing gold; - If dazzling sands or thickets thee enfold, - Transfigured Usk, where from their mossy sills - Grey hamlets kiss thee, and by herded hills - Diviner run thy shallows than of old;-- - - If intellectual these, Oh! name my Vaughan - Creator too: and close his memory keep - Who from thy fountain, kind to him, hath drawn - Birth, energy, and joy; devotion deep; - A play of thought more mystic than the dawn, - And death at home; and centuried sylvan sleep. - - - - -_A Song of Far Travel_ - - - MANY a time some drowsy oar from the nearer bank invited, - Crossed a narrow stream, and bore in among the reeds moon-lighted, - There to leave me on a shore no ferryman hath sighted. - - Many a time a mountain stile, dark and bright with sudden wetting, - Lured my vagrant foot the while 'twixt uplifting and down-setting,-- - Whither? Thousand mile on mile, beyond the last forgetting. - - Long by hidden ways I wend (past occasion grown a ranger); - Yet enchantment, like a friend, takes from death the tang of danger: - Hardly river or road can end where I need step a stranger. - - - - -_Spring_ - - _With a difference._--HAMLET. - - - AGAIN the bloom, the northward flight, - The fount freed at its silver height, - And down the deep woods to the lowest - The fragrant shadows scarred with light. - - O inescapeable joy of Spring! - For thee the world shall leap and sing; - But by her darkened door thou goest - Henceforward as a spectral thing. - - - - -_The Colour-Bearer_ - - - THY charge was: "Hold My banner - Against our hidden foe; - To war where sounds no manner - Of glorious music, go!" - And like Thy word my answer all joyless: "Be it so." - - Ah, not to brave Thy censure - But win Thy smile of light, - My heart of misadventure - Will end in the losing fight, - And lie out yonder, wattled with wounds from left to right. - - The day will pass of torment, - The evenfall be sweet - When I shall wear for garment - The nakedness of defeat. - But when afield Thou comest, and look'st in vain to meet - - That eagle of the wartime, - That oriflamme, outrolled - With strength of staff aforetime, - With cleanly and costly fold,-- - Ride on, ride on! and seek me with lanthorns through the cold, - - And take from me (turned donor - That night on blood-soaked sand), - The stick and rag of Honour - There safe in a stiffened hand, - Not left, not lost, nor ever a spoil in the victor's land. - - - - -_Sanctuary_ - - - HIGH above hate I dwell: - O storms! farewell. - Though at my sill your daggered thunders play - Lawless and loud to-morrow as to-day, - To me they sound more small - Than a young fay's footfall: - Soft and far-sunken, forty fathoms low - In Long Ago, - And winnowed into silence on that wind - Which takes wars like a dust, and leaves but love behind. - - Hither Felicity - Doth climb to me, - And bank me in with turf and marjoram - Such as bees lip, or the new-weanèd lamb; - With golden barberry-wreath, - And bluets thick beneath; - One grosbeak, too, mid apple-buds a guest - With bud-red breast, - Is singing, singing! All the hells that rage - Float less than April fog below our hermitage. - - - - -_Emily Brontë_ - - - WHAT sacramental hurt that brings - The terror of the truth of things - Had changed thee? Secret be it yet. - 'Twas thine, upon a headland set, - To view no isles of man's delight, - With lyric foam in rainbow flight, - But all a-swing, a-gleam, mid slow uproar, - Black sea, and curved uncouth sea-bitten shore. - - - - -_Pascal_ - - - THOU lovedst life, but not to brand it thine - (O rich in all forborne felicities!), - Nor use it with marauding power, to seize - And stain the sweet earth's blue horizon-line. - Virgin the grape might in the trellis twine - Where thou hadst long ago an hour of ease, - And foot of thine across the unpressed leas - Went light as some Idæan foot divine. - - Spirit so abstinent, in thy deeps lay - What passion of possession? Day by day - Was there no thirst upon thee, sharp and pure, - In forward sea-like surges unforgot? - Yes: and in life and death those joys endure - More blessedly, that men can name them not. - - - - -_Borderlands_ - - - THROUGH all the evening, - All the virginal long evening, - Down the blossomed aisle of April it is dread to walk alone; - For there the intangible is nigh, the lost is ever-during; - And who would suffer again beneath