1872–1889
Aquí está encerrada el alma del licenciado Pedro Garcías.
Gil BlasAU LECTEUR.
Chiminga dream by the wayWith ocean’s rapture and roar,I met a maiden to-dayWalking alone on the shore:Walking in maiden wise,Modest and kind and fair,The freshness of spring in her eyesAnd the fulness of spring in her hair.
Cloud-shadow and scudding sun-burstWere swift on the floor of the sea,And a mad wind was romping its worst,But what was their magic to me?Or the charm of the midsummer skies?I only saw she was there,A dream of the sea in her eyesAnd the kiss of the sea in her hair.
I watched her vanish in space;She came where I walked no more;But something had passed of her graceTo the spell of the wave and the shore;And now, as the glad stars rise,She comes to me, rosy and rare,The delight of the wind in her eyesAnd the hand of the wind in her hair.
1872
Lifeis bitter. All the faces of the years,Young and old, are grey with travail and with tears.Must we only wake to toil, to tire, to weep?In the sun, among the leaves, upon the flowers,Slumber stills to dreamy death the heavy hours . . .Let me sleep.
Riches won but mock the old, unable years;Fame’s a pearl that hides beneath a sea of tears;Love must wither, or must live alone and weep.In the sunshine, through the leaves, across the flowers,While we slumber, death approaches though the hours! . . .Let me sleep.
1872
O,gatherme the rose, the rose,While yet in flower we find it,For summer smiles, but summer goes,And winter waits behind it!
For with the dream foregone, foregone,The deed forborne for ever,The worm, regret, will canker on,And Time will turn him never.
So well it were to love, my love,And cheat of any laughterThe fate beneath us and above,The dark before and after.
The myrtle and the rose, the rose,The sunshine and the swallow,The dream that comes, the wish that goes,The memories that follow!
1874
Outof the night that covers me,Black as the Pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may beFor my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstanceI have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chanceMy head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tearsLooms but the Horror of the shade,And yet the menace of the yearsFinds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,I am the master of my fate:I am the captain of my soul.
1875
Iamthe Reaper.All things with heedful hookSilent I gather.Pale roses touched with the spring,Tall corn in summer,Fruits rich with autumn, and frail winter blossoms—Reaping, still reaping—All things with heedful hookTimely I gather.
I am the Sower.All the unbodied lifeRuns through my seed-sheet.Atom with atom wed,Each quickening the other,Fall through my hands, ever changing, still changelessCeaselessly sowing,Life, incorruptible life,Flows from my seed-sheet.
Maker and breaker,I am the ebb and the flood,Here and Hereafter.Sped through the tangle and coilOf infinite nature,Viewless and soundless I fashion all being.Taker and giver,I am the womb and the grave,The Now and the Ever.
1875
Praisethe generous gods for givingIn a world of wrath and strifeWith a little time for living,Unto all the joy of life.
At whatever source we drink it,Art or love or faith or wine,In whatever terms we think it,It is common and divine.
Praise the high gods, for in givingThis to man, and this alone,They have made his chance of livingShine the equal of their own.
1875
Filla glass with golden wine,And the while your lips are wetSet their perfume unto mine,And forget,Every kiss we take and giveLeaves us less of life to live.
Yet again! Your whim and mineIn a happy while have met.All your sweets to me resign,Nor regretThat we press with every breath,Sighed or singing, nearer death.
1875
We’llgo no more a-roving by the light of the moon.November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June.The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere.We’ll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear.
We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune.Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year.We’ll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear.
We’ll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon.If yet we walk together, we need not shun the noon.No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear,We’ll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.
1875
MadamLife’s a piece in bloomDeath goes dogging everywhere:She’s the tenant of the room,He’s the ruffian on the stair.
You shall see her as a friend,You shall bilk him once and twice;But he’ll trap you in the end,And he’ll stick you for her price.
With his kneebones at your chest,And his knuckles in your throat,You would reason—plead—protest!Clutching at her petticoat;
But she’s heard it all before,Well she knows you’ve had your fun,Gingerly she gains the door,And your little job is done.
1877
Thesea is full of wandering foam,The sky of driving cloud;My restless thoughts among them roam . . .The night is dark and loud.
Where are the hours that came to meSo beautiful and bright?A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . .O, dark and loud’s the night!
1876
Thickis the darkness—Sunward, O, sunward!Rough is the highway—Onward, still onward!
Dawn harbours surelyEast of the shadows.Facing us somewhereSpread the sweet meadows.
Upward and forward!Time will restore us:Light is above us,Rest is before us.
1876
Tome at my fifth-floor windowThe chimney-pots in rowsAre sets of pipes pandeanFor every wind that blows;
And the smoke that whirls and eddiesIn a thousand times and keysIs really a visible musicSet to my reveries.
