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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: A Roadside Harp - A Book of Verses - - -Author: Louise Imogen Guiney - - - -Release Date: June 1, 2017 [eBook #54822] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - - -***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROADSIDE HARP*** - - -E-text prepared by Emmy, MWS, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team -(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by -Internet Archive (https://archive.org) - - - - - --------------------------------------- - This ebook is dedicated to - EMMY - friend, colleague, mentor, role model - who fell off the planet far too soon. - --------------------------------------- - - -Note: Images of the original pages are available through - Internet Archive. See - https://archive.org/details/roadsideharpbook00guinuoft - - - - - -A ROADSIDE HARP - - - * * * * * * - - By Miss Guiney. - - THE WHITE SAIL, AND OTHER - POEMS. 16mo, gilt top, $1.25. - - SONGS AT THE START. 16mo, $1.00. - - A ROADSIDE HARP. 16mo. - - HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. - BOSTON AND NEW YORK. - - * * * * * * - - -A ROADSIDE HARP - -A Book of Verses by - -LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - - - “_Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be, - And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, - Tempers her words to trampling horses’ feet, - More oft than to a chamber melody!_” - - -[Illustration] - - - - - - -Boston and New York -Houghton Mifflin and -Company M DCCC XCIII - -Copyright, 1893 -By Louise Imogen Guiney -All Rights Reserved - -The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A. -Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. - - - - -TO DORA AND HESTER SIGERSON - - - _There in the Druid brake - If the cuckoo be awake - Again, O take my rhyme! - And keep it long for the sake - Of a bygone primrose-time; - You of the star-bright head - That twilight thoughts sequester, - You to your native fountains led - Like to a young Muse garlanded: - Dora, and Hester._ - -March, 1893. - - - - -TABLE OF CONTENTS - - - _Page_ - - PETER RUGG the Bostonian 1 - - A Ballad of Kenelm 8 - - Vergniaud in the Tumbril 10 - - Winter Boughs 13 - - M. A. 1822-1888 13 - - W. H. 1778-1830 14 - - The Vigil-at-Arms 14 - - A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo 15 - - Spring Nightfall 15 - - A Friend’s Song for Simoisius 16 - - Athassel Abbey 17 - - Florentin 18 - - Friendship Broken 19 - - A Song of the Lilac 20 - - In a Ruin, after a Thunder-Storm 21 - - The Cherry Bough 21 - - Two Irish Peasant Songs 23 - - The Japanese Anemone 25 - - Tryste Noel 26 - - A Talisman 27 - - Heathenesse 27 - - For Izaak Walton 28 - - Sherman: “An Horatian Ode” 29 - - When on the Marge of Evening 32 - - Rooks in New College Gardens 32 - - Open, Time 33 - - The Knight Errant (Donatello’s Saint George) 34 - - To a Dog’s Memory 35 - - A Seventeenth-Century Song 36 - - On the Pre-Reformation Churches about Oxford 37 - - The Still of the Year 38 - - A Foot-note to a Famous Lyric 39 - - T. W. P. 1819-1892 41 - - Summum Bonum 41 - - Saint Florent-le-Vieil 42 - - Hylas 42 - - Nocturne 43 - - The Kings 44 - - Alexandriana 47 - - London: Twelve Sonnets. - - On First Entering Westminster Abbey 55 - - Fog 55 - - St. Peter-ad-Vincula 56 - - Strikers in Hyde Park 56 - - Changes in the Temple 57 - - The Lights of London 58 - - Doves 58 - - In the Reading-Room of the British Museum 59 - - Sunday Chimes in the City 59 - - A Porch in Belgravia 60 - - York Stairs 61 - - In the Docks 61 - - - - -A ROADSIDE HARP. - -POEMS BY LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY - - - - -_Peter Rugg the Bostonian_ - - -I - - THE mare is pawing by the oak, - The chaise is cool and wide - For Peter Rugg the Bostonian - With his little son beside; - The women loiter at the wheels - In the pleasant summer-tide. - - “And when wilt thou be home, Father?” - “And when, good husband, say: - The cloud hangs heavy on the house - What time thou art away.” - He answers straight, he answers short, - “At noon of the seventh day.” - - “Fail not to come, if God so will, - And the weather be kind and clear.” - “Farewell, farewell! But who am I - A blockhead rain to fear? - God willing or God unwilling, - I have said it, I will be here.” - - He gathers up the sunburnt boy - And from the gate is sped; - He shakes the spark from the stones below, - The bloom from overhead, - Till the last roofs of his own town - Pass in the morning-red. - - Upon a homely mission - North unto York he goes, - Through the long highway broidered thick - With elder-blow and rose; - And sleeps in sound of breakers - At every twilight’s close. - - Intense upon his heedless head - Frowns Agamenticus, - Knowing of Heaven’s challenger - The answer: even thus - The Patience that is hid on high - Doth stoop to master us. - - -II - - Full light are all his parting dreams; - Desire is in his brain; - He tightens at the tavern-post - The fiery creature’s rein: - “Now eat thine apple, six years’ child! - We face for home again.” - - They had not gone a many mile - With nimble heart and tongue, - When the lone thrush grew silent - The walnut woods among; - And on the lulled horizon - A premonition