a too divine alluring, - Keen as the ancient drift of sleep on dying faces blown? - - Yet in the valley, - At a turn of the orchard alley, - When a wild aroma touched me in the moist and moveless air, - Like breath indeed from out Thee, or as airy vesture round Thee, - Then was it I went faintly, for fear I had nearly found Thee, - O Hidden, O Perfect, O Desired! O first and final Fair! - - - - -_Ode for a Master Mariner Ashore_ - - - THERE in his room, whene'er the moon looks in, - To silver now a shell, and now a fin, - And o'er his chart glide like an argosy, - Quiet and old sits he. - Danger! he hath grown homesick for thy smile. - Where hidest thou the while, heart's boast, - Strange face of beauty sought and lost, - Star-face that lured him out from boyhood's isle? - - Blown clear from dull indoors, his dreams behold - Night-water smoke and sparkle as of old, - The taffrail lurch, the sheets triumphant toss - Their veering weight across. - On, on he wears, the seaman long exiled, - To lands where stunted cedars throw - A lace-like shadow over snow, - Or tropic fountains wash their agates wild. - - Again play up and down the briny spar - Odours of Surinam or Zanzibar, - Till blithely thence he ploughs, in visions new, - The Labradorian blue; - All homeless hurricanes about him break; - The purples of spent day he sees - From Samos to the Hebrides, - And drowned men dancing darkly in his wake. - - Where the small deadly foam-caps, well descried, - Top, tier on tier, the hundred-mountained tide, - Away, and far away, his barque is borne - Riding the noisy morn, - Plunges, and preens her wings, and laughs to know - The helm and tightening halyards still - Follow the urging of his will, - And scoff at sullen earth a league below. - - Alas! Fate bars him from his heirdom high, - And shackles him with many an inland tie, - And of his only wisdom makes a jibe - Amid an alien tribe: - No wave abroad but moans his fallen state. - The trade-wind ranges now, the trade-wind roars! - Why is it on a yellowing page he pores? - Ah, why this hawser fast to a garden gate? - - Thou friend so long withdrawn, so deaf, so dim, - Familiar Danger, Oh, forget not him! - Repeat of thine evangel yet the whole - Unto his subject soul, - Who suffers no such palsy of her drouth, - Nor hath so tamely worn her chain, - But she may know that voice again, - And shake the reefs with answer of her mouth. - - And give him back, before his passion fail, - The singing cordage and the hollow sail, - And level with those ageing eyes let be - The bright unsteady sea; - And like a film remove from sense and brain - This pasture wall, these boughs that run - Their evening arches to the sun, - Yon hamlet spire across the sown champaign; - - And on the shut space and the shallow hour, - Turn the great floods! and to thy spousal bower, - With rapt arrest and solemn loitering, - Him whom thou lovedst, bring: - That he, thy faithful one, with praising lip, - Not having, at the last, less grace - Of thee than had his roving race, - Sum up his strength to perish with a ship. - - - - -OXFORD AND LONDON - -XXVI SONNETS - - - - -OXFORD - - - - -I. _The Tow-Path_ - - - FURROW to furrow, oar to oar succeeds, - Each length away, more bright, more exquisite; - The sister shells that hither, thither, flit - Strew the long stream like scattered maple-seeds. - A comrade on the marge now lags, now leads, - Who with short calls his pace doth intermit: - An angry Pan, afoot; but if he sits, - Auspicious Pan among the river reeds. - - West of the glowing hayricks, tawny black - Where waters by their warm escarpments run, - Two lovers, newly crossed from Kennington, - Print in the early dew a married track, - And drain the aroma'd eve, and spend the sun, - Ere in laborious health the crews come back. - - - - -II. _Ad Antiquarium_ - - - MY gentle Aubrey, who in everything - Hadst of thy city's youth so lovely lust, - Yet never lineal to her towers august - Thy spirit could fix, or perfectly upbring, - Sleep, sleep! I ope, not unremembering, - Thy comely manuscript, and interthrust - Find delicate hueless leaves more sad than dust, - Two centuries unkissed of any Spring. - - Filling a homesick page beneath a lime, - Thy mood beheld, as mine thy debtor's now, - The endless terraces of ended Time - Vague in green twilight. Goodly was release - Into