The apple blossoms glistenWithin the crowned trees;The meadow grasses listenThe din of busy bees;The wayward, woodland singerCarols along the leas,Not loth to be the bringerOf summer fantasies.But you and I who neverMeet now but for regret,Forever and forever,Though flower-bonds were setIn Maytime, if you wonderThat falling leaves are ours,Yours was it cast asunder,Mine are the faded flowers.The fluted wren is sobbingBeneath the mossy eaves;The throstle’s chord is throbbingIn coronal of leaves;The home of love is lilies,And rose-hearts, flaming red,Red roses and white lilies—Lo, thus the gods were wed!But we weep on, unheedingThe earth’s joys spread for us;And ever, far receding,Our fair land fades from us:One waited, patient, broken,High-hearted but opprest,One lightly took the token—The mad Fates took the rest.High mountains and low valleys,And shreds of silver seas,The lone brook’s sudden sallies,And all the joys of these,—These were, but now the fireVolcanic seeks the sea,And dark wave walls retireTyrannic seeking me.Spirit of dreams, a visionWell hast thou wrought for us;Fold high the veil Elysian,The past held naught for us;Years, what are they but spacesSet in a day for me?Lo, here are lilied places—My love comes back to me!
I knows a town, an’ it’s a fine town,And many a brig goes sailin’ to its quay;I knows an inn, an’ it’s a fine inn,An’ a lass that’s fair to see.I knows a town, an’ it’s a fine town;I knows an inn, an’ it’s a fine inn—But Oh my lass, an’ Oh the gay gown,Which I have seen my pretty in!I knows a port, an’ it’s a good port,An’ many a brig is ridin’ easy there;I knows a home, an’ it’s a good home,An’ a lass that’s sweet an’ fair.I knows a port, an’ it’s a good port,I knows a home, an’ it’s a good home—But Oh the pretty that is my sort,What’s wearyin’ till I come!I knows a day, an’ it’s a fine day,The day a sailor man comes back to town;I knows a tide, an’ it’s a good tide,The tide that gets you quick to anchors down.I knows a day, an’ it’s a fine day,I knows a tide, an’ it’s a good tide—And God help the lubber, I say,What’s stole the sailor man’s bride!
Mark the faces of the childrenFlooded with sweet innocence!God’s smile on their foreheads glistenEre their heart-strings have grown tense.And they know not of the sadness,Of the palpitating painDrawn through arid veins of manhood,Or the lusts that life disdain.Little reek they of the shadowsFallen through the steep world’s spaceGod hath touched them with His chrismAnd their sunlight is His grace.And the green grooves of the meadowsThey are fair to look upon;And the silver thrush and robinSing most sweetly on and on.But the faces of the children—They are fairer far than these;And the songs they sing are sweeterThan the thrushes’ in the trees.Little hands, our God has givenAll the flower-bloom for you;Gather violets in the meadows,Trailing your sweet fingers through.The swift tears that sometimes glistenOn their faces dashed with painWeave a rosy bow of promise,Like the afterglow of rain.The soft, verdant fields of childhood,Certes, are the softer forThe dissolving dew of morning,Noon’s elate ambassador.Looking skyward, do they wonder—They, the children palm to palm—What is out beyond the azureIn the infinite of calm?Though they murmur soft “Our Father,”Angel wings to speed it onPast the bright wheels of the Pleiads,Have they thought of benison?Nay! the undefiled childrenSay it bound by ignorance;But the saying is the merit,And the loving bans mischance.Oh the mountain heights of childhood,And the waterfalls of dreams,And the sleeping in the shadowsOf the willows by the streams!Toss your gleaming hair, O children,Back in waving of the wind!Flash the starlight ‘heath your eyelidsFrom the sunlight of the mind!See, we strain you to our bosoms,And we kiss your lip and brow;Human hearts must have some idols,And we shrine you idols now.Time, the ruthless idol-breaker,Smileless, cold iconoclast,Though he rob us of our altars,Cannot rob us of the past.Dull and dead the gods’ bright nectar,Disencrowned of its foam;Duller, deader far the empty,Barren hearthstone of a home.Smile out to our age and give us,Children, of the dawn’s desire;We have passed morn’s gold and opal,We have lost life’s early fire.
