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diff --git a/old/55086-0.txt b/old/55086-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 6fe4c83..0000000 --- a/old/55086-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,6838 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Edward Dowden - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: Poems - -Author: Edward Dowden - -Release Date: July 10, 2017 [EBook #55086] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - - - - -Produced by Larry B. Harrison, Chuck Greif, Bryan Ness and -the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at -http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images -generously made available by The Internet Archive/Canadian -Libraries) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - POEMS - - EDWARD DOWDEN - - [Illustration: portrait of Edward Dowden] - - - - - POEMS - - BY - - EDWARD DOWDEN - - [Illustration: colophon] - - MCMXIV. J. M. DENT & SONS LTD. - LONDON AND TORONTO - - - - -CONTENTS - - - PAGE - -THE WANDERER (_Sept. 1872_) 1 - -THE FOUNTAIN (_Sept. 1873_) 2 - -IN THE GALLERIES-- - - I. The Apollo Belvedere 5 - - II. The Venus of Melos 5 - - III. Antinous Crowned as Bacchus (_Feb. 1873_) 6 - - IV. Leonardo’s “Monna Lisa” (_Dec. 1872_) 7 - - V. St Luke Painting the Virgin (_April 1872_) 7 - -ON THE HEIGHTS (_Feb. 1872_) 9 - -“LA RÉVÉLATION PAR LE DÉSERT” (_Feb. 1873_) 13 - -THE MORNING STAR (_Aug. 1873_) 19 - -A CHILD’S NOONDAY SLEEP (_Aug. 1872_) 22 - -IN THE GARDEN-- - - I. The Garden (_1867_) 24 - - II. Visions (_1866_) 24 - - III. An Interior 25 - - IV. The Singer 26 - - V. A Summer Moon (_1866_) 26 - - VI. A Peach 27 - - VII. Early Autumn 28 - - VIII. Later Autumn 28 - -THE HEROINES (_1873_)-- - - Helena 33 - - Atalanta 36 - - Europa 44 - - Andromeda 47 - - Eurydice 52 - -BY THE SEA-- - - I. The Assumption (_Aug. 1872_) 58 - - II. The Artist’s Waiting (_Sept. 1872_) 58 - - III. Counsellors (_May 1872_) 59 - - IV. Evening (_July 1873_) 60 - - V. Joy (_May 1872_) 60 - - VI. Ocean (_May 1865_) 61 - - VII. News for London 61 - -AMONG THE ROCKS (_1873_) 63 - -TO A YEAR (_Dec. 31, 1872_) 66 - -A SONG OF THE NEW DAY (_Sept. 1872_) 67 - -SWALLOWS (_July 1873_) 68 - -MEMORIALS OF TRAVEL-- - - I. Coaching (_1867_) 70 - - II. In a Mountain Pass (_1867_) 70 - - III. The Castle (_1867_) 71 - - IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία 72 - - V. On the Sea-cliff (_1873_) 72 - - VI. Ascetic Nature 73 - - VII. Relics 74 - - VIII. On the Pier of Boulogne 74 - - IX. Dover (_1862_) 75 - -AN AUTUMN SONG (_1872_) 76 - -BURDENS (_April 1872_) 77 - -SONG 78 - -BY THE WINDOW (_May 1872_) 81 - -SUNSETS (_June 1873_) 83 - -OASIS (_1866_) 84 - -FOREIGN SPEECH (_1868_) 85 - -IN THE TWILIGHT (_1873_) 86 - -THE INNER LIFE-- - - I. A Disciple 87 - - II. Theists (_April 1872_) 87 - - III. Seeking God (_1865_) 88 - - IV. Darwinism in Morals (_April 1872_) 88 - - V. Awakening (_1865_) 89 - - VI. Fishers 90 - - VII. Communion (_1862_) 90 - - VIII. A Sonnet for the Times 91 - - IX. Emmausward (_1867_) 91 - - X. A Farewell (_Sept. 1872_) 92 - - XI. Deliverance (_Oct. 1872_) 93 - - XII. Paradise Lost 93 - -THE RESTING PLACE (_Sept. 1872_) 95 - -NEW HYMNS FOR SOLITUDE-- - - I. (_April 1872_) 96 - - II. (_Oct. 1872_) 96 - - III. (_May 1872_) 97 - - IV. (_May 1872_) 98 - - V. (_April 1872_) 99 - - VI. (_April 1872_) 100 - -IN THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE (_1876_) 101 - -FIRST LOVE 103 - -THE SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE 105 - -BEAU RIVAGE HOTEL 107 - -IN A JUNE NIGHT 108 - -FROM APRIL TO OCTOBER-- - - I. Beauty 112 - - II. Two Infinities 112 - - III. The Dawn (_1865_) 113 - - IV. The Skylark (_1866_) 113 - - V. The Mill-race 114 - - VI. In the Wood 115 - - VII. The Pause of Evening (_Aug. 1873_) 115 - - VIII. In July 116 - - IX. In September 116 - - X. In the Window (_1865_) 117 - - XI. An Autumn Morning 118 - -SEA VOICES (_May 1872_) 119 - -ABOARD THE “SEA-SWALLOW” (_1865_) 121 - -SEA-SIGHING (_1871_) 122 - -IN THE MOUNTAINS (_April 1872_) 123 - -“THE TOP OF A HILL CALLED CLEAR” (_May 1872_) 126 - -THE INITIATION (_Oct. 1872_) 128 - -RENUNCIANTS (_Nov. 1872_) 130 - -SPEAKERS TO GOD (_April 1873_) 131 - -POESIA (_Feb. 1873_) 133 - -MUSICIANS (_Jan. 1873_) 134 - -MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS-- - - A DAY OF DEFECTION 139 - - SONG AND SILENCE 140 - - LOVE-TOKENS (_Nov. 1872_) 141 - - A DREAM (_Aug. 1875_) 142 - - MICHELANGELESQUE (_Oct. 1872_) 143 - - LIFE’S GAIN (_Aug. 1872_) 144 - - COMPENSATION 145 - - TO A CHILD DEAD AS SOON AS BORN 146 - - BROTHER DEATH 147 - - THE MAGE 148 - - WISE PASSIVENESS (_1865_) 149 - - THE SINGER’S PLEA 150 - - THE TRESPASSER 151 - - RITUALISM 152 - - PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 153 - - KING MOB (_1865_) 154 - - THE MODERN ELIJAH 155 - - DAVID AND MICHAL (_1865_) 156 - -WINDLE-STRAWS (_1872_)-- - - I. 159 - - II. 159 - - III. 160 - - IV. 161 - - V. 161 - - VI. 162 - - VII. 162 - - VIII. 162 - - -POEMS OF LATER DATES - -AT THE OAR 167 - -THE DIVINING ROD 168 - -SALOME 169 - -WATERSHED 170 - -THE GUEST 171 - -MORITURUS 172 - -ALONE 173 - -FAME 174 - -WHERE WERT THOU? 175 - -A WISH 176 - -THE GIFT 177 - -RECOVERY 178 - -IF IT MIGHT BE 179 - -WINTER NOONTIDE 180 - -THE POOL 181 - -THE DESIRE TO GIVE 182 - -A BEECH-TREE IN WINTER 183 - -JUDGMENT 184 - -DÜRER’S “MELENCHOLIA” 185 - -MILLET’S “THE SOWER” 186 - -AT MULLION (CORNWALL) 187 - -THE WINNOWER TO THE WINDS 188 - -EMERSON 189 - -SENT TO AN AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY 190 - -NOCTURNE 191 - -THE WHIRLIGIG 192 - -PARADISE LOST AND FOUND 195 - -AFTER METASTASIO 199 - -THE CORN-CRAKE 200 - -IN THE CATHEDRAL 203 - -EDGAR ALLAN POE 204 - -DEUS ABSCONDITUS 205 - -SUBLIMINAL 206 - -LOUISA SHORE 207 - -FLOWERS FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE 208 - -TO HESTER 209 - -UNUTTERED 212 - -IMITATED FROM J. SOULARY’S “LE FOSSOYEUR” 213 - -IMITATED FROM GOETHE’S “GANYMEDE” 214 - -WITH A COPY OF MY “POEMS” 216 - -PROLOGUE TO MAURICE GEROTHWOHL’S VERSION -OF VIGNY’S “CHATTERTON” 217 - -A SONG 219 - -THE DROPS OF NECTAR (_1789_) 220 - -AMOR AS LANDSCAPE-PAINTER 221 - -THE WANDERER 224 - -“ALEXIS AND DORA” 234 - - - - -PREFACE - - -Goethe says in a little poem[A] that “Poems are stained glass -windows”--“_Gedichte sind gemalte Fensterscheiben_”--to be seen aright -not from the “market-place” but only from the interior of the church, -“_die heilige Kapelle_”: and that “_der Herr Philister_” (equivalent for -“indolent Reviewer”) glances at them from without and gets out of temper -because he finds them unintelligible from his “market-place” standpoint. -This comparison is a pretty conceit, and holds good as a half truth--but -not more than a half: for while the artist who paints his “church -windows” needs only to make them beautiful from within, the maker of -poems must so shape and colour his work that its outer side--the -technical, towards the “market-place” of the public--shall have no lack -of beauty, though differing from the beauty visible from the spiritual -interior. - - [A] “Sechzehn Parabeln,” _Gedichte_, Leoper’s edition (p. 180) of - Goethe’s _Gedichte_. - -The old volume of _Edward Dowden’s Poems_ of 1876, which is now -reprinted with additions, has been, to a limited extent, long before -the public--seen from the “market-place” by general critics, who, for -the most part, approved the outer side of the “painted windows,” and -seen perhaps from within by some few like-minded readers, who, though no -definite door was opened into “_die heilige Kapelle_,” somehow entered -in. - -But a great many people, to whom the author’s prose works are well -known, have never even heard that he had written poetry. This is due in -a measure to the fact that the published book of poems only got into -circulation by its first small edition. Its second edition found a -silent apotheosis in flame at a great fire at the publisher’s in London, -in which nearly the whole of it perished. - -Edward Dowden’s chief work has been as a prose writer. That fact -remains--yet it is accidental rather than essential. In the early -seventies he felt the urge very strongly towards making verse his -vocation in life, and he probably would have yielded to it, but for the -necessity to be bread-winner for a much-loved household. Poetry is a -ware of small commercial value, as most poets--at least for a long space -of their lives--have known, and prose, for even a young writer of -promise, held out prospects of bread for immediate eating. Hence to -prose he turned, and on that road went his way, and whether the -accidental circumstances that determined his course at the parting of -the ways wrought loss or gain for our literature, who can say? - -But he never wholly abandoned verse, and all through his life, even to -the very end, he would fitfully, from time to time, utter in it a part -of himself which never found complete issue in prose and which was his -most real self. - -Perhaps the nearest approaches to his utterance in poetry occurred -sometimes in his College lecturing, when in the midst of a written -discourse he would interrupt it and stop and liberate his heart in a -little rush of words--out of the depths, accompanied by that familiar -gesture of his hands which always came to him when emotionally stirred -in speaking. Some of his students have told me that they usually found -those little extempore bits in a lecture by far the most illuminated and -inspiring parts of it, especially as it was then that his voice, always -musical in no common degree, vibrated, and acquired a richer tone. - -In his prose writings in general he seemed to curb and restrain himself. -That he did so was by no means an evil, for the habitual retinence in -his style gave to the little rare outbreaks of emotion the quality of -charm that we find in a tender flower growing out of a solid stone wall -unexpectedly. - -Not infrequently a sort of hard irony was employed by him, as restraint -on enthusiasm, with occasional loosening of the curb. - - * * * * * - -In Edward Dowden’s soul there seemed to be capacities which might, under -other circumstances, have made him more than a minor poet. His was a -more than usually rich, sensuous nature. This, combined with absolute -purity--the purity not of ice and snow, but of fire. And, superadded, -was an unlimited capacity for sternness--that quality which, as salt, -acts as preservative of all human ardours. He came from his Maker, -fashioned out of the stuff whereof are made saints, patriots, martyrs, -and the great lovers in the world. His work as a scholar never -obliterated anything of this in him. By this, his erudition gained -richness--the richness of vital blood. It was as no anæmic recluse that -he dwelt amongst his book-shelves, and hence no Faust-like weariness of -intellectual satiety ever came to him, no sense of being “_beschränkt -mit diesem Bücherhauf_” in his surroundings of his library (which -latterly had grown to some twenty-four thousand volumes). He lived in -company with these in a twofold way, keenly and accurately grasping all -their textual details, and at the same time valuing them for the sake, -chiefly, of spiritual converse with the writers. - -Besides the spiritual converse he gained thus, he found, as a -book-lover, a fertile source of recreation in the collecting of literary -rarities, old books, MSS. and curiosities. In this he felt the keen zest -of a sportsman. This was his shooting on the moors, his fishing in the -rivers. No living creature ever lost its life for his amusement, but in -this innocuous play he found unfailing pleasure, and many a piece of -luck he had with his gun or rod in hitting some rare bird, or landing -some big prize of a fish out of old booksellers’ catalogues or the -“carts” in the back streets. - -His physical nature was fully and strongly developed, and it is out of -strong physical instincts that strong spiritual instincts often -grow--the boundary line between them being undefined. - -His one athletic exercise--swimming--was to him a joy of no common sort. -He gave himself to the sea with an eagerness of body, soul and spirit, -breasting the bright waters exultingly on many a summer’s day on some -West of Ireland or Cornish shore, revelling in the sea’s life and in his -own. - -And akin to that, in the sensuous, spiritual region of the soul, was his -feeling for all External Nature, his deep delight in the coming of each -new Spring--its blackthorn blossoms, its hazel and willow catkins, its -daffodils--and his response, as the year went on in its procession, to -the glory of the furze and heather glow and to all Earth’s sounds and -silences. - -And of a like sort was his enjoyment of music which had the depth of a -passion. - -Very possibly, if his lot had been cast in early Christian or mediæval -times, all these impulses towards the joy and beauty of the earth might -have been sternly crushed out by the moral forces of his character. - -Looking at a picture of St. Jerome one day--not unlike E. D. in -feature--I said to him, “There’s what _you_ would have been if you had -lived in those times.” (The saint is depicted there as lean, emaciated -and woefully dirty!). - -It was well for Edward Dowden that he was laid hold of in his early life -by that great non-ascetic soul, William Wordsworth. He was initiated -into the inner secret of Wordsworth. He had experience of the -Wordsworthian ecstasy--that ecstasy which comes, if at all, straight as -a gift from God, and is not to be taught by the teaching of the scribes. - -Through kinship a man who is born potentially a poet comes first into -relation with poets, and with E. Dowden’s sensuousness of capacities it -was natural that he should be in his early years attracted to Keats, to -the long, deep, rich dwelling of his verse on the vision and the sounds -of Nature. It was not until he had advanced some way towards middle life -that he came into vital contact with Shelley. He had felt aloof from -him; but the attraction, when once owned, became very powerful, and he -yielded to the delight of the swift motion of the Shelleyan utterances. - -He always recognized Robert Browning’s greatness profoundly, and -responded to all his best truths, especially as regards the relation, in -love, of Man and Woman, but he never became pledged to an all-round -Browning worship; his admiration had no discipleship in it. - -For Walt Whitman, with whom a personal friendship, strong on both sides, -was formed, he felt the cordial reverence due to the giver of what he -reckoned as a gift of immense value. While condemning whatever was -unreticent in _Leaves of Grass_, he at the same time saw there the great -flood of spirituality available as a force for emancipation of our -hearts from pressure of sordidnesses in the world. - -It is somewhat remarkable that with all his trend towards the great -spiritual and mystical forces in literature he was all along never -without a keen appreciation of the writers who brought mundane -shrewdness and wisdom. The first book he bought for himself in childhood -with the hoarded savings of his pocket-money was _Bacon’s Essays_, with -which as a small boy he became very familiar. And all through his life -he sought with unfailing pleasure the companionship of Jane Austen again -and again. And amongst the books which he himself made, it was perhaps -his _Montaigne_ that gave him, in the process of making, the delicatest -satisfaction--the satisfaction of witnessing and analysing the dexterous -play of human intellect and character on low levels. - -His attraction to Goethe--very dominant with him in middle life--came, I -imagine, from the fact that he saw in that mightiest of the Teutons two -diverse qualities in operation--the measureless intellectual -spirituality and the vast common-sense of mundane wisdom. - -In this attraction there was also the element of the magnetism which -draws together opposites--not less forcible than the attraction between -affinities. - -As regards the moral nature, his own was as far as the North Pole is -from the South from that of the great sage of Weimar, whose -serenely-wise beneficence contained no potentialities of sainthood, -martyrdom or absolute human love. He sought gain from Goethe just -_because_ of that unlikeness to what was in himself. - -At one period of his literary work he was intending to make as his -“_opus magnus_” a full study of Goethe’s life and works, and with that -intent he carried on a course of reading, and laid in a great equipment -of workman’s tools--Goethe books in German, French and English. From -this project he was turned aside by a call to write the life of -Shelley--a long and difficult task. But he never lost sight of Goethe. -In one of the later years of his life, as recreation in a summer’s -holiday in Cornwall, he translated the whole of the “West-Eastern Divan” -into English verse, and previously, from time to time, isolated essays -on Goethe themes appeared amongst his prose writings. And yet it is not -unlikely that even if the task of Shelley’s biography had not -intervened, no complete study, such as he had at first planned, might -have been ever accomplished by him on Goethe, for with experience there -came to him a growing conviction that his best work in criticism could -only be done in dealing with what was written in his mother-tongue. - -Some of Edward Dowden’s friends, Nationalist and Unionist both, have -felt regret that he, the gentle scholar, gave such large share of his -energies to the strife of politics, as if force were subtracted thereby -from his work in Literature. They are mistaken. The output of energy -thus given came back to the giver, reinforcing his prose writing with a -mundane vigour and virility, exceeding what it might have had if he had -kept himself aloof from the affairs of the nation. - -Yet, strangely enough, between his politics and his poetry there was a -water-tight wall of separation. Other men, to take scattered instances, -Kipling, Wordsworth, Milton, fused in various ways their political -feeling and their poetical. This Edward Dowden never attempted. I cannot -analyse the “why.” - -Confining myself to some points which seem left out of sight in most of -the admirably appreciative obituary notices in last April’s newspapers, -I have tried to say here, in a fragmentary way, a few things about a man -of whom many things--infinitely many--might be said without exhausting -the total. He was himself at the same time many and one. He had -multiform aspects--interests very diverse--and yet life was for him in -no wise “patchy and scrappy,” but had unity throughout. - -In Shakespeare, whose faithful scholar he was, there are diversities: -and yet, do we not image Shakespeare to our minds as one and a whole? - -In the volumes now issued by Messrs. J. M. Dent & Sons is contained all -the verse that the author left available for publication, with the -exception of a sequence of a hundred and one lyrics (which by desire is -separately published under the somewhat transparent disguise of -editorship). That little sequence, named _A Woman’s Reliquary_, is his -latest work in verse. Much in it re-echoes sounds that can be heard in -his old poems of the early seventies. - -E. D. D. - -_September 1913._ - - - - -THE WANDERER - - - I cast my anchor nowhere (the waves whirled - My anchor from me); East and West are one - To me; against no winds are my sails furled; - --Merely my planet anchors to the Sun. - - - - -THE FOUNTAIN - -(AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SONNETS) - - - Hush, let the fountain murmur dim - Melodious secrets; stir no limb, - But lie along the marge and wait, - Till deep and pregnant as with fate, - Fine as a star-beam, crystal-clear, - Each ripple grows upon the ear. - This is that fountain seldom seen - By mortal wanderer,--Hippocrene,-- - Where the virgins three times three, - Thy singing brood, Mnemosyne, - Loosen’d the girdle, and with grave - Pure joy their faultless bodies gave - To sacred pleasure of the wave. - Listen! the lapsing waters tell - The urgence uncontrollable - Which makes the trouble of their breast, - And bears them onward with no rest - To ampler skies and some grey plain - Sad with the tumbling of the main. - But see, a sidelong eddy slips - Back into the soft eclipse - Of day, while careless fate allows, - Darkling beneath still olive boughs; - Then with chuckle liquid sweet - Coils within its shy retreat; - This is mine, no wave of might, - But pure and live with glimmering light; - I dare not follow that broad flood - Of Poesy, whose lustihood - Nourishes mighty lands, and makes - Resounding music for their sakes; - I lie beside the well-head clear - With musing joy, with tender fear, - And choose for half a day to lean - Thus on my elbow where the green - Margin-grass and silver-white - Starry buds, the wind’s delight, - Thirsting steer, nor goat-hoof rude - Of the branch-sundering Satyr brood - Has ever pashed; now, now, I stoop, - And in hand-hollow dare to scoop - This scantling from the delicate stream; - It lies as quiet as a dream, - And lustrous in my curvèd hand. - Were it a crime if this were drain’d - By lips which met the noonday blue - Fiery and emptied of its dew? - Crown me with small white marish-flowers! - To the good Dæmon, and the Powers - Of this fair haunt I offer up - In unprofanèd lily-cup - Libations; still remains for me - A bird’s drink of clear Poesy; - Yet not as light bird comes and dips - A pert bill, but with reverent lips - I drain this slender trembling tide; - O sweet the coolness at my side, - And, lying back, to slowly pry - For spaces of the upper sky - Radiant ’twixt woven olive leaves; - And, last, while some fair show deceives - The closing eyes, to find a sleep - As full of healing and as deep - As on toil-worn Odysseus lay - Surge-swept to his Ionian bay. - - - - - IN THE GALLERIES - - - I. THE APOLLO BELVEDERE - - Radiance invincible! Is that the brow - Which gleamed on Python while thy arrow sped? - Are those the lips for Hyacinthus dead - That grieved? Wherefore a God indeed art thou: - For all we toil with ill, and the hours bow - And break us, and at best when we have bled, - And are much marred, perchance propitiated - A little doubtful victory they allow: - We sorrow, and thenceforth the lip retains - A shade, and the eyes shine and wonder less. - O joyous Slayer of evil things! O great - And splendid Victor! God, whom no soil stains - Of passion or doubt, of grief or languidness, - --Even to worship thee I come too late. - - -II. THE VENUS OF MELOS - - Goddess, or woman nobler than the God, - No eyes a-gaze upon Ægean seas - Shifting and circling past their Cyclades - Saw thee. The Earth, the gracious Earth, wastrod - First by thy feet, while round thee lay her broad - Calm harvests, and great kine, and shadowing trees, - And flowers like queens, and a full year’s increase, - Clusters, ripe berry, and the bursting pod. - So thy victorious fairness, unallied - To bitter things or barren, doth bestow - And not exact; so thou art calm and wise; - Thy large allurement saves; a man may grow - Like Plutarch’s men by standing at thy side, - And walk thenceforward with clear-visioned eyes! - - -III. ANTINOUS CROWNED AS BACCHUS - -(_In the British Museum_) - - Who crowned thy forehead with the ivy wreath - And clustered berries burdening the hair? - Who gave thee godhood, and dim rites? Beware - O beautiful, who breathest mortal breath, - Thou delicate flame great gloom environeth! - The gods are free, and drink a stainless air, - And lightly on calm shoulders they upbear - A weight of joy eternal, nor can Death - Cast o’er their sleep the shadow of her shrine. - O thou confessed too mortal by the o’er-fraught - Crowned forehead, must thy drooped eyes ever see - The glut of pleasure, those pale lips of thine - Still suck a bitter-sweet satiety, - Thy soul descend through cloudy realms of thought? - - -IV. LEONARDO’S “MONNA LISA” - - Make thyself known, Sibyl, or let despair - Of knowing thee be absolute; I wait - Hour-long and waste a soul. What word of fate - Hides ’twixt the lips which smile and still forbear? - Secret perfection! Mystery too fair! - Tangle the sense no more lest I should hate - Thy delicate tyranny, the inviolate - Poise of thy folded hands, thy fallen hair. - Nay, nay,--I wrong thee with rough words; still be - Serene, victorious, inaccessible; - Still smile but speak not; lightest irony - Lurk ever ’neath thine eyelids’ shadow; still - O’ertop our knowledge; Sphinx of Italy - Allure us and reject us at thy will! - - -V. ST LUKE PAINTING THE VIRGIN - -(_By Van der Weyden_) - - It was Luke’s will; and she, the mother-maid, - Would not gainsay; to please him pleased her best; - See, here she sits with dovelike heart at rest - Brooding, and smoothest brow; the babe is laid - On lap and arm, glad for the unarrayed - And swatheless limbs he stretches; lightly pressed - By soft maternal fingers the full breast - Seeks him, while half a sidelong glance is stayed - By her own bosom and half passes down - To reach the boy. Through doors and window-frame - Bright airs flow in; a river tranquilly - Washes the small, glad Netherlandish town. - Innocent calm! no token here of shame, - A pierced heart, sunless heaven, and Calvary. - - - - -ON THE HEIGHTS - - - Here are the needs of manhood satisfied! - Sane breath, an amplitude for soul and sense, - The noonday silence of the summer hills, - And this embracing solitude; o’er all - The sky unsearchable, which lays its claim,-- - A large redemption not to be annulled,-- - Upon the heart; and far below, the sea - Breaking