that Past where these poor leaves, and thou, - Do freshen in the air of eldest peace. - - - - -III. _Martyrs' Memorial_ - - - SUCH natural debts of love our Oxford knows, - So many ancient dues undesecrate, - I marvel how the landmark of a hate - For witness unto future time she chose; - How 'gainst her own corroborate ranks arose - The Three, in great denial only great, - For Art's enshrining! Thus, averted straight, - My soul to seek a holier captain goes: - - That sweet adventurer whom Truth befell - Whenas the synagogues were watching not; - Whose crystal name on royal Oriel - Hangs like a shield; who to an outland spot - Led hence, beholds his Star, and counts it well - To live of all his dear domain forgot. - - - - -IV. _Parks Road_ - - - VIEWED yesterday, in sad elusive light, - These everlasting heptarchs, tree by tree, - Seemed filing off to exile, lingeringly, - Each with his giant falchion, kinless quite. - All the wild winter day and flooded night - They feigned to march far as the eye could see, - Through transient oceans plunging to the knee - Their centuried greaves, ebon and malachite. - - To-day, accustomed bole and branch all bare - Stand with old gems inlaid. Like coloured snow - Or vista'd flame along the drowsy air, - Their gold-green lichens stir and cling and glow. - What secret craftsmen painted them so fair? - Angels of Moisture and the Long Ago. - - - - -V. _Tom_ - - - HARK! the king bell, loud in his vesper choir. - As in between each golden roar doth come - That solemn, plangent, unregarded hum - Chiding the truant with archaic ire, - On Worcester mere far off, in elfin gyre - The wavelets laugh, and laughter showereth from - May's chestnut like a lampadarium - By Brasenose, with every point afire. - - Yet over all roofs to the uttermost, - Call, Shepherd dear, from thy dream-haunted ground: - For some there be, on whatsoever coast, - In midst of any morrow's ordered round, - Hear as of old (in earth and heaven an host!) - And like young lambs, leap homeward at the sound. - - - - -VI. _On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford_ - - -I - - IMPERIAL Iffley, Cumnor bowered in green, - And Templar Sandford in the boatman's call, - And sweet-belled Appleton, and Elsfield wall - That dost upon adoring ivies lean; - Meek Binsey; Dorchester, where streams convene - Bidding on graves thy solemn shadow fall; - Clear Cassington, soaring perpetual, - Holton, and Hampton Poyle, and fanes between: - - If one of all in your sad courts that come - Belovèd and disparted! be your own, - Kin to the souls ye had, while yet endures - Some memory of a great communion known - At home in quarries of old Christendom,-- - Ah, mark him: he will lay his cheek to yours. - - -II - - IS this the end? Is this the pilgrim's day - For dread, for dereliction, and for tears? - Rather, from grass and air and many spheres - In prophecy his heart is called away; - And under English eaves, more still than they, - Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears - The long-arrested, the believing years - Carry the sea-wall! Shall he, sighing, say: - - "Farewell to Faith, for she is dead at best - Who had such beauty"? or, with spirit fain - To watch beside her darkened doors, go by - With a new psalm: "O banished Light so nigh! - Of them was I, who bore thee and who blest: - Even here remember me when thou shalt reign." - - - - -VII. _A December Walk_ - - - WHITHERSOEVER cold and fair ye flow, - Take me, O gentle moon and gentler wind, - Past Wyatt's cumbering portal, frost-entwined, - And Merton 'neath that huge tiara's glow, - And groves in bridal gossamer below - Saint Mary's armoured spire; and whence aligned - In altered eminence for dawn to find - Sleep the droll Cæsars, hooded with the snow. - - White sacraments of weather, shine on me! - Upbear my footfall and my fancy sift, - Lest either blemish an ensainted ground - Spread so with childhood. Bid with me, outbound, - On recollected wing mine angel drift - Across new spheres of immortality. - - - - -VIII. _The Old Dial of Corpus_ - - - WARDEN of hours and ages, here I dwell, - Who saw young Keble pass, with sighing shook - For good unborn; and towards a willow nook, - Pole, princely in the senate and the cell; - And doubting the near boom of Osney bell, - Turning on me that sweetly subtile look, - Erasmus, in his breast