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diff --git a/old/62251-8.txt b/old/62251-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 25d7ce3..0000000 --- a/old/62251-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,4251 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Poems of Alice Meynell, by Alice Meynell - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most -other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of -the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have -to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. - -Title: The Poems of Alice Meynell - -Author: Alice Meynell - -Release Date: May 28, 2020 [EBook #62251] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF ALICE MEYNELL *** - - - - -Produced by Al Haines - - - - - - - - -[Frontispiece: Alice Meynell From a drawing by John S. Sargent, R.A.] - - - - - THE POEMS - - OF - - ALICE MEYNELL - - - - COMPLETE EDITION - - - - MCCLELLAND & STEWART - PUBLISHERS - TORONTO - - - - - Copyright. Canada, 1923 - by McClelland and Stewart, Limited, Toronto - - - - Printed in Canada - - - - - To - W.M. - - - - - BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE - - _This volume contains the whole of Mrs. Meynell's - poetry: the early volume of "Preludes"; the "Poems," - issued in 1893, of which nine impressions were printed - before 1913, when it was incorporated in the - Collected Edition; "Later Poems," issued in 1901, - also incorporated in the edition of 1913; - "Poems: Collected Edition," issued in - 1913, of which the eighth impression - was printed in 1919, and a ninth with - additions in 1921; "A Father of - Women, and other Poems," issued - in 1918, and included in the - Collected Edition in 1919; - and finally "Last Poems," issued in - February, 1923._ - - - - - THE CONTENTS - - EARLY POEMS - - In Early Spring - To the Beloved - An Unmarked Festival - In Autumn - Parted - "Soeur Monique" - Regrets - The Visiting Sea - After a Parting - Builders of Ruins - - - SONNETS - - Thoughts in Separation - The Garden - Your Own Fair Youth - The Young Neophyte - Spring on the Alban Hills - In February - A Shattered Lute - Renouncement - To a Daisy - - - San Lorenzo's Mother - The Lover Urges the Better Thrift - Cradle-Song at Twilight - Song of the Night at Daybreak - A Letter from a Girl to her own Old Age - Advent Meditation - - - A POET'S FANCIES - - The Love of Narcissus - To Any Poet - To One poem in a Silent Time - The Moon to the Sun - The Spring to the Summer - The Day to the Night - A Poet of one Mood - A Song of Derivations - Singers to Come - Unlinked - - - LATER POEMS - - The Shepherdess - The Two Poets - The Lady Poverty - November Blue - A Dead Harvest - The Watershed (_for R. T._) - The Joyous Wanderer - The Rainy Summer - The Roaring Frost - West Wind in Winter - The Fold - "Why wilt thou Chide?" - Veneration of Images - "I am the Way" - Via, et Veritas, et Vita - Parentage - The Modern Mother - Unto us a Son is Given - Veni Creator - Two Boyhoods - To Sylvia - Saint Catherine of Siena - Chimes - A Poet's Wife - Messina, 1908 - The Unknown God - A General Communion - The Fugitive - In Portugal, 1912 - The Crucifixion - The Newer Vainglory - In Manchester Square - Maternity - The First Snow - The Courts - The Launch - To the Body - The Unexpected Peril - Christ in the Universe - Beyond Knowledge - Easter Night - A Father of Women - Length of Days: To the Early Dead in Battle - Nurse Edith Cavell - Summer in England, 1914 - To Tintoretto in Venice - A Thrush before Dawn - The Two Shakespeare Tercentenaries - To O----, of Her Dark Eyes - The Treasure - A Wind of Clear Weather in England - In Sleep - The Divine Privilege - Free Will - The Two Questions - The Lord's Prayer - - - LAST POEMS - - The Poet and His Book - Intimations of Mortality - The Wind is Blind - Time's Reversals - The Threshing Machine - Winter Trees on the Horizon - To Sleep - The Marriage of True Minds - In Honour of America, 1917 - Lord, I owe Thee a Death - Reflexions - To Conscripts - The Voice of a Bird - The Question - The Laws of Verse - "The Return to Nature" - To Silence - The English Metres - "Rivers Unknown to Song" - To the Mother of Christ the Son of Man - A Comparison - Surmise - To Antiquity - Christmas Night - The October Redbreast - To "a Certain Rich Man" - "Everlasting Farewells" - The Poet to the Birds - - - At Night (_to W. M._) - - - - - Early Poems - - - - - IN EARLY SPRING - - O Spring, I know thee! Seek for sweet surprise - In the young children's eyes. - But I have learnt the years, and know the yet - Leaf-folded violet. - Mine ear, awake to silence, can foretell - The cuckoo's fitful bell. - I wander in a grey time that encloses - June and the wild hedge-roses. - A year's procession of the flowers doth pass - My feet, along the grass. - And all you wild birds silent yet, I know - The notes that stir you so, - Your songs yet half devised in the dim dear - Beginnings of the year. - In these young days you meditate your part; - I have it all by heart. - - I know the secrets of the seeds of flowers - Hidden and warm with showers, - And how, in kindling Spring, the cuckoo shall - Alter his interval. - But not a flower or song I ponder is - My own, but memory's. - I shall be silent in those days desired - Before world inspired. - O all brown birds, compose your old song-phrases, - Earth, thy familiar daisies! - - A poet mused upon the dusky height, - Between two stars towards night, - His purpose in his heart. I watched, a space, - The meaning of his face: - There was the secret, fled from earth and skies, - Hid in his grey young eyes. - My heart and all the Summer wait his choice, - And wonder for his voice. - Who shall foretell his songs, and who aspire - But to divine his lyre? - Sweet earth, we know thy dimmest mysteries, - But he is lord of his. - - - - - TO THE BELOVED - - Oh, not more subtly silence strays - Amongst the winds, between the voices, - Mingling alike with pensive lays, - And with the music that rejoices, - Than thou art present in my days. - - My silence, life returns to thee - In all the pauses of her breath. - Hush back to rest the melody - That out of thee awakeneth; - And thou, wake ever, wake for me! - - Thou art like silence all unvexed, - Though wild words part my soul from thee. - Thou art like silence unperplexed, - A secret and a mystery - Between one footfall and the next. - - Most dear pause in a mellow lay! - Thou art inwoven with every air. - With thee the wildest tempests play, - And snatches of thee everywhere - Make little heavens throughout a day. - - Darkness and solitude shine, for me. - For life's fair outward part are rife - The silver noises; let them be. - It is the very soul of life - Listens for thee, listens for thee. - - O pause between the sobs of cares; - O thought within all thought that is; - Trance between laughters unawares: - Thou art the shape of melodies, - And thou the ecstasy of prayers! - - - - - AN UNMARKED FESTIVAL - - There's a feast undated, yet - Both our true lives hold it fast,-- - Even the day when first we met. - What a great day came and passed, - --Unknown then, but known at last. - - And we met: You knew not me, - Mistress of your joys and fears; - Held my hand that held the key - Of the treasure of your years, - Of the fountain of your tears. - - For you knew not it was I, - And I knew not it was you. - We have learnt, as days went by. - But a flower struck root and grew - Underground, and no one knew. - - Day of days! Unmarked it rose, - In whose hours we were to meet; - And forgotten passed. Who knows, - Was earth cold or sunny, Sweet, - At the coming of your feet? - - One mere day, we thought; the measure - Of such days the year fulfils. - Now, how dearly would we treasure - Something from its fields, its rills, - And its memorable hills. - - - - - - IN AUTUMN - - The leaves are many under my feet, - And drift one way. - Their scent of death is weary and sweet. - A flight of them is in the grey - Where sky and forest meet. - - The low winds moan for dead sweet years; - The birds sing all for pain, - Of a common thing, to weary ears,-- - Only a summer's fate of rain, - And a woman's fate of tears. - - I walk to love and life alone - Over these mournful places, - Across the summer overthrown, - The dead joys of these silent faces, - To claim my own. - - I know his heart has beat to bright - Sweet loves gone by; - I know the leaves that die to-night - Once budded to the sky; - And I shall die from his delight. - - O leaves, so quietly ending now, - You heard the cuckoos sing. - And I will grow upon my bough - If only for a Spring, - And fall when the rain is on my brow. - - O tell me, tell me ere you die, - Is it worth the pain? - You bloomed so fair, you waved so high; - Now that the sad days wane, - Are you repenting where you lie? - - I lie amongst you, and I kiss - Your fragrance mouldering. - O dead delights, is it such bliss, - That tuneful Spring? - Is love so sweet, that comes to this? - - Kiss me again as I kiss you; - Kiss me again, - For all your tuneful nights of dew, - In this your time of rain, - For all your kisses when Spring was new. - - You will not, broken hearts; let be. - I pass across your death - To a golden summer you shall not see, - And in your dying breath - There is no benison for me. - - There is an autumn yet to wane, - There are leaves yet to fall, - Which, when I kiss, may kiss again, - And, pitied, pity me all for all, - And love me in mist and rain. - - - - - - PARTED - - Farewell to one now silenced quite, - Sent out of hearing, out of sight,-- - My friend of friends, whom I shall miss. - He is not banished, though, for this,-- - Nor he, nor sadness, nor delight. - - Though I shall talk with him no more, - A low voice sounds upon the shore. - He must not watch my resting-place, - But who shall drive a mournful face - From the sad winds about my door? - - I shall not hear his voice complain, - But who shall stop the patient rain? - His tears must not disturb my heart, - But who shall change the years, and part - The world from every thought of pain? - - Although my life is left so dim, - The morning crowns the mountain-rim; - Joy is not gone from summer skies, - Nor innocence from children's eyes, - And all these things are part of him. - - He is not banished, for the showers - Yet wake this green warm earth of ours. - How can the summer but be sweet? - I shall not have him at my feet, - And yet my feet are on the flowers. - - - - - "SOEUR MONIQUE" - - _A Rondeau by Couperin_ - - Quiet form of silent nun, - What has given you to my inward eyes? - What has marked you, unknown one, - In the throngs of centuries - That mine ears do listen through? - This old master's melody - That expresses you; - This admired simplicity, - Tender, with a serious wit; - And two words, the name of it, - "Soeur Monique." - - And if sad the music is, - It is sad with mysteries - Of a small immortal thing - That the passing ages sing,-- - Simple music making mirth - Of the dying and the birth - Of the people of the earth. - - No, not sad; we are beguiled, - Sad with living as we are; - Ours the sorrow, outpouring - Sad self on a selfless thing, - As our eyes and hearts are mild - With our sympathy for Spring, - With a pity sweet and wild - - For the innocent and far, - With our sadness in a star, - Or our sadness in a child. - But two words, and this sweet air. - Soeur Monique, - Had he more, who set you there? - Was his music-dream of you - Of some perfect nun he knew, - Or of some ideal, as true? - - And I see you where you stand - With your life held in your hand - As a rosary of days. - And your thoughts in calm arrays, - And your innocent prayers are told - On your rosary of days. - And the young days and the old - With their quiet prayers did meet - When the chaplet was complete. - - Did it vex you, the surmise - Of this wind of words, this storm of cries, - Though you kept the silence so - In the storms of long ago, - And you keep it, like a star? - --Of the evils triumphing, - Strong, for all your perfect conquering, - Silenced conqueror that you are? - - And I wonder at your peace, I wonder. - Would it trouble you to know, - Tender soul, the world and sin - By your calm feet trodden under - Long ago, - Living now, mighty to win? - And your feet are vanished like the snow. - - Vanished; but the poet, he - In whose dream your face appears, - He who ranges unknown years - With your music in his heart, - Speaks to you familiarly - Where you keep apart, - And invents you as you were. - And your picture, O my nun! - Is a strangely easy one, - For the