and breaking, smoothly, silently. - What need I any further? Now once more - My arrested life begins, and I am man - Complete with eye, heart, brain, and that within - Which is the centre and the light of being; - O dull! who morning after morning chose - Never to climb these gorse and heather slopes - Cairn-crowned, but last within one seaward nook - Wasted my soul on the ambiguous speech - And slow eye-mesmerism of rolling waves, - Courting oblivion of the heart. True life - That was not which possessed me while I lay - Prone on the perilous edge, mere eye and ear, - Staring upon the bright monotony, - Having let slide all force from me, each thought - Yield to the vision of the gleaming blank, - Each nerve of motion and of sense grow numb, - Till to the bland persuasion of some breeze, - Which played across my forehead and my hair, - The lost volition would efface itself, - And I was mingled wholly in the sound - Of tumbling billow and upjetting surge, - Long reluctation, welter and refluent moan, - And the reverberating tumultuousness - ’Mid shelf and hollow and angle black with spray. - Yet under all oblivion there remained - A sense of some frustration, a pale dream - Of Nature mocking man, and drawing down, - As streams draw down the dust of gold, his will, - His thought and passion to enrich herself - The insatiable devourer. - - Welcome earth, - My natural heritage! and this soft turf, - These rocks which no insidious ocean saps, - But the wide air flows over, and the sun - Illumines. Take me, Mother, to thy breast, - Gather me close in tender, sustinent arms, - Lay bare thy bosom’s sweetness and its strength - That I may drink vigour and joy and love. - Oh, infinite composure of the hills! - Thou large simplicity of this fair world, - Candour and calmness, with no mockery, - No soft frustration, flattering sigh or smile - Which masks a tyrannous purpose; and ye Powers - Of these sky-circled heights, and Presences - Awful and strict, I find you favourable, - Who seek not to exclude me or to slay, - Rather accept my being, take me up - Into your silence and your peace. Therefore - By him whom ye reject not, gracious Ones, - Pure vows are made that haply he will be - Not all unworthy of the world; he casts - Forth from him, never to resume again, - Veiled nameless things, frauds of the unfilled heart, - Fantastic pleasures, delicate sadnesses, - The lurid, and the curious, and the occult, - Coward sleights and shifts, the manners of the slave, - And long unnatural uses of dim life. - Hence with you! Robes of angels touch these heights - Blown by pure winds and I lay hold upon them. - - Here is a perfect bell of purple heath, - Made for the sky to gaze at reverently, - As faultless as itself, and holding light, - Glad air and silence in its slender dome; - Small, but a needful moment in the sum - Of God’s full joy--the abyss of ecstasy - O’er which we hang as the bright bow of foam - Above the never-filled receptacle - Hangs seven-hued where the endless cataract leaps. - - O now I guess why you have summoned me, - Headlands and heights, to your companionship; - Confess that I this day am needful to you! - The heavens were loaded with great light, the winds - Brought you calm summer from a hundred fields, - All night the stars had pricked you to desire, - The imminent joy at its full season flowered, - There was a consummation, the broad wave - Toppled and fell. And had ye voice for this? - Sufficient song to unburden the urged breast? - A pastoral pipe to play? a lyre to touch? - The brightening glory of the heath and gorse - Could not appease your passion, nor the cry - Of this wild bird that flits from bush to bush. - Me therefore you required, a voice for song, - A pastoral pipe to play, a lyre to touch, - I recognize your bliss to find me here; - The sky at morning when the sun upleaps - Demands her atom of intense melody, - Her point of quivering passion and delight, - And will not let the lark’s heart be at ease. - Take me, the brain with various, subtile fold, - The breast that knows swift joy, the vocal lips; - I yield you here the cunning instrument - Between your knees; now let the plectrum fall! - - - - -“LA RÉVÉLATION PAR LE DÉSERT” - - “Toujours le désert se montre à l’horizon, quand vous - prononcez le nom de Jéhovah.” - EDGAR QUINET. - - - Beyond the places haunted by the feet - Of thoughts and swift desires, and where the eyes - Of wing’d imaginings are wild, and dreams - Glide by on noiseless plumes, beyond the dim - Veiled sisterhood of ever-circling mists, - Who dip their urns in those enchanted meres - Where all thought fails, and every ardour dies, - And through the vapour dead looms a low moon, - Beyond the fountains of the dawn, beyond - The white home of the morning star, lies spread - A desert lifeless, bright, illimitable, - The world’s confine, o’er which no sighing goes - From weary winds of Time. - - I sat me down - Upon a red stone flung on the red sand, - In length as great as some sarcophagus - Which holds a king, but scribbled with no runes, - Bald, and unstained by lichen or grey moss. - Save me no living thing in that red land - Showed under heaven; no furtive lizard slipped, - No desert weed pushed upward the tough spine - Or hairy lump, no slow bird was a spot - Of moving black on the deserted air, - Or stationary shrilled his tuneless cry; - No shadow stirr’d, nor luminous haze uprose, - Quivering against the blanched blue of the marge. - I sat unbonneted, and my throat baked, - And my tongue loll’d dogwise. Red sand below, - And one unlidded eye above--mere God - Blazing from marge to marge. I did not pray, - My heart was as a cinder in my breast, - And with both hands I held my head which throbbed. - I, who had sought for God, had followed God - Through the fair world which stings with sharp desire - For him of whom its hints and whisperings are, - Its gleams and tingling moments of the night, - I, who in flower, and wave, and mountain-wind, - And song of bird, and man’s diviner heart - Had owned the present Deity, yet strove - For naked access to his inmost shrine,-- - Now found God doubtless, for he filled the heaven - Like brass, he breathed upon the air like fire. - But I, a speck ’twixt the strown sand and sky, - Being yet an atom of pure and living will, - And perdurable as any God of brass, - With all my soul, with all my mind and strength - Hated this God. O, for a little cloud - No bigger than a man’s hand on the rim, - To rise with rain and thunder in its womb, - And blot God out! But no such cloud would come. - I felt my brain on fire, heard each pulse tick; - It was a God to make a man stark mad; - I rose with neck out-thrust, and nodding head, - While with dry chaps I could not choose but laugh; - _Ha_, _ha_, _ha_, _ha_, across the air it rang, - No sweeter than the barking of a dog, - Hard as the echo from an iron cliff; - It must have buffeted the heaven; I ceased, - I looked to see from the mid sky an arm, - And one sweep of the scimitar; I stood; - And when the minute passed with no event, - No doomsman’s stroke, no sundering soul and flesh, - When silence dropt its heavy fold on fold, - And God lay yet inert in heaven, or scorn’d - His rebel antic-sized, grotesque,--I swooned. - - Now when the sense returned my lips were wet, - And cheeks and chin were wet, with a dank dew, - Acrid and icy, and one shadow huge - Hung over me blue-black, while all around - The fierce light glared. O joy, a living thing, - Emperor of this red domain of sand, - A giant snake! One fold, one massy wreath - Arched over me; a man’s expanded arms - Could not embrace the girth of this great lord - In his least part, and low upon the sand - His small head lay, wrinkled, a flaccid bag, - Set with two jewels of green fire, the eyes - That had not slept since making of the world. - Whence grew I bold to gaze into such eyes? - Thus gazing each conceived the other’s thought, - Aware how each read each; the Serpent mused, - “Are all the giants dead, a long time dead, - Born of the broad-hipped women, grave and tall, - In whom God’s sons poured a celestial seed? - A long time dead, whose great deeds filled the earth - With clamour as of beaten shields, all dead, - And Cush and Canaan, Mizraim and Phut, - And the boy Nimrod storming through large lands - Like earthquake through tower’d cities, these depart, - And what remains? Behold, the elvish thing - We raised from out his swoon, this now is man. - The pretty vermin! helpless to conceive - Of great, pure, simple sin, and vast revolt; - The world escapes from deluge these new days, - We build no Babels with the Shinar slime; - What would this thin-legged grasshopper with us, - The Dread Ones? Rather let him skip, and chirp - Hymns in his smooth grass to his novel God, - ‘The Father’; here no bland paternity - He meets, but visible Might blocks the broad sky, - My great Co-mate, the Ancient. Hence! avoid! - What wouldst thou prying on our solitude? - For thee my sly small cousin may suffice, - And sly small bites about the heart and groin; - Hence to his haunt! Yet ere thou dost depart - I mark thee with my sign.” - - A vibrant tongue - Had in a moment pricked upon my brow - The mystic mark of brotherhood, Cain’s brand, - But when I read within his eyes the words - “Hence” and “avoid,” dim horror seized on me, - And rising, with both arms stretched forth, and head - Bowed earthward, and not turning once I ran; - And what things saw me as I raced by them, - What hands plucked at my dress, what light wings brushed - My face, what waters in my hearing seethed, - I know not, till I reached familiar lands, - And saw grey clouds slow gathering for the night, - Above sweet fields, whence the June mowers strolled - Homewards with girls who chatted down the lane. - - Is this the secret lying round the world? - A Dread One watching with unlidded eye - Slow century after century from his heaven, - And that great lord, the worm of the red plain, - Cold in mid sun, strenuous, untameable, - Coiling his solitary strength along - Slow century after century, conscious each - How in the life of his Arch-enemy - He lives, how ruin of one confounds the pair,-- - Is this the eternal dual mystery? - One Source of being, Light, or Love, or Lord, - Whose shadow is the brightness of the world, - Still let thy dawns and twilights glimmer pure - In flow perpetual from hill to hill, - Still bathe us in thy tides of day and night; - Wash me at will a weed in thy free wave, - Drenched in the sun and air and surge of Thee. - - - - -THE MORNING STAR - - -I - - Backward betwixt the gates of steepest heaven, - Faint from the insupportable advance - Of light confederate in the East, is driven - - The starry chivalry, and helm and lance, - Which held keen ward upon the shadowy plain, - Yield to the stress and stern predominance - - Of Day; no wanderer morning-moon awane - Floats through dishevelled clouds, exanimate, - In disarray, with gaze of weariest pain; - - O thou, sole Splendour, sprung to vindicate - Night’s ancient fame, thou in dread strife serene, - With back-blown locks, joyous yet desperate - - Flamest; from whose pure ardour Earth doth win - High passionate pangs, thou radiant paladin. - - -II - - Nay; strife must cease in song: far-sent and clear - Piercing the silence of this summer morn - I hear thy swan-song rapturous; I hear - - Life’s ecstasy; sharp cries of flames which burn - With palpitating joy, intense and pure, - From altars of the universe, and yearn - - In eager spires; and under these the sure - Strong ecstasy of Death, in phrase too deep - For thought, too bright for dim investiture. - - Of mortal words, and sinking more than sleep - Down holier places of the soul’s delight; - Cry, through the quickening dawn, to us who creep - - ’Mid dreams and dews of the dividing night, - Thou searcher of the darkness and the light. - - -III - - I seek thee, and thou art not; for the sky - Has drawn thee in upon her breast to be - A hidden talisman, while light soars high, - - Virtuous to make wide heaven’s tranquillity - More tranquil, and her steadfast truth more true, - Yea even her overbowed infinity. - - Of tenderness, when o’er wet woods the blue - Shows past white edges of a sundering cloud, - More infinitely tender. Day is new, - - Night ended; how the hills are overflowed - With spaciousness of splendour, and each tree - Is touched; only not yet the lark is loud, - - Since viewless still o’er city and plain and sea - Vibrates thy spirit-wingèd ecstasy. - - - - -A CHILD’S NOONDAY SLEEP - - - Because you sleep, my child, with breathing light - As heave of the June sea, - Because your lips soft petals dewy-bright - Dispart so tenderly; - - Because the slumbrous warmth is on your cheek - Up from the hushed heart sent, - And in this midmost noon when winds are weak - No cloud lies more content; - - Because nor song of bird, nor lamb’s keen call - May reach you sunken deep, - Because your lifted arm I thus let fall - Heavy with perfect sleep; - - Because all will is drawn from you, all power, - And Nature through dark roots - Will hold and nourish you for one sweet hour - Amid her flowers and fruits; - - Therefore though tempests gather, and the gale - Through autumn skies will roar, - Though Earth send up to heaven the ancient wail - Heard by dead Gods of yore; - - Though spectral faiths contend, and for her course - The soul confused must try, - While through the whirl of atoms and of force - Looms an abandoned sky; - - Yet, know I, Peace abides, of earth’s wild things - Centre, and ruling thence; - Behold, a spirit folds her budded wings - In confident innocence. - - - - -IN THE GARDEN - - -I. THE GARDEN - - Past the town’s clamour is a garden full - Of loneness and old greenery; at noon - When birds are hushed, save one dim cushat’s croon, - A ripen’d silence hangs beneath the cool - Great branches; basking roses dream and drop - A petal, and dream still; and summer’s boon - Of mellow grasses, to be levelled soon - By a dew-drenchèd scythe, will hardly stop - At the uprunning mounds of chestnut trees. - Still let me muse in this rich haunt by day, - And know all night in dusky placidness - It lies beneath the summer, while great ease - Broods in the leaves, and every light wind’s stress - Lifts a faint odour down the verdurous way. - - -II. VISIONS - - Here I am slave of visions. When noon heat - Strikes the red walls, and their environ’d air - Lies steep’d in sun; when not a creature dare - Affront the fervour, from my dim retreat - Where woof of leaves embowers a beechen seat, - With chin on palm, and wide-set eyes I stare, - Beyond the liquid quiver and the glare, - Upon fair shapes that move on silent feet. - Those Three strait-robed, and speechless as they pass, - Come often, touch the lute, nor heed me more - Than birds or shadows heed; that naked child - Is dove-like Psyche slumbering in deep grass; - Sleep, sleep,--he heeds thee not, you Sylvan wild - Munching the russet apple to its core. - - -III. AN INTERIOR - - The grass around my limbs is deep and sweet; - Yonder the house has lost its shadow wholly, - The blinds are dropped, and softly now and slowly - The day flows in and floats; a calm retreat - Of tempered light where fair things fair things meet; - White busts and marble Dian make it holy, - Within a niche hangs Dürer’s Melancholy - Brooding; and, should you enter, there will greet - Your sense with vague allurement effluence faint - Of one magnolia bloom; fair fingers draw - From the piano Chopin’s heart-complaint; - Alone, white-robed she sits; a fierce macaw - On the verandah, proud of plume and paint, - Screams, insolent despot, showing beak and claw. - - -IV. THE SINGER - - “That was the thrush’s last good-night,” I thought, - And heard the soft descent of summer rain - In the drooped garden leaves; but hush! again - The perfect iterance,--freer than unsought - Odours of violets dim in woodland ways, - Deeper than coilèd waters laid a-dream - Below mossed ledges of a shadowy stream, - And faultless as blown roses in June days. - Full-throated singer! art thou thus anew - Voiceful to hear how round thyself alone - The enrichèd silence drops for thy delight - More soft than snow, more sweet than honey-dew? - Now cease: the last faint western streak is gone, - Stir not the blissful quiet of the night. - - -V. A SUMMER MOON - - Queen-moon of this enchanted summer night, - One virgin slave companioning thee,--I lie - Vacant to thy possession as this sky - Conquered and calmed by thy rejoicing might; - Swim down through my heart’s deep, thou dewy bright - Wanderer of heaven, till thought must faint and die, - And I am made all thine inseparably, - Resolved into the dream of thy delight. - Ah no! the place is common for her feet, - Not here, not here,--beyond the amber mist, - And breadths of dusky pine, and shining lawn, - And unstirred lake, and gleaming belts of wheat, - She comes upon her Latmos, and has kissed - The sidelong face of blind Endymion. - - -VI. A PEACH - - If any sense in mortal dust remains - When mine has been refined from flower to flower, - Won from the sun all colours, drunk the shower - And delicate winy dews, and gained the gains - Which elves who sleep in airy bells, a-swing - Through half a summer day, for love bestow, - Then in some warm old garden let me grow - To such a perfect, lush, ambrosian thing - As this. Upon a southward-facing wall - I bask, and feel my juices dimly fed - And mellowing, while my bloom comes golden grey: - Keep the wasps from me! but before I fall - Pluck me, white fingers, and o’er two ripe-red - Girl lips O let me richly swoon away! - - -VII. EARLY AUTUMN - - If while I sit flatter’d by this warm sun - Death came to me, and kissed my mouth and brow, - And eyelids which the warm light hovers through, - I should not count it strange. Being half won - By hours that with a tender sadness run, - Who would not softly lean to lips which woo - In the Earth’s grave speech? Nor could it aught undo - Of Nature’s calm observances begun - Still to be here the idle autumn day. - Pale leaves would circle down, and lie unstirr’d - Where’er they fell; the tired wind hither call - Her gentle fellows; shining beetles stray - Up their green courts; and only yon shy bird - A little bolder grow ere evenfall. - - -VIII. LATER AUTUMN - - This is the year’s despair: some wind last night - Utter’d too soon the irrevocable word, - And the leaves heard it, and the low clouds heard; - So a wan morning dawned of sterile light; - Flowers drooped, or showed a startled face and white; - The cattle cowered, and one disconsolate bird - Chirped a weak note; last came this mist and blurred - The hills, and fed upon the fields like blight. - Ah, why so swift despair! There yet will be - Warm noons, the honey’d leavings of the year, - Hours of rich musing, ripest autumn’s core, - And late-heaped fruit, and falling hedge-berry, - Blossoms in cottage-crofts, and yet, once more, - A song, not less than June’s, fervent and clear. - - - - -THE HEROINES - - - - -HELENA - -(_Tenth year of Troy-Siege_) - - - She stood upon the wall of windy Troy, - And lifted high both arms, and cried aloud - With no man near:-- - “Troy-town and glory of Greece - Strive, let the flame aspire, and pride of life - Glow to white heat! Great lords be strong, rejoice, - Lament, know victory, know defeat--then die; - Fair is the living many-coloured play - Of hates and loves, and fair it is to cease, - To cease from these and all Earth’s comely things. - I, Helena, impatient of a couch - Dim-scented, and dark eyes my face had fed, - And soft captivity of circling arms, - Come forth to shed my spirit on you, a wind - And sunlight of commingling life and death. - City and tented plain behold who stands - Betwixt you! Seems she worth a play of swords, - And glad expense of rival hopes and hates? - Have the Gods given a prize which may content, - Who set your games afoot,--no fictile vase, - But a sufficient goblet of great gold, - Embossed with heroes, filled with perfumed wine? - How! doubt ye? Thus I draw the robe aside - And bare the breasts of Helen. - - Yesterday - A mortal maiden I beheld, the light - Tender within her eyes, laying white arms - Around her sire’s mailed breast, and heard her chide - Because his cheek was blood-splashed,--I beheld - And did not wish me her. O, not for this - A God’s blood thronged within my mother’s veins! - For no such tender purpose rose the swan - With ruffled plumes, and hissing in his joy - Flashed up the stream, and held with heavy wings - Leda, and curved the neck to reach her lips, - And stayed, nor left her lightly. It is well - To have quickened into glory one supreme, - Swift hour, the century’s fiery-hearted bloom, - Which falls,--to stand a splendour paramount, - A beacon of high hearts and fates of men, - A flame blown round by clear, contending winds, - Which gladden in the contest and wax strong. - Cities of Greece, fair islands, and Troy town, - Accept a woman’s service; these my hands - Hold not the distaff, ply not at the loom; - I store from year to year no well-wrought web - For daughter’s dowry; wide the web I make, - Fine-tissued, costly as the Gods desire, - Shot with a gleaming woof of lives and deaths, - Inwrought with colours flowerlike, piteous, strange. - Oblivion yields before me: ye winged years - Which make escape from darkness, the red light - Of a wild dawn upon your plumes, I stand - The mother of the stars and winds of heaven, - Your eastern Eos; cry across the storm! - Through me man’s heart grows wider; little town - Asleep in silent sunshine and smooth air, - While babe grew man beneath your girdling towers, - Wake, wonder, lift the eager head alert, - Snake-like, and swift to strike, while altar-flame - Rises for plighted faith with neighbour town - That slept upon the mountain-shelf, and showed - A small white temple in the morning sun. - Oh, ever one way tending you keen prows - Which shear the shadowy waves when stars are faint - And break with emulous cries unto the dawn, - I gaze and draw you onward; splendid names - Lurk in you, and high deeds, and unachieved - Virtues, and house-o’erwhelming crimes, while life - Leaps in sharp flame ere all be ashes grey. - Thus have I willed it ever since the hour - When that great lord, the one man worshipful, - Whose hands had haled the fierce Hippolyta - Lightly from out her throng of martial maids, - Would grace his triumph, strengthen his large joy - With splendour of the swan-begotten child, - Nor asked a ten years’ siege to make acquist - Of all her virgin store. No dream that was,-- - The moonlight in the woods, our singing stream, - Eurotas, the sleek panther at my feet, - And on my heart a hero’s strong right hand. - O draught of love immortal! Dastard world - Too poor for great exchange of soul, too poor - For equal lives made glorious! O too poor - For Theseus and for Helena! - - Yet now - It yields once more a brightness, if no love; - Around me flash the tides, and in my ears - A dangerous melody and piercing-clear - Sing the twin siren-sisters, Death and Life; - I rise and gird my spirit for the close. - - Last night Cassandra cried ‘Ruin, ruin, and ruin!’ - I mocked her not, nor disbelieved; the gloom - Gathers, and twilight takes the unwary world. - Hold me, ye Gods, a torch across the night, - With one long flare blown back o’er tower and town, - Till the last things of Troy complete themselves: - --Then blackness, and the grey dust of a heart.” - - - - -ATALANTA - - - “Milanion, seven years ago this day - You overcame me by a golden fraud, - Traitor, and see I crown your cup with flowers, - With violets and white sorrel from dim haunts,-- - A fair libation--ask you to what God? - To Artemis, to Artemis my Queen. - - Not by my will did you escape the spear - Though piteous I might be for your glad life, - Husband, and for your foolish love: the Gods - Who heard your vows had care of you: I stooped - Half toward the beauty of the shining thing - Through some blind motion of an instant joy,-- - As when our babe reached arms to pluck the moon - A great, round fruit between dark apple-boughs,-- - And half, marking your wile, to fling away - Needless advantage, conquer carelessly, - And pass the goal with one light finger-touch - Just while you leaned forth the bent body’s length - To reach it. Could I guess I strove with three, - With Aphrodite, Eros, and the third-- - Milanion? There upon the maple-post - Your right hand rested: the event had sprung - Complete from darkness, and possessed the world - Ere yet conceived: upon the edge of doom - I stood with foot arrested and blind heart, - Aware of nought save some unmastered fate - And reddening neck and brow. I heard you cry - ‘Judgment, both umpires!’ saw you stand erect, - Panting, and with a face so glad, so great - It shone through all my dull bewilderment - A beautiful uncomprehended joy, - One perfect thing and bright in a strange world. - But when I looked to see my father shamed, - A-choke with rage and words of proper scorn, - He nodded, and the beard upon his breast - Pulled twice or thrice, well-pleased, and laughed aloud, - And while the wrinkles gathered round his eyes - Cried ‘Girl, well done! My brother’s son retain - Shrewd head upon your shoulders! Maidens ho! - A veil for Atalanta, and a zone - Male fingers may unclasp! Lead home the bride, - Prepare the nuptial chamber!’ At his word - My life turned round: too great the shame had grown - With all men leagued to mock me. Could I stay, - Confront the vulgar gladness of the world - At high emprise defeated, a free life - Tethered, light dimmed, a virtue singular - Subdued to ways of common use and wont? - Must I become the men’s familiar jest, - The comment of the matron-guild? I turned, - I sought the woods, sought silence, solitude, - Green depths divine, where the soft-footed ounce - Lurks, and the light deer comes and drinks and goes, - Familiar paths in which the mind might gain - Footing, and haply from a vantage-ground - Drive this new fate an arm’s-length, hand’s-breadth off - A little while, till certitude of sight - And strength returned. - - At evening I went back, - Walked past the idle groups at gossipry, - Sought you, and laid my hand upon your wrist, - Drew you apart, and with no shaken voice - Spoke, while the swift, hard strokes my heart out-beat - Seemed growing audible, ‘Milanion, - I am your wife for freedom and fair deeds: - Choose: am I such an one a man could love? - What need you? Some soft song to soothe your life, - Or a clear cry at daybreak?’ And I ceased. - How deemed you that first moment? That the Gods - Had changed my heart? That I since morn had grown - Haunter of Aphrodite’s golden shrine, - Had kneeled before the victress, vowed my vow, - Besought her pardon, ‘Aphrodite, grace! - Accept the rueful Atalanta’s gifts, - Rose wreaths and snow-white doves’? - - In the dim woods - There is a sacred place, a solitude - Within their solitude, a heart of strength - Within their strength. The rocks are heaped around - A goblet of great waters ever fed - By one swift stream which flings itself in air - With all the madness, mirth and melody - Of twenty rivulets gathered in the hills - Where might escapes in gladness. Here the trees - Strike deeper roots into the heart of earth, - And hold more high communion with the heavens; - Here in the hush of noon the silence broods - More full of vague divinity; the light - Slow-changing and the shadows as they shift - Seem characters of some inscrutable law, - And one who lingers long will almost hope - The secret of the world may be surprised - Ere he depart. It is a haunt beloved - Of Artemis, the echoing rocks have heard - Her laughter and her lore, and the brown stream - Flashed, smitten by the splendour of her limbs. - Hither I came; here turned, and dared confront - Pursuing thoughts; here held my life at gaze, - If ruined at least to clear loose wrack away, - Study its lines of bare dismantlement, - And shape a strict despair. With fixed hard lips, - Dry-eyed, I set my face against the stream - To deal with fate; the play of woven light - Gleaming and glancing on the rippled flood - Grew to a tyranny; and one visioned face - Would glide into the circle of my sight, - Would glide and pass away, so glad, so great - The imminent joy it brought seemed charged with fear. - I rose, and paced from trunk to trunk, brief track - This way and that; at least my will maintained - Her law upon my limbs; they needs must turn - At the appointed limit. A keen cry - Rose from my heart--‘Toils of the world grow strong, - ‘Yield strength, yield strength to rend them to my hands; - ‘Be thou apparent, Queen! in dubious ways - ‘Lo my feet fail; cry down the forest glade, - ‘Pierce with thy voice the tangle and dark boughs, - ‘Call, and I follow thee.’ - - What things made up - Memorial for the Presence of the place - Thenceforth to hold? Only the torrent’s leap - Endlessly vibrating, monotonous rhythm - Of the swift footstep pacing to and fro, - Only a soul’s reiterated cry - Under the calm, controlling, ancient trees, - And tutelary ward and watch of heaven - Felt through steep inlets which the upper airs - Blew wider. - - On the grass at last I lay - Seized by a peace divine, I know not how; - Passive, yet never so possessed of power, - Strong, yet content to feel not use my strength - Sustained a babe upon the breasts of life - Yet armed with adult will, a shining spear. - O strong deliverance of the larger law - Which strove not with the less! impetuous youth - Caught up in ampler force of womanhood! - Co-operant ardours of joined lives! the calls - Of heart to heart in chase of strenuous deeds! - Virgin and wedded freedom not disjoined, - And loyal married service to my Queen! - - Husband, have lesser gains these seven good years - Been yours because you chose no gracious maid - Whose hands had woven in the women’s room - Many fair garments, while her dreaming heart - Had prescience of the bridal; one whose claims, - Tender exactions feminine, had pleased - Fond husband, one whose gentle gifts had pleased, - Soft playful touches, little amorous words, - Untutored thoughts that widened up toward yours, - With trustful homage of uplifted eyes, - And sweetest sorrows lightly comforted? - Have we two challenged each the other’s heart - Too highly? Have our joys been all too large, - No gleaming gems on finger or on neck - A man may turn and touch caressingly, - But ampler than this heaven we stand beneath-- - Wide wings of Presences august? Our lives, - Were it not better they had stood apart - A little space, letting the sweet sense grow - Of distance bridged by love? Had that full calm,-- - I may not question since you call it true,-- - Found in some rightness of a woman’s will, - Been gladder through perturbing touch of doubt, - By brief unrest made exquisitely aware - Of all its dear possession? Have our eyes - Met with too calm directness--soul to soul - Turned with the unerroneous long regard, - Until no stuff remains for dreams to weave, - Nought but unmeasured faithfulness, clear depths - Pierced by the sun, and yielding to the eye - Which searches, yet not fathoms? Did my lips - Lay on your lips too great a pledge of love - With awe too rapturous? Teach me how I fail, - Recount what things your life has missed through me, - Appease me with new needs; my strength is weak - Trembling toward perfect service.” - - In her eyes - Tears stood and utterance ceased. Wondering the boy - Parthenopœus stopped his play and gazed. - - - - -EUROPA - - - “He stood with head erect fronting the herd; - At the first sight of him I knew the God - And had no fear. The grass is sweet and long - Up the east land backed by a pale blue heaven: - Grey, shining gravel shelves toward the sea - Which sang and sparkled; between these he stood, - Beautiful, with imperious head, firm foot, - And eyes resolved on present victory, - Which swerved not from the full acquist of joy, - Calmly triumphant. Did I see at all - The creamy hide, deep dewlap, little horns, - Or hear the girls describe them? I beheld - Zeus, and the law of my completed life. - Therefore the ravishment of some great calm - Possessed me, and I could not basely start - Or scream; if there was terror in my breast - It was to see the inevitable bliss - In prone descent from heaven; apart I lived - Held in some solitude, intense and clear, - Even while amid the frolic girls I stooped - And praised the flowers we gathered, they and I, - Pink-streaked convolvulus the warm sand bears, - Orchids, dark poppies with the crumpled leaf, - And reeds and giant rushes from a pond - Where the blue dragon-fly shimmers and shifts. - All these were notes of music, harmonies - Fashioned to underlie a resonant song, - Which sang how no more days of flower-culling - Little Europa must desire; henceforth - The large needs of the world resumed her life, - So her least joy must be no trivial thing, - But ordered as the motion of the stars, - Or grand incline of sun-flower to the sun. - - By this the God was near; my soul waxed strong, - And wider orbed the vision of the world - As fate drew nigh. He stooped, all gentleness, - Inviting touches of the tender hands, - And wore the wreaths they twisted round his horns - In lordly-playful wise, me all this while - Summoning by great mandates at my heart, - Which silenced every less authentic call, - Away, away, from girlhood, home, sweet friends, - The daily dictates of my mother’s will, - Agenor’s cherishing hand, and all the ways - Of the calm household. I would fain have felt - Some ruth to part from these, the tender ties - Severing with thrills of passion. Can I blame - My heart for light surrender of things dear, - And hardness of a little selfish soul? - Nay: the decree of joy was over me, - There was the altar, I, the sacrifice - Foredoomed to life, not death; the victim bound - Looked for the stroke, the world’s one fact for her, - The blissful consummation: straight to this - Her course had tended from the hour of birth. - Even till this careless morn of maidenhood - A sudden splendour changed to life’s high noon: - For this my mother taught me gracious things, - My father’s thoughts had dealt with me, for this - The least flower blossomed, the least cloud went by, - All things conspired for this; the glad event - Summed my full past and held it, as the fruit - Holds the fair sequence of the bud and flower - In soft matureness. - - Now he bent the knee; - I never doubted of my part to do, - Nor lingered idly, since to veil command - In tender invitation pleased my lord; - I sat, and round his neck one arm I laid - Beyond all chance secure. Whether my weight - Or the soft pressure of the encircling arm - Quickened in him some unexpected bliss - I know not, but his flight was one steep rush. - O uncontrollable and joyous rage! - O splendour of the multitudinous sea! - Swift foam about my feet, the eager stroke - Of the strong swimmer, new sea-creatures brave, - And uproar of blown conch, and shouting lips - Under the open heaven; till Crete rose fair - With steadfast shining peak, and promontories. - - Shed not a leaf, O plane-tree, not a leaf, - Let sacred shadow, and slumbrous sound remain - Alway, where Zeus looked down upon his bride.” - - - - -ANDROMEDA - - - “This is my joy--that when my soul had wrought - Her single victory over fate and fear, - He came, who was deliverance. At the first, - Though the rough-bearded fellows bruised my wrists - Holding them backwards while they drove the bolts, - And stared around my body, workman-like, - I did not argue nor bewail; but when - The flash and dip of equal oars had passed, - And I was left a thing for sky and sea - To encircle, gaze on, wonder at, not save-- - The clear resolve which I had grasped and held, - Slipped as a dew-drop slips from some flower-cup - O’erweighted, and I longed to cry aloud - One sharp, great cry, and scatter the fixed will, - In fond self-pity. Have you watched night-long, - Above a face from which the life recedes, - And seen death set his seal before the dawn? - You do not shriek and clasp the hands, but just - When morning finds the world once more all good - And ready for wave’s leap and swallow’s flight, - There comes a drift from undiscovered flowers, - A drone of sailing bee, a dance of light - Among the awakened leaves, a touch, a tang, - A nameless nothing, and the world turns round, - And the full soul runs over, and tears flow, - And it is seen a piteous thing to die. - So fared it there with me; the ripple ran - Crisp to my feet; the tufted sea-pink bloomed - From a cleft rock, I saw the insects drop - From blossom into blossom; and the wide - Intolerable splendour of the sea, - Calm in a liquid hush of summer morn, - Girdled me, and no cloud relieved the sky. - I had refused to drink the proffered wine - Before they bound me, and my strength was less - Than needful: yet the cry escaped not, yet - My purpose had not fallen abroad in ruin; - Only the perfect knowledge I had won - Of things which fate decreed deserted me, - The vision I had held of life and death - Was blurred by some vague mist of piteousness, - Nor could I lean upon a steadfast will. - Therefore I closed both eyes resolved to search - Backwards across the abysm, and find Death there, - And hold him with my hand, and scan his face - By my own choice, and read his strict intent - On lip and brow,--not hunted to his feet - And cowering slavewise; ‘Death,’ I whispered, ‘Death,’ - Calling him whom I needed: and he came. - - Wherefore record the travail of the soul - Through darkness to grey light, the cloudy war, - The austere calm, the bitter victory? - It seemed that I had mastered fate, and held, - Still with shut eyes, the passion of my heart - Compressed, and cast the election of my will - Into that scale made heavy with the woe - Of all the world, and fair relinquished lives. - Suddenly the broad sea was vibrated, - And the air shaken with confused noise - Not like the steadfast plash and creak of oars, - And higher on my foot the ripple slid. - The monster was abroad beneath the sun. - This therefore was the moment--could my soul - Sustain her trial? And the soul replied - A swift, sure ‘Yes’: yet must I look forth once, - Confront my anguish, nor drop blindly down - From horror into horror: and I looked-- - O thou deliverance, thou bright victory - I saw thee, and was saved! The middle air - Was cleft by thy impatience of revenge, - Thy zeal to render freedom to things bound: - The conquest sitting on thy brow, the joy - Of thy unerring flight became to me - Nowise mere hope, but full enfranchisement. - A sculptor of the isles has carved the deed - Upon a temple’s frieze; the maiden chained - Lifts one free arm across her eyes to hide - The terror of the moment, and her head - Sideways averted writhes the slender neck: - While with a careless grace in flying curve, - And glad like Hermes in his aery poise, - Toward the gaping throat a youth extends - The sword held lightly. When to sacrifice - I pass at morn with my tall Sthenelos, - I smile, but do not speak. No! when my gaze - First met him I was saved; because the world - Could hold so brave a creature I was free: - Here one had come with not my father’s eyes - Which darkened to the clamour of the crowd, - And gave a grieved assent; not with the eyes - Of anguish-stricken Cassiopeia, dry - And staring as I passed her to the boat. - Was not the beauty of his strength and youth - Warrant for many good things in the world - Which could not be so poor while nourishing him? - What faithlessness of heart could countervail - The witness of that brow? What dastard chains? - Did he not testify of sovereign powers - O’ermatching evil, awful charities - Which save and slay, the terror of clear joy, - Unquenchable intolerance of ill, - Order subduing chaos, beauty pledged - To conquest of all foul deformities? - And was there need to turn my head aside, - I, who had one sole thing to do, no more, - To watch the deed? I know the careless grace - My Perseus wears in manage of the steed, - Or shooting the swift disc: not such the mode - Of that victorious moment of descent - When the large tranquil might his soul contains - Was gathered for a swift abolishment - Of proud brute-tyranny. He seemed in air - A shining spear which hisses in its speed - And smites through boss and breastplate. Did he see - Andromeda, who never glanced at her - But set his face against the evil thing? - I know not; yet one truth I may not doubt - How ere the wallowing monster blind and vast - Turned a white belly to the sun, he stood - Beside me with some word of comfort strong - Nourishing the heart like choral harmonies. - O this was then my joy, that I could give - A soul not saved from wretched female fright, - Or anarchy of self-abandoned will, - But one which had achieved deliverance, - And wrought with shaping hands among the stuff - Which fate presented. Had I shrunk from Death? - Might I not therefore unashamed accept-- - In a calm wonder of unfaltering joy-- - Life, the fair gift he laid before my feet? - Somewhat a partner of his deed I seemed; - His equal? Nay, yet upright at his side - Scarce lower by a head and helmet’s height - Touching my Perseus’ shoulder. - - He has wrought - Great deeds. Athena loves to honour him; - And I have borne him sons. Look, yonder goes - Lifting the bow, Eleios, the last-born.” - - - - -EURYDICE - - - “Now must this waste of vain desire have end: - Fetter these thoughts which traverse to and fro - The road which has no issue! We are judged. - O wherefore could I not uphold his heart? - Why claimed I not some partnership with him - In the strict test, urging my right of wife? - How have I let him fall? I, knowing thee - My Orpheus, bounteous giver of rich gifts, - Not all inured in practice of the will, - Worthier than I, yet weaker to sustain - An inner certitude against the blank - And silence of the senses; so no more - My heart helps thine, and henceforth there remains - No gift to thee from me, who would give all, - Only the memory of me growing faint - Until I seem a thing incredible, - Some high, sweet dream, which was not, nor could be. - Ay, and in idle fields of asphodel - Must it not be that I shall fade indeed, - No memory of me, but myself; these hands - Ceasing from mastery and use, my thoughts - Losing distinction in the vague, sweet air, - The heart’s swift pulses slackening to the sob - Of the forgetful river, with no deed - Pre-eminent to dare and to achieve, - No joy for climbing to, no clear resolve - From which the soul swerves never, no ill thing - To rid the world of, till I am no more - Eurydice, and shouldst thou at thy time - Descend, and hope to find a helpmate here, - I were grown slavish, like the girls men buy - Soft-bodied, foolish-faced, luxurious-eyed, - And meet to be another thing than wife. - - Would that it had been thus: when the song ceased - And laughterless Aidoneus lifted up - The face, and turned his grave persistent eyes - Upon the singer, I had forward stepped - And spoken--‘King! he has wrought well, nor failed, - Who ever heard divine large song like this, - Keener than sunbeam, wider than the air, - And shapely as the mould of faultless fruit? - And now his heart upon the gale of song - Soars with wide wing, and he is strong for flight, - Not strong for treading with the careful foot: - Grant me the naked trial of the will - Divested of all colour, scents and song: - The deed concerns the wife; I claim my share.’ - O then because Persephone was by - With shadowed eyes when Orpheus sang of flowers, - He would have yielded. And I stepping forth - From the clear radiance of the singer’s heights, - Made calm through vision of his wider truth, - And strengthened by deep beauty to hold fast - The presences of the invisible things, - Had led the way. I know how in that mood - He leans on me as babe on mother’s breast, - Nor could he choose but let his foot descend - Where mine left lightest pressure; so are passed - The brute three-visaged, and the flowerless ways, - Nor have I turned my head; and now behold - The greyness of remote terrestrial light, - And I step swifter. Does he follow still? - O surely since his will embraces mine - Closer than clinging hand can clasp a hand: - No need to turn and dull with visible proof - The certitude that soul relies on soul! - So speed we to the day; and now we touch - Warm grass, and drink the Sun. O Earth, O Sun, - Not you I need, but Orpheus’ breast, and weep - The gladdest tears that ever woman shed, - And may be weak awhile, and need to know - The sustenance and comfort of his arms. - - Self-foolery of dreams; come bitter truth. - Yet he has sung at least a perfect song - While the Gods heard him, and I stood beside - O not applauding, but at last content, - Fearless for him, and calm through perfect joy, - Seeing at length his foot upon the heights - Of highest song, by me discerned from far, - Now suddenly attained in confident - And errorless ascension. Did I ask - The lesser joy, lips’ touch and clasping arms, - Or was not this salvation? For I urged - Always, in jealous service to his art, - ‘Now thou hast told their secrets to the trees - Of which they muse through lullèd summer nights; - Thou hast gazed downwards in the formless gulf - Of the brute-mind, and canst control the will - Of snake, and brooding panther fiery-eyed, - And lark in middle heaven: leave these behind! - And let some careless singer of the fields - Set to the shallow sound of cymbal-stroke - The Faun a-dance; some less true-tempered soul, - Which cannot shape to harmony august - The splendour and the tumult of the world, - Inflame to frenzy of delirious rage - The Mœnad’s breast; yea, and the hearts of men, - Smoke of whose fire upcurls from little roofs, - Let singers of the wine-cup and the roast, - The whirling spear, the toy-like chariot-race, - And bickering counsel of contending kings - Delight them: leave thou these; sing thou for Gods.’ - And thou hast sung for Gods; and I have heard. - - I shall not fade beneath this sunless sky, - Mixed in the wandering, ineffectual tribe; - For these have known no moment when the soul - Stood vindicated, laying sudden hands - On immortality of joy, and love - Which sought not, saw not, knew not, could not know - The instruments of sense; I shall not fade. - Yea, and thy face detains me evermore - Within the realm of light. Love, wherefore blame - Thy heart because it sought me? Could the years’ - Whole sum of various fashioned happiness - Exceed the measure of that eager face - Importunate and pure, still lit with song, - Turning from song to comfort of my love, - And thirsty for my presence? We are saved! - Yield Heracles, thou brawn and thews of Zeus, - Yield up thy glory on Thessalian ground, - Competitor of Death in single strife! - The lyre methinks outdoes the club and fist, - And beauty’s ingress the outrageous force - Of tyrant though beneficent; supreme - This feat remains, a memory shaped for Gods. - - Nor canst thou wholly lose me from thy life; - Still I am with thee; still my hand keeps thine; - Now I restrain from too intemperate grief - Being a portion of the thoughts that claim - Thy service; now I urge with that good pain - Which wastes and feeds the spirit, a desire - Unending; now I lurk within thy will - As vigour; now am gleaming through the world - As beauty; and if greater thoughts must lay - Their solemn light on thee, outshining mine, - And in some far faint-gleaming hour of Hell - I stand unknown and muffled by the boat - Leaning an eager ear to catch some speech - Of thee, and if some comer tell aloud - How Orpheus who had loved Eurydice - Was summoned by the Gods to fill with joy - And clamour of celestial song the courts - Of bright Olympus,--I, with pang of pride - And pain dissolved in rapture, will return - Appeased, with sense of conquest stern and high.” - - But while she spoke, upon a chestnut trunk - Fallen from cliffs of Thracian Rhodope - Sat Orpheus, for he deemed himself alone, - And sang. But bands of wild-eyed women roamed - The hills, whom he had passed with calm disdain. - And now the shrilling Berecynthian pipe - Sounded, blown horn, and frantic female cries: - He ceased from song and looked for the event. - - - - -BY THE SEA - - -I. THE ASSUMPTION - - Why would the open sky not be denied - Possession of me, when I sat to-day - Rock-couched, and round my feet the soft slave lay, - My singing Sea, dark-bosom’d, dusky-eyed? - She breathed low mystery of song, she sighed, - And stirred herself, and set lithe limbs to play - In blandishing serpent-wreaths, and would betray - An anklet gleaming, or a swaying side. - Why could she not detain me? Why must I - Devote myself to the dread Heaven, adore - The spacious pureness, the large ardour? why - Sprang forth my heart as though all wanderings - Had end? To what last bliss did I upsoar - Beating on indefatigable wings? - - -II. THE ARTIST’S WAITING - - Tender impatience quickening, quickening; - O heart within me that art grown a sea, - How vexed with longing all thy live waves be, - How broken with desire! A ceaseless wing - O’er every green sea-ridge goes fluttering, - And there are cries and long reluctancy, - Swift ardours, and the clash of waters free, - Fain for the coming of some perfect Thing. - Emerge white Wonder, be thou born a Queen! - Let shine the splendours of thy loveliness - From the brow’s radiance to the equal poise - Of calm, victorious feet; let thy serene - Command go forth; replenish with strong joys - The spaces and the sea-deeps measureless. - - -III. COUNSELLORS - - Who are chief counsellors of me? Who know - My heart’s desire and every secret thing? - Three of one fellowship: the encompassing - Strong Sea, who mindful of Earth’s ancient woe - Still surges on with swift, undaunted flow - That no sad shore should lack his comforting; - And next the serene Sky, whether he ring - With flawless blue a wilderness, or show - Tranced in the Twilight’s arms his fair child-star; - Third of the three, eldest and lordliest, - Love, all whose wings are wide above my head, - Whose eyes are clearer heavens, whose lips have said - Low words more rare than the quired sea-songs are,-- - O Love, high things and stern thou counsellest. - - -IV. EVENING - - Light ebbs from off the Earth; the fields are strange, - Dusk, trackless, tenantless; now the mute sky - Resigns itself to Night and Memory, - And no wind will yon sunken clouds derange, - No glory enrapture them; from cot or grange - The rare voice ceases; one long-breathèd sigh, - And steeped in summer sleep the world must lie; - All things are acquiescing in the change. - Hush! while the vaulted hollow of the night - Deepens, what voice is this the sea sends forth, - Disconsolate iterance, a passionless moan? - Ah! now the Day is gone, and tyrannous Light, - And the calm presence of fruit-bearing Earth: - Cry, Sea! it is thy hour; thou art alone. - - -V. JOY - - Spring-tides of Pleasure in the blood, keen thrill - Of eager nerves,--but ended as a dream; - Look! the wind quickens, and the long waves gleam - Shoreward, and all this deep noon hour will fill - Each lone sea-cave with mirth immeasurable, - Huge sport of Ocean’s brood; yet eve’s red sky - Fades o’er spent waters, weltering sullenly, - The dank piled weed, the sand-waste