“Where do the stars grow, little Garaine?The garden of moons, is it far away?The orchard of suns, my little Garaine,Will you take us there some day?”“If you shut your eyes,” quoth little Garaine,“I will show you the way to goTo the orchard of suns and the garden of moonsAnd the field where the stars do grow.“But you must speak soft,” quoth little Garaine,“And still must your footsteps be,For a great bear prowls in the field of the stars,And the moons they have men to see.“And the suns have the Children of Signs to guard,And they have no pity at all—You must not stumble, you must not speak,When you come to the orchard wall.“The gates are locked,” quoth little Garaine,“But the way I am going to tell—The key of your heart it will open them all:And there’s where the darlings dwell!”
(M. H.)When you were born, my dear, when you were born,A glorious Voice came singing from the sun,An Ariel with roses of the morn,And through the vales of Arcady danced oneAll golden as the corn.These were the happy couriers of God,Bearing your gifts: a magic all your own,And Beauty with her tall divining rod;While tiny star-smiths, bending to your throne,Your feet with summer shod.Into my heart, my dear, you flashed your way,Your rosy, golden way: a fairy hornProclaimed you dancing light and roundelay;—I thank my generous Fates that you were bornOne lofty joyous day.
L’EMPEREUR, MORT(M. H., AGED FIVE)My dear, I was thy lover,A man of spring-time years;I sang thee songs, gave gifts and songs most poor,But they were signs; and now, for evermore,Thou farest forth! My heart is full of tears,My dear, my very dear.My dear, I was thy lover,I wrote thee on my shield,I cried thy name in goodly fealty,Thy champion I. And now, no more for meThy face, thy smile: thou goest far afield,My dear, my very dear.My dear, I am thy lover:Afield thy spirit goes,And thou shalt find that Inn of God’s delight,Where thou wilt wait for us who say good night,To thy sweet soul. The rest—the rest, God knows,My dear, my dear!
Phyllis, I knew you once when I was young,And travelled to your land of Arcady.Do you, of all the songs, wild songs, before you flung,Remember mine—its buoyant melody,Its hope, its pride; do you remember it?It was the song that makes the world go round;I bought it of a Boy: in scars I paid for it,Phyllis, to you who jested at my wound.
Did ye see the white cloud in the glint o’ the sun?That’s the brow and the eye o’ my bairnie.Did ye ken the red bloom at the bend o’ the crag?That’s the rose in the cheek o’ my bairnie.Did ye hear the gay lilt o’ the lark by the burn?That’s the voice of my bairnie, my dearie.Did ye smell the wild scent in the green o’ the wood?That’s the breath o’ my ain, o’ my bairnie.Sae I’ll gang awa’ hame, to the shine o’ the fire,To the cot where I lie wi’ my bairnie.
How many years of sun and snowHave come to Camden Town,Since through its streets and in its shade,I wandered up and down.Not many more than to you hereThese verses hapless flung,Yet of the Long Ago they seemTo me who am yet young.We strive to measure life by Time,And con the seasons o’er,To find, alas! that days are years,And years for evermore.The joys that thrill, the ill that thralls,Pressed down on heart and brain—These are the only horologues,The Age’s loss or gain.And I am old in all of these,And wonder if I knowThe man begotten of the boy,Who loved that long ago.A lilac bush close to the gate,A locust at the door,A low, wide window flower-filled,With ivy covered o’er.A face—O love of childhood dreams,Lily in form and name—It comes back now in these day-dreams,The same yet not the same.My childhood’s friend! Well gathered areThe sheaves of many days,But this one sheaf is garnered in,Bound by my love always.Where have you wandered, child, since whenTogether merrily,We gathered cups of columbineBy lazy Rapanee?The green spears of the flagflower,Down by the old mill-race,Are weapons now for other hands,Who mimic warfare chase.You were so tender, yet so strong,So gentle, yet so free,Your every word, whenever heard,Seemed wondrous wise to me.You marvelled if the dead could hearOur steps, that passed at willTheir low green houses in the elm-Crowned churchyard on the hill.And I, whom your sweet childhood’s trust,Esteemed as most profound,Thought that they heard, as in a dream,The shadow of a sound.We drew the long, rank grass awayFrom tombstones mossy grown,To read the verses crude and quaint,And make the words our own.One tottering marble, willow-spread,I well remember yet,With only this engraved thereon,“By Joseph to Jeanette.”It held us wondering oft, as wePeeped through the pickets old:There was some mystery, we knew,Some history untold.Well, better far those simple words,Where weeping phrase is not,Than burdened tablet, and the restForgetting and forgot.And Lily Minden, do you lieIn some forgotten grave,Where only strangers’ feet pass o’erYour temple’s architrave?Or, by some hearthstone, have you learnedThe worst and best of life,And found sweet greetings in the nameOf mother and of wife?I cannot tell: I know you butAs bee the clover bloom,That sips content, and straightway buildsIts mansion and its tomb.So took I in child-innocence,So build the House of Life,And in low tone to thee alone,As dead or maid or wife,I sing this song, borne all alongA space of wasted breath;And build me on from room to roomUnto the House of Death,Where portals swing forever inTo weary pilgrim guest,And hearts that here were inly dearShall find a Room of Rest.