holy weed you wear, - For your hidden eyes and hidden hair, - And in picturing you I may - Scarcely go astray. - - O the vague reality, - The mysterious certainty! - O strange truth of these my guesses - In the wide thought-wildernesses! - --Truth of one divined of many flowers; - Of one raindrop in the showers - Of the long ago swift rain; - Of one tear of many tears - In some world-renowned pain; - Of one daisy 'mid the centuries of sun; - Of a little living nun - In the garden of the years. - - Yes, I am not far astray; - But I guess you as might one - Pausing when young March is grey, - In a violet-peopled day; - All his thoughts go out to places that he knew, - To his child-home in the sun, - To the fields of his regret, - To one place i' the innocent March air, - By one olive, and invent - The familiar form and scent - Safely; a white violet - Certainly is there. - - Soeur Monique, remember me. - 'Tis not in the past alone - I am picturing you to be; - But my little friend, my own, - In my moment, pray for me. - For another dream is mine, - And another dream is true, - Sweeter even, - Of the little ones that shine - Lost within the light divine,-- - Of some meekest flower, or you, - In the fields of heaven. - - - - - REGRETS - - As, when the seaward ebbing tide doth pour - Out by the low sand spaces, - The parting waves slip back to clasp the shore - With lingering embraces,-- - - So in the tide of life that carries me - From where thy true heart dwells, - Waves of my thoughts and memories turn to thee - With lessening farewells; - - Waving of hands; dreams, when the day forgets; - A care half lost in cares; - The saddest of my verses; dim regrets; - Thy name among my prayers. - - I would the day might come, so waited for, - So patiently besought, - When I, returning, should fill up once more - Thy desolated thought; - - And fill thy loneliness that lies apart - In still, persistent pain. - Shall I content thee, O thou broken heart, - As the tide comes again, - - And brims the little sea-shore lakes, and sets - Seaweeds afloat, and fills - The silent pools, rivers and rivulets - Among the inland hills? - - - - - THE VISITING SEA - - As the inhastening tide doth roll, - Home from the deep, along the whole - Wide shining strand, and floods the caves, - --Your love comes filling with happy waves - The open sea-shore of my soul. - - But inland from the seaward spaces, - None knows, not even you, the places - Brimmed, at your coming, out of sight, - --The little solitudes of delight - This tide constrains in dim embraces. - - You see the happy shore, wave-rimmed, - But know not of the quiet dimmed - Rivers your coming floods and fills, - The little pools 'mid happier hills, - My silent rivulets, over-brimmed. - - What! I have secrets from you? Yes. - But, visiting Sea, your love doth press - And reach in further than you know, - And fills all these; and, when you go, - There's loneliness in loneliness. - - - - - AFTER A PARTING - - Farewell has long been said; I have foregone thee; - I never name thee even. - But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee? - For thou art so near Heaven - That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee. - - Thou dost beset the path to every shrine; - My trembling thoughts discern - Thy goodness in the good for which I pine; - And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn - Unto a smile of thine. - - How shall I thrust thee apart - Since all my growth tends to thee night and day-- - To thee faith, hope, and art? - Swift are the currents setting all one way; - They draw my life, my life, out of my heart. - - - - - BUILDERS OF RUINS - - We build with strength the deep tower wall - That shall be shattered thus and thus. - And fair and great are court and hall, - But how fair--this is not for us, - Who know the lack that lurks in all. - - We know, we know how all too bright - The hues are that our painting wears, - And how the marble gleams too white;-- - We speak in unknown tongues, the years - Interpret everything aright, - - And crown with weeds our pride of towers, - And warm our marble through with sun, - And break our pavements through with flowers, - With an Amen when all is done, - Knowing these perfect things of ours. - - O days, we ponder, left alone, - Like children in their lonely hour, - And in our secrets keep your own, - As seeds the colour of the flower. - To-day they are not all unknown, - - The stars that 'twixt the rise and fall, - Like relic-seers, shall one by one - Stand musing o'er our empty hall; - And setting moons shall brood upon - The frescoes of our inward wall. - - And when some midsummer shall be, - Hither will come some little one - (Dusty with bloom of flowers is he), - Sit on a ruin i' the late long sun, - And think, one foot upon his knee. - - And where they wrought, these lives of ours, - So many-worded, many-souled, - A North-west wind will take the towers, - And dark with colour, sunny and cold, - Will range alone among the flowers. - - And here or there, at our desire, - The little clamorous owl shall sit - Through her still time; and we aspire - To make a law (and know not it) - Unto the life of a wild briar. - - Our purpose is distinct and dear, - Though from our open eyes 'tis hidden. - Thou, Time to come, shalt make it clear, - Undoing our work; we are children chidden - With pity and smiles of many a year. - - Who shall allot the praise, and guess - What part is yours and what is ours?-- - O years that certainly will bless - Our flowers with fruits, our seeds with flowers, - With ruin all our perfectness. - - Be patient, Time, of our delays, - Too happy hopes, and wasted fears, - Our faithful ways, our Wilful ways; - Solace our labours, O our seers - The seasons, and our bards the days; - - And make our pause and silence brim - With the shrill children's play, and sweets - Of those pathetic flowers and dim, - Of those eternal flowers my Keats - Dying felt growing over him! - - - - - THOUGHTS IN SEPARATION - - We never meet; yet we meet day by day - Upon those hills of life, dim and immense-- - The good we love, and sleep, our innocence. - O hills of life, high hills! And, higher than they, - - Our guardian spirits meet at prayer and play. - Beyond pain, joy, and hope, and long suspense, - Above the summits of our souls, far hence, - An angel meets an angel on the way. - - Beyond all good I ever believed of thee, - Or thou of me, these always love and live. - And though I fail of thy ideal of me, - - My angel falls not short. They greet each other. - Who knows, they may exchange the kiss we give, - Thou to thy crucifix, I to my mother. - - - - - THE GARDEN - - My heart shall be thy garden. Come, my own, - Into thy garden; thine be happy hours - Among my fairest thoughts, my tallest flowers, - From root to crowning petal thine alone. - - Thine is the place from where the seeds are sown - Up to the sky enclosed, with all its showers. - But ah, the birds, the birds! Who shall build bowers - To keep these thine? O friend, the birds have flown. - - For as these come and go, and quit our pine - To follow the sweet season, or, new-comers, - Sing one song only from our alder-trees, - - My heart has thoughts, which, though thine eyes hold mine, - Flit to the silent world and other summers, - With wings that dip beyond the silver seas. - - - - - YOUR OWN FAIR YOUTH - - Your own fair youth, you care so little for it-- - Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances - Of time and change upon your happiest fancies. - I keep your golden hour, and will restore it. - - If ever, in time to come, you would explore it-- - Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year's pansies, - Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances; - In my unfailing praises now I store it. - - To guard all joys of yours from Time's estranging, - I shall be then a treasury where your gay, - Happy, and pensive past unaltered is. - - I shall be then a garden charmed from changing, - In which your June has never passed away. - Walk there awhile among my memories. - - - - - THE YOUNG NEOPHYTE - - Who knows what days I answer for to-day? - Giving the bud I give the flower. I bow - This yet unfaded and a faded brow; - Bending these knees and feeble knees, I pray. - - Thoughts yet unripe in me I bend one way, - Give one repose to pain I know not now, - One check to joy that comes, I guess not how. - I dedicate my fields when Spring is grey. - - O rash! (I smile) to pledge my hidden wheat. - I fold to-day at altars far apart - Hands trembling with what toils? In their retreat - - I seal my love to-be, my folded art. - I light the tapers at my head and feet, - And lay the crucifix on this silent heart. - - - - - SPRING ON THE ALBAN HILLS - - O'er the Campagna it is dim, warm weather; - The Spring comes with a full heart silently, - And many thoughts; a faint flash of the sea - Divides two mists; straight falls the falling feather. - - With wild Spring meanings hill and plain together - Grow pale, or just flush with a dust of flowers. - Rome in the ages, dimmed with all her towers, - Floats in the midst, a little cloud at tether. - - I fain would put my hands about thy face, - Thou with thy thoughts, who art another Spring, - And draw thee to me like a mournful child. - - Thou lookest on me from another place; - I touch not this day's secret, nor the thing - That in the silence makes thy soft eyes wild. - - - - - IN FEBRUARY - - Rich meanings of the prophet-Spring adorn, - Unseen, this colourless sky of folded showers, - And folded winds; no blossom in the bowers; - A poet's face asleep in this grey morn. - - Now in the midst of the old world forlorn - A mystic child is set in these still hours. - I keep this time, even before the flowers, - Sacred to all the young and the unborn: - - To all the miles and miles of unsprung wheat, - And to the Spring waiting beyond the portal, - And to the future of my own young art, - - And, among all these things, to you, my sweet, - My friend, to your calm face and the immortal - Child tarrying all your life-time in your heart. - - - - - A SHATTERED LUTE - - I touched the heart that loved me as a player - Touches a lyre. Content with my poor skill, - No touch save mine knew my beloved (and still - I thought at times: Is there no sweet lost air - - Old loves could wake in him, I cannot share?) - O he alone, alone could so fulfil - My thoughts in sound to the measure of my will. - He is gone, and silence takes me unaware. - - The songs I knew not he resumes, set free - From my constraining love, alas for me! - His part in our tune goes with him; my part - - Is locked in me for ever; I stand as mute - As one with vigorous music in his heart - Whose fingers stray upon a shattered lute. - - - - - RENOUNCEMENT - - I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong, - I shun the thought that lurks in all delight-- - The thought of thee--and in the blue Heaven's height, - And in the sweetest passage of a song. - - O just beyond the fairest thoughts that throng - This breast, the thought of thee waits, hidden yet bright; - But it must never, never come in sight; - I must stop short of thee the whole day long. - - But when sleep comes to close each difficult day, - When night gives pause to the long watch I keep, - And all my bonds I needs must loose apart, - - Must doff my will as raiment laid away,-- - With the first dream that comes with the first sleep - I run, I run, I am gathered to thy heart. - - - - - TO A DAISY - - Slight as thou art, thou art enough to hide - Like all created things, secrets from me, - And stand a barrier to eternity. - And I, how can I praise thee well and wide - - From where I dwell--upon the hither side? - Thou little veil for so great mystery, - When shall I penetrate all things and thee, - And then look back? For this I must abide, - - Till thou shalt grow and fold and be unfurled - Literally between me and the world. - Then I shall drink from in beneath a spring, - - And from a poet's side shall read his book. - O daisy mine, what will it be to look - From God's side even of such a simple thing? - - - - - SAN LORENZO'S MOTHER - - I had not seen my son's dear face - (He chose the cloister by God's grace) - Since it had come to full flower-time. - I hardly guessed at its perfect prime, - That folded flower of his dear face. - - Mine eyes were veiled by mists of tears - When on a day in many years - One of his Order came. I thrilled, - Facing, I thought, that face fulfilled. - I doubted, for my mists of tears. - - His blessing be with me for ever! - My hope and doubt were hard to sever. - --That