O monstrous pipes, melodiousWith fitful tune and dream,The clouds are your only audience,Her thought is your only theme!
1875
Bringher again, O western wind,Over the western sea:Gentle and good and fair and kind,Bring her again to me!
Not that her fancy holds me dear,Not that a hope may be:Only that I may know her near,Wind of the western sea.
1875
Thewan sun westers, faint and slow;The eastern distance glimmers gray;An eerie haze comes creeping lowAcross the little, lonely bay;And from the sky-line far awayAbout the quiet heaven are spreadMysterious hints of dying day,Thin, delicate dreams of green and red.
And weak, reluctant surges lapAnd rustle round and down the strand.No other sound . . . If it should hap,The ship that sails from fairy-land!The silken shrouds with spells are manned,The hull is magically scrolled,The squat mast lives, and in the sandThe gold prow-griffin claws a hold.
It steals to seaward silently;Strange fish-folk follow thro’ the gloom;Great wings flap overhead; I seeThe Castle of the Drowsy DoomVague thro’ the changeless twilight loom,Enchanted, hushed. And ever thereShe slumbers in eternal bloom,Her cushions hid with golden hair.
1875
Thereis a wheel inside my headOf wantonness and wine,An old, cracked fiddle is begging without,But the wind with scents of the sea is fed,And the sun seems glad to shine.
The sun and the wind are akin to you,As you are akin to June.But the fiddle! . . . It giggles and twitters about,And, love and laughter! who gave him the cue?—He’s playing your favourite tune.
1875
Whilethe west is palingStarshine is begun.While the dusk is failingGlimmers up the sun.
So, till darkness coverLife’s retreating gleam,Lover follows lover,Dream succeeds to dream.
Stoop to my endeavour,O my love, and beOnly and for everSun and stars to me.
1876
Thesands are alive with sunshine,The bathers lounge and throng,And out in the bay a bugleIs lilting a gallant song.
The clouds go racing eastward,The blithe wind cannot rest,And a shard on the shingle flashesLike the shining soul of a jest;
While children romp in the surges,And sweethearts wander free,And the Firth as with laughter dimples . . .I would it were deep over me!
1875
Thenightingale has a lyre of gold,The lark’s is a clarion-call,And the blackbird plays but a boxwood flute,But I love him best of all.
For his song is all of the joy of life,And we in the mad, spring weather,We two have listened till he sangOur hearts and lips together.
1876
Yourheart has trembled to my tongue,Your hands in mine have lain,Your thought to me has leaned and clung,Again and yet again,My dear,Again and yet again.
Now die the dream, or come the wife,The past is not in vain,For wholly as it was your lifeCan never be again,My dear,Can never be again.
1876
Thesurges gushed and sounded,The blue was the blue of June,And low above the brightening eastFloated a shred of moon.
The woods were black and solemn,The night winds large and free,And in your thought a blessing seemedTo fall on land and sea.
1877
Weflash across the level.We thunder thro’ the bridges.We bicker down the cuttings.We sway along the ridges.
A rush of streaming hedges,Of jostling lights and shadows,Of hurtling, hurrying stations,Of racing woods and meadows.
We charge the tunnels headlong—The blackness roars and shatters.We crash between embankments—The open spins and scatters.
We shake off the miles like water,We might carry a royal ransom;And I think of her waiting, waiting,And long for a common hansom.
1876
TheWest a glimmering lake of light,A dream of pearly weather,The first of stars is burning white—The star we watch together.Is April dead? The unresting yearWill shape us our September,And April’s work is done, my dear—Do you not remember?
O gracious eve! O happy star,Still-flashing, glowing, sinking!—Who lives of lovers near or farSo glad as I in thinking?The gallant world is warm and green,For May fulfils November.When lights and leaves and loves have been,Sweet, will you remember?
O star benignant and serene,I take the good to-morrow,That fills from verge to verge my dream,With all its joy and sorrow!The old, sweet spell is unforgotThat turns to June December;And, tho’ the world remembered not,Love, we would remember.
1876
Theskies are strown with stars,The streets are fresh with dewA thin moon drifts to westward,The night is hushed and cheerful.My thought is quick with you.
Near windows gleam and laugh,And far away a trainClanks glowing through the stillness:A great content’s in all things,And life is not in vain.
1877
Thefull sea rolls and thundersIn glory and in glee.O, bury me not in the senseless earthBut in the living sea!
Ay, bury me where it surgesA thousand miles from shore,And in its brotherly unrestI’ll range for evermore.