Three times round has the sun gone, Jean,Since on your lips I pressedMute farewells; if that pain was keenFair were you in your nest.Smiling, sweetheart, I left you there;You had no word to say;One last touch to your brow and hair,Then I went on my way.Time it was when the leaves were grownYour rose-colour, my queen;Ere the birds to the south had flown,While yet the grass was green.Eyes demure, do you ever yearn,Bird-wise to summer lands?Is it to meet your look I turn,Saying, “She understands,”Saying, “She waits in her quiet placePatient till I shall come,The old sweet grace in her dreaming faceThat made a Heav’n her home”?No! She is there ‘neath Northern skies,And no word does she send;But near to my heart her image lies,And shall lie there to the end.Come what will I am not bereftOf the memory of that time,When in her hands my heart I leftThere, in a colder clime.And to my eyes no face is fair,For one face comes between;And if a song has a low sweet air,Through it there whispers, “Jean.”Better for me the world would say,If I had broke the charm,Set in the circle she one dayMade by her round white arm.Never a king in days of eldGathered about his throatSuch a circlet; no queen e’er heldNecklace so clear of mote.It sufficeth the charm was set;And if it chance that oneStill remembers, though one forget,Then is the worst thing done—Done, and I still can say “Let be;I have no word of blame;Though her heart is no more for me,Mine shall be still the same.”I have my life to live and she—Well, if it be so—so;She may welcome or banish meAnd if I go, I go.Friend, I pray you repress those tears,Comfort from this derive:I am a score—and more-of yearsAnd Jean is only five.
From buckwheat fields the summer sunDrew honeyed breezes overThe lanes where happy children runWith bare feet in the clover.The schoolhouse stood with pines aboutUpon the hill, and everA creek, where hid the speckled trout,Ran past it to the river.And rosy faces gathered there,With rustic good around them;With breath of balm blown everywhere,Pure, ere the world had found them.Behind sweet purple ambuscadesOf lilacs, laws were broken;And here a desk with knives was frayed,There passed forbidden token.One slipped a butternut betweenHis pearly teeth; a maidenDove-eyed, caressed her cheek; ‘twas e’enWith maple sugar laden—A flock that caught at wiles, becauseThe shepherd’s hand that drove them,Reached little toward wise human laws,And less to God above them.With eyebrows bent and surly lookHe only saw before him,The rule, the lesson, and the book,Not nature brooding o’er him.One day through drone of locusts fellThe wood-bird’s fitful tapping,And in his chair at “dinner-spell,”The teacher grim sat napping.An urchin creeping in beholdsThe tyrant slumber-smitten,And in his pocket’s ample foldsHe thrusts the school-yard kitten.At length the master waked, and clangedHis bell with anger fitting;His sleep had made it double-fanged,And crossed like needles knitting.Slow to their seats the children file,And wait “Prepare for classes,”A score of lads across the aisleFrom twice a score of lasses.But two within the throng betrayA mirth suppressed; the sinner,And Rafe Ridall, the chief at play,At books the easy winner:The wildest boy in all the school,In mischief first and ever,His daily seat the penance-stool,Disgraced for weeks together.Just sound of bone and strong of heart,Staunch friend and noble foeman;In life to play the kingly part,True both to man and woman.Joe’s secret now he holds; a deedWith just enough of danger,To win his—ah, what’s that? ‘Tis freed,The pocket-prisoned stranger!A moment’s riot laughter-filled,Then fear, white-visaged, follows;And through the silence there is trilledThe shrill note of the swallows.And now a fierce form fronts them all,Two fierce eyes search their faces,Then flash their fire on Rafe Ridall,Whose mirth no peril chases.“You did it, sir!” “Not I!” “You did!”“No!” “You’ve one chance for showingWho in my coat the kitten hid,Or be well thrashed for knowing.”The master paused, the birch he graspedAgainst his trousers flicking;Rafe said, with hands behind him clasped,“I’d rather take the licking.”Full many a year has passed since then,The lilacs still are blooming,Awaiting childish hands again,But they are long in coming.Now wandering swallows build their nestsWhere doors and roofs decaying,No more shut in the master’s zest,Nor out the children’s playing.All, all are gone who gathered there;Some toil among the masses,Some, overworn with pain and care,Wait Death’s “Prepare for classes.”And some—the sighing pines sway onAbove them, dreamless lying;And ‘mong them sleeps the master, goneHis anger and their crying.And Rafe Ridall, brave then, brave now,Amid the jarring coursesOf man’s misrule, still takes the blowFor those of weaker forces.