an Attic book: - Peacemakers all, their dreams to ashes fell. - - Naught steadfast may I image nor attain - Save steadfast labour; futile must I grope - After my god, like him, inconstant bright: - But sun and shade will unto you remain - Alternately a symbol and a hope, - Men, spirits! of Emmanuel your Light. - - - - -IX. _Rooks: New College Gardens_ - - - THROUGH rosy cloud and over thorny towers, - Their wings with darkling autumn distance filled, - From Isis' valley border, many-hilled, - The rooks are crowding home as evening lowers: - Not for men only, and their musing hours - By battled walls did gracious Wykeham build - These dewy spaces early sown and stilled, - These dearest inland melancholy bowers. - - Blest birds! A book held open on the knee - Below, is all they guess of Adam's blight: - With surer art the while, and simpler rite, - They gather power in some monastic tree - Where breathe against their docile breasts by night - The scholar's star, the star of sanctity. - - - - -X. _Above Port Meadow_ - - - THE plain gives freedom. Hither from the town - How oft a dreamer and a book of yore - Escaped the lamplit Square, and heard no more - Inroll from Cowley turf the game's renown, - But bade the vernal sky with spices drown - His head by Plato's in the grass, before - Yon oar that's never old, the sunset oar, - At Medley Lock was laid reluctant down! - - So seeming far the confines and the crowd, - The gross routine, the cares that vex and tire, - From this large light, sad thoughts in it, high-driven, - Go happier than the inly-moving cloud - Who lets her vesture fall, a floss of fire, - Abstracted, on the ivory hills of heaven. - - - - -XI. _Undertones at Magdalen_ - - - FAIR are the finer creature-sounds; of these - Is Magdalen full: her bees, the while they drop - Susurrant to the garth from weeds atop; - And round the priestless Pulpit, auguries - Of wrens in council from an hundred leas; - And merry fish of Cherwell, fain to stop - The water-plantain's way; and deer that crop - Delicious herbage under choral trees. - - The cry for silver and gold in Christendom - Without, threads not her silence and her dark. - Only against the isolate Tower there break - Low rhythmic murmurs of good men to come: - Invasive seas of hushed approach that make - Memorial music, would the ear but hark. - - - - -XII. _A Last View_ - - -I - - WHERE down the hill, across the hidden ford - Stretches the open aisle from scene to scene, - By halted horses silently we lean, - Gazing enchanted from our steeper sward. - How yon low loving skies of April hoard - A plot of pinnacles! and how with sheen - Of spike and ball her languid clouds between - Grey Oxford grandly rises riverward! - - Sweet on those dim long-dedicated walls - Silver as rain the frugal sunshine falls; - Slowly sad eyes resign them, bound afar. - Dear Beauty, dear Tradition, fare you well, - And powers that aye aglow in you, impel - Our quickening spirits from the slime we are. - - -II - - STARS in the bosom of thy braided tide, - Soft air and ivy on thy gracile stone, - O Glory of the West, as thou wert sown, - Stand perfect: O miraculous, abide! - And still, for greatness flickering from thy side, - Eternal alchemist, evoke, enthrone - True heirs in true succession, later blown - From that same seed of fire which never died. - - Nor Love shall lack her solace, to behold - Ranged to the morrow's melancholy verge, - Thy lights uprisen in Thought's disclosing spaces; - And round some beacon-spirit, stable, old, - In radiant broad tumultuary surge - For ever, the young voices, the young faces. - - - - -LONDON - - - - -I. _On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ - - - HOLY of England! since my light is short - And faint, Oh, rather by the sun anew - Of timeless passion set my dial true, - That with thy saints and thee I may consort; - And wafted in the cool enshadowed port - Of poets, seem a little sail long due, - And be as one the call of memory drew - Unto the saddle void since Agincourt. - - Not now for secular love's unquiet lease - Receive my soul, who rapt in thee erewhile - Hath broken tryst with transitory things; - But seal with her a marriage and a peace - Eternal, on thine Edward's altar isle, - Above the storm-spent sea of ended Kings. - - - - -II. _Fog_ - - - LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, - Through