grey and still. - Sad Pleasure in the moon’s control! But Joy - Is stable; is discovered law; the birth - Of dreadful light; life’s one imperative way; - The rigour hid in song; flowers’ strict employ - Which turn to meet their sun; the roll of Earth - Swift and perpetual through the night and day. - - -VI. OCEAN - - More than bare mountains ’neath a naked sky, - Or star-enchanted hollows of the night - When clouds are riven, or the most sacred light - Of summer dawns, art thou a mystery - And awe and terror and delight, O sea! - Our Earth is simple-hearted, sad to-day - Beneath the hush of snow, next morning gay - Because west-winds have promised to the lea - Violets and cuckoo-buds; and sweetly these - Live innocent lives, each flower in its green field, - Joying as children in sun, air, and sleep. - But thou art terrible, with the unrevealed - Burden of dim lamentful prophecies, - And thy lone life is passionate and deep. - - -VII. NEWS FOR LONDON - - Whence may I glean a just return, my friend, - For tidings of your great world hither borne? - What garbs of new opinion men have worn - I wot not, nor what fame world-without-end - Sprouted last night, nor know I to contend - For Irving or the Italian; but forlorn - In this odd angle of the isle from morn - Till eve, nor sow, nor reap, nor get, nor spend. - Yet have I heard the sea-gulls scream for glee - Treading the drenched rock-ridges, and the gale - Hiss over tremulous heath-bells, while the bee - Driven sidelong quested low; and I have seen - The live sea-hollows, and moving mounds grey-green, - And watched the flying foam-bow flush and fail. - - - - -AMONG THE ROCKS - - - Never can we be strangers, you and I, - Nor quite disown our mysteries of kin, - Grey Sea-rocks, since I sat an hour to-day - Companion of the Ocean and of you. - I, sensitive soft flesh a thorn invades, - The light breath of a rose can win aside, - Flesh fashioned to be hourly tried and thrill’d, - Delighted, tortured, to betray whose ward - The unready heart is ruler, still surprised, - With emissary flushes swift and false, - And tremulous to touches of the stars. - You, spiny ridges of the land, rude backs, - Clawless and wingless, half-created things, - Monsters at ease before the sun and sea, - Untamed, unshrinking, unpersuadable, - My kindred. - - For the wide-delivering womb - Which casts abroad a mammoth as a man, - And still conceals the new and better birth, - Bore me and you. Old parents of the Sphinx - What words primeval murmured in my ears - To-day between the lapping of the waves? - What recognitions flashed and disappeared? - What rare faint touches passed of sympathy - From you to me, from me to you? What sense - Of the ancestral things shadowed the heart, - Cloud-like, and with the pleasure of a cloud. - Therefore I know from henceforth that the shrill - Short crying of the sea-lark when his feet - Touch where the wave slips off the shining sand - Pierces you; and the wide and luminous air - Impregnate with sharp sea smells is to you - A passion and allurement; and the sun - At mid-day loads your sense with drowsy warmth, - And in the waver and echo of your caves, - You cherish memories of the billowy chaunt, - And ponder its dim prophecy. - - And I,-- - Lo here I strike upon the granite too, - Something is here austere and obdurate - As you are, something rugged and untamed. - A strength behind the will. I am not all - The shapely, agile creature named a man, - So artful, with the quick-conceiving brain, - Nerve-network, and the hand to grasp and hold, - Most dexterous of kinds that wage the strife - Of being through the years. I am not all - This creature with the various heart, alive - To curious joys, rare anguish, skilled in shames, - Prides, hatreds, loves, fears, frauds, the heart which turns - A sudden venomous asp, the heart which bleeds - The red, great drops of glad self-sacrifice. - Pierce below these and seek the primal layer! - Behind Apollo loom the Earth-born Ones, - Half-god, half-brute; behind this symmetry, - This versatility of heart and brain - A strength abides, sustaining thought and love, - Untamed, unshrinking, unpersuadable, - At ease before the powers of Earth and Heaven, - Equal to any, of no younger years, - Calm as the greatest, haughty as the best, - Of imprescriptible authority. - - Down upon you I sink, and leave myself, - My vain, frail self, and find repose on you, - Prime Force, whether amassed through myriad years - From dear accretions of dead ancestry, - Or ever welling from the source of things - In undulation vast and unperceived, - Down upon you I sink and lose myself! - - My child that shouts and races on the sand - Your cry restores me. Have I been with Pan, - Kissing the hoofs of his goat-majesty? - You come, no granite of the nether earth, - Bright sea-flower rather, shining foam that flies, - Yet sweet as blossom of our inland fields. - - - - -TO A YEAR - - - Fly, Year, not backward down blind gulfs of night, - Thick with the swarm of miscreated things: - Forth, flying year, through calms and broader light, - Clear-eyed, strong-bosom’d year, on strenuous wings; - Bearing a song more high-intoned, more holy - Than the wild Swan’s melodious melancholy, - More rapturous than the atom lark outflings. - - I follow on slow foot and unsubdued: - Have I not heard thy cry across the wind? - Not seen thee, Slayer of the serpent brood,-- - Error, and doubt, and death, and anguish blind? - I follow, I shall know thee by thy plumes - Flame-tipped, when on that morn of conquered tombs, - I praise amidst my years the doom assigned. - - - - -A SONG OF THE NEW DAY - - - The tender Sorrows of the twilight leave me, - And shall I want the fanning of smooth wings? - Shall I not miss sweet sorrows? Will it grieve me - To hear no cooing from soft dove-like things? - - Let Evening hear them! O wide Dawn uprisen, - Know me all thine; and ye, whose level flight - Has pierced the drear hours and the cloudy prison, - Cry for the pathless spaces and the light! - - - - -SWALLOWS - - - Wide fields of air left luminous, - Though now the uplands comprehend - How the sun’s loss is ultimate: - The silence grows; but still to us - From yon air-winnowing breasts elate - The tiny shrieks of glee descend. - - Deft wings, each moment is resigned - Some touch of day, some pulse of light, - While yet in poised, delicious curve, - Ecstatic doublings down the wind, - Light dash and dip and sidelong swerve, - You try each dainty trick of flight. - - Will not your airy glee relent - At all? The aimless frolic cease? - Know ye no touch of quelling pain, - Nor joy’s more strict admonishment, - No tender awe at day-light’s wane, - Ye slaves of delicate caprice? - - Hush, once again that cry intense! - High-venturing spirits have your will! - Urge the last freak, prolong your glee, - Keen voyagers, while still the immense - Sea-spaces haunt your memory, - With zests and pangs ineffable. - - Not in the sunshine of old woods - Ye won your warrant to be gay - By duteous, sweet observances, - Who dared through darkening solitudes, - And ’mid the hiss of alien seas, - The larger ordinance obey. - - - - -MEMORIALS OF TRAVEL - - -I. COACHING - -(_In Scotland_) - - - Where have I been this perfect summer day, - --Or _fortnight_ is it, since I rose from bed, - Devour’d that kippered fish, the oatmeal bread, - And mounted to this box? O bowl away - Swift stagers through the dusk, I will not say - “Enough,” nor care where I have been or be, - Nor know one name of hill, or lake, or lea, - Or moor, or glen! Were not the clouds at play - Nameless among the hills, and fair as dreams? - On such a day we must love things not words, - And memory take or leave them as they are. - On such a day! What unimagined streams - Are in the world, how many haunts of birds, - What fields and flowers,--and what an evening Star! - - -II. IN A MOUNTAIN PASS - -(_In Scotland_) - - To what wild blasts of tyrannous harmony - Uprose these rocky walls, mass threatening mass, - Dusk, shapeless shapes, around a desolate pass? - What deep heart of the ancient hills set free - The passion, the desire, the destiny - Of this lost stream? Yon clouds that break and form, - Light vanward squadrons of the joyous storm, - They gather hither from what untrack’d sea? - Primeval kindred! here the mind regains - Its vantage ground against the world; here thought - Wings up the silent waste of air on broad - Undaunted pinion; man’s imperial pains - Are ours, and visiting fears, and joy unsought, - Native resolve, and partnership with God. - - -III. THE CASTLE - -(_In Scotland_) - - The tenderest ripple touched and touched the shore; - The tenderest light was in the western sky;-- - Its one soft phrase, closing reluctantly, - The sea articulated o’er and o’er - To comfort all tired things; and one might pore, - Till mere oblivion took the heart and eye, - On that slow-fading, amber radiancy - Past the long levels of the ocean-floor. - A turn,--the castle fronted me, four-square, - Holding its seaward crag, abrupt, intense - Against the west, an apparition bold - Of naked human will; I stood aware, - With sea and sky, of powers unowned of sense, - Presences awful, vast, and uncontrolled. - - -IV. Άισθητιχή φαντασία - -(_In Ireland_) - - The sound is in my ears of mountain streams! - I cannot close my lids but some grey rent - Of wildered rock, some water’s clear descent - In shattering crystal, pine-trees soft as dreams - Waving perpetually, the sudden gleams - Of remote sea, a dear surprise of flowers, - Some grace or wonder of to-day’s long hours - Straightway possesses the moved sense, which teems - With fantasy unbid. O fair, large day! - The unpractised sense brings heavings from a sea - Of life too broad, and yet the billows range, - The elusive footing glides. Come, Sleep, allay - The trouble with thy heaviest balms, and change - These pulsing visions to still Memory. - - -V. ON THE SEA-CLIFF - -(_In Ireland_) - - Ruins of a church with its miraculous well, - O’er which the Christ, a squat-limbed dwarf of stone, - Great-eyed, and huddled on his cross, has known - The sea-mists and the sunshine, stars that fell - And stars that rose, fierce winter’s chronicle, - And centuries of dead summers. From his throne - Fronting the dawn the elf has ruled alone, - And saved this region fair from pagan hell. - Turn! June’s great joy abroad; each bird, flower, stream - Loves life, loves love; wide ocean amorously - Spreads to the sun’s embrace; the dulse-weeds sway, - The glad gulls are afloat. Grey Christ to-day - Our ban on thee! Rise, let the white breasts gleam, - Unvanquished Venus of the northern sea! - - -VI. ASCETIC NATURE - -(_In Ireland_) - - Passion and song, and the adornèd hours - Of floral loveliness, hopes grown most sweet, - And generous patience in the ripening heat, - A mother’s bosom, a bride’s face of flowers - --Knows Nature aught so fair? Witness ye Powers - Which rule the virgin heart of this retreat - To rarer issues, ye who render meet - Earth, purged and pure, for gracious heavenly dowers! - The luminous pale lake, the pearl-grey sky, - The wave that gravely murmurs meek desires, - The abashed yet lit expectance of the whole, - --These and their beauty speak of earthly fires - Long quenched, clear aims, deliberate sanctity,-- - O’er the white forehead lo! the aureole. - - -VII. RELICS - -(_In Switzerland_) - - What relic of the dear, dead yesterday - Shall my heart keep? The visionary light - Of dawn? Alas! it is a thing too bright, - God does not give such memories away. - Nor choose I one fair flower of those that sway - To the chill breathing of the waterfall - In rocky angles black with scattering spray, - Fair though no sunbeam lays its coronal - Of light on their pale brows; nor glacier-gleam - I choose, nor eve’s red glamour; ’twas at noon - Resting I found this speedwell, while a stream, - That knew the immemorial inland croon, - Sang in my ears, and lulled me to a dream - Of English meadows, and one perfect June. - - -VIII. ON THE PIER OF BOULOGNE - -(_A Reminiscence of 1870_) - - A venal singer to a thrumming note - Chanted the civic war-song, that red flower - Of melody seized in a sudden hour - By frenzied winds of change, and borne afloat - A live light in the storm; and now by rote - To a cold crowd, while vague and sad the tide - Loomed after sunset and the grey gulls cried, - The verses quavered from a hireling throat. - Wherefore should English eyes their right forbear, - Or droop for smitten France? let the tossed sou, - Before they turn, be quittance for the stare. - O Lady, who, clear-voiced, with impulse true - To lift that cry “_To Arms!_” alone would dare, - My heart received a golden alms from you! - - -IX. DOVER - -(_In a Field_) - - A joy has met me on this English ground - I looked not for. O gladness, fields still green! - Listen,--the going of a murmurous sound - Along the corn; there is not to be seen - In all the land a single pilèd sheaf - Or line of grain new-fallen, and not a tree - Has felt as yet within its lightest leaf - The year’s despair; nay, Summer saves for me - Her bright, late flowers. O my Summer-time - Named low as lost, I turn, and find you here-- - Where else but in our blessed English clime - That lingers o’er the sweet days of the year, - Days of long dreaming under spacious skies - Ere melancholy winds of Autumn rise. - - - - -AN AUTUMN SONG - - - Long Autumn rain; - White mists which choke the vale, and blot the sides - Of the bewildered hills; in all the plain - No field agleam where the gold pageant was, - And silent o’er a tangle of drenched grass - The blackbird glides. - - In the heart,--fire, - Fire and clear air and cries of water-springs, - And large, pure winds; all April’s quick desire, - All June’s possession; a most fearless Earth - Drinking great ardours; and the rapturous birth - Of wingèd things. - - - - -BURDENS - - - Are sorrows hard to bear,--the ruin - Of flowers, the rotting of red fruit, - A love’s decease, a life’s undoing, - And summer slain, and song-birds mute, - And skies of snow and bitter air? - These things, you deem, are hard to bear. - - But ah, the burden, the delight - Of dreadful joys! Noon opening wide, - Golden and great; the gulfs of night, - Fair deaths, and rent veils cast aside, - Strong soul to strong soul rendered up, - And silence filling like a cup. - - - - -SONG - -(From “’Tis Pity she’s a Queen.”--A.D. 1610.) - - -ACT IV. SCENE 2. - -_The_ LADY MARGARET, _with_ SUSAN _and_ LUCY; LADY M. _at her embroidery -frame, singing_. - - Girls, when I am gone away, - On this bosom strew - Only flowers meek and pale, - And the yew. - - Lay these hands down by my side, - Let my face be bare; - Bind a kerchief round the face, - Smooth my hair. - - Let my bier be borne at dawn, - Summer grows so sweet, - Deep into the forest green - Where boughs meet. - - Then pass away, and let me lie - One long, warm, sweet day - There alone with face upturn’d, - One sweet day. - - While the morning light grows broad, - While noon sleepeth sound, - While the evening falls and faints, - While the world goes round. - - _Susan._ Whence had you this song, lady? - - _L. Mar._ Out of the air; - From no one an it be not from the wind - That goes at noonday in the sycamore trees. - --When said the tardy page he would return? - - _Susan._ By twelve, upon this very hour. - - _L. Mar._ Look now, - The sand falls down the glass with even pace, - The shadows lie like yesterday’s. Nothing - Is wrong with the world. You are a part of it,-- - I stand within a magic circle charm’d - From reach of anything, shut in from you, - Leagues from my needle, and this frame I touch, - Waiting till doomsday come-- - [_Knocking heard_] The messenger! - Quick, I will wait you here, and hold my heart - Ready for death, or too much ravishment. - -[_Exeunt both Girls._] - - How the little sand-hill slides and slides; how many - Red grains would drop while a man’s keen knife drawn - Across one’s heart let the red life out? - - _Susan._ [_returning_] Lady! - - _L. Mar._ I know it by your eyes. O do not fear - To tell all punctually: I am carved of stone. - - - - -BY THE WINDOW - - - Still deep into the West I gazed; the light - Clear, spiritual, tranquil as a bird - Wide-winged that soars on the smooth gale and sleeps, - Was it from sun far-set or moon unrisen? - Whether from moon, or sun, or angel’s face - It held my heart from motion, stayed my blood, - Betrayed each rising thought to quiet death - Along the blind charm’d way to nothingness, - Lull’d the last nerve that ached. It was a sky - Made for a man to waste his will upon, - To be received as wiser than all toil, - And much more fair. And what was strife of men? - And what was time? - - Then came a certain thing. - Are intimations for the elected soul - Dubious, obscure, of unauthentic power - Since ghostly to the intellectual eye, - Shapeless to thinking? Nay, but are not we - Servile to words and an usurping brain, - Infidels of our own high mysteries, - Until the senses thicken and lose the world, - Until the imprisoned soul forgets to see, - And spreads blind fingers forth to reach the day, - Which once drank light, and fed on angels’ food? - - It happened swiftly, came and straight was gone. - One standing on some aery balcony - And looking down upon a swarming crowd - Sees one man beckon to him with finger-tip - While eyes meet eyes; he turns and looks again-- - The man is lost, and the crowd sways and swarms. - Shall such an one say “Thus ’tis proved a dream, - And no hand beckoned, no eyes met my own?” - Neither can I say this. There was a hint, - A thrill, a summons faint yet absolute, - Which ran across the West; the sky was touch’d, - And failed not to respond. Does a hand pass - Lightly across your hair? you feel it pass - Not half so heavy as a cobweb’s weight, - Although you never stir; so felt the sky - Not unaware of the Presence, so my soul - Scarce less aware. And if I cannot say - The meaning and monition, words are weak - Which will not paint the small wing of a moth, - Nor bear a subtile odour to the brain, - And much less serve the soul in her large needs. - I cannot tell the meaning, but a change - Was wrought in me; it was not the one man - Who come to the luminous window to gaze forth, - And who moved back into the darkened room - With awe upon his heart and tender hope; - From some deep well of life tears rose; the throng - Of dusty cares, hopes, pleasures, prides fell off, - And from a sacred solitude I gazed - Deep, deep into the liquid eyes of Life. - - - - -SUNSETS - - - Did your eyes watch the mystic sunset splendours - Through evenings of old summers, slow of parting,-- - Wistful while loveliest gains and fair surrenders - Hallow’d the West,--till tremulous tears came starting? - - Did your soul wing her way on noiseless pinion - Through lucid fields of air, and penetrated - With light and silence roam the wide dominion - Where Day and Dusk embrace,--serene, unmated? - - And they are past the shining hours and tender, - And snows are fallen between, and winds are driven? - Nay, for I find across your face the splendour, - And in your wings the central winds of heaven. - - They reach me, those lost sunsets. Undivining - Your own high mysteries you pause and ponder; - See, in my eyes the vanished light is shining, - Feel, through what spaces of clear heaven I wander! - - - - -OASIS - - - Let them go by--the heats, the doubts, the strife; - I can sit here and care not for them now, - Dreaming beside the glimmering wave of life - Once more,--I know not how. - - There is a murmur in my heart, I hear - Faint, O so faint, some air I used to sing; - It stirs my sense; and odours dim and dear - The meadow-breezes bring. - - Just this way did the quiet twilights fade - Over the fields and happy homes of men, - While one bird sang as now, piercing the shade, - Long since,--I know not when. - - - - -FOREIGN SPEECH - - - Ah, do not tell me what they mean, - The tremulous brook, the scarcely stirred - June leaves, the hum of things unseen, - This sovran bird. - - Do they say things so deep, and rare, - And perfect? I can only tell - That they are happy, and can bear - Such ignorance well; - - Feeding on all things said and sung - From hour to hour in this high wood - Articulate in a strange, sweet tongue - Not understood. - - - - -IN THE TWILIGHT - - - A noise of swarming thoughts, - A muster of dim cares, a foil’d intent, - With plots and plans, and counterplans and plots; - And thus along the city’s edges grey - Unmindful of the darkening autumn day - With a droop’d head I went. - - My face rose,--through what spell?-- - Not hoping anything from twilight dumb: - One star possessed her heaven. Oh! all grew well - Because of thee, and thy serene estate: - Silence ... I let thy beauty make me great; - What though the black night come. - - - - -THE INNER LIFE - - -I. A DISCIPLE - - Master, they argued fast concerning Thee, - Proved what Thou art, denied what Thou art not, - Till brows were on the fret, and eyes grew hot, - And lip and chin were thrust out eagerly; - Then through the temple-door I slipped to free - My soul from secret ache in solitude, - And sought this brook, and by the brookside stood - The world’s Light, and the Light and Life of me. - It is enough, O Master, speak no word! - The stream speaks, and the endurance of the sky - Outpasses speech: I seek not to discern - Even what smiles for me Thy lips have stirred; - Only in Thy hand still let my hand lie, - And let the musing soul within me burn. - - -II. THEISTS - - Who needs God most? That man whose pulses play - With fullest life-blood; he whose foot dare climb - To Joy’s high limit, solitude sublime - Under a sky whose splendour sure must slay - If Godless; he who owns the sovereign sway - Of that small inner voice and still, what time - His whole life urges toward one blissful crime, - And Hell confuses Heaven, and night, the day. - It is he whose faithfulness of love puts by - Time’s anodyne, and that gross palliative, - A Stoic pride, and bears all humanly; - He whose soul grows one long desire to give - Measureless gifts; ah! let _him_ quickly die - Unless he lift frail hands to God and live. - - -III. SEEKING GOD - - I said “I will find God,” and forth I went - To seek Him in the clearness of the sky, - But over me stood unendurably - Only a pitiless, sapphire firmament - Ringing the world,--blank splendour; yet intent - Still to find God, “I will go and seek,” said I, - “His way upon the waters,” and drew nigh - An ocean marge weed-strewn and foam-besprent; - And the waves dashed on idle sand and stone, - And very vacant was the long, blue sea; - But in the evening as I sat alone, - My window open to the vanishing day, - Dear God! I could not choose but kneel and pray - And it sufficed that I was found of Thee. - - -IV. DARWINISM IN MORALS - - High instincts, dim previsions, sacred fears, - --Whence issuing? Are they but the brain’s amassed - Tradition, shapings of a barbarous past, - Remoulded ever by the younger years, - Mixed with fresh clay, and kneaded with new tears? - No more? The dead chief’s ghost a shadow cast - Across the roving clan, and thence at last - Comes God, who in the soul His law uprears? - Is this the whole? Has not the Future powers - To match the Past,--attractions, pulsings, tides, - And voices for purged ears? Is all our light - The glow of ancient sunsets and lost hours? - Advance no banners up heaven’s eastern sides? - Trembles the margin with no portent bright? - - -V. AWAKENING - - With brain o’erworn, with heart a summer clod, - With eye so practised in each form around,-- - And all forms mean,--to glance above the ground - Irks it, each day of many days we plod, - Tongue-tied and deaf, along life’s common road. - But suddenly, we know not how, a sound - Of living streams, an odour, a flower crowned - With dew, a lark upspringing from the sod, - And we awake. O joy and deep amaze! - Beneath the everlasting hills we stand, - We hear the voices of the morning seas, - And earnest prophesyings in the land, - While from the open heaven leans forth at gaze - The encompassing great cloud of witnesses. - - -VI. FISHERS - - We by no shining Galilean lake - Have toiled, but long and little fruitfully - In waves of a more old and bitter sea - Our nets we cast; large winds, that sleep and wake - Around the feet of Dawn and Sunset, make - Our spiritual inhuman company, - And formless shadows of water rise and flee - All night around us till the morning break. - Thus our lives wear--shall it be ever thus? - Some idle day, when least we look for grace, - Shall we see stand upon the shore indeed - The visible Master, and the Lord of us, - And leave our nets, nor question of His creed, - Following the Christ within a young man’s face? - - -VII. COMMUNION - - Lord, I have knelt and tried to pray to-night, - But Thy love came upon me like a sleep, - And all desire died out; upon the deep - Of Thy mere love I lay, each thought in light - Dissolving like the sunset clouds, at rest - Each tremulous wish, and my strength weakness, sweet - As a sick boy with soon o’erwearied feet - Finds, yielding him unto his mother’s breast - To weep for weakness there. I could not pray, - But with closed eyes I felt Thy bosom’s love - Beating toward mine, and then I would not move - Till of itself the joy should pass away; - At last my heart found voice,--“Take me, O Lord, - And do with me according to Thy word.” - - -VIII. A SONNET FOR THE TIMES - - What! weeping? Had ye your Christ yesterday, - Close wound in linen, made your own by tears, - Kisses, and pounds of myrrh, the sepulchre’s - Mere stone most venerable? And now ye say - “No