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Rose-bosom'd and rose-limb'dWith eyes of dazzling brightShakes Venus mid the twined boughs of the night;Rose-limb'd, soft-steppingFrom low bough to bough,Shaking the wide-hung starry fruitage — dimmedIts bloom of snowBy that sole planetary glow.Venus, avers the astronomer,Not thus idly dancing goesFlushing the eternal orchard with wild rose.She through ether burnsOutpacing planetary earth,And ere two years triumphantly returns,And again wave-like swelling flows,And again her flashing apparition comes and goes.This we have not seen,No heavenly courses set,No flight unpausing through a void serene:But when eve clears,Arises Venus as she first uproseStepping the shaken boughs among,And in her bosom glowsThe warm light hidden in sunny snows.She shakes the clustered starsLightly, as she goesAmid the unseen branches of the night,Rose-limb'd, rose-bosom'd bright.She leaps: they shake and pale; she glows —And who but knowsHow the rejoiced heart achesWhen Venus all his starry vision shakes;When through his mindTossing with random airs of an unearthly wind,Rose-bosom'd, rose-limb'd,The mistress of his starry vision arises,And the boughs glittering swayAnd the stars pale away,And the enlarging heaven glowsAs Venus light-foot mid the twined branches goes.
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Like the tide — knocking at the hollowed cliffAnd running into each green cave as ifIn the cave's night to keepEternal motion grave and deep —That, even while each broken wave repeatsIts answered knocking and with bruised hand beatsAgain, again, again,Tossed between ecstasy and pain;Still in the folded hollow darkness swells,Sinks, swells, and every green-hung hollow fills,Till there's no room for soundSave that old anger rolled around;So into every hollow cliff of life,Into this heart's deep cave so loud with strife,In tunnels I knew not,In lightless labyrinths of thought,The unresting tide has run and the dark filled,Even the vibration of old strife is stilled;The wave returning bearsMuted those time-breathing airs.— How shall the million-footed tide still treadThese hollows and in each cold void cave spread?How shall Love here keepEternal motion grave and deep?
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Falls from her heaven the Moon, and stars sink burningInto the sea where blackness rims the sea,Silently quenched. Faint light that the waves holdIs only light remaining; yet still gleamThe sands where those now-sleeping young moon-bathersCame dripping out of the sea and from their armsShook flakes of light, dancing on the foamy edgeOf quiet waves. They were all things of lightTossed from the sea to dance under the Moon —Her nuns, dancing within her dying round,Clear limbs and breasts silvered with Moon and wavesAnd quick with windlike mood and body's joy,Withdrawn from alien vows, by wave and windLightly absolved and lightly all forgetting.An hour ago they left. Remains the gleamOf their late motion on the salt sea-meadow,As loveliest hues linger when the sun's goneAnd float in the heavens and die in reedy pools —So slowly, who shall say when light is gone?
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In those old days you were called beautiful,But I have worn the beauty from your face;The flowerlike bloom has withered on your cheekWith the harsh years, and the fire in your eyesBurns darker now and deeper, feeding onBeauty and the remembrance of things gone.Even your voice is altered when you speak,Or is grown mute with old anxietyFor me.Even as a fire leaps into flame and burnsLeaping and laughing in its lovely flight,And then under the flame a glowing domeDeepens slowly into blood-like light: —So did you flame and in flame take delight,So are you hollow'd now with aching fire.But I still warm me and make there my home,Still beauty and youth burn there invisiblyFor me.Now my lips falling on your silver'd skull,My fingers in the valleys of your cheeks,Or my hands in your thin strong hands fast caught,Your body clutched to mine, mine bent to yours:Now love undying feeds on love beautiful,Now, now I am but thought kissing your thought ...— And can it be in your heart's music speaksA deeper rhythm hearing mine: can it beIndeed for me?
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Of caterpillars Fabre tells how day after dayAround the rim of a vast earth pot they crawled,Tricked thither as they filed shuffling out one mornHead to tail when the common hunger called.Head to tail in a heaving ring day after day,Night after slow night, the starving mommets crept,Each following each, head to tail, day after day,An unbroken ring of hunger — then it was snapt.I thought of you, long-heaving, horned green caterpillars,As I lay awake. My thoughts crawled each after each,Crawling at night each after each on the same nerve,An unbroken ring of thoughts too sore for speech.Over and over and over and over againThe same hungry thoughts and the hopeless same regrets,Over and over the same truths, again and againIn a heaving ring returning the same regrets.