altered face, those holy weeds. - I filled his wallet and kissed his beads, - And lost his echoing feet for ever. - - If to my son my alms were given - I know not, and I wait for Heaven. - He did not plead for child of mine, - But for another Child divine, - And unto Him it was surely given. - - There is One alone who cannot change; - Dreams are we, shadows, visions strange; - And all I give is given to One. - I might mistake my dearest son, - But never the Son who cannot change. - - - - - THE LOVER URGES THE BETTER THRIFT - - My Fair, no beauty of thine will last - Save in my love's eternity. - Thy smiles, that light thee fitfully, - Are lost for ever--their moment past-- - Except the few thou givest to me. - - Thy sweet words vanish day by day, - As all breath of mortality; - Thy laughter, done, must cease to be, - And all thy dear tones pass away, - Except the few that sing to me. - - Hide then within my heart, O hide - All thou art loth should go from thee. - Be kinder to thyself and me. - My cupful from this river's tide - Shall never reach the long sad sea. - - - - - CRADLE-SONG AT TWILIGHT - - The child not yet is lulled to rest. - Too young a nurse, the slender Night - So laxly hold him to her breast - That throbs with flight. - - He plays with her, and will not sleep. - For other playfellows she sighs; - An unmaternal fondness keep - Her alien eyes. - - - - - SONG OF THE NIGHT AT DAYBREAK - - All my stars forsake me. - And the dawn-winds shake me, - Where shall I betake me? - - Whither shall I run - Till the set of sun, - Till the day be done? - - To the mountain-mine, - To the boughs o' the pine, - To the blind man's eyne, - - To a brow that is - Bowed upon the knees, - Sick with memories? - - - - - A LETTER FROM A GIRL TO HER OWN OLD AGE - - Listen, and when thy hand this paper presses, - O time-worn woman, think of her who blesses - What thy thin fingers touch, with her caresses. - - O mother, for the weight of years that break thee! - O daughter, for slow time must yet awake thee. - And from the changes of my heart must make thee! - - O fainting traveller, morn is grey in heaven. - Dost thou remember how the clouds were driven? - And are they calm about the fall of even? - - Pause near the ending of thy long migration, - For this one sudden hour of desolation - Appeals to one hour of thy meditation. - - Suffer, O silent one, that I remind thee - Of the great hills that stormed the sky behind thee, - Of the wild winds of power that have resigned thee. - - Know that the mournful plain where thou must wander - Is but a grey and silent world, but ponder - The misty mountains of the morning yonder. - - Listen:--the mountain winds with rain were fretting, - And sudden gleams the mountain-tops besetting. - I cannot let thee fade to death, forgetting. - - What part of this wild heart of mine I know not - Will follow with thee where the great winds blow not, - And where the young flowers of the mountain grow not. - - Yet let my letter with thy lost thoughts in it - Tell what the way was when thou didst begin it, - And win with thee the goal when thou shalt win it. - - Oh, in some hour of thine thy thoughts shall guide thee. - Suddenly, though time, darkness, silence, hide thee, - This wind from thy lost country flits beside thee,-- - - Telling thee: all thy memories moved the maiden, - With thy regrets was morning over-shaden, - With sorrow, thou hast left, her life was laden. - - But whither shall my thoughts turn to pursue thee? - Life changes, and the years and days renew thee. - Oh, Nature brings my straying heart unto thee. - - Her winds will join us, with their constant kisses - Upon the evening as the morning tresses, - Her summers breathe the same unchanging blisses. - - And we, so altered in our shifting phases, - Track one another 'mid the many mazes - By the eternal child-breath of the daisies. - - I have not writ this letter of divining - To make a glory of thy silent pining, - A triumph of thy mute and strange declining. - - Only one youth, and the bright life was shrouded. - Only one morning, and the day was clouded. - And one old age with all regrets is crowded. - - O hush, O hush! Thy tears my words are steeping. - O hush, hush, hush! So full, the fount of weeping? - Poor eyes, so quickly moved, so near to sleeping? - - Pardon the girl; such strange desires beset her. - Poor woman, lay aside the mournful letter - That breaks thy heart; the one who wrote, forget her: - - The one who now thy faded features guesses, - With filial fingers thy grey hair caresses, - With morning tears thy mournful twilight blesses. - - - - - ADVENT MEDITATION - - _Rorate coeli desuper, et nubes pluant Justum - Aperiatur terra, et germinet Salvatorem._ - - - No sudden thing of glory and fear - Was the Lord's coming; but the dear - Slow Nature's days followed each other - To form the Saviour from his Mother - --One of the children of the year. - - The earth, the rain, received the trust, - --The sun and dews, to frame the Just. - He drew His daily life from these, - According to His own decrees - Who makes man from the fertile dust. - - Sweet summer and the winter wild, - These brought him forth, the Undefiled. - The happy Springs renewed again - His daily bread, the growing grain, - The food and raiment of the Child. - - - - - A POET'S FANCIES - - I - - THE LOVE OF NARCISSUS - - Like him who met his own eyes in the river, - The poet trembles at his own long gaze - That meets him through the changing nights and days - From out great Nature; all her waters quiver - With his fair image facing him for ever; - The music that he listens to betrays - His own heart to his ears; by trackless ways - His wild thoughts tend to him in long endeavour. - - His dreams are far among the silent hills; - His vague voice calls him from the darkened plain - With winds at night; strange recognition thrills - His lonely heart with piercing love and pain; - He knows again his mirth in mountain rills, - His weary tears that touch him with the rain. - - - - II - - TO ANY POET - - Thou who singest through the earth - All the earth's wild creatures fly thee; - Everywhere thou marrest mirth,-- - Dumbly they defy thee; - There is something they deny thee. - - Pines thy fallen nature ever - For the unfallen Nature sweet. - But she shuns thy long endeavour, - Though her flowers and wheat - Throng and press thy pausing feet. - - Though thou tame a bird to love thee, - Press thy face to grass and flowers, - All these things reserve above thee, - Secrets in the bowers, - Secrets in the sun and showers. - - Sing thy sorrow, sing thy gladness, - In thy songs must wind and tree - Bear the fictions of thy sadness, - Thy humanity. - For their truth is not for thee. - - Wait, and many a secret nest, - Many a hoarded winter-store - Will be hidden on thy breast. - Things thou longest for - Will not fear or shun thee more. - - Thou shalt intimately lie - In the roots of flowers that thrust - Upwards from thee to the sky, - With no more distrust - When they blossom from thy dust. - - Silent labours of the rain - Shall be near thee, reconciled; - Little lives of leaves and grain, - All things shy and wild, - Tell thee secrets, quiet child. - - Earth, set free from thy fair fancies - And the art thou shalt resign, - Will bring forth her rue and pansies - Unto more divine - Thoughts than any thoughts of thine. - - Nought will fear thee, humbled creature. - There will lie thy mortal burden - Pressed unto the heart of Nature, - Songless in a garden, - With a long embrace of pardon. - - Then the truth all creatures tell, - And His will Whom thou entreatest, - Shall absorb thee; there shall dwell - Silence, the completest - Of thy poems, last and sweetest. - - - - III - - TO ONE POEM IN A SILENT TIME - - Who looked for thee, thou little song of mine? - This winter of a silent poet's heart - Is suddenly sweet with thee. But what thou art, - Mid-winter flower, I would I could divine. - - Art thou a last one, orphan of thy line? - Did the dead summer's last warmth foster thee? - Or is Spring folded up unguessed in me, - And stirring out of sight,--and thou the sign? - - Where shall I look--backwards or to the morrow - For others of thy fragrance, secret child? - Who knows if last things or if first things claim thee? - - --Whether thou be the last smile of my sorrow, - Or else a joy too sweet, a joy too wild. - How, my December violet, shall I name thee? - - - - IV - - THE MOON TO THE SUN - - _The Poet sings to her Poet_ - - As the full moon shining there - To the sun that lighteth her - Am I unto thee for ever, - O my secret glory-giver! - O my light, I am dark but fair, - Black but fair. - - Shine, Earth loves thee! And then shine - And be loved through thoughts of mine. - All thy secrets that I treasure - I translate them at my pleasure - I am crowned with glory of thine, - Thine, not thine. - - I make pensive thy delight, - And thy strong gold silver-white. - Though all beauty of mine thou makest, - Yet to earth which thou forsakest - I have made thee fair all night, - Day all night. - - - - V - - THE SPRING TO THE SUMMER - - _The Poet sings to her Poet_ - - O poet of the time to be, - My conqueror, I began for thee. - Enter into thy poet's pain, - And take the riches of the rain, - And make the perfect year for me. - - Thou unto whom my lyre shall fall, - Whene'er thou comest, hear my call. - O keep the promise of my lays, - Take thou the parable of my days; - I trust thee with the aim of all. - - And if my thoughts unfold from me, - Know that I too have hints of thee, - Dim hopes that come across my mind - In the rare days of warmer wind, - And tones of summer in the sea. - - And I have set thy paths, I guide - Thy blossoms on the wild hillside. - And I, thy bygone poet, share - The flowers that throng thy feet where'er - I led thy feet before I died. - - - - VI - - THE DAY TO THE NIGHT - - _The Poet sings to his Poet_ - - From dawn to dusk, and from dusk to dawn, - We two are sundered always, Sweet. - A few stars shake o'er the rocky lawn - And the cold sea-shore when we meet. - The twilight comes with thy shadowy feet. - - We are not day and night, my Fair, - But one. It is an hour of hours. - And thoughts that are not otherwhere - Are thought here 'mid the blown sea-flowers, - This meeting and this dusk of ours. - - Delight has taken Pain to her heart, - And there is dusk and stars for these. - O linger, linger! They would not part; - And the wild wind comes from over-seas, - With a new song to the olive trees. - - And when we meet by the sounding pine - Sleep draws near to his dreamless brother. - And when thy sweet eyes answer mine, - Peace nestles close to her mournful mother, - And Hope and Weariness kiss each other. - - - - VII - - A POET OF ONE MOOD - - A poet of one mood in all my lays, - Ranging all life to sing one only love, - Like a west wind across the world I move, - Sweeping my harp of floods mine own wild ways. - - The countries change, but not the west-wind days - Which are my songs. My soft skies shine above, - And on all seas the colours of a dove, - And on all fields a flash of silver greys. - - I make the whole world answer to my art - And sweet monotonous meanings. In your ears - I change not ever, bearing, for my part, - One thought that is the treasure of my years - A small cloud full of rain upon my heart - And in mine arms, clasped, like a child in tears. - - - - VIII - - A SONG OF DERIVATIONS - - I come from nothing; but from where - Come the undying thoughts I bear? - Down, through long links of death and birth, - From the past poets of the earth, - My immortality is there. - - I am like the blossom of an hour, - But long, long vanished sun and shower - Awoke my breath i' the young world's air; - I track the past back everywhere - Through seed and flower and seed and flower. - - Or I am like a stream that flows - Full of the cold springs that arose - In morning lands, in distant hills; - And down the plain my channel fills - With melting of forgotten snows. - - Voices, I have not heard, possessed - My own fresh songs; my thoughts are blessed - With relics of the far unknown. - And mixed with memories not my own - The sweet streams throng into my breast. - - Before this life began to be, - The happy songs that wake in me - Woke long ago and far apart. - Heavily on this little heart - Presses this immortality. - - - - IX - - SINGERS TO COME - - No new delights to our desire - The singers of the past can yield. - I lift mine eyes to hill and field, - And see in them your yet dumb lyre, - Poets unborn and unrevealed. - - Singers to come, what thoughts will start - To