hung. - - The babes at Hampton schoolhouse, - The wife with lads at sea, - Search with a level-lifted hand - The distance bodingly; - And farmer folk bid pilgrims in - Under a safe roof-tree. - - The mowers mark by Newbury - How low the swallows fly, - They glance across the southern roads - All white and fever-dry, - And the river, anxious at the bend, - Beneath a thinking sky. - - But there is one abroad was born - To disbelieve and dare: - Along the highway furiously - He cuts the purple air. - The wind leaps on the startled world - As hounds upon a hare; - - With brawl and glare and shudder ope - The sluices of the storm; - The woods break down, the sand upblows - In blinding volleys warm; - The yellow floods in frantic surge - Familiar fields deform. - - From evening until morning - His skill will not avail, - And as he cheers his youngest born, - His cheek is spectre-pale; - For the bonnie mare from courses known - Has drifted like a sail! - - -III - - On some wild crag he sees the dawn - Unsheathe her scimitar. - “Oh, if it be my mother-earth, - And not a foreign star, - Tell me the way to Boston, - And is it near or far?” - - One watchman lifts his lamp and laughs: - “Ye’ve many a league to wend.” - The next doth bless the sleeping boy - From his mad father’s end; - A third upon a drawbridge growls: - “Bear ye to larboard, friend.” - - Forward and backward, like a stone - The tides have in their hold, - He dashes east, and then distraught - Darts west as he is told, - (Peter Rugg the Bostonian, - That knew the land of old!) - - And journeying, and resting scarce - A melancholy space, - Turns to and fro, and round and round, - The frenzy in his face, - And ends alway in angrier mood, - And in a stranger place, - - Lost! lost in bayberry thickets - Where Plymouth plovers run, - And where the masts of Salem - Look lordly in the sun; - Lost in the Concord vale, and lost - By rocky Wollaston! - - Small thanks have they that guide him, - Awed and aware of blight; - To hear him shriek denial - It sickens them with fright: - “They lied to me a month ago - With thy same lie to-night!” - - To-night, to-night, as nights succeed, - He swears at home to bide, - Until, pursued with laughter - Or fled as soon as spied, - The weather-drenchèd man is known - Over the country side! - - -IV - - The seventh noon ’s a memory, - And autumn ’s closing in; - The quince is fragrant on the bough, - And barley chokes the bin. - “O Boston, Boston, Boston! - And O my kith and kin!” - - The snow climbs o’er the pasture wall, - It crackles ’neath the moon; - And now the rustic sows the seed, - Damp in his heavy shoon; - And now the building jays are loud - In canopies of June. - - For season after season - The three are whirled along, - Misled by every instinct - Of light, or scent, or song; - Yea, put them on the surest trail, - The trail is in the wrong. - - Upon those wheels in any path - The rain will follow loud, - And he who meets that ghostly man - Will meet a thunder-cloud, - And whosoever speaks with him - May next bespeak his shroud. - - Tho’ nigh two hundred years have gone, - Doth Peter Rugg the more - A gentle answer and a true - Of living lips implore: - “Oh, show me to my own town, - And to my open door!” - - -V - - Where shall he see his own town - Once dear unto his feet? - The psalms, the tankard to the King, - The beacon’s cliffy seat, - The gabled neighborhood, the stocks - Set in the middle street? - - How shall he know his own town - If now he clatters thro’? - Much men and cities change that have - Another love to woo; - And things occult, incredible, - They find to think and do. - - With such new wonders since he went - A broader gossip copes, - Across the crowded triple hills, - And up the harbor slopes, - Tradition’s self for him no more - Remembers, watches, hopes. - - But ye, O unborn children! - (For many a race must thrive - And drip away like icicles - Ere Peter Rugg arrive,) - If of a sudden to your ears - His plaint is blown alive; - - If nigh the city, folding in - A little lad that cries, - A wet and weary traveller - Shall fix you with his eyes, - And from the crazy carriage lean - To spend his heart in sighs:-- - - “That I may enter Boston, - Oh, help it to befall! - There would no fear encompass me, - No evil craft appall; - Ah, but to be in Boston, - GOD WILLING, after all!”-- - - Ye children, tremble not, but go - And lift his bridle brave - In the one Name, the dread Name, - That doth forgive and save, - And lead him home to Copp’s Hill ground, - And to his fathers’ grave. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_A Ballad of Kenelm_ - - “In Clent cow-batch, Kenelm King born Lieth under a thorn.” - - - IT was a goodly child, - Sweet as the gusty May; - It was a knight that broke - On his play, - A fair and coaxing knight: - “O little liege!” said he, - “Thy sister bids thee come - After me. - - “A pasture rolling west - Lies open to the sun, - Bright-shod with primroses - Doth it run; - And forty oaks be nigh, - Apart, and face to face, - And cow-bells all the morn - In the space. - - “And there the sloethorn bush - Beside the water grows, - And hides her mocking head - Under snows; - Black stalks afoam with bloom, - And never a leaf hath she: - Thou crystal of the realm, - Follow me!” - - Uplooked the undefiled: - “All things, ere I was born - My sister found; now find - Me the thorn.” - They travelled down the lane, - An hour’s dust they made: - The belted breast of one - Bore a blade. - - The primroses were out, - The aislèd oaks were green, - The cow-bells pleasantly - Tinked between; - The brook was beaded gold, - The thorn was burgeoning, - Where evil Ascobert - Slew the King. - - He hid him in the ground, - Nor washed away the dyes, - Nor smoothed the fallen curls - From his eyes. - No father had the babe - To bless his bed forlorn; - No mother now to weep - By the thorn. - - There fell upon that place - A shaft of heavenly light; - The thorn in Mercia spake - Ere the night: - “Beyond, a sister sees - Her crownèd period, - But at my root a lamb - Seeth God.” - - Unto each, even so. - As dew before the cloud, - The guilty glory passed - Of the proud. - Boy Kenelm has the song, - Saint Kenelm has the bower; - His thorn a thousand years - Is in flower! - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Vergniaud in the Tumbril_ - - -I - - THE wheels are silent, the cords are slack, - The terrible faces are surging back. - France, they too love thee! bid that keep plain; - - The wrath and carnage I stayed afar - Colleagues of my white conscience are: - Accept my slayers, accept me slain! - - Shed for days, in its olden guise - The quiet delicate snake-skin lies - To cheat a boy on his woodland stroll: - - What if he crush it? Others see - Beauty’s miracle under a tree - Supple in mail, and adroit, and whole; - - The shaper rid of a shape, and thence - (Growth of an outgrown excellence), - Mounted with infinite might and speed, - - Freed like a soul to the heaven it dreamed; - Over life that was, and death that seemed - A victory and a revenge indeed! - - As the serpent moves to the open spring, - The while a mock, a delusive thing - Sole in sight of the crowd may be, - - So ye, my martyrs, arise, advance! - For what is left at the feet of France - It is our failure, it is not we. - - -II - - Not to ourselves our strength we brought: - Inexpiable the Hand that wrought - In us the ruin of no redress, - - The storm, the effort, the pang, the fire, - The premonition, the vast desire, - The primal passion of righteousness! - - Scarce by the pitiful thwarted plan, - The haste, or the studious fears of man - Drawing a discord from best delight, - - The measure is meted of God most wise; - Nor the future, with her adjusted eyes, - Shall speak us false in our dying fight. - - But e’en to me now some use is clear - In the builded truth down-beaten here - For any along the way to spurn, - - Since ever our broken task may stand - Disaster’s college in one saved land, - Whence many a stripling state shall learn. - - Out of the human shoots the divine: - Be the Republic our only sign, - For whose life’s glory our lives have been - - Ambassadors on a noble way - Tempest-driven, and sent astray - The first and the final good between. - - Close to the vision undestroyed, - The hope not compassed and yet not void, - We perish so; but the world shall mark - - On the hilltop of our work we died, - With joy of the groom before the bride, - With a dawn-cry thro’ the battle’s dark. - - -III - - O last save me on the scaffold’s round! - Take heart, that after a thirst profound - The cup of delicious death is near, - - And whoso hold it, or whence it flow, - O drink it to France, to France! and know - For the gift thou givest, thou hast her tear. - - True seed thou wert of the sunnier hour, - Honorable, and burst to flower - Late in a hell-pit poison-walled: - - Farewell, mortality lopped and pale, - Thou body that wast my friend! and Hail, - Dear spirit already!... My name is called. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Winter Boughs_ - - - HOW tender and how slow, in sunset’s cheer, - Far on the hill, our quiet treetops fade! - A broidery of northern 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 fall, to bring this wonder here. - O ye forgetting and outliving boughs, - With not a plume, gay in the jousts 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_M. A. 1822-1888_ - - - GOOD oars, for Arnold’s sake - By Laleham lightly bound, - And near the bank, O soft, - Darling swan! - Let not the o’erweary wake - From this his natal ground, - But where he slumbered oft, - Slumber on. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_W. H. 1778-1830_ - - - 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! - - Nothing falls under to thine eyes eternal. - Sleep safe in dark Soho: the stars are shining, - Titian and Wordsworth live; the People marches. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_The Vigil-at-Arms_ - - - KEEP holy watch with silence, prayer, and fasting - Till morning break, and all the bugles 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! - -[Illustration] - - - - -_A Madonna of Domenico Ghirlandajo_ - - - LET thoughts go hence as from a mountain spring, - Of the great dust of battle clean and whole, - And the wild birds that have no nest nor goal - Fold in a young man’s breast their trancèd wing; - For thou art made of purest Light, a thing - Art gave, beyond her own devout control; - And Light upon thy seeing, suffering soul - Hath wrought a sign for many journeying; - Our sign. As up a wayside, after rain, - When the blown beeches purple all the height - And clouds sink to the sea-marge, suddenly - The autumn sun (how soft, how solemn-bright!) - Moves to the vacant dial, so is lain - God’s meaning Hand, thou chosen, upon thee. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Spring Nightfall_ - - - APRIL is sad, as if the end she knew. - The maple’s misty red, the willow’s gold - Face-deep in nimble water, seem to hold - In hope’s own weather their autumnal hue. - There is no wind, no star, no sense of dew, - But the thin vapors gird the mountain old, - And the moon, risen before the west is cold, - Pale with compassion slopes into the blue. - Under the shining dark the day hath passed - Shining; so even of thee was home bereaved, - Thou dear and pensive spirit! overcast - Hardly at all, but drawn from light to light, - Who in the doubtful hour, and unperceived, - Rebuked adoring hearts with change and flight. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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, - The one inexorable thing!) - - In rocky hollows cool and deep, - The bees our boyhood hunted sleep; - The early moon from Ida’s steep - Comes to the empty wrestling-ring. - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - Upon the widowed wind recede - No echoes of the shepherd’s reed, - And children without laughter lead - The war-horse to the watering. - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - Thou stranger Ajax Telamon! - What to the loveliest hast thou done, - That ne’er with him a maid may run - Across the marigolds in spring? - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - With footstep separate and slow - The father and the mother go, - Not now upon an urn they know - To mingle tears for comforting. - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - The world to me has nothing dear - Beyond the namesake river here: - O Simois is wild and clear! - And to his brink my heart I bring; - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - - My heart no more, if that might be, - Would stay his waters from the sea, - To cover Troy, to cover me, - To save us from the perishing. - (Alas, alas, - The one inexorable thing!) - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Athassel Abbey_ - - - FOLLY and Time have fashioned - Of thee a songless reed; - O not-of-earth-impassioned! - Thy music ’s mute indeed. - - Red from the chantry crannies - The orchids burn and swing, - And where the arch began is - Rest for a raven’s wing; - - And up the bossy column - Quick tails of squirrels wave, - And black, prodigious, solemn, - A forest fills the nave. - - Still faithfuller, still faster, - To ruin give thy heart: - Perfect before the Master - Aye as thou wert, thou art. - - But I am wind that passes - In ignorant wild tears, - Uplifted from the grasses, - Blown to the void of years, - - Blown to the void, yet sighing - In thee to merge and cease, - Last breath of beauty’s dying, - Of sanctity, of peace! - - Tho’ use nor place forever - Unto my soul befall, - By no belovèd river - Set in a saintly wall, - - Do thou by builders given - Speech of the dumb to be, - Beneath thine open heaven, - Athassel! pray for me. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Florentin_ - - - HEART all full of heavenly haste, too like the bubble bright - On loud little water 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, thro’ troubled valleys, we also follow thee. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 arts we win, 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 sceptic 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 - Thro’ a long avenue, and voices kind - Idle, and indeterminate, and blind - As rumors 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, honorable 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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! - And 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; - O 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 valor: 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_The Cherry Bough_ - - - IN a new poet’s and a new friend’s honor, - 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. - O naught is absent, - - O 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 revels 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 color, - And you, and you that burst 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.” - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Two Irish Peasant Songs_ - - -I - - I KNEAD and I 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-stricken earth, the earth-colored 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 - - ’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 little 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 bank into the lane the primroses do crowd, - All colored 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 downs 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 in a bower: - But low by the wall is my odorless 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 ardors 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, tho’ resumed by the Giver, - And dead long ago, being lovely for ever. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Tryste Noel_ - - - THE Ox he openeth wide the Doore - And from the Snowe he calls her inne, - And he hath seen her Smile therefore, - Our Ladye without Sinne. - Now soone from Sleepe - 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 husht his voyce and bent - Trewe eyes of Pitty ore the Mow, - And on his lovelie Neck, forspent, - The Blessed lays 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 Juda’s 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! - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 anything sweet - The art to lay it aside! - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 honor 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 thro’ gods not inaccessible. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_For Izaak Walton_ - - - WHAT trout shall coax the rod of yore - In Itchen stream to dip? - What lover of her banks restore - That sweet Socratic lip? - Old fishing and wishing - Are over many a year. - O hush thee, O 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. - O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear. - - Nay, rise not now, nor with them take - One silver-freckled fool! - Thy sons to-day bring each an ache - For ancient arts to cool. - But, father, lie rather - Unhurt and idle near; - O hush thee, O 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: - O hush thee, O hush thee! heart innocent and dear. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Sherman: “An Horatian Ode”_ - - - THIS was the truest man of men, - The early-armored citizen, - Who had, with most of sight, - Most passion for the right; - - Who first forecasting treason’s scope - Able to sap the Founders’ hope, - First to the laic arm - Cried ultimate alarm; - - Who bent upon his guns the while - A misconceived and aching smile, - And felt, thro’ havoc’s part, - A torment of the heart, - - Sure, when he cut the moated South - From Shiloh to Savannah’s mouth, - Braved grandly to the end, - To conquer like a friend; - - In whom the Commonwealth withstood - Again the Carolinian blood, - The beautiful proud line - Beneath an evil sign, - - And taught his foes and doubters still - How fatal is a good man’s will, - That like a sun or sod - Thinks not itself, but God! - - Many the captains of our wrath - Sought thus the pious civic path, - Knowing in what a land - Their destiny was planned, - - And after, with a forward sense, - A simple Roman excellence, - Pledge in their spirit bore - That war should be no more. - - Thrice Roman he, who saw the shock - (Calm as a weather-wrinkled rock,) - Roll in the Georgian fen; - And steadfast aye as then - - In plenitude of old control - That asked, secure of his own soul, - No pardon and no aid, - If clear his way were made, - - Would have nor seat nor bays, nor bring - The Cæsar in him to be king, - But with abstracted ear - Rode pleased without a cheer. - - Now he declines from peace and age, - And home, his triple heritage, - The last and dearest head - Of all our perfect dead, - - O what if sorrow cannot reach - Far in the shallow fords of speech, - But leads us silent round - The sad Missouri ground, - - Where on her hero Freedom lays - The scroll and blazon of her praise, - And bids to him belong - Arms trailing, and a song, - - And broken flags with ruined dyes - (Bright once in young and dying eyes), - Against the morn to shake - For love’s familiar sake? - - The blessèd broken flags unfurled - Above a healed and happier world! - There let them droop, and be - His tent of victory; - - There, in each year’s auguster light, - Lean in, and loose their red and white, - Like apple-blossoms strewn - Upon his burial-stone. - - For nothing more, the ages thro’, - Can nature or the nation do - For him who helped retrieve - Our life, as we believe, - - Save that we also, trooping by - In sound yet of his battle-cry, - Safeguard with general mind - Our pact as brothers kind, - - And, ever nearer to our star, - Adore indeed not what we are, - But wise reprovings hold - Thankworthier than gold; - - And bear in faith and rapture such - As can eternal issues touch, - Whole from the final field, - Our father Sherman’s shield. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_When on the Marge of Evening_ - - - WHEN on the marge of evening the last blue light is broken, - And winds of dreamy odor are loosened from afar, - Or when my lattice opens, before the lark has spoken, - On dim laburnum-blossoms, and morning’s dying star, - - I think of thee, (O mine the more if other eyes be sleeping!) - Whose great and noonday splendor the many share and see, - While sacred and forever, some perfect law is keeping - The late and early twilight alone and sweet for me. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Rooks in New College Gardens_ - - - THRO’ rosy cloud, and over thorny towers, - Their wings with all the autumn distance filled, - From Isis’ valley border hundred-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 know of Adam’s blight: - With surer art the while, and simpler rite, - They follow Truth in some monastic tree, - Where breathe against their innocent breasts by night - The scholar’s star, the star of sanctity. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 has done with roofs and men. - Open, Time, and let him pass, - Vague and innocent again, - Into country grass. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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, - Honor at eventide. - - Let claws of lightning clutch me - From summer’s groaning cloud, - Or ever malice touch me, - And glory make me proud. - O 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 armor gay! - The passion for perfection - Redeem my failing way! - The arrows of the tragic time - From sudden ambush cast, - With calm angelic touches 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! - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 thro’ 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 odors of the sappy orchard-bough, - And brooks begin to brawl along the march; - The late frost steams from hollow sedges high; - The finch is come, the flame-blue dragon-fly, - The cowslip’s common gold 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_A Seventeenth-Century Song_ - - - SHE alone of Shepherdesses - With her blue disdayning eyes, - Wo’d not hark a Kyng that dresses - All his lute in sighes: - Yet to winne - Katheryn, - I elect for mine Emprise. - - None is like her, none above her, - Who so lifts my youth in me, - That a littel more to love her - Were to leave her free! - But to winne - Katheryn, - Is mine utmost love’s degree. - - Distaunce, cold, delay, and danger, - Build the four walles of her bower; - She ’s noe Sweete for any stranger, - She ’s noe valley flower: - And to winne - Katheryn, - To her height my heart can Tower! - - Uppe to Beautie’s promontory - I will climb, nor loudlie call - Perfect and escaping glory - Folly, if I fall: - Well to winne - Katheryn! - To be worth her is my all. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 Wytham wall - That doth upon adoring ivies lean; - Meek Binsey; Dorchester where streams convene - Bidding on graves her solemn shadow fall; - Clear Cassington that soars perpetual; - Holton and Hampton, and ye towers between: - If one of all in your sad courts that come, - Belovèd and disparted! be your own, - Kin to the souls ye had, while time endures, - Known to each exiled, each estrangèd stone - Home in the 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 spirit sinks away; - And under English eaves, more still than they, - Far-off, incoming, wonderful, he hears - The long-arrested and 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 kisses lain - For witness on 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.” - -[Illustration] - - - - -_The Still of the Year_ - - - UP from the willow-root - Subduing agonies leap; - The squirrel and the purple moth - Turn over amid their sleep; - The icicled rocks aloft - Burn saffron and blue alway, - And trickling and tinkling - The snows of the drift decay. - O 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 the little trillium-blossom - Tucked under her leaf to think; - 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_A Foot-note 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 upstart enviers 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 of the supremest thing - A poet might have said!” - - Young knight and wit and beau, who won - Mid war’s adventure, ladies’ praise, - Was’t well of you, ere you had done, - To blight our modern bays? - - O 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. - - How shall this singing era spurn - Her master, and in lauds be loath? - Your worth, your work, bid us discern - Light exquisite in both. - - ’T was virtue’s breath inflamed your lyre, - Heroic from the heart it ran; - Nor for the shedding of such fire - Lives 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 pinnacles of song. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_T. W. P. 1819-1892_ - - - 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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, tho’ 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!” - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Saint Florent-le-Vieil_ - - - THE spacious open vale, the vale of doom, - Is full of autumn sunset; blue and strong - The semicirque of water sweeps among - Her lofty acres, each a martyr’s tomb; - And slowly, slowly, melt into the gloom - Two little idling clouds, that look for long - Like roseleaf bodies of two babes in song - Correggio left to flush a convent room. - - Dear hill deflowered in the frantic war! - In my day, rather, have I seen thee blest - With pastoral roofs to break the darker crest - Of apple-woods by many-islèd Loire, - And fires that still suffuse the lower west, - Blanching the beauty of thine evening star. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Hylas_ - - - JAR in arm, they bade him rove - Thro’ the alder’s long alcove, - Where the hid spring musically - Gushes to the ample valley. - (There ’s a bird on the under bough - Fluting evermore and now: - “Keep--young!” but who knows how?) - - Down the woodland corridor, - Odors deepened more and more; - Blossomed dogwood, in the briers, - 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 - Noisy ploughmen drinking, drinking, - On his drownèd cheek down-sinking; - 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-gray, their eyes adore him. - (There ’s a bird on the under bough - Fluting evermore and now: - “Keep--young!” but who knows how?) - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 pausing boat in shallows drifted, - Alone her plaintive form ascends the sky. - - O sing! the water-golds are deepening now, - A hush is come upon the beechen bough; - She shines the while on thee, as saint to saint - Sweet interchanged adorings may allow: - Sing, dearest, with that lily throat uplifted; - They are so like, the holy Moon and thou! - -[Illustration] - - - - -_The Kings_ - - - A MAN said unto his angel: - “My spirits are fallen thro’, - And I cannot carry this battle, - O brother! what shall I do? - - “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, foolish 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 very, the only, - The solemn event of things; - The weakest of hearts defying - Is stronger than all these Kings. - - “Tho’ 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!” - - - - -ALEXANDRIANA - - - - -_Alexandriana_ - - -I - - I LAID the strewings, sweetest, 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 wild 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 flag I 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 - - 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. - - -V - - Upon thy level tomb, till windy winter dawn, - 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 shout forth: “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 ardors are - But a cinder in a jar? - - -X - - 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! - - -XI - - As wind that wasteth the unmarried rose, - And mars the golden breakers in the bay, - Hurtful and sweet from heaven forever 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 - - Praise thou the Mighty Mother for what is wrought, not me, - A nameless nothing-caring head asleep against her knee. - - - - -LONDON: - -TWELVE SONNETS - - - - -_On First Entering Westminster Abbey_ - - - THABOR of England! since my light is short - And faint, O 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 calm Chaucerian 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 holy isle, - Above the stormy sea of ended kings. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Fog_ - - - LIKE bodiless water passing in a sigh, - Thro’ 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 Hebrew bugles blow, - Black and dissolved; nor could the founders 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 primitive 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, tho’ the dark visor ’s down. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 hateful 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 men’s injustice then and now - Add to these aisles one other broken heart. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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, - Thro’ 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_Changes in the Temple_ - - - THE cry is at thy gates, thou darling ground, - Again; for oft ere now thy children went - Beggared and wroth, and parting greeting sent - Some red old alley with a dial crowned; - Some house of honor, 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. - - O for Virginius’ hand, if only that - Maintain the whole, and spoil these spoilings soon! - Better the scowling Strand should lose, alas, - Her peopled oasis, and where it was - All mournful in the cleared quadrangle sat - Echo, and ivy, and the loitering moon. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 sudden gleam, - London, one moment fallen and forgot. - - Her booths begin to flare; and gases bright - Prick door and window; all her streets obscure - Sparkle and swarm 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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, - The 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.” - -[Illustration] - - - - -_In the Reading-Room of the British Museum_ - - - PRAISED be the moon of books! that doth above - A world of men, the fallen Past behold, - And fill the spaces else so 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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! Tho’ 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 a naked coast - Deploys her white and steady wing, alone. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_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 not have been for evermore. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_York Stairs_ - - - MANY a musing eye returns to thee, - Against the lurid 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. - -[Illustration] - - - - -_In the Docks_ - - - WHERE the bales thunder till the day is done, - And the wild sounds with wilder odors 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 colors bound, - Away, away from this too thoughtful ground, - Sated with human trespass and despair, - Thee only, from the desert, from the storm, - A sick mind follows into Eden air. - - - -***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A ROADSIDE HARP*** - - -******* This file should be named 54822-0.txt or 54822-0.zip ******* - - -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/5/4/8/2/54822 - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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