IIn other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.The woodbine whispers, low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago;The firwoods murmur and the sea-waves knowThe message that the setting sun shall send.In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.IIAnd God sighed in the sunset; and the seaChanted the soft recessional of TimeAgainst the golden shores of mystery;And ever as that long low change and chimeWith one slow sob of molten music yearnedWestward, it seemed as if the Love sublimeAlmost uttered itself, where the waves burnedIn little flower-soft flames of rose and greenThat woke to seaward, while the tides returnedRising and falling, ruffled and serene,With all the mirrored tints of heaven aboveShimmering through their mystic myriad sheen.As a dove's burnished breast throbbing with loveSwells and subsides to call her soft-eyed mateHome through the rosy gloom of glen or grove,So when the greenwood noon was growing lateThe sea called softly through the waste of years,Called to the star that still can consecrateThe holy golden haze of human tearsWhich tinges every sunset with our griefUntil the perfect Paraclete appears.Ah, the long sigh that yields the world reliefRose and relapsed across Eternity,Making a joy of sorrows that are brief,As, o'er the bright enchantment of the sea,Facing the towers of that old City of PainWhich stands upon the shores of mysteryAnd frowns across the immeasurable main,Venus among her cloudy sunset flowersWoke; and earth melted into heaven again.For even the City's immemorial towersWere tinted into secret tone and time,Like old forgotten tombs that age embowersWith muffling roses and with mossy rimeUntil they seem no monument of ours,But one more note in earth's accordant chime.O Love, Love, Love, all dreams, desires and powers,Were but as chords of that ineffable psalm;And all the long blue lapse of summer hours,And all the breathing sunset's golden balmBy that æonian sorrow were resolvedAs dew into the music's infinite calm,Through which the suns and moons and stars revolvedAccording to the song's divine decree,Till Time was but a tide of intervolvedAnd interweaving worlds of melody;In other worlds I loved you, long ago,—The angelic citoles fainted o'er the sea;And seraph citerns answered, sweet and low,From where the sunset and the moonrise blend,—In other worlds I loved you, long ago;Love that hath no beginning hath no end;O Love, Love, Love, the bitter City of PainBidding the golden echoes westward wend,Chimed in accordant undertone again:Though every grey old tower rose like a tombTo mock the glory of the shoreless mainThey could but strike such discords as illumeThe music with strange gleams of utter lightAnd hallow all the valley's rosy gloom.And there, though greyly sinking out of sightBefore the wonders of the sky and sea,Back through the valley, back into the night,While mystery melted into mystery,The City still rebuffed the far sweet WestThat dimmed her sorrows with infinity;Yet sometimes yearning o'er the sea's bright breastTo that remote Avilion would she gazeWhere all lost loves and weary warriors rest.Then she remembered, through that golden haze,(Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound)Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,And how he sailed to heal him of his wound,And how he lives and reigns eternallyWhere now that unknown love is throned and crownedWho laid his bleeding head against her kneeAnd loosed the bitter breast-plate and unboundHis casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,And how she reigns beside him on that shoreFor ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)And they twain have no sorrow any more.IIIThey have forgotten all that vanished awayWhen life's dark night died into death's bright dayThey have forgotten all except the gleamOf light when once he kissed her in a dreamOnce on the lips and once upon the browIn the white orb of God's transcendent Now;And even then he knew that, long before,Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;Yea; that most lonely and immortal faceWhich dwells beyond the dreams of time and spaceBowed down to him from out the happy placeAnd whispered to him, low and sweet and lowIn other worlds I loved you, long ago;And then he knew his love could never dieBecause his queen was throned beyond the skyAnd called him to his own immortal sphereForgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they knowThey loved on earth a million years ago;And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;And heard a voice whispering in their flow,And calling through the silent sunset-glow,Love that hath no beginning hath no end.IVIt was about the dawn of dayI heard Etain and Anwyl sayThe waving ferns are a fairy forest,It is time, it is time to wander away;For the dew is bright on the heather bells,And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,Over and under the braes and dells.She was eight years old that day,Full of laughter and play;Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—Two young lovers were they.Two young lovers were they,Born in the City of Pain;There was never a song in the world so gayAs the song of the child, Etain;There was never a laugh so sweetWith the ripple of fairy bells,And never a fairy foot so fleetDancing down the woodland dells!She was eight years old that day,Two young lovers were they.There was never a sea of mystical gleamsGlooming under enchanted skiesDeep as the dark miraculous dreamsIn Anwyl's haunted eyes.There was never a glory of lightAround the carolling larkAs Etain's eyes were brave and brightTo daunt the coming dark.Two young lovers were theyBorn in the City of Pain;There was never a song in the world so gayAs the song of the child, Etain;Blithe as the wind in the trees,Blithe as the bird on the bough,Blithe as the bees in the sweet Heart's-easeWhere Love lies bleeding now.VAnd God sighed in the sunset; and the seaForgot her sorrow, and all the breathless WestGrew quiet as the blue tranquillityThat clad the broken mountain's brilliant breast,Over the City, with deep heather-bloomHeaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfumeWhose billows rocked the drowsy honey-beeAmong the golden isles of gorse and broomLike some enchanted ancient argosyDrunkenly blundering over seas of dreamPast unimagined isles of mystery,Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,And sunbeams float and toss across the bareRose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleamWhere sirens wind their glossy golden hair;Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloomHeaving its purple through the high bright airRolled a silent glory of gleam and gloomFrom mossy crag to crag and crest to crestUntroubled by the valley's depth of doom.The hawk dropped down into the pine-forestAnd, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wingsBlossomwise over her winsome secret nest.Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy singsOut of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,Or in the floating starlight faintly ringsThe frail blue hare-bells—turn again, and turn,Under and over, the silvery crescents cryTo where the crimson fox-glove belfries burnAnd with a deeper softer peal reply,There came a ripple of music through the rosesThat rustled on the dimmest rim of skyWhere many a frame of fretted leaves enclosesFor lovers wandering in the fern-wet woodAn arch of summer sea that softly dozesAs if all mysteries were understood:Yrma, my queen, what love could understandThat faint sweet music,God saith all is good,As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,Over the blithe blue hills and far awayWandered into their own green fairyland?VIFor the song is lost that shook the dewWhere the wild musk-roses glisten,When the sunset dreamed that a dream was trueAnd the birds were hushed to listen.The song is lost that shook the nightWith wings of richer fire,Where the years had touched their eyes with lightAnd their souls with a new desire;And the new delight of the strange old storyBurned in the flower-soft skies,And nine more years with a darker gloryHad deepened the light of her eyes;But lost, oh more than lost the songThat shook the rose to tears,As hand in hand they danced alongThrough childhood's everlasting years."Oh, Love has wings," the linnet sings;But the dead return no more, no more;And the sea is breaking its old grey heartAgainst the golden shore.She was eight years old that day,Two young lovers were they.If every song as they danced alongPaused on the springing spray;Is there never a bird in the wide greenwoodWill hush its heart to-day?There's never a leaf with dew impearledTo make their pathway sweet,And never a blossom in all the worldThat knows the kiss of their feet.No light to-night declares the wordThat thrilled the blossomed bough,And stilled the happy singing birdThat none can silence now.The weary nightingale may sobWith her bleeding breast against a thorn,And the wild white rose with every throbGrow red as the laugh of morn;With wings outspread she sinks her headBut Love returns no more, no more;And the sea is breaking its old grey heartAgainst the golden shore.Born in the City of Pain;Ah, who knows, who knowsWhen Death shall turn to