song? What words of yours be sent - Through man's soul, and with earth be blent? - These worlds of nature and the heart - Await you like an instrument. - - Who knows what musical flocks of words - Upon these pine-tree tops will light, - And crown these towers in circling flight, - And cross these seas like summer birds, - And give a voice to the day and night? - - Something of you already is ours; - Some mystic part of you belongs - To us whose dreams your future throngs, - Who look on hills, and trees, and flowers, - Which will mean so much in your songs. - - I wonder, like the maid who found, - And knelt to lift, the lyre supreme - Of Orpheus from the Thracian stream. - She dreams on its sealed past profound; - On a deep future sealed I dream. - - She bears it in her wanderings - Within her arms, and has not pressed - Her unskilled fingers but her breast - Upon those silent sacred strings; - I, too, clasp mystic strings at rest. - - For I, i' the world of lands and seas, - The sky of wind and rain and fire, - And in man's world of long desire-- - In all that is yet dumb in these-- - Have found a more mysterious lyre. - - - - X - - UNLINKED - - If I should quit thee, sacrifice, forswear, - To what, my art, shall I give thee in keeping? - To the long winds of heaven? Shall these come sweeping - My songs forgone against my face and hair? - - Or shall the mountain streams my lost joys bear, - My past poetic in rain be weeping? - No, I shall live a poet waking, sleeping, - And I shall die a poet unaware. - - From me, my art, thou canst not pass away; - And I, a singer though I cease to sing, - Shall own thee without joy in thee or woe. - - Through my indifferent words of every day, - Scattered and all unlinked the rhymes shall ring, - And make my poem; and I shall not know. - - - - - Later Poems - - - - - THE SHEPHERDESS - - She walks--the lady of my delight-- - A shepherdess of sheep. - Her flocks are thoughts. She keeps them white; - She guards them from the steep; - She feeds them on the fragrant height, - And folds them in for sleep. - - She roams maternal hills and bright, - Dark valleys safe and deep. - Into that tender breast at night - The chastest stars may peep. - She walks--the lady of my delight-- - A shepherdess of sheep. - - She holds her little thoughts in sight, - Though gay they run and leap. - She is so circumspect and right; - She has her soul to keep. - She walks--the lady of my delight-- - A shepherdess of sheep. - - - - - THE TWO POETS - - Whose is the speech - That moves the voices of this lonely beech? - Out of the long west did this wild wind come-- - O strong and silent! And the tree was dumb, - Ready and dumb, until - The dumb gale struck it on the darkened hill. - - Two memories, - Two powers, two promises, two silences - Closed in this cry, closed in these thousand leaves - Articulate. This sudden hour retrieves - The purpose of the past, - Separate, apart--embraced, embraced at last. - - "Whose is the word? - Is it I that spake? Is it thou? Is it I that heard?" - "Thine earth was solitary, yet I found thee!" - "Thy sky was pathless, but I caught, I bound thee, - Thou visitant divine." - "O thou my Voice, the word was thine." "Was thine." - - - - - THE LADY POVERTY - - The Lady Poverty was fair: - But she lost her looks of late, - With change of times and change of air. - Ah slattern! she neglects her hair, - Her gown; her shoes; she keeps no state - As once when her pure feet were bare. - - Or--almost worse, if worse can be-- - She scolds in parlours, dusts and trims, - Watches and counts. O is this she - Whom Francis met, whose step was free, - Who with Obedience carolled hymns, - In Umbria walked with Chastity? - - Where is her ladyhood? Not here, - Not among modern kinds of men; - But in the stony fields, where clear - Through the thin trees the skies appear, - In delicate spare soil and fen, - And slender landscape and austere. - - - - - NOVEMBER BLUE - -_The golden tints of the electric lights seems to give a -complementary colour to the air in the early evening._--ESSAY ON -LONDON. - - - O heavenly colour, London town - Has blurred it from her skies; - And, hooded in an earthly brown, - Unheaven'd the city lies. - No longer, standard-like, this hue - Above the broad road flies; - Nor does the narrow street the blue - Wear, slender pennon-wise. - - But when the gold and silver lamps - Colour the London dew, - And, misted by the winter damps, - The shops shine bright anew-- - Blue comes to earth, it walks the street, - It dyes the wide air through; - A mimic sky about their feet, - The throng go crowned with blue. - - - - - A DEAD HARVEST - - IN KENSINGTON GARDENS. - - Along the graceless grass of town - They rake the rows of red and brown,-- - Dead leaves, unlike the rows of hay - Delicate, touched with gold and grey, - Raked long ago and far away. - - A narrow silence in the park, - Between the lights a narrow dark, - One street rolls on the north; and one, - Muffled, upon the south doth run; - Amid the mist the work is done. - - A futile crop!--for it the fire - Smoulders, and, for a stack, a pyre. - So go the town's lives on the breeze, - Even as the sheddings of the trees; - Bosom nor barn is filled with these. - - - - - THE WATERSHED - - _Lines written between Munich and Verona_ - - - Black mountains pricked with pointed pine - A melancholy sky. - Out-distanced was the German vine, - The sterile fields lay high. - From swarthy Alps I travelled forth - Aloft; it was the north, the north; - Bound for the Noon was I. - - I seemed to breast the streams that day; - I met, opposed, withstood - The northward rivers on their way, - My heart against the flood-- - My heart that pressed to rise and reach, - And felt the love of altering speech, - Of frontiers, in its blood. - - But O the unfolding South! the burst - Of summer! O to see - Of all the southward brooks the first! - The travelling heart went free - With endless streams; that strife was stopped; - And down a thousand vales I dropped, - I flowed to Italy. - - - - - THE JOYOUS WANDERER - - _Translated from M. Catulle Mendès_ - - - I go by road, I go by street-- - Lira, la, la! - O white highways, ye know my feet! - A loaf I carry and, all told, - Three broad bits of lucky gold-- - Lira, la, la! - And O within my flowering heart, - (Sing, dear nightingale!) is my Sweet. - - A poor man met me and begged for bread-- - Lira, la, la! - "Brother, take all the loaf," I said, - I shall but go with lighter cheer-- - Lira, la, la! - And O within my flowering heart - (Sing, sweet nightingale!) is my Dear. - - A thief I met on the lonely way-- - Lira, la, la! - He took my gold; I cried to him, "Stay! - And take my pocket and make an end." - Lira, la, la! - And O within my flowering heart - (Sing, soft nightingale!) is my Friend. - - Now on the plain I have met with death-- - Lira, la, la! - My bread is gone, my gold, my breath. - But O this heart is not afraid-- - Lira, la, la! - For O within this lonely heart - (Sing, sad nightingale!) is my Maid. - - - - - THE RAINY SUMMER - - There's much afoot in heaven and earth this year; - The winds hunt up the sun, hunt up the moon, - Trouble the dubious dawn, hasten the drear - Height of a threatening noon. - - No breath of boughs, no breath of leaves, of fronds, - May linger or grow warm; the trees are loud; - The forest, rooted, tosses in her bonds, - And strains against the cloud. - - No scents may pause within the garden-fold; - The rifled flowers are cold as ocean-shells; - Bees, humming in the storm, carry their cold - Wild honey to cold cells. - - - - - THE ROARING FROST - - A flock of winds came winging from the North, - Strong birds with fighting pinions driving forth - With a resounding call:-- - - Where will they close their wings and cease their cries-- - Between what warming seas and conquering skies-- - And fold, and fall? - - - - - WEST WIND IN WINTER - - Another day awakes. And who-- - Changing the world--is this? - He comes at whiles, the winter through, - West Wind! I would not miss - His sudden tryst: the long, the new - Surprises of his kiss. - - Vigilant, I make haste to close - With him who comes my way, - I go to meet him as he goes; - I know his note, his lay, - His colour and his morning-rose, - And I confess his day. - - My window waits; at dawn I hark - His call; at morn I meet - His haste around the tossing park - And down the softened street; - The gentler light is his: the dark, - The grey--he turns it sweet. - - So too, so too, do I confess - My poet when he sings. - He rushes on my mortal guess - With his immortal things. - I feel, I know, him. On I press-- - He finds me 'twixt his wings. - - - - - THE FOLD - - Behold, - The time is now! Bring back, bring back - Thy flocks of fancies, wild of whim. - O lead them from the mountain-track - Thy frolic thoughts untold, - O bring them in--the fields grow dim-- - And let me be the fold! - - Behold, - The time is now! Call in, O call - Thy pasturing kisses gone astray - For scattered sweets; gather them all - To shelter from the cold. - Throng them together, close and gay, - And let me be the fold! - - - - - "WHY WILT THOU CHIDE?" - - Why wilt thou chide, - Who has attained to be denied? - O learn, above - All price is my refusal, Love. - My sacred Nay - Was never cheapened by the way. - Thy single sorrow crowns thee lord - Of an unpurchasable word. - - O strong, O pure! - As Yea makes happier loves secure, - I vow thee this - Unique rejection of a kiss. - I guard for thee - This jealous sad monopoly. - I seal this honour thine; none dare - Hope for a part in thy despair. - - - - - VENERATION OF IMAGES - - Thou man, first-comer, whose wide arms entreat, - Gather, clasp, welcome, bind, - Lack, or remember; whose warm pulses beat - With love of thine own kind:-- - - Unlifted for a blessing on yon sea, - Unshrined on this highway, - O flesh, O grief, thou too shalt have our knee, - Thou rood of every day! - - - - - "I AM THE WAY" - - Thou art the Way. - Hadst Thou been nothing but the goal, - I cannot say - If Thou hadst ever met my soul. - - I cannot see-- - I, child of process--if there lies - An end for me, - Full of repose, full of replies. - - I'll not reproach - The road that winds, my feet that err, - Access, Approach - Art Thou, Time, Way, and Wayfarer. - - - - - VIA, ET VERITAS, ET VITA - - "You never attained to Him?" "If to attain - Be to abide, then that may be." - "Endless the way, followed with how much pain!" - "The way was He." - - - - - PARENTAGE - -"_When Augustus Cæsar legislated against the unmarried citizens of -Rome, he declared them to be, in some sort, slayers of the people._" - - - Ah! no, not these! - These, who were childless, are not they who gave - So many dead unto the journeying wave, - The helpless nurselings of the cradling seas; - Not they who doomed by infallible decrees - Unnumbered man to the innumerable grave. - - But those who slay - Are fathers. Theirs are armies. Death is theirs-- - The death of innocences and despairs; - The dying of the golden and the grey. - The sentence, when these speak it, has no Nay. - And she who slays is she who bears, who bears. - - - - - THE MODERN MOTHER - - Oh, what a kiss - With filial passion overcharged is this! - To this misgiving breast - This child runs, as a child ne'er ran to rest - Upon the light heart and the unoppressed. - - Unhoped, unsought! - A little tenderness, this mother thought - The utmost of her meed. - She looked for gratitude; content indeed - With thus much that her nine years' love had bought. - - Nay, even with less. - This mother, giver of life, death, peace, distress, - Desired ah! not so much - Thanks as forgiveness; and the passing touch - Expected, and the slight, the brief caress. - - O filial light - Strong in these childish eyes, these new, these bright - Intelligible stars! Their rays - Are near the constant earth, guides in the maze, - Natural, true, keen in this dusk of days. - - - - - UNTO US A SON IS GIVEN - - Given, not lent, - And not withdrawn--once sent, - This Infant of mankind, this One, - Is still the little welcome Son. - - New every year, - New born and newly dear, - He comes with tidings and a song, - The ages long, the ages long; - - Even as the cold - Keen winter grows not old, - As childhood is so fresh, foreseen, - And spring in the familiar green-- - - Sudden as sweet - Come the expected feet. - All joy is young, and new all art, - And He, too, Whom we have by heart. - - - - - VENI CREATOR - - So humble things Thou hast born for us, O God, - Left'st Thou a path of lowliness untrod? - Yes, one, till now; another Olive-Garden. - For