“Fetch forth the Paradisal garb!” * spake the Father, sweet and low;Drew them both by the frightened hand * where Mary’s throne made irised bow—“Take, Princess Mary, of thy good grace, * two spirits greater than they know.”
Virtuemay unlock hell, or evenA sin turn in the wards of Heaven,(As ethics of the text-book go),So little men their own deeds know,Or through the intricatemêléeGuess whitherward draws the battle-sway;So little, if they know the deed,Discern what therefrom shall succeed.To wisest moralists ’tis but givenTo work rough border-law of Heaven,Within this narrow life of ours,These marches ’twixt delimitless Powers.Is it, if Heaven the future showed,Is it the all-severest modeTo see ourselves with the eyes of God?God rather grant, at His assize,He see us not with our own eyes!
Heaven, which man’s generations drawsNor deviates into replicas,Must of as deep diversityIn judgment as creation be.There is no expeditious roadTo pack and label men for God,And save them by the barrel-load.Some may perchance, with strange surprise,Have blundered into Paradise.In vasty dusk of life abroad,They fondly thought to err from God,Nor knew the circle that they trod;And wandering all the night about,Found them at morn where they set out.Death dawned; Heaven lay in prospect wide:—Lo! they were standing by His side!
The rhymer a life uncomplex,With just such cares as mortals vex,So simply felt as all men feel,Lived purely out to his soul’s weal.A double life the Poet lived,And with a double burthen grieved;The life of flesh and life of song,The pangs to both lives that belong;Immortal knew and mortal pain,Who in two worlds could lose and gain.And found immortal fruits must beMortal through his mortality.The life of flesh and life of song!If one life worked the other wrong,What expiating agonyMay for him damned to poesyShut in that little sentence be—What deep austerities of strife—“He lived his life.” He livedhislife!
Wherethe thistle lifts a purple crownSix foot out of the turf,And the harebell shakes on the windy hill—O the breath of the distant surf!—
The hills look over on the South,And southward dreams the sea;And, with the sea-breeze hand in hand,Came innocence and she.
Where ’mid the gorse the raspberryRed for the gatherer springs,Two children did we stray and talkWise, idle, childish things.
She listened with big-lipped surprise,Breast-deep mid flower and spine:Her skin was like a grape, whose veinsRun snow instead of wine.
She knew not those sweet words she spake,Nor knew her own sweet way;But there’s never a bird, so sweet a songThronged in whose throat that day!
Oh, there were flowers in StorringtonOn the turf and on the spray;But the sweetest flower on Sussex hillsWas the Daisy-flower that day!
Her beauty smoothed earth’s furrowed face!She gave me tokens three:—A look, a word of her winsome mouth,And a wild raspberry.
A berry red, a guileless look,A still word,—strings of sand!And yet they made my wild, wild heartFly down to her little hand.
For standing artless as the air,And candid as the skies,She took the berries with her hand,And the love with her sweet eyes.
The fairest things have fleetest end:Their scent survives their close,But the rose’s scent is bitternessTo him that loved the rose!
She looked a little wistfully,Then went her sunshine way:—The sea’s eye had a mist on it,And the leaves fell from the day.
She went her unremembering way,She went and left in meThe pang of all the partings gone,And partings yet to be.
She left me marvelling why my soulWas sad that she was glad;At all the sadness in the sweet,The sweetness in the sad.
Still, still I seemed to see her, stillLook up with soft replies,And take the berries with her hand,And the love with her lovely eyes.
Nothing begins, and nothing ends,That is not paid with moan;For we are born in other’s pain,And perish in our own.
I.
The Father of Heaven.
Spin, daughter Mary, spin,Twirl your wheel with silver din;Spin, daughter Mary, spin,Spin a tress for Viola.
Angels.
Spin, Queen Mary, aBrown tress for Viola!
II.
The Father of Heaven.
Weave, hands angelical,Weave a woof of flesh to pall—Weave, hands angelical—Flesh to pall our Viola.
Angels.
Weave, singing brothers, aVelvet flesh for Viola!
III.
The Father of Heaven.
Scoop, young Jesus, for her eyes,Wood-browned pools of Paradise—Young Jesus, for the eyes,For the eyes of Viola.
Angels.
Tint, Prince Jesus, aDuskèd eye for Viola!
IV.
The Father of Heaven.
Cast a star therein to drown,Like a torch in cavern brown,Sink a burning star to drownWhelmed in eyes of Viola.
Angels.
Lave, Prince Jesus, aStar in eyes of Viola!
V.
The Father of Heaven.
Breathe, Lord Paraclete,To a bubbled crystal meet—Breathe, Lord Paraclete—Crystal soul for Viola.