1876
Inthe year that’s come and gone, love, his flying featherStooping slowly, gave us heart, and bade us walk together.In the year that’s coming on, though many a troth be broken,We at least will not forget aught that love hath spoken.
In the year that’s come and gone, dear, we wove a tetherAll of gracious words and thoughts, binding two together.In the year that’s coming on with its wealth of rosesWe shall weave it stronger, yet, ere the circle closes.
In the year that’s come and gone, in the golden weather,Sweet, my sweet, we swore to keep the watch of life together.In the year that’s coming on, rich in joy and sorrow,We shall light our lamp, and wait life’s mysterious morrow.
1877
Inthe placid summer midnight,Under the drowsy sky,I seem to hear in the stillnessThe moths go glimmering by.
One by one from the windowsThe lights have all been sped.Never a blind looks conscious—The street is asleep in bed!
But I come where a living casementLaughs luminous and wide;I hear the song of a pianoBreak in a sparkling tide;
And I feel, in the waltz that frolicsAnd warbles swift and clear,A sudden sense of shelterAnd friendliness and cheer . . .
A sense of tinkling glasses,Of love and laughter and light—The piano stops, and the windowStares blank out into the night.
The blind goes out, and I wanderTo the old, unfriendly sea,The lonelier for the memoryThat walks like a ghost with me.
Shesauntered by the swinging seas,A jewel glittered at her ear,And, teasing her along, the breezeBrought many a rounded grace more near.
So passing, one with wave and beam,She left for memory to caressA laughing thought, a golden gleam,A hint of hidden loveliness.
1876
Blithedreams arise to greet us,And life feels clean and new,For the old love comes to meet usIn the dawning and the dew.O’erblown with sunny shadows,O’ersped with winds at play,The woodlands and the meadowsAre keeping holiday.Wild foals are scampering, neighing,Brave merles their hautboys blow:Come! let us go a-mayingAs in the Long-Ago.
Here we but peak and dwindle:The clank of chain and crane,The whir of crank and spindleBewilder heart and brain;The ends of our endeavourAre merely wealth and fame,Yet in the still ForeverWe’re one and all the same;Delaying, still delaying,We watch the fading west:Come! let us go a-maying,Nor fear to take the best.
Yet beautiful and spaciousThe wise, old world appears.Yet frank and fair and graciousOutlaugh the jocund years.Our arguments disputing,The universal PanStill wanders fluting—fluting—Fluting to maid and man.Our weary well-a-wayingHis music cannot still:Come! let us go a-maying,And pipe with him our fill.
When wanton winds are flowingAmong the gladdening glass;Where hawthorn brakes are blowing,And meadow perfumes pass;Where morning’s grace is greenest,And fullest noon’s of pride;Where sunset spreads serenest,And sacred night’s most wide;Where nests are swaying, swaying,And spring’s fresh voices call,Come! let us go a-maying,And bless the God of all!
1878
Achild,Curious and innocent,Slips from his Nurse, and rejoicingLoses himself in the Fair.
Thro’ the jostle and dinWandering, he revels,Dreaming, desiring, possessing;Till, of a suddenTired and afraid, he beholdsThe sordid assemblageJust as it is; and he runsWith a sob to his Nurse(Lighting at last on him),And in her motherly bosomCries him to sleep.
Thus thro’ the World,Seeing and feeling and knowing,Goes Man: till at last,Tired of experience, he turnsTo the friendly and comforting breastOf the old nurse, Death.
1876
Kate-a-Whimsies, John-a-Dreams,Still debating, still delay,And the world’s a ghost that gleams—Wavers—vanishes away!
We must live while live we can;We should love while love we may.Dread in women, doubt in man . . .So the Infinite runs away.
1876
O,haveyou blessed, behind the stars,The blue sheen in the skies,When June the roses round her calls?—Then do you know the light that fallsFrom her belovèd eyes.
And have you felt the sense of peaceThat morning meadows give?—Then do you know the spirit of grace,The angel abiding in her face,Who makes it good to live.
She shines before me, hope and dream,So fair, so still, so wise,That, winning her, I seem to winOut of the dust and drive and dinA nook of Paradise.
1877
O,Falmouthis a fine town with ships in the bay,And I wish from my heart it’s there I was to-day;I wish from my heart I was far away from here,Sitting in my parlour and talking to my dear.For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken treeThey’re all growing green in the old countrie.
In Baltimore a-walking a lady I did meetWith her babe on her arm, as she came down the street;And I thought how I sailed, and the cradle standing readyFor the pretty little babe that has never seen its daddie.And it’s home, dearie, home . . .
O, if it be a lass, she shall wear a golden ring;And if it be a lad, he shall fight for his king:With his dirk and his hat and his little jacket blueHe shall walk the quarter-deck as his daddie used to do.And it’s home, dearie, home . . .