we endure the tender pain of pardon,-- - One with another we forbear. Give heed, - Look at the mournful world thou hast decreed. - The time has come. At last we hapless men - Know all our haplessness all through. Come, then, - Endure undreamed humility: Lord of Heaven, - Come to our ignorant hearts and be forgiven. - - - - - TWO BOYHOODS - - Luminous passions reign - High in the soul of man; and they are twain. - Of these he hath made the poetry of earth-- - Hath made his nobler tears, his magic mirth. - - Fair love is one of these, - The visiting vision of seven centuries; - And one is love of Nature--love to tears-- - The modern passion of this hundred years. - - O never to such height, - O never to such spiritual light-- - The light of lonely visions, and the gleam - Of secret splendid sombre suns in dream-- - - O never to such long - Glory in life, supremacy in song, - Had either of these loves attained in joy, - But for the ministration of a boy. - - Dante was one who bare - Love in his deep heart, apprehended there - When he was yet a child; and from that day - The radiant love has never passed away. - - And one was Wordsworth; he - Conceived the love of Nature childishly - As no adult heart might; old poets sing - That exaltation by remembering. - - For no divine - Intelligence, or art, or fire, or wine, - Is high-delirious as that rising lark-- - The child's soul and its daybreak in the dark. - - And Letters keep these two - Heavenly treasures safe the ages through, - Safe from ignoble benison or ban-- - These two high childhoods in the heart of man. - - - - - TO SYLVIA - - TWO YEARS OLD - - Long life to thee, long virtue, long delight, - A flowering early and late! - Long beauty, grave to thought and gay to sight, - A distant date! - - Yet, as so many poets love to sing - (When young the child will die), - "No autumn will destroy this lovely spring," - So, Sylvia, I. - - I'll write thee dapper verse and touching rhyme; - "Our eyes shall not behold--" - The commonplace shall serve for thee this time: - "Never grow old." - - For there's another way to stop thy clock - Within my cherishing heart, - To carry thee unalterable, and lock - Thy youth apart: - - Thy flower, for me, shall evermore be hid - In this close bud of thine, - Not, Sylvia, by thy death--O God forbid! - Merely by mine. - - - - - SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA - -_Written for Strephon, who said that a woman must lean, or she should -not have his chivalry._ - - - The light young man who was to die, - Stopped in his frolic by the State, - Aghast, beheld the world go by; - But Catherine crossed his dungeon gate. - - She found his lyric courage dumb, - His stripling beauties strewn in wrecks, - His modish bravery overcome; - Small profit had he of his sex. - - On any old wife's level he, - For once--for all. But he alone-- - Man--must not fear the mystery, - The pang, the passage, the unknown: - - Death. He did fear it, in his cell, - Darkling amid the Tuscan sun; - And, weeping, at her feet he fell, - The sacred, young, provincial nun. - - She prayed, she preached him innocent; - She gave him to the Sacrificed; - On her courageous breast he leant, - The breast where beat the heart of Christ. - - He left it for the block, with cries - Of victory on his severed breath. - That crimson head she clasped, her eyes - Blind with the splendour of his death. - - And will the man of modern years - --Stern on the Vote--withhold from thee, - Thou prop, thou cross, erect, in tears, - Catherine, the service of his knee? - - - - - CHIMES - - Brief, on a flying night, - From the shaken tower, - A flock of bells take flight. - And go with the hour. - - Like birds from the cote to the gales, - Abrupt--O hark! - A fleet of bells set sails, - And go to the dark. - - Sudden the cold airs swing. - Alone, aloud, - A verse of bells takes wing - And flies with the cloud. - - - - - A POET'S WIFE - - I saw a tract of ocean locked inland, - Within a field's embrace-- - The very sea! Afar it fled the strand, - And gave the seasons chase, - And met the night alone, the tempest spanned, - Saw sunrise face to face. - - O Poet, more than ocean, lonelier! - In inaccessible rest - And storm remote, thou, sea of thoughts, dost err - Scattered through east to west,-- - Now, while thou closest with the kiss of her - Who locks thee to her breast. - - - - - MESSINA, 1908 - - Lord, Thou hast crushed Thy tender ones, o'erthrown - Thy strong, Thy fair; Thy man thou hast unmanned, - Thy elaborate works unwrought, Thy deeds undone, - Thy lovely sentiment human plan unplanned; - Destroyer, we have cowered beneath Thine own - Immediate, unintelligible hand. - - Lord, thou hast hastened to retrieve, to heal, - To feed, to bind, to clothe, to quench the brand, - To prop the ruin, to bless, and to anneal; - Hast sped Thy ships by sea, Thy trains by land, - Shed pity and tears:--our shattered fingers feel - Thy mediate and intelligible hand. - - - - - THE UNKNOWN GOD - - One of the crowd went up, - And knelt before the Paten and the Cup, - Received the Lord, returned in peace, and prayed - Close to my side. Then in my heart I said: - - "O Christ, in this man's life!-- - This stranger who is Thine--in all his strife, - All his felicity, his good and ill, - In the assaulted stronghold of his will, - - "I do confess Thee here, - Alive within this life; I know Thee near - Within this lonely conscience, closed away - Within this brother's solitary day. - - "Christ in his unknown heart, - His intellect unknown--this love, this art, - This battle and this peace, this destiny - That I shall never know, look upon me! - - "Christ in his numbered breath, - Christ in his beating heart and in his death, - Christ in his mystery! From that secret place - And from that separate dwelling, give me grace!" - - - - - A GENERAL COMMUNION - - I saw the throng, so deeply separate, - Fed at one only board-- - The devout people, moved, intent, elate, - And the devoted Lord. - - O struck apart! not side from human side, - But soul from human soul, - As each asunder absorbed the multiplied, - The ever unparted, whole. - - I saw this people as a field of flowers, - Each grown at such a price - The sum of unimaginable powers - Did no more than suffice. - - A thousand single central daisies they, - A thousand of the one; - For each, the entire monopoly of day; - For each, the whole of the devoted sun. - - - - - THE FUGITIVE - - "_Nous avons chassé ce Jésus Christ._"--FRENCH PUBLICIST. - - - Yes, from the ingrate heart, the street - Of garrulous tongue, the warm retreat - Within the village and the town; - Not from the lands where ripen brown - A thousand thousand hills of wheat; - - Not from the long Burgundian line, - The Southward, sunward range of vine. - Hunted, He never will escape - The flesh, the blood, the sheaf, the grape, - That feed His man--the bread, the wine. - - - - - IN PORTUGAL, 1912 - - And will they cast the altars down, - Scatter the chalice, crush the bread? - In field, in village, and in town - He hides an unregarded head; - - Waits in the corn-lands far and near, - Bright in His sun, dark in His frost, - Sweet in the vine, ripe in the ear-- - Lonely unconsecrated Host. - - In ambush at the merry board - The Victim lurks unsacrificed; - The mill conceals the harvest's Lord, - The wine-press holds the unbidden Christ. - - - - - THE CRUCIFIXION - - "_A Paltry Sacrifice._"--PREFACE TO A PLAY - - - Oh, man's capacity - For spiritual sorrow, corporal pain! - Who has explored the deepmost of that sea, - With heavy links of a far-fathoming chain? - - That melancholy lead, - Let down in guilty and in innocent hold, - Yea into childish hands delivered, - Leaves the sequestered floor unreached, untold. - - One only has explored - The deepmost; but He did not die of it. - Not yet, not yet He died. Man's human Lord - Touched the extreme; it is not infinite. - - But over the abyss - Of God's capacity for woe He stayed - One hesitating hour; what gulf was this? - Forsaken He went down, and was afraid. - - - - - THE NEWER VAINGLORY - - Two men went up to pray; and one gave thanks, - Not with himself--aloud, - With proclamation, calling on the ranks - Of an attentive crowd. - - "Thank God, I clap not my own humble breast, - But other ruffians' backs, - Imputing crime--such is my tolerant haste-- - To any man that lacks. - - "For I am tolerant, generous, keep no rules, - And the age honours me. - Thank God, I am not as these rigid fools, - Even as this Pharisee." - - - - - IN MANCHESTER SQUARE - - (_In Memoriam_ T.H.) - - - The paralytic man has dropped in death - The crossing-sweeper's brush to which he clung, - One-handed, twisted, dwarfed, scanted of breath, - Although his hair was young. - - I saw this year the winter vines of France, - Dwarfed, twisted, goblins in the frosty drouth-- - Gnarled, crippled, blackened little stems askance - On long hills to the South. - - Great green and golden hands of leaves ere long - Shall proffer clusters in that vineyard wide. - And O his might, his sweet, his wine, his song, - His stature, since he died! - - - - - MATERNITY - - One wept whose only child was dead, - New-born, ten years ago. - "Weep not; he is in bliss," they said. - She answered, "Even so, - - "Ten years ago was born in pain - A child, not now forlorn. - But oh, ten years ago, in vain, - A mother, a mother was born." - - - - - THE FIRST SNOW - - Not yet was winter come to earth's soft floor, - The tideless wave, the warm white road, the shore, - The serried town whose small street tortuously - Led darkling to the dazzling sea. - - Not yet to breathing man, not to his song, - Not to his comforted heart; nor to the long - Close-cultivated lands beneath the hill. - Summer was gently with them still. - - But on the Apennine mustered the cloud; - The grappling storm shut down. Aloft, aloud, - Ruled secret tempest one long day and night, - Until another morning's light. - - O tender mountain-tops and delicate, - Where summer-long the westering sunlight sate! - Within that fastness darkened from the sun, - What solitary things were done? - - The clouds let go, they rose, they winged away; - Snow-white the altered mountains faced the day, - As saints who keep their counsel sealed and fast, - Their anguish over-past. - - - - - THE COURTS - - A FIGURE OF THE EPIPHANY - - The poet's imageries are noble ways, - Approaches to a plot, an open shrine. - Their splendours, colours, avenues, arrays, - Their courts that run with wine; - - Beautiful similes, "fair and flagrant things," - Enriched, enamouring,--raptures, metaphors - Enhancing life, are paths for pilgrim kings - Made free of golden doors. - - And yet the open heavenward plot, with dew, - Ultimate poetry, enclosed, enskied - (Albeit such ceremonies lead thereto) - Stands on the yonder side. - - Plain, behind oracles, it is; and past - All symbols, simple; perfect, heavenly-wild, - The song some loaded poets reach at last-- - The kings that found a Child. - - - - - THE LAUNCH - - Forth, to the alien gravity, - Forth, to the laws of ocean, we - Builders on earth by laws of land - Entrust this creature of our hand - Upon the calculated sea. - - Fast bound to shore we cling, we creep, - And make our ship ready to leap - Light to the flood, equipped to ride - The strange conditions of the tide-- - New weight, new force, new world: the Deep. - - Ah thus--not thus--the Dying, kissed, - Cherished, exhorted, shriven, dismissed; - By all the eager means we hold - We, warm, prepare him for the cold, - To keep the incalculable tryst. - - - - - TO THE BODY - - Thou inmost, ultimate - Council of judgment, palace of decrees, - Where the high senses hold their spiritual state, - Sued by earth's embassies, - And sign, approve, accept, conceive, create; - - Create--thy senses close - With the world's pleas. The random odours reach - Their sweetness in the place of thy repose, - Upon thy tongue the peach, - And in thy nostrils breathes the breathing rose. - - To thee, secluded one, - The dark vibrations of the sightless skies, - The lovely inexplicit colours run; - The light gropes for those eyes - O thou august! thou dost command the sun. - - Music, all dumb, hath trod - Into thine ear her one effectual way; - And fire and cold approach to gain thy nod, - Where thou call'st up the day, - Where thou awaitest the appeal of God. - - - - - THE UNEXPECTED PERIL - - Unlike the youth that all men say - They prize--youth of abounding blood, - In love with the sufficient day, - And gay in growth, and strong in bud; - - Unlike was mine! Then my first slumber - Nightly rehearsed my last; each breath - Knew itself one of the unknown number. - But Life was urgent with me as Death. - - My shroud was in the flocks; the hill - Within its quarry locked my stone; - My bier grew in the woods; and still - Life spurred me where I paused alone. - - "Begin!" Life called. Again her shout, - "Make haste while it is called to-day!" - Her exhortations plucked me out, - Hunted me, turned me, held me at bay. - - But if my youth is thus hard pressed - (I thought) what of a later year? - If the end so threats this tender breast, - What of the days when it draws near? - - Draws near, and little done? yet lo, - Dread has forborne, and haste lies by. - I was beleaguered; now the foe - Has raised the siege, I know not why. - - I see them troop away; I ask - Were they in sooth mine enemies-- - Terror, the doubt, the lash, the task? - What heart has my new housemate, Ease? - - How am I left, at last, alive, - To make a stranger of a tear? - What did I do one day to drive - From me the vigilant angel, Fear? - - The diligent angel, Labour? Ay, - The inexorable angel, Pain? - Menace me, lest indeed I die, - Sloth! Turn; crush, teach me fear again! - - - - - CHRIST IN THE UNIVERSE - - With this ambiguous earth - His dealings have been told us. These abide: - The signal to a maid, the human birth, - The lesson, and the young Man crucified. - - But not a star of all - The innumerable host of stars has heard - How He administered this terrestrial ball. - Our race have kept their Lord's entrusted Word. - - Of His earth-visiting feet - None knows the secret, cherished, perilous, - The terrible, shame fast, frightened, whispered, sweet, - Heart-shattering secret of His way with us. - - No planet knows that this - Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave, - Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss, - Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave. - - Nor, in our little day, - May His devices with the heavens be guessed, - His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way, - Or His bestowals there be manifest. - - But, in the eternities, - Doubtless we shall compare together, hear - A million alien Gospels, in what guise - He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear. - - O, be prepared, my soul! - To read the inconceivable, to scan - The million forms of God those stars unroll - When, in our turn, we show to them a Man. - - - - - BEYOND KNOWLEDGE - - "_Your sins ... shall be white as snow._" - - - Into the rescued world newcomer, - The newly-dead stepped up, and cried, - "O what is that, sweeter than summer - Was to my heart before I died? - Sir (to an angel), what is yonder - More bright than the remembered skies, - A lovelier sight, a softer splendour - Than when the moon was wont to rise? - Surely no sinner wears such seeming - Even the Rescued World within?" - - "O the success of His redeeming! - O child, it is a rescued sin!" - - - - - EASTER NIGHT - - All night had shout of men and cry - Of woeful women filled His way; - Until that noon of sombre sky - On Friday, clamour and display - Smote Him; no solitude had He, - No silence, since Gethsemane. - - Public was Death; but Power, but Might, - But Life again, but Victory, - Were hushed within the dead of night, - The shutter'd dark, the secrecy. - And all alone, alone, alone - He rose again behind the stone. - - - - - A FATHER OF WOMEN - - AD SOROREM E. B. - - "_Thy father was transfused into thy blood._" - _Dryden: Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew._ - - - Our father works in us, - The daughters of his manhood. Not undone - Is he, not wasted, though transmuted thus, - And though he left no son. - - Therefore on him I cry - To arm me: "For my delicate mind a casque, - A breastplate for my heart, courage to die, - Of thee, captain, I ask. - - "Nor strengthen only; press - A finger on this violent blood and pale, - Over this rash will let thy tenderness - A while pause, and prevail. - - "And shepherd-father, thou - Whose staff folded my thoughts before my birth, - Control them now I am of earth, and now - Thou art no more of earth. - - "O liberal, constant, dear! - Crush in my nature the ungenerous art - Of the inferior; set me high, and here, - Here garner up thy heart." - - Like to him now are they, - The million living fathers of the War-- - Mourning the crippled world, the bitter day-- - Whose striplings are no more. - - The crippled world! Come then, - Fathers of women with your honour in trust; - Approve, accept, know them daughters of men, - Now that your sons are dust. - - - - - LENGTH OF DAYS - - TO THE EARLY DEAD IN BATTLE - - There is no length of days - But yours, boys who were children once. - Of old - The Past beset you in your childish ways, - With sense of Time untold. - - What have you then forgone? - A history? This you had. Or memories? - These, too, you had of your far-distant dawn. - No further dawn seems his, - - The old man who shares with you, - But has no more, no more. Time's mystery - Did once for him the most that it can do; - He has had infancy. - - And all his dreams, and all - His loves for mighty Nature, sweet and few, - Are but the dwindling past he can recall - Of what his childhood knew. - - He counts not any more - His brief, his present years. But O he knows - How far apart the summers were of yore, - How far apart the snows. - - Therefore be satisfied; - Long life is in your treasury ere you fall; - Yes, and first love, like Dante's. O a bride - For ever mystical! - - Irrevocable good,-- - You dead, and now about, so young, to die,-- - Your childhood was; there Space, there Multitude, - There dwelt Antiquity. - - - - - NURSE EDITH CAVELL - - _Two o'clock, the morning of October_ 12_th_, 1915 - - - To her accustomed eyes - The midnight-morning brought not such a dread - As thrills the chance-awakened head that lies - In trivial sleep on the habitual bed. - - 'Twas yet some hours ere light; - And many, many, many a break of day - Had she outwatched the dying; but this night - Shortened her vigil was, briefer the way. - - By dial of the clock - 'Twas day in the dark above her lonely head. - "This day thou shalt be with Me." Ere the cock - Announced that day she met the Immortal Dead. - - - - - SUMMER IN ENGLAND, 1914 - - On London fell a clearer light; - Caressing pencils of the sun - Defined the distances, the white - Houses transfigured one by one, - The "long, unlovely street" impearled. - O what a sky has walked the world! - - Most happy year! And out of town - The hay was prosperous, and the wheat; - The silken harvest climbed the down: - Moon after moon was heavenly-sweet - Stroking the bread within the sheaves, - Looking 'twixt apples and their leaves. - - And while this rose made round her cup, - The armies died convulsed. And when - This chaste young silver sun went up - Softly, a thousand shattered men, - One wet corruption, heaped the plain, - After a league-long throb of pain. - - Flower following tender flower; and birds, - And berries; and benignant skies - Made thrive the serried flocks and herds.-- - Yonder are men shot through the eyes. - Love, hide thy face - From man's unpardonable race. - - * * * - - Who said "No man hath greater love than this, - To die to serve his friend"? - So these have loved us all unto the end. - Chide thou no more, O thou unsacrificed! - The soldier dying dies upon a kiss, - The very kiss of Christ. - - - - - TO TINTORETTO IN VENICE - -_The Art of Painting had in the Primitive years looked with the -light, not towards it. Before Tintoretto's date, however, many -painters practised shadows and lights, and turned more or less -sunwards; but he set the figure between himself and a full sun. His -work is to be known in Venice by the splendid trick of an occluded -sun and a shadow thrown straight at the spectator._ - - - Master, thy enterprise, - Magnificent, magnanimous, was well done, - Which seized the head of Art, and turned her eyes-- - The simpleton--and made her front the sun. - - Long had she sat content, - Her young unlessoned back to a morning gay, - To a solemn noon, to a cloudy firmament, - And looked upon a world in gentle day. - - But thy imperial call - Bade her to stand with thee and breast the light, - And therefore face the shadows, mystical, - Sombre, translucent, vestiges of night, - - Yet glories of the day. - Eagle! we know thee by thy undaunted eyes - Sky-ward, and by thy glooms; we know thy way - Ambiguous, and those halo-misted dyes. - - Thou Cloud, the bridegroom's friend - (The bridegroom sun)! Master, we know thy sign: - A mystery of hues world-without-end; - And hide-and-seek of gamesome and divine; - - Shade of the noble head - Cast hitherward upon the noble breast; - Human solemnities thrice hallowed; - The haste to Calvary, the Cross at rest. - - Look sunward, Angel, then! - Carry the fortress-heavens by that hand; - Still be the interpreter of suns to men; - And shadow us, O thou Tower! for thou shalt stand. - - - - - A THRUSH BEFORE DAWN - - A voice peals in this end of night - A phrase of notes resembling stars, - Single and spiritual notes of light. - What call they at my window-bars? - The South, the past, the day to be, - An ancient infelicity. - - Darkling, deliberate, what sings - This wonderful one, alone, at peace? - What wilder things than song, what things - Sweeter than youth, clearer than Greece, - Dearer than Italy, untold - Delight, and freshness centuries old? - - And first first-loves, a multitude, - The exaltation of their pain; - Ancestral childhood long renewed; - And midnights of invisible rain; - And gardens, gardens, night and day, - Gardens and childhood all the way. - - What Middle Ages passionate, - O passionless voice! What distant bells - Lodged in the hills, what palace state - Illyrian! For it speaks, it tells, - Without desire, without dismay, - Some morrow and some yesterday. - - All-natural things! But more--Whence came - This yet remoter mystery? - How do these starry notes proclaim - A graver still divinity? - This hope, this sanctity of fear? - _O innocent throat! O human ear!_ - - - - - THE TWO SHAKESPEARE TERCENTENARIES - - OF BIRTH, 1864; OF DEATH, 1916 - - TO SHAKESPEARE - - Longer than thine, than thine, - Is now my time of life; and thus thy years - Seem to be clasped and harboured within mine. - O how ignoble this my clasp appears! - - Thy unprophetic birth, - Thy darkling death; living I might have seen - That cradle, marked those labours, closed that earth. - O first, O last, O infinite between! - - Now that my life has shared - Thy dedicated date, O mortal, twice, - To what all-vain embrace shall be compared - My lean enclosure of thy paradise: - - To ignorant arms that fold - A poet to a foolish breast? The Line, - That is not, with the world within its hold? - So, days with days, my days encompass thine. - - Child, Stripling, Man--the sod. - Might I talk little language to thee, pore - On thy last silence? O thou city of God, - My waste lies after thee, and lies before. - - - - - To O----, OF HER DARK EYES - - Across what calm of tropic seas, - 'Neath alien clusters of the nights, - Looked, in the past, such eyes as these! - Long-quenched, relumed, ancestral lights! - - The generations fostered them; - And steadfast Nature, secretwise-- - Thou seedling child of that old stem-- - Kindled anew thy dark-bright eyes. - - Was it a century or two - This lovely darkness rose and set, - Occluded by grey eyes and blue, - And Nature feigning to forget? - - Some grandam gave a hint of it-- - So cherished was it in thy race, - So fine a treasure to transmit - In its perfection to thy face. - - Some father to some mother's breast - Entrusted it, unknowing. Time - Implied, or made it manifest, - Bequest of a forgotten clime. - - Hereditary eyes! But this - Is single, singular, apart:-- - New-made thy love, new-made thy kiss, - New-made thy errand to my heart. - - - - - THE TREASURE - - Three times have I beheld - Fear leap in a babe's face, and take his breath, - Fear, like the fear of eld - That knows the price of life, the name of death. - - What is it justifies - This thing, this dread, this fright that has no tongue, - The terror in those eyes - When only eyes can speak--they are so young? - - Not yet those eyes had wept. - What does fear cherish that it locks so well? - What fortress is thus kept? - Of what is ignorant terror sentinel? - - And pain in the poor child, - Monstrously disproportionate, and dumb - In the poor beast, and wild - In the old decorous man, caught, overcome? - - Of what the outposts these? - Of what the fighting guardians? What demands - That sense of menaces, - And then