delight againOr a wound to a red, red rose?Eight years old that day,Full of laughter and play;Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—Two young lovers were they.VIIAnd down the scented heather-drowsy hillsThe barefoot children wandered, hand in hand,And paddled through the laughing silver rillsIn quest of fairyland;And in each little sunburnt hand a spray,A purple fox-glove bell-branch lightly swung,And Anwyl told Etain how, far away,One day he wandered through the dreamland dellsAnd watched the moonlit fairies as they sungAnd tolled the fox-glove bells;And oh, how sweetly, sweetly to and froThe fragrance of the music reeled and rungUnder the loaded boughs of starry May.And God sighed in the sunset, and the seaGrew quieter than the hills: the mysteryOf ocean, earth and sky was like a wordUttered, but all unheard,Uttered by every wave and cloud and leafWith all the immortal glory of mortal grief;And every wave that broke its heart of goldIn music on the rainbow-dazzled shoreSeemed telling, strangely telling, evermoreA story that must still remain untold.Oh,Once upon a time, and o'er and o'erAs aye theHappy ever aftercameThe enchanted waves lavished their faery loreAnd tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flameAround the whispers of the creaming foam,Till the old rapture with the new sweet nameThrough all the old romance began to roam,And Anwyl, gazing out across the sea,Dreamed that he heard the distance whisper "Come.""Etain," he murmured softly and wistfully,With the soul's wakening wonder in his eyes,"Is it not strange to think that there can be"No end for ever and ever to those skies,No shore beyond, or if there be a shoreStill without end the world beyond it lies;"Think; think, Etain;" and all his faery loreMixed with the faith that brought all gods to birthAnd sees new heavens transcend for evermoreThe poor impossibilities of earth;But Etain only laughed: the world to herWas one sweet smile of very present mirth;Its flowers were only flowers, common or rare;Her soul was like a little garden closedBy rose-clad walls, a place of southern airIslanded from the Mystery that reposedIts vast and brooding wings on that abyssThrough which like little clouds that dreamed and dozedThe thoughts of Anwyl wandered toward some blissUnknown, unfathomed, far, how far away,Where God has gathered all the eternitiesInto strange heavens, beyond the night and day.VIIIAnd over the rolling golden bay,In the funeral pomp of the dying day,The bell of Time was wistfully tollingA million million years away;And over the heather-drowsy hillWhere the burdened bees were buzzing still,The two little sun-bright barefoot childrenWandered down at the flowers' own will;For still as the bell in the sunset tolled,The meadow-sweet and the mary-goldAnd the purple orchis kissed their anklesAnd lured them over the listening wold.And the feathery billows of blue-gold grassBowed and murmured and bade them pass,Where a sigh of the sea-wind softly told themThere is no Time—Time never was.And what if a sorrow were tolled to restWhere the rich light mellowed away in the West,As a glory of fruit in an autumn orchardHeaped and asleep o'er the sea's ripe breast?Why should they heed it, what should they knowOf the years that come or the years that go,With the warm blue sky around and above themAnd the wild thyme whispering to and fro?For they heard in the dreamy dawn of dayA fairy harper faintly play,Follow me, follow me, little children,Over the hills and far away;Where the dew is bright on the heather-bells,And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,Over and under the braes and dells.And the hare-bells tinkled and rang Ding dongBell in the dell as they danced along,And their feet were stained on the hills with honey,And crushing the clover till evensong.And, oh the ripples that rolled in rhymeUnder the wild blue banks of thyme,To the answering rhyme of the rolling ocean'sGolden glory of change and chime!For they came to a stream and her fairy loverCaught at her hand and swung her over,And the broad wet buttercups laughed and gildedTheir golden knees in the deep sweet clover.There was never a lavrock up in the skiesBlithe as the laugh of their lips and eyes,As they glanced and glittered across the meadowsTo waken the sleepy butterflies.There was never a wave on the sea so gayAs the light that danced on their homeward wayWhere the waving ferns were a fairy forestAnd a thousand years as yesterday.She was eight years old that day,Full of laughter and play;Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—Two young lovers were they.And when the clouds like folded sheepWere drowsing over the drowsy deep,And like a rose in a golden cradleAnwyl breathed on the breast of sleep,Or ever the petals and leaves were furledAt the vesper-song of the sunset-world,The sleepy young rose of nine sweet summersDreamed in his rose-bed cosily curled.And what if the light of his nine bright yearsGlistened with laughter or glimmered with tears,Or gleamed like a mystic globe around himWhite as the light of the sphere of spheres?And what if a glory of angels there,Starring an orb of ineffable air,Came floating down from the Gates of jasperThat melt into flowers at a maiden's prayer?And what if he dreamed of a fairy faceWondering out of some happy place,Quietly as a star at sunsetShines in the rosy dreams of space?For only as far as the west wind blowsThe sweets of a swinging full-blown rose,Eight years old and queen of the liliesLittle Etain slept—ah, how close!At a flower-cry over the moonlit laneIn a cottage of roses dreamed Etain,And their purple shadows kissed at her latticeAnd dappled her sigh-soft counterpane;And or ever Etain with her golden headHad nestled to sleep in her lily-white bed,She breathed a dream to her fairy lover,Please, God, bless Anwyl and me, she said.And a song arose in the rose-white West,And a whisper of wings o'er the sea's bright breast,And a cry where the moon's old miracle wakenedA glory of pearl o'er the pine-forest.Why should they heed it? What should they knowOf the years to come or the years to go?With the starry skies around and above themAnd the roses whispering to and fro.Ah, was it a song of the mystic mornWhen into their beating hearts the thornShould pierce through the red wet crumpled rosesAnd all the sorrow of love be born?Ah, was it a cry of the wild waysideWhereby one day they must surely ride,Out of the purple garden of passionTo Calvary, to be crucified?Only the sound of the distant seaBroke on the shores of Mystery,And tolled as a bell might toll for sorrowTill Time be tombed in Eternity;And in their dreams they only heardFar away, one secret birdSing, till the passionate purple twilightThrobbed with the wonder of one sweet word:One sweet word and the wonder awoke,And the leaves and the flowers and the starlight spokeIn silent rapture the strange old secretThat none e'er knew till the death-dawn broke;One sweet whisper, and hand in handThey wandered in dreams through fairyland,Rapt in the star-bright mystical musicWhich only a child can understand.But never a child in the world can tellThe wonderful tale he knows so well,Though ever as old Time dies in the sunsetIt tolls and tolls like a distant bell.Love, love, love; and they hardly knewThe sense of the glory that round them grew;But the world was a wide enchanted garden;And the song, the song, the song rang true.And they danced with the fairies in emerald ringsArched by the light of their rainbow wings,And they heard the wild green Harper strikingA starlight over the golden strings.Love, oh love; and they roamed once moreThrough a forest of flowers on a fairy shore,And the sky was a wild bright laugh of wonderAnd the West was a dream of the years of yore.In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end:The heather whispers low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago;The meadows murmur and the firwoods knowThe message that the kindling East shall send;In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.IXOut of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,Yrma, thy voice came to me in my sleep,And through a rainbow woven of human tearsI saw two lovers wandering down the years;Two children, first, that roamed a sunset land,And then two lovers wandering hand in hand,Forgetful of their childhood's Paradise,For nine more years had darkened in their eyes,And heaven itself could hardly find againAnwyl, the star-child, or the flower, Etain.For on a day in May, as through the woodWith earth's new passion beating in his bloodHe went alone, an empty-hearted youth,Seeking he knew not what white flower of truthOr beauty, on all sides he seemed to seeSwift subtle hints of some new harmony,Yet all unheard, ideal, and incomplete,A silent song compact of hopes and fears,A music such as lights the wandering feetOf Yrma when on earth she reappears.And he forgot that sad grey City of Pain,For all earth's old romance returned again,And as he went, his dreaming soul grew gladTo think that he might meet with GalahadOr Parsifal in some green glade of fern,Or see between the boughs a helmet burnAnd hear a joyous laugh kindle the skyAs through the wood Sir Launcelot rode byWith face upturned to take the sun like wine.Ah, was it love that made the