Angels.
Breathe, Regal Spirit, aFlashing soul for Viola!
VI.
The Father of Heaven.
Child-angels, from your wingsFall the roseal hoverings,Child-angels, from your wings,On the cheeks of Viola.
Angels.
Linger, rosy reflex, aQuenchless stain, on Viola!
All things being accomplished,saith the Father of Heaven.
Bear her down, and bearing, sing,Bear her down on spyless wing,Bear her down, and bearing, sing,With a sound of viola.
Angels.
Music as her name is, aSweet sound of Viola!
VIII.
Wheeling angels, past espial,Danced her down with sound of viol;Wheeling angels, past espial,Descanting on “Viola.”
Angels.
Sing, in our footing, aLovely lilt of “Viola!”
IX.
Baby smiled, mother wailed,Earthward while the sweetling sailed;Mother smiled, baby wailed,When to earth came Viola.
And her elders shall say:—
So soon have we taught you aWay to weep, poor Viola!
X.
Smile, sweet baby, smile,For you will have weeping-while;Native in your Heaven is smile,—But your weeping, Viola?
Whence your smiles we know, but ah?Whence your weeping, Viola?—Our first gift to you is aGift of tears, my Viola!
Thislabouring, vast, Tellurian galleon,Riding at anchor off the orient sun,Had broken its cable, and stood out to spaceDown some frore Arctic of the aërial ways:And now, back warping from the inclement main,Its vaporous shroudage drenched with icy rain,It swung into its azure roads again;When, floated on the prosperous sun-gale, youLit, a white halcyon auspice, ’mid our frozen crew.
To the Sun, stranger, surely you belong,Giver of golden days and golden song;Nor is it by an all-unhappy planYou bear the name of me, his constant Magian.Yet ah! from any other that it came,Lest fated to my fate you be, as to my name.When at the first those tidings did they bring,My heart turned troubled at the ominous thing:Though well may such a title him endower,For whom a poet’s prayer implores a poet’s power.The Assisian, who kept plighted faith to three,To Song, to Sanctitude, and Poverty,(In two alone of whom most singers proveA fatal faithfulness of during love!);He the sweet Sales, of whom we scarcely kenHow God he could love more, he so loved men;The crown and crowned of Laura and Italy;And Fletcher’s fellow—from these, and not from me,Take you your name, and take your legacy!
Or, if a right successive you declareWhen worms, for ivies, intertwine my hair,Take but this Poesy that now followethMy clayey hest with sullen servile breath,Made then your happy freedman by testating death.My song I do but hold for you in trust,I ask you but to blossom from my dust.When you have compassed all weak I began,Diviner poet, and ah! diviner man;The man at feud with the perduring childIn you before song’s altar nobly reconciled;From the wise heavens I half shall smile to seeHow little a world, which owned you, needed me.If, while you keep the vigils of the night,For your wild tears make darkness all too bright,Some lone orb through your lonely window peeps,As it played lover over your sweet sleeps;Think it a golden crevice in the sky,Which I have pierced but to behold you by!
And when, immortal mortal, droops your head,And you, the child of deathless song, are dead;Then, as you search with unaccustomed glanceThe ranks of Paradise for my countenance,Turn not your tread along the Uranian sodAmong the bearded counsellors of God;For if in Eden as on earth are we,I sure shall keep a younger company:Pass where beneath their rangèd gonfalonsThe starry cohorts shake their shielded suns,The dreadful mass of their enridgèd spears;Pass where majestical the eternal peers,The stately choice of the great Saintdom, meet—A silvern segregation, globed completeIn sandalled shadow of the Triune feet;Pass by where wait, young poet-wayfarer,Your cousined clusters, emulous to shareWith you the roseal lightnings burning ’mid their hair;Pass the crystalline sea, the Lampads seven:—Look for me in the nurseries of Heaven.
Summerset lip to earth’s bosom bare.And left the flushed print in a poppy there:Like a yawn of fire from the grass it came,And the fanning wind puffed it to flapping flame.
With burnt mouth red like a lion’s it drankThe blood of the sun as he slaughtered sank,And dipped its cup in the purpurate shineWhen the eastern conduits ran with wine.
Till it grew lethargied with fierce bliss,And hot as a swinked gipsy is,And drowsed in sleepy savageries,With mouth wide a-pout for a sultry kiss.
A child and man paced side by side,Treading the skirts of eventide;But between the clasp of his hand and hersLay, felt not, twenty withered years.
She turned, with the rout of her dusk South hair,And saw the sleeping gipsy there;And snatched and snapped it in swift child’s whim,With—“Keep it, long as you live!”—to him.