palsied streets the fatal shadows flow, - And in their sharp disastrous undertow - Suck in the morning sun, and all the sky. - The towery vista sinks upon the eye, - As if it heard the horns of Jericho, - Black and dissolved; nor could the founder, know - How what was built so bright should daily die. - - Thy mood with man's is broken and blent in, - City of Stains! and ache of thought doth drown - The natural light in which thy life began; - Great as thy dole is, smirchèd with his sin, - Greater and elder yet the love of man - Full in thy look, though the dark visor's down. - - - - -III. _St. Peter-ad-Vincula_ - - - TOO well I know, pacing the place of awe, - Three Queens, young save in trouble, moulder by; - More in his halo, Monmouth's mocking eye, - The eagle Essex in a harpy's claw; - Seymour and Dudley, and stout heads that saw - Sundown of Scotland; how with treasons lie - White martyrdoms: rank in a company - Breaker and builder of the eternal Law. - - Oft as I come, the piteous garden-row - Of ruined roses hanging from the stem, - Where winds of old defeat yet batter them, - Infects me: suddenly must I depart, - Ere thought of man's injustice then and now - Add to these aisles one other broken heart. - - - - -IV. _Strikers in Hyde Park_ - - - A WOOF reversed the fatal shuttles weave, - How slow! but never once they slip the thread. - Hither, upon the Georgian idlers' tread, - Up spacious ways the lindens interleave, - Clouding the royal air since yester-eve, - Come men bereft of time and scant of bread, - Loud, who were dumb, immortal, who were dead, - Through the cowed world their kingdom to retrieve. - - What ails thee, England? Altar, mart, and grange - Dream of the knife by night; not so, not so - The clear Republic waits the general throe, - Along her noonday mountains' open range. - God be with both! for one is young to know - The other's rote of evil and of change. - - - - -V. _Changes in the Temple_ - - - THE cry is at thy gates, long-lovèd ground, - Again: for oft ere now thy children went - Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent - Some old red alley with a dial crowned; - Some house of honour, in a glory bound - With lives and deaths of spirits excellent; - Some tree rude-taken from his kingly tent - Hard by a little fountain's friendly sound. - - Oh, for Virginius' hand, if only that - Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon! - Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas, - Her walled oasis, and where once it was - All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat - Echo and ivy, and the loitering moon. - - - - -VI. _The Lights of London_ - - - THE evenfall, so slow on hills, hath shot - Far down into the valley's cold extreme, - Untimely midnight; spire and roof and stream - Like fleeing spectres, shudder and are not. - The Hampstead hollies, from their sylvan plot - Yet cloudless, lean to watch as in a dream, - From chaos climb with many a hasty gleam, - London, one moment fallen and forgot. - - Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright - Prick door and window; every street obscure - Sparkles and swarms with nothing true nor sure, - Full as a marsh of mist and winking light: - Heaven thickens over, Heaven that cannot cure - Her tear by day, her fevered smile by night. - - - - -VII. _Doves_ - - - AH, if man's boast and man's advance be vain, - And yonder bells of Bow, loud-echoing home, - And the lone Tree, foreknow it, and the Dome, - That monstrous island of the middle main; - If each inheritor must sink again - Under his sires, as falleth where it clomb - Back on the gone wave the disheartened foam?-- - I crossed Cheapside, and this was in my brain. - - What folly lies in forecasts and in fears! - Like a wide laughter sweet and opportune, - Wet from the fount, three hundred doves of Paul's - Shook their warm wings, drizzling the golden noon, - And in their rain-cloud vanished up the walls. - "God keeps," I said, "our little flock of years." - - - - -VIII. _In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ - - - PRAISED be the moon of books! that doth above - A world of men, the sunken Past behold, - And colour spaces else too void and cold - To make a very heaven again thereof; - As when the sun is set behind a grove, - And faintly unto nether ether rolled, - All night his