whole world shineLike some great angel's face, blinded with bliss,While Anwyl dreamed of bold Sir AmadisAnd Guinevere's white arms and Iseult's kiss,And that glad island in a golden seaWhere Arthur lives and reigns eternally?Surely the heavens were one wide rose-white flameAs down the path to meet him Yrma came;Ah, was it Yrma, with those radiant eyes,That came to greet and lead him through the skies,The skies that gloomed and gleamed so far aboveThe little wandering prayers of human love?...He had forgotten all except the gleamOf light when once he kissed her in a dream, ...For surely then he knew that long beforeTheir eyes had met upon some distant shore....Ah, was it Yrma whose red lips he metBetween the branches, where the leaves were wet?Etain or Yrma, for it seemed her faceBent down upon him from some happy placeAnd whispered to him, low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago!And he, too, knew his love could never die,Because his queen was throned beyond the sky.Yet In sweet mortal eyes he met her nowAnd kissed Etain beneath the hawthorn bough,And dared to dream his infinite dream was trueOn earth and reign with Etain, dream he knewWhy leaves were green and sides were fresh and blue;Yea, dream he knew, as children dream they knowThey knew all this a million years ago,And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wendAnd heard a voice whispering in their flowAnd calling through the silent sunset-glowLove that hath no beginning hath no end.Ah, could they see in the Valley of GloomThat clove the cliffs behind the City;Ah, could they hear in the forest of DoomThe peril that neared without pause or pity?Behind the veils of ivy and vine,Wild musk-roses and white woodbine,In glens that were wan as with moonlit tearsAnd rosy with ghosts of eglantineAnd pale as with lilies of long-past years,Ah, could they see, could they hear, could they knowBehind that beautiful outward show,Behind the pomp and glory of lifeThat seething old anarchic strife?For there in many a dim blue gladeWhere the rank red poppies burned,And if perchance some dreamer strayedHe nevermore returned,Cold incarnate memoriesOf earth's retributory throes,Deadly desires and agoniesDark as the worm that never dies,In the outer night arose,And waited under those wonderful skiesWith Hydra heads and mocking eyesThat winked upon the waning WestFrom out the gloom of the oak-forest,Till all the wild profound of woodThat o'er the haunted valley sleptGlowed with eyes like pools of bloodAs, lusting after a hideous food,Through the haggard vistas creptWithout a cry, without a hiss,The serpent broods of the abyss.Ancestral folds in darkness furledSince the beginnings of the world.Ring upon awful ring uproseThat obscure heritage of foes,The exceeding bitter heritageWhich still a jealous God bestowsFrom inappellable age to age,The ghostly worms that softly moveThrough every grey old corse of loveAnd creep across the coffined yearsTo batten on our blood and tears;And there were hooded shapes of deathGaunt and grey, cruel and blind,Stealing softly as a breathThrough the woods that loured behindThe City; hooded shapes of fearSlowly, slowly stealing near;While all the gloom that round them rolledWith intertwisting coils grew cold.And there with leer and gap-toothed grinMany a gaunt ancestral SinWith clutching fingers, white and thin,Strove to put the boughs aside;And still before them all would glideDown the wavering moon-white trackOne lissom figure, clad in black;Who wept at mirth and mocked at painAnd murmured a song of the wind and the rain;His laugh was wild with a secret grief;His eyes were deep like woodland pools;And, once and again, as his face drew nearIn a rosy gloaming of eglantere,All the ghosts that gathered thereBowed together, naming his name:Lead us, ah thouShadow of a Leaf,Child and master of all our shame,Fool of Doubt and King of Fools.Now the linnet had ended his evensong,And the lark dropt down from his last wild dittyAnd ruffled his wings and his speckled breastBlossomwise over his June-sweet nest;While winging wistfully into the WestAs a fallen petal is wafted alongThe last white sea-mew sought for rest;And, over the gleaming heave and swellOf the swinging seas,Drowsily breathed the dreaming breeze.Then, suddenly, out of the Valley of GloomThat clove the cliffs behind the City,Out of the silent forest of DoomThat clothed the valley with clouds of fearSwelled the boom of a distant bellOnce, and the towers of the City of PainEchoed it, without hope or pity.The tale of that tolling who can tell?That dark old music who shall declare?Who shall interpret the song of the bell?Is it nothing to you, all ye that hear,Sorrowed the bell,Is it nothing to you?Is it nothing to you?the shore-wind cried,Is it nothing to you?the cliffs replied.But the low light laughed and the skies were blue,And this was only the song of the bell.XANWYLA darkened easement in a darker roomWas all his home, whence weary and bowed and whiteHe watched across the slowly gathering gloomThe slowly westering light.Bitterness in his heavy-clouded eyes,Bitterness as of heaven's intestine warsBrooded; he looked upon the unfathomed skiesAnd whispered—to the stars—Some day, he said, she will forget all thisThat she calls life, and looking far aboveSee throned among the great eternitiesThis dream of mine, this love;Love that has given my soul these wings of fireTo beat in glory above the sapphire sea,Until the wings of the infinite desireClose in infinity;Love that has taken the glory of hawthorn boughs,And all the dreaming beauty of hazel skies,As ministers to the radiance of her browsAnd haunted April eyes;Love that is hidden so deep beneath the dustOf little daily duties and delights,Till that reproachful face of hers grows justAnd God at last requitesA soul whose dream was deeper than the skies,A heart whose hope was wider than the sea,Yet could not enter through his true love's eyesTheir grey infinity.And so I know I wound her all day longBecause my heart must seem so far away;And even my love completes the silent wrongFor all that it can saySeems vast and meaningless to mortal sense;Its vague desire can never reach its goalTill knowledge vanishes in omniscienceAnd God surrounds her soul,Breaking its barriers down and flooding inThrough all her wounds in one almighty tide,Mingling her soul with that great Love whereinMy soul waits, glorified.XIETAINMy love is dying, dying in my heart;There is no song in heaven for such as IWho watch the days and years of youth depart,The bloom decay and die;The rose that withers in the hollow cheek,The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;And Time that writes what Pity dares not speakAround the fading eyes.He dreams he loves; but only loves his dream;And in his dream he never can forgetAbana seems a so much mightier streamAnd Pharpar wider yet;The little deeds of love that light the shrineOf common daily duties with such gleamsOf heaven, to me are scarcely less divineThan those poor wandering dreamsOf deeds that never happen! I give him this,This heart he cannot find in heaven above;This heart, this heart of all the eternities,This life of mine, this love;Love that is lord of all the world at onceAnd never bade the encircled spirit roamTo the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,But makes each heart its home,And every home the heart of Space and Time,And each and all a heaven if love could reign;One infinite untranscended heaven sublimeWith God's own joy and pain.Why, that was what God meant, to set us hereIn Eden, when he saw that all was good;And we have made the sun black with despair,And turned the moon to blood.So has Love taught me that too learnèd tongue,And in his poorer wisdom made me wise;I grew so proud of the red drops we wrungFrom all philosophies.My heart is narrow, foolish, what you will;But this I know God meant who set us here,And gave each soul the Infinities to fulfilFrom its own widening sphere.To annex new regions to the soul's domain,To expand the circle of the golden hours,Till it enfolds again and yet againNew heavens, new fields, new flowers,Oh, this is well; but still the central heartIs here at home, not wandering like the windThat gathers nothing, but must still departLeaving a waste behind.Where is the song I sang that April morn,When all the poet in his eyes awokeMy sleeping heart to heaven; and love was born?For while the glad day brokeWe met; and as the softly kindling skiesThrilled through the scented vistas of the woodI felt the sudden love-light in his eyesKindle my beating blood.Happy day, happy day,Chasing the clouds of the night awayAnd bidding the dreams of the dawn departOver the freshening April blue,Till the blossoms awake to welcome the May,And the world is made anew;And the blackbird sings on the dancing sprayWith eyes of glistening dew;"Happy, happy, happy day;"For he knows that his love is true;He knows that his love is true, my heart,He knows that his love is true!I cannot sing it: these tears blind me: love,O love, come back before it is too late,Why, even Christ came down to us from above:I think His love was great;Yet he stood knocking, knocking at the doorUntil his piteous hands were worn with scars;He did not hide that crown of love he woreAmong the lonely