such flying feet, imploring hands? - - Life: There's nought else to seek; - Life only, little prized; but by design - Of nature prized. How weak, - How sad, how brief! O how divine, divine! - - - - - A WIND OF CLEAR WEATHER IN ENGLAND - - O what a miracle wind is this - Has crossed the English land to-day - With an unprecedented kiss, - And wonderfully found a way! - - Unsmirched incredibly and clean, - Between the towns and factories, - Avoiding, has his long flight been, - Bringing a sky like Sicily's. - - O fine escape, horizon pure - As Rome's! Black chimneys left and right, - But not for him, the straight, the sure, - His luminous day, his spacious night. - - How keen his choice, how swift his feet! - Narrow the way and hard to find! - This delicate stepper and discreet - Walked not like any worldly wind. - - Most like a man in man's own day, - One of the few, a perfect one: - His open earth--the single way; - His narrow road--the open sun. - - - - - IN SLEEP - - I dreamt (no "dream" awake--a dream indeed) - A wrathful man was talking in the park: - "Where are the Higher Powers, who know our need - And leave us in the dark? - - "There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart - In God, no love"--his oratory here, - Taking the paupers' and the cripples' part, - Was broken by a tear. - - And then it seemed that One who did create - Compassion, who alone invented pity, - Walked, as though called, in at that north-east gate, - Out from the muttering city; - - Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass, - Bent o'er the speaker close, saw the tear rise, - And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass, - In those impassioned eyes. - - - - - THE DIVINE PRIVILEGE - - Lord, where are Thy prerogatives? - Why, men have more than Thou hast kept; - The king rewards, remits, forgives, - The poet to a throne has stept. - - And Thou, despoiled, hast given away - Worship to men, success to strife, - Thy glory to the heavenly day, - And made Thy sun the lord of life. - - Is one too precious to impart, - One property reserved to Christ, - One, cherished, grappled to that heart? - --To be alone the Sacrificed? - - O Thou who lovest to redeem!-- - One whom I know lies sore oppressed, - Thou wilt not suffer me to dream - That I can bargain for her rest. - - Seven hours I swiftly sleep, while she - Measures the leagues of dark, awake. - O that my dewy eyes might be - Parched by a vigil for her sake! - - But O rejected! O in vain! - I cannot give who would not keep. - I cannot buy, I cannot gain, - I cannot give her half my sleep. - - - - - FREE WILL - - Dear are some hidden things - My soul has sealed in silence; past delights; - Hope unconfessed; desires with hampered wings, - Remembered in the nights. - - But my best treasures are - Ignoble, undelightful, abject, cold; - Yet O! profounder hoards oracular - No reliquaries hold. - - There lie my trespasses, - Abjured but not disowned. I'll not accuse - Determinism, nor, as the Master* says, - Charge even "the poor Deuce." - - Under my hand they lie, - My very own, my proved iniquities; - And though the glory of my life go by - I hold and garner these. - - How else, how otherwhere, - How otherwise, shall I discern and grope - For lowliness? How hate, how love, how dare, - How weep, how hope? - - *George Meredith - - - - - THE TWO QUESTIONS - - "A riddling world!" one cried. - "If pangs must be, would God that they were sent - To the impure, the cruel, and passed aside - The holy innocent!" - - But I, "Ah no, no, no! - Not the clean heart transpierced; not tears that fall - For a child's agony; nor a martyr's woe; - Not these, not these appal. - - "Not docile motherhood, - Dutiful, frequent, closed in all distress; - Not shedding of the unoffending blood; - Not little joy grown less; - - "Not all-benign old age - With dotage mocked; not gallantry that faints - And still pursues; not the vile heritage - Of sin's disease in saints; - - "Not these defeat the mind. - For great is that abjection, and august - That irony. Submissive we shall find - A splendour in that dust. - - "Not these puzzle the will; - Not these the yet unanswered question urge. - But the unjust stricken; but the hands that kill - Lopped; but the merited scourge; - - "The sensualist at fast; - The merciless felled; the liar in his snares. - The cowardice of my judgment sees, aghast, - The flail, the chaff, the tares." - - - - - THE LORD'S PRAYER - - "_Audemus dicere 'Pater Noster.'_"--CANON OF THE MASS. - - - There is a bolder way, - There is a wilder enterprise than this - All-human iteration day by day. - Courage, mankind! Restore Him what is His. - - Out of His mouth were given - These phrases. O replace them whence they came. - He, only, knows our inconceivable "Heaven," - Our hidden "Father," and the unspoken "Name"; - - Our "trespasses," our "bread," - The "will" inexorable yet implored; - The miracle-words that are and are not said, - Charged with the unknown purpose of their Lord. - - "Forgive," "give," "lead us not"-- - Speak them by Him, O man the unaware, - Speak by that dear tongue, though thou know not what, - Shuddering through the paradox of prayer. - - - - -Last Poems - - - - - THE POET AND HIS BOOK - - Here are my thoughts, alive within this fold, - My simple sheep. Their shepherd, I grow wise - As dearly, gravely, deeply I behold - Their different eyes. - - O distant pastures in their blood! O streams - From watersheds that fed them for this prison! - Lights from aloft, midsummer suns in dreams, - Set and arisen. - - They wander out, but all return anew, - The small ones, to this heart to which they clung; - "And those that are with young," the fruitful few - That are with young. - - - - - INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY - - FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD - - A simple child ... - That lightly draws its breath - And feels its life in every limb, - What should it know of death? - WORDSWORTH. - - - It knows but will not tell. - Awake, alone, it counts its father's years-- - How few are left--its mother's. Ah, how well - It knows of death, in tears. - - If any of the three-- - Parents and child--believe they have prevailed - To keep the secret of mortality, - I know that two have failed. - - The third, the lonely, keeps - One secret--a child's knowledge. When they come - At night to ask wherefore the sweet one weeps, - Those hidden lips are dumb. - - - - - THE WIND IS BLIND - - "EYELESS, IN GAZA, AT THE MILL, WITH SLAVES" - _Milton's "Samson."_ - - The wind is blind. - The earth sees sun and moon; the height - Is watch-tower to the dawn; the plain - Shines to the summer; visible light - Is scattered in the drops of rain. - - The wind is blind. - The flashing billows are aware; - With open eyes the cities see; - Light leaves the ether, everywhere - Known to the homing bird and bee. - - The wind is blind, - Is blind alone. How has he hurled - His ignorant lash, his aimless dart, - His eyeless rush upon the world, - Unseeing, to break his unknown heart! - - The wind is blind, - And the sail traps him, and the mill - Captures him; and he cannot save - His swiftness and his desperate will - From those blind uses of the slave. - - - - - TIME'S REVERSALS - - A DAUGHTER'S PARADOX - - To his devoted heart* - Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life, - In late lone years Time gave the elder's part, - Time gave the bridegroom's boast, Time gave a younger wife. - - A wilder prank and plot - Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me - Impossible things that Nature suffers not-- - A daughter's riper mind, a child's seniority. - - Oh, by my filial tears - Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head - Time yet will force at last the longer years, - Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead. - - Nay, nay! Too new to know - Time's conjuring is, too great to understand. - Memory has not died; it leaves me so-- - Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand. - -*Dr. Johnson outlived by thirty years his wife, who was twenty years -his senior. - - - - - THE THRESHING MACHINE - - No "fan is in his hand" for these - Young villagers beneath the trees, - Watching the wheels. But I recall - The rhythm of rods that rise and fall, - Purging the harvest, over-seas. - - No fan, no flail, no threshing-floor! - And all their symbols evermore - Forgone in England now--the sign, - The visible pledge, the threat divine, - The chaff dispersed, the wheat in store. - - The unbreathing engine marks no tune, - Steady at sunrise, steady at noon, - Inhuman, perfect, saving time, - And saving measure, and saving rhyme-- - And did our Ruskin speak too soon? - - "No noble strength on earth" he sees - "Save Hercules' arm"; his grave decrees - Curse wheel and steam. As the wheels ran - I saw the other strength of man, - I knew the brain of Hercules. - - - - - WINTER TREES ON THE HORIZON - - O delicate! Even in wooded lands - They show the margin of my world, - My own horizon; little bands - Of twigs unveil that edge impearled. - - And what is more mine own than this, - My limit, level with mine eyes? - For me precisely do they kiss-- - The rounded earth, the rounding skies. - - It has my stature, that keen line - (Let mathematics vouch for it). - The lark's horizon is not mine, - No, nor his nestlings' where they sit; - - No, nor the child's. And, when I gain - The hills, I lift it as I rise - Erect; anon, back to the plain - I soothe it with mine equal eyes. - - - - - TO SLEEP - - Dear fool, be true to me! - I know the poets speak thee fair, and I - Hail thee uncivilly. - O but I call with a more urgent cry! - - I do not prize thee less, - I need thee more, that thou dost love to teach-- - Father of foolishness-- - The imbecile dreams clear out of wisdom's reach. - - Come and release me; bring - My irresponsible mind; come in thy hours. - Draw from my soul the sting - Of wit that trembles, consciousness that cowers. - - For if night comes without thee - She is more cruel than day. But thou, fulfil - Thy work, thy gifts about thee-- - Liberty, liberty, from this weight of will. - - My day-mind can endure - Upright, in hope, all it must undergo. - But O afraid, unsure, - My night-mind waking lies too low, too low. - - Dear fool, be true to me! - The night is thine, man yields it, it beseems - Thy ironic dignity. - Make me all night the innocent fool that dreams. - - - - - "THE MARRIAGE OF TRUE MINDS" - - (IN THE BACH-GOUNOD "AVE MARIA") - - That seeking Prelude found its unforetold - Unguessed intention, trend; - Though needing no fulfilment, did enfold - This exquisite end. - - Bach led his notes up through their delicate slope - Aspiring, so they sound, - And so they were--in some strange ignorant hope - Thus to be crowned. - - What deep soft seas beneath this buoyant barque! - What winds to speed this bird! - What impulses to toss this heavenward lark! - Thought--then the word. - - Lovely the tune, lovely the unconsciousness - Of him who promised it. - Lovely the years that joined in blessedness - The two, the fit. - - Bach was Precursor. But no Baptist's cry - Was his; he, who began - For one who was to end, did prophesy, - By Nature's generous act, the lesser man. - - - - - IN HONOUR OF AMERICA, 1917 - - IN ANTITHESIS TO ROSSETTI'S "ON THE REFUSAL - OF AID BETWEEN NATIONS" - - Not that the earth is changing, O my God! - Not that her brave democracies take heart - To share, to rule her treasure, to impart - The wine to those who long the wine-press trod; - Not therefore trust we that beneath Thy nod, - Thy silent benediction, even now - In gratitude so many nations bow, - So many poor: not therefore, O my God! - - But because living men for dying man - Go to a million deaths, to deal one blow; - And justice speaks one great compassionate tongue; - And nation unto nation calls "One clan - We succourers are, one tribe!" By this we know - Our earth holds confident, steadfast, being young. - - - - - "LORD, I OWE THEE A DEATH" - _Richard Hooker_ - - (IN TIME OF WAR) - - Man pays that debt with new munificence, - Not piecemeal now, not slowly, by the old: - Not grudgingly, by the effaced thin pence, - But greatly and in gold. - - - - - REFLECTIONS - - (I) IN IRELAND - - A mirror faced a mirror: ire and hate - Opposite ire and hate: the multiplied, - The complex charge rejected, intricate, - From side to sullen side; - - One plot, one crime, one treachery, nay, one name, - Assumed, denounced, in echoes of replies. - The doubt, exchanged, lit thousands of one flame - Within those mutual eyes. - - - - (II) IN "OTHELLO" - - A mirror faced a mirror: in sweet pain - His dangers with her pity did she track, - Received her pity with his love again, - And these she wafted back. - - That masculine passion in her little breast - She bandied with him; her compassion he - Bandied with her. What tender sport! No rest - Had love's infinity. - - - - (III) IN TWO POETS - - A mirror faced a mirror: O thy word, - Thou lord of images, did lodge in me, - Locked to my heart, homing from home, a bird, - A carrier, bound for thee. - - Thy migratory greatness, greater far - For that return, returns; now grow divine - By endlessness my visiting thoughts, that are - Those visiting thoughts of thine. - - - - - TO CONSCRIPTS - - "_Compel them to come in._"--ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL - - You "made a virtue of necessity" - By divine sanction; you, the loth, the grey, - The random, gentle, unconvinced; O be - The crowned!