whiter image and his mould - Grows beautiful with looking on her love. - - Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray, - Lend to our steps both fortitude and light! - Feebly along a venerable way - They climb the infinite, or perish quite: - Nothing are days and deeds to such as they, - While in this liberal house thy face is bright. - - - - -IX. _Sunday Chimes in the City_ - - - ACROSS the bridge, where in the morning blow - The wrinkled tide turns homeward, and is fain - Homeward to drag the black sea-goer's chain, - And the long yards by Dowgate dipping low; - Across dispeopled ways, patient and slow, - Saint Magnus and Saint Dunstan call in vain: - From Wren's forgotten belfries, in the rain, - Down the blank wharves the dropping octaves go. - - Forbid not these! Though no man heed, they shower - A subtle beauty on the empty hour, - From all their dark throats aching and outblown; - Aye in the prayerless places welcome most, - Like the last gull that up some naked coast - Deploys her white and steady wing, alone. - - - - -X. _A Porch in Belgravia_ - - - WHEN, after dawn, the lordly houses hide - Till you fall foul of it, some piteous guest - (Some girl the damp stones gather to their breast, - Her gold hair rough, her rebel garment wide, - Who sleeps, with all that luck and life denied - Camped round, and dreams how, seaward and southwest, - Blue over Devon farms the smoke-rings rest, - And sheep and lambs ascend the lit hillside), - - Dear, of your charity, speak low, step soft, - Pray for a sinner. Planet-like and still, - Best hearts of all are sometimes set aloft - Only to see and pass, nor yet deplore - Even Wrong itself, crowned Wrong inscrutable, - Which cannot but have been, for evermore. - - - - -XI. _York Stairs_ - - - MANY a musing eye returns to thee, - Against the formal street disconsolate, - Who kept in green domains thy bridal state, - With young tide-waters leaping at thy knee; - And lest the ravening smoke, and enmity, - Corrode thee quite, thy lover sighs, and straight - Desires thee safe afar, too graceful gate; - Throned on a terrace of the Boboli. - - Nay, nay, thy use is here. Stand queenly thus - Till the next fury; teach the time and us - Leisure and will to draw a serious breath: - Not wholly where thou art the soul is cowed, - Nor the fooled capital proclaims aloud - Barter is god, while Beauty perisheth. - - - - -XII. _In the Docks_ - - - WHERE the bales thunder till the day is done, - And the wild sounds with wilder odours cope; - Where over crouching sail and coiling rope, - Lascar and Moor along the gangway run; - Where stifled Thames spreads in the pallid sun, - A hive of anarchy from slope to slope; - Flag of my birth, my liberty, my hope, - I see thee at the masthead, joyous one! - - O thou good guest! So oft as, young and warm, - To the home-wind thy hoisted colours bound, - Away, away from this too thoughtful ground, - Sodden with human trespass and despair, - Thee only, from the desert, from the storm, - A sick mind follows into Eden air. - - - - -NOTES - - -_The Kings_: P. 3. - - II Kings, VI, 15, 16, 17. - -_His Angel to his Mother_: P. 21. - - One line of the refrain is taken from an old love song, - "Sweet, if you Love me, Let me Go," set to a charming - melody in D major, and to be found in Chappell's Popular - Music of the Olden Time. - -_Beside Hazlitt's Grave_: P. 47. - - St. Anne's, Soho, boasts the "sorry steeple," one of - London's architectural absurdities. Hazlitt's grave is - grassed over and unmarked, but the epitaph which has now - for some years stood in place of the interesting original - one, may be read on the headstone set against the outer - west wall of the church. - -_The Vigil-at-Arms_: P. 48. - - Suggested by the very simple but soldierly melody in - Mendelssohn's Lied ohne Worte in A, Book I, Opus 19, No. 4, - the last two lines coming in for repetitions. - -_A Friend's Song for Simoisius_: P. 49. - - Having to do with Iliad IV, 473-489. - -_The Inner Fate_: P. 64. - - It is perhaps too daring to force into Greek forms any - sentiment so dead against the Greek spirit of determinism. - -_The Acknowledgment_: P. 66. - - "The Prætor." Brutus in Shakespeare, if not the historical - Brutus. - -_The Cherry Bough_: P. 70. - - "Si quis adhuc isthic meminit Nasonis adempti, - Et superest sine me nomen in urbe