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I am that creature and creator whoLoosens and reins the waters of the sea,Forming the rocky marge anon anew.I stir the cold breasts of antiquity,And in the soft stone of the pyramidMove wormlike; and I flutter all those sandsWhereunder lost and soundless time is hid.I shape the hills and valleys with these hands,And darken forests on their naked sides,And call the rivers from the vexing springs,And lead the blind winds into deserts strange.And in firm human bones the ill that hidesIs mine, the fear that cries, the hope that sings.I am that creature and creator, Change.
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In each black tile a mimic fire's aglow,And in the hearthlight old mahogany,Ripe with stored sunshine that in MexicoPoured like gold wine into the living treeSummer on summer through a century,Burns like a crater in the heart of night:And all familiar things in the ingle-lightGlow with a secret strange intensity.And I remember hidden fires that burstSuddenly from the midnight while men slept,Long-smouldering rages in the darkness nursedThat to an instant ravening fury leapt,And the old terror menacing evermoreA crumbling world with fiery molten core.
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Stephen, wake up! There's some one at the gate.Quick, to the window ... Oh, you'll be too late!I hear the front door opening quietly.Did you forget, last night, to turn the key?A foot is on the stairs — nay, just outsideThe very room — the door is opening wide...Stephen, wake up, wake up! Who's there? Who's there?I only feel a cold wind in my hair...Have I been dreaming, Stephen? Husband, wakeAnd comfort me: I think my heart will break.I never knew you sleep so sound and still....O my heart's love, why is your hand so chill?
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Who is that woman, Philip, standing thereBefore the mirror doing up her hair?You're dreaming, Phœbe, or the morning lightMixing and mingling with the dying nightMakes shapes out of the darkness, and you seeSome dream-remembered phantasy maybe.Yet it grows clearer with the growing day;And in the cold dawn light her hair is grey:Her lifted arms are naught but bone: her handsWhite withered claws that fumble as she standsTrying to pin that wisp into its place.O Philip, I must look upon her faceThere in the mirror. Nay, but I will riseAnd peep over her shoulder ... Oh, the eyesThat burn out from that face of skin and bone,Searching my very marrow, are my own.
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A scent of Esparto grass — and again I recallThat hour we spent by the weir of the paper-millWatching together the curving thunderous fallOf frothing amber, bemused by the roar untilMy mind was as blank as the speckless sheets that woundOn the hot steel ironing-rollers perpetually turningIn the humming dark rooms of the mill: all sense and discerningBy the stunning and dazzling oblivion of hill-waters drowned.And my heart was empty of memory and hope and desireTill, rousing, I looked afresh on your face as you gazed —Behind you an old gnarled fruit-tree in one still fireOf innumerable flame in the sun of October blazed,Scarlet and gold that the first white frost would spillWith eddying flicker and patter of dead leaves falling —looked on your face, as an outcast from Eden recallingA vision of Eve as she dallied bewildered and stillBy the serpent-encircled tree of knowledge that flamedWith gold and scarlet of good and evil, her eyesRapt on the river of life: then bright and untamedBy the labour and sorrow and fear of a world that diesYour ignorant eyes looked up into mine; and I knewThat never our hearts should be one till your young lips had tastedThe core of the bitter-sweet fruit, and wise and toil-wastedYou should stand at my shoulder an outcast from Eden too.
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Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks,Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky,Above me glimmer, infinitely high,Towards my giant hand a beetle walksIn glistening emerald mail; and as I lieWatching his progress through huge grassy bladesAnd over pebble boulders, my own world fadesAnd shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.Within that forest world of twilight greenAmbushed with unknown perils, one endless dayI travel down the beetle-trail betweenHuge glossy boles through green infinity ...Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the bracken asway,And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.