--you may, you may. - - You, the compelled, be feasted! You, the caught, - Be freemen of the gates that word unlocks! - Accept your victory from that unsought, - That heavenly paradox. - - - - - THE VOICE OF A BIRD - - "_He shall rise up at the voice of a bird._"--ECCLESIASTES - - Who then is "he"? - Dante, Keats, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley; all - Rose in their greatness at the shrill decree, - The little rousing inarticulate call. - - For they stood up - At the bird-voice, of lark, of nightingale, - Drank poems from that throat as from a cup. - Over the great world's notes did these prevail. - - And not alone - The signal poets woke. In listening man, - Woman, and child a poet stirs unknown, - Throughout the Mays of birds since Mays began. - - He rose, he heard-- - Our father, our St. Peter, in his tears-- - The crowing, twice, of the prophetic bird, - The saddest cock-crow of our human years. - - - - - THE QUESTION - - IL POETA MI DISSE, "CHE PENSI?" - - Virgil stayed Dante with a wayside word; - But long, and how, and loud and urgently - The poets of my passion have I heard - Summoning me. - - It is their closest whisper and their call. - Their greatness to this lowliness hath spoken, - Their voices rest upon that interval, - Their sign, their token. - - Man at his little prayer tells Heaven his thought, - To man entrusts his thought--"Friend, this is mine." - The immortal poets within my breast have sought, - Saying, "What is thine?" - - - - - THE LAWS OF VERSE - - Dear laws, come to my breast! - Take all my frame, and make your close arms meet - Around me; and so ruled, so warmed, so pressed, - I breathe, aware; I feel my wild heart beat. - - Dear laws, be wings to me! - The feather merely floats. O be it heard - Through weight of life--the skylark's gravity-- - That I am not a feather, but a bird. - - - - - "THE RETURN TO NATURE" - - _Histories of Modern Poetry_ - - (I) PROMETHEUS - - It was the south: mid-everything, - Mid-land, mid-summer, noon; - And deep within a limpid spring - The mirrored sun of June. - - Splendour in freshness! Ah, who stole - This sun, this fire, from heaven? - He holds it shining in his soul, - Prometheus the forgiven. - - - - (II) THETIS - - In her bright title poets dare - What the wild eye of fancy sees-- - Similitude--the clear, the fair - Light mystery of images. - - Round the blue sea I love the best - The argent foam played, slender, fleet; - I saw--past Wordsworth and the rest-- - Her natural, Greek, and silver feet. - - - - - TO SILENCE - - "SPACE, THE BOUND OF A SOLID": SILENCE, THEN, - THE FORM OF A MELODY - - Silence, for thine idleness I raise - My silence-bounded singing in thy praise, - But for thy moulding of my Mozart's tune, - Thy hold upon the bird that sings the moon, - Thy magisterial ways. - - Man's lovely definite melody-shapes are thine, - Outlined, controlled, compressed, complete, divine. - Also thy fine intrusions do I trace, - Thy afterthoughts, thy wandering, thy grace, - Within the poet's line. - - Thy secret is the song that is to be. - Music had never stature but for thee, - Sculptor! strong as the sculptor Space whose hand - Urged the Discobolus and bade him stand. - * * * * * - Man, on his way to Silence, stops to hear and see. - - - - - THE ENGLISH METRES - - The rooted liberty of flowers in breeze - Is theirs, by national luck impulsive, terse, - Tethered, uncaptured, rules obeyed "at ease," - Time-strengthened laws of verse. - - Or they are like our seasons that admit - Inflexion, not infraction: Autumn hoar, - Winter more tender than our thoughts of it, - But a year's steadfast four; - - Redundant syllables of Summer rain, - And displaced accents of authentic Spring; - Spondaic clouds above a gusty plain - With dactyls on the wing. - - Not Common Law, but Equity, is theirs-- - Our metres; play and agile foot askance, - And distant, beckoning, blithely rhyming pairs, - Unknown to classic France; - - Unknown to Italy. Ay, count, collate, - Latins! with eye foreseeing on the time, - And numbered fingers, and approaching fate - On the appropriate rhyme. - - Nay, nobly our grave measures are decreed: - Heroic, Alexandrine with the stay, - Deliberate; or else like him whose speed - Did outrun Peter, urgent in the break of day. - - - - - "RIVERS UNKNOWN TO SONG" - _James Thomson_ - - Wide waters in the waste; or, out of reach, - Rough Alpine falls where late a glacier hung; - Or rivers groping for the alien beach, - Through continents, unsung. - - Nay, not these nameless, these remote, alone; - But all the streams from all the watersheds-- - Peneus, Danube, Nile--are the unknown. - Young in their ancient beds. - - Man has no tale for them. O travellers swift - From secrets to oblivion! Waters wild - That pass in act to bend a flower, or lift - The bright limbs of a child! - - For they are new, they are fresh; there's no surprise - Like theirs on earth. O strange for evermore! - This moment's Tiber with his shining eyes - Never saw Rome before. - - Man has no word for their eternity-- - Rhine, Avon, Arno, younglings, youth uncrowned: - Ignorant, innocent, instantaneous, free, - Unwelcomed, unrenowned. - - - - - TO THE MOTHER OF CHRIST - THE SON OF MAN - - We too (one cried), we too, - We the unready, the perplexed, the cold, - Must shape the Eternal in our thoughts anew, - Cherish, possess, enfold. - - Thou sweetly, we in strife. - It is our passion to conceive Him thus - In mind, in sense, within our house of life; - That seed is locked in us. - - We must affirm our Son - From the ambiguous Nature's difficult speech, - Gather in darkness that resplendent One, - Close as our grasp can reach. - - Nor shall we ever rest - From this our task. An hour sufficed for thee, - Thou innocent! He lingers in the breast - Of our humanity. - - - - - A COMPARISON IN A SEASIDE FIELD - - 'Tis royal and authentic June - Over this poor soil blossoming; - Here lies, beneath an upright noon, - Thin nation for so wild a king. - - Far off, the noble Summer rules, - Violent in the ardent rose, - His sun alight in mirroring pools, - Braggart on Alps of vanquished snows; - - Away, aloft, true to his hour, - Announced, his colour, his fire, his jest. - But here, in negligible flower, - Summer is not proclaimed:--confessed. - - A woman I marked; for her no state, - Small joy, no song. She had her boon, - Her only youth, true to its date, - Faintly perceptible, her June. - - - - - SURMISE - - THE TRACK OF A HUMAN MOOD - - Not wish, nor fear, nor quite expectancy - Is that vague spirit Surmise, - That wanderer, that wonderer, whom we see - Within each other's eyes; - - And yet not often. For she flits away, - Fitful as infant thought, - Visitant at a venture, hope at play, - Unversed in facts, untaught. - - In "the wide fields of possibility" - Surmise, conjecturing, - Makes little trials, incredulous, that flee - Abroad on random wing. - - One day this inarticulate shall find speech, - This hoverer seize our breath. - Surmise shall close with man--with all, with each-- - In her own sovereign hour, the moments of our death. - - - - - TO ANTIQUITY - - "... REVERENCE FOR OUR FATHERS, WITH THEIR - STORES OF EXPERIENCES" - _An author whose name I did not note_ - - - O our young ancestor, - Our boy in Letters, how we trudge oppressed - With our "experiences," and you of yore - Flew light, and blessed! - - Youngling, in your new town, - Tight, like a box of toys--the town that is - Our shattered, open ruin, with its crown - Of histories; - - You with your morning words, - Fresh from the night, your yet un-sonneted moon, - Your passion undismayed, cool as a bird's - Ignorant tune; - - O youngling! how is this? - Your poems are not wearied yet, not dead, - Must I bow low? or, With an envious kiss, - Put you to bed? - - - - - CHRISTMAS NIGHT - - "IF I CANNOT SEE THEE PRESENT I WILL MOURN - THEE ABSENT, FOR THIS ALSO IS A PROOF OF LOVE" - _Thomas à Kempis_ - - We do not find Him on the difficult earth, - In surging human-kind, - In wayside death or accidental birth, - Or in the "march of mind." - - Nature, her nests, her prey, the fed, the caught, - Hid Him so well, so well, - His steadfast secret there seems to our thought - Life's saddest miracle. - - He's but conjectured in man's happiness, - Suspected in man's tears, - Or lurks beyond the long, discouraged guess, - Grown fainter through the years. - - * * * * * - - But absent, absent now? Ah, what is this, - Near as in child-birth bed, - Laid on our sorrowful hearts, close to a kiss? - A homeless childish head. - - - - - THE OCTOBER REDBREAST - - Autumn is weary, halt, and old; - Ah, but she owns the song of joy! - Her colours fade, her woods are cold. - Her singing-bird's a boy, a boy. - - In lovely Spring the birds were bent - On nests, on use, on love, forsooth! - Grown-up were they. This boy's content, - For his is liberty, his is youth. - - The musical stripling sings for play - Taking no thought, and virgin-glad. - For duty sang those mates in May. - This singing-bird's a lad, a lad. - - - TO "A CERTAIN RICH MAN" - - "I HAVE FIVE BRETHREN.... FATHER, I BESEECH - THEE ... LEST THEY COME TO THIS PLACE" - _St. Luke's Gospel_ - - - Thou wouldst not part thy spoil - Gained from the beggar's want, the weakling's toil, - Nor spare a jot of sumptuousness or state - For Lazarus at the gate. - - And in the appalling night - Of expiation, as in day's delight, - Thou heldst thy niggard hand; it would not share - One hour of thy despair. - - Those five--thy prayer for them! - O generous! who, condemned, wouldst not condemn, - Whose ultimate human greatness proved thee so - A miser of thy woe. - - - - - EVERLASTING FAREWELLS - - "EVERLASTING FAREWELLS! AND AGAIN, AND - YET AGAIN ... EVERLASTING FAREWELLS!" - _De Quincey_ - - - "Farewells!" O what a word! - Denying this agony, denying the affrights, - Denying all De Quincey spoke or heard - In the infernal sadness of his nights. - - How mend these strange "farewells"? - "Vale"? "Addio"? "Leb'wohl"? Not one but seems - A tranquil refutation; tolling bells - That yet behold the terror of his dreams. - - - - - THE POET TO THE BIRDS - - You bid me hold my peace, - Or so I think, you birds; you'll not forgive - My kill-joy song that makes the wild song cease, - Silent or fugitive. - - Yon thrush stopt in mid-phrase - At my mere footfall; and a longer note - Took wing and fled afield, and went its ways - Within the blackbird's throat. - - Hereditary song, - Illyrian lark and Paduan nightingale, - Is yours, unchangeable the ages long; - Assyria heard your tale; - - Therefore you do not die. - But single, local, lonely, mortal, new, - Unlike, and thus like all my race, am I, - Preluding my adieu. - - My human song must be - My human thought. Be patient till 'tis done. - I shall not hold my little peace; for me - There is no peace but one. - - - - - AT NIGHT - - _To W. M._ - - Home, home from the horizon far and clear, - Hither the soft wings sweep; - Flocks of the memories of the day draw near - The dovecote doors of sleep. - - Oh, which are they that come through sweetest light - Of all these homing birds? - Which with the straightest and the swiftest flight? - Your words to me, your words! - - - - - WARWICK BROS. & RUTTER LIMITED, TORONTO - - PRINTERS & BOOKBINDERS - - - - - - - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's The Poems of Alice Meynell, by Alice Meynell - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE POEMS OF ALICE MEYNELL *** - -***** This file should be named 62251-8.txt or 62251-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/6/2/2/5/62251/ - -Produced by Al Haines -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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