O, there’s a wind a-blowing, a-blowing from the west,And that of all the winds is the one I like the best,For it blows at our backs, and it shakes our pennon free,And it soon will blow us home to the old countrie.For it’s home, dearie, home—it’s home I want to be.Our topsails are hoisted, and we’ll away to sea.O, the oak and the ash and the bonnie birken treeThey’re all growing green in the old countrie.
1878
Note.—The burthen and the third stanza are old.
Theways are green with the gladdening sheenOf the young year’s fairest daughter.O, the shadows that fleet o’er the springing wheat!O, the magic of running water!The spirit of spring is in every thing,The banners of spring are streaming,We march to a tune from the fifes of June,And life’s a dream worth dreaming.
It’s all very well to sit and spellAt the lesson there’s no gainsaying;But what the deuce are wont and useWhen the whole mad world’s a-maying?When the meadow glows, and the orchard snows,And the air’s with love-motes teeming,When fancies break, and the senses wake,O, life’s a dream worth dreaming!
What Nature has writ with her lusty witIs worded so wisely and kindlyThat whoever has dipped in her manuscriptMust up and follow her blindly.Now the summer prime is her blithest rhymeIn the being and the seeming,And they that have heard the overwordKnow life’s a dream worth dreaming.
1878
Love blows as the wind blows,Love blows into the heart.—Nile Boat-Song.
Love blows as the wind blows,Love blows into the heart.—Nile Boat-Song.
Lifein her creaking shoesGoes, and more formal grows,A round of calls and cues:Love blows as the wind blows.Blows! . . . in the quiet closeAs in the roaring mart,By ways no mortal knowsLove blows into the heart.
The stars some cadence use,Forthright the river flows,In order fall the dews,Love blows as the wind blows:Blows! . . . and what reckoning showsThe courses of his chart?A spirit that comes and goes,Love blows into the heart.
1878
Alatelark twitters from the quiet skies;And from the west,Where the sun, his day’s work ended,Lingers as in content,There falls on the old, grey cityAn influence luminous and serene,A shining peace.
The smoke ascendsIn a rosy-and-golden haze. The spiresShine, and are changed. In the valleyShadows rise. The lark sings on. The sun,Closing his benediction,Sinks, and the darkening airThrills with a sense of the triumphing night—Night with her train of starsAnd her great gift of sleep.
So be my passing!My task accomplished and the long day done,My wages taken, and in my heartSome late lark singing,Let me be gathered to the quiet west,The sundown splendid and serene,Death.
1876
Igavemy heart to a woman—I gave it her, branch and root.She bruised, she wrung, she tortured,She cast it under foot.
Under her feet she cast it,She trampled it where it fell,She broke it all to pieces,And each was a clot of hell.
There in the rain and the sunshineThey lay and smouldered long;And each, when again she viewed them,Had turned to a living song.
Orever the knightly years were goneWith the old world to the grave,I was a King in BabylonAnd you were a Christian Slave.
I saw, I took, I cast you by,I bent and broke your pride.You loved me well, or I heard them lie,But your longing was denied.Surely I knew that by and byYou cursed your gods and died.
And a myriad suns have set and shoneSince then upon the graveDecreed by the King in BabylonTo her that had been his Slave.
The pride I trampled is now my scathe,For it tramples me again.The old resentment lasts like death,For you love, yet you refrain.I break my heart on your hard unfaith,And I break my heart in vain.
Yet not for an hour do I wish undoneThe deed beyond the grave,When I was a King in BabylonAnd you were a Virgin Slave.
Onthe way to Kew,By the river old and gray,Where in the Long AgoWe laughed and loitered so,I met a ghost to-day,A ghost that told of you—A ghost of low repliesAnd sweet, inscrutable eyesComing up from RichmondAs you used to do.
By the river old and gray,The enchanted Long AgoMurmured and smiled anew.On the way to Kew,March had the laugh of May,The bare boughs looked aglow,And old, immortal wordsSang in my breast like birds,Coming up from RichmondAs I used with you.
With the life of Long AgoLived my thought of you.By the river old and grayFlowing his appointed wayAs I watched I knewWhat is so good to know—Not in vain, not in vain,Shall I look for you againComing up from RichmondOn the way to Kew.
ThePast was goodly once, and yet, when all is said,The best of it we know is that it’s done and dead.
Dwindled and faded quite, perished beyond recall,Nothing is left at last of what one time was all.
Coming back like a ghost, staring and lingering on,Never a word it speaks but proves it dead and gone.
Duty and work and joy—these things it cannot give;And the Present is life, and life is good to live.
Let it lie where it fell, far from the living sun,The Past that, goodly once, is gone and dead and done.