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His eyes are quickened so with grief,He can watch a grass or leafEvery instant grow; he canClearly through a flint wall see,Or watch the startled spirit fleeFrom the throat of a dead man.Across two counties he can hear,And catch your words before you speak.The woodlouse or the maggot's weakClamour rings in his sad ear;And noise so slight it would surpassCredence: — drinking sound of grass,Worm-talk, clashing jaws of mothChumbling holes in cloth:The groan of ants who undertakeGigantic loads for honour's sake —Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin:Whir of spiders when they spin,And minute whispering, mumbling, sighsOf idle grubs and flies.This man is quickened so with grief,He wanders god-like or like thiefInside and out, below, above,Without relief seeking lost love.
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In my body lives a flame,Flame that burns me all the day;When a fierce sun does the same,I am charred away.Who could keep a smiling wit,Roasted so in heart and hide,Turning on the sun's red spit,Scorched by love inside?Caves I long for and cold rocks,Minnow-peopled country brooks,Blundering gales of Equinox,Sunless valley-nooks,Daily so I might restoreCalcined heart and shrivelled skin,A morning phœnix with proud roarKindled new within.
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Tangled in thought am I,Stumble in speech do I?Do I blunder and blush for the reason why?Wander aloof do I,Lean over gates and sigh,Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?If thus and thus I do,Dazed by the thought of you,Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew,My heart cut through and throughIn this despair of you,Starved for a word or a look will my hope renew:Give then a thought for meWalking so miserably,Wanting relief in the friendship of flower or tree;Do but remember, weOnce could in love agree,Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.
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Love, do not count your labour lostThough I turn sullen, grim, retiredEven at your side; my thought is crossedWith fancies by old longings fired.And when I answer you, some daysVaguely and wildly, do not fearThat my love walks forbidden ways,Breaking the ties that hold it here.If I speak gruffly, this mood isMere indignation at my ownShortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;I forget the gentler tone.'You,' now that you have come to beMy one beginning, prime and end,I count at last as wholly 'me,'Lover no longer nor yet friend.Friendship is flattery, though close hid;Must I then flatter my own mind?And must (which laws of shame forbid)Blind love of you make self-love blind?... Do not repay me my own coin,The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan;No, stir my memory to disjoinYour emanation from my own.Help me to see you as beforeWhen overwhelmed and dead, almost,I stumbled on that secret doorWhich saves the live man from the ghost.Be once again the distant light,Promise of glory not yet knownIn full perfection — -wasted quiteWhen on my imperfection thrown.
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Lost manor where I walk continuallyA ghost, while yet in woman's flesh and blood;Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingersAnd gliding steadfast down your corridorsI come by nightly custom to this room,And even on sultry afternoons I comeDrawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.Empty, unless for a huge bed of stateShrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry(A puppet theatre where malignant fancyPeoples the wings with fear). At my right handA ravelled bell-pull hangs in readinessTo summon me from attic glooms aboveService of elder ghosts; here at my leftA sullen pier-glass cracked from side to sideScorns to present the face as do new mirrorsWith a lying flush, but shows it melancholyAnd pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.Is here no life, nothing but the thin shadowAnd blank foreboding, never a wainscot ratRasping a crust? Or at the window paneNo fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider?The windows frame a prospect of cold skiesHalf-merged with sea, as at the first creation,Abstract, confusing welter. Face about,Peer rather in the glass once more, take noteOf self, the grey lips and long hair dishevelled,Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's loveGive me one token that there still abidesRemote, beyond this island mystery,So be it only this side Hope, somewhere,In streams, on sun-warm mountain pasturage,True life, natural breath; not this phantasma.A rumour, scarcely yet to be reckoned sound,But a pulse quicker or slower, then I knowMy plea is granted; death prevails not yet.For bees have swarmed behind in a close placePent up between this glass and the outer wall.The combs are founded, the queen rules her court,Bee-sergeants posted at the entrance-chinkAre sampling each returning honey-cargoWith scrutinizing mouth and commentary,Slow approbation, quick dissatisfaction —Disquieting rhythm, that leads me home at lastFrom labyrinthine wandering. This new moodOf judgment orders me my present duty,To face again a problem strongly solvedIn life gone by, but now again proposedOut of due time for fresh deliberation.Did not my answer please the Master's ear?Yet, I'll stay obstinate. How went the question,A paltry question set on the elementsOf love and the wronged lover's obligation?Kill or forgive?Still does the bed ooze blood?Let it drip down till every floor-plank rot!Yet shall I answer, challenging the judgment: —'Kill, strike the blow again, spite what shall come.''Kill, strike, again, again,' the bees in chorus hum.