man hath seen Him, He is borne away - We wot not where.” And so, with many a sigh, - Watching the linen clothes and napkin lie, - Ye choose about the grave’s sad mouth to stay. - Blind hearts! Why seek the living amongst the dead? - Better than carols for the babe new-born - The shining young men’s speech “He is not here;” - Why question where the feet lay, where the head? - Come forth; bright o’er the world breaks Easter morn, - He is arisen, Victor o’er grief and fear. - - -IX. EMMAUSWARD - - Lord Christ, if Thou art with us and these eyes - Are holden, while we go sadly and say - “We hoped it had been He, and now to-day - Is the third day, and hope within us dies,” - Bear with us, O our Master, Thou art wise - And knowest our foolishness; we do not pray - “Declare Thyself, since weary grows the way - And faith’s new burden hard upon us lies.” - Nay, choose Thy time; but ah! whoe’er Thou art - Leave us not; where have we heard any voice - Like Thine? Our hearts burn in us as we go; - Stay with us; break our bread; so, for our part - Ere darkness falls haply we may rejoice, - Haply when day has been far spent may know. - - -X. A FAREWELL - - Thou movest from us; we shall see Thy face - No more. Ah, look below these troubled eyes, - This woman’s heart in us that faints and dies, - Trust not our faltering lips, our sad amaze; - Glance some time downward from Thy golden place, - And know how we rejoice. It is meet, is wise; - High tasks are Thine, surrenders, victories, - Communings pure, mysterious works and ways. - Leave us: how should we keep Thee in these blown - Grey fields, or soil with earth a Master’s feet? - Nor deem us comfortless: have we not known - Thee once, for ever. Friend, the pain is sweet - Seeing Thy completeness to have grown complete, - Thy gift it is that we can walk alone. - - -XI. DELIVERANCE - - I prayed to be delivered, O true God, - Not from the foes that compass us about,-- - Them I might combat; not from any doubt - That wrings the soul; not from Thy bitter rod - Smiting the conscience; not from plagues abroad, - Nor my strong inward lusts; nor from the rout - Of worldly men, the scourge, the spit, the flout, - And the whole dolorous way the Master trod. - All these would rouse the life that lurks within, - Would save or slay; these things might be defied - Or strenuously endured; yea, pressed by sin - The soul is stung with sudden, visiting gleams; - Leave these, if Thou but scatter, Lord, I cried, - The counterfeiting shadows and vain dreams. - - -XII. PARADISE LOST - - O would you read that Hebrew legend true - Look deep into the little children’s eyes, - Who walk with naked souls in Paradise, - And know not shame; who, with miraculous dew - To keep the garden ever fair and new, - Want not our sobbing rains in their blue skies. - Among the trees God moves, and o’er them rise - All night in deeper heavens great stars to view. - Ah, how we wept when through the gate we came! - What boots it to look back? The world is ours, - Come, we will fare, my brothers, boldly forth; - Let that dread Angel wave the sword of flame - Forever idly round relinquished bowers-- - Leave Eden there; we will subdue the earth. - - - - -THE RESTING PLACE - - - How all things transitory, all things vain - Desert me! Whither am I sinking slow - On the prone wing, to what predestined home, - What peace beyond all peace, what ultimate joy? - Nay, cease from questioning, care not to know, - Let bliss dissolve each thought, all function cease, - Fold close the wing, let the soft-flowing light - Permeate, and merely once uplift drooped lids - To mark the world remote, the abandoned shore, - Fretted with much vain pleasure, futile pain, - Far, far. - - The deepening peace! a dawn of essences - Awful and incommunicably dear! - Grace opening into grace, joy quenching joy! - Thy waves and billows have gone over me - Blissful and calm, and still the dreams drop off, - And true things grow more true, and larger orbs - The strong salvation which has seized my soul. - - The stream of the attraction draws me on - Toward some centre; all will quickly end, - All be attained. The sweetness of repose - And this swift motion slay the consciousness - Of being, and bind up the will in sleep. - Silence and light accept my soul--I touch.... - Is it death’s centre or the breast of God? - - - - -NEW HYMNS FOR SOLITUDE - - -I - - I come to Thee not asking aught; I crave - No gift of Thine, no grace; - Yet where the suppliants enter let me have - Within Thy courts a place. - - My hands, my heart contain no offering; - Thy name I would not bless - With lips untouched by altar-fire; I bring - Only my weariness. - - These are the children, frequent in Thy home; - Grant, Lord, to each his share; - Then turn, and merely gaze on me, who come - To lay my spirit bare. - - -II - - Yet one more step--no flight - The weary soul can bear-- - Into a whiter light, - Into a hush more rare. - - Take me, I am all Thine, - Thine now, not seeking Thee,-- - Hid in the secret shrine, - Lost in the shoreless sea. - - Grant to the prostrate soul - Prostration new and sweet, - Make weak the weak, control - Thy creature at Thy feet. - - Passive I lie: shine down, - Pierce through the will with straight - Swift beams, one after one, - Divide, disintegrate, - - Free me from self,--resume - My place, and be Thou there; - Yet also keep me. Come - Thou Saviour and Thou Slayer! - - -III - - Nothing remains to say to Thee, O Lord, - I am confessed, - All my lips’ empty crying Thou hast heard, - My unrest, my rest. - Why wait I any longer? Thou dost stay, - And therefore, Lord, I would not go away. - - Let me be at Thy feet a little space, - Forget me here; - I will not touch Thy hand, nor seek Thy face, - Only be near, - And this hour let Thy nearness feed the heart, - And when Thou goest I also will depart. - - Then when Thou seekest Thy way, and I, mine - Let the World be - Not wide and cold after this cherishing shrine - Illum’d by Thee, - Nay, but worth worship, fair, a radiant star, - Tender and strong as Thy chief angels are. - - Yet bid me not go forth: I cannot now - Take hold on joy, - Nor sing the swift, glad song, nor bind my brow; - Her wise employ - Be mine, the silent woman at Thy knee - In the low room in little Bethany. - - -IV - - Ah, that sharp thrill through all my frame! - And yet once more! Withstand - I can no longer; in Thy name - I yield me to Thy hand. - - Such pangs were in the soul unborn, - The fear, the joy were such, - When first it felt in that keen morn - A dread, creating touch. - - Maker of man, Thy pressure sure - This grosser stuff must quell; - The spirit faints, yet will endure, - Subdue, control, compel. - - The Potter’s finger shaping me.... - Praise, praise! the clay curves up - Not for dishonour, though it be - God’s least adornèd cup. - - -V - - Sins grew a heavy load and cold, - And pressed me to the dust; - “Whither,” I cried, “can this be rolled - Ere I behold the Just?” - - But now I claim them for my own; - Thy face I needs must find; - Lo! thus I wrought, yea, I alone, - Not weak, beguiled, or blind. - - See my full arms, my heaped-up shame, - An evil load I bring: - Thou, God, art a consuming flame, - Accept the hateful thing. - - Pronounce the dread condemning word, - I stand in blessed fear; - Dear is Thy cleansing wrath, O Lord, - The fire that burns is dear. - - -VI - - I found Thee in my heart, O Lord, - As in some secret shrine; - I knelt, I waited for Thy word, - I joyed to name Thee mine. - - I feared to give myself away - To that or this; beside - Thy altar on my face I lay, - And in strong need I cried. - - Those hours are past. Thou art not mine, - And therefore I rejoice, - I wait within no holy shrine, - I faint not for the voice. - - In Thee we live; and every wind - Of heaven is Thine; blown free - To west, to east, the God unshrined - Is still discovering me. - - - - -IN THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE - - - In the Dean’s porch a nest of clay - With five small tenants may be seen, - Five solemn faces, each as wise - As though its owner were a Dean; - - Five downy fledglings in a row, - Packed close, as in the antique pew - The school-girls are whose foreheads clear - At the _Venite_ shine on you. - - Day after day the swallows sit - With scarce a stir, with scarce a sound, - But dreaming and digesting much - They grow thus wise and soft and round. - - They watch the Canons come to dine, - And hear the mullion-bars across, - Over the fragrant fruit and wine - Deep talk of rood-screen and reredos. - - Her hands with field-flowers drench’d, a child - Leaps past in wind-blown dress and hair, - The swallows turn their heads askew-- - Five judges deem that she is fair. - - Prelusive touches sound within, - Straightway they recognize the sign, - And, blandly nodding, they approve - The minuet of Rubinstein. - - They mark the cousins’ schoolboy talk, - (Male birds flown wide from minster bell), - And blink at each broad term of art, - Binomial or bicycle. - - Ah! downy young ones, soft and warm, - Doth such a stillness mask from sight - Such swiftness? can such peace conceal - Passion and ecstasy of flight? - - Yet somewhere ’mid your Eastern suns, - Under a white Greek architrave - At morn, or when the shaft of fire - Lies large upon the Indian wave, - - A sense of something dear gone-by - Will stir, strange longings thrill the heart - For a small world embowered and close, - Of which ye some time were a part. - - The dew-drench’d flowers, the child’s glad eyes - Your joy unhuman shall control, - And in your wings a light and wind - Shall move from the Maestro’s soul. - - - - -FIRST LOVE - - - My long first year of perfect love, - My deep new dream of joy; - She was a little chubby girl, - I was a chubby boy. - - I wore a crimson frock, white drawers, - A belt, a crown was on it; - She wore some angel’s kind of dress - And such a tiny bonnet, - - Old-fashioned, but the soft brown hair - Would never keep its place; - A little maid with violet eyes, - And sunshine in her face. - - O my child-queen, in those lost days - How sweet was daily living! - How humble and how proud I grew, - How rich by merely giving! - - She went to school, the parlour-maid - Slow stepping to her trot; - That parlour-maid, ah, did she feel - How lofty was her lot! - - Across the road I saw her lift - My Queen, and with a sigh - I envied Raleigh; my new coat - Was hung a peg too high. - - A hoard of never-given gifts - I cherished,--priceless pelf; - ’Twas two whole days ere I devour’d - That peppermint myself. - - In Church I only prayed for her-- - “O God bless Lucy Hill;” - Child, may His angels keep their arms - Ever around you still. - - But when the hymn came round, with heart - That feared some heart’s surprising - Its secret sweet, I climb’d the seat - ’Mid rustling and uprising; - - And there against her mother’s arm - The sleeping child was leaning, - While far away the hymn went on, - The music and the meaning. - - Oh I have loved with more of pain - Since then, with more of passion, - Loved with the aching in my love - After our grown-up fashion; - - Yet could I almost be content - To lose here at your feet - A year or two, you murmuring elm, - To dream a dream so sweet. - - - - -THE SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE: AN ODE - -(_By a Western Spinning Dervish_) - - - I spin, I spin, around, around, - And close my eyes, - And let the bile arise - From the sacred region of the soul’s Profound; - Then gaze upon the world; how strange! how new! - The earth and heaven are one, - The horizon-line is gone, - The sky how green! the land how fair and blue! - Perplexing items fade from my large view, - And thought which vexed me with its false and true - Is swallowed up in Intuition; this, - This is the sole true mode - Of reaching God, - And gaining the universal synthesis - Which makes All--One; while fools with peering eyes - Dissect, divide, and vainly analyse. - So round, and round, and round again! - How the whole globe swells within my brain, - The stars inside my lids appear, - The murmur of the spheres I hear - Throbbing and beating in each ear; - Right in my navel I can feel - The centre of the world’s great wheel. - Ah peace divine, bliss dear and deep, - No stay, no stop, - Like any top - Whirling with swiftest speed, I sleep. - O ye devout ones round me coming, - Listen! I think that I am humming; - No utterance of the servile mind - With poor chop-logic rules agreeing - Here shall ye find, - But inarticulate burr of man’s unsundered being. - Ah, could we but devise some plan, - Some patent jack by which a man - Might hold himself ever in harmony - With the great Whole, and spin perpetually, - As all things spin - Without, within, - As Time spins off into Eternity, - And Space into the inane Immensity, - And the Finite into God’s Infinity, - Spin, spin, spin, spin. - - - - -BEAU RIVAGE HOTEL - -SATURDAY EVENING - - - Below there’s a brumming and strumming - And twiddling and fiddling amain, - And sweeping of muslins and laughter, - And pattering of luminous rain. - - Fair England, resplendent Columbia, - Gaul, Teuton,--how precious a smother! - But the happiest is brisk little Polly - To galop with only her brother. - - And up to the fourth étage landing, - Come the violins’ passionate cries, - Where the pale femme-de-chambre is sitting - With sleep in her beautiful eyes. - - - - -IN A JUNE NIGHT - -(_A Study in the manner of Robert Browning_) - - -I - - See, the door opens of this alcove, - Here we are now in the cool night air - Out of the heat and smother; above - The stars are a wonder, alive and fair, - It is a perfect night,--your hand,-- - Down these steps and we reach the garden, - An odorous, dim, enchanted land, - With the dusk stone-god for only warden. - - -II - - Was I not right to bring you here? - We might have seen slip the hours within - Till God’s new day in the East were clear, - And His silence abashed the dancers’ din, - Then each have gone away, the pain - And longing greatened, not satisfied, - By a hand’s slight touch or a glance’s gain,-- - And now we are standing side by side! - - -III - - Come to the garden’s end,--not so, - Not by the grass, it would drench your feet; - See, here is a path where the trees o’ergrow - And the fireflies flicker; but, my sweet, - Lean on me now, for one cannot see - Here where the great leaves lie unfurled - To take the whole soul and the mystery - Of a summer night poured out for the world. - - -IV - - Into the open air once more! - Yonder’s the edge of the garden-wall - Where we may sit and talk,--deplore - This half-hour lost from so bright a ball, - Or praise my partner with the eyes - And the raven hair, or the other one - With her flaxen curls, and slow replies - As near asleep in the Tuscan sun. - - -V - - Hush! do you hear on the beach’s cirque - Just below, though the lake is dim, - How the little ripples do their work, - Fall and faint on the pebbled rim, - So they say what they want, and then - Break at the marge’s feet and die; - It is so different with us men - Who never can once speak perfectly. - - -VI - - Yet hear me,--trust that they mean indeed - Oh, so much more than the words will say - Or shall it be ’twixt us two agreed - That all we might spend a night and day - In striving to put in a word or thought, - Which were then from ourselves a thing apart, - Shall be just believed and quite forgot, - When my heart is felt against your heart. - - -VII - - Ah, but that will not tell you all, - How I am yours not thus alone, - To find how your pulses rise and fall, - And winning you wholly be your own, - But yours to be humble, could you grow - The Queen that you are, remote and proud, - And I with only a life to throw - Where the others’ flowers for your feet were strowed. - - -VIII - - Well, you have faults too! I can blame - If you choose: this hand is not so white - Or round as a little one that came - On my shoulder once or twice to-night - Like a soft white dove. Envy her now! - And when you talked to that padded thing - And I passed you leisurely by, your brow - Was cold, not a flush nor fluttering. - - -IX - - Such foolish talk! while that one star still - Dwells o’er the mountain’s margin-line - Till the dawn takes all; one may drink one’s fill - Of such quiet; there’s a whisper fine - In the leaves a-tremble, and now ’tis dumb; - We have lived long years, love, you and I, - And the heart grows faint; your lips, then: come,-- - It were not so very hard to die. - - - - -FROM APRIL TO OCTOBER - - -I. BEAUTY - - The beauty of the world, the loveliness - Of woodland pools, which doves have coo’d to sleep, - Dreaming the noontide through beneath the deep - Of heaven; the radiant blue’s benign caress - When April clouds are rifted; buds that bless - Each little nook and bower, where the leaves keep - Dew and light shadow, and quick lizards peep - For sunshine,--these, and the ancient stars no less, - And the sea’s mystery of dusk and bright - Are but the curious characters that lie, - Priestess of Beauty, in thy robe of light. - Ah, where, divine One, is thy veiled retreat, - That I may creep to it and clasp thy feet, - And gaze in thy pure face though I should die? - - -II. TWO INFINITIES - - A lonely way, and as I went my eyes - Could not unfasten from the Spring’s sweet things, - Lush-sprouted grass, and all that climbs and clings - In loose, deep hedges, where the primrose lies - In her own fairness, buried blooms surprise - The plunderer bee and stop his murmurings, - And the glad flutter of a finch’s wings - Outstartle small blue-speckled butterflies. - Blissfully did one speedwell plot beguile - My whole heart long; I loved each separate flower, - Kneeling. I looked up suddenly--Dear God! - There stretched the shining plain for many a mile, - The mountains rose with what invincible power! - And how the sky was fathomless and broad! - - -III. THE DAWN - - The Dawn,--O silence and wise mystery! - Was it a dream, the murmurous room, the glitter, - The tinkling songs, the dance, and that fair sitter - I talk’d æsthetics to so rapturously? - Sweet Heaven, thy silentness and purity, - Thy sister-words of blame, not railings bitter, - With these great quiet leaves, and the light twitter - Of small birds wakening in the greenery, - And one stream stepping quickly on its way - So well it knows the glad work it must do, - Reclaim a wayward heart scarce answering true - To that sweet strain of hours that closes May; - How the pale marge quickens with pulsings new, - O welcome to thy world thou fair, great day! - - -IV. THE SKYLARK - - There drops our lark into his secret nest! - All is felt silence and the broad blue sky; - Come, the incessant rain of melody - Is over; now earth’s quietudes invest, - In cool and shadowy limit, that wild breast - Which trembled forth the sudden ecstasy - Till raptures came too swift, and song must die - Since midmost deeps of heaven grew manifest. - My poet of the garden-walk last night - Sang in rich leisure, ceased and sang again, - Of pleasure in green leaves, of odours given - By flowers at dusk, and many a dim delight; - The finer joy was thine keen-edged with pain, - Soarer! alone with thy own heart and heaven. - - -V. THE MILL-RACE - - “Only a mill-race,” said they, and went by, - But we were wiser, spoke no word, and stayed; - It was a place to make the heart afraid - With so much beauty, lest the after sigh, - When one had drunk its sweetness utterly, - Should leave the spirit faint; a living shade - From beechen branches o’er the water played - To unweave that spell through which the conquering sky - Subdues the sweet will of each summer stream; - So this ran freshlier through the swaying weeds. - I gazed until the whole was as a dream, - Nor should have waked or wondered had I seen - Some smooth-limbed wood-nymph glance across the green, - Or Naiad lift a head amongst the reeds. - - -VI. IN THE WOOD - - A place where Una might have fallen asleep - Assured of quiet dreams, a place to make - Sad eyes bright with strange tears; a little lake - In the green heart of a wood; the crystal deep - Of heaven so wide if there should chance to stray - Into that stainless field some thin cloud-flake, - When not a breeze the trance of noon dare break, - About the middle it must melt away. - Lilies upon the water in their leaves, - Stirr’d by faint ripples that go curving on - To little reedy coves; a stream that grieves - To the fine grasses and wild flowers around; - And we two in a golden silence bound, - Not a line read of rich _Endymion_. - - -VII. THE PAUSE OF EVENING - - Nightward on dimmest wing in Twilight’s train - The grey hours floated smoothly, lingeringly; - A solemn wonder was the western sky - Rich with the slow forsaking sunset-stain, - Barred by long violet cloud; hillside and plain - The feet of Night had touched; a wind’s low sigh - Told of whole pleasure lapsed,--then rustled by - With soft subsidence in the rippling grain. - Why in dark dews, unready to depart, - Did Evening pause and ponder, nor perceive - Star follow star into the central blue? - What secret was the burden of her heart? - What grave, sweet memory grew she loath to leave? - What finer sense, no morrow may renew? - - -VIII. IN JULY - - Why do I make no poems? Good my friend - Now is there silence through the summer woods, - In whose green depths and lawny solitudes - The light is dreaming; voicings clear ascend - Now from no hollow where glad rivulets wend, - But murmurings low of inarticulate moods, - Softer than stir of unfledged cushat broods, - Breathe, till o’erdrowsed the heavy flower-heads bend. - Now sleep the crystal and heart-charmèd waves - Round white, sunstricken rocks the noontide long, - Or ’mid the coolness of dim lighted caves - Sway in a trance of vague deliciousness; - And I,--I am too deep in joy’s excess - For the imperfect impulse of a song. - - -IX. IN SEPTEMBER - - Spring scarce had greener fields to show than these - Of mid September; through the still warm noon - The rivulets ripple forth a gladder tune - Than ever in the summer; from the trees - Dusk-green, and murmuring inward melodies, - No leaf drops yet; only our evenings swoon - In pallid skies more suddenly, and the moon - Finds motionless white mists out on the leas. - Dear chance it were in some rough wood-god’s lair - A month hence, gazing on the last bright field, - To sink o’er-drowsed, and dream that wild-flowers blew - Around my head and feet silently there, - Till Spring’s glad choir adown the valley pealed, - And violets trembled in the morning dew. - - -X. IN THE WINDOW - - A still grey evening: Autumn in the sky, - And Autumn on the hills and the sad wold; - No congregated towers of pearl and gold - In the vaporous West, no fiend limned duskily, - No angel whose reared trump must soon be loud, - Nor mountains which some pale green lake enfold - Nor islands in an ocean glacial-cold; - Hardly indeed a noticeable cloud. - Yet here I lingered, all my will asleep, - Gazing an hour with neither joy nor pain, - No noonday trance in midsummer more deep; - And wake with a vague yearning in the dim, - Blind room, my heart scarce able to restrain - The idle tears that tremble to the brim. - - -XI. AN AUTUMN MORNING - - O what a morn is this for us who knew - The large, blue, summer mornings, heaven let down - Upon the earth for men to drink, the crown - Of perfect human living, when we grew - Great-hearted like the Gods! Come, we will strew - White ashes on our hair, nor strive to drown - In faint hymn to the year’s fulfilled renown - The sterile grief which is the season’s due. - Lightly above the vine-rows of rich hills - Where the brown peasant girls move amid grapes - The swallow glances; let him cry for glee! - But yon pale mist diffused ’twixt paler shapes,-- - Once sovereign trees,--my spirit also fills, - And an east-wind comes moaning from the sea. - - - - -SEA VOICES - - - Was it a lullaby the Sea went singing - About my feet, some old-world monotone, - Filled full of secret memories, and bringing - Not hope to sting the heart, but peace alone, - Sleep and the certitude of sleep to be - Wiser henceforth than all philosophy? - - Truth! did we seek for truth with eye and brain - Through days so many and wasted with desire? - Listen, the same long gulfing voice again: - Tired limbs lie slack as sands are, eyes that tire - Close gently, close forever, twilight grey - Receives you, tenderer than the glaring day. - -[_He sleeps, and after an interval awakes._] - - Ah terror, ah delight! A sudden cry, - Anguish, or hope, or triumph. Awake, arise,-- - The winds awake! Is ocean’s lullaby - This clarion-call? Her kiss, the spray that flies - Salt to the lip and cheek? Her motion light - Of nursing breasts, this swift pursuit and flight? - - O wild sea-voices! Victory and defeat, - But ever deathless passion and unrest, - White wings upon the wind and flying feet, - Disdain and wrath, a reared and hissing crest, - The imperious urge, and last, a whole life spent - In bliss of one supreme abandonment. - - - - -ABOARD THE “SEA-SWALLOW” - - - The gloom of the sea-fronting cliffs - Lay on the water, violet-dark, - The pennon drooped, the sail fell in, - And slowly moved our bark. - - A golden day; the summer dreamed - In heaven and on the whispering sea, - Within our hearts the summer dreamed; - The hours had ceased to be. - - Then rose the girls with bonnets loosed, - And shining tresses lightly blown, - Alice and Adela, and sang - A song of Mendelssohn. - - O sweet, and sad, and wildly clear, - Through summer air it sinks and swells, - Wild with a measureless desire, - And sad with all farewells. - - - - -SEA-SIGHING - - - This