stars.This round of hours, the daily flowers I cullAre more to me than all the rolling spheres,A wounded bird at hand more pitifulThan some great seraph's tears.How should I join the great wise choir aboveWith my starved spirit's pale inhuman dearth,Who never heard the cry of heavenly loveRise from the sweet-souled earth?Yet it is I he needs, and I for whomHis greed exceeds, his dreams fly wide of the mark!Is it all self? I wander in the gloom;The ways of God grow dark;I watch the rose that withers in the cheek,The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;And Time that writes what Pity dares not speakAround the fading eyes.XIIAnd ever as Anwyl went the unknown endFaded before him, back and back and backHe saw new empty heavens for ever bendOver his endless track;And memory, burning with new hopeless fire,Showed him how every passing infinite hourMade some new Crucifix for the World's DesireIs some new wayside flower:He saw what joy and beauty owed to death;How all the world was one great sacrificeOf Him, in whom all creatures that draw breathShare God's eternal skies;How Love is lord of all the world at once;And never bids the encircled spirit roamTo the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,But makes each heart its home,And every home the heart of Space and Time,And each and all a heaven if love could reignOne infinite untranscended heaven sublimeWith God's own joy and pain.XIIIOut of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,A little child came to him in his sleepAnd led him back to what was ParadiseBefore the years had darkened in his eyes,And showed him what he ne'er could lose again—The light that once enshrined the child Etain.Ah, was it Yrma with those radiant eyesThat came to greet and lead him through the skies;Ay; all the world was one wide rose-white flame,As down the path to meet him Yrma cameAnd caught the child up in her arms and cried,This is my child that moved in Etain's side,Thy child and Etain's: I the unknown idealAnd she the rich, the incarnate, breathing realAre one; for me thou never canst attainBut by the love I yield thee for Etain;Even as through Christ thy soul allays its dearth,Love's heaven is only compassed upon earth;And by that love, in thine own Etain's eyesThou shalt find all God's untranscended skies.As of old, as of old, with Etain that day,Over the hills, and far away,He roamed thro' the fairy forests of fern:Two young lovers were they.And God sighed in the sunset, and the seaGrew quieter than the hills: the mysteryOf ocean, earth and sky was like a wordUttered, but all unheard,Uttered by every wave and cloud and leafWith all the immortal glory of mortal grief;And every wave that broke its heart of goldIn music on the rainbow-dazzled shoreSeemed telling, strangely telling, evermoreA story that must still remain untold.Oh,Once upon a time, and o'er and o'erAs aye theHappy ever aftercameThe enchanted waves lavished their faery loreAnd tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flameAround the whispers of the creaming foam,Till the old rapture with the new sweet nameThrough all the old romance began to roam.XIVAnd those two lovers only heard—Oh, love is a dream that knows no waking—Far away, one secret bird,Where all the roses breathed one word,And every crispel on the beach—Oh, love is a sea that is ever breaking!—Lisped it in a sweeter speech;As hand in hand, by the sunset seaThat breaks on the shores of mystery,They stood in the gates of the City of PainTo watch the wild waves flutter and beatIn roses of white soft light at their feet,Roses of delicate music and light,Music and moonlight under their feet.Crumbling and flashing and softly crashingIn rainbow colours that dazzle and waneAnd wither and waken and, wild with delight,Dance and dance to a mystic tuneAnd scatter their leaves in a flower-soft rainOver the shimmering golden shoreBetween the West and the waking moon,Between the sunset and the night;And then they sigh for the years of yoreAnd gather their glory together again,Petal by petal and gleam by gleam,Till, all in one rushing rose-bright streamThey dazzle back to the deep once more,For the dream of the sea is an endless dream,And love is a sea that hath no shore,And the roses dance as they danced before.XVIn other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end:Low to her heart he breathed it, sweet and low;In other worlds I loved you, long ago;This is a word that all the sea-waves knowAnd whisper as through the shoreless West they wend,In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.XVI"Yet love can die!" she murmured once again;For this was in that City by the Sea,That old grey City of Pain,Built on the shifting shores of MysteryAnd mocked by all the immeasurable main."Love lives to die!"Under the deep eternal skyHis deeper voice caught up that deep refrain;"A year ago, and under yonder sunEarth had no Heaven to hold our hearts in one!For me there was no love, afar or nigh:And, O, if love were thus in time begun,Love, even our love, in time must surely die."Then memory murmured, "No";And he remembered, a million years ago,He saw the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;And heard her voice whispering in their flowAnd calling through the silent sunset-glow.Love that hath no beginning hath no end."Love dies to live!" How wild, how deep the joyThat knows no death can e'er destroyWhat cannot bear destruction! By these eyesI know that, ere the fashioning of the skies,Or ever the sun and moon and stars were madeI loved you. Sweet, I am no more afraid."Love lives to die!"Under the deep eternal skyHer wild sweet voice caught up that deep refrain:There, in that silent City by the Sea,Listening the wild-wave music of Infinity,There, in that old grey City of mortal pain,Their voices mingled in mystic unisonWith that immortal harmonyWhich holds the warring worlds in one.Their Voice, one Voice, yet manifold,Possessed the seas, the fields, the sky,With utterance of the dream that cannot die;Possessed the West's wild rose and dappled gold,And that old secret of the setting sunWhich, to the glory of Eternity,Time, tolling like a distant bell,Evermore faints to tell,And, ever telling, never yet has told.One, and yet manifoldArose their Voice, oh strangely one againWith murmurs of the immeasurable main;As, far beyond earth's cloudy bars,Their Soul surpassed the sunset and the stars,And all the heights and depths of temporal pain,Till seas of seraph music round them rolled.And in that mystic planeThey felt their mortal yearsBreak away as a dream of painBreaks in a stream of tears.Love, of whom life had birth,See now, is death not sweet?Love, is this heaven or earth?Both are beneath thy feet.Nay, both within thy heart!O Love, the glory nears;The Gates of Pearl are flung apart,The Rose of Heaven appears.Across the deeps of change,Like pangs of visible song,What angel-spirits, remote and strange,Thrill through the starry throng?And oh, what wind that blowsOver the mystic Tree,What whisper of the sacred Rose,What murmur of the sapphire Sea,What dreams that faint and failFrom harps of burning gold,But tell in heaven the sweet old taleAn earthly sunset told?Hark! like a holy bellOver that spirit Sea,Time, in the world it loves so well,Tolls for Eternity.Earth calls us once again,And, through the mystic Gleam,The grey old City of mortal painDawns on the heavenly dream.Sweet as the voice of birdsAt dawn, the years return,With little songs and sacred wordsOf human hearts that yearn.The sweet same waves resoundAlong our earthly shore;But now this earth we lost and foundIs heaven for evermore.Hark! how the cosmic choir,In sea and flower and sun,Recalls that triumph of desireWhich made all music one:One universal soul,Completing joy with pain,And harmonising with the WholeThe temporal refrain,Until from hill and plain,From bud and blossom and tree,From shadow and shining after rain,From cloud and clovered bee,From earth and sea and sky,From laughter and from tears,One molten golden harmonyFulfils the yearning years.Love, of whom death had birth,See now, is life not sweet?Love, is this heaven or earth?Both are beneath thy feet.In other worlds I loved you, long ago;Love that hath no beginning hath no end;The sea-waves whisper, low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago;The May-boughs murmur and the roses knowThe message that the dawning moon shall send;In other worlds I loved you, long ago;Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
I
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.The woodbine whispers, low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago;The firwoods murmur and the sea-waves knowThe message that the setting sun shall send.In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
II
And God sighed in the sunset; and the seaChanted the soft recessional of TimeAgainst the golden shores of mystery;
And ever as that long low change and chimeWith one slow sob of molten music yearnedWestward, it seemed as if the Love sublime
Almost uttered itself, where the waves burnedIn little flower-soft flames of rose and greenThat woke to seaward, while the tides returned
Rising and falling, ruffled and serene,With all the mirrored tints of heaven aboveShimmering through their mystic myriad sheen.