Thespring, my dear,Is no longer spring.Does the blackbird singWhat he sang last year?Are the skies the oldImmemorial blue?Or am I, or are you,Grown cold?
Though life be change,It is hard to bearWhen the old sweet airSounds forced and strange.To be out of tune,Plain You and I . . .It were better to die,And soon!
The Spirit of WineSang in my glass,and I listenedWith love to his odorous music,His flushed and magnificent song.
—‘I am health, I am heart, I am life!For I give for the askingThe fire of my father, the Sun,And the strength of my mother, the Earth.Inspiration in essence,I am wisdom and wit to the wise,His visible muse to the poet,The soul of desire to the lover,The genius of laughter to all.
‘Come, lean on me, ye that are weary!Rise, ye faint-hearted and doubting!Haste, ye that lag by the way!I am Pride, the consoler;Valour and Hope are my henchmen;I am the Angel of Rest.
‘I am life, I am wealth, I am fame:For I captain an armyOf shining and generous dreams;And mine, too, all mine, are the keysOf that secret spiritual shrine,Where, his work-a-day soul put by,Shut in with his saint of saints—With his radiant and conquering self—Man worships, and talks, and is glad.
‘Come, sit with me, ye that are lovely,Ye that are paid with disdain,Ye that are chained and would soar!I am beauty and love;I am friendship, the comforter;I am that which forgives and forgets.’—
The Spirit of WineSang in my heart,and I triumphedIn the savour and scent of his music,His magnetic and mastering song.
Awinkfrom Hesper, fallingFast in the wintry sky,Comes through the even blue,Dear, like a word from you . . .Is it good-bye?
Across the miles between usI send you sigh for sigh.Good-night, sweet friend, good-night:Till life and all take flight,Never good-bye.
Friends. . . old friends . . .One sees how it ends.A woman looksOr a man tells lies,And the pleasant brooksAnd the quiet skies,Ruined with brawlingAnd caterwauling,Enchant no moreAs they did before.And so it endsWith friends.
Friends . . . old friends . . .And what if it ends?Shall we dare to shirkWhat we live to learn?It has done its work,It has served its turn;And, forgive and forgetOr hanker and fret,We can be no moreAs we were before.When it ends, it endsWith friends.
Friends . . . old friends . . .So it breaks, so it ends.There let it rest!It has fought and won,And is still the bestThat either has done.Each as he standsThe work of its hands,Which shall be moreAs he was before? . . .What is it endsWith friends?
Ifit should come to be,This proof of you and me,This type and signOf hours that smiled and shone,And yet seemed dead and goneAs old-world wine:
Of Them Within the GateAsk we no richer fate,No boon above,For girl child or for boy,My gift of life and joy,Your gift of love.
Fromthe brake the NightingaleSings exulting to the Rose;Though he sees her waxing paleIn her passionate repose,While she triumphs waxing frail,Fading even while she glows;Though he knowsHow it goes—Knows of last year’s NightingaleDead with last year’s Rose.
Wise the enamoured Nightingale,Wise the well-belovèd Rose!Love and life shall still prevail,Nor the silence at the closeBreak the magic of the taleIn the telling, though it shows—Who but knowsHow it goes!—Life a last year’s Nightingale,Love a last year’s Rose.
Inthe waste hourBetween to-day and yesterdayWe watched, while on my arm—Living flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone—Dabbled in sweat the sacred headLay uncomplaining, still, contemptuous, strange:Till the dear face turned dead,And to a sound of lamentationThe good, heroic soul with all its wealth—Its sixty years of love and sacrifice,Suffering and passionate faith—was reabsorbedIn the inexorable Peace,And life was changed to us for evermore.
Was nothing left of her but tearsLike blood-drops from the heart?Nought save remorseFor duty unfulfilled, justice undone,And charity ignored? Nothing but love,Forgiveness, reconcilement, where in truth,But for this passingInto the unimaginable abyssThese things had never been?
Nay, there were we,Her five strong sons!To her Death came—the great Deliverer came!—As equal comes to equal, throne to throne.She was a mother of men.
The stars shine as of old. The unchanging River,Bent on his errand of immortal law,Works his appointed wayTo the immemorial sea.And the brave truth comes overwhelmingly home:—That she in us yet works and shines,Lives and fulfils herself,Unending as the river and the stars.
Dearest, live onIn such an immortalityAs we thy sons,Born of thy body and nursedAt those wild, faithful breasts,Can give—of generous thoughts,And honourable words, and deedsThat make men half in love with fate!Live on, O brave and true,In us thy children, in ours whose life is thine—Our best and theirs! What is that best but thee—Thee, and thy gift to us, to passLike light along the infinite of spaceTo the immitigable end?