A little brown sparrow came trippingAcross the green grass at my feet;A kingfisher poised, and was peeringWhere current and calm water meet;The clouds hung in passionless clustersAbove the green hills of the south;A bobolink fluttered to leewardWith a twinkle of bells in its mouth.Ah, the morning was silver with gloryAs I lay by my tent on the shore;And the soft air was drunken with odours,And my soul lifted up to adore.Is there wonder I took me to dreamingOf the gardens of Greece and old Rome,Of the fair watered meadows of Ida,And the hills where the gods made their home?Of the Argonauts sung to by Sirens,Of Andromache, Helen of Troy,Of Proserpine, Iphigenia,And the Fates that build up and destroy?Of the phantom isle, green Theresea,And the Naiads and Dryads that giveTo the soul of the poet, the dreamer,The visions of fancy that liveIn the lives and the language of mortalsUnconscious, but sure as the sea,And that make for great losses repaymentTo wandering singers like me?But a little brown sparrow came trippingAcross the green grass at my feet;And a kingfisher poised, and was peeringWhere current and calm water meet;And Alice, sweet Alice, my neighbour,Stands musing beneath the pine tree;And her look says—“I have a loverWho sails on the turbulent sea:Does he dream as I dream night and daytimeOf a face that is tender and true;Will he come to me e’en as he left me?”Yes, Alice, sweet Alice, for you,Is the sunlight, and not the drear shadow,The gentle and fortunate peace:But he who thus revels in rhymingHas shadows that never shall cease.
The bay gleams softly in the sun,The morning widens o’er the world:The bluebird’s song is just begun,And down the skies white clouds are furled.The boat lies idly by the shore,The shed I built with happy careIs fallen; and I see no moreThe white tents in the eager air.The goldenrod holds up its plumesIn the long stretch of meadow grass,The briarrose shakes its sweet perfumes,In coverts where the sparrows pass.Far off, above, the sapphire gleams,Far off, below, the sapphire flows,And this, my place of morning dreams,The bank where my vain visions rose!Sweet Alice, he came back again,Across the waste of summer sea,What time the fields were full of grain,But not to thee; but not to thee.She comes no more when evening falls,To watch the stars wheel up the sky;Then love and light were over all;Alas! that light and love should die.I feel her hand upon my arm,I see her eyes shine through the mist;Her life was passionate and warmAs the red jewels at her wrist.Hearts do not break, the world has said,Though love lie stark and light be flown;But still it counts its lost and dead,And in the solitudes makes moan.We school our lips to make our heartsSeem other than in truth they are;Before the lights we play our part,And paint the flesh to hide the scar.Masquers and mummers all, and yetThe slaves of some dead passion’s fires,Of hopes the soul can ne’er forgetStill sobbing in life’s trembling wires.Fate puts our dear desires in pawn,Youth passes, unredeemed they lie;The leaves drop from our rose of dawn,And storms fall from the mocking sky.I shall come back no more; my shipWaits for me by the sundering sea;A prayer for her is on my lip—And the old life is dead to me.
I have lain beneath the pine trees just to hear the thrush’s calling,I have waited for the throstle where the harvest fields were brown,I have caught the lark’s sweet trilling from the depths of cloud-landfallingAnd the piping of the linnet through the willow branches blown.
But you have some singing graces, you who sing because you love it, That are higher than the throstle, or the linnet, or the lark; And, however far my soul may reach, your song is far above it; And I falter while I follow as a child does in the dark.