is the burden of the Sea, - Loss, failure, sorrows manifold; - Yet something though the voice sound free - Remains untold. - - Listen! that secret sigh again - Kept very low, a whole heart’s waste; - What means this inwardness of pain? - This sob repressed? - - Some ancient sin, some supreme wrong, - Some huge attempt God brought to nought, - All over while the world was young, - And ne’er forgot? - - Those lips, which open wide and cry, - Weak as pale flowers or trembling birds, - Are proud, and fixed immutably - Against such words. - - Confession from that burdened soul - No ghostly counsellor may win; - Could such as we receive its whole - Passion and sin? - - In this high presence priest or king, - Prophet or singer of the earth, - With yon cast sea-weed were a thing - Of equal worth. - - - - -IN THE MOUNTAINS - - - Fatigued of heart, and owning how the world - Is strong, too strong for will of mine, my steps - Through the tall pines I led, to reach that spur - Which strikes from off the mountain toward the West. - I hoped to lull a fretted heart to sleep, - And in the place of definite thought a sense - Possessed me, dim and sweet, of Motherhood, - The breasts of Nature, warmth, and soothing hands, - And tender, inarticulate nursing-words - Slow uttered o’er tired eyes. - - But suddenly - Rude waking! Suddenly the rocks, the trees - Stood up in rangèd power, rigid, erect, - And all cried out on me “Away with him! - Away! He is not of us, has no part - In ours or us! Traitor, away with him!” - And the birds shrilled it “Traitor,” and the flowers - Stared up at me with small, hard, insolent eyes. - But I, who had been weak, was weak no more, - Nor shrank at all, but with deliberate step - Moved on, and with both hands waved off the throng, - And feared them not, nor sent defiance back. - Thus, till the pine-glooms fell away, and goats - Went tinkling and no herd-boy near; glad airs - With sunshine in them moved angelical - Upon the solitary heights; the sky - Held not a cloud from marge to marge; and now - Westward the sun was treading, calm and free. - I lay upon the grass, and how an hour - Went past I know not. When again time was, - The sun had fallen, and congregated clouds, - A vision of great glories, held the West, - And through them, and beyond, the hyaline - Led the charm’d spirit through infinite spaces on. - I think of all the men upon this earth - The sight was mine alone; it for my soul, - My soul for it, until all seeing died. - Where did I live transfigured? through what times - Of heaven’s great year? What sudden need of me - For sacrifice on altar, or for priest, - For soldier at the rampart, cup-bearer - At feasts of God, rapt singer in the joy - Of consonant praise, doom’d rebel for the fires? - --I know not, but somewhere some part I held, - Nor fail’d when summoned. - - When the body took - Its guest once more the clouds were massy-grey, - The event was ended; yet a certain thing - Abode with me, which still eludes its name, - Yet lies within my heart like some great word - A mage has taught, and he who heard it once - Cannot pronounce, and never may forget. - But this I dare record,--when all was past, - And once again I turned to seek the vale, - And moved adown the slippery pine-wood path, - In the dimness every pine tree bowed to me - With duteous service, and the rocks lay couched - Like armèd followers round, and one bird sang - The song I chose, and heavy fragrance came - From unseen flowers, and all things were aware - One passed who had been called and consecrate. - - - - -“THE TOP OF A HILL CALLED _CLEAR_” - -(_In sight of the Celestial City_) - - - And all my days led on to this! the days - Of pallid light, of springs no sun would warm, - Of chilling rain autumnal, which decays - High woods while veering south the quick wings swarm, - The days of hot desire, of broken dreaming, - Mechanic toil, poor pride that was but seeming, - And bleeding feet, and sun-smit flowerless ways. - - Below me spreads a sea of tranquil light, - No blue cloud thunder-laden, but pure air - Shot through and through with sunshine; from this height - A man might cast himself in joy’s despair, - And find unhoped, to bear him lest he fall, - Swift succouring wings, and hands angelical, - And circling of soft eyes, and foreheads bright. - - Under me light, and light is o’er my head, - And awful heaven and heaven to left and right; - In all His worlds this spot unvisited - God kept, save by the winging of keen light, - And the dread gaze of stars, and morning’s wan - Virginity, for me a living man, - Living, not borne among the enfranchised dead. - - New life,--not death! No glow the senses cast - Across the spirit, no pleasure shoots o’er me - Its scattering flaw, no words may I hold fast - Here, where God’s breath streams inexhaustibly; - But conquest stern is mine, a will made sane, - Life’s vision wide and calm, a supreme pain, - An absolute joy; and love the first and last. - - - - -THE INITIATION - - - Under the flaming wings of cherubim - I moved toward that high altar. O, the hour! - And the light waxed intenser, and the dim - Low edges of the hills and the grey sea - Were caught and captur’d by the present Power, - My sureties and my witnesses to be. - - Then the light drew me in. Ah, perfect pain! - Ah, infinite moment of accomplishment! - Thou terror of pure joy, with neither wane - Nor waxing, but long silence and sharp air - As womb-forsaking babes breathe. Hush! the event - Let him who wrought Love’s marvellous things declare. - - Shall I who fear’d not joy, fear grief at all? - I on whose mouth Life laid his sudden lips - Tremble at Death’s weak kiss, and not recall - That sundering from the flesh, the flight from time, - The judgments stern, the clear apocalypse, - The lightnings, and the Presences sublime. - - How came I back to earth? I know not how, - Nor what hands led me, nor what words were said. - Now all things are made mine,--joy, sorrow; now - I know my purpose deep, and can refrain; - I walk among the living not the dead; - My sight is purged; I love and pity men. - - - - -RENUNCIANTS - - - Seems not our breathing light? - Sound not our voices free? - Bid to Life’s festal bright - No gladder guests there be. - - Ah, stranger, lay aside - Cold prudence! I divine - The secret you would hide, - And you conjecture mine. - - You too have temperate eyes, - Have put your heart to school, - Are proved. I recognize - A brother of the rule. - - I knew it by your lip, - A something when you smiled, - Which meant “close scholarship, - A master of the guild.” - - Well, and how good is life, - Good to be born, have breath, - The calms good and the strife, - Good life, and perfect death. - - Come, for the dancers wheel, - Join we the pleasant din, - --Comrade, it serves to feel - The sackcloth next the skin. - - - - -SPEAKERS TO GOD - - -_First Speaker_ - - Eastward I went and Westward, North and South, - And the wind blew me from deep zone to zone; - Many strong women did I love; my mouth - I gave for kisses, rose, and straight was gone. - - I fought with heroes; there was joyous play - Of swords; my cities rose in every land; - Then forth I fared. O God, thou knowest, I lay - Ever within the hollow of thy hand. - - -_Second Speaker_ - - I am borne out to thee upon the wave, - And the land lessens; cry nor speech I hear, - Nought but the leaping waters and the brave - Pure winds commingling. O the joy, the fear! - - Alone with thee; sky’s rim and ocean’s rim - Touch, overhead the clear immensity - Is merely God; no eyes of seraphim - Gaze in ... O God, Thou also art the sea! - - -_Third Speaker_ - - Thus it shall be a lifetime,--ne’er to meet; - A trackless land divides us lone and long; - Others, who seek Him, find, run swift to greet - Their Friend, approach the bridegroom’s door with song. - - I stand, nor dare affirm I see or hear; - How should I dream, when strict is my employ? - Yet if some time, far hence, thou drawest near - Shall there be any joy like to our joy? - - - - -POESIA - -(_To a Painter_) - - - Paint her with robe and girdle laid aside, - Without a jewel upon her; you must hide - By sleight of artist from the gazer’s view - No whit of her fair body; calm and true - Her eyes must meet our passion, as aware - The world is beautiful, and she being fair - A part of it. She needs be no more pure - Than a dove is, nor could one well endure - More faultlessness than of a sovran rose, - Reserved, yet liberal to each breeze that blows. - Let her be all revealed, nor therefore less - A mystery of unsearchable loveliness; - There must be no discoveries to be made, - Save as a noonday sky with not a shade - Or floating cloud of Summer to the eye - Which drinks its light admits discovery. - Did common raiment hide her could we know - How hopeless were the rash attempt to throw - Sideways the veil which guards her womanhood? - Therefore her sacred vesture must elude - All mortal touch, and let her welcome well - Each corner, being still unapproachable. - Plant firm on Earth her feet, as though her own - Its harvests were, and, for she would be known - Fearless not fugitive, interpose no bar - ’Twixt us and her, Love’s radiant avatar, - No more to be possessed than sunsets are. - - - - -MUSICIANS - - - I know the harps whereon the Angels play, - While in God’s listening face they gaze intent, - Are these frail hearts,--yours, mine; and gently they, - Leaning a warm breast toward the instrument, - And preluding among the tremulous wires, - First draw forth dreams of song, unfledged desires, - Nameless regrets, sweet hopes which will not stay. - - But when the passionate sense of heavenly things - Possesses the musician, and his lips - Part glowing, and the shadow of his wings - Grows golden, and fire streams from finger-tips, - And he is mighty, and his heart-throbs thicken, - And quick intolerable pulses quicken, - How his hand lords it in among the strings! - - Ah the keen crying of the wires! the pain - Of restless music yearning to out-break - And shed its sweetness utterly, the rain - Of heavenly laughters, threats obscure which shake - The spirit, trampling tumults which dismay, - The fateful pause, the fiat summoning day, - The faultless flower of light which will not wane. - - How wrought with you the awful lord of song? - What thirst of God hath he appeased? What bliss - Raised to clear ecstasy? O tender and strong - The eager melodist who leaned o’er this - Live heart of mine, who leans above it now: - The stern pure eyes! the ample, radiant brow! - Pluck boldly, Master, the good strain prolong. - - - - -MISCELLANEOUS SONNETS - - - - -A DAY OF DEFECTION - - - This day among the days will never stand, - Carven and clear, a shape of fair delight, - With singing lips, and gaze of innocent might, - Crown’d queenwise, or the lyre within her hand, - And firm feet making conquest of a land - Heavy with fruitage; nay, from all men’s sight - Drop far, cold sun, and let remorseful Night - Cloke the shamed forehead, and the bosom’s brand. - Could but the hammer rive, the thunder-stone - Flung forth from heaven on some victorious morn - Grind it to dust! Slave, must I always see - Thy beauty soil’d? Must shining days foregone - Admit thee peer, and wondering new-born - To-morrow meet thy dull eyes’ infamy? - - - - -SONG AND SILENCE - - - While Sorrow sat beside me many a day, - I,--with head turned from her, and yet aware - How her eyes’ light was on my brow and hair, - The light which bites and blights our gold to grey,-- - Still sang, and swift winds bore my songs away - Full of sweet sounds, as of a lute-player - Who sees fresh colours, breathes the ripe soft air, - And hears the cuckoo shout in dells of May, - Being filled with ease and indolent of heart. - So sang I, Sorrow near me: chide me not, - O Joy, for silence now! Hereafter wise, - Large song may come, life blossoming in art, - From this new fate; but leave me, thou long sought, - To gaze awhile into those perfect eyes. - - - - -LOVE-TOKENS - - - I wear around my forehead evermore, - The circlet of your praise, pure gold; and how - I walk forth crown’d, the approving angels know, - And see how I am meeker than before - Being thus proud. For roses my full store, - Upon a cheek where flowers will scantly blow, - Is your lips’ one immortal touch, and lo! - All shame deserts my blood to the heart’s core. - Dare I display love’s choicest gift--this scar - Still sanguine-hued? Here ran your sudden brand - Sheer through the starting flesh, and let abroad - A traitor’s life; your wrathful eyes afar, - Had doom’d him first. Ah, gracious, valiant hand - Which drew me bleeding to the feet of God! - - - - -A DREAM - - - I dreamed I went to seek for her whose sight - Is sunshine to my soul; and in my dream - I found her not; then sank the latest beam - Of day in the rich west; upswam the Night - With sliding dews, and still I searched in vain, - Through thickest glooms of garden-alleys quaint, - On moonlit lawns, by glimmering lakes where faint - The ripples brake and died, and brake again. - Then said I, “At God’s inner court of light - I will beg for her;” straightway toward the same - I went, and lo! upon the altar-stair, - She knelt with face uplifted, and soft hair - Fallen upon shoulders purely gowned in white - And on her parted lips I read my name. - - - - -MICHELANGELESQUE - - - Shaping thy life what if the stubborn stuff - Grudge to inform itself through each dull part - With the soul’s high invention, and thy art - Seem a defeated thing, and earth rebuff - Heaven’s splendour, choosing darkness,--leave the rough - Brute-parts unhewn. Toilest thou for the mart - Or for the temple? Does the God see start - Quick beauty from the block, it is enough. - The spirit, foiled elsewhere, presses to the mouth, - Disparts the lips, lives on the lighted brow, - Fills the wide nostrils, flings the imperious chin - Out proudly. Now behold! the lyric youth, - The wrestler stooping in the act to win, - Pythian Apollo with the vengeful bow. - - - - -LIFE’S GAIN - - - “Now having gained Life’s gain, how hold it fast? - The harder task! because the world is still - The world, and days creep slow, and wear the will, - And Custom, gendering in the heart’s blind waste, - Brings forth a wingèd mist, which with no haste - Upcircling the steep air, and charged with ill, - Blots all our shining heights adorable, - And leaves slain Faith, slain Hope, slain Love the last.” - O shallow lore of life! He who hath won - Life’s gain doth hold nought fast, who could hold all, - Holden himself of strong, immortal Powers. - The stars accept him; for his sake the Sun - Hath sworn in heaven an oath memorial; - Around his feet stoop the obsequious Hours. - - - - -COMPENSATION - - - You shake your head and talk of evil days: - My friend, I learn’d ere I had told twelve years - That truth of yours,--how irrepressible tears - Surprise us, and strength fails, and pride betrays, - And sorrows lurk for us in all the ways - Of joyous living. But now to front my fears - I set a counter-truth which comes and cheers - Our after-life, when, temperate, the heart weighs - Evil with good. Do never smiles surprise - Sad lips? Did the glad violets blow last spring - In no new haunts? Or are the heavens not fair - After drench’d days of June, when all the air - Grows fragrant, and the rival thrushes sing, - Until stars gather into twilight skies? - - - - -TO A CHILD DEAD AS SOON AS BORN - - - A little wrath was on thy forehead, Boy, - Being thus defeated; the resolvèd will - Which death could not subdue, was threatening still - From lip and brow. I know that it was joy - No casual misadventure might destroy - To have lived, and fought and died. Therefore I kill - The pang for thee, unknown; nor count it ill - That thou hast entered swiftly on employ - Where Life would plant a warder keen and pure. - I thought to see a little piteous clay - The grave had need of, pale from light obscure - Of embryo dreams; thy face was as the day - Smit on by storm. Palms for my child, and bay! - Thus far thou hast done well, true son: endure. - - - - -BROTHER DEATH - - - When thou would’st have me go with thee, O Death, - Over the utmost verge, to the dim place, - Practise upon me with no amorous grace - Of fawning lips, and words of delicate breath, - And curious music thy lute uttereth; - Nor think for me there must be sought-out ways - Of cloud and terror; have we many days - Sojourned together, and is this thy faith? - Nay, be there plainness ’twixt us; come to me - Even as thou art, O brother of my soul; - Hold thy hand out and I will place mine there; - I trust thy mouth’s inscrutable irony, - And dare to lay my forehead where the whole - Shadow lies deep of thy purpureal hair. - - - - -THE MAGE - - - When I shall sing my songs the world will hear, - --Which hears not these,--I shall be white with age, - My beard on breast great as befits a mage - So skilled; but song is young, and in no drear - Tome-crammed, lamp-litten chamber shall mine fear - To pine ascetic. Where the woods are deep, - Thick leaves for arras, in a noonday sleep - Of breeze and bloom, gaze, but my art revere! - There I will sit, and score rare wisardry - In characters vermilion, azure, gold, - With bird, starred flower, and peering dragon-fly - Limned in the lines; and secrets shall be told - Of greatest Pan, and lives of wood-nymphs shy, - Blabbed by my goat-foot servitor overbold. - - - - -WISE PASSIVENESS - - - Think you I choose or that or this to sing? - I lie as patient as yon wealthy stream - Dreaming among green fields its summer dream, - Which takes whate’er the gracious hours will bring - Into its quiet bosom; not a thing - Too common, since perhaps you see it there - Who else had never seen it, though as fair - As on the world’s first morn; a fluttering - Of idle butterflies; or the deft seeds - Blown from a thistle-head; a silver dove - As faultlessly; or the large, yearning eyes - Of pale Narcissus; or beside the reeds - A shepherd seeking lilies for his love, - And evermore the all-encircling skies. - - - - -THE SINGER’S PLEA - - - Why do I sing? I know not why, my friend; - The ancient rivers, rivers of renown, - A royal largess to the sea roll down, - And on those liberal highways nations send - Their tributes to the world,--stored corn and wine, - Gold-dust, the wealth of pearls, and orient spar, - And myrrh, and ivory, and cinnabar, - And dyes to make a presence-chamber shine. - But in the woodlands, where the wild-flowers are, - The rivulets, they must have their innocent will - Who all the summer hours are singing still, - The birds care for them, and sometimes a star, - And should a tired child rest beside the stream - Sweet memories would slide into his dream. - - - - -THE TRESPASSER - - - _Trespassers will be prosecuted_,--so - Announced the inhospitable notice-board; - But silver-clear as any lady’s word - _Come in, in, in, come in_, now rich and low, - Now with tumultuous palpitating flow, - I swear by ring of Canace I heard. - “Sure,” said I, “this is no brown-breasted bird, - But some fair princess, lost an age ago - Through stepdame’s cursed spell, till the saints brought her - Who but myself, the knight foredoomed of grace.” - Alas! poor knight, in all that cockney place - You found no magic, save one radiant sight, - The huge, obstreperous house-keeper’s granddaughter, - A child with eyes of pure ethereal light. - - - - -RITUALISM - - - This is high ritual and a holy day; - I think from Palestrina the wind chooses - That movement in the firs; one sits and muses - In hushed heart-vacancy made meek to pray; - Listen! the birds are choristers with gay - Clear voices infantine, and with good will - Each acolyte flower has swung his thurible, - Censing to left and right these aisles of May. - For congregation, see! real sheep most clean, - And I--what am I, worshipper or priest? - At least all these I dare absolve from sin, - Ay, dare ascend to where the splendours shine - Of yon steep mountain-altar, and the feast - Is holy, God Himself being bread and wine. - - - - -PROMETHEUS UNBOUND - - - I, who lie warming here by your good fire, - Was once Prometheus and elsewhere have lain; - Ah, still in dreams they come,--the sudden chain, - The swooping birds, the silence, the desire - Of pitying, powerless eyes, the night, and higher - The keen stars; (if you please I fill again - The bowl, Silenus)--; yet ’twas common pain - Their beaks’ mad rooting; O, but they would tire, - And one go circling o’er the misty vast - On great, free wings, and one sit, head out-bent, - Poised for the plunge; then ’twas I crushed the cry - “Zeus, Zeus, I kiss your feet, and learn at last - The baseness of this crude self-government - Matched with glad impulse and blind liberty.” - - - - -KING MOB - - - Dismiss, O sweet King Mob, your foot-lickers! - When you held court last night I too was there - To listen, and in truth well nigh despair - O’ercame me when I saw your greedy ears - Drink such gross poison. I could weep hot tears - To think how three drugged words avail to keep - A waking people still on the edge of sleep, - And lose the world a right good score of years. - I love you too, big Anarch, lately born, - Half beast, yet with a stupid heart of man, - And since I love, would God that I could warn - Work out the beast as shortly as you can, - Till which time oath of mine shall ne’er be sworn, - Nor knee be bent to you, King Caliban. - - - - -THE MODERN ELIJAH - - - What went ye forth to see? a shaken reed?-- - Ye throngers of the Parthenon last night. - Prophet, yea more than prophet, we agreed; - No John a’ Desert with the girdle tight, - And locusts and wild honey for his need, - Before the dreadful day appears in sight - Urging one word to make the conscience bleed, - But an obese John Smith, “a shining light” - (Our chairman felt), “an honour to his creed.” - O by the gas, when buns and tea had wrought - Upon our hearts, how grew the Future bright,-- - The Press, the Institutes, Advance of Thought, - And People’s Books, till every mother’s son - Can prove there is a God, or there is none. - - - - -DAVID AND MICHAL - -(2 SAMUEL vi. 16) - - - _But then you don’t mean really what you say_-- - To hear this from the sweetest little lips, - O’er which each pretty word daintily trips - Like small birds hopping down a garden way, - When I had given my soul full scope to play - For once before her in the Orphic style - Caught from three several volumes of Carlyle, - And undivulged before this very day! - O young men of our earnest school confess - How it is deeply, darkly tragical - To find the feminine souls we would adore - So full of sense, so versed in worldly lore, - So deaf to the Eternal Silences, - So unbelieving, so conventional. - - - - -WINDLE-STRAWS - - -I - - Under grey clouds some birds will dare to sing, - No wild exultant chants, but soft and low; - Under grey clouds the young leaves seek the spring, - And lurking violets blow. - - And waves make idle music on the strand, - And inland streams have lucky words to say, - And children’s voices sound across the land - Although the clouds be grey. - - -II - - Only maidenhood and youth, - Only eyes that are most fair, - And the pureness of a mouth, - And the grace of golden hair, - Yet beside her we grow wise, - And we breathe a finer air. - - Words low-utter’d, simple-sweet,-- - Yet, nor songs of morning birds, - Nor soft whisperings of the wheat - More than such clear-hearted words - Make us wait, and love, and listen, - Stir more mellow heart accords. - - Only maiden-motions light, - Only smiles that sweetly go, - Girlish laughter pure and bright, - And a footfall like the snow, - What in these should make us wise? - What should bid the blossom blow? - - Child! on thee God’s angels wait, - ’Tis their robes that wave and part, - Make this summer air elate, - Fresh and fragrant, and thou art - But a simple child indeed, - One dare cherish to the heart. - - -III - - Were life to last for ever, love, - We might go hand in hand, - And pause and pull the flowers that blow - In all the idle land, - And we might lie in sunny fields - And while the hours away - With fallings-out and fallings-in - For half a summer day. - - But since we two must sever, love, - Since some dim hour we part, - I have no time to give thee much - But quickly take my heart, - “For ever thine,” and “thine my love,”-- - O Death may come apace, - What more of love could life bestow, - Dearest, than this embrace. - - -IV - - Now drops in the abyss a day of life: - I count my twelve hours’ gain;-- - Tired senses? vain desires? a baffled strife, - Vexed heart and beating brain? - - Ten pages traversed by a languid eye? - --Nay, but one moment’s space - I gazed into the soul of the blue sky; - Rare day! O day of grace! - - -V - - She kissed me on the forehead, - She spoke not any word, - The silence flowed between us, - And I nor spoke nor stirred. - - So hopeless for my sake it was, - So full of ruth, so sweet, - My whole heart rose and blessed her, - --Then died before her feet. - - -VI - - Nay, more! yet more, for my lips are fain; - No cups for a babe; I ask the whole - Deep draught that a God could hardly drain, - --Wine of your soul. - - Pour! for the goblet is great I bring, - Not worthless, rough with youths at strife, - And men that toil and women that sing, - --It is all my life. - - -VII - - Look forward with those steadfast eyes - O Pilot of our star! - It sweeps through rains and driving snows, - Strong Angel, gaze afar! - - Seest thou a zone of golden air? - Hearest thou the March-winds ring? - Or is thy heart prophetic yet - With stirrings of the Spring? - - -VIII - - Words for my song like