As a dove's burnished breast throbbing with loveSwells and subsides to call her soft-eyed mateHome through the rosy gloom of glen or grove,
So when the greenwood noon was growing lateThe sea called softly through the waste of years,Called to the star that still can consecrate
The holy golden haze of human tearsWhich tinges every sunset with our griefUntil the perfect Paraclete appears.
Ah, the long sigh that yields the world reliefRose and relapsed across Eternity,Making a joy of sorrows that are brief,
As, o'er the bright enchantment of the sea,Facing the towers of that old City of PainWhich stands upon the shores of mystery
And frowns across the immeasurable main,Venus among her cloudy sunset flowersWoke; and earth melted into heaven again.
For even the City's immemorial towersWere tinted into secret tone and time,Like old forgotten tombs that age embowers
With muffling roses and with mossy rimeUntil they seem no monument of ours,But one more note in earth's accordant chime.
O Love, Love, Love, all dreams, desires and powers,Were but as chords of that ineffable psalm;And all the long blue lapse of summer hours,
And all the breathing sunset's golden balmBy that æonian sorrow were resolvedAs dew into the music's infinite calm,
Through which the suns and moons and stars revolvedAccording to the song's divine decree,Till Time was but a tide of intervolved
And interweaving worlds of melody;In other worlds I loved you, long ago,—The angelic citoles fainted o'er the sea;
And seraph citerns answered, sweet and low,From where the sunset and the moonrise blend,—In other worlds I loved you, long ago;
Love that hath no beginning hath no end;O Love, Love, Love, the bitter City of PainBidding the golden echoes westward wend,
Chimed in accordant undertone again:Though every grey old tower rose like a tombTo mock the glory of the shoreless main
They could but strike such discords as illumeThe music with strange gleams of utter lightAnd hallow all the valley's rosy gloom.
And there, though greyly sinking out of sightBefore the wonders of the sky and sea,Back through the valley, back into the night,
While mystery melted into mystery,The City still rebuffed the far sweet WestThat dimmed her sorrows with infinity;
Yet sometimes yearning o'er the sea's bright breastTo that remote Avilion would she gazeWhere all lost loves and weary warriors rest.
Then she remembered, through that golden haze,(Oh faint as flowers the rose-white waves resound)Her Arthur whom she loved in the dead days,
And how he sailed to heal him of his wound,And how he lives and reigns eternallyWhere now that unknown love is throned and crowned
Who laid his bleeding head against her kneeAnd loosed the bitter breast-plate and unboundHis casque and brought him strangely o'er the sea,
And how she reigns beside him on that shoreFor ever (Yrma, queen, bend down to me)And they twain have no sorrow any more.
III
They have forgotten all that vanished awayWhen life's dark night died into death's bright dayThey have forgotten all except the gleamOf light when once he kissed her in a dreamOnce on the lips and once upon the browIn the white orb of God's transcendent Now;And even then he knew that, long before,Their eyes had met upon some distant shore;Yea; that most lonely and immortal faceWhich dwells beyond the dreams of time and spaceBowed down to him from out the happy placeAnd whispered to him, low and sweet and lowIn other worlds I loved you, long ago;And then he knew his love could never dieBecause his queen was throned beyond the skyAnd called him to his own immortal sphereForgetting Launcelot and Guinevere.
So Yrma reigns with Arthur, and they knowThey loved on earth a million years ago;And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;And heard a voice whispering in their flow,And calling through the silent sunset-glow,Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
IV
It was about the dawn of dayI heard Etain and Anwyl sayThe waving ferns are a fairy forest,It is time, it is time to wander away;
For the dew is bright on the heather bells,And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,Over and under the braes and dells.
She was eight years old that day,Full of laughter and play;Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—Two young lovers were they.
Two young lovers were they,Born in the City of Pain;There was never a song in the world so gayAs the song of the child, Etain;
There was never a laugh so sweetWith the ripple of fairy bells,And never a fairy foot so fleetDancing down the woodland dells!
She was eight years old that day,Two young lovers were they.
There was never a sea of mystical gleamsGlooming under enchanted skiesDeep as the dark miraculous dreamsIn Anwyl's haunted eyes.
There was never a glory of lightAround the carolling larkAs Etain's eyes were brave and brightTo daunt the coming dark.
Two young lovers were theyBorn in the City of Pain;There was never a song in the world so gayAs the song of the child, Etain;
Blithe as the wind in the trees,Blithe as the bird on the bough,Blithe as the bees in the sweet Heart's-easeWhere Love lies bleeding now.
V
And God sighed in the sunset; and the seaForgot her sorrow, and all the breathless WestGrew quiet as the blue tranquillity
That clad the broken mountain's brilliant breast,Over the City, with deep heather-bloomHeaving from crag to crag in sweet unrest,
A sea of dim rich colour and warm perfumeWhose billows rocked the drowsy honey-beeAmong the golden isles of gorse and broom
Like some enchanted ancient argosyDrunkenly blundering over seas of dreamPast unimagined isles of mystery,Over whose yellow sands the soft waves cream,And sunbeams float and toss across the bareRose-white arms and perilous breasts that gleam
Where sirens wind their glossy golden hair;Oh, miles on miles, the honeyed heather-bloomHeaving its purple through the high bright air
Rolled a silent glory of gleam and gloomFrom mossy crag to crag and crest to crestUntroubled by the valley's depth of doom.
The hawk dropped down into the pine-forestAnd, far below, the lavrock ruffled her wingsBlossomwise over her winsome secret nest.
Then suddenly, softly, as when a fairy singsOut of the heart of a rose in the heart of the fern,Or in the floating starlight faintly rings
The frail blue hare-bells—turn again, and turn,Under and over, the silvery crescents cryTo where the crimson fox-glove belfries burn
And with a deeper softer peal reply,There came a ripple of music through the rosesThat rustled on the dimmest rim of sky
Where many a frame of fretted leaves enclosesFor lovers wandering in the fern-wet woodAn arch of summer sea that softly dozes
As if all mysteries were understood:Yrma, my queen, what love could understandThat faint sweet music,God saith all is good,
As those two children, hand in sunburnt hand,Over the blithe blue hills and far awayWandered into their own green fairyland?
VI
For the song is lost that shook the dewWhere the wild musk-roses glisten,When the sunset dreamed that a dream was trueAnd the birds were hushed to listen.
The song is lost that shook the nightWith wings of richer fire,Where the years had touched their eyes with lightAnd their souls with a new desire;
And the new delight of the strange old storyBurned in the flower-soft skies,And nine more years with a darker gloryHad deepened the light of her eyes;
But lost, oh more than lost the songThat shook the rose to tears,As hand in hand they danced alongThrough childhood's everlasting years.
"Oh, Love has wings," the linnet sings;But the dead return no more, no more;And the sea is breaking its old grey heartAgainst the golden shore.
She was eight years old that day,Two young lovers were they.
If every song as they danced alongPaused on the springing spray;Is there never a bird in the wide greenwoodWill hush its heart to-day?
There's never a leaf with dew impearledTo make their pathway sweet,And never a blossom in all the worldThat knows the kiss of their feet.
No light to-night declares the wordThat thrilled the blossomed bough,And stilled the happy singing birdThat none can silence now.
The weary nightingale may sobWith her bleeding breast against a thorn,And the wild white rose with every throbGrow red as the laugh of morn;
With wings outspread she sinks her headBut Love returns no more, no more;And the sea is breaking its old grey heartAgainst the golden shore.
Born in the City of Pain;Ah, who knows, who knowsWhen Death shall turn to delight againOr a wound to a red, red rose?
Eight years old that day,Full of laughter and play;Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—Two young lovers were they.
VII
And down the scented heather-drowsy hillsThe barefoot children wandered, hand in hand,And paddled through the laughing silver rillsIn quest of fairyland;And in each little sunburnt hand a spray,A purple fox-glove bell-branch lightly swung,And Anwyl told Etain how, far away,One day he wandered through the dreamland dellsAnd watched the moonlit fairies as they sungAnd tolled the fox-glove bells;And oh, how sweetly, sweetly to and froThe fragrance of the music reeled and rungUnder the loaded boughs of starry May.