And his smile, as nymphs from their laving meres,Trembled up from a bath of tears;And joy, like a mew sea-rocked apart,Tossed on the wave of his troubled heart.
Forhesaw what she did not see,That—as kindled by its own fervency—The verge shrivelled inward smoulderingly:
And suddenly ’twixt his hand and hersHe knew the twenty withered years—No flower, but twenty shrivelled years.
“Was never such thing until this hour,”Low to his heart he said; “the flowerOf sleep brings wakening to me,And of oblivion memory.”
“Was never this thing to me,” he said,“Though with bruisèd poppies my feet are red!”And again to his own heart very low:“O child! I love, for I love and know;
“But you, who love nor know at allThe diverse chambers in Love’s guest-hall,Where some rise early, few sit long:In how differing accents hear the throngHis great Pentecostal tongue;
“Who know not love from amity,Nor my reported self from me;A fair fit gift is this, meseems,You give—this withering flower of dreams.
“O frankly fickle, and fickly true,Do you know what the days will do to you?To your Love and you what the days will do,O frankly fickle, and fickly true?
“You have loved me, Fair, three lives—or days:’Twill pass with the passing of my face.But whereIgo, your face goes too,To watch lest I play false to you.
“I am but, my sweet, your foster-lover,Knowing well when certain years are overYou vanish from me to another;Yet I know, and love, like the foster-mother.
“So, frankly fickle, and fickly true!For my brief life—while I take from youThis token, fair and fit, meseems,For me—this withering flower of dreams.”
* * * * * * *
The sleep-flower sways in the wheat its head,Heavy with dreams, as that with bread:The goodly grain and the sun-flushed sleeperThe reaper reaps, and Time the reaper.
I hang ’mid men my needless head,And my fruit is dreams, as theirs is bread:The goodly men and the sun-hazed sleeperTime shall reap, but after the reaperThe world shall glean of me, me the sleeper!
Love! love! your flower of withered dreamIn leavèd rhyme lies safe, I deem,Sheltered and shut in a nook of rhyme,From the reaper man, and his reaper Time.
Love!Ifall into the claws of Time:But lasts within a leavèd rhymeAll that the world of me esteems—My withered dreams, my withered dreams.
You, O the piteous you!Who all the long night throughAnticipatedlyDisclose yourself to meAlready in the waysBeyond our human comfortable days;How can you deem what DeathImpitiably saithTo me, who listening wakeFor your poor sake?When a grown woman diesYou know we think unceasinglyWhat things she said, how sweet, how wise;And these do make our misery.But you were (you to meThe dead anticipatedly!)You—eleven years, was’t not, or so?—Were just a child, you know;And so you never saidThings sweet immeditatably and wiseTo interdict from closure my wet eyes:But foolish things, my dead, my dead!Little and laughable,Your age that fitted well.And was it such things all unmemorable,Was it such things could makeMe sob all night for your implacable sake?
Yet, as you said to me,In pretty make-believe of revelry,So the night long said DeathWith his magniloquent breath;(And that remembered laughterWhich in our daily uses followed after,Was all untuned to pity and to awe):“A cup of chocolate,One farthing is the rate,You drink it through a straw.”
How could I know, how knowThose laughing words when drenched with sobbing so?Another voice than yours, than yours, he hath!My dear, was’t worth his breath,His mighty utterance?—yet he saith, and saith!This dreadful Death to his own dreadfulnessDoth dreadful wrong,This dreadful childish babble on his tongue!That iron tongue made to speak sentences,And wisdom insupportably complete,Why should it only say the long night through,In mimicry of you,—“A cup of chocolate,One farthing is the rate,You drink it through a straw,a straw,a straw!”Oh, of all sentences,Piercingly incomplete!Why did you teach that fatal mouth to draw,Child, impermissible awe,From your old trivialness?Why have you done me thisMost unsustainable wrong,And into Death’s controlBetrayed the secret places of my soul?Teaching him that his lips,Uttering their native earthquake and eclipse,Could never so availTo rend from hem to hem the ultimate veilOf this most desolateSpirit, and leave it stripped and desecrate,—Nay, never so have wrungFrom eyes and speech weakness unmanned, unmeet;As when his terrible dotage to repeatIts little lesson learneth at your feet;As when he sits amongHis sepulchres, to playWith broken toys your hand has cast away,With derelict trinkets of the darling young.Why have you taught—that he might so completeHis awful panoplyFrom your cast playthings—why,This dreadful childish babble to his tongue,Dreadful and sweet?
[55]Note—I have throughout this poem used an asterisk to indicate the caesura in the middle of the line, after the manner of the old Saxon section-point.