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A simple nosegay! was that much to ask?(Winter still gloomed, with scarce a bud yet showing).He loved her ill, if he resigned the task.'Somewhere,' she cried, 'there must be blossom blowing.'It seems my lady wept and the troll sworeBy Heaven he hated tears: he'd cure her spleen;Where she had begged one flower, he'd shower four-score,A haystack bunch to amaze a China Queen.Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic RoseHe conjured, and in a glassy cauldron setWith elvish unsubstantial MignonetteAnd such vague bloom as wandering dreams enclose.But she?Awed,Charmed to tears,Distracted,Yet —Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued — who knows?
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Take now a country mood,Resolve, distil it: —Nine Acre swaying alive,June flowers that fill it,Spicy sweet-briar bush,The uneasy wrenFluttering from ash to birchAnd back again.Milkwort on its low stem,Spread hawthorn tree,Sunlight patching the wood,A hive-bound bee....Girls riding nim-nim-nim,Ladies, trot-trot,Gentlemen hard at gallop,Shouting, steam-hot.Now over the rough turfBridles go jingle,And there's a well-loved pool,By Fox's Dingle,Where Sweetheart, my brown mare,Old Glory's daughter,May loll her leathern tongueIn snow-cool water.
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He fell in victory's fierce pursuit,Holed through and through with shot,A sabre sweep had hacked him deepTwixt neck and shoulderknot....The potman cannot well recall,The ostler never knew,Whether his day was Malplaquet,The Boyne or Waterloo.But there he hangs for tavern sign,With foolish bold regardFor cock and hen and loitering menAnd wagons down the yard.Raised high above the hayseed worldHe smokes his painted pipe,And now surveys the orchard ways,The damsons clustering ripe.He sees the churchyard slabs beyond,Where country neighbours lie,Their brief renown set lowly down;Hisname assaults the sky.He grips the tankard of brown aleThat spills a generous foam:Oft-times he drinks, they say, and winksAt drunk men lurching home.No upstart hero may usurpThat honoured swinging seat;His seasons pass with pipe and glassUntil the tale's complete.And paint shall keep his buttons brightThough all the world's forgotWhether he died for England's prideBy battle, or by pot.
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Across the room my silent love I throw,Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,Your young stern profile and industrious fingersDisplayed against the blind in a shadow-show,To Dinda's grave delight.The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful threadRuns after, follow-my-leader down the seam:The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda's head,Fulfilment of their dream.Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten,With camphor on a top shelf, hard to find,Now wake to this most happy resurrection,To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cottonAnd staring at the blind.Dinda in sing-song stretching out one handCalls for the playthings; mother does not hear:Her mind sails far away on a patchwork Ocean,And all the world must wait till she touches land;So Dinda cries in fear,Then Mother turns, laughing like a young fairy,And Dinda smiles to see her look so kind,Calls out again for playthings, playthings, playthings;And now the shadows make an UmbrianMaryAdoring, on the blind.
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The yellow sky grows vivid as the sun:The sea glittering, and the hills dun.The stones quiver. Twenty pounds of leadFold upon fold, the air laps my head.Both eyes scorch: tongue stiff and bitter:Flies buzz, but no birds twitter:Slow bullocks stand with stinging feet,And naked fishes scarcely stir for heat.White as smoke,As jetted steam, dead clouds awokeAnd quivered on the Western rim.Then the singing started: dimAnd sibilant as rime-stiff reedsThat whistle as the wind leads.The South whispered hard and sere,The North answered, low and clear;And thunder muffled up like drumsBeat, whence the East wind comes.The heavy sky that could not weepIs loosened: rain falls steep:And thirty singing furies rideTo split the sky from side to side.They sing, and lash the wet-flanked wind:Sing, from Col to Hafod Mynd,And fling their voices half a scoreOf miles along the mounded shore:Whip loud music from a tree,And roll their pæan out to seaWhere crowded breakers fling and leap,And strange things throb five fathoms deep.The sudden tempest roared and died:The singing furies muted rideDown wet and slippery roads to hell:And, silent in their captors' train,Two fishers, storm-caught on the main:A shepherd, battered with his flocks;A pit-boy tumbled from the rocks;A dozen back-broke gulls, and hostsOf shadowy, small, pathetic ghosts,— Of mice and leverets caught by flood;Their beauty shrouded in cold mud.