And God sighed in the sunset, and the seaGrew quieter than the hills: the mysteryOf ocean, earth and sky was like a wordUttered, but all unheard,Uttered by every wave and cloud and leafWith all the immortal glory of mortal grief;And every wave that broke its heart of goldIn music on the rainbow-dazzled shoreSeemed telling, strangely telling, evermoreA story that must still remain untold.
Oh,Once upon a time, and o'er and o'erAs aye theHappy ever aftercameThe enchanted waves lavished their faery lore
And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flameAround the whispers of the creaming foam,Till the old rapture with the new sweet name
Through all the old romance began to roam,And Anwyl, gazing out across the sea,Dreamed that he heard the distance whisper "Come."
"Etain," he murmured softly and wistfully,With the soul's wakening wonder in his eyes,"Is it not strange to think that there can be
"No end for ever and ever to those skies,No shore beyond, or if there be a shoreStill without end the world beyond it lies;
"Think; think, Etain;" and all his faery loreMixed with the faith that brought all gods to birthAnd sees new heavens transcend for evermore
The poor impossibilities of earth;But Etain only laughed: the world to herWas one sweet smile of very present mirth;
Its flowers were only flowers, common or rare;Her soul was like a little garden closedBy rose-clad walls, a place of southern airIslanded from the Mystery that reposedIts vast and brooding wings on that abyssThrough which like little clouds that dreamed and dozed
The thoughts of Anwyl wandered toward some blissUnknown, unfathomed, far, how far away,Where God has gathered all the eternitiesInto strange heavens, beyond the night and day.
VIII
And over the rolling golden bay,In the funeral pomp of the dying day,The bell of Time was wistfully tollingA million million years away;
And over the heather-drowsy hillWhere the burdened bees were buzzing still,The two little sun-bright barefoot childrenWandered down at the flowers' own will;
For still as the bell in the sunset tolled,The meadow-sweet and the mary-goldAnd the purple orchis kissed their anklesAnd lured them over the listening wold.
And the feathery billows of blue-gold grassBowed and murmured and bade them pass,Where a sigh of the sea-wind softly told themThere is no Time—Time never was.
And what if a sorrow were tolled to restWhere the rich light mellowed away in the West,As a glory of fruit in an autumn orchardHeaped and asleep o'er the sea's ripe breast?
Why should they heed it, what should they knowOf the years that come or the years that go,With the warm blue sky around and above themAnd the wild thyme whispering to and fro?
For they heard in the dreamy dawn of dayA fairy harper faintly play,Follow me, follow me, little children,Over the hills and far away;
Where the dew is bright on the heather-bells,And the breeze in the clover sways and swells,As the waves on the blue sea wake and wander,Over and under the braes and dells.
And the hare-bells tinkled and rang Ding dongBell in the dell as they danced along,And their feet were stained on the hills with honey,And crushing the clover till evensong.
And, oh the ripples that rolled in rhymeUnder the wild blue banks of thyme,To the answering rhyme of the rolling ocean'sGolden glory of change and chime!
For they came to a stream and her fairy loverCaught at her hand and swung her over,And the broad wet buttercups laughed and gildedTheir golden knees in the deep sweet clover.
There was never a lavrock up in the skiesBlithe as the laugh of their lips and eyes,As they glanced and glittered across the meadowsTo waken the sleepy butterflies.
There was never a wave on the sea so gayAs the light that danced on their homeward wayWhere the waving ferns were a fairy forestAnd a thousand years as yesterday.
She was eight years old that day,Full of laughter and play;Eight years old and Anwyl nine,—Two young lovers were they.
And when the clouds like folded sheepWere drowsing over the drowsy deep,And like a rose in a golden cradleAnwyl breathed on the breast of sleep,
Or ever the petals and leaves were furledAt the vesper-song of the sunset-world,The sleepy young rose of nine sweet summersDreamed in his rose-bed cosily curled.
And what if the light of his nine bright yearsGlistened with laughter or glimmered with tears,Or gleamed like a mystic globe around himWhite as the light of the sphere of spheres?
And what if a glory of angels there,Starring an orb of ineffable air,Came floating down from the Gates of jasperThat melt into flowers at a maiden's prayer?
And what if he dreamed of a fairy faceWondering out of some happy place,Quietly as a star at sunsetShines in the rosy dreams of space?
For only as far as the west wind blowsThe sweets of a swinging full-blown rose,Eight years old and queen of the liliesLittle Etain slept—ah, how close!
At a flower-cry over the moonlit laneIn a cottage of roses dreamed Etain,And their purple shadows kissed at her latticeAnd dappled her sigh-soft counterpane;
And or ever Etain with her golden headHad nestled to sleep in her lily-white bed,She breathed a dream to her fairy lover,Please, God, bless Anwyl and me, she said.
And a song arose in the rose-white West,And a whisper of wings o'er the sea's bright breast,And a cry where the moon's old miracle wakenedA glory of pearl o'er the pine-forest.
Why should they heed it? What should they knowOf the years to come or the years to go?With the starry skies around and above themAnd the roses whispering to and fro.
Ah, was it a song of the mystic mornWhen into their beating hearts the thornShould pierce through the red wet crumpled rosesAnd all the sorrow of love be born?
Ah, was it a cry of the wild waysideWhereby one day they must surely ride,Out of the purple garden of passionTo Calvary, to be crucified?
Only the sound of the distant seaBroke on the shores of Mystery,And tolled as a bell might toll for sorrowTill Time be tombed in Eternity;
And in their dreams they only heardFar away, one secret birdSing, till the passionate purple twilightThrobbed with the wonder of one sweet word:
One sweet word and the wonder awoke,And the leaves and the flowers and the starlight spokeIn silent rapture the strange old secretThat none e'er knew till the death-dawn broke;
One sweet whisper, and hand in handThey wandered in dreams through fairyland,Rapt in the star-bright mystical musicWhich only a child can understand.
But never a child in the world can tellThe wonderful tale he knows so well,Though ever as old Time dies in the sunsetIt tolls and tolls like a distant bell.
Love, love, love; and they hardly knewThe sense of the glory that round them grew;But the world was a wide enchanted garden;And the song, the song, the song rang true.
And they danced with the fairies in emerald ringsArched by the light of their rainbow wings,And they heard the wild green Harper strikingA starlight over the golden strings.
Love, oh love; and they roamed once moreThrough a forest of flowers on a fairy shore,And the sky was a wild bright laugh of wonderAnd the West was a dream of the years of yore.
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end:The heather whispers low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago;The meadows murmur and the firwoods knowThe message that the kindling East shall send;In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
IX
Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,Yrma, thy voice came to me in my sleep,And through a rainbow woven of human tearsI saw two lovers wandering down the years;Two children, first, that roamed a sunset land,And then two lovers wandering hand in hand,Forgetful of their childhood's Paradise,For nine more years had darkened in their eyes,And heaven itself could hardly find againAnwyl, the star-child, or the flower, Etain.
For on a day in May, as through the woodWith earth's new passion beating in his bloodHe went alone, an empty-hearted youth,Seeking he knew not what white flower of truthOr beauty, on all sides he seemed to seeSwift subtle hints of some new harmony,Yet all unheard, ideal, and incomplete,A silent song compact of hopes and fears,A music such as lights the wandering feetOf Yrma when on earth she reappears.And he forgot that sad grey City of Pain,For all earth's old romance returned again,And as he went, his dreaming soul grew gladTo think that he might meet with GalahadOr Parsifal in some green glade of fern,Or see between the boughs a helmet burnAnd hear a joyous laugh kindle the skyAs through the wood Sir Launcelot rode byWith face upturned to take the sun like wine.Ah, was it love that made the whole world shineLike some great angel's face, blinded with bliss,While Anwyl dreamed of bold Sir AmadisAnd Guinevere's white arms and Iseult's kiss,And that glad island in a golden seaWhere Arthur lives and reigns eternally?Surely the heavens were one wide rose-white flameAs down the path to meet him Yrma came;Ah, was it Yrma, with those radiant eyes,That came to greet and lead him through the skies,The skies that gloomed and gleamed so far aboveThe little wandering prayers of human love?...He had forgotten all except the gleamOf light when once he kissed her in a dream, ...For surely then he knew that long beforeTheir eyes had met upon some distant shore....Ah, was it Yrma whose red lips he metBetween the branches, where the leaves were wet?Etain or Yrma, for it seemed her faceBent down upon him from some happy placeAnd whispered to him, low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago!And he, too, knew his love could never die,Because his queen was throned beyond the sky.