Between the river and the stars,O royal and radiant soul,Thou dost return, thine influences returnUpon thy children as in life, and deathTurns stingless! What is DeathBut Life in act? How should the Unteeming GraveBe victor over thee,Mother, a mother of men?
Crossesand troubles a-many have proved me.One or two women (God bless them!) have loved me.I have worked and dreamed, and I’ve talked at will.Of art and drink I have had my fill.I’ve comforted here, and I’ve succoured there.I’ve faced my foes, and I’ve backed my friends.I’ve blundered, and sometimes made amends.I have prayed for light, and I’ve known despair.Now I look before, as I look behind,Come storm, come shine, whatever befall,With a grateful heart and a constant mind,For the end I know is the best of all.
1888–1889
(ToCharles Whibley)
1890–1892
St. Margaret’sbells,Quiring their innocent, old-world canticles,Sing in the storied air,All rosy-and-golden, as with memoriesOf woods at evensong, and sands and seasDisconsolate for that the night is nigh.O, the low, lingering lights! The large last gleam(Hark! how those brazen choristers cry and call!)Touching these solemn ancientries, and there,The silent River ranging tide-mark highAnd the callow, grey-faced Hospital,With the strange glimmer and glamour of a dream!The Sabbath peace is in the slumbrous trees,And from the wistful, the fast-widowing sky(Hark! how those plangent comforters call and cry!)Falls as in August plots late roseleaves fall.The sober Sabbath stir—Leisurely voices, desultory feet!—Comes from the dry, dust-coloured street,Where in their summer frocks the girls go by,And sweethearts lean and loiter and confer,Just as they did an hundred years ago,Just as an hundred years to come they will:—When you and I, Dear Love, lie lost and low,And sweet-throats none our welkin shall fulfil,Nor any sunset fade serene and slow;But, being dead, we shall not grieve to die.
Forthfrom the dust and din,The crush, the heat, the many-spotted glare,The odour and sense of life and lust aflare,The wrangle and jangle of unrests,Let us take horse, Dear Heart, take horse and win—As from swart August to the green lap of May—To quietness and the fresh and fragrant breastsOf the still, delicious night, not yet awareIn any of her innumerable nestsOf that first sudden plash of dawn,Clear, sapphirine, luminous, large,Which tells that soon the flowing springs of dayIn deep and ever deeper eddies drawnForward and up, in wider and wider way,Shall float the sands, and brim the shores,On this our lith of the World, as round it roarsAnd spins into the outlook of the Sun(The Lord’s first gift, the Lord’s especial charge),With light, with living light, from marge to margeUntil the course He set and staked be run.
Through street and square, through square and street,Each with his home-grown quality of darkAnd violated silence, loud and fleet,Waylaid by a merry ghost at every lamp,The hansom wheels and plunges. Hark, O, hark,Sweet, how the old mare’s bit and chainRing back a rough refrainUpon the marked and cheerful trampOf her four shoes! Here is the Park,And O, the languid midsummer wafts adust,The tired midsummer blooms!O, the mysterious distances, the gloomsRomantic, the augustAnd solemn shapes! At night this City of TreesTurns to a tryst of vague and strangeAnd monstrous Majesties,Let loose from some dim underworld to rangeThese terrene vistas till their twilight sets:When, dispossessed of wonderfulness, they standBeggared and common, plain to all the landFor stooks of leaves! And lo! the Wizard Hour,His silent, shining sorcery winged with power!Still, still the streets, between their carcanetsOf linking gold, are avenues of sleep.But see how gable ends and parapetsIn gradual beauty and significanceEmerge! And did you hearThat little twitter-and-cheep,Breaking inordinately loud and clearOn this still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere?’Tis a first nest at matins! And beholdA rakehell cat—how furtive and acold!A spent witch homing from some infamous dance—Obscene, quick-trotting, see her tip and fadeThrough shadowy railings into a pit of shade!And now! a little wind and shy,The smell of ships (that earnest of romance),A sense of space and water, and therebyA lamplit bridge ouching the troubled sky,And look, O, look! a tangle of silver gleamsAnd dusky lights, our River and all his dreams,His dreams that never save in our deaths can die.
What miracle is happening in the air,Charging the very texture of the grayWith something luminous and rare?The night goes out like an ill-parcelled fire,And, as one lights a candle, it is day.The extinguisher, that perks it like a spireOn the little formal church, is not yet greenAcross the water: but the house-tops nigher,The corner-lines, the chimneys—look how clean,How new, how naked! See the batch of boats,Here at the stairs, washed in the fresh-sprung beam!And those are barges that were goblin floats,Black, hag-steered, fraught with devilry and dream!And in the piles the water frolics clear,The ripples into loose rings wander and flee,And we—we can behold that could but hearThe ancient River singing as he goes,New-mailed in morning, to the ancient Sea.The gas burns lank and jaded in its glass:The old Ruffian soon shall yawn himself awake,And light his pipe, and shoulder his tools, and takeHis hobnailed way to work!