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Cold shone the moon, with noiseThe night went by.Trees uttered things of woe:Bent grass dared not grow:Ah, desperate man with haggard eyesAnd hands that fence away the skies,On rock and briar stumbling,Is it fear of the storm's rumbling,Of the hissing cold rain,Or lightning's tragic painDrives you so madly?See, see the patient moon;How she her course keepsThrough cloudy shallows and across black deeps,Now gone, now shines soon.Where's cause for fear?'I shudder and shudderAt her bright light:I fear, I fear,That she her fixt course followsSo still and whiteThrough deeps and shallowsWith never a tremor:Naught shall disturb her.I fear, I fearWhat they may beThat secretly bind her:What hand holds the reinsOf those sightless forcesThat govern her courses.Is it SetebosWho deals in her command?Or that unseen Night-ComerWith tender curst hand?— I shudder, and shudder.'Poor storm-wisp, wander!Wind shall not hurt thee,Rain not appal thee,Lightning not blast thee;Thou art worn so frail,Only the moonlight paleTo an ash shall burn thee,To an invisible Pain.
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When the slow year creeps hay-ward, and the skiesAre warming in the summer's mild surprise,And the still breeze disturbs each leafy frondLike hungry fishes dimpling in a pond,It is a pleasant thing to dream at easeOn sun-warmed thyme, not far from beechen trees.A robin flashing in a rowan-tree,A wanton robin, spills his melodyAs if he had such store of golden tonesThat they were no more worth to him than stones:The sunny lizards dream upon the ledges:Linnets titter in and out the hedges,Or swoop among the freckled butterflies.Down to a beechen hollow winds the trackAnd tunnels past my twilit bivouac:Two spiring wisps of smoke go singly upAnd scarcely tremble in the leafy air.— There are more shadows in this loamy cupThan God could count: and oh, but it is fair:The kindly green and rounded trunks, that meetUnder the soil with twinings of their feetAnd in the sky with twinings of their arms:The yellow stools: the still ungathered charmsOf berry, woodland herb, and bryony,And mid-wood's changeling child, Anemone.* * * * *Quiet as a grave beneath a spireI lie and watch the pointed climbing fire,I lie and watch the smoky weather-cockThat climbs too high, and bends to the breeze's shock,And breaks, and dances off across the skiesGay as a flurry of blue butterflies.But presently the evening shadows in,Heralded by the night-jar's solitary dinAnd the quick bat's squeak among the trees;— Who sudden rises, darting across the airTo weave her filmy web in the Sun's bright hairThat slowly sinks dejected on his knees....Now is he vanished: the bewildered skiesFlame out a desperate and last surmise;Then yield to Night, their sudden conqueror.From pole to pole the shadow of the worldCreeps over heaven, till itself is litBy the very many stars that wake in it:Sleep, like a messenger of great import,Lays quiet and compelling hands athwartThe easy idlenesses of my mind.— There is a breeze above me, and around:There is a fire before me, and behind:But Sleep doth hold me, and I hear no sound.In the far West the clouds are mustering,Without hurry, noise, or blustering:And soon as Body's nightly SentinelHimself doth nod, I open furtive eyes....With darkling hook the Farmer of the SkiesGoes reaping stars: they flicker, one by one,Nodding a little; tumble, — and are gone.
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Poets, painters, and puddings; these threeMake up the World as it ought to be.Poets make facesAnd sudden grimaces:They twit you, and spit youOn words: then admit youTo heaven or hellBy the tales that they tell.Painters are gayAs young rabbits in May:They buy jolly mugs,Bowls, pictures, and jugs:The things round their necksAre lively with checks,(For they like something redAs a frame for the head):Or they'll curse you with oaths,That tear holes in your clothes.(With nothing to mend themYou'd best not offend them.)Puddings should beFull of currants, for me:Boiled in a pail,Tied in the tailOf an old bleached shirt:So hot that they hurt,So huge that they lastFrom the dim, distant pastUntil the crack o' doomLift the roof off the room.Poets, painters, and puddings; these threeCrown the day as it crowned should be.