Yet In sweet mortal eyes he met her nowAnd kissed Etain beneath the hawthorn bough,And dared to dream his infinite dream was trueOn earth and reign with Etain, dream he knewWhy leaves were green and sides were fresh and blue;Yea, dream he knew, as children dream they knowThey knew all this a million years ago,And watched the sea-waves wistfully westward wendAnd heard a voice whispering in their flowAnd calling through the silent sunset-glowLove that hath no beginning hath no end.
Ah, could they see in the Valley of GloomThat clove the cliffs behind the City;Ah, could they hear in the forest of DoomThe peril that neared without pause or pity?Behind the veils of ivy and vine,Wild musk-roses and white woodbine,In glens that were wan as with moonlit tearsAnd rosy with ghosts of eglantineAnd pale as with lilies of long-past years,Ah, could they see, could they hear, could they knowBehind that beautiful outward show,Behind the pomp and glory of lifeThat seething old anarchic strife?For there in many a dim blue gladeWhere the rank red poppies burned,And if perchance some dreamer strayedHe nevermore returned,Cold incarnate memoriesOf earth's retributory throes,Deadly desires and agoniesDark as the worm that never dies,In the outer night arose,And waited under those wonderful skiesWith Hydra heads and mocking eyesThat winked upon the waning WestFrom out the gloom of the oak-forest,Till all the wild profound of woodThat o'er the haunted valley sleptGlowed with eyes like pools of bloodAs, lusting after a hideous food,Through the haggard vistas creptWithout a cry, without a hiss,The serpent broods of the abyss.Ancestral folds in darkness furledSince the beginnings of the world.Ring upon awful ring uproseThat obscure heritage of foes,The exceeding bitter heritageWhich still a jealous God bestowsFrom inappellable age to age,The ghostly worms that softly moveThrough every grey old corse of loveAnd creep across the coffined yearsTo batten on our blood and tears;And there were hooded shapes of deathGaunt and grey, cruel and blind,Stealing softly as a breathThrough the woods that loured behindThe City; hooded shapes of fearSlowly, slowly stealing near;While all the gloom that round them rolledWith intertwisting coils grew cold.And there with leer and gap-toothed grinMany a gaunt ancestral SinWith clutching fingers, white and thin,Strove to put the boughs aside;And still before them all would glideDown the wavering moon-white trackOne lissom figure, clad in black;Who wept at mirth and mocked at painAnd murmured a song of the wind and the rain;His laugh was wild with a secret grief;His eyes were deep like woodland pools;And, once and again, as his face drew nearIn a rosy gloaming of eglantere,All the ghosts that gathered thereBowed together, naming his name:Lead us, ah thouShadow of a Leaf,Child and master of all our shame,Fool of Doubt and King of Fools.
Now the linnet had ended his evensong,And the lark dropt down from his last wild dittyAnd ruffled his wings and his speckled breastBlossomwise over his June-sweet nest;While winging wistfully into the WestAs a fallen petal is wafted alongThe last white sea-mew sought for rest;And, over the gleaming heave and swellOf the swinging seas,Drowsily breathed the dreaming breeze.Then, suddenly, out of the Valley of GloomThat clove the cliffs behind the City,Out of the silent forest of DoomThat clothed the valley with clouds of fearSwelled the boom of a distant bellOnce, and the towers of the City of PainEchoed it, without hope or pity.The tale of that tolling who can tell?That dark old music who shall declare?Who shall interpret the song of the bell?
Is it nothing to you, all ye that hear,Sorrowed the bell,Is it nothing to you?Is it nothing to you?the shore-wind cried,Is it nothing to you?the cliffs replied.But the low light laughed and the skies were blue,And this was only the song of the bell.
X
ANWYL
A darkened easement in a darker roomWas all his home, whence weary and bowed and whiteHe watched across the slowly gathering gloomThe slowly westering light.
Bitterness in his heavy-clouded eyes,Bitterness as of heaven's intestine warsBrooded; he looked upon the unfathomed skiesAnd whispered—to the stars—
Some day, he said, she will forget all thisThat she calls life, and looking far aboveSee throned among the great eternitiesThis dream of mine, this love;
Love that has given my soul these wings of fireTo beat in glory above the sapphire sea,Until the wings of the infinite desireClose in infinity;
Love that has taken the glory of hawthorn boughs,And all the dreaming beauty of hazel skies,As ministers to the radiance of her browsAnd haunted April eyes;
Love that is hidden so deep beneath the dustOf little daily duties and delights,Till that reproachful face of hers grows justAnd God at last requites
A soul whose dream was deeper than the skies,A heart whose hope was wider than the sea,Yet could not enter through his true love's eyesTheir grey infinity.
And so I know I wound her all day longBecause my heart must seem so far away;And even my love completes the silent wrongFor all that it can say
Seems vast and meaningless to mortal sense;Its vague desire can never reach its goalTill knowledge vanishes in omniscienceAnd God surrounds her soul,Breaking its barriers down and flooding inThrough all her wounds in one almighty tide,Mingling her soul with that great Love whereinMy soul waits, glorified.
XI
ETAIN
My love is dying, dying in my heart;There is no song in heaven for such as IWho watch the days and years of youth depart,The bloom decay and die;
The rose that withers in the hollow cheek,The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;And Time that writes what Pity dares not speakAround the fading eyes.
He dreams he loves; but only loves his dream;And in his dream he never can forgetAbana seems a so much mightier streamAnd Pharpar wider yet;
The little deeds of love that light the shrineOf common daily duties with such gleamsOf heaven, to me are scarcely less divineThan those poor wandering dreams
Of deeds that never happen! I give him this,This heart he cannot find in heaven above;This heart, this heart of all the eternities,This life of mine, this love;
Love that is lord of all the world at onceAnd never bade the encircled spirit roamTo the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,But makes each heart its home,And every home the heart of Space and Time,And each and all a heaven if love could reign;One infinite untranscended heaven sublimeWith God's own joy and pain.
Why, that was what God meant, to set us hereIn Eden, when he saw that all was good;And we have made the sun black with despair,And turned the moon to blood.
So has Love taught me that too learnèd tongue,And in his poorer wisdom made me wise;I grew so proud of the red drops we wrungFrom all philosophies.
My heart is narrow, foolish, what you will;But this I know God meant who set us here,And gave each soul the Infinities to fulfilFrom its own widening sphere.
To annex new regions to the soul's domain,To expand the circle of the golden hours,Till it enfolds again and yet againNew heavens, new fields, new flowers,
Oh, this is well; but still the central heartIs here at home, not wandering like the windThat gathers nothing, but must still departLeaving a waste behind.
Where is the song I sang that April morn,When all the poet in his eyes awokeMy sleeping heart to heaven; and love was born?For while the glad day broke
We met; and as the softly kindling skiesThrilled through the scented vistas of the woodI felt the sudden love-light in his eyesKindle my beating blood.
Happy day, happy day,Chasing the clouds of the night awayAnd bidding the dreams of the dawn departOver the freshening April blue,Till the blossoms awake to welcome the May,And the world is made anew;And the blackbird sings on the dancing sprayWith eyes of glistening dew;"Happy, happy, happy day;"For he knows that his love is true;He knows that his love is true, my heart,He knows that his love is true!