sighing of dim seas, - Words with no thought in them,--a piping reed, - An infant’s cry, a moan low-uttered,--these - Are all the words I need. - - Others have song for broad-winged winds that pass, - For stars and sun, for standing men around; - I put my mouth low down into the grass, - And whisper to the ground. - - - HERE END THE POEMS - WHICH WERE FIRST - PUBLISHED IN - A VOLUME - IN 1876 - - - - - MISCELLANEOUS - POEMS OF LATER DATES - - - - -AT THE OAR - - - I dare not lift a glance to you, yet stay - Ye Gracious Ones, still save me, hovering near; - If music live upon mine inward ear, - I know ye lean bright brow to brow, and say - Your secret things; if rippling breezes play - Cool on my cheeks, it is those robes ye wear - That wave, and shadowy fragrance of your hair - Drifted, the fierce noon fervour to allay, - Fierce fervour, ceaseless stroke, small speed, and I - Find grim contentment in the servile mood; - But should I gaze in yon untrammelled sky - Once, or behold your dewy eyes, my blood - Would madden, and I should fling with one free cry - My body headlong in the whelming flood. - - - - -THE DIVINING ROD - - - Here some time flowed my springs and sent a cry - Of joy before them up the shining air, - While morn was new, and heaven all blue and bare; - Here dipped the swallow to a tenderer sky, - And o’er my flowers lean’d some pure mystery - Of liquid eyes and golden-glimmering hair; - For which now, drouth and death, a bright despair, - Shards, choking slag, the world’s dust small and dry. - Yet turn not hence thy faithful foot, O thou, - Diviner of my buried life; pace round, - Poising the hazel-wand; believe and wait, - Listen and lean; ah, listen! even now - Stirrings and murmurings of the underground - Prelude the flash and outbreak of my fate. - - - - -SALOME - -(_By Henri Regnault_) - - - Fair sword of doom, and bright with martyr blood, - Thee Regnault saw not as mine eyes have seen; - No Judith of the Faubourg, mænad-queen, - Pale on her tumbril-throne, when the live flood - Foams through revolted Paris, unwithstood, - Is of thy kin. Blossom and bud between, - Clear-brow’d Salome, with her silk head’s sheen, - Lips where a linnet might have pecked for food, - Pure curves of neck, and dimpling hand aloft, - Moved like a wave at sunrise. Herod said-- - “A boon for maiden freshness! Ask of me - What toy may please, though half my Galilee;” - And with beseeching eyes, and bird-speech soft, - She fluted: “Give me here John Baptist’s head.” - - - - -WATERSHED - - - Now on life’s crest we breathe the temperate air; - Turn either way; the parted paths o’erlook; - Dear, we shall never bid the Sphinx despair, - Nor read in Sibyl’s book. - - The blue bends o’er us; good are Night and Day; - Some blissful influence from the starry Seven - Thrilled us ere youth took wing; wherefore essay - The vain assault on heaven? - - And what great Word Life’s singing lips pronounce, - And what intends the sealing kiss of Death, - It skills us not; yet we accept, renounce, - And draw this tranquil breath. - - Enough, one thing we know, haply anon - All truths; yet no truths better or more clear - Than that your hand holds my hand; wherefore on! - The downward pathway, Dear! - - - - -THE GUEST - - - Rude is the dwelling, low the door, - No chamber this where men may feast, - I strew clean rushes on the floor, - Set wide my window to the East. - - I can but set my little room - In order, then gaze forth and wait; - I know not if the Guest will come, - Who holds aloft his starry state. - - - - -MORITURUS - - - Lord, when my hour to part is come, - And all the powers of being sink, - When eyes are filmed, and lips are dumb, - And scarce I hang upon the brink. - - Grant me but this--in that strange light - Or blind amid confused alarms, - One moment’s strength to stand upright - And cast myself into Thy arms. - - - - -ALONE - - - This is the shore of God’s lone love, which stirs - And heaves to some majestic tidal law; - And bright the illimitable horizons’ awe; - God’s love; yet all my soul cries out for hers. - - - - -FAME - - - My arches crumble; that bright dome I flung - Heavenward in pride decays; yet all unmoved - One column soars, and, graven in sacred tongue, - Endure the victor words--“This man was loved.” - - - - -WHERE WERT THOU? - - - Where wert Thou, Master, ’mid that rain of tears, - When grey the waste before me stretched and wide, - And when with boundless silence ached mine ears? - “Child, I was at thy side.” - - Where wert Thou when I trod the obscure wood, - And one lone cry of sorrow was the wind, - And drop by heavy drop failed my heart’s blood? - “Before thee and behind.” - - Where wert Thou when I fell and lay alone - Faithless and hopeless, yet through one dear smart - Not loveless quite, making my empty moan? - “Son, I was in thy heart.” - - - - -A WISH - - - Could I roll off two heavy years - That lie on me like lead; - And see you past their cloudy tears, - Nor dream that you are dead. - - I would not touch your lips, your hair, - Your breast, that once were mine; - Ah! not for me in Faith’s despair - Love’s sacramental wine. - - Find you I must for only this - In some new earth or heaven, - To bare my sorry heart, and kiss - Your feet and be forgiven. - - - - -THE GIFT - - - “Now I draw near: alone, apart - I stood, nor deemed I should require - Such access, till my musing heart - Suddenly kindled to desire. - - No farther from Thee than Thy feet! - No less a sight than all Thy face! - Nay, touch me where the heart doth beat, - Breathe where the throbbing brain hath place. - - Yield me the best, the unnamed good, - The gift which most shall prove me near, - Thy wine for drink, Thy fruit for food, - Thy tokens of the nail, the spear!” - - Such cry was mine: I lifted up - My face from treacherous speech to cease, - Daring to take the bitter cup, - But ah! Thy perfect gift was peace. - - Quiet deliverance from all need, - A little space of boundless rest, - To live within the Light indeed - To lean upon the Master’s breast. - - - - -RECOVERY - - - I joy to know I shall rejoice again - Borne upward on the good tide of the world, - Shall mark the cowslip tossed, the fern uncurled - And hear the enraptured lark high o’er my pain, - And o’er green graves; and I shall love the wane - Of sea-charm’d sunsets with all winds upfurl’d, - And that great gale adown whose stream are whirl’d, - Pale autumn dreams, dead hopes, and broodings vain. - Nor do I fear that I shall faintlier bless - The joy of youth and maid, or the gold hair - Of a wild-hearted child; then, none the less, - Instant within my shrine, no man aware, - Feed on a living sorrow’s sacredness, - And lean my forehead on this altar-stair. - - - - -IF IT MIGHT BE - - - If it might be, I would not have my leaves - Drop in autumnal stillness one by one, - Like these pale fluttering waifs that heap sad sheaves - Through mere inertia trembling, tottering down. - - Better one roaring day, one wrestling night, - The dark musician’s fiercer harmony, - And then abandoned bareness, or the light - Of strange discovered skies, if it might be. - - - - -WINTER NOONTIDE - - - I go forth now, but not to fill my lap - With violets and white sorrel of the wood; - This is a winter noon; and I may hap - Upon a few dry sticks, and fire is good. - - A quickening shrewdness edges the fore wind; - Some things stand clear in this dismantled hour - Which deep-leaved June had hidden; earth is kind, - The heaven is wide, and fire shall be my flower. - - - - -THE POOL - - - A wood obscure in this man’s haunt of love, - And midmost in the wood where leaves fall sere, - A pool unplumbed; no winds these waters move, - Gathered as in a vase from year to year. - - And he has thought that he himself lies drowned, - Wan-faced where the pale water glimmereth, - And that the voiceless man who paces round - The brink, nor sheds a tear now, is his wraith. - - - - -THE DESIRE TO GIVE - - - They who would comfort guess not the main grief-- - Not that her hand is never on my hair, - Her lips upon my brow; the time is brief - At longest, and I grow inured to bear. - - All that was ever mine I have and hold; - But that I cannot give by day or night - My poor gift which was dear to her of old, - And poorly given--that loss is infinite. - - - - -A BEECH-TREE IN WINTER - - - Now in the frozen gloom I trace thy girth, - Broad beech, that with lit leaves upon a day - When heaven was wide and down the meadow May - Moved bride-like, touched my forehead in sweet mirth, - And blissful secrets told of the deep Earth, - Low in mine ear; wherefore this eve I lay - My hand thus close till stirrings faint bewray - Thy piteous secrets of the days of dearth, - Silence! yet to my heart from thine has passed - Divine contentment; it is well with thee; - Still let the stars slide o’er thee whispering fate, - The might be in thee of the shouldering blast, - Still let fire-fingered snow thy tiremaid be, - Still bearing springtime in thy bosom wait. - - - - -JUDGMENT - - - I stand for judgment; vain the will - To judge myself, O Lord! - I cannot sunder good from ill - With a dividing sword. - - How should I know myself aright, - Who would by Thee be known? - Let me stand naked in Thy sight; - Thy doom shall be my own. - - Slay in me that which would be slain! - Thy justice be my grace! - If aught survive the joy, the pain, - Still must it seek Thy face. - - - - -DÜRER’S “MELENCHOLIA” - - - The bow of promise, this lost flaring star, - Terror and hope are in mid-heaven; but She, - The mighty-wing’d crown’d Lady Melancholy, - Heeds not. O to what vision’d goal afar - Does her thought bear those steadfast eyes which are - A torch in darkness? There nor shore nor sea, - Nor ebbing Time vexes Eternity, - Where that lone thought outsoars the mortal bar. - Tools of the brain--the globe, the cube--no more - She deals with; in her hand the compass stays; - Nor those, industrious genius, of her lore - Student and scribe, thou gravest of the fays, - Expect this secret to enlarge thy store; - She moves through incommunicable ways. - - - - -MILLET’S “THE SOWER” - - - Son of the Earth, brave flinger of the seed, - Strider of furrows, copesmate of the morn, - Which, stirr’d with quickenings now of day unborn, - Approves the mystery of thy fruitful deed; - Thou, young in hope and old as man’s first need, - Through all the hours that laugh, the hours that mourn, - Hold’st to one strenuous faith, by time unworn, - Sure of the miracle--that the clod will breed. - Dark is this upland, pallid still the sky, - And man, rude bondslave of the glebe, goes forth - To labour; serf, yet genius of the soil, - Great his abettors--a confederacy - Of mightiest Powers, old laws of heaven and earth, - Foresight and Faith, and ever-during Toil. - - - - -AT MULLION (CORNWALL) - -_Sunday_ - - - Where the blue dome is infinite, - And choral voices of the sea - Chaunt the high lauds, or meek, as now, - Intone their ancient litany; - - Where through his ritual pomp still moves - The Sun in robe pontifical, - Whose only creed is catholic light, - Whose benediction is for all; - - I enter with glad face uplift, - Asperged on brow and brain and heart; - I am confessed, absolved, illumed, - Receive my blessing and depart. - - - - -THE WINNOWER TO THE WINDS - -(_From Joachim de Bellay_) - - - To yon light troop, who fly - On wing that hurries by - The wide world over, - And with soft sibilance - Bid every shadow dance - Of the glad cover. - - These violets I consign - Lilies and sops-in-wine - Roses, all yours, - These roses vermeil-tinctured - Their graces new-uncinctured - And gilly-flowers. - - So with your gentle breath - Blow on the plain beneath - Through my grange blow, - What time I swink and strain, - Winnowing my golden grain - In noontide’s glow. - - - - -EMERSON - - - Memnon the Yankee! bare to every star, - But silent till one vibrant shaft of light - Strikes; then a voice thrilling, oracular, - And clear harmonies through the infinite. - - - - -SENT TO AN AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE SOCIETY - - - ’Twixt us through gleam and gloom in glorious play - League-long the leonine billows ramp and roll, - The same maturing sun illumes our day, - Ripens our blood--the sun of Shakespeare’s soul. - - - - -NOCTURNE - - - Ere sleep upheaves me on one glassy billow - To drift me down the deep, - I lie with easeful head upon my pillow, - Letting the minutes creep. - - Until Time’s pulse is stayed and all earth’s riot - Fades in a limit white, - While over me curve fragrant wings of quiet - Tender and great as Night. - - Then I gaze up. Divine, descending slumber - Thine access yet forbear, - Though vow I proffer none, nor blessings number, - Nor breathe a wordless prayer. - - A Presence is within me and above me, - That takes me for its own, - A Motherhood, a bosom prompt to love me, - I know it and am known. - - So softly I roll back the Spirit’s portals; - O be the entrance wide! - Silence and light from home of my Immortals - Flow in, a tranquil tide. - - Calming, assuaging, cleansing, freshening, freeing, - It floods each inlet deep; - Now pass thou wave of Light, ebb thought and being! - Come thou dark wave of sleep! - - - - -THE WHIRLIGIG - - - Glee at the cottage-doors to-day! - Small hearts with joy are big; - The merchant chanced to come our way - Who vends the whirligig. - - You know the marvel-stick of deal, - And, where the top should taper, - Pinned lightly, the ecstatic wheel, - Flaunting its purple paper. - - Raptures a halfpenny each; and see - The liberal-bosomed mother - Faltering; they tug her skirts the three, - (Ah, soon will come another!) - - Away they start! Swift, swifter fly - The buzzing, whirring chips, - O eyes grown great! O gleesome cry - From daubed, cherubic lips! - - I as companion of my walk - Had chosen a soul heroic - (So much I love superior talk) - An Emperor and a Stoic. - - The cowslip tossed; upsoared the lark; - Our choice was to recline us - Against an elm-bole, I and Mark - Aurelius Antoninus. - - Pale victory lightened on his brow, - Grieved conquest wrung from pain; - Of Nature’s course he spake, and how - Man should sustain, abstain. - - Physician of the soul, he spake - Of simples that allay - The blood, and how the nerves that ache - Freeze under ethic spray. - - I turned; perhaps his touch of pride - Moved me, a garb he wore; - I saw those children eager-eyed, - And Rome’s pale Emperor. - - “You miss,” I said, “born Nature’s rule, - Her statutes unrepealed, - You would remove us from the school, - And from the playing-field. - - And if our griefs be vain, our joys - Vainer, all’s in the plan; - For what are we but gamesome boys? - Through these we grow to man. - - I to my hornbook now give heed, - Now hear my playmates call, - Will ‘chase the rolling circles speed, - And urge the flying ball.’ - - Joys, pains, hopes, fears,--a mingled heap, - Grant me, nor Prince nor prig! - I want, sad Emperor, rosy sleep, - Leave me my whirligig.” - - In haste I spoke; such gusty talk - Oft wrongs these lips of mine; - Under grey clouds some day I’ll walk - Again with Antonine. - - - - -PARADISE LOST AND FOUND - - - Eve, to tell truth, was not deceived; - The snake’s word seemed to tally - With something she herself conceived, - Sick of her happy valley. - - The place amused her for a bit, - (Some think ’twas half a day) - Then came, alas! a desperate fit - Of neurasthenia. - - She tired of lions bland and grand, - She tired of thornless roses, - She felt she could no longer stand - Her Adam’s courtly glozes. - - His “graceful consort,” “spouse adored,” - His amorous-pious lectures; - She found herself supremely bored, - If one may risk conjectures. - - “Would he but scold for once!” sighed she, - “_De haut en bas_ caressings, - Qualified by astronomy, - Prove scarce unmingled blessings.” - - She strolled; fine gentlemen in wings - Would deftly light and stop her; - She looked demure; half-missed her “things,” - Half feared ’twas not quite proper. - - They asked for Adam, always him, - Each affable Archangel, - Nor heeded charms of neck or limb, - Big with their stale evangel. - - They dined; her cookery instinct stirred; - A dinner grew a dream, - Not berries cold, eternal curd, - And everlasting cream. - - Boon fruit was hers, but tame in sooth; - One thought her soul would grapple-- - To get her little ivory tooth - Deep in some wicked apple. - - So, when that sinuous cavalier - Spired near the tree of evil, - The woman hasted to draw near; - Such luck!--the genuine devil! - - And Satan, who to man had lied, - Man ever prone to palter, - The franker course with woman tried, - Assured she would not falter. - - He spoke of freedom and its pains, - Of passion and its sorrow, - Of sacrifice, and nobler gains - Wrung from a dark to-morrow. - - He did not shirk the names of death, - Worn heart, a night of tears-- - If here the woman caught her breath, - She dared to face her fears. - - Perhaps he touched on pretty needs, - Named frill, flounce, furbelow, - Perhaps referred to sable weeds, - And dignity in woe. - - Glowed like two rose-leaves both ear-lobes, - White grew her lips and set, - The sly snake picturing small white robes, - A roseate bassinet. - - He smiled; then squarely told the curse, - Birth-pang, a lord and master; - She hung her head--“It might be worse, - It seems no huge disaster.” - - She mused--“A sin’s a sin at most; - Life’s joy outweighs my sentence; - What of my man, who now can boast - A virtue so portentous? - - Best for him too! Sweat, workman’s groan - And death which makes us even; - I want a sinner of my own, - Who finds my breast his heaven.” - - Our General Mother, which is true - This tale, or that old story, - Tradition’s _fable convenue_ - Fashioned for Jahveh’s glory? - - - - -AFTER METASTASIO - - - If seeking me she ask “What hap - Befel him? Whither is he fled, - My friend, my poor unhappy friend?” - Then softly answer “He is dead.” - - Yet no! May never pang so keen - Be hers, and I the giver! Say, - If word be spoken, this alone, - “Weeping for you he went his way.” - - - - -THE CORN-CRAKE - - -I - - Here let the bliss of summer and her night - Be on my heart as wide and pure as heaven; - Now while o’er earth the tide of young delight - Brims to the full, calm’d by the wizard Seven, - And their high mistress, yon enchanted Moon; - The air is faint, yet fresh as primrose buds, - And dim with weft of honey-colour’d beams, - A bride-robe for the new espousèd June, - Who lies white-limbed among her flowers, nor dreams, - Such a divine content her being floods. - - -II - - Awake, awake! The silence hath a voice; - Not thine, thou heart of fire, palpitating - Until all griefs change countenance and rejoice, - And all joys ache o’er-ripe since thou dost sing, - Not thine this voice of the dry meadow-lands, - Harsh iteration! note untuneable! - Which shears the breathing quiet with a blade - Of ragged edge! Say, wilt thou ne’er be still - Crier in June’s high progress, whose commands - Upon no heedless drowzed heart are laid? - - -III - - Nay, cease not till thy breast disquieted - Hath won a term of ease; the dewy grass - Trackless at morn betrays not thy swift tread, - And through smooth-closing air thy call-notes pass, - To faint on yon soft-bosom’d pastoral steep - Thee bird the Night accepts; and I, through thee, - Reach to embalmèd hearts of summers dead, - Feel round my feet old, inland meadows deep, - And bow o’er flowers that not a leaf have shed, - Nor once have heard moan of an alien sea. - - -IV - - Even while I muse thy halting-place doth shift, - Now nearer, now more distant--I have seen - When April, through her shining hair adrift, - Gleams a farewell, and elms are fledged with green, - The voiceful, wandering envoy of the Spring; - Thee, never; though the mower’s scythe hath dashed - Thy nest aside, but thou hast sped askant, - Viewless; then last we lose thee, and thy wing - Brushes Nilotic maize and thou dost chaunt - Haply all night to stony ears of Pasht. - - -V - - Ah, now an end to thy inveterate tale! - The silence melts from the mid spheres of heaven; - Enough! before this peace has time to fail - From out my soul, or yon white cloud has driven - Up the moon’s path I turn, and I will rest - Once more with summer in my heart. Farewell! - Shut are the wild-rose cups; no moth’s awhirr; - My room will be moon-silvered from the west - For one more hour; thy note shall be a burr - To tease out thought and catch the slumbrous spell. - - - - -IN THE CATHEDRAL - - - The altar-lights burn low, the incense-fume - Sickens: O listen, how the priestly prayer - Runs as a fenland stream; a dim despair - Hails through their chaunt of praise, who here inhume - A clay-cold Faith within its carven tomb. - But come thou forth into the vital air - Keen, dark, and pure! grave Night is no betrayer, - And if perchance some faint cold star illume - Her brow of mystery, shall we walk forlorn? - An altar of the natural rock may rise - Somewhere for men who seek; there may be borne - On the night-wind authentic prophecies: - If not, let this--to breathe sane breath--suffice, - Till in yon East, mayhap, the dark be worn. - - - - -EDGAR ALLAN POE - -(_Read at the Centenary Celebration, University of Virginia, 19th Jan. -1909_) - - - Seeker for Eldorado, magic land, - Whose gold is beauty fine-spun, amber-clear, - O’er what Moon-mountains, down what Valley of fear - By what love waters fringed with pallid sand, - Did thy foot falter? Say what airs have fanned - Thy fervid brow, blown from no terrene sphere, - What rustling wings, what echoes thrilled thine ear - From mighty tombs whose brazen ports expand? - Seeker, who never quite attained, yet caught, - Moulded and fashioned, as by strictest law - The rainbow’d moon-mist and the flying gleam - To mortal loveliness, for pity and awe, - To us what carven dreams thy hand has brought - Dreams with the serried logic of a dream. - - - - -DEUS ABSCONDITUS - - - Since Thou dost clothe Thyself to-day in cloud, - Lord God in heaven, and no voice low or loud - Proclaims Thee,--see, I turn me to the Earth, - Its wisdom and its sorrow and its mirth, - Thy Earth perchance, but sure my very own, - And precious to me grows the clod, the stone, - A voiceless moor’s brooding monotony, - A keen star quivering through the sunset dye, - Young wrinkled beech leaves, saturate with light, - The arching wave’s suspended malachite; - I turn to men, Thy sons perchance, but sure - My brethren, and no face shall be too poor - To yield me some unquestionable gain - Of wonder, laughter, loathing, pity, pain, - Some dog-like craving caught in human eyes, - Some new-waked spirit’s April ecstasies; - These will not fail nor foil me; while I live - There will be actual truck in take and give, - But Thou hast foiled me; therefore undistraught, - I cease from seeking what will not be sought, - Or sought, will not be found through joy or fear, - If still Thou claimst me, seek me. I am here. - - - - -SUBLIMINAL - - - Door, little door, - Shadowed door in the innermost room of my heart, - I lean and listen, withdrawn from the stir and apart, - For a word of the wordless love. - - And still you hide, - Yourself of me, who are more than myself, within, - And I wait if perchance a whisper I may win - From my soul on the other side. - - What do I catch - Afloat on the air, for something is said or done? - Are there two who speak--my soul and the nameless One? - Little door, could I lift the latch. - - Sigh for some want - Measureless sigh of desire, or a speechless prayer? - Rustle of robe of a priest at sacrifice there - Benediction or far-heard chaunt? - - Could we but meet, - Myself and my hidden self in a still amaze! - But the tramp of men comes up, and the roll of drays, - And a woman’s cry from the street! - - - - -LOUISA SHORE - -(_Author of “Hannibal, a Drama”_) - - - Who dared to pluck the sleeve of Hannibal, - And hale him from the shades? Who bade the man, - Indomitable of brain, return to plan - A vast revenge and vowed? Wild clarions call; - Dusk faces flame; the turreted brute-wall - Moves, tramples, overwhelms; van clashes van; - Roman, Numidian, Carthaginian; - And griefs are here, unbowed, imperial. - Who caught the world’s fierce tides? An English girl. - Shy dreamer ’neath fledged elm and apple-bloom, - With Livy or Polybius on her knee, - Whose dreams were light as dew and pure as pearl,-- - Yet poignant-witted; thew’d for thought; girl-groom - Sped to her Lord across the Midland Sea. - - - - -FLOWERS FROM THE SOUTH OF FRANCE - - - Thanks spoken under rainy skies, - And tossed by March winds of the North, - And faint ere they can find your eyes, - Pale thanks are mine and poor in worth, - - Matched with your gift of dews and light, - Quick heart-beats of the Southern spring, - Provençal flowers, pearl-pure, blood-bright, - Which heard the Mid-sea murmuring. - - Listen! a lark in Irish air, - A silver spray of ecstasy! - O wind of March blow wide and bear - This song of home as thanks for me. - - Nay, but yourself find thanks more meet; - Blossoms like these which drank the sky - Strew in some shadowy alcove-seat, - And lay your violin where they lie; - - Leave them; but with the first star rise, - And bring the bow, and poise at rest - The enchanted wood. Ah, shrill sweet cries! - A prisoned heart is in its breast. - - - - -TO HESTER - -(_At the Piano_) - - - So ends your fingers’ fine intrigue! - The netted guile! Nor yonder sat he - In pump and frill who made the gigue, - Your Neapolitan Scarlatti. - - The twilight yields you to me; strange! - My dainty sprite, a most rare vision! - Well, is it not a wise exchange, - Live maid for ghost of dead musician? - - Yet gently let the shadows troop - To darkness; lightly lie the dust on - Damon and Chloe, hose and hoop, - My bevy of the days Augustan. - - What led my fancy down the track, - Through century-silent, shadowy mazes? - Perhaps that foolish bric-à-brac - Your pseudo-classic shelf that graces. - - Or haply something I divined, - While on your face I stayed a dweller, - Of that fair ancestress--unsigned-- - It pleases you to name a Kneller; - - And still your fingers ran the keys, - Through quaint encounter, pretty wrangle - Light laughter, interspace of ease, - Fine turn, and softly-severed tangle, - - Gigue, minuet, rondo, ritornelle-- - Quaint jars with rose-leaf memories scented, - Stored with glad sound, when life went well, - Ere melancholy was invented, - - When pleasure ran, a rippling tide, - And Phillida with Phyllis carolled, - Ere Werther yet for Lotte sighed, - Or English maids adored Childe Harold; - - Ere music shook the central heart, - Or soared to spheral heights inhuman, - Ere Titans stormed the heaven of art, - Let by the hammer-welder, Schumann. - - Ah, well, we sigh beneath the load, - We sing our pain, our pride, our passion, - And Weltschmerz is the modern mode, - But sweet seventeen is still a fashion. - - Let be a while the Infinite, - Those chords with tremulous fervour laden, - Where Chopin’s fire and dew unite-- - I choose instead one mortal maiden. - - Let sorrow rave, and sadness fret, - And all our century’s ailments pester, - I am not quite despairful yet-- - There, at the keyboard, sits a Hester. - - - - -UNUTTERED - - - Song that is pent in me, - Song that is aching, - Ne’er to escape from me, - Sleeping or waking, - - Down aspic! the dust of me, - Blown the world over - A century hence - Will envenom a lover. - - His red lips grow vocal, - His great word is new, - And the world knows my secret, - Is dreaming of you. - - - - -IMITATED FROM J. SOULARY’S “LE FOSSOYEUR” - - - For every child new-born God brings to birth - A little grave-digger, deft at his trade, - Who ’neath his master’s feet still voids the earth, - There where one day the man’s dark plunge is made. - - Do you know yours? Hideous perhaps is he, - You shudder seeing the workman at his task; - Such gracious looks commend who waits on me - I yield whole-hearted, nor for quarter ask. - - A child rose-white, sweet-lipped, my steps he presses - On to the pit with coaxings and caresses, - Lovelier assassin none could choose to have. - Rogue, hast thou done? Let’s haste. The hour comes quick, - Give with a kiss the last stroke of the pick, - And gently lay me in my flowery grave. - - - - -IMITATED FROM GOETHE’S “GANYMEDE” - - - As with splendour of morning - Around me thou flamest, - O Spring time, my lover, - With a thousand delights and desires; - To my heart comes thronging - The sacred sense - Of thy glow everlasting, - O infinite beauty! - - Would I might seize thee - In these my arms! - - Ah! on thy bosom - I lie sore yearning; - Thy flowers, thy grasses, - Press close to my heart; - Fresh breeze of the morn - Thy coolest the burning - Thirst of my breast. - With love the nightingale - Calls to me from the misty valley! - - I come, I am coming! - Whither? Ah, whither? - Upward! Upward the urge is! - Lower the clouds come drifting, - They stoop to the longing of love. - For me! for me! - Borne in the lap of you - Upwards! - Embracing, embraced! - Upwards, even to the bosom - Of thee all-loving, my Father! - - - - -WITH A COPY OF MY “POEMS” - - - My slender, wondering Nautilus, - Sunk in the ooze--a thing how frail!