meum." - _Tristia_, Lib. III, El. X. - - "Atque aliquis vestrum, Nasonis nomine dicto, - Deponat lacrymis pocula mista suis." - _Idem_, Lib. V, El. IV. - -_A Talisman_: P. 87. - - Many years after these lines were in print, it was pointed - out to the author by a friend, a student of St. Bernard, - how they have managed to echo in part a saying of that - great Doctor, in his _De Consideratione_, Lib. I, Cap. - VIII, Sec. 9: - - "Prudentia item est quae inter voluptates et necessitates - media, quasi quaedam arbitra sedens ... disterminat fines - ... ex alterutris tertiam formans virtutem quam dicunt - Temperantiam." - -_Fifteen Epitaphs_: P. 91. - - It may be well to state (as these have often been taken for - translations), that they are only pseudo-Alexandrian. - -_A Footpath Morality_: P. 121. - - A sort of floral log-book of a walk from Oxford to Appleton - in Berkshire, May, 1908. - - -OXFORD - -_Ad Antiquarium_: P. 146. - - This is Wood's disinterested helper, John Aubrey, F.R.S., - 1626-1697. Never was a truer lover of what he calls "that - most ingeniose Place!" - -_Martyrs' Memorial_: P. 147. - - The only monument in the streets of Oxford was put up by - the local Low Church party in 1841, not really so much to - commemorate Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer, all Cambridge - men, as to register a protest against Hurrell Froude (then - dead), Newman, and Keble, who all showed frank disrespect - to the heroes of the Reformation in England. The reference - in the sestet is of course to Cardinal Newman, and was - written barely a month before his rather sudden death on - August 11, 1890. - -_Tom_: P. 149. - - The College is a century and a half older than the upper - part of its chief entrance gate, and the once monastic bell - is much older than either. "The Tom Tower [was] finished - in November, 1682. In this was hung the bell called Great - Tom of Christ Church, which had originally belonged to - Osney Abbey.... From that time to this, it has rung its one - hundred and one strokes every night at nine, as a signal - that all students should be within their College walls. It - need hardly be said that the signal is not obeyed!" - - J. WELLS, M.A., 1901. _Oxford and its Colleges_: - Christ Church, pp. 205-206. - -_The Old Dial of Corpus_: P. 153. - - The great Dial in the quadrangle of Corpus Christi - College was not put up until 1605,--too late to have been - contemporary with either Erasmus or Pole. The author - discovered the error several years ago, but has never known - how to correct it except by this caution. "Osney Bell" - is Great Tom (see just above): Christ Church being next - neighbour to Corpus; but Tom may or may not have been in - place and condition to ring for curfew in the second year - of Queen Elizabeth's reign. The closing line is meant to - refer to the motto of the University, _Dominus illuminatio - mea_, taken from the opening of Psalm XXVII. - -_Undertones at Magdalen_: P. 156. - - "The priestless Pulpit" was an accurate description when - this sonnet was written (1895), though it is so no longer. - From the open-air Pulpit of Magdalen, disused since the - Reformation, a Sermon is once again delivered annually on - St. John Baptist's Day. - - -LONDON - -_St. Peter-ad-Vincula_: P. 161. - - St. Peter-ad-Vincula is the ancient and sadly appropriate - dedication of the Church near the Beauchamp Tower and the - site of the scaffold. The vaults are under the chancel. - -_York Stairs_: P. 169. - - Inigo Jones' Water Gate, standing on the Embankment at - the foot of Villiers Street, Strand, now a long way - from the river, is still called York Stairs. It is the - sole surviving appanage of the great town-house of the - seventeenth-century Dukes of Buckingham. - - - - - The Riverside Press - CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS - U . S . A - - - - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Happy Ending, by Louise Imogen Guiney - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY ENDING *** - -***** This file should be named 54719-8.txt or 54719-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/7/1/54719/ - -Produced by Emmy, Linda Cantoni, and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was -produced from images generously made available by The -Internet Archive). 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