Let us too pass—Pass ere the sun leaps and your shadow shows—Through these long, blindfold rowsOf casements staring blind to right and left,Each with his gaze turned inward on some pieceOf life in death’s own likeness—Life bereftOf living looks as by the Great Release—Pass to an exquisite night’s more exquisite close!
Reach upon reach of burial—so they feel,These colonies of dreams! And as we stealHomeward together, but for the buxom breeze,Fitfully frolicking to heelWith news of dawn-drenched woods and tumbling seas,We might—thus awed, thus lonely that we are—Be wandering some dispeopled star,Some world of memories and unbroken graves,So broods the abounding Silence near and far:Till even your footfall cravesForgiveness of the majesty it braves.
Downthrough the ancient StrandThe spirit of October, mild and boonAnd sauntering, takes his wayThis golden end of afternoon,As though the corn stood yellow in all the land,And the ripe apples dropped to the harvest-moon.
Lo! the round sun, half-down the western slope—Seen as along an unglazed telescope—Lingers and lolls, loth to be done with day:Gifting the long, lean, lanky streetAnd its abounding confluences of beingWith aspects generous and bland;Making a thousand harnesses to shineAs with new ore from some enchanted mine,And every horse’s coat so full of sheenHe looks new-tailored, and every ’bus feels clean,And never a hansom but is worth the feeing;And every jeweller within the paleOffers a real Arabian Night for sale;And even the roarOf the strong streams of toil, that pause and pourEastward and westward, sounds suffused—Seems as it were bemusedAnd blurred, and like the speechOf lazy seas on a lotus-haunted beach—With this enchanted lustrousness,This mellow magic, that (as a man’s caressBrings back to some faded face, beloved before,A heavenly shadow of the grace it woreEre the poor eyes were minded to beseech)Old things transfigures, and you hail and blessTheir looks of long-lapsed loveliness once more:Till Clement’s, angular and cold and staid,Gleams forth in glamour’s very stuffs arrayed;And Bride’s, her aëry, unsubstantial charmThrough flight on flight of springing, soaring stoneGrown flushed and warm,Laughs into life full-mooded and fresh-blown;And the high majesty of Paul’sUplifts a voice of living light, and calls—Calls to his millions to behold and seeHow goodly this his London Town can be!
For earth and sky and airAre golden everywhere,And golden with a gold so suave and fineThe looking on it lifts the heart like wine.Trafalgar Square(The fountains volleying golden glaze)Shines like an angel-market. High aloftOver his couchant Lions, in a hazeShimmering and bland and soft,A dust of chrysoprase,Our Sailor takes the golden gazeOf the saluting sun, and flames superb,As once he flamed it on his ocean round.The dingy dreariness of the picture-place,Turned very nearly bright,Takes on a luminous transiency of grace,And shows no more a scandal to the ground.The very blind man pottering on the kerb,Among the posies and the ostrich feathersAnd the rude voices touched with all the weathersOf the long, varying year,Shares in the universal alms of light.The windows, with their fleeting, flickering fires,The height and spread of frontage shining sheer,The quiring signs, the rejoicing roofs and spires—’Tis El Dorado—El Dorado plain,The Golden City! And when a girl goes by,Look! as she turns her glancing head,A call of gold is floated from her ear!Golden, all golden! In a golden glory,Long-lapsing down a golden coasted sky,The day, not dies but, seemsDispersed in wafts and drifts of gold, and shedUpon a past of golden song and storyAnd memories of gold and golden dreams.
Outof the poisonous East,Over a continent of blight,Like a maleficent Influence releasedFrom the most squalid cellarage of hell,The Wind-Fiend, the abominable—The Hangman Wind that tortures temper and light—Comes slouching, sullen and obscene,Hard on the skirts of the embittered night;And in a cloud uncleanOf excremental humours, roused to strifeBy the operation of some ruinous change,Wherever his evil mandate run and range,Into a dire intensity of life,A craftsman at his bench, he settles downTo the grim job of throttling London Town.