I cannot sing it: these tears blind me: love,O love, come back before it is too late,Why, even Christ came down to us from above:I think His love was great;
Yet he stood knocking, knocking at the doorUntil his piteous hands were worn with scars;He did not hide that crown of love he woreAmong the lonely stars.
This round of hours, the daily flowers I cullAre more to me than all the rolling spheres,A wounded bird at hand more pitifulThan some great seraph's tears.
How should I join the great wise choir aboveWith my starved spirit's pale inhuman dearth,Who never heard the cry of heavenly loveRise from the sweet-souled earth?
Yet it is I he needs, and I for whomHis greed exceeds, his dreams fly wide of the mark!Is it all self? I wander in the gloom;The ways of God grow dark;I watch the rose that withers in the cheek,The leaden rings that mark us old and wise;And Time that writes what Pity dares not speakAround the fading eyes.
XII
And ever as Anwyl went the unknown endFaded before him, back and back and backHe saw new empty heavens for ever bendOver his endless track;
And memory, burning with new hopeless fire,Showed him how every passing infinite hourMade some new Crucifix for the World's DesireIs some new wayside flower:
He saw what joy and beauty owed to death;How all the world was one great sacrificeOf Him, in whom all creatures that draw breathShare God's eternal skies;
How Love is lord of all the world at once;And never bids the encircled spirit roamTo the circle's bound, beyond the moons and suns,But makes each heart its home,
And every home the heart of Space and Time,And each and all a heaven if love could reignOne infinite untranscended heaven sublimeWith God's own joy and pain.
XIII
Out of the deep, my dream, out of the deep,A little child came to him in his sleepAnd led him back to what was ParadiseBefore the years had darkened in his eyes,And showed him what he ne'er could lose again—The light that once enshrined the child Etain.
Ah, was it Yrma with those radiant eyesThat came to greet and lead him through the skies;Ay; all the world was one wide rose-white flame,As down the path to meet him Yrma cameAnd caught the child up in her arms and cried,This is my child that moved in Etain's side,Thy child and Etain's: I the unknown idealAnd she the rich, the incarnate, breathing realAre one; for me thou never canst attainBut by the love I yield thee for Etain;Even as through Christ thy soul allays its dearth,Love's heaven is only compassed upon earth;And by that love, in thine own Etain's eyesThou shalt find all God's untranscended skies.
As of old, as of old, with Etain that day,Over the hills, and far away,He roamed thro' the fairy forests of fern:Two young lovers were they.
And God sighed in the sunset, and the seaGrew quieter than the hills: the mysteryOf ocean, earth and sky was like a wordUttered, but all unheard,Uttered by every wave and cloud and leafWith all the immortal glory of mortal grief;And every wave that broke its heart of goldIn music on the rainbow-dazzled shoreSeemed telling, strangely telling, evermoreA story that must still remain untold.
Oh,Once upon a time, and o'er and o'erAs aye theHappy ever aftercameThe enchanted waves lavished their faery lore
And tossed a foam-bow and a rosy flameAround the whispers of the creaming foam,Till the old rapture with the new sweet nameThrough all the old romance began to roam.
XIV
And those two lovers only heard—Oh, love is a dream that knows no waking—Far away, one secret bird,Where all the roses breathed one word,And every crispel on the beach—Oh, love is a sea that is ever breaking!—Lisped it in a sweeter speech;As hand in hand, by the sunset seaThat breaks on the shores of mystery,They stood in the gates of the City of PainTo watch the wild waves flutter and beatIn roses of white soft light at their feet,Roses of delicate music and light,Music and moonlight under their feet.Crumbling and flashing and softly crashingIn rainbow colours that dazzle and waneAnd wither and waken and, wild with delight,Dance and dance to a mystic tuneAnd scatter their leaves in a flower-soft rainOver the shimmering golden shoreBetween the West and the waking moon,Between the sunset and the night;And then they sigh for the years of yoreAnd gather their glory together again,Petal by petal and gleam by gleam,Till, all in one rushing rose-bright streamThey dazzle back to the deep once more,For the dream of the sea is an endless dream,And love is a sea that hath no shore,And the roses dance as they danced before.
XV
In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end:Low to her heart he breathed it, sweet and low;In other worlds I loved you, long ago;This is a word that all the sea-waves knowAnd whisper as through the shoreless West they wend,In other worlds I loved you, long ago:Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
XVI
"Yet love can die!" she murmured once again;For this was in that City by the Sea,That old grey City of Pain,Built on the shifting shores of MysteryAnd mocked by all the immeasurable main."Love lives to die!"Under the deep eternal skyHis deeper voice caught up that deep refrain;
"A year ago, and under yonder sunEarth had no Heaven to hold our hearts in one!For me there was no love, afar or nigh:And, O, if love were thus in time begun,Love, even our love, in time must surely die."Then memory murmured, "No";And he remembered, a million years ago,He saw the sea-waves wistfully westward wend;And heard her voice whispering in their flowAnd calling through the silent sunset-glow.Love that hath no beginning hath no end.
"Love dies to live!" How wild, how deep the joyThat knows no death can e'er destroyWhat cannot bear destruction! By these eyesI know that, ere the fashioning of the skies,Or ever the sun and moon and stars were madeI loved you. Sweet, I am no more afraid.
"Love lives to die!"Under the deep eternal skyHer wild sweet voice caught up that deep refrain:There, in that silent City by the Sea,Listening the wild-wave music of Infinity,There, in that old grey City of mortal pain,Their voices mingled in mystic unisonWith that immortal harmonyWhich holds the warring worlds in one.
Their Voice, one Voice, yet manifold,Possessed the seas, the fields, the sky,With utterance of the dream that cannot die;Possessed the West's wild rose and dappled gold,And that old secret of the setting sunWhich, to the glory of Eternity,Time, tolling like a distant bell,Evermore faints to tell,And, ever telling, never yet has told.One, and yet manifoldArose their Voice, oh strangely one againWith murmurs of the immeasurable main;As, far beyond earth's cloudy bars,Their Soul surpassed the sunset and the stars,And all the heights and depths of temporal pain,Till seas of seraph music round them rolled.
And in that mystic planeThey felt their mortal yearsBreak away as a dream of painBreaks in a stream of tears.
Love, of whom life had birth,See now, is death not sweet?Love, is this heaven or earth?Both are beneath thy feet.
Nay, both within thy heart!O Love, the glory nears;The Gates of Pearl are flung apart,The Rose of Heaven appears.
Across the deeps of change,Like pangs of visible song,What angel-spirits, remote and strange,Thrill through the starry throng?
And oh, what wind that blowsOver the mystic Tree,What whisper of the sacred Rose,What murmur of the sapphire Sea,What dreams that faint and failFrom harps of burning gold,But tell in heaven the sweet old taleAn earthly sunset told?
Hark! like a holy bellOver that spirit Sea,Time, in the world it loves so well,Tolls for Eternity.
Earth calls us once again,And, through the mystic Gleam,The grey old City of mortal painDawns on the heavenly dream.
Sweet as the voice of birdsAt dawn, the years return,With little songs and sacred wordsOf human hearts that yearn.
The sweet same waves resoundAlong our earthly shore;But now this earth we lost and foundIs heaven for evermore.
Hark! how the cosmic choir,In sea and flower and sun,Recalls that triumph of desireWhich made all music one:
One universal soul,Completing joy with pain,And harmonising with the WholeThe temporal refrain,
Until from hill and plain,From bud and blossom and tree,From shadow and shining after rain,From cloud and clovered bee,From earth and sea and sky,From laughter and from tears,One molten golden harmonyFulfils the yearning years.
Love, of whom death had birth,See now, is life not sweet?Love, is this heaven or earth?Both are beneath thy feet.
In other worlds I loved you, long ago;Love that hath no beginning hath no end;The sea-waves whisper, low and sweet and low,In other worlds I loved you, long ago;The May-boughs murmur and the roses knowThe message that the dawning moon shall send;In other worlds I loved you, long ago;Love that hath no beginning hath no end.