-- - Because you choose to have it thus - Through wavering waters luminous - Rises once more, sets up the sail; - - It trembles to the sun, has fear - Of life, that knew no fear of death: - Ah! may kind Ariel, hovering near, - Speed the toy onward with his breath! - - - - -PROLOGUE TO MAURICE GEROTHWOHL’S VERSION OF VIGNY’S “CHATTERTON” - -(_March 1909_) - - - Not yet to life inured, the Muse’s son, - Born to be lord of visions, Chatterton, - A youth, nor yet the master of his dream, - Poor, proud, o’erwrought, perplex’d in the extreme - By poetry, his demon, and by love-- - Powers of the deep below, the height above-- - Ringed by a world with dreams and love at strife, - Rejects in fiery spleen the gift of life. - - Condemn, but pity! - In the South, they say, - Boys in their sportive mood affect a play; - The brands aglow they fashion in a ring, - Then in the ardent cirque a scorpion fling; - Crouched motionless the creature lies, until - Urged by the fire you see him throb and thrill, - Whereon the laughter peals! Anon, he’ll shape - Right on the flames his course to make escape, - And backward draws o’erpowered. Fresh shouts of glee! - Next round the circle curving timorously - He seeks impossible exit; now, once more, - Quailing, and in the centre as before, - He shrinks despairing; lest, he knows his part, - Turns on himself, grown bold, his poisoned dart, - And on the instant dies. O then at height - We hear the cries uproarious of delight! - Doubtless the wretch on mortal crime was bent, - Doubtless the boys were good and innocent. - - Play not, O world of men, the savage boy, - Make not the poet, quickener of earth’s joy, - Your scorpion! Hardly once a hundred years - Compact of spirit and fire and dew, appears - He through whose song the spheral harmonies - Vibrate in mortal hearing. Nay, be wise, - For your own joy, and see he lacks not bread, - If ye but wreathe the white brows of the dead, - ’Tis ye yourselves are disinherited. - - - - -A SONG - - - When did such moons upheave? - When were such pure dawns born? - Yet fly morn into eve, - Fly eve into morn. - - Lily and iris blooms, - Blooms of the orchard close, - Pass--for she comes, she comes, - Your sovereign, the rose. - - Lark, that is heart of the height, - Thrush, that is voice of the vale, - Cease, it is nearing, the night - Of the nightingale. - - Hasten great noon that glows, - Night, when the swift stars pale, - Hasten noon of the rose, - Night of the nightingale. - - - - -THE DROPS OF NECTAR. 1789 - -_Imitated from_ GOETHE’S “DIE NEKTARTROPFEN” - - - When Minerva, granting graces - To her darling, her Prometheus, - Brought a brimming bowl of nectar - To the underworld from heaven - To rejoice his race of mortals, - And to quicken in their bosom - Of all gracious arts the impulse, - Fearing Jupiter should see her, - With a rapid foot she hastened, - And the golden bowl was shaken, - And there fell some slender sprinklings - On the verdurous plain below her. - - Whereupon the bees grew busy - With the same in eager sucking. - Came the butterfly as eager - Some small drop to gather also. - Even the spider, the unshapely, - Hither crept and sucked with gusto. - Happy are they to have tasted, - They and other delicate creatures, - For they share henceforth with mortals - Art, of all earth’s joys the fairest. - - - - -AMOR AS LANDSCAPE-PAINTER - -_Imitated from_ GOETHE’S “AMOR ALS LANDSCHAFTSMALER” - - - On a point of rock I sat one morning, - Gazed with fixèd eyes upon the vapour, - Like a sheet of solid grey outspreading - Did it cover all in plain and mountain. - - By my side meanwhile a boy had placed him, - And he spake. “Good friend, how can’st thou calmly - Stare upon the void grey sheet before thee? - Hast thou then for painting and for modelling - All desire, it seemeth, lost for ever?” - - On the child I looked, and thought in secret, - “Would the little lad then play the Master?” - - “If thou wouldst be ever sad and idle,” - Spake the boy, “no thing of skill can follow. - Look! I’ll paint you straight a little picture, - Teach you how to paint a pretty picture.” - - And thereon forth stretched he his forefinger, - Which was rosy even as a rose blossom, - To the ample canvas strained before him - Set to work at sketching with his finger. - There on high a glorious sun he painted, - Which mine eyes with its effulgence dazzled, - And the fringe of clouds he made it golden. - Through the clouds he let press forth the sunbeams, - Then the tree-tops delicate, light, he painted, - Late refreshed and quickened. Over the hillrange - Hill behind hill folded, for a background. - Nor were waters wanting. There below them - He the river limned, so true to Nature, - That it seemed to sparkle in the sunbeams, - That against its banks it seemed to murmur. - - And there stood beside the river flowers, - And their colours glowed upon the meadow, - Gold and an enamel green and purple; - As if all were emerald and carbuncle. - Pure and clear above he limned the heaven, - And the azure mountains far and further, - So that I, new-born and all enraptured, - Gazed on now the painter, now the picture. - - “I have given thee proof, perhaps,” so spake he, - “That this handicraft I’ve comprehended - But the hardest part is yet to follow.” - - Then and with his finger-tip he outlined, - Using utmost care beside the thicket, - At the point where from earth’s gleaming surface - Was the sun cast back in all its radiance-- - Outlined there the loveliest of maidens, - Fair of form, now clad in richest raiment, - Brown her hair and ’neath it cheeks the freshest - And the cheeks were of the self-same colour - As the pretty finger that had drawn them. - - “O my boy,” I cried, “declare what master - Did receive thee in his school as pupil, - That so swiftly and so true to Nature - Thou with skill beginn’st and well completest?” - - But while yet I spake a breeze uprises. - And behold, it sets astir the summits, - Curleth every wave upon the river, - Puffs the veil out of the charming maiden. - And, what me the astonished, more astonished, - Now the maiden’s foot is put in motion, - She advances, and to the place draws nearer, - Where I sit beside the cunning Master. - - Now when all things, all things are in motion, - Trees and river, flowers and veil outblowing, - And the slender foot of her the fairest, - Think you I upon my rock stayed seated, - Speechless as a rock and as immobile? - - - - -THE WANDERER - -_Imitated from_ GOETHE’S “DER WANDERER” - - -WANDERER - - God’s grace be thine, young woman - And his, the boy who sucks - That breast of thine. - Here let me on the craggy scar, - In shade of the great elm, - My knapsack fling from me - And rest me by thy side. - - -WOMAN - - What business urges thee - Now in the heat of day - Along this dusty path? - Bringest thou some city merchandise - Into the country round? - Thou smilest, stranger, - At this my question. - - -WANDERER - - No city merchandise I bring, - Cool now the evening grows, - Show me the rills - Whence thou dost drink, - My good young woman. - - -WOMAN - - Here, up the rocky path, - Go onward. Through the shrubs - The path runs by the cot - Wherein I dwell, - On to the rills - From whence I drink. - - -WANDERER - - Traces of ordering human hands - Betwixt the underwood. - These stones _thou_ hast not so disposed, - Nature--thou rich dispensatress. - - -WOMAN - - Yet further up. - - -WANDERER - - With moss o’erlaid, an architrave! - I recognize thee, plastic spirit, - Thou hast impressed thy seal upon the stone. - - -WOMAN - - Further yet, stranger. - - -WANDERER - - Lo, an inscription whereupon I tread, - But all illegible, - Worn out by wayfarers are ye, - Which should show forth your Master’s piety, - Unto a thousand children’s children. - - -WOMAN - - In wonder, stranger, dost thou gaze - Upon these stones? - Up yonder round my cot - Are many such. - - -WANDERER - - Up yonder? - - -WOMAN - - Leftwards directly - On through the underwood, - Here! - - -WANDERER - - Ye Muses! and ye Graces! - - -WOMAN - - That is my cottage. - - -WANDERER - - The fragments of a temple! - - -WOMAN - - Here onwards on one side - The rivulet flows - From whence I drink. - - -WANDERER - - Glowing, then hoverest - Above thy sepulchre, - Genius! Over thee - Is tumbled in a heap - Thy masterpiece, - O thou undying one! - - -WOMAN - - Wait till I bring the vessel - That thou mayst drink. - - -WANDERER - - Ivy hath clad around - Thy slender form divine. - How do ye upward strive - From out the wreck, - Twin columns! - And thou, the solitary sister there, - How do ye, - With sombre moss upon your sacred heads, - Gaze in majestic mourning down - Upon these scattered fragments - There at your feet, - Your kith and kin! - Where lie the shadows of the bramble bush, - Concealed by wrack and earth, - And the long grass wavers above. - Nature dost then so hold in price - Thy masterpiece’s masterpiece? - Dost thou, regardless, shatter thus - Thy sanctuary? - Dost sow the thistles therein? - - -WOMAN - - How the boy sleeps! - Wouldst thou within the cottage rest, - Stranger? Wouldst here - Rather than ’neath the open heavens bide? - Now it is cool. Here, take the boy. - Let me go draw the water. - Sleep, darling, sleep! - - -WANDERER - - Sweet is thy rest. - How, bathed in heavenly healthiness, - Restful he breathes! - Thou, born above the relics - Of a most sacred past, - Upon thee may its spirit rest. - He whom it environeth - Will in the consciousness of power divine - Each day enjoy. - Seedling so rich expand, - The shining spring’s - Resplendent ornament, - In presence of thy fellows shine, - And when the flower-sheathe fades and falls - May from thy bosom rise - The abounding fruit, - And ripening, front the sun. - - -WOMAN - - God bless him--and ever still he sleeps. - Nought have I with this water clear - Except a piece of bread to offer thee. - - -WANDERER - - I give thee thanks. - How gloriously all blooms around - And groweth green! - - -WOMAN - - My husband soon - Home from the fields - Returns. Stay, stay, O man, - And eat with us thy evening bread. - - -WANDERER - - Here do ye dwell? - - -WOMAN - - There, between yonder walls, - The cot. My father builded it - Of brick, and of the wreckage stones. - Here do we dwell. - He gave me to a husbandman, - And in our arms he died-- - Sweetheart--and hast thou slept? - How bright he is--and wants to play. - My rogue! - - -WANDERER - - O Nature! everlastingly conceiving. - Each one thou bearest for the joy of life, - All of thy babes thou hast endowed - Lovingly with a heritage--a Name. - High on the cornice doth the swallow build, - Of what an ornament she hides - All unaware. - The caterpillar round the golden bough - Spins her a winter quarters for her young. - Thus dost thou patch in ’twixt the august - Fragments of bygone time - For needs of thine--for thy own needs - A hut. O men-- - Rejoicing over graves. - Farewell, thou happy wife. - - -WOMAN - - Thou wilt not stay? - - -WANDERER - - God keep you safe - And bless your boy. - - -WOMAN - - A happy wayfaring! - - -WANDERER - - Where doth the pathway lead me - Over the mountain there? - - -WOMAN - - To Cuma. - - -WANDERER - - How far is it hence? - - -WOMAN - - ’Tis three good miles. - - -WANDERER - - Farewell! - O Nature! guide my way, - The stranger’s travel-track - Which over graves - Of sacred times foregone - I still pursue. - Me to some covert guide, - Sheltered against the north, - And where from noontide’s glare - A poplar grove protects. - And when at eve I turn - Home to the hut, - Made golden with the sun’s last beam, - Grant that such wife may welcome me, - The boy upon her arm. - - - - -IMITATED FROM GOETHE’S “ALEXIS AND DORA” - - - Ah, without stop or stay the ship still momently presses - On through the foaming deep, further and further from shore. - Far-traced the furrow is cut by the keel, and in it the dolphins - Bounding follow as though prey were before them in flight. - All betokens a fortunate voyage; light-hearted the shipman - Gently handles the sail that takes on it labour for all. - Forward as pennon and streamer presses the voyager’s spirit, - One alone by the mast stands reverted and sad. - Mountains already blue he sees departing, he sees them - Sink in the sea, while sinks every joy from his gaze. - Also for thee has vanished the ship that bears thy Alexis, - Robs thee, O Dora, of friend, robs thee of, ah! the betrothed. - Thou, too, gazest in vain after me. Our hearts are still beating - For one another, but ah! on one another no more. - Single moment wherein I have lived, thou weigh’st in the balance - More than all days erewhile coldly squandered by me. - Ah, in that moment alone, the last, arose in my bosom - Life unhoped for in thee, come down as a gift from the Gods. - Now in vain dost thou with thy light make glorious the æther, - Thy all-illumining day--Phœbus, by me is abhorred. - Back on myself I return, and fain would I there in the silence - Live o’er again the time when daily to me she appeared. - Was it possible beauty to see and never to feel it? - Did not the heavenly charm work on thy dullness of soul? - Blame not thyself, poor heart, so the poet proposes a riddle, - Artfully wrought into words oft to the ear of the crowd, - The network of images, lovely and strange, is a joy to the hearer, - Yet still there lacketh the word affirming the sense of the whole. - Is it at last disclosed, then every spirit is gladdened, - And in the verse perceives meaning of twofold delight. - Ah, why so late, O love, dost thou unbind from my forehead - Wrappings that darkened my eyes--why too late dost unbind? - Long time the freighted bark delayed for favouring breezes, - Fair at last rose the wind pressing off-shore to the sea. - Idle seasons of youth and idle dreams of the future - Ye have departed--for me only remaineth the hour; - Yes, it remains the gladness remaining for me; Dora, I hold thee. - Hope to my gaze presents, Dora, thy image alone. - Often on thy way to the temple I saw thee gay-decked and decorous, - Stepped the good mother beside, all ceremonious and grave. - Quick-footed wert thou and eager, bearing thy fruit to the market, - Quitting the well, thy head how daringly balanced the jar; - There, lo! thy throat was shown, thy neck more fair than all others, - Fairer than others were shown the poise and play of thy limbs. - Ofttime I held me in fear for the totter and crash of the pitcher, - Yet upright ever it stood, there where the kerchief was pleached. - Fairest neighbour, yes, my wont it was to behold thee, - As we behold the stars, as we contemplate the moon. - In them rejoicing, while never once in the tranquil bosom, - Even in shadow of thought stirs the desire to possess. - Thus did ye pass, my years. But twenty paces asunder - Our dwellings, thine and mine, nor once on thy threshold I trod. - Now the hideous deep divides us! Ye lie to the heavens, - Billows! your lordly blue to me is the colour of night. - Already was everything in motion. A boy came running - Swift to my father’s house, calling me down to the shore. - “The sail is already hoisted; it flaps in the wind,” so spake he. - “Weighed with a lusty cheer the anchor parts from the sand. - Come, Alexis! O come!” And gravely, in token of blessing, - Laid my good father his hand on the clustering curls of the son. - Careful the mother reached me a bundle newly made ready; - “Come back happy!” they cried. “Come back happy and rich.” - So out of doors, the bundle under my arm, did I fling me, - And at the wall below, there by the garden gate, - Saw thee stand; thou smiledst upon me and spake’st. “Alexis, - Yonder clamouring folk, are these thy comrades aboard? - Distant shores thou visitest now and merchandise precious - Thou dost deal in, and jewels for the wealthy city dames. - Wilt thou not bring me also one little light chain? I would buy it - Thankfully. I have wished so oft to adorn me with this.” - Holding my own I stood and asked, in the way of a merchant, - First of the form, the weight exact, of the order thou gavest. - Modest in truth was the price thou assignedst. While gazing upon thee, - Neck and shoulders I saw worthy the jewels of our queen. - Louder sounded the cry from the ship. Then saidest thou kindly, - “Some of the garden fruit take thou with thee on thy way. - Take the ripest oranges--take white figs. The sea yields - Never a fruit at all. Nor doth every country give fruits.” - Thereon I stepped within; the fruit thou busily broughtest, - There in the gathered robe bearing a burden all gold. - Often I pleaded, “see this is enough,” and ever another - And fairer fruit down dropped, lightly touched, to thy hand. - Then at the last to the bower thou camest. There was a basket, - And the myrtle in bloom bent over thee, over me. - Skilfully didst thou begin to arrange the fruit and in silence. - First the orange, that lies heavy a globe of gold, - Then the tenderer fig, which slightest pressure will injure, - And with myrtle o’erlaid, fair adorned was the gift. - But I lifted it not. I stood, we looked one another - Full in the eyes. When straight the sight of my eyes waxed dim. - Thy bosom I felt on my own! and now my arm encircled - The stately neck, whereon thousandfold kisses I showered. - Sank thy head on my shoulder--by tender arms enfolded - As with a chain was he the man whom thou hast made blest. - The hands of Love I felt, he drew us with might together, - And thrice from a cloudless sky it thundered; and now there flowed - Tears from my eyes, down streaming, weeping wert thou. I wept, - And through sorrow and joy the world seemed to pass from our sense. - Ever more urgent their shoreward cry; but thither to bear me - My feet refused: I cried, “Dora, and art thou not mine?” - “For ever,” thou gently saidst. And thereon it seemed that our tears, - As by some breath divine, gently were blown from our eyes. - Nearer the cry “Alexis!” Then peered the boy, as he sought me, - In through the garden gate. How the basket he eyed. - How he constrained me. How I pressed thee once more by the hand. - How arrived I aboard? I know as one drunken I seemed. - Even so my companions took me to be; they bore with one ailing, - And already in haze of distance the city grew dim. - “For ever,” Dora, thy whisper was. In my ear it echoes - Even with the thunder of Zeus. There stood she by his throne, - She, his daughter, the Goddess of Love, and beside her the Graces. - So by the Gods confirmed this our union abides. - O then haste thee, our bark, with the favouring winds behind thee. - Labour, thou lusty keel, sunder the foaming flood! - Bring me to that strange haven; that so for me may the goldsmith - In his workshop anon fashion the heavenly pledge. - Ay, in truth, the chainlet shall grow to a chain, O Dora. - Nine times loosely wound shall it encircle thy neck. - Further, jewels most manifold will I procure for thee; golden - Bracelets also. My gifts richly shall deck thy hand. - There shall the ruby contend with the emerald; loveliest sapphire - Matched against jacinth shall stand, while with a setting of gold - Every gem may be held in a perfect union of beauty. - O what joy for the lover to grace with jewel and gold the beloved. - If pearls I view, my thought is of thee; there rises before me - With every ring the shape slender and fair of thy hand. - I will barter and buy, and out of them all the fairest - Thou shalt choose. I devote all my lading to thee. - But not jewel and gem alone shall thy lover procure thee. - What a housewife would choose, that will he bring with him too. - Coverlets delicate, woollen and purple, hemmed to make ready - A couch that grateful and soft fondly shall welcome the pair. - Lengths of the finest linen. Thou sittest and sewest and clothest - Me therein and thyself, and haply also a third. - Visions of hope delude my heart. Allay, O Divine Ones, - Flames of resistless desire wildly at work in my breast, - And yet I fain would recall delights that are bitter, - When care to me draws near, hideous, cold and unmoved. - Not the Erinnyes torch nor the baying of hounds infernal - Strikes such terror in him, the culprit in realms of despair, - As that phantom unmoved in me who shows me the fair one - Far away. Open stands even now the garden gate, - And another, not I, draws near--for him fruits are falling, - And for him, too, the fig strengthening honey retains. - Him too doth she draw to the bower. Does he follow? O sightless - Make me, O Gods! destroy the vision of memory in me. - Yes--a maiden is she--she who gives herself straight to one lover, - She to another who woes as speedily turns her around. - Laugh not, O Zeus, this time, at an oath audaciously broken-- - Thunder more fiercely! strike! yet hold back thy lightning shaft. - Send on my trace the sagging clouds. In gloom as of night-time - Let thy bright lightning-flash strike this ill-fated mast. - Scatter the planks around and give to the raging waters - This my merchandise. Give me to the dolphins a prey. - Now ye Muses enough! In vain is your effort to image - How in a heart that loves alternate sorrow and joy. - Nor are ye able to heal those wounds which Love has inflicted, - Yet their assuagement comes, Gracious Ones, only from you. - - - EDITOR’S NOTE.--The four Goethe translations with which this volume - closes are taken from rough jottings, hardly more than - _protoplasm_. - - They much need re-handling, which they cannot now receive. Many - lines are, as verse, defective for the ear ... yet some contain - sufficient beauty, as well as fidelity, in translation to justify, - perhaps, their preservation as fragments of unfinished work. - - This does not apply to the other translations which were left by E. - D. in fair MS. as completed. - - -COLSTONS LIMITED, PRINTERS, EDINBURGH - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poems, by Edward Dowden - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS *** - -***** This file should be named 55086-0.txt or 55086-0.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/5/0/8/55086/ - -Produced by Larry B. 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