In elder days, when all the world was silent save the beating Of the tempest-gathered ocean ‘gainst the grey volcanic walls, When the light had met the darkness and the mountains sent their greeting To each other in sharp flashes as the vivid lightning falls,
Then the high gods said, “In token that we love the earth we fashioned, We will set the white stars singing, and teach man the art of song”: And there rose up from the valleys sounds of love and life impassioned, Till men cried, with arms uplifted, “Now from henceforth we are strong!”
Adown the ages there have come the sounds of that first singing, Lifting up the weary-hearted in the fever of the time; And I, who wait and wander far, felt all my soul upspringing, To but touch those ancient forces and the energies sublime,
When I heard you who had heard it—that first song—perhaps in dreaming, Till it filled you with fine fervour and the hopes of its refrain; And I knew that God was gracious and had led me in the gleaming Of a song-shine that is holy and that quiets all my pain.
Though the birds sing in the meadows and fill all the air with sweetness, They sing only in the present, and they sing because they must; They are wanton in their pureness, and in all their fine completeness, They trill out their lives forgotten to the silence of the dust.
But if you should pass to-morrow where your songs could never reach us,There would still be throbbing through us all the music of your voice;And your spirit would speak through the chords, as though it wouldbeseech usTo remember that the noblest ends have ever noblest choice.
In your onward march, O men,White of face, in promise whiter,You unsheathe the sword, and thenBlame the wronged as the fighter.Time, ah, Time, rolls onward o’erAll these foetid fields of evil,While hard at the nation’s coreEat the burning rust and weevil!Nathless, out beyond the starsReigns the Wiser and the Stronger,Seeing in all strifes and warsWho the wronged, who the wronger.
“No man cared for my soul.”Blind, Lord, so blind! I wander farFrom Thee among the haunts of men,Most like some lone, faint, flickering starGone from its place, nor knoweth whenThe sun shall give it shining doleLord! no man careth for my soul.Blind, Lord, so blind! In lonelinessBy crowded mart or busy street,I fold my hands and feel how lessAm I to any one I meet,Than to Thee one lost billow’s roll:Lord! no man careth for my soul.Blind, Lord, so blind! And I have knelt‘Mong myriads in Thy house of prayer;And still sad desolation felt,Though heavy freighted was the airWith litanies of love: one ghoulCried, “No man careth for thy soul!”Blind, Lord, so blind! The world is blind;It feeds me, fainting, with a stone:I cry for bread. Before, behind,Are hurrying feet; yet all aloneI walk, and no one points the goalLord! no man careth for my soul.Blind, Lord, Oh very blind am I!If sin of mine sets up the wallBetween my poor sight and Thy sky,O Friend of man, Who cares for all,Send sweet peace ere the last bell toll—Yea, Lord, Thou carest for my soul!
Over the hills they are waiting to greet us,They who have scanned all the ultimate places,Fathomed the world and the things that defeat us—Evils and graces.They have no thought for the toiling or spinning,Striving for bread that is dust in the gaining,They have won all that is well worth the winning—Past all distaining.Now they have done with the pain and the error,Nevermore here shall the dark things assail them,Void man’s devices and dreams have no terror—Shall we bewail them?They have cast off all the strife and derision,They have put on all the joy of our yearning;We falter feebly from vision to vision,Never discerning.Faint light before us, and shadows to grope in,Stretching out hands to the starbeams to guide us,Finding no place but our life’s loves to hope in,Doubt to deride us—So we climb upward with eyes growing dimmer,Looking back only to sigh through our smiling,Wondering still if the palpitant glimmerLeads past defiling.They whom we loved have gone over the mountains,Hands beckon to us like wings of the swallow,Voices we knew from delectable fountainsCry to us, “Follow!”Some were so young when they left us, that morningSeemed to have flashed and then died into gloaming,Leaving us wearier ‘neath the world’s scorning,Blinder in roaming.Some, in the time when the manhood is bravest,Strongest to bear and the hands to endeavour,When all the life is the firmest and gravest,Left us for ever.Some, when the Springtime had grown to December,Said, “It is done: now the last thing befall me;I shall sleep well—ah! dear hearts but remember:Farewell, they call me!”So the tale runs, and the end, who shall fear it?Is it not better to sleep than to sorrow?Tokens will come from the bourne as we near it—Time’s peace, to-morrow.