So, by a jealous lightlessness besetThat might have oppressed the dragons of old timeCrunching and groping in the abysmal slime,A cave of cut-throat thoughts and villainous dreams,Hag-rid and crying with cold and dirt and wet,The afflicted City, prone from mark to markIn shameful occultation, seemsA nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting,With wavering gulfs and antic heights, and shifting,Rent in the stuff of a material dark,Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale,Shows like the leper’s living blotch of bale:Uncoiling monstrous into street on streetPaven with perils, teeming with mischance,Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread,Working with oaths and threats and faltering feetSomewhither in the hideousness ahead;Working through wicked airs and deadly dewsThat make the laden robber grin askanceAt the good places in his black romance,And the poor, loitering harlot rather chooseGo pinched and pined to bedThan lurk and shiver and curse her wretched wayFrom arch to arch, scouting some threepenny prey.
Forgot his dawns and far-flushed afterglows,His green garlands and windy eyots forgot,The old Father-River flows,His watchfires cores of menace in the gloom,As he came oozing from the Pit, and bore,Sunk in his filthily transfigured sides,Shoals of dishonoured dead to tumble and rotIn the squalor of the universal shore:His voices sounding through the gruesome airAs from the Ferry where the Boat of DoomWith her blaspheming cargo reels and rides:The while his children, the brave ships,No more adventurous and fair,Nor tripping it light of heel as home-bound brides,But infamously enchanted,Huddle together in the foul eclipse,Or feel their course by inches desperately,As through a tangle of alleys murder-haunted,From sinister reach to reach out—out—to sea.
And Death the while—Death with his well-worn, lean, professional smile,Death in his threadbare working trim—Comes to your bedside, unannounced and bland,And with expert, inevitable handFeels at your windpipe, fingers you in the lung,Or flicks the clot well into the labouring heart:Thus signifying unto old and young,However hard of mouth or wild of whim,’Tis time—’tis time by his ancient watch—to partFrom books and women and talk and drink and art.And you go humbly after himTo a mean suburban lodging: on the wayTo what or whereNot Death, who is old and very wise, can say:And you—how should you careSo long as, unreclaimed of hell,The Wind-Fiend, the insufferable,Thus vicious and thus patient, sits him downTo the black job of burking London Town?
Springwinds that blowAs over leagues of myrtle-blooms and may;Bevies of spring clouds trooping slow,Like matrons heavy bosomed and aglowWith the mild and placid pride of increase! Nay,What makes this insolent and comely streamOf appetence, this freshet of desire(Milk from the wild breasts of the wilful Day!),Down Piccadilly dance and murmur and gleamIn genial wave on wave and gyre on gyre?Why does that nymph unparalleled splash and churnThe wealth of her enchanted urnTill, over-billowing all betweenHer cheerful margents, grey and living green,It floats and wanders, glittering and fleeing,An estuary of the joy of being?Why should the lovely leafage of the ParkTouch to an ecstasy the act of seeing?—Sure, sure my paramour, my Bride of Brides,Lingering and flushed, mysteriously abidesIn some dim, eye-proof angle of odorous dark,Some smiling nook of green-and-golden shade,In the divine conviction robed and crownedThe globe fulfils his immemorial roundBut as the marrying-place of all things made!
There is no man, this deifying day,But feels the primal blessing in his blood.There is no woman but disdains—The sacred impulse of the MayBrightening like sex made sunshine through her veins—To vail the ensigns of her womanhood.None but, rejoicing, flaunts them as she goes,Bounteous in looks of her delicious best,On her inviolable quest:These with their hopes, with their sweet secrets those,But all desirable and frankly fair,As each were keeping some most prosperous tryst,And in the knowledge went imparadised!For look! a magical influence everywhere,Look how the liberal and transfiguring airWashes this inn of memorable meetings,This centre of ravishments and gracious greetings,Till, through its jocund loveliness of lengthA tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,Some vision multitudinous and agleam,Of happiness as it shall be evermore!
Praise God for givingThrough this His messenger among the daysHis word the life He gave is thrice-worth living!For Pan, the bountiful, imperious Pan—Not dead, not dead, as impotent dreamers feigned,But the gay genius of a million MaysRenewing his beneficent endeavour!—Still reigns and triumphs, as he hath triumphed and reignedSince in the dim blue dawn of timeThe universal ebb-and-flow began,To sound his ancient music, and prevails,By the persuasion of his mighty rhyme,Here in this radiant and immortal streetLavishly and omnipotently as everIn the open hills, the undissembling dales,The laughing-places of the juvenile earth.For lo! the wills of man and woman meet,Meet and are moved, each unto each endeared,As once in Eden’s prodigal bowers befell,To share his shameless, elemental mirthIn one great act of faith: while deep and strong,Incomparably nerved and cheered,The enormous heart of London joys to beatTo the measures of his rough, majestic song;The lewd, perennial, overmastering spellThat keeps the rolling universe ensphered,And life, and all for which life lives to long,Wanton and wondrous and for ever well.